The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

Tale of four letters; Three Pretoria people; Road/Niger Bridge Travel as ‘National Disasters’

The world buried Nelson Mandela and begins the search for a successor-an international honest political hero, Meanwhile Nigerians read the horrible revelations in two letters from Sanusi of CBN and Obasanjo, ex-President and look at the third ‘letter’, a Supreme Court Judgement in favour of Bode George and a fourth ‘letter’, a High Court ruling in favour of Nasir El Rufai. Nigerians shudder at the consequences of corruption, poor governance, vindictive prosecution and abuse of investigative organs of justice since before 1999 and questionable court judgement. Nigerians must remember that there is no difference between government trained snipers, killer squads, thugs and police KAG –‘Kill and Go’. They all kill and all parties use one or another. If we can stop one, we must stop all. A sniper’s bullet in the heart or brain has the same effect as a cut throat from a machete or brains spilt with a thug’s stick. For example how many were imprisoned, executed and died mysteriously during the dreaded Abacha regime, yet he still has a stadium named after him and his henchmen and offspring will soon again run for President if not governor? How many die each election.

Christian Amanpour of CNN reminds us all that Pretoria and South African experiences link three great heroes of this generation. They were all burnt or seared by apartheid and miraculously went on to personal greatness. Churchill was held in Pretoria during the Boer War and escaped to become a war hero and later the great leader of Great Britain during World War 11 and though he later described Ghandi as ‘bloody kafir’, Churchill in the heat of WW11 in 1943 still managed to set up the machinery that would bring higher education to English speaking Africa with the founding of the Universities Ibadan, Legon and Fourah Bay. Ghandi was thrown off the train to Pretoria for being Indian. He subsequently fought apartheid and became the non-violence icon during struggles to lead India to independence in 1947. And then there was Mandela, Madiba.

From adversity and pollution sometimes comes magnificent resolve and unimaginable greatness leading often excruciatingly slowly to purifying the society and FREEDOM. But during the process of ‘purification’, many, in their miserable millions, are ‘contained’, minimised in needs and deeds, crippled, killed, die in reality or economically, of their wounds, mental and physical. They remain unsung except by loved ones. How many must suffer for one suffering hero to emerge? How many suffered and died in slavery before abolition? How many times did Mandela’s name come up for execution or appear in the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle? What saved Mandela when other mortals in Sharpsville and Soweto and victims like Chris Hani were fair game for dog attacks, beatings, brutality, bullets and murder?

When good men and women keep quiet or are silenced bad people fill the vacuum. That is why the EU is trying to solve the electricity problem spawned in Nigeria by the serial failure and collective small mindedness of past political and military visionless leaders with no spark of national energy during the dark ages 1983 to 2013! God gave us the sun but we need someone with solar-vision to harness it for development. Will that be the new Mandela’s task? What is the new apartheid to be confronted by the new Mandela? Is depriving Nigerians of their livelihood, security’, health and education by removing electricity from their expectations the new apartheid leading to oppression by denial of power, exploitation of the people by petroleum and generator oppressors? Will they be defeated by solar power?

So we MUST suffer at the hands of contractors to smile. The 20,000 vehicles in five lanes on each side and 25 kilometres long caught in both sides of the Saturdays of 7-12-2013 and 14-12-13 traffic mayhem cannot all be wrong. What manner of supervising governance, contractor-customer care and country is this? RCC and Julius Berger should have a better CONTRACTOR-CUSTOMER CARE pact. And do not forget the Niger Bridge. The FRSC must redefine its role to keep traffic moving at all times and not pluck unfortunate suffering vehicles for ‘particulars check’. Why is ‘travel’ a ‘Natural or national Disaster’ in Nigeria? We are our worst enemies. Uncaring FRSC, contractors, events like religious events, queue-jumping as a way of expressway life, too few points of turning on the expressway, absent pedestrian walkways all contribute to 4-6 hours for a 127km trip. Judge Nigeria by absent flyovers or pedestrian walkways at Redeem and the slow pace of work on the Lagos Secretariat Alausa pedestrian walkway taking more than six months, the same time as it is taking to build the tallest building in the world! Is there a light at the end of this tunnel? There will be light only if all Nigerians, every Nigerian, join hands to shine their eyes and torches to dispel the evil. Nigeria is dying, not rising. Nigerians must rise up and demand a seat at the table, directly or indirectly. Nigerians must contribute to, eat, drink, thank, talk, walk and sleep and dream ‘The Nigeria of their Dreams’. As we clock 100 years of ‘AMALGAMARRIAGE’ it is time for all to make the changes to our polity and politics, economy and education, humanity and health, safety and security, fiscal and excusive list in the constitution, now with this ‘Sovereign’ -National Conference. Merry Christmas, will you have electricity on Christmas Day?

December 18, 2013
The ‘curse’ of a godfather

Of recent, President Goodluck Jonathan has been under siege like no other president in recent history. In quick succession, he has come under indirect attack from the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and then directly from the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, and even more directly, from his erstwhile benefactor and estranged godfather, former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo.

Not least of all, the man has come under renewed attack from the new opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) which has called for the president’s impeachment subsequent upon Obasanjo’s open letter to his erstwhile godson, a letter in which the godfather has accused his godson of sundry offences, including venality, incompetence and bad faith as leader of his party, as president of the country, as commander-in-chief of its armed forces, as its chief security officer and as its political leader.

