The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • The sulky Mimiko

    The sulky Mimiko

    Ondo State Governor Olusegun Mimiko is a good example in this democracy of a man whose small mind is getting smaller. Recently, he was one of those who took part in the Nigerian Governors’ Forum election in which Governor Rotimi Amaechi won. Mimiko said he did not lose because he withdrew. Nobody, not Hardball, will believe such fantasy. He was on the side of Jang, and if Jang lost, then he knew he, too, lost.

    Rather than take it in its stride and bite the bullet, he decided to play an empty peacock. He said the election was not free and fair, and later he said he did not believe the video because he was not there. But rather than wrap his tail around his buttocks and keep mum, the Jonathan lackey in the Southwest would not stop talking.

    When the 2007 election took place, and the progressive minded fought on the behalf of his mandate, he forgot that it was not about him. It was about the principle. He does not know that it is not about his big ego and that when a person is called Iroko, it does not mean that he cannot be hewn down.

    Well, he saw that in a little way when his big ego was made little in a little room where he contested and lost an election. It took a little gadget to expose the big ego of his.

    Because the Aregbesola video did not capture him, he felt little. Because he felt little, he decided it was not real. Then he attacked Amaechi by saying that the chairman of the forum had no evidence that he (Mimiko) voted. Is it the duty of Amaechi to show who voted? He should direct that question at the returning officer, Asissana Okauru, who counted the votes. The video showed clearly that all of the 35 governors, including Mimiko, were present in the room when Okauru counted, showing the face of each ballot paper to the men. Why did he not protest and say, look, this is not a ballot paper. This is not where I voted. Neither he nor his 15 other losers raised a finger. Was the super-intelligent, hyper-progressive, agile and defiant Mimiko under a spell? Who so cast the spell of silence on the great Iroko that he could not speak when he was being swindled out of his mandate?

    Hardball believes that Iroko should quietly go to his new master in Aso Rock and explain sincerely that he was outwitted, outplayed, outmaneuvered, outclassed, outvoted, outflanked and in the end, he went out sulking. He has not stopped sulking.

    Democracy is bigger than all of us. If he wants to pay back Jonathan for his work in the last Ondo State polls, this is a tacky way to go about it.

  • When Boko Haram’s Shekau is found

    When Boko Haram’s Shekau is found

    The United States Acting Assistant Director of Diplomatic Security Threat Investigations and Analysis Directorate, Ambassador Kurt Rice, has said that wanted Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, could be tried for terrorism in the United States or in Nigeria where he hails from if caught. To this end, the U.S. on Monday placed $23m bounties on five leaders of terrorist groups in West Africa, including Shekau. The Boko Haram leader alone attracted a highly tempting seven million dollars bounty. News reports pointed out that the U.S. action coincided with the Nigerian government finally determining, after endless waffling and prevarication, that Boko Haram is indeed a terrorist organisation, and its leaders and members liable to be tried for terrorism.

    Nigeria, which is increasingly finding it difficult to define and guard its independence and national pride, has not protested against any suggestion that its homegrown terrorists cannot be dealt with at home and under home rules. Boko Haram has not just attacked home targets; indeed foreigners have also been among its victims. However, except for a brief foray into Cameroun, and perhaps a base and launch pad in Mali, the sect’s attacks have been limited to Nigeria. As Britain showed in the case of Michael Adebolajo, the British terror suspect who was coaxed from feeble Kenyan hands in 2010 in order to be investigated under British rules, nations recognise that their sovereignty is infinitely much more nuanced than first view and ordinary definitions suggest. Nigeria needs all the help it can get to curb terrorism and bring Nigerian terrorists, or any other terrorist who commits crime on Nigerian soil, to trial. But it must be understood very clearly that Shekau is our problem, and except he goes to another country to carry out terror-related activities, he remains strictly our problem, no matter how far-reaching the consequences of his actions.

