The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Electoral savagery

    PDP, Nigeria’s leading opposition party, craves sympathy — drip! drip! — over Bayelsa and Kogi.  Not from these quarters!

    Whatever its present angst, it merrily inflicted such on others, in those halcyon days of dreaming power, in the first instance, for 60 uninterrupted years — and was beastly about it.

    It’s grim to see the crude also cry!

    Power without conscience does neither the aggressor nor the victim any good.  In politics as in other spheres of life, that famous saying is trite: as you lay your bad, you lie on it.

    After 16 years as Nigeria’s ruling party, PDP grates from a bed of spikes; to which it condemned the opposition, during its high power days.

    APC, the current central lord of manor, is only in its fifth year.  But whatever holds true for PDP holds true for APC too: whatever APC does as a ruling party would also be its lot as future opposition.

    That is the ultimate lesson from the November 16 elections; and that is why APC must think more, and joy less, over the Bayelsa and Kogi polls.

    Kogi, particularly, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth — the violence, the thuggery,  the general election-day anarchy, in some voting precincts.

    True, the violence may have been both ways.  But the Kogi meltdown would appear the greatest threat, thus far, to President Muhammadu Buhari’s solemn pledge to bequeath Nigeria a saner electoral system than he met it.

    Bayelsa, despite allegations from the losing camp, followed its normal poll pattern since 1999.  If there was any fraud, as the PDP claims, it wasn’t more — or less — than frauds in the past, which the PDP rapturously claimed.

    To now howl, simply because it’s no beneficiary of the latest “fraud”, is the height of cant and hypocrisy.

    Which takes the discourse to what, beyond partisan fealty, really shaped the November 17 elections: the triumph and defeat of clannish politics.

    In Bayelsa, the tribes — or more accurately, the clans — gathered, with a vengeance, to hand APC’s David Lyon a rousing upset: the political equivalent, to echo Reggae great, Bob Marley, of Exodus, movement of Jah — sorry Ijaw — people!

    The Zionist rime, in this showdown, appears manifest: David, Lyon, lion, Zion — a study indeed, in scorched earth clannish mobilization, for a devastating election victory!

    But in Kogi, the tribes — Igala, Ebira and Okun Yoruba — scattered, to hand a rather desperate Governor Yahya Bello (GYB) victory, which optics nevertheless weren’t pretty!

    Even now, Kogites would appear in a bind: which is more tolerable — a GYB victory, with all its warts?   Or a Musa Wada one, with its spectre of umpteenth Igala hegemony, simply because the Igala are the “insensitive” majority?

    On this question alone, Kogi politics is ruptured, far more ruptured, beyond mere partisan differences.  That needs urgent fixing.

    But back to Bayelsa.  Governor Henry Seriake Dickson, in the PDP camp, provoked the angry banding of the clan, by his pre-election Nebuchadnezzar complex.

    Remember the biblical Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, felled by the hubris of own glory, but who ate crow, en route to redemption?

    Perhaps only Dickson would feign ignorance on the disaster that struck his party.  Barely one week to the polls, the new Bayelsa Speaker from Southern Ijaw, imposed after a gun clatter deposed the former Speaker, quit and defected to APC.

    Read Also: Electoral Act Bill scales Second reading in Senate

     

    Before then, the PDP suffered a gale of high profile defections, from high officials of state, almost on a daily basis.  Of course, there was the little whispering campaign of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s alleged entente with APC, over Dickson’s alleged intransigence.

    Then, horrors of horrors!  The outgoing governor had “imposed” an Urhobo, as PDP deputy governorship candidate!  But pray, isn’t the Urhobo a Bayelsan?  It’s the making of the political Osu (Igbo for outcaste), in an Ijaw state!

    The PDP lost the Bayelsa election simply because almost all critical influence centres left the party in the lurch — Exodus, movement of Bayelsa people!

    And if you jeer, that Lyon, the governor-elect and proud lion of that Zion train, is rather grammatically challenged, these good people had it all figured out, right from the feverish campaign stump: who grammar help?

    The PDP is clearly peeved that Bayelsa, it’s South-South pearl, is in “enemy” hands, just as APC would grimace at the PDP gubernatorial capture of Oyo, its South West political capital.  But both “outrageous” feats have been achieved more by elite gang-up, than ideological shift.

    Still, with Bayelsa, the ultimate loser would appear outgoing Governor Dickson.  His humpty-dumpty crash, though induced by a Nebuchadnezzar complex, appears bereft of that post-fall Nebuchadnezzar humility, that Dickson needs to grasp a ticket to redemption.

    But then, it’s early days yet; and politics is all so fluid!

    Now to Kogi, the ultra-violent face of November 16.  The true tragedy of Kogi would appear a macabre post-election victory dance, with partisans grooving and singing their opponents would “hear am ta-ta-ta-ta-ta”! — an onomatopoeia for raking gunshots!

    Such glamourization of electoral savagery must never be tolerated, for elections are no wars!  The government must start by rounding up and prosecuting all those involved in the Kogi violence.

    Still, Kogi might be the latest of such election barbarity.  But it’s certainly not the worst.  Indeed, the Kogi violence rubbed shoulders with the electoral massacre of Osun, in the 2007 election, which the then outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo christened “do-or-die”.

    Even if it was worse than Osun 2007, it certainly held no candle to the free-killing and maiming Rivers fields of 2015, complete with election-time opportunistic rape.

    A Rivers State Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, then chair of the National Human Rights Commission, put the figure of slaughter, between 15 November 2014 and 11 April 2015, at 19 daily.

    The murder of Mrs Salome Abuh, the Ochadamu PDP women’s leader, burnt while locked up in her home, headlined the Kogi gory counts.

    But even that pales into relative insignificance, compared to the fate of the tragic Adubes, in Rivers’ Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni LGA.  Patience Adube told the Odinkalu Commission how partisan thugs massacred her husband, three sons, Ikechukwu, his son-in-law and one of the deceased’s security guards — all six, for their APC sympathies!

    There is no evidence that those killers, among others, have been brought to book — or will ever be brought to book.

    The fact is since the 1st Republic when Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, Deputy Premier of the West, told folks his Demo party would win — and they did — whether voters voted them or not, provoking the “we tie” protests; to the Ondo anti-rigging “war” of 1983 that signalled the beginning of the end for the 2nd Republic, to Obasanjo’s do-or-die show of 2007, and the Rivers killing fields of 2014/2015, electoral savagery has always threatened to hallmark Nigeria’s voting culture.

    Kogi is only the latest reminder of that nightmare.  That is why concerted efforts must be made to uproot the menace.  No democracy thrives by thuggery and allied election-time brigandage.

  • Encounters with Alex Akinyele and Tam David-West

     Olatunji Dare

     

    This past fortnight, Nigeria lost two of its most arresting personalities in quick succession.

    The first to depart, on November 11, was Professor Tam (Tamunoeni) Sokari David-West, eminent virologist, former commissioner for education in the old Rivers State, minister of petroleum resources, minister for mines, power and steel, was perhaps better known for his “philosophical essays” in the news media on a wide range of subjects.  He was 83.

    Barely four days later, on November 14, Alex Akinyele, was reported dead. Akinyele was a chief public relations strategist for the Nigeria Customs Service, later serving as Minister for Information, Executive Chairman of the National Sports Commission and, to cap his public career, chair of a pork barrel set up by General Sani Abacha to promote “national reconciliation” in the wake of the turmoil into which he annulment of the 1993 presidential election had plunged Nigeria.  He was 81.

    Both were remarkable personalities, each in his own way.

