The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • The N40b doppelganger, by Danny D. Dainty

    Dear readers, Hardball has the rare privilege of bringing you a sneak preview of a blockbuster, unputdownable book by one of the richest and most illustrious Nigerian carpet-bagger, ex-convict and manipulator, let’s call him Danny D. Dainty. Now, mind you this book (also to be made into a film) has not been written but Hardball through the instrumentality of a special device (patently his), read the book right there on Danny’s mind and here reviews it just for your pleasure dear reader. The first point to note is that Danny had trouble choosing a suitable title for his book. When he landed his megabucks (N40biggies) and he contemplated writing a book, the first title that came to his mind was: Capitalist Art: How to Mint Money From the Comfort of your Paris bedroom, surrounded by all the good things Paris can offer.

    Danny boy loved the title but even his illiterate mind (literarily, that is) was able to figure out that that is damn too long if not tautological. No book ever had such a long title he told himself. He thought to himself, how about: How to Kill a Country and Squeeze the Balls of Smart Oil Multinationals. No, still long, he deleted it. How about, The Poor Boy Who Took the World by Storm or… He eventually settled for the above title (adopted as the title of this piece) which he believes has all the right elements – short, concise, adequately highfaluting and carries the cash tag.

    The moving but doctored-to-suit- tale is a personal account of how Danny who was oil minister in a bumbling country ruled by a dumb dictator 15 years ago proved that you can make not one or two but 40 billion cash without as much as registering a proper company. It is a story of an extremely clever fellow who used the white people to determine the juiciest oil block of the time; it is the story of a master manipulator who corralled the small dictator and all involved in a 9 billion barrels crude oil worth of oil block and converted it to his own using a bogus company. The book regales readers with how he put some of the largest foreign oil firms through the hoops, baiting them into cleaning up the block at huge expense while he waited for them at the corner to clobber them with the malleable law courts of his country.

    At the end stage of the epic drama when he had to go for the kill, he co-opted his country’s top-notchers including the chief law officer who was his legal leg man in his earlier days. The soup made in a cauldron was ready indeed and Danny had a fill. A whopping $1.3 billion was extracted from desperate oil companies that wanted Danny’s phantom company which hijacked one of the richest oil blocks in the world for itself. It was a form of obtaining by false pretense (419) except that in this case, a valuable commodity changed hands but at a black market rate. The book ends with how the billion dollars was disbursed, who got what and how. Especially, how the monies made winding trips all over the world before returning to their owners in Danny’s jungle of a country. Danny tells us how he got $250 million which translates to an obscene 40 billion in his native currency. It is indeed a doppelganger, whatever that means.

    Danny lives in France now (or on top of the world if you like) where he was convicted four years ago for laundering huge sums, corrupt proceeds from a political office. He lives large and boisterous, full of bonhomie. He ends the book mocking the very country of his which he raped and suggests that the government officials he had suborned are a greedy, stupid lot.

  • PDP ‘s Taj Mahal of shame

    PDP ‘s Taj Mahal of shame

    If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were a building, it would be remarkable for its status of perpetual uncompletedness. This is not to be taken metaphorically for it would be rather foolhardy now to expect this headless (this is the metaphor) leviathan to run on ideology or edifying mores. Hardball refers to the physical structure. PDP offices across the country often cut the pictures of misbegotten edifices lacking in soul or sobriety. Their architecture often appear haphazard and the environment uninspiring and bereft of any lustre.

    You may argue that the work stations of most other political parties are no different if not worse and that is, where they exist. Hardball concedes to that point wholeheartedly. But this piece has been triggered by the new headquarters of the PDP in Abuja. The 11-storey behemoth of an edifice has been abandoned to weeds and reptiles. Started about six years ago after an elaborate fundraising, contractors are said to have moved out of the site; all is quiet and forlorn there now.

