The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • Oteh vs the House: Bad laws and blackmail

    Oteh vs the House: Bad laws and blackmail

    The latest episode of the long-running Arunma Oteh versus House of Representatives soap opera ought to be subtitled: Episode 10 – Bad laws and Blackmail.

    At this point the lady would be wishing she had devoted more time to studying the fine art of diplomacy and ego massage, before dumping her cushy job as Vice President for Corporate Development at the African Development Bank (AfDB) in order to become an Abuja powerhouse as Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

    Given that early in her tenure she set out an agenda for cleaning out the capital market and taking on entrenched interests, it was inevitable that she would get into pretty serious fights. Some of those slugfests have been brutal affairs – with little or no provision for civility.

    Remember the clash of the amazons? In the red corner brimming with reformist zeal was Oteh; in the blue corner was the hulking presence of the longstanding boss of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke.

    Despite the bruising nature of that engagement, it is not the reason that the SEC DG’s tumultuous reign now faces the very real threat of an abrupt and ignominious termination. Credit for that must go to the infamous clash last year at a public hearing on the collapse of the Nigerian capital market called by the House Committee on Capital Markets and other Financial Institutions.

    Most readers will recall the heated exchanges between Oteh and committee chairman, Herman Hembe, and the lurid tales of bribes solicited and given on both sides. The grubby exchange led to the fall of the chairman and the dissolution of his committee.

    Oteh only fared slightly better. She was asked to proceed on compulsory leave by the SEC board, pending an independent investigation into the management of Project 50, a programme put together by her to commemorate 50 years of the capital market in Nigeria. Although the board-ordered probe by PricewaterhouseCoopers will clear her of any financial impropriety – opening the way for her return to office, the definitive battle of her tenure was just beginning to take shape.

    If Oteh’s interaction with the Hembe committee was prickly, it was not much better with the successor committee. Offended legislators bided their time – waiting to exact their pound of flesh.

    In short order they came up with a report that was anything but laudatory for the SEC boss. One of the most contentious conclusions reached was that Oteh was not qualified to head the commission because she did not possess the requisite professional qualification prescribed in the Securities and Exchange Commission Act for appointment to the office of Director-General.

    Flowing from this, the House issued the non-negotiable decree that President Goodluck Jonathan fired the lady. Aso Rock’s understanding of the position of the legislators was that their resolution was advisory and not binding on the president.

    In order to make it clear that this was not friendly advice but an order, the legislators have turned the screws tighter by making no provision whatsoever for SEC in the 2013 budget. They have even gone a step further by warning the president not to think of funding commission – even from private sources.

    Let’s explain this by saying that the commission has not been scrapped; but it will only receive funding again after the DG had been kicked out of office.

    First, what we have here is a shameful instance of a law being tailor-made to target an individual. Secondly, we are confronted not by the regular saber-rattling of legislators, but an unapologetic attempt to blackmail the president to do their bidding. I wish there was a more elegant way to put it, but blackmail has an unmistakable smell to it.

    If the House had stopped by publishing the report of its committee indicting Oteh, and left Jonathan to deal with the moral burden of leaving in office an individual whose reputation had been damaged by the legislators’ findings, most people would have backed them.

    Unfortunately, in this case as in many others, we see lawmakers engaging in overreach. The legislators of the Fourth Republic are particularly guilty of this tendency. They are not the sort of lawmakers Nigerians knew in the First, Second or Third Republics, but a hybrid variety that see themselves straddling legislative and executive roles.

    This crisis of identity, and confusion over what their true role should be, comes across even in the language of their engagement with agents of the executive branch. And so from day to day we’re regaled with reports of the “summons” issued to one minister, or the latest threat to arrest the head of some government parastatal for tardiness in responding to legislative invitations.

    In 1999, the first class of Fourth Republic legislators prepared the foundation for the crisis we see today, by manipulating the budget to introduce what they called “community projects.”

    These were not altruistic or well-thought out development projects, but rather showy, populist undertakings to create the impression that the lawmakers had “done something” for their people during their tenure. The injection of these extraneous items altered the shape of the federal budgets designed by the executive, and provided the ground for the earliest fights between then President Olusegun Obasanjo and the lawmakers.

    Unfortunately for our democracy, the class of 1999 successfully blackmailed the executive, and every president ever since has had to live with the nightmare of legislators who do not know where their territory begins and ends.

    Elsewhere what happens is that legislators lobby the executive branch to site choice projects in their constituencies in exchange for support for the administration’s legislative agenda. The lawmaker then gets credit for attracting such a project to his constituency. It is what the Americans refer to as “pork barrel” bills.

    Returning to Oteh, the demands of the House actually put the National Assembly as an institution in an awkward position. Let’s not forget that the Senate cleared her in 2010 and declared she was fit for the role. So if anyone deserves flak for her appointment it is the senators who approved her appointment three years ago.

    The lawmakers who are always quick to assert their independence, should accord that same right to the executive. Oteh is an appointee of the president and it is only fair and proper that he be allowed to determine whether she is up to the demands of her office. The sort of bald-faced pressure being put on Jonathan to sack the lady is an unseemly abuse of legislative power.

    What they are doing may not be the best for separation of powers in our democracy, yet the legislators may just get their way. The president has displayed over time, a tendency to buckle in the face of the least pressure from ornery lawmakers.

    He doesn’t have the bloody-mindedness of an Obasanjo who will sometimes dare his interlocutors to tip the whole democratic project into the ravine, rather than succumb to blatant blackmail. And that is bad news for Oteh.

    At a time when she thinks its peace and safety, he will dump her to appease the gods of Apo, just as he did with Dr. Harold Demuren, the erstwhile Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). Following the Dana Air crash last year, the legislators demanded his head on a platter. In due season, Jonathan duly obliged.

