The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Peter Mbah’s awkward start

    Peter Mbah’s awkward start

    The governor-elect of Enugu State, Peter Mbah, did not exhibit his advertised reputation as a technocrat in the unwieldy 64-man transition committee he set to articulate and fine-tune his incoming administration’s “implementable and impactful development plan” within 30 days. While Mbah’s success with Pinnacle Oil advertises his technocracy, it smacks of poor judgement to set up such an unmanageable team of divergent experts and expect them to come up with a lasting developmental plan within a month.

    Except for the calibre of the leadership and membership of the committee, one would have dismissed the committee as a public relations stunt by the incoming administration, which has the daunting task of governing with a minority legislature. Again, considering the arduous election petition filed by the candidate of the Labour Party, Chijioke Edoga, challenging Mbah’s election, could it be that the governor-elect is merely seeking elite consensus to deflate his electoral challenges, extra-judicially?

    Of course, it is prejudicial to concede that his administration is merely interim, as many who believe that he lost the election are canvassing. I recall that Enugu State was one of the few states on tenterhooks after the March 18 gubernatorial election, as the results could not be declared because of the dispute over Nsukka and Nkanu East local government votes. Surprisingly, Mbah’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which had bestridden the state since 1999, was shellacked in several of its strongholds by the cyclonic Labour Party of Peter Obi.

    So, could the unwieldy transition committee Mbah set up be a panic measure in the face of clear and present danger posed by the rootless Labour Party in Enugu State? (all pun intended). Of course, the candidate of Labour Party, Edeoga, and his bedfellows were members of the PDP, few weeks, if not days, before the Labour Party’s gubernatorial and legislative primaries organised after most of them lost out in the PDP. Clearly, the candidates of the two parties are members of the same political family turned against themselves.

    For Mbah, if the allegations of electoral malfeasance in Nkanu East are upheld by the courts, there would still be the hurdle of Section 77(2) &(3) of the Electoral Act 2022, for the candidate of the Labour Party to scale through. Section 77(2) provides that: “every registered political party shall maintain a register of its members in both hard and soft copy.” While Section 77(3) provides: “each political party shall make such a register available to the Commission not later than 30 days before the date fixed for the party primaries, congresses or convention.”

    If the matter of locus standi does not impede the cross petition of Peter Mbah, and Section 77 of the Electoral Act is appropriately pleaded and proven, PDP sympathisers believe that the name of Edeoga would not be in such a register of Labour Party, and that should be a ground to dismiss his petition and uphold the cross petition. There are also those who, despite the claims, are persuaded that the allegation of electoral malpractice in Nkanu East is of no moment, and as such Edeoga and Labour Party would not win the case against Peter Mbah and PDP.

    While the parties slug it out at the Election Petition Tribunal, this writer hopes the committee would have the opportunity to do a thorough job of distilling out a development agenda for the state. It is one thing to assemble some of the brightest minds in Enugu State, but it is a different kettle of fish to make use of their recommendations. Ordinarily, this columnist believes that if given adequate opportunity, the team led by erudite Ike Chioke would conceive quality policy advisory that can change the governing dynamics in the state.

    The challenge, however, is that unless the members are willing to take a leave of absence from their present engagements, they may not be able to articulate and propose the requested “impactful and developmental plan” before May 29, when the committee’s tenure will expire. Except, of course, the committee is willing to split into several sub-committees, and whatever each sub-committee proposes will be adopted by the general house as its common decision. For even with the best intentions, it will require special skill to build consensus amongst the fuller team of divergent egg heads within the time given.

    But while wishing the team the best of luck, it is apt to advise Mbah to give the committee an extended period to do the job of recommending sustainable developmental plans for the state. One such way to achieve success is to encourage its splitting into committees of variegated experts. Amongst the core issue for the committee should be how to take advantage of the recent 5th Constitution Alteration Act that listed electricity production and railways in the concurrent legislative list.

    If the committee could come up with a bankable proposal, either independently or in association with other states, to produce electricity in the short, medium and long term, such a proposal, if implementable, would be a lasting legacy for Mbah. Luckily, Professor Nebo, the former Minister of Power, is a member of the committee, and could lead such a charge. The major challenge of under industrialisation and unemployment would gain a heft from the stabilisation of power supply, which could come from the work of the electricity sub- committee.

    In the area of revenue mobilisation to lift the finances of the state, luckily again, the committee has in its fold required experts. There are top-end bankers and revenue mobilisation experts, like Chief (Mrs) Christy Okoye, a former executive director of First Bank. Of course, underlining whatever developmental plan the governor-elect may plan is the issue of state law reform. Whether in the area of public finance and investment, where Ike Chioke is a renowned expert, or with respect to taking advantage of the electricity reforms, or revenue generation, the enabling laws must be put in place.

    And there are distinguished law experts like Professor Joy Ezeilo, who is also an expert in gender rights. With or without Mbah’s plan, Enugu needs an effective law reform commission that should engage in methodological reform of the inherited and enacted laws of the state, for every meaningful development is hinged on the existence of modern developmental laws. Undoubtedly, no serious investor ventures into any jurisdiction where the laws are anachronistic. The committee must also make implementable proposals on educational and other social welfare issues, and they have Rev Fr (Prof) Christian Anieke in their team.

    How Peter Mbah would navigate the land mines of an election result that is the subject of bitter recriminations amongst a large chunk of the people he intends to govern will be seen in the days ahead. Unfortunately for him, many believe that the days of PDP in Enugu State, and indeed the Southeast, are numbered.

  • Peter Pan: An umpire at work

    Peter Pan: An umpire at work

    To young persons of my age seeking in the 1960s to enter journalism, Peter Enahoro, who wrote under the name “Peter Pan” was the exemplar.

    His weekly column in the Sunday Times, of which he was the editor, scintillated with wit and grace and elegance and was, withal, enormously entertaining.  Every word shone like a gem, and how we savoured every instalment.  Our delight knew no bounds when, on his being made editor of the Daily Times, the column appeared twice, and then three times weekly, with no loss in their freshness and vigour and sheer felicity.

    We shared with him the excitement of his society wedding, the pictures of which were plastered all over the Sunday Times.  We followed him to Jerusalem where he covered the Adolph Eichmann trial, and to Salisbury, now Harare, where he interviewed Ian Smith shortly after his ill-fated unilateral declaration of independence. 

    He carried us along on an exciting excursion through the Manhattan telephone directory on his first visit to the United States.  We sympathized with him as he lamented that the word “sereneness” was not to be found in his dictionary, whereas the much evocative and euphonic “serenity” was there.

    Enahoro was a pace-setter par excellence.  Following his article on sycophancy, that term became the central issue in the national discourse for several months as every commentator strove to demonstrate that he was above that kind of thing.  With his 1966 essay on the first 100 days of the regime of Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, he established a tradition. If the tradition has since fallen into great disrepute, blame it not on the innovative Peter Pan.

    The man took great pride in being “controversial” and “hard-hitting.”  He was no detached observer, to be sure.  But he always stayed splendidly above the miasma of contention and rarely descended into the pit of partisanship.  In the end, you could always be sure that he would deal an even hand.

    As the 1960s progressed, Enahoro became more assertive.  By 1966, the skeptical gadfly had been supplanted by the oracular pundit.  The uncompromising opponent of military rule elsewhere in Africa became an enthusiastic supporter of military rule in Nigeria.  He urged on Ironsi policy measures that were grounded on a misreading of the political situation in Nigeria.  The tragedy that flowed from those policies and from others is with us to this day. 

    -Enahoro himself embarked precipitately on an exile that was to last 25 years.

    Let no one declare, however, that Enahoro’s flirtation with Ironsi signalled a definite break with much of what had endeared him to his countless admirers.  To do so would be to be guilty of present-mindedness.  For the 1996 coup was widely accepted in most parts of the country and even in the North by those who were later to demonize it.

