The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • An expedition and its aftermath

    An expedition and its aftermath

    Finally, I do hope that Nigerians have truly begun to pay attention to the declared end game of the high-octane drama staged by former vice president Atiku Abubakar and which, while it lasted, took country to the edge. For those that the fishing expedition in the courts of Magistrate Jeffrey T. Gilbert and Judge Nancy Maldonado of U.S. Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, United States, had created the exaggerated expectation of sorts, their pain after the disappointing voyage is certainly understandable hence their resort to inferences neither borne of the written text nor supported by the facts deposed at the proceedings.

    Clearly, if the past few days have been interesting, it certainly cannot be on any ground of ‘discovery’ of a new facts as it is in the desperation to confuse and to confound, and when these fail, resort to the default setting of haranguing the poor justices of the apex court on a case yet to be properly brought before them. Even in this, it would appear that the Atiku Abubakar, the self-styled democrat by conviction couldn’t afford to wait for his legal team to do their job nor the adjudicating justices to sit.

    A ‘world press’ conference in the circumstance simply became the logical next phase. Obviously, the judges needed to be served notice that Atiku means business, even if that meant rewriting the rules of court or providing some form of accommodation for his juridical fantasies, so be it!

    No questions about invoking either the law or new compelling facts to persuade the learned justices; suffice at this time to invoke the spirit of Gani Fawehinmi, the Senior Advocate of the Masses of revered memory of whom he says ‘inspired him on this path of discovery…and that he can truly rest in peace in the assurance that what he started about 23 years ago has come to fruition! Political opportunism does not come by any other name!

    By the way, Atiku has since found a new hero – David Hundeyin, ‘an independent journalist whose extraordinary work and those of many more young people like him has become a source of inspiration’.  Let me just say that Atiku is certainly in good company here.

    To yours truly however, the high point of the Atiku conference is his strange call “on all well-meaning Nigerians, leaders of thought, our religious leaders, our traditional leaders, our community leaders, our political leaders, and in particular, Governor Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP and, the leaders of every political party in Nigeria, and, indeed, every single person who loves this country, as I do, and who wishes nothing but the best for the country, as I do, to join me in this campaign to enshrine probity, accountability and the basic principles of justice, morality and uprightness in our country and in our government. This is a task for each and every one of us”.

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    That, although dangerous, is a familiar call. Earlier on, we heard similar calls by those who, unable bear the thought of a Tinubu presidency, had called for an extra-constitutional contraption of an interim government. Add to the group the Obidients, the league in the forefront of delegitimising the electoral outcome; the cyber warriors for whom it is either their way or the hell’s highway? 

    Is Atiku merely echoing the minds of Nigeria’s principalities and powers before whose altars he’s known to bow when it suits him? It is certainly a new day that Atiku Abubakar, the democrat of convenience, now seeks an alliance with those in whom he is in competition for the same prize, to chase out the legitimate government through such means that are beyond the contemplation of the law!

    Earlier in this piece, I raised the issue of Atiku’s end game. The issue as it appears, bears restating: what does Atiku want? Here was a man who although lost in the February 25 presidential elections somehow believes that there still exists for him a viable path to the presidency. Clearly, if that quest is legitimate, he seems to forget that the path to that office is circumscribed by the provisions of the constitution and the Electoral Act. The law of course recognises a two-tiered process for resolving all disputes arising from the presidential election. The first part has been concluded. That stage has since found – with all the five justices concurring – that Atiku’s case as indeed that of his co-traveller, Peter Obi, lacked merit. Having gone to the highest court in the land in line with the provisions of the law, one would have thought that Atiku would hold his peace.

    Yes, I understand why the Chicago expedition might be deemed a mere distraction, a judicial afterthought sort of, or even a chase after the wind by some people. To yours truly however, the issue of whether it falls within the right of the fishing party to pursue his case as he deems fit is clearly beyond debate! It is after all, the man’s money and he can use it for any causes even if they lead nowhere! That right, inbuilt in the democratic spirit, would seem to be tolerant of all manners of specious interpretations by all manners of actors even when they sometimes border on the lunacy!

    It is however a different kettle of fish when a principal party in a case already in court, a former vice president, supposedly a statesman, begins to call for extra-constitutional measures apparently because he thinks the system would not pander to his whims. That is one red line that should not go unchallenged!

    See how ridiculous things can get for the ultimate democrat? He says the former Lagos State governor abandoned him as well as the Action Congress of Nigeria to support Umaru Yar’Adua of the PDP in the 2007 presidential poll. And that he saved Tinubu by not allowing former President Olusegun Obasanjo to take over Lagos State in the 2007 general elections. Yes, the star cast in the mind-boggling corruption cases running from the shores of Nigeria to the United States Congress, and on whom Olusegun Obasanjo once issued a most scathing ‘recommendation’ is out there talking public morality. That is Nigeria!

    So where do we go from here? As it is, the Wazirin Adamawa has long indicated that he has little faith in the Nigerian judiciary – except things go in his favour. In other words, the Supreme Court judgment is unlikely to settle anything – so long as it does not favour him. I believe Nigerians should begin to pay attention.

  • Atiku agonistes

    Atiku agonistes

    The agony of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar runs deep.  His APC f(r)iends claim it’s some virulent post-poll defeat virus.  

    But don’t take that on face value.  Partisan foes love to poke costly jokes — or even outright muck — at one another.  It is what it is!             

    Still, the depressing bile with which Atiku is taking his latest — and final? — loss echoes a refreshing opposite from his North East nativity: with the 2nd Republic Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim (1926-1992), that republic’s chief apostle of politics without bitterness.

    Now, Alhaji Ibrahim had every reason to be sore.  As awaiting presidential candidate for the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP), he smacked at a rather strong pan-Nigeria platform. 

    But Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s re-entry into politics turned that pleasure into pain — the famed Zik of Africa, who the iconic cartoon of Jossy Ajiboye (then of the defunct Daily Times group) had dubbed “Bride of the Century”!

    Zik, politically coquettish as ever, wouldn’t say yes or no, to calls by his followers to join the 1979 presidential race.  

    But when eventually Zik hearkened that call, his party of choice was NPP, teeming with mainstream old East politicians, the Christian Middle Belt that often sided with the South against the North in crunchy national matters, and Zik’s 1st Republic Lagos/West confederates, led by Chief Adeniran Ogunsanya.

    With Zik’s entry, the smart Alhaji Ibrahim knew his presidential ticket dream was toast.  He simply moved on and formed a new party, Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP).  

    Enter, Politics Without Bitterness: the credo the late Ibrahim lived for the rest of his life.

    Now, compare and contrast his conduct with Atiku’s, who lost an election and is seized with so much gall — a Samson’s complex that suggests the Wazirin Adamawa wouldn’t care a hoot if he crashed everyone (including himself) with his crashed ambition!

    As a historical aside, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, self-named military “president”, would be wondering whatever happened to his new breed political brood, among whom counted former Vice President Atiku and sitting President Bola Tinubu.

