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  • Labour leader Aremu tackles OBJ, Obi over comments on democracy

    Labour leader Aremu tackles OBJ, Obi over comments on democracy

    • Insists system alive, not dying in Nigeria

    Foremost Nigerian Labour leader and Director General of Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS), Comrade Issa Aremu, has tackled former President Olusegun Obasanjo and one-time Anambra State governor Peter Obi over their recent comments that democracy was dying in Nigeria and Africa.

    Aremu said despite the challenge of nation-building, Nigeria has been described as a “Democracy Destination, undergoing democratic consolidation,” contrary to some recent high-profile discordant views about the prospects of the democratic process in Africa.

    Recently, former President Obasanjo and erstwhile governor of Anambra State, Mr. Obi, had claimed that democracy was dying in Africa and Nigeria.

    However, Aremu took exception to what he called the “new democracy-pessimism fad” by those he said “without democracy would not have been able to exhibit their limited leadership ability in the past.”

    Aremu, who spoke to journalists at Arewa House, Kaduna, during the secial prayers to mark the 73rd birthday of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, organised by Arewa Think Tank (ATT), opined that it was time for Nigerians to deepen and consolidate the democratic process.

    He added that “democratic optimism must not in any way give way to democratic despair in Africa”.

    He argued that, “With 19 registered political parties, 93,469,008 total voters registered, 176,846 polling units in Nigeria, seven concluded presidential elections since 1999, five elected Presidents, two elected twice; one graciously accepting the loss of election, hundreds of State, National Assembly elections and bye-elections, active media, vibrant organised trade unions and civil society, freedom of assembly and expression, Nigeria is a model of how democracy lives, not dying.”

    Read Also: Firm sues for N4.1b over negligence as CBN objects

    The MINILS DG cautioned the media to “report but also profile the messengers of despair and doom” for discerning citizens for informed judgement about them.

    Aremu said both former President Obasanjo and former governor Obi suffer what he called “bring-down-what I- cannot-control-syndrome,” adding that democracy is alive for only those who necessarily must not have their ways all the time but still keep faith in the ballot.

    “Afro-democracy is another subterfuge for a call to authoritarianism by OBJ, Democracy is not divisible, it is, according to the 1999 constitution, the simple majority that made OBJ President twice, Peter Obi governor and a failed Presidential candidate in 2023. Any resort to red hearing that democracy is dying because the duo are out and dry is unhelpful and self-serving,” Aremu stated.

  • Aremu tackles OBJ, Obi, says democracy not dying in Nigeria

    Aremu tackles OBJ, Obi, says democracy not dying in Nigeria

    Foremost Labour leader and Director General Micheal Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS), Comrade Issa Aremu, has tackled former President Olusegun Obasanjo and 2023 Labour Party (LP) Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, over their recent comments that democracy was dying in Nigeria and Africa.
    Aremu said despite the challenges of nation-building, Nigeria has been described as a “Democracy Destination undergoing democratic consolidation ” contrary to some recent high-profile discordant views about the prospects of the democratic process in Africa.

    Recently former President Olusegun Obasanjo and erstwhile governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, had claimed that democracy was dying in Africa and Nigeria”.

    However, Aremu took exception to what he called the “new Democracy-pessimism fad” by those he said “without democracy would not have been able to exhibit their limited leadership ability in the past”.

    Aremu who spoke to journalists at Arewa House Kaduna during the Special Prayers to mark the 73rd birthday of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu organised by Arewa Think Tank (ATT), argued that it was time for Nigerians to deepen and consolidate the democratic process adding that “democratic optimism must not in any way give way to democratic despair in Africa”.

    “With 19 Registered Political Parties, 93,469,008, Total Voters Registered, 176,846 Polling Units in Nigeria, 7 concluded presidential elections since 1999, 5 elected Presidents, 2 elected twice, one graciously accepting the loss of election, hundreds of state, National Assembly elections and bye-elections, active media, vibrant organized trade unions and civil society, freedoms of assembly and expressions, Nigeria is a model of how Democracy lives, not dying,” Aremu observed.

    The Director General cautioned the media to “report but also profile the messengers of messages of despair and doom” for discerning citizens for informed judgement about them. Aremu said both former President Obasanjo and former governor Peter Obi suffer what he called “bring-down-what I- cannot-control-syndrome” adding that democracy is alive for only those who necessarily must not have their ways all the time but still keep faith in the ballot.

    Read Also: Democracy, dysfunction and sustainability

    “Afro-democracy” is another subterfuge for a call to authoritarianism by OBJ, Democracy is not divisible, it is according to the 1999 constitution, the simple majority that made OBJ President twice, Peter Obi governor and a failed Presidential candidate in 2023, any resort to red hearing that Democracy is dying because the duo are out and dry of elsewhere power is unhelpful and self-serving”.

    “Following the death of President Hage Geingob On 4 February 2024, Namibia just successfully conducted an election to inaugurate the first female President Nangolo Mbumba who she once served as vice-president. Senegal last year elected the youngest 45-year-old Bassirou Diomaye Faye, while Amadou Ba, the candidate of the ruling United in Hope (BBY) coalition, peacefully conceded defeat. OBJ must be operating from outer space to say Democracy is dying in Africa,” Aremu said.

    He said the challenges of development in Africa call for more democracy through quality control measures of politics of ideologies and programmes not doubt and scaremongering about democracy adding that the military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger must give way to free and fair elections for legitimacy.

