The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • Making a MEND

    Hitherto comatose, the shadowy Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has resurrected and landed feet first in the 2015 campaigns. In Lagos, Jonathan disclosed that the militant group twice tried to assassinate him.

    The group’s notoriety scaled new heights October 1, 2010 when its agents were implicated in bomb blasts that rocked Abuja. MEND took responsibility for the incident which claimed 16 lives. But surprisingly a day after President Jonathan said the government knew the persons who masterminded the bomb blasts, and that they were terrorists and NOT (MEND) as was widely speculated.

    Speaking at a colloquim organised by the ECOWAS Parliament he said: “We know the persons behind the terrorist attacks on the nation. We know they used an organisation that operates in the Niger Delta called MEND as a front, but we are aware that MEND is not a terrorist organisation.”

    Fast forward four years and the same MEND that is ‘not a terrorist organisation’ endorses Buhari for president and all hell breaks loose. Whatever happened to the clean bill of health given to the organization in 2010? Or is this another case of selective amnesia?

  • Statesmen, motorpark touts and pickpockets

    Statesmen, motorpark touts and pickpockets

    If we categorise them by advanced age and exalted positions in which they served their country, Nigeria’s elderstatesmen are a very small tribe. Those who make the sort of statements that have provoked President Goodluck Jonathan to make his now famous jibe belong to an even smaller tribe of one: Olusegun Obasanjo.

    Just as the president was warming up to kick off his election campaign, the pesky old man summoned a conclave at his Abeokuta hill top redoubt with leaders of market women from across the land. You didn’t need to be a seer to know that he wasn’t about to lecture the women on Keynesian economics.

    It turns out that those who feared the worst had reason to do so. Obasanjo didn’t disappoint in his latest bid to torpedo MV GEJ 2015. He accused the incumbent of squandering billions of dollars painstakingly built up in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) by his predecessors. The summary of the day out with the traders was that squandermania mixed with managerial incompetence had brought Nigeria to her current sorry economic pass.

    It was hardly the sort of testimonial with which PDP wanted to go into battle. Aso Villa went into firefighting mode. First, Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, offered a restrained rebuttal – leaving the brutal bit to the president himself.

    In a moment of uncommon transformation, mild and meek old Jonathan was changed into a fire-eating combatant who declared: “Some people call themselves statesmen but they are not statesmen; they are just ordinary politicians. For you to be a statesman is not because you have occupied a big office before but the question is what are you bringing to bear? Are you building this country? Or are you a part of people who tell lies to destroy this country?”

     “Making provocative statements in this country, statements that will set this country ablaze and you tell me you are a senior citizen. You are not a senior citizen you can never be; you are ordinary motorpark tout.”

    Although Jonathan didn’t mention names, the media decided there were  enough hints in the soundbite to conclude the salvo was aimed at Obasanjo’s doorstep. There’s also the Yoruba proverb that says “an owl (witch) cries in the night and a child dies in the morning: who doesn’t know that it is the witch that killed the child.”

    The problem with the president’s angry swipe at his elderly critics is that his failure to name names left the statement broad enough for anyone who sees himself as falling into that category to be offended. Not only that, hurling insults at others leaves you open to a sucker punch from those with the capacity to improve on whatever you have dished out.

    So, quick as a flash the Alhaji Maitama Sule-led Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF) hit back with choice commentary of its own. Group spokesman, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, called out Jonathan for being abusive towards elders who fought for the unity of Nigeria.

    He said: “President Jonathan should know that in a motorpark, there are touts and there are pick-pockets, so if some past leaders are touts, some sitting leaders are pick-pockets and thieves. So, you have to make your pick from that.” Ouch!

    I agree that being at the receiving end of an unending stream of flak cannot be fun. Still, describing prominent but voluble old men as ‘motor park touts’ just because they gave a less-than-flattering assessment of your performance is a disaster on any given day.

    If the barb was aimed at Obasanjo then it missed him and landed in the ‘overreaction hall of fame.’ For one thing the former head of state in his meeting with the market leaders didn’t use foul language. His critique was cutting but he went out of his way to be civil – even saying that he didn’t have anything personal against Jonathan.

    In our environment, and I dare say in many African societies, scolding elders in such coarse manner is unacceptable – and that is putting it mildly. Jonathan might be the occupant of the most exalted office in the land but it isn’t licence to speak that way to people who may be nearly 20 years older than him, and who were even once his benefactors.

    Indeed, the high office he holds demands a certain kind of behavior. A president is expected to project dignity, poise and calm in his public interactions. He is the captain of the ship and in the midst of a storm when all around him are flustered and losing their cool, no one should know he’s sweating.

    Jonathan lowered the dignity of the office of president with his crude insults. By so doing he invited the offended to dish out even more gross invectives in reply. He is entitled to be angry but presidents don’t get their hands dirty saying such things. That is why they have attack dogs. For him to have to have done the dirty job himself is further evidence that Jonathan is beginning to show the strain.

