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Tag: President Goodluck Jonathan

  • NIS recruitment deaths: APC accuses Jonathan of taking political advantage of calamities

    NIS recruitment deaths: APC accuses Jonathan of taking political advantage of calamities

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday accused President Goodluck Jonathan of taking political advantage of calamities in the country.

    It dismissed as belated government’s compensation of N5million each to families of those who lost their lives in the Immigration recruitment exercise after one year.

    The party said the compensation, coming at this time, was aimed at currying votes.

    National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement in Lagos wondered why it took the president all of one year to act on the promise he made to the families, adding that “but for the forthcoming elections, the President would have simply ignored the families, in his usual style.”

    He said: ‘’The truth is that this President was forced to act because of the elections. Otherwise, why has it taken one year for the president to redeem his promise to the bereaved families? Why has his Administration not sanctioned those who sent innocent job seekers to their early graves after extorting them? Why is the Interior Minister, Mr. Abba Moro, who presided over the deaths, still in office, virtually dancing on the graves of those innocent youths?

    ‘’Sunday, March 15th, will mark one year since those vibrant youths were lured to their deaths by a callous federal government that failed them in all ramifications, including the security of their lives and the assurance of their welfare, the raison d’être of any government. It is therefore utterly reprehensible, immoral and wicked for the same administration to seek to make political gains out of the needless tragedy.’’

    APC said President Jonathan, in his desperation for re-election, has also sought to take political advantage of other tragedies, including the Buni Yadi massacre of school children and the abduction of Chibok girls

    It observed, ‘’After refusing to even visit the families of those school children in Buni Yadi and Chibok, the President suddenly woke up and started sending delegations to meet with them, all this because he needs votes. As a parent himself, how will the President feel if he had been so treated? Why must the President put his re-election over and above everything else, including the welfare and security of Nigerians? Is there no limit to desperation?’’

    The APC said Nigerians are aware that the President has “suddenly woken up from his deep slumber and become artificially hyperactive, making repeated visits to regions that he had neglected in the past six years and doling out hard currencies even at a time the Naira was taking a beating, all for election purposes.

    ‘’No one is fooled by the antics of a desperate President, and in the fullness of time, Nigerians will show President Jonathan and his cohorts that they are not impressed by his pretend governance.’’

  • Two weeks to poll: Jonathan still in a tinder-box

    Two weeks to poll: Jonathan still in a tinder-box

    Despite a six-week window for more covert and overt campaigns, the nation’s presidential race is still getting tighter by the day with much anxiety. Caught in the midst of the campaign web is President Goodluck Jonathan, who is running from pillar to post. In this piece, YUSUF ALLI, MANAGING EDITOR, NORTHERN OPERATION examines how Jonathan got into a tinder-box

    Barring last-minute hitches like “curious court injunctions”, the presidential election would have been lost and won in two weeks time. The battle has remained the fiercest, the keenest, the dirtiest and the most expensive for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its arch-rival, the All progressives Congress (APC). In the last three weeks, the candidate of the PDP, President Goodluck Jonathan had traversed the country in a sleepless manner for the third round of a nationwide campaign because the incumbency factor (a rigging device for democracy in Africa) is not adding up. From the increasing grey hair of the President to the mudslinging on television against APC candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and key opposition figures, Jonathan has been tripping by winning some and losing some. The question is: How did Jonathan run into a tinderbox?

    Uncoordinated presidential campaign

    Until the President took his destiny in his own hands, his campaign had been cosmetic because there was no synergy between the PDP and his Presidential Campaign Council. At a point, the Campaign Council refused to pay the advertisement bills of the party even when such adverts were for the President’s campaign. While some members of the council had been looking for crumbs to survive, others had remained mere passengers. Today, the President’s campaign is split into five namely: the President’s personal coordination; Ahmadu Ali led Presidential Campaign Council but remotely managed by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the party, Chief Tony Anenih; PDP Governors Forum; the PDP initiative; and the strategic team being driven by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim/ ministers/ Chief E.K. Clark/ and other motley support groups.  A source said: “The struggle for personal benefits has overshadowed the target of winning the election. Virtually everyone wants to make money from the campaign as if there will be no tomorrow or as if we are going to lose at the poll. The President saw the gaps and decided to personally drive his own campaign.

    “If the President tells you his experience in the last three weeks that he had been shuttling about, you will appreciate that he would have lost the February 14 election woefully.”

    Another source said: “The challenge we are having is that the Campaign Council is too big for nothing, only few are working. To compound the problem, the PDP also raised a parallel campaign structure leading to overlapping duties and lack of results. Look, the six-week poll postponement is certainly a saving grace for the PDP.” The Deputy Director-General of PDP Campaign Organization, Prof. Tunde Adeniran on Thursday accused the party of doing little to promote Jonathan. He said: “If we continue to show this man has not done anything, others will capitalize on it. The party is not showing enough in this regard. The president’s achievement is undersold and in some cases not sold at all. In some places they ask, so Jonathan has done so and so?”

    How effective are Jonathan’s self-help shuttles?

    In the last few weeks, the President had embarked on shuttles to churches and traditional rulers to repackage his campaign and re-sell himself to Nigerians. Since the three birds (doves) refused to fly at the sanctuary of Rev. Fr. Mbaka in Enugu, the President had attempted to prove the Catholic Priest wrong that there is salvation elsewhere. But the mission to churches backfired with alleged N7billion bribe gift to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). Unlike in 2011, religious sentiments do not seem to favour Jonathan this time around. Instead, the church shuttles have left the nation polarized.

    The failure of the mission trip made Jonathan to evolve a new strategy of consulting with traditional rulers in all the six geopolitical zones. He, however, did not take cognizance of history that most of the same traditional rulers who wined and dined with the late Chief MKO Abiola during the Hope 93 Presidential Race and assisted to annul his mandate were always at the Presidential Villa during the regime of the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha to even watch films on flimsy state matters. The all-weather behaviour of some of the traditional rulers has made them to lose touch with their subjects. They prefer to smile to banks with the highest bidder and still have their cake and eat it. The few conscientious ones did not waste time in telling Jonathan the truth, home truth.  The Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona (who spoke truth to power when Abacha regime was at its draconian best) reminded Jonathan of the helplessness of the royal fathers.

    He said: “In Ijebu here, it is not possible for any Oba- not even in Ijebu, in Yorubaland- to go out and say vote for this, vote for that. That person is looking for trouble. But they should give them (the politicians) the opportunity to present their programmes so that the people can make up their minds on what to do.” There could have been no better home truths than the incorruptible Awujale’s submission. Again, each time takes a political step, he falters with a higher cost. Now he is being branded as serving God and Mammon for what he thought he had a clear cut intention. Jonathan has however shored up the image of many unknown or attention-seeking priests.