    Aremu, who was also the Director of the Labour Directorate of Tinubu/Shetima Presidential Campaign Council ( PCC) during the 2023 elections, described President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as an “audacious” reformer who legitimately “can and should run for a second term in 2027 to consolidate on his achievements in the labour sector”.

    The Director General of the premier Labour Institute described the recently approved N758 billion bond to settle long-standing pension liabilities by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as “a timely welcome act of compassion, statesmanship and good governance” in the country’s pension market adding that the measure was the most impactful of the Renewed Hope Agenda in labour market after the 2024 National minimum wage Act ”.

  • OBJ versus NNPCL

    OBJ versus NNPCL

    The thing about Olusegun Obasanjo is that he does not think Olusegun Obasanjo can have peace unless Olusegun Obasanjo does not make headlines. This time, he is fighting with NNPCL. What he did was being economical with the truth. First, he pretended he wanted Shell to run it, and one of the excuses of the multinational was corruption. They probably did or did not know that the man was also offering them a corrupt deal. In the interview, Obj did not mention Tra nscorp. He only said it was Dangote. The reason is simple. He wanted to tap into the success of the Dangote refineries. Two, he dodged his own filth in the matter. Obj had a so-called blind trust in Transcorp. What is that? He had an interest, and so he wanted to be in the oil business from the backdoor. But he was only being clever by half. He wanted to bequeath a corrupt deal to posterity. This was in the mould of his Bells University and Obasanjo Library. Both he acquired by subterfuge, raking up cash by blackmailing governors and politicians.

    So, he said the refineries could never work. In earnest, he was saying that he did not want the refineries to work. He was playing into a trend in both media and opposition who wanted the refineries to remain dud. They did not give NNPCL a chance.  So, it was not that NNPCL could not do it. It was that he wanted the business for himself. He failed, and decades after, he is still lamenting the pepper soup that got away. He is salivating in vain.

    Read Also: Falana to Obasanjo: Yar’Adua voided refinery sale over conflict of interest

    Well, if he says NNPCL could not do it, who is to blame? Was he not the president? Was NNPCL not reporting to him? On the face of it, we can say he failed as president. But it is more complicated than that. He wanted to fail so he could lap up another soup. He got neither. He failed and that explains why his successor who he glibly called Umoru cancelled the deal because of lack of transparency.

    NNPCL has invited him to the refineries. This is the first time that humour has come out of the oil giant. Corporations can also have a sense of humour. They know the man will not oblige. But is this not the same OBJ who, like Don Quixote, thinks he is bigger than the earth. This same man who seizes any opportunity as invitee and guest of honour to play baba.

    The thing is, he is still bellyaching over the last polls. He wants any opportunity, as the baba of obidients, to lash out without proof or reason at anything associated with President Tinubu. Well, he may have a blind trust in Transcorp, let him play blind at the evidence of the refineries all he wants. Those who have eyes can see.

  • OBJ skewers ex-wife

    OBJ skewers ex-wife

    Shortly after ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s ex-wife, Taiwo Martins, published a curious and dramatic apology begging for ‘eternal and permanent forgiveness’ from the Yoruba on behalf of the entire Obasanjo clan for allegedly desecrating the crowns of Yoruba chiefs in Iseyin, Oyo State, over a week ago, the former president issued this memorable putdown. “The attention of former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has been drawn to a statement purportedly…issued by…Ms. Taiwo Martins as the author… For the records, Ms. Martins has two children, Jonwo and Bunmi, for Chief Obasanjo, but (we want) to say emphatically that she is not his wife nor a member of the Obasanjo family. Her posturing as Chief Obasanjo’s wife is false and that of an impostor…It must be noted that the state of health of Ms. Martins is known to all and sundry and whatever she says or does has nothing to do with Chief Obasanjo as an individual or the Obasanjo family as a whole.”

    Read Also: Yoruba elders seek return of Akintoye, Igboho from exile

    With that, the angered woman’s apology goes up in smoke, but not before issuing the most withering riposte anyone has given yet against a former president so enamoured of cuckoldry that he completely obliterates the boundary between vice and virtue. Worse, Nigerians now have a controversial and hesitant peep into the state of Ms Martins’ mental health. The feud with the Iseyin chiefs is harvesting many scalps: the reputation of the Oyo feckless chiefs, the sense of judgement of the amoral Chief Obasanjo, and the delicate image of a livid Ms Martins.

  • OBJ, statesman as mischief-maker

    Obasanjo is a global statesman. His contemporaries include Jimmy Carter, the 39th American president (1977-81), George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of US (1989-1993, ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of United Kingdom (1979-1990). He was very active in the international mediation efforts in Angola, Burundi, Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa. He played a leading role in the establishment of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), designed to promote democracy and good governance. Only last week, he got another “invitation of the UN Secretary-General to be a member of his 18-member High-Level Board of Advisers on Mediation.”

    Obasanjo, unfortunately, is a prophet without honour among his own people. While he might have succeeded in bewitching the international community, many Nigerians regard him  an ‘incredible opportunist’ (Brigadier General Alabi Isama, Tragedy of Victory) and a mischief maker on account of his periodic letters designed to de-legitimize every government after him  starting with  Shehu Shagari, Babangida, Abacha, Yar’Adua and Jonathan. With a second inciting  letter on the eve of a crucial election, he alleged without proof, that President Buhari is set to rig  while also accusing him of  massive corruption: “If we expose them, all of them will enter hell; they will not only go to jail”. Many are bound to conclude that Obasanjo is probably suffering from messianic complex.

