The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Traore’s nirvana

    Traore’s nirvana

    “After all,” Jero quipped, “it’s the fashion these days to be a desk general!”

    In Burkina Faso, it’s Ibrahim Traore’s dizzy season as giddy messiah — all tizzy lies pushed as redemptive balm: the making of a junta nirvana on X!  What mirage!

    Whatever fibs this junta upstart feeds the long-suffering Burkinabe is no concern here. What’s of concern is sons and daughters of perdition, pushing Traore’s lies as model for redemption in Nigeria — after eons of best-forgotten military rule!

    But back to Brother Jero.  That closing quote, in Wole Soyinka’s Jero’s Metamorphosis,  wasn’t just the rogue beach prophet mocking the Nigerian military-in-power of his day.

    It was Prof. Soyinka, piercing  wit, devastating humour, lacerating political generals.  Pray, how’s a “desk general” different from the desk sergeant in your neighbouring police station? Neither has gone to war!

    But those were even the early Gowonian era, with comparative sublimity and sanity. Headlined by the cherubic Gen. Yakubu Gowon himself, many of the top guns could still pass as the archetypal officers and gentlemen. 

    By the time of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and cronies, pepper soup generals had taken over! 

    Peeper soup, so-called because Alozie Ogugbuaja, an otherwise high-flying Police spokesman, blurted that Nigerian soldiers of his day were gloriously idle they retired early to their mess, to soak selves in pepper soup and beer, and plot endless coups! 

    That got poor Alozie, a Police Superintendent, a quick-march posting to Siberia!

    Under Sani Abacha?  It was the age of well and true brigands — again, headlined by Abacha himself!  Abacha  would loot and plunder, with relish.  But at the risk of hot death, he would keep out a looting ensemble!  Thank God for small mercies?

    Read Also: Nigeria, others set to launch African Energy Bank

    Even Abacha’s chief of army staff (COAS), at near-forced retirement, as near-sole martial archetype in Abacha’s dream army of rich rot, declared the army he was leaving was an “army of anything goes”! 

    The post-June 12 annulment mess proved exactly that. But until Sani himself mercifully expired — with thrilled folks hollering “divine intervention” it was a close shave!  He died so the country he wilfully raped could exhale!

    Why this foray into a best forgotten era, though?  Another upstart from Burkina Faso spins a ceaseless yarn about turning his dirt-poor country into instant paradise.

    You believe that, as British crime thriller writer, James Hadley Chase, would have quipped, you believe anything?  But tell that to the Traore plebs on X, as gullible as they come, touting Traore as some new revolutionary-saint, come to chisel the whole of Africa in his power robber’s pan-Africanist image!

    Those campaigns, particularly by “African Hub” on X, are as hare-brained as they come. Indeed, it seems a savage tweak of the famous Awo quip: only the shallow call to the shallow!  Chief Awolowo’s deep called to the deep.

    What does this fella think he is — some reincarnated Kwame Nkrumah, in military fatigues?  Isn’t that galloping absurdity, just thinking of it?  Nkrumah’s pan-Africanism wasn’t frothy X stuff.  It was deep scholarship, captured in liberty classics as Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism.

    Yes, Nkrumah was friendly with Soviet Russia, which threw the West into a tizzy of panic, leading to his military overthrow. 

    But he wasn’t pawning Ghana’s new freedom for USSR’s new shackle, as Traore now does, trading Burkina Faso’s old French cuffs, for new golden chains, from Vladimir Putin’s rogue Russia — all for regime survival! 

    How far that will last, in the dog-kill-dog grim poetry of junta rule, is left to be seen.

    Traore is even no Thomas Sankara, the idealist young officer, that changed his country’s colonial name of Upper Volta to Burkina Faso — Land of the Honourable! 

    His treacherous pal, Blaise Compraore, sure proved every inch a cad.  But Sankara, for redemption, only reached deep into his African roots, not trade French slavery for Russian thrall — and feeling hip about it.

    Still, even the Burkinabes themselves, victims of Compraore’s wasted years, ought to know nothing good comes out of military rule.  Their cup of tea!

    The Alliance of Sahel States (ASS), with which these power outlaws bluff ECOWAS, is yet another quandary. What mandate do power bandits have to commit their countries to such a union?

    But even beyond that: a land-locked three-member ASS is imposing union duties on the 12-member ECOWAS regional bloc!  Isn’t that act of ASS well and truly asinine? 

    If that doesn’t show outright the sterility of military rule, nothing will!  Should ECOWAS respond in kind and freeze out this trio, who loses?  There simply have got to be a limit to junta bluff and bluster! 

    In Mali, Assimi Goita, soon to plague his country with severe political goitre, just awarded himself a five-year transition.  But transition to what exactly — political death, as IBB/Abacha unfurled in Nigeria?

    Traore is busy misguiding himself on X.  Niger’s Abdourahmane Tchiani has settled down to uneasy quiet, after an initial anti-Nigeria sabre-rattling. 

    In Guinea Conakry, head of the junta there, Mamady Doumbiya, has quietly — but wisely — stayed off the asinine rascality of ASS.  In Gabon, former junta head, Brice Oligui Nguema, just transmuted in an elected president, posting a too-good-to-be-true vote tally, after elbowing from power, his Omar Bongo clan cousins.

    This quad again underscores the futility of military rule, as the sad Nigeria experience. A confirmed route to perdition can’t change into a sure path to salvation.  There is no Pauline conversion here.  No blinding flash on the way to Timbuktu!

    Which is why you wonder at the Traore Nigerian plebs on X — were they living in Mars?

    Didn’t they live through the military mess in Nigeria?  If they were not born then, didn’t their parents gist them? If their parents were too busy, didn’t these kids, now “forming” governance sages on X, read even a tiny bit of Nigerian contemporary history?

    As a University of Ibadan undergraduate in 1984 — the opening year of the Buhari-Idiagbon junta — a hall mate sent everyone into a wild guffaw. It was his grandmother’s x-ray of the ruling junta:

    “Buhari ni di agbon? Abasha!” — a devastating pun in Yoruba, suggesting it would all end in tears.  How prophetic!

    Abacha expired, but not before living the ultimate mess of military rule.  IBB lives to rue his June 12 election annulment.  Obasanjo, the “Army Arrangement”, planted to cover the flanks of the retreating military, blew it up on the altar of self-worship.

    Of the lot, only Muhammadu Buhari, as unsung as he is, grabbed a historic redemption: the general that aborted the Lagos Metroline became the president that federalized rail; and commissioned the Lagos Blue Line, Nigeria’s first urban rail.

    PMB also drove Nigeria’s renewed infrastructural vim, from the dead alley of the PDP years, which the Tinubu presidency has admirably kept aglow.

    Democracy is no magic pill.  But it’s corrective and sustainable — away from military quick fixes, that lead nowhere but ruin, as our giddy ASS will soon find out.

  • Adebanjo meets Awo

    Adebanjo meets Awo

    “E ku’le, Bami,” Pa Ayo Adebanjo went down, the full-stretch ‘idobale’ as the Yoruba do it, speaking his native Ijebu dialect.  He just arrived the heavens, celestial bliss, provocative peace and all.

    “Ayo!  Iwo reyen!” Awo enthused. “Welcome!  How’s Nigeria?  I hear Reuben (Fasoranti) just turned 99?  Loyal fellow!  Very reliable!  I rejoice with him.  Welcome!”

    Awo then bawled.  “Michael (Ajasin)!  Triple A (Abraham Aderibigbe Adesanya)!  Bola (Ige)! AMA (Adisa Meredith Akinloye)!  All of you, come out!  Ayo is here!”

    They all did.  Their collective “Welcome!” boomed and chimed like some heavenly symphony.

    “Ayo, you see,” Awo explained, “all your Afenifere folks are here.  Even AMA who coined ‘Afenifere’ during our sweet, early Action Group years, before he left us for the conservatives — or were they reactionaries?  They’re all anxious for news on Afenifere. I hope all is well?”

    “Bami, indeed all is well.  Afenifere is strong.  Afenifere is united,” Adebanjo enthused.

