The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Oppressive

    It is interesting that the controversial Biafra campaign has spawned newspapers.  The secession movement generates news and there are niche newspapers that make such news their business.

    But it wasn’t business as usual for these newspapers when officials of the Department of State Services (DSS), on November 9, raided newspaper vendors in Asaba, the Delta State capital. A report said the raiders confiscated over 1,000 copies of “Biafra-related tabloids – Biafra Times, Biafra Star, Biafra Republic, Biafra Rising Sun, Biafra Voice, Biafra Journal and Biafra Trust.”

    The report gave further details: “All major newspaper centres in the city were raided. They included those on Ibusa Road, Nnebisi Road, and Mixed Secondary School area. The officials did not state their reasons for the raid but onlookers said the development might not be unconnected with recent comments made by the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu. Vendors located along Summit Road, Okpanam Road, Anwai Road, West-End Road, Abraka and Cable-Point area were not left out…”

    An October 19 online video showing the controversial leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, praying in Israel, extended an attention-grabbing drama that began with his disappearance on September 14, 2017. His reappearance 13 months after was as mysterious as his disappearance.

    Kanu had disappeared while on bail. Kanu was facing trial for “alleged offences of conspiracy to commit acts of treasonable felony and other related offences.” A military exercise in the Southeast, “Operation Python Dance,” was ongoing at the time soldiers allegedly invaded Kanu’s house in Afara-Ukwu Ibeku, Umuahia, Abia State, leading to his disappearance. After he surfaced at the Wailing Wall in the Holy City of David in Jerusalem, he spoke publicly on October 21.

    Talking of the Asaba raid, it is not clear what triggered the raid. A female newspaper distributor affected by the raid was quoted as saying: “They (DSS officials) were on a dangerous mission. They came with rifles of different shapes and in their usual black-black uniform. I wanted to run but one of them aimed his gun at my leg. At this point, I had to stop. They ransacked my newspapers’ stand and collected all those that have Biafra as their mastheads.”

    This operation was carried out without any explanation. But the raiders and those who gave the order for the raid owe the public an explanation, if not an apology.  The action was oppressive.

  • Posthumous statesmanship

    A pop diva sang about love being wicked but Hardball wager that it is History that is actually most wicked. For one, history seems to abhor villainy. Two, since many still have not been able to fathom the ways and wiles of history, they tend to ignore it or even banish it from national syllabi.

    But history is like a wizened old man, full of wisdom and well-being; seated at a corner of the theatre watching and taking in every minute of man’s strivings on the stage of life.

    History, as unobtrusive as the old one at the corner, is apparently lost on all, especially the principalities, the powers and the rulers of the world. How could anyone kowtow to history if an entire population is at his very mercy? The aphrodisiacal fervor of power would make any leader to repudiate history, banish it and denounce it as a mere tome of verbiage on the dunghills of time.

    Such is the trap that many leaders across ages have fallen into that at the end of the day, when the dust of life and living has settled on the red earth everyone, history is all that mankind is left with… its pages begin to turn as the last page of man is closed. If there was no repentance in the grave as some wags have opined, there surely is no changing the verdict of history.

    Men have tried to write their own history… or re-write history’s history. Some in bold and vicious assertiveness while others in stealth or even by stealing. But it hardly works. History can be mean and unforgiving.

    The sum therefore is that you live your history daily unbeknownst to you but it is penned on your demise, when your opinion didn’t matter anymore and you cannot smuggle stuff in it. In other words, you couldn’t have lived an entire life of a scoundrel and expect history to present you as a statesman.

    In other words again, there is no such thing as posthumous statesmanship. This is why Hardball merely chuckled some jejunal Nigerian politicos try to foist statesmanship on one of their kind after a peculiarly Nigerian perfidious sojourn.

    They start by heaping vacuous eulogies on such a fallen traveler as if that would change anything. History is neither stupid nor is he a Nigerian big man.

    Here: “Senate has urged the Federal Government to accord former Lagbaja all official burial rights due a national figure, with such honour and diligence.”

    Let’s just close by telling them bump heads that honour never comes through the back door nor is statesmanship acquired after the fact.

  • Despicable serenade

    Guess the duo serenading each other — Ibrahim Babangida and Arthur Nzeribe!  Blighted indeed, is that polity, without institutional memory!

    It was Nzeribe’s 80th birthday and Gen. Babangida, the enfant terrible, if not outright Ivan the Terrible, of Nigerian military rule, just went off-tangent, in his praise of Nzerible, IBB’s collaborator-in-chief, in the wayward wield of power, at the zenith of IBB’s power without responsibility.

