The Nation Newspaper

Category: Yomi Odunuga

  • Dapo Abiodun, Mr. Ibu and man’s vainglorious folly

    In life, some success stories deserve to be celebrated and recorded for posterity so that humanity can have deeper understanding of quotidian living, its pitfalls and the eventual triumphs of a resilient spirit. While acknowledging the shallowness in the triumphalism with which some characters celebrate dubious success stories in different areas of human endeavours, we cannot deny the existence of real and moving stories that should reinforce our faith that it is not finished as long as we do not give up on our dreams. Of course, the latest of such extraordinary stories is the Tiger Woods’ victory at the Augusta Masters Open where, against all odds, the rejected golfer became the pillar of strength to many who had given up the hope of ever bouncing back. In many ways, the story of the Governor-elect of Ogun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun and a testimonial rendered by Nollywood celebrity, Mr.Ibu, were only different shades of the Tiger Woods’ extraordinary feat – the triumph of the resilience of the human spirit – when you look at the obstacles placed before them by close friends and associates.

    A common thread was the loneliness of the long-distance runner; sometimes, it can be really lonely and depressing along some portions of the road. But personally, I find the testimonies of these men inspiring especially in this season of wonky legs where dogs conveniently eat dogs with unusual relish. For Ibu, his rags to fame and fortune tale can be paraphrased thus (and as relieved by him in one of the churches in a video that went viral some weeks past): One fateful morning, a friend that has accommodated him in a face-me-I-face-you apartment in a Lagos suburb, called him aside and informed him of his decision to lock him out as he planned to travel to the village for Christmas. Ibu had assumed it was all a rude joke until the guy started flinging his belonging through the door. With tears welling in his eyes and N20 life savings dancing in his pocket, Ibu had opted to take the easiest way out of his mystery by jumping into the open well in the compound. They say cowards die many times before their death, right? Somehow, mother luck had other plans for Ibu. The suicide attempt failed and an emotional song serenading from a neighbours room, Michael Bolton’s “When I’m Back on My Feet Again” somehow gave him a reason to pick up the broken pieces and trudge on. He abandoned the suicide mission as another friend asked him to escort him to somewhere in Surulere where an audition was taking place and where he, fortuitously, met a friend who insisted that he must move to his house that day. Long story short, he moved his scattered property to the friend’s house, made a break in the movie industry, bought his first car, built houses and is now living his dream. What if I had taken the plunge into the well? Mr. Ibu asked the gathering at the Freedom for All Nations Outreach. He started the life-changing testimony by admonishing the congregation to “let this story teach you a lesson. “

    What lesson, you ask. Well, it is simple. At the point when his ‘rich’’, one-room apartment friend decided to play god, threw his nose up in the air and, inadvertently, set Mr. Ibu on a suicidal journey of no return, God stepped in and providence availed for him. Surely, Bolton’s track couldn’t have come at a better time. His eventual triumph was a testimonial that man’s folly and egoistic shenanigan shouldn’t be a barrier to one’s dream of greater tomorrow. They are mere cogs in the wheel of progress.

    Perhaps, nothing testifies to this than the trajectory that Prince Dapo Abiodun had to pass through before he could snatch victory from the jaws of imminent defeat. Of course, we all know that the odds were stacked against him by his once-bosom friend that became his fiercest nightmare, a demagogue with a bloated ego. Abiodun, in a testimony relayed to an audience at a Redeemed Church of God in London, said he practically went through hell in his bid to become the governor of his state. The most shocking aspect of his experience was the fact that those he thought he could trust with his two eyes closed were the ones beating the drum for his downfall and disgrace.

    Listen to him: “I thought that God will not forgive me if I didn’t come forward to share a bit of my testimony and my ‘only God’ moment. I stand here as a testimony of the awesomeness of the Almighty God, and the fact that God is greater than man. God will be God and man will continue to be man, because if it were for men, I will not be the Governor-elect of Ogun state. I have been in the private sector, but I have always had a passion for politics. In 1997, I made my first show in politics; I ran for the senate. I became a senator-elect, and I was the youngest ever elected senator in Nigeria. I was so young that there was a controversy that I was probably too young to be sworn-in because the age limit then was forty and I was not quite forty. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Head of state then died and that republic came to an end. I tried again in 2015; I was persuaded to run for the senate, and I didn’t quite win. Well, I won, I was rigged out, and I went to court. I won at the tribunal and my opponent went and appealed and it was overturned.

    “I was so unhappy. I thought to myself: ‘This is surely it, I’m done with politics; I must just face my business and leave all these politicians alone. They are not trustworthy, they are not reliable, and it is just a waste of money and resources.’ As time went on, in 2017, I had an unfortunate incident. I lost my first son, and life could not have dealt me a worst blow. I withdrew into my shell. For over six months I could not function. I could not go to work, I didn’t see people; I became a complete recluse. Then, in 2018, someone came to me and said will I consider going back into politics. Of course, I said never. Time after time I will be talked to, and then it was that I should go to the senate, and I said I was not interested. I have done this twice, so I’m not interested; God definitely does not want me to be a senator. At some point in time, someone asked me: ‘would you consider being Governor?’ I said that I will consider, but I will first go to God and see what God has to say about it. To cut the long story short, I became convinced that God indeed wanted me to be Governor of Ogun state. I could not explain it. I sat down with the incumbent Governor and had a chat with him. Of course, he said ‘No, never; I will offer you senate’. I said I don’t want senate. Eventually, our Pastor Prof, the Vice President intervened. He now said: ‘maybe you should consider this senate.’ I said okay. I will do it, only to find out that the incumbent Governor that had indeed offered me this senate didn’t mean it. He actually was just leading me on. When that became clear, I went back to Pastor Prof and said: ‘Pastor Prof, God is telling me something. I am going to be the Governor of Ogun state. Like the Pastor said: ‘it was against all odds.’

    And that, in a nutshell, was what Abiodun summarized as “the most turbulent, most bumpy, most challenging, most difficult” tale of a political heroism in which the “incumbent did everything humanly possible to stop me. This is considering the fact that this incumbent has been a friend of mine for over 25 years.” Put bluntly, Ibikunle Amosun’s folly and buffoonery is wreathed in hollow triumphalism. Without thinking of the God factor in the affairs of men, he ascribed to himself the Alpha and Omega of others’ fate—the godfather of godfathers. He was huffing and puffing with a swag that defies logic. He forgets that the fall of humpty dumpty is one of the tragic renditions of all times, the emptiness of it all. How, for example, did Mr. Ibu’s former benefactor feel when he heard that the man he threw out in the sun to dry was now dancing in the sun to His glory and using his rags-to-riches experience to inspire thousands of hopeless people to get their mojo back?

    How are those that swore on their grannies’ graves that Dapo Abiodun would never be in charge of the levers of governance in Ogun State feeling now that he has set up a transition committee in that state with the incumbent saying he would stop being governor on May 28, 2019? Oh! I thought he was in it till the grim reaper puts a tone of finality on his tenure. In short, how does it feel to throw away 25 years of solid friendship on the altar of political self-immolation? How does betrayal taste in the mouths of these persons anyway?

    Here, Bolton’s lyrics resonate:

    Soon these tears will all be dryin’

    Soon these eyes will see the sun

    Might take time, might take time, but I’ll see it

    When I’m back on my feet again

    When I’m back on my feet again

    I’ll walk proud down this street again

    And they’ll all look at me again

    And they’ll see that I’m strong

    Abiodun and Mr. Ibu’s tears dried up and there came a soothing balm of victory that etched permanent smiles on their faces. One can only hope they remember to apply the same spirit of untainted love for humanity in their dealing with others as they progress. Maybe we should also ask those who pilloried Woods in all those 14 years in the wilderness how they felt when, through determination, grit and divine help, the man broke the chains around him and got back on his feet again in Augusta some days back. When, I ask, will men learn to stop playing gods in the affairs of fellow men? When?

  • Oga Buhari, lamentation time has elapsed!

    Sir, when millions of Nigerian citizens have endured your long-running jeremiad, it becomes even more necessary to listen to one of them through this column. There is palpable angst in the land over your do-nothing, nose-in-the-air attitude and its growing by the day. That, by the way, is what informs this missive of mine and it is requires your urgent attention.