    Embarrassingly, the ‘motor park touts’ episode came shortly after the same president asked his campaign team not to insult his opponents. But I guess it is tough practicing what you preach when there’s fire raging on all sides of the mountain.

    All the same I ask myself when hurling abuse became electoral strategy. The president and his supporters seem content with just insulting their interlocutors. At this point in the game voting intentions are already set for the vast majority. Between 10 and 20 percent of the electorate might still be undecided. How does a volley of silly little insults convince them to vote for you? Insults are not going to win you friends; conviction would do it. I suspect, however, that those who have chosen to go negative don’t really ‘give a damn anymore.’

  • A powerful minister and his enforcers

    A powerful minister and his enforcers

    Minister of Police Affairs, Jelili Adesiyan, is a very powerful man. He has at his beck and call hundreds of thousands of men enlisted in the Nigeria Police. An indeterminate number of officers belonging to the shadowy Department of State Security (DSS) are equally available to do his bidding at the snap of a finger.

    In a country where the authorities over the years have not been squeamish about deploying armed agents of state to disconcert the opposition and claim ‘victory’ at the polls, the concentration of such power in the hands a brazen partisan is potentially disastrous for our young democracy.

    When he proudly announced at a book launch last week that he had given orders to the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba and the DSS to arrest anyone who makes ‘inflammatory statements’ ahead of the 2015 elections, the gravity and implications of his utterances were clearly lost on him.

    At the same event he made the incendiary claim that All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari and former President Olusegun Obasanjo were working to foist an interim government on Nigeria.

    Explaining his order for a crackdown, Adesiyan said: “Many of those in the APC are disgruntled PDP members who are no longer relevant and because they could not have their way, they have started to heat up the polity. They have said they will form a parallel government if they lose.”

    This same statement had riled President Goodluck Jonathan who at one of his campaign stops at an Abuja church wondered how a politician, and a Christian to boot, would dare utter such a statement.

    Everyone knows that the ‘Christian’ politician being referred to by Jonathan is his bête noire and Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi. I have no doubt that but for his constitutional restraint of immunity, the Aso Villa would have moved against the outspoken governor.

    Amaechi, never one to sidestep a controversy, infuriated his foes afresh with his remarks insisting that soldiers recently court-martialed and convicted for mutiny had the right to protest being asked to fight Boko Haram insurgents without being adequately armed. Since those comments were made all heel has broken loose with the army and DSS piling in the governor for saying things they consider an invitation for soldiers to be mutinous.

    It might help to remind readers here that the same comments the governor made have been repeated by the likes of Major General Ishola Williams (retd) who went on to state that soldiers protesting suicidal orders was not unheard off. The remarks of the former Chief of Defence Operations, Planning and Training, at Defence Headquarters have been largely ignored, but Ameachi’s have triggered near ballistic reactions given his political profile.

    In the light of what Adesiyan has revealed the response of the DSS is a follow-up to instructions from above. But beyond that it is especially sinister.

    The organisations’s Deputy Director of Public Relations, Marilyn Ogar, warned political office holders not to ‘hide under the privileges of their offices to perpetrate and encourage the commission of acts inimical to the general interest of this nation.” This, she said pregnantly, was the “final warning.”

    I am struck by the finality of Ogar’s threat. Assuming Amaechi or some other public officer protected by law from prosecution were to say something which the agencies consider inciting, would they violate that individual’s constitutional immunity?

    In today’s Nigeria nothing is impossible. If a squadron of policemen could seal off the National Assembly and humiliate its members by teargassing their chambers without consequences, then there is no low our security forces will not plumb in their desire to please whoever holds power at a given time.

    I am all for peace and security. But democracy is also about free speech and freedom to choose who will lead a country or community. It is about exercising such freedoms without some non-judicial arbiter standing as a middle man to determine what constitutes appropriate or inflammatory comment, or determining what is constitutional or not.

    It was that sort of effrontery that prompted the Inspector-General of Police to declare that Aminu Tambuwal was no longer Speaker of the House of Representatives because he decamped from APC to PDP. In an outrageous power grab that remains as yet unpunished, he assumed the role of the courts to add to his powers as an enforcer.

    Since that event, legislators have been crossing the carpet at the National and state assembly levels at a dizzying rate. Embarrassingly, the great enforcer of the Nigerian constitution has suddenly gone absent without leave.

    Whatever section of Nigeria’s statutes the security services are depending on to clamp down on people for their comments, they would find that such provisions  don’t define what constitutes ‘inflammatory comment.’

    When does a comment become inciting? What is the empirical gauge for judging its flammability other than the jaundiced assessment of the likes of Adesiyan and Abba?

    With barely six weeks to go before the general elections, I dare say any strong criticism of the incumbent and his embattled administration would rank as ‘inflammatory comment’ in the books of the Police Minister and his enforcers.

    On the day Adesiyan was making his arrest order public, he was also accusing two former Nigerian Heads of State of planning treasonable acts without providing any shred of evidence. In my book that ranks as a grade one ‘inflammatory comment.’ But who’s going arrest the arresters?

