The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Suntai and the gilt cage

    Suntai and the gilt cage

    Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, embattled governor of Taraba State, is happily locked in a gilt cage. But those trying to prise him from that golden prison don’t necessarily boast a better moral hue.

    Both sides are power warriors, who subscribe to the same rotten values. If you doubt, relive the odyssey of President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Vice President Jonathan was high victim of the Yar’ Adua cabal. That earned him high national sympathy. Yet, the victim as president has not exactly balked at erecting his own cabal.

    Indeed, the difference between the Yar’Adua Katsina cabal and the Jonathan Ijaw cabal, vis-a-vis Jonathan’s presidential emergence and his plot for an encore in 2015, is just a stark exchange of roles. In pole positions, both sides would dagger justice with absolutely no qualms.

    So, will it be with the Taraba power tussle, whichever side of the divide, between Governor Suntai and Deputy Governor Garba Umar, gains ascendancy.

    That stark reality puts the moral purists in the media and seething purists in the legal high streets, the likes of the irrepressible Femi Falana, SAN, who always literally flies off the handle at the whiff of any constitutional infraction, in a no-win situation.

    Yesterday, they were banging their heads against the wall for Jonathan, the arch-victim. But how is Jonathan himself turning out? Today, they are fighting for the latest crusader-saints on the block, the tag team of Deputy Governor Umar and Taraba Speaker Haruna Tsokwa. But is there any guarantee the pair would tomorrow not turn the latest constitutional daemons?

    So, then: good people should fold their arms? Hell, no! It is just that they are condemned to fighting the same battles, and crowning yesterday’s victims as tomorrow’s devils. So, maybe it is time to quit getting excited over symptoms and digging deep for the root cause. No sane law works on insane sociology.

    Indeed, the Nigerian power code is stark – stark to the point of hopelessness: where there is power, there is no honour; where there is honour, there is no power. It doesn’t get any grimmer for a country that needs all its talents to break free; yet boasts a power vicious cycle that throws up hustlers and racketeers!

    All the cacophony of protest from the media and from purist lawyers is helpless voices from the fringe. In the vortex of state, the power lunatics are not only in government, they are also in power!

    That brings the discourse to a suggestion that President Jonathan intervene in the Taraba show. To be sure, that is no bad counsel. But legally, what can he do that the 1999 Constitution, as amended, has not done, if the ground rule of political engagement is good faith?

    Good faith! That challenges the president’s own track record, after his odyssey, which the current Taraba box office monster hit seems uncannily cut after.

    True, the Yar’ Adua cabal, with the presidential widow, Turai Yar’Adua, reportedly playing a lead role in its high tension power game, was a constitutional affront. Yet, in retrospect, it knew what it was up against: a power ethos with absolutely no honour.

    If you lost power, you lost everything – even power rotary agreements signed in black-and-white! The cabal’s method? Prevention is better than cure – and if the Constitution got slaughtered along the way, too bad!

    Still, its illegal “prevention” collapsed under the weight of national outrage. And the cabal is living its worst fears: no “cure” for its loss. Yar’ Adua is dead and buried. Interred with his bones is the worthless rotation agreement the North still clutches in moral rage!

    Meanwhile, the arch-victim of yesterday, the president, canters ahead on the same unconscionable power horse. The same people that balked at the Yar’ Adua cabal, and are now balking at the putative Taraba cabal, lost their moral outrage when Jonathan, after finishing Yar’ Adua’s term, insisted on having a full term of his own – which he is having – and is busy plotting a second term, even if his party explodes in the process! And all these without giving a damn about the deep hurt of the cheated!

    So, what advice might the president give the Taraba gladiators? That they should stick by principles, as he himself has done? Or give assurance that the Suntai bloc’s interest would be protected even if Deputy Governor Umar became accidental governor, as he himself protected the interest of the Yar’ Adua bloc, after becoming accidental president?

    O, the recourse to crass legalism in defence – constitutional right to run, Nigeria needs “national”, not ethnic leaders, and allied cant! But while politically correct legalism, with its empty fullness, could truncate politically incorrect argument, it has proved no Deus-ex-machina to living problems like lack of political fairness, ethnic domination, religious chauvinism, minority rights and allied fears.

    True, in a normal constitutional republic, Sections 189 and 190 of the 1999 Constitution ought to have led to seamless transition of power in Taraba. By Section 190, the letter by Governor Suntai that he is back and ready for work should have sufficed. That is what the law prescribes. But even the most doting of his friends know he is not.

    To make matters worse, he sacked his cabinet to pre-empt the trigger of Section 189 (1) (a), which empowers the executive council to declare the governor, on account of ill health, incapable of performing his duty. A medical board would now confirm or demur (Section 189 (1) (b); Section 189 (4)). That was power cynicism at its worst – and from a governor mortally struggling with his health!

    But in a festival of bad faith, the Taraba Assembly also over-reached itself in its purported “rejection” of the governor’s letter; and re-crowning Deputy Governor Umar as Acting Governor. It has no such powers under the law. Even more grotesque is the Deputy Governor’s counter-instruction that the governor’s dissolution of his cabinet is void. At the end of the day, except his side wins, Umar would lose more than his office as deputy-governor.

    Suntai could well be the face of a Christian lobby, scared stiff at a possible loss of power, in a state hinged on delicate Christian-Muslim divide: majority Christians with a sizeable Muslim population. It is the very opposite of Kaduna: Muslim majority, with a sizeable Christian population.

    Umar, perhaps, is the face of a Muslim lobby, salivating at the rare chance of producing the top dog. Should Umar become accidental governor and, like Jonathan after completing Suntai’s term, insist on his “constitutional right” to run on his own, that would be a fait accompli – unless, of course, his party loses at the polls.

    These would appear the fears driving the Taraba stand-off. In such a titanic primordial tussle, there are neither constitutional saints nor sinners; only smart alec pawns deploying the Constitution to angle for group supremacy.

    That is why Suntai would fight to the finish, even at the risk of his life; and Umar no less, at the risk of political death.

  • Again, Sege talks the talk

    Somewhat, former President Olusegun Obasanjo figures himself some incarnation of Chief Obafemi Awolowo – the one who must sneeze and the republic must catch a cold.

    The huge difference is that while Awo walked the walk before talking the talk, Obasanjo talks the talk without walking the walk.

    Awo, it was, who on his yearly medical sojourn abroad, on the defunct British Caledonian Airways, would release his annual state-of-the-nation bazooka, that elicited so much heat and tirade, from the sitting government and its luckless officials, who felt obliged to respond to Awo’s blazing fire of cold stats with a fusillade of vulgar abuse.

    One of the most celebrated of such dog fights was Awo’s alert that the economy, under Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, was heading for the rocks. Stung, Prof. Emmanuel Edozien, celebrated former professor of development and international economics at the University of Ibadan and President Shagari’s chief economic adviser, with Chief Adisa Akinloye, the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) national chairman, went for Awo’s jugular, in a fierce, two-man pincer attack.

    But when the passion of sentimental battle cooled, the government ate crow. A few months later, the Shagari government went to Parliament, tail between two hind legs, clutching an economic stabilisation bill, to pad an economy in free fall.

    That confirmed Awo’s earlier warning. That showed the futility of hysteria against well reasoned alerts. That reinforced the Awo mystique.

    Since his public policy activism started during that same Second Republic, Obasanjo had always coveted such Awo-like mystique. But tragically, he has always lacked Awo-like work ethic, or personal morality, the such that declared when his contemporaries were carousing with women of easy virtue, he, Awo, was punishing his mind, searching for solutions to Nigeria’s problems.

    That explains why, even from the grave, Awo sounds credible, plausible and rigorous: thanks to his numerous books that have addressed and proffered sane solutions to some, if not most, of Nigeria’s perennial problems.