    My dear President Muhammadu Buhari, it is my hope that this letter meets you in good spirit. Why not, anyway? All things have worked together for your good. In spite of the odds stacked against you in the recently concluded elections, you emerged tops and your party equally won, even in areas where many had thought you would have your nose rubbed on a hard surface. Somehow, you won the vote of confidence and that should mean something to you. Having scaled that hurdle, the entire country now looks on to you to make the difference in their lives and be the leader the country needs at this critical moment where life has become quite brutish, brutal and bloody. To be sincere, Nigerians have been drained by too much pummeling by the vagaries of quotidian living. Most of them barely go through the drill. The other day, a report by the United Nations described your citizens, Your Excellency, as having about the largest gathering of the world’s hungriest. By the way, what does that mean? Does it mean that we have progressively climbed the ladder of infamy from a position of being the happiest people in the world to the unflattering status of having the highest collection of society’s dregs?  And should that be the sad narrative of a nation that is blessed with oil and dozens of untapped mineral resources? No sir!

    You may wonder why I am so concerned about the UN report. It is because it has everything to do with the multi-dimensional crises plaguing this Lugardian contraption from insurgency to kidnapping, from banditry to cattle rustling, from armed robbery to the sheer lunacy of ritual killings and political brigandage. You may not like it sir, but the fact remains that our national flag, though decked in luscious green and with pure white, is dripping with the blood of innocent souls that are daily being sent to their early graves while your government continues with its shocking tradition of offering tendentious platitudes. The reality is that such hollow rituals do not matter anymore. They neither bring back the dead nor stop the endless wailing by those mourning the loss of loved ones. They have become used to the lamentations in high places and the endless circle of promises to arrest the situation while the killers just giggle with relish. Our purity has been stained with crimson red signifying doom. Our sanity has been abused and our virginity yanked off by these banal rapists. Oh, never mind my poetry. It is meant for the deep.

    Sir, a careful study of the UN 2018 report on food crisis in the country suggests that whatever improvements that may have been recorded could be wiped off by the resurgence in insurgency, banditry, kidnappings and all other forms of despicable activities. When you look at it, the brazenness with which these criminal elements operate in the hinterland should call for a drastic measure by your government and the security agencies. It is not enough for the military and other security agencies to fill our eardrums with how they waylaid bandits, insurgents and cattle rustlers with heavy casualties when the numbers of these blood curdling attacks keep increasing daily. As things stand today, the Abuja/Kaduna road has become a veritable kidnappers’ haven – a route through which bandits earn millions from their abduction – for-ransom activities while citizens literally tread with trepidation all through. It is such bad that high ranking security personnel would rather struggle for space with ordinary citizens at the train stations rather than risk direct confrontation with these criminals – even when they have an option of full militarized convoys. The few who still ply the road do so with their hearts in their mouths. The Abuja/Okene road is not any different. Motorists and passengers have loads of sad tales to recount on how kidnappers randomly kill and make fortunes from their captives. Countless victims hardly survive the ordeal even after ransom had been paid. Many of these hot points where these evils are being perpetrated daily are scattered across the country. When you add that to the acts of criminality in the cities, towns and villages, you would understand why the President cannot afford to continue sitting on his hands with the hope that things would sort themselves out with time. No, it requires more than that, sir!

    I read the other day, my President, how you lamented about how these toxic elements have turned you into one of the unhappiest leaders in the world. Awww! That was so touching. You also waxed lyrical, wondering how anyone would have imagined that you were indifferent to the “senseless killings of my fellow citizens by bandits.” You said and I quote: ‘I am human and I understand the pains of the victims and their families who have been traumatized and impoverished by constant ransom demands by bandits. The politicization of the tragedy reveals the darkest sides of our primitive politics. Almost every week, I summon my security chiefs to get an update on the strategies being devised to defeat these mass murderers.”

    Read Also: Buhari to security chiefs: be ruthless with bandits

    You said so many other heartwarming things, Mr. President. But, sir, words that are not backed by actions that impacted lives positively hardly make any meaning to the right thinking members of the society. The key to making yourself one of the happiest leaders in the world lies not in blowing hollow verbiage but in the action you take to halt the killings and rein in the terrorists, mass murderers and arsonists. Security of lives and property are crucial responsibilities of all governments all over the world and it is part of the very fundamental aspects of Nigeria’s Constitution that you swore to uphold. Yours cannot be an exception. If you have been meeting with your security chiefs constantly like you said, what exactly have they been telling you? If you have been meeting their demands for funding and equipment purchase, why do those murderous elements continue to slaughter, maim and destroy with rapacious gusto? Are the funds being deployed to the appropriate quarters? Do they buy the required equipment to prosecute the war? How much of intelligence gathering do they employ in the discharge of the onerous task before them? Who are the backers and funders of these murderous elements? And why is it difficult to name, shame and prosecute the so-called traditional rulers that connive with these bandits? In short, when would we start reaping positive results from the billions of dollars being spent on the war yearly?

    These are the germane questions that millions of Nigerians want answers to. They did not vote the President in for a second term, just for him to fruitlessly continue blaming our “primitive politics” or certain seeming untouchable monarchs for this canvas of blood. When Buhari says he has ordered “rapid and robust deployment of troops to all the areas currently under attack from bandits” and that his administration is, more than ever before, “determined to tackle this challenge ferociously until these remorseless killers are crushed and utterly defeated”, Nigerians want him to walk the talk. Sir, that cannot be asking for too much. Or is it? For many years, they have listened to leaders who say the right things and recline on their chairs as the rot continues to decimate our humanity. Mr. Buhari, they say, would be treading that path if after his emotive outburst earlier in the week, nothing concrete is done to reduce these senseless killings and general insecurity in the land. Simply put, the message is: Buhari should drop this book of lamentation in the closet and begin to clean up this mess. We want results, not mere jeremiads!

  • Ndume: Will this cook spoil the broth?

    Ali Ndume will always be Ali Ndume the rebel that wouldn’t play by the rules.
    For him, it is almost his calling to dance a different style even if in a choreographed medley. He is the lone runner that requires the support of others to breast the tape first. And so, rather than get needlessly agitated over his decision to kick against his party’s preference for Senator Ahmed Lawan for the position of the Senate President in the soon-to-be-inaugurated 9th National Assembly, those who have followed his political bacchanalia over the years would understand that this Senator, who initially represented Chibok/Damboa/Gwoza Federal Constituency of Borno State in House of Representatives, was merely playing to type. In fact, he gets some sort of kicks from this game of deceit and self-conceit. Why did I say this? Ndume’s trajectory, as espoused in a piece this writer penned with a colleague, Onyedi Ojiabor, on June 27, 2015 painted, in crying words, an image of a man who would grasp at every straws to remain high and above his peers. It would have been surprising if Ndume, the sole beneficiary of the Senator Bukola Saraki leadership coup of 2015 had not seen anything wrong in the All Progressive Congress’ attempt at forestalling a repeat of that legislative heist in the 9th Senate. It is not just how this controversial senator rolls. No, not at all.

    In the piece titled Ndume: A leader’s garland for rebellion, I surmised: “The name, Mohammed Ali Ndume, means different things to different people, especially those who have followed the developments at the nation’s highest legislative body—the Senate—in the last eight years (make that 12 years if you will). While quite a number of senators have come and gone without making any impression worth writing about, Senator Ndume’s case is different. His entrance into the nation’s national consciousness was without its fascinating, even if disturbing, drama. Today, Ndume is a focus of media attention for another reason. In a brazen rebellion against the wishes of the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the Senator from Borno State, the hotspot of the killings, bombings and violent attacks by the members of the Boko Haram sect, Ndume was picked as Senate Majority Leader by the President of the Senate, Senator Bukola Saraki. His emergence, just like Saraki’s some few weeks past, has torn the political calculus of the APC into shreds and raised serious fundamental questions about party’s supremacy on the issues relating to key appointments. But who is Ndume and what does his emergence portend for the 8th National Assembly and the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari? As an All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) politician then, Ndume was elected to represent Chibok/Damboa/Gwoza Federal Constituency in April 2003 and was re-elected in April 2007 on the same platform.  He was appointed Minority Leader in the House of Representatives where he was a vocal critic of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as he was always heaping the blame for the country’s woes on the party’s bumbling leadership. For example, he said in an August 2010 interview: “The PDP in the last 11 years has vandalized Nigeria; they have only introduced kidnapping, assassination, militancy, armed robbery, power degeneration and widespread religious crisis.” It was, however, a twist of irony that Ndume defected to the PDP, the same party he was criticising in December 2010. He cited alleged injustices as his reason for leaving the ANPP.

