The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • 2023: Before APC, PDP bury zoning

    2023: Before APC, PDP bury zoning

    Every Nigerian election cycle is presented as make or mar, but the current one may be more so than most, because its emerging dynamics could alter the shape of politics for decades. This is largely down to the zoning conundrum that has paralysed the two leading political parties.

    A common factor the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have to contend with in picking their presidential candidates is geography.

    Through the years, power rotation that sees the old Northern and Southern Regions exchanging baton has become the tradition, or so we thought.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, would be concluding his eight-year rule come May next year. In the PDP, this hasn’t deterred a slew of aspirants from his zone from hurling their hats into the ring. In principle they are not opposed to zoning, but argue the party has to chose between winning the next polls and upholding some gentleman’s agreement.

    Some like former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who are now so dismissive of zoning used it as the basis for challenging then President Goodluck Jonathan for the PDP ticket in 2011. He emerged as the Northern consensus pick because the zone argued it was their turn to complete what would have been late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s second term.

    Last year, the Southern Governors Forum (SGF) which draws its membership from APC, PDP and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), insisted the next president must come from the South.

    Despite the protestations of their leading lights in the main opposition PDP, it increasingly looks like the party could field another Northerner. It just finished screening aspirants from the two regions – suggesting that with less than 30 days to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deadline for concluding primaries, an open contest is a fait accompli.

    In APC, it was well-nigh sacrilegious to think the North would present anyone to replace Buhari. After all, the very foundations of its formation were built on power rotation.

    On February 22, 2022, following a visit of a delegation of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF) to President Muhammadu Buhari at Aso Rock, Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, emerged to announce that a working agreement had been reached by the party regarding its zoning formula.

    He said: “We have agreed a zoning formula for all the six geopolitical zones. Essentially, northern zone will have positions the South have had in the last eight years, and vice versa. It is a very simple, equitable and fair formula.”

    Last week, however, APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, said the party had not taken any position on zoning. In short order, the media was awash with reports of moves to draft Northern aspirants into the contest. As you read this, Senate President Ahmad Lawan may be entering the contest.

    This new plot is ostensibly because the PDP is thinking of picking a Northerner. But its promoters are clutching at straws. A party has to stand for something; it cannot base fundamental decisions on expediency or knee-jerk reactions to what its rival is doing.

    In the unlikely event that the two parties throw up northern candidates, the collateral damage would be worse for APC. It’s unlikely to win in the South-South or Southeast; offering another Northerner to its Southwest stronghold would only generate a pool of angry voters who would repay its treachery with protest votes. And it wouldn’t matter if such votes end up enthroning a Northern PDP president.

    Some would say that’s the agenda. PDP or APC, a northerner is a northerner. But such a parochial goal would only produce further national polarisation.

    I made a case for major parties to stay with the rotation principle in a piece titled “The 2023 zoning controversy”, published in The Nation on August 4, 2020. Some excerpts are reproduced here because the arguments are still relevant for the ongoing debate.

    THE 2023 ZONING CONTROVERSY***

    ‘The recent upheavals in the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been linked to succession politics. There’s intense jockeying within the ruling party as well as the main opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) with key players moving their pieces around on some unseen chess board.

    It is against this backdrop that we must view the recent intervention by Buhari’s uncle, Mamman Daura, on the issue of zoning. It was a bolt out of the blue that called for jettisoning of the concept. In its place merit and competence should be used to pick presidents.

    “This turn-by-turn, it was done once, it was done twice, and it was done thrice… It is better for this country to be one…it should be for the most competent and not for someone who comes from somewhere,” he told the BBC Hausa Service in an interview.

    Choosing the best man for any job is a reasonable proposition, but Daura’s proposal has been met with a raucous chorus of disapproval and suspicion. Even the presidency felt it necessary to distance Buhari from the comments – arguing that they were personal and the author old enough to hold whatever views he espoused.

    His remarks have come when a certain strand within the northern political establishment was sending out signals they were actively scheming for retention of presidential power in the region come the next election cycle. This is after Buhari would have held power for eight unbroken years.

    It is a thought that should make anyone with the slightest familiarity with Nigeria’s political history recoil in horror.

    For all its flaws, zoning is one thing the political class has got right as a way of reducing heat in the polity and fostering a sense of belonging in a culturally and ethnically-diverse country.

    It provides hope that at national level even minorities – outside of the big three ethnic groups – can ascend the highest heights of political power with time. The same holds true at state level.

    Before the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) pioneered zoning in the Second Republic, ‘merit’ and ‘competence’ were the yardstick for picking leaders. But did we ever get the ‘best’? No way!

    Instead, the power structure was tilted in such a way that the dominance of the old North was total. It was always easy for the region to divide the two southern blocs and rule.

    When the late Biafran leader, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, visited the home of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo to condole with the family on his death, he wrote these famous lines in the register: “The best president Nigeria never had.”

    Many shared that sentiment – especially in the Southwest – but elsewhere in the North and East people couldn’t be bothered about his abilities and he never became president.

    Over time frustration with this lopsided arrangement triggered the agitation for ‘power shift’ to the south. Zoning was a by-product of that political evolution.

    But for the military intervention of 1983 the concept might have become an unshakable article of faith of our politics – never to be tampered with.

    In the Fourth Republic it worked seamlessly with the President Olusegun Obasanjo handing over to Umaru Yar’Adua. It would have gone on and on but for the unscripted death of Yar’Adua which handed PDP the dilemma of denying then President Goodluck Jonathan the right to seek re-election when the breach of the rotational arrangement wasn’t his making.

    Without manipulation and with the cooperation of men of goodwill, it would equally work in producing a successor to Buhari from any of the three southern zones.

    Daura’s argument that zoning hasn’t delivered the best for Nigeria is disingenuous. At what point did he make the discovery? As many have pointed out he didn’t hold this position when zoning favoured the emergence of Buhari in 2015.

    It’s not as if there’s any system known to man that throws up the ‘best’ candidate for a political position.

    The office of president wasn’t made to be filled by a conclave of wise and influential courtiers. Constitution writers through the ages left that important assignment to ‘ordinary’ voters – many of whom we dismiss as lacking the sophistication to choose the ‘best’ man for the job. In the end everyone is left to determine who is ‘best,’ not based on any objective parameters but subjective ones.

    No country ever elected ‘the best’ leader. Many who have been lauded through history also had truckloads of detractors. Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Winston Churchill, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Nelson Mandela…weren’t without critics.

    Nigerians aren’t looking for a superman. They just want an honest, competent and empathetic individual who may not necessarily be the ‘best’ of his generation. He would do his bit and step aside for a successor to continue the task of nation-building.

    Such competent hands abound in the north, south, east and west of this country. Many would come to the office underrated only to be transformed into giants by the office and the challenges they overcame while serving there.

