The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Here, there, and yonder

    Here, there, and yonder

    What a difference an umbrella makes – any umbrella, but the Umbrella of the PDP especially.

    If you are standing under it, you are protected against the law and the Constitution, to say nothing of the ordinary annoyances and vagaries of life in Nigeria. In fact, I m almost prepared to insist that you are the law and the Constitution.

    Step outside it voluntarily or involuntarily, and you instantly become a prime illustration of the instability of human greatness, bereft of any rights that the law and the Constitution are obliged to respect or protect.

    When he was comfortably ensconced under the protective canopy of the PDP Umbrella first as unelected governor of the State of Osun, retired Brigadier-General (Prince) Olagunsoye Oyinlola was for all practicaly purposes the law. His every utterance was an edict. He could make and unmake, without having to answer to anyone. He had his way on practically every issue.

    Continuing a practice he had inaugurated as military administrator of Lagos State, he turned Okuku Day into one of the most prominent signposts on the nation’s calendar. On that day, grateful contractors, desperate supplicants, plain hustlers, and all manner of influence-peddlers assembled in his place of birth and tried to outdo one another in contrived gestures of solidarity and philanthropy,

    Perhaps they still observe Okuku Day but, like Ibogun Day which brought national and international attention to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s birthplace when he was in office, it is no longer what it used to be.

    All those ingrates! If invited, hardly any person who used to flock to Ibogun and Okuku will show up today, much less make pledges that they have no intention of redeeming. But while the applause lasted, those towns occupied the spotlight as never before – nor since.

    In his latter career as national secretary of the PDP, Oyinlola also wielded enormous powers that only the wishes and desires of those who belong in the upper echelons of the party could countermand. If you did not belong in that group, you learned not to mess with him.

    Then, Oyinlola found himself, along with other dissidents, outside the Umbrella, in circumstances not entirely of his own making, and a different reality set in.

    Men who once had the power to deploy the police to break up any assembly, however lawful, and did not hesitate to exercise it, found themselves obliged to tell a lie to keep the police from breaking up their perfectly lawful assembly.

    According to Oyinlola, the breakaway faction of the PDP, which calls itself the New PDP, could assemble at the Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja and elect its officers only because they had given the authorities to understand that the facility was going to be used for a wedding reception.

    They should not exult yet. For all I know, in the on-going war of attrition between those standing under the Umbrella and those operating outside it, Oyinlola and company may yet be charged with gaining entry into a restricted facility under false pretences.

    Next time they meet, they should announce to the world that the purpose is to generate ideas to help Her Excellency the Lady of the Rock realise her agenda of women empowerment and peace building. Heaven help the police officer or government official who would be temerarious enough to question the motives of those assembled for such a purpose.

    I was also going to suggest that if, for their next meeting, the New PDP could put it out that they were gathering to offer prayers for peace, stability and prosperity in Nigeria, with General Yakubu Gowon billed to deliver the invocation, the forces of law and order would keep a respectful distance from the event.

    But a certain diffidence supervened when I was reminded of what happened to a group in Swaziland which had fashioned such a pretext for staging a political meeting, something that the king of the Swazis categorically forbids. The purpose, they said, was to offer prayers for peace and prosperity in the land.

    The Swazi authorities were not fooled.

    The police swooped on the scene and disbanded the group on the perfectly sensible grounds that, first, there was no turmoil in the land, no conflict, no street protests to warrant such public supplication, and second, that offering payers for the nation’s prosperity carried the dark and impermissible imputation that the economy was not being run adroitly.

    Go back to your homes and say your prayers there as fervently and for as long as you wish, the police admonished them sternly.

    Since news travels so fast these days and bad practices travel even faster, the authorities in Abuja may well have heard of this incident and foreclosed a resort to such tactics by those who had taken themselves outside the protective canopy of the biggest Umbrella in Africa.

    Even if they should now say that their secretariat building the police prevented them from commissioning the other day is in fact designed to mobilise support for the PDP’s transformation agenda to ensure a landslide victory in the 2015 general elections, it is doubtful whether they will be allowed to proceed. The authorities are taking no chances.

    And after what happened to him last week, the beleaguered governor of Rivers State, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, must know that he has lost the protection of the big Umbrella irretrievably, and that nothing will avail him a place under it again.

    The police would not even let his convoy take the usual route to his official residence. A public relations officer for the Force, obviously seeking to distance the police from the act, ended up actually deepening the confusion. No blockade took place, she said. And no order for a blockade was given by the state commissioner of police, according to the officer, DSP Angela Agabe.

    Now, if the Commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, Abuja’s point man in Rivers State and Governor Amaechi’s sworn adversary, did not order the blockade, who did? Who is in charge?

    Adding to the confusion, another account quoted the police on the scene as saying that Amaechi’s convoy would be allowed to move on only if Mbu gave an order to that effect. But it he had not ordered a blockade in the first place, why would they require his approval to lift it?

    The police order, it now seems in retrospect, was designed to block access to Amaechi’s former campaign headquarters, lately converted to the state secretariat of the New PDP. As the authorities might well argue, Amaechi suffered nothing worse than collateral damage, and was, in any case still able to get to his residence through another route; so, where was the so-called blockade?

    Collateral damage is also what some of the former ministers whom President Goodluck Jonathan dropped curtly from his Cabinet last week suffered, especially those of them who owed their positions to persons no longer entitled to the protection of the Big Umbrella. Some among them were no doubt casualties of the Administration’s preference for loyalty over competence.

    According to a leaked account, one of the ex-ministers badgered parastatals reporting to him or her into contributing N17 million to buy an SUV for his or her personal use.

    Don’t count on Dr Jonathan to refer the matter to the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission for further investigation and thus turn it into a teachable moment. He is busy transforming the PDP, with the consolation that if he cannot transform Nigeria, he can at least transform the political party in whose name he governs the country.

     

     

     

     

  • What does Obasanjo really want?

    If we go by Nigeria’s political precedents, there is considerable reason to doubt that former President Obasanjo will go against the re-election of President Jonathan if he chooses to contest in 2015. However, two weeks ago, Obasanjo had a private one-on-one discussion with Alhaji Rashidi Ladoja in Ibadan. Shortly after, a split occurred in the PDP at a convention that was not attended by Obasanjo, who is now sponsoring Ladoja as a new secretary for PDP. These two events suggest some linkages.

    If this information is true, it suggests some pre-meditated actions on the part of Obasanjo and strengthens the claims in some quarters that he started the fires that currently engulfs the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and should therefore be responsible for putting it out. But what does Obasanjo really want and how does the current disarray in the party characterize the political ideology that may be ascribed to Obasanjo?

    To begin to answer this question, it must first be pointed out that the travails currently buffeting the political ship of the PDP, under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan is not new. Obasanjo should actually be the last person to start or stoke such a fire because just before his re-election in 2003, many swore that he would never be allowed to run for re-election.

