Category: Opinion

I have lost count of the number of candidates who have obtained the expression of interest form and nomination  in all the political parties. This will go down in history as electoral season with the highest number of presidential candidates from the popular candidates to the new and unknown, including women aspirants.

As more candidates come out, the whole exercise seem to have been turned to a circus show with everybody coming out to show his or her magical skills. Despite the huge amount placed on the procurement of the form especially by the ruling APC.

What do these candidates have to offer? As a keen observer of the system, one can say majority have practically nothing to offer. Some are in for the sake of it, some to maintain political relevance and some as a bargaining tool for future political appointments.

One would wonder why so many candidates are jostling to be president at this crucial time in the history of the country when practically everything needs fixing in the life of the country. From economy to security and to societal cohesion.

Most of our parties lack clear cut ideologies so also are most of the candidates. You can hardly pin them down to an idea. Most are in the race for class  preservation while others are in to claim ethnic right to the post. A lot of the candidates have not talked about issues, they are only concern with mundane matters devoid of substance. One has his video going viral saying because his name is now popular in Nigeria to the extent that you don’t need a dictionary to check for the name, then he should be given the ticket of his party. While others were laughing, you could see the embarrassment on the faces of the party elders.

In developed democracies, parties are driven by ideologies and when it is time for election, discourses often erupt based on the ideology of the parties in contention and how much the candidates exemplifies such ideology, regrettably, Nigeria politics has degenerated over the years that we no longer discuss any ideology when it comes to politics. Some will tell you that it is the candidate that matter. So, how do we assess the candidate when there is no clear cut ideology.

Some days back, former education Minister, Obiageli Ezekwesile took a swipe at the CBN governor when the news broke that he has joined the race or about to join. She urged him not to embarrass the country. He should rather concentrate on fixing our monetary policy or resign to face his new found vocation in politics. The Same goes for many of the serving ministers who have all refused to resign. One wonders what is happening in those ministries where the ministers are busy jetting around the country to meet delegates to canvass for votes. In the education ministry where we are grappling with the crisis of Academic staff union of universities ( ASU) the junior minister is running for presidency. The minister of labour, saddled with the responsibilities of ensuring industrial harmony, has thrown his hat in the ring not minding the crisis at hand. He is the one leading the government negotiating team with ASU. How do we expect ASU to shift ground when they see how our politicians are throwing millions around in the name of getting nomination forms.

So, who will put Nigeria on a path of growth? It is in the cacophony of what one would like to refer to as the season of anomie that one man actually stand out. Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This man has a unique feature among all contestants. Though he is not insulated against the  decadence on our body politics in terms of ideology but he is not parading experience as most candidates are saying, for experience is actually different from achievements, he is parading achievements, solid legacies, as evident in his work at building a modern Lagos.

Asiwaju’s ideology could be likened to  the heroes of South East Asian politics such as Lee Kwan Yee and Deng  Xiaoping who see recent nation states evolve as they grow on the human development index (HDI) level and attempt to meet the sustainable development targets. This he exemplifies when he declared during his 2019 colloqum, “work for the people that the people may work for themselves’  He campaigned against the increment in VAT when the Buhari administration proposed it as he noted that this will further erode the purchasing power of the ordinary man, rather he advocated for widening the tax net. Tax the rich and generate more money for the government.

If we examine his ideas of the economy, then you will realize that you need a President like him who can debate the state of the economy with his Minister of finance and not someone who will be lost when it come to micro and macro  economic policies. This regime has borrowed a lot no thanks to the two recessions that we faced as a country, without a President who can diversify the economy and make more money , the country may be heading to the rocks.

With all the problems facing us as country why do we have so many Presidential aspirants. We still have our  constitution to grapple with. Our 1999 constitution has been pronounced defective and up till now the national assembly has not been able to conclude on its assignment of constitutional amendments. Such issues as devolution of powers, state police , resource control are all burning national issues. This prompted elder stàteman and SAN, Chief Afe Babalola , to propose a government of national unity to avail us the time to untangle this knotty issue of the constitution. This will amount to a call to anarchy in a country already bleeding. What will be the modality of choosing the government. What we need is  a man with strong political courage and goodwill across board to accomplish all these. That man is Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He is a bridge builder with large political goodwill to solve our myriad of problems. He has prepared for this. We should not once again entrust our future to those who have not invested in finding solutions to our problems. He also has the record of assembling fire  brands to actualise his vision. Voi popupale voi dei.

• © Raji is Director, Tinubu Youth Support Organisation (TYSO), Abuja Chapter. 08023360536.

Across the continent, a staple of social conversations is the continent’s continued struggle with poverty, insecurity, and underdevelopment. Most of these conversations inevitably and rightfully centre on the continent’s history of bad governance, corruption, and the dearth of leadership. Yet, in my mind, what is less reflected on is the artificiality of African post-colonial states and the absence of the crucial sense of nationalism and group sacrifice necessary for social and economic development.

A couple of evenings ago, I came across the documentary, Bigger Than Africa on Netflix. Although the focus of the documentary was the influence of the Yoruba culture across the Atlantic in countries such as Cuba, Brazil, and Trinidad and Tobago, it nonetheless re-instigated questions about Africa’s colonial borders in my mind. It is well known that the 1884-5 Berlin conference bequeathed the continent with artificially drawn borders. Lord Salisbury, a former British Prime Minister, famously reported after the conference: “we have been engaged in drawing lines upon maps where no white man’s feet have ever trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were.”

At the conference in 1884-5, colonial powers showed a complete disregard for the interest of African people and the consequences of that display of imperial power remains visible throughout the continent. Africa’s 54 states straddle more than 165 porous and poorly drawn borders. Many ethnic nationalities are dislodged and divided among several countries. For instance, there are significant population of the Chewa people in Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and the Malinkes can be found in atleast six sub-Saharan African states. The Somalis, who have an incredibly strong sense of national identity, are splintered between Ethiopia, and Kenya.

According to the Institute of Security Studies, 40-45% of the continent’s population belong to groups partitioned by a national border— provoking irredentism. It is not surprising, therefore, that Africa has been beset by dozens of intra and interstate conflicts.  In 1977, Somalia unsuccessfully went to war with Ethiopia to secure Ogaden, an area with a sizable number of ethnic Somalis (there are more Somalis in Ethiopia than in Somalia). Yet, a critic might retort against this narrative of European maleficence towards Africa: shouldn’t Africans have exercised their agency by redrawing the borders post colonisation?

