The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olatunji Dare

Osun: The morning after

All is quiet now in the aftermath of the governorship election in Osun State, bar the exuberant rejoicing in re-elected Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s circle, which stretches all the way from Osogbo to Bourdillon Road in Ikoyi, Lagos, the grieving in Aso Rock and in Wadata Plaza and the gnashing of teeth in the palaces of some wayward monarchs.

Make no mistake about it: The election was a contest between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate, Ogbeni Aregbesola, on the one hand, and President Goodluck Jonathan, and the entire apparatus of the Federal Government on the other, with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Iyiola Omisore, playing along as bit actors.

With the Federal Juggernaut behind you – slush money, logistics, the police, the army, the secret service, clandestine armed services of no known provenance, and the desperate craving to “capture” more opposition territory – with these and much more behind you, who can stand in your way?

Besides, the governorship election in Ekiti two months earlier had not only pointed up a winning formula that accorded sophomoric stunts a greater salience than solid achievement, it had also shown that the entire Southwest was politically ripe for the picking.

But something went horribly wrong on the way to the orchard.

The would-be harvesters suffered a comprehensive sandbagging.

All the intimidating display of force and might, the warrantless arrest of officials and operatives of the governing party in the state, the bullying, the stoking of religious differences, the claim to possession of private facts that showed Omisore not only leading but coasting to victory —everything ended in a puff, “just like that,” to borrow a phasing from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the Afro-beat king.

Such was the compass of the intimidation that Chief Isiaka “Serubawon” Adeleke, who once governed the state on the Caligula Principle —”You can hate us, so long as you fear us” — was driven by fear to flee his home in Ede and go into hiding as the Federal Juggernaut widened the reach of its ravenous dragnet.

At Aso Rock and in the palaces of the wayward monarchs and in Wadata Plaza and in the ranks of Dr Jonathan’s private army of ghost “public affairs analysts” and “public affairs commentators”, who invariably live in Abuja, they must be wondering how what was supposed to be an easy take-over turned into a comprehensive rout of the would-be receivers.

They conveniently forgot that Osun is not Ekiti. Believing that the dividends of democracy begin and end in the stomach, they could not see beyond the stomachs of the electorate. Accordingly, they tailored their messages to appeal to that organ and its immediate satiation. They mis- apprehended an outlier, an aberration, for a trend. They willfully set aside the public record and stuck with their private facts.

And so, what was supposed to serve as a bridgehead for the capture of the Southwest in Dr Jonathan’s all-but-certain presidential run in 2015 ended up as the graveyard of that strategy. They will now have to go back to the drawing board on that one. And, despite the gain in Ekiti, his faction of the National Governors Forum remains a minority; the most it can hope for is parity in membership with the group from which it was suborned to defect.

The Osun verdict is on one level a personal triumph for the austere and driven Rauf Aregbesola. Unlike some who stumbled into office in a fit of absent-mindedness or were dragooned into it, he entered office fully prepared, a man with a mission, armed with blueprints for transforming the State of Osun. From his first day in office, he has pursued his progressive agenda with a singularity of purpose that has alienated some around him who regard political office not as a summons to service but an invitation to eat, drink and be merry.

The election outcome is also a victory for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the National Leader of the victorious APC. Following the party’s freak defeat in the Ekiti governorship race, some commentators had begun to script his political obituary. They said he was waning as a political force in his Southwest redoubt, and was headed for the abyss.

It is not the first or the second time such things are being said of him, and it won’t be the last. Those counting him must be prepared for a long wait. The man’s capacity for resurgence is simply astonishing.

The election was in a way a proving ground for the Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, whom I got to know quite well when he served as a consultant to the Editorial Board of The Guardian, where I was chair of the board and editorial page editor.

He acquitted himself magnificently, displaying the intelligence, the sharp, analytic mind, the capacity for sustained engagement, the eloquence, the resoluteness and the forthrightness that made him one of the youngest, if not the youngest person to be appointed permanent secretary in the Federal Civil Service.

The decisiveness with which he moved the APC machinery to Osogbo to counter the designs of the Federal Might was vintage Oyegun. He is not combative by nature, but he is not afraid of a fight. You can count on him to fight a good fight.

I cannot recall the context now, but in one of the many conversations I had with General Olusegun Obasanjo during visits to his farm in Ota, I mentioned that Oyegun had marked his 55th birthday lately. Obasanjo, who is as flinty with praise as he is with his money, spoke glowingly of Oyegun who served with him when he was head of state.

He asked me to convey to Oyegun his desire to host a birthday luncheon for him, his family and friends. The luncheon did take place, several weeks later.

That is a measure of the esteem in which Oyegun is held.

The on-again, off-again candidate of the Labour Party, Fatai Akinbade, finished as an also-ran. But he provided a comic relief that dispelled somewhat the high tension that marked the vote tallying. Losing on every turf and registering for the most part less than token presence, his spokesperson nevertheless called on the candidates of the APC and the PDP to withdraw if they felt threatened by Akinade’s profile.

At this writing, Omisore has not conceded. The man, who could win election to the Senate from prison where he was being held as a suspect in the prosecution of the murder of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, has now twice failed to win election from the outside. He lost his re-election bid to the Senate, and was crushed in his governorship quest.

His political future is uncertain. Dr. Jonathan may well compensate him with a ministerial appointment, an ambassadorial post, or some other sinecure.

In whatever case, you will never see Omisore again riding an okada or devouring a cob of roast corn purchased from a street vendor.

August 12, 2014
Beware, sender: A UPS experience

Problem:

You have some time-sensitive documents to rush to a foreign destination. Only originals accepted; no scanned documents attached to e-mail, and no facsimile (fax, for short) and no photocopies of any description whatsoever, please.

Solution

Take them to any of those global courier services promising delivery anywhere in four or five working days. For a package containing just four sheets of copy paper, the price will be close to, if not exceed, Nigeria’s minimum monthly wage of N18, 000 that some state employers are yet to honour. But you will have the satisfaction of getting what you paid for.

Until two months or so ago, that would have been my advice to anyone seeking to rush time-sensitive material to a foreign situation.

Now, based a recent personal experience, I would have to say: Beware, sender.

Let me explain.

Just before the United Parcel Service Business Office along Oworonshoki- Apapa Expressway on June 6, 2014, I handed to the clerk a package containing some notarized documents for transmission to my home address in the United States. The official papers, all eight pages of them, had no commercial value whatsoever. Unlawful interception would have breached my privacy somewhat, but would not have redounded to the financial advantage of any Four-One-Niner.

I was assured that the package would be delivered within three working days. The transaction took place on a Friday. Saturday is a working day for UPS, but even granting that it is not, and allowing for Sunday which is definitely not a working day, the package was set to be delivered Wednesday of the following week, latest Thursday.

Given the time-bound nature of the documents, I could live with the N14, 600 I was invoiced.

Wednesday came, but no package was delivered. Thursday came, no delivery. The week ended on the same disobliging note.

By the middle of the following week, delivery would have been too late to serve the purpose of courier freight. But there was nothing to indicate that it was even imminent.

