The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Life for an ‘international terrorist’

    Life for an ‘international terrorist’

    An uncouth child, untrained and untrainable, is fated to a harsh tutorial outside — Yoruba saying.

    It was “Six for the PM” (September 9): Simon Ekpa’s terrorism conviction in Finland.  Now, it’s “Life for an ‘international terrorist’”:Nnamdi Kanu’s life jail for terrorism, on November 20.

    As Ekpa’s Finland canning, it’s Nigeria’s renunciation of atavistic savagery, veiled as self-determination.  Any polity, ruled by law, logic and decency, has no other way.

    So, if some South East elite still huff and puff; and the ignorant hoi polloi spewing emotive rubbish — both on X and allied social media — can’t still see the clear folly of terror tactics clothed as “self determination”, then the cruel joke is on them.

    Even if the rest of Nigeria, victims of Kanu’s violent ethnic chauvinism, decide to “move on” (and that is far from certain!), what of his fellow Igbo: from Orsu, Ozubulu, Agulu, Orlu, Okigwe and Arondizuogu, hacked and slain by Kanu and his IPOB/ESN terrorists?

    Their lives are worth nothing, so long as Kanu and co-criminals claim they shed their blood to water a neo-Biafra — a neo-Biafra where the Igbo, under whatever guise, are free to slaughter fellow Igbo? How long will such an enclave even last, before sinking in its own violent contradictions?

    Besides, the South East elite should explain: how a rogue Eastern Security Network, busy devouring its own, thrived; and the Ebube Agu (Igbo for “Fear/aura/glory of a lion”) hardly made it beyond the conception slate, despite the opening salvo of ex-Ebonyi Governor, David Umahi?

    Indeed, Ebube Agu, a regional security bloc, was to the South East, what Amotekun (Yoruba for Leopard, but formally: the Western Nigeria Security Network) is to the South West; just as the numerous Joint Civilian Task Force (JCTF) cadres are to the North — already integrated into that region’s anti-terrorism/banditry security buffer.

    So, the South East orchestrated anguish, loud and tactless, echoes the opening quote of this piece: a child with no home training is yoked to a shattering lesson outside. 

    That essentially is the Kanu tragedy: loud, rude, uncouth, cocky and insufferable!  He just birthed where he belongs.  Good riddance!

    So, those claiming his jailing is tantamount to jailing the entire Igbo are entitled to their self-deceit. They should walk their talk, though: join him in the slammer!

    Besides, has it ever happened anywhere: that a docked person would bawl at his trial judge: “Omotoso, show me the law!”? — and all that from what has turned out to be no more than combative ignorance?  In the open court too!  What heresy!

    Now if after, the South East elite still deign to muster such indignation at a criminal getting his glaring desert, they must accept they have been horrible “parents”, that unleashed such a horrible — nay, evil! — “child”, on their entire Nigerian “neighbours”. 

    Instead of this empty blather and bluster, they should show contrition and — pronto — apologize to other Nigerians!

    Indeed, for an elite ever eager to clamber on tales of victimhood, they show pretty little sensitivity on how, by their reckless jibes, they routinely bruise others.

    Which takes the matter to another post-jail campaign: instant mercy and pardon — an unthinking call, after the illogical pre-trial thunder: “Release Kanu unconditionally!” Isn’t it sheer lunacy to do exactly the same thing, yet expect a different result?

    Even if you were to credibly beg for Kanu, where would you begin?

    The courts whose sedate practitioners he throatily traduced, in his empty attempt to subdue?  Remember these four Justices: Ahmed Mohammed, John Tsoho, Binta Nyako and James Omotoso, all sitting as justices of the Federal High Court, Abuja?

    Kanu bludgeoned three out of the four to recuse themselves.  Justice Omotoso, that eventually convicted him, was patient and long-suffering to defeat Kanu’s stalling tactics.  Even then, he cursed, yelled and growled at the judge like some mad dog! 

    Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, Kanu’s prosecutor-in-chief?  He insulted him twice  — first, with Justice Nyako; and after with Justice Omotoso, after Kanu’s unruly conduct earned him expulsion from the courtroom on judgment day! 

    Yet, the same court, peopled by same jurists, will handle his appeal, after his crude boast that no court could convict him!

    The security agents that he goaded his goons, via his insane EndSARS broadcasts in 2020, to go slaughter during the EndSARS riots? 

    The sitting President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose alleged assets he told his IPOB thugs in Lagos to go raze, or possibly kill him if they could get him? 

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    The late President Muhammadu Buhari, a proud son of the North who, when ill, Kanu’s evil tongue floated the morbid lie that he had “died”; and that the “clone” that made it back as President was some Jubril of Sudan?

    Pastor Enoch Adeboye, of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), who he cursed, dubbed his church a “Yoruba church” and  every Igbo that worshipped there, an “imbecile”?

    Will Lagos ever forget the evil of the atavistic savage that incited an IPOB mob to set on fire its historic monuments and landmarks, aside razing a new fleet of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) buses — among other investments Lagos made to ease life for his fellow Igbo and other ethnics in the Lagos cosmopolis?

    Will the Igbo ever tolerate a non-Igbo savage, direct his co-savages to go on an arson spree, on the Igbo cherished landmarks, in the Igbo homestead?  That’s what Kanu did to Lagos — and jail is where he eternally belongs!

    Indeed, which section of Nigeria has Kanu not profaned?  Where will this so-called “political solution” issue from — his rogue exceptionalism that because he is Igbo, and he’s fighting for Biafra, so he can destroy others’ lives and livelihoods, and walk free?

    How would that even sound with victims in Kanu’s Igbo homeland: Miracle Nwobodo, Dr. Chike Akunyili, medic and spouse of the late but impactful Dora Akunyili, and the Army couple, Gloria Matthew and her beau, Linus Musa Audu, humiliated, beheaded and desecrated by IPOB, among thousands of nameless others?  And Ahmed Gulak, will Adamawa ever forget?

    Again, those who continue to mouth “injustice against Kanu” can enjoy their wilful lies.  But even his lawyers knew he had absolutely no defence for his terrorist acts — so did Kanu himself.  Thus, their stalling tactics that dragged the case for 10 years.

    Fittingly on judgment day, his loose tongue nailed him — and spectacularly so.  Indeed, had Justice Omotoso handed down the death penalty, that tongue would have handed the authorities a long rope to hang the condemned.

    All of a sudden, the scriptures become so haunting: it’s the nonsense you spew that nails you, not the chaff you eat! The blood of his IPOB/ESN victims cried for justice –and secured judgment.

    Let the lifer endure his life jail.  But that’s even his least worries.  The blood of his terror victims cry, will taunt him and challenge him for the rest of his life.  It’s hard, lonely, miserable road to travel!

  • No, to military hauteur

    No, to military hauteur

    The Wike-Yerima face-off, over some Abuja plot of land, has again brought to the fore the vexed issue of military hauteur — that complex that spews and acts as though the civil majority are no more than contemptible “bloody civilians”!

    Any democracy worth its name must discount with such a temper without much ado. The military caste is honourable. Officers and soldiers should be loved and admired for their sacrifice to the state.  But that’s only when they too revere the civil authority.

    On that, there can be no quibbling — especially for Nigeria, that has had more than its fair share of ruinous military rule.

    Growing up on Lagos Island, if you drove against the traffic, the neighbourhood kids would flood in from nowhere and bawl: “one way!” “one way!”  Shame-faced you’d turn back — an adult being heckled by children before doing what was right!

    But then came soldiers — and they would drive against the traffic as they well damn liked!  With foreboding looks and guns at the ready, which child would shout them down with “one way!”?