    I myself would date this dimming of a leading light from that moment in the Second Republic when, in his Africa Now newsmagazine,  Enahoro characterized as “a triumph for democracy” in Nigeria the impeachment of Governor Balarabe Musa (PRP) by the NPN-dominated Kaduna State legislature in proceedings that would have made the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in session look like a kangaroo court.

    The “democracy” of which Balarabe Musa’s impeachment was “a triumph” collapsed barely two years later.  Enahoro remained in exile while others tried to clear the debris.  Realizing at last that “home is where you are somebody,” he returned to Nigeria in 1992 to observe –or was it to participate in – military president Ibrahim Babangida’s transition programme.  Soon thereafter, he was named chairman of the National Broadcasting Commission.

    His first major pronouncement on the transition programme was a stout, even if convoluted, defence of the June 12, 1993.  He returned to that theme recently in a speech before the Mpoko Igbo Convention, in Enugu, describing an event in which 14 million cast their ballot as a “non-election” and again justifying its annulment on the ground that it had been bought in its entirety.

    This is a serious indictment, not merely of the candidates but, more crucially of those who conducted the poll.  For if there were buyers, there must have been vendors.  If Enahoro cares at all about democracy, if he believes in due process, he would not have supported its annulment by executive fiat.  He would have urged that the results be declared and due process followed.

    He would have taken his evidence to the Election Petitions Tribunal which, if it found his evidence compelling or even credible, would have voided the poll.  As it is, he has cast grave doubt on the integrity of many officials and individuals who are not in a position to defend themselves.

    In the same address, he castigated the so-called Lagos-Ibadan press for all manner of wrongdoing.  But he was silent on the campaign of incitement, hatred and blackmail that pour forth daily from the Kaduna-Kano press, and most especially from Radio Kaduna.  Unless Enahoro is prepared to condemn media misbehaviour wherever he finds it – and there is a great deal of it in Nigeria – he does not care at all about media misbehaviour.

    In a passage dripping with scorn and contempt for The Guardian’s claim to being a serious newspaper (“The flagship” and all that)) he charged it with “intellectual fraud,” just because it had argued in an editorial that justices of the Supreme Court should not have gone to court in the matter of what it called “Their Lordships’ Limousines.”

    The Guardian’s position, as I understand it, is that, having explained how they came about the controversial limousines, their Lordships should let the matter rest there.  For if they pursued the matter at law, they risked not only being pulled down from the high pedestal on which society placed them, but also provoking a constitutional crisis the country could do without.

    That is what Enahoro dismissed as “intellectually fraudulent.”  Yet the analogies he furnishes to clinch this claim are hardly an improvement on what he is condemning.  If someone unlawfully takes over the property of the chief justice and he embarks on legal action to evict the trespasser, no constitutional crisis will arise.  For even if the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court, only the petitioner has a direct personal interest in the case and will of course recuse himself.

    And if the chief justice can no longer perform his duties because of a certified illness or disability, it is to be hoped that he will not contest all the way to the Supreme Court a move to replace him, and that if he does, his colleagues who are not co-plaintiffs with him will do justice on the basis of the facts before them and the law. 

    But when the chief justice and eight associate justices of the court are the petitioners, it requires no clairvoyance to see that a constitutional crisis is shaping up.  Sooner or later, they will have to adjudicate in their own cause.

    Enahoro is perfectly entitled to his opinions.  The trouble is this:  Where does one draw the line between the views of Peter Enahoro, private citizen, and Peter Enahoro, chairman of a federal regulatory agency?

    As a private citizen, he is at liberty to say anything he likes about any person or institution, subject of course to the laws of the land.  As chairman of the NBC, he is expected to be transparently fair, to show at all times a capacity for even-handedness.  He is enjoined to non-partisan conduct, in word and in deed.

    I have no evidence that he has been remiss in his duties as chairman of the NBC,  But some of his recent pronouncements raise questions about his capacity for adjudicating  fairly and impartially, and about his belief in, and commitment to,  due process,

    Since Enahoro cited examples from the United States in his Mpoko lecture, I should perhaps add that if the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission were to throw himself into the vortex of controversy and to conduct himself in the way Enahoro has been carrying on lately,  there would have been loud and insistent calls for his resignation.

    And if he refused to heed the calls, citizen action would have been mobilized to secure that end.  But that is another country, another culture.

    A postscript

    This article was first published in The Guardian on April 26, 1994, titled “An umpire at work.”

    Peter Enahoro died in London, UK, on April 24, 2023, aged 88 years.   Till the end,  he remained widely admired as a world-class journalist.  His sprawling 2009 memoir Then Spoke the Thunder is an engaging chronicle of his life and times, and it bristles with the magic of his Peter Pan days.

    His legend endures. 

  • Electoral offences in Adamawa

    Electoral offences in Adamawa

    The suspended Adamawa State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Hudu Yunusa Ari, almost wrecked the reputation of the 2023 general elections, with his reckless announcement of Senator Aisha Dahiru Binani as winner of the state’s supplementary governorship election, while the collation was ongoing.

    The authentic result showed she lost to Governor Ahmadu Fintiri. One wonders what induced Ari, a lawyer, to corral the security chiefs in the state to join him to engage in clear, unambiguous and evidence laden electoral offences as enshrined in the 2022 Electoral Act?

    According to some social media accounts, the disgraced electoral chief was allegedly bribed with N2 billion. But even that handsome sum should not be enough for the electoral heist Ari and his cohorts attempted to foist on our scarred country. As a lawyer, Ari should know the full implications of what he did, and it is hoped he would have the opportunity to justify his conduct, or face the punishment for his intransigence.

    Section 120(4) provides: “Any person who announces or publishes an election result knowing same to be false or which is at variance with the signed certificate of return commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of 36 months.” Section 121(1)(b) further provides: “upon or in consequence of any gift, loan, offer, promise, procurement or agreement corruptly procures, or engages or promises or endeavours to procure, the return of any person as a member of a legislative house or to an elective office or the vote of any voter at an election; commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a maximum fine of N500,000 or imprisonment for a term of 12 months or both.”

    On where an offender of the Electoral Offences can be tried, or which authority has the powers to conduct such a trial, the acts provide direction. Section 145(1) of the act provides: “An offence committed under this Act shall be triable in a Magistrates’ Court or a High Court of a state in which the offence is committed, or the Federal Capital Territory Abuja.” Sub-section 2 further provides: “A prosecution under this Act shall be undertaken by legal officers of the Commission or any legal practitioner appointed by it.”

    From the above reproduced provisions, and perhaps more, it is clear there are provisions in the Act which Ari and his collaborators must answer to remove any vestige of doubt about the neutrality of INEC in the just concluded general elections. If the Adamawa REC had succeeded in wrecking the governorship election, that shenanigan would spread a foul odour across all the other elections. As the Igbo adage says, when one finger touches oil, it spreads across the others.

    So, it is in the interest of the present and incoming government at the centre to ensure that Ari and his cohorts are dealt with in accordance with the law. Already the opposition parties, without specification, are claiming that what happened in Adamawa happened elsewhere, only the former was more brazen. Such brazen abuse of the electoral act, if unpunished, would feed the social media hysteria against the last presidential election, which, no doubt, was one of the most competitive elections in recent history of Nigeria.

    INEC must resist the temptation to treat the issue with contempt. The Electoral Act clearly states that it is the commission or its appointed legal practitioner that can prosecute electoral offences, and what happened in Adamawa breached the clear provisions of the Act. The procedure to bring Ari and his cohorts to court is clearly provided both by the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) and the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA).

