The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Obtainers Unlimited

    Obtainers Unlimited

    The word “obtain” has been on my mind lately.

    Somehow, I had assumed, and was going to assert, that you will not find the word “obtainer” in the dictionary. Out of a sound instinct for self-preservation, I decided to look it up online, and there it was, denoting a person who obtains.

    It reminds me, pardon the digression, of a story told me long ago by one of the most gifted Nigerians who ever wielded a scalpel.  He had independently developed and perfected a technique that greatly simplified a traditional surgical procedure that cut hospital stay as well as post-operation recovery period drastically.

    He shared with leading colleagues in the field the draft of a scientific paper he was going to submit to the leading journal of the trade and invited their comments and criticism.  All of them said the technique was a revolutionary breakthrough that would cement his place in the world of surgery,.

    Just as he was about to dispatch the paper to the editors of the journal, an inner voice told him to stretch his literature review back to the time of the ancients.  So he repaired to the Medical Library, in Yaba, for a final check.

    He found, much to his chagrin, that a Greek physician, a contemporary of Hippocrates, had described the very technique that he and well-regarded colleagues had regarded as a revolutionary breakthrough worthy of the Lister Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons, and perhaps a future Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.

    It is amazing what one could find if one just searched diligently and long enough.

    To return to the matter at hand, I did not know that the word “obtainer” is in the dictionary. That finding gave me the confidence to use that word, pluralised, in the headline.  From “obtainer,” it is but a short step to “obtainment,” which can mean the act of obtaining, acquiring, or getting something.

    As words go, there is nothing special about the word “obtain.”   It is one of the most ordinary words in the English language, used routinely and indeed almost reflexively in all manner of contexts.  But it has never lain far from my political consciousness since the time when military president Ibrahim Babangida fooled the political class into embracing his duplicitous political programme, described by the noted political scientist, Richard Joseph, as “one of the most sustained exercises in political chicanery ever visited upon a people.”

    A fellow who went by the name of Professor “Eric Opia dropped on the scene from parts unknown and became, just like that, a major contender for governor in the newly-created Delta State.

    One of the primaries, later voided, was a contest not of ideas or programmes, but of which aspirant could dispense the most cash.  And how the residents of Warri and environs, the major theatre of the contest, delighted in their good fortune!  As reported by the perceptive Guardian political editor Akpo Esajere, the common salutation among the younger elements was no longer  “Ol’ boy how you dey?” but “Ol’ boy, you don obtain?”

    I was instantly fascinated with the locution.  “Obtain,” one had been taught back in high school, is a transitive verb.  It always goes with the object.   But in the Warri usage, there was no subject.  What they were obtaining — the object – was not stated.  Yet, it required no imagination to figure it out.

    Since then, the locution has been embedded in my political consciousness and journalistic bag of tools.  And it has framed my perception of the absorbing, even if maddening national drama that reached a high point of sorts with the arraignment in Abuja yesterday of one of the principal actors, Colonel (retired) Sambo Dasuki, most recently National Security Adviser, and three of his aides on money laundering charges.

    According to documents that trickled into the public domain day after passing day over the past three weeks, the security vote operated by the Office of the National Security Office (ONSA), Dasuki’s fancy title for his station, was reduced to a piggy bank from which the PDP and just about anyone who could peddle any ware or remedy, however dubious, could “obtain “on  President Goodluck Jonathan’s say-so.

    And many indeed are those who now occupy the gallery of obtainers.  A broadcast licensee who hadn’t paid his employees for some 20 months – and probably still hasn’t — shows the President  a proposal for publicising his achievements and boosting his re-election chances.  For his pains he is directed to go and obtain N2 billion and some pocket change.

    A high-living media mogul who runs his sprawling empire on the Mobutu Principle tells Jonathan that if his Administration had been alive to its responsibilities, Boko Haram would not have succeeded in bombing his printing plant.  And since the Administration was re-building the UN complex in Abuja that the same Boko Haram had bombed into ruins, it ought to compensate him for his losses.  Jonathan directs him to obtain a token contribution of more than N500 million from the piggy bank.

    Some newspapers – you know them — print several hundred copies a day, for local circulation, just to keep up the pretence of still being in the business.  Even if they were minded to, they were not in a position to suffer any losses when jittery security officials seized distribution.

    Yet they were not averse to obtaining N10 million each as compensation for the loss they allegedly suffered from the disruption of their business.

    One fellow who cannot be trusted to recite key passages in the most sacred texts without stumbling obtains more than N400 million from the piggy bank as “spiritual allowance.” Not to be outdone, a prayer warrior of indeterminate bona fides obtains the equivalent for intercession.

    Expired political godfathers with no constituencies whatsoever also obtain, though it is not clear that they filed demands.  The Arch Fixer who has been put out of the lucrative business that has sustained him for decades obtains, too, in the hundreds of millions.

    To augment the paltry official income that comes nowhere near what he used to make as a top professional in private practice, a very senior administration official develops the habit of  obtaining a princely N20 million a month from the inexhaustible piggy bank that Dasuki kept in the ONSA.

    Funds for mobilising voters in the Northwest for Jonathan’s re-election reportedly came out of the piggy bank, plus hundreds of millions for accredited delegates to the PDP Convention from which Dr Jonathan came out as the party’s sole presidential candidate.

    So did funds for members of the House of Representatives, for unspecified purposes.  In the bazaar that was the ONSA, it was not necessary to specify a purpose for obtaining.  It was okay  to obtain for the fun of it.

    I gather that the obtainers as well as the sub-obtainers are set to identify those who obtained from them in one guise or another.  Watch out, all those “Abuja-based public affairs analysts” who toiled ceaselessly to take down and take out anyone who would not place Dr Jonathan in  the same league as Nelson Mandela, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., Lee Kuan Yew and Barack Obama.

    It has to be said to the great credit of the former First Family that, although the First Husband has been mentioned as the issuing authority for permits to obtain, there has been no suggestion that he personally obtained.  He has had a piggy bank of his own anyway long before he took the top job. And the First Wife, a stickler for independence and propriety, kept a separate and amply provisioned piggy bank, I gather.

    Say what you will, the Office of the National Security Adviser also deserves great credit for its meticulous record-keeping.

    However the drama plays out, the Jonathan era may well come to be defined as the Era of Obtainment, when nothing succeeded like obtaining.

    Trust the column to provide periodic updates.

  • Naira: What’s going on?

    Naira: What’s going on?

    If the wailing of the business class has not reached the ears of the landlords of the villa, it must be due to either the impervious nature of the walls, or the pigheadedness of the dwellers of that rarefied abode of power. After months of shouting themselves hoarse about how much the stifling policies of the apex have come to hurt the real sector with no one pretending to have heard, the crunch may have finally come with the naira hitting the nadir trading at N260 to the greenback at the parallel market in the past week.

    That development seems the closest sign to the troubling times that lie ahead, particularly in an in an economy which manufactures next to nothing and which exports only crude to finance its obsessively compulsive consumption habits. The exception perhaps would be Godwin Emefiele’s world of utopia where monetary policy comes close to doing nothing or where economic management is locked on autopilot!

