The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Osogbo rendezvous

    September 15, and a galaxy of stellar minds, gathered at Osogbo, the Osun capital, to discuss the Nigerian condition.

    The prism was sharp — whither the South West, Nigeria’s perennial opposition since 1960, since its 2015 displacement of the South East and South-South, perpetual power sharers with the North?

    You could, of course, counter, as Rauf Aregbesola, the perspicacious Osun governor, argued at the occasion, that a South West faction had always been in government since 1960.

    Ay, but those didn’t belong to the progressive mainstream, under the tutelage of the Obafemi Awolowo school.

    Olusegun Obasanjo, after all, was president for eight years (1999-2007).  His Yoruba folks scorned him all through his first term.  He willy-nilly corralled them, by military ambuscade, in the second.

    But Obasanjo’s was a mere camouflage (military imagery again!) to compensate the Yoruba for the Abiola presidential injustice, but ensure the beneficiary was a Hobson’s choice, from the Yoruba conservative rank.

    Nevertheless, the Yoruba mainstream, which Aregbesola called “Afenifere” (Yoruba political progressives) at the confab, romped into federal power, courtesy of the epochal Muhammadu Buhari presidential win of 2015.

    That was a historic first, powered by a North West-South West entente, under the All Progressives Congress (APC) alliance.

    Now, APC was sweet battle whoop; and even sweeter victory roar.  But ideologically, it would appear a damp squib.

    The reason is clear: both North West and South West are Nigeria’s most ideologically stubborn, whether pre-Abacha 1st Republic (1960-1966), with the three regions (later four) of North, West, East, (and later, Midwest); or post-Abacha geo-political coinage, courtesy of Dr. Alex Ekwueme, 2nd Republic Vice President (1979-1983), of North West, North East, North Central, South West, South East and South-South.

    Now, the North West, with its unfazed conservatism, cohabiting with the South West, with its unapologetic social democracy, may well equate the Yoruba quip of two ferocious rams sharing a sole drinking pot.  That could be recipe for chaos!

    Now, factor in the slew of PDP rogue elements in the winning coalition, brutal power careerists, neither outside pissing in (to borrow that irreverent American quip), nor inside pissing out, but brazenly pressing their democratic right to piss in from inside — decency be damned! — you could then imagine the ensuing post-power melee.

    That would explain the near-consensus that the post-power APC has been a study in how not to be a winning party.  But while the hyper-critical media, mostly of the southern hue and boasting differing motives, got the end result right, they got the process frightfully wrong, because of their emotive approach.

    Without those PDP rogue elements, embedded in the wrong places, pushing private or at best group agenda, the APC is no better or worse than any party, come to power, wearing the ideological version of Dolly Parton’s coat of many colours.

    That reality prompted, as part of the Osogbo conference agenda, the idea of federalizing political parties, along geo-political lines, with local demands driving each party’s national charter, though with APC as case-point.

    The jury is still out on the workability or even desirability of such party federalization.  For one, it is a novel idea, likely to gather moss, as the days wear on, on the political front.

    For another, the Nigerian party system received a kiss of death from Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s wayward political experimentations.  Compared to the organic parties of the 1st and 2nd republics, his post old breed-new breed guinea-pigging has left the formal party system a hollow shell, devoid of any ideological direction, talk less of rigour.

    There is therefore an urgent need to revitalize the party system, if Nigeria’s delicate democracy must be deepened.

    Still, Olubunmi Adetunmbi, Ekiti North senator (2011-2015), lead speaker for the topic, gave it a brilliant shot.

    The gathering also x-rayed Osun’s schools feeding system, a social democracy classic, and signature South West intervention, even at the best of times; and an imperative, even at the worst.

    The worst of economic times — that is where both the Buhari presidency and the Aregbesola governorship, have found themselves.

    Yet, for the society’s most vulnerable, Osun has pioneered this schools feeding programme, as part of its larger social safety-net agenda.  The Federal Government too has adopted the programme, running as pilot in 14 states already; with the possibility of all 36 states buying into the idea.

    That is a distinctive South West programme on the Nigerian national front; and the Osun government should be immensely proud for pioneering it.

    For the pilot states, across geo-political zones and ideological blocs, the salutary message is clear: development is primal; and that basic human imperative, especially among the society’s most vulnerable, must trump political and ideological differences.

    Like former Senator Adetunmbi, the other lead speakers, Prof. Mobolaji Aluko, famed public intellectual and founding vice-chancellor of the Federal University Otuoke, Bayelsa State (the South West critique) and Dr. Charles Akinola (who as director-general, Osun Office of Economic Development and Partnerships, is the policy wonk strutting the Osun safety-net programmes), discharged themselves creditably.

    So did the panel chairs and their discussants: Prof. W. Alade Fawole (Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ife), Kanmi Ademiluyi (former Editorial Board Chairman, Daily Independent) and Dr. Akin Akande (OAU) — a last-minute stand-in for Kayode Komolafe, deputy managing director of This Day, who could not make the session for some personal challenges; and their panels: Dr. Bisi Olawunmi (Bowen University, Iwo), Dr. Harry Olufunwa (Federal University, Oye-Ekiti), Sanya Oni (Editorial Page Editor, The Nation), Dr. Emmanuel Oladesu (Political Editor, The Nation), Ismail Omipidan (Political Editor, Sun) and Sulaiman Salawudeen (Ekiti correspondent, New Telegraph).

    The conference consensus, chaired by Chief Bisi Akande (represented by Chief Sola Akinwunmi), was that the result, of the last two years, was a mixed bag.

    Still, the conferees warned that was no reason for some shrill irredentist baying, in some quarters; adding that with proper restructuring, Nigeria’s consumerist pseudo-federal system may well be tweaked into a productive and prosperous one.

    Governor Aregbesola put it all in devastating statistics, saying that all Nigeria’s ballyhooed “petro-dollar” wealth amounted to was a mere N8, 000 a month, if you share the current oil output among its 140 million citizens — N10, 000 less than the national minimum wage!

    Yet, poor Osun, as part of a South West economic zone, in a productive federal Nigeria, could easily gross N2.5 billion as monthly tax, even with the lowest paid earning N25, 000 a month.  That would build better roads, more schools, and other infrastructure, physical and social.

    The moral?  Waiting for Abuja’s monthly dole has beggared everyone, while breeding a noxious breed of the corrupt, that gobbles up the common patrimony!

    It’s time to properly federalize — but without the bogey of ethnic irredentism.

  • Biafra 2: way to Bathos

    Between Biafra 1 (1967-1970) and the ongoing attempts at Biafra 2, Karl Marx howls: history repeats itself, first as tragedy; then as farce.

    Biafra 2 appears a tragic farce, built on ”Igbo exceptionalism” — at least given the posturing of the vocal minority.

    This is that penchant for own self-serving counsel, no matter how skewed or garbled.  In that explosive emotional nirvana, the Igbo is the perpetual victim; the others, the perpetual Devil.

    The Nnamdi Kanu Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) campaign has been running on that blissful nirvana, in which Nigeria is a “zoo”; and the charmed Biafra, sheer paradise.

    Though the political equivalent of the Biblical wide and merry that leads to perdition, the civil Igbo face appears cool with, if not outright complicit in, Kanu’s excesses.

