The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Presidential ”youth”collapse?

    Four days to the 2019 presidential election, the “youth” thunder is muffled: a soft moan, softening into a baby’s sigh.  Hardly any challenger has made a dent.

    Bravo, the brave Kingsley Moghalu, and his Young Progressive Party (YPP), just received our own WS’s endorsement – applause, applause!

    But the same WS has, no less, applauded the new Lagos-Abeokuta standard gauge rail, a sure vote-spinner for the old masters.  So, where does that endorsement lead Moghalu and his gamely young Turks?

    It appears the sensational collapse of youthful pride and prejudice (to parody Jane Austen’s classic) — not to add conceit.

    Like Elizabeth Bennet, Austen’s chastened protagonist, in Pride and Prejudice, these “youths” are finding out the hard difference between the fundamental (painstaking thinking) and the superficial (hasty rush to emotive judgment).

    The “take it back” crowd appears eating some crow — and just as well!

    “Take it back” — that’s Omoyele Sowore’s electioneering rally.  But that aptly captures the temper of these callow gladiators — whatever it takes, take it back!

    En route to that mission, old age had become a curse; and youth, fresh and booming, eternal blessing!  But which youth doesn’t eventually get old?  A campaign, by its gushing emotions, never got vainer.

    Nor were ethnic slurs, off limits: blaming the criminality of a few, on a whole collective, just because you want to take down one man.  Enter then, the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen”, the southern media’s headline hysteria!

    But perhaps the most fatal — and surprising — for the youth challenge, is a laughable I-don’t-care hauteur, about the political environment.  If you don’t master your milieu, or even care to understand it, how do you bend it to your advantage?

    Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo, the late Senate president and colourful Oyi of Oyi, himself once a callow youth when he dismissed the Great Zik as the “ranting of an ant”, once thundered “political arithmetic”.  But these bristling “youth” don’t know political geography.  Or even political optics.

    That is why a band of southern “youths” would gallop into town, bawling, with maddening rush: down with the old!  Youth power is here!

    Yet, the sitting president, with a right to second term, is from the North; in a democratic polity delicately hinged on a periodic North-South swapping of power!

    Meanwhile, these uproarious youths have no structure; hardly any reach, or even an inner eye, to see the grim optics of their show.

    Neither are they masters of organized voting power, even if on paper, the youth dominate the scroll of registered voters.

    All they crow is their rippling youth.  All they flex is their avant-garde brilliance, in neo-modern governance.

    It was a towering triumph of brilliance over gumption.  In real terms though, a triumph of folly over wisdom.  That explains the making of a thunderous crash, even before the first ballot is cast!

    In doubt?  Look at the “youth” camp, now as gentle as a baby’s sigh, to parody country music great, Dolly Parton.

    Donald Duke, about their brightest prospect, on account of his nimble fox-trots as Cross River governor (1999-2007), jerked awake to see his Social Democratic Party (SDP) ticket vanish!  His party just declared for the sitting president.

    Oby Ezekwesili, Obasanjo-era Madam Due Process, just danced herself into the ditch.  She has served herself the red card she was flashing at others.

    Worse: she exited in a blaze of putative campaign fund scandal, given the row her estranged Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (APCN) is making.  Madam Due Process in putative campaign skewed process?  It doesn’t get more awry!

    Besides, check out Oby’s political history!  APCN?  Wasn’t that Baba Oloye’s Kwara special vehicle, to make darling daughter, Gbemi, willy-nilly governor, after the gubernatorial stonewall, from beloved son, Bukky?

    How does post-modern governance sprout from such pre-medieval garden?  Perhaps only on the humus of crass opportunism!

    It also took Ohanaeze’s endorsement of Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, to jerk Moghalu back to reality.  For all his famed brilliance, Ohanaeze has proved more astute in political arithmetic (apologies again to the late Oyi of Oyi)!

    As for Sowore, the “take it back” maverick, his campaign ended with the stunt he pulled at the Ooni of Ife’s palace, breaching age-old palace protocol, because his royal host didn’t keep to time!

    What Nigeria needs is an elected president, not a democratic anarchist.  That Sowore gamely breezes on is proof of the youths’ dashing ignorance of their milieu.

    Still, the “youth” debacle is only the symptom of a more fundamental malaise: the Nigerian penchant to yelp at pressing problems, conjuring up sweet but empty utopia, not hard thinking, as they flee.

    The result?  A rash of easy-does-it youth policy shamans, talking the talk!

    Between 2015 and 2017, it was extremely tough, as the old PDP order had collapsed the economy.

    Though former President Goodluck Jonathan was the popular scapegoat — to be fair, he contributed his own fair share to the debacle, with the freewheeling sleaze under his watch — that rot had its root in the Obasanjo presidency.

    At the best of times, Nigerians lack institutional memory.  At these worst of times, a distracted media fuelled this corporate forgetfulness, growling at “hunger in the land”.   But they blissfully forgot that quip: no pain, no gain.

    So, about everyone started shellacking PMB and his team.  When the pocket hurts, the brain seems unhinged!

    In that free-wheeling chaos, yesterday’s wreckers became today’s grating jeer-leaders, in the deafening anti-salvagers orchestra!  A theatre never got so comically absurd!

    Why, even the PDP, in a flash of delusion it mistook for transfiguration, started dreaming a snappy comeback!

    Still, the president and his team have stayed the course.

    Thanks to a general infrastructural revamp (roads, rail and power); and targeted interventionist schemes at the society’s most vulnerable, PMB has done much more, with much less resources, compared to the PDP era.

    That has put the spendthrift PDP era in bold relief; showing the former ruling party an anachronism, on its virtual death bed.

    It has also taken the sail off the loud “youth” challenge.  No one, in their right senses, would entrust their future to rookies, if they can help it.

    Still, the youth gunning for power is legitimate. The young, after all, shall grow!  But in this case, it was a costly distraction, when what was imperative was a national consensus to spring the country from a millennial jam.

    Besides in politics, a stark youth-oldie divide, is a mirage.

    Even in Emmanuel Macron’s France, Justin Trudeau’s Canada, Tony Blair’s “New Labour” Britain and Bill Clinton’s United States, the so-called “youth”, which the political dice threw up, were to their parties, tested veterans, not rookies.

    Flicked the other way, these youths were no happenstances.  They were always the spine, behind the often elderly face of power.

    So, the pride (of youth), prejudice (against old age) and conceit (of vigour) can’t gift power to the Nigerian youth.  Only clinical thinking and organization can.