    During those years of endless political transition, which unravelling at the gutsy June 12 junction nearly signalled the actual death of the country, IBB and Nzeribe were unabashed plotters.  Their country men (and women) were the worse for it.  Remember Dr. Aitkins and the so-called Association for Better Nigeria (ABN)?

    IBB wanted to rule in perpetuity.  But he didn’t have the balls to say so.  Nzeribe, on the   other hand, was just the unhinged anarchist on the prowl.  What kick such anarchy and dissembling gave him, nobody knew.  But he threw everything into it, as if his life depended on it.  That constant rape, that soulless battery, has left the country winded till today.

    Which was why it was rather rich that IBB went insanely lyrical in newspaper adverts, praising his fellow country wrecker, as if the duo were the best to happen on Nigeria, after the debacle of Lord Frederick Lugard.

    “A man with a different attitude,” IBB crowed of his friend, “a Nigerian with a different orientation, whose understanding of the human mind, gives you the cutting edge.”  Cutting edge!  How about that for satanic praise, given havoc the duo wreaked on the country!

    Make no mistake:  IBB is at liberty to celebrate or venerate his friend and vice-versa.  But it is simply crossing the line, when  after so much damage, the man of yesteryear emerged, almost from nowhere, with rogue praise, simply because he feels the injured had forgotten the grave injury their satanic partnership inflicted!

    But the limit of the IBB Nzeribe cant came with this: “At 80, you are a complete book with 80 chapters, each page telling a story of its own” — fair enough, it’s 80 crappy chapters, anyway! — “Each chapter a compendium of life well nurtured, life well cultivated, in service to humanity”!

    Humanity!  Service!  There has got to be some conceptual violence here!  Nzeribe and service to humanity?  That is rather rich because both are two parallel lines!

    That IBB could gush this much, when the country is yet to recover from the evil both of them perpetuated, just shows the joke that Nigeria had become for much too long!  Imagine an anti-democratic pair, storming back to shape the eventual return to democracy, in their very own gargoyle!

    IBB, for selfish reasons, virtually set his country on fire, on account of a criminal annulment of a free election.  Yet, with his fellow generals, they schemed to impose Olusegun Obasanjo, who went on to impose his own minions, in a progressive degradation of the country.  Alas, even Nzeribe got his own pie, of the rotten bake, as ranking senator, at a point in time!  The result is today’s Nigeria!

    This then, is the two-some cast, of IBB’s theatrical birthday lullaby for Nzeribe! It is nothing but humbug and insensitivity writ large!

    No doubt, it is despicable serenade — but maybe deserved insult, for a society that has zero institutional memory!

  • Meddlers

    How to sustain democracy in Nigeria is a question that has been further problematised by an intriguing intervention.

    It is curious that a lawyer and the National Coordinator of Lawyers for Sustainable Democracy in Nigeria, Muhammad Zubair, asked a Kano High Court to stop the Kano State House of Assembly from conducting an investigation into a bribery allegation against Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje by Jafar Jafar, publisher of an online medium, “Daily Nigeria”.  The legislature had set up a seven-man investigative committee following the release of videos showing Ganduje allegedly receiving $5 million bribe from contractors.

    When Jafar appeared before the committee, he said: “More than two years ago, a contractor friend of mine complained to me that the governor had been receiving kickbacks, ranging from 15 to 25 percent, for every project executed in the state from contractors. We then agreed to plant spy cameras on his Kaftan lapel so that he can capture the brazen act in hard evidence. He captured at least 15 clips, nine of which fully showed the governor’s face, body and hands collecting bundles of dollars.”

    He explained that the first video, published on October 14, showed the governor receiving US dollars from a contractor. “The video also showed His Excellency tucking these monies under his flowing gown and putting them inside an envelope,” Jaafar added.

    Ganduje chose to respond to the serious accusation in writing, saying he “did not collect, has not collected and will never collect bribe from anybody.” His defence letter was signed and delivered   to the committee by Information, Youth and Culture Commissioner Muhammad Garba.

    It looks like Ganduje trivialised the accusation.  His appearance would have demonstrated that he understood the gravity of the allegation. But he didn’t appear.  Or did he think his position meant he didn’t need to appear?     It isn’t enough, and can’t be enough, that Ganduje responded in writing.

    It’s no business of Zubair and the group known as Lawyers for Sustainable Democracy in Nigeria.  Asking a court to stop the investigative committee from further probing the bribery allegation is not democratic. This is no way to sustain democracy.

    Democracy is not expected to encourage corruption, which is not to say that the governor is corrupt, or that he is guilty.  Ganduje is expected to defend himself and prove his innocence. This meddlesome group does not help his case.