    It was the beginning of the best-forgotten era of military rule.  Riding roughshod over such basic traffic mores began a comprehensive assault on basic urban decency — and they went on to shred the societal moral fabric — just because they wore a uniform, and could cork a gun!

    It was, Lady Macbeth-speak, the “eye of childhood that fears the painted devil”!  But unlike those child eyes in Shakespeare’s historical fiction of old Scotland, reasonable Nigerians have developed adult glares, very scornful of military hubris, with or without the threat of cocked guns!

    Indeed, arrogant military rule, at its tragic zenith, bred a band that figured it could cancel Basorun MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993, presidential mandate, and live happily ever after!  It also bred another that pushed his martial sole right to sleaze, at the risk of hot death to fellow thieves!  Both grand delusions ended in grief!

    So, those military top brass, active or retired, serenading the martial hauteur of the young Navy Lt. A. M. Yerima, against Nyesom Wike, the FCT minister, miss the point. 

    Such conceit, laced with sinister threat and force, led their command ancestors astray, brought the military into disrepute and brought our dear country, Nigeria, to a sorry pass.  Such should never be repeated — or, if they are, instantly slammed.

    But back to the Wike-Yerima confrontation — a parallel of two riveting paradoxes: Yerima looked decent for a bad cause.  Wike appeared gross for a good cause! 

    Beyond those contrasting optics — for which not a few have boisterously nailed Wike — hardly any other thing can justify Lt.  Yerima!  Now, let’s break it down.

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    Navy Lt. Yerima looked every inch the golden soldier boy: cool, calm, polished and unruffled in the eye of a ministerial storm — this one, the ever brash Hurricane Wike, which violent bursts and fiery puffs know no end, until it has uprooted all in its sight!

    Yerima was supposedly the younger one.  Yet, he showed admirable composure, even as the far older Wike blew his tops to assert his ministerial authority.  Aside moving a sinister inch closer to the fuming minister, as things got to a head, hardly anyone can fault Yerima’s self-control.  Wike was the diametric opposite on all counts.

    Still, why would a fine, young military officer exercise such martial refinement, in a civil space, standing guard over a disputed piece of land?  That’s the critical question.

    A lawyer friend, more anti-Wike than he’s pro-Yerima, swore that were he on the same spot, as the retired Navy chief alleged to own the land, he would do “anything” to safeguard his land. He even dived into legal “proofs” to buttress his point. Fair enough!

    But what if, as emerging information seems to show, the Navy chief’s claim to the land could be tenuous?  There are claims that the original owners acquired the land on the proviso that it would be developed into a park — the purpose for which the area was designated — not residential houses.

    This claim puts forth two points.  One: that the ex-Navy chief is a third-party claimant. And two: that he might have deviated from the FCT original plan for the area.  These points, if true, point at the age-old abuse of power and privilege, which often brings the otherwise cherished military caste into civil scorn.

    In any case, if the naval top gun has licit claim to the property, why cordon it off — a civil space — with a military truck, post a Navy lieutenant (an equivalent of an Army captain) there on guard duty, leading other lower ranks, guns a-popping? 

    To intimidate and scare off civil authority?  Are martial laws then superior to civil laws, in the civil space?  If so, can martial laws overwhelm general civil laws in a democracy?

    Except all these questions are answered in the affirmative, Navy Lt. Yerima, his guards and whoever posted them there, stand on slippery grounds.  Indeed, for the honour and dignity of the military, it would have been better for whoever that sent them there to have engaged thugs, on what appears a clearly illegal guard duty!

    That you can’t deploy licit guards, to an illicit space, trumps whatever might have been the ugly optics of Minister Wike’s rather brash intervention.

    Yes, not a few have weighed in with an emotive appeal to fear. What if the young naval officer had flipped in the passion of the moment, and Wike had become history?

    Yes, that would have been a catastrophe.  But it still would have showed the brazen illegality of trigger-happy fingers, which would still have attracted the direst lawful consequences. 

    That further reinforces the point: that the state gives you lawful arms doesn’t canonize you as gloried outlaws in uniform, free to kill fellow citizens, without question!  So long for that ad baculum appeal to fear!

    But that’s even at one level.  The other level, on citizen-to-citizen direct comparison, makes the military conceit clearer — and starker (read uglier).

    Citizen Wike, after his basic education (like the rest of the civil population) paid his way through university and Law School, even if the Nigerian state also subsidizes tertiary education.  Whatever he had after, he sweated hard to acquire.

    Citizen Yerima, on the other hand (as the rest of his military class), got his training absolutely free.  Any post-Defence Academy training, home or abroad, the state also fully bears.  His smart uniform, the fierce arms and ammo he carries, come courtesy of the state, preparing him for the grim duty of defending the state.

    So, how can such a pampered and beloved son of the state come challenging and obstructing (with state arms!) the Minister from doing the FCT work, which the President — that soldier’s commander-in-chief — has entrusted to the minister, as his FCT personal representative? Arrant indiscipline!

    Isn’t that rash power — wherever Lt. Yerima’s “orders” had come from — challenging a higher authority, especially in a civil space?  If the chips are down, can this act of martial bravado stand up to legal scrutiny?  This is a country of law. That’s the young officer’s cross right now.

    Still, beyond who is wrong or who is right, a civil state thrives on cherishing its military: the state is incomplete without its “teeth”.  But the military too have no choice: it must subject itself to civil order.  An unhinged military is a recipe for chaos.

    From Nigeria’s painful experience, any other way is anarchy.

  • The trial of Minister Wike

    The trial of Minister Wike

    Exactly a week after, it comes as no surprise that Nigeria and Nigerians are nowhere reaching agreement on what is substance and what is peripheral among the issues that led to last Tuesday’s face-off between Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike and Navy Lieutenant Ahmad Yerima, the young officer deployed on guard duties on the property said to belong to the immediate past Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Zubairu Gambo (retd.)

    For while the deliberate, if not entirely programmed, obfuscation by those for whom any opportunity to pillory Wike and the Tinubu government at whose behest he serves might ordinarily seem fair game, the way and manner the military establishment in particular, including their hordes of supporters within and outside of government have been carrying on, going as far as to tag the young officer a hero, not only typifies the institutional arrogance that has long been in the character of the Nigerian military, but betrays its poor grasp of the imperatives of military subordination to civilian control as one might imagine under democratic rule.     

    It is interesting how the military has since mounted a spirited rally in support of one of its own, which is not exactly a bad thing save for the opportunistic framing of the issue as one of disrespect to the military uniform, as against the legendary arrogance under which other national institutions get routinely undermined, assaulted, with our laws rendered impotent, and shredded by the military – a derivative of which is the pitting the citizens against our uniformed men.

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    Those who described the Tuesday event as horror scene have a point, considering that a minister with his hordes of directors in tow being engaged in verbal altercations with a young officer is not something one sees often. Yet, there is something in the subtext of the day’s outing that speaks to the state of the disorder even among our institutions, including those we often valorise.

    As in all cases, the pattern is always nearly the same with variances only in details: a brass hat wants or does something out of what the law could conveniently permit. When those in charge would neither endorse nor grant the permit to proceed, he draws upon brawn and muscle to give effect to his desire. In the process, those charged with the duty of control and management are not only prevented from undertaking their legitimate duty; they are actually hounded like felons – sometimes at the pain of losing limbs and lives.

