Category: Sanya Oni

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More than 10 days since the highest judiciary in the land ruled President Muhammadu Buhari administration to be out of order on its demonetisation policy, the situation in the country is best described as being in ‘suspended animation’ mode. It is, as one internet dictionary puts it, a situation of temporary cessation of most vital functions of the body – minus death. Even for an administration that is only too notorious for its snail speed; one that has become irritatingly desensitised to the feelings of the ordinary citizen, that it would require the whole of 10 days to study and give effect to that simple, straight-forward judgment, is hard to imagine.

And so the waiting game continues. More than that; things may have merely turned full cycle.

Yours truly actually read somewhere that the number one officer of the federal government, Abubakar Malami, SAN,  that the office would not be compelled to make a public statement on the matter as monetary policy matters are outside of its remit as he is a mere law officer! And that was an officer, whose office was specifically cited among the respondents to the suit challenging the demonetisation policy!

And you say his principal – President Muhammadu Buhari, has been magisterially mute? Why not? Only the undiscerning would fail to observe the elegantly woven schema – a case of things merely falling into their proper places!

Remember, the president was forced to address the country on February 16 on the naira redesign. The sum total of the address, which came after the Supreme Court had put the policy on abeyance, was to tell the apex court to back off!

Between the president’s word – interpreted by Malami and company – as the last on the matter and on which no further contention was permitted; and the Supreme Court judgement – which the constitution duly pronounces as the final word on any matter, Nigerians surely know where the pendulum would inevitably swing. Indeed, between the rule of our ‘constitutional monarch’, and his unelected minion in charge of the general purse on the one hand, and the rule of law on the other, Nigerians have by now the understanding of where real power resides and that anything contrary to that received wisdom is merely academic!

We can only watch and pray that reason prevails in the end while hoping also that the costs would still be within tolerable while the game of hide and seek lasts!

That takes us to the other principal agency in the orchestrated confusion that has thrown the economy into the needless spasm, the trauma of which threatens to erode the very fabric of trust underpinning the financial eco-system.

From the initial hubris drenched in activism, we have seen the CBN stumble and fumble to the point that it is now practically on AWOL as the military is wont to say, when it matters most.  From yielding the space to shadow players, we have seen its officials swing from the reactionary mode, issuing rebuttals to news it routinely calls ‘fake’ even when no ‘originals’ exist, to spewing all manners of rubbish to confuse the exasperated, bewildered citizenry.

As anyone might imagine, the focus is increasingly now on the lone individual responsible for putting the financial services sector in its most expansive mode in recent memory. No prize for guessing: Godwin Emefiele, the man under whose watch the traditional monetary policy instruments suffered the most egregious abuses imaginable; the aberrant fellow who not only threw the traditional monetary restraints into the bin but did everything to corrupt both the office and the institution!

And what has the individual said or is saying in all of these? Nothing; in fact, he’s been practically in hiding! Not exactly though! Thanks to this newspaper expose yesterday, Nigerians are only now learning that more surprises are still in the bag as our Man Friday sets out on an inexplicable mission to wreak vengeance on a people that dared to call him out in that moment of utterly reckless, unprecedented, political brigandage!

For now, it is taken that the number one banker’s job has been practically outsourced! Isa Abdulmumin, the apex bank’s acting director of Corporate Communications, can take on all the daemons of fake news and rumours for all the cares in the world, there is, apparently, a limit to how far he can go. And so enters, Anambra State governor, Chukwuma Soludo, a man who has earned his stripes as a doughty fighter in the terrain. He would better fit for the two roles since we are already in an informal emergency! 

And so it was he that reminded Nigerians that the man is still in office as the governor of the apex bank. Also, we have his word that a Bankers’ Committee meeting not only held on Sunday, March 12, but that the banks, most of which are still in trauma, could return to business after the Emefiele-induced paralysis.

For an unpaid the apex bank spokesman, he would even make a supplementary announcement that:  “Tellers at the commercial banks are to generate the codes for deposits and there is no limit to the number of times an individual or company can make deposits” even as he assured Nigerians that the old notes would remain legal tenders.

