The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Toying with our future

    Once again the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has shut down academic activities in most of Nigeria’s public universities save in just a few where the local ASUU branches have broken ranks with the national body to assert their ‘autonomy’.

    And expectedly, both the union and the federal government have gone on the charm offensive to get the public behind their different positions which paint the other as the devil in the battle to save our ‘crumbling’ university education.

    While ASUU would want the rest of us to believe that it is fighting to restore the glory back to our universities, the government is convinced that the lecturers are only interested in their own wellbeing but using alleged infrastructural decay in the universities as a screen to push for better pay.

    It is over a month now since the students were asked to go home indefinitely and both ASUU and the federal government are nowhere near an agreement even as they were locked in another round of negotiation yesterday. But things could change for the better as news emerged yesterday that the government had approved about N400 billion for infrastructure upgrade in the universities.

    But if no agreement was reached on the N92 billion or so that the lecturers are asking for to augment their pay along with the approval for the infrastructure upgrade, the truth behind ASUU’s indefinite strike could soon be revealed. Should the government release the funds for the infrastructural development and stuck to its guns that it cannot afford the N92 billion ASUU wants for its members, Nigerians could be forced to ask whether the lecturers are truly interested in the health of the universities and the students or simply their pocket?

    But should government do this, it would only further damage its reputation as an unreliable partner in any agreement and further foul the already strained relationship the students and their parents are having with ASUU over the spate of strikes that have brought academics activities in our universities to their knees more often than not in the last decades or so.

    The federal government had reneged several times on agreements reached with ASUU in recent times, the same way it has done with similar agreements with several other unions. Even in the economic sector, the government appears incapable or unwilling to act its own part of an agreement or perform as expected. Joint venture partners in the oil sector have cried out several times that the government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had been lagging behind in fulfilling its own side of the funding of the sector. Ditto with the health sector and virtually every other sectors where government counterpart funding was required. The Nigerian government it appears is good at entering into an agreement but unwilling or reluctant to fulfil it to the letter.

    The unfulfilled agreement that led to the latest strike action by ASUU was signed with the government in 2009. The federal government went into it with its eyes wide open. If it wasn’t willing to fulfil it or knew it wouldn’t be able to fulfil it, why did the government sign? Agreed that ASUU has a way of bullying its way through every agreement with government, but the government shouldn’t allow itself to be bullied. When ASUU wants something from government all it does is send the students home to put pressure on their parents who would in turn put pressure on government to accede to the lecturers demands. Nowhere in the world has the government or other employers met all the demands of workers. The best that had ever happened was reaching an agreement that satisfied both parties; an implementable agreement. Is the 2009 ASUU/FG agreement implementable? To the government, No, while ASUU says YES if the will is there.

    The union and its sympathisers are quick to point at the astronomical pay of our politicians especially members of the National Assembly to buttress the point that government could pay if it is willing. They could have a point here. But government that says it cannot accommodate N92 billion or thereabout that the lecturers are asking for as this would shoot the recurrent expenditure to an unbearable level also has a point here. So what do we do?

    Can or should we pay the lecturers all they ask for at the expense of other workers or we should pay all workers all they ask for at the expense of the health of the economy? Should we say because our politicians are paying themselves ‘too much’ all government/public sector workers should also earn ‘too much’?

    This is not a defence of irresponsibility on the part of government but a call for give and take on both sides for the sake of the students and our future. The health sector just like every other sector is not perfect, but if doctors shut down the hospitals (or mere consulting clinics as some would like to call them) as often as lecturers shut down the universities, half of Nigerians would be dead by now. There has to be a better way of resolving the problem of funding of our universities and other tertiary institutions other than strikes and ASUU’s arm twisting tactics.

    Think of the students and our future. On the average, students spend between five and seven years in our public universities for a four-year Bachelors programme, no thanks to ASUU strikes. Majority of these students either because of JAMB or WAEC disappointments or a combination of both don’t enter university until they are about age 20. They graduate at about age 26/27, if they are lucky. They spend one year on NYSC. So, by the time they are ready for the employment market, they are already in their late 20s, already overage, as most employers go for graduate under 25 years of age. So, these graduates in order to fit in to the requirements of the employers including government would now begin to ‘doctor’ their ages. So the system is forcing them to be dishonest. Imagine the multiplier effect of that on the society, no thanks to ASUU’s incessant strikes and our irresponsible governments that never kept to agreement.

    So as we continue another round of ASUU strike let whoever is responsible both on the part of the lecturers, university administrators and government remember that our future as a people and a nation is at stake. These children that are being half baked would be our leaders tomorrow and whatever we teach them now is what they would use to lead us when their time comes. We might be too weak to intervene then if they do the wrong thing. We’ll suffer then for the stupid things we are doing today. Let’s come together now and address the problem of the education sector for the sake of our tomorrow.

     

  • FG vs. AfDB

    The federal government’s indignation at the African Development Bank AfDBs unflattering scorecard was perhaps expected. Having sunk so much energy into convincing Nigerians of its deft handling of the economy, its touchiness over comments remotely deemed to negate its exaggerated claims of performance should be understandable. Even at that, it seems that the Jonathan coterie of self-scorers barely read, not to talk of digest, what could in fact pass as a generous assessment by the continental finance institution.

    The details of the AfDB report are of course already in the public domain. To start with, I do not think the so-called report contains anything new or different that Nigerians are not already familiar with on the economy and its vulnerabilities.

    Let me however, attempt a summary of the main elements of the report. The report starts by acknowledging that the economy has been on a steady cruise hovering between 6.5 to 7 percent. That despite government’s best intentions to turn the tide in agriculture, the sector remains largely hobbled by lack of modernisation on one hand and poor linkage with manufacturing on the other. That unemployment, despite the impressive growth rates actually increased from 21% in 2010 to 24% in 2011; it attributes this to the fact that the sectors driving the economic growth are not high job-creating sectors. It gave the federal government credit for fiscal consolidation which has helped to contain the fiscal deficit below 3.0% of gross domestic product (GDP). So also is the tight monetary policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which kept inflation at around 12.0% in 2012. Over all, it projects a flattering picture of positive growth in the future.

    Indeed, it seems to me that only the Federal Government considers the AfDB’s presentation on the “enclave” economy of crude oil, which powers an annual 8.0% growth, (the corresponding figure for non-oil sector is -0.35%) while leaving youth unemployment at a monstrous 37 percent as anything but objective. Or more still – its prescription of the need to broaden the base of the economy through diversification, harnessing its potentials in agriculture, manufacturing and services to broaden the growth and to create employment and reduce poverty.

    It was therefore not sufficient that the lynch mob at the Presidency found the presentation disagreeable – it had to be passed off by Jonathan’s information minister Labaran Maku as containing “bogus claims and disingenuous innuendos” only because it dared to draw attention to the vulnerabilities of the economy. Coincidentally, the Minister of Finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had only a week before in an interview with Thisday admitted the vulnerability to be real!