    Section 113 ACJA provides: “A court may issue a summons or warrant as provided in this Act to compel the appearance before it of a suspect accused of having committed an offence in any place, whether within or outside Nigeria, triable in a state or in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.” Also, section 47 of the CPC provides: “summons to appear or attend before a court may be issued by any court competent to inquire into an offence or by Justice of the Peace.”

    INEC must not be seen to delay on this matter, more so as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), through the national president, Mr Y. C. Maikyau (SAN), had offered to partner with the commission to prosecute electoral offences. Clearly, all other electoral offences committed during the general elections pale into insignificance, compared with the atrocious conduct of Ari and his fellow conspirators. The malfeasance committed in Adamawa is also a pointer to the need to review the nomination and appointment process for INEC officials, as recommended by Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais Electoral Reform panel, set up by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.

    As shown by the Adamawa debacle, the mode of appointment and removal of the Resident Electoral Commissioner and other top officers of the commission is key to non-partisanship, control and discipline. For many, Ari was more beholden to Senator Benani, than to the oath of office he took. Again, in the face of his infractions, there was confusion as to who holds the ace to call him to order. The president and INEC initially prevaricated on who should immediately sanction him.

    While INEC looked up to the president to act, the latter wanted to wash off his hands like the biblical Pontius Pilate. The president, through the Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, portrayed the problem as that of INEC. He claimed it was theirs to solve, while INEC reminded the president that he is the appointing authority, and as such, he owned the responsibility to intervene. The Uwais report had recommended that the judiciary, which is non-partisan in elections, should nominate electoral officers for the parliament to screen, and the president to appoint.

    Since President Buhari’s tenure would soon come to an end, it is the incoming administration of the President-Elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that has the responsibility to further amend the electoral laws to ensure a fairer electoral process. Tinubu should dust up the Uwais report, set up a review team made up of distinguished men and women of character, to determine what improvements are required to give Nigeria a better process of appointing electoral officers. As long as it is left in the hands of politicians, allegations of partiality will prevail.

    While we await Tinubu to begin to write his presidential history, the police should hunt down Ari and his confederates, and haul them before a court to answer charges of electoral offences as provided in the act. The hogwash that Ari has disappeared after attempting to set the country on tenterhooks, is like Macbeth’s tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  • PMB and strategic silence

    PMB and strategic silence

    After eight brutal years, the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari is ebbing out, but with grace — the rare grace of a man at peace with himself. 

    The last time a party-to-party power transfer held was in 2007: a failed “third-termer” hoofing off like some bull in a china shop! Holy chaos!

    The difference, between then and now, is stark.

    Still, what didn’t PMB’s traducers hurl at him: politicians, ethnic champions, equal opportunity hustlers and noisemakers, and even the grandstanding media?

    Yet, the inflexible man from Daura, grandmaster of strategic silence, wore them all out — with granite quiet!

    True, PMB’s silence was not always golden.  

    His last major policy was utter disaster: the Naira redesign catastrophe; and the brazen lies from CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, whose bank didn’t print enough new notes, yet gloried in bare-faced confiscation of citizens’ cash, under some macabre cashless policy. 

    But PMB got his swift comeuppance.  The Supreme Court voided the exercise. The president licked his wounds in dignified quiet — the same quiet he used to unhorse his galloping traducers, with their clattering hooves.  Quite a study!

    Ayo Fayose, former Ekiti governor and author and finisher of stomach infrastructure at its crudest, set the earliest — and scariest — tone for a long night of political crudity.

    Fayose must have been petrified at power slipping off his PDP, having run Nigeria aground under President Goodluck Jonathan.  

    So, Fayose started having dark dreams; dark dreams he punched into a rabid scarecrow; rabid scarecrow he served as Nigeria’s most grotesque political advert ever: don’t vote Buhari.  He would die in office as Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Sani Abacha and Murtala Muhammed did before him!

    Morbid?  Worse.  A new era of illiberal politics, anchored on blatant lies; plus ethnic scapegoating and profiling, wild and reckless, was born! 

    Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK), as sinking PDP’s campaign spin doctor, weighed in with own fecund mind: APC, then the rising alliance that would send mighty PDP into power Siberia, was nothing but an Islamic “Janjaweed” — a dark throwback to Sudan’s ethnic- cleansing horror in its Darfur region — despite that Buhari’s running mate was Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, then a Pentecostal pastor, now the outgoing Vice President.

    But where are Fayose and FFK today?  

    The one, though still a PDP man, swears by the integrity of the 2023 presidential election; and tells Atiku Abubakar, his party’s candidate, to concede defeat.  

    The other is even more trenchant as a PDP Saul-turned-APC Paul, defending Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s mandate — a clear difference, to be sure, from Obasanjo’s do-or-die show of 2007!

    But FFK came with an additional baptismal: a PMB handshake as granite as Aso Rock, when FFK strayed back into the party, with Yobe Governor Mai Mala Buni, then APC interim chair, in tow!

    The power of strategic silence!

    Why, the wild Fulani roasting, just because a Fulani was president, gifted Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB fanatics new wings to soar, in rude and crude cross-ethnic slurs.  

    Kanu himself, in or out of Nigeria, got seized by a fresh mania: conjuring up the Jubril of Sudan, directing Igbo-on-Igbo killings, or barking orders to insurgents to tar people’s livelihood in Lagos, under the guise of EndSARS riots.

    But again, where is Kanu today?  Brought to heel pending the court’s final verdict, however that decision goes, on his execrable conduct.  

    But irony of ironies: IPOB’s panic clatter, over Kanu’s caging, is as raucous as PMB’s silence is loud!  Blowing hot and cold, IPOB is running out of propaganda stunts!

    Still, if bile and victimhood tales are a crucial mix of South East post-Civil War history, what harm did PMB do a section of the Yoruba elite, sworn to making willy-nilly foe of his government, which harbours a Yoruba son as No. 2?

    An Afenifere elder — who supported Jonathan but crashed with him in 2015 — woke up one day and told The Punch the Fulani were “Yoruba enemies”! Then, some Fulani bandits were amplified, in the passion of the moment, as some regime ploy to muscle and capture the Yoruba!

    That led to the toxic era of the South West: the atavistic reign of the Yoruba Nation lobby, itself a misdiagnosis — wilful or innocent? — of a national security meltdown, which could be logically explained as diffusion from the North East theatre of terror.  

    With that theatre getting too hot, insurgents were fleeing with small arms, and causing havoc in other areas.  Ultimately, worst hit would be the North West (bastion of the Fulani) and North Central — not even the South West.  

    But the media, that ought to have put out this clinical analysis, was busy playing shameless echo chamber to breathtaking ethnic and sectional inanities.

    Still, whither these South West antagonists, posing as supreme ultra-nationalists?  All dissipated and unhorsed. The Yoruba Nation’s virtual collapse need not be rehashed.  

    But Baba Ayo Adebanjo is fitting metaphor for that fair collapse.  At the dawn of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) — formed because of the grandees’ perennial feuding — Baba hit on a brilliant pun: Afenifere Rebel Group (ARG), to dismiss the new body! 

    But now, Baba is facing real rebels — “youths”, as Pharaoh that knew no Joesph — calling for his scalp, as his Afenifere rump’s honorific leader!  

    Not unfair a sentence for grabbing Afenifere to fight personal battles as “Yoruba” wars!

    PMB won the presidency, not because of his especial brilliance, but for his honesty, integrity and Spartan grit.  That vaulted him above the rest, after the debris PDP-era sleaze had made of Nigeria, under President Jonathan.

    Yet, how did the Church, the prime social agency against moral decay, take his anti-corruption war? Instead of systemic support, many of their leading lights seized their pulpits as launch pads for wild politics.

    In 2019, Father Matthew Kukah, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto and Winners Bishop, David Oyedepo, with others in tow, went to former President Olusegun Obasanjo to plead Atiku Abubakar’s case, to run on the PDP ticket.  

