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Tag: Matters miscellaneous

  • Matters miscellaneous

    “Matters miscellaneous,” as many a fellow commentator has graciously acknowledged, is the platform I patented back in my days at Rutam House for attending to a glut of occurrences in broad strokes and short takes, lest the people who make and the people who consume the news feel neglected.

    Here, in all its eclecticism, is the bulletin du jour.

    “Buhari’s Double”

    In journalistic reckoning, the case of Buhari’s Double has to be the top item.

    Since 2017, so goes the tale reportedly originated by the fugitive leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Nigeria has been ruled by a Buhari look-alike, Jubril al Sudan, a native of Sudan — or Niger, take your pick. Buhari had died in the UK in 2017, where he was undergoing medical treatment.  Notwithstanding the fact that Queen Elizabeth had sent a message of condolence to the Nigerian government, the entrenched Cabal in Aso Rock had procured a Buhari double in Sudan, and pressed him into service as Nigeria’s president.

    Despite occasional stumbles and apparent loss of memory, the transition had gone so smoothly that the only tell-tale sign of the infernal switch was a scar on Jubril’s left earlobe that was not a part of Buhari’s profile.

    Kanu, or whoever began the tale, and those who have been peddling it, should update their material.

    I can report authoritatively that representatives of the Jubril family, having discovered the gigantic swindle, suddenly showed up in Abuja the other day and demanded to be compensated with a power-sharing arrangement at the federal level in perpetuity, plus 50 percent of Nigeria’s oil revenues for ten years in the first instance.   Failing this, they warned, they would tell their story to the whole world.

    I can also reveal that the Nigerian authorities have entered into frantic negotiations with Jubril’s family to head off what is sure to earn a double entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s Dirtiest and Worst-kept Secret.  The UK authorities are mediating.

    Meanwhile, dependable sources tell me that Abuja is close to unraveling the true identity of the fake Jew parading himself on faked foreign soil as Nnamdi Kanu.

    Vast Estates, Ghost Owners

    Of the developments that have trailed Ayo Fayose’s lachrymose exit from the gubernatorial mansion in Ado Ekiti, none perhaps has been more mysterious than the discovery of a vast portfolio of valuable real estate with no owners.

    The sprawling estate covers some of the choicest areas of Ado Ekiti, stretches to the most opulent turfs of Abuja, and then to the finest residential neighbourhoods.  And that is just its Nigerian aspect. In its larger aspect, it is reported to stretch all the way to the most affluent settings in the Arabian Peninsula.

    The EFCC has impounded them, saying that they all belong to Fayose, and that they are the proceeds of official corruption.  Fayose says he knows nothing about the properties and that the EFCC is wantonly infringing the rule of law and undermining the fundamental rights of the actual owners.

    But the “actual owners” seem to be in no hurry to stake any claim on the properties.  They have sought no court orders restraining the EFCC from alienating their property.

    Surely, it cannot be that they are willing to forfeit their hard-earned holdings to the EFCC without a struggle?

    It is more likely the case that they are not aware of the EFCC’s proceedings.  In which case, this piece should serve as an alert

    Between giver and receiver

    If you were to ask the embattled Comrade, I suspect he would tell you that he has found one year as national chair of the aggregation of strange bedfellows that calls itself the All Progressives Congress (APC) far more stressful, more soul-destroying than eight years as governor of Edo State.

    His negotiating skills, honed in hundreds of acrimonious labor disputes, seemed tailored for the job. He would bring them to bear in reconciling the various factions and groups into which the APC had splintered, and tease out a coherent, unifying message out of the many discordant tunes claiming to speak for it or act in its name.

    Not even a thousand Oshiomholes could have stopped Saraki and his camp followers from defecting.  Nothing short of President Buhari forswearing a second term and anointing Saraki the APC’s presidential ticket for next year’s presidential election would have kept Saraki and his followers in the fold. I doubt whether even that would have sufficed.  He would have laid down further conditions.

    The party primaries that should have united the party as it approached the general elections generated far more recriminations than even this fractious clime is accustomed to.  Calculating party barons or local kingmakers set aside rules and procedures designed to impart at least a veneer of credibility and democratic choice, selected themselves or their proxies as candidates, or tried to rewrite the rules all over again in their favour.

    Oshiomhole and the APC leadership vacillated for a while, then insisted that the party’s candidates were those chosen under the rules and procedures the party had established.

