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Category: Tuesday

Much ado about NGF

Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970), the American psychologist, spoke of a hierarchy of needs.

While basic needs (breathing, food, water, sleep etc) occupy the base of the pyramid, self-actualisation (the creative swagger of a man/woman who has made good) perches at the summit.

Between these two extremes are safety (innate security), love/belonging (family confidence and security) and esteem (societal appreciation and respect): and you need to climb through these rungs to gain the summit.

This is, of course, no psychology exposé. But linking Maslow’s hierarchy to the twin main dramatis personae in the raging storm over the impending Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) election is rather revealing.

Performance-wise, one has attained self-actualisation in his elected office. The other is languishing at the base, still fumbling over basic needs. But both are angling for future tours of duty – or, in any case, reportedly so. That accounts for the raging war over an otherwise innocuous election!

Enter Rivers Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, sitting NGF chair.

As far as performance goes, two-term Governor Amaechi, who nevertheless would end up spending less than eight years prescribed by law because of his delayed assumption of office (25 October 2007 instead of 29 May 2007), appears to have garnered enough swagger to aim for higher office.

Remember former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperious diktat that Amaechi’s gubernatorial nomination had developed a “K-leg”; and also the legal challenge that eventually reclaimed the governor his seat, even if his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had brazenly replaced his name on the ballot with his cousin’s, Sir Celestine Omehia?

Despite these setbacks however, Governor Amaechi has enough on ground to show (in model primary and secondary schools, healthcare, infrastructure, sports and security: ridding Rivers of the militants’ terrorist threat in kidnapping), to justify a future political ambition. He therefore appears made, with or without a second NGF term.

So, why this contest-and-be-damned mentality in his camp? The NGF chairmanship, with its attendant networking, keeps alive Governor Amaechi’s reported vice-presidential ambition, a ticket media reports claim he hopes to share with Sule Lamido, the Jigawa governor. That sure does not sit well with Governor Amaechi’s political traducers.

Enter then, President Goodluck Jonathan. He appears fixated with crushing Amaechi: and the controversial grounding of the Rivers government airplane would appear the latest indication.

But between Governor Amaechi and President Jonathan, the contrast is stark.

The one would spend less than eight years as governor; yet has an ample lot to show. The other, if his second term bid gels, would likely spend nine years as president – more than the required eight – but may have pretty little to show, if the morning shows the day, from his parlous performance so far.

However, Dr. Doyin Okupe, with his presidential public affairs staff in tow, on a visit to The Nation the other day, believed it was only a matter of time before President Jonathan started dazzling Nigerians with tangibles.

It would appear, therefore, a titanic (?) tussle between a clumsy “Oga at the top” and a nimble lower fry in the Nigerian Animal Farm (apologies to George Orwell), particularly with the president assuming the Obasanjo-era almighty president and “party leader” – a thorough and thorough corruption of the American presidential system.

Yes, over there, the sitting president by convention is party leader. But that deference comes from reverence to the presidential office, which incumbent is no insufferable power brute, but a meek lamb of the constitution, created, nurtured and completely directed by the rule of law, never by brazen arbitrary power.

In President Jonathan’s case, that misguided role is double jeopardy. The more fixated he is with crushing Amaechi, the more distracted he is from scrambling up Maslow’s pyramid by superlative performance, and the more he damns himself as unworthy of the 2015 presidential en core he clearly covets.

But the president and his handlers appear for now too irate to think clearly.

That explains the “Judases” metaphor of the rather tactless Godswill Akpabio, Akwa Ibom governor, on being made chair of the no less tactless PDP Governors Forum, a forum that could well destroy NGF itself. Like the Christ and Iscariot, the Jonathan presidential Judases are within, not without.

No thanks to them, for one, there are emerging talks of many opposition governors pulling out of NGF. For another, there is counter-talk of Jonathan’s gubernatorial storm troopers either plotting to scuttle the NGF poll should Amaechi secure the number to win; or walk out after losing to paint the election as some farce – talk of (un)presidential bad faith!

But in this presidential huffing and puffing, strategic thinking would appear to have taken a fatal flight. If not so, the president and his men ought to have carefully x-rayed the NGF power centres before plotting their moves. That apparent failure is all so reminiscent of the search-corrupt-and-destroy calamitous tactics of the Obasanjo third term gambit, as beautifully exposed by Nasir El-Rufai in The Accidental Public servant.

President Obasanjo listened to political and careerist witches and wizards who told him what he wanted to hear. The result was a spectacular collapse of his third term pipe dream and the well-earned disgrace, even if the former president continues to live in denial of the debacle by hiding behind the proverbial finger.

Is President Jonathan headed for the same ditch? That is hard to say, until you analyse the NGF power centres.

The opposition NGF governors’ camp would appear a no-go area, even if Anambra’s Peter Obi and Ondo’s Segun Mimiko might go with the president. Incidentally, Governor Obi was reportedly at the dinner, at which the president allegedly told the attendees to go for Amaechi’s jugular.

The PDP Governors Forum? That is a house divided against itself. Most of the president’s opponents are second-term governors who have less to lose than if they were seeking a second term. Besides, Governor Akpabio, the body’s chair, has been so tactlessly tactless it is doubtful if he can rally anybody for the president, beyond preaching to the converted (who seem to lack the number) and barking impotent threats at opponents.

The Northern States Governors Forum? The body language of Niger Governor, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the chair, speaks of a regal distancing from the president and his cause. In open balloting, how many of them would risk voting the Jonathan way, given how the traditional North feels about power in 2015? And how many, in secret balloting would, without prying presidential eyes? This is another house divided against itself but united by a primordial cause.

But even if the president vanquishes Amaechi, what does he prove – that Goliath has slain David? Big deal! But at what cost?

Really, all this furore over NGF election is much ado about nothing. It is a massive distraction all round.

The president bullying the governor or the governor slaying the president does not remove the quacking basis of the Nigerian state. After all the noise of battle, the hoop of victory and the puncture of defeat, let us hope the combatants would not find themselves buried under the rubble of once upon a country!

April 30, 2013
Understanding Jonathan/Amaechi family feud

In Nigeria, being good, upright, truthful and forthright could be a bad idea especially if you are in public office. It has also emerged in the past few years in our country that dictatorship, high-handedness, intolerance and vindictiveness can lice successfully with democracy, albeit, Nigeria’s brand of democracy. And where you have all these in abundance as is the case here, cronyism, nepotism, incompetence et al become the order of the day with corruption reigning supreme.

To understand what I am talking about, let’s take a look at the on going face-off between Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers state and ‘Oga and Madam at the top’ in Abuja’ President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan.

In between, throw a certain character called Nyesom Wike, who sits in cabinet with President Jonathan as Nigeria’s Minister of State for Education, but who in reality is a tool in the hands of Madam and does all the dirty jobs for the First Family, including trying to destabilise the Rivers State government to soften the ground for Madam, an Okrika from Rivers State, to have her boy installed as the governor of the state now or sometime in 2015. All these geared towards getting Rivers State and its two million or so votes in Jonathan’s corner in the 2015 presidential election.