Last week, the press published a letter the CBN governor had written to the president months before accusing the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation of failing to remit $49.8 billion (about N8 trillion) from the sales of crude oil for 19 months ending last July. That letter can be interpreted as Malam Sanusi’s indirect way of saying the president was either clueless about the alleged mishandling of the oil business by NNPC or he was negligent or, worse still, complicit.

The CBN governor would not be the first to raise doubts about the transparency of the NNPC and, by extension, that of the Federal Government on whose behalf NNPC handles the oily business. As far back as at least 2003, Engineer Hamman Tukur, former chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), had a running battle with both the NNPC and President Olusegun Obasanjo about money the corporation was supposed to have remitted to the Federation Account. At one time he even wrote the Senate Committees on Appropriations and Finance, accusing the NNPC of short-changing the country of over N300 billion, a charge that then managing director of the corporation, Mr Jackson Gaius-Obaseki, promptly denied.

More recently, the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) warned in its 2011 report on the oil industry that there were revenue short falls of N3.2 trillion from NNPC. Similarly in its controversial report on fuel subsidy, a panel under Malam Nuhu Ribadu appointed by the Minister of Petroleum, Mrs Dizeani Allison-Madueke, to look into the subject said about $30 billion of oil money could not be accounted for.

In all three cases, the public never got any satisfactory answers before the hullabaloos they generated fizzled out.

The difference with the CBN letter is the scale of the alleged venality, which is the biggest so far. Another difference is that the NNPC seems to have a satisfactory answer this time to the charges of playing hanky-panky with oil revenue. Yes, it seems to say, the CBN governor may have got his sums correct but he was wrong not to have disaggregated the total oil revenue among the parastatals collectively responsible for remittances into the Federation Account, the others being the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).

However, even if the CBN governor has goofed – and in spite of NNPC’s seemingly satisfactory explanation, the jury is still out over the issue – no one can deny the fact that long before President Jonathan the presidency has never been in the frontline of the war against corruption in Nigeria’s oily business which has made it one of the most opaque in the world. The problem with the president is that, instead of the breath of fresh air he promised in the way the affairs of state have been conducted in his 2011 presidential campaigns, things have only grown worse exponentially.

Thus, it is difficult, if not impossible, to deny Tambuwal’s charge that the president’s “body language” in the crusade against corruption does not suggest someone who is committed, willing and able to fight the scourge.

However, of all the attacks the president has come under lately, none has apparently rattled him like that of his estranged godfather and benefactor. This should not surprise anyone if only because no true godson can ever be happy at being repudiated by his godfather, no matter the extent of disagreement between them.

Add to this the mystique that this godfather’s repudiation has almost always led to the downfall of the object of his attack – the presidency of Alhaji Shehu Shagari whom he had handed over power to in1979 fell in 1983, the regime of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari which took over from Shagari fell in 1985 and General Ibrahim Babangida who ousted Buhari in a palace coup “steeped aside” in August 1993, not long after Obasanjo publicly chastised each of them – then it’s easy to see why President Jonathan should be worried by the tone and substance of General Obasanjo’s letter.

General Sani Abacha, who threw out General Babangida’s interim civilian administration in November 1993, seemed to have punctured this mystique when, first, he sentenced Obasanjo to death but later commuted the sentence to life for his alleged complicity in a coup attempt against Abacha in 1995, due to pressure from the international community to which Obasanjo was well-connected. But then Abacha died mysteriously in office in 1998 and Obasanjo emerged straight from prison to the presidency in 1999, as if to reinforce his mystique of a man whose curse, for want of a better word, is never in vain.

It is highly unlikely that President Jonathan would fall because of Obasanjo’s “curse”. Military coups have generally since become discredited as a means of regime change, never mind the recent cases of Mali, Egypt and the Central African Republic. Impeachment for “gross misconduct”, as the opposition APC called for over the weekend, is also not a viable option even though the president, like his godfather, has committed almost every impeachable offence you can imagine, not least of which is his highly selective and poor implementation of the country’s annual budgets; the opposition in the National Assembly does not have numbers but even if they do, our ethnic, religious and geo-political divisions and the power of cash coupled with the greed of the ruling elite generally, make it virtually impossible to depose anyone through impeachment.

However, even though President Jonathan is unlikely to fall on account of Obasanjo’s curse, it has damaged the viability of his candidacy in the 2015 presidential election almost beyond repairs.

As president, Obasanjo is, no doubt, one of Nigeria’s, indeed Africa’s, most competent and knowledgeable. Also he is, in spite of the presidency’s most recent retort to his letter that the man is a “spineless coward”, one of Nigeria’s most courageous; for example, only a man of courage will disregard warnings while he is abroad of his imminent arrest once he returns to his country and still go ahead not only to fly back but continue with his criticisms of the authorities, as Obasanjo did under Abacha in 1995.

However, as almost everyone will agree, the man is the last who should preach the virtues of good governance, transparency and good faith to anyone, given the proverbial venality, insecurity, institutional instability and acts of bad faith that characterised his eight-year rule as civilian president.

Even then, his propensity to preach what he does not practise should not detract from his courage to speak truth to power when he is virtually alone among our past leaders that are unhappy with President Jonathan’s dismal record of performance, who can speak out without the matter being turned into an ethnic, sectional or sectarian conflict. It’s hardly difficult to imagine how, for example, Mujahid Asari Dokubo, the outspoken Ijaw militant, would have since turned Obasanjo’s letter into an ethnic or sectional thing or how Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the Christian Association of Nigeria’s president, would have since turned the letter into a religious war if it had been written by, say, Generals Buhari or Babangida.