Like everything in these parts, it will soon be a return to business – as usual. Never mind that the new naira notes are still nowhere to be found; or that the copious assurances of imminent stabilisation have remained a mirage. The job of cnearly four months afteral hinking of thence these could always be covered tary ket somewhere in ancial eco-systemettisation feounting the costs will come later.

In the meantime, think of the thousands of businesses – micro, small and medium entities – destroyed as a result of the cash crunch. Or the millions of jobs wiped off. I saw a picture at the weekend of several thousands of bunches of plantain dumped in a market somewhere in Lagos but which had gone bad as a result of lack of patronage. That was some people’s investment wiped off. That was the house that Godwin Emefiele aka Meffy built!

And now, think of the next wave of bazaar to be spearheaded by Emefiele’s development-minded CBN a la intervention! That is their monetarism. That is the way the Emefiele’s CBN works.

Did we not see all of these coming? You bet we did!

Here’s what the World Bank said of Emefiele’s naira redesign at the onset: “While periodic currency redesigns are normal internationally and the naira does appear to be due for it… the timing of and short transition period for this demonetization may have negative impacts on economic activity, in particular for the poorest households.

“International experience suggests that rapid demonetizations can generate significant short-term costs, with small-scale businesses, and poor and vulnerable households, potentially being particularly affected due to being liquidity-constrained and heavily reliant on day-to-day cash transactions”.

That was the World Bank said. But who cares?

As my dear readers will guess, the title for today’s piece is borrowed from David Yallop’s bestseller, but nonetheless controversial book with the same title. Whereas the meat of the book is aptly captured in its sub-title – Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, the sub theme is an alleged corruption in the Vatican Bank and by extension the church establishment.

Although not so neatly divided; the book could be broken into two parts: the revelation of the rot in the Vatican Bank – a mess that did more than invite the attention of His Eminence; and, the effort by his papacy to clean up the rot which inevitably set off a chain of violent reactions among the establishment, culminating, finally in the death of the Pope after barely 33 days in office.

The plank of Yallop’s theory was that men, being men, could do the vilest, egregious if not the most criminal of things –supposedly in God’s name – in service of the egos of men.

By the way, the book published in 1984, has been widely condemned by the hierarchs of the Catholic Church as fiction stuff. To yours truly however, what matters is not whether the bits and pieces are accurate; what I find irresistible is the parallel to what is happening in Nigeria at this time – its underlying lessons particularly at a time of unprecedented abuses of the church as a body by those that should ordinarily be in the vanguard of preserving its sanctity. 

Nigerians have certainly seen enough of the crass opportunism of so-called spiritual leaders to draw not just lessons and grim conclusions about the future of organised religion but also of the larger society.  From the Babel of prophetic voices proclaiming apocalyptic doomsday messages, to the grand high-octane wish-lists drenched in the prophetic flavour as to be mistaken for real prophetic utterance; we have seen a section of the Nigerian church, not only caught up in the general societal malady but descend into the murky arena of politics.

For while these are within the rights of the religious bodies as players in the democratic space, what some of us find worrisome isn’t just the church’s insistence on non-recognition of the boundaries between the sacred and the secular, but the menacing substitution of the received gospel with the feel-good doctrine which a huge chunk of the body is daily propelled to their utter embarrassment. Clearly, if the larger Nigerian church is yet to recognise the strain of the rabid theology that threatens not just to corrupt the minds of our young ones, but somewhat programmed to destroy the very foundations of their faiths in God and country, put it to the initial artful subtlety of its purveyors and proselytes. Now, the gloves, as it were, are finally off!

Permit me, dear reader, to cite two trending examples, both of them scary, to illustrate one strain of this dangerous cancer that may in the end undo, not just the society, but the church itself. 

Most Nigerians must have by now, come across the trending videos on Facebook of two impressionable minds corralled into apostasy by the ethno-religious mob for whom nothing is held as sacrosanct let alone inviolate.

The first featured a young boy no more than six years old, making tearful supplication to God on behalf of Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate. It was as moving as could be – that is if the factor of abuse of the innocent lad counted for nothing. Suffice to say that those who corralled him may have long convinced themselves that the prayer of an innocent lad would move God to deliver electoral victory to Peter Obi!