    Today, the naira is practically fixed at N197-N199 per dollar; it’s been so since Emefiele’s apex bank put the brakes on banks’ ability to buy foreign-exchange from autonomous sources, followed by its tightening of the noose on importers of some 40-odd items, ranging from toothpicks, glass to rice.

    Several months on, the real sector complains of delay in the processing of Form M to import their raw materials and spares. The organised private sector, in particular cannot seem to make sense of what is going on. Businesses with outstanding settlement before the new policies commenced were particularly hardest hit with many unable to remit their due payments. Bills for collection, the facility which allows companies to ship in goods for weeks, months before paying back has dried up because of default arising from inability to transfer fund giving rise to credibility issues. In summary, very limited activities appear to be going on in the productive sector.

    Meanwhile, the apex bank, like the Federal Government, insists on living in denial. And while the former swears by heaven that it has enough forex to finance all legitimate imports, virtually every sector of the economy complains of being ill-served by its current forex regime. The situation reminds me of the story of a surgeon who after a delicate operation pronounces the operation successful only that the patient had succumbed fatally to the knife! The surgeon, as you might imagine in this case is the CBN which insists that everything is fine; the patient of course is the economy currently reeling under the threat of extinction and with it the hordes of disparate players being criminalised essentially by the apex bank’s stifling monetary policies!

    All of these – unfortunately – would hardly have mattered were the policies to be seen as delivering on their objectives. The reality is that this is far from being the case! One ready proof is the sinking naira – no thanks to the booming parallel market fostered by the CBN; the other is the constriction forced on the economy by lack of access to forex. The derivative is the parallel economy where no one can truly claim to be in charge.

    Of course we know what the situation is at the moment. Despite the so-called restrictions put in place, our ever the smart Alec club of importers have practically made nonsense of it with their heavy patronage of the alternative but hugely expensive parallel market. Now, thanks to the piggy banks of rich Nigerians in Diaspora or the club of Nigerians with fat off-shore accounts, you can access all your forex requirements without having to go through any financial institution provided you are ready to pay premium. One financial sector operative actually told yours truly last week that these accounts – which at the moment appear inexhaustible despite its attendant risks – are available to settle all manners of foreign exchange transactions but only at rates far above that obtainable in the local parallel foreign exchange market! With daily reports of trafficking in Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) cards and with recent reports of young Nigerians swallowing foreign currencies, there appears to be no limits to the desperate measures being adopted by Nigerians to beat the CBN measures. Given the situation, would anyone still be talking about respite for the naira anytime soon?

    Is that what we bargained for? Has anyone out there yet figured out how the measures will get our factories roaring back to life? Today, with barely $30 billion in reserves – just about enough to finance seven months of imports, and with oil prices hitting a new low over of $36 a barrel at the weekend, some levels of control of foreign exchange utilisation have become somewhat inevitable. But while I would go as far as to argue that a return to the ancien regime of mindless liberalisation is neither desirable nor wise, I would also make the point that the current foreign exchange regime cannot and should not be seen as an end in itself. If anything, the goal should be an economy that is less dependent on imports for its day to day requirements.

    This is where the CBN ought to have taken the views of the organised private sector more seriously in the making of the controversial policy.  Insularity, in the current situation, is neither unhelpful nor productive. I say this because the business class wear the shoes; hence they ought to know where it hurts the most. The truth is – the restrictions are simply not working as it ought to.  Moreover, it seems to me that the challenge facing the economy isn’t so much about curbing the influx of foreign goods as it is about giving the local entrepreneur the muscle to produce those goods locally and more competitively. Thus far, it has not.

    And by the way, where is the wisdom in seeking to technically outlaw the importation of some 40 items while doing nothing about the capacity issues?

    Still want to know the surest path to saving the naira? How about getting the economy revving full throttle first? Trust me, Emefiele and company wouldn’t need to bother about how forex are allocated after. That seems simple, isn’t it?

  • Kogi: From tragedy to farce

    Kogi: From tragedy to farce

    Kogi State residents were still struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of Abubakar Audu, their former governor who was on the cusp of returning to Lugard House for a record third stint, following his commanding showing in the November 21 election.

    Amidst the mourning and the wailing, tragedy quickly turned into farce.  And the whole thing has remained a perfect calendar of farce ever since.

    I am not referring to the jubilation that punctured the funereal ambience, following reports that Audu had resurrected, Lazarus-style, on account of a miracle worker’s intercession.  Elsewhere, that would be farcical indeed.  But in Nigeria, such claims, and even more brazen ones, are made routinely by syndicated charlatans with eyes on the main chance.

    This long-running farce began when, without research and without consultation, the returning officer, Professor Emmanuel Kucha, declared the election outcome inconclusive.  Audu and his running mate on the APC ticket had built a lead that their opponent, incumbent Governor Idris Wada, could not surmount even if he won every ballot in the constituencies where the voting had to be rescheduled because of logistic problems or election malpractices

    The APC, said INEC chair, would have to nominate a candidate to replace Audu.  That candidate would then pick a running mate, and together, they would face Wada in a supplementary poll.

    The Federal Attorney-General, who had not figured in the matter thus far, weighed in and endorsed INEC’s position.

    If INEC stuck to its decision, the bet was that Faleke would replace Audu at the head of a new ticket and then pick a running mate for the final stage of the election.  That seemed to be the position of the APC, a position dictated by common sense and backed by some of the nation’s leading attorneys.

    Nonsense, thundered Olisa Metuh, the last man standing in a long line of hacks who made the PDP the odious brand that it was and has remained.  With Audu’s death, he said, the APC had “crashed out” of the contest and the PDP’s candidate who had the second highest vote tally was the outright winner.  For stating otherwise, INEC’s chair and the Federal Attorney-General should resign immediately, he demanded.

    Resign, and then what comes next?

    But Metuh is not in the business of proposing solutions.  With him, nothing succeeds like bombast, and the more sophomoric the bombast, the more he celebrates it as a mark of achievement.

    Emboldened by Metuh, Wada who had won in only five of the 21 local government areas compared to the Audu ticket’s 16, found his voice.  He proclaimed himself winner of the election.

    Meanwhile, a solution that had seemed so commonsensical was vitiated by lawyers and non-lawyers canvassing a solution guaranteed to muddy the waters and generate maximum confusion. Faleke could not replace Audu, they said, because Audu had not been “duly elected”  governor at the time he died. Beside, Faleke had not participated in the primaries that threw up Audu.  It made no difference that he is joint legatee, with Audu, of the votes cast for the APC.

    Then, in a move that baffled and confounded its supporters, and the attentive public, the APC caved in to INEC and the Attorney General and agreed, per its National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, to hold a primary to pick a replacement for Audu.   It was like snatching defeat from the jaws of unassailable victory and sowing the seeds of bitter conflict within the party.

    In its new wisdom, the APC settled for Yahaya Bello who had come a very distant second in the primaries that threw up Audu, and had contributed nothing to Audu’s campaign.  He was even reported to be preparing to defect to the PDP after his loss.  It is a measure of his political standing and influence that he lost his ward to the PDP in the November 21 election. In a curious reversal, Faleke was designated Bello’s running mate.

