The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • NNPCL: Not yet back in business

    NNPCL: Not yet back in business

    It should not be difficult to understand why things oftentimes get animated, or better still, the adrenalin suddenly boils over, whenever the name of the behemoth – the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL pops up in public discourse. Ask the ordinary Nigerian on the street how much he/she knows about the entity in whom – to borrow the Biblical parlance – they live and have their being, and you will be surprised at how variegated the answers you will get. More often than not, you hear such dreary appellations as ‘Number one house of rent’, ‘Subsidy incorporated’, or worse, ‘Corruption Inc.’ to such other unflattering appellations that somehow sums up to how much the company has missed, not just its way but its essence as a going concern.

    Unfortunately, whereas most Nigerians would appear to be in broad agreement that their beloved state oil corporation is not only ailing but terminally so, the option of a corrective surgery to prevent a certain death would seem far from their minds!

    Here, I refer in part to the general reactions that have trailed the appointment of Bayo Ojulari as the new helmsman at the NNPCL a key highlight of which is the needless descent into Nigeria’s identity politics.  However, if it seems that the departure of the last helmsman, Mele Kyari, was the least that Nigerians should be asking for after more than six years of stewardship, nearly four of which saw him transition the entity into a commercial, service-driven one only in name, that Nigerians are soon after, more interested in the elite game of musical chairs as against the immense promises made since the advent of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) must be seen as the ultimate tragedy of these times!

    Perhaps the only thing that could be said to be worse is the situation of apparent disinterestedness, under which Nigerians appear so totally oblivious of the rapidly changing but nonetheless dire global dynamics of which their beloved national oil company is being challenged to operate as indeed the texture of the individuals required to drive the required change.

    Whether in its original coming as NNPC or its NNPCL mutation, the story of the behemoth has certainly been told so many countless times that it is now impossible to forget. Aside being everything that a national oil corporation should not be, it’s probably the most abused entity on planet earth. Pillaged on all fronts by various mechanics the most notable ones being the supply misalignment, mismanagement, opacity and the apparent lack of capacity of which Nigerians routinely debate; the existential nature of the battering forces, often more complex and deeper than Nigerians would care to know, are such that anything less than a massive overhaul can only but postpone the evil day.  

    I remember the story of NNPC’s early beginning, as told me by industry veterans, particularly at its take-off as Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC) in the 50s. The founding fathers, even if it appeared more like a venture into the wild, still had a sufficient understanding of what their mission was. They envisioned an entity that was everything a state oil corporation should be, both in the way it carried out its business activities, and in its field operations. Then, the ministry and the bureaucrats in charge, approved and procured oil rigs more than the operators then required, with the extras meant to be taken apart in what was designed to be launch pads for the early birds in the industry – something that their counterparts like Algeria did and largely succeeded.

    Read Also: NNPCL: Lessons from Petrobras

    I guess that was an era in which public service counted for something!

    Unfortunately, if the successive inheritors of that legacy understood the goal, they chose rather to find satisfaction in what was convenient – the ignoble joint venture partnerships and the crude and the unfathomable alliances which bred the rentier culture under which the entire country not only chokes but are routinely gang-raped by unscrupulous nationals and foreigners alike!

    Interestingly, while the same bureaucrats of old still had the good sense to establish the ancillary infrastructures and institutions such as the NNPC Engineering and Technical Company, (NETCO), to address specific engineering gaps the industry, the National Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) to advance the nation’s aspirations in exploration and production, and then of course the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and with it the countless depots spread across the nooks and corners of the country, to guarantee seamless petroleum products distribution, they would later become a huge avenue for creating jobs for the boys!

    Yes; the generations that came after ensured that the facilities were either unable to deliver optimally or were allowed to rot away! 

    This is where my sympathy goes to Bayo Ojulari and his team. His job at this time is an unenviable one. True as might be that the rules and the terrains have since changed, still everyone expects the NNPCL be to all manner of things to all classes of men and deservedly so given the NNPCL’s pre-eminent status as the industry leader.

    True to its nature, the government expects it to deliver on its primary goal of oil exploration and production, to continue its role as the cash cow that it has always been, hopefully beyond its current exertion as mere collector of rents and royalties that must at every month’s end, share from the pool collected to its beneficiaries. Like other entities in the energy terrain, government expects it to play the lead in the quest for energy diversification.

    To the ordinary folk however, everything begins and perhaps ends with ensuring that petrol and perhaps diesel continues to flow at the pump and this in a sustainable manner. This is where things could get tricky in the middle term and in no distant future, given the total collapse of our depots and pipelines infrastructure. In fact, to suggest that the current model of fuel transportation is neither profitable let alone sustainable is merely to restate the truth that Nigerians have always known but have chosen to keep in abeyance for the more weighty matters of fuel supply itself! 

    Which is where the depots as indeed the sprawling network of fuel distribution pipelines covering several thousands of kilometres would seem the best place, if any, for the Ojulari-led NNPCL to make his golden mark. I refer to the pipelines running from the Atlas Cove to Ejigbo in Lagos, then to Mosinmi in Sagamu, to Ore in Ondo State and then to Benin on the Mid-west flanks; and then western flank running from Lagos to Ibadan to Ilorin proceeding to Suleija and Minna and to Kaduna and beyond; and then those running from Port Harcourt to Aba and Enugu and other parts of the east.

    Only thereafter could the NNPCL under his watch truly claim to be back in business!  

  • Buhari as bride

    Buhari as bride

    As Nigerian politicians turn their proboscis to the 2027 general elections, former President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) is being serenaded as the beautiful bride in other to garner votes in the north, particularly the northwest. Suitors who had scorned him in the past have put a veil on their past indiscretions and in a variegated marque dance, are determined to seduce the one advertised as having over 12 million votes stuck safely in his Babariga.

    While many believe that his poor performance as president from 2015 to 2023 may have whittled down his followership and influence in the north, the politicians, ever optimistic, are not leaving anything to chance. So, to Kaduna where the “sterile general” has been relocated to, from his native Kastina, the train of politicians are all headed to. The inimitable wily former governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, angrily hyperactive, since he was nominated as a minister and then dropped, was the first to visit the General for political blessing.

    According to El-Rufai, who has decamped to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), he sought the permission of the General before leaving the All Progressive Congress (APC). He claimed the General sanctioned his voyage and had in fact prayed for his success. Of course, that claim is a cryptic message to other disgruntled members of the APC to think PMB has tacitly encouraged them to move to SDP. El-Rufai must have calculated that Buhari in his usual aloofness to political matters that doesn’t concern him directly, would not comment, and allow him press that haze of uncertainty to his advantage.

    Perhaps, knowing who they are dealing with, Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, quickly reaffirmed his principal’s loyalty to APC on whose platform he won the presidency twice. This writer doubts if PMB, being a man who believes in the principle of an eye for an eye, would ever betray President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT). The inner core of PMB, is that the measure you give to him, is the measure you will receive. That explains why he justified sidelining the southeast by his infamous 97 versus five percent of votes, as the determinant of political appointments, even though he slightly mended his way later.