    The modern and traditional northern elite, as epitomized by the Sultan with some emirs, and some key governors, have cautioned their own lunatic fringe, that threatened the Igbo with a deadline to quit the North (truth be told, in reaction to Kanu’s unceasing torrents of hate, insults and threats).

    But their Igbo counterparts, at best, have hee-hawed, claiming Igboland is a republican bastion; where everyone presses his republican right to say anything and do anything, without regard or recourse to others, in the Nigerian space.

    It was the proverbial violently beating drum, triggering a macabre dance, fated to end in catastrophe.

    At that tragic pass, the South East governors roused themselves to “ban” IPOB (a panic-driven action of dubious legality) — not when Kanu was inspecting a bathetic column of Biafra “troops”; not when he announced the formation of a Biafra Secret Service; not when he triumphantly claimed the president was a Buhari clone from the Sudan, after his medical vacation, not the Buhari original; and definitely not when he ordered his IPOB rabble to burn Nigeria, should any attempt be made at his arrest!

    Whatever happened to the old axiom: prevention is better than cure!

    Still, that amounted to clutching at straws.  Kanu had stylishly remade himself a fugitive from the law — and good riddance!

    But his disappearing act echoed one of the many eerie parallels between Biafra 1 and Biafra 2.

    At the tail end of the Civil War (1967-1970), Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Biafra “head of state” vanished to Côte d’Ivoire “in search of peace”.  By then, no less than a million souls had perished from both sides of the conflict. That was Biafra 1.

    This Biafra 2, Nnamdi Kanu just vanished — “in search of peace” too?  To brew further war? Or simply scampered to save own skin, after putting others in jeopardy, by his insane brags and reckless posturing?

    Mercifully, it was after the pre-skirmishes of “Python Dance 2”, with excitable “youths” pelting a column of troops-at-manoeuvre with stones and other missiles.  Did they expect the soldiers, the ultimate symbol of the state’s monopoly of coercion, to respond with kisses?

    Still, it’s good his vanishing act has occurred before any major carnage, even if it has led to a needless militarization of the South East.  But better a militarization than turning innocent folks, or even ignorant youth, brainwashed, into cannon fodders!

    As for the “human rights” ensemble, just clearing their throats to bellow “fragrant abuses!”, after their funereal quiet on the ongoing IPOB rascality, they should remember the state does have some rights too — in its duty to keep the rest of us safe, from the gambits of a few lunatics.

    That simple principle drove the Social Contract, the philosophical pillar of the pristine government.  Besides, better to move in to avert catastrophe, than risk massive human misery, from beating a brainless drum of war.

    Still, on eerie parallels.  Biafra 1 ran on the explosive bathos of the northern pogroms, the post-15 January 1966 coup unfortunate slaughter of the Igbo in the North; in the run-up to the Civil War.  From the northern leaders’ handling of the Igbo quit threat, they would appear living in eternal regret of that epochal bestiality.

    But something triggered that slaughter from the Igbo side.  Segun Ayobolu, that cerebral Saturday columnist of The Nation, just quoted late academic, Billy Dudley’s testimony of the taunting, by some Igbo in the North, of the locals; on the killing of northern leaders, during the first coup, later christened the “Igbo coup”.

    In Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the famed novelist, also referred to a certain number by Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson, highlife music impresario, now dead, which sounded like the harrowing bleat of a ram under slaughter, to which triumphant northern Igbos capered with gusto, to the bile of the hurt northern locals.  The bleating “rams” were northern leaders, “being slaughtered”, during the first coup!

    The tragic result was the pogrom — and the July 1966 revenge coup.

    But while the pogroms always “jump out” of Civil War history, to milk eternal sympathy, no one has mentioned the tragic trigger-taunts, without which it is doubtful the pogroms would have taken place.  That is regrettable but hardly surprising, for it fits pat into a deliberate one-sided narrative, on the Igbo side.

    This one-sidedness is evident in this Biafra 2, which may well turn out a big farce.  By what looks like a southern media conspiracy, the devil are the northern lunatic fringe that threatened the Igbo with expulsion; not the IPOB lunatic fringe that started the hate blizzard.

    Even, “Python Dance” is the fault of a proactive Buhari Presidency, looking out for the law-abiding majority in Igboland, not the rash Kanu and his IPOB, with their ceaseless baiting of catastrophe.

    Very soon, everyone would forget — fond hope! — that Biafra 2 has little to do with the so-called “Igbo marginalization” but a crafty scheme by the greedy political fat cats that lost unearned privileges by casting their lot with former President Goodluck Jonathan.

    They cannot reconcile themselves with their bad political judgment.  Nor imagine themselves without the unceasing gravy of the Jonathan era.  The deus-ex-machina, like in riveting classical drama, where the playwright is out of his depth?  Agitation for Biafra 2!

    Ironically, central to all of this mess is Chinua Achebe, iconic novelist, whose famous debut, Things Fall Apart and swan song, There was a Country, appear to have a strong nexus with the macabre drama of the moment.

    In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, the tragic hero, started life as a wrestler.  He ended life as a suicidal.  Between wrestler and suicidal, there is little introspection.

    Biafra 1 is only 50 years ago.  But its survivors, by tolerating this IPOB nonsense, have not shown much introspection.  Pity!

    Then the Achebe swan song, There was a Country.  With all due respect to Prof. Achebe’s golden memory, among family, friends, loved ones and even the huge colony of literary offspring, across races worldwide, that swan song, by its one-sided rendition of the Biafra tragedy, created the ogre that birthed the Kanu IPOB menace.

    To the battery of critics and analysts in the southern media, their mischief of political correctness has only constructed some anti-North media terrorism, which nevertheless is goading a people with a history of trauma to further disaster.

    But it is the bounden duty of the Buhari presidency — screech of “human rights” be damned! — to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself, beyond this present farce.

  • The imperative of restructuring

    The imperative of restructuring

    In recent weeks, “restructuring” has dominated public discourse across Nigeria.  Interest groups that have not staged local or regional assemblies on the subject are preparing to do so, impelled by circumstances they can no longer ignore or control.

    If the declaration that “the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable” once passed  as measure of sincere commitment to the Nigerian project, today it must be seen as a most unhelpful response to the demand for a peaceful resolution of the National Question.

    At the heart of that declaration is the assumption that “the unity of Nigeria” already exists and that those seeking to discuss it are at bottom seeking to countermand, if not destroy it.  Yet, I do not recall a time since Independence when Nigeria was more divided than it is today, when the national consensus was more tenuous, when mutual loathing across the ethnic and religious divides was more pervasive.

    Reading comments on Nigerian news on the Internet sites frequented by Nigerians, you would think the constituent groups are engaged in a war of attrition.  Nothing is sacred anymore.  Vileness has become the standard of elocution.

    A great many of these comments issue from the products of so-called Unity Schools, established to promote a sense of oneness after the civil war, and from veterans of the National Youth Service Corps who were supposed to be transformed into catalysts for national unity by a year-long stint outside their states of origin.

    And yet, there is hardly any let-up in the chant from some quarters that “the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable.”

    In what respect, pray, is “the unity of Nigeria” not negotiable?  If the unity already exists, if it is an actuality, surely it can be still negotiated to reinforce it, to establish for her citizens “a more perfect union,” to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s phrasing at one of the darkest periods in American history?

    If “the unity of Nigeria” is an ideology, surely it can be refined by debate and discussion, in short, by negotiation?