    Of course, the federal government counter-argument to the AfDB could only be revealing. First, it argues that the growth rate of the Nigerian economy projected at 6.7 percent this year would be the fastest on the continent. That, courtesy of the Jonathan administration’s transformation agenda, Nigeria remains the destination of choice for Foreign Direct Investment in Africa, over and above South Africa and Egypt. It awards it awards itself high marks for the recovery of the capital market, celebrates its “successful” realignment of the Lugardian Lagos-Kano rail lines; sings the high praise for the still-in-the-womb standard gauge rail lines from Lagos-Ibadan; Abuja-Kaduna; Warri-Ajaokuta-Itakpe; Abuja City Light Rail; etc.

    It goes on to celebrate the creation of 12,000 YouWin jobs; looks forward to another 80,000 more jobs by 2015. As for the SURE-P funded Community Services Scheme, it claims that 178,000 youths are already employed out of the 370,000 expected while the Graduate Internship Scheme is expected to place about 50,000 graduates across the country. Now, all of the above merely represent a fraction of the achievement which the administration claims it has in its kitty.

    Of course, you would be mistaken to imagine that the minister was not talking about a nation that spends an annual $11 billion – representing 35 percent of its entire budget- to import staple food for its population; an economy powered by generators and where basic manufactures are still sourced abroad. We are talking of an economy where more than 40 million are out work; where factory closures are more than start-ups, and where the only ‘productive’ activity going on is politics!

    While it seems that the poor grasp of the fundamentals of the economy by the likes of Maku is troubling enough, the greater danger is when officials choose to live in denial of the reality. Contrary to the picture often painted, the arithmetic of the economy is neither nor too complex to grasp. Excess crude means nothing more than surplus of earnings over projected receipts. You do not need experts from the World Bank to understand that it does not require special intelligence! The same with foreign reserves; it is growing because the nation is earning more – not consuming less!

    That the economy enjoys a semblance of macro-stability is simply a function of oil receipts.

    By the way, no one needs to look far to understand why all manners of portfolio investors are swooning on Abuja: it is precisely because the nation has enough reserves to guarantee safe exit for the investors whenever the bubble burst. What the like of Maku is yet to appreciate is that our present capacity to pay for imports remains dependent on oil prices holding steady. Even then, there are increasing signs that the economy is heading for troubling times as oil receipts dwindle due to theft and tumbling oil prices.

    The second leg of the report is the aspect dealing with unemployment and poverty. The federal government, not surprisingly thinks it is doing enough on both counts. What have they done? It is unimaginable that the government thinks so much of the high-octane affairs in Abuja during which some 100 youths are presented with wheel barrows all in the name of job creation? Is that job creation?

    Let me end by praying that this revelry last; it seems to me that the nation is due for a shocker. Contrary to the AfDB’s prognosis, I do not even think that the prognosis is good. Soon enough, the reality would dawn on everyone.

  • FG Vs. ASUU: The game goes on

    What has consistently escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that mediocrity destroys the very fabric of a country…ushering in all sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption and debauchery. That…is precisely where Nigeria finds itself today! —Chinua Achebe

     

     

    Since the beginning of yet another strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU last month, which not surprisingly has entered its second month, one wonders when we as a nation would remove ourselves form this wanton mortification of making the education a laughing stock among comity of nations. The question all stakeholders enmeshed in this opprobrium should be asking is whether something fundamental is not wrong with our collective consciousness, else, how come that in every two to three years, the news of ASUU demanding that its overlords in Abuja implement an agreement both entered into and which in turn leads to a painful strike, reverberates the whole nation?

    Are we lacking in foresight as to understand that the Nigerian universities are dying gradually? Have we looked around to ask ourselves why the nation, whose youth out-numbers the old and very young, cannot remove itself from the shackles of societal malfeasance and hold forth the appellation: “we are the future leaders of tomorrow” by taking their destinies into their hands? For as long as the Nigerian youth accepts redundancy, fails to think for himself, cannot see where the rain began to beat him or take the bull by the horn, like many of their counterparts in developed nations, then it will be succinct to claim that the education sector which is supposed to train, build, inculcate, mould and educate vibrant youths against the morrow have failed in its entirety to bequeath such for a people who will take up the reigns of leadership from the old guards, a fault which is not theirs anyway.

    If ASUU once again and for the umpteenth time has called for a strike, it is not because they do not see the peck in their own eyes, as it is evidently known that their own house is also not in order, but because from the very first day government whose responsibility is to pay very good attention to the education sector keeps faltering and reneging on agreements she entered into. For many who are of the belief that ASUU has no reason or justification to embark on this strike which has become one too many in recent times, they must understand that though it may look more like Oliver Twist asking for more, in the situation our education sector finds itself, once and for all, drastic measures ought to be taken in ensuring we do not become a pointer to ridicule anywhere in the world anymore.

    If we have to look well enough the reason ASUU had decided embark on this strike and we feel the shame our universities have put up with, especially if we have to balance it with the education the likes of our parents had in the 60s, 70s and 80s and the pitiable ones our children have today, we then must understand ASUU’s pain and anger. Nobody likes to strike, nobody wishes to allow it take so long, in fact, it is not a good story to tell in our nascent democracy. Yet when a country is bequeathed with leaders who have no foresight, lack understanding of the socio-political terrain, remain clueless in tackling simple political arithmetic, and is occupied with how to remain in power until 2090, then strike becomes an option and a weapon to bring such government to its senses.

    Many Nigerians cannot understand how we practice democracy in the country. Democracy and good governance go hand in hand and therefore, policies embarked upon by one government or the other must necessary be a continuum and should not shift unless necessary. One finds it very difficult to grasp well the story peddled by this government that the agreement it voluntarily entered into in 2009 with ASUU should be re-negotiated. It is the worst of arguments this writer has heard in decades and one wonders if this government is truly committed to transforming the education sector, if the so called campaign promise in 2011 is anything to go by. One would have thought the government of the day should have put forward the same argument during negotiations with the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC in the last subsidy protest. Perhaps, the vast majority of Nigerians wouldn’t be where they are today looking weary, fatigued and hopeless in the midst of plenty.

    Even if government in its usual volte-face had thought the agreement needed to be re-negotiated, why didn’t it bring it to ASUU’s table long before the latter deemed it fit to embark on its ignoble strike? From this, there is no disputing the fact that there is so much insincerity among those in power and it is the reason the vast majority of Nigerians do not trust their leaders.

    It is an irony that the education sector, more than ever, faces this type of humiliation, especially when the president of this country was once a university teacher and his minister of education, a professor in a vibrant field of academic study. No country in its right senses would have such individuals in power and watch as rot engulfs their education sector. With leaders like that who cannot engineer viable transformations within the sector they once held sway, we cannot but feel sorry for the entire country.

