The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Of change and counter-change

    Lores, on the Russian Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, ooze with revolution and counter-revolution elements, resulting in massive revolutionary purges.

    What would chroniclers write about Nigeria’s current era of change — from a Conservative (centre-right) to a Progressive (centre-left) ruling elite — a lore of change and counter-change agents, with its inevitable intra-elite power purge?

    That should agitate the mind of power scholars, particularly with the unfolding Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) high drama, involving Senate President, Bukola Saraki.

    On one-on-one comparison, but attaching absolutely no values, moral or ideological, Saraki may well pass for the Trotsky of this era.

    Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was the communist theorist and purist, who at different times, famously fell out with both Lenin and Stalin, Soviet communist icons, because of his rather liberal mind.

    Now, you won’t, by any stretch of imagination, compare Trotsky with Saraki on ideological purity or liberalness of mind or even perceived championship of the common good.  Yet, their odysseys appear uncannily similar.

    In 1913, Trotsky who, before declaring himself non-aligned, had joined and dumped the Menshevik (minority) and Bolshevik (majority) factions of the emergent Russian Communist Party, had written a rather strong letter to Nickolay Chikheidze, a Menshevik leader, protesting the Bolsheviks’ appropriation of Pravda, the name of Trotsky’s rested newspaper, for their new workers-oriented newspaper in St. Petersburg, the then capital. Though he harshly criticised Lenin’s role in the matter (Lenin was Bolshevik), he soon forgot all about it.

    But unfortunately for him, the secret police got a copy of the letter and filed it away.  When Lenin died in 1924 — Lenin that would rather Trotsky, his No. 2, succeed him — the letter surfaced from nowhere: as “evidence” of Trotsky’s hatred for Lenin!  The letter, 11 years after, was of course, the handiwork of  Stalin and his scheming power troika: Stalin, with Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev.

    Stalin would not rest until the exiled Trotsky was state-assassinated in 1940, in his Mexico home.  His crime?  He was a counter-revolutionary!

    Saraki left office, as Kwara governor, in 2011.  The allegations of irregularities in assets declaration, for which Saraki has been dragged before CCT, are at least four years old (2011-2015) or, if you count from 2003 (considering allegations of anticipatory assets declaration), 12 years old (2003-2015)!  Now, see the uncanny similarity between Saraki and Trotsky?

    “Saraki’s messy win was a brazen legislative counterpoise to presidential puritanism, on which the 2015 election was won and lost’

    So, is somebody, somewhere in the change movement, as the Stalin troika did of Trotsky, trying to undo Saraki?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

    But even if that were the case, it is only valid on the emotional front.  On the legal lane, the case is not statute-barred; so the length of years would appear immaterial.

    Still, Olisa Metuh, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesperson, has gone on overdrive, in what Prof. Olatunji Dare, The Nation columnist, would call “hysterical screeds”, alleging the Muhammadu Buhari presidency’s descent into dictatorship and fascism.

    But how so — and what is PDP’s especial interest in a Senate president that doesn’t even belong to its fold?  To protect its deputy senate presidential “loot”?

    Lai Mohammed, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson, has riposted in no less vigorous drama, dismissing the PDP shrill as ignoble campaign against President Buhari’s war against sleaze; and extending the PDP man an umpteenth invitation to come learn how to do “proper” opposition criticism!

    Senator Saraki’s supporters too have been all tears and all growl, gruffly bellowing queries over the prosecution’s timing — why now? they snap — and figured (rather triumphantly, even in depression) that the CCT drama is all about the senate presidency; which they insist Saraki won fair and square.

    Saraki’s opposers, nevertheless, counter he corralled that office in the vilest and most crooked of manners.

    So, how does Saraki himself come across in this whole saga?  Hardly more sinned against than sinned!

    At best, he cuts the picture of the Yoruba quip: doomed to a fiery end, yet merrily frolics with fuel!  If he goes down with this, it would be hubris yet again taking its costly pound of flesh — hubris, that implacable enemy, posing as friend, to (wo)men of means!

    Truth to tell: Saraki’s senate presidency win was desperation-fired perfidy classically unveiled — and maybe, in his quiet moments, beyond the din of subversive whoop of support, he would perhaps wish things had panned out differently.

    To be sure, Saraki’s and opponents’ intra-APC quibbling over party position, supremacy and allied claims are equal-opportunity assertions, neither here nor there.  Really, at that period, with different factions of the APC amalgam trying to annex the soul of the new ruling party, how would you define the “party”?  And if you could not, in all good conscience, how would you honestly come up with “party supremacy”?  Which party  — and which supremacy?

    But Saraki’s despicable sell-out of his party, crassly trading off the senate deputy presidency to the opposition PDP, was the limit of perfidy, which would always come back to haunt him, even if he weathers this present storm.  His blunt refusal to compromise with his intra-party opponents, in the filling of other principal positions, unlike Speaker Yakubu Dogara who wisely did that, only worsened matters.

    The rather rotten method of Saraki’s win has burrowed a big chink in his moral armour, even as his supporters go now on an emotive binge, claiming their principal is being “persecuted”.

    Emotion is sweet.  But it hardly changes the grim and objective situation — what lawyers would call “notorious facts”.  The notorious fact is that a case is before a tribunal; and the Senate president is obliged to avail himself of doughty defence.  Motives, no matter how dodgy or suspicious, hardly turn prosecution to persecution, so long as the alleged offence was committed; and the accused had his or her fair day in court!

    Saraki’s messy win was a corruption of the parliamentary process.  A corruption of political conventions.  A corruption of public decency.  A corruption of basic morality.

    That was a brazen legislative counterpoise to presidential puritanism, on which the 2015 election was won and lost.  For the scion of Baba Oloye, it may well prove costly, if not outright politically fatal.

    But don’t count out Saraki — a political cat with nine lives!  Besides, these are just allegations, allegations that amount to nothing until rigorous prosecution, scrupulous defence and a fair and transparent verdict: whether of shameful conviction or triumphal acquittal.

    For the APC, however, this must be a sober moment.  The party would appear in a flux; and its ability to deliver on its electoral promises of positive change, and even its future integrity, appears on its ability to resolve the furious war between change and anti-change agents among its own ranks; after its rainbow coalition, of moral and ideological neuters, has coasted to federal power.

    How it resolves its internal contradictions may well decide its future; and Nigeria’s wellbeing — after a failed military rule; and PDP’s callous frittering of hope in the first 16 years of this democratic republic.

  • Osun, after the salary demon

    After a stream of cheery developmental news, the Osun opposition, with both hands, grabbed the demon of unpaid salaries — and hard, it nailed the Osun government.

    It thoroughly demonised Governor Rauf Aregbesola and his ambitious social and physical infrastructure programmes, donning the Ogbeni in an unflattering garb — a grand hypocrite in the progressive space, that should be condemned by all!

    Which lover of the masses, they ask in triumph, cheeks bathed in subversive tears, would sit pretty and watch his people go hungry, months on end, without salaries?

    It was all emotive blackmail, of course.  On the salary issue, the governor was not unfazed any more than he created the failure, though his finances were rather tight, with virtually every kobo over-leveraged, on ambitious — over-ambitious, many insist — capital projects, such that any shock, no matter how slight, was catastrophic.

    The real culprit was, however, former President Goodluck Jonathan — his recklessness with the national till. This point Ripples made in “Osun’s politics of the belly” (July 7), when it argued that since the Jonathan Presidency caused the problem, the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency should fix it, instead of the media roasting of victim governors, which solved no problems.  The president did just that.

    But the blackmail grandly resonated.  Those unconvinced by its logic were easily swept by its pathos; with not a few succumbing fast to plaintive kith-and-kin, going hungry and clearly angry, for not earning salary, for no less than six months.

    Well, all is fair in war — and the Osun government, in the clouds most times, plummeted back to earth!

    Now, with a Federal Government-secured loan to clear the salary backlog, is the demonization set to end?  Not a chance!

    For one, play on emotions is the exclusive preserve of those who cannot build clinical arguments; or the mischievous, who have nary a case.

