The Nation Newspaper

Tag: post-mortem

  • Metele attack: A post-mortem

    IT is almost two weeks since the Metele attacks occurred. Details of the incident remain a matter of conjectural manipulation as in military matters of this nature.

    Politicians have latched onto it to lash the Muhammadu Buhari administration for insisting that Boko Haram, the terrorist group masquerading as an Islamic crusader, has been “technically defeated” and “degraded”. On social media, there are videos purporting to be actual reports of the attack.  At the National Assembly, there is anger. Lawmakers are warming up for a probe of the government spending in the anti-insurgency war. Fine.

    One fact seems incontrovertible – we lost many soldiers in that incident. But, as in all wars, truth is the first casualty. Nobody knows for sure how many of our compatriots died. Nor are we told that the insurgents lost any fighter. Boko Haram has used this incident to proclaim its “invincibility”, with the less discerning helping to push its propaganda by sending round the videos, which are believed to have been doctored.

    But the big question remains – what happened in Metele? How did Boko Haram, which is supposed to be receding with its rag-tag army of fighters, storm a military base and levelled it as if there was no resistance?

    Sabotage? Failure of intelligence? Fatigue? Superior firepower? Complacency?

    Many emergency military tacticians have suddenly surfaced,  making suppositions and postulations on what may have gone wrong. Troubled, I sought some experts’ views.

    “The boys may have relaxed,” one told me, “having not experienced such incidents for a long time”. This is a possibility. No normal human being can be on red alert in perpetuity. After a while during which what is feared has refused to manifest, it is logical to drop one’s guard a bit.

    Did that happen in Metele?

    Besides, the soldiers may have interacted with the community for long, making friends with the residents, some of whom may have been working for Boko Haram. They may have studied the base very well – its strength, mode of operation, weaponry, change of guards and all. “So, the boys were caught unawares, no doubt. There was no time to rally the troops. If there was time, the casualty would not have been so high,” said one of my sources, a retired senior officer.

    Contrary to the impression that Boko Haram fighters are novices, they are trained – courtesy of their affiliation with the ISIS, which supports them with weapons and cash. The group also earns handsomely from the huge ransoms paid for kidnap victims. Its fighters, having been brainwashed, are ready to die, believing that fighting to the death is a sure visa to heaven. That is why some are sent on suicide bombing missions. The military seems to have found a way round that; now the insurgents have resorted to fighting again.

    Some of the soldiers we lost in Metele are believed to be young and relatively inexperienced in warfare. Among them, most likely, are those encountering a real war situation, perhaps for the first time.  So, is quality of soldiering dropping? I really do not know, but some of the experts believe it is. Their verdict is that the soldiers of today are different from those who got accolades in Liberia, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and many other places.

    No doubt, there was failure of intelligence. Otherwise, the troops would not have been caught napping, as it seemed. Boko Haram and its local collaborators must have spent many days organising the attack, yet the information did not leak.

    If we note that intelligence may have failed, what about the Air Force; was it contacted as the bombardments began? Was there any response? In other words, was there any air support for our soldiers?

    The combat readiness of the Air Force, to one expert, can not be easily determined. It is true that modern wars are won by the Air Force, but the infantry remains the king of the Armed Forces because, according to the  source, they are the ones who hold the ground and the success of an operation is measured by their gains.

    Could it be, as many believe, that Boko Haram has superior weapons?  A General once told me that what the military owes a soldier is the rifle; any other equipment is a a supporting tool.  The soldier must hold on to his rifle even if he is down, the General said.  But he wondered if today’s soldiers die holding their guns, considering the unauthenticated – they won’t ever be, anyway – stories of soldiers taking off  their uniforms and fleeing the battle field.

    Like in many other matters of national interest. Metele has become a political device  to be pressed into service by politicians whose only interest is how to retain their seats, not in any patriotic or altruistic ventures which will be to the benefit of all. This is tragic.

    The National Assembly has been threatening to probe the funding of the Boko Haram war. It should go ahead. Leading the call for probe are many members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which was in power when Boko Haram attained its notoriety and its madness hit its full potential. The Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) became a cash machine visited by leading lights of the PDP, who shared at least $2.1b earmarked for the purchase of arms.

    The money was diverted into the prosecution of the 2015 election and ended up in private pockets. Some of it even went into spiritual matters, with a former governor claiming that he spent over N2.2b on prayers. That has got to be the most expensive prayer ever undertaken anywhere in the world, I dare say.

    President Buhari has been pilloried for not talking about the incident until about a week after it occurred. The popular view is that he should have spoken, summoning the Service Chiefs and lashing them. Publicly, he should have demanded an answer to the question – what happened?

    That is not the way to go, an expert told me. In the expert’s view, by issuing a statement immediately, Buhari would have been reacting as if what has happened is unusual in a war. “Nigeria is at war; we shouldn’t deceive ourselves,” the source said, adding that Buhari, who fought in the Civil War, should have remembered some of the battles that were lost before the war ended.”In a war, you can’t win all the battles,” he said, adding: “Why lose focus because you’ve lost one.”

    To the retired officer, it is right for the citizenry to think that there should be no loss, but the Armed Forces do not think so. In fact, there is room for about 10 per cent loss in this kind of situation. “War is idiotic,” he said, adding that “the first to fire is the one without ideas”. The reality, in his view, is that “in a war, people must die”. This is very tough for non-soldiers to understand, he noted.

    This is why the government should find out what went wrong. Is it true that some of the people see the fight against Boko Haram as another business? Even then, shouldn’t there be a line that business must not cross – when it begins to consume human life in such a gruesome manner? Are we funding the military adequately? What are the roles of our neighbours?

    Senators called for a minute’s silence to honour the fallen heroes. This is hypocritical. The salary of 20 Generals, I am told, is less than a senator’s package–wardrobe allowance, wives allowance, children’s education allowance, out-of-station allowance, inconvenience allowance, gardner’s allowance, steward’s allowance and more. In fact, our lawmakers’ pay is one of the most guarded secrets ever–anywhere. They should cut their allowances and salaries and package a better welfare for our military men instead of honouring them with a minute’s silence whenever they fall in battle.

    Will they listen?

     

    Good times for whistle-blowers

    THE Federal Government has just given an update on its whistle-blower policy, which it says has raked in N540b – as of May. The cash came in various currencies (N527b, $53m and £122,890), recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    Besides the vast sums, many choice properties have been recovered from men – and women – who thought they were untouchable. Some are pleading to be left off the hook after surrendering their loot. Others are in court. But there are questions the public are asking: Is the cash lying idle somewhere? If so, when will it be spent and on what? How about the people who tried to squeal on others but got it all wrong? How many have been prosecuted?

    Magu
    Magu

    With the success of the whistle-blower policy, it is a mystery that no university has been able to design some courses in this lucrative area, to be taught by experienced professors. Ask 10 youngsters what they wish to become in future, no fewer than eight will reply: “Whistle-blower”.

    “Why?”

    “Simple; they make billions by just blowing a whistle.”

    It is surprising also that all those bogus job agencies are yet to see whistle-blowing as a veritable tool for their nefarious trade.

    When they finally get it, I can see some of such agencies coming up with notices, such as: “Wanted. Whistle-blowers. Age: Any age: Education: At least School Certificate. Experience: Not necessary but can be of advantage.”

  • Ekiti: A post-mortem

    THE July 14 governorship poll in Ekiti State is instructive for its general transparency and the open frankness with which it announces and promotes the electorate’s base instincts. Neither the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) nor the All Progressives Congress (APC) denied buying votes on a massive scale. The Ekiti voters themselves happily sold their votes. The vote sellers may be overpriced, as many men of conscience now think, and the buyers themselves quite cynical and indulgent, but two Saturdays ago, Nigerians saw how a people and their politicians reinforced the appalling mockery politics in these parts has become. It is pointless trying to determine who outbid the other, or whether there is merit in Governor Ayo Fayose’s complaints of election-rigging, or whether the APC would have lost if they had not prostituted votes. What is important is that Kayode Fayemi of the APC secured a second term after a four-year hiatus, and the PDP’s Kolapo Olusola, who was reduced to a silhouette by the daunting and overwhelming presence of Mr Fayose in the race, lost by a narrow and dignified margin.

    No one should dwell too much on how the votes were priced in Ekiti. Let the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the security agencies, if they can divorce themselves from their slavish subordination to the government, find a way to check that distortionary menace. If he likes too, and if he can find the depth and vision required, let the president look for novel and non-partisan ways to deal buying and selling of votes a death blow. Like Kano State which has a penchant for changing parties in their governorship elections and defending their votes, Ekiti may be approaching a truly democratic community. The Ekiti journey to a civic culture is undoubtedly flawed and unprincipled, and the electorate somewhat destitute of character and depth, but they have admirably and co-incidentally manifested the right democratic characteristics of reserving the right and independence to change their governments.

    In 2014, they threw out Dr Fayemi, even though he worked hard and innovatively for the state. Ekiti lives on the old glory of having the highest number of professors per capita in Nigeria. Today, with as many poorly educated young people as other states, the state matches the rest of the country ignorance for ignorance, and in the process manages to make their peculiar brand of ignorance even sexy. Long regarded as eminent scions of educated egg heads, it was strange indeed that Ekiti people in 2014 complained about what they described as Dr Fayemi’s inaccessible elitism and insufferable snobbishness. As a result the state, emboldened by federal rigging machines, angrily repudiated him and his politics, and embraced Mr Fayose whom many have characterised as hysterical and incompetent. What the electorate embraced in 2014 was of course not competence, as they acknowledged, nor did they imply that they even thought of it or desired it. It was enough that Mr Fayose had the endearing common touch that they panted for, and that he possessed a truly bohemian nature that gave them hope that their own nothingness was irreproachable. After all, he genuinely took steps and cobbled together pell-mell policies that transformed their defeatism into triumph, and their commonness into royalty. They were satisfied with his earthiness and jocosity, not to say his false religiosity, and were indeed eager to shame Dr Fayemi’s urbanity that appeared to mock their provincial coarseness.