Armed with the payment receipt and other documents relating to the transaction, my assistant went to the UPS office to demand an explanation. He was told that the parcel was being held up at a Customs and Border Protection post in the United States and would be forwarded to its final destination as soon as the officials were done.

Why had they not told me this at the point of transaction?

That is the practice now, and UPS could only urge the relevant agency to clear it not a moment later than was absolutely necessary, my assistant was told.

By now, the addressee was thoroughly frazzled and had begun to doubt whether I had actually couriered the documents. So, I sent down an electronic copy of the shipment transaction, to be used to petition the nearest UPS office to find out what was going on.

Same reply. The parcel arrived in the U.S. within three working days, and has since been in the custody of the Customs and Border Protection agents.

For how much longer?

They could not tell. They could only promise that it would be rushed to the addressee as soon as it was officially cleared.

Was there a phone number or some other contact information through which one could reach the agency in question to have some idea of how soon they will be done inspecting the parcel?

None that they knew of, the UPS people said.

In the event, the parcel was delivered 14 working days after it was accepted for transmission, when it could no longer serve the purpose for which I had been charged an amount close to monthly minimum wage.

My layman’s sense of the law tells me that a breach of contract has occurred, for which I should be able to recover at law. After all, the contract was for delivery to the addressee within three working days, not to some inspecting agency.

But the claim will immediately collide with, and be vapourized by considerations of “national security,” the “doctrine of necessity” and “raison d’état” and all that.

At any rate, what were they looking for in a parcel containing printed matter and weighing all of 0.5 kilograms?

The Ebola fever scare was still some seven weeks away. So, they could not have been subjecting the parcel to microscopic analysis just to be sure it did not harbor the deadly Ebola virus.

Boko Haram had stepped up its nihilist campaign of murder and mayhem, the sophistication of which has led to widespread belief that it must be enjoying foreign logistic and financial backing, and to fears that it might be seeking new operational theatres aboard, perhaps in the United States itself, the bulwark against international terrorism.

Could it be, then, that the U.S. Customs and border protection agents were scouring the parcel for coded messages that might on deconstruction lead them to pre-empt a Boko Haram strike in the homeland or on the soil of any of its NATO partners or, horrible thought, its eternal ally, Israel?

Again, could it be that they were looking for something that might help them crack what they call “the Nigerian Connection” here, the network of persons engaged in syndicated crime covering credit card fraud and advance-fee fraud, the type that has brought to grief many Americans who believe that staggering wealth can be conjured out of nothing?

Perhaps they were looking for something that might help them figure out how Nigeria leaped from the bottom ranks of the world’s least developed nations to the League of the Top 20 in a matter of months. I am told that the United States and its European allies are deeply troubled by this quantum leap, and are fearful that two more of that kind would push them out of their accustomed places and take away the obscene benefits they have been reaping from such positioning.

Or something that might help the international community understand why, more than 40 days after Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls from their school hostel in Chibok, President Goodluck Jonathan had not deigned to meet with their parents and had instead been demanding that they “cooperate” with his administration.

They might for all I know have been looking for hints about where the girls are being kept, a secret that the combined intelligence services of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, France, Australia and Israel have been unable to prise from the Nigerian authorities.

I wish I could say exactly what the U. S. inspectors were looking for or indicate where to turn for answers. What I can say at this time is that since the parcel was released without inviting me or the addressee for questioning, we have not been declared “persons of interest.” But that is not to say that the story is ended, given the mysterious ways “security issues” move here and everywhere.

There was no sign that the parcel had been tampered with or its contents compromised. But that is poor comfort, knowing that I could have had the same parcel delivered for N1,000 in less than ten days by regular mail.

Remember the good old post office.

August 5, 2014
Chibok: In defence of President Jonathan

It has been 100 days since more than 200 female pupils were seized from their school hostel in Chibok, Borno State, by elements of the nihilist Boko Haram terrorist outfit and ferried through the jungle of Sambisa forest to destinations unknown and fates uncertain.

Since then, the Jonathan administration in general, his dutiful and self-effacing wife in particular, and the dynamic and results-oriented President Goodluck Jonathan especially, have been the butt of malignant and unpatriotic gibes pouring ceaselessly from commentators, who could not see the result of the Ekiti governorship election, although it was staring them in the face just as it was tugging at the stomachs of the voters.

“#BringBackOurGirls” has been the constant refrain of some idle, unimaginative people, who cannot find better use for their time.

Instead of spoiling their spouses with good meals and tender loving care or baking cookies for their children or attending to their businesses or doing the laundry or cleaning house or tending their gardens or reading a good book or just taking a revivifying break from the daily grind, these people mill around Abuja’s manicured lawns and even spill on to the streets, to impede the flow of limousines ferrying high state officials to and from urgent state duties.

On one occasion, led by a former minister, they even tried to march on Aso Rock, for the purpose of handing to Himself the President a petition demanding more forceful action to bring back the girls.

The former minister used to have a reputation for good judgment. But her recent sojourn in the opulent offices of the World Bank, in Washington, DC, seems to have impaired her judgment, according to government officials speaking as usual on condition of anonymity.

But for the timely intervention of our ever-vigilant security forces, the misguided protesters would have succeeded in their nefarious scheme, the real object of which was to distract President Jonathan, divert public attention from the roaring successes of his Transformation Agenda and ultimately destabilise his administration.

It is to the eternal credit of the Jonathan administration that the law-enforcement authorities accorded the protesters far greater courtesy and consideration than the self-righteous and publicity-seeking protesters accorded the President of the Republic and his exalted office.

They are nothing if not pertinacious, these desperate do-gooders.

Only the other day they imported Malala, a young woman still traumatised by the wounds inflicted on her by Pakistan’s taliban, to lecture Dr. Jonathan on how to handle the terrorism convulsing northeastern Nigeria — the same Dr. Jonathan who, wearing another hat, is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Do these people hold anything sacred?

Among Malala’s jejune recommendations is that Dr. Jonathan meet the parents of the Chibok girls at the earliest opportunity. Some elements here have even gone further, urging Dr. Jonathan not merely to visit Chibok to see things for himself, but to go on to the dreaded Sambisa forest, home to some of the most ferocious beasts that ever roamed the earth.

Such stunts might capture the headlines and the front pages, but what practical purpose would they serve, really? What if some of the distraught parents vented their anger on the President, cursed him lustily and even attacked him physically, in full view of the global television audience? Is this what Malala and her misguided admirers want?

Why has Malala not arranged a meeting between the authorities of her native Pakistan and parents of the victims of the Taliban’s terrorism? If she is such a prodigy at conflict resolution, why did she not flush out Osama bin Laden who was living the good life in her country until the Americans caught up with him?

What is even more distressing is that Dr. Jonathan actually yielded to her entreaties and agreed to meet the parents of the Chibok girls – the same parents who have spurned his appeals for the kind of cooperation with the Federal Government that would have prevented the girls from being abducted in the first place, or resulted in securing their release within 100 hours at the most.

Such executive pliability ill serves the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Nigeria.

Before you know it, another girl – or a boy, for a change – could just parachute in from Outer Ruritania to demand the reinstatement of the impeached former governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako, as well as immediate and unconditional cessation of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) juggernaut’s plans to impeach a governor or a local council chairman operating outside its protective umbrella.