  • Kano, amnesty and amnesia

    Kano, amnesty and amnesia

    For some, the killing of more than 70 persons in a suicide bomb attack on a bus park in Kano last Monday makes the case for granting terrorists rampaging across northern Nigeria amnesty, more compelling.

    I beg to disagree. If anything, this stomach-churning slaughter of innocents by faceless cowards should embarrass all those making the amnesty argument.

    As an instrument for bringing peace to strife-torn countries, the amnesty has its place. But it works best where the issues involved are largely political or more general crimes. It is more difficult to accept where the matters are sectarian or religious, and where the potential beneficiaries are bestial killers who unapologetically target unarmed civilians – even children.

    Those pushing the case for amnesty for Boko Haram militants think they have latched on to a magic bullet that will make the current misery of northern Nigeria disappear. But they are mistaken for a number of reasons.

    Firstly, mass killings have become ritualistic over the last five decades in the north. What Boko Haram is doing today is not different from what the followers of Mohammed Marwa aka Maitatsine did in Kano, Kaduna and other places in the 70s and 80s. In that period, thousands of people lost their lives as adherent of his sect clashed with other groups and security agencies.

    Interestingly, Maitatsine saw the reading of any other book but the Koran as paganism. He preached against the use of radios, watches, bicycles, cars and undue accumulation of cash – doctrines which bears an eerie resemblance to what Boko Haram – Western education is sin – propagates.

    Today’s horrific killings may be shocking, but all those not afflicted with amnesia, will see that they pale in comparison to what happened to a certain Gideon Akaluka in Kano in 1994.

    He was an Igbo trader resident whose wife was accused of desecrating a page from the Koran. Confronted by irate accusers, Akaluka fled to the Bompai, Kano police station for refuge. Soon the mob tracked him down and demanded that the police hand him over. They quickly obliged.

    Right there, before people who were supposed to enforce the law, he was beheaded and his head impaled on a stake. The gory trophy was then paraded triumphantly round the metropolis by the ‘all-conquering’, singing and chanting mob. No one was ever brought to justice over that act of bestiality, neither were the police ever punished for dereliction of duty.

    Hardly a year passes in the north without terrible and inexplicable killings triggered by sectarian or political causes. Over a week in February 2000, more than 400 persons were killed in Kaduna State following riots that accompanied the introduction of Sharia law.

    After three days of rioting across the north in November 2002, over 100 people were killed after THISDAY newspaper published a controversial article following the botched attempt to host a Miss World pageant in Nigeria.

    I doubt if anyone is keeping count. But the death toll in the lingering communal clashes in Plateau State since their onset must be somewhere in the thousands. The outrages continue today, unfortunately we have become so desensitised to mass murder that the abominable numbers no longer shock us.

    This mass slaughter is errant behavior that has continued because it has never been confronted in any serious manner over the years. Rather than bring peace to the north, amnesty will be a reward for bullying conduct. Another set of thugs will rise up conscious of the fact that politically-correct politicians will one day band together to pat them on the back.

    The second reason why this amnesty business will not wash is that the current insurgents are a totally different kettle of fish because of the time of their manifestation. Whereas their forerunners like the Maitatsine sect were a local phenomenon, Boko Haram has well-established ties not only with the routed Islamists in Mali, but also with the global Jihadi movement.

    It continues to thrive because some of those it targets are not motivated just by a need to escape justice. They are not the dregs of earth pushed into criminality by poverty. Some like Farouk Abdulmuttalab are the scion of the rich classes seduced by romantic notions of jihad sold by the terrorist Al-Qaeda network.

    When President Goodluck Jonathan said government will not extend amnesty to ghosts, some criticised him – saying Boko Haram were not faceless because some of their suspected members were in jail. But who do we have in jail other than some hungry 18-year old paid to place an IED in a public square?

    These are errand boys whose only contact with anything that approximates sect leadership is some disembodied voice at the other end of a phone line. A serious matter like amnesty cannot be discussed with clueless messengers or so-called leaders who won’t show their faces.

    Boko Haram bigwigs are not in jail, neither are their sponsors. They are so ashamed of their evil deeds they hide behind balaclava masks to address the media. If I were responsible for the Kano carnage that killed more of my people than my supposed enemies, I would be ashamed too. This is the third ground that makes it virtually impossible to contemplate any such measure for the sect.

    When the Niger Delta militants signed on to the amnesty deal, they all crawled out of the creeks and were shipped off to Aso Rock for photo opportunities with the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. The world was at last able to put faces to shadowy characters with exotic names like “Tompolo,” “General Shoot-at-Sight” “Ogunboss” etc.

    Although they had used unlawful, and often violent means to pursue their cause, but their fight against the economic rape of their region and the decades-long environmental degradation was a noble one that even mainstream politicians could identify with. The same cannot be said of Boko Haram. Which major northern politician wants to be associated with this despicable group?

    Several months ago they named some major northern figures to negotiate with the Federal Government on their behalf. Within hours the would-be peacemakers were falling over themselves trying to put distance between them and the group.

    Of course, there is the rump of Boko Haram led by one Sheik Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulazeez which says it now wants peace. But before we get ahead of ourselves, we should ask how many legions of terrorists this chap commands.

    One thing I know is that he has absolutely no control over the Kano killers. Neither does he have any hold over the Ansaru faction which claimed responsibility for the execution of seven foreign hostages two weeks ago.

    Rather than wasting time on this amnesty talk, government should be thinking of developing capacity for fighting the terrorists. After 9/11, when Al-Qaeda caught the United States cold, the Americans created the Department of Homeland Security as part of their comprehensive response. They didn’t choose the easy way out by offering amnesty to the enemies of all that they stood for.

    Today, the major national security threat facing Nigeria is terror, not some cross-border invasion by any of our neighbours. That is why the balance of our security spending should tilt away from conventional forces towards building up intelligence and counterinsurgency.

