The Nation Newspaper

Category: Yomi Odunuga

  • Our Plateau’s canvas of blood

    No one can say, with precise articulation, where this blind rage to steal, kill and main is coming from. When you try to interrogate the sources of this fiery, blood-sucking bitterness that has enveloped our land, the response you get might just be a function of the myopic biases of those offering the answers. You can’t be sure of anyone in a land where mutual distrust continues to fire the embers of disunity amid this pretence of brotherliness. The present day reality in Nigeria is that no day passes without the tragic news of senseless killings in one locality or the other. Before, we thought quite a number of untimely deaths were the physical manifestations of the ever-famished death traps called roads in our part of the world or the usual deaths from common ailments that our hospitals seem incapable of handling no thanks to a corrosive corruption system that has weakened our healthcare policy. Today, the narrative has changed. Now, hundreds of hapless citizens die by the seconds either from a rain of bullets, suicide bombings or mass massacre through other dangerous cudgels. Others in hidden crannies die unseen as reflected by increasing suicide rates, worsening resort to drugs and other maladaptive mechanisms in the face of existential challenges. Our land is gradually turning into an open morgue, littered with the decapitated remains of victims of what they hardly know anything about.

    Who, I ask, are the perpetrators of this mass murder where the old, young, pregnant women and toddlers are pumped with hot lead in the day, scotching afternoon and the dead of the night? In Zamfara, where thousands of lives have been lost to these killers, they call them bandits. In Kaduna, depending on location, they are either cattle rustlers or bandits. In Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, they are called terrorists. In Taraba, Benue, Plateau and Nassarawa, they are either Fulani herdsmen, bandits, rustlers, terrorists or a mixture of all. In Abuja, we were used to terrorists at a time but, with the murder of seven policemen on stop and search duty earlier in the week, bandits may become the new lexicon of terror. What is not in doubt is that this band of mean, cold-blooded animals in human clothing don’t give a hoot for the sanctity of the human lives. The more they kill, the happier they become. They derive immense pleasure in inflicting the maximum pain on their unfortunate victims. As the body bags pile up and as families prepare to mourn the dead, they pick up their weapons of mass destruction to perpetrate more evil, wetting the clayey soil with the blood of their deadly game. As I write this, we don’t even have any reliable data on the number of people that have been lost to these wars that tend to come from many fronts. All we know is that thousands have gone and many more may end up with bullet-ridden bodies as the authorities wring its hands in surrender to an unknown, vicious enemy force.

    To be clear, it is pedestrian to blame all the killings on herders or remnants of the fighters from Libya aftermath of the ouster of that country’s maximum ruler, Muammar Gaddafi. It is deeper than that. Beyond the ethnic, religious and political colorations that some persons (and the government) are reading into the killings, I fear for the likely conflagrations that may befall this nation if the government does nothing other than offer platitudes to families of the dead as it recently did in the mindless attacks in some communities in Plateau State which left over 200 persons dead. It becomes scarier when you listen to the reasons given for that pogrom. If indeed the Berom killings were carried out as retaliation for an earlier rustling of over 300 cows and murder of five Fulani herdsmen by some youths in that community, then we should question not just our justice system but also the values we place on certain things. By all standards, it is criminal to rustle one cow and deny the owner his means of livelihood not to talk inflicting such depravity on 300 cows. Having said that, should we waste one life for that? And if the event actually happened as being claimed by the herders, what did the authority do to fish out those involved and what assurance did they give families of the dead that justice would be served in addition to compensating them? If that had been done, would the reprisal, if any, be this gory?

    No one could have put it better than President Muhammadu Buhari when he descried how human lives have been cheapened in this country. The North Central is in a middle of a pogrom that is compellingly chilling. More shocking was the report that those that unleashed a flood of bullets on the villagers in Jos had more than enough time to finish the job without resistance from the various security forces stationed in the area. Add that to the professionalism they were said to have displayed in the handling of the AK-47 rifles and you begin to see some credence in Buhari’s postulations that the invaders might likely be specially trained hired killers from other lands. But then, should that justify the do-nothing posture by the government and its band of security apparatchik? No! Honestly, it beggars belief that, the government’s huffing and puffing notwithstanding, these merchants of death continue to ply their trade with benumbing arrogance.

    On this matter, the Federal Government needs to do less of marketing its incompetence. What it needs to do is to sit up and face the problem headlong. With over 200 persons killed at one fell swoop; there couldn’t have been a better time to rejig its intelligence unit than now. Clearly, this macabre attack was successful because of the failure of intelligence. The way and manner the invaders clinically wasted the hapless villagers should enrage everyone. Yes, it may not be the first time such carnage would be taking place in Plateau or even in our recent history. What makes this one worse is the fact that it was carried out after the security in that state was fortified following recent killings in Benue, Taraba and Nassarawa.  Those in that community would have thought that they were safe not knowing that what they were latching on to was a false sense of security.

    However, I must acknowledge that, for the first time in a long while, Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo did surprise their growing band of critics by visiting Plateau State not only to express solidarity with the people but also promising to apprehend the culprits and ensure justice. It is, by all means, a soothing relief from their earlier posture where they stay within the comfort of Aso Rock to cobble meaningless patter that neither address the matter nor show empathy to the grieving families. Having said this, the government needs to walk its talk. It would have to do more than putting pressure on the security chiefs to do their jobs. If the pressure the President piled on the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, over the killings in Benue did not yield any positive results, what assurance do we have that an additional pressure by Buhari on the same set of service chiefs that have failed to stop the carnage in the last three years would yield a different result? It is ludicrous that the Presidency could still be feeding the public with the fabulous tale that some powerful political forces could be behind the killings as reflected in the statement issued by the State House. With all the intelligence at its disposal, how come these criminals are still parading our streets as privileged citizens under an administration that swore to do things differently?

    Will we ever reach a bend that would propel us to be proactively involved in halting this harvest of mindless and senseless killings in whatever guise or will the canvas of blood in Plateau be replaced by yet another one as the government offers its usual basket of hollow platitudes? No one knows, really. The uncertainty implies an extended vacuum in which only the mindless bandits can continue their bloodcurdling campaign of mindless rampage as if there is no government. See, they just knocked on Abuja’s door the other day. Who knows what is next on their bloody agenda? So sad the ‘sympathy visits’ and empty platitudes may still continue. Pity.

  • Again, budget brouhaha pops up

    From N17bn loaded into the national budget during the Goodluck Jonathan era, the National Assembly has now ‘advanced’ such loadings to N578bn in the 2018 national budget – more than enough to generate nightmares for citizens who naively thought that the change mantra will rub off positively onlegislooters.

    Former Finance Minister and Coordinator of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, tried to make light of the serious matter of corrosive and corruptive budget padding in the national legislature when she came to the lawmakers’ defence following allegations that her book spanked them for ‘importing’ extra-budgetary items worth over N17bn into the 2015 documents before it was signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan. In fact, Okonjo-Iweala’s book, Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines accuses the federal legislators of being a bunch of selfish individuals whose main concern is how to grab as much as they can from the national till. Describing their modus operandi, at least under Jonathan, the renowned World Bank chief says they appropriate needless powers to themselves on the shape, form, size and details of the budget such that they have become a major clog to the Executive’s bid to implement a workable budget.

    Specifically, she points out that: “The legislature was concerned largely about three things—the size of its own budget; the nature and the size of the capital budget, particularly investment projects; and the number and geographical location of the projects. Senators and Representatives felt that their role as appropriators of the budget was not just to vet and approve budget parameters and oversee budget implementation, but also to shape the size and content of the budgets, including details of specific projects.”

