The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Ilyasu versus the Leviathan

    Protest is man last refuge against the Leviathan. Well, so thinks Hardball and so has it been proven over the ages. When all else fails, and the body has been mesmerized and subdued by a monstrous challenge, man seems to retreat to the inner recesses and calls up the last vestiges of his being – the spirit.

    That intangible, invisible heady fellow that lucks stubbornly in everyman often rises to the occasion when all else seems to have failed. The spirit man, that indomitable little guy is what steps forward in dire moments of humanity to occasion the stemming of tides, to vitiate a raging inferno or to imbue such courage as to fell a people’s Goliath with one little piece of rock.

    As man was afflicted with Leviathans of unimaginable proportions upon creation, so was he also imbued with doughty spirit in the form David and his little sling.

    Leviathan is thought to be a disproportionate sea creature; it also stands for any person or system of impregnable power and influence. Scholars have long come to see it in the expansive might of the state and in outsized monarchs, emperors, plutocrats, feudal lords and barons. Even empires and fiefdoms; harems and covens wherever humanity is debased.

    What then does man do when the behemoth ups full length before him; in a dire situation when you can’t even turn and run? This is when man simply musters the last atom of his being and confronts the ignoble monster. You may call it man’s moment of denouement and death. It is the moment during which man already circumscribed, prostrate in the belly of the creature, would be dung or dog.

    It must be such a moment that a certain Nura Ilyasu found himself in Abuja last weekend. If there were awards, Ilyasu would take the cake for the story of the week. A well-spoken young man had elected to protest the abiding misery in the land. He had chosen the best positiond communication mast in the capital city; the one near an army barracks in the highbrow area of town, Asokoro.

    Nura had hoisted himself up the giant mast to begin a 7-day hunger strike. Of course, no sooner had he sallied up the metal grid than the entire world began to take notice. Media, government officials, security agencies assembled at the foot of Nura’s new shrine in supplication.

    The point had been made. Nura clambered down. Why have you embarked on a death wish? Nura was asked? Eloquent as an ancient philosopher he said:

    “… I climbed up to protest incompetency and cluelessness; to protest presidential impunity… I don’t believe Gen. Buhari deserves another 4-year term because the pervasive hunger in the land is inexplicable…”

    See Citizen Ilyasu howling from the belly of the monster!

  • Direct vs indirect primaries

    In direct primaries, the All Progressives Congress (APC) may well be blazing a revolutionary trail, in the recruitment of electoral candidates.

    It is “revolutionary”,  because since 1999, there have been too many powers and principalities in political parties, full of whims and caprices.

    First, you have governors who, though they contested and won power on the party platform, decree themselves czars, before which parties — and other fellow members — must bow and tremble.

    Then, a coterie of party careerists and influence peddlers, who position themselves as new aristocrats, in a supposed democracy, where the base word is equality.

    In a patronage-suffused corrupt system, this careerist network, the democratic hoity-toity, confirms the supremacy of the president, governor, and even local government chairmen, with their parallel chain in the legislative arm; and condemns other party hoi polloi as the wretched of the earth.

    These plebs, the bulk of the party members, must be seen, seldom heard, except during the testy election period.  That would explain the frustration and bitterness, among the party rank-and-file, many of who feel they are no more than foot-soldiers, to mobilise the vote; and canon fodders, to protect party bosses.

    Still, no matter how ideal direct party primaries appear, and its allure of re-democratisation and re-mobilisation of political parties, you could see — and that is hardly surprising — that it appears hugely unpopular with APC governors, who wouldn’t abandon, in a hurry, their virtual power of life-and-death, over party affairs.

    It’s not that the governors’ power is altogether negative.  You see cases too, of legislators at the National Assembly, who get in there only to abandon the interest of the people that voted them, for some fleeing parliamentary fancy.  Bukola Saraki’s 8th National Assembly is replete with such notoriety.

    Maybe the governors stand well placed to call such to order?  But then, who regulates the party regulator?  Is it just gubernatorial whims?  That is the danger.

    Even the media, with that penchant to turn everything into a combat to boost copy sales, don’t seem to think it’s all a big deal.  You read headlines like “APC state chapters dare Oshiomhole; stick to indirect primaries”.  No, it isn’t Oshiomhole’s personal battle — in any case, it shouldn’t be.  It is all about reclaiming the soul of political parties, from a few hierarchs, to the many that own the collective.