Rivers votes have always been crucial to winning a presidential election in Nigeria. I recall as a teenager in the second republic how votes from the old Rivers State tilted the balance in favor of Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the then National Party of Nigeria (NPN). Glued to my father’s radio, I was monitoring the result of the 1979 presidential election state by state as being announced by the then Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO).

With most of the result out, Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the then Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) was in the lead with over four million votes closely followed by Shagari, and optimism was in the air, especially in the old western region that Awolowo was on course to clinching the country’s presidency. But overnight the picture changed when the result from Rivers State was released and NPN got over one million votes and catapulted Shagari to over five million votes. That put paid to Awolowo’s presidential ambition that year and the result put Rivers State as a must win for any presidential candidate in Nigeria.

That trend has not changed as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the successor to NPN has consistently benefited from this solid backing from Rivers since the advent of this democracy, up to the 2011 presidential election that brought in President Goodluck Jonathan.

Rightly or wrongly, however, the Jonathan camp believes that could change in 2015 if Governor Rotimi Amaechi is not in their camp in the run up to the next presidential election. And it does appear to them that the governor’s body language is not in sync with their 2015 ambition. This, those close to the governor say is not true as Amaechi is totally committed to not just the PDP but also the Jonathan presidency both now and post 2015 election.

The problems they say are the people around the president (read my lips, Nyesom Wike & co) who would rather create a gulf between Jonathan and Amaechi for their own selfish ends. They say the President and Governor Amaechi used to be in the same corner right from Jonathan’s days as Vice President to late President Umar Yar’Adua. And amidst opposition to Jonathan elevation to the position of acting President when Yar’Adua took ill, Amaechi it was said stood by the man from Otuoke, and finally when he ascended the presidency and later ran for election in 2011, the governor delivered Rivers votes to the president. So, at what point did their “quarrel” start?

It is very difficult to say the two are quarreling as both have denied this, but it will also be playing the fool to say all is well between them. All that can be said about the unease between them is that it doesn’t bode well for Rivers State on one hand and our democracy on the other hand. While both have refused to acknowledge it, their seeming quarrel can not but be related to the 2015 presidential election. Jonathan believes rightly or wrongly that Amaechi plans to team up with a presidential candidate, most likely from the north, to challenge him in the coming presidential election. And the governor has vehemently denied this, both in private and publicly. He had even gone on the record to say Jonathan is a good man and means well for the country, but that the president is surrounded by some “bad” people.

This is what everybody close to the President seem to be saying, but not a few Nigerians are confused when they hear this as President Jonathan has not convinced them that he is nice or meant well for the country. And examples abound to prove their point.

Jonathan, apparently driven by determination to return to office in 2015, from recent events and actions of the Federal government, doesn’t seem to believe Amaechi. The governor it does seem from the point of view of the president must be muzzled or bullied to tow the line or punished if he refused.

If recent events are anything to go by, then the punishment option appear to have been taken by the Jonathan camp even when there is little or no evidence to suggest that Amaechi is against the President’s 2015 project.

Remember the on going feud between Rivers and Bayelsa States over disputed oil field along their border in the Kalabari area? Not a few in Rivers State believe this was punishment on the people for the “sins” of Amaechi. Similarly oil fields have been ceded from Rivers to Akwa Ibom State in what many believe to be compensation for Governor Akpabio’s support for the president.

Other punishments bordering on security and even economic matters have been meted out to Rivers all in a bid to show Amaechi ‘we have the federal might’.

Directly the presidency is fighting to ensure that Amaechi does not return as chairman Nigeria Governors Forum when the Forum elects new officers in a few weeks time. Why you may want to know?

Amaechi as Chairman of the Forum has been speaking the minds of his colleagues especially on the vexed issues of excess crude account, sovereign wealth fund, true federalism, fuel subsidy and so on to a presidency that doesn’t seem to want to listen. For speaking truth to power on behalf of his colleagues, the presidency wants him out as NGF chairman and have been using the Governors of Benue, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, expectedly Bayelsa states and to some extent Katsina State to cause trouble for Amaechi in the NGF.

We all know the story of the creation of the PDP Governors Forum, to frustrate the Rivers State Governor, even when both the PDP and Governor Akpabio, the PDPGF chairman, have denied it.

The story of insecurity of lives and property in Rivers State prior to the coming on board of the Amaechi administration is well known, so also is how the Governor has successfully restored peace to his domain. Part of the measures was to spend millions of Naira to equip the security forces deployed in the State. But while the security forces were grateful, their masters in Abuja appear less so. As we write, two armoured helicopters meant for security operations in Rivers state and environs, fully paid for by the state government have been denied clearance at the port in Lagos by the federal government who believe (wrongly) the choppers are meant for the so called Lamido/Amaechi 2015 project, which only exists in the imagination of the presidency. You can see how there minds work in Abuja. These are equipments that can be used to fight terrorism anywhere in Nigeria.

To cap it all, the war on Amaechi by Jonathan’s Federal Government has been taken to the ridiculous level of impounding the governor’s official aircraft for allegedly violating aviation rules and regulations.

Having covered the aviation beat for years, I know the powers invested in the regulatory authorities and as such would not pick issues yet with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) over their actions regarding that aircraft. But they had better be on solid ground else they would be dragged into the political mess by Jonathan and be disgraced.

Amaechi, we all know cannot be kept quite and will continue to say the truth. And as long as he continues to deliver the dividends of democracy to his people, he will always triumph, no matter the odds. He has gone through this before and emerged victorious. His current travail this will not be an exception. He should be patient.

President Goodluck Jonathan is however advised to beware of his latter day friends, the Nyesom Wikes of this world.

April 30, 2013
Baga: A postscript

Just when the appeasement template described as amnesty for the Boko Haram seems given, the nation woke up to a dramatic escalation of hostilities in Baga, a fishing border town in the North-east between the men of the military Joint Task Force and the Boko Haram. At the end of the confrontation, the casualties were numbered in multiple scores depending on who did the counting. The military high command put out its own figures of the dead at 36. The leaders of the community also gave their version as between 185 and 200.

But then, it is not only the number of casualties that is in dispute, even the day the hostilities broke out and the series of events that led to the skirmishes have since been contested. While most accounts gave the weekend of April 19 as the day the hostilities broke out, some accounts actually point at an earlier date of April 16. As if to further compound the puzzle, the military couldn’t be sure – days after – whether it was the multinational troops in the JTF that engaged the insurgents or exclusively Nigerian troops.

Of course, the only area of broad agreement is that civilian lives were involved. The JTF said six civilians were killed – the rest 30 were alleged to be members of the Boko Haram.

And as for those to be held responsible for the mayhem, again, it is a matter of who to believe. Whereas the commander of the multinational force, Brigadier General Austin Edokpaye, puts the blame squarely on the door-steps of the Boko Haram who he accused of using civilians as human shield while firing on soldiers, what the locals saw was the heavy hand of soldiers in the mission to avenge the death of one of their men. Some accounts actually blamed the extensive destruction which followed on the house-to-house search embarked on by the soldiers after which the residents were chased out and their abodes set on fire.

