The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • DStv serenades self

    DStv is going on a binge of self-serenading; and appears quite pleased with itself!  What would celebratory adverts not do: turn a regulator’s sanction into some self-purloined triumph?

    The facts: The Consumer Protection Council (CPC), following subscribers’ complaints against Multichoice Nigeria Ltd, in the provision of its digital satellite television (DStv) subscriber service, found the firm’s hand literarily in its subscribers’ cookie jar, in a cocktail of sharp practices.

    Here is the CPC release on the affair, by its spokesperson, Abiodun Obimuyiwa, as reported by New Telegraph:

    “After an extensive investigation, the CPC has substantiated allegations of violations of consumer rights by Multichoice Nigeria Ltd, in its provision of its DStv service.  Consequently, the council has issued far-reaching orders, including suspension of service when consumers are away; release of free-to-air channels, even when subscription expires; compensation across the board to consumers for lost viewing time; introduction of toll-free lines; and reasonable equitable spread of popular sports channels, among others.

    “The multinational pay-media company,” the release continued, “is also required to present written assurances in line with Section 10 of the council’s enabling law that it will not engage in any conduct which is detrimental to the interest of consumers,” aside from CPC’s order that, for 18 months after rolling out the sanctions, the CPC shall inspect Multichoice processes to ensure it is complying with its directives.

    With the tone of the CPC indictment, no one would be surprised at how DStv, in subscribers’ mind at least, had been growing in notoriety, en route to becoming perhaps the vilest corporate persona in Business Nigeria!

    Well, it is good news the company is taking its punishment and pledged itself to correcting its bad conduct.  It is good for subscribers.  It is good for Multichoice.  It is good for the market.

    What is not so good is how DStv has seized the airwaves, beatifying itself as some benevolent corporate uncle out to dish out favours to its cheated customers, not someone caught cheating; and forced to make restitution.

    It has projected its compact bouquet as some reloaded goody with extra subscriber gravy at no extra charge.  It has also pushed the slash in the prices of its two decoders to prices hitherto half their asking prices.  But where is the evidence those hardware were not, ab initio, overpriced, in a market Multichoice is a virtual monopoly?  In any case, spinning sanction as benevolence reflects exactly that cheating mindset that landed Multichoice in soup, in the first instance.

    Besides, the deal is not “slashing” the prices of hardware, where the fairness and equity of those prices cannot be independently determined.  It is rather slashing its Shylock tariff which, it would appear, has made many a subscriber vote with their feet.

    It is also in correcting its many operational glitches, many of which border on technical incompetence, of not immediately hooking up subscribers that just paid their dues, thereby cheating them on viewing time, while the bill continues to run.

    Unless and until Multichoice fixes fairer tariffs and corrects its operational glitches, it would appear morning yet on its day of consumer troubles — and regulator’s sanctions.

  • Not something to be proud of

    University of Abuja (UNIABUJA) Vice Chancellor Prof. Michael Adikwu is happy, but the reason for that does not call for happiness. He told the media in Abuja on February 22:  ”I feel quite happy that at last we are breaking the jinx. When I took over as vice chancellor, I visited the National Universities Commission and I was confronted with the fact that most of the students that had graduated from here had no certificates. Initially, we wanted to have the convocation last year, but we did not feel like giving out the certificates that we used to know, those printed here in Nigeria, because many people had faked them and they are all over the place.”

    Then he stated why he felt happy. Adikwu said: “We approached a company in the UK to print for us a certificate with a lot of features, something that looks like money, but superior to money. We have about seven different identities on our new certificates. So with that, it is going to be very difficult to forge. That is what delayed our convocation up till now. Henceforth, our convocation would become an annual affair. We shouldn’t be accumulating convocations. What makes a graduate feel that he is a graduate is actually that he has a certificate. The lifespan of the statement of result is supposed to end after one year.”

    It is noteworthy that the varsity chief didn’t say the UK-made certificate couldn’t be forged, only that “it is going to be very difficult to forge”. So, what if forgers overcame the difficulty and succeeded in forging the certificate? Would the university then try making the certificate elsewhere, maybe Mars?

