The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • Mbu the Brave

    Mbu the Brave

    The newly posted Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Zone 2, Joseph Mbu, fancies himself a special kind of cop. He came to national attention for his confrontations with Governor Rotimi Amaechi whilst he was Commissioner of Police in Rivers State.

    While the clashes between the two were often under the cloud of partisan politics, Mbu obviously rates his time in Port Harcourt as the high point of his law enforcement career. Ever since, he hasn’t stopped regaling us with tales of how he “tamed Amaechi.” He is clearly proud of this “accomplishment” – if that is what it is. But I wonder when the humiliation of a state governor or disrespecting his office became the hallmark of policing.

    Mbu is clearly fascinated with governors – that’s why he’s been going around making snide comments and threatening them. His outbursts are supposed to show us how brave he is: the only police commissioner in Nigeria who can confront a governor. Congratulations Mr. Commissioner! Now we know you have hair on your chest!

    While the police officer’s former utterances have been entertaining, he entered dangerous territory at a meeting last Thursday at the Ogun State Command, Eleweran, Abeokuta. In briefing his men on how to handle the coming elections he said: “If one of my men is killed, I shall kill twenty of them but don’t shoot first. If they shoot you, shoot back in self-defence. Anybody who fires you, fire him back in self-defence.”

    Let’s be clear: anyone who shoots at a policeman must face the law and pay the price for his crime. It is totally different matter, however, for a senior police officer to be encouraging his men to engage in murderous reprisals.

    In which of our statutes is it written that 20 citizens must be killed for the death of one policeman? This is an outrageous statement that makes you wonder about the sorts of excesses which Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others have blamed our police for.

    There’s a limit to self-lionisation and overzealousness. It is always wise for public officers to choose their words carefully. Mbu has spoken. But when he orders such a shooting he will suddenly discover the limits of the powers of an AIG!

  • Presidential sackings and their consequences

    Presidential sackings and their consequences

    Jonathan hinted in his recent TV media chat that he had the power to sack Jega. That is in dispute. But it was also in dispute whether he had the power to remove former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi – until he pulled the suspension trick. He did it and nothing happened. Sanusi went to court, but to all intents he had disappeared into the sunset.

    Some are already suggesting that were the president to pull the same stunt with Jega, the heavens won’t fall. But that depends on what we are thinking would happen.

    Many would expect to see protesters taking to the streets and hurling stones in frustration. Those sorts of emotional outpourings don’t last and can easily be contained using brute police or military action. However, there are consequences that are not as dramatic as bonfires but are potentially more devastating and enduring.

    For one thing it would damage the credibility of the current electoral process irretrievably. The tension that has followed poll shift would be child’s play compared to that which would greet a Jega sack.

    Election postponement has thrown the financial markets into a panic because of the uncertainty it has created. The naira is taking an unprecedented battering. Nigerian businesses and wealthy individuals are losing billions because of the collapse of the currency. Investors are putting any moves into the Nigerian market in abeyance until a clear picture emerges of where the country is headed.

    All of these things could result in massive job losses. The fall in the value of the naira against the dollar and other major currencies is bound to set off inflationary pressures – especially where producers have imported components in their production chain.

    Let no one delude themselves that trying to mess the electoral process further by threatening, undermining, or even removing Jega would have no consequences. There would be a price to be paid and it would be steep.

  • Saint Valentine’s Day massacre or miracle?

    Saint Valentine’s Day massacre or miracle?

    Even as I write this there are indications that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was still facing intense pressure to shift the polls earlier scheduled for February 14 and 28.

    But if the commission sticks to its consistent position of being ready, then six days from now Nigerians would be voting in the most momentous polls since the return of democracy in 1999. All portents are indicative of a seismic shift in the country’s power calculus. It is a measure of the heightened stakes that political tension has reached boiling point.

    Most foreign analysts have been projecting a very close and competitive race – with the winner and loser being separated by hundreds of thousands of votes and not millions as was the case in 2011. Other local estimates suggest that the gap might be much wider.

    One year ago if anyone had told stalwarts of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that they would be fighting for their political lives, they would have laughed him to scorn. The reality is that they are staring at the abyss.

    The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) has reasons to be optimistic. This was the party that the cynics never gave a chance. Some prophesied that it would be history in 12 months. Others expected an implosion as the different strands competed for party positions, and ultimately for the presidential ticket. Instead of the expected infighting a miraculous cohesion has taken hold of the party – imbuing it with a momentum that may very well propel it into Aso Villa.

    So how did the PDP blow an electoral contest that it could have won comfortably had it handled its internal contradictions differently? How did President Goodwill Jonathan succeed in tossing away the cross-party goodwill that elevated him to Acting President courtesy of the Doctrine of Necessity contrivance?

    How did he dismantle the 2011 coalition that neutralised the northern lobby for the presidency which was then using the agency of the PDP’s internal zoning arrangements? How come some of those who fought hardest to enthrone him have become his fiercest critics?

    Today, a party that once believed it could re-enact in Nigeria the sort of dominance that the African National Congress (ANC) enjoys in South Africa; a party that once boasted it was the largest on the continent and would reign for 60 years, now faces the real prospect of ending up a shrivelled behemoth. It all happened on Jonathan’s watch and he must take responsibility.