The other, just as dramatic, was that of a young girl, again not more than 10 years old, declaring also tearfully and with grim finality, her parting of ways with God, since in her apparently misguided state, that ‘god’, to whom she had apparently been led in the false believe to deliver her pet Obi presidency, let her down. Her point: that ‘god’ was no longer deserving of reverence let alone worship and so must be called out!

I wager that the parents of the duo were Christians. Since neither of the two was of the voting age, any talk of political preference and with it the usual prejudices, would be limited to what is fed to them by their parents. What is also clear is that the parents or those that freely shared the videos in the cyberspace thought little of the danger of exposing these young children with such toxic theology to the world; they felt no weight of responsibility to preserve their innocence; and certainly no shame or inhibitions about sharing the craven abuse in the jungle of the Cyberia! A Peter Obi presidency will more than vitiate the means no matter how ignoble!  In normal season, not only would such apostasy deemed to have crossed the bounds of tolerability but profoundly offensive. However, in a season where religion and rage have found a good blend, even the most abnormal could easily become the new norm. Most of the comments that accompanied the video ranged from the permissive to the tolerable, with one or two, agreeing that the ‘god’ in reference having expired deserved a place in the bin!

Talk of the society turning full circle. From a deeply religious society where boundaries are scrupulously kept, a typically conservative people held together by rich symbols, customs and traditions, we have arrived finally at a junction where our children are led to scorn sacred altars!

And for the sake of what? What next? And this because the so-called silly season happened on us?

I understand the place of religion in our peculiarly prebendal kind of politics. I understand the anger, emotions, if not the frustrations from unmet expectations. But then, as must be obvious to everyone by now, the ways of the Supreme Being are not exactly the ways of man. Try as mortal man may to bend His will to himself, he labours in vain in the absence of Divine discretion. It is something our latter day theologians need to learn.

Days after the presidential and the National Assembly elections, there is, as one might expect, just as many gloating out there as there is gnashing of teeth going on. And this is even at a time when the results still abode in the province of speculation. Talk of a long night; the rumour mill has been busy as much as their kith in crime – the hyper-active, fake-news-prone social media industry have practically taken to the overdrive – churning out, as one might imagine, results generated from wherever.

It’s been a hell of a waiting time.

If one expected the day after the election, which is a sacred day of worship to help calm the nerves, things actually turned the opposite direction. After weeks of not-exactly-silent bickering by those who conflate their partisan preferences for the Divine Will, it was not surprisingly; time to launch into the next phase: featuring the most heinous rationalisation from the same palace theologians who not only claim monopoly of the heavenly wisdom but say they are able to tap on the celestial hotlines on the go! Whether they will allow the rest of the orderly society to have peace in the event of their prophecy (?) missing the mark remains to be seen! In any event, there will still be time to make amends for those fatal misses, if only to assuage their gullible, hyper-forgiving flocks who took their gibberish seriously!

What about the throng who believes that their beloved candidate is incapable of losing in a free and fair election? The only declaration that would please them is to hear their man pronounced winner – irrespective of what the rules say and even when their candidate’s pathway to the presidency only exists in realm of fantasy! I believe the rest of the orderly society have a duty tom pay attention to the silent rumbling of the atavistic club already notorious for their aversion for civil political discourse. Remember EndSARS and its disgraceful aftermath? The country deserves some calm from their quarters after the dreadful storm of the past weeks.

And where are we? Monday night, some of the results as indeed the lessons from them have continued to trail in. Surprises? Not exactly at this point; at least as far as what is already declared is concerned. Perhaps in a few instances – may be; over all, the election could be said to be as competitive as could be in the circumstance. We know who is leading and those whose mission is – to use the Gen-Z lingo – to catch cruise is all but completed.

To be sure, the lessons are instructive for those willing to learn, something leading parties in particular – notably the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party can afford to ignore at their peril. One refers to the old paradigm of party outreach, mobilisation and organisation; the imperative of new tools and mechanisms for party engagements. There will certainly be a lot to say on this and much more in the coming days/weeks.

The politicians and their notoriety for crass delinquency are of course a different matter. Will they ever learn? Surely, the signs are ominous.  Trust the tribe to find any avenue, no matter how ludicrous to seek to throw the spanners into the wheel of progress particularly when things appear not to be going their way. They are back to their old ways.