The only other past leader I can think of who could tick off the president without the matter being given an ethnic or religious colouration is General T. Y. Danjuma. Two Fridays ago, he reportedly lambasted the president in words and tone even more acerbic than Obasanjo’s letter over his incompetence and weak leadership at a private dinner of a very select few initiated by Chief Tony Anenih to solve the seemingly intractable PDP crisis. However, as a private takedown, Danjuma’s reported criticism of the president cannot obviously have the same effect as Obasanjo’s letter.

If nothing else that letter has given the president plenty food to rethink his 2015 presidential ambition. It has also made it difficult, if not impossible for the president’s supporters, his war commanders and foot soldiers alike, to use ethnicity and religion as effective propaganda weapons like they did in the 2011 elections.

December 18, 2013
World, you have lost your leader. Mandela: Robben Island Prisoner 46664, RIP.

World, you have lost your leader. Nelson Mandela, Madiba, Rolihlahla aka troublemaker, 18-7-1918 to 5-12-2013, 95, laugh, dance, smile all the while, RIP=Robben Island Prisoner and Rest In Peace.

Who does not know ‘That Name’? Yet Mandela is not a product of commercial advertisement for products for sale. Indeed Mandela has never been on sale or commercialised at the cost of billions like the ‘big brands’. But perhaps he has been on sale since the ‘Troublemaker’ days. The Mandela Price was unusual, not personal gain or 10 houses in different world capitals and billions in foreign bank dungeons. The Mandela Price has always been Freedom- for himself, his people black, his people white, his people South Africans, his people Africans, his people citizens of the world.

World, you have lost your greatest most outstanding selfless leader. In our youth the memorable ones were Lumumba, JFKennedy, MLKing Jr, Che Guevara –the T-shirt silhouette icon- but they were sectional heroes, cut down in their struggle, loved or hated depending on your socialist or capitalist leanings. Mandela has been different. They could not, or dared not, cut him down. Mandela has been the closest thing we have had to a world leader, not country leader, we have had. In another age, Mandela could have so easily been the President of Africa or the President of the United Nations, meeting intergalactic legions. The people of the world and particularly the poor are the poorer for the lack of next generation Mandelas. Ever child-loving and humble, Mandela even lent his name to a Hand Washing and Toilet Use Campaign.

How many Nigerian and African headmasters and principals and priests and Imams did what we saw their counterparts doing worldwide by teaching ‘Mandela-ism’ to their students and congregations? Following the Mandela-Rhodes Foundation successes at higher learning, every school in Africa and the world should have local ‘Mandela Prizes’ for the most Mandela-like student in each class, set, and an Annual Mandela Award. That way we may raise 200 million Mandelalets a year worldwide, just one in each school. The Mandela guidelines would include Love your enemy, Constructive engagement, sports/games for unity, inclusive government, exemplary honesty in office, quitting when the ovation is loudest.

He led, with many others who suffered and have died, and won a war against a distinctly evil system of government apartheid. But apartheid is easily recognisable as evil because it is black and white, or colour based. There are many ‘apartheids’ which escape the media microscope because they are not colour but creed, domestic, gender, ethnic, age, work or wealth related. Mandela may have lived and left a legacy that ‘could’ change the world but ‘will’ it change the world? The answer is in your hands as president, politician, parliament, people, police. Mandela has shown the world how to walk the walk on the Long Road To Freedom.

Now it is your turn to continue the journey. Are you up for it or in your case did Mandela waste the example of his life, sacrifice, 27 years in Robben Island breaking rocks and his upright leadership, modesty, honesty, dress code and smile? He has gone to rest. We loved the easy way he dressed. His struggle against apartheid was our life guide. He was always on our side. And all the while there has been that generation smile. Rolihlahla aka troublemaker, we have a saying in Nigeria –trouble de sleep, yanga come wake am. In death you have raised more questions and sent several billion people soul searching for more than just the funeral arrangements. Madiba, legacies, yours and ours, are exposed on the table of life by your death. RIP Permit me to donate the rest of this column to excerpts from my work The Laterite Road related to relevant segments to our late revered Man-dela, Great Man, Good Man, Gi-normous Man whose shadow has fallen comfortingly across the peoples of many of the world’s nations.

On The laterite road

Mandela took his long walk to imprisonment

Each prayer, working day and worrisome night

Terminating in nightly dreams of death, Maturing into longevity granting him, Near immortality and immunity

And 27 year Robben Island solitary sanctuary

And finally a long walk to freedom. Paradoxically prison healthy living

Found him his oppressors, outliving.

The universities of hard knocks

Mark tombstones for ‘trouble’ makers

And risk takers.

Maula, Luzira, Babati, Kamiti, Beitbridge, Robben Island,

Kirikiri, Gula, African gulags, imprisoning isles

For tears, torture, Terror and termination

Of innocent and guilty

On the laterite road

On the laterite road

See Chaka Zulu’s heel, Lumumba’s sandal,

Mandela’s footprint, Slaves’ enchained toes.

Look upwards, The shape of the clouds

Our own cloud Rushmore. Use your mind’s eyes,

See Mandela, Lumumba, See Sankara, Schweitzer,

Look Tutu in the face. The laterite road

Led to Robben Island Prisoner

RIP, but alive, Number 46664.