    But four years later, after having had their fill of the filth and unpredictability that hallmarked Mr Fayose’s government, Ekiti’s adventurous electorate chose to immerse themselves in the splendour of their choice and independence. They must be saluted, even though in procuring a new identity for themselves, they managed to split that identity, a sort of bipolarity that speaks more to their confusion and true psychological state than to their contrition and conversion. More than a quarter of a million of them refused to collect their PVCs. Of the about 667,000 who did, some 56 percent of them voted. On the surface, this figure is a little better than the national average that sees less than half of the constantly grumbling electorate taking the trouble to vote. However, in concrete terms, of the over 900,000 people who registered to vote, some 41.12 percent voted. And of the about three million people populating Ekiti, only 12.52 percent took the decision two Saturdays ago to determine who should rule them and who should not.

    The figures, sadly, take a much darker hue when viewed closely. It is true that the APC has been less exultant about their victory than they should, not just because they also participated in the buying of votes, and even outflanked and outpunched the PDP, but because, the sensible people that they are, their number crunching reveals to them why clearly they must be subdued in their celebrations. Of the registered voters, only 21.62 percent endorsed Dr Fayemi, and taken as a percentage of the total population of the state, only 6.58 percent affirmed the APC legitimacy. But Dr Fayemi clearly won, regardless of Mr Fayose’s histrionics. In 2014, he conceded defeat, even though he groaned later as if he regretted that salutary step. It is not his fault that Mr Fayose has been peevish in judging the outcome of the July 14 poll. Dr Fayemi deserves his victory, but he must be worried by how it was procured, the slim margin of his victory, and the almost infinitesimally small percentage that victory constitutes out of the state’s population and registered voters.

    Much more than anything else, the slim margin of Dr Fayemi’s victory must tell him that he had a narrow escape. He has been advised by many analysts and top political leaders to view his slim victory as an indication of the polarisation existing in Ekiti, and why, unlike President Muhammadu Buhari, he must work assiduously to heal the wounds of the election and run an inclusive government. Dr Fayemi must imagine what would have been the electoral fate of the APC if Mr Fayose had not owed salaries, and had in addition to his populism and defiance entranced the people with widely dispersed projects. It is surprising that Professor Olusola got as many votes as he did. In fact, it remains at the level of conjectures whether the eminent and urbane professor would not have performed better than he did at the poll had the obtruding Mr Fayose not framed the election as a battle between himself and Dr Fayemi.

    It is unlikely that this is the kind of victory Dr Fayemi craved for, one that is so slim that both victory and defeat appear indistinguishable, a victory that depended unwholesomely on cash and intimidation, and one in which the appeal to pre- and post-2014 records went largely unheeded. The APC would have loved to beat the PDP by more than 50,000 or even 100,000 votes. Instead, a little over 19,000 votes separated the combatants. Dr Fayemi would have loved the election to be framed in terms of ideas and possibly ideologies. These also didn’t happen. The reasons are clear: the state has not escaped the decay, poverty and decline buffeting the county, and the ruling party at the centre has not been clearly as innovative as many hoped when they voted for the party in 2015. With the APC unable to stanch the flow of blood in many parts of the country, and with the Abuja government reluctant to inspire itself, let alone the people, there was no spectacular reason to ditch the PDP in Ekiti, scorn Mr Fayose’s abominable tactics, and imagine that electing Dr Fayemi would attract any synergy between Abuja and Ekiti, especially when Abuja seems to many states as completely alienated from reality.

    If Dr Fayemi is to make a success of his second term and be acknowledged and rewarded for his works, he will have to really run an inclusive government, and make his government approachable without sinking to Mr Fayose’s disgusting and counterproductive populism. He will have to think in terms of the long run, embrace genuinely democratic principles in his interaction and relationship with the opposition and the legislature; in short, rise above his discomfort with the opposition both within and outside his party, and the pedestrianism and intolerance that hobbled Mr Fayose’s government. Together with Governors Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun and Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo, he has postured and sometimes schemed as President Buhari’s countervailing powers in the Southwest, a factor that led Mr Fayose to paint him as the president’s errand boy and supporter of herdsmen ranches. He is of course entitled to support the president like any other Nigerian, but he must find accommodation with the Yoruba cognoscenti, and sustain, promote and even polish the Yoruba worldview.

    It is not clear to what extent Dr Fayemi will succeed in this regard. This is the first time the Southwest will really be playing the second fiddle at the centre, especially to a mercurial if rather unyielding leader. For a region long accustomed to the politics of opposition, this is testing not only their forbearance, culture and worldview, it is also distorting their progressive identity. There is nothing wrong in playing number one or playing second fiddle, but the eagerness and subservience with which some of the governors have immersed themselves in their new role has triggered needless wrangles and competition between them and the dominant powers in their region. There are no templates to follow, not even the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency. And President Buhari and his kitchen cabinet have felt the need to counterbalance the Southwest political elite by subtly supporting conflicting caucuses and interest groups which unite around his person rather than around his ideas, or groups and individuals who unite around their pet animosities rather than around lofty ideals. Dr Fayemi and other governors like him will have to find a balance between those competing worldviews, as indeed Mr Fayose appeared to have found in his second term, and recognise that reaching accommodation with President Buhari does not invariably mean invoking regicidal tendencies.

    The APC may feel subdued by the kind of victory it procured on July 14, but it need not feel abased by it. Mr Fayose opened the gates of hell himself without possessing either the talent to stoke the inferno nor the stamina to outlast and outpace the opposition. Had the APC failed to respond in kind to the monetary incendiary thrown by the PDP, no one knows what the outcome would have been. That culture of monetised politics will not die overnight, not with the state of the economy, and not with the paralysis and insularity in Abuja. It will take time, assuming there is a conscious plan by the federal government to uproot and banish that suffocating and entrenched culture. It is also unlikely that Dr Fayemi, flowing from his loss in 2014, will imagine that he can trust the electorate to vote right simply because the governor has done well, or that in four years he could create and enforce a template that would enable Ekiti to play the right kind of politics and vote in line with the highest ideals of a civic culture. Wishes are not horses.

    President Buhari’s spokesmen have spoken glowingly of the APC victory in Ekiti. They can bask in that glory for as long as they wish. And they must feel a sense of relief, especially against the background of the coalitions being formed to thwart the ruling party’s expectations in the 2019 elections, that their plans are still on course. On the one hand is a scorched but not exterminated PDP, and on the other hand are Dr Obasanjo and a host of journeymen and political panjadrums, all of them nursing multiple grudges, and all arrayed in battle for the big day. It helps Abuja to have Ekiti in the APC. After all, Mr Fayose swayed Ekiti to the PDP in the 2015 presidential poll. And this must be why all the APC bigwigs in the Southwest rallied to Dr Fayemi’s cause, believing as they do that the worst of APC, should that be the impression, will always be better electorally than the best of PDP. They know instinctively that regardless of the outcome of the 2019 elections, it helps the Southwest worldview to sustain and consolidate the progressive cause as represented, no matter how minimally, by the APC.

    The president’s spokesmen can extrapolate all they want about the significance of the APC victory in Ekiti, and project its significance for the president’s election chances in 2019. But at bottom, it is a victory the Southwest APC leaders, as fractious and factionalised as they are, will hope will help nurture the region’s political culture and economic development far beyond 2019. Dr Fayemi understands those needs, and in his first term promoted that regional developmental agenda far better and more intellectually than Mr Fayose did in his second term. Even though the present quality of the Southwest governors has not been as inspiring as it used to be or as the region wants, the APC victory in Ekiti may help to revive the regional aspirations expected to lift the region from poverty into a showpiece.

    Mr Fayose may have projected a bold and irreverent kind of politics at a time of dangerous national schisms and parochialism, perhaps Prof Olusola would have presented a different and beguiling kind of politics and style of governance, and for many, Segun Oni might have been the needed cross between offensive populism and detached elitism, but the reality after the July 14 vote is that the state must now look to the future with Dr Fayemi. He probably understands democracy more than most of today’s governors do, and by his exposure knows the magnificent role development plays in the life of a people. If he can find the discipline to practice what he knows, walk the tightrope between the needs of the region and the distant and sometimes convoluted politics of Abuja, and moderate his proclivity for intrigues and short-term gains, he might yet build a great legacy and propel himself to higher grounds.

     

    Palladium’s leave was interrupted for this post-mortem. He resumes his vacation

     

  • Super Eagles’ friendly: A post-mortem

    The noise from the social media after Nigeria beat Poland in Wroclaw penultimate Friday was deafening. It was as if the Super Eagles lost the game, with paralysed analysis bothering on the people’s primordial sentiments on how the team should look. Chief among the complaints was the clamour for Vincent Enyeama’s return, even when  we know that he has been inactive in Europe this season. The submissions gave the impression that they would rather have Enyeama in goal with a walking stick than allow Francis Uzoho man the goalpost in Russia. Let me not say what have gone down in the social media since Eagles lost 2-0 to Serbia in England. Everyone talking about going to the drawing board to plot new tactics. I wonder if this board isn’t in tatters.

    The friendly matches against Poland and Serbia were meant to test the players and see how they would fare against countries that have similar playing patterns and mentality like the Croatians, Nigeria’s opening game opponents at the Russia 2018 World Cup on June 16. Besides, the two matches were meant to expose the team’s lapses so that the coaches could find the right players for weak positions. I’m glad that both games served the purpose, with the tie against Serbia showing that Eagles’ regular back men have no substitutes. It is also not too late to look for reliable defenders to rival the first team players.

    Enyeama was awesome with the Eagles. When Adegboye Onigbinde told us (Nigeria sporting press) in Japan that he was fielding Enyeama ahead of Ike Shorunmu in Nigeria’s last World Cup game against England at the Korea/Japan World Cup, many wondered  if he could stop David Beckham’s free-kicks. Enyeama kept a clean sheet in that game. The rest is history.

    What these analysts don’t know is that Uzoho will only gain experience playing games such as the one against Poland. The essence of friendly games is to correct mistakes. Most teams at this time are work-in-progress, like the coaches say. It is worthy to note that Rohr listed Uzoho in the Serbian game, making the goalkeeper know that his fate doesn’t lie with what critics say but how the manager rates him – boosting his confidence.

    Two balls slipped through the defence into the net. The first which happened in the Poland game was debatable. But the slip in the first half against Serbia was a good goal. Rohr needs to warn his defenders and Uzoho that such slips would be captured by the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) machine, which wasn’t used in the two matches. On the score of 10, I will rate Uzoho 7, as a first timer in such high profile matches.