    Is all this anxiety over “inflammatory comments” not an indication how fragile the Nigerian federation has become? Instead of looking for vulnerable scapegoats should we not be pointing the finger at failed leadership that has brought us to this pass?

    If there’s a grave danger facing our democracy today, it isn’t from the occasionally heated statements made by excitable politicians. It is emanating more from the pedestrian interpretation of what constitutes threat to national interest by Nigeria’s security agencies.

    Politics is activity that excites passions and roils emotions. It involves contest: we should expect the temperature to rise during any election cycle. All the lazy and clichéd talk about ‘heating up the polity’ arise from ignorantly trying to turn politics into Sunday Mass: it is not! It is passionate business that generates heat, insults and sometimes, unfortunately, violence. Live with it.

    This is the understanding that seems to elude our all-powerful minister and the enforcers that are ever so gung-ho about arresting people for speaking their minds. The police, DSS and others should stop inserting themselves in the middle of the political mudfight. By presenting themselves as interested partisans they erode the integrity of their institutions and lose respect in the eyes of the people.

    That is why aside the economy and insurgency, one of the most pressing challenges confronting the national leadership that will emerge this February is reforming our security services to make them relevant to the needs of an emerging democracy in the 21st century. What we have now are services whose mindset is stuck in the military era of the 70s and 80s.

    That reform must, however, be National Assembly-led because the abuse of the security agencies has always been a crime perpetrated by the executive branch. If APC wins the Presidency don’t be surprised if next day security agencies start threatening PDP members who make critical comments about the new powers-that-be. The system is that backward and servile.

    We need a police and DSS that are truly engaged with protecting the people from violent criminals and insurgents. We don’t need a bunch of armed men and women who are confused about what their roles are and have lapsed into some sort of ‘thought people’ dragooned to screen what we say in the heat of the moment. Don’t turn Nigeria into North Korea please!

    But more importantly we need a decentralised police and intelligence agencies structure that does not leave such powerful institutions in the hands of small-minded individuals with anything but a democratic temper and mindset.

  • The PhD and the ‘illiterate’

    The PhD and the ‘illiterate’

    PDP National Secretary, Professor Wale Oladipo, says this February Nigerians will have to choose between Goodluck Jonathan the PhD holder and Muhammadu Buhari, the ‘semi-illiterate’ jackboot.

    Oladipo isn’t saying Buhari cannot read and write in English, Hausa or Arabic. He isn’t accusing him of not passing through the precincts of some primary, secondary or military school. The former head of state has been forcibly demoted to the ranks of the illiterate because he didn’t attend a university.

    Thankfully for the APC candidate that is no hindrance to his aspirations as the constitution only requires him to have secondary school education – a conditions he more than meets.

    Given that Oladipo is some sort of professor it is amazing he does not understand that mighty accomplishments are not a function of your string of degrees. Some of the greatest business leaders the world has ever known are either university dropouts or never even had the tertiary education experience.

    Names like Microsoft founder and one of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates; Oracle founder, Larry Ellison, worth $28 billion who dropped out of University of Chicago; Chelsea Football Club owner, Roman Abramovich, worth $11.2 billion – a college dropout who once sold plastic toys out of his small apartment in Russia.

    But the most interesting example is Britain’s war time Prime Minister Winston Churchill who had a very poor academic record in school. He struggled through three independent schools before ending up at the famous Harrow School.

    After leaving Harrow he applied to attend the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He would make three attempts before passing the entrance examination. Although he never went to university, Churchill is today regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century. He is the only British Prime Minister to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since its inception in 1901, and has been voted the greatest Briton ever.

    Strong leadership comes from your innate character traits, not the number of paper qualifications on your wall. Enough said.

  • 2015 and the violence card

    2015 and the violence card

    Just like religion, the specter of violence hangs ominously over the 2015 general elections. That should surprise no one because virtually all our electoral exercises – with the possible exception of 1993 – have been trailed by tears and blood.

    If the recent intra-party primaries were as chaotic as they were, we should look with trepidation towards next year when the contest would be across party lines. Up North the Boko Haram insurgents would do their level best to disrupt the process. Add to that irresponsible politicians trying to manipulate religious sentiments for electoral advantage and you have the makings of a real tinderbox.

    The stakes are incredibly high. For the first time in 16 years a very strong possibility exists that the opposition could seize power from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which has dominated the landscape for so long.

    The game-changer is the emergence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) which provides a credible platform for the contestation of power with the PDP. The opposition can sense that their moment is at hand: the incumbent is horrified by the prospect of power slipping from its grasp. In these parts being in opposition is worse than winding up in hell: there’s no greater incentive to hang on using all possible means.

    This has set the stage for the some of the most incendiary pre-election rhetoric to assault our ears. A few days ago President Goodluck Jonathan was in church moaning about the volatile comments being made by politicians. Typically, he focused on the threat of the opposition to form a parallel government if the polls were rigged. What he didn’t say was that all sides are just as guilty of firing things up.

