Category: Vincent Akanmode

Since he conceded def_____eat to the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, on March 30, the news media have been awash with praises of President Goodluck Jonathan, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the election held on March 28. The outgoing President, whose less than impressive performance in the six years he has been in the saddle saw him roundly beaten by Buhari in the election, had sent a text message, congratulating the APC candidate before counting was concluded at the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Jonathan’s decision to concede defeat after a plot by his foot soldiers to subvert the process had failed prompted many to hail him as not just a statesman, but a hero of democracy. The more lavish of the praise singers, among whom I count former Chief of Army S taff, Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, even vowed that Jonathan’s decision to concede defeat had made up for all his failures as the nation’s leader for six years. These include his inability to rescue the close to 300 school girls abducted by the deadly Boko Haram insurgents from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State one year ago.

Lionizing President Jonathan for conceding defeat after fanning the embers of violence with hate speeches and dividing the nation along ethnic and religious lines is a sentiment that flows from the reluctance of previous leaders to quit office. It sends a wrong message: that an elected president has the option of staying on when he has been defeated in a free, fair and credible election. This unfortunate mentality was foisted on the nation in 1993 when former military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, refused to hand over to Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola, the winner of the presidential election held on June 12, 1993.

Babangida’s refusal to quit and the protracted crisis that resulted had thrown the nation into arguably the darkest period of its political history. But its most enduring legacy is the tragic belief that an elected president is a hero, if he loses re-election and hands over power as he is constitutionally obliged to do. By heaping praises on Jonathan for accepting a fair and square defeat, we are inadvertently admitting that Babangida’s refusal to hand over to an elected President in 1993 was justifiable.

It is also an indication that we have not learnt from the ugly experience we had with former President Olusegun Obasanjo who sought to perpetuate himself in office after exhausting the maximum of two terms mandated by the constitution. Before he became the candidate of the PDP and won the presidential election in 1999, Obasanjo had enjoyed global acclamation as the only military ruler in Africa to supervise an election and willingly hand over power to an elected president. For two decades, Obasanjo was feted by the western world and hailed as Africa’s hero of democracy. So effusive were the encomiums that Obasanjo began to think that he probably made a mistake when he handed over power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari.

It was not a surprise that when he became an elected president in 1999, he told himself that he would not repeat the ‘mistake’ he made 20 years earlier. First, he shunned the calls from some quarters that he should adopt the Mandela option and quit after one term. And when he had exhausted the maximum two terms specified in the Constitution, he began to plot for the third. It took the gallantry and tenacity of some progressive minds in the National Assembly to scuttle the illicit and illegitimate agenda.

By telling him that he performed an extraordinary act by quitting office after losing an election, Jonathan’s praise singers appear determined to goad him on Obasanjo’s path. Lost on them is the fact that the tension that set the nation up for a conflagration was masterminded by Jonathan himself. He looked away when Ayodele Fayose, Doyin Okupe, Femi Fani-Kayode and his other foot soldiers heated up the polity with utterances that were fit only for the Stone Age. He maintained deafening silence when Dokubo-Asari, Tompolo and other ex-Niger Delta militants threatened to destroy oil installations and set the nation on fire if he did not win the presidential election. He acquiesced all the mudslinging, character assassination and other campaigns of calumny his wife and hangers on launched against the persons of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and some of his backers.

Jonathan and his men played their last joker with the crisis orchestrated by Elder Godsday Orubebe during the collation of results at INEC headquarters on March 30. Discerning Nigerians knew that Orubebe was merely acting a script written by the Presidency and the election would have been truncated, if Jega had not handled Orubebe’s outburst with tact and dignity and the nation would have been thrown into unimaginable crisis. But rather than giving Jega who foiled the evil plot the credit, its masterminds are being hailed as heroes.