    Is the First Lady spoiling the broth with Fayose and Fani-Kayode?

    Naturally, the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan is expected to be beside her hubby, President Jonathan, not only as a dutiful wife but as the first beneficiary of power from re-election. Politically known as Madam P or Mother of the Nation, the First Lady formed the initially effervescent Women for Change Initiative to provide a back up for the President and PDP but when she was overwhelmed by the tightness of the race to the Presidential Villa, she threw decorum to the wind even when her husband has entered into a peace accord with other presidential candidates. On March 2 in Calabar, the First Lady minced no words when she said: “I’m telling you, anyone that comes and tell you Change, stone that person.  “What you did not do 19 Kirikiri, is now that age has caught up with you, you want to come and change? You can’t change rather you will turn back to a baby. You will turn back to a baby. From old age nothing, so nothing like change. Rather (it) is continuity.”  Though the First Lady was politicking, her office is too sensitive for such a blunder because it can ignite political violence.

    To Japheth Omojuwa, a noted blogger with large following, the comments lowered the standard of the Office of the First Lady. He said:  “We need not look too far to find examples of First Ladies who brought class and elegance to the privileged office. They may have their own faults but few people will fault the elegance and class of the likes of Maryam Babangida and Stella Obasanjo. Looking to use Michelle Obama as an example of who Mrs. Patience Jonathan should emulate may be asking too much.

    “But if the First Lady does not know what is right and what not to say, especially on national television, does she not have media managers? Are they paid to urge her and her classless disrespectful self on or they are paid to make her look better? Even if they have given up on her getting better, would it be out of place for them to suggest she never appears on live TV? They could at least edit the unwholesome parts of her speech from the whole speech. If per chance the whole speech is unwholesome, would it not be better to make the speech available without its sound? That is, if the First Lady must be on television at all.

    “One saw that one or two men in the president’s campaign team said they saw nothing wrong in the Patience Jonathan statements. Now, it is one thing to want to earn a living, it is another thing to live life as though living beneath one’s belief is a way to earn a living. Or would anyone say stoning those who don’t agree with them tallies with the belief system of any civilized person for that matter? Haba! Should we begin to accord honorary titles to cows just because we are desperate to feed off their meat? Let us call a spade what it is, Madam Patience Jonathan is a disgrace to Nigerian women. Our women have certainly got more class.”

    Whether Omojuwa is right or not will be tested at the International Criminal Court where the Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Organization, Governor Rotimi Amaechi has lodged a formal complaint. With the conviction of ex-First Lady of Cote d’Ivoire, Simone Gbagbo, the case against Mrs. Patience Jonathan might be one of the post-election legal tussles which Nigeria’s First Lady will face. In his letter Amaechi said: “Change, as the entire country must know by now, is the slogan of the APC – the rallying cry of a political party that wishes to bring hope of greater and better things to come for Nigeria and Nigerians. By her statement, Mrs. Jonathan was clearly calling on PDP supporters in Calabar to attack supporters and campaigners of the APC in the state,” Amaechi said.

    “Mrs. Jonathan’s statements and conduct during the ongoing political campaign brings to mind the conduct of Mrs. Simone Gbagbo, wife of the former president of Cote d’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, prior to that country’s 2010 election. The ICC indicted Mrs. Gbagbo for her part in planning to perpetrate brutal attacks, including murder, rape, and sexual violence, on her husband’s political opponents in the wake of the 2010 election.

    “Mrs. Jonathan does not occupy any formal office in the Nigerian government, as the position of First Lady is not recognized by the Nigerian constitution. But Mrs. Gbagbo’s case shows the ICC’s awareness of how someone beyond formal governmental and military hierarchies can be identified as responsible for serious international crimes.”

    The Director of Media and Publicity of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode however described the ICC threat as an “empty and boastful ranting.” He said: “We read with amusement, the threat by the Buhari campaign organization to drag the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, before the International Criminal Court of Justice (ICC), for allegedly indulging in what they described as “hate speech” at a recent rally in River State. Their threat to take the First lady before the ICC is not only absurd, but it is also nothing but the empty and boastful ranting of a perfidious, desperate, decaying and dying political party and such threat will amount to nothing. The truth is that if anybody is a candidate for the ICC, it is certainly not Dame Patience Jonathan, but rather General Muhammadu Buhari himself.” Instead of being combative, a solemn First Lady, who spoke through her Media Adviser, Ayo Adewuyi said:  “The only thing we can say from here is that Dame Patience Jonathan is a woman of peace that can never in any way be identified with violence before, during and after elections. You do not expect somebody who is the President of African First Ladies to be promoting violence.”

    The political losses incurred for Jonathan by the First Lady are dwindling goodwill from Nigerians, including die-hard PDP members and supporters; signs of desperation for power; international odium as the clips have gone viral on the Internet; and swaying votes from the ruling party to the opposition. It requires a lot of image laundering to repair the costly damage.

    Contrary to the permutations of those who drafted Fani-Kayode, a former Minister of Aviation to Jonathan’s campaign council  and Governor Ayo Fayose’s self-imposed attack dog,  the propaganda role of the PDP Presidential Campaign may be short-lived because Yoruba, who are the immediate constituents of these ‘butchers’, are Republicans who can easily decipher the truth from falsehood. Yoruba cannot easily be led by the nose. And for Fayose, whose state cannot even deliver up to 500,000 votes for Jonathan, he cries more than the bereaved.

    Jonathan, Muazu and the fresh fear of losing the north

    For three days during the week, Vice-President Namadi Sambo and his wife were stuck in the North trying to woo Northerners all over for PDP. The few gains in the North had been eroded by the First Lady’s campaign remarks against the APC Presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and Northerners. Besides describing Buhari as “brain dead”, she accused the North of not having a good family planning system which has led to the emergence of street kids (Almajiri). First Lady Dame Patience said: Wetin him dey find again? Him dey drag with him pikin mate…Old man wey no get brain, him brain don die pata pata. Our people no dey born shildren wey dem no dey fit count. Our men no dey born shildren throway for street. We no dey like the people for that side.” According to findings, reports indicated much anger, even from PDP members, against the First Lady to the extent that the wife of the Vice President, Hajiya Amina Sambo is now the one coordinating the last leg of mobilization of women in the North. For a region addicted to its culture, Northerners don’t take kindly to derogatory comments on polygamy and insults against those who enjoy cult followership like Buhari.

    This was why the National Chairman of PDP, Alhaji Adamu Muazu threatened to resign if the First Lady and others behind hate politics were unchecked by the President. Although the National Publicity of PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, dismissed the resignation rumour, a member of the National Working Committee, who spoke in confidence, said: “It was true that Mu’azu protested against the use of uncouth language by the First Lady and some members of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organization because the North is sensitive to uncomplimentary remarks. And you know, we cannot joke with the North’s voting strength.”