    Our universities are no more role models for other countries to follow. Even the so called first generation universities have lost it, while mediocrity reigns supreme in the new ones. Individuals who lack the capacity to teach or engage in ground-breaking discoveries now fill our faculties and departments. Students who lack the intellectual vigour to learn now fill our departments with little or no capacity to communicate, write or engage their lecturers in intellectual debates. Most worrisome is the fact that one cannot find viable tools to hold experiments in our respective laboratories, reminding one of the total neglect in our secondary school laboratories. The structures which the Sardauna, Azikiwe and Awolowo had patriotically erected over 48 years ago still stand rickety today with nothing to show for a better one or even critical repair of the old. One could count the number of ICT-driven universities in the country and if one is lucky to find any, the structure is not enough to train students who are supposed to have pre-requisite knowledge of the ICT world like their counterparts elsewhere.

    Our classrooms have become a national embarrassment where students now sit on windows and outside to receive lectures. University libraries are littered with books the like of Isaac Newton had used during his time yet librarians are employed year in and out without any innovation coming from them to transform their departments into world class. It is most saddening that more than 80 Nigerian universities cannot boast of a state-of-the-art library where students can get up-to-date books to embark on their research. It is no wonder that even reference materials used for PhD thesis today are as old as the country itself, when new materials have been churned out by the same author over five times. Most PhD thesis today appears unconstructive, lack coherence and almost adds nothing to problem-solving. A don once pathetically noted that there are a lot of questionable PhD’s today in Nigeria.

    We seem to forget that strikes in our ivory towers have lasting implications for the future direction of the country. A medical student who is supposed to spend seven uninterrupted years in medical school suddenly faces a three month strike in his quest to become a medical doctor. At the end, he spends about eight to nine years for a seven year medical programme and is in turn given license to practice thereafter. If we do not know, we have bred a murderer and with his shaky training as a medical doctor in the murky world of medical school as a result of incessant ASUU strikes, we are bound to find our loved ones at their mercy. God help us if they survive with the way things keep going in this country!

    If we continue to pretend as if all is well, we will only find ourselves to blame if not now then tomorrow, as the future does not even hold anything to cheer about.

    • Oluwafuminiyi, writes from Lagos.

  • Beware, Eastern Brother!

    The title of this piece is a pun of Chinua Achebe’s Beware, Soul Brother, the late novelist’s collection of poetry, written basically during Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970).

    The symbolism of the pun is clear: victims of past tragedies should be less gung-ho about future ones.

    Yet from the emotions over the Lagos-Anambra 14 “deportation” or “resettlement” saga (depending on which side of the divide you stand), that lesson does not appear to have sunk.

    As The Nation editorial on the unfortunate incident held, the Lagos government should have been more circumspect. But those at the receiving end too ought to have been more sensitive to the burden Lagos carries, without any extra help from Nigeria’s skewed federation. The matter can be amicably resolved with mutual sensitivity and understanding.

    Still, the intemperate reactions on the matter, for and against, forebode some future but avoidable tragedy; without clear ground rules guiding Nigeria’s so-called federalism, particularly on citizenship and native rights.

    Just check out the Babel of reactions: Anambra Governor, Peter Obi’s canonisation of President Goodluck Jonathan as some overarching prefect that must impose a diktat on inter-state disputes; Orji Uzor Kalu’s rather incendiary goading; Femi Fani-Kayode’s three-serial riposte, which started with fine points of history but dipped into some ribaldry about past trysts with Igbo girls just to prove he is a lover of truth but no hater of Igbo; C. Don Adinuba’s fine piece urging caution and strategic thinking on the part of the Igbo in Lagos; Joe Igbokwe’s bad tempered response that opened him up to vicious charges of a house Negro in the Lagos establishment; Senator Chris Ngige’s intervention that could well set him up for political blackmail; Andy Uba’s urbane protest-advertorial to Governor Fashola, and one Akubueze’s lunatic yak that Igbo are 46 per cent of Lagos population!

    But after all the excitement, something is clear: Nigeria is no settler community, like the United States or Australia. It is an indigenous corps of cultural entities, which had existed long before colonialism and Frederick Lugard’s yoking of 1914.

    So, those who do plastic legal analysis, without factoring in the objective and peculiar condition on ground miss the point. It is nothing but legal grandstanding.

    Every part of Nigeria is indigenous to some people, no matter the fortune or misfortune of the place. No matter how the Yoruba swarm Enugu, for instance, claiming ownership of the place or bragging about their teeming numbers there, is courting needless disaster. The same should be for Igbo in Lagos, no matter what rights they figure they have as citizens; and whatever rationalisations about Lagos being a former federal capital.

    That again leads to the Akubueze yak: “The Igbo are key stakeholders in the affairs of the state. We constitute over 46 per cent of the population of the state … It is the Igbo that are making Lagos tick; it is the Igbo that made Lagos what it is and without them, Lagos will go to sleep. In short, without Igbos, there will be no Lagos.” (as quoted by Daily Sun of August 6). Akubueze claims to be an Igbo leader.

    This clearly is a voice from the lunatic fringe. But it betrays a condition, which thanks to Prof. Achebe and his classic, Things Fall Apart, you could call the Okonkwo syndrome: that tragic self-goading to disaster, simply because action gallops, in false triumph, miles ahead of thinking.

    But if Okonkwo self-martyred to protect the integrity of his land and culture, on what basis is Akubueze baiting disaster as virtual owner of Lagos?

    Indeed, Akubueze-speak is a worrisome streak, which the Igbo themselves must ponder and decry. Triumphalism-induced host community provocation preceded the northern pogroms. Same provocation rebranded the Nzeogwu coup as “Ibo coup”, with tragic consequences.

    That brings the discourse to the Orji Uzor Kalu -Femi Fani-Kayode face-off. Mr. Kalu disregarded his high position as former governor with his incendiary comments. Mr Fani-Kayode too did his former position as minister no honour by embarrassing Igbo ladies (now married) he had once dated. Both behaviours are to be decried.

    Still, in Mr. Fani-Kayode’s intervention were some bitter truths which the Ndigbo must ponder, in their relationship with other ethnic groups: Charles Onyeama’s 1945 statement that “Igbo domination of Nigeria is only a matter of time” and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s 1949 quip that the god of Africa had created the Igbo nation to lead all.

    Of course, these statements, especially Zik’s, could have been made in the context of cultural pride, not unusual in a pluralistic and competitive setting, necessitating federalism, which Nigeria claims to run. But they could also have been made to push cultural irredentism, the sense Mr. Fani-Kayode quotes them.

    Question is: which is which? Now, back to Things Fall Apart, the pristine Igbo society that Achebe painted did not betray any streak of others’ domination. But is there something in the psyche of the contemporary Igbo that craves domination of others – but after embarking on such escapades, end up scalding themselves?

    Aguiyi-Ironsi’s Unification Decree 34 of 1966 was the panic button, after the 15 January 1966 coup, that triggered the pogrom. The fear? Igbo domination. Then, post-Civil War seizure of Igbo property in Port Harcourt, fraudulently dubbed “abandoned property”. The fear again? Igbo domination!