It doesn’t help that attention has since deflected from the murderous activities of the Boko Haram sect to the role of the guardians drafted to keep the peace. Today, the military is the one on the spot – accused of deploying excessive force against the insurgents thereby causing heavy collateral damages. It seems a case of the military providing fresh ammunitions for those who see them as the problem and hence are pressing for the withdrawal of troops from the North-east.

No doubt, the point cannot be sufficiently made that the death of one innocent soul to the raging insurgency is one too many. Whether it is one lone service man mauled in the course of national duty or the dozens of innocents caught in the middle of the raging fire between the security forces and the Boko Haram. However, just as the use of excessive force by the military must be deplored, and hence the need for thorough investigations to establish and bring to book those individuals found in breaches of relevant services rules, part of the problem isn’t just the tendency to jump into conclusions before the full facts are established but to see the servicemen as expendables.

How many people died? We do not even know at this point. The one that we know for certain is that an officer of the JTF died. But then, does the number really matter? Are these fellows not Nigerians with dreams and aspirations? The point is that every life must be seen to count; whether we are dealing with one life or dozens, the difference must be seen only in terms of the multiples of avoidable tragedy.

In all of these however, the greater tragedy must be the predictable, knee-jerk response to a foreseeable outcome. Most predictably, the response has been superficial – the same standard blame game: the military must be blamed for the multi-layered problem they didn’t create. I struggle to find the required due sensitivity accorded the task force in the rather difficult operating environment and the sacrifices they are called to make, more so in an environment where the next individual standing by may well be a terrorist waiting to lob yet another IED. I find none. More palpable also is the lack of resolve to confront a common threat by those who should assume the role of drum majors for peace.

At this point, I do not want to delve into the argument as to whether or not the military by its well known record of brutality against unarmed civilians is not wholly responsible for the way the ordinary citizen perceives them. Neither do I want to venture into the debate as to whether the nation can afford to defang the military simply because a few serving personnel exceeded their brief. In the same vein, no one questions the right of citizens to demand acceptable standards of conduct from our servicemen whether in combat zones or among the civil populace.

The issue is whether we are not looking in the wrong direction for solution to a general malaise. First, I do not think that anyone should misunderstand the job that the military is called to do; theirs is to find and fix the insurgents wherever they may be found using all available instruments including force. Secondly, I do not also think that anyone should suffer the illusion that the military is anything but a facilitator in the search for peace. Just as it seems inevitable that mistakes would be made in the course of duty, it is precisely the job of the civil society to call them to account. I do not think that the civil society has failed in this duty – whether it is Odi, Zaki Biam and now in Baga.

The problem is the attempt to amplify the failings of the JTF, and to present it as the problem. They were not the problem in the Niger Delta any more than they will be the problem in Borno and Yobe. In both situations, they were drafted in to deal with the specific problem.

Does anyone imagine that the only reason anyone is talking of amnesty today is because the Boko Haram has not succeeded in overrunning the vast territories of the North? How about imagining the North-east without the JTF in the current circumstances? Surely, the federal government does not seem to have exclusive monopoly of bad faith!

I conclude by re-affirming an earlier thesis that there can be no such thing as an imposed solution to the Boko Haram problem. The problem is fundamentally for local authorities – working with the federal authorities – to solve. Even if the federal government succeeds in smashing the infrastructure of the insurgency, the issue of the fundamentalist ideology behind it would still have to be addressed. That, for me, is the only ground on which the proposed amnesty can stand – or make sense!

April 30, 2013
Anarchy at the gate

Nineteen years ago, in February 1994, The Atlantic magazine published an article with the apocalyptic title “The coming anarchy,” in which its national correspondent, Robert Kaplan, advanced the thesis that poverty, overpopulation, disease and crime would conflate in urban areas of West Africa – and ultimately in other parts of the Third World — to set the stage for the meltdown of civil society.

Nigeria, Guinea (Conakry) and Sierra Leone had furnished the raw material for Kaplan’s prognostication. Liberia was already being convulsed by a barbarous civil war.

Fast forward to 2013; add to Kaplan’s toxic brew corruption on a scale almost beyond belief, massive and growing youth unemployment, free flow of firearms of every description, syndicated kidnapping, serial sectarian violence of which last week’s carnage in Baga, in Borno State, is only the latest installment, as well as degradation of the environment in oil-producing areas.

Exacerbated and unaddressed, any of these factors could drive Nigeria to the edge. Together, they constitute a potent potion for disaster. Anarchy, it now seems clear, is not merely coming; it may well have arrived at the gate already.

But the authorities seem all too distracted to notice it, or they notice it all right but do not give a damn, persuaded that they can ride the storm and live happily ever after Sometimes they even appear to be wringing their hands out of sheer helplessness, if not abject surrender.

When they think at all about ameliorative measures, it is all in the future. By baking bread from cassava flour instead of wheat flour, the public was assured about a year ago that some three million jobs would be created. Some N4 billion that would have been spent importing wheat flour would be pressed into more productive use that would generate still more jobs.

But well before a steady stream of the cassava crop has been assured, contracts had been awarded for purchasing and installing cassava-processing plants all over the country. The much-advertised bread has thus far been reserved for the breakfast table at Aso Rock. The jobs are yet to materialise.

The same strategy has been applied to rice. Growing and processing the stuff locally will save billions of naira in foreign exchange and create thousands of jobs. Ahead of an assured and sustainable harvest stream, industrial-scale rice mills are being purchased to process rice for the local market and perhaps even for export, to earn foreign exchange. Meanwhile, the projected jobs remain just that.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of young men and women armed with degrees and diplomas for the universities and other institutions of further learning are released to the job market to swell the ranks of those who had graduated three, perhaps or even five years earlier but are still pounding the streets looking for jobs that are just not there.

Yet every year, the Federal Government and the states routinely establish more universities and institutions of further learning, most of them ill-provisioned, to produce yet more graduates destined to suffer the fate of those who had graduated much earlier.

Not too long ago, a university degree was the passport to a career that was rewarding and full of promise. In Nigeria today, a strict cost-benefit analysis will lead the hard-headed to regard it as a disinvestment.

The business mogul Aliko Dangote placed an advertisement to recruit university graduates as truck drivers the other day and could not cope with the deluge of responses, a good many of them from persons with higher degrees, including doctorates. Since I commented on the natter, hardly a week passes without my getting an inquiry from a graduate about the method of application, and whether I could provide a recommendation.

Entertaining no illusions about what awaits them at the end of their service year, many youth corps members, now assure themselves a second term in the schemed and its anaemic pay by deliberately under-performing.

The Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, pivoted her ill-fated campaign for president of the World Bank on a promise to create jobs for the world’s youths. Why can’t she devote her abundant energies to doing just that on a national scale? Rarely does she mention the subject these days, though it once ranked high on the “Transformation” agenda of the Jonathan administration.