    In 2023, it was Oyedepo and his “Yes, Daddy” collabo with Labour Party’s Peter Obi, Atiku’s running mate in 2019.

    Both gambits collapsed, exposing not-so-wily politicians in cassock.  PMB not only won a second term, his APC just won a third, though with PMB bowing out.  

    The “magic”, of course, is PMB’s iron concentration on the right stuff; and ignoring noise makers, spiritual and temporal.

    Yes, he hasn’t quite bequeathed an el-dorado, after eight years. But by his stubborn focus on agriculture and infrastructure, he has done the heavy lifting of re-birthing the local real sector, from the 1986 import-powered wide-and-merry SAP, that leads nowhere but destruction.  

    The incoming government must drive that foundation to new heights.

    Still, for the Tinubu Presidency, these vital take-aways: Do justice to all but appease no one.  Focus on your goals. Give every part of the country its due — just as PMB did.  

    But din your accomplishments into public consciousness — as PMB clearly did not.

    From the results of 2019 and 2023, the masses make smarter choices than elite noisemakers, temporal or spiritual!  So, come election day, they’d give you your due.

  • Annals of industrial relations

    Annals of industrial relations

    When justices of the Supreme Court  unanimously served notice the other day in the manner of shop-floor artisans that they would have no alternative than to embark on an industrial action unless their grievances centering on pay and conditions were addressed to their satisfaction, even those who thought that nothing new could happen in Nigeria’s political firmament had to concede that this was altogether a singular development

    Even to those who allowed that “anything can happen” in Nigeria’s public sphere: this, surely was not the kind of thing they had in mind.  They would have dismissed the mere thought of it as a joke taken too far.

    The only thing the justices left out was the date the action would commence.  Its duration would depend on the response of the authorities.  The public imagination was already astir with images on the one hand, of their bewigged lordships in their ermined raiments, driven by desperation to behave like actual trade unionists, and on the other, of the police in riot gear,  ready to discharge their duties in the cause of law and order.

    And, of course, television cameras positioned to capture the spectacle, live.

    The case has great merit.

    In this electronic age, they still have to take down depositions in the longhand.  Their access to the internet, so vital for instant research and for acquiring facts and data at the touch of a button or a screen, is not guaranteed beyond office hours.  Electricity is not fully guaranteed even during office hours. 

    The justices live in accommodation that does not reflect their status and dignity.  They go about their official duties in vehicles that often break down and expose them to ridicule and danger.  Funds earmarked for hiring bright minds from universities to do legal research and draft opinions have been swallowed up in the maws of the bureaucracy. or are disbursed improperly.

    And so on and so forth.

    Their petition has great merit, even without relating it to what obtains in other institutions of public service.  If you compare it to what obtains, say, in the National Assembly, you have to commend their lordships for their restraint.

    Officially, it is the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Allocation Committee that determines the compensation of public officers.  But, following the lead of the National Assembly,  every ministry, department, or agency, tweaks the scheme, often in ways that distort it beyond recognition.

    The National Assembly has turned this practice into an art.  It is the only institution of its kind in the world that regards lawmaking as a hardship that must be handsomely rewarded.  Its compensation scheme is so padded with “allowances” that you wonder what they need salaries for.  In the absence of verifiable audits, conservative guesstimates of what a lawmaker takes home range between N30 million and N50 million every month.

    So steeped in this practice is the National Assembly that it is often seen more in caricature than in perspective.  According to the caricature, it even gives its members allowances for sleeping, for staying awake, and for everything in between; for doing what they are elected to do; for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and newspapers.   One account has it that they are even remunerated for farting and for belching, which a member reportedly characterized on the floor as “evidence of good living.”

    It can be said without exaggeration and without doing violence to facts that, in Nigeria, no business succeeds like lawmaking.  The rewards are instant and guaranteed by the Exchequer.

    You need only look at a video of the portfolio of the choicest luxury goods and automobiles that former senator Dino Melaye periodically posts on the so-called social media to tease and taunt the public with a glimpse of the rewards that can accrue even to mediocre and insufferable lawmakers.

    Melaye has been accused of so many things – bombast, showboating, crassness, exhibitionism, and so  onand so forth.  But, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever accused him of playing any part, however tangential, in promoting, shaping, or securing the passage of a significant law for the good governance of Nigeria.

    But everyone in the attentive audience can tell you the special features of his Lamborghini, Alfa-Martin, Bugatti, Rolls Royce, Mercedes  Benz, and Jaguar, to mention only a selection from his fleet. 

    Everyone knows Melaye has enough high-end wristwatches, and shoes to stock an exclusive shop.  If you were to add his luxury travel goods and the usual knickknacks, you would need a store on three levels.

    A person briefed on Melaye’s current concerns tells me that the fleet will soon boast a vertical-takeoff helicopter and a long-haul executive jet, in time for his Kogi gubernatorial election campaign on the PDP’s platform. 

    All this just from lawmaking.

     No wonder they are fuming in the Judicial Branch.

    In the Supreme, beg your pardon, Apex Court, they cannot get even the basic essentials, while officials in other arms of the public service are basking in superfluity.

    Amici curiae who are concerned that it will be infra dignitatem for their lordships to resort to the tactics of shop-floor trade unionists to press their case for better pay and conditions are hoping that it will not come to that.

    But one of them is taking no chance.

    He has petitioned the courts, locus standi be damned, to raise the salary of justices of the Supreme Court from a measly N3 million a month to N7 million, and to raise that of the chief justice to N10 million a month.

    And in double quick time, the court obliged.  Petition upheld.

    But those who want to keep their lordships in acute deprivation are saying that the judges have made a mockery of the doctrine of nemo judex in causa sua be damned;  that the ruling is at bottom an exercise in self-dealing, in which judges stand to profit from their own rulings.

    They say it is a hallowed canon of jurisprudence. 

    “Hallowed canon” my foot. I call it soulless.  If judges cannot advance their own standing, who is to do so for them?  The Melayes, who are so busy grabbing and acquiring stuff that they have no time for any other pursuit?

    Those given to aridly legalistic disputations will debate and discuss the court’s ruling till the end of time.   What really matters is that the court has introduced a dynamic new element into our system of jurisprudence in general, and our system of conflict resolution in particular.

    Shop around for a court or judge whose sympathy you can count on, press your claim, and       have it translated into a perpetual injunctive relief that cannot be won through negotiation or arbitration The process is quick and affordable.

    Under that system, university lecturers who teach and conduct research under the harshest conditions would not have to go on strike for six months just to get the attention of the authorities.

    Just imagine:  The textbook that a professor of law is teaching from is into its fourth edition, but the instructor has only the second, which he guards jealously and treats like Holy Writ. At the end of one class meeting, a student walks up to the instructor and tells him respectfully that he is teaching from a dated text.

    “How do you know?” the professor asked non-threateningly.

    “Because I have the latest edition, sir.” Whereupon she brought it out of her bag.  Her father had bought it for her for £180 during her last vacation in the UK.

    To state that the instructor, a person of great sensibility, felt thoroughly chastened by this change in the power calculus, is to understate the matter.   When the student added good-naturedly that the professor could borrow the book anytime he desired, it could only have sealed his discomfiture.

    And when she was done with the course, she donated the book to the professor. 

    Without question, it is the ghastly system of remuneration in the universities that is responsible for this scandalous reversal.

    But that could be a thing  of the past if university professors adopted the formula that the petitioner mentioned earlier used to secure appropriate pay for court judges.

    Get a person who cannot easily be dismissed as a busybody to file an amicus curia brief with a court noted for progressive disposition of the resident judges – get a person in good standing to file a brief demanding that university teachers be compensated on a scale ranging from N10 million to N40 a million a month for five years in the first instance.  The pay scale can be adjusted as time goes on, but only northwards, never southwards. 