Jonathan gave up when all else had failed and he realised the enormity of the forces he was up against locally and internationally. The tension he is being hailed for dousing emanated from what he did or failed to do as President. If he, his wife and cohorts had invested in governance, half of the energy they dissipated on insulting Buhari and assassinating his character, there would have been no need for tension or the fierce contest that set the nation on edge. Except the adulations are meant to massage his ego and goad him to relinquish power without feeling a sense of rejection, it smacks of ill-logic that the President would be venerated for dousing the tension he ought not have created in the first place. What favour has a murderer done, if he beheads an old man in the sun and keeps the severed head in a cool place?

Jonathan deserves credit for realising that the game was up and doing the needful. But arrogating heroism to him in spite of his divisive tendencies as President would amount to making nonsense of the concept.

Last Saturday, Nigerians turned out in their millions to elect their president, senators and members of the House of Representatives. It was a set of elections where grassroots support was the most critical ingredient of victory. But we saw a number of politicians whose grass were lush green but the roots were too feeble to resist the wind of change that blew across the land.

Among them were Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State as well as Gabriel Suswam, Isa Yuguda and Usman Dakingari, his counterparts in Benue, Bauchi and Kebbi states respectively, whose bids for seats in the Senate suffered terrible blows.The initial story that filtered out from his Otukpo hometown in Benue State was that the Senate President, Senator David Mark, had also lost his seat in the upper chamber. But while his admirers were mourning and his detractors were jubilating, another version of the story emerged that he had won.

Ordinarily, I should be congratulating the Senate President for his success at the poll. But I cannot do so because I do not know whether he is gladdened by the victory or saddened by it. For it is certain now that he will be returning to the Senate as a floor member. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which for 16 years has bestrode the upper chamber like a colossus, and on whose platform Mark won the election for the fifth time, could only muster 45 seats against the 64 won by the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The development would have mattered little in societies where the motivation for seeking political office is service to fatherland. But from Mark’s comportment and deportment as a public office holder since his days as a military governor and minister of communications, he has demonstrated the fact that he is motivated more by ego and survival. Hence the Senate under him has been nothing more than the President’s rubber stamp.

For those who are familiar with his pedigree as a soldier, it should not come as a surprise that Mark has turned out an ultra-conservative politician. As the minister of communications during the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida-led military administration, he was credited with the infamous declaration that telephone was not an item for the poor. He is also reputed as the arrowhead of the military top brass who insisted on the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election fairly and freely won by the late Bashorun MKO Abiola. Mark and his colleagues in the Armed Forces Ruling Council were said to have insisted that Abiola would only be president over their dead bodies and that Nigeria would only return to democratic rule over their graves.

It is therefore an irony that he has turned the Senate into his cocoon and a seat in it his birthright. Yet in all the years he has served as a senator and Senate President, the only thing he seems to have deemed important is to protect his seat by pandering to the promptings of the President and studiously avoiding any form of conflict with him. What has emerged at the end of the day is a Senate that is all so willing to go along with the President, no matter how unpopular the latter’s position.

The most recent example was his near single-handed clearance of Senator Musiliu Obanikoro for ministerial appointment in spite of the widespread opposition hinged on allegations of the latter’s wrongful deployment of soldiers in his previous appointment as Minister of State for Defence, as well as the protest from his Lagos home state that after serving variously as an ambassador and a minister, the new appointment should go to another Lagosian.

The Senate under Mark has bungled investigations into such issues as the sum of 48.9 billion dollars which former Central Bank governor, now Emir of Kano, Alhaji Lamido Sanusi, said was missing in crude oil revenue. So also were others like the fuel subsidy scam involving some highly-placed Nigerians, the two bulletproof cars a former Minister of Aviation, Mrs Stella Oduah, allegedly acquired with sums surpasseing the annual budgets of some African countries and the questionable manner a former Director-General of the Nigerian Security and Exchange Commission handled its finances.