    The “new breed” — costly pawns in IBB’s failed self-perpetuation ploy — were to be free of partisan bitterness that crashed the 1st Republic (1960-1966) and the 2nd Republic (1979-1983).

    Yet, here was Ibrahim, a top player back in the 2nd Republic, trumping Atiku — the aging “new breed” of the IBB era — in the ABC of civil and cultured politics! 

    But back to the tumultuous present: Atiku’s conduct (pre-poll, electioneering cum election proper and post-poll) has been as bitter as gall, fired by a rabid desperation.

    Unlike Alhaji Ibrahim that really was unfairly done by — and had a genuine case of being cheated — Alhaji Abubakar’s wild desperation fired his electoral misfortune.

    For personal glory, he bucked a near-national consensus for the presidency to move down South, after the Muhammadu Buhari years (2015-2023).  

    That stubborn streak earned him the PDP ticket all right.  But it also split PDP into three camps: if you discount the internal rebellion of the G-5 (the irked five PDP governors led by Nyesom Wike, then Rivers governor, now FCT minister).  

    So, the G-5 effectively splintered PDP into four: Peter Obi, another demagogue, was leering punter at the Labour Party (LP) — always a shameless harlot at vote seasons, always getting under the sheets with the highest bidder.

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    Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, with his red-capped Kwankwassiyya movement, also whored with the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), though the latter-day explosion in that party has shown the futility of mutual opportunism.  

     Besides, Atiku lost no time to further degrade himself from a national figure to a cheap “northern” hustler for president.  He took the PDP down that abyss, as some northern vassal party, captive to Atiku’s low ethnic agenda.  

    Blinded by acute power lust though, that grim twin-irony was totally lost on him!

    But even within the PDP rump, Atiku had the G-5 to contend with.  While the Arewa Atiku pulled north, the G-5 pulled south — until PDP, a pan-Nigeria party in 1999 (though a cynical Army Arrangement), was well-nigh wiped out in Nigeria’s South!

    So, how can the opposition PDP, split into four bitter camps, delude itself it “won” the presidency on February 25 â€” with two parts of that headless snake, Atiku and Obi, both claiming “victory”?  How — against the ruling APC that held on to its ranks?

    What hearty pantomime!

    But not even the thunder from the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) could snap Atiku out of his concentrated delusion.  To the United States he headed, manifesting the same Samson’s syndrome that lost him the election.

    The insensitive ex-Vice President that would crash political sensibilities for stark power, is self-same insensate loser, whose US search for a certificate that was never lost, would earn his cherished homeland undeserved jeer and ridicule.  

    Hardly any redemption for he blinded by partisan bile!

    Indeed, after kicking up much dust and burning tonnes of US dollars, all Atiku got from his American voyage was a damp squib.  

    That squib hissed all right.  But if it burnt anyone, it was Atiku himself — in ice cold commonsense rebuke, which really made the point that common sense isn’t common!

    Otherwise, how could the Chicago State University swear on oath — with released academic transcripts to boot — that Bola Tinubu was its graduand, yet you dub a certificate that graduate parades as a “forgery”?

    To complete the Atiku drama of the absurd at his “world press conference”, he summoned one of his lawyers to mouth the inanity: Tinubu’s certificate was a “forgery” because it belonged to a “Black American” — titillating stuff that can only excite starry-eyed Atikulates and their Obidient cousins!

    Still, after all the hurly burly is done, and the battle is lost and won at the apex court, this lawyer had better be prepared to prove his claim, should the Tinubu camp decide to sue!

    Besides, stripped naked by own gambit, Atiku invoked emergency saints for his emergency cause: the late Gani Fawehinmi, SAM, SAN, that started the wild goose chase in 2001.  

    Why, he even played to the gallery over “Muslim-Muslim” ticket. But in his selective recall, he blissfully forgot he was Shehu Yar’Adua’s preference in 1993, over Baba Gana Kingibe, to run with “Christian” Moshood Abiola, after which failure the Yar’Adua faction of the winning camp traded off MKO’s mandate!

    But the cruellest cut of all: Atiku invited Obi and Kwankwaso, the duo that destroyed PDP from without because of own roaring ambitions, to reunite with him on his quaint voyage!

    Kwankwaso didn’t even flatter the call with any response.  But Obi, always the trader, hustling and haggling for the best bargain, instantly balked. Holy Obi was gunning for “justice” — whatever that means — at the Supreme Court!

    Atiku and Obi are two of a kind.  The one stands for everything, via cheap grandstanding.  The other stands for nothing, save empty demagoguery.  

    The polity can do without their shrill distractions.

  • Mangosuthu Buthelezi: A portrait

    Mangosuthu Buthelezi: A portrait

    Saturday, July 8, 1990. Forty minutes after take-off from Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts Airport -since renamed for a hero of the anti-Apartheid struggle, Oliver Reginald (OR) Tambo, – the Falcon 900 Executive jetliner clears the Mtonajeni Range, the low, grass-covered hills that ring the Ulundi plain, scene of the last great battle between the British invaders and the Zulu in 1879, and touches down at the airport.

    It is a small but well-maintained airfield.  On the tarmac is a small, twin-engined plane.  A 15-minute drive takes the visitors to the KwaZulu Administrative and Legislative Assembly, at the corner of King Dinuzule Highway and Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi Street.

    In the forecourt, a bronze statue of the great Zulu warrior Shaka, in full military regalia, stands atop a high reinforced concrete plinth, as if keeping a watch over the precincts.

    The visitors, General Olusegun Obasanjo, chairman of the Africa Leadership Forum and co-chair of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group which recommended the wide-ranging sanctions that quickened the collapse of white minority rule in South Africa, four aides and this reporter, were ushered into what looked like the Cabinet Room.

    There is no mistaking the seat reserved for our host, the Chief Minister of the KwaZulu Government, president of Inkatha Tenkululeko Wesizwe, and chairman of the Black Alliance,  Chief Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi.  Behind him is a bust of the man himself, and other paraphernalia of state.

    Those who come into the room believing that Buthelezi is no more than a local potentate in rural KwaZulu are quickly struck by plenty of evidence to the contrary.  On the mantelpiece are framed pictures of Buthelezi with Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Margaret Thatcher, the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, Senator Ted Kennedy, Julius Nyerere, Jesse Jackson, and many other persons of consequence.

    Being a prince himself – his mother was a princess – and he traces his bloodline to Shaka, it is only natural that royalty should be represented in this collection.  And it is indeed, in the form of a framed picture of the Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales, and their infant son.

     The writer is taking in all of this when our host walks into the room in brisk, confident steps, a picture of affability.  On this day, he is sporting a simple blue, long-sleeved French suit. Two articles of dress mark him out from his aides:  a green, yellow and black beaded necklace that terminates in a green triangular locket on his chest and from which a single bead string projects and two inches or so in his right hand is a carved, multi-coloured swagger stick, a symbol of his traditional office.