  • As Nigerians decide

    One of the more positive correlates of the so-called silly season is the wave of activism that leaves neither room for ambivalence nor indifference.  Call it the binary season: you are either in or out. You are either boarding the train moving to the next level or on signed to team sworn to get Nigeria working again. Whether you are talking of friends turning frenemies sometimes over nothing of substance; the ever-widening chasm over inanities between the so-called tribe of wailers and their hailer-compatriots;the debates over alternative facts and public morality; and now, the sundering of otherwise cohesive groups over base, atavistic politics of convenience; not only are both symptoms of the same binary flu afflicting the polity, neither, unfortunately,  would appear to offer tangible guarantees that our country will emerge stronger and better.

    Muhammadu Buhari or Atiku Abubakar? That practically is what is on the table. Considering the array of threescore plus 10 candidates that the country has to choose from, it comes pretty close to a distinction without a real difference particularly with the leading alternative quite frankly reviled; making the return of the incumbent looking more like a reward for performance rather than a rejection of that perilous path to which Nigerians swore Never Again – in 2015.

    That, most tragically is where we have found ourselves – today.

    Has the administration therefore failed? Failure is certainly not the word to describe the administration that came in with a good dose of goodwill in 2015 but somehow failed to measure up to expectations. In any case, if there is any case of failure, it is precisely one of inability to match citizens’ hunger for development, the quest for inclusion and justice with its appetite to make things happen. Admittedly, it came in with bagful of challenges chief of which was a treasury plundered by a departing Jonathan administration. Not only did it inherit a war in the Northeast which it must fight to win or risk the disintegration of the country, it met a vastly depleted and dispirited army no thanks to greedy Generals that saw the war as an opportunity to amass illicit wealth to themselves. And this was at a time the price of oil had long dipped and production severely curtailed by militants in the Niger Delta which held the nation by the jugular. For an import-dependent country, the tightening of the forex regime not only shrank production, it eventuated in the players in the real sector coming to grieve with the economy predictably – tanking.

    That was the situation then. Today, the debate is whether the country couldn’t have beaten a different path to achieve a vastly different outcome had the administration been less tardy in its response or less out of depth when the problem surfaced.

    Now, that is taking nothing away from the administration’s heroic efforts in some areas. One such area is in the Northeast where the war against the Boko Haram terrorists continues to rage; surely the administration cannot be accused of lacking the will despite the persistence of the scourge. The same is true of the northcentral where clashes between herdsmen and farmers, kidnapping and other forms of banditry have festered; the administration may have misjudged the wave of the criminality at the initial stage, there is some sense that the monstrosities are being dealt with. While the question of whether the administration could have done more would remain an open one, the charge of abdication as we had under the clueless PDP administration of Goodluck Jonathan, will certainly be hard to sustain.

    The same can be said of its war against corruption. Unlike the PDP administration which made graft the directing principles of state policy,the Buhari administration has certainly done well to focus attention of that lethal virus that continues to undermine and weaken the nation’s institutions. While it might seem an exaggeration to aver that Impunity Inc. is dead and buried, there can be no denying that the virus has been substantially tamed despite growing charges of administrative overreach by the administration. On this, while most Nigerians will readily agree that the latter will be infinitely better than doing nothing, the administration, contrary to its public averments, is yet demonstrate how scrupulous fidelity to due process can be injurious to its anti-corruption battles.

    However, while the administration’s claim to have been able to do more with less may have found validity in the array of projects scattered across different parts of the federation, it is precisely on grounds of underperformance of the economy that the Atiku challenge finds great relevance. For not only are the stats sobering, there is pretty little that the Buhari administration has done to hint at a future, coherent direction to which the economy is headed.

    What do you expect in the environment of vacuity of policy? Talk of course. And Atiku has been talking.  Why should anyone be surprised that an Atiku, whose claim to economic wisdom is not only suspect but utterly dubious, sell Nigerians a pig for the poke? So, selling NNPC – the national oil that has turned rent collector – is big deal? To who?

    By the way, who remembers the corporation’s prospecting arm – the National Petroleum Development Corporation (NPDC) – an agency that does no more than sweet ‘strategic alliance’ deals on behalf of the powerful?

    Once upon a time, the agency bled the nation to the tune of billions of dollars in unremitted funds? Do we wait for the next level to get the funds back in the kitty?

    Forget Atiku and his grandiose economics. If you ask me, I will say that the man is overrated – simple. He’s nowhere close to the new thinking required to get the country working. However, taking Nigeria to the next level –whatever that means –requires more than the catchy sloganeering on offer by the incumbent. It calls for a radical, new thinking on how to get Nigerians back to work. The problem with the Buhari administration goes beyond itsfixation with fighting corruption; then trouble is that it hasn’t even begun thinking through the problems let alone enduring solutions – sadly with only few months to the end of its first term.

  • Buhari vs Atiku

    As February 16, slated for the presidential election approaches, the die is cast between ‘the buharists’ and ‘the atikulates’ to match their words with action. They must go to the polls to cast their vote for their preferred candidate. While many wished the frontrunners were intellectual denizens like Oby Ezekwesili, Kingsley Moghalu, Omoyele Sowore or their kindred spirit, the fact is that all things being equal, either Buhari or Atiku will be our president-elect by evening of February 16.

    So, like Julius Caesar said on January 10, 49 B.C., after crossing the Rubicon river: Aleaiactaest (the die is cast) for our dear country on her march to the 2019 general elections. But, also like 2Baba and his melodious brethren have been preaching through their songs, all Nigerians should work for a peaceful election. I have no doubt that the greatest legacy President Muhammadu Buhari can leave is a free, fair and credible election. While he is entitled to run to win, he must never contemplate the election as ‘a do or die affair’.

    In making a choice between Buhari and Atiku, what should be the guarding principle?In my view, it should be who amongst the two candidates will better wage the war on corruption. Perception wise, Buhari is viewed as incorruptible, while Atiku is seen as susceptible to corruption. Buhari’s famed incorruptibility was very instrumental to his winning the presidency in 2015. Atiku’s corruption index was key to his being denied a succession advantage by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in 2007.

    Practically, Atiku in an interview last weekmooted the idea that he could offer amnesty to corrupt officials willing to return their loot to the national coffers. No doubt such a proposal will find favour amongst his supporters who are facing corruption charges in court. Some of his vociferous supporters who have been politically exposed are facing financially related charges in court. Either they are accused of outright embezzlement or of they have taken humongous loans from Banks which they have refused to repay.

    Perhaps that peculiar circumstance may be because Atiku’s politicalelite base is substantially members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who were in power for 16 years, during which they had access to public resources. But beyond the politically exposed there is a huge number of potential voters who believe that regardless of the corrupt practices associated with the PDP candidate, life was better while ‘the corrupt practices’ lasted. This group are adamant that national progress should be measured in terms of the present cost of one bag of rice compared to the pre-Buhari era.