    Faleke, insisting that he was the rightful person to step into Audu’s shoes, had made it abundantly clear that he was not available to serve as Bello’s or anybody’s running mate.  But  the upshot was that Bello who had contributed nothing to the Audu/Faleke ticket stood to inherit the votes the twain had garnered, the very votes they said Faleke could not inherit.

    They went to the supplementary poll with that arrangement anyway, and Bello was proclaimed winner.  When added to the votes the Audu/Faleke ticket had won, the 6,885 cast for Bello’s dubious APC ticket last Saturday resulted in a plurality of more than 40, 000 votes.

    Bello has since been proclaimed governor-elect of Kogi State.  But no rejoicing, no dancing in the streets, no victory lap, has followed this strange victory.

    When reminded that Faleke had declined to serve as Bello’s mate, the returning officer had  replied curtly that Faleke could not do so since it was the APC that had designated him Bello’s running mate.  The APC is going to rue this one.

    Trust Olisa Metuh to stir things up.  Designating Bello governor-elect, he said, amounted to “a waste of time, a waste of scarce national resources and ridiculous shadow-chasing.”

    By the PDP’s reckoning, he said, Bello – “one Bello” he called him, with his trademark condescension — had scored only 6,885 votes in the supplementary election, as against Wada’s 204, 877 votes overall in the election.  The votes cast for the Audu/Faleke ticket in the earlier election had died with Audu. Wada was, therefore, the undisputed winner.

    In a rare moment of sobriety, he refrained from declaring that Wada had won  by a landslide. Perhaps the word had escaped him in the heat of composition. Something tells me he will deploy at his next press conference.

    So, there you have it.

    There are now three claimants to the gubernatorial perch at Lugard House in the Kogi capital, Lokoja: Wada, who lost at each stage of the election, Faleke, who was poised to win with Audu until Audu died at their moment of triumph, and Bello, who was substituted for Audu in a process that cannot pass the test of fairness and equity.

    There is even a fourth claimant:  None of the above.

    And each claimant has a formidable team of attorneys in its corner.

    I am here reminded of a quip about lawyers I first heard from the late Chief Bayo Kuku, a corporate lawyer of no mean repute.  A lawyer, he said self-deprecatingly, is the one who, when two parties are fighting over a cow, steps in between to milk the cow.  I am sure the lawyers will figure out how to proceed with the milking when there are three or more parties claiming ownership of the cow.

    The courts are going to have a hard time figuring out this one.

    It would be the height of judicial perversity if they found for Wada or Bello.  But anything can happen in a judicial system mired in perversity.

  • Some observations on arms-gate

    Some observations on arms-gate

    Like some tiny bits of an intriguing puzzle, Nigerians may have only begun to make some sense of yet another chapter of the Jonathan-era malfeasance described as armsgate. As it were, armsgate would surely qualify as the biggest scandal in years. And that is saying a lot in a country where corruption is more or less a daily staple. I say this not necessarily because of the princely $2 billion-plus –said to have been plundered by PDP’s primitive gang under the cover of arms purchase, but on account of the multi-layered heist as well as the unprecedented violation of the nation’s financial protocols as reported.

    Admittedly, the story is only just unfolding. However, the elements and the plot, the twists and turns that have emerged thus far would seem the classic stuff of the Nigerian story. In a sense, the soap titled armsgate is actually the Nigerian story being re-told in a fresh way.

    For obvious reasons, I can only dwell on the general – rather than specifics – at this stage of the incredible story. To the extent that there are already different accounts of what has been discovered by the investigators, or even the details of what transpired at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions (EFCC) over the course of the past week, yours truly will only make some preliminary comments at this stage.

    How much does the former President Goodluck Jonathan know? That is no doubt the billion dollar question. At a conversational forum co-hosted by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), United States, the former President had stated emphatically: “Where did the money come from? I did not award a contract of $2billion for procurement of weapons!”

    Now, the man at the eye of the storm, Sambo Dasuki says otherwise. In a statement issued last Wednesday, the former NSA stated that all contracts and accruing payments were made based on the approval of ex-President Jonathan: “Nigerians should note that all the services generated the types of equipment needed, sourced suppliers most times and after consideration by the Office of the NSA, the President will approve application for payment.”

    That was before the intervention by Raymond Dokpesi Jnr. – son of the media mogul, Raymond Dokpesi who was earlier picked on account of a N2.1 billion cash payment. While clarifying his father’s involvement in the scandal, the younger Dokpesi reportedly said: “We will like to make it abundantly clear that Dr. Dokpesi’s Daar Investment and Holdings Company Ltd, developed a proposal presented to the former President Goodluck Jonathan proposing a Multi Media Strategic Development Support Project to promote and project the achievements and highlight the challenges of his government whilst demystifying false information gleefully circulated by the propaganda machinery of the then opposition party”.

    That proposal, according to him was submitted to the former President in person by the older Dokpesi and his team in the presence of the former Vice President, Namadi Sambo, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. More significantly, he further claimed that the proposal was “thoroughly studied, approved and paid for by the Presidency through the office of the National Security Adviser” which “has multiple budgetary sub-heads including for communication and information”. Of course, he would also insist “that the proposal had absolutely nothing to do with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), nor the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC)”.

    Really? Anyway, that was Dokpesi Jnr.’s account.

    Now, I do not pretend to know how the Jonathan presidency worked but then the account, if true, would appear hardly flattering either to the prestige of the number one office or its occupant. The implications are simply mind-bending. By personally accepting the proposal from the DAAR team for whatever reasons, the President of course stands rightly accused of overtly subverting due process and the law under some phantom exigency. To imagine that we are not talking of some “chicken change” but a whopping sum of N2.1 billion – imagine also that this quantum expenditure is being alleged to have been passed off on the President’s coffee table – just like that!

    Call it what you like – I say it is the ultimate desecration of the exalted office. Again, that is if the account is true!

    But then, tale of the absurd does not even there. There are in fact other legs of the same riveting story. One says that some of the expenditures were charged to the account of the national oil corporation. Knowing how the former administration reduced the NNPC account into a piggy bank to cater for all manners of purposes under the sun, that could not have come to anyone as a surprise. As if that was not terrible enough, the official line given for moving the funds was that it was needed to prosecute the war in the North-east!  And to imagine that this was happening at a time when soldiers at the theatre of the battle openly complained of being starved of weapons and kits – and also a time President Jonathan was seeking approval for a $1 billion loan to prosecute the war!

    The other leg is the role of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). If Nigerians are any familiar with the Jonathan administration’s reduction of the disciplined science of economic management to a free-for-all regime of disparate actors united by greed, the role of the apex bank in fostering the regime’s criminal enterprise is, at least until now, little known. That unfortunately seems to have changed now going by the reports of the involvement of the apex banking institution in extensive money laundering activities and plain economic sabotage. Again, these remains what they are – allegations. Now, if it seems unimaginable that the apex bank will dispense with the extant controls in doing the bidding of hierarchs of the Jonathan administration, more unimaginable is that the officials went would go as far as breaking the nation laws in the process. While the EFCC will hopefully help to unravel these and many other allegations in due course, I must again make this preliminary comment about the myth of autonomy of the apex bank – erroneous but expansive interpretation of the concept to mean independence. Let me explain what I understand by the autonomy of the apex bank. For me it means the absolute discretion of the CBN to deploy monetary policy instruments to address specific challenges in the financial system. It does not and cannot by any stretch of imagination be taken as independence – a licence to murder – as we saw under former CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi where an individual can, with the stroke of the pen authorise N620 billion no matter how good the cause is!  Isn’t the obverse side of the same coin the alleged withdrawal of several millions of dollars by the Jonathan administration from the CBN vault for PDP’s good causes?