    But a living Obasanjo, beyond his false piety, often sounds like the human equivalent of a grating drum – grating because it is empty; and is wilfully deaf to the irritating sounds it makes, when it insists on rolling itself!

    That is the long and short of Obasanjo’s pastime of public policy interventions, the latest of which was his Ibadan heroics of pontificating on failed younger leaders! That itself was a grand irony: for the megaphone blaring out that condemnation was the ultimate in failed leaderships across generations! But then, self-nailing is one of Obasanjo’s divine gifts!

    After some self-serving books, a pretence to scholarship and intellectualism, and a “three-term” presidency (one as jackboot head of state, and two as elected – if controversial – civilian president), Obasanjo remains very much part of, hardly any solution to, the problem he periodically rails against. His motive is to clutch at relevance at all cost.

    Indeed, analysing Obasanjo through what he says of others in his books, and what others say of him in theirs, is a rich experience.

    In Not My Will, he talked down on Gen. Yakubu Gowon, his war-time commander-in-chief, as some ungrateful and duplicitous coup plotter, on account of unproven allegations on the Bukar Sukar Dimka coup.

    Yet, Gen. Gowon probably has in his fingernail more honour, nobility, grace and charity than Obasanjo would ever have in his whole being, even if he lived a million years!

    In the same book, he talked down on Awo, saying what Awo hankered after all his life, he got on a virtual platter of gold. That was gloating on his first coming as military head of state. Yet, even after his second coming of two presidencies, and a clatter of books to articulate his thoughts, Awo, dead since 1987, still towers, like Gulliver in Lilliput, above the living midget still hustling for attention in his hoary years, when he had every opportunity – but blew it – to make his mark, and make it good.

    In My Command, his Civil War account, Obasanjo demonised everybody, especially the formidable “Black Scorpion”, Benjamin Adekunle of the Third Marine Commando fame. But Brig-Gen. Godwin Alabi-Isama, a brain box in the war’s Atlantic theatre has shown, in his own account, The Tragedy of Victory, with maps, pictures and devastating logic, that Obasanjo’s Command was just a tad less than grand fiction, driven by narcissistic conceit. Ben Gbulie, another combatant, though on the Biafran side, hinted as much in an interview The Nation published on August 25

    Even if Alabi-Isama had an axe to grind with Obasanjo – in his book, Alabi-Isama accused both Obasanjo and Gen. Theophilus Danjuma of easing him out of the army – Nasir El-Rufai bears no such burden.

    Yet, Obasanjo’s profiling in El-Rufai’s The Accidental Public Servant, particularly the former president’s comical denial of his failed third term project and the ultra-corrupt suborning by a sitting president, of Nigeria’s Business Royalty to “donate” to a presidential library swindle, is anything but flattering.

    And like some daemon that must sear its victim long after it had exited the scene, the best Obasanjo could bequeath a country that has given him all, aside from his irritating leadership sermonising, is presidential paralysis: Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, a goodly soul clobbered by bad health, was virtually dead on arrival; and the famously uncritical Goodluck Jonathan, finding out the hard way that it takes more than good luck, and a conspiratorial pan-Nigeria mandate of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt, to have a stellar presidency.

    But that, at the national level. In his native South West, all Obasanjo inspired was a reactionary “mainstream”, with a garrison command and electoral banditry in tow, that sapped the people as it bloated the greedy and corrupt client-reactionaries. It was rolling back, for eons, Awo’s proud legacy.

    But to Obasanjo, that is fine. In the absence of near-zero legacy in real terms, contrived presidential Lilliput, just to make Obasanjo the Gulliver of his unsung era, is fair game.

    If Jesus the Christ had the divine mandate to die so that humanity might live, Obasanjo’s narcissistic mandate, it would appear, is for his country to die so that he might live! That, of course, is the sum-up of his empty grandstanding on leadership, when it is clear that, on that topic, he is a brilliant failure, wilfully un-confessed but proven.

    Of course, Obasanjo would remain great as long as Nigeria is chained to the current Lilliputian level. But the moment it breaks free – and it must – Obasanjo would embrace his fate in the dustbin of history.

    If Nigeria must attain its manifest destiny, the present generation of leaders must shun Obasanjo and his empty rhetoric.

    Instead, they must push for a super structure, not super humans: super structure that manages the best of geniuses but curtails the worst of villains that strays into governance.

    Such a system would end the era of unrepentant super-failures like Obasanjo, who run their mouth because of the strange conceit that they boast worse failures as successors.

  • Beware, Eastern Brother!

    The title of this piece is a pun of Chinua Achebe’s Beware, Soul Brother, the late novelist’s collection of poetry, written basically during Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970).

    The symbolism of the pun is clear: victims of past tragedies should be less gung-ho about future ones.

    Yet from the emotions over the Lagos-Anambra 14 “deportation” or “resettlement” saga (depending on which side of the divide you stand), that lesson does not appear to have sunk.

    As The Nation editorial on the unfortunate incident held, the Lagos government should have been more circumspect. But those at the receiving end too ought to have been more sensitive to the burden Lagos carries, without any extra help from Nigeria’s skewed federation. The matter can be amicably resolved with mutual sensitivity and understanding.

    Still, the intemperate reactions on the matter, for and against, forebode some future but avoidable tragedy; without clear ground rules guiding Nigeria’s so-called federalism, particularly on citizenship and native rights.

    Just check out the Babel of reactions: Anambra Governor, Peter Obi’s canonisation of President Goodluck Jonathan as some overarching prefect that must impose a diktat on inter-state disputes; Orji Uzor Kalu’s rather incendiary goading; Femi Fani-Kayode’s three-serial riposte, which started with fine points of history but dipped into some ribaldry about past trysts with Igbo girls just to prove he is a lover of truth but no hater of Igbo; C. Don Adinuba’s fine piece urging caution and strategic thinking on the part of the Igbo in Lagos; Joe Igbokwe’s bad tempered response that opened him up to vicious charges of a house Negro in the Lagos establishment; Senator Chris Ngige’s intervention that could well set him up for political blackmail; Andy Uba’s urbane protest-advertorial to Governor Fashola, and one Akubueze’s lunatic yak that Igbo are 46 per cent of Lagos population!

    But after all the excitement, something is clear: Nigeria is no settler community, like the United States or Australia. It is an indigenous corps of cultural entities, which had existed long before colonialism and Frederick Lugard’s yoking of 1914.

    So, those who do plastic legal analysis, without factoring in the objective and peculiar condition on ground miss the point. It is nothing but legal grandstanding.

    Every part of Nigeria is indigenous to some people, no matter the fortune or misfortune of the place. No matter how the Yoruba swarm Enugu, for instance, claiming ownership of the place or bragging about their teeming numbers there, is courting needless disaster. The same should be for Igbo in Lagos, no matter what rights they figure they have as citizens; and whatever rationalisations about Lagos being a former federal capital.

    That again leads to the Akubueze yak: “The Igbo are key stakeholders in the affairs of the state. We constitute over 46 per cent of the population of the state … It is the Igbo that are making Lagos tick; it is the Igbo that made Lagos what it is and without them, Lagos will go to sleep. In short, without Igbos, there will be no Lagos.” (as quoted by Daily Sun of August 6). Akubueze claims to be an Igbo leader.

    This clearly is a voice from the lunatic fringe. But it betrays a condition, which thanks to Prof. Achebe and his classic, Things Fall Apart, you could call the Okonkwo syndrome: that tragic self-goading to disaster, simply because action gallops, in false triumph, miles ahead of thinking.

    But if Okonkwo self-martyred to protect the integrity of his land and culture, on what basis is Akubueze baiting disaster as virtual owner of Lagos?

    Indeed, Akubueze-speak is a worrisome streak, which the Igbo themselves must ponder and decry. Triumphalism-induced host community provocation preceded the northern pogroms. Same provocation rebranded the Nzeogwu coup as “Ibo coup”, with tragic consequences.