    The point is that UNIABUJA’s resort to UK production is a bad advertisement for local capacity. Should the move be interpreted to mean that there is no Nigerian firm with the capacity to produce certificates that would be “very difficult to forge”? Perhaps more importantly, the question should be asked: Are there other universities in the country that rely on foreign firms to produce their certificates?

    UNIABUJA’s direction is not the way to go. The university’s direction is particularly ridiculous because a university is supposed to be a place of thinking and thinkers. If a university cannot think creatively in the interest of local development, it indicates a serious inadequacy. As a tertiary educational institution, it should contribute to making the label “Made in Nigeria” a thing to be proud of. Its thinking on this matter is not something to be proud of.

  • Lamentation of Fani

    He just rechristened himself Olufemi Olu-Kayode, from Femi Fani-Kayode.  But the distinctive Fani lament, of pathos and bathos, against Ali Modu Sheriff (SAS), as Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national chairman, shows the Fani public persona is intact.

    Just take this sampler: “This is what a party that was founded and was once led by giants like President Olusegun Obasanjo, Chief Tony Anenih, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Gen. Aliyu Gusau, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, Gen. T. Y. Danjuma, Vice President Abubakar Atiku, President Umaru Yar’ Adua, President Goodluck Jonathan, Chief Bode George, Col. Ahmadu Alli, Chief E. K. Clark, Prof. Jerry Gana, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, Chief Ken Nnamani, and so many others, has degenerated to?  What a pity!  What a monumental tragedy!”

    If there ever was a near-perfect verbal stacking of cards,  this was it!

    But what’s stellar about these names, some of whose crass obduracy pushed PDP into the pit in which it is buried?

    O sure, they harbour some wonderful patriots and gentlemen.  Alhaji Adamu Ciroma is one.  Hardball has never liked his conservative politics.  But, in all seasons, he remains a man of honour.  Indeed, when PDP were playing yo-yo with their zoning formula, Ciroma warned there would be serious consequences.  Here we are today, in the words of the keeper of a peculiar “freely given” mandate of Rivers.

    Gen. Danjuma too, with Senator Ken Nnamani who, as Senate president, oversaw the defeat of Obasanjo’s third term attempt, would make Ciroma’s list.

    Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar — was he ever a PDP member?   Was he a closet PDP member?  Well, Fani just blurted in his lament.

    Almost all of the other names, sans a few, can’t mount a higher moral pedestal than SAS, in a serious and conscientious country.  Meaning?  They all piled up the PDP bomb that blew up in Goodluck Jonathan’s face.

    Obasanjo?  Had he taken saner steps, the Fourth Republic would have been richer; and PDP better for it.  He laid the wrong foundation, though he carefully plays the saint now.  Don’t forget: his manipulation delivered the poor Yar’Adua (Allah bless his soul) and Jonathan.

    Jonathan?  His fecklessness was the final nail in the PDP coffin.  So, how could he, in “Fani-speak”, have been one of the great leaders “that founded and led PDP”?

    IBB? Ah!  Hardball won’t say more than that!

    Anenih?  Since allegedly trading off MKO’s mandate in 1993, what else has he been known for, except “Mr. Fix it”, of elections that for too long gave PDP false life?

    Ahmadu Alli?  Wasn’t he the chairman-GOC that implemented his C-in-C’s Ibadan garrison commander battle order, that told Rashidi Ladoja, an elected governor, to chuck it or surrender to Lamidi Adedibu, Obasanjo’s Oyo garrison commander, in his do-or-die 2007 election?  Wasn’t that, for PDP, the beginning of the end?

    Fani himself?  Whose vulgar abuse, reckless statements and empty bluffs were to blame for Jonathan’s eventual crash, so much so that even when the man had lost, Fani was still bragging he was leading by some millions of phoney votes, and that “PDP would not be robbed”?

    SAS, PDP, et al deserve themselves.  So, it would take more than pathetic and bathetic lamentation from Fani for the party to escape from its self-dug hole.

  • Tarfa Vs EFCC

    Remember Paul Tarfa?  He was the famous colonel, at the height of military rule, who had a rather infamous koboko theory.

    No, the good colonel (as he then was) was no sadist.  He was just pissed by the brash outlawry on Lagos roads, and would have none of such wayward traffic.  His simple solution?  Tan the hide of whoever you caught!  That should put the fear of God in others!

