Being a former British Colony, Nigeria had the political misfortune of being bequeathed with a public administration system that was based on ‘Migrated Social Structure’; and it could not have been otherwise. After all, it’s the only systemic public administration structure known to the British. Consequently, and right from the outset, the tools of public engagement at all levels, in particular, struggled with the norms and values of Nigerians. Absent the domestication of the intrinsic norms, ethics and usage of the colonial administrative system over a period of time, the emergent system acquired a life of its own; deformed, or, at best, a compromised caricature. And, despite intermittent and laborious attempts at reforming its bureaucracy, this compromised system and its attendant systemic anomalies have only continued to advance exponentially at the expense of the professed developmental agenda of Nigeria’s founding fathers.

Put differently, although the gamut of the extant government machinery is said to exist to serve the public, in reality, it provides services for the privileged class and the well- connected members of the society through the determined pace, mercy and direction of the public and civil servants. Against this background, democracy as a form of government will still have to be interpreted and powered by the State’s bureaucracy as it deems fit. Beyond the definition of the concept of democracy, its interpretive understanding and the political orientation of the power elite, political gladiators and the power-brokers are the motivational factors driving government performance.

As things stand in Nigeria, our democracy cannot but reveal certain and peculiar tendencies. For instance, though we identify our bureaucratic structure as a democracy, it doesn’t have to conform to what obtains elsewhere. Here in Nigeria, democracy is huge business; and only the rich and the well-connected run for elections into her critical public offices. Extant laws against excessive funding and spending notwithstanding, stupendous amount of money is always expended by our politicians and public office seekers on this four-year routinized exercise. Political participation is made attractive and possible through money, and only the moneybags are the authentic players. This is reinforced by the whet and insatiable appetite of political jobbers and party officials who are always out for pecuniary rewards. The masses respond to money and not manifestos, ideas, or political ideology. Yet, we call the system, ‘democratic’ even when a system which selectively disenfranchises participants cannot be said to be truly democratic. The major snag is that the so-called democratic institutions that are supposed to correct these anomalies are also part of the problems. So, who is fooling who?

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Talking about deep pockets, there is no doubt that they possess the power to create their own pattern; and that pattern is called ‘entitlement syndrome’. For example, those delegates who became ‘accidental millionaires’ just because they served as delegates at the last party conventions in Nigeria might have learnt some lessons about politics to the extent that if there’s going to be another round of presidential party conventions in the next four years, the operational code will have been horned, since some participant-delegates already knew how lucrative it was to be a delegate. So, chances are that selection of delegates in 2027 will be a battle to the finish. Then again, the piper payers who have surreptitiously established – and are oiling – the syndrome will jerk up the rate at the next available opportunity. It is normal with human beings!

Be that as it may, the beneficiaries of the largesse are not likely to see it as if somebody has done, or is doing them a favour, but more of what they are entitled to. So, this creates a pattern which makes it difficult to have good governance, because the money that is expected to be used to promote it is already frittered away on other issues. Of course, once this is created, it has the means of creating a pattern; and, once that pattern is created. The society will only be shouting! It is what has led to vote-buying! So, when the electorate start accusing the government of negligence or incapacity, the reasons, in part, are as adduced above.

In development, one of the first things to look at is pattern formation. Had Nigeria been a serious country, the pattern of development she’s had was enough for development. Should anyone want to draw a chart, or compare stuffs about dear fatherland, all one has to do was to interrogate the pattern with a view to drawing informed conclusions. For example, successive military coups have come with a promise to curb the excesses as well as right the wrongs of the politicians. Looking back, how many of those wrongs have been righted? How many among their promises have been thwarted and how many of those excesses have remained with us till date? As if the gods are angry, successive leaders have merely succeeded in scratching the wrongs on the surface; nobody has uprooted anything. And that’s why we are where we are!

Events, as they unfold with each passing day have shown that, in a compromised democracy, corruption is a necessity. Once the system is no longer working the way it should, corruption becomes the driving force. It becomes the oxygen. The likelihood of even the rights activists succumbing due to intense heat from the fire abject poverty is very high. So, to think that those who have spent their life savings will not, on getting into political office, strive at recouping their expenses is to embrace the philosophy of the idiots. How can they truly afford to develop the society? Besides, it is not in their objective interest to develop the society, because, if they do, corruption will start waning; and when it does, their business can’t thrive again! After all, sustaining an amorphous system demands oiling the machine; and oiling the machine means accommodating more corruption. When a system works as it should, fraudsters won’t get work to do. But interestingly, the fraudsters have taken over. So, corruption has taken a sunken taproot. And, in order to sustain that corruption, one needs more money. Since those who are corrupt are also conscious that there will one day be a stop to it, they can’t but be aggressively in a hurry to make all the money before ‘kasala’ eventually bursts.

Think about policy options that have turned the Nigerian state into a series of sociopolitical accidents and one will find out that the kind of leadership a country gets will determine how far it can go! It is also sad that leadership in this part of the world has become more like a cult; a game for every Dick, Tom and Harry. Ours is now politics of cliques and nuclear families. I doubt if any of us can be qualified to be amongst the extended relatives. To borrow the late Obafemi Awolowo’s words, what we have is ‘ojelu’, no longer ‘oselu.’ We are where we are because our system allows the emergence of certain and preferred leadership to manage the affairs of the country. Again, that the Nigerian society has ebbed to the point of a home-grown anomie is no longer news. Hence the only way to arrest it is to truthfully arrest it; and by that, we mean a total overhaul, which starts even from the family.

May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace in Nigeria!

• Komolafe wrote in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk)

For most part of, if not all this year, Nigeria has been caught up with election fever as the country prepares for a general election which is still the better part of five months away. For all that time, politicians have been moving up and down the country in the name of gathering support for themselves and their respective parties so that they can continue to wield power within their respective constituencies and ultimately at the very centre of the country’s governance in the fabled city of Abuja.