    Unlike under the more malleable parliamentary model, the election cycles under the presidential system are fixed. Everyone knows that the United States elects a new president every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The Nigerian constitution which is fashioned after the American document also specifies a fixed time frame for holding the polls.

    That timetable is inviolable except under very extreme conditions which are equally spelt out in the constitution. So if a president is battling with a depressed economy and low approval ratings, he has no choice but to face the electorate.

    It is different with the parliamentary system where the Prime Minister could choose to call elections at a time when he or she enjoys relatively good polls and all other conditions favour victory. They would call such elections even when their tenure has not expired.

    Compared to 2011, Jonathan and the PDP are returning to voters in terrible shape. Four years ago, the ruling party quickly rallied its ranks after the heated primaries. Northern governors moved to mollify sections of the region which felt they should have been given another bite of cherry on account of Umaru Yar’Adua’s demise.

    The party’s southern flank was intact and energised. Such was its goodwill that it even entered into unofficial electoral arrangements in the South that delivered millions of votes to Jonathan.

    Back then Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) was monstrous up north but a virtually non-existent minnow down south. The APC didn’t even exist in the imagination of its prime movers. Today, it provides Buhari with what he lacked in 2011 without losing ground to Jonathan and the ruling party.

    Aside its internal divisions, the ruling party’s greatest albatross is the Boko Haram insurgency that has claimed between 20,000 and 30,000 lives in five years and led to the displacement of 1.5 million people internally.

    The terrorists control at least 14 local government areas across three states in the North East, and their activities have devastated the economy of the region.

    But the most graphic symbol of the failings of the administration regarding the insurgency remains the over 200 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by terrorists from their dormitories in the dead of night almost 10 months ago. Hopes of them ever returning are fading fast just as repeated pledges by the president to free them now ring hollow.

    In any election an underperforming economy can kill an incumbent. It is just Jonathan’s luck that despite the nice sounding claims of Nigeria’s economy being the largest on the continent, conditions are deteriorating. The collapse of crude oil prices and the crash of the naira against the dollar have grave implications. States and some federal government agencies have been experiencing difficulties paying salaries as their share of what normally flows from the Federation Account takes a hit.

    Already, government has introduced austerity measures that could see it unable to deliver critical new infrastructure or finish those that are already ongoing. The outlook is truly bleak and it is a nightmarish condition under which any politician would approach the electorate.

    For the APC and its candidate, Buhari, the prospects could not be better. Not being the incumbent he doesn’t face Jonathan’s peculiar challenges. But he too has to defend the record of what he did in office 30 years ago. He has to defend his character as well as every niggling thing the PDP can find to throw at him – including the entertaining claim that he’s a stark illiterate who didn’t go to secondary school.

    Ordinarily, Buhari’s record as a former military dictator contains enough to make any political strategist salivate. However, such are the dire conditions in the country today that people are more willing to forgive him his ancient sins than to contemplate that the Jonathan we’ve known in the last five and a half years would be radically transformed in the next four.

    Another thing working in favour of the former military ruler is time and that peculiar Nigerian tendency to move on quickly. A generation of voters has entered the register since the general ran the country. Most of them don’t even remember the ‘atrocities’ that the PDP would want them to be outraged about.

    But even those who are old enough to recollect the days of queuing don’t mind that he tried to do something about the problem of indiscipline – even if his methods were draconian. Thirty years on it remains a problem and it is appealing to have an alternative candidate with a reputation for confronting the issue.

    What should tell the PDP which way the wind is blowing is that despite the slew of advertorial bombs hurled in his direction, Buhari sails on unscathed. He appears to be cut from the same cloth as another septuagenarian politician – former United States President Ronald Reagan – who was also the target of such savage attacks from his opponents but always emerged undamaged. That led to commentators dubbing him the “Teflon President” after a synthetic material of the same name on which nothing ever sticks.

    He is equally helped by the relative unity in the ranks of the APC. The party surprisingly has managed the fallout from its primaries better than the PDP.

    Another important factor that many are not recognising is what can best be described as ‘ruling party-fatigue’. It is that affliction that comes upon the electorate in different countries from time to time and causes them to turn upon their long time rulers. They just get fed up with the same set of characters and want a change. How interesting that the APC’s rallying cry is ‘change!’ Sixteen years after Nigerians may just have come down with a bad case of ‘PDP-fatigue’.

    I return to where we started and predict that if the elections were to hold today, the PDP and Jonathan would need a miracle to win. Any postponement within the window anticipated by the constitution might not help the ruling party much. If anything, it could even anger voters and make them more determined to kick out the party.

    So this Saturday, if it goes ahead, Nigerians are likely to witness a St. Valentine’s Day electoral massacre if Buhari wins, or the political equivalent of Lazarus rising from the dead if Jonathan prevails against the odds. But then miracles can happen given that the president keeps the company of some of the biggest pastors in the land!

