The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Supreme gambit, supreme crash

    Supreme gambit, supreme crash

    The willy-nilly presidential wannabes, on October 25, got their supreme comeuppance. Now, the polity can breathe! 

    Still, it has been such a huge but needless distraction, on far too many fronts. 

    For eons, you x-rayed a legal bubble that sure would burst: right from the day INEC declared the result of the February 25 presidential election.

    Yet, that bubble was so cynically wrought: with so much hell-raising, garnished with maximum muck-raking, to cause so much angst and pain in the land.

    That aptly captures the post-poll gambit of Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, using raw emotion to weaponize the court processes, after a clear — and fair — election loss.

    It was the supreme crash of a supreme gambit — and just as well!

    But make no mistake: February 25 was one of the fairest polls Nigeria ever had.  It was clearly the cleanest and most evenly contested since 1999.  No bile can cancel that.

    Yes, rabid partisans might have been bewitched by the closeness of the poll: Bola Tinubu (12 states), Atiku (12), Obi (11 plus FCT) aside Rabi’u Kwankwaso (one).  That closeness points to its fairness.

    For sore losers, the harsh reality should have set in, especially with both Atiku and Obi unable to prove any “rigging” in court when the chips were down.  But no!

    Indeed, beyond raw emotions, both had hardly any case.  That was why they took their “evidence” to the court of rabid supporters, rather than the clinical court of justice.

    The result was as clear as the lamentation was shrill — 5:0 at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC); 7:0 at the Supreme Court.  It was a 12:0 rout all round!

    Lest we forget: PEPC tanned the opposition lawyers — PDP, LP and the Allied People’s Movement (APM) — for wasting its time on a vexatious cause, with hefty fines to boot! 

    The Supreme Court also flayed Atiku’s lead counsel for selling a legal dummy: PEPC wasn’t bound by petition time limit because it was the Court of Appeal!

    That rebuke, over the infantile position by a silk, could well be fine metaphor for how empty the case was.  Still, such resort to Gbajue (in-your-face desperate) tactics to game the apex court, was a laughable ploy to try trickery, after cold logic, in facts and figures, had abysmally failed.

    Just as well the lead judgment dismissed the trick with supreme contempt, laced with terse humour, searing and biting!

    Still, the supreme collapse of the challenge may well hallmark the supreme collapse of reputations, legal, social and political. 

    Here, the lawyers are the most fortunate.  They live in legal cloisters.  Even then, those involved would be galled by the ultimate putdown by elderly silk and senior citizen, Robert Clarke, SAN, that not even a junior in his chambers would take the Atiku case!

    Not so, for opportunistic critics that seized the Atiku/Obi legal vacuity to dance naked, all for Obi’s empty cause.  Vacuity, it would appear, merrily begets vacuity!

    Take these takes on the PEPC verdict.

    Robert Clarke, SAN, 50 years at the Bar, told Channels TV: “I have every belief, and I seriously believe that the unanimous judgment of the Court of Appeal (now as PEPC) is unassailable.  It is as fixed as you can fix anything and I can assure you that if there is an appeal, I doubt whether anything can come out of the appeal.” 

    Indeed, nothing did, with a 7-0 affirmation, with absolutely no dissent.

    Read Also:JUST IN: Supreme Court’s decision leaves much to desire, says Atiku

    Chimamanda Adichie, fiction writer, told CNN: “I am in the middle of reading the judgment and it’s stunning how shoddy it is. The elections were manipulated in a way that is very shabby and the judgment is shabby and shoddy.  I didn’t expect it to be very thoughtful but I am shocked at how very lacking in thought it is.”

    Now that the Supreme Court just validated that “shabby and shoddy” verdict, maybe Chimamanda should be stunned at how shabby and shoddy her thinking always is, particularly where she knows nothing but is too arrogant to learn!

    Fiction writing, in plays, novels and poetry, is a cherished genre, which challenges our common humanity to keep us all sane, because of the presumed honesty and fairness of its vessels — playwrights, authors and poets.

    But when such take wild liberty for licence, and try to ram down clear fiction as facts, because of tribal and sundry bias, then a wilful collapse of reputation is near.  The Bible is of course right: what you gobble doesn’t destroy you, what you vomit does!

    So, Chimamanda beware!  But then, reputation suicide is a democratic choice!  A writer sans integrity is as dead as dodo, though (s)he lives a thousand years!

    Oby Ezekwesili, railed about some “criminal enterprise gang” from her bitter and wailing soul, asked the rhetorical question “where is the hope?”, and sizzled in her  traducement of the apex court, for “judicial enthronement of criminality as an official norm”!

    “Easy, Oby, easy!” Femi Adesina, presidential spokesperson during the Buhari years, would have counselled.  “Wail responsibly!”

    For Mrs Ezekwesili, of course, talk is always cheap. 

    All her Madam Due Process gra-gra of the Obasanjo years didn’t stop that regime’s No. 1 and 2 — and cronies — from gaming the system and bequeathing rampaging sleaze of the PDP years: the fundament of today’s mass penury and economic pains. 

    Even as the regime’s latter-day Education minister, her ministry nearly sold off the federal unity schools to alleged regime cronies, but for trenchant public opinion. 

    Her own aborted presidential run in 2019 exited with a departing stench: a controversy over campaign funding! Even in the case of the Anambra girl that forged her JAMB result, blood was thicker than water for fiery Madam Due Process!

    Criminal enterprises indeed!  Ezekwesili’s hypocrisy on four feet continues to rankle!

    But away from those that wail more than the bereaved, to the actual dramatis personae: Atiku and Obi.

    That the Supreme Court dismissed Ob’s appeal in less than 160 seconds reflected its emptiness, beyond raw hysteria and parasitizing on Atiku’s case.  To borrow from our inimitable WS: it was Gbajue demagoguery spectacularly unhinged!

    Still, Obi could have further complicated things for the South East political elite, in their legitimate push for the Nigerian presidency.  In truth, Obi’s clannish politics and brazen push as cynical “Christian” candidate of convenience, alienated not a few nationwide.

    It’s refreshing though that Works Minister, Dave Umahi and Governor Chukwuma Soludo, play more cosmopolitan, less clannish, politics. That is the path to tread. The South West too played enclave politics, until MKO Abiola found the right pan-Nigeria mix.

    No thanks to bitterness, Atiku Abubakar just unravelled from a perceived pan-Nigerian to a narrow northern irredentist, if not supremacist.  That was tragic — for it crashed the PDP!  If he wants to contest again, he has a big personal problem to fix.

    Post-Supreme Court, Atiku claimed Nigeria was “doomed” — because he lost?  A classic Samson’s complex!

    President Tinubu must double down to work — if only to prove those “doomed” are only the Atikus, trapped in their bitter Doomsday. For hardworking Nigerians, there must be a new dawn of laughter.

  • Tales of vanishing manhood, revisited

    Tales of vanishing manhood, revisited

    It came as a welcome relief to the tedium of test-tube politics, a system of politics without politicians, mainly parastatal types locked in desperate game to emerge as the group that best reflects the thinking of its progenitor, and therefore the group most likely to be anointed.

    It is a grim business indeed, this test-tube politics, and the alchemists who concocted it must be alarmed at some of the things that are going on.

    Imagine, for instance, the promise to turn Nigeria into a world power by 2000 A.D.  Would that not be a regression?  Those making that promise obviously have never heard of a place called Liberia, nor of something called ECOMOG.  The promise to abolish poverty at some unspecified future date is just as misguided.  How can anyone seek to fight all over again the battles that have been fought and won decisively by the Structural Adjustment Programme, the Better Life, Program, etc, etc?

