The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • NSA: Who is qualified? 

    NSA: Who is qualified? 

    The job of the National Security Adviser (NSA) is essentially to coordinate the various intelligence agencies, both internal and external, and brief and advise the President as necessary. It is the President that determines who to appoint to the office.

    Sample: Shortly after George Bush Jnr was inaugurated as US President in February 2001, he appointed Condoleezza Rice (a woman) as his NSA. George Bush was a soldier; he retired as an officer of the National Guards (which is an arm of U.S. military), before he joined politics as a Republican. 

    Condoleezza Rice was not a military person but had rich credentials on security studies and work experience. She was also a Republican politician who had worked with George Bush in the Republican caucus before Bush emerged as President.

    In Nigeria, the precursor organization to NSA office, was the National Security Organization (NSO), which was formed in 1976, headed by a serving Police officer. 

    It had its various departments which, in later years, were broken up into separate organizations:  State Security Service/Department of State Services, SSS/DSS (essentially for homeland security intelligence); Defence Intelligence Agency, DIA (essentially for military intelligence); National Intelligence Agency, NIA (the external arm). 

    Then, the Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA), headed by the National Security Adviser (NSA) to coordinate the rest of the intelligence and security services; and brief the President as necessary. The President also has backdoor channels to get intelligence briefs from each of the services.

    The newly-appointed NSA, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, is a retired senior Police officer who had handled some critical national assignment as the first Chairman of a key anti-graft agency, EFCC (with international reaches). 

    Since he left office, he had been a close political ally of Bola Tinubu long before Tinubu became President. In fact, Tinubu has been his political mentor, and they had worked together in the election that produced Tinubu as the new President. 

    Tinubu does not need any brief from anybody before appointing him to the position of NSA. That’s very easy to understand.

    • Col. Azubike Nass, ECOMOG hero and retired officer from the Nigerian Army, writes from Enugu, Enugu State.
  • Asari’s bunkering allegations

    Asari’s bunkering allegations

    • By Azubike Nass

    The exit of an old administration and entry of another often heralds a cacophony of allegations — some earnest and others wild — about the state of the nation and the imperative to take radical steps.  The change of guard, from May 29, has not been different.

    Asari Dokubo, famed Niger Delta agitator, just alleged that oil theft could not be stopped without bringing to heel the alleged military top guns behind it.  Also, President Bola Tinubu’s naming of Nuhu Ribadu, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) as National Security Adviser (NSA), has sparked some controversy, suggesting the military might be cold toward that appointment, since latterly, the NSA had been the bastion of retired Army officers.

    Col. Azubike Nass, a retired Army officer himself, weighs in on both issues, giving a rare insight which can only enrich the discourse.  Enjoy!

    Asari Dokubo recently made a public statement that the Nigerian military was heavily involved in about 99% of oil bunkering.  He stirred the honets’ nest and has come under attacks and official rebuttal by military authorities.  

    Dokubo raised a stinging issue, but I also think he exaggerated it for effect. This essayist is neither a supporter nor antagonist of Dokubo. My position is to confront the bitter facts if it could be of benefit to the wider society.

    Military involvement in Nigeria oil business, whether legal or illegal, had been there since the military governments of the 1970s, up to the last military regime which exited on 29 May 1999.  But even with the coming of democracy, military involvement in oil business has not stopped because it is already well entrenched.

    In the past, it was common for some members of the Supreme Military Council (the highest ruling body) to secure oil block allocations for themselves and/or their business cronies/fronts — just as they also did with the regulated foreign exchange. 

    You could just get an official allocation paper and the oil companies or foreign exchange traders/users would hustle to buy it from you at a huge amount of money. Your business front would broker the deal. These are facts on record.

    Since the 1980s, there had been several periodic reports by credible international groups about military involvement in Nigerian illegal oil business. I recall that of 2013/2014 period when the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (now the Director-General of World Trade Organization – WTO), openly lamented about the huge volume of oil theft in Nigeria. 

    Some foreign groups, including IMF and an oil business tracking outfit, had released reports about the involvement of the military in oil theft in Nigeria. The military authorities promptly denied the accusations. Minister Okonjo-Iweala was completely helpless to the situation and she expressed it.

    Most military personnel who serve/served in the oil-producing Niger Delta make/made a lot of money within a short period. Some senior commanders, mostly of the Navy and Army, make hundreds of millions or billions of Naira within about two years stay in the region. The few that are not interested in hustling for the business are seen as indolent and stupid. 

    At present, for example, the biggest fraud/money-laundering trial of a military officer by EFCC, is that of Maj-Gen Emmanuel Atewe for billions of Naira within his two years stay as commander of a military task force in the region. That’s just one case. This writer is a retired military officer speaking from knowledge and experience.

    President Bola Tinubu was a senior executive of the biggest multi-national oil company in Nigeria (also the biggest in the world) in the 1980s military regime era. He has a good knowledge of oil business in Nigeria and beyond. 

    Asari Dokubo is an indigene of oil-producing Niger Delta. He knows what is involved in the business. He was also a pro-democracy protester after the military regime of Gen Babangida annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election. 

    That was when he knew Bola Tinubu, who was one of the key leaders of NADECO. Dokubo also campaigned vigorously for candidate Tinubu during the last presidential election which Tinubu won.

    It is the position of this writer that there is no way any Nigerian leader can drastically reduce or stop oil-bunkering/oil-theft in the Niger Delta region, without finding a way to break the hold of some military guys who had been entrenched in it. 

    It’s quite a tricky issue, but once you achieve that, it is very easy to control that of other security and law-enforcement agencies who are equally well involved in it.  

    It will take a leader with lots of gut and ingenious approach (thinking out of the box) to achieve that. 

    President Bola Tinubu, by his track record, is the right person to do that. Nigerian economy and the Nigerian masses would be the beneficiaries. I rest my case.

    God Bless Nigeria.

  • The Osborne Towers Haul: Not yet closure

    The Osborne Towers Haul: Not yet closure

    The case of the Osborne Towers Haul has got to be one of the most bizarre in Nigeria’s history.

