The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Asiwaju and fiends

    Asiwaju and fiends

    Then 4th Republic history is written, a good part of it will focus on Asiwaju Bola Tinubu versus a concert of fiends, united in spite.

    If not brilliant, this ensemble has been persistent and deadly.

    A scant three years ago, Tinubu was a media angel, seemingly fated to eternal good press; despite these implacable foes.

    But some three years down the line — in the media at least — it appears some Pauline re-conversion: Paul, the immaculate apostle just slid back to Saul the horrible anti-Christ!

    Is this the same Tinubu about everyone hailed for his sound contributions to the June 12 struggle, which paved the way for the present 4th Republic?

    His pivotal tenure as Lagos governor, that laid the foundation for much of the fundamental re-jigging Lagos has experienced?

    His gubernatorial and post-gubernatorial activism for fiscal federalism and political restructuring; and the imperative for sound opposition in a democracy, which has eventually crystallized in the mergers that birthed the All Progressives Congress (APC)?

    To be sure, Tinubu has his fair share of lionisers, perhaps as passionate as the huge column in the demonising camp.  But both camps are bad for him.

    Lionisers destroy the hero because they always tell him what he wants to hear.  If the difference between hero and anti-hero is no thicker than a spider’s web, uncritical adulations and ululations often prompt a fatal slip across the divide.

    The demonising camp, on the other hand, are eventually as much danger to themselves, as they are to their target.  Not unlike a deranged visceral hater, they often end up falling upon their own swords of spite.  Before they do, however, they muddy the waters; and confound the polity.

    That is the danger now, vis-a-vis the Asiwaju public persona, and its implacable column of bashers.

    Still, the man is not faultless.  For a start, he would appear a tad too driven toward his goal.  So,  he is to Nigerian politics what Bill Gates is to global computing software.

    That plants resentment, if not outright hatred, in the  heart of his competitors.

    Then, having highly charged himself to attain his goals, he insists on his fair share of the results.  His opponents call this “over-bearing” and a penchant to dominate.  But the Asiwaju and his camp counter it’s equitability — the chef that sweats the most must savour the sweetest part of the gravy!

    Fair enough?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But it breeds no less spite from the enemy camp; and idolisers from the friendly camp.

    Both sides played out at the emergence of Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, as the APC vice-presidential pick.

    Olisa Metuh, PDP national spokesperson, weighed in with his usual janja-weed sentiments: Osinbajo was just any of the thousands of former state commissioners, aside being just another Tinubu crony!

    But that was sour grape.  Any rigorous commentator would know that aside from the Lagos judicial reforms: improved judges’ welfare and work atmosphere, digitalisation of court proceedings and records, arbitration to curb litigation, the Office of the Public Defender (OPD), all of which bore Prof. Osinbajo’s imprint, the law professor was also central to the Tinubu government’s judicial mauling of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperial presidency, which put fascism at bay.

    The same Metuh, on the Osinbajo pick, dismissed Major-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as “weak” for meekly surrendering his presidential ticket to the Tinubu establishment, the same way he ceded governance to his late deputy, Major-Gen. Tunde Idiagbon, during his brief military rule stint.

    That surface comparison may resonate as an emotional weapon — with the gullible.  But again, it was just bluff and bluster, covering blind panic.  With Prof. Osinbajo, the PDP emotive grand theorem of pitching Christians against Muslims, in their janja-weed strategy, just collapsed!  Cursed are those who approach a crucial election with nothing but emotive bomb!

    But what if Buhari conceded to Tinubu because, perhaps more than any individual, the Asiwaju worked hardest to realise the APC dream?

    The Tinubu camp has, of course, hailed the professor’s choice as a master-stroke.  From neutralising the PDP appeal to base religious passion, it is.

    But not so from name recognition for — let’s face it — Prof. Osinbajo is no heavyweight politician, though he is a legal titan.  Indeed, last week, Ripples pushed for Rivers Governor, Rotimi Amaechi (regional electoral stratagem), in the absence of Lagos Governor, Babatunde Fashola, SAN (political arithmetic).

    However, the professor would make a model vice-president: he would not compete for attention with the president; but add rare value in depth and competence.  Indeed, federalists would be especially excited, with him on the ticket.

    And the rich bonus: Osinbajo’s rich integrity, coupled with Buhari’s Spartan probity, is a dire reproach to the Jonathan-Sambo ticket: with the president still cooking his unfortunate theory of a dichotomy between stealing and corruption!

    But most importantly, the Osinbajo pick has underscored the futility of raw spite as effective political weapon, with the fond hope that hot hatred would melt cold facts.

    Tinubu is “rotten”, claim his traducers; yet only he could “warehouse” and present the polity with Osinbajo, a rare combination of sound learning and unimpeachable character; not to talk of the tiny needle that punctured the big PDP balloon of religious spite!

    This same Tinubu produced Fashola, no doubt the grand revelation of the 4th Republic, aside from inspiring, in the South West, a quad of gubernatorial performers, that give the region some hope, after the stagnation of the Obasanjo-inspired South West mainstream years.

    Yeah, Kayode Fayemi lost in the Ekiti electoral sweepstakes.  But even that would appear more of an Ekiti loss, with Ayo Fayose, post-haste, rushing his people back to the Stone Age.

    By the way, faced with the same succession situation, what did Obasanjo deliver?  Imagine: a Fashola after a Tinubu at the national level — would Nigeria today suffer this paralysis?

    In this age of seamless defection, Tinubu should perhaps have “ported” to PDP, after the 2003 South West electoral tsunami.  But he didn’t.  From the sole Alliance for Democracy (AD) surviving governor, he not only marshalled a South West progressive comeback, he was also pivotal to APC’s formation — APC that now strikes mortal fear in PDP, at the virtual eve of the 2015 election.

    Tough luck to those who think Tinubu’s life equates their own instant death: Afenifere grandees that, Rip Van Winkle-fashion, hawk Awo’s franchise, like Chaucer’s Pardoner hawking papal indulgences; their younger generation collaborators-in-spite; the Bode George camp with their me-too syndrome;  Tinubu’s gubernatorial comrades turned adversaries, and other equal opportunity visceral haters.

    They have their democratic right to want to unhorse the man.  But mere hatred just won’t do!

    Still, the Asiwaju himself must nuance his tactics, while not letting go of his strategies; and work very hard on his weak points.

    On that score, the Muiz Banires of this world are friendly fires to be treasured, not brainless rebels to be crushed, even if Mr. Banire himself could do with more tact.

     

    Merry Christmas to everyone.  But as you enjoy Christmas turkey washed down with choice wine, just pray for the Chibok girls.  Last year, they celebrated Christmas with their parents.  Now, they are in Boko Haram dungeon, and the Jonathan Presidency appears too incompetent to spring them.

  • Return of Buhari?

    Return of Buhari?

    Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native (1878) is a flawed heroine’s tale of dashed expectations.

    The heroine was Eustacia Vye, beautiful and enchanting, but priding herself above her native Egdon Heath; and all its young men could offer.  Clym Yeobright was the returned native, a former diamond merchant from Paris, France.

    In Clym, Eustacia saw one through whom she could live her dream: a diamond merchant come to lift her off the humdrum of Egdon Heath, to rich and sparkling life in Paris.  But Clym was bound to a humbler and less exciting stuff: a teacher in his native Egdon Heath.

    The marriage ended in a fiasco — and tragedy.  Eustacia drowned; and Clym, for the rest of his days, lived with the self-imposed guilt of killer of both his wife and mother — which he was not.

    Transpose Nigeria to Hardy’s Victorian England or vice-versa, and a comparison might just emerge.

    Eustacia is Nigeria: blessed but perpetually plagued by the waywardness of her nationals; but nevertheless hopeful a saviour would come some day.

    Clym is Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, a former military head of state (1984-1985) turned reformed democrat, who not a few Nigerians now believe could offer Nigeria fresh hope, after Goodluck Jonathan’s six years of cascading fall.

    Still, Buhari’s first coming was sweet and sour.  Sweet: not a few hail his personal integrity; and his regime’s resoluteness, particularly its War Against Indiscipline (WAI), with which, Draco-like, he tried to smash some order into the decadent Nigeria he inherited.

