The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • NASS: Between legacy and careerists

    NASS: Between legacy and careerists

    In “Between APC and SDP” (June 16), Ripples noted the tactical error of trying to keep at bay, the New-Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) bloc of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    That sparked the Bukola Saraki-led parliamentary coup of June 9.

    But with the turn of events, and the nPDP elements now attempting to impose their own image on the National Assembly, has it transformed into a strategic blunder that could, in due course, nullify the Change Nigerians voted for on March 28?

    That chilling question is imperative because two grim dramas are unfolding from the APC crisis: the fierce struggle for the party’s soul (the subject of “Between APC and SDP”); and the emergence, from inside the ruling party, of two different blocs: the Legacy bloc (most likely to drive Change) and the Careerists (most likely to, all-movement-no-motion wise, leave things as they are).

    Gunning for the soul of APC, that boasts at best an ideological bric-a-brac, is neither unexpected nor illegitimate; and one dare says, the internal business of the varied tendencies in the party.

    But whichever faction ascends is the business of the polity; for Nigeria would rise or sink by it.

    If the pro-Change bloc wins, and radically pushes policies that would deliver a legacy of change for the better, Nigerians would have won with their March 28 heroics, that powered Muhammadu Buhari to the presidency.

    But if the Careerists win — careerists that jostle for self-political offices, without a corresponding improvement in the collective welfare — it would be much of the old same.  The March 28 mandate would then have been in vain; and millions of longsuffering Nigerians would, yet again, have lost.

    Given the vengeance and passion, with which Nigerians voted in March and April for change, that would be highly risky, if not outright fatal, for Nigeria — both for the entrenched establishment, and the  distraught rabble.

    Because Nigeria perches at a delicate historical juncture, that is the correct prism to view the high-voltage drama from the APC front — and not necessarily from the relative loss or win of the individuals involved in the combat.

    That, of course, throws the discourse right back to the dramatis personae.

    By rebelling against his party, and having bulk PDP votes with a smattering of his own APC’s elect him as senate president, what was Saraki guilty of?

    Realpolitik, his friends would coo: whatever lobby for influence that availed Ahmad Lawan his party’s backing also availed Saraki the push for support, inside and outside his own party.

    Treachery and perfidy, his foes would roar: even the best of individual intents should be subjugated to the collective good; and party discipline.

    That thrust-and-fence would perhaps do, particularly in a value-neuter milieu, where the vilest of conducts and the noblest of behaviours, on a single cause, are just two sides of a bloody controversy.  If in doubt, recall how the clear crime of annulling the free election of 12 June 1993 became the holy banner of anti-June 12 elements.

    With the media itself ever ready and willing (for whatever motive) to spin even the most abhorrent of conducts, the society’s value-blindness and deafness become even more alarming.

    Still, beyond contrived controversies, Saraki’s emergence as senate president; and his bloc’s spurning of rapprochement in the filling of other principal officers — winner-takes-all fashion — throw up troubling questions.

    Needless to say, the attempt by Saraki’s confederates in the House of Representatives, which Speaker Yakubu Dogara leads, to replicate a similar ploy, led to the June 25 uproar in the lower house.

    If APC’s nPDP bloc pressed their legitimate right to land vital positions in the new government (as reward for their electoral labour), why might they block the party’s bid for legitimate balancing, particularly after a sharp dispute, for the sake of peace founded on equity and fairness?

    That has exposed them to a not altogether illegitimate web of conspiracy theories, which clearly conflicts with President Buhari’s clear mandate for change.

    For starters, Saraki’s real blunder in the June 9 parliamentary coup was less in rebelling against his own party (as dire as that was for party discipline; in a new party elected on the mandate of urgent change in awful times); but more in selling out his party to PDP elements — PDP, with clear motives to block that change; and ensure APC’s utter failure.

    A fall-out of that sell-out was the emergence, as senate deputy president, of PDP’s Ike Ekweremadu.  Though an embattled Saraki has denied Ekweremadu’s election was a logical quip-pro-quo (which sounds disingenuous, to say the truth), the charge of treachery and perfidy is not helped by the grim prospect that when Saraki is not around, Ekweremadu bosses proceedings.

    Ekweremadu can be counted upon to stall the APC agenda.  Besides, by further defying their party and rejecting its preferred candidates for other APC National Assembly principal officers, outside senate president and deputy, the Saraki bloc would further split the party.

    Saraki would, therefore, find it hard to throw off the charge of playing an alleged Judas out to halt the APC momentum of change; and haul Nigerians’ future right into the dark past of careerists and soulless power adventurists.

    That, in Nigeria’s troubled political history, would dovetail into the decision of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua faction of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) to trade off the late MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate of 12 June 1993, for a sterile Interim National Government (ING) — with disastrous consequences, which the birthing of the current 4th Republic was programmed to correct.

    Other conspiracy theorists have even claimed Senator Saraki is only the visible face of an alleged northern irredentist bloc, trying to push yet again an alleged “born-to-rule” project.

    Ripples would find this claim rather implausible though, given the trouble June 12 (which tried to push this calamitous doctrine) caused the country; and the historic North-South West political entente that delivered the famous March 28 APC presidential win, to save the country from ruin.

    But whatever the facts or fiction, Senator Saraki, by his somewhat legal but hardly legitimate emergence as senate president, finds himself at the cusp of a cruel historical pigeon-hole — the man that arrested change, when change was imperative for a sinking Nigeria!

    That is why he must accommodate efforts at fair balancing by his party, in filling the remaining Senate principal offices.  On this score, the claim about stalling to avoid cohabiting with his “enemies” is balderdash.  Balancing senate principal offices is no ancestral feud.

    But history and judgements are in the long, long run.  Right now, there is a government to run; and our people to bail out.

    That is why President Buhari must step out and resolve this logjam — not necessarily for his feuding party, but for Nigerians who gave him a clear mandate for change.

    After due diligence, the president should weigh in on the side of the forces of legacy, against the careerists. That is his covenant with Nigerians; and that is what he should do.

    To do that, however, he might have to take the case directly to Nigerians, away from the feuding parliamentarians.

    ‘The president should weigh in on the side of the forces of legacy, against the careerists. That is his covenant with Nigerians’

     

  • Our Girls;  Educare Trust@21; President Buhari: We need a ‘Youth Centre’ in every ward, Pls

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15 2014. We pray for their safe return.

    A lesson from recent history about Educare Trust@21. From the late 70s my family was a member of The Group, a social association of 30 families bringing up a generation of children in Ibadan spearheaded by the vision and uniting strands of Dr Funso Onafowokan and Dr Dele Fawole. Back in 1994, we smarted under the terrorism and coming darkness of the then one week old Abacha Regime- ‘a change’. The exodus abroad which had started under Babangida as an economic refugee tide had become a flood with the addition of security refugees. The Abacha change motivated some additional members of the Group to get together in my sitting room every evening for six weeks. There we X-rayed the economic, agricultural, health and other problems associated with a maximum military regime. Having brainstormed on the low quality of everything including education in Nigeria under the military, we offered a raft of solutions. We wrote down nothing and remembered everything as we went ‘underground’ to implement various strategies for the survival of the citizens. In education it was decided to ‘do something’ to ‘change’ education. An NGO was needed as ‘Change Agent’ and Dr Toyosi, a distinguished private medical practitioner, agreed to be chairman only if I agreed to become the secretary. So 21 years ago, in 1994, a number of people held the inaugural meeting of the founding members and Educare Trust was born at the Department of Agricultural Biology, University of Ibadan on Thursday October 20, 1994. At that meeting, Professor Ayo Banjo generously pointed us in the right direction by saying that we should deal more with the foundation level of education than the tertiary education. Others at the first meeting included Dr Bayo Banjo, Engineer Palmer, Dr Mike Aken’Ova, Dr Dele Fawole and myself and Dr Raymond Zard who has remained the major pillar of support.