    Rather than taking a cue from Muazu, some PDP leaders had been attacking him in the last few days. According to findings, the presidency had been suspicious of Mu’azu for allegedly nursing a secret presidential or vice-presidential ambition. They therefore felt Mu’azu’s threat to quit was a consequence of frustration for not realizing his ambition. They pointed to Mu’azu’s remarks at the inauguration of the Presidential Campaign Council to justify what foretold the resignation plan. Mu’azu had said: “Mr. President, I want to appeal to you to consider it a challenge to discuss with your governors, Senators and all elected officials of PDP that members of our party shouldn’t be used and dumped. Adhere to equity, fairness and justice.” The bashing of Mu’azu had been on in the last three days. The Concerned Elders and chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Bauchi State accused Mu’azu, of not doing enough to ensure the re-election of President Jonathan.  In a statement in Bauchi by a PDP chieftain in the state, Bibi Dogo, they warned Jonathan not to rely on Mu’azu to deliver the mandatory 25 per cent to him in the forthcoming elections. The statement said: “There is also nothing concrete on ground to show Mu’azu’s personal commitment to the Jonathan’s re-election efforts. Attending presidential campaign rallies organized by PDP Presidential Campaign Organization is not enough commitment from the national chairman of the party.

    “In fact, to govern a state for eight years under the same party is not enough for Mu’azu to deliver Bauchi to Jonathan 100 per cent, if actually Mu’azu is in control of the party in his state.”

    Whatever becomes of the party chairman’s drama on the chances of Jonathan, it is a self-inflicted problem by the President. In keeping faith with his friend, Jonathan took the risk to make Mu’azu the National Chairman of PDP despite opposition. Many Nigerians may not know that one of the main reasons for the removal of a former Chairman of EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri was because of her insistence to prosecute Mu’azu against legal and ‘presidential’ advice.

    Resurfacing fuel queues and epileptic power supply

    No matter how temporary the fuel shortage was nationwide in the last one and a half weeks, it created another electoral hurdle for the President because many Nigerians are having a rethink on whether or not to cast their votes for him since there might not be change in the oil sector. It was as if those in charge of payment to marketers have a hidden agenda to draw back the hands of the campaign clock for Jonathan. The fears of Nigerians that the shoddiness in the oil sector might remain were heightened by the alleged secret memo from the presidency directing some ex-Niger Delta militant leaders to take over Nigerian waterways and oil pipeline protection from Police and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). The ex-militants implicated in the new ‘deal’ are Government Tompolo; the NDPVF, Mujaheedin Asari Dokubo; and Gen. Shoot-At-Sight. Although the takeover was said to be with effect from March 16, it was not immediately clear if the three key leaders got the “new deal” on behalf of all former militants. According to a source yesterday, the militants operating under seven groups had been allocated ‘regions’ or operational areas as follows:

    1. Egbe Security River One (Bayelsa);  2. Gallery Security (Mosinmi -Ore) 3. Close Body Protection (Edo State);  4. Adex Energy Security(Rivers) ; 5. Donyx Global Concept(Lagos and Ogun);  6. Oil Facilities Surveillance-(Delta) and 7. NewAge Global Security (Mosinmi-Ibadan). The NNPC through its General Manager, Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, described the deal as a “community engagement programme” but it was evident that “it is job for the boys” for political purpose. This is why foreign oil firms are skeptical of new investments in oil prospecting in the country.

    While Nigerians were recovering from fuel crisis, the power situation has become epileptic nationwide in the thick of rising heat. The electricity market which has 5,500MW installed capacity now generates average of 3,575.85MW following paucity of gas. Yet, the same Nigerians going through the anguish are expected to vote for “continuity.”

     Poll postponement, international reaction,  Jega’s fate and Mbeki’s visit

    Up till now, the President and the PDP have not recovered from the backlash of poll postponement. Notwithstanding the repeated assurances of the Federal Government that there will not be a further poll shift, many Nigerians and foreign missions have been asking the media: Do you think this general election will hold? The element of trust is lacking due to alleged plot to remove the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega and the unending debate over the use of Card Readers, which is a prerogative of INEC.  An example on Wednesday in Washington DC, USA, further lent credence to the fact that the poll postponement remains an international challenge for the Jonathan government.  At a briefing,  the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Amb. Ayodele Oke and the Director of Defence Intelligence, Rear-Admiral Gabriel E. Okoi, took time to explain that the nation had overcome most of the security and logistic problems which led to poll shift. Oke said: “INEC was having challenges with regards to the distribution of permanent voter cards (PVCs)”. Okoi also explained how Boko Haram insurgency in some parts of the North-East caused INEC to postpone the poll in line with the 1999 Constitution. He said: “Consequently INEC, after robust consultation with key stakeholders, deferred the elections by six weeks in accordance with constitutional provisions”.  The session however became charged when Oke said: “When the election was postponed, the NDI and IRI who are both on the ground issued a joint statement which corroborated and gave fuller explanation as to the reason why INEC took the decision it took.”

    The representatives of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) at the session said neither the US nor any US-based organizations was complicit in poll shift. A former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador George Moose, who led an eight-man joint pre-election assessment mission to Nigeria in January said: “nothing in the statement justified postponement.”

    Earlier, the US and the UK had expressed disappointment over the poll shift. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry said: “The US is deeply disappointed by the decision to postpone Nigeria’s presidential election, which had been scheduled for February 14.

    “Political interference with INEC is unacceptable, and it is critical that the government not use security concerns as a pretext for impeding the democratic process.

    “The international community will be watching closely as the Nigerian government prepares for elections on the newly scheduled dates. The US underscores the importance of ensuring that there are no further delays.

    “We support a free, transparent, and credible electoral process in Nigeria and renew our calls on all candidates, their supporters, and Nigerian citizens to maintain calm and reject election-related violence.”

    On its part, the UK said: “The decision by INEC to postpone the presidential elections is a cause for concern. The Nigerian people have the right to credible, peaceful and transparent elections. There should be no further delay in delivering democracy and we urge all to remain calm during this period of frustration.

    “While we support Nigeria in its struggle against terrorism, the security situation should not be used as a reason to deny the Nigerian people from exercising their democratic rights. It is vital that the elections are kept on track and held as soon as possible in accordance with international norms.”

    The increasing doubt over the poll made ex-President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, likely at the instance of the UN, to spend almost a week in Nigeria meeting Jonathan, APC candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and others alike. A source said: “Mbeki’s visit had to do with the anxiety in and out of the continent over the general election. There are apprehensions on whether or not the poll will hold; the likelihood of violence and the acceptability of the results of the elections.

    “So, the ex-South African President came to extract commitment from the key candidates that Nigeria will not be thrown into turmoil. He has been on a peace mission in order to ensure a free and fair poll in the country. He wants any loser to seek redress in court and not on the streets.”