    Fearing that the El-Rufai’s storm in a tea cup may turn into a hurricane, governors elected on the platform of APC otherwise referred to as Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), quickly made a dash to the Kaduna residence of PMB, to pay homage. The governors had apparently gone to douse the claim that the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) bloc in the APC were planning to exit the party. Some leading lights of that block include the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas. 

    Will Speaker Abass emulate the former speaker of the House of Representative, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, then a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), but effectively in opposition until the end of his tenure, when he officially joined the APC, to contest as governor of Sokoto State? To successfully emulate Tambuwal, Tajudeen would have to join forces to orchestrate crisis in APC, knowing that he would automatically lose his speakership if he joins El-Rufai in SDP. 

    Read Also:APC applauds Buhari’s loyalty to party

    Agreed, he may be an acolyte of El-Rufai, since El-Rufai after the success of APC at the polls, had said that making Tajudeen speaker, was the only recompense he wanted for helping the party win at the 2023 polls. But will Tajudeen sacrifice the joy of his speakership, to make El-Rufai happy? He may rather cut his political kinship with El-Rufai, if that would free him to enjoy the spoils of his present office. 

    Across the northern states, the SDP is a neophyte, politically, and despite his pretenses, El-Rufai lacks the charisma to excite the talakawas, like Buhari. He also lacks the messaging ability or even the message that can resonate amongst any political demography. Unlike Peter Obi, of the Labour Party, who in the 2023 general elections, galvanized the youths and the Christians, as their preferred candidate in the elections. Obi was so successful that he gave the APC and the PDP with hundreds of notable personalities, a run for their money.

    Even though he belonged to the old order, having been a member of APGA, and later the PDP, Obi was able to sell himself as different from the rest of them, and presented himself as the candidate to kill the hegemon of corruption and waste in government. El-Rufai, who is leading the quarry against the APC, has not shown himself capable of reigniting any such messaging or capacity. That perhaps explains why he is desperately seeking a coalition, with those he believes are desperate to win the presidency, in 2027.

    Atiku Abubakar would have little chance of ever being a president if he misses 2027. Beyond 2027, Atiku may become unelectable because of his age. Currently 78, he would be 84 by 2031, and even with the best of health, the electorate would not likely look his way. On his part, Obi though less affected by age should PBAT serve a second term, knows the presidency would move north for eight years, to berth in the south in 2039. By then, Obi would be 73 years, and who knows whether his message will still resonate.

    So, El-Rufai is feeding on their fear, to position himself as the successor to both PMB and Atiku, when PBAT would likely finish his second tenure in 2031. Currently 65 years, El Rufai would be 71 years in 2031, and if he succeeds to give the impression that he did all he can to help Atiku and Obi succeed but they couldn’t, he can then offer Obi a vice presidency slot to fight whoever APC may nominate. Knowing that the northern power hegemons aside from Atiku Abubakar may not wish to truncate the southern presidency in 2027, El-Rufai may actually be working for 2031, for himself. 

    Interestingly, one of the northern power brokers, former military president, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, has already thrown his heavy weight in favour of PBAT, perhaps as a thank you for the emotional rehabilitation during his recent book lunch. Even as an ordinary politician, PBAT showed himself an expert in building coalitions for a long term goal, how much more as a sitting president. While 2027 will not be a walkover, defeating PBAT at the polls will be a very tall order, and the coalition to achieve that may likely not happen within two years.

    Again, PBAT, having invested heavily in the Buhari presidency, on the two occasions he won, when other political power hegemons, were against his contest, those relying on the proverbial 12 million northern votes of PMB to shove PBAT aside in 2027, may be making a wrong political calculation. Even if he refuses to campaign for PBAT in 2027, PMB will likely not campaign against him.

  • Again, pump-pricing

    Again, pump-pricing

    Is rising fuel pump-pricing, following the bungling of the crude-for-Naira policy, to blame for the change in the NNPC Ltd Board?  Who knows?  More on that presently.

    Meanwhile, the transactional temper, in today’s Nigeria, is in a sickly class, all its own.

    Every presidential hire is an angel to be toasted and serenaded.  Every presidential fire is devil to be mocked and scorned, with suggestive tales of alleged sleaze to boot.

    But don’t be deceived.  While holding no brief for any fired officer, this hot-and-cold is often cynical repudiation of a hitherto flowing tap now dried up!  A dried-up tap is seldom angelic to perched throats!  Besides, buzzing bees must find new nectar!

    That has pretty much summed up reactions to the change at NNPC Ltd. 

    The most significant, on the operational plane, is Mele Kyari, NNPC Ltd boss since 2019, all through its transition from a public corporation to a more commercially driven oil trading firm, yielding place to Bayo Ojulari, a Shell Nigeria veteran, with pretty much intimidating credentials.

    Well, Chief Pius Akinyelure, President Bola Tinubu’s boss during their days at Mobil Nigeria, also gave way to Ahmadu Musa Kida, as new NNPC Ltd board chair.

    Ethnic balancers and ace pundits are already foaming in the mouth.  One — prematurely? — growled that Ojulari was yet another Yoruba from the South West — before realizing Ojulari was indeed a Yoruba northerner from Kwara!

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    Other Yoruba — no less clannish in their thinking — would scoff at why the President would trade Akinyelure, his “kinsman”, for Kada from Borno State.

    Pray, what have all these got to do with cognate experience and job competence?But still talking “tribes”: how can Kyari (ex-NNPC),  Akinyelure (ex-Mobil), Ojulari (ex-Shell) and Kada (ex-Total) belong to any tribe but oil and gas? 

    Wasteful and needless voyages, yet perfectly Nigerian!

    Still, no matter what anyone says, NNPC Ltd “original”, Kyari, made his mark since his appointment as GMD, helping to drive NNPC Ltd to its present state. 

    That the company has partly reclaimed three of its four comatose refineries — Port Harcourt 1 and 2, and Warri; with Kaduna still a work-in-process — is ode to grim determination to succeed, even with loud naysayers sizzling with haughty cynicism.

    That doesn’t, however, mean NNPC Ltd is no longer a laggard compared to its global state-owned peers: Aramco (Saudi Arabia), Petrobras (Brazil) Petronas (Malaysia), KPC — Kuwait Petroleum Corporation — (Kuwait), etc.  But under Kyari, it has made distinct progress and the prospects seem quite better.

    Why the board dissolution and Kyari’s ouster, then?  For starters, the man is 60 and his term may have expired.  In any case, the President has the leeway to hire and fire.

    But if indeed it had to do with crude-for-Naira, then it would show a government very much aware of its vulnerabilities, too perilously close to midterm! 

    Despite the elite lullaby of “bold and courageous” showered on the President and his team, the masses are still pretty much bewildered at the post-subsidy direction of the economy, as it concerns their welfare, nay economic survival. 

    Fuel pump-pricing, hitherto trending down, bought the administration some legitimacy, even if grudging, on its tough reforms. 

    Those reforms are driven by harsh neo-liberal methods — not to punish anyone, to be sure, but — to re-set eons of economic disequilibrium.  That comes with pains.

    Still, that method dots on the market’s upper crust — the investing patricians — but thinks little of the plebs that grind and grill in the market’s crucible base.  It’s however convinced that having sated investor greed, benefits would trickle down to the plebs.

