The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Crunch time

    Olusegun Obasanjo’s endorsement of Atiku Abubakar, for 2019, has left Nigerians with a stark choice.

    Do you want to go back to 1999, and endure a meltdown as you did in 2015 — a meltdown that the endorsing duo actively baked, during their presidential decadence (1999-2007); but which finally collapsed on the feckless Goodluck Jonathan, in 2015?

    Or buckle down to build a new country, which ethos is hard work; unlike the Obasanjo-era money without sweat, that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential years so notoriously epitomized?

    That is the stark reality facing Nigerians, thanks to the excitement of October 10.

    But more than the buzz of Obasanjo’s Atiku volte-face, the optics, temporal and spiritual, were rivetingly gripping!

    Obasanjo and Atiku somewhat serenaded each other as the Alpha and Omega of the first ruin (1999-2007).  They are quite unfazed to signal their readiness to marshal the second.

    From 1999, when the rot started, to 2015, when the rubble buried fall guy-in-chief Jonathan, the template was quite enchanting: holy platitudes to feed the multitude, hefty pork to sate the cronies, and everyone lived happily ever after — until, yet again, the plebs realized they had been scammed!

    And like the Obasanjo-Atiku temporal partnership, the spiritual patrons, of the old ruin, are no less ecstatic, about midwifing the new plague.

    Holy Father Matthew Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, point-blank told Nigerians to forget the stifling corruption of the Jonathan era, just because the man lost election and quit.

    Since irate Nigerians told the holy priest to keep his immaculate advice, Kukah has been cooking thick, bubbly gall against the Buhari order.

    Then, on Jonathan’s behalf, the holy boss at Winners Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo, was threatening and blessing: woe upon the Jonathan fiend; bliss upon the Jonathan friend!

    But then again, the election came and the boss at Winners lost — even after the desperate Jonathan ensemble had played a ferocious Christian versus Muslim card, aside from the reckless rain of dollars!

    Since that loss, however, the holy man has gone apoplectic: naming Christian bastards, locating Muslim infidels and prophesying who will die and who will live, in a scandalous descent into graceless politics, bang on the pulpit!

    From his Zaria redoubt too, Muslim cleric, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, has gushed with scalding, eye-shutting fury, in anti-Buhari holy vitriol.

    Gumi’s friends swear his is only the fierce manifestation of holy dissent.  Others, not so taken in, point at some probable personal beef.

    But whatever has propelled Gumi’s explosive bile, it’s hardly undemocratic — at least on the personal, if not on the religious, lane.

    Which was why it was rather amusing to see the bitter trinity gather, pushing forth a new political god, Atiku Abukakar, all preen, pride and joy — again, on the personal lane, hardly undemocratic!

    Don’t know what the Muslims call such bliss.  But in Christendom, it would appear the closest to a secular Rapture!

    Yet, by Obasanjo’s own umpteenth rail, even once swearing God would never forgive him if he held otherwise, Atiku was nothing but a power knave!

    But all that has changed, in a blinding flash, en route to political Damascus: Saul has turned to Paul.  All hail new Saint Atiku.  Obasanjo has forgiven.  Nigeria has forgotten.

    Even the halo of holies, around the new partisan saint, with the doting kiss of all faiths, is rather impressive: the Ebora Owu, with nevertheless twin but fierce accreditation to Christendom Nigeria; then the bishopric pair of Kukah and Oyedepo; the one Catholic, the other, Pentecostal; finally, the Muslim Shiekh, Gumi — Allah Akbar!

    Factor in the cathedral of Rapture, the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library — first in Africa! — proud jewel of Baba Iyabo’s second coming; and you’ll probably know how and why the old order, spiritual patrons in tow, are primed for new, lucrative business!

    Well, the old, ruinous order have shown their hands.  The battle line is drawn.

    It’s left to the redemptive faction of the elite, banding with the long-suffering masses, to take the gauntlet; and prise our country from the vice clamp of these noxious forces.

    But why should anyone hearken to this war cry?  Maybe a bit of history would help.

    At every crucial juncture, Nigeria had always started with its wrong foot.

    At independence, Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, with zealous cooperation from the East, would rather cage Obafemi Awolowo, with his uppity Western Region, than build a country driven by justice, equity and fair play — until all collapsed in a military take-over.

    Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s first military head of state, slammed a Unification Decree that junked Nigeria’s federalism.  Perhaps, it was honest nationalist passion gone awry.  Or ethnic short-term gain, turned long-term fiasco.  But the progenies of Decree 34 of 1966, now huff-and-puff, singing the magic of “restructuring” in 2018!

    History could be a ruthless judge!

    As midwife-in-chief in 1979, this same Obasanjo, as exiting military head of state, saw to the willy-nilly installing of the goodly President Shehu Shagari, even at the expense of short-circuiting the Electoral Act process — witness the twelve-two-third judicial crisis.  But when that 2nd Republic (1979-1983) also collapsed, in military rule, he was the first to wash off his hands.

    Now, discounting his perfidious role in Moshood Abiola’s aborted mandate of 1993, which also aborted that 3rd Republic, this same Obasanjo became the beneficiary-in-chief in 1999, after the Abacha plague had brought everyone to their knees.

    But what did he do, as first president of the current 4th Republic?  A fit of personal megalomania, sitting on the throne of presidential imperialism.

    O, not only that: a ceaseless, virulent and scalding demonization of an alleged power vermin — this same Atiku Abubakar, that Obasanjo just re-canonized on October 10, with their Lords Spiritual in tow!

    As Obasanjo preened from his throne, infrastructure nation-wide not only totally collapsed, corruption and free-wheeling sleaze assumed a post-industrial scale.

    This explosive combo explains the crippling poverty of today, which ironically these same powers and principalities are turning a campaign issue, to scam the unwary.

    And when the debacle of 16 PDP years collapsed on the luckless Goodluck Jonathan, in 2015?  The Ebora savagely danced shaku-shaku, to thumping Bata beats, in the open streets!

    The saving grace here is that Jonathan took the fall — not the republic for the umpteenth time — for the Obasanjo-Atiku era of unprecedented decadence.

    It can only be hubris playing a tragic trick — or how do you explain Obasanjo presenting Atiku, yesterday’s rotten vomit, as tomorrow’s exquisite cuisine?

    Obasanjo, Atiku, their spiritual fathers and the spite-hobbled Afenifere belong to the past. The 2019 elections must bury them all; and consign them to a rich corner of history’s garbage.

  • After the winnowing

    Last week’s threshing and winnowing of a vast field of aspirants to elected office restored some order to the landscape, and one can now step outside without fear of tripping over a desperate striver claiming to be the divine answer to Nigeria’s problems  and asking to be  given a chance to perform the necessary wonders from a well-remunerated elected position.

    The biggest and most-watched event of the process was of course the pruning in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, of 12 aspirants down to one candidate for the biggest prize of all, the PDP presidential ticket.

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar  and serial contender “emerged” as the PDP’s standard bearer, having polled 1,532 of the 3,206 valid votes, or more than twice the score of his nearest rival, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, and nearly five times the score of the putative “front runner,” the embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki, who came third.

    Individuals no longer win elections here.  They are no longer elected.  They just “emerge”, like apparitions. Even President Buhari, probably the most visible and most reported public figure in Nigeria, had to “emerge” from the APC Convention as its presidential candidate, though he was the sole candidate and the event was more managed coronation than contest.

    Even First Lady Aisha Buhari was not impressed.  And, as usual, she would not confine herself      to “the other room” nor keep her views severely to herself.