    That gentleman officer now enjoys a hard earned rest after retiring as a General.  But the odyssey of another Tarfa cannot but resonate the koboko theory.

    In his titanic tussle against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ricky Tarfa, SAN, taking a N2.5 billion fundamental rights action to whip EFCC in line, is certainly grave and serious business. No less so is EFCC’s sensational counter-affidavit rebutting the learned silk’s averments.  That certainly is a block buster response.

    Is somebody, somewhere, in the two opposing camps, thinking of a legal koboko to whip sense into the other?  Serious claims and counter-claims, there!

    The opening manoeuvre certainly belongs to the SAN and learned company, all 34 of them (excluding the plaintiff), barging in, all learned glory, to institute Tarfa’s suit. He wants the court to compel EFCC to release his two mobile telephone handsets, “deceitfully” seized; release his Mercedes Benz SUV car in EFCC’s custody; write an apology to be published in at least two widely circulated newspapers, broadcast in two TV stations with national reach within 24 hours of securing judgment and publish it also in the social media, with its possibility of going viral.

    Besides, to cure EFCC of its bully tactics and stiff-necked arrogance, the learned silk wanted the court to restrain EFCC from further violating his rights, fork out N20 million to pay his legal fees and, of course, award the princely N2.5 billion as compensation for breaching the liberty of a learned silk of many years standing on lawful duty.

    But EFCC’s counter-blitzkrieg is no less stunning and formidable, with its counter-affidavit dripping with rather damaging allegations.

    The EFCC claims Tarfa obstructed the lawful arrest of two Beniniose, Nazaire Sorou Gnanhoue and Modeste Finagnon, by keeping them in his car, between noon and 5pm, until its fuel ran out; and that the lawyer engaged in illicit text conversation with a judge to allegedly subvert justice. It also alleged the “bribing” of the judge with N225, 000, to which the judge allegedly responded with a text to thank the silk. On those allegations, EFCC averred it would rather hold on to both car and phone, since both were alleged exhibits, until the case was over.

    But besides the instant case, EFCC alleged a pattern suggesting the lawyer had a record of systematic skewing the judicial processes: the lawyer’s chamber allegedly manipulating the court’s registry to hand cases to particular judges, telephone trails of  the lawyer’s instruction to transfer money to “other public officers”, an alleged collection of $500, 000 from a client, “under the pretext that he was going to bribe some officials of EFCC”, an allegation of illicit donations at a book launch to induce the course of justice, and a reported but scoffed recommendation by a judge for the Lagos NBA to discipline the silk for alleged unprofessional practices.

    This is heavy stuff!  Whichever of the parties the koboko smites, EFCC or Tarfa, would stay smitten for a long time, if not forever!

    This is why the court should not only do justice in this case; it must be transparently seen to have done so.

  • Like Fayose, like Wike, like SAS

    Show me your friends, goes that English saying, and I will tell you the person you are.

    That appears to have played out in the controversial announcement of the no less controversial former Senator Ali Modu Sheriff  aka SAS as new national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    SAS’s coronation, which has sent a segment of the party hopping made, is a coup between the PDP national executive committee (NEC) and its governors.  Former President, Goodluck Jonathan, feckless and unimaginative at the best of times, has reportedly endorsed the move.  He called SAS “the right choice for the opposition”.  Dr. Jonathan’s patent political folly, which led to the PDP crash, appears set to undo any renaissance it may be dreaming of.

    In another section of the house divided against itself is the PDP Board of Trustees (BOT) and former ministerial appointees of Dr. Jonathan.  It appears another set of crisis within the once-upon-a-time self-proclaimed “Africa’s largest party”.

    But even among the governors that pulled the SAS coup, two stand out: Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose and Rivers’ Nyesom Wike.  Link both of them to SAS himself, and you can imagine the ruinous path PDP has chosen.

    Fayose bragged without end how he routed an incumbent in the Ekiti gubernatorial elections of 2014.  But the dirty revelations from Tope Aluko, on how that “win” was cooked, has exposed Fayose as another loud charlatan, professing democratic ethos.