  • A Nigeria without oil

    I like most people, have condemned the recent threat by a group of ex-Niger Delta militant leaders – among them Chief Government Ekpemupolo, aka Tompolo, Asari Dokubo, Boyloaf and others – to go to war if President Jonathan is defeated at the polls. They equally vowed to cut off Nigeria oil supplies as reprisal for the looming ‘insult to the Ijaw nation.’

    Having gotten over my outrage, I have thought about their comments, some more and now think we should be thanking them rather than chastising them endlessly.

    The way oil price is nose-diving, who knows how low it would fall? The Central Bank Governor has already warned that the days of the $100 per barrel crude are gone for good. So when the price breaks the $10 barrier – and it is possible one day – what would we do? When sales can barely cover production costs what would we do?

    Tompolo and his pals may actually be doing us all a favour by cutting off the oil. While it has funded some development over the years, oil has been more of a pain in the neck for Nigeria.

    Not too long ago I attended a seminar organised by an NGO – FIND – where speaker after speaker bemoaned the lack of discussion of serious policy issues by politicians. One speaker pointed out that some of the landmark achievements of this country were attained without oil revenue.

    Nigeria established the first television station in Africa without oil; the NECOM Building in Lagos was erected without petro-dollars – the list is endless. I can think of scores of countries that are better off than us economically and don’t have oil in their territory.

    So rather than being some tragic occasion for bloodletting, the ex and future militants might just be doing everyone a favour by carrying out their threat. Surely there can be life in a Nigeria without oil if we start envisaging such a future now.

  • Good militant, bad militant

    Good militant, bad militant

    Sometimes you wonder what’s in a name or tag – especially when there is a convergence in their meaning. Given their topicality I decided to do a little research on two words – ‘militant’ and ‘insurgent’ – and discovered that not much separates the two.

    One definition says the militant is one who favours using confrontational or violent methods in support of a political or social cause. The insurgent on the other hand is a person fighting against a government or invading force; a rebel or revolutionary. This is the classic case of trying to make six look different from half a dozen.

    These days the fashionable way to refer to bloodthirsty Boko Haram fighters is to call them ‘insurgents’. Their goal is to bring down the entity called Nigeria and supplant it with a caliphate governed by the tenets of their own strange strain of Islam.

    Before the sect seized the headlines with their uprising and brutality, there was the insurgency in the Niger Delta. Although the militants in the creeks never descended to the inhuman depths of Boko Haram, they also took up arms against the Nigerian state. They targeted and destroyed vital oil infrastructure and killed federal troops in the occasional firefights.

    To their credit they never targeted unarmed civilians for mindless slaughter. The parallels I draw here are only limited therefore to the fact that the two groups took military action in pursuit of their grievances against the state.

    It’s been almost seven years since the Niger Delta insurgency was brought to heel courtesy of the amnesty programme that has transformed erstwhile warlords into multimillionaires and seen foot soldiers receiving skills training and cash handouts.

    Since that landmark deal, the relationship between the Niger Delta insurgents and the center has been radically transformed. As an icing on the cake, President Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw politician, providentially found himself on the seat of power.

    In this new world, some of the one-time militants have prospered beyond their wildest dreams. Today, Chief Government ‘Tompolo’ Ekpemupolo is the proud owner of a cushy contract for policing Nigeria’s waterways – effectively making the Navy observers over what should naturally be their assignment.

    The new arrangement works perfectly for all sides. While the former agitators have become recipients of uncommon financial transformation, they have in turn provided political muscle for Jonathan in the never-ending power struggles of the Nigerian elite.

    Long before the 2015 campaign season, the likes of Asari Dokubo have been threatening trouble if the president wasn’t returned for a second term. Many who had in the past dismissed this as the rantings of a rabble-rouser may have had cause to rethink after a group of the ex-militants gathered for peculiar conclave at the Bayelsa State Government House in Yenagoa a little over a week ago.

    While the real reason the meeting was called remains subject of controversy, what is not in doubt is that sentiments were expressed which promised trouble if Jonathan was voted out of office on Febryary 14.

    The intervention of former Defence Minister, General Theophilus Danjuma asking that those threatening war be arrested, has only attracted insults and a reaffirmation from Tompolo and others that there would indeed be trouble if the president lost the election.

    Danuuma’s call was no doubt triggered by the threats made not too long ago by Minister of Police Affairs, Jelili Adesiyan, who said he had directed the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba and the Department of State Security to arrest and prosecute politicians who make provocative statements.

    The immediate trigger for that outburst of outrage from officialdom was the comment by Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, to the effect that soldiers who had been tried for protesting being asked to fight Boko Haram without adequate arms were within their rights to complain.

    DSS spokesperson, Marilyn Ogar, left no one in doubt as to the target of their fury when she talked of a “serving governor”. My worry back then was that what would be defined as ‘provocative’ would be left to the subjective judgment of the minister and his friends.

    And that is exactly how it has turned out. It is a shame that while Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, has described the threats attributed to the ex-militants as reprehensible, the Police Minister and all those who had warned ‘Enough is Enough’ have gone ‘Missing in Action’.

    If the outcome of the first meeting was ever in dispute, the reiteration of positions of these Jonathan backers without any official action being taken, underlines the fact that in today’s Nigeria it is one rule for the president’s pals and another for his foes.