Epileptic power supply has ruined small-scale businesses that served as a cushion against poverty for millions of Nigerians. Poverty is as visible as never before, just as hunger stalks the land as never before. Crime is just around the corner, and insecurity is a constant companion.

This conjuncture ought to concentrate the minds of our policy-makers as never before and move them, if only out of a healthy instinct for self-preservation, to devise measures to stem what is clearly shaping up as a slide into ungovernability.

Instead, they are focusing all their energies and resources on the general elections scheduled for 2015, frantically instituting measures to cripple potential or wholly imagined challengers, and scheming to impose a new Constitution on the country through the back door, in the process eviscerating yet another opportunity – some say it may well be the last one – to design a healthier union.

The kidnapping saga of Kehinde Bamigbetan, the dutiful and unassuming chair of the Ejigbo Local Council Development Area, in Lagos, ought to serve as a wake-up call to all of them.

The syndicate that abducted him was on routine reconnaissance, looking out to seize anyone for whose freedom they could obtain a hefty ransom. Bamigbetan seemed that kind of person. He was being chauffeured in an SUV, not in itself a sure sign of affluence in most Nigerian cities, but some indication that the fellow in the “owner’s corner” is not exactly a pauper.

As the stalkers overtook his vehicle, a shot rang out from their Kalashnikov assault rifle. His driver jerked the SUV into reverse gear and tried to change course but hit an electric pole and stopped. More shots rang out from the AK-47, narrowly missing the driver who somehow opened the door and fled.

Bamigbetan was now effectively in the hands of his abductors. They bundled him into their car, blindfolded him, and drove furiously toward Badagry. But not before they had kicked out of the car a captive who, they told Bamigbetan chillingly, had just been ransomed with hard cash.

The kidnappers, numbering seven, split up into two groups. One group comprised “hardened” individuals, according to Bamgbetan. This was the group that administered the beatings and the blood-curdling threats. The other was more “humane.”

It says something of the sophistication of the syndicate that they sent “spies” to mingle with the staff of Bamigbetan’s office and monitor what they were saying about their abducted boss. Their report apparently moved their principals to settle for a reduced ransom, and to release him after one traumatic week in their custody.

Bamigbetan was lucky. Several weeks earlier, a former deputy governor of Anambra State, Dr Chudi Nwike and a chieftain of the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) was killed by his kidnappers after they had collected a negotiated ransom.

Now, here is the point that should set our policy-makers thinking: The kidnappers, Bamgbetan said, “seemed to have been forced into criminality” by the prevailing circumstances. Many of them are graduates but had been unemployed for years. They could not understand “why we budget billions of Naira and graduates cannot get jobs.”

So, they took to kidnapping as a way of registering their anger against “the system.”

Continuing on the present trajectory and hoping to muddle through somehow is not a public policy option. If policy makers could summon just one tenth of the creativity they employ in enriching themselves and their cronies and apply it to devising sustainable employment schemes for the burgeoning army of restive young persons, they may yet stave off the looming prospects of anarchy in those parts of the country that have not been overrun by Boko Haram.

For Funmilayo Olayinka: A Postscript

Funmilayo Olayinka, the deputy governor of Ekiti, whose remains were buried in the state capital last week, was an uncommon public figure. Abjuring the pomp and circumstance that went with the office, she was unpretentious through and through.

Gracefulness – suavity, to employ a more evocative term — perfused every step she walked, every word she spoke, and every gesture she made. She battled the ravages of the cancer that ultimately claimed her life with great dignity and continued until the end to complement Governor Kayode Fayemi in devoted service to the people. She gave public service and politics a human and humane face.

We are all the poorer for her passing. May her soul find peace. Her family will take pride and consolation in the outpouring of grief and affection that attended her passing. Her example inspires and ennobles us still.

April 30, 2013
Margaret Hilda Thatcher: Lest we forget

Baroness Thatcher, the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 20th century had been laid to rest at the age of 87. She was better remembered as The “The Iron Lady” – a paradox indeed for the first woman to be British Prime Minister. Rabidly anti-communist, her globally “uncompromising politics and leadership style” made a Soviet journalist to so nickname her, Iron Lady.

In Africa, we dare not speak ill of the dead. Certainly nobody would ever recommend a Thatcher Death party the type which before her burial reportedly attracted some hundreds in London, who had fun rather than shedding tears for a Prime Minister, whose poverty -inducing policies in Britain are known as Thatcherism.

But while we are enjoined to miss a departed soul, some of the post mortem exaggerated tributes from Africa are too good to be believed about the Iron Lady. Indeed some tributes by their factual untruths amount to speaking ill of the dead. During her reign (without royal entitlement!) the no-no woman never gave in to flattery and praise singing. I recall that in 1988, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher visited Nigeria. The tour was greeted by NLC-led mass anti-apartheid protest. She actually declined to take along her BARB horse gift given to her by the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero. Definitely I bet that Maggie who rejected a royal horse gift would dismiss posthumous, unsolicited and certainly undeserved, attributions.

President Goodluck Jonathan while condoling the government and people of Britain on the death of its former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in a statement signed by the President’s spokesman Reuben Abati, that; “The late Baroness Thatcher will always be remembered by the world for her very unique, distinctive and purposeful leadership which restored pride and respect to her country and made a resurgent Great Britain a force to be reckoned with on the global stage.” These tributes were mere words without historic justifications. What made Thatcher’s leadership “unique”, “purposeful” for our continent?

The bane of contemporary African leadership is lack of memory and accountability. The generous posthumous assessment of Margaret Thatcher once again shows that some African leaders are eager to impress outside powers rather than being accountable to their peoples.

True to her divisive character, Thatcher while in office made two rancorous visits to Africa characterised by protests and condemnations against her notorious racist support for the discredited apartheid terror-regime. A woman who in defiance of the world and unapologetically saw Nelson Mandela as “a terrorist” deserving no freedom from Robben Island maximum prison (instead of a freedom fighter Madiba is) offered no purposeful leadership neither for Africa nor for Britain where anti-apartheid feeling was rooted in spite of her obstinacy. Undoubtedly, the sudden resignation of Thatcher as British Prime Minister on November 22, 1990 after her humiliation by her conservative party was one big relief for Africa. Long before the war in the gulf in 1990, her African policy passed for political and economic equivalent of war(s) against a continent. Thanks to the scores of her doctrinaire policies (read: missiles) for which the continent lacked the capacity (read: patriots) to repel.