    In many contests across the country, the nation’s motley political parties acted as if it was not enough to allow the candidates to “emerge”; they had to “unveil” their  gubernatorial, senatorial and House of Representatives standard-bearers, to lend colour to their “emergence.”

    Nor is the emerging limited to actual persons.  “Facts” and “indications” have also developed the habit of “emerging,” and not just from the archives.

    A first-time visitor to Nigeria would have been led to think that the personages aforementioned, had been hiding behind a curtain that was suddenly lifted, or in caves from which they had they had just been disinterred.

    In the run-up to the Convention, pardon the detour, Saraki was prefacing his speeches at each campaign stop with “When I become President.”  To get there, he was going to concede the Northwest and the Northeast to Buhari, and “lock down” the votes in the rest of the country

    Apparently the assembled delegates, being for the most part analog persons, did not want a “digital president” any more than they wanted a “youth-driven” government, being for the most part middle-aged or superannuated.

    For practically all the 3,274 delegates at the Convention, the weekend will probably go down as the most rewarding – but not on account of the three-minute floor speeches the aspirant was allowed.  They were in the main perfunctory, laced here and there with the sardonic and the piquant

    Gombe State Governor Ibrahim Dankwabo said he was the best person for the job, “not too           old to retire and not too young to run.”  David Jang said he would not stand by and watch “returnees” snatch the main chance.  Sule Lamido staked his claim on helping rebrand the PDP and transforming it into a “beautiful damsel.” David Mark said he was the only candidate with       a female campaign director, and withal a man of courage and honour, who would keep his promise to the PDP.   Those who “absconded” should not get the party’s blessing.

    Reacting to rumours swirling at the Convention that he had stood down for a certain aspirant, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN) pointed out through his spokesperson that “”Luckily, his integrity, credibility, knowledge, intellectual experience, competence and dynamism had never been questioned.”

    “May be there is wisdom after all in the position of some of the resilient members who later became Presidential Aspirants that those who once tried to destroy the party should not be allowed to harvest where they did not sow, to the extent of trying to destroy the common ‘farm’ ( the PDP),” he added.

    He added for good measure that he was the only aspirant not living in daily dread of a visitation from the EFCC.

    Whom do you think Turaki had in mind?

    Given centre stage, former President Goodluck Jonathan would have been impolitic to openly endorse any of the candidates.   With touching candour and to no surprise, he confessed that he was “confused.”  GEJ:  He never disappoints.

    Though few of the delegates can recall anything that any speaker said on the convention floor, none of them will ever forget the “dollar rain” that drenched them.

    One aspirant, it was said, was handing out $1, 000 to each delegate by way of mobilisation fee.  That, people, adds up to $3, 246, 000. Or N1, 168 billion and plenty of change.  Other candidates ponied up, to the best of their ability.

    By one account, each delegate grossed mobilisation fees ranging from $9, 000 to $2, 500.  They just sat tight in their hotel rooms, waiting for the aspirants to come mobilise them.  And even when it seemed the aspirants were done mobilising, the delegates still remained in their rooms, expecting that some straggler would show up.

    They had to be literally dragged out of their rooms to the convention venue.

    A source who was present at the convention said he overheard many a jubilant elector saying that it was far better to be a delegate than a candidate, and that they could hardly wait till 2022 for the next harvest.

    Did the aspirants shell out all that money without exacting an iron-clad guarantee that the obtainer would deliver?  There must be hundreds who obtained from every source available only to vote for one aspirant.

    Back when politics was politics, you could not try that kind of rascality with Arthur Nzeribe,            he who never embraced any cause without bringing it into disrepute; the con artist whose depredations litter the landscape from South Africa to the UK through Ghana and Nigeria.

    It was said that he led you in the dead of night to the shores of Lake Oguta.  You stood in an open coffin and swore to deliver whatever political favour he wanted, and you got your fee.            By that action, you also covenanted to end up in a casket if you betrayed him.  From his days            as Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel, Atiku’s campaign director, also knows a thing or two about such pro-active measures.

    No sooner had Atiku emerged as the presidential candidate than Saraki, realising that he would be bereft of an elected position scurried back to Ilorin in a desperate bid to wrest back the PDP Senate ticket for Ilorin Central from a flunkey to whom he had assigned it for safe-keeping.

    Rabiu Kwankwaso, who also ran in Port Harcourt, rushed back to Kano with the same objective in mind.  Expect a big scramble to regain lost territory by other figures for whom politics is a business.

    Four state governors — Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kogi), Isiaka Ajimobi (Oyo) and Rochas Okorocha (Imo) ­—are looking forward to opulent retirement in the 9th Senate, in the excellent company of a dozen former governors who went from being excellent to being merely distinguished.  But what’s in a name when the rewards are just a shade less bounteous?

    If the transition from the one to the other continues at the present rate, at least one-half of      the 108-member chamber will be made up of former governors in the next four or five election cycles, mostly through self-help.   Of what use is it to be not too young to run when the political space is blockaded by those who control it, or reserved only for their relations and proxies?

    There is no sterner critic of the PDP and its way of doing business than this columnist.  But it is meet and proper to give it high praise for its surefootedness in the conduct of the Port Harcourt Convention.  The event was widely expected to end in confusion, with aspirants and their camps crying foul and demanding its cancellation or challenging the outcome in court after court.

    It is to the PDP’s great credit that none of this has happened.

  • Ebonyi: from dust to salt

    Its founding fathers, at its creation in 1996, crowed it was the “salt of the nation”, after its abundant salt deposits, in the Okposi and Uburu salt lakes.

    But at the nadir of its huge infrastructural hole, its neighbours sneered it was the “dust of the nation” — no roads, anywhere in the country, boasted a cascade of dust more than Abakaliki, the Ebonyi capital!  A pun never sounded more devastating!

    Nevertheless now, with a developmental rebound, the extant Ebonyi order is pushing to make it the tourism hub of the nation — an enchanting destination of choice, after which Nigerian travellers and foreign tourists would soon lust.

    It’s all the salt-to-dust-to-lust story of Ebonyi at 22!

    Indeed, Abakaliki streets, on the night of September 28, had the magical look of a vast grotto.

    The roads not only gleamed with streetlights, they also sparkled and twinkled with low roadside lights, such that visibility was excellent, navigation enchanting and driving, purring.

    Many times you had to pinch yourself: when is Santa leaping out of this vast grotto, with his jumbo Yuletide gifts?

    In this nightly incandescence, the dust of the nation, slowly but surely, may well be morphing into the pearl of the nation!

    Still, that grotto was no open sesame; and Governor David Umahi, no Ali Baba, snapping his fingers, conjuring up sheer magic, less than four years in office.

    At least, that was the impression the upbeat governor gave, at a special media chat, televised live, to mark Nigeria at 58, and Ebonyi at 22.

    It was rather, the result of a sustained developmental upscale, across almost every facet of Ebonyi life: roads, with more stress on concrete, less on asphalt; flyovers, safe water provision, power, with a special bent on solar; agriculture, and even processed solid minerals.

    Indeed, processed solid minerals drive the Umahi government’s concrete road activism, thanks to huge limestone deposits; and its renewed efforts to process Ebonyi’s natural salt, also in fulsome deposits, into some industrial products.

    Yet, as show-grabbing and eye-popping as Ebonyi’s bevy of roads and new bridges are, they have elicited harsh criticisms, from the governor’s local political foes, who accuse him of “wasting” scarce resources on prestige projects, while shunning the basics.

    What does it profit Ebonyi, such foes probably growl, that Abakaliki fountains sparkle with water jets, while residents there lack sparkling drinking water?