    That brings the discourse to the Orji Uzor Kalu -Femi Fani-Kayode face-off. Mr. Kalu disregarded his high position as former governor with his incendiary comments. Mr Fani-Kayode too did his former position as minister no honour by embarrassing Igbo ladies (now married) he had once dated. Both behaviours are to be decried.

    Still, in Mr. Fani-Kayode’s intervention were some bitter truths which the Ndigbo must ponder, in their relationship with other ethnic groups: Charles Onyeama’s 1945 statement that “Igbo domination of Nigeria is only a matter of time” and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s 1949 quip that the god of Africa had created the Igbo nation to lead all.

    Of course, these statements, especially Zik’s, could have been made in the context of cultural pride, not unusual in a pluralistic and competitive setting, necessitating federalism, which Nigeria claims to run. But they could also have been made to push cultural irredentism, the sense Mr. Fani-Kayode quotes them.

    Question is: which is which? Now, back to Things Fall Apart, the pristine Igbo society that Achebe painted did not betray any streak of others’ domination. But is there something in the psyche of the contemporary Igbo that craves domination of others – but after embarking on such escapades, end up scalding themselves?

    Aguiyi-Ironsi’s Unification Decree 34 of 1966 was the panic button, after the 15 January 1966 coup, that triggered the pogrom. The fear? Igbo domination. Then, post-Civil War seizure of Igbo property in Port Harcourt, fraudulently dubbed “abandoned property”. The fear again? Igbo domination!

    Even in Lagos, there are allegations of Igbo crushing non-Igbo out of legitimate trade. The Nation columnist, Sanya Oni, told a sad tale of how he was crushed out of business when he once traded in spare parts at Ladipo Market, Mushin, Lagos. Utuk Motors and Inyang Ette, transport companies in Eastern routes, also have sad tales alleging Igbo sharp trade practices.

    Also, the Igbo must ask themselves: Nigerians of every stock live all over the country. Why is it that it is mostly the Igbo that witness tension with their host communities?

    Well, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former Anambra governor, claims it is Igbo envy. Even Achebe, in his There was a Country, hinted as much. Other Igbo flatly claim wherever they settle is their home as Nigerian citizens, and they could well do as they pleased. But how many Nigerians could claim such brazen rights in Igboland – or are they less Nigerian? Or is it just protecting yours but encroaching on others’?

    The Igbo deserve to give themselves frank answers to these questions. Otherwise, their past tragedies would be no learning dam against future ones.

    Irredentism and the penchant to dominate is no monopoly of any ethnic group. Indeed, that is the crux of Nigeria’s crisis of nationhood.

    Still, the Yoruba are famous for their twin ethos of Afenifere (live and let live) and Omoluabi (good breeding). That cultural liberality would explain why Igbo investment literally melted from Port Harcourt after the “abandoned property” swindle, but continues to thrive in post-Civil War Lagos.

    The Yoruba have no cause to ogle Igbo property or envy Igbo success. But the Igbo in Lagos must not give the impression of ogling Lagos territory or any other part of Yoruba land.

    Such crass and cavalier insensitivity is courting sure disaster.

     

  • Tale of two scapegoats

    “When your enemies sit in the assembly for the impeachment of your blessing, the Lord will appear like Chidi Lloyd with a mace and beat them to a coma” – social media joke that went viral.

    In Rivers, it is a tale of two scapegoats: one nestling in a foreign hospital bed fighting for his life; the other (at least until August 5) in a local prison, fighting for his freedom.

    Enter then Michael Chinda, of the G-5 failed impeachment bid, and deeply scarred soul from the July 9 messy parliamentary coup attempt; and Chidi Lloyd, no-nonsense fiery avenging angel of the G-27 fame; but now chartered devil in the books of a baleful establishment.

    But aside from the main tragic drama, the stage fizzes with comic strips that would have been so hilarious, were they not so tragic.

    Take the case of model cop, Mbu Joseph Mbu. Only a few days ago, he smugly self-declared his box office “popularity” with the country’s media, for his exploits in the Rivers carnival of anarchy. But many paused and wondered: did the all-mighty cop know the difference between popularity and notoriety?

    But before anyone could decide on anything, his “Oga at the top”, Mohammed Abubakar, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) himself, weighed in on Mbu’s side. Mbu remains Rivers police chief – at least that was how The Nation of August 9 coined it – affirming Mr. Mbu’s sound professionalism; and confirming his popularity, and not notoriety, as some deluded subversive minds were already thinking!

    Ride on then, cop of example! Go pacify Rivers of Amaechi and allied pollutants! The whole nation is solidly behind you! And should any irritant wave the 1999 Constitution in your nose, tell them exactly what Stalin, of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) told of the Pope: The Pope – sorry, the Constitution? How many divisions does he – sorry, it! – have?!

    But as you canter from victory to victory, you must know these severe facts.

    Joseph Stalin is dead, though his power notoriety remains. More importantly, the haughty pedestal on which he made that arrogant papal challenge has crumbled, never to rise again, except as ruins in the commodious brain of history.

    But as that particular Pope, Pius XII (with his famous riposte: “Tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heaven!) had died, the Papacy (which commands a moral armada, a lot more formidable than physical tanks) is alive and well. That means there is more to life than brazen power play.

    Of course, there is also the festival of cant by Felix Obua, factional chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Rivers and by the Chinda clan – understandably on the current health of their son, main victim of the aborted parliamentary coup of July 9, now hospitalised abroad.

    Whatever the pros and cons of Mr. Chinda’s case, every well meaning Nigerian should wish him speedy healing from the injuries he sustained from that messy parliamentary coup attempt. On this, peace-loving Nigerians must be one with the Chinda family, sharing their angst and giving them hope.

    Still, as life is not run on sentiments alone, the issues call for clinical examination and analysis, lest unsuspecting members of the public be led astray.

    First, “Chairman” Obua. On the issue of Chidi Lloyd, he had issued a shrill protest, alleging foul play and inviting the attention of the National Judicial Council (NJC) to the “improper” bail allegedly granted the Leader of the Rivers Assembly, now in the dock, in connection with the affray of July 9.

    Indeed, there would appear, on the face of it, some merit in the case; though it would take lawyers to establish the more fundamental basis for granting bail in the Lloyd matter. The Ahoada court apparently ruled on the basis of “fundamental human rights”; Lloyd, according to his counsel’s pleas, “having been detained for about two weeks now” and following reported certified medical report about his dipping health.

    Still, even with the medical alert, should the Ahoada court have shut its eyes to the fact that Lloyd was being docked for alleged offences in a Port Harcourt court of coordinate jurisdiction, in granting him bail and ordering the Police not to re-arrest him? Only legal experts can navigate that mire.

    Fortunately however, the Port Harcourt court also granted the suspect bail, thus averting the crisis of two courts of coordinate jurisdiction giving contrary rulings on a single case boasting similar facts, almost in every material particular.

    Mr. Obua did just fine as advocate of judicial sanity until he blundered on the sentence: “Why run to far away Ahoada, when the offence for which Hon. Lloyd was arrested, was committed in Port Harcourt?” That manifestly established Obua’s cant.

    Ahaoada is “far away” from Port Harcourt, uh? And Abuja: it is closer to Port Harcourt? On what basis is Obua parading himself as Rivers PDP chair – on the basis of a court sitting in Abuja or one sitting in Port Harcourt? Or has Rivers PDP headquarters suddenly shifted from Port Harcourt to Abuja? Which is nearer to Port Harcourt: Abuja or Ahoada?

    The Rivers PDP case is sub-judice; and the court will in the fullness of time dispose of it. But Mr. Obua’s outburst exposes the jaundiced mindset of political power players: when it suits them, it is fine. When exactly the same condition suits an opponent, it is not. That is why rigging, political or judicial, is their stock in trade!

    For the Chindas, it is cant coming from blood being thicker than water, even if they are humanly entitled to their passion for a son.