    One of his ardent supporters and one-time leader of a militant Niger Delta group, Asari Dokubo, has threatened that there would be bloodshed if the president loses the next election. Some other retired militants have equally threatened to come out of cushy retirement if their kinsman and benefactor were toppled through the ballot box. Another way of putting it is that a band of gunmen are putting a pistol to the head of the rest of Nigeria saying – ‘Vote Jonathan or else…’

    What makes this threat interesting is that in 2011 one Northern PDP leader angry that the party would not allow the region field someone to serve another four years of what would have been the late Yar’Adua’s second term, vowed that they would make the zone ungovernable.

    There are those who still argue that the upsurge in activities of the Boko Haram sect is a fall-out of that threat. If we were to take that conspiracy theory seriously then we should be prepared for a fresh red tide of blood in the creeks next year.

    Up North, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi stirred controversy when he called on Jonathan not to contest the 2015 election. Perhaps to balance things up, a few days after he also advised General Muhammadu Buhari to forget about his fourth bid for power.

    Last week, he cried out that supporters of the APC presidential candidate had been sending threatening text messages to his phone over his stance. Some other leaders in the region have also claimed that an unspoken threat hangs in the air over anyone who would dare oppose the Buhari’s aspiration.

    Given what happened in 2011 when supporters of the general embarked on an orgy of violence through the North because they believed he had been rigged out of certain victory, it is not out of the realm of possibility that there could be a repeat if the results turn out to be controversial.

    Given this backdrop should we been running for the hills because of the prospect of violence marring the polls? Former Minister of External Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, thinks we have real reasons to worry about looming “horrendous violence.”

    In an open letter to President Jonathan and General Buhari last Monday, he proposed that both candidates sign an undertaking to rein in their supporters after the election.

    He wrote: “The certainty of violence is higher than it was in 2011. If President Jonathan wins, the North will erupt into violence as it did in 2011. If Gen. Buhari wins, the Niger Delta will erupt into violence.” I don’t believe that we need rocket science to make this prediction.”

    Adducing other reasons to support his fears about impending violence he said “illegal massive importation of weapons into the country, which has reached such alarming proportions that I really wonder which is better armed, the militia on one hand or the official armed forces on the other hand”.

    To prevent disaster, Akinyemi suggested that frontline traditional rulers – the Sultan of Sokoto, the Emir of Kano, the Lamido of Adamawa from the North, the Ooni of Ife and the Oba of Benin from the South; elder statesman Chief Emeka Anyaoku; religious leaders Pastor Enoch Adeboye and Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor and ex-Heads of State Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar -facilitate a pre-election meeting between the candidates, the preparation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and act as a Council of Wisemen to assist in managing the post-election conflicts.

    The recommended MoU would commit the candidates to “a civil and peaceful campaign, devoid of threats; a commitment to control their supporters after the elections; and that supporters of whoever loses should be entitled to peaceful protests but not to violent protests.”

    We’ve already had a quick dismissal of the proposals from the Presidency after its spokesperson said there was no need for Jonathan to sign any agreement since he had always been committed to peaceful, free and fair polls. This is another of saying ‘don’t worry about us you talk to the bad guys on the other side.’

    This is where the problem begins – when we chose to see the speck in the opponent’s eyes without first plucking out the beam in ours. No side has been guiltless over the use of violent rhetoric. If we’re to make progress towards peaceful polls, a starting point would be for all sides to admit their sins. It is unhelpful when the government and the ruling party posture as the patriots while the opposition are painted as rebellious rabble.

    Akinyemi’s suggestions are some of the most useful I have come across in what currently passes for debate about the coming elections. They deserve to be treated with more respect and given a second look.

    I believe that given the level of maturity displayed by politicians in most Third World environments violent transitions are things we must learn to live with. Whether in India or Pakistan, Egypt or Zimbabwe elections are often contested against a canvas of booming guns and bombs. As a supporting cast you have the police and other security agencies who think their role is to align with whoever is in power.

    While it is difficult to hold leaders responsible for the sometimes spontaneous actions of supporters, there can be no denying that their firm utterances can have a calming influence on them. Imagine if the late Nelson Mandela had not spoken strongly against blacks taking vengeance against their erstwhile white Apartheid oppressors?

    All Nigerians who are truly committed to peaceful polls next year should now insist that Jonathan and Buhari should sign on to the sort of MoU Akinyemi has proposed as a first step. This might not be a magic wand but it would certainly help.

    The only problem I see is that our leaders have shown that they don’t respect agreements or signed documents. People who can baldly disavow commitments they made publicly cannot be expected to respect any deal on peaceful elections – especially when there are no credible means of enforcement beyond moral persuasion.

    It might also be helpful to remind gung-ho supporters that while their threats of conflict might seem romantic now, the consequences are often bitter. Those who promise violence and act on it invariably turn their home turf into the theatres of war. The wars will not be fought on European soil.

    Whether it has political undertone or not we have seen how the Boko Haram insurgency has devastated the North East. The economy is shattered and families broken in pieces. Thousands have become internally displaced persons in the own homeland. Even with billions of naira thrown in it would take at least a decade to restore this region to where it was in 2009.