    Besides, the collapse of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the former ruling party, arose from President Olusegun Obasanjo towering above the party that vaulted him to power and re-moulding it in his own image.  That climaxed in the electoral fiasco of 2015.

    And the progressives too, has anyone wondered why their crises always come, not necessarily in governance, but on election eves, when they pick candidates?  Check the history, dating back to Alliance for Democracy (AD), Action Congress (AC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and now APC?

    Despite the present resistance, direct primaries hold the key to re-democratizing the political parties.  Every party should make it an integral part of its constitution.  While those who govern should be servants of the people (that is what the vote, at least in theory, is all about), those who recruit leaders should be servants of the party collective.

    No sane democratic polity thrives without party supremacy.  Direct primaries hand that right back to the party collective, from a few hierarchs, as it is now.

  • Divine art of statesmanship

    Some sage said the greatest art is writing well but Hardball will differ a little here. The greatest art must be statesmanship; if only for the fact that it subsumes every other human endeavour. No, that is not quite right – it actually circumscribes all. Statesmanship at its very apogee is the highest calling of man; a state of grace.

    After God of course, are statesmen. Even God differs to statesmen. The Holy Bible is all about God and statesmen at play. The Old Testament is almost purely a universe of statesmen – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Caleb, Samuel, David, Solomon, Princes, Chiefs of Households, Captains of hundreds and thousands, high priests, name them.

    Men lifted among their peers and in their generations for specific purposes. Presidents, governors, chairmen, generals, editors, managers of multitude of men and resources – these are one in million men and women, chosen for higher purposes.

    But sorry to say that not many quite understand their state or station; just as Saul fluffed his high estate and Samson poured his special oil in the bosom of a femme fatale, so it is today. Very few still really are able to grapple its true essence.

    Statesmanship is a heavy responsibility which Hardball wants to wager is almost larger than the mortal being. It seems an assignment meant only for the gods or the supernatural. The failure rate is very high indeed. That may explain the universal chaos that has continued to engulf humanity from creation.

    The roll call is long. Adam failed, swept by the lure of the flesh. Pilate crumbled under the weight of mob pressure. Herod fell to the wiles of Herodias. Caesar mixed it up; Hitler, like Lucifer thought himself God and suffered a woeful finale.

    The story is the same from creation to the Jesus millennial – statesmanship has failed man or vice-versa. Statesmanship, the graceful art of the gatherer, the pathfinder, the multiple-eyed one, the one who must never snore even in slumber, the one who must never sup until all have had their fill; the one who must be first and who must be last.

    Most important, the one who though is ensconced at the Olympian height, beyond the sight of most, he it is who must stoop to serve all, even the lowliest. Such is the divine majesty of statesmanship. But oft, it is lived in lies and apocryphal propensities. For instance, why would a president, leader of a nation don top and pants and seek to be a footballer.

    Why would another president insist he is bereft of the munificence to afford re-election documents so some nondescript stalwarts purport to gift it to him? That’s a travesty; it’s statesmanship debauched before the alter of state.

    Statesmanship is often draped in virginal white; sepulchral and pure.

  • Saraki’s NASS: why is no one surprised?

    THE 8th National Assembly, under Bukola Saraki as Senate president and Yakubu

    Dogara, Speaker, House of Representatives, has lugged so much notoriety in illicit self-help that hardly anyone is surprised again at what outrage it might conjure again.

    After umpteenth budget padding and wayward delays, a brazen attempt to rig the order of elections to favour its members, Saraki’s orchestrated defections, forged to be the ultimate perfidy, but which backfired, setting a minority senator on the run from his illicit claim to the senate presidency, you would have thought you had seen all, in unfazed parliamentary rot.

    But even  more rotten scandals appear to perpetually ooze from that chamber.

    Or how else do you explain the alleged surreptitious deleting of the card reader, from the 2018 Electoral Bill, sent to the president to sign and transform into an Act, to guide the conduct of the  2019 general elections.  Talk of guardians of the Nigerian law chambers and their illicit brew to skew the coming elections!