    Sticking to Uzoho underscores the importance that Gernot Rohr attaches to using this Mundial to give Nigeria a team that would have a lifespan of 10 years, which is what Clemens Westerhof did when he started rebuilding the Eagles in 1990. Nigeria is going to the Russia 2018 World Cup with the youngest squad. Nobody is casting any doubt on the players’ ages because most of the players pledged their allegiance to Nigeria from other countries, although they have Nigerian parentage. It simple means that their ages are incontestable, how being born in Europe. We are tired of always rebuilding Eagles after every failed expedition. The drawing board we always refer to after every aborted trip must be tattered now.

    It is obvious that many players have lost their shirts, given their contributions in the last two games, especially the one against Serbia, which we lost by two goals. Rohr must dig deep into his bag of tactics to evolve a system that would make the players play at their best. The only consolation is that Nigeria’s last group opponents at the Mundial, Argentina were whacked 6-1 by Spain. I know many pundits would say that the results would have been better if Lionel Messi had played. Hmmm! The same excuse when Nigeria beat Argentina 4-2 last year in Russia. Failure beckons, if Argentina’s coach must be told the truth.

    Rohr, happily, isn’t perturbed by the defeat. He gambled on Ahmed Musa to lead the team’s attack, which is normal for friendly matches. It didn’t work. He played Awuziem in place of injured Leon Balogun; it was catastrophic. Oguenyi Onazi was lost in the game just Victor Moses, who apparently played to avoid injuries. The results of friendly games will count for nothing, when the chips are down during the Mundial. Balogun’s absence  in the team’s  defence showed when the Serbians launched their onslaughts. They effectively utilised Eagles’ weakness to play aerial balls, especially from set-pieces. Rohr should find a way to play Ola Aina regularly. He is big and strong, scared and plays regularly for Hull City in the English Championship, even though he is a Chelsea star on loan. Aina can dash forward to score like he does with Hull City.

    Moses appears unable to carry the fortunes of the team, if marked like we saw against Serbia. Perhaps because Ivanovic, the Serbia captain, knew him – they were mates at Chelsea. One word- Moses isn’t Eagles messiah at the Mundial. Eagles, don’t have any undertaker in the mould of Lionel Messi (Argentina) and Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), Neymar (Brazil), Thomas Muller (Germany), Paul Pogba (France), Hazard (Belguim) et al. I’m scared to pick Wilfred Ndidi as Nigeria’s undertaker because he lacks the World Cup experience. He isn’t also a prolific scorer for the Eagles, unlike the aforementioned players in their countries.

    Alex Iwobi looks like the man to do the creative job for the team at the Mundial, only if he is told so now. There is an obvious reason for that. Nigeria head coach Gernot Rohr may have an exciting young squad to take to Russia but he hardly has creators like Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Iwobi is perhaps the nearest the Super Eagles have to a playmaker. He certainly looked like their best hope for a goal as they laboured against a disciplined Serbia.

    A few people would argue that John Mikel Obi’s contributions were missing. True, but Mikel still needs a younger player, such as Iwobi to use his passes and dribbling runs to attract markers to him. This way, openings would be created for goals. Eagles’ midfielders in the two matches were tentative in their displays, with none of them willing to seize the initiative of being match winners reminiscent of the Nwankwo Kanu and Austin Okocha era.

    With a dysfunctional midfield like we saw in the two matches, there is no way the strikers can work. Strikers are best utilised if the defence-splitting passes are there. They would find it easier to run into space to receive such passes, where the midfielders can dribble to unlock the oppositions’ defences. Our players’ resort to long balls to unlock defences was poor tactics as it rendered the strikers otiose. The manager needs to either look for the players (I wonder if there is the time) or find a better pattern of play that will bring out the players’ best qualities.

    ‘’Nigeria may have come away from Barnet licking their wounds, though it was largely to do with a youthful defence incapable of taming Aleksandar Mitrovic and the woeful display of Ahmed Musa as a central striker,’’ Standard Sports newspaper of England wrote on Wednesday.

    “Rohr commended the boys and urged them not to drop their heads because no football team in the world wins all their games,” Eagles spokesman Toyin Ibitoye said.

    “The coach told the team they should learn from this defeat but not suck, but rather go back to their clubs and keep fighting. He said what was most important after such a loss is how you react, he said we have to bounce back.”

    “The coach reminded the boys that they have not been doing badly as a team and what has happened should be put behind. He said it is a game and they have done their part and should forget the rest. We have three more friendly matches to play before the World Cup proper. Ours is to take the positives from the Serbia game, study them critically and implement,’’ Ibitoye said.

    It is good to know that NFF chieftains are on the same page with Rohr and the team. Amaju Pinnick’s statement underscored the need for all the parties to work towards getting Nigeria into the quarter-finals. At that stage, anything is possible, especially if Nigerians rally round the team. They could spring surprises.

    Pinnick wrote this writer in a terse reply to an inquiry about his thoughts on the game: ‘’Trust me, it was a good preparatory game against Poland, for instance. We are satisfied. You learn more when you lose matches and learn less when you win games.

    ‘’I must congratulate Serbia for giving us a good game, which helped to expose the weaknesses of our team. This is the essence of playing such friendly games. The coaches have taken notes and we expect good reaction from them in subsequent matches before the World Cup proper in Russia.’’

     

  • Herdsmen killings: A post-mortem

    Herdsmen killings: A post-mortem

    THE killings did not start today, but in its characteristic manner, the government turned a blind eye to everything. As men, women and children were mowed down in some parts of the country, we only heard the wailing of the bereaved and not the action taken by the government to stem these killings. Until now, herdsmen and farmers skirmishes were a rarity. How and why things changed still remain a mystery. But some highly placed people seem to know more about the genesis of  these clashes than what is in the public domain.

    If we are to believe what the Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi 11 told the Sunday Punch a few days ago, the herders are on a revenge mission. According to the emir, they are avenging the killing of their fellow herdsmen in some states. These killings, he said, were not reported by the media nor did the states where the dastardly acts occurred take any action against the perpetrators. As a respected monarch, Sanusi cannot lie, but it is worrisome that he is saying this at a time like this.

    Sanusi’s remarks were revealing even though he said he was not justifying the herdsmen killings, but merely providing background information for what led to their action. From what he said, it is clear that some powerful people in the north are abreast of what the herdsmen are doing. If anything, the January 1 Benue killings have shown that we can only keep quiet over this issue at our own peril. The herders – farmers clashes will not disappear if we continue to look at them from ethnic or religious prism. Naturally, Emir Sanusi spoke like a Fulani whose kinsmen were being killed in some parts of the country, according to him, without the law enforcement agencies and the media lifting a finger in their aid. As he said in the Sunday Punch report, this is no time to play the blame game, but to look for a way out of these incessant skirmishes.

    These clashes will continue to fester if the herdsmen continue to take out their cattle for grazing as they presently do. Even those of us living in cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Benin, Enugu, Ibadan and Calabar shudder at how these herdsmen rear their cattle in full public glare without a care for others feeling. From nowhere, these herdsmen and their cattle will invade public places under the guise of grazing. In such a situation anything can happen if the herdsman loses control of his cattle.

    And this is what has happened in some instances when cows invade farms and eat up everything in sight. What should the farmer do in such a circumstance? Embrace the herdsman and his cows? A colleague of mine nearly lost his life a few years ago when a straying cow ran into his car in the wee hours of the night after he closed from work, damaging his windscreen. And on several occasions, motorists have had to compete for the right of way with cows on the Long Bridge on the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway. In most cases, these herdsmen feel that they can let their cows loose on the highway without a consideration for the lives of other road users.

    This is where trouble starts from. Rather than admit their wrong, the herdsmen will claim that they also have the right to put their cows on the road. But cows are not meant to be on the road fighting for space with man and machinery. We have gone past that age of nomadic grazing. That kind of grazing was excusable in the Nigeria of the sixties, seventies and perhaps, eighties. Nigeria has reached a stage where we can no longer allow cattle rearers to move about town, doing whatever they like.

    It is unfortunate that some people had to die before we woke up to the reality of the herdsmen menace. I do not have anything against herders, but truth be told their mode of operation is not the best at all. They feel that they have the right to graze anywhere even on private properties. Unfortunately, those who should call them to order do not see anything wrong in what they are doing.  If these people love them that much why did they not release their own land to the herders for grazing? It is one thing to support the herders with words of mouth, but another when it comes to walking the talk. These powerful people have all it takes to give these herders grazing land. They have vast land not only in their domains, but also elsewhere in the country.

    Will they have kept quiet  if they were in the shoes of those whose farmlands these herders’ cattle destroyed? I believe we should not be emotional in our quest to find a lasting solution to the problem. Let us forget whether we are Fulani, Hausa, Yoruba, Efik, Igbo, Bini or Idoma and do what is right and just to ensure peace in every part of the country. There will be danger, serious danger,  if any part of the country bleeds again from this crisis. Things started like this in 1967 before we slid into a three-year civil war in which one million people died. We do not pray for such a bitter enterprise again.

    What has happened has happened – 73 killed in Benue on New Year’s day; scores killed in Enugu, Adamawa, Plateau and Nasarawa not too long ago; while a former presidential candidate, Chief Olu Falae, was kidnapped on his farm. He paid an undisclosed ransom before he was released. These are annoying acts, which could lead to one section of the country rising against the other. Let us put all these behind us and chart a new path forward. Establishing cattle colonies is a good idea, but we should think the matter through before embarking on the project because of the cost implication.

    Is appeasement the solution? For how long will we watch people break the law – wanton killing and destruction of properties  – and allow them to go scot-free?   Should not those who kill intentionally be made to face the music? What happens to the bereaved families? Is the government considering compensating them? If we are thinking of building colonies for cattle rearers, we should also be thinking of what to do for the families of those killed and others whose farmlands were destroyed.

  • Mu’azu: A post-mortem

    Mu’azu: A post-mortem

    THE emergence of Adamu Mu’azu as the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) early 2014 was celebrated by the party’s leadership and members with fanfare. He became an instant poster boy and the party’s “game changer”. So, Mu’azu was ushered into office in a blaze of glory. But it did not take long for the reality to dawn on the chairman that he indeed inherited a tattered party. Morale was at its lowest ebb and party loyalty was generally tepid. Undeterred, the new chairman reeled out the credo upon which he intended to preside over the now fractured party.

