Tag: Nigeria

• By Mike Kebonkwu

There is an African proverb that, “a child does not ask what killed his father until he got hold of the sword”.  Methinks Siminalayi Fubara, the governor of Rivers State had not gotten full hold of the sword before attempting to  remove the dram of the hemlock received from his predecessor and godfather, Nyesom Wike.  He probably acted too hastily before the knife got to his hand, or before he mastered the dexterity of the sword.  He was grossly ill-equipped to enter into the rings with Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory; his war cabinet certainly had not been formed.  They do not belong to the same weight category in the political turf.   To engage in a fight, you have to carefully select and pick your opponent, size him up before the duel.  Do not bay for blood when you do not have the appetite for a fight and if you don’t like the taste of blood, don’t enter the ring!

The political crisis brewing in Rivers State is more than a storm in a tea cup; it was a consuming tsunami that was bound to cripple the state.   It was beginning to gather strength but thank God the worse may have been averted, thanks to the Presidential Peace Pact, which the governor himself said he would honour the terms because it is not a death sentence.

Politicians behave like predatory animals and would defend their colonies and territory by all means; fair and foul.  Once in power, the politician schemes to perpetuate himself in office and to continue in government by proxy at the expiration of tenure. 

He looks for a qualified minion and willing stooge with no capacity to question his authority and orders; a glorified robot, or artificial intelligence. You are dead wrong to think that this is peculiar only to Rivers politics; it is a national malaise. 

The problem in Rivers State is taking a toll on good governance at a huge cost.  The hallowed chamber of the state House of Assembly has been turned into a battle ground; the assembly members are everything but honourables.  Part of the assembly complex was torched and in the ensuing milieu, it was reported that the governor himself was almost shot by the police.  It is a battle of supremacy and authority over who controls the political soul and structure of the state.  Does the political structure in a state belong to the party or a godfather who runs a one-man show with puppets? 

The governor, commissioners and assembly members in Rivers State all owe their selection to the former governor Nyesom Wike.   Fubara could not outmanoeuvre the political fox that Wike has become when he tries to assert and stamp his authority as the chief executive of the state.  Wike is a dogged fighter that does not take hostages; go and ask Atiku Abubakar. Fubara is a naive political green horn with no ideological content to confront the structure of Wike’s big war chest.  Who will blink first! 

First, 27 members of the state assembly started plotting the governor’s removal.  The Speaker was allegedly impeached.  The 27 assembly members defected to the ruling APC.  As if that was not enough, the commissioners in Fubara’s cabinet started resigning in their numbers.  Fubara took unusual political move notwithstanding the cost and went for the broke by demolishing the state assembly complex, the symbol of democracy and Third Arm of government.  In a daring move, he proceeded to sign the 2024 Appropriation Bill passed by four members; thereby drawing the battle line.   

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The state was gradually creeping into chaos and anarchy.  Suddenly everybody that was somebody started asking the president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu to intervene because they wanted peace in Rivers State.  It is their expectation and judgment that Mr President has the capacity to rein in the combatants.  He acquiesced and invited parties for a parley at the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock.  Indeed he did it in a grand style and an Eight Points Peace Pact was extracted and signed freely.  Now, the same people who pleaded and requested Mr President to intervene are the same bunch of people who are up in arms saying that he had no authority and power to get them sign a peace pact.  Common, you cannot be vacillating like the ocean, blowing hot and cold and expect every sane person to follow you, No!  Stop running with the hare and chase with the hound! 

The crisis in Rivers State is an admixture of personal greed, the godfather syndrome. It is political as well as the legality of the actions of the politicians in disregard to the rule of law.  Our democracy and respect for the rule of law is poorer for it.  The crises have left the state poorer in virtue and economic prosperity.  The people are paying the price for the fight between the godfather and his rebellious minion who want freedom.  It must not be forgotten that whoever takes an oath of loyalty to a godfather in the cult of the underworld does not seek for liberty; his fate is sealed.  

It is not only under the Sicilian mafia code that you have the godfather pulling the string and control of organizations and sometimes government structures.  In Nigeria, we have a political cartel that controls the power lever and government.  In Rivers State, the people appear to have surrendered their political space and power to Wike.  About 27 assembly members are his nominees.  He imposed a list of commissioners on the governor whom he handpicked without consultation with anybody to run the affairs of the state. At the word of command, 27 assembly members defected to the ruling APC while the commissioners resigned in their numbers like zombies to create crisis for the governor. 

Now that peace appears to have returned; it is important to let the sleeping dog lie; you can’t have your cake and eat!  You have invited Mr President to intervene, he acquiesced and invited the warring parties to a parley and extracted some agreement, sealing a deal to end the crises and gave you the peace you want.  The governor has agreed to the terms of the peace pact, saying that no price is too much to pay for peace in Rivers State.  Why now the whining?  

People should stop taking paracetamol for someone else’s headache. The governor has said it is ok by him to implement the agreement he signed.  The governor certainly may have shown acute lack of capacity to run a bureaucracy like a state, but that is the stooge; you have him and it is a deal.

For the commissioners themselves that have resigned, one wonders how they will come back to their vomit.  It is clear where their loyalty lies; certainly, not with the governor or the state to serve the people.   On returning the commissioners back to office, it is just an intellectual sophistry to be pontificating that the governor having entered into an agreement must honour it willy-nilly; that is balderdash.   Nigeria typifies the only political environment where people run with the hare and hunt with the hound with little reflection. 