  • Obduracy as bane statecraft

    While proverb is regarded as the palm oil with which words are eaten in Igbo land, according to Chinua Achebe; in Yoruba land, it could be said that onomatopoeia is chief device with which elders of yore coined their adages. Examples abound but just one would do here.

    Here: bu fun mi n bu fun o, ni opolo nke n nu odo. Those who understand Yoruba would immediately hear rendered here, the croaking of frogs in the pool. Literally, it suggests that frogs are wont to chant: do unto me as I do unto you. But the meaning is better captured in the onomatopoeic chants of these amphibious creatures.

    This may be a bit complex for non-speakers of the language but today is not about frogs and Yoruba rich word play. It’s actually about the paramount place of equity, rule of law, good sense and fairness in the sacred art of statecraft.

    It has been said that running a state or government is probably the nearest thing to playing God. The better a state is run the closer the state is the verisimilitude of the kingdom of God, it has also been said. And as frogs chant, deal unto me as I deal unto you, in fair and equal measures, so must always be the mindset of the managers of the affairs of any state.

    And this piece refers to the on-going agitation of the Shiites’ sect for the release of their leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El Zakzaky. In December, it will be three years Zakzaky has been detained in what government calls “protective detention”.

    Several courts have ruled in favor of the cleric’s release on bail while trial continues but the Federal Government seems to consider him too much a security risk. Courts have been blatantly disobeyed on this matter and disregarded even.

    Read also: El-Zakzaky: I-G puts Commissioners of Police on red alert

    But if the Shiites are considered to be propagating anarchy, the state cannot be seen to be matching them with an even more brazen anarchy. Government obdurately repudiating its courts and judicial processes is the worst kind of state failure; it’s the death of rule of law.

    The result is the wave of protests in the heart of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The protests are termed to be peaceful, and truly they bear no arms nor attack anyone but the capital city is shut down each time. This triggers anxiety among the populace and security agencies.

    The result has been bloody clashes leading to deaths. Yet they have vowed to continue until their leader is released. Let’s say obduracy is never a tool of statecraft. Different challenge, different solution. Dialogue, strategic engagements required here.

     

  • Obasanjos: Might the child be the father of the man?

    One of the greatest poetic paradoxes ever was the quip: “child is the father of man”, by English romantic poet, William Wordsworth, in his famous poem, ‘The Rainbow’.

    Is that what is playing out in the latest drama in the Obasanjo household?

    Olusegun Obasanjo, the one and only Ebora Owu, needs no introduction.  At the zenith of his presidential reign, many of his courtiers dazzled him with the flattering praise of “father of modern Nigeria”.  And didn’t the Ebora lap up that praise?

    Well, the “modern Nigeria”, of the Obasanjo era, collapsed in the corruption rubble that buried former President Goodluck Jonathan.  Though Jonathan was commander-in-chief for some odd five-plus years, he signed off his presidency as fall guy-in-chief, the ultimate sacrificial lamb, for all that was wrong with the Obasanjo era.

    What is more?  Even the Ebora went on over-drive to roast poor Jonathan.  Reason, Jonathan wouldn’t be Baba’s poodle.  Though he wasn’t much of own man either, he paid the ultimate political price — and Baba was pleased!

    But the same rotten order the Ebora condemned under Jonathan, he has u-turned to endorse, picking Atiku Abubakar, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the 2019 presidential election, as his new champion.

    Never mind that Baba had published un-printable stuff on Atiku, complete with tumbling adjectives and searing epithets.  Still, blood is thicker than water; and the Ebora would be loath to abandon his cherished old order — as “father of modern Nigeria!” — more so, as the Buhari Pharaoh is proving to know no Joseph, from the old rotten order.

    That would appear the critical juncture, where the Obasanjo child, in Wordsworth-speak, ventures to be father of the man.

    Read also: A grandstanding ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo

    Olujonwon Obasanjo, Olusegun Obasanjo’s son, is pitching his tent with the PMB Army.  Many have claimed the child is disenchanted with the man, given some reported dissonance between mom and dad.  Maybe.  Still more have claimed it’s the act of a rebel son against the father.  Maybe too — as far as private grievances go.

    But in the public space, what would make a son go against a father, even with the age-old filial dictates by African tradition?

    Well, maybe the father dreams a past he wished would come back; and he would become, yet again, the unchallenged lord of the manor!

    And maybe the son sees the vision of an immaculate future, where all the dross of the past, all the grandstanding, all the hypocrisy, all the pious posturing over nothing really — that the father richly epitomises — would have vanished, leaving the people generally with a far better deal!

