Category: Tuesday

Nigeria is incrementally moving towards a cliff in the competition for power, thanks to the most pathetic in-your-face excesses of President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, and the peripheral religious-gaming of his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. With the 2023 general election in sight, religion as a major factor in national politics is mutating into a hydra-headed monster that may consume Nigeria faster than the ethnic politics that has plagued her since the advent of self-rule.

It is religion in politics or the politics of religion that is referenced as religio-politics, while of course ethnic or regional politics is geopolitics. Unarguably, religion plays a significant part in politics across the world, and Nigeria cannot be an exception. After all, the clatter between Islam and Christianity is regarded as the clash of civilization, and we see the impact in the contest for influence across the third world, and between western civilisation and her Islamic neighbours.

The attack on the United States of America on September 11, 2001, by extremist Islamic elements, which shook the entire western world, is seen as a militant manifestation of that clash. Even the Afghanistan war and the many instances of terrorism by extreme Islamic elements that plague the western world, is seen as continuation of the debacle. But in Nigeria, while accusation of religious persecution has always been a factor, especially in the north-central, religious demagoguery was not always trumpeted in selecting presidential candidates.

So, what could be responsible for the massive hoopla by Christian religious leaders against the choice of Senator Kashim Shettima, a northern Muslim, as the vice presidential candidate of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the All Progressive Congress (APC), a southern Muslim. This is despite the manifest secularism of the presidential candidate, proved beyond reasonable doubt by his happy marriage to a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Senator Oluremi Tinubu. Again, this is despite decades of secularist practices which Asiwaju has been associated with.

Could it be the fear that the APC stands a great chance to win the presidential election, considering Asiwaju’s political sagacity and the extensive spread of his party, the APC that many Christian religious leaders are stringently railing at what has been termed a Muslim-Muslim ticket? Maybe. But for many, a strong contributory factor to the hysteria is the extreme manifestation of religious and ethnic bias by the Buhari presidency. This resort to manifest religious favouritism tamely started by President Jonathan assumed an epidemic proportion under Buhari.

Perhaps it is the burden of those recent religious trajectory in national politics that the presidential candidate of the APC has been destined to carry as he climbs the presidential mountain. As I have written previously on this page, the greatest undoing of the tenure of President Buhari’s, is his lackadaisical handling of the menace of the insurgency by the militant Fulani herdsmen, in the north-central and southern part of the country. Unfortunately, many see him in religious and ethnic garb, for condoning the dangerous excesses of the herdsmen.

So, that is why the menace of the herdsmen has been interpreted by many as part of an Islamization and/or Fulanization agenda, with both terms being interchanged without much interrogation. Even the highly regarded former President Olusegun Obasanjo made that allegation, and so every political decision of President Buhari, particularly his appointments of security chiefs, has been interpreted in shadow of religiosity/ethnicity. To further compound the unfolding tragedy, President Buhari damned the constitutional demand for spread in those appointments, as if to give credence to the alleged agenda.

But while Buhari raised the ante of religion in politics to the present dangerous level, it was President Jonathan that made religion a part of statecraft. How can we forget the peacock entrails of Pastor Ayo Oritsajafor and his Christian associates milking their closeness to a Christian President Goodluck Jonathan? Sadly, there is no interrogation whether those manifestations were borne out of incompetence and the lack of rigour in the quality of decisions by the two presidents. For while President Obasanjo may act more religious that the two, he knew when to call the bluff of the Christian Association of Nigeria as soon as their handshake was moving towards the elbow.

Tragically for President Buhari, his inept handling of the herdsmen crisis will define his tour of duty in the Nigerian presidency, and not the bridges, railways, roads and new universities that his media handlers wish should. Even the insecurity in the country that is far bigger than the herdsmen’s crisis, and which is afflicting several parts of the sub-Sahara Africa, has been interpreted as part of the larger Fulani agenda, because the president had treated a boil so lackadaisically that it has become cancerous.

Now there is real and fake fear, heightened by the political opponents of the APC that supporting a Muslim-Muslim presidency by the Christendom is akin to offering a kola nut to a man who comes into one’s hut and defecates on the floor; instead of taking a stick to break his head, apologies to the incomparable Chinua Achebe, in “Things Fall Apart.”. So, the challenge facing the APC is how to separate the bumbling performance history of President Buhari, from the potentials on offer from Tinubu and Shettima.