    If it is an aspiration, that too can be negotiated?  Should debate be foreclosed on whether it is a worthy aspiration, or on its proper place in a hierarchy of national aspirations?

    In whatever case, “the unity of Nigeria” must mean much more than unity for the sake of unity.  So, what should be its purpose?  What should it consist in?  These, surely, are legitimate issues for discussion and debate, especially when the very concept of unity has for all practical purposes been turned into uniformity.

    Ours has been a federation in name only.  At Nigeria’s independence in 1960, Northern Nigeria was    twice as large as Eastern Nigeria and Western Nigeria combined.  It is not generally realised, for instance, that Mambila Plateau, in what was Northern Nigeria, lies on the same latitude as Abeokuta, in Western Nigeria.  The North was well placed to impose its policy preferences on Nigeria and dominate it in many other respects.

    This was a negation of one of the cardinal principles of federalism, that no unit should be so large as to dominate the rest.

    Even so, Nigeria at that time had more features in common with a federation than the present arrangement. Each region had its own constitution, approved by its own legislature.  And it was the operative law, so long as it did not conflict with the Constitution of Nigeria.  Each region determined its own local government structure and the number of such local authorities, fixed the minimum wage, as well as the remuneration of civil and political officials.

    Not anymore.  Almost everything begins and ends in Abuja.

    In the United States from which we borrowed our present Constitution, each state has its own constitution, which is the supreme law in designated areas of state authority.  The state constitution prescribes how the governor is elected, the number of terms he or she may serve, and the duration of each term.  It also specifies the locus of state power.

    In some states, the governor is elected for single four-year term, and can seek office again after only a new governor will have completed his or her own four-year term.  In Texas, power is concentrated in the legislature.  The governor is little more than a ceremonial figure.  In New Hampshire, a state senator gets $100 for each of a two-year term, and the figure has not changed for more than a century.  Also in New Hampshire, and Vermont, governors are elected for a two-year term, and for three years in Wyoming.

    A member of a local council in Alabama does as earn the same remuneration as a member of a local council in New York State, just not a local council member in Oneonta, in up-state New York does not earn the same pay as a council member in Manhattan

    Various territories in Nigeria parcelled into states from whim and caprice for the most part have not made for a more perfect union. Most of them are unviable anyway.   The creation of six so-called geo-political zones seeks to evade the problem by recreating it on a smaller scale.

    When you shunt Niger, Kogi, Kwara, Benue and Nassarawa and Plateau into a Northwest Zone, what you are most likely to get is a smaller version of Nigeria.  Each of the other zones will produce its own version of Nigeria.  How these can constitute the building blocks for a more perfect union beats the imagination.

    Whether expressed as a quest for” resource control” or “ true federalism” or  “fiscal federalism,” or a “sovereign national conference” or a “national conference,” the demand for restructuring has attained   a momentum that cannot be arrested and a salience that can no longer be ignored.  Those who claim that they do not understand what it is all about, or that it is a matter for the National Assembly to resolve, are being disingenuous.  And they risk consigning themselves to irrelevance in the task of re-shaping Nigeria, probably the most urgent task of our time.

    In an advertorial in Vanguard (May 25, 1995), Chief Anthony Enahoro of cherished memory,  one of the founders of modern Nigeria and leader of the Movement for National Reformation, reviewed the political situation and its implication for the country’s future.  The distinguished statesman and patriot concluded that Nigeria had only three options in the long run.

    One:  Continue headlong on its present course and pray that God would rescue it from the consequences of its folly.

    Two:  Take concrete steps to restructure the Federation, granting a substantial measure of internal self-government to the nationalities and groups of nationalities, and return to what he Enahoro called “collective self-government.”

    Three: The nationalities and groups of nationalities disband the Federation and go their separate ways.

    It seems unlikely that nationalities that can hardly agree on anything will agree to disband the Federation.

    What seems most likely is that, in the absence of substantive restructuring, as the Centre faces growing challenges from Boko Haram insurgents, Delta militants, Indigenous People of Biafra and incipient separatist groups, armed bands of lawless cattle herders, unpaid workers and pensioners, young men and women who see only a bleak future ahead–as these challenges mount, the authority and legitimacy of the Centre will weaken to the point that those nationalities strong enough or determined enough to break away will do so

    In short, in the absence of restructuring, Nigerian state will wither away, like the former Soviet Union and the territory formerly known as Yugoslavia.  That is the lesson of history.

  • Misau versus IGP

    Until a few weeks back, it seems unlikely that many Nigerians could claim to have heard let alone be familiar with the name – Isah Hamma Misau. Well if you aren’t, the fellow is the distinguished lawmaker representing Bauchi Central in the Upper legislative House.  Now, thanks to the social media, all you need to do is hit your data-enabled PC and the name pops up among the many names and issues that have been trending in the last two weeks.  Thanks in most part in the ribald drama that the man insist on playing the star cast; a drama that some insist, threatens to eclipse Tafa Balogun’s unscripted heist. The senator, an ex-cop himself, by daring the gods of the police establishment, has since found himself swapping role between an overnight ‘celebrity’ to a potential felon.

    Never mind that the Police Service Commission – the agency in charge of discipline, promotion and presumably, exit from service – has pronounced him as having no sin; and never mind that the police hierarchy has till date offered no defence or justification to the weighty charges hauled at it by the senator; the man, at least in the eyes of the police led by Ibrahim Idris Kpotun, is guilty as hell and may well be guillotined for the crime of desertion.

    While the drama continues to run, Nigerians, it must be admitted are not entirely without an opinion one way or the other. Unfortunately, were they to choose who to believe between the police and their quarry – Misau, majority, would, it seems readily swear that the Nigerian Police is rotten through and through with differences perhaps only in the degree of the perceived rottenness. As it is, not even the ugly twists and turns or the diversionary sub-plots inelegantly contrived to overshadow the main narrative of criminal diversion of funds can take away from the chunk of evidence supplied the Bauchi born lawmaker on the gangrenous infestation at the highest level of the Nigerian Police.

    Guess it makes a lot of difference that Nigerians are hearing it, straight as it were, from an ex-cop whose own father retired as an Assistant Inspector General of Police.

    The ‘facts’ of heist of course remains unproven and so we must give the office of the IGP the benefit of the doubt. The broad allegations – the first bordering on cash for security and, the second, the culture of cloaking of the corporate and institutional support of the police establishment (by its leadership) with the customary veil on non-transparency – obviously bear a familiar ring.  Less talked about is the third – the allegation of cash for posting of personnel!

    For as sure as day is as real as the night, there can be no talking here of smoke without fire!

    As alleged by Misau, oil companies, oil servicing companies, multinational companies, corporations, big hotels, embassies, oil marketers and private institutions dealing with the police pay for services rendered.  He put the amount involved in the range of N10bn monthly or N120 billion annually. So also is the humongous sums as well as hundreds of operational vehicles donated to the police across the states on an annual basis.