    But let’s assume Michael Chinda’s alleged batter has been docked. What is stopping the state to dock Chinda (whenever he is well and strong enough for trial) and his fellow G-5 for alleged battering of the Nigerian Constitution as regard impeachment quorums?

    Or, in the eyes of the family, is a batter of an individual more dangerous than a batter of the Law on which the whole society is erected, and could well come crashing down because of such assault and battery?

    Is the family, beyond the passion for a son, proud of that son for engaging in the G-5 legislative banditry, even if he has ended up as the most grievous scapegoat of that rascality?

    Let the law prosecute whoever is alleged to have committed a crime. If Lloyd is in the dock for allegedly battering Chinda, Chinda too must be docked for allegedly battering the Constitution. You cannot have one without the other.

    If you do, the result is the joke that opened this piece: “When your enemies sit in the assembly…” It is a grim endorsement of just desert, even if the physical result is ugly!

    Let those in temporary power govern fairly and justly, lest they become the butt of jokes of society which outlives every government.

    That is the grim moral from the tale of two scapegoats in Rivers!

  • Neither Jonathan nor the North

    If you ran away from a death for donkey years, yet you came back to die the same death, then you have lost your care – Igbo saying, courtesy Chinua Achebe.

     

    The opposition column of Nigerian politics is flush with triumph – and the reason is clear: the formal registration, by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the first in the country’s political history, is well and truly epochal.

    The victory whoop is understandable: at last, an alternative platform to face the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) behemoth in fierce, face-to-face electoral contest.

    Conversely, the ruling partisan camp is muffled with apparent worry, though Doyin Okupe, presidential spokesman has, as usual, essayed rich bluff and bluster, laced with Okupe-istic cant, claiming it was President Goodluck Jonathan’s democratic credentials – not the laws of the land – that ensured APC’s registration.

    That, as usual, was an empty bluff. The law that created the Presidency created INEC. The same grundnorm set out strict conditions for merging political parties. Creations of the law cannot, therefore, claim discretions in how their Creator works. It is entirely out of their hands, except of course, they want to criminalise their office which, it must be conceded, past office holders had done and got away with.

    This time, however, the forces behind APC were smart enough to follow, to the letter, the law on merging political parties. The Jonathan Presidency too was smart enough to know when it was licked, despite earlier childish manoeuvres on the APC acronym, from whatever camp. INEC too was smart enough to be strictly guarded by the law and nothing else. Over all, it is a triangular victory for the democratic republic.

    But victory hoop from the opposition?

    Yes, in the sense of a loyal opposition pushing for a partisan environment conducive to free and fair contests for political power, without the government of the day rigging the system in its favour.

    But no, in the sense of unbridled jubilation that suggests mere coming together of disparate opposition parties, into a single more powerful column, is the beginning of the end for PDP and its infamous power mismanagement. That does not necessarily follow.

    Even if that were so, the end of PDP does not necessarily translate into the end of power mismanagement in the polity. The PDP is no saint any more than the new APC are sinners!

    That brings the discourse to Nigeria’s latest troubling tendencies, symbolised by President Jonathan and his emotive Ijaw crowd, digging in for 2015; and the opposing “core North”, almost hell-bent on uprooting the “minority upstarts” and allies.

    It is a classic: power delinquency versus power senility.

    The APC must give these two pernicious tendencies rigorous thinking, if it hopes to be part of the solution to Nigeria’s power problems; and not the latest addition to it.

    Indeed, if the new party fulfils its potentials as agent of positive change, fortune-seeking stragglers from both camps would smarm it. If APC doesn’t have a ready formula to sort them out, it would go down with them, like the giffen theory in basic economics, where worthless goods drive out the good ones.

    Power delinquency comes from a sitting president with his minority backers who, just some four years in power, have developed the overlord complex so irritatingly common in the Nigerian power chamber. Though Jonathan’s South-South lacks the vote to propel him to a second term (even if his performance has been inspiring – and it definitely is not), his emotive supporters yammer as if just occupying Aso Rock is open sesame for a win in 2015.

    Some of these excitable fellows (just like the delusion that gripped the polity that APC would not be registered even if it met all the legal requirements), even darkly hint at something suggestive of rigging, even if they didn’t exactly spill it out. But pray: if 2nd Republic President Shehu Shagari, from a northern majority bloc could not hold on to his stolen electoral booty in 1983, what makes a minority bloc think they can in 2015, if they make the same mistake?

    Ranged against this power delinquency is the apparent power senility of the old North, as espoused the other day, ironically by Ango Abdullahi, an agronomy professor, and former vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University.

    Prof. Abdullahi said based on a North-South rotation pact, the North ought to take power in 2015; and that President Jonathan lacks the moral right to run, since he allegedly signed the reported pact as no. 37; same pact former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Jonathan’s estranged political godfather, allegedly signed as no. 1.

    This column has always held – still does and will always do – that the North was cheated on the zoning formula, on which Prof. Abdullahi based his argument. For that, blame Obasanjo’s perfidy and Jonathan’s crass opportunism, after the death in office of President Umaru Yar’Adua, in the run up to the 2011 election. It is the Nigerian elite penchant for short-term selfish gain, leading to long-term collective pain!

    Still, what was that professorial crap about the North having the democratic number to rule in perpetuity? The question is which North? What number? And for what purpose?

    Prof. Abdullahi easily forgets it was exactly this same “born-to-rule” mindset that led to the criminal annulment of Moshood Abiola’s presidential mandate in 1993, which marked the beginning of the end of the North’s power hegemony.

    Tragically, as Yerima would appear the brazen face of paedophilia for whatever justifications, Prof. Abdullahi would appear the unfazed face of northern hegemony, no matter the collective cost to the Nigerian state. Thus, when power delinquency confronts power senility, the sure result is avoidable national catastrophe.

    The APC must, therefore, note these destructive power tendencies and navigate a third but saner way of equity, justice and fair play. To do these however, it must think less of power and think more of service.

    Target: it must pare down the present parasitic presidency, which though gobbles the country’s wealth, is not an asset but a terrible liability: as Obasanjo’s tenure showed; and as Jonathan’s tenure is showing. That two extremely opposite personalities are delivering similar bungling shows it is a structural problem.

    “What does APC want?” (June 18) already, on this page, suggests how best APC can go about its arduous task, working on a six-region format; and turning felt needs of those six regions into a franchise of service to be implemented with despatch if it gains power, pending the country’s constitutional restructuring into productive federalism from the present parasitic unitary state in federal guise.

    APC must get real. After all its registration euphoria, the party cannot behave like the Achebe man who died the same death, even after running away from it for eons.

    That would be more than the death of a party. It could well be the death of a country, given the cliff to which the present powers-that-be have pushed this polity.

     

  • Of leaders and dealers: Soyinka Vs Clark

    Of leaders and dealers: Soyinka Vs Clark

    A community with worthy elders never comes to ruin – Yoruba proverb 

    When do elders morph from leaders to dealers?

    The latest foxtrot on the Rivers crisis, by the South-South Elders and Stakeholders, a group led by Pa Edwin Clark, Ijaw leader and presidential godfather, might just offer a clue.

    The Clark-led elders, on July 24, told Governor Chibuike Amaechi to stop blaming President Goodluck Jonathan and Patience, his ever-meddling wife, for the contrived Rivers crisis; told the governor to shape in or shape out; told the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to kick out the governor to serve as warning to other power renegades; pooh-poohed the four northern governors that went on a solidarity visit to Amaechi as cynical meddlers; and branded Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, as an arch-hypocrite who wept more than the bereaved at the legislative banditry of the Rivers G-5, while he kept mute in earlier legislative outlawry in Oyo (where Governor Rashidi Ladoja was illegally impeached) and Soyinka’s native Ogun State (when Governor Gbenga Daniel inspired legislative lawlessness in his gubernatorial dying days).