This column believes and has argued that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, from his antecedents has the potential to be a great president, considering his capacity to think through great ideas that can change the present economic bugaboo of our tottering country. This column also believes that Asiwaju has the badly needed political sagacity to mediate the troubling scarecrow created to harass and harangue the national psyche by the manipulative political elites. But the road to that presidency is now strewn with thorns of religious politics in a divided country.

Some of those who had foresworn any support for another northern president after eight years of Buhari’s hegemonic rule, have refused to situate Tinubu as a strong southern presidential candidate who also needs a strong northern vice presidential candidate to have a good chance of winning the presidency. In their anger against the choice of Shettima, a northern Muslim as vice presidential candidate to Tinubu, a southern Muslim, they relegate geopolitics as subordinate to religiopolitics. Whether that discontent would buoy the candidature of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, instead of Peter Obi of Labour Party, is immaterial to them.

The argument that a vice president cannot stop the president’s determination to act in a certain manner, as evidenced by the tenure of Professor Yemi Osinbajo, is also considered inconsequential. For the antagonists of the Tinubu/Shettima candidacy, the Buhari’s excesses have created a nightmarish phobia. To tame that monster, Asiwaju’s famed sagacity will be tested in the days ahead.

The recent piece by Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser on Media, to President Muhammadu Buhari, titled “warning shots from Kigali” after a visit to Kigali Genocide Memorial,  was well aimed and smoking. Whether it decimated the target in the form of making the target abjure hatred is another matter altogether. Of course, Femi’s objective is to give hatemongers an opportunity to learn from the heart-rending stories of what hate caused in Rwanda, and for them to desist from their dangerous mixture of combustible materials.

What Femi did not however manifest in his piece is whether his principal, our dear president, Muhammadu Buhari, learnt relevant lessons from the visit to Kigali Genocide Memorial. If the president learnt his lessons, Femi did not advert his write-up to such, including any potential change of style and actions. But before I espouse why I say so, let me join Femi to trumpet that hate can truly kill a nation, and Nigeria is dangerously stymied in obtrusive hate actions and words. So, I join him to ask that we retrace our steps.

In his piece, Femi trained his well-aimed warning shots on hate speeches and acts by Nigerians, especially those speaking from the pulpit and the minarets, but not a word of condemnation about hate actions and speeches by those in authority. Of course, since he did not mention names, it will be unfair to judge whether he was fair or unfair to such persons, except if one has to juxtapose his earlier diatribe with some men of God, as the targets of his warning shots from Kigali.

Some of the preeminent men of God Femi had aimed his diatribe in the past include the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev. Dr. Matthew Hasssan Kukah, and Bishop David Oyedipo of Winners Chapel, and there are pellets in the shots from Kigali to reach the conclusion that the two men maybe among Femi’s current target. So, if they are amongst the targets, I hope they are not amongst those Femi referred to as the “so-called Bishops”, since both have eminently lived up to their titles as Bishop.

If Femi insists otherwise, then he can legitimately be accused of engaging in hate speech. But more importantly for this piece, is what many have regarded as hate actions manifested by the skewed appointments of President Buhari, in clear violation of the 1999 constitution as amended. But even most important is whether the president has learnt the important lesson behind the Kigali memorial, which I believe is to keep the despicable act of genocide in public consciousness and to enforce a national penance.

The main essence of this intervention is therefore to encourage Femi to advise his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari, to initiate a memorial in honour of the genocidal victims of 1966/67 in our country, Nigeria. The other essence of this essay is to encourage Femi to also advise the president to appreciate that he is the leader of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation, and that such consciousness should reflect in his actions, otherwise he would be accused of engaging in hate actions.

Should Mr President initiate the building of such a memorial, he would distinguish himself from the pack of other past presidents and leaders, including Gen. Yakubu Gowon, who as post-war leader had the best impetus to do so. While those who love to live in denial like the Ostrich, would think such a memorial is irrelevant, since the victims where vanquished in the war that ensued soon after the genocide, the benefit as Femi and the president must have seen, is to keep the despicable act in public consciousness and to abjure a repeat, under any guise.