    Discerning Nigerians are aware that since Obasanjo’s first coming as head of a military junta (1976-1979), he has done everything but promote the democratization process. He publicly admitted that as an umpire in 1978 presidential election, he took sides with the late Shagari to spite his more illustrious fellow Yoruba compatriot, Obafemi Awolowo, who according to Biafra Civil war leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu “was the best president Nigeria never had”. His perfidy was to lead to the derailment of the second republic experiment at democratization when the ill-prepared Shagari administration awarded his party ‘landslide and sea-slide’ victories especially in opposition strongholds in the 1983 election.

    Nigerians can also still remember how Obasanjo, the democracy crusader supported Babangida’s interim contraption to deny MKO Abiola, his Egba compatriot, of his pan-Nigerian mandate by claiming the winner was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for. And after being imposed on Nigeria by General Babangida and his anti-democratic elements, Obasanjo undermined the democratisation process in 2003 and 2007 through massive election rigging and failed third term agenda and in 2011 by imposing Jonathan on the country. Until President Buhari “the dictator” recently honoured MKO Abiola for his supreme sacrifice that democracy may thrive, Obasanjo and his fellow PDP democracy warriors, for 18 years desecrated Abiola’s grave.

    Nigerians, except the wailing and wayward PDP children who instead of telling Nigerian what they intend to do differently from their 16 years of locust have focused more on Buhari’s personal failings, are not deceived. Atiku who as Obasanjo’s deputy did not only publicly denounce him as false democratic and anti-corruption crusader but also alleged helping to disburse public funds for private concerns, is promising to continue with privatization of public enterprises. He thinks Nigerians have forgotten a House of Representatives probe report that claimed the country recouped only about $1.5b from total investments of over $100b between1960-1998. This was in addition to the loss of seven million jobs projected by World Bank because beneficiaries were more interested in asset stripping.

    Besides, Atiku other Obasanjo’s PDP children who will probably be ready to swear their adopted father is a false democratic and anti-corruption crusaders include the late Diepreye Alamieseigha who he chased from France to Britain where he escaped to Nigeria dressed like a woman. The late ‘Governor-General of Ijaw People’ was finally impeached by Obasanjo’s kangaroo impeachment panel of about half a dozen state lawmakers holed up in a hotel room in Lagos. We also have Rivers’ Peter Odili. Although he was saved by the Nigeria’s troubled judiciary that ruled he must not be tried or arrested by EFCC for allegedly defrauding his state, he however lost his dream of succeeding Obasanjo as president. There is also James Ibori who like Odili, was also saved by Nigerian judiciary but finally jailed for the same offences by the British judiciary. Obasanjo’s other estranged PDP children  include Lucky Igbinedion, Doyin Okupe, Ayo Fayose, Gbenga Daniel, Jolly Nyame, Joshua Dariye,  Boni Haruna, Adamu Mu’azu, Chris Uba  and others.

    But those who are really  interested in a critical assessment of Obasanjo’s credentials as democracy and anti-corruption crusader will find  the verdict of Ayo Fayose, Dino Melaye, Gbenga Daniel and Bukola Saraki ,  who are in all respects a match to their godfather’s intrigue, abrasiveness and uncouthness instructive.

    Ayo Fayose, a student of the late Pa Adedibu, the late exponent of ‘amala politics’ and the garrison commander of Ibadan Politics, was foisted on Ekiti by Obasanjo. They later fell apart over Fayose’s chicken farm scam.  Fayose had described Obasanjo while taking a temporary leave of absence from PDP as “a man without honour”  who “shouldn’t just tear his PDP membership card; but should relinquish the ownership of Bells University, Obasanjo Farms, Obasanjo Presidential Library, and other financial benefits he got during his eight years as President.’’  Fayose, the adopted son of Obasanjo, the democracy crusader, according to EFCC, allegedly collected about N3b from Jonathan to rig the 2014 Ekiti election. As governor-elect, he led some of his thugs to a court premises to beat up a judge presiding over his case.  He thereafter with the help of the thugs chased out 15 majority state lawmakers out of the state.

    Gbenga Daniel was drafted from Lagos by Obasanjo to supplant Aremo Olusegun Osoba as governor of Ogun State. When relationship between father and son became sour, Daniel with nine loyal state lawmakers impeached 15 majority who scurried out of the state while Daniel unconstitutionally put the state House of Assembly under lock and key. Obasanjo had to call on those he described as “men of goodwill within and outside,” made up of his secondary school classmates and Afe Babalola, his friend and lawyer to placate Daniel.

    Fresh from medical college, Bukola Saraki’s illustrious father donated him to Obasanjo who without hesitation appointed him special assistant on budgeting. He went on to become Kwara’s two-term governor and a senator.  When he usurped the senate presidency by, according to his confession, outwitting his 51 APC senators to be proclaimed senate president by acclamation by 49 opposition PDP senators, Obasanjo’s house was his first port of call.

    However when Obasanjo in a letter dated January 13, 2016 complained about ‘the mind-boggling expenditure going into cars, furniture, housing renovation which he said were ‘veritable sources of waste and corruption’ and went on to accuse the lawmakers of “massive corruption, greed, impunity and lawlessness..”, Saraki, directed his half-brother, Dino Melaiye who Obasanjo had also appointed adviser on youths, to disrobe their father publicly.