    Educare Trust’s first project was fixing the leaking roof of a primary school, Salvation Army Primary School, Yemetu, Ibadan at N360. Since then, the Trust has spent over N60m of its members’ funds and countless hours playing both grassroots on-hands and leadership roles in uplifting members of society showing that much can be achieved with little provided the will is strong.  

    After a couple of years of visiting schools for programmes and projects, the absence of a youth-friendly, edutainment (ET) centre in Nigeria was obvious as was the need to help fill the ‘ignorance gap’ about non-school subject material.  At the time the National Museum at Alalubosa, Ibadan dealt only with the ancient and the ET centre was to complement it by being both Ancient and Modern -a change agent.

    In 1997, the members set up The Educare Trust Youth Exhibition Centre (EYTC). It was in a space in Brick House, Bodija and the year’s rent was paid by Engineer Niran Fafowora.  Diana Johnson recruited our first employee, a bright young man Daniel Henshaw. On the principle that ‘a picture is worth 1,000 words’, the centre was equipped using material sourced from The Smithsonian and Welcome museums and exhibitions in the USA and UK; Thus a poster and wall chart exhibition was setup with education wall charts, display picture cards, Native American craft pieces, display boards, two aquaria and the first computer available to the youth in Ibadan and donated by Tunji Adepeju, brother of the late Kunle Adepeju killed by a stray bullet in front of Queens Hall UI back in 1971 when I was in UI.  The ETYC targeted children, young adults, teachers and parents. It was to challenge their minds to learn and exchange ideas and ‘eliminate ignorance’. The exhibition centre is multi-focal, multi-disciplinary and multi-ethnic to expose children and adults to their surroundings as well as the universe.

    Since it was opened, the Educare Trust Exhibition Centre has been an ignored and neglected TEMPLATE begging for individual, groups, communities, government, YOU and corporate bodies to use the huge available resources and, especially in CSR, to replicate in every ward, in Nigeria in different sizes. This will keep youth occupied and educated in non-text book subjects and life-skills. So far, most of the millions of Nigerians visiting or aware of Educare Trust and YOU have not taken up the ‘Challenge To Change The Educational Opportunities’ and spread the word and so millions are suffering ignorance and become prone to youth restiveness.

    On January 2nd, 1999 the centre was relocated to space in Goshen Building run by Mrs Toyin Marinho, Coca-Cola, Ibadan. After 10 years it moved to Our Lady of Apostles Secondary School Odo-Ona in 2010 for two years. Then Educare Trust was offered a Youth Centre built by PZ Cussons Foundation at N10.5m and we had to find the land which we eventually got from the Akala Government and the C of O followed under the Ajimobi Government.

    As Buhari, governors and other stakeholders ponder on solutions to youth restiveness and crime and plan for the changes in education, we offer a suggestion that ‘The Time of the Youth Centre’ as a powerful tool to change and empower the youth nationwide is NOW. All Nigeria’s 16,400 wards must have a Youth Centre, small or big, built by collective effort. You want a Youth Centre in your neighbourhood, don’t you? Replicate the success of Educare Trust@21.

    ‘As Buhari, governors and other stakeholders ponder on solutions to youth restiveness and crime and plan for the changes in education, we offer a suggestion that ‘The Time of the Youth Centre’ as a powerful tool to change and empower the youth nationwide is NOW. All Nigeria’s 16,400 wards must have a Youth Centre, small or big, built by collective effort’

    •  To be continued

  • APC, softly, softly

    The National Assembly is back to work after a two-week recess the members embarked upon shortly after the 8th Assembly was inaugurated on June 9. Immediately after the inauguration, the elections of the principal officers for both the Upper and Lower houses of the assembly took place amidst controversies. While the controversy surrounding the election of Yakubu Dogara as the Speaker of the House of Representatives and his deputy seems to have abated, that of the Senate President and his deputy continued to generate acrimony in the polity. Not even the behind-the-scene moves to find a workable solution to the impasse have yielded any fruitful result.

    The process through which Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu emerged as Senate President and Deputy Senate President respectively, have been faulted by the leadership of the All Progressives Congress, APC. However, what seems to have compounded the problem is the coming on board of Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President. The bone of contention is that the ‘selection’ of Ekweremadu, as Deputy Senate President may have given the party to which he belongs, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, an undue and probably, undeserved advantage in the emerging politics of change which the APC, as the ruling party at the centre, is desirous to enthrone in the country.

    The PDP had monopolised power at the centre for 16 years, beginning from the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1999. It held on to power until barely one month ago, specifically, on May 29, when it vacated the scene after it was ignominiously upstaged in the presidential election held on March 28. What the APC cannot understand is why Ekweremadu who had served for eight years in the same position was able to stage a comeback with ease under the new dispensation as Deputy Senate President. To many political observers, it means that nothing has really changed.

    All through the years the PDP was in control at the centre, the party never gave any chance to anybody outside its fold to taste power or even come near it at all. Also, they never pretended to run an inclusive or national government. It was a winner-takes-all type of arrangement throughout its period of power domination. This is probably why, to the APC and its teeming supporters, the present arrangement in the Senate appears not only to be absurd, but also quite unacceptable.

    The unfolding scenario has, so far, put the APC in a quandary. Though the party had had to grudgingly accept what it could not change after a lot of fuss in the wake of the happenings in the senate, now, the party’s anticipated panacea for achieving lasting peace has met a brick wall. In its attempt to resolve the logjam in the Senate, the APC had proposed that Ahmad Lawan, its anointed candidate for the post of Senate President and George Akume, his deputy, who had both lost out in the race, should become Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip respectively. But this has not gone down well with Saraki and his group who are sceptical that having the two rivals to the coveted Senate seat being so conspicuous in the Senate could pose a real danger of a deliberate ambush by those in the leadership of the party who are opposed to the present arrangement in the Upper House.

    With these developments, it is now very clear that all is not well with the APC, the rainbow coalition of political interest groups that succeeded in ousting the behemoth PDP at the centre in the last election. The coalition was spear-headed by the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. Other parties in the coalition were the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, the All Nigerian Peoples’ Party, ANPP and part of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA. There was also a splinter group of the PDP known as the New PDP, nPDP, which was put together by some disgruntled but ambitious members of the then-ruling PDP. The entrance of the nPDP with five serving PDP governors at that time as arrowheads, as well as a large number of PDP senators in tow, somehow, energised the coalition and completely altered the political equilibrium of the country.

    It would be recalled that though the PDP had a sizeable number of heavyweights and moneybags including a good geographical spread, nevertheless, the party lost the last election because of the absence of internal democracy within its ranks. This was the biggest factor that instigated the large number of defections from the party before the elections. The major complaint was that the party had indulged in the imposition of candidates for elective offices nationwide. Unfortunately, just a few weeks after the new President, Muhammadu Buhari, came to the saddle, the APC itself is embroiled in its first major test case as the ruling party.

    Long before the National Assembly elections or selections took place, the APC had been engulfed in disagreements over who gets what. It is doubtful if any genuine move was, at any time, undertaken to harmonise all the contending interests in the party in order to forestall the ugly episode that later came to play in the affairs of the National Assembly. At any rate, the uproar that has greeted the elections at the National Assembly should not be allowed to destabilise the party.