    But Governor Umahi, unfazed and unrepentant, just countered: ”Tell those who criticize me for building roads and bridges that the beautification of Abakaliki, the state capital, has just started.”  The packed State House auditorium exploded with cheers!

    That declaration somewhat echoes Chinua Achebe’s 1975 collection of essays, Morning Yet on Creation Day!  Indeed, in Umahi’s Ebonyin, it is morning yet on renewal day!

    In the governor’s logic, beautification births city beatification, since solid investment in tourism infrastructure offers Ebonyin a future bliss, in tourists-driven new jobs, earnings and wealth!

    For starters, the governor, with infectious passion, talks of a Muhammadu Buhari Glass  Tunnel; an Ebonyi version of the famous Dubai Mall; a specialist medical facility, projected as an Ebonyin hub for medical tourism; and an ecumenical centre — “biggest and best” — to serve as magnet for faith tourism!

    That President Buhari’s name somewhat bobs up in Umahi’s tourism vision, speaks to his rather liberal and accommodative politics, sans needless confrontation, powered by ethnic jingoism — a clear breath of fresh air.

    Besides, a Goodluck Jonathan Boulevard, cohabiting with a Muhammadu Buhari Glass Tunnel, may well be teaching the rest of Nigeria principled collaborative politics, without compromising fealty to politicians’ partisan platforms.  That appears the Ebonyin governor’s prime political philosophy.

    At the core of the Umahi infrastructural activism is the primacy of cement.  That triggers an urgent need to leverage Ebonyi’s vast limestone deposits, already drawing the attention of three Nigerian cement majors: Ibeto (new investors in Niger Cement, Nigercem), Lafarge and Bua, all soon to set up shop in the state.

    Little wonder then, that the governor reeled out a list of roads, in different parts of the state, most of them eight-inch deep concrete works, in advanced stages of completion.

    Though the governor admitted the entry cost of cement roads could be higher, its long-term durability, with minimum maintenance, makes them an absolute bargain.

    Aside road, another core project is power.  Solar-powered electricity, the governor announced, would soon bath, in streetlights, all of Ebonyin’s 13 local governments; each, for a cumulative stretch of 10 km.

    But even this project is a putative work-spinner for local artisans.  From this month, solar panels, to power the project, would be manufactured in the state, courtesy of some Chinese investors, thus employing hundreds of Ebonyi youths.

    But even with the infrastructural upgrade, the Umahi governorship is not about taking its eyes off Ebonyi’s famous rice cultivation and processing.

    To boost general agriculture, the governor announced an ambitious fertilizer project that would make Ebonyi the fertilizer capital of the whole of the South East.  And wastes, from Abakaliki’s rice mills, would also come handy, to generate off-grid electricity for some communities.

    But away from brick-and-mortar and tourism lure and lustre, Ebonyi’s social infrastructure, with a special focus on education, also takes a centre stage.

    Though Ebonyi already funds free primary and secondary education, the state is putting in place 13 primary and 13 secondary model schools — one each, in its 13 local government areas.

    Science-driven, the governor hopes to turn these schools into nationwide reference science primary and secondary academies.  Requirement for entry?  Strictly merit.

    Much higher at the tertiary level, the governor not only talked of a policy to peg fees for tertiary education, he also told the gathering that 10 per cent of every kobo Ebonyi earns goes into funding grants and subventions, to its tertiary institutions.

    Reeling out more achievements during the telecast — flood control and management; community security via neighbourhood watches; low crime rate, resulting from positive youth engagement; resolving community feuds and border disputes at the Ebonyi-Cross River border areas; civil servants’ special rice cultivation scheme, among others — the governor oozed a rare bonhomie, to turn Ebonyi into the very best, in every sphere.

    But that geniality vanished, each time the discourse turned to the local political opposition.  Neither the governor, nor his local traducers, take prisoners!

    But that is no surprise.  It’s virtual election eve and the governor is running for second term.  Indeed, all politics is local!

    But no matter Abakaliki’s local political in-fighting, Ebonyi appears a place to watch in developmental politics.

    If the current momentum is sustained, history may yet mark up the Umahi era as Ebonyi’s Renaissance.

  • Another recession?

    Today makes it exactly a week since the Central Bank of Nigeria warned about the threat of another spiral of recession. Coming shortly after what I had called the “doomsday prognosis” by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – the research unit of The Economist magazine and the multinational banking and financial services company – HSBC, I believe that there is something more than mere coincidences in their shared but generally grim conclusions about the economy at this time. This is not just because of what appeared to be their agreement on probable causes but also their firm conclusions that the economy, despite the so-called heroic efforts of the current minders and the vast improvements in oil revenue, was delivering at sub-optimal levels.

    To start with, the figure from the CBN is as grim as could be in the current circumstances: From 1.95 per cent GDP growth rate in the first quarter of the year, things are said to have slowed to 1.5 per cent in the second quarter. The reasons as one might guess are as old as they are familiar:the late implementation of the 2018 budget, weakening demand and consumer spending, rising contractor debts, and low minimum wage.

    There is also the talk of the impact of flooding on agricultural output, continued security challenges in the Northeast and North-central zones, and growing level of sovereign debts.

    Nearly a year after the nation is said to have exited the recession, Nigerians must be worried that the country is back at the same starting blocks of “weakening fundamentals”; the same old story of”inflationary pressure”,of “capital flows reversals” and sundry liquidity issues.

    Thanks to the inclement forces of nature, the menace of flooding currently ravaging most parts of the federation has now been thrown into the mix. And now the story is that a country said to have been placed on a sound economic pedestal is againheaded in the same direction it claimed to have departed aeons ago; and this despite the vast improvements in oil earnings considering that a barrel which only recently sold $30 now sells for $80!

    This is where the story our dear country continues to be an intriguing one. Whenever oil prices went bust as it happened of late particularly in the closing years of the Jonathan administration,things understandably went haywire. During the last time, we saw how the country couldn’t finance its imports – which were in fact unlimited; how our factories, which were few and far in between, couldn’t operate optimally because they could not get forex to bring in raw materials and spares.

    And because we needed forex to import fuel, to bring basic consumer goods into the country, to service the fledgling demand for medical tourism and to meet the needs of our young ones studying abroad, the ensuing mad scramble turned the business of forex procurement to an industry in itself. Whereas those who needed forex genuinely couldn’t get forex to buy; meanwhile, middlemen, oil importers and all manners of shadow economic operators had a surfeit hence the ensuing reign of anarchy in the economic system. The result predictably was recession.

    Today, whereas the elements are significantly different, the end-game is unfortunately the same. With foreign reserves at an impressive $44,380,658,133 as at September ending as against $29 billion a little while ago, the fetish about forex and the scramble that came with it have since worn off. While that may seem positive, the other part is that oil prices has brought with it unique challengesof which the recurrent squabbling at the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) over sharing –has since become one of its more manifest symptoms; another benign one is the humongous cost of maintaining the differentials between the cost of fuel at the pump and the actual cost of the product more appropriately called subsidy.This time, the story is that the country is choking from having things smooth and easy – and so inflation and macro-economic imbalance.

    However, if we are to believe Godwin Emefiele and his Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) members, none of the malignancies come anywhere near the threat posed by election-related spending in a country where access to credit by economic actors is akin to the Biblical camel attempting to go through the eye of a needle!

    The truth, long denied seems to be out: the financial services sector may not have nearly enough for the real sector with their low returns and longer gestation to do business with, it retains more than enough to finance the ambitions of our high risk, high yield,but short-tenuredpolitical players!

