The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Alagbado history

    He proudly calls himself Senator Engr. (Dr) Iyiola Omisore, the latest geek in public-private sector participation (PPP), in the most esoteric of fields in engineering. Fair praise, even if self-ululated.

    But when a chartered engineer willy-nilly turns a chartered historian, to spin a dubious political yarn, the feat spirals into what Hardball would call “Alagbado history”.

    Baba Alagbado, by the way, is how his unflattering Osun opponents dismiss Omisore, on account of his 2014 Osun gubernatorial election stunts, on the campaign stump.

    Ayo Fayose had just won a most befuddling victory over Kayode Fayemi, and Omisore thought he could replicate, in Osun, Fayose’s Ekiti “stomach infrastructure” winning elixir. Pronto, to derisive laughter, Osun’s Baba Alagbado was born! Need Hardball add? His theatrics won nothing but the electorate’s scorn and hearty guffaw — crunching double cobs of corn on the stump!

    Well, that takes the matter to Alagbado history on Osun’s political evolution. Omisore was in Abuja to procure the Social Democratic Party (SDP) form for his umpteenth gubernatorial quest, when he unleashed a rather mendacious piece of history.

    “Courts have installed more governors in this country than politicians and the people,” The Nation Saturday of June 23 quoted him. “They have taken advantages of the problem in the system, and the non-awareness of our public. I am here as a democrat from Osun State. I was in detention and I won election in this country. Nigerians don’t celebrate history. And I won every polling unit in 2003.”

    Sure. But that was the acme of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) misrule, when Bola Ige, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, was killed and one of the principal suspects (Omisore) indeed won election from Agodi Prisons in Ibadan, even in Ige’s Ijesa segment of Omisore’s Ife-Ijesa senatorial district, formally called Osun East.

    Yes, he won again in 2007, when Obasanjo’s “do-or-die” electoral war reached its most gruesome nadir in Osun, with the ready and merry bloody harvest of lives and limbs.

    Hardball calls it brutal government magic (in Fela-speak). But Omisore glorifies the rot as own version of Alagbado history, he would love the kids to swallow.

    For the courts doing the needful, voiding votes procured by ballot-stuffing and voter-slaying, the self-anointed “man of the people” (remember Chinua Achebe’s Chief Nanga, MP, in the novel, A Man of the People), is demonising the judiciary by his mendacious hyperbole that “courts have installed more governors in this country than politicians and the people” — concentrated untruth, pure and simple!

    But you can understand where Omisore is trudging from, biting his sour grape, and setting his teeth on edge. That judicial righting of electoral wrongs, served as the beginning of the end for Omisore and his ilk in the Yoruba South West. In 2011, Omisore got flushed out of the Senate by the real owners of the land.

    Why, a bitter Baba Alagbado even essayed a libel of Justice Ayo Salami, that great jurist who was president of the Court of Appeal that retrieved the mandates PDP stole in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun. The effete President Goodluck Jonathan picked that up to victimize and eventually hound Justice Salami out of service before his time.

    But who is smiling last today — Justice Salami who has his honour fully restored in a retirement filled with honour and bliss? Or Jonathan and Omisore, whose PDP was spitted out, like a bitter piece of meat, by Nigerians fed up with its umpteenth gall? By the way, why is Omisore now pitching from SDP and not from his darling PDP? Indeed, emptiness is nothing but emptiness!

    So, when next Omisore comes purveying his fake Alagbado history, know it is toxic stuff, never to be glorified. Omisore and PDP power years epitomise the worst of Nigerian democratic odyssey, most especially in the South West.

    That he has “ported” from PDP to SDP, and is spinning Alagbado yarns he miscalls “history” can’t change that notorious fact.

  • Hardball scores a hat trick!

    The Mundial, the world’s largest and most exciting sporting fiesta, is on-going. The tempo is fever-pitched and it may be said that every man or woman for that matter who has any blood running in his veins is a partaker of this round leather carnival for the next one month, excitement, euphoria and shouts of joy will herald every goal scored in faraway Russia. If we listen carefully we might just catch the seismic reverberations around the globe when the world shouts gooooaaal in unison!