    On his part the anti-corruption agencies under President Buhari prefers to fight corruption frontally, even refusing to consider plea bargain. In fairness to them, they have recovered substantial sums from the thieving elite that raped our country for better part of the 16 years the PDP were in charge at the centre. Buhari on his part is viewed by many as ascetic and incorruptible. He preaches that it is either Nigeria kills corruption or corruption will kill Nigeria.

    Unfortunately Atiku supporters do not believe that Buhari is sincere in the fight against corruption. They easily point to allegedly corrupt officials close to the president, who are not targeted by anti-corruptionagencies. They have also ingeniously linked the lopsided appointments in Buhari’s government as corruptpractices. So, while the anti-corruption agencies have performed better under Buhari, some framers of the campaign issues are pushing the existence of other forms of corruption, beyond stealing public funds.

    But assuming the electorate are discerning enough on the issue of corruption, their responsibility would be to weigh between an Atiku who may be more nuanced in spreading political appointments, even while he may be soft on financial related corruption and a Buhari who may surround his kitchen cabinet with his folks, even though he would be more trenchant in fighting corruption. In essence, the choice to make will be which of the two likely scenarios would better serve a country held captive by debilitating corruption in public service?

    Ordinarily, the coming election should have been a walk-over for a president who has made the fight against corruption the cornerstone of his administration, considering that corruption kills more Nigerians than even Boko Haram. In fact, it is corruption that undermined the efforts made by President Jonathan to fight the insurgents. Even the prevalence of perhaps the greatestcause of death in our country,malaria is attenuated by corruption, which has reduced the resources available to fight the scourge.

    The same challenge applies to the debilitating infrastructure that has hobbled our lives. Whether it the absence of roads, rails or even social infrastructure, corruption is at the bottom of the challenge. Considering the staggering billions of dollars, stolen since the era of oil boom, the fundamental challenge to our national existence is no doubt corruption. The countries that Nigeria was at par with at independence have long zoomed past, because they applied the resources they had more judiciously.

    Even the issue of a buoyant economy will be a ruse if there is no substantial honesty amongst government officials. One example. Nigeria has had many national economic development plans, yet in industrial terms, Nigeria is an import-dependent economy. Whether it the industries that were established or the banks to back it up, all have been swallowed in the cesspit of corruption. All the big ticket industries like the Ajaokuta steel industry, the various paper mills, the vehicle assembly plants, the refineries, the Nigerian Airways, the Nigerian Shipping line and the gamut of other enterprises, all have been killed by corrupt practices.

    So, ifthe electorate are discerning enough, the single most important factor to determine who wins between Atiku and Buhari should be who between the two has a better strategy to fight corruption. Of course, the two are not the best the country can offer, but either of the two will be our president-elect by February 16. In making a choice, one has to decide whether Atiku’s plan to grant amnesty would yield more resources to the national coffers than Buhari’s preference of chasing those accused of corruption until their vomit what they have stolen.

    Again, they must decide whether an aggressive enforcement or a liberal disposition to ruleswould better grow the economy, both in the short run and the long run. Furthermore, whetherthe stricter Buhari persona will drive an enhanced national development programmemore than the liberal Atiku persona or vice versa? Between the two who has the more effective aura needed in the fight against sundry criminality, including Boko Haram? Also, which of the two will better enhance the resuscitation of the sorely lacking physical and social infrastructure? Everything considered, it appears Buhari is a better option than Atiku.

  • Panic — no, sinister — button

    “When a bunch of known corrupt people unite against one man and spare no effort to ridicule him, blackmail him and attempt to assassinate his character, blindly follow that one man” — Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD, Roman emperor, and last of Rome’s “five good emperors”).

    This Marcus Aurelius quote, though a Roman classic, pierces the core of the February 16 Presidential and National Assembly elections.

    Dark forces, eternally plaguing Nigeria, bristle at their putative nemesis — and Holy Armageddon, the masses, hitherto dense and useless, appear rousing to the ancient charge of Aurelius!

    They do appear to “blindly follow” that nemesis – elite nemesis, but own saviour!

    You could then see why former President Olusegun Obasanjo is out there, in blind panic — no surprise!  Obasanjo is the fragrant air from a putrid brew.

    That also explains his rather rash last stand, a 16-page infamous tirade. It rippled with wild conjectures; and oozed, like a smelly sore, with vulgar abuse and bad breeding.  Little wonder it fell flat, earning nothing but general scorn and derision.  About time!

    Besides, for every single finger the once all-mighty Ebora Owu pointed at others, the remaining four judged him, ever so harshly, but fairly.

    For President Muhammadu Buhari’s legit second term (which the Ebora inexplicably tagged “self-succession”), juxtapose Obasanjo’s own aborted illegal “third term”.

    Beside his “they-want-to-rig” howling, over an election yet to hold, place his record-crashing, do-or-die electoral heist of 2007 – which he arrogantly promised and brazenly delivered.

    Even on suspect Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) staff, place Aisha Zakari (the woman Obasanjo tried to hang at the stakes), side by side with his very own Ayoka Adebayo, of the Maurice Iwu INEC.

    Madam Adebayo’s much trumpeted “Christian conscience” vanished, at the mighty sight of Ekiti’s electoral robbery!

    The Ebora panic becomes all the more stunning — and tragic — with his virtual slander of the Christ Jesus, and the Christianity he bequeathed mankind, on account of Atiku, Obasanjo’s newfound electoral god — and sole mirage to continued relevance.

    Incidentally, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Christendom Nigeria’s foremost faith body, has been loudly silent on this ultra-faith slur.  But again, that’s what you get, when you waste your essence, on the dubious altar of politics.

    Somewhat, the Ebora cuts the grim picture of a mouse, stuck on rat gum, blundering for comely fish.  His is a racket of panic!

    The initial blunder was that opportunistic letter of 2018, hectoring PMB not to re-contest.  Then, bolstered by raucous self-eulogy, as he is wont, he sold the “Third Force” dummy, of a putative “youth” take-over.

    But after a failed annexation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) — Pa Olu Falae claimed the Ebora gruffly demanded the surrender of SDP’s registration certificate, which Falae rebuffed, in a fit of opportunism trumping opportunism — Obasanjo announced, with much fanfare, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as his “Third Force”.

    But then, ADC, after much “initial gra-gra” (to borrow that picturesque street lingo), didn’t really fly.

    So, Obasanjo found himself hooked with an Abubakar Atiku he loves to hate, but is now yoked to love, in a final(?) existential political war!  The scriptures are right: the stone that the builders refused has become the head corner stone!

    Is it the final, painful unravelling of the Ebora Owu as a political force?  Time will tell.

    But one thing, even now, is clear: the shimmer of tinsel dims, by the glitter of solid gold.  That is the Obasanjo-Buhari contrast, when the question is probity and integrity.

    But the Obasanjo-Buhari, tinsel-versus-gold juxtaposition, goes beyond integrity and probity.  It applies in so many other areas: basic honesty and decorum, trust-worthiness, credibility, selflessness, and good old community value.