    For another, the Osun opposition is not about dismantling its egbirin ote — what the Yoruba would call a complex web of intrigues — for in Aregbesola’s failure lies their own salvation!  When, after all, comes from the gods, another potent blackmail weapon, ala unpaid salaries, to torture a clear and present nemesis?

    So, enter a fresh controversy: the reported verification, in the build-up to clearing the salary arrears.

    The Osun opposition insists it is yet another example of the government’s coldness to the plight of the Osun workers — for why is the verification bobbing up “now”, on the virtual eve of settling what was owed?  Some especially creative minds even posit, swearing by all they hold dear, that the government had “fixed” the salary money to earn some “quick interest”, while workers continued starving!

    To be sure, the government has not exactly done itself much favour by the verification’s timing, with its high blackmail value: its opponents’ penchant for eternal spinning; and a jaded workers’ near-zero resistance to emotional manipulation, masquerading as hot sympathy.

    Still, the government insists that since Osun would continue re-paying the loan far into the future, it was an excellent time to vet the salary bill, lest the money ends in some ghost pockets.  That makes a lot of sense, though not a few would be too angry to see reason with it.

    It could also well be that a few ghosts and their ambassadors are the most trenchant in the protest racket — for the more raucous the racket, the more the confusion; and the more the confusion, the better chances the ghosts continue to get paid!

    Whatever is happening, the Ogbeni owes the Osun people clear explanations and full disclosure.  At the end, the government would do what it must do to protect public money and its own integrity.

    So, with the opposition always buzzing with mischief, of the most fantastic hue, it may be morning yet on Osun’s day of eternal intrigue!

    Still, the Osun government must be gratified it continues to point the way, for the rest of the country, to the welfare state; despite its lean resources.  Two policy news appear to reinforce this point.

    Two weeks ago, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo announced the Federal Government was set to implement the All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign promise of a schools feeding programme, which, apart from boosting school attendance, would also boost investment in agriculture, catering and allied lines.

    On September 9 in Osogbo, as the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) kicked off its nationwide distribution of plastic chairs to schools, a Federal Government official confirmed Osun’s leadership in this schools welfare programme.

    “The home-grown school feeding programme, the O’Meal,” said UBEC’s Dr. Yakubu Gambo, “is one programme that has endeared the governor to us because he is the only governor doing it despite the capital intensive nature of the programme.”

    Governor Aregbesola, present at the occasion, weighed in: “We are building state-of-the-art 100 elementary schools, 50 middle schools and 20 high schools.  This is a big project by any standard,” he gushed, “which has injected life into the construction industry; and has provided jobs for artisans and professionals.”

    Prince Felix Awofisayo, the Osun SUBEB chief, was not left out of the developmental whoop: “Let me reiterate that the provision of functional education for the citizenry,” he declared, “as the administration is anchored on the implementation of a cohesive and an all-encompassing six-point integral plan.”

    So much developmental news in a day — a far cry from rumbling tummies, plotting adversaries and scapegoating media, just as it was at the beginning, before the salary demon!

    It is the final triumph, then?  Hardly!

    ‘Governor Aregbesola needs a cabinet now to finish as strongly as he started, before the salary catastrophe.  If he delays, he risks facing a crisis — an internal crisis — much more lethal than the hell-raising Osun opposition can ever muster’

    And the battle next time would not be solely from the Osun opposition, even if its bad-tempered buzz would always vibrate; but more dangerously from inside Aregbesola’s own camp, which may well, not unfairly, declare itself starved of legitimate pork.

    Thank God, the salary odyssey is coming to an end.  The Ogbeni should draw a closure as swiftly as he can, and bring smiles back to the cheeks of Osun workers.  He should also seek funds to complete his grand capital projects, among them crucial roads.  It is nice developmental news, from Osun, is hitting the wires again, after the horror tales of the past months.

    But the come-back would not be complete without the governor constituting a cabinet. Nearing the end of the first year in a four-year second term, it is time to bring in as many bright and committed minds as possible — for it is a challenging juncture, demanding a brilliant and committed collective.  It could make the difference between success and failure.

    Governor Aregbesola needs a cabinet now to finish as strongly as he started, before the interregnum of the salary catastrophe.  If he delays, he risks facing a crisis — an internal crisis — much more lethal than the hell-raising Osun opposition can ever muster.

  • Buhari: between image and substance

    No hee-hawing: Muhammadu Buhari, president of the Federal Republic, is provincial!  But is that necessarily bad?

    In a multi-national country, with a parlous record of northern political domination, that would appear a disaster.  The image of the Nigerian Presidency as bastion of northern hegemony creates a disturbing déjà vu: we had seen it all, in those bad old days, many would sneer.  Now, are we condemned to living it all, in this season of purported change?

    Believe it, the image is not exciting!  But the substance?

    Put another way, does provincialism automatically negate Buhari’s fine natural traits which, in part, powered him to the Nigerian presidency?

    Before you answer that question, just ponder these two situations, between President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo — Osinbajo, said to be as cosmopolitan as his principal is provincial — on account of picking their very close staff: chief of staff and senior special assistant for Media.

    If you discount Femi Adesina, Buhari’s and Osinbajo’s picks, for chief of staff and chief of media, follow the same geographical parallel.  The president picked Abba Kyari, as chief of staff; and Garba Shehu, as senior special assistant (SSA) media; both northerners.  The vice-president picked Ade Ipaye, as chief of staff; and Laolu Akande, as SSA media, both Yoruba.

    Now, what is the definitive difference between these two picks?  Still, that Osinbajo picked fellow Yoruba as closest staff — does that then re-make him as provincial; or even make his choice evil?

    And if both cosmopolitan and provincial end up with similar principles to choose close aides, shouldn’t it be clear there could perhaps be more fundamental dynamics driving both — indeed, everyone — beyond the political correctness of being “Nigerian”, to hypocritical applause?

    Indeed, there is a deeper principle; and it is that Nigeria is a federation.  A federation is no fancy tag: it is a country peopled with different peoples, though it is hoped these different peoples will eventually yoke, in a melting pot; and that alchemy would produce a “national” culture.  Still, a person gets to know first, families and friends; and not a few go through life trusting this immediate environment, no matter how limited or extensive their exposure has been.

    In Nigeria’s often emotive media, such people have often been demonised as tribalist or bigoted; but go ahead to glamorise the other extreme as detribalised, whatever that means.  So, to be a proper Nigerian, you must erase your cultural nativity?

    This emotive imaging has caused a lot of havoc in the political space, though it is fair to say such havoc resulted from mutual distrust, which emanated from real and potent fears of unfair domination.  Three names, in Nigeria’s political history, past and present, will just anchor this point.

    Obafemi Awolowo.  He was the most rigorous political thinker of his generation.  Yet, conventional “Nigerian” wisdom dismissed him as “tribalist”.  Why?  Because his closest aides were generally Yoruba; who he often despatched to sensitive duties all over Nigeria, even during election time.  Still, there is no proof the tribalist tag diminished his rigour or vision.  But on that sole score, he never became Nigeria’s prime minister or president — hard as he tried.

    Olusegun Obasanjo.    He is Awolowo’s very opposite, unabashedly “Nigerian”; and his admirers followed up to gift him the eulogy of “father of modern Nigeria”, which Baba Iyabo merrily lapped up.  As elected president, he went ahead to reflect perhaps the most pan-Nigeria outlook in appointive decisions.  But after all that, what?  Not unlike the Biblical white sepulchre: all-gleam outside but all-rot within — for beyond imaging, Obasanjo’s pan-Nigeria ensemble didn’t appear to have got the job done.  If they had, Nigeria won’t be in this terrible pass today.

    Muhammadu Buhari.  By Nigeria’s terrible political-speak, Buhari would be the first “tribalist” to make the Nigerian presidency.  During electioneering, his opponents threw everything at him: tribalist, northern irredentist, religious bigot.

    Yet, such was the rot; and such were his perceived sterling basic qualities that they shone through the clouds of negative coloration, that his coalition powered to the presidency: on account of massive votes in the core North; and his make-over in the South West and the Middle Belt.