    Let’s fight for justice and human values for once. This unhealthy stampede to offer amnesty is akin to surrendering to fringe elements who through murderous tactics are making us lose our humanity. Let’s grow a spine and say no to evil.

  • The Unpardonable

    No one can accuse President Goodluck Jonathan of not being full of surprises. The nation is still reeling from his decision to pardon former Bayelsa State Governor, D. S. P. Alamieyeseigha for his wrongdoings whilst in office.

    Prominent lawyers have assured us that the President was within his rights to do what he has done. His political advisers had ordered us all to quit making a fuss – after all Alams has shown remorse and returned everything he took.

    Frankly, I don’t see why busybodies are going on and on. The Americans have even intervened – expressing their dismay that the pardon represented a backward step in the anti-graft war. I expect a press statement from Aso Villa shortly telling them in no uncertain terms to stick their noses somewhere else.

    I take the position that if God in His mercies can forgive us our sins on a daily basis, there’s nothing wrong in the President cleansing his benefactor and mentor of his sins against the state.

    My only point of cavil is that by pardoning only Alams amongst past convicted looters, he has worsened the ongoing marginalisation of the five other geo-political zones in the country. But he can remedy that with next year’s list – on the cusp of the crucial 2015 polls. That will be political genius!

  • Adulterated APC and unpardonable sins

    Adulterated APC and unpardonable sins

    Anyone who thinks the theatre of the absurd currently playing out at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the acronym ‘APC’ is a freak coincidence, will believe anything. Anyone who believes those most threatened by the opposition dissolving into the All Progressives Congress (APC) are not in some way involved in this circus is naïve beyond belief.

    I refer here to the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). Forget the bluster, they are worried and are wise to be disturbed. Obviously, you’re not likely to find fingerprints of their national officers plastered all over the grubby application letter of the adulterated APC, when nondescript proxies can execute the task excellently.

    Aside the flurry of meetings and caucuses of the PDP in recent weeks, this latest dirty tricks stunt calculated to throw the energised opposition out of their stride, is the best indication yet of how rattled the powers-that-be are. The received notion that certain persons and groups can never work together to challenge the anticipated 60-year PDP hegemony, has bitten the dust. For once, the monster which thought itself invincible is flailing around blindly.

    Suddenly, everyone wants to register a political party that will generate the acronym ‘APC.’ Aside the merging opposition parties, the ‘Jankara’ African Peoples’ Congress, a new bunch have turned in a letter at the electoral commission seeking to register something called ‘All Patriotic Citizens.’ The power of imagination displayed by these clowns is simply breathtaking!

    This rash of political party formation activity comes against the backdrop of the deregistration, by INEC, in December 2012 of 28 political parties on grounds of their inactivity and near electoral irrelevance. None of them won a single seat at any level at the 2011 general elections.

    Among those consigned to the political wilderness by that action are some of Nigeria’s best known political activists like Balarabe Musa, Olu Falae, Tunji Braithwaite, Dr. Junaid Muhammed, Rev. Chris Okotie to name a few.

    While not denying anyone their legal right to seek registration of their wives and children as political parties, the point must be made that such a step bucks the emerging trend.

    In a competitive environment where familiar political figures found it difficult to thrive, it is not surprising that the old logic of Nigeria being essentially a two-party state is swiftly evolving into our present day reality.

    In this sort of circumstance, it is not credible to expect that any political organisation with serious designs on power will seek to strike out on its own; even worse, do so in the transparently mercenary and bumbling way the fake APCs have gone about the business.

    While the mischief is evident for all to see, and while the leaders of the opposition merger vehicle will be foaming at the gills with consternation, the broader worry should be about how low we are sinking into the morass of mediocrity.

    Whichever political ‘strategists’ are pushing the adulterated APC operation deserve to be fired. If the best they can come up with to counter the threat of the new opposition grouping is the silly trick of denying them use of a particular name or acronym, then they deserve to be pitied. The parties could always pick another name that will resonate even better with the populace.

    Someone is probably wondering what all the fuss about the name is. You need to have hung around politicians to know why. What may seem trifling to the rest of us carries grave implications where they are concerned.

    A typical politician understands that a huge chunk of the electorate – the ones who actually queue in the sun for hours to vote – are largely not too well-educated. So there is the need to keep things very simple for these kinds of voters. So they pick a name or acronym that will, for instance, place them at the top of the ballot paper.

    That way they can explain to the simpleminded that their party – Action Alliance – is right at the top of the ballot paper. ‘It’s the very first box; you can even thumbprint it blindfolded.’

    Notice that in this fight over names and acronyms, there is no discussion of solutions to the challenges confronting Nigeria. That is because those sorts of matters don’t decide who wins elections in Nigeria. People go through the motions of campaigning, but they know that in the end what will count is how well you have deployed financial resources to get out the vote, or how well you’ve deployed your master riggers to fix the elections.

    So rather than beginning to engage the new threat on the basis of what they would do differently, we are stuck in the quick sand of ruling party officials trying to trip up their rivals in the vain hope that it will make them go away. But that is not going to happen.

    What is emerging now is a clear pointer that the elections of 2015 will be more of the same: a rigging contest – full of dirty tricks and uncontrollable violence.

    Of course, INEC might still do the right thing and register those who have presented themselves to the world since early February using the name All Peoples Congress and the ‘APC’ acronym. But even if they choose to do what the typical Nigerian institution will do, and register any of these other fly-by-night outfits, there will be important lessons for the opposition to learn, and grave implications for the credibility of the electoral commissions as an impartial arbiter.

    The opposition needs to quickly get its head out of the clouds and realise that PDP is not going to hand over power on a platter. If they are going down, they will do so making an almighty racket. They will employ dirtier tricks than the current APC stunt, and invent new ones that are not already in the books. Put simply: 2015 will be war.