    To rescue us from such drollery came tale upon tale of vanishing manhood in Lagos.  For upwards of one week, the city has been in the grip of a scare which, it would seem, surfaces every ten years.  It had been like that in 1980, except that adult males did not go about with their hands buried deep in their trouser pockets, clutching you-know-what, for fear that it might vanish on the slightest contact with some evil conjurer.

    I have been told of a young man who now encases his in a specially designed harness, with the strands terminating in a solid knot at the back of his neck. If there is any slackening of tension in the harness, he will know instantly that there has been some foul play and raise an alarm before the prized object in lands in one witchdoctor’s cauldron in Ondo or Ijebu.

    None of the accounts I have heard came from someone who personally witnessed, much less experienced, this troubling phenomenon.  Usually, it was a neighbour or friend or relation of impeccable integrity that had witnessed it.  And the victim, invariably, was a total stranger, never their father, husband, boyfriend, son, distant cousin, or even a neighbour.

    And as argument raged back and forth about whether the reported incidents signalled the advent of our much-postponed technological breakthrough or constituted a gigantic hoax on popular credulity, it struck me that, either way, something should be done, fast.

    The veteran educator and iconoclast, Dr Tai Solarin, has set an example in a different context.  When it was being claimed the other day that some people possessed the power to turn humans into goats, the founder of Mayflower School, Ikenne, had publicly challenged anyone who had such power to step forward and turn him into a goat. If the conjurer succeeded, the goat should be slaughtered on the spot.

    Dr Solarin, I presume, still stands by that audacious wager.  But no conjurer has surfaced so far.

    It seemed to me that somebody should post a similar challenge and thus silence those peddling tales of vanishing manhood.  I was even going to post the challenge myself, as a contribution to the advancement of science. But I have been warned by some people who have a vital stake in the matter not to do so.

    What it, in the end, it was not a hoax?

    And just in case I persisted, an attorney of the first rank has been retained to seek an injunction restraining me in perpetuity from pursuing the matter, and the learned fellow has given his clients a solemn assurance that no question of locus standi will arise,

    Being a firm believer in the rule of law and in due process, I have decided not to press the matter.  But the enterprise, I am happy to report, is far from doomed, thanks to a gentleman of my acquaintance. We first met some three years ago at business luncheon where, alone among more than 20 diners, he had ordered a lemon drink with his meal.

    “Haven’t you heard?” I teased him.

    “Heard what?”

    “That the drink you ordered is not good for your battery?”

    “Let it die,” he replied plaintively.  “It has been the source of all my problems.  Let it die.”

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    The fellow, just barely into his thirties, had four wives and 13 children at the time.  His youngest wife had just turned 16, and the folks back home were threatening to send him a pubescent maiden.

    If the source of all his problems were not merely to die but to vanish altogether, irretrievably, I reckon that he would be exceedingly glad.  When I made a proposal to him along that line, he accepted it enthusiastically, 

    Watch this column for further developments.

    Meanwhile, the insurance industry is reported to be cashing in on the scare.  They are offering special policy packages on demand, at special at special premiums that are unbelievable bargains if viewed in the proper context.  On the university campuses, women are reported to have found attractive possibilities in the phenomenon.

    Consider how much better campus life would be if just one or two of those professors of sexual harassment and sexploitation could by a mere wink be eviscerated of all offensive power.  If they think that everything has been forgotten or forgiven simply because the President, the National Council of Women’s Societies and the National Council on Education have not spoken about the vexed issue lately, our randy dons have it coming to them.

     The political possibilities are also receiving due attention.  If in the world of test-tube politics you cannot openly criticize, threaten or assault your opponent, you can at least strike decisively where it hurts most.

    All this will no doubt be grist to the mill of the junk magazines whose numbers seem to be growing exponentially.  I can imagine some of the titillating headlines already, as well as actual or contrived stories of would-be intimate encounters gone frightfully awry.

    First published in 1990, this piece is reproduced from Matters Arising, a selection from my collected  journalism for Guardian Newspapers  between 1985 and 1990.  Egret Books, Ibadan,1992.

  • Gaza: cost of mutual lunacy

    Gaza: cost of mutual lunacy

    How about this for “divine” propaganda, courtesy of Amos 1:6, now viral in the social media?

    “The Lord says,” says the quote, ‘Gaza has sinned again and again, and I will not forget it.  I will not leave her unpunished any more.  For she sent my people into exile, selling them as slaves in Edom.’ “

    “‘So I will set fire to the walls of Gaza, and all her forts shall be destroyed, and destroy Ekron and the King of Ashkelon; all Philistines left will perish. The Lord has spoken.’ ” — thunderous, chilling, sweeping and final!

    The simple-minded, especially among faith zealots, may well be wowed: 21st century Gaza’s fate had long been sealed in BC Israel!  

    So, let the Gazans pay for their latest catastrophe, triggered by the October 7 terror raid of Hamas inside Israel; and massacre of defenceless Isrealis in their Kibbutzes?

    The snag, however, is that Ashkelon today sits in Israel, and also wilts under Hamas’s barrage of retaliatory rockets, even as Israel bombs Gaza to ashes.

    Sure — thanks to the Israeli Iron Dome and Iron Beam defence systems — Ashkelon may well escape the ashen treatment that appears the terrible fate of Gaza. 

    Still, is Ashkelon, part of present-day Israel, also doomed by the Biblical decree in the Book of Amos?  Is Hamas part of the “divine” rod to doom Ashkelon, for its BC crimes? 

    The limit of spin, “divine” or earthly! Every propaganda is spin, woven to scam! 

    So Amos, as literature or as “prophecy”, has nothing to do with present-day Gaza and Ashkelon. 

    Rather, Israel and Gaza are man-made cauldrons, stoked by mutual lunatics, scalding their respective peoples — by the way, ancestral cousins, offspring of Jewish Father Abraham; or Ibrahim, the Arab equivalent.

    In a way though, by their electoral choices, present-day Gazans (Palestinians) and Israelis — the ultimate victims in this conflict — bear ultimate responsibilities. 

    You don’t elect Hamas terrorists and Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition extremists, and feign surprise you are hugging naked grenades!

    Still, the Amos account shows the danger of tracking Palestine’s explosive history from the 1948 founding of the modern State of Israel.

    The trouble in that region dated way back.  It’s sweet fiction therefore, peddled by faith zealots, that Palestine belonged to Arabs. 

    Indeed, both can claim the area: both being one-time happy and harsh conquerors; other times sorry and torrid victims of ruthless conquests, both spanning centuries.

    Unless you build from these fundaments, you will flare on rabid emotions but wilt on cold logic.  Only a clinical mind can be fair to both sides, sworn to mutual annihilation.

    Still, how about this PM Netanyahu pitch to Israelis — cant at its most sublime — after the Hamas massacre?  It’s a study in crass emotions, trapping grieving minds.

    “Let us remember,” Bibi the orator thundered, “all nations, empires or cultures who once tried to destroy us, no longer exist today while we still live!  Egypt?  Babylon?  The Greeks?  Alexander of Macedonia? The Romans — does anyone still speak Latin these days?  The Third Reich?”

    This brilliant demagoguery more or less paints Israel’s grim odyssey through the ages: the AD 70 Roman crushing of a Jewish revolt and the sacking of Jerusalem; plus a more ruthless putdown in AD 135, when imperial Rome renamed Judea as Palestine.