    In closing, I must say that we have had a good week of media show of the scandal. But then, this, we all know is hardly enough. Indeed, the real battle is in the court-room. Outside the courts, very little matter really. EFCC has treated us to enough of the entertainment to last several lifetimes. Time to get down to the business of prosecution.

     

  • When two ministers went missing

    When two ministers went missing

    As former President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure muddled toward its desultory end, two of his senior  ministers, with responsibility for some of the most critical issues of state, went missing from their strategic turfs.

    I called attention to one of them, the Foreign Minister, Ambassador Aminu Wali, in my September 23, 2014, column titled “Where is our Foreign Minister?”

    “Has anyone in the attentive audience ever seen, heard, sensed or otherwise encountered Ambassador Aminu Wali acting out his remit since he was appointed Foreign Minister in March 2014?’’ I asked.

    I had raised this question in the wake of the Chibok abductions, when the accident-prone Jonathan administration stumbled from miscue to egregious miscue in a perfect calendar of blunders. Day after day, Nigeria took a pummelling in the global news media.  And the foreign minister, who should have been the international face of Nigeria at such a time, was nowhere to be seen.

    Instead, he was trying desperately to sell Dr Jonathan to political kingmakers in the so-called Northwest geopolitical zone as the best thing to have happened to Nigeria since the  amalgamation, and an unquestionably worthy candidate for re-election.

    Hear him as he read the communiqué at the end of the meeting:  “Having carefully considered   the steady and stable progress of our nation under the able leadership of the President, the stakeholders of PDP in the Northwest, having in mind the monumental strides attained by this administration, have resolved to urge President Jonathan to declare for president in the forthcoming 2015 elections so as to continue the good works he started in nation building.”

    They say an ambassador is a person sent to lie for his country abroad.  Ambassador Wali was going round the country lying for the president and his administration.

    To be fair to Wali, he was not the only minister plying that trade. The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, did exactly that each time he opened his mouth.  So did the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, but with emphasis on his personal achievement.

    It came as no surprise, then, that Wali’s expertise was not tapped during what must rank as one of Jonathan administration’s most humiliating foreign misadventures, namely, the dramatic seizure in hard currency of the equivalent of N9.3 million from a Nigerian-owned private jet that made a covert landing at a private airport near Johannesburg, in South Africa, with the Jonathan administration’s fingerprints all over it.

    The administration said the money was for the purchase of arms from private vendors for the security services and that the shipment was properly documented.  The South African authorities, on the other hand, were acting on the theory that this was a money-laundering caper gone awry and were not in the least impressed by the disingenuous fudging that marked Abuja’s attempt to explain the incident away.

    The last is yet to be heard of that incident

    The second cabinet official who went missing from his strategic turf at critical points in the last phase of Dr Jonathan’s presidency was Lt.-Gen. Aliyu Gusau, the Minister of Defence and, before that, National Security Adviser in the Obasanjo administration.

    Aliyu Gusau had been appointed to replace Dr Bello Haliru, to demonstrate the government’s resolve to regain vast swathes of territory Boko Haram had seized in the Northeast, and to crush the insurgency.

    Shortly after resuming office, he summoned the service chiefs to his office for a meeting, at which the war effort was likely to figure prominently.  The Chief of Defence Staff, Air Vice Marshal Alex Badeh, countermanded the summons, stating that the invitation had to be routed through his office.

    Whereupon, as was widely reported in the  media, Aliyu Gusau resigned.   Later reports said the minister had insisted on meeting with service chiefs alone, and had demanded an apology from Badeh, who was probably still in high school — or in the military  academy – when Aliyu Gusau was promoted to the rank of army general.

    Despite President Jonathan’s intervention, the twain stood their grounds, and Aliyu Gusau  made it known that, contrary to media reports, he had not resigned.

    For all practical purposes, however, he might as well have resigned.

    Boko Haram escalated its campaign of murder and mayhem and battled the ill-equipped and ill-used Nigerian military to a stalemate, often dictating the terms of engagement.  In one instance, an entire army battalion, faced with Boko Haram’s superior firepower and motivation, “tactically manoeuvred” its way to neighbouring Cameroun, where it was disarmed and escorted back to base.

    Through it all, the minister of Defence was missing.  He was not seen at the war front rallying the troops and boosting their morale.  Usually self-effacing, and  a man of few words as befits the super spook – beg your pardon – the consummate intelligence officer that he is, this time he stood aloof, distant, as if the war was none of his business.

    Nor did he join in the controversy surrounding the seizure by South Africa of a cash-laden private jet from Nigeria that had landed surreptitiously in a private airport near Johannesburg, allegedly on a mission to buy arms from private dealers for the Nigerian “security services.”

    Was Badeh’s refusal to submit to the authority of the minister of Defence the reason General Aliyu Gusau chose to keep his own counsel in matters relating to the military, including the Boko Haram insurgency that was steadily incorporating more and more Nigerian territory under its infernal control?

    Was that how it also came about that the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), who, it has been said, was not a career intelligence officer but had on his own taken a crash course in military intelligence after his retirement — was that how he came to supplant the minister of Defence and to assume responsibility for procuring arms and ammunition and other materials for the military directly or through contractors?

    The figures cited in those transactions, in which Dasuki seems to be a central figure, boggle  the mind.  So do the puny returns resulting therefrom, according to officials looking into the matter.  President Jonathan, Dasuki has said, approved all the transactions at issue.

    Aliyu Gusau’s name has not figured thus far in the investigations.  He must be glad that he kept his distance from all the wheeling and dealing that the EFCC says it has uncovered in the office of the National Security Adviser.

    Should he merely have kept his distance under the circumstances?  Should he not have resigned to protect his honour?

    For the record will show that, under his watch as Defence minister, the armed forces could not tame Boko Haram, and allegations of shady transactions in military purchases surfaced.

  • The poet’s verdict: Danjuma, Tinubu

    The poet’s verdict: Danjuma, Tinubu

    In “Piano and Drums”, Gabrial Okara, the poet — or in any case, the protagonist — suffers a serious dissonance: to stick with the vitality of the drums of his nativity (African culture) or be lured by the seductive though destructive lure of the European piano — but end with putative cultural death!

    Cultural death is, of course, the most lethal for the living dead: for without your culture, what are you?

    Performance poet, Akeem Lasisi and his performing songbirds suffer no such dissonance.  Their earlier works, Wonderland: Eleleture, the sweet Udeme and the epochal Ori-Agbe, in celebration of Wole Soyinka, our own WS, at 80, were a splendid mix of the piano and drums for poetic euphony and vitality.

    Way back, in the late 1960s to late 1980s, during the musical hegemony of the duo of Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade, and the Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Africa 70 and Egypt 80 ruled the roost of Afrobeat (Fela’s own piano and drums musical brew), the debate between always ensued between “praise” and ideological music.