    The rotund ex-Niger Delta militants who are threatening mayhem if their benefactor losses the polls should remember what happened to poor local people in the days leading to the ceasefire that birthed the amnesty programme of the Umaru Yar’Adua administration.

    Fed up with the unrelenting attacks by militants on oil installations and security agents, the government unleashed military action to root out the rebels. In a matter of days the lightening fast offensive unmasked a string of militant camps. Unfortunately, the fighting also devastated hapless communities which had been under the thumb of the gunmen.

    Thousands of women and children were put to flight – an indeterminate number killed. The palace of the paramount ruler of the Ijaw Gbaramatu Kingdom was razed by federal troops. As the one-sided fight unfolded Ijaw leaders like Chief Edwin Clark were forced to cry out that their people were being slaughtered and called for a truce.

    This bit of history might be helpful in jogging the memories of billionaire ex-militants dreaming of returning to the creeks. What counts is not starting a conflict but understanding where it takes you and whether you can finish what you’ve started.

    I suspect that whoever governs Nigeria after now will not treat any insurgency in the Niger Delta that threatens the country’s economic jugular vein with the same cavalier attitude the Boko Haram war has been handled.

    In any event much of these threats might just be empty bluster. Even if Jonathan loses I don’t expect millions in the Niger Delta whose lives have not been bettered in the last four years to start rushing into the creeks to fight. Most are just ordinary people who will just want to carry on with their lives.

    The Asari Dokubos, Ateke Toms and Boyloaf we can understand: they would have millions of reasons to be disgruntled.

  • VP: Why Osinbajo isn’t Bakare

    VP: Why Osinbajo isn’t Bakare

    In presidential politics picking a running mate is a fine balancing act. The needs of a candidate: how to play to his strengths, and compensate for his weaknesses, usually determine who he ends up selecting. Those laboring to convince themselves that the All Progressives Congress (APC) flagbearer, General Muhammadu Buhari, made a mistake by picking Professor Yemi Osinbajo, do so without considering these factors.

    To argue that the opposition should have gone for livewire political types like governor, Rotimi Amaechi, Babatunde Fashola or Adams Oshiomhole, forget that people don’t pick deputies who would outshine or be in competition with them. It has to be clear that there’s just one captain on the ship.

    That is why there is usually more emphasis on loyalty and competence than political gravitas in making this sort of decision. In 1999, the then Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was confronted with names like Atiku Abubakar, Abubakar Rimi, Bamanga Tukur, Abba Kyari, Jibril Aminu and Adamu Ciroma – all heavyweights as he sought to make his choice.

    As legend has it, Obasanjo sought the counsel of former Minister of Works, Chief Tony Anenih, who famously advised that if he chose Rimi he should ensure that there was a police orderly waiting outside the door at all times as they would quarrel often. However, if he wanted unalloyed loyalty he should go for Atiku. The rest is history.

    All that Buhari needed to do for his choice to be considered correct was name a Christian and Southerner. This balances the ticket nicely given that for months the flirtation with a possible Muslim-Muslim slate had stoked controversy. The candidate, perhaps miffed by the fact that he was being forced to overlook several excellent candidates because of the religion issue, seemed to equivocate in several public statements on the matter.

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which had been salivating at the prospect that Buhari would make the fatal mistake of picking a fellow Muslim in spite of being painted a fundamentalist by his foes, must have been sorely disappointed. The former head of state sidestepped the trap. His enemies have now moved to the option of deriding Osinbajo as APC leader, Bola Tinubu’s puppet. That is when they are not dismissing him as a political lightweight who adds nothing to the ticket.

    We have been reminded that this is the second time Buhari would be pairing with a clergyman. In 2011 he ran with popular pastor and activist, Tunde Bakare of The Latter Rain Church in the vain hope that it would give him the much-needed Southern breakthrough. It never happened.

    By settling for Osinbajo, a senior pastor with The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) – Nigeria’s largest Pentecostal congregation, Buhari has triggered inevitable comparisons  with what happened four years ago.

    Those who compare the 2011 and 2015 picks and assume the result would be the same this time ignore the context. Although Bakare was a popular clergyman, he had no political structures to speak of.

    Before the general selected him he was not a member of any party and was not known to associate with politicians. If anything, he was more likely to lampoon them in one of his fiery sermons. It was the height of naivete on the part of Buhari and those who advised him to think that Bakare’s celebrity alone would translate into votes.

    The pastor was a kind of Gani Fawehinmi type of personality who was incredibly well liked in media and activist circles, but whose popularity never translated into political muscle. That was why in spite of his immense popularity on the streets, the late radical lawyer’s National Conscience Party (NCP) was, and remains, largely a fringe player in the polity.

    Osinbajo, on the other hand, is a totally different case. For eight years he served as Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice under the then Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu. Back in 2011 when the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) were flirting with some late-hour electoral collaboration, his name featured in the calculations for running mate.