    AD 638: Muslim Arabs toppled imperial Rome, and seized the area. Jerusalem became Al-Quds (meaning “The Holy Sanctuary”). Al-Aqsa Mosque, with its famous dome, nestles on the Temple Mount, sacred to the Jews, bang inside Jerusalem’s old city, now in East Jerusalem! 

    AD 1099, Christian Crusaders “briefly” seized the area — for a century or two — before the Muslim Saracens recaptured it, for more than a millennium.  Of course, Crusaders and Saracens were war thugs, grappling at loud faith for moral life.

    So, same shrines. Three faiths.  Untrammeled cross-faith sacredness.  A peep into how Jews-Arab Muslims-Christians are yoked in faith, yet scattered by politics!

    Palestine — and its umpteenth troubles — is living proof of that boiling cauldron!

    Still on Hamas’s barbarism of October 7, Bibi even managed a crow: “Sixty years ago, no country.  No army. [But] today, we have a state (country), an army, a powerful Air Force, a state-of-the-art economy with exports worth billions of dollars …”

    But Bibi blissfully forgot it was same hubris, from felt invincibility, that drove him to strike a desperate deal with ultra-right lunatics (never before tolerated in Israel since 1948), just to return as Prime Minister.

    One, Bazalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance minister, in March blithely blabbed “there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.  There is no Palestinian history.  There is no Palestinian language”!, provoking a fire storm in the Arab world.

    Read Also: Otukpo bank robbery: Slain female Police Inspector buried in Okene

    Another, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security minister, went marching on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, with some Israeli settlers, and Israeli Police in tow!  How can a “national security” minister be so insensate, without courting needless danger?

    But that’s the lunacy on the Israeli side.  The lunacy on the Palestinian side is no less berserk.

    No matter its grouse, Hamas just damned itself as a terrorist cell, with its premeditated massacre of Israelis in their homes, and killing of 260 partying youths in cold blood.  

    Indeed, if you heehaw over October 7, but howl in a pity-party over the Gaza bombing, you are a closet terrorist — no matter your faith, racial or ethnic cant or camouflage.

    You can’t glorify Hamas’s butchery, yet wax hysterical over Gaza and its tragic fate.

    Israeli children, as Gaza’s, have a right to breathe and live!  So, the Israelis are right to insist Hamas started this present cauldron.  It is what it is — the grim logic of it all!

    Still, Gaza’s fate ought to capture the humanity in us all, sans pride, bias or prejudice. 

    Which is why the lasting solution must be to shun the loonies on both sides — bury Hamas, in Gaza; bury Bibi and his ultra-right coalition, after the guns had fallen quiet.

    But sadly, that path — of moderation — had hardly been taken, on both sides.  1981: Islamist extremists despatched Egypt President Anwar Sadat. 1995: a Jewish fanatic assassinated dovish PM, Yitzhak Rabin.

    Their crimes?  The temerity of both to push for peace and accommodation.

    Still, a flicker: Abu Dawud (1937-2010), who plotted the Black September terrorist attack that massacred 11 Israeli athletes, at the 1972 Munich Olympics, died unbowed. 

    Yet in 1996, the same Israel guaranteed his safe passage to and fro Gaza, to attend the PLO meeting that rescinded Fatah’s old protocol that called for Israel’s eradication. 

    Bitter Dawud was displaced from Jerusalem, following its Israeli capture, after the 1967 Six-Day War — just as the ancient Israelites must have felt, in AD 70 and AD 135, when Rome cracked down and scattered them from their Promised Land.

    Israel’s fearsome war machine cannot win the peace.  The Palestinian impotent rage cannot win the war. 

    Both must settle for moderation: a fair two-state solution that guarantees peace and mutual existence.  It’s a much safer path than mutual lunacy.

  • P&ID: Not yet a closure

    P&ID: Not yet a closure

    It was a case of a Daniel coming to judgment in faraway United Kingdom yesterday where Judge Robin Knowles of the Business and Property Court finally dismissed the so-called $6.6billion arbitral judgment won by Process & Industry Development (P&ID) Ltd against Nigeria over a failed 2010 deal to develop a gas processing plant. While granting the country the long sought reprieve, the court held that the award was obtained by fraud and that what has happened in the case is contrary to public policy.

    The saga centred on a 2010 agreement between P&ID and the federal government to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State. Along the line, nothing happened. The company later claimed that the contract failed because the Nigerian government did not fulfil its end of the bargain. Although the was no record that the company ever moved to the project site not to talk of turning the sod, it sort of guaranteed itself ample protection in the perverse, blatantly one-sided and artfully worded contract documents to sustain any claim of injury in the unlikelihood of the project ever seeing the light of day!

    And so the claim went before international arbitration, that Nigeria, the giant with the feet of clay, deprived P&ID the potential benefits expected from 20 years’ worth of gas supplies with “anticipated profits of $5 to $6 billion.” The country, on its part, had countered that P&ID actually failed to acquire the site and build Gas Processing Facilities and that this failure was a fundamental breach as “no gas could be delivered until this has been done.”

    To the arbitral tribunal however, Nigeria’s obligations under Article 6B of the contract were not conditional upon P&ID having constructed any gas processing facilities!

    Summary: Nigeria, for all its care, could spend billions to pipe its gas to anywhere or nowhere; nothing in the contract expressly commits P&ID to providing an onsite receiving facility to take the gas! And for this, Nigeria was to pay P&ID $6.6 billion as damages, as well as pre-and post-judgment interest at seven per cent!

    For a contract that would ordinarily be deemed to be perverse – at least according to UK’s Judge Knowles – the ensuing arbitral award would stand apart in bizarre, public policy jurisprudence!

    Yours truly could not but rue the fate that would have befallen our beleaguered country had yesterday’s judgment gone the other way. We are here referring to an award which at the time of the judgment was already in excess of $11 billion. Think of the accompanying shock waves at a time the country’s standing in global financial circles is already shaky; a time when there are already, silent whispers about our trading partners rejecting Nigeria’s letters of credit. I thought for a moment about our foreign assets and what would happen to them in the dark, conspiratorial, shark-infested waters of global finance!

    Was yours truly frustrated? Supressed anger would be a better description. For if it seems hard to imagine Nigeria’s Corruption Inc. and its allies walking away with the massive trophy after brazenly scamming a whole country, the audaciousness of a plot that would reduce a whole country to a most cruel joke in global capitals would most certainly be impossible to swallow.

    Thanks to The Cable – Nigeria’s online medium for breaking the story and staying on it till this very moment. Now we know the story is not your typical single, straight line story of two parties locked in dispute over perceived breaches of contractual terms; rather, it is an intriguingly complex, confounding story of fraud: the collusion between cross-border crooks and fraudsters, high profile Nigerian lawyers and their evil or is it ‘civil’ servants counterparts.

    As one would imagine of the typical Nigerian story, there were interesting twists and turns, such as when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in a parallel investigation actually found evidence of two bank transfers totalling $20,000 made by Dublin-based Industrial Consultants (International) Ltd. — part of the P&ID group of companies — to a Nigerian government lawyer, Grace Taiga, who oversaw the award of the gas plant contract, purportedly for “medical costs!

    Or another interesting aside featuring Olasupo Shasore SAN, Nigeria’s first counsel in the P&ID arbitration saga, who despite receiving the sum of two million dollars, allegedly worked against the interest of his client! In fact, one Mark Howard, said to be Nigeria’s legal representative, stated point blank that in the first two stages of the arbitration, Shasore, deliberately “defended the case thinly”. More than that; that Shasore also allegedly made questionable payments of $100,000 each to Folakemi Adelore and Ikechukwu Oguine, both legal representatives of the ministry of petroleum resources and NNPC respectively. In short, the trio, who also discouraged Nigeria from strongly contesting claims of the British firm, formed the settlement team that jetted to London for settlement negotiations with P&ID!