    Dino wrote: “‘Our leader has mistaken the 8th National Assembly as the same National Assembly that defrauded him in 2007; that is those who collected his money and refused to implement the third term agenda. I appeal to Baba that we are not the ones please”. He did not forget to rub it in: “There was the case of bribery introduced by the Obasanjo regime in the desperate attempt to remove Speaker Ghali Umar Na’Abba from office then. In fact, there was an open display of that bribery money on the floor of the House”. Concluding, Melaye asks; “I hope this is not in an attempt to cover up and distract attention from the Halliburton and Siemens corruption allegations?’’

    Dear compatriots, behold the democracy and anti-corruption crusader according to his PDP children.

  • Did OBJ, IBB tell Saraki the truth about power?

    It is junketing about time for our Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki.

    In the last couple of weeks, he has tranversed the country from the North to the South, consulting some of the handful “owners” of Nigeria.

    First, it was to Minna where he met with the former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida on the way forward for an agenda that seemed opaque at first but is now crystallising.

    Then he drove, (or did he fly), to Abeokuta to consult with another former president, General Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who almost attained the sobriquet of the “Conscience of the Nation”, until the lure of politics pulled him down from that olympian height to become a rabid political partisan.

    I’m not privy to what transpired in Minna and Abeokuta but I only assume the duo must have advised the obviously ambitious Saraki of the avoidable trouble he’s courting for himself in his current audacious political daring. If they did, in true conscience, Obasanjo must have regaled his visitor how many Senate Presidents he humiliated and hounded out of office in his eight years as civilian president and the unforgettable words of warning by military president General Ibrahim Babangida to his tormentors in office in those heady years, that he was not just in office, he was truly in power.

    Saraki must have also been cautioned to exercise restraint in his confrontation with President Buhari because if the man should be persuaded by Saraki’s bravado to adopt a Babangida or Obasanjo’s style as military or civilian president, in dealing with the offensive style of the handsome inheritor of the Kwara political kingdom, he may end up being badly bruised; and he will then have no one else but himself to blame.

    If he was edged on in his consultations with them, it means the two elder statesmen don’t love the Senate President or this nation and, from the experience of the Second Republic, some people may be providing the fertile ground for a military take-over of the government of this country. May the Supreme God we all worship, disallow this again in our land.

    Me? I’m an admirer of Saraki’s fine-boy look as well as his cool and confident mien. Are all these a facade to hide the hard-as-rock stuff inside of Oloye’s son? But the saying I first heard from a soldier-friend of mine in the mid-90s, is becoming too irresistible for me to ignore. It says something of the Ilorin person and capacity for mischief: “Odun meta ti Ilorin ti nya igbe eje, jamba inu e, ko ni ya jade” (three years an Ilorin person has been stooling blood, he/she will not excrete the mischief in him or her).

    I crave apology of Ilorin people for this, but there’s no better time than now to wash themselves clean of this label and dissuade our likeable Senate President from the ruinous path he’s treading. He should realise that the bootlickers and praise-singers around him, who for now are ready to lick his sputum for filthy lucre, will be the first to jump ship and transfer their allegiance to the new occupant of his powerful position, once he allows himself to be felled by the proverbial “banana peel”.

  • OBJ and the ‘Ogboju’ syndrome

    Ogboju” is no ordinary term in Yoruba speak. It describes a false bravado by the daring in pursuit of often dubious end. It happens when the marauder is, for instance, audacious enough to turn around and blame the very crime on their supposed victim.

    More and more, we are witnessing the “Ogboju” syndrome in the simmering Buhari/Obasanjo tiff. With the president suddenly breaking his own custom of silence last week by insinuating hanky panky in the multi-billion dollars power projects executed under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s watch as president, it became clear the infantry General from Daura is simply no longer willing to turn the proverbial other cheek under relentless assault by his senior professional colleague.

    Since drawing the first blood with the “letter bomb” of January, OBJ has characteristically not allowed any opportunity or platform pass without peppering PMB further with invectives least expected of a statesman of his pedigree and stature.

    But PMB’s own fireworks would appear to have commenced in earnest. Not only has the anti-graft agency responded by dusting up the reports of earlier probe of the $16b power deal, the Presidency further stirred things up weekend with a detailed reminder of how public institutions like the police and DSS were dragooned by OBJ to “topple” elected governors in pursuit of political vendetta. We were reminded how, in many instances, subdued state lawmakers were herded from EFCC detention camp to the assembly and made at gunpoint to impeach governors, even without a quorum.

    Added to the foregoing is the whispering campaign in town linking OBJ to an alleged multi-billion dollars contract proposal involving the Mambilia power project said to have been scuttled by Buhari.

    But for once, usually prolific OBJ is yet to find his fountain pen to confirm or deny this. Rather, he has since been on the back-foot, seeking portions of his latest memoirs, My Watch, as enough defence on the $16b power charge. Now, the wily witch-doctor is being force-fed generous portion of own bitter portion.

    While PMB may not have fully lived up to the promise of 2015, let it however be stated that that is not sufficient alibi for OBJ to now seek to indulge his habitual narcissism by resorting to some “Ogboju” and, in the process, inflict the most brazen assault on national memory. For, as they say, that the deer suffers adversity of having its visage disfigured by a boil isn’t enough reason for the domestic fowl to appropriate the toga of the tale-bearer.

    True, Buhari’s albatross in the past three years would undoubtedly include the issue of lopsidedness in appointments that have seen the South-East and South-South virtually alienated and the fact that the nation’s space remains haunted by the restless ghosts of the innocent slaughtered by genocidal herdsmen.

    But each time they read or hear OBJ lampooning Buhari, I am quite sure most – if not all – of those old enough to understand things while the two-term President held sway must find themselves choked by the stench of hypocrisy, unnerved by the sheer sanctimony of OBJ’s guttural chord.