    But the most important thing is that he’s not on the ticket because of his personal political weight but as the face and representative of a political tendency within APC. He is a member of the Tinubu political family and longstanding confidant of the former governor. His presence on the ticket keeps both Tinubu and the South-West caucus in the party engaged and committed to the Buhari challenge.

    I will just mention in passing the fact that he’s related by marriage to the family of the late acclaimed Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. While his political influence has waned with his passing many years ago, sentimental attachment to that famous name can only help and not hurt the APC running mate.

    Aside his political and familial connections Osinbajo’s selection disrupts the PDP’s bid to make Jonathan the main beneficiary of the Christian vote. Buhari’s running mate is a pastor in RCCG whose General Overseer, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has become one of the most influential religious leaders in the land.

    During the last election cycle all presidential candidates of key political parties beat a path to his door to seek his blessings. Many would remember the famous photograph of President Jonathan kneeling with eyes closed while Adeboye prayed over him.

    Knowing the RCCG leader’s reserved and statesmanlike style, don’t expect him to openly take sides – even when one of his spiritual children is involved. In such a huge assembly you’re likely to find people from diverse political persuasions. It would be inappropriate for a father to take sides. Though I would love to be a fly on wall when Adeboye casts his vote for president and VP!

    But even without overt official backing, it would be naïve to think a very senior pastor in this massive congregation contesting for such a high profile position would not influence a chunk of the millions who worship in this church.

    This, again, is another difference between Bakare and Osinbajo. Whereas the former, with all due respect, presides over a one-branch church in Lagos – by design maybe – the latter can potentially tap into a support base with nationwide presence.

    Anyone who then tries to analyse Osinbajo’s impact without factoring in this backdrop is ignorant, mischievous or engaged in a fruitless exercise in self consolation.

  • 2015: PDP runs to Jesus

    After unsuccessful attempts by his backers to compare Goodluck Jonathan to the likes of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew, Public Affairs Adviser to the President, Dr. Doyin Okupe, outdid himself by likening his boss to Jesus Christ last week.

    Apart from the delusions of grandeur implicit in that comparison, the suggestion is that the incumbent is the only Nigerian president who ever labored under this country’s burden. Not surprising given that this same crew had declared Jonathan the best president to ever govern the country.

    The recourse to a religious metaphor is part of the brazen efforts to make matters of faith decisive factors in the coming electoral contest. It started when the ruling party started trying to define the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) as Islamic and sponsors of the Boko Haram insurgency.

    Even before the emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari as presidential candidate it was no secret that the opposition was looking to the north for its flagbearer and hoping to reap from the widespread disaffection with this regime in that region.

    By trying to position APC as having Muslim bias, the ruling party was clearly aiming to establish a bridgehead in minority areas of the North which are mostly Christian, while hoping that it’s anti-Muslim rhetoric would play well down South. But this ignores the fact that in many areas of the South-West there are millions of Muslims.

    There is evidence that up to a point this gambit of painting Jonathan as a Christian victim being set upon by a baying mob from the other side had gathered traction – at least with the gullible and ignorant.

    I have read statements that the president’s ascent to power was divinely facilitated therefore his return for a second term could not be stopped because God had a hand in the matter. Nothing could be more fraudulent and unbiblical.

    The Bible is replete with examples of kings who God installed and later removed. A good example is Saul – the first king of Israel. God elevated him but when he messed up the throne was taken from him and given to David. (I Samuel 9 and 15).

    I have also heard suggestions that because Jonathan is a Christian running against a Muslim, he automatically has heaven’s seal of approval. This is, again, false and unbiblical.

    God is sovereign; He’s in heaven and does as He pleases. He can use anybody to establish His purpose on earth because His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. He used Cyrus the pagan king of Persia to deliver the Jews from 70 years of Babylonian captivity (Isaiah 45; 2 Chronicles 26: 22-23). God even used a donkey in the Scriptures to do his will. (Numbers 22-24).

    The argument of these Christians would have made scriptural sense if the president was the only one on the ticket or if his running mate was also Christian. If Buhari is excluded from being used of God because he’s a Muslim, how do these super ‘Christians’ explain Jonathan being joined at the hip to Vice President Namadi Sambo – another Muslim – in the light of the scripture that warns against being unequally yoked with unbelievers? (2 Corinthians 6:14).

    Now, APC has set the cat amongst the pigeons by picking Professor Yemi Osinbajo, a pastor with The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) and he can equally appeal to Christian sentiments and voters. As both sides volley supplications upwards who will the God of heaven favour: the PDP or APC Christian?

    This silly attempt to muddy the 2015 contest with religion is a con game we must refuse to partake in. We are a country of Muslims, Christians and animists. We are not choosing a sectarian leader: we’re voting for a Nigerian president.

  • Campaign Tactics: This is 2015 not 1984

    lementary politics teaches that when a campaign is in trouble you go negative by launching attacks that would slow down, or eliminate the momentum of the frontrunner. When your campaign has wind in its back, you take the dignified high road and leave the mudslinging to those behind.