    Even in Lagos, there are allegations of Igbo crushing non-Igbo out of legitimate trade. The Nation columnist, Sanya Oni, told a sad tale of how he was crushed out of business when he once traded in spare parts at Ladipo Market, Mushin, Lagos. Utuk Motors and Inyang Ette, transport companies in Eastern routes, also have sad tales alleging Igbo sharp trade practices.

    Also, the Igbo must ask themselves: Nigerians of every stock live all over the country. Why is it that it is mostly the Igbo that witness tension with their host communities?

    Well, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former Anambra governor, claims it is Igbo envy. Even Achebe, in his There was a Country, hinted as much. Other Igbo flatly claim wherever they settle is their home as Nigerian citizens, and they could well do as they pleased. But how many Nigerians could claim such brazen rights in Igboland – or are they less Nigerian? Or is it just protecting yours but encroaching on others’?

    The Igbo deserve to give themselves frank answers to these questions. Otherwise, their past tragedies would be no learning dam against future ones.

    Irredentism and the penchant to dominate is no monopoly of any ethnic group. Indeed, that is the crux of Nigeria’s crisis of nationhood.

    Still, the Yoruba are famous for their twin ethos of Afenifere (live and let live) and Omoluabi (good breeding). That cultural liberality would explain why Igbo investment literally melted from Port Harcourt after the “abandoned property” swindle, but continues to thrive in post-Civil War Lagos.

    The Yoruba have no cause to ogle Igbo property or envy Igbo success. But the Igbo in Lagos must not give the impression of ogling Lagos territory or any other part of Yoruba land.

    Such crass and cavalier insensitivity is courting sure disaster.

     

  • Salami: An epic injustice

    Salami: An epic injustice

    When the National Judicial Council recommended in May 2012 after a detailed inquiry that the suspended president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Isa Salami, be reinstated, not a few of those who had followed the matter closely felt that the Council was offering President Goodluck Jonathan a decent way to end one of the ugliest episodes in Nigeria’s judicial history.

    That the recommendation bore the imprint of two of the nation’s most eminent jurists who stand at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum made it all the more resonant.

    If the liberal retired associate justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Kayode Eso, since deceased, and the conservative senior attorney and former Minister of Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Chief Richard Akinjide, could sign off on the document, along with the overwhelming majority, it would seem that the Council had decided to take politics out of the matter and had considered it purely on its legal merit.

    The Council, I thought, had thus placed in Dr Jonathan’s hands a powerful weapon to rein in the hawks in the PDP who will settle for nothing less than Justice Salami’s scalp because his Court stripped them of their stolen gubernatorial trophies in Osun and Ekiti and restored the people’s mandate to those who had earned it at the polls.

    I was hoping that Dr Jonathan would seize the opportunity to play statesman rather than party chieftain. And when he was reported to be “studying” the document, I thought he was trying to find a way of appeasing the hawks, aforementioned.

    Dr Jonathan had something else in mind. His strategy, it is now clear, was to run down the clock on Justice Salami, calculating that the books would be closed on the matter once the jurist reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 years.

    And so, two years after being consigned to judicial purgatory, Justice Salami, according to competent sources, has served notice of retirement, effective October 15, victim of an epic injustice that Dr Jonathan could and indeed should have ended.

    Justice Salami’s ordeal began, as I once recalled in this space, when he presided over the sitting of the Court of Appeal that voided the purported election of the PDP candidate, Engineer Segun Oni in the 2007 Ekiti gubernatorial election and declared Dr Kayode Fayemi of the ACN winner.

    The election was marred by fraud on a staggering scale. In a court-ordered partial re-run to ascertain the true voice of the people, the PDP, the election umpire INEC, Maurice Iwu presiding, and the police executed a more brazen heist that a 3-2 majority of the Election Petitions Tribunal nevertheless consecrated with transparent sophistry.

    The Court of Appeal reversed, and Justice Salami became a marked man.

    Five weeks later, the Salami Court, Justice Clara Ogunbiyi presiding, vacated the stolen mandate under which yet another PDP candidate, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, had governed Osun for three years and seven months — or seven years and seven months if one believes, as one now positively must — that Oyinlola and the PDP never won the 2003 election, on the basis of which he had served a four-year term.

    As in Ekiti, the Osun poll was vitiated by massive rigging and violence. The ACN candidate, Engineer Rauf Aregbesola, headed to the Elections Petition Tribunal for review and redress. Obtaining none, he took his case to a superior body, which held that the verdict of the court below amounted to a miscarriage of justice and ordered that the petition be heard de novo.

    The new tribunal rejected Aregbesola’s petition in a “unanimous” judgment signed by four of the five judges, and the text of which was festooned with alterations and interpolations that called the integrity of the process into question.

    In finding for Aregbesola, Justice Ogunbiyi wrote for a unanimous Appeal Court, that the Tribunal was “lackadaisical” in its handling of the case, that it dismissed vital evidence as “mere allegations”; that it set at nought compelling forensic evidence; that it wantonly misrepresented evidence of key witnesses; in sum, that the Tribunal’s conduct was “a travesty, and a mockery” of the judicial process.

    That verdict sealed Justice Salami’s doom. He would have to be taken out of the Court of Appeal, the terminus for all election petitions except those arising from the election of President.

    First they offered to promote him to associate justice of the Supreme Court. He demurred.

    Several years earlier, when there was a vacancy, he had declined to apply for such a position.

    Then, they accused him, first in whispers and subsequently in paid newspaper advertisements, of all manner of misconduct, including consorting with attorneys of parties to the case he was handling. Leading the charge was Senator (as he then was) Iyiola Omisore who, despite his apparent conversion to an apostle of probity and propriety, nevertheless remains a principal suspect in the murder of the former Federal Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, Chief Bola Ige, leading the charge.

    Then there was talk of giving him a “soft landing” if only he would just quit.

    Why would they contemplate, much less make such offers to a judge they claim has been tainted irredeemably? Why would they reward him with a promotion to the Supreme Court? Why offer him a “soft landing”? Why not make a public example of him?

    If you have the facts on your side, if you are serious about cleansing the judiciary, if you are truly desirous of prosecuting a Transformation Agenda in which fighting corruption is a core element, why would you pass up such a great opportunity to nail him?

    But Justice Salami’s saga was never about law. It was all along about politics, politics in its rawest form.

    A pending judgment in the disputed gubernatorial election result in Sokoto before the Salami Court would provide the final pretext for caging Justice Salami and ultimately terminating his career. The judgment could overturn many a political applecart, and the authorities were taking no chances.

    According to Justice Salami, the sitting chief justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, requested that the judgment be withheld, for political reasons. He cited Justice Dahiru Musdapher, of the Supreme Court, as a witness to this encounter.

    Justice Katsina-Alu said he had merely informed Justice Salami that the judgment had been leaked, and that it might be wise to put off issuing it.

    If the judgment had indeed leaked, that was not unusual. Only last month, judgment in a major case before the Supreme Court leaked well ahead of delivery, and no member of the Court was blamed for it.