His conservative Senate has been a veritable source of frustration for the highly progressive Hon. Aminu Tambuwal-led House of Representatives. At critical moments in the life of the nation, the lower chamber has pitched its tent with the people while the Senate, supposedly an independent institution of government, blindly allies itself with the Presidency. This unholy romance explains why the House viewed with suspicion Mark’s intervention when some policemen attacked the House late last year, following Tambuwal’s defection from PDP to APC.

The foregoing has led many to say that whenever the need arises to apportion blames for the calamitous leadership that has cost Jonathan his seat, Senator Mark would get a heavy dose. It is no use asking him to quit when the ovation is loudest. He has done nothing to warrant an ovation.

THE convergence of world leaders on Abuja on Wednesday to broker an accord between the candidates and chairmen of the 14 political parties that will participate in the presidential election scheduled for February 14 was no doubt a historic moment. Particularly remarkable was the warm embrace between the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), President Goodluck Jonathan, and that of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. It was a clear case of leadership by example which many believe would rub off positively on the followers of the two main gladiators in the presidential race,

But the move brokered by the likes of former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, among other world leaders, would amount to scorching the snake and not killing it. Why? The leaders of some critical agencies who should have been involved in the accord-signing ceremony were left out. A violence-free election is predicated on an exercise that is not only free and fair, but also seen to be free and fair. And there is no way this can be achieved without the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the judiciary and the security agencies, particularly the police and the Directorate of State Service (DSS), acquitting themselves as fair umpires.

Unfortunately, the actions and utterances of members of the Nigeria Police Force and the DSS are far from projecting them as neutral agencies of government. Nigerians are living witnesses to the witch-hunting of opposition parties by the DSS, particularly the APC, whose office it recently invaded in Lagos over alleged plans by the party to produce its own version of permanent voters’ cards (PVCs) and hack into the INEC’s data system. But after the agency’s purported analysis of its findings, it has changed its allegations against the APC to registering under-age Nigerians and uniformed men as members.

Through her actions and utterances, the spokesperson of DSS, Maryln Ogar, has left no one in doubt about the service’s sympathy for the ruling party. She has only stopped short of mounting the rostrum to campaign for the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan while her men hunt down APC members.

The police too have not fared better as three recent examples would show. During the inaugural campaign rally of Gen. Buhari in Port Harcourt on January 6, some armed youths believed to be working for the PDP opened fire on two buses, conveying supporters of the APC from Asari-Toru and Khana local government areas to the Adokiye Amasiemaka Stadium venue of the event. One person was reported dead while no fewer than seven others were seriously injured in the incident. Without any diligent investigation, the police issued a statement, describing the incident as a robbery attack.

Alarmed by the hasty manner the police jumped to the conclusion, Ms. Ibim Semenitari, the Director of Communications of the campaign organisation of the Rivers State governorship candidate of the APC, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, said: “We are shocked at the speed with which the police in Rivers State concluded their so-called investigations which to us would be record-breaking, considering their appalling records in investigation”. No suspect has been arrested.

On January 11, some hoodlums also believed to be sympathetic to the PDP bombed the APC office in Abam-Ama, Okrika Local Government Area, Rivers State simultaneously as four APC members were attacked with machetes by persons believed to be political thugs in Rumueme, Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of the state without arrests being made in both cases. But less than 24 hours after some PDP buses were burnt by some persons believed to be sympathetic to the APC in Plateau State, the police immediately announced the arrest of 13 suspects! The foregoing, coupled with the condemnable role the force played in the recent governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states, has thrown it up as a veritable threat to a free and fair election upon which peace will be predicated before, during and after the elections. It was, therefore, a major oversight on the part of the conveners of the Abuja Accord that the agencies whose actions or inactions could make or mar the elections were not carried along. I expected that the Inspector-General of Police, the Director-General of DSS, the Chairman of the INEC and the Chief Justice of Nigeria would be co-opted into the accord-signing exercise because of the critical roles they have to play in the elections. I also expect the INEC and the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to make the most of the picture of Jonathan and Buhari’s warm embrace which graced the cover of most national newspapers on Thursday. By making posters or billboards of it and placing same at strategic locations around the country, they will be telling their followers that the two gladiators are not enemies after all. This, I believe, will go a long way in changing the mindset of voters who might see the presidential election as a do-or-die affair

