Category: Olakunle Abimbola

Tortoise: I’m going on a journey. Audience: When will you come back? Tortoise: When I’m disgraced. —Yoruba saying.
Those the gods will destroy, they first make mad. — An African saying.
Fools tread where angels dread. — An English saying

No, it is no festival of aphorisms.  But ongoing political rascality in the land, that if not checked could plunge Nigeria in fresh but needless crisis, requires some straight talk.

First, it is surprising that the symbolism of the election-must-hold-from-February 14 ensemble, at the February 5 Council of State meeting, must have been totally lost on President Goodluck Jonathan and his party.

According to a front page report in The Nation of February 6, former presidents/heads of state that opposed shifting the elections were Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar and Chief Ernest Shonekan.

Of the pack, Gen. Babangida and Chief Shonekan are especially significant.  Both were star actors in the catastrophic 12 June 1993 presidential election annulment crisis, which satanic script the current power rascals appear to be acting out, despite being blessed with the hindsight of how June 12 nearly finished Nigeria.  But more on that presently!

Nevertheless, in the overall context of Nigeria’s grand political mess, the trio of Gen. Gowon, President Shagari and Gen. Abubakar are no less important.

Though the quintessential officer and gentleman, Gen. Gowon’s prevarication over a pledged 1976 return to civil rule date drained his military government of all legitimacy, leading to his eventual overthrow in 1975.

President Shagari fell because, after a failed presidency like the current Jonathan’s, his National Party of Nigeria (NPN) — again as notorious as the current Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) — savagely rigged the polls, which led to the collapse of the 2nd Republic  — and the president’s ouster — in 1983.

Gen. Abubakar was the fall guy who was constrained, between 1998 and 1999, to lead a disgraced military back to the barracks, after dissipating its essence in toxic political power.

Gowon was benign.  Murtala Mohammad/Olusegun Obasanjo, on impulse, tried to fix the polity, but destroyed the civil service.  Muhammadu Buhari/Tunde Idiagbon were draconian, riled by the decadence of the 2nd Republic.  Babangida was devious and noxious; and feverishly laid the foundations of the rot that lasts till today.  Sani Abacha was well and truly savage, materially and spiritually, and was the very epitome of military rule as Stone Age tyranny and debauchery.

Well, Gen. Abubakar led the Army, tail between hind legs, back to the barracks; and birthed the current 4th Republic, though the sudden death of Chief Moshood Abiola, who won the 12 June 1993 presidential election, is an eternal blight on his tenure.

June 12, of course, brings back the pair of Babangida and Shonekan.

“A bull in a china shop” (incidentally the title of this piece) was the Obasanjo vicious putdown, when Gen. Babangida was trying every trick under the sun — not unlike President Jonathan and his crowd are doing now — to stay in power, though he pretended to organise an elaborate and circumlocutory transition programme.

Babangida knew he had to leave at the end of his transition programme — but he didn’t want to.  Jonathan knows he is a sorry failure as president and, from feelers, will lose the election — whether on February 14 or later.

As Babangida stonewalled then, blundering into the tragic annulment of June 12, Jonathan is stonewalling now, pushing for election postponement.  But by that gambit, what crisis will he plunge Nigeria into?

Still, the Shonekan leg of the narrative.  Chief Shonekan, an otherwise respected business voice, stumbled into the power maelstrom as head of IBB’s contrived Interim National Government (ING), after even the annulment could not guarantee IBB’s stay; thus playing out the tortoise who would not return from a trip until it was thoroughly disgraced.

Yet, Shonekan was doomed to similar fate.  For starters, he became a pariah in Nigeria’s South West — for playing Judas to a cheated fellow Egba man; but more importantly, to the Yoruba cherished culture of standing firm, no matter what, on fairness and justice.

Then, a Lagos High Court declared his ING illegal.  Finally, his judicial ouster rocketed the terrible Abacha into power.  By the courts, Shonekan ought not to be on the National Council of State; but an Abacha regime decree som ewhat revalidated his tenure.

So, if IBB and Shonekan were trenchant elections must hold as scheduled, it is because they had passed through the perilous path Jonathan and his gang are leading themselves.  It brings nothing but perdition and disaster.

“With report from NSA,” The Nation of February 6, quoted IBB as reportedly quipping to Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), President Jonathan’s National Security Adviser’s jeremiad, on parlous security in Adamawa, Yobe, Borno and Gombe states, “it is clear that only 14 out of the 774 local governments in the country (less than 5%) are under security threats.  You cannot,” he reportedly insisted, “stop  elections because of these areas.”

Yet, the NSA angle is another face of the postpone-the-election grand burlesque.  In London, the NSA’s dissonance was the slow distribution of permanent voter cards (PVCs), an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headache.  Less than two weeks later, the NSA has developed new worries — his own core area of security.  Six weeks hence, what would the excuse be?