    I first met Akinyele in 1990, at a reception for media executives by one of the leading advertisement companies.   He had the erect bearing of a senior military officer. His exquisite tailoring, his luxuriant, manicured moustache, his handsome, movie-actor looks and his overall grooming would have made him a standout in any crowd.

    In no time at all, he was relating how his late uncle, Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, who was killed during the January 15, 1966 coup, had observed that he was made for the army but had somehow ended up in the Customs.

    Just telling, mind you. No complaints.

    Some two years later, it fell to me to chaperon him at a Guardian Newspapers function at the Ogun State Hotel, in Abeokuta.  After settling in in his suite, I tarried for a while to brief him on the programme.

    During the small talk that ensued, he leaned across the couch, and in the manner of someone imparting a profound secret, asked:  “Are you aware that I am the first graduate of the University of Ife (later Obafemi Awolowo University) to be appointed a Federal Minister?”

    Before I could formulate a response that would satisfy the honoured guest without advertising my ignorance on overarching issues of Nigeria’s history, he followed with another question:  “Do you know that I am also the first indigene of Ondo. to be appointed a federal minister?

    That was vintage Alex Akinyele.

    He had announced to the whole world one full year in advance that he was going to be named a minister.  One unreliable source, actuated no doubt be envy, even claimed that Akinyele had printed elegant business cards reflecting that designation ready for distribution on his first day in office.

    At his investiture, Akinyele revealed something of his amazing physical fitness when he executed a 90-degree bow, without the slightest discomfort, to clasp military President Ibrahim Babangida’s outstretched hand by way of gratitude. He would later refer to his much younger benefactor as his “father,” and not just in the symbolic sense of “father of the nation.”

    Akinyele’s brief was to repair Nigeria’s battered image, at home and abroad.  He returned from an extended visit to the UK and the United States and proclaimed “mission accomplished,” on the strength of an interview with a not-so-reputable journal in London, and an interview on a radio station in New York that belted out reggae music 24 hours a day.

    He was so peeved by a satirical piece in the government-controlled Daily Times, something about a Mungo Park, that he asked Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi, the paper’s managing director, to fire its author, Ndaeyo Uko.  Ogunbiyi refused, whereupon Akinyele, with a nod from Babangida fired Ogunbiyi.

    Akinyele took no little pleasure or pride in winning that power game, which he was fond of recounting.

    Akinyele got his own comeuppance, or so the public thought, when Bagangida named him chair of the National Sports Commission.  It was no horizontal career move, much less a vertical one, even if it carried an executive tag.

    Ironically it was in this somewhat diminished status that Akinyele accomplished his most notable feat on the national scene when he led the nation’s Olympic team to a record haul of three silver medals and a bronze at the Barcelona Olympics.

    I last saw Akinyele in May 1992. The coronation of Oba Festus Adesanoye as the Osemawe of Ondo had reached a critical stage when a siren blasted the solemnity of the occasion, heralding a limousine that drove right to the outdoor stage.

    Guess who stepped out daintily of the limousine, without the slightest unease, as if it was the most natural thing in the world?

    No prizes for figuring that out:  Alex “Alecko” Akinyele. Who else but Himself the Alecko?

    Whereas Akinyele stood out on account of his accoutrements, David-West stood out on account of his erudition, which he was never loath to display in insightful newspaper articles.  As many of his younger admirers have noted in tributes to his memory, those essays helped unlock the mystery of things and served as models of literary exposition.

    But some of David-West’s contemporaries at the University of Ibadan thought him lacking in intellectual modesty. Without naming him, the philosopher Godwin Sogolo inveighed on those who were forever “veering without caution.”  He had in mind David-West’s forays into philosophy, even though he had no academic training in that field, formal or informal.

    It is to David-West’s credit that his critics never accused him of misleading those he sought to educate. He claimed no originality in his essays, written long before the computer made the wisdom of the ages available at the touch of a button.  He sought to explain and integrate some concepts in philosophy and relate them to everyday life.

    I first met him in 1963, when he came from the University of Lagos College of Medicine to observe a physics lab I was taking at the old Federal Advanced Teachers College, in Akoka.  Our Hungarian professor, Dr F. Bukovszky (we never knew what the F stood for. Fyodor, perhaps?), introduced him as an adjunct who would thenceforth supervise the labs.

    Fresh-faced, clean-shaven and mild-mannered, he exuded the quiet confidence you would want in your of supervisor.  But he never showed up thereafter.

    I never forget the occasion nor the man, and I was delighted to encounter him many years later as      a public intellectual who did not shy away from controversy or from the limelight. Appointment followed public appointment, in Rivers State, and at the Centre, with some of the most important cabinet portfolios under his belt.

    Then, humiliation followed on humiliation. He was moved in a cabinet shuffle from petroleum resources to mines, energy and steel.  Then, without formally dismissing David-West, and without naming him to another post, military president Ibrahim Babangida announced David-West’s successor, with David-West himself in attendance.

    He was later charged with contributing to the nation’s “economic adversity.”

    The evidence? 

    Accepting a cup of tea – yes, tea – and a wrist watch from a prospective investor.   In a transparent travesty, a rookie judge found David-West guilty as charged and sentenced him to ten-year jail term, to be served in the fly-infested Bama, in the desiccated Sahel.

    The judgment was voided on appeal.  The judge in the court of first instance, was later dismissed for conduct unbecoming.

    David-West often boasted that he used his office to turn many Nigerians into millionaires but never enriched himself.  If there is any evidence to the contrary, it is not pubic knowledge. He lived simply and modestly.  Not for him the opulence living that has come to be associated with holding public office.

    They thought he was being self-righteous at their expense and decided to teach him a lesson he would never forget. He did not wallow in self-pity or in the injustice of it all. Rather, he took it like one of the Stoic philosophers he wrote about.

    My personal interactions with David-West were not always smooth.  When he sent you an article, he expected it to be published the very next day, if not earlier.  He had this habit of rendering dozens of phrases and sometimes entire sentences in the upper case. Editing his copy was additional work that could wait.

    One day he told me with uncharacteristic gruffness that it was our publisher Alex Ibru who had urged him to contribute articles to The Guardian, and that he would have to report to Ibru if I delayed publishing his submissions.

    I disinterred his latest submission from the pile on my desk, handed it to him and told him I would be expecting Ibru’s instructions.

    We made up, but he never sent me another piece.  He found a way with another editor in the house.

    There was no repressing Dam David-West.

    Nigeria’s public sphere is the less vibrant for his passing.

  • Hate speech? Not part of the hysteria

    Trust Nigeria: that well-hyped, well-crafted liberality, may well be well-shrouded, self-serving impunity!

    After former CJN Walter Onnoghen’s scandal broke, what gored a SAN most was not a judicial high priest that allegedly smudged his immaculate cloak, but  the “outrage” of docking a sitting CJN.

    “How can they,” he fumed, “dock the CJN?”

    “Why not?” Ripples countered. “Is he above the law?”

    That brought the learned SAN thudding hard on grim reality.  But it never cured him of his professional conceit that the CJN should be above the law — the same law that created his office and, by that special grace, vaulted him over and above every other citizen, when interpreting the law was the question.

    That hubris all but played out thereafter, with the futile legal rally that the CJN should shun appearing before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, until its chairman read the riot act and things got rather nasty.

    ASUU, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, just essayed its own grandstanding; pushing a divine right to decide how its employer must pay it, because thanks to “university autonomy”,  its members are exceptional minds, too superior to be paid, from the same salary framework, as other plebs!

    What’s that — liberal fascism?

    A similar conceit is playing out in the media, regarding hate speech; and the clearly draconian bill, now in the mill, to stamp it out.

    Forget the pro- and anti-hate speech bill arguments, the opening gambit by the ace democratic liberals and champions of free speech, would appear media exceptionalism — not unlike the legal exceptionalism that landed the former CJN in so much grief.