    Maybe that’s the future the son craves, and surely wants to belong.

    But don’t surrender your ringside ticket.  The drama isn’t about ending.

    Talk of the child being father of the man!

     

  • Empty-handed

    It never rains but it pours. Former Ekiti State governor Ayo Fayose is experiencing the potency of this proverb. Since his tenure ended on October 16, he has experienced bad situation after bad situation.

    First, his succession plan failed.  Fayose’s personal choice, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, the former deputy governor and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, was defeated by Dr. Kayode Fayemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Second, Fayose had questions to answer at the office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after he left office. He was detained over alleged corruption.

    Now Fayose has been removed as PDP leader in the state. On November 3, PDP stakeholders in Ekiti State chose a new leader, Senator Biodun Olujimi. She is also the party’s new leader in the Southwest. Olujimi tried to paint a picture of normalcy when she spoke to reporters after the meeting that endorsed her leadership. But it was clear that things had changed in the party.

    Olujimi was quoted as saying: “We knew what he might have passed through by staying in detention and we know it might not be easy for him to attend this meeting, so there is no faction at all in our party. My being appointed the Leader does not mean there is crisis.”

    She added: “The very day he left office was the day he was summoned by EFCC and we knew the rigour he had passed through. We are going to work together, I mean with former Governor Fayose. What we are doing is that we don’t want to allow his exit from office to mean the end of PDP in Ekiti. So, let me assure our supporters that we are on the same page with former Governor Fayose and other stakeholders.”

    Olujimi, who represents Ekiti South in the Senate, was just being diplomatic. She was among those that opposed Fayose’s move to impose his deputy on the party ahead of the governorship election.  She had said:  ”Whoever says we are politicians that can be wished away will blame themselves, the result will be grievous. We don’t want to lose Ekiti but Governor Fayose is messing up the whole process… Prof Olusola was only a beneficiary of our sweat, he didn’t contribute anything and now he wants to be adopted against the party’s constitution, this we will not accept.”

    Fayose is now empty-handed.

  • Wike smacks his lips

    Governor Nyesom Wike remains a fixture of both affection and controversy in his party, The PDP. Those who love him, especially in his state, swear because of what they consider his earthy virtue, his folksy voice and visceral effusions. Those who don’t like him consider him a boor.

    But the Rivers State governor is anything but boring. Not when he is sparring with his favorite foe, the transport minister Rotimi Amaechi, whose fight was thankfully kept alive recently for having a second life after surviving a giddy air experience in a flight from Port Harcourt to Lagos.

    But the most potent battles he has had of late has been within his party. The latest is the charge that the Ikwere man picked the feminine-voiced Peter Obi as the running mate of Atiku Abubakar, the party’s flag bearer. It gave Wike a sort of larger-than-life image, the man who was only just a junior minister under the shadow of Jonathan and also in good spirits with the former first lady, Patience, has suddenly morphed into a party titan?

    But Wike would not take credit, and rejected any role in vaulting Obi to the party’s presumably number two spot when some of his colleagues even within the same region had their eyes set on that fleshy prize. He was also a butt of outrage from Obi’s kinsmen, especially the governors. Some of them thought the River State governor was presumptuous for going out of his natural zone to foist a man out of the comfort zone of the south-eastern elite.

    He was unmistakable in his rebuttal: “I never nominated Obi. But the mere fact that the vice presidential candidate is coming from the southeast does not give the zone the sole right to nominate a person, since the entire country will benefit.” If you thought he prevaricated a little, hear this: “when the southeast said they were not consulted before Peter Obi was nominated, when did we meet as a party that the vice president must come from the southeast? But we said if the presidential candidate believes he has somebody to work with, so be it.” A bit of a lawyerly logic here.

    But it all began since he wanted to host the PDP convention in the garden city that ultimately picked the party presidential torch bearer. Wike was resented by those who feared his muscle as the landlord of Port Harcourt. With that clout, he would pick the candidate. He was oil-rich, he was a bulldozer and an underrated chess player. They did not want to mess with him, and that would amount to keeping the fish in the custody of a cat.

    He used all the tools of power player. He cajoled. He threatened. He teased. Eventually he triumphed. He brought dollars and political sense to his city, and bested his foes. Is he doing all these at the expense of his friends within the party, or his stature only grows in the PDP by default. Time will tell. But Wike seems to be enjoying the theatre at some people’s expense. That, we agree, is how the political cookie crumbles.

     

  • Death fixes everything after all

    But for aging and death, man may have laid claim to divinity. At that, not even the ugly wrinkling up of once gorgeous flesh, nor morbidity and eventual morphing into dust has sufficiently subdued man.