Imagine, what began as an ordinarily simple observation by the PDP representative, the erratic Dino Melaye, about the so-called failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload the results as captured by the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS) in the 174,000-odd polling booths would suddenly become the ratio for seeking to abort an entire result collation process. To do this, the party had to literally browbeat some fringe parties to follow its ignoble steps, and failing to force the hand of INEC to do its bidding, resort to an Orubebe-like theatrical which climaxed in the walkout on the collation process.

Does it really matter that some 66,000 (38 percent) of the results had, at that point time, been uploaded on the INEC website? Or that the process was still on-going? Or the copious assurances by the INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu that the results being presented to INEC were those whose hard copies had not only been authenticated by the parties at the polling unit levels but were also in the custody of the parties themselves? And what about the remedies availed to the parties to challenge the outcomes?

Delinquency must come with great rewards else the likes of Dino Melaye would not be found in decent company. In any case, it’s been said that ours is a democracy without democrats. In 2015, it was a man called Peter Godsday Orubebe; in 2023, it is one Dino Melaye. Same party; same plot, same outcome – a doomed venture. Yes, Nigerians are wiser!

And now, the latest information is that the Labour Party also wants the process halted or better still, the entire process aborted wholesale! And who else is this coming from other than Akin Osuntokun, the director general of the party’s Presidential Campaign Council (PCC)? Interesting times ahead, you say?

Talk of the delinquency of the political class being barely tolerable; how about a section of the media and their civil society allies, almost simultaneously, going to town with choreographed talking points ostensibly to de-legitimise the process that the world saw online and in real time?

And this at a time most Nigerians already had, with perhaps the exception of that irrepressible club of losers, a fair idea of the outcomes.

To be sure, no system is perfect. Not even the United States where we borrowed this presidential system. In any case, neither the constitution nor the Electoral Act demand perfection; what it prescribes is substantial compliance with all applicable laws governing the process. Considering that the process is not yet completed, it seems early in the day to judge INEC any fairly. In the meantime, PDP, Labour Party and their media enablers should calm down.

It was just a fortnight ago on this page that I drew upon the immortal Fela’s lyrics – Confusion Break Bone to describe the swelter of confusion that has trailed the rather expansive, ill-timed, equally ill-designed, and, what has since proved to be the most disruptive monetary experimentation ever visited on a people. Since them, a lot has happened, just as the victims of the hare-brained policy has lengthened, to challenge those long-held assumptions about the capacity, capability and the fidelity of the monetary authorities to the national cause on one hand, and the good faith of those pulling the levers of power on the other.

To do a recap. Where else to begin but the meeting between the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele with President Muhammadu Buhari in his country home of Daura on January 29.  Thereafter, the CBN announced a 10-day extension of the cash swap programme to February 10. That was two days before the expiration of the initial deadline for the phasing out of the old N200, N500, and N1, 000 denominations of the naira notes.

Few days after, President Muhammadu Buhari met with the APC governors in Abuja during which he urged Nigerians to give him seven days to resolve the crisis. He assured that the remaining seven days of the 10-day extension “will be used to crack down on the encumbrances mitigating the successful implementation of the currency redesign policy”. He would further assure of “… a decision one way or the other in the remaining seven days of the 10-day extension”.

Well, those seven days passed last week – with no “decision one way or the other” from the president.

In the meantime, the governors of Kaduna, Kogi and Zamfara, worried if not entirely frustrated by the federal government’s dilatoriness amidst reports of growing restiveness of citizens across the federation decided the matter was too sensitive to be left in the hand of an utterly inept CBN and its vacillating principal. They dragged the federal government before the Supreme Court, seeking a restraining order to stop the full implementation of the policy.

As it is, not a few believe that its order of last Wednesday, stopping the federal government from enforcing the February 10 deadline, given the grave crisis provoked by the policy, may have staved off another, testy, potentially EndSARS moment for the country! 

Is the worse then over? Doubtful!

Need I add that a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory presided over by Justice Eneojo Eneche had earlier on, in an ex parte application brought by four political parties against the government and 27 commercial banks in the country, issued a restraining order on President Muhammadu Buhari, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele and 27 commercial banks from suspending the policy of the federal government.