The ultimate prize in this never ending contest is of course the presidency, for the simple reason that the party that has control at the centre has access to the levers of power all over the country, even in those states which are governed by any one of the other political parties which are in the field of contest for power. This is why no stone is left unturned in order to occupy the Aso Rock seat of the Presidency. For the vast majority of those who will turn out to vote in the various elections in February, they have no other point of reference. They have been coming out dutifully in the last twenty-four years to cast their votes in various elections and must think that there is no alternative to the presidential system that we now operate. However, there are a few old timers who remember a time, now, shrouded in the nearly impenetrable mist of time when the country was run through the parliamentary system. This system is one of the long term victims of the 1966 military coup, which has changed the face of Nigeria seemingly permanently and profoundly.

It is understandable that the country, through a couple of unelected Constitutional committees have imposed this system of government on the country. Understandable because this is the system through which the most powerful and financially secure country, the United States of America is governed. Obviously, the people who made the proposal that we adopt this system did so in the hope that it the dazzling sun that powers the USA will be reflected in us for the betterment of the people of Nigeria. Up till now, any hope in this direction has been forlorn as the nation has sunk ddeeper and deeper into the morass of poor government from where any hope of escape is small and dwindling with every passing turn in the wheel of our all too frequent electoral cycle. It is now time to interrogate the system of governance of the country and take stock with the aim of deciding if it is even reasonable to continue as a clone of the American system which is alive but probably unwell even in the land of its birth, not to talk of this, the land of its adoption.

The USA has been governed by the Constitution drawn up under the shadow of the American War of Independence from British rule by the representatives of the original thirteen colonies that had come together to form the USA. At the time of its adoption, it was a treasonable document and all those that appended their signature to it would have been summarily hanged by the British had the colonies not succeeded in defeating the British army in the war of independence. From this point of view alone this is a document which could have been written in blood, the blood of all those brave men who were prepared to die for their beliefs especially the sanctity of private property and their inalienable right to happiness . This is probably the first point of departure from its Nigerian equivalent as the framers of our constitution were chosen by sitting governments which had a plain but undeclared interest in the outcome of the deliberations of those who had been handpicked for this well remunerated assignment.

Both the American and Nigerian constitution that state clearly that the people of each nation had come together to thrash out all the elements of their respective constituencies but in each side was being, at best, economical with the truth. The framers of the American constitution were all rich, white men who had their class interests to promote and protect. For example, they were slave owners whose continued prosperity depended on their ownership of slaves. Thomas Jefferson, the young man, only thirty-three years old at the time, trusted with drafting that constitution not only owned some six hundred slaves in the course of his life, but at least six of his slaves were his own children, fathered with Sally Hemings, a slave and half sister to his wife. No wonder, the American constitution only recognised black men to the mere extent of describing them as being only 60% human and just a little bit more valuable than a mule. They were therefore deemed unqualified to exercise any right to be involved in  casting a vote in any election. More than a hundred years went by before the black people were admitted into the union as full human beings, albeit with only some of the rights and privileges assigned to white Americans at birth. What more, it took a costly and bloody civil war to dismantle the apparatus of slavery in America, the so called land of the free. Those of us who grew up in the sixties cannot forget the civil rights struggles waged relentlessly on many fronts before the black people of America were allowed to creep out of the dungeon into which they had been cast at birth by the descendants of the framers of the constitution which, they claimed had been written by the American people. The framers of the Nigerian constitution made the same airy claim, one which cannot stand up to scrutiny, however perfunctionary.

The framers of the Nigerian constitution made strenuous attempts to follow faithfully in the tracks of their American counterparts in many ways in their effort to replicate the success of the American experience.  This is one of the reasons why it is necessary to look closely at our constitution in order to make it work for us. In the first instance, the American constitution was written for thirteen states, the number of which has increased to fifty states since it was written. The thirty-seven states which have been admitted to the union over the last two hundred years have done so only after series of negotiations and adjustments. In the case of Nigeria, no such adjustments were ever made because the thirty-six state structure predated the constitution which is one reason why that structure cannot be amended without amending or perhaps better, abrogating the constitution itself. The Nigerian constitution may not have been a copy and paste job but it appears that little was done to address those peculiarities which have been a stumbling block to the political, financial and other areas of development of the country.

Sitting at the heart of the Nigerian constitution is the monstrosity that is the Presidency. It is a fearsome behemoth sucking the life out of the nation as it flexes its prodigious muscles, bulldozing its way through all types of political terrain. The checks and balances which have been built into the system are so feeble that overall, they count for very little and can be swatted aside with contemptuous ease by any president bent on having his way. And some of those who have wielded the awesome power of the Nigerian presidency have not been circumscribed by any niceties. Even when the president goes rogue and is acting outside the so called confines of the constitution, there is very little that can be done by way of sanctions. In the extreme, the only thing that can be done to check the runaway juggernaut is to resort to his impeachment, a process which is so cumbersome the likelihood of success varies from slim to none.

Another aspect of the Nigerian presidential system is the sheer volume of money required to run it at all, not to talk of doing so effectively. The office of the power holders in the system are crawling with aides and aides to aides and dare it be said, aides to the third degree, all of them appointed at the whim of the president and other less visible officers who for all their invisibility wield the kind of power that can only be described as totally irresponsible. To paint a truly frightening picture, this scenario is replicated in all the thirty-six impecunious states of the blighted Federation, the result being that those who are pulling their shift in schools, universities, the police, army and other such departments of government are paid very little and even the little may be delayed by several months. The president of Nigeria is, in the final analysis, answerable to nobody but himself. In the light of this situation he must be the envy of heads of state of many less chaotic governments. This is one reason why the presidency of Nigeria is well worth fighting over and no wonder that the battle over that position, has always been a do or die affair.

The most important thing about being president of Nigeria is not about governing the country but about winning the election that opens the door to the presidential palace. Once every four years a great deal of time, energy, money, goodwill and goodness knows what else are poured into the project of winning an election. At the end of it all, the winner, the losers as well as numerous hangers on are left physically, mentally, psychological and even spiritually drained. And yet nobody has been moved to calculate the extent of the damage done to the nation in the process of choosing a president. Perhaps if this is done with any degree of honesty and thoroughness, the nation will wake up to the grievous harm done to the country in the process of subjecting both politicians as well as the electorate to the trauma of these sterile but overly expensive jamborees which as far as can be seen have not contributed anything to the healthy development of Nigeria.