    Leaders of Daura’s generation keep saying Nigeria’s unity is non-negotiable. But it can only be sustained if political actors don’t destroy trust. Zoning is a glue that enhances accommodation and sense of belonging. Dismantling it does the opposite and perpetuates the belief that some are born to rule while others are mere spectators.’

    (Excerpts from an article first published in The Nation on August 4, 2020)

  • The moral crises of our time

    The moral crises of our time

    Nigeria is in a multitude of moral crises, which dovetail into one another. There is a moral crisis in the family. There is a moral crisis in the educational system. Peer pressure is laced with moral crisis. There is a moral crisis in the political sphere. There is a moral crisis in the economic sphere. There is a moral crisis in society at large. In general, the ethical fabric of the Nigerian society has been shredded in pieces, and from top to bottom. It did not start today. It’s been coming for a long long time. But it matters no more when and where the fabric began to tear apart. What matters now is that we are all enveloped by moral crises of different hues and no one escapes their effects. What is more, no one escapes blame. To put it in Biblical language, “We all sinned and fallen short of …..”

    We experience or learn about one or more of these crises on a daily basis but privilege for national discussion what the print, electronic, and social media bring to national consciousness. Many of these moral laxities take place behind closed doors, thereby escaping public gaze. But some become topics of national discussion. One such crisis is the recent breakdown of sexual morality as illustrated by several videos of a purported 10-year old female pupil of Chrisland Schools in Lagos. One of the videos is said to be an explicit sex video, involving the 10-year old girl and some boys. One boy engaged in the act with her, while the other was busy video-taping it. The other videos, some of which were recycled online, portray the same girl in sexy dresses, posture, and dance moves. The videos were posted on two different social media accounts, TikTok and Likee,  She reportedly has 62 videos on TikTok with 1,760 followers and 526 videos on Likee with over 12,000 followers.

    The immediate influences on the young girl can be deduced from the videos. They include social media and the enlarged social network of peers, which social media platforms made possible for her. Among her peers, of course, are her school mates, one of whom engaged in a sexual act with her in a Dubai hotel while on a school trip. The school’s negligence gave room for boys and girls to exchange room visits and mingle freely. Equally reprehensible is the school authority’s attempt to cover up the shameful behaviour of kids under its watch. Then, there are the kids’ immediate families, whose duty it is to exercise needed parental control over their children’s social “taste” and media engagements. A photo of the girl’s mother in some black jeans and black blouse by a black car seems to suggest the wrong role model for the young girl. The parents might also have failed to control their kids’ consumption of sexually suggestive music videos on TV and online, which gave the young girl some of the moves she imitated on the videos she posted on her social media platforms and in the sexual act portrayed in the Chrisland video.

    It is unfortunate that the focus has been on the young girl as if she is the only culprit in the sex video. Everyone in the room should be fully investigated, debriefed, and counselled. These are minors who learned their escapade somewhere, real or virtual, and found the opportunity to practice what they saw or learned. In fact, some of the parents may have been strict on their kids and exercised necessary precautions. Who knows?

    I have been around kids long enough to know that they are imitative, creative, innovative, and daring, especially in this age of alternative reality online. More importantly, they know more than what their parents think they know, because they have teachers in school, among their peers, on TV, and on social media. That’s why it is necessary these days not to withhold necessary information from kids and to get them involved in decisions on matters affecting their lives. Moreover, sex education should start early. If parents fail to talk about it at the right time, the kids would learn from others and they may pick up the wrong practices and values.

    However, teaching the right values is not about sex education alone. There are strict parents, when it comes to sexual morality but who throw ethics to the dogs when it comes to seeking favours for their children. This is particularly evident during university admission seasons, when parents, especially mothers, seek various loopholes in the attempt to get their children admitted to the university. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has exposed many parents, who assist their children in cheating during exams, some by employing exam takers for their children.

    Traditional rulers, religious leaders, politicians, civil and public servants, teachers, professors, and other professionals, all have crossed or destroyed ethical boundaries in various ways. So have security agencies, the military, the police, the intelligence agencies, immigration, and customs officers. They all seem to leave their conscience at home whenever they leave home. If you are in doubt, just watch out during this electoral season.

    This brings me to a video now trending on social media. Traditional rulers are seen coming out of a bus, each carrying a hefty bag apparently loaded with “kolanut”. Here’s my comment to a friend, who shared the video with me: This practice of sharing kolanut will persist “so long as poverty persists and so long as we maintain two parallel systems—the monarchy and the republic—in which one feeds the other”.

    When it comes to morality, the breakdown trickles down from the larger society, dominated at the top by corrupt politicians, grab-grab traditional rulers, entrepreneurial religious leaders, and capitalist businessmen. Aided by the technologies of communication, the breakdown  has now trickled down to the lowest rung of the society—schoolchildren. The Chrisland school sex video is thus only a dramatic metaphor of the moral crises that have gripped the country. All the sermons about counseling and early sex education may be useful for the kids. But none of these measures will cure the moral ills of the society at large.

  • Alaafin Adeyemi III ; Osuntokun @80; Palm oil

    The Alaafin Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, 83years old, has ‘joined his ancestors’ after a 53-year reign following a youth spent in Iseyin, Abeokuta, Obalende and a career in boxing, winning 54 of 56 bouts. His was a Gregorian and a clerk at Royal Exchange Assurance, Marina Lagos. May he rest in peace. Amen.  Google his reign and history. He beat nine contestants four different times 1968-1970 before receiving the staff of office.

    The orderly world of time-honoured history, tradition and timed-release of news, good and sad, from the traditional palaces to the town criers have been unceremoniously upturned by the rapid-fire Q &A tsunami and transmission of  fact-fake knowledge through social media messages in seconds. The mountains of conflicting messages about a 1-3 word fact, ‘joined his ancestors’ testifies to social media run-wild. Many of us received hundreds of tit-for-tat, ‘you message me – I message you’ messages related to ‘fact or fake?’ all day. What a loss of human and media time. Time proved it fact!

    Should the traditional institutions fight modernity and remain tenaciously traditional, allowing the historic, but now pointless, timeframe for messengers to carry mournful messages by mouth, message, letter,  foot, horse, dirge drum and bell, in the IT age? Or should traditional institutional time and custom keepers climb down from their customary high galloping horses to solve this problem. ‘Announcement Delay’ may be a traditional rite but it causes an embarrassing ‘media run riot’ wrong of denial and counter-denial poisoning the atmosphere of traditionally monumentally solemn moment in time.

    Everyone in a traditional institution now uses modern social media so there is modernity preceding traditional and customary practice. We must introduce such modern tools of communication into the ‘Traditional Rites Command Structure’. It takes less than five minutes to inform the traditional council about events affecting a traditional ruler and order printing of ‘The Letter’ which is always ready in advance and only awaiting dating and signing. The Official Biography/Obituary would similarly have been prepared with the CV updated for quick release. This would have saved terabytes of data and billions of even abusive fake/fact speculative messages and enhance the traditional institutions’ prestige and transition into 2022+.