    So far, that has not quite happened — in any case, not with thundering collapse of prices, sending the hoi polloi into sheer ecstasy! Right now, there are just the elite, from their crystal balls, telling the masses good times are coming.  Sweet aroma seldom calms a hungry, rumbling tummy!

    Still, the crude-for-Naira policy did open a tantalizing window, making the masses to believe again.  It caused fuel pump prices, thanks to local refining, to trend down — until Dangote Petroleum Refinery (DPR) ended that fleeting paradise, with torrid news.

    DPR warned that it might hike its products’ pricing — which it did — unless the Federal Government kept its end of the bargain, on the crude-for-Naira policy.  Now, pricing is trending up — from mid-N800-a-litre — back to N925-a-litre at the very lowest. 

    If care isn’t taken, it would spiral up to over N1, 000-a-litre, the price at the earliest days of subsidy removal, which sent inflation soaring, burned the pocket and sparked anger. 

    Whodunnit — such that after six months of crude-for-Naira, no new deal?

    If it was NNPC Ltd, it just got its comeuppance.  It has a new board and management team.  Both have their jobs cut out for them.  They had better get cracking!

    The Federal Ministry of Finance-mandated technical team of experts, chaired by Zach Adedeji, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) boss?  DPR roused the Adedeji team to a fresh commitment.  But so far, still no new deal as at the March 31 expiry of the old one.

    That culpable negligence — if indeed, the fault is from there — should not go un-conked.  Petrol is critical to the economy; and every administration official must know the Tinubu Presidency will float or sink, at its careful management.  Petrol’s cost-push inflationary danger is all too glaring!

    The market regulators, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA)?  Might NMDPRA be grappling — as not a few have suggested — with the futures market?

    Does Nigeria simply not produce enough to guarantee the 385, 000 barrels-a-day to feed local refiners, given that a large chunk of crude produced by NNPC Ltd is already sold or battered in advance? 

    If that’s the case, the NMDPRA should come clean.  The public have a right to know.

    Waffling over the crude-or-Naira policy — and its putative collapse — appears the greatest threat yet to the government’s electoral survival.  Should prices start climbing again, the Tinubu Presidency might just be cooked!

    It may appear just mid-term — the second anniversary is May 29.  But the government has barely one year in its furious race against time to smash inflation, and win over hurting pockets, for re-election in 2027.  It must re-fix the crude-for-Naira policy before it’s too late.

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the populist but empty Peter Obi are jaded policy souls.  But the administration must never underestimate their cynical capacity for mischief.  President Tinubu can shut both up only with a winning policy.

    Meanwhile, everyone should be worried — NMDPRA especially — that DPR is pumping fresh muscles, by the day, to crash and hike pump pricing. 

    Is there the oligopoly of cement winking, so early at the rebirth of local oil refining? Will local refining yet be captive to a greedy few, that may well sell petrol at prices the cartel well pleases?

    NMDPRA had better act while it still can.  Replicating cement in local crude refining would be the virtual death of the economy — with stagnated incomes and thumping costs!

  • Mediating political disputes

    Mediating political disputes

    Political disputes can benefit from the mediation process if parties submit to an experienced mediator to settle their disputes. Even high profile cases making the headlines like the dispute between the suspended governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara, versus members of the state House of Assembly, and even that between Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan versus Senate President Godswill Akpabio can benefit from mediation instead of the long-winded adversarial adjudication offered by the courts. But who will bell the cat considering the untrammeled ego at play?

    What constitutes mediation? The Lagos Multi-Door Courthouse Neutrals’ Handbook, defines mediation as “a process by which a neutral third party assists two or more people to address issues in conflict in order to give them an opportunity to reach a mutually agreed solution.” It went on: “The mediator uses a variety of skill and techniques to help the parties negotiate but does not make any decisions for them.” It concluded: “Some of the more common types of mediation are “interest based facilitative mediation” and “evaluation mediation.”

    Of course, while practitioners of mediation undergo training to learn modern skills associated with its practice, and are more susceptible to neutrality and successes, non-trained persons can mediate disputes. As I like to say while mediating disputes, mediation was originally the African way of settling disputes between parties before the introduction of the litigation based approach. And in mediation, the parties agree on the terms of settlement, while in litigation, a judge is authorized to impose a settlement on parties.

    Take for example the dispute between Fubara and the legislators. Before it got entangled in unconstitutional conducts, it was principally a dispute about the contending interests of the parties. To untie the knots, whoever is asked to mediate needs to go back to those issues in dispute and help agree to a resolution through the process of give and take. If the original issues in contention are resolved between the parties, that standard will be used to deal with all the issues that may have arisen since the disputants refused to agree.

    While untying the knots of the disputes, it would become clearer to the parties, where and how they derailed from either an express agreement or expected standard of engagement in political relationship. The mediator would help all the sides understand what were the expectations that were not met, and help the offending party explain why or how the expectations were met. In disputes, sometimes the real issue that is important to one of the parties may not be known to the opposing party, and through a mediation process the issue crystallizes and a resolution applied.

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    And in professional mediation, unlike in litigation, a contending party is free to negotiate a settlement and if the mediation does not succeed, the concessions made during the mediation process would not be held against him in court. For example, if in a dispute over a contract sum due and payable, one of the parties offers to pay a certain sum to end the dispute, if the opposing party declines, that offer cannot be pleaded as a reference benchmark in court. So, the offer fails or succeeds at mediation.

    Of course, under the rules of mediation which the parties have to submit to, the mediator cannot be called to give evidence of what the parties said or agreed to at the various sessions. And the mediator is not expected to keep records of the mediation. So there will be no opportunity for subpoena ad testificandum to compel the mediator to testify, or subpoena duces tecum to compel the mediator to produce a document before the court.

    Professional mediators are persons who are preeminently neutral in any dispute they are called to mediate. So, at the beginning, the mediator declares whether he/she has an interest in the issue he/she is called to mediate. If the mediator has an interest, a neutral mediator is assigned the dispute. Again, because mediation is party driven, where any of the party objects to a named mediator, he/she is changed, since the cooperation of the parties are fundamental to a successful mediation. Where either of the party don’t agree with an ongoing process, the mediation fails.

    Another important factor is that when an agreement is reached and parties sign off on it, it becomes binding and efficacious as the judgment of the court. The Natasha versus Akpabio dispute which is already in court would enjoy that benefit, should the matter be sent to mediation either by the court suo moto, or upon the request of either of the parties. Of course, while many would want the lugubrious allegation against Akpabio to continue to tantalize their dry sense of humour, the parties can choose mediation to end the saga.

    The parties can agree on the terms of settlement, including an agreement to keep the terms secret from the general public. A party can agree to settle a dispute for its nuisance value, not necessary out of guilt as alleged. Again, despite the titillating allegations of sexual harassment, the diatribe from the parties shows that there are other undulating forces and factors at, beyond the salacious details of alleged sexual advances. And if the parties resolve that open opera through mediation, it can cinch all the tales.

