The Nation Newspaper

Tag: PMB

  • PMB vs. rule of law advocates

    President Buhari is very stiff. He is set in his ways. He believes his, is a messianic mission. He is therefore not out to please anyone including his party men, political foes or even the electorate. It is not he but others that lose sleep over his shooting of himself in the legs most of the times. Buhari doesn’t appear to give a hoot about winning or losing elections. If any proof was needed, his last week’s ‘the rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest’ provided that. A man who is thinking of an election in less than six months would have avoided such self-inflicted controversy.

    And come to think of it, the president no doubt knows that ‘rule of law’ is a department in which he is most vulnerable. He is the author of decrees two and four of 1984, through which journalists were jailed for reporting the truth. He has not been forgiven by patriots like Pa Ayo Adebanjo whose colleagues such as the late Professor Ambrose Alli, Olabisi Onabanjo and Pa Adekunle Ajasin were jailed like common criminals for deploying state resources to build universities and provide other welfare packages for their people without making a distinction between their noble objectives and those of their NPN and NPP colleagues who diverted foreign loans towards setting up private banks and marrying new wives. And worse still, back in 1984, he had a strong personality like Gani Fawehinmi who was prepared to swim against the tide by pointing out the hypocrisy within his legal profession to justify his support for Buhari’s abridgement of rule of law. Today, Buhari has few sympathisers.

    Meanwhile the constituency of his political foes has been enlarged with the coming of age of those who were neither born in 1984 nor can today articulate the battle Buhari is waging on their behalf. The enemy camp has been made more formidable with the intervention of some genuine pro-rule of law advocates who have nothing but contempt for military dictators. Of course, there are also the crooks and brigands, the target of Buhari’s anti-corruption war who are trying to use rule of law as excuse to evade prosecution for massive corruption. Added to the list  are also some institutions of state such as the legislature, the judiciary that habour not a few thieves  that have in the last three years deployed self-help tactics  to slow down his anti-corruption war.

    For President Buhari, Wole Soyinka, the conscience of the nation has a short advice. “The rule of law, he says, outlasts all ‘subverters’, however seemingly powerful”, adding that President Buhari has obviously given deep thought to his travails under a military dictatorship, and concluded that his incarceration was also in the ‘national interest’.  But for Pa Ayo Adebanjo, “For his statement that the rule of law is under the state security, it is time to tell the president that the statement is treasonable”. Like his fellow lawyers, Femi Falana insists, national security is subject to rule of law. He however admitted that “it has however  to be conceded that under a democratic dispensation the fundamental rights of individuals may be suspended in certain circumstances, citing  section 45(1) which says that “Nothing in sections 37,38,39,40 and 41 of this Constitution shall invalidate any law that is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society:(a) In the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health; or (b) For the purpose of protecting the rights and freedom of other persons.”

    Of course for the NBA, “Any national security concerns by the government must be managed within the perimeters and parameters of the rule of law”, while for the body’s newly elected president, Paul Uzoro, “The NBA’s significant role is “to serve as the watchdog of society and, in the process, call the government to account.”

    And finally, there is the PDP, the patron of those charged with corruption whose intention is to use the bogey of the rule of law to escape justice. The party has no restraint in making wild and unproven claims of “documented disobedience to court orders, extra-judicial and arbitrary executions, unlawful arrests and political detentions, killing of persons in custody, torture and excessive use of force by security forces on innocent citizens.”

    But I sympathise with those uncompromising rule of law idealists. As an ideal, rule of law has many advantages according to “The World Justice Project (WJP)”, an independent, multi-disciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law worldwide. It says “effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease, and protect people from injustice large or small. It is the foundation of communities of equity, opportunity and peace-underpinning development, accountable government and respect for fundamental rights”.

    But that is only if we view rule of law as work in progress. For even in no one is above the law America where Thomas Paine as far back as 1776 boasted “in America, the law is king” and where by 1780, John Adams was already seeking for the establishment of “a government of law and not of men”; rule of law cannot be said to be a concluded enterprise. This was perhaps why the late Gani Fawehinmi who fought along Buhari in 1984 defying his professional colleagues had no illusion. For him “strengthening rule of law is a never ending process; no society ever attains let alone sustain a perfect crystallisation of rule of law”.

    Were he to be alive today, perhaps a more compelling reason why he would have pitched his tent with Buhari is our failure to meet up with “four universal principles, adopted by The World Justice Project, a body in which he played an active role when he was alive, for measuring the effectiveness of rule of law. They include: accountability of government as well as private actors under the law;  just and evenly applied laws; accessibility of the  processes by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced; and lastly,  timely deliverance of justice by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals who are accessible, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.