    Nigeria has never presumptuously attempted to intercept foreign terrorists on foreign soils. Therefore, this generation of Nigerians must never be seen as condoning foreign governments extending their laws creatively or collaterally for the purpose of apprehending and prosecuting Nigerian criminals. It is of course evident that Nigerian governments have been slothful in dealing with their criminals, either because of plain juristic inefficiency or because certain individuals in government connive at crime and criminals. This is, however, not enough reason for other countries to invade our sovereignty under any guise. In fact, it must be emphasized that even if Shekau were to be apprehended in, say, Mali by U.S. forces, it is important that he should be handed over to us for prosecution. Thankfully, Ambassador Rice has herself left a window open for the wanted terrorists to be tried in their home countries. Nigeria must emphasise its unequivocal preference for this option.

    But if Ambassador Rice contemplates the option of subjecting Shekau to the U.S. justice system, it is simply because Nigeria has consistently and enduringly projected a weakness of national character that has made it possible, for example, for Diepreye Alamieyeseigha to be ‘handed’ over remorselessly to British authorities for prosecution, and for our country to quite puzzlingly rejoice that a James Ibori foolishly preferred to wash his dirty linen abroad. If our laws are weak, by all means let us strengthen them. If our courts are inefficient, let us make them more efficient. And if our justice system is too convoluted to competently dispense justice speedily, let us remedy the problem. Let us do anything but display a weakness of national character that makes Nigerians prey to foreigners. Surely we are smart enough to know that prosecuting Shekau abroad, if he is apprehended, would define the country as a people of weak resolve and slow thinking. But if, failing everything, our courts let us down, then let us at least have the common sense and essential practicality to live with our faults.

  • NGF again: Rage of the Giffen goods

    The 19th century English economist, Sir Robert Giffen, observed that low quality goods attracted a disproportionate amount of patronage from people of low incomes until such a time that their incomes rise. It was also observed that if care was not taken, Giffen goods had the potential of elbowing out quality goods from the market. Hardball craves the indulgence of his patient readers to take refuge in this 19th century conceptual leisure of our learned economist friends. For after regaling the public for months with the endless machinations of our learned politician friends, of whom President Goodluck Jonathan is the archetype, this columnist must come to a moment such as this to amuse readers with the esotericism of our friends besotted to terms like demand and supply, Pareto optimal, Ricardian equivalence and other such paradigmatic interplay of economic and engineering concepts. After all, there is Pareto frontier in engineering for which a set of algorithms has been developed to take care of what is referred to in computer science as the maximum vector problem or the skyline query.

    To cut to the chase, Hardball is saying this Wednesday that the Giffen goods concept has a lot to do with the recently concluded Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) election for which economists and engineers will have to bring their combined expertise to resolve the conundrum. Not only are the inferior goods (in this case the defeated governors) trying to squeeze out quality goods (in this case the victorious governors), it even seems there will be no solution to the complex matrix that has translated defeat into victory and victory into defeat until economists and engineers come up with the algorithms to take care of the puzzle. Readers of course recall that on May 24, the governors elected one of their own to be the chairman of the NGF for the next two years. That election, in which the president unsuccessfully attempted to surreptitiously impose a puppet, led to the emergence of Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State as winner by 19 votes to Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State’s 16 votes.

    But by the most dazzling display of electoral legerdemain ever conceived in these parts, the Jang-led team, of which Ondo governor, Olusegun Mimiko, is the incontestable and incomparable spokesman, argued that pre-election endorsement was in fact superior to Election Day voting. To rewrite the rules of political science is one thing, but to stand morality on its head is quite another in this blighted part of the continent. However, much more than unilaterally and arbitrarily rewriting rules, the Jang-led warriors have gone indifferently ahead to summon meetings of the Group of 16 (G-16), relocate the NGF office in Abuja, direct the public to visit the NGF website, receive or engineer more congratulatory messages over the supposed election victory than the victors, and have generally carried on with such messianic zeal and fury that you would be forgiven if you thought the diffident Amaechi-led team was the defeated group.