    In politics, there must be compromise and everybody must be carried along. Perhaps, if this had been done and/or carried out with sincerity of purpose, the mock elections conducted by the APC for the leadership positions in the National Assembly, which some of the members either boycotted or walked out of would not have been necessary. And if it was done as a last resort, unfortunately, it did not produce any amicable end to the raging disagreement as probably envisaged by the proponents. As a matter of fact, the current sad episode could have been avoided altogether.

    Politics is a game of wits and opportunities. Saraki and his supporters mainly from the PDP and a sprinkle of other senators only outwitted his opponents when he saw the golden opportunity to actualise his long-standing dream. It is his emergence as the Senate President that had a collateral effect on the election that took place in the Lower House. And since the President in his wisdom has declared the election of Saraki as constitutional but that the party’s decision could have been followed, what it means is that Buhari has tacitly endorsed the election of Saraki as Senate President.

    Whichever way this development is viewed by the leadership of the APC, there is a lesson to be learnt. The current development should provide the necessary opportunity and ammunition for the leadership of the APC to review and appraise its strategies, more so, now that they have transformed from being in opposition to being the ruling party.

    It is certain that there are many contending groups and interests within the APC as a party. In the situation the party now finds itself, only wise counsel can help to douse the current tension that has the propensity to envelope the party and make nonsense of its hard-earned victory in the last election.  The onus, therefore, is on the leadership of the party to properly harmonise the interests of the different groups under an acceptable formula that will ensure cohesion and lasting peace.

    Above all, the principle of give-and-take should be allowed to prevail. The way and manner the APC navigates the current stormy waters, would possibly determine its survival as a ruling party.

    ‘The current development in the National Assembly should provide the necessary opportunity and ammunition for the leadership of the APC to review and appraise its strategies, more so now that they have transformed from being in opposition to being the ruling party’

  • The tortuous road to public disclosure

    The tortuous road to public disclosure

    We have come a long way from that day in 1973, give or take a year, when Tai Solarin, the pre-eminent iconoclast and contrarian of his day, dialed up the Dodan Barracks switch board, introduced himself and asked a senior official how much the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, was earning by way of salary.

    A full minute of silence that seemed more like an hour greeted the inquiry.

    That was not a good sign.

    Then, in a voice rendered all the more menacing because its owner was obviously straining to contain his rage, the fellow at the other end asked if Solarin could repeat the question.

    A person of lesser specific gravity would have taken fright and hung up.  If the caller was the  less tenacious type, he would have apologised profusely for calling the wrong number.  For it was clear  that the person making such an inquiry had come dangerously close to crossing the thin line that separated legitimate inquiry from seditious libel, and could therefore expect to be visited with the consequences that would naturally flow from such temerity.

    But Solarin, being Solarin, repeated the question.  From his home in Ikenne, Solarin told his interlocutor, he had been able to gather data on the salaries of various government leaders worldwide from their countries’ embassies in Lagos by telephone. The comparative study, he said, would be incomplete without the Nigerian data.  And so, could the official kindly tell him General Yakubu Gowon’s official salary?

    “You want to know the salary of the Head of State?” the official asked in stunned disbelief.

    Solarin confirmed that that was indeed his mission, making matters worse by repeating the offence when the official had clearly given him an opening to back off.

    “And how is that your business?” the official pursued, still reeling from the caller’s contumacy.

    “As a citizen, I have . . .”

    “Cit’zen my foot,” the official cut in.  “This is how you people get yourselves into trouble.  Just imagine, wanting to know the salary of the Head of State.  Tell me, has the Head of State ever asked to know your salary?”

    “No, but . . .

    “Why then do you want to know the Head of State’s salary?”

    Whereupon, before Solarin could answer the question, the official warned severely that Solarin would have only himself to blame if he persisted in that line of inquiry.

    If the official earnings of the principal officers of state were classified secrets, inquiries about  their private holdings belonged in the realm of the forbidden.  A full 35 years would pass between Solarin’s audacious quest and a public declaration by a Nigerian head of state not only of his financial worth, but of his wife’s, too.

    By openly declaring his assets and liabilities, Malam Umaru Yar’Adua struck a blow for probity in public life.  He made that move, we are told, against the strenuous objections of the Code of Conduct Bureau, and, one suspects, also against dire warnings of the party bigwigs and freeloaders and the denizens of officialdom who have turned public service into an oxymoron.

    It is not the case, of course, that all was quiet on the probity front between Solarin and Yar’Adua.

    On the contrary, as a repudiation of the excesses of 13 years of military rule, and an indication that Nigeria was headed for a new order, the Constitution that ushered in the Second Republic in 1979 established a Code of Conduct Bureau.

    The intent was that the Bureau would demand, receive, hold and make available for the inspection of bona fide inquirers documents detailing the assets of public officers, thus helping to close the gap between official earnings and private accumulation and keep public officers on the straight and narrow path.

    But the institution was soon perverted.  Not many officials cared to comply. Where submitted, assets declarations were shrouded in bureaucratic secrecy.  Instead of limiting the Bureau’s remit to elected officials as framers of the Constitution probably intended, it was stretched to include civil servants from GL 10 upwards.  Thus, the Bureau’s capacity to process and store data was overstretched, and its watchdog function vitiated.

    The whole exercise was turned into a joke.  Middling civil servants who had virtually no assets to declare but were compelled to do so on pain of facing some bureaucratic sanction declared their wives, parents, siblings, husbands, grandparents, cousins, nephews, nieces and even their household pets as assets.

    Meanwhile the elected officials and political appointees the scheme was designed to rein in gorged themselves on the very resources they were supposed to hold in trust for the public.

    Of the officials who cared to comment on this travesty, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, then Chief  of General Staff in the Babangida regime, came closest in my view to providing a plausible  explanation.  There would be no end to the importunities of friends and relations if they knew  how much a public officer was worth.   Some wicked supplicants might even send witches after public officers they deem tight-fisted

    He might have added that some desperate elements might even have been able to conjure a public officer’s life savings out of the bank vaults by mere incantation.

    Clearly, it was not just the skinflints that had to be troubled by the danger of making their assets public.  Every public officer had cause to worry about calculating friends and relations,  to say nothing of adversaries.

    But they had a choice.  They could decline to hold public office.  They could faithfully proclaim their assets and extend their munificence to their relations and friends and hope thereby to earn their goodwill and their blessings.   Or they could hog it all and risk an everlasting curse.

    Today, we have some idea of what elected officials are paid officially, right up to allowances  for their wardrobe, for clearing their throats before they talk, for belching.and even for farting, for sitting, for standing and for every posture in between, for dozing off and for staying awake during meetings, for doing their work and for not doing it.   We know the special compensation the “hardship allowance” they receive for the unspeakably hazardous job of law-making.

    That is no small improvement.  But we still do not know what they are worth, although service in the public realm constitutes the sum total of their careers for the most part.

    Musa Yar’Adua has broken the mould.  If we discount the cash and material donations to his  presidential race such as it was, he is even far less affluent than the assets declaration seems to suggest.  All the nitpicking that has trailed the declaration is unwarranted.  He deserves praise  for this act of transparency.

    But despite some gestures from Kogi and a belated one from Zamfara, his example is unlikely  to prove contagious.  In fact, I will not be surprised if the National Assembly were to commence  impeachment proceedings against him one of these days because he made a public declaration of his assets and his wife’s, despite strong advice to the contrary.  Abuja, as he knows and as we know, moves in mysterious ways.