    Unfortunately, of the four pre-conditions, all those bitten by the ‘rule of law’ bug have focused only on the sovereign and his human frailties to drive fears into our minds. They conveniently ignore the other three variables without which rule of law remains what it is, an ideal. How can we talk of rule of law within the framework of the 1999 constitution described by some eminent lawyers as Abdulsalami’s Decree 24 which arbitrarily created more LGAs to be funded from the federation account for a geographical zone at the expense of the areas that generated the revenue? How just are the new rules on revenue allocation instituted by the dominant ethnic groups that had insisted on revenue allocation based on derivation before oil became the mainstay of the nation’s economy?

    Obasanjo in office tampered with rule of law in order to confront crooks and miscreants. China and Singapore and many developed nations before them temporarily abridged rule of law to liberate their poor from those who want freedom for themselves but demand for a state cover to preside over empire of slaves. We cannot eat our cake and have it.

    That we agreed in the first place to give up our freedom and liberty for the protection of an elected sovereign presupposes he is better placed to articulate the national interest during his limited reign. Crooks and brigands are not in a position to tell us if ours is a state of lawlessness.  In less than six months we will have an option to choose between an unrepentant Buhari who strongly believes he has a date with posterity and his current political foes.

     

  • Before PMB expands the jailhouses

    Fresh from his 10-day working vacation in the British capital at the weekend, the media pointedly put the question to President Muhammadu Buhari on what Nigerians should expect from him going forward.

    “More Nigerians”, he said, “are expecting that we are going to jail more of the thieves that brought economic problems to the country. I think that is being expected of ME and I will do it”.

    No one, it seems to me, ever doubted where the president stood on the monster called corruption. However, if the expectation was that the rest period in the United Kingdom would have afforded our president ample time for deeper, perhaps more comprehensive reflection on those seemingly intractable problems that have hobbled past and current efforts to build a united, peaceful and prosperous country, it must have come to many as disappointing that he almost instinctively, relapsed into his now traditional default mode of chasing after the wind of the ‘looters’ of our commonwealth.

    To start with, it should alarm Nigerians that the president will implicitly and perhaps most cavalierly, discount the strictures embedded in our constitutional order simply to press the case against the so-called looters even when they are yet to be put to trial. As far as yours truly can see, the president, as the symbol of executive authority, could cause the building of as many jailhouses as the national appropriation would permit; he could even sign as many executive orders to address perceived lacuna in the existing laws as he deems fit – the most recent being Executive Order No 6 which seeks to restrict the use of suspected stolen funds; nowhere in the constitution, it needs to be made clear, is the president empowered to declare any Nigerian a looter any more than the presidency could procure any extra-legal measures to put any citizen out of circulation – no matter how heinous or grievous the perceived misdeed might be.

    That role, it bears stating, belongs exclusively to the judiciary.

    That a president sworn to the observance of the due process and of the law would harbour such exaggerated notion of presidential powers would seem to me at the heart of all that is wrong with our country. The same would apply to the anti-graft and security agencies, all of which, in the frenzy of the moment forget that they are in fact creations of law, going overboard with mindless activism – despite the clear delineation of their roles as investigative and prosecutorial bodies – all in the cause of a so-called presidential anti-corruption agenda.

    No doubt, the president may be right in his assumption about Nigerians sharing his revulsion for corruption. Most likely, they do. After all, they bear the direct consequences of the uncountable billions routinely filched from the treasury – monies that could have been judiciously deployed to improve their living conditions. What is debatable is whether they – by this I mean citizens – would tolerate means that are more foul than fair all in the name of stanching out the scourge. This is even more so, from a presidency, which although imbued with such awesome powers, have neither enhanced the institutional capacity of the anti-graft bodies to do the hard work, nor evolved a coherent strategy to stop corruption from budding.

    Let me preface this by admitting that the president has done quite a lot to bring corruption into the front burner. Perhaps more than all the previous leaders before him, he has deployed the moral force of the bully pulpit to awaken Nigerians to the consciousness of the scourge as a lethal, not-too-silent killer of nations. The implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), for instance, has not only eventuated in massive curbs in wastes in the federal bureaucracy in particular, it has somewhat, streamlined our public finance and its unfathomable processes. As it is, gone as it were, is the era where public officers, did as they pleased with public funds, only because their helmsmen thought little of the appropriation process.

    Of course, we have seen a new zeal on the part of the anti-graft institutions to confront the menace, even if the agencies are still largely light years behind as far as the cutting edge technology required for the fight is concerned. This we must also admit is when showmanship is not allowed to undermine the rigour of due diligence needed to deliver. And with the judiciary recently providing a spark in what had hitherto proven to be an unwinnable war, a country primed to confront the un-silent killer has finally begun to emerge.

    Clearly, while the economy may not have returned to robust health, the mindless haemorrhage is increasingly becoming history.

    As important as these are, they are certainly not sufficient to deal a fatal blow on corruption. That factor, long lost in the current treatise on corruption in these parts, would again be missed by President Buhari in his single-minded resolve to herd the nation’s colony of looters into the jailhouse. That factor, if I may put it simply is the push for a fairer, more just and equitable society.

