Category: Tuesday

As the 2023 general elections draw near, many states are boiling over as political gladiators plot the rise or fall of their opponents. Enugu State is no different, except that the temperature somehow simmers near the boiling point. But it has not always been peaceful in the eastern front, especially at the beginning of the present republic. We recall that it was while Senator Chimaroke Nnamani from Enugu East senatorial zone held sway as state governor that the political alliance was forged in blood, tears and sorrow.

Perhaps, it was the usual business of a maternity ward that was at play? Despite the misgivings of many, the Ebeano family has survived several political transitions, even if regicide remains its ascension policy. When Governor Nnamani ascended the throne, the rules of the family were carved. The high points were that the state governor should deal ruthlessly with any opposition, hound any putative godfather into political exile, and reign as the czar of the political family, apologies to Russian Vladimir Putin, the butcher of Ukrainians.

So it was that Chief Jim Nwobodo, who championed the election of Governor Nnamani, while he took the senate seat as his redoubt, sooner than later became a persona non grata in the state. Hounded by his political children, he was retired after only a term in the senate. With Nwobodo out of the way, Nnamani reigned as the supreme commander of the new political family he forged. He allowed no opposition, and the consequences of defiance were too steep.

At the end of his eight-year tenure as governor, Chimaroke installed Sullivan Chime from Enugu West senatorial zone, his erstwhile commissioner for justice, and moved over to the senate, which road he had paved in advance, by tactically upstaging Senator Nwobodo after only one tenure. The godfather and his followers believed that all will be calm in the eastern front. But as soon as Governor Chime consolidated as governor, Senator Nnamani faced the fate of his own political godfather.

Governor Chime unceremoniously retired Chimaroke from the senate, and became the reigning czar. It was in this political environment that Senator Ike Ekweremadu was chiselled and forged. As the campaign manager of Governor Nnamani in 1999, he was there at the beginning. And he has seen the rise and fall of political gladiators in the state at the behest of the state governors. But perhaps he has not taken note that Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi from Enugu north senatorial zone is a different kind of czar. Ugwuanyi has not only rehabilitated former Governors Nnamani and Nwobodo, his immediate predecessor Governor Chime, is enjoying his new political life unhindered.

But before I delve into what may have changed in the Ebeano political family, with the emergence of Governor Ugwuanyi, let me attempt a deconstruction of the Ekweremadu political persona. Perhaps, having closely witnessed the treatment meted out to others, the five-time senator has learnt the survival instinct better than any other person in the political family. Arguably, within the Ebeano political family, Ekweremadu has fared better politically than any other member. Following the triumph of Nnamani, in 1999, he started off as secretary to the state government.

In 2003, as part of his consolidation effort, Governor Nnamanni apparently sent Ekweremadu to the senate as his forbearer to the national political scene. I recall that Governor Nnamani with his nation-wide lectures was assiduously positioning himself as a national intellectual and a potential presidential candidate in 2007, before the Obasanjo’s third-term political tsunami sent everyone scampering for safety. Before the tsunami, with the hope of going to the centre, Nnamani had sent the young political Turk, Ekweremadu, to help prepare the way.

Unfortunately, not only that Nnamani’s presidential dream suffered a still birth, his underbelly was thoroughly exposed by the EFCC probe, and Senator Ekweremadu joined the winning team, led by the reigning Governor Chime, to decapitate his former boss politically. Ekweremadu also succeeded in taking the price of the deputy senate president, and so became de jure and de facto superior to his former boss, who was a rookie in the senate.

By the time Chime had done two terms as governor, and perhaps feeling that the two-term deputy senate president Ekweremadu was morphing into an uncontrollable political behemoth, he decided to retire the senator. Again in fairness to Governor Sullivan, strong political interests in Enugu west senatorial zone were clamouring for rotation of the seat to another cultural zone, with the retiring governor who is from the same senatorial zone touted as a potential replacement.