    That would be an enduring solution to the pesky ASUU problem, and it would carry with it the imprimatur of a court of competent jurisdiction.

    Other fractious groups such as the National Association of  Resident Doctors (NARD), the petroleum and gas workers union, and indeed other occupational groups, can be pacified in like manner. 

    That is the path to social justice and industrial peace.

  • Obi and dregs

    Obi and dregs

    Wouldn’t be bothered about whatever rackets the western media conjure.  

    If you roil at their annoying condescension, then you can’t joy at whatever praises they heap, earnest or cynical — except, of course, you’re congenitally dishonest.

    That, more or less, was Ripples’ attitude to Time magazine’s listing of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, as among the globe’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023.

    Yet, the Tinubu citation, by Astha Rajvanshi, hardly shorn of routine western patronizing, is boiled down history the ignorant but curious can gobble: 

    “Winning an election in Africa’s most populous country is no easy feat.  But Nigeria’s newly elected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has had nearly two decades to prepare.  Called Jagaban, or “leader of the warriors,” by his supporters, the now 71-year-old ran in a presidential election for the first time this March.  His campaign slogan, ‘It’s my turn,’ was a nod to his role as a longtime political power broker.  Tinubu helped restore the country’s democracy in 1999 after fighting military rule and then served two consecutive terms as governor of Lagos.”  Less than 100 words!

    To be sure, it wasn’t all accurate. Emilokan (“It’s my turn”) wasn’t Tinubu’s campaign slogan — “Renewed Hope” was.

    But in truth, Emilokan was a penetrating pre-nomination byte that vibrated all through the campaign.  It also averred Tinubu’s presidential bid, as Time correctly interpreted.

    Aside, Tinubu’s presidential preparation was in excess of two decades.  From 1999 to 2023 alone is 24 years.  Fighting the military, for democracy to thrive, dated back to 1993 — 30 years ago.  That shows how long it took him to build his network.

    Of course, the citation also rehashed sweet music to western ears: a shambolic election, with hardly any redeeming value, which Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi bitterly contest; and how Nigeria, the 21st century Armageddon, scraped through its seventh set of general elections since 1999 barely sane!  Predictable?

    Peter Obi always coos, with his “youth” army, he wanted to birth a new Nigeria. But by his supporters’ crowing crudeness and eternal cyber-bullying, it is clear Obi has done nothing but inspire dregs — and Obi-dients’ reaction to Tinubu’s Time listing is latest proof of that ringing notoriety.

    Or why would anyone heap insults and threats on Time’s Rajvanshi, for penning a citation largely factual and true?  

    Did they wish Obi, not Tinubu, was listed — beyond the condescending footnote Obi and Atiku occupied?  Did that rile the surly Obi-dients to shout it all down, in the silly hope it would vanish?

    Obi’s own political trajectory, compared with Tinubu’s, perhaps provides a clue.

    The late Chinwonke Mbadinuju (God bless his soul, for he just passed away) was a thorough-and-thorough metaphor for bad governance, as Anambra governor, from 1999 to 2003.  At the close of his term, everything had virtually collapsed at Awka.

    His successor, Chris Ngige, showed some bright sparks.  But he too had to contend with “godfathers” that wanted their pound of flesh in illicit state gravy.  That in-fighting pushed Obi to the fore — the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate whose mandate got stollen by PDP electoral bandits.

    Obi rode that messianic complex with gusto. But inside that whited sepulchre was his own bones, rotten and stinking.  

    On the surface, he was “saving” Anambra funds from predators. But really, he was locking down public funds to finance his family’s business, with a bank in which he had investment interests.  True, he claimed to have returned every kobo with interest but that hardly redeemed that grave fiduciary breach.

    Then, leaked Pandora papers linked him with alleged illicit tax havens and shell companies.  He was also accused to have operated foreign account(s) as governor, in contravention of the law — to which he then pleaded ignorance.

    On the political plain, he swore to Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu (the APGA patron saint) while alive, never to leave APGA — a pledge he abandoned after Ojukwu died.  

    He not only dumped APGA for PDP, he in 2022, as emergency “youth” messiah re-made in supreme demagoguery, also junked PDP for LP to contest for president.

    While gaming APGA and PDP might be sweet political dissembling, his foes claim he is fated to fruitless peripatetic pursuits, no thanks to some “APGA curse”!

    So, back to 2006 when Obi regained his mandate, he was taking over a near-empty shell, despite Ngige’s post-Mbadinuju heroics, to cover lost grounds.  

    As at that time in Lagos, Governor Tinubu had honed his reforms, despite Abuja’s bad faith from then President Olusegun Obasanjo; and Lagos was coasting to being the national reference point.  

    Tinubu was also carefully knitting the cross-country network that would land him the Nigerian Presidency some 17 years later.

    But trust the South East elite to over-praise their own and thumb down others.  That has been the case since the days of West African Pilot, the nationalist and immediate Independence-era newspaper that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe owned.

    That over-hyping drove Obi into Nigeria’s central politics from his South East regional laager.  From that enclave, Obi hardly bothered to build any pan-Nigeria network.  That was why his presidential run fell short, though he also over-performed.

    Rather than rigorously correct these flaws — though in truth, the time was short — Obi and co resorted to infernal fancy and crass opportunism, founded on self-deceit.

    Despite no ethnic group having enough numbers to solo win a presidential race, Obi doubled down on clannish voting.  Why, his Obi-dient cyber-army stood ready to tar anyone, resisting their clannish ploy, as “tribalist” or “bigoted” — ironically, a brilliant and spectacular capture of their own very essence!

    Then, the APC “Muslim-Muslim” ticket would gift Obi the infernal spin of election as “religious war”, as revealed in his pathetic “Yes, Daddy” audio leak with Winners Bishop, David Oyedepo — which neither of them even has the balls to admit.

    This faith-clannish coalition was all too glaring from the results of February 25 — which ought to have sobered Obi and got him thinking of future alliances.  

    But instead, he and supporters have resorted to bluff and bluster, powered by the most incendiary and uncouth of threats.

    When faced with the most innocuous of truths — like the Tinubu Time citation — they fly off the handle.  That explains the cyber attacks on poor Ms. Rajvanshi — as if such juvenile blather would banish the truth! 

    Welcome to the bubble of Saint Gregory and his inspired dregs.  Just imagine if this rabble had won power!

    But this mob, predictably surly and sour, aren’t the most dangerous of Obi-dient fascism. More respectable voices are — which brings back Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  

    After a rash letter to US President Joe Biden, she doubled down on Arise TV that her “anecdotes” could stand for sweeping electoral facts — including soiling the reputation  of the INEC chair but admitting it was all based on rumours!  

    That girl must really think she’s writing grand fiction, which may yet breed grand angst!

    Yet, reputations don’t just suddenly collapse.  They fade by enforcing suspect causes.  But even that is a democratic choice.

  • Abuja FCT’s super citizens

    Abuja FCT’s super citizens

    It was my friend calling from Lagos.

    In the twenty years that I have known him, he had never sounded so animated.  I sensed immediately that he had something on his mind, something he thought I must know right away, at that unholy hour.

    Perhaps the diehard revanchists and their confederates had obtained a midnight court injunction voiding the entire General Election, thus clearing the path to the setting up of an Interim Government?

    “What’s up?” I asked him.

    “Abuja,” he replied.  In his excitement, he could only articulate one word in one breath.

    “What is it about Abuja?”

    “So, you haven’t heard?”

    My mind raced through all the bad news, bad news and more bad news that came out of Abuja the previous week, and set me wondering which particular piece of bad news I could have missed.