    From 1999, Nigerian elections were a huge joke.  But it sunk to its nadir during the “do-or-die” election, which outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed on the polity.  The result was so patently ugly that the goodly and gentle Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (Allah rest his soul!) was so ashamed of his so-called mandate that he set up the Muhammadu Lawal Uwais’s Electoral Reform Panel, to carry out a surgery on the conduct of Nigerian elections.

    That progressive tinkering led to the card reader, that device that validates the permanent voter card (PVC) — and the effort to frustrate its use in much of the South East and South-South in the 2015 elections — gave a glimpse as to how the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) corralled its wins, in its high noon of power.

    Besides, the total number of votes plummeted from 2011 to 2015, a curious inverse link that suggested Nigeria must have de-populated, in four years, leading to fewer voters.  Yet, population-wise, the reverse was the case!  It was just conclusive proof that the so-called PDP winning tallies of old, were nothing but mere phonies.

    Since the advent of card readers, however, elections have become progressively credible.  Despite a fresh outcry over vote-buying — which however, has been part and parcel of elections since 1999 — there appears some net-progress, on the way to sanctity of elections.

    It is this ground-breaking progress that Saraki’s National Assembly tried to undermine in its latest gambit; and therefore, maybe precipitate post-poll confusion and possible violence!  What an assemblage!  What a conclave!

    This latest allegation again reinforces the public perception of this 8th NASS as the worst ever inflicted on this country.  In any case, its leadership has been the most rascally, the most audacious in cutting corners at the expense of the citizens they claim to represent, and the most reprehensible in their outrageous conduct.

     

    Well, elections are around the corner, and this is another reminder — if any is needed — to fling out these seedy characters and give back the National Assembly to citizens of high ideals who think first of the good of the majority, than bare-faced hustlers, who think of nothing but rank self-help.

    The elections of 2019 should be a referendum to clean up this highly defiled legislative chamber.  The furious Christ Jesus once drove away, from the temple, gamblers and speculators.  My father’s house of worship, he bawled in rare anger, has become a den of thieves!

     

    It is high time Nigerians drove away these opportunistic occupiers; and restore the National Assembly to the glory it is capable of attaining.

     

  • A king and his hangman – a fable

    Once upon a time, there lived a king in a faraway land. He was well loved by his people that they desired him to live forever that he may rule eternally. But the king had a small problem, the king is emotionally blank; he could not feel. In other words, he could not understand people laughing or crying.

    He only laughed when he saw people around him laugh and he grew moody and even cried by emulating others. But none of his subjects knew this. Not even his family understood this strange phenomenon. Worse, even the king did not understand he was afflicted with this peculiar disorder.

    Incidentally, only his head guard who doubled as his chief hangman had an inkling of this royal disorder of a strange kind. But alas, Kotukotu, the hangman, totally misread, or shall we say mis-diagnosed the king’s ailment. However, he loved his king so much he would do anything to protect and preserve him. And knowing his Highnesses’ disabilities, or rather believing he knew, he was always on guard to ensure that no one took advantage of him.

    By the call of duty, Kotukotu was an abiding presence in the presence of his majesty. Even when he was removed from the royal presence by some design, he had devised a means of his own to always keep an eye on his principal. He had a hole drilled in the palace’s wall trained at the royal stool. This way, even when he is not within sight, he had the crown in his sight.

    So it happened that each time his majesty frowned – in reaction to the frowning of his subjects before him, Kotukotu took exception to such occurrence. Depending on the size and importance of such a personage, the repercussions were often severe.

    Such a one that brought a frown upon the king’s visage was often circumscribed, sequestered, quarantined or guillotined altogether. In the event that a subject’s head was brought down for the ‘peace’ of his majesty, Kotukotu preserved the prize in a special purpose House of Skulls he made not unlike a yam barn. In fact in his lighthearted moment, he called it a barn.

    So he would keep an eye on the king’s audiences and whoever elicited the slightest frown on the king’s visage was doomed. You were a prisoner or a skull altogether. Through the years, Kotukotu’s ‘barn’ grew large. He was dreaded.

    Ironically, the more the subjects went with frowning visages to the king over strange disappearances and sequestrations, the more Kotukotu’s barn swelled!