Indeed, I share this sentiment. In 1964, as the wave of decolonisation gripped the continent, the nascent OAU emerged from its first ordinary session in Cairo with a mandate to African states that inherited borders must be respected. Ostensibly, the resolution was designed to prevent wars of self-determination. But this was an historical mistake. African leaders were focused on the wrong issues and failed to ask pertinent questions: What is sacred about the continent’s colonially drawn borders? Why should the inherited colonial artifice which was designed specifically for the administrative convenience of the British, French, German, Portuguese—the colonisers, be sustained and defended with the blood of Africans? What justice lays in forcing a people to be part of an entity they have no desire to be part of, or to be loyal to? These were relevant questions then, and remain relevant now.

Given that the emergence of states across the continent was not the product of any wilful consenting deliberation by any of its peoples, the first task of independent states in Africa ought to have been to provide their people an opportunity to decide their own future in a dignified democratic way—the very thing they were denied as subjugated people of the colonial empire. The failure to negotiate the basis of our co-existence as fully functioning self-actualising beings has failed to plaster the deep and entrenched feelings of animosity between ethnic nationalities across the continent. It has engendered wars and stifled development. It has left the continent with trails of bloods.

The right of self-determination is recognised in customary and treaty-based international law. African leaders must abandon this historical tendency to defend boundaries at the cost of human lives. Fidelity to colonial boundaries have not brought peace or development to the continent. Indeed, they have done the opposite. I recognise that allowing disparate ethnic nationalities to determine their future is not the silver bullet that suddenly lifts the continent out of the throes of poverty and instability. However, I am also convinced that muffling democratic and nationalist agitations will not bring peace or development. More importantly, beyond the questions of inter-state politics, issues of self-determination are also questions of justice, of agency, of asserting our humanity as Africans. We must encourage true democratic participation, including popular referendums that provide separatist groups the opportunity to determine their future. To paraphrase J.F Kennedy, if we continue to make peaceful change impossible, then we make violent resistance inevitable.

• Dr Adediran is an Assistant professor in International Relations at Liverpool Hope University. He can be contacted on: bolaadediran2020@yahoo.com

We’ve likely reached the high-water mark of the grand alliance to defeat Russia in Ukraine. In the coming months, relations between the Ukrainian leadership and its external supporters will grow strained, and the culprit will be economic pain exacerbated by the war.

When our children and grandchildren study this conflict, they will marvel at the speed and audacity with which the Western powers—Europe and the United States, primarily—mobilized to arm the Ukrainian people in the face of Russia’s onslaught. In stark contrast to the Winter War of 1939–40, when Russia invaded Finland and various Western powers hemmed and hawed before providing only token assistance to the plucky Finns, Europeans have fallen over themselves to provide lethal aid to the Ukrainians.

And it really is lethal aid, which amazes me: I had the misfortune of helping deconflict allied and Russian operations over Syria from 2015 through 2017, when we went to extraordinary lengths to avoid killing any Russians, for fear of starting World War III.

Today, meanwhile, we are sending some of our most advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons systems to the Ukrainians with the express purpose of killing as many Russians as possible. Not only the United States but the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden—Sweden!—were quick to provide anti-tank weapons. Sweden and Finland, meanwhile, seem likely to join NATO at the first available opportunity (and once Turkey’s demands on arms sales and the Kurds are met).

The remarkable Western response confirms the extent of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s miscalculation, but it also stands in stark contrast to the way the West handled previous Russian military offensives in Georgia, in 2008, and Ukraine, in 2014. In each of those conflicts, the European states dragged their feet before imposing any costs on Russia. That reluctance to take any action almost certainly informed Russian calculations prior to this latest offensive.

The war has now dragged on for months, though, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. As the British strategist Lawrence Freedman observed, you could detect the outlines of what Russia might settle for in Putin’s May 9 speech to commemorate the Allied victory in World War II: protection of Crimea; nothing that could be characterized as Ukrainian aggression in the Donbas region; and a guarantee that Ukraine will not host nuclear weapons on its soil.

But Ukraine is unlikely, in the extreme, to settle for any territorial concessions. The Ukrainians must also sense, recent losses notwithstanding, that they can still win this war.

So Ukraine continues to press its Western allies for more support. What it wants now, however, is the kind of support that it would need to not only resist Russian advances but also win back territory and duel with Russia’s powerful artillery. The Biden administration is more reluctant to provide this aid, and it is hard to see other countries getting much further out ahead than the Americans.

One big reason for this reluctance is that the economic costs of the war are starting to seriously concern American and other Western policy makers. Eurozone inflation is up to 8.1 percent for the year, while in the United States, inflation is at a four-decade high. Leading economists worry about a recession next year, while business leaders with whom I speak fret that one may arrive sooner.

Putin’s war on Ukraine didn’t cause all of this pain in the global economy, but it certainly doesn’t help, and it has played an outsize role in the pain we are about to feel in the global supply of food.

All of that pain makes this a really crummy time to be a democratically elected incumbent almost anywhere in the world—and a very good time to be a populist. Recent elections in Colombia, France, Australia, and Germany have illustrated the headwinds facing both incumbents and mainstream parties.

The twin pressures of an ailing economy and surging populism will be on the minds of Western decision makers as they wrestle with a war that will continue to take a toll on the world’s leading economies.

For that reason, the conversations between Ukraine and its supporters abroad are likely to grow harder, not easier, as the year progresses. Ukraine will come under more pressure, and not just from Henry Kissinger, to concede some territory and allow Russia to save face.

Even a hasty termination of the conflict, however, seems unlikely to arrest the world’s slide into greater economic pain. Putin’s war, of course, has little to do with China’s zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy or the efficiency of West Coast ports. Yet the war—like all wars—captivates the imagination of onlookers in a way that port operations never seem to do. The grumbling from Western capitals about the duration of this conflict will continue, and the honeymoon that Ukraine’s leaders have enjoyed with the West will end soon.

Russia will note and be delighted by increasing fissures between Ukraine and its supporters. But Putin should not take too much comfort in what he sees. The sanctions his country faces are uniquely sticky: They’re not likely to quickly go away, regardless of whether the United States sends long-range missiles or just shorter-range rockets to Ukraine. And losses in the junior ranks of Russia’s officer corps alone tell the story of an army flirting with combat ineffectiveness. Russia is capable of absorbing immense pain on the battlefield, but despite minor territorial gains, its strategic situation has not improved.