    At 62 years old, he can easily pass for a nab two decades younger.  Of average height, he is slim but not compact,  There is nary a streak of grey in his hair or his beard.  When he talks about Nelson Mandela, it is with unfeigned reverence.  In his autobiography, Buthelezi recalls his days as an activist in the Africa National Congress Youth League, and how Mandela had influenced him to head to Johannesburg after Law School.

    When Obasanjo visited Mandela in prison in 1988 as co-chairman of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, Mandela had told him that he regarded Buthelezi as an authentic freedom fighter.  Obasanjo had conveyed the message to Buthelezi.  The compliment is like a tonic to Buthelezi, who never tires of citing it, just as he is ever so ready to share a letter Mandela had written to him from prison.

    “Dear Shenge,” the letter begins, using the clan name with which Buthelezi is hailed wherever he is stirring the Inkatha crowds.  Mandela expresses warm thanks to Buthelezi for the 70th Birthday greetings that Buthelezi had sent him in prison.  Stating that “few things in his political career had distressed him as seeing our people killing one another,” Mandela had urged that everything must be done to put an end to the slaughter of so many innocent lives.”

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    Mandela signs off this moving entreaty of peace and unity with his own clan name, Madiba.

    Buthelezi is clearly disappointed that several planned meetings between him and Mandela did not hold.  For this, he blames not Mandela but ranking officials of the ANC.  He does not sound embittered, but he is miffed at being treated like a pariah not only by the ANC but also by the leaders of the so-called independent homelands.

    The eight million Zulu, of whom he is the leader, deserve much better, he seems to be saying.  His aides stress that it just happens that Ihkatha was founded by Zulus and had a predominantly Zulu membership.

    The ANC, they remind you, was in fact founded by a Zulu but over the years, its leadership had been taken over almost entirely by the Xhosa of the Eastern Cape.

    Black-on-black violence, instigated at least in part by the white authorities, has been a sad fact of South Africa’s recent history.  But the violence had escalated as the prospect Mandela’s release from prison brightened, reaching a crescendo when the final obstacles to substantive negotiations between the apartheid authorities and the ANC were cleared. 

    Buthelezi, it seems to me, seeks to come across as a factional leader more sinned against than sinning. 

    I ask him about the land question that lies at the heart of the conflict in South Africa, with 13 percent of the population owning 87 percent of the productive land.  An 18-hour road trip from the Namibian capital Windhoek to Johannesburg earlier in 1990 that year gave me a glimpse of just how pernicious the system was, with individual whites or corporate entities holding titles to one million hectares of undeveloped farmland.

    How will this vexed issue be redressed in a post-Apartheid South Africa?

    We will appeal to those holding more land than they need to release some of it for redistribution to those who have none, Buthelezi said.

    If the foregoing is Buthelezi’s way of signalling to the ANC and its allies that they must reckon with him and his supporters, they should heed him, however much they detest his persona or deplore his tactics.  No settlement in South Africa will endure that does not accommodate them.

    • First published in The Guardian (Lagos), August 28, 1990.  Mangosuthu Buthelezi died on September 9, 2023, aged 95 years, and was accorded a state burial.
  • Southeast reawakening

    Southeast reawakening

    The summit on economy and security, organized by governors of the southeast region in Owerri, Imo State, last week, should portend a reawakening of the region. As if under a spell, the region has been ensconced in severe insecurity in the past few years, such that going to some communities was akin to visiting a war zone. At the height of the insecurity, state capitals were not even safe, as a Correctional Centre in Owerri was attacked and 1844 inmates released. Citizens dared not ride in any vehicles that gave them out as being affluent, or seemingly an official of government.

    Part of the trigger was the activities and subsequent detention of Nnamdi Kanu of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The other trigger was the activities of the herdsmen, and kidnapping and attacks by armed groups. Following the detention of the leader of the IPOB, his followers decreed a sit-at-home every day he was taken before a federal court to answer the charge of treason. When it appeared the sit-at-home on court days were not achieving the desired result, IPOB leaders decreed a sit-at-home every Monday of the week. And where the directive is disobeyed, enforces were sent into the streets with devastating consequences. 

    As if bad was not enough, the herdsmen added salt to the festering injury, as they attacked communities, to enforce open grazing. They worsened the situation when they turned to kidnapping for ransom as business venture. Going to farms and even driving on lonely highways became a security risk, and many were kidnapped and huge ransoms extorted from relations of the kidnapped. With security agents sometimes accused of compromise or completely missing in action, the southeast governors met in Owerri, in 2021, to raise a regional security network to confront the menace.

    Accused of prevarication and division within themselves, IPOB which was posturing as an alternative to the elected government officials, quickly formed the Eastern Security Network (ESN) and set their own rules to fight the herdsmen attacks. Sooner than later, a local variant of kidnapping for ransom mutated in the region and going to the region became the worst nightmare. Some of those who dared had heart rendering stories to tell, sometimes with relations working in concert with kidnappers to effect maximum damage.

    Slowly but surely, the economy of the region began to grind to a halt as going to the region for business or leisure was considered a risk even by natives. Coupled with the devastating economic meltdown of COVID19 and allied challenges, and mismanagement of the national economy by agents of governments at the federal and sub-national levels, pauperization of the people became the regional ethos. Victimized by nationwide general economic crisis and home grown calamity, the people of the region sunk deeper into multi-dimensional poverty.

    The security challenge got so bad that many police stations in the rural areas were shut down, as they became targets of attack by those referred to as unknown gunmen. While accusing fingers were pointed at members of IPOB and their security arm, ESN, their spokesman, fancifully called Emma Powerful, continually denounced the accusation, stating that they are a non-violent organization. When the sit-at-home became an object of public odium, IPOB called off the protest, asking the people to go about their business on Mondays. But with the division within IPOB, championed by Simon Ekpe, living in Finland, a countermand order ensures that sit-at-home endures.

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    The effort by state governors to forcefully end the sit-at-home has worked fitfully, in some state capitals and a few commercial cities, where the government can ensure reasonable security. But of course, businesses thrive where there is security and less fear and trepidation. So, the governments of the region know that they can only end the sit-at-home if the people and businesses feel secured, and not in obedience to their command or the arms of the federal armed forces. A further unhealthy dimension was the addiction to a dangerous illegal drug called methamphetamine, known in local parlance as mkpuru mmiri, by some youths.

    I have tried to trace a trajectory of the grave insecurity and economic woes bedevilling the southeast region, to help those tasked to find the solution. As the Igbos say, he who does not know where the rain started beating him, would not remember where and when it stopped. Interestingly, it was in the same Owerri that the governors met in 2021, after the Correctional Centre attack, and they couldn’t meet the great expectations of setting up a regional security outfit. Perhaps, that effort was consumed by the 2023 general elections which polarized the governors.

    Would any good thing come out of Nazareth this time? Maybe. At the recent summit, all the governors canvased the need for unity of purpose, both in dealing with security and the economy. A proposal by the host governor gladdens this column, considering its exertions for such a unity of purpose in the past. Gov. Uzodimma postulated: “There is need for the Igbos to turn within themselves for solutions, pool resources together and cooperate in order to be able to contain the dangers posed by insecurity.”

