The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • Corruption: what can one man do?

    Buhari has vowed to kill corruption in Nigeria. It may well be a long and painful death. While many appreciate the president’s zeal they scoff at suggestions he’s is going to rid the country totally of graft in the next four years.

    In fact there’s deep cynicism about how far he can go given that stealing in government isn’t about party affiliation: the tags are surface dressing whereas underneath the system operates in much the same way across the country.

    A cynical colleague who had served in the federal government in the not-too-distant past had this pidgin English exchange with me recently regarding my suggestion that that ‘chopping’ was likely to decline under Buhari.

    He retorted: “Abeg forget that one my brother. Not only would they continue to chop, they would even chop Buhari’s cows in Daura!”

    It is a depressing assessment of the depth of the national malaise. Still you get the sense that Buhari is willing to have a go at the problem. Not only is he willing to act, he’s not likely to become the defender of ministers and other officials caught behaving scandalously with public funds. This in itself is significant movement from the recent past where the president would only act in the face of unbearable public pressure.

  • Will Boko Haram demystify Buhari?

    Will Boko Haram demystify Buhari?

    If anyone has a good chance of breaking the Boko Haram insurgency, it is President Muhammadu Buhari. He has the experience – having chased killer Maitatsine Muslim fundamentalists all the way into Chad in the 80s.

    He has the knowledge of the terrain, having worked in several senior capacities in the North East. Although he would not be functioning as an officer on the battlefield, his background as a one-time army general should help him relate better with those charged with doing the fighting today.

    His job has been made easier by the fruits of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s last throw of the dice. It wasn’t too long ago when at least 14 local government areas in three states in the North East were under Boko Haram control.

    Today, on account of the multinational military operations of February and March, the insurgents have been driven out of the major towns they held. They have been reduced to attacking soft targets in villages in no-man’s land along our borders with Chad, Niger and Cameroun.

    More importantly, Buhari is not bogged down by politics that made clearheaded analysis of the problem impossible at the highest levels of government in recent times. In the last two years of his tenure Jonathan and security agencies like the Department of State Security (DSS) spent valuable time trying to sell the fiction that Boko Haram was being sponsored by leading lights of the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).

    It’s over five weeks since the opposition became the governing party. You would have expected the ‘sponsors’ to call off their goons and claim credit for peace returning to the ravaged areas. On the contrary, we’ve witnessed a spike in attacks that have claimed hundreds of lives in this short period.

    Of that huge toll, the massacre of the last few days in Kukawa and surrounding villages in Borno State account for as many as 150 or more of those casualties.

    Judging by the unrelenting bloodbath not much has changed since the handover. If anything the insurgents seem to be sending out a message that the election-induced military offensive of February had not destroyed them as a fighting force. Their defiance can be better understood against the backdrop of widespread expectation that Buhari’s tough guy reputation would work the magic where Jonathan’s vacillation didn’t.

    I think the president understands that the extremists are not just going to disarm because of his history. He also appreciates that they are a different proposition from the bow and arrow and dane gun-wielding maniacs he crushed in the Second Republic.

    Boko Haram is a more sophisticated fighting outfit whose funding sources remain a mystery. They have been implicated in bank robberies in the past, but that cannot be enough to sustain an operation that has spread into four countries and withstood everything their collective armies have thrown at it. It is certainly getting substantial funding from somewhere. It is also recruiting enough people to refresh its ranks in spite of the heavy losses it suffers regularly in combat.

    This should trouble us. Aside from conscription, it is evident that many people are joining up with the sect of their own free will. How is it that a group which takes as much delight in killing Muslims as it does in slaughtering Christians, still manages to attract followers in territories where Islam is the predominant religion?

    It is the same puzzle that surrounds the appeal of the Islamic State (IS) such that it is attracting young people who grew up in America and the United Kingdom to suddenly abandon their families and comfortable lifestyles to join up with Jihadi fighters in the Middle East.

    The pat explanations about economic marginalisation are no longer enough to explain the phenomenon. It is possible that some were initially lured to join the sect in the hope that they would be better off. But we’ve also heard enough stories from defectors and escapees who speak of crushing poverty within the ranks of the insurgents.

    Something more powerful than bread and butter is at work here. Wars cease when sides in a conflict decide they are fed up with death. This isn’t the case in a conflict where one side is only too glad to die in the hope of arriving speedily in Paradise into the warm embrace of 72 virgins! When death becomes the fast track to a better reality conflict can no longer be conventional.

    That should also affect our expectations as to how this war would be resolved. When militants took up arms in the Niger Delta their grouse was economic and environmental. They had demands that could be negotiated and the compromise was the Amnesty Programme that silenced the booming guns. The arrangement may not be pretty but at least it brought closure – after a fashion.

    But how do you deal with enemies who are not willing to negotiate? Their only condition for peace is that you bow to their way of thinking and worship. In a multi-religious and multi-ethnic setting like Nigeria that is a non-starter: leaving only an option – a fight to the finish until only one side is left standing.

    Such face-offs are usually wars of attrition that are long-drawn. A striking parallel on the African continent is the conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government. The rebels formed their organisation in 1987, took up arms in the 90s and have been killing and maiming for over two decades.

    Just like Boko Haram the LRA’s activities spilled out of Uganda and over the years affected South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While claiming to be committed to the establishment of multi-party democracy, this ‘Christian’ cult aims to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten Commandments. Its religious roots mirror that of the North East insurgents who are pushing a brand of Islam that views Western education as sinful.

    A Wikipedia entry about the LRA says it “is not motivated by any identifiable political agenda, and its military strategy and tactics reflect this and it appears to largely function as a personality cult of its leader Joseph Kony.”

    The same entry quoting a report funded by United States Embassy in Kampala in 1997 said: “the LRA has no political program or ideology, at least none that the local population has heard or can understand.” (Who in Nigeria has been able to explain what Boko Haram is fighting for, or why it enters a town and mows down 150 unarmed men, women and children?)

    This ragtag army at the height of its infamy had thousands enlisted in its ranks. But over the years offensives by the Ugandan army as well as joint operations with neighbouring countries depleted its cadres to the extent that by some estimates it now has only a few hundred fighting men it can call upon to commit havoc.

    Even with the intervention of the United States which in 2011 provided 100 military advisers and $4.5 million per month to defeat the rebels, they stubbornly carry on.

    In March 2012 a four-nation African Union military force was created with Uganda providing leadership. The brigade of 5,000 drew soldiers from the DR Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan with the mandate to track down Kony and the remnants of the LRA. (That force is much like the one Nigeria heads – involving three of our neighbours.) But as of today the rebel leader remains at large and his diehard followers keep moving between four countries.

    Without doubt Buhari and his team are determined to approach the problem differently. It is certainly too early to begin to see the effects of that new strategy when even the process of relocating command and control to Maiduguri is yet to be completed. Still, I don’t see him reinventing the wheel. Judging by the moves he has made in the last few weeks, were seeing a replay of what has been tried in East Africa against the LRA with a limited measure of success.

    That isn’t to say that it might not work better here because unlike the Boko Haram situation, the Ugandan rebellion despite its religious colouration had deep ethnic roots. This afforded the rebels a measure of acceptance by the dominant tribes in the northern part of the country. Our Islamists have never aspired to be part of the mainstream political arrangements and don’t care about winning the affection of local people in territories they conquer.

    Irrespective of the tack the government wants to adopt it now has to manage a crisis of expectations. Jonathan did so poorly in his handling of the  insurgency that people naively expect Buhari like some ‘Rambo’ character to waltz into Sambisa and gun down every one of them. And they expect it to happen fast! In reality this Boko Haram business will not have a Hollywood ending.

    We must begin to prepare for the long haul. This sect, just like the LRA, isn’t going to totally disappear because we don’t have enough soldiers to police huge expanses of territory in the country side far from regular military outposts.

    They may become a pale shadow of the fearsome terror machine whose maniacal leader, Abubakar Shekau, taunted us with boastful videos from time to time at the height of their notoriety. But they would not totally disappear. Such is the bloodlust that they have become accustomed to that there would be nothing else left for them to do other than kill and be killed.