    All of these, according to reports, were all in play in the build up to the Tuesday altercation. What Nigerians saw live on Tuesday November 11 was merely the climax of the not-so-subterranean battle that started days before: An enraged minister and his team storming the site – Bastille style – apparently to enforce the law only to meet a naval platoon, led by a Lieutenant on guard duty, to keep the law not only at bay, but in permanent abeyance if it comes to that! Little wonder that Wike’s enemies – and they are quite a number – have been all over town in celebration over what is supposed to be a brutal putdown of a man that they love to hate!

    You know the rest.

    Now, someone would have us accept that the issue at stake is about disrespect for the uniform! Not the disrespect that started with sending uniformed men to secure building sites in defiance of the law, or physical planning regulations and the authority of the president at the behest of whom Minister Wike serves? No concerns with the alleged crime of obstruction from the performance of lawful duty and the associated assault on the MFCT officials, an offence which in itself is punishable under the law? 

    And now the officer, who led the team that chased out the officials from performing their lawful duty, is being touted as a ‘hero’; not of the battle-field where the best of our gallant men and women are tested but in the defence of the private estate of a Nigerian big man! Talk of some Nigerians painting such as the stuff of which our heroes are made!  

    Meanwhile, the above is nothing compared with the reaction of the former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, now a chieftain of the ADC. He demands that Wike publicly apologise to President Bola Tinubu, the Armed Forces, and the military officer.  He then goes on to equate what he called “disparagement of a uniformed officer of the Nigerian Armed Forces” with treason.

    To use his words: “A minister’s verbal assault on a military officer in uniform is an act of profound indiscipline that strikes at the core of our nation’s command and control structure. It deliberately undermines the chain of command, disrespects the authority of the Commander-in-Chief and grievously wounds the morale of every individual who serves under the Nigerian flag. Such actions erode the very foundation of discipline upon which our national security apparatus stands.”

    Discerning Nigerians know that this is arrant nonsense: the uniform does not make the fighting men any more patriotic than the well-starched khaki would automatically predispose them to citizens’ respect. How about the disorderly conduct of some of his men particularly when they wilfully insert themselves into civilian matters thus drawing opprobrium to their beloved institution? 

    Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor (retd.), was just as sanctimonious: “the uniform of military and security personnel symbolises the authority, dignity, and sovereignty of the Nigerian state, and that any act of disrespect towards those wearing it amounts to an insult to the country itself”.

    Agreed, but then, authority, far from being abstract, comes with responsibility. Fine; the two brass hats see nothing wrong with the deployment of the young officer to guard private property. We are supposed to accept this as norm – something permissible in the course of duty. Same with the use of men wearing uniforms as they pleased, and that, possibly, includes conversion of officers into non-regimental duties whenever it suited them! 

    As for the alleged outlawry, the unlawful expropriation and subsequent conversion of the property in question – parks and gardens – into such ends not so designated by the MFCT authorities; that apparently should be far more tolerable than the offence for which they seek the neck of Nyesom Wike!  

    And now the duo of Bello Matawalle and Mohammed Badaru, both cabinet-colleagues of Wike putting their colleague to the sword for fear of ruffling the feathers of a section of their beloved military. Talk of the perfect Nigerian metamorphosis: from entitlement to impunity, then outlawry, and inevitably, to legitimisation.  Talk of yet another riveting Nigerian story.    

  • Wike vs Yerima

    Wike vs Yerima

    The past week has been tetchy for the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike. It started with a confrontation with a young Navy Lieutenant Ahmad Yerima, over access to a disputed land in Abuja. Wike who has tamed the high and mighty in the current political dispensation by his rambunctiousness, was dragged by the derring-do comportment of the young officer, Lt. Yerima. 

    While many social media enemies of the minister and even very knowledgeable commentators have been in a celebratory mode, that for once, Wike came away as the weaker person in a fight, the real issue in dispute have been relegated to the background. Wike as the overlord of the FCT, had gone to the site to chase away illegal military men sent to guard a disputed land owned by a retired Vice Admiral, but he came away with a bruised ego.

    In the video that went viral, Lt. Yerima showed himself, an example of officer and gentleman. While Wike appeared angry and querulous, Yerima was calm and comported. But for the circumstance surrounding his presence on the land, he would have become an instant hero and the face of how a young officer should behave when confronted in the line of duty, by an aggressive civilian superior. While the officer technically knocked out Wike in the confrontation, as captured by the social media, there is more to the issue at stake.

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    The ultimate question should be, between Minister Wike and Lieutenant Yerima, who has the right to be at the disputed site? By virtue of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (Delegation of Powers) Decree No 12 of 1985, the functions of a governor of a state have been delegated to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, in the current dispensation, Minister Nyesom Wike. And the powers of a governor or in this instance a minister, with regards to land under his care are very expansive.

    By virtue of section 5 of the Land Use Act, the Minister of the FCT, has powers to manage land in both urban and non-urban areas, primarily by granting statutory rights of occupancy for any purpose, granting easements, demanding and revising rent, and imposing penal rent for breach of covenants. Section 11 of the Act further empowers the minister or a designated public officer to enter and inspect land and its improvements, as part of the authority to manage and administer land in the FCT.

    The land is dispute was reportedly purchased by a former Chief of Naval Staff, retired Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, from a private company. The company had applied for conversion of the use of land, but sold to the general before the approval, which was eventually rejected. While under the Armed Forces Act of Nigeria, the retired general is not entitled to security details, by convention and practice, he is entitled to armed personal security details, to watch over his residence.

    Having such armed guard to watch over his land in dispute, is a different kettle of fish. Clearly, no serving or retired general has right to commandeer junior officers to secure any land in dispute. So, Lt. Yerima was likely on an illegal duty. Those who sent him ought to know that. It is strange that when the land became a subject of dispute, instead of having recourse to the courts for redress, the general sent soldiers to guard the land.

    While the young officer came off as a hero to those who have one axe or another to grind with Minister Wike or even President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, he has exposed himself to conduct prejudicial to service discipline. Of course, with the ministers of defence jumping into the fray, politics may overshadow discipline in the line of duty. But for politics, that omnibus clause on service discipline would have caught him.

    Despite the excitement in the social media, this writer doubts if there was an official posting for Lt. Yerima and the soldiers stationed at the site, to prevent legitimate officials of the FCT from accessing the land. Even if Vice Admiral Gambo was a retired five-star general, no serving officer in the Navy would stick his head to post Lt. Yermia and other ranks as guards over a land, whether in dispute or not.

    That deal would likely be an under-the-table arrangement. And if a commissioned officer was posted to guard a construction site, when Nigeria is at war, then the Nigerian Navy deserves a total overhaul. But while the dispute lasts, the young officer is having his days in the sun. He has become a celebrity for Nigerians beleaguered by the harsh economic realities of our time. They see him as a hero who was able to slay one of the dragons afflicting their lives.

    The social media which has become an elixir for the economic tribulations of the present times will celebrate their young hero for a long time to come, even if the military laws should catch up with him. Like Wike, he has risen to fame, but I don’t know whether to fortune. If elections are done on the social media, this writer would have advised Yerima to resign his commission and plunge into politics. But alas, it is not. Minister Wike has many bruises to show for his own rise to stardom.           

    In the current democratic dispensation, few politicians have had as much impact in the last decade on national politics as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike. While he was a neophyte (as politicians like to refer to smaller powers and principalities in politics) in the first one and half decades of this republic, he has grown to become one of the most talked about politician, since 2015, after he won the governorship election of Rivers State.