    Now how did it come to be that Hardball scored a hat trick? No, the first question has to be how did it come to happen that Hardball was playing football?

    Well, as the story streamed, Hardball found itself playing in a major tournament; whether it is in the on-going World Cup or UEFA Champions League final was difficult to ascertain. But that he was doing exploits in a big tournament was all that mattered.

    It also streamed that commentators profiled him as being a graduate  of the world famous Aspire Academy. But not the massive one  in Doha, Qatar which has been a model for many countries to emulate. It turned out yet again that a Qatar Academy annex has been built in Kano by none other than the ancient city’s, nay, Nigeria’s most illustrious son, and money man, Aliko Dangote (May he find eternal favour from Allah).

    And in no time, it has churned great footballing talents from Kano like Ahmed Musa. In fact, record shows that in a short time, there are already enough Ahmed Musa’s in Kano to set up four Super Eagles teams. Indeed, raw talents across Nigeria and the West Coast are said to be trooping to Aspire Academy, Kano.

    It was in this sporting furnace that Hardball was said to have been wrought and now stands tall as a world class player. So there was Hardball playing in this tournament as an offensive mild-fielder (that must be the number 10 position).

    Barely one minute of commencement of the match, springs-in-foot Hardball quickly displaced two defenders, immobilised another and felled yet one more as if he were a log of wood, before picking his spot at a corner of the goal post.

    The second goal was not unrelated to the first having mesmerised the opponent’s defenders as if he were a snake charmer before tucking in the ball.

    And here is the hat trick or so he thought: Hardball received a pass at the periphery of the opponent’s 18-yard box. One look, the goalkeeper was off his line and he arcs to release a firecracker of a shot when a defender throws his foot in the mix. A searing pain explodes in Hardball’s head.

    And Hardball wakes up.

    He has smashed his toes against his bedpost!

     

     

  • A mess gets messier

    At last, President Muhammadu Buhari has signed Budget 2018. The signing was an anticlimax.  It is six months into the year, which is not the time the budget should normally come into effect.

    After a six-month delay, the two chambers of the National Assembly passed the budget on May 16 and transmitted it to Buhari, who signed it on May 25. When Buhari presented the budget to the lawmakers on November 7, 2017, he urged them to pass it without delay so that the country could return to the January – December budget cycle, which had been disrupted for several years because of delayed approval. It is striking that this year’s delay is the longest since the country returned to democratic rule in 1999.

    The mess got messier. Buhari said he decided “to sign the 2018 Budget in order not to further slow down the pace of recovery of our economy, which has doubtlessly been affected by the delay in passing the budget.” In other words, the budget as passed by the National Assembly was unworthy of his signature.

    Buhari was disappointed. He noted that  ”the National Assembly made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion.” He added: “Many of the projects cut are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation.”

    It is noteworthy that the lawmakers raised the total budget figure from N8.6tn to N9.1tn. It is interesting that this difference in figures wasn’t enough to cause a clash and further delay. It is also noteworthy that the National Assembly raised its budget from N125b to N139.5b without consultation with the Executive.

    Even before implementing the signed budget, the President is thinking about presenting “a supplementary and/or amendment budget which I hope the National Assembly will be able to expeditiously consider.”

    Optimism is positive. But considering the legislature’s negative record, it remains to be seen how the lawmakers will handle the planned “supplementary and/or amendment budget” when Buhari eventually presents it to them.

    Now that the President has signed the budget at this time of the year, what are the implications for implementation?  Of course, budget delays have consequences. Why is it so difficult to have the budget passed and signed at the beginning of the year? The country’s budgetary process is crying for progress.

     

     

     

  • Still, IE steals

    Despite a nationwide public uproar over “crazy bills” by the unmetered but over-milked segment of the power Distribution Companies’ (DisCos) market, Ikeja Electric (IE), as other DisCos, continues to systematically steal from its customers.

    The sure-footed heist so gores that something might soon give, except the authorities call these thieving DisCos to order.

    Just imagine this extortionist fiat, a one-way text from Ikeja Electric, and marvel at its martial finality:

    “Dear acct no 0100967162, Your consumption for MAY 2018 is 510.00Kwh, current charge is N11, 406. 15. Arrears is N-4.35. Pls pay to avoid service disruption. For enquiries call 017000250.”