    At its heart was the largest fortune any person or institution ever chanced upon in a single location in Nigeria, and it transformed one of the most exclusive addresses in one of the nation’s most opulent neighbourhoods into a sensational crime scene brimming with money and mystery.

    Footage of the unearthing of the haul, some $43.3 million stacked in packs of mint-fresh $10, 000 bills, in a fire-proof steel cabinet in Flat 7B at the Osborne Towers, in Lagos, not forgetting small change in hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, made the headlines and front pages of the news media across the world.

    Early reports claimed that the haul was part of the “security” money former President Goodluck Jonathan had squirreled away for fighting the 2015 presidential election that he should have known he could not win.  He had been so crushed by his defeat, they said, that he forgot the money.

    Even if Dr Jonathan remembered, others said, how could he have come forward to claim the money, especially when his wife, the formerly excellent Dame Patience, was fighting desperately to re-possess some N54 million in bank deposits that the courts had ordered forfeited on the suspicion that it was the fruit of crime?

    EFCC operatives who had swooped on Apartment 7B following, a tip-off from a whistle-blower were still toting up the haul when former Governor Nyesom Wike declared that it belonged unquestionably to the Rivers State Government, being proceeds of assets his predecessor and serving Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi had “fraudulently” sold.

    “We will follow due process of the law to get back the money found at the Ikoyi residence,” he told Channels Television. “This money belongs to the Rivers State people. We  have conducted our checks.

    “We will stun Nigeria with this matter. We will come out with our evidence at the appropriate time.”

    So much for Barrister Wike’s plan, which was at full throttle when the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ayodele Oke, a highly-regarded spook whom few outside the community of spooks had ever heard of, stepped forward to claim that the money belonged to the NIA.

    The funds, he said, were duly appropriated by the Federal Government at the time of Dr Jonathan for projects that could not be named, and that Oke had periodically reported on those projects, to the complete satisfaction of the authorities, among them National Security Adviser Babagana Monguno, and by extension President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Premium Times (May 5, 2016) confirmed that much in a painstakingly documented piece that has not been rebutted as far as I know.  The editors assured me on the record that they stood “perfectly” by their reporting.

    In 2013-2014, the paper reported, Ambassador Oke’s immediate predecessor, Olaniyi Oladeji, had proposed to the Jonathan Administration an upgrade of NIA’s intelligence gathering facilities and techniques. On taking over from Oladeji, Ambassador Oke had fleshed out the proposal in a memo he submitted to Dr Jonathan on Feb: 14, 2015.

    Premium Times quoted from Oke’s memo the following salient paragraphs regard the project:

    Goal: to “upgrade and professionalise agency operations” in order to “engender an effective clandestine communication system central to the working of an intelligence service.”

    Schedule: 2015 – 2018:

    Price tag:  $289, 202, 282 to be expended on 12 high-level projects.

    According to the report, Dr Jonathan approved the request on February 16, 2015 and directed the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Allison-Madueke, to release the funds.  Several weeks later, the NIA received the full amount in cash from the Central Bank.  The paper trail was minimal, given the nature of the project.

    Eleven months later, in January 2016, the report continued, the NIA filed progress reports on the projects and a detailed breakdown of its expenses in a letter to NSA Monguno.

    Thereafter, Premium Times continued, a three-man panel from the National Security Adviser went to inspect the projects.  In its February 29, 2016 report, the team expressed its satisfaction with the way the $289 million operation was being implemented.

    Some ten weeks later, on May 5, 2016. Monguno visited NIA’s Headquarters for the first time since he assumed office in July 2015 and, according to Premium Times, wrote in the Visitors’ Book:

    “On the occasion of my maiden visit to the NIA since assumption of official duties as NSA, I am extremely delighted by the warm reception and hospitality shown to me by H.E. Ambassador Ayo Oke, DG, NIA, the quality of works in progress is notably breathtaking but very inspiring also.

    “All the facilities being constructed have demonstrated that the NIA is far ahead of its sister agencies in terms of foresight and dealing with 21st Century intelligence issues.

    “It is my fervent prayer that the NIA achieve all the goals it has set for itself so that all other institutions of government, particularly the intelligence community, will bring about the desired change for this great country,” Mr. Monguno wrote in the NIA visitors’ book on May 5, 2016.

    Two weeks later, on May 17, 2016, the NSA informed the NIA that President Buhari had been briefed about the ongoing projects and that the president had expressed his gratitude to the NIA personnel, the paper reported.

    Roughly a year later, the EFCC in a sensational operation recovered $43,449,947, £27,800 and N23,218,000 from Flat 7B at Osborne Towers, the project’s “safe house.”  Oke was suspended from office and dismissed subsequently by President Buhari, following the unpublished report of a panel headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) and comprising Monguno and the Federal Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar  Malami (SAN).

    Its remit:  “To establish the circumstances in which the NIA came into possession of the funds, how and by whose or which authority the funds were made available to the NIA, and to establish whether or not there has been a breach of the law or security procedure in obtaining custody and use of the funds.

    The Osborne Towers haul was forfeited to the Federal Government, on the orders of the Federal High Court, Lagos.

    Based on the panel’s recommendation,  Ambassador Oke was in October 2017 dismissed from service and was scheduled to face criminal trial sometime in 2019, according to a statement from the Vice President, most likely in secret court, because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

    In January 2019, however, Oke and his wife jetted out of Lagos to a European destination, in circumstances that carried not the slightest indication that they were fleeing from justice; to the contrary, more like senior officials in good standing embarking on a foreign trip and being accorded all the courtesies their exalted station warranted.

    In his final days in power, Buhari commissioned the National Centre for Terrorism and Counter-terrorism, the nucleus of which Oke had built to high acclaim with the funds he obtained from the Central Bank.  Shortly after he took office, President Bola Tinubu also visited and commended the facility.

    The matter rested there until last week when the Lagos High Court struck out, at the instance of the EFCC, the case the agency had filed against Oke.  The EFCC said the case could not be prosecuted for reasons of national security.