    “To further justify his defection to PDP, he claimed the people from the grassroots of Southern Borno were solidly behind him and his action. Ndume claimed that he was not being given a level-playing field in the competition with other ANPP aspirants for the candidature in the Senate election. Sources close to the intricate political game playing out in Borno then explained that Ndume’s defection to PDP was mainly due to the sour relationship with the then leader of the ANPP in the state, Governor Ali Modu Sheriff. His defection to the PDP was seen by observers as a major blow to the ANPP. Ndume was considered the major financial backbone of the ANPP in Borno-South senatorial zone, and was considered one of the most dynamic of the lawmakers from the Northeast zone. Following his defection, the PDP re-opened the sale of nomination forms. Alhaji Sanda Garba, who had been the only aspirant for the South Borno Senate seat, stepped down to pave the way for Ndume as the PDP candidate.

    “In the election, Ndume was declared winner with 146,403 votes, ahead of Dr. Asaba Vilita Bashir of the ANPP with 133,734 votes and Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) with 20,414 votes.  That marked the beginning of Ndume’s romance with a party he once vilified with a rare vigour and passion. Moving with the political tide during the merger of forces that gave the PDP a run for the presidential slot in 2015, Ndume, again in company with other Senators from Borno State, defected from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to actualize his desire to return to the Senate. He won his election in the March 29, 2015 National Assembly polls. He quickly began to show more than a passing interest in the Senate Presidency. Ndume quickly aligned himself with a group of Senators who tagged themselves “Senators of Like Minds”, principally formed by Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, to actualize his (Saraki’s) Senate Presidency.

    “Ndume was among the Northeast Senators who disowned Senator Ahmed Lawan’s endorsement by the zone.  He criticised what he called “the overzealousness of Ahmed Lawan,” and insisted that Lawan was unlikely to emerge Senate President. On June 9th, 2015, at the inauguration of the 8th Senate, Ndume stood as the Rock of Gibraltar in the Senate chamber to give support to the emergence of Senator Saraki in disobedience to the APC leadership directive. He was, later the same day, nominated to run for the position of Deputy President of the Senate, but he was defeated by Senator Ike Ekweremadu, a PDP Senator from Enugu West. That week, Saraki announced Ndume as the Senate Majority Leader, again, in total disregard to APC leadership’s instruction that Lawan should be made the Senate Majority Leader. Ndume was said to have been nominated and endorsed for the position by the North East APC Senate caucus.

    “Political observers see his emergence as the prize for the brazen way the Senators of “Like Minds” stood against the wishes of the leadership of the APC to nominate its preferred candidates for the top positions in the National Assembly. This set of politicians not only worked against the realization of the wishes of the party but also went into an unholy alliance with senators in the opposition PDP, which culminated in the election of Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President. Ndume’s nomination and subsequent confirmation by Saraki as Majority Leader is, therefore, being read as his epaulette for the treachery and damning rebellion that signpost ominous consequence not only for the party but also for the nation.”

    Well, is there anything to add to this? We need not rehash how, when the cookies crumbled, Ndume was left in the sun to dry by the triumvirates of Saraki, Dino Melaye and Ike Ekweremadu when he was suspended and eventually removed as Senate Leader. In a sudden twist of fate, Ndume’s wreath of treachery which he wore with extravagant aplomb while it lasted was gifted to Lawan as a garland of honour for loyalty to party supremacy. It was the stepping stone to Lawan’s eventual endorsement as the heir apparent to the Senate President seat by President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC. And so, it runs against commonsense to expect Ndume, of all persons, to accept the fact that fate is playing a fast one on him. And knowing that treachery still has a pivotal role to play in the scheme of things with the Peoples Democratic Party senators-elect threatening to vie for principal positions in the Senate, Ndume knows that the cards are not entirely stacked against him should the ruling party sleep on his hands again.  That is why no one should shove off his capacity for mischief and ability to be the extra cook that spoils the broth.

    Will he make himself available to be used as the one that scuttles his party’s plans to take full charge of the affairs in the National Assembly? Is he another Saraki in waiting having released a nine-point agenda earlier this week despite his party’s position? The days ahead are pregnant with all sorts of political revelries. And the answers to these riddles lie in the belly of time. So, let’s wait on time.

  • Will Buhari sit on his hands once again?

    FOR the life of me, I want to believe that the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Affairs, Senator Ita Enang, was merely playing to the gallery when he reportedly expressed his principal’s unwillingness to play any crucial role in the process leading to the emergence of a new leadership for the incoming 9th Assembly. It is either the ex-lawmaker was speaking for himself without the mandate of Aso Rock or he is the proverbial fifth columnist parading the corridors of power. Ita Enang, in case he actually wants us to believe this joke, must have taken us for a fool. I would have labeled him the crooked firewood that spoils the broth. But I doubt if that was the intention of this fine gentleman. How on earth would President Muhammadu Buhari – knowing the magnitude of after-effects that followed his inaction and the surprise emergence of a scheming Sarako in 2015 – now sit on his hands and allow those characters in the legislature to berth another calamitous treachery that would further inflict irreparable damage on his ailing government? For, if we must say the obvious truth, that was exactly the leeway that a gang of selfish bandits exploited to invade and hijack the 8th National Assembly and then, force a twist in the tale of the executive/legislature relationship that proved deadly for the ruling All Progressives Congress which then found itself dining on the same table with its worst foes.

    Listen to Enang spewing hollow patter: “The principle of President Buhari is that each arm of government should function according to what the Constitution says which is that every person in government should do the right thing. He will not go beyond what the constitution allows him and every arm of government should stick to its responsibilities.”

    Now that is pure balderdash and Enang, a serial winner of the House of Representatives’ ticket from his Akwa Ibom State Senatorial district before his emergence as Senator, should know this for a fact. Yes, due respect must be given to the principles of separation of power as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution. But nothing stops the leadership of a ruling party to take steps that would help it in the smooth implementation of policies by having the right persons in key positions in a critical arm like the highest law-making body in the land. It is called lobbying in other democracies and it is legal. It doesn’t have to come through the force of state power but it can be orchestrated through persuasion and appeal to commonsense. What makes democracy tick, by the way, is not the absence of conflict or divergence of opinions. Instead, it is the synergy that exists among the various arms that often disagree to agree or, sometimes agree to disagree. And if I may ask, how many of such did we see in practice in the present dispensation under the adversarial leadership of a certain Senator Bukola Saraki and his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara?

    Yoked under the burden of a putrefying and choking air of mutual distrust, the Buhari administration’s faltering steps started manifesting immediately the Saraki/Dogara legislative coup was hatched. Of course, it was not helped by the fact that Saraki had to concede the seat of the Deputy Senate President to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party despite the fact that the APC had the upper hand in terms of number. It was a complete sell out. A shambolic one at that. In his confessional statement afterwards, Saraki, I remember, revealed certain details that suggested that he was ready to damn the consequence in his vaunting ambition to become the President of the Senate. He said he slept in one of the rickety cars in the National Assembly car lot and sneaked into the chambers whilst some of his party loyalists had gone to the International Conference Centre to attend a meeting summoned by Buhari and the APC leadership with the aim of reaching a concrete agreement on the candidates for the positions. The meeting had barely started before news filtered in that this gang of coup plotters had hatched the most treacherous trick on everyone. At that point, Buhari had no option than to succumb to the blackmail, waxing lyrical about his preparedness to work with whatever political miscalculations emanated from the Saraki coup. Well, it turned out to be the biggest mistake of his life and we are all living witnesses to that misjudgment by this neophyte in politics!

    Should Buhari allow thunder to strike him twice by sitting idle while another band of self-conceited sadists is allowed to seize the gavel of legislative impunity, the joke would be on him this time. There should be a limit to how one wrings one’s hands in stupefaction amid the rot in a broken nation. Buhari and the party oligarch should rein in the errant irritants in their fold. Nigeria cannot afford another four years of executive/legislative feud in which sheer ego defines the currency of political cum economic decision making process. Let me, for emphasis sake, crave your indulgence to rehash some paragraphs from an earlier piece titled “The emergence of Saraki, Dogara and the Buhari Presidency” which was published on June 2015. The short piece forecasts the grim realities that awaited the Buhari administration and most of the things did come to pass.