    But the distemper of electioneering would appear to linger, coupled with new-found panic in the South West.

    That brings the discourse to the rather unflattering reaction to Buhari’s latest appointments which, in truth, is skewed in North’s favour.  And the South East, somehow not unusually, has been most strident.

    No doubt, the South East, as any other part of the country, has the right to yell and kick, if it feels short-changed.  And despite that region’s clear general anti-Buhari electioneering and electoral posture, some South Easterners still stuck out their neck for the president.  These presidential allies would be most hit.  They face “we told you so!” jeers from their people, but little to cheer from their stubborn electoral choice.

    Still, the South East stridency would appear hobbled by its mainstream political elite’s culpable indifference, particularly when such appointive injustices are in their people’s favour.  Strictly on principle, Buhari’s perceived northernisation of his government is no worse than Goodluck Jonathan’s easternisation of his.  Yet, the South East elite appeared comfy with the Jonathan-era injustice — a case of the Achebe quip that you don’t spew out palm kernel put in your mouth by benevolent spirits?  If that were so, what is the justice in the present South East’s shriek of alleged injustice?

    As for the South West and South-South, the dominant political elite would appear a confused lot.  In Ripples‘ opinion, Lagos’ Babatunde Fashola and Rivers’ Rotimi Amaechi would appear the best two governors in the national gubernatorial class of 2007-2014.  Yet, both blocs, though fired by different motivations, went on over-drive demonising the duo.  But when the dust cleared, and appointments had gone elsewhere, they suddenly jerked awake to bawl “northernisation!” and “marginalisation”!

    Even if Buhari was really “northern” in his outlook, what chances did these sniping South West and South-South ancestral warriors give him, to essay a change of heart?  Please note that the Fashola and Ameachi examples are only metaphors of the wilful lack of strategic thinking demonstrated by these two blocs.  It didn’t mean both Fashola and Amaechi were in contention (even if they were, Ripples was in no position to know), though either making the list would have drastically changed the Buhari Presidency’s perception as “northern”.

    Still, nothing from this piece should be interpreted as an endorsement of Buhari’s northernisation of his presidency, perceived or real.  Just as Obasanjo’s pan-Nigeria imaging shielded his government’s rot until it was too late, Buhari’s emerging image of a northern presidential laager may too early blind the polity from the president’s promise of a nation-changing tenure.

    If Buhari’s electoral coalition could boast a pan-Nigeria mandate (though located more in the North’s three geo-political zones and the South West), it should be capable of pan-Nigeria citizens of quality and  character, from all parts of the country.

    Any rationalisation short of that standard is nothing but presidential cant — and presidential cants can’t agree with the president’s mantra of change.

     

    Quote: “Buhari’s perceived northernisation of his government is no worse than Goodluck Jonathan’s easternisation of his.  Yet, the South East elite appeared comfy with the Jonathan-era skewing“

  • A princess and her angels

    Meja Mwangi, the Kenyan novelist, in Going Down River Road, did a good parody of the all-mighty Kenyan parliament.   His fictive People’s Parliament, of the over-worked, underpaid, hungry and angry workers, during their break time, railed at the high-and-mighty.

    From their break-time hell-raising came an immortal line: “Germs don’t kill Africans, only hunger does!”  That, beyond the biting sarcasm, makes the pungent point: millions of Africans do need help — and maybe the government alone cannot provide all of that help.

    The American playwright, Arthur Miller, was even more audacious, gifting his creative space to the common man, the “everyday people”, in  his tragic play, Death of a Salesman.  Classical tragedies enjoyed the artistic pleasure of cruelly cutting to size, the proverbial movers-and-shakers, who often love to play god, over fellow men.  The gods, ever so malevolent, seize alleged hubris to mercilessly humble these greats.

    But Willy Loman (pun it as low man, and you probably would get the full gist), the tragic hero in Death of a Salesman, is not Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony or King Oedipus.  Still, by Miller’s contraption, he fell from his low and humble level to a no less profound tragedy.  To make the point hubris is no exclusive preserve of the great?

    Well, this is no foray into literary appreciation.  It is rather a dramatic way of saying today, Ripples stays the with lowly and the humble, even if the polity booms, quakes and aches with blistering crossfire, over President Muhammadu Buhari’s latest set of appointments.  Maybe next week, if the battle still rages, and the controversy still “trends” (as they say on the social media), Ripples may yet join in the fray.

    But right now, it is full attention on a princess and her angels, one the benefactor, the others the putative beneficiaries, of a heroic (o, that word again!) effort to ease the mass pain and anguish in the land — if not aborted for lack of funds.

    First, the “princess”.  Bukola Fasuyi is chief executive of Proclips Media Communication Ltd, a Lagos PR firm, movie producer, and fashion entrepreneur with a bent for culture.  She owns an Adire fashion line (wears and accessories), with a special eye for the Diaspora market.  Adire is a traditional Yoruba tie-and-dye fabric, native to Osogbo and Abeokuta.  She also runs a charity, Lady of Africa and Advocacy Foundation.

    By virtue of this charity, Miss Fasuyi would appear, indeed, a princess of the streets, with the NGO funnelling help to the distressed and disadvantaged, basically in the field of health and education.

    Indeed, it was in the cause of this charity that the “princess” met with her “angels” — poor children rendered orphans, after their parents, and former Lady Africa Foundation (afterwards cited as Lady of Africa) charity beneficiaries, had died of  cancer.

    One is Kayode Olabiyi, 12, whose mother, Bunmi Olabiyi died of breast cancer, in the course of raising the N7million estimated bill for her treatment in India.  Kayode, with his two siblings, Balikis and Emmanuel, were taken in by Lady of Africa, with the permission of their family.

    Another is Ifeoluwa Bello, 6, who also lost her single mother to breast cancer.   Baby Ife was barely nine months! After the death, according to a Lady of Africa release, Ife’s aunty (her mother’s elder sister) took over her care.  But she too would die when Ife was three.  Afterwards, Lady of Africa took over her care, with her family’s permission of course.

    Ifeoluwa, and the Olabiyi siblings, are only four of the 10 kids in the Miss Fasuyi’s charity NGO, all at different stages of formative education, courtesy of a collaborative scholarship by a Lagos private school, Tohibat Group of Schools, at Gbagada Estate, in Lagos.

    The Foundation had approached the school’s founder, Alhaja Tohibat Adeniji, herself a philanthropist, for help.  According to the Foundation, the school agreed to take in the children, and bear part of the cost.

    Instead of N450, 000 per child for a term, the school charged each of the children, all boarders, N50, 000 a term, plus another N30, 000 monthly fee for boarding expenses.  Thus, instead of N450, 000, each child pays N140, 000 a term, N310, 000 less than the normal fee.

    Not only that: Tohibat School is also in the process of helping two of the Foundation pupils secure admission into the Iran University in Ghana, an Islamic faith-based university, with a N200, 000 yearly fee, and another N50, 000 a month for feeding and allied living expenses.

    Still, why would Lady of Africa charity send these poor kids to expensive private schools in Lagos, where the state government runs free schools?  On the surface, no reason — for the government runs free schools because it pays the bill for the majority poor, who cannot afford it.

    But Lagos public schools are day-schools; and the Foundation was anxious the children, who otherwise could have become street urchins, and maybe laboratories for future criminals, needed boarding facilities for something closest to a home setting, so that it is only during the holidays that the Foundation has to worry about providing them homes.

    Despite the Foundation’s efforts and Tohibat’s gamely response, it is a case of the spirit willing but the body tired.  Tried as it has, Lady of Africa has been finding it difficult to raise the children’s school fees, thus subjecting these young minds to some hiccups and disruptions.

    On the Tohibat front, it so happens that a new set of investors are taking over the school.  Alhaja Adeniji, 92, the founder, is advanced in age.  But it is not quite the coming of a Pharaoh who knew no Joseph — no.  The new investors are still willing to help.