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    Yes, all of that and perhaps more were said to have happened!

    The problem with P&ID case is that the company did not confine itself to playing in the local league which, thanks to our inept institutions and their consort of criminal enablers would ordinarily have afforded them maximum protection. They would rather go after a much bigger prize – our foreign reserves including, where possible, other assets domiciled in foreign shores. Had the company chosen to play local, the story would have been different.

    Safe to say that Nigeria only got lucky this time around; in a country where spurious judgment debts have become something of an industry for fortune-hunters, the case of the P&ID only sticks out because of the greed quotient and the fact that the sought out trophy is huge – far beyond our borders! Talk of a more malignant variant of Nigeria’s Corruption Inc.

    Recall that the Buhari administration with only a few days to leave office in May reportedly shelled out  $566.75 million, 98.52 million pounds sterling ($124.35 million) and N226.28 billion naira ($491.92 million) allegedly incurred by federal ministries, department and agencies as judgment debts! How much of that is spurious is something that Nigerians would never know.

    Again, Nigerians would also recall the story of the $418 million Paris Club refund ‘consultancy fee’ over which the Nigerian Governors Forum is locked in dispute with ‘consultants’ whose services the governors body maintained, were neither solicited for nor were offered, remains live. The last we heard was the governors vowing to continue to explore all legal channels available to them in ensuring that ‘’resources belonging to states are not unjustly or illegally paid to a few in the guise of consultancies.’’

    Far from closure, the P&ID story is only partly ended. There will certainly be no closure until all the company’s named accomplices are served the bitter pill of judicial retribution. It is something that yours truly – as indeed all lovers of Nigeria – can’t wait to see happen. 

  • Legislative road to confusion

    The motion by Hon. Khadija Bukar Ibrahim, passed by members of the House of Representatives last week, halting the move to use only concrete technology to build federal roads can be described as another road to confusion. While the Minister of Works, Engr. David Umahi, has secured the approval of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and certificates of no objection by the Bureau of Public Enterprise, to henceforth use only concrete technology to build federal roads, the House of Representatives’ motion has put a spanner in the works.

    Without gain saying, despite the best efforts of the immediate past regime, most federal roads have remained an embarrassment to the nation. While Nigerians are in haste for road-repairs to begin, the House of Representatives doubt Umahi’s proposed concrete technology. In her lead debate, Khadija Ibrahim raised succinct arguments which swayed her colleagues. Amongst others posers, she said: “The House is worried that the Hon. Minister of Works’ new policy on cement concrete pavement adoption, without in-depth studies of the comparative advantages and disadvantages with asphalt, may contradict technical specifications, potentially leading to contract breaches and potential arbitration and litigation during a challenging economic time.”

    She further claimed: “The House is also concerned that several studies have revealed that the use of rigid or cement concrete pavements in road construction has significant technical limitations and constraints.” This column urges the minister to answer the legislators as quickly as possible, as Nigerians can’t wait for the rehabilitation of the death traps that our roads have become. For many Nigerians, the appointment of Dave Umahi as the Minister for Works was considered one of the best ministerial appointments by the Tinubu administration. Apart from being an engineer of repute, as governor, he had transformed Abakaliki, the capital of Ebonyi State, to a glistering capital city, with infrastructure littering the landscapes.

    So, it is strange that what many considered a deft move to solve the decayed road infrastructure across the country is already enmeshed in confusion. If Khadija Bukar Ibrahim is to be trusted, that her motion is in the interest and welfare of Nigerians, then it means that Umahi did not carry out due diligence before approaching the president for approval. Or could Kadija’s intervention be a mere hogwash to give cover to mundane interest whitewashed as national interest?

    The 10th House of Representatives has regrettably started their tenure on a very unfriendly note to the challenged national economy, with the irresponsible and unconscionable acquisition of luxury SUVS for their grossly abused oversight functions. According to reports, each of the 360 members will get a new Prado SUV at a whopping cost of N130 million per unit, which translates to about N57.6 million naira. In presenting the news to the public, the spokesman of the House gave the impression that the purchase is to enable members effectively discharge their responsibilities.

    He also justified the purchase of the luxurious vehicles on the premise that previous members of the House engaged in similar purchase, which they converted to personal use, after paying a token to the federal purse, at the end of their tenure. He made a feint reference to the executive branch as also guilty of engaging in luxurious lifestyle, when the rest of Nigerians are asked to tighten their belts to survive the economic challenges. While the others may be guilty as charged, the House has confirmed her inconsideration for the dire economic quagmire facing our dear country.

    But while confusion may linger over which of the arms of government is more wasteful, the House members must not walk the roads taken by their predecessors, who used oversight functions to undermine the work of the executive, while lining their private pockets, with public resources. The previous assemblies where so ingrained in personal aggrandizement to the extent that the so-called constituency project became a pork for their welfare. There were established instances, where members cornered billions for projects that they never executed. Other instance existed where a solar power was cited in the personal farm of a member as constituency project.

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    The abuse of constituency project became so rampant that the ICPC had to establish a tracking procedure to monitor it. No doubt, if a thorough investigation of the execution of constituency project is carried out, many former and serving legislators would spend time in prison for corrupt practices. So, when Representative Khadija Bukar Ibrahim, stirs the hornet’s nest about the use of concrete technology to build our roads despite the claims of Minister Umahi that it would serve the country better, many are asking whether the intervention is in the spirit of oversight, or to stir a bargain for constituency road projects.

    Engaging in oversight has also turned to a corrupt practice for members of the National Assembly. There are claims that when legislators engage in oversight, it is merely an opportunity to extort the executors of the projects, the parastatals and departments of government concerned. The allegations against the legislators are that they use that constitutional power to overreach the executive branch and when they are ignored, they make life unbearable for that executive branch during the budget defence.

    Open allegations of abuse of oversight were made against the legislators by ministers in the past, so it is hoped that the sweeping claim of the House of Representatives against concrete roads is for national interest. The dilapidated state of roads across the country should have received the motion of the House of Representatives more than the hammer on concrete roads, which has been experimented with successfully in many parts of the country, including the Apapa to Oworoshonki road, one of the busiest and heaviest laden in the country.

    Nigerians earnestly await the outcome of the inquiry by the House of Representatives, as the motion adopted by members gave their committees three weeks to conduct their research and reach a conclusion on which road to follow between asphalt and concrete, for the construction and rehabilitation of all the federal road projects going forward. If the Representatives rode on the federal roads across the country while they were campaigning, they already know that a lot of the roads require immediate attention. One such road that needs urgent attention by the Ministry of Works is the Benin bye-pass.

    There are several others, like the East-West Road, which from the broadcasts on television, can be described as government engineered economic sabotage against those that ply the road. That road like others similar to it, are avenues for forced sacrifices of peoples’ lives and hard earned goods. With food inflation over the roof, one can just imagine the losses usually incurred, when trucks loaded with tomato or rice or corn fall into the craters that have become permanent feature of such road.

  • Matters sartorialand culinary

    Matters sartorialand culinary

    A sartorial transformation, nay, revolution, is sweeping quietly through the palaces of the emirs and senior royals in northern Nigeria, leading them to dump the bulky, unadventurous outfits of their prime residents in the mouldy archives of the Caliphate and replacing them with smartly-tailored outfits carved from digital-age fabrics, the various pieces from the turban to the cape, rendered in sensuous hues.