    For starters, he charged elective office seekers to seek support from among the grassroots in their immediate localities. “Don’t come to Abuja to seek endorsement for your political aspirations because nobody will give you that support here. For you to get the party’s ticket to contest any election, you must be able to get support and nomination from your various constituencies”, Mu’azu had stated. However, the code he attempted to instill in the party was clearly at variance with the system he met on ground. Party supremacy and cohesion had long taken flight of the ruling party. The governors were deeply entrenched and were in control of party machinery at both the state and national levels. It was a system Tukur waged a futile war to reverse but which eventually consumed him.

    Mu’azu came in at a time President Jonathan’s body language suggested he wanted re-election, even as some powerful elements in the party felt the ticket ought to be zoned to the North. A handful of the party’s leading lights of northern extraction, including Governor Sule Lamido, were perceived to be eyeing the presidential ticket. The momentum died down when Lamido, at a well attended party function at the party’s secretariat, identified with Jonathan’s second term aspiration. That made Mu’azu’s task easier, as there were no contending aspirations to contend with. But that was the beginning of the party’s headache. Jonathan was coronated as presidential candidate of the PDP in November 2014. There were still muffled indignation within the rank of the northern power brokers in the PDP.

    The 2015 presidential campaign was run with the President’s loyalists in the frontline. Ethnic warlords of different shades and character added the side-kicks with extreme and provocative utterances. They were joined by the President’s wife, Dame Patience Jonathan. The vitriolic attacks, mainly targeted at the opposition, ricocheted off target several times over and splinters came hitting the party’s northern collectives in the face. Tempers were subdued and indignation muffled. The unchecked commissioned and hired crowds of the President’s campaigners seized the show, to the detriment of their principal. Major party stakeholders were shoved to the background. They took their seats at the spectators’ column and adopted a wait-and-see posture.

    The campaign took a rabid turn from start to finish. After a series of rigmarole of shift in poll dates, the presidential election finally held on March 28, leaving in its trail recriminations and dashed expectations. With the election won and lost, major stakeholders in the PDP are back on the drawing board, too seek a way forward for a party, which some insiders consider to be on a journey to the eclipse. But emerging permutations suggest a re-engineering strategy without any significant role for Mu’azu. As far as some of the arrowheads of the “rebranding” mission are concerned, the party chairman has outlived his relevance. Identities of members of the rebranding team appear to be hazy for now, but names like Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido; his Niger State counterpart, Babangida Aliyu; President of the Senate, David Mark; his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu; Delta State Governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan; his Ekiti State counterpart, Ayo Fayose; Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko; Cross River State Governor, Liyel Imoke; and Akwa Ibom State Governor, Godwill Akpabio among others have continued to dominate discussions. Mu’azu does not enjoy the sympathy of most members of the reformist group who still regard him as Jonathan’s anointed candidate. Moreover, investigation by our correspondent indicates that the party would settle for a northern presidential candidate, as counter force to the cult-like popularity and mass appeal commanded by the President-Elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2019 general elections.

    Based on this calculation, the group is said to be shopping for a new party chairman from a geopolitical zone outside the North. The reformist group is said to have resolved to show Mu’azu the exit door after its positions must have been harmonised and consolidated. The party chairman is being blamed for the poor outing of the PDP at the polls. Many cited what they described as his lukewarm attitude and lack of commitment to the party’s quest to retain power at the centre. Already, not a few members across the various blocs have called for his resignation, citing the abysmal failure of the PDP in the last general election. The power blocs may not also be disposed to working with the present crop of elected National Working Committee (NWC) which Mu’azu presides over. But a contending force, made up mainly of a few radical elements cut across the six geopolitical zones, have asked Mu’azu’s accusers to look inwards in their search for scape goats. According to this group, rather than blaming the party chair for the crushing defeat at the poll, Jonathan and the PDP governors should be ready to take the blame.

    A member of the group who volunteered information under cover, contended that there was no way the party could have recorded any meaningful success at the last election. According to him, under Jonathan, the governors had a free hand manipulating the nomination process and imposing candidates at will. The source said: “Let them stop blaming Mu’azu for the failure they invited upon themselves and the party. At every available opportunity, the chairman had warned against imposition of candidates for elections, be it at the state or national level. Just look around and see how these governors engaged in reckless imposition of candidates in PDP controlled states. The story was the same in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Jigawa, Delta, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi, Kebbi, Adamawa and others. In states where the PDP is not in control, some party chieftains, with the active backing of the President, decided to impose their preferred candidates to the detriment of more popular and acceptable aspirants.

    “While just a few of these imposed candidates were lucky enough to win, majority of them were roundly defeated. Even at that, a few of them that won their elections by whatever means, may still have it rough at the various tribunals and courts when litigations begin. So these latter day saviours of the PDP should look elsewhere for reasons for the party’s failure. Thy should leave Mu’azu out of it”.

    In the history of the PDP, the chairmanship position lost its soul right from inception. Party supremacy got subsumed the moment Chief Olusegun Obasanjo assumed the presidency in 1999. Obasanjo had crowned himself “leader of the party”, thereby relegating the chairman and the leadership of the PDP to the background. With the party in his breast pocket, Obasanjo, in his eight-year presidency, single handedly decided when to hire and fire the party chairman. So the pioneer chairman, the late Chief Solomon Lar was tactically yanked off the seat. Chief Barnabas Gemade that succeeded him was also thrown out when Obasanjo was done with him. Then came Chief Audu Ogbeh who dared to speak the bitter truth to the “leader of the party” when things were taking a wrong turn. Obasanjo, in not-too-nice a manner, showed Ogbeh the exit door in what many described as a “gun point” approach. Dr. Ahmadu Ali that succeeded Ogbeh was well versed in the command system, apparently owing to a shared military background with Obasanjo. With the full backing from the then President Obasanjo, Ali was able to navigate the slippery terrain till the end of the Obasanjo presidency in 2007. By precedence, the late President Umaru Yar ‘Adua who succeeded Obasanjo, inherited the “leader of the party” nomenclature. But he was not as domineering as his predecessor in the affairs of the party. Seeing this lacuna, the governors elected on the platform of the PDP quickly hijacked the control of the party machinery. So when the party was shopping for a replacement for Ahmadu Ali in 2008, the governors had little problem in selling Prince Vincent Ogbulafor to Yar A’dua as party chairman.

    Ogbulafor’s choice was a fluke. Although the party had zoned the position to the Southeast geopolitical zone, the choice was zeroed down to two states in the Southeast -Imo and Ebonyi. Ogbulafor’s home state, Abia, was not in the calculation but it did not matter to the PDP governors who wanted a supple party chair. And against the principles of party supremacy, Ogbulafor,as party chair, subordinated himself to the governors who brought him in. Throughout his tenure, he never addressed any of the governors without adding “Your Excellency Sir”. The pliant Ogbulafor enjoyed the protection of his benefactor governors until shortly after the death of Yar A’dua in 2010 and the coming of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as President. The miscalculating Ogbulafor unwittingly stirred the hornet nest under Jonathan when he declared that the presidency remained zoned to the north, in continuation of Yar A’dua’s tenure. He was talking about the party’s presidential candidate ahead of the 2011 general election.

    That was his undoing. Unknown to him, Jonathan was not only interested in completing what was left of Yar A’dua’s unfinished tenure, but was also interested in the 2011 presidential ticket of the PDP. And Ogbulafor too, got a kick in the rump from Jonathan, the President and leader of the party. The party at the time, decided to retain the chairmanship slot in the Southeast. And through familiar arrangements, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, an old political horse from Enugu State, was brought in as Ogbulafor’s replacement. But Nwodo also got the boot a few months after, when he was perceived to be too close to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who had indicated interest in the party’s 2011 presidential ticket. One false step led to another and Nwodo was forced to relinquish the chair on the party’s convention ground in 2011.

    At this point, the party started shopping for a new chairman of Northern extraction, with proof beyond reasonable doubts, that Jonathan was interested in the 2011 presidential ticket. The lot fell on Dr. Mohammed Haliru Bello Haliru who was appointed chairman in acting capacity before he got appointed Defence Minister shortly after. He was succeeded also in acting capacity by Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje whose tenure witnessed relative stability before the March 2012 national convention of the party. Apparently to dim the chances of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the 2015 presidential race, power brokers in the party decided to zone the chairmanship to the Northeast geopolitical zone. In what many saw as a counter stroke, Jonathan settled for Alhaji Bamanga Tukur among the array of contestants. Incidentally, Tukur is from Adamawa State where Atiku also hailed from. Other contestants were sandbagged into endorsing Tukur as consensus candidate and the convention simply rubber stamped his candidature. Tukur came in as a cane wielding headmaster, an approach that did not sit well with majority of the power brokers within the party, particularly the PDP governors. Existing crevices kept widening by the day as some of the elected party officials whose loyalty appeared to be in doubt were being forced out.

    The party became polarised along the ranks and discipline became a rare commodity. Several moves initiated by the party leadership to reconcile aggrieved members achieved very little, leading to deep seated disenchantments among the various divisive caucuses. The festering crisis took a new twist when Atiku and Baraje eventually led seven of the party’s governors and many other chieftains to form a parallel New PDP in 2013. The breakaway faction was however short lived, as Jonathan and his PDP harassed its members out of town. Five of the governors eventually defected to join the APC late 2013. A good number of the PDP’s serving members in the National Assembly, as well as other prominent chieftains also started deserting the ruling party in droves. The party was breaking at the seams and key stakeholders, particularly the governors, were able to convince President Jonathan that Tukur had become a liability to the party.

    At that point, the PDP appeared to have had enough of Tukur’s two-year-old turbulent tenure as chairman, with various stakeholders and power blocs within the party calling for the resignation of the 77-year-old politician. By the time the old man was being eased out, he had succeeded in sending a good number of party chieftains, including a few governors, on indefinite suspension. That marked the beginning of the intractable internal crises that brought the PDP to its present state of disarray. As events gradually unfold, within the party, heads or tail, Mu’azu may no longer find comfortable accommodation in the emerging scenario. He may as well be on his way to political hibernation. Some say, it’s a matter of time. Confronted by the stark reality of fighting from a disadvantaged corner as opposition party, at least for the next four years, can this fallen behemoth called PDP rise above the rubble? Time will tell.

  • nba election: A post-mortem

    nba election: A post-mortem

    This is the concluding part of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Chairman, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu’s article on the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) election which first part was published last week.