    “That’s good!  Very good!  But what’s this we hear about you, shortly before you left, being named ‘National Leader’ when the ‘Leader’ — Reuben — is still there?”

    “Ngbo Bola,” Awo turned to Ige before Adebanjo could respond. “Was there anything like ‘National Leader’ while you were there?”

    “No, my Leader,” Ige answered.  “It was the Leader, followed by the Deputy Leader, which I was before I was called here.”

    “Is that so, Triple A?”

    “Indeed!” Adesanya chipped in.  “I myself was Deputy to my Leader, Baba Ajasin. When Baba became ill and frail, I dutifully acted as Acting Leader. Baba Ajasin was Leader until he was called here.”

    “Is that right, my partner?” looking in the direction of Ajasin.

    Ajasin, always deep and taciturn, only nodded with a good-natured grunt.

    “So, Ayo,” Awo turned from Ajasin to Adebanjo, “what happened?  How come you became ‘National Leader’ when the Leader was still there.  By the way, were you not his Deputy?”

    “Yes, Bami.  I was.”

    “And he even made you Acting Leader, when he said, as I was told, that with old age he could no longer cope with the rigour and demand of the office?”

    “Yes, Bami,” Adebanjo nodded.

    But before he could answer further, Adesanya asked for permission to speak.  Awo gave him the go-ahead.

    “Please permit me, Baba.  Even that — Fasoranti appointing Adebanjo Acting Leader — was not unique.  I remember my own tenure as Leader.  We had suddenly lost Bola,” Adesanya went the historical lane, “in tragic circumstances.  He was my Deputy, and he never acted as anything beyond that, though the likes of Adebanjo also canvassed that we expel him, for nudging his zealous followers to form the rival Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE)”

    Read Also: Farewell Adebanjo, an iconic brand with great conviction

    “Was that so, Bola?”  Awo asked.

    Ige nodded, a tad crest-fallen. “But, my Leader …”

    Adesanya continued: “We never expelled him, though.  But in the midst of all that, he was despatched here!  We were all in great pains!  Great anguish, indeed!  So, we named another Deputy to succeed him — Fasoranti.  But later, I fell ill.  It was old age mixed with the rather draining efforts to keep Afenifere as one. During my very serious illness, however, Fasoranti served loyally as Acting Leader.  I hear that his loyalty paved the way for him to become Leader after me, just as my loyalty to Baba Ajasin made me succeed him as Leader.”

    “Very interesting!  Very good!” Awo quipped. “So, you’re saying, Triple A, that Acting Leader had become the Afenifere convention, long before Fasoranti named Adebanjo as one?”

    “Yes, indeed, Baba!”

    “And everyone, from you, had kept to that principle, without rupturing the ingrained protocol that Afenifere only has one valid, living Leader?”

    “Yes, indeed, Baba!” Adesanya concurred again.

    “So, Ayo,” Awo said, turning to Adebanjo, “how come this ‘National Leader’ thing?  Can you explain it?”

    “Bami,” — it was the combative, no-retreat-no-surrender, eye-blazing-with-passion-of-conviction Adebanjo that faced his Leader, in whose name, as life-long Awoist, he did whatever he did — “times were changing.  Too many opportunists were calling your name in vain.  Too many of them had infiltrated Afenifere to gain political office in your name.  Yet, they are not true Awoists!  I felt I had to act before it was too late!”

    “So, you’re saying Reuben is not a true Awoist?”

    “No, Bami.  I can’t say that — never!  But he had allowed, as Leader, too many suspect Awoists to take advantage of your name for political office.  Bami, I just had to act!”

    “Interesting!  Was that why you supported Peter Obi for President in 2023, against Bola Tinubu, who Reuben, your Leader, announced as the Afenifere choice?”

    “Partly, Bami!  But it was a bit more complicated.”

    “How, Ayo?” Awo queried. “Are you saying Obi is more Awoist than Tinubu?”

    “I can’t say that,” Adebanjo hee-hawed.  “I really can’t say that.  But Bami, Bola (I mean Tinubu) is only Awoist or progressive in name.  He’s more of a pragmatist, who uses progressivism or Awoism as veneer.  He does whatever works for him.”

    “I see!” Awo chuckled.  “But does he get results — I mean ‘progressives’ results? ‘Awoist’ results?”

    “Bami!  S’agbe loju yo yo ni! It’s all fake Awoism!  Fake progressivism!  Imagine tinsel passing as solid gold!”

    “I see!” Awo chortled again.  “Still, is Peter Obi more ‘progressive’ than Tinubu?”

    “It’s more complex than being progressive or not.  A fundamental core of Awoism is fairness to all.  The Igbo had not produced a president.  We had produced Obasanjo, the first elected president since 1999.  So, I thought another Yoruba man becoming President was grossly unfair.  That was why I backed Obi.”

    “Not because he was a better Awoist or progressive?”

    Loud quiet. But Ige stepped up to break it.

    “There he goes again!” He told Awo, gesturing Adebanjo, enveloped in his loud quiet. “It’s either his way or the highway!  The trouble Ayo gave Baba Adesanya!”

    “Let’s even leave all that,” Awo interjected. “Ayo, do you realize naming yourself ‘National Leader’ may have split Afenifere for real, this time, thus putting a dent on your Awoist reformation or revolution?  Even AMA, that left us for the reactionaries, doesn’t have the splitting of Afenifere to blight his name and foul his memory …”

    “Bami!” — Adebanjo was clearly agitated now — “I didn’t name myself ‘National Leader’!  We held a meeting!  We duly debated it! It was a thorough debate …!”

    But alas!  It was all a dream!  Ripples just woke up!  Goodness me!  It seemed all so real!

  • Torpedo Atiku

    Torpedo Atiku

    Not a few have tagged the current PDP blowout and death-in-slow-motion as Hurricane BAT.  Maybe.  In politics, there is often no smoke without fire.

    But no one needs any smoke to see the clear fire Torpedo Atiku poses to the former federal ruling party.  Desperate for personal glory, Torpedo Atiku waits, with bated breath, to blast into smithereens, whatever remains of the unmourned PDP.

    It’s the umpteenth mirage of a presidential dream — abortive and aborted since 1993 — calling again, in 2027!  For that grand cloud-chasing, Atiku won’t blink an eyelid to further rip the storm-ravaged umbrella. 

    Which explains why the most excitable Atiku rabble, on X and FB, are already piping Atiku-Obi as a sure-bet new deal for 2027 — a certified failure beaten black-and-blue in 2019; a cross-failure that cleaned out each other, on mutual power greed, in 2023!

    Hey, it’s a democracy!  Folks are entitled to own democratic delusions!

    Still, Atiku and PDP fit each other pat — neither person nor corporate is capable of sober self-x-ray, talk less of galling home truths.  Which is why both would likely roil from crisis to crisis, until they mutually self-destroy.

    Nigerian politics would be much better for such. Anyone with Atiku’s crass insensitivity to a North-South political balance of 2023, yet seems willy-nilly set for a terrible encore in 2027, is well and truly beyond redemption.

    Read Also: Nigerian music sensation Dice Ailes returns with a hit single ‘Towa’

    The same goes for a party that, for 16 years, led Nigeria to perdition.  Now, it feels by weaponizing the current challenges it would, open sesame, charm its way through as a voter darling, in a national emergency.  More deluded than hitherto thought!

    But again, it’s the grim PDP tale that hardly ever changes: no thanks to its leaders — coarse and rough power dealers — that crudely over-reach themselves.

    As former President Olusegun Obasanjo worked tooth-and-nail to banish PDP into the power Siberia — with his raw and nasty power projections — former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, is working extra-time to be its undertaker-in-chief, with his insensate power manoeuvres.

    Even to the obtuse, it is clear that Atiku is the Alpha and Omega of PDP’s present bind — and terminal trauma.

    It was he that pushed northern solidarity — euphemism for Arewa  clannishness — to rubbish a North/South rotation understanding.  By that, he won the PDP presidential ticket.  But he also severed PDP from its traditional southern satellites since 1999.

    In that, he had a deputy wrecker-in-chief in Peter Obi who, with brilliant foxtrot in the cynical gaming of “Christian” votes and total mop-up of clannish Igbo votes, wiped out the PDP from much of the South East and South-South. 

