The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Osun: time to catch up

    When history records the present 4th Republic, Osun, with its impassioned elections, could earn a special chapter.

    But so would the intense fray between the captains of development and commanders of retardation, grappling for its soul; with the people themselves seeming self-condemned, as democratic prisoners of war (POW)!

    Still, shorn of that rather dramatic combat symbolism, the Osun situation is universal truism.  The masses have never changed anywhere in history.

    Those who have are lean and mean forces, of light or darkness; of progress or regress. The winners just corral the rest, and mould them in own images!

    So, a polity or society that progresses or regresses is a function of the critical mass that holds it in thrall.

    When positive forces triumph, society soars. That is a manifestation of happy thrall, with all its ringing paradox.

    When negative ones are victors, the society sinks.  That is a manifestation of mirthless thrall, with all its grim folly of wilful self-stabbing.

    In electoral and democratic terms, it’s the majesty of choice.  Make the right one and soar.  Make the wrong one and sink.

    To parody John Milton in Paradise Lost, you got free choice.  But you must stand by the wisdom — or folly — of that choice.  It is the severe beauty of self-making or ruining!

    So, it was with Osun; and its bitterly fought gubernatorial election, just judicially resolved on July 5, in favour of sitting Governor, Gboyega Oyetola.

    Now, the governor has his job cut out for him.  Out of a term of four years, nearly one is gone, on bitter feuding on the judicial front.  Yet, governance couldn’t stop.  Neither did voter expectation.

    So Governor Oyetola though now flush with victory, as the Supreme Court just affirmed his victory, is condemned to upping the ante, to make up for lost time.

    That is as easy as executing a sprint during a marathon; and yet retaining well-managed breath to finish the race with aplomb, splash and dash!

    That’s a hard chore, fit only for the brave and nimble.

    Between Governor Oyetola and feisty opponent, PDP’s Ademola Adeleke, who symbolizes progress or regress, light or darkness, solid deal or titillation, hope or despair, may well be marooned in the emotive plain of politics.

    In a cynical, value-neuter polity, both could well be pitches from two ends of the same continuum.  It’s a happy-go-merry ruin that condemns the voter to sweet nothings, during electioneering.

    In that ultra-cynical street lingo, it’s just all politics.  Let everyone pitch; and let the most cunning take the day.

    But to the development-minded — and development ought to be the purpose of governance — it’s not that fluid or empty.  There has got to be definitive value ingrained in governance, which must guide choice.

    In Osun, since 1999, there appears a distinct but contrasting pattern, between the forces of politics for politics; and politics for development.

    By that frame, there appears two distinct tendencies; and quite frankly, the Osun voters must begin to take themselves much more seriously; and decide a definite path to follow, to make good by their state, given its peculiarities.

    For politics for development, you could track the continuum, since 1999, as Governors Bisi Akande-Rauf Aregbesola-Gboyega Oyetola.

    For politics for politics, you could track pretty much only Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, though Ademola Adeleke, had he won, would have fitted pat into that counter-continuum.

    Now, this classification is no holy writ, valid only because Ripples had pronounced it — no!  It is rather the columnist’s honest interpretation, based on close study and understanding of the policy thrusts of the two tendencies.

    Of course, readers and partisans are free to agree — or demur.

    Yes, there is also Iyiola Omisore, an ever-constant and recurring thrust, since 1999.  Omisore was part of the Akande government.  Before the split in that regime, he was the first Deputy Governor.

    Omisore would go on own different political trajectory, becoming a PDP ranking senator, and unfazed opposition figure to the Akande-Aregbesola tendency — until the Oyetola-Adeleke stalemate, when he weighed in on the Oyetola side; and helped to swing the extended election the new governor’s way.

    If therefore Akande-Aregbesola-Oyetola symbolize a thrust, against the Oyinlola counter-thrust, which of the two black-or-white will Omisore’s grey eventually fit into?  That stays in the belly of time!

    Suffice it to say the two major tendencies have had to contend with bruising post-election tiffs. Oyetola just lost eight months to distractions, borne out of a judicial challenge to his election.

    Oyinlola, on the other hand, enjoyed almost a full four-year illegal tenure as re-elected governor, until the Court of Appeal sacked him six months to full term in November 2010, when Aregbesola was sworn in as duly elected governor, in those best-forgotten “do-or-die” elections (apologies to former President Olusegun Obasanjo) of 2007.

    Irony of ironies: Omisore that threw his lot with Oyetola vehemently opposed the Aregbesola triumph, not really out of any strong judicial foundation but out of bitter partisan fealty.

    Even Oyinlola, before Obasanjo’s ADC Trojan horse and CUPP, its giddy mutation, was part of the Osun APC order, after the presidential win of 2015.

    Old Greek, Heraclitus the philosopher must sure have had Osun in mind, when he philosophically decreed you can’t step in the same river twice!  Osun politics would appear Heraclitus’s constant state of flux!

    Still, between the Akande-Aregbesola and the Oyinlola thrusts, it is clear which side was development-driven.

    Baba Akande came with Spartan, if painful policies; preaching the gospel of for their future, we give our today.  But that was seldom popular, among friend or foe.

    He was scalded out of power by emotive politics, though the Osun Alliance for Democracy (AD) partisans, back then in 2003, swore trademark Obasanjo-esque guile and cunning fiddled the vote.

    Rauf Aregbesola’s eight-year governorship scaled new heights in developmental policy, chalking hitherto unattained marks in infrastructure, physical and social; and giving the Osun rural economy a healthy jab in the arm.

    But no thanks to the regime’s wilful media-roasting (especially on the salary crisis), and bitter division among the Osun APC cadre, Adeleke hit the scene as a tragic comic — a Maltina Dance All virtuoso, gunning for the Osun governorship, with no especial credential or any rigorous policy thrust, except free-style, consummate dancing!

    It was disaster averted — the political equivalent of boxing’s “saved by the bell”!

    But even as the high drama peaked, the Osun electorate appeared no more than POWs — dazed and stunned; even as Adeleke was wildly gyrating towards becoming the Osun equivalent of Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose: an unfazed mascot of retardation, to undo the gruelling work of the eight previous years!

    Adeleke’s close shave defines Oyetola’s historic duty.  He appears the latest of the critical mass for progress, against that for retrogress, baying for Osun’s soul.

    If he succeeds, Osun soars.  If he fails, Osun sinks.  His job is well cut out; and time is not on his side.

    It’s time, therefore, to play vigorous catch-up!

  • Brewing tragedy

    A reportage and private discourse prompted this piece.

    In the Yoruba country, plebeians (who don’t know) and patricians (who should know and guide) appear yoked in passionate ethnic-goading.  It’s a brewing tragedy.

    When passion runs high, reason takes a dive.  It’s often the wide and merry way, to borrow that biblical phrase, that leads nowhere but avoidable catastrophe.

    First, Gani Adams, as “Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland”, warned South West governors against ceding any part of Yorubaland for any Fulani ranching settlement, otherwise known as ruga.

    While interrogating the propriety or otherwise of this diktat, the tragic Afonja of Ilorin cropped up, prompting a friend and top editor to join battle.

    Ripples’ stand was simple: Adams clearly over-reached himself, purporting to give orders to elected governors.  Beyond the honorific Kakanfo title, Adams has nobody’s mandate.

    Besides, Adams’ rash and stark “orders”  only exposes the Kakanfo title as a historical farce — at least, the claimed “Yorubaland” of it.

    There was Kakanfo of Oyo Empire.  But Oyo Empire never covered the whole of Yorubaland.  Indeed, the coastal Ijebu were never part of it.  Neither was Eko (Lagos), with its Awori aborigines.