It takes no especial acuity to see that someone, somewhere is trying to dodge elections — and that person might just be the president of the Federal Republic!  That is a new low in Nigeria’s chequered but troubled political history!

Doyin Okupe, a presidential spokesperson, was later to spill the beans — his principal could not guarantee security during elections, if they start on February 14!  If a president cannot guarantee security, what the hell is he still doing on his seat — just to grow gross on the people’s fat?

The Okupe angle also introduces another rich parallel to this running power show, vis-a-vis June 12.  Back in 1993, Okupe was part of the National Republican Convention (NRC) negative campaign to hurl down MKO Abiola, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate; since they lacked the panache to vault Alhaji Bashir Tofa, NRC candidate, to MKO’s dizzying heights.

The Jonathan campaign, with their puerile scandals where there are none; and petty blackmail and threats, and ridiculous scaremongering, are adopting the same dumb tactics to shoot down Gen. Buhari.  But if that tactic electorally buried  Tofa in 1993, it is not about to lift Jonathan in 2015.

But political rascality aside, a democratic president that dodges an election, because of mortal fear of a crushing loss; and security agents of state, that stack their cards to achieve scare-mongering to subvert elections, play an ultra-dangerous game that borders on treason.

Goodluck Jonathan is a co-citizen.  Only the law, with the instrumentality of democratic elections, thrust him above the rest of us, as president of the Federal Republic.

Now, if for any reason he subverts that law, he only knocks the ground from under his own feet — and risks a fatal crash.

It is playing the proverbial fool, treading where angels dread.

Like Shakespeare’s King Macbeth, charmed and ruined by the three witches, three apparitions continue to haunt Goodluck Jonathan, president of the Federal Republic.

But these apparitions belong to three different categories: tragic, comic and tragi-comic.

Tragic: the Chibok girls, whose capture, some nine months ago, continues to define the Jonathan Presidency: its incompetence in citizens’ basic security and safety — the most fundamental duty of any state.

Comic: the Transmogrification — sorry Transformation — Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) that, like Macbeth’s subversive witches, make of Jonathan inordinate and bizarre likenesses — the outrageous comparisons to Barrack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Lee Kuan Yew and Martin Luther King, trusting Nigerians were dimwits to swallow the nonsense.

Tragi-comic: the pair of Pa Edwin Clark and Asari Dokubo — the one old and wise, yet makes statements that continue to distance angry voters from the president; the other young and brash, that continues to yak and yak — nonsensical threats that impress no one but his deluded self.

This duo, that ironically hurt the Jonathan cause more than any other, epitomise the quality of presidential counselling, on the virtual eve of a crucial election.

Apparitions, therefore, virtually threw up President Jonathan — and apparitions appear set to consume him.  It would appear the rise and fall of a voodoo presidency!

The tragic Macbeth, hardy soldier flush with yet another victory, appeared quite content with his raise from Thane of Glamis to Thane of Cawdor; and quite appreciative of his ill-fated King, Duncan — until the three witches put, in his head, regicide, en route to himself becoming illicit king.

Jonathan too was quite content — and overly appreciative, it would appear — playing second fiddle to Dieprieye Alamieseigha, the then wave-cresting, self-named Governor-General of the Ijaw nation, though only officially Bayelsa governor — until President Olusegun Obasanjo entered the fray.

Jonathan committed no regicide.  Indeed, it was Alamieseigha, no thanks to stupendous sleaze, that committed power suicide.  Though Jonathan was, even at the nadir of the crisis, still loyal to his boss, Obasanjo would not rest until he planted, in Jonathan’s mind, the idea of higher responsibilities — governor, vice-president and eventually, president.

That, to be sure, was no crime.  But as the witches goaded Macbeth to usurp his king and later unravel, Obasanjo — for no altruistic reasons, by the way — goaded Jonathan to higher state responsibilities, that would later prove beyond his ken; and from which he would eventually unravel.

What is more?  The Obasanjo power game and Jonathan’s receptive opportunism, came with a cruel repudiation of the zoning agreement that vaulted Obasanjo himself to power.

That created a poisoned chalice.   A baleful North felt cheated and openly grumbled.  The result was mutual distrust and blame-trading that allowed Boko Haram, the crazed killers in the name of pseudo-Islam, to fester.  That thoroughly demystified the president as effete; his presidency as prostrate and the Nigerian state as simply pathetic.

But even as the North chaffed, President Jonathan, virtually first thing in 2012, launched the start of a series of campaigns that would eventually wipe out his goodwill — the January 2012 hike in the pump price of petroleum products, sparking the Occupy Nigeria citizen protests in Lagos, Abuja and other major cities nationwide.