    One day, all the subjects marched on the barn and pulled it down. They frowned all day at the harvest… and the king won’t stop frowning… and Kotukotu hugged his sword…

  • Corporate outlawry?

    This is a handphone text notice, from DStv, to one of its customers: “Your subscription on SC 7022387143 ends 15 Sep[tember].  Pay N15, 800 (Excludes HDPVR) for Premium & watch Man City vs Fulham this Sat[urday].  Please ignore if you have paid”.  That text was sent September 10.

    Earlier on July 9, DStv had sent the same customer a summary notice of increased tariff: “Dear customer, please be advised that DStv Premium subscription will change to N15, 800 from 1 August 2018.  Thanks for your continuous support.”

    On August 20, however, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba had restrained DStv from implementing the the new tariff, in the ongoing suit No FHC/ABJ/CS/894/18, brought by the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) against DStv on the tariff hike.

    Even if the order was late, concerning the August 1 take-off of the new tariffs, should DStv not have obeyed the order, in subsequent subscriber notices?

    It is worrisome this outlaw behaviour is fast becoming a set pattern.  Earlier in March 2015, DStv had announced a 20 per cent tariff increase, across the board, for its different bouquets, to take effect from April 1.

    Just as now, Justice C. J. Aneke, of the Federal High Court, Ikoyi, Lagos, had ordered a freeze on the hike.  That order came on April 2.  But DStv ignored it, on the technicality that the new tariff had already taken off on April 1.  It eventually got away with the illegality.

    Why the Nigerian legal space should tolerate such cynical outlawry beggars belief.  It is even more stunning that DStv appears quite comfy, playing the legal cynic, and getting away with it.  It’s high time it is put out of its rascality!

    Any player that doesn’t have any regard from the market where it makes the chunk of its money deserves nothing but counter-contempt.  That would appear the case of many South African businesses, operating in the Nigerian market.

    Back in South Africa, it is xenophobia against the so-called foreigners come to take the locals’ jobs.  In Nigeria here, the arrogance, as empty as they come, come as corporate conceit, fast developing into hubris — or what do you call having contempt for your market, and thinking you can push through, at your whims, and reckless caprices, your cut-throat business model, any time you like?

    The Consumer Protection Council (CPC) has done very well by insisting on civil methods to curb this DStv provocations.  It is time for the courts to do their bit.

    But much more than the judicial system, the regulatory agencies must move fast to break DStv’s operational monopoly, to protect the market from the firm’s in-your-face cut-throat tactics.

    When Hitv was offering effective competition, DStv was crashing its tariffs.  But as soon as that competitor was off the market, DStv has become rather reckless in its monopolistic tendencies, thus goading its customers, across the bouquet belts go need anger.  Now, was HItv going down deliberate sabotage?

    This DStv affront must not stand.  It’s so reminiscent of the per-second billing, which both Econet and MTN, both foreign networks, insisted was impossible.  But the moment Glo came and introduced it, that impossibility not only became possible, it also became pleasant!  The greedy, reckless world of monopolies and oligopolists!

    DStv must not be allowed to get away with its recklessness.  That is why it should be taught a hard lesson. If it still wants to continue business with Nigerian subscribers, it must be taught never again disobey a court order.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Upon a rich man’s fortress

    Great theologians have long held that every knowledge, every learning reside in the Bible. It is either that we don’t know it or we have not found it. Well, Hardball would like to tweak that a little to say that all wisdom is found in the Bible and only those who earnestly seek would find it.

    Let’s say that Hardball has been rattled with fresh insight following the earth tremor in some areas of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja last week. It was reported that about 20 tremolous occurrences shook areas like Mpape, Katampe, parts of Maitama and some rural communities of the FCT last Thursday.

    It was reported that series of vibrations shook buildings to their foundations. According to residents, the first couple of vibrations didn’t register; they thought it was the effect of rock blasting activity in the vicinity. But after repeated postings from the bowels of the earth, it dawned on them that this was extra-ordinary or extra-terrestrial – if you like.

    And residents scampered out of their abodes and ran in various directions – but to nowhere in particular.