    But again, beyond ideological passion, which many times is herd mentality rather than hard, rigorous reason, such exceptionalism is clearly illogical.  You cannot claim because you distil free speech, you are free of the laws that guide that territory.

    Even with celestial perfectness, isn’t order the first law in heaven?  How much less then on earth, with folks’ penchant to bait the extreme?

    Make no mistake: the hate speech bill is following all the wrong path, in tackling a serious problem.  No matter how grievous a matter is — and hate speech is grievous — you don’t frame law, or any public policy, on sheer emotions.

    If you did, you risked not giving it the full, rigorous and concentrated thinking it deserved, since anger or outrage tends to freeze your thinking.  That is the flaw of the sponsor of that bill.  His anger tends to consign it to death on arrival.

    But that a bill’s sponsor is clinically challenged does not vitiate the need, nay the imperative, to deal with the problem.  Indeed, resorting to media hysteria to push “free speech” at any cost, is no less critically challenged as the bill itself is.

    There certainly can’t be free hate speech!

    So, the drama playing out is emotion versus emotion: Sabi Abdullahi, senator and sponsor of the hate speech bill, is so incensed he wants to play the Nigerian modern day legislative Draco — death for hate speech, well, if it causes the death of another!

    But his critics too are in a huff, too incensed by his draconian temper; puffing hot smoke, in a fit of democratic rage!

    Both sides betray different sides of patriotic arrogance that leaves the pressing problem unsolved.  That, for the polity, could be fatal.  That is why there must be a third way, rooted in cold reason.

    At the end of the day, the starting point is taking responsibility.  That is trite in speech; as it is in every other sphere of life.

    In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a voice in the epic poem grumbled that God ought to have willed Adam from straying from Eden and dooming mankind.  But another voice countered: God has given Man free will.  Still, however Man exercises this will, he must stand by the consequences.  That also goes for free speech.

    That is the point the willy-nilly champions of free speech are fleeing from, flaunting the rich lather of ideologue sentiments, hoping that would cover the void.  It won’t — at least with the acute.

    Indeed, taking responsibility for his freedom is what Man has fled from, since the fall of Adam.

    Read Also: ‘Hate speech death penalty antithetical to development’

     

    Sigmund Freud, in psychoanalysis, demonstrates the uneasy balance between the “id” (the raw intent to do anything), the “ego” (the inherent check against raw intents) and the “super ego” (societal sanctions against misbehaviour, should self-restraint fail).

    Even the Social Contract, the basic theory undergirding the pristine state, is also a bulwark against man’s seeming natural extremity, in his relationship with peers.  The threat of the mighty crushing the weak made the state imperative — an agency to moderate behaviours and impose order.

    But again, in a modern democratic state, the debate is not about free speech.  That is settled, with any democratic constitution, worth its name.

    What is not settled is possible abuse — by the state, particularly by its unscrupulous agents, pushing back the frontiers of citizen liberty.  That appears the angst of the media and other free speech champions, in this present push, to tackle hate speech.  That fear is real, particularly with Nigeria’s past nasty experience with military rule.

    But ample abuse also comes from citizen beneficiaries, who hide behind free speech to press their democratic right of pushing out free hate speech!

    That is clear from too many social media posts. That free speech champions are deliberately coy about this menace shows the deliberate fraud in their own impassioned campaigns, for the so-called “free society”.  That is nothing but tragic romance — at least from the Rwanda experience.

    Rwanda!  Had the Rwandan genocide of 1994 come some 20 years later, Ripples wagers, with the present social media penetration, Rwanda would perhaps have become the first modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah — completely razed by hate, if not by sexual decadence.

    Which country could have survived the Rwanda “cut down the tall trees!”, pass through the cold and ubiquitous social media, and yet live to tell the tale?

    Just as well: Rwandans appear less gung-ho about democratic rights, which President Paul Kagame abuses with gusto!  Hutu-on-Tutsi hate, which snowballed into genocide, left a harsh existential mark: you must be alive, before claiming democratic rights!

    Still, many in the Nigerian rights lobby still tingle with philosophical anarchy — limitless rights and zero government control — much as the English metaphysical poet, John Donne, announced his triumphant shutting out of the sun, “with a mere wink”, in his poem “Sun Rising”.

    Intellectual anarchy is gripping and exciting.  It makes the mind soar!  But physical anarchy is sobering stuff: the unbridled push of rights that alters the societal balance and peaks in avoidable tragedy.  That starts with hate speech.

    Hate speech is an existential menace.  Not even media hysteria can wish away that acute danger. Which is why the state and the rights lobby must partner to get rid of it.

    The earlier both sides quit grandstanding and got to serious business, the better for everyone.

    At least, Nigeria has Rwanda’s experience to learn from.

  • Bloodthirsty senate?

    What is driving our distinguished senators to propose capital punishment for an offence, which to a large extent is a common pastime for many Nigerians? Could it be a way of paying Nigerians back, for their stringent objection to the criminal enrichment going on in the national assembly, by way of unconstitutional emoluments? Or perhaps, the senators hope that if the law if passed, it will silence Nigerians who have been abusing them for failing to make appropriate laws that could lift the country from the prevalent economic quagmire.

    Without equivocation, the bill on hate speech before the senate, which has passed first reading, and which provides for death penalty, is an overkill. In some instances it may amount to a capital punishment for an offence with a nebulous presumption of guilt. For instance, does it amount to hate speech to stringently denounce a public official who has misappropriated the resources put in his care, and ostensibly use it for self-aggrandizement? Will a caller for civil disobedience face death penalty if the people angrily riot and the police in quelling the riot use life bullet on the demonstrators, resulting in the death of a citizen?

    Again, when frustrated citizens from one tribe call citizens from another tribe names, which inflame passion, and in a roforofo arising therefrom, somebody dies, will the police be entitled to seek out those they believe started the quarrel and ask for death penalty when they are charged to court for hate speech? Furthermore, will political and socio-cultural leaders who have threatened and boasted severally that their tribesmen don’t forgive an offence against their cattle, be eligible to face death penalty for the many deaths traceable to those they defend?

    How would the law exhaustively define hate speech? Will the usual abuse that happen in a danfo bus or molue be treated as a hate speech? Will the regular abuse between neighbours in the ‘face me I face you’ living quarters, when passions are inflamed, during which they mutually haul abusive words to members of each other’s tribe and even dead parents, be treated as hate speech? Will it amount to hate speech, to say that the Deputy Chief Whip of the senate, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, who sponsored the bill, is a woeful failure in the senate?

    Will it amount to hate speech to tell the electorates in Niger state to recall Senator Abdullahi, and vote in a more serious person who will be concerned about their welfare, instead of an extremist law on hate speech? Will it amount to hate speech to speculate on constituency projects since the details of the work, the project costs, and the beneficiary of the usually over-bloated contract, are shrouded in secrecy? Will it amount to hate speech to speculate on the health condition of a public official, who goes abroad on a medical tourism with public funds, but refuses to disclose his medical challenge publicly?

    Read Also: Nigeria @59: We’ll always provide quality representation – Senate

     

    Of note, the criminal code provides in section 59(1) as follows: “Any person who publishes or reproduces any statement, rumour or report which is likely to cause fear and alarm to the public or to disturb the public peace, knowing or having reason to believe that such statement, rumour or report is false shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and liable on conviction, to imprisonment for three years.”

    The Code further provides in sub-section 2: “It shall be no defence to a charge under the last preceding subsection that he did not know or did not have reason to believe that the statement, rumour or report was false unless he proves that, prior to publication, he took reasonable measures to verify the accuracy or such statement, rumour or report.” At the level of public interest, the above provision to a large extent deals with the scourge of our time, the plague of fake news and hate speech.