Ukraine, for its part, may decide that although an uneasy truce by the early fall might not be an acceptable final settlement, it would nevertheless allow it to stiffen its defenses in the east, where the terrain favors Russian armor and artillery, and refit its own exhausted combat units. Such a truce would also give the brutal sanctions on Russia more time to weigh on the minds of Russian leaders. And an armistice, even if temporary, would no doubt be quietly welcomed in Western capitals.

• This article was first published in www.theatlantic.com

From considerable evidence, Nigeria is not a democracy but a full-fledged Kleptocracy. Democracy is defined as: “a government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”[1] While Nigeria is officially a democracy, with a Constitution, an Executive, a National Assembly — of Members of the House of Representatives and a Senate — as well as a Judiciary; Nigerian politicians have fashioned ingenious ways and means of subverting the system, such that Nigeria is, at best, a dysfunctional democracy, and at worst, a thriving kleptocracy.

A kleptocracy is “a government whose corrupt leaders use political power to appropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population.” The same source went on to draw important distinctions between kleptocracy, plutocracy and oligarchy. It observed that: “Kleptocracy is different from plutocracy (rule by the richest) and oligarchy (rule by a small elite). In a kleptocracy, corrupt politicians enrich themselves secretly outside the rule of law, through kickbacks, bribes, and special favors, or they simply direct state funds to themselves and their associates. Also, kleptocrats often export much of their profits to foreign nations in anticipation of losing power.”[2]

Here are a few of the ways and means Nigerian politicians, especially elected officials, enrich themselves at the expense of the State and the citizenry; as well as try to cover their tracks in Nigeria’s kleptocracy. In Nigeria, it is treated as though it is the Constitutional right of an incumbent state Governor to coronate his successor within his so-called political party. Of course, an incumbent, but outgoing Governor or President, can endorse an aspirant or candidate of his political party; but not coronate him or her as though the votes of his fellow party members — in so-called party primaries — amount to nothing. It goes against the grain of democracy, especially, at the grassroots.

Of course, it can and has been argued that such a political party aspirant or candidate, still has to face the general election, in which he or she has to compete against candidates from other political parties; with no certainty of victory at the polls. Except that in the context of Nigeria’s kleptocracy, in which the two biggest parties — APC and PDP — have amassed humongous war-chests to literally buy the general elections; they have a built-in monetary advantage that substantively subverts democracy.

At any rate, so-called “political parties” in Nigeria are not really political parties in the commonly understood meaning of such entities. They are not founded on discernable political ideologies on the basis of which, believers in the respective political ideologies, coalesce into political parties. They are nothing more or less than business associations, designed to access governmental power through money laundering schemes, networks of fraudsters and rigged elections; with the objective of using their acquired positions in government to feather their nests.

Political parties in Nigeria, especially the so-called two major ones — APC and PDP — turned their “Nomination and Expression of Interest Form” fees, into a money-making scheme, pricing electoral offices out of the reach of middle and upper-middle class Nigerians; thus, ensuring that those who participate in the electoral process are members of the major league kleptocratic class. In a brilliant article, titled: Nigeria Vs USA: Party nomination fees and the matter of democracy, by Tunji Light Ariyomo,[3] he did an exceptional job analyzing the comparative political party processes in the US and in Nigeria, in terms of GDP per capita implications for political participation in Nigeria’s ostensible democracy. In summation, Ariyomo notes about Nigeria’s political system in comparison to the American one, which we supposedly copied to bring us out from military dictatorship to democratic governance, that:

Conversely, that the Nigerian public officer appears to perpetually hold the Nigerian people in utter contempt, is a direct consequence of Nigeria’s restrictive political processes. By limiting people’s participation to only voting on election day, the Nigerian ruling class reduces the public to rubber stamp electorates required only to give a veneer of democratic legitimacy to what in truth [is] the antithesis of democracy. The frustration with fair and equitable access to the political process is principally responsible for the mushrooming of political parties by citizens in Nigeria. In a display that is contemptuous of egalitarian participation by the people, even political parties have now been known to impose heavy fees for members willing to aspire to leadership positions within Nigerian political parties! It cost N20 million to obtain the form for APC National Chairmanship position at its last convention. The lowest leadership rung at the convention, such as an Assistant Publicity Secretary, cost N5 million — that is about three times what it cost to run for governorship in the USA.

In the course of the sad parody called “politics” in Nigeria, aspirants and candidates buy whoever needs to be bought: Traditional Rulers, party delegates and stalwarts, religious leaders and “prophets,” as well as all manner of other so-called “stakeholders.” In a free and fair electoral system, which, under normal circumstances, ought to be the penultimate democratic “clearinghouse,” is riddled with all sorts of underhanded practices: inflated numbers of voters, forged PVCs, stolen or “missing” ballot boxes, outright violence, etc. Even INEC officials who are supposed to be inviolable custodians of the electoral system, are often implicated in shady games.

So, now, Nigeria’s kleptocratic shenanigans are in full swing, with the 2023 elections round the corner. All manner of characters with dubious pedigrees, emerge on the scene as political contenders; after years of quietly enriching themselves by syphoning money from federal and/or state governments through inflated contracts, “paper contracts” that were funded but never executed; kickbacks and/or facilitating the thievery of those already in high positions in government. They take traditional titles, make one or two public gestures in their villages or local government areas, ingratiate their traditional ruler, whose relative destitution guarantees his compliance and complicity; then, they become “big men” ready to contest for one public office or another.

Consider the following scenario. A state Governor in Nigeria earns an average annual salary of N11,540,896, with an annual basic salary of N2,223,705 and an annual leave allowance of N222,370,50;[4] which brings his total annual take home pay to approximately: N14,000,000.00. How can such a public servant afford to have numerous cars, several houses — in Nigeria and abroad — and many plots of land all over Nigeria? Surely, it cannot be from his salary. If it is not from his salary, then, from where does he find such monies without being called to answer by the law? The answer is simple: since Nigeria operates a kleptocracy, from top to bottom, there is no one to check anyone in government. Even the agencies presumably set up to investigate such malfeasance, are so caught up in Nigeria’s kleptocracy, that they are at the behest of those at the commanding heights of national power; who are virtually above the law, unless something goes terribly wrong.