    Even electoral disputes can be a subject of mediation as some of the causa belli for approaching election petition tribunals can be settled at mediation, instead of the resource-wasting approach to the tribunals. In some instances, a party may be aggrieved that the resources expended in the electoral process have been wasted and he/she approaches the tribunal to vent the anger. Through mediation, that anger can be assuaged, through some form of appeasement. There are instances where a simple apology satiates anger, while in some, monetary or other form of comfort help resolve a dispute.

    In discussing the benefits of mediation, the LMDC Handbook, noted: “Mediation allows parties to come to a resolution of their dispute within the context of their relationship. This is particularly important when the relation is going to continue, such as the relationship that parents have with one another even after a divorce, the relationship of one business partner with another, the relationship of employer and employee, the relationship of neighbors, etc.” Of course, in the two political cases referred to, both parties are likely to have a relationship for some time to come.

    The dispute in Rivers State is one that the principal parties should by now have realized the urgent need to submit to some form of mediation in the interest of all the parties affected. As should be clear to the suspended governor and the legislators, the country would move on without them, instead of allowing their dispute to upend the economic well-being of the nation.

  • For a presidential emperor?

    For a presidential emperor?

    Just as well — the House of Representatives just froze its bill to strip everyone else, except the President, of their immunity under the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

    It’s unclear, though, which is sadder: a bill that lacked rigour in concept, and is bereft of tracking Nigeria’s contemporary history, to fully adapt it to the country’s political sociology, much of it toxic?

    Or freezing it for now — to be later introduced? — even after the clear foggy thinking that, ab initio, thrust forward the bill?

    If our lawmakers must make effective laws, they must first understand their political habitat — or shouldn’t they? 

    Still, a bill that picks out only the President, from the entire universe of voters and elected personnel, as the sole decent mind meriting immunity, has neither shown enough critical thinking in concept formation, nor demonstrated enough nous in current political history, to claim mastery of its environment.

    Or how would the Constitution graft a presidential candidate and running mate — that ticket is legally incomplete without both “twins” — yet an amendment bill would purport to grant one constitutional immunity but deny the other?

    Where’s the rigour and the consistency in thinking here? Or are laws made, not by hard thinking but by flabby emotions?

    Okay, concepts are more difficult to form, for they belong to the realm of rigour. But tracking history, particularly contemporary history, is much easier. 

    So, before pushing forward that bill, the House should have refreshed itself in current political history.  It didn’t, it would appear.

    If it did, it would have noticed that in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term (2003 to 2007), we saw a President try to weaponize this same constitutional immunity, so he could bully and batter his Vice President, to gain a nefarious edge.

    Now, between President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar, there was really little to choose — in power or out of it. 

    But back then, the President accused the Vice President of sleaze, implying Vice President Atiku was indeed president of vice!  The other countered that the President was buying cars for his alleged girlfriends from the public till — holy hypocrisy!

    By that dirty brickbat, both showed why they were unworthy of their high offices.

    Yet, it was the President that wouldn’t lead by example — if Atiku’s allegations were true — that tried to rig the immunity process to elbow his deputy out of the way: first, to shut him up; and later, to wallop him in a one-sided “rofo-rofo” fight! 

    The courts eventually shut out the plot but the brutal fight wasn’t pretty.  But just imagine if Atiku too did not have immunity?  An unscrupulous presidential emperor could have crushed a fellow citizen, as high in the hierarchy as the Vice President, for whatever alleged infractions he was equally guilty of — just because he could?

    Now, is that ugly blast from the past the future that this bill envisages, with its skewed thinking that the President would always be reasonable and conscientious?  But this Obasanjo/Atiku rumble, with its many dirty revelations, showed the President’s alleged acts were no less unconscionable!

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    So, in real terms, where is that presumed halo that deems the President a saint, and the rest of the partisan polity, irredeemable sinners? Soapy thinking!

    Still, true: the Obasanjo/Atiku mutual gracelessness did not always blight their successors.

    The late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua didn’t cut the picture of a presidential bully to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, though not a few would argue that his tenure was too fleeting for a definitive verdict.  Maybe.

    President Goodluck Jonathan, who completed the ill-fated Yar’Adua’s tenure and won a fresh term of his own, treated Vice President Namadi Sambo with decorum. 

    President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo too treated each other with mutual respect and trust.

    Yet, in these three cases, no one could wager if the end results were a function of genuine presidential grace, or vice-presidential long-suffering!

    Incidentally, both Obasanjo and Atiku are the only presidential pair still out there making a row — the one self-condemning himself to putting down his successors to stay relevant; the other still after the elusive — and illusive? — office of president, for which no stunt is too low to pull; no liaison too base to join.

    Buhari and Osinbajo live in quiet post-power dignity. So does Jonathan — and certainly Sambo — save Jonathan’s occasional verbal glitches that tend to underscore his lack of depth: the most recurrent problem that blighted his best-forgotten presidency.

    Even at that, in post-power etiquette, Jonathan towers above Obasanjo, whose old-age purgatory appears eternal ranting; and courting cheap controversies unbefitting of a former President.

    So long for history as teacher! Now, to how that frozen bill, being conceptually flawed, makes absolutely no sense.

    If the President and Vice President enjoy constitutional immunity, and so do the governors and deputy governors, it’s simply because the Constitution strictly follows the federalism concept.

    Federalism puts in place governments of states, regions, provinces, cantons, etc, co-ordinate with a central — federal — government, that though assumes additional responsibility of national defence (in war times) and treaty and diplomacy (in peace times).

    It’s precisely because the President is no Leviathan, that can do and undo in a federation, that both the President and Vice President, with governors and deputy governors, enjoy constitutional immunity. 

    That was no happenstance.  It rather reinforces the tenets of the federal concept.  This ill-thought-out bill, if passed into law, threatens to crash that fundamental balance — worse, in a Nigerian troubled polity still struggling to actualize its full federal essence.

    First, granting the President sole immunity would make him a tin god in his own federal cabinet, if ever he’s as cynical as Obasanjo in wielding his messianic complex — a complex not based on any public good, no matter the colourful preachments, but fired by a ruthless self-aggrandizement.

    Then, it would birth a presidential emperor, that would wreck our democratic polity. 

    Imagine, even without sole immunity, the sundry constitutional crimes of the Obasanjo era: the futile effort to summarily sack Atiku, the wayward removal of governors with the notorious “simple minority” of state legislatures, the wilful seizure of Lagos council funds, and the brazen attempt at subverting the Constitution to gain a third term!

    Removing or retaining immunity is neither here or there.  That the crude beneficiaries right now won’t, in the long run, morph into refined and decent players, meriting that honour, can’t be ruled out.  But if you must remove immunity, never grant any exemption.

    Sole immunity for the President is bad.  The House should forget that terrible idea.

  • The rule of market foxes

    The rule of market foxes

    Even now, the most incurable believers in market forces, of which yours truly could claim to be numbered, must have grown weary of the programmed (or deliberate?) misapprehension if not entirely the brazen subversion of the rules by those who claim a near-exclusive monopoly of the market and its allocative power. Talk of an era of easy solutions. From the service provider in the much debauched electricity sector for whom service means crude exploitation, the telecommunications industry operators and their fixation with routine adjustments at the expense of quality and the imperative of service, right up to the general services sector where issues of value for money have remained an alien concept, we are not only now in a season where the market hounds, thinking little of being left on the prowl, insist on hitting the tariff button at every sign of imagined turbulence.