    Even efforts to suck in the Ekiti/Ijesa, beyond imposing the Oyo “Ajele” (viceroy), crude envoys of war and plunder extracting tributes, sparked the Kiriji War (1877-1893), which though raged for 16 years, ended in a dreadful stalemate.

    Only superior British arms broke up that stalemate.  But British force not only stopped the belligerent parties, it also degraded the Alaafin from the unquestioned and unquestionable empire sovereign (Kaabiesi o!), to a British vassal-King.

    The same British might tamed the rather aggressive Ijebu, in the Anglo-Ijebu War, that saw the then reigning Awulaje, the Ijebu paramount monarch, banished to neighbouring Epe.  All these facts are in the Oyo-centric History of the Yorubas by Samuel Johnson.

    So, if the Kakanfo was limited to the Oyo Empire, what then is the progeny — nay propriety — of a “Kakanfo of Yorubaland”, dishing out orders to South West governors on state matters, beyond pitiable historical farce?

    Even within the Oyo Empire, was it ever heard that the Alaafin shared state powers with the Kakanfo (beyond giving and receiving battle orders), to the extent the Kakanfo would tell the Alaafin how or how not to wield his powers, even with the strict check-and-balance in the Oyo feudal system, best epitomized by the council of Oyomesi?

    At least two Kakanfo, consumed by hubris, tragically over-reached themselves.  One was Kurunmi, the great Ijaiye General.  His tragedy was well captured in Ola Rotimi’s play, Kurunmi.

    The other was the perfidious Afonja, and the dire curse of Aole.  That curse not only doomed Afonja to a tragic end, it also cost the Yoruba Ilorin, which they lost to Alimi and fellow Fulani, Afonja’s anti-Alaafin confederates turned fatal foes.

    If even in the Oyo Empire, the Kakanfo would share political spotlight with his sovereign, the Alaafin, only at his own perils, what makes Gani Adams think he could order governors around in a modern setting — a setting more democratic than feudal; where the Kakanfo is more honorific than real?

    By his happy starkness, Adams appears gravitating towards the well-paved self-destruct tragedies, which have plagued the Kakanfo title till the modern era.

    But while that is a free and democratic choice Adams can embrace or shun, not slamming his reckless orders would be tantamount to bowing to mob rule, in a duly constituted polity ruled by law.

    That is why the governors should assert their mandate on state matters — except, of course, they want to yield space to mob rule; from which nobody gains.

    But it was on Afonja, the top editor’s point of intervention, that plebs and patricians appear merged, in a Yoruba ultra-nationalistic army, against a looming Fulani occupation army, real or imagined.

    Ripples’ interpretation of Afonja was that by dabbling into matters beyond his ken, and trading off his sovereign for personal gain, he courted tragedy and earned his doom — a fate Adams, the Kakanfo modern caricature, appears too stark to grasp and learn from, given his rash South West gubernatorial diktat.

    But the editor had a diametrically opposed interpretation: he alleged present neo-Afonja were aiding and abetting the capture of Yorubaland, by Fulani modern-day occupiers!

    Same tragic historical figure.  Contrasting interpretations.  How interesting!

    But that goes to the crux of the matter: the anti-Fulani hysteria is just the blinding tribal smoke.  The real crux is an election lost and won; and plotting losers who won’t let go!

    What are the facts, though starkly out there in the public space?

    For starters, the editor’s neo-Afonja theory is rather rich, for it is nothing but a fabulous, if not outright mischievous, colouring of the South West-North West entente that in 2015 sacked the PDP and drove Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo to power.

    But the real gist is the South West political mainstream broke into two.  A faction, led by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Baba Bisi Akande won.

    The other faction, most epitomized by Baba Ayo Adebanjo’s Afenifere faction lost — and justly so.  Both 2015 and 2019, they have proved the democratic minority, despite thunderous barks and doomsday howls, on behalf of the “Yoruba”, whose mandate they don’t even have.

    Even Adams that now postures as some rebel-general with suspect cause, on behalf of the Yoruba, marshalled his Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) thugs to sack Lagos, in aid of Goodluck Jonathan’s doomed presidential re-election.

    That barbarism was bad enough if it was genuine hustle for democracy.  But alas!  It was cynical hustle for cheap, near-illicit pipeline security contracts that the new PMB government promptly voided.

    Now, the same Adams is hankering for anti-Fulani ruga war, on behalf of the Yoruba!

    The ruga controversy is only the latest in the series of schemes by the electorally vanquished, who nevertheless clutch at rogue activism, that can only sucker the dumb, on the Yoruba ultra-nationalist front.  That path leads nowhere but perdition.

    Let the ruga ranching question be clinically debated.  After, let the governors take decisions that best tally with the interest of their people, and of course, pan-Yoruba interest, in a federal Nigeria.

    That task is for clinical thinkers that understand the issue in all its ramification, not rabid ultra-nationalists who spew nothing but ethnic hate, because naked fear, phantom or real, has captured and paralyzed their thinking.

    In these stark times, the Yoruba must draw inspiration from Awo, the avatar himself.  In his titanic battle against the North-Eastern Region order of the 1st Republic, he deployed his acute mind, not some rabid and scalding tribal appeal, to trump his enemies on the high shrine of ideas.

    That’s why he lives today, while most of his traducers are dead, buried and forgotten.

  • Enter state police?

    Not unlike the Biblical thief in the night, state police has stolen back into public discourse.

    Suddenly everyone — or well, almost — seems to realize how integral it is to the federal security infrastructure.

    Since the rather misleading report that President Muhammadu Buhari had “approved” state police; the Presidency’s almost instant disavowal to say the president had only set up an advisory panel on the matter; and the somewhat cheery news that state governors were approaching some unanimity on the matter, the polity had been in a whirr.

    For protagonists, it’s a whirr of great expectations (to echo one of the classics of English novelist, Charles Dickens) — at last!

    For antagonists, however, it’s grim brace-up for the final, do-or-die push against  a subject that, under the federal doctrine, ought to be trite; but which got infected with needless bile — no thanks to opportunistic “restructuring” campaigners.

    On state police, the polity would sure experience serious fireworks in the following weeks, if not months!

    But first thing first: it is not presidential business to “approve” or reject state police.  If one president could approve, then another could reject.

    State police is too fundamental to be condemned to such presidential yo-yo.  Rather, it is a constitutional matter that, once resolved, must be binding on all.

    Still, it’s gratifying that PMB, not the most fervent federalist by any stretch; and certainly a command-and-control mind by his military training, appears nudging towards state police.

    You could, therefore, say state police appears an idea whose time has come.  But that would be in the clouds, where myth and concept mix in a puzzling mist.

    Terra-firma, however, it’s the futility of meeting federal (read far-flung local) problems with a distant, one-shoe-fits-all unitary solutions.

    That pathology is manifest in the current nationwide security scourge.  But more and more, across all spheres, Nigerians must learn to develop local antidotes to peculiar local problems; rather than eternally await some central Leviathan to come work some magic.

    That draws the discourse to the controversy likely to dawn, in the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), with opposing strands led by razor-sharp minds, among their ranks.

    Ekiti Governor and new NGF chairman, Kayode Fayemi, symbolizes the pro-lobby.

    Dr. Fayemi might be relatively young.  But long before restructuring became convenient, emergency crusading, which neophytes speak in passionate tongues, the Ekiti governor had long been in the trenches for state police, as imperative to Nigeria’s re-federalization process.

    Kaduna Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, one of the most cerebral among the governors’ rank, would likely champion the state police nay-lobby.

    Though Malam El-Rufai boasts a tick-tock mind, brilliant and dazzling, he has already availed himself the luxury of that popular, if nauseating, Nigerian cliche — “Nigeria is not ripe”, on the state police question.

    Now, proponents of state police are no saints any more than opponents are devils.  Both are just a product of their socio-political evolution, even if both are bred in Nigeria, though in different parts.