    He further canvased: “The South East Economic Development Fund will go a long way in financing research that will bring prosperity to the people.” It will be a thing of joy if the governors can set up such a fund and effectively fund it. As I have argued previously on this page, the states in the zone should take advantage of their natural strength in agro-allied industrialization. There are very fertile agricultural belts in all the states in the region which can be turned to the food baskets of the region.

    States in the region also have enormous mineral resources, which they should tap into. For starters, the Nkalagu cement factory which used to be the flagship of the Eastern Nigeria, while Michael Okpara held sway as regional premier; and the abundant coal deposits in Enugu, which are comatose should receive interest from such pool of common funds. As originally envisaged, there are now several universities and research institutions which can churn out research to optimize the natural endowments. With the recent constitutional amendment, regional generation and distribution of electricity and inter-state railways should also attract their common interest.

    Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in her address professed the major challenge, which is the lack of unity amongst the governors. Of course, in the search for unity, they must work in concert with other Nigerians. The governor of Anambra State had that in mind when he said: “We need not just ourselves, we need Nigeria. Ndigbo needs Nigeria and Nigeria needs Ndigbo. Ndigbo needs Africa and the world and the World and Africa need Ndigbo. As an itinerant people, we cannot be an intolerant people.”

  • Labour’s Independence bouquet

    Labour’s Independence bouquet

    For Nigeria at 63, organized Labour had a bouquet of spikes — an “indefinite” strike that nevertheless resonates with its long-suffering members.

    Poor folks!  They are riled up to mauling an instant Judas (the sitting government), for a long-standing economic angst! The question though is after the strike, what? 

    Now, compare the Labour spikes with the nest of feathers, thrust onto the citizens, in President Bola Tinubu’s balmy Independence speech.  Different strokes? 

    The way Joe Ajaero, president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), marshalled his troops to at least get the one crippling strike he had craved since May 29, reminds you of Karl Marx — that bit about history repeating itself as farce.

    To boot, he finally got to his side the Trade Union Congress (TUC) — TUC nobles with the NLC rabble! — more perhaps for the TUC tiff with the Lagos government over the state’s Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) ban, than any ardour to go on a strike.  Indeed, my enemy’s enemy is my friend!

    Now, put Ajaero side by side with Adams Oshiomhole, now a senator of the Federal Republic, but then NLC boss.  Throw in their common anatomy — little guys that boss giants around!

    Then add, as spice, fuel subsidy — clearly the prime issue of Nigeria’s 4th Republic — with its co-irritant: importation of petroleum products, when Nigeria could more rationally â€” and cheaply â€” refine its crude oil, and all you have is the perfect storm.

    Oshiomhole fought President Olusegun Obasanjo to a standstill on petrol pricing yo-yo, with the government reversing price hikes after strikes, but not to pre-strike levels.

    In this Labour-government show down, Ajaero would hope to go one farther: force President Tinubu to junk oil subsidy removal, shove down pump prices to pre-May 29 levels — or otherwise face an indefinite strike that would cripple the economy!

    Still, how many days does NLC think it could get its members off work before fatigue — euphemism for search for daily bread — sets in?  Even in Oshiomhole’s triumphant days, strikes hardly lasted for three days before troubling signs of sudden abortion.

    Besides, NLC has asked its members — and the general public — to stock up.  But really how many have the capacity to do that with the present economic throes?  

    Even those that could, how much could they possibly “stock up” to sustain an “indefinite” strike?

    And after “stock up” and triumphant crippling, how can a stark economy, further drained, support workers’ demands for better deals?

    Ajaero craving an Oshiomhole-era triumph is no more than a craven dream — bold cowardice in rushing at new challenges with old methods.  In such circumstances, history can only repeat itself as farce!

    That’s the thing, though: times have changed but Labour is fixated with set past practices, instead of thinking anew, to get more for its members.  

    Still, none of all these suggests organized Labour is the sole sinner, while the government it contends with is a saint — far from it.

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    If you remove subsidy without local refining; and float the Naira such that every kobo buys far less than hitherto, then brace yourself for a stiff social cost!

    The first manifestation of that is anger from the hoi polloi — the first (and worst) to be hit by spiralling prices, no matter how much that jolt could push a strategy that may eventually improve their lives.

    Then, you risk Labour leaders, stuck in old ways but deathly scared to think anew, milking the raw emotions, and basking in popular roar, as they tear at the government for “anti-people” policies.

    Between earnest unionism and artful dissembling, there is but a thin line!

    But pray: how can a government that just earned its legitimacy, from a tough election, from the same people, suddenly turn rogue and unfeeling on them?  

    That’s hardly logical.  Still, emotion is mushy rush to hurting answers, especially when the pocket burns!

    Aside from eager “critics” and sundry anarchists, feasting on yet another “pro-people” crusading, add baleful foes diving into the fray for cheap and nasty politics.

    Ram in too the hybrid agitators, in this season of virulent partisanship.  

    Pray, who does Ajaero represent — NLC, as he postures?  Peter Obi’s Labour Party, which Joe and co blindly backed but who lost at the polls, but continues to deny the obvious?  Or both in different degrees, as cynically convenient!

    But after all the high drama, after all the thunder, after all the tempest, the economy is no magic the government must quickly conjure, or be roasted at the stakes.  

    That is the fundamental folly of rushing into strikes, as Ajaero’s NLC has been bristling to do.  That again reinforces that earlier question: after the strike, then what?

    The poor economy, integral and systemic, demands a productive Labour-government partnership, anchored on mutual trust.  It’s a critical juncture at which old thinking must yield to new: patient collaboration, against hasty confrontation.

    Still, it’s hard times.  So, the government should — indeed, must — concede to the people as much quick reliefs as possible.  

    Incidentally, from the president’s Independence broadcast, the government already offered some reliefs: workers to get additional N25, 000 for six months; the expanded National Social Register (NSR) to now accommodate 15 million Nigerian households, and compressed natural gas (CNG)-powered buses deployed to down transport costs.  

    Salary awards and CNG buses are two prominent demands on the Labour strike menu. Later, Femi Gbajabiamila, the presidential chief of staff, announced the raise of the wage award, from N25, 000 to lowest earners to N35, 000 to every worker, low or high.

    Still, the people too must accept that initial pains come with tough measures to crack hard times. 

    Why the six months duration for the wage awards, though?  Could it be that in six months, some local refining would have been in place, leading to lower pump prices of petrol, thus tamping down the present high inflation?

    Inasmuch as the the government may not fully expose its strategy, a clear timeline, detailing when the many refineries in the works will come on stream, should help to shore up public confidence, sympathy and eventual support.

    Besides, that alone will help defang Labour’s eternal refinery agitations, public or private — no crime, though — and force fresher thinking on union leaders, so as to  extract the best deals, in challenging times, for their members.

    So, while this government has the bounden duty to fix the economy — President Tinubu is the first to tell folks not to pity him, since he campaigned hard for the job — changed attitudes, on both sides, are imperative.