    He won that election, with the support of President Goodluck Jonathan, in spite of the strong opposition from then incumbent governor of the state, Rotimi Amaechi. While he won his governorship election, his principal, President Jonathan lost the presidential election.  With no political godfather breathing down his neck, he quickly grew in stature to become his own man.  In the very oily and slippery politics of Rivers State, he was able to cobble a coalition to steady the state politics against the incendiary attacks of Rotimi Amaechi’s All Progressive Congress (APC).

    With the PDP doddering nationally, Wike moved in as the deus ex machina, and cobbled a coalition of young Turks, that stood the withering attacks by the APC across the country. His predecessor, Amaechi, who President Buhari gave the juicy Ministry of Transportation, with an open cheque in his dealings with the Chinese, could not a make a dint in the subsequent elections in 2019 and 2023 in Rivers State. But Wike’s fight against APC is now in the distant past.

    The winner of the tango between Minister Wike and Lt. Yerima may depend on how the embarrassing confrontation is framed ultimately, in the mind of President Tinubu, who is the boss for both of them, as the chief executive and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Unfortunately for the disputants, when the chips are down, those cheering on both sides would not be there to help.

  • Anambra exposes opposition parties

    Anambra exposes opposition parties

    The governorship election in Anambra State has exposed the weakness of opposition parties in the state. With 422,664 votes, out of 584,054 total valid votes cast in the off-season election, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), trashed the opposition parties. The closest rival, the All Progressive Congress (APC), garnered 99,445 votes, followed by Young Progressive Party (YPP) with 37,445 votes. The Labour Party (LP) got 10,576, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), 8,208, and the Peoples’ Democratic Party, mere 1,401 votes.

    While this column expected Soludo to win the election, based on his performance as acclaimed by many Anambrarians, the landside result should embarrass the opposition parties. In the 2021 governorship election, Soludo won with 46.47% of the votes cast, while PDP got 22.28%, APC 17.92% and YPP 8.80%, of the votes cast, at that election. But in the election held last weekend, APGA, garnered about 70.65% of the valid votes cast.

    While APC managed to garner 17.02% of the valid votes cast in last week’s governorship election which is not much different from what it got in the 2021 election (17.92%), the PDP which came second in the 2021 governorship election in Anambra with 22.28%, embarrassingly got a mere 0.23% of the valid votes cast in the election last week, in the state. Without gainsaying, the Anambra election exposed the underbelly of the PDP, which has been under the spell of factional crisis.

    Castrated by the fights between two factions, one now led by Umar Iliya Damagun and loyal to the tendency championed by the governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, and the other led by Abdulrahman Mohammed, loyal to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, the former PDP governors who recently jumped ship would be having a banquet of laughter. The effort to revive the party remains futile, with the two factions seeking favourable court judgments from courts of coordinate jurisdiction.

    Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court, Abuja, while delivering judgment in the suit filed by Austin Nwachukwu (Imo PDP chairman) Amah Abraham Nnanna (Abia PDP chairman), and Turnah George (PDP Secretary South-south) declared the processes leading to the convention as invalid, and asked parties to obey the provisions of the 1999 constitution (as amended), as well as the party’s constitution, on the election of delegates to an elective national convention.

    On the other hand, Justice A. L. Akintola, of Oyo State High Court, following an ex parte application, filed by one Folahan Adelabi, against the now acting factional chairman, Umar Damagun, Governor Umaru Fintri, the head of the National Convention Organizing Committee, and the Independent National Electral Commission (INEC), issued an interim order that the convention programmes must not be altered. While the two courts are of coordinate jurisdiction, most respectfully, this column doubt if the ruling by Justice Akintola is diametrically opposed the judgment of Justice Omotosho.

    While the outcome gives that impression to the general public, the issues raised before the two courts, by the different applicants, are different. It would have been a different matter if the issues raised by the different litigants in the two separate courts, are similar, and the learned Judges after listening to the parties, reached divergent judgments. That appears not to be so in the separate cases before the courts of coordinate jurisdiction.

    So, while for INEC, the germane issue may seem to be whether to attend the convention, or not; Justice Omotosho’s judgment, unless set aside on appeal, may invalidate everything the factional PDP do at that convention. The governor of Enugu State, Barrister Peter Mbah, who while justifying his defection to the APC, said, he did not want the state to be interred with the PDP, would be having a good laugh. So, too, the governors of Delta, Akwa Ibom, and most recently Bayelsa State.

    The other party exposed by the Anambra election, is the LP, on whose platform, the former governor of Anambra State and the party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, contested. Despite the campaign by Obi, for the candidate of the party, George Moghalu, he came fourth, with an embarrassing 1.81% of the valid votes cast at the election. Yet, Obi of the same LP, garnered 95.24% of the votes cast in the state, in the presidential election in 2023.

    While clearly, Obi can legitimately say that the result would be different were he to be on the ballot as a contestant, the fact remains that it reflects the disillusionment of the party supporters, considering the unremitting crisis that has befallen the party, since the last general election. With three factions seeking to strangulate each other, it is even surprising that the party made it to the ballot. Perhaps, it was a case of which of the factions had the most recent court judgment before the elections, with the implication that a superior court order may surface thereafter.

    Read Also: Religion not Nigeria’s crisis, says Soyinka

    The impact of a disoriented LP platform, would definitely affect Peter Obi, if he were to run on the party’s platform in the 2027 presidential election. Surprisingly, it appears that Peter Obi takes his popularity for granted. In the recent bye-election in the state, the former presidential candidate reportedly campaigned for the candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), who was thoroughly beaten at the polls. For him to swing back, to support the LP, in the governorship election, gives the impression that he believes he can swing the voters wherever he chose.

    The ADC which some erstwhile PDP and APC bigwigs hobnobbed with, after leaving their former parties, didn’t show any prospects. Her candidate, John Nwosu, scored a woeful 1.4% of the valid votes cast at the election. Again, the sympathy earlier shown to the coalition by Peter Obi did not sway votes to the touted coalition behemoth. With no party bigwig in the southeast defecting to the ADC, it is obvious that the party will not make any inroad in the region or inherit from the crisis afflicting the PDP.

    With the other 15 candidates in the Anambra governorship election not getting up to 30% of the valid votes cast, the state of opposition parties in the country is a cause for worry. While not begrudging the winner, the political environment is healthier when there are one or more vibrant opposition parties in contest. Sadly, perhaps, because of the insufferable greed on the part of political actors, and excruciating poverty on the party of the citizens, the life of opposition parties in Nigeria, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short; apologies to Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.

    While wishing Professor Chukwuma Soludo, referred to as “Soludo Solution”, in the book: Service Above Self, a fulfilling second term in office, no doubt, a vibrant opposition is always necessary, for effective governance.

  • Country of Particular Concern!

    Country of Particular Concern!

    It is merely stating the obvious that Nigerians have long been divided on the issue of the engulfing terror – whether it is of the Boko Haram, the so-called herder-farmer clashes, the ravaging banditry, or even the industry-scale kidnapping that continues to defy solution. Add to these the reign of unknown gunmen that have in equal measure reduced swathes of the southeast into virtual wastelands, the Nigerian conundrum, given its complexities, can only continue confound.

    Yet, nothing more could have brought the depth of the chasm home than the interjection of the United States into the ‘fray’, with the country putting Nigeria on the global spotlight as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC) – a country where Christians, for their faith, are routinely put to the sword of rampaging jihadists.

    Thanks to the intriguing world of social media; two successive posts by President Donald Trump on his Truth Social and that was it! The first announcing the designation of Nigeria a “country of particular concern” over its failure to, in Trump words, stop the “mass slaughter” of Christians; and the other, directing the Defence Department to prepare for possible military action.

    “If the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities”. The attack – were it to happen, he said, “will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians”.