    Albert Einstein was reported to have once exclaimed he needed more mathematics in his arduous search for a unified field theory, and on his death bed. (By the way, contrary to popular notion, Einstein was never poor in mathematics, having at the age of 12 independently found a proof of Pythagoras’ theorem after acquiring a book on Euclidean geometry). Compared with Einstein, it is not clear what else the Jang-led team would need to rewrite every scientific theory the world has known. They have supplied us the mathematical proof that defeat can in fact be equal to or more than victory, and they have, by the way they carry on, shown us that the earth does not revolve around the sun. In the days ahead, we must patiently wait to see how their Giffen goods would drive out the victorious Amaechi goods, and how their chief priest, Dr Jonathan, and his alter ego, the eclectic Dr Mimiko, would inspire the creation of a new world, a nirvana in which neither loss nor defeat exists.

     

  • Jonathan’s perspective on OPC and MASSOB

    Jonathan’s perspective on OPC and MASSOB

    President Goodluck Jonathan has not availed the country reasons for labelling the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) as national security threats. He owes the country a full explanation. Does the label have anything to do with the antecedents of the two groups both of which are regarded in many circles as ethnic militias? Or does it have anything to do with their present dispositions? Or perhaps, it has something to do with the lackadaisical manner the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, was at first handled before it snowballed into a full terrorist group. Whatever the considerations were, the country will be puzzled that the president has suddenly considered the OPC and MASSOB security threats almost at par with Boko Haram, the Islamist sect against which a full blown military engagement is underway.

    During the presentation of the mid-term report of his administration in Abuja on Democracy Day last week, the president suggested that, “Nigeria faces three fundamental security challenges posed by extremist groups like Boko Haram in the North; the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra in the South-East; and the Oodua People’s Congress in the Southwest.” If this is not strong stuff, then consider his next statement. “The activities of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra and OPC,” he added tersely, “though not as violently intense as those of Boko Haram, they still pose a serious security challenge to the Nigerian state.” It was expected that the president would say something major on the security challenges facing the country, but no one thought he would make such sweeping statements that are capable of boxing his administration in?

    Except the OPC is a sleeper cell of militants, there is nothing to show that in the past few years, it is an active militia able and willing to levy war against the state on the scale or even half the scale of the Boko Haram sect. In fact more than anything else, the OPC has become both a cultural organisation and security consultants to troubled and harassed neighbourhoods insufficiently serviced by the regular law enforcement agencies. Its leaders are not only known, they have also bidden for federal government’s lucrative pipeline security contracts, especially pipeline protection and surveillance jobs. In addition, their leaders are increasingly at the forefront of cultural activities, particularly those with tourism potentials.

    MASSOB’s leaders are known, and their offices are not hidden. They send out periodic press releases, grant interviews with their photographs emblazoned all over newspaper pages, and have advanced reasons for the Igbo to receive equitable share of national resources or, failing that, to enter into either a confederal arrangement with the rest of the country or outright autonomy and independence. They have advocated these causes openly through public channels. Admittedly, their advocacy has sometimes been accompanied by violence, but often they have been provoked by or resulted from a misunderstanding with law enforcement agents. In any case, because their members and leaders are known and their grievances understandable, if not legitimate, the state has a responsibility to engage them within the confines of the law. It will be counterproductive to radicalise them.

    This is, however, not to say there are no fringe elements within both groups, just as there are fringe elements acting more dangerously and independently in other areas of national life. Indeed, this column had in the past worried that the elite in both the Southwest and Southeast had engaged in unregulated romance with ethnic militias, a habit it concluded amounted to an abdication of the reasoned leadership they should give conservative and radical elements within their regions. However, it amounts to a hasty and extreme measure to label the two groups as security threats before engaging them in discussions and monitoring their activities to establish a pattern of constitutional subversion. It must be recalled that the federal government also failed to engage Boko Haram until it gradually metamorphosed into a terror group after its leaders were extrajudicially murdered. The same mistake must not be repeated.