One hundred days is undoubtedly a long time to stay in captivity even in the most pleasant surroundings. In the infernal Sambisa forest, everyday must seem like an eternity to the unfortunate girls. But in the emotion-soaked debate on just how to proceed, many have lost sight of the elementary fact that rescue efforts take time and meticulous planning, and flawless execution.

Ask the Americans.

In what is now called the Iran hostage crisis, Iranian students protesting the admission of the deposed Shah to the United States for cancer treatment seized more than 60 workers of the United States Embassy in Tehran and held them hostage for 444 days.

This is not a misprint: Not 14 or 44, 114 or even 144, but 444 days!

The precipitate rush to free them ended in a disastrous failure in the desert, drained the Jimmy Carter administration of all vital signs and handed Ronald Reagan a sweeping victory in the 1980 presidential election.

That lesson may be lost on those armchair strategists seeking to goad him into launching a precipitate rescue mission, but it is not lost on Dr. Jonathan, an acclaimed student of world history and international relations.

The military authorities that were once misled into proclaiming that more than 100 of the Chibok girls had been rescued are understandably more cautious these days. They would say only that they know the precise location where the girls are being held and have perfected contingency plans to rescue them without putting their lives at risk.

That is much more substantial than the combined intelligence and rescue experts and the eyes in the sky that the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Australia, Israel and other nations have achieved since their deployment in Nigeria to help in the search for the Chibok girls.

And there is much more to come if only the National Assembly would be dutiful enough to approve President Jonathan’s request to borrow U.S. $1 billion to equip the armed forces to crush Boko Haram for all time.

But the disloyal opposition, the armchair strategists and their confederates in the media would hear none of it.

The money, they are claiming, is for more “stomach infrastructure” to help the PDP capture those states not currently under its control. In whatever case, why do you need a loan to equip the national army to fight an insurgency, they are asking. What has been happening to the vast sums of money voted year after year for the armed forces and “national security”?

Those asking this kind of question are compounding their lack of patriotism with sedition. By so doing, they unwittingly or, more likely, wittingly give aid and comfort to Boko Haram, and gravely undermine the Jonathan administration’s valiant efforts to stamp out terrorism not just in Nigeria but in the sub region, the region, and ultimately in the world.

President Jonathan is clearly on top of the situation.

July 29, 2014
On reaching 70

When you reach age 40, the New York Times humourist and satirist, Russell Baker, wrote in his engrossing autobiography, Growing Up, you suddenly realise that you can no longer take your immortality for granted.

Baker, since deceased, was writing about a country in which the life expectancy even for persons at the lowest rung of the economic ladder was well above 60 years.

According to the best authorities, life expectancy in Nigeria may be as low as 47, or as high as 54 years. So that if you attain the age of 70, as I did last week, you are at least in a statistical sense doing “overtime,” for which the reward is certainly not an enhanced rate of compensation but an accelerated journey into the arcane world of entropy.

From then on, the trajectory is notorious: Memory falters, eyes dim, reflexes slacken, hearing diminishes, joints creak, body processes slow down and motion is constrained. Thurgood Marshall, the first black associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, captured this process succinctly in1991 on being asked why he was resigning from the court when he could keep the job until his death.

“Because my body is falling apart,” the great man said. He was 81 and lived for two more years.

There are of course even here notable persons, who have proved superior to that trajectory. I am thinking of Chief Edwin Clark, rambunctious as ever at 82, the irrepressible Chief Ayo Adebanjo, former Head of State Gen. Yakubu Gowon and former President Olusegun Obasanjo. At 80, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has a gait that persons two decades younger will give anything to possess and runs a schedule that will faze persons half his age.

I have not yet begun to feel the full weight of the years. And I am indeed thankful that I have beaten the statistical odds. So, when asked how it felt to be on cusp of 70, I usually responded that it felt not much different from being 65, or 60 for that matter.

Not anymore.

When your colleagues in the newsroom call you “Daddy” to your hearing or “Baba Dare” behind your back; when the young woman you are about to compliment from the purest of motives on her fetching dress and exquisite grooming gives you a look that literally screams: “Don’t even think of going there” ; and when you are on the receiving end of friendly advice to give up your snazzy designer necktie for “the younger ones,” you know that you are now perceived differently even if you don’t feel much different.

Still, the anniversary was worth celebrating.

It was a compact and a starchy affair, marked with a lecture and the launch of what the Germans call a festschrift, an appreciation of a scholar when he turns 65, by fellow scholars, and with the usual reminiscences. It had nothing in common with the owambe outing that the chairman of the occasion, Gen. TY Danjuma, said jokingly he would have preferred.

Although I had heard much about the resolute manner of Gen. Danjuma, it was not until 1991 that I experienced it first-hand. Lagos State Military Governor Raji Rasaki had closed down The Guardian Newspapers, following the publication of a story that the police had shot dead two students during a demonstration at the Yaba College of Technology. Rasaki let it be known that if The Guardian disavowed the publication – which was accurate in every material particular —and apologised, he would allow it to resume business.

The Guardian Publisher, Alex Ibru, had then called a meeting of senior editors to deliberate on Rasaki’s proposal. In attendance were two members of the Board of Directors, Gen. Danjuma and Chris Okolie, the Publisher of Newbreed.

The discussion was going in the way of finding the words to meet Rasaki’s terms when Danjuma intervened.

“We cannot apologise,” he said. “We will not apologise.”

That resolute pronouncement, backed enthusiastically by Chris Okolie, ended the discussion. Rasaki did not get his apology. A week later, The Guardian was back in business.

But I digress.

Not a few persons in the anniversary audience must have been grieved to learn from the guest lecturer, Prof. Kwame Karikari, of the University of Ghana, Legon, and most recently the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, that Ethiopia, freed from the tyrannous grip of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the Dergue, and Eritrea, which at its birth showed inspiring intimations of a new way of governance in Africa, have regressed into stark authoritarianism, along with Gambia, which Yahya Jamme rules as his personal estate.

But these are only the worst cases on a continent in which rulers show scant regard for the rule of law, human rights and freedom of speech and of the press.

Nor did my fellow Columbian, Karikari, spare the men and women of the press — their predilection for cutting journalistic corners and engaging in sensationalistic reporting, their scant regard for ethics and their often instrumental approach to the business, not forgetting the proprietors who do not pay their workers regularly and thus drive them to seek or accept favours that compromise news work.

Dr. Wale Adebanwi conceived the festschrift, nurtured it, sustained it and saw it to execution in just six months. Just to give some idea of the effort that went into preparing the volume: It features contributions from 25 scholars, media academics and media practitioners on four continents.

It is emblematic of the diligent commitment that has earned Dr. Adebanwi a global reputation for scholarship in just the first decade of his academic career. I thank him and all the contributors to the festschrift. If one follows the German tradition, it is coming five years late. But I take it with grateful thanks.

I claim no entitlement to the significant presence at the anniversary event of my colleagues in the academy and the media, former students and persons who have followed my work over the years. Few things are more gratifying than the approval of one’s colleagues, peers and a discriminating audience. I am deeply touched.