    The same National Assembly, through its various committees, she notes, “sought to add more to individual projects or create completely new, un-appropriated major projects, thereby distorting the budget”, while they rebuffed all entreaties by the executive to trim down on their huge budgetary allocations in line with economic realities of that period, which happened to be an election year. Instead, through a flurry of disguised, sometimes brazen, arm-twisting and blackmail, the executive had to overlook a N17bn input into that year’s budget so that the ruckus that precedes every budget signing ceremony can be avoided. Although Iweala would, in a rejoinder to what she described as ‘lies’, refute the N17bn as bribe but merely an increment that the government “accepted in order to move on”, it does not preclude the fact that what happened was budget padding in its raw form. It is an illegality that has been sustained over the years—a recurring malaise that has plagued Nigeria’s appropriation policy since May 29, 1999 when this democratic experiment started.

    And with what happened on Wednesday during the 2018 Budget signing ceremony at the Presidential Villa, it is obvious that Okonjo-Iweala’s admonition and subtle plea to the legislators to display the highest degree of patriotism and commitment in discharging their responsibilities especially on appropriation has fallen on deaf ears. She may have to wait a bit longer before her dream of seeing a change in our warped culture of pumping up budgets for personal gains as it was manifestly clear that the few good eggs among the lot have not been able to stop the rot. Where one had thought that the book would appeal to the sensibilities of the lawmakers to “clear up and clarify the budget process for the future to improve”, it turned out that President Muhammadu Buhari had to reluctantly append his signature to that bulk of convoluted documents with one arm tied to the blackmail stake and with a loaded gun pointed at his head in an election year. And so, as it was with Jonathan, so it is with Buhari.

    It is my belief that the lawmakers were up to some mischief in latching on to the constitutional provision that empowers them to appropriate funds to the executive’s budgetary items. Clearly, they misread that to mean that they can carry out a complete turnaround of the budget and simply force the executive to implement on the pretext that they represent a particular section of the electorate. It is high time we told them that, in a constitutional democracy such as ours, the legislature is not an alternate government. They should stop the posturing. That is where our problem of perennial budget brouhaha lies. Personally, I consider it jejune, irreverent and tendentious argument for the National Assembly to insist that the significant change noticed in the form, size and figures of the document signed by Buhari was informed by their desire to “balance in the six geo-political zones” and inculcate projects that are relevant to the needs of the people. They just don’t get it. That is not how these things should work. It is a crude way of arm-twisting and blackmailing the executive which has a short span within which the budget can be implemented to a reasonable level before the elections.

    By the way, it is to our collective shame that, yearly, we normally come to this sorry pass where the executive would reluctantly sign a budget with one hand and submit a supplementary budget with the other hand to the National Assembly shortly after going through the ritual of smiling for the cameras. The 2018 budget is not in any way different from the same rites of passage in the past even if Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah was quoted as saying that Buhari has no option than “implement it to the letter.”  How, if I may ask, is that going to be possible with the kind of criminal alterations the President listed as being perpetrated by the lawmakers in his pre-budget signing speech?

    You ask: in what way has the 8th National Assembly distinguished itself from the one described by Okonjo-Iweala? The answer is none. It is as simple as that. If the ex-minister was making so much fuss over a-N17bn illegal injection, what would she say about this horde of ‘people-friendly’ lawmakers who just topped their annual appropriation with extra N14.5bn? What would be her reaction when she gets to know that, in one fell swoop, the Federal Government estimates for 4700 projects were cut by over N347bn while, in its place, the National Assembly injected fresh 6403 projects worth N578bn? This is the budgetary documents that they are insisting that the executive must implement ‘to the letter.”

    Let’s interrogate the legislative interventions to see if we can justify the argument that it was meant to address the aspirations and yearnings of the masses who are always the victims of the laughable governance structures here. While drastically reducing estimated figures in vital projects like the Mambilla Power Plant, Second Niger Bridge, East/West Road, Lagos/Ibadan Expressway, the United Nations Building in Abuja, Rail projects and the Construction of the Enugu Airport, the National Assembly would rather deploy the smuggled N578bn in funding ‘laudable projects’ like the supply of industrial sewing machines including the supply of tricycles/motorcycles for youths and women. Amazingly, these wise men in the hallowed chambers believe that buying grinding machines and supplying Volkswagen Golf cars for youth empowerment are more germane to national growth than the projects listed by the executive. Others, according to reports, include building of culverts and drainages in some communities, provision of entrepreneurship training for some youths, upgrading of pathways and driveways, construction of VIP toilets in designated primary schools and purchase of motorcycles for extension work. Maybe we should just scrap all the federal agencies and cede their responsibilities to these distinguished and honourable lawmakers!

    In her rejoinder, Okonjo-Iweala said ‘lies obscure the country’s problems and do not allow us to improve.” I concur. But lies, in this context, refer to the hilarity and cynical ingenuity which the National Assembly employed to pad up the budget to the dizzying figure of N578bn. It makes one to puke! From past experience, such funds often find their ways into the pockets of the lawmakers in connivance some persons in Ministries, Departments and Agencies. The former Chairman of the Finance Committee of the House of Representatives, Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, said this much in his well-documented outcry on how the National Assembly leadership corrodes the budget with projects that are mainly for self-aggrandizement. Quite unfortunately, the list for the 6403 projects that was exposed by Buhari looks like a rehash of Jibrin’s expose which fetched him a long suspension to leak his wound. For now, it is like the raid on the national till via this arm-twisting module has come to stay. Or has it not?

  • June 12: Flashbacks and current realities

    FOR 25 agonising years, the June 12 imbroglio was a never-ending soap opera until President Muhammadu Buhari decided to bring it to a deserving conclusion on Tuesday, June 12, 2018. At least, we all got the chance to exhale, regardless of how we may feel about the politics of the well-deserved presidential recognition bestowed on the real symbol of the undying narrative of an abducted hope on June 12, 1993—the late Bashorun Moshood Kasimawo Olawale Abiola. Even in these times, not many people would stand up to be counted like he did when it mattered most. Of course, in matters like this, it is difficult to rule out the usual devious sellouts who, after dancing on the grave of Abiola, also became beneficiaries of that supreme sacrifice. Pitiably, that is part of the story. But, when the chips are down, we do know those who truly stood up to be counted either dead or alive. And let’s not get it wrong like the warped illogic spewed by a serving senator on the floor of the Senate some days back. These exceptional men and women were Nigerians—the true heroes of the democracy that many now enjoy with spasms of arrogance tailored to their padded shoulders.

    For those who witnessed the tragic impulses that unfolded before them in those days, there could have been no better way of celebrating Abiola’s triumph than the significant olive branch President Muhammadu Buhari waved to all parties on the 25th anniversary of Nigeria’s freest and fairest election which was annulled by the military junta under the leadership of now-retired General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. The Babangida years would be remembered for three things—his Structural Adjustment Programme which impoverished the middle class; the gruesome letter bomb murder of that iconic journalist, Dele Giwa; and, the shameful role he played in the abortion of the June 12 mandate freely given to his bosom friend and arguably Africa’s richest man at that time, Abiola. No one is keen to remember MAMSER, DFRRI, Option A4 and numerous great initiatives of the IBB era that the anti-people annulment eclipsed so firmly. Those who lived through that period couldn’t have forgotten the deadly games and murderous proclivities of the military boys from the moment Babangida announced his decision to annul the election to the short-lived Interim National Government of Ernest Shonekan/General Sani Abacha to when the dark-goggled one completely seized the rein of power, tossing off Shonekan and his band of pretenders so casually with less effort than someone swatting a fly.

    You ask Babangida today what pushed him into that betrayal of trust and he would mumble some mumbo-jumbo incoherent statement that makes no sense other than blaming it on the military hierarchy which, he said that he, as Commander in Chief, was powerless to control – the same tendentious excuse that he has tendered over the years to dribble everybody. Well, he ended up dribbling himself to infamy with that rude joke. And so, it was not surprising that he didn’t turn up on Tuesday when Abiola, Gani Fawehinmi and others had their day in the sun. How could he? Aside the ghosts of all the martyrs of the June 12, 1993 mandate haunting him, we cannot easily forget the many lives that were lost in the protests, including those who met their untimely deaths whilst running from the crisis-ridden South-West when the Abacha goons used protesters to perfect their shooting capacity. At the height of the June 12 struggle, notable voices were killed in their homes including Pa Rewane and Mrs, Kudirat Abiola who was mauled down on the streets of Lagos for daring to insist on the release of her husband. Till today, Abiola’s death in the hand of the state is still shrouded in official secrecy. He was silenced, betrayed by those he thought he knew too well to distrust.