Campaign has been defined as an organized course of action to achieve a goal. It’s any series of actions or events that are meant to achieve a particular result. Much as this definition is general and covers certain aspects of life viz; social, cultural, commercial, political, campaign is more associated with politics. This is because political parties are the ones that mostly make use of campaigns to engage with the public. In other words, campaign is the tool political parties employ to sell their manifestoes to the people. Campaign serves as an avenue for politicians to talk to the people and to convince the electorate to vote for them and their parties.

No doubt campaigning is very important in the life of any political party as it plays a prominent role in determining the fate of parties in elections. In an ideal situation, a party that is able to engage in vigorous campaigning by reaching out to a large section of the populace, sell her policies and programmes to the electorate convincingly during electioneering campaigns, stands a better chance of winning in an election. Such a party is more likely to carry the day in an electoral contest and this is the reason why all over the world in countries where leaders get to power through the ballot, serious politicians and political parties that really want to capture power don’t joke with campaigns.

Political parties do try to make their campaigns as highly and heavily tantalizing as possible so as to get the electorate to key into their programmes and then eventually use their voting power to elect them into office/s. They put their whole life into it as if it provides a sure ticket to paradise. This is so because a campaign – as mentioned earlier – is the only avenue through which they (politicians) can convince the electorate to vote for them. So for this, there’s no serious political party that treats the issue of a campaign with levity. Only an unserious one does.

The Independent National Electoral Commission has announced the dates for the commencements of campaigns for next year’s general elections. September 28, 2022 has been fixed for the takeoff of presidential campaigns while campaigns for both national and state Houses of Assemblies will commence on October 12, 2022.

Of course Nigerians have been looking forward to hearing from the presidential candidates what they and their political parties have in stock for the good people of this country. Though skeletal campaigns have commenced on the political scene since the emergence of presidential candidates of the different political parties, such campaigns are not really deep. They are only peripheral as they have been prominent only on social media and are being carried out mainly by parties/candidates’ supporters.

Read Also: Campaigns: The roundtable conversation begins…

Thus, as we are about to witness what parties and their candidates have for us in terms of policies and programmes, it’s expected that their campaigns will be issue-based as against what we have been witnessing so far on the social media space where campaigns of calumny and character defamations have been the order of the day.

And the question that comes to mind here is; will Nigerian politicians and their supporters ever change? This question becomes necessary as mudslinging and dirty brickbats seem to have become part and parcel of our politics. We witnessed the same in 2015 and other previous general elections.

This trend really calls for serious concern. Rather than convince the electorate by presenting to them what you have to offer when you get to the office, l mean the ways you intend to change their living conditions for the better, what is of interest to some of our political gladiators and a majority of their supporters is painting their opponents black. This is really worrisome.

These campaigns of calumny; especially as being targeted at the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, do not really speak well of us as a people. They only portray us as a backward, frivolous and ‘bad belly’ lot who are not interested in progress but who only revel in running ourselves down.

These retrogressive and counterproductive natures of our campaigns also turn us to a laughing stock before the outside world. Our political leaders and their followers need to realize the fact that running ourselves down doesn’t put food on our tables, nor does it put our names on the hall of fame. It only demeans us and makes us look cheap as a people.

Like the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola rightly opined recently at a lecture organized by The Niche; “Elections can be won without negative rhetorics”.

According to the Minister, “rather than exploiting the country’s fault lines to appeal to some sections of voters, politicians and candidates for elective positions can speak to issues and highlight how they plan to solve the challenges.”

This is apt and this writer can’t agree less with the minister. So therefore as presidential campaigns start in a few days’ time, what Nigerians are expecting to hear from our presidential candidates and their campaigners are real issues that have to do with how they intend solving our energy problem, how they want to improve our health care system, how they will solve the problems in the education sector, fix our infrastructure and improve the living conditions of our people generally.

So in a nutshell all the aforementioned are expected to form the kernel of the coming presidential campaigns, but not negative rhetorics like all this unnecessary brouhaha about Muslim-Muslim ticket and character assassinations like the ones being done to Tinubu that bear no good fruit for human consumption.

For a candidate like Tinubu and his ilk that are being vilified daily by haters and their agents, they should remain focused and always have this Shakespearean quote at the back of their minds; “May thou be as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shall not escape calumny.”

• Odepeju wrote from Osogbo via kolaodepeju@gmail.com

Six months after the Senate President, Dr. Ahmed Lawan constituted an ad-hoc committee of the upper legislative chamber to investigate the hikes in pay television rates and the demand for the adoption of Pay Per View (PPV) subscription model by operators, the committee held a public hearing into both matters on 22 September.

Based on media reports of the hearing, the most evident outcome is of the  committee’s foggy grasp of the issues it sat to probe. This piece does not aim to diss the Senate, but to illuminate the issues and ensure a better understanding by the ad-hoc committee and subscribers. A bold hint of the committee’s meagre grasp of the issues was provided by the committee chairman, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, who blamed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) for the frequent pay television tariff increases.

“We need to have price regulation. Price increases need to be regulated. NBC, from all intent and purposes, are the problem of the country when it comes to pay TV,” Abdullahi said.

Only one inference is drawable from this: That the NBC has the power to regulate prices and has failed to exercise the power, the reason tariffs have kept climbing. But the NBC Act CAP N11 gives the commission no such powers, as stated at the hearing by Anete Onyebuchi, who represented the commission’s Director-General.

“The NBC Act only gives it power to receive, consider and investigate complaints regarding broadcast content. Nowhere in the Act is the NBC given powers to regulate the prices being charged on their services,” Onyebuchi, NBC’s Deputy Director, Research and Policy, said in his presentation.

Given that the issues being investigated are consumer-centric, it was curious that the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) was invited to the session. This is because the FCCPC has the responsibility for the protection of the consumer against exploitation. Its Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Babatunde Irukera, is also on record as having explained that the commission is not empowered to regulate prices.