In the years ahead, I plan to devote my time to spreading awareness about the childhood degenerative disease, autism, with which one of my sons is afflicted, and to use whatever influence I can muster to draw attention to the plight of those so circumstanced.

A Very Special Birthday Greeting

The Hon Patrick Obahiagbon, Chief of Staff, represented his principal, the Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, at my birthday celebration.

But it was in his personal capacity that he sent on the eve of that milestone this e-mail, which I crave his indulgence to share with the devoted followers of this page.

Hear it, then, from Himself the Igodomigodo:

“Congratulations on your natal day, my brother.

“Only a particolored pantaloon would be didymusian as to the fact that your peregrination thus far in this incarnation has been dedicated to the pax Nigeriana of our dream.

“May your pantagruelian and rabelaisian pen never suffer atrophy that you may continuously dance on the coruscating cadence of the hybla bees.So Mote It Be.”

July 22, 2014
When success breeds terror

I always suspected that there was much more to the terror that has been convulsing Nigeria in the past four years than the facile rationalisation that all the analysts, domestic and foreign, have brought to the matter.

How, I have been musing: How can the desire of an extremist sect to Islamise Nigeria, the marginalisation of adherents and sympathisers of that sect, the corrosive poverty in Nigeria’s Northeast and the historic indifference of the authorities to it, plus Nigeria’s military contribution to the international effort to crush the revolt of the Touaregs in Mali – how can these factors, mere allegations at best, have led to the depredations and the devastation that have now become the fearsome signature of Boko Haram?

Is this line of reasoning not the product of the kind that led some commentators who were so caught up in the foam of events that they could not see the decisive element in the recent Ekiti governorship election – the stomach infrastructure factor that lay just beneath the surface in several precincts and was literally screaming at them in the others?

The whole thing just doesn’t add up. An explanation that can stand the most rigorous analysis will have to be sought. And it would most likely come from the nation’s most accomplished social scientists, I concluded with resignation.

Little did I know that our own Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, whom no one has ever accused of psittacism, has not only been seeking but has actually found such an explanation.

In the finest tradition of scholarship, his thesis is at once testable, parsimonious and heuristic. It is engaging and elegant, and it has the great merit of deriving from longitudinal perspective, as opposed to the snap-shot approach that is the standard fare of much social research.

Best of all, it explains the relationship among the component variables, it is predictive, and it serves as a reliable guide to action. In fact, I am almost prepared to say that it is the stuff of a genius.

Stated simply, Laban’s thesis, postulated at an interview in Lagos the other day, is that there is a direct correlation behind the series of terrorist attacks in the country and the various landmarks recorded by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration.

Whenever the Jonathan administration has had cause to celebrate an achievement – which happens all too frequently, I might add — bombs explode to distract Nigerians and portray the government in bad light, the highly cerebral minister was reported to have said.

This is no fanciful thesis. The empirical evidence Maku adduces is overwhelming and irrefutable. Hear him: “Immediately we rebased our economy and it was now confirmed that Nigeria was the largest economy in Africa, there were bombs at Chibok. Immediately they learnt we were going to hold the World Economic Forum, there were bombs in Abuja and its environs to make sure Nigeria does not get the economic benefits of hosting the World Economic Forum and discourage the world from coming here and to make the attack the centre point of international and local media. We also noticed that immediately after Ekiti, the bombs started raining again.”

I must here enter a word of caution to those who are ever so quick to jump to conclusions – usually the wrong conclusions. Maku’s thesis implies no causality. It posits no cause-and-effect relationship between President Jonathan’s achievements, coruscating as they are, and the barbarous exploits of Boko Haram and its confederates in murder. It merely establishes a direct correlation between them, the exact magnitude of which my sources say he is planning to reveal to the World Press next week.

From the thesis, it follows that the frequency of terrorist strikes in Nigeria varies directly as the accomplishments of the Jonathan administration in transforming Nigeria. It may even be the case that the volume and intensity of terrorist strikes on Nigerian soil also correlate directly with the magnitude of the central government’s accomplishments, but that is an investigation for another day.

For now, it is sufficient to know that each time the Jonathan administration chalks up another glittering achievement, another terrorist strike can reasonably be expected.

The policy implications of this seminal finding should not be lost on the Jonathan administration, the security services and the public.

Given the indissoluble association between new government accomplishments and terrorist strikes, it follows that if the authorities are truly minded to curb terrorism, they would have to freeze with immediate effect any project or activity that might lead them to proclaim success of any kind or move Boko Haram to suspect that the nation is moving forward.

The authorities would have to curb their predilection for taking the thought for the deed and for celebrating mere intent as glorious achievement. In short, they must stop creating the illusion of momentum, for that only incenses the Boko Haramites and drives them to murderous rage.

This means tamping down all those claims about the wonders that the Transformation Agenda and the Industrial Revolution and the New Automotive Policy and the New Agricultural Policy and the Cassava Revolution and the Rice Revolution and the New Rail and Water Transportation Policy have wrought, not forgetting the zillions of jobs they have spawned of will spawn.

It means the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its agent, the Federal Government, not winning another election, Ekiti-style.

It means not staging any international conference.

It means desisting from re-basing the economy again, no matter the provocation or the benefits; it means restraining all those rating bodies from ranking any Nigerian among the world’s richest people; it means not calling global attention to the largest fleet of executive jetliners in Africa and one of the largest in the world, is owned and operated by Nigerians, as President Jonathan has been doing.

It most certainly means summoning those overzealous Transformation Ambassadors to modesty. It means ordering them to desist from placing Dr. Jonathan in the same league as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Lee Kuan Yew and Barack Obama.

Armed with Maku’s hypothesis, the security forces can now calibrate with greater confidence the national threat level and accordingly mobilise first responders. Whenever yet another epochal achievement is being proclaimed from on high, they know it is time to sound the alarm and deploy their anti-terror machine against the Boko Haram strike that is sure to follow.

Residents of cities prone to terrorist attacks now have a reliable warning system: Take cover when the Minister of Industry declares that the all-Nigeria automobile that compares favourably with those built in Japan, Germany and South Korea and costs much less is about to roll off the assembly line. You know then that Boko Haram must be lurking in the neighbourhood.

July 15, 2014
Once upon another C’wealth Games

The ongoing World Cup in Brazil has so gripped Nigeria that I will not be surprised that not many in the audience of the usually attentive are aware that the Commonwealth Games are due to start in Glasgow, Scotland, in two weeks.

Games officials and indeed all Glaswegians must be heartened that the event has not been foreshadowed by the kind of political issue that doomed the 1986 edition held in Scotland’s premier city, Edinburgh.

It was a sham and a financial disaster.

Of the 59 countries eligible to participate, only 27 showed up, just four of them – Botswana, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland — from Africa.

Thirty-two countries stayed away. Revenue projections based on broadcasting rights and sponsorships and spending by teams and visitors collapsed, plunging Edinburgh into huge debt.

Designed to celebrate the diversity and common purpose undergirding the largest political organization –I exclude the moribund Non-aligned Movement – the Games ended up as a competition among white athletes for the most part, bereft of the colour and the gaiety and the grit that athletes from Asia and Africa and the Caribbean usually brought to the event.