    If not for Buhari, “Hope 93” could have been deferred in perpetuity. Some of those who sat at the ceremonial acclamation of that mandate last Tuesday at the State House Banquet Hall knew what they did to frustrate the somewhat ‘heady’ Abiola. Here, we speak of those who went behind his back to strike a deal with Abacha and worked to ensure that June 12 was finally dealt a fatal blow. Perhaps, one should ask: how did they feel when they heard Hafsat Abiola-Costello speak glowingly of the true love the father they never allowed her to enjoy had for the people of this country? Did they know that it was the same young graduate, Hafsat, who braved the odds many years back, asking the authorities to explain why her parents should come to such a tragic pass for daring to demand justice, fair play and equity for the people of this country? That same girl is now a full grown woman living with the 25-year anguish of being kept in the dark on why and how the state reached the agreement that her parents had to go for Nigeria to move on.

    If it were that simple, Nigeria would have moved on since that cruel elimination of Abiola and every other person that opposed the perpetuation of military oligarchs in power. They just didn’t want Abiola dead; they also wanted his memories wiped off like he never happened. But he did happen. Growing up in the suburb of Itire/Ijesha then, I remember vividly what Abiola Bookshop meant to us in different parts of the country. There was also Abiola Bakery, Concord Press and many other companies. Like Hafsat noted in her speech, MKO was one man who would rather die than allow anyone to shave his head in his absence. Even in those tortuous moments, he never forgot to lace his speeches with wisecracks that left many laughing through their pain. It was the Abiola personae that made June 12 a watershed. That election broke all barriers as Nigerians unanimously returned a Muslim/Muslim ticket to the consternation of the treacherous few who now gloat in the dark. And no one can ever forget the patriotism and strong sense of duty displayed by Prof. Humphrey Nwosu who stood firm in spite of intimidation from the military. He could have buckled under pressure. But he never did. That is why he is really an unsung hero of that once dark part of our history.

    To understand what Abiola stood for, you would have to listen to Hafsat’s testimonial at the event. Hear her: “In many ways, the events that transpired later revealed to Nigerians the eloquence in his heart; the fidelity of his commitment and even his own deep abiding wish that, if there was anyway his own actions would in any way compromise the people of Nigeria, MKO preferred to die. He preferred to leave the earth rather than compromise on you, on your integrity as a people and your sovereignty as a nation.”  And didn’t Abiola live those eternal words of his daughter to the last? Wasn’t he the reason why, when Nigeria began yet another journey of democratic experiment, the entire nation agreed that the South West must solely field presidential candidates? Did the winner of that election, his kinsman, recognise Abiola’s sacrifices throughout his eight year on that seat? Did he even acknowledge the significance of June 12 in our national history?

    When Prof. Wole Soyinka harped on the need to establish a hall of shame for those who betrayed the mandate, I assume quite a number of people in that hall would shift discomfortingly in their chairs. When Hafsat said it was quite ironic that a Buhari would be the one to posthumously honour her father, the import of that couldn’t have been lost to those who understood that Abiola, like every one of us, had his shortcomings. One of these was the fact that he sponsored the palace coup that ousted Buhari and foisted Babangida on the nation—the same Babangida that looked the other way when a simple sip of tea killed the dream of a nation and threw us into turmoil. How would we have been able to heal the wounds if Buhari had not summoned the courage to right the wrongs?

    Politics or not, Buhari made a huge difference in saying the five-letter word—sorry. But for sheer ego, that apology could have been made many years back. We cheapen the conversation when we criticize Buhari for trying to make huge political capital out of that gesture. Who wouldn’t anyway? Yet, we do know that June 12 is more than that. Knowing the mindset of the living heroes of that particular event, it was ennobling some of them exploited the occasion to lecture Buhari on the fine ethos of democracy and why he must address the imbalance in the land.

    Though a soothing balm was rubbed on the festering wounds of many years from both sides of the divide, those who spoke were not shy of telling truth to power no matter how unpalatable. That was why Soyinka tasked Buhari on the limits of his somewhat fecund loyalty to Abacha, the tormentor-in-chief of Abiola and all loyalists of his mandate. That was why Hafsat reminded him that the best way to truly honour the memory of her father is to make Nigeria a place where the over 200 million population are in full control of the levers of governance instead of the current situation where few landlords oppress the majority and dare them to go take a dive in hell fire. That was why Iyorchia Ayu demanded for his full understanding of how democracy works, asking him to develop an almost inelastic tolerance for the opposition. And, if we must rub it in, that was why those who couldn’t take the knocks for their treacherous past excused themselves from the occasion when June 12 became a reality—the day MKO’s inimitable message that “the hand of the giver is always on top’ toppled the evil machinations of his ‘friend’ and bruised the ego of a ‘kinsman’ who never saw MKO as the true symbol of the democracy that heralded him into power from the prison!

  • Offa robbery: The macabre dance on victims’ graves

    On June 9, 2015, this newspaper’s screaming headline, I dare say, set the template for the endless political drama that continues to dog the fortunes and misfortunes of the All Progressives Congress’ led government of President Muhammadu Buhari. That seed of discord, I had suggested in a somewhat prescient piece that time, would test the grit of the party’s leadership and the way it handles the fallout of the seeming self-inflicted suicide mission would have a telling effect on its future. Written by Yusuf Alli, Onyedi Ojiabor and Sanni Onogu, that edition screamed: Saraki dumps APC to run with Ekweremadu. That same day, the script was played out to the chagrin and consternation of some party hawks with Saraki later saying he suffered the indignity of sleeping in the National Assembly’s car lot to be able to sneak into the Senate chambers and perfect the plot!. The rug, as they say, was pulled off the limping feet of the party goons by a treacherous clique of presumed party faithful. Thus Senator Bukola Saraki emerged Senate President and Ike Ekweremadu, of the Peoples Democratic Party, became his deputy in what was, perhaps, the most confounding political coup ever hatched by a key figure against his own political party in Nigeria’s modern history.

    That marked the beginning of the end—a precursor to the shameless melodrama playing out today. Each time I come across news reports that members of the new Peoples Democratic Party, of which Saraki is a leading figure, have threatened to dump the APC, I find myself casting a retrospective glance at the headline above. Personally, I consider it benignly farcical to say that the nPDP was about to pull out from a marriage it never consummated beyond June 9, 2015 when Saraki and his men burrowed a large hole on the delicate heart of the party that propelled them into power riding on the then popularity of Buhari. Exactly three years after as I write this, the narrative has not changed as the party’s leadership continues to rue the moment it surrendered its authority to the enemy within.

    And, if we must knock the truth on its head, the Nigerian people are the real victims of the political buffoonery of the last three years. As it is, they are the pawns in the deadly, selfish and demeaning politics of our times. In case we have forgotten so soon, the Offa bank robbery of April 5 would go down in the history of bank robberies in this nation as one of the deadliest with 31 innocent victims pumped with hot lead by the crazy bandits who carted away millions of naira. Among these were 9 policemen shot on the line of duty, pregnant women, bystanders and others who met their unfortunate end for being at the right place at the wrong time. Offa streets became a canvas of blood, soaked in crimson red as the armed robbers disappeared into thin air after the callous heist, and probably assured that they never left any trail.

    Fortuitously, whilst families of the dead and the injured gnash their teeth in anguish and the affected banks count their losses, the police swiftly moved into action and succeeded in apprehending 22 of the daredevil armed robbers with the help of intelligence and CCTV images. It was a relief to many that those who perpetrated the heinous act would face the full wrath of the law regardless of their family background, political affiliations or connections. Of course, the police got plaudits for its action. What Nigerians didn’t bargain for was what was to follow later. No one would have thought that such a serious case would offer itself to the twists and turns of the shenanigans of politics which, quite unfortunately, it has become with the decision of the police to interrogate Saraki over his alleged link with some of the arrested culprits following their confessional statements.