Now, was this some spiritual comeuppance, or the accidental starting of a journey with the ominous left foot, that would snowball into never-ending bad luck?

This is because the Occupy Nigeria protests, and its handling, set the tone for the Jonathan Presidency — unsavoury tones on most counts.

For starters, impunity.  That President Jonathan literarily smashed the Lagos protests with military tanks established, early enough, the administration’s penchant for the military fist of mail, when it could not reason its way out of trouble.  It won the protest war, all right.  But it tragically lost the peace.

Then, the profile of the president as simplistic.  In rather childish reaction to the Occupy Nigeria protests in Lagos, the president thoroughly insulted Lagos and its denizens, claiming that the so-called subsidy only favoured Lagos fat cats and their rotten offspring, and never, for instance, the hardy souls of this own Otuoke village.

And when, somewhat it came out that the so-called subsidy removal could well be taking back, from the majority, what a few hustlers — voodoo fuel independent marketers had stolen from the state, possibly to help fund the president’s election — the administration donned its most toxic toga so far: the president as perceived but unfazed champion of corruption and allied sleaze.

When the president made that ill-fated comment about “ordinary” stealing not being anything near corruption, the notorious canonisation stuck — this government does not give a damn about probity and accountability!

Meanwhile, a meltdown was on.  Boko Haram was killing and bombing at will; and demystifying the Nigerian military.  The president’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) seethed with rebellion, culminating in a split.  In blind panic, the Jonathan Presidency was also turning key security agencies of state into partisan political tools — perhaps more than any other government in this country’s history.

But even with all of these, TAN — that stole illicit campaign time ahead of others, because the sitting government thinks nothing of bending the law to its own brazen advantage — came out with its infamous comparison that Jonathan was the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria!  That was well and truly comic!

And with more than ample evidence of acute presidential failure, the president on the stumps making ridiculous promises it clearly cannot keep, given its parlous performance record; and the grand collapse of a campaign structured on religious and ethnic divisiveness, Pa Clark and ex-militants still delude themselves with levying war, should their “son” lose?  That is well and truly tragi-comic!

But the real tragedy is the fate of the Chibok 276.  How can a government that could not protect these innocent school girls from Boko Haram, yet dilly-dallied until their rescue became almost a mission-impossible, in all good conscience, seek re-election?

Chibok is the painful metaphor of a state, under the agency of President Jonathan, that has failed in its basic and most important duty.  Pray, where has it found the guts to pitch the same people for re-election?

But even if the rest of Nigeria decides to “move on” as the president and his party clearly hope they would, the ghost of the kidnapped girls, the deep hurt of their parents and even the self-rebuke of the president’s own prickling conscience, continue to haunt — and will eventually smash — this re-election gambit.

It is well and truly tragic!

From an irate and insulted electorate, to the president and his party: from February 14 looms a crushing and comprehensive defeat, other things being equal!

Well, no tear for Goodluck Jonathan on his well earned fate.  But let those who will take over from him beware.  After the Jonathan meltdown, it is unlikely the Nigerian electorate would tolerate, from anybody, the pre- and Jonathan era humbug.

From the present agonies of Citizen Muhammadu Buhari, issuing from a sham certificate controversy, it is a far cry from the halcyon days of 1984!

The then Brigadier Buhari was a dashing though taciturn military officer, who just took over as head of state, after the collapse of the 2nd Republic (1979-1983).

“I will gag the press,” he roared to National Concord (now defunct) in January 1984, in perhaps his first major interview with a newspaper.

The grouse of the new Nigerian helmsman were media reports, traced to a Vera Ifudu scoop during the Second Republic — Ms Ifudu was an NTA reporter — that alleged US$2.8 billion NNPC money vanished when Buhari was federal commissioner (now minister) for Petroleum, under Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo.

Buhari defended his integrity, claiming the report was phantom.  The media, never one to give government and its officials the benefit of the doubt when the subject is sleaze, insisted on its scepticism, bordering on summary media conviction.  It was therefore perhaps a truly innocent but thoroughly bitter man that issued that threat.

In any event, Gen. Buhari soon enough walked his talk, with the promulgation of Decree 4 of 1984, which soon claimed the scalp of The Guardian duo of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, for publishing a report that was essentially factual.

A callow Buhari did what he had to do.  He is living with the consequences of his actions.

But how is an older and wiser Buhari reacting to the present storm, which appears even more blatantly unfair, given the vacuity of the certificate allegations?

Indeed, there is an eerie parallel between 1984 and now.

Back then, Buhari was accused of sleaze, which would appear fantastic indeed, given his acclaimed probity.

Shortly after he gained power, he took it out on the press; and today, it hangs as albatross on his neck.  However,  Tunde Thompson, one of the victims of Decree 4, has decried the use of his odyssey as partisan blackmail against the Buhari presidential candidacy — a candidacy that Mr. Thompson himself has practically endorsed.