But Ekweremadu had become a primed survivalist. Instead of begging for the senate seat, he went for the political jugular of PDP in the state. Again, instead of joining the breakaway PDP at the centre co-led by the then senate president Bukola Saraki, to join APC, Ekweremadu stayed in PDP, and with cunning and federal support, organised the recognised 2015 state party primary election. With that manoeuvre, the political hold of godfather Governor Sullivan Chime became traumatised, and a political compromise was reached, with Senator Ekweremadu taking his prize of returning to the senate, unhindered.

Arguably, with the privileges as deputy senate president, Ekweremadu has substantially raised an army of followers in his senatorial zone and beyond. So in 2019, instead of begging for his senatorial seat from the governor, as is the custom in the state and across the country, he had the opportunity to nominate and sponsor some of his own followers for political offices. But that opportunity is also because Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, with a staggering peaceful political persona, was the governor in 2019 that Ekweremadu did not need to fight to return to the senate.

No doubt, Governor Ugwuanyi, popularly called Gburugburu, has brought a different panache to the leadership of the political family in the state. The result has been tranquillity in the political arena, and this column as an interested party urges all sides to emulate the governor, in the interest of the state. While Ekweremadu is entitled to contest the governorship of the state, as he has vowed recently, it will be disingenuous for him to claim that there is no agreement to rotate governorship position in the state. While the political gladiators may not have signed off on it as he claimed recently, they have been practising it in the state, since 1999.

If Ekweremadu wants to torpedo the delicate political arrangement in the state, which has served him and his political family well in the past, he should not blame it on the absence of an agreement. The clamour for rotation of power is associated with prebendalism, and Senator Ekweremadu has fared well with his famed accumulation of staggering wealth.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin is a bully, and as Chinua Achebe said, a bully gets excited each time he sees someone he can throw in a fight. Putin sees the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenksy, as a person he can beat in a fight. He says President Zelenksy is stubborn, because he is unamenable to his fancies as a modern day czar. As such he wants to dethrone Zelensky by all means, including inviting the Ukranian military to overthrow their president.

But Putin is not only a bully; he is also a dumb fellow, to the extent that he played into the hands of the USA and her western allies by being an aggressor against a peaceful Ukraine in the eyes of the world. Some have argued that he attacked to stop Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), but this columnist thinks he could have achieved the same objective without engaging in an unwinnable war. With the attack, the dominant world media is effectively ringing the world against Russia.

As the Igbo adage would say, when a man cooks for the community, they will eat the meal, but when the community cooks for one person, the person will not be able to consume the feast. The real enemies of Russia, the USA and her western European allies would be excited that Russia has foolishly entered into a trap. They will go ahead to portray Russia as a bandit nation, and help her deplete the resources its resurgent economy has amassed in recent decades.

The USA and Britain which may have been apprehensive of the increasing economic interdependence between Russia, Germany, France and other mainland European countries, because of their increasing dependence on the enormous gas resources of Russia, would be happy in their closet that Russia has ended it with Putin’s misjudgment. So while Russia can defeat Ukraine in the battle, it would likely lose the emerging economic interdependence with her neighbours.

Of course, unless Russia attacks a NATO country, thereby triggering NATO to defend her member, only Ukraine would be sacrificed to turn Russia into a rogue nation with all its consequences. Unless Putin immediately pulls the break, the huge resources he has amassed for his country, would be expended fighting off the economic strangulation that is coming, while the continuation of war will further extend the life span of the international economic imbalance created after the Second World War.

A long occupation of Ukraine by Russia would cost an isolated Russia dearly such that by the time a full détente is reached, Russia would be as economically dissipated as the USA, which until recently saw itself as the policeman of the world. Perhaps, Russia, under the firm grip of a bullish Putin, did not learn from the misadventures of the USA as international policeman, most recently in Afghanistan. With the USA’s economy running on huge deficits over decades, her political leaders have learnt the limits of roguish benevolence.