So few returned

Parting the offshore sea

With their wisdom wand

Traversing sand and rock

To walk the last steps

Bridging the divide

Between slavery chains

Clinking around necks and ankles

Linking Nubian mountain climbs

To apartheid treks. ‘No blanks. Whites only’

Obviously a ‘blank’ is not a white, On the laterite road

Africa’s vine, a vascular system, Cardiac, pulsating, Connecting

Cape to Horn, Alexanderia to Djibuti, Maghreb to Madagascar,

Senegal’s Gory Gorée Isle to South Africa’s Robben Prison Island

Rabat to Timbuktu, Lagos to Takoradi

Bulaweyo to Soweto. World, you have lost your leader.

December 11, 2013
Madiba’s legacy

The name his father gave him at birth, he said in his engaging and inspiring 1995 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was Rolihlahla. In Xhosa, his native language, he said, the word literally meant “pulling the branch of a tree” but its colloquial meaning more accurately was “trouble maker”.

“I do not believe,” he said of this name in the opening paragraphs of his book, “that names are destiny or that my father somehow divined my future, but in later years friends and relatives would ascribe to my birth name storms I have both caused and weathered.”

Names may not be destiny and his father may not have divined his future by naming him Rolihlahla at birth, but Nelson Mandela, aka Madiba, who died at 95 last Thursday, December 5, could not have been given a more apt but, at the same time, a more self-contradictory nickname; in the eyes of those who invented and perpetrated apartheid as one of the world’s most obnoxious and heinous ideologies, the man was probably their worst nightmare but in the eyes of the rest of the world he was certainly one of its greatest TROUBLESHOOTERS of all time. For, all his adult life he fought more than most leaders in the world – and paid a higher price – for the dignity and humanity of all men regardless of colour, creed, nationality or gender.

Mandela, at any rate, seemed an unlikely trouble maker growing up in Mveso countryside in Qunu district of the Transkei where he was born on July 8, 1918. “All I wanted as a child of 9 (the year he lost his royal father and had to move out of the village),” he said in his book, “was to be a champion stick fighter.” However, the indignities he suffered and which he saw all around him growing up under the system of apartheid, simply because he was black, left him with no choice but to forget the “luxury” of his literal stick fighting and champion the much more difficult fight against not just racism but any form of discrimination.

As the world testified to yesterday when over a hundred dignitaries, celebrities and world leaders, including American President Barack Obama and our own, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, and thousands of ordinary folks gathered at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, in defiance of heavy rains, to pay him their last respect, the man proved himself the greatest champion of the fight against apartheid. And he did so not with modern day “fighting stick”, or the gun, if you will, but primarily through eschewing bigotry, hatred and reverse racism.

The walk to freedom for all races in South Africa was indeed a long one and, of course, it began long before Mandela was born. In its most popular modern day manifestation as the African National Congress, however, the walk to freedom for all in his country begun in 1912, six years before he was born. Its key objective when it was founded on January 12 that year was the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South African society.

Soon enough the younger elements in the organisation led by Anton Lembede, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and himself, among others, felt the organisation was not militant and mass-oriented enough and consequently in 1944 they formed its Youth League.

Four years after that, apartheid, which until then was only de facto government policy became official, following the defeat of the ruling Unity Party of mostly British whites by the National Party of the Boer settlers widely known as Afrikaans.

Predictably, the NP proceeded post-haste to enact all manner of obnoxious and racist laws which restricted the movements of blacks who formed nearly 80% of the population, of Indians (3%) and of so-called Coloured, i.e. those of mixed races, (8%) and also restricted where they could live, work, play and worship and do whatever. These obnoxious laws climaxed in the Bantustan policy in1959, a policy which gave whites who constituted fewer than 10% of South Africa’s population nearly 90% of the land!

Predictably, the ANC rejected these laws and organised peaceful protests against them. The racist government responded with both force and the law. In 1956, it charged Mandela, along with 155 other members – 105 Africans, 21 Indians, 23 whites and seven Coloured – with treason. The trial proper began three years later and lasted for about two years. Meantime, the government imposed a ban on the movement and public speaking of several of the organisation’s leaders, including, of course, Mandela.

On March 21 1961, two days before the court was to deliver its verdict on the treason trial, a massacre by the South African police took place in Sharpeville, a small township 56 kilometres south of Johannesburg, the country’s commercial capital, in which 69 unarmed Africans were killed, many of them shot in the back as they fled from the scene of the demonstration they had gathered for. Government then declared a state of emergency and subsequently banned the ANC.

The whole world was horrified by the massacre. On its part, the ANC now felt obliged to drop its peaceful resistance. It formed an armed wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation), with Mandela as its first leader and Chris Hani as its commander, and took up arms in 1961. Not even the dismissal by the courts of the case against the defendants following a week’s delay occasioned by the Sharpeville massacre could persuade Mandela and his fellow comrades that the racists had become open to reason.

The ANC knew their acquittal was only a temporary relief. Soon enough it was proved right when 19 of its leaders, including Mandela, were detained and subsequently charged for sabotage and attempt to overthrow the government in what became known as the Rivonia Trial between 1963 and 1964.

The majority of them were convicted and sentenced to live at the end of the trial. Mandela served 27 years of his sentence, the first 18 of them in solitary confinement on the forbidding Roben Island, off the South African coast, before he was released on February 11, 1990.

