The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Still on the Natasha matter

    Still on the Natasha matter

    Surely, if those minding the information committee of the senate couldn’t be accused of having done a particularly stellar job of effectively containing the minor stirring in the teacup that has now assumed a threatening conflagration in Nigeria’s upper legislative chamber, perhaps even worse could be said about those managing the image of the man in the eye of the storm in the wake of the so-called Natashagate.

    Thanks to Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the senator from Kogi Central for teaching her colleagues a thing or two on how the spin works; it seems to me a new day in which emotions and artful manipulation will coalesce to deliver sellable, irresistible, but sizzling  narrative about sex in high places. With Akpabio’s corner on virtual AWOL, should we still be asking how things have turned beyond ugly to potentially irredeemable embarrassment?

    It may well be that politicians wouldn’t be what they are without their uncanny ability to muddle up facts, to twist and then proceed to foist their specious interpretation of reality on the rest of the orderly society. But that the enlightened society – particularly those who, by their orientation, are supposed to be chroniclers of truth, would join the politicians in marketing devious narratives for some narrow, partisan ends can only be described as the ultimate tragedy.  

    Yes, it’s been weeks since Nigerians were treated to the drama on the floor of the senate. At this time, it is doubtful if there is any Nigerian still in confusion about the sequence of the events that took place- the only probable exception being the usual tribe – the hordes of conflict entrepreneurs who seek to make a capital of what is actually no more than a hare-brained delinquency.

    Then, a senator, the chief whip, with the name Mohammed Tahir Monguno, had risen to raise some observations on the conduct of a certain senator in refusing to proceed to the seat allotted to her following some changes in sitting arrangement. He then proceeded to read from the senate red book as if to clear any doubt that the exercise was anything extraordinary. Citing the authority of the presiding officer as captured in the book, the distinguished senator from Borno had reminded all that the exercise was entirely the prerogative of the senate president.

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    Thereafter, Akpoti-Uduaghan, against whom the complaint was made jumped to her feet –claiming her authority from the same book. The problem was that the presiding officer would have her know that she could only validly raise her matter of privilege from the seat allotted to her!

    There was no suggestion that the privilege would be denied her; only that the rules of the chamber required that she speak from her allotted seat, which she apparently thought was not photogenic enough! What followed was hell literally let loose in the chamber with the now out-of-control senator daring the authority of the institution and that of its leader.

    That was the drama – a very shameful one – that Nigerians saw on ‘live’ television. The story of a senator being required to leave the chamber for unruly behaviour is one that Nigerians should not forget in a hurry!

    Worse however was to come.  Next stop was Berekete Radio, a station which, for its famed notoriety, could neither be accused of good judgment nor sound ethical practice. The station, in a rather strange twist to the event that was then gathering steam, and in a series of follow-ups that could only have been well choreographed, placed a call to Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan, requesting for her account of the events on the floor of the senate. If that part of the drama could be described as entertaining, no less intriguing is the barely disguised spin designed to whip emotions against the yet-to-be-heard number three citizen, who, moments later, would be summoned to the live programme without formal notice or invitation!!

    Even that singular act of putting the senate on the spot was just as terrible.

    Now, a lot has happened since to give Nigerians enough to chew. From high-octave TV appearances that seek to supply ample flesh to shadows in the absence of substance, to court cases that appear designed to inject life into the matter while it lasts. Of particular note is the narrative of sexual harassment, whose particulars have remained the petitioner’s best kept secret, well timed to whip supporters into frenzy. Not only has the latter trended, but has trumped everything else even when Nigerians have not been availed a scintilla of proof!

    To our hordes of street jurors, nothing about the contemptible treatment of the highest law-making body by a member would seem to matter. Nothing of the carefully laid out procedures of the ethics and privileges committee designed to guarantee fair and expeditious hearing can make sense. In the eyes of those cheering her on, the senate, not the particular individual sworn to drag the individual into the cesspit and who, as it turns out, is yet to familiarise herself with the rules of the institution in which she claims to represent the good people of Kogi Central, is the one that erred!

    Little wonder the part of the bizarre narrative that the senate subordinates its rules to the whims of gender activists on the whiff of mere allegations by asking the senate president to step down!  Talk of the lone warrior making good with her voluble, fit-for-camera activism even when her understanding of the simple rules of the institution in which she is privileged to serve is utterly suspect!

    The above narrative is the one on the verge of being buried by the lynch mob in the specious narrative in which Senator Akpabio and the distinguished members of the Upper House are being cast in the image of Lucifer and his fallen angels. As for the individual who desecrated the hallowed chambers of the senate, broke protocols, defied her country’s foremost institution, and thought little of dragging the entire nation to that global body – the Inter-Parliamentary Union – to settle personal scores, I can hear some Nigerians demanding her being asked to go and sin no more, if only to prove how gender-friendly our parliament is!

    That is where we are at the moment. Who knows whether her next stop will be the office of the United States president, Donald Trump? Or even the United States senate. Who says there are limits to such unbridled delinquency by our pampered, over-fed elite?  Whichever way things turn out, that date February 20, seems unlikely to be forgotten by Nigerians in a hurry.

  • El-Rufai and Fubara: Accidental politicians?

    El-Rufai and Fubara: Accidental politicians?

    When Mallam Nasir El-Rufai referred to himself as an accidental public servant, it resonated with the public, because he approached public service with the mind-set of a private pursuit. A person who works for himself/herself determines what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. But a public servant does not hold all the aces. Public servants are guided by laid down procedures, interests and factors which sometimes are beyond their control. 

    This column recalls that after El-Rufai was propelled by forces to become the Director General of Bureau of Public Enterprise and later Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, he operated substantially as an accidental public servant. As Minister of FCT, Abuja, he cared not whose ox is gored in his single-minded determination to restore Abuja to its original master plan. While his bulldozers roared, those who appointed him were taking the heat and cleaning the fallout mess. 

    To get him to pass through the senate to become minister, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, who nominated him, had to dye the wool, while El-Rufai was enjoying his night sleep. However, when El-Rufai saw that his godfather and benefactor, Atiku, had fallen out with President Olusegun Obasanjo, he shifted allegiance to the president and that shift allowed him to continue his pursuit of public service with the mind-set of a private person.

    With his intellectual sagacity, El-Rufai was able to endear himself to President Obasanjo, such that he became a member of the inner circle, otherwise called the kitchen cabinet of the president. While not knowledgeable in the crafty nuances of the public service and/or politics, his capacity to deliver on assignments, which served the purpose, shone brightly. So, with his work as the DG of BPE and Minister of FCT, El-Rufai acquired enough reputation to dream dreams and to assert himself.

    When Obasanjo’s successor, President Umaru Yar’Adua showed complete lack of appetite to the idiosyncrasies of El-Rufai, of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, the accidental public servant saw danger and fled. With Yar’Adua, a scion of the northern oligarchy in power, there was no space for blackmail and shenanigans, and so El-Rufai decided to put his combustible energy to further studies abroad. Hibernating abroad and biding his time, an opening came with the death of Yar’Adua, and the subsequent President Goodluck Jonathan’s bid for a second term.