    Then began, first, a whispering campaign, which soon grew into a roar heard across the county and  even abroad, that Oshiomhole had received as much as N500 million from some state governors in consideration for validating the results of the primaries conducted under their self-serving rules rather than under the APC’s rules.

    The Naira has fallen on very hard times, but N500 million is still a lot of cash, even with inflation running in double digits. That offer would be a mark of great desperation indeed, by governors who have fallen several months behind in paying public servants in their domains and have made it clear that they cannot pay the minimum monthly wage of N30, 000 being negotiated.

    But the charge soon took on in many minds the force of gospel truth. It had, they said, rendered Oshimohole morally unfit to remain party chair, and that he should resign immediately.

    Even Senate President Bukola Saraki who should be the last person to talk of morality in public life, given his ghastly record, seems to have suffered no qualms in demanding Oshiomhole’s resignation.  On moral grounds, no less.

    Others are demanding that Oshomhole face criminal prosecution.

    But in all this, those who allegedly offered the bribe have not been identified.  They have not been censured. The prosecutor has not been asked to round them up and bring them to justice.

    It is as if, even if proven, receiving a bribe is the crime to be punished.  Offering a bribe is not.

    Shades of Haliburton, Siemens, ITT, Kellog Brown, BAE System and other bribery scandals involving foreign companies doing shady business in Nigeria and other offshore destinations!

    GEJ is back

    At his book launch last Tuesday, Dr Goodluck Jonathan must have felt transported back to the glamour and glitz of his days in Aso Rock, and his wife Dame Patience must have been delighted to step once again into the limelight in a way she was accustomed to, not shuttling from one tribunal to another answering charges of serious sleaze.

    His detractors had peddled the libel that Jonathan didn’t even bother to read his briefing papers when he was in office. To damn them, he has actually written a book, and the cream of society had all flocked there to witness the launch.

    And it wasn’t only grateful contractors, former staffers, hangers-on and the usual influence peddlers what were on hand.  Even Jonathan’s most trenchant critics were there, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo who had lifted Jonathan from obscurity to celebrity only to regret it in a devastating screed and whom Jonathan had in turn compared to a “motor park tout.’’

    The enduring lesson that has come out of the book so far is that Dr Jonathan is still Dr Jonathan.

    The reviewers are unanimous that he blames everyone but himself for his defeat in the 2015 presidential election.  He blames it on former U.S. President Barak Obama and his secretary of state John Kerry, on UK Prime Minister David Cameron, on former French President François Hollande, and  on former INEC chair Professor Attahiru Jega, based on non sequiturs that it would be courteous to call sophomoric.

    It would be hard to imagine a greater insult to the intelligence of Nigeria’s electorate.

    Jonathan is no longer in denial about the abduction of the Chibok girls, but he remains implacably in denial about the circumstances.  He joins issues with those uncultivated minds who could not make the elementary distinction between ordinary stealing and corruption.

    I was hoping he would put to rest the controversy over his dodgy doctorate. The quality of reasoning in published excerpts from My Transition Hours is sure to revive and even deepen it.

  • Matters miscellaneous (III)

    How could we have gotten anything from a PDP-managed economy run on the warped logic that the grossest mismanagement of it would necessarily translate into prosperity for all? Or one run on the perverse belief that there is a nexus between massive looting of the coffers of state and ‘growth’ and ‘development’? But this is exactly what especially the PDP rank-and-file naively, foolishly or maybe even crookedly still believes –that the economy can be like that resilient carpet grass, the chamomile, which the more it is trodden upon, the faster it will grow. But every economy does have the quality of ‘youth’, -the more it is wasted, the faster definitely it will wear’! It appears only members and sympathizers of the PDP live by this lazy, weak-willed, freeloading belief that the ‘benevolent’ mouth fall from the wolfish, avaricious feeding habit of our thieving politicians will necessarily ‘trickledown’ like manna from heaven to lift the poor from their abject poverty.

    But this is the most ludicrous interpretation of ‘trickledown economics –to hope to ‘honestly’ make a living from those who dishonestly make a living from the fats of the land. This can only define an insidious, no less culpable, shade of corruption. The Canadian-born U.S. economist J.K. Galbraith, explained ‘trickle-down theory’ as “the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse oats, some (of it) will pass through to the road for the sparrows”. Only sympathizers of the PDP believe that ‘trickle-down economics’ can also gush even from the gory gaping wounds that grand corruption makes on the coffers of state. They believe that a laissez faire management of the economy is the best way to spread the dividend of democracy for the reason only that a freewheeling economy lets thieving eagles perch and it lets thieving kites perch too.