    By summarily describing the OPC and MASSOB as security threats, the president will face intense criticisms from puzzled citizens. He will also endure unflattering comparisons between his kind consideration of Niger Delta militants to whom placatory mouth-watering contracts have been given and the heavy-handedness with which he seems prepared to deal with the considerably tame and ostensible militias from other parts of the country.

     

  • Jonathan quits equivocating on NGF

    Jonathan quits equivocating on NGF

    During last Thursday’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) family dinner in Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan finally laid to rest any speculation about his determination to wrest control of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) from the hands of his enemies, or failing that, to destroy it. Not only did he reportedly refer to Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State as chairman of the NGF, he also indirectly gave notice which side he supports and how ready he is to help bury the group. That singular but unpresidential act showed the frailty and fecklessness of our leading politicians. But it isn’t only the character of the governors that has been weighed and found wanting; by publicly and casually embracing the Jang faction of the NGF, the president gave indication that any morality he had pretended to since his assumption of office was simple a hoax.

    It is true the president has not come out clearly to endorse the Jang faction. But what is his word worth anyway? Is it not recalled that he also denounced those who suggested he had any vested interest in the NGF election before it held on May 24? But whether in the case of the post-election endorsement or pre-election interest in the NGF chairmanship, the president had pretended to be uninterested. No one is fooled. More, it is doubtful whether he would be able to fool anyone again as to his bona fides, let alone his nobility of purpose and values. It is now as clear as day that Dr Jonathan is more than anything else a practical politician unruffled by the contradictions that encase his politics and disfigure his worldview. More worrisomely, he is not even really anxious about how his Machiavellian sentiments war against his proudly publicised religious principles. For to embrace an election loser is one thing; but to embrace an election loser who lives in denial of his defeat is quite another.

    There had been times when the president attempted philosophising about life, religion, God and Nigeria’s manifest destiny. To be sure, his philosophy never went beyond the practical and commonsensical perspectives of those long castrated by the dulling atmosphere of the countryside, and the bucolic wisecracks of the village teacher; but at least he made some efforts to be deep, detached and, like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. If only such accoutrements had been brought to bear on his political morality! What worries the average Nigerian is not Mr Jang’s quixotic chairmanship of the NGF, as the president and his aides must have known by now, but the president’s bravura display of political brinkmanship. The disturbing thing about Dr Jonathan’s endorsement of Mr Jang, obvious from his meeting with the losers last Friday, is how the president so insouciantly subordinated the entire Nigerian presidency to the childish intransigence of the 16 governors in his camp.

    There’s more than one way to skin a cat, it is said. The president and his governor friends could admit defeat in the NGF election but refuse to respond to any call for meeting. They could even decide they would be satisfied with associating only within the purview of the PDP Governors’ Forum. Or they could refuse any further association of the 36 governors altogether. But to insist they won an election which they unequivocally lost, and for the president, who fails to understand the weight and pricelessness of the office he occupies, to lend the highest office in the land to that shocking piece of chicanery is both to denigrate all that Nigeria ever aspired to be and to set a dangerous and dispiriting example for the coming generations. It would have been better if Dr Jonathan kept to his untruth of not being interested in the NGF election.

  • Aviation ministry’s Chinese craving

    Aviation ministry’s Chinese craving

    The Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, estimates that foreign airlines operating in Nigeria account for N300bn capital flight. Assuming she can justify that figure, has there ever been a time when foreign airlines were not operating in Nigeria nearly as intensely as they do now? And did Nigeria’s former national carrier not run into trouble in spite of the existence of foreign airlines? Will foreign airlines cease to exist once Mrs Oduah’s dream carrier comes into existence? The minister is bent on establishing a new national carrier, which she believes will be a success where the former carrier, the Nigeria Airways, failed. Again, like her capital flight figure, there is no convincing proof her belief is anchored on fact or reality. And in any case, beyond saying glibly that the new carrier would benefit from the experience and mistakes of the former carrier, she does not feel obligated to convince anyone but the presidency that a new carrier is sensible and worth our while.