    Here is how he puts what is clearly a national dilemma:  “As we speak, there are no records. You don’t know what the Federal Capital Territory Command spends on the police; the same with Kaduna, Kano and elsewhere. You will only see on television that so-and-so state governor has donated 20 Hilux vehicles to a police command. What about operational vehicles budgeted annually by the Federal Government for police commands across the states? There is no state in Nigeria where a governor doesn’t give money to the police on a monthly basis. If we want to get rid of corruption, we must start by being accountable. If a state government is donating equipment to the police, there should be records – records should be kept at all levels. This will reduce waste because when the police come for appropriation at the National Assembly, we will be in a position to say, ‘Look, you were given 100 vehicles in Kaduna, 250 in Rivers and so on.’ As we speak, nobody can tell you the number of serviceable vehicles the police have because they are collecting vehicles and equipment from individuals, states and international donors. Even embassies pay monthly fees for special protection (by the police)”.

    Familiar? Well said? So, where did the man from Bauchi go so wrong that the deluded police hierarchy would have him hung on the line in the tropical sun?

    Granted that the N120 billion allegedly collected by the police as ‘revenue’ is possibly exaggerated;  and agreed that the practice has endured from regime to regime, the question is whether the law permits – under any circumstance – what appears to be the wilful privatisation or better still, conversion of the funds donated by corporate bodies for whatever reasons.

    Is it really true, as suggested by Sir Mike Okiro, the Police Service Commission boss, that the Police Act actually recognise the practice by corporate bodies, of underwriting the cost of security services offered them?  If so, are there no guidelines? How are these payments determined? Considering that the funds in question are more often than not, tax exempt, does the leadership of the police have the discretion to use the funds as they will?  And what kind of the footloose accounting would permit hierarchs of a state institution, funded – almost exclusively – by the taxpayer to collect the quantum of monies being alleged almost without strictures and without any controls whatsoever – as alleged by Senator Misau?

    It certainly goes to the heart of the bastardisation of our public finance system that some key actors could even imagine spending a dime from the public till without the due process of appropriation. The tragedy is that chieftains of the primary agency of law enforcement are being accused of breaking the law in an age of constitutionalism and under the regime of Treasury Single Account!

    The issue would appear straightforward. However, unlike the lawmaker from Bauchi who sees the issue strictly from the prism of non-remittance of the tidy sums into the national kitty, the matter borders on corruption and subversion of process which the Buhari administration claims to hate with passion and which the constitution deplores.  An unfettered investigation by the National Assembly would seem for now, the way to go. For how long has the police top brass maintained the cash till? Who are the beneficiaries? Nigerians obviously deserve to know.

    By the way, I watched the police image maker defend his boss the other day on TV; rather than talk about the allegations, he would rather dwell on the mode of exit of Senator Misau from the police; lost to him was the fact that he was actually indicting his own PSC!

  • Midterm: challenges, opportunities

    It’s mid-term, with its burst and buzz of politics; and its cacophony of desires.

    The 2019 round of elections loom.  So do the 2018 dress rehearsals: the Ekiti and Osun gubernatorial polls.

    Former Vice President Abubakar Atiku has already fired, the president’s way, a jeremiad of alleged use-and-dump.

    So has Atiku protégée, Women Affairs Minister, Aisha Alhassan, got seared, bragging to the wrong folks, who promptly leaked that costly brag!

    Politics is, indeed, revving up!

    So, in the excitability of the moment, some insist on focus, full-trot, on 2019.  Hardly surprising, in a milieu of near-zero institutional memory, with political hustlers eternally looking for the next electoral scam.

    To such a lobby, there can’t be a future in the past, to parody country artiste, Vince Gill, in his album, I still believe in you.

    That you could see, as the vulnerable opposition tries to blot out the past, as prelude to avoidable future mistakes.  Aim?  To sucker the voter yet again, and assure needless future lamentations!

    But countering this view is another lobby that insists on the political rear-view, as a clear window into institutional memory — doing a rigorous analysis to situate the past, understand the present and generate ideas to shape the future.

    This would appear the spirit shaping a one-day conference in Osogbo, the Osun capital, fixed for Friday, September 15, looking at the political epoch of 2015: the electoral win that consummated the political entente between the Nigerian Northwest and Southwest.

    That alliance also led to the electoral sack of a sitting president and defeat of a federal ruling political party — the first time both would happen, in Nigeria’s chequered political history.

    Since independence, and post-Civil War era, the North had always shared power with both the South East and South-South political mainstreams.

    Indeed by 1979, scant nine years after the traumatic Civil War (1967-1970), Dr. Alex Ekwueme, had become Vice President under President Shehu Shagari. Joseph Wayas was also installed as President of the Senate.  That, like all others post-independence, followed the Northwest-Southeast-Southsouth power paradigm.

    Even in 1999, when President Olusegun Obasanjo emerged, it was an Army Arrangement (AA) — apologies to Fela — in spite of the Southwest political mainstream.  ”You want a Yoruba to right the Abiola annulment wrong?”, seemed to growl  the ‘owners of Nigeria’, real or apocryphal, “you’d have one: Olusegun Obasanjo.” Hobson’s choice!

    Since that epochal change, however, a lot has happened — biting economic blues, a natural follow-up to the past gravy of a few, gobbling up the future of the majority.

    Then, numerous crises, real and contrived, starting with the Niger Delta Avengers’ bombing campaigns, the IPOB secessionist agenda, and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) anti-”Islamization” crusade, which really appears nothing but vacuous cant by political losers, kicking back on the combustible religious front.

    Throw in the rather lethargic pace of the Buhari Presidency, the late formation of the federal cabinet, the Bukola Saraki-led Senate converting itself into internal but vicious political opposition, and a rather long bout of presidential illness, and you can imagine the high level of distraction the government has faced.

    Yet, how has it been, shorn of the acute frustrations of the magical lobby, stung that there is no Sesame Street in a polity, facing near-ruin, from decades of sleaze and collapse of state institutions?

    The Osogbo Conference, to be chaired by Chief Adebisi Akande, with its triad of star speakers, would hopefully offer a more rigorous view.

    Prof. Mobolaji Aluko, public affairs intellectual, long-term professor of chemical engineering at Howard University, USA before becoming pioneer Vice Chancellor, at Federal University Otuoke, FUO (2011-2015), tackles the first sub-theme: “The Southwest in National Governance: An Appraisal of the First Two Years”.

    The Southwest is clearly Nigeria’s bastion of social democracy (progressive politics, in local parlance), since the epochal free primary education policy of the Obafemi Awolowo era.  It would appear meet, therefore, that a signature Southwest programme, the schools feeding system, now running as pilot in 14 states after a federal adoption, emanated from Osun, despite its lean purse, and the vicious economic times.

    Dr. Charles Akinola, who as director-general,  Osun Office of Economic Development and Partnerships, runs the Osun social safety net policy, complete with the school’s feeding programme, will take the second sub-theme: “From Osun to Abuja: Investing in Social Infrastructure in a Recession”.

    The third sub-theme is about generating fresh ideas to fix the Nigerian political party system, atrophied since 1991, when Gen. Ibrahim Babangida started his old breed-new breed political experiment. That cut off the organic link between political parties and their members, and pushed the party as near-exclusive fiefdom of a few rich members.

    Since it’s a period of restructuring, can Nigerian political parties be rebuilt along federal principles?  Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi (Ekiti North senator 2011-2015), acute development economist and politician would speak on this theme: “Federalizing Political Parties to Conform with Local Needs.”

     

    Much ado about Ibadan Yoruba summit

    Across the other geo-political zones, there has been quite a response to the Ibadan political summit of September 9.  