Never in its 56-year history had the quadrennial competition witnessed such a spectacular flop.

Few now remember, and fewer still ever knew, that the discussion that triggered off the massive boycott of the Games originated in Rutam House, in the Conference Room of the Editorial Board of The Guardian Newspapers, one sultry Thursday in July 1986, two weeks to the competition.

Back then, meetings of the Editorial Board were largely unstructured. Members in attendance suggested subjects or issues meriting editorial attention; the urbane and intellectually-formidable Stanley Macebuh presiding, entered the topics on his yellow notepad, and discussions followed. If you brought up an issue judged worthy of an editorial, you ended up being assigned to write the editorial.

The Nigerian contingent to the Games was counting the days to its departure for Edinburgh. That, remember, was the time of Structural Adjustment, when goods, consumer goods, were scarce or unaffordable or both. A foreign trip, all expenses paid, with pocket money for athletes and hefty allowances for officials in the almighty British pound, would go a long way in easing the pains of the benighted programme.

That was also a time of ferment in the anti-apartheid struggle within South Africa and the wider world, particularly in Africa. In the Commonwealth, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stood imperiously alone against the tide of history. She not only resolutely opposed any plan to impose comprehensive economic sanctions against the racist regime in Pretoria, she branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist and M’konto We Sizwe (MK for short), the military wing of the African National Congress, a terrorist organisation.

To undermine the exclusion of South Africa from competitive international sport, Thatcher’s government had processed in record time papers granting South African marathoner Zola Budd citizenship to enable her compete in the 1984 Olympics under the British flag and perhaps add a medal or two to what was sure to be a modest haul for Britain.

Given Thatcher’s – and Britain’s – duplicitous role in a matter that touched every African at the core of his or her being, should Nigeria participate in the XIII Commonwealth Games?

That was the question before The Guardian’s Editorial Board that sultry Thursday, two weeks to the Games.

The answer was unanimous: No. And I was asked to find the words to affirm that conclusion and the reasoning behind it for publication the following Saturday.

Officials and athletes set to fly to Edinburgh for the Games were aghast, and they registered their disenchantment with The Guardian in various ways.

In the policy establishment, however, the reaction was different. Back from his rounds at the Ministry of External Affairs the following Monday, The Guardian foreign editor Ejiro Onobrakpeya told us that the editorial had resonated powerfully and that the Federal Government would most likely order a boycott of the Games.

The next day, The Guardian reported pointedly that, based on a directive from the Federal Government, Nigeria would not take part in the Games. The official announcement came only the day after.

The effect was galvanic.

By the end of that week, virtually all member-countries of the Commonwealth in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean had announced that they would be joining in the boycott, thus effectively sealing the doom of the Edinburgh Games.

References in the global media to “the Nigeria-led boycott” of the Games must have pleased military President Ibrahim Babangida and External Affairs Minister Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, emblematising as it did, not merely a foreign policy triumph, but a resurgence of Nigeria’s waning leadership role in Africa.

In Rutam House, however, we felt somewhat cheated. We had lit the fuse that literally consumed the XIII Commonwealth Games; the Federal Government had merely accepted our well-argued recommendation. And yet, everyone was calling the result “the Nigeria-led boycott” when they should be calling it “The Guardian-led boycott.”

All the same, we dutifully congratulated the authorities for adopting our principled advocacy. And for long thereafter, we playfully indulged ourselves in the conceit that we ran the world.

The credit belongs elsewhere

At the bottom of this page, you will find a feature labelled “Hardball.” It carries a conspicuous notice, a disclaimer in effect, that it is not the product of the writer whose column is posted above it.
Yet I often find that I am credited with its content. A recent scholarly volume assessing the Jonathan administration did just that, with footnotes to match.
I would not have said some of the things posted under that rubric, or would have phrased them differently. However, this is not to disavow its robust, often irreverent but always scintillating tone and content, merely to say that the credit belongs elsewhere.

July 8, 2014
Vote-harvesting, then and now

Back in October 1991, a tantalising new delicacy was added to the already formidable menu of the nation’s political cuisine.

It made a grand entry at the governorship primaries in Lagos State, a crucial benchmark in the stultifying and merry-go-round that self-anointed Military President Ibrahim Babangida called a transition to democratic rule. Provisional, because the confection owes nothing to the great Murtala Muhammed, who must have been too busy tending his garden after-hours to have any time left for baking.

The seductive delicacy was in fact the imaginative invention of one of Babangida’s newly-bred politicians, but my attorneys had warned that I would be dancing dangerously on the edge of defamation if I named the product for its inventor. I was inconsolable because, when the product (sandwich) is prefixed with his name, the whole thing has a cadenced, alliterative ring.

I can now reveal that its inventor was Dapo Sarumi, who failed in the election aforementioned, but went on to serve as Minister of Information during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term. I can also now call it by its proper name – the Sarumi Sandwich.

The recipe was simple. Get a fresh-baked loaf of bread. Split it at the top with a sharp knife. Gently insert into the slit a crisp N20 note (that was the Murtala, or “Muri” connection), then put the loaf in a cellophane wrapping and seal. It did not exactly come with an advisory that it was tastiest when served oven-fresh on Election Day, at the precincts of a polling centre, with the candidate looking out from a not-so discreet stance for those who “obtained” the sandwich but failed to deliver. But the message was clear.

Detecting inconstancy was easy. That, remember, was the era of the Open Ballot System, in which voters lined up behind their candidate’s portrait and cast their ballot for the candidate in full public view. And many were the voters who paid dearly for their inconstancy.

There were several variations to that theme. As told me by my driver at the time, the landlord would on the eve of crucial elections summon all the voting-age residents of his sprawling tenement to a meeting in the courtyard, announce his candidate, and hint broadly that he expected them to vote for his choice.

They were of course perfectly at liberty to vote the otherwise, he assured them solemnly, just as he too, a committed democrat, was perfectly at liberty to determine their tenancy if they ignored his preference. For good measure, he positioned himself close to the polling booth well before voting started and remained there until voting closed, checking off each tenant on a master list as they did his bidding.

To return to the Sarumi Sandwich: shortly after the entry of that treacherous victual into the political scene, Prof. Humphrey Nwosu’s National Electoral Commission swiftly banned the sale, display, storage, distribution or consumption of bread in any guise or disguise, and by whatsoever name called, within a 200-metre radius of a polling centre. The same rule applied to biscuits and fruit, but apparently not to cake.

Nwosu took no chances. If the usual suspects had tried to evade the law by offering a Sarumi Cake in place of the eponymous sandwich, Nwosu would have moved the Federal Military Government to promulgate a decree forbidding its baking, display, sale, consumption or distribution in any form a full week before Election Day.

Our sociologists may well assert, then, that what is now being called the “infrastructure of the stomach,” the cultivation of which turned the recent Ekiti governorship election for the populist challenger against the donnish incumbent and made the voters appear as if they cared more about their stomachs than their future and the future of their children, had as its antecedent the Sarumi Sandwich.

Ekiti Governor-elect Ayo Fayose emerges from the foregoing as a serious student of the political sociology of Nigeria. He had entered the 2003 governorship race with virtually no political assets – certainly no name recognition, and no godfathers. But he had somehow edged out an incumbent who had all the right assets, even if not a sterling performance record.