    Yet, on the opportunistic platform of the Labour Party (LP), Obi ultimately laboured in vain.  It’s that tragically self-neutralizing, mutually destroying, ultra-selfish ticket of 2023, that empty dreamers are dusting up for 2027!

    But back to Torpedo Atiku, and his northern agenda for raw personal gains.  If a giddy northern — let-the-rest-of-the-country-go-to-blazes — agenda was not clear when wily Aminu Tambuwal, ex-Sokoto governor, stepped down for Atiku to clean out Nyesom Wike from the PDP ticket, the aftermaths left little doubt.

    Instead of throwing some fobs to placate the hurt PDP southern wing, by sacrificing Dr. Iyorchia Ayu as national chairman, Atiku decided to ride the storm, insisting that the Ayu issue would be addressed after he had been elected president!

    That was Atiku’s sweet dream.  But in harsh post-2023 defeat, Atiku has not only become flotsam, and Ayu jetsam, the PDP ship itself is battered by the storm!

    Now, aside the huge cost of Atiku’s hubris turned awry, what of the question of Wike as vice-presidential pick, and the resultant G-5 (the five PDP dissenting Governors) rebellion?

    Well, in fairness to Atiku, it’s only one stricken by political lunacy that would pick Wike as No. 2!  The ever-boisterous Wike is either No. 1 or nothing.  He has proved that with stellar performance as Rivers governor and FCT governor-like minister. 

    So, let no one blame Atiku for looking beyond Wike as No. 2.

    Still, how do the Greeks put it: those the gods want to destroy they first make mad?  As much as dropping Wike as No. 2 made eminent political sense, it fitted perfectly into the sundry comedy of errors that plagued the Atiku-Ifeanyi Okowa ticket — on which ex-Governor Okowa just shed penetrating light, after the Delta PDP sink into APC.

    Even after that, Atiku would unabashedly proceed to brand himself the “northern” candidate, who must vacuum-clean the vote of the “North”.  That, from the results, did not work out too well.

    Which makes it extremely rich that the unapologetic “northern” candidate of 2023 is now busy coupling a so-called pan-Nigeria coalition, if not dream merger of political forces, for 2027!  It’s a Teflon Atiku classic!

    What’s more?  The same Atiku thought so little about brandishing PDP as the core to gather that coalition and possible merger — the same PDP Atiku had scattered, with insensate power dream and greed? 

    And for nothing beyond a personal dash for 2027, for which he ruined the same party in 2023?  What presumptuousness! Talk again of Torpedo Atiku! Little wonder, the PDP governors gave him the cold shoulder! 

    It’s clear PDP is considerably more weakened, no thanks to Atiku’s soulless gambits.  That’s driving a fresh elite power pacting en route to 2027, the most spectacular of which has been the Delta PDP meltdown, which might yet repeat itself in Akwa Ibom, and maybe shake up LP in Abia — who knows, given the frank, though double-speak, interview Governor Alex Otti just granted Arise TV?

    Now, with all of these excitements, is President Bola Tinubu’s re-election a done deal, even with the president not attaining mid-term until May 29?  Hardly!

    Yes, the elite re-pacting would greatly reshape the election-time dynamics in 2027, radically away from what obtained in 2023. So, those busy misguiding themselves, and thrusting Atiku-Obi, based on 2023 election stats, know they only blow hot gas.

    Yet, the Tinubu government would have to account for its tough policies. 

    Indeed, Governor Tinubu of Lagos (1999-2007), that charmed everyone with his “pragmatic democratic welfarism” (to borrow a Tatalo Alamu coinage) — and started the payment of students’ WAEC fees, later copied and mainstreamed by other states, across party lines — has returned as President Tinubu with hard (many would insist: harsh) neo-liberal policies!

    Sign of the tough times that need equally tough remedies?  Maybe — and in fairness, the stats from the economic front tend to show the patient is “responding to treatment” to borrow that medical cliche.

    Yet, to the masses, it hasn’t quite trickled down — which is why the Atikus, the Obis, the el-Rufais etc, of this polity, would weaponize current anguish and position selves as emergency saviours.  They are not.

    But it’s the president’s heavy cross to either explain the delayed trickle-down — and good luck on that, with empty pockets and rumbling tummies! — or ensure the trickle-down bursts into a manna-like torrent to sate the hungry and tame the angry!

    As for the PDP slow death, blame Torpedo Atiku, and less Hurricane BAT!

  • Insufferable!

    Insufferable!

    Each time serious political discourse brews, cynics and extremists, North and South, East and West, mount a booming concert of political lunacy: barking mutual threats, belching mutual fires.

    So, after much din, far less is done — except a polity already quaking with great unease, is sent roiling with a heightened fear of threatened Armageddon!

    With such rows, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s arrogant posturing over the North and the rest of Nigeria, en route to the 2027 electoral sweepstakes, must take the cake.

    Swallowed by conceit, battered by hubris, Baba-Ahmed claimed that in six months, the “North” would take its stand on 2027; and the rest of Nigeria would have to decide whether they wanted to follow or not.  What insufferable arrogance!

    Now, arch-Snooper Tatalo Alamu, “Snooping Around”, in The Nation Sunday (April 27), did quite a number on Dr. Baba-Ahmed.

    Tatalo suggested Baba-Ahmed was a technocrat at the ready for sinecures, many of them opportunistic, which might have helped to under-develop the North — this same “North” — over which he now postures, as emergency champion.

    He traced back Baba-Ahmed’s days as the secretary to the best-forgotten Maurice Iwu INEC, which cooked the blood-curdling heist that was the 2007 election, which nevertheless signalled the beginning of the end for the now crumbling PDP.

    He fingered the rank opportunism of Baba-Ahmed joining the Bola Tinubu Presidency. Not only was he no APC partisan, he raised no finger when his brother Datti, a sore loser as Peter Obi’s running mate, mouthed near-treasonable nonsense to de-market Tinubu’s win. 

    Which makes it very rich — indeed, morally disgusting — for Baba-Ahmed to jump off that same government and start attacking it, on behalf of his phantom “North”!

    But not even Snooper captured Baba-Ahmed’s activism in the Northern Elders Forum (NEF).  The arch-conservative NEF plays catch-up to the  Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) as the authentic voice of the North.

    Read Also: FULL LIST: Top 15 European scholarships Nigerians can apply for in 2025

    But NEF — at least to the perceptive — comes with an additional baggage: Prof. Ango Abdullahi, the soul of its activism, never hides his PDP sympathies, though he’s unfazed in his northern nativism, which is no crime in a federation, where different ethnics compete for power and influence.

    Still, Abdullahi’s partisan bent has made not a few to wonder if NEF activism is no more than closet PDP campaigns, carefully hidden behind rogue northern supremacism. 

    Indeed, while the bully southern media were blighting President Muhammadu Buhari — just because they could — on alleged northern nativism of the crudest hue, Baba-Ahmed and his NEF kept a loud silence — the voice of NEF, the hand of PDP?

    Yet, in Nigerian history, PMB was the first honest northerner to gain elective power on own terms.  While his fellow northern elites had thoroughly compromised selves, it was Mai Gaskiya (the Honest One) that the northern Talakawas could trust with power, backed, of course, by the Tinubu South West political army.

    He made his own mistakes, no doubt.  But if President Olusegun Obasanjo had been half as committed as PMB was to his job — less to personal imperial glory — the collapse and mess of 2015 would have been averted.

    But even from that Jonathanian collapse of 2015, a logical follow-up to Obasanjo’s mirage from 1999-2007, PMB made solid marks which though largely unsung by a bias-smitten, hypocritical media, can’t be denied by any fair-minded soul.

    Which brings these troubling questions: can any northerner honestly flaunt the North as it stands — a developmental laggard — as Baba-Ahmed just did, with all his pious pomposity?

    Or was it just bluff-and-bluster that his lobby could always ghost the Arewa plebs to vote according to cynical whims, by a manipulative elite?

    By the way, which “North” are these blokes even yammering about?  Baba-Ahmed’s native North West, which has bathed in the sweet sun rays of power more than any other region, yet grills in mass poverty, only next to the North East?