    To support the resistance to Obasanjo’s re-election bid in 2003, the then Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, now Secretary to the Federal Government (SGF) brought in to replace the late Chuba Okadigbo as Senate President stated that the PDP zoning scheme did not call for a second term for the President. This was a reinforcement of an earlier report credited to Chief Sonny Okogwu, where the latter contended that there was a deal after Obasanjo’s nomination in Jos in 1999, in which he was supposed to be a one-term president. Compare this with the recent claims by Governor Aliyu of Niger state.

    Moreover, the robust resistance of the so called G-5 governors to Goodluck Jonathan today can also be compared to the antagonism of some governors like Achike Udenwa of Imo State to Obasanjo’s re-election. In the same way, Governor Bafarawa, then governor of Sokoto State, speaking on behalf of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) stated that the north would not back Obasanjo for re-election. Similarly, Governor Orji Kalu swore that Obasanjo would never be allowed to go for re-election at the expense of a candidate from the South-east. All these occurred before the presidential nomination of the PDP in 2003.

    So, the resistance to President Jonathan is almost conventional within the PDP, except that it has now been calibrated with higher intensity, leading to a split in the party, led by Atiku Abubakar, former vice-president, a veteran of several failed presidential bids. But what may come as a shock to many is the role of former President Obasanjo in the whole affair.

    At some point, he is seen dissociating himself from the activities of the present government, and aligning with perceived competitors of the president for the presidential nomination of the party. In several instances, he has made scurrilous remarks on the performance of the party in government, whereas it is well known that if he intended to convey such as advice to government, he could easily do so, through a phone call or through private discussions. At other times, he is forecasting an imminent of ‘’Arab spring’’ in Nigeria due to high levels of unemployment arising from job opportunities that he could not provide while he was in office.

    It is difficult to understand what Obasanjo really wants from Jonathan. It has been pointed out that the current SGF Pius Anyim, came to national political relevance when Obasanjo ousted the late Okadigbo the then senate president for criticisms that were less caustic than Obasanjo is currently dishing out to President Jonathan. So, it may be safe to hazard a guess that Anyim’s appointment may have been partly to appease Obasanjo. Many would even assert that the South-west appears not to have much representation in the federal cabinet because of the type of nominations made by Obasanjo. With the exception of the Agriculture Minister Akinwunmi Adesina who has performed exceedingly well, other ministers from that zone have been mostly below par in performance.

    During his first term, Obasanjo never brooked any dissent, nor heeded any advice from any quarters. He it was who relegated some of the principal founders of the party and their political structures to the sidelines. When he became president, he immediately unseated the party executive and brought in Barnabas Gemade and Okwesilieze Nwodo as chairman and secretary of the party respectively. Today he is prodding Jonathan to shred his own trusted structure and install one that will do his bidding. While it appears as if the G-5 is representing the north, some prominent politicians in the north who understand what Obasanjo can do if the party structures are under his control are uncomfortable and suspicious of his motivations as he prods the G-5 into splitting the PDP.

    For instance, Ango Abdullahi a well-known critic of Jonathan, his bitterness being merely over the claim that the North should exclusively produce a presidential candidate instead of President Jonathan, has this to say about former President Obasanjo; “….we thought erroneously, that his government’s performance between 1976 and 1979 was his own. But as it turned out to be, we could see that it wasn’t his……how would Nigerians rank Obasanjo from 1999 to when he left office as president? Every record shows that there has never been as much corruption in this country as during that period…” President Goodluck Jonathan may only just be finding out that Ango Abdullahi and he, may just have something they agree on: that Obasanjo cannot be trusted politically.

    Can this explain why very few people of note in the South-west ever agree with Obasanjo? Can it also explain the discord within his PDP followers in his home state of Ogun, which led to the political defeat of the party in the last general election in most local elections? Nonetheless, those who are currently being used by Obasanjo to stoke the embers of discord in the PDP may not know this yet. But, it is still early and there is still enough time for rapprochement or they may find themselves in political limbo, after Obasanjo gets what he wants, like others who have been previously used for this type of agenda.

    • Eneoche, a Development Analyst writes from Abuja

  • Back as One big, happy family!

    I know that there are many Nigerians who will swear that the implosion currently rocking the Peoples Democratic Party of President Goodluck Jonathan is the long-awaited divine response to the anguished prayers of Nigerians for freedom. After 14-years bondage in the hand of a party sworn to serve citizens the cup of affliction till kingdom come, it seems that not even our prayer-addicted but by now traumatised fellow citizens would have anything left in their arsenal of good wishes for the party.

    Going merely by indications at the weekend, it seems that those in the business of prayers still have a long way to go as far as the quest to rid the nation of the PDP yoke is concerned. I start with the so-called resignation of the treasurer of the Baraje-led faction of the PDP said to have been procured at the villa over the weekend. While the matter of how the nPDP treasurer, Malam Tanko Isiaku Gomna, found himself in the lion’s den would remain a matter of conjecture, it is good grief that the lone unwilling (?) guest at the villa didn’t have to suffer the pains of losing life or limbs. At least he was given the option to either resign from his beloved nPDP or forfeit his company’s contracts with the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency and the Federal Ministry of Works. Oh yes, he resigned with gusto –followed by a treatise rationalising his Pauline somersault with a pledge of allegiance to the Bamanga Tukur leadership and a clarion call on all party faithful to do the same! That was one down. I hear from the grapevine that many more surprise resignations are on the way.

    That was however, merely one part in the two-part play staged at the weekend. Elsewhere within the same precincts of the Villa, a “ceasefire” was in earnest between the group of seven “rebel” governors, President Jonathan and the leadership of his faction of the PDP. By late Sunday night, a communiqué which suggested that the feuding parties may to have resolved to let Nigeria be, emerged. By the terms of the temporary truce, the parties are expected to sheathe their swords in the understanding that the issues in dispute are not necessarily irreconcilable. And just like that?

    The army of volunteers and the not-so-well-wishers drafted into the party’s turf wars would by now be licking their wounds for their exaggerated expectation that their predicted implosion would create a reformed PDP. And this applies to those who have long sworn that things will never be the same again for the party; it is apparent that not only did they rejoice too soon, they suffered terrible underestimation of the power of the patronage machine in Abuja to force behavioural change. Nigerians have between now and October 7 to see how many would be left of the nPDP members when the machine is fully deployed as it would surely be.

    Of course, the war was never about us in the first place. This was the point so beautifully made by my colleague, Segun Ayobolu in his illuminating back page column of last Saturday. It’s not about fixing our unworkable federal contraption much less about addressing those age-long economic strictures that continue to hobble the nation’s capacity to renew itself. It is not about the rot in our educational system that has left 10 million kids out of school; an educational system that continues to churn out barely literate graduates. It is not about defining Nigeria’s place in the sun among the mass in the 21st Century and beyond. It is not about advancing the cause of our collective security or such nobler goals.

    It is none of those.

    It is about the office of President and who occupies the office in 2015. That is what is tearing the PDP apart – for which Nigerians – treated as unknown equation by the PDP, have now been drafted to the role of cheerleaders.