Enter another ingenious kleptocratic scheme: the so-called Security Vote for the 36 state Governors in Nigeria. Theoretically, the Security Vote is for the sole purpose of funding security services within each state. The fund literally runs into billions of naira and varies depending on the security challenges in the respective states. The so-called Security Vote for a state Governor, is, in effect a “slush fund” that can be dipped into at the whim and caprice of the state Governor. The President of Nigeria is also afforded the dubious privilege of Security Vote. There is no oversight and no accounting mechanism for the expenditure of the funds. It is simply embedded in Nigeria’s kleptocratic system of governance.[5]

But is the so-called Security Vote constitutional, and therefore, legal; or is it legal, though not explicitly spelled out in the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria? Two interesting points of view are in mutual contention with one another over that matter. The first, articulated by Chief Robert Clarke (SAN), states that: “. . . there is no law, however small, that sanctions the payment of security votes to the state governors as well as the president . . .”[6] If that is the case, how then, did it come about and become institutionalized? Answering that question, Robert Clarke avers that:

When the military were in power, they needed security votes because they came by way of coups. At any time, they can be removed by another coup. So, they needed, at any given time, to know what is happening around them. So, they sought from the military authorities the right to have a special allocation to enable them use this as a source of security for information against coup plotters. When the 1999 constitution came into operation, it did not make any provision for security vote. I am bound by the constitution, if you can find it anywhere there. There may be a provision for the upkeep of the Presidency or the Governor’s house. But you will never find that a special amount of money has been allocated for security.

The opposed second point of view over the legality of Security Vote in Nigeria’s kleptocracy, was proffered by Governor Kayode Fayemi, Governor of Ekiti State. In a not entirely surprising self-serving vein, especially as then Chairman of the Nigeria Governor’s Forum, Fayemi argued that the appropriation of security votes is not illegal. His rather convoluted argument is that: “. . . in the Nigerian Constitution, the executive is entrusted with the responsibility of preparing a budget which is then sent to the legislature for ratification. The fact that huge amount of money [is] routinely being budgeted and expended in the name of security vote does not make it an illegal practice.”[7] He argued further that: “The main objective of the Fund is to support the various law enforcement agencies, mainly through the donation of arms and operational gadgets.”[8] The report stated, however, that the Governor “. . . noted that security votes attracted more attention because of the seeming none accountable nature of the expenditure under the budgetary provision. Fayemi however called on the custodians of security votes to manage it judiciously with good sense of responsibility.”[9]

Having implicated the security agencies as either the objective and/or beneficiaries of the security votes, the then Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai, made his position clear over the matter. He is reported to have said that: “. . . security vote was subject to audit and “if it is not done, it is wrong.” He added that the [security] votes were not votes for defence and were also not meant for the armed forces. “Strictly speaking, if you look at security votes in the true context, it is not meant to tackle insecurity. We have funding for Ministry of Defence and the armed forces. If you have budget lines for these services and organizations, then why security votes?” . . . “The chief of army staff said that if security vote was made constitutional and proper guidelines were set out on how they were utilized, this issue will be laid to rest.”[10]

Clearly, the so-called “Security Vote” is a glaring drainpipe of Nigeria’s resources that should be plugged, but, it is not in the interest of either incumbent or aspiring kleptocrats to bring about such budgetary discipline. What kind of retrogressive system of governance should one expect, when you have a combustive mixture of unbridled kleptomania, administrative and public policy incompetence, as well as barbaric ethno-religious bigotry? A failed or failing state.

There is a reason most, if not all, cattle-herding cultures are not big meat eaters; at least, not big meat eaters of their cattle herds. They understand that as a dairy-based culture in which milk and its derivatives, are a staple; killing the cows from which milk and its derivatives are gotten, is akin to killing the goose that lays the golden egg. So, they prize their cattle-herds highly for what they produce, on a daily basis; and do not slaughter them and eat up their meat once and for all. Similarly, people who are given the sacred responsibility of serving their nations as leaders, are equally called upon to exercise conservatory diligence and foresight. Only such leaders can make a nation great and strong. All others are charlatans!

It was supposed to be a ‘special military operation’ by the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine that should’ve achieved what it set out to do, regime change in Kyiv, in a week or so at most. And yet, here we are approaching 100 days of a brutal war in Eastern Europe that shows no signs of letting up and even fewer of a decisive victory by one side or the other. Is this the new face of conflict in the 21st Century? No victor and no vanquished? Or was it just ill-considered assumptions and arrogant planning by the Russian leadership (mainly a coterie of one) and even worse execution by the Russian Armed Forces, who were poorly informed and led. The answers are not straightforward or easy to reach. War, as the saying goes, has a grammar and vocabulary of its own and very few, if any, have the genius to master its complexity and achieve victory as originally intended. Nations that have declared military victory when major combat ended have found themselves on the losing side strategically. The 21st Century is replete with such examples as the wars in Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan have shown.

War is a ‘wicked’ problem. No other endeavour demands so much human capital together with a nation’s physical, economic and moral resources as the planning and conduct of war. It is, in the final analysis, a social phenomenon in which one side attempts to impose its will on the other by sheer physical force and pain of death. As Clausewitz stated, in his very definition of war, it is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”. Coupled with the fact that nation states and their militaries, even powerful ones, do not go to war very often, attaining predictable outcomes through the deployment of the military as an instrument of a decision in major disputes is never really in the hands of one side or the other.

A quick glance at the military balance of power of key nations would reveal that while force equations in terms of numbers and types of aircraft, missiles, ships and ground troops, (as also nuclear warheads of a select few) are easy to list and compare, what are never easily identifiable or evident are issues related to training, leadership at the strategic and operational levels, critical high tech manufacturing capabilities, civil-military interface in a crisis, and a host of inter-related national capacities (from critical infra to the human, natural, industrial and agricultural base, to name just a few). When a nation sets out on a course of war, how quickly and efficiently it can tap into all of these is a major determining factor in whether given war aims are likely to be attained. National will and the determination to resist is also an intangible yet vital ingredient in the mix when countries fight. If it is not factored in by all protagonists, the strategic outcome of the war may surprise leaders who took the risk to initiate a conflict.

All of this brings us back to the question “is decisive victory achievable anymore”. To qualify, when powerful states decide to wage war against a perceived weaker, though not a pushover, country, have they ensured the correct identification of a desired strategic end state? Is it achievable through the planned application of all strategic and military resources? What are the external manoeuvres through various other instruments of national power that are needed for shaping the external environment? Have major strategic risks of such an act been identified and a mitigation strategy/strategies drawn up? Is the general population aware and involved in the overall scheme of things? Are measures to guard the citizens from disinformation and propaganda active across all domains of information? The list of questions and activities is endless and ever-increasing. The whole point is that the act of waging war in the 21st Century is a complex and uncertain process which is no longer in the control of any one set of leaders or individuals.