    And their staff of authority is no longer a nondescript bauble.

    Call it the Sanusi Lamido Sanusi Effect, or the SLS Effect.

    For it was the former Emir of Kano who started it all.  Now, I must be careful here not to land in the lexical quandary that has ensnared everyone who has attempted to define the current status of the man who, before his royal ascension, used to be the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and didn’t even make any fuss about his pedigree until the day he showed up at work decked out in the resplendent attire of a Crown Prince.

    It is not at first blush clear what his quarrel is with the term “former emir.”  The ordinary meaning is clear.  It designates a person who was an emir but is no longer one, and it makes no reference to the manner of the transition, unlike “deposed emir,” a term I gather he finds not just insulting but cruel.

    Nevertheless, Sanusi has with characteristic hauteur berated those who referred to him as a former emir of Kano, insisting that there is no such creature.  One top bureaucrat in Kaduna who introduced him at a public ceremony with that forbidden title found himself reduced to a former Secretary to the State Government by the time it was over, just as Sanusi had hinted.

    But he may well have a point.  How can you be “former” and “emir” in one and the same breath?  How can you be “deposed” and “emir” at once?  You are either an emir or you are not, and there is no station in between, according to a source said to be close to Sanusi.  He has made peace with that circumstance, the source said, but wonders why misguided sympathisers and ignorant detractors alike keep rubbing it in.

    After all, he is still very much a royal personage, only on a different, perhaps larger and richer canvas:  His Royal Highness Sanusi Lamido Sanusi – or is it Muhammad Sanusi II – is the Spiritual Leader or Khalifa of the Tijaniyya Movement, comprising more than 50 million adherents in Nigeria and the neighbouring countries.  Whatever he may have lost in temporal power he has more than recouped in spiritual power and influence.

    To return to the sartorial revolution that is the substance of this fragment, and of which SLS must be judged the architect and exemplar:  You will find intimations of his tasteful style stamped all over the royal attire of the northern royals, particularly the younger ones, and especially the emirs spawned by the balkanization of the old Kano Emirate in the wake of his defenestration.

    Even His Eminence Sa’ad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto, has had to add a dash of colour to the all-white apparel he has donned for decades.   Expect more colour from there, and an infusion of the same in the former outposts of the Caliphate, not forgetting Borno-Kanem.   And expect the lesser royals across the Sahel to cotton on to SLS’s sartorial revolution.

    At this transitional stage, the tailoring isn’t quite as fastidious as that of SLS. A slap-dash approach rather than a well-calibrated colour scheme is what is out there right now.  But there is no mistaking its direction.  It is in the SLS Style.  Just give it time.

    Each time he steps out in his royal ensemble, Sanusi cuts a dashing, sprightly figure.  In a way, he has retained the soul, the essence of the traditional form even as he has taken the stuffiness out of it and made the person under its folds seem more approachable and accessible, less forbidding. You cannot accuse him of dandifying the court wardrobe.

    Plus, he cradles his staff of office not as a bauble but as part and parcel of his persona.  This adds glamour and mystique to his appearance.  It all seems like a performative act.

    In full flight, SLS comes across as a philosopher-king who can with the greatest confidence and elocution and the least preparation talk intelligibly on any subject, sacred or secular.

    Few can successfully replicate this aspect of his multi-faceted profile.  But a great many, I confidently predict, will adopt his sartorial assemblage enthusiastically and take it to that level where it will be granted a world-class designer label, to which SLS must be accorded the first propriety claim.

    Read Also: What’s wrong with Nigeria, by Wike

    Now to matters culinary.  The central character is so unlikely a personality that nothing less than that age-worn cliché will do as a preface:  Wonders will never cease.

    It is Nyesom Wike: the hard-charging, irascible, combustible, show-them-pepper Wike; showboat, Minister for Abuja Federal Capital Territory, and most recently executive governor of Rivers State; Wike figuring in none of the many guises and disguises we have encountered him.

    One hugely discredited former holder of that post, Jerry Useni, styled or allowed himself to be styled Abuja Czar or Emperor or whatever and used it to pursue an acquisition binge with few parallels even by our delusional standards.  When a public servant marks his 19th wedding anniversary or his wife’s 27th birthday with an Arabian Night-style celebration,  you are entitled to whatever conclusions you draw about the source of his wealth. 

    Wike is too self-regarding to indulge in that kind of thing. 

    At any rate, there he was the other day, Holy Molly, in the capacious and smartly equipped kitchen of his Abuja residence, taking personal charge in preparing some broth on the stove.  The way he held and wielded the mixing spoon, you could tell that this was no amateur or dilettante. 

    An audience of the day’s men and yesterday’s men watched in awe and cheered him on as he added ingredient after exotic ingredient, seasoned the broth, and stirred it at precise intervals to ensure that it came out in the right consistency.

    The mouth-watering aroma hit you as if propelled through ethereal space by some cosmic force.   The resident chef in a 5-Star Michelin-class restaurant could not have hoped for a greater effect.

    One of the guests was caught eyeing the slabs of cured beef – or was it bush meat – laid out in a tantalizing array on a tray and salivating uncontrollably.  Another was heard asking when the Wike Show would end and the real thing would start.  Unfortunately, the organizers did not allow viewers to witness that part of the telecast.

    Justice Eberechi Suzette Wike is lucky.  She can take all the time in the world to craft recondite judgments from the High Court of Justice, Port Harcourt, without having to worry about the culinary quality of her husband’s meals.  He can look after himself.  According to a source who should know, Justice Wike is the greatest admirer of his culinary prowess. 

    As Minister for Abuja FCT, Wike can be expected to carry over from his former domain his practice of non-stop launching and commissioning a blizzard of construction projects with song and music and dance and great merriment.

    But I will not be surprised if he invites the residents to Eagle Square one of these days to come savour his gourmet cooking.  It will not compensate for their loss of status as super-citizens vested with exclusive power to determine who becomes or can become President of Nigeria. 

    But it will be the next best thing to a restitution.

  • Enforcing practice direction

    Enforcing practice direction

    After a long hiatus, this writer appeared before a Magistrate court over a small claims case (less than N10 million liquidated money demand), and the experience before Magistrate Odubayo Oluwafumilayo, shows that our adversarial legal system is not irredeemable after all. The adversarial legal system is an accusatorial legal system, in which the opposing parties are allowed by the courts to slug it out, each relying on every opportunity or loophole provided by the law to win a case. The other, inquisitorial, allows a judge suo moto to dig deeper than what the parties presented before the court, in the interest of justice.

    In practice the adversarial system sometimes don’t approximate to what a common man would regard as fair and just, especially where the contending advocates rely on technicality. The above background is necessary for the reader to understand why this writer, unlike what he experiences at the High Court and appeal courts, was enthused when he appeared before the magistrate. The first pleasant experience was that filling at the Magistrate Court in Lagos State has become automated, and a new Handbook on Small Claims (2023), the Small Claims Court Forms and Practice Direction on Small Claims (2023) issued by Hon. Justice Kazeem O. Alogba, the Honourable Chief Judge of Lagos State, are in use.

    The contents of the handbook show a potential litigant how to start a case in the Small Claims Court, file a simple debt recovery claim in the Small Claims Court, find the right court for a claim and obtain and enforce judgment. The forms are designed to make filing easy, with prototype of letters of demand, complaint form, summons, application for summary judgment, affidavit in support, affidavit of non-service, form of admission, defence and counterclaim, defendant’s counter affidavit of service, motion ex-parte for substituted service and forms for appeal process and garnishee processes.