    Indeed, they practically did a pun on the famous author of The Man Died and his work: that the man died in the Nobel Laureate for his alleged quiet at constitutional outrages in Oyo and Ogun states; while jerking awake at the repeat of the same crime in their Rivers!

    But, of course, Clark and his “elders”, in their release, never bothered with the rigour of reason. All they barked, conceited folks, was the language of power, boasting neither wisdom nor reason.

    The whole thing was some dumb smartie’s response to the five northern governors’ “Save Democracy tour” to former President Olusegun Obasanjo (Jonathan’s estranged godfather), Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, three former soldiers ironically pitched to help save democracy under Jonathan’s reckless assault!

    But again, the Clark gambit was a classic from the brilliant dullness of the Jonathan court: no tactics, no strategy, just stark power blundering and bumbling!

    Even then, if the so-called elders wilfully lost a bit of their wisdom in anticipation of some power gravy, can’t their young Turks at least work hard to safeguard the integrity of their claims?

    The Clark group made the fantastic claim that Soyinka kept mute during the legislative anomie in Oyo and Ogun states. But this claim is either criminal forgetfulness or plain mischief.

    On the Ladoja illegal impeachment, Soyinka called for Obasanjo’s impeachment, linking the Oyo legislative crisis to his complicity – just as Jonathan’s link to the present Rivers affront is crystal clear.

    “Obasanjo has acted sufficiently against the constitution to warrant his impeachment,” Soyinka declared on 20 January 2006. “There is more than enough evidence to warrant his impeachment”.

    That was even a case of 18 (a simple majority) removing the governor in a 32-member legislature, which nevertheless fell short of the constitutionally required two-thirds majority: not a case of Rivers’ “simple minority” of five versus 27! AFP, with Nigerian newspapers, reported the Soyinka stand.

    On the Gbenga Daniel legislative shenanigans in Ogun, where the minority G-9 overthrew the majority G-15, Soyinka was no less hard-hitting. “I wish to state, categorically, this cannot and must not be allowed to stand. I call on the citizens of the state to ensure democracy is restored. A minority” he insisted, “cannot sack a majority”.

    Indeed, since Soyinka’s famous “Daani Elebo” laconic putdown, he had visited every OGD misdeed with ringing condemnation, including dismissing OGD’s as “government by billboard”.

    But where was Clark’s beloved presidential godson in all of these? Feigned culpable disinterest enough to name and retain Daniel as his South West presidential campaign coordinator! For Jonathan, it was, it is and ever shall be: to win and keep power, every constitutional breach is tolerable!

    All these were in the public space. They are eminently verifiable with a push of the computer keyboard. Yet, Clark and his elders made such an outlandish claim! Might these elders suffer criminal senility, just to patch up the ultra-bad case of their beloved godson?

    Even if Soyinka had kept mum: does that justify the criminality in the Rivers Assembly of five (with a fake mace to boot!) trying to overthrow the will of 27, simply because of collusion from Jonathan’s Nigeria Police? That is the futility and hollow arrogance of power, while these so-called South-South elders ought to have built their case on rigour and reason. It falls flat – even in the ears of the dumb!

    But Soyinka was right: if Obasanjo had been impeached for the Ladoja outrage or Jonathan seriously reprimanded for playing dumb, for electoral gain, on the OGD-inspired Ogun legislative crime, this nonsense would not have repeated itself; and the Clark “elders” would not ridicule themselves with woolly thinking to back constitutional evil.

    But maybe it is good Jonathan is pushing his good luck. And maybe, if he pushes it enough, he just might be impeached to avert any future presidential rascality! Did these elders ever think of this dire possibility?

    Really, it is amusing Clark of all people would doubt Soyinka’s total commitment to a Nigeria driven by equity, justice and fair play, and not arbitrary power. Indeed, when Soyinka landed in Ibadan in 1969, after his Civil War Kaduna incarceration, his first response to the war-time jingle, “To keep Nigeria One …” was a snappy riposte: “Justice must be done!”

    A younger Clark was busy collaborating with the same northern forces he now wants to demonise, to willy-nilly protect his godson – a power he doesn’t even have. But that is the way of Nigeria’s power men and women of all seasons!

    Soyinka comes from a diametrically opposed culture: justice men and women of all seasons. And names like Obafemi Awolowo, Tai Solarin, Ayodele Awojobi, Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana – do they ring a bell? They stand for justice and fair play and would battle anyone, no matter where he comes from, even within their own Yoruba stock, that essays impunity.

    So those orchestrated merchants of vulgar abuse, who claim the Yoruba are their problems because Soyinka told Jonathan to rein in his henchmen and women in Port Harcourt, miss the point.

    The Nigerian Presidency is not South-South property. Whoever occupies that post must play by the rules or face the flak of right-thinking citizens – Nigeria is a republic, after all! So it is with President Jonathan.

    As for Clark’s grouse with the visiting northern governors, the late Chuba Okadigbo called it “political arithmetic”. If Jonathan, with his power delusion and certified incompetence, alienates a wide swath of the North and a good chunk of the South West, how does he hope to win a second term? Indeed, if his party is in disarray and he is, for ego, planting further insurrection in his back yard, how does his centre hold?

    Elders are supposed to be wise. Clark and co must do some hard thinking, save Jonathan from self-inflicted ruin and stop playing to juvenile gallery.

     

  • Old soldiers, new battle

    ‘A lie may travel for donkey years but truth overtakes it in a flash – Yoruba proverb’  

     

    Were Chinua Achebe still alive, he probably would have brewed another classic, brimming with sardonic humour and laconic wit, from the July 18 launch in Lagos of The Tragedy of Victory, Brig-Gen. Godwin Alabi-Isama’s Civil War (1967-1970) memoirs.

    The new war account recounts the exploits of the Third Marine Commando (3MCODO), mostly under the formidable Brig-Gen. (then Col.) Benjamin Adekunle aka Black Scorpion, who attained both heroic and mythical status on the Nigerian side during that war.

    Brig-Gen. Alabi-Isama (then Lt. Col) was Adekunle’s chief of staff. The author, ace strategist and military tactician, saw almost every inch of battle on the Atlantic Front, which proved pivotal and decisive in swinging the pendulum of victory and defeat.

    Still, any literary wit with Biafra sympathies, having read There was a Country, Prof Achebe’s bitter swansong, could easily, “serves-them-right” manner, have turned the July 18 event into Nigeria’s own Tower of Babel, where Nigeria’s own victorious generals, under the tragically ironic banner of Tragedy of Victory, fall upon themselves in ferocious verbal combat.

    Even more grippingly ironic is Gen. (then Col.) Olusegun Obasanjo, as personal metaphor of “tragedy of victory”. Obasanjo (as his name Olusegun, Yoruba for “The Lord has conquered”, suggests) took the Biafra instrument of surrender as final 3MCODO commander, after the more formidable Black Scorpion. On that, he was an immaculate victor.

    But the tragic victor birthed when it was revealed that the all-conquering general, self-hyped to high heavens in My Command (1980), Obasanjo’s Civil War account, is the same that also reportedly fled for dear life from enemy fire, allegedly receiving bullet wounds in his rump!

    Whether that allegation was true or not (Col. Oyinlade Iluyomade, aka Hitler, commander of the troops involved in that particular battle insisted it was), the war hero, military era head of state and first elected president of the 4th Republic, became the butt of hilarious jokes at the venue! That would count as a personal tragedy of victory.

    But there is also a corporate side to that victorious tragedy.

    The near-unanimity of opinions, among the gathered generals, was that Obasanjo, by craftily rigging the Biafra armistice to be a one-man show, gypped other war commanders of earned glory, thus somewhat echoing the perfidious tortoise that renamed himself “All of you”, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

    Factor in Alabi-Isama’s allegation that Obasanjo, as military head of state, conspired with Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, his chief of army staff, to boot him out of the army after only 17 years, and the perfidious tortoise’s parallel comes to the fore. Alabi-Isama, from his war account, was one of the 3MCODO brain boxes that did the dirty work before Obasanjo came to claim the glory.