    Another source said the “recourse to hate politics was disturbing to African leaders and being a man of peace, Mbeki was saddled with the responsibility of intervening.

    “You know Mbeki is playing a crucial role in mediation efforts in Darfur and Sudan as Chairperson of the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP).

    “If you see what happened in Rwanda in 19994, no one will want either pre or post election violence in Nigeria.”

    Dilly-dally over phone conversation with the King of Morocco

    Of what use is an international telephone call with a foreign King or President to Jonathan’s campaign? Some officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had said the President had a telephone conversation with King Mohammed VI of Morocco. The spin was probably to project Jonathan as friendly with Muslim nations to score some political points. The faux pas led to the recall of Moroccan Ambassador to Nigeria. But the real intention was for the President to speak with the Moroccan King to seek support for the candidacy of the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina as the President of African Development Bank (AfDB). Expectedly, the opposition has taken advantage of the costly slip. The ebullient National Publicity Secretary of APC,  Alh. Lai Mohammed said: “Because of this unnecessary controversy over a phone discussion, Nigerians have now been branded liars. This is very serious considering Nigeria’s standing in Africa.” The President has ordered investigation into the telephone debacle. If he sacrifices any of the Ministers in charge of Foreign Affairs, it will backfire politically. Either way, he has a moral dilemma to come clean and prove to Nigerian voters that he is a tidier leader.

    Jega’s fate, PVC and card readers’ politics

    In spite of the President telling the nation that he has no cause to remove INEC chairman, the signs are still ominous over the fate of Jega because of the umpire’s adamant position on the use of Smart Card Readers to authenticate Permanent Voter Cards   for the election. All attempts to portray INEC as a failure over the distribution of PVCs and deployment of Smart Card Readers have failed due to the overwhelming public confidence the electoral agency is enjoying. Nigerians have chosen to be blind to INEC’s lapses, they are just yearning to go to the poll. Jega has so far staved off pressure on PVC distribution with 55, 904, 272 (81.22 %) collected out of 68, 833, 476 cards produced. The battle has shifted to Card Readers with the government and forces in PDP unrelenting in manoeuvre against Jega.   The supervising Minister of Information, Edem Duke tested the public pulse about two weeks ago with abracadabra comments on Jega which caught many members of Federal Executive Council unawares.

    He said: “On the issue of the INEC chairman, I align myself with what the President said that he has no plan to sack the INEC chairman. That is not to say that if it is time for the INEC chairman to naturally exit his office, then the natural course of things will not take place. It is like saying a civil servant has done 35 years or achieved the age of 60; we now begin to say that he must not retire or he must retire. I think all of that is in the terrain of the Presidency and he has spoken. I have nothing to add to that.”

    The PDP chieftains have not hidden their disdain for Card Readers because they won’t be able to rig the general election or return jumbo figures as the case in some zones in 2011. Following Jega’s insistence on Card Readers, the ruling party and 15 others have opted for three options: blackmail Jega through mass protest to force presidency to have a rethink on Jega’s stay; go to court to stop the use of Card Readers; frustrate INEC chairman to resign. All these plots were hatched not minding the fact that the presidency had received legal advice that the Card Readers do not violate Section 52(1) (2) the Electoral Act 2010(as amended).

    The mass protest which began at the INEC headquarters on Wednesday later spread to the South-East with the outlawed Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra(MASSOB) leading the anti-Jega march. There might be protest in Lagos on Monday too.

    The biggest of the plot is recourse to the court to cage Jega who will have no choice than to obey the order of a court. A top source, who spoke in confidence, said: “There is a fresh plan by the PDP to scuttle the general election on March 28 by securing an order to restrain INEC from using Smart Card Readers.

    “The initial plan was to use the registration of Young Democratic Party (YDP) to force INEC to start planning afresh following the new party’s claim that Justice Ahmed Mohammed of the Federal High Court had ordered that it should be included in the ballot papers.

    “But the PDP and some forces in the presidency got a big shock when Justice Mohammed denied issuing such order and summoned YDP leaders for misinforming INEC and Nigerians.

    “They have now resorted to Plan B by taking advantage of the suits on Card Readers to frustrate INEC and Jega.

    “The main fear of PDP is that the use of Card Readers will not enable the party to rig and secure jumbo votes like the case in some geopolitical zones in 2011.

    Another source said: “The PDP and 15 minor parties made the last botched move against Card Readers on Thursday when political parties met with Jega and INEC management.

    “Jega stood his ground and the anti-Card Readers lobbyists left INEC headquarters in Abuja dejected.

    “This is why they have seen the court matters as the last hope to call Jega’s bluff.”

    A third source said:  “Some forces in PDP in Abuja are already bragging that the Federal High Court, Abuja will give a ruling on Monday to put paid to the use of Card Readers.

    “They are celebrating as if the court had ruled in a case that they are not parties to.

    “It is left to the Judiciary to save the nation’s democracy and avoid a repeat of June 12, 1993 general election when there were conflicting court orders.”

    Justice Ademola Adeniyi is expected to determine the following prayers of the plaintiffs. They are:

    o       Seeking an interim order restraining INEC from proceeding with arrangement and plan to use the CRM for the impending elections.

    o       an order of interim injunction restraining the defendant, its agents, servants, privies or assigns, by whatever name, from implementing or commencing or further implementing or further commencing or directing or further directing the use and preparation of the Card Reader Machine or any name of like nature, pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice.

    o       Deployment of  card readers for the election is a violation of the provision of Section 52(1) (2) which prohibits the use of any electronic method of voting in the country.

     

    Obasanjo, Babangida, Danjuma, Agwai  et al

    The cold war between President Jonathan and ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo led to the tearing of PDP membership card by the latter. Obasanjo may be tagged a paper weight politician, he is respected by some Nigerians and the open derision of PDP might diminish the party before some voters. And the continuing haunting of any public officer associated with Obasanjo might prove politically fatal for Jonathan on March 28. The sack of the immediate past Chairman of SURE-P, Lt. Gen. Martin Luther Agwai for advocating change at Obasanjo’s 78th birthday lecture was not “too strategic” for a President seeking the votes of the people of Southern Kaduna which recently lost the coveted post of the Group Managing Director of NNPC. Even ex-President Ibrahim Babangida, whose political beacon is still Maradonic, came out openly in the week to back the use of Card Readers which the Presidency and the PDP are opposed to. Babangida in a statement said: “We must appreciate the creativity and innovation of the card reader which INEC has introduced to make for better election credibility and transparency.

    “In a digital world where almost everything is driven by technology, the offer of the card reader is a welcome development. We may not get to the fullest merit of this, but it is a good way to start. This is one way to bridge the technological gap between those developed and under-developed nations of the world. Let us repose confidence in the system in the interest of the unity of our great country.” The icing on the cake was when Jonathan hosted the urbane former Minister of Defence, Gen. Theophilus Danjuma at the State House, the guest told newsmen that he was not around to campaign for any candidate. The recurring message is that most retired Army Generals are unhappy with the ill-treatment of Buhari.