That release was perhaps the most symbolic moment in the long fight against apartheid. It is hard, if not impossible, to articulate that moment more graphically and more coherently than President Bill Clinton did in his 2004 autobiography, My Life. On that day, he said, he “witnessed the ultimate testimonial in human endurance.” He, his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, whom they had pulled out of bed especially for that moment, he said, watched Mandela on television “take the last step of his long walk to freedom.” Mandela, Clinton said, “had endured and triumphed, to end apartheid, liberate his own mind and heart from hatred and inspire the world.”

In Mandela’s own words, he walked out of his prison that day with bitterness and malice to none. “The oppressor and the oppressed alike,” he said in his book, “are robbed of their humanity. When I walked out of the prison that was my mission, to liberate the oppressor and the oppressed both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that this is not the case. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”

Mandela’s legacy, however, was not only of the need to love even thy enemy. He also left a legacy of knowing when to let go of power as the first black president of South Africa when he promised in 1994 to serve for only one tem and kept his word. He also left behind a legacy of living a simple life, in and out of power, which shunned primitive accumulation of wealth. You can hardly say the same of many leaders, in and out of power today, who have been falling over themselves in singing praises for the man.

When his friend and comrade in the struggle against apartheid, Oliver Tambo, died in April 1993, he had this to say of Tambo: “In Plato’s allegory of the metals, the philosopher classifies men into groups of gold, silver and lead. Oliver was pure gold.”

Borrowing from his tribute to his friend, it would be an understatement to say Mandela was Platinum, with a capital P.

Feedback

Last week’s column on what I said was the persecution of Governor Sule Lamido by President Goodluck Jonathan received a 1,200-word rejoinder from EFCC, a couple of emails one of which I will publish next week, God willing, for the power of its logic, and 38 texts, mostly critical of my piece. I have since forwarded the EFCC reaction to the editors of this newspaper for publication for my lack of space. Below are a few of the texts.

Sir,

How much did Lamido pay you to publish this back-page foolishness you call an article? You deftly and deliberately ignored the real issue: did Lamido’s sons steal?

+2348096571185

Sir,

Are you saying Lamido’s sons were not caught in the act or that they should be left off the hook simply because their father is a performing governor? Be objective for once.

+2348033553191

Sir,

Governor Lamido was/is my man on performance. However, I won’t support indiscipline, corruption and law-breaking by any family member or governor. Journalists, cleanse our society.

+2347064181043

Only irredeemable fools and born cowards call the prosecution of politicians who use their children as conduit pipe to siphon public funds persecution. I urge Mr. President to fight corruption without fear and favour.

+2348076823815

Sir,

Instead of condemning Lamido for the ‘alleged’ looting of d state treasury through his children, you would rather be contented comparing who loots more than the other in the country. And, of course, in your own brand of patriotism a Nigerian governor or leader who performs better than his predecessor in office should be free to help himself with the state money. Very unfortunate.

+2348037921541

Sir,

Imagine this scenario. Tinubu’s son or Murtala Nyako’s daughter commits an offence and the government must look the other way so as not to be accused of selective fight. Warped logic! Why hasn’t the govt picked any of Buhari’s relations for crimes? Let’s stop this elite nepotism. A thief is a thief, whether he steals N184b or N10b.

+2348037055027

December 11, 2013
When is a civil war?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) recently declared clashes between the Nigerian military and Boko Haram as a civil war.

Not surprisingly, supervising Minister of Defence, Labaran Maku, says the conflict is not a civil but a war on terror. He justified his position this way: “When the terrorists attacked the United States in September 11, 2001, it wasn’t declared a civil war; it was an attack on a peaceful country by a group of terrorists for mainly evil objectives.”

Truly, there’s no agreement among experts as to what constitutes a civil war. There is, however, one thing on which Maku and the ICC agree: Nigeria is at war – whether of the civil or terrorist variety. Irrespective of the tag wars involve destruction of lives and property and uncommon expense.

By classifying the ongoing conflict as only a “war on terror” is the minister suggesting that this kind of confrontation is somehow of lesser gravity?

Unlike what happened on 9/11, al-Qaeda had no intention to seize and hold territory. Their plan was not to topple the United States government and take over. That is unlike Boko Haram that has never hidden its intention to take over the whole of northern Nigeria and set up an Islamic republic in the manner of the Islamists in northern Mali.

I came across two dictionary definitions of civil war that I liked. Wikipedia says “a civil war is a war between organised groups within the same nation state or republic.” Another explanation describes it as “a war between citizens of the same country.”

I like things kept simple. Maku and the army may think they are only fighting terrorists, but Boko Haram who claim to be prosecuting a jihad would not define themselves that way. They are also intent on toppling the government of the day using the North-East as the launch pad for their insurrection.

It has also the makings of a civil war. The recent attack on the Maiduguri military formations in which the sect rolled into town in a column of pick-up vans underlines the scope of their ambition.

For as long as the government and military continue to see the Boko Haram conflict as some little firefight, the nation would continue to face the kind of embarrassment it was exposed to in Borno State last week. Remember that when the Nigeria-Biafra civil war began, the Federal authorities spoke of a “police action” to quickly bring the rebels to heel. Three years later the war was still raging.

December 8, 2013
Keeping Tukur posted

National chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) is turning out to be a master at verbal ping-pong. The target of ferocious attacks by a slew of politics foes, he’s becoming increasingly adept at replying cutting soundbites with witty repartee.

The other day, Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, called him a “polio virus” in the PDP, only for Tukur to respond that he was “a necessary virus!”

Knowing the destructive effect of viral infections it is no surprise that his actions contributed in part to the party losing five state governors in one fell swoop – without a single vote being cast.