    The G-7 wants Goodluck Jonathan out. That seems fine, and it is entirely their business – not ours – at least not at this time. I believe they have done well in seducing Nigerians into taking sides in their bitter family squabble. In this, one must give it to the leading lights of the “rebellion” for their profound mastery of social psychology of the ordinary Nigerian – particularly his instinctive penchant to rise in defence of the underdog during moments of unrestrianed use of power as we continue to see in Rivers where the governor and his loyalists are under siege.

    However, beyond the attempt by the G-7 to play the spoiler, where is their case for a different PDP that is less arbitrary less contemptuous of the people?

    The prospect of a shrunk presidency in the event that President Jonathan decides to run is however more frightening. The issue clearly isn’t so much about the right of President Jonathan to run in 2015 but whether in the current circumstances, it is in the nation’s interest for him to run. I must say here that part of the unfortunate consequences of the PDP’s war of attrition isn’t just the diminished aura of the most powerful office in the land but also the diminution of its moral authority. Surely, the squandering of the pan-Nigerian mandate of 2011 for what is now a full-blown Ijaw Presidency is the stuff of which anti-heroes are made.

    The bitter truth remains that those expecting the PDP to go the way of the fictional Humpty Dumpty are in for a rude shock; the party will pull back with or without Nigeria and Nigerians. As for Jonathan, he will run; the inexhaustible gravy in Abuja will ensure that every opposition to his running will be smothered just in time to ensure he enjoys his smooth sail. Win or lose; it does not really matter, at least not with the vote-harvesting PDP machine primed to deliver. Whichever way it goes, out nightmares can only continue.

    It is something for those seeking to pray the PDP out of existence should ponder over. Didn’t the scriptures say that heaven helps those who help themselves? Who says that the battle to retrieve the dignity of the citizens from the PDP taskmasters could be achieved by wishing the party dead? And this in a multi-party democracy?

    Nigerians ronu!

  • Awo: the unlearned lessons

    September 11, 1963 was, for Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987), programmed to be the beginning of the end. That was the day, 50 years ago, he was sentenced to 10 years gaol, with hard labour, for treasonable felony. But instead, it turned the end of the beginning for Awo’s political traducers.

    If it had ended that way, it would have been just as well. Unfortunately, that patent injustice, with its integral core of destroying Awo as a person and as a potent political force, has sentenced Nigeria to unending political wilderness from which, even with 53 years of flag independence, it is yet to emerge.

    The result: political retardation, economic stagnation in real terms and cumulative underdevelopment, with its all too glaring mass poverty bordering on penury, mass anger, mass disorientation and mass alienation.

    But even with all the meltdown, portraying Nigeria as a country in perpetual crisis of nationhood, like the Heraclitus state of flux, the first lesson from Awo’s political persecution and eventual triumph has remained unlearned: that political persecution and brazen attempts to destroy political opponents are ill winds that blow no one no good.

    Indeed, Nigerian leaders would progressively appear combatively proud of their patent lack of a sense of history – particularly that segment that avails them the tragic results of past partisan political crimes; and therefore arms them against falling into the same trap.

    In his My March Through Prison (Adventures in Power, Book One), Chief Awolowo told a chilling tale of a twin attack on him, at a cocktail marking Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s appointment as Nigeria’s governor-general, by two key officials of state: Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Adetokunbo Ademola and Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Both attacks belied a shocking contempt for the office of Leader of Opposition, a creation of the Parliamentary Constitution at independence.

    In the alleged attack, Awo quoted Sir Adetokunbo as dismissing a certain villager (read Awo) who opposed for opposing sake until he had nothing left to oppose; and lost the sympathy of his fellow villagers. Sir Abubakar, on his own part, pummelled a certain brat, “who called himself Leader of the Opposition”!

    Just imagine the constitutional travesty of the Head of the Judiciary (CJN) and Head of Government (Prime Minister) dismissing with scorn, in the presence of the Head of State (Governor-General) and other dignitaries, local and foreign, a constitutional creation, just because they did not like the face or the guts of the then occupier of the post!

    At that very beginning, it was the making of a bandit state! Though that banditry torpedoed the civil democratic order, condemned, for donkey years, the polity to military rule and now presents an uncivil civilian administration posing as a democracy, the ruling political mindset would appear not at all cured of that banditry!

    For starters, how was the Adetokunbo Ademola-Tafawa Balewa partisan rage different from the Jonathan brazen constitutional infractions in Rivers, the latest of which is the reported Police blocking the Rivers governor’s path into the Rivers Government House in Port Harcourt – just because the Jonathan Presidency neither likes the face nor the guts of Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, the sitting governor?

    Now, if the “ancient sins” of high officers of state in the 1st Republic sentenced us to subsequent military and post-military political paralyses, what constitutional torture is the present Jonathan Presidency consigning the future generation to by its umpteenth constitutional recklessness in Rivers?

    Is Nigeria then fated to be the proverbial barber’s chair, painfully going round and round on a spot? And how long will that go on – already it is on for 53 years! – before something tragically gives?

    So long for reckless political behaviour! But that does not exhaust the unlearned lessons from Awo’s political troubles.

    This second segment comes with a thesis: that both the old Northern and Eastern regions, for political expediency, ganged up against Awo’s Western Region to subdue a perceived constitutional irritant in Awo and establish political suzerainty over his peacocky people – with collaboration, of course, from the old Yoruba conservatives (at loggerheads with Awo’s social welfare ideology and progressive politics) and perfidious former Action Group (AG) elements in the wake of the party’s schism.

    But even if this thesis is generally debatable, the creation of the Midwest Region in 1963 lends it credence. As at that time, agitations were for the creation of minority regions: the Middle Belt in the North, the COR (Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers) in the East, the Midwest in the West.

    But the coalition of Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) collaborated to deliver Midwest Region; and also collaborated to forestall the creation of a Middle Belt Region in the North and a COR Region in the East, even as every regional government was, in principle, opposed to creating minority blocs from their regions.

    So, courtesy of political expediency, only the Western minorities in today’s South-South (Edo and Delta states) secured a region in the 1st Republic. The Eastern minorities (today’s Cross River, Rivers, Bayelsa, and Akwa Ibom states) did not.

    Even after the 15 January 1966 coup (that threatened the North-East power cohabitation in perceived favour of the East) and the 29 July 1966 counter-coup (that re-established North’s hegemony), the 2nd Republic still followed a North-East collaboration, with Alhaji Shehu Shagari as president and Dr. Alex Ekwueme as vice-president, though the dominant Eastern party back then was the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP). As in the 1st Republic however, NPP formed a federal alliance with the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

    A politically weakened post-Civil War East (read Gowon-era East Central State, now the five Igbo states) appeared to have found its salvation in the centre, whoever is there. That tradition appears on course, with its sympathy for the Jonathan Presidency, even as the polity buzzes with alignments and realignments.

    For the first time in Nigeria’s history, however, there appears on the horizon an alliance between the old West and the old North. That appears the new political map in which the All Progressives Congress (APC) is birthed, with today’s South West going with today’s North West and the North East, seeking allies in part of the Middle Belt, part of the South-South and part of the South East, in that order.