    Over N6 billion was raised then at the launch in 2008 and President Goodluck Jonathan who was then vice president, was the chairman of the committee charged with the project. The big donors had been Alhaji Aliko Dangote who had pledged N3 billion worth of cement; Femi Otedola had donated N1 billion. Other big donors were the PDP Central Working Committee members, Bola Shagaya, Chief Michael Otedola, Strabag Construction Company, and Ogun State Government. The then president, Umaru Yar’Adua, his vice Jonathan and indeed all elected PDP members and appointees across the country were forced to contribute through compulsory deductions of between 15 to 25 per cent of their salaries. The fund-raising for the secretariat of the biggest party in Africa was a huge racket that went on up until the 2011 general elections.

    But in the way of a bumbling giant, there was no account for the monies collected, neither was the disbursement transparent. Some have suggested that the edifice still stands uncompleted and ugly because the bulk of the funds realised were deployed into the 2011 election. But Hardball asks how come every penny missing in the country in the last few years had to have been flushed down the election sluiceway? And how come that in the PDP planet, there seems to be no rules of engagement, nobody raises eyebrows and questions are better swallowed? What pervades is a conspiracy of silence in the face of remorseless incongruity.

    We must not concern ourselves with the need for such an 11-storey monstrosity by a political party in a developing country. What is queer is that the PDP cannot even complete its own much-advertised building that has been on for about six years. If such conspicuous and showpiece edifice can be abandoned, it must say something about how the country is being run. How many far-flung projects across the country have been started and arrested mid-way as a result of official disorderliness, corruption and sheer brigandage. Any wonder that in the last 14 years under PDP, Nigeria has become one land mass of uncompleted projects – disheveled, coarse and ugly. In like manner that PDP may never complete its Abuja Taj Mahal of shame, the same way Nigeria will remain the verisimilitude of a junkyard until we have a change. Running a country is utterly beyond the ken of PDP.

  • For Dame, a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of the Bible

    For Dame, a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of the Bible

    Not many people like pundits; particularly so, of the political kind. One they seem to say far more than they know may be to impress and two, they take their punditry too far to the annoyance of those being put in the spot light and x-rayed. Ask our First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, she is currently in the firing line of pundits.

    The much criticised woman stormed her home town, Port Harcourt, (PH) Rivers State, last weekend and chose to stay over up until Thursday. According to her spokesperson, she was in her ancestral town for a series of functions, which included attending the wedding ceremony of one member of the State’s House of Assembly; to commission an international school and to empower widows. Having arrived Friday, June 14, 2013 and hanging out in PH for nearly one week, naturally sets the minds of analysts abuzz and of course, considering the ‘circumstances that surround’ the relationship between the first family and the governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, tongues are bound to wag. Naturally, the tough Dame’s visit would garrison the capital city, especially so because she was not a guest of the state government. Thus for the period she was in town, the city would be locked up, literally and movement would be a nightmare. That had been the ‘norm’ in every of her itinerary across the country so PH should not be an exception, anyway.

    But pundits, ever so irritable insist our dear Dame had gone to PH to wield the axe. Especially to whip into line, members of the State House of Assembly who have been on recess sine die because of the protracted and irreconcilable feud between number one and Governor Amaechi. Just because she attended the wedding of one of the legislators in the opposition camp and just because our great Dame seems to have relocated to PH is not enough to make jobless pundits plunge into the conclusion that she may have gone to PH with a sharp metal object.

    Well, whatever the mission of our Dame in PH is not really of immense interest to Hardball any more than the drama her story evokes. Two epic tales come to mind. First is the Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. The great warrior suffers acute vaulting ambition, wishing to usurp the kingdom by all means even though he is neither in line or lineage. The only way is to apply the dagger. As providence would have it the fated king comes on an over night visit to the Macbeth household. Here is the opportunity to seize the crown. In the dead of the night when it comes time to do the easy deed of stabbing the monarch in his sleep, Macbeth baulks. Infuriated, Lady Macbeth snatches the dagger from hubby, steals into the chamber where the king sleeps ever so gently .Presently she comes out with a crimson dagger, the bloody regicidal act done! The rest was history, albeit sad history for the Macbeths.

