The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Obidients’ post-truth fantasies

    Obidients’ post-truth fantasies

    If there is anything that the camp of Obidients in their curated world of alternative reality has achieved somewhat, it is how their inelegantly constructed universe of a ‘stolen presidency’ has continued to hold the imagination of their deluded members. Even when the raw facts tell a different story, it seems to me a measure of their relative success that their narratives of ‘flawed’ election have remained the talking point in a segment of the mainstream media and among their allies. That what I observed on this page last week, as a deliberate mischaracterisation of the February/March polls has gone unchallenged for so long, has remained a mystery!

    Now, they appear unstoppable. They have largely succeded in drowning alternative voices, attacking just about everyone and every institution in sight. The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, they have attacked for being an unworthy electoral body, with its chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, cast in the most unflattering robes of a con artist. They even dared to accuse the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola, of sneaking into London under the cover of darkness for what, they said, was a clandestine meeting with president-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to pervert the course of justice! And while at that, they didn’t forget to serve notice that only a judgment acceptable to their quarters will be welcomed!

    Lest I forget, their agents have also been unrelenting in their utterly self-serving but atrociously specious narratives of putting the FCT votes over and above the votes cast in the other 36 states apparently convinced that a contrived technical justice could help when all else fails! And while this is going on, we have seen some of their members set up barricades at the Defence House in Abuja to demand that the military step in since apparently, their man can’t be seen to lose fair and square! As for the May 29 inauguration, it is to them off the table, at least, not until they give the go ahead!

    Only in the past week, we saw a member of the external wing of the Obidients press such false narratives in foreign media in what I call, a programmed launch into the post-truth era! And all of these because Peter Obi lost an election!  That is the scourge that our dear nation is currently afflicted with. It is cerytainly their exclusive, post-truth world.

    Coincidentally, whereas Peter Obi, his running mate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed and their Labour Party are not the only the parties in court to challenge the result, only their camp has maintained that the only verdict acceptable is the one that restores an illusory mandate to the third place winner!

    Like I stated on this page last week, I appreciate how the pain of losing can sometimes prove difficult to bear. But then, the issue goes beyond such sentiments of a ‘hollow democracy’ as churned by that – not exactly unbiased – talking head comfortably ensconced on a foreign soil. Unfortunately, while the glib talks of stolen presidency and other tawdry, roadside tales about ‘flawed’ or compromised process continue to rouse the rabble, the filings in court, as well as the raw data from the elections, have certainly provided clearer insights into the claims about the process than those making the wild, ill-mannered effusions would bother to pay attention!

    Nigeria is an interesting place to live in. Take a look at the three legged claim put out by Obi to the electoral tribunal: first, that the president-elect, Bola Tinubu is not eligible to be voted for; second, that even if he is eligible, he did not get the two-thirds of votes cast in Abuja and, third, that the election was marred with violence and other malpractices – claims that no less a personality that the revered elder statesman, Robert Clarke, has dismissed, not uncharitably, as non-starters! Short of asking the court to strip the winner of his hard-won victory, I have struggled to find that solid patch on which the mortally wounded third-place winner could stand to stake his claim of victory. Yet, while the claims in the context of the hard facts would remain delusional, those are the kinds of vituperations that the rest of the orderly society is forced to put up with on a daily basis, and this on an election that all of us – yes, the remnant tribe yet to succumb to that lethal virus of selective amnesia – are participant-observers! It is so wearisome.

    The fact, and which has now been borne out by the results, is that the Labour Party candidate, even for all his twitter-showmanship does not as yet possess a viable pathway to the Nigerian presidency. Sure he posted predictable performances in the Southeast states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo and the South-south states of Edo, Cross River and Delta. And added Lagos, the most prized jewel to his crown; and then to a lesser degree, the predominantly Christian states of Plateau, Nassarawa and Benue States. Where else, outside those precincts where the two factors of ethnicity and religion were in strong play that is, could things have turned out otherwise?

    Or could Obi have won in Kwara, Kogi or Niger or Kaduna? Or the far north-eastern states of Borno and Yobe. What of the Northwest states of Sokoto, Katsina or even Zamfara? Nigerians would certainly be interested in the results returned by his agents in those states. They will most certainly be interested in finding out why the victories in some parts are deserving of accommodation while the results from the places where losses were recorded are not worth the paper they were written on!

    Even more bizarre is the claim of widespread electoral violence. That, we certainly know is not true. Now, any incident of violence is regrettable. Yes, there were a few minor skirmishes but these were simply too minor to have any impact on the overall outcomes. Those interested might want to check this out: the BVAS, according to official sources, recorded 88% success rate in the 176,606 polling units across the country. Only in nine percent of polling units did the BVAS malfunction and were soon after, fixed; in another two per cent, the BVAS malfunctioned and were promptly replaced.

    Of course, Nigerians would require some education on the meaning of voter suppression in the context of the polls, whether these are grounded in reality or are mere derivatives of the rumour mill. At an overall voter turnout of 26.87%, the 2023 election is without question, the lowest in Nigeria’s chequered democratic history. But then, it is – as they say – what it is; the issue of voter apathy neither detracts from its credibility nor impugns its outcomes. Put it to the failure of party-mobilisation.

    In any case, Nigerians might find it interesting that the turnout in the Southeast averaged 19.95%. In fact, Obi’s home state of Anambra turned out a mere 22.61 percent of which he recorded a moon slide victory of ninety-something percent after his supporters reportedly chased  away the supporters of other parties.  Remember, the same Peter Obi and his Labour Party, would speak of an alleged voter intimidation and suppression in a Lagos that turned out an equally modest 17.53 percent? Will the charge of voter suppression also apply to his kith in Ebonyi (19.86 percent), Enugu (21.34 percent) and Imo (18.95 percent)?

    I once heard a sage say that you don’t beat a child and expect him/her not to cry; only that it would be foolhardy to allow the child to set the house ablaze in the event that he/she could not have things his/her way. It seems about time rational minds began to speak out!

  • INEC on campaign funds

    INEC on campaign funds

    The recent guidelines issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on campaign expenditure may tame extravagant campaign expenses if strictly followed. While for smaller parties the limits on expenses indicate that party politics is still an expensive venture, for bigger parties it would be a big hurdle to keep within the limits of expenditure. The guidelines are based on the Electoral Act 2022, which in sections 85-90 detailed the limits on campaign expenses by parties and their candidates, as well as sanctions for any breach.

    Section 88(2) states: “The maximum election expenses to be incurred by a candidate at a presidential election shall not exceed N5,000,000.00” while sub-section 3 provides: “The maximum amount of election expenses to be incurred by a candidate in respect of governorship election shall not exceed N1,000,000.00”. The expenses cascades down to councillorship candidates. Interestingly, Section 98(2) left the limits of campaign expenses of a political party in the hand of the commission in consultation with the parties.

    In exercise of that mandate, the commissioned has issued electoral guidelines which provided as follows: “The election expenses of a political party for management of party primaries shall not exceed two-third (2/3) of the limits prescribed for candidates expenses in the Electoral Act 2022 for respective elective positions.” It further provided: “The election expenses of a political party for conduct of elections shall not exceed two-third the limit of election expenses of each candidate multiplied by the number of candidates the political party shall sponsor in a particular election for elective positions.”