In an interview published by Premium Times on 18 April 2022, Irukera dispelled the view that his agency is a price regulator. He said the law establishing the commission has a limited provision on price regulation which, if even it allows the government to fix prices, requires the FCCPC to make a recommendation to the President for a limited time of price regulation in a specific sector.

The committee, surprisingly, also seemed indifferent to/unaware of local and global economic conditions responsible for the cost-of-living crisis everywhere. In six years, said Abdullahi, MultiChoice, on which the committee’s guns was trained, has increased its tariff by 55 per cent.

Clearly lost on the committee are conditions that make price hikes of not just pay television, but all goods and services, inevitable. At the hearing, John Ugbe, the MultiChoice CEO, listed such as including rising costs of inputs and technical upgrades as well as the naira’s shrinking value.

“The costs of satellite pay television are massive, ongoing and increase, rather than decrease, with time. Due to the current adverse economic situation, some of these factors have, over the years, negatively impacted our cost of doing business and have put us under very challenging conditions,” explained Ugbe.

Basic. Very basic, I would think. A similar position was canvased by Olushola Peters, Head of Marketing, OurTv, and Tony Iyare, Coordinator, Nigerian Viewers’ Collective (NVC). “Inflation is now over 20 per cent, the highest in 17 years. The content which they (pay television operators) offer is bought in dollars and there has been a geometric drop in the value of the naira to the dollar. Prices of services and consumer goods, including household ones, have risen astronomically and continue to do so in the last three years. Prices of diesel and aviation fuel have leapt. Local and international economics dynamics are responsible,” argued Iyare.

Pay television companies, he stated, are in no way shielded from the inclement economic climate, which has seen even the government raise the pump price of petrol. Iyare also noted that in the event of price regulation in the sector, pay television companies will be forced into reducing the value of their offerings to the subscriber.

Just as the committee started with the apparent belief that price regulation can be declared and decreed into existence, it cockily slid into the second arm of its assignment, PPV. The ground was prepared by Senator Patrick Abba Moro, sponsor of the motion that led to the constitution of the committee in March by the Senate President.

Moro’s view is that PPV will result in the lowering of tariffs, as subscribers will pay only for what they watch. He was right, but still wrong.

As those who presented memoranda, including pay television firms and stakeholders pointed out, PPV allows payment only for what is watched, but not in the manner presumed and is actually more expensive than the fixed subscription model in use.

Explaining PPV to the committee, Ugbe said: “It would appear that this problem is because of some confusion in understanding the basic definitions and distinctions between some of the existing operational business models in telecommunications and pay TV broadcasting. PPV model allows a subscriber to watch some special one-off events, usually of the high-ticket variety in sports and entertainment, by paying for such events in addition to having an active subscription. Pay-As-You-Go, accommodates a metered mode of service, where consumers are billed only for the service they consume and not for a fixed period. The desire by this committee to adopt PPV is further challenged by the non-existence of any technology that can detect and or determine the viewers are tuned in per time. Once it is impossible to have this knowledge, billings based on ‘per view’ become difficult if not almost impossible.”

Emeka Mba, former NBC Director-General, and Dr Monday Michaels Ashibogwu, CEO of Billsbox Services, also touched on the misapprehension around PPV. Mba said PPV is not the same as Pay-As-You-Go, as widely assumed. In his submission, Ashibogwu said: “The simple definition of PPV is a system under which a viewer is required to pay a certain fee for viewing special programmes such as live events or sports. The programme is broadcast at the same time to everyone subscribing to PPV service. The addition of PPV to a package grants viewers access to programmes on a pay per view basis. The payment is specifically for a programme, show or event.”

Ashibogwu noted that the type of content broadcast via pay per view is typically big-ticket and is not included in the regular line-up of programmes, adding that the cost element is why PPV is used for high-niche events, not mainstream pay television broadcasting.

“These are not sums of money the ordinary Nigerian can afford,” he said with examples.

The epic 2015 boxing bout between America’s Floyd Mayweather and Filipino Manny Pacquiao, he stated, was retailed on PPV at £30 to viewers in the UK and $99.5 in the US respectively. He equally said that if the bout had not lasted the distance, it would have meant that the payment ended at whatever round was the final of the bout. The fight, he recalled, was made available to DStv Premium subscribers at no extra cost. The UFC fight between Khamzat Chimaev and Gilbert Burns, he added, cost $64.99 on PPV in the US.

At this point, dear readers, permit me to bring back Irukera. Responding to a question on PPV and its interchangeability with PAYSG in telecommunications during a July 2020 Channels Television interview, the FCCPC boss said there is a confusion between the two models, adding that what obtains in telecommunications is not necessarily applicable in pay television.

“My challenge with what sometimes is the discussion around pay-as-you-go in pay TV is that there is a disconnection. We have conducted some investigations and we have done some surveys in different parts of the world. The pay-as-you-go model in telecommunications is not necessarily applicable and so we confuse it sometimes with pay-per-view. Pay-per-view is not that you pay for what you view from the point of when you turn your television on. It is primarily that there are certain programmes, maybe a boxing match, a soccer match or some movies that are still in the cinemas that some of the pay TV operators have bought and you can literally request instead of going to a stadium or going to a cinema to watch, you can watch it in your home and pay for that view. That is pay-per-view, but we confuse it with pay-as-you-go. What people are asking for in pay-as-you-go is when you turn on your television and you are watching, you pay. When you turn off your television and you are not watching, you don’t pay. It is difficult because the content has been created, what you are paying for is access. Unlike the telephone where the clock starts and the airtime goes down, you have paid for content,” he said in the interview.

What is also not in doubt is that programmes, shows and events broadcast on PPV are high-niche and, therefore, very expensive. They are not a regular broadcast staple. The duo of Dr. Bright Echefu, CEO of TStv, and Mr. Tunde Aina, COO of Startimes, also poured cold water on the PPV debate, describing it as one that is not feasible. However, they said their organisations have instituted a daily access model.