    The other story comes from the bible book of 1Kings 21. The Samarian king, Ahab desires a vineyard by his palace; the owner, Naboth would not oblige. Ahab is sullen, won’t eat, can’t sleep. Why are you so troubled my king? His wife asks. That Naboth of a fellow will not oblige me his vineyard in spite of my generous blandishments, says Ahab. Why, is that all? She wondered. Are you no longer the one who reigns over all of Israel? She asks rhetorically. If so, “Arise, eat food, and let your heart be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth…” Before anyone could say Jezebel, Naboth was stone cold or if you like, stoned cold in the street. And of course, the rest is history but again, sad history for Ahab and Jezebel.

    The moral of these tales, in case you have not figured it out is that power is history. It may sound dumb but, power to the wise is first of all, about history.

  • Jonathan vs condemned criminals

    President Goodluck Jonathan exhibited an uncanny bloody-mindedness the other day and more scarily, he chose an especial event venue and time, the church service during Fathers’ Day. Here is the news: Nigeria’s president urges State governors to always make haste to sign the death warrants of condemned criminals. President Jonathan said this in his remarks at a special Fathers’ Day service in the Aso Rock Chapel last Sunday.

    Yes, there is no joking our President seems to thirst for blood; he was worried about indiscipline in his domain and as he gave a pithy treatise on what for him, may be the big, horned demon tormenting Nigeria, the president said: “Discipline can be in various forms…in the case of capital punishment, the governors will sign. Even governors sometimes find it difficult to sign. I have been telling the governors that they must sign because that is the law. The works we are doing have a very sweet part and a very ugly part, and we must perform both. No matter how painful it is, it is part of their responsibilities.”

    Hardball had long become used to the President’s staccato enunciation and speech pattern so let’s not dwell on that, let us parse the message. Why is our president so taken in by his subjects who though may be condemned to death; why does he want them finished off fast, fast (as we say it here)? Does he have some special axe to grind with them or what? We ask: how many of his citizens are on the death row, what percentage of the total prison inmates are condemned criminals (CC) assuming he is worried that they are the problem with his Transformation Agenda? Perhaps Nigeria’s economy would blossom if all the CCs are gathered in one gas chamber and exterminated? It would have given us a world of inkling into the mind and make up of our prez if he had given us a little idea why he wants these people signed away into oblivion very fast.

    One of the greatest frustrations of Hardball is that you cannot shout with words, you cannot raise your voice and scream like crazy, otherwise, one would have asked screamingly: why on earth Mr. President, do you think that these governors take their time and tarry awhile over this matter of life and death? Why do you think that a chunk of the civilised world is refraining from capital punishment? How could Jonathan forget that he was speaking from a pulpit, from the house of God who most unequivocally handed the injunction: thou shall not kill? Would Jonathan break nary one grey hair or grow one if no CC is executed in the next decade? Why would Jonathan not charge the governors to do more ‘prerogative of mercy rounds’ and free thousands of awaiting trials, denizens who have been detained even longer than the term they would serve should they be sentenced?

    There are a thousand and one noble deeds the President could extract from the governors by sheer power of moral suasion riding on the auspices of the Fathers’ Day celebration. Invoking blood on the polity as if our hands are not already dripping with the crimson substance is ghoulish and un-presidential, to put it lightly.

     

  • Of Anambra gay community and David Cameron

    There is an Igbo proverb which insists that an unthinkable occurrence is to find a lion feasting on yam. So was it peculiarly strange to read in national newspapers last week that, “ members of the gay community in Anambra State on June 12 disrupted court proceedings at the Atani Magistrate’s Court, while protesting the arraignment of two of them for allegedly having same-sex relationship.” This protest is stranger still because, Anambra, the foremost Southeast state, is not a place known for protesting any official policy or cause. It will be difficult to remember the last time the good people of Anambra carried placards in public show of umbrage. Not when their erstwhile governor was locked up in a toilet by a certain rascal politician who proceeded to torch public properties in the state when he could not have his way; not even during the fuel subsidy nationwide protests January last year did we get any inkling that so many people could shout in unison in Anambra.

    What forest gnome therefore pushed these full-bodied okorobias to dress up like women, come out in the public, on Igbo soil and insist that two men be allowed to co-habit. Eewoo, aru eme! Abomination stalks the land and our lion now eats yam and dog has grown a large horn. A rabbit has burst forth in broad daylight. Is it a daydream or how will the story be told that a full bodied man, onochie, isi obi, who holds the ofor, the totem of his family now plays woman, to be married off by another man? If that day had come when a man would cease to be a groom but a bride to a fellow man, did anyone think it would start from Anambra State?