    “Of course, there is no denying the fact that egos have been bruised on both sides of the divide and it would take a lot of political maturity and understanding to weave a web of unity round the betrayal. As things stand today, the task before President Buhari is how to put into practical reality his promise to work with any leadership put in place by the lawmakers without his interference. He must realise that he is now being described in some quarters as “ baba go slow”, equating him with a one- time governor of Lagos state, late Chief Michael Otedola whose administration was criticized for its tardiness and inaction. Almost two weeks after his inauguration, he is yet to appoint key officials like Secretary to the Government, Chief of Staff, Political Adviser, nor has he given any clear direction of where he is headed.

    “Nigerians are yearning for action, they are tired of promises. The President would also need to mend the broken walls within his party if he must prevent an anticipated encroachment by the PDP which now wields enormous influence in the legislature and may make his work difficult if it so wishes. Being a coalition of strange bedfellows, the APC leadership should not delude itself that it has the overriding power over the NASS leadership as presently constituted. If anything, it should be at the forefront of calming frayed nerves by accepting the choices made by the lawmakers in a democratic setting. Doing anything contrary to this may throw the party into further crisis or even decimate its membership. Since Buhari has declared his intention to work harmoniously with any leadership that emerged, the party needs to respect that decision in order to foster democratic values.”

    Well, we all know how things played out and the consequences of the President’s action and inaction then.  Besides, Buhari cannot afford to sit on the fence and allow some powerful forces to foist a leadership on the National Assembly that could jeopardise the unwritten code of geo-political balancing that is needed for justice and equity. Would he, for example, be comfortable with a legislature whose leadership is picked solely from his geo-political zone all in the guise of non-interference in the affairs of the legislature? Does he know that a region like the South-South deserves to be compensated with a key position in the Senate having been denied of any such privilege since this democratic journey began on May 29, 2019? And does he know that these things matter because our brand of home-grown democracy survives on this unwritten code of delicate balancing? How then can Enang be speaking for a man whose fingers were almost burnt beyond recognition some years back for daring to dine with enemies within? How? Must leaders fail to learn from history and thereby run the people they lead into a ditch or cul-de-sac one more time, causing regrets for all?

  • Their excellences’ path to political perdition

    In an article published on this page in December 5, 2018 and titled ‘This conclave of Jibrin illusionists’, I had surmised that the huge cap-loving Governor of Ogun State, Mr. Ibikunle Amosun, was nothing but a clown should he think that he would pull through that shenanigan of foisting his political lapdog as heir apparent to the seat of the Governor in such a sophisticated state. To be candid, I still wonder how he survived that long when it was obvious that he wouldn’t bulge on the vaunted ambition to install his puppet on the throne. As if he was under the influence of  some narcotic substance mixed with the best local gin money can buy, Amosun kept pressing on with his disrespectful action, lashing on his presumed closeness with President Muhammadu Buhari to cast aspersions on party leaders and even millions of supporters in the state. For months, Amosun and his counterpart in Imo State, Rochas Okorocha played god and dared mere mortals to combat at the poll. They arrayed themselves in garments of unimpeachable immortality, relying on the enormous power conferred on them by a Constitution that goes with a full dose of immunity from being prosecuted for whatever criminal act they may superintend over.

    In Imo, Okorocha’s stretched his political infantilism to dizzying heights. He boasted that no man born of a woman can stop him from making his son-in-law and ex aide, Uche Nwosu, the next best thing that would manage the treasury of the state for another eight years. Whatever confraternity that existed between father-in-law and son-in-law was that strong that Okorocha, like the prankster in Ogun State, was prepared to actualise his plot through a relatively unknown party, Action Alliance which adopted Nwosu after the All Progressives Congress rejected his candidacy. On the other side was Amosun who quickly attached his preferred candidate, Adekunle Akinlade, to the Allied Peoples Movement while the two thin gods got stuck to the APC. It was a classic case of political iberiberism (apologies to Okorocha) as they would later realise. The desperation was palpably discomfiting. While everyone could see the crying stupidity in the action and inaction of these men, the band of yes men around them urged them to keep dancing until they dribbled themselves down the lonely street called infamy.

    People have asked: what kind of devilish pact did these men sign such that they couldn’t think of other choices even when it was manifestly clear that the national leadership of the party would not accept such brazen abuse of power? Well, while that of Okorocha could be summed under the warped political ideology of keeping the juice within the family, Amosun’s theatricality beggars belief. Here, a little summary of Ogun State politics would suffice. Though the state, like the remaining 35 states, has three senatorial zones, it operates an unwritten but strict adherence to a rotational system in which the governorship is either ceded to the Egba or the Ijebu as the case may be. While the Egba is made up of the Egba people and Yewa, the Ijebu also has the Remo and the Ijebu people. You may wish to call it a needless ethnic coloration, but that is the coded undercurrent that has guided the leadership selection template in the state since Chief Olusegun Osoba, an Egba man, emerged as governor in 1999. As would be expected, the table turned to Otunba Gbenga Daniels from Ijebu and he had the privilege of ruling the state for eight years before Amosun from Egba was elected as governor. Therefore, it is not rocket science that every right thinking person had expected Amosun to pick a successor, if he so desires, from the Ijebu zone for political balance and equity. On this matter, there should be no controversy. Or so people thought.

    Unfortunately, Amosun’s arrogance is found to be way higher than his supersonic insignia of office, the extraordinary high cap that he wears with pride. His ego is not only bloated, the man is stuck to his make-believe world of self-conceit. He sees himself as an emperor and he carries himself with a swagger that exhibits that immodesty. Amosun is vain and he regales in that aura of self-importance and infallibility. There are many men of power like that but Amosun’s case is a study in political buffoonery. Here was a man who rode on the popularity of other political heavyweights to the Oke Mosan Government House in Abeokuta. Personally, I remember the long days and anxious nights he spent somewhere in Asokoro, Abuja when, as ex-Senator Amosun, his political future was in shambles having failed to unseat Gbenga Daniels at the courts. I remember the humility with which he engaged some of the persons that were corralled by his ‘political godfathers’ to save him from his misery with varied tasks set before these persons in their areas of competence. The Amosun we saw then was humble, meek and gentle. He wasn’t barking orders neither was he throwing his weight around. Anyway, he had nothing to offer than words of appreciation which came in torrents. That was then.

    They say you would never know a man’s capacity for mischief until you try him power, money or women. Amosun, Okorocha and the ‘Constituted Authority’ in Oyo State represent the physical realities of this wisecrack. But for the inebriating nature of power, no one would have thought that Okorocha, the political lyricist and Martin Luther King’s copycat in his days in the political jungle, would have the temerity to reduce leadership to such a street side joke in Imo. Where serious-minded leaders were busy constructing roads, erecting bridges and providing lasting infrastructural facilities, Okorocha was devoted to erecting statues for all manners of ‘icons’ that he fancies in addition to a laughable establishment of a ministry for happiness and purpose fulfillment. He was brimming with confidence that he had done more than enough for the people and that should guarantee the dream to hand over to an in-law to continue the good works. But the people had a different idea. They saw through the deceit and spoke eloquently at the poll by picking someone else, Emeka Ihedioha, to pilot the affairs of the state in the next four years. Obviously, they were tired of the rude joke in high places.

    In Ogun, Amosun’s capacity for mischief and the ability to ride roughshod on the backs of those that brought him into power was the passion that drives him. He wanted to be the real deal, the power broker in the state’s politics without learning the ropes from the masters. He was mean, vindictive and irascibly stupid. A self-confessed ally of President Buhari, Amosun exploited that window to his peril. At the presidential rally in Abeokuta the other day, he was at the forefront of the disgraceful event in which his thugs pelted the President and his entourage with stones all because he couldn’t stand watching Buhari endorsing Dapo Abiodun as the candidate of the APC in the governorship election. He would rather Buhari endorsed his stooge in the APM whilst also announcing him as the APC senatorial candidate for Ogun Central. Such is the thinking of men with little minds—those who think they are the only wise ones in a gathering of fools.