    Juju, where both Obey and Sunny excelled, was often dismissed as happy-go-merry, praise music without any ideological core.  Afrobeat, on the other hand, was trumpeted (and not unfairly) as ideological music that spoke truth — nasty truth — to power, no matter the huge cost.

    Indeed, costly it was: for Fela really did bear a lot of brunt in military-era savagery; by a ruling military order, scared stiff by Fela’s fearless and formidable moral authority, even if the soldiers-in-government controlled all the hideous instruments of state coercion.

    So, from Eleleture and Udeme, solid socio-political poetic commentaries, is Akeem Lasisi the poet veering into “praise” poetry, as his poetic telescope zooms on two eminent citizens, Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (rtd) and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu?

    Not quite, though the listener would make his or her own judgment.

    One quick observation, however, on From General to Manager, Lasisi’s tribute to Danjuma.  In this work, Lasisi’s trademark African drums (to borrow again from the Okara image) are mute.  Only the European piano raises its plaintive voice.

    The poet should perhaps have, as he is wont, given the Danjuma work some Jukun musical background.  That would have steeped it in African nativity; and added more vitality to its performance and rendition.  Sure, that would have needed some arduous research.  But the final product would have been much more pleasing — and entertaining.

    Still, that hardly distracts from this work: a fair, if poetic assessment, of the public persona of Gen. Danjuma, from when he first burst on Nigerians’ public consciousness as a young military officer, to his exploits as chief of Army staff and virtual guarantor of return to civil rule in 1979, under Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo as commander-in-chief, his foray into business thereafter, brief return to politics during Obasanjo’s second coming as elected president from 1999-2003, and his philanthropic activities happily ever after!

    “If I deny you a place in the Muse’s house,” the poem opens, “The Zuma rock will break its stony silence/The Niger and Benue will find their liquid tongues/From Mokola to Trinidad battalions will rise/Millions of IDP children will join a flood of SAPETRO staff/The Congo will rise and sing your praise …”

    Mokola and Trinidad battalions, the Congo, SAPETRO workers and millions of IDP [internally displaced children] are all allusions to Gen. Danjuma’s rich vein of past and present life: the early regimented times, peace keeping at the Congo, another era as oil investor and community charity in troubling times, tending Nigerian children displaced by the murderous Boko Haram fanatics, by virtue of chairing a presidential fund-raiser to care for the displaced.

    One life?  Ay, but with a texture of many rolled into one!  That would appear why this allusion echoes another in the scriptures — that bit about nature, animate and inanimate, rising to applaud the virtues of the Christ Jesus, even if spiteful humans demurred.

    Indeed, Gen. Danjuma burst on the public consciousness, as somewhat an enforcer of northern political hegemony, given his reported roles in the July 1966 counter-coup.  But over the years, he would appear to have morphed into a revered Nigerian patriot.

    Hear the poet’s parting shot: “Danjuma, teach me a cardinal lesson/to dodge invisible bullets in the market square/Give me the magic wand/To coast to victory in our Civil Peace [Note the clever pun on Civil War?]/From Barracks to the board room your breed is rare/From General to Manager your gut is high.”

    In the Lion Speaks to the Poet, the Lasisi tribute to Tinubu, the parting shot is reminiscent of the concluding lines in J.P. Clark’s poem, “Streamside exchange”, a deadpan response that further confounded the child-protagonist, over its mother’s return prospect: “You cannot know” replied the river bird, “And you should not bother;/Tide and market come and go/And so shall your mother.”

    But while the Clark river bird deadpanned, the Lasisi Lion revealed the “secret” of Tinubu’s stunning political triumphs — which has reaped him bitter and implacable enemies; and his rare talent at nurturing future leaders — which has earned him due praise, even from grudging quarters.

    “When others were saving for the rainy day,” the Lion roared in full glory, “I picked my cutlass and sharpened my hoe/I tilled and planted for the rainy day.  The dreaded season has finally come/They are chasing my crops with their anxious cash.”!

    That is as clinical a poetic response as any to the thick peer envy against Tinubu, from political opportunists who hate to sweat, yet love to be the first to swoop on the groovy.

    Why, it even echoes another Obafemi Awolowo quip: When others are busy chasing after women of easy virtue, I was always at my desk, forging out solutions to Nigeria’s problems!  Awolowo was, after all, the most meticulous politician of his generation, if not, so far, in all of Nigerian history.

    As to the old issue of piano and drums, the Lion has both aplenty.  The poem itself runs on cutting wit: “But is it really true,/That everything golden belongs to you?”  And a couple of hyperboles, perhaps to underscore ridiculousness of it all: “They say Aso Rock now belongs to you/That you are the new owner of Disney Land …?”

    But this piquant piano soars on the wings of African drums: a traditional Yoruba genre that thrives on ote (intrigue) and efe (biting humour), twin-concepts the Yoruba devastatingly deploy to wrong-foot adversaries.  That sure would be music to Tinubu’s friends; but pure poison to his fiends!

    In General and Lion, Lasisi has entered uncharted waters in his glorious poetic career: that of a poet making definitive judgment on active, if not outright controversial, citizens in the public space.

    Will he retain his poetic rigour?  Time will tell.  Meanwhile, like Ori-Agbe that toasted Prof. Soyinka at 80, General and Lion epitomise praise clinically — and poetically — earned.

     

     

  • The Kogi conundrum

    The Kogi conundrum

    Only those unfamiliar with the ways of our political class would be surprised by the twists and turns of events following the death of Prince Abubakar Audu, the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate in the November 21 Kogi State gubernatorial election. If our politicians have not been literally throwing punches and tearing at each other, such has been the outrageous show of crass opportunism and inventiveness bordering on delinquency that one is left wondering if indeed there is anything of a moral code underlying the supposedly beautiful vocation of politics.

    That lawyers too have been speaking – in tongues – is hardly surprising. Indeed, hearing some of our so-called erudite lawyers pronounce on the situation in Kogi as “constitutional crisis”, one gets the impression that law and commonsense live on opposite sides of the street! We must of course acknowledge the contributions of the handful few who insist that the law needed not be an ass or donkey!

    So much talk about crisis. Crisis? Where? We are nowhere near there, yet! If you ask me, I’ll say that what is currently going on in Kogi State is an opportunistic act by a bunch of over-excited political actors!  Guess what? The characters behind the charade in the Confluence State would have earned nominations for an Oscar if not for the fact that the destiny of an entire state is tied to their folly.

    Of course, what they want forgotten is that the people of Kogi State went to the polls on November 21; indeed, that the exercise returned 240,867 votes to the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket of Audu and Abiodun Faleke and 199,514 votes for Idris Wada and Yomi Awoniyi, the candidates on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) joint ticket hardly matters to them. Had they their way, these democrats of convenience will rather have the memories of the clear, indisputable choice made by Kogi electors on November 21 expunged from our heads.

    Here was an election that was practically concluded but which the electoral umpire – INEC and the losing party PDP prefers to see as hung or “inconclusive” on the dubious premise that some 41,300 votes were still outstanding – a situation that would later be compounded by the death of the principal of the APC joint ticket.