Some of the Ostriches would even deny the waves of genocidal killings of Igbos and those associated with them, mainly in the northern part of the country before the beginning of the war. Such denials instead of healing the wounds exacerbates the injury, which in turn feeds the disillusionment of those affected directly and indirectly affected by the genocide. Perhaps such hurt feelings feeds the hate speech that Femi is complaining about; and without assuaging the hurt, those affected would tell Femi, in the words of immortal Fela kuti, ‘teacher don’t teach me nonsense’.

Without such a memorial, those who engineered and/or participated in the genocide can easily forget their atrocities and forgive themselves. And of course, the generation after them would have no reminders to make them believe that such despicable acts of hatred took place in our country. Furthermore, without such a memorial that stirs the conscience of the protagonists, what stops them from seeing what happened as a fair game, which can be repeated for the fun of it?

In writing this reaction to Femi’s warning shot from Kigali, I dusted up Emma Okocha’s book, titled: ‘Blood on the Niger – the first black-on-black genocide’, which gives a detailed acts of genocide against the Igbos of western Nigeria. Considering the status of Izoma Chief P.C. Asiodu, who was a member of General Gowon’s war cabinet, I figured that I should quote extensively his preface to to Okocha’s book to underscore the argument for a war memorial, to stem the hatred Femi hammered on in his piece.

According to Asiodu: “At Asaba and environs, from October 2 to the 7 in 1967, horrible massacres were committed by the federal troops. Hundreds of men were slaughtered as a result of cold, deliberate planning. Men of all ages, including promising youths in their prime as well as teenagers and septuagenarians, were shot in cold blood.” He went on: “The massacres were militarily unnecessary and were unprovoked as the Midwest were already re-conquered from Biafra troops, and Asaba was firmly in the control of Federal troops. There were absolutely contrary to the war aims of the federal government and the Code-of-Conduct issued to the Nigerian Army.”

He also wrote: “For so long, the truth about the massacres has not been told in any details. It is necessary to tell this truth in homage to the innocent who fell and partly in service to the nation by excising from its conscience any lie about the critical events of its history, to enable it grow and to make sure such wanton fratricide never recurs.” In the preface to the second edition, an eyewitness and survivor of the massacres, Dr Ify Uraih, wrote: “Over a thousand youths in their prime were buried in a mass grave at Ogbeosowa. There is no monument, nothing to remember those souls for their sacrifice.”

Also, the one-sided appointments, under President Buhari, which has reignited the fault lines that trouble our country, is too open to warrant any waste of space here. In conclusion, I can only say to Femi that charity should begin at home.

The All Progressive Congress (APC) is apprehensive of losing the party’s majority in the senate, following the rumoured bid of her 18 senators to defect to other political parties, after the party earlier lost seven senators to the opposition parties. While the major opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is also losing senators, they may become the major beneficiaries of the defectors, and thus be in control of the senate. Such a development has legal and political implications, and this column will examine them.

No doubt the controversial emergence of Senator Abdullahi Adamu, as party chairman bears some responsibility for this development. Having been drafted to do a hatchet job, the chairman concentrated on foisting a ‘consensus’ presidential candidate, and like the interim contraption that handed over to him, he was distracted from maintaining harmony between the legislative and executive members of the party. Unfortunately, the senate president, Ahmed Lawan, swallowed the consensus bait, and his greed has added to the embarrassment the party is facing. Now the senate president did not only lose the presidential primary, the winner of his senatorial primary seat, Bashir Machina, has refused to surrender the ticket, and has told Lawan and Adamu to go fry in the nearby desert.

So, Lawan’s ingratitude to Tinubu has turned a huge embarrassment to those who lied that President Muhammadu Buhari was going to force him on the party’s faithful as consensus candidate. With Lawan dispossessed of a senatorial return ticket, which he could have won if he had contested the senatorial primary, will he join the bandwagon of the aggrieved who want to leave the APC? If he stays in the party, and the party loses the majority in the senate by a wide margin, he may lose his plum senate presidency.