    Well, the joke was actually on them. By the time the cloud was over, many of such men were consigned to the dustbin of history. From Kwara to Gombe, Kano to Sokoto, Benue to Akwa Ibom, Oyo to Imo and many other regions, the rejection through the ballot echoed loudly. Some of these men are still wondering what hit them while others are living in self-denial, hoping that it was just one long nightmarish experience that would soon be over. Unfortunately, it is not. The Nigerian electorate is getting wiser by the day and they now understand why it is important for them to free themselves from the shackles of ‘political iberiberism’ and the hollow arrogance of those who have failed to come grips with the immortal words that power is transient and should be wielded with utmost caution. When the curtain falls, it is always cheering to see those who assumed they have limitless power to hold the nation by its dangling testicles being the tragic victims of their self-inflicted stupidity. Of course, they know themselves. But will others that are entrusted with temporal power learn from their pitfalls and do the right thing? Will they?

  • If only Buhari would listen

    By now, the euphoric celebration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory at the poll two weeks ago should be over. And so, the time for the President to gird his loins, roll up his sleeves and really put his hands to the plough has come. Unlike he did some four years back when he pegged his redemptive mission on how well his team could manage the collateral damage inflicted on the socio-economic life of the nation by a fleecing gang from the Peoples Democratic Party, Buhari no longer enjoys such luxuries. History, I must say, would deliver a harsh verdict on him should he bungle this fresh opportunity that Providence has placed on his laps to make meaningful and memorable impacts in the lives of all Nigerians. After four years of assessing the damage (real and imagined), it should be taken as given that this government must be adequately equipped to steer the ship of state off the cliff of self-destruct without whining on and on again about missed opportunities and deferred hope. If there was ever going to be a moment to exhale for Nigerians; that time is now. This government cannot afford to clasp its hands in surrender and watch things degenerate beyond the way it is presently. And, most importantly, Buhari ought to know that the buck stops at his table and he cannot throw his nose in the sky, rebuffing genuine advice and informed criticisms from well-meaning and not so well-meaning Nigerians.

    To be clear, no one is saying that Mr. Buhari should not continue with his fight against corruption. But, in doing that, the vicious circle of media and selective trials must stop. The shadow boxing must end. Nigerians are tired of the hilarity. They want to see some real fight. Institutions must be strengthened such that corruptive practices can be nipped in the bud before they grow into monumental monstrosities. For, if the truth must be told, institutional corruption is at the root of the Nigerian narrative of movement without motion. Before our eyes, it became a lucrative venture for everyone who has the privilege of being in charge of government property because culprits hardly get punished in the real sense of the word. With all the song and dance this administration made of the fight, it is yet to be seen if any ‘big fish’ would end up in the prison after conviction at the court. Here, we are not talking about those fast-fingered Internet criminals that the anti-graft agencies parade daily. What amazes most Nigerians is the rate at which people who allegedly raped the national treasury of billions of dollars and ripped its belly open ended up walking away with slaps on the wrists as the ‘full wrath’ of our laws. Unfortunately, the charade still persists in this government such that Nigerians believe that the fight is all noise and hollow fury signifying sheer vacuity. Nothing, they said, has changed as key government officials continue to romance with the so-called treasury looters in the name of political expediency while the President pretends to be unaware of the rot going on around him. Pity.

    The other day, Buhari promised an all-inclusive government and people wondered if he actually knew what that meant. And, in a prognosis that defies logic, he equally said the next four years would be tough. Now, that beggars belief. Sir, you are not a slave driver but the President of a country. Sometimes, I wonder if this man weighs words before unleashing them. If anything, the last four years had been anything but pleasant. Most citizens roughed through the hardships with the hope that another four years of Buhari would either set Nigeria on the path of economic glory or an unexpected gloom. In fact, the opposition PDP latched on the missteps to forecast an inglorious end to Buhari’s reign, bandying figures of job losses and socio-economic traumas of disenchanted Nigerians. It was nothing short of a mystery that, amid the misery, Buhari was picked at the poll ahead of his sweet-talking arch rival, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP. Having done that, I doubt if any of those that stayed true to the Buhari course is prepared for another season of belt tightening. Ha! When they are not on a suicide mission! Most homes have been stretched to the limits and what they need in the next four years is a breather—something that would compensate them for the sacrifices of the past years. Nothing more.

    For Buhari to succeed, he needs to listen to the pulse of the people and work towards realising their dreams and aspirations. He must understand that he is not an emperor but an elected leader who is simply a first among equals. Unlike his days as a military ruler that was foisted into power through the barrel of the gun in a coup, he is answerable to the people and that includes those who voted against him regardless of which geo-political zone they come from. He doesn’t have to like them or their faces but he must accord them all that is due to them at every point in time. In acting presidential, he should eschew bitterness and embrace the entire country as one. The first weight that he would have to shed off his thinking faculty, to my mind, would be the petty proclamation he once made about first attending to the needs of the 95 per cent that voted for him in some geo-political zones while ignoring the rights and privileges due to the 5 per cent that voted otherwise. The Constitution doesn’t empower him to be selective in the distribution of favours. That is not how democracy works. It should not be subjected to such infantile politics of hatred and pure bigotry. I just hope the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria understands this simple fact.

    In his speech at a ceremony organised to celebrate his 82nd birthday in Abeokuta on Tuesday, former President Olusegun Obasanjo said something that should be instructive to Buhari’s desires to succeed. Despite his rabid attacks against the policies, actions and some actions of Buhari, the former military head of state made it clear that he has nothing personal against the President who was a junior officer to him in the Nigerian Army. Yes, he did gloat about the fact he remains the longest serving Nigerian leader dead or alive having spent close to 12 years in office both as military dictator and elected president, Obasanjo said his desire was to engender a focused and committed leadership that would berth a democratic practice of good governance, development and sustainable economic policies. He said the onus is on the Buhari government to show how well it is doing in those areas instead of calling him names for daring to expose ‘the other side’ of the government’s policies which is permissible in a democracy.

    If I were Buhari, I would take time to have a deep introspection into what Obasanjo said. Good enough, he has not spoken against the choice of Nigerians to return Buhari back to power despite his obvious shortcomings. This is not the time to unleash his rabid dogs after him or dismiss his submissions as borne out of pure jealousy. There is a lot of wisdom in separating the wheat from the chaff and the message from the messenger. Buhari, I dare say, stands to gain a lot if he takes another look at Obasanjo’s letter which was released to the public sometimes in January last year. That ‘so long a letter’ contains some bitter truth about the incredulous lethargy that the Buhari leadership style inflicted on the psyche of the nation and which helped to wake a sleeping, if not almost dead, opposition party.

     

     

     

    Those in the corridors of power may not like it. But the contents of that letter set rolling the political tremors that Nigerians were to witness later. With the stroke of the pen, the old wily fox unveiled some discomfiting truth about the government.

    Now, what exactly did he say and how important would those lapses, if left unattended to, affect the Buhari legacy post 2023? Obasanjo, in his usual hit on the nail writing style, expressed deep concerns about the Buhari administration’s loud silence and manifest incompetence in dealing with the killings in the North Central region by blood thirsty herdsmen. He said, aside Buhari’s poor understanding of the economy and vacillating attitude to governance, the President’s clannish disposition and nepotistic proclivities are alien to the principles of democracy. He didn’t make vague allegations but substantiated them with facts and figures which are difficult to dismiss with a wave of the hand. He also noted that Nigerians, who voted massively for Buhari in 2015, were no longer economically-secured as they were under the previous government while the fight against corruption was compromised by the fact that the basest form of corruption and financial crime were being perpetrated with ‘allegations of round tripping against some inner caucus of the Presidency.” These are weighty allegations which the administration is yet to address one year after.

    Yes, Buhari is back to power and that, to my mind, indicates that a large number of the electorates do have the belief that he has the capacity to do things differently and move the nation forward. He surely cannot achieve this if he throws out the baby with the bath water. If you ask me, the Obasanjo letter should be an ever present item on Mr. Buhari’s office tray for those pages bleed with crying facts that could have turned the table against him in the elections. Though the elections are over, Nigerians are still bleeding from the pains of the past and the utter negligence displayed by those whose responsibility it is to keep them safe and secured. The revelry on display at the seat of power when the killings were going on at that time still hurts. Having been given the opportunity to change the narrative, it would be a double jeopardy for the Buhari Presidency to round up in its last years as a monumental mistake in the annals of the Nigerian history just because of a president’s fixations to some anti-democratic norms. Is that what Buhari wants? And by the way, can we have an inspiring list of new Ministers and other appointees by May 29, this time?