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    El-Rufai again put forward his sagacious intellect to the service of the emergent coalition of forces which metamorphosed into the All Progressive Congress (APC), the political behemoth that ousted the incumbent president and the candidate of his former party, the PDP. Since he was at the table where the sharing took place, he cornered for himself, Kaduna State as its gubernatorial candidate. With the bandwagon of Sai Baba, El-Rufai, swept into power as Kaduna State governor in 2015; and with the power of incumbency at state and federal levels, coupled with his religious divide and rule tactics, El-Rufai secured a second term in 2019.

    Out of power for merely two years, El-Rufai’s impudence and impatience is once again at play. Angry that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu refused to make him a minister, he has left the APC and has joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and is inviting every aggrieved member of APC, PDP and the distraught Labour Party (LP), to join in his new sojourn. Former President Buhari, who learnt the political ropes the hard way, quickly disassociated himself from the gamble.

    Of course, it would amount to political hara-kiri for Atiku Abubakar to accept to become a boy to his former boy (El-Rufai), by agreeing to follow him to his new gamble. The candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, will likely not take the bait considering the mess that El-Rufai as governor made of his relationship with the people of Kaduna south, mainly Christians. Considering the religious bigotry that El-Rufai left behind in Kaduna, which his successor, Uba Sani, with the help of President Tinubu is trying to clean up, with strategic appointments and social reengineering, no farsighted politician will jump ship with El-Rufai.       

    Unlike the time of his being an accidental civil servant when he had employers who were ready and willing to clean the mess he lives behind as his bulldozer rumbled through human and material resources in his political endeavour, in SDP, as he was in Kaduna as governor, he would either clean any mess he rakes up, or it will live with him. Going forward, even his past mess will be stirred by his adversaries and the stench may be quite overwhelming. One major explanation he owes Nigerians is his connection with the killer Fulanis whom he admitted he had paid to stop killing Nigerians, and why despite the bribe, they never stopped.

    The other accidental politician in the public space presently is Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State. Drafted from his perfunctory civil service duties as an accountant, Fubara was foisted on the highly octane gubernatorial post of the combustible Rivers State. To further compound his challenges, after winning, he immediately entered into a dogfight with his rambunctious former godfather-turned-foe, Nyesom Wike. A political warrior’s warrior, Wike, has shown himself a rancorous marathon fighter with the capacity to deliver upending uppercuts with devastating precisions.

    This column had wondered how Fubara managed to become a governor after he threw away the peace deal President Tinubu had helped him negotiate with Wike. Not only that, he told the president that he was a meddlesome interloper, and he was not obligated to obey his ‘unconstitutional’ peace deal. This column had wondered how Fubara wandered into the government house. Even when the loquacious Wike boasted that he would keep pushing Fubara, to keep making mistakes, like a man afflicted by Cyprian Ekwensi’s sokugo or wandering spirit, Fubara kept stumbling from one error to another.

    When the jungle was merely at its infancy, Governor Fubara naively claimed that the jungle has matured. Now that the Supreme Court has withdrawn the carpets he was standing on to grandstand and boast, he was locked out of ‘his property’ (the state legislative quarters) by the (legislators) he had naively inferred were ‘his tenants’. To show that he is an accidental politician, Fubara made a shameful visit to the estranged legislators, in the daytime, with his sirens blaring and the cameras clicking.

    If Fubara had any modicum of political sagacity, or even reasonable knowledge of history, philosophy, sociology or political science, he would have sent emissaries to make peace behind the scene, before the showboat of the disgraceful lockout. This column hopes Governor Fubara and Mallam El Rufai are not driving political cars without brakes?

  • Like tortoise, like Fubara

    Like tortoise, like Fubara

    Siminilayi Fubara, the shrill-whining governor of Rivers, particularly when baying under pressure, reminds one so much of the tortoise in the Yoruba folktale.

    Tortoise announced he was going on a trip. When would you return?  He deadpanned: when I’m disgraced!

    Ola Rotimi, in Kurunmi, that Yoruba historical tragedy, used the tortoise parallel to paint the excesses of Kurunmi, lord of Ijaye and Aare Ona Kakanfo of the Oyo Empire. 

    Kurunmi perished, ousted by the invading Ibadan forces, losing his seven sons in battle — and his Ijaye fiefdom to boot.

    No matter his grouse with his emperor, Alaafin Adelu, Kurunmi should have been less inflexible.  True, by extant tradition, Adelu, the Aremo (firstborn of the Alaafin) should have died with his father, not succeed him.  But Atiba had changed that tradition, thus clearing Adelu’s path from forced death, to royal succession.

    But Kurunmi balked at that new order.  He defied his new emperor, just because he felt he had the lethal force to prevail.  When the formidable Ibadan army stormed Ijaye, after all entente had failed, the playwright, Ola Rotimi, deemed Kurunmi’s intransigence a wrong tactic to press a right cause — hence the tortoise’s parallel.

    Alaafin Adelu needed to consolidate his hold on power.  Ibadan scoffed at any rival power, which Ijaye was.  In that high-power convergence of interests, Kurunmi was toast, though too deluded to know! The rest, as they say, is history.

    So, are Fubara’s causes, against Nyesom Wike, the abrasive guy that loves to war and brawl to wear down his foes, wrong or right?  Besides, which of the two camps kisses naked danger, though is too far gone to realize it?

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    That would depend on where you stand on the Wike-Fubara divide — just too much sentiments in the air to correctly track anything!

    But Governor Fubara isn’t exactly an Ijaw equivalent of Kurunmi — heady, intrepid and rumbling.  Wike, his arch (tor)mentor, and now FCT minister, fits more into that profile. 

    Still, Fubara could whine, kick, bite and swear!  As Kurunmi, he shares a penchant for reckless excesses, which bait avoidable ruin.  That explains his latest judicial jam — a thundering double defeat that was hardly a surprise.

    Fubara, as executive basket mouth, is perhaps the only governor in today’s Nigeria that would insult a high court judge for doing his job, trash-talk the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), laying grievous allegations at his feet, and call his mentor-turned-arch tormentor names, just to press his democratic right to white rage!

    But no tears for Wike — the Sim insults are majestic Karma at work!  Wike too, no less,  had scalded, bruised and verbally bombed Rotimi Amaechi, his ex-boss and benefactor. 

    Still, while Fubara blows hot, he easily forgets that common sense — and survival instinct — impose on him the imperative to make friends (and not talk up powerful foes), just in case you need some right voices, in right quarters, when the chips are down.  Not Fubara!  He brawls as if there would be no tomorrow!

    Now, that dreary “tomorrow” is here.  The governor, buried by own rashness, is sapped by cold law — the twin-nullity of his budget (for two years’ running!) and the council poll he forced, abusing and traducing about everyone in view! 

    He would cut his loss and make a dash for some negotiated peace?  No way!  From his post-verdict antics, Fubara seems digging deeper and deeper!  Poor Rivers!