    To protect the individual reputation, the Criminal Code provides on the law of defamation, which is defined in section 373, thus: “Defamatory matter is matter likely to injure the reputation of any person by exposing him to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or likely to damage any person in his profession or trade by an injury to his reputation.” While the punishment for publication of defamatory matter is one year imprisonment, publication of defamatory matter with intent to extort is seven years.

    Away from criminal law, there is the tort of Defamation, which deals with libel and slander, both of which protect the reputation of individuals from hate speech and allied fake news. In Ratcliffe vs Evans (1892) 2 QB 524 at 529-530, Bowen LJ, said thus: “Every libel is of itself a wrong in regard to which the law implies damages… Akin to action for libel are those actions which are brought for oral slander, where such slander consists of words actionable per se, and the mere use of which constitutes the infringement of the plaintiff’s right. The very speaking of such words, apart from any damage, constitutes a wrong and gives rise to a cause of action. The law in such a case presumes… general damages.”

    So, to a large extent, there are provisions in our laws, which can substantially deal with the scourge of fake news and hate speech, in a civilized manner. The problem with us is the lack of capacity to bring culprits to book, in accordance with the law. While no doubt, the birth of social media has made life miserable for high class individuals and public officials, especially those with a lot of skeletons in their cupboard, such challenge is not enough to seek to unnecessary abridge the right to be informed, guaranteed by the constitution.

    Section 39 of the 1999 constitution (as amended), without equivocation provides: “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without hindrance.” Of course, the above provision is not absolute, that is why the law criminalises wrong use of the right as criminal defamation, and punishes the pocket, when the right is recklessly exercised by way of damages in the tort of defamation. If we need to upgrade the punishment for the reckless exercise of the right to freedom of expression, it must never be the harsh proposals before the senate, clearly geared to scare the public from exposing the deep rooted abuse of power and corruption in high places.

    From hindsight, it is also fair to allege that the purveyors of the malice laden bills now before the senate, are preparing to corner the jobs that would come from the proposed National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches, for their wards and friends.

     

    ‘From hindsight, it is also fair to allege that the purveyors of the malice laden bills now before the senate, are preparing to corner the jobs that would come from the proposed National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches, for their wards and friends’

  • The coming re-alignment

    Olatunji Dare

    Two years ago, I allowed on this page that former Vice President Abubakar Atiku and putative presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party had been seeking “through judicious lectures, signed newspaper articles and other interventions to come across as a progressive statesman who has thought deeply about the country’s problems and has the endowments to fix them.”

    “The fact that he is more a candidate of habit than of conviction takes nothing away from his quest.” I added.

    This declaration stemmed from the many labels he had worn over the years, abandoning one political party for another and returning to that party again, pitching his political tent in any camp willing to offer him a path to the Presidency.

    The judgement that he is driven more by habit than by conviction now seems to me rather harsh. Habit alone cannot account for the single-mindedness with which he pursued that office – a pursuit that consumed much of his fabled wealth and exposed him and his business empire to all manner of risk.  You do not enter the fray again and again, with all the attendant dangers, unless you also have the conviction that you can make a difference.

    Atiku believed with all his heart that he could make a difference, I have since gathered. He must therefore feel sorely disappointed that he did not achieve his goal.  But in Nigeria, there are things worse than losing an election.

    He must now brace himself for the mass desertion from the losing party to the victorious one. Those “on ground” tell me that the tell-tale signs of imminent defections are already in the air, and that one does not need to have sharp political instincts to perceive them.

    Those contemplating defection were prepared to bide their time as long as there was a chance that the Apex Court would reverse the verdict of Presidential Election Court and declare Atiku president-elect.  The wait was all the more indicated since Atiku’s strategists, associates, confidants, publicist, hangers-on and assorted spongers and freeloaders were all over the place assuring their principal and the attentive public that the PEC verdict would not survive even the most cursory examination by the Apex justices

    But now that the Apex justices have dismissed the appeal even more stridently, saying it lacked “a scintilla of merit,” the mass exodus can no longer be delayed. Already, Reception Committees at national, state and local levels nave been set up to plan and coordinate what is expected to be the largest political relocation and re-alignment of forces in living memory.

    Thousands, nay, tens of thousands of camp followers, who swore by Atiku’s name only last week, I gather, are busy negotiating the terms and conditions of their reception into the PDP – the wording of the announcement, the guest list, the speaking order, the cuisine, the wines, the entertainment, the aso ebi, the stagecraft and, of course, their prospects in the new order; in short, Everything.

    They are leaving nothing to chance.

    According to someone who has seen it, a memo from the Coordinator-General of the scheme, urges those seeking realignment to submit, for a start, a signed and notarized letter of intent, backed by a non-refundable handling and processing fee in the sum of N100, 000  or the equivalent thereof in U.S. dollars.  Family applications will get a 10 per cent discount.  File early to avoid disappointment.

    An insider tells me that this stipulation had set off a prolonged and impassioned debate in the National Reception Committee.  Some had argued that, given the state of the economy and the stalemated negotiations over a national minimum wage of N30, 000 a month, the application fee could only turn away well-meaning but indigent applicants.  Others contended that the investment was worth a higher price-tag, and that to settle for anything less would be to de-market the scheme.

    The latter are now being hailed as the party’s Wise Men.   Such has been the glut of applications in the two weeks since registration opened that the Reception Committee has had to contract the handling and processing to a first-generation firm of computer analysts.   By the time registration closes in four weeks, the APC may well have become the wealthiest political party in the world.

    Thereafter, screening panels at various levels will review submissions to verify the true names and identities of the applicants and to confirm that, in every material particular, the image on the photographs attached bear true and faithful resemblance to the person whose picture was duly notarized in the application material.

    Who can blame those supervising the scheme when the middle name of such enterprises in the national experience, if not the first, is inconstancy?

    I am here reminded of an attitude survey conducted at one of the first-generation universities several decades ago.  The instrument was to be administered by students at randomly-chosen rooms in the halls of residence.  As a control, the researcher scrambled the sequence to include toilets, janitorial rooms as well as classrooms.

    Not entirely to his surprise, the most eloquent and insightful responses came from residents of the toilets, broom cupboards and classrooms.

    To continue: When all that needs to be verified has been verified and those judged unworthy of membership of the APC have been eliminated, a Grand Reception will be staged simultaneously in Abuja, and in all state capitals and local government headquarters to welcome those who, in the lingo of sports commentators, made the cut.

    According to a source who has seen a draft programme of the day’s events, clergy representing the ecumenical spectrum will offer prayers. Inductees, all decked out in party uniform featuring and wielding a thick broom, will solemnly pledge allegiance to the APC and covenant to abide by its cardinal principles, to submit to party discipline at all times.

    The Environment might be too large for them to grasp, but can’t they at least spare a thought for the poor palm trees and those who make a living by tapping them?

    Following the invocations, a person who has been designated to speak for them will express their collective regret that it took them so long to realize that the political party to which they previously subscribed did not have the best interests of their teeming followers and supporters back home in mind.  The epiphany may have come rather late in the day.  But isn’t later to be preferred to never?

    Besides, the spokesman is expected add, recent developments had shown to the APC under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari is the only party that truly reflects and champions the yearnings and aspirations of the of diverse peoples of Nigeria and wishes nothing but the very best for them; the only party that can harness the nation’s huge potential and convert it to actual greatness; the only party that is committed to national unity, religious pluralism, and true national development.

    This declaration is expected to generate an applause so thunderous that if the programmer stays faithful to the choreography, it will be heard in the capitals of contiguous states.