    The organic disease which is at the root of the country’s problems has not only resurfaced but metastasized into a new form of malignancy!

    Poor Emefiele; we now know why those elegantly couched monetary policies of his apex bank are either ineffectual or simply unworkable; why so-called obligor limits have come to mean nothing and why credit appraisal by banks are such a joke.

    Although uncomfortable,that singular admission that the political class, and not the monetary authorities, control money supply speaks to a poignant truth that the managers of the economy have lived in denial all along which is that our financial services sector exists only in name!

    Sobering as it appears to be, that still – unfortunately – falls short in explaining why the government cannot get its economic acts right. It does not explain why budgets are not prepared on time, and why the budget, when finally passed are not implemented; or even the finger-pointing that perennially dogs the budget process.

    And the above in fact says nothing about the budget’s extremely modest ambitions in the face of a staggering  $3trn infrastructure gap.

    Or, aren’t the monetary and the fiscal policies supposed to be the complementary sides of the same economic management coin? Away from the same received orthodoxies that, at best, bear little relevance to the issues facing the economy,for how long should we wait for those policy initiatives and coordination needed to kick-start the economy in the throes of an emergency?When do we expect the real activism on the scale that matches current challenges?

    Or the clear-headed thinking as one might expect in the current circumstances? Until the next cycle of recession?

  • Osun: hubris trumps hubris

    In Osun, hubris just trumped hubris — alleged arrogance of performance, trumping bumbling hedonism, venality and vanity.

    It was an ultra-close call — and it wasn’t pretty!

    Up till the last second, the wide and merry way to Ekiti, Ayo Fayose’s Ekiti, was beckoning — satanic allure, charm, magic, force and all.

    But as in Ekiti, Osun’s escape came from the Biblical rejected stone; which became the crucial pillar, in Gboyega Oyetola’s win.

    Dayo Adeyeye, a run-away progressive, in Ekiti, nicked the Kayode Fayemi encore.

    Imagine what could have happened, had Adeyeye not broken ranks with Fayose, thus exiting with the bulk of his Ise-Orun votes?

    In Osun, it was the much vilified Iyiola Omisore that made the difference.  Whatever his controversial political biography, history would record his critical support, which tilted the scale, when it mattered most.

    Otherwise?  Like Fayose’s Ekiti, Ademola Adeleke would have vaulted Osun right back into the Stone Age.

    Or how would you fancy a 58-year old, that flunked his school certificate examination in 1981, but is linked to an alleged examination forgery in 2017, for the same O’ Level certificate, even as a sitting senator of the Federal Republic, gunning for a South West governorship in 2018?

    What people vote such a persona, and hope all would be well?  That is the depth of Osun’s narrow escape, with less than 500 votes — the closest in Nigerian gubernatorial election history!

    Still, like Ekiti, which plumbed the Fayose debacle, the Omisore intervention may yet prove very costly — except both sides strictly stick to the terms of their deal.  But more on that presently.

    The Osun see-saw is clearly a grim metaphor of acute retardation in Yoruba political thinking.  In a South West that prides itself unrepentantly progressive, basking in the infallibility of the Obafemi Awolowo vision, a reactionary incubus is setting in — and its long shadow seems getting longer by the day.

    In 1999, an Ademola Adeleke candidacy, in any South West state, would have been the butt of derision, to be furiously guillotined on Election Day.  Yet, an Osun of 2018 nearly saw a headless dancer, that articulated near-nothing, almost coasting home to victory.

    But give it to the Yoruba conservatives.  In their desperation for election wins, they don’t mind throwing any jerk at the electorate.  That is why the Osun PDP would look over an Akin Ogunbiyi, and pick an Ademola Adeleke.

    Fayose was governmental poison, sugar-coated and packaged as stomach infrastructure champion.  But  Adeleke’s paralyzing profile, of a gubernatorial vacuum, appears even worse than Fayose’s infantile tomfoolery.

    That should plumb an all-time low — at least, in the Yoruba South West.

    Yet, all that seemed not to matter.  The Afenifere, in Omisore’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), seemed ready to cut a deal with Adeleke, ideological warts, barrenness and all.  At that fatal moment, their ancestral feud with Bola Tinubu triumphantly trumped their fealty to Awo’s developmental ideology!

    It took an Omisore, pariah in good times, comrade in grudge times, to puncture their delusory ballon; and show a far keener sense, of both history and posterity.

    Long before, much of the South West media had turned livid with scalding, plebeian hate, against a sitting governor; and profaned the public trust in their care, with personal hostility; and institutional rascality and vendetta.

    No thanks to this rabid hysteria, from an otherwise respectable society turned so despicable in their professional misconduct, outgoing Governor Rauf Aregbesola, had become the devil-in-chief, fit for severe roasting.

    Yet, compare and contrast to neighbouring Ekiti, and the callous conspiracy would appear clear.

    Even on the skewed passion on salary defaults — a pan-Nigeria crisis fraudulently shaped as exclusive Osun “wickedness” — proclaim Aregbesola guilty as charged.  Yet, did Ekiti’s Fayose who, in his cheap theatrics, had earlier joined in the Aregbe roasting, do better?

    Now, contrast Fayose’s parlous infrastructure re-stock to Aregbesola’s record, in futuristic roads, bridges and eye-popping schools, among others.

    Which of the two would history remember to have dug deep and made a brilliant difference, even at a time of acute adversity?

    It is eerie, indeed, that Osun’s September 22 election nearly repeated history, ironically at the dawn of an earlier epochal developmental push, in the old Western Region.

    The great Awo had launched the free primary education programme.  But some elite back then, as some Osun elite now, thumbed down the project, in a blitz of fearsome propaganda, led by the opposition National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC).

    The next federal elections, Awo’s Action Group (AG) lost — and urban Ilesa and Ife, proudly NCNC bastions, gloried in the AG loss.  On September 22, most of Ijesa, urban or rural, would have gloated over an APC loss, just as urban Ife went SDP.

    But whatever the present hurts, just like the great Awo, history would be far kinder to Aregbesola.

    He has put in place quality infrastructure to make the next set of Osun youths very competitive, via quality education.  He has also laid a solid infrastructural foundation that, if continued, could, in a short time, vault Osun from the puddle of “civil service state”.

    Moreover, he more than any politician of his generation, has demonstrated fierce fealty to South West integration, as a key engine of Nigeria’s re-federalization.

    Awo would later call his electoral loss, for doing the right thing, “eebu d’ola” (insult-turned-praise).  For his developmental work in Osun, across many strata of society, Aregbesola’s swan song won’t be much different.

    But that doesn’t, in any way, suppose he didn’t make his own mistakes.  He did.  Not a few, friend or foe, would continue to pepper him for leading his party from a near-thumping majority in 2014, to a cliff-hanging win in 2018, aside from a net-loss in his native Ijesaland.  Still, it could have been worse!

    That takes the discourse back to Alhaji Oyetola, the governor-elect.  If it were a parliamentary poll, the Osun mandate would birth a “hung parliament”, with neither government nor opposition having a clear mandate.

    That just shows the ultra-tight rope Oyetola has to walk; and somewhat maintain a delicate balance.  It is good he has pledged an all-inclusive government, driven by mass consultation.

    On immediate expediencies, he must consummate, to the letter, the Omisore deal.  Otherwise, he risks an election-time ally turn an implacable foe.

    Besides, such unconsummated deals, in Ekiti, gave Ayo Fayose political resurrection, that almost doomed all Ekiti to collective death.  To boot, it also turned Omisore against the Adelekes, when it mattered most, after their Osun West collaborative senatorial triumph.