    Sour: Not a few too nail his regime as the fierce face of malignant military rule, from the benign years of Yakubu Gowon, with the Murtala-Obasanjo regime, which the Buhari regime claimed an offshoot of, serving as link.

    That military gorgon would hit its nadir under the late Sani Abacha; leaving a country in a cul-de-sac little chance but to return to constitutional rule.

    So, Buhari the democrat come to correct Buhari the autocrat, a doughty voyage from military perdition to democratic redemption, is a tantalising historical prospect.

    No less appetising is Buhari the progressive politician, impatient for change, the war-cry of his All Progressives Congress (APC); against Buhari the conservative military head of state, smug with the status quo, even if his regime was “corrective”.

    But many cynics would slant Buhari’s return as the return of the North to its “born-to-rule” default setting.  Now, this is a piece of emotive blackmail that would crowd the media, as electioneering progresses.

    In 2011, a mob-think, arising from the Umaru Yar’Adua Katsina Mafia’s attempt to block Jonathan from the presidency, led to mass anti-North sentiments (zoning be damned!), that dwelled on some mythical luck, glossed over Jonathan’s frailties, and vaulted him beyond his competence to the presidency.

    Four years down the line, it is exclusive good luck to Jonathan but extensive bad luck to his voters; who see the Nigeria they knew virtually melting away, and Jonathan, supposed commander-in-chief at sea, even more than the people he was elected to lead.

    It is the devastating harvest of a lie the voters told themselves — and believed!

    Sure, Jonathan supporters, in an appeal to pity, would claim some northern elements swore to make Jonathan’s Nigeria ungovernable; and have since walked their talk.  Maybe.  But the same sense of blatant injustice that elicited those threats drives the presidential drivel and harvest of excuses.

    But no matter the excuses, Nigeria is worse off in Jonathan’s unstable hands; and leaving the country any further in those unsteady hands only courts apocalyptic disaster.

    That explains the Buhari appeal — a rejected stone from a discredited military past; that nevertheless appears the emerging cornerstone to rebuild the country.

    But is this the real deal — or will turn yet another hope dashed?  That would depend on a lot of things, not the least Buhari’s vice-presidential pick.

    Lagos Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, should be an out-and-out pick.  That choice is obvious: if Jonathan has administered Nigeria the way Fashola has administered Lagos, it would be sheer suicide for anyone to run against him.

    Indeed, in Sam Omatseye-speak, Fashola has been the “governor of example” to who about every governor nationwide refers to improve their states — with the possible exception of Rivers’ Rotimi Amaechi, who also carved a niche for himself, shortly after Jonathan, by the Alamieyeseigha impeachment, got gifted the Bayelsa governorship.

    Jonathanian muck, however, which pits Christians against Muslims, North against South, and ethnic groups against one another, for illicit political gains, has all but aborted Mr. Fashola’s prospect.  That is unfortunate.  After the mess of the Jonathan years, Nigeria would need her best pair of hands.

    But aside from Mr. Fashola, there are other tantalising choices — vice presidents that could add value to Buhari’s grit and integrity: flexibility, modernity, federalist ethos and breath of vision, as they have demonstrated with their respective gubernatorial tenures.

    Edo Governor, Adams Oshiomhole: in a short time, Comrade Oshiomhole has demonstrated the Edo have a right to developmental governance, after the wasted Igbinedion years.  Mr. Oshiomhole, however, needs to be a bit more federalist in his thinking, to balance out Gen. Buhari’s centrist thinking.

    Former Ekiti Governor, Kayode Fayemi: though he lost re-election, he showed enough to point to where Ekiti should be in the comity of modern states the world over, even with scarce resources.  He also garnered additional plaudits as chair of the APC presidential convention, which has become a reference point.  However, electorally right now, Dr. Fayemi would appear toxic, because of the Ekiti loss.

    Rivers Governor, Rotimi Amaechi: in the non-availability of Mr. Fashola, Mr. Amaechi would appear APC’s best bet, if targeted goals — and not just political convenience — is the deciding factor.  In Amaechi, politics and policy comes to a harmonious whole; and his stellar achievements, from his Rivers tour of gubernatorial duty, speaks volume of his quality.

    Not a few feel Mr. Amaechi is abrasive and tough.  But without this twin-traits, he would have been crushed by the muscle-flexing but little-thinking Jonathan federal armada, after he dusted Jonathan’s man, Plateau Governor, Jonah Jang, in the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) chair election.

    In Amaechi is a combo of an acute policy thinker and a tough political fighter.  APC needs no less in the South-South, where the Jonathan camp would put up a very nasty campaign of ethnic spite and blackmail.

    If the Buhari dream must deliver on its prospect, Nigeria must enthrone a federalist ethos that frees the states — or better still, the six geo-political zones — from an insufferable and oppressive federal Leviathan that delivers nothing but collective poverty, from the humongous resources at its disposal.  But that would be in the long run.

    In the immediate, Buhari as president would need a sound chief operations officer (COO) who will boss policy, while the president is the grand chief executive officer (CEO).  And in the post-Jonathan collective rescue, let no one contemplate the political waste of the vice-president as spare tyre!

    The return of Buhari — if and when it comes — must not end a tale of dashed expectations.  Otherwise, things will turn really bad.

     

  • Beyond winning and losing

    Beyond winning and losing

    The Lagos All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial primaries have been won and lost, with Akin Ambode emerging victorious.  But why does it evoke eerie parallels from the Femi Agbalajobi-Dapo Sarumi titanic primary of 1991?

    Dr. Agbalajobi (of blessed memory) was the undisputed favourite of the then Alhaji Lateef Jakande Lagos political establishment.  Then, the 2nd Republic Action Governor of Lagos’ word was law.  But the Sarumi camp was bent on resisting any Baba so pe (“Baba has decreed”) alleged imposition.

    Mr. Sarumi, on the other hand, was the Lagos face of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s “new breed” — fresh, nimble and dynamic Olympians on Nigeria’s political firmament; come to run, out of town, the stale, awkward and rickety Titans, veteran politicians of the 1st and 2nd Republics, who little realised their epoch was over!

    For Agbalajobi  and Sarumi, the primary was a hideous stalemate, resolved only by their party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), disqualifying them both.  But the battle continued by proxy.

    Yomi Edu, the eventual SDP candidate, who faced Sir Michael Otedola (God bless his soul) of the National Republican Convention (NRC) was perceived, by the Jakande camp, of the Sarumi provenance.

    Both camps banded together to win the legislative election with a near-clean sweep.  But on the governorship, the Baba sope camp triggered mutual destruction as combat tactics.

    They allied with Otedola’s NRC  and gave their own candidate a terrible electoral hiding.  When the dust cleared, the political progressives, for the first time in Lagos history, had lost the governorship to the conservative NRC.

    Now, the eerie parallels between 1991 and now.

    In 1991, Lagos East Senatorial District was theatre of war.  It is also now.    After Asiwaju Bola Tinubu (Lagos West) 1999-2007 and Governor Babatunde Fashola (Lagos Central), 2007-2015, APC has zoned its governorship, from 2015, to Lagos East.

    Like in 1991, a pre-primary din alleged “imposition” of a “favoured” candidate, thus leading to horrific bad blood among the contestants.  Like in 1991, though the governorship primary delivered a candidate, there is probably no guarantee that candidate would be acceptable to all the feuding camps.

    That must explain why, before the primary that eventually produced Mr. Ambode, Asiwaju Tinubu, the party’s leader, had pleaded with everyone to accept the result.  It is also heart-warming that, after, Governor Babatunde Fashola has asked Lagosians to vote Ambode for continuity.

    But much more than a historical parallel, a direct link, between 1991 and now.

    The anti-Jakande crusading boys of yesteryear have become men.  Mr. Sarumi, no thanks to series of bad political decisions, may have vanished from the horizon.  But Asiwaju Tinubu has taken his place, thus replacing the Jakande political hegemony with their own.

    And, to be sure, they would appear to have done Lagos some hefty good.