Of course, with the economic resurgence of Asian tigers, and a few other former third world economies, the exploitation of other nations to remain at the top of world economic ladder is becoming increasingly difficult for the West. Amongst the new prosperous nations are Russia, Brazil, India and China, and they are increasingly seeking a reordering of the existing world economic order. But with the foolish attack on Ukraine, the USA and her European allies will try to isolate Russia and finish her off, while continuing to contain the rest.

With Russia considered a rogue nation, many countries will join the USA and her European allies in that venture. Again, the nations whose citizens have been badly affected by the folly of President Putin, as their nationals are stranded at the boarders of Ukraine with her neighbours, will hold it against Russia. Tragically for some countries like Nigeria, there is the lack of capacity to ensure the safe passage and repatriation of their nationals. Should harm befall the citizens of those countries held at the Ukraine borders, Russia bears blame.

Putin did not also factor resistance from the Ukrainians, which may prolong the war. Unlike when Adolf Hitler tried to forcefully redraw the world map in favour of Germany, the world has significantly changed. The social media for one has made it possible for Ukrainians to collaborate in their defence strategies, and that has buoyed up the determination amongst ordinary citizens to confront the enemy. With many citizens learning how to make bombs, Russian soldiers may find it difficult when they get their boots on ground.

Another fallout of the foolishness of Putin is that a pacifist Germany has decided to re-join the arms race, and the new German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has committed to spend over $100 billion to increase German’s defence capabilities, and such huge spending will become an annual ritual. Of course, with Russia losing over a million citizens to defend Stalingrad from the Nazi Germany during the Second World War, a militarily resurgent Germany is a greater threat to Russia than Ukraine.

Save for Russia’s nuclear armament, which Putin has boasted is now on high alert, but he dare not use them, NATO would have used her superior military powers to deal with Russia once and for all. Since the huge armament amassed by NATO over the decades cannot be deployed to turn Russia’s cities to rubbles, for her to start all over again, the only way to deal with Russia is to turn her currency the Ruble to rubbles. So, the USA and her allies are using international trading instruments to tighten the grip on the Russian economy.

If Russia is completely isolated economically, her citizens would turn the pressure on President Putin. The Russian oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, is the best known example of the economic folly of Putin. Sensing danger from the United Kingdom’s parliament, Abramovich quickly transferred control of Chelsea to a Trustee, before the parliamentarians force their Prime Minister to nationalise the ownership of the club. The USA is also contemplating cutting Russia of the international banking swift, and that will effectively kill Russia’s international trade.

The odds are against Russia, and so while Putin can win the battle against Ukraine, he will neither be able to recreate the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), nor redraw the world economic map, to truly turn his country into a world power. If the war prolongs and the West succeeds in ruining the Russian economy, Putin may be the one to be booted out of power, instead of the Ukrainian President Zelensky. For an economically castrated Russia may be as good as a Russia bombed back to Stone Age.

The disastrous attempt to recruit police constables by the office of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and the Police Service Commission (PSC) shows the tragedy of the present police structure in Nigeria. While the quarrel between the duo over who has power to recruit policemen is a distraction the country can ill-afford, the report that 90% of the applicants failed to secure up to 30% in the recruitment test says a lot about the quality of persons wishing to join the Nigeria police.

Perhaps, but for the controversy which aroused public interest in the recruitment process, the applicants would have been recruited without much ado. Most of the applicants, some say, paid their way to be on the list, and of course, the mass failure is a reflection of the quality of those who usually get recruited into the police. Is it not likely that the quality of present applicants is not different from those who succeeded in the previous recruitment exercises?

Most likely. For many commentators, it is such recruitment process that threw up the once celebrated super cop, DCP Abba Kyari and his likes that are now facing sundry criminal allegations. As the saying goes, if gold can rust, how much more iron. DCP Kyari, despite the strong allegations of strong-arm tactics and professional misconduct that trailed his career, was promoted and given rare honours by the political elites who of course were beyond the repercussions of his acts of professional misconducts.