    Danjuma and others who have dared speak up are being called names and reminded of the comments form 2011 which they didn’t criticize. I can understand the partisan passion of the ex-militants. However, the question we should be asking is whether their comments in the context of the 2015 elections have crossed the line. I believe they did.

    For one thing, no democrat should blackmail anyone at gunpoint to vote for him. None should accept such tainted endorsement no matter how desperate he is.

    If anything the positions of Tompolo, Dokubo and others, instead of cowing the rest of Nigeria, is infuriating many and hardening positions against Jonathan’s reelection bid. The ex-militants forget that whatever their claims maybe, it wasn’t only Ijaw votes that got Jonathan elected in 2011. Those sections of the country they are now threatening contributed millions of votes to the incumbent’s cause four years ago.

    Even in the South-South zone these presumptuous threats are not popular because the region is peopled by diverse ethnic groups and not just the president’s Ijaw kinsmen. There are Edos, Ikwerres, Urhobos, Itsekiris, Ukwanis, Isokos, Efiks, Ibiobios, Esan – just to mention a few. The lands of most of these people are also oil-bearing. There’s no evidence that they are raring to rush off to war in the event of a Jonathan loss.

    What I find most amusing is the cavalier way these men throw around these threats. Those who experienced the Biafran War still retail gut-wrenching tales of human misery and suffering. War is not romantic: Tompolo and friends would discover that swiftly whenever they start theirs.

    In today’s Nigeria not much surprises one. But I am amazed that the president didn’t utter ever the mildest of rebukes to the utterances of the exuberant former agitators.

    Does he not feel embarrassed those supporters of his are people who are brazenly threatening the country from the comfort of the Government House in his home state?

    As head of the Nigerian state should he not keep some distance from these figures? Does he appreciate that his continued open embrace of them makes him look more like a clan chieftain than national leader?

    His silence is funny given the rage that greeted the endorsement by the Henry Okah-led Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) of the ambitions of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari.

    Okah and his former co-travelers in the Niger Delta struggle parted ways long ago and there’s long been a dispute over the copyright to the MEND acronym. Between Okah and the president there’s no love lost. Little wonder that his backing of Buhari triggered the recollection by Jonathan of some failed assassination bids by group from way back.

    Okah, who’s cooling his heels in some South African prison, is no longer in the militancy business. He may be an ex-militant but by being on the opposite side, he’s a bad ex-militant who would probably be apprehended and prosecuted by our able security agents for his ‘careless and provocative endorsement’ were he to wander into these parts.

    Those who are threatening to divide Nigeria are bad when they belong to the opposition. They are good and untouchable for as long as they remain solidly behind the president’s second term ambition. Shades of Animal Farm!

  • Port Harcourt stadium as metaphor

    The PDP’s presidential campaign rally in Port Harcourt has come and gone. True to the boast of the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, the event held in the newly-built Adokiye Amiesemeka Stadium which Governor Rotimi Amaechi had refused to release.

    His excuse was that the facility was being repaired and offered the Liberation Stadium as an alternative. The response of the ruling party was to deploy soldiers to occupy the place.

    I believe Amaechi was wrong to have attempted to deny PDP use of the facility given that APC had used it twice for huge rallies. Not many were convinced that whatever repair work was being done was of such magnitude as to preclude its use for the one-day event. The governor’s action was clearly just another episode in his arm-wrestling match with the president.

    But even if he was wrong, the decision of the president to deploy the Nigerian Army and force his way into the stadium was even worse. The facility is state-owned and not the property of the Federal Government. The governor was within his rights to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – even if we judge his action to be faulty.

    By breaking and entering, the President and his party confirmed once again that under their watch impunity reigns. Their claims to be committed to the rule of law are only in words only. But even more ominous is the fact that Nigerian soldiers whose constitutional roles are clearly defined are increasingly being pressed into carrying out partisan political errands.

  • Islamisation and other red herrings

    Islamisation and other red herrings

    Many years from now, students in Political Science departments in Nigerian universities would be studying the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) 2015 presidential campaign under the theme: ‘How not to run a campaign.’

    This is not to suggest that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has run a flawless campaign either. Fortunately for them, their rivals are gifting them with so many blunders and unforced errors it’s almost like Christmas all over.

    For all the ruling party would want to crow about as its achievements, its record regarding the economy, insecurity and corruption is the sort you run from – not run on.

    The statistics about fadama fields, almajiri schools, federal universities created and Nigeria being the largest economy in Africa are not resonating because the administration’s failing are even more graphic – dwarfing President Goodluck Jonathan’s modest achievements.

    I speak in terms of an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of Nigerians and, in the last two weeks, produced a gory first with claims that 2,000 people may have been killed in the assault on Baga. Over 200 schoolgirls snatched from their dormitory in Chibok remain in the hands of Boko Haram maniacs – symbols of the regime’s helplessness.

    The photograph of a stadium full of the desperate unemployed who gathered together last year for an ultimately fatal job interview with the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is reminiscent of the picture of a snaking line of the jobless used to devastating effect by the Tories against the British Labour government in 1979. The poster carried the simple legend: ‘Labour isn’t Working.’