    Indeed, the Foundation has got a further rebate of N40, 000 on each child: the cumulative fee is now N100, 000, instead of N140, 000, aside from an additional N10, 000 rebate for ICT training (with other pupils paying N15, 000).  So, instead of N140, 000, each child now pays N110, 000.

    The snag though, is that the N100, 000 would now be paid off-front, at the beginning of session, instead of the former practice of N50, 000 off-front, while the monthly N30, 000 feeding fee is paid as it falls due.  That payment front-loading creates a huge challenge for a cash-strapped NGO.

    That therefore is the essence of this appeal — for the Foundation needs urgent help, if it is not to abort the education of these children.  If help does not come, the children would not resume with others, when Lagos schools reopen in two weeks.

    ‘If help does not come, the children would not resume with others, when Lagos schools reopen in two weeks’

    You want to help?  Thank you.  Please reach Princess Fasuyi, of the Lady of Africa Empowerment and Advocacy Foundation on 08027647056 and 08093287614 or visit the Foundation’s website: www.ladyofafrica.org.

    If you did, you have save the soul of a part of Nigeria’s future.

  • Ooni: reign sweet and sour

    First, some conceptual clarifications.

    Court records, of the late Ooni, Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II, (reigned 1980-2015) often referred to him as “His Imperial Majesty” — how so?

    This is not only a historical negation (the Ooni never headed an empire, so he could not have been His Imperial Majesty), it is also an affective downgrade of the Ooni institution in the Yoruba essence.

    Despite all the power and the glory (echoing Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican reggae star), empire building is essentially evil.  The conquerors flaunt prestige and power.  But the conquered suffer greed and plunder.

    In all of Yorubaland, only the Alaafin could rightly claim “His Imperial Majesty”, for only Oyo historically enforced the prestige of power and the notoriety of plunder.

    But Oyo, even at the height of its glory, only compelled love by force; while Ife, even at the nadir of its decline, commanded love by choice in the Yoruba soul — if not in the secular realm, then on the spiritual plane.

    “For about five centuries, Ife was the most revered of all kingdoms of the Yoruba people,” wrote Prof. Banji Akintoye, in his definitive and much more inclusive book, A History of the Yoruba People.  “Its territory was sacred and inviolate to all Yoruba people, by a universal consensus.”

    Even the much more Oyo-centric The History of the Yorubas, by Samuel Johnson, the 19th century ethnic Oyo cleric and Pastor of Oyo, confirmed the primacy of Ife, even if it also blared the Oyo imperial glory.

    True, at the height of its glory, when Ife was but a humble settlement, Oyo struck naked fear.  Also at its decline, and wind-down with the Kiriji War (1877-1893), a pan-Yoruba armed rebellion against Oyo imperialism, the Ibadan army, the most fearsome back then in the Yoruba country, still regarded the Alaafin as their sovereign, since Ibadan was only a garrison town, with pan-Yoruba appeal for all the rough necks that loved war and plunder.

    But at its own zenith (14th century AD, though the Ife civilisation spread from 11th-15th century), according to Akintoye, Ife was close to what pertained in the Athens of Pericles — the most golden age of any of the ancient Greek city states — when no thinker, philosopher or general literati was complete, before benchmarking his acute mind with peers in the great academies in that city.

    Prof. Akintoye, again: “ … A cultural ferment (with strong intellectual character) was in progress in Ile-Ife in the centuries following the creation of the city, a cultural ferment whose light gradually spread to the rest of Yorubaland.”

    So, as Greece was the bastion of Western thinking, Ife was the fundament of Yoruba civilisation: spiritual, political and economic.

    So, how much of that Ife all-round awe did Ooni Sijuwade retain, compared to his predecessor, Ooni Adesoji Aderemi (reigned 1930-1980)?

    That is no straight question.  For one, both monarchs reigned in two dramatically different epochs, with dramatically different dynamics: Ooni Aderemi under colonial rule (30 years: 1930-1960), and the first 20 years of independence (1960-1980); and Ooni Sijuwade, 35 years, the bulk of which was under military rule, with its cascading decay of public morality.

    For another, feudalism (the bastion of royalty) suited military rule just fine, for as unelected rulers, soldiers-in-government courted the royal fathers to shore up their legitimacy, in exchange for some visibility in governance.

    But even with that, Ooni Sijuwade was much diminished in perceived influence than Ooni Aderemi was enhanced, both under colonial indirect rule (somewhat, a legitimacy-starved precursor to military rule), and under democracy, as 1st Republic, first governor of Western Region (1960-62), under the Action Group (AG) government; and even under early military rule (1966-1979).

    Besides, the military-era Land Use Decree (now Land Use Act) eroded the royal economy, so much so that the landed wealth of many a royal father was drastically curtailed, sentencing not a few of them as military contractors, to the quiet chagrin, if not open disdain, of their subjects.

    Indeed, there is this school of thought that claims Chief Obafemi Awolowo and associates actively encouraged Oba Sijuwade’s ascendancy because of his established wealth which, they thought, should come in handy to preserve Ife’s primacy, in the conclave of Yoruba royal courts.

    Besides, that financial muscle should also help to checkmate any untoward politicking, backed by mischievous extant powers, from the Alaafin end, for the Alaafin, Oba Adeniran Adeyemi II, paid dearly with deposition (in 1954), for his rebellious disposition to the Awo AG establishment.  But with his son, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III already back on the throne by 1970, an Oyo-Ife tussle for Yoruba primacy was anticipated — the one claiming its latter-day imperial exploits, the other leveraging its pristine spiritual-cum-civilising sovereignty.  That indeed came to pass.

    So, how did Ooni Sijuwade fare?  On the culture front, very well.  To the Diaspora Yoruba, there was probably no better ambassador of pristine Yoruba tradition and splendour.  Add that to his ultra-regal fashion sense, and he was almost nonpareil.  It is no surprise, therefore, that the Cuba Diaspora Yoruba are deeply mourning his passage.

    He also distinguished himself as custodian of Yoruba history, particularly regarding Ife’s place in it.  The only dark clouds, in the late Ooni’s glittering sky of culture, was his seeming penchant to merchandise Ife honorary titles, rebranded as whatever titles “of the Source”.  It bordered on crass venality, with awards to some really controversial characters.

    It was, however, on his perceived lack of empathy with Yoruba popular aspirations, especially on the political plane, that Ooni Sijuwade dragged that institution into the mud — at least by popular perception — from the immaculate and dizzying heights that Ooni Aderemi had vaulted it.

    On 12 June 1993, Moshood Abiola, an ethnic Yoruba, won the presidency, in a spectacular pan-Nigeria mandate, hitherto thought impossible, given the balance of regional powers.  It was no thanks, in part, to the late Ooni’s pathetic hee-haw, that the criminal annulment of that historic mandate was sustained, at the end of which Chief Abiola lost his life in detention.

    Later, the military conspirators would fall upon themselves, when Sani Abacha declared himself the victim of an attempted coup, in which Oladipo Diya, his No. 2, was allegedly implicated.  If Gen. Diya escaped the gallows, it was not because the Ooni, his pan-Yoruba spiritual monarch, raised a voice in his defence — in any case, not in public.

    It was the cumulative effects of such faux pas  that diminished the late Ooni in the estimation of not a few, at least in Yoruba streets.  Still, it is only fair that as he inched towards his creator, the late monarch became much more tempered than his early years on the throne.

    ‘Ooni Sijuwade was not the angel his co-elite piped at his passage. Neither was he the devil many in the streets would swear he was. He was rather an embodiment of his age, warts and all’.

    Ooni Sijuwade was not the angel his co-elite piped at his passage.  Neither was he the devil many in the streets would swear he was. He was rather an embodiment of his age, warts and all.

    It is therefore left to whoever succeed him to vault the Arole Oodua throne to that height every Yoruba would be proud of.

  • Kukah cooking poisonous broth

    Kukah cooking poisonous broth

    Holy Father, Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, may be cooking a profane broth that may well smudge his frock.

    When that broth is done, we may witness the merriest push at self-demystification in the history of global Catholicism!