    The governmentmust complement the goal of military victory with winning the war for the minds of those who have been enslaved by the evil Boko Haram ideology. That is the only way of killing the insurgency because what is driving it is the power of an idea.

    Unless that approach is taken Buhari would be reduced to celebrating military success one day and issuing unending commiserations the next – just like his predecessor. After a while many would not remember that he was the feared general who once put rampaging extremists to flight in the 80s. They would only remember his record with Boko Haram.

  • The poisoned assembly

    The poisoned assembly

    After the emergence of Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives against the wishes of the All Progressives Congress (APC), I suggested that the party cut its losses and move on because the embarrassment it was subjected to was avoidable. It got its politics wrong and had to live with the consequences.

    I was also assuming that the ‘victors’ would do the wise thing by allowing the party they had betrayed, as well as those who had lost out,  to console themselves with the crumbs – the principal officer positions. The events of the last one week in the Senate and House are clear pointers that we are in interesting times where things are not always what they seem.

    The mildest word I can find to describe the game being played by Saraki and Dogara is ‘curious.’ Until now I was under the impression that politics was about compromises; a game in which either side sooner or later abandon entrenched positions to meet each other half way.

    I am even more mystified as at to the end of all the intrigues. What agenda is at play here? To defy your party once is bad enough, but to treat its leadership – everyone from president to national chairman and governors – with such contempt is well nigh unforgiveable.

    People go on about APC being paid back in its coins because it benefitted from the template of disobedience created by former Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, but even that original sinner didn’t go this far. Once he got what he wanted, he moved to mollify the incensed Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and allowed the party to install its choice – Mulikat Akande – as Majority Leader.

    I am still trying to make sense of how Saraki and Dogara think they can function in a poisoned National Assembly that is now polarized into sundry factions. With embittered individuals whose egos have been deflated and dreams shattered roaming its hallways, this legislature would be nothing but a hotbed of intrigues. Forget about the public posturing of the presiding officers, they would never sleep with two eyes closed.

    In the ongoing crisis two concepts have been going toe to toe: legislative independence versus party supremacy. Each side has tried to justify its position standing on these grounds. However, there can’t be an absolute interpretation of these ideas.

    I had argued in this column two weeks ago that in the United States despite the acknowledgment of party supremacy there is a lot of tolerance of independent action by lawmakers taking into consideration the peculiar political considerations of their constituencies.

    There is, however, a stricter interpretation of the concept under the parliamentary system because lack of discipline within the ranks of legislators of the ruling party could bring down the government of the day.

    What is clearly lacking in the current crisis is the application of common sense. The APC has swallowed its pride and moved from its original position of not recognising Saraki and Dogara. Unfortunately, the Senate President and Speaker are still posturing as legislative purists when we know that what is at play here is just a raw Nigerian political power game.

    Can Saraki swear that when he was governor of Kwara he didn’t decide who became Speaker of the state house of assembly? Could the rebellion he’s superintending in Abuja ever have happened under his watch in Ilorin?

    This is not the first time that a party would present to the Senate or House a list of its agreed nominees for the principal officer positions. It happened under David Mark’s leadership and I don’t recall the new Senate President weeping over the impeachment of legislative independence.

    Actually, all those trying to argue that the party should have no role in picking the leaders of the National Assembly are only being hypocritical.

    The party is integral to the political process and cannot be separated from it. You are elected and do your business on its platform. In whatever chamber you function your identification is on party basis. Indeed, any indiscriminate change of affiliation would lead to the loss of your seat as the Supreme Court ruled recently in the case of Ifedayo Abegunde representing Akure South/North Federal Constituency of Ondo State in the House. He was asked to vacate his seat for leaving the Labour Party (LP) to join the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

    Many of those who don’t want to hear about party instructions rode into the National Assembly on the coattails of APC and Muhammadu Buhari. They were swept into the legislature by the change tsunami; it wasn’t because they were so popular in their constituencies, or espoused any unique agenda that got them elected.

    Most voters were largely motivated to vote for presidential and governorship candidates. When it came to the legislature they simply ticked the appropriate party boxes because many of the legislative candidates were not known to the electorate. To turn around and treat a party that lifted you up with such contempt is truly despicable.

    Let’s not forget that Nigerians voted APC in with a clear mandate to change things. In addition to handing it the presidency, they empowered the party with robust majorities in the Senate and House. Saraki and Dogara have, through the back door, exchanged the clearly expressed will of the voters for cohabitation with a party that was rejected by the people just two months ago. And they did so without another election or referendum – simply riding on the fuel of ambition.

    In this era of ‘gotcha politics’ when wounds are still raw from the elections, some people may delight in gloating over APC’s troubles. Well, whatever makes them happy! But irrespective of partisan identification, the more sober and reflective amongst us would know that grievous damage has been done to our fledgling democratic culture.

    If Saraki and Dogara get away unscathed with what they have pulled off why should any other person obey party leadership – whether PDP or APC? What moral authority would the leaders of the new governing party have to punish future rebels when it failed to act against those whose wrote the primer for this extreme acts of political truancy?

    Irrespective of whether APC takes overt action, depend on it – there would be consequences either now or in the future. On the occasion of his valedictory appearance as Speaker, Tambuwal bemoaned the fact that the House under him couldn’t do too much. He blamed it on unceasing ‘distractions’ from former President Goodluck Jonathan. That was part of the price he paid for going against his party’s wishes.

    During President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term he had a torrid time at the hands of rebellious PDP House members who rallied around the leadership of the taciturn Speaker Ghali Na’Abba and pushed the nation to the brink of an impeachment crisis. When it was time to dole out tickets for the 2003 elections, the party exacted its revenge and all the marked rebels were denied a return to the National Assembly. Na’Abba himself was humiliated at the primaries.

    In the end no one should be too shocked by the upheavals arising from the leadership contests. If only Senate Presidents and Speakers were elected directly by voters we would have been spared the drama. Unfortunately, those who have to choose are lawmakers joined at the hip to various interests whose major concern is not necessarily the good of the Nigerian people. When these forces collide sparks are bound to fly.

    The foundation of the Fourth Republic federal legislature was laid in intrigues and turbulence. It kicked off with the riot over furniture allowance in 1999. It entered another level in the battle to oust one-time Speaker Patricia Etteh. So heated was the struggle that one aging lawmaker’s heart couldn’t take the strain. His corpse was carried out of the chambers. The Dogara dogfight is only the latest episode in a chamber accustomed to cage-fighting.

    Classes may come and go but the character of our poisoned assembly remains the same. That is why I find some of the outrage over last week’s proceedings a bit overdone. Even PDP has described them as shameful. Coming from the party that wrote the script for shamelessness that is rich!

  • The two Buharis and microwave change

    The two Buharis and microwave change

    Under the convenient cover of anonymity many of those who voted for continuity of Goodluck Jonathan’s disastrous rule have teamed up with others who truly plumped for a new beginning to bemoan the failure of Presidency Muhammadu Buhari to deliver change at the speed of a microwave.

    The former are motivated more by mischief to paint the picture of a bumbling president in the same manner their fallen hero was caricatured in the last four years. The latter are not exactly driven by patriotism but more by that Nigerian habit of rushing around in circles before deciphering why we’re scurrying around so furiously.

    The calamity that has befallen the nation is that three weeks after taking office Buhari has not appointed a Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) who by his mere emergence would magically transform our fortunes.

    Even more sacrilegious is the fact that the country still doesn’t have cabinet ministers. Those who have waited this long to moan have been uncommonly patient. After all, I did read a post by a supposedly enlightened blogger who wrote this on his Facebook page: ‘Three days and Nigeria still doesn’t have a government. Hmn…!’ This was on June 1, 2015!

    The last I checked the structure of government doesn’t crumble just because someone hasn’t been appointed Chief of Staff, SGF or minister. The fact that the president is getting things done is confirmation of that.

    In any event, historically, in the Fourth Republic it has taken even the most prepared of presidents at least four weeks to put together a cabinet. Taking that time to assemble a team that would run a race of four years is not being tardy in my book.

    That is even fast when we consider certain examples from around the world. After winning the March 17, 2015 general elections it took Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu almost two months to cobble together a cabinet.