    Much more importantly, the Aviation minister, according to a report by this newspaper, is proposing to the presidency that a Chinese firm be contracted to manage some Nigerian airports. Going by the impression created by the minister, managing anything, including airports, seems to be beyond our ken. How thoroughly disreputable can we be? According to the report, the minister is proposing that a Chinese firm, FRAPORT, with which she has unilaterally and without due process signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), should take over the operation and management of Nigeria’s “international airports and perishable terminal.” It is unlikely the minister will have her way both in the formation of a new carrier and the appointment of a foreign firm to manage the said airports, no matter how powerful and connected she is. It is bad enough that in some instances substandard materials were used in the renovation of the airport terminals, but to impose major policy decisions on the country so brusquely and recklessly is quite frankly insulting.

    What is clear from the Aviation ministry and from the new carrier boondoggle and the FRAPORT MoU is that the minister is getting away with murder. Neither her decisions nor the policies emanating from the ministry are being subjected to thorough scrutiny and debate. They need to be. And not only is the new carrier proposal silly and indefensible, as this column twice argued in this place last year and this year, the FRAPORT MoU gives the impression of a ministry and officials that have run riot. Surely, Mrs Oduah can’t be too powerful to be restrained in the public interest. Or does the government think that any opposition to the feverish experiments in the Aviation ministry amounts to politicking?

    The President Goodluck Jonathan government prides itself as transformative. It should, therefore, not be seen to condone private fancies masquerading as lofty public projects. If indeed the Jonathan presidency is committed to transformation, it must start the change it is advertising by reforming attitudes in order to make Nigerians believe in themselves and their ability to manage great institutions and firms. On more than three occasions, Nigerian rulers unwisely offered our national carrier, one international airport and also the railways to foreign firms. All the efforts came to grief. Are Nigerian rulers so inured to reality and so forgetful of recent history that they cannot even learn lessons from those appalling decisions? The Chinese and Indians have in fact both managed the Nigerian Railway in the past with no concrete result to show for the humongous funds expended on the jamboree. What new things do we expect from the Chinese management of our airports other than showcasing our backwardness and indolence?

    If the Aviation minister does not possess the national pride to believe in Nigeria, and the Jonathan government cannot summon the sound judgement and discipline to find Nigerians who can manage our airports, they should be honest enough to advertise their incompetence and ask for help from opposition parties. It is time to stop disgracing Nigerian know-how.

  • Amaechi, Aliyu, loyalty pledge and Jonathan

    Amaechi, Aliyu, loyalty pledge and Jonathan

    Moments after he was re-elected as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) last Friday, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State gave a short and, for someone who cuts a fairly radical or activist image, unusual statement about democracy and President Goodluck Jonathan. The election was victory for democracy and proved the resolve of the governors to affirm the unity of the Forum, he said with a strong hint of exaggeration. But as for Dr. Jonathan, the governor felt a desperate urge to pacify him, thereby giving the impression he not only contested against the Plateau State governor, Jonah Jang, but also against the president. It is not clear that everyone will agree the governor needed to pacify the president, but he did so nonetheless with extraordinary self-effacement. As he put it delicately, “We remain committed to supporting our leader, the president and commander in chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to realise the development dream of all Nigerians by reducing tension, uncertainty and insecurity in our beloved country. We want to pledge our steadfastness and resolve working alongside Mr. President to better the lives of our people as we render transparent and accountable stewardship.”