    Ironically, that very dichotomy in thinking should settle the argument: that Nigeria’s re-federalization is inevitable; and the present gloried unitary system is futile, since different parts of Nigeria boast different socio-political evolution.

    Besides, Nigeria is huge and vast.  Beyond the commonality of being Nigerian, its people are different and complex in their own ways.

    Federalism, therefore, provides excellent tools for navigating these complexities, without necessarily dismantling the common strength: a powerful, hugely populated, big and vast country.

    So, in the NGF, let both the Fayemi and El-Rufai strands bring it on!  Let’s have the fireworks!

    But let everyone know this is strictly no democratic contest (though it dawns under democratic tenets); where the majority must carry the vote.

    It is rather a contest of rigorous ideas; where a tiny but critical mass may well trump a flabby majority, scared stiff by change; and willing to paper over its ruins.  That would be a grave disservice to the future and its generations.

    Students of literature know English Romantic poetry accounts for one of the most evocative: providing succeeding generations with excellent pathos and even bathos.

    But even with the perils of climate change, what would modern living have been without the gains of the Industrial Revolution, which Romantic poetry rued with such evocative cries, pleasurable pains and sweet grief?

    There is pain in change.  But from such pains come gains. So, let it be for Nigeria’s re-federalization. At least, the security front has shown the present central system is clearly at the end of its tether.

    So, let equity, not majority opinion, guide the NGF debate.  Let the federal question be settled; and the place of state police in it.  But let each state exercise its right to own police at its own convenient time.

    For the federal authorities, please shun the “Nigeria is not ripe” orchestra.  Like other cliches, that would appear another convenient cover by those who have not given — or won’t give — the subject a serious thought.

    So, let the Federal Government do the needful; and push to parliament an enabling bill — an enabling bill that would not only amend the Constitution to allow state police but also set up rigorous procedures to avoid past abuses, that forced a sole central police on the polity.

    For states, having own police is neither burden nor prestige.  It is simply a tool to do urgent security work.

    Though state police is not yet official, Lagos has different “police”, tackling different urban challenges: the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA (traffic), Lagos State Environmental Sanitation Corps, LASESC (environment) and the Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Corps , LSNC (neighourhood safety).

    All three perform some “policing” function.  Lagos, tiniest in land mass but one of the most populated, has devised a means to protect its own environment.

    So, should it be for every state.  With the sad turn of events, it is clear the central Nigeria Police is ill-suited go it all alone.

    Still, state police should shunt aside the last barrier against Nigeria’s full re-federalization.  States should work own resources and control most of them, subject to tax laws in the land.

    Had that been so, Zamfara would have mined its gold and other costly stones; pay the Federal Government the agreed share in taxation and royalty, as a way of sharing its good fortune with the rest of the country; and used its wealth to put in place a police that could secure its citizens against bandits.

    That is the federal way. That is the way to go, if Nigeria must realize its full potential.

  • June 12: a postscript

    Done deal – 2019, and June 12 formally became Nigeria’s national Democracy Day!

    But the strong ripples of just desert, clashed with the no-less-rippling currents of futile denial, in an exhilarating drama of good finally trumping evil.

    First, the news hit the wires: all the former heads of state were absent at the epochal event; the apocryphal “owners of Nigeria” – Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar and even Ernest Shonekan, the craven head of the pitiful Interim National Government (ING).

    Even the one that should be part of them; and yet was clearly not with them on the June 12 debacle: Gen. Yakubu Gowon.  Good, old Jack was reportedly undone by old age flu!

    Aside from Gowon who made his own stand very clear with an earlier statement, were the rest unpleased with June 12’s beatification; and so stayed away?  Who knows?

    The anti-Buhari lobby, with a penchant to play politics with everything, could convert to warmth that cold comfort, in these excruciating wintry times, for a totally lost cause: the so-called “owners of Nigeria” were displeased!

    Still, that stay-out could be a quiet but powerful rite of passage.  Can you be present at your own burial?

    The old order fadeth — and its religious minders fall quiet!

    Little surprise: on June 12’s rehabilitation, mum has it been; from the once rambunctious polemics chamber of Father Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto.

    The bishop’s was one of the most luminous minds, all through military rule; and through the Obasanjo-led old order of the 4th Republic (1999-2015).  It appears the holy priest is getting progressively mute – and muted.

    Changing seasons, changing voices!

    Still, among the fading order, you just must think of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar.  On the June 12 debacle, his is a mixed bag.

    MKO Abiola died under his watch, after Sani Abacha’s sudden expiry, in what many have alleged was calculated killing to clear the deck.  But then that honourable, if painful, death earned MKO the martyrdom that hauled him right back to glorious life today.

    Also under Abdulsalami’s watch, Obasanjo got sprung from gaol; and raced, after a pardon, to a two-term elected presidency, in what the inimitable Fela would have dismissed as Army Arrangement (AA).  Yet, the same Obasanjo endures life; but hardly enjoys seeing all he erected get trashed!

    It is a powerful paradox that must tame the mighty, excite the witty, and buoy the weakling!  Yet, Abdulsalami may yet earn the soft side of history.

    His post-power grace-cum-carriage is a model in comportment; for many less endowed but far louder.  Then, the military would perhaps have wished an Abdusalami, not an IBB, or an Abacha.

    His short-and-sharp transition could have left a military-fleeing-from-power with some institutional grace; but hardly curbed it of its tragic messianic delusion.  Again, it’s Abdulsalami sweet and sour!

    But all sour – no sweetness? – was Gen. Obasanjo, mourner-in-chief, as Carnival June 12 hit town.  Yet, the old fox pointed towards another direction: the brewing political crisis in neighbouring Benin must be nipped in the bud.

    That is no bad call, for tiny Benin taught mighty Nigeria the democratic ethos.  Its sovereign national conference (SNC) still fires here, many a federalist romantic; while delivering, in Benin, a seamless democratic transition, in which government and opposition alternate power.

    Yet, latest beneficiary, Patrice Talon, after trumping the ruling party’s Lionel Zinsou in a run-off, just sunk an anti-democratic talon – an amendment to the electoral law that all but banned the opposition from bidding for parliament.

    To boot, a protesting former President, Thomas Boni Yayi, is clamped under house arrest!

    For once, a good call from Obasanjo, even if Talon appears a Benin manifestation of Obasanjo’s own grave anti-democratic flaws — witness his “do-or-die” general elections of 2007.

    Ghana’s John Kuffour, his advertised partner in this new Benin campaign, is a study to Obasanjo himself, in how a former president must comport himself – calm, graceful, dignified and non-meddlesome.

    Boni Yayi’s restriction might just be a crafty Obasanjo projection, of what he fears just might be his lot, should his reckless meddling continue, even as his political world crashes in a cascade!  But the Nigerian government must not take the bait.  In this business, nothing is as satisfying as self-burial!

    But away from the fading order, to lobbies that cannot even claim their glory, no thanks to bad politics and politicking.

    Enter the Afenifere, who as a vibrant part of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), were much as anyone, brave, battle-tested and well-decorated June 12 veterans.  Yet, victory came, and all they could muster was a moan, not a whoop.

    But God, in His infinite mercies, gave them Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, to vent their spleen – Kingibe, the co-owner of the MKO mandate that abandoned the battle midstream, yet shared in June 12’s full glory!

    A leading voice of that lobby, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, pummelled Kingibe without let – and fairly so; for reaping where he did not sow.

    Yet, better to admit the unworthy than entirely deny honour that is due.  Didn’t the Bible say it was better to let go a relay of the guilty, than punish a single innocent soul?

    Still, a strain of Yoruba ultra-nationalism tried to find its voice, at the peak of the June 12 carnival, staging what it called the “O to ge” rally.