    When did they come to that realization?

    But how, at any rate, did matter cross over into the realm of criminal investigation and putative prosecution?  How did a project that had reportedly earned high praise from the National Security Adviser turn into a national security scandal with no redeeming grace less than a year later?

    Was the NIA dissembling all along?  Was the Office of the National Security Adviser also dissembling? Was the National Security Adviser merely being collegial in its effusive report? 

    Was Oke a victim of intra-agency rivalry?  Other agencies in the security establishment reportedly received funds for special projects to advance their missions as well, but could not  report the kind of progress Oke had made.

    Was Oke a victim of inter-agency rivalry?  Was he being made a fall guy?

    Was a crime even committed in the first place?

    For now, the matter has been brought to a closure of sorts.  But the dark insinuations that have caused Ambassador Oke and his family such a huge loss of esteem among his peers and in the larger society have not been formally withdrawn.   Until that is done, last week’s official retreat is but cold comfort to him and his family.

  • The imperative of restructuring

    The imperative of restructuring

    For months, as the security situation worsened and hardships deepened across the country, the attentive audience in Nigeria urged President Muhammadu Buhari repeatedly to speak up, to engage, and to lead.

    Amidst the turmoil, Buhari appeared unmoved.  The pleas turned into a clamour; still, he carried on as if he was reconciled to the situation as the new normal. Those who claim the ability to decode his “body language” said they saw resignation stamped all over his deportment and comportment.  They said he was so overwhelmed that he must be wishing he could speed up time and end his tenure well ahead of schedule.

    The more firmly grounded in the attentive audience were diffident at best. What would he say then that he had not said at one forum or another, and what difference had it made?  How would another broadcast, the text of which was in all probability composed by bureaucrats and securocrats in the soulless language that is their trademark and likely to be rendered in like manner to a national audience alleviate their grinding misery?

    In June 2021, as the nation celebrated Democracy Day, Buhari finally chose to engage.  He did so in a manner that confounded those who thought he had given up, and those who thought he had nothing new to say. They expected a talking head surrounded by the artefacts of office to read, perfunctorily, a text put together by persons who play a tangential role at best in the scheme of things.

    He chose the more engaging format of not one, but two back-to-back interviews with media professionals from the Nigerian Television Authority and ARISE Television.

    If his outing was not exactly a command performance, it was certainly not the foul-up many were expecting.  He held his own; he didn’t let his interlocutors back him into a corner; he was not in the least conciliatory.

    He defended his most controversial public service appointments, saying they were based solely on merit and competence, with nary a taint of nepotism or parochialism.

    Thousands of farmers may have been bankrupted by herders who have turned farmlands into killing and grazing fields; entire villages may have been sacked by marauding herders asserting a fundamental right to tend their herds anywhere they pleased.

    Buhari’s answer to this mayhem is a law enacted by the Northern Nigeria Government in the 1960s establishing grazing routes for cattle herds.  The law applied only to that region, and expired with the Land Use Act, if not with that territory itself.  Was that law from that bygone era now to be nationalized?

    The interviews presented Buhari with an opportunity to refine or modify his views on a wide range of important national issues.  Instead, he dug in, doubled down, without nuance and without any concession to those who hold different views, and even more crucially with no empathy for those who had been driven to the edge of ruin by the cattle herders who carried on as if they had a licence, his licence, to wage a campaign of terror and impunity against farming communities.

    Buhari’s contempt for the national policy dialogue, especially as it concerns the National Question, would come to the fore a few days later, during the launch, in Zaria, of the Kudirat Abiola Sabon Gari Peace Foundation.

    He declared, per Alhaji Mohammed Shehu, executive secretary of the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, that advocates of restructuring and secession were “naïve and mischievously dangerous.”  He told those calling for a national platform to discuss the crises roiling the country that he had no time for any “obscure conference.”

    It was disingenuous indeed to conflate restructuring with secessionism.  It is worse.  The entire speech, it is necessary to state, was an abuse of forum, and a gratuitous insult to the memory of Kudirat Abiola, who was slain in broad daylight by agents of the Federal Government while she was running an errand for pro-democracy elements campaigning for the validation of the June 12, 1993, presidential election won by her husband, MKO Abiola.

    To disparage the cause for which she gave her life, at a forum established in her honour, is worse than unconscionable.

    In the face of withering criticism, some of it redolent of the contempt with which he had denounced those calling for national restructuring, Buhari backed off somewhat, saying he would sign into law any Bill duly passed by the National Assembly to that effect.

    That was not a concession, but a dodge, and a transparent one at that.

    When they insisted that only the National Assembly could change or amend the Constitution, Buhari and his cohorts unwittingly dropped all pretences.  The Constitution they are invoking is a disputed and contested document.  Its integrity is dubious at best.  It has not served Nigerians well.  It was designed by a small group that represented the military authorities of that era and the entrenched interests of the part of the country that is their power base, and then foisted on the nation with the fraudulent prefatory clause, “We the People.”

    To make that document the basis of going forward or even remaining on the same spot is to put the entire nation and the political process in a straightjacket.  The amendments Buhari signed into law at the end of his tenure do not constitute a significant departure from the present arrangement.  They merely tinker around the edges

    Building on the mistakes of the drafters of the 1979 Constitution who thought that what the Second Republic needed was a strong Centre, and on decades of the garrison rule of the military, the authors of the 1999 Constitution replaced the Federal Principle on which the country was founded with one grounded in uniformity, with every constituent unit marching at the same pace and to the same tune.

    Under the 1963 Constitution, each of the three regions, later four, had its own constitution and institutions that reflected its needs, priorities and aspirations.  On issues delegated to the regions, the region’s constitution was the final authority unless and only to the extent that it was inconsistent with the Constitution of Nigeria.

    A new constitution will have to return to that arrangement.

    All through his political career, President Bola Tinubu has been an apostle of  a return to “true federalism.”  It was an article of faith in his campaign manifesto. Given the formidable challenges facing his administration, it might seem that restructuring can wait.  It is not something that can be accomplished overnight. 