    Today, thanks to the political class’ infinite capacity to contrive crisis even when there is no need for one, and, no less, INEC’s inexplicable vacillation if not subterfuge in a matter that leaves no ambiguity, the confluence state is left to flounder under the combined weight of the malevolent opportunism of the PDP and the moral cowardice of the electoral body.

    Presently, we have a situation in which Governor Idris Wada and his PDP now insist that the votes cast for the Audu/Faleke ticket is technically extinguished! Some joke? In the same breathe, both have reportedly insisted that the votes cast for them – that is, the Wada/Awoniyi ticket must be deemed to be alive! In their warped reading of the law, the one half process was deemed abrogated – or to put in another way, the votes recorded for the winners could no longer be sustained because of the demise of one of actors in the joint ticket – and the other invested with life! That is the kind of reasoning to expect in a season suffused by opportunism and delinquency.

    I must say that we have INEC to thank at least for sparing us from what could have been a coup against the constitution. Insisting on the conclusion of the process no doubt represents an important step – a vital one at that – in the so-called imbroglio. I leave out the question of whether INEC acted in good faith – or even right when it halted a process that was as good as completed. Howbeit, it remains an important step at least to the extent that that it accords recognition to the inviolability of the votes already cast by the good people of Kogi.

    Despite the solidity and heroism of Kogi voters, the reality today is that the job which they began with all earnestness is not even nearly half done. While the position of INEC and the PDP would seem understandable even if not entirely excusable in the situation, what would seem unthinkable is that APC would be seen as pushing for a solution that prefers to leave out the clear choice made by the voters on November 21 in favour of a choice anointed by a conclave of party apparatchiks.

    This is where the party’s role not only comes across as stranger than fiction but can only be described as defying logic and commonsense. Here, I refer to the party’s strange inventiveness, when rather than find a running mate to Faleke in the supplementary poll and hence validate the indissolubility of the APC ticket as common sense would ordinarily dictate, opted for Yahaya Bello, Prince Audu’s runner-up in the APC governorship primary to fly the APC ticket –perhaps with or without Faleke! Imagine the choice thunderously made by the electors of Kogi now on the verge of being violently supplanted by the wishes of a conclave of party apparatchiks that promised change!

    The point must be made nonetheless that to the extent that Faleke is alive, he remains the undeniable symbol of the APC ticket. If it seems hard to find the basis for exhuming the primaries which produced Audu as candidate and Bello as runner up – which is now bandied as the basis for the latter’s endorsement as the party’s flag-bearer for Saturday’s supplementary election – it is even more bizarre that anyone would dare to suggest burying the Audu/Faleke joint ticket as APC seems desperate to do. I would argue in the same vein that any arrangement which precludes the erstwhile running mate to Audu playing a principal role ought to be seen as futile. Of course, if the current development says anything about the party’s sense of equity, justice and respect for the people of Kogi, it would seem to speak even more to its abhorrence for the discipline of orderly conduct and to its fidelity to moral principles.

    For both the APC and the nation, the days ahead promises to be interesting. At this time, there is no question about the APC losing the election given the limited number of votes expected on Saturday. Kogi unfortunately has merely provided the theatre for disparate elements in the party to act out fissiparous tendencies currently gnawing away at its soul. You ask if the party would remain the same after Saturday December 5? Now, that is a tough one to take a bet on.

     

  • Abubakar Audu: A Sophoclean tragedy

    Abubakar Audu: A Sophoclean tragedy

    Few subjects excite political journalists more than elections.

    To size up the major candidates – digging into their backgrounds and records, pointing up contradictions in their utterances and their biographies, weighing their grasp of issues domestic and foreign, evaluating their trustworthiness as well as their preparedness for the offices they are seeking, indicating who is up and who is down, and generally presenting pictures on which the attentive public can ground their choice:  this, in brief, is the responsibility of the political reporter.

    The job guarantees access to the candidates and their associates, often makes them privy to all kinds of secrets; it tests where the reporter’s allegiance lies – to the candidate, with whom he or she may have developed close ties, or to the public, of which he or she is a representative.   This vital distinction is often overlooked, but it remains a bedrock principle of political journalism.

    I have tried to follow most elections in Nigeria and indeed here in the United States, in that tradition of political journalism.

    Last week’s gubernatorial election in Kogi was different, however.  I had a vested interest in    the outcome. The race was between a divisive, incurably parochial, lethargic, do-nothing incumbent, and a challenger who had been there before and performed creditably but was heavily tainted, not without justification, by grave charges of corruption, and by delusions of grandeur.

    The intelligence from Kogi was that the challenger, Abubakar Audu, was not marketable and that if the APC fielded him against the incumbent Idris Wada, the APC would have in effect handed victory to Wada.

    I communicated this intelligence to the APC hierarchy and suggested that they talk Audu out of it and assure him he would be accorded the place of “Father of the APC in Kogi”, with all the attendant rights and privileges.  After all, he had served as elected governor of Kogi twice. No luck.

    In the primaries, Audu won more delegates than the rest of the field put together; none of  them could match his financial muscle.  He had the numbers, and since democracy as they say in Nigeria is a game of numbers, he was for all practical purposes the people’s choice.

    He had run a good race, and based on the plurality of his votes, the online newspapers Saharareporters projected him the winner.  Even if Wada won overwhelmingly in Abaji, he would at best come a close second.  In the event, Audu won in Abaji, and it was no longer whether the official election umpire would proclaim him winner, but when.

    The column you are reading now was going to be an open letter to Audu congratulating him on his epochal victory and entreating him to make his sojourn in Lugard House a mission of public service and personal redemption.  No personal aggrandisement; no imperial airs; no hubris; just devoted service to the public with humility, and in a spirit of reconciliation.

    I called the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to congratulate him.  His phone rang busy.  Perhaps he was taking calls from jubilant associates and supporters. Some thirty minutes later, my call went through.  I congratulated him on the hard-fought victory, saying that it presaged the prospect of change, real change, coming to Kogi.

    His voice was flat, bereft of its usual animation.  It did not sound like the voice of a person who had just wrought another political miracle.  He said he was attending to an emergency, and that I should call him later.

    What emergency? I wondered.  Surely, the usual suspects could not be trying to fix the results, certainly not with a new sheriff in town.  Besides, the Arch Fixer who always did their dirty work has been sent on permanent retirement, together with his infernal bag of tricks.  What emergency could Tinubu have been talking about?  What was going on?

    All this was before INEC declared the election inconclusive, because Audu’s plurality is smaller than the number of registered voters in precincts where the poll was cancelled for one reason or another and would have to be repeated.

    Still, it seemed to me that as morning shows the light of day, the figures now available indicated powerfully that Audu and the APC would win, no matter how they dressed it up.

    All this was academic, however. Audu had died even before they began collating the field reports.  But only those in his innermost circle were privy to the fact.  News of his death was first broken by Saharareporters in a terse bulletin.  If I did not know that online newspaper’s scrupulous commitment to getting the news fast and getting it right, I would have dismissed the bulletin as a sick joke.

    I called professional colleagues in Lagos for confirmation.  They said they had been working the phones but could still not confirm.  Next I called Kogi. Some of the political figures had not even heard and were asking me for details.  Several expatriate Nigerians here in the United States also called, believing that I would be in a position to confirm the news and provide details

    For me, confirmation came from Premium Times about an hour after Saharareporters broke the news.