    Obasanjo rather viciously rubbed it in, in My Command, in which he emerged the sole super-hero, leaving the other commanders gasping behind as super-villains or just simple nincompoops – a claim the pair of Alabi-Isama and Lt-Gen. Alani Akinrinade, and indeed the armada of generals and other old soldiers at the launch, dismissed as voodoo tales!

    Danjuma, chair and chief presenter at the launch, denied there was any anti-Alabi-Isama conspiracy, insisting that though he couldn’t recall the details, he had documents to show that whatever happened “followed due process”.

    The tragedy of victory was also apparent from the after-war career trajectory of the triumvirate of Adekunle, Alabi-Isama and Akinrinade, the hardy trio that faced the hottest parts of the war and prevailed with uncommon brilliance.

    Adekunle who, according to Wikipedia, renamed 3 Infantry Division 3MCDO, without even formal approval from army headquarters, suffered premature retirement in 1974 after only 16 years. He joined the army in 1958.

    As at the time Tragedy of Victory was launched, Gen. Adekunle was down with illness, prompting his first son, Abiodun, to solicit for support. Adekunle’s odyssey is not much different from the bulk of old soldiers at the occasion who complained of neglect, even after shedding blood to keep Nigeria one.

    Alabi-Isama himself was retired after only 17 years, following the conspiracy he alleged but which Danjuma denied.

    Only Akinrinade, of the trio, attained the apex of his career, not only becoming a three-star general as Lt-General, but also Second Republic’s first chief of army staff; and later chief of defence staff.

    Could the anti-Obasanjo armada then result from peer envy? That is possible, except that the adverse testimony of Gen. Akinrinade, measured, frank, candid and nuanced, both at the book launch and in his widely acclaimed interview with The Nation from the eve of the July 18 launch, did little to enhance Obasanjo’s cause.

    Akinrinade was Obasanjo’s chief operations officer that first met surrendering Biafra General Philip Effiong (who Danjuma jokingly dismissed as colonel in Nigeria, general in Biafra, to wide laughter and guffaw), at his Amichi last war headquarters.

    Still, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s war-time commander-in-chief, did not share the near-unanimous belief that Obasanjo stole anyone’s glory by claiming the instrument of surrender, even while he was far away in his Port Harcourt headquarters, when Akinrinade mid-wifed the surrender.

    “As the Commanding Officer assigned to command the Division that received the instrument of surrender from Biafra,” Gen. Gowon declared in a supplement Foreword to go with the second edition of the new book, “Gen. Obasanjo rightfully was positioned to claim victory on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.”

    That coming from Gowon, though logical, was rare grace, compared with the nasty stuff Obasanjo wrote in his Not My Will, about his former commander-in-chief, following the unfortunate event of 13 February 1976: the abortive coup that claimed the life of Gen. Murtala Muhammad and propelled Obasanjo to his first coming as military head of state.

    In Not My Will, Obasanjo, with exquisite bad grace, talked down on his old commander-in-chief, pillorying him as “Mr. Gowon”, tagging him with “duplicity and complicity” and celebrating his hurried “dismissal” (later reversed by 2nd Republic President Shehu Shagari) from the military – all these over mere suspicion of his alleged involvement in the Bukar Sukar Dimka coup!

    Now, who is this Nigeria, the heartless errant-lady whose troubadours-general kill themselves to protect; and yet who rewards almost each and everyone with disgrace and hurt?

    This is the crisis of Nigeria’s nationhood which, as Gen. Akinrinade correctly said, even the Civil War did not resolve.

    But at the launch, Gen. Danjuma, a tad insensitive but with martial elegance, proclaimed: “Though they said there was no victor or no vanquished, all I know is that we won the war”!

    We? Won?

    Forty-three years after the war, every Nigerian would appear a loser – not the least the generals – and would continue to be until Nigeria’s fundamental contradictions are resolved by restructuring the country along equitable and development lines.

    If Tragedy of Victory rams in this notorious fact, it would do a future patriotic duty just as it has done a past one by putting the records straight on the Nigerian Civil War.

  • Presidential anarchy

    Presidential anarchy

    Can the president of the Federal Republic levy war against a state and get away with it? From the conduct of President Goodluck Jonathan’s henchmen and women in the Rivers contrived crisis, that appears the case.

    It is nothing short of criminalising the presidency. But how much of this impunity can the civil order bear before something terrible gives?

    The especial tragedy of the Jonathan Presidency is, with reckless regularity, it repeats history as farce.

    But neither the first Nigerian president to boast a PhD, nor his hyper-educated aides, seems fazed by this roller-coaster cascade into infamy. Such is their total gobble of the sweet poison of naked power – powers they don’t even have, had they not chosen to criminalise the presidency, if they ever bothered to read between the lines of the 1999 Constitution, warts and all!

    Take the latest trigger in the contrived crisis: the Rivers House of Assembly mayhem of July 9. Now, between the Goodluck Jonathan and Rotimi Amaechi battling camps, there is enough villainy to gift a multitude, with some left-over.

    How can an immaculate, fiery and all-conquering mace-battler, with the moral ardour of some bathetic Christ clearing his father’s house of worship of a den of thieves, morph into a sanctimonious victim, nestling in a hospital bed; and peeping at millions of sympathisers, from the vantage point of the lead photo, on the front page of a national newspaper?

    But before you condemn that battler, meet his victim: an apparent constitutional criminal, one of the G-5 renegades who, backed by some subversive federal power, felt they could impeach the Rivers Assembly Speaker and, like some tragic-comic pantomime with voice-over, were already on the subversive ritual, seconding motions, suspending imaginary legislators, voting, getting “elected” and giving “acceptance speeches”!

    Must Nigerians be assaulted by such power lunacy?

    To apologists or self-proclaimed purists, who insist “constitutional criminal” is jumping the legal gun, since no one has been tried and found guilty, this riposte: if the courts had serially voided such legislative banditry in Oyo, Plateau and Anambra states, during the Obasanjo-era presidential anarchy, can it be less culpable now because Jonathan-era legislative lunatics are repeating the farce?

    And here really lies the crux: if Obasanjo could grandstand that Nuhu Ribadu was undermining the Constitution to get rid of allegedly thieving politicians, what noble cause can the current rascals attach to their own subversive activism?

    Those who nail Governor Amaechi for “invading” the Rivers legislature to clear the mess miss the point. Yes, a governor should be a gentleman. But with a president that tweaks rules for illicit gains, that could be fatal.

    If you doubt, ask Rashidi Ladoja, the bitter-sweet former governor of Oyo State. He shunned President Obasanjo’s diktat that he surrender his gubernatorial authority to Lamidi Adedibu, Obasanjo’s beloved Ibadan garrison commander, only to holler in the cold for no less than 10 months, victim of an illegal impeachment.

    To those who still want to play the ostrich, pushing “law” without factoring in the lawless temper of its operators, the odyssey of Justice Isa Ayo Salami, under this same Jonathan Presidency, is instructive. Salami did his duty by law. But to the lawless in government, that was near-capital crime, for which the no-nonsense president of the Court of Appeal is paying.

    Yes, the Judiciary saved Ladoja; and voided the allied legislative rascality in Plateau and Anambra states. But with the Salami experience, it is doubtful if that judiciary had not melted into Heraclitus’s state of flux, no thanks to a hostile Jonathan Presidency.

    Amaechi certainly was not pretty, “storming” the legislature to nip in the bud the putative coup against his office. But he did the needful to preserve his position in an emerging presidential anarchy. For all you know, if the coup against him had succeeded, he would now be shrieking, Ladoja-like, from the wilderness, while his traducers would be mouthing “due process”! No society thrives under such cynical manipulation.