    I suspect that much of the hysteria is being driven by those interested in being appointed to some of these offices. They are frustrated by the fact that Buhari has refused to show his hand and is taking his sweet time to resolve things. I can understand how that can unsettle politicians who are desperate to be relevant again.

    For the average Nigerian the naming of a Chief of Staff to the President doesn’t change the price of beans at Mile 12 market in the short term. Buhari has to govern with a team of ministers and he would name them sooner than later. He understands how hungry people are for change. That is why he kept trying to lower sky-high expectations that things would change overnight.

    We would all be totally stressed out if we don’t take the trouble to understand the man in whose hands we have put our collective fate. Indeed, if we remain our usual impatient selves, then it’s going to be a very long four years under the Buhari presidency.

    One-time British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said of herself: ‘the Lady’s is not for turning!’ We have on our hands another self-assured and stubborn customer. He would not be moved until he’s ready to move.

    After winning the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket in Lagos last December, he came under intense pressure to quickly name a running mate. The furore was as much the product of intense jockeying by those who fancied themselves for the role and the anxiety of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which was waiting for an opening to attack its rival.

    Rather than seeing the time it is taking to constitute a cabinet as some great failing, people should understand that today’s Buhari is a totally different package from the stern, lean-faced infantry general who 30 years ago delivered change under a military regime “with immediate effect.”

    Despite the good his regime did restoring orderliness, paying off debts and stabilizing the economy, it would be ultimately undone by its cavalier abuse of human rights. When General Ibrahim Babangida and his co-conspirators took over they didn’t accuse the man they toppled of fiddling with public funds; they posed as liberators who had come to restore freedoms taken away by a stern dictator.

    Back then in 1985 not many would have predicted that the man who left office reviled as a draconian junta leader would 30 years later be swept back into office as an almost messianic figure.

    But by joining those he once scorned to compete for power, Buhari invited intense scrutiny of his time in office. It was an exercise that his foes welcomed with glee and executed to devastating effect. Along with the caricature that he was a Muslim fundamentalist, the general was portrayed as a harsh despot who would never change his ways. The caricature was especially effective down south.

    He may not have apologised for the most egregious abuses, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that he understands how his record and image worked against him in three previous attempts at being elected president.

    In the 2014-2015 election cycle we have been confronted with a re-packaged Buhari. The man who once suspended constitutional government and ruled by decrees now swears by the constitution. He was accused of religious fanaticism, he countered by running twice with not just any Christian – but with Pentecostal pastors. Once derided as the ultimate anti-democrat he now overcompensates by making sure his every move is by the book.

    The new Buhari is one who thinks meddling in the leadership scheming of the National Assembly is a no-no because they are a different arm of government. He is a political innocent who just received a lesson in skullduggery when his APC was outmaneuvered in a conspiracy involving some of those who having been grinning in his face like friendly sharks, while plotting to undermine him and further their own interests.

    Without question the president believes that the troubles some of his predecessors had with the legislature had to do with their attempt to impose leadership. Of course, he had the recent example of Aminu Tambuwal to point to. But his hands-off approach also has much to do with not giving opponents grounds to cry that the old dictatorial traits were returning.

    The trouble with the new Buhari – the converted democrat – is he expects politicians to be honourable. Unfortunately, Nigerian democracy is a jungle where anything goes. He expected Bukola Saraki to toe the party line; the rebellious senator thumped his nose at the APC high command and cut a deal with the enemy – leaving the majority party humiliated in a chamber where it held a comfortable majority.

    The new Buhari is keen to prove his democratic credentials so he has made peace with the reality he’s been handed at the National Assembly. An Olusegun Obasanjo would not rest until he’s hounded the usurpers out of their thrones. That is not likely to happen with Buhari Mark II.

    He has shown unwillingness to manipulate the coercive instruments and agencies of state in pursuit of partisan political ends in ways that Obasanjo or his pupil, Goodluck Jonathan, would have done. That is why Ayo Fayose is still governor of Ekiti State today.

    Before the March 28 polls no one was sure which of the Buharis would show up as president – the old or the new. Former First Lady Patience Jonathan ventilated those fears when she repeatedly warned voters at campaign stops not to vote for the general as he would jail them and their spouses.

    The day after he was inaugurated many actually expected him to begin clamping PDP cabinet members into detention as the general circa 1983 would have done. Somehow a stop order whose origin we still don’t know went out preventing certain former office holders from travelling. It took the intervention of the new Buhari to clear the coast for the frightened to flee overseas and watch what would unfold from a safe distance.

    But being a stickler for rules is one thing, being politically naïve in an environment like Nigeria is a totally different matter. Former Vice President and APC chieftain, Atiku Abubakar, in a recent interview described Buhari as ‘a leader and not a politician.’

    It sounds contradictory to say a man who won the ticket of a political party and eventually became president is not a politician, still the statement is quite revealing. What Atiku was really saying is Buhari is an innocent at large in the dark and murky ways of Nigerian politics.

    Obasanjo and Jonathan may have made their mistakes in the manner they tried to impose leadership of the legislature but they were not wrong in taking more than passing interest in who became Senate President or Speaker. These are people who will determine the success or failure of your legislative agenda, and to be unperturbed whether they would be hostile or friendly is a big mistake.

    Although there’s very little a president can do to influence who leads the United States Congress because of their established democratic traditions, still we see that a hostile legislature can render the most powerful leader on earth impotent. The Barack Obama presidency has been paralysed at critical points in recent years by the hostility of the Republican congressional majority.

    Here in Nigeria, Obasanjo’s third term dream was shot down because the Senate and House turned against him.

    Again, we see in the tragic case of the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola that the consequences are often grave in this environment when the leader declines to show interest in who controls key points in the nation’s power architecture.

    Abiola had won the ticket of the then Social Democratic Party (SDP) narrowly seeing stiff competition from the candidate of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua political machine. He was so satisfied with what he had accomplished he generously declared he didn’t care who became party chairman.

    His position led to the emergence of Chief Tony Anenih. This would later prove to be pivotal after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election results. After Babangida stepped aside and Chief Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING) was eased out by General Sani Abacha, the SDP under the new chairman lost the desire to press for actualisation of Abiola’s mandate.

    Even worse, they quietly began negotiating for positions in the new military junta that would ultimately bury the June 12 mandate. Who knows what would have happened if Abiola had backed a candidate for chairman who was committed to his vision?

    Aside his determination not to get his hands dirty playing politics what has changed between the old Buhari and the new? Only the methods if you ask me. He is still committed to fighting corruption, restoring security and stabilising the economy. This was the same agenda when he took office 30 years ago. The only difference is that terrorism was an unknown phenomenon back then.

    Can this new, aging Buhari who has to work with a National Assembly leadership whose emergence he had no hand in still deliver the change he promised? There’s no reason why not.

    Exercising the powers of the presidency doesn’t call for the strength of the weightlifter. A friend argues that the Saraki-Dogara rebellion is just a sideshow and that even if there are no new reforms or bills, there are existing laws on our books for any serious president to jail 1,000 corrupt Nigerians every month.

    The problem with the Nigerian system is not a shortage of laws it is the absence of political will to enforce what we already have. Is it not a marvel the way the EFCC has been prosecuting people and arresting hitherto untouchable politicians all because the body language of the new president indicates he would not tolerate sleaze?

    The 73 year-old Buhari may be looking wistfully back at when he was 37 years old. But he doesn’t need the strength or stamina of his youth, neither does he need Saraki and his crowd to pat him on the back in order to deliver change.

    All he needs is that same iron will which first arrested the attention of Nigerians 30 years ago, as he begins to change the ways things are done in this country.

  • APC and its baptism of fire

    APC and its baptism of fire

    The crisis of the National Assembly leadership elections which tore through the All Progressives Congress (APC) might just be the best thing to have happened to it in its short existence. People forget that the party is barely two years old and has never held power at the center.

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the other hand has been at it for 16 years. It has had almost two decades to make mistakes and learn. APC stumbled and that should not be mistaken for a fall.

    Last week’s storm was a rude awakening to the fact that if the party doesn’t sort out its politics it would be unable to deliver on the change mandate.