    Whilst it is public knowledge that there exist a no-love-lost relationship between the Senate, Saraki and the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris over a number of national and personal issues, it depresses one that the matter at hand has become another opportunity for the various power blocs within the APC to flex muscles and play cheap politics. Where reasonable human beings would have seized the opportunity to treat the matter with the seriousness it deserves, our crowd of egoistic leaders are busy spitting on the graves of the dead, shamelessly passing a vote of confidence on themselves, threatening impeachment on a President that has refused to interfere with ongoing investigations and thumping their chests in hollow triumphalism. Everyone is poised to recklessly abuse power. It is a pity really.

    I have struggled to see if I could justify the recalcitrance of the lawmakers’ insistence that the police’ invitation to Saraki to explain his link with some of the robbery suspects was an affront on the independence of the legislature. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any. And it is, to my mind, jejune illogic to base it on his outcry, some weeks back, that he had access to intelligence reports that Idris, whom he called when he visited Offa to commiserate with the community after the robbery, was trying to link him some criminals in a cult related case. Unless we are asking the police Intelligence Response Team to ignore the confessional statements of the suspects who said they were political thugs to the Senate President in his home state, Kwara and that one of the cars used for the robbery operation was actually a gift by Saraki through the state Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, I wonder why anyone would read political persecution to the invitation.

    The allegations become weightier when the police alleged that the Lexus car was recovered from the Government House in Ilorin and revelations that a close aide to the incumbent governor is under interrogation for tampering with the number plate in a bid to obstruct investigation. Are we saying all these leads should be waved off just because this heavyweight politician’s name was mentioned by these vicious criminals? Wouldn’t it have been appropriate for the person so mentioned to clear his name instead of the resort to arm-twisting the executive to buckle under the pressure of an impeachment ringtone and order the law enforcement agent constitutionally saddled with the task of unraveling such mysteries to back off? Is that what legislative privileges is all about——flaunting ego when all it requires is a simple task of defending oneself against what could end up being petty lies by caged but desperate criminals holding on to straws? If everyone decides to ignore an invitation to defend one’s integrity by constituted authorities on the whimsical excuse of vendetta, we may as well bid farewell to law and order.

    Okay, maybe the Police erred by not following the ego-massaging protocol due to every ‘big man’ by profusely begging the distinguished senator to stroll to the station and dissociate himself from any heinous crime perpetrated by the thugs. Having said this, justice will never be served if we cavort to every silly excuse of a witch hunt by these persons. It is a cheap blackmail that must be rejected by every well-meaning citizen. Our laws should not be subjected to the whim of any individual no matter how highly placed. The way we interrogate the commoner should be the standard practice for all. This jaundiced and puerile attitude of placing certain persons above the law is hurting the system and killing the nation. Leadership should be by example and, on this matter, what is being set is a bad one.

    Curious enough, the lawmakers didn’t display this kind of riotous anger when the former Minister of Finance and Coordinator of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, accused the last Senate of smuggling a whopping N17bn into the budget documents before the 2015 budget could be passed. They would, instead, protest with the mute button fully activated. But when any of them gets under the radar of the anti-graft agencies for alleged economic theft, you are sure to see them displaying complete imbecility and cheapish herd mentality, arrogantly threatening to unseat the President for allowing these agencies to discharge assigned responsibilities. Is that how democracy works—by protecting personal interests and spitting on the graves of citizens mauled down in broad daylight by bandits? Is this how the Offa 33 will get justice when the vermin and reprobates in power are more interested in spitting on their graves?

  • Obasanjo: As it was then…

    For those who truly love former President Olusegun Obasanjo, this is the best time to pray that the old wily fox would not, in his reverie of self-importance, shoot himself on the foot. Truth is, if care is not taken, Obasanjo’s seeming invincibility may come to an ignoble end with his latest decision to exchange deadly political punches with President Muhammadu Buhari in his bid to impose a new leader on the nation in the 2019 election. While it was not shocking that his romance and preference for a Buhari Presidency was short-lived due to what he described as the former’s bumbling economic policies, incompetence and abominable clannishness, Obasanjo’s persistently rabid and ferocious attack against Buhari say much about how badly he would want a man he once dabbed in flowery words out of the presidential seat. You ask: what could have gone so terribly awry that the same Buhari whom Obasanjo supported to put an end to a continuation of the Jonathan Goodluck ruinous regime would suddenly make a 360 degree turnaround? Nothing other than the usual power game among Nigeria’s privileged elite! It didn’t start today and I doubt if it is going to end soon until this set of leaders with military background take their final bow from mother earth.

    Some years back, this same issue came to the front burner of national discourse when Obasanjo took his estranged former deputy, Atiku Abubakar to the cleaners. It was the same case with the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. And so, it wouldn’t be out of place to conclude that Obasanjo is the proverbial leopard that has not changed its skin. He is merely treading a familiar path by picking on Buhari who happens to be the latest project that must be taken down. In a piece titled “Now, OBJ spits on own grave” and published on this page five years back, I had written that: “There are a thousand and one reasons to dislike former President Olusegun Obasanjo. What one can’t help but admire is his infantile garrulousness. After close to 12 years in office at the highest level of governance, many had expected that Baba would gloriously retire to his Ota farms, tending his chickens and enjoying fresh palm wine away from Abuja’s intriguing politics. No one had thought he would still be that active to disturb a nation’s peace with scathing parodies. It turned out that we had placed too much value on a man who worships nothing but his own ego.

    “We may not have a sense of history but we are not that dumb not to understand why an Obasanjo would forever find it convenient to run his mouth riot on his former deputy, AtikuAbubakar or anyone for that matter. This man sees himself as some kind of superhuman. And he may deny it till the end of life; Obasanjo knows that there is more to his sour relationship with Atiku than the allegations of corruption. Central to this pathological heckling of Atiku at any given opportunity is the ‘disloyal’ role Atiku played in frustrating the self-perpetuation agenda otherwise known as tenure elongation in the days of the long knives. Second was the humiliation that Obasanjo went through in the hands of Atiku before he was eventually given the green light to contest for a second term in office. Aside these two, all other things seem to exist in Obasanjo’s fantasies.”

    That was when Obasanjo’s was in his late 70s. Today, at over 80 according to official records, the narrative has not changed. As it was then, so it is now. After running his mouth over the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and plucking Jonathan off the presidential seat, it is inexplicable that Buhari would be his latest poster boy for bad governance knowing that he sees himself as the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria. With Buhari’s veiled reference to his administration’s mismanagement of a whopping $16bn allocated to the power sector in his eight-year reign, you can be sure Obasanjo would unleash the vilest part of his tongue and commit all his energy in seeing that he rubbishes the Buhari government. It is one role that he relishes playing going by how he brought down other regimes after him, including the one in which Buhari is major beneficiary.

    Having said this, the journey might not be as smooth as Obasanjo would have wanted. While he practically had most of the other leaders by their balls tagging them corrupt and unfit to rule, Buhari, in spite of his many failings, may be an exception to the rule. Demystifying Buhari is definitely not going to be a tea party. Unlike the others, Obasanjo’s binge of delirium in tagging every of his targeted victims as criminally corrupt might not stick with Buhari. And, regardless of what he says, it would be delusional for him to think that he remains the only living Nigerian leader without the tar of corruption. In case he has forgotten, a former Chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mrs. Farida Waziri, had cautioned him to watch his tongue or risk being exposed. That was when Obasanjo described her as unqualified for the job of an anti-corruption czar, utterly mollified that the former governor of Delta State, James Ibori, played a crucial in Farida’s emergence.