    But the atmosphere for serious reform has never been more propitious.  Tinubu and the Tenth National Assembly must exploit it to the fullest.

    In a reconfigured Nigeria, each of the federating units will determine the balance of power between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch.  It may opt for a weak executive and a strong legislature or, vice versa, a strong executive and a weak legislature. 

    Each state will determine how long governors can hold office, and whether legislators serve full-time or part-time.  It will fix their compensation, taking into account its financial resources.  Only those who are prepared to serve under the stipulated terms and conditions will offer themselves for public office.  Their goal must be to serve, not to get rich through public service. 

    Each state will determine how many local governments it requires for effective delivery of services at that level, and the pay and conditions of service.

    Each state will establish and equip its own police force.  Those who object to this arrangement on the ground that state police will be used to persecute political opponents have a point, but are federal police not being used to a considerable extent for that purpose?  What makes federal abuse more acceptable than state abuse?

    It should be enough to enact and enforce laws against abuse of police powers at all levels.

    Powers not expressly delegated to the Federal Government will be vested in the states.

    Who needs a Senate that gulps scarce resources but adds little value to legislation and governance?  A Senate that serves as a cushy retirement home for careerists and grants them immunity from prosecution for well-documented misdeeds?

    The choice before Nigeria is not whether Nigeria will restructure, but when.  Unless it restructures, it will go the way of former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.  Each day that passes without an advance toward restructuring can only hasten that eventuality.

  • WS, interim govt and new “owners” of Nigeria

    WS, interim govt and new “owners” of Nigeria

    Hardly a secret: the failed conspiracy to scupper the last general election and foist an interim national government (IMG), that Prof. Wole Soyinka just spoke of.

    What might not be so clear — at least to the undiscerning, among whom many count — is a new but vile generation of “owners of Nigeria”, sprouting under our very noses.  

    The good news, though: the old “owners” appear losing grip, while their new wannabe cousins are making a hash of their gambit — from the result of their many wild machinations during the last cycle of elections.

    Nigeria’s democracy is the better — and stronger — for it. 

    While the old “owners” of Nigeria — discredited military-era rulers and allies — use thunder-and-bluster, their new kith-and-kin apply under-your-skin stealth: cynically mouthing the law; or shuffling some clever religious cards. 

    That makes them all the more noxious, for they hide behind some phoney moral force. 

    Kongi warned of populist symbolism as crass opportunism, which could set voters on a joy ride to nowhere, and ultimately end in tears.

    “Revolution is not about lining up behind nearest available symbol,” he stressed on June 16 in Lagos, while unveiling the latest work in his Interventionist series, The Putin Files: Excursion Around The Ideology Of Pain.  “When a symbol does emerge, however, we are obliged to examine every aspect of what is fortuitously an offer, and continue to guard our freedoms every inch of the way.”

    On Nigeria and how to run it, a Babel of voices blared before the polls, professing newfound patriotism, pointing to their preferred candidates as sacred actualizers.

    To that, WS just added a famous ambivalence, but in support of no one in particular. 

    “Project Nigeria, I must confess, has become near terminally soul-searing.  Do I still believe in it?” he teased. “I’m no longer certain, but first we must rid ourselves of the tyranny of the ignorant and the opportunism of time-servers.”

    Tyranny of the ignorant and the opportunism of time-servers!  That hoopla has defined the 2023 electioneering, the election proper and even this post-poll era; with plots and counter-plots to tip the scale by hook or by crook.

    Indeed, it has been a season of ceaseless drama: the election itself; the disputation, fair or foul; and contrived ”uncertainty” — the vile plot that plagued President Bola Tinubu’s inauguration till the virtual last second, though former President Muhammadu Buhari had worked out a most seamless hand-over that Nigeria ever saw.

    Folks can figure out which candidate best approximated the babble of the ignorant and the rank opportunism by time-servers.

    Still, a perceptive profiling of three candidates, to see how each fits in, will do.

    Read Also: LP cries out over plot by PDP to install interim govt in Abia 

    Where does former Vice President Atiku Abubakar belong?  For starters, he was the PDP candidate.  To be sure, the PDP of 1999 (that swept Atiku and former President Olusegun Obasanjo into power) is different from the PDP of 2023, that now languishes in the wilderness.

    Still, to the extent that PDP was the the “Army Arrangement” (to borrow the title of one of Fela’s iconic releases) that gifted mainly conservative forces power in 1999 — many of them anti-democratic elements — it’s reasonable to project Atiku would be comfy with this old power bloc.

    But as the PDP appears progressively weaker since losing power in 2015, so would the old “owners” of Nigeria: frailer they get, as Nigeria’s democracy gains extra years.  About time too!   

    President Bola Tinubu (then the All Progressives Congress candidate) is the direct opposite of Atiku —  if not the outright nemesis of the power ancien regime that Atiku so exemplifies. 

    Tinubu’s trajectory, from 1999, says it all.  From the sole surviving Alliance for Democracy (AD) governor in 2003, he galvanized a South West progressives power reclaim, starting from 2007, first under Action Congress (AC); then from 2011, under the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). 

    By 2014, Tinubu’s ACN had inspired a new opposition alliance: APC.  APC, in 2015, would flash PDP the red card, though with the help of some PDP elements, who joined the other APC legacy partners: Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and Rochas Okorocha’s All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) rump and Vice President Kashim Shettima’s All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP).

    So, might the old conservative bloc be hostile to Tinubu as they are warm to Atiku? Not that clear-cut: Tinubu is a practical (not dogmatic) progressive that boasts friends in the conservative camp, just as Atiku too could posture as some liberal conservative.

    It’s that seeming mishmash that the new “owners” hoped to crush, with Obasanjo, living to the full his post-power role as gadfly, anointing Peter Obi as new messiah.

    But both Obasanjo and Obi were old PDP hierarchs, very much part of the old rot they now railed against.  Still, their holy rage was sweet music to the band of frustrated youths, blissfully ignorant of their country’s history, and the pair’s roles in the debacle.