    It was the voice of the natives against kidnapping, banditry and allied violent crimes, which had spiked in Yorubaland, as it had in the rest of the country.

    Yet, that rally, as legitimate as it was, would have mocked the June 12 principle.  June 12 earned its golden stripes precisely because some evil forces tried to ethnicize – and therefore bury – the Yoruba protest against a flawless presidential mandate handed MKO.

    Now, 26 years after June 12, some Yoruba lobbies tried to ethnicize a national plague: painting kidnapping as a sole Yoruba menace, deliberately inflicted by the Fulani.

    Just as well it all turned a damp squib; for it was a big negation of the June 12 spirit.

    After the June 12 experience, that is no way to go.  Justice – as crime – has no ethnic flavour.  It is a blessing – just as crime is plague – to all!

    Besides, the kidnapping story, hitherto a fanatical anti-Fulani tale, has mutated in twists and turns: Yoruba pastor-turned self-kidnapper for ransom; Fulani herdsmen-turned rescuers of Yoruba captives from home-brewed kidnappers!

    Kidnapping, nationwide, has turned an all-comer, equal-opportunity criminal racket, which the local authorities, must partner with the federal authorities to crack.

  • June 12!

    June 12!  Democracy Day!
    The day not a few prayed — and perhaps fasted — would never come is here!
    And, as it pleases the Almighty, those yesteryear gods are still alive, though not so well!  It’s the ultimate futility of playing god over fellow humans!
    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the self-named “military president” (whatever that meant), suffered the terrible delusion he could cancel the making of a real president; and live happily ever after, as they say in those moonlight tales!
    IBB, 26 years after his rash annulment, is not unlike a golden coin badly faded; or a once glowing, smouldering coal, now covered by grey cold ash!
    The haughty glow of military power and glory is vanished!  All that remains is the cold ashen folly of vanity — like bitter winter after sweet summer!
    At the ultimate triumph of June 12, our man that once boasted of dominating his environment, who had the power of life and death, and was not only in office but also in power, is all but a mere relic!  His is a living example of the ephemerality of power.
    Sani Abacha, the June 12 “friend” turned fiend?  The Khalifa that sustained the annulment, with blood and gore; pus and brine, long after the annuler had “stepped aside” in disgrace?
    Twenty-six years after the annulment and 21 years after Abacha’s sudden expiry, we are still assailed by the rotten ooze of his uncommon sleaze!
    There is this claim that the Yoruba hated Abacha, always demonized him and therefore played down his good side.
    To be sure, between Abacha and the Yoruba, there was no love lost.  However, the issue was more fundamental.
    Politically, by sustaining the annulment, Abacha was clear danger to Nigerian democracy.  That was hardly Yoruba sole business.
    Economically, his gargantuan greed, expressed by his sweeping sleaze, condemned many to a future of poverty and insecurity, as epitomized by the plague now ravaging Abacha’s native North.
    Sani Abacha might have had his good part.  But history would fairly remember him as a thief, a murderer and a plunderer. These negative traits exalt no nation.  If the yearly June 12 celebrations thumb down these evils, Nigerians would have had more than a public holiday.
    Still the pair of IBB and Abacha, by their June 12 debacle, gifted the polity an unintended pearl: no more looting and parasitic military, posturing as emergency saviours.  Twenty straight years of democracy is living proof!
    What of Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and Tony Anenih (both now dead), who mixed up settling personal scores with the inviolability of a people’s mandate, thus conspiring to trade MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate for the feckless Ernest Shonekan Interim National Government (ING) — brewed in perfidy, imposed by perfidy, collapsed in perfidy?
    Chief Shonekan is alive to witness the full glory of June 12, even if he cuts a sorry sight: a merry tool used to truncate the people’s democratic will!  That would be his lot in history.
    But the old man carries his cross with stoic dignity.  That can’t be said of his Egba kith and kin, the restless and restive Ebora Owu — but more on that presently!
    Yar’Adua (God bless his soul!) paid the ultimate price for playing politics with everything: he died in Abacha’s gulag, after conviction for a controversial (many would insist, phantom) coup attempt.  Might standing by June 12 have earned him a better fate?
    What became of Anenih, the national chairman of the victorious Social Democratic Party (SDP), that nevertheless traded away MKO’s mandate?
    For a moment, “The Fixer” ruled the roost: a ruthless turner of electoral fortunes – winners to losers; losers into winners; at the acme of PDP’s electoral heists!
    Still, he died a diminished electoral menace, eventually trumped by the sanctity of the vote.  At his fall in Edo, a triumphant Adams Oshiomhole declared that he had retired the Edo “godfathers”.  The PDP 2015 national fall marked his final political demise.
    Arthur Nzeribe, he of the notorious but cynically named Association for Better Nigeria (ABN)?
    Arthur! — As folks called him: half in dread, half in scorn was the name; Nzeribe was the man, in those heady days of halcyon mischief!  Why, he would even later in 1999 emerge senator, beneficiary of a democracy he strove so hard to scuttle!
    But today, good old Arthur, battling for health in his winter years, would wonder if all that swashbuckling infamy was worth all the while!  Glad he too is alive, if not so well, to witness the glory of June 12!
    Still, perhaps the most pathetic of the anti-June 12 elements, condemned to living to see its glory, is ironically its greatest beneficiary, former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
    Technically, June 12 gifted Obasanjo two elective presidential terms, to add to his three previous years as military head of state.
    Pre-June 12, Obasanjo’s was, near-universally, a respected voice, except among his fellow Yoruba, thus echoing the Biblical quip of a prophet not without honour, except in his own country, among his own people.
    Still, 26 years after June 12, diminution appears Obasanjo’s lot, no thanks to horrid personal choices.
    First, a rabid fear of June 12 perhaps drove him to supporting Atiku Abubakar, a former deputy he had traduced with venom, probably in last-minute desperation to stave off June 12 as Democracy Day, if Atiku had triumphed.
    However, with re-election going President Muhammadu Buhari’s way, Obasanjo, arguably the greatest southern beneficiary of “Fulanization and Islamization” – both made him military head of state and elected president – is busy dissing his northern patrons, with his latest opportunistic theory, clearly to divert attention from June 12 as ultimate political nemesis.
    But even then, Obasanjo ran into a crushing blow from Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the former commander-in-chief Obasanjo had left for dead in his Not My Will, Obasanjo’s post-military rule memoirs, throatily insulting the man and addressing him as “Mr. Gowon”.
    Honour fully regained, and never diminished by opportunistic meddling as Obasanjo is wont, the Gowon “Fulanization” rebuke, of June 5, came with biting severity:
    “They were all my juniors starting from Obasanjo,” Gowon said.  ”I know their characters more than anyone … Buhari is kind, most disciplined and most diligent in his responsibilities. Any Christian leader spreading propaganda of Islamization or Fulanization against the President is doing so at his or her own risk …”
    The ultimate rebuke might be Gowon’s.  But the ultimate irony comes from Obasanjo’s own Not My Will.
    In that book, a triumphant but callow Obasanjo pilloried Awolowo and Azikiwe as ending as tribal champions.  Now see Obasanjo, self-trumpeted Mr. Nigeria, who claimed MKO was no messiah, playing own “Fulanization” ethnic card, all because of June 12!
    Poor Ebora Owu! His May 29 Democracy Day Trojan horse not only gets buried from tommorrow, he is ending too as another ethnic hustler!
    June 12, the spiritual grave of many a plastic reputation!
    MKO and Gani Fawehinmi must be rolling, with loud laughter, in their graves!

  • Again, the Fulani ogre

    It’s testy, grouchy time in the Yoruba country — and for good reasons.  Some Fulani dregs have turned Yoruba forests into a vast kidnappers’ den.

    The land seethes with anger and resent.  That is why President Muhammadu Buhari, and his security chiefs, must act — and act fast.