    Judging by the vicious attacks that have been launched against Buhari, Tinubu and even Osinbajo, you can hazard a guess as to which campaign is feeling the heat. You can also sense where there’s momentum and genuine sense of optimism.

    Ever since the APC candidate emerged the internet has been awash with all manner of negative material targeting Buhari and Tinubu. We have been reminded of every detail of what the former head of state and his ruling council did while the military held sway.

    Lost in these desperate efforts to demonise the APC leader is the case for Jonathan’s return to office. So we are left with something like this: ‘Vote for us because Buhari jailed politicians 30 years ago.’ Vote for Jonathan because Buhari seized Awo’s passport. He is a Tinubu’s friend, and was head of Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), so vote for us.’ How lame!

    What the pro-Jonathan groups don’t do is invite us to examine his patchy record in office. Whether it’s about the economy or insecurity, that record is the sort you run from, not the type you run on.

    What is the rationale for giving him another four years in office? Is it because Nigerians are better off today than they were in 2011? On the strength of what the president did with power in the last four years can we entrust him with four more?

    These are the critical questions that supporters of the current regime have refused to address. They believe that if they abuse Buhari and Tinubu sufficiently Nigerians would forget how the PDP shipwrecked the country.

    There is nothing being said now about Buhari’s past that was not known in 2011 and yet 12 million people voted for him. Reminding us of his ancient sins would not change anything at this point in the game. Eight weeks to polling day most people have already made us their minds who they would vote for – whether Jonathan or Buhari.

    For the bulk of those people what is informing their voting decisions are the realities of 2014, not history lessons about what happened in 1984.

  • Buhari: The opponent PDP prefers!

    Buhari: The opponent PDP prefers!

    Even before the first vote was cast at the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primaries the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) was already dismissing eventual winner, General Muhammadu Buhari, as a walkover. Its spokesman boasted that President Goodluck Jonathan would trounce all the opposition party’s aspirants rolled into one.

    Early in the week, all sorts of analyses made out former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to be the man most feared by the ruling party. One such article spoke of his immense wealth, intense preparation for the job and existing contacts with a remnant of his loyalists in the PDP who could work for him under the radar. At the end we were assured he would pip Buhari at the finishing line.

    In their attempts to paint the former head of state as easy to beat many are quick to point at his three unsuccessful attempts at getting the top job. But they do so without putting those defeats in proper context.

    For instance, it is settled that no one can become president of Nigeria unless they run on a broad-based platform with firm presence across the country. The constitution requires that to be elected you must win a majority of votes cast as well as 25% in two-thirds of the 36 states.

    The two times Buhari mounted his challenge on the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) platform, the party was strong only in a handful of northern states where it had governors. Down south it was virtually non-existent.

    In 2011, after he parted ways with the ANPP, he offered himself on an even more ramshackle arrangement called the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). By the time of the elections, the party didn’t control even one miserable local government area in the country. It had very little name recognition anywhere in the country and not much money.

    Like before, his new party was virtually non-existent in the south. He tried to remedy this and deal with accusations that he was a Muslim fundamentalist by picking a well-known pastor, Tunde Bakare, as running mate. Whatever point he thought he would score with southern Christians was neutralised by the fact that the clergyman had no political structures to add heft to the ticket.

    A last minute attempt to cobble together an alliance with other opposition groups came to nothing, and the CPC plunged ahead with its ultimately futile bid. The astonishing thing is that despite the crippling shortcomings of the platform, his candidacy still managed to attract over 12 million votes.

    This time around, Buhari is running on a platform that has 14 governors and strong presence in states where it does not control government. For the first time ever, this candidate who lost thrice because he didn’t have a credible electoral route to Aso Villa, now has a realistic chance of securing a simple majority and 25% of votes cast in two-thirds of 36 states. And yet the PDP would have us believe that he would be so easy to beat!

    Beneath the bluster, however, you get a sense of unease at the emergence of the old enemy. There’s no stronger evidence of this than the desperate efforts by the ruling party’s online army to discredit Buhari by reminding Nigerians of a litany ancient sins allegedly committed by the former head of state.

    One accusation that has been levelled against the APC in the past is that there’s not much separating it from the PDP. The differences are becoming quite stark – starting with the two presidential candidates.

    Let’s begin with ability to communicate their ideas and positions. No one can accuse Buhari or Jonathan of being orators. In fact, listening to either drone on from their usually prepared speeches is guaranteed to send you to sleep faster than swallowing a pack of sleeping pills.

    But what Buhari lacks in oratory he makes up for with that X-factor which attracts fanatical following. In this sense he is akin to the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo – no great speaker himself – but whose mere appearance at a public function could work his supporters into frenzied cries of Awo!

    The APC flagbearer excites his base. His followers are passionate about him: the word more commonly used to describe the connection between them is ‘fanatical.’ They will follow him for free and at the drop of a hat.

    Can we say the same about Jonathan? Take away the platform and Buhari would still attract millions of voters. If you separate him from the PDP platform, how many supporters would follow the incumbent president on a journey into the unknown?