    Whereas the Olusegun Obasanjo-Umaru Yar’Adua-Goodluck Jonathan Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) continuum at the centre appears to have bankrupted Nigeria, with the present fiscal panic over crashing prices of crude, the Tinubu-Fashola Alliance for Democracy-Action Congress-Action Congress of Nigeria-APC continuum in Lagos has led the state from a revenue profile of N600 million a month in 1999 to about N23 billion in 2014.

    On the balance, Lagos appears clearly to have moved from point A to B; signalling progress in enhanced security, infrastructure renewal, a greener environment and a far cleaner Lagos — Lagos, hitherto among the dirtiest on the globe.  There is always, of course, a lot more to do.

    Conversely, on the balance, the centre would appear to have regressed from B to A, with a harvest of decayed infrastructure nationwide, though President Jonathan, in his 2015 declaration speech, claimed stats that suggested he was fixing that.

    Still, there is legitimate feeling that, had post-1999 Nigeria (with its quantum of funds) been blessed with the leadership of post-1999 Lagos, the country would have been better.

    But success does have its hassles!  After the halcyon days of collective success, it appears now the era of “what is in it for me”!  That would explain the fierce contest — all the contestants Tinubu’s close protégés — to succeed Governor Fashola, who has boasted, from all objective accounts, superlative governance.

    Now, back to a peep at 1991!  At the start of the Ambode phenomenon, a band of demonstrators stormed the Ikeja seat of the Lagos government: first, at the precincts of the Lagos House of Assembly and later, at the adjoining Lagos House.  The message: “No more Oga sope!”

    If “Oga sope” echoes the Jakande era “Baba sope”, it is because the wished-for Utopian, all-equal Animal Farm of the anti-Jakande crusaders of yesteryear has morphed into something more earthly, of some animals more equal than others, to parody George Orwell.

    Let’s not beat about the bush — to use Soyinka-speak in his Jonathan Nebuchadnezzar putdown — though the battle has been lost and won, too many are aggrieved.  If things were not to degenerate to the Agbalajobi-Sarumi tragedy of 1991, then urgent, conscious and deliberate efforts must be made to placate the aggrieved.

    But first, both winners and losers must agree: theirs is a milieu that needs urgent reformation.  Starkly put, reform or die!

    The APC and its forebears may have got governance — brilliant governance at that — right.  But not their internal politics, which is always in a shambles, with today’s beneficiaries — and tomorrow’s victims — shouting “fairness!”, only later to scream “imposition!” when the table gets turned.

    The party must work some consensus on its internal business, without threatening to bring down the roof each time.  Since “consensus” is simply “imposition” to not a few, APC should deepen its primary elections, and make them a fresh start at deepening its own internal democracy.

    If the combatants won’t embrace entente for charity, they must, out of sheer enlightened self-interest.  They must not destroy  the house they built.

    In 1991, a dominant segment of the SDP got Edu as candidate, in lieu of Sarumi.  But the Jakande faction, dominant in the electoral streets, deployed the ultimate hammer — the classic Yoruba “Kaka k’eku maje sese, a fi sawa danu” [virtually in English: my private loss must turn a collective disaster].

    Lagos was the worse for it: Sir Michael was an excellent elder and citizen.  But as governor, he was far from excellent; and his electoral war cry, “That Lagos may excel” turned a hollow joke, as Lagos nearly stagnated.

    In 1991, the progressives were a shoo-in; even in 1999.  But in 2015, not so: no thanks to haemorrhaging over the years, despite proving their mettle.

    Again, no thanks to President Jonathan’s playing the end against the middle: Christians against Muslims, Igbo against Yoruba, subverting state coercion for partisan gains; and vicious Tinubu demonization by embittered Yoruba enemies, 2015 will be a far tougher proposition.

    That is why Tinubu himself should reach out and placate those who lost out on December 4.  Anything short may just replicate the Agbalajobi-Sarumi tragedy.

    With how PDP has beggared the nation at the centre — and that party stands to benefit most from any ensuing crisis — Lagos would be the worse for it.

     

  • Osundare: a breath of fresh air

    Osundare: a breath of fresh air

    In the present morass, Prof. Niyi Osundare winning the 2014 Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) is a breath of fresh air.

    Still, a breath of fresh air evokes an ironic déjà vu.

    A few months before the 2011 presidential election, there was a contrived air of great expectations.

    Mobile adverts, particularly on the panel of Danfo commercial minibuses, spoke of the imminence of “A breath of fresh air”, a pan-Nigeria new deal that would, perhaps, eclipse the globally acclaimed New Deal of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

    FDR’s New Deal (mainly, 1933-1936) was well and truly phenomenal, with its 3Rs — Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression — lifting America from the Great Depression.  The Depression started in August 1929, hit the trough with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, and triggered a global economic meltdown.

    Nigeria’s answer to FDR was Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

    The Nigerian equivalent of the American dream was a once shoeless southern creek boy, from the poorest of the dirt-poor,  from the minority of minorities — and, to boot, a charming name of Goodluck, and the record: first Nigerian president to boast a PhD! — rising to the acme of Nigerian political power, despite the country’s bully and domineering majorities.

    And GEJ’s answer to FDR’s New Deal was a Transformation Agenda, which mesmerising core was to pump the breath of fresh air, after which Lugard’s musty contraption would never be the same again!  Moral?  GEJ’s age of merit and quality beckons!

    Four years later and a few months to another presidential election, however, that promise has vanished, leaving the air toxic, rancid and pungent — almost in all spheres of national life.  An anticipated era of Plato’s philosophical kings has begotten the exact opposite: an unrepentant rule of the executive rabble.

    Whereas pre-Jonathan Nigeria was a venal redoubt where, to parody the England of the poet Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Philistines (the garish nouveau riches) routinely trumped the Greeks (the deep and cultured), Jonathan’s Nigeria has slid into sheer political barbarism, where about nothing is sacred.

    Transformation has turned deformation.  Hope turned mirage.  Merit turned unbridled mediocrity.  Freshness turned stale.  Public institutions, proud slaves of private whims: with the Police sacking Parliament; and an unfazed IGP Suleiman Abba, in an eager and merry dance to Hades.  A once proud and secure state has turned captive, pliant and prostrate, to blood-thirsty anarchists.

    Moral?  It is Jonathan’s age of unbridled paralysis, stupid!

    But from this sooty pot of national paralysis has emerged the immaculately white pap of welcome sanity:  Niyi Osundare, sole NNOM winner for 2014.

    So, a near-irredeemably damaged state can still throw up uncompromising quality?  Perhaps some redemption is afoot!

    But the ultra-sweet bonus: Osundare triumphs even as Hurricane Jona is busy blowing Nigeria to the cliff; and Typhoon Fayosh is busy smashing everything of common sense in Osundare’s native Ekiti, where Governor Ayo Fayose sits as unbridled cave-master, with zero tolerance for anything lawful, anything noble, and anything decent: in stark contrast, to echo Osundare himself, to the “arrested renaissance” of the Kayode Fayemi years, in a race-against-time into the Stone Age.

    Still, Prof. Osundare is no short burst to success.  On the contrary, his is the Old School long and arduous trek to excellence.

    Way back at the University of Ibadan in the early to mid-1980s, he mentored a crop of students in his highly interactive creative writing class: Kongi — no, not the inimitable WS but Sesan Ajayi of blessed memory, who nevertheless patterned his poetry after WS’s; Remi Raji, now a professor of English at UI, Babatunde Ajayi, Jr, Afam Akeh, the political science major who had his soul yoked to euphonic poetry, Nduka Otiono and, of course, yours truly, to mention a few.

    As he always warned that the Nigerian Ivory Tower was turning grey, he honed his students’ poetry skills as he fired their humanity; beseeching them to protect their inherent nobility, and avoid leaving school to “join them”, no matter the odds.

    But of course, the laureate’s staying power was that, in whatever he did, he walked his talk.

    To start with, he was — and still is — a consummate academic that always told you creativity was “99 per cent perspiration and one per cent inspiration”.

    He worked hard at his trade, and from Song of the Marketplace, to The Eye of the Earth, to Moonsongs, to Song of the Season, to Waiting Laughters, to Midlife, to The Word is an Egg, to Early Birds, to Not My Business, to Tender Moments: Love Poems, among others, the Ikere-Ekiti “rural-born and peasant-bred” toughly nurtured his genius, to produce a happy concert of inspiration and perspiration!