    Just like that!

    The truth however is that United States president Donald Trump did not come to the decision lightly let alone overnight. Surely, the plot cannot be said to be entirely new considering that the country was similarly designated in his first coming as president. While his evangelical base has raised the ante, their local counterparts, have also been active over the years, preparing as it were, with gory visuals, their narratives about Christian genocide.

    My worry is that Nigerians are being seduced into the false choice between deliberate mischaracterisation of a national tragedy and a denial of same. It is an unenviable situation for a country to find itself.

    Nigerians interested in an in-depth study of the phenomenon might wish to consult the article by political scientist Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, a specialist in violence in Africa, with the title From the U.S. to Nigeria: How a ‘Christian Genocide’ Narrative Is Being Manufactured – for a window into the questionable methodology of the supporting data on which the grim actions by the United States are being contemplated as indeed the dilemma faced by those who truly seek the truth.

    Here is a summary of Pérouse de Montclos’s position:  “Undoubtedly, there are discrimination and anti-Christian persecutions in northern Nigeria. On occasion, Christians are also killed because of their faith, particularly during attacks on places of worship by jihadists from the Boko Haram movement, by criminal gangs, or, very rarely, by members of rival churches. But it is important not to exaggerate the demographic scale of these incidents and to put them into perspective in a country, the most populous on the continent, with over 200 million inhabitants”.

    He thereafter warns: Beyond the macabre debates over the number of victims, the issue is primarily political. Whether concerning the fate of Christians or Muslims, narratives about a “religious” genocide must therefore be understood in a secular context”.

    Suffice to add that had the officials of United States government bothered to track the varied manifestations of violence across the board – from Nigeria’s troubled Northeast, Northwest, Middle Belt and Southeast – they would have taken a far more restrained – some say nuanced, view, rather than a single factor of Christian ‘genocide’ which is at best self-serving.

    By the way, didn’t the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in its last year report dismiss the notion of genocide when it noted that “Violence affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states across Nigeria”?

    To return to President Trump and his threat to bomb the hell out of the terrorists: In a nation already divided along the cleavages of tribe and religion, it seems more like pouring petrol on a combustible element. Little wonder that everyone has been talking since even if no one appears to be listening. Indeed, while Trump and his Truth Social may have won over a sizeable number of brothers in a way that we could never have imagined – to borrow the immortal words Chinua Achebe – our people, far from acting like one, have been further sundered. Indeed, Trump appears to have finally ‘put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart’.

    Yet, one good thing that could be said of the threat is the renewed consciousness it has brought to the need to stem the tide of insecurity. While I would wager that many Nigerians will probably go for the Trump solution provided that full-proof guarantees could be extracted that the mission will be quick and tidy even at the cost of injured national pride and sovereignty, to the extent that this is neither feasible or even practicable can only mean that the problem is almost exclusively Nigeria’s to solve, which again throws up the question of whether or not the threat by the United States president could be said to be warranted in the first place.

    These are no doubt, extraordinary times. Indeed, President Bola Tinubu could not have framed the challenge better: “The most important thing is the fact that despite the political headwinds and the fear of our people, we will continue to engage with partners.

    “We are engaging the world diplomatically, and we assure all of you that we will defeat terrorism in this country.

    Read Also: Tinubu hails take-off of Nigeria’s first methanol factory in Ondo

    “The task ahead is immense, but it is our resolve to move forward with unity and purpose, guided by the Renewed Hope Agenda to build a prosperous, inclusive and resilient Nigeria.”

    That surely is the way to go.

    As for Peter Obi, plus or minus his opportunistic politics, the high point of which was his averment of “an unprecedented level of insecurity with attendant carnage and the most shocking loss of lives and property”, a situation, which he claimed  “has worsened due to the government’s failure to act decisively”, he nonetheless still retained sufficient grace to come to the same conclusion with the president that  “present situation calls for constructive diplomatic and any other plausible engagement by both nations aimed at addressing the prevailing and disturbing security concerns”.

    Don’t ask me where former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has been all of these while. One only needs to recall his now deleted tweet on Deborah Yakubu to understand his preference for leadership by silence! It is as they say – a case being once bitten, twice shy!

    “There cannot be a justification for such gruesome murder. Deborah Yakubu was murdered and all those behind her death must be brought to justice. My condolences to her family and friends”, his social media handler had reportedly tweeted shortly after the murder.

    Imagine the one-time number two citizen taking cover under dubious semantics of a disclaimer for the inoffensive tweet simply because the killer-mob expressed outrage! Yet, he aspires to be the leader for the season!

  • Madmen and specialists

    Madmen and specialists

    America’s “mad men”, that shun the mental rigour to analyze, and loathe the humble intellect to appreciate Nigeria’s grim security challenges, are now “specialists” on that grave matter! 

    They are in such a fizz; so tizzy with empty pride that goes before a fall. They christen themselves rogue crusaders — galloping into town (guns a-blazing, crowed US President Donald Trump!) — to save Nigerian Christians from “genocide”!

    Yet, President Trump and his simplistic band don’t know jack — to use that American idiom — about the problem.  If that wasn’t so tragic, it would have been so comic!

    But then, thank God for Prof. Wole Soyinka, our Nobel laureate, for his prescience.  He had it all figured out in 1971.  That year, he had published Madmen and Specialists, an absurdist play that beamed the strains of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), reflecting the mental health collapse of the Beros, army medic father and son. 

    The medic father was crazy.  The medic son too was unhinged.  Enter, the “mad” father, and his “specialist” son — a tale of a lunatic son, “treating” a lunatic father!

    That was eons before the United States fell under the unthinking spell of Trump and his MAGA plebs.  But that Soyinka play, among the darkest in his rich repertoire, could well symbolize, on the globe, America’s crazy electoral choice of November 2024. 

    The latest manifestation of that is Trump’s vile threat against Nigeria.  Indeed, the grim humour in Madmen and Specialists, linked to America’s present global tomfoolery — hare-brained tariffs and wanton war threats against others — is grim life imitating art! 

    Imagine Ted Cruz and co! In fashionable ignorance, they work up a storm over a fictive “Christian genocide in Nigeria” on X, worked themselves into an evil lather, confusing and confounding other global simpletons, and feeling hip about it all!

    And the ludicrous climax?  Trump himself threatening a US invasion of Nigeria, to bomb off genocidal Islamists — classic, unreflective Trump!  Just like that?  Ha!

    Still, if this band had been a tad humbler, they would have known the data, with which they huff and puff, are cooked-up duds by IPOB and its neo-Biafra secessionist lobbies, home and abroad; aside save our soul wailings from some Middle Belt priests.

    But just as “Fulani herdsmen” — as gloriously parroted by the Nigerian southern media during the Muhammadu Buhari years, with IPOB itself the triumphant hate cheerleader — IPOB doesn’t automatically equate the entire Igbo, any more than criminal herdsmen equate the entire Fulani.

    Indeed, the Igbo are self-endangered: with the “Christian” IPOB, brutally culling fellow “Christian” Igbo in the name of Biafra, but now calling in the “Christian” Trump and co — from words and deeds, the frenetic anti-Christ! — to come bomb out “Islamist” killers that hardly exist in the IPOB native South East!

    Funny?  No, gloomy! It’s of course a mighty scandal that the global crux of scholarship, with its Harvard’s, Stamford’s and MITs, would fall for such simplistic thinking!

    But it’s also true: the dominant western media, often in a huff, savour a simplistic — and lazy — classification of Nigeria as “the Muslim North and the Christian South”: as empty as Nigeria’s southern media, that claims the North’s majority is “Hausa-Fulani!” 