    Enter then, a new cold pragmatism that thinks through the harsh reality.  

    Exit, fond dreams that purport strikes could prise open resources simply not there.

    Both the government and Labour should tread this new collaborative path all of the way.

  • Countdown to October 1                        

    Countdown to October 1                        

    It is that time of year again when Nigerians, contemplating their country’s troubled past and uncertain future, engage in an orgy of collective self-flagellation tinged with self-pity, if not self-loathing; when an anniversary that should be an occasion for rejoicing and renewal breeds, instead, resentment and recrimination.

    It is the time we rue the road not taken as well as the road actually followed; an occasion that stirs up wrenching lamentations about what might have been if the right people had taken charge and pursued the right policies.

    For every ten persons who dismiss the occasion as unworthy of celebration, there is at least one person who regards it a great achievement worth remarking in and of itself that Nigeria has not gone the way of former Yugoslavia or the former Soviet Union.

    In whatever case, the verdict was clear: if Nigeria was not already a failed state or well

    on its way to becoming one, it had failed abysmally to live up to its vast promise. Its

    name had been taken in vain repeatedly by a long line of rulers to perpetuate misrule, justify plunder, reduce citizens to subjects, and sanction hegemonic rule on a scale that has given independence itself a bad name.

    And despite all the pomp and pageantry that was sometimes confected around the occasion, the attentive audience always seemed to be saying:   This unhappy state of affairs will continue unless . . .  And here, the apparent consensus breaks down. 

    From one year to the next, the narrative has rarely changed; if anything, it has grown darker and darker, with nary an uplift.   Many a political official has cited this state of affairs as their reason for entering party politics.  Instead of watching and wailing from the margins, they would enter the fray and strive to change the system from within.

     The system swallowed them.  It has never yielded the turf to those who are forever lamenting the nation’s woes.   Speeches from on high, written by committee to mark the occasion, are laden with statistics on virtually every aspect of national life, from the mundane to the seminal, detailing how many roads were built or rehabilitated and how many miles of railway tracks were laid or rehabilitated. 

    From the National Day Broadcast, you could expect to know the gross tonnage of shipment cleared at the ports; how much crude oil was extracted, refined, or exported, and the gross receipts from those transactions; how much was expended on oil subsidy, and how tantalizingly close the nation had come to attaining food self-sufficiency, thanks to the new expanded and accelerated agricultural production programme.

    Plus of course, the thousands of jobs that had been created or are in the pipeline, and the dozens of projects that are set to be commissioned or for which planning had reached an advanced stage, and much more.

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    With rare exceptions, the National Day Broadcast has been a slap-dash affair, and the audience attends to it only perfunctorily, if at all.   Much of it reads like that of the previous year in tenor, if not in tedious detail.  It makes hardly any concession to nuance.

    The run-up to October 1, 2023 is shaping up to be even more dispiriting than the earlier editions.  The General Elections ended more than four months ago, but they are being litigated and relitigated in the courts and in the public sphere and on every street corner and in the marketplace and in the darkest recesses of social media with unrestrained passion.

    Increasingly, it has fallen to the courts to determine election outcomes employing parameters that the public does not fully understand or accept.  Why, they ask, is the evidence of their eyes and their ears accorded little or no probative value, whereas some obscure Latin phrase or clause fabricated by some long-dead white men may hold the key to what the courts regard as justice?

    The courts themselves sometimes move in mysterious ways that serve only to confuse the public and undermine whatever is left of the public’s faith in the judiciary.

    It seems wholly improbable that the framers of a Constitution anchored on the equality      of citizens could have consecrated residents of the Abuja Federal Capital Territory as

    super-citizens, whose votes alone could determine who becomes president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  This crackbrained theory was canvassed as the election results unfolded, and cited in the petitions of the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi.

    The Presidential Election Tribunal saved some of its most trenchant censure for this proposal, which even students taking a first course in constitutional law would have rejected on the threshold.  But some of the nation’s most senior attorneys espouse it and are set to urge it on the Supreme Court, the tribunal of last resort for the presidential election.

    Many in the organized and unorganized Opposition are now looking to the Supreme Court to void the verdict of the PEPT, which unanimously affirmed the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission.  As I see it, and given the facts on the ground, the best that can be expected from the Supreme Court is a  split decision, with the majority  affirming PEPT’s verdict.

    But nothing short of voiding the entire poll and ordering a new one is likely to mollify the entrenched Opposition.  Doing so, however, could plunge the country into civil war, which not even the most reckless desire.

    Judges handling election petitions in Kano had to deliver their ruling via ZOOM because of a clear and present threat to their lives. Allegations are rife of judges being suborned to deliver prepared judgments on pain of being visited with some horrendous punishment.  The harassment has reached a point, it is claimed, where many judicial officers have contemplated suicide.

    Nor will the mysterious fire which engulfed the Supreme Court in Abuja yesterday dampen

    the threat to the machinery of justice in Nigeria.

    So, it is just as well that this year’s National Day will be marked on the usual low key.

    But the narrative of governance failure that has marked our post-colonial history would seem to have been punctuated by President Bola Tinubu’s much-acclaimed performance at the United Nations General Assembly.  Even some key elements of the Opposition have commended his demonstration of leadership on the world stage.

    It is a thin reed, to be sure.  But it could serve as a platform on which Nigeria can forge a new, inclusive, inspiring, leadership-driven, nation-affirming narrative.

    President Tinubu should launch that narrative in his National Day Broadcast with an invitation to elements of the Opposition to join him in a long-term search for common purpose at the table of brotherhood, around which all problems will be discussed honestly and solutions sought earnestly.

  • Verbal suicide at Iseyin?

    Verbal suicide at Iseyin?

    With Typhoon Taiwo ripping his roof and the Yoruba Council Worldwide (YCW) aiming a blitzkrieg from outside, it’s testy times for former President Olusegun Obasanjo.   

    Quite the merciless storm: Ms Taiwo Martins (ex-Mrs. Obasanjo) virtually setting her former husband ablaze in justifiable public anger; and YCW going for broke!

    Why, Prof. Wole Soyinka, supreme master of the cultured repartee, on September 24, added his own spice!  

    “My royal highnesses, I wish to assure you that I’m not about to bark at you to ‘stand up’ and ‘sit down’,” he told a select company. “This is a cultured gathering.” Ouch!  

    That elicited a hilarious guffaw.  But the Ebora Owu wouldn’t find it a tad funny!

    At last, the man that has lived a long and grumpy life of talking down to others — no matter whose ox is gored, as he often brags — just talked himself into a ditch at Iseyin!

    When a self-famed Ebora spews gutsy insults at royal fathers, revered peers of the gods in the Yoruba cosmos, self-caused catastrophe is never far away!

    Indeed, Obasanjo’s impish relish at insulting others has been a life-long hobby — most of them documented to boot, thus making himself a preening pariah to not a few.  

    Still, Iseyin was a new, new low!

    The foundation of that talk-into-a-storm though, was firmly laid in 1990. That year, Obasanjo had released the second of his ego-tripping autobiographies: Not My will.  