    By the above provision, the candidate and the political party shall not spend up to N10 billion for presidential campaign, and less than N2billion for gubernatorial campaign. While those sums are humongous for a smaller party wishing to campaign for big positions, it would not go far for the big parties wishing to dominate every part of the country or a state, for the presidential or gubernatorial campaigns as the case may be.  

    Read Also: APC chieftain to INEC chairman: Press charges against Chimamanda over bribery claim

    The challenges for candidates and political parties are compounded by poor infrastructural development, and insecurity plaguing the country. For a presidential candidate seeking to connect to different parts of the country for campaigns, such candidate has to substantially rely on private transportation arrangement. That would include hiring private jets, and helicopters, instead of riding in a regular flight to a close-by airport and driving to the venue of a political rally. If train services were a feature of our public transport, it would even make it cheaper for candidates and their parties.

    Another huge hurdle which would increase the campaign expenses is the prevailing insecurity across the country. Most of the candidates and their parties would be paying huge costs on security for their campaigns across the country. When private candidates are forced to make expensive security arrangement for marriage ceremonies and communities pay heavily for protection from bandits and terrorists, the costs to protect campaign grounds would be much higher. For gubernatorial candidates who may need to go into the hinterland, there would be no-go area, unless accompanied by a battalion of soldiers.

    But an interesting guideline is the ceiling on campaign donations from individuals and the requirement for financial records and publications. As stated in reports: “the maximum amount of money or other assets that an individual or an entity can donate to a political party or aspirant for an election shall be N50 million .” Section 90(3) of the Electoral Act provides: “A political party shall not accept any monetary or other contribution which is more than N50,000,000.00 unless it can identify the source of the money or other contribution to the commission.”

    The above provision is particularly worthwhile, so that no single individual would use his or her resources to buy up a party, and dictate the tune should such a party win the election. The Act in subsection 4, as a follow up provides: “A political party sponsoring the election of a candidate shall, within three months after the announcement of the results of the election, file a report of the contributions made by individuals and entities to the commission.”

    A strict observance of the provisions of Section 89 of the Electoral Act on election expenses of political parties would bring control and sanity to the conduct of political parties, even though some may argue it can also be used to witchhunt parties. Sub-section 3 provides: “Election expenses of a political party shall be submitted to the commission in a separate audited return within six months after the election and such return shall be signed by the political party’s auditors and countersigned by the chairman of the party and be supported by a sworn affidavit by the signatories as to the correctness of its contents.”    

    Sub-section 4 provides that “a political party which contravenes sub-section 3 commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a maximum of N1,000,000.00 and in the case of failure to submit an accurate audited return within the stipulated period, the court may impose a maximum penalty of N200,000.00 per day on any party for the period after the return was due until is submitted to the commission.” These provision if substantially applied would bring sanity to the administration of political parties.

    No doubt, for a political party to grow organically, transparency in the management of its resources is key, and so the submission and publication in national dailies of the audited accounts of political parties as required by the Electoral Act is important. In the present dispensation, we have seen leaders of political parties run them like a private enterprise, and when such bad leaders are tired, they move on to another party. Again, allegations of corruption no doubt undermine the integrity of leadership and growth of political parties, and hopefully the new law will stem it.

    While many have canvased for the creation of special electoral offences court, Section 145(1) of the act however provides that trial of offences contained in the act shall be by Magistrate or High Court of a state in which the offence is committed, or the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Sub-section 2 further provides that prosecution of offenders shall be undertaken by legal officers of the commission or any legal practitioner appointed by it.

    There is no doubt that Nigeria is making incremental progress with regards to securing the electoral process, particularly with respect to curbing electoral expenses. The challenge remains getting the political actors to adapt new electoral behaviours, and imbibe the culture of seeing politics as a vocation instead of a business. Those who join political parties mainly for material gains, instead of an avenue to serve, may have to suffer the consequences of the offences listed in the Electoral Act 2022, before they learn their lessons.

  • Two memorable encounters

    Two memorable encounters

    In early August 1994, Dr Doyin Abiola, managing director editor-in-chief of Concord Newspapers and I, editorial  page editor and chair of the Editorial Board from Guardian Newspapers but with no authority from management,  went to see Lateef Jakande, General Sani Abacha’s senior minister, in his residence in Ilupeju, Lagos.

    Of the major privately-owned newspapers, only Vanguard, Champion and Tribune were still in circulation. The Guardian, Punch and Concord had been banned by the Abacha regime for, in its judgement, lending sympathy overtly or covertly to June Twelvers, the groups challenging the annulment of the 1993 Presidential election. 

    So were the vibrant newsmagazines, TheNews, Tell, and the weekly Tempo.  ThisDay was still on the drawing board.

    Even the Sketch, a regional newspaper owned by the government of the states that formerly constituted Western Nigeria, was not spared,

    How could Jakande, a pillar of the Nigerian press, continue to serve in a government that banned some of the nation’s best newspapers?

    That was the question we put to him after laying out the impact of the ban on the right of the public to receive and impart news, information and ideas as spelled out  in the section of the national constitution that had not been repealed,  the lives and wellbeing of media workers,  and on the industry.

    He listened attentively.  Not once did he interrupt our presentation.  Then, in a voice that registered just above a whisper, he said we should go and see General Oladipo Diya whose position as the regime’s Chief of General Staff was ranked in the popular imagination with that of a prime minister. 

    This was  clearly a false equivalence, but no matter.  For one thing, it did no harm. For another, it humoured Diya and his acolytes.

    Following that meeting,  Dr Abiola and I, together with Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi, president of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria, headed to Abuja to meet Diya.

    His residence was a bunker,  with sandbags piled almost to the ceiling.  It was late evening.  But even if it had been broad daylight, there would not have been enough natural light to transact any serious business.  The resident was cut off completely form the hustle and bustle, the sounds and the smells, of the outside.

    “What a life?” I sighed in self-communion.

    You could not but admire Diya’s military bearing.  His presence was commanding but not intimidating,  He made you feel at ease.

    We laid out our case again, telling him that Jakande, whom we had met earlier, had told us to bring up the matter to him.  We had come to urge him to intercede directly with Abacha to lift the ban on private newspapers so that thousands of media employees could return to work.

    “But their salaries are being paid?” he interjected,

    No, sir.  Not so.

    It turned out that he was unaware that the Supreme Military Council, in which he ranked just under Abacha, had decreed a four-fold increase in the pump price of   gasoline the earlier that day.  It was from us he first learned about it.

    Our conversation turned to Moshood Abiola, the detained winner of the 1993 presidential election.   He was kept in solitary, denied access to newspapers and radio, denied access to all reading material except the Holy Bible and the Quran, and only rarely allowed visitations by his family and his personal physician. 

    Abiola’s condition, a subject of public discussion and concern, was said to be   deteriorating fast; yet and the regime would not free him to go overseas for medical treatment.

    I asked Diya whether he had seen Abiola since he was detained.

    “No,” he said, matter-of-factly.

    Clearly, Diya was not in the loop, despite his grand official title.  He gave us no  assurance that he would take up out matter with Abacha.  He was in no position to do that.

    Some two years later, the regime in which he was a rank outsider nevertheless charged him with high treason, arraigned him before a kangaroo court, which sentenced him to death.

    Abacha’s killing squad was scouting around for an execution site that would serve as an object lesson for officers who might be contemplating an insurrection when he expired in an orgy of concupiscence.