    What galls is not exactly the so-called bill but the voodoo parameters of its calculation. How can a consumer run up more than N11, 000 in electricity bill, when the best IE supplied all through the month was, at peak, 10 to 11 hours a day, spread over two hours in the mid-morning, two hours in the afternoon, fours hours from 7pm to 11 pm and the remaining three hours from 3am to 6 am?

    But note, that was at the best of times, which was seldom. Some days in May, power dipped to a bare three hours a day, particularly shortly after a truck brought down some high-tension cables, at the popular Cele traffic-passengers hub, off the Oshodi-Mile 2 expressway. The quoted text message emanated from the Okota Undertaking of IE.

    Most times too, the segmented supply of electricity comes at the whims and caprices of IE engineers. Nothing is sacrosanct, except IE’s satanic bills that brooks no argument!

    This month, for instance, there has been a widely reported nationwide drop in power feed, due to gas supply complications. During that period, which lasted about one week or even a few days more, power was three hours maximum a day. There was a particular day or two, when the light did not even blink! But Hardball is sure IE’s magical bill meters are already recording hundreds of kwh consumed for enduring darkness, instead of enjoying electricity.

    And the so-called arrears! Most times, they are carry-overs from past voodoo billing, especially from that magical October of 2016, when electricity supply plumbed to record low but billing for darkness flared to record high. IE’s latest monster-child, the “crazy bill” was born.

    IE and other DISCOs are baiting communities, stealing from them with impunity and provoking them with disconnection gangs, who IE sends out to enforce its satanic decree, to corral money for service not rendered. As the Yoruba say, everyday is for the thief but only one day — one severe day — for the owner.

    The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), industry regulators and even the Federal Power ministry must ensure that lone, severe day, for the owner never comes. Since these DisCos can’t be trusted to honestly bill consumers, via estimated billing, without putting their hands in the cookie jar, they must be made to meter this segment, with metering treated as an emergency.

    If that day of the owner comes, and the communities vent their spleen on DisCos and their agents, DisCos will lose more than gulping easy revenue from supplying darkness. A word, they say, is enough for the wise.

  • Gov. Yari ti yari

    Great headlines are the joy of journalism. No, that’s too tame: great headlines are the epitome of great journalism. Headline writing is an art by itself; sublime art in the act of gathering and disseminating information.

    Readers and neophytes take one look at a newspaper (front) page; glean the news and take in the content. They get excited, anxious, well up tears or achieve a chuckle. These are the powers of headlining. Some journals and newspapers are actually buoyed on the wave and crest of ingenious headlines. The Economist of London and its tabloid homey, The Sun, are notable examples. Shall we then say super headlines are the rich vegetable soups with which the pounded yam of words are savored. Well, in a manner of speaking.

    But it’s not about the mechanics of headline crafting here today, just that the above natural header elicited this treatise. Governor Yari ti yari must go down as a classic in the annals of headlines even if Hardball says so. It’s in the class of the famously banal: “Wall Street Lays An Egg,” by Variety, a US entertainment newspaper in October 1929.

    Back to now, Abdulaziz Yari is governor of the scantily manned northwest territory of Zamfara State where herdsmen and rustlers have been having a field day in an unrestrained blood fiesta. Apparently, Governor Yari is thoroughly frustrated about the dire security situation in this no-man’s land.

    In February, about 200 hoodlums on bikes had invaded Zurmi Local Government Area of the state and slaughtered over 40 travelers.

    “On this particular incident, we had intelligence reports 24 hours before… I alerted security agencies unfortunately, they sent inadequate personnel…”

    These terrorists are known to us. Their major hideout is in a village called Kagara … but despite several appeals to security agencies to storm the area, our appeals have failed.

    “I need to state here that majority of the weapons used by bad people in this country are brought in from this area. I had reasons to personally inform Zamfara State Director of SSS sometimes back of a large cache of weapons being brought into the country, but no concrete action was taken…”

    This is the voice of a much frustrated state governor.