    Thereafter, The President will deliver an Address of Welcome, formally signalling an end to the Grand Reception and the inauguration of a new political culture.

    Nothing in the foregoing will be strange to the Wazirin Adamawa, however.  He may even have anticipated it all, having seen it all.

    But his response to the judgment of the apex court, aforementioned, must have surprised his friends and acolytes in the news media who fawned over him throughout the campaign and generally cast him as the coming liberator.

    And yet, hear him, in this self-serving lament:  “The Nigerian judiciary, just like every estate of our realm, has been sabotaged and undermined by an overreaching and dictatorial cabal, who have undone almost all the democratic progress the People’s Democratic Party and its administrations nurtured for sixteen years, up until 2015.”

    Every estate, including the news media?

  • Excellence: Sanwo-Olu’s Doctrine

    Olatunji Dare

     

    I DO not envy Governor of Lagos State Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

    Last week, he made a public show of repudiating the honorific that had attached to his office and his name until the week before.

    No more His Excellency Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, or His Excellency Babajide Sanwo-Olu; just plain Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

    If he had kept God out of the matter, his fellow governors and the legion of officials who cherish and parade the same honorific would perhaps have charged him with nothing more than grandstanding.  But I hear they have been chafing and squirming moment he asserted that only God Almighty is worthy of that appellation.

    Sanwo-Olu’s assertion merely questioned the appropriateness of that term in the political context in which it is usually employed.  I will not be surprised however if some fundamentalists in our midst will go further and maintain that, however acquired or employed, be it as a job description or even as nickname, the term reeks of blasphemy and deserves to be visited with a fatwah.

    In which case you can expect major, minor and lesser officials who have worn that title like an ornament   for decades to cast it away, not from modesty or conviction like Sanwo-Olu, but from fear of consequences known and unknown.

    School uniforms and such things may stir up fundamentalist passions in the organised religions here, but I doubt whether the usage of a particular honorific can have that kind of effect.  It will more likely set off a wide and engaging national debate that may even resonate across the world.

    At the funeral a fortnight ago for the late  African-American statesman, civil rights leader and chair of the powerful U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform, The Hon.  Elijah Cummings, former President Barack Obama spoke with practised subtlety about those who became honourable only after attaining certain positions, or indeed only by virtue of holding those positions.

    Then, pausing for effect, he added:  “Elijah Cummings was honourable before he became a leader of the United States Congress.”

    You could see members of the audience suppress their titters, nod approvingly, and exchange knowing glances.

    That one is for you, Donald Trump, Obama might have added.  But he did not need to. Nor did the audience expect him to.  Any elaboration would have ruined that deft rhetorical device.

    For until a narrow victory in the 2016 election catapulted him to President of the United States, only a few could have found the most tangential association between “Trump” and “Honourable.”  By his conduct in  that office three years on, the chances of finding any association between the twain will have to be judged galactic.

    It will be said that the term “Honourable” refers only to the office, not to the man or woman, and that if even the incumbent is a certified reprobate and a blackguard, we should still accord him or her office the benefit of the doubt in matters relating to honour:  a person without honour elected to and basking in the glory of an office designed for persons who are at the very least supposed to know what honour is.

    That is not uncommon in tribal politics, however.

    “He is a thief all right, but he is our thief,” it is often said, in extenuation of wayward conduct.

    The dissonance resulting from this mindset cannot make for healthy politics or a heathy polity.  No wonder we are in such a mess.

    All in all, I do not expect that Sanwo-olu will not be assailed by the stormy winds that a fundamentalist or literal construction that some expect his disavowal of the honorific attached to his position.  Still he could be prepared for hard questions on other matters arising from that act.

    Such as:  How can he preside over The Centre of Excellence if he has no claim to excellence?  Applied to Lagos, is that term not misconceived? Can there even be such a place in this sinful world, let alone Lagos? Only Heaven, Sanwo-Olu’s critic will chide him, qualifies to be regarded as a centre of excellence.

    Here, as a long-term Lagos resident and a Lagosian at heart, I must come to the aid of the good governor.   As I see it, connotes aspiration rather than actuality.  And aspiration is the one thing most of us have in common, those on the march to sainthood as well as the most desperate hustlers.

    Sanwo-olu’s critics will grant this objection but insist, nevertheless, that shedding the honorific at issue or going about his official business without being heralded by menacing outriders leading a snaking motorcade is not enough.  If he is really serious about the Excellency deficit, he should proceed to shed at least many of the perks and perquisites that flow from being designated excellent.

    Those are statutory benefits.  He did not confer them on himself.  They come with the territory.

    Divest himself of whatever he does not absolutely need in his emolument package, I can almost hear his critics rejoin.  How much does a person really need anyway, even a state governor?

    Other officials on the Excellency spectrum can similarly expect to be badgered, even if the honorific consists mainly in holding a diplomatic passport and carries far fewer benefits than in the case of state governors. I hope matters do not get to a point where they determine that the honorific is not worth the risk.

    Who wants to be caught wearing that label in any form while travelling through territory over which syndicated kidnappers rein?

    Fortunately for our senators, being merely “distinguished” does not carry the kind of query that being “excellent” carries even if, in this particular instance, there is little basis for it in parliamentary history or usage.

    When members of the House of Representatives, following foreign precedent, appropriated the term “Honourable” to themselves, the senators who stand higher in the political pecking order scrambled to find a grander and more evocative title.  But what they settled for was something more prosaic:  Distinguished.

    What their distinction consists in is far from clear.  They are for most part distinguished only for or being distinguished, as has been said of those who are famous for being famous and not for any particular achievement that is the stuff of fame.

    Still, I guess they will retain the honorific, happy that it is unlikely to attract the kind of objection that “excellency” and “honourable” seem set to attract, following what future historians will call Sanwo-olu’s Doctrine, at least, not until the senators come to insist that “Most Distinguished” is a more befitting term for their status.

    Shall we then return to the “simply Mister” era when high-riding newspaper The Guardian, presuming to      set the tone and temper of public discourse, chose to dispense almost entirely with titles and honorifics and replacing them with “Mr” for men, and I forget what for women —  almost entirely, because it allowed for some exceptions, notably Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Mallam Aminu Kano.

    There is a good dose of federal character there, too.

    These exceptions, based on long usage to which the public had become accustomed, doomed the scheme. Probably the fatal blow was a strong misrepresentation from the military regime to the paper’s proprietors that it was subversive of the strict hierarchy of the military tradition, a levelling too far.

    You cannot employ the same prefix to a General of the Army and a private and not give the corporal a false sense of equivalence, they said.

    Since then, titles and honorifics have, if anything, proliferated beyond logic and beyond regulation.  They    will endure, in spite of the once and formerly excellent governor of Lagos State, now simply Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, of what will doubtless continue to be the Centre of Excellence — excellence as aspiration, if not as actuality.

     

  • Bayelsa polls

    The people of Bayelsa State will go the polls on Saturday, to elect a new governor and his deputy, after what the opposition parties consider eight years of misrule by incumbent Governor Seriake Dickson. While Dickson and his handlers will dismiss the claim as untrue, it is instructive that the outgoing governor is relying on the number of political appointments he has made, as the raison d’être, why the candidate he foisted on his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), should win the vote on Saturday.

    This newspaper last Sunday, quoted the governor to have said: “Those who are writing about the defections from our party; let me make it clear that in our government, we have over 3000 appointees. The resignation or defection of 10 appointees out of the appointees is too small a number to cause a negative effect on our party and its chances in the election.” He went on: “come to think of it, each of you, the G32, you have between 10-14 appointments under you, and if you multiply 32 by 14, you have the sheer number of grassroots appointments.”