“Pay per view is not feasible, but we came up with pay per day. We allow our subscribers to choose the package based on the number of channels they want to watch,” said Echefu.

It will be interesting to see the outcome of the committee investigations, but in the meantime, there is a need to ask a few questions. Why were the Ministry of Information, which supervises the broadcast industry, and FCCPC not invited to the hearing? They were missing from the list of agencies invited. Those invited were Standard Organisation of Nigeria, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Central Bank of Nigeria, Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria.

Also, one has to wonder why, at this time, tariffs on pay television services, used by less than five per cent of the population, are above stratospheric prices of goods/ services, dipping naira value, insecurity, protracted university lecturers’ strike and other matters that affect the vast majority? Answers to these are crucial, given that both chambers of the National Assembly have, at one time or the other, travelled this route and returned with nothing beyond blunt resolutions.

As a Twitter user asked on the social networking site, “why are National Assembly members keen on pay per view, but are resistant to the idea of carrying out their legislative functions on part-time basis and get paid sitting allowances? That is legislative pay per view na.” Funny, but not exactly untrue.

• Akiode, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja

When the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr Iyorchia Ayu referred to Rivers State Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike and his fellow lone rangers as children, many people found the expression harsh, or at least inappropriate going by the deft moves to reconcile the party ahead of the 2023 elections.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, many people will begin to better understand what Ayu was trying to say. As a popular saying goes ‘What an elder sees while sitting down, the young ones may miss even while standing on an elevated platform.’

Wike has so far parried all sincere efforts to get him to see reasons as to why he should let bygones be bygones and reunite with the majority of the PDP stakeholders. Democracy has always been known to be the game of numbers in which the minority have their say, even as the majority have their way.

Losing a primary election is not the end of politics.

Actually, what happened in the PDP primaries is a way of telling him to do more in order to have his way in the future. The delegates have decided that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar should be the PDP flag bearer for the 2023 presidential election.

Wike had his own delegates but their votes were outnumbered by those of Atiku. It is like a game of football, no team can win it all the time. You win some and lose some. This explains why winners do all in their power to remain on top, while others continue to plot their downfall so they can also have the experience of what it feels to be champions. But they play according to the rules.

The fact that Wike came short of his aspiration in this election circle does not mean the end of his politics. Tomorrow is another day, and no one knows what tomorrow holds. So, Wike has his future ahead of him with bright chances unless he decides to make it otherwise.

Well, the PDP, right now, has resolved to forge ahead with or without Wike, and this is encouraging.

Indeed, the political trajectory of Peter Odili is a lesson for WIke and both have a lot in common. Like Odili, Wike was twice elected governor of oil rich Rivers State. And now in his final term of four years, Wike almost emerged as the running mate to Atiku Abubakar, same way Odili narrowly missed being on the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua ticket in 2007.

Read Also: Atiku vs Wike: will Ayu go?

To show his bitterness about how he was edged out, Odili wrote his experience in his biography titled “Conscience and History: My Story”. In the book, he narrated how he went from being a frontrunner in the 2007 PDP presidential race to an anointed running mate of Yar’Adua, only for him to be left with nothing at the end of the day.

Odili told the story of how he had the privilege of being shown the typed copy of the prepared acceptance speech of Yar’Adua, where it was clearly stated that he had been nominated by the then president-to-be as his running mate.

But at the last minute, Odili’s name was dropped and Goodluck Jonathan of Bayelsa State eventually became the running mate to Yar’Adua. This bears some resemblance to the Wike story, how he lost out to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State. Odili eventually congratulated Yar’Adua and Jonathan. But still, politically speaking, where is Odili today?

Former Governor of Jigawa State Sule Lamido has also related this same story for the benefit of Wike, advising the Rivers State governor to emulate Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Senate President Ahmad Lawan and his predecessors Peter Odili, and Rotimi Amaechi, who showed maturity when they lost the presidential tickets of their parties.

“A day to the PDP’s presidential convention, which Peter Odili of Rivers State was bound to win and was also bound to win the presidential election, he was stopped by the party which went on to nominate President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who did not even show interest. He was promised a vice presidential ticket and yet, he was not given. He took everything as the mature man that he is.

“Look at the APC, Vice President Osinbajo was humiliated; the Senate president was also humiliated and even his countryman, Amaechi was given the same treatment; they took it as matured men and did not go about complaining as Wike is doing. This is called maturity.

“Do you know why? This is because the party is supreme. You cannot be bigger than your party. Party is organic.

The convention has come and gone. Osinbajo, Lawan and Amaechi have shown maturity because their party has spoken. If Wike is in the APC, will he be talking and behaving as he is doing now?”

Today, if you go through the newspapers, or scout social media platforms, you will see the things Wike said, and these claims and vituperations have effectively been documented in history for generations, including those unborn.

From claiming to be aware of the underground moves of Okowa to become the vice presidential candidate of the PDP (as if that is not politics), to alleging (without any proof) that Ayu collected N1 billion from Lagos and threatening to mention who gave the money, Wike has openly contradicted himself.

Take the issue of former PDP chairman Uche Secondus as an example. Wike first said Secondus was removed for performing below the expectation of PDP members, now just a month after, he is saying that Secondus was removed to pave the way for a Southern president.

He had also challenged members of the committee set up to nominate Atiku’s VP to say if he lobbied them to nominate him.

Wike also accused Atiku of being insincere in backing Ayu, adding that the PDP flag bearer does not have Kano and Lagos.

Like those ex-governors who have misused their days in office and are now running helter-skelter, scheming their way to the Senate, forming Whatsapp groups for former governors (as Wike himself allege), the Rivers State governor should ask himself where he will be after May 2023 if he refuses to work for the PDP.

Every voice of reason, including that of Atiku Abubakar, has been advising Wike to sheathe his sword so that the party can go into election as a united front, but he seems determined to walk a path that can only lead him to a cul-de-sac. He is writing his political obituary.

He is giving credence to those accusing him of being a mole, a serpent in the midst of PDP.