    A string of financial scandals – beginning with claims by the former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that billions of dollars that ought to have been remitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the Federation Account were missing, to the Stella Oduah armoured cars saga, to the botched arms shopping run in Johannesburg, South Africa, left the government mired in a swamp of sleaze. Earnest explanations of its officials have done little to wash the administration clean.

    All of these play into the age-long narrative that our public officials are serial bunglers only looking out for their pockets. There’s nothing the government has done in its time to make many think of it differently.

    It is therefore not surprising that the PDP campaign seems to have lost its way. Put on the defensive from the outset, it has scrambled for a coherent argument for reelection. It was never going to convince anyone about its competence: the opposition had successfully defined it as incompetent long before the campaigns started.

    Today, the ruling party isn’t really making the case why it should be given another chance: it is desperately trying to stop the other side from winning. The strategy according to officials of the campaign team is to make APC presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, the issue.

    If he’s perceived as honest, make him look dishonest. If people think he’s strongwilled and firm, make him look weak and beholden to entrenched interests. But more than anything play up the religious card and tell anyone who cares to listen that he’s the ultimate Islamic fundamentalist.

    But rather than get traction, the strategy has backfired spectacularly because the PDP – overconfident and conceited – left it too late. Just as the image of Jonathan not being up to the job took years to create, Buhari’s reputation was built over decades.

    His actions over the years have only helped to concretise that perception. Little wonder they call him Mai Gaskiya – meaning the truthful one. It is wishful thinking to believe that his image for uprightness will be so damaged by a contrived certificate controversy that his legion of followers would suddenly convert to Jonathan’s cause two weeks to Election Day.

    The major plank of attack lined up against the APC and its candidate was that they were out to Islamise the country. The hope was that in the age of Boko Haram, Christian voters north and south of the Niger out of fear and sectarian hatred, will not touch the opposition party because of the religious smear.

    Unfortunately, the attacks soon collapsed under the weight of illogicality and scrutiny. First, pseudo-historians and rogue clerics banged on endlessly about how Turkey succumbed to Islam. What they don’t tell us is how location and the historical forces at work then made this possible. We are now to assume that because it happened where East meets West, it must of necessity happen here too.

    At this point Nigeria can only be Islamised in two ways. First one is legally through an amendment of the constitution. That is a non-starter because it would require the Houses of Assembly of 24 states to concur and then the National Assembly to pass it.

    The other way is by conquest – the route that Boko Haram is going by carving out its so-called caliphate in North Eastern Nigeria. Islamisation by conquest is easier as it doesn’t require national consensus or agreement.

    However, as a nation it is within our power to decide to roll over and be overrun or to stand up and fight for a way of life that allows our people to worship God whichever way they choose. Even without waiting for some central government in Abuja people will fight to remain free and maintain their cultur.

    Unfortunately, the ruling party’s strategists made a fatal mistake in trying to position Jonathan as a bulwark against Islamisation. His record doesn’t support the borrowed robes he’s been draped with.

    It was under the nose of this great scourge of the Muslim hordes that hundreds of mostly Christian schoolgirls were snatched in Chibok. They have since been forcibly converted to Islam by Boko Haram. While this was happening, the president didn’t even believe that the abductions happened. He preferred the fantasy that it was another gimmick by his enemies to make him look bad.

    Up till today, the poor girls remain trapped in the middle of nowhere. Still, the great defender of the Christian faith has not been able to secure their release.

    If we are to consider the fact that huge chunks of three North-Eastern states are in Boko Haram hands, then Islamisation may be happening faster under this administration given our inability to either keep the insurgents at bay, or defeat them militarily.

    Despite the fact that this line of attack has clearly passed its sell-by date, PDP strategists like Kamikaze pilots embarked on a suicidal mission, plunge ahead oblivious of all warning signals. They keep pushing the religion button hoping to win enough converts to prevail on February 14.

    Joining them in banging their heads against the wall are a coterie of Pentecostal pastors who have inserted themselves in the middle of the political free-for-all. They don’t care that by making religion an issue in this campaign they are encouraging hate and dividing our people even further along sectarian lines.

    This election will come and go and there will be a blowback for these clerics that will affect their standing in the larger society – and even worse – with their own flock.

    Luckily it is their standing that would be damaged and not the church because the God who has ordained that the gates of hell wouldn’t  prevail against His church is able to ensure it outlasts this season of political chicanery.

    The fate of the church in Nigeria cannot be tied to the political ambitions or fate of any individual – no matter how eminent. These persons on whom many are now hanging their Christian future will only hold office for four years at a time. When they vacate office, assuming they are elected, will Nigeria be governed forever by Christians – so as to stop the greatly feared Islamisation?

    Will Muslims never occupy the office of President after Jonathan? Just think about it.

     

    2015: More grandfathers needed

    Beyond his certificates and religious beliefs, the next big issue the PDP wants us to ponder before voting is the age of the candidates. One is 57 and the other 72.

    The excitable Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, and others have referred to him as a doddering grandfather who should probably retire to a rocking chair in the anonymous precincts of Daura. But this ancient grandfather may just be what Nigeria needs at this point in her history.