Apartheid South Africa thrived on Thatcher’s ‘no-sanctions’ policy. The popular belief was that both the liberation efforts and sanctions by the international community would bring the racist Boers to reason and negotiation table. For her, sanctions campaign was ‘absurd’ and commonwealth-after-commonwealth, she could not conceal her annoyance about the fact that sanctions would not set out ‘to relive the poverty and starvation’ in South Africa. She single handedly subverted reasoned positions of the of the Commonwealth’s Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) on apartheid and guaranteed British security for the most inhuman system on the globe.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo commendably unmasked Thatcher’s outlook in a personal letter, sent to her published in an edition of British Financial Times, when he told her thus: “Many people around the world view your continued opposition to sanctions as founded in instinct, not logic and as displaying a misguided tribal loyalty and myopic political vision…”

She mischievously taunted the repeal of the so-called Mixed Marriage Act by Pik Botha as evidence of her romance with apartheid. General Obasanjo reportedly asked Thatcher if all 25 million blacks were fighting for was to “marry or have sex with five million whites” adding that the “mental laager of the Boer seem to be mirrored” in Thatcher’s “own attitudes”.

Thatcher’s UK did not promote any decolonisation policy or initiative on Namibia. On the contrary, Cold war perspective beclouded the policy perception of the legitimate efforts of SWAPO to restore the usurped rights of black men and women. The struggle for independence was reduced to a ‘regional ideological conflict’ according to which a ‘linkage’ existed between the withdrawal of the Cuban troops in Angola and the independence of Namibia. Indeed, with the unscheduled visit of Mrs. Thatcher to Windhoek in September, 1989, the world nearly had a caricature of UN Resolution 435 on Namibian independence as she displayed colonial bias and wrongly accused SWAPO of ‘disrupting’ decolonisation process, she never believed in the first instance. Africa problem-solving was never her specialisation in office.

Her worst footprint was on the global economy. Obviously not by accident, her tenure coincided with the worst economic crisis in Africa: balance of payment crisis, collapse of primary goods’ prices, poverty and unemployment. These crises were in themselves attributable to the debt crisis. Maggie was ruthlessly committed to debt collection and the better if the structural ‘adjustment’ programme lacked a human face. Britain was the home of the ‘Club of private creditors’. The Prime Minister was committed to neo- liberal free enterprise at home, never hesitated to export same abroad with the support for IMF and World Bank reforms. Thus the continent became a showcase of mutually exclusive competitive policies of devaluation, liberalisation, privatisation and cuts in public spending.

The results: unemployment, brain drain, decline in income, and ‘perverse flow of resources’ through debt repayment. Her tenure was the same as SAP-military imposed regimes in Africa. She suffered no democracy rhetoric in Africa; she administered UK at a time constitutionalism was trampled upon by corrupt military adventurers in notable commonwealth states of Nigeria and Ghana. As recent as 2004, Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of Lady Thatcher, was arrested and charged over claims that he was involved in a plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea.

Let’s forgive but we dare not forget her dubious African legacy. The defunct West Africa Weekly summed up Mrs. Thatcher’s tenure thus: ‘Mrs. Thatcher never developed a coherent policy that remotely took account of the genuine interests of African people…’

• Aremu mni, is Vice President of Nigeria Labour Congress

April 23, 2013
Playing kite with corruption in Imo

That huge corruption thrives in Nigeria is no news. It rankles. It is sad that from the low class, through the middle class, to the elite, corruption seems to be the order of the day. But, it is sadder, when the ruling elite, the class projected on public beam, and meant to represent the interest of the people of the country, are also guilty of this malady. Particularly irksome to me is the current state of affairs in Imo State.

I’m particularly worried about the malfeasance which caused the impeachment of Jude Agbaso, the erstwhile Imo deputy governor. Following an embittered relationship with his boss, Agbaso, upon impeachment recently by the Imo State of House of Assembly over a N458m bribe allegation, is singing like a canary. According to reports, the N458m kickback came from a Lebanese road contractor, Joseph Dina of JPROS International Nigeria Limited. His disclosure showed that discussions that probably took place in cosy sanctuaries and at odd hours is now out in the open and for all ears. It stinks of shady dealings in top places.

The way it is, development is coming at a great cost to Imolites. Though, the state government maintains a public display of thriftiness and modesty, this might not really be the case with the governor at the helm of affairs. And if the words of the impeached deputy governor have any measure of truth, then, funds earmarked for development purposes in Imo have embarked on foreign trips. This is indeed a sad development.

On the surface, Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha, seems to be concerned about saving Imo State government funds. It never tires the governor to reiterate how he does not spend his ‘security’ vote on himself. Rather, he boasts of how he channels it towards developmental efforts. But, a tour around the state reveals a chaotic form of development, where things are perpetually in a state of work-in-progress. The truth be said: After his four-year term, Okorocha might just turn out to be another extravagant governor.

And, while posterity has rubbished Agbaso by brandishing him as being corrupt, it remains to be confirmed if indeed that is the whole truth concerning the matter. This is because, like a wounded animal, Agbaso is attacking back. He is talking about complicity involving the use of state funds, which he says that even the governor, Okorocha, is aware of. According to the embittered deputy governor, Joseph Dina who has graft cases to answer with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was made to implicate him.

According to Agbaso in an interview, ‘Joseph Dina was specially sponsored to falsely confess that he gave me bribe. If not, how could a Lebanese, who had had series of graft cases with the EFCC since 2009, boldly come out in the open to confess that he used up to 46 per cent of fully paid contract sum from Imo people’s money to give me bribe? It is unbelievable.’

On the other hand, how could I collect such an amount from a man I never did any favour for and was not in a position to do any favour for?’

Agbaso had said, ‘An aide of Governor Rochas Okorocha, Prince MacDonald-Akano, who is the governor’s Special Adviser and Chairman of the Committee on Monitoring and Implementation of Road Projects in Imo State, was made a shareholder in JPROS International Nigeria Ltd. on June 20, 2012 and allotted two million shares of the company’s 10 million shares.’

Following his impeachment, Agbaso and his family enlisted the services of private investigators. According to him, the N458m purportedly paid to him was traced and it was found out that the money was paid in two tranches through private foreign bank accounts in Dubai and London. The investigation, Agbaso said, also revealed that the accounts in which the money was paid into belonged to Three Bother Concept Nig. Ltd and IHSAN Bureau De Change Limited. Defending himself, Agbaso said he had no links and had no relationship with any of the companies.

Agbaso also said it was the governor that paid the contractor an initial N200m from his office. Again, if close aides to Okorocha are in the thick of the matter and if the ousted deputy maintains that any money missing can be explained by the governor, then, something is definitely fishy. What is it? Could the governor be complicit? Or is it merely a case of pot calling kettle black and making the kettle pay for being black?

It takes two to tango. And a leopard does not develop spots overnight. Surely, Agbaso and Okorocha were buddies before things turned sour. And both of them, to an extent, know about the deals going in Imo State. To have power is sweet as people obey your words. But, those in power should realise that it intoxicates. And the outcome is not too rosy. In his cries, Agbaso had said his impeachment also had to do with the politics of 2015.

I know Nigerian politics is one of strange bedfellows; hence, there is no way Agbaso cannot come out clean. But, the fact is that there are certain things which are not right. For one, Agbaso fingered his aide for being made a director in the company only last July. Is investigation going on in that direction? In addition, there was so much hurry to prosecute Agbaso. Why? Has the phony ‘construction equipment’ rant by the company been investigated? It would be difficult for Okorocha to claim not to have knowledge of how the disputed money went.