    That is hyperbole, of course. But not a few have wondered why the goodly priest was so cavalier at leveraging his integrity on Jonathan-era opacity, the unconscionable sleaze from which has near-emptied the public till, and caused nationwide anguish.

    Yet, all the holy priest could volunteer, from his August 13 bully pulpit on television, was harangue President Muhammadu Buhari to forget the alleged humongous graft and “move on”, because of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s “spectacular” deed of losing election and stepping down!  Pray, was Jonathan supposed to veto voters’ will?

    Father Kukah was so imperious on behalf of his do-gooding National Peace Committee (NPC), now self-transformed into National Peace Council.  That body, of eminent Nigerians, midwifed the testy peace before, during and after the general elections; and closely guided the peaceful transfer of power from the defeated President Jonathan to opposition candidate, Gen. Buhari, for the first time in Nigerian history — kudos! Indeed, every Nigerian should salute NPC’s patriotism.

    Still, securing peace anchored on justice is one thing.  Pushing for peace founded on fraud is another.

    If the Jonathan-era NPC earned due praise for pushing for peace founded on justice (an election loser should surrender power, shouldn’t he?), the Buhari-era NPC risks ringing condemnation for pushing for peace of the graveyard.  Or how does one situate Father Kukah’s rather quaint crusade to gloss over serious regime fraud, simply because the regime head quit power after sound electoral rejection?

    Might the holy father then be Nigeria’s 21st century equivalent of the Pardoner, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, whose pouch bustled with papal indulgences, hot, fresh and smoking from Rome?  And by that, he already secured, for the Jonathan regime looting gang, some celestial pardon, mass cry for justice and national anguish be damned?

    In his holy rail against a sacred presidential duty to retrieve allegedly stolen funds, Father Kukah somewhat betrayed the Catholic Church’s historical nemesis of suspect fidelity to the state, no matter how profane its cause.

    When Fidel Castro made his famous prediction — a virtual impossibility that nevertheless just came to pass — that the United States would re-open relations with Cuba only when America had a Black president and the Catholic Church had a Latino pope, he probably had in mind the stinging rebuke of Liberation Theology to Catholic orthodoxy’s secular failings.

    An intra-Catholic protest movement had, in the 1950s, started in South America.  But it was not until 1971 that the Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutierrez, coined it a name, via his 1971 work, A Theology of Liberation.  Liberation Theology accused the Church of siding with the mighty and powerful, against the poor, meek and gentle, the Biblical beloved of the Christ Jesus.  Other proponents of this thinking included Spain’s Jon Sobrino, Uruguay’s Juan Luis Segundo and Brazil’s Leonardo Boff — all Latinos from continental Europe and South America.

    Such near-heretical soil hardly nurtures a pope?  Yet, today Pope Francis from Argentina (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio) is sovereign of Vatican City; and Barack Obama is US president — a tribute to the inevitability of truth and justice, no matter how secular overlords of orthodoxy — and political bosses — play the game.  From Father Kukah’s rather arrogant intervention in a suspect cause, there appears but a thin line between the two!

    The bitter irony though is that Nigerian Catholicism, since the dawn of the 4th Republic in 1999 and indeed throughout the jungle of military rule, had been nearest to telling truth to power — and resonating with a longsuffering public — on a consistent basis (witness Anthony Cardinal Okogie, retired Archbishop of Lagos).  That much cannot be said of the bulk of the Pentecostals, with their prosperity preaching and equal opportunity influence peddling; and the resultant ultra-closeness to any government in power.

    ‘President Buhari must take his historic duty of cleansing Nigeria directly to the people, whose shoes painfully pinch; and not some manipulative elite, whose comfort zones are assured’

    Which leads to the next point: had Father Kukah carefully x-rayed his NPC membership, he would perhaps have been more nuanced, strutting his holy violin with reckless abandon, for the “stop-the-probe-of-looters” orchestra.  Take Pastor Ayo Oristejafor, sitting Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) president, also in the NPC delegation to Aso Villa.

    With all due respect to the good clergy, Pastor Oritsejafor somewhat reminds the historical-minded of the Russian priest, Gregori Rasputin.  Indeed, what Rasputin was to the doomed Nicholas II, the last czar that ended the Romanovs’ over 300-year reign in imperial Russia, Oritsejafor is to President Jonathan, who ended PDP’s 16-year political hegemony in Nigeria’s federal democratic republic.

    Now, down in history, Rasputin appears a penumbra.  To many, he was the very devil.  To others, he was a court saint, undone by peer envy.  To yet others, he was the dialectical grey, between the fierce pull of black and white.  But the historical consensus: his spiritual influence, particularly on the Empress, aided the doom of the Russian monarchy, though he would be murdered before the Romanovs and their monarchy joined him in the grave.

    Pastor Oritsejafor has outlived the Jonathan Presidency — praise the Lord!  Ripples wishes him many more years yet in the Lord’s vineyard.

    Yet, not even the most fanatical of Oritsejafor adherents would deny his influence in the Jonathan presidential court; the arms purchase scandal that involved the pastor’s private jet, and CAN’s orchestrated campaign, under Oritsejafor’s presidency, to turn the presidential election into a Christian Vs Muslim plebiscite.

    After all of these, the pastor would coolly stroll into Aso Villa, with other NPC members, and the Father would have us believe the lobby is altogether selfless?  Excuse me!

    Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar too!  No doubt, the former head of state has done well for his country.  Quite sensibly, he hurriedly ended military rule.

    But the Army Arrangement (apologies to Fela) they put in place since 1999, with President Olusegun Obasanjo at the helm, had so alarmingly decayed that President  Jonathan was only a fall guy, even if he, through his fecklessness, more than contributed his own quota to the crash.

    Indeed, in his sacred passion to save Jonathan’s neck (hardly a crime), Father Kukah conveniently forgot the NPC election-time derring-do was as much do-gooding to save the polity, as it was an establishment rally to forestall sinking with Jonathan.  For all his famed polemics and brilliance, Father Kukah is no iconoclast but only an elite purifier and stabilizer.  But again, that is no crime.

    NPC is welcome to its self-defined historic role of stabilising the Nigerian polity.  But it must guide against morphing into a historic nuisance: a bastion against draining off the dross of roguery and robbery, that put Nigeria in this sorry pass.

    In the final analysis, President Buhari must take his historic duty of cleansing Nigeria directly to the people, whose shoes painfully pinch; and not some manipulative elite, whose comfort zones are assured.

    From the Kukah holy show on TV, it is all but clear that even the cleanest of this regnant establishment might just be too filthy for a new Nigeria where everything works.  Yet, Buhari must strive to save this elite from itself.

  • Akpabio and crying wolf

    Akpabio and crying wolf

    Akpabio, Akpabio!

    Let off that hail in The Nation Editorial Board suites, and you probably would elicit equally passionate but contradictory responses.

    Commendation: a socially responsible and historically conscious former governor, whose laudable education policy was aimed at ridding his people of the “houseboy/girl and cook syndrome”, by making education free, compulsory and attractive; and gifting his state monumental physical infrastructure, easily a generational reference point.

    And condemnation: a brash narcissist, who always thinks he remains the issue.  Whatever he says, no matter how ridiculous, he tends to feel that, because he says it, confers on it the wisdom of Solomon and the depth of Socrates.

    That is Ripples’ honest sweet-sour impression of Godswill Obot Akpabio, former governor of Akwa Ibom State, and newly minted Senate Minority Leader.

    That much is clear from Senator Akpabio’s latest crying wolf, over President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war, DSS’s alleged partisanship in election matters and of course, the restive Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) staff, agitating against a 50 per cent pay cut.

    “We can no longer run to the Villa for cash, so we don’t have the wherewithal to maintain that large number of secretariat workers”, Himself, Akpabio the Infallible, barked, in company with Uche Secondus, acting PDP national chairman, at a press conference.  “The workers should understand that they are in a master-servant relationship, in which you cannot force an unwilling master to keep a recalcitrant servant.  We are definitely going to downsize.”

    Pray, what was that?  No, not the master-servant stuff in employment matters.  That is trite, though a being less infallible would sure have been sweeter, less stark and less combative.