    That appears to fulfil Awo’s post-1983 presidential election prediction of a progressive-conservative thesis, antithesis and synthesis theory, resulting in new political alignments in the polity.

    To the extent that nothing is permanent and the old political alignment had been basically ruinous, the brewing development might just be a thing to cheer.

    But that is only if the new arrangement is used to forge, across the board, a fair and equitable new deal for every segment of the country.

    The APC must therefore guide against any political gang-up to dominate persons or subdue any part of the country. Otherwise, it too would have fallen into the Awo era grand mistake still plaguing thispolity.

  • The Nigeria Police Force

    Sometime in 1998 as preparations reached top gear for the return of democracy to Nigeria after decades of military rule interrupted midway by General Ibrahim Babangida’s failed third republic, a certain businessman in Ikeja, capital of Lagos State called a press conference for his office at midday. My colleagues and I were there.

    As he was into selling of exotic cars, we were looking forward to him unveiling yet another of such cars into the Nigerian market as was his practice. But we were wrong or rather shocked when we arrived at the imposing glass house structure that was his office and found nothing to suggest that an unveiling of a next generation car was in the offing. Nothing of sort was planned; the Chief from Ijebuland had other ideas.

    As he welcomed us into the press conference he launched into the reason for gathering the media into his office that mid afternoon:Nigeria, yes Nigeria, our dear country was on his mind. The incoming democratic dispensation was troubling his mind and he wanted to share his thoughts with Nigerians on how to make the 4th republic better.

    He was an elderly man and we listened patiently to his wisdom. Out of all the problems confronting our country then he singled out the Nigerian police as one problem, if solved, that could solve most if not all the other problems. Why, we asked.

    He noted that Nigeria’s problem is essentially maintenance of law and order or rather lack of it. If our laws were enforced to the letter by the police in particular and other law enforcement agents, he reckoned that Nigeria would not only be better but also prosper.

    He reckoned that if the Nigeria Police Force is well funded, the officers and men properly trained and catered for they would be willing and even expected/compelled to ‘serve with heart and mind’, as our national anthem says, Nigerians and the nation and not the leaders who pay the piper. We couldn’t agree with him less.

    As he later became a close confidant of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and even a strong member of his kitchen cabinet, we expected that the Nigeria Police would fare better under that regime and serve Nigerians better. You all know the outcome of the NPF under Obasanjo.

    As the drama of the ongoing power struggle in Rivers State between the State governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and the Commissioner of Police Mbu Joseph Mbu reached a head last Thursday with the latter prevented from accessing his official residence through his normal route by policemen acting on the orders of Mbu, the question came to mind as to whether the police force as it is today is actually Nigeria Police Force or Nigeria’s President Police Force.

    And whoever has been following developments in Rivers State since Governor Amaechi contested and won the chairmanship of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum for a second term against the wish of President Goodluck Jonathan can not but (in good conscience) conclude that the Nigeria Police Force as it is today is working for and in the interest of Mr President. And this is unfortunate.

    It is not as if the situation had been different in the past, the NPF had always been serving their master’s voice, whether under the military or civilian government. But the appointment of Mohammed Abubakar as Inspector General of Police had raised hopes that with an officer and gentleman, at the saddle at the Force Headquarters Nigeria would finally have a police force to serve the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.

    The IGP actually started well and the Force could be said to be doing well but for the problem of the Rivers State command and CP Mbu. Abubakar’s order dismantling police checkpoints across the federation has not just brought so much relief to the people but has also left criminals confounded as to where and when they could encounter a police patrol. This has brought the elements of surprise and unpredictability which are essential to fighting crime.

    The Force has been engaged in some laudable things but which the politics it has enmeshed itself in in Rivers State could rubbish altogether. If the IGP does not know it, CP Mbu is damaging the Nigeria Police and he is a bad advertisement for a professional police force that Nigeria crave for and which we expect Abubakar to give us.

    Let us leave the politics of what is going on between President Jonathan, his wife Patience on one hand and Governor Amaechi on the other hand aside. Why should the police under the guise of enforcing law and order prevent a state governor from moving freely on any route in his state, especially the route that leads to his residence? What is that security situation that the governor does not know or should not know about that would warrant him being denied access through a particular route/road in his state? If there was such a situation and it happened suddenly as Mbu’s apologists may want to argue, why wasn’t the governor informed immediately and advised accordingly? And assuming the policemen around did not know the governor was the one coming with his guests, why wasn’t his convoy allowed to pass through once their identities were established if the police command was not playing politics?

    There are so many ifs and whys here begging for answers, but the truth is that irrespective of whatever Governor Amaechi had been or could have been doing wrongly in the current political crisis rocking his state, the police in particular and every other organ or agents of government anywhere in Nigeria for that matter, should give him the honour and respect as the elected governor of Rivers State. It is not necessarily about him, but about that office and the Nigerian constitution which the police are duty bound to respect and uphold.

    The argument that there was an alternate route he could have taken and chose that particular route just to give solidarity to the recently opened state headquarters of the new PDP which he belongs does not hold water. Even at that, when has that become a crime and what business has the police got in sealing off the headquarters of the new PDP in Rivers State? More shocking ad disgraceful was the fact that the team that sealed off that party office and forcefully brought down both the flags of Nigeria and that of the party was led by a deputy Commissioner of Police. What a shame? What kind of officers are these? These are the kind of things that bring public disrespect to the police. When the people see naked partisanship like this by the police, absolute partiality, they lose respect for the force. If President Jonathan had been on the other side of the party, say a member of the new PDP, would the police have prevented his faction from opening it’s office or even the president taking the road in front of the party office to wherever he wanted to go? When the Nigeria Governors’ Forum was factionalized and President Jonathan decided to back the minority faction why didn’t the police say NO? Why didn’t the Force send policemen to seal off the office of the Jang faction of NGF? Going by the police logic on the new PDP, Jang faction of NGF is also operating illegally, so, why not apply the law on that group. Was it because the president is involved? This is the kind of inconsistent application of the law by the police that tends to promote crises and anarchy in the land. This is the kind of things that the IGP should prevent if the Nigeria Police Force are to be respected by Nigerians. The truth today is that Nigerians have more respect even for the Civil Defence Corps than a policeman or woman. It is that bad. And it is politicians in uniform like CP Mbu Joseph Mbu that promotes this kind of low esteem and contempt that most Nigerians have for the Nigeria Police Force, in spite of the efforts of such gentlemen officers like IGP Abubakar and most of his officers and men, including some that had served meritoriously in the NPF in the past.

    Back to the Rivers issue, IGP Abubakar, apart from the image of the Nigeria Police, has his own personal integrity to protect in this matter and should not allow one incompetent CP acting at the behest of his paymasters outside the Force, to tarnish his own reputation and taint his tenure as IGP. Abubakar should resist the temptation of allowing the NPF under his watch to be used as the militant wing of the ruling party the way one of his predecessors Sunday Adewusi deployed the police in the second republic to serve the interest of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN). We all know the place of Adewusi and the NPF of that era in Nigeria’s history today, IGP Abubakar should not travel that road. He has a name to protect. Nigerians are watching.