    Though there are 2015 electoral losers in the region trying to claw back at relevance aka “restructuring”, and using that braggadocio as 2019 blackmail tool, federalism had been a Yoruba agenda since the Kiriji War (1877-1893).  

    The Kiriji Treaty, which the British midwifed to cement peace in the Yoruba country, was squarely built on guaranteed federalism, among  the Yoruba sub-ethnic groups, as opposed to Ibadan hegemony, that sparked the Kiriji War.  So, Yoruba federalism issued from protest against intra-Yoruba domination.

    Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in his Path to Nigerian Freedom (1949), with his rigorous federalist thinking, only codified the Yoruba distaste for domination, internal or external, but located such distaste in the emerging Nigerian federation.

    That the Southwest was in opposition for so long was because the Awo political mainstream stubbornly stuck to the federalist ethos, while the other regions cut power deals — until the current nationwide “restructuring” epiphany!

    So, let no one impute any extra meaning to the Ibadan conference.  Federalism has always been the pristine Yoruba agenda.

    But perhaps that calls to one of the themes of the Osogbo conference of September 15 — rebuilding Nigerian political parties on the federal principle, fired by local geo-political charter of demands?

  • Back on the beat

    Back on the beat

    A week, it has been said, is a long time in politics. Applied to Nigeria, that is an understatement. A week there is almost like an eternity. How then do you catch up even on a slice of the most noteworthy events that have occurred in the two weeks this column was on recess?. I have chosen to follow the path of extreme randomness, infact random musings.

    Returning from his long medical trip to the UK, all primed up to zip through the mountain of files requiring his attention, President Muhammadu Buhari found that he could not work from the Executive Office, because it had been trashed by a colony of desperate rodents that have no respect for constituted authority.

    Fortunately, they did not carry their brigandage near what President Buhari once called “the other room,” in a display of delicacy and circumspection that few credit him with.

    Those who are forever kvetching over funds in the Federal Budget earmarked for exterminating rodents in the palace owe the Presidency an unreserved apology.

    Now that the infestation seems to have developed resistance to whatever was being used to check it, no one should cavil at any request from the Executive Branch for emergency funds to fumigate the areas affected with the most potent rodenticide in the market.

    On a happier note, just as the president was settling down to work from his office at the residence, the recession ended or bottomed out or petered out — or whatever.  But why split hairs over the matter? The important thing is that the hard times that have been with us for some two years are about to make way for the return of the good times of the good old days.

    So, watch out for a huge increase in the volume and intensity of industrial disputes.  Now that the recession is ended, what excuse can any state government put up for not paying salaries for months on end, or for paying only a fraction thereof?  What excuse can Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello in particular rake up for importuning doctors in the state’s medical service to settle for one half of their salaries?  Will he settle for their rendering only one-half of their services?

    Watch out for a huge increase in the volume of domestic disputes as well.  Heads of households who think they can unilaterally cut the housekeeping money by a third now that the recession has ended should be prepared to have only two-thirds of their recession-era meals to put up or go to the market to do all the cajoling and the haggling and the bluffing and absorb the vulgar abuse that often comes with buying stuff.

    The one group that is decidedly unhappy that the recession has ended, even if only in a technical sense, comprises the stragglers of the Jonathan Administration’s discredited PDP flailing and thrashing to find their feet in the political terrain they dominated for 16 years and drove to    the edge of ruin.

    All the indications of a recession were manifest at the time the Jonathan Administration was dismissed by the people.  I say nothing of the looting that was the fundamental objective and directive principle of its tenure. Yet, the PDP, per its national chairman Ahmed Makarfi, says it was under the Buhari Administration that the economy “nosedived” into recession.

    Haba, PDP!   Where are you, Olisa Metuh!

    Finally, a response from Yusuph Olaniyonu, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Senate president Dr Bukola Saraki, to my August 15 column, “A preface to the silly season.”

    Olaniyonu sent it as a “private letter.”  But since it raises issues that belong in the public sphere, I sought his kind permission to publish it herewith, slightly edited:

    “Dear Prof:

    “I have just read your article titled “A Preface to the Silly Season” and I find it very interesting and really surprising.

    “I have a lot of respect for you and I usually feel happy the way you treat everybody you come into contact with respect. My reverence for you was the reason why I refused to join issues with you publicly despite all the blackmail and intimidation I was subjected to in my last job with the Ogun State Government in Abeokuta when your article on Chief Olusegun Osoba and Governor Ibikunle Amosun was published.

    “This letter is to tell you privately that the column under reference was wrong and unjust in its reference to Saraki.

    ”I know you as a man with great conscience and who dwells on facts. However, I find it surprising that you were repeating the line of lies created and concocted by Sahara Reporters’ Omoyele Sowore in your article mentioned above.

    “Sir, where on earth did Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki ever refer to Prof. Yemi Osinbajo as “ordinary Commissioner”?

    “When Sowore created that lie as part of his wicked vow to single-handedly bring Saraki down as Senate President, I had not even joined the staff of the Senate President but I read the latter’s public denial of that claim.

    “Also, I have never seen anywhere where Sowore produced a tape recording of that statement attributed to Saraki and neither did anybody come out to claim he witnessed when the statement was made.

    “With due respect, sir, even though you are free to choose what to believe and which camp to propagate their view points, however, I am sure you have no evidence and nobody else in this life has an evidence of Saraki mouthing such nonsense as attributed to him by Sowore. I wonder why it was only Sowore who heard that, not even The Nation and Punch, despite their constant searchlight on Saraki and their unrepentant mischief against the man.

    “Back to another aspect of the article, how come, sir, that when you chose those who, in your own personal calculation would be interested in running for the Presidency in 2019 even when such persons have not openly and covertly indicated interest and you brilliantly tore them apart, you also carefully evaded writing about an aspirant who has categorically declared that he would join the race if Buhari does not contest?

    “That candidate whom you chose to protect is Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, owner of The NATION, in which your article is published.

    “This error of omission or deliberate decision not to mention Asiwaju Tinubu gave an unmistakable impression that the article in question is part of the ploy by the Bourdillon media/Intellectual Think Thank to which you are widely believed to belong, to quickly take  out the other potential rivals long before the race commences.

    “However, I believe The NATION and its columnists will not have the last say on who becomes the next President after Buhari, either in 2019 or 2023.

    “I want to assure you that, contrary to the propaganda by Sahara Reporters and its collaborators in The NATION, Dr. Saraki has a lot of respect for Acting President Osinbajo. I have seen the two men discuss face to face and on phone and I know Dr. Saraki relates to Prof. Osinbajo with all the respect due to the office and person of the Acting President, Vice President, a distinguished Professor of Law and older brother.  You may personally check this fact with the Acting President.

    “Well, I know that even those who want the Sahara Reporters lies to be entrenched in the psyche of Nigerians know the truth but they believe in Goebbel’s dictum that a lie often repeated assumes the status of the truth.

    “Sir, my respect for you and the good relationship we have cannot be affected by this article. I just feel I should let you know my opinion and give a different perspective on some of the statements contained in the article.

    “Prof, do have the assurances of my highest regards, sir.”