    It is to its advantage that the crisis occurred early in the party’s reign rather than at the tail end of its tenure when it would be going into another election cycle. So, rather than allowing the bitterness and anger of the moment to fester, the leadership needs to handle the fallout of the June 9 debacle with humility and introspection to see if things could have been handled differently.

    There are so many lessons and APC would be misunderstanding the import of recent events if it embarks on any sudden or extreme moves against those who have challenged its authority. The emergence of Dr. Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives was a rebellion driven as much by ambition as by other factors. The immediate thing to do is indentify what these are.

    A wise leadership would first try to de-escalate things and contain the damage that’s already been done. That is exactly what Chief John Oyegun and his team have done by finally recognizing Saraki as duly elected head of the Senate. All the talk of the nuclear option of drastic disciplinary action was not practical as APC risked the danger of driving the offenders back into the embrace of a PDP that is desperately looking for a way to get back into the game.

    So where did APC get it wrong? For one thing they made a fundamental error in not dealing with the power sharing concerns raised by elements of one of the legacy parties that came together to form it – the ‘New PDP’. Dismissing their demands by saying that such groups died when the new party came into being was unrealistic. In every big political party there are diverse tendencies and people who have been linked in the past would flock together even in a new home.

    The seed of the rebellion was sown in that sense of marginalization and thrived because the issue was not dealt with frontally. It is no surprise therefore that the new Senate President and Speaker of the House were members of that ‘New PDP’ group.

    Thus far the APC leadership has been outraged by what it perceives as a breakdown of discipline within its ranks. Before their very eyes party supremacy which they had touted as distinguishing them from PDP has been stamped upon by the rebels.

    No organization that wants to be taken seriously would condone such brazen acts of indiscipline. However, it bears pointing out that the application of the concept of party supremacy cannot be absolute. It works best under the parliamentary system of government because rebellion against the party line by parliamentarians could lead to fall of the government of the day.

    Under the American presidential system things are slightly different. There is a lot more latitude for independent action on the part of lawmakers. Times without number we have seen Democratic senators and Congressmen cross the party line to join Republicans in voting against major legislation of their fellow Democrat – President Barack Obama.

    Whenever that happened, those who crossed party lines were not condemned for voting the way they did. They never come up for censure by their party. Pay back comes when they have to present their voting record to the electorate. Still, we acknowledge that we operate under different circumstances in a society that still has to deal with primordial issues like tribe and religion.

    But this is not to say that the methods adopted by Saraki to achieve his goal are acceptable. It wasn’t just the fact that he took the contest to the Senate floor in defiance of his party leadership that was galling he compounded the injury by inviting the defeated enemy to share in the victors’ banquet.

    Surely, Saraki must have known that the APC leadership would be incandescent with rage over what they have described as his treacherous conduct in selling them to the disgraced PDP just to satisfy his ambition, but he just didn’t give a damn about the consequences.

    His rivals and the APC clearly underestimated him – thinking he would not push things to the brink. He did just that without blinking. They should have known that the man who moved against his own father – the late strongman of Kwara politics Dr. Olusola Saraki – and ultimately retired the old man from active politics would be capable of defying anyone when his dream was so clearly within reach. Such ruthlessness is uncommon even in the rough and tumble of Nigerian politics.

    But to make sense of what happened on June 9 we must not focus on the ambition alone – notwithstanding the fact that it is a powerful incentive.

    I strongly believe that no matter how driven they were, Saraki and Dogara would never have sustained their challenge without the backing of powerful forces within and without the APC who have an eye on 2019 calculations.

    President Muhammadu Buhari is still trying to make something of the fresh mandate in his hands. No one knows what his intentions are concerning a second term bid but there’s a lot of guessing going on that a man would be 77 in four years could choose not to run again.

    Were he to spurn the chance of running again, the usual suspects are positioning powerful allies in the positions that could positively impact their ambitions. The backing of those with these presidential ambitions no doubt have encouraged the rebels to take the contest to the floor of the National Assembly.

    One other factor that sustained the rebellion was the anti -Bola Tinubu sentiment whipped up by one side in the contest as well as the PDP still bitter about the role the former Lagos State Governor played in its downfall. For them this was the perfect opportunity to retaliate as he was perceived to be the driving force behind Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila.

    Most of those who have gone overboard to vilify Tinubu have been less than honest in their presentations. The Gbajabiamila project was initiated by his colleagues in the House who felt he was the natural person to rise to be Speaker having led them admirably as Minority Leader.

    That he supported Lawan is no secret. But didn’t other APC leaders back other candidates? All of the senators from Buhari’s home state, Katsina, voted for Lawan in the primaries. So how did he become a lapdog that Tinubu was seeking to impose on the Senate?

    Success has many friends but paradoxically the successful are often hated for doing well by those less fortunate. The Saraki and Dogara camps tapped into the deep anti-Tinubu sentiment and played the card for all it was worth.

    However, all those writing political obituaries of the APC leader are being unduly hasty. Politics is not like football – a game of two halves. It is more like a towering bestseller where one action-packed chapter opens into another and builds to a climax. He may have had a bad day at the office but his foes would be foolish to read too much into what has just happened.

    Many of those gloating over Tinubu’s perceived loss in the scheming for the National Assembly leadership should be reaching out to him to mend fences. If God permits, many who have ambitions beyond today would be seeking his support and that of his South-West base to actualize them. Just ask Muhammadu Buhari.

    Bar the shouting and the threats of legal action, Saraki and Dogara are the new reality that APC and the Buhari presidency must deal with for the foreseeable future. What are the implications for the individuals caught up in the controversy and for the polity?

    The new leaders of the National Assembly may have achieved their ambition but they have left something broken in their party. People keep referring to what former Speaker Aminu Tambuwal did in the last House – using members of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to seize power against the wish of the PDP leadership.

    That precedence has come back to bite the APC as the Tambuwal scenario has been repeated in both chambers of the legislature. The new governing party finds itself in an awkward position where it cannot really moan now that it is being paid back in its own coins.

    That said the brazen and long-drawn campaign of defiance against their party which Saraki and Dogara carried out, along with the Tambuwal episode would weaken the authority of Nigerian political parties – not just APC – for a long time to come.

    Powerful individuals would continue to rubbish the concept of party supremacy knowing that the cold reality of political calculations would shield them from harsh punishment.

    We saw it when Tambuwal defied PDP. The ruling party chose to grin and bear it so as not to make matters worse. The same scenario has played out again in APC.

    On an individual level the implications are equally grave. The new Senate President is the undisputed Lord of the Manor in his Kwara fiefdom. His word is law and you cross him at your peril. Now that he has played the card of disobedience in Abuja it would be interesting watching him try to impose the party line in Ilorin.

    Don’t be surprised if many who have been chafing under his rule suddenly acquire a taste for rebellion. Whatever a man sows he usually reaps with interest.

    For a man known to nurse presidential ambitions it would be virtually impossible for him to realize such dreams on the platform of the APC. He would never be trusted again and would now have a very awkward relationship with the party high command. It was the same experience Tambuwal had with former President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP leadership.

    One of things that the Fourth Republic Senate enjoyed under David Mark was an extended period of stability after the initial years of turbulence. Given the manner of his emergence Saraki has just steered the upper chamber into stormy waters.

    Truly he’s in the saddle right now, but whether he would sit there comfortably is a different matter. He may just have placed that saddle on what in American rodeo circles is called a ‘Bucking Bronco.’ Anyone who ever sat on those wild horses would tell you it’s not the most stable seat in the world.

    APC may not be able to oust either the Senate President or Speaker because they wouldn’t be able to muster the required two-thirds of members to get the job done. That effectively makes Saraki and Dogara hostages of the former ruling party on whose votes they must now depend for survival.

  • Fuel Subsidy: Time to slay the sacred cow

    Fuel Subsidy: Time to slay the sacred cow

    How apt that the final images of Goodluck Jonathan’s shambolic presidency, is a nation camped out at petrol stations in desperate search of fuel! For long stretches of his tenure it seemed as though the queues had disappeared for good but the malaise was only being kept at bay by artificial solutions.