  • The PIB can of worms

    The PIB can of worms

    One of the arguments that Northern politicians have deployed for so long to frustrate passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), is that it gives too much to the Niger Delta – the region which for over half a century has hosted the exploitation of Nigeria’s crude oil with all attendant devastation.

    A typical argument was made on the floor of the Senate last Tuesday, by Senator Ahmed Lawan of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). He said the Niger Delta states did not deserve additional funds, having received N11 trillion from derivation, the Ecological Fund and other sources since 1999.

    Waxing eloquent, he claimed that various state governments in the oil-producing belt that had been receiving 13 per cent derivation had virtually nothing to show for the cash inflows. Putting the extra burden of more money on the people was unacceptable he argued.

    Positions similar to that advanced by Lawan have been canvassed in the past by the likes of Governors Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano and Babangida Aliyu of Niger. In fact, the governors did make the point that what one or two of the Niger Delta states receive from the federal purse dwarfed what accrued to the entire North.

    Each time those arguments were made they not only came across as insensitive, but also irrational. Now, in the light of the recent revelations about the ownership of oil blocs in the country, they have been exposed as fraudulent and hypocritical.

    In the face of boisterous Northern opposition to the PIB, Chairman, Senate Committee on Business and Rules, Ita Enang (Akwa Ibom North-West), changed the tenor of the debate at last Wednesday’s plenary when he accused influential northerners of being owners of 83 per cent of the entire oil wells in the Niger Delta!

    For those who may have missed the report, I reproduce here Enang’s list. Those to be found there include Alhaji Mai Deribe, Borno State, who owns Cavendish Petroleum – operator of OML 110 with an average revenue of N4billion monthly.

    Seplat/Platform Petroleum, operators of the ASUOKPU/UMUTU Marginal Field has Mallam (Prince) Sanusi Lamido of Kano, as major shareholder and director. This Sanusi is not the same person as the Central Bank Governor.

    Another well-known name is General T. Y. Danjuma of Taraba State. He established South Atlantic Petroleum Limited (SAPETRO). He is also chairman of Eni Nigeria Limited. SAPETRO partnered with Total Upstream Nigeria Limited (TUPNI) and Brasoil Oil Services Company Nigeria Limited to become operators of the OPL 246.

    AMNI International Petroleum and Development Company is owned by Alhaji (Colonel) Sani Bello of Kontangora , Niger State – another ubiquitous player in corporate Nigeria. They operate OML 112 and OML 117.

    According to Enang, former Petroleum Minister and former OPEC Chairman, Rilwanu Lukman, manages AMNI oil blocks “with very key interest in the NNPC/Vitol trading deal.”

    Among other disclosures are that Oriental Energy Resources Limited, a company owned by Maiduguri-based multimillionaire, Alhaji Mohammed Indimi, runs three oil blocs – OML 115, the Oldwok field and the Ebok field.

    Alhaji Aminu Dantata’s Express Petroleum and Gas Limited, operates OML 108. OML 113 allocated to Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Limited is owned by Alhaji W.I. Folawiyo. Alhaji Saleh Mohammed Gambo, North East Petroleum Limited, is the holder of the OPL 215 Licence.

    North East Petroleum was awarded blocs OPL 276 and OPL 283 and sealed a Joint Venture Agreement with Centrica Resources Nigeria Limited and CCC Oil and Gas.

    INTEL is owned by former Vice President Abubakar Atiku, the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero. It is believed to own substantial stakes in the oil exploration industry in Nigeria as well as Sao Tome and Principe.

    Among the few Southern-owned business interests on the list are Mike Adenuga’s Conoil – the oldest indigenous oil exploration company with six blocks. OPL 291 was awarded to Starcrest Energy Nigeria Limited, owned by Emeka Offor and later sold to Addax Petroleum.

    Without question these revelations must have caused considerable disquiet and embarrassment in certain circles. The lopsidedness of the distribution tells the story of Nigeria in the last 52 years. Clearly, the pattern of distribution of the blocs is down to the fact that for the bulk of our years as an independent nation the North has produced leaders at the center whether under military regimes or in civil dispensations.

    Knowing what we now know we can return to the central point of Senator Lawan’s argument which is that the Niger Delta states have received too much money – over N11 trillion from various sources since 1999 to use his figures. We may not even make an issue over how much is too much. But perhaps Lawan may wish to enlighten us about how much accrued to northern states in the same period so we can have a reasonable discussion.

    He also makes the moot point that the states have not been able to manage – such that they have very little to show. Nigeria’s reality, however, is that governments whether at federal or state level have not been able to manage Nigeria’s resources in a way that would have transformed our fortunes. No region – not the north or even Lawan’s home state – can claim to have done better.

    If such performance were the basis for revenue allocation, I dare say many states and regions will receive zero allocation.

    Now we have a situation where these influential Northerners who own 80% of Nigeria’s oil blocs are receiving more revenue than the entire region from which they come. We have no information as to how long they have owned these assets. The question we should ask is how these billions have benefitted the North?

    The whole plank on which Northern opposition to the PIB has rested for so long is equity. What is equitable in a situation where a section of the elite corner these oil blocs and not a single name from the Niger Delta appears on that list? It goes beyond being inequitable; it is downright embarrassing for this country.

    Of course, there’s no guarantee that if the door of the elite oil bloc owners association is opened a crack to let in one or two persons from the Niger Delta it will change much for the poverty-stricken masses in the creeks. Still, this distorted ownership structure cannot be allowed to remain.

    The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has called on the government to investigate Enang’s claim. I absolutely align myself with that suggestion. We should establish how these blocs got into the hands of those who own them. We must then revoke all licences and establish a more equitable way of distributing them to ensure better balance – east, west, north and south.

    The PIB is not perfect and those who argue that too much power is concentrated in the hands of the President and Petroleum Minister may have their point.