Therefore, any decision to go to war today ought to be counterbalanced by the utter complexity of the nature and process of waging war itself. Rational leaders ought to think twice before taking such a step because of the uncertainty of outcomes and the horrendous costs of war. Seeking decisive victory of the kind witnessed at the end of the Second World War, or even Gulf War I, is no longer an achievable aim. This would be a rational conclusion through the conduct of simulations and war games. In an interconnected and interdependent world, the repercussions of trying to seek all-out victory in war over another state are far too many, and the risks immense for humanity as a whole. Even so, the war in Ukraine has established that despite all the challenges and complexities of using the military as the preferred instrument of coercion, countries with revisionist tendencies will still use it to try and attain political goals. The Chinese Taiwan obsession is one such case in point.

The ongoing Ukraine crisis has a lesson for us all. In sum, it teaches us the importance of having a capable and strong military that is self-reliant for its strategic needs. It also highlights the need to not underestimate an opponent, however weak and infirm they may seem from the outside. The era of setting out ambitious political and strategic aims that challenge the existing international order, tenuous and flawed as it may be, is over. The military will remain an instrument of statecraft for exerting national will, but it needs to be much more of a deterrent and punitive force than one for blunt use with an open-ended mandate for application. Setbacks and unexpected occurrences are in the very nature of waging conventional war. An ability to foresee these, to the extent possible, and maintain an overall direction and tempo through adversity should be the major focus of leadership training and key force integration exercises. Finally, nations and militaries need to be circumspect of their own prowess, yet capable and determined enough to protect national interests and achieve limited objectives at the strategic level. Thus, military victory needs to be redefined for the present times. It should be stated in terms that allow it to remain within a nation’s grasp and not become a chimaera.

One of the fascinating things about old age is that early childhood memories, long buried under the weight of the dross of time suddenly pop up with glaring clarity and surprising freshness. These memories blow away the cobwebs of time and stimulate reactions of pleasure, regret or pain as the case may be long after the events which generated them became ancient history. The interesting thing about these flashbacks is that they come and go as they please and in most cases are completely beyond any form of control but they come at the behest of identifiable triggers as was the case with me when the end of the football season in the European leagues set me to thinking about my involvement with the beautiful game.

I watched my first live game of football all the way back in 1957 when my mother took me to the Osogbo Association ground to watch a match between Osogbo and a team from Ikerre. Playing on the away team was Fiofori, a much celebrated footballer in those parts and at that time as close to legendary status as to make no difference. For days afterwards, the dancing figure of Fiofori tormenting the Osogbo team with his brilliance fleeted across the screen of my mind, implanting those scenes indelibly so that I can still bring them up so many years later. That was the most highlight of my encounter with football in those early days because ironically, my mother who took me to watch that match or more precisely to watch the genius of Fiofori at work was also resolutely opposed to my developing an interest in the game. As far as she was concerned, football was one of those slippery paths to failure in the far more important game of life and was to be avoided at all cost. This is why I only discovered that I had considerable football skills when I got to the secondary school and away from her hawkish supervision of my everyday activities. From then on, I enjoyed playing football to an immoderate extent until after I had the privilege of celebrating my sixtieth birthday. I daresay that my football career would have been radically different from what it would have been had I been born at least a little later than I was given that the kind of football used in my generation was cruelly different from wat those who came after my time played with. You see, in those days footballs were made of leather, hard leather to be precise and those things weighed close to a ton when dry but could weigh double that when it was wet, very much different from the modern plastic footballs now available. Being of a decidedly diminutive stature, I was very reluctant to give the ball anything close to a hefty kick and of course diverting the trajectory of the ball with my head was entirely out of the question. In other words, my activity with the balls available to me was restricted strictly to dribbling which made my contribution to my team frustratingly limited but rather attractive to the uncommitted spectators who were frequently entertained by my lack of ability to cause any real damage to my opponents.

The game of football is restricted to at most twenty-two people at a time but the number of spectators is unlimited and so, football depends more for its popularity on spectators rather than the players and without crowd support football would be a rather turgid affair not worth talking about. Most spectators have no clue about what is happening out on the field of play and would go home happy if their team wins by any means possible. For all that, the passion shown by spectators is way higher than that demonstrated by players on the field. This is why fights break out more often among spectators watching a match than among the players who are actually in opposition to each other on the field. Players are involved in their game for as long as it lasts but spectators go home with all kinds of memories chasing each other through their excited brains and in the final analysis retain those memories for inordinately long periods of time. In time, the supporters of any particular team begin to see the world in identical lurid colours which decide their individual attitudes to life itself and may even begin to speak to each other in a language which only they could find intelligible.

My football playing career such as it was, was quite enjoyable but not memorable and if all my relationship to the game was limited to playing it, there would have been precious little to talk about especially since the end of my playing days. Fortunately there is a great deal to say about my experiences as a supporter of a succession of teams over a period which stretches in excess of sixty years.

It is certainly interesting that in my early years as a football supporter, I did not really get to watch the teams that I supported with as much passion as I could muster in my young mind. The fact that I did not actually watch my teams in action only added fuel to my imagination and upgraded my enjoyment and appreciation of my football idols. I grew up in an age before televised matches and lived so far away from where football was being played that the opportunity to watch the game was limited to the occasional match like my first match at the Association grounds in Osogbo. My media of contact with the game were through print and radio. Indeed, my interest in football gave rise to my other passion, reading as I learnt how to read through the medium of the Daily Times at a time when my contemporaries were still struggling to come to terms with the alphabets. This is why up till now, I start to read any newspaper from the back pages which contain news and comments about football and other sports. This is how as a child I followed the exploits of Thunder Balogun and other famous players with avid interest even though I never once set eyes on the great men as he strutted their stuff on the football pitch. The other medium was the radio and how I exploited that medium! The main arena for football in Nigeria of my childhood days was the King George the fifth (KGV) Stadium at Onikan and I knew that stadium like the proverbial back of my hand long before I actually set my foot in its hallowed precincts to cheer my school team like a demon at the annual Zard cup competition for secondary schools in Lagos. I remember those blood tingling matches with greater clarity than a lot of what I was taught in the classroom a privilege for which my father parted with a great deal of money.

I started listening to football commentaries with a fair amount of regularity in 1960 which is probably why the first football that I lost my head over was the mighty ECN. I never got to watch a single one of their matches at the KGV but I was able to argue fiercely with my friends at school about what happened on any Saturday to my darling team. In those days, all matches kicked off promptly at 4.45pm and long before the commencement of the match, I was sat beside the radio, breathless with excitement as I waited for the honeyed tones of the doyen of Nigerian football commentators, the inimitable Isola Folorunso to jolt me to life.