    Donaldson Oladipo Diya regained his freedom and his command, and lived for another 25 years.

    He died two weeks, ago, aged 78 years.

    The day after our visit with Diya, the Abuja High Court was scheduled to consider, for the umpteenth time, Abiola’s application for bail. His wife Doyinsola, Yemi Ogunbiyi  and I, managed to find our way to the court.

    Security could only have been a little more suffocating at Nuremberg.  Over a mile-long stretch leading to the premises, I counted no fewer than five checkpoints, all manned by combat-ready soldiers and riot police.

    Abiola cut a pitiful sight.  Before his captivity, he was easily one of the best-dressed persons in the country.  That day, his three-piece attire, though far from shabby, was nondescript, cheap.  His feet were so swollen he could not wear proper shoes, only ill-fitting casuals.

    The right side of his face was swollen, as if a ping pong ball had been forced into that corner of his mouth.   But he was his usual witty and cheerful self.  He showed no signs of self-pity.  Those looking for signs of defeat in his manner must have been disappointed.  He carried himself with the kind of dignity that flows from conviction of the justness of one’s cause, and the certainty of victory ultimately.

    The hearing ended all too quickly.

    Following some points of law raised by Abiola’s large team of attorneys led by Chief GOK Ajayi (SAN) and Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), the court adjourned.  Piqued, the Federal Solicitor-general, Tochukwu Onwugbufor announced petulantly that he was travelling abroad for medical treatment, and that Abiola’s attorneys would have only themselves to blame for the long delay that was sure to follow.

    Between him and Abiola, it as Abiola who seemed in more urgent need of medical treatment.

    For an hour after the court adjourned, Abiola was allowed to see two or three at a time, and under the close watch of Abacha’s security officials, some of his relations, friends and sympathisers who had come from near and far.

    Many of them, especially those for whom Abiola was the sole provider, had come to tell him that he had already made whatever point he had set out to make, and that it was time for him to cut a deal, go home, reconnect with his family, attend to his health and rebuild his crippled business empire.  Some of them presented the message as a plea, a solemn entreaty; others were less subtle.

    Abiola’s senior wife, Kudirat would have none of it.  The president-elect, she said to everyone’s hearing, could not betray the people’s trust.  He could not yield to forces seeking to thwart the democratic will of the people. 

    Her voice was firm, resolute.

    When I finally took my turn meet Abiola, he greeted me warmly, adding that he had learned of my steadfast support.  “Aburo,” he said, seeking to make the most of the brief audience.  “You have heard what they are saying.  They are saying that I have played my part and that it is time to for me to go home and look after myself and my family and my business.”

    “I have heard it all, Bashorun,” I replied.

    “What do you think?” he said, looking me in the eye.

    This was the hardest question I had ever been asked.

    What do you say to a hostage who had a multibillion-dollar business empire  and perhaps his life to lose if he remained unyielding but could regain his freedom and everything that  went with it by simply telling his captors that he would no longer pursue his claim to being president-elect of Nigeria? 

    Suppose the man was my father, uncle or brother? 

    “It is not yet time, Bashorun, I said tremulously.  “But we are almost there.”

    He seemed reassured.  Some twenty minutes later, I managed to gain entry into the reception area again.  As I bade him farewell, he asked me the question he had asked earlier.  Tremulous as ever, I repeated my answer.

    Pressures on Abiola to renounce his claim to being president-elect in exchange for  his freedom intensified after Abacha died suddenly.  The new head of state, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, kept Abiola in detention until he was done to death, literally across the coffee table from a United Staters delegation visiting ostensibly to negotiate terms that would lead to his release.

    Moshood Kasimawo Olawale Abiola died on July 7, 1998, aged 61 years.

  • Never again!

    Never again!

    Olakunle Abimbola

    No, the Yoruba Nation lobby never really “wedded” the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), just declared the world’s 10th most deadliest terrorist group — or did they?

    Maybe in the delusional world of closet anarchists in the Yoruba Nation camp: dreaming gory dreams of Yoruba-on-Yoruba violence, as IPOB did of its Igbo base: bashing skulls, hewing limbs, bombing homes and killing livelihoods with sadistic joy.

    The Yoruba dodged that bullet because good sense prevailed among the majority.  The rash Sunday Igboho, with his crude sabre-rattling, rushed himself into Siberia in Benin Republic, where he has been cooling his heels.

    Even more spiritually: since then, the Ilana Omo Oodua Worldwide, the lobby that goaded Igboho to embrace his sorry fate, suddenly fell upon themselves.

    In December 2022, Tunde Amusat, announced that Prof. Banji Akintoye, world renowned History blue blood and Ilana’s celebrated Alana (Yoruba for Pathfinder), had quit his “pathfinder” duty, for “old age and a weakened body system”.

    But by January 6, grimmer news would break.  Maxwell Adeleye, Ilana’s communications secretary under Prof. Akintoye, claimed he had resigned from the body on 5 August 2022, cut off every communication with his Alana from 31 October 2022 and severed every relationship with the Ilana group by 2 January 2023.

    Then, he dropped the thunder, which threatened a heavy rain of financial incontinence:  ”I call on Prof. Banji Akintoye to also step aside 101% from the Yoruba Nation Self-Determination Struggle so that his account of stewardship and all the funds he has collected can be interrogated by the Yoruba people.”

    To be sure, these allegations were never proven.  But as these matters go, hints of sleaze, even if they are lies from the pit of hell, fire idle public imagination and coral rabid attention, more than anything.  

    If President Muhammadu Buhari has succeeded in near-contemptuously ignoring his many traducers, it’s because his integrity — bordering on the proverbial Caesar’s wife’s — can’t easily be impeached, no matter how long or hard you try.

    Prof. Akintoye, still revered even with many Yoruba doubting the wisdom of his Ilana Oodua gambit, has met the Adeleye challenge with studied and dignified silence.  

    That explained the all-quiet-on-the-Ilana-front — until a few days ago when the same Ilana belted out a dissociation, again putting the goodly professor in the dock.  

    Prof. Akintoye was alleged to have authored a joint press release with Simon Ekpa, new self-named commander-in-chief of IPOB’s romantic anarchy, with the chaining of Nnamdi Kanu, for his past and reckless gambits.

    The Ilana’s angst was no repudiation of Yoruba self-determination, even if it didn’t establish which pan-Yoruba assembly gave it that mandate.  

    It was rather to distance the body from IPOB’s terrorism; and chastise Prof. Akintoye for that unfortunate coupling.

    “Very lately a global body has put IPOB in the index of terrorist organizations occupying the position of number 10 deadliest terrorist group in the world,” the Ilana Omo Oodua roared in its disclaimer. “To, therefore, attach our name to IPOB, already rated as a terrorist organization, by Prof. Akintoye, will surely spell a bad implication to our organization duly registered with the U.K.”

    The questions, however, are: if Prof. Akintoye had stepped down as Ilana leader, in what capacity was he co-authoring a press release with IPOB’s Ekpa?

    Was there a secret pact between Ilana and IPOB, unknown to most?  Did IPOB’s dubbing as a deadly terror group force a panicky dissociation from the Yoruba camp?  

    To what purpose was that partnership, given the havoc IPOB had wreaked on own native South East space?