    When you think of Buhari the adjectives that come to mind are firm, stern, strong and honest. Think of Jonathan and words like humble, amiable, deliberate come to mind. But you also think weak and indecisive.

    This may not be a totally fair assessment of the president but it is the perception out there – one that is reinforced by quotes like the one from former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s controversial new memoirs, “My Watch”, that insinuated Patience Jonathan, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Petroleum Minister, Stella Oduah, former Aviation Minister and Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, were all ‘Presidents’ of Nigeria. Jonathan, he wrote, was the weakest of them all.

    Buhari’s strongest point – one on which friends and foes largely agree – is that he is honest and that in a country where a large chunk of the elite have been besmirched by corruption, he has remained sleaze-free. The PDP recognises this as his strong suit and is challenging that image.

    We are now being reminded that when the nation’s borders were shut amidst currency reforms in the mid-80s, the then military ruler’s aide-de-camp, Major Mustapha Jokolo, pulled rank to get 53 suitcases belonging to an emir into the country. The bending of the rules to allow the privileged bring in the banned baggage with unknown content remains a sore point that dogs the General’s steps.

    This one incident is what critics point to when they raise doubts about Buhari’s saintliness. But to put things in perspective we should also note that the man has held several high profile offices – including supervising the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and yet has no house in Abuja or a foreign bank account. Most people accept that he’s an honest man with a modest lifestyle, that is why attempts to paint him otherwise always ring hollow.

    Under his watch three convicted drug pushers were executed under the retroactive laws instituted by the military junta of the day. Of all the actions of that tough regime, this is perhaps one of the most wrongheaded and troubling. It is one which he would one day need to confront and apologise for.

    But if we were to use the atrocities of former military regimes to exclude people from participating in the political process, then a large swathe of powerful figures in the land today would be disqualified – everyone from Obasanjo to Babangida, David Mark and others who participated in the annulment of the June 12 election results, or who rubberstamped death sentences arising from trumped-up coup plotting allegations.

    The ruling party supporters may be dismissive of Buhari in the belief that as they successfully did in times past they can define him again as some sort of religious nut. Against the backdrop of a polity polluted by sectarian disputes made worse by the atrocities of Boko Haram, this old trick could be used to damage the man before the undiscerning.

    True, Buhari has said in the past that he supports Sharia. But I’m yet to see a Muslim who is opposed to the legal code that is part and parcel of their religion. Indeed, knowledgeable people would tell you that it had always been in the statute books in Northern Nigeria before and after Independence. The turning point was when Sani Yerima, then Zamfara State governor, dramatised and politicised the adoption of the code by his state in 2000.

    Beyond one or two ill-thought out utterances, fair-minded people should look at Buhari’s life, actions and associates and determine for themselves whether he fits the mould of an Islamic fundamentalist. Let’s not forget that this same individual led the military push to destroy Maitatsine in the 80s. This last July, he barely survived a bomb attack carried out by extremists he is supposedly sympathetic towards.

    Those who dismiss the APC candidate as easy to beat should ask themselves whether over the last four years he has shed support like his opponent for the February 2015 polls. Most people who voted back for Buhari in 2011 are still likely to back him today. After seeing what he has done with power , Jonathan has lost many erstwhile supporters.

    What should disturb the ruling party more is that people are becoming increasingly resistant to the old propaganda. They take the position that Buhari may not be an orator, he may not be an angel or discuss economic policy like Okonjo-Iweala, still they would risk their votes on him because they are fed up with Jonathan’s Nigeria.

  • Bursting some 2015 myths

    One of the great unknowns as polling day draws ever closer is how the ‘North’ will vote. For the past five years, the region has been devastated by the Boko Haram insurgency as well as communal clashes that set indigenous farming communities against itinerant Fulani herdsmen in places like Benue and Plateau States.

    Unpredictable voter behaviour is compounded by the fact that the regional elite is divided between sustaining the status quo or lining up behind Buhari. For some, four more years of Jonathan might not be such a bad idea as it opens the door for them to run at the next contest.

    In reality, the electoral picture that might emerge two months down the line could throw up a clear winner in the region, but it would also bury almost permanently that myth of ‘one North’ as it probably existed in the days of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello.

    The same thing applies down south. I hear people repeat lazy assumptions suggesting that every South-south vote is already in Jonathan’s column. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

    The South-south zone is artificial – a product of the General Sani Abacha constitutional conference. This is one part of Nigeria where you would find one of the most diverse collections of ethnic groups – each with its own unique identity and political interests.

    The Niger Delta insurgency and the emergence of Jonathan as president has helped project the Ijaws into the limelight – but not always in a positive sense. Some ethnic groups have complained that access to the most powerful office in the land has made them more domineering. A case in point is the president’s abandonment of his visit to Ogidigben to inaugurate the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) project because of pressure from his Ijaw kinsmen. That action almost reignited bloodletting with the neighbouring Itsekiris.

    Just as in the North, all zones of the country present opportunities for hardworking and imaginative campaigns to exploit. It would be foolish for any candidate to write off a zone because his opponent comes from there or supposedly has an iron grip on the area.