    But that is no reason to tar every Fulani with the criminality of a few.  Or suggest a “Fulani” presidency spurs Fulani banditry.

    That would profane legitimate anger with reckless politicking; and could plant more potent ethnic danger, long after the current security crisis is history.

    It all appears a throwback to May 2015, though.

    Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani had defeated President Goodluck Jonathan, a Niger Delta minority; and just got sworn in as president.

    Buhari’s winning All Progressives Congress (APC) coalition comprised the Bola Tinubu-led Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in a rare North West-South West entente.

    The Jonathan losing coalition had the Afenifere, led by Chief Reuben Fasoranti, but whose most vocal voices were Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Chief Olu Falae, though these partisans were formally no members of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), dominant in the South East and South South.

    So, for the losers, the after-loss strategy was heightened anti-Fulani hysteria.

    Because a Fulani just won power, the entire Fulani must be new — or more appropriately, renewed — Judases of the Federal Republic, docked, tried and guillotined, in the emotive courts, holding in the southern media!

    The Niger Delta Avengers, in a reckless staccato, fired the opening salvos, to make the country “ungovernable”; blowing up off-shore oil fields, blighting their home environment and sabotaging oil exports.

    Nnamdi Kanu, of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), later weighed in with his scalding tribal-hating; explosive ethnic-baiting; and reckless faith-ranting.

    That tanked with some so-called northern “youths” giving the Igbo an ultimatum to quit the North, in a grim echo of the tragedies of 1966.  Kanu himself would later scram out of town to emerge unfazed fugitive, but with scaled down mischief.

    Afenifere’s own contribution to this sour grape “war” was, on the surface, “restructuring”.

    But really, its twin-headaches were Tinubu (who masterminded a North West-South West entente) and pushed Afenifere into some political Coventry; and Buhari (the first chief beneficiary of that realignment). That twin-migraine has persisted, with the way the 2019 elections went.

    This 2015 back-grounding should illuminate the interpretation, as a Fulani ogre, of a grave national security challenge, that must be smitten in the South West, with all ethnic venom possible.  That is a tragic distraction.

    Along that line, however, the Yoruba Summit Group (YSG), claiming to act on behalf of the Yoruba, just weighed in with a diktat; and called whoever disagrees with it “traitor” to the Yoruba cause.

    While banding into pressure groups could be the summit of pressing democratic rights, YSG must know that branding contrary voices “traitors” is the very nadir of common sense.

    You can’t claim a democratic right with recklessly undemocratic swagger.  That is the very traitor to common sense!

    But having done with the body’s inanity of democratic fatwa (with all its violent contradictions), YSG is right, like everyone, to be gravely concerned about the dire security situation.

    This is more so when the South West, hitherto a safe oasis, in a national desert of unrest and violence, seems now captive to kidnappers.

    The state must go after and punish those criminals — and fast too!  But when you ethnicize a crime, you replace seasonal angst with perennial pain.

    That is the folly of the present hysteria, over Fulani kidnappers come to subdue the South West; shortly after the national hysteria of the Fulani herdsmen come to slaughter the rest of the country.

    It is a ringing and tendentious fallacy that might just plague the polity, long after Muhammadu Buhari must have retired to Daura.

    You blame the “Fulani president” for “Fulani banditry” today?  Fine!  Tomorrow, a “Yoruba president” would be roasted for Yoruba robberies; and an “Igbo president”, guillotined for “Igbo crime” – and a new bout of Nigerian national banality is born!

    O, the very inanity of “Fulani”, “Hausa”, “Igbo” or even “Yoruba” kidnappers (which of these ethnics doesn’t harbour own criminals?), compels the background to the current plague of kidnapping — the Zamfara security crisis.

    In southern Nigeria’s political lore, the “Hausa-Fulani” are one and indivisible; yoked in eternal and hideous power plotting.

    Yet, from a research finding, the Zamfara crisis started with a spectacular Hausa-Fulani blowout!

    According to research findings by the Abubakar Mohammed-led Centre for Democratic Development Research and Training, Zaria, armed robbers, suspected to be “Fulani boys”, were robbing local Zamfara farmers.

    A local vigilante, a Hausa answer to the local criminality, faced down these criminals.  In its moral fervour, however, it not only vanquished the criminals, it killed and drove almost every Fulani in sight into the bush.

    That provoked a counter Fulani reaction, birthing a Hausa versus Fulani ethnic show down — a classic “Gambari pa Fulani” (northern elements neutralize one another) Yoruba sneer, in full tragic Technicolor!

    That crisis, of killings and counter-killings, got traction from earlier Ahmed Yerima governorship land reforms, which allegedly grabbed Fulani ancestral lands and shared them among Hausa farmers.

    In the equal-opportunity bedlam, a third but overwhelming Leviathan swooped on the scene: rustling the Fulani herdsmen of their cows; robbing the Hausa farmers of their cash.

    A new anarchy just came upon the land!

    With rustled cows located among rustic robber barons, but with the robber Leviathan protected by AK47-totting toughs, kidnapping for cash, by the dispossessed but equally fiercely armed, joined the explosive mix!

    Four years down the line, kidnapping and banditry had become a national emergency; with the violence seeping down to pierce the serene South West, resulting in the current angst.

    These Zamfara dregs could be the Fulani plaguing Yoruba forests; extorting millions of Naira as ransom; killing and maiming; and worsening the security situation.

    So, instead of escalating their crime as “Fulani invasion”, is it not more logical to isolate the criminals as the soulless bandits that represent no one but own greed; and offering the security agencies the intelligence to bring them to heel?

    Should there be suspected criminal collusion and cover-up by the security agencies, specific lights must be beamed on the guilty; and everything done to punish and root them out.

    That would be a better strategy, than the current combustible hell-raising and ethnic-baiting.

    That way, Yoruba forests would have been rid of Fulani bandits, without stirring any ethnic slur. In any case, if these bandits devastated the Zamfara Hausa folks, why would they suddenly become crime ambassadors, of the Fulani, in the Yoruba country?

    Forget the tribe. Tackle the criminal. Then comes the pleasant epiphany: Nigeria has only two tribes: the good and the bad – and maybe, more clear-headed thinking; and certainly less “Fulanization” political mischief!

    Get rid of the bad; and every other thing would be added.  Nothing could be more liberating.

  • Twenty years after

    Twenty straight years of democracy – and Nigeria is a scalding, hissing, whistling crucible.

    No wonder: it’s the high season of trendy lamentation; and fashionable melancholy!

    Rogue elements, with an eye for the deluded, may locate a parallel for their trauma in American playwright Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; and claim it is all persecution.

    Miller’s 1953 play made a stinging allegory of McCarthyism (1950-1954).  But he tucked it all under the Salem witch trials, of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1692/93.  So if folks, as corrupt as they come, now bawl “witch-hunt!” you know where that original sentiment came from!

    US Senator Joseph McCarthy was the hound-in-chief of McCarthyism — that nefarious five-year anti-communist hysteria, under which the United States purged its so-called “communists”.

    Miller himself was a victim, in 1956 facing congressional probe.  He got bullied by the so-called House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities; and got convicted for “contempt of congress”, because he refused to reveal the guys he had meetings with.

    The Nigerian crucible, from 1999 till now, could have its own dross still. On balance, however, it would appear squeezing the dross from the truly, truly loathsome.

    From 2015, those who had sowed the wind from 1999, appear reaping the whirlwind.  But that does not suggest the new order, from 2015, is not sowing its own fresh winds.

    Still, some hard core purification appears dawning.  Though most can’t — or don’t want to — see it in the current bedlam, the public space is going through some corrective heat.  That can’t be bad for any polity.

    From tomorrow, for instance, a grand symbol of pretence goes crashing — May 29 as Nigeria’s National Democracy Day, giving way to June 12: Nigeria’s true fount of democracy.