True, Fayose had pulled it off with help from a sitting president desperate to show that he was not without significant following in his geographical home base and an Arch-Fixer, whose specialty is turning victory into defeat and defeat into victory.

But he also catered, even if indirectly, to the infrastructure of the stomach. In parts of the state where water was scarce, he sent in tankers to distribute the precious commodity free. He also supplied free kerosene at a time when its price had risen beyond what ordinary consumers could afford.

In his latest outing, his approach was more sharply targeted, less nuanced.

You showed up at his campaign headquarters, and were rewarded with 2.5kg parcel of parboiled long-grain rice in a package bearing his portrait and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) umbrella, plus cash that, by some accounts, ranged from N2, 500 to just N500.

But there was a catch. You had to present a current Voter Card, probably as an indication at the very least, of an intention to vote, though not necessarily for him. He was not prepared to waste the provisions bounteously furnished by Abuja on people who were not in a position to deliver even if they had the best will in the world.

That was exactly what those starving polytechnic students discovered when they stormed Fayose’s campaign headquarters in expectation of free rice and some pocket change. No current voter card, no free rice and no free money.

It does not follow, I should add, that his sweeping election victory resulted directly from the freebies. You could still obtain the freebies and vote against him or abstain from voting. You could obtain and still exercise your democratic franchise freely.

Perhaps that was why Prof. Attahiru Jega’s INEC had no problem with that approach.

Say it for Ayo Fayose, that a person credited with few intellectual skills, is single-handedly rewriting the theory and practice of electioneering in Nigeria, and perhaps globally.

July 1, 2014
Ekiti: The morning after

It is all over now in Ekiti, bar the wailing and the gnashing of teeth in Governor Kayode Fayemi’s camp, and the exuberant rejoicing in Governor-elect Ayo Fayose’s circle.

There is no way to finesse or spin this one: Fayemi and the All Progressives Congress (APC) took a comprehensive shellacking.

No major public affairs analyst, among whom I number myself, saw this coming. This will therefore have to be accounted one of the most egregious failures of perception in the annals of political journalism in Nigeria.

When we placed Fayemi and Fayose on the scale, we saw in the one an incumbent whose record spoke eloquently for a second term, as did his overall approach to the business of governance: deliberative, steeped in the detail and nuance of policy, goal-oriented, and unobtrusive for the most part.

In the other we saw a challenger who had had his chance as governor and blown it spectacularly, a showboat and a con-artist whose idea of governance consists in stagingstunt after tawdry stunt, given to cheap populism and not a little demagoguery, and withal not foresworn to violence as a means of winning and retaining support.

When we surveyed the field, we saw an electorate populated for the most part by sophisticated and discerning men and women of much learning – several holders of university degrees in every home, plus a formidable array holders of doctorates in every specialism under the sun, to say nothing of professors, of whom, household by household, Ekiti probably boasts the largest number in Nigeria.

Given a choice between Fayemi and Fayose, surely, the learned, sophisticated and discriminating people of the “Fountain of Knowledge”, who know only too well the antecedents of the twain, would heartily renew the mandate of the one and indignantly reject the advances of the other.

The only problem was that we analysts attended for the most part to people like ourselves; we read for the most part what they wrote and heard for the most part what they said. So that, for all practical purposes, we did not see what was out there; instead, we saw only what we wanted to see, heard only what we wanted to hear and believed only what we wanted to believe about the candidates and the electorate.

We were not “on ground,” to employ a peculiarly Nigerian coinage.

That feeling first struck me when I saw the picture of the mammoth crowd at Fayose’s campaign rally with President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP’s grandees. Given Fayose’s reputation for pulling all manner of stunts, it was tempting to dismiss the throng as a rented crowd. But if it was indeed a rented crowd, it must have taken a great deal of organisation and resources to put it together. And the people behind it could not be dismissed as inconsequential.

As I drove through Ekiti en route Kogi six days to the election, the feeling that we analysts might have misread the Ekiti political terrain stirred somewhat. Many campaign billboards with pictures of the candidates had been vandalised. But billboards bearing Fayemi’s pictures seem to have been marked for special treatment. Was this the work of commissioned thugs, or an indication of public feeling toward him?

But perhaps the clearest indication of the situation “on ground” came from a resident of Ekiti in the early stage of the vote count. Fayose was going to win and win big, he said with the utmost confidence.

What of his less-than-savoury first coming, especially the scandal-plagued Integrated Poultry Project that gulped billions of Naira without producing an egg, and the rusted remains of which are strewn over the countryside?

“The people have forgotten,” he said. “Those who haven’t forgotten don’t care.”

By “the people,” he obviously meant the okada bikers, artisans, street vendors, shopkeepers, motor-part touts, unemployed persons who don’t know where the next meal will come from, or when, and of course rural dwellers.

But Fayemi has transformed Ekiti through building new infrastructures and rehabilitating the old ones.

“The people are yearning for infrastructure of the stomach,” he rejoined.

What of the murder rap he is facing, arising from the killing of two political opponents?

“Even if Fayose were to kill off one-half of the population, the other half would still vote for him,” he said. “They love him. They adore him.”

Fayose himself would confirm this mysterious hold on “the people” when he said at his post-election interview that if he raised his hand high, they would cheer vehemently; if he lowered the hand, the cheering would subside. And if he pointed in one direction, they would go in that direction.

Is this what they call charisma?

By whatever name, it is at once fascinating and disturbing. It was missing entirely from our analyses. And now, we have mud on our faces.

We should be prepared for the taunts and the jeers of the other side, given the triumphalism arising from the Ekiti verdict and the vindictiveness that is their trademark.

One of their standard responses is to dismiss whatever I write as the bidding of a “paymaster,” by which they obviously mean Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, feigning ignorance of the well-advertised fact that I earn my living as a university professor in the United States and need no “paymaster,” real or imagined, to practise my art and craft.

Personally, I will not be surprised if, henceforth, they reflexively dismissed those of us who got Ekiti wrong as “failed analysts,” or even more damnably as “failed and discredited analysts.” Some of them may pivot on the build-up to my 70th birthday to excoriate those “spent old men who should have long ago left the serious and exacting business of journalism to younger and fresher minds.”

I hear you all.

If there is any redeeming grace in this matter, it lies in recognising that the right to comment on public issues – indeed, freedom of speech itself – implies the right to be wrong, so long as one is not deliberately and irresponsibly wrong.

I do not believe that those of us who called Ekiti for Fayemi were deliberately and irresponsibly wrong. We were wrong all the same; flat-out wrong.

The Ekiti people have spoken. Those who do not like what they said must in the spirit of democracy respect their will, as must those who regard it as the triumph of style over substance.

Fayose’s return to power eight years after he was disgraced out of office is one of the most amazing political comebacks not just in Nigeria but anywhere. He deserves to be congratulated.

His challenge is to prove as adroit in governing as he has been in vote harvesting.

With Ekiti now back under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) umbrella, President Jonathan should for once redeem his pledge and unleash the Federal Might on the state, its transformational magic to work.