    The North East, as filthy poor as the famed wealth of one of its illustrious sons, Atiku Abubakar; and plunged into the existential crisis of Boko Haram terrorism, a logical extension of mass poverty and unfazed ignorance that criminalizes knowledge?

    Or the long-suffering North Central, now and then, wracked with senseless killings, which root causes these glamorous champions of the “North” have not figured out?  Or if they have, wilfully condoned, as not a few allege, for narrow ethnic reasons?

    Maybe, Baba-Ahmed’s “North” is indeed the North West?  Its thunderous voting bloc, when pacted with the South West’s, could on paper deliver the Presidency, as it did for PMB and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT), both APC presidents.

    Even so, what hold do Baba-Ahmed and his kind have on the North West, beyond over-projected influence as media paper tigers?

    Now, if they are no PMB — in or out of power, he retains the Talakawa trust — how can they walk their talk that when they snap their fingers, the northern masses jump?

    O, did that explain the scramble by Atiku and the mercurial Nasir el-Rufai, to add PMB to their coalition bluff?  Atiku, of course, knows too well PMB and fickleness are two parallel lines.  They never meet.

    As for El-Rufai, he’s as razor-sharp as they come in intellect.  But alas!  A stunted emotional intelligence almost, always lets him down. That was why he felt he could sell a PMB/wholesale CPC anti-APC coalition dummy. PMB poured cold water on such.

    Besides, wasn’t the hubris of the North as Nigeria’s insufferable power Leviathan, the type Baba-Ahmed painted, dead and buried with the June 12 debacle, after which IBB burnt his fingers, and the rapacious Sani Abacha lost his life?

    Still, let no one assume only the North is guilty of political arrogance.  As the northern elite often weaponize their voting numbers to game some concessions, the southern elite too wield their powerful media to browbeat any northern order.  But it’s mutual hypocrisy that always back-fires.

    Under PMB, the South, and bullying media in tow, thundered “nepotism” and screamed “Fulanization”.  These same southern hypocrites — among them top columnists, with dashing, cutting brilliance but little gumption, now rally to defend PBAT’s alleged “Yorubanization” of offices!

    Yet, neither did — or is doing — any wrong, beyond the media’s galloping bias — and Ripples is proud to say he slammed those idiotic campaigns back then — and thus can stand by PBAT now!

    Pray, how can putting folks you trust, to deliver on your policies and programmes, equate “nepotism”, “Fulanization” or “Yorubanization” — even if the uppity South tarred PMB as some cave nativist from Daura; and PBAT, the “city boy” from Lagos, so cosmopolitan he would import, from Mars, those who would work for him!

    Enough of this sterile politics of mutual blackmail!  What we need is the rich politics of mutual development. 

    As for Baba-Ahmed and co, they labour under the delusion of pre-June 12 Nigeria. That era is gone — and forever buried.

  • It’s stunted parties, stupid!

    It’s stunted parties, stupid!

    Many felt it was reasonable compromise.  Others slammed it as reckless overreach — that April 14 decision, by the PDP Governors Forum, to sideline previous claimants to the PDP national secretaryship and impose a fresh one, even in an acting capacity.

    But again, this storm is only the symptom.  The real disease is 26 years on — on May 29 — since the return of democracy, the government could have bloomed.  But the party system is the reverse: it has wilted.

    Politics on frail parties is not unlike erecting a mansion on a very weak foundation.  It bodes ill: a doughty political party system is the bastion of participatory democracy.

    It’s looking even more dreary now — even if that may be the hard crash before the bounce — that the courts are throwing the issue back to our infantile party players: go sort out your internal troubles, you’re adults!  Leave the courts out of it!

    But instead of getting chaste and wise, at least two parties have descended into even more chaos.

    The Labour Party (LP) — opportunistic footstool of ace cynical populist Peter Obi — is effectively carved into three:

    The Julius Abure pack, which like Samuel Ladoke Akintola of 1st Republic Action Group (AG) has just “taku” — going nowhere; 

    The patrician wing that set up Esther Nenadi Usman as caretaker chair, hoping the majesty of its sole governor, Abia’s Alex Otti, with the promise of his office’s likely funnel of endless cash, would wow the other belligerents;

    And the Lamidi Apapa plebeian wing, giving the other claimants a ferocious push for their money, to claim LP’s troubled soul!

    But wait a minute: it could well be four! 

    The paternalistic Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), under the chaos-hugging Joe Ajaero, whose standard reflex is to unleash his Aluta army, even if they boast no winning tactics, talk less of enduring strategies! 

    There’s more to battles than running into them like headless chickens!  Hell is loosed upon the Labour paradise!

    You want a gripping study in buzzing chaos?  Take a ringside seat in LP’s current unravelling!  Perhaps that would teach the party — if it survives this present meltdown — not ever again to sell its platform (and ideological soul) for dirty election-eve lucre!

    Now, to the PDP.  Not a few have wagered that current PDP troubles are fitting karmic comeuppance for its past flagrant party abuses.  That’s dead-on-the-money correct — and no tears from here!

    PDP’s trouble started when empire-minded President Olusegun Obasanjo felt the late Solomon Lar might just have had too much gravitas for his comfort.  He would rather appoint fawning viceroys — what the Yoruba call ajele — to do his bidding as all-mighty elected president, that just towered above the platform that hoisted him for office.

    Read Also: FG rakes in N6.5BN from mining fees, registers 118 buying centres

    Otherwise, he would not have inspired Ahmadu Ali to order elected Governor Rashidi Ladoja to bow before the late Lamidi Adedibu, illicit security vote gravy craving and all! The Alaafin Molete, unfazed emperor of amala-and-abula politics was Obasanjo’s Oyo PDP garrison commander!  It all ended in tears!

    So, from one weakened viceroy to another, PDP crawled into power wilderness!

    Now, with Atiku Abubakar and his Samson’s complex — ready to crash everything on everyone, with his diseased obsession to be president despite chilling realities — PDP is in for a long, long night. 

    As the 1st Republic federal ruling coalition — the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) — put their worst foot forward after Nigeria’s independence, so did PDP, at the advent of this 4th Republic in 1999.

    And this uncanny parallel, too: as those least upbeat about independence corralled the cream of state from 1 October 1960, arch-plotters against the June 12 mandate of Basorun MKO Abiola grabbed the prime plum of state from 29 May 1999.

    Obasanjo himself, first 4th Republic elected president, counted among this wild breed.

    But back to PDP’s present troubles.  The PDP Governors meeting at Ibadan, Oyo State, of April 14, was probably well-intentioned. 

    The Supreme Court just created a further puzzle: embattled Samuel Anyanwu claimed it just validated his case.  Wannabe Sunday Ude-Okoye couldn’t swear he hadn’t run into a storm.  Neither could he crow he had a clear path to the cherished cake.

    What to do?  The PDP governors, in their wisdom — or arch-folly? — decided to shove both aside, as newly self-imposed Atlases, whose combined, rippling muscles should pacify everyone else — good try!

    But not so fast, Anyanwu balked. Beyond illicit self-projection, where did the governors derive their powers ? 

    Did they even remember that without the party secretary — the Leviathan that signed  signed their forms — they wouldn’t even become candidates, talk less of governors?

    So, why this newfound muscle-flexing, to decree the PDP national secretary, knowing they had earlier backed Ude-Okoye but fell flat on their faces?  Intrigue without end!

    Now, Anyanwu vs Ude-Okoye is done and dusted.  Looming is Anyanwu vs Setonji Koshoedo, the legit deputy national secretary and the governors’ new beloved.

    Post-Easter confusion looms on the PDP front!

    But where would it all end?  If you “checked out the real situation” as the immortal Bob Marley did, in one of his global hits, would it be as he predicted: “total destruction is the only solution”?  It’s Easter!  Let the PDP carry its own cross!

    Still, let no one think the ruling APC is sitting pretty.  Well, national chair, Abdullahi Adamu, even flush with hard-won victory in 2023, knew his goose was cooked.