    “Heard what?” I asked.

    “You haven’t heard that residents of Abuja Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have all along been super citizens without even knowing it?”

    There goes another conspiracy theory, perhaps the latest in a very long line of conspiracy theories that have flooded the news media and the pseudo-social media outlets and polluted social discourse, especially in this silly season, I said to myself.

    “I must confess i have not kept pace with the deluge of news out of Nigeria.  Please tell me the latest about Abuja.”

    “It is right there in the Constitution,” he said breathlessly.

    That foundational document stipulates, he went on, that no candidate can become president of Nigeria unless he wins 25 percent of the votes cast in Abuja FCT in a national election.   “It is there in black and white,” he said.

    “Not even if the candidate fulfills every other requirement, such as winning an overall majority of votes cast, and meeting the two-thirds rule.”

    “Not even then, sir.  Regardless of every other stipulation, he or she has to win 25 percent of the FCT votes to be deemed elected.  That is the learned consensus of the best legal minds.  Call it the Iron Law of the Constitution.

    “So, what is in it for you?”

    “A  great deal, sir.  A great deal.  Can’t you see the implications, sir?  They are profound.  To start with, it confers special status on the residents of the FCT, rich and poor, lawmaker and lawbreaker, homeowner and home watcher alike, over and above the status of ordinary Nigerians – like your good self, sir, assuming that after all these years in America, you still consider yourself a Nigerian. With this special status comes many special rights and privileges, at least by implication.

    “Such as?”

    “The right to special treatment for Abuja FCT residents in the scheme of things.  For example, it would follow that, in federal recruitment, appointments, contracts, and admission to federal institutions, FCT residents would be served first.”

    Would that not collide with the equal-protection clause of the Constitution, which requires broad equality of treatment for all citizens?

    “Not in the least, sir, since FCT residents are not ordinary citizens.  They are super citizens.  The Constitution itself says so.”

    It would follow, then, by the same reasoning, that representatives of the FCT in the National Assembly and the FCT Administration can jointly and/or severally veto federal legislation on any whatsoever?

    “Absolutely, sir.  Absolutely.  You are beginning to see things as they really are.”

    “Why are they conferred with this special status, if I may ask? Is it simply by virtue of their residing in the FCT, or is there something transcendent about living in that space?”

     “Good question sir.  The framers of the Constitution did not explain how they came about the FCT’s special status.  But they must have had it at the back of their minds that they were dealing with something new, perhaps unique even, and that the document should reflect that point splendidly and unambiguously.   It had to   espouse and honour the soul of Abuja.”

    I did not tell him that, regardless of what the Constitution says, I have always had some doubts about Abuja. Maybe it is a different place now, but back in the 90s, I always felt that it was just a collection of masonry, bereft of “town-ness.”  Whenever I visited, I always came away asking:  “Where is the town?”

     But if there is a soul to Abuja, it is only fair and proper that the Constitution should articulate it.  What does that soul consist in?

    “Like Nigeria itself, it is a work in progress.  It speaks to the nation’s vast potential, about which there is no disagreement.  We can also speak of its can-do, never-die optimistic spirit.”

    “It seems like you are set to relocate.”

    “You took the words right out of my mouth, sir.  I am actually calling to tell you that, given recent revelations about the extra-constitutional status of its residents, I have decided to relocate to the FCT before a new Administration is sworn in on May 29, and to ask for your blessings.

    It has been my experience that whenever younger folk seek your blessings, they are thinking of hard cash to help them in a new venture, not pious, incantatory chants.  He is not that kind of chap.  He is not asking too much of a retired professor living on a modest pension.  My prayers will go with him.

    His plans seem hazy for now.  He has some money in the bank, and no constricting family obligations.  Fortunately for him, he is no stranger to the place.  He lived and worked there several years back, and knows his way around.

    With Abuja’s new status, he can now see new opportunities he did not see even when they were staring him in the face, opportunities for self-actualization on a scale he and doubtless others never could have imagined

    Is Abuja ready for the thousands of who will flock there to seek fame and fortune following the constitutional epiphany, and the brickbats that earlier residents who missed the tide will hurl at them?

    Obidient Mess

    All kinds of memes have sprung from the Obidient Movement and its insurgent sweep, most of them deprecatory.  I will not repeat them here.

    How I wish I could come up with a more polite term than Obidient Mess to characterize the drama surrounding Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi’s clandestine visit to the UK to celebrate Easter, his detention for questioning by the immigration authorities at Heathrow, his alleged deportation, the UK Government’s apologies for the inconvenience he suffered and his sepulchral silence since returning to base.

  • Enough of bile

    Enough of bile

    This column believes that the greatest challenge the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi (Okwute) faces in his future political career is maintaining the love and adoration of his trenchant supporters, the Obidient movement. As was shown in the 2023 presidential elections, Obi within a short period accumulated a cult of followers who could maim in support of his political ambition. These supporters do not suffer any opposition to Obi gladly.

    Their adulation for Peter Obi can be comparable to that for President Muhammadu Buhari. For their supporters, both are messianic and they love unquestioningly. While Buhari’s lovers where ready to maim to push his political advancement, until his misadventure in politics embarrassed them thoroughly, Obi’s supporters are adventurous and menacing against any threat imagined or real, in pursuit of their political Eldorado. But unlike Buhari’s supporters who are mostly poor and illiterate, Obi’s supporters are mostly literate, internet savvy, and highly opinionated.

    So, while Buhari’s supporters were in their cocoon, wallowing in their worship until their love ventured into the presidency, Obi’s supporters are on their duty posts training their vitriolic apparatchik against any potential enemy, as they push their charge. The supporters believe their subjects of belief are infallible. But the political opponents of Obi have accused him of hypocrisy and exploiting his followers, and have warned that if given a chance he would fail like Buhari. 

    Clearly, both supporters are products of the gross maladministration that has made Nigeria a living hell for the majority of Nigerians. They are not angrier than the rest of Nigerians, but they perceive Buhari and Obi respectively as solutions to bad governance. Unfortunately, they are unwilling to allow any critical interrogation of their beliefs. Any attempt to engage in any critical conversation is seen as an attack on their principal, which deserves the most scurrilous abuse and threats.  

    The latest victim of Obi’s supporters’ querulous attacks is the revered Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, and he is not likely going to be the last. The attackers most of whom have no sense of history, in their determination to score cheap points, are juxtaposing apple and oranges as one and the same. They believe that by haranguing the Nobel Laureate, they are advancing their march to success. The old bard, who has sacrificed so much for other peoples’ causes, including Biafra, is now being accused of ethnic bias for rightly cautioning Baba-Ahmed Datti’s zealotry.

    Before Soyinka they had taken Igbo leaders who hold a different opinion and political persuasion to theirs to the cleaners. One of the first prominent victims was the governor of Anambra State, Chukwuma Soludo, who predicted that Peter Obi cannot win the presidential election on the current platform. Also, the former governor of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani suffered similar fate, when he projected correctly that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would win the election, and he urged Igbos to support his campaign.

    The likes of Imo and Ebonyi State governors are viewed as saboteurs and scoundrels, by the trenchant supporters of Obi. When counselled that no presidential contestant has won the election, solely on the full backing of his ethnic group without any alliance, and that plurality of politics is normal, the person making the argument gets roasted in the social media. For Obi’s followers, his case will be different, and no force will be able to stop the divinely predicted presidency.

    Now against their projection, the presidential diadem has become elusive. While originally, anger was propelling their hope, now frustration is propelling their anger. Of course, when one is angry, the capacity to think clearly, and act wisely is diminished. The tendency is to make mistakes and sometimes compound the root causes of the anger. This column believes that majority of supporters of the Obi movement are in such a position now, and that managing their frustration and anger is the greatest challenge of the post-election era.