    Last week, Governor Yari completely downed tools: “I am no longer the Chief Security Officer of Zamfara,” Yari lamented plaintively. Put bluntly, this means that Governor Yari ti yari. To yari in Yoruba is to vehemently reject a situation.

    According to him, since the president’s order, the killings have not stopped; state government spends so much on security to no avail… “Chief Security Officer is just a nomenclature.”

    Gov. Yari in obvious final capitulation, urged his people to be more faithful to God and embark on special prayers….

    But even in his prostrate position, Hardball wonders what Governor Yari thinks about restructuring?

     

     

     

     

  • A lawyer and his client

    From the beginning, someone should have told Lagos lawyer Olukoya Ogungbeje: don’t start what you can’t finish. Perhaps someone did, but he rejected the wisdom.

    Ogungbeje should have anticipated the reason he gave for withdrawing from the case involving self-confessed big-time kidnapper Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, alias Evans. The sensational case is currently before the Lagos State High Court.

    Ogungbeje said his withdrawal was based on “personal reasons.” Did he use the expression “personal reasons” euphemistically?  He also said in a statement:  “For the avoidance of doubt, we wish to state categorically that we have fought a good fight this far despite repeated and sustained threats to my life and my co-defence lawyers; I dare say we have no regrets whatsoever having conducted the criminal charges involving our client this far.”

    Ogungbeje exhibited irrationality when he said: “For the sake of history we have been able to enrich the basic principles of our Criminal Jurisprudence, especially the principle premised on an accused person being presumed innocent until the contrary is proved, no matter the public opinion and the criticism.”

    Evans, a native of Umudun, Nnewi, Anambra State, was arrested on June 10, 2017, at his classy home at Magodo, Lagos, about three weeks after the announcement of N30m bounty by the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, for information that could lead to his arrest. He had been on the wanted list of the police in three states, Edo, Anambra and Lagos, for over four years; and police interest in him was renewed by his alleged involvement in the kidnap of Innocent Duru, the owner of a multi-national pharmaceutical company in Ilupeju, Lagos.

    When he was arrested, Evans painted a picture of how he started kidnapping, which added colour to the thriller: “I was into auto spare parts importation but lost all my money (over N25m) when Customs seized my goods. From there, I relocated to South Africa, where I started peddling drugs. But along the line, my business partner shot me and passed me off as dead. I recuperated, returned to Nigeria and decided to start kidnapping rich men for ransom.”

    Evans expressed remorse after his arrest: “I am feeling bad. People who are still into kidnapping should quit. They should learn from what has happened to me. ”

    This is the character Ogungbeje tried to defend in court. In other words, the lawyer tried to prove the innocence of a self-confessed criminal. Was that reasonable?

  • Mimiko … on the move ooooooooooo …

    It’s still the season of fidelity to June 12, with its rehabilitation 25 years after.  So, it’s fitting to remember some MKO Abiola campaign sound bites, in the run-up to that election.

    On radio and television (not much Facebook, or Twitter or Instagram penetration then) the song started with something like Nigeria on the march again, but ended with the enchanting and captivating refrain, which children sang and capered to in the street: “MKO … is our man oooooooooooooooo”

    Those were the days, of MKO’s Hope ’93!  And fidelity to that hope, which climaxed with being martyred for his mandate; and fidelity to the sanctity of the vote, by the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the Campaign for Democracy (CD) and indeed most of the human rights community, have reaped the great 2018 rehabilitation and MKO’s electoral sainthood.  Call it an ode to fidelity!

    But how many of the beneficiaries of MKO’s martyrdom, from the restoration of civil rule in 1999, bear any fidelity to the sanctity of the party system, the party that forms the organizational basics for democracy?  Only a few.

    And among the many free-wheeling, wide and merry sons and daughters of partisan infidelity, Olusegun Mimiko, former two-term governor of Ondo State, holds an especially notorious candle.

    Check his partisan record, as a “progressive”, the Nigerian lingo for social democracy, a capitalist left of the ideological spectrum, against the rightist or the centrist: from Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 1999, to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2003; Labour Party (LP) in 2007; back to PDP in 2014, at the tail end of his governorship, even presenting and backing a PDP gubernatorial candidate.  Now, four years later in 2018, after all the power and the glory, and the climaxing full vacuity, he’s back to LP!