    Suddenly, OBJ and his people now, for instance, want us to believe Buhari had many skeletons locked up in the PTF closet. But speaking on the same issue in January 2015, these were OBJ’s reactions to speculations against then candidate Buhari: “When we looked into it (PTF), there was really nothing amiss except that that organisation went from road-building to mosquito-net buying and all sort of things. Although there was an investigation, its report was not of any material importance. I thought that I should say it… (hoping) people will face issues rather than triviliaties.”

    Suddenly, the free-flowing eulogy of yesterday has bitter jeremiad today.

    While now dismissing both APC and PDP as “wrecked vehicles”, OBJ speaks as though the rest of us are the proverbial Bourbons afflicted by incurable amnesia. If nothing at all, he should, at least, accept responsibility for nourishing the umbrella party on the diet of impunity in its first eight formative years.

    When his last-ditch desperation to grab power after Third Term came to grief in 2006, he orchestrated the rigging of the party’s constitution to proclaim himself “Life Leader” and “Head of the Legislative Agenda” in a poor imitation of the ANC model in South Africa.

    As imperial president, the party leadership was made to grovel and worship at his feet.

    Those who rebelled soon met sour ending. When Audu Ogbeh as national chair summoned courage to publicly disagree with him on some state policies, the then imperial majesty at the Villa personally penned a philippic. Thereafter, the resignation letter of the insolent chair was allegedly extracted at gun-point behind closed doors!

    We also see OBJ’s “Ogboju” in continued denial of third term, despite overwhelming exhibits.

    The same mindset is also on display whenever and wherever presented a platform to pontificate on corruption. Apparently, his guiding philosophy is: do as I say, not as I do. Who, for instance, will forget the abominable spectacle of dirty undergarments exposed over PTDF when OBJ and his deputy Atiku Abubakar chose to fight dirty.

    Through the public hearing conducted, we heard how funds meant to develop the oil sector were converted to purchasing SUVs for OBJ’s concubines.

    Yet, Saint OBJ continues to sermonize on morality in public office. But when he ruled, his own queer lithurgy did not see any iniquity in auctioning prized national assets and allocating oil blocs to newly incorporated Transcorp where he had personal interest euphemistically classified as “blind trust”.

    When poor varsity teachers downed tools in protest of poor pay and underdevelopment of tertiary education in the country back then, sharp-tongued OBJ soon descended on them as saboteurs and hypocrites who would send their own kids abroad while shutting the school gates against the children of the poor at home. His own solution: he hastened the setting up of his own “world-class” university in Ota, obviously as alternative to those denied by ASUU.

    We also saw OBJ’s “Ogboju” in commandeering industry captains and state governors to raise a whopping N7b for his personal presidential library in Abeokuta on the eve of his exit. Meanwhile, the National Library mooted in 2002 amid national fanfare never really got off the ground.

    Asked recently by the Yoruba service of the BBC about the prospects of enlisting in OBJ’s political movement, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, was unsparing. Thumping his temple in a supreme gesture of denunciation, he retorted jocularly: “Then, I should have my head examined by a psychiatrist.”

    So, when they say millions have enlisted behind OBJ today, the big puzzle is whether the queue passes through the street sheltering the psychiatrist’s studio Soyinka insinuated.

     

  • OBJ, IBB, Danjuma, and the rest of us

    Three fabulously wealthy retired generals, two of them, former heads of state and one, a former defence minister are visibly agitated and even on the loose. The latest and the most incendiary is the outburst of retired General Theophilus Danjuma, who struck unfathomable person fortune when he sold an oil well for nearly US$2billion.

    There is no comparable fortunate retired General in the world, who got such breathtaking state hampers as oil field, and exploded in wealth without consumerate drop of sweat.

    Talking about why headsmen and farmers are in murderous encounter over depleting resource, the state’s art of parceling out of common national patrimony to very few tiny elites, account for one of the remote causes of the widening and terrific conflicts in which the toxic contradiction of peoples ever growing needs meets with shrinking opportunities.

    Danjuma at a convocation ceremony of Taraba State University lashed out the army, which President Muhammadu Buhari is the current Commander-in-Chief as criminally colluding with murderous marauders to attack helpless communities, decimating their population and pillaging their properties. He calls on Nigerians not to place their security in the constituted authority of a government they freely elected but to rise in self-defence against maunders and their military backers.

    Coming soon after the copious letter of former President and retired army General Olusegun Obasanjo, who owns billions of naira worth of private university and presidential library, in which he accused the government of incompetence and feeble anti-corruption war, followed by half-hearted and unsolicited counsel of former president, Ibrahim Babangida to President Buhari to forfeit any second term ambition, the impression cannot be lost in any discerning and fairly intelligible quarter, that the inordinate tantrums the retired soldiers dressed up as patriotic outrage is more than what meets the eye. When did they actually began to care or is Nigeria’s characteristic periodic and exponential upheavals, for which they have been collectively and even privately privy to, a new phenomenon? Is the state of affairs of a weak state and dysfunctional institutions, toiled to perpetuate influence peddling and power-grab not the crucible of  a prebendal polity and socio-economic system, benefiting men of power, money influence, even when they have exited formal state apparatus? Has the edifice of a rigged structure designed to be manipulated from outside under threat and has the influence peddling maneuvers of retired General, on state authority under threat.