    Here now is where the words of the Scripture hit Hardball more forcefully than any earthquake. Maitama and parts of Mpape are highbrow areas of the FCT. These areas are adorned with mansions some of which are comparable with those found among the rich anywhere in the world.

    But late last week, when the earth began to do a gentle waltz, perhaps to some celestial soft orchestra, earthlings began to run helter-skelter. Yet it was not even an earthquake – just a gentle shake. Maybe someone up there stirred his tea too vigorously and it reverberated down here.

    Just a little vibration and mansions which were fortresses, which mere mortals dared not peer into, assuming they are allowed to pass around the vicinity, were flung open. These fortresses became some form of Golgotha, places of death to their owners… as some fled, they didn’t remember to close their doors or gates.

    And the Word comes to mind here:

    “No king is saved by the multitude of an

    army;

    A mighty man is not delivered by great

    strength.

    A horse is a vain hope for safety;

    Neither shall it deliver any by its great

    strength.” (Psalm 33: 16-17 KJV)

    This is not to say that mansions and fortresses are abomination, far from it. It is just a gentle nudge to remind us that even the best fortresses in the world would not guarantee safety. But verse 18 of the above-quoted chapter says: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him.”

    But let adequate material and man be deployed for a thorough investigation of this phenomenon, quick.

  • Kano: Exchange is no robbery

    What is that quip again, that the more things change the more they remain the same? Hardball just wonders if whoever originally made that statement had Kano, Mallam Aminu Kano’s bastion of the Talakawa, in mind.

    The fact is the political spectrum of Kano is changing, now that everyone is gripped by the fever of 2019 general election.  But the more it changes, the more it appears to remain the same.

    Flip it back, four years ago.  In the anti-Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gale of defections that consigned the former ruling party to virtual power Siberia, Kano was an epicentre of sorts.

    In the PDP-to-All Progressives Congress (APC) defection, PDP Kano governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, rolled his Kwankwasiyya red army tank, from Kano’s  ruling PDP, to the new opposition merger APC, of which another former Kano governor, Ibrahim Shekarau’s All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) was a legacy party.  That made Shekarau a founding APC member.

    But the APC hierarchs’ decision to hand Kwankwaso the party structure — Shekarau be damned! — sent Shekarau scurrying in protest to the PDP.

    Four years later, it’s a change in the opposite direction.  Yet, the Shekarau-Kwankwaso dynamics would appear essentially the same.  Now, it’s a defecting Kwankwaso storming back into PDP and Shekarau going the opposite direction.  Reason?  Like APC in 2014, PDP handed over, almost wholesale, the PDP structure to Kwankwaso — again, Shekarau be damned!

    Do these political parties ever learn from their own immediate past history,?  Or is it that the exigencies of the moment always trumps the guiding hands of history, when the power stake is rather high?

    Well, with the Kano Kwankwaso-Shekarau umpteenth trading of parties, it would appear, as they say, exchange is no robbery!  But is that really so?

    Newspaper reports suggest the APC-Shekarau deal includes offering Shekarau Kwankwaso’s Kano Central senatorial seat, on APC ticket.  Now, Kwankwaso wants to be president.  But should he falter, and not get the PDP ticket, his fall-back position might just be to get back into the Senate, but on PDP ticket.

    There then would be the ultimate Shekarau-Kwankwaso exchange, for a sole senatorial seat, in which either would be the net-loser!

    So, hail the Talakawa of Kano, for they are spoilt for choice!  Their all-mighty vote might just crown a new Titan but bury the other!

    No, exchange is no robbery.  But between the two, one would be the ultimate net-loser!

     

  • Dalung and parable of the dog’s big buttocks

    The meat of today’s discourse reminds one of the parable of the dog and his buttocks. An old Igbo fairytale tells about the dog who once upon a time, was so depressed because as he claimed, the gods bequeathed him with no buttocks at all.

    He was so envious of other animals with a generous endowment that he often grouched that if only he had a wholesome bum … that those who had a good helping of buttocks didn’t know how to sit; that he would have always seated like a king.

    This crass canine lament got so loud it reached the ears of the gods. Angered, they quickly remade Mr. Dog and imbued him with a handful of buttocks fit only for a dowager. Mr. Dog was so overjoyed that he strutted the jungle with such lilting swag of the backside that all the other animals would turn to see the new spectacle.