    One particular item on Yar’Adua’s assets declaration points distressingly to the unconscionable appropriations that a good many Nigerians have carried out in the name of public service.  It is an undeveloped parcel of land in Abuja, worth N50 million.  It was in the same Abuja that  Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, most recently secretary to the Federal Government, was invited to buy his official residence for a cool N360 million.  Persuaded that the offer was a mere formality and that the house was not meant for people of his means, he turned it down.

    And yet, in the same Abuja, members of the National Assembly auctioned to themselves, at a reported N11 million apiece, magnificent mansions meant to serve as official quarters for legislators. And in the same Abuja, the Senate has as its presiding officer a fellow who acquired one of the auctioned mansions but now lives, without twinge of conscience, in a presidential suite at public expense in a five-star hotel because he has no “official accommodation.”

    Unless Yar’Adua moves quickly to void this odious auction and other acts of expropriation  carried out in the name of privatisation and monetisation, his assets declaration will amount to  little more than a hollow ritual.

     

    First published in this newspaper on July 10, 2007, under the title “The long road to probity,” this comment is being republished, slightly revised, because of its contemporary resonance.

  • To President Buhari

    Good day, Your Excellency.

    I’m sorry, I have to dispense with long protocols in opening greetings.  But Mr. President, it is not for lack of respect.  It is rather due to the urgency of the situation.

    Besides, it is only the unthinking, in today’s Nigeria, that would not respect you.  In the midst of seeming paralysis, you appear the near-sole moral palladium, by whose name anyone can swear.  That is no mean feat, in the mass turpitude of contemporary Nigeria.

    Moral authority helps when in the midst of teeming amoral Lilliputians.  That comes handy to keep everyone in check.  But it hardly guarantees you a great presidency.

    So, allow me to ask: do you want to be a great president?  If you want to, please take your mind from the distracting drama swirling around you, especially from the National Assembly front.  Instead, x-ray your presidential predecessors, all fortunately members of the National Council of State (NCS).

    I mean no disrespect, Your Excellency.  Neither do I intend any malice towards any of the ex-leaders, now proud NCS members.  But if you must achieve change, the electoral mantra that romped you into power, against all establishment odds, you must make a clean break from how they ran affairs in their time.  Otherwise, Mr. President, you would end up like them: personages barely tolerated by their people but nevertheless propped up by the establishment.

    Take former President Olusegun Obasanjo, incidentally the closest of the lot, to your power trajectory.  Mr. President, only you and Chief Obasanjo have the distinction of ruling Nigeria, both as military heads of state and elected presidents.  Indeed, the Murtala-Obasanjo government, you will recall, was the one you traced your power DNA to, at your first coming on 31 December 1983.  But inasmuch as Gen. Obasanjo promised change, he delivered little of that.

    Proof?  Gen. Obasanjo attained distinction as the first African military strongman to hand over to an elected president as promised.  But what all that achieved was the collapse of the Shehu Shagari Presidency after only four years and three months, logging at its exit an egregiously rigged 1983 general elections.  You took over back then to, in your own very words, “clear the Augean stable”

    President Obasanjo’s second coming hardly fared better, though after his two-term, eight-year presidency, the present 4th Republic is hitting its 17th year, the longest democratic season in Nigeria’s history.  But that is about all the high point.

    The 2007 election, the transitional one from Obasanjo’s presidency to the late Umaru Yar’Adua’s, was even more soullessly rigged than 2003’s.  So, the cumulative crisis of illegitimacy, a combination of phoney elections and soulless governance, would produce Goodluck Jonathan, under whom the Nigerian state, from cumulative decay, was collapsing fast.

    But again, as it was in 1983, it is now your hard luck to clear the debris: the collapsed economy that has led most states to fail in their salary commitments; and even a more collapsed value system, with the Leviathan, Corruption, in your own words, set to “kill us, if we don’t kill it first”.

    Indeed, it is your pledge of David, to slay Corruption the Goliath, that rekindled the masses’ hope; and romped you into power on March 28.

    The other former helmsmen contributed their respective quotas to Nigeria’s woes.  Gen. Yakubu Gowon belonged to the military age of innocence.  Though he was a gentleman of gentlemen, his youthful mistakes continue to plague the country.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s power waywardness cost Nigeria dear.  Apart from the mass corruption his tenure enthroned, his unprecedented annulment of a free election almost torpedoed the country.

    Chief Ernest Shonekan is dear to his family and relations.  But in Nigeria’s power matrix, he continues to symbolise provocative subversion, of both the democratic principle and of fairness and equity, by accepting to head the so-called Interim National Government (ING) — which a court declared illegal — to wilfully subvert Abiola’s presidential mandate.

    Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar would probably bear on his conscience, to his grave, Chief Moshood Abiola’s sudden death in detention.  But he saved the military from further humiliation by, post-haste, leading them back to the barracks; and handing power to an elected presidency in 1999.

    As a unit then, this is an undistinguished group of leaders, even if, as individuals, they may be distinguished Nigerians.

    So, Mr. President: do you, at the end of your tenure, want to join this undistinguished group, barely tolerated by a longsuffering people? Or you really want to make a difference, as the Nigerian leader that finally made the long awaited change?

    From your exertions during electioneering, you would appear to want to make a difference.  If so, then you should, post-haste, jettison how they did things.  If they had acted right, you probably, at 72, would be enjoying sweet retirement and not worrying yourself about Nigeria’s eternal problems.  But now that you are out there, it would be double jeopardy indeed, should you fail — God forbid!

    That is why, Your Excellency, you should seize the moment.  Many are already saying you are slow.  I don’t buy that tale.  It is nothing but the Nigerian penchant for speed, even if it is brainless, rash and ultimately counter-productive.  Still, I just hope your so-called “slowness” is methodical — the hallmark of wisdom,  which abhors rashness.

    The mention of wisdom brings to mind the unsavoury drama playing out at the National Assembly, since the seeming rupture in your ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), since the election of the Senate president and House Speaker.

    Ostensibly to stanch the crisis, you have been swarmed by all sorts: former leaders desperately seeking relevance, professional sympathisers, eternal do-gooders and even mischief makers.  Phew, the din of the market must be ear-shattering!

    Still, after all the din, you have a government to run, a government that promised change; and a people impatiently waiting for that difference.  Failure is, therefore, not an option.

    That is why, Mr. President, you must maintain a clear head.  No matter what happens, you must not surrender your presidency to anyone.  You should also not allow anyone to come between you and your vice president.

    Despite the excitement in the Senate and House of Representatives, a united presidency, with the president seeing to politics; and the vice president bossing policy and getting his hands real dirty with bolts and nuts, may well be the key to your success.

    Please, please Mr. President, don’t let anyone give you the business-as-usual fable that the veepee is only a spare tyre. Everyone on your ticket must add value — and your veepee is nothing but solid gold.  So, mine it!

    If you succeed, Mr. President, you would have imprinted yourself in the hearts of Nigerians.  Not only that: you would have ennobled NCS as a true Areopagus: a heroic chamber of genuine Nigerian heroes, not a barely tolerated group of establishment drafts.

    May God gift you the wisdom and temperament to act right, Mr. President.