    Surely, the fight is certainly not exclusively that of the executive to fight. While the president could prod the anti-graft agencies to investigate corruption whereever found, the job of determination or exculpation from guilt obviously lies with the judiciary. To go beyond that is to undermine the institutional integrity without which the body is at once reduced to an executive lackey.

    But the more fatal is the assumption that the anti-corruption stands any real chance without a deliberate move to expand the frontiers of opportunity for everyone.

    To be sure, that factor boils down to the basic question of how a diligent worker is expected to own a home without a mortgage system in place without dipping his finger into the treasury; we are not even talking here of a pensioner, who, after, toiling faithfully for 35 years in public service has nothing of shelter to boast of. Or a young man, who after spending more than decade in employment and on a salary that would hardly suffice to take him home, and with all the societal pressures, is nonetheless expected to cough out more than a million cash upfront to purchase a car in the absence of a functional credit system.

    And we sure know how rents and wages are paid in these parts; whereas the former are in advance, sometimes as many as two years; the latter, which comes in trickles, are oftentimes hopelessly in arrears, sometimes for as much as six months as we have seen in some of the states in recent time!

    That is the reality of our society.  Time we began to evolve  functional institutions in credit delivery.

    It is not too late for the president to ponder on these even as he moves to expand the jailhouses.

  • PMB: Need to sustain the change

    SIR: Barely six months to the 2019 general elections, political parties and politicians with common agenda are grouping and regrouping to seek elective offices, and in particular, the coveted office, the presidency.

    The office of the president would certainly going to be keenly contested between the two major political parties, the governing All Progressives Party and the People’s Democratic Party. The opposition PDP struggling to seize power seems to be interested only in grabbing power without any pro-people agenda, as all the aspirants who have shown interest are singing the same tune; no blue print on the economy, job creation, security etc.

    There are two important reasons why Nigerians should continue to support the change mantra led by President Muhammadu Buhari. One is the fight against insurgency in the Northeast, and the other, the anti corruption war. They are twin evils that have hampered our growth and development as a nation, and requires a proactive, incorruptible and fearless leader like President Buhari, a fact that even his opponents can not dispute. And these are major areas the previous administration under former president, Goodluck Jonathan performed poorly because he lacked the political will to confront them.

    However, this is not to say that the government has successfully achieved the desired results.  Prior to the 2015 elections, Nigerians had high expectations and were full of hope that as soon as APC won the election, they would turn stone to egg! They forgot where we’re coming from, that the damaging legacies of 16 years of PDP era cannot be repaired within a four year tenure. And change, as observed by Robin Sharma, is always a little uncomfortable at first. It is also more than a little risky.

    The anti-corruption war is also succeeding, and gaining momentum, as the government has recovered monies both home and abroad running into billions of dollars and still expecting more from bilateral agreements entered with countries in Europe, UAE, and the US.

    It’s our hope, that Nigeria will be restored to the path of honour and greatness again, with our collective efforts, but only if we all say no, to the government of kleptocracy, impunity and disorder!

    If the politicians that led us to this mess are genuinely interested in the growth and development of this country, they wouldn’t have spent $16 billion in the energy sector without any result, leaving the country to still face electricity problem!

    The time to say no to enemies of Nigeria is now, and let’s all sustain the change!

     

    • Abdullateef Tanko, nayashit@yahoo.com

  • PMB and the limits of loyalty

    Loyalty is unquestionably a key element of President Muhammadu Buhari’s political philosophy even if he has not espoused any systematic or coherent set of principles or ideas that guide his politics. Buhari is enamoured of loyalty and seemingly finds those who proclaim their fanatical commitment to him from the rooftops particularly endearing.  But then, Buhari is not alone in this. Most political leaders in history, across time and space, have cherished the loyalty of their aides and associates, above all other virtues.  Many great historical personages have been undone, sometimes fatally, by the treachery and betrayal of those in whom they reposed much trust.

    PMB has personally experienced the painful thrusts of treachery and disloyalty when the military regime he headed alongside the late General Tunde Idiagbon was overthrown in 1985.  The forceful change was effected through a palace coup conceptualized and executed by insiders in the top hierarchy of the regime right in the inner recesses of state power.  But then, it could be argued that the logic of forceful seizure of power by the military is that those who assume office through the barrel of the gun can also be forcibly removed legitimately by the barrel of the gun. It is not a question of morality.

    In the aftermath of his 1985 ouster from power, Buhari was in forced incarceration for about three years. That experience, some suggest, may subliminally be responsible for PMB choosing the heads of practically all security agencies from his part of the country and with all of them also being of the same religious faith. The implication is that these are the heads of our security architecture that PMB can feel safe and secure with. Of course, there is no way to prove this. But PMB’s greatest strength and defence, he should know, lies not in force of arms through the military but rather in the support of millions of ordinary Nigerians who admire his asceticism, discipline, simple outlook on life and his relentless onslaught against corruption.