    Over the years, Obasanjo had bawled and screeched and crowed: Nigeria’s very best, out of all humanity.  But then came PMB, quiet and taciturn; yet loud and foreboding, sending the former president ga-ga!

    Indeed, God bless our own WS: a tiger does not proclaim its tigeritude!

    So long for Baba, and his end-time angst!  Looming political end is a scary sight.  Only a few — if any – face it without blinking.

    Still, that can’t excuse his dangerous theatrics: attempting to discredit a legitimate vote; and scaring the lily-livered, by inciting the so-called “international community”, against a country that gave him everything.

    That goes beyond pressing a legitimate panic button.  It is pressing a sinister button, which could have devastating consequences.  Indeed, it’s a perilously new low, after June 12, in political brinkmanship.

    By the June 12, 1993 tragedy, Ibrahim Babangida and confederates scuppered a successful election; and threw the country into chaos.

    By his latest stunt, Obasanjo and confederates are trying to scupper an election yet to hold, just because they are faced with crushing defeat.

    It is an abuse of privilege to cry wolf – where there appears none — and sell the bogey of interim government (a gargoyle unknown to the Nigerian Basic Law), to the so-called “international community”.

    That borders on outright treason.  As crass gamesmanship goes, it is the most menacing, thus far.  It ought to be resoundingly condemned by all right-thinking Nigerians.

    Still, Obasanjo may not represent, or share his glory with, anyone. But on this score, he would appear only the rashest face of a baleful lobby, among them key societal gatekeepers, in blind panic.

    Faced with an epoch-defining poll, even a section of the media is busy thundering hard.  Who are you, mere mortal, to question their democratic or patriotic bona fides?

    Still, the gruff, editorial excitability, by the growling anger of its thunder, hints at sheer panic. In the final run-up to a crucial election, the people they are supposed to lead – but have been trying to illicitly teleguide – appear far ahead, in making their choice.

    In this bind too, appear critical moral gatekeepers, that nevertheless see nothing in the execrable scandal that has swallowed the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).

    Why, even holy Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, loudly quiet when his moral voice ought to roar in holy anger, just regained his voice: the CJN is too much of a juridical blue blood to face trial!

    Again, because the “wrong” sheriff is calling the shots!

    It is amazing how the charge of Aurelius, out of ancient Rome, resonates in today’s Nigeria.

    The mass of the people appear to have cut to the chase, leaving behind the elite, stuck with their decadent chase.

    No wonder, the elite chamber is in sheer bedlam — and in “severe pains”, apologies to Ayo Fayose!

  • Requiem for auto-policy?

    Finally, the clouds appear to be gathering over a key element in the automotive policy enacted by the Jonathan administration in October 2013.

    I refer here to the ‘punitive’ 35 percent levy on imported vehicles. A week after Comptroller General, Nigeria Customs Service, Col Hameed Ali (retd.), called for a reduction of the 35 per cent levy on imported vehicles to curb smuggling, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has also lent its voice to the call. Whereas both fundamentally agree that the policy has failed to work the magic either in terms of its stated goal of growing local capacity in auto manufacture; they are also of the view that the policy has become a major drawback to the government’s drive to grow its revenue base.

    LCCI, speaking through its Director-General, Muda Yusuf,  was rather point bank: Five years after its proclamation, “the policy had not only failed to achieve the desired outcomes but had adversely impacted the cost of doing business, the welfare of the people, government revenueand the capacity of the economy to create jobs”.

    The duo is certainly not alone. Minister of Finance, Hajia Zinab Ahmed had in January echoed the same sentiments when she told leadership newspaper in an exclusive interview that the policy was currently undergoing review.

    “The auto policy”, she told the newspaper, “is presently being reviewed because neighbouring countries are giving incentives to vehicle importers to bring in their vehicles through their port because of our own rate.” In other words, at a time our federal government would rather maintain a punitive tariff regime to keep car imports – used and new – at bay, and this supposedly to grow a non-existent automotive industry,neighbouring countries continue to provide safe havens for vehicles destined for the country through unapproved routes. Even that would seem a mild headache when the stated goal of the policy which is to foster growth in the auto sector, and the abuses that have characterised the tariff regime, are taken into account.

    The chicks, as they say, have come to roost; time to count the costs of the false hopes kindled,time to reflect on those phoney assumptionsfreely traded by Olusegun Aganga and his cohorts in the industry ministry at the time, and flowing from this, the exaggerated outcome that the government projected. It is unfortunately the case that Nigeria would have to wait for five years to discover what yours truly had described in July 2014 as a journey to nowhere.  Today, whereas the country is nowhere near the stated goal of the auto policy, the same cannot be said of the multiples afflictions the country and the people have suffered either in terms of the desolation of our ports, the level of smuggling that have attenuated the policy and the unmitigated losses in revenue year in year out – which of course explains the frustrations of the CGS.

    Four years ago, I had written of the policy as being dead on arrival. I thought the absence of critical infrastructure rendered the policy a non-starter; I highlighted the dearth of support industry, critical skills pool and what I called the still-in-the-works financing infrastructure among other factors. I didn’t see the big deal in a policy that seeks to punish one segment of the auto market when the structures for take-off of the other segment are not yet in place. I couldn’t understand how Nigerians could have allowed a policy, which was to me a brainwave, whose main assumptions are not only questionable but flawed, to go unchallenged.  And then my conclusion: The question which our policy wonks have hardly bothered to address is whether the nation can actually sustain a competitive auto-industry at this time. The problem here isn’t so much the desire to return to the “good old days” of Peugeot in Kaduna, Steyr in Bauchi, Leyland in Ibadan, and ANNAMCO in Enugu but whether the conditions responsible for their exit are any different today than what they were in the 80s.

    Let me say this: I have nothing against the National Automotive Policy 2013. The idea, as I understood it is to bring back the vehicle assembly plants such as we had in the early 80s. That will most certainly be a good thing not just because of the size of the Nigerian market but the massive economic spin-offs it would engender. However, I also understand that it is not always how it seems; not only would it require huge forex outlay, the virtual absence of any local addition makes the prospects a non-starter as the final price will be far beyond the reach of the prospective Nigerian consumer. For a country that once boasted of capacity to produce tyres, windscreens, batteries and other components, it beats me that the government wouldn’t think of reviving these ancillary industries before resuming the so-called quest. A case of no lessons learnt?

    And to even imagine that no one is yet thinking of developing the financing infrastructure in a country where the cheapest locally assembled auto costs about N10 million!