    But Mr. Amaechi is not the only one pledging loyalty to the president, even though it is all but obvious the pledge was cynical and perfunctory. Governor of Niger State, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, also felt compelled to offer the same peace offering when the president visited Niger State for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Zungeru Hydro-electric Power Project. Responding to widespread report he was warring against the president, Dr. Aliyu remarked effusively: “Those thinking that there is war between the Niger State government and governor and the president should swallow their spit. We are one; we recognise that the people of Nigeria elected him and we respect that. If we do not respect and follow you (Mr. President), God will ask us. So we are saying, Mr. President that we are for you…We are with you and I hereby pledge my government and people’s loyalty and support to you.” But shouldn’t everyone pledge his loyalty to the constitution?

    It is unlikely Dr. Jonathan would believe the two governors. By lashing out furiously against Mr. Amaechi through the Rivers State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) immediately after the NGF poll, the president gave indication he was impervious to the governor’s blandishments. And while he may also not be able to lash out against the Niger State governor as he would like, he will at least take the governor’s protestations with a pinch of salt. On their own, it is unlikely the two governors think the president would be misled by their red herrings. Why, then, don’t we cut to the chase by showing one another our true colours and forswearing the cultural nuance of groveling before power? It is true that by the Nigerian constitution the president has nearly limitless power to do and undo, yet both the spirit and the letter of the constitution do not grant the president such powers as many imagine. But by groveling before the president/head of state and deferring to him sycophantically, as has been done by the political elite over the decades, the president can be forgiven for imagining he transcends the constitution and has the power of life and death over every citizen. After all, the police, secret service and the army believe everyone is a subject to be treated shabbily, not a citizen whose rights are non-derogable.

    Let Mr. Amaechi enjoy his NGF victory unabashedly, notwithstanding the compulsive bellyaching of his traducers and the aggressive intrigues of Dr Jonathan and the PDP. And beyond the routine exhibition of official courtesies, let Dr Aliyu also put his foot down whenever the need arises, for in truth, there is really no pleasing this president, at least not with the scheming gerontocrats around him disturbing the peace of the country. Blessed will be the day when the president climbs down from his high horse, and the people climb up from their genuflecting and groveling sewers, and we all meet at the table of reason and moderation where everyone knows his limits within the sacred confines of the constitution.

     

  • Fourteen years of civil rule

    Fourteen years of civil rule

    In spite of the structural and constitutional imperfections that have become integral to civil rule in Nigeria, there is still much to rejoice about the Fourth Republic. It is of course not yet a democracy in the classical sense, and the executive arm has often behaved with the monarchical temperament of its cultural past, but civil rule has endured for 14 fairly long and surprising years, by far the longest since independence. In the First Republic, civil rule lasted for less than six agonising and desperate years. The Second Republic was even shorter – a mere four years, notwithstanding the advancement in technology, knowledge and political sophistication. Much worse was the giddy and experimental Third Republic, which endured for one crazy year and a few months before it expired under the weight of insincerity, immaturity, presumptions and societal and judicial contradictions. Seeing then that with each succeeding republic, the experiment with civil rule became more convoluted, more demanding and less successful, it was logical to fear the worst for the Fourth Republic.

    That that negative expectation has not been fulfilled is probably a testimony to the people’s resilience, having suffered the indescribable torment of past military governments to the point of preferring anything else but military dictatorships. For as it is well known, the people themselves have not substantially changed either in terms of the discipline required to make a fair constitution workable, or in terms of creating the right atmosphere for the emergence of a leadership with the charisma and character necessary to revivify and redirect the country. In addition, as in the other republics, particularly the Second and the Third, there was never really a constitution properly describable as the people’s constitution. The case of the controversial Third Republic was even worse. Though governors had been sworn in and the National Assembly inaugurated, there was no constitution enacted to guide the democracy it pretended to have brought into being.