    In 1985, PMB and Idiagbon were patriotically fixated on fighting corruption but remained absolutely impervious to loud outcries from the populace on the excruciating impact the regime’s policies was having on them particularly in the areas of human rights violations. Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, was forced to declare at that time that the public seemed to be talking to a deaf and dumb government.  Of course, the wily and politically astute Ibrahim Babangida and his collaborators took advantage of the situation to seize power.

    Today, PMB once more wields power legitimately acquired through the ballot box within the context of constitutional democracy.  But again, just as during his earlier coming as military Head of State in 1984, the PMB administration is frontally and aggressively fighting corruption while remaining utterly indifferent to outrageous public outcry on diverse issues. These include, unlawful detention of persons despite court rulings to the contrary, rampant nepotism, non-inclusive governance, alleged double standards in the war against corruption as well as the unprecedented and manifestly dangerous appointment of heads of the various arms of the military as well as those of paramilitary and security agencies from the North with most of them being Muslim to boot.

    This time around, the danger is not military intervention. Nigeria has thankfully evolved beyond that stage in the process of our political development with 19 years of unbroken civilian rule over the last 19 years. However, the All Progressives Congress (APC) must realize that it is not immune from the kind of electoral tsunami that swept away the PDP in 2015, following the latter’s arrogance, insensitivity, unconscionable corruption and the complacency arising from its delusion of being ordained to be in power indefinitely irrespective of the will of the people.  The APC must be wary of treading that path, which it unfortunately is doing now, unless it plans to remain in office in 2019 in spite of, rather than as a result of the freely expressed will of the people.

    One admirable feature of PMB’s leadership style is his fierce and uncompromising loyalty to his appointees and associates. This can be a positive strength but it can also be a great weakness. It might inspire some to work hard, always going the extra mile to compensate for the loyalty of the boss and his faith in them. For others, it might encourage a sense of lethargy, indolence and complacency in the belief that they are untouchable and can do no wrong as far as their principal is concerned.

    The spate of sustained killings across the country particularly through the nefarious activities of ‘unknown herdsmen’ has elicited widespread calls for the appointment of new service chiefs. However, PMB has remained stoically impervious to and absolutely unperturbed about this demand from large sections of the citizenry.  Rather, he has extended the tenure of the service chiefs twice upon the expiration of their statutorily stipulated terms in office. This column does not believe the service chiefs should be sacked because of the security situation in the country.

    They certainly have tried their best and made some impact especially in substantially caging the Boko Haram monster in the North East. Even if PMB removes the service chiefs today, it will not necessarily bring about an automatic end to the diverse security challenges confronting the country. No less critical is the need to urgently and radically re-configure our entire security architecture to achieve greater operational and functional efficacy in a culturally diverse, politically complex, ethnically plural, geographically vast and supposedly federal polity like ours.

    This column believes there are three reasons why PMB should urgently allow the service chiefs to bow out honourably and let fresh hands take their place. Firstly is the fact that statutorily, their tenures have expired and PMB must maintain his reputation as a stickler for due process. No matter how well they may have done, others should also be given an opportunity to showcase their abilities and bring fresh ideas into the struggle to confront and contain the country’s sundry security challenges. Secondly, the continuation in office of these service chiefs beyond their statutory terms creates the impression that they are indispensable and that there are no competent hands to take over from them. This will certainly have serious implications for morale, sense of fulfilment as well as self-confidence down the hierarchical chain of command. Thirdly, PMB can utilize the opportunity of appointing new service chiefs to address the very serious issue of the obvious ethno-regional and religious skewing of security appointments in favour of the north – an issue that is daily eroding the President’s good will.

    Buhari, El-rufai and Yaya Bello
    Buhari, El-rufai and Yaya Bello

    In any case, what exactly is loyalty? Are many of those proclaiming themselves to be fanatical ‘Buharists’ today, doing so because they love him or because of the benefits they are reaping from his present position? Let us take Governor Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna State for instance. Today he poses continuously as an unrepentant ‘Buharist’. Yet, is this not the same el Rufai, who as head of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, endlessly sang former Vice President Atiku Abubaka’s praises to high heavens claiming that Atiku never interfered in the privatization process?

    When Atiku fell out with President Obasanjo, el-Rufai, made a 180 degrees turn and began his new swan song portraying his new benefactor, Obasanjo, as a saint and Atiku as  corrupt villain. Today, el Rufai is at the fore front of the ‘Buhari is our Messiah’ orchestra. Where he will be tomorrow on the political spectrum will certainly not be a matter of principle or honest conviction but one of expediency, opportunism and personal aggrandizement. This is a perfect example of chameleonic loyalty.

    Or take my governor, the youthful and ebullient Yahaya Bello of Kogi State.  Here was a man who was at the forefront of the advocacy for the extension of the tenure of the Chief John Odigie-Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC). When he saw that PMB was unbending in his resolve that the APC constitution must be adhered to and congresses and the convention held, Bello quickly made an amazing somersault. He told an obviously astonished and startled Oyegun at a party meeting at the APC national secretariat that he was prepared to dive into fire if that was PMB’s wish.