    Justice Musdapher whom Justice Salami had cited as witness would only say with consummate diplomatic tact that he could not recall the occasion. Not categorically that the encounter never happened; merely that he had no recollection of it.

    For all practical purposes, that was the end of Justice Salami’s career. Those determined to teach him a lesson wove Justice Musdapher’s diplomatic answer into a charge of perjury, with chief justice Katsina-Alu as accuser and prosecutor and witness and judge while in office and even after he retired.

    Not even the National Judicial Council could save Justice Salami from their vengeful wrath.

    He leaves the scene bruised and battered, and not entirely on his own terms. But his head is unbowed. He refused to submit to blackmail and blandishment. While they hurled every weapon in their arsenal of dirty tricks at him, he sought vindication through the law.

    Something tells me that history will remember him more kindly than those who, when presented with a chance to end an epic injustice, chose to perpetuate it.

     

    Re:  Allah-De

    A  retired career ambassador has commented as follows on my tribute in this space (July 31, 2013) (to Alade “Allah-De” Odunewu, the departed veteran newspaperman and revered columnist:

    “I could understand your good intention to “speak no ill of the dead.” But you should not mislead your readers by creating the impression that the veteran was utterly apolitical as a top Editor of the highly regarded Daily Times in the 60s. He certainly wasn’t!

    “The day after the Western Region election was massively rigged by Chief Akintola, & Co, the Daily Times under Allah De screamed with a headline in an unprecedented Yoruba language headline, “DEMO BORI!” — a clear exultant declaration by an ‘apolitical’ editor.

    “I hope you will be characteristically courageous to publish this contribution.”

     

     

     

     

  • Tale of two scapegoats

    “When your enemies sit in the assembly for the impeachment of your blessing, the Lord will appear like Chidi Lloyd with a mace and beat them to a coma” – social media joke that went viral.

    In Rivers, it is a tale of two scapegoats: one nestling in a foreign hospital bed fighting for his life; the other (at least until August 5) in a local prison, fighting for his freedom.

    Enter then Michael Chinda, of the G-5 failed impeachment bid, and deeply scarred soul from the July 9 messy parliamentary coup attempt; and Chidi Lloyd, no-nonsense fiery avenging angel of the G-27 fame; but now chartered devil in the books of a baleful establishment.

    But aside from the main tragic drama, the stage fizzes with comic strips that would have been so hilarious, were they not so tragic.

    Take the case of model cop, Mbu Joseph Mbu. Only a few days ago, he smugly self-declared his box office “popularity” with the country’s media, for his exploits in the Rivers carnival of anarchy. But many paused and wondered: did the all-mighty cop know the difference between popularity and notoriety?

    But before anyone could decide on anything, his “Oga at the top”, Mohammed Abubakar, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) himself, weighed in on Mbu’s side. Mbu remains Rivers police chief – at least that was how The Nation of August 9 coined it – affirming Mr. Mbu’s sound professionalism; and confirming his popularity, and not notoriety, as some deluded subversive minds were already thinking!

    Ride on then, cop of example! Go pacify Rivers of Amaechi and allied pollutants! The whole nation is solidly behind you! And should any irritant wave the 1999 Constitution in your nose, tell them exactly what Stalin, of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) told of the Pope: The Pope – sorry, the Constitution? How many divisions does he – sorry, it! – have?!

    But as you canter from victory to victory, you must know these severe facts.

    Joseph Stalin is dead, though his power notoriety remains. More importantly, the haughty pedestal on which he made that arrogant papal challenge has crumbled, never to rise again, except as ruins in the commodious brain of history.

    But as that particular Pope, Pius XII (with his famous riposte: “Tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heaven!) had died, the Papacy (which commands a moral armada, a lot more formidable than physical tanks) is alive and well. That means there is more to life than brazen power play.

    Of course, there is also the festival of cant by Felix Obua, factional chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Rivers and by the Chinda clan – understandably on the current health of their son, main victim of the aborted parliamentary coup of July 9, now hospitalised abroad.

    Whatever the pros and cons of Mr. Chinda’s case, every well meaning Nigerian should wish him speedy healing from the injuries he sustained from that messy parliamentary coup attempt. On this, peace-loving Nigerians must be one with the Chinda family, sharing their angst and giving them hope.

    Still, as life is not run on sentiments alone, the issues call for clinical examination and analysis, lest unsuspecting members of the public be led astray.

    First, “Chairman” Obua. On the issue of Chidi Lloyd, he had issued a shrill protest, alleging foul play and inviting the attention of the National Judicial Council (NJC) to the “improper” bail allegedly granted the Leader of the Rivers Assembly, now in the dock, in connection with the affray of July 9.

    Indeed, there would appear, on the face of it, some merit in the case; though it would take lawyers to establish the more fundamental basis for granting bail in the Lloyd matter. The Ahoada court apparently ruled on the basis of “fundamental human rights”; Lloyd, according to his counsel’s pleas, “having been detained for about two weeks now” and following reported certified medical report about his dipping health.

    Still, even with the medical alert, should the Ahoada court have shut its eyes to the fact that Lloyd was being docked for alleged offences in a Port Harcourt court of coordinate jurisdiction, in granting him bail and ordering the Police not to re-arrest him? Only legal experts can navigate that mire.

    Fortunately however, the Port Harcourt court also granted the suspect bail, thus averting the crisis of two courts of coordinate jurisdiction giving contrary rulings on a single case boasting similar facts, almost in every material particular.

    Mr. Obua did just fine as advocate of judicial sanity until he blundered on the sentence: “Why run to far away Ahoada, when the offence for which Hon. Lloyd was arrested, was committed in Port Harcourt?” That manifestly established Obua’s cant.

    Ahaoada is “far away” from Port Harcourt, uh? And Abuja: it is closer to Port Harcourt? On what basis is Obua parading himself as Rivers PDP chair – on the basis of a court sitting in Abuja or one sitting in Port Harcourt? Or has Rivers PDP headquarters suddenly shifted from Port Harcourt to Abuja? Which is nearer to Port Harcourt: Abuja or Ahoada?

    The Rivers PDP case is sub-judice; and the court will in the fullness of time dispose of it. But Mr. Obua’s outburst exposes the jaundiced mindset of political power players: when it suits them, it is fine. When exactly the same condition suits an opponent, it is not. That is why rigging, political or judicial, is their stock in trade!

    For the Chindas, it is cant coming from blood being thicker than water, even if they are humanly entitled to their passion for a son.

    But let’s assume Michael Chinda’s alleged batter has been docked. What is stopping the state to dock Chinda (whenever he is well and strong enough for trial) and his fellow G-5 for alleged battering of the Nigerian Constitution as regard impeachment quorums?

    Or, in the eyes of the family, is a batter of an individual more dangerous than a batter of the Law on which the whole society is erected, and could well come crashing down because of such assault and battery?

    Is the family, beyond the passion for a son, proud of that son for engaging in the G-5 legislative banditry, even if he has ended up as the most grievous scapegoat of that rascality?