    Well, breaking news!  The Fulani vs Hausa banditry crisis has shown the Hausa are Hausa, and the Fulani are Fulani!  That same simplistic grouping — plastic, shallow, supercilious and condescending — would make a foreign power, like Trump’s war-mongering America, to rein in victims of banditry (overwhelmingly Muslim) as “proof” of Islamists massacring “Christians” in the “Muslim North”!

    To think that this fella just hankered after the Nobel Peace Prize!

    Still, to be clear: only in the Middle Belt (Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa); and in southern Kaduna (North West) can any claim of majority Christian victims, from mainly ancestral violence — less Islamist terror — be sustained. 

    The perishing Christians in that cruel and unfortunate theatre — gone on for too long! — crave our collective empathy and decisive action. In the hot grief of instant massacre, you could even excuse the wailing that the violence has religious undertones.

    That would explain the “Christian” reprisal attacks too: among the most recent ones,  the killings of northern Muslim pilgrims returning to Ikare, their Ondo State base, passing through Plateau State.  Though under-reported in comparison to Fulani attacks, reprisals from both sides are near-routine.

    The Trump call, as uninformed as it is, should therefore be a wake-up call for the Nigerian government to work harder to stop this menace.  Even then, the crisis is more ethnic, even more economic, than religious.  But it won’t be solved by some foreign army — “guns a-blazing” — invading the area, causing more catastrophe. 

    Rather, it would be by further federalizing the Nigerian security architecture. More effective “boots on the ground” — no, not of the Army but of state police and the new Forest Guards — would occupy vast un-policed spaces; and keep armed felons at bay.

    Only the North East has Islamist qua Islamist violence. But again, that is a Muslim majority belt.  Still, from the Buhari years, Boko Haram (which hitherto had turned entire local government areas into rogue caliphates) has been utterly degraded into hit-and-run opportunist terrorists. President Bola Tinubu has admirably built on the Buhari record these last two years.

    Read Also: Religion not Nigeria’s crisis, says Soyinka

    In this season of menacing over-simplification, conflating Shariah law with Islamist terror, could stoke fresh faith tension.  Let’s be clear: the problem with Shariah law is its misapplication on Christians; and its rogue “blasphemy” calls on practicing Muslims. 

    Now, these are abuses the Federal Government must curb, working closely with states that have Shariah law.  Judicial appeals already deal with “blasphemy”.  But that procedure, to protect the Shariah oppressed, must be made more robust.

    Nigeria is a federal state.  Though constitutionally secular, it’s in reality a multi-religious country.  Shariah is Islamic, not Islamist.  But the Trump noisy band mix up the two.

    The West clearly decries the so-called “African Big Man”, and just as well: corrupt, vain, evil, crooked, arrogant, unscrupulous, entitled, megalomaniac.  The Economist endlessly returns to that concept in its condescending African reports.  That harsh anti-African arrogance looms large in Trump’s “Christian genocide” in Nigeria.

    But if by his own power temper, the US President ticks all of these unflattering boxes, might we then welcome the American — read Western — Big Man?  Instructive!

    For the sake of whatever is left of America’s global prestige — beyond projecting blind, naked power that earns nothing but global scorn — the US president had better get accurate facts before blundering into other people’s problems.  For his reflex to bully others, our WS already dubs Trump the “White Idi Amin” — not unfairly!

    Nigeria should continue doing the needful: go on a global charm offensive to dispel these wilful and evil lies; and share the correct picture with the US government.  But more importantly: go on — and hard — with the war on terror!

    Still, the neo-Biafra mischief, behind it all, is another life imitating art.  Nnamdi Kanu, now awaiting judgment, once bragged he’d hang himself if he did not get Biafra within 18 months!  That appears a throwback to the tragic Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart!

  • Help Nigeria needs

    Help Nigeria needs

    The threat by the President of the United States of America (POTUS), Donald Trump, to invade Nigeria, “if the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians” will tantalize many victims of the vicious attacks by Moslem extremist groups like the Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa (ISWA) and similar terrorist groups making life unbearable for residents in many parts of Nigeria. For such victims, especially in the northeast, Plateau and Benue states, where thousands have been killed by insurgents, invasion by the Trump army as guardian angels will be welcomed.

    But, that would be only one part of the story, considering that the lives of thousands of regular Moslems have also been wasted by some vicious religious extremists. A jejune argument would be that there are no extremist Christians killing Moslems, the same way there are extremist Moslems killing Christians. Also, that prominent Moslem leaders in the country do not vehemently and openly condemn such vicious killings. Another of such untenable argument would be that it is Moslems that are killing their fellow Moslems, so why should the rest none Moslems bother.       

    The truth however is that extremist Moslems constitute danger to moderate Moslems, Christians and non-believers wherever they operate to establish a theocratic state. If they can, they would kill every person who does not agree with their extremist ideology, in pursuit of their narrow interest. Sadly, as evidence have shown in several countries across the world, they mask their political interests, while fighting to conquer and excise power, under the cloak of religious piety, and the gullible Moslems believe them.

    A ready example is Afghanistan. It has remained a desolate country despite being a Moslem country, because of the internecine war for political power, between extremist Moslems and the moderates. The Taliban which pretend to be fighting for religious piety are in reality fighting for political control of the country. When they gain control, they impose extremist religious doctrines to mask their real intention, which is political control of the country and its resources.

    Like in the Animal Farm by George Orwell, they create an animal kingdom, where some animals are more equal than others. They live off the resources of the state, and use the apparatus of state to whip the rest into line. Like the pigs, the bloody extremists would say: “it is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples” while the gullible fool will intone “I will work harder.” They would say: “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend” and the masses will chant amen.

    Similar masked extremism plays out in several predominant Moslem countries, and parts of northern Nigeria. What complicates the Nigerian situation is the mixture of religious extremism with ethnic exceptionalism, particularly in the northern part of the country. For an example, the killings in the middle belt are substantially fuelled by the desire by an ethnic militia to control natural resources of another ethnic group. Even former president, Muhammadu Buhari alluded to that when he urged the ethnic groups in the region to accommodate the herdsmen, who are seeking pasture.

    But the crisis in the northeast part of the country seeks to create a theocratic Moslem caliphate that would overthrow the present political configuration. It can be argued that should such permutation work, it would extend westward to possibly overthrow the Usman Dan Fodio dynasty that has dominated local political leadership for over a century now. While religion is a form of binding force for those pursuing ethnic exceptionalism and those pursuing religious extremism, the fact is that in the long run, both cannot cohere.                 

    Of course, should US attack Nigeria, the two interest would likely work together to defend their common interest. While one is not a military expert, one ponders on the complexity of such an attack. Except in the northeast, where the Boko Haram is localized in the massive forests of the Lake Chad region, one wonders the focal points of attack for the US forces. With the threats from the extremists in several parts of the country, how will the mighty US Army wipe out the threats against Christians livings in several parts of the country?  

    If there should be such intervention to help secure the lives of Christians which Trump claims to be the main objective, the inter-ethnic and religious rivalry in Nigeria would likely exacerbate, and the country may degenerate into a civil war. While Trump has modern military capabilities, rich Moslem countries, have money to pour into the theatre and Nigeria could become another Ukraine. With no clear cut boundaries between Christians and Moslems across the country, it may turn into a war without boundaries.