    With or without the punitive auto-levy; Nigerians desirous of a car will most certainly get them. After all, the thought of a new car for most Nigerians is at best a dream. Unlike the car assemblers who can approach the government for forex or credit as necessary, the ordinary Nigerians simply desire a contraption that could to take them places without the government riding on their backs. The exactly opposite, unfortunately, is what the policy seeks to ensure with the five year-old policy with its punitive levy of 35 percent – in addition to the 35 percent duty on imported vehicles. Now, having shut itself in the foot, the government has been moaning about lost revenue.

    Well, the government cannot eat its cake and still want to have it at the same time. It has no right to complain that the neighbouring countries offering their territories as transit for smuggling. Rather than complain, the way to go is to make our ports truly competitive and our fiscal policies humane. Of course, it goes beyond mere revenue; it is about what truly serves the greatest number as against the interest of a dubious club of auto- assemblers. Perhaps, the latter needs to be educated that the marginal auto-market, which is what the tokunbo car market segment represents, is not the same with their exclusive club. Not only do they operate different paradigms, their characters are certainly not the same. The latter will do well to remember this as they go about their lobby even as the federal government proceeds to review the jaded policy.

  • Fascism: executive or judicial?

    Since it is the season of high-wire emotions, we may as well start a no less explosive debate.  Which would you prefer: executive or judicial fascism?

    Since that rather novel “suspension” of January 25, the polity has been in a tizzy.  Some bawl fascism!  Others screech dictatorship! Yet, others hiss tyranny!

    President Muhammadu Buhari, clutching an “interim order” by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), had “suspended” embattled Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Samuel Onnoghen, as CJN and chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC).

    In his place, he had sworn in Justice Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed, the next in line on the Supreme Court hierarchy, as acting CJN, pending the CCT trial of Justice Onnoghen, for alleged asset declaration infractions.

    The order’s exact wording, on the CJN: “It is hereby ordered as follows: That the defendant/respondent shall step aside as the CJN and chairman of NJC over allegation of contravening the provisions of the Code of Conduct and Tribunal Act CAP C15 Laws of the Federation 2004, pending the determination of the motion on notice, dated 10th January 2019.”

    And its directive to the president: “That the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall take all necessary measure to swear in the most senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria as acting CJN and chairman NJC in order to prevent a vacuum in the judicial arm of government, pending the determination of the motion on notice.”

    That is the legal anchor for the current high-wire drama: Onnoghen out, Mohammed in.

    But that is certainly a departure from the Constitutional provisions, which state the CJN could only be removed by the president, armed with a resolution backed by two-third majority of the Senate.

    Still, has CJN Onnoghen been removed?  No.  Stepping aside — even if pushed — cannot equate “removal”.  So, to confuse removal (final cessation), with suspension (temporary cessation), is nothing but conceptual fuzziness.

    Yet, what does the law say on suspending the CJN?  Virtually nothing, at least going by the Constitution.

    Well, the closest to that is the NJC convention, that almost automatically suspends any judge that has any case to answer.  That is a neat procedural window, to temporarily ease out a judge accused of any infraction, without necessarily losing his job before being found guilty; or blighting the majesty of his office.

    In this grim case, however, the accused judge (shame of shame!) is CJN, the chair of NJC — and from his camp would appear already some high-wire manoeuvres, not only to cling to office but also to sabotage justice.

    CJN Onnoghen indefinitely postponed NJC’s routine 88th meeting, fixed for January 15, for no specific reasons, because he allegedly feared NJC might suspend him.

    Also, on the procedural lane, a rash of courts have ruled  — including the National Industrial Court (NIC), that in this fray hardly has a locus, except the CJN is now an endangered Labour species! — that proceedings at CCT be stopped.  Judicial hand of Esau but voice of Jacob?

    The premise for these orders, for alleged procedural hiccups, is that the CJN is charged with “judicial misconduct”, in which case he is entitled to some NJC pre-sanction, to disrobe him, before facing justice in court.

    But there have been counter-voices that “forgetting” to declare your asset, as the CJN claimed he did, is easily linkable to high sleaze; which exits the window of routine “misconduct” to high financial crime.

    A judge, charged with crime, of stealing a goat or murdering his wife, for instance, they argue, loses the privilege of NJC “orderly room” pre-trial.

    But beyond arguments and counter-arguments, the media also reported that the CJN was poised to inaugurate vital adjudication tribunals, for the 2019 general elections.

    In other words, smudge, stink and all, His Lordship was going to pretend his reputation was intact; and public perception irrelevant.

    Had that happened, a blighted CJN, in public perception, if not court conviction, would have infected those tribunals with his perceived stench, no matter how immaculate the members of those tribunals are.  For that prime public evil, he would have pleaded “presumption of innocence”, which by the way is no crime, under our present prosecutorial legal system.

    But isn’t good, old honour, stepping aside to clear his name, far better — honour that presumably comes with his office, as even he is addressed “Honourable CJN”?

    That Justice Onnoghen would prefer to hang in there, to game the system as long as he possibly could, relying on procedural cant, just shows how low the judicial system has sunk.

    That goes back to the CCT order.

    To be sure, that order remains controversial, since the Constitution didn’t say exactly say how a CJN should be suspended.

    But perhaps as in the Njangiwa 11 December 2017 Court of Appeal verdict, which the technicality ensemble now codify as the regnant “law”, that must willy-nilly keep the CJN in office, maybe the CCT order should pass as “latest law”, to teach the CJN fresh tutorials in the harsh strictures of honour.  That cannot be bad for a redemption-needing Bench, can it?

    In realpolitik terms, however, it’s gaming and counter-gaming.  The arrogant SANs tried to game the system by propping up a CJN whose integrity has all but vamoosed.

    That would not only have further profaned the judiciary, it would have firmly founded judicial fascism, in which only crass procedural manipulations — never Justice — matter.

    But the president too has counter-gamed: to unhorse a damaged CJN; and put the dazed judiciary out of its misery.

    Grant those whose editorials thunder and howl against “dictatorship” and “fascism” their democratic bile.

    But like the deluded pro-Onnoghen SANs, it’s the tragedy of a media that prides its manipulative weapons over and above clear thinking for public good.

    As for the so-called “international community”, they should propel Onnoghen to the apex of their Bench, to underscore his excellent conduct.  That would appear far more convincing than mere diplomatic whining.

    If PMB’s push, to teach a recalcitrant CJN basic honour amounts to “fascism”, so be it.

    But better an executive fascism (to which you have putative checks); than judicial fascism (in which the ultimate check is irredeemably corrupted and destroyed).

    Still, all blare about “fascism” is scare-mongering from an evil class, that knows it’s about to be checkmated; and try to dress their private evil in public good.

    But even if it comes to that, blame no one but lawyers (basic and applied) who, in Achebe-speak, grow so powerful they challenge their chi (personal god) to a wrestling bout.

    It’s the classic pride that goes before a loud crash!