    But all those who are still nitpicking over 10% of oil company profits going to host communities need to balance their greed and envy with an understanding of the uncommon ecological damage that these communities have suffered, and continue to suffer. Perhaps, one month of legislative oversight in the creeks – under the shadow of a gas flare – will change the perspective of the Abuja bunch.

  • Jonathan and his Maradona politics

    Jonathan and his Maradona politics

    It was former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, who in an interview granted this paper on the occasion of his 60th birthday, called President Goodluck Jonathan ‘Nigeria’s most dangerous politician.’

    Part of that lethal effect comes from the fact that because he lacks the oratorical skills of a Bill Clinton, for example, people tend to underrate him and write him off as dour and ineffective. His chess-like moves that threw the much-vaunted Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) into disarray last week, show that you dismiss him at your own peril.

    But the greater danger of his brand of politics that embraces all the dodgy philosophies of the Diego Maradona school of thought is that it always ends in tears.

    Maradona is a famous former Argentinean football player who at the height of his powers at the World Cup finals in 1986 scored a vital goal against England using underhand tactics. He then blasphemously attributed the inspiration for his dubious goal to a holy God. He scored, he said, with a little help from “the hand of God!”

    For the Maradonas of this world the end always justifies the means. It doesn’t matter who or what is trampled upon or run over in the process. But the trouble with dribblers is that they soon tie themselves up in knots because they quickly run out of space for manouvre.

    Former President Ibrahim Babangida never called himself Maradona. But the moniker naturally attached itself to the man and never detached itself. And it was all down to his penchant for periodically sabotaging a political transition that he invented.

    This last week President Jonathan showed that he has assimilated the bare essences of Maradonic politics by demobilising and balkanising the NGF with the creation of the so-called Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum (PDP-GF).

    But while the President and his men might count what happened in Aso Villa last week as some tremendous achievement, I am less than impressed. I have long held the view that the power and unity of the NGF is grossly exaggerated.

    A few weeks ago, prominent Ijaw leader, former Minister of Information, and Jonathan’s chief cheerleader, Chief Edwin Clark, was fulminating against the NGF – accusing the body of all sorts of crimes. In reaction to his comments I had written in my column of January 27, 2013 as follows:

    “Today, Clark would like us to believe that the NGF is this new-fangled monstrosity that is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Closer examination will, however, show that the behemoth has a soft underbelly. They can be a powerful bloc when they agree, but they are as powerless as a congregation of strange bedfellows when their interests diverge along regional, ethnic or monetary lines.”

    The Aso Rock drama therefore goes beyond a clash of egos between a prickly president who wouldn’t brook a contrary word being said about him, and a governor who in the eyes of the powers-that-be was beginning to spill out of his britches. It is, in reality, the foreplay for the coming 2015 battles.

    All these chess moves are evidence of an incumbent president who has decided to run and is putting structures in place to support such a bid. This sort of aggression is usually deployed for something greater than assuaging a bruised ego.

    After Niger State Governor, Babangida Aliyu, blew the whistle on the one-term pact supposedly signed between Jonathan and PDP governors in 2011, the president’s spokesmen would not give a yes or no answer – but rather settled for hot air. The president will not be distracted and will only speak on such matters from next year, they said huffily.

    But we don’t need any other confirmation. His actions speak louder than words. His party chairman, Bamanga Tukur, has even come out to affirm the right of the president to run again. But here they all miss the point.

    In 2011 and as it is now, the real issue was not whether Jonathan as a Nigerian had the right to run. What we are confronted with is the reality that in politics in countries with a multiplicity of ethnic groups, things are not always resolved only by legalities. Sometimes factors like balance, fairness and spread come into play.

    In 1999, every Nigerian had a right to run for president. But the major parties that year decided that given the injustice suffered by the late Chief M. K. O. Abiola whose victory at the June 12, 1993 presidential polls was arbitrarily annulled by the military, that the South-West be compensated with the position in the interest of national reconciliation.

    That year, the PDP’s Olusegun Obasanjo ran against the All Peoples Party (APP)-Alliance for Democracy (AD) candidate, Olu Falae. Both men were Yoruba.

    Jonathan is free to run as the Tukur and the courts have said. But the question he will have to answer sooner than later is whether he gave his word to stand down after one term. It doesn’t matter whether he signed a physical document. Did he give his word of honour?

    I recall that after this deal was reached, and the northern governors left the group of Atiku Abubakar, Adamu Ciroma and Ibrahim Babangida and Aliyu Mohammed Gusau in the lurch, many of them became pariahs in their own states. They were perceived as treacherous individuals who deserved to be stoned for selling out the interest of their region.

    They stuck out their necks in the belief that a gentleman will keep his word. I suspect that someone like Atiku who was especially embittered by Jonathan’s decision to run in 2011 returned to PDP in the expectation that the president will not contest again. Surely, he must be wiser now.

    If there was a deep reservoir of resentment against Jonathan back then, it will be difficult to plumb the depths of regional ill-feeling were he to renounce his pact to serve for just one term.

    The tragedy for the president and country is that he talks up a storm about transforming Nigeria, yet his politics threatens to sink the nation deeper into the mire of division. Instead of offering the ‘breath of fresh air’ he promised during his 2011 campaign, all he’s doing is serving up the regurgitated banalities of previous leaders.

    What is so novel about locking governors up and showing them a video of Amaechi attacking him over the Bayelsa-Rivers oil wells dispute. The late General Sani Abacha patented the Aso Rock film show tour – trucking in everyone from traditional leaders to market women to watch bungling, bumbling generals planning to topple a master coup-plotter.

    In a country aspiring to build a democracy should we be coercing people using the tactics of military dictators, or engaging in a contest of ideas – no matter how contentious?

    What is so unique about changing the goal posts in mid-game? Babangida wrote the manual on that. As for renouncing agreements sealed with a handshake, Jonathan must have torn several pages out of the handbook of a couple of predecessors.