    In the last few weeks the experience of the average Nigerian trying to purchase petrol for his car or generator has been hellish. Very few bought at the official rate of N87 per liter. The product sold for between N150 and N250 per liter depending on location and intensity of the problem on a given day.

    The latest crisis has revived calls for the removal of fuel subsidies which different administrations have struggled with over the last two decades. The very suggestion that the incoming Muhammadu Buhari administration could discontinue a system that guarantees artificially cheap petrol has provoked a predictably hostile response from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

    The union has always been the vanguard for resisting hike in fuel prices over the years. It successfully stared down a succession of presidents – from Olusegun Obasanjo to Jonathan – over the issue.

    The almost visceral reaction of labour and other activists revolves around the sense that the bulk of Nigerians who subsist on less than $2 per day would be hurt by the removal of subsidy. They also argue that this is the only benefit that this vulnerable segment of society gets from government and should not be touched.

    These arguments might be appealing emotionally and politically but they are becoming increasingly indefensible. Our experiences during these never-ending cycles of fuel scarcity demand that we re-frame the basis for the discussion.

    Also, the ongoing prosecution of the offspring of highly-placed members of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and their associates over subsidy payment scams raises the question of who really is being subsidised.

    On paper the subsidy is supposed to protect the less economically empowered in the society. But every time marketers throw a fit and refuse to import, we all – rich and poor – end up paying outrageous prices for petrol and carry on with our lives. In fact, the most powerful continue to get the products at subsidised rates because of their connections while those in the lowest rungs bear the brunt.

    Kerosene is supposedly subsidised for the poor and should sell for N50 per liter. But nowhere in Nigeria is the product retailed for less than N120 – and that is when you can find it. Meanwhile, the marketers keep getting paid billions of naira that doesn’t translate into a subsidy for impoverished citizens.

    Nigeria isn’t the only country on the continent that has operated or continues to operate a regime of fuel subsidies. But over time many have come to the conclusion they could no longer continue to do so. The latest to announce it is ending them from September 30 is Angola.

    Angola, just like Nigeria, imports virtually all of its fuel despite being Africa’s second largest producer. This is because of its insufficient local refining capacity. The result is she spent four percent of her 2013 budget on subsidies.

    Justifying the move, a government statement said: “Gasoline now joins the free price system, ending the burden on the state of the cost of subsidies. The ongoing effort to adopt realistic prices will help strengthen social programmes and reduce inequality, since subsidies benefit the most favoured groups and encourage fuel smuggling to neighbouring countries.”

    It is interesting that the Angolans make the point about those who really benefit from the subsidy regime. What an irony that when labour unions oppose attempts to change the existing system, they are actually helping the emergency businessmen feeding fat on it to continue taking us all for a collective ride.

    The point at which we find ourselves in Nigeria today the issue isn’t just whether subsidies that ostensibly benefit the ‘poor’ are good and desirable. The equally relevant question is whether they are affordable and sustainable. Can a country that is borrowing to pay workers and contractors continue to pay out trillions of naira in subsidies that don’t subsidise?

    The problem is compounded by the changing revenue profile of the country. In the boom years the payments may have been bearable, but with oil prices crashing to unprecedented lows they no longer make sense.

    And it isn’t as if the figures have remained static. Between the Obasanjo years and the Jonathan tenure they ballooned from an average of N300 billion that was being spent yearly up to 2007 to N 2.7 trillion by 2013! From a little over N400 billion under President Umaru Yar’Adua there was a quantum leap to over N1.2 trillion in the first year of Jonathan’s presidency.

    Even more embarrassing is the fact that between the Federal Government and the marketers there’s no agreement as to what is currently owed to them. While they claim N200 billion as outstanding, the Ministry of Finance says the figure is N131 billion.

    Whatever the true figures are it doesn’t make sense paying out N2.7 trillion to subsidise consumption. Petrol might be an important product which price ultimately affects the pricing of other goods and services, but it isn’t the only variable that determines that.

    That raises the question of how to move forward. First, we need to accept that the market doesn’t respond well to unnecessary political meddling. We need to review and repeal all legislation regulating the petroleum industry whose construction was not based on purely economic considerations.

    One of the pillars of the subsidy regime is the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) Decree of 1975. It was created to equalise the cost of transporting petroleum products from depots to filling stations and ensure that they are available at uniform prices throughout Nigeria. Elementary economics, however, tells us that distance will impact the price at which a product is ultimately sold in different locations.

    Even at the best of times, in spite of the existence of this legislation, petrol always sold at prices higher than the official rate in Nigeria’s extremities. Meanwhile, the marketer who has delivered his cargo, dutifully queues up to collect PEF payment (subsidy) for a product that the poor man in Damaturu buys for N120 per liter or more.

    Times have changed and the unions also need a reality check. The NLC has argued in the past that while it isn’t opposed to ending fuel subsidy, it wants certain measures put in place before such an action can be contemplated. Among other things it wants the refineries working, an efficient public transportation system as well as other welfare measures in place first.

    While these are not unreasonable demands they are not very practical. Fixing the existing refineries or building new ones could take anything from 24 to 36 months. Those who would like to see new refineries sprout also have to realise that investors are not philanthropists. It is a non-starter to think they would be attracted to a system that expects them to pour billions into a project only for the state to fix the price at which they sell what they produce.

    Again, putting in place the sort of mass transit system that could move millions daily at a cheap rate could take up to five years – if not longer.

    In the interim as we wait to create the perfect conditions for a painless exit from wasteful subsidies, we are forced to continue with payments that the country cannot afford! It is a vicious cycle and not the right way to go.

    Putting palliatives in place must go hand in hand with the necessary reforms. Imagine how many buses or train lines N2.7 trillion can buy. Just think of the number of refineries that can be built for that amount. You can build countless roads, schools and hospitals for what we throw away yearly.

    Religion is a touchy subject but the more I think of the subsidy the more I am reminded of India where there’s so much poverty and yet well-fed cows roam free because they are considered sacred. We’ve made the fuel subsidy into an idol that must not be touched. Unfortunately, it is our commonwealth draining away yearly while leaving the mass of the people untouched.

    The only way forward is to confront this cancer headlong. Nigerians are already paying outrageous amounts for petrol and I doubt whether deregulated prices can be worse. Indeed, if you were to poll our longsuffering population and offer them regular fuel supply at higher prices or intermittent scarcity at existing rates, they would jump at the former.

    Most of these arguments are not new. What has been lacking has been the political will to do what is necessary. Previous administrations were not able to convince people that the subsidies should go because they were sleaze-infested and distrusted by the people. That was why the argument that the subsidies were the only things the poor benefitted used to resonate.

    But against the backdrop of the exposure of massive scams dogging the scheme, the incoming administration has an uncommon opportunity to tap into peoples’ frustrations arising from the pains of scarcity to remove the subsidies once and for all.

    There is no right time or pain-free way to do so. The trouble with us is we desire to get to heaven but want to be saved the trouble of dying first. We want to have lovely babies but want to be spared the pains of childbirth.

  • PDP must earn right to criticise Buhari

    PDP must earn right to criticise Buhari

    “Many in the ruling party still cannot reconcile themselves with what has just happened: they are handing over the reins to the man they disdained and they just can’t stop the habit of sniping at him. This is the campaign that never ended, and the attacks would continue whether or not they are reasonable or morally justified.” 

    I overheard a conversation between two men on a street that captures the magnitude of the burden inherited by President-elect Muhammadu Buhari. It went something like this:

    Mr. A: “Why e come be say now wey your man (Buhari) don win naim we dey suffer dis kain thing? No light, no petrol, no money… Na so una dey shout change, change … him don win now see wahala!”

    Mr. B: Haba! But Jonathan is still in charge, Buhari never take over now!”

    Mr. A: “Look … we no go gree o!” And their voices tapered off in the distance.

    In stunned silence I digested what I had just heard. The size of the challenge confronting the next administration is gargantuan, but it is compounded by so much ignorance on the part of a longsuffering population who now expect their newly-minted leader to brandish a wand and sweep their troubles away. If only this was wonderland!

    Buhari’s assignment is complicated by the bitterness factor. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) was unprepared for the loss of the presidency. Party spokesman aptly described his organization as ‘traumatized’.