  • Of Rehoboam and Jonathan

    David had fought all the wars and secured the kingdom. Solomon had taken the kingdom to its zenith, a pearl among nations. All Rehoboam needed was a little wisdom to “possess his possession”.

    Yet, he blew it with folly as profound as the wisdom of Solomon, his father. No thanks to bad advice, a royal fool was soon rid of his Israel.

    The odyssey of Goodluck Jonathan and his crumbling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not unlike that of the grandson of the Biblical King David.

    All Rehoboam needed was a little concession, over forced labour, to an angry but still loyal people. All Jonathan needed was a little wisdom to manage the poisoned chalice of his presidency, given his controversial emergence.

    But instead of stooping to conquer, as counselled by Solomon’s wise advisers, Rehoboam succumbed to the empty power conceit of bad advisers his age, who a version of the Bible dismissed as “worthless young men”. He lost everything.

    Much the same way, President Jonathan is courting ruin by over-relying on a conceited presidency, almost shorn of all its glory and majesty.

    Even then, there is a big difference: Rehoboam was done in by callow advisers. Jonathan may yet be done in by callous advisers, young and old.

    The general madness in the Abuja power house is symptomatic of fated collective madness before the final, irredeemable crash! But it is early days yet.

    Still, on one point, Jonathan is spot on: former President Olusegun Obasanjo cannot be part of the solution to the roiling PDP problems. The man who now craves relevance as fish craves water, rather conveniently absent at the convention bust, re-appeared all too suddenly: like some happy vulture sampling sweet carrion!

    It is perhaps too creative to suppose, as the Presidency is doing, that Obasanjo and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, would gang up to unhorse Jonathan, no matter how permanent interests always trump permanent friends or enemies, in soulless politicking. Both would appear too much of chartered political enemies and mutual-nemesis to fit in that bill.

    Still, it is grand immorality for Obasanjo to posture to be settling a PDP crisis of which he could easily have been the mastermind. But then, morality and legality are no strong points of the PDP!

    Indeed, the president as party outlaw was what Obasanjo bequeathed his party. That grand fraud labelled “PDP national leader” is ostensibly after the American system in which every successive president, or governor, assumes the role of party leader after election.

    But Obasanjo’s peculiar invention neither boasts the presumed good breeding of the normal American president nor brooks the conventional but rigorous checks and balances inherent in the American system.

    Indeed, it is the president as the unconscionable party bandit, before whom party laws and every member must bow and tremble. Just as Obasanjo’s imperial presidency affected the conceit to soar above the Constitution that gave it life, the party variant affected the conceit that a president was supreme to the party that gave it a platform.

    It was this subversive conceit that consumed Audu Ogbeh, the last PDP national chairman that had any character; and set PDP on a journey of no return. Ogbeh’s successors, Ahmadu Ali, Vincent Ogbulafor, Okwesilieze Nwodo and the latest poodle, Bamanga Tukur, were merry and eager rods in the hands of a bully president.

    All the same, Jonathan has himself to blame for the grave turn of events. The Christ was divined to die, so humanity would live. Still, woe begot Judas: that human scum that made that divine decree happen. PDP would sooner than later unravel, given its reckless and undemocratic ways. Still, history will damn Jonathan for making it happen in his own Presidency!

    Jonathan as presidential fall guy for past presidents’ PDP excesses, is a study in tragic flaws, bordering on wilful folly. Obasanjo had enough satanic gravitas to thump his nose at the law in bare-faced impunity. The ill-fated Umaru Yar’ Adua had a golden quietude about power that earned him respect, if not awe, before he passed on.

    But Jonathan, in fits and starts, reminds himself he is president; and would appear to act on that whim. He projects power – and crudely too – when he should not. But when he legitimately should, he clams up. He is the sorry study of a president as serial loser. But instead of pulling back to think after each avoidable loss, he plunges further in search of further disaster!

    That tragic streak he demonstrated in his Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) election debacle, when he permitted himself the hubris of dictating which candidate should and should not run for NGF chair; but earned nothing but disgrace.

    Even after his horse, the jangling Jonah Jang had lost, he flexed presidential muscles in a laughable bid to crown a loser as winner. Huffing and puffing, he blundered into Rivers, in hot pursuit of the victorious Chibuike Amaechi: his minister Nyesom Wike, talking wike, wike, and generally making a fool of himself; his police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, shackling his presidential principal in a futile bid to police a sitting governor; and even his Dame, in an insufferable projection of power, earns the highest office in the land nothing but scorn.

    Yet, Amaechi, the object of all this naked dance in the market, would appear always a step ahead!

    The undertaker in Jonathan has condemned him to using Obasanjo-era bully tactics. Yet, the equation has drastically changed, except that only he won’t see it. That explains why the party is going kaput.

    From Jonathan, the Tukur mandate is clear: deliver 2015 PDP ticket, even if the party collapses. Well, it appears Tukur would get his crude mandate. But it would come with a collapsed party.

    Still, in impotent rage, the Jonathan PDP faction would illegally conscript the Nigeria Police as partisan rod to seal off rival camps, just as the Mbu Police in Rivers routinely aid and abet Jonathan’s local faction.

    Even, pro-Jonathan voices from the South-South couldn’t be more “Rehoboamic”: the ancient Pa Edwin Clark, with his utterances, is busy manufacturing vicious presidential enemies for his godson. Asari Dokubo, from the militant class, is mouthing his usual trashy talk.

    Even from the intellectual front, at the height of the oil subsidy strike of January 2012, the best the normally cerebral minority rights advocate, Annkio Briggs, could offer, as convener of Niger Delta Occupy Niger Delta Resources (NDONDR), was some South-South/South East Alliance that sinisterly suggested secession – and that on January 13, the anniversary of the day the tragic Civil War ended in 1970!

    Why is Jona so blest!

    The PDP goose is probably cooked – and Jonathan appears on his way, other things being equal, to be the first Nigerian president voted out of power.

    That would be good for Nigeria’s democracy. But it wouldn’t amount to much if whoever took over still repeated the PDP hubris. This polity must learn from the looming PDP meltdown – or it is doomed.

  • OAU’s leadership in software engineering

    Obafemi Awolowo Uiversity, Ile-Ife continues to engrave her name in the psyche of global reckoning as a centre of academic excellence. She remains the best and the number one university in Nigeria. She has retained this position for two consecutive years. In the latest Webometric ranking of world universities released by the Cybermetrics Lab of Spain – a world renowned Research Council and which was circulated around the world, the university was ranked the best and number one university in Nigeria and the entire sub-region of West Africa. She also moved from number 14 position to number eight in the Africa. This makes her the first university in Nigeria to be among the best 10 universities in Africa.