    Can hounding the opposition figures boost the chances of Jonathan?

    The emergence of “curious” watch-list on Friday, purportedly sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) by the presidency, has upped the ante. Though marked a fake list by the EFCC, there had been apprehensions in the land that Jonathan might play dirty because of the biting opposition. Some vexatious documentaries being run on some television stations have added proof to the do-or-die or desperate politics of the presidency and the PDP. These same politicians were in the vanguard of the fight for the actualization of Acting Presidency for Jonathan in 2010. According to findings, those on the “curious” list, alleged to be from the Chief of Staff to the President, Gen. J.O. Arogbofa, are key opposition figures in the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM).

    They are ex-Vice-President Atiku Abubakar; Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; Speaker Aminu Tambuwal; Sen. Bukola Saraki; Governors Rotimi Amaechi, Adams Oshiomole, Aliyu Wammako, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Abdulfatah Ahmed,  and Sen. Danjuma Goje.

    Others are the Governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress(APC) in Taraba State, Sen. Aisha Jummai Alhassan; the Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Movement(PDM) in Adamawa State,  Dr. Ahmed Modibbo (ex-Executive Secretary of UBEC); and a former Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai, Executive Secretary, PPPRA, Farouk Ahmed; Deputy Governor for Operations of the CBN,  Suleiman Barau; Managing Director, NPA,  Habib Abdullahi; DG, NCAA, Capt. Mukhtar Usman; MD of NDIC, Umaru Ibahim;  GED, Business Development of NNPC, Attahiru Yusuf; and the GED, Commerce and Investment of NNPC, Aisha Abdulrahman.

    If the watch-list is implemented, the political terrain will be rough for all and the election might not be free, transparent and fair.  Jonathan may succeed in destroying the opposition figures or hounding his political enemies into detention, he will however lose out in the long run. His place in the nation’s history might be difficult. Life with history can be lonely because all the so-called strategists, propagandists, friends of the President and blind loyalists would have vanished into thin air.

    What next for Jonathan?

    The comportment of Jonathan’s presidency in the next two weeks will determine his mileage at the poll. Like the wise say, “Your attitude will determine your altitude.”

     

     

  • The longest fortnight

    The longest fortnight

    Suddenly, six weeks have become a fortnight… the longest fortnight in the history of the country. The postponement of an event however unpleasant is a poor substitute for its outright cancelation. A thousand years will eventually become a thousand seconds. As the nail biting countdown to the most explosive election in the post-colonial history of the nation begins, one must be chastened and sobered by the shocking finitude of time. If only time can stay still, autocrats would have added it to their list of captives.

    By now, President Goodluck Jonathan would have discovered that a postponement of six weeks might have been enough to gain some strategic respite, particularly to recover his poise and pull some stunts against an opposition that would have been stung by the sudden turn of events. But it is not enough to scramble what has been fecklessly unscrambled; or to attempt to cobble together a new hegemonic power formation in the country.

    Jonathan had a whole six years to will this new power bloc into being by forging new alliances; by building bridges and by breaking out of his ethnic cocoon to create a pan-ethnic charter for the nation. The time was ripe; the opportunities were abundant. For a fleeting magical second, the moment seemed to have met its man and its match. But he bombed it spectacularly. You cannot give what you don’t have. Unprincipled expectation is the bedmate of promiscuous optimism.

    A few months into the Jonathan presidency, it ought to have been clear to all but the most hardy optimists that it was all a horrendous scam.  It was obvious that the new ruler lacks the discipline, the diligence, the application, the visionary impetus, the intellectual wherewithal and the psychological stamina and steeliness to administer a complex commonwealth of two hundred million souls tottering at the edge of despair and despondency.

    Jonathan’s charm offensive of the past three weeks, particularly in the South West and his singularly offensive and obscene attempt to buy his way back into electoral reckoning by massive bribery of the political elite and agents of influence must rank as the worst instance of presidential delinquency in the annals of electoral corruption in Nigeria . With this in your face , I don’t care impunity, there can be no further proof that the Nigerian president does not care a hoot or give a damn about the sanity of the political system or the survival of the nation itself.

    It has been observed that a person should keep his friendships in a state of constant repairs. How anybody in a few weeks can cobble together a dominant power consortium that can withstand the tumultuous revolt of the Nigerian multitude that we have on our hand remains a perplexing mystery even to the most accomplished of political witchdoctors. It is said that politics is the art of the possible, but even in politics, certain things are simply impossible.

    The presidential gallivanting, the executive walkabout and the dollar spree even as the naira, the ultimate symbol of national sovereignty, was tumbling in the market would have been unnecessary if Jonathan had done the needful. At the onset of his presidency, Jonathan had at his beck and call the active base of the traditional South West activists and progressive politicos who fought a relentless and slogging campaign to validate his presidency.

    He could also have tapped into the dormant resentment against the feudal arrogance of an oligarchic cabal bent on sabotaging his ascendancy. But all the goodwill was frittered away in a jiffy as Jonathan retreated into an ethnic igloo to be surrounded by tempestuous tribesmen and other recuperating revanchists.

    As for the wise, wily and formidably discerning Yoruba obas who are rumoured to be beneficiaries of Jonathan’s dollar deluge, if they didn’t know what to do, they wouldn’t be on their fathers’ throne the first instance. Past masters of the cloak and dagger politics that come with empire building, they are also astute readers—bar one or two feckless ones—of the dominant political mood of their people. After almost a thousand years of an unending battle of will and wits with the populace in which many of them paid the supreme sacrifice, they know where the balance of power resides. They will collect and then they will recollect.

    As the Jonathan presidency slouches towards a momentous finale, the entire country lies in ruins and smouldering wreckage, spiritually, politically, economically and militarily broke and back-broken. At no other point in the country’s history has the nation faced more dire prospects of economic annihilation. At no other point has Nigeria been at the military mercy of neighbours.

    Never in its history has Nigeria been confronted with and wracked by such intra and inter-religious animosities and conflicts. Never have the political elite been this riven and polarized along the fearsome fault lines of region, religion and ethnicity. It has even become impossible to get the various factions of the political class to agree on the minimum precondition for the conduct of election.

    Never has an election brought out the worst in our people, thanks to a political campaign that has been unprecedented in its rancour and distemper. Not even in the run up to the infamous 1964 general elections which was boycotted by the UPGA party did we witness such intense bitterness and animosity within the ruling class. It was a bitterness that fed directly into the subsequent violent military mutiny, a momentous pogrom and inevitable civil war.