    In that book, he cast great slurs on two personages: the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who the Yoruba revere as the second Oduduwa; and Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Obasanjo’s old commander-in-chief, suave and genteel as Obasanjo is raw and coarse.

    First, he bragged that all Awolowo craved in his entire life, he — Obasanjo, a mere rustic boy from Ibogun-Olaogun, near Abeokuta! — got on the proverbial gold platter.  

    Were he a futurologist, the triumphalist in him would have pranced over his future eight years as elected president (1999-2007), added that tally to his three years as junta head (1976-1979) and screeched he not only triumphed over Awo, he was indeed the best that ever happened to Nigeria!

    In truth, that grand delusion — the best that ever happened to Nigeria — feeds the Owu chief’s constant megalomania.  

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    Still, everyone knows Awo, in rigorous thinking, clear vision and developmental ideas, theory and praxis, was head and shoulders above Obasanjo and his band of military ruffians — political soldier-usurpers that misruled this country for much too long.

    Which explains why Awo (1909-1987) would in death command deep reverence, which a living Obasanjo craves, but will never get.  Indeed, that craving for willy-nilly honour, unworthy of his trademark petulance, must have led him to his Iseyin cultural Waterloo.

    Obasanjo also savaged Gen. Gowon, arbitrarily stripped him of his military rank, churlishly demoted him to “Mr. Gowon” and passed on him a military fatwa, should he ever set foot in Nigeria — all for unproved allegations over the 1976 Buka Suka Dimka coup attempt that took Gen. Murtala Muhammed’s life!

    Still in 1995, karma would pay Obasanjo back in grim coins.  Gen. Sani Abacha nearly tied Obasanjo to the stakes  â€” Obasanjo, Abacha’s old commander-in-chief — for coup plotting, just as Obasanjo himself had tied Gowon to the stakes in Not My Will!

    Only divine grace sprang the old soldier from that hook, though not before a hefty jail term.  But grace hardly oozes from the public conduct of the man, old or young!  

    Still, the Awo/Gowon symbolism is telling: if you rubbish the prime icon of the modern Yoruba (Awo) — to which you claim nativity — and scorn your own army commander-in-chief (Gowon), which other shrine will you not profane?

    Earlier in My Command, his Civil War memoirs (released in 1980), he had traduced Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle, his predecessor at the Third Marine Commando Division. The dreaded “Black Scorpion” had won the most bruising battles before Obasanjo harvested the Biafra surrender. 

    Still, after Awo and Gowon, he felt emboldened to gore about anyone — and did he do so with satanic relish!

    Second Republic (1979-1983) President Shehu Shagari was a let-down — which he was, in truth — for wasting the 1979 military-to-civilian power transfer.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (self-named military “president” for eight years) was the worst to ever blight Nigeria — which he was.  

    Still, that frothy public sanctimony didn’t prevent Obasanjo from allegedly striking a one-term deal, with the same Babangida as successor, as part of the Army Arrangement that propelled Obasanjo to the 4th Republic presidency in 1999 — if a video clip, making the rounds is true, in which Senator Orji Uzor Kalu bared it all!

    The stark Abacha wouldn’t stomach the cheap Pharisee that was his old commander-in-chief. That probably was why he roped Obasanjo into the so-called phantom coup, before he started running his mouth, as always, against the Abacha regime!

    Earlier, as Ernest Shonekan’s iniquitous Interim National Government (ING) was being cooked at home, Obasanjo bobbed up abroad, claiming MKO Abiola, winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, was not the “messiah”.

    After leaving power in 2007, Obasanjo would descend on his successors — the tragic Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, on his dying hours; the sorry Goodluck Jonathan, mere fall guy for a corrupt PDP-era structure Obasanjo nurtured; and the Spartan Muhammadu Buhari, the opposition candidate that kicked PDP from the Abuja power gravy.

    Most flailed under Obasanjo’s vicious verbal strafing but only PMB gave a quiet but devastating riposte. 

    Behind Obasanjo’s second coming power trophy — the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta — PMB erected the Wole Soyinka train station, to serve millions of long-suffering Nigerians, as OOPL eternally sates Obasanjo’s sole gravy.

    Posterity will judge: who, between the two, was the leader or the dealer!

    It was this terrible complex, of annoying arrogance firing verbal diarrhoea, that spurred him to his Iseyin sacrilege, risking becoming a formal Yoruba pariah at old age.

    Now, YCW demands Obasanjo must beg on 10 TV stations and 20 national dailies.  It also told the Olowu of Owu-Egba to strip his Balogun of that title.

    Karma! He that stripped Gowon of his military rank risks losing own traditional military title!  Karma!

    The Ebora â€” ever rough and gruff — will probably ride out the storm.  Still, his march into wilful ostracism echoes the great Pericles’s of ancient Athens.

    Gen. Pericles was voted into political exile for being too “popular”.  Gen. Obasanjo risks cultural exile for ringing notoriety: unabashed insolence to revered natural rulers!

    Even if he rides this harsh scrutiny, who survives the undiluted scorn his former wife, Ms Taiwo Martins, publicly poured on him, in that long, no-holds-barred put down?  

    And to think the crux of her message was that her children, and children’s children, be shielded from the dire comeuppance of her former husband’s grand misconduct!

    On this one, the Ebora Owu is well and truly on his own! 

  • A deal to avoid strike

    This column is concerned that the federal government is yet to offer the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) a proposal to end the perennial threat of a nation-wide strike, since May 29. Or could it be that the NLC which stands accused of having a partisan interest in the 2023 election, which is beyond their primary responsibility of protecting workers’ welfare, have a hidden agenda to torpedo the new administration?

    This writer is worried that the fragile national economy cannot sustain a prolonged nation-wide strike, and therefore urge the federal government and the NLC/TUC to work together to avert it.

    The meeting between the government and labour scheduled for today must be put to maximum use in the interest of the country. While four months is too short to make a comprehensive deal with the labour unions, considering the varied interest groups, such as the National Assembly, state governments, employers’ association, wages and salaries commission, budget and planning commission and others interests that must be widely consulted, there ought to be serious negotiations ongoing to avoid the distractions of threat of strike.

    Agreeably, the problems inherited by the federal government are as high as Mount Kilimanjaro, but in the order of priority, the NLC and TUC demands for better working condition should be amongst the top interests to receive attention. Under the prevailing economic condition, the public wage structure, particularly the national minimum wage, is a scandal. The value of the naira cannot depreciate by over 250% since the last review of the minimum wage in 2019, while the wages and salaries of workers remain the same.

    On its part, the NLC must eschew every iota of partisan interest in negotiating a new minimum wage. For this column, it was a mistake for the NLC which controls majority of workers in Nigeria to openly support a political party, as happened in the 2023 elections. The reason is that there would be a blur between partisan interest and workers’ interests. And that blur would affect both the leadership and rank and file, as it is impossible to force all workers belong to one political party.