    But it is instructive how this Jonathan-era rascality empties into the Obasanjo-era mother river, even if Jonathan’s bumbling, to use Malthus-speak of basic economics, is “geometrical” while Obasanjo’s “original sins” now appear “arithmetical”.

    Talking about “original sin”, the dramatis personae of the current crisis appear to have cleanly forgotten the first outrage of 10 July 2003 (the Rivers outrage followed almost 10 years after, 9 July 2013!), when some Abuja-backed criminals tried to unseat controversial Governor Chris Ngige. It was the classic malevolent godfather’s challenge, before the plague of illicit impeachments based on “simple minorities”, which the latest Rivers jokers essayed with devastating consequences.

    What happened to the ring leaders back then: AIG Raphael Ige, the apparent Abuja viceroy in the crime, Tafa Balogun, then sitting IG, and even Obasanjo himself, the sitting president who, throughout the crisis, pushed the theory of plausible deniability?

    AIG Ige, the apparent fall guy, suffered abrupt retirement (even if his retirement time was close) and later, sudden death. Mr. Balogun suffered eventual humiliation, though his role, beyond being the Police IG was unclear; and his comeuppance was not directly linked to the Ngige saga. Even Obasanjo has continued to suffer progressive devaluation, to the point of irrelevance, since his presidential glory days.

    Do all these speak to Mbu Joseph Mbu, the commissioner of Police deep in the Rivers crisis, given his inappropriate conduct and reckless utterances? There are always spiritual consequences for political rascality that hurt the silent and innocent majority.

    Festus Eriye, editor of The Nation on Sunday, in his penetrating piece of July 14, described President Jonathan as Pontius Pilate, in a piece he headlined “Pontius Pilate strikes again”. That was a brilliant metaphor because before Jonathan, there was Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, and Pontius Pilate I of Nigeria’s troubled political horizon.

    Sir Abubakar launched political insurrection at the Western Region, with his suspect proclamation of state of emergency, after a contrived crisis in the Western House of Assembly, just to cripple Obafemi Awolowo.

    Jonathan, Pontius Pilate II, is doing the same, in what would have been the old Eastern Region, although this time, against a party mate; but with no less partisan bile, despite his aides’ comical denial. Jonathan court historians should check their history books and tell their principal how the Balewa gambit ended.

    Which brings us to the Jonathan denial ensemble: two “doctors”, Reuben Abati, Doyin Okupe and a Gulak, who obviously thinks everybody’s thinking faculty is, as his own, locked in Jonathan’s gulag!

    Ahmed Gulak, sounding every inch a power brat, told Prof. Wole Soyinka to be “responsible” (a counsel his principal ironically needs more than anyone!), because of Soyinka’s stance on the contrived Rivers crisis.

    Well, Gulak should check his history books. When Balewa was being led astray or even Obasanjo, Jonathan’s political creator, was leading himself astray, Soyinka was there, an ever consistent voice of reason, which nevertheless is the proverbial harsh hunter’s whistle, to the hearing of a doomed dog.

    Those who engage in double-speak, let them. But true friends of Goodluck Jonathan must tell him to withdraw from his Rivers misadventure.

    It is a wide and merry way that leads to infamy.

     

  • Presidential anarchy

    Can the president of the Federal Republic levy war against a state and get away with it? From the conduct of President Goodluck Jonathan’s henchmen and women in the Rivers contrived crisis, that appears the case.

    It is nothing short of criminalising the presidency. But how much of this impunity can the civil order bear before something terrible gives?

    The especial tragedy of the Jonathan Presidency is, with reckless regularity, it repeats history as farce.

    But neither the first Nigerian president to boast a PhD, nor his hyper-educated aides, seems fazed by this roller-coaster cascade into infamy. Such is their total gobble of the sweet poison of naked power – powers they don’t even have, had they not chosen to criminalise the presidency, if they ever bothered to read between the lines of the 1999 Constitution, warts and all!

    Take the latest trigger in the contrived crisis: the Rivers House of Assembly mayhem of July 9. Now, between the Goodluck Jonathan and Rotimi Amaechi battling camps, there is enough villainy to gift a multitude, with some left-over.

    How can an immaculate, fiery and all-conquering mace-battler, with the moral ardour of some bathetic Christ clearing his father’s house of worship of a den of thieves, morph into a sanctimonious victim, nestling in a hospital bed; and peeping at millions of sympathisers, from the vantage point of the lead photo, on the front page of a national newspaper?

    But before you condemn that battler, meet his victim: an apparent constitutional criminal, one of the G-5 renegades who, backed by some subversive federal power, felt they could impeach the Rivers Assembly Speaker and, like some tragic-comic pantomime with voice-over, were already on the subversive ritual, seconding motions, suspending imaginary legislators, voting, getting “elected” and giving “acceptance speeches”!

    Must Nigerians be assaulted by such power lunacy?

    To apologists or self-proclaimed purists, who insist “constitutional criminal” is jumping the legal gun, since no one has been tried and found guilty, this riposte: if the courts had serially voided such legislative banditry in Oyo, Plateau and Anambra states, during the Obasanjo-era presidential anarchy, can it be less culpable now because Jonathan-era legislative lunatics are repeating the farce?

    And here really lies the crux: if Obasanjo could grandstand that Nuhu Ribadu was undermining the Constitution to get rid of allegedly thieving politicians, what noble cause can the current rascals attach to their own subversive activism?

    Those who nail Governor Amaechi for “invading” the Rivers legislature to clear the mess miss the point. Yes, a governor should be a gentleman. But with a president that tweaks rules for illicit gains, that could be fatal.

    If you doubt, ask Rashidi Ladoja, the bitter-sweet former governor of Oyo State. He shunned President Obasanjo’s diktat that he surrender his gubernatorial authority to Lamidi Adedibu, Obasanjo’s beloved Ibadan garrison commander, only to holler in the cold for no less than 10 months, victim of an illegal impeachment.

    To those who still want to play the ostrich, pushing “law” without factoring in the lawless temper of its operators, the odyssey of Justice Isa Ayo Salami, under this same Jonathan Presidency, is instructive. Salami did his duty by law. But to the lawless in government, that was near-capital crime, for which the no-nonsense president of the Court of Appeal is paying.

    Yes, the Judiciary saved Ladoja; and voided the allied legislative rascality in Plateau and Anambra states. But with the Salami experience, it is doubtful if that judiciary had not melted into Heraclitus’s state of flux, no thanks to a hostile Jonathan Presidency.

    Amaechi certainly was not pretty, “storming” the legislature to nip in the bud the putative coup against his office. But he did the needful to preserve his position in an emerging presidential anarchy. For all you know, if the coup against him had succeeded, he would now be shrieking, Ladoja-like, from the wilderness, while his traducers would be mouthing “due process”! No society thrives under such cynical manipulation.

    But it is instructive how this Jonathan-era rascality empties into the Obasanjo-era mother river, even if Jonathan’s bumbling, to use Malthus-speak of basic economics, is “geometrical” while Obasanjo’s “original sins” now appear “arithmetical”.

    Talking about “original sin”, the dramatis personae of the current crisis appear to have cleanly forgotten the first outrage of 10 July 2003 (the Rivers outrage followed almost 10 years after, 9 July 2013!), when some Abuja-backed criminals tried to unseat controversial Governor Chris Ngige. It was the classic malevolent godfather’s challenge, before the plague of illicit impeachments based on “simple minorities”, which the latest Rivers jokers essayed with devastating consequences.

    What happened to the ring leaders back then: AIG Raphael Ige, the apparent Abuja viceroy in the crime, Tafa Balogun, then sitting IG, and even Obasanjo himself, the sitting president who, throughout the crisis, pushed the theory of plausible deniability?

    AIG Ige, the apparent fall guy, suffered abrupt retirement (even if his retirement time was close) and later, sudden death. Mr. Balogun suffered eventual humiliation, though his role, beyond being the Police IG was unclear; and his comeuppance was not directly linked to the Ngige saga. Even Obasanjo has continued to suffer progressive devaluation, to the point of irrelevance, since his presidential glory days.