Closing my eyes for effect and the better to capture every word, I abandoned myself to the joy of being present at the side of the great man as he described what was going on in front of him to my audience of one. In 1960, the most exciting team in the country was ECN and I cannot be convinced otherwise. My uncle who worked for the Railways and whose loyalty one would expect would lie with the great Railways team of those days was the one who infected me with love for ECN. Being an adult he had the privilege of watching ECN live anytime they played and knowing my interest for ECN, he never failed to make a detour to our house on his way home from KGV so that we could go through the match which he had just seen, the description of which I had just heard on the radio. That was a time when all the football that mattered was local and people were only aware of what happened on British football pitches because of their interest in pools betting. But at that time, there were many Britons in Nigeria and most of them kept up with what was going on back home through weekly compilations of newspapers which they bought from the departmental stores nearest to them.

One of my classmates who was madly interested in the pictures in those newspapers brought expired copies to school and I soon found out that they could inform me about British football so that I quickly became familiar with the exploits of Tottenham Hotspurs. That team  won the League and Cup double, a feat so rare that up till then only three teams had pulled it off before they did in the 1960/61 season. I loved reading about them as they set the English football scene alight but it did not cross my mind that I could support them given that I had given myself up, heart and soul to ECN. As far as I was concerned it was the only team worthy of my support and I continued to support them until, as all things Nigerian, they simply faded away, to be heard of no more.

I have decided to write a sequel to my earlier write up last week. This is in line with the fact that as the days go by, the cries of agitation to secede continue unhindered with a number of separatist groups springing up to pursue such agitation.

Such secessionist demands have transcended from peaceful agitations to one where violence has become its trump card. Today, the once peaceful region of the SouthEast Nigeria is gradually morphing into the situation NorthEast Nigeria found itself in with the start of Boko Haram. The emergence of the unknown gunmen, the killings of innocent citizens as well as the wanton destruction of property coupled with the existence of a siege upon the people of the region by virtue of the perennial sit at home orders which have enjoyed almost a total compliance more out of fear than solidarity to the Biafran Struggle are classical examples of our drift into an Afghanistan of sorts which run contrary to the original identity of Biafra and what she stood for.

Trust me, I have and will not denounce the Biafran Struggle, much as I believe that the Igbo nation’s best bet lies in a free , fair and united Nigeria, I must also allow those who believe that an independent Biafran Nation would be the eldorado but then is this pattern of violence and fear the real Biafran Identity?

When Odumegwu Ojukwu declared Biafra, he did such because there was no other option, twice NdiIgbo had been massacred, despite the guarantees given for their safety. Even his hopes that the Nigerian side would honestly implement the Aburi Accord fell flat, Ojukwu had no other choice but to pull out of Nigeria.

Today, the people carrying out such acts are killing NdIgbo and though I still have my reservations that these acts are solely carried out by those championing the Biafran Struggle, as we may not rule out the possibility of fifth columnists, yet, the leaders of IPOB as well as those cheering from the outside are really not the helping matters! Yes, which independence movement brazenly kills its own all in the name of its struggle? This yet again can be followed by a myriad of questions. What if these acts are been perpetuated by criminal gangs with little or no ties to IPOB? Again, what if these members have or had ties to IPOB but have gone rogue? My dear, plenty questions, few answers!

Shutting down markets, closing schools and other aspects of their activities targeted at forcing the recognition of Biafra is not in tandem with the Biafran identity, since it is counterproductive. Where in all these lies the Biafra of the mind? The Biafra that defied all known military and economic salvos, are we now to employ same on our people makes one wonder what sort of struggle these people are embarking on.

The Biafran identity much emphasized on sacrifice, patriotism, immense resourcefulness and unity. It was the only way the outgunned and outnumbered Republic could have survived for three years on its own against two world powers. The Biafran Identity created and established myths, it was the first attempt by the black man in Enugu to redraw his borders earlier drawn for him by the colonial masters in Berlin. Must we now throw such legacies and myths to the dogs? This is definitely not the Biafra our fathers fought for, this is not the Biafra that witnessed resounding victories in Uzuakoli and Abagana areas of the battlefield as well as the diplomatic circles.

What sort of Biafra do we seek to recreate in this manner? In 1967, it was the Nigerian Army that fired the first shots at Garkem, beginning the hostilities, today it seems we are the ones carrying out such hostilities and it is against our own people.

Shall we at this point in time invoke the spirit of Ojukwu? Can we salvage the struggles to truly liberate the Igbo nation within the Nigerian nation? Can we salute  and remember the sacrifices of millions of our people without smothering the same people these people we seek to honour actually fought valiantly and died for? Going against the same identity that Biafra ideally stood for?

Pray what would the late M.I Okpara say to the senseless carnage presently going on? What would the souls of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere , Kenneth Kaunda, Papa Doc Duvalier Houphet Boigny and Omar Bongo, international statesmen in their own right, say of what we have now? Lastly, is this the kind of agitation that Bruce Mayrock immolated himself for or the Biafra, Count Von Rosen, the Devil Pilot fought for free?

Like I earlier stated, there may be more to such than meets the eye, but if not then definitely, this is not the Biafra our father’s fought for, this is not her identity.

James Madison was the fourth president of America. He is also known as the ‘Father of American Constitution’ and one of the founding fathers of America. He was the Secretary of State to Thomas Jefferson and was pivotal to the reforms in American democracy. So today, despite the imperfections, America is still the model of Democracy to the world. Contributions from people like Madison are still relevant today centuries after their deaths. That is the value of focused leadership that thinks about tomorrow today.

In 1778, Madison insisted that “Good government implies two things, the first is fidelity to the object of governance which is the happiness of the people and the second is knowledge of the means by which that object can be sustained”.  In these words lie the core of what democracy is about, the people and their happiness. Leadership is therefore a commitment to be focused on the happiness of the people.This does not imply that those who lead must be saints but they must be people who have the knowledge.

The Nigerian political space has experienced the emergence of various leaders from the community, regional, state to federal levels since independence. The coups and counter coups by the military were periods the people had no choice about leadership. Despite the mantra that the military has no business with governance, the military have been in charge for more than half of the post-independence years. They ruled by military fiat and it does seem that despite the twenty years of the return of civilian democracy, the military hangover is still with politicians.