    Of course, Farida didn’t take the allegation lying low, cautioning the impertinent ex-president to be mindful of the saying that “those who live in glass house don’t throw stones, and, as such, Obasanjo should not allow me open up on him. Respectable elder statesmen act and speak with decorum.” Well, Obasanjo is not one to speak with the decent gait of a grey-haired statesman. He relishes swimming in his pond of hollow triumphalism as an incorruptible living legend. That seems to be the reality that nudges to talk down on other Nigerian leaders either dead or alive. Yet, it is a reality that has not been put to the test for some queer reasons. Fair enough, he didn’t take Farida on and the sleeping dog was allowed to rest. Now that he has decided to enter into a ‘roforofo’ fight with a brutally frank Buhari, one can only hope he has his facts right as Buhari does not look like someone that would clasp his hands in submission while Obasanjo runs his acerbic tongue on him recklessly.

    Whilst jumping from pillar to post in a bid to install yet another president in power, Obasanjo should also be wary that the dynamics of the power game has changed. Farida spoke like someone who has classified information on him. If that was the case, there is nothing to suggest that someone in the Presidency is equally not in possession of that file. Buhari, in making his allegations, did not speak like someone who was making empty threat.

    The President’s question was simple yet pregnant with meanings: why the megawatts of darkness after investing billions of dollars power generation? It is one question Obasanjo, in spite of his pontifications in his book, My Watch, has failed to answer convincingly. Should Buhari decide to push the conversation further by backing his innuendoes with classified documents, would he be able to dribble himself of the scandal?

    By the way, I couldn’t recall the National Assembly, precisely the House of Representatives which probed the activities of the power sector under Obasanjo, exonerating from the scandalous perfidy of that time. Instead, he was excoriated for superintending over the benumbing malfeasance going under his nose. Specifically, the report indicted him and some of his top aides for playing one role or the other in the “high level corruption and unspeakable inefficiency and waste in the execution of projects and disbursements of funds’ that were exposed during the investigations. While Obasanjo reserves the right to gloat over his clearance of any involvement in the power fraud by the Ibrahim Lamurde-led EFCC, he should also note that there was the possibility, as being suggested in some quarters, that Lamurde could just be doing a clean-up on a report that was submitted to Farida after taking over from the woman Obasanjo never wanted on that seat in the first place. Knowing how things are done here, it is not an impossibility that someone just provided him with a soft landing, knowing how close he was to Jonathan then before their romance went bad. And so, until the real truth behind the mess that happened in that sector was laid bare and the truth about how the billions spent on the third term project were sourced, it would do Obasanjo well to step down on his old time fantasy of playing god in the affairs of this nation. Will he listen? I doubt if he would, anyway.

  • Saraki, IGP’s naked dance in the village square

    SHEER ego brought us to this low. Nigeria, we all do know, is saturated with quite a number of laws. Unfortunately, these laws are mainly operated in the breach such that the privileged few have developed a template through which they trample on and abuse the law with irritable arrogance. That is why the law is not an ass here. It panders, mostly, to the dictates of those who wield power. For the vulnerable millions who cannot afford its price, they hardly escape its full weight or wrath as the case may be. Most often than not, criminality is measured by the size of your pocket or the quality of influence you exert. Perhaps if everyone has surrendered to the supremacy of our laws and constitution, the Senate and the Nigerian Police would not be dancing naked in the market square so shamelessly over a simple matter bordering on national security. Now, the flip side to this is that national security has different coloration here. Its meaning is not as straight forward as the words sound. Sometimes, calling the President by his first name or asking a senator to visit a police station for interrogation may be considered as tantamount to breaching national security and exposing a senior citizen to danger. We are that petty.

    Let me place it on record that the ongoing war of attrition between the Senate and the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, is a gratuitous insult on our collective intelligence. The huffing and puffing from both sides of the divide will only add to Nigeria’s long-running narrative of hollow posturing as a democratic nation sauced with a mindset of military mentality. Lest we forget, we are where we are today on this matter because a serving lawmaker, Senator Dino Melaye, chose to ignore a routine invitation by The Police to defend himself in an alleged criminal indictment by suspects in their custody. Dino could have honoured that invitation in company with his lawyer and the processes, I believe, would have gone smoothly without any drama. Instead, he paid little attention to the matter, carrying on as if it was business as usual until the Police declared him wanted and effected his forceful arrest. Whilst Dino was at his dramatic best shooting one abusive videos after the other, none of those hailing him as a victim of police brutality against a distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria reminded him that he was under obligation to honour the official invite. I doubt if they told him that his short but brutal dramatic skits on the social media, impugning the integrity of perceived enemies can never replace the need to obey the official summon. At least, not one single senator was on record as advising him to address the allegations as every law abiding citizen would. No one reminded him that being a senator does not transmute one into an untouchable—someone above the law.

    By the way, this does not mean that one is grossing over Dino’s fears about the police or their tendency to rope him into a criminal case just to silence him. Having said this, his suicidal attempt to escape from police custody by jumping out of a moving vehicle while he was being ferried to Kogi somewhere in Area 2, Abuja must be condemned. It was a tactical blunder regardless of his status. If any petty criminal had played that fast one on any of the security agencies, I doubt if such person would live to threaten anyone that he would kill himself and cause problems for the country as Dino did in a video that went viral. Such a person would have been dead given the frequency with which security men accidentally dispose of stubborn suspects. And so, Dino is lucky to be recuperating in one of the best medical facilities as he faces his travail like a cowed lion.

    Yet, the question remains: did we need to get to this banal low before commonsense prevails? The answer is no. We are here because the opportunistic elite hardly tell themselves the home truth. As usual, on this matter, their conscience revved into action when they saw one of their own being stretchered to the court first in Abuja and, later, in Kogi to answer to charges on bothering on criminal conspiracy. It was at that moment they realized that Idris and his men have crossed the proverbial red line. They were flummoxed, flabbergasted and railed with uncontrollable rage. It was at that moment they realised that Idris, the same top police chief whom President Muhammadu Buhari publicly acknowledged as disobeying his order to relocate to Benue State at the height of the mass killings by armed herdsmen, had violated national security. Pronto, they moved in to cut his wings. Idris was summoned to, as the letter read, “brief the Senate on the inhuman treatment meted on Senator Dino Melaye over a matter that is pending before a court of competent law court (sic); and other killings across Nigeria.” By the way, this is the same Senate that didn’t hesitate to suspend one of its own for daring to disagree with its decision and seeking redress at a court of competent jurisdiction!

    Of course, it has been a ding-dong affair as Idris simply refused to honour that invitation. The subsequent appearance of a senior police officer did not assuage the senators. They wanted Idris’s head on a plate. It is either that or nothing. With riotous anger, they tabled their case against a man they tagged as unfit for any public office, a persona non grata before Buhari. As usual, the President promised to look into that matter. But they know better than rely on a presidential promise with no maturity date. Meanwhile, their sacred cow, Dino, was still under the custody of the police even in the hospital. What then should be the next action as the police insist that security matters cannot be discussed in the public glare as the Senate would have liked. Tired of what it called Idris’ straw holding tactics, the Senate became fired up by Senate President Bukola Saraki’s latest allegation that information at his disposal suggest that the IGP was planning to frame him in a case involving some arrested cultists and subsequently indict him and the Kwara State Governor, Abdulfatai Ahmed, as retaliatory measure for his insistence that Idris must account for his stewardship in office amid the killings and human rights abuse by the Police.

    Listen to Saraki: “In my own View, this plot is an act of desperation, blackmail, intimidation, abuse of office and crude tactics aimed at turning our country into a Police State where top officials cannot be made to obey the law, follow due process and subject themselves to constituted authorities. I want to bring this dangerous development to the attention of all of you my colleagues, the entire country and the international community so that you can be aware of the level of impunity in our country and the danger it constitute to our democracy.”