    Again, where the labour union’s preferred party lose the election, the union will be in a quagmire in dealing with the party that won the election throughout the tenure. Any action, even when in pursuit of workers’ interest could be interpreted by the successful party as a partisan exercise. But considering that the harm has been done, the NLC and the TUC must eschew partisanship and negotiate for the welfare of the workers, bearing in mind that their paramount interest should be the wellbeing and survival of the country. 

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    While it will be unreasonable to expect a new minimum wage in place after barely four months into the new administration, the shape of what is to come ought to be in the skyline. This column believes President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration will be a labour-friendly administration as borne out by the experience of workers in Lagos State where the president held sway as governor between 1999-2007. While historically it was bumpy with the union leaders at the beginning, the Lagos workers went on to become the best paid and most secured after the initial hiccups.

    The Minister of Labour and Employment Simon Lalong, as well as the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Nkiruka Onyejeocha appears to be distracted by their cases at the National Assembly Election Petitions Tribunals. While Lalong has been declared as the duly elected senator for Plateau South district, Onyejeocha has been declared the winner of Isiukwuato Umunneochi Federal Constituency, in the 2023 general elections. It is likely that managing the election cases may have affected their concentration on the urgent job of negotiating with the NLC and TUC to avoid a national strike.

    Unfortunately, the two ministers have become like the proverbial dog distracted by which of the two plates of food to concentrate on, with the recent judgements of the tribunals. Will they forgo their ministerial appointments and return to the red and green chambers respectively? Interestingly, some women groups are already urging Onyejeocha to forgo the ministerial appointment and return to the National Assembly, where she would be a top ranking representative considering her years as a legislator. Regardless of which preferences they have, the more important concern here is the drag in dealing with the labour unions.

    Hopefully, President Tinubu would find an answer to that distraction and get results to avert a national strike if the delay is from the ministers. This column hopes the present administration would eventually secure a holistic wage review to minimize sectoral threats of strike. One of the sectors that urgently needs attention is the health sector. As the statistics have shown, Nigerian medical personnel, whether doctors, nurses or other professions in the sector, form a large chunk of the emigrants to Europe, North America and even Asia.

    Hopefully, the Minister of Labour would not dismiss the worrisome brain drain in the health sector the way his predecessor Chris Ngige, dismissed our common worries. The former minister claimed that Nigeria has 350,000 medical doctors, far more than the 250,000 which according to him the World Health Organisation prescribed for the country, and as such those who want to leave because of the poor remuneration in the sector should leave. As if heeding the call, Nigerian medical personnel are leaving the country in droves, because of poor working condition.

    Yet, a simple research shows that while some years ago, Nigeria has about four doctors to 10,000, the WHO recommendation standard is one doctor to 600 patients. Last year, it was reported that Nigeria has only 24,000 licensed medical doctors practicing in the country, which is projected at less than ten per cent of the number needed to meet the WHO recommendation. Of course, the country has trained about four times that number, but the majority of them have emigrated to other countries, with the United Kingdom being the highest beneficiary.

    Recently, the United Kingdom initiated a teaching opportunity in priority subjects in the country. This new program would soon draw a large chunk of our best teachers to the UK, unless measures are put in place to pay a living wage to teachers in Nigeria. With a salary of about ÂŁ28,000 dangled at prospective teachers, and with one pound equal to about to about N1250 in the parallel market, exodus of teachers may become the next national emergency, if there is no urgent wage review.

    Without further delay, this column urges the federal government to review upwards the national minimum wage. On their part, the labour unions must exhibit patriotism, instead of partisanship, in their negotiation with their employers and the governments at all levels.

  • Niger, Gabon, and democracy in Africa

    Niger, Gabon, and democracy in Africa

    Just as the din of the sabre-rattling in the ECOWAS states over the military coup that toppled the civilian government of President Mohamed Bazoum of Niger Republic was subsiding, another din was loosed by the African Union, following the putsch that terminated the private arrangement under which Bongo family had ruled Gabon for six decades and counting.

    For an agonizing week, it seemed as if President Ahmed Tinubu, doubling as President the ECOWAS Commission, the regional body’s highest authority,  was set to marshal the combined armies of the ECOWAS states to march on Niamey to reinstate Bazoum and put the military throughout the region on notice that their incursions into politics would no longer be tolerated.  

    And it did not seem like empty posturing.   As the regime in Niger was handed an ultimatum to restore Bazoum and the disbanded governing apparatus, army chiefs of the member- states began consultations aimed at enforcing the orders of the ECOWAS Commission.   Military manoeuvres could commence anytime, it seemed, and we might just wake the next day to find that Operation Sahel Sweep was already in progress.

    While the sabre-rattling over Niger was going on, I found myself thinking about Muhammadu Buhari, who had honourably vacated the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces scarcely three months earlier.  In a rare moment of levelling with the public, he had revealed that if at any time his kinsfolk in Daura and other interlopers would not let him enjoy his hard-earned retirement in peace and quiet, he would just  roll across the border and settle among the more agreeable branch of the clan there.

    The way events were shaping up, elements of the military forces he commanded for a decade might well combine with local rascals to push him across the border where he might get the opposite of the warm welcome he was counting on.

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    What would happen if he was caught on the wrong side of the border?

    As far as I have been able to ascertain, not many Nigerians appear to have entertained any solicitude on this grim possibility, not even those who used to swear by his name. 

    Ingrates, all. 

    Darting south-east to Gabon, in Central Africa, a scene not unlike the one in Niger, was playing out.  Fourteen years into his own tenure as president, and 42 years after succeeding his father in the post, Ali Bongo was ousted by the military some three weeks ago within hours of his party proclaiming his re-election.  The coup-makers said the election was fraudulent through and through.

    Bongo suffered a serious stroke in October 2018, which left him physically impaired, with particular difficulty moving his right leg and arm.  Two years earlier, he had been returned in a hotly disputed poll.  Last month, he won one controversial poll too many for the family’s epochal hold on power to sustain.

    Not to be outdone by ECOWAS, the African Union said  it “strongly condemns” the military takeover of power in the Republic of Gabon” and has decided “to immediately suspend the participation of Gabon in all activities of the AU, its organs and institutions.”

    The conflict in Niger and Gabon, it should be remembered, stemmed from elections that were supposed to help resolve a lingering conflict that had originated in disputes over election outcomes.  And in all probability, the remedy the “international community” will urge upon the parties is yet another round of elections.

    This is a cycle of desperation.

    In Africa, Bongo père is remembered as a cartoon character who wept copiously at the funeral of the man he called his father, President Charles de Gaulle, and for handing out large parcels of Gabon’s gold and diamonds to leading French government officials and their wives.

    There is a tendency to judge and condemn Bongo fils just as perversely, mainly on account of his alleged human rights violations.  But he strikes me overall as a deliberative politician with an intuitive grasp of the dynamics of power, its limits and uses, even if not its abuses.

    I have before me, courtesy of Wale Adebanwi, most recently the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations and director of African Studies at the University of Oxford, and currently the Presidential Penn Compact Professor and director of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, a 2018 video featuring Ali Bongo fielding questions at an event Adebanwi moderated.