    Rather, it was the bit about running to the Villa for cash.  Was that a Freudian slip?  An Akpabio-istic hyperbole?  Or a hedge-and-be-damned combative war cry from He, who cannot be wrong?

    Whatever it was, was the PDP dipping its hands into the public till to run its business, simply because it ran the Presidency?  Mr. Akpabio’s dismissive roar tended to suggest such.

    But even if it were just the impassioned hyperbole from the House of Akpabio, it was harmful no less: for the senator’s arrogant diction seemed to portray the rump of a regnant impunity, that peaked in the power hubris, that finally smashed the PDP Humpty Dumpty.

    Imagine referring to your own party workers as near-contemptible urchins that must take it or chuck it!  Still, the least said on that the better: post-power PDP — and its workers — appear perfectly capable of carrying their cross!

    Which takes the discourse to the Akpabio and Secondus latest campaign on DSS’s alleged satanic activism on electoral officials allegedly linked to contentious polls; and President Buhari’s allegedly skewed anti-corruption war.

    Just as well the DSS, through Lawal Musa Daura, its director-general, has responded to the partisan allegations.  It’s left to the public to decide the more credible — the accuser or the accused.

    But, for Ripples, the issue is simple: a key security pillar of state becoming a partisan rod, does no one no good.  Under President Goodluck Jonathan, DSS was notorious for such brazen abuse.  By that same logic, it can’t be popular under President Buhari, if that vile habit has continued.

    If true, that would be a negation of building state institutions.  After all, to paraphrase US President Barack Obama, strong institutions deepen democracy, seldom strong personalities.

    It is, however, rich Mr. Akpabio is raising hell now.  What was his reaction to DSS excesses during the Jonathan presidency, when “golden girl” Marilyn Ogar became the stylish “Charlie’s Angel” (remember that American crime-busting TV series, that aired on ABC from 22 September 1976 – 24 June 1981 — and much later, via syndication, on NTA?) in the Jonathan government’s unending war against the opposition?

    On 8 August 2014, Lai Mohammed, then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson, with Sunday Dare and Salisu Shuaibu, were celebrated DSS pre-Osun gubernatorial election “prisoners of war”.

    On the spot, a DSS trooper alleged Alhaji Mohammed always “abused” Jonathan.  Even, if abusing the president was a crime — which it is not, though it may be tort if it is slander or libel — when did DSS become the courts to settle the matter in a one-way adjudication of summary arrest?  But Ms Ogar soon moved in to clear the air: those in the net were nabbed for “loitering” (another novel crime)!

    The same Ogar swiftly moved in to canonise DSS’s illegal raids — twice: the second, an open defiance of an express court order — on an APC IT facility in Lagos, brutalising the staff, wrecking assets.  The angelic Ms Ogar again weighed in with a plethora of “evidence”, suggestive of alleged electoral subversion.  True, Prof. Attahiru Jega’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would pour cold water on the DSS supposition, but the immaculate Ms. Ogar had spoken!

    Now, what was Mr. Akpabio’s reaction to these clear abuses, though then he was both Akwa Ibom governor and chair, PDP Governors Forum?  Perhaps as muffled back then, as his hell-raising now is shrill!

    Sure, that would appear immaterial, particularly if the allegation is true — for, ad hominem, his preferred reaction does not affect the objective reality on the ground.  But it pushes a legitimate case that Senator Akpabio, for partisan motives, might just be crying wolf where there is none.

    Besides, the states under reference, Akwa Ibom (where Akpabio was involved as a partisan) and Rivers, are instructive.  Media reports before, during and after the elections, in the two states, strongly suggest probable cases of grave electoral subversion (with lost lives and limbs to boot!), with alleged criminal collusion from ranking electoral officials and security agencies.

    The tribunals are adjudicating the allegations.  Still, the Akpabio-Secondus tag-team is not deluded enough to think that just crying partisan wolf would force the authorities to back off those with genuine cases to answer?

    The alleged Buhari one-sided corruption war speaks of a particularly virulent strain of political nihilism: accusation and counter-accusation soon democratically spreads the muck among a gullible people, uh?

    Though the Presidency itself has given a fitting response, the states where the PDP points a finger of guilt, Rivers and Lagos, are rather interesting.

    Even under PDP banners, Rivers under Rotimi Amaechi, from all objective analysis, had a lot going for it: its futuristic public schools, its effective post-militancy security infrastructure before murderous politicking set in, by a desperate but doomed presidency; and its huge investment in physical infrastructure.  The allegations would, therefore, appear a once sweet song turned sour — without prejudice to whatever the probing authorities may find.

    And Lagos under Babatunde Fashola?  Arguably, in his 2007-2015 set, Nigeria’s brightest advertisement for democracy.

    Even if he did nothing else, his clinical tackling of the Ebola virus remains a global reference.  If Lagos — and Nigeria — didn’t collapse under Ebola, Fashola earned all the plaudits.  Pre-Ebola, his place, in sane and responsible governance, was secure: a tremendous blessing to his generation. Besides, how come Fashola ran Lagos with admirable pluck, that earned a national reference?

    Rubbishing due praise is political nihilism taken too far.  More than the target individual, the system loses the credible dream of a glorious repeat.

    That is a loss a growing democracy can ill afford.

     

  • Again, NASS comes up short

    Remember Salisu Buhari of Kano?  He was the first Speaker, 4th Republic House of Representatives.

    He was everything: rich, handsome, genteel, debonair, street-wise and dashing — until a certificate forgery scandal laid him bare.  He was also accused to have fast-tracked his age to make election into the House of Representatives, and eventually, its Speakership.

    But when the forgery scandal came, he came hurtling off his high throne.  He promptly got convicted too — and like the comet, he blipped off the public space.  Nevertheless, the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency granted him pardon, after conviction.

    But not so (at least in the public eye) the House, and by extension, the National Assembly which, from then, has somehow notched up the rather unsavoury image of chambers of eternal scandals.

    It was supposed to be a new beginning of democratic rectitude, after years of waste, driven by military turpitude.  But clearly, the National Assembly wouldn’t be part of that renaissance.

    Aside from Citizen Buhari’s trip, the late Evan(s) Enwerem, first president of the 4th Republic Senate (3 June 1999 – 18 November 1999) and Imo governor in the aborted 3rd Republic, was stewing in his own corruption juice.

    His nemesis was the dreaded “banana peel”, from which also the flamboyant Oyi of Oyi, Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo (now dead), second Senate president (18 November 1999 – 8 August 2000), would slip.  They were both unhorsed in quick successions, no thanks to scandals, real or induced.

    Though Anyim Pius Anyim, the third incumbent (8 August 2000 – 29 May 2003) , would complete that turbulent but sole term (even that, at the expense of forfeiting a return to the Senate), the “banana peel” soon claimed its third scalp, Adolphus Wabara.

    Fourth senate president but only first president of senatorial term 2003-2007, Wabara was forced to resign (2005) via a bogus corruption scandal, reportedly pushed by a tag-team of the Obasanjo presidency and Nwabara’s own Igbo rival-claimants to the Senate presidency.  But a court later quashed the allegations, for lack of fair hearing.

    Ken Nnamani (2005-2007) would enjoy a relatively peaceful tenure as senate president, even, with regal panache, halting President Obasanjo’s illegal third term bid.  But the Senate presidency, assailed by scandals from the “Eastern home front”, proved a hideous churchyard for many a prominent South East politician.

    Meanwhile, the holy President Obasanjo, fiery commander-in-chief of the war against graft, who would share his glory with nobody, thought nothing of throwing the National Assembly to the wolves on “furniture allowance”.

    He made it known that the National Assembly (NASS) was some unconscionable allowance glutton, out to ruin his new age of rectitude.  But mum was the word, on the perks his own ministers and special advisers were grossing — no matter!

    The media loves sensation.  It even enjoys the more, roasting the proverbial high-and-the mighty.  The National Assembly’s goose was cooked.  It was the final departure — and NASS never made it back in the good books of public consciousness.