In the Imo financial conundrum, it seems Agabso is just being used as the sacrificial lamb by a gang of corrupt politicians. While Agbaso really deserves little pity, the situation is not fair. More eyes should be cast on other implicated persons, even if they are friends and cronies of the governor. Even, if it is the governor himself.

• Nduka writes from Owerri

April 23, 2013
A misbegotten constitution review

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha, has been all over the media this past week congratulating himself and his colleagues on executing what by his reckoning is one of the rarest political feats ever achieved in this clime.

“We have kept faith with Nigerians,” he proclaimed, in an article detailing the exertions the House of Representatives put itself through in its self-serving and utterly misconceived task of fashioning a new Constitution for Nigeria (ThisDay, April 19, 2013).

He recalled how, on December 10, 2012, all 360 members of the House fanned out across the country to their constituencies to stage town hall meetings at which various “stakeholders” deliberated on a 43-item template of issues they would like to see amended in the 1999 Constitution.

Discussions at the sessions were not merely free and robust, Ihedioha wrote, they were resoundingly “participatory.” Thereafter, votes were taken and recorded in full view of all the participants. Each member of the House then presented a report, incorporating voting results from his or her constituency and backed by video evidence, to the secretariat of the ad hoc Committee on the Review of the Constitution.

The reports were then deposited at the secretariat of the Constitution Review Committee, which again invited representatives of “stakeholders” to join with its staffers to collate the results.

As Ihedioha sees it, the outcome of this process, presented to the House of Representatives last week, categorically represents “the voice” of the Nigerian people regarding what changes they would like to see an amended Constitution.

He admitted that the process may not be perfect, but before you could give him high praise for candour, he declared without fear and without research that “it is the first time in the history of this country that Nigerians at the grassroots have been made part of the Constitution Review Process in a practical and transparent manner.”

The process is nothing of the sort. In conception and execution, it is as incurably flawed as the 1999 Constitution it was supposed to modify. It is certainly not an improvement.

To begin with, what the nation needs is not a trainload of amendments to a Constitution that may not be a grand forgery as some leading authorities have called it, but is so shot through with errors and omissions, and so constricted in its underlying assumptions, that it cannot serve as a useful guide for and resolving the conflicts convulsing the country.

In undertaking to re-work that document, Ihedioha and his colleagues in the House of Representatives were laboring under a misapprehension

Even if the House has a mandate to review the 1999 Constitution, the way it went about it belies Ihedioha’s claim that the outcome represents the “voice” of the people. For one thing, the people had no hand in preparing the agenda. They certainly took no part in designing the “43-item template” that constituted the substance of discourse – assuming it is not a case of unnecessary dignification to call what took place a “discourse”.

For another, those whom House members railroaded from their constituencies into attending the town meetings were for the most part self-selected or induced by the prospect of free food and drinks and gifts from the abundant perks – the constituency and hardship allowances, among others — of the Honourable Visitor from Abuja. In no sense can they be said to represent the political tendencies or shades of opinion in the constituency, much less in the country.

For yet another, there was no independent verification of the “collation” that followed each town meeting. The House member who staged the meeting and had a vested interest in showing that it was a “robust” grassroots deliberative forum, the kind of which Nigeria had never witnessed, was responsible for the “collation”. In this digital age, the “video evidence” presented with the report cannot authenticate an exercise that was at bottom a mockery.

Or “a sham and a monumental failure,” as High Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, the influential minority-rights activist called it, in a withering critique (ThisDay, November 13, 2012) of the town meeting held in her Delta State constituency of Warri. The exercise, she said, was “nothing more than a ploy to rubber stamp the selfish agenda of those who organized it.”

The Warri town hall meeting took place the day President Goodluck Jonathan was visiting to join in the birthday celebrations of the televangelist, Ayo Oristsejafor. Scheduled to start at 9 o’clock in the morning, it did not begin until 4 p.m. By then, many of those who had gathered for the event had left.

Only one minute was allowed for indicating “yes” or “no” to 43 questions on the template. That was the sum total of the “discussions.”

“How on earth do you expect people of my calibre and age to just answer ‘Yes or No’ about a matter that was not previously discussed?” Lori-Ogbebor asked in justified indignation.

To be sure, not all the public hearings across the country were as shambolic as the one in Warri. But even where they were better organized, one cannot in good faith call them “consultations.” Asking members of the audience to answer “yes” or “no” to the questions on the template cannot be called “consultations” without doing great violence to language. Nor can it be honestly claimed that the outcome represents the “voice” of the people.

What a good-faith exercise requires is a forum at which persons elected for the purpose of re-writing the Constitution meet over a period of time – certainly not one day – and deliberate, no options foreclosed, on a wide range of significant national issues in a spirit of give-and take, and come up with a document reflects a broad national consensus on which a healthier union can be founded.

The town hall meetings provided no such forum.

One of the issues that has been convulsing Nigeria is that federalism – the bedrock principle on which the nation was established — has over the years been honoured more in the breach than in the observance, to the point that Nigeria today is more or less a centrally administered state.

The so-called public hearings evaded the problem altogether, or sought to perpetuate it. One of the items on its template required the audience to indicate by yes or no whether the electoral commissions in the states should be abolished, leaving it to the National Electoral Commission to conduct all polls.

No one desirous of restoring true federalism would ask a question like that.

Another item called for a vote on whether the states should establish a police force, without laying out the arguments for and against, and without outlining how potential abuse of the scheme might be averted or curbed.

And in Lagos State of all places, a majority of attendees – the very people who stand to lose the most – reportedly voted to deny federal funds to local governments allegedly created outside the framework of the1999 Constitution.

How plausible is this outcome? Did they really understand what they were voting on? Surely, the more fundamental question is whether Kano State, which allegedly has roughly the same population as Lagos State, should have three times as many local governments in Lagos State, and three times as many representatives in the lower house of the National Assembly.

The foregoing, in sum, is the process Emeka Ihedioha and his colleagues in the House of Representatives are busy advertising as a great breakthrough. This is the product they want Nigerians to accept as an unprecedented act of keeping faith with the public.

I see it as a grand evasion of the problems at hand, and a usurpation of the prerogative of the sovereign people of Nigeria to give themselves a new Constitution. Something tells me that it will go down as yet another exercise in futility.

Meanwhile, the question needs to be asked again: Who is afraid of an authentic people’s Constitution, one truly warranted by the preface, “We the people . . .”?

April 23, 2013
Jonathan vs. Amaechi: Again, judiciary on the spot

Nigeria’s judiciary suffered a major setback in its determination at ensuring fair dispensation of justice on Monday April 15 in Abuja High Court. Justice Ishaq Bello sacked the Rivers State executive of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and approved the election of a parallel executive and a faction of the party.