    Pronto, the next time we saw Bello, His Excellency was on crutches, his right foot heavily bandaged. The inimitable Azu Ishiekwene, publisher of The Interview and columnist, speculated that Bello may have sustained the injury while rehearsing the art of fire diving. I am reliably informed that some citizens of Kogi State have since embarked on intensive prayer and fasting to influence PMB to request his beloved son to take a dive into a blazing inferno.

    There is no doubt that this kind of prayer is being uttered with undisguised ‘malicious and malignant’ intent (apologies to T.M. Aluko). PMB should certainly be wary of Bello’s kind of acrobatic loyalty. As for Mr. President, your loyalty should, first and last sir, be to the constitution and people of Nigeria and not to those who proclaim their love for you from the hilltop for selfish gains.

  • All gloves off for PMB

    On Wednesday, May 9, 2018, some ex-leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who joined the coalition that gave birth to the All Progressives Congress (APC), issued a seven-day ultimatum to the leadership of the APC to convene a meeting to address alleged marginalization and unfair treatment of their group in the appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB).

    The ultimatum bore a great weight in the context of the group’s referential antecedent that strengthened the basis of the ultimatum. It was a significant punch. To be sure, the defunct new PDP (nPDP), under the superintendence of former national secretary and one-time acting national chair of the PDP, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, that issued the ultimatum, has a remarkable history behind it.

    The group broke away from the PDP in 2014 due to some irreconcilable differences. Five governors on the party platform-Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Abdulfatai Ahmed (Kwara), Aliyu Magatakarda Wammako (Sokoto), and Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano) – pulled out with their followers. Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, also left the party. The then incumbent Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, followed suit.

    The list, which comprised some serving senators – Bukola Saraki, Abdullahi Adamu, Adamu Aliero, Danjuma Goje, et al and some members of the House of Representatives, including Yakubu Dogara, Abdulmumin Jibril, Dakuku Peterside, among others, was quite exhaustive.  There was consensus among them.  Their single-mindedness and unanimity of purpose gave impetus to their agenda.

    The outcome of their voyage and its far-reaching implications for the Nigerian nation-state have become part of the novel historical narrative of the electoral defeat of an incumbent president and the dislodgement of a ruling party that had bestridden the nation’s political landscape for all of 16 years. The defunct nPDP played a major role in the untangling of the once-dreaded behemoth of self-appointed and vaunted demigods, oracles, godfathers, fixers and enforcers.

    Allowing the group to egress was PDP’s greatest strategic political blunder that irredeemably damaged its electoral fortune in the presidential election. The defunct nPDP with such human and political capacity should rationally not have been taken for granted. In pursuit of an agenda, it has now been somewhat resurrected and has created a palpable tension in the APC consequent upon the submission of its protest letter to the leadership at the National Secretariat. Baraje, who is curiously a core loyalist of Saraki, led the delegation and addressed the press on the essence of their visit and the theme of their letter.

    Significantly, it would appear that the timing of the letter and the ultimatum were choreographed to aggravate the anxiety and rancour in the party arising from the current party congresses. Baraje and his cohorts had, perhaps, calculated that the APC leadership might not have the luxury of time right now to address their grievances and that would provide a good alibi to abandon the party. They did not also consult with the large spectrum of members of the defunct nPDP in the APC to get their buy-in, a move that portrayed their action as being in bad faith.

    It was, therefore, not difficult for some of the members who occupy strategic positions in the APC government to see through the chicanery of Baraje and his clique. To deflate the ego of the Baraje group and take the winds of its sail, a counter attack from the circle of members of the defunct nPDP was inevitable.  Former governor of Nasarawa state and one-time Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the PDP, Abdullahi Adamu (representing Nasarawa West in the Senate) stood up to Baraje’s offensive, all gloves off, yes, in bare-knuckle punches. The exertion was to vehemently defend Buhari and the APC.

    In company with Chief Theodore Georgewill and Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, Adamu stormed the APC national secretariat on the eve of the expiration of the ultimatum by the Baraje-led group to submit a letter absolving the president and the party of culpability of any sort in the alleged marginalization in the appointments of party members into government offices. Adamu, who is currently chairman of the Committee on Agriculture in the Senate, is the North Central Coordinator of Buhari’s presidential campaign. He enjoys a cornucopia of respect in the zone as well as massive goodwill in the entire north.

    One of the respected voices in the north, Adamu has, with good grace, thrown his hat in the ring in defence of Buhari’s re-election enterprise. An acclaimed political wizard in Nasarawa state, he is not bothered at all about his re-election to the Senate as he has strategically locked in the Nasarawa West senatorial seat. Very popular and loved by his people, the second term senator continues to deploy his legerdemain for electoral support. Having secured the home base, he is clear-headed about the bigger picture of the unfolding presidential clash.