You see there is something about children that make them unable to take decision devoid of emotion. They are always susceptible to manipulations by those who will promise them sweet and what not. They are incapable of seeing the bigger picture.

So in all these, if what Wike is busy doing is not childishness, I don’t know what it is.

Ayu was right afterall!

The recently-surfaced video clip on the social media, purportedly showing the COVID-19 palliative items warehoused in Ede, Osun State, but looted by hoodlums and other misguided members of the society necessitated this write-up.

Without doubt, this act by some unscrupulous elements was ill-conceived and, definitely, in bad faith. This is so because, not only that the unfortunate incident had occurred to the rude awakening of the state government and its law-abiding residents years earlier, appropriate measures were taken to curtail it. The sad event, which occurred in October 2020, was promptly addressed even as its effects and social implications as they affected governance were also laid to rest.

Having done the needful by the state government back then, uploading such a video and spreading same as a current event was as barbaric as the act was capable of breaching the peace for which Osun State has been renowned. If the masterminds of the offensive video had premised their action on ways to affect the probable outcome of the much-anticipated-but-now-successful Osun Local Government elections, then, it’s indeed politics taken too far; and such video should be disregarded by the good and peace-loving people of the state. Thankfully, their plans failed woefully!

Now that the video has been re-introduced into the subconscious mind of the society, the most sensible option is to re-appraise the nitty-gritty of the episode. For those who care to know, such a step will afford Nigerians the opportunity of picking the fine grains of pertinent lessons in progressive politics and administration for the greater good of humanity.

To begin with, the warehouse option, its location and the palliative contents therein were legitimate government decisions. That’s what obtains in all sane societies. The delay in the distribution of the relief food items, the bureaucratic tardiness in what was supposed to be a prompt social service as explained by the Gboyega Oyetola-led administration, following the unfortunate incident was also altogether tenable. And CACOVID, the Committee responsible for the delay, duly apologized for the pains it took the state through.

With these in mind, it is important to note that the security architecture at the warehouses in Ede could be said to be non-functional, or, apparently non-existent at the time; which explains why the looters had a field day – an uninterrupted looting spree. Besides, the belief is that whosoever was responsible for the provision of watertight security for the goods on behalf of the state – but failed to do his or her job – has long been sanctioned. If that has not happened, it is not too late to do so, for it will serve as deterrence to others. For example, were the relief materials to be nuclear reactors, or bio-chemical weapons, it would have been a different story – a catastrophe of a sort!

Read Also: Osun dispels rumour of COVID-19 palliative warehouse

The obvious lack of rapid and prompt response capacity and gross inability of the Nigeria Police Force to stand tall in the face of social crisis was also made manifest while the looting lasted. Hoodlums were calling on fellow hoodlums and friends were reaching out to friends. Even, age-long enemies became friends overnight and joined the earsplitting, rowdy, free-for-all spree! What a shameful act?

Obviously, not all the residents of the state participated in the looting saga of Ede, which, interestingly, is the hometown of the Osun Governor-elect. Well, who knows? At any rate, the bitter truth is that the small number of the society that looted those relief items wreaked havoc on the moral psychology of the unsuspecting members of the society. Nigerians may wish to be reminded that, under the societal moral code, it is wrong to steal under any guise. Pilfering or kleptomania is frowned at and condemned in strong terms. For the masses therefore, seeing the daylight looting of those warehouses ran contrary to the accepted norms of the society. However, the evil narrative was that the Oyetola-led government was deliberately hoarding the items for the unwholesome and obnoxious reasons. Consequently, the masses lost all caution and the looting, justified through a lie, became free-for-all; and more people joined the already-desperate people, not only to sweep clean the warehouses but also feeling righteous in their crooked act. The truth, however, is that there is nothing righteous about thievery!

The shameful scenario in Ede only served as a precursor to the EndSARS riots, which came after it. On this occasion, greed moved a tad higher on the index metre and hoodlums broke into shops and stole wares of immense cash-values in what was regarded as a fight against the government. Of course, in such a senseless fight, anything goes! It’s disheartening that the point was lost on the looters that the items being stolen belonged to business individuals, who, most often, might have taken loans from banks to stock the shops. Aggression was pointlessly transferred from the state government to the shop and business owners. But for the timely intervention of the Oyetola-led government, the gloomy reality was already frightening!

The state government sermonized to the people, explaining the difference between a protest (which is civic right and responsibility) and looting (which is criminality). It provided an amnesty cover for a period of a week for the stolen items to be returned, failure which culprits would be made to face the full wrath of the law. Traditional rulers, community and religious leaders as well as upright members of the society were consulted and their cooperation was enlisted. At the end of the day, their interventions helped in cutting the losses.

From the foregoing, one important lesson to learn here is that socially-induced crises require socially-induced solutions. Those who uploaded Ede COVID-19 palliatives looting clips for whatever reasons must note that ‘whatever goes around comes around’ and that if nothing is done to expunge the evil-vibes of that video, the chickens will soon come home to roost!  What is most important is the survival of Osun State, not only the victory at elections. Speaking for posterity, neither of the two major political parties in the State can rule successfully if the State is ailing. That is the truth! If Osun is peaceable and governable, its inhabitants will be at peace and savour the peaceful environment. The converse is also true: if the State is unstable and ungovernable, no one will be at peace, irrespective of the party in power! Had Nigerians been collectively concerned about the development of Mother Nigeria, their politics should have moved from the elementary basics of ‘who wins an election’ to debates about development ideas, administrative policies, good governance and related best practices. For political parties to secure victory at elections only to begin to grapple with development plans and strategies is not only counter-productive, it is embarrassingly so!

A word is enough for the wise!

• Ayoade, a sociologist, wrote from Ilorin, Kwara State.

Even his most trenchant critic knows this as gospel truth: Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress, APC’s presidential candidate in next year’s election is the main issue and the candidate to beat in that exercise.

However, naysayers who would rather deny the evidence of their eyes than accept the reality of Asiwaju’s unstoppable victory in the polls, like slave riders of the old, are on the prowl, warring against the truth and trying to take it captive.