    England’s thieving medieval hero, Robin Hood, robbed the rich to give to the poor. He was adulated by the poor and despised by the nobles. But Nigeria’s Robin Hoods –or should we say ‘hooded robbers’? – take from the poor to grow the superfluous estates of the rich. It has always been the inordinately rich taking from the abjectly poor. But the irony of it is that the loudmouth poor, corrupted by decadent politics, are still fanatically more in love with their exploiters than even Robin Hood was by England’s poor for whom he robbed. This largely PDP members and sympathizers believe that ‘looters’ are truly our own modern day Robin Hoods, and that although they may not have the charitable motive of the medieval English thief, yet the crumbs from their heists often fortuitously cater to the fawning of these political hangers-on. Their greed is assuaged only by the ‘less than elegant’ hope that whenever corrupt politicians haul their usually over brimming Ghana-Must-Go, the grovelling poor in their path, may make what pickings they can.

    And it is in the undignifying hope of preserving such personal privileges that this usually loudmouth minority is shamelessly insisting we give them back their corruption! And this has always been the nature especially of our unprincipled political journeymen. Whereas the majority of our everyday folks have been and are always ready to sacrifice in the journey to the Promised Land, these shameless ones are always stiff-necked and rebellious; they have their own condition for the journey to the Promised Land: it has to be either a stress-free, manna-filled journey to that Eldorado or a return to Pharaoh’s Egypt. They know the gravity of the situation that Nigeria is in. And they know no less what is at stake -given the gravity of the situation. But rather than support critical measures –no matter how temporarily painful- they prefer to aid those they know to exacerbate the situation. As long as their little personal nests are feathered.

    And now –just like it had to take a Jonathan to teach us the difference between ‘stealing’ and ‘corruption’, it is now having to take an Obasanjo to tell us the difference between ‘reinforcing failure’ and ‘rationalizing corruption’. The same Obasanjo who has ruled the most of the 16 adjudged wasted years of the PDP, is now the one telling us that supporting a man who fights corruption ‘fist, fang and fury’, is ‘reinforcing failure’, but that supporting a presidential candidate that even he has written an autobiography to brand a ‘thief’, is ‘reinforcing development’. Isn’t that wonderful?

    And so not only did we not get anything from PDP’s 16 wasted years, we in fact have lost virtually ‘everything’. We have lost to the politics of ethnicity and religion our precious minds, because we are now at the apogee of our self-debasement: we have become bigoted, hypocritical and jingoistic; we have become inveterately hateful of each other, warmongering and terribly subversive. We want solutions our own narrow, selfish ways or the entire house must be brought down! We have lost the capacity –or is it the willingness- to tell right from wrong, truth from falsehood or good from bad. We are avidly selfish, eminently corruptible and lazy! Everyone wants to take without giving. Everyone wants to earn without eking. Nor are our ‘corporate beggars’ any more honourable than even our scavenging ‘almajiris’. Because whereas the latter are courageous wolves confronting socio-economic odds not of their own making, ‘corporate beggars’ that we have all turned to are cowardly dogs grovelling at the feet of those who have appropriated the common patrimony.

     

    POSTSCRIPT

    (An excerpt from a previous piece, in deference to the request of a faithful reader)

    The knowledge of economics alone does not bring about growth and development. Sincere exertion in the opposite direction of decay achieves faster than an army of insincere economists does. Said the American author, Robert Solomon “Economics without ethics is a discipline without substance”. And as the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw would say “If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion”. It takes sincere politicians to take economic decisions

    I narrated when I wrote the title ‘Still on the Sick Economy’, the story of the American Economist, Arthur Burns, who, once on a visit to Israel in the 70s said he asked that country’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion how Israel was able to ‘grow’ and ‘develop’ her economy in the absence of basic natural resources and on the bare backs of a barren desert. And Arthur Burns said that Ben Gurion said: “We did it first by dreaming, then by doing what the economists said was impossible” –which is a euphemism for saying ‘we jettisoned established theories of macro and micro economics and we tried previously untried ideas’. It is like saying we rebelled against the grain of economic norms and we created for ourselves new norms. And Singapore’s late President, Lee Kuan Yew, when he was asked about the economic and technological ‘miracle’ that he brought about in his country, denied that there was actually any miracle. Simply he said: ”We did a few things right and we kept doing them right” –which is also another way of saying simply ‘we gambled, but we were sincere enough in our ‘gamble’ to jettison what was wrong and to hold on to that which was right.

