The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • That Port Harcourt mob attack

    An Ijaw friend of mine from Bayelsa state who has been living in Lagos for close to 30 years now shocked me recently when he made a strong albeit stupid case for a second term for his kinsman, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, as Nigeria’s president post 2015 general elections.

    He pleaded that President Jonathan should be given another opportunity in 2015 to ‘wobble and fumble’ in the presidency again just like his predecessors did and were not denied a second term.

    And in case you think the man was joking, he wasn’t. He was dead serious. He listed former presidents Shehu Shagari and Olusegun Obasanjo who didn’t do well in their first term in office and were still allowed to continue after four wasted years.

    He argued that since every  elected president before Jonathan messed up the opportunity given to them to rule this country and were still given another chance to continue, then Jonathan should be allowed to complete his own ‘messing up’, so to speak before we clean up their mess. As he puts it ‘let the messing up go round’.

    Don’t cry for him or Nigeria. That is the level to which our politics has fallen since we elected to promote ethnicity rather than competence in our choice of leaders in this country.

    If not to appease the Yoruba for denying their son, Chief MKO Abiola the presidency of Nigeria in 1993 through the criminal annulment of his election, why on earth would any right thinking leadership hand over the rein of government to an Olusegun Obasanjo after he bungled the first chance he had as military Head of State between 1976 and 1979?  But that was what the so called cabal then did in 1999, when Obasanjo was ‘elected’ president, even against the wise counsel of his Yoruba kinsmen.

    And to complete the appeasement he was given another four years even when his first tenure was a monumental failure

    Was it not because the north must be allowed to complete its eight years at the saddle that President Shagari was given a second term in 1983 in spite of his glaring inadequacies?  President Umaru Yar’Adua would have asked for and given another four years if death had not intervened to cut short his presidency, even when the signs were there that things weren’t getting better. You could argue that Yar’Adua could have done better were it not for death, but on the evidence of his performance as a two-term governor of Katsina state, even ten more years wouldn’t possibly have changed anything.

    So if you look around you, it’s been one mess up after another for our presidents (including the soldiers), and this was probably why my Ijaw friend was arguing that his Ijaw brother, our president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan be allowed to complete the South-south turn.

    If we are to go by his argument, then the entire 500 plus ethnic nationalities in Nigeria should be allowed their chance to mess Nigeria up for eight years each. Did I hear you scream madness? Yes madness! Because that is what it is, but don’t laugh at him, rather pity him and some of his fellow Ijaw and South-southerners who are rabidly rallying behind a Jonathan-for-second-term project without a thought for the wellbeing of Nigeria.

    By the way, my friend used to be a critic of the lack lustre Jonathan administration, until his recent 360 degrees turn. Why I wouldn’t know. But I know for certain that he didn’t change because he had been paid, but I suspect blind ethnic solidarity which had never been part of him before but which has now crept in and is distorting his sense of reasoning and perception, a malady that is gradually blowing across the Ijaw nation and to some extent, the South-south geo-political zone.

    This malady is playing itself out in Rivers State where the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party is in a state of civil war which has the tendency to derail not only this democracy but also the fabric of Nigeria’s existence as a united nation. The war has pitched Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and his supporters on one side against forces loyal to President Goodluck Jonathan, led by the Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike.

    The story of the unfolding war so far you know, but the whole story might not be known unless the key actors decide to open up. Governor Amaechi has promised to reveal all at a later date, sometime next year and he says Rivers people would be shocked. Wike in response says if the governor opens his mouth and says something, he too has a lot to reveal. But this is beside the point here.

    What is of greater concern here is the dangerous dimension the whole crisis has taken which portends danger for the country.

    Last week, four state governors from the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), decided to pay a solidarity visit to their colleague and Chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Rt. Hon Rotimi Amaechi, who they believe is facing persecution from the federal government for standing up against a tyrannical presidency.

    The governors of Kano, Jigawa, Adamawa and Niger states who flew into Port Harcourt International Airport together with Amaechi were reportedly attacked by supporters of Wike (by extension supporters of Jonathan) and held hostage for hours at the airport by stone throwing thugs from the Wike backed Grassroots Democratic Initiatives (GDI), a group of political hoodlums that emerged from nowhere just as the Rivers crisis began.  Though unruffled, Amaechi and his guests had one of the vehicles in their convoy damaged by the thugs as they eventually made their way out of the airport for the Government House, Port Harcourt.

    But after spending some quality time with their host, the governors eventually left for home but not before having some harsh words for the Nigeria Police whose officers and men reportedly looked the other way as the hoodlums held sway at the airport. They reportedly expressed concern at the glaring partisanship of the police against the state government in the crisis and threatened that state governments could reconsider their funding of the police if the trend in Rivers continues. They also deplored the political crisis in the state urging their colleague to stand firm.

    The attack on the governors by Wike’s boys showed the level to which Jonathan and his band of supporters are prepared to go to achieve their 2015 objective. Thank God, at no time were the lives of these visiting governors put under serious threat. If all or one or two of them had been injured in the attack, only God knows what could have happened back home in their respective states. This is the kind of thing you get when thugs are allowed to walk the corridors of power.

    I recall in the run up to the governorship election in old Oyo state in 1979, the then Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), the party that later emerged victorious in the gubernatorial polls in what was then known as LOOBO states, comprising today’s south west, Edo and Delta states, had its primary and it was deadlocked. Chief Bola Ige locked horns with his former teacher at Ibadan Grammar School, Archdeacon Emmanuel Alayande (believed to be Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s preferred candidate for the position) and the deadlock was broken by a certain thuggish looking politician by name Chief Busari Adelakun. Governor Bola Ige was to later reward Adelakun with a seat in his cabinet as Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, against the advice of Chief Awolowo who we were told, warned that Adelakun was a mere thug, not fit for any serious political appointment. Bola Ige did not listen.

    Those who know the story of the political crisis that engulfed Bola Ige’s Oyo state, or witnessed the mayhem that accompanied the National Party of Nigeria (NPN’s) determination to take over the state from the UPN would readily acknowledge, if they are still alive, the role the thug called Adelakun played in the blood bath. It might be necessary to add here that the crisis in Oyo state then was one of those crises that brought down the second republic.

    Another thug is walking the corridors of power now and at the national level. The trajectory of his rise and rise to prominence is probably the fault of his benefactors, including Governor Amaechi and now President Jonathan, who instead of rewarding Wike (for whatever good  he must done to them) with a position commensurate to his thuggish disposition promoted him beyond the level of his competence. And now he is causing all this trouble.

    Nigeria could have been on fire now if anything bad had happened to those governors. And nobody or only a few would remember that Wike’s ambition had a hand or even was the hand that ignited the fire, everything would be on Jonathan’s neck. The earlier the president knows this the better. He should call Wike and his band of thugs to order.

     

  • Old soldiers, new battle

    ‘A lie may travel for donkey years but truth overtakes it in a flash – Yoruba proverb’  

     

    Were Chinua Achebe still alive, he probably would have brewed another classic, brimming with sardonic humour and laconic wit, from the July 18 launch in Lagos of The Tragedy of Victory, Brig-Gen. Godwin Alabi-Isama’s Civil War (1967-1970) memoirs.

    The new war account recounts the exploits of the Third Marine Commando (3MCODO), mostly under the formidable Brig-Gen. (then Col.) Benjamin Adekunle aka Black Scorpion, who attained both heroic and mythical status on the Nigerian side during that war.

    Brig-Gen. Alabi-Isama (then Lt. Col) was Adekunle’s chief of staff. The author, ace strategist and military tactician, saw almost every inch of battle on the Atlantic Front, which proved pivotal and decisive in swinging the pendulum of victory and defeat.