    Of course, the Police swiftly denied the allegation made by the Senate President, describing it as “unbelievable claims, unverifiable allegations and unfounded accusations with no iota of truth.”  Now, this is not the time to accuse anyone of attempting to impede justice or crying wolf where there was none. Saraki, in his speech, hit on the real problems—the reign of impunity in high places. When the Senate points a finger of “desperation, blackmail, intimidation, abuse of office and crude tactics against the Police, it should realise that the remaining four leprous fingers sorely point back at it. Truth be told, Nigerians are tired of this shenanigan. Without prejudice to his fears, Saraki should have availed himself of the privileged channels open to him to express his thoughts, to wit blackmail, without playing to the gallery and relish in the folly with which his colleagues concoct fallacious allegations against a constituted authority saddled with the arduous responsibility of protecting lives and properties. Shouldn’t he have allowed the police to discharge its function of investigating the arrested criminals who allegedly murdered eleven people without Wednesday’s drama at plenary? Would he have said the same thing that he was being targeted if these criminals were moved from Ogun State to the Force Headquarters? And when did his state governor become the chief intelligence officer of the federation such that he would hastily conclude that his godfather was the target of the transfer of the culprits to Abuja?

    One thing is sure: this ego fight, shadow boxing and display of infantile impunity inflict more collateral damage on the country’s image. The way we play cheap politics with everything and anything is deleterious to our collective wellbeing. If simple rules had been obeyed at the beginning, there wouldn’t have been any need for the muscle-flexing that is now threatening the fractious peace that was in place. Until the law becomes truly a blind ass that is a no respecter of status, creed or position, we will continue stewing in this self-inflicted pot of ignominy. Pity.

  • Will the APC self-destruct?

    Not so long ago, this same question became a recurring decimal on the radar of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party when its leaders became arrogantly intolerant of dissenting views and murdered internal democratic norms on the altar of presidential autocratic desires. By the time the cookie crumbled 16 years into the deceit of a presumed invincibility, the PDP was left out in the cold, soaked in the idiocy of its arrogance in power. Unfortunately, the party that benefitted from that heavy fall—the All Progressives Congress—appears to have learnt nothing from that history going by the rancorous outcome of its ward congress across the nation. Its leadership may opt to live in denial of this fact. But everything points to the fact that the APC is treading a dangerous path which may likely consume it.

    Let’s look at the facts as the intriguing, deadly politics being played by these strange bedfellows unfolds. The ominous signs, I hasten to note, continue to pop up. It was obvious that the party was sitting on a gun powder with the way it handled the plot to compel its leadership at the state and national level to seek re-election instead of a well-scripted tenure elongation agenda that had to be abandoned on the insistence of President Muhammadu Buhari. Ordinarily, one would have thought that a template for internal democracy had been set and the key stakeholders would take a cue from the President and allow things to flow naturally. But because we have a queer way of doing things here, the narrative is a harvest of tragic impulses from different parts of the country. In Ekiti State where aspirants jostled for the governorship ticket of the party, hell was practically let loose as ballot papers were flung into the air by aggrieved supporters. The election arena was turned into a boxing ring. Punches were freely exchanged as hoodlums sang war songs and rain curses on one another. Four lives were lost in the election crises in Lagos, Delta and Rivers. Even at that, the outcome remains a subject of controversy in two out of the three states and the national leadership appears incapable of resolving the matter with allegations of self-enlightened interest hanging on their necks.

    In Oyo State, a minister and some Federal lawmakers were said to have escaped mob attack by the whiskers with their legs on their tails. In Bauchi State where Speaker Yakubu Dogara hails from, his supporters were said to have boycotted the ruling party’s ward congress no thanks to his raging feud with Governor Mohammed Abubakar. Kaduna was not any better. The long-running battle between Governor Nasir el-Rufai and Senator Shehu Sani deepened as the latter’s supporters shunned the congress opting to conduct a parallel congress as it was the case in Kogi State where Governor Yahaya Bello fiery political battle with the party’s leadership in the state has been well documented. There were also shades of violence and protest in Kebbi and Ondo West. In all, these are not the best of times for a party that was solidified through a marriage of convenience which has remained its greatest plague till date.

    If the PDP had a semblance of unifying figure in the overwhelming power of a Presidency that disburses favour at the whim and, through that, weed quite a number of recalcitrant members into the line, the APC is bereft of such a figure in spite of Buhari’s larger than life image and pretenses to such. It is that failure to have a firm hold on the party that has shred it into bits and pieces of what a truly national party should be. As I write this, the rumour out there is that a key faction of the party which contributed immensely to its success——members of the NewPDP, had written to the National Chairman, John Odigie Oyegun, threatening to pull out of the marriage if certain conditions are not met in a week’s time. Those who are conversant with history would readily recall that it was this same gang of rebels that rendered the PDP impotent, left it gasping for breath before its final fall in the 2015 elections. And to show how powerful this group is, it has succeeded in forcing a divided governance structure on the country with the leadership of the Senate being the chief culprit. The APC, in the main, is a house divided against itself and its centre can no longer hold. This party that came in with so much hype, pomp and panache is dancing on the edge of the precipice.

    It is not that these early warning signs were not telling enough. What amazed one was the seeming ease with which these things were left to fester. Now, the PDP is feasting on those gaps. Perhaps, things would not have been this bad if Buhari had displayed leadership when it is most needed. Unfortunately, he spent valuable time looking the other way as the errant but powerful cabal within his party glibly rubbed his nose on the concrete floor. Perhaps, he was content being a friend to everyone and friend to no one in particular. He was neither here nor there. He was floating in empty space. Now, the chickens have come home to roost. The rebels in his camp are baying for blood or, in exchange, a compromise that would weaken his authority if he had any. With the state of his health and repeated medical trips to the United Kingdom, I doubt if Buhari still has the energy to inject some sanity into this fallen house which offered a lot of promises at inception.

    That doubt becomes scarier when one interrogates the desperate moves by these forces to pull the rug off the feet of a weakened, ineffective leader of a party roiling in self-inflicted crisis. And so, I ask: will the APC self-destruct few months into a critical general election or would its bumbling gangs of egoistic leaders apply the brakes before they hand over the country back to the dare-devil rapists of our collective patrimony who are currently finding their voices amid this medley of benumbing gaffes?

  • Buhari, Trump and the wailing hailers

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent visit to the United States of America on the invitation of President Donald Trump has exposed the putrid underbelly of Nigeria’s political discourse. First, quite a number of people were disappointed at the measured comportment and his rather ‘timid’ style in addressing issues raised during the meeting. Those who have sharpened their pencils and filed their biros to take him to the cleaners for ‘de-marketing’ the country at the international stage remain painfully shocked that he didn’t give them that opportunity to begin another fiery fight on the cyberspace between a growing band of wailers and a diminishing list of hailers. At the height of that frustration, those who have chosen to tar Buhari as being irredeemably sold to particular agenda would go on to conjure lies and publish such as true reflections of his engagements with the Trump administration. Every statement he makes; his meetings with the ‘geriatric’ Nigerian ambassador to the United States and some select groups in the diaspora, the pro-Buhari rally and all other things were subjected to mundane if not irritating political jibes, demeaning twist and offensive taunts.

    To these set of people above, nothing good could ever come from Buhari. To them, the President is a plague, an anathema to anything noble. Trust former President Olusegun Obasanjo to be at the centre of this kind of discourse. And that is where we all mix the point as wailers and hailers if I may borrow these two abused words in our fast-developing political lexicon. No matter the hard feelings and bitter bile that anyone may want to spew against a leader that continues to wobble through the rare opportunities offered him to make the difference, we must interrogate the President’s visit to the USA within its proper context. It is not something that should be subjected to our warped and jaundiced cleavages. It shouldn’t be the time to throw the usual roforofo political tantrums that continue to tie us to the apron strings of retrogressive development. And so, it runs against the grain of logic, fair play and equity to assume that Buhari’s American trip was a waste of tax payers’ money without any positives. This kind of narrative just doesn’t fly in the face of the good things Trump, a man who was known for saying it the way it is, says about our country and Buhari’s efforts at changing the tale. Oh c’mon, that should count for something.