  • The wage crisis

    Aside ushering the chariot of change and its riders and with it the promise of new possibilities, the Fourth Republic should consider itself in great debt to Providence that the PDP’s quest to retain power at the centre was aborted on March 28. Imagine, we are not even a month into the new season; yet yesterday’s carefully orchestrated overstatements, lies and other prognostications about the economy are already coming apart – not incrementally as one might expect – but at the speed of light. Before now, we thought that things were bad enough – so bad that our tearful “reformer of the unreformable”, her imperial majesty, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, would deign to lament about “a deliberate attempt to sabotage the economy and bring it to a halt”. That was after she pronounced the whining debtor-governors fiscally irresponsible –never mind that her Finance Ministry had reportedly borrowed N473 billion in the course of four months to meet recurrent expenditure, including salaries and overheads for the workers in the federal bureaucracy.

    Merely from the look of things, the true picture of the actual shape of the economy has only begun to emerge. However, if we go by the findings by the Ahmed Joda-led transition committee, it is worse than previously imagined. Sure, Nigerians cannot now rightly claim ignorance of the industrial scale theft said to bleed the nation’s entire oil output by some 20 percent. After all, that was supposed to be the price for Jonathan’s absentee government and its indifferent, free-wheeling ways. What is new is the revelation that the spendthrift administration known to have earned more than previous administrations combined, actually left a N7 trillion hole – as against its claim of N1.3 trillion – in the treasury.

    Of course, we know the other factors gnawing away at the polity; two-thirds of the nation’s federating units already several months in arrears in their recurrent bills with majority having not the foggiest idea of how to get out the mess; there is also the shale revolution that has not only berthed in the current glut but has since eventuated in producer nations like Nigeria scampering to find new markets at the cost of marked discounts. By the way, could anyone have foreseen the 10 million barrels of Nigerian crude said to be stranded in foreign seas looking to find buyers three years ago? That of course is the new reality that we must live with.

    To say that things could hardly be worse is merely understating the obvious.

    Suddenly it’s like the nation is back to 1982/3. Then and now, oil was the trigger with corruption merely supplying the catalyst. As it was then, the economy was in deep crisis with civil servants owed arrears of salaries. President Shehu Shagari and his National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in their famed moon-slide had defied gravity by returning itself to power. For an answer to the grave crisis, the administration sought refuge in a hastily conceived Economic Stabilisation Act otherwise called austerity measures. The measures came in doses of massive cutbacks in public spending, rationalisation of the bureaucracy, rationing of essential commodities – measures that would seem ordinarily just fine except that they fell short in the areas that really matter – which is production to take care of the nation’s needs. As it would turn out, the economy simply plunged further and further into crisis until the military finally terminated the nightmares of the citizens in the hand of that clueless regime.

    The nation is luckier this time around. Like the old man Joda said, I shudder to imagine what would have happened had the PDP returned to power under the current circumstances. Imagine the utterly corrupt and unimaginative PDP federal government asking ordinary citizens to make further sacrifices after putting their future in jeopardy? That would be akin to a declaration of war.

    That is where the Buhari administration comes in. But then, as we are sooner going to be finding out, Providence can sometimes be a tough caller. Agreed, the new administration offers more than mere prospects of new beginnings; a golden opportunity for a national conversation about the missed opportunities and hence the prospect that a different path could be charted to the future.  That is as far as it goes. Nothing is guaranteed. So, as they say, the future is what we make of it!

    Aside not having the luxury of time, the Buhari administration would certainly be tasked in multiple fronts in the coming days. Most obvious is what to do with the issue of the bankrupt states.  Somehow, everyone seems to imagine that a bailout therapy would do some magic. Here, the argument goes that the Federal Government, as lender of last resort, can always get the Central Bank of Nigeria to use the traditional tool – ways and means – to fix the problem in the short term.   So what happens in the medium to long term? Put the affected states on the life support until things get better? And how far can we go in the use of the ways and means instrument which is basically about printing new notes without going the way of Zimbabwe where you require a glistening one hundred trillion dollar bill to pay for a lunch pack for two?

    I certainly do not envy the administration.

    The other issue is what to do with the fuel subsidy which currently saps the nation of a sizeable chunk of its vital juice. Again, given the state of the nation’s finances, I do not think that the options are open-ended. As it stands, it is one demon that the administration would have to confront headlong as soon as possible.  We have certainly gone past the debate on whether or not to let go of the subsidy. It is as wasteful as it is unsustainable.  The same goes for the refineries said to have been primed to resume production in the coming weeks; the news of their imminent restoration should merely come with the prospect of enhanced value at sale. It is time to let go of all of them.

    What about stripping the Leviathan – the Federal Government – of a part of its 54 percent share from the federation account? I agree that it might be necessary at some point; however, if you ask me, I would say it is merely facet of the sharing mentality that has produced the club of leeches called states. The same about the need to revamp states tax infrastructure. Surely, these are ordinary governance issues which require no emergency to either contemplate or undertake. But then, the much we know is that Nigeria has never been under anything but an emergency.

  • June 12, 1993, and June 9, 2015

    June 12, 1993, and June 9, 2015

    The June 12, 1993 presidential election heralded a new dawn in Nigerian politics.

    Forsaking tribe and tongue and creed and station, a decisive majority of Nigerians voted to entrust their destinies to the Muslim-Muslim ticket of Bashorun MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe, of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

    In eight years of virtually unchallenged rule, the duplicitous regime of military president  Ibrahim Babangida had led Nigeria to the edge of economic ruin and destroyed the value system. The election offered Nigeria a chance to chart a new course, founded on the principle that governance shall be based on the consent of the people freely given.

    Babangida annulled the election, with help from a suborned faction of the SDP, which was only too willing to bargain away its electoral victory and with it, the hopes and aspirations of millions of Nigerians who had given it their mandate.

    The rest is history.

    Of the many political figures complicit in the annulment, two have not only remained in circulation, their stock has risen.  I have in mind Brigadier General David Mark who, as a key player in the Babangida regime, is on record as having vowed to shoot Abiola to death if Abiola was allowed to take power

    David Mark has served as a member of the Senate for 16 years and as its president for the last eight, in which latter capacity he designated himself or was designated His Excellency the Right Honourable David Mark.

    I have also in mind Chief Tony Anenih, whose renown as a fixer had been established long before he took the leading part, as national chairman of the SDP, in bargaining away the party’s victory in the 1993 presidential election. He has since then made a lucrative career as a fixer for every season.

    Wherever a political job of the most unsavoury kind is to be done, like turning winners into losers and losers into winners, there you will find Anenih in his true element.

    In a way, June 8, 2015, some 22 years removed from the historic 1993 poll, also signalised a new dawn. The two houses of the legislature were to be inaugurated under new management as it were, the APC having wrested them decisively from the PDP.  These are the organs through which the APC was going to pursue the agenda of Change on which it had fought and won the election.

    To drive the agenda and pursue it faithfully, the APC had to have as the heads of these organs persons whose dedication, loyalty and commitment it can vouch for. In its judgment, Bukola Saraki did not pass that test. He had brought considerable assets to the APC through the ACN when he defected from the PDP, but he was for all kinds of reasons not his party’s candidate for Senate president.

    As if to prove prescient those elements in the APC who thought him unfit for that high office and to confirm what his fellow Ilorin kinsman Is’haq Moddibo Kawu has written about him, namely, that the only thing Saraki cares about is Saraki, the aspirant surreptitiously cut a deal with the PDP minority, which then voted en bloc with some renegades in the APC to steamroll him to the third rank in the national order of precedence.