    If President Buhari is eventually disrupting and dismantling paternalistic structure of the state, in which a tiny elite exercise a disproportionate suzerainty over it, to its benefit and allied surrogates to the exclusion of the majority of Nigerians, then a backlash of coordinated outbursts is only to be expected and is even welcome.

    Both presidents Obasanjo and Babagida helped entrench fragile state structure, and weak public institutions, reinforced by elite impunity, lawlessness and corruption that is at the root of contemporary Nigeria’s challenge.

    Having established the corrosive network through which the state is rendered hollow and vulnerable to insidious manipulations by handful of elites, from where they thrive and enjoy questionable appellations of “statesmen”, any prospective disruption of the informal network of state control would naturally draw the ire of the “big men” who have enjoyed the status of a state within state.

    The open revolt of Nigeria’s rich retired army Generals whose personal fortunes are way beyond the imaginations of their peers around world, calls for sober reflection within intelligible quarters and not the mere partisan roars of many commentators.

    Against their own records in office, what is the current government doing so incompetently that could draw their irate backlash? Former President Obasanjo enjoyed rare goodwill of a national consensus that followed the anger of General Babaginda’s questionable and endless transition to civil rule. Basking in the rare national unanimity of an elected civil administration, former President Obasanjo has the unique privilege to turn such goodwill into credible institutional process of state building. He bucked the party that brought him into office, grossly undermined state institutions and fostered surrogacy through planting minions accountable only to him and to not formal institutions of state.  He oversaw the largest turnover of the leadership of National Assembly, as he cherry picked the most malleable and pliable. President Buhari even against the prodding of his party and associates rejected meddling in the leadership of National Assembly, allowing the institution to sort out its leadership question. Ganging up against the current administration with open incitement to rebellion against it, the Generals are on a dangerous adventure. General Danjuma’s charge of a security breakdown which he alleged that the military colludes with criminal marauders to perpetuate murder and pillage against Nigerians is hot air and a mere smokescreen to hide deeper antipathy. For President Obasanjo, the latest outburst of an incompetence and even Babangida feeble attempt to put the Buhari regime to a corner are willful orchestrated outrage designed to bring the regime to an informal negotiating table of keeping alive the informal back channel through which Nigeria has been run aground that paved the way for its numerous crises. President Buhari must refuse to oblige them.

    The Buhari administrations have undoubtedly numerous self-inflicted problems, but the wolf-cry of Obasanjo, Danjuma and Babangida are national distractions, that the country cannot afford. But President Buhari must be alive to his responsibility especially in drawing the line where free speech begins and outright incitement to anarchy begins and not mistake one for another, before it is too late.

    Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy has just answered questions about his possible infractions of the law, while in office, and his Nigerian counterparts should not  be held no less accountable.

     

    • Onunaiju is journalist based in Abuja.
  • A governor at work

    A governor at work

    It was an operation conceived in utmost secrecy and executed at dawn when many were still snoring in bed. By the time they woke up, the huge storey building had been levelled, flattened.

    The building used to be the home of a faction of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kaduna. It was the symbol of the defiance of some party men, who are opposed to Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s style. His Excellency was alleged to have personally led the operation. This may not be far from the truth, considering the clinical manner in which it was executed and the delicate nature of the assignment.

    A few days ago, the Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi- led faction suspended El-Rufai and some of his aides. It was the climax of many months of bitter bickering between the factions.  Famous for his reticence, El-Rufai was calm. But, can a ship  have two captains? Will any governor worthy of the Executive Mansion tolerate such insubordination and calculated insult?

    Just as the Hunkuyi faction began to gloat over its success, the governor deployed an old strategy of his that has never failed. The bulldozer moved in. Now, Hunkuyi and his men are grumbling like a child stopped from sucking on his thumb.

    So incensed at the action was Senator Shehu Sani that he told the Senate: “Governor El-Rufai is an affliction on Kaduna State. He is a curse to us. We want to call on Buhari to caution his son. If this crisis is not nipped in the bud, it will grow into something bigger. We in Kaduna State cannot accommodate somebody who has the tendencies of Adolf Hitler, Mobutu Sese Seko and Nebuchadnezzar.”

    The Senator recalled that, exactly one year ago, His Excellency’s bulldozer smashed  APC Vice Chairman (Northwest) Inuwa Abdukadir’s house.

    Sani is not alone. Also complaining are those who know nothing about governance, state policy and power. They are crying like hired mourners who must outdo the bereaved. They say El-Rufai is inhumane, wicked and destructive.

    Does El-Rufai deserve the name calling and abuses? Why won’t anybody consider the peace that has suddenly descended on Kaduna since this demolition and many others? Why won’t anybody praise his mastery of this strategy as the final solution to stubborn problems? Or the governor’s inventive ability.  Instead, they talk about “his huge capacity for mischief, his unbridled ambition, his tempestuous and abrasive mannerism”.

    This is not the first time His Excellency has been excoriated for demolishing a property. He was harassed and cursed in Abuja when he was minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). So bad was the situation that he had to face an inquiry after his tenure. He was accused of grabbing other people’s land and allocating choice plots to his wife, concubines, girlfriends, friends and babies. Not a word did he deny. In fact, he told his inquisitors that he acted in the public interest and dared his critics to go to court. That was the end of the matter.

    When the Shiites ignited a bloody clash by blocking the Chief of Army Staff’s convoy, many were convinced that what they had seen as an age-long problem needed to be resolved immediately. But, they did not know what to do. El-Rufai’s  bulldozers simply rumbled through the place and knocked down the Shiites’ enclave. Hasn’t there been peace ever since?