    It took sincere ‘trial and error’ not the ‘expert calculations’ of sophistic, hair splitting, doctrinaire economists for Israel and Singapore to get it right. The Israelis have proved Arthur Burns right, that “the human element” is a basic ingredient in the creation of virile, vibrant and stable economies. And the ‘human element’ which he said consists mostly of the dreams, fears, and hopes of a people, is often capable of upsetting even ”the most expert calculations”.

    If we choose to celebrate a ‘human element’ which, rather than fear and fight corruption, openly glorifies and hopes to grow and develop by it, then we will definitely not make it.

     

    • Concluded.

  • Bala Mohammed vs EFCC: Matters miscellaneous

    In any decent society where some premium is placed on human dignity, the accepted jurisprudential position is that, it is better for many suspects to escape unpunished than for one innocent person to be wrongly convicted. Unfortunately, the way accused persons are treated in Nigeria does not depict us as people who place much value on the dignity of the human person. Even our long cherished principle that an accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty has suffered brutal assault at the hands of overzealous agents of government. To such people, who may not necessarily be in the majority, it doesn’t really matter if hundreds of ‘suspects’ are hounded into jail if only, in the process, one targeted person is incarcerated.

    However, the recent judgement in Senator Bala Mohammed versus the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC appears to provide a new impetus for victims of official highhandedness to challenge their traducers while at the same time rekindling hope that, somehow, the country will not descend to the reign of tyranny. Former FCT Minister, Bala Mohammed’s fight, to enforce his fundamental human rights is solid proof that, what it takes for tyranny to take root is for good people to keep quiet or for the injured to refuse to fight back.

    The former minister’s case is well known. After heeding the invitation by the EFCC, based on allegations against him, he ended up being incarcerated for 49 days in 2016, despite meeting the bail conditions imposed by the agency. To make matters worse, not even a court order could sway the agency to desist from its abuse of the constitution by way of arbitrary detention of the minister. That set the stage for the former minister’s counsel, Chris Uche, SAN, to approach the court to enforce his client’s fundamental human rights.

    Thus, last Thursday, in a judgement that is being celebrated as victory for the rule of law, Justice Baba Yusuf of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, ruled that Bala Mohammed’s detention was unlawful. He followed up by awarding Five Million Naira against the anti-graft agency.

    Justice Baba Yusuf deserves commendation for being incisive, methodical and fearless in delivering his judgement. He has restored hope that ours is a country of laws, not of men as the EFCC, by its conduct, has all along sought to convey. The judge was emphatic that in the absence of compelling evidence of any crime, the EFCC had no right to detain the former minister beyond 48 hours. That point needs to be noted by all Nigerians.

    But while the abridgement of the ex-minister’s civil liberty loomed large in the judge’s decision, it will appear that, a more fundamental reason was the inability of the anti-graft agency to adduce any evidence to support its claims of wrongdoing against the accused. The judge was unambiguous on that. Here are excerpts from the judgement:

    “Where a party admits the detention of another, the onus to prove that such detention is legal lies on it. In the instant case, no material evidence of fraud, irregular allocation of plots of land among others is placed before this court.

    “All other averments relating to fraudulent activities against the applicant remain largely in the realm of imagination of the respondent and unproved as there is no such document before the court. The result is that the respondent has not proven the allegation to warrant the court to decide otherwise”.

    The judge’s statement, above, should be read in conjunction with the section where he averred that he saw nothing wrong with Bala Mohammed’s arrest by the EFCC. That is to say that, by arresting Senator Bala Mohammed, the EFCC was acting within its powers, to hold public office holders, past or present, accountable for their actions. Yet, we must continue to underscore the judge’s position that the agency did not have the powers to detain people endlessly without cause; and that he could not see evidence of allegation of fraud against the former minister.

    On a serious note, Bala Mohammed did not deserve the incarceration he was subjected to. Here was a man who, upon being informed that the EFCC needed him to respond to some allegations against him, voluntarily abandoned medical treatment abroad in order to honour the invitation. Here was a man who, for all times, maintained his support for the anti-graft effort of President Muhammadu Buhari, insisting always that public office holders should be prepared to account for their actions while in office. Also as a sign of good faith, Bala Mohammed has actively participated in every legislative enquiry bothering on his office or ministry. It is one of those paradoxes of life that such a Nigerian who has never given any cause to suspect that he would jump bail, was deprived his freedom for so long a period, in defiance of the order of a court of competent jurisdiction.