    Yesterday marked Professor Emeritus Akinjide Osuntokun @80, distinguished emeritus professor of History and who followed into pastorship,  his pastor wife, Abiodun – now sadly late, devastatingly passing at 53years, to found and build the Redeemed Church of God, Jesus Chancery, Awolowo Road, Ibadan. He is internationally acclaimed academic, lecturing at the University of Maiduguri, University of Lagos and Redeemer’s University, an expert in History, Diplomacy and International Affairs, receiving honours in Canada and Equatorial Guinea and elsewhere. His ‘The Nation’ and other newspaper columns have for many decades brought the weight of soundly researched relevant historical placement to the political and social fermenting events, constantly hoping that both leaders and followers reading the articles yesterday will somehow change direction and practices today, thus producing a better tomorrow. Sadly, we see no such positive change in our society in spite of the enormous but ignored sharpest intellectual academic and morally-driven articles written by the very best of nationalistic, socially-driven, morally upright and academically incisive minds, with six month military detention traumatised bodies, like our revered Professor Akinjide Osuntokun on the entire spectrum of mostly self-inflicted problems facing the country.

    Such articles always concluding with practical solutions to those problems. He became an ambassador to Germany, meeting government and NADECO supporters and fell victim to spy networks of politics and the military, eventually suffered six months imprisonment by Abacha. He rose above the loss of his wife and bitterness of imprisonment to continue to contribute, far exceeding his quota.

    Personally, I have had the privilege of the ‘Osuntokun Encounter’. I was taught neurology by his late brother, the genius Professor Benjamin Oluwakayode Osuntokun and ophthalmology by BOO’s wife, the distinguished and humane Professor Bopo Osuntokun. I became brother to his late brother Captain Abiodun Osuntokun’s children B,N,T, when, following his untimely death,  my father, now late, Dr Abayomi Marinho met and later married their mother, now late, Mrs Grace Ebunoluwa Osuntokun, nee Fadojutimi and they also had Y,F,L. I was most honoured twice by the Osuntokun family. Firstly, when Professor Osuntokun put my name forward for a weekly column in The Nation. I eagerly said yes after many years of frequent writing for The Guardian, Tribune, Sketch etc. Secondly was the honour of receiving an invitation by Professor Emeritus Akinjide Osuntokun and Professor Bobo Osuntokun to give The Professor B.O. Osuntokun 20th Memorial Lecture which coincided with my 70th birthday the following day.

    Nigeria would have been better off if the politicians had acted upon the advice delivered by a generation of many including first class school and university teachers of whom Professor Akinjide Osuntokun is an iconic example. We toast Professor Akinjide Osuntokun @80 and wish him many more years of health and happiness with the family he cherishes so much and friends and legion of grateful students.

    We suffer our CINS-Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence, Selfishness. Professor Akinjide Osuntokun’s articles point a way forward. He is playing his part, suffering agonisingly in the process. Will you and Nigeria play your part?

    Indonesia bans export of palm oil effective April 28 due to the ongoing war involving two major sunflower oil producers resulting in high prices and rebound high prices of palm oil worldwide. Beware Nigeria.

  • 2023: The curious case of Goodluck Jonathan

    2023: The curious case of Goodluck Jonathan

    The imagination of the Nigerian politician is unbelievably fertile. Only he could have come up with a scheme in 2022 to make former president Goodluck Jonathan consensus presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Let’s put things in context. That that APC pulled off the near-impossible in 2015 – toppling an incumbent president and a party that had confidently boasted it would rule for 60 years – is down to his failings.

    Before then it was taken for granted that it would be easier to move a mountain than to oust Aso Rock incumbents. But the Jonathan administration turned out to be serial bunglers who provided a treasure trove of ammunition which the opposition utilised successfully to define it as incompetent.

    Many Nigerians became familiar with the word ‘clueless’ because of the regularity with which the opposition attached it to the then president. They went from familiarity to believability and voted in sufficiently large numbers to give the young opposition party a comfortable margin of victory.

    It therefore gives the phrase ‘mind-boggling’ a new definition to think that in political circles the prospect of Jonathan becoming President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor is being discussed seriously.

    What has made a man who was humiliated out of power become suddenly attractive to new-found promoters? What makes the long line of loyal APC members who have declared interest in the race so unattractive, that influential elements within the party are trying to conscript a flagbearer from enemy ranks?

    If the former president felt he had unfinished business in Aso Villa, why isn’t he launching his comeback on the PDP platform that took him from near anonymity in Bayelsa to national limelight in Abuja?

    It’s a measure of how much those in the opposition party rate him that they are not beating down his door, begging him to lead them back to power. Who knows, perhaps if he was considered a credible option the likes of Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, Akwa Ibom Governor, Udom Emmanuel, former Anambra State Governor, Ben Obi, former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, among others, may not be on the field today. Maybe they know something the ruling party doesn’t.

    This isn’t to dismiss the Jonathan scheme as I believe there’s actually something afoot, even if its promoters don’t manage to deliver an end product.

    For one thing, rumours of the plan have been floating around for almost two years. They received fresh fuel when a delegation of largely Northern APC governors visited him in his Otuoke, Bayelsa country home a while back.

    Secondly, rather than firmly dismissing the notion that he was contemplating another presidential bid, he gave a pregnantly-ambiguous response to campaigners who called at his residence last weekend. He told them he couldn’t declare ‘yet’ because ‘the process was ongoing.’

    Note the words ‘yet’ and ‘process ongoing.’ That leaves the distinct possibility that within the next 30 days, Jonathan could actually launch a bid to return to power in a party which, at this point, he’s not a member of. But that’s no big deal in Nigerian politics because by agency of the almighty waiver a day-old member could contest the most powerful position.

    So far, the reaction from opposition ranks has been one of bemusement – with a few voices warning the former president he’s walking into disaster with eyes wide open. But all of that seems lost in translation for a man who has committed himself to a ‘process’ and is only waiting for its conclusion.

    I suspect that many APC members are equal stunned at the prospect that the erstwhile butt of their jokes may soon be rubbing shoulders with them.

    So what sort of marriage would this be? Not a very convenient one for all sides I hazard. For instance, why does Jonathan think he would be at home in a party he once painted as a den of terror sponsors and religious extremists?

    Beyond ambition, what is the ideological meeting point between him and APC’s leading lights? What has happened within the ruling party in the last seven years to make it his new comfort zone?

    In the run-up to the 2015 polls, the then opposition identified the economy, corruption and insecurity as Jonathan and the PDP government’s weakest points. They made these the focus of campaign attacks to great effect.