    Read Also: JUST IN: NSA Office to brief media on Trump’s genocide claim against Christians in Nigeria

    To protect the Christian minority in the northern part of the country, will the Trump army patrol the streets, guard the churches, clerics and Christians as they engage in their routine and religious activities? If the rich Moslem countries fund Moslem militias to also protect Moslems, will the country not degenerate into atrocious internecine, inter-ethnic and religious wars similar to the Bosnian War in the 1990s? If the US army should fight to save Christians from Moslems, how would they deal with spouses, brothers and sisters who share different faiths?

    Few years ago, many international pundits had predicted that Nigeria would disintegrate before now. The argument was premised on the fact that all the indices of a failed state were prevalent in the country. For example, there are several armed non-state actors, challenging the state monopoly of force. The national economy is dependent on external shocks and the political elites are willing to fight to finish. The inflationary pressure remained frightening, while the population was growing way ahead of economic development, to compound the bourgeoning youth unemployment.

    Until May 2023, many states in the country could not pay salaries without borrowing from the bank. The national economy suffered deep stagflation, and running away from the country, was considered the wisest investment for the young and even not so young. To the amazement of the world, Nigeria is turning the bend, and despite the economic hardship, the majority appears willing to give the political actors, led by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a chance to succeed or fail.

    Should Donald Trump fall into the trap set by international buccaneers who want to trade on Nigerians’ misery, the consequences will reverberate across the entire continent and even beyond. What US can do for Nigeria, is to supply her army with requisite knowledge, intelligence and ammunition to defeat the several insurgency groups seeking to destabilize the country. This writer hopes the threat from Trump would be a wake-up call for the ruling elite and the national army, to save their face, and protect our nation’s independence and integrity.

  • Salami’s pound of flesh?

    Salami’s pound of flesh?

    Might Justice Isa Ayo Salami, revered jurist and retired President of the Court of Appeal (PCA), be seeking own pound of flesh from former President Goodluck Jonathan, now reportedly ogling a 2027 presidential run?

    Not likely.  For one, Justice Salami’s profile paints a rather grave jurist, with no less grave fealty to his calling.  That thumbs down any base predilection.

    For another, Justice Salami cuts the strict — almost sacred — quintessential jurist, the very diametric opposite of the frivolous. His rather limited tribe is the very antithesis of the flippant hugging publicity for validation, to veil a natural core of full emptiness.

    Still, Justice Salami’s sweeping dismissal of Dr. Jonathan’s yearning for a presidential encore, as far as the law goes, echoes a past political tango between the two.

    The one, the embattled President of the Court of Appeal, conscientiously doing his job, let the heavens fall!  He resisted judicial-executive bullying and he triumphed.

    The other, a rather naive — or wilful? — President of the Federal Republic, that couldn’t stomach stolen mandates judicially retrieved from his ruling PDP; and so, resorted to strong arm tactics, that eventually blew in his face.

    More, however, on all of that presently.  For now, what’s that Salami declaration, that must be causing quite some ache in the Jonathan camp?

    The headline, as reported by The Nation of October 31, is explicit: “Jonathan not eligible to contest in 2027, says Justice Salami.”  In the story, Justice Salami spoke with the finality of a judge that had examined forensic evidence, which he found immutable.

    Hear him: “It is painstakingly and dispassionately demonstrated abundantly to all and sundry that [the] ambition of Goodluck Jonathan to contest for office of the president, for the second term in the 2027 general election, is effectively and undoubtedly shot down by Sub-section (3) of Section 137 of the 1999 Constitution, as altered by the Fourth Alteration Act, No. 16 of 2018 which, to my mind is unassailable.”

    But should Jonathan even contest and win, Justice Salami’s legal prognosis is even direr: “In the event of his winning the election, he will be conveniently removed by the Court of Appeal in an election petition to that court, which removal will be undoubtedly affirmed by the Supreme Court on the ground that his total tenure would have exceeded the eight years maximum tenure.”

    That eerily echoes how Justice Salami’s Court of Appeal — then serving as the final court on gubernatorial election disputes — had removed PDP governors that, in 2007, brazenly stole the vote, in Edo, in Ondo, in Ekiti and in Osun: the last two after more than three years, during which the thieving governors usurped power sans a mandate. 

    Justice Salami himself chaired the final panel that tossed out Engr. Segun Oni in Ekiti.

    So, what legal principle would fling Jonathan against the rock and send him crashing, even if he won the election, given that the amendment, which Justice Salami quotes, was made after Jonathan had left office?  Wouldn’t  the non-retroactive principle count for him?

    It’s that definitive difference between criminal and civil rights, rarely espoused in the public space by jurists. 

    “The Constitution protects criminal right against retroactive legislation … The Constitution,” he admitted, “frowns at or forbids retroactive enactments with regard to criminal act, omission and penalties, and not civil or constitutional infractions.”

    So, on the grund norm, the difference can’t be starker: “It is trite that an amendment to an enactment relates back to the date the principal enactment (legislation it is seeking to amend) came into force.  In other words, the date for the commencement of the Fourth Alteration Act, No. 16 of 2018 is the date the 1999 Constitution of the Federal of Nigeria itself, came into force.”

    To buttress his points, Justice Salami quoted Section 4, Sub-section (1) of the Interpretation Act, viz.: “A reference in an enactment shall, if the other enactment has been amended, be construed as a reference to the other enactment as amended.”

    Thus, Justice Salami declared, with measured finality: “Consequently, the hue and cry that there has been a retroactive legislation is most unjustifiable.”

    Now, Justice Salami is retired.  So, this could be a mere legal opinion, to which serving jurists could differ.  Yet, such is his sure-footed references that a fit may be seizing the Jonathan camp!

    Which is why Dr. Jonathan would naturally permit himself to wonder: is that jurist after me, for past wrongs done him when I was president?  Ha!

    In fairness to Dr. Jonathan, it was strictly a judicial affair, though triggered by the excitable politics of the moment.  Seeing the Salami Court of Appeal retrieving PDP stolen votes in the then Yoruba opposition bastion of the South West, Iyiola Omisore, then a senator, penned a controversial piece in The Guardian.

    That piece — more angry than sober — insinuated Justice Salami might be an Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) judicial mole, an insinuation not only reckless but almost equating an apostasy, given Justice Salami’s whistle-clean image.

    Read Also: Nigeria must unite against fabricated divisions — Alawuje

    Somehow, however, the late Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, came up with a “promotion” for the PCA: a seat on the Supreme Court, at which Justice Salami balked. 

    The CJN called it promotion. Justice Salami called it elimination — elimination from the Court of Appeal, because that court had retrieved stolen votes from the ruling PDP! 

    Omisore was clearly peeved, because the last retrieval was in Osun: the judicial sacking of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, for ACN’s Rauf Aregbesola, the rightful winner of the 2007 election — but three-and-a-half years after, in November 2010!

    After CJN Katsina-Alu found Justice Salami would not be bullied, his deus-ex-machina, staged at the National Judicial Council (NJC) absurd theatre, was a sudden suspension from office, after an alleged misdemeanour, by Salami. 

    The trigger was another Sokoto gubernatorial judicial challenge.  In the ensuing exchange, CJN claimed PCA had “lied” against him.  That stalemate lasted between August 2011 and May 2013. 

    Dr. Jonathan’s role was how his government hurried to affirm Salami’s “suspension”, but tarried to obey his reinstatement, by the same NJC, after it found the jurist did no wrong. 

    But by then, CJN Katsina-Alu had retired, and new CJN Dahiru Musdapher crested Nigeria’s judicial system.  PCA Salami statutorily retired, with his honour intact, on 15 October 2013.

    Which is why Jonathan would wonder: is Salami after me?  Again, not likely; though the mind of the guilty, who are always afraid (to filch the title of one of James Hadley Chase’s crime fiction thriller novels), could run that way.