Never mind the well-timed reprieve from the Supreme Court; the situation remains grave with reports across the country of angry, frustrated citizens letting out their anger on equally distraught bank workers. In one of the videos currently in circulation, a group of bank staff were seen using a wooden ladder to scale the high walls of the bank in their bid to escape the wrath of angry customers. On the streets, the joke is everywhere about the booming trade in naira to naira, akin to the forex trade – all of these in Emefiele’s programmed confusion.

Ironically, where leadership was expected from the federal government which created the mess, it has been practically on AWOL or pretends to be at work. As if the situation is not terrible enough, the number one legal officer of the federal government (or federation?) would prefer to clutch to hare-brained legalese in the face of a grave national security issue! He says the governors who challenged the federal government on the monetary policy not only lack the competence to do so but were apparently misdirected in their quest since – according to him – the matter is entirely federal government’s business!

To our legal ‘juggernaut’, the ordinary citizen neither deserves clarity nor empathy since the government not only knows what is good for the people but recognises no cost as too prohibitive in the pursuit of what is presumably the public good!

Nigerians, to be sure, are finally seeing through the façade. More than 120 days after, Nigerians may have finally come to the conclusion that Mefy’s recipe is anything but a solution in search of a problem. It is in fact worse – a ruse!

In case Nigerians still need reminding; the liquidity mess which Godwin Emefiele aka Mefy now defines as the problem didn’t come overnight. It is neither the creation of politicians that some love to scapegoat nor that of the ordinary citizens rendered its luckless victims. Rather, they are by-products of the irresponsible if not lawless deployment monetary policy tools by our wayward number one banker with the direct prodding of its equally reckless principal – the federal government.

Secondly, nothing in the CBN Act makes the institution an anti-graft body in the mould of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) or even the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) – and so the idea of pretending to be some financial sector police, outside the contemplation of its enabling legislation, smacks of an institutional overreach. In the circumstance, the CBN can best be described as a busybody!

Thirdly, the crimes of terrorism financing, kidnapping for ransom and other violent crimes have been with us for some time now. Only an individual suffering grand delusion can think of summarily extirpating them with the use of the monetary policy instruments more so on the eve of national elections!

Mefy, I gathered, may yet have one or two tricks to teach the world’s apex monetary authorities on the use of monetary policy instruments to fight turf wars; for Nigeria and Nigerians, it certainly comes as a sad day that a supposedly even-handed policy tool is being cavalierly deployed to serve a partisan, ignoble end.

Of course, the big question that has remained unanswered is: Why the new notes have remained a rarity despite the repeated assurances by Emefiele that the mint actually produced enough? Could the problem be one of the logistics of distribution? Highly implausible. Could it be, as some have said, plain sabotage by the usual culprits – the banks? While that could not be entirely ruled out, could that, truthfully, be held responsible for the nationwide shortage?  Who is lying to Nigerians?

By the way, how much does our dear president know of the policy – from the conception to implementation? Was he misled? And by who?

The choice before President Buhari cannot be clearer: either he listens to the voices of the opportunistic hardliners in the precincts of power with their narrow agenda or those of the masses already disenchanted with a policy that has brought them nothing but sorrow, tears and blood – again to borrow Fela’s words. As the elder-statesman Robert Clarke, SAN observed recently on a television programme, the issue has since moved beyond a monetary policy issue to a national security one.

Weeks into what the apex monetary authorities had advertised as the most robust response to the variegated monetary policy challenges facing the Nigerian economy, call it an intriguing twist that its lead author and midwife has been practically in exile in what is alleged to be a spirited manoeuvre to escape the sword of Damocles dangling over his head.

Clearly, if the reports of a soft landing being procured – as alleged – for the once beloved-boy of the Buhari administration is to believed, it must have come as a tragic turn to the racy, sensational events of the past few weeks.

By the way, Nigeria must be the only country in the world – minus Idi Amin Dada’s Uganda that is – where a sitting CBN governor could be hunted like a common felon or in this instance, forced to shelter (temporarily?) in foreign shores without as much as stoking panic in the financial markets! Add to that the other paradox – the government of the federation pretending that the circus was another typical stunt by our big men to stoke excitement and so will resolve by itself; call it the perfect dysfunction and dissonance, the stuff of which the Buhari administration is made!