    This break-taking achievement has been made possible because OAU as the leading ICT university in Nigeria continues to be the trail-blazer in other ICT initiatives in the nation’s educational landscape. Her researchers developed and established the first i-Lab in Africa, South of Sahara, after, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started its pilot programme in 2005 with three African universities namely OAU, Makerere University, Uganda and University of Dar a-Salaam, Tanzania. I-Lab is a scientific innovation which enables students and researchers carry out experiments over a network without being in the same geographical location. Her Central Science Laboratory with the assemblage of state-of-the art equipment, including Varian Mercury 200 NMR Spectrometer which is the only one in the entire Nigerian university system is the best not only in Nigeria but in the entire West Africa. It attracts researchers and scholars from the sub-region. In furtherance of the determination of the administration of Professor Bamitale Omole to make ICT and other related innovations the fulcrum of her developmental strategy in teaching, research, administration and service delivery, she is now the pace-setter in software engineering.

    Recently, with the financial support from Step-B/World Bank and Skye Bank Plc, a multi-million naira Centre of Excellence in Software Engineering was commissioned in OAU in July. The facilities in the centre will greatly impact in the teaching and research efforts of the university and make her retain its enviable position on the ranking of global universities by Webometric as the best university in Nigeria.

    The centre’s Telepresence Environment which is fully equipped with Huawei TP 3118 product will enhance the delivery of lectures for large classes. Lectures will be delivered to students located in different auditoria in real-time over the internet. OAU researchers will also have web-conferencing and interactions with other researchers all over the globe in real time via the internet. There exists a Cloud Computing Environment (CCE) with 7.7 TB cloud server for applications and OS, and cloud storage of 96TB with 500 virtual Terminals.

    The objective of the centre which is well-equipped with highly sophisticated equipment is to address the paucity and dearth of educational software which will utilize teaching aids in the teaching and learning of Science and Technology (S & T) post-basic courses. It will also enhance the capacity of post-basic teachers to develop, deploy and evaluate teaching and learning of S & T using modern ICT facilities with a view to facing the 21st century S & T challenges. The programmes of the centre will build national capacities through postgraduate trainings, post-doctoral researches, short-term trainings, conferences and workshops in software engineering in S&T courses such as software development and application, networking, development of internet and web applications, simulations, graphic, remote experimentation, hardware design, implementation and maintenance.

    The centre will impart knowledge to students in these areas using ICT driven participatory and student-centred teaching and learning approaches that would produce graduates who will be practical-oriented and serve as the catalysts and purveyors of the technological development of the nation.

    For the centre to move abreast with modern trends in software engineering, it will leverage on some international and national partners which OAU has working relationships. The international partners include Abdusaalam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Italy for the provision of network backbone and hotspots, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) U.S.A in the area of S&T training and research in internet and remote experimentation, Hewlett Packard (H.P) in the area of modern methods in teaching S & T courses, CISCO Academy and Oracle Academy, USA in capacity building in networking and database management. CHAMS PLC, OMATEK Computers Plc and Main One Nigeria Computers Plc which are the local partners will also assist in software development, hardware design and implementation as well as in the provision of internet bandwidth respectively. Already, Sir Demola Aladekomo, Group Managing Director of CHAMS Plc and an alumnus of the university has graciously agreed to build a Software Development House (SDH) to be located beside the centre to expand the software studio.

    The centre also has a software studio where developers can interact to enhance their development skills with a view to developing various applications in software for local and international consumption. The software studio has started producing results. Within the last six months, a group of students from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering trained at the centre as software developers have been able to produce two major innovations: the “‘Akowe” and the “Kedu” software. The Akowe is an application software that enables lecturers deliver lectures over network either via the internet, or the Intranet, and for students to receive the lectures remotely from different locations. The “Kedu” is a network based on real-time communication system that leverages on the existing network facility of the University. It enables users communicate over the Local Area Network (LAN) even without the internet.

    The i-Lab project has also made significant impact in teaching and research efforts by OAU. Firstly, it has solved some of her basic needs in experimentation. Another significant benefit of the project is the opportunity OAU students have had in working with leading global companies in the domain of the project. Through the i-Lab project, OAU staff and students have free access to majority of the lecture notes, audio, video and presentations of MIT Professors under that Institution’s Open Course Ware (OCW) which is the most popular Open Educational Resource (OER) project. This is because OAU is the only university in Nigeria which has the server of the OCW of MIT. Staff and students of OAU have leveraged on the accessibility of the MIT Open Course Ware to conduct research activities including porting the i-Lab platform to mobile phones, developing servomotor lab which allows students to carry out experiments in control engineering, and developing Emona Datex laboratory which enables experiments to be carried out in telecommunications.

    As a result of the immeasurable benefits from interdisciplinary collaboration in the area of research and training, OAU will extend the immense benefits of both the i-Lab project and the software engineering to other universities in the country.

    • Adefemi is of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife

     

  • Coming of Abia industrial city

    Who says leadership is all about staying by the side to cynically and sentimentally criticise even when you are not capable of doing better? Leadership is all about having a vision, seeing beyond today, and planning for future. That was what the present government in Abia State has shown with her recent plans to relocate the popular Ariaria market in the commercial city of Aba to Osisioma community which is just about one kilometre from Aba town.

    The plan is a welcome development and a step in the right direction. One of the greatest problems facing the commercial city of Aba today is the congestion caused by the abuse of the master plan of the city by residents in connivance with some corrupt officials of the successive governments in the state before now. Before now, no government in the state has ever thought of decongesting Aba through the relocation of some markets and expansion of the area.

    But today, the present government has taken the bull by the horn by entering into a Memorandum of Understanding with a private development company to construct ultramodern workshops and warehouses on about 200 hectares of land to be structured on build, operate and manage basis for 35 years. The project, known as Abia International Industrial City (ABIIC) is expected to gulp $1billion dollars with an estimated 200,000 jobs to be created in the process.

    The move is sequel to an advice from former World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz and Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, both of whom visited the market back in 2005 to assess its economic potentials. Even though the relocation exercise would be voluntary, no right thinking person or trader hates good thing. When the project is completed, it is expected that most traders in Ariaria Market will not delay in relocating to the city because of the conducive and strategic nature of the place after completion. The city will attract more investors to the state and will also uplift the commercial city of Aba to international standard.

    On its part, the state government has been in high-level talks with various organisations, some of which include the Bank of Industry (BOI), United Nations Development Organisation (UNIDO), Central Bank of Nigeria CBN, Nigeria Investment Promotion Council (NIPC), Ministries of Trade and Investment as well as that of Labour and Productivity to see how they could be factored in making the project a great success. The project which is expected to take off September will have its first phase completed by December 2014.

    Naturally, a lot of people would be wondering why this initiative now when the current administration has less than two years in office. The issue is that the project has been conceptualized to outlive the current administration and to explore other viable means of income to the state. The project was borne out of the need to establish key sectors of the economy that have the potential to transit Abia State specifically and Nigeria ultimately from being dependent entirely on the oil sector and unlock the several other economic fortunes of the state.