    Interesting times!  Still, the moral here is clear: like the Biblical Tower of Babel, any enterprise that sprouted from intrigues would most likely peter out in chaos and crisis.  

    That would appear the essential Ilana story, with the flak going the way of Prof. Akintoye, ordinarily a revered Yoruba elder and Nigerian patriot — until the “Yoruba leader” phase of his long and distinguished life.  

    Just as well it appears ending in tears — for the Yoruba Nation lobby, as Ripples had always maintained, even at its reckless high noon, was to de-market and delegitimize the South West formal political order, on altar of explosive Yoruba ultra-nationalism.

    That direct conspiracy dated back to a gathering in Ibadan, on 22 August 2019, which out of the blue, elected a “Yoruba Leader”; and dressed up Prof. Akintoye in that robe.  

    Why, that gathering even nominated Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, among its many presumptive aspirants!  Even Prof. Akintoye, that “won”, wasn’t there.  

    So, was Tinubu’s nomination and “defeat” a deliberate slur?  Even then, when did Tinubu tell anyone he craved to be “Yoruba leader”?

    But 22 August 2019 only followed eons of “egbirin ote” (Yoruba for a nest of intrigues), by the likes of Baba Ayo Adebanjo and his lobby, who weaponized personal anti-Tinubu spite, served as “Yoruba” angst; and posturing how they, and their camp, were more “Yoruba” than others!

    That satanic campaign had driven Baba to the most incongruous of emergency bed mates — 2015: Goodluck Jonathan; 2019: Atiku Abubakar; 2023: Peter “Yes, Daddy” Obi — hardly ideological comrades that Awo, Baba’s sworn avatar, would be proud of!

    For the Ijebu chief, from 2015 to 2023, it’s been a hat trick of crushing, electoral shellacking!  Yet, even after Tinubu had become president-elect, and Governor Jide Sanwo-Olu had won a second term, Baba Adebanjo still hollers in comic self-delusion:  Obi won!  Obi won!  Chinedu of Lagos won!  How tragic!

    That has prompted a harsh but right censure from the Afenifere rump the old man loves to serially abuse for his ultra-personal vendetta, dressed up as “Yoruba” advocacy!

    The “Yoruba Nation” move of August 2019 grabbed the twin-bomb of Tinubu resent and Fulani hate: the twin-fare of long-established Adebanjo campaign, now fraudulently robed as a Yoruba agenda.

    Besides, President Muhammadu Buhari, the “hated” Fulani, just won a second term.  Tinubu paved his way, as part of the North West-South West alliance that was the APC fulcrum.  It was time to weaponize the dire nationwide security situation and dub it “Fulani capture” of Yorubaland!

    In this warped thinking, both PMB and Tinubu must be destroyed, even if the APC government offered the Yoruba excellent opportunities to showcase their talents — witness Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Works and Housing Minister, Tunde Fashola — on the national scale; and the Yoruba had their fair share of cutting national infrastructural renewal.  

    But thank God it all miscarried.  Even more: Yorubaland dodged the IPOB bullet of communal self-destruction from a brainless agitation.

    The Ilana panicky dissociation from IPOB should be an eternal reminder: never again!

  • Emergence of super states

    Emergence of super states

    The 5th Alteration Act 2023, recently signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari may be the most significant so far in the incremental attempt to rein in some of the outlandish unitary provisions in the 1999 constitution, foisted on Nigeria, by the hurriedly departing military. While the amendments may not be far reaching for ultra-federalists, it has answered the prayers of this column and many others, with regards to decentralizing the most important modern factor of production – electricity.  

    Out of the 16 constitution amendment bills signed into law, the most significant economically is the movement of electricity power production and distribution from exclusive to concurrent legislative list. As has been canvassed here, stultified electricity supply is the major contributor to the poor economic growth of our national economy over the years. Whether generated by wind, water, solar, gas or other forms of fuel, efficient supply and use of electricity can catapult a third world economy to first class economy within a decade.

    Until the recent amendment, the economic development of states was strangulated by the monopoly of the federal government of this production enabler. But with the amendment, states can generate, transmit and distribute electricity in areas covered by the national grid. The effort by states to engage private capital in that sector has gotten a boost with the new constitutional amendment. With the freedom, states wishing to transit to a modern economy now has the opportunity.

    Even the highly recommended regional economic integration now has an impetus with the new law. States within any of the regions which wish to collaborate to achieve the gains associated with numbers could lap on that opportunity to jointly own a generation plant, develop and build a sub-national grid and distribution network. Hopefully, in the nearest future, the incessant national grid collapse, would be a thing of past, and regions which have progressive agenda can move own at their own speed.

    Under the old regime, the centralized national electricity supply grid was a major challenge. Our maintenance culture of a single national grid exposed the nation to gross inefficiency and sabotage. With a land mass of 923,768 sq.km, it remains a big challenge for the grid to cover the entire country, efficiently. For places already covered by the grid, it remains a huge challenge to maintain and protect that critical national asset. On many occasions the grid either collapses because of maintenance challenge or outright sabotage, while the nation is thrown into darkness.

    Again, with rise in trans-national criminality and terrorism, it is unreasonable for a vast nation like ours to rely on a single national grid. An enemy of the nation can seriously hurt the country by attacking the national grid. Even when the grid is on, Nigerians suffered inadequate electricity generation. Despite the huge national resources pumped into the sector since the birth of Electricity Corporation of Nigeria in 1950, and the recent privatization of the power generation plants and distribution companies, the entire generation capacity of our vast country remained 11,165.4 MW, while the Transmission Company of Nigeria could at best transmit 5,801 MW. Whereas to sustain the basic needs of the population, Nigeria needs to generate 40,000 MW.

    The chaos is so much that what is generated cannot be transmitted, and where transmitted, cannot be effectively distributed. Where what is transmitted is distributed, getting the end users to pay a fair price is nigh impossible. The result has been that again the privatization of the distribution arm of the industry has failed to make any dent on the challenges. While there is a debate about the capacity of the private companies who got the concessions, the end users continue to pay huge price for the inefficiency in the sector.

    So, the constitution amendment that has gifted the sub-national authorities the right to generate, transmit and distribute electricity is revolutionary for a country held down by frustrating unitary laws. While the post-election crisis may have dimmed the import of that development, it is hoped that the emerging governments at the federal and state levels would take advantage of the opportunity and start our country on the path of sustainable economic development.

    Another significant economic development in the new Act is the right granted states to establish their own railway service. Again, states and regions can lap on this new law to boost state and regional economies. Interestingly, this column had also canvased for this constitutional amendment and had argued that the southeast could run a rail ring across the five states in the region linking the agricultural belt to the inland port in Onitsha for evacuation to other parts of the country and foreign countries.

    Of note, Professor Ben Ayade of Cross River had proposed the establishment of a super highway from his state, abutting a deep sea port, to Maiduguri. Such a highway, can be complimented by a rail line, built by the regions in that part of the country, since the federal government is reluctant to rebuild the old Port Harcourt to Maiduguri rail line. The states can also develop trams and intra-state rail services as Lagos State is seriously working on, in the state.

    One more significant provision in the amendment is the grant of financial independence to state Houses of Assembly and state judiciary. This development would help push state governors to be more accountable to the people they govern. Under the old regime, most of the governors project themselves as emperors, unaccountable to the state legislature, which is supposed to oversight them. Many state governors also use the control of state finances to subjugate the state judiciary, and so the amendment is a big boost to the independence of the legislature and judiciary.