    Let the law prosecute whoever is alleged to have committed a crime. If Lloyd is in the dock for allegedly battering Chinda, Chinda too must be docked for allegedly battering the Constitution. You cannot have one without the other.

    If you do, the result is the joke that opened this piece: “When your enemies sit in the assembly…” It is a grim endorsement of just desert, even if the physical result is ugly!

    Let those in temporary power govern fairly and justly, lest they become the butt of jokes of society which outlives every government.

    That is the grim moral from the tale of two scapegoats in Rivers!

  • All roads lead to Abuja?

    The latest circus of muscle-flexing over local government autonomy hardly comes as a surprise. If it seems an indication of how muddled our federalism has come to be in the hand of our slow-learning operators, it partly reflects the desperation in some quarters to perpetrate their retrogressive reign and anti-development agenda on the polity.

    I don’t want to go into the matter of how our federal lawmakers came to read their manual on federalism upside down. That is not important; at least not now. Rather, of great interest to me is that the two chambers of the National Assembly have taken their positions on the raging debate of local government autonomy: one for, the other against.

    The House of Representatives, persuaded that autonomy is the way to go, voted –according to the reports – overwhelmingly to give “full financial, administrative, executive and legislative autonomy to local government councils in Nigeria”.

    In the Senate, a determined group of minority senators – 34 in number – used the filibuster to deny the pro- autonomy senators the needed 73 votes! And that on an issue that have the potentials of altering the terrain of our federal practice!

    Should anyone therefore feign surprise that the division came that close? I don’t think anyone should. At least, not while everyone remains hung on the Niger Delta freebies and the rentier economy it promotes, and not when power is seen as an end an itself rather as an opportunity for service.

    I think I understand the Lower House’ love for the fancy word “autonomy” a phrase increasingly used exclusively for the councils. It starts from their opinion of the 36 governors as the bad boys who need to be stopped forthwith from dipping itchy fingers into the councils’ tills. Where the idea came from, I do not know but suffice to say that the attitudes of some of the governors, who, often times carry on like the Lords of the Manor have simply not helped matters.

    What could be wrong with councils insisting on taking control of their funds? I think there is a world of difference between being allowed to take charge of their affairs and the clamour to have council officials sit at table with their federal and states counterparts to share revenue from a common pool. How about blending the confounding three-tier federal arithmetic with the monthly conclave of 774+ 36+1 officials to share oil money in the name of autonomy? How does that square to the imperative to devolve more powers to the states?

    And to what effect? More funds for council officials to buy those fancy toys that make them objects of adoration in those far flung communities after leaving just enough left to pay the bills of their bored staff?

    What are the problems with our councils? I can number them in dozens. In the first place, I believe that the capabilities of our local councils are overstated. Majority are simply nowhere there yet, at least not as far as being agents of change and development is concerned. Take a trip to any of the rural local governments and you will be amazed at the number of absentee officials – officials on AWOL – men and women who only show up either when their wage is due or when there is something to share!

    No doubt, there are few exceptions in notably, urban local government areas which for obvious reasons, have very little choice than to perform even if minimally. The truth is that the records of our local councils overall, have been dismal. That explains why nothing of development is going on, and why basic social services are not provided at that level. Fact is; majority are no more than mere outposts for sharing the federal freebie.

    So how does the quest for “autonomy” cure what is fundamentally a structural problem? How does a monthly excursion to Abuja promote development or even lift the status of the local council? Will the craving to share in the wealth they did not help to create encourage responsible fiscal practice? Would it not produce alternate governors – officials who will consider themselves answerable to no one in the long run?

    This is where I believe that those pushing the autonomy miss the argument. It starts with their inability or unwillingness to isolate the problem. Left to me, we should rather be discussing whether indeed the current local government structure has not outlived its usefulness. Imagine the chairman of a local government whose internally generated revenue would not even suffice to purchase the diesel needed to run its generators making a case for autonomy. What he means is that he needs a licence to live off the wealth created by others. True autonomy means living off your sweat. Has anyone ever queried any chairman for spending their internal revenues the way they deem fit?

    I need to make one important point. I do not wish to suggest that the governors are entirely blameless in the mismanagement of our councils. Indeed, one of the problems is the absence of democracy at that level. The obverse side is that claims of meddlesomeness by the governors are often times exaggerated. The problems of the local governments are largely endogenous, hence my position that the prescription of autonomy is a wrong therapy to consider.

    While fiscal federalism is yet a long way yet in practice, let the local governments make do with what they have. Yes, we need democracy at the grass roots; we also need development. Autonomy in the circumstance cannot be the end. The councils surely have a long way to prove that they are worthy of our trust. They are a long way from there.

     

  • Mimiko and South-west economic integration

    Prof Jide Osuntokun’s admonition to Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, governor of Ondo State to eschew from the politics of the South-west Regional Economic Integration (SREI) and join his colleagues in jointly developing the region’s economy through SREI in his Thursday, August 1, column shows how concerned the respected educationist must be about the well-being of this great idea. In the column titled “Appeal to Mimiko on S/West Economic Integration” the former ambassador, who is a repository of the nation’s history, told the governor, in case he was not aware, and those of us who have no idea, that the South-west regional economic integration has a long history. Professor Osuntokun said that “…stretching from Ilupeju, Mushin to some parts of Bayelsa, and including the present five states controlled by the ACN, Ondo State…Edo state…and Delta…, it enjoyed planned development arising from the tremendous agricultural resources and the vibrancy of its people…,” among other things.

    Professor Osuntokun was apparently worried, and rightly so, and as any discerning person of Yoruba extraction should be, that the South-west regional economic integration is being threatened by what appears to be a deliberate exclusion of Ondo State by its chief of state. The regional economic integration is probably the single most important, most effective economic initiative capable of rapidly transforming the socio-economic wel-lbeing of the people and leap frog the region into modernity as we know it. It is an initiative whose time is well overdue especially in light of the current global economic trend in which the much bandied mantra of the world as one global village is only in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and not much on trade.

    As ICT is forcefully opening and expanding the business space among nations, these nations, especially the developed ones, paradoxically, are also ganging up and closing their markets against those they consider outsiders for more competitive advantage. And this is why we have clusters of nations in relative close proximity with each other with such names as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the European Union (EU); BRICS comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) even though the latter do more talking than trading as there’s hardly anything to trade with among these underdeveloped countries.

    Although Mimiko said on several occasions in the run up to his re-election that he doesn’t have to be in the same political party with his brother governors to embrace the region’s economic integration, which in theory, may be right. The opposition political parties even sort of agreed with him then. But I disagree. Aside from the fierce and bitter electoral battle which may have dampened his enthusiasm for the regional economic integration agenda, as a brutally calculating, Machiavellian political operative, the personal political road Mimiko has chosen to travel and his intended political destination makes it counter-intuitive, if not counterproductive for him to embrace the economic integration agenda. Mimiko’s political rivals in the region will be better served if they listen to what he is NOT saying rather than what he says.