    Still, how long, for instance, did he figure he would continue dealing with his glorious “simple minority” of four, in the Rivers House of Assembly of 32, and he wouldn’t get roasted, with him even providing the fuel?  How long?

    Should push come to shove, Fubara could be toast! 

    Should the Rivers House go full blast for impeachment, only a miracle would save Fubara.  How could anyone be elected governor, and yet not know spending public money, without parliamentary appropriation, is democracy’s most grievous crime, only next to treason? 

    In the Rivers’ tragic burlesque, even the state’s Attorney-General, who bears the suffix of SAN — the learned silk, Nigeria’s highest professional ranking of lawyers — passed through a four-man screening, in a 32-member Rivers Assembly!  If gold rusts, what would iron do?

    Pray, how could such a crippled appointee advise the governor against governance outlawry, which the Supreme Court utterly flayed in its February 28 verdict that brought Fubara down to earth?  It’s certainly not the best of times for the embattled governor!

    But it’s neither for the Wike camp, with its post-verdict unbridled triumphalism; and a confetti of rash orders to further bludgeon the dust-biting Fubara and co.

    Again, for Fubara, no tears from here!  He should have known what’s coming for him, with such executive brigandage he had allowed himself to be goaded into. 

    Again here, the Supreme Court referenced his gung-ho demolition of the House of Assembly, a rash act tantamount to, as the apex court put it, cancelling democracy in the state!

    Still, while the Wike camp have the infantile Fubara exactly where they want him, any rash move from their own end could earn them defeat from the jaw of victory! 

    That’s the thing, though. It need not be a zero sum game.  But Rivers politics would be nothing, if not zero-sum — either with Amaechi versus Wike;  or this Wike/Fubara row.

    So, though the Supreme Court verdict has been humbling — if not crushing for Fubara: and just as well — it could offer a new re-set that gifts the Rivers folks a relief.

    Law is cold.  It already leaves Fubara for dead.  But emotive politics is as hot as clinical law is frigid and cold.  Fubara could have earned his impeachment — if it came — by own reckless executive follies and foibles.

    Still, everyone knows the beginning of invoking an impeachment.  But hardly anyone knows how it would pan out.  Which is why both sides must take the judgment as welcome shock therapy.  The Rivers APC, calling for Fubara’s resignation in 48 hours or be impeached, should perish that reckless thought!

    Also, the so-called Ijaw “youths”, threatening Armageddon on Fubara’s account, should chill.  That’s as infantile as Fubara’s approach to governance. 

    It doesn’t paint the Ijaw in good light.  It’s only the dumb that resort to violence — of which no one has a monopoly — because they can’t think through a challenge.  The Ijaw are far too illustrious and far smarter than that.

    Besides, they should have learnt from the Goodluck Jonathan debacle.  Threat and thunder didn’t fetch President Jonathan a second term any more than it would save Fubara from the political guillotine, via an impeachment well-earned.

    But with mutual caution, it need not go to that dire extreme.

    Which is why the Wike side too must work toward peace with dignity.  Even if they loathe Fubara as a “traitor”, they should honour the office of the governor.

    Incidentally, all these would have been averted, had Fubara heeded the presidential peace framework of re-submitting his budget to the legit Assembly, but no!

    Let both parties return to that framework.  Rivers deserves peace and development, not conflict without end, among its political warlords.   Enough is enough!

  • Fubara: Pay day for outlawry!

    Fubara: Pay day for outlawry!

    Thanks to the candid judgment of highest court of the land, the events of October 29, 2023 and their many confounding aftermaths in the Garden City State, have been comprehensively settled. Reminds me of the Biblical abomination of desolation – used to describe an egregious violation of covenant, the judgment came to me as an unambiguous censure of outlawry; a brutal excoriation of that individual for whom the law is what he alone, apparently, thinks it is!

    Lest I forget, those Nigerians, particularly the supremely voluble television lawyers still in expectation of some judicial reprieve from the lower court on the question of the status of the 27 lawmakers decreed out of existence by Fubara and his henchmen, the publication of the entire text of the judgment in this newspaper’s edition of last Friday must have come as a terrible blow.

    As far as judgments go, nothing that could have been touched appears to have been left untouched. From how the parliament, the symbol of representative government in that beautiful enclave, was razed to the ground by anarchists, who, supposedly for the loved for their beloved governor, thought little of taking the country back to the Stone Age.

    To how the governor, following their steps, in an unparalleled demonstration of executive delinquency, moved in the bulldozers to complete the rite of destruction on that symbol that had cost the state treasury billions of taxpayers’ money.

    And still to the constitutional absurdity of a four-member parliament making laws for the people to the exclusion of the majority of 27; the intervening charade of screening members of the state executive council followed by the bigger sham of local council elections that mocks not just the law but the tenets of constitutionalism, with the governor disdainfully proclaiming that the jungle – his self-declared jungle –has matured.

    And then the travesty of all time – a gang of four members assuming the power over the purse of the state in place of a properly constituted legislative assembly even when a lower court had earlier pronounced such activity as a clear usurpation of the powers of the majority and thus illegal.

    All of these and many more were touched upon by the five-man panel of justices.

    Talk of the house Fubara built finally collapsing like a pack of cards!

    To borrow the words of the jurists: “In this case, the executive arm of the government has chosen to collapse the legislature to enable him to govern without the legislature… As it is, there is no government in Rivers State”, the apex court had thundered!

    Fubara, it specifically noted, “started the prevention of the sittings of the Rivers State House of Assembly constituted by the number of members as prescribed by Section 96 of the 1999 Constitution long before the issue of the remaining 27 members defecting to another political party arose.

    Fubara’s activities “were adjudged by the concurrent holdings of the Court of Appeal in its judgment in Appeal No. CA/ABJ/CV/133/2024 as illegal and unconstitutional long before the allegation of defection started”, said the justices while referencing an earlier judgment of the appellate court.

    His “reliance on Sections 102 and 109 of the Constitution and the doctrine of necessity”, it said “is to continue his brazen subversion of the Rivers State House of Assembly, the 1999 Constitution and legitimate government in Rivers State”.

    How, truly are the mighty fallen. This is a governor, who in May last year had told “those group of men who claim that they are assembly members; they are not existing. I want it to be on record…

    “I accepted that peace accord to give them a floating. That’s the truth. There is nothing in that peace accord that is a constitutional issue. It is a political solution to a problem. I accepted it because these are people that were visiting me and we were together in my house.

    “These are people that I have helped… in many ways when I wasn’t even a governor. Yes, we might have our disagreements, but I believe that one day, we could also come together. That was the reason I did it.

    “But I think it has gotten to a time when I need to make a statement on this thing, so that they understand that they are not existing. Their existence and whatever they have been doing is because I allowed them to do so. If I don’t recognise them, they are nowhere; that is the truth”.

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    That was the almighty Fubara announcing the dawn of jungle rule to a visiting delegation from the neighbouring state of Bayelsa led by former Governor Seriake Dickson; moments after openly repudiating the political settlement brokered by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    No doubt, the past few days must have been a rather traumatic metamorphosis for Fubara. From being everything from underling, to deal breaker and then to lawbreaker and finally to supremo; and now with the apex court’s definitive judgment, he has been stripped of his self-assumed pretences to unchallengeable power. What an elegant way by the Supreme Court to restore order and decorum to the conduct of government business.