    Still, any literary wit with Biafra sympathies, having read There was a Country, Prof Achebe’s bitter swansong, could easily, “serves-them-right” manner, have turned the July 18 event into Nigeria’s own Tower of Babel, where Nigeria’s own victorious generals, under the tragically ironic banner of Tragedy of Victory, fall upon themselves in ferocious verbal combat.

    Even more grippingly ironic is Gen. (then Col.) Olusegun Obasanjo, as personal metaphor of “tragedy of victory”. Obasanjo (as his name Olusegun, Yoruba for “The Lord has conquered”, suggests) took the Biafra instrument of surrender as final 3MCODO commander, after the more formidable Black Scorpion. On that, he was an immaculate victor.

    But the tragic victor birthed when it was revealed that the all-conquering general, self-hyped to high heavens in My Command (1980), Obasanjo’s Civil War account, is the same that also reportedly fled for dear life from enemy fire, allegedly receiving bullet wounds in his rump!

    Whether that allegation was true or not (Col. Oyinlade Iluyomade, aka Hitler, commander of the troops involved in that particular battle insisted it was), the war hero, military era head of state and first elected president of the 4th Republic, became the butt of hilarious jokes at the venue! That would count as a personal tragedy of victory.

    But there is also a corporate side to that victorious tragedy.

    The near-unanimity of opinions, among the gathered generals, was that Obasanjo, by craftily rigging the Biafra armistice to be a one-man show, gypped other war commanders of earned glory, thus somewhat echoing the perfidious tortoise that renamed himself “All of you”, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

    Factor in Alabi-Isama’s allegation that Obasanjo, as military head of state, conspired with Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, his chief of army staff, to boot him out of the army after only 17 years, and the perfidious tortoise’s parallel comes to the fore. Alabi-Isama, from his war account, was one of the 3MCODO brain boxes that did the dirty work before Obasanjo came to claim the glory.

    Obasanjo rather viciously rubbed it in, in My Command, in which he emerged the sole super-hero, leaving the other commanders gasping behind as super-villains or just simple nincompoops – a claim the pair of Alabi-Isama and Lt-Gen. Alani Akinrinade, and indeed the armada of generals and other old soldiers at the launch, dismissed as voodoo tales!

    Danjuma, chair and chief presenter at the launch, denied there was any anti-Alabi-Isama conspiracy, insisting that though he couldn’t recall the details, he had documents to show that whatever happened “followed due process”.

    The tragedy of victory was also apparent from the after-war career trajectory of the triumvirate of Adekunle, Alabi-Isama and Akinrinade, the hardy trio that faced the hottest parts of the war and prevailed with uncommon brilliance.

    Adekunle who, according to Wikipedia, renamed 3 Infantry Division 3MCDO, without even formal approval from army headquarters, suffered premature retirement in 1974 after only 16 years. He joined the army in 1958.

    As at the time Tragedy of Victory was launched, Gen. Adekunle was down with illness, prompting his first son, Abiodun, to solicit for support. Adekunle’s odyssey is not much different from the bulk of old soldiers at the occasion who complained of neglect, even after shedding blood to keep Nigeria one.

    Alabi-Isama himself was retired after only 17 years, following the conspiracy he alleged but which Danjuma denied.

    Only Akinrinade, of the trio, attained the apex of his career, not only becoming a three-star general as Lt-General, but also Second Republic’s first chief of army staff; and later chief of defence staff.

    Could the anti-Obasanjo armada then result from peer envy? That is possible, except that the adverse testimony of Gen. Akinrinade, measured, frank, candid and nuanced, both at the book launch and in his widely acclaimed interview with The Nation from the eve of the July 18 launch, did little to enhance Obasanjo’s cause.

    Akinrinade was Obasanjo’s chief operations officer that first met surrendering Biafra General Philip Effiong (who Danjuma jokingly dismissed as colonel in Nigeria, general in Biafra, to wide laughter and guffaw), at his Amichi last war headquarters.

    Still, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s war-time commander-in-chief, did not share the near-unanimous belief that Obasanjo stole anyone’s glory by claiming the instrument of surrender, even while he was far away in his Port Harcourt headquarters, when Akinrinade mid-wifed the surrender.

    “As the Commanding Officer assigned to command the Division that received the instrument of surrender from Biafra,” Gen. Gowon declared in a supplement Foreword to go with the second edition of the new book, “Gen. Obasanjo rightfully was positioned to claim victory on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.”

    That coming from Gowon, though logical, was rare grace, compared with the nasty stuff Obasanjo wrote in his Not My Will, about his former commander-in-chief, following the unfortunate event of 13 February 1976: the abortive coup that claimed the life of Gen. Murtala Muhammad and propelled Obasanjo to his first coming as military head of state.

    In Not My Will, Obasanjo, with exquisite bad grace, talked down on his old commander-in-chief, pillorying him as “Mr. Gowon”, tagging him with “duplicity and complicity” and celebrating his hurried “dismissal” (later reversed by 2nd Republic President Shehu Shagari) from the military – all these over mere suspicion of his alleged involvement in the Bukar Sukar Dimka coup!

    Now, who is this Nigeria, the heartless errant-lady whose troubadours-general kill themselves to protect; and yet who rewards almost each and everyone with disgrace and hurt?

    This is the crisis of Nigeria’s nationhood which, as Gen. Akinrinade correctly said, even the Civil War did not resolve.

    But at the launch, Gen. Danjuma, a tad insensitive but with martial elegance, proclaimed: “Though they said there was no victor or no vanquished, all I know is that we won the war”!

    We? Won?

    Forty-three years after the war, every Nigerian would appear a loser – not the least the generals – and would continue to be until Nigeria’s fundamental contradictions are resolved by restructuring the country along equitable and development lines.

    If Tragedy of Victory rams in this notorious fact, it would do a future patriotic duty just as it has done a past one by putting the records straight on the Nigerian Civil War.

  • As Rivers’ anomie continues

    As Rivers’ anomie continues

    Did anyone ever suffer the illusion that the foiling of the attempted coup by the Gang of Five at the Rivers State House of Assembly on July 9 would bring some respite for the folks in the state?

    Two weeks after, the signs ought to be clear enough: the quintet and their pipers may have been worsted by the superior tactics of Governor Rotimi Amaechi and the 27 loyal lawmakers, there is no relenting on their part. That the Obuah-led faction of Rivers’ PDP wants the governor out by means foul than fair is hardly news; indeed, only those unfamiliar with the PDP’s bizarre inventiveness would consider the pre-emptive valedictory service staged for the governor and his troop at the weekend as anything strange.

    That is how it has always been for the party of the tattered umbrella.

    Now, thanks to the Sunday Sun of July 21, we now know that the event(s) of July 9 is merely a dress rehearsal for the main battle which according to the newspaper, “will be the final push to dislodge Amaechi from his stranglehold in the state and dissolve his post-2015 political ambitions permanently”. Apparently emboldened by the findings of their post-putsch review strategists which blamed their failure on “tardiness and the inability of critical people in the scheme to tighten all the loose ends well”, the anti-Amaechi forces are reportedly fine-tuning a new offensive. This time around, the creek warriors have since resolved that nothing would be considered off-the-table.

    You ask: who is giving the battle orders? After last week’s visit by 16 Bishops from the South-south zone to First Lady Dame Patience Goodluck Jonathan, I believe that the question has been sufficiently answered. Since the details are already in public domain, I do not wish to bore my readers with them here. Suffice to say here that our irrepressible Dame not only repudiated the previously held position of the hired hands that the Presidency had no hands in the crisis, she let out the hitherto suppressed truth about her direct, active involvement in the animus. In a fit of rage, she labelled the elected governor a wayward son who needed to be steered from the path of self-destruction; in another breadth, she would admonish him to stop being used by outsiders against his own blood! Such contradictions are perhaps expected in the atmosphere of contrived crisis.