    Unfortunately, the complementary need for states and even local governments to have the constitutional right to establish state police has not been achieved, under the 5th constitution amendment. With the election of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a strong advocate of restructuring, it is expected that many of the stifling unitary laws that have held our nation down since the advent of military government would be amended. Even when the National Assembly is populated by reactionary forces, there is hope for the emergence of a more federal Nigeria.

    The implication of the highlighted provisions of the 5th Alteration Act is that sooner than later, Nigerians would begin to have super states, which will join Lagos State, the acclaimed fifth largest economy in Africa to contend with national governments in the continent. Again as has been canvassed on this column, Nigeria must make a conscious effort to energize more sub-national economies, to help decongest Lagos and boost the nation’s economy. Without the emergence of more super states, Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gun powder.

  • Finally, the interim-ists

    Finally, the interim-ists

    One thing is certain- our politicians –thanks to their unending inventiveness, are unlikely to run out of bizarre ideas anytime soon. Mercifully, we have seen strange, extra-legal calls for the abortion of a still-running electoral process fail to push the electoral umpire off-course. This, it must be said, was not so much for lack of efforts by the bad losers, but because the electoral body’s internal systems, despite those minor glitches, somehow, still managed to hold fast.

    Nigerians are by now familiar with the kamikaze jurisprudence in which a weird, specious interpretation of that section of the 1999 constitution which purports to put the voters in the federal capital city in the super electoral category is being lobbed around by those who feel they must say something just to gain relevance.

    And just in case you have not heard the most asinine mischaracterisation of the February 25 and March 19 elections in which our otherwise highly informed commentariat would lapse into wild, a-historical generalisations that purports to put the just concluded elections in the same pedestal with the one the Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration conducted in 2007, you are regaled with the opinions of foreign media, international observers and their supposedly grim conclusions, by a section of the media that would in normal times, consider itself, the most authoritative at least on domestic matters!

    Now, the story of how the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) technology, once praised to high heavens, has suddenly become the Nigerian equivalent of United States Dominion Voting Systems said to have shooed the Great Donald J. Trump out of office is all over town!

    Yes; with each passing day come differential manifestations of the Post-Election- Loss-Trauma (PELT), whose sufferers claim to have won the elections (ostensibly in their dreams) but have thus far failed to get INEC to concur!

    Interestingly, while some elements in this class are on Abuja streets calling for the head of INEC boss, Prof Mamood Yakubu, and demanding that the already concluded process be re-started de novo, we have seen at least a member of the tribe (not ethnicity!) taking to the skies to demand that either the May 29 inauguration of the President-elect be cancelled or at least the date be expunged from the calendar!

    One of the more prominent members, Yusuf Datti, the Labour Party vice presidential candidate, was on television, making incendiary and potentially treasonable statements on the result of an election that his party was already in court to upend.  In their reckoning, the judiciary being either too corrupt or compromised to deliver justice – their kind of justice that is – have rendered the resort to desperate measures inevitable. With their massive presence in the twitterdom, a kingdom where anarchy is permitted and no rules observed, a most brutal war is already being fought on all fronts!

    Ordinarily, such activities should worry every true Nigerian. However, last week’s confirmation, by the nation’s lead spy agency, the Department of State Services, of a plot by yet-to-be named political actors to foist an interim government on the nation seems to have stretched the dangerous gambits to the utmost.

    Here, if the covert agency is to be believed, some of the key players are already known. More than that, its promoters had, according to it, held several meetings during which several options to actualize their plot were considered. Top among them are endless mass protests across Nigerian cities, getting a warrant to declare a state of emergency or a court injunction to stop the inauguration of the executive and the legislature at the federal and state levels.

    Familiar? One wagers that the agency would most likely have far more information on the plot than it’s willing to avail the public at this point in time. But then, to so cavalierly pronounce on those legitimate instruments, which ordinarily avails every citizen that have reasons to dissent as anything subversive is to call to question the agency’s understanding of the meaning of citizenship and democracy.

    For now, far be it from me to impute that the agency  lack credibility; suffice to say at this point that it needs to be far more convincing than it is currently willing/able to put out more so in a country where cynicism has become something of a daily staple.

    Interim nonsense – or whatever; most discerning Nigerians already have an idea of who the promoters are even if they are not exactly sure, let alone agree with their motivations.  They are the patrons of those who lost an election they believe they alone deserve to win, and who unable to access political power by popular votes, would insist on crafting a role for themselves as patron-saints outside of what the rules and the constitution prescribe!

    Nonetheless, I do understand where the DSS is coming from. In a country where delinquency/deviance is never in short supply, perhaps the morbid fear of one or two criminal operatives staging subversive plots via the judiciary or any other pliant institution and hence throwing spanners into the works would seem not to be entirely unreasonable. Remember Clement Akpamgbo and his comrade-in-infamy, Arthur Nzeribe of the Association of a Better Nigeria in the June 12, 1993 political debacle? But that was 30 years ago!

    In other words, bad as things appear to be – or as some would wish it is – Nigeria has certainly moved! It is neither a banana republic nor a gangland where just about any misguided element could, in selfish exploitation of political tensions, run roughshod over our systems and institutions. Clearly, if those principal actors in the 1992/3 contraption barely lived to tell the story, I believe it would be suicidal for anyone to try it in AD 2023! 

    This takes us to the final point in today’s piece – what to do with the bourgeoning tribe – those children of anger and entitlement, whose activities, while seeking to define the texture of our politics have now assumed a permanent fixture in all political engagements in a most destructive sense.

    The 2020 EndSARS protests were supposed to be something of a defining moment in youth agitation and expression. Initially advertised as protest against the excesses of the elite anti-robbery squad of the Nigeria Police, it morphed into an atavistic force, plunging the country into a needless and most horrendous spasm from which it is even now yet to recover. Today, few Nigerians, beyond the sheer horror the protesters unleashed on the people, could claim to have recognised the underlying sub-text, at least until its alter-ego, the Obidient Movement with its mindless rage barged into the political scene. These are dwellers in the alternative universe where apparently no known rules and conventions are applicable; they have long announced that it is either their way or the hell’s highway!

    With them, our dear country had better brace up to a long dark night ahead! Surely, some fathers, nay, interim-ists, do have them!

  • Politics as carnival

    Politics as carnival

    Just about the only thing that Nigerians agreed on in the run-up to the General Election was that it was going to be the “most consequential” in the nation’s history.”   Just how consequential it would be, they had not the slightest inkling.

    Two weeks after the final results were announced, the consequences have merely begun to unfold.   Many a rampart fell, verities that had endured for ages collapsed, and the political map of Nigeria has taken on a new shape. For political gain, desperate actors invested religion and ethnicity with far greater salience than they had ever possessed, corroding both factors in the process and setting up the country for an implosion.

    Never has the country been so divided, in the home and in the workplace.  Civility has become a stranger, and yesterday’s neighbour has become an object of suspicion, if not loathing.  A return to anything resembling amity is unlikely to occur anytime soon, I fear.

    Resentments are hardening and deepening, and everyday language is coarsening in private and public intercourse.

    It is a far cry from the carnival atmosphere that characterised election season, especially from the party conventions to the post-election jubilations of those who had cause to celebrate.  Call it the time of politics as carnival.

