Category: Hardball

Presidential candidates of some opposition parties in the February 25th election recently took to lobbying for appointment in the government of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). They visited APC National Chairman Abdullahi Ganduje in Abuja and requested for an audience with President Bola Tinubu to solicit roles in his government. The delegation, on the platform of Forum of Concerned Presidential Candidates, comprised flagbearers of Action Peoples Party, Charles Nnadi; National Rescue Movement, Felix Osakwe; All Progressives Grand Alliance, Peter Umeadi; Action Democratic Party Vice-Presidential Candidate, Odey Udo; and team leader, Adewale Adeogun.

Make no mistake: there is something to say in commendation of these politicians. After all, they avowed a disposition to peaceful collaboration and harmony in the polity, which is something to emulate by all opposition players in the political class. The effort being plied currently by the two leading opposition parties – the Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party – is one misdirection of energy that could be channeled to contributing to nation-building. On their part, the opposition politicians who visited Ganduje said they weren’t for politics with bitterness, hence their refusal to jump on the bandwagon of candidates who headed to the petition tribunal to challenge the outcome of the 2023 presidential poll.

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That said, the candidates barefacedly begged for political jobs, which raised questions about their motivation for contesting the presidential race in the first place. Purportedly in putting the love of country above partisan interest, they solicited the APC chair’s assistance to secure them an audience with the President. “We are here to thank you and to thank God and everyone seated here and to say, as presidential candidates, there is something we can offer this country, and I believe a government of inclusion will be necessary in times like this,” Osakwe, who spoke on behalf of the delegation, told Ganduje. He further said inter alia: “(We) are willing to offer our services to this country. We have a demand and it is for the party: that a slot in the campaign council for the governorship elections should be made available to us. Those of us that have piloted this, we held a meeting. And we are asked to demand from you a presence in the campaign council. We believed that our role is much more needed now as we prepare to go into polls in three states in November.”

At the last count by Hardball, political jobs hadn’t gone round APC loyalists, and the opposition candidates apparently angled to get to the front on a long queue they shouldn’t even be on. But more importantly, what happened to integrity of political conviction? They sounded more like jobbers than presidential candidates.  

It’s a sick evolution of Nigerian politics that elections are never complete without the threat to “go to court” and “retrieve my mandate”.

Actually, that could be a potent threat to those that really stole the vote.  But many times — if not most — it’s a cynical bluster to charm naive supporters.  The losers knew they lost fair and square. But they still mess with the head of rabid partisans.

The September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), which trashed the petition of the People’s Democratic Party, Labour Party and Allied People’s Movement (APM), showed the galloping folly of going to court on flimsy cases. 

The hefty fines — LP: N47, 910, 431. 87; PDP: N23, 391, 001. 45 and APM: N13, 675, 880 — showed it could be costly! 

But of the trio, APM lawyers would appear most frivolous, as the Supreme Court had already removed the pillar on which the APM case stood: alleged double nomination by the APC vice presidential candidate.  Yet, its lawyers still went before PEPC!

The PEPC ordered that the fines be paid, within 48 hours after the judgment, into the consolidated account of the Appeal Court, lodged at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).  That shows the judiciary’s rising ire with frivolous suits and cynical litigants.

Yet, from reactions to the verdict — well-reasoned, at least by the take of many judicial stakeholders — it would appear some litigants are clearly not done with that ruinous strategy.

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No sooner was the PEPC verdict read than LP outed with its “rejection”.  Peter Obi, its defeated candidate, would later come up with a more detailed response.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the equally worsted PDP candidate, would continue with his usual grandstanding, as some statesman fighting to fix the electoral system, as against a bitter partisan pushing a suspect grudge.

Well, it’s a democracy.  But believe Atiku and his umpteenth cant and you can believe anything! — to borrow that famous quip, from one of James Hadley Chase’s crime thriller-classics.

On election adjudication, the judiciary had made bad calls: chief among was its endorsement of the 2007 presidential election.  The “winner”, the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, was utterly ashamed of that blind steal: hence he began electoral reforms that much later crested in BVAS, the IT that drove the 2023 general elections. 

But the same judiciary, adjudicated the same 2007 elections, and retrieved gubernatorial mandates in a slew of states: Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and  Osun, with the help technology-powered forensic proof.

So, partisans had better win elections fair and square, or mount clinical IT to prove their case — even with all its tedium — instead of hoping to profit from emotional blackmail or even attempted intimidation of the judiciary.

That silly approach spectacularly crashed at PEPC.  But perhaps hope springs eternal at the apex court?  Time will tell.