  • 2019 poll: Articulating the realities

    I would have been shocked if last Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections in Nigeria had not generated the controversies that we are currently battling with as we prepare for the governorship and state assemblies elections scheduled for March 9. The reason is simple: there has never been an election in this country in which the electoral umpire does not end up being bashed by those who lost the contest. And so, I had notified Prof. Yakubu Mahmood in my last piece to be prepared for the righteous and unrighteous rage from a battery of sore losers after he must have given himself a thumb up for a job well done regardless of who emerged victorious between the candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the Presidential Election, President Mohammed Buhari and his counterpart in the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. As things turned out, Mahmood was not even midway through the announcement of results before Atiku’s men launched a clinically-executed attack not only on his integrity but the entire conduct of an election that produced shocking results in certain strongholds of some political heavyweights.

    Like I pointed out last week, the political class is the crooked wood that, more often than not, stokes the fire of distrust in our electoral system. Our pretence to doing things according to the world’s best practice notwithstanding, we must agree that our electoral system is yet to wean itself of the crude methodologies of old in spite of the evolvement of our own brand of electronic voting which, to my mind, is nothing more that manual e-voting. I can’t understand why, in this age and time, a section of the enlightened populace was compelled to go through the arduous drill of voting in the open fields when such could be done on their phones with a specially designed App. We all know that is a big dream in a mercantilist economy that panders to the whim of political godfathers in the corridors of power. Having said this, the February 23 elections, in my estimation, was remarkably different. In short, it was an improvement when compared to past national elections even with the usual shortcomings of ballot box snatchings, vote buying, killings and outright vote stealing as claimed in some quarters. Most importantly and critical to this election was the fact that age old myth of the invincibility of certain persons in an electoral contest was thrown into the dustbin of history.

    Before Nigerians went to the poll, certain realities were taken as given. It is what those conversant with betting in pool houses in those days would call ‘sure banker!’ For example, most political analysts would have wagered that the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, was ‘sure banker’ to return to the National Assembly even if they weren’t sure he would remain as leader of the National Assembly. Also, it was imagined that the man with an ‘uncommon’ grip on the political fortunes and misfortunes of Akwa Ibom State, Senator Godswill Akpabio, would be a key player in the next gathering of lawmakers despite his defection to the APC, a party that has never recorded any meaningful victory in that region. When you shift a bit to the South West, no one could have scripted the lines that the one and only ‘constituted authority’ of Oyo State politics, Senator/Governor Abiola Ajimobi would be made to bite his tongue and regret ever aspiring to go back to the Senate after eight years in office. When the reality dawned on him, he had to console himself with an anticipated federal appointment—a wish which may not manifest going by Buhari’s actions in the past. Shocking still was the return of the enfant terrible of the National Assembly under the leadership of Saraki, Senator Dino Melaye. Like him or hate him, Melaye’s return, amid the barrage of unfriendly fires stacked against him in Kogi State and the Federal Government, speaks volume about the pure love his people have for him. It also says a lot about the credibility of the election and INEC’s determination to discharge its responsibilities without fear or favour no matter how patronizing this may sound.

    Don’t get me wrong, this does not in any way mean the grievances expressed by the likes of Atiku, Saraki, Akpabio, Ajimobi and others against the conduct of the election are not to be taken seriously. It only accentuates the argument for the reform of our electoral system in such a way that this attitude of mutual distrust would be reduced drastically. Having said this, it is also important that we interrogate the reasons espoused by these aggrieved candidates to justify what they perceived to be electoral heist. For example, when Atiku argues that figures were allotted to the APC candidate and winner of the election, Buhari, does that include the figures that were released in his polling unit were he lost to his bitter rival? And if, as he claimed, he was that strong in the North East and the entire North, what were all his teeming supporters and polling unit representatives doing when those figures were being allocated? If we go by the unwritten code of Rigging 101 that people rig in their areas of strength, do we then conclude that Atiku’s foot soldiers had upper hand in the 17 states and Abuja where he won? Would Atiku or any of those making a song and dance of the viral videos of alleged rigging accept this narrative of a case of one party out-rigging the other? And if that was the case, how did Ajimobi, Akpabio, Saraki, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his polling unit, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in his Victorian Garden City ‘stronghold’, Atiku and Senator George Akume fail to execute the plot?

    Here is the glaring fact: After the declaration of the results by the body empowered to do so, all that is left for Atiku and any other sore losers is to move the battle to the courts to reclaim what they label a ‘stolen mandate’. It is pointless throwing sour grapes at Mahmood or even INEC. Let me underscore that fact that the initial plan to release a final result sheet that favours the PDP or the attempt to form a parallel government as advised by some of Atiku’s men would have seen them treading on the sharp edge of treason. If they have anything to learn from the incumbent President, it should be the fact that he suffered defeat three times as presidential candidate both at the polling booths and the courts before providence smiled on him. For all that was said about him in those days, he never, for once, resorted to self-help by releasing any presumed result neither did he form a parallel government. He simply lived with his pain and retired to his farm. Atiku should learn from this before those nudging him on push him into the deep valley and move on to the next port of self-glorification.

    Elections have been won and lost in the past. Atiku is no stranger to this reality having lost presidential contest several times either at the primaries or in the general election. The hard fact is that he doesn’t have justification for self-entitlement to the throne. The Presidency is not an ancestral inheritance. It is open to all citizens who meet the legal requirements to aspire for the office. If the courts hand victory to him, that would be legitimate. And it is quite possible for him to be on the saddle if he can prove to their lordships that the mandate was rightfully his. However, I find it laughable that he was quoted, among other things, to have advised the international investors in Nigeria not to move their investments elsewhere due to the outcome of the election. That is self-glorification at its banal best. Which international community? The one that says the outcome of the election was reflective of the people’s will to stick to integrity or the one that says that the re-election of Buhari was “in many ways a referendum on honesty” over a packaged façade of capacity to steer the ship of state?

    See, after all the noise and showmanship, calm has returned. The international community understands the fact that we hardly accept defeat here no matter how free, fair and credible the election was. We must always find loopholes to explain away our losses. Except for former President Goodluck Jonathan, hardly do we experience a situation where a major contender would willingly congratulate the winner. And so, those who expected Atiku to follow that line are dreamers. Buhari was never on record to have done that in any of his three defeats. As things stand today, it is only the courts that can put an end to the bitter squabbles for power. Even when that is done, the struggle seems eternal. Nothing is wrong with that as long as it within the bounds of the law and decency. Resorting to brigandage will spell doom for all. One can only hope that this seething rage will go with time and we can begin another process of healing as the losers chew their pain with philosophical equanimity till another opportunity beckons for a shot at the post. That is the discomfiting reality, for now!

  • Mahmood’s thankless job and sore losers

    Let me start with this confession. I have enjoyed the rare privilege of having several one-on-one interactive sessions with the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Yakubu Mahmmod since his appointment as head of the nation’s electoral umpire. Quite honestly, I don’t envy him. The office he occupies, though described as independent, has been randomly subjected to both verbal and physical abuse over the years that congratulating him would be tantamount to making jest of him. If I could recollect vividly, previous occupants of that office had never come out smelling like red roses. They were dabbed with the toga of partiality, partisanship, betrayal, treachery and outright stealing of electoral mandates by aggrieved politicians and the voting public. Not even Mahmood’s predecessor, Prof. Attahiru Jega, escaped the tar brush of being a biased umpire despite being credited with organising arguably Nigeria’s best elections in 2015. That is the way the cookie crumbles here because our brand of politics gives no room for losers. If there are any, they hardly lose fairly and freely. By the way, why should they accept defeat with a deep sense of philosophical equanimity when the contest has always been between winners? Engrained in the DNA of a Nigerian politician is a jot of suicidal optimism that blinds him to the reality of an imminent loss and that is why someone must take the bullet when the obvious happens. Most of the times, the likes of Mahmood and his predecessors become the scapegoat of the deep-seated antagonism that follows every electoral contest.