    Wike, in the words of eminent lawyer, Prof. Itse Sagay, SAN, rode on the blood and limbs of the slain to power.  Despite the Supreme Court’s validation of his rotten election, it is clear who is on the moral defensive — the governor or critics of his so-called election.  As it was in the beginning of “militancy” that turned criminality in the Southsouth, armed enforcers, used and dumped by politicians in previous election, became the armed pest to their own people.  That sorry history is about to repeat itself in Wike’s Rivers.

    Link Wike’s probable progression to SAS’s chartered path in infamy, and what you have in your hands is a clincher.  SAS used armed muggers to “win” election in Borno.  But his attempt at use-and-dump led to the Boko Haram crisis, after the first Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was slain in police detention.

    And did you catch SAS’s victory whoop?  “By the grace of Allah, nothing will deter this party from going to Aso Rock in 2019,” he enthused.  “This my long cap is prepared to lead my colleagues and brothers to Aso Rock, Insha Allah.”!

    No qualms about the gridlock PDP’s 16-year misrule has caused.  No thinking about the integrity-deficiency of its many hierarchs, now facing corruption trials.  Absolutely no thought about the legendary incompetence of the last commander-in-chief the PDP inflicted on the country.  And, of course, millions of innocent Nigerians, grand victims of this misrule, absolutely don’t matter.

    What matters is power, power and p-a-w-a!  A deluded party, boasting all-power-no-brain?

    By the way, where does SAS’s ascendancy leave the now loudly quiet Olisa Metuh and his Janjaweed philosophy?  Or is SAS no longer Metuh’s sponsor of Boko Haram?

  • Force of size

    Imagine a defence team made up of 99 lawyers, including 32 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN). This curiously large team of defenders was announced at a Lagos High Court in Igbosere on February 16.

    The defendant, Lagos lawyer Ricky Tarfa (SAN), is accused of willfully obstructing two officers of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Moses Awolusi and Sanusi Mohammed, from arresting Gnanhoue Sourou and Nazaire Odeste, suspected to have committed economic and financial crimes.  Also, he is alleged to have engaged in improper communication with Justice M. Yunusa of the Federal High Court, Lagos, while the case between the EFCC and two others was pending before the judge.

    But that didn’t make the size of the defence team understandable. The same number of Senior Advocates had reportedly lined up behind Tarfa to file a suit at the Federal High Court in Lagos, demanding N2.5 billion damages for Tarfa’s alleged unlawful arrest and detention.  It looked like a dramatic show of solidarity.

    It wasn’t less dramatic when the size of the defence team attracted attention at Justice Aishat Opesanwo’s court at the commencement of proceedings in a counter case filed by the EFCC.

    Was the intention to intimidate the judge with an army of lawyers, senior and not-so-senior? The trial judge reportedly “bemoaned the number of counsel who were in court for the defendant. She noted that there was no need for such magnitude of support as it amounts to harassment and intimidation of the court.”

    The judge’s observation is thought-provoking. It remains to be seen whether the sheer number of defenders would work in the defendant’s favour. The force of size is not the force of justice.

  • His Parsimonious Excellency

    Truth be told: if Nigeria were some ideologically-driven polity, Lagos and Cross River, at near extreme ends of Nigeria’s southern coast, would be proud beacons for the left and the right.

    Lagos, bastion of progressivism, has since 1999, built a movement to show the rest of Nigeria how developmental governance can, and should be.  From Bola Tinubu, to Babatunde Fashola and now to Akinwunmi Ambode, that movement has made Lagos a positive reference point.

    Cross River, bastion of rightist conservatism under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has been a contra-showcase.  From Donald Duke, to Liyel Imoke and now Ben Ayade, it is another development movement, that has done well for Cross River people, though in ideology it differs from Lagos.  It is a beautiful advertisement that ideology is but only a compass that cannot replace vision.

    Which was why Ben Ayade’s arrival, with his rather intimidating bona fides, was rather exciting.  And too true, the professorial governor started shooting from the hips, immediately he breasted the tape, and was INEC-certified winner.  The added boon is that Ayade’s election, was certainly far less controversial than the near-charade of both Akwa Ibom and the notorious killing fields of Rivers, though the Supreme Court just sanctified both.