    By now, the alibis have become standard even if they remain essentially what they are – alibis: the country, they say, is hard. The business environment, they complain to no end, has remained not just unfriendly but endangered in the atmosphere of rising costs, inflationary spiral and stifling government regulations. In their books, not only is the consumer out of the equation; rather, it is a one-way traffic that leaves nothing to the imperatives of service delivery or market equity, a scenario in which the supposed king is actually a guinea pig!

    In their season, a season marked by the curse of tariff addiction, even the institutional arbiters are supposed to be seen not heard even when gang rapes go on!

    Can anyone imagine the irony of an underperforming service provider which claims it has neither the money to procure basic tools to enhance service delivery for the consumer, nor would come up with a strategy to raise the funds, yet turns over to the latter to pick the bill; imagine the same returning, without shame, not to the capital markets where it ought to be making its case for funds, but to the public arena via the ready option of higher tariffs!

    Or the other case – that of an ill-served subscriber being asked to pay more even when minimum service threshold could neither be attained let alone guaranteed just to appease the ruling market foxes – not forces. Thanks to their ingrained market monopoly and with it the false but baseless assumption of holding the yam and the knife, they assume, equally falsely, that their words ought to remain law.

    Nigeria may well be a country where anything is permissible; nothing however casts the ugly shenanigans in bolder relief than the current tiff between the nation’s lead competition and consumer protection agency – the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) and the entertainment company, MultiChoice and its subsidiary DSTV.

    Now, the current issue is the Monday February 25 notice of another round of tariff hike that took effect on March 1, served by MultiChoice over which the FCCPC had expressed legitimate concerns about what it perceives as the recurrent issue of unilateral price hikes, potential market dominance abuse, and anti-competitive practices– concerns that predate the current leadership at the FCCPC.

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    Relying on its mandate under Sections 32 and 33 of the FCCPA, the FCCPC had directed the chief executive officer of MultiChoice Nigeria to attend an investigative hearing at the commission’s headquarters on Thursday, February 27. It warned that failure to provide a satisfactory explanation or any violation of fair market principles could result in penalties, sanctions, or other corrective measures, even as it confirmed that it was engaging the sector regulator and other relevant agencies to ensure fair competition and stronger consumer protection in the local pay-tv industry.

    We know how that went. While the company asked for time to prepare and the regulator insisting that the new price be put on hold, the company, in a brazen act of defiance and bad faith, went ahead to give effect to the new prices!

    Are the underlying issues legitimate? Like most Nigerians, I believe they are. To start with, let’s look at the trend in recent years, using the data from Dataphyte, the data analytical firm. As Dataphyte would observe, price increases for each subscription package between 2023 and 2024 has been phenomenal.

    For instance, in May 2023, premium package subscribers were hit with a 51.23% increment – from N16,200 to N24,500. Six months after, another major increment of 20.41% would follow, pushing the price to N29,500. Yet again, in another six months, that is, in May 2024, the service provider would be back with a new price of N37,000, a leap by another 25.42%; and then the latest adjustment effective Saturday, March 1, taking the package to N44,500 a 21% increase– representing over 300% increase using 2015 as the base year.

    For a company that pretends to be less of a monopoly that it is in reality, not even its claims about the stifling operating environment ought to suffice to deter a consumer protection body worth its salt from seeking an explanation on the dynamics under which the pricing model that many Nigerians have long described as heinous, continues to take place. And while that quest is supposed to be standard, at least in an industry said to be service oriented, what must remain the truly troubling part is the unwillingness on the part of MultiChoice to engage the consumer rights body, preferring instead, to play the Jekyll and the Hyde. 

    No matter how the current tides turn, the on-going tiff between the FCCPC and MultiChoice would merely appear a shadow of things to come. In fact, Nigerians would have, traditionally, let pass such inscrutable arrogance on the part of our local service providers. Not anymore. Today, countless evidences abound not just of how things are changing and this on a daily basis, but their endorsement of the work of the FCCPC even when this comes at a risk of being misunderstood. That, to yours truly, is a measure of progress.

    Surely, what would count in the end would not be so much about one dominant player clutching to the straw of legalese for narrow cause(s), but one of solid awareness of what is just and equitable between service providers and their consumer counterparts. In fact, thanks to the Nigerian non-governmental organisation – Save the Consumers, Nigerians have since been taught another lesson on how the sauce for the South African goose cannot be good for the Nigerian gander: MultiChoice offering simultaneous enhancement of service offerings and 38% reduction in prices for its South African customers at a time their Nigerian counterparts are being asked to pay 21% more with perhaps far less offerings – presumably to lessen the impacts of the cost of the living crisis on the former? The word discrimination could not have found a better operational definition. How about that – straight from the books of MultiChoice?

    Trust me, if the final judgment – or better still, that much feared Armageddon – is yet to come in the loud whispers of falling revenues or precipitous decline in subscriber bases, it seems only a matter of time before the reality comes tumbling in. That, surely, is one verdict that the market foxes cannot escape!

  • Nwosu stirs the Senate

    Nwosu stirs the Senate

    The complex contradictions, over the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election stirred the senate the past week as the burial of the late chairman of the National Electoral Commission, (NEC), Professor Humphrey Nwosu, approached. Nwosu, a distinguished professor of political science, died in October 2024, and was buried last weekend. The controversy was whether he was hero or a villain, and emotions stirred a commotion in the senate, after Nwosu’s kinsmen demanded for a national honour for the departed soul. Leading the charge was Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, representing Abia South.

    The June 12 election, referred by many as the most transparent election in the history of Nigeria, was supervised by Professor Nwosu and it is a paradox why those who agree with that postulation would deny that the person who conducted the election does not qualify as a hero. Of course, the major underlying tragedy is that the announcement of the election result was stopped mid-way after the military rulers set in motion a series of actions that culminated in the illegal annulment of the presidential election.

    The events of the June 1993, a little over 30 years ago, and the actions of the regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babaginda, leading to it, are within the living memory of majority of the senators serving in the 10th senate. Who did what, is known to them. Amongst the well-celebrated villains were the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN), led by the late Arthur Nzeribe, Abimbola Davies and Brigadier Haliru Akilu. Their mission was to abort the democratic process and install Babangida as a civilian president.

    On the judicial bench, were Justices Bassey Ikpeme and Dahiru Saleh, who gave judgments that gave some form of judicial imprimatur to the annulment of the election. Justice Ikpeme gave the infamous mid-night injunctive relief to the members of the ABN, ordering that the election should not hold, while adumbrating that the NEC can ignore his orders. When the order was ignored and the elections held, Justice Saleh declared the election a nullity, on the ground that the order of Justice Ikpeme was disobeyed.

    In between the concocted judgments of the courts, the military regime of Babagida was breathing down the neck of NEC, and but for the dire warnings of the United States of America, and more subtly that of Britain, the regime was prepared to truncate the transition programme before the election on June 12. It was in-between the threats, injunctions from the courts, subterfuge from those who created the NEC and appointed its officials that the best election in Nigeria, by many accounts, held.