  • Polity in free fall

    It is like a typical market scene: Everyone is talking at the same time even no one is listening let alone comprehending. A straight chapter from Achebe’s Things Fall Apartin which the fabled falcon had long gone past hearing the falconer. A time whenalternative facts rule and the niceties of old time respect for others’ opinion are increasingly a distant memory, when the delicate threads holding brothers and sisters together have long sundered.Welcome to Nigeria’s season of polemics – a season when everyone claims to be a plaintiff, defence, attorney – all rolled into one depending on space, time and circumstances!

    As the immortal Fela would say – this season, surely will bring out either the best or beast in us!

    Afternearly week of verbal gymnastics most of which were couched in arcane legalese, it is increasingly hard to remember where the brouhaha started from let alone the issues at the heart of the disputation. Unfortunately, were the situation not so tragic – or better still – were the country not dealing with a crisis as graveas touching on our collective claim to being able to discern between right and wrong as indeed the very essence of constitutional governance, one would be tempted to simply relax and enjoy the circus going on.

    See what has happened – all in a space of a fortnight. On January 7, a civil society group, Anti-Corruption Research Based Data Initiative (ARDI) petitioned the Code of Conduct Bureau accusing  Onnoghenof failure to properly declare his assets according to law. Exactly a week after, the CJN was dragged before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) to answer to the charges. In between, the embattled CJN was alleged to have admitted to omissions so grave as to constitute a terrible violation of the law.

    Not so – at least in the eyes of some lawyers who reduced the matter to one of finding the loopholes not to serve the ends of justice but tom exculpate the self-confessed offender. And so began the judicial rigmarole – first at the CCT over an ordinarily settled issue of jurisdiction; and thenthe high court, the industrial court and finally the Court of Appeal in what would become one of the most inglorious circuses ever seen in these parts. And then the federal government, as if to compound the serial travesty, going for a power grab, following a curious order procured at the CCT.

    To describe what happened last week was a multi-layered tragedy is to put things mildly – for want of a better phrase. Just imagine the individual, who is not only the High Priest but in normal times would personify the majesty of the law, to get kicked off the sacred stool for grave financial malfeasances. As if the self-confession of amnesiais not troubling enough for a man who, like the Caesar’s wife should be without blemish, the anti-graft bodies have since determined that they would not hold back from roasting him in the African sun even if it means putting the institution of the judiciary on the spot. With revelations being splashed out daily in newspapers and the electronic media about the man’s net worth, it is doubtful that anyone among the vociferous throng chanting ‘due process would dare to swear on their mother’s grave that those humongous sums in various currencies found in the accounts of their ‘beloved’ Honourable Justice Walter Onnoghen, GCON , were actually products of honest day’s enterprise.

    Which is what makes it hard to fathom why the man wouldn’t take a bow when it was still possible to salvage whatever was left of his honour.

    Hardly a way to end a career spanning a little over four decades – if you ask me.

    As for the Nigerian Judicial Council, it used to be said that you do not have elders around with the neck of the young sticking out of joint. Even if we leave out the minor drama of the embattled CJN putting off the meeting of the august body indefinitely, what I cannot understand is how the body of eminent men would so readily acquiesce – without as much as a whimper– to a forced abdication by a leader whose moral credentials have been so terribly assailed. Esprit de corps? That none of the wise men saw the looming disaster, nor took steps – even if informal – to stave off the national embarrassment seems to me another variant of the same tragedy.

    The lawyers we know too well. Once upon a time, our learned fellows used to be described as ministers in the temple of justice. Not anymore. At least not here. So is their claim to being ‘learned’ just as questionable. Much as they have a job to do, it is their penchant to defecate in the communal pond that many find galling. Could any case be ‘worse’ than the celebrated O.J Simpson trial in the United States? Many of us watched the trial of the former National Football League (NFL) player, broadcaster and actor on two counts of murder for the June 12, 1994, deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman on television. I didn’t see his high-profile defence team, referred to as the “Dream Team” attempt to bring the judicial institution down.  What wason display throughout the trial was class, intellect and elegance. In the end, justice, rather than technicalities won. Nearer home, one remembers the trial of Oscar Pistorious, the South African sprint runner who made history in 2012 as the first amputee to compete in track events at the Olympics. Accused of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, the trial which opened in High Court of South Africa,Pretoriaon March 3, 2014 was initially concluded on September 11, 2014 even as global audience watched the legal fireworks on prime time television. Here, our lawyers would, rather than apply their rigour to the trial process, shunt the process!

    Was the federal government right or wrong to have asked Onnoghen to step aside? On this, Nigerians are as sharply divided as on the notion of what is right and wrong, and whether the endgame should trump the process. Trust Nigerians in their indignation to latch on to whatever aspects of the law that suits them,the issue really is who has the authority to sanction the erring CJN. In an ideal setting, the weight of public opinion would ordinarily suffice to force the embattled CJN to do the needful. This was not the case was simply a case of failure of private and public morality. As for the lawyers, they did not help matters by their frivolous applications designed to obstruct the process of trial even as the NJC, in a demonstrably false sense of moral solemnity went on sabbatical.  And so an indignant even if opportunistic presidency, sure that the prospect of immediate sanction stands no chance with the Senate,and increasingly disdainful of the slow legal and bureaucratic safeguards,went for the option of self-help. Talk of the ultimate symptom of society in free fall.

    Troubling times, surely, lie ahead.

  • Prayer for Dangote

    It a time our politicians and their legion of cheerleaders have, in the last few weeks, done little else than spar over inanities; when minders of the economy have long embarked on sabbatical, we must thank God that something, finally, is happening at the industrial front to inspire hope in the future of the country.I refer here to the news which filtered in at the weekend that the $9 billion,650,000 barrels of crude oil per day (bpd)Dangote Refinery willsoon commence operations. On a tour of the facilities at the weekend, Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Group of companies had had told the crew from the CBN led by its governor, Godwin Emefiele that the long-awaited project will finally be delivered by April 2020. The fertilizer plant, he also said, will commence operation between April and May this year.

    In a country where all things are never equal; where policies tend to change like the British weather and the science of forecasting reduced to something of a nightmare to the practitioners of the art, it must be something of a celebration that the project – conceivably the most ambitious one by a private investor on the continent is finally coming on stream.

    To those who had long prayed for the reawakening to the 2007 folly – yours truly included –it comes as the moment of vindication. In July 2007, late President Umaru Yar’Adua, then mint-fresh in office, had caused to be refunded, the $721 million paid by Bluestar Oil Services Limited Consortium for the acquisition of 51 percent equity in the Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries. Of course, the story of how the consortium promoted by Dangote emerged the preferred bidder/core investor for the plants at an open bid held at the behest of the departing Obasanjo administration in May 2007 is very muchin public domain.As the argument then went, it was bad enough that the Obasanjo administration thought little of selling a vital national patrimony to his “friends” and this for “peanuts”; that it happened on the eve of its departure from office was deemed the height of immorality!