    Anambra is still among the last bastions of Catholicism in Nigeria as well as the stronghold of Igbo culture and tradition. It is a place where the traditional marriage rite of igba nkwu nwanyi (wine carrying to take the hand of a woman in marriage) is still cherished in Igboland. Perhaps the time has come upon us sooner than we thought to rethink that idea and change it to igba nkwu nwoke (wine carrying to marry a man).

    It must be remarkable that this Atani protest is happening (shortly) after the demise of Chinua Achebe, the great Anambra son who wrote Things Fall Apart which was set in colonial Anambra. The great novel is about how things fell apart in Igboland as the new British masters over ran the primitive people of the lower Niger River and eventually pacified them through the force of arms.

    Incidentally, Atani is right at the bank of the River Niger. If Achebe had lived longer, would he have written Things Fall Apart, Again, with the advent of the Whiteman gay culture on his fatherland as young men seem eager to run off with fellow men in abominable co-habitation spree?

    But wait a minute, British Prime Minister David Cameron has been banging the table and threatening thunder if Nigeria passes the same-sex marriage Bill; these Anambra boys always have one ahead of the rest us. Do you see a chance that Mr. Cameron may ask all Nigerian gays over to Britain? Wow, what huge prospects lie ahead of you should you land at Heathrow announcing you are a gay exile fleeing from Nigerian government persecutors! Well Hardball’s advice is, better be truly gay before you try such stunt for you may well be subjected to unpalatable tests to prove your status.

     

  • Football house of commotion

    Football house of commotion

    It is an old dictum that what you love most is likely to be your albatross. Nigerians love football to no end and often, it is their worst source of heartache. Hardball cannot seem to count any two consecutive weeks without a rumpus in Nigeria’s football house. Recall that no sooner did the national football team, the Super Eagles, snatch the African football diadem than we heard that the victorious coach, Stephen Keshi, had resigned in South Africa – before he could even bring the trophy home.

    He resigned! He did not resign, he was only pre-empting a sack – hee-haw, he-haw (as hogs carry on their sordid forage). And that simply blew over just as it started. Nobody told the real story of that momentary madness; no questions asked, no answers given, all the muck was swept under the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and life went on.

    But it never really did go on, things never seem to be at ease with the soulless; our football house never seems to sleep but not out of honest conscientious engagements you can bet. A few weeks after the “I have resigned hoax”, it broke out again like measles in the football house: “We are broke, dead broke,” was the new song and before you say “African Champions”, the fellows in our football office which they glibly call Glass House, went into a frenzy of sacking and appointments. A number of Keshi’s assistants and support staff were chucked out ignominiously. Then some bogus, ‘big men’ appointments were made, people earning fat salaries.

    Remember too that the last African Nations’ cup tournament was not beamed on our national television and were it not for cable TV, Nigerians would have been in the dark all through the competition that we eventually won. Recent World Cup qualifiers (against Kenya and Namibia) were all blacked out on Nigerians and our Eagles are supposed to be a high market value champion brand! The football house’s bag of tricks seems to brim with fresh stunts all the time. A house that claims to be broke would haul the African Champions all the way to the USA in a friendly match against another continental champion, Mexico for just $40,000? It is certain that $40,000 could not have covered the cost of that friendly expedition. Are we to understand that the NFF subsidised a friendly invitation match of that magnitude?

    The truth, Hardball must make known, is that all the above are mere preambles. The big story for today is that Nigeria was recently put to shame by our shambolic football house. The story, which you probably know is that the Super Eagles who are to participate in the on-going Confederation competition in Brazil (starting Saturday June15) were still on transit even on the opening day, missing the opening ceremonies and opening matches.