Spurred by such ill-conceived recognitions, DCP Kyari saw himself as untouchable regardless of his actions. While facing a criminal indictment and potential extradition to the United States of America, over aiding and abetting international fraudsters, he according to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) continued his aiding and abetting trait in the narcotics underworld. Remorseless as it were, Kyari’s inherent trait of using his office to promote crime in the country has manifested in several dimensions.

Some have argued that if a random test of traits of criminality is conducted on the entire police force, the result would be as disastrous as that of the recent recruitment exercise. The argument being that many members of the police force aid and abet criminality as part of their work schedule. While such potential huge number of criminality in the force is arguable, there is no doubt that the quality of policing across the country, is a manifestation of the poor recruitment process.

As data analysts would put it, garbage in, garbage out. In essence, it is the quality of recruits into the force that has manifested in the kind of police officers and men we have. Of course, the police structure we run, allows persons who are completely alienated from the outcome of the recruitment exercises, to recruit the police men, under a centralised police force, legalised by a so-called federal constitution. It is this warped system that attracts mainly the poorly educated to apply to join the police.

It is instructive that many states could not fill their quota in the recruitment exercise, and obviously it is the states with better educated population and better alternative opportunities that failed to show up in large numbers for the recruitment exercise. A recruitment exercise that attracts the least educated and least prepared in life should worry our policy makers if they care about the country. As things are, Nigeria is poorly policed, and it would be unmanageable tragedy if the few hands recruited are mainly dullards.

So, our policy wonks must impress on the political leadership the urgent need to change the police structure in other to attract quality applicants. We cannot keep employing the dregs of our society into our police force and expect a better policing. Those who hold the view that the centralised policing structure can be tweaked through the so-called community policing should see that the gimmick is not working. The monster of insecurity in rural areas is not satiated by the highly promoted community policing.

In my rural community, Imezi-Owa, in Ezeagu Local Government Area of Enugu State, the police post has been shut down since the advent of the unknown gun-men in parts of the southeast region. Similar shut-downs have become the norm is several rural communities where the few policemen that man the rural police posts have become soft targets for the bandits that have taken over our rural communities.

Obviously, because of the centralised command of the police structure, the local authorities including the state command would continue to wait on Abuja to determine how to deal with the situation. I bet that if the state and indeed the local governments have powers to recruit police at their levels, the abandonment of policing in rural communities would not be the case, as we see across the country.

Instead of being conquered by fear, the states which now rely on sundry groups with no legal rights to bear arms, except as approved by the president or IGP, would employ their own police, train and equip them to deal with the menace. Perhaps, it is necessary to conduct a comparative analysis of the quality of persons who apply to join the quasi-police structures across the states in the country, and those who applied for the recent police recruitment exercise, so as to appreciate the underlining challenges.

If applicants for states’ quasi-police, like Amotekun, Ebubeagu, state traffic control corps, and similar others, attract more qualified persons than the federal police, then, those in-charge of the federal police should be very concerned. Should that be the case, what it implies is that despite the advantages attached to being a federal policeman, recognised by the constitution, as the only police in the country, with guaranteed authority to bear arms, with better assurances of payment of salaries, with other better privileges, attract lower grades of persons than the state quasi-police.

In an address, the chairman of the PSC Alhaji Musliu Smith, appreciated the gravity of the challenge as regards the quality of applicants, when he said: “this is a sad reflection of the calibre of officers that will be patrolling our communities in the event that these persons actually end up enlisted in the police. Perhaps owing to disenchantment with the police, the inability of citizens to appreciate the value of police and policing has further impacted the quality of persons applying to work in the force.”

While he understands the challenge facing the recruitment of quality police personnel, there are no signs that right steps are being taken to address those challenges. As a former IGP, Smith is in a good position to advise the federal government to change the paradigm, for the good of our country.