    Many aspects of the just concluded elections were deeply flawed. Arbitrariness defined the process. To begin with, the NBA’s branch network determines the outcome of the Association’s votes. In 2012, the NBA comprised 100 branches. In the run in to the 2014 ballot, at least nine new branches were created. When branches were last created in 2012, the NBA resolved that the new branches would not be deployed for election purposes. As such, they did not present any delegates to the 2012 elections. In a departure from this precedent, however, all the newly created branches in the year fielded delegates to the Special Conference. Although the rules for creating new branches in the NBA are very clear, the criteria for the creation of the new ones and their distribution across the country were unclear. Recollections also differ as to how some of the new branches were created. In the end, an impression may have been created that many of these new branches were primarily created to affect or tilt the electoral calculus with aforethought.

    The Guidelines governing the elections gave the hand-picked Chairman of the NBA’s Electoral Committee plenipotentiary “powers” to fiddle with the rules as he deemed fit and to disqualify candidates on a whim. On the eve of the vote on14 July, the Committee did just that, disqualifying four candidates for different positions in circumstances that appeared opaque at the very best.

    The list of eligible voters was unknown and undisclosed until the delegates converged in Abuja for the accreditation on 14 July, one day before the actual balloting. The best that the outgoing leadership of the Association offered in defence of this was that publication of the NBA’s Roll of voters is not provided for in the rules of the Association. In response to this, one can only hope that the leadership was mis-reported otherwise this would be considered evidence of bad faith or of lack of the capability to organize a credible ballot.

    Balloting was to have ended by noon on 15 July. By this appointed time, however, none of the candidates knew or had access to the list of accredited voters. In effect, it was theoretically possible for voters to have been accredited after the official end of accreditation by 17:00 hours on 14 July. There were credible allegations that this may indeed have happened. It was impossible to verify these allegations before filing this report.

    After voting was supposed to have ended, the Electoral Committee announced that they had accredited 1,481 voters, comprising 142 Senior Advocates; 36 Benchers; 68 co-opted members of the National Executive; and 1,235 branch delegates. This information was, however, provided, long after the fact and in circumstances which sadly leave the leadership of the Electoral Committee open to entirely avoidable allegations of fiddling with the list of accredited voters. The easy thing to have done was to ensure that all the candidates received copies of the list of eligible voters well ahead of time and of the list of accredited voters immediately after accreditation finished. It is indefensible that senior lawyers could justify a system that makes this possible.

    Hail Mary to te rain maker

    This balloting took place in the middle of July, notoriously the heart of the rainy season in Nigeria. Yet, there were no arrangements for covered stands. If it had rained, there would have been no where for anyone to hide and the NBA would have struggled to organise anything. When I pointed this out to someone at the venue, she responded that the NBA must have visited a rain maker. You can imagine how reassured I was by the knowledge that our Bar is fully in tune with Nigeria’s community of shamans and voodoo practitioners.

    Voting delegates travelled to Abuja on July 13. July 14 was the date set aside for accreditation and final campaign orations. Voting, counting and declaration of results followed on July 15. The NBA’s travelling voting parties began to disperse from Abuja on July 16, having spent four days on a voting process that involved a highly educated electorate of a mere 1,728 voters. To call this antediluvian is to be charitable. As we say here though, they all travel with “journey mercies”.

    Even more indefensible, therefore, than the rules and conditions under which the NBA conducts it elections is the fact that lawyers, supposedly the defenders of the rules of electoral democracy in Nigeria, could subject themselves to a leadership contest and ballot under these conditions.

    Despite all these shortcomings – or may be because of them – the NBA has elected a new leadership that deserves a chance to prove that it realises and relishes the challenges that confront the Bar and the wider country. The biggest of these challenges is a Bar devoid of civic credibility; lacking the moral authority to persuade anyone to its message of promoting the rule of law; in hock to paymasters with an investment in capturing its organs and institutions; and increasingly without a capacity to offer any value to its members. This is a terrible place for any entity to be, least of all the foremost professional association in the country.

    In 2012, at the request of the outgoing Presidency of the NBA, I led a committee to review the professionalism of the NBA’s programming. The Committee’s report, submitted in January, last year, began: “[t]he NBA does not offer a clear value proposition to its members. The absence of a defining value proposition is an existential threat to the NBA and to the effectiveness of its Secretariat. If any other organization or entity can rise to offer to members of the NBA a unifying promise of professional growth or edge, the NBA as we know it could become history. To avoid this possibility, the leadership of the NBA must define a value proposition for our members and, in the Secretariat, evince a programming capability to ensure the realisation of this promise.”

    These provide metrics by which the in-coming leadership of the NBA can measure progress in grappling with the many challenges that bedevil the Association. There is not much time to turn this around. If they fail, it is possible that this could be the last time the NBA would be voting as a unified and united body for its leadership. To the incoming leadership, congratulations are due; to the Bar, goodluck.

    • Odinkalu is  member, National Executive Committee of the NBA and   delegate to the just-concluded Special Delegate’s Conference of the NBA.

     

  • Nba election: A post-mortem

    Nba election: A post-mortem

    Following the election of  new national officers of the NBA last week, a civil society activist and Chairman National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof. Chidi Odinkalu examines the election, the outcome and implication for the legal profession.

    At the end of the contest for the Presidency of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) two years ago, I wrote that “the mechanisms for electing the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) are out-dated, scandal-prone and liable to whimsical capture”, pointing out that they are “too dependent on government and the elections into leadership at the Bar were too prone to manipulation.” For four days from July 14, 2014, delegates from the various branches of the Bar gathered in Abuja to elect a new leadership. It was also an opportunity to show how the leadership selection processes at the Bar had evolved, if at all.

    At the conclusion of a special conference in Abuja on 15 July 2014, the delegates elected Augustine Oyarekhua Alegeh, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) from the NBA’s Benin Branch, as the new President of the Association. Alegeh polled 691 votes to beat four other candidates for the leadership of the Bar. Three other Senior Advocates on the ballot, namely: Funke Adekoya, Dele Adesina, and Niyi Akintola, polled 370, 255 and 126 votes respectively. Osas Erhabor, former Chair of the Ilesha Branch of the Bar, polled 17 votes. In the ballot for Secretary-General of the Bar, Mazi Afam Osigwe of the Abuja Branch polled 684 votes to beat off the combined challenge of Steve Abar of the Jos Branch who polled 401 votes and Reuben James of the Kaduna Branch who polled 242 votes.

     

    Ethnic Bar Politics

    This was a very keen contest. A slate of five candidates on the ballot for the presidency of the Bar is unprecedented, surely not since the restoration of the NBA in 1998. At the turn of the millennium, the NBA instituted two measures designed to diminish the acrimony and sleights of hand that drove it into near-terminal crisis in Port-Harcourt in 1991. First, in place of universal suffrage for all lawyers, it instituted a delegate-based electoral system. Eligible delegates comprise the 13 elected officers of the Bar, all Senior Advocates of Nigeria, members of the Body of Benchers who are not serving or retired judicial officers, other members of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the NBA, and branch delegates. Each of the 109 branches of the NBA is entitled to send 10 delegates to the election. To account for disparities in the size of branches, branches with more than 100 members are entitled to one additional delegate for every 100 members. This system was designed to give branch delegates a decisive edge in determining who leads the Bar. It also makes the branch chairpersons beautiful brides and brokers of delegates and votes. In the just-concluded elections, there were 1,728 registered delegates. Some were unable to show up for the actual ballot.

    Second, the Bar instituted an informal convention of rotating its Presidency among fields of aspirants confined in succession to the three historic regions of Nigeria at Independence – East, North, and Western regions. This began in 2000. In NBA-speak, this is called “inclusion”. Nigerians understand it more popularly as “zoning”. After two rounds of this rotation among the three regions, the position was to return on this occasion to the Western region. There was a snag though: the three zones invented by the Bar were in arrears of Nigeria’s contemporary political architecture. In 1963, the Mid-Western region was created from the Western Region. By 1967, Nigeria had become 12 States. By the turn of the Millennium, Nigeria’s 36 States were clustered into six, not three geo-political zones, supposedly designed to advance national equity and inclusion. NBA’s own inclusion policy based on three instead of six geo-political zones easily became fraught, fragile and controversial.

    As with the wider politics of Nigeria, the convention of rotating the Presidency of the Bar in this way encouraged the emergence of regional, ethnic, and tribal bar forums. Many people considered the emergence of these ethnic and tribal Bar forums to be contrary to the declared commitment of the Bar to promoting the rule of law on a non-discriminatory basis. It was also seen as injecting narrow ethnic interests into what increasingly became a contest for the capture of the Bar as an influential professional group. Indeed, in 2012, a committee to review the system of leadership selection at the Bar chaired by Prince Lanke Odogiyan, a Life Bencher and former President of the NBA, had recommended the abolition of these sectional forums. The National Executive Committee of the NBA adopted the Odogiyan Committee Report but its recommendations remain shelved.

    For their part, 13 Branches of the NBA from the former Mid-West region (now Delta and Edo States) had always protested the fact that this arrangement was inherently unfair to them. Although they were historically part of the Western Region, the branches in Delta and Edo states were excluded from the forum of NBA’s branches of the old Western Region where the preferred platform for organising was ethnically branded and called “Egbe Amofin”. In Yoruba language, this translates literally into “Group/Forum of people learned in law”.

     

    A showdown on zoning

    The Mid-West Bar chose this most recent contest for the Presidency of the Bar as the moment for an electoral showdown on these claims of injustice. They could not have picked a better moment. According to the conventions of the Bar, the Presidency of the Bar for the two year period beginning 2014 was “zoned” to the old Western Region. Historically, South-West Nigeria produced the first lawyers in the country. It also has the highest concentration of lawyers. At the beginning of this election cycle, it comprised 23 branches. The Mid-West Bar had 13 Branches. If the South-West could produce one candidate, that person was guaranteed to be a winner. But it could not.

    For these elections, the 23 branches of the South-West produced four candidates: Funke Adekoya from the Lagos, Dele Adesina from Ikeja, Niyi Akintola from Ibadan, and Osas Erhabor from Ilesa. Several and successive attempts by the leadership of the Egbe Amofin to “harmonise” the ambitions of the respective candidates proved frustrating and ultimately futile. Each of the candidates had good reasons for putting their ambitions in the laps of the electorate. Propelled by a sense of injustice meanwhile and by deftly exploiting the geo-political alliances with the branches in the States of the Niger Delta and of South-Eastern Nigeria, the Mid-West Bar rallied solidly behind the candidacy of Augustine Alegeh.