    With this development, the state government has proved critics wrong again that nothing good comes to the state. Before investors would be prepared to invest such huge money in the state, they must have done their feasibility study which must have proved positive that they would not only get their returns, but that the atmosphere is conducive and devoid of insecurity for them to operate. It has equally demonstrated the state government’s mastery of Public-Private Partnership initiatives (PPP), coming so soon after the partnership agreement with MEDICURE which brought about the successful completion and commissioning of Abia Specialist and Diagnostic Hospital Umuahia. The government has also extended the same gestures to other investors in the state. That is why Nigerians have not heard any case of disagreement between the state government and investors in the state, a development that has encouraged investors to be trooping into the state to explore investment opportunities.

    One could only imagine what would have been the state of Aba today had the government in the state in 2005 hearkened to the advice of the then World Bank President, Wolfowitz and Okonjo-Iweala on the need to build industrial city centre in Aba. That they did not is yet another indication of how visionless and greedy those who pretend to be the leaders of the people are. Of course, such candid and salutary advice from world economic experts was an anathema – particularly as few politically connected individuals actually owned most of the shops in Ariaria market! Heeding the advice would have been tantamount to going against the express wishes of Mama Excellency. That was the major reason the government in the state then did not give it thought.

    It is of course significant that the project is coming on board at a time Geometric Power Nigeria Limited has completed her power plant in Aba; this is another indication that the project would be a huge success. With this, it is expected that by the end of the next year, the commercial city will attain the status of a global industrial city.

     

    • Dr. Ukaegbu, an investment analyst wrote from Abuja

     

     

  • As the PDP implodes

    As the PDP implodes

    To anyone who has followed the unremarkable life of Nigeria’s ruling PDP, the only surprise must be that the implosion that has shaken it down to its shallow roots in recent weeks did not occur much earlier.

    With characteristic conceit, it branded itself the biggest political party in Africa – without having an audited record of its membership, let alone that of other political parties in Africa. It was this very conceit that led a former chairman of the party, Vincent Ogbulafor, to declare some five years ago that the PDP would rule Nigeria for 60 unbroken years.

    That is a frightful prospect indeed, mitigated only by the consideration that if Ogbulafor could not predict his own future, there is no reason to set much store by his prediction of the party’s future. For he was dismissed as party chairman within two years of making that prophecy and has since then been shuttling between his home and the high court to answer a charge of criminal embezzlement.

    Ogbulafor’s fate reminds me of what happened to the noted political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski who, on the way to becoming Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, had made a brilliant academic career at Columbia with his stirring anti-communism and combative Cold War rhetoric, all of which conduced to his reputation as the leading Sovietologist of the time.

    Then, the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, fell, just like that, in 1964, replaced by Aleksey Kosygin, in an internal purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

    The news media that had embraced as gospel truth almost everything Brzezinski wrote or said about the Soviet system were taken aback.

    “Professor Brzezinski, how come you had not predicted the fall of Khrushchev?” they taunted him.

    “If Khrushchev could not predict his own fall,” he replied with a smirk, “how can you fault me for not predicting it?”

    Before then, not even his doting admirers had credited the dour scholar with anything that could be mistaken for a sense of humour.

    But I digress.

    I was going to say that, despite the conceit and the bombast, the PDP is not even a political party in the strict sense of that term. Rather, it is a vote-harvesting machine that runs on patronage. And like all machines, it is soulless. See how many of its senior officials it has devoured.

    Ogbulafor, it has to be said to his credit, was just as taken in by the delusion of power as the party stalwarts who preceded him in that office. Those who came after him have operated with the same conceit, none more so than the current occupant of the post, the much re-cycled Bamanga Tukur, who runs the organisation like a camp master with help from Dr Goodluck Jonathan who, with disastrous consequences for all concerned, divides his time between serving as National Leader of the PDP and President of Nigeria.

    One day Tukur is suspending a state governor from the party because the governor did not take his phone call. The next day he is urging the National Assembly to pass a law mandating state governors or other political office holders to attend orientation courses, seminars or retreats before assuming office so that they would know how to address their superiors, like his good self.

    Lately, he has declared in the manner of the captain of the Titanic might have, that he was fully in charge, and that he would “crush” those who had broken away to form a new PDP faction, among them seven state governors and 57 members of the National Assembly.

    You know the PDP is in trouble when Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who governed Osun State under false pretences for three years – or seven – and had very little to show for it, clinches the post of National Secretary, edging out Ebenezer “Topsy” Babatope who had served with great merit as Director of Organisation of the defunct UPN in the Second Republic, and is far more articulate.

    Oyinlola had clinched the post by a process the courts considered flawed, like the process by which he had occupied the Executive Mansion in Osogbo, capital of the State of Osun for at least three and perhaps seven years. Now he is the National Secretary of the breakaway rump of the PDP. Its attempt to run a parallel operation has been crushed by the Nigeria Police Force, which has now dispensed with the pretence of being anything other than a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goodluck Jonathan’s and Bamanga Tukur’s PDP.

    This should come as no surprise to Oyinlola. For it was the same police force he had used to frame the man he had cheated out of power – Rauf Aregbesola – on a charge of forgery. What goes around comes around.

    It is in the wisdom of our forebears that when adversity comes, even the pawpaw will demand to be counted among the might trees of the forest. That is the context in which Bode George, the PDP’s one-time chieftain in the Southwest who compounded a criminal conviction with unspeakably shameless behaviour on his release from jail, has now embarked on a mission to rescue the PDP from its self-destructive path.

    But do not count the PDP out yet, weighed down by fatigue though it is.

    For, even as it was imploding, it still had the presence of mind to do what it does best: stealing an election in the most brazen manner conceivable, the type that Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo-Kuti described as “ojukoroju stealing” and “original stealing.”

    In a reprise of its larcenous proceedings in Ekiti, it stole, for the second time, the council elections in Offa Municipal Local Government, in Offa, Kwara State. The court had voided an earlier election and ordered a re-run, satisfied that the PDP had not earned the victory it was claiming.

    Now, Offa has always been a bastion of progressive politics, a stronghold, first, of the Action Group, then the UPN, and lately of the ACN, which has since morphed into the All Peoples Congress, APC. With all their money and their bag of tricks, the Sarakis, father and son, could never secure a foothold in Offa for their self-aggrandizing brand of politics. And how it rankled!

    So, at every opportunity, they and their agents always seek to add Offa to their collection of purloined trophies. When they are not trying to foist a paramount ruler on the people, they are scheming to steal their votes. That they have never succeeded in the long run does not deter them.

    In their latest effort, they apparently had the chairman of the State Independent (ha!) Electoral Commission, Dr Uthman Ajidagba, in their corner. He did not announce the results in Offa as stipulated by law. Instead, he left it to the state-owned Radio Kwara to declare winners the day after, in a dawn broadcast. At this writing, the detailed results are yet to be announced. For good measure, the authorities have issued the usual refrain: Anyone who is not happy with the state of affairs should head to the courts.