    His first strategic battle was against the reordered sequence of 2019 general elections. Acting in pari materia with national and APC’s interests, he and some colleagues to whom he provides a sharply-focused leadership were able to dilate the Senate plan to override the president’s veto of the Electoral Act 2010 (Amendment Bill 2018) in furtherance of their sympathetic support for the president’s electoral cause. The issue of overriding Buhari’s veto of the Bill is dead.

    Indeed, the group’s arguments verge on the president’s achievements and not on primordial sentiments. It holds the view that Buhari has done well enough to deserve a consolidating second term in office. For instance, the group is enamoured by the national and international awareness and support that the president has attracted to the anti-corruption crusade, the degrading of the Boko Haram insurgents and the positive outlook that the economy is gaining with the shoring up of the nation’s foreign reserve from about $21 billion under the immediate past administration to about $47.8 billion presently.

    There is also the argument by the Adamu group that the president has the constitutional right to seek a second term. With the full force of approbation of the Buhari effects in government in the last three years, Adamu has committed to enthusiastically take on real and perceived oppositions to Buhari’s re-election enterprise. Having assumed the leadership of the pro-Buhari group in the Senate, he has also stepped in the ring to engage Baraje and his band of external aggressors in the defunct nPDP.

    Declaring the group as defunct and, therefore, non-existent, Adamu had cautioned that should the APC leadership call the Baraje-led group for a meeting, the leadership should also invite his group to the meeting as critical stakeholders. Interestingly, in the articulation of his group’s counter positions, Adamu admitted that members of the defunct nPDP to which he and his colleagues on the counter protest belonged, had been taken care of by Buhari and the APC in appointments.

    To validate the claim, he had listed the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Speaker Yakubu Dogara, five governors, about six senators occupying the chairmanship of juicy committees and a minister (Rotimi Amaechi) as some of the strategic positions held by members of the defunct nPDP.  Adamu’s audacious leadership of the counter offensive has substantially defused tension and knocked the bottom off the presumption that Baraje’s threat enjoyed the kind of unanimity that propelled the group’s breakaway from the PDP in 2014.

    Having successfully led a counter action to puncture yet another conspiracy against Buhari and the APC, Adamu and his followers are, no doubt, riding on the crest of approbation in the familiar and sympathetic conclaves of Buhari’s support groups in the legislature, the executive and the APC, whose diktats, as a governing party, will eventually be the lot of the opposition elements within if they do not jump ship.

     

    • Ojeifo sent in this piece from Abuja.

  • When Dogara’s Hate for PMB Becomes a Religion

    Speaker of the House of Representatives, Right Honourable Yakubu Dogara is a man in desperate need of help before he drowns in his own bile. His Hatred for President Muhammadu Buhari has crossed the bounds of obsession and now borders on being a religion, a pathetic belief that relevance in the contemporary Nigeria comprises chiefly of antagonizing PMB or going for the jugular of those that ae brave enough to identify with his anti-corruption war.