    He was caught up in the ugly intra-APC sweepstakes, that nevertheless produced Bola Tinubu as candidate, not his preferred Ahmad Lawan, falsely rumoured as President Muhammadu Buhari’s choice, before PMB quelled the rumour.  It was payback time.

    Now, should Adamu have voluntarily fallen on own sworn?  Or was there a bit of Obasanjo in new President Tinubu who wasted no time to get rid of him?

    But replacing a national chair from North Central with one from North West has caused — and is still causing — some ripples in the party.  The logic — balancing.

    The likes of Salihu Lookman and Nasir el-Rufai have used that as excuse to storm out of the party, baying for some anti-APC coalition or another for 2027.

    But even el-Rufai’s body language — his presumption that he would join the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and pronto, re-make it in his own image, to fight his own battles — speaks volume about politicians’ general contempt for the party, even if it’s their only viable vehicle to power.

    For Nigerian democracy to thrive, there must be conscious and deliberate efforts to build the party system.  There are no two ways about it.

  • America: Age of the illegitimates

    America: Age of the illegitimates

    Donald J. Trump, America’s huff-and-puff, hot-and-cold president, probably knows pretty little outside his contrived MAGA tribe, and its culture of fashionable chaos.

    If he did, this Yoruba saying should have tweaked his cocky ears: harmony reigns in a home, only because the illegitimates in there have not come of age! 

    America’s illegitimates have not only come of age, they are gung-ho under Trump: thinking their home-brewed chaos is some new global high culture!  Witness: Trump’s irrational tariff world war, which not a few of them hail. 

    How deluded — and may their feverish delusion endure! What empire lasts forever?

    The biting irony with Trump begins with his wild deportations.  How can the grandson of a settler German, that emigrated to the United States in 1885, expel other settlers? 

    The family’s original German name, from their Kallstadt nativity, was Drumpf, which morphed to Trumpff and later still to Trump, among its many variants.  Trump sounds more English than German. Then, to boot: Donald’s mum was a Scot! 

    Pray, were Germans and Scots then native Indian-Americans, that the savage White tribe cancelled to take over America?  Did Germans even count among the Anglo originals that staged the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773, on the unimpeachable basis of no taxation sans representation?

    That rebellion by colonists from the British Isles, against own British Crown, would drive the American Revolution that eventually birthed the United States in 1776.

    But if a man, 78, shows little introspection in contemporary things, how can he — and his ilk — drink and be chastened by the well of history?  Which explains why there appears no rime or reason to the many Trump executive bumbling — sorry — orders!

    But there is another layer of piquant irony, in the happy lunacy of Trump’s America — Elon Musk: Trump’s fixer-in-chief to smash Uncle Sam’s federal bureaucracy.

    You’re well and truly ripped — even if comically — at a Dutch/Afrikaan-born of apartheid-era South Africa, with its holy orthodoxy of White supremacism, bob up with a load of cash as an “American”, preaching present-day White victim-hood in his native country, a former blind den of White oppression!

    South Africa has given short shrift to Musk’s White cry-baby campaign — and just as well!  In truth, beyond bullying propaganda, there is nothing there.

    But again, the irony ripples with old man Trump’s characteristically knee-jerk reflex, on his so-called Truth Social: “They are taking the land of white farmers, and then killing them and their families …” — presidential tears, dip, dip!  What crap!  Truth social, indeed!  More of fibs anti-social!

    Trump then pushed his presidential jeremiad into an executive invite: South African White farmers should relocate to America — the same guy shooing Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and sundry folks, off the United States!  Any further proof that MAGA is nothing more than make America White again (MAWA)? The irony is totally lost on him!

    But as they say here, in our pidgin high street, “las, las, America go dey alright”!  America will fix own demons!  Elections, after all, do have consequences!

    Read Also: American rapper Slim Thug loses valuables to robbers

    The victims here though, are the many Africans in the diaspora. As they are finding out, fleeing own country to dodge developmental pangs, for “easy life” in “saner climes”, has limited value.  Hurricane Trump is living proof!

    Still, how Trump treats those who elected him is an American problem — no dog in that fight.  But extending his American bullying, to the rest of the globe, is a grave concern. It’s potent tinder for wild blazes, in this season of global harmattan.

    Trump clearly thinks China is an outpost of America, much the same as Canada: which he deems its 51st state; its prime minister, who he nettles as “governor”; Mexico, a contemptible footstool; and Greenland, an ogled pearl he must snatch from Denmark!

    Trump’s China explosion on X, tells the story, unfiltered:

    “Yesterday, China issued retaliatory tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting tariffs, non-monetary tariffs, illegal subsidization of companies, and massive long-term currency manipulation, despite my warning that any country that retaliates, above and beyond their already existing long-term tariff abuse of our nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher tariffs, over and above those initially set.

    “Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long-term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th.  Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! …”

    Insufferable, wasn’t that?  The global emperor had roared!  In another tweet, he moaned about how China “disrespects” the United States! But doesn’t respect beget respect?

    What China did — and admirably so — was confront the bully.  No matter what happens, Beijing had triumphed on that front — for Trump’s bully power is off. 

    As for respect, a bully doesn’t crave respect.  He thrives on fear.  But with the fear factor off, Trump lost his ace.  On tariff, it’s tit-for-tat.  We’ll see who blinks first!

    Tragically for Trump, the initial blinking — though in the dark! — appears from own corner.  First: exempting cell phones, computers and allied micro-chip products, where China and India hold the ace.  Then, freezing, for 90 days, the latest tariffs, earlier announced with aplomb!  So much for high-wire bluff and bluster!

    But it all goes back to old man Trump’s shallow core.  A more deliberative guy should have known that China — and others’ rise in Asia — resulted  from American capitalist greed.

    Voila! — they trumpeted globalization!  But that was a veil for cheap overseas labour, since they could no longer bear Americans’ high local wage bill. 

    Now, who will cover America’s flanks, from its president that knows little outside projecting raw power — as a minor showing off his latest audacious toy — and hankering after “deals”, no matter how obscene or soulless?

    Has anyone even told Trump that his tariff world war only cuts up the global trade order, hitherto infernally rigged to sate American capital greed?

    Or that his no-friend-no-foe tariff war only rips apart western cohesion — the most hegemonic tribe of this age that has imposed its ethos on other cultures? 

    Ironically, Trump’s hot labour should breed new trade alliances — and eventually throw overboard the bully, yet smiling, West?  About time!

    Trump swore to — open sesame! — end the Russia-Ukraine War.  But his peculiar magic is clear: reward the aggressor, bludgeon the victim!

    As for Israel versus Hamas in Gaza, all hail his El-dorado: an Arab riviera, built with US capital, but with native Gazans firmly shut out!  Sweet, isn’t that? 

    But since the Arab world wouldn’t  take that “deal”, from the ultimate deal-maker, war-hawk Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Nethanyahu, could continue his bombing spree — though Hamas’s hare-brained raid of Israel, on 7 October 2023, earns part-blame for that catastrophe.

    America’s illegitimates bay and roar to crash, in four years, alliances Uncle Sam had built over centuries!  To cash in, Nigeria must get its acts together!

  • Again, pump-pricing

    Again, pump-pricing

    Is rising fuel pump-pricing, following the bungling of the crude-for-Naira policy, to blame for the change in the NNPC Ltd Board?  Who knows?  More on that presently.

    Meanwhile, the transactional temper, in today’s Nigeria, is in a sickly class, all its own.

    Every presidential hire is an angel to be toasted and serenaded.  Every presidential fire is devil to be mocked and scorned, with suggestive tales of alleged sleaze to boot.

    But don’t be deceived.  While holding no brief for any fired officer, this hot-and-cold is often cynical repudiation of a hitherto flowing tap now dried up!  A dried-up tap is seldom angelic to perched throats!  Besides, buzzing bees must find new nectar!

    That has pretty much summed up reactions to the change at NNPC Ltd. 

    The most significant, on the operational plane, is Mele Kyari, NNPC Ltd boss since 2019, all through its transition from a public corporation to a more commercially driven oil trading firm, yielding place to Bayo Ojulari, a Shell Nigeria veteran, with pretty much intimidating credentials.