    But even if you could see through Obasanjo and Obi, it was harder seeing through the motives of lawyers and priests, flying new kites, carefully veiling their partisan blights.

    One top lawyer created a controversy out of a hitherto settled matter in law: the place of Abuja, the federal capital, in determining a presidential candidate’s win or loss.

    A bevy of priests, orthodox and Pentecostal, turned their pulpits into subversive platforms, pumping captive congregation full of partisan bile; turning the church into a partisan camp, restive and radicalized, on account of the so-called “Muslim-Muslim” ticket. 

    As the result hit the polity, and the “wrong” candidate had won, some Catholic priests staked their integrity on bad-mouthing the polls; and after, pushing strange legal theories of holding up inauguration, until legal challenges were completed, all in clear breach of the Constitution. 

    But if all else failed, the clamour for “interim national government” wouldn’t — they must have thought — not with after suffusing the polity with Armageddon tales.

    All hail — or nail — the new owners of Nigeria!

    As it happened, that plot  also crumbled, with a new government in place and doing the work of state.  Still, the strategy of sacred deceit has hardly changed.

    As white lies choked the media space during electioneering, so have some litigants been dishing out flowery stories, flattering badly faltering court procedures, just to game gullible partisans.

    But good news: so far, democracy is holding its own against the new wannabe, as it has wrestled, to a halt, the old “owners” of Nigeria.  That is heart-warming. 

  • Managing state transitions

    Managing state transitions

    Managing government transition in some states, from one political party to another has become a smouldering crisis, and this column calls for caution. Kano State appears to be the worst hit, with Zamfara State coming a close second. While some state governors and their predecessors are trading tackles verbally over the alleged mismanagement of state resources by the previous administration, some others are engaged in open combat.

    The Kano crisis is turning to a huge economic waste, and unless the new governor, Kabir Yusuf, of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) applies break, by the time he vents his anger, his roaring bulldozers would have dug a huge hole in the pocket of the state government; as the affected private developers have threatened to approach the courts for redress. By Governor Yusuf’s account, he is demolishing illegal structures authorized by former governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, of the All Progressive Congress (APC).

    The demolition exercise stated on June 3, and as I write, hotels, shopping malls, private houses, name it, allegedly built on illegally transferred public lands have been demolished. The new government claims that it is restoring the development plan of the old mega city, and recovering public land maliciously given out by the former government to his cronies. On his part, the former governor accused the new governor and his godfather, Rabiu Kwankwaso of malice and avarice, and of destroying job creating businesses he initiated as governor.

    While petty quarrels amongst political opponents are standard in politics, acquisition of public lands are determined by statutes. Again, where there is any dispute as to whether legal process was duly followed in the acquisition of a land by government, the courts have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the disputes. As a governor, Ganduje or Yusuf, is imbued with enormous statutory powers over state lands, to be exercised according to extant laws. Any exercise of the powers outside the provisions of the laws is usually declared ultra-vires, null, void and of no effect.

    Governor Yusuf claimed that former governor, Ganduje did not follow due process in granting statutory rights over state lands and properties, and that the transfers to his cronies were tainted with corruption. In fairness to Governor Yusuf, those are fundamental questions in public administration, and if he could prove them, the purported grants would be struck down by the courts. But the governor has to follow due process to lawfully determine the issues he has raised.

    He could approach the courts duly established and authorized under the constitution in section 6(2) and 6(6)(b) of the 1999 constitution to declare the alienation null and void, illegal and of no effect. Section 6(6)(b) provides eloquently: “The judicial powers vested in accordance with the foregoing provisions of this section – shall extend to all matter between persons, or between government or authority and to any persons in Nigeria, and to all actions and proceedings relating thereto, for the determination of any question as to civil rights and obligations of that persons.”

    This column hopes that the new governor considered whether the former governor duly exercised his powers under section 5 of the Land Use Act (LUA), which empowers the governor to “grant statutory rights of occupancy to any person for all purposes.” Before demolishing the buildings on the land, did the new governor advert his mind to the determinations of the court with respect to the powers of the state governor in section 28(1) of the LUA, which provides: “It shall be lawful for the governor to revoke a right of occupancy for overriding public interest.”

    Read Also: Commission congratulates Tinubu, governors on peaceful transition

    The Supreme Court in a plethora of cases have held that section 28(1) of LUA is subject to the provisions of section 44(1) of the 1999 constitution, which provides: “No moveable property or any interest in an immovable property shall be taken possession of compulsorily and no right over or interest in any such property shall be acquired compulsorily in any part of Nigeria except in the manner and for the purposes prescribed by a law that, among other things – requires the prompt payment of compensation thereof; and gives to any person claiming such compensation a right of access for the determination of his interest in the property and the amount of compensation to a court of law or tribunal or body having jurisdiction in that part of Nigeria.”

    Section 28(2)(b) defines overriding public interest in the case of a statutory right of occupancy to include: “the requirement of the land by the Government of the State or by a Local Government in the State, in either case for public purposes within the State, or the requirement of the land by the Government of the Federation for public purposes of the Federation.” The above is the commonest ground which governors rely upon for public acquisition of private land or property.

    But that provision does not defeat the legal requirement to follow the due process of giving notice before acquisition and the constitutional requirement to pay due compensation. If the haste employed by Governor Yusuf is a pointer, the chances are that he did not as much as give any notice to the property owners, talk less of paying them any compensation. The details of what is happening in Kano would eventually become a public, as those affected by the demolition exercises have vowed to approach the courts for redress.

    In Zamfara State, the new state helmsman, Dauda Lawal of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is also up in arms against the immediate past governor, Bello Matawalle of the All Progressive Congress (APC). Governor Lawal has accused the former governor of corrupt enrichment, and has sworn to recover all the assets allegedly acquired by the former governor corruptly. He alleged that Governor Matawalle spent over N2 billion to buy cars during his administration, but on taking over, there are no such cars in the government pool.