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    Indeed, it was on the night of June 10 that Justice Ikpeme, delivered the ruling granting an injunction against the election, and it was in the evening of June 11, that NEC announced that the election must hold. Many Nigerians may have legitimately believed that the election had been truncated by the same regime that had banned, unbanned and re-banned politicians, without a wimp from those directly affected and the rest of Nigerians, including those pontificating as heroes in the chambers of the senate.

    Interestingly, few weeks ago, the chief culprit of the annulment, Babangida, tried to whitewash his responsibility for the annulment of the election, and the senate of the National Assembly did not rise up to condemn what clearly amounted to a historical revisionism. Some of them, may have even attended that event, and would gleefully have shaken the hands of Babangida despite the fact that he bears primary responsibility for the June 12 election, annulment.

    Until the courageous intervention of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who recognized June 12, as Democracy Day and awarded the winner, Chief Moshood Abiola, the highest national honour reserved mainly for the heads of state, many of the senators passing off as June 12 sympathizers, would have peed on the grave of the winner if it ever came up in a discussion in the senate. After all, one of their own, David Mark, who rose to become the president of senate from 2007 to 2015, was reputed to be arch-opponent of the June 12 election and yet he has the second highest national honour ascribed to his name.

    On a fair assessment, it was miraculous that the June 12 election, despite the roadblocks, put on its way by the military regime of Babangida, and the courts, subpoenaed to do the biddings of its surrogates, turned out to be the best presidential election by several accounts. Considering the game plan of the military administrators to truncate the election even on the eve of the election, it is most likely that the military junta had hoped that the elections would be marred by logistical nightmare.

    If by June 10, an order of court said the election should not hold, those who never wanted the election in the first place may have hoped that the electoral commission would by itself demand a postponement, which would have played into their hands. Again, if those who refused to acknowledge the sheer courage and determination of Prof Nwosu in the senate last week are themselves sincere, they would acknowledge that it required a lot of dexterity and courage to continue to plan and eventually execute the best organized presidential election in the midst of destabilization plots by those who appointed the officials.

    One of the opposing senators on the floor of the senate last week said that he lost a relation, following the annulment, and by his jejune account, the late NEC chairman should be held responsible for that sad incident. That argument sounded so pedestrian. But for deep rooted prejudices, this writer wonders how an electoral officer would be expected to subjugate a military regime, to his whims and caprices, without grave consequences – a military regime, which the courts have recognized to have extra constitutional powers, legitimately.

    Without doubt, the sad events of the June 12 presidential election cannot legitimately be laid at the feet of Professor Humphrey Nwosu and his colleagues. To do so, is to turn logic on its head. But, whether those in the senate wish to support a motion that he should be honoured is their prerogative. As should be clear to the senators, there are those who would refuse to accept any honour from the senators, perhaps on the premise that they are not distinguished enough.              

    As a matter of fact, the entire senators have only one motion which cannot immortalize Professor Nwosu to muster. The power to honour the departed Prof Nwosu, by naming a national monument after him really lies with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Why the southeast senate caucus chose such an issue to stake a walkout in the senate is bemusing. If they want Professor Humphrey Nwosu to be granted a national honour, the lobbying is done behind the scene.

  • Rivers: Between 1962 and 2025

    Rivers: Between 1962 and 2025

    With the Rivers emergency bind of March 18, a babble — excitable TV lawyers, baleful politicians, giddy rights activists and sundry grudgers — swear Rivers 2025 is same as Western Region 1962.  Not so!

    They probably pray — and fast too! — that Rivers brings the same crash as 1962! Fond hope!  But more on that presently. 

    Now, is the tale of two combatants that fought, without let, and ended in a ditch! 

    First, Nyesom Wike and his 27 legit legislators, that somewhat bottled a sure Fubara wallop into a pulsating — if tragic — draw, to borrow that dramatic football expression.

    What the hell were the Wike group thinking, after having the pitiful Siminalayi Fubara exactly where they wanted him?

    A double-whammy impeachment of governor and deputy!  That would have been the first in Nigerian history!  That was classic rush without gumption!

    Pray, what was Deputy Governor Ngozi Odu’s offence, beyond guilt by association?  Would she, the tail, have wagged the dog? A mere “spare tyre”, could she have stopped Fubara, with his penchant for executive suicide?

    Besides, impeached governor and deputy would have romped the legit Speaker, Martins Amaewhule, into office as acting governor — at least, pending fresh elections.

    Would the Fubara side, seething with defeat and grilling with humiliation, have folded their arms?

    Couldn’t the Wike side have struck the shepherd to scatter the flock? Targeting Fubara — with the odd chance of Odu becoming Rivers first female governor — would have split his camp, and forced not a few careening into their original Wike camp — careerists all! — just to retain their sinecure!  Or wouldn’t it?  Cynical!

    That double-whammy was a strategic blunder.  Fubara has lived to fight again.

    As for Fubara, no tears from here.  From his sundry fumbling as governor, he cuts a tragic gubernatorial figure — the most tragic so far?

    His infantile temper hardly trumps a local government councillor’s!  He hides behind a finger, as  he mounts a huge billboard beside his many infractions.  Most politicians cover theirs. Not Fubara!

    He’s in quite a class, all his own, in executive delinquency — or how would you place a governor, in a state in crisis, openly telling Ijaw “youths” to keep calm — euphemism for rearm? — and await “instructions”?  Next, a bang from oil pipes!

    Or an executive prodigal who would rush to demolish the Rivers House of Assembly — to fend off impeachment — only to scramble together N10 billion to build another one, and still pretends he he has any sense of value!

    If his Rivers electors don’t question his sense of value, that’s their democratic migraine. But again, Wike bears vicarious blame for giving Rivers such an immature fellow. 

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    Why did Wike pick him, though?  To spin and juggle him like a yo-yo?  Rivers!

    Now, to the pseudo-historical parallel between Rivers and the old West.

    Rivers, as Western Region in 1962, is a coastal state.  Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa was friendly to Western Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), a key player in the dispute.  Also, President Bola Tinubu is friendly to Wike, his FCT minister, another critical player in the Rivers dispute, though he’s no foe of Fubara.

    Beyond these parallels, the two crises couldn’t have been more different.

    Between the Action Group (AG) faction of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and SLA’s renegade plank, there was enough equal-opportunity politics to go round — equal-opportunity cynicism to outfox each other. 

    But on the balance of facts, Balewa rigged the federal might to favour SLA and damn Awo.  Tinubu, from the beginning, brought the two together to iron out political peace.

    The Privy Council judged that SLA was lawfully removed but the Balewa government scrambled to de-link that council from Nigeria, to save SLA. On Rivers, even the Supreme Court has proclaimed Fubara’s many infractions.  Yet, Tinubu has invoked an emergency, that just saved Fubara’s neck from fit political guillotining!

    Balewa’s emergency rule was suspect.  Tinubu’s was to head off catastrophe, with oil pipelines already being bombed.

    Yes, there was fracas in the Western House chambers — twice: both in the House of Assembly and in the House of Chiefs.