    The numbers prove it. Together, the candidates from the South-West polled 762 votes, 71 votes more than Mr. Alegeh. Mr. Alegeh’s candidacy thus benefitted immensely from the uncharacteristically egalitarian outcome of the Egbe Amofin’s efforts to “harmonise” the ambitions of its members ahead of the vote.

     

    Money Talks

    A major reason given for the establishment of the delegate system for electing leadership at the NBA was to reduce costs and expense. If this was the intention, the NBA needs to urgently re-think its rationales. The delegate system has made the elections into offices in the NBA more not less expensive. Long before the election cycle began, candidates invested considerable resources in influencing the creation of new branches, emergence of branch chairmen and determining the composition of branch delegates. Candidates spent freely on the transport, accommodation and subsistence costs of their delegates.

    Arguably, for the first time in the NBA’s history, some candidates deployed private jets as they rushed around the country canvassing for the delegate count to get them across the finish line. In these elections, money spoke very loudly. By some estimates, the NBA’s 2014 elections were the first in which the campaign expenditure easily crossed the One billion Naira mark.

    Many people will wonder why leadership elections in any professional or civic association such as the NBA would be this expensive. Clearly, the NBA is not an ordinary organization. The President of the NBA has huge powers of patronage, with a privilege to nominate members into the boards of choice constitutional and statutory bodies.

    Whether this is sufficient reason for excess of money sloshing around the NBA elections is a different matter. In its 2013 report, the NBA’s Committee on the Professionalization of the Secretariat complained about a disturbing “tendency of the Bar and its leadership sometimes to contract potentially problematic relationships with politically exposed persons (PEPs) who sometimes have partisan interests in compromising an independent Bar.” Quite clearly, the influence of outside money in this leadership contest makes this a clear, present and continuing worry.

     

    Out-dated and Arbitrary Processes

    Defined by this landscape, the outcome of this ballot for the Presidency of the Bar was not entirely unpredictable. Yet, the manner in which the NBA conducts elections saddles the in-coming President with a moral burden from which he can, nevertheless, retrieve an agenda for reform and leadership.

    The concerns first expressed about NBA’s leadership processes in 2012 remain unaddressed. If anything, these elections advertised them on a grand scale. The hallmark of democratic politics is that elections are governed by pre-determined rules designed to guarantee the credibility of outcomes, which are indeterminate. Within the NBA, however, there is ample reason to believe that the rules are indeterminate in order to facilitate outcomes that are designed to be pre-determined. This is not a criticism of any candidate. Rather it speaks to the failures of an Association whose methods and reputation are no longer of any concern to its leadership or membership and whose dominant governance mores now hew closely to the anything-goes predilection of Nigerian politics. This is tragic.

    Many aspects of the just-concluded elections were deeply flawed. Arbitrariness defined the process. To begin with, the NBA’s branch network determines the outcome of the Association’s votes. In 2012, the NBA comprised 100 branches. In the run in to the 2014 ballot, at least nine new branches were created. When branches were last created in 2012, the NBA resolved that the new branches would not be deployed for election purposes. As such, they did not present any delegates to the 2012 elections. In a departure from this precedent, however, all the newly created branches in 2014 fielded delegates to the Special Conference. Although the rules for creating new branches in the NBA are very clear, the criteria for the creation of the new ones and their distribution across the country were unclear. Recollections also differ as to how some of the new branches were created. In the end, an impression may have been created that many of these new branches were primarily created to affect or tilt the electoral calculus with aforethought.

    The Guidelines governing the elections gave the hand-picked Chairman of the NBA’s Electoral Committee plenipotentiary “powers” to fiddle with the rules as he deemed fit and to disqualify candidates on a whim. On the eve of the vote on14 July, the Committee did just that, disqualifying four candidates for different positions in circumstances that appeared opaque at the very best.

    The list of eligible voters was unknown and undisclosed until the delegates converged in Abuja for the accreditation on 14 July, one day before the actual balloting. The best that the outgoing leadership of the Association offered in defence of this was that publication of the NBA’s Roll of voters is not provided for in the rules of the Association. In response to this, one can only hope that the leadership was mis-reported otherwise this would be considered evidence of bad faith or of lack of the capability to organize a credible ballot.

    Balloting was to have ended by noon on 15 July. By this appointed time, however, none of the candidates knew or had access to the list of accredited voters. In effect, it was theoretically possible for voters to have been accredited after the official end of accreditation by 17:00 hours on 14 July. There were credible allegations that this may indeed have happened. It was impossible to verify these allegations before filing this report.

    After voting was supposed to have ended, the Electoral Committee announced that they had accredited 1,481 voters, comprising 142 Senior Advocates; 36 Benchers; 68 co-opted members of the National Executive; and 1,235 branch delegates. This information was, however, provided, long after the fact and in circumstances which sadly leave the leadership of the Electoral Committee open to entirely avoidable allegations of fiddling with the list of accredited voters. The easy thing to have done was to ensure that all the candidates received copies of the list of eligible voters well ahead of time and of the list of accredited voters immediately after accreditation finished. It is indefensible that senior lawyers could justify a system that makes this possible.

     

    HAIL MARY TO THE RAIN MAKER

    This balloting took place in the middle of July, notoriously the heart of the rainy season in Nigeria. Yet, there were no arrangements for covered stands. If it had rained, there would have been no where for anyone to hide and the NBA would have struggled to organize anything. When I pointed this out to someone at the venue, she responded that the NBA must have visited a rain maker. You can imagine how reassured I was by the knowledge that our Bar is fully in tune with Nigeria’s community of shamans and voodoo practitioners.

    Voting delegates travelled to Abuja on 13 July. 14 July was the date set aside for accreditation and final campaign orations. Voting, counting and declaration of results followed on 15 July. The NBA’s travelling voting parties began to disperse from Abuja on 16 July, having spent four days on a voting process that involved a highly educated electorate of a mere 1,728 voters. To call this antediluvian is to be charitable. As we say here though, they all travel with “journey mercies”.

    Even more indefensible, therefore, than the rules and conditions under which the NBA conducts it elections is the fact that lawyers, supposedly the defenders of the rules of electoral democracy in Nigeria, could subject themselves to a leadership contest and ballot under these conditions.

    Despite all these shortcomings – or may be because of them – the NBA has elected a new leadership that deserves a chance to prove that it realizes and relishes the challenges that confront the Bar and the wider country. The biggest of these challenges is a Bar devoid of civic credibility; lacking the moral authority to persuade anyone to its message of promoting the rule of law; in hock to paymasters with an investment in capturing its organs and institutions; and increasingly without a capacity to offer any value to its members. This is a terrible place for any entity to be, least of all the foremost professional association in the country.

    In 2012, at the request of the outgoing Presidency of the NBA, I led a committee to review the professionalism of the NBA’s programming. The Committee’s report, submitted in January 2013, began: “[t]he NBA does not offer a clear value proposition to its members. The absence of a defining value proposition is an existential threat to the NBA and to the effectiveness of its Secretariat. If any other organization or entity can rise to offer to members of the NBA a unifying promise of professional growth or edge, the NBA as we know it could become history. To avoid this possibility, the leadership of the NBA must define a value proposition for our members and, in the Secretariat, evince a programming capability to ensure the realization of this promise.” These provide metrics by which the in-coming leadership of the NBA can measure progress in grappling with the many challenges that bedevil the Association. There is not much time to turn this around. If they fail, it is possible that this could be the last time the NBA would be voting as a unified and united body for its leadership. To the incoming leadership, congratulations are due; to the Bar, goodluck.

    Odinkalu is a member of the National Executive Committee of the NBA and was a delegate to the just-concluded special delegate’s conference of the NBA.

     

  • Post-mortem of a trial: Racism lives

    Post-mortem of a trial: Racism lives

    We walk blindly, moving forward into the past

    This is my second column about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case. The case is the stuff of drama. In short order, a movie will come of it. Zimmerman will write a book and shall be the temporary saint of the White conservative lecture circuit before slipping into a paranoid, forced anonymity. What will not happen is Travyon’s family seeing him again, except for the image he left in the corridors of their memories or the photographs they keep.

    However, I haven’t returned to this matter because of the individual trauma involved. I hold to this case because of its wider social and political consequences.

    Racism lives. This means the Black race remains endangered although not sufficiently alert to the trouble at hand. The trouble is not that of extermination or physical slavery as centuries ago. The danger is that of a sense of crippling inferiority. This sense is perceived and acted on but no longer formally acknowledged by either side of the racial divide characterizing Black people’s historic relationship with mostly White America and Western Europe.

    Because of the power differential that has existed for half a millennium, the two races view each other differently. To put it mildly, Blacks generally respect Whites but that respect is not reciprocated in equal portion. Each race stereotypes the other. The stereotypes Blacks hold of Whites are, to a large degree, authored by Whites. Therefore, the stereotypes are generally positive. Even the few negative biases amount to critiques that Whites have taken to the extreme what otherwise would be a virtue. Thus, the spirit of exploration becomes one of aggression, conquest, and colonialism. The belief in the primacy of science and technology to improve our material wellbeing becomes unbridled. It turns into the malpractice of distorting our environment and endangering our wellbeing through the very technologic and economic processes once touted as harbingers of a benign future. Any trouble with Whites it is not because they are bad but sometimes they are too much of a good thing.

    Stereotypes affixed to the Black race trend in the opposite direction. While Whites may overload on a fine thing, Blacks are characterized by multiple depravity. Our affluence lies in our nothingness. Almost every dysfunctional, criminal attribute known to man is viewed as our quiddity. While Whites are presumed the best, we are adjudged the worst even before evidence is adduced.

    Intellectually, most people know theses stereotypes are minatory and inaccurate. However, psychology often trumps intellect. After quickly acknowledging the mistakes of this line of thought, people turn back to the wrong ideas in order to embrace them. They find it is easier to live within the comfortable bounds of wrongful convention than to live outside of comfort yet be right.

    The trial of George Zimmerman must be viewed through this perspective if it is to be viewed with perception. Zimmerman is White and Martin was Black. The former killed the latter under questionable circumstances. In America, the clash of White and Black is rarely coincidental. It is a function of a history of racial animus and of the stereotypes that animus has brewed over generations.