    Dickson’s permutation that the so-called grassroots appointment is good reason why his preferred candidate should win the governorship election in a richly endowed but developmentally backwater Bayelsa State is most unfortunate. That assertion perhaps explains why his opponents regard his regime as eight years of wasted opportunities, for the oil bearing state. After eight years in power, the governor ought to be campaigning on his achievements, which he wants the successor to continue.

    Using social development indices, Dickson should be telling voters what he has done in education; reeling out statistics on the quantum leap in the number of Bayelsans who have passed out in flying colours in the WAEC and NECO exams, in the years he is governor. He should be showing off the number of child and maternal health care centres, and how such efforts have impacted on infant mortality and pre and post natal health care.

    While Bayelsa has water everywhere, getting drinkable water is a huge task. So, what has Governor Dickson done to ameliorate that huge challenge and if has, he should be campaigning on getting a successor to continue the trajectory. Again, what has Dickson done to reclaim the wetlands, which makes building roads and houses in the state excruciatingly difficult? If he has been governing well, and ensuring security of lives and property, such reclaimed lands would be prime properties for building condominium for the many oil companies operating onshore and offshore Bayelsa.

    ‘So, how come Governor Dickson is relying on his political appointees to fight the election, instead of his achievements in power? Does it mean that he spent the nearly eight years doing nothing’

    So, how come Governor Dickson is relying on his political appointees to fight the election, instead of his achievements in power? Does it mean that he spent the nearly eight years doing nothing? Of note, Dickson who rode on the back of the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan to power appears to have outgrown his godfather. While it is not bad to grow up, one must recognise and respect the fingers that fed one, while growing up.

    According to the report, Dickson not only chose the gubernatorial candidate for his party, in the person of Senator Duoye Diri, he also selfishly chose the deputy, Senator Lawrence Erwujakpor, whom he wants to replace in the senate, if the candidates succeed at the polls. The self-serving moves have reportedly pitched him against former President Goodluck Jonathan and other PDP chieftains in the party. Interestingly, to get to the top position eight years ago, Dickson had to crawl on the back of Jonathan who had become president after the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

    This column recalls that after gaining power against more entrenched PDP chieftains like Timi Alaibe because of Jonathan’s support, Dickson made a law against rumour mongering, claiming that they were fuelling unrest in the state. This column had poked fun at the governor then, reminding him that his sudden rise to power, back then, started as a rumour, while he was at the National Assembly. Indeed, as the rumour was gaining ground, Jonathan’s men were denying it, until it became too late for the then incumbent governor.

    Presently, the soft spoken and poetic Chief Timipre Sylva, now a chieftain of the All Progressive Congress (APC), is the leader of the party in the state, and he is working assiduously to deliver Chief David Lyon to the Bricks house in Yenagoa. Interestingly, Chief Lyon has received blessings from the matriarch of the Jonathan family, Mama Beatrice Jonathan, and several of Jonathan’s men who have defected to the APC. Former President Jonathan also recently paid a courtesy visit to President Muhammadu Buhari and it was speculated that he went there to show solidarity with the APC candidate, perhaps to scorn his erstwhile godson.

    While President Jonathan has denied any such plans to dump his party, his body language say otherwise. The former first lady, Patience Jonathan, who has openly disagreed with Governor Dickson, is believed to be routing for the APC candidate. The strong man of River State politics, Barrister Nyeson Wike, is also uninterested in the PDP candidate, even though strangely his predecessor is allegedly said to be surreptitiously supporting the PDP candidate. With the odds staked against Senator Duoye Diri of the PDP, Chief David Lyon of the APC appears set to clinch the prize.

     

    Congratulations CIArb Nigeria

    From the 7th to 8th of November the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK), Nigeria Branch, conducted its 2019 Annual Conference in Lagos. There were seven sessions oscillating around the theme: “Positioning Africa: The changing Landscape in Alternative Dispute Resolution.” With distinguished speakers from Nigeria, United Kingdom, Kenya, Ghana, and Rwanda, it was an intellectual feast on Arbitration as the wining Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism. 

    At the event, Mr Olatunde Busari, SAN, C.Arb, ceremoniously took over from the immediate past branch chair, Mrs Adedoyin Rhodes-Vivour, SAN, C.Arb. The Chief Judge Federal High, Hon. Justice J.T. Tsoho, Hon. Justice O.A. Obaseki-Osaghae, Hon. Justice J.E. Oyefeso, and Hon. Justice Roli Harriman were among the top guests. Mrs Adeyinka Aroyewun MCIArb, of the Lagos Multi-Door Court House chaired one of the sessions. The conference co-chairs were Dr. Adewale Olawoyin, SAN FCIArb, and Mrs Obosa Akpata, C.Arb.

    At the occasion, yours sincerely was admitted as a member of the prestigious Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Nigeria Branch. It was also an evening for wining, dinning and networking. I say hearty congratulations to the institute and all the inductees.  

     

  • The tiff over Diaspora remittances

    Most Nigerians, I suspect, probably paid nary attention to what is – again probably, the most embarrassing spat between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the so-called Brookings Institutions on Diaspora remittances. It started with a September 9 poser by The Punch columnist Henry Boyo – $26bn Diaspora remittances: Where are the dollars?

     It was, as the title suggests, an attempt to open the lid on the management, by the CBN, of the so-called diaspora remittances, which the World Bank claimed had grossed $26 billion in 2019 alone! While his main thesis was that ‘Diaspora remittances have inexplicably failed to bolster the economies of recipient nations’, he was even more critical of the role of our apex bank, as according to him, the “over $25bn annual Diaspora remittances, have failed to produce a stronger naira exchange rate or meaningfully impact Nigeria’s economy’.

    Concerned about what he considered the unanswered questions on the matter, Etubom Michael Ani Minister of Finance 1993-1998, would raise the profile of the debate further with an article on the subject in the same newspaper on October 9. His summary: the CBN owes Nigerians lots of explanations. Alleging collaboration between the CBN, Nigerian banks and Western Union/MoneyGram; he insists that government must investigate and where infraction is established, “punish the money launders, and recover all past remittances retained abroad!

    In the interim, he says, outbound money transfer services must be stopped and all remittances retained for naira stability and the nation’s development.

    The CBN in its response says the $26 billion figure only exists in the creative imagination of those peddling the figures.   Says CBN Director, Corporate Communications Department, Isaac Okoroafor, the figure – purported to be from the World Bank – had also been queried by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the CBN, as it did not reflect the actual amount of inflows from Nigerians living abroad.

    “We are looking for the so-called $26 billion diaspora cash because such cash will impact positively on our reserve.”

    To him, $2.6 billion might be more like it!

    In a clime where institutions have long acquired notoriety for muddling up just about anything, citizens might even wonder why anyone should lose sleep over where that tiny dot perches on the conjoined integers 26! Or better still, in a country where dizzying billions – whether denominated naira, dollars or euro – have little relevance to citizens’ daily struggle to eke out an existence, why anyone should pay attention let alone follow the controversy, never mind that such could actually precipitate a massive shakedown in serious financial circles.

    Short of calling the World Bank data spurious, and hence the claims of those peddling the stats baseless, the CBN spokesman says an understanding of how their “data was sourced could provide an insight into why their figures might be off the target!

    Even if we accept the disclaimer on its face value, the CBN position in this instance, is certainly disingenuous. First, the figures which the CBN wants consigned to the dustbin didn’t just chance upon us overnight. That document, notably, claims as source, the IMF Balance of Payments Statistics database, data releases from central banks, national statistical agencies and World Bank country desks. In other words, the World Bank merely processed and expectedly drew inferences from them as any typically data-driven institution would! Secondly, the data and the projections from them have been in the public square for as long as anyone could remember! Indeed, I have before me as I write, the spreadsheet of Migration and Remittances Data produced by the World Bank Group with the latest update being October 2019 with national figures going as far back as 1980! That the CBN has only now begun to raise methodological issues cannot but call in its true motivation into question.