    Unfortunately, this base politics devoid of honour cannot take Nigeria far. If people occupying or aspiring to the high office of president can blithely disavow commitments they made to others – just because they didn’t sign a written document – why should we believe anything they tell us when they come seeking our votes again? Nigeria certainly deserves better.

  • ‘Messi’ and the opposition hordes

    ‘Messi’ and the opposition hordes

    It was billed as mission impossible by cynics who have seen past attempts at mergers and alliances by political parties fizzle at the altar of outsize egos and gargantuan ambitions. And, the speed with which four major opposition parties announced the formation of the All Peoples Congress (APC) was, to say the least, dizzying.

    Of all the reactions to the event, the one I found most entertaining was that by the national chairman of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Bamanga Tukur. At a time when Nigeria’s football team, the Super Eagles, decided to shock a jaded nation with its exploits in South Africa, it was not surprising that Tukur would succumb to a sporting metaphor to respond to an equally unscripted political development.

    “If they have the strength why do they come together?” he wondered. “If you go for a contest you have the striker, you know Lionel Messi, PDP is Messi in the contest. They (opposition) are not a threat at all, it is better; it will inspire PDP to action.

    For the uninitiated, Lionel Messi is the pint-sized Argentinean dynamo who plays for the top Spanish La Liga side, Barcelona. He is quick, consistent and skilful beyond belief. Those are not words that you would ordinarily use to describe the PDP – a lumbering, bumbling, unwieldy assemblage of disparate interests welded together for so long, by the sole fact that in 13 years it has remained the surest path to power at the center.

    I didn’t expect Tukur to react to the news by saying he and his party men were shaking in their boots. Although, PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisah Metuh, did issue a statesmanlike statement welcoming the merger, some leading members of his party have been to quickly dismissive.

    On the face of it they have grounds to be so cavalier. In 2011, Muhammadu Buhari’s infant Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) went into a late-hour mating dance. The alliance effort was half-hearted, but more critically, it was grievously ill-timed coming as it did just a few weeks before polling day.

    Many will also recollect another chaotic attempt at electoral collaboration in 1999. By the time of elections, leaders of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) who had dashed in and out of the nascent PDP and All Peoples Party (APP) for all manner of reasons, found themselves boxed into the South-West.

    The only way to power at federal level was to cooperate with the then APP which appeared to enjoy some popularity across the northern states. It turned out the APP’s supposed strength was exaggerated. Some of its leading lights like Umaru Shinkafi whom the AD-APP alliance was depending upon were roundly trounced. More than incompatibility, the 1999 failure was more because the collaboration was rushed – leaving no time for adequate mobilisation of the people and familiarisation with the political platform.

    Again, one of the reasons why such mergers and alliances had failed in the past was down to the presence of larger-than-life figures who led the potential partners, and whose ambitions stood in the way of genuine cooperation.

    When they were alive the ambitions of the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, were considerable cogs that made any talk of cooperation between the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) little more than a pipe dream.

    Many will see in the APC that same challenge given that Buhari still dreams of reaching the presidency. Some in the new partnership believe he remains a hard sell in other parts of the country, and prefer he anoints a younger individual around whom the new party can rally. But there’s no sense that the general has decided to sacrifice his aspiration. The only light at the end of the tunnel might be that the other parties have decided to live with the reality that the general will run one final time.

    Of course, many PDP strategists believe Buhari can never win an election in Nigeria. That much has been said by Dr. Doyin Okupe, Public Affairs Adviser to the President. Since we are still throwing football metaphors and analogies around, I might just add that in politics as in sport anything is possible. The current Super Eagles team at the African Cup of Nations went there unheralded. Many expected them to be humiliated by Cote d’Ivoire. Today, they will be playing in the finals against another underrated and unheralded bunch of no-hoppers – Burkina Faso!

    I suggest that rather than laugh and think that it will be business as usual, the PDP should be worried for all manner of reasons. Even if the opposition does nothing else, they have managed something major with the creation of the APC given their differences and the personalities who have agreed to subsume parties where they were once lords and masters, and join a bigger team where they will just be one of the major players. In Nigerian politics that is not something to sneer at.

    Will there be disagreements? Of course, there will be. Will someone people suddenly make an about-turn when they fail to get what they hoped for? Depend on it! Will some people starting carping about a lack of ideological purity? Of course, they will.

    But like the pragmatic former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, once told his nitpicking colleagues in the then opposition Labour Party: even if you have the best ideas you can never do anything about them for as long as you remain in opposition. His message was clear: Labour had to downplay the ideological grandstanding and find ways to make themselves electable.

    In the very existence of the APC today, Nigerian opposition politicians are finally waking up to the reality that PDP could govern for 60 years, as they have threatened to, unless they find a way to make themselves electable.

    Another reason the PDP should worry is that the key pillars in the new party have strength in two zones with the greatest haul of electoral votes: North-West and South-West. With that as foundation and with pick-ups in other zones, they can easily make the constitutional requirement of winning one-third of votes cast in two-thirds of the states of the federation. Believe it or not, there is a clear path way to Aso Rock for the APC.

    Lying like a time-bomb in the belly of the PDP is the President Goodluck Jonathan factor. Will he run or will he not? After the bitter zoning battles of 2011, and the unwritten understanding that he will govern for just one term, another bid by the incumbent is bound to fracture the party – to the benefit of a new, credible platform with a realistic chance of going all the way.

    Another factor the ruling party has to be concerned about is PDP-fatigue. Across the world the electorate often gets to a point where they just become bloody-minded, tired of the same old faces, and would gladly throw them overboard if there is a credible alternative in sight. Margaret Thatcher was kicked out by voters after 13 years in power for similar reasons. Come 2015 the PDP would have been in power 16 years non-stop.