    Pulling the strands together, I now realise that the “emergency” Tinubu said he was grappling with was Audu’s death.  In retrospect, it is a wonder that he could keep so calm under circumstances that would have rendered a person of lesser straw apoplectic.

    By some accounts, it was INEC’s declaring the election incomplete that induced the condition – was it a stroke, or a heart attack – from which Audu died.  That was not the case.  He had died, it is necessary to repeat, before INEC began collating the returns.

    The emerging truth is that he had been in poor health, and his condition was exacerbated by the rigours of the election campaign, to the point that it was with great discomfort that he turned up to cast his ballot on Election Day.

    His death has plunged Kogi and indeed Nigeria into murky constitutional waters, with some persons learned in the law asserting that Audu’s death had rendered the poll a nullity, and that a fresh gubernatorial election would have to be held.

    Others just as learned in the law insist that Audu and his running mate had won the election outright, because even if the votes cast in the supplementary election INEC says it is going to conduct in the 19 wards where no voting took place – if all the potential votes from those precincts went to Governor Wada, he would still have polled less than Audu overall.

    They might have added Audu that won in 16 of the 21 local government areas in Kogi, whereas Wada carried only five.

    Abubakar Audu lived a rich and textured life, the stuff of a Sophoclean tragedy.  His death is likely to generate more sympathy and admiration than he enjoyed while he was among us.

  • Subsidy: Time to let go

    Subsidy: Time to let go

    The fuel queues are back – as if you didn’t know that already. The tragedy isn’t just that OPEC’s one-time sixth largest exporter of crude has again suffered another crushing relapse of the familiar plague of dry pumps – no thanks to the feud between fuel importers and the finance ministry – it’s like the nation has come under a spell of some ancestral curses!

    Trust Nigerians for their inventiveness, guess they have since moved on; while we are back to the same old wearisome arguments about whether or not the subsidy exists, our go-go nature appears to have gotten the better of us. Majority – call it the silent ones if you like – it would appear, could no longer be bothered with either the economics or even the semantics of fuel subsidies, they have since swallowed the full pill of deregulation – this time through the back door. Scarcity or not, I know for a fact that you could purchase fuel in some stations in Lagos without as much as breaking a sweat – so long as you are willing to part with N140 for a litre in the deregulated market downtown! Seems one moment when Nigerians wouldn’t mind to cut their noses – even if temporarily – to get going!

    Truly, the subject of fuel subsidy never ceases to fascinate. As in the round leather game of football, it is one subject that every Kasali, Chinedu and Usman would claim, with some air of certainty, some degree of knowledge if not expertise. You know why? Everybody is involved – from the jerry-can clutching vulcanizer to the barber next door; what about the welder or even the ubiquitous taxi driver all of whom the liquid gold has come to mean the difference between life and death?

    Yes, everyone is involved.

    Agreed, subsidy is a touchy subject. I have seen otherwise brilliant minds relapse into some wild, witless garbage when the subject is fuel subsidy. Many would rather be politically correct rather than risk ruffling feathers. And so argument persists that simply because oil is of nature’s finest gift to us, we can continue to dispense with the niceties of economics!

    To be sure, I have looked at the contending arguments; it seems to me that the difference between the most vociferous proponents of fuel subsidy removal and their opponents is actually more shadow than real substance! Forget what the marketers and their hordes of middlemen say; the truth is that they want the subsidy regime to continue; it is their surest route to unearned wealth. What about the bureaucrats, the men and women wielding awesome powers over our lives? It is their surest guarantee of raw, invisible power – without control. As one would imagine, the politicians want it for a different purpose; for them, it is a fascinating subject for politricking any day.

    Did I hear the “ogas at the top” describe the subsidy regime as “unsustainable”? What their lucre-addicted lordships meant to say is that they could do with more of freshly-minted wads in the piggy bank to do as they please.

    The irony of course is that a section of the hoi polloi actually believes the lie that the petrol and kerosene subsidy – together with its impregnable infrastructure of graft that services it – actually comes close to their share of the proverbial national cake! That for me is the most tragic part of the raging debate.

    Is there really a subsidy? I have heard the question over and over again. To the question I say – we wouldn’t be who we are if we are not found debating whether or not the weekend May 14 Platts reference price of $718.49 per metric tonne (that is N105.55 per litre) is real! Note that this is not yet reflective of distribution costs as well as the marketers’ margins!  With petrol price officially pegged at N87 per litre, the above should ordinarily solve the arithmetic.

    Next question – why can’t the federal government build new refineries? Or its variant – why can’t the government compel the International Companies (IOCs) to build refineries in the country? Or still, get the private sector to build new refineries? Good question – all of them!

    Let me proceed from the known to the unknown. Again, as if we don’t know, the reality is that OPEC’s leading crude oil exporter refines only a miniscule fraction of its domestic fuel needs. Daily requirement for petrol is said to range from 40-45 million litres daily of which the four refineries combined is said to deliver a miserable 10-15 percent. To bridge the gap, we rely on imports at deleterious costs to our foreign reserves and the larger national economy. From an ordinarily hefty subsidy bill of barely N250 billion in 2011; the nation has since the literally broken the banks – spending close to a trillion on kerosene and petrol alone annually!

    So why can’t the government build new refineries? The answer: the same reason the government is unable to bring back the national carrier; it’s the same argument about government’s inability to fix the multiplicity of our roads; the reason the power sector is considered as jinxed! I daresay here that the old cliché about the government not being good at business is true only to the extent that our government lacks both the means and the discipline to run a modern enterprise! The tiny Island country of Singapore is a living exception to that rule!

    As for getting the IOCs to build new refineries, it seems rather too easy to overlook the terrible effects of government’s meddlesomeness on the downstream sector. Does anyone still remember that the first refinery in the country was actually built not by government but by Shell? It seems aeons ago when the motorist in Lagos bought fuel at a different price from his compatriot in Maiduguri! That was when market ruled – long before our leaders pronounced that money was not our problem but how to spend it!

    To my main point. There comes a time in the life of a nation when citizens just have to make hard choices. The current season would appear such a time. The simple truth is that the nation cannot afford, even if it wants, to sustain the current regime of price support called subsidy. Something simply has to give. Moreover, I have stated elsewhere that the subsidy regime is unfair to the extent that the burden is regressive. In short, it is time to let go! Agreed, it is not the end; it’s one sure step on the path to dismantling the infrastructure of fraud currently sapping the nation’s vital juices. That done, with supporting policies, the goal of local refining might actually be closer than many would dare to imagine. I rise!

    The above was first published on May 19 this year.

    Kogi: The law can’t be an ass!

    Yours sincerely joins the rest of the good people of Kogi to mourn the unfortunate demise of Prince Abubakar Audu, the flamboyant All Progressives Congress candidate in weekend’s gubernatorial election. It seems one of the cruel ironies of life that the good people of Kogi are now left to rue over the possibilities in his planned return to the Lugard House complex 12 years after.

    I am not entirely surprised at the myths being spawned in the aftermath of his death. Since when have we stopped being superstitious?