    If 54-year-old governors can be carrying on like adolescents, aren’t we better off with gentle, wise and deliberate septuagenarians running our affairs? Fayose in his infamous advertisement declaring that Buhari would die in office must have thought he was fighting Jonathan’s corner. But he was actually hurting him by denigrating a zone whose votes the president badly needs. It may just be that this 54-year-old is too young to understand the implications of his actions.

    Through the actions of intemperate politicians and other public figures, Nigeria finds herself more badly divided today than it has ever been in her history. Whoever wins the presidential elections would need to lead  national healing as an urgent task. And who better to tackle that assignment than a grandfather with a calm temperament?

     

    On Dasuki’s proposal

    Of all the excuses so far advanced by those who would like to see the February general elections postponed, the most ludicrous has to be that offered by the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki. Speaking at a lecture in London during the week he suggested that the polls be moved to allow all eligible voters collect their PVCs. How considerate!

    Let’s stop postponing the day of reckoning. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will never be 100% ready for elections. Even if the polls are moved six months or one year from now, the commission will still be battling with one thing or the other. If it isn’t PVCs, it would be card readers or ink pads.

    Even if all registered voters collect their cards as Dasuki would like, there’s no guarantee that there would be 100% turnout. So what is the point in postponing the polls just because some people haven’t collected their cards?

    There’s no excuse under the sun for postponing the polls. Every election cycle when it looks like something momentous is in the offing all sorts of people spring up trying to move the goal posts.

    It happened in the dying days of President Ibrahim Babangida’s regime when he began having second thoughts about ceding power. No one should be surprised that a figure so close to the sanctum of power in Abuja is making this curious proposal at an even more suspicious hour.

  • Who’s with Jonathan?

    Who’s with Jonathan?

    When people question the electoral value of former President Olusegun Obasanjo my answer is simple: whenever he speaks it goes straight to every newspaper’s front page. If he was of no consequence this would not be so.

    If he were irrelevant the PDP and APC would not be trying to beat down his door in a bid to get his support. President Jonathan has done everything short of prostrating himself to get the old man’s endorsement. Obasanjo may still be pledging allegiance to the ruling party but his body language and utterances show he’s backing Buhari this time.

    Former Vice President Alex Ekwueme is not known to be controversial. But the timing of the interview in which he tore present day PDP to shreds cannot be described in any other way but as pre-meditated. He said all he’s ever received from the ruling party was humiliation and warned Jonathan not to expect a 2011-type bumper harvest of votes. Coming from one of the grandees of the party in what it considers its stronghold, this is ominous.

    Just like Obasanjo, former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, has just published in newspapers an open letter to Nigerians in which he paints a grim picture of the state of the nation and warns people to ‘vote wisely’.

    His close pal and neighbor, former President Ibrahim Babangida, whose regime has often been accused of institutionalizing corruption, gave an interview recently in which he declared that compared to what happened in his day, current levels of malfeasance made him and his associates look like angels.

    Former Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, on Thursday labeled the administration ‘clueless’, warning that the country needed an urgent rescue from the “imminent brink of irredeemable destruction.”

    From former Nigerian High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, Christopher Kolade to popular Catholic Priest, Ejike Mbaka, a growing list of influential voices are rising against the status quo. Where are all those non-partisan big names whose endorsement the president needs to counter this trend?

    His supporters might be tempted to dismiss these individuals, but from a perception point of view this isn’t good news for Jonathan’s second term bid. Every campaign needs a boost from time to time – not an unending dripping of bad news.

  • 2015: Ethnicity meets frivolity

    2015: Ethnicity meets frivolity

    Politicians are already doing what they do best: making promises they never deliver on. From the word go most parties assured us they would run issue-based campaigns. Taken on face value it meant focusing on matters that have brought the country to its knees: insecurity, economy and corruption.

    Their way of addressing the issues is to make fresh promises to tackle existing problems without offering detailed plans for public discussions. Everyone is promising to create trillions of jobs, provide 24 hour electricity and crush the insurgency. The only this missing is a roadmap on how to get from A to B.

    The upshot is an unprecedented dumbing down of political campaigns the likes of which we’ve not seen in recent memory. It is so ludicrous, it is surreal. I don’t see any ‘transformation’ – that much abused word – happening in the 28 days before we start casting votes.

    That is another way of saying that what would inform our voting decisions this election cycle would be religion, ethnicity and frivolity. That said I now serve you a sampling of choice soundbites – beginning with some classics from the period preceding the campaigns and other winners now that the battle has been joined. Hopefully, you would decide who to vote for based on these inspired utterances.

    Not too long ago, Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to the President, Doyin Okupe, got us all in a flap when he likened his longsuffering boss to Jesus Christ. Now one of the president’s biggest boosters, Akwa Ibom Governor, Godswill Akpabio, has declared his own wife ‘Mother Theresa’. Thankfully, the late Theresa of Calcutta was only saintly, not deity, so we are spared the brouhaha that would have attended suspicions His Excellency had crossed the line into blasphemy.