    What a tour!  Indeed, a critic has dismissed Dr. Mimiko as the most peripatetic, itinerant and nomadic politician so far in the 4th Republic.  Others less courteous in their diction have bombed him with the tag of unfazed political harlotry, with a concentrated contempt for ideological propriety.  Mimiko’s only living and thriving world, they say, is ideological infidelity and political prostitution!

    But Mimiko, he of the Gba Sibe electoral battle cry, has pushed his democratic right to hold and change political opinion.  The other day at the Abraham Aderibigbe Adesanya 10th year memorial, at the Shell Hall of Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, Mimiko mounted a lecture on ideological fealty in Nigerian politics!

    Apparently touting himself as a “progressive” in that polite and cultured company, he carpeted what he called the neo-Liberal ethos which, he claimed, had under-developed Nigeria!  Not a few helped themselves to a quiet and polite snigger — a Mimiko preaching ideology!   Might Gba Sibe be totally lost in the ideology-neuter jungle he has created and snarled himself?

    As at then, he was in PDP.  Now, he has made the move back to LP, perhaps walking his ideological talk.  But some LP lobbies swear they would resist Mimiko’s move, alleging he is nothing but a mole that would betray LP as he allegedly did before.

    But in all of these to-ing and fro-ing, can Mimiko the man recognize Mimiko the ideologue?  Can the Mimiko the falcon hear Mimiko the falconer, in this dense ideological jungle?

    But don’t be confused, just sing as the kids did along with MKO in 1993: “Mimiko … is on the move ooooooooooooooooo”!

    This time though, it’s ode to infidelity, ideology be damned!

  • Budget mess

    Six months into the year, it is still unclear when the country’s 2018 budget will come into effect. Two days ago, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, added to the uncertainty.  Adesina gave information that was supposed to clarify the issue, but it had the opposite effect.

    After a meeting of the Federal Executive Council, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, Adesina told State House correspondents: “The budget will be signed next week. We will give you the specific date when it is confirmed.” Why did he say “next week,” when the date was unconfirmed?

    The Presidency had said Buhari would sign the budget based on the advice of the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma. All ministers were expected to scrutinise the budget as passed by the National Assembly against the proposals they submitted and report their findings to Udoma.

    Udoma reportedly told reporters recently: “The President is currently reviewing the budget. As you know, we have a minimum window of 30 days…The President is currently reviewing it and as soon as he is through, he will sign it.”  This is a picture of uncertainty.

    After a six-month delay, the two chambers of the National Assembly recently passed the budget and transmitted it to Buhari for signing. When Buhari presented the budget to the lawmakers on November 7, 2017, he urged them to pass it without delay so that the country could return to the January – December budget cycle, which had been disrupted for several years because of delayed approval. It is noteworthy that this year’s delay is the longest since the country returned to democratic rule in 1999.

    It is also noteworthy that the lawmakers raised the total figure from N8.6tn to N9.1tn. It is not clear whether this difference in figures would lead to a disagreement that may further delay the signing of the budget.

    If the President signs the budget next week, what are the implications for budget implementation?  Why is it so difficult to have the budget passed and signed at the beginning of the year?

    Ultimately, it means that the representatives of the people in government are not doing enough. With the 2019 general election approaching, the people should get ready to vote for political candidates who will work in the public interest.  It is time to reject budget delays and the consequences.

     

     

     

  • MKO: Two cities, one honouree

    Looking back at the 2018 June 12 rehabilitation of Basorun MKO Abiola, who won the June 12, 1993 presidential election but was elbowed off his prize by the Ibrahim Babangida military cabal, Hardball’s mind just flashed by to the novel, “A Tale of Two Cities”, by Charles Dickens.

    That book, of the best and worst of times, in London, England, and Paris, France, at the height of revolutionary fervour, could well have been a literary fore-runner to 2018 Nigeria, grabbed with June 12 revolutionary passion!

    The Bible, the Christian spiritual constitution, spoke of rising bones.  That could well be the fate of MKO, cheated of his right 25 years ago, and buried five years later in 1998, after sudden death in detention.  He just rose, like a tsunami, to bury those who thought they had buried him for good!