    For Peter Obi, the challenge is enormous. Before the election, his supporters’ anger was channelled towards ensuring that he wins against the odds, as projected by the other hated political elites. After the election was declared, INEC which made the declaration, even when it slipped in its plan to upload the result on INEC IRev portal, became the target of scurrilous attacks and hate. To ensure that they take no chances, the Supreme Court, which would determine the final appeal on the election petition, is forewarned to ensure victory for Obi.

    As far as the trenchant supporters of Obi are concerned, any judgment short of returning Obi as winner of the election will be unacceptable. Many of them are unwilling to contemplate the likelihood that the apex court could affirm the election of Tinubu as the winner of the election as declared by INEC. The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, recently suffered psychological bruises for daring to travel abroad when Asiwaju, whose mandate would soon be a subject of litigation before his court, also travelled out of the country.

    This column shudders at what would happen to the reputation of the learned judge and his brothers, should they reach a judgment that does not appeal to the angrily frustrated supporters of Obi. This column hopes that should the judgment go against them, the worst that could happen will be the umbrage of the judges at the Court of Appeal tribunal, and the Supreme Court, which is the final appellate court for presidential elections, and no more. The challenge thereafter would be what happens to the Peter Obi’s political movement.

    Can Peter Obi sustain the interest of his supporters to his political cause for the next four years, for him to remain a force in the next presidential election? To achieve that, how will Obi manage the anger presently driving his supporters, and replace same with an ideological belief that will be self-sustaining? If they continue on the trajectory of abusing and libelling any opposing view point, would he keep faith with their unsustainable style, or will he call them to order, and incur a backlash and virulent attack?        

    While Buhari’s former supporters are mostly in the northern part of the country, especially northwest and northeast, which warehouses the poorest of the poor in Nigeria, Obi’s supporters are scattered across the south and north-central, especially the southeast and south-south, which has suffered disproportionately from the maladministration of the recent era. Again, while Buhari’s supporters are mainly Muslims, Obi’s are substantially Christians. So will Obi’s six million voters react to a failed presidential contest, the same way as Buhari’s touted 12 million voters?

    Obi must begin to worry about how to convert the bile against past maladministration that drives the Obidient movement, to a sustainable ideological political movement, for his future political relevance.

  • Why do they stick with Tinubu?

    Why do they stick with Tinubu?

    They called him “the last man standing.”

    That was in 2003, when President Olusegun Obasanjo schemed out five of the six governors seeking reelection on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), to manufacture a basis for claiming that the Southwest, where the party ruled the roost and his PDP was an unpopular opposition, had abandoned the AD and coalesced into his political bastion.

    Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, governor of Lagos State, was the sole survivor of the sextet who had held sway in the region since the restoration of democracy.

    Obasanjo did not take his defeat in Lagos lightly.  It undercut his claim to suzerainty in the Southwest.  He impounded federal funds that statutorily belonged to Lagos State with impunity, hoping thereby to cripple the Tinubu Administration.  Not even court rulings declaring his action ultra vires moved him to relent.

    The impoundment only brought out Tinubu’s extraordinary resourcefulness.   Through deft political engineering, he generated enough funds to sustain the administration and to set on the march to modernity the megalopolis that is Lagos.

    Almost two decades and countless trials and tribulations later, the man has remained unbowed, and now stands canonized as the nation’s President-elect.  En route, Tinubu evolved into one of the most significant political actors in Nigeria, a kingmaker courted and wooed by aspirants to elected office.

    Nor is his influence limited to Nigeria.  He relates with most of the leaders of the West African  Economic Community  (ECOWAS) on a first-name basis. Whenever he is travelling in that region, you would think that he is a visiting head of state.

    Few of his contemporaries when he was state governor are today on speaking terms with their former deputies, commissioners, and senior officials.  Barely- disguised resentment and low-intensity warfare characterize relations between most of yesterday’s state governors and their former associates, some of whom could not wait for the next election cycle before seeking to supplant them

    Tinubu has had a falling out with many of his former associates all right.  Vice versa, many of his former associates have broken ranks with him, only to return to the fold. They are to be seen representing him at functions at home and abroad, articulating his views and generally helping to project him and his political agenda.

    In that respect, Tinubu stands in a class of his own.  Why is this the case?

    Former president Goodluck Jonathan’s remarks at an event honoring him in Bauchi back in 2020 got me exploring that question.  

    Dr Jonathan was in town as the special guest of Governor Bala Mohammed, at the commissioning of his first legacy project, the 6.25 km. Sabon Kaura-Jos bypass.  The governor, who once served in Jonathan’s Administration as a minister from the ranks of the opposition, gratefully acknowledged Jonathan as his mentor, and as a person who had made a great impact on his life.

    To immortalise his guest, he named the bypass Goodluck Jonathan Road.  It was also perhaps the first time anyone would in public acknowledge the much-vilified former president as a mentor.

    Hear him:

    “I have been in government for a reasonable time. I have attained a number of levels starting from deputy governor and most of us after leaving office, some of the people you think that if they don’t see you will not eat, will just forget that you even exist.”

    He could also have said of such people that they would give you the impression that they would have no intimacy even with their wives unless you approved it.  But once you leave office, they forget that you exist.

    Liars, and bootlickers.

    His host, Governor Bala Mohammed, was not that kind of person, Jonathan told his audience.  Unlike those aides and allies who had deserted him after he left office, the Bauchi governor was a trusted “son” and a person of “unparalleled loyalty”.

    “Today,” Jonathan went on, “is a very big day for me, and you know why, because it is not easy for somebody to work with you in Nigeria then, even after leaving office, that person still continues with that kind of strong relationship with you.”

    Jonathan had every right to regard that day as one he would never forget.

    All in all, a fine outing for the former president.

    Given Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s improbable path to power, his unremarkable performance in office and the tentativeness that was his trademark, his life out of power seemed guaranteed a rapid descent into the obscurity from which he had been thrust into celebrity.

    He had experienced the kind of loneliness that only those who have held and lost high office in Nigeria know.  It can be brutal and disorienting.

    Jonathan had been there; he knew the special loneliness that comes with being not just an ex-this or an ex-that, but of being an ex-president. From the way he narrated his experience the other day, loneliness after the Aso Rock years is almost sepulchral.

    The phone that used to ring nonstop now sputters only intermittently.  After a while, it goes silent for days on end.  A ghostly silence pervades the house.  The visitors who once thronged the living room and even the family quarters have all found better use for their time.

    Invitations to all kinds of ceremonies dry up.  Full-page congratulatory adverts that used to crowd out news content in the better newspapers on birthdays and wedding anniversaries all but vanish.  Unsolicited gifts no longer arrive at the gate by the truckload.

    For old times’ sake, or just to kill boredom, you call up a former supplicant who would have stopped whatever he was doing back then and reported immediately if you summoned him.  Now, he will not even take your call or he will take it and without even pretending to be the steward or a guest, tell you that he is not at home.

    If he is in a foul mood, he might actually tell you gruffly that you have the wrong number and must never dial it again.

    Ingrates, all.

    Jonathan’s remarks at the Bauchi event led to a larger point that I would like to make in this exploratory piece about the sociology of leadership and followership in Nigeria.

    Dr Jonathan spoke of Governor Mohammed’s “unparalleled loyalty.” Was he implying that those who deserted him after he left office were deficit in loyalty?   It does not follow, of course.  Loyalty is not a one-way affair.

    There are those who would be disloyal, no matter what.  But as a rule, loyalty begets loyalty. How many of Jonathan’s aides and allies could count on his support when they needed it?  How many of them counted on his standing by them?  How many could rest easy that he had their back?

    The relationship between boss and subordinate in Nigeria seems for the most part transactional.  It endures so long as it is profitable to either party. Or so long as there is a reasonable expectation of profit.  If no profit is guaranteed, each goes his or her separate way.