    Well, Chief Pius Akinyelure, President Bola Tinubu’s boss during their days at Mobil Nigeria, also gave way to Ahmadu Musa Kida, as new NNPC Ltd board chair.

    Ethnic balancers and ace pundits are already foaming in the mouth.  One — prematurely? — growled that Ojulari was yet another Yoruba from the South West — before realizing Ojulari was indeed a Yoruba northerner from Kwara!

    Read Also: Beyond the game: 10 Super Eagles players with academic degrees

    Other Yoruba — no less clannish in their thinking — would scoff at why the President would trade Akinyelure, his “kinsman”, for Kada from Borno State.

    Pray, what have all these got to do with cognate experience and job competence?But still talking “tribes”: how can Kyari (ex-NNPC),  Akinyelure (ex-Mobil), Ojulari (ex-Shell) and Kada (ex-Total) belong to any tribe but oil and gas? 

    Wasteful and needless voyages, yet perfectly Nigerian!

    Still, no matter what anyone says, NNPC Ltd “original”, Kyari, made his mark since his appointment as GMD, helping to drive NNPC Ltd to its present state. 

    That the company has partly reclaimed three of its four comatose refineries — Port Harcourt 1 and 2, and Warri; with Kaduna still a work-in-process — is ode to grim determination to succeed, even with loud naysayers sizzling with haughty cynicism.

    That doesn’t, however, mean NNPC Ltd is no longer a laggard compared to its global state-owned peers: Aramco (Saudi Arabia), Petrobras (Brazil) Petronas (Malaysia), KPC — Kuwait Petroleum Corporation — (Kuwait), etc.  But under Kyari, it has made distinct progress and the prospects seem quite better.

    Why the board dissolution and Kyari’s ouster, then?  For starters, the man is 60 and his term may have expired.  In any case, the President has the leeway to hire and fire.

    But if indeed it had to do with crude-for-Naira, then it would show a government very much aware of its vulnerabilities, too perilously close to midterm! 

    Despite the elite lullaby of “bold and courageous” showered on the President and his team, the masses are still pretty much bewildered at the post-subsidy direction of the economy, as it concerns their welfare, nay economic survival. 

    Fuel pump-pricing, hitherto trending down, bought the administration some legitimacy, even if grudging, on its tough reforms. 

    Those reforms are driven by harsh neo-liberal methods — not to punish anyone, to be sure, but — to re-set eons of economic disequilibrium.  That comes with pains.

    Still, that method dots on the market’s upper crust — the investing patricians — but thinks little of the plebs that grind and grill in the market’s crucible base.  It’s however convinced that having sated investor greed, benefits would trickle down to the plebs.

    So far, that has not quite happened — in any case, not with thundering collapse of prices, sending the hoi polloi into sheer ecstasy! Right now, there are just the elite, from their crystal balls, telling the masses good times are coming.  Sweet aroma seldom calms a hungry, rumbling tummy!

    Still, the crude-for-Naira policy did open a tantalizing window, making the masses to believe again.  It caused fuel pump prices, thanks to local refining, to trend down — until Dangote Petroleum Refinery (DPR) ended that fleeting paradise, with torrid news.

    DPR warned that it might hike its products’ pricing — which it did — unless the Federal Government kept its end of the bargain, on the crude-for-Naira policy.  Now, pricing is trending up — from mid-N800-a-litre — back to N925-a-litre at the very lowest. 

    If care isn’t taken, it would spiral up to over N1, 000-a-litre, the price at the earliest days of subsidy removal, which sent inflation soaring, burned the pocket and sparked anger. 

    Whodunnit — such that after six months of crude-for-Naira, no new deal?

    If it was NNPC Ltd, it just got its comeuppance.  It has a new board and management team.  Both have their jobs cut out for them.  They had better get cracking!

    The Federal Ministry of Finance-mandated technical team of experts, chaired by Zach Adedeji, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) boss?  DPR roused the Adedeji team to a fresh commitment.  But so far, still no new deal as at the March 31 expiry of the old one.

    That culpable negligence — if indeed, the fault is from there — should not go un-conked.  Petrol is critical to the economy; and every administration official must know the Tinubu Presidency will float or sink, at its careful management.  Petrol’s cost-push inflationary danger is all too glaring!

    The market regulators, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA)?  Might NMDPRA be grappling — as not a few have suggested — with the futures market?

    Does Nigeria simply not produce enough to guarantee the 385, 000 barrels-a-day to feed local refiners, given that a large chunk of crude produced by NNPC Ltd is already sold or battered in advance? 

    If that’s the case, the NMDPRA should come clean.  The public have a right to know.

    Waffling over the crude-or-Naira policy — and its putative collapse — appears the greatest threat yet to the government’s electoral survival.  Should prices start climbing again, the Tinubu Presidency might just be cooked!

    It may appear just mid-term — the second anniversary is May 29.  But the government has barely one year in its furious race against time to smash inflation, and win over hurting pockets, for re-election in 2027.  It must re-fix the crude-for-Naira policy before it’s too late.

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the populist but empty Peter Obi are jaded policy souls.  But the administration must never underestimate their cynical capacity for mischief.  President Tinubu can shut both up only with a winning policy.

    Meanwhile, everyone should be worried — NMDPRA especially — that DPR is pumping fresh muscles, by the day, to crash and hike pump pricing. 

    Is there the oligopoly of cement winking, so early at the rebirth of local oil refining? Will local refining yet be captive to a greedy few, that may well sell petrol at prices the cartel well pleases?

    NMDPRA had better act while it still can.  Replicating cement in local crude refining would be the virtual death of the economy — with stagnated incomes and thumping costs!

  • For a presidential emperor?

    For a presidential emperor?

    Just as well — the House of Representatives just froze its bill to strip everyone else, except the President, of their immunity under the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

    It’s unclear, though, which is sadder: a bill that lacked rigour in concept, and is bereft of tracking Nigeria’s contemporary history, to fully adapt it to the country’s political sociology, much of it toxic?

    Or freezing it for now — to be later introduced? — even after the clear foggy thinking that, ab initio, thrust forward the bill?

    If our lawmakers must make effective laws, they must first understand their political habitat — or shouldn’t they? 

    Still, a bill that picks out only the President, from the entire universe of voters and elected personnel, as the sole decent mind meriting immunity, has neither shown enough critical thinking in concept formation, nor demonstrated enough nous in current political history, to claim mastery of its environment.

    Or how would the Constitution graft a presidential candidate and running mate — that ticket is legally incomplete without both “twins” — yet an amendment bill would purport to grant one constitutional immunity but deny the other?

    Where’s the rigour and the consistency in thinking here? Or are laws made, not by hard thinking but by flabby emotions?

    Okay, concepts are more difficult to form, for they belong to the realm of rigour. But tracking history, particularly contemporary history, is much easier. 

    So, before pushing forward that bill, the House should have refreshed itself in current political history.  It didn’t, it would appear.

    If it did, it would have noticed that in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term (2003 to 2007), we saw a President try to weaponize this same constitutional immunity, so he could bully and batter his Vice President, to gain a nefarious edge.

    Now, between President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar, there was really little to choose — in power or out of it. 

    But back then, the President accused the Vice President of sleaze, implying Vice President Atiku was indeed president of vice!  The other countered that the President was buying cars for his alleged girlfriends from the public till — holy hypocrisy!

    By that dirty brickbat, both showed why they were unworthy of their high offices.

    Yet, it was the President that wouldn’t lead by example — if Atiku’s allegations were true — that tried to rig the immunity process to elbow his deputy out of the way: first, to shut him up; and later, to wallop him in a one-sided “rofo-rofo” fight! 

    The courts eventually shut out the plot but the brutal fight wasn’t pretty.  But just imagine if Atiku too did not have immunity?  An unscrupulous presidential emperor could have crushed a fellow citizen, as high in the hierarchy as the Vice President, for whatever alleged infractions he was equally guilty of — just because he could?

    Now, is that ugly blast from the past the future that this bill envisages, with its skewed thinking that the President would always be reasonable and conscientious?  But this Obasanjo/Atiku rumble, with its many dirty revelations, showed the President’s alleged acts were no less unconscionable!