The RoundTable Conversation sought to find out why the political space seems to throw up people who unlike what James Madison said are not loyal to the happiness of the people and cannot seek to sustain that. Is our leadership recruitment processes so flawed or are the people themselves not desirous of good governments at all levels? How do our leaders emerge? Do our political parties still surreptitiously use the military tactics of imposition of leaders at all levels? Are the people free to practice the best tenets of democracy in terms of having the freedom to choose who their leaders are or given that politicians are from the people, is there a fundamental character flaw in those that have been in the political space? Do the people have the knowledge that leadership at all levels make decisions and policies that affect them either negatively or positively?

The RoundTable Conversation sat with Professor Osita Ogbu, (OON) a Professor of Economics at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He was a former Minister of National Planning, former Chief Economic Advisor to former President Obasanjo. He worked for the International development Research Center of Canada in Ottawa and at the regional office in Nairobi as Senior Program Specialist for ten years. He is currently the Director of the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nigeria Nsukka.

We asked him his overall views about the leadership evolution processes in the political parties that make it unattractive for technocrats and professional who have achieved successes in their various fields to successfully navigate the political space. Is the problem of Nigeria that of lack of competent elites or a case of the elite being lethargic?

He said that for him he knows the value of good leadership and as such he is not one of the intellectuals that try to sit on the fence and criticize. He personally resigned from his job to go back to his state to contest for governorship. It is in acknowledgment of the weight of my understanding of the importance of politics in the life of any community or nation he said. He understands the full import of politics and knows that politics is superior to economics and superior to science because the buck stops at the table of the politician.

Leadership is about championing policies for development and having the willpower to engage the most competent to drive those policies. A leader must have a direction and must come with the clarity that can lead to the achievement of goals personally or he must have the knowledge and humility to engage those that can work towards achieving the set objectives for development. Before any leader is elected, he must have and display the clarity of vision to set goals and the means to achieve them. We must begin to elect individuals that have very clear vision of what leadership is about and the readiness to achieve them.

The leader must be clear about development indices that can make things work for the people. Our leadership evolution processes must begin to look at the qualities and pedigree that candidates for every post come to the table with. Politics must cease to be about financial muscle. We must begin to evaluate candidates based on a history of achievements and personal qualities like grace and empathy which are the core qualities that aid performance in leadership.

We seem to have lost our ability and intelligence to interrogate people who seek to serve. I personally believe that we must form political awareness groups to educate our people because while some act out of ignorance, some selfish citizens focus on the political expediencies. How do we get our people to take leadership seriously and begin to demand quality leadership?

Prof. Ogbu He maintains that the myopic views of some political elite often blur their vision when the choice is to be made at the political party levels. He feels this amounts to shooting themselves in the foot because the general good must always guide the choice of leadership in any democracy. He believes things would begin to change when Nigerians get the right political education and they begin to realize that nepotism or other mundane ideological convictions about who must access leadership at any level is like people shooting themselves in the foot.

At the end of the day, what any individual does with power affects the socio-economic equilibrium of the environment under review. Nigerians must consciously make the choice to imitate the best democratic practices where merit is key and governs the political space. If we continue with politics of influence-peddling, we would continue to have development challenges. We must begin to dig into the backgrounds of candidates. A Lateef Jakande for instance was called ‘Baba Kekere’ for a reason. He ‘graduated’ from the Obafemi Awolowo ‘political school’.

His achievements in housing and education stand as his legacies. Make no mistake about it, Chief Awolowo himself had difficulties getting the free education for the region at the time but he knew that was a price to pay for development. We must therefore begin now to interrogate the political philosophies and economic blueprints of anyone from our wards to the presidency in future elections. That to me is the only route to economic development that gives happiness to the people.

The RoundTable Conversation also spoke to Segun Adeniyi, a veteran journalist who conducted his research on the factors that shape incumbent presidential elections in Africa as a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University in 2010/2011 academic session. Asked how political parties can rejig the leadership selection processes to make sure those who understand leadership access power at all levels, he said he has always believed that if we get politics right at the local community levels, other higher positions would succeed.  If ever I will get into partisan politics, he said, my ambition will be provide leadership at the local government level because I believe I will make an impact in my community.

To Mr. Adeniyi, he believes very much in the Nigerian project and has worked all his life for the progress of the country. Being a columnist and a public affairs commentator is his ways of contributing to progress and believes we can all do our parts for progress because this is the only country we have. We cannot continue like this. The interest of the people must be what drives leadership ambitions.

However, Adeniyi believes that no nation seeks for saints in leadership. People of integrity must show interest first and make themselves available to the people so we can make the choice between A and B. The problem with politics in our environment is the illusion that some angels would just appear to fix things, no, humans do that. People with the knowledge and capacity must start showing up in politics. In the absence of the good people who sit and complain, we will continue to get the not so good deciding the fates of those who feel they are too good for politics.

When people make themselves available, we then begin to choose the ones with best ideas and commitment. People must come out first before the people choose or reject them. At the moment, many people in politics do not truly understand the idea of service. If they did, they would always be driven by the needs of the people. At the moment, some politicians are driven not by that but by some pursuit of politically expedient opportunities. Most of the politicians are not really driven by any ideological convictions and we can see that the two major political parties have members who oscillate from one to the other for their own personal political advantages.

We need to change the narrative. We must change that kind of trajectory where selfish power pursuit trumps  public good. Again we must work towards gender parity in our politics. Things are presently too though for women. We can do better for our people.  We must begin to stop people who lust for power for its own sake. Service must be the driving force and the people must identify those people who truly want to serve. The idea of imposing and anointing people at all levels must stop so that people who truly qualify and understand leadership can emerge.

Professor Ogbu and Mr. Adeniyi are both committed to keep educating the people about what productive leadership is about. The ball as they say is in the court of the people.

• This article was first published on May 22, 2021.

SIR: The Methodist Church in Nigeria was recently rocked by the abduction of its prelate, Samuel Kanu-Uche on Sunday May 29, along the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway in the Umunneochi Local Government Area of Abia State. He was only released after his church coughed out about N100 million requested as ransom by his abductors.

All over the country, the kidnap and killing of priests and pastors have become as commonplace as the fate that continues to befall their congregants. Two catholic priests of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto were recently abducted from their rectory along with two boys. This abduction came on the heels of the death in the hands of his abductors of a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Kaduna after more than a month in captivity.

The cyclone of terror which continues to batter the church in Nigeria undoubtedly caused the Methodist Church in Nigeria to rally around, raise the ransom and   secure the release of their prelate from criminals.

Now, the prelate‘s worrying observations while in captivity should really toll the alarm bells.