    What went amiss: the players refused to proceed to Brazil after their World Cup qualifiers in Namibia; their match bonuses had been slashed from $10,000 to $5000 for a win and from $5000 to $2,500 for a draw. Since the new rate was not discussed and agreed with the boys, they refused to accept the slash. Were it not for FIFA that rushed to rescue the situation, Nigeria would not have been at the champions’ spectacle in Brazil. The world would have laughed Nigeria to death. Because of the bunch of bumblers at the NFF, the entire football world was put on the tenterhooks awaiting the arrival of the Eagles, wondering whether they would make it to Brazil one day after the show started.

    We ask: what logic informs the slashing of the bonus of players after they became champions and ought to earn an increase? Why is it that NFF officials earn match bonuses too? How many officials are travelling with the team at a very huge expense? It is Hammer house of horror but as the saying goes, Mr. Hog will eventually get to its destination just that the world around it would suffer unimaginable trouble. What a pity.

  • Abati going gung-ho

    Abati going gung-ho

    He seems to have gone off da hook, to put it the way of today’s teenagers when they describe an exciting performance by one of their ilk. We speak, of course, of presidential spokesman Dr Reuben Abati in his latest tango with the ‘enemies’ of his boss. A doctor of Philosophy, lawyer and ace columnist, cerebral Abati has as his current object of ‘hate and strafing’, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, former police officer, former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and former presidential candidate.

    We have laboured to make the distinction between the twain to point out that any ‘word war’ between them would be utterly ill-matched. When, therefore, Ribadu threw a barb at the Presidency last Saturday from far away Kaduna (reported on Sunday), Abati’s missiles followed swiftly behind, harsh, unsparing and violating all rules of engagement.

    Irrepressible Ribadu had hacked hard at the Presidency when he addressed the Students’ Representatives Council of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in Kaduna State describing Nigeria’s democracy as one full of tyranny while proclaiming Nigeria a sinking ship. A master of atmospherics who knows how to seize the moment, Ribadu sized up his audience and dug in thus: “The tragedy of our democracy is that it is one in which the yearnings of the youth are stamped down in order to perpetuate a tyranny of interests. Tyranny it is when a certain slim range of people impose their private interests on the majority; tyranny it is when the agents of change are left on the cliff of unemployment, poverty, insecurity, substandard education and, worst still, policies destroyed by our heritage of corruption.”

    Ribadu said much more to a pliable yet discerning audience with all the rich and far-reaching nuances of his treatise. In deed, what he insinuated at and left unsaid is far longer and deeper than the published speech.

    Dr Abati, too being no novice to the art of the word, read through and between Ribadu’s thick lines. It is no doubt a kick to the underbelly of the Jonathan’s administration, a damning verdict and condemnation. But most importantly, he spoke the truth largely, the harsh truth to obdurate power. But Abati whose government has just given itself a most-flattering mid-term pass mark would not bear an enfant terrible rousing rabble; one that had apparently enjoyed the ‘largesse’ of the same government in numerous ways.

    Abati, therefore, laid it thick on Ribadu’s back and promptly reminded him the tree from which his totem was carved. He described Ribadu’s statement as false, hypocritical and self-serving. He digs in: “The Presidency finds it sad and deplorable that Ribadu has resorted to shameless wolf-crying, peddling of arrant falsehood and the denigration of the elected government of his fatherland in furtherance of his selfish quest for continued national political relevance after his wholesale rejection by Nigerian voters in 2011.”

    Then a go for the jugular: “There can be no doubt that nothing else but blind ambition for an office for which he is clearly unfit is driving Ribadu to infer that an administration led by a President, who welcomed him back from his self-imposed exile, restored his rank in the Nigeria Police to save him from the shame of demotion and converted his dismissal from service to retirement has now become tyrannical and anti-people.”

    What more to add than that Abati may have slaked the vengeful thirst of his principal(s) but in all his doing, he largely left his job undone. Or better still, he undid his job and he keeps doing himself in as Americans say. Put plainly, Abati has lost his innocence and has let go, gamboling and enjoying a new-found role of an attack dog apparently in contest for relevance with his colleague, the top hound, Dr Doyin Okupe. Ha, this ‘relevance’ thing again. Perhaps all of us Nigerians are travelling in one relevance boat?