    Not for him, cloistered but conspiratorial silence when things go awry.

    At Ekiti’s fatal embrace of Fayose’s toxic “stomach infrastructure”, he composed a dirge for his native land: pained lamentation of a devastated troubadour, for his doomed lady.  “The People Voted their Stomach — Blues for an Arrested Renaissance” went viral: for its arresting content and its enchanting form.

    Less than three months later, the Ekiti blues is real!

    When Fayose’s barbarians sacked the courts, battered judges and ripped court records, the poet’s rebuke came in biting riposte: “They slap Court Judges ‘In the Land of Honour’ “, the pristine voice of noble Ekiti scolded the present barbarity that would pass; and rued how “Impunity mates Immunity/And the union begat Imuniti” (devastating pun for “immunity” and literally, Yoruba for beyond arrest; or executive lawlessness).

    Less than three months later, Fayose’s pact with the past — while others make a dash for the future — is all but cemented!

    Unlike the infamous hee-haw of some Ekiti elders, over the governor’s galloping illegalities: the latest being the Ekiti Assembly 7 sacking 19 (a triumphant improvement on Jonathan’s Nigeria Governors Forum novelty of 16 greater than 19), the man has not died in the poet (to paraphrase our own WS).  In the face of glaring lawlessness, he has refused to be silent.

    That this poisoned atmosphere, in Nigeria as a whole and in his native Ekiti, still produced Prof. Osundare as sole NNOM laureate for 2014 is well and truly remarkable.  It is simply the inevitability of excellence — particularly that hue that combines brilliance with conscience — for any nation desirous of attaining its manifest destiny.

    So, when on December 4 the President meets the Poet to deliver the award, it would be a meeting between mere tinsel and solid gold.

    Perhaps Nigerians, on the virtual eve of another election, will gravely ponder: why do we settle for tinsel (or even worse) when we have and can get solid gold?

    Osundare’s win is tribute to the sane segment of troubled contemporary Nigeria.  These times would pass, if the deep don’t surrender their sanity to the galloping barbarians.

  • His Excellency, the Brigand

    His Excellency, the Brigand

    The irony was clearly lost: it was November 20, the birthday of President Goodluck Jonathan — and so much executive banditry from his side!

    Was that happenstance? Or, as in the technique of creative prose, the true character of the Jonathan presidency, under pressure, unravelling?

    “His Excellency, the Brigand”, was conceived as response to the antics of that tragic figure, Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti; and, in the ensuing pattern of the Jonathan presidency planting the dregs in Yorubaland, a fitting presidential viceroy.

    Mr. Fayose’s adult delinquency once ruined him. With his zestful self-destruct moves, that nemesis may yet unhorse him, perhaps dooming him to an even briefer term.

    But the presidential rascality from Abuja, with the Police invading the National Assembly and tear-gassing legislators, all in futile bid to block Speaker Aminu Tambuwal from gaining access, just shows Fayose’s executive brigandage is no stand-alone accident. Suleiman Abba’s Police is, after all, fully involved in the high constitutional crimes, at both Abuja and Ado!

    Indeed, a fish rots from nowhere but the head!

    But make no mistake: the parliamentary desecration that the Jonathan Presidency put up on November 20 and the gubernatorial banditry that Fayose inspired in the Ekiti legislature from November 17, did not just start. They had their roots in the “simple minority” pseudo-impeachments of the Olusegun Obasanjo years.

    If President Obasanjo had been impeached on the basis of this high crime against the Constitution, the presidential rascality of the Obasanjo years would not today come back as tragic farce, threatening a Jonathan fascism.

    In Jonathan vis-a-vis the Obasanjo years however, the child, as the poet famously quipped, has become the father of the man!

    Whereas Obasanjo would limit his power abuse to muscling and blackmailing state legislatures for suspect anti-corruption crusades, Jonathan, in reckless disregard of the separation of power doctrine, is committing the ultimate infamy of invading the National Assembly; and tear-gassing the same legislatures he had requested to approve for him renewed emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

    The trick was clear, though Jonathan and henchmen would hide behind a finger: shut out Speaker Tambuwal because of the defection saga, let in Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha; and on the basis of that exclusion, proceed to unleash a criminal “impeachment” ala Obasanjo’s notorious “simple minority”! That clearly explains why the Police eased in Ihedioha, and attempted to keep out Tambuwal.

    The parliamentary coup failed because the Tambuwal side resisted the security bullies of IGP Abba, who appears un-bashful at making the Police the partisan rod of the president, rather than the dutiful security arm of the Nigerian state.

    On Tambuwal, IGP Abba has gone ga-ga: summarily withdrawing his security details on a mischievous interpretation of the law, unleashing his Police to rain teargas on the Speaker and his fellow legislators, and now, a threatened arrest! This constitutional abomination must not go unpunished.

    For once, Doyin Okupe, unfazed presidential bulldog, somewhat lost his bark. In one breath, he disowned Mr. Abba, claiming the policeman was only doing his job, without any presidential prompting. In another, he denied Mr. Abba invaded the National Assembly. In this yet another Okupe-istic cant, only Okupe believes Okupe!

    But just as well the Reps are threatening presidential impeachment. For this democracy to cease being a joke, there must be zero tolerance for the executive arm as unrepentant conclave of constitutional criminals. If on this basis alone Jonathan is scapegoat to atone for past rascals and deter future culprits, so be it!

    As for Mr. Fayose, his gubernatorial banditry is not without push from Abuja. Since that virtual election eve incident, when the local Mopol commander “dethroned” Governor Kayode Fayemi, claiming that with Vice President Namadi Sambo in town he recognised no governor, Ekiti’s path to constitutional banditry was fully paved.

    From that spot, Fayose had swaggered from one outrage to another — and, like the tortoise that swore never to return home until he was fully disgraced, Fayose will not cease until he exits in a dust of odium.

    What abomination has Fayose not committed, less than two months in office, despite playing pseudo-David in ridiculous religiosity, by throwing himself flat on the floor at a Deeper Life Church service in Ado Ekiti?

    To stop a pre-election eligibility case, Fayose, with thugs in tow and Abba’s Police looking elsewhere, marched to sack the courts and mug judges. As at the last count, the judge who assumed jurisdiction on the case has been harassed off it. Before Fayose and thugs, the courts must bow and tremble!

    Then, to procure fake parliamentary endorsement for rogue commissioners, the all-conquering Fayose thugs and all-colluding Abba Police again came in handy — with seven rogue legislators sacking 19! Again, before Fayose’s concert of thugs and colluding Police, the Ekiti parliament must dive for cover!

    The piquant irony: one of the “approved” commissioners is “Justice and Attorney-General”! Ah, the English, Geoffery Chaucer, would scream from his grave: if gold rusts, what would iron do?! What lawyer worth his training would take himself through such farce?

    But again, a self-destruct Fayose special, in reckless constitutional criminality: procurement of ghost legislators!

    If the Ekiti legislature numbers 26, split 19 (APC) and seven (PDP), where did the three ghost legislators emerge, to form a phantom quorum: not only to “elect” a phantom temporary Speaker, but also to “sack” the lawful Speaker?

    These are the open political graves the excitable Fayose merrily digs for himself. In no time, he would be buried in them, and vanish without trace!

    Ironically, the first act Fayose’s illicit parliament did was to pare itself naked. It abrogated the Ile Uyi, Ile Eye (Land of Honour) branding of the Kayode Fayemi ancien regime — and just as well: for honour and (un)parliamentary knavery are parallel lines that never meet — and declared itself the Fountain of Knowledge.

    But if there is any knowledge in Ekiti’s emerging jungle, it must be absolutely without character!

    Very early in his first term, Lagos Governor, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, spoke of the infrastructure of the mind. Eight years later, the result is there for everyone to see.

    Ekiti Governor, Ayodele Fayose, signalled his second coming, with stomach infrastructure. Four years down the line, Ekiti-Kete will feel the full impact.

    In Abuja and Ado, the wages of bad electoral choices loom large.