    As we have seen in Nigeria and more recently in Kenya and Cote D’Ivoire, whenever the electoral process is marked by intense hostility and a lack of elite consensus on the basic rules, we may be sure that the outcome is already vitiated by political adversity. When a four-star general and one of Nigeria’s most decorated soldiers and a global citizen in his own right is summarily cashiered for attending the birthday celebration of his former commander in chief who also happens to be the political benefactor of the current commander in chief, we can be sure that the gloves have come off and the battle line sharply drawn.

    This past week, Ben Nwabueze, the respected constitutional lawyer, has advocated a coalition government or a government of national unity to manage what promises to be a momentous post-election tempest. If this is not a wily kite flying on behalf of an embattled government, then it is a case of trying to shut the stable door after its equestrian inmates had bolted. For it presupposes, against all evidence to the contrary, that there might still be a semblance elite amity after such a polarizing and divisive election.

    In the unseemly circumstances that we have found ourselves, a ruling coalition or a Government of National Unity is possible and feasible only under strict international supervision and after the tempest might have blown off. Under similar circumstances in Kenya,  Mwai Kibaki, the old Gikiyu fox, summarily terminated the results as they rolled in and declared himself elected.

    In Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo simply barricaded himself in after he had lost the presidential election until he was flushed out of his underground bunker with the aid of French forces. As if to confirm the looming apocalypse, international emissaries have been coming in and out of Nigeria like doctors in an emergency ward, trying to appeal to the political class to save the nation from imminent perdition.

    Their grim, unsmiling and taciturn visage tells its own story. In any case if anybody misses the import of all this, the unscheduled but widely publicized visit to Aso Rock by one or two members of our own equivalent of the 1922 Committee of the British parliament should tell those who know how to read tea leaves that once again, the nation is on the cusp of momentous events.

    As he rues the ruins and wreckage of the country gifted to him in a moment of spite and hubris by the man who is the most influential and arguably the most controversial personage of the Fourth Republic, the otherwise genial and affable Goodluck Jonathan must be wondering what happened and the road not taken. Never in the history of the country has a ruler snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in this manner. But this is not the time to continue to excoriate the formerly shoeless boy from Otueke. This is the time to put on our thinking cap about how to extricate the nation from the debris of another historic cul de sac.

    There are times when sharpening contradictions suddenly mature, forcing a nation into a fundamental rethink about its future. This is the moment of the grand gridlock. In a sense, Jonathan himself is a victim of the post-colonial condition in a way the colonial imaginary that founded Nigeria and the colonial imagination that powers it along could not have envisaged. This is the moment when colonial malice meets post-colonial malignancy. Having been thrown into the chessboard as a helpless and hapless pawn, Jonathan has shown that he has other ideas.

    As sober students of history would attest, nothing is completely without some value, not even the most horrendous human experience. As a matter of fact, there are some radical philosophers and historians who push this view to the bitter conclusion that nothing good can come out of history. It is just a record of random brutality and contingent cruelty. As a British historian, floored and flawed by facile empiricism, would put it, “history is just one fxxxx  thing after another.”

    But history is ultimately and in the last instance structured in such a way that perplexes us and challenges the rigour of the dialectical imagination. It may well be that the paradoxically revolutionary dimension of the Jonathan administration is to expose for all to see, the huge racket of the neo-military civilian fascism foisted on Nigeria by retreating military barons. But having exposed the hoax, Jonathan has shown that he lacks the revolutionary nobility of spirit, the cerebral endowments and the political stamina to force through a new charter for the nation.

    This is the basis of the historical conundrum in which we have found ourselves. Even if Jonathan spends the next hundred years in office, he is unlikely to make a dent on the deep rot, the political malaise, that afflicts Nigeria.  What is not there is simply not there. National transformation is not a function of empty sloganeering.

    Transformation is deeper than mere change because it involves a deeper, more integrative, more holistic and more deliberately systematic reordering of a society towards a new orientation and a new set of values. As it is, the paradox of our situation is that change is now required in order to even begin to think of transformation.

    The last patriotic duty Jonathan owes a country that has given him so much is to leave quietly if he loses the election fair and square. He must resist the temptation to play the biblical Samson. Thereafter, he must be accorded the respect and dignity accruing to a former head of state, of a man untested and untried who ruled Nigeria in very difficult circumstances and who tried his very best, only that his best was enough. If he cannot lead the way, he has at least taken explosives to the house of cards. The Nigerian ruling cabal must rue the day they invited a neophyte of power nuances to hold the fort for them.

    The next fortnight is going to be the longest night indeed for Nigeria. It is going to bring out the worst or the best in Nigerian. There is no point in demonizing and scape-goating poor Attahiru Jega and casting ethnic slurs on a very patriotic Nigerian. As readers of this column would testify, we harbor reservations about the way and manner of Jega’s appointment, but this has never extended to questioning his integrity. Never in the history of the nation has a man been saddled with a more onerous and difficult duty of electoral umpire. Jega should be allowed to do his job without any further let or hindrance.

    One of the lessons that Nigerians must take away from the current crisis is the fact that as a complexly variegated country with diverse ethnic nationalities in different and often divergent modes of economic, spiritual, intellectual and political production, Nigeria is powered along by a micropluralism of power centres which induces a negative equilibrium which can only be disturbed or disrupted by a conventional power formation at its own peril. This is Jonathan’s undoing, just as it has been the undoing of Obasanjo, Abacha and Babangida before him.

    A negative equilibrium is a tense equipoise of countervailing forces; an unstable ensemble whose stability is dependent on the dynamic instability of its elements. Only a new revolutionary power group led by complete outsiders or what Antonio Gramsci has described as the emarginati, people from the margins, can shatter the order by inaugurating a new order.

    In the absence this revolutionary countervailing power formation, and while still waiting for the arrival of a pan-Nigerian critical mass, it is worth restating that any Nigerian ruler who is a product of the old status quo must keep his friendship in a state of constant repairs. As Jonathan will learn in about a fortnight, scrambling for votes at the eleventh hour is not the sign of a man who has learnt the elementary lesson of politics.

  • The sacking of Gen Agwai

    The sacking of Gen Agwai

    PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan is often indifferent to public perception of his policies and actions. If his countrymen thought he was slow and weak, he scurrilously dismissed their profiling of his government and delved into apposite history of high-handed leaders whom he judged unfit as role models, the Egyptian pharaohs and Babylonian Nebuchadnezzars. If they condemned his sacking of an Appeal Court Justice and caviled at his indecent appropriation of extra-constitutional powers, he replied with a sanctimonious litany of juridic and democratic paradigms erected to underscore what he says is his respect for and acceptance of government of the people, for the people, and by the people. And if they complained against his policemen — for that is what they really are — he challenged and sometimes even mocked their fidelity to the law.