    So, in more ways than we care to pay attention to, this republic has done the impossible by surviving for so long. It is not a democracy yet, but it is significant that it is not a democracy because those saddled with that historic responsibility of laying its foundation did a damnable job. This, in fact, is why civil rule is tottering, and democracy remains far-fetched, if not a chimera. By far the most culpable in this wise is of course the irrepresible Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who still thinks that by merely midwifing a change from one president to another, he had recorded a feat. However, in spite of the weaknesses evident in the constitution, it would still have been possible to nurture real democratic government and change had Chief Obasanjo understood what the concept meant and expected of him, its philosophical and metaphysical significance, and its irreplaceability, not to talk of its proven capacity to mediate and moderate interrelationships and conflicts.

    The story of the past 14 years is, therefore, one frustrating and herculean effort to build a great edifice on a badly constructed foundation. Though the current leadership has made an even worse mess of governing the country than the last two presidents, and the mess is getting even messier with torrents of anti-democratic practices, it is urgent to find the right leadership able and willing to give what it has; for no leader can give what he doesn’t have, no matter how assiduously he is indoctrinated. If the republic is to be saved, and if real democracy is to be instituted, a fundamental change is required to make the republic endure, obviously shorn of the tentativeness that has afflicted the country since independence.

     

  • NGF election as eye-opener

    NGF election as eye-opener

    President Goodluck Jonathan insists he has nothing to do with fracturing the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) or the crisis that attended the election into the chairmanship of the Forum. Nobody believes him. It is doubtful whether he believes himself. Everyone is probably puzzled, wondering how Nigeria declined so precipitously that no one believes the president anymore. President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) had contempt for the truth; President Umaru Yar’Adua (2007-2009) evaded the truth; and now Jonathan (2009- ) is manipulating the truth. If the country cannot trust its president; and if the president cannot give his word and stand by it, how would the huge edifice called Nigeria stand?

    Thirty-five governors voted in the NGF election on Friday in Abuja. No vote was voided. Nineteen supported Mr Amaechi, and 16 went with Mr Jang, governor of Plateau State. But this extremely simple act of voting and of winning and losing an election became so complicated that the whole country is embarrassed. A returning officer declared the election lost and won. And it was an election in which supposedly the best and the brightest of Nigeria’s politicians, the governors, were involved. They were expected to be the embodiment of truth, correctness and wisdom. None of them was expected to indulge in self-help. But not only did one of the governors swear they had to restrain themselves from exchanging blows on account of some perceived wrongs, those who lost simply ignored the courts and preferred self-help by declaring themselves winners and setting up their own paraphernalia of office. The tragedy they had just enacted was lost on them.

    First, they proved incapable of organising the simplest election, in which the voting population was nothing more than 35 supposedly well-educated and polished political aristocrats. Instead, they turned out to be little better than a riotous bunch from the country’s worst slums. Second, they were supposed to be the embodiment of correct behaviour, of gravitas, of nobility. But they turned out to be so ordinary even schoolboys would be bewildered. And thirdly, in spite of the presidency’s constant protestations of innocence, and consequent upon the defeated governors’ remarks and movements, it is clear the stunned losers are being manipulated by the presidency.

    It is indeed troubling to realise that the Jonathan presidency will not expire until many top Nigerian politicians have been unmasked and demystified. Recall how many otherwise sound and sensible politicians were unmasked in the betrayal of the June 12, 1993 election and under the Gen Sani Abacha military government. The demystification continued under the Obasanjo and Yar’Adua governments, and is now continuing furiously under the Jonathan government. Dr Jonathan, it is well known, is desperate to master the 2015 elections and wishes, among other things, to control the NGF. He will do anything, no matter how demeaning, to accomplish his goals.