     

    ‘The figures which the CBN wants consigned to the dustbin didn’t just chance upon us overnight. That document, notably, claims as source, the IMF Balance of Payments Statistics database, data releases from central banks, national statistical agencies and World Bank country desks’

     

    So much for the latest enterprise in fault-finding by our apex bank, the issue is certainly more nuanced than the CBN would seek to paint. Certainly, the days are long past when the apex bank could deem its actions not only inviolate but also beyond scrutiny. Indeed, its claims to monopoly of records of cross-border financial flows are – to put it mildly – questionable particularly as remittance flows originate outside our shores – which puts the World Bank and the IMF in vantage position to track what is going on! Third – and this is particularly relevant to us, is that the rules put in place by the apex bank for remittance are not only light years behind; being purpose-made for the cartel of currency speculators at national and international levels makes for an unlikely scenario of the recipient country benefitting!

    Imagine a scenario where a family member wires home – say $500 – and where under some curious arrangement fostered by the CBN, the sender is told that the beneficiary could only receive the funds in the local currency and on terms that are neither transparent nor equitable. Aside the recipient whose needs are momentarily met, the settlement, usually from the excess naira account in the absence of direct cash flows means that the economy gains nothing!

    I guess it comes simply to who to believe between the CBN, the World Bank and allied institutions. Now, I haven’t quite said that the World Bank figures are any sacrosanct or that the alternative bandied by the apex bank is less credible! For now, yours truly is only guided by the underlying wisdom in the African proverb about the witch crying all through the night only for death to mark the arrival of dawn!

    Remember the famous quote? “Today, most of the statistics quoted about Nigeria are developed abroad by the World Bank, IMF and other foreign bodies…Some of the statistics we get relating to Nigeria are wild estimates and bear no relation to the facts on the ground. This is disturbing as it implies we are not fully aware of what is happening in our country”.

    Although worth remembering – don’t ask me who said those words.

    And now – as if contrarian statistics being routinely dredged up by critics of the administration are not enough irritants, imagine being called up to ingest yet another toxic brew from supposedly the World Bank and the IMF!

    By the way, isn’t the difference between $2.6 billion and $26 billion the place of that tiny, inscrutable dot?

  • BOS and fickle Lagos

    L’ojo Monday, Eko o ni gba-gba-kugba [On Monday morning, Lagos takes no nonsense] —  Fela

     

    Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu (BOS), who now wants to be called “Mr. Governor”, dropping the conventional prefix of “His Excellency”, seems condemned to the fickleness of Lagos.

    That fickleness is rooted in the city’s proud impatience, as noted in Fela’s famous lyrics; itself drawn from a popular street lingo, with which the denizens of the fast-paced commercial hub serenade selves.

    Lagos, a hustler’s paradise, simply brooks no sme-sme — the Lagos lingo for slackness!

    Still, the ever busy traditional Eko isn’t quite the crazy sprawl of present Lagos: a tiny space hurtling with boisterous hustlers; pushing their democratic right to rudeness and petulance, in their zero tolerance for pain and allied discomfort.

    When economic migrants from all over Nigeria rumble with the traditional Eko impatience, that impish fickleness is never far away!

    Besides, it’s the season of the social media, at its anti-social worst!  In that all-comer’s party, millions of voices rumble with irreverent thunder: from the honest, the earnest and the reasoned; to the bilious, the bigot and the diabolically partisan.

    Poor BOS is caught in this fearsome flak — basically on the generally sorry state of Lagos roads — and it all appears to get to him!

    This irreverent army has dismissed the governor as “point and kill” — the very caricature of his gubernatorial exertions and gesticulations, to fix the very problems they rage about.

    But BOS need not be fazed.  The fickle are driven by extremes.  The one that rails loudest today will praise loudest tomorrow, when the problem is history; and is seen to be so.

    Besides those who condemn first and think later, always belong to the garbage of history.

    From 1999 to 2001 or thereabouts, when Governor Bola Tinubu and his cabinet were fixing the Lagos ruin, left behind by the departed military, they were not short of  traducers.

    Even further back, while working those epochal social and physical wonders, that made the pre-independent Western Region a clear Nigerian pacesetter, the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo was never short of caustic naysayers.

    That is why the governor should take this solace: the offspring of those that rushed to mock Awo in the old Western Region, and even Tinubu back in 1999, are among those who sing the fulsome praise of both today.

    BOS should, therefore, fix his eyes on the ball.  Those who nail him today would, with equal zest, hail him tomorrow.  But that is if he gets the job done.

    Still, though not apparent to many, BOS appears to have imbued a vital lesson — how a governor relates with his predecessor.  Akinwunmi Ambode was not that endowed.  But see his comeuppance today, on that score?

    Ambode’s predecessor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, now Works and Housing Minister, left a far better Lagos for Ambode, than Ambode bequeathed BOS.

    Fashola earned high — and fair — praise for his high intellect and high-mindedness.

    His parting records too were sparkling: the roads, which have all but gone to seeds, four years after his departure, were much better.  The Okokomaiko-Mile 2-Orile-CMS light rail corridor seemed coming to life.

    Under him too, Lagos thought it had won its notorious refuse war, a combat which Tinubu had fiercely launched; and which Fashola zestfully pushed, in the best tradition of continuity.

    Even the Okada menace, Fashola seemed to have had under control, and would probably have won; had his tenure not been terminated, after his two constitutionally allowed four-year terms.

    His only Achilles heels, however, was the legitimate charge that he was more elitist than populist, a charge that resonated with the bulk of the Lagos hoi polloi, in their Alagbado, Alakuko and Tabon-Tabon redoubts, even if they still revered the governor — and, of course, some intra-chamber rumblings, within the Lagos ruling bloc, as stalwarts push and pull to corral influence.

    But despite all of Fashola’s parting goodwill, Ambode decided to throw him under the bus, on some state government-commissioned website, on alleged high costs.

    Though the issue would appear more phantom than real, the ever distracted media, particularly the social media segment, ever sniffing for salacious tales, lapped on to the alleged rot.  All, however, would peter out, after the initial, impassioned nosing for sleaze.

    Read Also: Lagos seeks CBN partnership to boost SMEs growth

    Still, see the tricks Karma is playing on Ambode today?  No thanks to his kerfuffle with the Lagos legislature, the one that wanted to throw his predecessor under the bus, is being thrown under a moving train, but for a legal freeze!

    Ay, many have claimed whatever is happening in Lagos is less Karma, and more of in-fighting within the ruling order, simply because Ambode has been, by far, the most disruptive in that chamber, since 1999.  Maybe.

    But the moral is clear: Ambode that assayed roasting another, is himself being badly roasted by others!  This is rather unfortunate.  Even with all his fair short-comings, Ambode appears condemned, at least for now, to being painted blacker than he really is.

    That is neither fair to Ambode nor good for the Lagos ruling order.  Despite some rotten personal choices, Ambode still chalked spectacular legacies in rural infrastructure upgrades: witness Epe and rural Alimoso. He therefore ought to get his due plaudits, even as he reels from fair knocks.

    The good thing here though, is that BOS has refrained from undermining his predecessor, even if not a few feel much of his present challenges are due to Ambode’s tragic distraction.

    Ambode’s shock of not nailing a second term, which should have been routine, led to a clear de-motivation, which has now put his successor in the hole.