    To get this dubious support, Saraki bargained away to the PDP the APC’s prerogative of selecting the deputy senate president from its own ranks. And in grateful appreciation of his role in facilitating this tawdry enterprise, the conclave elected David Mark “leader” of the   Senate, a position that does not exist. A little bankrolling also helped, I gathered.

    It took 57 of 108 senators, all the 49 from the PDP and eight from the APC, presumably including Saraki, to consummate this subversive deal. There was no dissenting vote. Before many in the attentive audience realised what was going on, Saraki was already ensconced in the Senate president’s chair and wielding the gavel.

    Such was the rush, the indecent haste with which an event that should have resonated with solemnity and symbolism came across instead as the parliamentary equivalent of a street mugging.

    The 51 APC senators who were not on the floor had not willfully absented themselves.  They were assembled at another venue, to which all APC senators had been summoned, for an appeal by President Muhammadu Buhari for party unity in the run-up to the election of leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

    Saraki may still have won if the election had been conducted with all APC members present and voting. But Saraki being Saraki, he left nothing to chance. Why wait for a vote of the full house and an uncertain outcome when you can achieve your goal through a Faustian bargain?

    As in the 1993 presidential election, David Mark, and according to media reports Tony Anenih, who was brought out of retirement to do what he does best, played pivotal roles in up-ending established process to achieve partisan, if not personal goals.

    It is in truth scandalous that David Mark who had served in the Senate since it was set up 16 years ago and presided over it for eight aided and abetted this flagrant abuse of process when he should have stood up robustly for propriety.  Where was the “elder statesman” in him?

    There was a time when the standard justification for a military coup was that politicians or the political class had learned no lessons. Were any lessons taught?

    The storied careers of David Mark and Tony Anenih, and indeed Bukola Saraki, whose rap sheet with the EFCC is about a mile long, show clearly that no lessons were taught. That is why Nigeria has been going round and round in an ever -shrinking circle.

    The usual pettifoggers have been justifying Saraki’s coup – for that is what it is at bottom —claiming that it accords with the rules and regulations in force. Even President Buhari has said that it was “somewhat constitutional.”

    Everything Saraki did may well have accorded with the letter of the law. But did it also accord with the spirit of the law?  And is fidelity to the spirit of the law not as important as, if not more important than, fidelity to the letter of the law? Fidelity to the letter of the law, like the sleep of reason, often brings forth monstrosities like the 12 and 2/3 formula that the Supreme Court relied upon to determine the winner of the 1979 presidential election.

    When the “anything goes” brigade claims that the coup is good for democracy because it will ensure the independence of the legislature, the retort must be: Independence from whom or from what? Independence for what?

    To return to the June 12, 1993 presidential election, the 22nd anniversary of which was marked last Friday largely in the Yoruba country:  President Buhari’s acknowledgement was a desultory tweet that had all the markings of an afterthought.

    We now know, thanks to Humphrey Nwosu who conducted the poll, that Abiola won it indissolubly. So, the claim that the election was “inconclusive” is no longer tenable.

    Nor can anyone in good faith now refer to Abiola as the “presumed winner” of that election. In the books of the National Electoral Commission, and in the records of accredited observers, domestic and foreign, Abiola was the actual, outright, undisputed winner, in truth a president-elect, a president–in-waiting.

    He died defending his mandate, after years of detention in solitary confinement, in the most barbarous of conditions. He rejected shabby and ignoble compromise, the kind that Saraki embraced to win election as Senate president.

    A long line of Nigerian rulers, from Babangida to Abdulsalami Abubakar, through Ernest Shonekan and Sani Abacha, suborned the institutions and instrumentalities of the state to persecute, and ultimately murder Abiola and his wife Kudirat, not sparing his global business empire, all because he won an election and would not surrender the people’s mandate.

    There is only one way to expiate this crime.

    It begins with Nigerian state marshalling all its institutions to acknowledge and honour that indissoluble fact.

    Thereafter, it should officially recognise Abiola as a president-elect who died before he could take office, and accord him all the rights and privileges of a president.

  • Between APC and SDP

    The June 9 National Assembly showdown, in which All Progressives’ Congress (APC) rebel elements routed the party’s official choices, underscores the eerie parallel between the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) of the still-birth 3rd Republic and APC.

    In the face of conservatives’ clear failure in governance, SDP and APC dangled the progressive charm (Nigeria-speak for left-of-centre welfarist ideology); and both struck a chord among the longsuffering electorate.

    Both were cobbled together, but in different circumstances.

    SDP, by a hectoring Ibrahim Babangida military presidency, which sly transition programme wanted to sell Nigerians a pig in a poke.  With the IBB junta rejecting all freely formed political bodies as registered political parties, but imposing own SDP (“a little to the left”) and National Republican Convention (NRC — “a little to the right”), the legacy People’s Solidarity Party (PSP) and People’s Front (PF) forged a somewhat forced union.

    And APC, by a sinking but arrogant ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which forced a free merger, among no less than four opposition political parties — the first successful fusion (as distinct from electoral alliance) in Nigerian political history.

    Coming together were Bola Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), much wilted All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) and a faction of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), led by Imo Governor, Rochas Okorocha.  A faction of the disintegrating PDP, which dubbed itself the New PDP (nPDP), would later join the merger, with the defection of five PDP governors.

    What happened on June 9 was, therefore, the legacy segments fiercely battling for the APC soul.

    At SDP, the wrong elements captured the party’s soul.  This was clear from how the SDP national executive traded away its 12 June 1993 presidential mandate, which Chief MKO Abiola won.  The crisis that followed the reckless annulment of that election forced Nigeria to its knees.

    Has APC made a better choice than SDP, with the extant balance of forces?  Time will tell.

    But back to SDP.  PSP, a bastion of Western Nigeria Awoists with friends nationwide, fused with PF, the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua’s sole power machine.  Though PF had cells nationwide, it was fiercely supported too by young, upwardly mobile professionals from Western Nigeria.  In this group was a certain young Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    Though these “new breed” politicians shared the Awo progressive ideals (as reportedly Gen. Yar’Adua; as he was reputed to have initiated an Awo-Northern elements rapprochement for the 1983 presidential election), they were loath to queue behind the ageing Awo establishment, with their alleged penchant to impose candidates.

    So, when elections into SDP offices came, the richer and more cohesive PF swept the posts, even if, to PSP, they were the smaller partners.  That in itself was not bad.

    The tragedy, however, would come with the June 12 annulment crunch.   Yar’Adua, the PF leader, must have felt MKO’s mandate annulment (though after a presidential election) had cancelled out his own putative SDP presidential candidacy (a process IBB also arbitrarily cancelled), so SDP could start on a clean slate by embracing IBB’s dubious Interim National Government (ING), pending the conduct of another election!

    Though Yar’Adua would die in prison from the political complications that arose from the June 12 crisis, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar would carry on the PF banner, albeit under another name, People’s Democratic Movement (PDM).  But in parting ways with PF during the June 12 crisis, Asiwaju Tinubu would find his own political life.  Ironically, both Atiku and Tinubu were involved in the June 9 showdown.

    So, was the APC’s then an eerie reincarnation of the SDP power struggle?  Not exactly.  Yes, June 9 was a fierce struggle for APC’s soul.  But no, the details were much different.

    For starters, SDP self-aborted after winning power, but before forming government.  The APC excitement is coming after it has formed government, but before delivering on its campaign promises.