    After the fraud of voting the southern shoeless boy in 2011, not a few spewed the nonsense of “voting for Goodluck but not PDP”. Well, the truly tragic result is a vindictive president as wilful undertaker.

    At the June gubernatorial polls, Ekiti-Kete hated former Governor Fayemi so much that they would appear to have hated themselves even more! Hence, the wilful self-infliction of the tragic Fayose. The result is expressway to the Stone Age, despite Ekiti’s avowed brain power.

    How ever good or bad a government turns out is a function of democratic choice and consequences. But never must the executive chamber become the bastion of constitutional bandits who, with their Samson’s complex, don’t give a damn, even if they crash the polity.

    That is the manifest danger from Abuja and Ado-Ekiti. It must be resisted, with all legal resolve, by every Nigerian patriot.

  • Ogun: Anthony Vs Augustus

    Ogun: Anthony Vs Augustus

    In the battle for the soul of post-Julius Caesar Rome, Mark Anthony had a grand lamentation.

    In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Anthony said though Augustus Caesar was a mere subaltern when himself, Marcus Lepidus and Augustus (later the Second Triumvirate) crushed the Brutus-led rebellion that killed Julius Caesar, he was already a full general.  Yet, Augustus always trumped him in battle.

    That routine trumping Anthony, firmly under the skirts of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, so much rued, forced him to suicide, after the veteran’s defeat at the 31 BC Battle of Actium.

    This is no foray into Roman history or Shakespearean drama.  It is only some literary parallel to the battle for the soul of Ogun State, with the ruling progressives in a fight-to-finish.

    In this progressives’ retrogressive war, reason has vanished.  Only ego remains.     

    “Olumo Wars” (Republican Ripples, October 21), had hoped the two feuding camps would find some mutual accommodation.  But that has proved forlorn, with a faction, the near-wholesale Ogun All Progressives’ Congress (APC) National Assembly caucus, with Deputy Governor, Segun Adesegun, defecting into the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

    Enter then, Anthony: Aremo Olusegun Osoba, former Ogun governor and media aristocrat.  Latterly, the Aremo has joined the Afenifere default setting, by tracing his progressive nativity to the feet of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to underscore his ideological longevity.

    That could translate, in Shakespeare-speak, into an Anthony reminding the Augustus of his time, that he was a progressive qua progressive, even when Augustus was still in political diapers, of no defined ideological provenance!

    More dangerously, for the progressive cause: the Aremo’s Awo nativity could well signal a proxy war, as the Afenifere dandies are wont to do, against forces beyond the local “enemy”, another latter-day ideological arrival — at least in the thinking of the huffy Afenifere aristocracy — come to sudden but great political fortune, and becoming bad influences on the local rascal, also come to sudden political office!

    But also enter, Augustus, Ogun Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun (SIA).  He could well have been in political diapers when the Aremo had become a general in the Awo Progressive Army.  He could also boast no ideological fidelity over a period of time.

    He could even prove guilty as alleged: that he ought to have shown Pa Osoba more reverence, in his alleged iconoclastic war to gun down the old Osoba progressive order; and mould the terrain in his own image, simply because he is governor, and does not shy away from fierce slugfests.

    Still, SIA himself could claim, as governor, to have near-excellently executed his brief, earned his pip beyond empty progressive sloganeering and grandstanding, and therefore earned the people’s confidence.

    Even more irreverent, he could claim, with a measure of fairness, that when the battle was fierce, and Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD) was bloodying everybody, and the heat forced the Aremo to relocate elsewhere on political sabbatical, he and only he, was the triumphant general in the streets, facing — and slaying — the dragon of Governor-Ferocious OGD!

    Still, the Anthony-Augustus parallel does not in any way suggest SIA would prevail over Osoba, as Augustus did over the more seasoned Anthony.  Pray, which child, even with his wardrobe choking with fancy clothes, out-rags his parents?

    Nor does it suggest the reverse: Osoba trumping Amosun.

    It starkly suggests an ego war is afoot, in which a hitherto common camp — in government and with achievements to flaunt — is about falling upon itself like ones cursed.  Mutually assured destruction (MAD) may just well be assured!

    On the Ogun political plains, soon to turn ideological killing fields, hubris crows and brags, in the worst tradition of what the Yoruba call eedi!  It is the ultimate grave of the proud, the haughty, the cocky!

    The ultimate victims?  The people — except, of course, they secure their own interests, even as the politicians batter themselves in a needless civil war.

    So, the Ogun people must ask themselves: have they fared better than hitherto under SIA; and what are their prospects, four more years under that government?

    If the answer is yes, they had better start directly rallying themselves;  to protect their interests.  If however the reverse is the case, they had better start planning to do the needful too.

    Of course, that is better said than done.  In a democracy, political parties are a vital interface to mobilise the people for purposeful political action.  But what if these political parties are themselves a bastion of confusion; and the people, themselves, in their high season of doubt and ennui?

    On one hand, the SIA APC government, that has given a good account of itself, appears near-fatally distracted.  On the other hand, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) plots — and why not? — to take partisan advantage.  But its own record, as the federal ruling party, is absolutely appalling.

    It was as WB Yeats said in his famous poem, “The Second Coming”:  The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

    The second coming!  Is the poem that gifted Chinua Achebe the immortal title of his foremost classic, Things Fall Apart, about plaguing SIA’s second coming: with things falling apart, the centre not holding, the falcon not hearing the falconer, and mere anarchy being loosed upon the Ogun partisan world?

    That would appear the case, if Osoba and SIA don’t step back from their mutually self-destruct paths!  And talking about self-destruction, all the noise about the Osoba faction emptying into SDP is a journey to nowhere — or better still, a journey to the past.

    SDP, like Olusegun Mimiko’s Labour Party (LP), is a PDP Trojan horse.  Unlike the ill-fated Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA) of 2007, which the Afenifere grandees floated but was electorally crushed, SDP would appear more potent because of its high chances of treachery with the opposition, to checkmate a bitter comrade turned antagonist; but also, given the SIA government’s developmental strides, short-change the people.

    Those who got their progressivism from the feet of Awo must be familiar with this tragic trend: Awo-Akintola (1962/63); collapse of the Second Republic (1983); Unhorsing of the Alliance of Democracy progressives (2003) — whenever the Yoruba homeland shows signs of bursting forth, despite the paralysis of pseudo-federal Nigeria, score-settling and ancestral feuding Yoruba themselves would join reactionaries from elsewhere to scuttle the golden dream.

    For the ideological-callow but politically gung-ho SIA camp, some home truth: you can’t hope to consolidate your development programmes and policy, if your politics is not right!

    Something is certainly not right with SIA politics: a sitting and high performing government deserted by almost all of its National Assembly members; and a good chunk of the Ogun legislature members.

    Some dire news, for both sides: If Osoba loses this war, he faces political death.  If SIA loses, he kisses his second term goodbye.  By sheer ego, it is lose-lose.  But reason may yet turn it win-win.

    As in Ekiti, sad history is about repeating itself in Ogun — unless, of course, both the seasoned and callow get off their ego horse; and fast, wear their thinking caps!

  • Jonathan and the ghost of Chibok

    Jonathan and the ghost of Chibok

    Nigerians first… Nigerians always!!! President Jonathan declares, theadvert swooned in false gaiety, as if there was some big carnival in town.  Instead, there is a big funeral.

    Which Nigerians is the Jonathan presidential declaration advert talking about?

    Those that Boko Haram daily slaughter in the North East?

    Those that have become internally displaced persons (IDPs) in their own country?

    Residents of Mubi (or is it Madinatul Islam?) and Gwoza (or is it Darul Hikma?), that Boko Haram has captured, from under the nose of the president and his mighty host?

    The distraught parents of the Chibok school girls?

    Or, nationwide, civil servants who don’t know when their next salary would come, because the Jonathan administration cannot trustfully manage the Federation Account?

    If President Jonathan is true to himself, even he would be unexcited at his so-called declaration today, to again run for the Nigerian presidency.  But if he is truly excited, he would have believed the lie told him by his flatterers.  If he did, that would be unflattering to his sense of judgement — and his conscience.