    Yusuph Olaniyonu, Abuja

  • Kachikwu’s metamorphosis

    Ibe Kachikwu, Minister of State is back once again to the old game of foretelling. Recall that he prophesied moments after the federal government hived off subsidy that petrol price would come crashing after six months? Never mind that the May 2016 prophecy never came to pass, last week was for him an occasion to roll out another audacious prophecy that product  prices will crash in the next four to six months! Like one reading from a crystal ball, he saw “competition inherent in the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) price modulation”, relative stability of the market, and, the three refineries are working simultaneously, although at 50 % of their capacity – for which we all must be glad that the good times are here – finally!

    To be sure, Kachikwu is no prophet; but even if he was, I’ll probably have taken him on, all the same – mindful of course of the story of that fellow in the Bible who ran into trouble after daring the prophet as told in the book of 2 Kings 7: 2. The no-nonsense Prophet Elisha it was that pronounced the cessation, within hours, of the terrible famine which reduced Samaria to a cannibal colony. A palace aide, obviously flustered by its sheer audacity had quipped “Behold, if the LORD should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?”  Well, sure as he said, the word of the prophet came to pass barely 24 hours later while the poor fellow died – trampled afoot – but not before witnessing ‘live’ its fulfilment exactly as the prophet had foretold!

    Six months of course barely 180 days from now – in which case, the miraculous could still happen. However, considering that Nigerians had just about twice the space of time to get the earlier prophecy fulfilled to their frustration, they ought to be forgiven for taking this latest voyage in futurology with a pinch of salt! For while Minister Kachikwu cannot be said to be new to the oily business, for the hard-nosed technocrat drafted by President Muhammadu Buhari to clean up a graft-ridden industry a little while ago, his metamorphosis would seem about now complete with his latest induction into the club of mealy-mouthed politicians.

    Remember how he started out: he wanted the refineries sold – if need be – as scrap. Later he demurred – arguing that they could be fixed with private funds. Now he’s drum major – if you like the champion – of the quest to get the government put scarce funds into the bottomless pits!

    Unfortunately, had the minister not been too eager to cart home the trophy before the game is called, we probably might be looking more dispassionately at the current state of the industry as against what he inherited.

    Left to the minister and his boss, progress is supposed to be served in tokens; from the sink holes described as refineries to the incurably obsolete pipelines right up to the dysfunctional dry depots, progress must come as incremental, snail-paced; that is supposed to be the rule at a time hydrocarbons are increasingly dated.

    That is why the so-called “competition inherent in the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) price modulation” is supposed to be big deal; something that would ordinarily be deemed as ordinary in an industry driven by volume. Never mind that the fundamentals have not changed in any significant manner. Or the question of whether the costs are truly going down or are there other dynamics at play? We are supposed to roll out the drums that the club of traders have, after flooding of the market with imported white products, are offering marginal discounts as one would in the normal run of business!

    The truth of course is that story of steady climb-down in the price of petrol is more farcical than real. While it is true that some stations sell for N143 per litre as against the official price of N145, the development is neither widespread nor has it proven to be sustainable to warrant the minister’s exaggerated notice.  As for diesel –a product which admittedly has ceased to be the high-priced commodity that it was in recent past, the reason is not far-fetched: the refineries – although in fits and starts – have lately been pushing limited quantities of the product into the local market; which of course explains why the price returned to the upward climb as soon as Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries went out of action, leaving Warri Refinery, which itself is only now returning into operation after a break.

    Howbeit, Nigerians only need to recall that the current stability in supply was purchased at a princely cost of a hike in fuel price of nearly 80 percent if only to appreciate the true measure of the ‘achievement’.  Moreover, considering that the Jonathan administration, its predecessor never enjoyed the luxury –one would have expected that the administration to be less exuberant in staking such as achievement.

    Like the refineries, the other pressing issue in the industry is the state of the pipelines and depots. Last week, I did a quick enquiry. Here is what I found: The Satellite Depot in Ejigbo, Lagos has been out of action in the last six weeks; during the period, it has remained – dry. The one in Ibadan is said to have managed to receive some quantities of white products, but is yet to resume operations. The same with the depot in Ore and Ilorin; at the moment, no loading is going on in the two depots leaving Sagamu (Mosinmi) in the entire western zone in operation! As for the pipelines, while the federal government is said to have done a heroic job of tending to them, the reality today is that they are not yet in the fuel supply matrix. Rather than address those critical infrastructures considered as the life-wire of the downstream sector of the oil industry, the government, true to its character continues to sell the dummy of an imminent price crash.

    Six months will be here, soon enough.

  • Neither settled nor hopeless

    As a shock therapy, you can hardly fault President Muhammadu Buhari’s homecoming broadcast of August 21.  As granite as they come, it halted, at least for now, the free descent of free speech into wayward threats.

    To be sure, it came with some sweeping name-calling, which could well gall genuine restructuring crusaders; as distinct from latching, fair-weather hustlers.

    Still, how do you decisively stop, in its tracks, such reckless bedlam, except with a presidential speech equivalent of Operation Shock and Awe?

    Indeed!  The polity was cascading into a free fall: a ruthless orchestration of presidential illness, with the traducers baiting the Acting President to jump ship,  pleading a most subversive strain of “public interest”.  Yet, no law was broken.  Yet, the ship of state was purring.

    Such was the media siege that one crank woke up, and in a jiffy at an Enugu press conference, announced a “Biafra interim government”!  That sent the journalists gathered reeling with a guffaw, before the severe crank cautioned it was no laughing matter.  Of course, it wasn’t!

    Worse: those named in that “cabinet” were mute for at least 48 hours, until the DSS threatened a probe.  Perhaps running scared, they dissociated themselves from the chutzpah.

    Surprising that folks, first to moan “human right”, at the first sign of trouble, would be so sanguine about baiting trouble!

    Earlier, Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB had tested the waters, proclaiming no further elections in the South East, starting with the Anambra governorship, until it got its referendum on secession. Kanu would later gather some romantics in black, his so-called Biafra Secret Service (BSS).  Might the black be symbolic of wilful baiting of needless ruin?

    Some so-called “Southern leaders” followed that up with own threats: no restructuring, no election in 2019.  Who gave them such a grave mandate?

    So, everything was careering out of control until the president’s broadcast, which imposed some reality check — and just as well.

    Yet, the president’s stance that Nigerian unity was settled was as extreme as the slew of grating bluffers, pushing secession or even “restructuring”, as their final answer.

    Both extreme positions are highly provocative and insensitive — at least to the still extant reasoning lobby, clustered mid of the two extremes.  That is where to go.

    Mr. President, Nigeria’s unity is not settled.  If it were, there wouldn’t be threats and counter-threats, all over the place.

    If it were, Basorun MKO Abiola (God bless his soul!), who would have turned 80 this month, would not have served his presidential term in gaol, and ultimately lost his life, for winning a free election.

    If it were, “marginalization” would not float in the air, as some dysfunctional national anthem, throated by denizens of a dysfunctional nation.

    Ripples is not particularly taken by the Igbo elite’s umpteenth howl of “marginalization”.  Nor is it, given the two-some’s bazaar under President Goodluck Jonathan, by the South-South elite’s claim.

    Both partied without break under the ancien regime, just as both had been faithful partners with the northern power elite, they now love to hate, from 1960 till 2015.  If there is marginalization, therefore, they are both complicit.

    But there is a pan-Nigeria colony of the oppressed and dispossessed, to feed the greed of this — wait for it — pan-Nigeria unconscionable elite, which even includes reactionary elements from the South West, in the perpetual days of opposition.