    Can the law, which he had all of these while scoffed at, still save him? With the options so narrow and in-between, I guess that is a tough question to hazard. Will the political process which he falsely assumed would answer to his diktat still avail given how rapidly things have turned? That is even more problematic particularly as he still talks as someone living in wonderland, totally oblivious of the unambiguous pronouncement of the apex court. Like Donald Trump and his blithe summon to his MAGA goons in the dying days of his first term, imagine Fubara even asking his own ‘cult’ to stand firm for further instructions!

    And what about those supposed elders, the army of conflict entrepreneurs and ethnic jingoists, egging him on? Assuming that they have not been too far gone in their Samsonian Complex; will they now afford him the space to read the signs correctly and to take corrective measures? Will he be willing to eat the humble pie to engage his nemesis? What about those who, only yesterday pronounced him their hero? Will they still have the nerves to stay the course?

    The days ahead promises to be interesting. 

  • Trial of Senator Natasha

    Trial of Senator Natasha

    Distinguished Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan is arguably the most popular senator in the country as I write this piece. Of course, some would rather say, the most notorious senator. It all depends on the pundit’s sympathy. Some have referenced her as the biblical Delilah, who was recruited by the Philistines to seduce Samson, in this case, Senate President Goodswill Akpabio, to reveal the source of his strength and die. The more compassionate see her as Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, whom King David, cornered to himself, and then dinned with Uriah, to his death.

    Yet others, have out rightly dressed Natasha as Potiphar’s wife, who tried to lure Joseph to her warm embrace, and when he rejected the offer, roped him in as a rapist, and was jailed. For most people, Natasha’s troubles or stardom, started a few weeks ago, over where she must sit, to be heard, in the hallowed chambers of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. A directive by the senate leadership to relocate to a new seat, was met by an Amazonian defiance, which rattled the senate, as the social media, dry-cleaned the senate laundry in public.

    Rising with poise and defiance, and raising the omnibus Order 10 of the senate rules, on privileges, Senator Natasha, refused all entreaties to move to her newly assigned chair, before she can be heard. As if propelled by forces, far bigger than her delicate frame, she confronted the senate president frontally, ignoring threats of a walkout, by the senate sergeant-at-arms, and declared fearlessly that she cannot be intimidated. Entreaties by colleagues, well-wishers and detractors alike, were brushed aside. Sensing that the senate chamber was turning into a real-time theater, the plenary proceeded, as if nothing happened. 

    Before the brouhaha, over the sitting arrangement, Senator Natasha was like the rest of other female senators. Only those who followed her fight with the former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello (alias the White Lion), to get to the senate, would have taken notice of her. In fairness to Senator Natasha, the way she fought off the “White Lion”, who may have taken that name to scare his opponents showed that she was not a mewing but a ferocious member of the feline family.    

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    That sterner stuff showed on the floor of the senate when what was a mere altercation snowballed into a hurricane, which some quickly predicted would consume the President of Senate, Godswill Akpabio. First, Natasha thundered that she would release a bombshell, should Akpabio dare her. Perhaps, not wanting to be discouraged from ‘bombing’ the senate president, Natasha went to a radio and television stations, to allege that Akpabio had harassed her sexually – guess when, in December, 2023.

    Like an expectant mother, Natasha must have gone home to her beloved husband, Chief Emmanuel Uduaghan, expecting an earthquake in the senate, after igniting what she thought was seismic disruptions. Most distinguished senators were neither amused nor scared, of what they considered the antics of a derailed member. Citing several orders from their red book, they were nearly unanimous that Natasha has brought the senate to disrepute, and violated the privileges of other senators. Natasha was quickly referred to the committee on ethics and privileges.

    Her spirited effort to deflate the matter, through an action for defamation, against the senate president, based on statements made by his aides, could not detract the guns aimed at her. Of course, whether defamatory suit is an action in persona or in rem, is a matter for the courts to determination. Again, a petition to the senate, alleging sexual harassment against the senate president, which apparently was intended to force Akpabio to surrender his presidency, while the matter is investigated, fell through on the premise that a senator cannot sign a petition to be presented to the senate for adjudication.

    While seeking the intervention of the senate to investigate her petition, against Akpabio, Natasha refused to submit to the senate committee, she was referred to, following her tantrums in the chambers, and the subsequent radio and television interviews. Expectedly, the senate committee reached a verdict, that Natasha should be suspended for six months, and her allowances and security details withdrawn. The committee added that the punishment can only be rescinded if she offers a written apology to her colleagues. Meanwhile Akpabio’s wife has gone to court, claiming that Natasha defamed her and her children, while Natasha’s husband is strongly defending the wife in the public space.

    In the midst of these imbroglio, some pundits are wondering what is driving Natasha, in her quest to bomb Akpabio out of his exalted senate seat? Could it be the alleged incidence of holding her hand in December 2023, and proposing in a hush tone, while the husband is answering a call, an adulterous return to Akpabio’s den sometime in the future? Or could it be the removal from her plum senate committee chair on local content, obviously well after the alleged invitation to an adulterous treat, failed?

    Could the answers lie in the questions raised in the midnight call by the senate majority leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, querying what Natasha would gain, from bringing Akpabio down, from his exalted seat. Exploring that theme, could it be that Natasha is a whip in the hands of Akpabio’s detractors, wishing to bring him down? Is there a chance that Natasha is recruited like Delilah, in the Biblical story, to bring Akpabio down? Or worse still, Potiphar’s wife? Conversely, could she be like the wife of Uriah, whom King David coveted and adulterously converted to his own?

    Delilah, was a beautiful Philistine woman, whom Samson loved, against good reasoning. She was recruited to entrap Samson, to reveal his source of strength, and swayed by her beauty, Samson revealed his secret and eventually brought the roof down on himself and his enemies. According to Senator Ireti Kingibe, Senator Natasha has received more privileges in the senate than her. So, what changed. Recall, that the senate president had within weeks of Natasha’s entrance, as a rookie senator, made her the chairman of a committee considered plum.

    Chief Uduaghan, is(was) clearly a good friend of Senator Akpabio, and the family relationship precedes Natasha’s emergence, as a senator. If that friendship played a part in Natasha’s rise in the senate, is it playing a part in her troubles? And will it play a part in its denouement? Some women pressure groups are threatening fire and brimstone against Senator Akpabio and the senate, should the senate fail to recall Senator Natasha from the six-month’s suspension handed her, by the senate. Part of their grievance is that Senator Akpabio, cannot be a judge in his own cause. Will Natasha play by the senate rules and mend her part, or will she fight on from outside, as many are baiting her?

  • Rail from pork

    Rail from pork

    Got your share of the latest round of elite pork?  The North Central is the last to get its — with the advent of the North Central Development Commission (NCDC).

    Let it rain the deluge.  Let the sun, with venom, fry the earth.  The Nigerian power elite would share and gobble sweet pork!  To rear the swine?  Who cares?