June 24, 2014
Between rhetoric and actuality

In parts, President Goodluck Jonathan’s speech before the All Nigeria Political Parties Summit held in Abuja last week is the stuff of the rhetoric of statesmanship.

“Our roles should not be limited to the struggle to win elections and acquire political powers but also to handling the demands of patriotism and statesmanship and restoring hope to the Nigerian people,” he said with reference to the political class. “In all this, it is pertinent that the actions, conduct and utterances of all political stakeholders reflect the highest level of commitment to the defence of our social cohesion, our political stability and our sovereignty as a nation.”

This is the stuff of the rhetoric of high patriotism, rendered all the more rousing by its ex-cathedra provenance. The President and Commander-in-Chief is nothing if not patriot-in-chief as well.

And there is more from Dr Jonathan.

“The conduct and utterances of leading politicians at home and abroad,” he said, are rapidly creating and spreading unnecessary tension in the country. Such unguarded utterances on their part fester (sic) the embers of discord, bitterness and rancor. Such unfortunate development plays into the hands of extremist elements waging a vicious campaign of terror against the state.”

High-minded stuff indeed, in a long season of pusillanimity.

“Our political parties,” he went on, “must remain positive and constructive in their engagements as we seek to build a virile and stable nation that can compete with other states in the world.”

Not even the most querulous commentator can find fault with these remarks. They are indeed the stuff of the rhetoric of statesmanship, it is necessary to insist.

When Dr Jonathan went on to warn of “very remorseless and anti-democratic forces operating in the political system, ever ready to exploit lapses in the management of our political and electoral processes,” and that some of these forces may during the forthcoming elections, “through their lifestyle, truncate the nation’s hard-won democratic liberty,”you could properly charge him with hyperbole, some scare-mongering even.

The newspapers, circulating freely again after a four-day blockade imposed by the military officials in the name of “national security,” dutifully captured the President’s rather apocalyptic warning on their front pages or in their headlines.

Samples: “Jonathan alleges plot to scuttle 2015 polls” (The Guardian). “Forces out to truncate democracy – Jonathan (Vanguard). “Jonathan: anti-democratic forces working against 2015 polls” (The NATION, on an inside page).

You could point out that being ever ready to “exploit lapses in the management of business of the politically and electoral processes” is the main business of the political opposition, consecrated in the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Any opposition party that fails to exploit such lapses ought to have its registration withdrawn.

You could also ask how political actors could truncate Nigeria’s democracy “through their lifestyle,” of all things.

But you would still have to situate Dr Jonathan’s warning in the context of the rhetoric of statesmanship that runs through portions of his speech.

Taken as a whole, however, the speech lacks not just plausibility but moral force. Dr Jonathan came across like the direction post that is always pointing somewhere but never going there.

In his actions and utterances, he is first and foremost leader of the PDP, desperate to keep his party in power by all means and at all cost, and to secure another term. That preoccupation often trumps his office as President of Nigeria; rarely does he come across as a statesman.

Take as an example, his declaration that terrorism, Boko Haram style, is convulsing only states governed by the opposition APC, whereas states governed by the PDP are models of good governance and orderly development.

It so happens that the three North-eastern states ravaged by terrorism are indeed governed by the APC. But that is not the whole truth. The larger truth is that, until their governors defected to the APC some six months ago, those states had been under the control of the PDP since the end of military rule in 1999. Plateau State, which has at its helm Jonah Jang, the chair of the PDP Governors Forum, is being daily ravaged by “Fulani herdsman” terrorism, with occasional Boko Haram intervention.

By his unhelpful and utterly partisan declamation, Dr Jonathan effectively politicised what was hitherto an issue on which all Nigerians were united across party affiliation. And yet, in his speech, he could say with a straight face that “We must never politicise the fundamentals and core imperatives of defending the state,” since doing so would only “embolden” the terrorists and their confederates.

Not yet done, Dr Jonathan publicly berated the former PDP governors who migrated to the APC, saying that they could not win elections in their constituencies.

Even if that is true, it smacks of politics in its rawest form. Dr Jonathan should have left that kind of talk to one of the dozens of political flunkeys at his service, or front organisations flush with slush funds from his alternative treasury.

Take again the petulant vindictiveness with which he has pursued Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s ascendancy as Emir of Kano. Sanusi had served out his controversial suspension from the post of Central Bank Governor and his lawsuit challenging the ouster is before the courts.

We have it from reliable sources that Dr Jonathan tried to block Sanusi’s preferment. His party, the ruling PDP, even tried to pre-empt it by publicly congratulating one of the contestants who, it would turn out, had not been designated emir.

When these shabby tactics failed, the police, acting on Abuja’s orders, blockaded the emir’s palace, claiming rather disingenuously that they were doing so to ensure the safety of its treasure of precious artifacts. It was as if the matter at issue were the throne of Emir of Nigeria rather than that of Emir of Kano. Meanwhile, denied access to the palace, the new emir had to take up temporary residence in Government House, Kano, as the Governor’s guest.

The siege on the Emir’s palace was lifted only after Abuja had extracted an apology of sorts from Sanusi over his disclosure of wide gaps in the Federal Government’s financial reporting, and a promise to do nothing that would embarrass the federal authorities.

There is no statesmanship here, only petulance.

Finally, there is President Jonathan’s open and enthusiastic embrace of Ayo Fayose as his party’s candidate in the Ekiti gubernatorial election scheduled for Saturday. Fayose once occupied that position based on a gravely flawed election and was impeached for gross misconduct and dismissed. He is a suspect in the investigation of the murder of two of his political opponents and the subject of an indictment for serious fraud.

It may well be that Dr Jonathan could not dissuade his party from nominating Fayose. Still, in another country, the President would have kept a very long distance between himself and a candidate so heavily tainted.

Not in Nigeria. For there was Dr Jonathan the other day, enthusiastically presenting Fayose to the Ekiti people in a carnival atmosphere, with PDP chieftains and the mighty apparatus of the Nigerian state in tow. The only thing missing was Dr Jonathan’s trademark azonto dance.

There is no statesmanship here, no thought about the next generation, only raw political calculation to serve the needs of the moment.

June 17, 2014
“June 12”: An infamy revisited

I am writing these lines at 7:30 in the evening of Thursday, June 10, 1993, just 48 hours to the presidential election. But it is by no means clear that the election will actually take place.

The High Court in Abuja is yet to determine whether the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Federal Attorney-General (Clement Akpamgbo) and Military President Ibrahim Babangida have furnished compelling reasons as to why the election should not be stopped, as demanded by Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for a Better Nigeria (ABN). The association has followed up its petition with a huge demonstration in Kaduna, urging Babangida to stay on for four more years.

S. G. Ikoku’s self-styled Council of Elder Statesmen is still busy calling for what amounts to a scuttling of the transition process. Curiously, its advocacy, dripping with contempt for the two official political parties and their presidential candidates and indeed for the entire political class, is described not as a proposal but a “Report.’’ The ‘’Report’’ is received in Abuja with all the pomp and circumstance of a commissioned job.

Newspapers are awash with unsigned advertisements excoriating the SDP candidate, Moshood Abiola, and the NRC candidate, Bashir Tofa, for all manner of misconduct, ranging from alleged purloining of an opponent’s letter to religious fanaticism. The country is awash in rumours of dark plots and dire warnings.