    Mimiko’s political predilection has no room for regional economic integration agenda, it seems to me. He cares nothing about the progressive political party, even though “progressivism” is his self-described political ideology. Neither does he care that much for the conservative political philosophy that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) represents. The real political interest of the Ondo chief of state is to grow and nurture his Labour Party to where it can have some traction in some states in the federation, most especially in the South-west, where this party can be leveraged with whoever happens to be in control at the centre in order to advance his personal political relevance and opportunity. The other leg of this mid- to long-term goal is for his Labour Party to act as a bulwark against the progressives in the South-west, which ultimately will lead to the first end goal of gaining more political relevance and opportunity, and for his party to be seen, at least in the South-west as the alternative ‘progressive’ party just in case the progressives drop the ball. In an environment where political parties are built around personality and/or a handful of people because the country’s politicians are still largely at the very rudimentary stage of political, if not human evolution, it should be clear why Mimiko should prevaricate on the economic integration agenda.

    Mimiko must also dilly-dally on this all-important regional economic initiative because a coterie of his current political associates and bedfellows would be absolutely hell-bent against this idea, not because it lacks merit, but because of the collective political vendetta they have against a former National Leader of the party that controls the South-west except Ondo, who, they believe, will take the credit for the success of the economic integration when they’re currently too busy trying to cut him down to size. He cannot afford to invite the ire of these people and that of Jonathan Gullible whose bidding in the South-west he now must do.

    There is no doubt that the road to the regional economic integration destination would be bumpier and therefore more strenuous if any of the component part of the South-west region is not on board the integration boat, most particularly Ondo State because of its unique place in this integration matrix. Ondo is relatively more strategically positioned because of its contiguity to all the South-west states except Oyo. It shares boundaries with Edo and Kogi states to the east and north respectively. Its coastline is almost a stone throw to Lagos, the economic nerve centre of the nation, a coastline that also extends to the South-south geo-political region. More importantly, the state is the second richest after Lagos in the South-west. Its financial wherewithal can be brought to bear and effectively utilized in bankrolling some projects that are very critical to the economic integration agenda, which must of necessity, be situated in the state for the overall benefit of the South-west region and its people.

    Rather than the South-west governors and Dipo Famakinwa’s commission, which is saddled with actualizing the regional economic integration agenda waiting for the Ondo State governor to change his mind and embrace this important initiative, they should just march on and set aside the state’s own piece of the puzzle for now until, hopefully, the Supreme Court decides in their favour in the on-going electoral litigation to reclaim Akeredolu’s mandate. What is even more important is for the progressives to keep the South-west under their political control into the foreseeable future. An initiative of this magnitude would need about a couple of decades of uninterrupted political control to grow into full maturity otherwise it would be quickly jettisoned if another party takes control of the region. The only way Ondo can participate in this initiative is for the progressives to gain political control of the state, otherwise, sitting around and waiting for Mimiko to do the needful for posterity by embracing this agenda would be like Waiting for Godot.

     

    • Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com.

     

  • The other Omelezes in the Nigeria Police

    A friend sometime ago narrated this story to me. It was a personal experience. It happened a long time ago when he was still a bachelor.

    He had a girl friend who loved to party a lot which was in sharp contrast to his own quiet social life and this often strained their relationship. At one of such parties which as usual he was opposed to, she ran into a problem with a group of hoodlums who attempted to rape her. The matter eventually ended up at Oko Oba police station in Lagos.

    Her friend who attended the same party with her ran home to inform him of what had just happened and together they headed to the police station. He introduced himself to the desk officer as the lady’s lover and demanded to know what actually happened. The officer told him she was arrested and brought to the station for disturbing public peace (fighting) and causing destruction to property at the venue of the party. The owner of the event centre where the party took place had lodged the complaint against her that necessitated her arrest.

    My friend said he was confused as to what to do, but he sought the assistance of the officer to secure a bail for the lady. The officer not only obliged to help him, albeit at a fee, but handed over the statement of the original complainant in the case to him to go through and use the information to write his own statement accusing the first complainant of assault and such other similar offence(s) that some policemen have the capacity to cook up in an attempt to nail somebody.

    Upon payment of the agreed fee, the statement of the original complainant was destroyed and my friend’s statement admitted as a complaint against the owners of the damaged property. So, the complainant suddenly became the accused and the lady was released. The rest is history.

    I am sure this kind of story is not new in the Nigeria Police and not a few Nigerians will have similar stories to tell in their previous encounters with officers and men of the Nigeria Police. I am not saying this is the norm in the police but the recent case of one Sergeant Chris Omoleze who was caught on camera demanding a bribe of N25, 000 from a motorist over an alleged traffic offence has once again raised to the fore the issue of corruption and other vices in the Nigeria Police.

    With the video of the event released to the public via YouTube, the Inspector General of Police Mohammed Abubakar acted swiftly by ordering the Lagos State Police Command to put the Sergeant on Orderly Room trial, which the Commissioner Umar Manko did, and within an hour or so, it was over. Sergeant Omoleze was dismissed and thus ended his 21 years in service, in disgrace. He also stands to be prosecuted for the offence by the police.

    Good. It was about time the Police high command began to act and decisively too on some of its officers and men who have brought shame to the force as well as the nation. The IGP has promised that there would no longer be room for corruption and such vices in the police again. Bad behaviours he said would no longer be tolerated. Good also. But does he have the will to see through any house cleansing exercise that this his promise could entail? Yes, he does and can, according to those who know him well.

    Ummmm, that’s good. May be he should go the whole hog and kick out the other Sergeant Omolezes still left in the police. And he could do this by beaming his searchlight on not just those at the lower rung of the ladder, but also on some of his commanders who are more than an embarrassment to the Nigeria Police. One of such is Mbu Joseph Mbu, the incumbent commissioner of Police, Rivers State Police command.

    The story of Mbu Joseph Mbu we all know. But perhaps what is still baffling is why the man is still at the saddle in Port Harcourt as CP of the state police command, in spite of overwhelming public call for his removal. Not even the Senate or the House of Representatives is left in doubt about the need to relieve him of his appointment as Rivers state police boss. Yet the powers that be at the top are saying no, including the IGP.

    No matter the professional competence of Mbu Joseph Mbu as a police officer as his friends would want us to believe, his integrity as a public officer has been called to question and in the public interest and for the sake of peace he should be removed as CP Rivers state.

    I understand this was to be the case recently, but the ‘madam at the top’, who allegedly masterminded his posting to Rivers state command from Oyo State command in would have none of this. CP Mbu, sources say was to be redeployed on the orders of the President and Commander-In-Chief. In fact, he was billed to be redeployed to neighbouring Imo state as the Police boss while the man in Owerri was to cross the border to Port Harcourt and take over as CP. The ‘Oga patapata’ at the top was said to have given his orders to the IGP to do this and the man in Imo had been briefed. But somehow, the Imo state governor got wind of this and he allegedly protested.