    That explains the elite hankering after new states — new cost centres.  Or this gifting of every part of the country with own so-called development commission — flabby bureaucracy! 

    Which nation ever sates its elite greed, but cares less about even parsing the real need of the voiceless majority?  The one that happily hugs winking apocalypse?  Ha!

    Ogun East Senator, Otunba Gbenga Daniel (OGD), also a former governor of Ogun State (2003-2011), probably pats himself on the back for midwifing the South West Development Commission (SWDC) Bill in the Senate — fair enough.

    But beyond the South West accessing own elite pork, whoever told OGD the South West needed a development commission? 

    What serious catastrophe had plagued the region to warrant that, despite already having the Development Agenda of Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission (DC)?

    Isn’t DC tighter and much cost-effective than replicating a flabby central bureaucracy, as SWDC?

    Holy Moses!  Both DC and SWDC will cohabit in the same iconic Cocoa House, Ibadan!  Two for the price of one?  No. Two costs instead of one. But tell that to the waste-crunching elite!

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    Still on that: the South East doesn’t need a development commission either, though those steeped in the politics of “marginalization” would scoff, bite, kick and bawl!

    Beyond the Civil War (1967-1970) — which ended 55 years ago — what catastrophe has struck the South East, beyond Nnamdi Kanu’s neo-Biafra self-imposed mayhem, which its political elite somewhat tolerate, to the ruin and chagrin of its masses?

    With their huge human endowments, the South West and South East should use trimmer think-tanks to drive home developments, not some fatty central contraptions.

    But if the South East elite think otherwise, it’s their democratic right, so long as they act in good faith.  Still, with all due respect, they underrate own inherent capacity.

    The South-South is markedly different.  Even years after the defunct Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) and the present Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the environmental plague of mining crude oil — which fattens Nigeria — is still there, and remains a sore thumb.

    Yes: the South-South elite are no less rapacious than cousins in the other five geo-political zones.  Under President Goodluck Jonathan, many — if not most — among them forgot all about “resource control”.  Whoever makes a row when eating!

    Their “son” — to pilfer a fond word by the late Chief Edwin Clark — was state chef-in-chief.  They could help themselves to as much gravy as they could! 

    And yes too: neither OMPADEC nor NDDC had proved, over the years, any saintliness in accountability or transparency.  But either body could also claim it only follows the hoot of many of the locals to just “share the money”.

    Yet, the albatross of cruel oil mining has earned the Niger Delta a special intervention agency to atone for past deeds.  But whatever that agency is called, it must shed past opacity, and hug rigorous transparency, to hit its goal.   Otherwise, it would remain a supposed solution-turned-problem. That would be double jeopardy.

    To the North!  No doubt: the North East — from Boko Haram and plague — sorely needs a development commission to rebuild its infrastructure, re-tool its people and re-awaken economy.  No doubt!

    Bandit terrorism in the North West is self-inflicted.  That region had held the reins of power, more than any, since Nigerian independence in 1960.  Yet, its masses are as dependent as the South West — the bastion of opposition till 2015 — is sure-footed and self-striving.  For that, the North West power elite stand legitimately docked.  

    Still, for bearing the brunt of fleeing terrorists  from the hot North East Boko Haram theatre, maybe it needs some state special intervention agency to straighten it out. 

    Nevertheless, its elite should crave less central pork; and be wary of acting as if without political power — least reflected in their people’s welfare — they are a fish out of water.

    The North Central is the least poverty-prone, yet the least politically pampered, among the three northern geo-political zones.  Their respective poverty rates: North Central (42.7%), North West (64.84%), North East (71.86%).

    So, the North Central could well argue, as arguably the least politically favoured among the three northern zones, to deserve an interventionist agency. It just got the NCDC.

    Still on strict merit, only two zones: South-South and North East, deserve a central interventionist agency.  Only the two have been sapped with recent truly national catastrophes, to merit one.   Such agencies should target specific disasters, and have a fixed time to wind up.

    The Civil War could have earned the South East one.  But that ended 55 years ago.

    But all of these — merits and demerits — are academic exercises now.  All regions have got their pork.  But how can each region turn this potential “waste” into value?

    Rail!  Intra-regional rail!

    The last time the PDP seized power, near-wholesale in the South West in 2003, words were rife that they planned a South West rail network that would have further powered the regional economy, by far the strongest in the country.

    But it was all talk, no walk. President Olusegun Obasanjo was too distracted, wrestling over the rail right-of-way, over which it claimed exclusive right, with Lagos.  Lagos, under Governor Bola Tinubu, was planning own urban rail network.

    If the head was rotten, in any case, fatally distracted, the five PDP Governors couldn’t have been any more focused.  So, they passed up an epochal legacy.

    Still, SWDC presents a fresh opportunity for integrated South West rail, now that the South West is a politically a mixed zone: four APC governments against PDP’s two.

    The region could have leveraged the tighter DC, though.  By that, it could have spent far less on overheads and sundry bureaucracy, than this duplication with SWDC.  Nevertheless, the new SWDC offers a rare chance to birth a South West rail network.

    The South West should follow the cue from coastal Lagos, and introduce a regional rail hub.  That would be a game-changer for its economy, aside giving tourism and safer, and more comfy travel, a jab in the arm.

    Rail could also prove excellent investment for other geo-political zones, though each should be free to locate its felt critical needs.  But even with that, rail should prove a top pull, in this season when petrol is gold.  Kaduna, under Nasir El-Rufai broached urban rail.

    Still, rail or no, the regional development agencies must add value to the real sector — not just tools for elite dispensation of patronage.

    Otherwise, they would end as scarce money blown on needless pork.

  • Markets and the burden of regulation

    Markets and the burden of regulation

    That Nigerians are not amused by the across the board tariff increases at a time of shrinking disposable incomes is merely stating the obvious. With the vicious, battering forces of the market as unfriendly as can be, and with services providers across the board barely managing to keep a steady course, the irony isn’t just that the Nigerian consumer, who ordinarily should be the king in normal circumstances are left with the short end of the stick, but also that the service provider whose primary duty is to make that happen, being themselves increasingly enfeebled, have more often than not, gone on a ruthless binge of extortionate pricing, to survive.

    Admittedly, no sector of the economy, has been untouched by the headwinds. Thanks to the Tinubu administration’s valiant efforts to reset the economy, to unchain it from the wasteful subsidies and the discretionary, but transparently corrupt foreign exchange regime that have held it down, it has been a slow but painful adjustment across the board.

    From basic household items to food, transportation services to raw materials for industries, no sector has escaped the gale. Currently, the inflation rate, aside ranking among the highest in Africa has seen food prices in particular, balloon; so also are transportation costs and the cost of housing; until lately, they have all been on a steep increases. Again, raw material prices as indeed the cost of industrial spares, thanks to the new forex pricing regime and the attenuating devaluation of the naira, have shot up. Overall, the ease of doing business or the mere prospect of it has remained daunting whether for entities small, medium of even large scale.