I grew up learning from my parents and teachers that stealing has no degrees. In other words, a man who steals N100 is guilty of theft as much as another who steals a million naira. My father, a teacher and school administrator before he became a traditional ruler, would even add that you become a thief the moment you contemplate stealing. Repeatedly, he told us that stealing and covetousness are siblings and their mother is greed. I have lived within the bounds of my father’s stipulation for more than four decades, contenting myself only with things I can acquire legitimately and studiously avoiding greed. Mercifully, I never had the misfortune of coming under the influence of anyone with a contrary view of theft.

My soul has, therefore, been sorely troubled since President Goodluck Jonathan launched a campaign that seems to eulogise stealing and lionize theft which, to him, must not be rated as evil as corruption and consequently not punishable. “Over 70 per cent of what is called corruption, even by the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) and other anti-corruption agencies, is not corruption, but common stealing,” the President said on national television on May 5 last year. He has since followed that up by declaring that Nigerians have a flawed perception of corruption because they often equate financial breakthrough with it. At a recent political rally in Enugu, the President, who is known to have defended some members of his cabinet accused of corrupt practices, reportedly criticized the military administration led by Gen Muhammadu Buhari between 1983 and 1985 for sending a former governor of Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo, to jail just because the latter stole a sum that could not even buy a new car.

The President thus unwittingly provoked a debate as to which is more edifying between theft and corruption. A dictionary defines corruption as impairment of integrity, virtue or moral principle. Its synonyms include debauchery, debasement and decadence. It defines stealing or theft, on the other hand, as the act of taking or carrying away (something) without right or permission. Its synonyms are robbery, larceny and rip-off. Under the ICPC Act 2000, theft or embezzlement of public funds is included among corrupt acts. What then is the point being made by the President? That he would rather accommodate a thief than tolerate a corrupt individual? It may interest him to know that whereas bribery was the pivot on which corruption rotated, its new garb is theft or what the President calls common stealing

In his popular Yoruba weekly programme, Nkan Mbe, the late TV presenter, Kolawole Olawuyi, once aired the story of an Inspector of Police who suffered deformity and eventually died after slapping a physically challenged man he met at a mechanic workshop in Lagos. Chauffeured by his younger brother, the physically challenged man had taken his car to the mechanic workshop for repairs. The mechanic was already working on his car when the Police Inspector drove in and asked the mechanic to attend to his car. Seeing that the police officer was in haste, the physically challenged man told the mechanic to suspend work on his own car and attend to the Inspector.

When the mechanic had finished work on the Inspector’s car, he put the car in the reverse gear as he made to leave. But the physically challenged man, who sat on a bench behind the car, feared that the officer might be unaware of his presence and quickly warned him to be careful not to hit him, “so that you would not incur a debt you are not prepared for.” The police took offence at the statement. He promptly alighted from his car, walked up to the physically challenged man and gave him a dirty slap.

Rather than react angrily, the physically challenged man kept his cool and calmly told the police officer not to repeat what he had just done. The officer became angrier and responded with another slap that was dirtier than the first. Again, the man shook his head and simply told the police officer not to try doing it the third time. By now, the seeming defiance of the physically challenged man had moved the police officer to high dudgeon. He lifted his thick hand the third time and struck his face even harder.

The third slap turned out to be tragic. It was the last physical exercise the Police Inspector did before departing the world. He had fallen to the ground after slapping the cripple the third time and could no longer move his hands and legs. His speech also became impaired and saliva poured ceaselessly from his mouth. Within a few days, he had become mere vegetable and all the spiritual homes to which he was taken had no answer to the problem. Two weeks after the encounter, he gave up the ghost.