    But the Balewa government knew the SLA camp had the firm motive to push chaos to fend off SLA’s ouster — yet, looked the other way.  It was this blatant partisanship that birthed the real emergency, of free arson, that collapsed the 1st Republic.

    The situation in Rivers is quite different.

    In less than two years as governor, Fubara had run up too many constitutional crimes.  And each time he bungled, he crowed and left clear, incontrovertible evidence!

    In full glare, he demolished the Rivers State House of Assembly.  Then, he bragged that the legit majority at the Assembly existed at his pleasure, and that their quarters, which they turned into emergency sitting chambers, was “my property” 

    For two years running, he passed both his budget and the screening of his commissioners and special advisers through a phoney assembly.

    Then, from October 2023 or thereabouts, he sat on the salaries and emoluments of the Rivers legislators opposed to him — culpable impunity in the eye of the law.  By the way, the Rivers Administrator should, pronto, clear this salary backlog.

    Even after the Supreme Court verdict, he was still playing games. A Fubara aide claimed they sent 2025 budget information to legislators’ WhatsApp accounts!  What a crowd!

    True, the Wike camp baited Fubara into these constitutional stumbles.  But as crisis often reveals the core of people, this one only exposed the ruthless despot trapped inside the placid Fubara!

    When the crisis broke out in October 2023, the president did scramble together the Abuja peace accord.  But while Wike wouldn’t halt his aggressive rhetoric, Fubara too wouldn’t be saved from himself, jumping from one infraction to the other.

    Just as the late Chief Edwin Clark wrote thunderous letters to disavow the Abuja treaty, based on vacuous Ijaw bias, Fubara’s “ljaw youths” hastened emergency rule with pipeline bombing!  Some ensemble!

    Were either president, Abubakar Atiku or Peter Obi would have taken the exact action as Tinubu, though both now play to the gallery on crass emotions. 

    If they did otherwise, their presidential judgment would have been questionable — for they would have left Rivers to burn in own blaze.

    Let this emergency rule slam fresh reason on both sides.  Whatever happens, Fubara has written his legacy — of endless chaos — hardly flattering!  But Wike’s own “structure” too could have cropped a terminal(?) knock.

    After Fubara, will the next Rivers governor re-find the path to peace and sane governance?  Time will tell!

  • What may save Fubara

    What may save Fubara

    The political interpretations of the judgments of the Supreme Court in the cases principally between the suspended governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara and the suspended members of Rivers State House of Assembly, led by Martins Amaewhule, are quite interesting. In one of the judgments, the Supreme Court affirmed the decisions of the Court of Appeal and the High Court presided over by Justice James Omotosho. The apex court affirmed that Governor Fubara had collapsed the democratic structure in the state, principally the legislative arm of the government, and declared several of his actions unlawful.

    By the provisions of the 1999 constitution (as amended), the legislature is the first arm of the government, followed by the executive and finally the judiciary. But according to the three layers of the judiciary, Fubara had subjugated the legislature and had been governing as a despot. The apex court held that Fubara had not only demolished the physical structure of the state House of Assembly, but had collapsed the state democratic structure, by refusing to deal with 27 members out of the 32-member House of Assembly.

    The courts came down hard on the governor for dealing with a four-member House of Assembly, who he quartered in the executive branch of the government, and who despite the clear provisions of the 1999 constitution, purported to pass the 2024 and 2025 budgets, amongst under illegalities. Despite the pronouncements of the High Court that the passing of the budgets and other legislative approvals by the four-man gang were illegal, Fubara continued to deal with them. He purported to have cleared the commissioners and the members of the Rivers State Independent Election Commission, before the four member gang.

    As a governor who has desecrated the constitution which he swore to uphold, and who has been described as a despot by the apex court of the land, Fubara, but for the state of emergency, was a sitting duck for impeachment by the state House of Assembly members, under section 188 of the 1999 constitution (as amended). After all, the worst crime the executive can committee is to spend state money without authorization through an appropriation law, supplementary appropriation or monies charged to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the state.

    A sin Fubara admitted he committed in the apex court, leading to the dismissal of one of the cases before the court. According to his lawyers, the unconstitutional conduct of the expenditure without authorization for year 2024 had been completed, and there was nothing the governor could do, to redeem himself. The matter of expenditure for 2025 which had been set in motion, and monies spent without legislative approval was what the governor wanted to remedy by re-representing the year’s budget before the state assembly.   

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    It is strange that despite Fubara’s several constitutional misconducts, which has been affirmed by the highest court in our country, many legal opinions while commenting on Fubara’s suspension from office, makes light weather of those gross misconducts. For this column, every person who did not call Fubara to order while he reigned as a despot in Rivers State has no moral justification to rail against his removal, which is arguably justifiable in the circumstances of his peculiar mess.

    Except if one views the gross abuse of power committed by Fubara, through the prism of politics, the findings of the Supreme Court concerning the state of democracy in Rivers State, was arguably enough justification for the president to exercise the powers envisioned in section 305, of the 1999 constitution (as amended), to declare a state of emergency in the state. The Supreme Court, per Justice Agim had said: “The concurrent findings of facts in the Court of Appeal judgment in Appeal No. CA/ABJ/CV/133/20249 (exhibit RSHA 5) indicate that some months after the 8th respondent was elected and sworn in as governor of Rivers State in 2023, he began to fear that, instigated by his political opponents, members of the Rivers State House of Assembly were planning or initiating proceedings to impeach him from office as governor of the state.”

    He went on: “That to pre-empt his said impeachment, 8th respondent took several steps such as attempting to get the National Assembly to take over the exercise of the legislative powers of Rivers State from the Rivers state House of Assembly, preventing the Rivers State House of Assembly from sitting with its complete members or constitutionally prescribed quorum of one-third of the 32 members and arranged for initially four members and subsequently three members to be sitting as Rivers State House of Assembly outside the Legislative building of the Rivers State House of Assembly, withholding Rivers State House of Assembly funds, removing the Clerk and Deputy Clerk of the Rivers state House of Assembly, using caterpillars, bulldozers and other earth-moving vehicles and equipment to pull down, dismantle and destroy the legislative building of the Rivers State House of Assembly.”

    Fubara prevented lawmakers and other staff of the state assembly: “from having access to the House of Assembly Complex to do official work and engaging in all these actions in disobedience of interim restraining orders of courts that were obtained by the said 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly in suits to restrain these actions.”  A democratically elected governor who has desecrated democracy in the manner aforesaid, is not operating within the realms of law, and has constituted himself as an aberration unknown to the constitution, under which he pretends to govern.

    His Lordship further said: “A government cannot be said to exist without one of the three arms that make up the government of a state under the 1999 Constitution.” Furthermore: “In this case, the head of the executive arm of the government has chosen to collapse the legislature to enable him govern without the legislature as a despot. As it is, there is no government in Rivers State.” As the courts hold, and lawyers like to quote, you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand. With a court finding that there is no democratic government in Rivers State, can it not be argued that a state of emergency already exists in the state?