    Seven years after, these problems have metastasized. If he wasn’t good enough to deal with them back them, resulting in voters rejecting him, what makes him the solution now that these challenges have become monsters? Beyond playing statesman, there’s no evidence the former president took a refresher course at any School of Competence since losing power.

    Those who are pushing the project are probably too consumed by their motivations to think it through. But if they would reflect they would quickly see a line-up of roadblocks between the dream and its actualisation.

    The first challenge has to do with interests and internal party cohesion. Consider the case of Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi who is currently darting around the country courting delegates, after dashing around the Port Harcourt stadium to prove his fitness for the presidency.

    He was virtually hounded out of the PDP by Jonathan and his wife Patience. He so desperate for an APC victory in 2015 because he knew what awaited him had the former president been re-elected. I dare say he’s not jumping for joy at the prospect of the former First Couple becoming lord and master over him again.

    The minister is one of those who would like the world to believe that he’s Buhari’s preferred successor. Therefore, this sudden insertion of an interloper into the succession equation could deal a fatal blow to his dreams.

    There are other powerful aspirants and stakeholders who wouldn’t just roll over and swallow the imposition of the former president on APC in the name of some so-called consensus. Even if they don’t take up arms there would be consequences for a party that, ideally, should have all hands pulling in the same direction.

    There is also the question of perception. The Jonathan agenda has long been identified as the strategic project of some Northern elements – especially governors – within the ruling party who want power back in their region as quickly as possible because he would only serve one term.

    So while it would appear like a clever manoeuvre in the internal race for the party ticket, it may well turn out to be too clever by half in the larger context of a general election as voters down South see it as an attempt to cheat them of a clear eight-year run at governance.

    Beyond serving the purpose of being a stop-gap arrangement to keep the throne warm for his boosters, the question has to be asked what real electoral advantage Jonathan offers. Will he make APC more electable in the South-South zone? Is he going to seize Rivers from Wike because he picks the presidential ticket?

    The Southeast has been making an aggressive play for the presidency in this electoral cycle. Does his winning the ticket mean the zone suddenly develops an appetite for a party it has long spurned? I suspect that not even his middle names – Ebele Azikiwe – would help. Chibuike Amaechi got there first this time; reminding everyone of his Igbo heritage – only to receive a decidedly lukewarm and suspicious reception.

    Would his candidacy spark voter enthusiasm and high turnout in the Southwest?

    But it gets really interesting in the context of a general election as Jonathan on the APC ticket would be a once-in-a-lifetime gift to PDP. It would be fun as they dust up all the destructive campaign materials deployed so effectively by Lai Mohammed and the opposition in 2015.

    We’ve been here before. Two years ago, after losing his bid to win a second term ticket, Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, defected to PDP. His replacement was Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, who was that party’s candidate four years earlier and was attacked with great relish by then APC chairman Adams Oshiomhole.

    In the ensuing campaign, PDP simply went back and dug up all the derogatory things Oshiomhole had said about Ize-Iyamu. It turned out to be an awkward and embarrassing time at the hustings as the APC team found themselves permanently on the defensive.

    Jonathan remains a high risk venture for those pushing him, but they are welcome to try. However, APC would be making the same arrogant mistakes PDP made, thinking they could get away with anything. If the ruling party can seriously be thinking of rewarding a late defector with its most prized ticket, it should have suitable answers ready for its loyalists who have stuck with it through thick and thin.

  • Two similar slaps, two different outcomes

    Two similar slaps, two different outcomes

    The similarities between the two slaps are striking enough: Each slap recipient provoked the slapper. In one case, Ebele walked straight to Bianca and attempted to remove Bianca’s head gear, after taunting Bianca. In the other case, Chris Rock taunted Will Smith, by joking about the shaved head of Will Smith’s wife, whose hair loss was due to alopecia, a rare disease. In each case, the recipient of the taunt responded with physical assault in the form of a one-handed slap on one side of the face. Each event happened in the course of a prestigious ritual, the inauguration of a state governor in Nigeria and the 94th Academy Awards in the United States. Both events were televised live and clips of the slap will live forever in cyberspace.There is yet another striking similarity. In both cases, the slap recipient did not press charges against the slapper.

    Differences between the two events began to emerge as days went by. While Will Smith apologized to Chris Rock days after the event, Bianca has not apologized to Ebele till today. It is important, however, to understand the circumstances surrounding the provocative taunt in each case. Chris Rock is a professional comedian, who jokes about just anyone and any situation. Will Smith, an artiste and an actor, should have understood that. This explains why most commentators blamed Will Smith for his behaviour. To be sure, there are those who argued that Chris Rock shouldn’t have joked about the hair loss of Will Smith’s wife, given her public disclosure of her rare illness.

    In Ebele’s case, most commentators believe that she stepped out of bounds. As the wife of the immediate past Governor, whose successor was being inaugurated, Ebele threw caution, decorum, and decency to the dogs, more so that her husband was also in attendance. Of course, Will Smith, with his wife by his side, was equally guilty of the same offense, given the classy nature of the Academy Awards and its global viewership.

    Nevertheless, as a former First Lady of her state, Ebele is considered more shameless in this regard. Of course, as a former beauty queen, ambassador, and wife of Odumegwu Ojukwu, whose separatist mission IPOB has since resumed, Bianca is not blameless for engaging in battering another person. She should have remembered her father’s ignominious behaviour as the Governor who slapped a Bishop! Even more importantly, Governor Chuckuma Soludo should have delayed offering her a job for now. Making her the Secretary of the newly set up Truth, Justice, and Peace Committee is not the best political reward for someone who slapped a former First Lady at a major state event, such as a governor’s inauguration.

    Ebele’s shamelessness has continued to this day. Even recently, with her husband on bail from the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on several charges of embezzlement, she declared to run for Senate in her district in Anambra state. If she eventually gets the ticket, her victory will speak to our ethically challenged political culture in which character and qualifications mean little or nothing, where money talks. Here’s someone who should have been shamed with appropriate reprimand by the state and the political party for bringing shame to an otherwise august state event.

    There is considerable sanctity in that regard in the United States, because the institutions still do what they are supposed to do.  That’s why, despite his apologies to the Academy on the occasion and later to Chris Rock as well as his voluntary resignation from the Academy, Will Smith was still barred for 10 years from attending any Oscar event or programme, in person or virtually.

    Institutional response to battery is critical to the maintenance of ethical standards. The response could take one of two forms. One is prevention. In both cases, the appropriate institutions failed to prevent the battery. In Bianca’s case, onlookers, including the police, bodyguards and aides, should have quickly intervened and prevented Ebele’s visible provocation from degenerating into a brawl. Similarly, in Will Smith’s case, he should have been prevented from leaving his seat to walk up the stage and slap Chris Rock. I am sure the Academy will put necessary measures in place to prevent anyone from getting up the stage unless the person is authorised to do so.