    Armed with the above practice direction, the court moves with definite alacrity. For the proceedings at the court, Article 10(1) of the Practice Directions, provides that the magistrate shall promote, encourage, and facilitate an amicable settlement of the dispute among the parties by providing settlement options to the parties as the magistrate deems fit. The process of facilitating an amicable settlement shall not exceed seven days. The parties are also encouraged to contact one another to explore settlement. It is important that while providing opportunity for settlement, a specific time frame is given so that the defendant would not use it to buy time.

    Where settlement fails, the matter moves expeditiously, and no party or counsel on either side is allowed to cause any form of delay. Article 10(3) provides that if the parties are unable to settle the dispute amicably, the magistrate shall proceed to hear the application for Summary Judgment or give directions for hearing the Claim or Counterclaim. Article 10(4) provides that the hearing shall be conducted by the court from day to day as far as is practicable and may only be adjourned as a last resort and for the shortest possible time. Subsection 7 provides that the entire hearing period shall not be more than 30 days from the first date of the hearing, inclusive of the seven days for amicable settlement.

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    Article 11 provides that the parties may represent themselves at the proceedings in the Small Claims Court, while Article 12(1) provides that parties may testify for themselves and tender all necessary documents and they may call other witnesses to give evidence at the hearing. Article 12(2) provides that in the interest of justice, the court may depart from the strict application of the provisions of the Evidence Act. Furthermore, Article 13(1) provides that the magistrate shall deliver judgment within 14 days of the completion of the hearing. The court shall include in its judgment, rulings on any interlocutory applications heard in the proceedings.

    In practice, for a determined magistrate, the application of the rules has made hearing and determination of simple, clear, unambiguous and straight forward cases of Small Claims very expeditious. And that is what a working justice system should be. A magistrate relying on the Practice Direction can insist that all applications must be determined together with the judgment. That once the claim is filed and served, the application for summary judgment already designed should be filed and served. A defendant must within six days file his defence and a counter-affidavit stating why a summary judgment should not be entered.

    While appearing, I was also observing with amusement the discomfiture of lawyers, including this writer, as the new practice direction has displaced the usual lethargy of law practitioners, especially defendants and their counsels, who have no defence to the claim against them. All attempts by counsels to get a long date are rebuffed. When there is a little challenge which can be quickly dealt with, instead of an adjournment, the magistrate would stand the matter down, to enable the challenged party go to the registry to resolve the problem.

    I witnessed some claimants conducting their cases themselves with the magistrate directing them on the necessary steps to take in accordance with the Practice Direction. A Special Registry and Sheriff Section have also been created for the Small Claims Court, and while there are challenges with adjusting to the new innovative technology, the speed of getting a matter filed and served is commendable. Where necessary, a form for substituted service by pasting or through a WhatsApp number is provided for by the rules and immediately approved, upon an application before the court.

    Article 15 provides on Appeals. Article 15(2) provides that the aggrieved party shall file the Notice of Appeal within 14 days of delivery of the judgment stating the reasons for the appeal, while sub-section 3 provides that the Assistant Chief Registrar shall compile the Records of Appeal within 14 days of the submission of the Notice of Appeal. The matter is sent to the Fast Track Registry of the High Court, where it is assigned to a Judge of the Fast Track Court designated to hear appeals from the Small Claims Court.

    Article 15(7) provides that the whole process from the assignment of the appeal to judgment shall not exceed 30 days. Article 16 provides for the regulation, monitoring and assessment of the magistrates of the Small Claims Court. This column commends the Honourable Chief Judge of Lagos State, Hon. Justice Alogba for the elaborate Practice Procedure, and accompanying documents, and earnestly prays that it will be strictly adhered to by all those concerned.

    Chief Judges of the High Courts across the country are encouraged to adopt similar Practice Procedure, for their Magistrate and High Courts. The adversarial legal system needs modification, and enforcing efficient practice direction could aid justice before the courts and in the eyes of the public.

  • Beyond the CBN reset

    Beyond the CBN reset

    While it seems inevitable that the house Godwin Emefiele built would fall apart in the aftermath of President Bola Tinubu’s clean sweep of the top echelon of the apex bank, I suspect that not a few Nigerians are still either confused by what is going on or simply unable to make sense of the direction that the new team headed by Yemi Cardoso is headed.

    Yet, nearly a month after assuming office in acting capacity, there is not only a sense that a new Sherriff is in town, but one primed to chart a completely different course from Emefiele’s.  

    Call it the Cardoso manifesto; the elements, shorn of the typical of media glitz and hypes could easily have passed unreported save for its rather lucid and straight-to-the-issue declarations which obviously speaks to the new mood at the apex bank. 

    Take a few samples: The CBN will no longer be involved in direct development finance interventions. That means an end to the several intervention programmes of the CBN; the so-called darling of the farmers – the Anchor Borrowers Programme, the 100 for 100 Policy on Production and productivity (PPP)), the Real Sector Facility (RSF) and the Nigeria Electricity Market Stabilization Facility and countless others that have hitherto, attracted the interventionist eyes of the apex bank and which, combined have gulped over N9.71 trillion, are gone for good.

    Observing that the apex bank’s forays into development financing has been such that blurred the lines between monetary policy and fiscal intervention, the Cardoso manifesto also affirmed:  “in refocusing the CBN to its core mandate, there is a need to pull the CBN back from direct development finance interventions into more limited advisory roles that support economic growth.

    “Those advisory roles, it would further clarify, would include acting “as a catalyst in the propagation of specialised institutions and financial products that support emerging sectors of the economy.

    Secondly, the bank seeks to “facilitate new regulatory frameworks to unlock dormant capital in land and property holdings. Third, it seeks an accelerated access to consumer credit and expansion of financial inclusion to the masses.

    Yes, the CBN under the new thinking “would also focus on de-risking instrumentation to increase private sector investment in housing, textiles and clothing, food supply chain, healthcare, and educational supplies…”

    Summary: the era of the apex bank acting as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for all manners of interventions was over. Put in another way, the era of looking for rice pyramids in Abuja is not only gone forever, the apex bank would henceforth be spared of such farcical shows that promote the vanities of personages.

    Read Also: Can CBN rescue naira from free fall?

    The other measure, which to yours truly also believes tips the scale is the lifting of foreign exchange restrictions hitherto placed on the importation of 43 items.

    Recall that the apex bank had way back in 2015 put 43 product categories on a list of items not valid for forex. The idea, as understood, promoted and stridently defended by Emefiele at the time, was that those goods that could be better produced in the country shouldn’t be found on the queue sourcing for scarce forex. For an institution that had long moved from being the lender of the last resort to your run-of-the-mill player in the arena, it was taken as one of those orthodoxies dictated by national exigencies and so went unchallenged! Never mind that the same individual broke every known rule in modern apex banking; to him, the Nigerian exigency, it would appear, would suffice to trump every conceivable consideration even when facts dictated otherwise!

    If our revolutionary banker ever thought that a fiscal prop was needed to guarantee sustainability considering that none of the 43 items were under any import prohibition list, neither he nor the Economic Management Team considered it necessary to put any such measures in place! In the circumstance, our chief pilot was left to fly solo in the turbulent weather that would ordinarily require all hands to be on deck! To him, it was sufficient to ask the importers of the 43 items to either set up factories for local manufactures or in the alternative source for forex from wherever!