    Yes, Buhari was told the bare knuckle truth about his numbing inability to show leadership amid the spate of mindless killings going on across the country. Specifically, Trump was concerned about the killings of Christians in churches against the backdrop of what happened in Benue State some days before Buhari flew to Washington DC. Trump admonition may be a bit distasteful to his Nigerian guests but I doubt if they were shocked considering his antecedents. For me, he was merely reminding Buhari to be pro-active in addressing the insecurity problems instead of offering hollow excuses to explain off a seeming impotence. When your citizens are being butchered daily by those you have identified as remnants of the Libyan horrific crisis, you don’t wring your hands in submission to the savagery. You don’t maintain loud silence that confounds the populace. And you don’t play the victim Mr. President Sir. What you do is to confront the enemy with the boldness, anger, fire and brutal force like a leader elected to secure lives of citizens as enshrined in the constitution. That is the simple reminder that Trump drummed into the President’s ears, tasking him to “protect innocent civilians of all faiths, including Muslims and including Christians.” It’s an advice he needs to take seriously if he is, indeed, a President for all!

    But then, that was just one leg of the story. There are other aspects which should gratify us as a nation no matter which side of the political divide we belong. If we all heard Trump loudly chastising Buhari for a seeming leadership failure in tackling insecurity in the land, we should also hear him loud and clear when he commended our President for standing firm in the arduous task he set for himself—fight against corruption and his commitments to seeing that stolen funds are repatriated back to the country. It is the least we can do in spite of our convoluted and warped perceptions about a do-nothing Presidency. We shouldn’t get it twisted. For me, it is ennobling that, in spite of everything, one Nigerian leader gets the plaudit for braving the odds in the fight against corrosive corruption in this country.

    Listen to Trump: “Nigeria has a reputation for very massive corruption. I also know that the President (Buhari) has been able to cut that down very substantially. We talked about that, he is working on it and they have made a lot of progress and I think they will continue to make a lot of progress. We have a lot of people in this country that invest in Nigeria, so cutting down on that corruption element is very important to us and Buhari will be able to do that.”

    I’m sure we all know that Trump’s endorsement of Buhari’s efforts did not come from the two leaders’ momentary interactions at the White House. He must have been duly briefed by the relevant officials before making the pronouncement. And so, it was Buhari’s moment to exhale. How many of our leaders in the recent past enjoyed that singular honour of being officially recognised as an anti-corruption czar? If we wail at him for his doddering docility in handling some germane national issues, why can’t we hail him where he has excelled as a leader?

    • Continued online www.staging.thenationonlineng.net

  • Because this Senate isn’t anyone’s fiefdom…

    ORDINARILY, the Senate of any nation in a constitutional democracy is conceived to be an arena for informed wisdom, cross-fertilization of productive ideas with an almost limitless tolerance for dissention. It is a place where people either agree to disagree or disagree to agree. It is for this reason that, oftentimes, the majority is sure to have its way while the minority will have its say. Essentially, it is a gathering of equals in which leadership is picked at the discretion of members who represent various constituencies across the federation. By all sense and purposes, the Nigerian Senate as it was then and as it is presently construed should not be any different. Members are expected to freely ventilate their opinions, political thoughts and choices without let or hindrance as long as such is done within the bounds of the laws of the land in dignified manner. Age is not necessarily a barrier to the lofty ideals that such law-making body all over the world sets for itself. However, it is assumed that those privileged to be in a chamber with the arduous task of formulating laws for the good governance of the country must exhibit some level of gray-haired perceptive mindset and comportment in discharging that responsibility. It should be a gathering of serious-minded patriots and not a conclave for rascally display of ego-tripping buffoonery and hollow charade.

    It is a pity that, some 18 years after Nigeria’s fresh foray into democratic governance, the nation’s highest legislative body is yet to grasp all the fine ethos of representative governance highlighted above despite its pretenses to such. The hallowed chamber, as it were, has been desecrated by the despicable acts and serial political heresy of brigands occupying the sacred seats. The mace, which is the symbol of legislative authority, has been dazed in a maze of deadly punches and unrestrained sacrilege. It has been laid bare of its power. For all we know, it could just be one of the mere artistic works engraved with the nation’s coat of arms regularly hawked on the streets to, perhaps, remind us that we still have a country no matter how battered. It may be a harsh verdict but it is the sad reality of a country still battling for a governance identity despite countless trials. The truth is: as long as the National Assembly continues to see itself as the alternative government in line to take over from a bumbling executive and for as long as it is run at the whim of a leader with the power to distribute ‘juicy’ freebies, it will continue to be buffeted with sour tomatoes in addition to taking a prime place as an object of ridicule.

    To be candid, I had often nursed the fear that the 8th National Assembly, especially the Senate, was a time bomb waiting to explode going by the desperation with which its present leadership grabbed power. The cowboy style with which the leadership heralded itself into power marked the beginning of what we are witnessing today. Right before our eyes, the All Progressives Congress’ birthright to control that arm of government was traded off to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party by those who place selfish interest over honour, dignity and party supremacy. And so, embedded in the ruling APC is a powerful force that, right from inception, was poised to frustrate it if the executive doesn’t pander to certain demands from the legislature. That, to me, is what the President Muhammadu Buhari government has been battling with after the euphoria of his grave confession of being ready to work with whosoever emerged as the Senate President had fizzled out. It was quite clear that this political neophyte in Aso Rock didn’t understand the dynamics of power neither did he know what he was toying with by opting to work with an opponent that obviously wasn’t interested in working with him or with his party. His enemies are his fiendish friends who share the same table with him.

    Today, Nigerians remain the collective victims of that political gamble of the 2015 Senate leadership chicanery. It is one of the pivotal reasons why the Buhari change agenda has remained comatose. And it is the reason why the Senate is being run like a fiefdom by a band of brigands who would do anything to muzzle any form of opposition even by their own members. That is why Senator Ovie Omo-Agege could be suspended without due regards for the courts or even the rules and principles that ought to guide the conduct of the Senate. When you try to interrogate why a duly elected Senator should be suspended for 181 days or 90 legislative days, all you get are tendentious excuses that stand logic on its head.  Is it not laughable that, in this age and time, a senator could be ‘sanctioned’ for associating with some of his colleagues to form the Parliamentary Support Group for the President of his nation? How can holding a dissenting opinion in a parliament become punishable by suspension? And where, in the world, do you punish a man for seeking a judicial interpretation to his rights and privileges as a lawmaker and citizen of a country?

    In the first place, we wouldn’t have needed a legislature if it is assumed that those that would gather in the chamber would just rubber stamp the decision of the leadership. There wouldn’t have been any need for debates, arguments, lobbying and even voting. The legislature, if there was to be one, would just draft its Act and order the President to sign into law as it attempted to do with the amendment of the sequence of election in the Electoral Act. That can never be the ideal in any political structure. Unfortunately, our Senate is peopled by men and women who wear their ego on padded shoulders with an overdose of hollow triumphalism. They spit on the same law they are meant to guide and guard jealously. They rape, abuse and trample on the Constitution of the land with benumbing gusto. In case they don’t know, the 1999 Constitution (as amended by the National Assembly) is very clear on how a lawmaker can be removed.  Sections 68 and 69 of the 1999 Constitution exhaustively states that he could choose to vacate his seat or resign; if he dies then he is automatically deleted; if he is recalled by registered voters or electors in his electoral constituency; and decampment from the party platform on which he was elected (without a division in that party). A lawmaker may also be removed by a court or tribunal of competent jurisdiction. Therefore, it stands to reason that when you bar a man for 90 legislative days simply because he ventilated his dissention to a bill that aimed to rubbish the political fortunes of a President that he supports, you have effectively removed him from his officially assigned post as an elected member among equals. What were Saraki and his men thinking anyway? Or could this be a carryover of the master/servant relationship that exists between state governors and members of state houses assembly whose main duty was to grovel at every prompting of the Excellency?