    That all but explains the governor’s present bind, and the roasting from his fickle traducers — hardly surprising!  As ace musician Tu-Baba would croon, no paddy for (Lagos) jungle!

    But that granite challenge also presents granite opportunities, for BOS to come good and earn his own pips.

    The roads, of course, are the immediate focus — enforced low hanging fruits denizens of Lagos can’t wait to pluck and savour, now that the rains are abating!  Ridding the streets of refuse is another.

    Then, the light rail.  That would take some tough cobbling together of scarce cash! But rail might well be the organic answer to the Okada and Marwa tricycle shuttle challenge, which should never have been part of the transport mix, in a bustling 21st century Lagos.

    Of course, BOS must learn from the Ambode pitfall: always maintain a cool head; and, from fleeting power, learn to be least disruptive.

    If he gets it right — and he has little choice — Lagos wailers will turn hailers; and in their hearts, don BOS in the garb of “His Excellency”, which he just shunned, in the searing heat, of the executive kitchen.

     

    ‘It’s the season of the social media, at its anti-social worst!  In that all-comer’s party, millions of voices rumble with irreverent thunder’

  • Atiku agonistes

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President of the Federal Republic and squelched PDP candidate in the 2019 presidential election, is in agony.

    But that agony, pathetic and bathetic, issues from phantom hope, soaring on wilful delusion, driven by the most stubborn strain of self-deceit and galloping conceit.

    Indeed, how do you describe a loser, hands-down in an election, who nevertheless declared himself a soar-away winner; quoting some comic server, as real in common sense and in law, as a mirage in a sweltering desert?

    Whoever readies a parched throat, to drink from such vanishing waters?

    It’s the peril of Atiku-lated mirage in full technicolor! Yet, Atiku and his Atiku-lated crowd appear too dazed to readjust themselves to the arid reality.

    For starters, eminent jurist, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, SAN, leads the nay ensemble, over the 7-0 Supreme Court verdict, that gave the Atiku challenge the judicial short shrift.

    Now, you can’t doubt the forensic skills of Pa Nwabueze. He is among the best, if not the very best, in his area of legal expertise. In the Atiku legal misadventure, however, the political partisan would appear to have trumped the forensic genius in our good professor.

    Maybe it’s just honest mistake, or even partisan chutzpah gone awry? If either or both were the case, then Atiku would appear only the latest of Prof. Nwabueze’s chequered historical faux pas.

    In 1966 Nwabueze, as a young Turk, was among the principal advisers of Major-Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, Nigeria’s first military head of state, over the promulgation of the Unification Decree of that year.

    In 2019 Nwabueze, now old and frail, appears condemned to righting the wrong of that “original sin”, in his umpteenth restructuring campaign; to which the old man has given his all, since the dawn of The Patriots, under the leadership of the late Frederick Rotimi Alade (FRA) Williams, Nigeria’s first SAN. Tough luck in a karma war!

    Between that knowledge of history and the secrets of the future, poor Atiku is, at present, left to lick his wound!

    The PDP is not helping matters, by its comical reactions.

    Uche Secondus, its national chairman, does a comic appeal to the supernatural, resigning he, and his political household, to the court of God; a sentiment our loquacious FFK echoes, in his ubiquitous tweets, yammering about Egyptians you see today you’d see no more!

    Pray, is FFK now among the prophets, even if he claims to be a pastor?

    Read Also: What next for Atiku?

    A “shocked” Kola Ologbondiyan, feisty soul and PDP spokesperson? He drones on and on, about how “the distinction of our case remains for Nigerians, including generations yet unborn.” Seriously? Indeed, nothing is more lethal than wilful self-delusion!

    Old man Buba Galadinma, zesty neophyte if there was one, in blaring support of his new partisan friends, darkly weighed in, with the dire security implications of the Atiku failure!

    But it’s the candidate himself, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, that seems stuck by a most devastating strain of bluff and bluster!

    First, he declared himself unbroken by the judicial shellacking. Then, he consecrated himself as Nigeria’s democrat-in-chief, a thankless chore he claimed to have imposed on himself, these 20 years past, and is not willing to surrender, no matter what!

    Curiously, in that patriotic bragging, he sounds eerily close to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s too well known rich lather of patriotic narcissism.
    Strangely, however, mum has been the word, from the Ebora Owu, to Atiku’s present travails.

    Before the election, the Ebora had assumed the pious role of the grand democratic Pardoner. Like the old Catholic hustler in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prelude to the Canterbury Tales, he had attempted to cleanse Atiku of his “sins”, all frozen for history, in My Watch, Obasanjo’s presidential memoirs.

    As it turned out, Atiku, ashen, crushed and desperate, had through a crony, donated N50 million to the political cathedral of grace, the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) — first in Africa! What is unclear, however, is whether there was established quid-pro-quo, for the most sacred of political transactions, on the eve of a most crucial presidential election!

    Still, the slightest of doubts negates Julius Caesar’s rigorous integrity test: Caesar’s wife must not only be above board, she must be seen to be so! Are those high standards, of probity qua probity, gone with the classical epoch?

    That brings the discourse to Atiku’s comic epiphany, of declaring 1999 to 2015, the first 16 years of returned democracy in which the PDP rammed itself out of power, as the apogee of Nigeria’s democratic ideals!

    How so? By its overweening conceit and overarching sleaze, which plumbed the very nadir under President Goodluck Jonathan, but which strong foundation was laid under the Obasanjo-Atiku presidency?

    By its brazen writing of electoral figures, which started as a moderate pour with Obasanjo’s re-election of 2003; but hit the monsoon in the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s “election” of 2007, an exercise in which the colluding INEC never even bothered to serialize the ballot paper, which the president-elect was utterly ashamed of, but which the Supreme Court nevertheless certified as okay?

    Indeed by 2015, after Fall Guy Jonathan had added his own effete stumbles, a PDP re-presenting its candidates for re-election had become the Achebean rogue who had stolen too much for the owner not to notice!

    Yet, it’s the same PDP and its misdeeds that Atiku was trying to re-canonize, just as Obasanjo had tried to re-beatify Atiku, before the 2019 presidential election, after all the complete demolition job contained in My Watch!

    Any surprise both not only fell flat but were sweet butt of jokes?

    Aside from this Atiku-lated epiphany, Atiku’s severe post-defeat syndrome also entailed a Samson complex, of pulling everything down and libelling the courts, because he lost a bad case!

    Well, was this a former Vice President of the Federal Republic, or some callow political hustler, new on the block, blindly lashing out, in insane rage?

    With Atiku’s rather funny lionization, PDP appears set to gamble away its time in opposition, as it did in power. Unless it changes tack, it risks a stiff drop: from power, to opposition, to irrelevance.

    If that happened, the peripatetic Atiku, everything to everybody so long as he sniffs a power deal, would move elsewhere to pursue his fixation: power. If you doubt, check his partisan wandering: PDP to Action Congress (AC), back to PDP, then to APC, and now back to PDP!

    Even now for the former Vice President, it could well be morning yet on migration day! But then, it’s his democratic right.

    Still, Atiku could put up such a show because the general society itself is tragically distracted. The masses proudly lack institutional memory. The elite — merrily selfish, parasitic and unconscionable — are a classic example of how not to be an elite!

    A section of the media has even traded healthy skepticism for sickening cynicism! At a critical juncture of Nigeria’s history, what appears to matter is the institutional ego of those media — and the sacred arrogance of their reporters and columnists — and not honest duty to a country, trying to find its feet again.

    Let’s just hope those involved won’t gamble away their market relevance, as some parties and politicians have blown away their political essence — and become the future media equivalent of Atiku agonistes!

    Quote: “Atiku’s patriotic bragging sounds eerily close to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s too well known rich lather of patriotic narcissism”