Now, the same media, in the course of its routine reportage, and under the rubrics of the people’s constitutional right to know, is busy amplifying a certificate non-issue, on the cusp of Gen. Buhari becoming Nigeria’s next president, should he win the February 14 presidential election.

If indeed he wins — as about every indication points he would — he cannot possibly, Decree 4-wise, hit at his traducers on the certificate controversy, which the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) cynically exploited to con the voting public.  Constitutional rule is a far-cry from military impunity!

Besides, it is season of electioneering; and about any sense or nonsense is allowed in the passion of the campaign stump!

Twenty years ago, therefore, Citizen Buhari was a military officer who, on assuming martial powers, could practically do anything.

But now, if Gen. Buhari assumes constitutional powers, he cannot touch anyone, except the law says so — even in the face of the most blatant of provocations.

Therefore, Buhari’s present agonies — as cynical as they appear — are no more than constitutional strictures to purge him — as indeed every candidate — of any dross of misconception, over civil power.

Aberrant soldiers could shoot their way into power.  Since they hold nobody’s mandate, they could indulge in crass recklessness.  But attaining democratic power is much more sobering — except, of course, you are an Ayo Fayose!

This stark difference must, more than anyone, impress Gen. Buhari, given his 1984 derring-do  and his current electioneering experience.  But that kiln should forge him into a more tempered wielder of power.  Nigerian democracy — and governance — should be the better for it.

Still, the general would appear to have got off comparably lightly.  Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s presidential bid never got beyond testing the waters.  A wild roar of public hostility shot it down — and just as well, for the IBB regime was notorious on most fronts.

Goodluck Jonathan, that got his presidency on a virtual platter of gold, despite his ultra-minority status, must really think Nigerians stupid to have voted him.  That is why he had not offered leadership yet got his propagandists to proclaim him Nigeria’s best president ever!  His comeuppance appears nigh, as the election looms.

What has stood Gen. Buhari in good stead, despite his terrible decisions as military head of state, is his integrity, which has remained steady over the years, courtesy of the Buhari records, just released by the Nigerian Army.

1961: Buhari’s principal, Provincial Secondary School, Katsina, in the letter recommending him for the Army commission: “ … A fine boy of honest disposition … “

1973: His instructors at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, USA: “Buhari is a quiet, unassuming and honest individual …”

Both sources describe him as intellectually “average”.  While Wellington wrote Buhari was “of average intelligence”, his secondary school principal, an expatriate, wrote: “Took WASC in 1961; predict [and that prediction came to pass] a Grade 2 certificate for him.  This is a reasonable hope.”

So, while not being a dullard — he was Head Boy in his secondary school — his forte was character, not necessarily brilliance.  Yet, it is on the character plank that his partisan opponents try to rubbish him!

Many, for instance, make a sickly meat of the difference between “Mohammed” on his released WASC statement of result and “Muhammadu” his official first name, perhaps making the ever-glib  Femi Fani-Kayode, the Jonathan presidential campaign chief spokesperson, reach his rather infantile conclusion that the statement was “Oluwole” (alleged forgery) — Oluwole, being a notorious neighbourhood, off Tinubu Square in Lagos, where documented forgeries were big business.

Yet, in his own handwriting, in his application to the then Royal Nigerian Army (RNA) for military commission in 1961, the boy Buhari wrote his name as Muhammadu.  But his expatriate principal changed it to Mohammed, apparently seeing no fundamental difference between the two variants!

To play that up is, of course, the cynical clutching at straws that has typified the Jonathan camp’s demonise-Buhari-at-all-cost costly strategy, which has however badly backfired.

But this negative electioneering strategy echoes another eerie parallel: between Gaius Marcus Coriolanus, boy soldier in old Rome; and Muhammadu Buhari, old soldier in contemporary Nigeria.

Coriolanus wanted to be Consul, after vanquishing his city’s enemies at the battle field.  But the vengeful tribunes (constitutional defenders of the Roman rabble) would have none of it.  So, they launched a campaign of calumny that goaded Coriolanus to his doom, knowing full well Coriolanus was young, rash and short-fused.

The Jonathan campaign, on the Buhari certificate saga, are essaying similar tactics.  But unlike the Roman tribunes that unhorsed Coriolanus, Femi Fani-Kayode and co have only succeeded in burying their own principal!  How sweet!

Buhari agonistes may be well and truly galling, to the general that has built life-time integrity.  Still, it is not so bad for the polity.

For one, the certificate storm has restored Gen. Buhari’s honour and further consolidated his electoral bounce, barely two weeks to the election.  For another, when he becomes president, a tempered Gen. Buhari would realise 2015 is not 1984, just as constitutional rule is no errant military usurpation!

That cannot be bad for the polity!