In a chat with Olawuyi, the physically challenged man admitted that he had acquired some spiritual powers when he was about to leave his home town in Ekiti State to seek greener pastures in Lagos. Some family members who feared that he could be maltreated by some callous Lagosians hit on the idea of arming him with a charm that would guarantee his safety against would be oppressors. The police officer turned out to be one of them and paid greatly for it. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the power of talitha cumi like Jesus. I would have run away and prevented him from slapping me the third time if I knew that her wife is such a nice woman,” he said.

Before the  inimitable Olawuyi presented the programme on television a few years ago, I was one of the people who never believed in the efficacy of charms. But all that changed after the telecast. And the goings on in the North East, where it has taken the intervention of amulet wielding hunters to expel the Boko Haram sect whose fire power could not be resisted by soldiers, has reinforced my belief that some charms are more effective than guns. But oblivious of the foregoing and grossly overrating the indispensability of his men, the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba, is living with the belief that the power of life and death rests with them.

In his overzealous bid to impress his paymaster, therefore, he recently announced the withdrawal of the security detail of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal; a move he thought would force the Speaker to pander to the promptings of President Goodluck Jonathan and force him to renounce his recent defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Lost on the police boss is the fact that for every policeman that is withdrawn from the security apparatus of the Speaker, there is a more potent alternative that can be drawn from the Oodua P e o p l e ’ s Congress (OPC), the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), the Egbesu Boys and the O m b a t s e , among other militia groups across the country. These groups have proven not only to be more potent than the police in many cases but even more dependable.

Many Nigerians are living witnesses to the ignoble role the police played in the assassination of consummate politician and former Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, who was murdered at his residence in Ibadan on December 23, 2001 while, by some strange coincidence, all the three policemen who were supposed to guard him went away in search of food at the time his killers came calling!

With threat of impeachment hanging over Jonathan since the condemnable invasion of the National Assembly by policemen on November 19, Abba appears to have realised the danger in his open demonstration of contempt for the Speaker. Knowing that he would not be spared by any whirlwind that sweeps Jonathan off his seat, the IG is subtly seeking to appease the Speaker by restoring his police escort. He found in the Speaker’s emergence as the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Sokoto State an opportunity to reverse his action. The Speaker would, however, be smart enough to be wary of the IG’s motive after his public show of hatred. There is every reason for caution If a man who ordinarily would not even acknowledge your greetings suddenly sends you a request to be his guest in a private room.

I have always known that ordinary Nigerians will suffer dysentery from the excess sugar consumed by the minders of Aso Rock. It therefore did not come as a surprise that the Minister of Finance and Supervising Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, adjusted the big frames of her glasses at a press conference in Abuja last week and told already pummelled Nigerians to tighten their belts for tougher times. Flanked by the Director-General, Budget Office of the Federation, Dr Bright Okogu; the Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr. Jonah Otunla; the Acting Chair, FIRS, Alhaji Kabir Mashi, and other top government officials, Okonjo-Iweala said the Federal Government had decided to adopt austerity measures as a buffer for the economy in the face of a dwindling oil price in the international market.

Assuring Nigerians that the Jonathan economic team was on top of the situation, the minister said: “Every country that is well managed doesn’t just sit and allow a situation to happen to them. If they are well managed, they prepare the right set of policies to deal with the situation. Those days when we used to be like that in the ‘80s and ‘90s are over. In the ‘80s, when we had shock, we didn’t take measures by ourselves to adjust. We waited for others to come and tell us how to adjust. But now we have competent teams and our job is not to sit and wait, but, to craft a set of policies that will help us to address the shocks. We are not talking about salaries and benefits. We are talking of training and travels, and these will be only for critical and essential items which will be pre-approved by the Head of Service and the Director-General of the Budget Office. The purpose of this is to tell you what we are doing and this (economic) team is calm and will be effective and we are working with the monetary policy authorities and together we will manage the economy in a transparent manner so that people need not have any fear.”