    Ironically, these elite now bait this dispossessed clan  — Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Ijaw, Junkun, Tiv, Ebira, Kanuri, etc — to enlist in their latest class fancy: secession, “restructuring” or even retention of the present ruinous status quo.

    No matter the elite motivation, the objective situation of grinding poverty and mass disorientation has positioned this selfish elite to bait their economically besieged

    victims to point fingers at the “other people”.

    That is why Kanu thunders in the South East, explosively profiling the non-Igbo.

    The South-South “militants” get hailed for blasting their environment into deeper poverty and misery.

    Even the poorest northerner could have a rakish sense of empty power, a near-monopoly of his elite, which nevertheless has condemned him to the poorest of the poor among Nigerians.  That could well make him fanatically endorse the present dysfunction.

    And, of course, the Yoruba!   Not even their much-vaunted sophistication seems to see through the fierce irredentist campaigns, waged as “restructuring”, by their political veterans, that lost face after sinking with Jonathan in 2015.

    The enemy is the “other people”!

    Still, even with rogue elite motivations, it is clear the Nigerian commonwealth needs radical re-tinkering.  That is where pristine restructuring comes in, as a peaceful and rational process to birth fundamental fairness and strengthen the polity.

    Simply, restructuring — as Ripples understands it — is remaking Nigeria into productive economic zones, where the locals would eat from the sweat of their brows. It is the antithesis of the present sickening central gravy, which breeds greed, corruption and rot — and ruins everyone.

    To restructure is an intensely economic doctrine, but served on the political charter of federalizing resources native to every part of the country. Everyone, along the six geo-political zones, would now milk their resources, develop at their own pace, and pay agreed tax cuts to the centre.

    But it could also strike naked fear with the section of the country that feels vulnerable, just as it could also make those that feel invincible strut and preen like cocks, in a fit of wilful arrogance.

    That would appear to explain the North-South divide over restructuring, especially with the dross of mischief, irredentism, condescension and sheer ethnic supremacy that have come with its post-2015 vociferous advocates.

    Campaigners would, therefore, do well to carefully couch their message.  Opposers would also do well to banish, from their psyche, panic and irrational fear.

    Pristine restructuring is win-win, if well and carefully broached.  Right now, Nigerian unity is neither settled nor hopeless.  But it could be, with fairness and justice to all.

     

    The Revd. J. O. Alabi (1918-2007) — 10 years after

    For the Alabi family of Okebukun quarters of Ola, in Ejigbo local government of the State of Osun, 30 August 2017 remains ever fresh in memory.  That was when their patriarch, the Revd. Joseph Odetola Alabi, departed — 10 years.

    Ordained minister in 1959, the late Alabi received further training at Oklahoma Baptist University, and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Missosuri, both in the United States.  Until his retirement to Ola, he pastored First Baptist Churches, in Minna, Fiditi and Ilorin; and was active in the Nigerian Baptist Convention affairs, before retiring to Ola to plant further churches and mentor many people.

    By August 30, it would be 10 years since his death.  But his memory has been sweet.  Indeed, sweet is the memory of the righteous!

     

  • Echoes from the ‘Third Term’ project

    Echoes from the ‘Third Term’ project

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo seems fated to be dogged by the “Third Term” project he was widely reported to be hatching the way the former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida has been haunted by his annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, however much Babangida may pretend to the contrary.

    No sooner was it bruited in 2006 that Obasanjo was scheming to change the rules to allow him remain in office beyond the two terms warranted by the Constitution than his one-time collaborators in the PDP worked themselves into a froth and warned of the direst consequences if he went ahead.

    The rumours were not unfounded.

    Obasanjo’s loyal followers had declared that he deserved a third term to continue the titanic job of rebuilding Nigeria after the depredations of military rule.  These were no fringe elements.   They came mostly from, and were backed enthusiastically by the organized private sector, which sponsored lavish wrap-around newspaper advertisements to press their case.

    A leading captain of industry said Obasanjo had been so good for business he could remain in office for another 35 years as far as operators of that sector were concerned.

    Obasanjo did not help matters by his mixed signals and studied evasions.  When he declared at a reception in Germany that “some well-meaning people” had been urging him to stay longer  in office to see his reform measures to a logical conclusion, alarm bells pealed back home.

    He calmed the waters somewhat when, when, asked by visiting but since defenestrated World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz whether he would leave office at the end of his term, he answered in the affirmative.

    Even after that affirmative statement, Obasanjo was not quite forthcoming. And so, every utterance or chance remark of his, every gesture, every action or failure to act, every clearing   of the presidential throat, his coming and his going, and every breath he drew, was deconstructed through the prism of the third-term bid.

    Those who claimed to know Obasanjo’s mind could not communicate his intentions clearly and coherently. They said he would surely leave, because he had assured them that he would  do nothing subversive of the Constitution. But that assurance left open the possibility that Constitution could be amended to accommodate Obasanjo’s rumoured ambition.

    Arguably the most definitive statement on the issue came from Ojo Madueke, Minister of Transport, who said that here was indeed a proposal for a constitutional amendment before the National Assembly, but that it was only one of more than 100 amendments under consideration.

    The strategy for the actualization of the Third Term rested on the calculation that at least 24 state governors  would be able to persuade, induce, bribe or corral their state assemblies into approving an enabling enactment, after which he National Assembly would be procured  by similar methods to approve it.

    Teams from the National Assembly fanned out to the so-called geo-political zones and staged “national consultations” to ascertain public opinion on the proposed amendments. In the Osogb centre, Ekiti Governor Ayo Fayose burst into dance, chanting “emi lowo si,” meaning that he fully endorsed the move.  After the consultations, the amendment was reported to have won popular endorsement.

    It all looked like a done deal.

    But when the question was put before the Senate for a voice vote, it elicited only a faint response from the Third Term lobby.  In stunned disbelief, the incumbent President of the Senate, Ken Nnamani put the question a second time.  Again, the response was barely audible.

    The protagonists of the Third Term had lost their voices and their nerves at the most crucial moment, after reportedly obtaining the N50 million and other inducements on offer for each vote.

    To this day, Obasanjo maintains that he never sought a third term.  He said God had given  him everything he ever asked for, and that God would have granted him a third term if he        had asked.

    There the matter rested until two weeks ago, when Ayo Fayose – who else –breathed new life into and perverted the narrative the way he has perverted everything he has ever touched.

    Hear him, as reported by the newsmagazine The Interview, in which he claimed  he personally witnessed  Obasanjo go down on his knee to beg the late Libyan president Moumar Ghaddafi to assist him realize his third-term quest.

    “It was such a pathetic scenario, so shameful. Obasanjo was speaking rapidly like a parrot. I was shocked beyond words. I never knew Obasanjo would be that humble.

    “He was on one knee till the end of the conversation. Ghaddafi kept quiet and was just watching Obasanjo. When Obasanjo stopped rambling, Ghaddafi said, ‘Have you finished? Just know that I will not attend that meeting. I have other engagements.”

    Obasanjo has his flaws, to be sure.  But the Obasanjo I know will never kowtow to any foreign leader.  When he was a statesman-at-large holding no substantive office, he carried himself with the dignity of a head of state, and was received as such everywhere he went.