    The new governor with the aid of the Police unilaterally seized all the cars in the compound of the former governor. Appearing to have set a trap, the former governor approached a Federal High Court in Gusau, which made an order that the cars taken by the police be returned back to Matawalle. The Federal High Court presided over by Justice A. B. Aliyu directed the respondents “to return all the vehicles and other items as well as a written inventory of the items removed.” The judge further ordered that they be brought “under the custody of the court pending the determination of the applicant’s substantive Originating Motion in the matter which comes up on the 28th of this month.”

    This column urges the new state helmsmen to painstakingly apply the rule of law, in dealing with their predecessors, as any self-help may expose their state to legal liability, with all the possible consequences.

  • Social media as regulator

    Social media as regulator

    In the past week, the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly Hon. Mudashiru Obasa and the former governor of Kaduna State Maallam Nasir El-Rufai have been under intense public umbrage in the social media for their alleged public communication infractions. While speaking after his inauguration as the re-elected speaker of the state assembly, Hon. Obasa said: “There would be laws…in the areas of economy and commerce, property and titles, and we will reverse all that is reversible to protect the interest of the indigenes.”

    The inauguration statement coming shortly after the Oba of Ogombo made a public announcement that owners of land in the community should come forward for ratification, the social media have been abuzz about a plan to dispossess non-indigenes of their lands in Lagos State. With all manner of conspiracy theories flying around, there are claims and counter-claims about the intention of the Speaker and the Oba. The social media pundits are even imbuing the Speaker with legal impossibilities, saying that he would make laws to convert 99 year leases to lesser years.

    On his part, the social media has been roasting El-Rufai for his statement that there is an alleged Islamic agenda in Kaduna State and the entire country. Having won Kaduna State election in 2019 with a Muslim as deputy, and also enthroned Governor Sani Uba with a Muslim as deputy, he was quoted to have boasted: “If we continue like this for 20 years, everybody will understand that we (Muslims) are in charge. If Uba finishes, we will bring another person. After 24 years, everybody will know where he belongs. They will know Muslims will not cheat them and we will live in peace. I swear, this is our agenda since we came out to look for leadership and by the grace of God and your support and prayers, we are on track.”

    Read Also: Covenant University urges public to disregard admission list on social media

    El Rufai was speaking to Muslim clerics and he told them that they are the ones that made it possible for him and his party to win the election in the state, and to further sweeten the talk, he claimed that similar game plan was afoot in the country with the president and his vice practicing the same religion. While President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima who are wearing the shoes are working assiduously to reassure the entire citizens that there is no Islamic agenda, El-Rufai’s garrulousness provides more armour for social media feud.

    The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi (Okwute) whom El-Rufai referenced in his speech, suffered the social media backlash during the elections. He was accused of pushing a Christian agenda when a tape emerged in the social media where he allegedly said the election was a religious war. The backlash was heavy and the social media feasted with “Yes Daddy” compliments for Bishop David Oyedepo of Living Faith Church Worldwide aka Winners Chapel. Obi’s claim that the tape was doctored never stopped the social media diatribe between the contending denizens.  

    So, the social media has become a form of regulator for public office holders and aspirants. Apart from giving a voice to the voiceless, it manages to keep issues the public consider of interest in the front burner. It also does not forget easily. Without the social media, politicians believe that their worst controversial statements would die as soon as another controversy erupts. They know the mainstream media would not waste time regurgitating old news when developing stories are contending for media space. Such luxuries are gone with the advent of the social media, as intermittently old news are rebroadcast and the original purveyors made to pay for their old indiscretion in the court of public opinion.

    Many who believe that El-Rufai may be strategizing for the 2031 presidential elections are up in arms castigating him and daring him to show his hand. They will keep reminding the general public of El-Rufai’s religious bigotry and present him as unfit for such high office. On his part, the crafty politician may actually be using the social media to spread his fidelity to Islam, and may be hoping to ride on that fervour to win the presidential election.

    Overseas, the social media has been a pain in the ass for politicians. In Senegal where there are deadly clashes between the police and demonstrators over the detention of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, social media is perceived as the fuel. Claiming to act in public interest, the Senegal’s Interior Minister Antonie Felix Abdoulaye Diome banned social media in the country for complicity in the crisis. He said the government took the step: “to guarantee the safety of people and property. We are going to reinforce security everywhere in the country.”

    Some repressive countries like China, North Korea, Iran and a few others, banned social media usage in their countries. In June 2021, Nigeria banned the use of twitter, when the social platform yanked off the twit of President Muhammadu Buhari which was considered a hate speech, against people from the eastern part of the country. While the ban lasted, denizens of social media used other platforms to fire umbrage against the former president and his government.

    Lauretta Onochie, the former social media aide to President Buhari and currently the chairman of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is still carrying the baggage of her social media activities in her new assignment. Buhari’s earlier attempt to nominate her as a commissioner in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in October 2020, was stiffly resisted by the public, and even members of the National Assembly. After two attempts failed on the floor of the Senate, the nomination was withdrawn, until the NDDC opportunity came up.

    So the social media has a strong check on political practice. Those who understand the ubiquity of the platforms and its reach are always careful about what they do and what they say, especially when they are in public spaces. With technology at the behest of friends and foes alike, everyone is a potential paparazzi. The invasion of privacy has become a common phenomenon and what was done to amuse or scurry a favour can turn to a nightmare. Dark secrets could also become weapons in the hands of enemies by the power of social media.    

    But the social media has also been a medium for spreading dangerous and divisive news, and if politicians have their way, they would regulate the use of the various platforms. The National Assembly dreamed of regulating it, but the idea died at incubation. How to go about it without incurring the wrought of denizens of the social media is a major challenge. Going forward, with President Tinubu in the saddle, this column doubts if anti-democratic laws would pass muster under his watch.