    It mattered little at the time that the two refineries were not only practically down and out but were effectively of no use to anyone!Majority of Nigerians, it seemed, had made up their minds that the status quo of nothing was infinitely better than the promise of afresh hands to inject new money to get the refineries up and running.And so with public anger sufficiently roused; andwith organized laboursuccessfully grounding the economy for four days in June 2007, the Yar’Adua administration, itself caught in the tango of legitimacy in the aftermath of highly flawed polls, was forced to cancel the exercise. Talk of cutting the nose to spite the face!

    Now, we know better. Whereas the once-derided investor has since become the toast of everyone, the obverse side is a country so anaemic that the only reason it is still able to stand on its feet is that it manages to sell crude, unprocessed oil. At an average of $6 billion per year, the giant in the African sun has, in a little more than a decade, spent nearly $70 billion on fuel imports alone and still counting. And that is nothing compared to the billions spawned by the economy of rent and corruption inextricably linked with the fuel trade that has made the African giant a by-word in sleaze. As for the nation’s four refineries, which in the past decade has gulped millions of dollars of taxpayers funds,they have remained where they were in 2007 –scraps – despite endless promises of Turn Around Maintenances (TAMs); the federal government on its part, continues to sell the illusion that it would, somehow, get them up running even when those who know say the technology is obsolete.

    Add to the scenario the rentier economy called subsidy under which the nation gets to import refined fuel only to sell below the cost price; or the more bizarre part – that the country actually spends a third of its entire earnings on crude to import refined products for its domestic uses – and this in a country that has neither an industrial capacity to boast of, nor a petrochemical complex on which to an anchor an industrial strategy, things can hardly get more confounding!

    And someone is still wondering about the huge unemployment figures, the rising poverty and the spate of factory closures? Or the link between the route that the country willfully neglected to take in 2007 and the current mess that the country has found itself? Shouldn’t we then apologise to Dangote for the folly of 2007?

    I do not pretend that Dangote refinery will transform the economy overnight. For an economy the size of Nigeria’s, that would be utterly misplaced. It is however a solid beginning. Think of the cartel of fuel importers not having to make a request for forex as they routinely do (that is $6 billion off the CBN table); in place of that, there is a potential for additional $5.5 billionto be generated annually through exports of the refined petroleum products, fertiliser and petro-chemicals; think of the countless direct and indirect jobs to be created and the multiple linkages and spin-offs in small and medium enterprises that would follow in the coming months. That is what I call progress.

    Of course, I have heard some say that that establishing a refinery is no rocket science. Very true. But then, didn’t they say also that talk is cheap? If in doubt, try sourcing for N9 billion – not $9 billion! Yeah? Only when one indulges in the “folly” of investing same in a process business with a long gestation period as against cash and carry business of buying and selling will one begin to appreciate the difference. This is where Dangote excels them all!

    For me, I can only offer my sincere heartfelt prayers to the likes of Aliko Dangote. May their dream – as indeed the hopes of our hapless country, find fulfilment. If only for the sake of our leadership-challenged country, I pray that the tribe of Dangotes increase.

  • CJN and elite bully tactics

    The other day, Daily Trust broke, on its front page, complete with battleground map, a secret Baga counter-attack plan, against Boko Haram.

    The military, with other security agencies, promptly raided the Trust premises.

    Reacting to the outrage – which indeed, it was – a top editor howled: the military, invading a newspaper house, in 21stcentury Nigeria, under a democracy!

    Splendid!  But why his loud silence on the newspaper’s counter-outrage: the reckless publication of combat information, which could alert the enemy, lead to needless casualties and jeopardize the country’s security?

    It was a perfect emotive whoop, complete with cynical and ruthless card-stacking.  The military were the villains – to be sure! — for not following “due process”, in a democracy.

    Much more: it was a signal for the “media rights” herd to bleat, hoot and roar; and drown the republic with a hubbub of own perspective – simply because they could and would!  Call it the media’s democratic right to self-help!

    But if that was the regnant illogic, why then blame the military too, for raiding Trust – simply because they could and would?  Or is one self-help any less democratic than another?

    Welcome to Nigeria, the republic of elite bullies!  Beyond that, nothing else matters – no shared values, no grand ethos, just elite waywardness!

    That same elite conceit now drives the Nigerian Judiciary, even as it faces its direst catastrophe ever – calling to rude question, the integrity of Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen.

    And how did the flower of the Bar – and probably the Bench, since those are not easily quotable – react to that stain?  Pushing forth a clatter of technicalities – simply because they can and they will!

    In a scandal that is easily a record, even with Nigeria’s cascade of chartered sleaze in the public space, CJN Onnoghen is accused of not declaring all his assets.

    The jurist has not denied those grave charges.  All he reportedly said, in response, was that he forgot to declare some of them – among those three bank accounts: a trove in foreign currencies, thus naturally fuelling suspicions, in a country that thrives on conspiracy theories.

    Given the sacredness of his office, the CJN would appear mortally wounded; if not outright destroyed.

    In that famous Caesar-speak, he is not Caesar’s wife that must not only be above board but be seen as so.  He is the very Caesar, whose conduct must be absolutely unimpeachable.

    In any case, that is society’s expectation of the Judiciary – and CJN is head of that hallowed chamber.

    But why these superhuman expectations, when the CJN, leading other judges, is just a mere mortal and fellow citizen?  It is because judges enjoy super-human reverence and privileges.  When any citizen appears before their courts, they become Their Lordships, even in a full-fletched republican democracy!

    This reverence is less because of their profundity in scholarship, though lawyers often claim sole monopoly to learnedness, when they bristle with procedures; and ripple with arcane legal technicalities.

    It is rather because piety and the most rigorous of ethical behaviours are presumed an integral part of the Judiciary, at the apex of which nestles the immaculate Lord CJN.

    So, when the CJN faces a dire integrity question – as it would appear in the present case – you just remember the Parson’s value lament, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prelude to Canterbury Tales: “If gold rusts, what will iron do?”  That is the hole the judiciary has found itself.

    The mere shame of it all ought to have struck everyone dumb.  Polite society, gravely led by the CJN himself, ought to have embarked on a judicial Operation Shock and Awe to sanitize the judiciary, after the CJN had quit without much ado.

    But what do we have?  Senior lawyers, rallying their junior ones, rattle with grating technicalities.

    True, law qua law, of which they are grandmasters, you probably cannot fault their triumphant finality: “the law is the law.  If you don’t like it, change it.  But until then, that’s all we have and that’s all we’d work with”!