    But on no account should Osun’s developmental strides be halted: the school feeding programme and other social safety net schemes, road infrastructure and futuristic schools — within budgetary limits of course.

    That is the hard road to gubernatorial greatness — beyond the short-term lure of belly politics.

  • Stalemate in Osun

    Given the PDP’s record of epic misrule of Nigeria and Governor Ayo Fayose’s evisceration of Ekiti State on the platform of that entity and with its tacit approval, I confess to entertaining hopes that last July’s gubernatorial election in Ekiti would sound its death knell in that part of the country, and that the projected poll in neighbouring Osun State would finish the job.

    Fat chance.

    Though the PDP lost the Ekiti gubernatorial election, its robust showing revealed just how passionate its followers are, despite its record being an almost perfect catalogue of depredation.  And far from burying the PDP, last weekend’s gubernatorial election more than revived its fortunes.  It pipped the ruling APC which had held sway in  Osun for eight years, in what the national election empire INEC has declared an inconclusive poll.

    Election Night was indeed a nail-biter for the ages.

    As between the APC and its main challenger the PDP, ward-by-ward returns posted contemporaneously by online media swung to and fro, the gains of APC in one ward erased or turned into a deficit in the very next posting for another precinct, and so it was for most of the night.

    The big lead the APC was widely expected to open up never materialised. At the time I retired for the night, the returns were incomplete.  But from my mental juggling of the available returns, I sensed that the poll was headed more or less for a stalemate, with the APC or, more likely the PDP, eking out a plurality so slender that a recount would be required to validate it.

    In the end, it was the PDP that squeaked through with a plurality 353, out of 509, 043 votes cast.

    The elections umpire INEC has declared the poll inconclusive, since the plurality falls far short of the 3, 489 ballots voided in seven polling centres across four local government areas because of irregularities, and has scheduled a rerun in those precincts for Thursday in the expectation that it will produce a clarifying outcome.

    Since then, attention has been concentrated on those seven polling centres, and not just by the two camps, but also by candidates who fell by the wayside in the first ballot and now see in the re-run an opportunity to play kingmaker and make a huge pile in the process.

    The principal contenders, Gboyega Oyetola, of the APC, and Abiola Adeleke, of the PDP, have been reduced to  mere ciphers in a larger, vastly more complex game of strategic calculations concerning next year’s General Elections and the implications of the outcome for Nigeria’s future.

    Rarely has the political future of Nigeria hung so delicately on the choices that the 3,489 electors will  make in the re-run scheduled for Thursday.  And by the time it is over, it will be said, even without a formal audit, that rarely in Nigeria has so much money been spent per capita to “mobilise” potential voters.  It will in fact be asserted, I wager, that never in the annals of plebiscitary contestation has a vote or the promise thereof cost so much to obtain.

    Trust the voters.  They will obtain and obtain, and obtain yet again, until voting starts and perhaps even thereafter.  And in keeping with dictum that emerged triumphant in the last Ondo State gubernatorial election, never will so many pots of choice Nigerian soups fortified with orisirisi have been prepared and consumed per household anywhere than in those seven voting centres.

    A sales audit of chickens, goats, sheep, cows, yams, rice, gari, cooking oil, tomatoes, onions, peppers and other condiments should confirm this hypothesis.

    Lucky voters!  This is their chance, and no one should blame them for seizing it.  They may not get another until the next election.  And if they do, it certainly will not be as juicy as the present one.

    Why should they leave all the juice to politicians?

    All manner of reasons are being adduced by experts and dilettantes alike for what must for now be called the Osun stalemate.  The PDP has understandably disputed this characterisation.  At the very least, it is entitled to feel that it has won a psychological victory that may yet translate into actual victory worthy of being celebrated with convulsive dancing to the most mesmerising rhythms that a juju band ever created.

    As befits a master dancer, Adeleke has promised to take his jaw-dropping dancing prowess from his home in Ede all the way to the Osun capital, Osogbo, for his Inauguration — the rhythmic heaving of his hefty frame, the stomping and twisting and gyrating and wiggling with which he entertained an audience in the United States to mark his election to the Senate several months ago, plus some more absorbing choreography he has since perfected.

    Residents of Osogbo must hope that by the time he arrives there, he will not be too foot-weary to treat them to a captivating Inaugural Dance.

    As I was saying, all manner of reasons are being canvassed to explain why the election outcome trumped conventional wisdom, which is more often than not a reliable guide in matters political.

    All things considered, outgoing Governor Rauf Aregbesola has done well.  In terms of infrastructure and innovation, especially in education, his record is nothing short of outstanding.  His austere lifestyle grated  on aides and their hangers-on who were forever lamenting that their appointments did not translate into an invitation to come and eat.

    But the APC’s surprisingly weak outing cannot be attributed to his lack of performance.  Nor am I aware that Aregbesola has personally been accused of corruption, or of running a corrupt government.

    Debating skills, which reveal mastery of detail and the capacity to think on one’s feet, hardly entered into the people’s choice.  Adeleke spurned every debate, thus denying the public a chance of gauging his electability.  He did not even deign to send his running mate to stand in for him, unlike President Muhammadu Buhari, who has pro-actively deputed Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to represent him in next year’s election debates.

    Some disaffected party insiders are blaming it all on APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, saying that he “imposed” Oyetola on the electorate.  If this were the sole reason for the party’s present grief, Oyetola should have suffered a rout.

    Some again claim that it resulted from untrammeled use of money.  But every political party spent to the extent of its resources, and some.

    Others blame it on Nigeria’s Pentecostals who allegedly urged their followers to throw their support behind the PDP candidate because Governor Aregbesola, in whose Administration the APC candidate served as a principal officer, had engaged in creeping Islamisation of Osun.

    But the PDP’s candidate is also a Moslem. Has he entered into an agreement to dismantle the alleged project?  Besides, it is doubtful, despite all the posturing on all sides, that religion holds that kind of salience in Osun.

    Still others say that Osun yearns for change, not the continuity Oyetola promised.  But this sounds like change for its own sake, not the qualitative change that the PDP has rarely delivered anywhere.

    And then, there are those who insist that Adeleke profited hugely from a sympathy vote on account of the police attempt to arrest him in the on-going investigation of his academic qualifications.  The move was misguided, smacked of desperation and reflected poorly on the APC-controlled Federal Government. But was the sympathy vote large enough to tip the scale in his favour?

    To a greater or lesser degree, these factors and others I have not remarked probably influenced the election outcome.  But none of them determined it.

    By the way, in case the police still don’t know Adeleke’s academic standing, I can reveal with the highest confidence that he failed the only subject he sat for in the West African School Certificate – English Language.

    But that is a matter for the looming post-election legal war.

  • Much ado about EIU, HSBC report

    On the death of an elephant, expect to see all manners of knives at work. Much has certainly been made of the unflattering, or if you like, the doomsday prognosis on the state of the economy and the nation in general by two international bodies – the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – the research unit of The Economist magazine and HSBC, the multinational banking and financial services company. Aside their shared believe that the Buhari administration is not doing nearly enough to address the problems facing the economy, also united by the duo is their conviction that the 2019 elections would prove momentous for the struggling economy.

    Says the EIU: “Nigeria’s leadership will struggle to deal with a range of challenges to political and economic stability. Campaigning ahead of the 2019 elections will complicate the situation as politicians focus on shoring up support (and undermining opponents) rather than more prudent policy reforms. Economic growth will be constrained by the weak policy environment and dire infrastructure provision. The prospects for 2020-22 are slightly stronger, with elections out of the way and oil prices strengthening”.