  • Emefiele: Don’t make him a hero

    Emefiele: Don’t make him a hero

    By now, most Nigerians must have seen the viral image of Godwin Emefiele clambering down a Toyota Hilux van into the waiting hands of the men of the Department of State Security who immediately saw him into a waiting aircraft. A far cry from what the truth-averse netizenry had put out as the account of the man not only cuffed but thoroughly manhandled in what was supposed to be the greatest hounding of the century; none of such drama was suggested in the less than a minute-length video. Rather, an apparently ‘humbled’ or ‘flustered’ Emefiele with half dozen security men in tow, with one dangling a cuff as if to remind of the seriousness of the moment, was the best of the ‘drama’ we saw!

    Of course, with conspiracy theories never in short supply in these parts, and with the DSS already providing the lead in their characteristically distracting mind-games, such are the tales already being woven about the man’s many sins that future Nollywood movies are not only already in the making, there have since emerged the usual tales of an ethnic plot being hatched!

    With all that happened in the past week, the question of what has become of the December 9, 2022 order by Justice John Tsoho of an Abuja High Court barring the Department of State Services, DSS, from arresting and detaining Godwin Emefiele on allegations bordering on terrorism financing and economic crimes has since become somewhat academic.

    Read Also: Emefiele’s exit… and the fireworks that heralded his suspension

    The learned judge, while declining to grant the application ex parte at the time  had noted that (1) secret police did not provide any concrete evidence to substantiate its claims that Emefiele was involved in terrorism financing and economic crimes; (2), that the name of the respondent was given simply as ‘Godwin Emefiele’ without a material disclosure that he is the same person as the CBN governor, and (3) that if the applicant believes that the evidence available to it so far is sufficient, then it can as well arrest and detain the applicant, even without the order of the court!

    Interestingly, Justice M. A. Hassan of a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) would, based on that ruling further hold that “any continuous harassment, intimidation, threats, restriction and free movement, abuse of right of office, surreptitious moves to arrest, and humiliation of Mr. Godwin Emefiele over trumped up allegations of terrorism financing and fraudulent practices etc., would constitute a flagrant breach of his rights to personal liberty, dignity and human person and illegal and unconstitutional!

    That was six months ago. So what has changed? Pretty lot, you might say. In the first place, none of the rulings actually went as far as pronouncing Emefiele as untouchable! Justice Tsoho in fact did aver that DSS didn’t even need a court order to arrest and detain Emefiele if it truly believes that the evidence available to it so far is sufficient!

    In any case, the terrains between the two rulings and the present have certainly changed considerably. And this, I daresay, goes beyond the simple fact about a new Sherriff being in town! As it is, the man is no longer the nation’s topmost banker. He is simply Godwin Emefiele – without the CBN address. Moreover, there is a new broad thinking both on the direction of the economy as a whole and more specifically the entire gamut of monetary policy management. While the latter has inevitably raised troubling questions about the role of yesterday’s men in fostering the current climate in which the apex bank actually became an SPV for all manner of executive fancies, asking Emefiele to step aside would seem the least an administration which not only knows what to do but how to go about the business could do in the circumstance!

    Then comes the question – why bring the DSS into the equation? The question, to my mind, is best directed to the high officials of the Buhari administration who tolerated the initial aberration. Was the president actually aware of the grave charges levelled against his number one banker? Was it a case of the president not appreciating the grave implications of the DSS putting a sitting CBN behind the bars? Even the learned Justice Tsoho was sensitive enough to chide the DSS for seeking to detain ‘Godwin Emefiele’ without a material disclosure that he is the same person as the CBN governor!

    Surely, if it seems stranger than fiction that the DSS would move to take in Emefiele for questioning over allegations of high crimes, even more baffling is that the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces would treat same as just another routine matter of crime and investigation.

    Again to the question – why now DSS? Thanks to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, all the encumbrances on the path of the DSS have since been removed. Much as Nigerians tend to find the sometimes loathsome methods of the secret police deplorable, it nonetheless stands to reason that the DSS needs to be availed of the opportunity of proving the charges!

    Of course, there might yet be other parallel questions on Emefiele’s stewardship as helmsman at the apex bank; an inquest to know the conditions and the extent to which procedures were subverted, if truly there were such cases, or where laws were broken, to establish them. Such an undertaken, were it to be considered necessary, would seem to be better suited for an independent body of external auditors. Mercifully, there is at the moment, no indication that the administration will shy away from undertaking this important task, if it becomes necessary.

    For now, it suffices to state that drama apart, the DSS more than any other institution, ought to know the implication of labelling a citizen a ‘terrorist’.  Nigerians surely expect to see the weighty allegations proven in the court of law; and whilst that is ongoing, ensure that it does not constitute either a distraction or something of a judicial fishing expedition that would in the end translate into the more pressing tasks of institutional correction and restitution being left undone.

    Surely, the DSS ought to know that anything short of the foregoing would turn the man into a hero!

    For Emefiele, the wheels, as they say, have turned full cycle. Imagine how quickly how the tables have turned. Yours truly, had while calling out his untrammelled power described him as “a governor without the restraint of parliament; whose control of the purse knows no limits; an individual who could, in a fit of unbridled activism and assumed opportunistic exigency, collapse the dividing walls of monetary and fiscal management without a restraining voice; a player whose ego and sense of entitlement not only reckons him among the gods but also above the deep state…”.

    That was four months ago. All of those now belong in the past. It is a lesson in the transience of power.

  • Emefiele and the many knives

    Emefiele and the many knives

    When the elephant falls, the Yoruba say, every sort of knife — long or short, sharp or blunt — slashes and cuts.  That essentially is the Emiefele story.

    On June 10, the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigeria’s secret police, arrested Godwin Emiefele, the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), suspended on June 9.  After, he was flown from Lagos to Abuja, said the DSS, for “investigative reasons”.

    Since that arrest, the roast-and-skin-them-alive lobby, at their growling worst at the end of one administration and the beginning of another, have been baying for blood — not exactly of Emiefele’s alone; but others’ too, against who they bear a grudge. 