    Indeed, Aniete Okon, a former senator of the Federal Republic and the Jonathan declaration’s publicity sub-committee chair, betrayed the Chibok ghost by resorting to raw aggression to salve his conscience.  “Are you saying that until we find the girls, we should not renew our faith in the country”? The Nation of November 10 quoted him as saying.

    Some question!  But why is Mr. Okon so agitated — because of the manifest idiocy of the Jonathan declaration, in the face of looming disintegration?

    Is Mr. Okon seeing, in the mirror, the hateful image of a 21st century Nero, fiddling and playing politics, even as the country Jonathan inherited in 2011  is losing territory to Boko Haram anarchists?

    Jonathan and associates can delude themselves all they want.  Theirs is government of manipulation, for manipulation, by manipulation.

    That is manifest in yet another Declaration Eve wrap-around advert in some newspapers, which the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) ironically entitled: “Be a witness to history … as HE President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR declares, in response to Nigerians’ demand …

    “As an outstanding performer,” the advert claimed, “he was under-reported.  We came, highlighting his verifiable achievements that have transformed every sector of Nigeria.  The story has now changed, with over 17.8 million Nigerians endorsing him for continuity.  Thank you Mr. President,” the self-serving ad enthused, “for yielding to the voice and demand of Nigerians!”

    Audacious?  Not yet!  See TAN’s stats: 1.6 million signatures from the North East want Jonathan to continue.  This 1.6 million must nurse some death wish — to wish some incompetent and soulless president should prolong their agony!

    Perhaps they also include the Chibok parents, who hail the president for not only having no clue as to recovering their children but also absolutely lacking in compassion on sharing their grief — a grief a president worth his seal of office would have averted.

    Corresponding figures from the North, according to the TAN advert, are: North West, 3.4 million and North Central, 1.85 million.  From the South, the zestful Jonathan Signature Fans Club, scribble: South East: 2.3 million; South West: 2.6 million and South South: 6.05 million.

    So, with all the noise and tempest from the South East on Jonathan 2015, that zone could garner only 2.3 million signatures; and the North Central, with the Jonathan camp’s serious goading of that zone’s Christians against Muslims, only 1.85 million signatures?

    Indeed, every ploy harbours the seeds of its own destruction!

    But forget all the media hype and advert foxtrots: the Jonathan strategy is simple — make a huge racket of sweet nothings, and all the ruts would vanish!  It is the old propaganda strategy: lies repeated often soon assume the garb of truth.

    Still, at every juncture, Jonathan comes a sad cropper — though his TAN racketeers egg him on — and the setback has its spiritual fount in the April 14 kidnap of the Chibok school girls.

    Before April 14,  not a few would grant Goodluck Jonathan the benefit of the doubt.  But after, he lost everything.  On Chibok, his government has shown no initiative, no sound judgement, no balls, no compassion, no remorse, no nothing — just condemnable petulance, arrogance and emptiness.

    That Jonathan was tardy after the kidnap, thus surrendering lead time needed to save the girls, was monumental bad judgement.

    That First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, tried to put the Chibok victims on television trial, showed presidential callousness without redemption.  Ironically — but justifiably enough — the First Lady bloodied herself with her “Dia ris God o” tragicomedy.

    Even more fittingly, that initial tardiness and failure to save the girls always comes back to haunt Jonathan, and his presidential re-run misadventure.

    At its last appearance, the Chibok ghost hit Jonathan where it pained most.  His spin doctors had, with fan fair, announced a ceasefire with Boko Haram; and coming with that package was a tantalising release of the Chibok girls, after which — at least the propagandists thought — their chief would gallop to victory, both at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sole nomination (which, by the way the Jonathan camp has made a hash of), and at the election proper itself.

    But yet again, Jonathan ate crow, his presidency proving itself the dumbest and daftest Nigeria ever had (and may ever have), the way the so-called ceasefire shamefully collapsed!  Of course, all that desperation was to make inviolate today’s so-called declaration.

    Talk of a president so avid at pressing his constitutional right to run but is so remiss in doing his constitutional duty, to the satisfaction of his compatriots; save the multitude of hustlers urging him on, when it is crystal clear, to any right-thinking person, that the job is beyond his ken — intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

    Despite all the media grandstanding, all the boisterousness, and all the braggadocio at Eagle Square today, it is clear that Jonathan and friends are stealing to the declaration, like some thief during broad daylight!  All the bluff and bluster is to cover the manifest irrationality of the Jonathan declaration.

    Besides, is it not grand irony that this same Eagle Square, in which the president is not bold enough to host National Day celebrations, at least in the last two years, is now where he exhibits the Dutch courage to declare his so-called bid for second term?

    Like Neighbour-to-Neighbour (N2N) before it, TAN is another equal opportunity racket and gravy train to sell Nigerians a pig in a poke.  While  N2N drooled about “a breath of fresh air” (which all too soon turned rancid) and a shoeless boy bidding for president, TAN is hallucinating about non-existent achievements.

    But at the other end of the country, Boko Haram is busy showing off its “caliphate”, axed off Nigeria’s territorial space, courtesy of a video made available to AFP.  That is another concrete achievement of Jonathan and friends!

    For Jonathan, there is no escaping the ghost of Chibok — and, it appears, the worst is yet to come.

  • Tambuwal and the integrity question

    Ripples‘ candid view: Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives, should have resigned his speakership.

    From the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) camp, now busy shopping for sympathy, and howling “betrayal”, that view would be “balanced and objective”; or even “patriotic”.

    From the All Progressives Congress (APC), celebrating a big political catch, Ripples would be guilty of “empty idealism” and perhaps culpable ignorance of the realpolitik.

    But both views would amount to cant.  Principles are constant.  But cant is the chameleon that changes with the season, even if it has to risk high unreason, bordering on patent absurdity.

    By convention, the party with the majority provides the Speaker — democracy is, after all, majority rule.  So, Alhaji Tambuwal ought to have stepped down because it is decent, because it is honourable, because it is fair.

    But which of the opposing sides plays by decency, plays by honour, plays by fairness?  And if overwhelming bad faith is the grundnorm, why would a partisan play by good faith — to commit partisan suicide?

    To the emotive and non-introspective, therefore, the Tambuwal affair is a PDP vs. APC tango.  In a way, it is — to the extent that the one got a net-loss and the other, a net-gain.  But dig deeper, and what you see is the unconscionable face of Nigerian politics, and its rotten, smelly core!  That ought to impress the perceptive, much more than partisan gains or losses.

    Take the PDP that now screams blue murder.  What moral right has it to do so: because it boasts better morality when similar situations are to its own rogue advantage?

    Mulikat Adeolu-Akande, the House Leader, was quoted as saying that the with Ondo Governor, Olusegun Mimiko’s defection to PDP, all eight Labour Party (LP) members of the House of Representatives “automatically” (and Ripples adds, seamlessly) become PDP members — just like that?  And there was even no split in LP!

    Now, if the House Leader is so sloppy in her sense of proprietary, why should others be more scrupulous — because the majority is now the victim?  Or because PDP can ripple its majority muscles to threaten others, or corral illicit orders from the Police high command to impose its will?

    That, of course, brings the debate to the purported withdrawal of security from the office of Speaker — not because he has been deposed as Speaker, but because he has defected from the majority party.

    To start with, there is an eerie similarity between Sulaiman Abba, acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and his commander-in-chief, President Goodluck Jonathan, in the so-called withdrawal of the Speaker’s security details.

    The one wants to be confirmed IGP at all cost; the other wants to win in 2015 at all cost.  So, it is meet that the subversive order — subversive of the law — emanated from the Concert of the Desperate, into which the duo fits pat!  Whenever desperation is sighted, bad judgement is never far away.

    Besides, it is tribute to Jonathan’s presidential focus that even as Boko Haram swooped over Mubi in Adamawa, the commander-in-chief was swooping over a presidential nomination form for a job he has clearly proved his inability; and was also gracelessly settling partisan scores with the Speaker.

    On what basis was the IGP giving that illegal order?  That Alhaji Tambuwal is no longer Speaker?  That definitely is not true, for no parliamentary session has deposed him.  And if he is still Speaker, does the IGP, even if the president gives him an illegal order, have the right to summarily strip the No. 4 citizen of his security, his right by law?