    What is more?  On that that day of MKO glory, the principal traducers were too shame-faced to show their face:  IBB the “annuller”, was too ill to come; Olusegun Obasanjo, the denier and sustainer, who conjured the May 29 magic, to bury June 12 in the trash of personal ego, fled to far-away Norway to launch a book.

    Even the likes of David Mark, the immediate past Senate president in the present dispensation but who June 12 lores alleged was prominent in the anti-June 12 conspiracy, has pushed forth a funereal quiet from his camp.

    The only honouree-absentee was Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, then chairman of the National Electoral Commission (NEC, now known as INEC: Independent National Electoral Commission).  In a way, his pains were tantamount to MKO’s.  If MKO was the pregnant woman denied of a healthy child after the pangs of childbirth, Nwosu was the  skilled midwife, whose skills and hard-work delivered the baby, but was denied the concrete joy of his efforts.

    But thank God, those dark days are over!  As MKO was getting his Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR) award, and Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, SAM, his Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) in Abuja, the Alapere, Ojota, Ogudu, Ketu and allied communities were hosting a new giant-size MKO statue, to commemorate June 12 in 2018.

    It is doubtful if the Lagos authorities knew of a possible June 12 tsunami when that new statue was commissioned.  Indeed, there was on old one, put in place by former Governor Babatunde Fashola, just as the neighbouring Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park, just across the 10-lane Ikorodu road, on the Ojota axis.

    That the MKO park stands barely three kilometres after the 7-Up junction, near the Lagos end old toll gate of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, where MKO’s wife, Alhaja Kudirat, was slain, is another glorious symbolism of how the just but dead, tower over the wicked that live.

    But the moral from the MKO saga, the official Federal Government apology to the Abiola family and other Nigerians killed, maimed and traumatised by the crisis; and the IBB-Obasanjo unravelling, is the imperative to ascribe to the high standard of public morality in public policy and governmental actions.

    If that had been the guide for the IBB junta, Nigeria and Nigerians would have been saved this nation-tearing trauma, which has plagued a fractious polity for 25 years.

    Let the June 12 rehabilitation be a fresh opener for everyone.  No country does great things by condoning injustice, even to the most vulnerable of its citizens.

  • Missing the point

    It was expected that there would be positive and negative reactions to President Muhammadu Buhari’s award of a posthumous national honour to Chief M.K.O. Abiola, Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR).   Chief Gani Fawehinmi was also honoured posthumously with Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON).  Ambassador Babagana Kingibe got the national award, Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON).

    The Federal Government described them as “June 12 Pro-Democracy Heroes.”  Starting from next year, June 12 will be observed as Democracy Day and a national holiday, the government said.

    A statement by Buhari had explained: “June 12th, 1993 was the day when Nigerians in millions expressed their democratic will in what was undisputedly the freest, fairest and most peaceful election since our Independence.” He added that Abiola would be posthumously awarded “the highest honour of the land” as “the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 cancelled elections.”

    Talking of reactions, the reaction of Alhaji Bashir Tofa, candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC) in the said election, is particularly intriguing. Tofa was defeated by Abiola, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the election.

    Tofa said in a statement: “There are also those who canvass that I be so honoured with a similar award of GCFR, if the motive indeed was noble and meant to serve the end of justice.” Describing the 12th June, 1993 presidential election as “inconclusive,” he also stated that “the idea that June 12 should be the new Democracy Day is also a matter that deserves serious reconsideration.”

    Clearly, Tofa missed the point. But the point was clear enough. Abiola clearly won the June 12, 1993, presidential election that was controversially annulled by military strongman General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB). It was a critical juncture in the country’s political history.  Abiola remains relevant on account of the devastation the annulment of that historic election wreaked on the collective psyche and the irretrievable loss of what might have been.

    Tofa faded into political irrelevance after the annulment of the election. He lost in the election. He was on the other side when pro-democracy fighters resisted the dictatorial annulment.  He was never a participant in the struggle for the actualisation of June 12.

    It is interesting that he expects to reap where he has not sown. He is reaping what he sowed. He should learn to live with that reality.