    And so, it does appear that the narratives are not about to change as Nigerians begin yet another match towards electing new leaders in today’s Presidential and National Assembly elections nationwide. It may be true that the real combatants in the bid for The Presidency are the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressive Congress and the serial presidential candidate on different political platforms, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, the man in the eye of the storm is no other person than Mahmood who is yet to recover from the deadly punches unleashed on him by political heavyweights from all sides of the divide after the decision to shift the election by a week. In short, his travails accentuate my belief that it is pointless envying anyone who willingly accepts to mount the saddle. To be candid, he was at his wit’s end in a spirited attempt to defend the indefensible in the days leading to today’s election. For a man brimming with indescribable confidence about the unimpeachable preparedness of the electoral body to go on with elections as scheduled, it was pitiable watching him on television struggling to itemize the ‘logistical reasons’ that led to the midnight decision to leave the electorates drying in the sun. He cuts a pathetic image lamenting how a number of unforeseeable acts, which were not helped by the criminal activities of arsonists and saboteurs, conspired together to truncate the electoral body’s vows to deliver on its mandate.

    For them, Mahmmod could as well take his truckload of excuses to the marines. The abruptness with which the postponement was announced provided a window for politicians and their league of irascible supporters to unleash a harvest of venomous rant on Mahmood. One was lost amid the flow of punches and sadistic tales woven round the neck of the electoral chief. In a swift reaction, Atiku’s camp said it was able to foil the attempt by the Mahmood-led INEC to rig the elections for the APC, jazzing up their story with the salacious anecdote about how the supplier of the Electronic Card Readers was the same person contesting for a senatorial seat on the platform of the APC in Niger State. Well, it didn’t take long for the APC to link the cancellation of the election to a carefully orchestrated collaboration between the leadership of INEC and the PDP to rig Atiku in by hook or crook. Others said it was a ploy to disenfranchise millions of voters who had travelled to their various villages to effect a change of governance at the centre. With the cancellation, they reasoned that Mahmmod was merely playing by the books of the APC as the disenchanted millions of voters do not have the means to travel home for the election today. And you ask: how did they know the mindset of these voters? Don’t expect any answer. It is all within the realm of political conjectures and permutations by politicians with benumbing optimism!

     

    Mahmood’s fate, I must note, was not helped by the fact that some of his men displayed an atrocious sheer lack of capacity in handling the task before them. Like one of its national commissioners pointed out, it would have been disastrous had the election commenced as scheduled last Saturday with INEC’s ‘sensitive materials’ flown to the wrong destinations while some allegedly ended up in the hands of the wrong persons. In a country where trust is abysmally in short supply and where loyalty to the state can be bought at the price of a plate of pottage, it is not surprising that certain unpalatable events were unearthed in the course of the week. The lesson in all this is that nothing has changed in the way we play politics here. Make no mistake about it, cheap lucre is at the core of our electoral despondency. Desperate politicians would stop at nothing to buy victory. The signs are ominous with a frustrated President threatening a shoot-at-sight order on ballot box snatchers. Even at that, nothing suggests that the herds of political jobbers would not stake their lives and dare the authorities. The reason for this is simple: service for the general wellbeing of the people is not at the heart of our political ambition. What propels this madness to win at all cost is greed. That is what drives the passion in addition to an assurance that victory ensures an uncommon access to the national treasury where one can have a big bite of the national cake for personal aggrandizement. In anyway, culprits hardly get punished and those that get caught always suffer the full wrath of our laws with a slap on the wrist!

     

    You know what amuses one in all this? The fact that Mahmood easily became the punching bag through which Nigeria’s perennial sore losers can ventilate their convoluted angst. He was practically their toothpick. I saw some presidential candidates, who couldn’t muster up to 10000 votes, threatening fire and brimstone over what they perceived to be the disenfranchisement of their supporters across the nation due to the cancellation. These were candidates no one knew were in the ballot paper or the mushroom parties they belong to. I saw veiled anger and the cascading dramatics being put up by the representatives of the two leading parties and I laughed. They huffed and puffed. I saw as Mahmood shifted uncomfortably on his seat as he was being buffeted with questions by politicians and journalists alike. Of course, they were right when they questioned his competence having used over three years to prepare for an election that ended up being canceled few hours to the commencement of accreditation and voting. It was understandable that he needed to be tongue-lashed for swimming in a lake of self-confidence when everything pointed to the fact that other extraneous factors could derail even the best of plans. So why didn’t he have an alternative plan? Has he identified the treacherous staff within? If yes, what is he doing about it in order to avoid a repeat of the bribe-for-vote scandal of the 2015 general elections? Is he still as surefooted as he was on his avowed determination to deliver a credible, free and fair election?

     

    Like I said in the opening paragraph, I have been privileged to be on the same table with this man a number of times interrogating the electoral process. In all those encounters, Mahmood comes across as a man who knows his onions and the challenges before him. He never failed to remind us of the nuances of politicians who, more often than not, play to the gallery in outright display of political buffoonery. He knows that regardless of who wins this election, he would be at the centre of voracious attacks. Already, he has tasted a dose of it with what happened at last Saturday’s press conference where he battled to explain why the election was canceled. He stood out like a sore thumb that would throw spanners in the works of politicians who have never hidden their character as sore losers. He knows he has taken up a thankless job in which he could be devoured by the hawks and hyenas of the power struggle. Yet, he needs not to be bothered that much. His predecessors suffered the same fate and they lived to tell their stories. For Mahmood, the saying that conscience is an open wound aptly comes to mind. Let the umpire be guided by his conscience in his action and inaction so that he can be at peace with himself after all this storm. He needs it just like his predecessor, Jega, needed it some four years back. May Nigeria succeed.

  • Will Nigeria’s comatose health sector get better?

    Monday, February 4, was World Cancer Day and the narratives concerning the country’s health sector were anything but inspiring. The day after, the headlines were dominated by cacophonous rant and hollow promises made by politicians of different shades and hue on the campaign train. Little or sparse commentary was reserved for health news on cancer awareness campaign and they were mostly buried in the pages with faint headings. For me, it was an irony of unimaginable tragedy that we were busy celebrating the action and inaction of the same characters that fleece our treasury and use part of the loot to procure medical cards for themselves and members of their families in the best medical facilities in Europe and America when we could have seized the opportunity to draw the government’s attention to the rot within. For, if the truth must be told, our health system requires urgent attention to save it from a terminal sickness and a seeming permanent amnesia. Some of these persons, I was told, have upgraded their medical cards to gold to add some panache and class to the treatment of their ailments just as they fly only First Class and lodge in only five star hotels across the globe. Even when they die, their remains stay in the best morgue until when freighted home for burial in golden caskets. Vanity!

    Amid the chaos, figures relating to Nigeria’s losses to medical tourism are varied and equally depressing. Latest reports indicate that losses to medical junkets by Nigerians were more than the entire appropriation for the health sector by the Federal Government in 2018. For now, the authorities are yet to disprove the claim made by the National Secretary of the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions, Dr. Theophilus Ndubuaku that over N359.2bn was being spent annually to access medical care abroad while the entire budget for the sector in the 2018 budget was just N340.45 billion. Breaking it down to what that means for you and I, Ndubuaku said the health cost per citizen for that year was a meagre N1.888. Shocked? Well, I’m not. The sad tale did not start today. It was for that reason that, many years back, our hospitals were ingeniously tagged ‘mere consulting clinics’ until the latter days when they were downgraded to ‘death centres.’ The big question is: How bad would things get for the poor and vulnerable millions before the leadership would have the courage to declare an emergency in our health sector?

    In a country with less than N2000 per head for annual medical treatment, Ndubuaku, in a report published by the Vanguard on November 20, 2018 at the launch of a state of the art surgery equipment by a private hospital in Abuja, explained that the nation records an average 9000 medical tours monthly with “India being the major beneficiary of 500 visits monthly while many of these travelers often have to go back monthly for checkups and sometimes for corrective surgery.” He didn’t mince words that these medical feats could have been carried out here if the required facilities were to be on the priority list of medical expenditures and procured for our medical centres. Well, that remains a dream yet to be realised in the long list of items stocked in the pipeline. Instead, a handful of private medical centres feast on the few who could afford the expensive bills while the government hospital groan under a debilitating regime of paucity of funds and management crises with threats of strikes and counter strikes from both medical and non-medical staff standing out as visible signs of the putrefying decay.