    If that were so, then it would be dangerous indeed: for maybe some day, someone, somewhere could “order” the IGP to summarily withdraw the president’s security details too!  And by pure logic, why not?  If a mere policeman can deny the No. 4 citizen his legally guaranteed security, on some phantom law he lacks the capacity to correctly interpret, he could also as well deny the No. 1, citizen, the president, of his too!

    Outrageous?  That is the risk you take when, by reflex but unreflective actions, you try to undermine the institutions of state.

    But back to the basic argument: ought Speaker Tambuwal have remained Speaker, after defecting from his majority party?  On moral grounds, Ripples thinks not.  But the legality or otherwise of it is much more complex, all the more complicated by the mala fide all round.

    To start with, by Section 50(1)(b) of the 1999 Constitution, the Speaker is the exclusive business of the House.  So, is the IGP (or even the president) a member of the House?  So, how come both have convinced (more of colluded with) themselves the Speaker has been removed, and so should forfeit his right to official security by law, if both don’t suffer from grand executive delusion?

    Then even the law the IGP glibly quoted: Section 68(1)(g), which says a House member loses his seat if he left his party for another, provided there was no division in the party or merger with another party.

    Now, where was our IGP when Labour Party MPs defected to PDP, even with no division in their party?  The same law he brandished with a flourish at the Speaker died then, just because the president was pleased with the defection to his own party?  So, it is some Animal Farm, where some animals are more equal than others?

    Of course, partisan opinion is divided on whether a division exists in the PDP.  The ruling party hierarchs love to flaunt a court verdict that there was nothing like “New PDP”.  They follow that up to kid themselves there was no division in the party.  But if there was no division, how come five governors (Sokoto, Rivers, Kano, Kwara and Adamawa — now reclaimed by gunboat impeachment) left the party for APC?

    The opposition APC has even upped the ante, pushing forth two Federal High Court judgments:  Justice Faji, in Ilorin, that held there were indeed factions in the PDP; and Justice Aikawa, in Sokoto, which not only affirmed that there was a division but also held that the resulting faction merged with APC.

    So, if these judgments are real, where stands the PDP position that factions never existed simply because of the legal sophistry that no “New PDP existed”?  And where stands the IGP precipitate order to strip the Speaker of his security, simply because Mr. President is boiling?

    Let President Jonathan and fellow PDP hierarchs boil all they want.  They are only a victim of their own impunity.  The rich also cry!

    But let them be wary of, as Jonathan always does when he appears trapped, rushing to wield power, without recourse to the law that created that power.  That would reinforce the ultimate futility of impunity and doom them to crises like the Tambuwal affair, if not the eventual collapse of the democratic project.

    As for APC, let them too be wary of playing the politics of cant, and play more of the politics of principle.  It is such penchant to play in the PDP sewers that fuels the rising opinion that APC differs from PDP as six differs from half-a-dozen.

    APC, if it really wants to deliver change, cannot afford such conceptual putdown.

     

    Quote: “Let President Jonathan and fellow PDP hierarchs boil all they want.  They are only a victim of their own impunity.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Beyond a Buhari presidency

    Beyond a Buhari presidency

    No prize for guessing right — the October 15 presidential declaration, by former military Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, is sending the Goodluck Jonathan establishment into a tizzy.  But it should surprise no one that the Jonathan camp is jumpy.

    Never in the history of Nigeria has government been so demystified, as under President Jonathan.  To act right, the Jonathan Presidency is annoyingly impotent.  But to act wrong, it oozes brazen, devil-may-care impunity.  Gone, with the winds, are basic etiquettes that make government tolerable because it acts responsible.  From almost all indices, the administration is a flat failure.

    In the context of soaring insecurity, take the Chibok fiasco, on which Jonathan seems to have hit blind panic.  There have been perennial news, at least in the last three weeks, that the Chibok girls would soon taste freedom, after six months in the Boko Haram dungeon.  Monday, October 20 was to be the sweet freedom day, after which a ceasefire announced by Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, would have held.  But all seems to have ended in fiasco, with the girls’ release and the ceasefire turning a mirage.

    Indeed, the Chibok affair would appear Jonathan’s unravelling point.  When the messy affair started, the president and his men (and women) feigned disbelief; and lived in the denial that the ploy was some stunt by some political opponents, thus losing crucial lead time.

    Now, to resolve the political denouement, the administration appears trapped.  Jonathan is anxious to reveal the most open secret in Nigeria’s political history: his zest to run in 2015.  Yet, without the resolution of Chibok, even the president himself knows he embarks on a journey to nowhere, though his spin machine would try to put the failure on the neck of some nebulous “opposition”.

    The Chibok failure is replicated almost on all sectors of the polity and economy.

    Public finance:  No government in Nigerian history has been so brazen in its (mis)management of the Federation Account.  Revenue shortfalls may not be novel.  What is novel is the consistent shortfalls now come with absolutely no logical explanations; laced with partisan conspiracy theories that the ploy is allegedly to cripple opposition governors because of 2015.  Yet, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance minister, claims Nigeria is not broke!

    Religion and ethnicity: The president and his party have not flinched from the religious bomb for partisan gains.  President Jonathan himself started lobbing political bazookas from church pulpits, passing himself off as a persecuted Christian president at the mercy of Muslim anarchists, to gain explosive sympathy.  Without much ado, PDP spokesman Olisa Metuh, tagged the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) an “Islamic party”, his own emotive way of blunting the party’s perceived potency.

    And open sesame!  A country, fractious at the best of times, is now in a fierce hubbub of Christian-Muslim antipathy!

    Meanwhile, the passive volcano of ethnic bickering has started flickering, in the run-up to 2015.  The South-South roars: “Our son, our son”!  The South East gushes: Cousin Ebele!  In Lagos, some voice hollers: “Ndigbo, remember your numbers!”, the same lobby that goads the Igbo to make a dash for the state’s deputy-governorship, riding on Cousin Ebele’s coat tail, to the utter irritation of their Yoruba hosts.  Of course, the good, old South vs. North is alive and well.  And the Middle Belt? Uphold your Christian faith against the core North’s!

    It is the demagogue’s paradise out there, this Jonathan presidency!

    Yet, you could feel the administration’s clear discomfort at the sight and sound from the Buhari presidential declaration — discomfort at both the quantum and fervour of the crowd, as well as the A-list politicians gathered there.

    Still, Buhari is a long way from emerging the APC candidate, given the bid of no less than four other aspirants: former Vice President Abubakar Atiku, sitting Governors Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), and Rochas Okorocha (Imo) and Leadership Newspaper Publisher, Sam Nda-Isaiah.

    Even if he does emerge, Ripples, with all due respect to the widely acclaimed incorruptibility of the Spartan general, does not think Buhari is an especial visionary or a governmental modernist in the mould of Nasir El-Rufai or even, Rabiu Kwankwaso.

    Besides, his mindset would appear centralist — just like former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s — and not quite attuned to the imperative for radical federal restructuring, if this democracy must deliver sustainable development and prosperity.  Not unlike Obasanjo too, Buhari would appear susceptible to the illusion of hoping personal daring would solve systemic problems.  Obasanjo flatly failed on that score.  There is no indication that Buhari would succeed.

    O yes: there is a raft of zestful media speculations that a Buhari-Babatunde Fashola ticket would create new possibilities and dynamism, never perhaps before dreamed of in a federal democratic Nigeria.  That might well be.

    But the dynamics of presidential politics still makes the vice-president a spare tyre!  When presidential cabals invade, the vice-president had better dive for cover!  If in doubt, ask Goodluck Jonathan in his Umaru Yar’Adua years!

    Besides, there is the issue of the Christian-Christian/Muslim-Muslim ticket, on which Obasanjo has just made a baleful noise.

    Still, what makes a putative Buhari ticket so scary for the Jonathan camp?  Political arithmetic!  Buhari is the scary face of a North that wants power back — and claims it has the number to do just that!  On the cynical plane, that is more than formidable; and Jonathan is especially vulnerable.