To be sure, it is not the first time a Nigerian government would adopt austerity measures in critical economic situations. Indeed, advocates of cyclical history must have heaved a sigh of vindication after last week’s announcement by the minister. Shortly after it seized power from the wasteful civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in the Second Republic, the Muhammadu Buhari-led military administration had adopted similar measures to save the country’s economy from imminent collapse. The Gen. Ibrahim Babangida-led junta between 1985 and 1993 is also remembered for its Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

The only misgiving about the latest call for sacrifice is that it is coming from a civilian administration that has little or no regard for prudent management of the nation’s resources. And contrary to Okonjo-Iweala’s claim that the executive arm of government had in its discussions on national budgets with the National Assembly in the last three years consistently advocated prudence and low benchmark to encourage more savings, the records show that the administration has been one of the most reckless. In 2005, the Obasanjo administration successfully negotiated a debt write-off deal of about $18 billion after a cash payment of about $12 billion to free the nation from the Paris Club debts of over $30 billion. Today, the nation’s debt stock stands at more than $44 billion because the government cannot control its propensity to borrow and spend at will.

The nation’s budgets under the Jonathan administration have seen billions of naira dedicated to all manner of funny items from chewing stick to chewing gum. Why, for instance, would the government budget N2.2 billion for a banquet hall in Aso Rock or propose N34.5 million for the feeding of lions in the zoo at the presidential villa when millions of Nigerians do not know where their next meal would come from? In the 2014 budget, for instance, the government, which already had 10 aircraft in its fleet, proposed another sum of N1.6 billion as deposit for another aircraft to raise the number to 11. In 2011 alone, about N18 billion was said to have been spent to maintain the president’s jet. Consider against the fact that the Queen of England and the British Prime Minister have no private jets, but depend on the British Airways for their flights, one would begin to appreciate the extent to which our leaders are insensitive to the plight of ordinary Nigerians.

Following the public outcry that greeted the addition of three jets to the presidential fleet in 2010, President Jonathan had told Nigerians to be constructive in their criticisms “so that we do not inadvertently encumber the rebuilding of our nation.” He had said “the President of Nigeria must be transported safely at all times. The cost may seem exorbitant now, but it would be impossible to put a price tag on good governance and an efficiently run country, a promise that this administration is determined to deliver.” His position contrasts sharply with that of another African leader, President Joyce Banda of Malawi, who had to sell the only plane the president had with a fleet of 60 limousines because she considered it an unwarranted luxury in a povertystricken nation. As the story goes, upon receiving an invitation from Nigeria to attend a function in Abuja last year, President Banda wrote back and said she would not be coming because she could not afford the cost of transporting herself to Nigeria, prompting the presidency to dispatch a jet in his own fleet to convey her.

If therefore there is any apprehension from the populace in respect of the call for sacrifice, it would be because those who should be leading by example are complacently flaunting their wealth while the ordinary man is made to shed sweat and blood. Right now, even the blind would see the hands of the presidency in the ongoing billion-dollar campaign of the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) for the re-election of President Jonathan in 2015. Spurred by the urge for survival and the prospects of cheap money, desperate Nigerians have become pawns on the chessboard of TAN managers, who toss them up and down the landscape to sing Jonathan’s praises and declare him the messiah while the nation perishes under his watch. Deluding themselves that Jonathan has been sufficiently marketed at home, the managers of TAN have taken their venture abroad. They have not only organised pro-Jonathan rallies in Ghana, South Africa, Canada, France and the USA, they have also wasted millions of dollars advertising the President on CNN, BBC, Supersport, Aljazeera and other international radio and television stations, leaving many to wonder if there are plans to take the additional polling booths rejected in Nigeria to the aforementioned countries.

So far, the government has given the impression that only the rich will be made to pay for the nation’s dwindling economic fortune, but discerning Nigerians are not deceived. With the emerging state of affairs, the government will soon hit on its usual joker: a hike in the pump price of fuel.