    Between the fabled Scylla and Charybdis, the Nigeria economic actor – whether as a consumer or a producer of goods or services – has suddenly found himself caught up in the maelstrom of the forces over which he little or no control.  

    Just like the Good Book is wont to say, it may well be the case that the parents were the ones that ate the sour grapes, it is the children’s teeth that are set on the edge! Nigerians, long impervious to such concepts as ‘cost recovery’, ‘appropriate tariff’ and the long maligned ‘market forces’, are not only now waking up to the dawn of a new reality, but are finally, it seems, learning the lessons the hard way too.

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    And so the current pressure by service providers for across the board tariff reviews. From the telecommunications companies that claim to require it so bad that any contemplation of an alternative or even a delay in granting their request can only be at the cost of their survival as an industry. Imagine; last year alone, the MTN Group reportedly posted a staggering $414.7 million loss; the same with the electricity sector which continues to guzzle billions of naira of taxpayers’ money post-privatisation (the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission puts the subsidy largess in the first 11 months of 2024 at N1.91tn), hence the buzzword today being that tariff reviews have become somewhat inevitable. 

    Now, the latest in the tariff quest is the entertainment company, MultiChoice, the operator of DStv and GOtv, which Monday February 24 served notice of its intention to hike subscription prices, effective March 1. Again, as with the other corporates, the reason as given by the company’s Chief Executive Officer, John Ugbe is, ‘higher operational costs’. 

    Part of the statement from the company read: “Due to prevalent economic factors leading to increased operational costs, we have unavoidably had to adjust the prices of our DStv and Gotv subscription packages”.

    As Dataphyte, the media, research and data analytics company would note: “Over the past nine years, Nigerians have dealt with a series of price increments on DStv subscriptions. The increments have become more frequent in recent times and the reasons for increment has (sic) always been due to the rising operational costs in the country.

    Expectedly, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), has since taken up the challenge with the latter not only raising concerns about what it described as ‘recurring unilateral price increases’, including serious questions about ‘fairness, market abuse, and potential anti-competitive practices’ but requesting a meeting to discuss the matter.

    As it is, it is hard to see any part of the FCCPC invite as anything but legitimate public duty. MultiChoice is, after all, not just another fringe player in the entertainment sector of the economy, its dominance is unequalled, or if you like, unchallenged. 

    Surely, this will not be the first time MultiChoice will duel with the regulators or even the parliament. Yet, as with every duels past and present, the issue(s) have remained basically the same issues of inflation and rising costs and how this impinges on the service delivery and prices, and then the question of how it responds to it, not just in the market place, but in the context of its status as a lead player in a sector in which it has remained, inexplicably, a dominant player.

    However, while the issue has remained somewhat intractable and so doesn’t lend to easy answers, it is not necessarily because the roots of the problem are unknown but because they are out of control!

    Surely, I understand the case that the FCCPC is eager to make: it doesn’t accept that the tariff review by DSTV makes any sense any than the extremely short notice of barely five days served on the subscriber fair; needless to add that it considers both to be, not just injurious, but antithetical to consumer interests and to that extent demands some regulatory action. Not only is this reasonable, it may well be the right call to make in the current circumstances. This, as indeed, the alleged monstrosity of a dominant player in a country of over 200 million population being legitimate questions that Nigerians have had to raise in times past, but for which concrete answers are yet to be found, precisely because the solutions, although in plain sight, are not easy to deliver, are live issues!

    To put things simply:  Nigeria’s case is akin to that of the proverbial bird perched, delicately on rope; neither the bird nor the rope could claim to be at ease!

    Therein lies the burden of the nation’s competition and consumer protection body. The body has certainly done a yeoman’s job of pounding the streets in the bid to bridge the perceptible animus between the different set of actors in the economy, producers and consumers alike. Sometimes the body has found itself, reading the riot act, to those for whom the issue of fair, just and equitable market prices would remain an alien concept. In all, it has done well to raise the stakes for the consumer and the service provider alike. But then, as far as the matter of tariffs go, the case of the service providers may well be an instance of those creating value being forced to carry more than they can capably bear.

  • Quack street judges

    Quack street judges

    There is the custom of quackery in nearly every profession on earth. There are even quack messiahs, who claim to be what they are not. There is a story of a fake Jesus in Targaryen Kenya who refused to be crucified like Christ when his congregation asked him to die the way the original Jesus died on the Cross of Calvary. There are also quack lawyers who usually get caught when they appear in court, to pass off, as real lawyers. 

    But the resurgence of what this writer has chosen to call quack street judges in our country is very worrisome. Of course, disagreeing with a judgement of the court and even criticizing same, is a legitimate right, consistent with fundamental human rights, enshrined in the 1999 constitution (as amended). Section 39(1) provides: “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.”

    So, it will be unconstitutional, to seek to abridge that right except in the manner and for the purpose envisaged in section 45 of the same constitution. Thus, for example, no person can, in pursuit of the provision of section 39, hold the opinion and espouse the claim that an analgesic is a drug for aids. There are multiple examples of what one cannot do in the exercise of the right “to hold opinion and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.” 

    But a quack street judge is a different kettle of fish. To make matters worse, these quack street judges do not operate in the courts. They are on televisions and in some cases, have greater influence on the masses than the real judges in courts. The Nigerian space is afflicted with many such quacks, misinterpreting and reinterpreting the judgment of the courts, especially cases rooted in political disputes. In recent times, the several judgements with respect to the political disputes in Rivers State, have thrown up all manner of quack judges.

    Perhaps, one of the most prominent quack street judge on the Rivers State imbroglio is Ugochinyere Michael Ikeagwuonu, also known as Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, a member of House of Representatives, representing Ideato Federal Constituency. Ikenga, is also reputed as the spokesman of CUPP. A lawyer by training, Ikenga, under the guise of press conferences, ingeniously engages in misinterpretation and reinterpretation of judgments of court as a business. One of such judgments was the Supreme Court ruling dismissing the appeal filed by Governor Siminalaya Fubara, after his lawyers filed a notice of discontinuance of a matter, in which the parties have joined issues before the court.

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    In the interview, Ikenga kept hammering that Fubara’s lawyers, in their notice of discontinuance, said the matter had been overtaken by events, and so the court struck it out. Throughout his interview, Ikenga never used the word used by the Supreme Court which is that the matter has been dismissed. As a lawyer, Ikenga Ugochinyere knows that there is a difference between dismissal and striking out a case. In Okereke vs N.D.I.C, (2002) F.W.L.R pg 1406, the Court of Appeal held: “There is a difference between an application which has been heard on the merits and dismissed and another which is merely struck out.” The court further held “When an appeal is withdrawn “wholly”, it presupposes that the appeal is withdrawn in its entirety. In such a situation the appellant cannot come back again on the same appeal.” 

    Ikenga, contends that Governor Fubara can transact legislative business with the four-member gang led by Victor Oko-Jumbo, despite the proviso to section 91 of the 1999 constitution. It says: “provided that a House of Assembly of a State shall consist of not less than twenty-four and not more than forty members.” Ikenga and his fellow quack street judges, keep urging Governor Fubara to continue conducting legislative business with the four-man gang, ironically claiming to be advancing constitutionalism. 