    Many in the ruling party still cannot reconcile themselves with what has just happened: they are handing over the reins to the man they disdained and they just can’t stop the habit of sniping at him. This is the campaign that never ended, and the attacks would continue whether or not they are reasonable or morally justified.

    That the PDP is in disarray after its calamitous electoral performance is to be expected. The scope of the debacle is such that the party which has been in power for an unbroken 16-year stretch would be would be psychologically damaged for a long time.

    Up North it has been virtually wiped out by Hurricane Buhari. In the South West it is standing on two shaky legs in Ondo and Ekiti. These outposts are bound to come under sustained pressure from the new governing party after May 29.

    In the South South and South East zones it faces an uncertain future. Electoral litigation and potential defections are bound to erode its holdings in these areas.

    In Abuja, national chairman Ahmadu Muazu and members of his National Working Committee (NWC) are exchanging brickbats with aides and associates of President Goodluck Jonathan over the defeat while crossing swords with governors who want them sacked.

    But no matter how bad things look for PDP at the moment, the worst is yet to come. In the next few months as the new government begins a forensic examination of the Jonathan years we should expect more embarrassing scandals to be unveiled as whistleblowers – long restrained by the fear of the outgoing government – begin to sing.

    The savage in-fighting that has already kicked off is not going to disappear just because a committee has been appointed to examine why the party did poorly at the polls. Peace will only come when one of the factions contending for the soul of the party prevails.

    Although there’s no unanimity as to the best way forward most members agree that PDP has to reinvent itself. But that isn’t going to happen until the party understands where it went wrong. The reactions of some of its leaders – from President Jonathan who’s already dreaming of PDP’s speedy return to power in 2019 to Muazu who’s been bragging about transforming into a vicious attack dog who will give the All Progressives Congress (APC) government nightmares – shows they still don’t get it.

    Their comments and those of their camp followers on the internet show that their understanding of their new opposition role ends with lobbing criticism and invective at every move of the incoming lot and their leader, Buhari. It was that sort of wooly-headed thinking that inspired the hate campaign strategy that backfired spectacularly of March 28 and April 11.

    The tactic or strategy a party in opposition adopts is usually shaped by the circumstance. There is the ‘reaction model’ involving relentless sniping and nitpicking. This means harassing your quarry over every little failing. It could be quite effective where the government in power is already unpopular, but it is very risky where certain lines are crossed.

    The other option is the ‘proactive model’ in which the opposition tries to take the initiative by proffering new and more attractive policies than those set forth by the government of the day for dealing with challenges. This is mostly adopted where the incumbent regime retains a measure of popularity and credibility. In this case frontal attack doesn’t work because there’s not much to attack.

    APC adopted the relentless attack model, now the PDP lazily wants to follow that same tack without understanding why it worked. You don’t attack for attack sake. The power of a critic’s utterances comes from his credibility. When Buhari talks about fighting corruption there’s a ring of believability to his words because of his history. The same comments coming from some of our former heads of state immediately conjures images of very black pots calling the kettle names.

    Jonathan was roundly criticized because there was so much to criticize in his government. The flak hit home because it was supported by concrete evidence. If the opposition were hitting him over the head for corruption, they could point at several running scandals at every point in time. It was so bad that by the final year of his tenure the president had lost so much credibility locally and internationally.

    In trying to savage Buhari even before he’s sworn into office, the PDP is making a big mistake. The man still enjoys tremendous goodwill and this will not dissipate overnight; it will take him stumbling from disaster to disaster for that to happen.

    If anything PDP and its leaders should stay out of the way. As the magnitude of the mess it created becomes evident they should be hiding their heads in shame and allow the new team clean up their mess. And truly Nigeria in 2015 is one massive mess.

    Every day the sheer scale of Boko Haram atrocities becomes evident. On the positive side the military has recorded successes in recent times. But it has struck me that all the efforts of the armies of Nigeria and three neighbouring countries have not been able to wipe out the sect.

    After each day’s fighting the military reports new heavy death tolls of the part of the militants. How did they manage to get this big? How did they manage to build such a mighty force of men under arms? What were the administrations in charge in the last decade doing while this monster grew? All of this occurred under PDP’s watch.

    Under the same party the nation has become bitterly polarized along ethnic and religious lines like never before in her history. The hatred between groups is frighteningly approaching the intensity of the pre-civil war period.

    That’s not all. The economy has been run aground. There is no electricity. Fuel queues have become a permanent feature of our landscape. We squander billions of naira on dubious subsidy payments every year. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that neither the Ministry of Finance nor the oil marketers can agree on what the numbers are.

    Unemployment has assumed the status of a plague. Under pressure from falling oil prices the naira now exchanges at an all-time low of well over N200 to the US dollar. The foreign reserves and Excess Crude Account are depleted. With one or two exceptions most states cannot pay monthly salaries and even the federal government had to borrow to meet its own wage obligations. This is the country that PDP would be handing to the next administration.

    The clean-up exercise that Buhari has been saddled is going to take a while to get to done. We’re not going to wake up on May 30 to discover that Nigeria has become Paradise.

    I believe that the president-elect has started going about his business in a very sound way. Some have tried to make his attempts at lowering expectations out to be an attempt to renege on campaign promises. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

    Anybody who has bothered to read between the lines of his words in the past few weeks would notice he’s been clearly setting the style and tone of his government. In his comments on the first anniversary of the abduction of the Chibok girls he said the approach of his administration to resolving the issue would be founded on honesty. That required him to declare bluntly that there were no guarantees the girls would ever be found.

    One of Jonathan’s greatest undoing is that for much of his tenure he lived in denial and never leveled with the public about how bad things were. He preferred to tell the each audience what he felt they wanted to hear instead of the bitter truth.

    He glossed over the insurgency even when bombs were going off in Abuja – preferring the narrative that it was the work of APC and sundry enemies who were bent on unseating him. He and his wife didn’t initially accept that the Chibok abductions happened. Indeed some of his aides up till today insist that the incident was a politically-motivated stunt to embarrass the government.

    After he accepted that the incident did happen, he kept reassuring the country of their imminent return. At a point one of his defence chiefs even boasted of knowing where they were being held. More than a year after they are still not home. By promising what he could not deliver Jonathan did incalculable harm to his credibility. The result is he led his party to the electoral carnage we’ve just witnessed.

    Seamlessly the party responsible for our sorry state becomes the new opposition. It expects to get going in that role by deploying criticism. But the erstwhile ruling party lost the moral right to criticise by its criminal mismanagement of Nigeria. Indeed, it would be amusing watching PDP leaders moan about the state of the nation in the next one or two years.

    PDP must now earn the right to criticize those who govern the country. Introspection and planning were never its strong suit. But that more than anything is what is required in opposition. In 1999, the party’s first Minister for Power, Bola Ige, excitedly promised to deliver 24-hour electricity within six months. He didn’t wait to understand what the problem was. Sixteen years after his successors haven’t done better.

    The party needs to prove through concrete actions that it has repented of its old, discredited ways and can now be entrusted with power.

    It will not have the federal platform to showcase anything in the coming years. It would have to prove its competence using its few remaining outposts in the South-South, South-East and Gombe. APC did this successfully – that was why during the campaigns it could point to the achievements of its governors in Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Ogun, Oyo and elsewhere as examples of good governance it intended to replicate at federal level.

    Until it has something positive to show PDP and its discredited leaders must really stay out of the way of the cleaners.

  • Jonathan battles withdrawal symptoms

    Jonathan battles withdrawal symptoms

    Few things are more addictive than tobacco because of the chemical – nicotine – that it contains. Once it takes a hold on the smoker it requires super-human effort, even divine intervention to break free.

    In that transitional period between the decision to quit and total abstinence, the repentant smoker’s body begins to make the forced adjustment to tobacco denial. The internal chemical reactions as a brain that wants to quit battles a body that longs for its normal nicotine fix results in anything from irritability, anxiety, insomnia to depression – a collective known as ‘withdrawal symptoms.’