    With June 12 as new Democracy Day, MKO Abiola’s sacred but truncated mandate, of 12 June 1993; and his martyrdom, of 7 July 1998; get a laudable national rehabilitation.

    That would bring some closure to the grave injustice of Ibrahim Babangida’s electoral annulment.

    But as MKO soars, even from the grave; Olusegun Obasanjo plummets, even when very much alive.

    Obasanjo erected May 29 to blot, from the public mind, MKO’s personal sacrifice; and the more fundamental sanctity of the vote.  Both motives have turned ashen in his mouth.

    Besides, compared to his pre-June 12 (1993) heydays and despite gaining the presidency in 1999, a clinical track shows Obasanjo’s stock has faced what the economists would call diminishing returns.

    Now, the old soldier is self-relegated to a VIP among media hell raisers; most times embarrassingly self-serving, to remain willy-nilly relevant.

    The Greeks said it all: only the dead are truly happy — and MKO versus OBJ is a classic Nigerian contemporary example!

    But the corrective crucible of democracy goes beyond individual fortune or misfortune.  This 20-year democracy haul — haul, because it has been rather tedious and heavy going — appears to have tamed many an institutional hubris.

    Take the military.  In the 1st Republic (1 October 1960 – 15 January 1966), the gung-ho boys of military salvation only allowed the politicians five years of foibles.

    The 2nd Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983) was even shorter: four years and three months!

    At their peak of tragic conceit in 1993, the Nigerian military, in the grim Sani Abacha, even truncated their eight-year political transition, after Babangida’s wayward annulment of the result of the 12 June 1993 election results.

    Yes, in all three cases, the politicians were no angels.  Indeed, they buckled and fumbled and wobbled.  Also, they have not been angels, these 20 years past, any more than they were, in those two failed republics; and IBB’s stalled transition.

    Yet, what has changed these 20 years past, that didn’t plague the previous orders?  Practically nothing — except that the khaki boys have been smitten by the wild blunders of own conceit.

    That cannot be bad for the polity!  Besides, that grand illusion — nay delusion — is banished, hopefully forever: national salvation isn’t quartered in any military uniform.  It is rather quartered in the people, taking their destiny in own hands.

    That has been democracy these 20 years past, warts and all.  Though it hasn’t exactly been political El Dorado, hard progress has been made.

    The most spectacular of that, on the political plane, has been the defeat of the ruling federal party.  The year 2015 achieved all that – for the first time since 1960.

    That harsh reality just got reinforced, with the 2019 general elections — the ruling party can no longer go a-snoring at elections, simply because it is the ruling party.  The dynamics are fast changing.  That is good for Nigerian democracy.

    With their latest Zamfara debacle, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are fast realizing, the hard way, that they cannot afford the arrogant decadence that ruined and sank the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    A political party has no choice: it must be bound by own rules — and party primaries are good starting points!  Though that hurts the APC today, it is good, over all, for Nigerian democracy, if the right lessons have been learnt.

    Still, look and listen around you: it’s free-wheeling jeremiad.  Contemporary Nigeria has developed the old Israelites’ complex: to howl and bawl and moan and screech, at every opportunity; like children whose lollies just got taken away!

    The partisan opposition feels obliged to bad-mouth, no matter what — hardly a democratic crime!  The sensation-crunching media finds it rather fashionable to criticize, many times blindly, with unfazed venom, rather than do reasoned critiques.

    On the balance, however, compared with the military era, a democratic Nigeria has experienced far better structured growth, even if the growth has come with new challenges.

    For starters, 2015 has brought to the federal plain more thoughtful pro-poor policies (emblematized by Tradermoni; state–supported credit for the humblest of trades); away from the PDP-era PAP (poverty alleviation programme), as epitomized by Keke Marwa, and its inevitable urban transportation plague.

    Besides, the wild cats, parasites that for too long fed fat while the rest of us shrivelled, are meeting their due nemesis.

    Still, the story would appear even more dramatic in the states. But for the democratic order, and the re-engineering that came with 1999, the Lagos economy would perhaps have ground to a halt, even if challenges remain.

    Abakaliki in Ebonyi, even post-1999, got dismissed by its dusty roads — not anymore!  Osun, a state that pre-1999 and much after, seemed trapped with poor infrastructure and structural poverty, is teaching the rest of the country how to maximize scarce resources, for the Jeremy Bentham ideal: “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”.

    Pray, what can you say of Borno?  Out of the ashes of Boko Haram, the state is building Osun-like futuristic mega-schools, for the talakawa kids to tap quality education!

    That is the colour of democracy, warts and all, 20 years after!

    Despite the present challenges, that can’t be bad for anyone.

  • Baiting a needless crisis

    It started as local government reforms of 1976.

    It has, since then, proved virulent deforms; to centre-component relations, in a federal state.

    It is the howling misnomer of piping state money straight to constitutional strangers; in form of a so-called “third tier”.  That is fast tearing into shreds the fundamental canons of federalism.

    By such direct federal-local government dealings, Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperial presidency illegally seized funds belonging to Lagos State; during the Lagos council creation crisis of 2004-2007.  Patriotic nastiness was never more monstrous!

    Now, combative ignorance continues to triumph over reticent knowledge; on the federal question.  But its strategic chaos may yet wake everyone up to its ultimate folly.

    In a federal set-up, there can’t be anything like “local government money”, directly paid from the Federation Account.  That account belongs to two owners: the Federal Government and the 36 state governments.

    Any other body, outside these two, is an impostor at best; or a stranger, at worst.  Either way, none can be legitimate recipient of cash from the federal till; for strictly, they are constitutional nobodies.

    Yes, the 1999 Constitution (as amended) lists 774 local governments in its 4th Schedule; and wears this misnomer like some gargoyle.  But that was military-era paternalism, if not outright hubris, smuggled into the democratic grundnorm.

    Like the bastard in real life, however, whose coming of age causes inevitable chaos, this federal constitutional bastard, of regarding the local government as a federating unit, is set to wreak fresh constitutional havoc!

    That is because the Buhari administration just gave it new lease — a new lease that could provoke a constitutionally potent new diss, from the states across party lines.

    The polity could well then brace up for a rash of suits, challenging Federal Government powers, over its latest financial regulations.

    That is baiting a needless constitutional crisis.  Still, a rare stasis is needed to start the administration’s second term; and focus on rebuilding the economy, without any distractions.

    The genie popped off the bottle in 1976, during the Obasanjo military regime.  That paternalistic junta, clearly driven by the military command ethos, felt it could fund local governments, till then the exclusive business of the states, directly from Lagos, then the federal capital.

    Enter then, the so-called “third tier”— which was no novelty: local governments had always been an administrative part of the Nigerian polity.  But the anomaly, characteristic of military quick fixes, was decreeing it a component unit of the Nigerian federation.  That was clear military crap!

    It is that crap the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) just tried to sustain, by its May 6 new financial guidelines, concerning local government allocations from the Federation Account.

    Simply, that guideline decrees no one must touch local government money, warehoused in the state joint local government account (SJLGA), until it hits the specific accounts of the local governments.

    On the face of it, the NFIU diktat has its own merits.  For one, governors over the years have been accused of itchy fingers, concerning local government monies; thereby allegedly diverting the money away from local government needs.

    For another, in this age of free-wheeling money laundering, the SJLGA could also be a ready and thriving pool for diverting money for grassroots welfare to less noble stuffs.  Plugging that loophole is not out of order, especially by a government that puts a lot of stress on fighting sleaze.

    Still, that would appear chasing the symptom; but leaving the real disease to fester.  That the SJLGA was created underscored the legal brick wall, of the Federal Government purporting to shovel cash direct to local governments.