    The occasion for lavishing such effusive praise on the gubernatorial spouse was Akpabio telling a political gathering that it was the state’s First Lady who actually ‘discovered’ the Akwa Ibom Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, Udom Emmanuel. Now you can add headhunting to the list of madam’s multitasking skills!

    Just when we are struggling to restrain the religious from plunging Nigeria into sectarian strife, a fired-up President Goodluck Jonathan nearly sparks class warfare. The immediate trigger was former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s calling a summit with market women at which he briefed them on leakages in the Excess Crude Account (ECA).

    Jonathan who’s becoming adept at scoring own goals seemed to have decided he could do without the votes of agberos and the elderly because he lambasted unnamed senior citizens for carrying on like “ordinary motor park touts.”

    A few days later at the inaugural PDP presidential rally in Lagos, a Jonathan almost foaming at the gills with rage blasted All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, for not buying a single rifle for the armed forces when he was in power. And to think the general didn’t have to contend with passing appropriation bills though a hostile National Assembly!

    Presidential rage was unabated as the campaign swept into the relatively friendly precincts of Enugu. The ambience was enough to inspire the Commander-in-Chief to let fly with another salvo in the direction of enemy forces. Buhari, he charged, couldn’t remember his own phone number and shouldn’t be trusted with the presidency. Haba Mr. President! How many of us remember the registration numbers of our cars?

    Jonathan wasn’t trying to play a game of trivia but suggesting that his rival was already in his dotage. Thinking they are on to something, the PDP has seized on the age question with gusto. Former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi, warned that Nigeria didn’t need a 72-year old grandfather. Another person suggested that the general was actually 74 or was it 78?

    If he’s all of 78, he’s still a spring chicken compared to Tunisia’s newly-elected President, Beji Caid Essebsi, who is a mere 88 years. And what is it about all these countries that love electing grandfathers? Check this: Ronald Reagan elected United States President at 69 or Nelson Mandela assuming the South African presidency at 76?

    As I speak the age question has refused to go away because the very young Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, has accused Obasanjo of trying to foist ‘an old horse’ who’s about to keel over on the nation. So far the ancient horse keeps trudging on oblivious to the fact that aside his age and health, issues surrounding his school certificates are still raising dust – at least in PDP quarters.

    Again, the ruling party believes it has found the chink in the general’s armour. I keep wondering why this fuss wasn’t kicked up in the last three election cycles. Is someone seeing something nightmarish on the horizon?

    Anyway, some Nigerians are not too concerned whether Buhari’s certificates are with Defence Headquarters, National Museum or the US Army. Former Super Eagles star, Victor Ikpeba posted this on Twitter in response to the controversy: “Even if Buhari present NEPA bill as him certificate I go vote for am! E don reach that level.”

    Whoever thought that women would be relegated to the backseat during this campaign is obviously clueless. Initially, it did look like there was a conspiracy to silence them. In fact, I was beginning to miss the inimitable contributions of our esteemed First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, on the hustings.

    That was until Buhari went and put his foot in it by declaring his intentions to proscribe the unconstitutional office of the First Lady. This provoked a mutiny not only in social media – but of all places – even within APC ranks. Post haste the would-be first and second ladies were wheeled out for public scrutiny in Abeokuta mid week. Suffice to say they passed muster.

    Not willing to have its thunder stolen given that the administration has excelled in First Ladyship, Jonathan jumped feet first into the discussion by declaring that spouses of presidents and governors don’t spend government money. How revealing! Clearly, they’ve been running their circus with British foreign aid or United Nations funding.

    Slowly but surely the president is coming to terms with fact that Nigerians want the issue of corruption discussed and he has decided to compare his methods with those of the one-time military ruler.

    Exasperated by Buhari’s tough posturing he wondered aloud how much former Anambra State Governor, Jim Nwobodo, stole that he was thrown into jail. ‘Money that is not enough to buy a Peugeot’, he snorted. That should be good news for those who pinch a Peugeot worth of public funds: amnesty is coming in a Jonathan second term.

    Such was the depth of feeling the president had over this issue that declared he would not put people in crates because of corruption. For those born after 1984, this refers to the then military regime’s innovative way of repatriating the late Second Republic Minister of Transport, Umaru Dikko, from London to face corruption charges.

    The president’s comment prompted one of those irreverent types who troll the Internet night and day to declare that in China corrupt officials are executed: loading them into crates is to give them underserved honour!

    I began by moaning that the candidates were talking in general terms. My apologies to the president who has made the intriguing declaration that he now intends to fight corruption using technology. Sounds interesting! He must have been using cowry shells; that explains why things have been going from bad to worse.

    When the next set of cabinet nominees go for screening they would probably be made to walk through a scanner that would determine their susceptibility to corruption.

    No discussion of Nigerian politics would be complete without a nod to ethnicity. Already, we’ve had useful contributions that could swing the polls in one direction or the other. Take, for instance, the warning by Lagos PDP gubernatorial candidate, Jimi Agbaje that the South-South could shut down the economy if Jonathan isn’t reelected.

    I wonder when Agbaje did his referendum because a couple of prominent South-southerners like former Bayelsa State Governor, Timipre Sylva and incumbent Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, have made it obvious that there had little or no brotherly feelings towards the president.