    So where do we go from here? In the first place, those who see the Presidency as holding the ace miss the point. It does not. If it does, the Rivers story would have changed by now. The issues, as it is, is no longer one of whether or not the lawmakers loyal to Amaechi will hold out. At this point, it does not really matter how things turn out; what we have is a battered, bruised, diminished, demystified, but desperate Presidency.

    I do not think we have had it so bad.

    So, what to expect? More serial missteps; more attempts to subvert the constitution by those sworn to uphold and defend the sacred document. Should anyone be surprised if the Abuja lords finally succeed in crowning Evans Bapakaye Bipi Speaker of the Rivers legislature through the back door?

    Clearly, one lesson that the Rotimi Amaechi ordeal has taught is that the notion of the Nigerian Presidency as the most powerful one in the world has very little in terms of substance really; what has sustained the myth is the historical weak-kneed resistance by an indifferent citizenry. That is what has made it to become self-perpetuating. Our recent history has since taught that it is more of illusion than fact.

    You ask – what of the Ayodele Fayose example? I say, this is 2013; the circumstances are clearly different.

    Still want to ask how the Rivers scenario will play out?

    First, I do not think that anyone should loose sleep over the role of the partisan police. Let me make a quick comment on the ugly event of July 9. After watching the show of shame on Youtube, my conclusion was that there was no language too strong to condemn the brigandage in the hallowed legislative chambers. It is however a different call to be asked to choose between the show of shame on one hand, and the attempted institutional subversion, the brazen attempt by the five gangsters to foist their rule of impunity on the state, coupled with their open, contemptible disdain for the constitution of the federal republic. Simply put: those chaps ought to have been arraigned for an attempted coup!

    How about the drama of declaring one of the principal actors – Chidi Lloyd – wanted or even the extreme measure of hanging the charge of attempted murder for what appears to be at best a case of affray? That is Nigeria Police for you. The point is, the drama is unlikely to go farther than keeping the man out of circulation. After then what?

    Was the governor right to have ‘invaded’ the House with his personal security? How about asking the governor to wait to be kicked out of office by the garrulous five?

    By the way, how dare anyone ask whether it was right for a governor sworn to uphold the law and the constitution to sit in the comfort of his office while lawbreakers are allowed free reign in his domain? Do you ask a governor to play by the rules when the forces massed against him have long parted with the niceties of rules and due process?

    I need to make this final point. The greatest tragedy in the Rivers’ crisis is the diminishing moral authority of the Presidency. A Presidency that would stage a victory ball for the loosing party in a contest cannot but damage its esteem in the eyes of the people. The other day, we even heard the First Lady lecture on respect for constituted authority. Strange, isn’t it coming from an unelected individual that once gave an elected governor a dressing down over state policies?

    These are unusual times. We may as well start to prepare for the coming anarchy.

  • Presidential anarchy

    Presidential anarchy

    Can the president of the Federal Republic levy war against a state and get away with it? From the conduct of President Goodluck Jonathan’s henchmen and women in the Rivers contrived crisis, that appears the case.

    It is nothing short of criminalising the presidency. But how much of this impunity can the civil order bear before something terrible gives?

    The especial tragedy of the Jonathan Presidency is, with reckless regularity, it repeats history as farce.

    But neither the first Nigerian president to boast a PhD, nor his hyper-educated aides, seems fazed by this roller-coaster cascade into infamy. Such is their total gobble of the sweet poison of naked power – powers they don’t even have, had they not chosen to criminalise the presidency, if they ever bothered to read between the lines of the 1999 Constitution, warts and all!

    Take the latest trigger in the contrived crisis: the Rivers House of Assembly mayhem of July 9. Now, between the Goodluck Jonathan and Rotimi Amaechi battling camps, there is enough villainy to gift a multitude, with some left-over.

    How can an immaculate, fiery and all-conquering mace-battler, with the moral ardour of some bathetic Christ clearing his father’s house of worship of a den of thieves, morph into a sanctimonious victim, nestling in a hospital bed; and peeping at millions of sympathisers, from the vantage point of the lead photo, on the front page of a national newspaper?

    But before you condemn that battler, meet his victim: an apparent constitutional criminal, one of the G-5 renegades who, backed by some subversive federal power, felt they could impeach the Rivers Assembly Speaker and, like some tragic-comic pantomime with voice-over, were already on the subversive ritual, seconding motions, suspending imaginary legislators, voting, getting “elected” and giving “acceptance speeches”!

    Must Nigerians be assaulted by such power lunacy?

    To apologists or self-proclaimed purists, who insist “constitutional criminal” is jumping the legal gun, since no one has been tried and found guilty, this riposte: if the courts had serially voided such legislative banditry in Oyo, Plateau and Anambra states, during the Obasanjo-era presidential anarchy, can it be less culpable now because Jonathan-era legislative lunatics are repeating the farce?

    And here really lies the crux: if Obasanjo could grandstand that Nuhu Ribadu was undermining the Constitution to get rid of allegedly thieving politicians, what noble cause can the current rascals attach to their own subversive activism?

    Those who nail Governor Amaechi for “invading” the Rivers legislature to clear the mess miss the point. Yes, a governor should be a gentleman. But with a president that tweaks rules for illicit gains, that could be fatal.

    If you doubt, ask Rashidi Ladoja, the bitter-sweet former governor of Oyo State. He shunned President Obasanjo’s diktat that he surrender his gubernatorial authority to Lamidi Adedibu, Obasanjo’s beloved Ibadan garrison commander, only to holler in the cold for no less than 10 months, victim of an illegal impeachment.

    To those who still want to play the ostrich, pushing “law” without factoring in the lawless temper of its operators, the odyssey of Justice Isa Ayo Salami, under this same Jonathan Presidency, is instructive. Salami did his duty by law. But to the lawless in government, that was near-capital crime, for which the no-nonsense president of the Court of Appeal is paying.

    Yes, the Judiciary saved Ladoja; and voided the allied legislative rascality in Plateau and Anambra states. But with the Salami experience, it is doubtful if that judiciary had not melted into Heraclitus’s state of flux, no thanks to a hostile Jonathan Presidency.

    Amaechi certainly was not pretty, “storming” the legislature to nip in the bud the putative coup against his office. But he did the needful to preserve his position in an emerging presidential anarchy. For all you know, if the coup against him had succeeded, he would now be shrieking, Ladoja-like, from the wilderness, while his traducers would be mouthing “due process”! No society thrives under such cynical manipulation.

    But it is instructive how this Jonathan-era rascality empties into the Obasanjo-era mother river, even if Jonathan’s bumbling, to use Malthus-speak of basic economics, is “geometrical” while Obasanjo’s “original sins” now appear “arithmetical”.

    Talking about “original sin”, the dramatis personae of the current crisis appear to have cleanly forgotten the first outrage of 10 July 2003 (the Rivers outrage followed almost 10 years after, 9 July 2013!), when some Abuja-backed criminals tried to unseat controversial Governor Chris Ngige. It was the classic malevolent godfather’s challenge, before the plague of illicit impeachments based on “simple minorities”, which the latest Rivers jokers essayed with devastating consequences.

    What happened to the ring leaders back then: AIG Raphael Ige, the apparent Abuja viceroy in the crime, Tafa Balogun, then sitting IG, and even Obasanjo himself, the sitting president who, throughout the crisis, pushed the theory of plausible deniability?

    AIG Ige, the apparent fall guy, suffered abrupt retirement (even if his retirement time was close) and later, sudden death. Mr. Balogun suffered eventual humiliation, though his role, beyond being the Police IG was unclear; and his comeuppance was not directly linked to the Ngige saga. Even Obasanjo has continued to suffer progressive devaluation, to the point of irrelevance, since his presidential glory days.