  • June 12 @ 20: To kill a ghost

    June 12 @ 20: To kill a ghost

    The ghost is still abroad. Now 20 year old, it has been with us these years traipsing about town taking prisoners, causing commotion and even handing favours to some. Remember Saturday, June 12, 1993? In fact let’s do a bit of ‘where were you’. Where were you that bright, rain-defying Saturday when Nigerians trooped out to vote? ( if you are 20 years or below, you were probably in your mother’s tummy whereupon you were most likely on that long queue by proxy as mummy waited to vote). Where were you that day Nigerians tried out that anachronistic voting system called option A4; a method in which we had to queue behind the candidate, rain or shine, and we had a physical head count as was done in the days of King Herod?

    Where were you when Nigerians unanimously queued behind a certain MKO Abiola in an option that left his opponent no option than to accept electoral defeat before the votes were counted? Where were you that day Nigerians voted against religion, against tribe and against the soldiers? Where were you 20 years ago when Nigerians in their majority refused to let go of their mandate which they freely gave to MKO? Where were you all through the silly machinations of the gap-toothed general who actually did not want to leave power but who had to run when come came to become and the ghost of June 12 refused to be exorcised? Where were you when the joker in Aso Rock was installed and the goggled general swiftly nudged him to a crashing fall like humpty-dumpty?

    Where were you that morning when Alhaja Kudi Abiola was gunned down along the expressway by Oregun? Where were you the day the ‘small’ general finally kicked the bucket on a most unremarkable date that even Hardball cannot readily remember now (but how can we forget that he packed up relishing delicious Indian apple flown in directly from that oriental land of the great Taj Mahal)? And where were you on that historic day of July 10, 1998 when news filtered out most eerily that MKO Abiola had died in detention or if you like, on that day MKO was believed to have been extirpated?

    June 12, 1993, well, for those who were not born, was the day a certain hardy businessman-turned politician stood election to become the president of Nigeria. The stuttering Egba man, from Ogun State in Nigeria literally took Nigeria by storm and had them cast off their religious and tribal incubus to vote as one and perhaps for one Nigeria for a change. It was the day MKO, the one who spoke in parables and riddles; the moneyman who loathed to see a man cry and who spent money as if he owned a plantation of money trees, won the freest and fairest election this land has ever seen. It was the day the boisterous and chivalrous hurricane of a man cast a spell on Nigeria and had her on a train to fairyland but was stopped short in its track and Nigeria was disembarked and left to wander about, now a ghost, now a loony and now a tramp, 20 years on.

    The ghost of June 12, or shall we say the ghost of Abiola still walks our landscape and cries us awake every night. It refuses to be rested because many of those who betrayed him are still around reaping from their evil enterprise. Not a few were his friends, many climbed to prominence through his magnanimity. But they still strut the land and worst of all they deny that he won that historic election even 20 years on. But the more they deny and equivocate and dance refusing to make atonement the more we are all sorry. And the ghost stalks still.

  • Tofa and the ghost of June 12

    TODAY marks 20 years since the result of the presidential elections won by the candidate of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief M.K.O. Abiola, was annulled by then President Ibrahim Babangida.

    The events of June 12, 1993 traumatised a nation struggling for balance. Part of the scandal lay in the fact that the military authorities were never able to dredge up a rational excuse for cancelling what has come to hailed as one of the fairest and freest electoral exercises in Nigerian history.

    So instead of receiving acclaim for conducting such a poll, Babangida who signed off on the diabolical directive to scuttle a transition process on which billions had been spent, has been burying his head in shame ever since. Stopping short of apologizing for a treasonable act against the people of this country, he has managed to say he took responsibility for the action.

    But just as the name of former United States President, Richard Nixon, will forever be overshadowed by the disastrous legacy of Watergate; everything that Babangida achieved in his nine odd years in office – even the irony of superintending one of the freest polls in our history – will always be stained by the date “June 12.”

    The former military president does not deny that an election took place on that day. If the event were “fictitious” then there would have been no need to annul a “fiction.” Instead, he has over the years tried to justify the annulment by claiming he was blackmailed into doing so. At other times he would hint darkly that allowing the result of the poll to stand would have resulted in dire consequences for Nigeria.