    Anyway, Ayade the prof, announced his glorious entry sounding so professorial, declaring with all pomp, his intention of putting his putative cabinet members to some written tests!  For this rigorous mind, mere vetting of CVs would not just do! harry

    Whatever happened at those great exams?  The media, harried and hassled, had hurried on to other things of pressing national interests; and didn’t quite follow them through.  But it is safe to say only the best and the most acute of minds were good enough for His Professorial Excellency!  Cross River could only be better for it.

    But for Ayade, that could only be the commanding opening of an unfolding high drama.  The next scene is the theatrics of showing high patriotism with the chief, by loving money much less.

    His Parsimonious Excellency just announced an 80 per cent slash of own pay.  That is the real Mac Coy leading by example!  For every Naira in the hard but sweet service to Cross River, His Excellency would earn only 20 kobo!  Nice and noble!

    But as a tree cannot make a forest, His Excellency is demanding volunteers of his appointees, but with a far sweeter deal.  He is demanding of them a 20 per cent slash: earn one naira but please collect 80 kobo!  That isn’t too bad, is it?

    The snag though, is that no one knows whose choice that decision is.  Is it Hobson’s choice, which really is nothing but the governor’s; choice imposed on the appointees by subtle blackmail?  Or the whole-hearted desire of the noble and patriotic exco members et al?

    And the little question about law: can a governor lawfully impose a cut in the earnings of his appointees?  Would that very nobility and patriotism ironically not breach the law?

    Over to you, brilliant Nigerian jurists!

    But to His Parsimonious Excellency, candid counsel from Hardball: your patriotism is cherished.  But let your executive labourers earn their wage.

  • Latest comrade in town

    Guess the latest unionist agitator in town?  Comrade Senate President, Omo Baba Oloye, Dr. Bukola Saraki!   Did you catch him pump his fist in the air the other day?

    Ah, that would make Adams Oshiomhole green with envy, as the Americans would say! But when did the alliance between an elitist eighth Senate, which has not quite been able to throw off the perception crisis of its forebears, and a populist Labour movement, always mouthing aluta continua, victoria ascerta, even if it stumbles from one defeat to another, in an industrial space spiked with more than its fair dose of neo-liberalism, start?

    And wonders and wonders, Omo Baba Oloye was not alone!  With him, as captured by a picture which The Nation published in its February 9 issue, was Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, product of Saraki’s rebellion against — and conquest of — his party, in the all-important task of choosing principal officers for the Senate.

    With them on the aluta dais was Trade Union Congress (TUC) President, Bobboi Kaigama and Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President, Ayuba Wabba, both comrades in the new battle to force Babatunde Fashola’s Power Ministry to force service; before brow-beating longsuffering power consumers, to pay even more for the darkness they get now, instead of light.It was at a rally at the National Assembly, Abuja.

    That rally kick-started the nationwide picketing of DISCOs (electricity distribution companies) and GENCOs (electricity generating companies), as the new Great Satan (to use Iran-speak, in its high rhetoric with the United States), in the eyes of a baleful electricity — or sorry, darkness — consuming masses; and their organised Labour champions and chaperons.So, between the elite National Assembly and a rabidly populist Labour, when did the entente start?  Well, maybe there is no entente, as such.

    Maybe elitism and populism have not morphed into some strange alchemy, which sees both diametrically opposed economic dramatis personae hug themselves like some long lost lovers.

    Maybe there is only politics of perception, which winning symbolism symbiotically works for both sides!For once, Labour seems happy to have in its corner the Senate, an all-important ally against the Power Minister Babatunde Fashola, SAN, who for the umpteenth time, needs to work on his emotional intelligence.

    It is only a Fashola, who would believe in the manifest goodness of his crusade of rescuing the power sector by asking angry consumers to pay first, and ask question later. He dubbed it a bitter pill that must be downed for the future good of all! For another, the embattled Saraki, with his Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) trial set to open soon, would appear to need some healthy dose of populism to weather the fierce journey ahead.  Smart bloke!  He knows the battle would be fought in the law court as it would be in the street.

    If he must win that perception game, he could not afford the folly of the Roman Coriolanus, who mocked the plebs that their breaths reek of garlic. Even if they do, Omo Baba Oloye perhaps has enough courtly street wisdom (and common sense) to merrily gulp them down! So, when next Bukola Saraki comes throwing his punch in the air, in your neighbourhood, know he is preparing for the long haul.