It must have happened while Tukur was dozing. The man announced a few days ago that he was unaware the five governors had defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Perhaps someone should send him one of those ‘Wish you were here’ postcards!

December 8, 2013
Ekweremadu and the grasshopper mentality

Judging from the torrent of criticism that greeted it, Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu’s tenure elongation proposal is dead on arrival.

With the two leading parties – Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC) almost at par in the gubernatorial count, this single tenure dodge could only have assisted the ruling party to hang on to the presidency for another two years, and buy it time to regain the initiative.

In an increasingly volatile and unpredictable polity we should expect more of such desperate political gambits in the run-up to the 2015 general elections. But it is a shame because it shows the mentality of Nigerian politicians hardly changes.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his henchmen embarked on a well-orchestrated nationwide campaign to amend the 1999 constitution and insert provisions for a third term when he had barely a year to go in his second term.

Instead of allowing the system to work, this power-hungry bunch engineered a fake crisis that had the nation on tenterhooks while it lasted. But the moment the proposal collapsed in the Senate, the contrived crisis became like a lanced boil and peace descended on the land.

It is hard not to see similarities here. Barely one and a half years to the next general elections we’re not only talking of a national conference of dubious value, we are even thinking of throwing the incendiary of tenure elongation gimmick into the mix.

Back in 2007, it was another Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu, who was driving the process. Fast forward six years and under the guise of another so-called constitutional amendment process we are being offered a warmed-over Greek gift. Unfortunately the proponents of this sorry idea didn’t even take the trouble to pour paint on it: that’s why we can see it for what it is.

Last time, a third term was necessary because Obasanjo was the only one who could ‘hold Nigeria together.’ Today, Ekweremadu would have us believe that crises raging in the polity are all down to “the issue of succession.”

In his estimation a single tenure of six years would be the magic bullet that would sate people’s desire for power and restrain them from heating up the polity in the quest for a second bite of the cherry.

In reality, there would always be succession crises whether we have a single term or two-term options. The rosy picture painted by the likes of Ekweremadu to sell their scheme is misleading. People might not be fighting themselves trying to taking advantage of the second term the constitution presently allows, but there would be equally fierce battles as incumbents attempt to install their stooges or those who would protect their interests after their one and only term.

In this environment people’s appetite for power and influence is insatiable because public office is the only game in town. One year in an elective office can alter a man’s financial profile for life. Beyond that, the key thing is to remain relevant and retain access to the powers-that-be at every point in time. That is why transitions would always be tense in Nigeria

Even more laughable is the suggestion that tenure elongation should be executed because it would give comfort to governors engaged in a free-for-all with President Goodluck Jonathan. Some of them are said to be afraid that a second term for the incumbent would afford him the chance to wreak vengeance on them.

Never has there been a lower reason for amending a country’s constitution. We are descending to the level of legislating to address the peculiar problems of individuals.

To compound matters the senator suggests that the changes can be forced through the National Assembly using the so-called ‘Doctrine of Necessity.’ This legal contrivance was swallowed by Nigerians because of the unique circumstances of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s disappearance from the country in search of medical treatment. But for the political affliction that Ekweremadu wants to treat, this doctrine is so unnecessary.

What it all comes down to is our national pastime of seeking shortcuts. We are a nation of grasshoppers – always quick to jump upon the latest bandwagon without truly testing the old. We keep moving the goal post around right in the middle of the game.

The trouble with our politics is not so much the constitution as its operators. The 1999 document is barely 14 years old and we have dissected it more times than a teenager playing with a rat in a biology laboratory.

There are no perfect constitutions. Indeed, there are countries like the United Kingdom where there’s no written constitution. These things are to be tested and this can only be done over time – by subjecting them to legal processes. It is not the document on its own that shapes a country, it is what people do with the document they’ve been handed.

The present politicians in power delude themselves that they have superior solutions to Nigeria’s problems. But people forget that what we now operate as a constitution didn’t drop from the sky.

It is the result of long and costly deliberations beginning with the constitution drafting committee of the late Chief FRA Williams,’ Justice Udo Udoma’s Constituent Assembly right down to the General Sani Abacha’s national political conference. What emerged from those processes was further tinkered with after much thought by those in power in 1999.

In a country with more patient people the 1999 Nigerian constitution would probably work like a charm. Rather than fooling ourselves into believing that tenure manipulation would cause peace to break out in our politics, we should first determine what the problem is and what we want.

Are we tampering with the constitution because our politics and electioneering generate heat? If that is the case then we are confused. You cannot separate conflict from political contests because they involve multiple parties and ideas.

Two months ago the United States government was shut down because of the political conflict in Washington D. C. No one suggested a constitutional amendment, rather everyone knuckled down to work out compromises that moved the country forward.

A constitution is not a plaything. Let’s give ourselves time to master what we have.

December 8, 2013
Where is the love? We, the people, must stop this 2014 vehicle tariff policy

Today, mournfully, let 100+m honest Nigerians express righteous indignation and join ANA and ASUU members who attend or offer up an ‘Iyayi silence’ prayerfully to sympathise with the family during the funeral of late Professor Festus Iyayi today Dec 4. Let no one be in doubt about this most important funeral. ASUU is under threat and orders to resume work or face sack and proscription. We have travelled this road before. Does no one learn from history? Is ASUU over-demanding or is government arrogant? Certainly without ASUU struggles, the universities would be 100 times worse! If only secondary school teachers had such clout, the education foundation would never have deteriorated!