    It, therefore, did not come as a surprise that President Jonathan peremptorily sacked former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen Martin Luther Agwai (retd), whom he had made head of the amorphous and in many instances misdirected Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) agency, a body designed to implement government palliatives to mitigate fuel price hike. Gen Agwai had in a speech he gave at former president Obasanjo’s birthday lecture rhapsodised change as an ingredient of development and progress. According to the general, “In life, you find out that everything needs change; if that is what the community wants, what the people want, you must give it to them and, as such, it becomes inevitable. You can have everything nice, but if you don’t have the right leadership to propel it, it cannot go anywhere. Integrity matters  doing what is good for the larger society and not just what you want to do for a narrow society to please yourself.”

    It was apparent the Jonathan government thought the cap fitted their president. Gen Agwai had waxed eloquently and knowledgeably of change, the APC mantra, and wailed against leadership failing, a message that sits majestically at the core of the APC presidential election campaign. Worse, the general had also forthrightly cautioned against the politicisation of the military, a warning that has apparently incensed the Jonathan government. According to the general, “The military has to be transformed and this becomes necessary from the point of recruitment, training and assuming leadership role. Our forces that are trained, equipped to defend us are now in a strange field…The military has nothing to do with politics, and if we allow it, we will run into problems.” Unfortunately, again, the allegation of politicisation of the military remains one of the major complaints of the APC. And to cap a very bad conjunction, the Agwai speech was made in the presence of the hated Chief Obasanjo, who is believed by the Jonathan crowd to be secretly angling for the APC and change.

    Gen Agwai of course did not forget he was appointed to head a federal agency before he made his radical speech in Abeokuta. But whether he meant to attack the Jonathan government or campaign for APC, or simply offer candid advice to the country, is unclear from his speech. He also warned against the politicisation of the military; but is there anyone, including the Jonathan government, who wants the military to be politicised? Whatever his intentions were, it is clear that by sacking the officer, President Jonathan interpreted the general’s speech to be adversarial. He is uninterested in upholding the right of the general to make a fiery speech, let alone on a platform offered by the president’s arch enemy, Chief Obasanjo. If anyone still harbours any illusion what the Jonathan government stands for or how his second term would look like,  should he get one, that person must be living in a fool’s paradise.

  • Abati’s fool’s paradise

    Who needs a presidential debate to make a choice between President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the presidential poll rescheduled for March 28? It is noteworthy that Jonathan’s spokesman and media adviser Reuben Abati noted in a statement on Buhari’s alleged avoidance of a debate: “There is no gainsaying the fact that President Jonathan and General Buhari are the main contenders in this election. Every Nigerian would love to see the two of them debate. That would be good for our democracy.”

    Abati further said on Buhari: “His deliberate avoidance of a Presidential debate is akin to an examination malpractice. It is not god enough for a man who wants to be President of our country. He is short-changing the Nigerian electorate by denying them the opportunity of assessing him properly in an open debate.” He added: “While a Presidential debate is not a constitutional requirement, it is an established convention that deepens and enriches the democratic process.” According to Abati, “President Jonathan is ready to meet him in an open debate, any day, any hour, and at any venue of his choice.”

    Now, how would Abati describe the jolting rearrangement of the election dates by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), allegedly influenced by the Jonathan camp? What kind of “malpractice” could this be, and what does it say about a man who is seeking presidential reelection?

    It is a pathetic reflection of Abati’s distance from reality that he regards “an open debate” as an opportunity for the electorate to “properly” assess the candidates. It is convenient for him to downplay the defining value of electioneering as well as the wisdom of the electorate. Abati must be living in a fool’s paradise to believe that a presidential debate of an hour or two would conclusively convince voters to reelect Jonathan, when his low-grade performance in office and his unconvincing political campaign speak of failure.

    What this means is that Abati’s promotion of a presidential debate is much ado about nothing. It is highly unlikely that any perceptive voter would need to listen to Jonathan and Buhari debate before taking a voting decision. In case Abati doesn’t understand, and that seems to be the case, the candidates have been engaged in an informal but discernible debate based on their antecedents, their personalities and what they represent; and the people have followed this debate by other means with a keen and concentrated interest.

    For instance, when Buhari is portrayed and recognised as a game-changing player of unstained integrity, and Jonathan is seen as a cunning champion of corruption, the collision has the ingredients of a debate.

    In particular, it is evident from Abati’s obsession with a debate that he must number among the parochial who failed to grasp the import of Buhari’s February appearance and performance at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House in London. Buhari’s lecture was fittingly titled “Prospect for Democracy Consolidation in Africa: Nigeria’s transition”; and he glowed impressively during the question and answer session that followed.  It was certainly not a picture of a debate-shy man. But Abati is clearly reality-shy, which is a way of describing his narrow-mindedness.

  • Fani-kayode’s flurry of fictions

    SIR: President Goodluck Jonathan left no one in doubt about the type of campaign he wanted to run when he picked well known loose cannon with no modicum of decency, Femi Fani-Kayode, as his campaign spokesperson. Fani-Kayode had earlier styled himself as a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), when he was actually never one, not having at no time been recognised as such by APC leadership when he was in the party.

    Known for throwing decency to the gutters with toxic Facebook posts, and error-ridden newspaper articles, the Osun State-born lawyer, had conducted himself in the last few years in a manner that makes one wonder if the globally respected Cambridge University will ever be proud of such product. Or how else do you think of someone that goes around writing on the number of women he had slept with as contribution to debates on the legality and morality of “deportation” of destitute of certain origin from Lagos?

    It is only in Nigeria that someone of Fani-Kayode’s standing, someone having an alleged money laundering case before the courts, will be appointed by a President as campaign spokesperson. In countries where choices of candidates by citizens are scientific, not based on religious and ethnic sentiments as exploited here, such faux pas is enough to lose elections.

    Fani-Kayode has since discharged his duty to type – daily regaling us with tissues of lies to demonize the candidacy of General Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the APC. First, he sold to the media the non-issue of Buhari’s certificate, and even when the Katsina school where General Buhari had his secondary education, released the statement of result of the general and the masterlist issued by Cambridge University which conducted the exam in 1961, he declared it fake. It did not occur to him that Cambridge would have come out to disclaim the result if it never originated from it. How anyone would attribute a fake document to Cambridge – of all places – in this age, and some gullible Nigerians bought it, is beyond me.

    Fani-Kayode and his Social Media hirelings have thrown everything – including the kitchen sink – in the direction of the General. They have forged medical reports in the name of a non-existent “Ahmadu Bello Teaching Hospital” to declare Buhari as having prostate cancer; they have circulated “minutes” of imaginary meetings to say Jega met with Northern elders in Kaduna  (in other reports, Dubai) on rigging elections; they have hired commercial protesters to embarrass General Buhari in London. They have paid millions of naira to put up adverts in national dailies in the name of a fictitious “Muslim” group in the South West endorsing Buhari because “they wanted Islamization of the South West”. It does not occur to these vendors of fictions that Jonathan was the first Nigerian president to attend OIC meeting since the country’s return to civil rule.