    Yes, the new wisdom is that the restrictions actually pushed importers into the parallel market, fuelling the demand for forex and thus further weakening the naira in that segment of the market. And so the argument goes that they have to go! Just like that? Yes, just like that.

    The reason is self-evident: the exclusionary forex policy was not borne out of a sound policy let alone common sense. What it did was to play up to the familiar activist, populist sentiment. Second, the exclusion would appear an intrusion into trade policy – an arena outside of the CBN remit. Third, there is no evidence that the restrictions helped the forex situation either in terms of boosting domestic production of those items or in curbing the demand for them. It is like the federal government did when it closed the borders without putting in place matching policies to address those  fundamentals that made local  entrepreneurial initiatives so herculean.

    The message here is that the CBN could be a better job of focusing on its core functions of monetary system regulation, banker and adviser to the federal government while the fiscal side of governance come up with complementary policies to spur growth.

    What about the implications of the reversal on the gains already recorded in the production of those items? Nothing has changed, if you ask me. Remember: the good were never on any prohibition list. In fact, those with independent forex sources could freely import them! That they are found everywhere in our markets simply indicates shortfalls in domestic output. That shortfall will certainly not be cured by forex restriction or import prohibition!

    On the one hand, while the domestic producers of those hitherto excluded items could rest easy knowing that the government would inevitably deploy complementary fiscal policy tools to achieve the some price parity, the importers on the other hand could take comfort in the knowledge that the same market rules govern the allocation of scarce forex!

    And the point here: Nigerians didn’t elect the CBN to fix the variegated problems of the country. At best it is an enabler – a help to the government achieve its macro-economic objectives. While its role in promoting inclusive growth, in bringing down the inflation and ensuring overall macro-economic stability cannot be overstated, those looking in its direction for ultimate solution will do well to fix their gaze on what President Bola Tinubu and his team does in the coming months to fix the economy.

  • Sweetness in bitter times

    Sweetness in bitter times

    With Atiku Abubakar raking muck, and Peter Obi splattering mud, in their post-poll season of gall and bile, the mind craved a rare sweetness in horrid bitter times! 

    So on Saturday October 14, Ripples and others — family, friends and protégés, among whom Ripples counted — headed to the Ikeja GRA, Lagos, home of the late Dr. Adewale Adesoji Adeeyo, a “Triple A” indeed in soul sweetness and beauty — if ever any such ever lived! — for the second anniversary of his passage at 73. 

    Sir ‘Eyo passed away on 14 October 2021.

    It was at the invitation of his loving widow, Hauwa Nana Adeeyo, with her two teenage boys, Aminu and Bashir.  The patriarch may have departed — painfully so!  But not a breath of the Adeeyo sweetness was missing — happily so!

    That was clear as the two strapping boys flanked their mum, with the patriarch, benign and large, on the huge anniversary prop, for the sad-happy anniversary photo: Aminu, swarthy as his dad at old age, Bashir, rosy as his mum now and his dad in his younger years, both boys looking different, yet looking the same!

    As the Yoruba often say: the patriarch is gone, yet the patriarch is very much alive — except that the sole original is now split in a refreshing double: “Baba ku, Baba ku!”

    Juxtaposed against the political bitterness that has gripped the country, the irony was stark and profound: the dead that still lived in pure and core grace; the living that since died in a crude dance of shame, over an election won and lost, with the media playing happy-go-merry captive to breathtaking inanity!

    In all good conscience, would you blame the media though — even with its current tragic distraction of historic proportion?

    Would the media have mirrored gentility, when all it had on its radar were preening cads, who for selfish cravings would gladly bury the collective, and blithely toast that depravity as the very acme of patriotism?

    Still, how would the late Adeeyo have reacted to it all, given his stellar bona fides?

    He was a media investor — the proud publisher of The Anchor, the defunct newspaper that took the market by storm but died at dawn, while its publisher battled to save his life, after a horrific robbery raid on his Ikeja GRA home.

    Indeed, it was at The Anchor that he cultivated the friendship of many of his far younger staff, who he treated more as treasured friends, never as mere paid hands.

    That mutually reinforcing friendship was fired by acute intellect, a frothy exchange of healthy ideas, human respect and mutual decency — all honed by Dr.  Adeeyo’s uncompromising faith in the supremacy of good over evil.

    Among the protégés were Kunle Fagbemi (now Adekunle Ade-Adeleye), Tunji Adegboyega aka Cyclone, and, of course, Ripples.  Dr. Adeeyo would often sit in on the The Anchor Editorial Board meeting, chaired by Prof. Ralph Akinfeleye.  

    Former Senator Bunmi Adetunmbi, a visiting member, would weigh in with his vast developmental ideas from the prism of the private sector investment.  So would Prof. Diji Aina, ex-Daily Times but latter-day communications academic in the Nigerian private universities circuit, cresting as vice-chancellor in one of them.  

    Pastor Segun Babatope, The Anchor managing director and editor-in-chief, and passionate leader writer of the best crust, also sat in and chipped in own ideas.  

    Those weekly meetings were always sessions to remember!

    Still, how would Adeeyo have reacted to the current crassness on the political front, since he would have had his own partisan preferences, despite a progressive and squeaky clean liberal outlook?

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    Whatever his preferences, he would have winced at the crudity of it all — outright lies, titillating half-truths and a penchant to dive and swim in the sewers, in the blind delusion that tomorrow won’t soon come to mock the current happy-go-merry muck!

    Why, in the total moral collapse for partisan expediency, a nameless few even dared to tar Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, our own WS!

    Didn’t their forebears tell them — even if they were not born then — how WS stoutly stood against the electoral heist of Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) and his “Demo” riggers in 1st Republic Western Region?

    Didn’t their fathers tell them how WS tried to rally a third force to neuter both Nigeria and Biafra, to prevent the Civil War bloodbath, earning long detention for his pains?  

    To secure this current democracy, didn’t their parents tell them how WS faced down Gen. Sani Abacha and his formidable and murderous state gang, even as Atiku, Obi and co did business-as-usual with that rogue regime?

    So, if WS talks of the “Gbajue” mentality from the Obi camp, isn’t it clear all that came from the pristine activist who has seen it all, and not from social media “cash-tivists”, on the lookout for the hire, no matter how lost or ignoble the cause? 

    Indeed!  In those days — and that season included the fierce civic war to revalidate MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential mandate — WS and co poured sustained moral fire on vote robbers (and military annullers), forcing the rogue political military to cut and run.  

    The result is this democracy.

    But now, Gen. Z “cash-tivists” push supreme democratic lies to turn clear losers into magical winners — Gbajue!  The terrible genie is out of the cursed bottle!

    In the noxious fume of the moment, even Ripples blundered into a rare headline mix-up: Atiku agonistes!  

    That was the column headline for last week (October 10).  But it was also the headline for 5 November 2019 — almost four years ago to this day — and Ripples didn’t even know until a passionate reader called to point it out!

    But you know what? — and that’s the grand irony: Atiku agonistes (now 1 and 2), refer to the same dramatic personae — then, Atiku and Obi, as losing PDP presidential ticket in 2019; now, Atiku and Obi, as discrete and separate presidential losers in 2023!

    The Gbajue children of bitter politics have certainly come of age!   Their bitterness too has deepened with geometrical proportion — not unlike the dire population projection of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who predicted a population doom for pre-Industrial Revolution England!

    But pray, what happens to their political offspring after all this madness is over?  How would they explain their forebears’ zealous dance of filth, to wrongly corral the electoral diadem never theirs, depending on brazen lies?  What a heavy burden to lug!