     

    By the way, those fawning senators nudging the leadership to arbitrarily suspend one of them outside the extant act and rules are a bigger threat to democracy. Or would they claim to be ignorant of Section 21 of the Legislative Houses (Powers and Privileges) Act, 2018, which stipulates that a member of a Legislative House may be suspended but such a suspension should be limited to 48 hours? Were they also unaware of Order 67(4) of the Senates Standing Orders, 2015 which clarifies that a Senator cannot be suspended for more than 14 days if he commits a serious discretion? So where did this Senate derive the power to suspend any member for more than the stipulated days not minding the fact that, in law, these orders become invalid as they are inconsistent with the Constitution? Oh, has the Senate chosen to ignore the judgment of the court that it has no power to suspend any member in a suit filed by Senator Ali Ndume against it? Could it be possible that these men and women we trusted to make laws that would ensure our wellbeing didn’t care a hoot about different court pronouncements that bar them from arrogating to themselves the powers to suspend any member from the case involving a member of the Bauchi State House of Assembly to that of Hon. Danna Usman and the Kaduna State House of Assembly and even that of Hon. Dino Melaye (as he then was) versus the House of Representatives? By the way, could embattled Senator Melaye be part of this act of callous brigandage purportedly led by a man who thought he could run things the way he has been leading his fiefdom in the North Central by the nose?

    One thing is clear though: this Senate of intrigues, treachery and brazen impunity may as well be digging its own grave without knowing it. Those laughing with scorn now may end up in the pit they thought they had dug for those who dare to be different. It is just a question of time. And that time ticks dangerously close.

  • Corruption and the whimsical alibis of the leeches

    Slowly but assuredly, it is beginning to sink into our subconscious that Nigeria’s survival as a nation is dependent on how it handles the monster called corruption. Though yet to be released to the public, a review of a book aptly titled,“Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind The Headlines” and written by the former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, suggests that much still needs to be done to tame this corrosive menace. Besides, from her testimonial, it is evidently not a fight for the lily-livered or the faint hearted. If the renowned economist had to go through the traumatic experiences recounted in the book just because she insisted on doing things the right way, it stands to reason that unimaginable heist could have been perpetrated under a more tempered, understanding and condescending minister. And that should really scare us not just because of the riveting tales Okonjo-Iweala told in her book but because of the tradition of mind blowing larceny that daily goes on in the nation’s honey pot—-the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

     

    Listen to her in a sneak preview published in ThisDay newspaper earlier in the week: “For me, it was also an issue of personal responsibility. I believe that the fight against corruption must start with individuals who choose to take responsibility. Years of development experience have shown me that regardless of the instruments, such as incentives and disincentives, that are available to reformers, corruption cannot be fought successfully from the outside or by outsiders. It must be by ‘insiders and from the inside’.” She would then go on to reveal how her insistence on due process and accountability not only led to the kidnap of her aged mother but also a series of threats that could have resulted in her permanent incapacitation but for providence. In all this, the activities of the NNPC stands out as a festering sore with the powerful briefcase contractors insisting that  they must be paid billions of naira for services not rendered even after a forensic audit blew open the lid off their vicious deceit.

     

    On the face of it, one would have thought that the Jonathan administration did itself some good by prosecuting a number of oil thieves indicted by the House of Representatives report. But, from Okonjo-Iweala\s recap of what happened during that period, it became manifestly clear that she was practically walking on a tight rope without the support of strong institutions that would have made the job easier. Corruption thrives because of insider connivance and harvest of betrayals. Nothing more could justify this than the latest revelations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, detailing how a sleaze worth N1.8bn was clinically effected by some top leaders of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party without anyone raising an eyebrow. The EFCC’s account, in my view, underscores the former minister’s outcry that her attempt to ensure transparency and accountability in the sector was “probably one of the most stressful and dangerous tasks of my job as finance minister!”

     

    How, for instance, would she have known that some hawks and fat cats within the system were beneficiaries of the purchase of vehicles worth N1.8bn which was part of the proceeds fleeced from the same sector she could have easily lost life in a bid to sanitize its workings? According to a report published by this paper on Monday, the current Chairman of the PDP, Uche Secondus, and two of his colleagues in the Jonathan government were beneficiaries of the exotic car gifts worth such humongous amount. While the Secondus vehicle gifts were said to gulp a whopping N472m (55 vehicles including two ‘treated’ or bulletproof ones), that of the former chairman of the party and ex-governor of Bauchi State, Alhaji Adamu Muazu was N504m and Senator Albert Bassey, former Commissioner of Finance in Akwa Ibom State equally received car largesse worth N303m.

     

    Want to know the interesting thing about these special gifts? Reports indicated that they were bought with proceeds from the Strategic Alliance Agreement between Energy Drilling Concept Nigeria Limited owned by Chief Jide Omokore and the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a deal that is under investigation following suspicion that it was a conduit pipe through which the powerful cabal in that sector under the Jonathan government siphon billions of dollars for themselves and cronies. None of the three party top shots mentioned received anything less than 20 assorted state of the art vehicles from this generously wonderful ‘philanthropist’ in the oil sector. And what reasons did they give for willingly accepting the gifts without questioning the source? The report said that Secondus, in his statement before the EFCC, claimed that: “All these gifts came to me from the Chairman of Atlantic Energy, Chief Jide Omokore over the years. I am not aware of the proceeds from Strategic Alliance Agreement being used to purchase the gifts.” And then Bassey had this to say: “The vehicles are gifts from Jide Omokore on the need to ensure my personal safety. I have known him for 19 years since 1997. They are also contributions to my governorship campaigns in 2014.”

     

    Unless the meaning of ‘over the years’ has changed, I wonder what Secondus meant by that statement. Come to think of it, we are speaking of 10 Hiace High Roof at N8.5m each, 15 Hiace Mid-roof at N8.5m each, a Range Rover Autobiography at N50m, Mercedes G63 at N36m and two Toyota Hilux Cabin Pick Up at N14m all paid for on April 8, 2014! Bassey’s many cars were also listed as follows: one BMW X5BP (Bullet Proof) at N50m bought in 2010; Infinity OX 5BP at N45m bought in 2012; Range Rover at N40m bought in 2014; 11 Toyota Hiace High Roof and D Cabin bought in 2014 and set of vehicles worth N83m also bought in 2014. However, the details of Adamu’s car gifts were missing probably because he is yet to be interrogated. It is not in any doubt that he would likely come up with the same story of accepting freely given gifts from a friend without questioning the source of the purchase. Curiously, the same tendentious excuse was given by all those alleged to have benefitted from the $1.2 billion arms money recklessly disbursed from the Office of the National Security Adviser to Jonathan, Col. Sambo Dasuki. They all assume it was money that had been properly appropriated! Can you beat that!

     

    In this same country, a former first lady was on record to have claimed that the mind-blowing billions of Naira (counting, still going on, more still being discovered) linked to her accounts were mostly gifts from well-wishers and friends of her husband. Maybe the word ‘gift’ is now a password for untainted sudden wealth, indicative of how the privileged few grow their personal human capital. Whatever it is, we should be concerned because of its implication to our collective wellbeing. But we are not. Instead, we wish them away, describing it as a needless witch hunt of the elements in the opposition. These are the little, little things killing us and putting our future in jeopardy—the soft but deadly punches knocking out our brains.

     

    Okonjo-Iweala was right in describing the vast majority of Nigerians as honest, hardworking whose simple desire was to see a government that provides basic services. But how on earth would that be achievable in a system which, in spite of all efforts, continue to allow key decisions to be taken at the whim of the leader  without efficient institutions to stop the abuse? With an errant National Assembly which is more interested in feeding fat on the system and a judiciary which Okonjo-Iweala described as frustratingly slow, would Nigeria ever reach that moral high when corruption would be fought from the inside by the ‘insiders’ for the benefits of all? Maybe Okonjo-Iweala’s book would give us an insight. Maybe it would not. Be that as it may, there is no better time than now to start being a bit more circumspect in the way we wave off corrosive corruption as a norm instead of a deadly affliction!