Yes, the Minister of Federal Capital Territory is rash and irascible but to allow him to reduce the people of Rivers State to his political structure is to diminish the political worth and right of choice by the Rivers people.  It is up to the people whether they want to leave their state in the hands of unscrupulous political operatives to be impoverished and ravished.  If we are to grow democracy and rule of law, the people have to cut off the head of the king cobra which the godfather syndrome in Nigerian politics represents.

• Kebonkwu Esq is an Abuja-based attorney.

• By Banji Ojewale

The universal principle is that what goes around must come around. It’s not so in Nigeria. With us, when what goes around goes around, it does more than coming around. As it makes its return trip, it comes aground, grounding us, levelling us, merging us with the miry mud. That’s been our history, extinct and extant. We create institutions and leaders from this back-and-forth process to form an endless cycle of assailable links in governance that remind us of the famous lines of the late poet, Christopher Okigbo: AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore, Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching; The new star appears, foreshadows its going Before a going and coming that goes on forever… (Path of Thunder).

 It is a villainous star, a kind of abiku that gives ephemeral excitement to the home where it surfaces at birth. Our present is nothing but a horrid replay of unpleasant encounters with the past. We sowed the wind yesterday; but today we’re reaping what’s greater than the wind. What goes around comes aground.

It’s tragic that we always go back into forlorn ages for deliverance from present woes. In 1984, we all stood in awe of Decree 4, and to differ with officialdom was to court doom. We were mortally pummelled by the demands of that law under military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari. His days recorded some of the worst breaches of human rights in the annals of Nigeria. There was retroactive application of edicts that outraged Nigerians and the international community.  Yet, more than three decades later when we wanted a president to free us from the ‘clueless’ hold of Goodluck Jonathan, guess who went for. Buhari, a figure of a discarded dispensation! We dug him from his sepulchral abode, to sit over the affairs of the living; he couldn’t but bring the nation to a level where we landed in a grave crisis from which we haven’t emerged. He grounded the country and bequeathed an economy which, experts warn, won’t yield to a quick fix. They say a lot of dead debris would require to be washed away first now and  in the years ahead to make way for the real business of economic resuscitation, which would take a much longer time. We aren’t reaping the wind we sowed; we are going to be harvesting a killer hurricane.

It’s no surprise that President Bola Tinubu, Buhari’s successor, is inheriting a country left in funereal straits. What else did we expect from a predecessor he exhumed and installed as our leader? As we all can see now, Buhari didn’t remember to take the pall over him back as he receded after his eight-year reign; it is still with us, overshadowing the entire land of the living.

Tinubu is also under the guidance of Okigbo’s cursed star. He is planting seeds certain to grow into labyrinthine forests with the potential to ground us. He’s going his predecessor’s way, throwing free cash at challenges on the ground, when, according to experts, he could use this money to address strategic needs of the weak, who make up the majority. Those who came before him also walked this pseudo-welfarist route of easy cash solution and flopped. There was/is little to show for the billions they spent as reliefs.

This approach is set to inject more ‘multidimensional’ penury into the system, as revealed by local and independent international figures. First, what does the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, say, even after we have released raw money to the so-called poor? The body issued a report late in 2022 where it said the number of compatriots ‘living in poverty stands at 133 million.’ This is about 63% of the country’s population. There was no indication of any impact of the various levels of the direct cash interventions initiated by the successive governments. Now the World Bank. Its recent publication says ‘extremely poor people in Nigeria (has) increased from 95 to 104 million.’ Again, nothing to reflect the success of the cash transactions between the authorities and the underclass.

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So, why would Tinubu ply the same unprofitable path?   Why not address these issues by applying the massive funds under his watch to build critical infrastructure: schools (along with free education for all at all levels), health centres, modern roads, employment-generating agro-ventures in the rural regions, aggressive human capacity building projects etc.? Ready or ‘uncreated’ money in my pocket or in my bank account won’t bring about these fundamental changes in the polity. Rather, it will lead to individualistic misadventures and illusory perceptions of prosperity. While the government would assume it’s pursuing popular interests, it would wake up at the end of the day to face acute mass misery, hunger, depression, inflation and poverty among those we pretend we want to help. We seem not to be decoding this five-word maxim: what goes around comes aground.

What the leaders are giving out by way of so-termed palliatives is opium sedatives from which you would wake back into the reality of your excruciating conditions, sooner or later. They offer temporary comfort, when what we need is a base on which to erect lasting social and economic justice. Throwing N35k monthly remittance to a very small percentage of the population for a limited period, offering ‘13th’ month bonus to civil servants, halving charges on public transportation or delivering free train rides during festive seasons, asking workers to cut the number of office hours to beat high cost of commuting, etc. all amount to a will-o-’the-wisp in the face of the real, long-term overwhelming concerns of the society. They don’t outwit the challenges. We’re only trying to tame a 21st Century plague with the concoctions of 13th Century alchemists.

Thus, all Nigerian governments, military, diarchy and civilian, have trodden a predictable trajectory. As our leaders step into office, we hail them and proceed shortly to the next stage of hauling them unto our laps. It’s never a long romance. For, just a few months after the citizens release their leaders into the performance field to fulfil their campaign pledges, the administration and its agencies begin to traumatize the people with policies that whipped us into destitution in the past.

• Ojewale is a writer in Ota, Ogun State.