The issues in Rivers State politics especially with regard to Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and the PDP are well known. What is however strange and disturbing in the barefaced verdict is the consequences of this action on our judicial system and the consolidation of democracy. The sacked executive, led by Chief Godspower Ake enjoyed the support of Governor Amaechi while the parallel faction recently imposed on the people of Rivers State is loyal to Nyesom Wike, Minister of State for Education who is alleged to have been drafted by the Presidency to spearhead this onslaught against the people of Rivers State and their outspoken governor.

Unknown to many Nigerians, what has turned out to be a judgement usurping the powers of a democratically elected executive is fraught with irregularities and absurdities. For instance, to all intents and purposes, the perceived crisis in Rivers State occasioned by the presidency’s undue interference is serving nobody’s interest. Aside that, this issue that resurfaced in an Abuja High Court is strictly an intra party matter which presupposes that it would not have been taken to court for adjudication in the first place. More so, the party congress that happened took place in Port Harcourt, not in Abuja. It is therefore inconceivable for a supposedly “local” case to be heard in the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja and not even the Federal High Court. Lawyers will tell you this is absurdity of the first order.

Baffling too is the fact that the state congress that produced the Chief Ake led executive took place in March 2012 and it took almost a whole year for the petitioners to file their case. The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC was joined in the matter of Obuah and one other versus Chief Ake and others before an FCT high court. By my elementary knowledge of law, this case was clearly filed out of time coming almost a year after the completion of the congress, thus statute barred. The judge also ignored this well known principle of law.

There is also the outstanding issue of gross criminal allegations and the manner the judge treated it leaves much to be desired. Whereas there was an allegation of fraud and forgery, yet no witness was called throughout this trial. The trial judge relied on affidavit evidence sworn to by one of the officials who conducted the congress. This is against the spirit and practice of the law.

The trial judge also deliberately ignored a report from INEC which monitored the state congress as enshrined in the Electoral Act. It is quite ironic that these characters who now brandish a spurious court victory did not even purchase nomination forms nor where they found anywhere near the venue of the PDP congress.

These developments are disquieting and posse a great danger to our democracy. There is no doubt that the judiciary and the work they do is a pillar in the consolidation of democracy. Daily, we drift steadily towards full blown dictatorship yet we all seem helpless. What is happening today in Nigeria is distressing and calls for urgent intervention from all men of goodwill.

Sadly, those entrusted with the onerous task of keeping Nigeria running are the same people undermining and desecrating our institutions. Even a blind man can see the unseen hands of the perpetrators of the crisis in the PDP across the country and this is traceable to the Presidency. There is nothing accidental about this latest onslaught in Rivers State PDP considering the running battle between the Presidency and Governor Amaechi. As a people, I think it is time we took the affairs of our country more seriously.

Fortunately, some Nigerians are already speaking out against this unjustified abuse that our country is subjected to almost on a daily basis. They are alarmed at the despoliation of the political space and the impending doom.

For a judicial system that only recently embarked on measures to rid its rank and file of corrupt officials, this is a test case. The National Judicial Council, NJC must quickly act to restore confidence in the judiciary if the revered institution hopes to remain as generally perceived as the last hope of the common man. There is no doubt that the action of Justice Bello will impact negatively on the credibility of our courts. This is absolutely needless.

As election year approaches, it has become very imperative for Nigerians to be more vigilant and participatory in this arduous task of building a country we can proudly bequeath to the next generation. We must also show interest in the affairs of our nation; that is the only way to build a great country. To assume that we are still learning because our democracy is still relatively young and evolving presupposes that we may learn forever and this will do us more harm. Therefore when patriots like Amaechi challenge any contradictory reality that is inconsistent with our federal structure, we must not stand aloof and watch.

I believe that every serious Nigerian must be gravely worried at the turn of events in our country today particularly with our parties and their promoters. Less than twenty-four hours after obtaining the controversial judgement, a kangaroo swearing-in ceremony was arranged by some members of the PDP National Working Committee in Abuja. As a people, we must begin to take ourselves more seriously and the time to avoid taking actions that would haunt us in the future now.

• Salami, Executive Director, Judiciary Watch Initiative writes from Lagos.

April 23, 2013
This way for necrolatry

Eze Igbo gburugburu, the inimitable Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, must be smiling in his grave.

The handshake across the Niger he canvassed in life, between Nigeria’s often mutually antagonistic East and West, might just be flourishing – in morbid romance with the dead, with the Ikemba himself as the undisputed godhead!

It is the age of political necrolatry. Necrolaters, across the Niger, rejoice!

The other day, Peter Obi, the Anambra governor, went to Ojukwu’s graveside and declared the Ikemba – dead or no – remained national leader of his faction of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). The humble governor dutifully queued behind the Ikemba, perhaps awaiting sacred instructions from the land of the dead!

Not long after, after the judicial restoration of Victor Umeh as APGA national chairman by the Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu, Emeka Ojukwu Jr, staked a rightful claim to the Ojukwu godhead, as a political franchise. He said with Umeh’s reinstatement, his beloved father would be happy in his grave, knowing all was well with the party he left behind.

Now, some political analysts are wondering: is this the opening skirmish in the APGA-PDP Vs APGA-APC war to come? Whatever it is, the Ikemba as a political franchise remains potent and undiminished.

Step across the Niger then, to Oodualand, where Dr. Fredrick Fasehun, the Odu’a People’s Congress (OPC) leader, is mounting his own romance with dead ideas.

With full flourish and even fiercer conviction, Dr. Fasehun is breathing new life into Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Second Republic party, presumed long dead with that republic (1 October 1979-31 December 1983).

But maybe it cannot, in all good conscience, be said UPN is dead.

As The Nation columnist, Mobolaji Sanusi rightly argued in his “Steps without imprint” piece (April 12), the UPN mutated from Awo’s First Republic Action Group (AG); and has itself mutated into aborted Third Republic’s unregistered People’s Solidarity Party (PSP), which became a major partner in Social Democratic Party (SDP), the IBB-imposed party that clinched MKO Abiola the presidency.

In this Fourth Republic, the UPN mutants are the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and its variants, Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and even (but Bolaji did not include this in his analysis) Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA), formed by some disaffected Lagos AD members, made up of Awoist old guard and young Turks, in the run-up to the 2003 elections in Lagos State.

Indeed, but for the Ibrahim Babangida “new breed” experiment that somewhat cut the inter-republic umbilical cord, the AG regnant credo would even have been more pervasive in the South West political mainstream.

So, the UPN could not have been said to be “dead”. But that cannot be said of Pa Fasehun’s latest political gambit, after the Hamza al-Mustapha campaign.

Like the looming APGA-PDP vs APGA-APC battle in the East, could the coming ACN Vs UPN battle be one and the same proxy battle, but fought under different colours, at the behest of the same desperate forces, digging in for 2015?

Look, politicians would be something else, if they didn’t play politics – and the meaner, the more cynical and the more sinister, the better perhaps. The kingdom of politics suffereth violence; and the end always justifies the power meanness!