    Another strange argument of Ikenga and his likes, is the misinterpretation of section 109 of the constitution. Section 109(1)(g) provides: “A member of the House of Assembly shall vacate his seat in the House if – being a person whose election to the House of Assembly was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which the House was elected.” This much quoted provision has a proviso, which says “provided that his membership of the latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political party of which he was previously a member or a merger of two or more political or faction by one of which he was previously sponsored.”

    There is also, sub section 2 which provides that “the speaker of the House of Assembly shall give effect to subsection (1) of this section, so however that the Speaker or a member shall first present evidence satisfactory to the House that any of the provisions of that subsection has become applicable in respect of the member.” Sadly, despite these clear provisos, which even require the affirmation of the courts, the quack street judges keep saying that section 109(1)(g) is self-executory.    

    Again, few days ago, the Supreme Court made far reaching decision that Governor Siminalayi Fubara is engaged in gross constitutional misconduct by relying on the four-member gang to conduct legislative business of the state. The court held that monies from the federation account should not be released to the state government until the governor presents a budget before the legislative assembly led by Martins Amawhuele. The apex court also nullified the local government election conducted by Fubara, few weeks ago, in disregard of the order of a Federal High Court.

    Despite the very far-reaching implications of the judgment, Ikenga again interpreted the judgment as he wished. According to him, the judgment of the Supreme Court that Amaewhule is the speaker of the state House of Assembly, should be disregarded until a specific case, at the Court of Appeal, on the issue of cross-carpeting of Amaewhule, is determined by the Supreme Court. As if an oracle, he declares that the government of Rivers State will continue to run smoothly, despite the obvious danger ahead.

    Sadly, Ikenga, usually emphasises that they are fighting for constitutionalism. Even when he has not defined who the ‘they’ are, it can be assumed that he has subsumed himself and his gang, as one and the same, as the government of Rivers State. Surprisingly, Fubara and his illegal attorney general, Dagogo Iboroma, SAN, have continued to act as if the provisions of section 188 of the constitution, on the removal of a governor from office, does not matter. Fubara, should pray the state House of Assembly does not go that way, for his sins are legion.

  • IBB’s gobbled vomit

    IBB’s gobbled vomit

    On Thursday, February 20, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) buried Gen. Sani Abacha.  He was the arch-villain that annulled the June 12, 1993 election!  The dead stay dumb!

    Abacha is long dead and buried. But from his grave, a thick stench oozes: of unbridled cruelty, dark cunning, a vicious power brute and a gargantuan appetite for executive-sleaze-at-gun-point, such that “Abacha loot” fairly defines his living essence. 

    Sadiq and sis, Gumsu — brave souls! — stoutly defend the honour(?) of their father. But even they, beyond filial bluff and bluster, know that carrying the Abacha name is a terrible burden. 

    Abacha, as stark maximum ruler and iron thief, epitomizes near-bestiality.

    But beyond burying the dead Abacha, IBB also spectacularly buried himself — alive — with co-bearers of false tales over the June 12 question. 

    In that Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja “Open Grave” — ironically the title of the second of Hon. Wale Osun’s trilogy on the June 12 saga: the direst political crime in Nigerian history — all the conspirators were there, if not in body, then in spirit.

    The fitting requiem — to blast the soul of this evil ensemble — was IBB’s admission (hardly news!) that Chief MKO Abiola indeed won the June 12 election; and that he regretted annulling it!  But as everything IBB, that “regret” has fired fresh controversy.

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    MKO’s crime was winning a fair election, which result a band of over-fed Army traitors felt was infra dig.  For that, the Nigerian rogue state killed his wife, Kudirat, wrecked his thriving business and finally killed the man — and made Kudi’s six children complete orphans — after MKO had spent his entire presidential term in the evil Abacha gulag!

    It’s an epochal crime that would continue to haunt, blight and plague the coming generations of everyone involved!

    Fittingly too, also buried in that open grave, was former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the fake rectitude that brazenly fronted for the IBB-Abacha turpitude, to bury, without trace, June 12.  But see who is buried alive now!

    The pretentious Obasanjo was there to rally the odious Interim National Government (ING) nonsense that threw up the feckless Chief Ernest Shonekan.

    He was there when, as elected President, he tried to supplant June 12 — the hallowed date MKO won; and which would turn the nemesis of the political military — with May 29: the hollow day Obasanjo took power in 1999, albeit from MKO’s supreme sacrifice.

    Obasanjo forced down that fraud, until President Muhammadu Buhari threw it out; and named June 12 as authentic Democracy Day in 2018, to take effect from 2019.

    Finally, on February 20, he was there — as chairman of proceedings — when IBB ate crow, declared that on MKO they had all lived a shrill lie, and exalted PMB for exulting the truth of June 12, over Obasanjo’s lie of May 29!

    But as the Abuja Hilton drama played out, one towering irony ruled the roost: a “June Twelver”, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that faced down the plot, when it was hot and fatal for too many, had become President!  Indeed, the inevitability of right over wrong!

    Yes, PBAT wasn’t supposed to go there and gloat. That would have been bad breeding. 

    Yet, not a few fume that his high praise of IBB was a tad too fulsome!  Might it be that PBAT is president of everyone — the good, the bad and the ugly? 

    Or that, even with his famed sharp street antenna, that always feels out the true mass temper, even he is trapped in that notorious elite bubble, which jars with the harsh reality outside?

    In truth, the superlative praise that gathering poured on IBB was nauseating.  Yes, IBB could have made of Nigeria restless sites of policy scaffolding, all through his eight power years.

    But he, more than anyone alive or dead, gifted contemporary Nigeria with “settlement” — that subversive generosity that captured the supreme ethos of the IBB years: a gangling venality that toasted sleaze; and conked honest, hard work. That razed our moral fabric.  It explains why, today, the civil service is a nest of graft.

    Yet, there is some nobility in IBB’s recant and apology on June 12.  It’s a doughty act of courage that should stand him in good stead, whatever his final place in history.

    In that, he towers over Gen. Obasanjo, his old commander-in-chief, whose cardinal rule is doubling down on past rots: June 12, ING, May 29, and the horrible, horrible 2007 elections, among his many power blunders!

    Would IBB show Obasanjo new redemptive ways in simple but noble apology?  Time will tell.

    Still, IBB’s new memoir, A Journey in Service, conclusively proves military rule is arrant disservice, despite the many fibs IBB allowed himself. Proof? How the principal players turned out, over coups d’etat.

    Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the most angelic of them all, faced the indignity of his juniors stripping him of his high rank, over unproved coup allegations — a wrong IBB righted.  From Gowon’s age of innocence, the military progressively self-destroyed, in deep rot.

    The mercurial Murtala Muhammed practically got bumped off, even before he started ruling.  Even IBB, if ever so coyly, admitted that Murtala’s impatient reforms, marked by giddy purges “with immediate effect”, effectively killed the federal civil service.