    Not even an event as hallowed as the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Abuja some few days ago could provoke a sense of contrition in Dogara, who thought it was the best time to claim that President Buhari is not the only incorrupt Nigerian alive. True. There are millions of Nigerians that are incorrupt but those Nigerians are not in the legislature where the Speaker only speaks the language of sleaze.
    Had Dogara a tenth of President Buhari’s global standing as an anti-corruption crusader and one percent of his commitment to root out official corruption Nigeria would have been on the mend at a faster rate than is currently the case. The Speaker, instead of supporting the President, has dedicated the better part of his career since June 2015 to undermining the collective resolve to do away with corruption before it sinks Nigeria.
    For him to put it in words that PMB is not the only ‘incorrupt’ person is therefore indicative that his attacks on persons fighting corruption is shifting to a higher gear, something that Nigerians should be worried about because Dogara has a host of House members that share not just his conviction that the country should continue to be corrupt but also share his fanatical passion for implementing this perverted thought pattern.
    Their mode of operation is to target the Chief Executives of government agencies that they know to be compliant with President Buhari’s stance on fighting corruption and unleash multiprong attacks on them. They package this harassment of upright public office holders to appear like legitimate activities in pursuit of a better country so it is not unusual to read of probes, motions, public hearings and other engagements to which these chief executives are invited.
    In fact, there was the instance of a Director General of one government agency who blurted out to his associates that he was unable to do any meaningful work on account of constantly being summoned to appear before standing, ad-hoc and emergency committee of the House of Representatives – often over the same issue in most instances. The suggestion of these associates was for him to pay off the lawmakers, which is impossible because of his belief in the policy direction of his boss, the president, on corruption.
    In some cases, the pettiness of Dogara and his colleagues gets to bizarre levels, like the way they made a circus out of the fraud uncovered at the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). The NEMA boss, Engineer Mustapha Maihaja, found himself holding the slippery end of the stick for daring to expose the fraud that had been perpetrated at the agency prior to his assumption office as Director General. Logic suggests Maihaja should be acknowledged for his uprightness and contribution to the anti-corruption war, Dogara’s new religion of obsession dictates that he must be hounded and made the accused in the fraud he uncovered.
    Maihaja has honoured several invitations before the House members and there seems to be no end in sight, he is but a few steps away from getting a permanent suit at the National Assembly when he ought to be hard at work providing relief across the country. The humorous part is that the directors he exposed as being thieves have not for once been invited by the same House but were instead rewarded by reinstatement from a befitting suspension for being indicted. It was this attempt at creating a soft landing for indicted treasury looters and the revelation that the House was being teleguided from some quarters that unravelled its investigation into NEMA.
    Desperate to take attention away from its sinking case, and of course create some drama to justify witch-hunting President Buhari, the lawmakers clutched at the air to find what they could blackmail Mr. President with and the straw they came up with was that Maihaja rejected an offer by the World Food Programme (WFP) to donate rice to internally displaced persons but that he rather bought 5000 metric tonnes of rice distributed through WFP.
    The foregoing highlights how the combination of Dogarous greed and obsession threatens not just the stability of the country but also the safety of Nigeria. First, it seems the lawmakers are totally disregard of the tendency of the offer of assistances from international bodies tend to mutate into loans that imperil future generations. Secondly, in an era where the dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMO) are still being hotly debated, it appears the lawmakers have no questions about accepting grains of uncertified origins as food Nigerians; even at the height of a food shortage in 2010, starving Zimbabweans rejected such tainted grains so why should Nigeria’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) be fed poison simply because an international organization is shipping it in.
    Of course, there was the issue of having to give the procured rice to WFP since it has the capacity to distribute and the lapses discovered to have occurred before Maihaja came into office, which Dogara and his goon must overlook simply because it will not give them the opening they are looking for to tear President Buhari down. They have become even more aggressive after their own public hearing have put facts in proper perspective because their religion of obsession has no room for being reasonable.
    Dogara and his co-travellers in this game of Buhari-hounding must learn one truth: that sometimes the frenzy of religious absorption becomes profound to a point that the genuine inner voice is drowned out. Their obsession with President Buhari has blinded them to their own loss of popularity with their own constituencies, which has set them up to fail in the 2019 elections except for the few that can still retrace their steps in time to avert the incoming self-inflicted defeat. The only door of salvation is to renounce the obsession and, as lawmakers, align with the wishes of the electorate, which is to support President Buhari’s anti-corruption war.

    Ibekwe, a public affairs analyst and anti-corruption crusader sent in this piece from Abuja.

  • I won’t allow anybody to cheat Nigerians – Buhari

    President Muhammadu Buhari said on Tuesday said he would not cheat or allow anybody to cheat Nigerians.

    The President stated this shortly after lunching the social intervention programme initiated by Jigawa State Governor, Badaru Abubakar, in Dutse.

    Buhari is currently on a two-day working visit to the state.

    Read Also: I will not disappoint Nigerians– Buhari

    He said: “We are fully aware of the present hardship in the country. You are always in our mind. Our thinking, plans and determination always are on how to make your lives better, comfortable and happy.

    “I will not cheat or betray you. We will not allow anybody to cheat you in all circumstances no matter what. Our hope is to positively improve the lives of Nigerians.

    “We are interested in your betterment. We are not in power to cheat you and we will never allow any one to cheat or deceive you Nigerians, either from us or outside.”

     

     

  • PMB right on herdsmen/farmers clash

    SIR: When President Muhammadu Buhari spoke in far-away London on the crises between the Fulani herdsmen and farmers and the spasms of communal bloodlettings, not many well- meaning and knowledgeable people understood the meaning of his statement, particularly his findings that the crises is sociological. They were not patient enough, because what the president got in return was a plenitude of abuse and vitriolic attacks.

    It is the considered view of the Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum that the president is right when he pointed out his findings to his august visitor, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.  The president is in the best position to know from the various reports laid before him. In addition, it is also a truism, as stated by the president, that the clashes are century old and it should therefore be seen as sociological in nature. If therefore the president decides to go the whole hog, then a sociological enquiry becomes inevitable.

    Nigerians should know by now except we want to play politics with everything, that the demise of Muammar Gadhafi of Libya threw the entire Sahel region into despair and turmoil because those he trained and armed for his military adventures against perceived enemies all fled with their arms back into the Sahel from where they originally came from which of course includes Nigeria.

    We urge Nigerians and especially those who should know better to join hands with the government in proffering solutions through quality contributions rather than abuses.

     

    • Akin Malaolu, Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum, Lagos.
  • 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.

     

  • Dele Momodu VS PMB

    Dele Momodu VS PMB

    Dele Momodu is a star wildly celebrated by thousands of his admirers. As publisher of ‘Ovation International’, one of Africa’s most popular celebrity bi-lingual magazines that celebrate human vanity, he is patron to many of these fame and prosperity-seeking youths. For politicians, traditional rulers and others in society who derive joy in celebrating their sense of importance, he is an indispensable ally whose friendship is widely cultivated. As the author of a weekly Thisday back page column called “PENdulum” where current affairs and issues in Nigerian politics are critically examined, he is highly regarded   by many of his admirers. Above all, as a former presidential candidate, he is to many youths especially those who have been taken hostage by the social media, the hope for tomorrow. For all the above reasons and more, when our multi-talented Dele Momodu speaks, it is incumbent for us to pay attention.