    Do all these speak to Mbu Joseph Mbu, the commissioner of Police deep in the Rivers crisis, given his inappropriate conduct and reckless utterances? There are always spiritual consequences for political rascality that hurt the silent and innocent majority.

    Festus Eriye, editor of The Nation on Sunday, in his penetrating piece of July 14, described President Jonathan as Pontius Pilate, in a piece he headlined “Pontius Pilate strikes again”. That was a brilliant metaphor because before Jonathan, there was Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, and Pontius Pilate I of Nigeria’s troubled political horizon.

    Sir Abubakar launched political insurrection at the Western Region, with his suspect proclamation of state of emergency, after a contrived crisis in the Western House of Assembly, just to cripple Obafemi Awolowo.

    Jonathan, Pontius Pilate II, is doing the same, in what would have been the old Eastern Region, although this time, against a party mate; but with no less partisan bile, despite his aides’ comical denial. Jonathan court historians should check their history books and tell their principal how the Balewa gambit ended.

    Which brings us to the Jonathan denial ensemble: two “doctors”, Reuben Abati, Doyin Okupe and a Gulak, who obviously thinks everybody’s thinking faculty is, as his own, locked in Jonathan’s gulag!

    Ahmed Gulak, sounding every inch a power brat, told Prof. Wole Soyinka to be “responsible” (a counsel his principal ironically needs more than anyone!), because of Soyinka’s stance on the contrived Rivers crisis.

    Well, Gulak should check his history books. When Balewa was being led astray or even Obasanjo, Jonathan’s political creator, was leading himself astray, Soyinka was there, an ever consistent voice of reason, which nevertheless is the proverbial harsh hunter’s whistle, to the hearing of a doomed dog.

    Those who engage in double-speak, let them. But true friends of Goodluck Jonathan must tell him to withdraw from his Rivers misadventure.

    It is a wide and merry way that leads to infamy.

     

  • Presidential anarchy

    Can the president of the Federal Republic levy war against a state and get away with it? From the conduct of President Goodluck Jonathan’s henchmen and women in the Rivers contrived crisis, that appears the case.

    It is nothing short of criminalising the presidency. But how much of this impunity can the civil order bear before something terrible gives?

    The especial tragedy of the Jonathan Presidency is, with reckless regularity, it repeats history as farce.

    But neither the first Nigerian president to boast a PhD, nor his hyper-educated aides, seems fazed by this roller-coaster cascade into infamy. Such is their total gobble of the sweet poison of naked power – powers they don’t even have, had they not chosen to criminalise the presidency, if they ever bothered to read between the lines of the 1999 Constitution, warts and all!

    Take the latest trigger in the contrived crisis: the Rivers House of Assembly mayhem of July 9. Now, between the Goodluck Jonathan and Rotimi Amaechi battling camps, there is enough villainy to gift a multitude, with some left-over.

    How can an immaculate, fiery and all-conquering mace-battler, with the moral ardour of some bathetic Christ clearing his father’s house of worship of a den of thieves, morph into a sanctimonious victim, nestling in a hospital bed; and peeping at millions of sympathisers, from the vantage point of the lead photo, on the front page of a national newspaper?

    But before you condemn that battler, meet his victim: an apparent constitutional criminal, one of the G-5 renegades who, backed by some subversive federal power, felt they could impeach the Rivers Assembly Speaker and, like some tragic-comic pantomime with voice-over, were already on the subversive ritual, seconding motions, suspending imaginary legislators, voting, getting “elected” and giving “acceptance speeches”!

    Must Nigerians be assaulted by such power lunacy?

    To apologists or self-proclaimed purists, who insist “constitutional criminal” is jumping the legal gun, since no one has been tried and found guilty, this riposte: if the courts had serially voided such legislative banditry in Oyo, Plateau and Anambra states, during the Obasanjo-era presidential anarchy, can it be less culpable now because Jonathan-era legislative lunatics are repeating the farce?

    And here really lies the crux: if Obasanjo could grandstand that Nuhu Ribadu was undermining the Constitution to get rid of allegedly thieving politicians, what noble cause can the current rascals attach to their own subversive activism?

    Those who nail Governor Amaechi for “invading” the Rivers legislature to clear the mess miss the point. Yes, a governor should be a gentleman. But with a president that tweaks rules for illicit gains, that could be fatal.

    If you doubt, ask Rashidi Ladoja, the bitter-sweet former governor of Oyo State. He shunned President Obasanjo’s diktat that he surrender his gubernatorial authority to Lamidi Adedibu, Obasanjo’s beloved Ibadan garrison commander, only to holler in the cold for no less than 10 months, victim of an illegal impeachment.

    To those who still want to play the ostrich, pushing “law” without factoring in the lawless temper of its operators, the odyssey of Justice Isa Ayo Salami, under this same Jonathan Presidency, is instructive. Salami did his duty by law. But to the lawless in government, that was near-capital crime, for which the no-nonsense president of the Court of Appeal is paying.

    Yes, the Judiciary saved Ladoja; and voided the allied legislative rascality in Plateau and Anambra states. But with the Salami experience, it is doubtful if that judiciary had not melted into Heraclitus’s state of flux, no thanks to a hostile Jonathan Presidency.

    Amaechi certainly was not pretty, “storming” the legislature to nip in the bud the putative coup against his office. But he did the needful to preserve his position in an emerging presidential anarchy. For all you know, if the coup against him had succeeded, he would now be shrieking, Ladoja-like, from the wilderness, while his traducers would be mouthing “due process”! No society thrives under such cynical manipulation.

    But it is instructive how this Jonathan-era rascality empties into the Obasanjo-era mother river, even if Jonathan’s bumbling, to use Malthus-speak of basic economics, is “geometrical” while Obasanjo’s “original sins” now appear “arithmetical”.

    Talking about “original sin”, the dramatis personae of the current crisis appear to have cleanly forgotten the first outrage of 10 July 2003 (the Rivers outrage followed almost 10 years after, 9 July 2013!), when some Abuja-backed criminals tried to unseat controversial Governor Chris Ngige. It was the classic malevolent godfather’s challenge, before the plague of illicit impeachments based on “simple minorities”, which the latest Rivers jokers essayed with devastating consequences.

    What happened to the ring leaders back then: AIG Raphael Ige, the apparent Abuja viceroy in the crime, Tafa Balogun, then sitting IG, and even Obasanjo himself, the sitting president who, throughout the crisis, pushed the theory of plausible deniability?

    AIG Ige, the apparent fall guy, suffered abrupt retirement (even if his retirement time was close) and later, sudden death. Mr. Balogun suffered eventual humiliation, though his role, beyond being the Police IG was unclear; and his comeuppance was not directly linked to the Ngige saga. Even Obasanjo has continued to suffer progressive devaluation, to the point of irrelevance, since his presidential glory days.

    Do all these speak to Mbu Joseph Mbu, the commissioner of Police deep in the Rivers crisis, given his inappropriate conduct and reckless utterances? There are always spiritual consequences for political rascality that hurt the silent and innocent majority.

    Festus Eriye, editor of The Nation on Sunday, in his penetrating piece of July 14, described President Jonathan as Pontius Pilate, in a piece he headlined “Pontius Pilate strikes again”. That was a brilliant metaphor because before Jonathan, there was Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, and Pontius Pilate I of Nigeria’s troubled political horizon.

    Sir Abubakar launched political insurrection at the Western Region, with his suspect proclamation of state of emergency, after a contrived crisis in the Western House of Assembly, just to cripple Obafemi Awolowo.