    Read Also: Makinde, Ladoja inspect Ibadan circular road project

    So, in real terms, where is that presumed halo that deems the President a saint, and the rest of the partisan polity, irredeemable sinners? Soapy thinking!

    Still, true: the Obasanjo/Atiku mutual gracelessness did not always blight their successors.

    The late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua didn’t cut the picture of a presidential bully to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, though not a few would argue that his tenure was too fleeting for a definitive verdict.  Maybe.

    President Goodluck Jonathan, who completed the ill-fated Yar’Adua’s tenure and won a fresh term of his own, treated Vice President Namadi Sambo with decorum. 

    President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo too treated each other with mutual respect and trust.

    Yet, in these three cases, no one could wager if the end results were a function of genuine presidential grace, or vice-presidential long-suffering!

    Incidentally, both Obasanjo and Atiku are the only presidential pair still out there making a row — the one self-condemning himself to putting down his successors to stay relevant; the other still after the elusive — and illusive? — office of president, for which no stunt is too low to pull; no liaison too base to join.

    Buhari and Osinbajo live in quiet post-power dignity. So does Jonathan — and certainly Sambo — save Jonathan’s occasional verbal glitches that tend to underscore his lack of depth: the most recurrent problem that blighted his best-forgotten presidency.

    Even at that, in post-power etiquette, Jonathan towers above Obasanjo, whose old-age purgatory appears eternal ranting; and courting cheap controversies unbefitting of a former President.

    So long for history as teacher! Now, to how that frozen bill, being conceptually flawed, makes absolutely no sense.

    If the President and Vice President enjoy constitutional immunity, and so do the governors and deputy governors, it’s simply because the Constitution strictly follows the federalism concept.

    Federalism puts in place governments of states, regions, provinces, cantons, etc, co-ordinate with a central — federal — government, that though assumes additional responsibility of national defence (in war times) and treaty and diplomacy (in peace times).

    It’s precisely because the President is no Leviathan, that can do and undo in a federation, that both the President and Vice President, with governors and deputy governors, enjoy constitutional immunity. 

    That was no happenstance.  It rather reinforces the tenets of the federal concept.  This ill-thought-out bill, if passed into law, threatens to crash that fundamental balance — worse, in a Nigerian troubled polity still struggling to actualize its full federal essence.

    First, granting the President sole immunity would make him a tin god in his own federal cabinet, if ever he’s as cynical as Obasanjo in wielding his messianic complex — a complex not based on any public good, no matter the colourful preachments, but fired by a ruthless self-aggrandizement.

    Then, it would birth a presidential emperor, that would wreck our democratic polity. 

    Imagine, even without sole immunity, the sundry constitutional crimes of the Obasanjo era: the futile effort to summarily sack Atiku, the wayward removal of governors with the notorious “simple minority” of state legislatures, the wilful seizure of Lagos council funds, and the brazen attempt at subverting the Constitution to gain a third term!

    Removing or retaining immunity is neither here or there.  That the crude beneficiaries right now won’t, in the long run, morph into refined and decent players, meriting that honour, can’t be ruled out.  But if you must remove immunity, never grant any exemption.

    Sole immunity for the President is bad.  The House should forget that terrible idea.

  • Rivers: Between 1962 and 2025

    Rivers: Between 1962 and 2025

    With the Rivers emergency bind of March 18, a babble — excitable TV lawyers, baleful politicians, giddy rights activists and sundry grudgers — swear Rivers 2025 is same as Western Region 1962.  Not so!

    They probably pray — and fast too! — that Rivers brings the same crash as 1962! Fond hope!  But more on that presently. 

    Now, is the tale of two combatants that fought, without let, and ended in a ditch! 

    First, Nyesom Wike and his 27 legit legislators, that somewhat bottled a sure Fubara wallop into a pulsating — if tragic — draw, to borrow that dramatic football expression.

    What the hell were the Wike group thinking, after having the pitiful Siminalayi Fubara exactly where they wanted him?

    A double-whammy impeachment of governor and deputy!  That would have been the first in Nigerian history!  That was classic rush without gumption!

    Pray, what was Deputy Governor Ngozi Odu’s offence, beyond guilt by association?  Would she, the tail, have wagged the dog? A mere “spare tyre”, could she have stopped Fubara, with his penchant for executive suicide?

    Besides, impeached governor and deputy would have romped the legit Speaker, Martins Amaewhule, into office as acting governor — at least, pending fresh elections.

    Would the Fubara side, seething with defeat and grilling with humiliation, have folded their arms?

    Couldn’t the Wike side have struck the shepherd to scatter the flock? Targeting Fubara — with the odd chance of Odu becoming Rivers first female governor — would have split his camp, and forced not a few careening into their original Wike camp — careerists all! — just to retain their sinecure!  Or wouldn’t it?  Cynical!

    That double-whammy was a strategic blunder.  Fubara has lived to fight again.

    As for Fubara, no tears from here.  From his sundry fumbling as governor, he cuts a tragic gubernatorial figure — the most tragic so far?

    His infantile temper hardly trumps a local government councillor’s!  He hides behind a finger, as  he mounts a huge billboard beside his many infractions.  Most politicians cover theirs. Not Fubara!

    He’s in quite a class, all his own, in executive delinquency — or how would you place a governor, in a state in crisis, openly telling Ijaw “youths” to keep calm — euphemism for rearm? — and await “instructions”?  Next, a bang from oil pipes!

    Or an executive prodigal who would rush to demolish the Rivers House of Assembly — to fend off impeachment — only to scramble together N10 billion to build another one, and still pretends he he has any sense of value!

    If his Rivers electors don’t question his sense of value, that’s their democratic migraine. But again, Wike bears vicarious blame for giving Rivers such an immature fellow. 

    Read Also: I have no link to any militant group, says Fubara

    Why did Wike pick him, though?  To spin and juggle him like a yo-yo?  Rivers!

    Now, to the pseudo-historical parallel between Rivers and the old West.

    Rivers, as Western Region in 1962, is a coastal state.  Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa was friendly to Western Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), a key player in the dispute.  Also, President Bola Tinubu is friendly to Wike, his FCT minister, another critical player in the Rivers dispute, though he’s no foe of Fubara.

    Beyond these parallels, the two crises couldn’t have been more different.

    Between the Action Group (AG) faction of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and SLA’s renegade plank, there was enough equal-opportunity politics to go round — equal-opportunity cynicism to outfox each other. 

    But on the balance of facts, Balewa rigged the federal might to favour SLA and damn Awo.  Tinubu, from the beginning, brought the two together to iron out political peace.

    The Privy Council judged that SLA was lawfully removed but the Balewa government scrambled to de-link that council from Nigeria, to save SLA. On Rivers, even the Supreme Court has proclaimed Fubara’s many infractions.  Yet, Tinubu has invoked an emergency, that just saved Fubara’s neck from fit political guillotining!

    Balewa’s emergency rule was suspect.  Tinubu’s was to head off catastrophe, with oil pipelines already being bombed.

    Yes, there was fracas in the Western House chambers — twice: both in the House of Assembly and in the House of Chiefs.

    But the Balewa government knew the SLA camp had the firm motive to push chaos to fend off SLA’s ouster — yet, looked the other way.  It was this blatant partisanship that birthed the real emergency, of free arson, that collapsed the 1st Republic.

    The situation in Rivers is quite different.

    In less than two years as governor, Fubara had run up too many constitutional crimes.  And each time he bungled, he crowed and left clear, incontrovertible evidence!

    In full glare, he demolished the Rivers State House of Assembly.  Then, he bragged that the legit majority at the Assembly existed at his pleasure, and that their quarters, which they turned into emergency sitting chambers, was “my property” 

    For two years running, he passed both his budget and the screening of his commissioners and special advisers through a phoney assembly.

    Then, from October 2023 or thereabouts, he sat on the salaries and emoluments of the Rivers legislators opposed to him — culpable impunity in the eye of the law.  By the way, the Rivers Administrator should, pronto, clear this salary backlog.

    Even after the Supreme Court verdict, he was still playing games. A Fubara aide claimed they sent 2025 budget information to legislators’ WhatsApp accounts!  What a crowd!