From his base in London, fugitive Second Republic minister Umaru Dikkko, no longer fearful of being shipped home in a crate, is reported to have written to the Kaduna Mafia, warning that under no circumstance should a Southerner be allowed to win power.

As if to add poignancy to the rumoured Dikko epistle, allegations surface that Abiola and a conclave of Yoruba elders have completed plans to transfer the federal capital back to Lagos if Abiola won the election. And if he did not, Igbo property in Yorubaland was marked for destruction.

Such were the doubts and distrust sowed in the week before the election and watered assiduously every passing day. Long and disorderly queues formed by panic-stricken motorists in the wake of a strike by petroleum workers strengthen doubts about the election. A breakdown in electricity and water supplies further reinforces the doubts.

NEC Chairman Humphrey Nwosu comes on the television screen as I write these lines, ebullient as ever, and reeling out in a sing-song, combative voice, a trainload of things that must not be done on election day and assuring a national audience that all was set for the historic poll.

I am immediately reminded of what someone who should know told me long ago: Never mind the histrionics. Good old Humphrey is not actually in charge, and does not know what is really going on.

At any rate, no polling booths have been erected, and no voters’ list has been put on display in Lagos 48 hours to the poll. It requires a degree of credulity bordering on naiveté to wager that the poll will indeed hold on June 12.

NTA’s network news has just ended. There is no indication at all of developments in the ABN’s legal battle to scuttle the election. The doubts remain. The electoral laws state categorically that no court action can stand in the way of the election. If this means anything at all, it means that no court can entertain any petition that seeks to stop the election. The Abuja High Court has not only entertained the petition, it allows it to drag on for one full week, and to cast grave doubts on whether the election will be held.

At this point, I break off and go to bed, hoping to complete this piece the next day, Friday, June 11, to meet my copy deadline.

At 11:05 p.m., the doorbell rings.

Who can it be at this late hour?

It is Femi Kusa, The Guardian’s director of publications and editor-in-chief. He has a message, and it is for my ears only, the night guard tells me. I go downstairs to meet Kusa.

Without the slightest trace of agitation or surprise, Kusa tells me, first, that the Abuja High Court has ruled that election scheduled for Saturday, June 12, must not hold as demanded by the ABN; second, that the court has reserved ruling for one month on NEC’s counter-motion, and third, that the police had granted the ABN a permit to stage a Babangida-Must-Stay rally in Abuja. He says he thought I should not have to read the newspapers the next day before learning of these developments.

Even those of our countrymen (and women) who have maintained all along that the transition programme bears the markings of a cruel hoax and of a prologue to tragedy could hardly have believed that matters would come to such a desultory pass. But such, alas, is the level of triviality to which the final phase of the transition programme has been reduced.

No sooner were thepresidential primaries concluded than rumours spread that the candidates of both parties would be disqualified. Damning dossiers on both candidates were said to have been compiled, with generous help from the intelligence services of Western nations. Since then, it has been one dark hint of gloomy portents after another.

Was this the ‘’hidden agenda’’ finally unravelling?

A hidden agenda exists all right, weighs in Vice President Augustus Aikhomu. But it belongs to the self-appointed messiahs and their confederates who held a widely publicized meeting at General Olusegun Obasanjo’sfarm the other day, not to the Babangida Administration.

As I conclude this piece at 1:05 a.m. on Friday, June 11, 1993, NEC has not indicated whether it will go ahead with the election as planned, the Abuja injunction notwithstanding. The authors and managers of the transition programme have made no statement.

Perhaps they are satisfied that the transition is still ‘’on course,’’ and that the ‘’solid foundation’’ they have been laying for democracy these past seven years is, if anything, stronger than ever. Or it may well be that they regard the latest developments as just another phase of the “learning process’’ that is the transition.

Others of a different cast of mind cannot be blamed if, on waking up today and hearing the news, they felt, like Jacob in the Old Testament, that they had for seven years been sleeping with an illusion.

For the next 16 hours or so after Justice Ikpeme’s ruling, there is no clear indication that the election will hold. It is well past lunchtime on Friday, June 11, when NEC finally announces that the election will go on as scheduled, Justice Ikpeme and the ABN notwithstanding.

The Federal Government’s affirmation that the election will hold comes only indirectly, in response to a statement issued by the United States Government through the United States Information Service in Lagos to the effect that any postponement of the election would be “unacceptable” to Washington.

The election holds as scheduled. Minor hitches are reported here and there, the type that can be expected even in the best-ordered poll. For the most part, NEC and everyone connected with the election gets high praise for a job superbly executed.

Nine days later, when results already proclaimed or authenticated and only awaiting official release indicated that the SDP ticket of Moshoold Abiola and Babagana Kingibe had swept the poll, the regime of military president Ibrahim Babangidawhich had been thrown into panic by the results finally dropped all subterfuge to announce through an unsigned and undated memo issued on plain paper by Nduka Irabor, chief press secretary to Vice President Augustus Aikhomu, that it had annulled the election.

Why?

“To rescue the judiciary from inter-wrangling . . . to protect our legal system and the judiciary from being ridiculed and politicised both nationally and internationally,” according to the memo, and to ensure that a judiciary built on sound and solid foundation was not “tarnished by the insatiable political desire of a few persons.”

By that instrument, the Babangida regime terminated all court proceedings on any matter touching on the June 12 1993 presidential election, and for good measure repealed all laws relating to a political transition programme that had been eight years and some N40 billion in the making.

The consequences of this brazen evisceration of the sovereign will of the Nigerian people, executed with the active complicity of the political class, sections of the judiciary and the news media, political merchants, revanchists and quislings, live with us still.

This piece, slightly revised, was first published in this newspaper on June 11, 2013. It is adapted from my June 15 and June 22, 1993, columns for The Guardian, where I was editorial page editor and chair of the Editorial Board.

Desperate censors at work

There is a strong chance that patrons of the paper edition of The Nation may never get to read the Tuesday issue in which this column is scheduled to appear.

For three days running, military officials claiming to be acting on orders have blockaded the routes of newspaper vans across the country and taken over the distribution points, resulting in late deliveries and sometimes no delivery at all.

The officials said they were acting on intelligence that some unidentified persons were going to use newspaper distribution vans to carry explosives to areas of Boko Haram activity. Could the officials not have alerted the newspaper houses and urged them to ensure that their vehicles were not employed for subversive activities?

The Abuja office of ThisDay was severely damaged some two years ago in a bomb explosion. If the security services have forgotten, the news media have not. It cannot be in their interest to be witting or unwitting accessories to any plot to employ their vehicles for terroristic purposes.

Besides, the selective nature of the blockade, especially after the first day, suggests powerfully that what is unfolding is not a scheme to frustrate the designs of potential terrorists but to paralyse a section of the press and prevent Nigerians from receiving the news and information so vital to making informed decisions and choices in a democracy.

In whatever case, why detain the vans after searching them and finding nothing compromising? Why impound their cargo?

This shamefully disingenuous recourse harks back to the darkest chapters of military rule in Nigeria.

June 10, 2014