    The report ended with a dire prediction that President Muhammadu Buhari will not win next year’s election.

    HSBC on its part pushes things further: “A second term for Mr. Buhari raises the risk of limited economic progress and further fiscal deterioration, prolonging the stagnation of his first term, particularly if there is no move towards completing reform of the exchange rate system or fiscal adjustments that diversify government revenues away from oil.”

    “Economic growth remains sluggish and reliant on the rebound in oil output while the non-oil economy, which accounts for about 90 per cent of GDP, continues to languish with many service sectors still mired in contraction.

    “Joblessness continues to rise, up almost three-fold in three years to 19 per cent in Q3 2017, pushing the number in poverty to 87 million. “Meanwhile, current account improvements may have pivoted on higher oil prices, but they also derive from on-going import restrictions and limited FX access for many sectors of the economy.”

    Now, if you consider the ‘garbage’ (I choose to describe it so) – so patently self-serving and needlessly condescending – packaged as economic outlook as outrageous and offensive; just as galling must be the attempt by the duo to insert themselves into the nation’s domestic affairs going by their subtle hints at regime change – no matter that some of the premises are grounded on incontrovertible facts.

    Of course, the economy is still in the woods. And there can be no denying that. Thanks to global rise in crude prices, oil retains its status as a major driver and with it the potentials for future instability. In the absence of the vital infrastructure required to leapfrog the economy in record time, what we have is an economy locked in the cyclic mode all depending on the direction of the swing!

    Clearly, there can be no better testimonial than those supplied by members of the organised private sector (OPS) as reported by this newspaper on Sunday. First is the one from former Director General of the Nigeria Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), and consultant to the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), John Isemede:”The country cannot be said to have exited recession with the figures being released for the economic performance of the first quarter (Q1), which recorded growth of 1.95 percent, and the second quarter (Q2) is 1.5 percent”.  To him, the economy could”go into depression this time around, if right recovery policies are not put in place and properly managed.”

    “The real sector” he further said, “is still wrestling with serious productivity challenges arising from the constraint of infrastructure, particularly power and logistics. It is imperative that efforts are geared towards investment and policies focusing on improving logistics and enhancing the power sector. The manufacturing sector also slowed from 3.39 percent in Q1 to 0.68 percent in Q2 as a result of massive infrastructural deficit, and logistic challenges”.

    He says “The Apapa gridlock, access and cost of credit, weak purchasing power, multiple taxation amongst others are points to ponder.”

    To Frank Jacobs President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN): “Technically, Nigeria has exited recession, but the economy… is still vulnerable. The macroeconomic indices and structural reforms need urgent attention to contain vulnerability and support sustainable private sector-led growth.”

    Or the equally insightful view of the chairman, Policy Committee of MAN, Engineer Reginald Odiah: “Nigeria is just lucky that oil price is on the increase; otherwise, manufacturing is consistently dwindling. If you look closely at it, most businesses have closed down. I am not seeing clear policy direction and political will to bring the country out completely out of recession completely. The government is just focusing more attention on the 2019 general election. We just need to make one more mistake and the country would plunge back into deep recession.”

    In the same vein, it does not require special grace to acknowledge the number of things that the administration has done to jumpstart the economy. Notably among these are the array of fiscal reforms that have boosted the treasury while also blocking all avenues for the endemic wastes and corruption that hitherto hobbled and undermined the nation’s fiscal processes.  We have also seen a lot of investment in rail transportation which of course promises to be a game changer whenever they finally come on stream. To these we can add the ongoing rehabilitation of road infrastructure, investment in hydro-power.

    By far the most credible charge is that the current administration could do far more than it is currently doing to turn the tide. First is the reality of mass unemployment with its continuing potentials for social dislocation. Second is the snail-paced attempt at infrastructural renewal at a time of unprecedented infrastructure deficit. Most hobbling of course is the lack of clarity in policies and programme.

    The real problem as I see it is that the Buhari administration has neither found the hunger for development on the scale that matches our current realities nor shown firm resolve to undertake extraordinary measures to avert the looming socio-economic cataclysm. For a country with a population growth rate of 2.7 percent to be doing 1.9 percent in GDP growth is the surest way to court disaster.  Put simply, Nigerians haven’t quite seen the scale of change envisaged when, three years ago, they threw out the incompetent PDP administration.

  • Again, rule of law bogey

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term started with the bogey of rule of law.  It is ending with the bogey of rule of law.

    Just how taut can you stretch that bogey, faced with nation-threatening decay?

    Nigeria, at independence, didn’t quite put its best leadership foot forward.  Still, it wasn’t all doom, for not a few projected its huge potentials, which they linked to the fortune of Africa.  If Nigeria soared, Africa would not sink.

    But then, decadent leadership, with indifferent followers, all but sank all that.  The endless debacles saw the eventual collapse of the 1st Republic (1960-1966).

    Then came the era of military rule, even with the civilian interregnum between 1979 and 1983.  With or without the rule of law, the military era too, witnessed progressive decadence.

    The surface of that decadence was crippling corruption.  But its core was the total collapse of the value system, such so that there was hardly any sense of right and wrong.

    Then came the 1999 re-entry of democracy.  While leaders mouthed rule of law and citizens’ economic rights, governance itself collapsed into a den of robbers.  Its sole business appeared the sole pleasure of those garrisoned in there and their cronies; not the welfare of the collective that put the government there.

    The nadir of this dysfunction, a logical pile-up from the Olusegun Obasanjo years, was the Goodluck Jonathan presidency; and the rot that oozed from it at its fall, after its 2015 election loss.

    That rot provoked an outrage that many times threatened mob justice, by a good segment of the population that counted themselves cheated.  But that would have been a tragic extreme.

    Still, how do you rein in such putrescence, when those who pulled off the great heist, courtesy of an illicit trove, now wave “rule of law” at your nose, not because the rule of law is undesirable but as a bogey to escape justice?

    So, at the sight of that bogey, do you just surrender, knowing full well it is disaster assured?  Or you tweak things a bit to make the rogue class far less comfortable?

    How was it done in other climes? Ancient Greece, since it shaped modern Western thinking, remains a classical guide.  Of course, France and Britain also offer some clue.

    Athens, which under Pericles (495-429 BC) became the best of everything in antiquity, much earlier in 7th century BC, was buried in decadence.  Yet with progressive reforms, by a triad of lawgivers, Draco, Solon and Pericles, Athens reinvented itself.

    At its nadir of decadence, when Draco became lawgiver (7th century BC), it was shock therapy.  Draco, riled by the paralysis wrought by the old oral laws, wrote down the laws, for the first time in Athenian history.  The Draco codes were decidedly severe, just to stamp out the decay.  Hence, the English word, “draconian”.

    Then came Solon, in another epoch (6th century BC).  His was an era of liberalization, toning down the harshness in the law of Draco.

    Considered among the seven sages of antiquity, Solon’s liberalism laid the foundation for democratic Athens.  Still, without Draco’s severity, Solon’s liberalism would have been impossible, for liberalism, built on decay, is foundation for further decadence.

    For Athens, all came together for good under Pericles (495-429 BC). That was the Athenian Golden Age, otherwise called Periclean Athens.

    During that epoch, Athens was the clear leader in democracy, philosophy, the theatre, mathematics and the sciences — thus fore-shadowing what the Western Hemisphere, led by the United States, would look like in the modern era, even if Athens’ key rival, Sparta, would also offer some prototype for modern USSR (now defunct).

    Indeed, no thinker of note considered himself complete until he bench-marked his mind against peers in the great Athenian academies, forerunners of today’s universities; or working in affiliation with them.  To boot, Athens had become a great naval power!