    And what a jolly time it was, and how rich its sartorial heritage, not forgetting its symbols.

    Even in the present distemper, I can still see much of it with my mind’s eye. I can still see the blizzard of brooms fashioned from palm fronds, held aloft by the APC party faithful, their ends dipping and cresting and swaying as their handlers desired -handlers who, at the end of another long, tumultuous rally, showed nary a sign of fatigue nor a loss of enthusiasm.

    It was not inconceivable that an object designed to symbolise the party’s commitment to sweeping the dirt-strewn landscape clean could in a moment be turned into a weapon of brutal offence, given the intended or accidental provocations that can occur at such events.

    But it never happened.   The crowds were too disciplined for that.

    The greater surprise was that none of the other 17 registered parties said a kind word about the palm trees whose branches were hacked down for the brooms, nor about ecology, the sustenance and health of which the trees are a crucial factor.

    None of them sought a court injunction restraining the APC from hacking down palm tree fronds to knit into brooms just to gratify the party’s iconolatry.    None among them invoked national or international environmental law to move the APC to cease and desist

    An environmentalist with whom I raised the matter said it centred on a renewable resource; that its exploitation would do no lasting damage, and that criticism would have seemed out of place given more pressing issues, such as the crippling currency crisis.

    But what about sustainability, given the furious pace of exploitation?  Where, at any rate, are the brooms today? 

    Are they being warehoused in readiness for the inauguration of the President-elect and governors-elect on May 29, assuming the courts would not have voided the elections as some people are demanding?

    It would be a pity indeed that they had to hack down hectares upon hectares of palm tree plantations across the country again just to make new brooms, unless they are for sweeping away the APC itself, according to the environmentalist aforementioned, a die-hard Obedient.

    The contractors who supplied the brooms couldn’t care less about the environment   They were trooping merrily to the banks every day until the governor of the Central Bank, Godwin  “Mefi” Emefiele, crippled the nation’s financial institutions by way of retaliation for his own lack of courage to pursue his misbegotten presidential ambition,

    Broom merchants and retailers of consumer goods found themselves grappling with an issue that could never have cropped up even in a hallucination:  How many brooms would retailers take for a tablet of toilet soap, a medium-sized packet of detergent, a pint of palm oil or beer, a bottle of aspirins, a can of baby formula, or a family-size piece of yam?

    For that matter, how many truckloads of designer brooms would translate into a 50-kg sack of rice?

    They would have had to employ the most abstruse algorithms to figure out the equivalencies. 

    How the other parties must have envied the APC its good fortune, having no symbols that could be deployed to produce stunning visual effects at will, rally after rally!  Umbrellas cannot be massed to that effect even when it is raining; they may have the compactness of brooms, but they don’t come cheap.

    The sartorial legacy of the period is just as memorable.

    I am thinking of the distinctive uniforms in which the faithful were decked out at national, state, and local engagements; the fetching styling, the ornate embroidery, and the matching caps and headgear.  I am thinking of the hectares upon hectares of fabric from which they were made, the lucky merchant who supplied them, the tailors who fabricated them, the storekeepers who kept stock, and the contractors who handled distribution.

    This was a massive logistic undertaking that the main political parties executed seamlessly, and a pointer to what Nigeria can achieve if mobilized for common purpose.

    One image in particular clings in my memory:  the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, decked out as an Eyo masquerade without the mask, after his party had won resoundingly in Lagos, and was on the cusp of capturing Alausa outright.  It was truly captivating.

    Some of the caps featured in the rallies told stories of flexibility and adaptability.  At the risk of getting lost in the crowd, Tinubu gave up his signature knitted cap with the mathematical symbol of infinity embossed at the rim for a modest version of the Zanna Bukar Dipcharima cap of the First Republic which lapsed when its depth came to symbolize the excess of the Shagari years. 

    Just as startling was the sight of many APC governors in the North wearing Tinubu’s signature cap without any sign of unease.  Benue Governor Samuel “Ortomatic” Ortom’s rainbow cap added colour to the proceedings of the Group of Five, with the maestro himself, the combustible Nyesom Wike, at the helm.

    Now that the festivals are over, what is to become of the party uniforms? 

    It has been suggested, I gather, that they be preserved for future use.  But where can appropriate storage be found?  It has also been suggested that they be donated to the poor and needy.  They will in all likelihood find them unwieldy.  Even if they cut them up, would they have the resources to make them into less ostentatious clothing?

    One proposal under active consideration, I have learned, is to store samples of the most striking outfits in a designated museum of political artefacts, for the benefit of historians, moviemakers, and the general public.  Not a bad idea, if the facility will not suffer the fate of such depositories across the national landscape.

    What of the mountains of vile, incendiary and treasonous audio-visual material that poured ceaselessly into the mainstream from discredited politicos and their proxies, not forgetting the venomous outlet they call “social media,” though they are anything but social?

    Some of it should be preserved, too, if only as examples of how not to build a nation.

  • Augury of 2023 election

    Augury of 2023 election

    The Electoral Act 2022 was a promising child who broke the first tooth as he took the first tentative steps. Many Nigerians used to the scorched earth policy of the past elections, especially the do or die variant of 2007, were excited at the prospects of the new Act. Like when the old Green Eagles were still green and every Nigerian was a football expert, nearly every Nigerian became an expert in election matters. The trophy was a technological device known as Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the promise to transmit the result from a polling unit to the secured server of the Independent National Electoral Commission‘s (INEC), Election Result Viewing Platform (IReV).

     With the promises from INEC, Nigerians in their millions trooped to the polling units on February 25 to elect a new president and members of the National Assembly. Amongst the gladiators, three stood out. The candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a veteran of many political battles, a former governor of Lagos State, a benefactor of many elected public officers, amongst other pedigree. The next was Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who also had fought many political battles, a former vice president of the Federal Republic, with wide associates across the country. The third candidate Mr. Peter Obi (Okwute) of the Labour Party (LP), who many initially dismissed as a presidential election neophyte, but with immense popularity amongst the youths, and was a former governor of Anambra State.

    The rest of the pack even before the gun at the starting block went off were dismissed as also ran. As predicted, the election ended a three horse race, with the candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared the winner of the election and returned elected as president with a total of 8,794,726 votes against 6,984,520 for Atiku and 6,101,533 for Obi. There were also several upsets in the National Assembly elections, with many state governors, who contested to go to the senate not winning the contest. Also affected were some ranking senators who lost to those that may be referred to as political minions.

    While the winners and their supporters have been jubilant, the losers and their supporters have vowed to challenge the polls in the Election Tribunals and on the streets. As expected, the court process which is time bound is proceeding apace as petitions are being filed by the hundreds of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) recruited to jostle in the court. But contesting the elections in the streets, and the complementary internets, are turning scary, as the gladiators are unknown, and unidentifiable. To make matters worse, the internet with its perceived anonymity provides the bulwark of the warriors without boundary and no rules of engagement. With anonymity as a shield, many of them are hauling intercontinental ballistic missile, some fixed with what amounts to nuclear warheads, without the potential of being brought to account for using banned non-conventional weapons.

     The most dangerous of the weapons is fake news used on multiple warheads, which the social media has become. Resorting to the same technology that came to save the nation’s electoral process, some of the sympathizers of those who lost rely on fake news to threaten mayhem and Armageddon. They forget that with technology what never happened can be created, energized and broadcast as real. Resorting to what is called deep fake, words and actions are implanted on innocent gladiators, and non-gladiators, and with social media as multiple warheads, all heal is let loose, without the consumers asking any questions.