    Still, the root would appear a tactical mistake of not appearing to accommodate elements of the nPDP and Governor Okorocha’s APGA faction, in sharing the National Assembly offices.  Heretofore, ANPP provided the chairman in John Odigie-Oyegun (though popular sentiments have it that he got the post less because of his party but more by his personal integrity), CPC produced the presidential candidate in President Buhari and ACN, the vice-presidential candidate in Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

    Somehow, Tinubu’s hands were seen in all three; as in the party’s endorsement of Ahmad Lawan for Senate president and Femi Gbajabiamila, as House of Representatives Speaker.  Mr. Gbajabiamila though, as former minority leader, had built a robust pro-people profile, at the height of PDP rule.

    The Tinubu camp maintains, with the SDP experience, the former Lagos governor only wanted APC legislative chieftains to be trusted hands; to deliver swift legislative support for the party’s campaign promises.  Even then, the APC preferred candidates both belonged to the CPC/ACN tendencies.  That not only united Tinubu’s enemies, inside and outside APC, it also lent the APC national leader to combustible allegations of wanting to “corner” the party and “encircle” the president.

    At the end, the nPDP bloc installed their own as parliamentary chiefs: Bukola Saraki as senate president and Yakubu Dogara, as Speaker.

    But that came at the hideous allegation of treachery — Saraki virtually trading off his own APC faction for bulk PDP support, that somewhat echoed the 19th century Ilorin Alimi-Afonja betrayal; and even Senator Saraki’s own political regicide with his late father, the Oloye.

    What is more?  The emergence of Ike Ekweremadu, totem of the Saraki-PDP trade-off as deputy senate president, has given the South East a toe-hold in a government they massively voted against.  Though that might gall emotionally,  it is not necessarily bad, with good faith.

    But from Senator Ekweremadu’s triumphalist crowing after, that seems unlikely.  Besides, any attempt to tell loyal South East APC elements that in Ekweremadu they have had their quota, would lead to massive restiveness and discontent.   Both might, in due course, come back to haunt Saraki — and the ruling party.

    The APC balance of forces right now?  It is a CPC/ACN executive versus an nPDP legislature, with ANPP as party chair!  For institutional check-and-balances, that would appear not so bad — again, if there is good faith.  But why would a wounded PDP want APC to succeed?

    If the APC threat to “deal with” rebel elements drives the Saraki coalition further into the subversive warmth of the old PDP, then the Buhari Presidency could not have made a worse start. But with good faith and common sense on both sides, the party’s tactical error need not lead to strategic doom.

    Unfortunately, common sense is not so common — not among emotive and feuding politicians!

    Still, let both sides of the divide know.  After June 12 and the hash the PDP made of the post-1999 Army Arrangement, the Buhari Presidency is the best electoral recipe to get Nigeria back on track, sans a radical constitutional re-tinkering to reconstruct Nigeria, on radical federal lines.

    If Buhari fails, it would be more than a failed government.  Indeed, it would be the final failure of a troubled country — with all the dire consequences.

    ‘After June 12 and the hash PDP made of the post-1999 Army Arrangement, the Buhari Presidency is the best electoral recipe to get Nigeria back on track’

     

  • Ekiti: The conquistador at work

    Ekiti: The conquistador at work

    Governor Ayo Fayose sealed his conquest of Ekiti State with a victory parade through the streets of the capital, Ado Ekiti, last Friday, with a declaration and a warning.

    Declaration:  “I am a man destined for greatness and with the power of God, nobody can bring me down. I have defeated my enemies (emphasis added) during elections, and now I defeated impeachment.”

    Warning:   “Whoever thinks he could impeach his governor and the Deputy for him to become the Acting Governor always ends being destroyed. You have to learn from history. Those who impeached me the other time have died politically today.”

    Fayose’s election on the platform of the PDP in June 2014 was the first in a long line of the conquests that have now established him as a modern-day conquistador.  He conquered the incumbent governor, Dr  Kayode Fayemi, and the ruling ACN.

    But that stunning conquest was not enough.  At his inauguration, fresh from taking a solemn oath to serve all the people of Ekiti faithfully, to be governor for all and not just his supporters, he vowed to drive out the ACN out of the South West, its traditional stronghold in the short term, and thereafter out of Nigeria.

    As rule, conquerors don’t like sharing territory or power.   It is everything or nothing.  But here was Fayose, PDP governor, facing the daunting prospect of having to cohabit with a 27-member State Assembly, all of them elected on the platform of the ACN before it fused with other parties to morph into the APC.

    By sundry inducements, he won seven of the 26 to his side.  Bolstered by hired ruffians pretending to be members of the assembly and cheered on by a rented crowd, the seven promptly “impeached” the Speaker of the Assembly, Dr Adewale Omirin, elected one of their own to replace him, and proceeded to exercise the authority of the legislative branch.

    The police dutifully provided cover for the proceedings and, together with Fayose’s people – truck drivers, motor-cycle taxi operators, truck drivers, motor-park touts, artisans, petty traders, the usual crowd, you know – barricaded the precincts to keep away bona fide members of the Assembly.

    If you cannot persuade a person to be your friend, the Italian philosopher Niccolo Machievelli laid it down six centuries ago in his manual on how to win, exercise and retain power, make it impossible for that person to be your adversary.

    This piece of wisdom probably came naturally to Fayose, who has no patience with book learning, which he regards as the opium of the elite.  He made Ekiti unsafe for the 19 legislators who would not bend to his will.  They fled to the safer and more hospitable clime of Lagos, there to continue the struggle through the judicial process to regain their place in the Ekiti Assembly, and thereafter use that platform to impeach Fayose who had had treated that institution with such blazing contempt.

    They never returned.  He mobilized his supporters to blockade highways leading into Ado Edo Ekiti to ensure that they could not return to the city under any guise or disguise.  And in case they somehow slipped through the cordon, they would run smack into another band of Fayose’s enforcers from whom they could expect no mercy

    Score that not just as a coup but as another conquest for Fayose – conquest of the legislature.  But even that would be understating the matter:  It was a victory against the right of free movement of persons and lawful goods across the territory of Nigeria or any portion thereof

    There remained that other pesky third branch, the judiciary. Down the ages, no self-respecting conquistador has ever allowed it to function without interference, much less one marked for greatness by Providence, and against whom all weapons fashioned by the enemy will fail.  So, the judiciary had to be conquered, too.

    That turned out to be the easiest task on the conquistador’s agenda.

    Set your enforcers on the hallowed chambers of the court house in the state capital to harass, intimidate and bully, roughen up and physically assault its officers, rend their robes and tear up court documents.  Instill fear in them, those court officials in ermined raiments and black robes; primal fear, from which the police cannot deliver them.

    The heavens did not fall.  Rather it was the court officials that fell, and with them the machinery of justice in Ekiti State.  Score that as yet another one for the conquistador:  conquest of the judiciary.

    Nor were these Fayose’s only conquests.

    He conquered accountability.  He claimed to have sunk close to a billion Naira on, of all things, an “integrated poultry project.”  The scheme did not produce a single egg; yet, he could not be called to account, just as he has not had to account for operating the exchequer without lawful authority.

    He conquered truth, by knowingly deploying falsehood so readily and so often that can no longer distinguish between actuality and his own fabrications

    He conquered honour.  “Call me a bastard if Buhari ever becomes president of Nigeria,” he said during the election campaign.  Buhari took office nearly two weeks ago, but Fayose is yet to change his name.

    He conquered dissent.  By their support, he said during his latest victory lap, his enforcers had proved that “Ekiti will continue to speak with one voice.”  Fayose’s voice.

    He conquered and forced into a shameful silence or abject capitulation traditional rulers and elders, the custodians, if they are true to their station, of the mores, the value system of society.