    So, an Athens that was practically buried in own decadence, before Draco applied his shock therapy in severe laws, had, under Pericles, soared to become the exemplar in everything — democracy, scholarship, liberal thinking and even military might.

    Yet, irony of ironies: all these were grounded in Draco’s severity!  Just imagine, how might Greece have panned out if, given the decay of Draco’s time, someone was still pussy-footing with “rule of law”?  That is a lesson for Nigeria of today!

    But leaving the ancients for the not-so-ancient: England and France.

    England’s rebirth came with the reformation of Oliver Cromwell, “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland” (from 1653 to 1658, when he died), after the execution of Charles I (1649).  The monarchy was restored with Charles II, from 1660.

    Unlike England that regained its monarchy, thanks to Cromwell’s bloody reformation, France lost its monarchy forever, after the French Revolution (1789-1799).

    Though Napoleon Bonaparte would later impose some imperial throne, as Emperor and head of the French Empire (1804-1814), the French monarchy never really made it back.  Charles Dickens, in his A Tale of Two Cities, captured the mood of revolutionary France.

    So, apart from Athens, England and France also endured some meltdown, no thanks to a decay in the monarchy, at a stage in their history. That jolt shaped the rebirth that made them the countries they are today.

    Again, at these times, would anyone have been crowing about the rule of law?  When you rape the rule of law, the rule of the mob takes over.

    To Nigeria, the nasty experience of England and France is instructive: mouthing the rule of law, without linkage to the sad realities of the moment, even as some shock therapy, could just bait a future disaster.

    Nigeria must be careful not to tilt just into that cauldron.

    Now, this submission in no way backs or excuses citizens allegedly languishing in DSS cells, without trial.  That should have no place in a democratic setting, particularly after decades of military rule.

    The government should therefore move fast to either try all those involved, or free them, if there is no valid case against them.

    It is rather to impress it on everyone, not the least the “rule if law” campaigners, to realize the country, no thanks to past bad choices, is going through a very painful era.

    A clique of robbers, ensconced in past governments, had stolen the country blind, causing mass poverty, no thanks to the greed of a few.

    As double jeopardy, this ensemble has enough cash to buy the most unscrupulous and unconscionable of lawyers, who for a fat fee, think little of getting these crooks off the hook, even if they are not in doubt about their culpability, if not outright guilt.

    It is such brazen social injustice that ruptures the tiny thread that holds societal trust; and sends the state into a whirlpool of catastrophe.

    So, this cynical “rule of law” lobby is up to no good.  It is nothing but another rogue rally to escape justice, and further embitter the cheated and the dispossessed.

    Something must give in a society in free-fall decadence, transiting to some form of accountability.  Any departure from this natural path might just be a danger to everyone.

    Every people have to tweak their laws, at a time of high decadence, as redemptive tool.  That is what Athens’ rise from decay to glory has taught the world.

  • See how they run

    Some nine months to the presidential election, the race for the top job is almost at full throttle.

    At the last count, 62 aspirants, ranging from the deluded to the desperate have declared interest. Fortunately for most of them, there is no price tag for being an aspirant.  They can go on aspiring for as long as they wish.

    Being a serious quester is a different matter, however.

    Unless you can cough up N45 million just for the application material, don’t even think of declaring interest in the APC ticket.  Better to remain an aspirant – a designation that attracts some notice without carrying a hefty price tag.  That is no small privilege.

    Even those we are used to regarding as well-off, if not prosperous, are having a hard time coming up with the APC’s application fee.  President Muhammadu Buhari, the party’s putative nominee, has had  to be bailed out by a group of admiring young professionals and tens of thousands of their peers who presented him with the application package, gratis.

    In keeping with its new, austere way of doing business, the PDP has put a price tag of only N12 million on its application package for president.  But Abubakar Atiku’s teeming supporters and admirers took exception to his being burdened with such a trifling transaction.  Accordingly, they went ahead to purchase the application package for him.

    Atiku was so moved by the gesture that he wept.  Surely, there is no greater love than this, that struggling young men and women, unbidden and in expectation of no returns, put themselves to  great exertions to help a billionaire seeking to actualise his dream.

    It cannot be long before the youths of Benue mobilise themselves to purchase application papers for another billionaire, David Mark, the former Senate David president.  They would be continuing a practice they began three years ago when they presented him with an application form for his Senate re-election bid.

    You can count on the youths of Ilorin not to be left out in this matter.  They regard the race for the presidential nomination, I am told, as an opportunity to give back to Dr Bukola Saraki, who has given so much to community and indeed to Nigeria and the wider world, in the tradition of his family.

    Many of those hoisting the banner of “Not too young to contest” have been heard complaining that the high cost of seeking elective office has left them exactly where they were before the qualifying age for a presidential run was lowered to 35 years.   To which one older aspirant has quipped:  It is good not to be too young to run.  It is much better not to be too poor to run.

    It reminds me of the time of military president Ibrahim. Babangida. At every opportunity, he denounced “moneybags” and the old breed and vowed that they would never inherit the new political kingdom he was building for a new breed class.

    The only problem was that the new breed were looking up to the old breed money bags to bankroll their quest. One resentful old breed moneybag after another told them to go breed their own money.

    That dark era notwithstanding, Babangida has become a fount of wisdom for all manner of aspirants, and his Minna Hilltop residence has become a mecca of sorts.  They troop there, seeking his blessing, which he dispenses generously.  He does more:  He assures them that he is available anytime to provide counsel and guidance.

    Every caller leaves, fully satisfied that he has won Babangida’s endorsement.  Former governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa departs, assured that the Aminu Kano tradition of politics, of which Babangida canonises Lamido a holdover, is just what Nigeria is yearning for.

    Saraki departs, buoyed that his outstanding record and experience as lawmaker, governor and Senate president remarked so eloquently by Babangida were just what Nigeria needed.

    Nor is Babangida’s endorsement limited to political figures in the mainstream parties. He poured his  blessings on the Social Democratic Party, telling its visiting leader Olu Falae, a former presidential candidate and before that, secretary to Babangida’s military government:  ”If I hadn’t been too old, I would have loved to join the youths vanguard of your party. I have faith in the political party, for what it is and what it stands for.”

    There is never a dull moment at IBB’s Court on the Minna Hilltop these days.

    All of this brings to mind a presidential aspirant in the Babangida era with whom I used to compare intelligence.  One day he sent word that I should visit at my earliest convenience. Arriving at his home that Sunday, I found him in high spirits.  There was a radiance on his face and a swagger in his gait that I had not noticed before.

    He went on to narrate with breathless excitement how he had been the president’s breakfast guest for four consecutive Sundays, how they had compared notes on the unfolding transition, and how the president had more or less assured him that if he maintained his momentum, he was well on course to becoming Nigeria’s next president.

    “Do you know which presidential aspirant he invites for lunch?  And dinner thereafter?” I asked him.

    “Oh, prof, you are too far gone in your cynicism,” he remonstrated. “Why can’t you look on the bright side for once?”

    Some three weeks later, he asked to see me. That day, he was glum, saturnine.

    “How did you figure it out, prof?” he asked.

    “Figure out what, Chief?”

    “Babangida,” he said bitterly.   My host had found out that Babangida had been administering the same treatment to another aspirant over lunch, and to yet another over dinner.

    To return to jostling for the presidential tickets:  How are the aspirants faring in the field?

    Atiku seems desperate.  He has been going round urging younger PDP aspirants to stand down for him, since tradition demands that the young defer to their elders.