Firstly, he identified his assailants as an eight-man gang of Fulani boys who claimed to be against the government. Of the eight, only one understood English while the rest communicated in Fulfude. Secondly, the prelate observed that military men were around the place where the hoodlums operated, while their cows were also around the vicinity. Thirdly, the prelate was also told that a macabre museum where seven decapitated bodies were decomposing was not far away from him. For good measure, if he had any doubts, the stench that hung thick in the air dispelled them.  Fourthly, the prelate said the kidnappers told him that Lagos was on their radar. He also called on the government to act immediately while citing the Nigerian Army for its complicity in his ordeal.

The Nigerian Army has come out to strongly deny the prelate‘s claims that its men were involved in his abduction. However, it should worry the Nigerian Army as much as it should worry any responsible professional body that   the complicity of its men is even in issue at all. It should further worry the army that its men are frequently mentioned in incidents involving attacks on innocent Nigerians within the country. Are there saboteurs of Nigeria‘s security in the Nigerian army as many suspect?

As for Fulani herdsmen, whether a smear campaign against them is on or not, it should give them sleepless nights that they are almost always mentioned whenever innocent Nigerians are attacked.

Until Nigeria shores up its security architecture, innocent citizens will continue to serve as targets for criminals of all shades and stripes.

• Kene Obiezu, keneobiezu@gmail.com

An an epic blow to his professed political integrity, reports have emerged that the self-serving clique around President Muhammadu Buhari, desperate to extend their stranglehold on the country beyond his tenure, is urging him to micro-manage the transition process, leading to the emergence of a presidential candidate of the ruling APC. At the meeting held some few days ago with governors elected on the party’s platforms in attendance, President Buhari seemingly succumbed to the pressure, though short of expressly anointing any particular person.

He claimed that governors have constantly exercised the dubious prerogative of automatically putting themselves forth for re-election or fronting their minions for the post in the case of those who are serving out their last constitutional tenure in office. In seeking to maintain and extend an odious tradition of political succession, which has brought little or no benefit to Nigerians in their respective states, President Buhari requested or demanded – ‘reciprocity and support of the governors and other stakeholders’ in picking his successor; in keeping with the established internal policies of the party and as it approaches the convention in a few days.

For one, there is no aspirant on the APC ticket to the presidency who did not consult with the president before setting out to announce his aspiration and subsequently picked up the costly expression of interest and nomination form. As one who encouraged all to enter the political fray to test their popularity, why is he developing cold feet at the late hour and talking about being handed the prerogative to decide on his successor? Why did he not expressly advise the aspirants that they should not bother, since he would wish to exercise his prerogative to choose his successor or is this sudden realization of the prerogative to choose his successor as a result of failure of a plan?

An authoritative news channel, the Abuja based Daily Trust newspaper has reported that the whole ploy to have the president impose his successor is not actually his. The newspaper, quoting a source close to the shenanigans around the president reported that “Even though the president is keen on leaving behind a legacy of success stories at the end of his tenure in 2023 for the future generation to see, he was not particularly interested in circumventing democratic norms or having a direct influence on who succeeds him in order to cover any wrong doing.”

The report continued that “it is people around him and entrenched so-called establishment who would like to be direct beneficiaries of anointing someone that are working hard to see that the president raise the hands of someone”.

This desperate clique reportedly maneuvered the president to raise the hands of the former governor, Senator Abdullahi Adamu as party chairman, despite that he was not even in the animated race to the chairmanship of the party, less than five weeks to the convention. He was muscled in, and currently, he toils desperately and many believed or wish, he would toil in vain, to impose the narrow agenda of the self-interested cabal that put him in office.

Already, the rumble of his high-handedness is already filtering out of the party. Two zonal national vice chairmen of the party are already crying foul that the Nassarawa-born politician, hardly now remembered for sealing off, the Lafia State Stadium and preventing President Buhari from using the facility to campaign when he held sway as the governor of the state, is up to something fishy. It was alleged then, that many of the first class traditional rulers in the state who locked their palaces against hosting candidate Buhari actually did that on definite threat to have them kicked out of their exalted stools, should they dare to host candidate Buhari.

Today, the desperate, among whom very few or none at all could be found or even counted in President Buhari’s long and arduous march to power, but are now holed in, in the comfort of the villa and  dictating and plotting a post-Buhari presidency, they will keep hostage for their narrow aggrandizement, while the country rots away.

President Buhari’s very late hour demand to choose his own successor flies the face of his long political odyssey and those who joined him in the trenches throughout. If all those in power before him, including his new political courtiers that included former governors were to choose candidate for the presidency, none of them including chairman, Abdullahi Adamu would have touched him with a long spoon seven years ago. In 2015, despite his bulging popularity, he went through the grit of a credible and transparent primary election in which he emerged winner. All other aspirants not only supported him but even reportedly collapsed their political structures to his and helped him win the epic election victory.

How would President Buhari today want to act like former President Obasanjo, who desperately muscled through a candidate for his party, procured for him a politically naïve and clueless vice president? Events that followed need not be recounted but it culminated to the disgrace of the ruling party, with the mastermind of the political ruin of the party, tearing up his membership card in the public glare. If there is any lesson to be learnt in former President Obasanjo’s handpick of a successor, both for his party and the country, it is simply – don’t repeat it again!

But President Buhari’s inner caucus who appear desperate and confused would hardly learn. First, it was former “clueless” President Jonathan and like a hot potato, he was dropped and disowned. Now, the grapevine has it, the vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo is the new bride in town but the clique is so afraid to test their choice in a credible, free and transparent primary election. President Buhari or his kitchen cabinet has right to their choice but they must put him through the mill and grit of transparent and credible primary election as Buhari himself went through.

As admirers and even imitators of America’s democracy, they should be reminded that the current U.S president, Joe Biden, despite being a very humble and loyal vice president to his principal, Barrack Obama went through a grueling party primary nomination exercise, barely scrapping through the hugely popular Senator Bernie Sanders before clinching the ticket of the Democratic Party.

The same cabal around President Buhari who masterminded the sack of the vice president’s 35 aides in one single swoop in November 2019, with the amiable pastor and former law professor barely lifting a finger and ostensibly turning the other cheek, is rumored to be the backers of the new political bride in town.

President Buhari needs to know that his well-known conviction of an open, free and transparent election process whether at the level of party primaries or general election, for which he has been the most iconic beneficiary, is still the best way to go and his latter-day courtiers who shudder and panic at it, should be told in the popular street language “to go and hug transformer” only with the regrettable caveat, being that most electric transformers across the country are redundant, and without power!

• Onunaiju contributes from, the FCT, Abuja.