    Some 16 years down the line, from the first Buhari House of Representatives scandal, another Buhari is appearing on the anti-corruption horizon.  He is Muhammadu Buhari, president of the Federal Republic.

    From the previous historical back-grounding, President Buhari may well appear, like President Obasanjo before him, as another one come with executive swagger, to crush the longsuffering Nigerian parliament.

    The shriller the anti-corruption rhetoric, the more endangered the NASS, right?  And, as an endangered species, NASS has a right to defend its democratic territory?

    Indeed, there are interesting parallels between President Buhari and former President Obasanjo.  Both were former military heads of state, who secured democratic mandates.  Both enter their democratic era jobs as radical anti-corruption stalwarts.  Finally, both promise(d) a new dawn, after so many years in the woods.

    Still, with all due respect to President Obasanjo and all his anti-corruption activism, what he promised in 1999 has turned out nothing but a false dawn.

    If President Goodluck Jonathan pitifully crashed out of office in 2015 — and that, at the ruling elite’s scramble not to sink with him — the genesis of that rot was the Obasanjo presidency from 1999.  Its progressive decay climaxed in the Jonathan fiasco of 2015.  That has even made President Buhari’s anti-corruption stand all the more pressing and credible.

    Obasanjo’s systemic blackmail and muscling of the National Assembly (both the Senate and House of Representatives in perpetual near-permanent war state, almost always traced to some executive-fuelled intriguing), only led to a thorough subversion of the separation of powers/checks-and-balances doctrine.  That further underdeveloped the already disadvantaged parliament, since it stayed suspended in the military era.

    For the democratic polity, the severe result of such subversion is institutional shrivelling, with parliament becoming punier and the executive bigger; and corruption spiralling out of control.

    So, could the Buhari new anti-corruption war be a ready executive excuse to further pulverise the legislature?  Maybe.  Maybe not — though Buhari’s lean, ascetic and Spartan profile appears much more reassuring, for a genuine anti-sleaze war, than Obasanjo’s flabby, hedonistic and materialistic persona.

    Still, much as a strong, just and disciplined leader can, hopefully in Buhari, redeem the dawn of rectitude that the Obasanjo era so painfully promised but never delivered, a strong set of institutions would serve better the democratic polity.

    That is why the Senate must snap out of its present costly drama — costly to its own institutional health; even costlier to Nigeria’s ever delicate democratic project.

    ‘Senate President Bukola Saraki may have kicked off the Buhari era in a dust of scandal, as Speaker Salisu Buhari kick-started the Obasanjo era with a whiff of forgery’

    There are credible allegations that the Senate leadership election of July 9 held under a forged set of rules — Standing Orders 2015 (as amended) which magically replaced the extant rules at the end of the 7th Senate: Standing Orders 2007 (as amended).  Police investigations reportedly suggest there might be a prima facie case of that grave allegation.

    If that holds true, it means Senate President Bukola Saraki may have kicked off the Buhari era in a dust of scandal, as Speaker Salisu Buhari kick-started the Obasanjo era with a whiff of forgery.  That adds no shine to the legislature’s image, as a bastion of change — change for the better.

    Yet, the Senate response to this grave charge is a sickening espirit-de-corps, which tends to flex emotive muscles on the executive-legislature divide, instead of addressing the weighty question of alleged forgery of rules.

    Should the courts decide the case, and the worst fear is confirmed, NASS’s image, as a responsible and responsive legal citizen, would dip further.  An illicit but wilful cover-up is a war the Senate cannot win.

    Either way, it just might be prone to more executive bullying, should Buhari develop an Obasanjo-like messianic complex; and essay Obasanjo-era blackmail and muscling.  That must be avoided at all cost.

    That is why the Senate should do an unflattering introspection, and do what is right, by law and by morality.  Otherwise, NASS would come short again, and not illegitimately, be perceived as wilful obstacle to the present anti-corruption effort to bring the country back to life, from the grave of its past graft.

    That would be well and truly unfortunate

  • Subsidy: before another barren debate

    For once, perhaps in eons, a Nigerian leader has not traded off his humanity for political power.  That about captures President Muhammadu Buhari’s take on fuel subsidy.

    “I have received many literature on the need to remove subsidies, but much of it has no depth,” President Buhari declared.  “When you touch the price of petroleum products: that has the effect of triggering price rises on transportation, food and rents.  That is for those who earn salaries, but there are many who are jobless and will be affected by it.”

    A sitting president, worried about subsidy removal affecting transportation, food and rents — when the state has provided his free! — as well as the jobless?  That is rare presidential humanism around here!

    Still, for the anti-fuel subsidy orchestra, with their infallible neo-liberal doctrine, Buhari’s take is pure heresy: crass populism, symbolising nothing but ancient thinking.

    That has been the regnant temper since 1999, when pioneer 4th Republic President, Olusegun Obasanjo, laid down the rules — though, in truth, the ill-fated Umaru Yar’Adua (Allah bless his soul!) did a somewhat heretic foxtrot, reversing the 51% sale of Kaduna and new Port Harcourt refineries to Blue Star, an Aliko Dangote-led group of investors.  But his ill health put paid to any further heretic rascality.

    President Goodluck Jonathan would appear far too dazzled by the Breton-Woods tantrums of her economy empress, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, with her persistent hollering: “save, save, save for the rainy day”!  A crucial part of those “savings” was the imperative to remove “subsidy”.  Well, the rainy day is here, and there appears pretty little savings!

    Even formal subsidy removal “savings”, epitomised by SURE-P, in some states like Lagos, have proved nothing but lethal chop-pey (easy loot) — a partisan-powered slush fund, to kill and maim opposing partisans, in an abortive bid to “capture Lagos”!

    Gen. Obasanjo, on his part, was an apostle of state-driven economies, during his first coming as military head of state (1976-1979).  But at his second coming, he played the classical neophyte, with vigour, pushing his new neo-liberal conversion, selling off about everything he had insisted the state must own — or run — before he saw the light; perhaps on his way to economic Damascus!

    The apogee of that frenetic privatisation was his fuel liberalisation-by-importation policy, en route to selling off the local refineries  — which organised Labour nevertheless resisted.

    So, that single energy policy — liberalisation-by-importation — is the issue.  The so-called fuel subsidy, alleged host to oil-marketing subsidy parasites, is only a symptom.

    Now, how can a country solve a problem by, with a frenzy, attacking the symptom, while blissfully forgetting the root disease?  That is the long-and-short of the subsidy removal hysteria.

    But the mother philosophy remains unchanged.  President Obasanjo, in opting for his flawed policy, declared his government powerless against petty rats, that fed fat on turn-around maintenance (TAM) contracts; which crippled Nigeria’s local refineries.  So, for the abject failure to kill those big rats, subsidy must go; even if that was grave collateral damage to the law-abiding majority.

    The latest strain of that philosophy: because subsidy thieves cannot be checkmated, subsidy must go!  Then the clinching moan: subsidy does not get to the poor, anyway!

    Now, that explosive mix of fact and emotion has registered a rather shrill presence in the long-running subsidy conundrum.

    In the impassioned exchanges of January 2012’s Occupy Nigeria protests, embattled President Jonathan alleged that the pushers of the strike were over-fed Lagos denizens, whose monster cars guzzled fuel, monster lungs gulped choice victuals and brutal lips swilled bottled water, the tri-luxuries his poor Otuoke folk would never dare imagine, despite their state’s status as crude producer.

    Bayelsa senator, Ben Murray-Bruce, has returned to that regional hysterics, in his latest road show against fuel subsidy.  While the Lagos poor had access to cheap fuel, he rued, his Bayelsa poor (and for geographical balance, the Boko Haram-harassed North East poor!) had never benefited from it.

    But to his credit, in a piece he wrote for This Day newspaper, “Tame fuel subsidy or it will tame Nigeria” (July 24) he erected a scaffolding of initiatives, of how to pay “transport subsidy” to transport owners and managers, after stopping fuel subsidy as we know it now; and getting rid of the fat fuel-importing rats.  But his complex idea of fuel stumps, administered by designated fuel stations, portends an even more soulless racketeering!