    One of them, the aforementioned Jigawa governor, Sule Lamido, shot back with Shavian repartee. In the matter of politics, he said, he was Atiku’s elder, having served as parliamentary secretary in the First Republic while Atiku was an officer in the Customs.  So, Atiku should be the one standing down.

    “When I become president,” not “If I become president,” is now the refrain in Saraki’s speeches at every stop.  He says he has given up hope of carrying the Northwest and the Northeast and would be content to secure 25 percent of the poll in the States constituting that zone.  But he will “lock down” the votes in the rest of the country on his way to becoming president.

    Saraki has even threatened to bring “integrity” to bear on the governance of Nigeria when he becomes president.  Yes, integrity, of all things.

    There is hardly any sign of David Mark on the turf.  Where is Omoyele Sowore?

    The televangelist Pastor Kris Okotie, of the FRESH Party and the Household of God is waging his field campaign through sesquipedalian epistles urging the major political parties to adopt him as the consensus candidate, the one person who has the vision and the judgment and the wisdom to take Nigeria to the Promised Land.

    That is God’s will for Nigeria, he has been saying.  Not having received that command from above, no other aspirant apparently feels obliged to heed it.

    Former deputy governor of the Central Bank Kingsley Moghalu, who had entered the race full of promise, failed to win the backing of Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT), a coalition of 16 aspirants.  He promptly declared for the Young Progressive Party and now holds its presidential ticket.

    The great surprise in all this is that nothing has been heard lately of Obasanjo’s mega movement, the Coalition for Nigeria that was going to re-define power, leadership, service and governance and establish a new and enduring order, has been swallowed up by the African Democratic Congress (ADC).

  • Restructuring, distemper and dystopia

    Restructuring” proponents — classicists, neophytes or even rank opportunists — love to have Vice President Yemi Osinbajo for dinner, over his Minnesota, USA, address, to diaspora Nigerians.

    In “restructuring”, these lobbies have conjured up a utopia where, as in the fairy tale, everyone would live happily ever after!

    Dare to differ, and they work themselves up — with the ready, teeming and merry army of the gullible — into a rabid distemper.

    That distemper, in a high season of high-wire posturing, brands non- or even partial conformists, as high enemies of the people; that bait a future dystopia.

    That is the strait-jacket the current restructuring orchestra are framing a post-Minnesota Osinbajo!  It is nothing but cheap blackmail.

    Yet, barring any fixation with a trending cliche, the Vice President is no less right than the impassioned restructuring ensemble.

    That is simply because, from the beginning, he has been in on a strain of “restructuring”, even if his own core track, dating back to the Bola Tinubu Lagos governorship (1999-2007), is fiscal federalism.

    As Lagos attorney-general and commissioner for Justice, Osinbajo bloodied the nose, in the courts, of the Obasanjo Presidency (1999-2007), a government in which, by the way, Atiku Abubakar, now posturing as new restructuring Prince, was No. 2.

    At Minnesota, therefore, Vice President Osinbajo only stayed glued to his core belief.

    Still, give it to the restructuring classicists, Afenifere: restructuring has always been their core agenda; just as it is a pristine South West rally, spaning no less than three political generations.

    It birthed with Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s ethnic federalism, which he espoused in his 1947 classic, Path to Nigerian Freedom — that durable fundament of Nigerian federalism, to which the 1st Republic never fully conformed.

    With military rule’s over-centralization, which came with charges of internal re-colonization against military-era northern czars, Awo’s pristine theory mutated into the “national question”.

    That spiked when Gen. Ibrahim Babangida started dribbling everyone, and the late Alao Aka-Basorun, and fellow braves in 1990, attempted Nigeria’s own sovereign national conference (SNC), following Republic of Benin’s feat of that same year, which birthed, for it, a new constitution.

    The latest strain, of that mutation, is the current restructuring buzz.  The June 12 injustice, against Basorun MKO Abiola, had reinforced the clamour for SNC to re-federalize Nigeria.

    That dovetailed into the questioning, by progressive elements, of the legitimacy of the 1999 Constitution, calling for an SNC to correct the fraud.

    That campaign, near-exclusively South West, would rage all through the Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan presidential era, peaking in an election-eve National Conference gravy in 2014, which sucked the Afenifere into Jonathan’s 2015 electoral agenda.

    So, though the Afenifere were restructuring classicists, their election fiasco, in the Jonathan camp of 2015, has left them with “restructuring” as sole ticket to continued political relevance.

    To worsen matters, a faction of the South West progressive mainstream, of which VP Osinbajo is part, are top partners in the Buhari Presidency.  So, it’s perfectly understandable if the Afenifere and allies gore Osinbajo to have, on restructuring, “betrayed” Awo, his great grandfather-in-law.

    Again, that is nothing but arrant blackmail.

    But somewhat, Afenifere’s “restructuring” has gathered some nation-wide moss, no thanks to severe pains, from severe economic changes; and some shared resentment against the so-called “Hausa-Fulani”, in the Nigerian power mix.

    Without necessarily discounting the excellent re-federalization prospects of pristine restructuring  — which, by the way, Ripples had earlier written umpteen articles to canvass — anti-Hausa/Fulani resentment (by southern elements) and progressive posturing (by northern elements, essaying a power capture) power the latest restructuring strain.

    Indeed, a rather interesting mix, this new restructuring orchestra!

    First, the South East political elite that, right back to the Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi first military regime (January to July 1966), had helped to promulgate the Unification Decree 34 of 1966.

    That decree not only dismantled the 1st Republic’s regional federalism, it also helped to erect — and milk, with the now hated “Hausa-Fulani”, over the years — a dysfunctional centre.

    That elite, as unfazed neophytes, intoxicated by the giddy wine of new belief, are new ”restructuring” radicals!  Instructively, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, who in 1966 was a Unification  Decree young Turk, is now the wise and wizened Solon of new-found restructuring!

    The trio of Nwabueze, the late F. C. Nwokedi, a federal permanent secretary and the late C. C. Mojekwu, attorney-general of the defunct Eastern Region, were linked to Decree 34, itself a near-wholesale lifting of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) 1951 manifesto, which craved a unitary Nigeria.

    Then, the South-South lobby!  Throughout Jonathan’s six presidential years, that elite was too busy, trying to foist minority domination, over the majority — ”restructuring” be damned!  — on this same flawed centre.

    Yet, the Jonathan era offered the most golden opportunity to push that campaign.

    The northern “neo-progressives” complete this new sweetheart coalition.  Among those, former VP Atiku Abubakar fancies himself as some self-crowned Pericles, Nigeria’s answer to the czar of progressive thinking in ancient Athens!

    That is rank opportunism, given Atiku’s funereal quiet over restructuring during the Obasanjo power years.  Besides, when did the peripatetic Atiku start standing for anything durable, beyond his perpetual flux of political parties, to chase illusive power?

    Beatified, the Afenifere high priests, with near-divine swagger, are sweating in the “restructuring” high shrine: canonizing some; excommunicating others.  That would explain the “we-have-endorsed-Atiku-no-we-have-not” mix-up!  It’s excellent election-eve fever!

    Still, all these restructuring-buzz-as-sweet-lollies, to lull adherents into some magical future, issue from a debacle: too much central cash chasing absolutely no value.

    The result is crippling corruption, which the Buhari Presidency has been condemned to battling.

    Now, Osinbajo’s Minnesota message seeks to uproot that debacle of over-centralization: you must radically tweak things, so that every kobo chases radically increased value.

    That is the long and short of the Vice President’s case.  That can’t violently jar against “restructuring”, can it?

    So long for election-eve buzz!