    The second option is to mete out appropriate punishment to serve as deterrent for future offenders. As indicated above, the Academy played this role, while the Anambra state government and the All Progressives Grand Alliance failed to do the appropriate thing. As if to underscore this failure, APGA Chairman, Victor Oye, described the slapping event on Channels’ Politics Today with Seun Okinbaloye as providing “comic relief”! Something is deadly wrong with this unserious comment from a party chairman. Didn’t he realise that the episode denigrated his party and state government? If he didn’t, then it is the normalisation of the absurdist politics we play.

    The Ebele-Bianca episode speaks volume about the state of our nation and about party politics. The state government and the political party treated the two women more or less as sacred cows, the way party bigwigs are treated, unless there is a fight for position between party factions, as we saw in the fight between Adams Oshiomhole and Godwin Obaseiki. Ordinarily, everybody overlooks bigwigs atrocities and they keep doing their thing with impunity.

    The episode is also an unfortunate dramatisation of the state of insecurity in our land. Watching two elite ladies engage in a brawl at a governor’s inauguration ceremony without timely intervention and without any sanction whatsoever is symbolic of how herdsmen, bandits, kidnappers and other violent groups molest citizens without repercussion. When you don’t sanction offenders at the top, it is hypocritical to preach ethical behaviour. No wonder then that thugs and other party supporters commit all kinds of crime on behalf of their political bosses.

    It is critical to learn the right lessons from the Ebele-Bianca brawl: Battery is a criminal offense. It’s intention is to harm another person not to provide comic relief. The status of the offender is irrelevant to the crime. Whoever commits battery should be given the punishment commensurate with the offense. So should the provocateur.

     

     

     

     

  • Train treason, NNPC, PWD returns 

    Train treason, NNPC, PWD returns 

    The trouble with the train treason is to find out what next for Nigeria. The train treason comprised mass and multiple murders, terrorising military tactics, mass kidnappings and now the bloodthirsty threat of an out-of-hand execution of over 120 kidnap victims while knowing the killers have as they say no regard for human life. That is the bigger picture. We have just suffered a huge national attack about on par with the five major mass school kidnapping beginning with the Chibok attack still with fellow Nigerian girls missing. Each of those terrible attacks was accompanied by the as-yet unpunished murder of innocents, their blood soaking into the earth of their birth and generating a generation of tearful bereaved parents. Instead we are faced with more murders and kidnapping.

    The bigger picture is what next for Nigeria? A reversal of these murders is impossible but release of all the kidnapped victims is a possible outcome, though it will not bring succour to victims’ families. This appears a remote dream in the wake of the cold-blooded nature of the video from the terrorist group which dismissed as inconsequential the lives of their remaining victims. They claim they want government to contact them and that government knows what they want.

    Fortunately, we are hearing of military advances, forest bombings, weapon seizures and terrorists arrest by armed forces. But Nigerians require the liberation of the ‘The Train Treason’ victims.

    NNPC finally announces what we have known for years. Corruption is killing Nigeria!  If 90-95% of a simple pipeline flow is missing in transit, it is a huge profit at our expensive for the criminals. Sadly, no country will survive with up to 10 %.  However, once the corruption rate tips 10%, all development indices with fall because the cost of building infrastructure become unsustainable with no or negative profit margin, i.e. a loss. But here we are facing a 90-95% shortfall in this one pipeline. If oil is the blood in the veins of the body of Nigeria, imagine what the patient would be like losing 10 or 20 or 50 or 90% of such a supply. Its survival is in question.

    The corruption may have been horrible but manageable in a society which accepts almost anything thrown at it. However, we must add the huge detrimental effects of the long war declared by herders against farmers, the ravages of Boko Haram and successive waves of terrorists, many invited by politicians. These have conspired to create massive inflation, massive falling in the value-for-money of work, reduced farming opportunities from insecure farmland almost in every state, and the rubbishing of the value of the naira in particular which predated the new financial and food collapses. If we add the unexpected war with very predictable consequences of possible famine and financial instability, the economic situation in the future is bleak. Once again, our leadership has to make hard decisions. They have appealed to kidnappers, terrorists and herders to release their victims and free the land from tyranny and allow a return of the five million+ Internally Displaced Nigerians to their home lands. One expects them to appeal to the corrupt oil bunkerers to give up their corrupt trade for Nigeria and Nigerians to recover or there will soon be nothing to left to steal.

    Already CBN is drying up and foreign exchange for normal citizens is difficult. Nigerians abroad hold more than the country’s reserves. It seems it is time for a blood transfusion-of foreign exchange, of Honesty-I WILLL NOT BE CORRUPT IN 2022, and of Love. Many Nigerians are already doing this.   The government has finally inserted a maintenance law in the management of all its assets, Ministries, Agencies, Departments and assets under its authority. Hopefully this will do away with the requirement to send out a contract for every pothole, paint stain and clogged toilet in every MDA. This is not new but a return to an old, tried and tested working model setup and handed over by the colonial power. Ask grandparents about PWD, the Public Works Department. In those days we had two-to-four man teams securing stretches of road for cleanliness and detection and filling of potholes as they occur and before they get big. The team had a tripod of sticks with a red flag and a wheelbarrow in which they had some hot tar in watering-can to fill the baby pothole before it grew into a car and human being killer.  The PWD was also responsible for paining government residential quarters every seven years. This seven-year cycle was cast in stone and managed using a PWD Forward Bookings Diary which was seven years in the future. On every house and office, there was a 10-inch painted circle with a date in it. A week to that date, the PWD staff come to remind the resident of the impending maintenance visit and do an assessment visit. The whole team of painters, carpenters, plumbers show up on the appointed day and repaint, restore repair. Once finished they paint a new date, seven years in the future and also into the PWD Forward Bookings Diary. The system was abandoned by a greedy political class which ate the maintenance money. The PWD will return jobs to a raft of skilled professionals abandoned for 50years but only if their budgets are honest and implemented without political or professional theft.

  • The semiotics of GCIOBA’s takeover of GCI

    The semiotics of GCIOBA’s takeover of GCI

    In semiotic analysis, every action of the state, or, more precisely, of those who act on behalf of the state, is imbued with at least two levels of meaning: One is the denotative meaning, that is, the literal meaning of the act that is apparent to everybody watching. The other is the connotative meaning, that is, the associated or secondary meaning of the act—what the act actually suggests, implies, or symbolises.

    The recent agreement, signed between the Oyo State Government and the Government College Ibadan Old Boys Association, offers a good illustration of both levels of meaning. At the denotative level, the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the two parties on the transfer of GCI to the Old Boys Association is no different than similar acts between the state government and other parties. It is one of numerous such agreements, characterised by the attendant ceremonies of exchanging papers between representatives of both parties and signing them to the applause of onlookers.