    In 2017, the Minister of State for Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, lamented that about $1bn is lost annually to medical tourism in spite of a troubling report that over 2,300 under-five children and 145 women of child bearing age die daily in Nigeria due to the challenging condition of mother/infant access to quality healthcare. That is outside the mounting figures of those who die from terminal diseases and even common ailments daily either due to negligence, lack of drugs, poverty or ignorance.  And, in December 2017, a former Health Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, made startling revelations about the comatose state of our health sector and the implications for national growth. He said, aside the N175bn lost yearly to medical tourism, the collateral damage could be gleaned from skill proficiency as “both trainers and trainees are not exposed to enough cases and, of course, the quality of care ultimately suffers”, adding that “as outbound medical tourism becomes the preference of patients, the local sector loses the confidence of the populace and the loss of morale among health personnel.’

    As I write this, Chukwu grim imagery tugs at my heart. Unfortunately, those who should be setting the right examples are busy hugging the skies, seeking treatment in far flung countries even for simple ailment like toothache. Add that to the fact that locally trained medical personnel takes a lion’s share of Nigeria’s brain drain debacle and you would understand why it was the same tale of woes that highlighted events on the World Cancer Day. With the high number of deaths recorded from cancer in recent times and the concerted efforts being put into the fight against the ravaging disease in other clime, it is shocking that not many of our so-called state-of-the-art government hospitals can boast of having modern machines that could help in early detection and treatment.  According to the founder of the Tai Aremu Cancer Awareness Campaign Organisation, Mr. Aremu Segun Kuti, the entire nation has fewer than five cancer treatment machines working in its government hospitals, thereby forcing many cancer patients to rely on the inadequate facilities at the National Hospital, Abuja. Naturally, both personnel and machines must have been stretched to the limit even as annual expenditure on chemotherapy per annum is said to be over N7m. How much is Nigeria’s minimum wage anyway? Kuti, whose wife died as a result of cancer, said the drugs are not within the reach of the patients who throng the hospital. For the patients, who longed for the day when top state and federal functionaries would be barred from travelling abroad for routine medical checkups, it has been a tale of sorrow, anguish and death as they queue to access the facilities at the national hospital. Sad, very sad.

    In a country where those who regularly colonize the national treasury fritter millions of dollars on buying choice cars and living large, you wonder why no conscious effort has been made to procure these life-saving machines in, at least, one government hospital in all the states. According to reports, the machine and relevant components can be acquired with just one million dollars. But for blind greed and vacuous embrace of extravagant lifestyles with no positive impact on humanity, I do not see why six of the machines cannot be procured for one hospital each in the six geo-political zones to ease the needless burden on the Abuja facilities if government is really about the people. But what do I know? We were in this country, under this same democratic experiment, when those who vowed to patronise Nigerian hospitals like every other poor citizen, were seen sneaking into top notch medical facilities in Wiesbaden in Germany, London in the United Kingdom, Cairo in Egypt, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates or Riyadh in Saudi Arabia for routine and non-routine medical tourism. And here, patients hardly get bed spaces; drugs are always expensive if they are ever available; surgeries are carried out sometimes in candlelit theatres or at the mercy of the officials of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria; medical personnel can, if they wish, down tools even when attending to emergency cases; the Hippocratic Oath is abused and raped at will and self-preservation is the music everyone listens to while lives get wasted daily. That, in a nutshell, is the sickening report of a healthcare system with the highest number of policy somersault in modern history!

    Will things ever get better?

  • Ebora Owu and his letters

    Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s 16-page letter to President Muhammadu Buhari couldn’t have come at a better time than now. The elections are just few weeks down the line and since Buhari is not the former president’s preferred candidate, it is not unexpected that Obasanjo, as it has become his habit, would do everything within and outside the books to inflame passion, question Buhari’s integrity, promote his candidate and portray himself as the oracle with the last say on who emerges victorious at the polls. In fact, keen watchers of Nigeria’s political development should be worried if Baba, as he is fondly called, had not released any letter at this critical period. It is an affliction that no one has been able to wean off him. And so, when the latest letter hit the streets and a colleague sent the document to me online, I had asked a simple question: What exactly is new in what has become a routine that should attract my attention? The answer is nothing.

    Now, what exactly did he say in the new letter that he has not said before in an earlier acidic notes to Buhari? Except for his verbose loquacity and fear mongering, he didn’t say much. In fact, he could have re-jigged any of his letters to former President Goodluck Jonathan with a little sauce and dispatch to Buhari. As usual, he says the elections would be rigged by the Independent National Electoral Commission in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress just because one of its commissioners, Amina Zakari, was related to Buhari. He said, under the present administration, the Boko Haram insurgency has become fiercer than it was in the past. He said the ongoing trial of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, was aimed at deflating his ego and rubbishing his integrity so that he would accede to the rigging plans should the matter be brought before his court. He said the anti-graft agencies would be used to hound members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party and that Buhari has perfected plans to unleash the worst kind of terror on perceived enemies with the adoption of the late General Sani Abacha’s strategy. For him, the government has not recorded any positive improvement in key sectors in the last three years be it the economy, fight against corruption or war on terror. And, to cap it all, he reminded those that care to listen that he remains the only Nigerian leader, dead or alive, that is nationalistic in outlook and incorruptible as he has been investigated severally without any misdeed linked to his name.

    That was the summary of his latest canticles which ended with reasons why the Nigerian electorate should reject clannish Buhari and vote massively for a man he once described as the true meaning of treachery, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar——a man he vowed never to support as presidential candidate in August last year because he would not like to incur God’s wrath. The same Atiku that he has written loads and loads of salacious details on in books and pamphlets has suddenly become the man with the magic wand to transform Nigeria. In giving reasons for the turnaround, Obasanjo says, if the books of sins were to be opened, the thieves in the APC working with Buhari would go straight to hell but failed to tell us where the conscientious treasury looters in the PDP would go to. It is this kind of tragic impulse and deliberate falsehood that make one to disregard Obasanjo most of the time. This man’s capacity for mischief is legendary. If he says Buhari lacks the physical and mental capacity to govern Nigeria due to failing health, did he remember how he foisted Umaru Yar’Adua on his party shortly after Atiku frustrated his self-succession plot through the instrumentality of the law?

    We must concede to him that, as the architect of do-or-die electioneering campaign since the 2003 elections, Obasanjo reserves the right to nurse fears that Buhari could possibly adopt that inglorious template he bequeathed to the then ruling PDP until things fell apart between him and Jonathan. So, we can understand his mortal fear of his shadows. However, one wonders if Obasanjo was living in Jupiter some years back when the Boko Haram threat was a clear and present danger to our collective existence as a nation——that period when bombings and reckless killings became part of quotidian living in different parts of the country including Abuja. It is, to my mind, carrying political infantilism to a ridiculous low for an Obasanjo to say the insurgents are stronger now than they were in the past. It is also amazing, if not silly, that a man who violated the rights and privileges of every democratic institutions and hounded perceived enemies to the gallows by recklessly deploying the anti-corruption bodies against them is the one accusing Buhari of perpetrating such. If I may ask, would an Obasanjo have tolerated the leadership of a Bukola Saraki in the Senate if the appointment ran contrary to his wish? Would he not have ordered his men in the EFCC to give Onnoghen a dose of the treatment meted out on the former Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun, if it were under his regime. To say the truth, Obasanjo’s pretence to democratic ethos suffers a huge deficit when one remembers how he flagrantly ignored the Supreme Court ruling on the seized monthly allocations to Lagos State following disputes over the creation of additional local councils in the state. But for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s political sophistication in confronting Obasanjo’s federal powers, would Lagos not have fallen victim to his plans to ‘capture’ the whole South West states?  In an article published on June 2, 2018 titled “Obasanjo: As it was in the past…,” I had counseled Obasanjo to thread softly and to be mindful of the fact that every lie has an expiry date. Buhari, I must admit, may not have performed to our expectations going by his mantra of change. But in as much as we have the power to send him packing with our electoral power, he enjoys the inalienable right to put himself up for reelection as constitutionally guaranteed unlike some persons who craved a third term by hook or crook. That decision would have to be determined on February 16 after which aggrieved persons can seek redress at the courts if they feel strongly about it. That was what happened under Obasanjo when Buhari failed to get reprieve at the courts. He was to fail twice when he contested against Yar’Adua and Jonathan before Nigerians decided to give him a chance in 2015. Or would Obasanjo say that election was rigged too?

    With respect to his several letters especially the first one he wrote Buhari last year, I had cautioned that: “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.

    “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. And so, 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. 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.”

    Obviously, he didn’t listen. He never would!