    As CP Mbu had seemingly turned toxic, no state governor wanted him in his domain and Governor Okorocha allegedly made his move to stop Mbu from coming to Owerri. The embattled CP got wind of his transfer as well and ran to Madam at the top in Abuja seeking cover. But since the order for the move seemingly came from above, the story had it that Mbu was to be taken to a lucrative beat as a form of soft landing and the Port Police Command was to be his next port of call.

    The police hierarchy sources said kicked against this, the argument being that if Mbu is to be removed, those who sent him to Port Harcourt should remove him and once he is removed, he should be kicked out of the police and not redeployed.

    But who sent him to Port Harcourt you might want to ask? It is a long story. As I heard, our First Lady had a hand in it. She felt strongly that the former CP was working for the state Governor Rotimi Amaechi and she wanted her own person as CP in her home state, so Mbu who had barely spent three months as CP in Oyo state was found ‘suitable’ for the task, and you’ll agree with me he has been doing a ‘good’ for Madam at the top. You know the rest of the story.

    If this is exactly what is happening then IGP Abubakar must stand up and act truly as the Inspector General of Police. The rot, mess, corruption and all the other bad things happening in the Nigeria Police cannot and will not end until all the Sergeant Omolezes in the police including the likes of CP Mbu and other politicians in uniform are booted out. Not a few Nigerians have faith in IGP Abubakar; he should not disappoint the nation.

     

     

  • Neither Jonathan nor the North

    If you ran away from a death for donkey years, yet you came back to die the same death, then you have lost your care – Igbo saying, courtesy Chinua Achebe.

     

    The opposition column of Nigerian politics is flush with triumph – and the reason is clear: the formal registration, by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the first in the country’s political history, is well and truly epochal.

    The victory whoop is understandable: at last, an alternative platform to face the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) behemoth in fierce, face-to-face electoral contest.

    Conversely, the ruling partisan camp is muffled with apparent worry, though Doyin Okupe, presidential spokesman has, as usual, essayed rich bluff and bluster, laced with Okupe-istic cant, claiming it was President Goodluck Jonathan’s democratic credentials – not the laws of the land – that ensured APC’s registration.

    That, as usual, was an empty bluff. The law that created the Presidency created INEC. The same grundnorm set out strict conditions for merging political parties. Creations of the law cannot, therefore, claim discretions in how their Creator works. It is entirely out of their hands, except of course, they want to criminalise their office which, it must be conceded, past office holders had done and got away with.

    This time, however, the forces behind APC were smart enough to follow, to the letter, the law on merging political parties. The Jonathan Presidency too was smart enough to know when it was licked, despite earlier childish manoeuvres on the APC acronym, from whatever camp. INEC too was smart enough to be strictly guarded by the law and nothing else. Over all, it is a triangular victory for the democratic republic.

    But victory hoop from the opposition?

    Yes, in the sense of a loyal opposition pushing for a partisan environment conducive to free and fair contests for political power, without the government of the day rigging the system in its favour.

    But no, in the sense of unbridled jubilation that suggests mere coming together of disparate opposition parties, into a single more powerful column, is the beginning of the end for PDP and its infamous power mismanagement. That does not necessarily follow.

    Even if that were so, the end of PDP does not necessarily translate into the end of power mismanagement in the polity. The PDP is no saint any more than the new APC are sinners!

    That brings the discourse to Nigeria’s latest troubling tendencies, symbolised by President Jonathan and his emotive Ijaw crowd, digging in for 2015; and the opposing “core North”, almost hell-bent on uprooting the “minority upstarts” and allies.

    It is a classic: power delinquency versus power senility.

    The APC must give these two pernicious tendencies rigorous thinking, if it hopes to be part of the solution to Nigeria’s power problems; and not the latest addition to it.

    Indeed, if the new party fulfils its potentials as agent of positive change, fortune-seeking stragglers from both camps would smarm it. If APC doesn’t have a ready formula to sort them out, it would go down with them, like the giffen theory in basic economics, where worthless goods drive out the good ones.

    Power delinquency comes from a sitting president with his minority backers who, just some four years in power, have developed the overlord complex so irritatingly common in the Nigerian power chamber. Though Jonathan’s South-South lacks the vote to propel him to a second term (even if his performance has been inspiring – and it definitely is not), his emotive supporters yammer as if just occupying Aso Rock is open sesame for a win in 2015.

    Some of these excitable fellows (just like the delusion that gripped the polity that APC would not be registered even if it met all the legal requirements), even darkly hint at something suggestive of rigging, even if they didn’t exactly spill it out. But pray: if 2nd Republic President Shehu Shagari, from a northern majority bloc could not hold on to his stolen electoral booty in 1983, what makes a minority bloc think they can in 2015, if they make the same mistake?

    Ranged against this power delinquency is the apparent power senility of the old North, as espoused the other day, ironically by Ango Abdullahi, an agronomy professor, and former vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University.

    Prof. Abdullahi said based on a North-South rotation pact, the North ought to take power in 2015; and that President Jonathan lacks the moral right to run, since he allegedly signed the reported pact as no. 37; same pact former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Jonathan’s estranged political godfather, allegedly signed as no. 1.

    This column has always held – still does and will always do – that the North was cheated on the zoning formula, on which Prof. Abdullahi based his argument. For that, blame Obasanjo’s perfidy and Jonathan’s crass opportunism, after the death in office of President Umaru Yar’Adua, in the run up to the 2011 election. It is the Nigerian elite penchant for short-term selfish gain, leading to long-term collective pain!

    Still, what was that professorial crap about the North having the democratic number to rule in perpetuity? The question is which North? What number? And for what purpose?

    Prof. Abdullahi easily forgets it was exactly this same “born-to-rule” mindset that led to the criminal annulment of Moshood Abiola’s presidential mandate in 1993, which marked the beginning of the end of the North’s power hegemony.

    Tragically, as Yerima would appear the brazen face of paedophilia for whatever justifications, Prof. Abdullahi would appear the unfazed face of northern hegemony, no matter the collective cost to the Nigerian state. Thus, when power delinquency confronts power senility, the sure result is avoidable national catastrophe.

    The APC must, therefore, note these destructive power tendencies and navigate a third but saner way of equity, justice and fair play. To do these however, it must think less of power and think more of service.

    Target: it must pare down the present parasitic presidency, which though gobbles the country’s wealth, is not an asset but a terrible liability: as Obasanjo’s tenure showed; and as Jonathan’s tenure is showing. That two extremely opposite personalities are delivering similar bungling shows it is a structural problem.

    “What does APC want?” (June 18) already, on this page, suggests how best APC can go about its arduous task, working on a six-region format; and turning felt needs of those six regions into a franchise of service to be implemented with despatch if it gains power, pending the country’s constitutional restructuring into productive federalism from the present parasitic unitary state in federal guise.

    APC must get real. After all its registration euphoria, the party cannot behave like the Achebe man who died the same death, even after running away from it for eons.

    That would be more than the death of a party. It could well be the death of a country, given the cliff to which the present powers-that-be have pushed this polity.