    Many of such news carry the message that such message should be rebroadcast, so that the message can go viral. And acting like persons under a spell, the recipients usually make the message go viral without first confirming that the message is correct. The result is that many otherwise reasonable persons have been inoculated against facts and would not listen or consider any alternative views. As Karl Marx said of religion, the alternate facts have become the opium of many. Those stymied in the toxic social environment can be likened to social zombies, averse to reason and reality.

     In such state of mind, no amount of explanation, reasoning or fact checking would make any dent on what “the victims” consider the fact, which in reality is an alternative fact. Arguing or counselling such persons is like hitting one’s knuckles on a stone. The victims without knowing that they are victims constitute a menace to themselves and the rest of the society. Some of the victims are willing to give their lives and their valuables in support of the cause, which they believe is genuine. Like persons hypnotized, they violently defend their cause of action, should they be challenged.

    Unfortunately while the Electoral Act 2022 made tremendous provision for an orderly election, there is no manual to manage post-election stress and misconception. Those deeply affected by the mismanagement of the electoral process by INEC, wonder what benefit Nigeria derived from the elaborate provision of the Electoral Act? The apparent gains from the Electoral Act has been damaged by the challenge of non-transmission of election result at the polling booths as provided in the election manual and pre-celebrated by INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu with fanfare.

     After the presidential election, many electorate, especially the younger ones destroyed their Permanent Voters Card, and vowed never to participate in any future election.

     While the sad development may amuse contestants with dubious intentions, the society in the long run pays dearly for it. No doubt those who have no faith in the electoral process will be unwilling to contribute their share of citizens’ responsibility to build a modern society. With a divided society, the work of the government becomes more strenuous. So the victors at the polls must start building bridges of reconciliation, even as they device means of providing the dividends of democracy. While there are divisions in some states, the main challenge is at the national level, where the nation’s fault line could torpedo our democracy.

    Hopefully, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would use his highly regarded political skills, to mend the deep scares and fissures caused by INEC. There is the likelihood that if the election result had been transmitted online from the polling units as promised and provided for in the INEC guideline, the crisis of confidence which has deeply affected the perception of the presidential election as free and fair, would not be there. And the perception which has provided ammunition for those hell-bent on discrediting the results would also not be there.

    It is hoped that the post-election crisis would simmer down in the days ahead. Those who have evidence of malpractice, as envisaged in section 134 of the Electoral Act, 2022, should pursue their legitimate contest in the court of law. Any other method of contesting the result of the elections, whether in the streets, or in the social media, or other forms of protestation not envisaged by the electoral act, may spiral out of control, and cause incalculable damage to our fragile democracy. Those calling for interim government are misguided, and should be treated as enemies of Nigeria.

  • Election deniers at work!

    Election deniers at work!

    The general elections may have come and gone and the winners already declared according to the applicable laws; a section of the political class and their media allies, unfortunately, are not about to let up as they regale hapless Nigerians with fantasies and moonlight commentaries, sometimes so hare-brained as to leave the rest of us bewildered as the mere contemplation of the depth that some otherwise knowledgeable Nigerians have sunk!

    No day passes without another round of talking points to delegitimise and besmirch the process; that is when those involved have not called the entire democratic project itself to question essentially on account of an electoral shellacking that some find hard to bear! Listening/reading some so-called writers, opinion moulders and television anchor persons talk about the last elections, you might be forgiven to imagine that the election took place in the last century or that the characters came straight from the Legend of Tarzan!

    Not even the author and finisher of ‘Do-or-die’ politics, the same individual under whose watch the country was put through the most brazen electoral chicanery ever witnessed in its electoral history would rather let things pass without adding his own bizarre judgment. He, in fact would not only have the world believe that the last presidential election was the worst ever; he would go as far as savage the reputation of the electoral chief as soon as it became clear that his protégé would come short in that election!

    From a judgment that could best be dubbed as bizarre, the Only Wise One of Ota could only come up with a prescription that is as deeply concerning as it is strange: He wanted President Muhammadu Buhari to halt the process (although he didn’t specify the law under which the latter could have derived such power). He didn’t stop at that; he also wanted the electoral chief to quit, supposedly, to “salvage” whatever is left of his reputation – never mind that that his, even at the best of times, couldn’t be said to hold a candle to the latter’s in reputational and other positive terms!

    Today, if only a few men of discernment were able to sniff the plot at that point in time, Nigerians are finally coming to terms with an insidious agenda which actually started way back. First, they dredged up Section 134(2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution. That section simply says that to be declared winner in the presidential contest, a candidate must secure at least 25% of votes cast in 2/3rd of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Nigerians might want to recall that the matter became an issue only in the curious expectation that the eventual winner might fail to garner 25 per cent of the votes in the FCT!

    If Nigerians in their typically fertile imagination could not have contemplated seeing the FCT vote as a sort of Electoral College vote – a ‘super vote’ to override the votes in the ‘federating’ 36 states, and INEC in its majesty wouldn’t buy the spurious jurisprudence, it was simply a matter of time before our super lawyers deploy their febrile imagination to dredge up another issue no matter how offensive, to tilt the scales!

    They soon found one, or better still, were practically handed another odious straw to clutch by INEC via its tardy handling of the upload of the scanned results into the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV). By that, what is arguably the most minor of the elements in the electoral management chain has suddenly become the main anchor on which the entire process either rises or falls apart! And now the clamour for INEC not just to lay the already concluded process to waste but for a fresh exercise to be undertaken even when the processes outlined by the law is yet to be exhausted! And these not necessarily because INEC broke the law as many would rather have the world to believe, but mainly on account that it reneged on its pledge to upload the results in real-time!

    I understand why electoral losses can be somewhat disorienting. After all, we have seen so much hype from the quarters of those who assume that the big trophy is theirs for the picking. Their pressing for the rules to be re-written mid-way and perhaps to reverse their loss might be partly understandable even when the facts so starkly arrayed against them make such nigh impossible. Nigeria’s current situation reminds me of the story of two mother and their two infants in the Bible as recorded in 1 Kings 3:16–28. One of the babies in the course of the night’s sleep had been smothered, with each woman claiming ownership the remaining infant. The old wise King Solomon had pronounced that the baby be cut in two, each woman to receive half! At this point, the real mother would rather let go if only to preserve the life of the innocent child!  

    Sure, we know those who want the ‘democracy’ baby smothered. Unable and unwilling to see the process through, they are calling for anarchy, just as their foot-soldiers most of whom are sheltered in the twitterdom and other virtual domains, long primed for victory before the game was called, are far too gone to understand the niceties of process.

    In all, the chief culprit remains that section of the media that continues to present false hope outside of what the law contemplates;  giving wing to lies, including sponsoring and indulging those false narratives that flies in the face of reality.

    How about the narrative about the so-called ‘sanctity’ of the IREV portal? 

    Tell a section of the media that the law makes no such pronouncement and they will swear that it was what INEC’s Mahmood Yakubu promised the world! Try educating those hyperactive fellows that while the IREV is important to enhance the credibility of the process, what actually gives it flesh is the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device and they blank out! Yes, I am talking of a section of the Nigerian media. To the extent that the results could not be transmitted online, real-time, they have something to hold on to, and so nothing else matters. Have you not read a few our otherwise respected columnists draw grim conclusions from the jaundiced reportage of their foreign counter-parts? It is a season of professional abnegation after all! Nigeria we hail thee.