In a hot desert, muddy ponds would seem like alluring crystal pools to thirsty souls. That was the case in Bayelsa State lately when residents of Yenagoa invaded a warehouse and carted away food and other items that the state government has said were not in fit state for consumption.

Some residents stormed a private warehouse in Kpansia area of the state capital at about 7:30pm on Sunday, 27th September, and took away items said to include bags of rice and garri as well as cartons of noodles and bottled water that were reportedly part of palliatives donated to the state during the 2022 flood disaster. Reports said the residents swooped on the warehouse located on Isaac Boro Expressway with pick-up vans and private vehicles to move the food items, much of which had gone bad. While the looting was ongoing, the state government deployed men of its security outfit known as Doo Akpo to disperse the looters and secure the warehouse. The state government, however, dismissed the warehouse invasion as unwarranted. The Bayelsa State Emergency Management Agency (BYSEMA) explained in a statement that preparatory to an impending flood this year, its Director-General Walamam Igrubia and other personnel of the agency had just visited the warehouse and had remnants of stale that were no longer fit for consumption cleared from the warehouse and placed outside for disposal the next day. “The remnants, which were swept from the floor and packed in disused bags, were less than 10 bags of rice and garri and with some broken cans of oil. For emphasis, BYSEMA states that these items were not fresh food palliatives and were not hoarded by the agency or the state government,” the statement said, adding: “Importantly, these items are unfit for human consumption and a responsible, caring government like ours will not give Bayelsans such items as palliatives. In essence, there were really no food items to loot. So, those who carted away the unfit items are please advised in their own interest not to consume them.”

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But the state government’s explanation is at best lame. Going by its own narrative, some “10 bags of rice and garri” were at issue, and that is by a sizeable quantity that could have been better handled way back and ensure it got to needy persons. Even if that were mere spills during the distribution of the 2022 items, it showed wasteful handling of the essential materials. People are in dire need and officials must show a better sense of prudence in dispensing available materials to succour them.

The concept of Labour-as-nuisance isn’t so new.  It gels with the manna craze from the oil boom years, when Nigeria’s problems wasn’t the cash but how to blow it.

To be sure, the leaders over time had helped selves to a good chunk of that cash — and unfortunately so — thus erecting stout distrust in the public space.  But even that distrust shouldn’t be licence for organized Labour to just dream dreams, instead of thinking hard, in the face of obvious and glaring odds.

In all of these, the consuming passion of Joe Ajaero, president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), is to go on strike.  And after strike what — some deus ex machina that would magically fix things, as in Greek classical drama contraptions?

Still, Ajaero and co’s behaviour isn’t new.  The only difference is that in their Aluta lullaby, they seem dead to both history and harsh contemporary realities.

About everyone now, as standard chime, references President Bola Tinubu’s Lagos records, a clear national model of progressive evolution from 1999.  But how many remember that when those reforms were at their most delicate stages, this same NLC — its Lagos wing — emotionalized everything and swore the Lagos reforms would succeed only over its dead body?

That was the sum total of the campaigns of the late Ayodele Akele, and the fierce Lagos NLC wars against the civil service reforms headlined by Oracle computerization.  Today, NLC members, Lagos civil and public servants, earn seamless pensions and gratuity based on secure service records, made possible by the Oracle digital firm-up.

Just imagine if NLC had triumphed and the Tinubu Lagos government had buckled?

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Then, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).  Just too much dosage of Labour Aluta and a supposed collective of vibrant thinkers suddenly became virtual invalids, incapable of thinking outside paralyzing strikes of dubious impact!  On that wide and merry way, ASUU has well-neigh blown up its brand equity.  But it’s doubtful if it even fully realizes it!

In its latest strike bug, Ajaero’s NLC appears smitten by willy-nilly anarchy to war with everyone — including itself: Air Peace is a corporate devil.  Imo and Abia governments are public sector villains.  The Federal Government itself is ultimate anti-people monster, for economic reforms that hurt in the short-run, could work in the long-run but which NLC, in glorious and triumphant emotions, decrees a journey to nowhere that would only succeed over its dead body!

In Ajaero of Abuja, are we seeing a neo-Akele of Ikeja?  In Ajaero’s infantile stunts, are we seeing the inevitable deja vu, bound in years to come to mock Labour’s unthinking activism, at a crunchy epoch of Nigeria’s difficult evolution?

Labour should do less of emotive stacking of cards and more of clinical thinking and strategic engagement and partnership to solve current crunchy problems.  That’s the only way it can lead its members right; and be part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.