    The otherwise soft-spoken Mr Jang propounds a gentle theology of God and elections in which his sudden entrance into the NGF race last Friday was attributable to God, and his loss, by the most amazing sophistry ever, indistinguishably became victory. One of these days, Hardball will discourse upon Mr Jang’s frolics between Einstein’s relativity (God does not play dice with the world) and Cartesian dualism (Cogito ergo sum). That’ll be the day! Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State, who has lent himself lock, stock and barrel for Dr Jonathan’s capricious use, forsakes reason so joyously that, for him, there is no limit to his self-abnegating commitment to the president’s cause. The cost to his own integrity and principles is nothing compared to his fanatical and imponderable show of loyalty.

    The NGF debacle has done us more good than injury. It is an eye-opener; and we now know where we stand. It has revealed the poor mettle of our governors. It has also more importantly revealed the disdain the president has for his oath of office. He had sworn thus: “I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I will discharge my duties to the best of my ability, faithfully and in accordance with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the law, and always in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, solidarity, well-being and prosperity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria…that I will not allow my personal interest to influence my official conduct or my official decisions; that I will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria…that in all circumstances, I will do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will…”

    It would be presumptuous of us to remind the president and his colluding governors the weighty oath they took on assumption of office. Apart from the distinct possibility that they have forgotten the wordings or its import in their meaningless struggle for the NGF chairmanship, there is no proof they ever meant a word of it.

     

  • NGF Election: A joke that went too far

    Last week Friday, what we witnessed as a nation in the name of election was appalling. Many have condemned what is now the sour grape of the governors, especially of the PDP who thought that the election was like the exercise of their personal fiefdoms in their states where election is a coronation rather than a contest. After Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi won his reelection as the chairman the Nigerian Governors Forum, an advert ran on page 66 of The Sun of May 25 and showed signatures of the governors who purportedly signed their agreement to oust the current chairmen of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. The whole thing was pathetic. It is obvious that it is a forgery.

    First, number two of the opening section ran: “That we strongly agree for a change of leadership of the forum from April 2013 to April 2013.” The two installments of April on the document were cancelled and May was superimposed on it. The governors who put together the advert were not clever enough to remove evidence of the April. So anyone who read the advert wondered why May on top of April. It was a shabby way to cancel a word. And that showed that the April that was written on it was actually when the document was put together. They hurriedly published it in desperation after the election did not go their way. This is insincerity of the highest order. At the bottom of the document, they dated it 24 of May 2013. They said the 19 signatures voted for Governor Jang. Even if it was true that they all signed the signature, does endorsement automatically translate to vote. It was a secret ballot, and clearly some of those who claimed to belong to Jonathan and Jang did not do so when it mattered. That is how insincere they are about elections, and is that how they won? By fantasy?

    If they thought they had fooled anyone, hear this. The governor of Yobe, Ibrahim Gaidam, was not present. He was out of town, so how did they conjure up the signature beside his name? How come his signature was there? This is extreme forgery, and how many of the signatures there were forged? The police ought to investigate this. This seems like criminality writ large.

    Again, if you examined the handwriting, you will discover that many were written by the same hand. Compare, for instance, the S in Akpabio’s first name Godswill of Akwa Ibom State and the S in Suswan. Look also at the S in Sullivan as in Sullivan Chime of Enugu State.

    Is this how the governors ran elections and won? Is this how they governed their states? This is a disgrace.

    If one man won an election, why the hullaballoo of rejection? Why the nervousness and the huffing and puffing. President Goodluck Jonathan is the culprit in chief in this matter. Why has he now, through his spokesman Reuben Abati, distanced himself from the ignominy? Was it not at the Aso Villa that the PDP Governors’ Forum was inaugurated to undermine Governor Amaechi’s authority? It is indeed too late in the day to play statesman when he enjoyed the public pains of Amaechi in the hope he would lose the election.

    The whole thing was videotaped. So, why the dispute over the result in what was transparent? President Jonathan is destroying the sole force that he climbed to power. It was the Nigerian Governors’ Forum that muscled influence and fought the Yar’Adua forces. We cannot forget the doctrine of necessity. Now, after planting confusion, he says he knows nothing about it. What a farce.