    Jonathan, after six years, has pretty little to show in concrete achievement.  That is why his camp has embarked on their divisive and emotive strategies.  Even then, they need to painfully cobble together the numbers to make hay.

    Buhari?  His immense standing in the Northern “streets” is enough to harvest the vote, for a near-cult figure, despite the long running mutual suspicion between him and the northern elite.  If the Northwest-Southwest political entente works as planned, plus further harvests from a hurting Northeast, which by action and compassion Jonathan abjectly failed to protect from Boko Haram, it could well be vicious payback time!

    On a nobler front, the Mr. Clean image of Buhari is a grave rebuke to a Jonathan administration that appears a brazen boast of equal-opportunity sleaze, with the president himself making his infamous distinction between stealing and corruption.

    Still, danger may well lurk in a Buhari putative presidency.  Ironically, the booby trap is the Obasanjo-Jonathan collusion that killed the PDP zoning formula, in Obasanjo’s expectation of a presidential puppet in Jonathan.

    Though both putative puppet and puppeteer have cancelled themselves out in grief — with Jonathan making a hash of his presidency and Obasanjo closest ever to political irrelevance — that conspiracy may well hand the North the dangerous illusion that it could well hold on to power in perpetuity — with a sense of rogue morality, since Jonathan and co-southerners killed zoning.  That would be Nigeria’s fastest track to perdition.

    That is why the APC must come up with a robust power-balancing template, based on the felt-needs of the six geo-political zones, develop concrete programmes to meet these needs and enshrine the federal doctrine in its intra-party conduct.

    Otherwise, it would have won the war of presidential election, yet lose the peace of Nigeria’s stability, integrity and progress.

  • Olumo wars

    Olumo wars

    Olumo Wars, the war of attrition for the soul of Ogun State, ahead of the 2015 elections, clearly showcases the destructive intra-progressive tension, particularly in Western Nigeria.

    At one end of the battle, horses neighing, cavalry charging, and a fearsome and fearless infantry darting, is Ogun Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun (SIA), GCIR [Grand Commander of Infrastructure Renewal] — at least according to Segun Ayobolu, The Nation columnist, greatly impressed by the governor’s giant leaps in infrastructure and urban renewal.

    At the other end, with a no less formidable army, is Aremo Olusegun Osoba, former governor and Akinrogun Egba.

    Akinrogun, Chief Osoba’s traditional title, connotes an intrepid and war-tested brave that has savoured many glories.  A traditional title never served a political battle so well!  So, both camps appear sworn to a fight-to-finish.

    The political progressives’ fight-to-finish would appear contemporary Nigeria’s political equivalent of the curse of Aole.

    Alaafin Aole (1789-1796), petulant, baleful and vengeful, cursed his rebellious principal chiefs for triggering traditional protocols to force the Alaafin to commit suicide; thus, ending his insufferable reign.  For his forced suicide, he doomed his cabinet with perennial chaos.

    On the contrary, the political progressives, from the glory days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, are mostly glorious in governance.  But each time they turn upon themselves, like a band cursed by the sheer magnitude of their own successes, it is chaos without end, the Aole way.

    Each time that happens, however, the people stiffly pay — and  the reason is simple.

    The dynamics of Nigerian politics pitches a conservative central government (almost reactionary in its stubbornness to maintain its neo-feudalistic status quo) against a Western Nigeria, which dominant progressive ideology is equally bent on opening the good life for as many additional citizens as it could possibly manage, by its welfarist  policies.  So, each time the progressives stutter, the people, at least in Nigeria’s South West, stagnate

    Ironically, back in 2003, both SIA and Chief Osoba were part of the last undoing of the progressives in Ogun State.  Though both were on opposite sides, both ended up victims.

    Then Governor Osoba and his Alliance for Democracy (AD) South West gubernatorial class of 1999-2003 were adjudged long on Awoist rhetoric; but short on delivery.  Besides, they struck an accord with President Olusegun Obasanjo, desperate to land a second term, to gift him the South West vote for the presidency, in exchange for all six AD governors romping in for second term.  But the foxy old soldier double-crossed them, and the rest, as they say, is history.

    On the victorious side was SIA, who swept out AD Senator Femi Okurounmu.  But SIA soon fell out with victorious Governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD).

    To pull off this electoral coup, however, even with its rumoured electoral abracadabra, OGD had to brand himself an Awoist (which indeed he was, before the progressives meltdown en route to 2003); and a PDP progressive (which he was not, from his disastrous second term).

    However, as OGD serenaded and flattered the living Awolowos, who returned the favour with their virtual endorsement of OGD as some Awo reincarnate, SIA had to endure hard ideological (more appropriately, political) reorientation, moving from PDP to ANPP, and finally to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), one of the legacy parties, with ANPP, that formed the present All Progressives Congress (APC).  He won the Ogun governorship on the ACN platform.

    In his ideological wilderness, SIA felt the full brunt of an apostate fallen out with the federal ruling party; aside from the full might of OGD, who was not only in government but was fully in power.  Chief Osoba, on the other hand, was serving a dignified political sabbatical in Lagos — victims both!

    With this brief recap, both Osoba and SIA ought to be tempered by the emerging déjà vu.  Whereas, back in 2003, OGD led the rebranded face of the PDP crafty opposition as “political progressives”; the PDP opposition, trying to steal in right now, led by Buruji Kashamu, of no known political provenance, owe no allegiance to Ikenne, or anyone.

    Whereas from his Sagamu, Remo, launch base, OGD was building an altar on Awo’s progressive ideas; Kashamu, from his Ijebu Igbo base, is building a temple in the name of Goodluck Jonathan, despite that the president boasts no cutting-edge ideas, or any groundbreaking achievement from a six-year presidency.

    But of course, the strategy is clear: from the Ayo Fayose victory in Ekiti despite articulating no clear programme and President Jonathan’s rather flat score card, Jonathan’s Ogun men are contriving an election regime where issues are taboo and performance doesn’t count.  Yet, performance is SIA’s strongest weapon.

    Worse: like President Obasanjo in 2003, President Jonathan, given the abject corruption of state coercive organs for partisan benefits in Ekiti and Osun elections, is even more desperate to have his way in 2015.

    That is why SIA and Osoba must beware of the OGD nemesis — self vote-splitting.  With the Ogun PDP and OGD’s Trojan horse, People’s Party of Nigeria (PPN) splitting their votes, ACN ran away with victory in 2011.  With Osoba-SIA Ogun APC civil war, that possibility is real.  That is why both should snap out of this war of attrition and seek mutual accommodation.

    That, however, is easier said and done, with a political universe founded on recurrent injustices.  The genesis of the crisis is clearly the penchant for intra-party blocs to completely dominate other tendencies, in a zero-sum-game.

    Latter-day progressive, SIA, despite being governor, must have felt justifiable paranoia that the ACN old guard would squelch his ANPP new comers; just as the Osoba side could justifiably accuse the SIA gang of coming to reap on a platform to which they were new.

    It was also aggravated by the schism created by the politics of the new Ogun APC executives — again, based on the foul, rather than fair, determination of each bloc to completely dominate the other.

    Still, how APC or the PDP play their internal politics is strictly their business, except that intra-party injustices have a way of coming to plague the polity; and derailing much-needed development.

    The important thing, however, is that in the Ogun case, the SIA government that has done so well risks self-destruction, simply because its party hierarchs are feuding.  That would be unfortunate.

    That is why Chief Osoba and SIA must come to mutual, just and fair accommodation. Imagine if Kayode Fayemi had won another term in Ekiti, and continued with his infrastructural achievements and futuristic programmes?

    Each time the Yoruba nation tries to vault over pan-Nigeria paralysis, reactionary Yoruba politicians team up with others, from other parts of the country, to scuttle the effort.  It happened in 1962/63 (1st Republic Action Group schism), 1982/83 (2nd Republic Unity Party of Nigeria crisis), 2002/2003  (present republic’s AD infiltration and destruction, by the Obasanjo presidency).

    That is also the strategic tragedy of the Fayemi defeat in Ekiti.

    That is why the Ogun Olumo Wars must be fought — if at all — with the hindsight of history and a foresight into the future.

    Osoba and SIA owe themselves that historic burden.