    For another central figure in the bizzare events of 20 years ago, the chairman of the defunct National Electoral Commission (NEC), Prof Humphrey Nwosu, the scuttling of his crowning achievement by the casual decree of one military dictator, was no fiction.

    So devastated was he that for 15 years he disappeared from public view . His vow of silence was only broken in 2008 when he emerged to confirm the obvious – that Abiola won the election fair and square. For him the matter was no “fiction” otherwise he would not have written a book about it.

    Of all the major players of that sordid chapter of Nigeria’s political history, only one figure remains resolute in living in denial – the former presidential candidate of the defunct National Republican Convention, (NRC), Alhaji Bashir Usman Tofa – Abiola’s opponent.

    Addressing reporters in Kano last week, he described ‘June 12’ as fiction and dismissed those still celebrating ‘the dead issue’ as idle.

    The fact that Tofa refuses to admit that something terrible happened on that day does not erase the reality or the place of those polls in Nigerian history. It also does not erase from the memory his role in the drama.

    Even worse, there are many like Tofa who are only too quick to move on to the next political blunder without analysing and learning from the past. The election is only free and fair where they are declared the winners.

    That is the tragedy of Nigeria and it makes the 20th anniversary of the annulment more poignant given the recent case of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election and the brazen attempt of losers to overturn an unpalatable outcome.

    This refusal to accept electoral outcomes is proof that the ghost of June 12 still roams the land. For as long as such despicable conduct continues, Tofa and all who participated in that chapter will continue to answers questions they would rather avoid. And that’s a fact!

     

  • Like Yar’Adua, like Suntai

    Like Yar’Adua, like Suntai

    The political game of hide and seek playing out in Taraba State is a reminiscence of the 93-day disappearing act enacted by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and his inner circle after he fell mysteriously ill and no one was willing to tell the nation the truth.

    The reason was simple. Spilling the beans would have made the former president vulnerable to all those who wanted to invoke Section 145 of the Nigerian constitution relating to the incapacitation of the president as grounds for his removal from office.

    Such was the intensity of public pressure back then Yar’Adua’s henchmen who had been spinning myriad tales of his imminent recovery reached breaking point, and smuggled the terminally ill man back into the country under the cover of darkness.

    A little over three years after that messy episode, another very brazen set of Nigerians are replaying the same script with little or no concern for originality. Yar’Adua was away for just three months before the bubble burst. Taraba State Governor, Danbaba Suntai, has been away for close to eight months.

    What has allowed this situation to be this long drawn is the very spectacular public circumstance under which the governor fell ill. There is also the fact that his deputy, Alhaji Garba Umar, has been holding forth as Acting Governor. This has allowed Suntai to continue his “recuperation” away from scrutiny for this long.

    However, the situation can clearly not been sustained because of conflicting reports about the true state of the governor’s health. Since we are dealing with politicians and their interests here we must admit that many of the agendas being pushed in the Suntai affair are less than altruistic or patriotic.

    Now the state is awash with tales of plans by the governor’s loyalists to ‘smuggle’ him in from his sick bed in the United States to eliminate questions about his continued absence.

    But even if they manage to do so, they will still have to answer whether he is capable of carrying out the functions of his office. The only way to resolve it is by following provisions of the constitution. But this is not likely to happen in a hurry as the State Executive Council, comprising mostly loyalists of Suntai, are refusing to raise a medical board to advice on the governor’s health.

    The people of Taraba deserve better. Rather than parochial politicians continuing with their silly games, they should act and resolve the situation by invoking of Section 189 of the constitution.

    That section says in part: “The Governor or Deputy Governor of a state shall cease to hold office if (a) by a resolution passed by two-thirds majority of all members of the executive council of the state it is declared that the Governor or Deputy Governor is incapable of discharging the functions of his office;

    “(b) the declaration in paragraph (a) of this subsection is verified, after such medical examination as may be necessary, by a medical panel established under subsection(4) of this section in its report to the Speaker of the House of Assembly.”

    But if they will not do the right thing, perhaps someone should remind the people of Taraba that, just like in Yar’Adua’s case, time and nature have a clinical way of resolving things, when selfish politicians refuse to act.