    Those who misled Governor Fubara into thinking and acting like Louis XIV of France, who famously declared “I am the state” are now goading him to live the illusion that he is a victim of the crisis that has bedevilled Rivers State, when in reality he is a major protagonist. When he declared that 27 elected members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, are only recognized at his pleasure, and went ahead to demolish the River State House of Assembly, I knew that the spirits beating the drums for him were of the dangerous type. The way out of the political stalemate in Rivers State, is through negotiation, not the shenanigan of false pretences.

  • Of gathering and scattering

    Of gathering and scattering

    Gathering and scattering, as good or bad, night or day, perch on diametrically opposed spots in life’s long continuum.

    Still politicians, since the dislodgment of PDP from federal power in 2015, would rather scatter to have a crack at power, than gather to consolidate policies and programmes.

    Nasir el-Rufai, former Kaduna governor and, before him, Salihu Lukman, famed ex-APC contrarian, have just validated that trend.  But that’s perfectly democratic.

    The ruling APC can’t expect its opponents not to dream that whatever hubris struck PDP, which earned it fair banishment into the Siberia of power, wouldn’t strike APC too.

    Still, this scattering is often a swashbuckling “me-too” complex.  It’s scalding emotion to strafe the ruling order, and willy-nilly bomb it down.

    But back to el-Rufai and Lukman, the twin-totems of this latest excitement en route to Sweepstakes ‘27.

    In his APC last days, el-Rufai sounded every inch a party puritan — again, no crime: indeed, a democratic virtue! — alleging the ruling APC had left the rocket that propelled it to power to rust and rot.

    Lukman too had played that same role, when el-Rufai, as glorious Kaduna governor, had easy access to President Muhammadu Buhari, as informal golden son — the he, who must be obeyed or, in any case, be indulged!

    Lukman excoriated his felt neglect of the ruling party, by its ruling elite. It was the lone voice, of the sole party puritan, shrieking in the wilderness! 

    Even, with the Bola Tinubu order, he had levied that same charge, primarily for making Abdullahi Ganduje (North West) APC chairman, to replace Abdullahi Adamu (North Central).  It was one Abdullahi replacing another.  But Lukman felt the new APC chair should have come from Adamu’s zone for party balance — hardly illogical!

    That was Lukman’s high horse, until he declared he was opting out of APC.  But if he loved APC that much, and pushed without let for its wellbeing, why his present rabid push to unhorse the party from power?  Gathering and scattering!

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    On his own, el-Rufai railed and huffed, scowled and growled, against the alleged neglect of the party, and accused President Tinubu of running a one-man show.

    But he didn’t attend the APC national caucus meeting, maybe called at last because of his constant hectoring.  A day or two later, he declared he had resigned from APC for the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to wrest federal power.  Gathering and scattering!

    Not a few nettle el-Rufai that his alleged bitterness, for not making Tinubu’s cabinet, self-bungled him out of APC. 

    But beyond political “yabis” (Fela-pidgin-speak for high-wire banter), why would el-Rufai, virtually in government since 1999, sans the Umaru Yar’Adua/Goodluck Jonathan years, be embittered because of missing yet another ministerial slot?

    Perhaps, he felt more betrayed by his native Kaduna APC?  As Adams Oshiomhole virtually strapped Godwin Obaseki to his back, to sell as governor to the Edo electorate, el-Rufai also backed Uba Sani, to sell as next Kaduna governor. 

    Yet, el-Rufai’s Kaduna legacy, which he expects protégée Sani to guard and protect, has been rubbished. Governor Sani though, has refused to speak ill of his benefactor. 

    But between active ungratefulness a la Obaseki, preening and rippling, and the passive ingratitude of Uba Sani, which rankles more?  Perhaps all of these scalded el-Rufai’s restive and hurt soul!

    But whatever the reasons for his SDP gambit, and the Lukman manic rally for a united opposition to unhorse the party both laboured to build, the two gentlemen would appear to labour under the notorious complex of “it’s either my way, or the highway”!

    Again, that’s no democratic crime.  The masses don’t change the society.  Only the critical mass does.  But that critical mass requires a huge dose of courage and daring.

    The snag, though: between healthy daring and hare-brained gambit, there is but a thin line.  The one harvests a political after-life, of which President Tinubu is living proof.  The other crops political death-at-dawn!

    So, which have el-Rufai and Lukman chosen?  Verdict ‘27 looms!  Gathering and scattering!

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo just weighed-in, in this mid-term politics of movement without motion, with his customary traducement of others, to bury own rot, as two-term elected president.

    Now Obasanjo’s public essence is rot, though he loves to posture as some Pope worthy of emulation. But from his records, nothing is farther from the truth.

    Still, he over-reached  himself this time, claiming PMB’s was the most corrupt tenure in Nigerian history.  Definitely, in his avid ardour to perjure others, senility has set in?

    You feel that portraiture is unfair?  Take a trip to Laderin, in Abeokuta, Ogun State.  Obasanjo that gamed the polity for “donation” as sitting president, to build a personal shrine; and PMB that built the Wole Soyinka train station for everyone, in a season of acute adversity, which of the two is grandmaster of corruption?

    PMB, a far junior officer that gives Obasanjo due honour, despite the Owu chief’s un-elderly tantrums, has taught his old commander-in-chief the ABC of decorum in and out of office.  While Obasanjo’s OOPL oozes the self-settlement rule of Obasanjo’s presidency, PMB’s many infrastructural revamp continue to serve millions of Nigerians. 

    Still speaking of bad-mouthing: Obasanjo also tried to thumb-down Tinubu’s critical infrastructure, as the Lagos-Calabar coastal expressway, with a rail section to boot.  Pray, which rail or road infrastructure did Obasanjo deliver in his eight years of self-distraction?

    But Works Minister, David Umahi, already gave a fitting riposte: the nay-party, with their negative hubbub, should stay off that highway when completed!  Spite can’t obviate the sweetness of honey!

    Still, President Tinubu (PBAT) has his job cut out for him, in his race against time, to beat the naysayers to the 2027 tape, give inflation a red eye and win over the masses.

    A brief PBAT-PMB comparison.  PBAT, a natural progressive, has chosen neo-liberal tactics to drive his reforms.  PMB is a natural conservative.  Yet, he adopted more socio-democratic methods during his tenure.

    But both, no matter their tactics, have made greater strides in infrastructure — far more than the PDP years.  Indeed, despite Tinubu’s neo-liberal pains, he is implanting discrete IOUs, in several critical demographics: student loans, the nascent credit culture, and aggressive IT training, to power a prosperous youth segment, etc.

    That’s why Obasanjo is revving up his virulent traducement, ahead of 2027. 

    He attacks critical projects that he knows, if completed, would finally bury him and his presidential mirage — which anyone hardly remembers anyway, but for Obasanjo’s eternal screeching and constant personal nuisance.

    Still, the Tinubu-Aregbesola crisis has been unfortunate.  Noise in regnant circles often demonizes Ogbeni as some traitor and implacable foe to the President. That’s not true.

    Ogbeni’s street value could have better assuaged the masses, than cost-mouthing ministers that seem to alienate them.  What a missed opportunity!

    Still, the electorate must know that those who love to scatter, after helping to gather, often do so for selfish and egoistic reasons. 

    Nigeria’s redemption and sustainable development compass, from all critical facts, appears closer to 2015, than 1999.