    For a cleaner city, the government demolished many houses and threatened to remove beggars from the street. Now, Kaduna ranks as one of the world’s cleanest cities – to the envy of others.

    The only situation in which the demolition formula was not applied was that of the Fulani herdsmen, probably because the nomadic cattle men had no fixed property worth demolishing.  El-Rufai simply plunked down a fortune to buy their commitment to peace.

    The government explained that Hunkuyi had not paid ground rent for eight years. In these days of aggressive revenue drive, will any responsible government tolerate that? Besides, to demonstrate that it was all in the public interest, the governor directed that the land should be turned into a public park. A less magnanimous governor would have built public toilets on it.

    Now, according to a Government House source, all the landlords who are yet to pay their ground rent will have their buildings demolished. Watch out, company executives who have failed in remitting VAT and other statutory obligations, your buildings may soon host El-Ruafai’s bulldozers.

    As I was saying, His Excellency has been scorned by many for deploying  demolition as a state policy. To such busybodies, the fact that it has always worked wonders does not count.  They ask in an attempt to deride the formula: Is demolition of a building the same as the demolition of people’s resolve? What manner of governor is this? Was he elected to build or to pull down?

    Going personal, some of his critics have asserted without any scientific proof that diminutive people, among whom I’m proud to number, are prone to sudden anger. How true is this? Is it the fear of domination that drives us to strike first and so fatally? Or just the “I’m in charge here” syndrome?

    Whatever anybody may say about the El-Rufai formula, it is arguably one of those effective policies of this era. It is in the class of stomach infrastructure, the vote harvesting formula that has seen every Ekiti resident sporting a round tummy and chubby cheeks – all in less than four years. Or the Imo formula that professes erection of statues as a recipe for peace and general well-being of residents. Like the El-Rufai formula, the Imo solution continues to be derided, particularly the Jacob Zuma statue after the former South African president threw in the towel. Many now look at it contemptuously and hiss: “what a wrong erection”.

    The Government House source aforementioned has just told me that the demolition formula was being considered for restive communities. The residents will just wake up someday to discover that their homes are gone. There will be nothing to fight over or somewhere to launch attacks from.

    From many states and neighbouring countries, I am told, inquiries have been pouring in on how to acquire the ABC of the El-Rufai formula. Some of the governor’s aides are said to be packaging a working document on how to set up a centre where the legion of people who want to be well grounded in this formula can be trained. At a price.

     

    Obj’s adventures in Ijawland

    It was thought to be a rumour. Then, the pictures hit the social media. Former President Goodluck Jonathan was hosting former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Otuoke, his Bayelsa State home. “Editorial Notebook” has approached many sources in a desperate bid to report the details of their discussion. Here is an account of the meeting, according to an unconfirmed source, who claimed to be close to a cousin of the sister of one of the cleaners in the sprawling compound:

    (Obasanjo, decked in an Ijaw dress- sparkling buttons and dangling chain – walks in briskly. He is surrounded by a retinue of guards. Jonathan meets him at the door). Welcome sir; you do well Baba. Very courteous of you to visit us here.

    Obasanjo: You see, I don’t dwell on the past. All is forgotten; all is forgiven. You are my son. Even the prodigal son in the Bible got a warm embrace after his repentance. So, let’s leave politics for politicians. I’m now a statesman.

    “But Baba (Jonathan laughs heartily) everybody is talking about your special statement on Buhari and your Coalition for Nigeria Movement, CNM. You even told Buhari not to run.”

    “Yes. Why should he run again? Please, please, I don’t want to discuss politics. Why should he run? I concede to him that he has been fighting the insurgency, but I need to warn that other areas are crying for attention. The economy is not doing well. If people now think that CNM and all that na politics; dat na dem toro.”

    “Even the so-called anti-corruption war; is that how to fight it; going after key opposition figures? Look at my wife. Nobody has complained that his money is missing, yet Magu and his people won’t let her rest. I don’t understand. Perhaps,  all this would not have happened if you had backed me.”

    Obasanjo chuckles, his lips pursed.  He raises his right hand.”My dear, forget the past. Even me, one yeye boy who said he was a governor and now a senator was saying I should face trial for corruption; Halliburton and all that. And I said, ‘okay o. I dey my house. Come catch Obasanjo. He was so disrespectful and I was wondering the kind of senators we now have. Senator my foot!

    “Where is Mama Peace? Where is my pounded yam? Wey fisherman soup? ”

    Jonathan signals to an aide to fetch the former First Lady who had earlier joined him to receive Obasanjo. She walks in fast, beaming.

    “Baba, na like this una go dey look me? All my money, they say it is money laundering. How can I carry money to a laundry; is it cloth? And I say, ‘okay, make we settle. They refused. Is that not persecution? Am I a launderer?”

    Obasanjo, smiling, moves to the dining table, sits. “My dear, don’t worry. We will soon know who owns this country. Just then, the light goes off (for a few minutes and Obasanjo, frowning, speaks. “They even said I, Aremu Olusegun Okikiolakan Obasanjo, chopped $16 billion for light. Me? We shall see o.”

    Lunch over, Obasanjo stands up and the former First Family sees him off to the car.

  • OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    Obasanjo tried to justify the inauguration of his new movement last week by reminding us of the need “to rethink and retool since the instruments we have used so far in our nation-building and governance since independence have not served us well”. He says his new movement “will mobilise our population for unity, cooperation, development, rule of law, employment, law and order, justice, integration, peace, security, stability, welfare and well-being”. He also says the movement is not the third force or a political party but a means to an end and the end is “Nigeria, unshackled, united, dynamic, strong, secure, cohesive, stable, and prosperous”. For him and his group, it is “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future.”  He however says in the event the movement decides to transit into a political party, he will cease to be a member.