Until the December 9 order by Justice John Tsoho barring the Department of State Services, DSS, from arresting and detaining the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele on allegations bordering on terrorism financing and economic crimes, most Nigerians would most likely have passed of the tale of Emefiele’s impending arrest as one of those elite mind-games meant to distract and deflect.

Now, the truth is out: the man is being accused, far beyond the typical financial malfeasances for which our public officials have become renown, to high crimes bordering on national security.

And what do we know? Nothing – of course – outside of what the DSS glibly proclaims but which two separate justices – Tsoho and Muslim Hassan of the FCT High Courts – have up till this point, deemed insufficient for any prosecutorial authority to call him in for. Yet, the man is not only on the run, he has thus far left enough room for the wildest of speculations to thrive.

In the meantime, we have seen – as one might expect – hordes of disparate groups, spring up almost on daily basis to defend both Emefiele’s honour and his supposed innocence. From amorphous civil society groups claiming that the man is being hounded for standing up to politicians and other gamers of the financial system; we even had socio-cultural groups address press conferences as if to reveal another layer of the joke that Nigeria has become; only at the weekend, a body of Senior Advocates, had to call out the DSS for what they deemed to be an institutional overreach. The list of the intervention is endless just no tool is being spared in what promises to be more than mere battle of wits between his army of supporters and opponents. And lest I forget, there are countless other groups who can’t wait to see Emefiele locked up with the keys thrown into the Atlantic!

Terrorism and economic sabotage are by no means light accusations to be levelled against the nation’s topmost banker. Like the two justices aforementioned, most reasonable Nigerians would certainly want more details beyond those earlier moved via a one-sided, ex parte motion! The DSS cannot, and should not be allowed to assume any air of infallibility particularly on a matter in which a citizen’s liberty is concerned!  

Beyond all of these however, the one question that should ring out loudly and which the country must seek answers is the point where things began to go wrong between Emefiele and the administration in which he was only too eager to play the marionette.

Let us just say that the man until recently could do no wrong!

For a powerful, unelected individual, Emefiele certainly knows how to deploy the power of the purse! Indeed, Emefiele at a point not only believed that he had the answers to every sectoral quest but the power even outside of the mandate of his institution to make the difference! Yes; that is how powerful he thought he was.

 As at the last time I checked, Emefiele’s CBN is said to have some 37-odd “purpose-driven interventions that are functionally based, well-thought-out and born out of the critical issues within the economic space”. Those are the words of Osita Nwanisobi, the apex bank’s director, Corporate Communications. Suffice to state that no questions are being asked, or perhaps will ever be, on the impact of the multiple programmes – benchmarked against their stated objectives. Talk of a new day and age in apex bank developmentalism where money is simply thrown at a problem!” 

I guess Emefiele’s relationship with the Buhari’s federal government is already public record. The principle appears to be – whatever the Buhari administration needed; Emefiele’s CBN supplied; no questions are asked even when laws are broken as many were indeed broken. The most notable of this was the criminal abuse of the so-called ways and means under which the country is currently burdened with a staggering N23.7trn advances. This is what President Buhari now wants to pass to our children, to be spread over 40 years, with three years moratorium on repayment, and an interest rate of nine per cent – all of this thanks to Emefiele.

How much of the current inflationary spiral could be put to Emefiele’s crude monetarism? Those who should know actually say that the man’s ideas are not only dated but astoundingly contradictory! They also say of his management of the exchange rate as lacking depth given current realities.

No doubt, Emefiele may have done well by his friends, the same special groups that wanted him propelled to the nation’s topmost job. It is certainly not his fault that he began to think and act as if our dear country belong to him and so he could do as he pleased.

Again, imagine a governor without the restraint of parliament; whose control of the purse knows no limits; an individual who could, in a fit of unbridled activism and assumed opportunistic exigency, collapse the dividing walls of monetary and fiscal management without a restraining voice; a player whose ego and sense of entitlement not only reckons him among the gods but also above the deep state. I couldn’t think of an individual more powerful under Buhari’s outsourced presidency.

And the sad part? He wanted more!  Now he must learn the lessons of those who before him were consumed by hubris!