After the funeral ASUU should note that the proposed vehicle tariff increase, will make nonsense of any agreement with government. Increasingly, the ogas at the top, government and NASS, wants to live in maximum ‘European luxury’ alone while the citizenry remains in penury at the bottom. They have government cars, car allowances, fuel or mileage allowances, air-conditioned toilets and bullet proof cars got by disenfranchising citizens. And the private sector is not far behind with the DISCOS and GENCOS planning to cancel prepaid metres which honest Nigerians were forced to pay N45,000+ for. Remember the compulsory answering machine before being allocated a phone? Was that under Minister David Mark who said that phones were not for the poor? Enough.

Ethiopia has a French-run wind farm which will generate 10,000Mw in Ethiopia. It cost $290m. The Nigerian 700km long seafront is available for renewable energy. Nigeria has the hottest weather in years but that solar energy is wasted. Countries with minimal sun have cities run with solar power. Is there a conspiracy against power in Nigeria? Certainly the satellite DSTV rates in Nigeria are perhaps the highest in the world at N11,000 + per month ie £44 or $68/month. Where is the ombudsman to protect the customer? What is the DSTV satellite TV tariff in South Africa or USA?

Nigeria is yet to see citizens offered shares in the newly formed power giants, owned partly by most of the old boy military past presidents’ network. It is like the days of oil blocks when no oil, cell phone or internet company appeared on the Nigerian stock exchange. It is a pity that government policies sell us as slaves and ‘commercial workers’ to feed the greed of big-man companies.

Politicians and government officials must answer the question: WHERE IS THE LOVE YOU PROMISED NIGERIANS when you became President, Minister, National Assembly member or civil servant? Government is often very selfish people hiding under the toga of office with an agenda to DECEIVE AND DEPRIVE the citizen. Look at the Police checkpoints, LASTMA, YES-O and all uniformed services involved in entrapment of citizens and other bad behaviour!

Now government plans increases tariffs on imported vehicles even though any new local cars are four years away. What government meeting decided that the best way forward for the automobile industry and easier transport is to increase the cost of imported vehicles? Nothing stops government from buying local vehicles. However the preferred vehicles are overpriced bulletproof. Are government officials jealous of other citizens in good cars? Already only politicians can have ‘tinted windows’. Is that not enough? In their tiny government minds, is the answer to the nationwide traffic jams and bad roads, putting cars out of reach? Just imagine the effect on transportation costs for goods and Nigerians. Everyone will claim increased costs. Nothing goes up by a fraction in Nigeria. It will be 100 or 200% or nothing. Fuel is transported in trucks so fuel prices will also go up. The domino effects of this economically detrimental weird transport system policy will cause economic trauma across society including all contracts, education, health, manufacturing, and consumer items. Everything will be affected negatively from food, pocket money, transport allowance for children and getting to work.

This policy will negate CBN’s effort to control inflation. Is Governor Sanusi party to this attempt to cancel the questionable gains of CBN? I do not agree with his 12% baseline interest rates or his weak naira but he has some good ideas.

Does President Jonathan not see this as the country being misled into executing a dangerous ill-thought-through policy? The policy has the elements of a perfect storm of malcontent, escalating costs and denial of cheap transport. It will bring his government into disrepute. All the questionable ‘gains’ of poverty alleviation strategies, Sure-P, ‘tight monetary control’, too high interbank interest rates, lifting people above a ‘dollar-a-day’ earnings and surviving massive political power abuse will be wiped out. It will wipe out any successes in youth empowerment as it will push millions back below the poverty line. It will negate any salary increments and ruin pension plans, earnings and it will increase rents. The ramifications are huge except for decision makers- they have government cars, petrol, food, drink, accommodation and multiple tax-free allowances.

Every time we Nigerians adjust to cope with government leadership failure, a policy comes to rob us of our money and dignity. Do non-governmental, non-political Nigerians not deserve new cars? Can new cars and ‘Completely Knocked Down’ cars be built overnight especially in Nigeria? Will the vehicle shortage not further fuel inflation and make the locally produced vehicles cost more? Nigerians must brace for a fight or more government inflicted misery. Are we mumu or men and women?

December 4, 2013
On the APC, New PDP nuptials

Former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is down. In his long years in politics and power the 77-year old has staggered from one scandal to another, but often staged improbable comebacks. This last week he was ignominiously ejected from the Senate because of his conviction on a tax-fraud case. That’s not the end of his troubles: he’s been ordered to stand trial for bribing a senator and is appealing a conviction in June for having sex with an underage prostitute – Karima El Mahroug aka Ruby the Heart Stealer – and abusing his office to cover it up. Clearly, a case of power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely. Will the day ever come when such a character will face justice in these parts?

Except for the blindly partisan, most reasonable people welcome the ongoing political shake-up which has seen the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) splinter group New PDP merge with the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).

Going into what promises to be a hotly contested general election in 2015, there are now no guarantees how things would pan out. Don’t be deceived by the PDP’s attempt at insouciance. They would be foolish not to be worried about what is unfolding.

It is not every day that a party loses five of its governors to a rival. Looming ominously in the horizon is the prospect that more will jump ship when the elements are right. Even before the defection, the G-7 governors had often said that a few other colleagues within the PDP would move at the appropriate time.

There is nothing for the ruling party to celebrate in the fact that Kano State Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and his Niger counterpart, Babangida Aliyu, insist they are still part of PDP. True, there are no permanent friends or foes in politics still I don’t see how these two can continue in the ruling party. Even if Jonathan capitulates and accedes to all their demands they would never again be trusted by the party’s high command.