    To Obiora Ifoh, factional national publicity secretary of Labour Party (LP), his party’s preferred villain-in-chief is Chairman Mahmood Yakubu, with his Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    INEC’s crime?  LP’s Peter Obi lost the presidential election under INEC’s watch!  Not a few in this camp, in wilful hyperbole, even claim INEC just conducted Nigeria’s “worst election”  — yeah right: with Maurice Iwu-delivered, Olusegun Obasanjo-decreed “do-or-die” heist of 2007!  

    Indeed, combative ignorance is the limit!

    Read Also: New naira notes: I would have issued warrant for Emiefele’s arrest, says Gbajbiamila

    This Day also quoted Ohanaeze Ndigbo, speaking through one Chima Uzor, who signed as Ohanaeze’s director of national interest matters, as claiming Emefiele’s suspension from office was — using Uzor’s exact words — “a witch-hunt and a sign of ethnic cleansing” to cancel the Igbo from public office! 

    What crap — and just as well Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, the Ohanaeze president-general, has dissociated the body from it!  Otherwise, the Igbo would have learnt nothing from the last election: that excessive clannishness and blatant ethnicization bring nothing but grief.

    But back to saner climes.  For Monday Ubani and the Nigeria Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL) which he chairs, even a more compelling arrest, than Emiefile’s, is Hadi Sirika’s, the former Aviation minister, for his alleged “scam of ‘Air Nigeria’”, as reported by The Nation of June 11.

    Fair enough.  Let Emefiele, Sirika and any other person from the ancien regime bear own cross for whatever allegations levelled against them.  

    But let no one presume it’s some willy-nillly roasting of some heretic to roaring applause, at some pious stake in some medieval court!  This is a 21st century democracy, run on the rule of law and powered by strict due process.

    Neither Emefiele nor Sirika would have strong cases built against them by circulated court rumours, codified by the media’s zest for scandals and sleaze.  

    So, the Federal Government will do well to graft hard facts from alluring fiction; and ignore those baying for blood on the fallacy of false equivalence.  Let everyone answer to his or her alleged crime.  But let no single innocent soul be harassed or traduced.

    Besides, Nigeria derives no benefit from a sick culture of tarring, wholesale, every old order as a den of robbers that must be demonized. That’s an ill wind. It blows no good.

  • June 12: Hope to Renewed Hope

    June 12: Hope to Renewed Hope

    What happened yesterday — a presidential broadcast making June 12 and MKO Abiola the core of this democracy — should have been routine since 1999.

    But back then, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, first president of this 4th Republic, somehow felt burying the annulled election — and MKO’s supreme sacrifice with it — was wise.

    Thirty years later, it’s Obasanjo’s turn, still alive and kicking, to see the burial of his own stratagem.  History never forgets — and Obasanjo is thrilling living example!

    Thirty years — 1993 to 2023 — have been a hard and bumpy ride, especially testy for the democratic forces — testy because it appeared only the reactionary forces were structurally entrenched to milk a democracy they actively worked against.  

    But yesterday, that nearly turned full circle — President Bola Tinubu, a proven democrat that pulled all stops for June 12 and its revalidation, was finally in the saddle.  No wonder, his speech was ode to June 12 and MKO!  

    Even MKO, martyr of Nigerian democracy, would beam staring down! An epoch just ended.  Another one is beginning.

    Read Also: Abiola and lessons of June 12

    In 1993, when the military were arrogant overlords, was Hope ’93.  In 2023, with a growing democracy, though with birth pangs and learning storm, is Renewed Hope.  

    The link, again, is Tinubu — the man that broke ranks with his Shehu Yar’Adua People’s Front (PF) faction of the victorious (but now defunct) Social Democratic Party (SDP).

    The PF faction, under SDP national chair, the late Tony Anenih, traded off MKO Abiola’s   win for Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING), which the late Gen. Sani Abacha brusquely collapsed to revert to jackboot rule of the harshest hue.

    In Tinubu, as president, the immutable lesson of history is clear: the future belongs to the bold, the persistent and the consistent — so long as the cause is just.

    As he was a thorn in the flesh of the haughty military (epitomized by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida aka IBB and Abacha: 1993-1999); so was he the palladium of opposition during the neo-military era of looming civil domination (symbolized by Obasanjo’s imperial presidency and the entire PDP years: 1999-2015).

    Still, today isn’t for Tinubu’s further lionization.  History has done that already. Besides, it’s a solemn time, at the start of his presidency to further anchor the progressives era, for which he needs fulsome prayers, not excessive praises.

    It is, however, a fit period to x-ray how the noxious forces that tried to arrest Abiola’s destiny have fared, 30 years after.

    IBB annulled that election in a fit of military hubris.  But today, he lives to witness the futility of a reckless and wayward wield of power.

    It is perhaps Karma’s special rebuke that President Muhammadu Buhari, who IBB toppled in a palace coup, became the elected president that eventually validated MKO’s win, though long after the man had died.  IBB’s own civil power comeback was guillotined by a hideous uproar!  He scrambled off the race like a frightened rat!

    The late Yar’Adua thought trading off MKO’s mandate would game the system in his favour.  But he got consumed by it all, just as Abacha, by his own iron tyranny — but not before he jailed Yar’Adua and Obasanjo, two principal players in Shonekan’s ING contraption, for an alleged coup.

    Ironically, the “luckier” Obasanjo (unlike Yar’Adua, he got out of jail to become elected president) earned about the harshest verdict of history.  Like IBB, he’s very much alive to carry the can!

    Under his nose, Obasanjo’s many plots are collapsing: ING; vaulting May 29 over June 12 as Democracy Day to bury Abiola’s martyrdom; the unhorsing of PDP, following its loss of power in 2015; hardly any physical legacy traced to Obasanjo’s eight-year imperial presidency: beyond hankering after an illegal third term, brazenly rigged polls, and the moral stink of his presidential library.

    God has laid the ruins of the conservative era before President Tinubu for a reason: to actualize MKO’s pro-people Hope ’93 cry with his own “Renewed Hope” agenda.

    With the back-breaking foundation of the Buhari years and his own sure-footed policy directions so far, he is condemned to succeeding — for failure is no option.