    But again the biological Adeeyo children, Aminu and Bashir, posing with their mother, oozed a refreshingly different aura, even if their solemn looks clearly rued the passage of their father.

    True, all might not be the same again, for their debonair paterfamilias is gone!  Still, they bear no heavy burden of his earthly misdeeds — none!

    On the contrary, they crest on the sweet breeze of his earthly charity — and malice to none — set to open doors of tremendous goodwill, as they go on own lives’ journey, under the watchful eyes of their young materfamilias, still very much around.

    May Sir Eyo’s memory continue to be sweet!  Such welcome sweetness in bitter times!

  • The verdict from Chicago

    The verdict from Chicago

    Calling Nigeria from the United States last Thursday was fraught.  Practically no one I was trying to reach was responding. 

    Some were surfing the Internet for the latest tidbit on how the Atiku Abubakar’s petition against President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February 25 election was playing out in federal court in the Windy City more than 9, 600 miles away, and were determined to tune out any distraction.

    A good many were glued to foreign television news providers that have as their unique selling proposition the transmission of Breaking News, as opposed to news that is ferreted out.  That genre, I gather, belongs in the bad old pre-digital age.

    Those who could not afford that luxury stayed tuned to the local television stations that serve as  proxies for foreign outlets, complete with thumping, throbbing music and scary graphics suggestive of world-altering situations, marked by chaos, and violence. 

    Remember the “twilight of the gods”.  I will spare you the Germanic name for a medieval precursor of the genre, but if you are a glutton for punishment and insist on my invoking it, here goes:   gotterdammerung.   Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

    As I was saying, it was almost as if the future of Tinubu’s presidency, no less than the destiny of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the world’s largest Black nation was hanging precariously on whatever ruling was handed down from that court house in Chicago.

    At issue was whether Tinubu had truly earned a degree in Accounting from Chicago State University, as he had indicated in election filings going back to 1999 when he first ran for Governor of Lagos State, or he had been using another person’s identity and credentials to advance his political fortunes, at the expense of candidates who had duly complied with all the rules and regulations.

    It is not a new issue. 

    The departed legal gadfly and  sworn enemy of humbug, Gani Fawehinmi, SAN,  had set out to have Tinubu’s victory in the 1999 election voided on the grounds that Tinubu did not have the qualifications detailed in his filing, nor did he attend the schools listed therein. 

    Tinubu’s response was that the application had been filed by his NADECO collaborator Tokunbo Afikuyomi without the benefit of the pertinent documents that Tinubu was not in a position to provide, being holed up in forced exile in the United States. 

    More concretely, Tinubu latched on to the constitutional clause that gave him legal immunity         as an elected state governor.

    But since then, the matter has followed his every political move like a shadow.  And there it was, more menacing than ever when he made his biggest political move career, declaring that it had been his ambition since childhood to serve as President, and that the time had come. 

    His “Emi lo kan,” or “It is my turn” declaration at a difficult time in his campaign for the APC ticket left no one in any doubt that his resolve was unshakeable, despite indications and dark whispers that he was in poor health.

    At first, what loomed as the most formidable obstacle in his path was settling for a fellow Muslim as his running mate. They said it was a plan to “islamize Nigeria, when the man couldn’t even “islamize” his own wife, a pastor in the Redeemed Church of God. 

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    The run- up to the nomination was mired in the sterile debate over that binary issue until Professor Wale Adebanwi, dean of Africana at the Ivy-League University of Philadelphia entered what  will go down as the definitive essay on factors governing Tinubu’s motivations, the choices and the calculations that Tinubu must have made far removed from all the noise in the public sphere.

    The manufactured controversy fizzled. Had MKO Abiola not chosen Babagana Kingibe, a fellow Muslim as his running mate in the 1993 presidential election, and had the duo not an emphatic victory that was annulled by a military regime that wanted to stay put.  And had not Atiku Abubakar, a Muslim, reportedly sought to be on Abiola’s ticket in place of Kingibe?

    Tinubu’s opponents would reopen questions about Tinubu’s antecedents with ferocity when Atiku lost to Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election.

    Atiku was the architect of his own loss.  By the PDP’s rules, its national chair and its presidential candidate cannot belong in the same geopolitical zone.  But the national chair, Iyorchia Ayu, and Atiku, its presidential candidate. belonged in the same zone. 

    Atiku turned deaf ears to petitions to repair this breach.  As a result, five state governors elected on his party’s platform – the so-called Group of Five, or G5 – led by the combustible Nyesom Wike, broke ranks with Atiku, thus severely eroding Atiku’s support in their domains. 

    Without the split, Atiku could conceivably have won the presidential election,

    The defeat rankled.  Atiku blames it on Tinubu, whom he has accused of engineering the split, and pursuing it to the point of no return.  His petition before the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal having been found lacking in merit, Atiku shifted gears. 

    He would frontload his appeal to the Supreme Court with what he had been assured would  constitute assailable evidence that the diploma Tinubu said he obtained from Chicago State University and the documents with which he had secured admission to that institution were blatant forgeries.

    In the run-up to the Supreme Court’s ruling on his appeal,  Atiku has pursued the quest for such materials with an intensity bordering on monomania.   It was in anticipation of  the release of the documents by Chicago State as ordered by  a federal court that the nation held its collective breath last Thursday.

    Schadenfreude wafted through the camps of the anti-Tinubu coalition. Their bogeyman was about to be brought down and taken out of contention, or so they hoped.  Team Tinubu was reckoning that, ultimately, what would really matter was what Nigerian courts have decided or will decide, based on their interpretation of Nigerian laws governing an issue that belongs indisputably in its jurisdiction.

    When it landed, the Chicago Verdict was neither the knockout punch, the evisceration  of Tinubu that the coalition of his adversaries confidently expected, nor the complete vindication that Team Tinubu would have welcomed.

    Chicago State released some dodgy application material from Tinubu’s file, to wit:  a transfer transcript from Richard Daley College, with a name and gender different from Tinubu’s, and an attestation  purportedly from Government College, Lagos, which had not been established at the time Tinubu sought admission.

    But it confirmed that the Bola Ahmed Tinubu, male, who sat the entrance examination to the institution, enrolled in the Accounting programme and was graduated with distinction, is one and the same person as the current President of Nigeria.

    Chicago State said the diploma filed with his election documents did not emanate from its provenance.  So that, even if it is a forgery, it does not materially detract from his status as a graduate in good standing.

    Read Also: Tinubu: Chicago State varsity has provided sufficient answers to all questions — Okeh

    The most judicious construction on the merit of Atiku’s case at this time has to be the Scotch Verdict:  Not proven.

    But proven or not proven, Atiku is not about to change course.  Rather, he seems set to change tactics.  He plans to turn a constitutional issue into a moral crusade against the Tinubu Presidency, which he hopes will resonate across the country. 

    Its effect will be to distract the Administration, to keep it so busy fending off attacks on its legitimacy that it would have  little time to pursue the policies, programmes and plans on which it was voted into power.

    -To be sure, Tinubu is no saint.  None among us is. Saints are anointed, not elected.  In whatever case, no election in Nigeria has ever produced a saint. And it is neither here nor there to insist that the Wazirin Adamawa is singularly unsuited to lead a moral crusade in Nigeria.

    The question is:  Where is all this leading, and how will it end?

    Nigerians must devoutly hope and pray that politics will yield to statesmanship before it is too late.  Atiku served Nigeria to the best of his ability as vice president, and may still, in the fullness of time, serve again in the higher office of President.