    As a kid growing up in the 70s, I became familiar with a particular brand of analgesic called APC. The new opposition party can turn out to be Nigeria’s pain killer if its leading lights can show that their desire to get into power in order to implement their ideas is far greater than all their egos put together. That is the real challenge: forming the new party was the easy part.

  • The old man and the governors

    The old man and the governors

    Prominent Ijaw leader and former Minister of Information, Chief Edwin Clark, revels in his unofficial role as President Goodluck Jonathan’s godfather. On several occasions when critics had his godson on the ropes, his pugnacious intervention served to stiffen the backbone of the man who, not too long ago, described himself as the world’s most criticised president.

    Well into his 80s, the old man is not your average meddlesome interloper. Indeed, anyone who tracked his role in the emergence of the current occupant of Aso Villa will find much evidence suggesting that he and Jonathan sing from the same hymn book.

    Back in 2011 when the zoning palaver threatened to tear the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) apart, Clark led a delegation of South-South leaders to reason with Northern power brokers led by former Finance Minister and one-time presidential aspirant, Adamu Ciroma. His trouble-shooting expedition received short shrift from the embittered leaders, but his cause will ultimately prevail after former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s challenge collapsed on convention night.

    Clark is still at the wars – taking on everyone from former President Olusegun Obasanjo to the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF). His latest no-holds barred attack on those he blames for making life difficult for Jonathan, is a reminiscence of the recent attack on Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, by the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe.

    These days nobody has a nice thing to say about Obasanjo so there’s nothing novel about another volley of invectives spat in the direction of Baba. I would suggest though that Clark was not so ferocious in denouncing the former president’s so-called crimes against party democracy when he was in the vanguard of those fighting for Jonathan’s enthronement back in 2011.

    I am more interested in the Ijaw leader’s vituperations against the NGF, because in the past I had been quite critical of the forum – likening it to some sort of secret society. Clark, rightly, has accused the governors of demanding at the centre what they would not tolerate at state level.

    He said: “The governors’ forum is now acting as an opposition party to the Federal Government. It deliberately breaches with impunity, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Constitution of the PDP, without any challenges. The Forum has now become a threat to the peace and stability of Nigeria. Most of the governors today are more dictatorial than the then military governors.”

    Ignoring the hyperbole, any fair observer will admit that while most governors would like a say in who becomes national chairman of the ruling party, they would not tolerate such impertinence were some local government chairmen to band together and insist on making input into who becomes state chairman of the party.

    So, a lot of the observations of Clark are spot on. However, the only reason the chief is moaning so loudly is because his godson is on the receiving end. Try as he might he has not been able to impose his will on the PDP as Obasanjo did. Much of that is down to the make up the two men. Whereas one was willing to ride roughshod over the party – deploying the apparatus of state to achieve his goals, the incumbent would rather tiptoe around obstacles. He would rather deploy homilies where an Obasanjo would have set off Scud missiles.

    But that is not the whole story. If the governors have become more formidable and better organised as a pressure group, it is down to the lessons they learnt from the Obasanjo years. Back them they also tended to band together. People forget that at the 2003 nominating convention, a good number of them were actually backing Atiku. Obasanjo and his late wife, Stella, virtually had to go on bended knees to secure their support. Of course, he never forgave them for the humiliation of making him beg.

    Today, Clark would like us to believe that the NGF is this new-fangled monstrosity that is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Closer examination will, however, show that the behemoth has a soft underbelly.

    They can be a powerful bloc when they agree, but they are as powerless as a congregation of strange bedfellows when their interests diverge along regional, ethnic or monetary lines.

    To confirm this you only need to look at their disarray over issues like revenue sharing and state police. On the former, suddenly you had a sub-bloc – the Northern Governors Forum – taking the position that the Niger-Delta states were cornering an unfair share of our commonwealth. That divergence of opinion is also evident over the contentious Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

    Not surprisingly, the governors of the South-South states find the aforementioned positions of their northern colleagues, to put it mildly, insulting.

    But where it comes to more parochial matters like who controls party positions and certain political offices, a certain amity descends upon what, in reality, is a fairly fractious organisation.

    My main area of disagreement with Clark, though, is that I no longer believe that the NGF – no matter how powerful it is made out to be – is such a bad thing after all. The Ijaw leader says the governors have turned themselves into the real opposition to the government at the centre. What he does not want to accept is that in every big political party there will be all manner of tendencies each fighting for control of the soul of the organisation.

    More importantly, democracy is about checks and balances. Obasanjo was often accused of running an imperial presidency where the legislative and judicial branches became appendages of the executive. Under him we saw that the awesome powers of an executive president could be deployed towards the most unsavoury of ends.

    Such is the way things are stacked the even the weakest of men could be transformed into a Machiavellian monster by the powers of the office. In our practice of American-style democracy the legislative branch, and to some extent the judiciary, have failed woefully in providing the brakes upon a rampaging president.

    It helps that in an environment such as ours that there are several power centers and no office holder – no matter how eminent –begins to delude himself into thinking that the sun rises and sets on his desk.

    The power and influence of the NGF is a reasonable check and balance against any potentially overbearing occupant of Aso Rock. Better still, it forces all the leading players in our political space to reappraise the virtues of compromise in addressing all political issues – no matter how contentious.

    Rather than foaming at the mouth with rage and calling the governors names, what Clark and others who are discomfited by the influence of the NGF should do is seek ways of working with the National Assembly during constitution review process to cut the governors down to size at state level.

  • PDP civil war and Boko Haram

    PDP civil war and Boko Haram

    The latest skirmishes in what is shaping up to be a full-blown civil war in the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) ahead the 2015 general elections was headline news all through last week. There was former President Olusegun Obasanjo on CNN pontificating about the Nigerian condition and offering remedies for our many maladies.