    The numbers ensemble have also weighed in, in the subsidy removal debate.  To this clinical class, if imported fuel costs x at the global pump price, why should Nigerians buy it at a lower pump price of y — the subsidy price — simply because Nigeria produces crude?  And the scarecrow clincher: crude, that is even progressively losing its market niche?  Such is the numbers ensemble’s infallibility!

    But wait a minute: what if local refineries processed the crude, and you didn’t have to import refined products — would those numbers still add up, infallibility and all?

    That leads to the real contention.  If crude were locally refined, to feed Nigeria and to export the excess — if any — the debate might just automatically change.  If fuel importation stops, fuel importing parasites would vanish with their hosts, wouldn’t they?

    So, if President Obasanjo had strategically invested in more refineries — despite the ready excuse that private investors that got licences did not build — would there still be the raging passionate debate over subsidy’s oil marketer “thieves”?

    Obasanjo’s fitful flight from duty (on local refining), on Breton-Woods doctrinal fancies, has come back to haunt the polity!  Even then, to many local neo-liberal ideologues, the solution is more Breton-Woods, and not a wise change of policy direction.  That explains all the renewed “remove subsidy” passion.

    That is why President Buhari should shun another round of a barren oil subsidy debate.  He should rather — and fast — explore building more local refineries; and ensuring the existing ones, though ageing, work to their maximum present capacities.

    As Ripples always notes, the government can build refineries and hand them over to private sector agents who can profitably run them — if such chores are beyond Nigerian public servants!

    Even if after attaining local refining, and petrol still sells for N300 a litre — which however is unlikely — all the petro-chemical spin-offs from petroleum downstream would still have been beneficial to the local economy.

    That cannot be said of the present net-loss of exporting crude cheap, but, at a premium, importing refined products.

    That, not the so-called fuel subsidy, is the real tragedy of the extant energy policy.

    ‘How can a country solve a problem by attacking the symptom, while blissfully forgetting the root disease?  That is the long-and-short of the subsidy removal hysteria’

     

  • Baba’s latest thunder

    Why did Goodluck Jonathan lose the presidency?

    Because, on all objective accounts, he didn’t perform well?  Yes.  But which of his two predecessors boasted stellar performances — Olusegun Obasanjo or the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua?  Besides, when did often sentimental Nigerians start voting out bad leaders, particularly at the federal level?

    Being from a minority bloc, he didn’t have the electoral numbers.  Besides, the North and the South West “conspired” to oust him.

    Maybe.  But why didn’t these conspiratorial sentiments apply in 2011, when Jonathan achieved a somewhat pan-Nigeria mandate?  “Somewhat” because, even back then, as this column pointed out, it was more of an electoral conspiracy — that word again! — between the South and the Middle Belt, against the far North, to press a rabid anti-North hysteria, over the zoning controversy.

    Even then, Jonathan’s was a mandate that made many wax poetic on the eventual arrival of the pan-Nigerian voter, blind to ethnic, regional and religious cleavages.  And to think the man was from the minority of minorities, his clan among the most minute minorities of the Ijaw nation; and despite a row over zoning that made a segment of the core North hopping mad!

    So, what happened in four short years that the Jonathan pan-Nigeria electoral alliance of 2011 pitiably collapsed, so much so that only his native South-South and its “catchment area” (to use JAMB-speak) of South East stood by the former president — even then, many would insist, on hot sentiments, rather than cold reason?

    Such was the near-total collapse of everything that hallmarked the Jonathan Presidency!

    The truth: Indeed, the voter might have got more sophisticated; and Jonathan, only the electoral scapegoat of previous bad rulers.  He could also have been a victim of a geo-political gang-up of ethnic majorities.  His loss could also be a result of many variables, aside from the two already mentioned.

    Still, the most valid variable may well be this: Jonathan performed so porly, and so comprehensively so on all fronts, that the Nigerian ruling class — “the owners of Nigeria” as a fiery  facebook friend rather cynically dubs them — simply panicked; and decided to junk Jonathan before his pathetic government sank them all!

    That ironically echoes how the Biblical Jonah, thrown overboard by panicky co-passengers, ended in the belly of the whale!  As it was with Jonah, so it is now with Jonathan?

    Indeed, in President Jonathan’s last days, Nigeria had grinded to a near-halt.  The Federal Government had got reckless with the common purse, paying whatever it wished to states from the Federation Account.  All over, it was equal-opportunity looting, with the Jonathan court cowing before the all-mighty rogues.  On the bunkering front, it was crude-stealing on an industrial scale, with the president just waffling and tweaking his fingers.  And with the people, the millions that felt cheated, disinherited and angry, it was a season of anomie, which dark clouds portended nothing but a terrible pour of anarchy.

    That was the grim point at which Jonathan’s co-”owners of Nigeria” pulled the plug.  If ever they had the slimmest of hopes that the gravy, secure and sweet, would continue under Jonathan, they perhaps would have come to an electoral compromise — grumbling masses be damned! — that would have returned Jonathan to Aso Rock.

    But they realised — and wisely too — that one additional second under Jonathan would torpedo their golden boat; and feed them to hungry sharks in Nigeria’s vast boiling and rumbling ocean of anger.

    That is why the latest thunder from the stable of former President Obasanjo is rather curious — how could a person who, by his patently bad choice of successors, initiate the progressive crash that Jonathan so tragically epitomised, and yet sounds so sanguine that he flatly refuses to take  even vicarious responsibility?

    Obasanjo first distanced himself from Yar’Adua’s ill-fated tenure.  Yar’Adua was a goodly man undone by his frail health, which neither Obasanjo nor even many Nigerians were not unaware of.  The late president was guilty of one thing, if any — opportunism: a trait, with provincialism, he shared with Jonathan, another Obasanjo-handpicked choice for Yar’Adua as vice president.

    Yar’Adua should have been more forthright with himself on his health.  As Katsina governor, he struggled with his health throughout his eight-year tenure.  Taking the Nigeria job simply proved a killer.

    But on his dying bed, it was the same Obasanjo that gave Yar’Adua a cruel shove.  If he got Yar’Adua a job, he had thundered, and Yar’Adua found that job too hard for him, the honourable thing was to resign!  That, to a man on his death bed!

    Meanwhile, Baba fled from Yar’Adua’s camp to champion Jonathan’s ascendancy — and no, not to counter the vile power tactics of the so-called Katsina cabal, that did everything to stonewall then Vice President Jonathan’s ascendance to power; but to falsely declaim political zoning, in Jonathan’s favour, when Jonathan decided to run for his own first full term.

    But now, after Jonathan had proved an unmitigated disaster, Obasanjo would wish no one remembered his vital role in his emergence.  He rather gratuitously told a lecture audience at Benin, Edo State, that Jonathan’s below-par performance would haunt the South-South for a long time to come.

    True it will.  But a more robust, if not outright honest, testimony should have mentioned Obasanjo’s role in the Jonathan debacle, instead of the virtual cruel kicking of the man from Otuoke — who was already down — and his South-South denizens.

    Yes, on Obasanjo’s part, that would have amounted to self-indictment.  But that instinct to protect self should have told Obasanjo to stay out of his gratuitous and sanctimonious preachment.

    Of course, perhaps troubled by the mess he has helped to make of Nigeria, the former president probably perpetually wrestles with his troubled conscience.

    Yes, he probably meant well — if indeed, an apologia is needed.  But the result — President Shehu Shagari in the Second Republic, Yar’Adua and Jonathan, in the present dispensation, Obasanjo’s successors all — have been nothing but fiasco.

    The old man probably hurts, and cannot bear anyone saying it — as it is.  So, he goes on the attack, pinning the rap on his successors; and hoping, against hope, that nobody would remember his role in the whole mess.  Some forlorn hope!

    Former President Obasanjo should be fair to himself on the Nigerian mess.  But that cannot be, with his perennial attempt to paint his successors pit-black, while putting on the toga of whiter-than- snow.

    Such foray into self-delusion cannot be supported by basic reason — or even common sense.