But theirs is a futile attempt at stifling a sure pregnancy that will inevitably be birthed for in the words of Miguel de Cervantes,

“the truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water”

Like oil rises above water, all the lies told against the person of Asiwaju cannot stand against the tide of truth.

This piece is directed against such falsehoods.

Clinically demolishing such a mountain of mendacity as peddled by reactionary elements and hired goons has become very imperative in the face of the burning need to enthrone as president next year, a progressive, people-oriented person as exemplified by Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu.

One of the time-worn, puerile and twisted narratives by traducers against Asiwaju’s presidency is age. But come to think of it, what has age got to do with quality leadership?

Absolutely nothing! For the records, Asiwaju is younger than many current world leaders.

Many former presidents around the world were equally much older than him at the time they mounted the leadership saddles of their respective countries.

Examples abound. United States President, Joe Biden, for example, was 78 years and 61 days old when he was sworn in on January 20, 2021

He is America’s oldest president ever to have been elected.

Read Also: Tinubu as fit as a fiddle, says Alake

In Malaysia, age did not diminish the ability of that country’s 95-year-old Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad to skillfully steer the ship of his country to infrastructural and economic growth.

President Michel Aoun of Lebanon is 85 and Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian National Authority, is nearly 85.

Note that President Aoun took office at 81 while Abbas succeeded the late Yasser Arafat at 70.

It is also worth noting that Congo-Brazzaville’s President is 77 and that  Beji Caid Essebsi served as the President of Tunisia from 2014 until his death in 2019 at the age of 92.

In the same vein, Shimon Peres was the ninth president of Israel from 2007 to 2014. Before his time as Israel’s President, he served two terms as a Prime Minister and three terms as Foreign Minister of Israel. At the time of his retirement, Peres was the world’s oldest head of state at 90 years old.

Let us also recall that Karolos Papoulias was the President of Greece for 10 years, from 2005 – 2015. When Papoulias retired, he was over 85 years old and is one of the oldest European presidents to ever serve.

Urbane, cerebral, cosmopolitan and detribalised, such primordial cleavage as entho-centrism,Igbophobia and religious bigotry are completely alien to Asiwaju’s character- trait, yet political jobbers are fruitlessly tarring him with an inelegant brush.

Asiwaju is a Muslim who married not just a Christian but an ordained Pastor of one of the world’s largest Christian denominations, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

Besides, Asiwaju who is not a stranger to Christian events have children who are Christians. How then can any sane person say that a liberal Muslim like him is a religious bigot simply because he picked a Muslim running mate for the strategic reason of winning an election?

And those who allege Igbo hate are perhaps not in this country when Asiwaju as Lagos state Governor appointed Igbo sons into his cabinet.

Divisive elements who shamelessly trumpet Igbo hate need to be reminded that Asiwaju as governor ran an inclusive government, a somewhat Government of National Unity which saw him appointing Nigerians irrespective of tribe or religion into his cabinet.

He is  talent hunter, one who hunts and mentors bright minds irrespective of tribe and religion.

This was why and how Ben Akabueze from Anambra state, under Governor Tinubu, become Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, one of the strategic ministries in the state.

Akabueze was Tinubu’s Commissioner for eight years,1999-2007 and would also be nominated by the same man for his current position in the Buhari administration, Director-General of the Budget Office.

Tinubu equally brought another Igbo son, Joe Igbokwe into government, appointing him in 2006 as the pioneer General Manager of Lagos State Infrastructure Maintenance & Regulatory Agency (LASIMRA), a position Joe combined with a strategic party position, the Publicity Secretary of the then the ruling party in Lagos, the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN.

Tinubu is phenomenal. His persona is an asset to Nigeria. A brilliant administrator and a knowledgeable political leader who understands the deep complexities of a difficult country like Nigeria.

He is what the country urgently needs now to fix that which has broken.

His eyes are set on the tasks ahead and no amount of naysayers’ toxic campaign can distract him.

• Mazi Kanu writes from Arochukwu, Abia State.

Had death been uncharacteristically tardy in coming for Queen Elizabeth of England, she would have been the subject of my last column. Instead, I devoted that column to the last of the fifteen Prime Ministers she inaugurated over the seventy year period of her record breaking rule. The other Elizabeth in this story surnamed Truss came to power only two days before the queen painlessly vacated the stage on which she had performed as a constitutional monarch for all of seventy of her ninety-six years of life. And yet, such is the constitutional arrangement in Britain that the younger Elizabeth in this picture, the Prime Minister, held more institutional power in her hands in two days than the woman who had been no more than a figure head for seventy years.

The last British monarch who had been a ruler in name and in deed was Charles I surnamed Stuart and even he was bound by the agreement with Stephen, a king who had reigned some three hundred years before him with the Nobles who had come together to force the king to acquiesce to their demands for curtailing the powers and prerogatives of the king of England. And so, even Charles I was operating under some restraints and his divine right as king was far from absolute. But then, the truncated rights which Charles clung to tenaciously were finally abrogated on that cold January day in 1649 when upon the instigation of Oliver Cromwell, the king was beheaded by Parliament. Cromwell was then declared Protector of what was described as the Commonwealth of England. This brought the divine power of English kings to an abrupt end. By the time the monarchy was restored in 1660 to what was the United Kingdom (England, Scotland and Ireland), the powers of the king who incidentally was of Scottish descent had been reduced quite considerably, so that by the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, the British monarchy which was now of German descent had become a mere figurehead with immense power in theory but none in practice. The young queen was the commander of the armed forces to whom all members swore allegiance but she could not issue any command to a platoon of what were her own troops. It is interesting that as monarchical power waned, the institution was surrounded by increasing pomp, pageantry and ceremony, the elaborate nature of which was mocked by the absence of real power. On paper, the government of Britain is beholden to the crown but it is the Commons that dictates policy to the Crown. Everything in Britain is done in the name of the king but the king cannot on his own authority ask that anything be done. For all these however, the value of the monarchy is of immeasurable value to the country as he is the guarantor of the state and everything goes through him. He is above politics and since he cannot interfere in political matters he is an impartial arbiter in all affairs of state, so that the state which is in constant political flux is grounded in the person of the monarch. This means that as much as the country changes, it remains the same and reduces the friction between all the bitterly opposed factions of the nation. It is a position of great delicacy and people all around the world are paying tribute to the recently deceased Elizabeth II because of the skill and charm she brought to her management of the delicate position which was assigned to her by destiny.