    Gen. Buhari, the most puritanical of them all, with naked jackboot dictatorship, sucked with the endangered masses that he had tried to save from IBB-era debauchery. 

    IBB’s sweet slime, power and policy waywardness et al, peaked with the tragic annulment — which challenge, by civil society, birthed Abacha: as stark, paranoid, kleptomaniac, megalomaniac and brutal as they come! 

    Under Abacha, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua died in jail for coup.  Obasanjo himself tasted jail, and was sprung by the virtual bell of Abacha’s sudden death — a privilege Abdulsalami Abubakar never extended to MKO before his rogue state murder.

    Abacha was the worst-ever portraiture of military rule.  Just as well, he and his terrible breed destroyed the political military, for Nigeria to claw back its soul!  Still, without IBB’s “evil genius”, monster Abacha couldn’t have thrived.

    Strange, though: IBB still, in a section of the book, permitted himself the delusion to rationalize military rule — audacious? Why, he even hallucinated, with all the havoc he had caused, about a so-called “Babangida School of Political Mentorship!” Horror!

    Such IBB conceits, powered by self-eulogy, drive the book, as it had driven the fatal annulment that made him a pariah, if not in his elite bubble, then among the masses; and now hankers after a so-called presidential library!

    Pray, who elected IBB “president”, beyond booming guns, his personal whims, and the caprice of his conclave of palace coup rats that ousted Buhari? And what’s the worth of a presidential library, if only to remind folks of the havoc you left behind?  Conceit!

    But then, that’s the thing!  From fond sentiments that wafted through the book — by the way, beautiful and fetching prose that delivered a mine of contemporary history — IBB still thinks he left Nigeria better than he met it. He’s entitled to his grand delusions!

    Still, on his presidential library project, IBB again trumps Obasanjo.  He has raised some N17 billion, to make that project a reality, 32 years after he left power. 

    Obasanjo’s fundraiser, back in 2005, was a holy suborn, though he branded it “donation”.  A sitting president doesn’t pen in contractors to “donate”, yet kid anyone it’s no brazen extortion!

  • IBB: Revision for contrition?

    IBB: Revision for contrition?

    It is just as well that Nigerians have been speaking on Ibrahim Babangida’s long awaited book – “A Journey of Service” since its public presentation Thursday last week. Surely, if a week after its release, most Nigerians appear less convinced about the aptness of the subject’s so-called journey of service which the title desperately sought to project, what the snippets out there suggest goes beyond a less-than-credible account of the eight-year trauma unleashed on a long-suffering people by the individual now famously described as Maradona. It is, to put things mildly, a nauseating patchwork of astounding self-justification, and a most egregious assault on the psyche of an injured people.

    Let me start with a confession at this stage: I have not read the book. I will hopefully do as soon as I am able to grab a copy. But like every concerned Nigerian, I have followed, closely, the events from the presentation to the subsequent naira rain in the service of the vainglorious monument of a so-called presidential library project – a scandal, an obscenity, if you ask me. That is a different matter by the way.

    Just as theirs belong the prerogative of what to make of his account as laid out in the book, Nigerians ought to join me in commending the number one artful dodger for finally coming out with his story – never mind that this is coming after 32 years since the annulment of an election that the world has come to accept as the freest and fairest in the nation’s electoral history.

    To say that the man they call IBB is no ordinary leader is no overstatement. For good or bad, the point really is not to deny him his place in history. Next to Yakubu Gowon under whose leadership the nation fought a bloody civil war, he is arguably Nigeria’s most consequential leader till date. Howbeit, if a minority few detected his pretensions to high-mindedness particularly in the early days of his administration, one must give it to his uncommon ability to deploy a certain charm offensive, added to his trademark toothy smile, to get majority to accept that he meant no harm.

    With all manners of palace intellectuals in his beck and call, the administration, which he was the supremo, was apparently well prepared, to answer to any and every quest, right up to playing god! In those giddy moments of intoxicating power, some even dared to call him the Prince of the Niger!

    To be sure, he was not all image and no substance. He was a doer of sorts. For roads and food security, his administration had the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI); there was the Mass Mobilization for Self-Reliance, Social Justice, and Economic Recovery (MAMSER) to educate the citizens about the political process, their civic duties and to inculcate in them a dependence on locally made goods and Nigerian products. They, the administration that is, even had the National Agricultural Land Development Agency (NALDA) to assist willing farmers to prepare the land for cultivation! Nigerians will recall the much reviled Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), the policy anchor to address the then looming economic catastrophe. 

    And then the spectacular bid to nurture a so-called new breed of politicians and with it, the laboratory of costly political experimentations; an era when politicians were banned, unbanned and re-banned by his administration– politicians thought to have crossed the lines of the administration’s political orthodoxy.

    If Nigerians were exasperated by the chaos falsely presented as a transition programme, the artful manoeuvres which berthed few hours into the elections and the subsequent annulment of same on June 12, 1993 certainly went beyond a mere turning point, it has since defined everything that the administration represents to Nigerians if not the global humanity.

    It is precisely why Nigerians chose to see the book – A Journey of Service – as an essential June 12 story – as against the autobiography that it is. As far as most are concerned – everything of meaning starts and ends with the story of MKO Abiola, a man who won an election fair and square but was denied the fruit of his victory for reasons that are as inexplicable as they are illogical. (Like most adults at the time, I could still play back in my mind those testy moments when a rambling Babangida, as if under the influence of substance, decreed the election annulled)!

    Now that the Supremo testament is out in the bookstands, many are actually wondering whether the so-called memoir should not have been more appropriately titled The Return of the Maradona. Yes, an exposition on the same old indulgences in semantic inexactitudes that is vintage IBB!

    Still, there is lot that Nigerians ought to be thankful for. First the dubious, but utterly self-serving attempt to conflate ‘acceptance of responsibility’ with ‘expression of remorse’ has been finally exposed for what it is – an exercise in chicanery at best. The man is apparently far too gone to understand the difference and their import. He apparently thinks that he has done the country no wrong to call for an apology to be offered. Or better still, he thinks that would detract from his macho image of the soldier’s soldier!

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    That thousands died didn’t appear to matter; nothing about the grave socio-economic dislocation spawned by the crisis seems to matter; these were mere collateral damages and should be accepted as such! That, for yours truly, is a revelation, a sure profile in leadership.

    Second, the confession that he, IBB was never truly in charge of anything! Again, I am relying on newspaper reports!

    Yes, he was supposed to be the commander-in-chief, but Sani Abacha, his army chief, was actually the one running the show! Interestingly that all of the other brass-hats which he gleefully named as his nemesis, and all of whom he claimed were sworn to ensure that the transition did not run its full course, are now dead! While that remains his words against theirs, the only thing that he did not add is that the perceptibly rattled, rambling and incoherent general that appeared on TV to announce the annulment was actually a Babangida clone!

    How about that shameful admission, coming from our beloved military president, a four-star general?

    Now that the man has pretty little to offer the nation or anyone for that matter, it’s probably time Nigerians left him alone as he continues to enjoy the peace of his rarefied hill-top mansion in Minna!