    Do all these speak to Mbu Joseph Mbu, the commissioner of Police deep in the Rivers crisis, given his inappropriate conduct and reckless utterances? There are always spiritual consequences for political rascality that hurt the silent and innocent majority.

    Festus Eriye, editor of The Nation on Sunday, in his penetrating piece of July 14, described President Jonathan as Pontius Pilate, in a piece he headlined “Pontius Pilate strikes again”. That was a brilliant metaphor because before Jonathan, there was Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, and Pontius Pilate I of Nigeria’s troubled political horizon.

    Sir Abubakar launched political insurrection at the Western Region, with his suspect proclamation of state of emergency, after a contrived crisis in the Western House of Assembly, just to cripple Obafemi Awolowo.

    Jonathan, Pontius Pilate II, is doing the same, in what would have been the old Eastern Region, although this time, against a party mate; but with no less partisan bile, despite his aides’ comical denial. Jonathan court historians should check their history books and tell their principal how the Balewa gambit ended.

    Which brings us to the Jonathan denial ensemble: two “doctors”, Reuben Abati, Doyin Okupe and a Gulak, who obviously thinks everybody’s thinking faculty is, as his own, locked in Jonathan’s gulag!

    Ahmed Gulak, sounding every inch a power brat, told Prof. Wole Soyinka to be “responsible” (a counsel his principal ironically needs more than anyone!), because of Soyinka’s stance on the contrived Rivers crisis.

    Well, Gulak should check his history books. When Balewa was being led astray or even Obasanjo, Jonathan’s political creator, was leading himself astray, Soyinka was there, an ever consistent voice of reason, which nevertheless is the proverbial harsh hunter’s whistle, to the hearing of a doomed dog.

    Those who engage in double-speak, let them. But true friends of Goodluck Jonathan must tell him to withdraw from his Rivers misadventure.

    It is a wide and merry way that leads to infamy.

     

  • Golden boy, golden age

    Golden boy, golden age

    There is something decidedly golden in the tenure and temper of Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, the governor of Lagos, who turned 50 on June 28.

    From “Babatunde who?” in 2007, Fashola has become an emblem of excellence. Perhaps never in the history of Nigeria’s fits-and-starts democracy has a rookie politician taken the public service lane by storm, posting a slew of solid performance, reaping tremendous accolades.

    Governor Fashola would rank second only after Alhaji Lateef Jakande, 2nd Republic Lagos governor (1979-1983) in the sheer race to nip the proverbial low hanging fruits, giving very early signals of a golden morning which forecast an even more golden tenure, which still has almost two years to run.

    Mr. Fashola is second to Alhaji Jakande because while Fashola had a solid foundation from which to launch his own campaign, Jakande was masterly master of his own destiny, despite the rot left by the departing military in 1979, at the end of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s first coming.

    Indeed, in the Tinubu political court, this “foundation” has assumed the high fetish of hallowed debate, on which many stake their honour. Many would argue – and correctly so – that without Tinubu’s solid foundation, Fashola would have been nothing. Other would counter, with equal vehemence – and they are no less correct – that without Fashola keeping faith and brilliantly executing his brief, Tinubu’s own place would have been less assured.

    The truth of the matter is that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Mr. Fashola, his high flying protégé, are akin to King David and King Solomon of the Biblical Kingdom of Israel.

    Like King David who fought endless wars to secure the kingdom against fiery and implacable foes, Tinubu did fight gruelling wars: against a purported elected president with gruff military temper; against a federal constitution with a unitary soul; against general environmental crisis with sky-towering refuse, like Goliath over David; against military-era mindset that state governors were despicable prefects at the whims of an arrogant and insufferable presidency; and even against an impatient, if not outright cynical media, which all but declared Tinubu’s first two years in government as total disaster.

    In these high octane wars, an embattled Governor Tinubu had to juggle politics with policy, fix his state’s financial infrastructure, and engage the judiciary to push for the rights of the states against a behemoth federal government, among others. By the third year, the new vision was taking shape. By the eighth year, after a second term, the foundation was solid and ready.

    Then came “Solomon” Fashola: fresh, cool and focused to take the “kingdom” to higher heights. One of his low-hanging fruits, which by their plan he would quickly move to pluck, was the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which secured lanes were already in the works at the latter end of the Tinubu era. Fashola plucked it with admirable speed and pluck. It was his brilliant morning that foreshowed a dazzling day. The rest, as they say, is history.

    History would come to record Fashola’s many feats in high-grade urban infrastructure. When he eventually delivers on the urban transit trains in the works in the Orile-Iganmu-Mile 2-Badagry Expressway corridor, he would have put his own bold and brilliant signature on the new Lagos multi-modal transportation of his party’s dream. That would be a stiff mountain for the opposition to climb.

    Fashola has brought into the implementation of these programmes a rare reasoned passion – friends call it focus; foes call it coldness – that is nobody’s imprimatur but his alone.

    His healthy obsession with the environment is legendary. Want to know how creatively restless Mr. Fashola is? Beam your gaze on the ever-changing flora and continual landscaping, ever in a state of flux, that is the governor’s never-ending Lagos urban beautification, which he calls “greening”.

    After the impressive greening and lighting of the Lagos Marina, the Lagos inner ring road corridor, spanning Third Mainland Bridge, Iyana Oworo, Ogudu, Alapere and Ikeja Toll Gate, aside from other areas, have become clear evidence of the governor’s stellar environmental policy. Still, it is morning yet, on beautification day!

    What is more? From about the dirtiest city on the face of the earth, Lagos has become progressively cleaner; and ever more secure. The audacious bank robberies of yore have become but distant memory, thanks to a robust public-private sector security initiative that other states have copied. And whoever thought the Oshodi human-vehicular traffic logjam, on Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, could ever be dislodged!

    But Fashola’s distinctive legacy is changing the focus of governance from politics to development. That later South West governors of his party have followed suit gives the happy feel that the glorious Awolowo days are here again.

    Still, the Solomon allusion is, for Fashola, a double-edged sword. Solomon, the wisest being that ever lived, was no fool. Yet, his fault, uxoriousness – excessive love of a woman – all but messed up his famed wisdom. That led to the violent split of the kingdom David gave blood and gore to build.

    Governor Fashola’s admirable focus on policy, almost to the total isolation of politics, is ironically the chink in his golden armour. But that tiny chink may well expand, for in the Fashola gubernatorial persona looms a disturbing peep of Thatcherism – a policy wonk’s cold resolve on the integrity of his initiative, even in the face of furious public outcry.

    In the Okada restriction policy, that resolve worked excellently well. The governor was the visionary leader who would enforce the welfare of the generality of his people, even if the affected ultra-vocal minority threw tantrums and cried blue murder.

    But not so in the LASU fee hike policy – and the reason is simple: for a developing country, education is key. Trite: there is nothing like free education. It is “free” because the state is paying for it. Even then, a developing country, in a vast swamp of poverty, cannot afford the Thatcherite conceit that there is nothing like community; and everybody had to carry his or her own educational can.

    Besides, all of Fashola’s now glittering infrastructure would eventually fade and decay. Only education would appreciate with time: in quality, world-class human resource.

    A serious, progressive state must, therefore, make strategic investments in that sector to justify its essence. The Awo credo, that gave Western Nigeria a great head start, was all about that strategic investment. That is why Governor Fashola cannot afford to be sanguine about high fees in the state university, despite the government’s admitted lean resources.

    The political cost of such sanguinity could be devastating. Sound policy might be the hallmark of good governance. But more often than not, even the best of policies are choked by hostile politics.

    Fashola has mastered his policies. But at 50, he must begin to master his politics, if he hopes to go far in statecraft. So far, however, he is sheer gold to Lagos and to his generation.