There are speculations, of course – true or untrue. There is talk of Fasehun’s OPC faction pitching the Jonathan Presidency for South West oil pipeline security gravy. What is sauce for the goose, is it not sauce for the gander?

And there is also talk of the mudunmudun (Yoruba for finger-licking gravy) from the pitched gravy train coming in handy for Fasehun’s quixotic UPN resurrection. And why not? As the Yoruba say, the drunkard is no fool; he only blows his cash on his passion! It is good old utility in basic economics.

Even outside the Fasehun gambit, Olu Falae and the Afenifere old guard are stirring, smitten perhaps by the ongoing APC merger, to rally a “third force” of Labour Party and other partisan bric-a-bracs to also essay a merger.

“Me-too” syndrome is a legitimate political aspiration – for in partisan politics, driven by eternal push for relevance, a plus for one is always a minus for the other! So, let the politicians play their game.

But not so the people, the umpteenth victims of these rogue games. That is why the discerning must ask hard questions; and the people themselves never surrender their thinking process to demagogues, especially where development is the issue.

There is a radical difference between Lagos of 1999 and Lagos of 2013. That did not just happen. It was product of deliberate and painstaking efforts. Perhaps with the Federal Government achieving a similar transformation nationwide, Nigeria would not be the anarchist’s haven it has become.

Now Ogun’s Ibikunle Amosun is thinking of light rail to link his capital, Abeokuta, to Lagos, by the Lagos-Ibadan expressway corridor. If that happens, South West economic integration would receive a big boost.

Ibadan, hitherto so glum and comfy in its muck and rot, is suddenly making a dash for one of the cleanest cities around, just as Lagos has made that transition. Is Ibadan that same place as Adedibu’s garrison headquarters, where satanic chefs served life-scalding amala and gbegiri, in unbridled anarchy?

Osogbo, Ilesa and other Osun towns are receiving a boost, after years and years of politically induced coma, the Oyinlola years being the latest excursion in the desert of misrule and stasis.

After the tragically hilarious years of Fayose’s juvenile rule, climaxed by Oni’s mimic rule of progressive reaction, Ekiti appears settling down to deliberate and systematic development, which could well be sustainable.

Again, all these are no partisan accidents. They are the work of those who want to make a positive difference.

Wale Oshun, chairman of Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), hit the nail on the head in his interview in The Nation (‘Oshun: Don’t extend amnesty to Boko Haram’, April 16): Each time Yorubaland appears on track for sustainable development and the prosperity that comes with it, noxious forces, internal and external, move to truncate the move.

That macabre drama appears unfolding in Pa Fasehun’s curious UPN resurrection campaign – and every discerning mind must see through it, even if the old man is entitled to his avowed nobility of motive.

Awo, the UPN and all he stood for are ever-living winning ideas that need no recall to life by cheap demagoguery. Awo is too saintly to be an ogre for anyone’s dirty, private political wars. Ojukwu probably is too; but only the Igbo can tell.

Besides, with the likes of Bode George pushing Fasehun’s brand of UPN, Awo unlike Ojukwu, is probably sadly turning in his grave.

Dr. Fasehun is, of course, entitled to his latest whim of political necrolatry. But Awo’s lifework of enlightenment and development would have been undone if anyone took him seriously.

His is a final flourish of dead ideas before they are interred with the scorn they deserve.

April 23, 2013
Osun: Workers know their true friends

After pillaging Osun State for nearly four years of its illegal occupation, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is eyeing the 2014 poll with a view to returning to power to continue the preying business. The party can’t ask for votes based on merit since while in office it posted no good performance to rest on. Nor has it, while in opposition to the Action Congress of Nigeria government of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, offered laudable shadow governance to win the sympathy of the citizenry.

In that case, as it is with all those bereft of honour and achievement as an article of service to the people, the party must resort to the rough and tumble of politics. That is what we are witnessing in the State of Osun. Otherwise why would a state known for its eminent labour relations suddenly start simmering with calls for a strike by workers?

To be sure, this is against the run of play as they say it in football, when suddenly the team confined to its own half of the field by the unceasing onslaught of its better opponents, scores a goal through an official sleight of the hand, as it were, protests and boos rather than applause follow such a goal.

A labour crisis in the form of a strike by civil servants is not what Osun needs at the moment. What the state needs at the moment is to build on the steady job creation process opened up by O’ YES programme, the massive construction projects state-wide, urban and rural transformation, recruitment of teachers to match the new vision of education reform and a host of socio-industrial concepts Aregbesola and his team are churning out.

Very early in the administration, the government found out that the greatest challenge facing the state was the dearth of jobs, a situation that plunged the state into depression and crime. The government intervened with the creation, within the first 100 days of its advent, of a whopping 20,000 jobs. It had never happened before in Africa!

Overnight an economy that was in shambles in the preceding era of the PDP government had been reflated. Young men and women had jobs. They also recreated jobs because they had increased purchasing power that got artisans and retail traders back to their enterprises. They also made small savings that they used to set up small businesses. The government policy had a rapid impact that made the citizens to ask: where was Aregbesola all along in the years of locust that fell upon us under PDP?

Such approbation wasn’t coming from the local scene only. It is on record that the conservative but revered World Bank also noticed what was going on in the state of Osun. It asked to understudy the execution of the job-creation policy and promptly recommended it as a model of youth engagement and mass employment for other states.

So obviously it is impossible to have a citizenry and a labour class that have benefited immensely from government policies to turn against that same government using a so-called freedom of right to declare an industrial dispute. It isn’t in their interest to do so given the fact that they passed through bitter times in the hands of the previous anti-people government of the PDP.

It is clear then that a small suborned clique of the labour unions has played into the hand of the political class who wants to create chaos ahead of next year’s governorship ballot. We discern this from the disarray the aborted warning strike threw the workers into. The national leadership of Joint Public Service Negotiation Council (JPSNC) has dismissed the stand of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Trade Union Congress (TUC) and Osun JPSNC, saying they had no right to call on workers in the state to go on a strike.

National secretary of JPSNC Omokhuade Marcus says NLC, TUC and JPSNC have no constitutional right to order an industrial action over wage agitation. He declared: ‘The NLC, TUC and JNC have no members. The members belong to the union. So calling a workers assembly for a strike is not known to law. They do not even have the right to call workers for that assembly. Only the leadership of the respective unions has the power of attorney to mobilize their workers to attend that gathering.’

No wonder the strike call failed! The law of the land does not support it!

But the biggest armament against the strike is the mammoth accomplishments of the Aregbesola government. He has secured irreversible gains as the foundation upon which even more attainments will be established in the years to come. The crisis the PDP is attempting to foment through a labour unrest will remain ineffectual in the face of the government’s achievements on the ground.

Just as PDP’s attempted exploitation of religion and publication of stolen documents failed to move the public against the government of Aregbesola, so would the antics of the party to venalize workers come to a shipwreck, because the masses know who their true friends are.

It follows also that they know who their enemies are.

• Odunmade writes from Inisha, Osun State

April 16, 2013