    Jonathan, Pontius Pilate II, is doing the same, in what would have been the old Eastern Region, although this time, against a party mate; but with no less partisan bile, despite his aides’ comical denial. Jonathan court historians should check their history books and tell their principal how the Balewa gambit ended.

    Which brings us to the Jonathan denial ensemble: two “doctors”, Reuben Abati, Doyin Okupe and a Gulak, who obviously thinks everybody’s thinking faculty is, as his own, locked in Jonathan’s gulag!

    Ahmed Gulak, sounding every inch a power brat, told Prof. Wole Soyinka to be “responsible” (a counsel his principal ironically needs more than anyone!), because of Soyinka’s stance on the contrived Rivers crisis.

    Well, Gulak should check his history books. When Balewa was being led astray or even Obasanjo, Jonathan’s political creator, was leading himself astray, Soyinka was there, an ever consistent voice of reason, which nevertheless is the proverbial harsh hunter’s whistle, to the hearing of a doomed dog.

    Those who engage in double-speak, let them. But true friends of Goodluck Jonathan must tell him to withdraw from his Rivers misadventure.

    It is a wide and merry way that leads to infamy.

     

  • Rivers: Time to stop the slide

    Rivers: Time to stop the slide

    Not a few Nigerians, both at home and in the Diaspora were disturbed by the recent turn of events for the worse in the escalating political crisis in the Rivers State chapter of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    Not only were they disturbed, they were equally surprised and disappointed at the orgy of violence that attended the legislative session of the House of Assembly last Tuesday and the show of shame put up a day later by the Police which barricaded the Government House in Port Harcourt for close to three hours, firing tear gas into the premises.

    And most Nigerians are now not just ashamed of what politicians are turning this democracy into under President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, but are also afraid that the 4th republic is in peril if the Rivers crisis is allowed to fester and spread to other parts of the country. They fear the Egyptian scenario could play itself out here if care was not taken. They could be right.

    In Egypt as we all know, the military had just kicked out the elected government of President Mohammed Morsi when the country was sliding into seeming unending chaos, replacing it with an interim civilian administration. The chaos though, is continuing and the military (mis)adventure looks unlikely to restore peace, stability and sustainable democracy any time soon.

    This is the path the Rivers crisis seems to be taking Nigeria. Remember we travelled this route before twice with disastrous consequences. The political crisis in the western region in the first republic over disputed election got to a head when opposing lawmakers fought one another in the Parliament building at Agodi in Ibadan, using chairs and other movable furniture as weapons. The photographs of members of the regional parliament escaping through the window are there in history books to remind us of that period.

    The rest of Nigeria practically looked on as the Western Region literarily burnt as supporters of rival political  parties engaged in arson and killing in what was known locally as “Operation  Wetie”, that is, wetting the subject or object with fuel before setting in fire. They thought it was a Yoruba problem, but they were wrong as the failure of the federal government then to contain it drew the attention of five Majors in the Nigerian Army who staged the first military coup in the country, thus terminating that democratic experience.

    And our politicians certainly did not learn anything from that experience as the south west again burnt in the second republic when disputed election in Ondo state in 1983, led to similar arson and killing which together with other political mayhem and similar crises elsewhere attracted the intervention of the soldiers and our second attempt at democracy was halted on December 31st 1983.

    Those who could recall these two past experiences have been drawing the attention of the political class to their similarities with today’s crisis in Rivers State and the need to avoid that path, but it does appear they are talking to the deaf.

    The crisis that culminated in the free for all fight inside the chambers of the Rivers State House of Assembly last Tuesday has its roots in the plans by rival political camps within the ruling PDP in the state to control the administration and resources of the state after the tenure of Governor Rotimi Amaechi in 2015. While the Amaechi group is intent on him seeing out his second term successfully, it also aims to produce his successor and therefore sustain his legacy of good work, performance and delivery of ‘dividend of democracy’ to the people.

    The other camp led by a former Amaechi ally and now a member of the federal cabinet Nyesom Wike, wants to be in charge and seems not willing to wait till 2015; it wants the governorship now and appears ready to do anything and everything that could bring about this. And it has found a willing ally in the wife of the president, Dame Patience Jonathan, an indigene of Rivers, who not only wants to build her own political followership in the state but also produce the next governor preferably from her Okrika ethnic group. Together they have sold the idea to Jonathan who has lent the federal might to their project with the selfish belief that that is the only way to guarantee him the two million or so votes from Rivers state in the 2015 presidential election.

    Both of them are using the presidential support differently. Wike, with ears of the president, is manipulating the party structure and with the help of a contentious court order has been able, for now, to wrestle the control of the PDP in the state from the Amaechi group, the intention being to either use the party to compel its members in the Assembly to impeach the governor and provide a window for the group to sneak into the Government House or deny Amaechi the party ticket in case a court invalidates his election and orders a rerun. They attempted to push through the impeachment and the outcome was the mayhem witnessed last week at the Assembly.

    The First Lady on her part has been using the security agencies especially the police to intimidate the state government to either run the governor out of office now or weaken him so much as to be unable to produce or influence his successor in 2015.

    The governor is expectedly not keeping quiet. In the face of the federal onslaught both against his government, his supporters and even the larger society in Rivers state, Amaechi has been fighting on all fronts to resist the other group and still be able provide leadership to his people and continue to deliver on his promise of good governance. This must be a tall order because the federal might arrayed against him is indeed awesome and powerful.

    To the chagrin of his opponents, the majority of the people of Rivers are with him, so also are most of his colleagues in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum where he remains the chairman, the presidency’s attempt to polarize the forum notwithstanding.

    But the effect of the ‘war’ is beginning to tell on the people. Security situation in the state is getting worse, no thanks to the Commissioner of Police, Mbu Joseph Mbu who seems to be more interested in playing along with the First Lady rather than working with the state governor. Militants, cultists and their likes that were driven out of town five, six years ago are back on the prowl, working for the anti Amaechi forces and terrorizing the people. Kidnapping we are told is on the increase, so are other crimes, but CP Mbu is unperturbed as long as ‘Madam at the top’ and the Minister are happy. He seems to be answerable to no one but the First Lady, not even the Inspector General of Police.

    In all of this the president is behaving as if all is well or Amaechi must be brought down to his knees and thought a lesson even if Rivers will burn. This is unfortunate. If Jonathan continues to fold his arms and allow events in Rivers to degenerate further to the point where things would begin to fall apart the blame would be on his head and nobody would cry for him. If truly he is the leader of his party, then he should be able to call all the warring groups in PDP in the state, including his wife to order in the interest of not just this democracy but also the country. He knows who and what is causing the crisis in Rivers state, he also knows the solution. He should stop playing politics with us. It is time to act as leader of the nation that his position has conferred on him He should resist the temptation to press the self destruct button. Nigeria can’t afford to travel that road again. NO.

    While this is not an attempt to justify Governor Amaechi’s actions or exonerate him from whatever blames he deserves, President Jonathan bears the greater responsibility to ensure the survival of this democracy and the country as a united entity.

     

  • Truths, lies and my EFCC days

    I read Mahmud Jega’s Daily Trust column a fortnight ago, with the title “Gra-gra versus softly-softly”.  It was composed in his characteristic meticulousness which also touched a nerve that concerns all.  It also involved me, personally. It involved me because the piece was not only about anti-corruption struggle, something I came to be more identified with in the course of my career, but also because I was mentioned, or referenced to, many times in the piece. In the piece, Jega repeated several erroneous notions about my work at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). But to be fair to him, those insinuations were far from being his concoctions. They have been held for a long time by a section of Nigerians who were largely misinformed about the modus operandi of the EFCC I headed or about me as a person. I therefore thought it a duty to correct some of the wrong impressions people have about what we did, for the sake of future and the reading public.