    Soon there was an emergency in the jungle and all the animals managed to flee to safety but dog was consumed – his buttocks encumbered him.

    The odious fight for the soul of Nigeria’s football in the last three years bears some similarities to this parable. The Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports is probably the most important ministry in the land. But like the dog that didn’t appreciate his peculiar endowment, the current minister (not unlike most others before him) seems not to have a grasp of the magnitude of the office he holds. Well, perhaps until he loses it.

    First, there are probably no fewer than 50 sports eligible for the Olympics Games. But our Honorable Minister, Solomon Dalong has effectively made himself minister in charge of football in the last three years. Dalong may well have created a Department for Chris Giwa Affairs.

    He has done little else in this great ministry than his negatively disruptive interventions in the Amaju Pinnick versus Chris Giwa squabble in inherited. But sports is such a huge affair and a thinking minister of sports will turn the country upside down in just twelve months in that office. But not so for Dalong; it is obvious by his utterances, that Dalong doesn’t quite have a hang of modern sports management. He seems to be still terribly fixated to government funding for sports. Here him:

    “FIFA cannot be right. They have not even appreciated what’s on the ground. Football is funded in Africa by governments which build infrastructure and pump in money. FIFA must therefore learn to treat the government partners with respect,” Dalong said in an interview.

    Sorry, like the dog that desired big buttocks, Dalong has it all twisted. Government needs not fund football or sports if the minister knew his onions.

    And the bigger question: What about the Youth component of his ministry?

     

  • Of restructuring and Atiku-lated rally

    Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s restructuring comments, to some Nigerians in the United States, has sure animated former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and, at least on the restructuring question, turned him into Atiku the Articulate.

    Quarter-to-elections, restructuring-activism could be highly profitable, with a fine eye for the vote, as Atiku the Articulate appeared running away with an Afenifere endorsement.  But alas, it all turned Atiku-lated, sorry, articulated mirage!  But even if that mirage had been real, a partisan on the other side sneered, how many votes can the Afenifere grandees corral, in their native areas of influence?  Well, you never know, Hardball fired back.  Elections are tricky affairs; and until they are done and dusted, you never really know where the pendulum would swing.

    Still, it is rather refreshing that a sitting Vice-President and a former one are lined on the contrasting end of public discourse, slugging it out over “restructuring” — an idea, which time sure has come, but which clearly means many things to many people.

    To many, it is just election-eve jazz words, which buzz promises electoral nourishment.  With others, however, it may well be an article of faith, on which depends a future political life, or even the continued life of country, with all the doomsday scenario the restructuring lobby paints every day.

    Still, it is rather welcome that at last, the discourse is passing from the inanity of my defectors are bigger than yours; or my wallet is deeper than yours to corral the vote; to two vice-presidents, the one extant; and the other not quite extinct, debating in the open, the restructuring question.

    It is also a rather curious match-up.   PYO is not especially garrulous.  But neither is he entirely taciturn, especially when he blesses his audience with the harvest of his brilliant mind, dishing out figures with clinical precision.  But on the restructuring question, he seems to have talked himself into a storm, particularly among its extremists.

    Yet, the point he makes is valid: restructuring is only a means to an end — rectitude in the public space, ensuring zero tolerance for corruption.  With the trademark weight, if not outright awe, his words carry, you could expect the restructuring radicals to fret and get frantic.

    That has created, for Atiku, a rare life, which opportunity is rarer still — being caught in serious discourse.  That doesn’t, in any way, suggest the former vice-president, who was virtually boxing the President, Olusegun Obasanjo, when they were in power, is frivolous.  But his public persona, beyond the wheeling-and-dealing of hot politics, is not particularly serious or grand either.

    Besides, Atiku has the baggage of being as peripatetic in his partisan odyssey, in his  willy-nilly quest for power (hardly a crime!), as he is in his views.  That has led not a few to dismiss his extant restructuring activism as nothing more than posturing, that could become extinct, as soon as the power dynamics change!

    Still, this cut-and-thrust isn’t bad at all for the polity, with elections only months away.  It’s really nice to see Atiku the Articulate have his day in the sun, in his impassioned rally of Atiku-lated restructuring!