    The first observation is that as indicated on these pages last week, Dr. Obasanjo who hijacked and destroyed PDP along with opposition AD and ANPP in 2003, seems to underestimate the value of political parties in a democracy. Yet no modern state is known to have developed since the 18th century without political parties serving as modernization agents.  Obasanjo unfortunately shares this fallacy with  his other military adventurers including  Babangida who tried to decree parties and Abacha , who in the guise of unipartysm, hilariously decreed what the late Bola Ige described as ‘ five fingers of a leprous hand’. Finally, Obasanjo was silent on why the old system failed and why for the nation, it has been motion without movement since 1966. We will address that shortly.

    But with Col Amhadu Ali (rtd), former PDP chairman and under whose chairmanship of Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), house probe confirmed the theft of N1.6trillion by PDP stalwarts and their siblings under the fuel subsidy scam, and Olagunsoye Oyinlola who  as governor of Osun State was sacked by the courts for electoral fraud, as the movement chief drivers, it is not difficult to predict the outcome of his proposal which  in itself is a recipe for a rule of mob by ill-equipped men as we have witnessed since 1966. Since people cannot give what they don’t have, what his movement will produce will not be different  from what is generally regarded as military social engineering efforts such as NYSC, unity schools, quota admission to universities and civil service, all aimed at symptoms rather than the fundamental problem of crisis of nation-building which Obasanjo claims is his concern.

    Secondly, we cannot climb the palm tree from the top as Edmund Burke reminded us a long while ago. “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future…” has no meaning when we share no common culture, values or world outlook. No ethnic group, whether dominant or minority, can impose its culture on others without resistance. The best route to national cohesion as advised by the UN is to encourage nationalities to promote their own cultures and values. Uniformity is the language of Nigerian military and their fronts that stand to gain economically or politically from the chaos that has come to define our nation since 1962.

    There was no evidence that southern youths who read architecture and other courses in ABU in early sixties were superior to their northern counterparts. Those who came to read medicine and other courses in University of Ibadan came on merit and were never considered inferior to their southern colleagues. Unfortunately, since the death of Ahmadu Bello in 1966, except for the ongoing effort of El- Rufai of Kaduna State to address the fundamental causes of low standard of education in the north, the obsession of successive northern leaders at both national and local level was to drag the rest of the country down to their level through quota system of admission to federal institutions which were taken over from the states. While the architect of forceful seizure of institutions from their state owners has not told us how his proposed rule of the mob will contribute to nation-building, we have seen without having to reinvent the wheel, how nations like Germany, France Italy and the rest of Europe after two devastating world wars came to grips with their crisis of nation-building. We also have examples of Brazil and India, a more heterogeneous society to learn from.

    But the question many may ask is why weep over the collapse of all our parties since 1979, if democracy that cannot survive without it, like Obasanjo’s proposal will only lead to the rule of a majoritarian mob? The simple answer is that unlike other institutions of democracy viz vibrant civil society, free press, free and fair elections, independent judiciary, and independent legislature, political parties help in recruiting and training gifted and astute individuals capable of managing the majoritarian mob.

    We can now address the question of why our system failed.  It failed in the first republic and under Obasanjo because those recruited by political parties to manage majoritarian mob had limited vision.

    With the control the of state security apparatus in the hands of the north as we have it today, Fulani agenda replaced the Nigerian agenda. Coercion was freely applied as response to restiveness among the Tivs, the Ijaw and was to be used to pacify the Yoruba before the coup of 1966. In fact, anarchy reigned in the land especially in the Yoruba country when the military came in 1966.

    Although Dr. Obasanjo calls himself ‘Mr. Nigeria’, available facts do not confirm he has a vision beyond self. He has publicly admitted he manipulated the system in 1979, just as he did in 2007 when, following his third term fiasco, he imposed terminally ill Umaru Yar’Adua and an untested and incompetent Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. Before then, he had, during the aborted third republic in 1993 said MKO Abiola, the astute politician produced by Babangida’s decreed parties, was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for. He voted for an interim contraption to be headed by an Ernest Shonekan. As it turned out, he became the greatest beneficiary of MKO Abiola’s tragedy.

    As for President Buhari, his ‘extraordinary strength of character seems to be marred by his stiffness and bigotry’. He doesn’t appear to have the capacity to build consensus, an important ingredient for democracy’ and this perhaps accounts for his inability to manage even his own ANPP and CPC until Bola Ahmed Tinubu worked along with others to put the APC together. He and he alone is to be held responsible for the failure of APC.

    In a piece titled ‘what Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu, published on these pages on January 11 2013, I had advised Buhari and Tinubu to see APC inauguration as that “of a modernising party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies…to replace the current political parties moulded in the military image, with garrison commanders as party leaders”. Tragically, what Oyegun and the president succeeded in doing since riding into power on the back of APC is striving to make it a carbon copy of PDP.

    With President Buhari’s apparent opposition to restructuring,  with Myyetti Allah leaders who justified mindless killings by Fulani herdsmen and threatened to unleash more violence still walking free, with video probably sponsored by Buhari detractors promising pacification of Nigeria with help from other West African Fulani making the rounds while those in charge of the state security apparatus keep blaming victims of herdsmen violence, it appears we are once again being haunted by ghost of collapsed First Republic.