    Most of us still forget we are mere dust – flailing flecks of dust that is here now and then no more. Regardless that atrophy and death have been with man since biblical Adam ate the forbidden fruit, yet we mostly live in partial forgetfulness, often playing at deification and seeking to repudiate our dust-to-dust status.

    Ironically, in so doing, most of us die twice; in the sense that in denying/forgetting our transience, putrescence and eventual demise, we seem to assign death a bad name when we finally kaput.

    In other words, death ought to be the glorious finale to an elevated life. But hardly any life is elevated or edifying in a cold, vacuous world anymore. So a hideous life begets a rogue passage and un-storied eternity – and so goes the sad song.

    So why aren’t all men covered in white clouds of glory both on earth and unto eternity? Why are we constrained to pen glowing epitaphs upon the tombs of villainy? Why do we desire sainthood in egregious states of un-saintliness? Death may be painful but life is ashen because in living, most of us die already.

    Hardball is moved to barroom philosophising upon the demise of one of Nigeria’s notable political figures of the current civilian dispensation, Chief Tony Anenih. A retired police officer turned politician, he earned a telling sobriquet of ‘Mr. Fix It’. In the 16 years the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) held sway in Nigeria (1999 to 2015) he was the iron gloves of the era.

    We all remember him famously announcing that “there is no vacancy in Aso Rock.” He said it as if he owned the place. It was a “keep of” notice of sort and it was not by chance that many politicians of his time didn’t take his notice lightly or literarily for that matter.

    He was ultra-conservative and establishmentarian and had no qualms about it. All that seemed to matter to him was power and victory. These ends justified the means. Again, he made no bones about it.

    He was the man, not the statesman just as he played at the state and didn’t care much about the man. Now, death is the final fixer of all things.

  • Secure parliament…

    Seek  ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” admonishes the scriptures in Matthew 6:33, “and all these things would be added unto you.”  That was the Christ Jesus telling the multitude to shun mammon, and glory in godly living.

    If people’s faith is their way of life, then politics is the life of citizens in a democracy.  Even if you are not an active politician, you’re periodically being called to exercise your franchise by those politicians, for whom politics is a way of life.

    Whatever your attitude, even more than the hyper-visible executive positions of president and governors, just know that securing the parliament is key.  If you did that, you just may have secured the political equivalent of the biblical kingdom of God, and frankly, you can expect every other thing to follow.

    How so?  Ask All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole.  He has been reported in the news, saying his ruling federal party would reward loyal party members in the National Assembly, and do away with opportunists and traitors.

    Ha, Comarade Adams should know!  Since 2015, his party had endured a pair, at the helm of its parliamentary machine, who answer Dr. Jerkyl, representing APC during the day; but no less zealously, answer Mr. Hyde of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at night.

    The duo of Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara ensured a slowdown, if not outright sabotage, of legislative backing for President Muhammadu Buhari’s programmes — in delayed budgets, padded budgets, rogue bills forged to ensure own selfish interests, threat to abandon parliamentary confirmation duties as rogue protest, sundry cynical filibustering and allied parliamentary rascality, that tend to de-market the government in which they both served.

    The latest phase of that enemy-in-the-house-war-of-attrition took off when Saraki announced senatorial defections to the opposition, hoping to build a new rogue majority that would still retain him as senate president, even in PDP colours!  Talking of Mr. Hyde finally coming out in the open!  Since that backfired, it’s been parliamentary shutdown — maybe until new stratagems are forged?

    Dogara has, more or less, pranced in Saraki’s wide and merry way.  As he has crossed over to PDP, he stands degraded, by the standing numbers, as a minority lawmaker.  Yet, he holds on as “Speaker”.  Well, the bastion of this 8th National Assembly is hardly honour!

    Hardball’s concern is not parliamentary personalities per se.  Politicians of several hues would still be politicians and would play politics — euphemism for cynical opportunism, if they can get away with it.

    Hardball is rather concerned with getting the people a good deal.  That is what the 8th National Assembly, under the duo of Saraki and Dogara, are not doing.

    That is why, as we build up to another bout of elections, the parties must ensure that, whoever their candidates are, they are not just another band of opportunists, who would feed fat, mouth cant but leave the people’s job undone.

    Which is why it is imperative to secure the parliament.  It starts, first with the parties to present their best minds — diligent, honest, industrious and loyal to their party’s programmes.  Then, the stage moves on for the people to choose right.

    Those done, there would be assurance that both the executive and legislature are on the same page, double-charged to delivering a renascent Nigeria, where the people come first, and not the antics and whims decadent leaders, no more than vicious power dealers.