    I must, however, appreciate many of the positive things about our operations and modest achievements at the EFCC highlighted by Jega. Those were things we achieved largely because of our resolve to form a strong and professional agency, from the outset. Strong institutions are at the base of whatever things to come out of a system. This was a major focus for us. There were deliberate steps at capacity building that would prove extremely advantageous for the work we did in the five years I was there. I use “we” because the work was never a one man job. EFCC was beyond Nuhu Ribadu, or any individual for that matter. It was a team work. The patriotism, esprit de corp and professionalism exhibited by the team were the secrets for our successes.

    But as I always insist, success of anti-graft efforts is hinged largely at the leadership level, especially the political leadership. We were lucky to have the cooperation of the leadership at the time. To the credit of President Olusegun Obasanjo, he let us do the work even at a time we were going against some elements that were extremely close to him. It is therefore amusing when I hear people these days charge me of “selective justice”. Well, perhaps those charges could be passed as the example of what Wole Soyinka called “our collective amnesia”. Take a comprehensive list of high profile people EFCC brought to justice, majority of them were people that could be correctly tagged “Obasanjo boys”. Even though some of them suddenly turn around the moment they found themselves in trouble with the law, as a way of buying public sympathy. Unfortunately, many people don’t strive to stretch the facts to reveal this truth. One largely neglected pillar of our work was the Judiciary and the criminal justice system generally. We had the support of other people in the justice administration chain. Without the will of incorruptible judges and other law enforcement officials, all our modest effort would have come to nought.

    However, the main thesis of Jega’s essay, which was also made clear from the title, was that the EFCC I headed was something of a gra-gra agency – a body that is peopled with exuberant officers eager to arrest suspects in order to hit the headlines. This is a flawed assessment of it. It is also something that people come to believe, largely on account of the agency’s portrayal in the media. EFCC was, and is, never about arrests. In fact, arrest was just a fraction of the entire work. But because arrest is what makes the news, the myriad of steps and processes we follow before and after arrest are mostly overlooked.

    Every step in administration of a corruption case is carefully outlined and has its rigours and identified procedures. A lot of work would have to be put in from the point of accepting a petition or starting a case, analysing it, identifying the key issues and persons, investigation, sourcing documents, obtaining arrest and search warrants, preparing charges and then arrest. We tried to work on each of the steps in a very meticulous manner. It is a little surprise therefore, that throughout my period there was only one person who took me to court challenging his detention by the EFCC. He also lost the suit. The reason was simple: we followed the law and therefore had to do our homework before we pick anybody. Similarly, to point to the meticulous nature of what we did, it is in record that the EFCC recorded a world record of over 90 percent convictions on all the cases we prosecuted. I don’t think gra-gra would yield these results.

    It is also incorrect to say that EFCC didn’t pursue preventive measures as regards corruption. We fully appreciated the fact that the twin strategy of prevention and sanctioning must always go together in law enforcement in general and fighting corruption in particular. The preventive measures of the EFCC were often overshadowed by the news selling headlines about arrests but EFCC took a lot of preventive measures. Major ones include the establishment of the Training and Research Institute that has been carrying out studies on corruption prevention in both public and private sectors. The institute is in the lead in training of detectives, public servants, bankers and so many others in Nigeria today. The establishment of Financial Intelligence Unit is one of the most important steps in preventive measures of controlling corruption globally; EFCC has done it for Nigeria. EFCC also worked to establish international networks and linkages, notably with the United Nations, FBI, Metropolitan Police, German BKA, and West African anti-money-laundering group, GIABA, among others.

    We also worked closely with many departments of governments, civil society groups, religious organisations and schools, on public enlightenment to stem corruption in the society. EFCC also engaged the National Assembly to amend laws, the judiciary on corruption prevention and justice delivery, the customs, the FIRS, NPA and many states and local governments. In fact, many of the arrests made by EFCC arose out of whistle-blowing efforts through these mechanisms. By the way, arrests and prosecutions are also very powerful tools of preventive measures, because they do send a strong message that one cannot get away with corrupt practice, no matter how highly placed.

    The article also mentioned the impeachment of three governors allegedly influenced by the EFCC. I try as much as possible not to be personal by commenting on such cases but the fact that it is suddenly gaining currency, makes it only sensible to clear the misconceptions. The EFCC did not and could not have impeached any governor or force legislators to do so. It will be unfair to deny the legislators the credit of doing their constitutional responsibilities. The EFCC did its part of the responsibility of investigation and submission of findings to the various state assemblies all over the nation. Some state assemblies had cause to act on such reports, others did not. But we certainly did not force anyone to take any action. My understanding of events then was that two out of the three former governors got arrested in London with millions of Pounds. They absconded from justice there and that triggered chain of events that culminated in their loss of political control of their states and thereby resulted in their impeachments. The former governor of Ekiti State had his own local issues. He lost out with the elite of the state, his political party, and other stakeholders. His ordeals had nothing to do with the EFCC. In all the cases, it was obvious that the governors lost out with their political parties and therefore the assembly members were more than willing to act on the thorough investigation reports of the EFCC. The reports were the extent of EFCC’s involvement in those impeachments.

    As a proviso, I want to state that all the actions we took while at the EFCC were taken with the purest of intentions and based on available facts before us at the time. But it is understandable that in everything we do as humans, we are bound to be misunderstood. However, fear of being misunderstood should not be an excuse for not moving to salvage our country. As citizens, we all have the civic responsibility of playing our part in healing the country of its myriad of maladies and guiding it to the coast of prosperity.

    • Ribadu is the former EFCC chairman

  • IBB: A tormented mind at work

    IBB: A tormented mind at work

    Former military president General Ibrahim Babangida’s greatest fear, I gather from some persons who see him from time to time, is that despite his many accomplishments, he will be defined by a single event: the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election.

    That fear would seem to explain why, over the past five years, he has been labouring desperately to re-write the very public record of the crucial events of the time, and to latch on to anything from that era that could soften what is sure to be history’s harsh judgment on him.

    Irony of ironies, he has seized the very election he annulled with such brazen casuistry as his path to redemption.

    He was back peddling that line the other day, in an interview with ThisDay, on the 20th anniversary of that election.

    “Well, it has come and gone,” he said of the poll. “Whatever I feel about it, at least, Nigerians agreed on one thing, that we, the administration, succeeded in holding one of the best and freest elections ever held in this country.”

    Then, this:

    “I can say I feel proud. We may not have achieved the objective but at least, we conducted an election that was not rigged, an election that was not marred by violence, an election that is still being referred to in the country.”

    In case he has forgotten, here, in his own words, is what he said in his June 24, 1993, national broadcast justifying the annulment:

    “ . . . Even before the presidential election, and indeed at the party conventions, we had full knowledge of the bad signals pertaining to the enormous breach of the rules and regulations of democratic elections.

    “But because we were determined to keep faith with the deadline of 27th August, 1993 for the return to civil rule, we overlooked the reported breaches. Unfortunately, these breaches continued into the presidential election of June 12, 1993, on an even greater proportion.

    “There were allegations of irregularities and other acts of bad conduct leveled against the presidential candidates but NEC went ahead and cleared them. There were proofs as well as documented evidence of widespread use of money during the party primaries as well as the presidential election. These were the same bad conduct for which the party presidential primaries of 1992 were cancelled.

    “Evidence available to government put the total amount of money spent by the presidential candidates at over two billion, one hundred million naira (N2.1 billion). The use of money was again the major source of undermining the electoral process.

    “Both these allegations and evidence were known to the National Defence and Security Council before the holding of the June 12, 1993 election. The National Defence and Security Council overlooked these areas of problems in its determination to fulfill the promise to hand over to an elected president on due date.