    Every one of these conquests was undergirded by Fayose’s  earlier conquest of the rule of law and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, with the active support of the Jonathan Administration and the PDP, the deluded holdovers of which have been threatening lately to resist any attempt to undermine “democracy” and the rule of law and all that in Ekiti.

    Fayose even conquered the most fundamental of decencies –the respect indeed reverence, that each person owes his or her mother’s privacy.  Just to score a political point, he told the whole  world that his mother suffered from an affliction of an intimate kind that is rarely mentioned in traditional society outside family circles and even there only in whispers.

    In sum, he has conquered all that is noble and decent and of good report.

    All that remains for Fayose the Conquistador is to conquer himself.  Unless and until he does that, all his vaunted conquests will vanish before his very eyes like rainbow gold.  The monsters he has spent his entire political life creating and nurturing may well devour him.

  • Ambode and King Solomon’s complex

    Akinwunmi Ambode, the new Lagos governor may, Bible-speak, have gained a “settled kingdom”, where much seems to work.

    Everybody perhaps would remember Babatunde Fashola, SAN, immediate past governor, who bolted off the starting blocks, zoomed through an eight-year gubernatorial marathon like a sprint, and breasted the tape hardly betraying any fatigue.

    But perhaps a little less would remember Bola Tinubu.  Back in 1999 and 2007, Asiwaju Tinubu’s power advent and exit were much less dramatic — and much more traumatic.

    In 1999, he was transitional governor from the military, that collapsed about everything.  True Buba Marwa, Tinubu’s immediate predecessor and retired Army brigadier-general, proved his own mettle.  But all was ad hoc, “military standard” that could hardly be built upon.  So, Governor Tinubu’s starting point was much slower and less dramatic.

    In 2007, Tinubu’s exit was no less sluggish.

    On the politics front, he was emerging from the bruising battle with a bully Federal Government, under President Olusegun Obasanjo.  Obasanjo illegally seized Lagos council funds, to bring Tinubu’s government to heel, over its creation of additional 37 local governments.  But the council funds battle was under a wider war, by the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to crush the opposition, of which Tinubu was chief irritant.

    On the policy front, the Lagos metropolis was a vast work-in-progress.  Yes, much of the Lagos Business District (LBD) infrastructure renewal had been completed, with the out-going Governor Tinubu commissioning the Tinubu Square fountain and adjoining works, at the very dusk of his governorship.  But much of Lagos was still dug up for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) tracks.  From exiting Tinubu to Lagos then, it was a trauma of rebirth.

    And with trauma, there is less drama.

    But the BRT offered Mr. Fashola his proverbial low hanging fruits, with which he hit the ground running.  In virtually no time, he would make his signal presence on the environment, greening the hitherto grey Lagos Marina; and in the night, dressing it in a blaze of lighting, to Lagosians’ lusty cheer but criminals’ dire gripe.

    He would later stamp his inimitable persona of governor as rigorous thinker: lighting up major highways at night; birthing a landmark public-private sector security innovation that made Lagos a safe haven, in a desert of violent crimes; spearheading the Ebola rapid response and curtailment that earned global applause; orchestrating the swift reaction to the Dana Air crash, gifting victims immediate relief; imposing the governor as passionate environmental freak, creating numerous gardens and parks all over the metropolis; staging the yearly Lagos Black Heritage Festival — on the surface a Brazilian-like carnival, but really a practical report card of state-trained artisans in varied skills, who design and sew the carnival costumes; and near-magically reclaiming Oshodi from a den of traders, staking their democratic right to corner a major highway as illicit mart.

    You bet nobody now remembers the notorious Oshodi gridlock, that virtually closed down the vital Agege-Motor road — pit black at night, where muggers, petty robbers and pickpockets made hay!

    Just as even less remember those bad, bad days, back in 1999, when Lagos was a mountain of refuse, a rubble of broken infrastructure, a bastion of crime and epitome of sheer paralysis, which former President Obasanjo once infamously dismissed as a “jungle”!

    Why, a populist attempt at security almost backfired!  The new Tinubu government changed the Marwa elite crime busting squad from Operation Sweep to Rapid Response Force, only for somebody to realise you could not have another force inside the police force!  So, the new name became Rapid Response Squad (RRS).

    That prompted many an impatient media analyst to dismiss the Tinubu government — just as not a few, even in the informed media, are already dismissing the new Buhari presidency — as long in sloganeering but painfully short in innovative ideas.

    Even, Tinubu’s starting billboard ad, likening him to the Indian Mahatma Gandhi and the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, playing on the similar shape of the pair of glasses the trio wore, became a butt of jokes.

    That jeer would last for no less than two years, during which the Tinubu government dug deep and came up with new sustainable developmental paradigms: the Oracle computerisation to plug leaks in the salary bill, the public-private-participation model in waste management and, of course, the revolutionary tactics to drive up internally generated revenue (IGR), that would lay the foundation for Lagos’ partial financial independence, while most other states succumbed to the financial profligacy of the Goodluck Jonathan presidential years.

    Between Tinubu and Fashola then, a biblical parallel.  Tinubu was the David that built the kingdom from scratch: and fought all of the wars, politics and policy.

    Fashola was the near-Solomon.  A relatively settled polis provided a launch pad for his brilliant policies, vaulting Lagos as a national poster boy of sane governance, though Fashola’s Solomon-like policy harshness, in some areas, would make many wish he was imbued with higher emotional intelligence.  Still, he brilliantly fulfilled his moniker of the “Actualiser”.

    So, where comes Mr. Ambode in all of this?  That is a tough one.

    Not for him the strategic lethargy of Tinubu’s entry and exit.  Not for him the blistering brilliance of Fashola’s gubernatorial sprint.  Just a humdrum entry — less to do with his own putative brilliance, but  more with the joyful sadness that things appear settled and placid.

    Just as well Mr. Ambode has prayed for the wisdom of Solomon during his tenure.  Indeed, he would need some Solomon complex to make his own mark in post-1999 Lagos.

    Still, a Solomon syndrome is a double-edge sword.  Solomon was the wisest man in history, who drove unprecedented prosperity in a secure Israel.  But his idolatry and policy harshness also tore up the kingdom of David.

    The comfort though — and that comfort is not at all cold! — is that Ambode has been pretty much an insider, in the renascent post-1999 Lagos.  As Lagos accountant-general, he was key to the financial re-engineering of the Bola Tinubu years.

    Indeed, during the fierce council funds war, he was there, a dutiful civil service technocrat, helping his political masters to create an adequate fiscal response to the dire emergency.

    But there is a gulf between stepping out to call the shots and orchestrating things from the hot comfort of the policy room.

    So, Mr. Ambode’s power-entry strategy could well be ensuring those Fashola-era policies click even more tick-tock: inviolability of BRT tracks, keep suicidal Okada riders off the highways, a zero tolerance for crimes, a special eye on Oshodi and its traffic-subversive traders, further greening and clean-up of Lagos —  generally consolidating the old order.

    Then, an aggressive tackle of inner-city roads, an area many a critic insists Fashola did not do so well.

    But Ambode’s entry big-bang may well be the delivery of the light rain mass transit, which Tinubu conceived and Fashola had been working on.

    On that, President Muhamadu Buhari owes Lagos.  His first coming as military head of state scrapped the Jakande-era Lagos Metroline project.  Governor Ambode must leverage on party amity and Lagos’ special status to ensure Buhari’s second coming rights that historic wrong.