    Consumed by patriotic zeal, he offered his most hard-hitting critique yet of President Goodluck Jonathan’s management of the Boko Haram insurgency, dismissing it as all stick with nary a carrot in sight. This was the signal for a presidential retort that it needed no “lectures” on how to resolve the conflict. Not the chummiest of exchanges between leading lights of the ruling party!

    Baba, as his fans call him, had forgotten that at Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s, 40th anniversary ministry celebrations in Warri, Delta State, he had bragged about how his muscular intervention in Odi, Bayelsa State, broke the backs of pesky Niger Delta militants once and for all.

    Those comments were widely, and correctly, interpreted as an endorsement of the firm hand treatment for terrorists, as opposed to Jonathan’s vacillation between force and talk.

    To now turn around a couple of weeks later to denounce the president for not trying enough to understand why the Boko Haram killers are so bestial is mischievous – to say the least. It is a pointer that in the looming war ahead in the ruling party truth will not only be an early casualty; logic will also be turned on its head.

    Anyone investigating the short history of failed dialogue between the government and the insurgents will find that Jonathan and his administration have been anything but hawkish over the matter. Even in the face of the worst outrages the president was always advocating talks – much to the chagrin of many.

    His recent tough talk is not the result of any sort of Damascus Road conversion; it is rather the cul-de-sac into which the government has been pushed by harsh reality.

    The fact is nothing has happened in the battle against Boko Haram to make dialogue any more reasonable or plausible at this point. Of course, it is politically correct to back talks, and the advocates of dialogue have tried their best to paint those who take a different view as intemperate, sectional and partisan. Nothing can be farther from the truth.

    Dialogue doesn’t just happen: humans are not that reasonable. Combatants only come to the table when they realise that their cause cannot be achieved by force of arms. Sometimes they come to that realisation before the shooting starts; at other times it takes the sight of blood and devastation to bring them back to their senses.

    I should also point out that no legitimate government – no matter how peace-loving – will just scurry into talks with every outlaw or pseudo-freedom fighter the minute its authority is challenged. They will only do so when they come to the conclusion that they can no longer impose their will and authority over the territory they control.

    Talks with Boko Haram is further complicated by the fact that sect has since fragmented into several factions. Which do you begin to negotiate with? If you cut a deal with one band of goons, will the other faction uphold such an agreement?

    In these sorts of matters dialogue can only be a reward for reason, or the consequence of the insurgents proving themselves militarily. They have not done so, and have suffered so many reverses in recent times they have been reduced to carrying out their inhuman killings in isolated villages along the Nigeria-Cameroun border.

    They have not done anything that can be vaguely described as reasonable. They could for instance declare a short ceasefire as a window for negotiations. They could also say they will no longer target innocent, unarmed civilians. But they have done nothing of this sort but continue with what Pope Benedict not too long ago referred to as “savage acts of terror” whenever they get a chance.

    For me, all talk of dialogue is especially repugnant when the group we are supposed to be talking with has devoted itself to setting the country on fire using sectarian triggers.

    Some mischievous commentators have excoriated CAN President, Oritsejafor, in recent times for taking a tough stance against the so-called dialogue. In their desperate bid to appear politically-correct, they miss the point. If they would take off the blinkers from their eyes they may appreciate how a man in his position can take such a stance.

    Where else in Nigeria are adherents of any religion being set upon in a deliberate and systematic manner as is happening in the North-East today? Who has heard or been given anything that approaches a rationale for slitting a pastor’s throat before his congregants?

    After a series of deadly attacks in June last year, Boko Haram spokesman, Abul Qaqa, in claiming responsibility said: “We are responsible for the suicide attack on a church in Jos and also another attack on another church in Biu. The Nigerian state and Christians are our enemies and we will be launching attacks on the Nigerian state and its security apparatus as well as churches until we achieve our goal of establishing an Islamic state in place of the secular state.”

    If the sect is angry with the government over the killing of its erstwhile leader, Mohammed Yusuf, how do Christians come in? The president at that point was Umaru Yar’Adua – a Muslim.

    Some advocates of dialogue at all cost, and by all means, have even reduced the matter to the parochial level of arguing that even more Muslims than Christians have been killed by the sect.

    It is easy to play a morbid game of statistics, but silly arguments about which side has more body bags to show will not get us very far. The fact of the matter is this conflict is taking place in northern Nigeria where there are more Muslims than Christians.

    When these killers sow their bombs in Kano city, for example, anyone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time would be blown to bits. It wouldn’t matter whether they were carrying a tesbiu or rosary. Those killed become collateral damage in the process of Boko Haram terrorising the community. They didn’t die because the sect launched a war against Muslims.

    But there is evidence of deliberate, coordinated murder of Christians in their homes and churches from Borno to Kano to Adamawa. What is happening in the North is sinister; it is evil. It should be stamped out – not coddled. No one suggested dialogue with the Nazis who were exterminating people because of their race and beliefs; no one should suggest that with this sect.

  • A king’s ransom

    Sometime in December 2012 six management staff of the South Korean construction and engineering firm, Hyundai Heavy Industries, were kidnapped somewhere in the creeks of Bayelsa State.

    The ink was barely dry on the reports when news emerged a few days later that they had been released. Since there was no account of security forces heroics, it is no surprise to now read that the company had coughed out a tidy N30 million to secure the release of their staff.

    Now, the Bayelsa State Police Command is furious that Hyundai paid the ransom ‘without their consent’. I am a bit confused as to the reason for their anger. Are they mad because the payment was done without their involvement, or they are opposed in principle to all such payments?

    In virtually all cases of kidnapping in recent times, hefty sums have exchanged hands. These sorts of exchanges are nothing new. In the past many Niger Delta governors paid off militants to secure peace in their domains. It has also emerged that Boko Haram elements had been paid protection money in the past by some wise northern governors.

    Insecurity – whether caused by kidnappers or terrorists – will not cease when you can make N30 million for a few days work. Only in Nigeria can you achieve such a return!