    “Apart from the tremendous negative use of money during the party primaries and presidential election, there were moral issues which were also overlooked by the Defence and National Security Council. There were cases of documented and confirmed conflict of interest between the government and both presidential candidates which would compromise their positions and responsibilities were they to become president.”

    Then, the coup de grace:

    “It is true that the presidential election was generally seen to be free, fair and peaceful. However, there was in fact a huge array of electoral malpractices virtually in all the states of the federation before the actual voting began. There were authenticated reports of the electoral malpractices against party agents, officials of the National Electoral Commission and also some members of the electorate.

    “If all of these were clear violations of the electoral law, there were proofs of manipulations through offer and acceptance of money and other forms of inducement against officials of the National Electoral Commission and members of the electorate.

    “There were also evidence of conflict in the process of authentication and clearance of credentials of the presidential candidates. Indeed, up to the last few hours of the election, we continued, in our earnest steadfastness with our transition deadline, to overlook vital facts.”

    But Babangida was not done yet.

    “For example, following the Council’s deliberation which followed the court injunction suspending the election, majority of members of the National Defence and Security Council supported postponement of the election by one week,” he continued. “This was to allow NEC enough time to reach all the voters, especially in the rural areas, about the postponement.

    “But persuaded by NEC that it was capable of relaying the information to the entire electorate within the few hours left before the election, the Council, unfortunately, dropped the idea of shifting the voting day. Now, we know better.

    “The conduct of the election, the behaviour of the candidates and post-election responses continued to elicit signals which the nation can only ignore at its peril. It is against the foregoing background that the administration became highly concerned when these political conflicts and breaches were carried to the court.

    “It must be acknowledged that the performance of the judiciary on this occasion was less than satisfactory. The judiciary has been the bastion of the hopes and liberties of our citizens.

    “Therefore, when it became clear that the courts had become intimidated and subjected to the manipulation of the political process, and vested interests, then the entire political system was in clear dangers. This administration could not continue to watch the various high courts carry on their long drawn out processes and contradictory decisions while the nation slides into chaos.

    “It was under this circumstance that the National Defence and Security Council decided that it is in the supreme interest of law and order, political stability and peace that the presidential election be annulled. As an administration, we have had special interest and concern not only for the immediate needs of our society, but also in laying the foundation for generations to come.

    “To continue action on the basis of the June 12, 1993 election, and to proclaim and swear in a president who encouraged a campaign of divide and rule among our ethnic groups would have been detrimental to the survival of the Third Republic.. . .”

    My apologies, reader, for drawing so copiously on Babangida’s broadcast formally announcing and justifying the election annulment. A paraphrase would not have done justice to it, I fear. Nor would it have shown so starkly the irreconcilable differences between Babangida’s 1993 evisceration of the poll in question and his desperate bid to canonize himself for conducting what he now advertises as a model and a signal achievement, if not his crowning glory.

    The ThisDay interview raises anew the question: When did Babangida know that the election he denounced so forcefully was indeed “one of the best and freest elections ever held in this country?”

    When did it occur to him that it was “an election that was not rigged, an election that was not marred by violence?”

    If he came to that judgment before his broadcast and yet annulled the election, history will charge him with perfidy and grand perjury. If he came to it after the broadcast but chose not to correct the record, history will hold him accountable for the tens of thousands who lost life, limb, livelihood and estate in the struggle for the validation of the election.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Sanusi’s CBN ‘Medical Tourism’: Bigger medical budgets, Medical entrepreneurship

    Sanusi’s CBN ‘Medical Tourism’: Bigger medical budgets, Medical entrepreneurship

    Medical tourism’ complained about by CBN’ Governor Sanusi saves the lives of those who can afford it or have sufficient government-CBN connections for them to pay. For over 40 years, we doctors were strangled and made medically impotent by government-orchestrated limited budgets and obsolete equipment. For how long will Nigeria be satisfied with the cheapest medical equipment? We in medicine manage to cater for the ‘rest of us’ -100+million or are forced to go on strike to guarantee ‘minimum facilities’ and remuneration compared to the bullion raked in by politicians. Nigeria operates a ‘Minimum Medical Service’ when we can afford ‘optimum’ or ‘gold standard; services for our people. Medical tourism is about citizens’ rights to maximum medical services which we in Nigeria can easily afford by increasing medical budgets, eliminating corruption in the medical delivery system and providing 24/7 electricity.

    As I write, the Indians are coming with medical equipment bought with loans from Indian billionaires and banks at 3-4% to ‘take over’ medical services and ‘improve’ hospitals providing ‘superior service’. If Nigerians had cheap and easy medical loans, would we not have the best equipment also?  Many doctors, including me, seek N2-4.8m soft loans for the best ultrasound and other machines payable over 3-5years at 3-5% interest per annum –like for a car in the 1970s. Why should hard working professionals in Nigeria, who deliver services, be denied government perks and tax breaks that rice, cement, sugar, tobacco and oil marketers got in every military and political era that made Nigerians paupers and them billionaires? I too would like to be billionaire but I would prefer to serve my patients with better equipment! God knows we have worked hard. But life is worthless in Nigeria. Ask any teacher or patient.

    But even sartorially elegant and ‘wise’ Sanusi, his CBN and banks have got it wrong. It is simply a ‘lack of funds’ issue. The problem is not with the medical tourists’ right to obtain the best for themselves. In fact the medical tourists are as wise as Sanusi as they have the good sense to avoid contracting more diseases and even dying in dirty-walled and filthy ‘mattressed’ casualties in concentration camps called hospitals. Even if we refuse to get good equipment why is it impossible for Nigeria’s budgets to paint hospitals and clinics quarterly, annually, before they get filthy? Visit any government casualty room. You will be sick! The problem is with the money supply side. Nigeria constantly fails to provide funds for cleanliness and cutting edge medicine. The national and state budgets and the CBN fail to recognise government hospitals, let alone private medical practice among others, as genuine profession-driven entrepreneurship strategies. Yet private practice employs tens of thousands of Nigerians in hospitals and clinics. Is that not ‘Medical Entrepreneurship’?

    Many specialists still inside government facilities have personally acquired specialist skills which waste away without saving any Nigerians because the skills need cutting-edge equipment maliciously cut by politicians from the hospital budget. Though these hospitals are often named ‘specialist’ there is nothing specialist delivered to the patient-just mediocre medicine. Do you know what a radiologist, radiotherapist, neurosurgeon, laparoscopic surgeon, plastic surgeon, orthopaedic surgeon or a maxillofacial trauma surgeon or an obstetrician and gynaecologist need to deliver maximum service to Nigerians?

    Recent open heart surgery, kidney transplants, being bandied around as breakthroughs, are not new. They were performed 35 years ago in Nigeria by Nigerian doctors but the programmes died in an ‘agony of broken medical dreams’ from political budgetary neglect by idiotic governments when the title ‘Centres of Excellence’ was created to make a laughing stock of ‘Centres of Extreme Suffering’. From that time Nigerian medicine was dragged into disrepute and thousands of medical professionals wisely fled with their qualifications abroad to cater better for family and brain. Locally professionals were rendered redundant by the politics. Even in private practice the cost of cutting-edge medical equipment to replace obsolete machines is a huge obstacle to entrepreneurial development.

    Nigerian medicine requires petrodollars to be like medicine abroad. It demands cutting-edge equipment – the main ‘medical tourist attraction’. In Nigeria, cutting-edge equipment paradoxically costs more than in the UK. Decent medical loans are not available but N5million loans and N500,000 obituary pages are plentiful to bury the dead.

    Sanusi’s CBN should earmark N1billion for professionals in government and private practice for cheap, easy loans for ‘Professional Entrepreneurial Development’ in self-recognition, guaranteed by the NMA or their professional body.