Last week’s developments have rearranged the political landscape such that it is no longer unduly tilted in favour of the ruling party. A newly competitive environment emerged.

Many have focused on counting governors. But to get a real sense of the changing power dynamic, we must look to the National Assembly. Before now President Goodluck Jonathan could reasonably expect his legislative agenda to sail through with minimal fuss. This may no longer be the case – especially in the House of Representatives.

For the first time in a very long while Nigeria is about to go into a phase of divided government – where the executive branch is controlled by one party, while the legislature is in the hands of the opposition.

If the messy United States government shutdown is any advertisement for divided government, we should all brace ourselves for a chaotic time ahead. But this dreaded arangement is not all about obstruction: it is one side asking hard questions and insisting that parliament not be a rubber stamp for decisions the executive has already taken.

In this age where the image of government at all levels is so dismal, the prospect of robust checks and balances rather than frighten, should give us hope that the train of impunity that has been running out of control can be reined in.

So much has been made of the untidy nature of the fusion. One day it is seven governors, the next two of them are denying dumping the PDP. In some states the erstwhile lords of the manor in APC have been less than enthusiastic in welcoming the New PDP hordes that look set to gobble them up.

For me these are minor points of cavil. Politics is messy business. Anyone who was expecting the unprecedented movement of five governors from one party to another – each with his own agenda and local worries – to be without hiccups must be living on another planet.

Frankly, what the APC has pulled off is remarkable. At every point they were written off. When the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) came together their opponents dismissed the new grouping as a contraption that would collapse within months.

When that didn’t happen, they began speculating that the arrangement would founder because of the personalities of Bola Tinubu and Muhammadu Buhari. Again, their dire predictions have not manifested.

So now they cynically dismiss the latest stage of the APC evolution as the merger of strange bedfellows. This supposes that what we have in the PDP, Labour Party and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to name a few is a banding together of birds of a feather. Spare me!

Depend on it: the merger of the APC and New PDP elements would throw up turbulence and disagreements from time to time. It will produce pain – even reverse movement when some people don’t get what they want. But then nature teaches us that the process of delivering a new baby can be painful and messy. To expect anything less is to fool ourselves.

Thanks to the merger newspapers are now full of talk about ideology. This sudden fixation is so amusing because no one can tell you what the guiding philosophy of any of the current parties is – other than they all have a template of policies they would supposedly implement in office. The best you’ll get from any of them is that: a mere election manifesto.

Ideological battles as we used to know them in the Cold War days died with that era. Harsh dividing lines between capitalism, communism, socialism and welfarism have become largely blurred. Philosophies of governance are now so indistinguishable that it is hard to tell what is driving what. Russia and China which used to be avowedly communist are now as capitalist as the United States.

In America there is very little ideological difference between the Democrats and Republican. Both proseletyse about the beauty of markets driving the economy and making government intervention minimal.

In the era of bitterly divided government in Washington, Barack Obama’s supposedly more left-leaning government has acceded to cutting government spending on social welfare programmes with a fervor that a typical conservative would envy. What now sets them apart are positions on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

So if Nigeria’s emerging two-party arrangement does not throw up the kind of ideological divide to please the purists, too bad. In any event, who the progressive is and who the conservative is in this country has always been a matter of branding. Whatever labels our politicians have worn they have managed to get stuck in the same shortcomings of corruption and mismanagement of public resources.

Ideology cannot be an end in itself; it ultimately should bring about development. Our people wouldn’t care whether you are socialist or capitalist if they have electricity, running water, healthcare and quality education for their children. Where these things are available the rest is just background noise.

December 1, 2013
Jega battles the poisoned chalice

With the exception of one or two cases those appointed to head the electoral commission in the past have often been men of personal integrity. Usually, the appointing authorities go out of their way to look for the most saintly of characters in the land.

A few days before he unveiled Professor Attahiru Jega as his pick to lead the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President Goodluck Jonathan, in a television interview dropped a few hints about the man he had chosen. I remember him saying that although he had never met the academic, all who knew him said he was a person of unbending principle and integrity.

Jonathan’s statement underlined the thinking that has driven the appointment of those to manage elections in Nigeria. If only we can get a Mother Teresa kind of saintly figure who all Nigerians can trust not to pull dirty tricks all would be well.

But a halo is not all that is needed to run acceptable elections. The INEC chairman is just one person; his organisation employs thousands of people as it tries to execute its mandate. If the chairman is an angel and has thousands of devils carrying out his instructions, he would deliver an Anambra gubernatorial election kind of performance.

Organising an election is about getting materials to polling points on time and ensuring that electoral officials are at their duty posts. It is about ensuring that the integrity of vital documents – from voters’ registers to ballot papers.

A proven manager with experience running multinational scale businesses, or a military officer who has handled logistics in a war operation, are more likely to eliminate those things we complain about – logistics hiccups and late starts – than some bishop without sin.

Quick to admit that Anambra was a mess, Jega now wants to be given another chance. He says he should not be judged by his latest outing: Nigerians should wait till 2015 before delivering a verdict on him.

The problem with his request is that the same things we complain about today besmirched the 2011 polls. Anambra is just one state. If INEC can contrive such a monumental cock-up in that little space, I hate to think what will happen when it has to deal with 36 states.

After heartfelt apologies Jega would probably retire. Let’s hope that another botched outing doesn’t retire Nigeria along with its bungling electoral umpires.

December 1, 2013