    However, the connotative meaning of the ceremony begins to emerge the moment we start probing into why, in the first place, the agreement was necessary and what it was meant to achieve for both parties. Bridging the denotative and connotative meanings are the details of the agreement to which we now turn.

    The MOU contains two essential details, among others. One, the management, operation, and development of GCI are transferred by the Oyo State government to GCIOBA for the next 25 years.

    Two, GCIOBA will preserve the state government’s free education policy by not charging tuition fees. However, it would charge fees for boarding and feeding of students who stay in college residence. It will also see to the day to day management of the school, including the recruitment and retraining of teachers and the development of the school’s infrastructure and facilities.

    At the connotative level, the agreement has far-reaching implications for the government and GCIOBA in particular and for education in general. The agreement is an acknowledgement by the government that it lacks the financial capacity to sustain the high standard for which GCI is known. Here’s how the Secretary to the State Government put it during the agreement signing ceremony: “A study conducted by this government upon assumption of office in 2019 indicated that it needed over N40 billion to take the education sector to standard … it was clear from the beginning that the state could not do it alone”.

    The decline in GCI’s standard began in the 1979, when the Oyo State government, having taken over total control of GCI, disregarded the College’s elite status and lumped it with other secondary schools in the state. Admission standards were lowered as competitive entrance examinations were all but eliminated. With a N10,000 fee, your child would be admitted to GCI! Enrollment shot up from 200 to over 3000. Yet teacher recruitment stagnated at a teacher-student ratio of 1 to over 110, in contrast to 1 to <25 in its heydays. In no time, facilities began to deteriorate. Whatever happened to the colonial government colleges was replicated in all schools taken over by the government, including the so-called Unity Secondary Schools.

    In an important publication, GCI: Past, Present, and Future, Dr. Kolade Mosuro recounts GCI’s glorious days, laments its present deplorable condition, and provides an outline of future action, aimed at restoring the school’s past glory.

    The deteriorating condition of the school and the accompanying falling standards alarmed the school’s alumni. It began serious intervention, while also negotiating with the government for greater involvement. For decades now, different sets and branches of GCIOBA have been renovating buildings, purchasing computers, erecting new structures, and even recruiting teachers to augment the effort of the government. The Parent-Teacher Association, whose membership includes some old students of the school, has also contributed to the development of the school. Ultimately, GCIOBA appealed to then Governor Ajibola Ajumobi administration to either transfer the administration of the school to the Association or at least allow the Association’s participation in running the school.

    The unsatisfactory response by the Oyo State Government to the takeover demand by GCIOBA led two star alumni of the school, late Professor Oladipo Akinkugbe and late Dr. Lekan Are, to invite me to Ibadan early in 2017. During a three-hour meeting at the Kakanfo Inn, they shared with me several documents and their concerns about the condition of the school and urged me to use my column to share them with the public. After a two-week investigation of the condition of GCI and its contemporaries, I summarised the findings and recommendations in “GCI and the travails of colonial government colleges”, The Punch, February 14, 2017.

    The continued decline in facilities and educational standards in GCI is symbolic of the falling standard of education in the country. For some time now, alumni and alumna associations have been intervening in their old schools. This is especially true of legacy secondary schools, which shaped the fortunes of the professional class during the early decades of independence. The ripple effects of the government’s neglect of the education sector are felt especially in tertiary institutions, especially the nation’s public universities, whose teachers have spent more time in protesting government failure than in teaching and research.

    GCIOBA is only one of several alumni associations that have succeeded in wrestling control of their alma mater from negligent governments. The Government College Umuahia Old Boys Association did it in 2014, when the Abia State Government transferred the ownership, management, operation, control and funding of the College to the Association.

    Ever sensitive to social problems, former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, decided way back in 2001 to handover 48 secondary schools in the state to their former owners in order to encourage competition and public-private partnership in education. One of the schools is St Gregory’s College in Ikoyi, which has continued to blossom, thanks to the active involvement of its Old Boys Association.

    These are among the stories that the simple act of signing an agreement to handover GCI to its Old Boys Association recalls about secondary education in Nigeria. Four things are clear: One, the government is both negligent about, and incapable of, funding and managing education. Two, better results could be achieved when the government partners with private sponsors of education. Three, the contributions of alumni and alumna associations are crucial and need to be effectively harnessed. Four, Nigeria needs elite secondary schools to groom the professional class as no nation develops without such schools.

  • Is this ‘Tripod of Terror’ not ‘A Declaration of War’?

    First it was the farms and then the roads which were occupied by arrogant and mindless violence and terrorism of which I was a victim on March 17, 2017. Then it was railways and now it is airports, damaging the international record of the country.  Government agents and agencies have grown hoarse and appear insensitive and impotent by almost daily repeatedly sending condolences, with an occasional visit, to families and communities robbed of loved ones with destruction of livelihood and life expectation truncation for the dependents.

    It has been an outstanding pity that we face an  unacceptable growing number of dead – 1500+ in three months in Kaduna area- and Internally Displaced Persons easily now more than five million registered and unregistered unable to go homes. Sadly, the government quibbles over semantics with journalists and human rights advocates and rages against the use of, and sequence of the words ‘Boko Haram’, ‘Fulani’,  ‘herders’ and  ‘farmers’, ‘insurgency’, ‘war’, ‘clash’, ‘bandits’, ‘terrorists’ and the ‘Unknown Gunmen’.

    Government always disputes the numbers of dead and displaced when it should be as concerned as the citizens when violent loss of property and life occur. Yes, the government and Nigeria have evidence of ‘trying to cope’ and can sadly announce many lost officers and other ranks of both sexes and also a quantum of military material as tragic demonstration of their commitment to the battle. But sadly, this is a war and not a battle requiring a declaration of war and massive manpower recruitment and weaponry acquisition and mobilisation. Whatever the truly gallant efforts on land, sea and air of the armed forces, they  have not stopped the onslaught on the widening terrorist-declared ‘Terror Fronts’ – now including road, rail and airports – victims of mindless violence and terror.

    Why has it taken this ‘Tripod of Terror’ – the ‘Road, Train and Airport Attack’, for government to announce upgraded patrols when such attacks have happened before and been predicted by even casual terror analysts. Is it manpower, material, moral lapse, or ‘underestimating the enemy’?

    The murderous airport attack in Kaduna must have been anticipated by the military. Routine drone security surveillance and network rings around villages for surveillance and communication of movements of columns of 100-300 motorcycle criminal gangs should have brought out a swift airborne pre-emptive response. We have satellite, google and rapid communications and friendly foreign satellite coverage worldwide. In Nigeria, it should not be nuclear physics to track the heat signals of 300 motorcycles advancing or retreating. It has been said repeatedly especially by military professionals. So why are we murdered by armies of free-roaming murderous terrorists?