    Like tobacco, power is an even more addictive opium. It produces in men changes that the most mind-warping chemicals can’t. It is not for nothing that the famous English writer and politician Lord Acton wrote: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

    Those addicted to exercising power don’t give it up easily – even if hanging on could cause them to wind up in a casket. That addiction is what has produced the likes of Robert Mugabe who has been president of Zimbabwe since 1980. Cursed with uncommon longevity he has outlived a long line of conspirators and conspiracies. If he had his way he would probably want to govern from the grave.

    It was the power addiction that drove Laurent Gbagbo to do stupid things in Cote d’Ivoire after it became evident that his rival, Abubakar Ouatarra, had defeated him in the elections. Rather than go quietly his supporters tore the result sheets on national television.

    It was the same thing that seduced former President Olusegun Obasanjo to succumb to the third term scheme. He only gave up when the whole fraudulent arrangement collapsed on the Senate floor. Many still argue that his reluctance to surrender power led him to install Umaru Yar’Adua who he thought would be a pliant president – allowing him to drive things from the back seat.

    Now in outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan we see the classic case of withdrawal symptoms manifesting. In the last four weeks we’ve seen two sides of the man manifesting. First, he meekly surrendered and conceded victory to the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. The implication of that act was that he had accepted the outcome of the elections – warts and all – and was willing to allow the process play out in the national interest.

    In the last two weeks, however, a totally different side has been unveiled. It is that of an irritable and angry man. As the reality of losing the power of almost life and death sinks in, he’s suddenly having second thoughts about the results of the March 28 polls.

    We can make our guesses about a man’s thoughts and body language, but when he begins to verbalise his innermost feelings then it is time to take him seriously. While receiving the report of the Dr. Ahmadu Ali-led Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation at Aso Villa, Abuja, Jonathan said: “the Peoples Democratic Party couldn’t have got those kinds of scores” it had in some places.

    This sort of statement isn’t something to be dismissed lightly. For while his concession phone call has been credited with dousing tension that had built up as the nation followed the long-drawn process of releasing the presidential election results, this latest outburst not only draws a cloud over the transition – it restores some of that dissipated anxiety.

    It doesn’t make sense that a man would aspire to wear the toga of statesman and at the same time be doing things that make him no better than the average politician driven only by selfish interests. What exactly is Jonathan trying to achieve with his recent actions and statements?

    Briefing journalists after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, last week, National Planning Minister, Abubakar Suleiman, accused the APC leadership of trying to stampede the administration out of office because of some terms of reference given to the transition committee of the incoming government.

    To underscore the depth of anger felt by the current regime, the minister warned that the president’s ‘magnanimity should not be mistaken for cowardice.’ Anyone reading those words would think that Buhari and Jonathan had a wrestling match scheduled for the village square.

    But nothing that entertaining is on the agenda this May. The issue at stake is managing a transfer of power from a lame-duck administration to its successor. So what does ‘magnanimity’ have to do with it? Since the minister is educated his choice is very revealing.

    Has the president been magnanimous in constituting a transition committee to interface with that of Buhari? Whoever thinks so needs to be reminded that 2015 isn’t the first time power has changed hands between administrations in Nigeria, and whenever this has occurred teams from both sides have dealt with the business of the hour without drama.

    In what way does conceding defeat translate to magnanimity? Was this a personal favour from Jonathan who owns the presidency as a birthright to Buhari the undeserving? Isn’t there the little matter of the expressed will of millions of Nigerians that must be respected and upheld by all? Some may suggest that the minister misspoke but I am unconvinced. This sort of misplaced arrogance has been evident in PDP ranks for months. We’ve heard some of its governors boasting before the elections that they would not hand over power to ‘blackmailers and supporters of terrorism’ – whoever they meant by that. In that loose talk there was no room made for voice of the ordinary voter.

    After March 28 Jonathan always had two choices: accept defeat or contest the results. For me, he chose the first option in his best interest. Even if he had decided to challenge the outcome the sky wouldn’t have caved in over Nigeria.

    It wouldn’t have been the first or last time a loser would challenge the result of a Nigerian election. From the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo over the twelve two-thirds verdict in 1979 to Buhari in recent years, candidates have contested poll outcomes and the system always resolved things. Even when 1,000 plus were killed following post-election violence in 2011, there was a resolution and the country moved on.

    Let’s stop making a monument out of Jonathan conceding victory. He wouldn’t be the first to do so neither would he be the last in Nigeria or on the African continent. I have pointed out on this page that former Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi conceded after losing the gubernatorial election last year.

    All the self congratulation over tension that was doused by the singular act of concession is just overdone. Elections always generate tension and anxiety anywhere. A people’s temperament could result in this occasionally spilling into violence. But even then this tension never lasts forever. Such situations are not sustainable and people invariably return to peace and normalcy.

    In any event it is not too late for Jonathan to recant. Instead of boring us with his bellyaching he can still take his grievances to the tribunal. He’s still well within the 180-day window for doing so. If he truly has the courage of his convictions he should be consulting his lawyers now.

    At the same event where he questioned Buhari’s victory, the president expressed his belief that PDP was still the ‘dominant’ power and would bounce back in 2019. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming. Politics, on the other hand, is a game of numbers.

    How can you be the dominant party when you opponent now controls 22 of the nation’s 36 states – leaving PDP and APGA with 14 states between them. How can you claim to dominate the landscape when APC now has a healthy majority in the Senate, and a bomb-proof difference in the House of Representatives?

    The president also sniffed at the 2.5 million votes that separated him and Buhari when the dust settled on March 28. He’s within his rights to do so. But even if the gap had been 2,500 votes – as long as the APC candidate met the constitutional requirements in 24 states, he was duly elected.

    It is not only when the difference is 10 million votes that a mandate is valid. In the 2000 United States presidential election, the Republican candidate George Bush didn’t win the plurality of votes. However, because his then Democratic Party’s rival Al Gore didn’t win the Electoral College contest Bush was still adjudged the winner after a recount and legal challenge at the Supreme Court.

    In the light of all of the ruling party’s well-documented shenanigans and attempts to hang on to power, 2.5 million votes is enough to secure this country a fresh start.

    A final evidence of Jonathan’s battle with withdrawal from power is the frenzy of sackings and appointments of the last fortnight. The only thing he’s not done is name a cabinet for Buhari just to prove that he’s still in charge for the next four weeks.  But the president also knows that everything he’s doing can be undone in a couple of weeks by the man taking over. So what’s the point?

    After his dignified conducted in the days after the presidential elections, it looked like Jonathan wanted to exit office with his head held high. But we appear to have misread his intentions once again: with every new move and utterance the man seems determined to ride into the sunset as the caricature of a president.

  • 2015: ‘Bad belle’ as ideology

    Going by the depth of bitterness, anger and frustration emanating from the ranks of the PDP and its supporters, it is obvious many of them never anticipated defeat in the presidential contest. I find that amazing. How is it possible that they didn’t consider all possible scenarios? If they did, the bile that is still gushing would have become a weak dribble.

    Their anger is not only directed at the Buhari and APC who pinched their precious presidency, it is also leveled at Jonathan who some blame for not doing “what is necessary” to win. I have had a couple say to me that were they to be in the man’s shoes they would have rigged their way to a second term.

    Online I get great entertainment reading the posts of ruling party supporters straining to find cracks in APC as members wrangle over spoil. When they identify what they presume to be evidence of trouble they celebrate such gleefully with such unoriginal exclamations as ‘We told you so’, ‘It has already started’ (the in-fighting they mean), and ‘We don enter One Chance’ – just to mention a few.

    Of course, I have also heard intemperate remarks coming from the APC end suggesting that some supporters are still giddy with adrenaline they’ve forgotten that Buhari has been given his certificate of return. You guys won remember?

    I would suggest to all sides of this bruising battle to calm down. To APC supporters: you won so be humble and compassionate. To the PDP supporters: I feel your pain. But you lost so get used to it. Buhari is going to be your president for the next four years at the very least. Live with it!

    The new government has not even been formed; it is indecent and undignified to be plotting how to savage it when it hasn’t even taken one step. Fairness demands that they be allowed a honeymoon period to bed down. That may not be in the interest of politicians who are desperate to see APC falter as quickly as possible, but it is in the national interest.