    However, the prosecutors, the defense team, and the jury — all of whom were White — all claimed the case had nothing to do with race. While these people may have been in the courtroom, they did not understand the trial or their role in it if they honestly believed their disavowals. For them to say race played no role is worse than disingenuous. They engage in a most dangerous form of chicanery. They lied knowing it was a lie but feeling in their gut that the lie was better than the truth. They dare not admit Zimmerman’s racism because they believed in what he did. They supported it not because of the governing laws on the books but because of the subconscious racism that governs their perspective of the world and that raises the hair on their backs whenever they see a Black person in a situation or position they do not associate with blackness.

    For them to admit Zimmerman’s prejudice would be to admit then try to discard their own. They have no reason to attempt such a thing. Their racism is a comfortable garment worn so long and that fits so smugly that they don’t notice it. It is part of them; it is them. To remove their prejudice would be tantamount to amputating a limb. They see no benefit in undergoing the painful operation for a dead black boy.

    For them, the lie that was the verdict worked because it returned the world to its proper balance. Zimmerman walked free, acquitted of killing an unarmed Black teenager. Confined forever to his grave, Martin was deemed culpable in his own homicide. Because of his race, the murdered was considered his own de facto killer. In effect, the jury decided the young man killed himself, that he basically committed the social equivalent of suicide, just because he did not bow to Zimmerman’s command.

    Zimmerman was not cloaked with legal authority to command anyone to do anything. However, the jury believed Martin’s status as a Black teenager automatically relegated him to a status were he should have obeyed Zimmerman or face the consequences of a real but unspoken law that has shaped the contours of American and world history for centuries. Perhaps the young man was not fully cognizant of his actions. Resisting Zimmerman’s encroachment into the quiet enjoyment of his personal space, the boy rebelled against the great weight of history.

    He might have thought this was a simple one-on-one confrontation. When race is involved nothing is simple and cast in isolation. Everything is tied to history and touched with larger meaning. Superficially, Trayvon was felled by a single bullet. In a more profound sense, this unwitting rebel was interred by the weight of a lopsided, unfair history; his actions were deemed improper by the legal system of a society that had already adjudged him guilty of some wrong by reason of his very existence. To be a young Black man is to be a criminal in waiting. According to the system, Trayvon got what he deserved and Zimmerman was unduly victimized for doing his civic duty containing this human form of the Black Plague.

    Most White Americans support the verdict exonerating the gun-toting Zimmerman; it accords with their racist perceptions of justice. They proclaim race did not play a role in the case. To admit that race was a factor is to confess to a problem. Why would they utter such a confession when the outcome was the desired one, as in the days of old before Blacks acquired civil rights?

    Most Blacks are appalled at the verdict; they sense its ugly ramification because they will bear its lethal brunt in the years to come. The nation is slowly but perceptibly returning to its former self where the door of justice was open to Whites but shuttered to Blacks. What the verdict says is that a Black person peacefully walking the street can be accosted by a White intermeddler. Unless there are objective witnesses around, the intermeddler can have his way with the Black person. The Black will be blamed for whatever happens to him. The verdict is an open invitation for White vigilantes to descend on any solitary black man who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The woods of southern states are littered with the corpses of Black men killed this way in years past. We come full circle back to this danger that made many Black men run home before sundown less he be caught, never to be seen above ground again.

    In a way, those who say race did not play a role in the case are right. To say it played a role is such an understatement as to be a lie. Race did not play a role in the case: Race was the case.

    Without the Black/ White divide, there would not have been a fatal confrontation. If Martin had been a White teen, Zimmerman would not have pursued him. However, based on the belief that some Black criminals had committed robberies in the area, Zimmerman concluded Martin was one of them. According to Zimmerman, the boy was walking too slowly. Who said there is nothing new under the sun? Low and behold, there is a new rule. A Black person can now be found guilty for walking below the limit permissible for him. In Travyon’s case, the penalty for this seemingly minor infraction was his very life.

    Twenty years ago, Zimmerman’s actions would have been known by its truer name: racial prejudice. Today, it is called justifiable pragmatism and deemed a civic service.

    In a certain sense, the verdict was foretold at the point that the prosecution team was picked. Prosecution lawyers made a jumble of the case because their hearts were not in it. They wanted Zimmerman to walk free. Their efforts were lame ones of merely going through the motions. The prosecutors knew their lives and status in the White community would be at risk if they sent Zimmerman to prison. The local White community wanted Zimmerman off and the prosecutors did what they could to oblige their neighbor’s wishes.

    As such, they were not prosecutors; they were like underpaid actors performing a secondary role just so the play could go on. After all, why risk their status? Travyon was dead. Nothing they did would bring him back. A vigorous prosecution would just make them pariahs in the community. Thus they behaved like the prosecutors in the Old South over fifty years ago when criminal cases were first being brought against Whites for violence against blacks. They tripped and fumbled through the case so that Zimmerman could walk and they could receive the silent, implied tribute of a community happy that the Black menace had received its just comeuppance. The clock always ticks but sometimes, sometimes, its hands move backward to return us to a past that never should have been.

    Enter into the fray President Obama. Immediately after the verdict, he issued a terse, anodyne statement that the jury verdict stands and must be respected. He is consistent in that his usual knee-jerk reaction to first assuage White conservatives was not placed out-of-joint by the case. However, Black and youth frustration has been mounting against him and the overall turn of events and issues in the nation. People have taken to the streets in protests. The nation is one incident away from a riot in a major city.

    Apprehended by the prospect of a race riot and being almost screamed at by a Black community waiting for him to show a little soul in office, the President issues a better still incomplete statement July 19. In that attempt, he tried to thread the needle to douse the frustration of the Black community without upsetting the satisfaction of the White at the verdict. For him, the attempt was a painful one in which he tried so hard to find the right words that he did not say all he needed to say. Historians of the moment will enjoy the irony of a Black president fidgeting to contain African American anger.

    He eloquently mentioned some poignant but relatively petty instances of racism he and other Black high-brows have suffered. He did this because he was not really speaking to the nation. This address was to Black people in particular. The subliminal message was that he was one of us and thus we should not go too far with the protests and demonstrations less we make his job harder. He was pleading, “give a brother a break!” Most people will be taken in by his tact but a growing number no longer see him as a brother. They will not relent to give him any break. They will see this as moment when the Black community just might emerge from protracted stupor to fight to keep the little it has. If that means the man in the White House must experience a bit of sweat under the collar, so be it. His salary is sufficient to take his apparel to a good dry cleaner.

    In the end, he ran into a wall of his own making. While trying to explain the social and political ramifications of the case, President Obama maundered haltingly at moments. He knew what he should say but he could not bring himself to uttering the word that needed to be said repeatedly. He dared not use the word “racism” too often. Instead he spoke of this harsh, flinty reality in soft euphemisms like “historic incidents and antecedents.” Give the rest of the brothers a break, Mr. President! If you can’t say racism is alive, real and killing people, then you have not lived up to the moment and to the unique responsibility you have chosen by commanding the desk in the Oval Office. You remain a standard politician, a man who is black but ill at ease with being a black man.

    It is not that you are bad but that you have sidestepped the higher purpose of your mission because fulfilling that purpose comes with political price you deem too costly to bear. You want everyone to love you. In the end, everyone will remember you by half, as an elaborate incompletion.

    On one level, the case is a simple criminal trial in Florida. On another level, it is universal warning. Racism is not only afoot, it is armed and claiming ground lost in recent decades. This affects not only Black America but Blacks everywhere. Zimmerman shot Travyon because the boy decided to be his own person and stand his ground. This is a metaphor with larger political and economic significance. As they strive to define themselves and stand their ground, Black people and nations will be accosted. The very prejudice that excused Zimmerman’s behavior now fuels increasingly overbearing and paternalistic Western economic and political policies toward Africa. Leaders of those African nations that tow the line, doing sheepishly as instructed, will get a pat on the head. Their people, however, will be asked to sup on the ash and dust of their poverty. Those people and nations that seek to stand will have a tough time of it. Yet, dignity and justice are worth the fight. In the years to come, we shall see of what material we are made. We shall see if we lower our heads and bury our dignity because we eschew the fight. Or will we have the courage of that solitary teenager who stood his ground because he had done nothing wrong except seek to find his way home.

     

    08060340825 (sms only)

     

  • Post-mortem of a pardon

    Post-mortem of a pardon

    NO event has been this tendentious in recent history. Not even the President’s handling of the deadly Boko Haram insurgency. Nor the reckless fuel subsidy removal of last year and the criminal negligence of our roads and hospitals; the novelty of governors just taking off on “well deserved” holidays and the emotional sight of old men and women protesting their unpaid pensions. None.

    The presidential pardon handed DSP Alamieyeseigha, a chief, former governor of Bayelsa State, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwart, ex-convict and – thanks to his munificence – governor-general of the Ijaw nation – has put the Presidency under fire since it was packaged and delivered eight days ago.

    No doubt, President Goodluck Jonathan must have reviewed the situation with his friends, aides and associates. What was his conclusion? Regrets? Triumph? Who said what behind the scene? Are more pardons coming? Who are the VIP ex-convicts clamouring for pardon? Editorial Notebook’s reportorial skills have been pressed into action to resolve these and many other questions to which readers are seeking answers.

    Thankfully, I ran into an uncle of mine in Sangotedo – the tiny beach town on the outskirts of Lekki, the Lagos home of the rich – whose friend’s brother claimed to have met a senior official of the Presidency who swore that he attended one of those post-mortem sessions. The source, I was told, pleaded not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, and the fact that he is not authorised to speak to the press.

    Here is his unconfirmed report of the aftermath of what has been described by some critics of the presidential action as the alarming pardon:

    Dr Jonathan sits down on a sofa, the national flag resting behind him. He is surrounded by some aides, friends and associates. He whips out a handkerchief to rub his face, smiles and adjusts his position. They all greet him.

    Thank you, gentlemen. You’re all welcome. And, if I may ask: How do you people see this pardon for those they called coup plotters and the other people?

    The aides keep quiet. But before the President could go on, a leading businessman, who is a regular visitor to the Villa, cuts in.

    My President, you know I won’t deceive you. That was a great decision. The critics have not been fair to you. They say your chief target was your former boss, DSP, and that you only used the others to pad the list and make it look national and sincere. Don’t bother yourself about busybodies. A great leader must take decisions – popular or unpopular – but history will not be kind to any leader who refuses to take bold decisions.