    He recently, in an open letter, advised President Buhari ‘to quit while the ovation is loudest’. His reasons:  non-performance and a sudden realization that Buhari’s administration is worse than that of President Goodluck Jonathan, his predecessor in office. Of course we can advance many reasons why President Buhari should go and take a well-deserved rest and hand power over to a younger person as Mandela did not too long ago in South Africa were our circumstances to be the same.  But comparing Buhari with Jonathan is odious, just as a charge of non-performance is not supported by available fact.  Momodu’s motive therefore is not only suspect, his current intervention raises the question as to whether his politics is not just an extension of what he does for a living – celebration of ego.

    This was brought to play in his open letter to President Buhari. The letter for instance opens with a celebration of his own sense of importance. He first reminded Buhari about how valiantly he fought on his side during his 2015 presidential contest against Jonathan; he took pains to present the president with a compilation of his articles as proof.

    And opening his assault, Momodu said he “never expected that our situation could ever get worse under the APC government that almost literally promised heaven and earth”. Momodu’s verdict finds parallel only in the claim of some of his followers on social media that Buhari has failed because the $1000 sent home by those who managed to escape the hell that is Nigeria fetched them N360, 000. Momodu doesn’t seem to believe there is a need to tighten our belt and become self-sufficient in things we can produce following the collapse of price of crude oil, the major source of our foreign earnings, from Jonathan’s all time high  of $120 per barrel to $35 in the world market. It is most unlikely, Momodu will not understand that the only alternative to enduring some pain now in expectation of a better tomorrow, is a path that leads straight to Venezuela especially since the return to Jonathan profligate years he is craving for is no more an option.

    It is also hard to believe Momodu actually thought Buhari “truly possessed the magic wand and talismanic effect to make all our problems evaporate and vamoose in a jiffy”. But if he did, it must have been a serious error of judgment on his part.  This probably misled him to dissipate energy campaigning for Buhari, an endeavour he now regrets, when he could have cast his lot with our prosperity prophets, the only people millions of Nigerians look up to for life of bliss without work, a luxury the Jews – the chosen people who labour daily to turn desert into farmlands – do not enjoy.

    Momodu also has an axe to grind with President Buhari for allowing a ‘cabal’ to hijack his government. As he put it: “We definitely want you to succeed but it seems some demons are desperately determined to make you fail by all means”. But Momodu could not have suddenly forgotten that when Pa Bisi Akande first identified the presence of this cabal in Buhari’s government, a section of the media labelled him a Yoruba irredentist fighting Yoruba war. And instead of Momodu joining the crusade against those harbouring anti-Nigeria agenda back then, he chose to lionise Buhari, claiming he won the election on his own merit as if Nigerians did not know he had tried and failed three times before a coalition of some disparate political interest groups swept him into power in 2015.

    Momodu also says Buhari’s administration is “directionless”, blaming this on the quality of his appointees. “The quality of your appointees in recent time points to how directionless your government has finally become”, he says. He doesn’t seem to think much of some of Buhari’s shining stars in FIRS, Customs, Nigerian Ports Authority, EFCC etc.

    Momodu at the end made it clear he was withdrawing his support for the president.   “Your Excellency”, he declares with brutal finality, “it has become very difficult, if not impossible to defend the excessive shortcomings of your government”.

    I am however not sure if Buhari, a leader who prides himself on his righteousness will see Momodu’s threat beyond self-promotion by a man who lives on celebration of vanity. He will remember it was not too long ago that Momodu lionised him and more or less proclaimed him a messiah.

    As a final shot, he predicted defeat for Buhari in 2019 if his advice is not heeded, claiming Buhari has nothing to “tell and sell to the electorate this time, particularly after the colossal failure of the last three years”.

    Now Buhari’s supporters have taken the battle back to Momodu, using his major platform-the social media which has become abuzz with a unique campaign copy, targeted at the private fears and anxieties of Nigerians.  “Now that they say you have failed, dear PMB, they plead: “come May 2019, give them back their corruption, their terrorism, their thieving military Generals, their Tompolos,  Dokubos,  Shekaus and their corrupt judges”etc.

    And now the battle line seems clearly drawn. While Momodu’s nostalgic craving for the return of PDP was apparent from his virulent attack,   Festus Keyamo, claiming he was ‘one of those who fought to oust PDP and its bad ruling system’, has said a call for change is a call for “a return to culture of misrule of the past, executive recklessness, impunity, leadership visionlessness, indiscipline and irresponsibility and merciless looting of the resources of Nigeria”. In the absence of a third order political system, the only option according to him “is to continue to engage the present one for better delivery of government services and improvement”. Unlike Momodu, for him, Buhari’s government “is still a lot better compared to the past one”.