    I listened to the Minister of Justice on DSTV Channel 419, NTA announced a contract to buy ‘Night Vision Equipment’ NVE and trying to explain the need for them and thus tell the enemy what we are planning. Excuse me, does it really require a TV appearance in 2022 to buy such basic equipment, like why you need nappies for babies? NVE should have been part of our military basic equipment immediately after the lesson of the Chibok girls kidnapping eight years ago, April 14. Who, military or political, has deliberately cancelled requests oy our armed forces of such war-winning equipment?

    This confirms that the military remains underequipped and undermanned for the task of night fighting. If this mass gang attack continues, covering hundreds of kilometres as killing fields, the menace will recruit more unemployed youth to the terrorist fold and even more innocent, hard-working, honest citizens will die a tragic, terrorist death. This train terror took members of many professionals, their lives cut short while doing their job, their families right now plunged into unexpected mourning.

    But we must add the effect of ‘being terrified and fearful’ infecting most Nigerians. Every death is a tragedy to family and friends. Every single terrorist death is one murder too many and is a tragedy of unimaginably painful proportions to loving parents, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands and children all left behind after preventable violent circumstances against which military resistance did not occur in time.

    Sadly, Nigeria is a country with some leaders acting as if everything is alright because they personally are not dying or do not hear the gunshots or see the bloodstained clothes and their relations appear to be safe. Already our ‘election dance’ has started even though in some areas, an election in the foreseeable future will be impossible in the current circumstances. Nigeria, INEC staff, voters, politicians require campaign and election security. In fact, government must review the distribution of NYSC members to ‘safer zones’.

    Condolences are not enough. Investigate the Amaechi Surveillance Contract.

    Sadly, Nigerians are more upset by the loss to Ghana in the World Cup qualifier than our human losses and the unbridled terrorism most recently demonstrated in Plateau where 10 were killed and 19 injured at a festival.

    ‘How much is spent per school on sports equipment, promotion and competition? For most schools, it is ‘zero or very little’. Some private schools do better but most do not. Worldwide sports champions are the result of a combination of ‘Discovery-talent scout, Exposure, Personal Talent, Talent Hunt, Opportunity, Training-Coach/funds, Equipment and Willingness’. You can’t identify the best footballers or athletes in Nigeria if your education and youth programmes do not give all youth footballs and equipment to practice and pyramid or ladder placing progress.

  • The Kaduna questions

    The Kaduna questions

    For a famously mild-mannered preacher, last Sunday’s pre-sermon remarks of the General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, couldn’t have had a more hard-hitting effect on the nationwide audience they were addressed to.

    First, he dealt with insinuations that the church’s establishment of a Directorate of Politics and Governance was essentially a mobilisation platform to back the suspected political aspirations of one of its pastors, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Even the most cynical of his auditors would’ve found it hard to dismiss his robust disavowal of any such agenda.

    The cleric would go on to suggest that those squabbling over the 2023 general elections were getting ahead of themselves in the light of more troubling national issues.

    He spoke in horrified tones about the magnitude of oil theft. He talked about a country teetering on the verge of bankruptcy with more than 90 per cent of money from crude oil sales being used to pay interest accruing on foreign debt.

    Adeboye then pivoted to Kaduna which has been in the news since the attack on a train headed there. He said: “You cannot go to Kaduna by road, air or train. Why Kaduna? Who is trying to isolate Kaduna? Why? After Kaduna, which next?”

    Before you dismiss him as another excitable clergyman trying to heat up the polity, consider the fact that with the exception of Maiduguri, Kaduna is the northern metropolis that has been targeted by terror more than any other. And the attacks are not limited to the capital.

    The state is a complex tinderbox where religious and ethnic tension regularly boil over between the largely Muslim north and the mostly Christian south. Those historically bloody conflicts have now been exacerbated by the rise of banditry and infiltration by elements of the insurgency hitherto limited to the Northeast.

    Aside being the historical capital of the old Northern Region and the gathering place of its political and intellectual elite, Kaduna also hosts the cream of Nigeria’s military and security institutions. One of the most celebrated of them all, the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), was breached several months ago with loss of lives.

    The sorties into what should ordinarily be a fortress city/state look like a deliberate effort at demystifying the military establishment and breaking the morale of those who people it.

    Last year also, Bethel Baptist Secondary School, Greenfield University among others, were overrun by bandits with students and staff taken hostage. The Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation at Afaka was attacked and over 40 of its students taken hostage.

    Next, the bandits would invade the airport on a number of occasions, the latest being the incident several days ago that led to the death of a security staff and disruption of flights.

    The main artery linking the state to the Abuja has been the subject of regular attacks by bandits, forcing many to adopt rail as a safer travel option. That was until last week’s attack that shocked the nation.

    With all modes of transportation now subject to deadly attacks it’s hard not to believe there’s a coordinated plan to isolate the city, using incremental attacks that make it unsafe to travel.

    If that were the case, who could the enemy be and what is their agenda? Such a scheme would be too sophisticated and ambitious for ragtag bands of bandits who are more interested in stuffing their pockets with easy millions. Are we to assume that ISWAP insurgents in the Northeast are altering their strategy and making common cause with local hoodlums?

    Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has suggested that the reckless abandon with which terrorists were operating they could very soon overrun the country.

    It bears pointing out that Abuja is three hours from Kaduna. Niger State which has been complaining about the takeover of several of its local government areas by Boko Haram fighters is two and a half hours from the federal capital. In military terms those are not very comforting distances when dealing with a motivated foe.

    If these terrorists are operating so freely close to the nation’s capital, how much longer before we are back in the days when IEDs were going off regularly in Abuja?

    Part of the problem is that we can’t even agree on who the foe is. That dilemma is captured in Adeboye’s ‘Kaduna questions.’ It is also evident in the seemingly academic debate whether to call the gunmen sowing death and destruction across large swathes of the Northwest ‘bandits’ or ‘terrorists.’

    Long after proponents of the latter tag won the debate and had it speedily gazetted, not much has changed. That legal manoeuvre was supposed to help government get around the restrictions of use that came with the purchase agreement of the Super Tucano jets. Several months after, the magic wand remains grounded, while murderous gunmen carry on business as usual.

    Incorrect identification of the enemy has been compounded by confused prescriptions as to how to deal with them. I have long argued that jets, however sophisticated, are in themselves not enough to deal with targets that quickly disappear under forest cover with the aid of motorcycles.

    In the aftermath of the train attack, President Muhammadu Buhari, issued another of his “marching orders.” Part of it was a reminder to the military to “deal decisively” with anyone illegally carrying AK47s in forests. This was amusing because the so-called order has had zero effect since it was first issued eons ago.

    Reiterating it can only be explained as an attempt to be seen to be acting in some form. But it also confirms confusion in government ranks as to who they are dealing with. Bandits or terrorists, these fellows have long gone beyond AK47s to add shoulder-held rocket and grenade launchers, recoilless guns and others to their arsenal. Surely, they didn’t bring down a military jet last year with a rifle!