    True, the Wike camp baited Fubara into these constitutional stumbles.  But as crisis often reveals the core of people, this one only exposed the ruthless despot trapped inside the placid Fubara!

    When the crisis broke out in October 2023, the president did scramble together the Abuja peace accord.  But while Wike wouldn’t halt his aggressive rhetoric, Fubara too wouldn’t be saved from himself, jumping from one infraction to the other.

    Just as the late Chief Edwin Clark wrote thunderous letters to disavow the Abuja treaty, based on vacuous Ijaw bias, Fubara’s “ljaw youths” hastened emergency rule with pipeline bombing!  Some ensemble!

    Were either president, Abubakar Atiku or Peter Obi would have taken the exact action as Tinubu, though both now play to the gallery on crass emotions. 

    If they did otherwise, their presidential judgment would have been questionable — for they would have left Rivers to burn in own blaze.

    Let this emergency rule slam fresh reason on both sides.  Whatever happens, Fubara has written his legacy — of endless chaos — hardly flattering!  But Wike’s own “structure” too could have cropped a terminal(?) knock.

    After Fubara, will the next Rivers governor re-find the path to peace and sane governance?  Time will tell!

  • Of gathering and scattering

    Of gathering and scattering

    Gathering and scattering, as good or bad, night or day, perch on diametrically opposed spots in life’s long continuum.

    Still politicians, since the dislodgment of PDP from federal power in 2015, would rather scatter to have a crack at power, than gather to consolidate policies and programmes.

    Nasir el-Rufai, former Kaduna governor and, before him, Salihu Lukman, famed ex-APC contrarian, have just validated that trend.  But that’s perfectly democratic.

    The ruling APC can’t expect its opponents not to dream that whatever hubris struck PDP, which earned it fair banishment into the Siberia of power, wouldn’t strike APC too.

    Still, this scattering is often a swashbuckling “me-too” complex.  It’s scalding emotion to strafe the ruling order, and willy-nilly bomb it down.

    But back to el-Rufai and Lukman, the twin-totems of this latest excitement en route to Sweepstakes ‘27.

    In his APC last days, el-Rufai sounded every inch a party puritan — again, no crime: indeed, a democratic virtue! — alleging the ruling APC had left the rocket that propelled it to power to rust and rot.

    Lukman too had played that same role, when el-Rufai, as glorious Kaduna governor, had easy access to President Muhammadu Buhari, as informal golden son — the he, who must be obeyed or, in any case, be indulged!

    Lukman excoriated his felt neglect of the ruling party, by its ruling elite. It was the lone voice, of the sole party puritan, shrieking in the wilderness! 

    Even, with the Bola Tinubu order, he had levied that same charge, primarily for making Abdullahi Ganduje (North West) APC chairman, to replace Abdullahi Adamu (North Central).  It was one Abdullahi replacing another.  But Lukman felt the new APC chair should have come from Adamu’s zone for party balance — hardly illogical!

    That was Lukman’s high horse, until he declared he was opting out of APC.  But if he loved APC that much, and pushed without let for its wellbeing, why his present rabid push to unhorse the party from power?  Gathering and scattering!

    Read Also: How economic predators ganged up against Tinubu over fuel subsidy removal, by Bamidele

    On his own, el-Rufai railed and huffed, scowled and growled, against the alleged neglect of the party, and accused President Tinubu of running a one-man show.

    But he didn’t attend the APC national caucus meeting, maybe called at last because of his constant hectoring.  A day or two later, he declared he had resigned from APC for the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to wrest federal power.  Gathering and scattering!

    Not a few nettle el-Rufai that his alleged bitterness, for not making Tinubu’s cabinet, self-bungled him out of APC. 

    But beyond political “yabis” (Fela-pidgin-speak for high-wire banter), why would el-Rufai, virtually in government since 1999, sans the Umaru Yar’Adua/Goodluck Jonathan years, be embittered because of missing yet another ministerial slot?

    Perhaps, he felt more betrayed by his native Kaduna APC?  As Adams Oshiomhole virtually strapped Godwin Obaseki to his back, to sell as governor to the Edo electorate, el-Rufai also backed Uba Sani, to sell as next Kaduna governor. 

    Yet, el-Rufai’s Kaduna legacy, which he expects protégée Sani to guard and protect, has been rubbished. Governor Sani though, has refused to speak ill of his benefactor. 

    But between active ungratefulness a la Obaseki, preening and rippling, and the passive ingratitude of Uba Sani, which rankles more?  Perhaps all of these scalded el-Rufai’s restive and hurt soul!

    But whatever the reasons for his SDP gambit, and the Lukman manic rally for a united opposition to unhorse the party both laboured to build, the two gentlemen would appear to labour under the notorious complex of “it’s either my way, or the highway”!

    Again, that’s no democratic crime.  The masses don’t change the society.  Only the critical mass does.  But that critical mass requires a huge dose of courage and daring.

    The snag, though: between healthy daring and hare-brained gambit, there is but a thin line.  The one harvests a political after-life, of which President Tinubu is living proof.  The other crops political death-at-dawn!

    So, which have el-Rufai and Lukman chosen?  Verdict ‘27 looms!  Gathering and scattering!

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo just weighed-in, in this mid-term politics of movement without motion, with his customary traducement of others, to bury own rot, as two-term elected president.

    Now Obasanjo’s public essence is rot, though he loves to posture as some Pope worthy of emulation. But from his records, nothing is farther from the truth.

    Still, he over-reached  himself this time, claiming PMB’s was the most corrupt tenure in Nigerian history.  Definitely, in his avid ardour to perjure others, senility has set in?

    You feel that portraiture is unfair?  Take a trip to Laderin, in Abeokuta, Ogun State.  Obasanjo that gamed the polity for “donation” as sitting president, to build a personal shrine; and PMB that built the Wole Soyinka train station for everyone, in a season of acute adversity, which of the two is grandmaster of corruption?

    PMB, a far junior officer that gives Obasanjo due honour, despite the Owu chief’s un-elderly tantrums, has taught his old commander-in-chief the ABC of decorum in and out of office.  While Obasanjo’s OOPL oozes the self-settlement rule of Obasanjo’s presidency, PMB’s many infrastructural revamp continue to serve millions of Nigerians. 

    Still speaking of bad-mouthing: Obasanjo also tried to thumb-down Tinubu’s critical infrastructure, as the Lagos-Calabar coastal expressway, with a rail section to boot.  Pray, which rail or road infrastructure did Obasanjo deliver in his eight years of self-distraction?

    But Works Minister, David Umahi, already gave a fitting riposte: the nay-party, with their negative hubbub, should stay off that highway when completed!  Spite can’t obviate the sweetness of honey!

    Still, President Tinubu (PBAT) has his job cut out for him, in his race against time, to beat the naysayers to the 2027 tape, give inflation a red eye and win over the masses.

    A brief PBAT-PMB comparison.  PBAT, a natural progressive, has chosen neo-liberal tactics to drive his reforms.  PMB is a natural conservative.  Yet, he adopted more socio-democratic methods during his tenure.

    But both, no matter their tactics, have made greater strides in infrastructure — far more than the PDP years.  Indeed, despite Tinubu’s neo-liberal pains, he is implanting discrete IOUs, in several critical demographics: student loans, the nascent credit culture, and aggressive IT training, to power a prosperous youth segment, etc.

    That’s why Obasanjo is revving up his virulent traducement, ahead of 2027. 

    He attacks critical projects that he knows, if completed, would finally bury him and his presidential mirage — which anyone hardly remembers anyway, but for Obasanjo’s eternal screeching and constant personal nuisance.

    Still, the Tinubu-Aregbesola crisis has been unfortunate.  Noise in regnant circles often demonizes Ogbeni as some traitor and implacable foe to the President. That’s not true.

    Ogbeni’s street value could have better assuaged the masses, than cost-mouthing ministers that seem to alienate them.  What a missed opportunity!

    Still, the electorate must know that those who love to scatter, after helping to gather, often do so for selfish and egoistic reasons. 

    Nigeria’s redemption and sustainable development compass, from all critical facts, appears closer to 2015, than 1999.