    Amaechi, in particular, has been keen to resolve the confusion over the president’s ethnicity. The Igbos have been made to believe that because Jonathan’s middle name was ‘Ebele’ he was their kith and kin. That is like saying because the Rivers State governor’s first name is ‘Rotimi’, he’s from Isale Ogbomosho!

    To address the matter once and for all he proposed a contest to the rally crowd in Aba: “My name is Amaechi, but President Jonathan who says his name is Azikiwe cannot speak the Igbo language. He says his name Ebele; let him speak Igbo and let us see.”

    Before Election Day we may be forced to watch another contest. Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko, says Buhari cannot be president because he’s not computer literate. I recall seeing the general holding an Ipad not too long ago. I’m not too sure whether he was using it or admiring it.

    I equally remember a photograph of Jonathan staring at a blank desktop computer screen. Was he trying to locate the power button? You make up your mind and ‘vote wisely’.

  • Why does Jonathan want four more years?

    Why does Jonathan want four more years?

    Like many others who looked forward to hearing why Jonathan wants four more years in office, I was surprised he blithely threw away the opportunity to make his case when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) kicked off its presidential campaign in Lagos on Thursday.

    Much has already been said about his lack of composure and how agitated he looked. He had barely got going when he inserted his foot in his mouth by declaring that he and his generation were old, expired failures – effectively ruling himself out as an option.

    Rather than explain to the watching world what he would do with another term that he could not accomplish in the almost six years he’s been in office, he spent the bulk of his time trying to demonise Buhari. Anyone watching would have thought the former head of state was the incumbent and the president the challenger.

    At his next campaign stop in Enugu, he reached into the archives for the speech made by General Ibrahim Babangida to justify the overthrow of Buhari. He proceeded to read through the list of the ex-military ruler’s cabinet pointing out that it had no woman. He then asked rhetorically whether this was the sort of person Nigerians wanted to hand the country to.

    I agree that if we are to put the president’s performance under scrutiny, Buhari’s record in office must also come under the spotlight. But such an examination is only relevant to the extent that it tells us something about the man’s character and his ability to do the job he seeks. It would have been especially relevant if Jonathan was not running and the two contenders were outsiders without any incumbency burden or record to defend.

    However, this election is about much more than that. Though some would love to see it cast in those terms, it is NOT about Buhari’s past. It is a referendum on what Jonathan has done with power in his initial term. What candidates have done is usually the platform for seeking another term. That is why people should be asking themselves: Is my life better than it was four years ago? Given what I have seen can I endure another four years with this man in charge?

    Those questions are not going to be answered by merely demonizing Buhari. The president and his team should ask themselves why in spite of their best efforts to cast the former head of state as a devil with two horns, his popularity isn’t waning.

    Many frustrated Nigerians have reached the point where they are saying ‘Anyone but Jonathan.’ They are not hearing anything new from the man who wants four more years.

    Four days before Jonathan came to Lagos, Boko Haram stormed the Nigerian town of Baga and razed it. Several other towns and villages suffered a similar fate. It is projected that as many as 2,000 people may have been killed in what Amnesty International is calling Nigeria’s worst massacre.

    Many are still waiting to hear the president say what he would do differently to end the insurgency. They are waiting to hear when the Chibok girls would return. They want to hear about job creation initiatives; they are anxious to know what the plan is to cushion impending shocks arising from crashing crude oil price. And they are hearing nothing! Instead we are being assaulted with one long whine about how his predecessors did nothing.

    The president spent his time playing the victim and being angry that the only one who can see the ‘great’ work he has done is himself. And there’s the rub! A while back, disturbed at unrelenting criticism of his administration, he once declared that his team would no longer depend on the media to rate it. They would henceforth assess themselves internally.

    The trouble with that is we all look handsome when we peer in the mirror. The next person’s assessment of our looks might be radically different. Jonathan fails to realize that it is the job of ordinary citizens, the electorate, to assess him. It is not in his place to do so. We do the rating and decide whether he deserves another four years. Until he realizes that he would be giving himself serious heartburn.

    But if he cannot make a compelling case for his second term, there are more than a few loyal party men eagerly waiting to do so. Take the unlikely example of the PDP gubernatorial candidate in Lagos State, Jimi Agbaje. A report in The Punch quoted him as warning that the South-South zone would shut down the economy if Jonathan wasn’t reelected. The PDP governorship candidate reportedly said this at meeting in London organised by his supporters and the UK chapter of the PDP.

    That Agbaje hasn’t refuted the assertion is shocking. How can any democrat attempt to push a candidate on the basis of blackmail and threats? Democracy is about the freedom of a people to choose their leaders in an atmosphere devoid of intimidation. We can’t be browbeaten into voting for someone just because gunmen are going to attack the nation’s economic interests. That would no longer be a democracy but a thug-o-cracy.

    Lest we forget, the Nigerian constitution only makes provision for individuals to run for two terms of four years each in the executive branch – and not an eight year stretch. The allocation is to persons and not their zones or regions. Political parties in their internal arrangements may opt to keep positions in certain areas but whoever they choose still has to make a case for us to reject or endorse. Make your case Mr. President.