    Now that he has been vindicated by the court judgement Senator Mohammed is in a stronger position to insist that, his incarceration, beyond what is statutorily permitted, was politically motivated. Since the court has ruled that there was no evidence of fraud or wrong-doing to support his prolonged incarceration, Bala Mohammed is on solid grounds to insist that he is a victim of some grand conspiracy to demonize him before the Nigerian public and probably put his political future in jeopardy. As things stand, the promoters of that strategy have failed. At least, nothing has happened to erode his political base in Bauchi.

    No one who followed the twists and turns of the former minister’s incarceration should be surprised at the judgement of Justice Baba Yusuf. In an unprecedented manner, the agency literally went about shopping for remand orders to shackle the former minister, in perpetuity. At every point during the trial, Chris Uche, SAN, adroitly punctured the alibi of the defence which included the inability of the accused to meet his bail terms, a claim that was false; that he would interfere with investigations, a position the judge found curious or that, he would influence another person of interest whose whereabouts were then not known. Again, the judge wondered how the detainee was expected to influence someone outside while still under the custody of the agency!

    For the EFCC, this highly indicting judgment should act as a sobering influence on the way it conducts its activities. To arrogate to itself the powers to simply dump people in jail indefinitely is, to say the least, uncivilized and barbaric; to hang serious allegations against a person without proof of evidence, as the judge noted in the case of Senator Bala Mohammed, is malicious, callous and unacceptable; and to constrain citizens with brazen impunity, in defiance of court orders, is to send a wrong signal to Diaspora Nigerians and other foreign investors who, paradoxically, our President and his ministers, have been courting assiduously, that the law cannot protect both they and their investments. It does not need to be overstated that Nigeria can ill afford the reputation of a lawless destination at a time the President Buhari Administration is almost recording a breakthrough in its valiant effort to attract foreign direct investment into the country.

    In conclusion, it is important that we recognise the milestones achieved by this judgment. Paramount among the milestones is the vindication of Bala Mohammed with the concomitant redemption of his image which the agency had sought to batter through the instrumentality of media trial and other subterfuges. Second, other victims of official high-handedness, impunity and arbitrariness now have a pedestal on which to launch their redemption plans. But by far the most important beneficiaries of this judgement are President Buhari and the country: it feels good to realize that there are checks and balances to handle the excesses of security agencies; that the judicial system can be trusted to act as the last hope of every Nigerian no matter the person’s social standing and that, in spite of our many challenges, this indeed is a great country on the threshold of being redeemed.

     

    • Agu, publisher of ZEST TRAVELLER magazine is a fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) as well as honorary fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).

     

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    In Nigeria where there is never a dull moment, where incident follows incident at a furious gallop, the glut of occurrences can overwhelm even the most pertinacious chronicler or analyst.

    As a way of coping with such moments, I patented back in my Rutam House years a rubric I named Matters Miscellaneous, under which I try to examine the day’s intelligence in short takes, working from no particular design.  It is also my way of attending to those who might otherwise feel neglected.

    So, here goes the miscellany, all protocols observed.

    Boko Haram on the Run

    Barely a week after he orchestrated the postponement of the presidential election and inveigled the electoral body INEC into accepting same, Dr Goodluck Jonathan finally gave a damn and went after Boko Haram (BH).

    Since then the marauding terrorist band has been in retreat and disarray.  Until the armed forces began regaling the public with their exploits and an inventory of just how many towns and villages and entire local government areas they had freed from the pernicious clutches of BH, few outside the Northeast had any inkling of the size of the territory over which it had proclaimed sovereignty.

    And in just one week, the outposts fell one after another, like ninepins.  It was hard to believe that this was the same BH that enlisted men were loath to engage, the same BH that had ravaged entire communities, sacked police formations, taken the fight to troops in their barracks, destroyed fighter aircraft on the tarmac, and roamed the entire region virtually unchallenged, its grisly business to conduct

    And Dr Jonathan, newly seized of his responsibility as commander-in-chief, has been touring the front, taking a victory lap as it were, decked out in combat gear as befits the office  and vowing that not one inch of Nigerian territory will remain under BH’s infernal thrall.

    You can’t begrudge him his new jauntiness.

    But the question remains:  What are the armed services doing now in the Northeast that they could not have done three years ago? Or two?  Or even a year ago?