    I accompanied him on trips to Benin Republic, Togo, Angola, Zambia, Namibia and to South Africa during and after apartheid.  These visits were like summits at which important bilateral issues and African issues were discussed.  He always informed military president Babangida before setting out, and always briefed him in writing on his return.    I contributed talking points and sat in at meetings, at once observer and participant.

    Obasanjo is too self-regarding, too proud of his being a Nigerian, too conscious of the responsibility that status confers on him as a citizen and statesman, and too steeped in the nuances of international diplomacy to kowtow to Ghaddafi or any foreign leader for that matter.    Remember his “Dear Margaret” letter joining issues with British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher over her no-sanctions policy on apartheid South Africa?

    I say nothing of his being a battle-tested general of the army, and an Owu chief to boot.

    Fayose’s claim that Obasanjo kowtowed to Ghaddafi is of a piece with earlier reports that Obasanjo had prostrated before his estranged vice president, Abubakar Atiku, and begged him not  to enter the race for the PDP’s  presidential ticket for the 2003 general election.  It speaks volumes about Atiku’s character that he has categorically disavowed that tale.

    In what way could Gaddhafi’s support have advanced  Obasanjo’s quest?  In what way could Ghaddafi’s demurral have hurt that quest?  Even if Libya belonged in ECOWAS, where Nigeria is  the dominant player, Ghaddafi’s support or demurral would not have mattered in the least.  Ghaddafi became chair of the African Union only in 2009, two years after Obasanjo had vacated power.  So, in what guise could he have helped or hindered Obasanjo’s bid?

    Besides, if Obasanjo was for any reason inclined to get down on his knees to beg for Ghaddafi’s support, I doubt whether he would have done so with the notoriously incontinent Fayose as witness.  Obasanjo would have asked his host for a private audience.

    The Obasanjo the world knows is in speech inclined to be slow, measured, and focused, very unlike the rambling parakeet Fayose made him out to be in the encounter with Ghaddafi.  This, surely, will not go down as the last installment in Fayose’s unspeakably tawdry career in public life.

  • Is this the reform they promised?

    If there are still lingering pretences about what is left of the restructuring of the electricity sector under the so-called Power Sector Reform Act 2005, two developments which emerged from the 18th Monthly Power Sector Stakeholders Meeting hosted by Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO) may have finally sealed it. Not only did the outcome finally lay bare the bad faith of the government and its attendant hollow posturing as an impartial umpire in the process to midwife change in the sector, it also exposed the farce packaged as the liberalization.

    I start with the approval by the Federal Government of the tidy sum of N39 billion as loan to Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOs) for the supply of meters. On this, the minister would have us know that the gesture was part of power sector recovery programme aimed at ensuring that every consumer of electricity is provided with a meter. That ordinarily seems fine except that the government needed not treat the firms as another parastatal of the government subject to period bailouts. What then is the essence of privatization if after formally relieving the federal government of the burden of funding and operating the anaemic entities, the same government still has to make back door financial accommodation to keep them in business? And for how long?

    The second is the strange announcement by Minister Babatunde Fashola that the federal government “will not oppose the wishes of electricity consumers that are willing to pay for meters from their distribution companies based on agreement between both parties as endorsed by the power sector regulator”. He claimed that he had “been receiving several requests from the Discos that their customers still wanted to pay for meters”.

    Permit me to quote the minister extensively: “Please recall that government had in the past attempted to intervene in meter supply through CAPMI, which ultimately I decided we should wind down because of the distrust and disaffection it was creating between consumers and Discos with government caught in the middle with numerous petitions by customers who paid for meters that were not delivered within the approved time.

    “Some Discos have come back to say that their customers still want to pay for meters and they can reach agreements with them on how to pay for it. Government will not stand in the way of such an agreement. It is consistent with the intent of privatization envisioned by the Electric Power Sector Reform Act or at least it does not violate the Act.”

    And in what appears like a bid to take out the sting out of the abdication, the minister added: “What I will reiterate is that the Discos have the obligation to meter customers because they are the ones who charge for electricity which must be measured. If the customers and the Discos reach an agreement between themselves, where the customer assumes the responsibility of the Disco of his own free will and NERC sanctions this agreement, then so be it.

    “The difference between this kind of agreement and CAPMI is that it is not a government initiative. However, through NERC, government will monitor and regulate to ensure that Discos do not use this as an excuse to abdicate their responsibility to provide meters.”

    The minister, a lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria to boot, may feel entitled to his play on words or even seek to rewrite the rule books on power sector restructuring in whatever way that suits him; what he is not entitled to is the attempt to pull the wool on the eyes of the citizens.

    A quick recap of the exercise – that has since turned the mother of all deceptions – would help here. Nigerians will recall the story of how the power sector got stunted under successive nomenclatures – from ECN to National Electricity Power Authority – NEPA and of course, to the transitional holding company, the Power Holdings Company of Nigeria (PHCN); the years of corruption and under-investment that took the sector to the nadir, and how the efforts by successive governments to improve the situation yielded no respite leaving the country with a miserable 4,000MW of power generation, a broken transmission grid and a hopelessly incompetent distribution chain after some 130 years after the  first public power plants opened for business and 66 years after Electricity Corporation of Nigeria came into being via an Act of parliament.

    Flip over to the Power Sector Reform Act 2005 – the anchor for arguably the most ambitious attempt to restructure the electricity sector since independence. From the go, the exercise, as advertised, was designed to mobilize funds and expertise from the private sector, to modernize, upgrade its systems to deliver world class service. Twelve years on, the verdict is one of a dream aborted – whether of the much needed injection of requisite capital or of new technologies to turn things around, or of basic service delivery as one would imagine under a private sector, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Today, the story across the board is that things have fared worse than when the sector was under government control.  From the gas infrastructure that has remained shambolic to the antediluvian transmission lines right up to the patently anaemic Discos, it is increasingly difficult to find any redeeming feature on an exercise on which the country has staked much faith.

    Even for something as ordinary as the demand by the electricity consumer for meters to enable them pay only for what they consume, the government had to broker accommodation for the Discos through the so-called Credited Advance Payment for Metering Initiative (CAPMI) which allowed customers to pay for electricity meters through their respective Discos. Ironically, the exercise was bungled by the same Discos due essentially to their inability to supply the meters after payments were made. This was what made the minister to direct the regulator to wind up the programme in April last year. The mother of all ironies is that the same Discos that could not meet that basic obligation under government direct oversight are now being promoted by Minister Fashola as the guarantor of the public good and this under a novel notion of best practices.

    While I have written a lot about the botching of the power reform; of the abiku discos that would rather feast on our misery than give us light, and the inept regulator terribly out of depth with the breathtaking developments in the sector. What no one could have bargained for, at least from a government that rode into office on a banner of change is the latest act of surrender to a bunch of inept but no less, extortionate service providers. Talk about turning cycle – under the ancien regime, the electricity consumer is more often than not not, known to have supplied service cables, transformers and other vital materials. Today, we are apparently back to the same starting block where the consumer is being asked to provide supplementary capital to enable our much touted messiahs provide us meters. It seems only a matter of time before the electricity consumer is once again enlisted into the business of providing transformers, cables, couplings – and don’t rule it out – voluntary labour – by the their government.

    Whenever it happens – as I am sure it will somehow do at some point – at least we know who to thank.