    Or the permutations and the frenzy of varied interpretations as to what should be the way forward. It is not entirely surprising that emergency lawyers and road-side activists appear to have hijacked the debate in the full blown laissez-faire season of unreason! Reminds me of the African saying that all manners of knives are to be seen at the death of an elephant!

    In Kogi, the issue of the limits of the law comes to the fore. So is the majesty of public policy. Now, it seems so easy to forget that 21 parties contested in all with 42 candidates and their running mates – on the ballot. We are talking of an election that was practically concluded except in some odd 91 polling units spread accross 18 local government areas in which the entire number of registered voters is a mere 49,953 and which the voters had left no one in doubt about their choice! Yes, the All Progressives Congress of Prince Audu Abubakar scored 240,867 as against the Peoples Democratic Party of Idris Wada with 199,514 votes.

    And now because INEC deems fit to fulfil all righteousness in given that the difference between the leading candidate and the runner up is some 41,000 votes, some people have gone as far as to suggest that the exercise be aborted because the candidate of the leading party died mid-stream! Did the law not envisage this possibility when it made provision for running mates? And would anyone have dared to make the same argument if it was another candidate but the leading one that died?

    We have not reached the point where the law is deemed stupid – or have we?

     

     

  • Buhari’s hard road

    Buhari’s hard road

    Muhammadu Buhari has a lousy luck.

    At this first coming in 1984, Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as military head of state, had to endure the head-splitting headache from the hangover of President Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria (NPN) freeloaders, in Nigeria’s Second Republic (1 October 1979 – 31 December 1983).

    At his second coming in 2015, Muhammadu Buhari, as elected president of the Federal Republic, faces no less splitting headache.  The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) dynasty had from 1999 under President Olusegun Obasanjo progressively decayed, such that the rot, under President Goodluck Jonathan, climaxed in a well-deserved fall; and loss of power.

    Just as in 1984, in 2015, the party is over.  It is left to President Buhari to clear the mess, with those who caused the problem most trenchant about the imperative to do so.

    But before he could even clear that mess in 1984 — no thanks to his junta’s fatal failure to communicate its own actions — reactionary forces overthrew him in a palace coup.  With them, Nigeria went to seeds.  But preserving the Buhari mystique came out of that personal tragedy.

    In 2015, what would it be?  Would reactionary forces short-change the administration again?  No one knows for sure.  One thing is certain though: from the impulsive bent of yore, epitomised by the with-immediate-effect temper of the ruinous military years, Nigerians would tend to have become more tempered.

    Besides, it is democracy.  Except there is perfidy from the parliamentary front — and nothing is impossible — it is a democracy.  Other things being equal, a fixed term of four years is guaranteed, within which the president is expected to unfurl his policies and implement his programmes.

    And because it is democracy too, the administration must have a vigorous and vibrant communication segment, as an integral part of every policy and programme.  Fifth columnists are no monopoly of military rule!

    That, of course, leads to the newly appointed federal cabinet; and the comments, more or less based on trivia, that have accompanied its birthing.

    Take Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, former governor of Lagos.  Not a few have proclaimed him a “prime minister”, a rather literal (if not outright mischievous) definition of his three-in-one heavyweight portfolio of Power, Works and Housing.

    Others have gone to proclaim Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, former Rivers governor, as another “super minister”, in view of his no less challenging Transport portfolio, under which is Aviation and Maritime, not to mention rail.

    Aviation is the hub of a modern economy, maritime is the cash cow, given the normally huge revenue from ports in a globalised economy that thrives on international trade; and rail holds the key to truly modernising the Nigerian local economy, both in the mass transit of people; and mass movement of heavy bulk, at tolerable costs, and with least cost to road infrastructure.

    Trivia aside, a federal cabinet today, without Fashola and Amaechi would have  been inconceivable, except they were not members of the ruling party.  This is simply because the duo would appear the very best, given their achievements during their tours of duty in Lagos and Rivers states, among the Gubernatorial Class of 2007-2014.

    But that is the trivial part of it.  The serious side is that the two are charged with tough infrastructure duties that would make or mar the administration.  With a projected 2016 budget in the N7 trillion to N8 trillion mark, it would appear a budget of reflation.  Public works, either indirectly by contract or directly by direct labour, would dominate economic activities.

    And power!  Imagine what a lit up Nigeria would do, to social and business health!

    So, should either Fashola or Amaechi (or both) fail, Buhari would be perceived to have failed.  So long for the vanity of prime or super ministers!

    The focus on infrastructure, agriculture and solid minerals, by the Buhari administration, would appear obvious by the manning of the two other ministries.

    Audu Ogbeh, the French major turned practical agriculturist, would appear both symbolic and practical.  Symbolic, because he appears to reinforce the zero-tolerance for sleaze that the Buhari Presidency appears to push.  Since Mr. Ogbeh’s entry into Nigeria’s public life, he has earned a rare reputation for consistency and integrity.  And practical, because since he had made farming his vocation, he had developed some private expertise, from which public policy can benefit.

    His major challenge, however, would be how Mr. Ogbeh is able to leverage his experience and personal temper to build on the modest achievement of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, in which agricultural showman and designer minister, Akinwunmi Adesina, now president of African Development Bank (AfDB), held sway.

    In Solid Minerals, however, Kayode Fayemi would appear a curious pick.  In Foreign Affairs, he would have been a shoo-in, by virtue of his training and intellectual activism.  Still, he comes to the job with a federalist’s temper; and keen intellect.  A federalist’s temper is key; for over-centralising mining would appear a perpetual drag on exploiting solid minerals.

    Dr. Fayemi’s huge challenge, however, would be convincing a traditionally centrist-minded president to see reason in urgent laws liberalising mining, such that states can enter into that sector, with proven foreign partners, as economic growth areas, to deliver cash and value.

    It would appear therefore that infrastructure, agriculture and solid minerals would be the hub of this government’s economic policy, in its bid to diversify the economy and deepen the local economy.  This is not a bad idea, especially if the pivotal ministers stay on top of their game and deliver.

    Talking of delivering ministers, the advent of Mr. Fashola as power minister has marked the nose-diving of power supply.  The authorities say the fault is from the transmission network, alleging some sabotage.

    But if one were to use a Biblical allusion, the dip would appear not unlike Satan tempting the Christ to show his power, when during the week of temptation, he took Jesus to a great height and taunted him to perform a miracle, since he was  the son of God expected by all!

    The parallel?  Well, Fashola the golden boy of Lagos, entered with some anonymity — Fashola who?  But as minister, his fame was already founded on the solidity of his achievements in Lagos; and the razor-sharpness of his thinking.

    So, he faces huge expectations bordering on the magical, which could easily snowball into a crisis, especially as he operates in tasking times.  Yet, crisis time is when proven performers prove their mettle, particularly with a united administration behind him.

    That is why those who trumpet him as “prime minister” would do well to see the quantum of his job; and spend less time on the triumphalism founded trivia.  Besides, such would only make him needless enemies, within and without the administration.

    Let everyone therefore focus on value.  That way, there would be less time for needless yarns that can only confuse, confound and distract.

    The Buhari road is too rough, and the pains of longsuffering Nigerians too high, such costly distractions.