And if he refuses to step down, preferring to fight off any threat of impeachment, he would preside over a rancorous senate until the end of his tenure. Of course, considering that Lawan may join the rank of the aggrieved party primary losers, he would not likely perform the responsibility enshrined in section 68(2) of the 1999 constitution (as amended), which enjoins the senate president to declare vacant the seats of defectors in appropriate circumstance.

The section provides that: “The president of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, as the case may be, shall give effect to the provisions of subsection (1) of this section, so however that the president of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representative or a member shall first present evidence satisfactorily to the House concerned that any of the provisions of that subsection has become applicable in respect of that member.”

With the potential that the senate president may jump ship if he is harbouring inordinate ambition to return to the senate in 2023, how can he accept to declare vacant the seats of the senators who have or will flagrantly violate section 68(1)(g) of the constitution? The section provides: “A member of the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall vacate his seat in the House of which he is a member if – being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected.”

Considering that there is no division within the APC to justify the rumoured bid of 18 senators to jump ship like the earlier seven, which violates section 68(1)(g), such senators deserve to lose their senatorial seats. The Supreme Court confirmed this state of our law in the case of Hon. Ifedayo Sunday Abegunde v The Ondo State House of Assembly & Ors. In that case, the appellant who contested and won the Akure North/South Federal Constituency seat on the platform of Labour Party defected to Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), on the claim that there were factions within the Ondo chapter of the party.

The Supreme Court affirmed the concurrent judgment of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal that by virtue of section 68(1)(a) and (g) the appellant has lost his seat in the House of Representative following his defection from Labour to ACN when there is no such division as envisioned by the constitution. In his argument in support of the appeal, the appellant had contended that any division in the party, whether at the ward, state or federal level can justify the invocation of the proviso to section 68(1)(g) of the 1999 constitution.

Rejecting the argument, the Supreme Court per Fabiyi JSC, reiterated her decision in FEDECO v Goni on the interpretation of section 64(1)(g) of the 1979 constitution which is in pari materia with section 68(1)(g) of the 1999 constitution, that a division that will justify the defection by a person elected on a one political platform to another would be one that affects the national structure of the party. The apex court thus put to rest the penchant for defectors to claim a phantom division within the party to justify their unbridled abuse of the constitution.

So, the senators elected on the platform of the APC who lost in the primary and indeed their colleagues from other parties should weigh their option properly before defecting. While this column sympathizes with those of them who are popular but where shoved aside by their state governors who have untrammelled dominance of the party delegates, they must also bemoan their carelessness while passing the 2022 Electoral Act, particularly the duplicitous section 84(12) that upended their plans.

As this column noted when it commented on the dogfight between the executive and legislative arms that led to the contentious provision, those temporarily exercising political power must see beyond their parochial personal interest. This advice is particularly so of those privileged to make laws, which would serve well beyond their limited tenure. Unfortunately most office holders fail to see power as temporal, and as such push personal interests as popular interests, and the result is the manmade crisis that pervade every aspect of our society.

It is such self-serving plan that made APC chairman and his cohorts to abandon the greater interest of the party in pursuit of a duplicitous agenda against the most popular presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The conspiracy contributed to the crisis of confidence between the APC-dominated National Assembly and the executive, in the run-down to the party primary. Now the APC chairman is begging the senators not to leave. This column hopes the horses have not bolted, before the APC chairman sought to bolt the stable door.

Perhaps, Asiwaju Tinubu can arrest the crisis and save the party the embarrassment of losing majority in the senate to the opposition.

At a meeting of the Attorneys General of the 36 states, held in Lagos, last week, some burning challenges of our tottering federation came to the fore. Unfortunately, the chief protagonist for the maintenance of the doddering status quo of a false federalism that Nigeria has been practicing since 1999 was the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, SAN, while the antagonists wh#ere led by the inimitable governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN.

Regrettably, despite the glaring inadequacies of the 1999 constitution (as amended), particularly with regards to the centralisation of police and economic activities in the hands of the federal government, her officials still prefer the maintenance of a status quo that has almost torpedoed our national stability. The evident debilitating national crisis as a result of the overconcentration of power at the centre was eloquently captured by Governor Akeredolu in his presentation.