Read Also: A queen and the wounds of history

When Queen Elizabeth was born in 1926, the first daughter of a second son, her chances of becoming the Queen of England at any time in the future  were so close to zero as to make no difference. Her uncle, Edward, the Prince of Wales was first in line of succession and on the occasion of his giving birth to an heir, especially if it was male, meant that the line of succession was going to be passed on to his offspring. This being the case, for the first twelve years of her life, she could not entertain any hope of one day becoming queen. All that changed abruptly when her uncle who had, as expected, become the king on the death of his father King George V, fell in love with a divorced American lady who was at the time in the process of going through a second divorce. King Edward as he was then was the nominal head of the Anglican Church which at that time not only did not sanction divorce but did not allow the marriage of a divorced person in any of their churches as long as the divorced former spouse was still alive. It was simply inconceivable that the head of that Church could go ahead with marriage to a woman who had been married and divorced twice. Such frivolity was simply beyond the pale. Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister of the day demonstrated the power of the Commons over the monarchy by demanding that the king gave up his mistress or in the alternative, his exalted throne. The king insisted that he could not give up the woman be loved and was immediately expelled from his palace and his brother Albert installed in his place. Albert chose to be called George VI as king and his first daughter was propelled from obscurity within the royal family to the first in line to the throne. Unlike her, her father was not blessed with longevity and he died at the relatively young age of fifty-six, vacating the throne for his young daughter who became queen at twenty-five after a short period of apprenticeship in a world which was going through far reaching changes. She could not have been totally prepared for the grave responsibility which was rudely thrust upon her at the age of twenty-five.

When George VI came to the throne, the British Empire, that vast real estate on which the sun never set figuratively as well as in reality, was solidly intact. One of his several impressive tittles was Emperor of India. By the time his daughter succeeded him, India described as the jewel in the English crown, had left the empire in a paroxysm of violence in which over a million people died and many millions were displaced as the country was ripped into two giving birth to India and Pakistan; two countries which are still as bitterly opposed to each other as they were in 1947 when they became violently detached from the British empire. The loss of India paved the way for the dissolution of the far flung empire and the young queen spent the first fifteen years of her rule watching the Union Jack being replaced on flag poles by brand new national flags all over the world including Nigeria of course. The empire itself was replaced by some contraption called the Commonwealth with the queen becoming the nominal head of about fifty countries, all of them bound by the bitter memory of having been part of the vast and brutally acquired empire which was ruled from London in the name of the British royal family. Quite interestingly, the Commonwealth is expanding with the addition of countries like Rwanda, Mozambique, and Namibia, countries which were never colonised by Britain. For all that however, it has to be said that the future of the Commonwealth is not set in stone as many countries within it have strongly expressed their disquiet about having anything to do with Britain, given the vastly unequal and degrading nature of what pulled them into the orbit of Britain in the first place. I am yet to be convinced that there is much to be gained by continued association with Britain now a fading world power, her own backwardness having been revealed by the falling standards of her own political leaders. If I  were British, I would support the continued existence of the royal family for the simple reason that it is a rallying force for the country. It has brought a great deal of stability to a nation which is finding it difficult to come to terms with the demands of modernity and must live in a past which is being dominated by the delusion associated with the glory days of empire and manufactured racial superiority. The queen has been very successful in maintaining this comforting façade to which the British are clinging desperately. And she has done it by knowing her place within the structure which the British have erected around their kingdom.

I have always resented the fact that Nigeria has a colonial past and even from this singular point of view, I have always treated the pomp associated with the British royal family with massive indifference,. They exist in a world into which I do not allow myself to traverse and have some level of contempt for people who allow themselves to go so far as celebrate a people who can only in my view be described as anachronistic. But I do not or more correctly, cannot deny them what I can only describe as a human weakness. I have never sat down to celebrate with them on occasions of their weddings, elaborate funerals or anything else and although I am a sucker for historic events, I will not devote any time to all the hullabaloo which will surround the royal family in the next few days because it is not history but cheap entertainment.

For all that however, I must confess that I was surprised by a pang of sadness when I was informed of the passing of the queen. Surprised because after all, I have never been a fan of her family and in any case it was an event that given her very advanced age has been expected for quite a long time and in traditional African practice would have been an occasion for massive celebration of a life from which all that could be useful to society had been wrung out leaving a truly empty shell. Under no circumstances should there have been long, mournful faces or the breaking out of awful dark clothes as a sign of mourning. As the Yoruba people would say, the burial of one so old is a prime excuse for raucous celebration of a life that has been well spent and in the case of the queen this was a life well spent if only because throughout her long life she had an enduring relevance within her office. In the real sense therefore, I was not saddened by her passing but by the fact that for the first time in all my seventy plus years on earth, she was no longer a point of reference. A vacuum had been created and I wondered what was going to wander in to fill it.

Elizabeth II lived a privileged existence and was waited on hand and foot all her life. She had every physical thing she could have possibly wanted and was even blessed with good health right to the end. But, was her life perfect? She being human, it could not have been as most certainly was not. For most of her privileged life, she was battling against forces of loss and despair, with her family breaking down, sometimes spectacularly and publicly all around her, and with her kingdom fading before her very eyes. It was clear that her exalted position did not protect her from the vicissitudes of ordinary human existence. Like all of us she felt pain, physical, psychological and otherwise and there were times when even for her, life brought the taste of dust and ashes to her mouth. There were times when she must have been kept awake by fears for the future, like any mother or grandmother, for what the dark and menacing future held for her loved ones. For all that, she has my respect for her ability to stand up to her numerous and truly awesome responsibilities, right down to the very end and for this reason, I have no regret for that pang of sadness I had to endure upon hearing that she had passed away. That moment marked for me, the end of an era.