    This formulation seems to break down when applied to the APC National Leader (and now President-elect), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and his associates.  Most of those who marched on the streets with him during the “June 12” protests or waged the struggle from exile in the United States or immersed themselves in the progressive cause he has been championing still belong in the fold.

    Associates from the time he was governor of Lagos can be seen or heard today representing him and speaking for him at events in Nigeria and abroad.  His concerns have largely remained their concerns.

    His legendary munificence helps, to be sure, but it does not fully explain their “strong relationship” with him, the kind that Jonathan did not enjoy with those who had previously worked with him.

    Tinubu’s large and stable following also has much to do with his large-heartedness, his capacity for forgiving wrongs for the sake of a larger cause and moving on.  We saw that large-heartedness most poignantly on display some three years ago during his visit to the home of the departed Afenifere spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin, to condole with his widow.

    For sheer scurrility, it would be hard to beat Odumakin’s full-bore tirade against Tinubu, his one-time patron.  And yet, it was from Tinubu that the most eloquent tribute to Odumakin’s memory came, with a gift of N50 million to his family.

    This large-heartedness and his natural disposition to empathy, I believe, help explain Tinubu’s teeming and enduring followership.

  • Post-poll nihilism

    Post-poll nihilism

    Prof. Wole Soyinka, our own WS, calls it fascism.  

    But to get an international anchor of all the post-poll nihilism in Nigeria, and the eventual futility and disgrace awaiting the nihilists, beam your searchlight on Kenya.

    Also, look at the eternal fumble and stumble of Donald Trump in the United States: twice impeached as president; and the first former president arraigned on criminal charges in US history.

    The local nihilists here are not unlike Trump.  The more Trump sinks and falters, the more he postures he’s staring in some Scooby-Doo — or is it Scrappy-Do now? — infantile cartoons, with thunderous cheers from kids, firmly locked in their sweet, infantile bubble!

    The more Peter Obi and co border on the treasonable and the felonious in their demagoguery, temporal and spiritual, the more their zombie-like captives, primordial and spiritual, lustfully cheer!

    They echo so eerily the Yoruba tragic drum.  Its thunder-clap sounds are grim invites to nothing but premature shredding.

    But back to America: the Trump that in 2016 bragged he could do anything and get away with it just faced cold reality check, looking so stone-faced from the dock!  

    So long for breakfast served chilled, for a perpetual child locked in an old man’s frame!  However the case is decided, Trump would never be the same!

    Neither will Nigeria’s post-poll comics, as they drive themselves into a cul-de-sac: again, a lift off the Trump play book of virulent election denial-ism; the butt of scornful  jokes from the court of public opinion — or even grimmer stuff, with their clear hugging of treason! 

    But back to Kenya.  ”Obidients”, in their cyber bully empire, drew loud joy from the social media-powered election of “youth-backed” President William Ruto.  

    If the social media could enthrone Ruto in Kenya, beating Raila Odinga, then backed by the sitting President Uhuru Kenyatta, against his own Vice President, why not Nigeria?  That was their own contemptuous riposte to Obi’s glaring lack of “structure”

    That was the pre-election fundament of Obi’s post-election hallucinations. 

    But what did the Kenyan “youth” do with their very own, Ruto’s victory?  With less than 100 days in office, the same “youth” queued behind Odinga — their visceral reject of less than three months ago — to power crippling protests against Ruto, their very own!

    So long for “open sesame” approach to serious challenges of governance!

    Still, Nigeria’s post-election lunacy is reaching troubling heights, leading to DSS, the Nigerian secret police, to read the riot act.

    The climax of that madness was some comics, with their cowardly sponsors, taking their treasonable protest to Defence Headquarters at Abuja, and begging the Army for a take-over.  What lunacy!

    Had the police arrested those protesters on the basis of putative treason cloaked in  democracy, their sponsors should by now be singing like canaries.

    Then, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, Peter Obi’s running mate in the February 25 presidential election, came on Channels TV to infernally brag and threaten the Nigerian state, should it dare to be bound by the rule of law, of inaugurating the president-elect!

    Channels, boasting own agenda but not always noble, got trapped with own hypocrisy. The NBC, broadcast regulators, slammed on it a N5 million fine for reckless air fare on public TV — no tears from here.

    But if Channels can cough out N5 million for Datti’s “jam talk” — to borrow that picturesque pidgin phrase — why should Datti walk free for threatening Nigerian democracy, in supreme, if misguided, outlawry?  

    Then, enter Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and her beatification of primordial angst as suave electoral petition; in her open letter to US President Joe Biden — and the June 12 crisis, of 30 years ago, seems alive, if not so well!

    Not so well — because a noble and incorruptible Muhammadu Buhari is locked in the Nigerian presidency.  Thirty years ago, it was a dissembling Ibrahim Babangida, self-imposed “military president”, courting wayward co-souls and near-ruining their country. 

    Indeed, Adichie internationalizing electoral near-fibs reminds you of many IBB/Abacha regime zealots, who clambered on CNN to impugn MKO Abiola’s victory.  

    But at the local level were a bevy of reactionaries, committed body and soul to the IBB regime’s white lies, filled with supreme hubris that evil would triumph over good.

    Arthur Nzeribe was the unfazed evil genius, with his Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) — what a name! — that nevertheless worked overtime for Nigeria’s ruin.  With subversive court injunctions, Nzeribe near-singularly torpedoed the June 12, 1993 presidential election — and with it, the inchoate 3rd Republic.

    Uche Chukwumerije, ex-Biafra propaganda czar, as IBB Transitional Government’s Information Secretary (minister), churned out relentless scare messages that created a sense of siege.  So deep was that sense that many Igbo fled Lagos, when no one pursued them, in the mortal fear that Lagos would blow up.  Many of them, innocent souls, perished in road crashes, in that panicky dash to homeland.

    Clement Akpamgbo, SAN, as federal attorney-general, was legal blacksmith-in-chief, forging IBB-era decrees, from that regime’s infernal furnace.  He was the regime’s No. 1 legal conspirator against June 12. 

    Why, in the Abacha high noon of post-June 12 madness, even Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Eze Igbo Gburugburu himself, bragged that as elected delegate into the Abacha-era constitutional conference, his “mandate” was superior to MKO’s!

    It is then to the nefarious acts of the likes of Nzeribe, Chukwumerije and Akpamgbo, all vermin of June 12 history, that Adichie is attaching her immaculate craft and distinguished name, over an election clearly won and lost!

    Hers is a democratic choice, to be sure.  But also sure is the inevitable stain that comes with staking your reputation on sweeping — or worse — false claims.   

    In 1993 and 1994, the opening years of the June 12 crisis, George H. W. Bush (US president till 1993) and Bill Clinton (new US president from 1994), were eons away from the Donald Trump era of rabid election-deniers and allied ruffians.

    So, if you froze history, Adichie’s letter might have made some sense to Bush or Clinton.  But not Joe Biden — himself a victim of American election deniers!  

    Why would Biden, therefore, not feel the civic evil of election deniers in Nigeria — because a venerated but misguided fiction writer, is excitedly writing fiction as real-life facts?  What hubris!

    But it’s as Karl Marx quipped: history oft repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce!  That paints the tragic farce of the Adichie appeal.

    The June 12 annulment won’t repeat itself here.  Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the president-elect, would be inaugurated — except, of course, those who have issues with his mandate can convince the courts otherwise.  That’s the way of rule of law.

    The repeat that would happen — and sweetly so — are sore election losers, morphing into virulent election deniers, sinking deep into the infamy of history.  

    That is the smelly heap Adichie, Obi, Datti and co risk — no matter their sweet primordial or partisan schmoozing right now.