    Still, in their self-serving, all-knowing clatter, they appear blind, deaf and dumb to other citizens’ basic sense of right and wrong; and whose plebeian noses get assailed by a thick stench, oozing from the supposed sacred temple of justice.

    Tragically, as this posturing heightens, the Judiciary sinks deeper into infamy, no one could have contemplated in 2007, when out-going President, Olusegun Obasanjo, broke all previous records in electoral infamy, with his “do-or-die” electoral heist!

    And irony of ironies!  The same Obasanjo, who procured a certain Maurice Iwu for his grand election steal, is now writing a sterile rigmarole, casting aspersions on the current INEC!  Laughable, isn’t that?  But that’s story for another day.

    Back in 2007, when former CJN Muhammadu Lawal Uwais, proposed the CJN should sit-in-council with NJC to nominate the electoral chief, many thought it was a brilliant idea.  Indeed, such was the high faith that not a few even clamoured that the president should cease that power to the CJN.

    Barely 11 years later, that very suggestion appears utterly ludicrous.

    First, it was CJN Alloysius Katsina-Alu (now dead) that unconscionably gamed Justice Ayo Salami, for upholding the law on electoral matters; and railroaded the NJC into rubber-stamping that crap.

    Now, it’s CJN Onnoghen, caught in a messy asset non-declaration blot.

    In-between, it was a slew of justices, some of them from the Supreme Court, caught with allegedly questionable assets.  They were neither found guilty nor innocent.

    It’s a measure of how the glory is vanished from Nigeria’s Judiciary that the best senior lawyers could essay, in their CJN rally, was ratchet up hollow procedure, used to spring those justices from their jam — not some definitive push for his integrity.

    How are they so blest!

  • Desperate season

    For sympathizers of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), the joke is on the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), AlhajiAtiku Abubakar, over his recent visit to the United States of America. While the PDP is thumbing her chest that her candidate has broken the travel-to-US jinx, her opponents are querying why a former vice president will require a diplomatic cover from the senate president, Senator BukolaSaraki, to enter the US?

    Some have even argued that the former vice president had to quickly depart the US before relevant agencies in that country could secure a warrant to go after him for alleged past misdeeds linking one of his wives, for which an American congressman was jailed years ago. But the Atiku supporters are celebrating the trip as a major diplomatic coup, considering that APC had advised the US consulate in Nigeria not to issue a visa to Atiku.

    If the report is true, then it is embarrassing that the presidential candidate of the PDP would need a diplomatic cover as an aide to the senate president, BukolaSaraki, to enter the US. As a former vice president of an important country like Nigeria, the US consulate ordinarily should extend diplomatic courtesies to Atiku, and more importantly as a top contender for the presidency, they should be glad that he wants to visit. If that didn’t happen and he had to turn an aide of senate president to enter US, then something is seriously wrong.

    So, instead of celebrating the embarrassing development, PDP sympathizers should be asking their candidate to explain the anomaly. What has he done that he needed to become an aide of his own aide to enter US? After all, as the Director General of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, Saraki is an aide of the presidential candidate of PDP. Is it a matter of a master who washes the feet of his servants as a gesture of humility, like Jesus Christ did to his apostles, or is it an act of desperation on the part of Atiku?

    Interestingly, the spokesperson of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo SAN, has raised posers for the Atiku handlers. The one that reverberates most, is why should Atiku travel to America and not conduct one press conference to sell the country he wants to govern? Again, why did the presidential candidate fail to meet with top government officials and businessmen to discussareas of collaboration should he win the presidency? The party also reminded the PDP the sore mark that the relationship between their candidate and the jailed American congressman William Jefferson represents.

    No doubt, Atiku’s past deals will continue to haunt his campaign. This will be so even when one of his foremost tormentors, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has strangely backtracked and endorsed him for the 2019 presidential election. In his books, Obasanjo had described Atiku as gravely too corrupt to be trusted with the presidency of Nigeria. It may be appropriate to ask, what has changed to make Obasanjo a new disciple for Atiku’s presidency?

    The APC sympathizers argue that Obasanjo’s beef against President Muhammadu Buhari is because he refused to grant him a favour. Something he feels entitled to, because he supported him to win the presidency against the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. While President Buhari has kept mute as to why the former president would turn around to support Atiku he earlier forswear against just to get him out of office, there seems to be something personal about the disagreement. Perhaps it is time for the two statesmen to come clean about the cause of the disagreement.

    Implacable as always, Obasanjo is now comparing Buhari to former military dictator Sani Abacha. Except that these are desperate times, such comparison should not hold any water. Not only that Abacha ruled as a dictator, he had Obasanjo and many others clamped into jail for daring to hold a different agenda from his own. Presently, Femi Fani-Kayode and other internet warriors are making a daily meal of abusing the president and churning out outright lies, without any fear of harassment from the government.

    Furthermore, the president has not shown the kind of desperation that even Obasanjo showed when he gunned for re-election. Both in words and action the president and his party have not shown desperation, like the PDP while in power. While the campaigns are going on, the president has not been traversing the country sharing dollars like President Jonathan did in 2015. Back then, all manner of groups sprang up and positioned themselves to get a share of the dollar rain, and many did.

    No doubt, many Nigerians are justifiably offended the way President Buhari gives top jobs to persons from a section of the country, but conversely he has brought some measure of sanity to the manner public officials threat public resources. The foremost testing time for restraint is the election period. If despite Buhari’s determination to win a second term, he has not opened the tap of public resources as his campaign funds, perhaps Nigeria needs another term for the Buhari persona to tame the greatest challenge of our era, corruption.

    Those who argue that nepotism is a form of corruption do have a point. But between sharing amongst themselves and their cronies our common patrimony as the PDP gleefully engaged in for 16 years and the weakness of surrounding his presidency with his kinsmen as President Buhari has perfected in the past three years and half years, I believe majority would prefer the much lesser evil. Even in that anomaly the Buhari presidency has delivered more value for money in its infrastructural renewal drive.

    Perhaps the closest to desperate action one can attribute to the Buhari presidency is the unfortunate entanglement of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen in asset declaration misadventure. For those who are genuinely suspicious, the timing of the indictment is very troubling. But can that detract from the substance of the charges raised against the CJN? This column fought vehemently for the confirmation of Justice Onnoghen as the CJN in 2016, as a counterpoise to the nepotism of the Buhari presidency. But the recent indictment is turning to a monumental tragedy with the CJN allegedly admitting guilt.

    Since the matter is in the Code of Conduct Tribunal and other courts, it is prejudicial to delve into the substantial issues here. My hope is that our public officials will learn from the tragedy that has befallen our judiciary. As a senior member of the bar, I feel pained like Vice President Yemi Osinbajo that our noble profession has become an object of ridicule because of corruption. I earnestly wish the case against the CJN can quickly be brought to a closure in the overall interest of our country.