    The brazen theft in Offa does not exhaust the parallel with the elections in Ekiti. There, Mrs the state chief electoral officer, Mrs Ayoka Adebayo, had announced defiantly that she could not on account of her Christian conscience announce the figures the election officials had cooked up, and was hailed as a heroine and a model of integrity.

    Several days later, she sent her Christian conscience on vacation and dutifully announced the cooked-up results.

    Now, in Offa, one of the councillors allegedly elected on the platform of the PDP has rejected the victory assigned to him and declared that the real winner was the APC candidate much to the discomfiture of the PDP which has been threshing about desperately and disingenuously to explain away how a candidate it claims not to have entered in the election was declared winner on its slate.

    Meanwhile, the candidate, Jimoh Olawale, is being hailed as a hero and a model of integrity. This time, meaning no disrespect to Mr Olawale, I am going to hold my applause for a few days, hoping he will, unlike Ayoka Adebayo in Ekiti, stand unshakably by his rejection of a phantom election victory.

     

     

  • Suntai and the gilt cage

    Suntai and the gilt cage

    Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, embattled governor of Taraba State, is happily locked in a gilt cage. But those trying to prise him from that golden prison don’t necessarily boast a better moral hue.

    Both sides are power warriors, who subscribe to the same rotten values. If you doubt, relive the odyssey of President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Vice President Jonathan was high victim of the Yar’ Adua cabal. That earned him high national sympathy. Yet, the victim as president has not exactly balked at erecting his own cabal.

    Indeed, the difference between the Yar’Adua Katsina cabal and the Jonathan Ijaw cabal, vis-a-vis Jonathan’s presidential emergence and his plot for an encore in 2015, is just a stark exchange of roles. In pole positions, both sides would dagger justice with absolutely no qualms.

    So, will it be with the Taraba power tussle, whichever side of the divide, between Governor Suntai and Deputy Governor Garba Umar, gains ascendancy.

    That stark reality puts the moral purists in the media and seething purists in the legal high streets, the likes of the irrepressible Femi Falana, SAN, who always literally flies off the handle at the whiff of any constitutional infraction, in a no-win situation.

    Yesterday, they were banging their heads against the wall for Jonathan, the arch-victim. But how is Jonathan himself turning out? Today, they are fighting for the latest crusader-saints on the block, the tag team of Deputy Governor Umar and Taraba Speaker Haruna Tsokwa. But is there any guarantee the pair would tomorrow not turn the latest constitutional daemons?

    So, then: good people should fold their arms? Hell, no! It is just that they are condemned to fighting the same battles, and crowning yesterday’s victims as tomorrow’s devils. So, maybe it is time to quit getting excited over symptoms and digging deep for the root cause. No sane law works on insane sociology.

    Indeed, the Nigerian power code is stark – stark to the point of hopelessness: where there is power, there is no honour; where there is honour, there is no power. It doesn’t get any grimmer for a country that needs all its talents to break free; yet boasts a power vicious cycle that throws up hustlers and racketeers!

    All the cacophony of protest from the media and from purist lawyers is helpless voices from the fringe. In the vortex of state, the power lunatics are not only in government, they are also in power!

    That brings the discourse to a suggestion that President Jonathan intervene in the Taraba show. To be sure, that is no bad counsel. But legally, what can he do that the 1999 Constitution, as amended, has not done, if the ground rule of political engagement is good faith?

    Good faith! That challenges the president’s own track record, after his odyssey, which the current Taraba box office monster hit seems uncannily cut after.

    True, the Yar’ Adua cabal, with the presidential widow, Turai Yar’Adua, reportedly playing a lead role in its high tension power game, was a constitutional affront. Yet, in retrospect, it knew what it was up against: a power ethos with absolutely no honour.

    If you lost power, you lost everything – even power rotary agreements signed in black-and-white! The cabal’s method? Prevention is better than cure – and if the Constitution got slaughtered along the way, too bad!

    Still, its illegal “prevention” collapsed under the weight of national outrage. And the cabal is living its worst fears: no “cure” for its loss. Yar’ Adua is dead and buried. Interred with his bones is the worthless rotation agreement the North still clutches in moral rage!

    Meanwhile, the arch-victim of yesterday, the president, canters ahead on the same unconscionable power horse. The same people that balked at the Yar’ Adua cabal, and are now balking at the putative Taraba cabal, lost their moral outrage when Jonathan, after finishing Yar’ Adua’s term, insisted on having a full term of his own – which he is having – and is busy plotting a second term, even if his party explodes in the process! And all these without giving a damn about the deep hurt of the cheated!

    So, what advice might the president give the Taraba gladiators? That they should stick by principles, as he himself has done? Or give assurance that the Suntai bloc’s interest would be protected even if Deputy Governor Umar became accidental governor, as he himself protected the interest of the Yar’ Adua bloc, after becoming accidental president?

    O, the recourse to crass legalism in defence – constitutional right to run, Nigeria needs “national”, not ethnic leaders, and allied cant! But while politically correct legalism, with its empty fullness, could truncate politically incorrect argument, it has proved no Deus-ex-machina to living problems like lack of political fairness, ethnic domination, religious chauvinism, minority rights and allied fears.

    True, in a normal constitutional republic, Sections 189 and 190 of the 1999 Constitution ought to have led to seamless transition of power in Taraba. By Section 190, the letter by Governor Suntai that he is back and ready for work should have sufficed. That is what the law prescribes. But even the most doting of his friends know he is not.

    To make matters worse, he sacked his cabinet to pre-empt the trigger of Section 189 (1) (a), which empowers the executive council to declare the governor, on account of ill health, incapable of performing his duty. A medical board would now confirm or demur (Section 189 (1) (b); Section 189 (4)). That was power cynicism at its worst – and from a governor mortally struggling with his health!

    But in a festival of bad faith, the Taraba Assembly also over-reached itself in its purported “rejection” of the governor’s letter; and re-crowning Deputy Governor Umar as Acting Governor. It has no such powers under the law. Even more grotesque is the Deputy Governor’s counter-instruction that the governor’s dissolution of his cabinet is void. At the end of the day, except his side wins, Umar would lose more than his office as deputy-governor.

    Suntai could well be the face of a Christian lobby, scared stiff at a possible loss of power, in a state hinged on delicate Christian-Muslim divide: majority Christians with a sizeable Muslim population. It is the very opposite of Kaduna: Muslim majority, with a sizeable Christian population.

    Umar, perhaps, is the face of a Muslim lobby, salivating at the rare chance of producing the top dog. Should Umar become accidental governor and, like Jonathan after completing Suntai’s term, insist on his “constitutional right” to run on his own, that would be a fait accompli – unless, of course, his party loses at the polls.

    These would appear the fears driving the Taraba stand-off. In such a titanic primordial tussle, there are neither constitutional saints nor sinners; only smart alec pawns deploying the Constitution to angle for group supremacy.

    That is why Suntai would fight to the finish, even at the risk of his life; and Umar no less, at the risk of political death.