    Another wrong prescription was El-Rufai’s vow that if the president failed to crush the terrorists quickly, he and his colleague governors in the Northwest would bring in foreign mercenaries to deal with the problem.

    Casting aside the fact that as subnational actors they lack the legal and financial power to embark on such an adventure, the suggestion is a nonstarter. I can understand the governor spoke out of frustration, but he only has to look at the records of these dogs of war to appreciate it’s not the way to go.

    His proposal is also a less-than-subtle vote of no-confidence on the Nigerian armed forces. It isn’t novel, but rather springs from desperation as the performance of mercenaries across Africa is far from stellar. From the Nigerian Civil War to similar conflicts across the continent, such contractors have fought side by side with the local military – albeit with a patchy record of success.

    The Goodluck Jonathan administration patronised them – especially during the six-week window the then Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government procured ostensibly to drive back insurgents so the 2015 general elections could hold undisrupted across the Northeast.

    As I have argued is a previous piece, mercenaries are a quick but not-so-sure-fire fix, given that their motivation is mainly pecuniary, whereas our military would be driven by patriotism to defend and die for their country.

    If it seems as if our troops are having difficulties containing the adversary it most certainly can’t just be a question of lack of capacity or zeal. What we’re seeing is diminishing returns setting in for a military that is overstretched between the demands of maintaining the country’s territorial integrity and being sucked into myriads of internal security operations.

    Many of these local conflicts should ordinarily be handled by the police. But that organisation looks light one that hasn’t truly recovered from the trauma of the #EndSARS protests.

    The reality is that the security challenges confronting Nigeria in 2022 cannot be resolved by an architecture that was designed several decades ago. Our military, police and related agencies need all the help they can get or they would soon find themselves outgunned.

    Everything that’s happening now exposes the myopia of those who opposed initiatives like the state police. Someone like El-Rufai who condemned the creation of security outfits like Amotekun looking through the jaundiced prism of regional rivalry is now, without irony, seeking deliverance from foreign mercenaries.

    But for a fraction of what they would cost, states could collaborate on such local initiatives that help them police their communities better and push back against the bad guys threatening to take over the entire country.

    Even if there’s no grand conspiracy, even if recent attacks are the work of freelancers, the ‘Kaduna posers’ raised by Adeboye can help us refocus discourse on Nigeria’s security crisis.

  • The historical trajectory of our present political culture

    The historical trajectory of our present political culture

    Each time we watch the behaviour of our politicians, some of us cringe. This is especially true of their behaviour at public events as elections draw near. One such public event was the National Convention of the All Progressives Congress, which took place on Saturday, March 26, 2022.

    A key feature of our political culture that was evident during the convention is the near deification of President Muhammadu Buhari, who, according to the party’s tradition, is the leader of the party. One speaker referred to him as Baba Nigeria (Father of Nigeria), recalling a similar honorific used for former President Olusegun Obasanjo of the Peoples Democratic Party. He was known by his party members as “Father of Modern Nigeria”.

    Like Obasanjo, Buhari wielded the power invested in him by the party members, by forcing the selection of the party’s national executive officers by consensus. He even met with the seven aspirants for the post of Chairman and got them to withdraw for his “anointed” candidate. One after the other, the remaining six aspirants withdrew, citing respect for the President as the main reason for their decision.

    Buhari did not stop there. He got the APC Governors to ensure that they came up with a zone-by-zone Unity List. The negotiations continued on the convention floor into the dead of night until the Governors arrived at a comprehensive Unity List of 77 national and zonal officials of the party. Like the aspirants for the chairmanship, each subsequent aspirant cited respect for the President as the major reason for their withdrawal for the Governors’ anointed candidates. Thus, like Buhari, the Governors became the Fathers of the party in their states.

    Although no one is sure of what will happen during the presidential primaries, it is feared that the stifling of democracy by the magic wand of consensus may throw the presidential primary into unnecessary chaos, unless the process is embarked upon early enough to remove the tension that comes with last minute negotiations. If Buhari’s claim to electoral reform is to be meaningful, the Obasanjo method of forcing aspirants to step down on the eve of the party’s primary should be avoided. The process so far has raised serious questions about the quality of a democracy that prevents the people or their representatives to exercise the freedom of choice by voting for their preferred candidates.

    Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the Electoral Act and the party’s constitution allow the party to choose its executive as it pleases, provided that necessary regulations and processes are followed. Besides, Buhari’s fear of racorous elections of party officials at national and state levels by over 7,000 delegates on the convention floor must be understood against the various problems besetting the ruling party as well as the possibility of disqualification by the Independent Electoral Commission should the process be unnecessarily prolonged.

    What is in doubt, however, is whether the party’s gate-keeping role in ensuring that the right people were elected as officials of the party was effectively discharged through the process of consensus. APC party leaders saw this challenge but argued that the process could be corrupted by money baggers, who would buy their way through the electoral process, even on the floor of the convention.

    Another criticism of the party, especially by PDP folks, is the selection of several former PDP members to top positions in the new APC National Working Committee. Such a criticism, however, overlooks the role of various legacy political parties, including members of the PDP, in the formation and growth of the APC. In any case, in a political system in which members switch political parties for expected gain, rather than for ideological reasons, the ascendancy of a politician in Party B, who was formerly in Party A, is a non-issue.

    True, presidential democracy invests the President and Governors with executive powers, it does not empower them to usurp the power of the voters or their representatives in exercising their franchise. Where then does the deification of the President or Governor come from to the extent that they are allowed to impose their anointed candidates on the party?

    The substrate of our political system is the monarchy (Oba or Emir) or Big Man in which the monarch or Big Man had the final say. The colonial government imposed a parliamentary system over the monarchical system. In the parliamentary system, the Leader of the party at federal, regional or local levels was also invested with a lot of power. He often chose whomever he trusted or liked to occupy a particular position.

    The transition to a presidential system in 1979 after decades of military rule did not reduce the power of the Leader in our political system. Rather, it enhanced it. The concept of Leader, already familiar from the monarchical and parliamentary systems, was grafted onto the presidential system.

    Today, sycophancy by political appointees and legislators looking for robbed palms from the Executive further contributed to the deification of the Executive Leader. This began with Obasanjo, who allegedly used money bags to cow down the legislators and the EFCC to instill fear in the Governors. He got party Chairmen removed and replaced and got his Vice President running from one Court to the other, while also searching for a political platform to run for President. Obasanjo wielded so much power by the end of his second term that he was regarded by his party members as the Father of Modern Nigeria.

    It is not likely that this political culture will change soon for two major reasons. First, culture or tradition is often resistant to change and it cannot be legislated out of existence. Second, illiteracy, material poverty, and the poverty of knowledge even by many politicians will continue to support worshipping the leader.