    Dr Jonathan says he had underestimated B H’s menace.  He sure did, big-time, and despite warning from General TY Danjuma, chairman of the since-dissolved Presidential Adversary Council.

    How many other clear and present threats to vital national interests has he underestimated?

    If Jonathan had taken that advice and lived up to his oath of office instead of thrilling rented crowds with his azonto dance moves and carrying sacks of money around to bribe traditional rulers and all manner of opportunist groups to buy support for his re-election bid, the casualty list from BH’s depredations would have been much shorter, and so would the roll of internally displaced persons, now numbered in the millions.

    One cannot go as far as the commentator on one of the so-called social media sites who with Old Testament rage placed squarely on Dr Jonathan’s head the blood of the thousands killed  by BH and the pain and agony of the millions forced to flee their homes.

    But to the extent that Dr Jonathan could — and indeed should — have done what he is now doing at least three years ago but did not, it has to be said that, at the very least, he bears moral responsibility for the slaughter of innocents, and the benumbing misery and agony wrought by BH.

    One more thing we must not allow them to forget in all the chest-beating:  The Chibok 219.  The military high command has been saying that it knows where BH is holding the girls but would not close in on the camp for fear of putting them in harm’s way.

    With their new fire power and enhanced intelligence capability, this is the time go in for the rescue.  Forward, gentlemen, to the location you’ve had on your radar since the girls were abducted.

    Calling all Septuagenarians

    Like a dutiful helpmeet, The Iron Lady of Okrika, most recently Permanent Secretary Without  Schedule in the Bayela State Civil Service, and in the normal run of things Patience Faka Jonathan, First Lady of Nigeria and distinguished chair of the African First Ladies Peace Mission has been on the hustings, deploying her charm and well-honed communication skills to make a strong case for her husband’s reelection

    And what a wave she has been making!

    “A72-year-old man has nothing to offer Nigeria,” she declared the other day at one of her campaign stops.

    Do you hear that, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, whom her husband is forever importuning for divine blessings? Do you hear that, John Cardinal Onaiyekan?

    Do you hear that, General Danjuma, General Alani Akinrinade, Chief Segun Osoba, Dan Agbese, Brigadier-General Ike Nwachukwu, Senate President David Mark, Felix Adenaike, Onyema Ugochukwu, Chief Ajibola Ogunshola, Professor Ladipo Adamolekun,  Dr Dayo Shobowale, Dr Haroun Adamu, Professor Idowu Sobowale, Duro Onabule, Kole Omotosho, Ropo Sekoni, and other worthy compatriots in that age range?

    Do you hear that, members of the National Council of State, to whom her husband always        runs for the political equivalent of covering fire whenever he has another odious scheme to                 inflict on the public?

    I am not going to let my generation down.

    I have asked my attorneys to commence, for our group, a class-action lawsuit for gratuitous infliction of emotional distress and mental cruelty against the Iron Lady of Okrika in her official capacity as wife of the President, unless she issues within seven days an immediate and unconditional apology for the gross libel and promises never to go there again.

    Attahiru Jega:  The Arbiter as Villain

    Alas, poor Attahiru.  This genial, shy professor of political science and former president of the  university teachers union ASUU, must now be ruing the day he agreed to serve as chair of the Independent (ha) National Electoral Commission, the most treacherous job in the world.

    Those who appointed him expect him to do their bidding at every point.  If he does not, it must be that he has been bought by the Opposition.  And if he does not apply the rules the way the Opposition thinks they should be applied, he is carrying out the Government’s agenda.

    It is an ordeal, even in the best of times.

    When it is compounded by contrived distractions from the government and its surrogates – when they express confidence in him one day and none the next day; when one day they say that his time is up and hint darkly that it will not be renewed, and say the following day that  he will indeed preside over the forthcoming election;  when they suborn the media to publish scurrilous and fabricated charges of sleaze against him – how can he concentrate on the job at hand?

    How can he — or indeed the public – even tell that there is a job at hand?

    Why can’t Dr Jonathan just do whatever he wants to do, and as usual not give a damn?

    A Frustrating Countdown

    Ayo Fayose – he of the dubious mandate, on which he runs Ekiti when he runs it at all like a schoolyard bully gone berserk–has been at pains lately to assure the public that there is nothing personal to his ghoulish death-watch on General Muhammadu Buhari.

    “I have nothing against Buhari,” he declared the other day.

    Right, Governor.  You only want him to drop dead and are distressed that he has not obliged.