    The Federal Government can’t pay allocations to constitutional nonentities – who local governments are in a federal set-up, because they are no federating units.  On what locus, then, would they receive the cash?

    Hence, the compromise state-local government joint account – a military ploy to work to a pre-determined answer.  But that came with its own instant peril: the states, not the centre, eventually controlled the money; as unfazed governors bossed the joint account, and determined who got what, to the shrill shriek of local government chairs!

    Yes, local governments are constitutional creations.  But the local governments are domiciled in states, not in any central enclave – as the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja – over which the Federal Government has any direct control.

    In real terms, therefore, the so-called “local government money” is money that belongs to the states.  This is because the local governments ought to be exclusive concerns of the state, which should reserve the right to increase or reduce their number, in line with administrative conveniences.

    Any contrary thinking is a legacy of the military era, when local governments and their creation became a tool of political patronage and punishment, thus complexifying otherwise simple stuff.  These are, however, bad legacies the democratic era must correct – and urgently too.

    The gamely NFIU, by its sensational guidelines, is entering the public space with a bang – a new sheriff is in town; and you had better take a dive!

    Still, beyond all the entry fire and fury, NFIU is faced with correcting two formidable flaws: the corruption of the federal process (by directly piping money to local governments from the central purse); and the corrupt act of governors, allegedly diverting – and misusing – local government revenue.

    The one is basic.  The other is secondary.  But the NFIU ought to know the secondary corruption emanated from the rupture of the federal principle, by the central government trying to bypass the states.  It was fated to chaos.

    So, what to do to correct the original flaw? Cancel these direct allocations; and pass whatever money is due to the 774 local governments to their respective states.  If you did that, the secondary corruption would vanish – and NFIU would have fulfilled its mandate without much ado.

    This first task – a constitutional amendment – is beyond the ken of NFIU.  That is the job of the political elite, prompting the National and State Assemblies.

    But NFIU, pressing its corruption-battling mandate, could devise financial protocols to make the governors accountable for such monies. That would be careful thinking, contrasted to what appears brash macho, of its May 6 financial directives, taking off on June 1.

    By these guidelines, President Muhammadu Buhari himself risks rebellion from the states, across party lines.  This is because the guidelines touch the very core of states’ administration; far deeper than partisan affiliations.

    Starting a corrective second term needs all the sobriety and concentration the polity can muster.  But this NFIU directive risks breaching all that.

    It is tantamount to throwing the proverbial red rag at the bull – and it is doubtful if the polity could withstand the raging states’ ire, in form of furious court suits, to come.

    Indeed, it is baiting a needless crisis.

  • Between Osun and Ekiti

    Ekiti Governor, Kayode Fayemi, gave a lament, at the May 13 launch of Federal Government’s home-grown school feeding programme, in the state.

    “Your Excellency,” he told Vice President Yemi Osunbajo, who was in Ado Ekiti for the flag-off, “my government paid significant attention to social investment initiatives in my first term in office.”

    “We had a social security benefit scheme for the elderly,” he recalled, “which paid a monthly stipend of N5, 000 and covered 25, 000 old people; a youth volunteer scheme, which paid a monthly stipend of N10, 000 and covered 10, 000 graduates; … food banks across the state that served a hot meal daily …”

    But then came the Ayo Fayose debacle, and everything crumbled: “All these programmes were jettisoned in the four-year interregnum that we spent out of office,” Dr. Fayemi rued, “and this significantly affected the quality of life in our state. Not only did we lose our number 1 position in school enrolment we were in the country in 2014,” he added, “we now occupy the last position in enrolment in the South West as at 2018.”

    All those well-thought out schemes, gone — at the roar of vacuous “stomach infrastructure”!

    Ekiti’s fate could easily have been Osun’s – no thanks to reckless electoral choices; primed by selfish and irresponsible elite, with near-absolute contempt for the wellness of the collective.

    That is why, with the courts now revalidating his mandate, Osun Governor, Gboyega Oyetola, should consolidate on the development agenda of the Aregbesola years; of which, the governor himself was part-implementer; as the former governor’s chief of staff, for the entire eight years.

    This counsel is for good reasons.  By a report in the May 8 issue of Business Day, Osun’s 10.3% is the lowest unemployment rate in the country.  The report quoted the latest National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figures.  That was no accident.  It was result of years of punishing thinking and gruelling work.

    Osun’s figures best the South West’s 14% (the lowest in regional spread in the country); and certainly dwarf South-South’s 32% (the highest national unemployment figures, even with the Niger Delta awash with crude oil cash).

    Still, in unemployment figures, 10.3% is not the lowest Osun has posted.  In 2017, the NBS unemployment and underemployment report, for the year’s first quarter, give Osun’s unemployment rate at 5.3%.

    Back in 2010 – the Aregbesola governorship started in November that year – NBS gave Osun’s unemployment statistics as 17.2%.

    That 12% fall, between 2010 and 2017, accounted for taking 406, 305 people in the state off joblessness.  Besides, by the same NBS figures, Osun created 393, 962 full time jobs, thus increasing the number of the fully engaged from 1, 524, 312 (in 2010) to 1, 918, 274 (in 2017).

    Still, if the latest NBS figure is 10.3%; contrasted to 5.3% for the first quarter of 2017 – might the Osun push against unemployment then be faltering?  Perhaps; but that shows the new government cannot afford to take its eyes off the ball.

    That reinforces the advice to the Oyetola government to further consolidate the social infrastructure segment, of the state’s development agenda, of the last eight years.

    Even then, the blip and dip could be due to the electoral distraction of the past months.  The Osun elite, baiting and goading, forced a fearsome electoral impasse.  For a moment, the spectre of a dancing but empty governor loomed.  Other things being equal, that would have completely drained Osun, of its eight-year gains.

    The Court of Appeal verdict, on the gubernatorial dispute, has somewhat reestablished some stability, pending the final stop at the Supreme Court.  It however shows how easily a state on the mend could take a knock; and return to old vegetative ways.

    That is one danger that must be avoided at all cost; and it would have been nice if the Osun political elite, even with their fierce progressive-conservative divide, could forge a consensus to put the people first – above gilt-edge elite privileges; that however put the majority in ruins.  But alas!

    People first — that would appear the simple but clear thinking behind Osun’s current social protection and social investment programmes, which have done much to lift the majority, driven by the following concepts: banish hunger, banish poverty, banish unemployment, promote healthy living, promote functional education and promote communal peace and progress.

    It’s early days yet – even after eight years and counting – but these Osun social infrastructure policies could well pass as the most transformational, since the old Western Region of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    During the Awo era, elite opposition came in form of nasty anti-taxation campaigns.  That made the Awolowo government to lose the first federal election, after the 1955 introduction of the epochal free primary education programme.

    During the Aregbesola governorship, it came in form of vicious media propaganda, headlined by the salary crisis; and charges of phantom “Islamization”, all targeted at diverting attention from real development going on, in a state that had been prostrate for too long.   That drove the Oyetola election into a hideous stalemate.

    But even with a lean purse, the Osun human development stats have been impressive: In 2013, with figures from the UNDP Human Development Index Report 2015, Osun’s human development index (HDI) was 0.4938, the 9th highest in Nigeria, despite not being among the Top 9 drawers from the federal purse.

    Three years later in 2016, despite a crippling recession in the Nigerian economy, the Osun HDI had notched up to 0.5123, according to UNDP/NBS figures, released in October 2018.

    So, whereas media headlines feasted on “hafsa” (half-salary) and allied banalities, suggesting some contrived economic meltdown, the glorious reverse was the case.

    Osun was on its way to becoming a model in citizen equity, judged by how state resources ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, to use the immortal words of Jeremy Bentham.