    “Term limits,” asked an African doctoral student in the Law program, student began, had come to be regarded as “core ingredients” of democracy.   Why then did the guest speaker remove term limits from Gabon’s Constitution, even as a he instituted some progressive reforms?

    It was as if Bongo had anticipated the question, prepared an elaborate response, and filed it away for instant recall as occasion might demand.

    Term limits sound nice, even sexy, Bongo began.  But they are not working, and that is not how politics works.  Gabonese law stipulated no term limits and he had removed no such protections.

    You get elected into office.  Your first two or three years of a five-year term are  bumpy,               he continued.  There are tough  measures to be taken, but you are already thinking of re-election. You then deploy your energies to winning re-election, but in the process, whatever remains of your tenure is lost in terms of serious governing.   Winning re-election does not help your agenda much, for the public knows that you are on your way  out of power, win or lose.   Your agenda thus becomes a hostage to whatever term-limits are in operation.

    In whatever case, Bongo went on, term-limits don’t work.  They don’t have them in Europe. In the United States, they are for presidents and governors only.  Lawmakers sometimes hold office for 40 or even 50 years and become institutions within institutions.  If term-limits were the “core ingredients” of democracy they have been made out to be, why not apply them to all elected officials?

    Yes, some African countries have written them into their laws, he conceded.  But not out of conviction.  They have them on their books to please the donors and, he might  have added, foreign academic citadels like Oxford.

    Long-winded, and more than a tad self-serving, to be sure.  But it raises some concerns about our unquestioning fidelity go the standard election and governance models that are routinely and reflexively pressed into service to resolve every political conflict, especially in developing countries.

  • APC hopes on Imo

    APC hopes on Imo

    Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State, and the entire All Progressive Congress (APC) leadership in the Southeast must be hoping to steer the region closer to the ruling party at the centre, by winning the forthcoming governorship election in Imo State. Before Hope Uzodimma emerged through the controversial judgment of the Supreme Court in 2020, the region looked impregnable to the APC. But after Uzodimma came, Governor Dave Umahi decamped from the PDP to APC, with his entire state elected officials.

    With two state governors in APC, it was believed that the party has become a significant player in the southeast region, as the 2023 general elections drew near. But unfortunately for the party, it increasingly became encumbered by the tragic conflict between the farmers and herders which was vigorously interpreted by many persons as a Jihad movement, meant to exterminate the people of the region and hand over their lands and ancestral homes to the alleged Fulani invaders.

    Even more regrettable, President Mohammadu Buhari, the titular head of the party, by his actions, seemed to give credence to the alleged hidden agenda. After winning the second term election, President Buhari who had contested presidential elections with vice presidential candidates from the region, by his pronouncement seemed to have drawn a line against the people of the region. So, with his skewed appointments, poor handling of the farmers-herders clashes and gaffes against the people of the region, promoting APC in the region was framed as a sabotage, with all its implications.

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    To add fuel to the simmering fire, political gladiators sprinkled religious incense on the burning charcoal, and the conflagration consumed many and almost torpedoed the region’s economic progress. Unfortunately for APC, Peter Obi (Okwute), after winning the presidential primary of the LP, projected himself as the long foretold redeemer of the people of the region from all their problems since after the civil war, problems allegedly exacerbated by Buhari.

    Overnight, the LP which had no structure, which had no serious membership base, and operating a vehicle gotten more or less on hire-purchase, became what the Igbo would call ugbo di oma, and there was bedlam to support the party. The hoopla against the APC was fever pitched. As explained by the Minister of Works and former governor of Ebonyi State, Engr. Dave Umahi, while he voted APC, his family members voted LP. For a long suffering people, the frugal but very wealthy and soft spoken Peter Obi fitted the image of a political messiah.

    In the 2023, general election, up against what can be called Obi thunderstorm, many candidates contesting on other political platforms in the southeast were swept into political wilderness, by political neophytes sponsored by the LP, whose only credential is that they proclaimed Peter Obi as their political master. The PDP which had held sway in the southeast since the advent of this democratic era in 1999 was decapitated across the region in the presidential and National Assembly elections, not to talk of the APC with all its challenges.

    After the general elections, many voters realized that in a fitful moment of anger against the system, they had thrown away the baby with the dirty bath water. In the governorship election which held three weeks after the presidential and National Assembly elections, in three out of five states, PDP managed to push back the effect of the thunderstorm and retained two states, but there were still casualties in the state legislative elections.  Some have since also realized that as Shakespeare wrote: “all that glitters is not gold”.  

    So, the Imo election will show how far other political gladiators have barricaded their terrains from the Obi thunderstorm. In fairness to Hope Uzodimma, for instance, while he entered the Imo State Government House tendentiously, he has established himself as a performing governor. Sounding out those who know the political trend in the state, there is hope that Hope Uzodimma will triumph at the polls, if performance will be the parameter to judge. Of course, the measure of performance is usually the quality of infrastructure built by a returning governor.

    According to my sources, Hope is a man of class for whom only the best is good enough. So, the roads and buildings built by Hope’s government in his current term as governor are reputed to be of the highest standards. The governor also engineered the ground breaking ceremony of the Oguta seaport by the immediate past regime of President Buhari. Of note, a seaport in the southeast is a totem of political worship like the completed second Niger Bridge, which the APC-led federal government delivered.

    Another plus for Hope is that he has also reasonably tamed the insecurity ravaging his state. While some may term his style as ruthless, he leaned on the Nigerian Army to confront the unknown gun men, who made many parts of Imo State a no go area for years. He also appears to have curtailed the atrocities of the armed herdsmen which many in the southeast, rightly or wrongly, believe were sent to annihilate the people of the region. How much he has contained that contagion will impact his re-election project.     

    According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Imo gubernatorial election would hold on November 11. Among the major political party gladiators, the Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are the ones that should be giving the APC leaders sleepless nights. The state which started off as a PDP state in 1999, went to the Peoples Progressive Party (PPA) in 2007, with Ikedi Ohakim, declared the winner. In 2011, despite the incumbent Governor Ohakim contesting on the platform of the federal ruling party, the PDP, Rochas Okorocha, of the All Progressive Alliance (APGA) won the election.

    In 2019, because of the internal crisis in APC, the PDP won back the state, with Emeka Ihedioha as governor. But following the judgment of the Supreme Court, the state fell into the palms of the APC again. So, the political trajectory of party politics in the state shows volatility, and the APC must double its effort to retain the state. At the inauguration of Governor Hope Uzodimma Campaign Council over the weekend, the chairman of APC, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, recognized that challenge, as he pleaded with the people of the state to re-elect Governor Hope Uzodimma, to be able key into the plans of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the centre.

    No doubt, the people of Imo State would fare better, if the ruling party in the state is the same as the one at the centre, more so, with the acclaimed performance of the incumbent governor, Hope Uzodimma. The November 11, gubernatorial election, will show whether the Obi Thunderstorm is still potent.