    But whatever the jurist’s motive by his legal opinion, it could well help to jar Jonathan back into the stark reality, from his reported latest dreamy fixation.

    Smell the coffee: the PDP, that staged the 2007 vote heist, is in disarray.  The ADC door is slammed shut — isn’t ADC an Atiku Abubakar special purpose vehicle (SPV)? The old South East/South-South alliance, that served Jonathan rather well, is all but vanished.  Now, Salami has added dreary tales on the legal front!

    Old Greek philosopher, Heraclitus was right: you can’t step in the same driver twice!  So, on what basis might Jonathan want to run?  Well, it’s a democracy!

  • Cowardice on four feet

    Cowardice on four feet

    Just as well: it ended a damp squib — Omoyele Sowore’s much touted rally to willy-nilly spring Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader, on trial for grave terrorism charges.

    Just as well, too: Kanu announced the start of his defence, never mind his soap opera stunts — and taunts.  The trial court has ordered, and his defence he must enter.

    Both developments reinforce a critical canon of civil society: that the majesty of due process can never be halted by cynical agitations — or how else do you describe the Sowore rascality of October 20, pushing the democratic right to citizen protest, to stall the sacred principle of due process: the hallowed backbone of any democracy?

    Still, Shakespeare was right: it was all “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”! A juvenile scheme to stall a court process was never more asinine!

    Indeed, Kanu’s cowardice, on four feet, is never clearer!  No less clear is his arch-delusion — and his proxies’ — that their braggadocio could indeed stop a criminal trial.

    Simon Ekpa, already nestling in jail in Finland, on his judicial day of reckoning, blabbed he was a content creator — a content creation that claimed lives and hewed limbs, of prominent Igbo folks as Dr. Chike Akunyili, the late Dora Akunyili’s husband; and non-Igbo, as Adamawa’s Ahmed Gulak!  Ekpa got his due.

    Kanu too has pushed his glorious right to agitation. Perhaps the Nigerian court would find for him, though the Finland court trashed Ekpa’s fib of content creation? 

    So, those busy hailing his juvenile showmanship in the dock, after he had sacked his lawyers, had better warn him he might just be nailing himself. The severe beauty of the judicial process is real.  It’s no Nollywood movie!

    Still, to float or to sink is a democratic choice.  But those first to scream and bawl and screech and screed “injustice!”; those who zealously boom “victimhood!” must apply their minds to the grim sequel of cynically skewing a court process; and the blatant injustice that grinds on the civil society, which apogee is that legal process.

    That’s what Kanu is up to. It’s in-your-face cowardice on four feet!  But when the sure outcome descends, let no one go berserk with cheap moans.

    After a long rigmarole that dates back to 2015, the present case is nearing a climax. The prosecution has closed its case, after calling witnesses; and tendering documents.

    But Kanu blustered with of a “no-case” submission, which the court threw out. To start his defence, Sowore hopped in with stunts, starry-eyed Kanu zealots  in tow.

    Clearly, Sowore and Kanu think the court is a place to catch a cruise, with thrilled plebs on the sidelines thundering with cheers.

    Take Sowore.  In fashionable lack of introspection, he’s nonpareil.  As if caught by a bug, he worked himself into a lather, drawing “Revolution Now!” graffiti all over the place!  It was his signal of an anarchist’s paradise! 

    But the late President Muhammadu Buhari would have none of that rubbish.  What followed was a period of arrest, detention and trial, until new President Bola Tinubu’s Justice Minister, Lateef Fagbemi, entered a nolle-prosequi.

    But not even that could wean Sowore off hare-brained agitations, hyped by brazen lies, spewed by his Sahara Reporters, now a virtual rag.

    During the so-called “Days of Rage”: the “End Bad Governance” protests, of 1-10 August 2024, Sowore and his “Take it Back” ensemble plunged into the fray!  Less than one year later, 7 April 2025, another “Take it Back” comedy, which drew little traction.

    From Sowore and co, it’s anarchy yesterday, anarchy today, anarchy forever.  With that troubled mindset, he romped into the Kanu matter.  Still, who in his right senses would follow Sowore in anything?  Apparently, though the “Free Kanu Now” protests proved a burlesque, many Kanu zealots still fell for it.  Gullible!

    Like Sowore, Kanu has not shown much sobriety, since his unfortunate saga broke on us.  Those blaming others for his prolonged trial are entitled to their crass pity party.  But even they know such a stance is a fraud.  Nnamdi Kanu is Alpha and Omega of his own fate.  No other one!  The facts are there for all to see.

    On 28 April 2017, he got bail on certain conditions: not to address any gathering, or grant a press interview. But he scorned his bail terms with a frenzy, abusing and traducing everyone, while those that stood surety for him looked askance.

    He claimed the Army invaded his space allegedly to kill him — maybe: and you can only be alive to fight any battle.  That would appear his prime reason for jumping bail.

    But does that also justify, from a safe haven abroad, the rabid launch of unvarnished sedition: raw hate against the non-Igbo: beasts, he claimed, in a zoo called Nigeria? 

    Does that justify the slaughter of fellow Igbo, caught in IPOB-decreed wrong places, during the so-called Monday sit-at-home strikes? Kanu himself — on record — bragged that anyone caught would be killed — a sickly threat the jailed Ekpa took to a grotesque new low from Finland!

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    Does that justify the mass slaughter in Orsu, in Imo, whose folks claim they had lost no less that 5, 000 kith-and-kin, over four years?  Their forest bore brazen criminality, allegedly by IPOB and the Eastern Security Network (ESN): rotten and smelly skulls and bones, and decayed remains of fellow Igbo!

    Does that justify the Kanu 2020 EndSARS pure lunacy: his deranged order to “burn down Lagos!” — and the high casualty figure of security agents on lawful duty?  Why, that Kanu mob even torched The Nation head office in Lagos!

    Does that justify Kanu’s endless uncourtly drama?  He lampooned the trial judge, Justice Binta Nyako, in the open court; and abused Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN — old enough to be his father, and, on all counts, far more accomplished — and all for what?  To press his democratic right to be rude, crude and uncouth?

    He would later apologize for his arrogant excitability, after the judge had stepped down.  But did he think that delinquency would halt the process?

    Then, the latter-day bombast of sacking his entire legal team, growling at his lawyers to “shut up! while I’m talking!”, the infantile “threat” to defend himself though he is no lawyer, and finally — on October 27 — his comic back-off from even that; and his claim (even after a definitive court ruling), that his “no case” submission was valid!  What hubris!

    Again, is he so delusional to think all this vile drama would make the case vanish?

    Let’s be very clear.  Nnamdi Kanu is no Obafemi Awolowo, whose 1962/63 treasonable felony trial, and the suspect way it was conducted by the then powers-that-be, are still a subject of controversy, some 62 and 63 years later.

    Nor is he MKO Abiola, who some misguided political soldiers thought they could cheat, annul his hard earned June 12, 1993 presidential election, and live happily ever after.  It took MKO’s martyrdom — a most costly act of cowardice from Abiola’s oppressors — to violently kick them out of their even costlier delusion. 

    They — too late — found out there’s no rest for the wicked!

    Whatever Nnamdi Kanu does in the dock is all on him. But he is charged with terrorism.  Those charges won’t just vanish, because he and his supporters are are playing games. And no evil can turn to good, because of the comedy of ethnic exceptionalism, as not a few are foolishly blabbing. 

    The law will take its course and heavens will not fall!  That’s due process: justice for Kanu, justice for the state, justice for the rest of us.  No more.  No less.