    Just as the new government needs time, the outgoing ruling party requires time for proper soul-searching. Many PDP’s leaders don’t grasp the gravity of the shift that has happened in the polity. That is why they make rash claims about reclaiming power in 2019.

    While that is not impossible, it excludes the possibility that the APC could do so well that 2019 would be the final burial of the last vestiges of PDP. The only way they are going to make headway in opposition is through creativity, rebranding and offering fresh ideas. Take their slogan – ‘PDP! Power! Can this organism survive now that it has been separated from power?

    Not much thinking is happening right now. Instead we continue to be treated to regurgitations of the same vile utterances that caused Nigerians to turn against Jonathan and his party. If they don’t take time to purge themselves of the poisonous tendencies in their midst they would soon be known as the party with bad belle as its ideology.

  • Suleiman Abba: Anatomy of a sacking

    Suleiman Abba: Anatomy of a sacking

    You won’t find too many people shedding tears for the immediate past Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba. The All Progressives Congress (APC) says under him the police became little more than the enforcement arm of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) used to thwart the people’s will and act in ways that negated its constitutional mandate.

    Other reports spoke of jubilation by the rank and file in some areas when news of his removal filtered through. For as long as I can remember, ordinary policemen have celebrated the fall of their bosses for reasons revolving largely round their welfare. I’m unsure in what ways he had offended them.

    If Abba was unpopular with the lower rungs of the force, he certainly was no longer flavour of the month in Aso Rock. The tweet announcing his firing was as terse as it was cryptic. It was devoid of even the lamest of courtesies: it was downright disrespectful.

    But it was not always this way. The colourless former IG leapt into public consciousness with his high profile role in the storming of the National Assembly when the House of Representatives tried to sit for the first time following the defection of Speaker Aminu Tambuwal to the APC.

    The Speaker had riled President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP high command by breaking with the party’s agreed zoning structure to run to lead the House. What made the episode even more galling for the powers-that-be was that the rebel achieved his victory through an unlikely alliance with elements of the APC.

    Although Tambuwal and his deputy, Emeka Ihedioha would go to Aso Villa and the party hierarchy to beg for forgiveness, he would never be trusted again. Indeed, if Jonathan had been able to muster the numbers the speaker would have been out on his ear long ago.

    Over the months as it became obvious that his break with PDP had become permanent the party waited patiently for their quarry to make his move. Even when he formally announced his change of affiliation they still couldn’t oust him. By now the APC through defections had temporarily snatched the majority.

    That left Jonathan will only one hand left to play. He got Abba to strip the speaker of his security details. The then IG even took matters a step further. When the media asked for the rationale behind his action he crossed the line between law enforcement and adjudication. Tambuwal, he said, had violated the constitution by crossing party lines – therefore he was no longer Speaker. Aghast, people asked the police chief when he assumed the role of the courts to interpret the constitution.

    Whatever the removal of security cover was intended to achieve for the Presidency and ruling party, the effect was the opposite. It exposed the hypocrisy of the force and administration as many other legislators and governors had defected to the PDP without receiving the same treatment.

    Tambuwal continued as speaker making his own private security arrangements and using the courts to sustain his position. Abba and his police force, on the other hand, found themselves getting sucked deeper and deeper into the mire of partisan politics. They clearly loved the mud bath as they threw themselves into further controversy with their open embrace of one side during the Osun State governorship election last year.

    In the end Abba who had devoted himself and the Nigerian police structure to the advancement of the partisan interests of those who made him was humiliated out of his cherished office by the same hands. No official reasons have been given for his sacking but I am inclined to believe much of the speculations that have been published.

    The truth is the Jonathan presidency leaks more than a sieve. Three days before the dismissal was announced The Nation had published an exclusive report on Saturday, April 18 to the effect that Abba was on his way out. Against such a backdrop it would be unreasonable to dismiss what has been reported in the media as untrue.

    So what do we know? The former IG was accused of disloyalty because in his final few weeks in office he made postings that positioned the police to do their work more evenly in some critical states. Significantly, he posted Assistant Inspector-General of Police Tunde Ogunsakin to Rivers State only to have his order countermanded by Aso Rock. That dodgy move by a desperate presidency soon found its way into the press.

    Abba’s other sin reportedly was his attending the ceremony where President-Elect Muhammadu Buhari was presented with his certificate of return. He was also said to have been at the airport to receive the general.

    I am convinced that in doing these things Abba didn’t have a sudden conversion to professionalism. Rather, it was the instinct for self-preservation that kicked in. Had Jonathan prevailed on March 28 would he have moved the officers around in the manner he did? I doubt it.

    This was a man who was willing to do what was necessary to please whoever would further his career ends. He gambled – thinking that the moves he made would stand him in good stead with the incoming administration. He lost because he presumed the dying horse was finished – not knowing it had one last devastating kick before expiring. The result was his vengeful sacking by an embittered president.

    For all his scheming to right wrongs that the police under him had perpetrated, the former IG would be remembered not for his actions in the last three weeks, but for the infamous police invasion of the National Assembly. Who can forget those graphic images of teargas filling the House chamber or of portly legislators clambering over gates that had been shut by the police? Mr. Abba has clearly secured his accommodation in the halls of infamy.

    As for President Jonathan his coldblooded humiliation of his erstwhile police chief reinforces what many have said about him in the past. While he makes every effort to project a humble and amiable mien he’s also capable of the most impetuous acts of vindictiveness. His Public Affairs Adviser, Doyin Okupe once famously compared him to Jesus Christ. But episodes like the Abba sacking expose the president as just another flawed, unforgiving human being.

    Those in the know claim that whilst he was late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s deputy he suffered a series of slights at the hands of former Delta State Governor James Ibori and ex-Bayelsa Governor Timipre Sylva. When he providentially became president these two fellows quickly discovered there was a new sheriff in town.

    Sylva, especially, was subjected to treatment that confirms the old saying that revenge is a dish best eaten cold. It is said that conscious of the less-than-chummy relationship between him and the new president, some colleague governors took Sylva to beg forgiveness of the president on bended knees. He got the real answer when he was muscled out the state’s PDP gubernatorial primaries with a script that had Abuja’s fingerprints all over it.

    There’s no question that Jonathan is still traumatized by the outcome of the elections. Reports say he feels betrayed by a wide array of party men and appointees who either didn’t do enough for the cause or just converted campaign cash to personal use. But we are yet to hear any admission by the candidate of his own mistakes that imperiled his candidacy long before these last few weeks.

    Some people always have to blame others for their woes. Amusingly, Jonathan’s supporters who are yet to reconcile themselves to the fact that their man has lost power have been clutching at anything in sight that looks like a win to award their hero. So they have latched onto his concession call to Buhari as the tool for reinventing the man some global statesman.

    But one phone call does not a Jimmy Carter make. The PDP crisis was exacerbated by the decision of the “global statesman” to break the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) by backing the minority against the majority. What was statesmanly about the president overseeing the abuse of the military in last year’s Ekiti gubernatorial election leading to what is now known as the Ekitigate scandal?

    The Abba sacking shows once again that at the core of Nigeria’s leadership challenge is slotting small men in big offices. Even if the ex-IG had actually been so ‘disloyal’ couldn’t the president have restrained himself knowing he was a lame-duck who would be out of the place in four weeks? What altruism is there in a man in his position making such a high profile appointment knowing that Buhari is likely to name his own security team once he takes over?

    Jonathan could have moved on basking in the approbation that followed his concession call to Buhari, but a man would sooner or later be undone by his weaknesses. By succumbing to one last vengeful lunge at his enemies the president now heads into retirement under a stream of negative headlines.

    The more I turn over Abba’s list of sins, the more I am left underwhelmed. Jonathan could have let it go and taken his revenge in his memoirs. Nelson Mandela was unjustly jailed for 27 years. He emerged to forgive his erstwhile tormenters, save his nation from racial conflagration and became a global symbol of the power of forgiveness. And he was not even a religious leader! He was a giant.

    Our leaders are slow to forgive and proudly celebrate their capacity to hold long grudges over small matters. They are quick to exact revenge at the first opportunity. Little wonder they are pygmies!