In his keynote address, the governor captured the twin challenge of insecurity and debilitating economy, which he rightly laid at the altar of the quasi-unitary system we practice in the name of a federal republic. On security he said: “The current spate of insecurity in the country leaves us with no room for equivocation on the right of the states to maintain law and order through the establishment of state police.”

This column like other patriotic Nigerians has made similar interventions in the past on the need to de-centralise the police, if the country hopes to stem the security challenges facing it. Indeed, it is strange that despite the challenges faced by the underfunded federal police, those at the helm of affairs are hell bent on keeping the centralised police structure with all the challenges.

Even more benumbing is the fact that most of the 36 state governors, have at several instances called for state police to alleviate the grave insecurity that has made most of them inefficient, without any positive result. As far back as 2018, Governor Nasir El Rufai, one of the most influential northern governors in the ruling party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), argued in support of state police.

In his remarks to members of Course 40 of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, he observed that “the current number of policemen in the country is grossly inadequate, there is need to double the number of police personnel.” He stated that nine of his colleagues were strongly in support of state police. The APC government in fulfilment of its electoral mandate set up the El Rufai committee on federalism in 2018, and among the recommendations was the establishment of state police.

It is shocking that barely a year to the end of the second tenure of the Buhari presidency, Governor Akeredolu is still arguing with the AGF over the same issue. Only last year, during his independence broadcast, the president made a promise to recruit 10,000 policemen annually, when he has not resolved the dispute between the Police Service Commission and the office of the Inspector General over who has the right to recruit.

Of course, the president has not fulfilled the 2018 promise on increase of salary for policemen, perhaps because of the economic challenges facing the nation. So, when states demand for the decentralisation of the police, the argument is sound, considering the challenges faced by the centralised police managed by the central government. One wonders why despite these glaring challenges, those in authority are determined to maintain the status quo.

The other issue raised by Governor Akeredolu is the overconcentration of economic activities in the hands of the central government, which again this column had railed against on many occasions. The governor lamented: “the federal government getting 52 per cent of the country’s revenue allocation is the main cause of the problem. There are some funds at the federal level that they don’t know what to do with. And the states and local governments are being starved. This is a direct consequence of long military rule.”

Again Akeredolu is right in the above assertion, but the bigger challenge is that the central government’s dominance of legal rights over economic activities, have made it impossible for states to engage in any meaningful economic activity. With 68 items in the Exclusive Legislative List reserved for the federal legislature, spanning all spheres of economic activity, the states are left with little of value, to deal with. Of course, the result is massive unemployment and grave insecurity across the land.

Interestingly, one of the main discussions at last week’s conference is the issue of Value Added Tax (VAT), which a Federal High Court has ruled should accrue to states, and not the federal government which has been reaping what does not belong to her. The judgment by Justice Stephen Dalypop Pam that Rivers State government and not Federal Inland Revenue Service is entitled to collect VAT had left the federal government squirming in conceit, and boast, to overturn the judgment on appeal.

Of course while the federal government is entitled to pursue its appeal, it should pause and think of the debilitating effect of its excessive dominance of economic activities across the country. One of the commonest effects of the lopsided Exclusive Legislative List is that many states which sit on huge mineral resources squirt in poverty and overdependence on the hand-outs from the federal government. The AGF is from one such poor state, Kebbi, which generate only about N4 billion annually in internal revenue despite its rich potentials.

Of note, the AGF purchased the form to run for the governorship primary of APC in Kebbi State but chickened out, when he was asked to resign before participating in the election. One wonders whether he would have changed his position on state police and devolution of economic powers to the states, if he succeeded at the primary and the main election. After all, former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who treated call for state police with contempt as president, has recently become an agitator for state police.

Perhaps, there are glad tidings for the twin debate over state police and devolution of powers to the states with the emergence of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as presidential candidate of the APC. As state governor, Tinubu was a strong advocate of true federalism, and he fought several battles with his then attorney general, and now vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. So, it is expected that if he wins the presidency, he will introduce executive bills to start our country on the march to modernity.

Our dear country cannot make any meaningful progress with the unitary structure imposed by the military in the name of a federal constitution, in 1999. Why AGF Abubakar Malami, SAN, cannot understand that fact, rankles this column.