    Thank you, chief. You see, I don’t give a damn. The question is: don’t I have the right to pardon anybody that I wish to pardon? Doesn’t the Bible say ‘I will have mercy on who I will?’ Here is a man who has helped me; no; a man who has been so helpful to this country. The creeks are quiet, oil production is rising; do they think it’s their noise? Honestly, I don’t give a damn!

    You’re right sir. There has been so much jubilation in Bayelsa. Big celebration. I saw it with my two eyes on television. I saw Alams on an open roof vehicle, waving to the cheering crowd. In fact, as I was coming here, somebody called me to tell me how this boy, em…em… James Ibori, received the news. He said the guy was lamenting, saying: “Shoo! See Alams o. E don free. Dem say he fit contest again to be senator or whatever. Why me I run comot? Even Lucky dey enjoy now, after coming back from court. Ha…I don yab. I fall my people hand.”

    Really? You see, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. As far as I’m concerned, I have taken a decision, approved by the Council of State, a body of our most experienced people, including elders and giants in law. So, what are they talking about? I’m here to take decisions and I have taken a decision. If you’re not pleased with my decision, you’re free to go to court.

    I agree with you sir. You see, a decision that is not popular with some people is being celebrated by others. It’s all politics. A friend of mine has just told me that you’ll soon be getting applications for such pardon. I understand Tafa Balogun is interested and I said, ‘why not?’ He was a damn good police officer; only the money problem. They said he stole, but his friends are saying he got no fair trial. This is a government of rule and law. And it must be seen to be so. Then, one crazy fellow was crying that Abdulrasheed Maina should come out of hiding.

    Another, who claims to be an economist and financial expert, said he heard from a reliable source that Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi would not seek another term. You know who he suggested as Sanusi’s successor? Shettima Bulama, the former Bank of the North chief and beneficiary of the pardon.

    Thank you bo. If the only thing I can do to help the man is what I have done, I have no apology. God used him to draw me into politics. The man has gone to jail. He has lost weight. He has lost property. What else do they want; make he quench? They say his pardon will undermine the war against corruption. But I ask, how? Just one man? Did he not serve? Abeg make I hear word.

    And somebody was saying Baba ,the one in Ota, that he was scorning the whole thing, that when he saw it in the newspapers, he screamed: “Alams pardoned…I dey laugh o!” When his boys asked him, “Baba, what’s the matter?” He started grumbling: “A man I sent to jail kulee and he came out jeje. Now, he’s pardoned. If that is what they want to be doing now, dat na dem toro. Alaremu has done his own. I started the EFCC. They said I was using it to grab my enemies. I wonder who I should have been using it to catch; my kids? Now they are free to be using it for their former ogas. Me I don do my own.

    (The President, pointing to one of his aides, a suppressed smile on his dry lips).What is all this talk about clemency, amnesty, pardon and all those gymnastics.

    Sir (an aide springs up to his feet, adjusts his jacket and straightens his bent tie). Mr President sir…em…emm. I don’t see the point they are trying to make. It’s all grammatical gymnastics, as you have rightly observed. In fact, there is so much ignorance about this matter and I have told them that the critics are suffering from sophisticated ignorance, which has heightened their anger. And they need some remedial tranquilisers for mollification of the situation.

    Hmm…I trust you! When people are ignorant and they see politics in everything, they won’t learn. As for us, we must refuse to lose focus. We must.

    (Another aide is struggling to rise onto his feet, the leather seat screeching, as if it’s crying to be freed of the weight that has been dumped on it. He eventually stands up, a file in his hand).Mr Presden sir. I went on television the very next day after the Council decision. And I told all those armchair critics to stop it. You ask a thief to run; he runs. You ask him to drop what he has stolen; he drops it. What else do you want?

    (The room burst into laughter, sparked by the strange allegory of the aide. In this lighter mood, another aide stands up to talk). Sir, the joke in town now is playing on the word “Alams”. They say: “Latest entries in Nigerian Urban Dictionary”: 1. Alams (noun). (i) An oga at the top who is much higher than a mere political godfather; he is generally believed to have the swagger of a tribal deity.

    (ii) Anyone who is intimate with oga at the top

    2. Alam: verb. To pardon someone of corruption e.g: “ Our accountant has been sacked for embezzlement of company funds but the board has alamed him.”

    Everybody was seized by laughter. The session closes as the President turns to the staircase, saying: “Good night, gentlemen.”

  • Election USA: A post-mortem

    Election USA: A post-mortem

    One week after his run for the White House went up in a puff, Mitt Romney and company are still trying to figure out what went wrong.

    Most of the polls that did not give him a slight lead had him in a statistical dead heat with President Barack Obama. Surging crowds filled the venues of his rallies, following his strong performance against a sedated Obama in their first “debate.” From rally to rally he rode on a wave of enthusiasm, whereas Obama’s supporters sulked in quiet resignation.

    In that debate, Romney twisted himself into so many different shapes and sizes that if the contest had been for the contortionist-in-chief of the United States, he would have won it that night for all practical purposes. The one who had made a virtue of being “severely conservative” cut the middle ground from under Obama’s feet with a brazenness that left the usually unflappable Obama utterly confused.

    And it worked, splendidly.

    In another clime, Romney would have been undone by that debate. For he confirmed his public image as a person without a core, a person who would say anything if he thought it would help him win, inauthentic. Not for nothing did one of his opponents in the race for the GOP ticket, Jon Huntsman, compare him to “a perfectly lubricated weather vane.”

    But in America, where politics is a game like almost everything else, where appearance – they call it “optics” — counts far more than substance, Romney’s contortions catapulted him to front runner.

    Nobody remembered anymore his comment about the 47 per cent of Americans who see themselves as victims and have settled for an easy life of dependency, nor the wealth he had salted away in off-shore tax havens, nor yet his sworn determination, in the face of established practice, to release no more than two years of his federal income tax filings.

    Not even Obama’s superior performance in the two subsequent “debates” could arrest the Romney momentum. The race dragged on, oscillating within a minuscule window, leading commentators to project all kinds of possible outcomes.

    One candidate (Romney) might win the popular ballot but lose the Electoral College vote to Obama, in which case Obama would have to contend with a fresh legitimacy issue that would provide fresh ammunition for the Tea Party crowd and its punditocracy that had spent the better part of the past four years trying to de-legitimise him.

    A winner might not be known for several months, and it might fall again to the Supreme Court again, the Republican Party in judicial robes to determine the outcome, according to another scenario. They even conjured up one curious scenario under which Romney would be president, and Obama’s running mate and vice president, Joe Biden, would continue to serve in that capacity in the Romney Administration.

    In these permutations, Obama figured only as a secondary actor.

    One of the few pollsters who came to a different conclusion was Nate Silver, the computer geek and resident statistician for The New York Times. While others predicted an outright win for Romney or a squeaker at best for Obama, Silver gave Obama more than eight chances in ten to clinch the race outright. For this, he was denounced endlessly by Romney’s supporters.

    Then, a deus ex machina that not even Sophocles could have devised supervened. Hurricane Sandy struck across 15 states in the North-east, wreaking devastation on a scale America has not seen since Katrina.

    Hurricane Sandy called to mind another deus ex machina that had supervened at a critical moment in the 2008 presidential election contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. The race was a ding-dong affair. Obama had the crowds and the enthusiasm, but this did not translate into a significant lead in the polls.

    The collapse of the stock market changed all that.

    McCain called off scheduled rallies and headed to Washington DC, saying he was going to help fix the economy. Obama kept his cool, consulted quickly with the experts, and staked a position that Americans found much more reassuring than McCain’s panicked and erratic conduct. The rest is history.

    Hurricane Sandy concentrated national attention on the ruin it had loosed on a vast swathe of the United States and to the efforts to deal with its aftermath. It offered President Obama to do what he does best – uniting the nation at a time of grief, and playing comforter-in-chief. There, on splendid display, and unsullied by the bitterness that has been the hallmark of the campaign – there was the essential Obama.

    But I am not persuaded that it slowed down or arrested Romney’s momentum, as his camp is now claiming. Right up to Election Day, they believed that they had the game in the bag, and their own internal polling and a good many of the independent polls appeared to back them.

    Romney and his inner circle certainly believed it.

    He had written and tucked in his vest the acceptance speech he would deliver moments after Obama would have called to concede. Boats moored along Boston harbor, had been detailed to launch a spectacular eight-minute fireworks to herald Romney’s victory. This was, to be sure, an incongruous move in the major city of a state that had just rejected him overwhelmingly at the polls. But then, nobody has ever accused Romney of subtlety.

    A web site for President-elect Mitt Romney was already up and almost running. Offices had been acquired in Washington DC to house his transition team.

    Romney was set to hit the ground running, as they say here, though he would have to wait until taking office on January 20, 2013, or Day One as he called it on the stump, to abolish “Obamacare,” the health care delivery law enacted by the Obama Administration and affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. It did not matter in the least that it was modeled on the law Romney had enacted as governor of Massachusetts.

    By the time they called Ohio some three hours after the poll closed, it was all over for Romney. Nate Silver, the resident statistician at The New York Times, had it right all along.

    Hurricane Sandy undermined the Romney mantra that big government was an aberration, whereas the private sector is the answer to every problem under the sun. It exploded Ronald Reagan’s oft-cited dictum that there are no words in the English language more terrifying “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

    But in the end, I think it was Romney’s phoniness that brought him to grief — his lack of a core, his inauthenticity, his cavalier treatment of politics as an amoral game in which winning is the only thing that counts, his belief that he could fool all the people all the time.

    This was what Obama distilled into a powerful closing argument in the final days of the race. “You know me,” the drained and bone-weary candidate seeking re-election said at each stop. “You know what I stand for. You know that I say what I mean. You know that I mean what I say. . .”

    Romney had no answer to that one.

    Former President Clinton, who played a pivotal role in the Obama campaign, drove home the point to teeming admirers who remember his tenure as an era of prosperity.

    The genius that has sustained the United States through the centuries prevailed. A bourgeoning progressive majority that cut across class and color and creed and tongue and gender and sexual orientation saw through the flakiness. It refused to submit to the fear-mongering, the race baiting, the xenophobia, the homophobia, and the demagoguery that constituted the pillars of Romney’s bid for the White House.