    That much was validated by Osun’s low misery index – the second out of Nigeria’s 36 states – for 2017.  According to figures compiled by Financial Derivatives Company Ltd, a Lagos research firm, the figure was 35.56%

    That means specific programmes like O’Meals (schools feeding programme), OYES (the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme), which apart from its 8, 000 cadet-volunteers, has also trained Osun graduates and non-graduates in specific skills; and O-REHAB, aimed at the mentally challenged and the destitute, have had a great impact on the majority.  Yet, these are programmes the political elite pooh-pooh.

    Osun is clearly on the mend.  But it is early days.

    That is why Governor Oyetola will do well to stick to the development charter of the past eight years.  With 12 cumulative years of those people-centric policies, Osun would surely be a state to beat.

    What is more?  Its purse might not be so lean.

  • What will Baba tell Awo?

    Chief Ayo Adebanjo wondered, to The Guardian of April 21, how Baba Ayo Fasanmi would face Chief Obafemi Awolowo?

    He claimed Senator Fasanmi, an Action Group (AG) “firebrand” of yore, had lost his Awoist verve.

    Still, God sparing his life for many years yet, what would Baba Adebanjo himself tell Awo?

    That after all his Not My Will heroics, against author Olusegun Obasanjo, for his rude anti-Awo remarks in that book, Baba Adebanjo in 2019 merrily queued behind the same Chief Obasanjo, for nothing more than an electoral gambit that pitiably crumbled?

    That if Baba Fasanmi deserved the hottest corner of the Awoist hell, for supporting Muhammadu Buhari, a “Fulani who refused to be exposed” for president; Baba Adebanjo has earned the most blissful of Awoist paradise, for supporting the same Buhari, for whatever reason, in 2007?

    That Baba Adebanjo would push Afenifere, on blind Yoruba sentiments, to near-political harakiri on Obasanjo’s account in 2003; but would grudge the Fulani, allegedly on those same ethnic grounds, from protecting their own Buhari in 2019?  How would the ever-logical Awo take to that?

    And horror of horrors!  That aside being underneath the sheets with Chief Obasanjo, the great Yoruba prodigal, Baba Adebanjo would crow to Awo, how he deployed Afenifere, Awo’s puritanical legacy, as uncompromising pre-court bluff, for Atiku Abubakar!

    The same Atiku who, as Obasanjo’s vice president, publicly brawled with his boss over personal lollies; not over high principles of state?  Wouldn’t Awo have dismissed such as “ojelu” (political parasites) and not “oselu” (politicians), in that devastating Awo pun?

    Yeah, in 2007, Atiku was the presidential candidate of the Action Congress (AC), the party that Baba Bisi Akande chaired; and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu led.

    Ay!  But didn’t Baba Adebanjo already dismiss both Akande and Tinubu as infidels, in his exclusive conclave of holy progressives?

    Yet, in 2007, Adebanjo worked for Buhari (new devil) while Akande/Tinubu worked for Atiku (new saint)!

    Perhaps, zealots and infidels once co-mingled in Baba Adebanjo’s impassioned cosmos of iron-clad saints and sinners!

    All these contradictions just highlight the clear danger of canonizing self and demonizing others, dead or alive; in the rabid piling of cards to sway an argument.  That does grave harm to the integrity — and even utility — of public discourse.

    Besides, tarring personal opponents (most times, in tactics and strategies, not even on core principles), as Yoruba traitors (as Baba Adebanjo did in his The Guardian interview) is rich.

    But even more dangerous: for ideological differences, no matter how sharp, dubbing the Fulani as “Yoruba enemies” (as Baba Femi Okurounmu, another Afenifere elder did, in another interview with The Punch, some two years ago.)

    The formidable Yoruba progressive mainstream (that Chief Adebanjo and Senator Okunroumu seized to inflict their respective ”fatwas”, issued from the titanic battle Chief Awolowo fought against the Hausa-Fulani political forces of his day.

    Sure, Awo had the earliest reversals: the Western Region got the Midwest chopped out of it; while his northern and eastern traducers kept, intact, their respective regions.  He was also gaoled for charges of treasonable felony, a setback that suggested Awo’s dazzling political star would set at noon.

    Even then, before he died, Awo triumphed over his foes.  The first coup, even in his absence, silenced his national enemies; and sentenced his Yoruba traducers, and their offspring, as political pariahs, if not outright lepers.

    The second coup rocketed Awo up to the near-apex of state, under Gen. Yakubu Gowon, as highest-ranked civilian.  Were Awo as ideologically flexible as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, his great political rival, Awo would have embraced, for personal short-term pleasure, Zik’s “diarchy” — a doctrine of military-civilian cohabitation for political power.

    But even the victory Awo never wrought while alive, he commanded after death; with the sheer rigour of his thinking.

    Proof?  About everyone — friend, foe or neither — is buying into “restructuring”; a tie-back to the federalism he enunciated, as far back as 1947, in his Path to Nigerian Freedom.

    It’s the making of the greatest thinker of his era — and perhaps, up till now.  So, if Awo had fought and won all of his wars, why does Baba Adebanjo’s faction of Afenifere always scald everyone, that disagrees with them, with Awoist puritanical blackmail?

    Perhaps it’s the tragic snare of the ideologue, matched against the uneasy perch of the pragmatic?

    The Afenifere grandees, unable to stay relevant in the fast changing political dynamics, cling to old Awo-era tactics, hoping that conjuring up Yoruba-Fulani ethnic bogey would whip everyone into line.

    But the potency or otherwise of that bulldog tactic appears clear.  While the Adebanjo faction wilts by the day, the other blocs: Tinubu/Akande progressives and Hon. Wale Oshun-chaired Afenifere Renewal Group (which Baba trenchantly dubs Afenifere Rebel Group, ARG), appear luxuriating.

    So, does the rival Baba Fasanmi Afenifere “Areopagus” — perhaps stung from quietude, to call the bluff of the Adebanjo faction, especially its excesses, in the name of Awo?

    Well, are all these the wide and merry way that leads to Awoist perdition — as Baba hints in his doomsday interviews?   Or are they the triumph of the progressive, as flexible pragmatic; over the progressive, as fixated ideologue?

    Pragmatism trumping fixation appears Baba Adebanjo’s main grouse with Tinubu’s APC (with Oshun’s ARG and Fasanmi’s Afenifere faction), over their ruling alliance with President Buhari.

    Still, how do you decry Fulani supremacy, yet project Yoruba irredentism?  Strip the Adebanjo group’s “restructuring” campaign of its media fizz and blitz, and its incubus: “I’m more Yoruba than you!” blinds you, with all its arrogant flash!

    Pray, how does haughty ethnic projection help anybody in a fractious polity?

    But even as cavalier Awoist puritanism masks this most swashbuckling ethnic arrogance, Awo’s grandson-in-law, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, is busy with PMB – the Fulani “feudalist” – planting pro-people and pro-poor policies, in the Nigerian national space: schools feeding programme; Tradermoni and Marketmoni (state credit for the humblest of traders); and conditional cash transfer, to the poorest citizens nationwide.

    These are classic progressive policies that would have warmed Awo’s heart.  Yet the dire verdict from Chief Adebanjo: PYO is “a disgrace” and a “dishonest intellectual”!  The thing though is, spite hardly vitiates the sweetness of honey!

    Afenifere, with all its media loudness, appears unaware of this apocryphal quote, credited to Gen. Gowon: I respect my elders but don’t fear them, for I already know what they can do.  My mates?  We can take care of ourselves.  But those coming after me?  Now, those are the ones I fear!  You never know the heights they’d scale!

    Perhaps with a little elderly humility, the Afenifere would realize why their ranks are thinning out.

    Maybe then, they’d appreciate why the ARG are less apostates to be crushed – as if the grandees could! – but only the natural inheritors of the Awoist legacy; without the ancestral poison of old.