    Even the ‘wise’ NMA has failed to negotiate such loans for its 30,000+ membership, though it has an annual budget of N2-300million of its members’ money. Can the NMA suspend most of its huge budget for administration, travel and five-star hotel accommodation and put N100m per annum for 20 years towards a powerful N1-2billion NMA Bank or NMA Coop Bank to guarantee its membership equipment and loans and get international grants? The NMA should also insist that state NMA should not beg governors for vehicles but save N1m/annum/state in a ‘Vehicle Fund’ to guarantee a new NMA vehicle every four years. Myopia!  If government refuses to improve medicine, the NMA should take up the challenge and lead in Medical Entrepreneurship promotion if CBN will refuse to recognise ‘Medical Entrepreneurship’ and prefers to merely criticise those who want the best medical care worldwide.

    To be continued.

     

    PS Please pray for those using delayed, damaged and ‘dead’ on the misnamed Lagos Ibadan Expressway.

     

  • NGF and NBA leadership

    The National Executive Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association held its last bi-monthly meeting from July 5-7, at Yenogoa, Bayelsa State. At the end of the meeting the NBA President, Okey Wali SAN was reported to have called for the proscription of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) in view of the controversy which had trailed the outcome of the re-election of Governor Rotimi Amaechi as its chairman. Wali, SAN must have forgotten that his own election was serioulsly contested by his major opponent, Emeka Ngige SAN. In spite of the fact that the allegations of malpractice (including the fact that some lawyers who died several years ago voted from the grave!) were proved beyond reasonable doubt no one ever suggested that the NBA be proscribed. However, while I reject the insinuation in certain legal circles that the call for the proscription of the NGF was influenced by the fund collected from the government to host the last NBA NEC meeting, I am of the strong view that the liquidationist call should not go unchallenged.

    In his characteristic forthright manner, the Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomole exposed the NBA leadership to ridicule when he maintained that “the environment and the overall circumstance known and unknown that led the NBA president to call for the freezing of the right of Governors to associate borders on corrupt practice.” Although another governor has joined issues with Wali, SAN, I deem it pertinent to challenge his reactionary call before it is adopted by the forces of annulment in the country. More so that the call is a sad reminder of the fate that befell some progressive professional bodies and trade unions which were either corruptly taken over or decimated by the Ibrahim Babangida junta. It would be recalled that in February 1984, the candidate backed by the junta had failed woefully to win election as the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress at its delegates conference held in Benin, Edo State. The government reacted by promulgating a decree which sacked the NLC leadership and appointed a sole administrator to run its affairs.

    The next target of the junta was the NBA which had under the leadership of the Late Mr. Alao Aka-Bashorun (1987-1989) been in the fore-front of the struggle for the observance of the rule of law and the restoration of democratic governance in the country. The junta did not disguise its plot to hijack the leadership of the Bar at the 1992 Annual Bar Conference which held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. But some of us successfully frustrated the imposition of the official candidate as the leader of the NBA. A few months later, the Legal Practitioners (Amendment) of 1993 was enacted and backdated to 1992. In the main, the decree sacked the National Executive Committee members of the NBA led by Chief Priscilla Kuye and replaced them with a caretaker committee headed by the Late Chief FRA Williams SAN to manage the affairs of Nigerian lawyers. Although the decree ousted the jurisdiction of the courts and criminalised the institution of any suit which might question “anything done or purported to be done” under it, I was prepared to challenge it. But the Ikeja branch of the NBA instructed me to file the suit on behalf of all its members. I did.

    In the suit we challenged the legal validity of the proscription decree. the Lagos High Court presided over by Obadina J (as he then was) granted an injunction against the caretaker committee. Dissatisfied with the injunction the defendants rushed to the Court of Appeal. Owing to the constitutional significance of the case, the request of the appellants’ counsel, Chief Williams SAN, for a special panel of five Justices of the Court of Appeal to hear the appeal was granted. However the appeal was dismissed. In upholding our submissions their lordships unanimously declared the amendment decree illegal and struck it down for violating the fundamental right of Nigerian lawyers to associate freely and assemble without interference. See FRA Williams & Ors V Akintunde & Ors(1995) 3 NWLR (PT 381) 101. In the same vein, the complaint filed by Olisa Agbakoba SAN at the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights at Banjul, The Gambia on the proscription was equally determined in favour of Nigerian lawyers. Thus, in Civil Liberties Organisation (in respect of the Nigerian Bar Association) v Nigeria (2000) AHRLR 186, the African Commission found that the official interference “with the free association of the Nigerian Bar Association is inconsistent with the preamble of the African Charter in conjunction with UN Basic Principles on the independence of the Judiciary and thereby constitutes a violation of article 10 of the African Charter”. Both decisions have confirmed that some Nigerian lawyers went all out to defend the autonomy of the NBA and resisted the official imposition of leaders on it, even under a fascistic military dictatorship. It is therefore ironical that the current leadership of the NBA has, for some inexplicable reasons, colluded with the forces of retrogression to constrict the democratic space in Nigeria.

    It is particularly sad to note that the NBA which used to be the defender of the fundamental rights of the Nigerian people has thrown up leaders who are campaigning for the proscription of friendly societies and clubs. Even if Mr Wali does not like the NGF, he is duty bound, as a lawyer, to respect the right of the members to associate without external interference. I personally, opposed the acquisition of jets by a few state governors in view of the excruciating poverty in the land. But I had to condemn the decision of the aviation authorities to ground the Rivers State owned bombardier plane while a couple of other governors are allowed to ride theirs. Since there is equality before the law it is illegal to restrict the movement of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, for political reasons, while others are allowed to enjoy their freedom of movement, without let or hindrance.

    Regrettably, the NBA appears to be encouraging impunity on the part of certain public officers. Otherwise its leadership should have called the Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu to order for banning demonstrations and rallies convened in Rivers State without police permit. More so, that the order of Mbu is totally contemptuous of the verdict of the Court of Appeal in the case of the Inspector-General of Police v All Nigeria People Party (2008) 12 WRN 65 wherein it was held that seeking police permit for public protest is violative of the right of Nigerian citizens to freedom of expression. In that appeal which I also had the privilege of handling for the respondents, the Court of Appeal agreed with me that police permit was illegal in a democratic society. It was the view of the court that: “In present day Nigeria, clearly, police permit has outlived its usefulness. Certainly in a democracy, it is the right of citizens to conduct peaceful processions, rallies or demonstrations without seeking and obtaining permission from anybody. It is a law guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution and any law that attempts to curtail such right is null and void and of no consequence.” Pursuant to the epochal verdict, the Nigeria Police Code of Conduct recently launched by the Inspector-General of Police, M. D. Abubakar, has directed all police officers to “maintain a neutral position without regard to the merits of any labour dispute, political protest, or other public demonstration while acting in an official capacity; nor make endorsement of candidates, while on duty, or in official uniform.”

    Incidentally, the honourable Justice Olufumilayo Adekeye JSC (rtd) who read the leading judgment in the case of IGP v ANPP (supra) is now a member of the newly inaugurated Police Service Commission. It is hoped that the police authorities will muster the courage to sanction the Rivers State police commissioner for violating the Police Code which has mandated all police officers to “perform all duties impartially without favour or affection or ill will and without regard to status, sex, race, religion, political belief or aspiration. All citizens will be treated equally with courtesy, consideration and dignity. Officers will never allow personal feelings, animosities or friendships to influence official conduct. …”

    In the light of the foregoing it is hoped that concerned lawyers will urgently adopt decisive measures to free the NBA from the grip of anti-democratic forces and reposition it to resume its traditional role of defending the rule of law and the expansion of the democratic space in the country.