    To win the perception war, is a task that must be done, so seems to say Bukky, the latest unionist agitator in town!

  • Shame on you

    So Daar Communications, the owners of African Independent Television (AIT), can eat the humble pie.  On February 5, the company made the headlines with the news that it had apologised to the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in connection with   the controversial documentary ‘Lion of Bourdillon’ aired on AIT ahead of last year’s general elections.

    Tinubu had filed a N150 billion suit, claiming that the documentary,   which was first aired on March 1, 2015, was aimed at tarnishing his image. Daar Communications had responded by filing a counter claim of N200 billion as aggravated, punitive and exemplary damages against the claimant. The matter was referred to Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in December last year.

    When Mike Ozekhome (SAN), counsel to Daar Communications owner   Chief Raymond Dokpesi, told the court that his client had opted for an out-of-court settlement, it reflected a forced humility.

    More importantly, the terms of settlement were humiliating for Daar Communications. The terms of agreement adopted as judgement of the court include a retraction of the broadcast by AIT and an apology by AIT which should be aired three times, once daily on AIT.

    The apology letter said:  ”Daar Communications Plc, acknowledges that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is an outstanding political leader of unblemished character and integrity, as well as a leading public figure and opinion moulder who has made and continues to make immense, colossal and gargantuan contributions to the progress and development of the nation in general and Lagos State in particular.”

    The letter continued:  ”Daar Communication Plc admits that in airing the said documentary, it had no intention whatsoever to embarrass or diminish the high reputation of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu which it respects and attests to. Daar Communications Plc hereby makes a public and unequivocal retraction of the said documentary titled ‘Lion of Bourdilon’, which was broadcast on its television station, AIT. Daar Communications Plc hereby tenders unreserved apology to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the broadcast of the documentary on its television station, AIT. Daar Communications Plc prays that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will live long to make more enormous contributions to the advancement of our nation, Nigeria, Lagos State and the world at large.”

    This apology letter was an admission of professional misconduct. But more fundamentally, it was an admission of unprofessional behaviour. Daar Communications and AIT should hang their heads in shame.

  • Nonsensical ‘innocence’

    How that the Supreme Court has allowed the trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) in connection with alleged false declaration of assets while he was governor of Kwara State, the stage is set for what promises to be a gripping drama.

    Saraki had tried to get the Supreme Court to disallow the CCT trial, rather than focus on establishing his innocence, if indeed he is innocent. Isn’t it curious that he initially chose to pursue the discontinuation of a trial that gave him a golden opportunity to prove his innocence?

    Put differently, why would anyone prefer to further problematise a problem, when the problem could be made less problematic simply by proving that it is not a problem? The point is that it does not make any sense that Saraki tried to discredit the trial rather than trying to concretise his credibility, if indeed he is credible.

    It is unsurprising that in the context of rivalry, ambitious figures in the Senate have called for Saraki’s resignation because of the Supreme Court’s judgement that he should face trial.

    But his supporters in the Senate insist that the situation is not damaging enough to warrant Saraki’s resignation. The position of his backers was presented by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi,  in a statement  titled “CCT vs Saraki: Our stand remains the same.” Abdullahi insisted that the campaign for Saraki’s resignation was premature.

    According to the defender, “our legal system is that a defendant is deemed innocent until proven guilty…we have decided to patiently observe the proceedings until the case runs its full circle in the nation’s final judicial forum.”

    The defensive statement said: “… from the beginning of the trial last September, we have declared that this case is not about any fight against corruption. It is simply a case of political vendetta. Our position remains the same. We still believe that the case is politically motivated”

    The statement continued: “The trial proper is yet to begin…It is on this ground that we want to state categorically that there is no basis for the call on the Senate President to resign until after the matter is decided in that final judicial forum.”

    In conclusion, the statement added: “We therefore reiterate our support for Saraki as the President of the Senate. We stand by him as he goes through the trial at the CCT where we believe he will be able to prove his innocence.”

    It remains to be seen whether Saraki would be able to “prove his innocence.” If he is innocent and can prove it, why did he try to stop his trial? Nonsense!