    Meanwhile, wild, baseless claims about ‘stolen presidency’ and other outlandish claims about the elections are allowed to pass. Surely, this is no time to admonish those in court to focus on securing the primary sources of data, the BVAS and the hard copy already in their custody both for validity and comparability during trial. It is perhaps long given that judiciary, apparently, compromised cannot deliver justice! Left to our emergency democrats and their media allies, we might as well wish away the events of February 25 and March 11 or at least pretend that they never held!

  • Of mandates and gambits: 1993, 2007, 2023

    Of mandates and gambits: 1993, 2007, 2023

    In Nigerian political history, 1993, 2007 and 2023 would bear contrasting electoral tales: model and rotten.

    1993 (12 June 1993 presidential election) and 2023 (25 February 2023 presidential election) would be model elections, though sore losers of both, 30 years apart, would wail otherwise in supreme and gangling delusion.

    2007 (21 April 2007 presidential election), on the other hand, was well and truly a rotten exercise — maybe the most rotten ever; surely the most outrageous since 1999.  

    Yet its author and finisher, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in defence of that macabre heist, sounded as a well and true democracy heretic: were Christ Jesus to conduct elections in Nigeria, he piped, Nigerians would still balk!  What double heresy!

    For the records: in 2003 and 2007, President Obasanjo conducted the worst polls since 1999 — the one to game a second term, the other to impose a successor.  Both ended in tears — though Obasanjo was too delusional to realize it back then.

    The aftermath of 2003 marked, for personal glory, Obasanjo’s comprehensive demolition of PDP, the Army Arrangement alliance (apologies to Fela) the departing military handed him in 1999.  

    The 2007 aftermath put the final nail on any previous claim Obasanjo might have had as a democrat.  Everything climaxed with the PDP loss of power in 2015.

    But the Obasanjo odyssey would appear to flow from the inglorious role he played in the post-election annulment Interim National Government (ING) of 1993.  

    Thirty years after, the old man and the headless herd PDP and LP desperadoes are goading to discredit the Bola Tinubu mandate of February 25 have learnt nothing from the June 12 debacle.

    Perhaps it’s time to play back that June 12 tragedy; and the odyssey of the different players thirty years on: Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (IBB), Obasanjo, the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

    For starters, a great and telling irony: among this lot, everyone that tried to kill June 12 has come to grief.  Only Tinubu, that fought to revalidate it, has relived MKO Abiola’s “Hope ’93″, with his own “Renewed Hope ’23″ that triumphed on February 25.

    Just to put the records straight: Peter Obi and his noisome bozos played no part in that epochal battle — except of course the South East infamy of Okwesilieze Nwodo, then governor of Enugu State, who swore he would go on exile should MKO be inaugurated President, from an election Abiola clearly won.

    Nwodo’s threat nicely dovetails into another bluster by Chief Bode George — ironically an Obi zealot — who also swore he would go on exile should Tinubu become president.  May 29 waits, with bated breath, for old man George to walk his talk!

    Suffice it to say Obi and his headless herd know no history.  Yet, they will do well to pay attention to the tragedy of the 1993 herd bent on subverting MKO’s mandate, but ended up blighting their names and staining their innocent offspring.

    By rashly annulling the June 12 election, IBB did what no one had done before, as the Yoruba would say.  He was therefore fated to dire consequences no one had faced.

    IBB that tried a Peronist transmutation from military to civilian rulership, even after eight wayward power years, beat a hasty retreat a day before his self-pronounced exit.  The power chamber had become too hot for the one “not only in office but in power”!

    He went down taking the cocky political military with him — base power hustlers that gave their otherwise noble profession a bad name.  

    But Babangida’s drop was the military’s rise.  They regained their service soul — though not before the murderous havoc of the stark Sani Abacha.  The result is 24 unbroken years of democracy.

    What is more?  Allah, in His infinite mercy, has kept IBB alive — long enough to see President Muhammadu Buhari restore MKO’s honour as elected president, though posthumously. So long for the sheer futility of destiny arrest!

    The late Gen. Yar’Adua was hardly the originator of the ING idea.  Obasanjo fitted more into that bill.  But by buying into the ING to subvert Abiola’s free mandate, he made a solid pact with avoidable self-ruin.  

    Yar’Adua led the People’s Front (PF) faction of the triumphant Social Democratic Party (SDP).  PF agreed to trade off MKO’s mandate for the ING, to the chagrin of the rival People’s Solidarity Party (PSP) faction, that rallied for the mandate.

    Yar’Adua’s trouble began when, with Obasanjo, he was roped into an alleged coup attempt by the Abacha dictatorship.  Yar’Adua and Obasanjo were sentenced to long jail terms, from which Yar’Adua never came out alive.

    Obasanjo was luckier.  He came from jail to make the choice of the Army Arrangement alliance for president, to placate the Yoruba for the June 12 hurt, while MKO would be martyred, while waiting to consummate his mandate.

    Still as president, all Obasanjo did was to wilfully self-devalue.  He organized the two most rotten elections (2003 and 2007) since the dawn of this 4th Republic.  His ogling of an illegal third term, as elected president, blew up in his face; yanking off the halo of a “democrat” soldier — what an oxymoron! — that, in 1979, voluntarily left power.

    His suborning of state governments and Business Nigeria to “donate” to his Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) project made him a clear study in transparent corruption, despite his pretentious huff-and-puff to fight that cancer.

    Also like IBB, God has kept him alive to witness the dismal collapse of his twin-plot against MKO: the same day PMB restored MKO’s June 12 honour, that same day Obasanjo’s May 29 “Democracy Day” imposition got tossed into the bin, replaced by June 12.  A dead MKO lives more in the people’s heart than a living Obasanjo!

    Atiku, by his link to Yar’Adua’s PF and their June 12 perfidy, has fared hardly better. From a wannabe and also-ran for the 1993 SDP ticket, he has since then run from pillar to post for that elusive diadem: 2007, 2019 and 2023.

    In his latest epic failure of February 25, he not only crashed, his insensitive power lust almost wiped out PDP in much of the South.  It was after that shock therapy that he ganged up with Obi, his Siamese twin in rank opportunism, to seek comic annulment, ala 1993, of an election already won and lost!

    Even if Obi is a history vacuum, might Atiku too be down with chronic forgetfulness?

    Among the lot, only Tinubu has emerged triumphant from the 1993 debacle — and that is because he broke ranks with his PF comrades to push justice and absolute justice for MKO; and embraced exile in a no-retreat-no-surrender war against Abacha.

    Later as governor, he would build Lagos from its post-federal capital rot into a national treasure that some non-Yoruba now ogle to the point of insanity — until that cold reality check of March 18, and the resultant shrieks, wailing and bitter gnashing of teeth, from across the Niger!

    Enjoy your democratic delusion: if you think Tinubu that pulled all the stops to defend MKO’s mandate of 1993, would defend his own of 2023 any less! 

    But between treason and subversive call for election annulment, there is but a thin line.  The comics goading the placard-carrying herd to treason are making a grim choice. The dire consequences of that choice would be no less grim.