    Their fiction factory keeps churning out lies every other day. The country has never gone so low. Fani-Kayode was yet again at his lying best when he addressed the press few days ago accusing APC of having made its vice presidential candidate, Yemi Osinbajo, to sign an oath to resign after six months in office. It is more unfortunate that the press that should have by now been familiar with the wicked fabrications of Fani-Kayode, gave this hogwash an undeserved prominence. This allegation started from some vendors of misinformation on the social media, when some of us that are equally social media-savvy proved beyond reasonable doubt that this was not true; it is therefore very unfortunate that President Jonathan’s official campaign latched on to this beer parlour gist.

    In any case, even if Tinubu comes on board along the way (which is only a figment of their imagination), Tinubu is by far a better administrator than Jonathan.  I’m not a fan of Tinubu, but I will pick him over Jonathan as President. Between 1999-2007 when Nigeria was afflicted with probably the worst set of non-performing governors in its history, Tinubu stood tall as a decent performer in Lagos – even when the man at the helms in the center withheld the state’s allocations. His political recruitment strategy is also top-notch as those he backed for power, from Aregbesola to Amosun and Ajimobi, are testament to this.  The whole thing is just another figment of Fani-Kayode warped imagination.

    The election is less than four weeks, and I know Fani-Kayode’s fiction machine is still being oiled to produce more between now and the election date, if they ever allow the election to hold. The task of extricating Nigeria from these fiction vendors and setting it on the path of progress is the business of every patriotic Nigerian.

     

    • Suraj Oyewale,

    Ajah, Lagos

  • This thing called corruption

    This thing called corruption

    Each time President Goodluck Jonathan tries to educate the misguided Nigerian public about  what is often glibly called “corruption,” he reminds me of an earlier era, and of Vice Admiral Augustus Aikhomu.

    Remember him?

    Aikhomu was the gruff mariner who, as Chief of General Staff, ranked second in the regime of military president Ibrahim Babangida, appointed to replace the strong-willed Ebitu Ukiwe.

    Never so happy as when confounding opponents and confusing friends, Babangida woke up one day and announced that, in keeping with the Constitution of the Federal Republic, Aikhomu had become civilian vice president under the military regime.

    Apparently also in keeping with the Constitution that Babangida was operating a loose-leaf document, the pages of which he shuffled endlessly, he announced several months later that the former naval chief turned civilian, had been promoted to the rank of Admiral.

    Aikhomu had no patience with all the fancy footwork that was the preoccupation of his principal.  Irascible and, withal, blunt as a cudgel, he told it exactly as he saw it.  He was a reporter’s delight, always forthcoming with delicious quotes.

    One day, reporters assembled for his customary Friday afternoon news conference, asked for his reaction to yet another damning report on the Nigerian economy that the IMF/World Bank had just issued.

    “What report?” he snickered.  “Do you know that those so-called reports are written by small boys like yourselves?”

    Back then, the dominant issue in public discourse was “misappropriation” of public funds.  For the most part, when people talked at all about “corruption” in public office, they did so only in whispers, checkmated by Decree 2, under which the government vested itself with the power to detain anyone for as long as it pleased, without judicial review. And Aikhomu was the decree’s chief administering officer.

    But Aikhomu saw through the subterfuge.  From “misappropriation” of public funds, it was but a short step to “embezzlement” of the same.

    So, he re-framed the discourse, such as it was.  The problem, he said, was not so much misappropriation as misallocation of public funds.

    Unfortunately, weighed down by state duties and the twists and turns and the labyrinthine trajectory of his principal’s duplicitous political transition programme – in which he dutifully acquiesced, by the way —Aikhomu did not have the time to work out with lexical finality the difference between “misappropriation” and “misallocation” of public funds.

    But from what I could make of it, misappropriation, with its undertone of embezzlement or plain theft – “original stealing” as the immortal Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo Kuti called it—was the cardinal sin.  Misallocation of public funds was not worth all the blather.

    In practical terms – and here I am second-guessing the mariner – if a public official used funds earmarked for a hospital to build himself a country home with a swimming pool and a helipad, he had merely misallocated the funds, and did not deserve the kind of condemnation to which an official who misappropriated such funds deserved to be subjected.

    It might even be argued that if the official moved such funds into his private bank account, it would still have been a mere mislocation  — putting the funds away in the in the wrong place — rather than a misappropriation.

    And here we are, more than two decades later and no wiser until the eminent scientist and respected taxonomist in him moved Dr Goodluck Jonathan to take time off his demanding re-election schedule to clear up the semantic mess and complete Aikhomu’s unfinished work.

    And he has gone about the difficult task with the fine sense of discrimination that only a world-class ichthyologist can call up at short notice and amidst the kind of distraction that only a few in his exalted league can even begin to imagine.

    In the popular understanding, and even in the minds of the lexicographers, corruption consists basically in dishonest acts. The Explanatory Memorandum to the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000 says rather laconically that “corruption” includes bribery, fraud, and other related offences.

    But the body of that law goes on to define corruption to the point of saturation. Corruption is in play, it says, when a public official asks for, receives or obtains property or benefits of any kind for himself or others, agrees or attempts to receive such rewards for himself or others, for benefits or favours already granted or expected to be granted.  And so on and so forth.

    Conviction carries a seven-year jail term.

    That is the law of the land.  That is the law appointees of the Jonathan administration have been administering, with funds approved by the National Assembly. That is the law under which the Independent Corrupted Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has prosecuted and sent to jail, by its own count, thousands of wayward public officials.

    But the ICPC and its agents, we now know, have been labouring not just under a misapprehension, but, under a delusion to boot.

    For, as Dr Jonathan has been saying, in statements heard around the world, the things people  call “corruption” in Nigeria fall far short of the threshold. Those who are forever beating the government on the head with allegations of overarching corruption would be closer to the mark if they talked instead about stealing.

    I hope they are listening, all those do-gooders who compile the International Corruption Index and the so-called foreign donors.

    In whatever case, the amounts usually cited as evidence of corrupt dealings are piddling.  One official creams off, say, N5 billion in pension funds and they rush to cite that it as evidence of corruption.

    Easy, gentlemen.  This is not Burkina Faso.  We are talking about the largest economy on the entire African continent, and the 16th largest and one of the fastest-growing in the whole wide world.

    From Dr Jonathan’s seminal submission, it would seem follow that the law under which ICPC has been prosecuting and jailing innocent persons is misconceived, at least insofar as it presumes to act on a matter in which its jurisdiction is dubious at best, and to the extent that it has been punishing acts it misconstrues as corrupt when it should have been punishing ordinary stealing.

    That kind of enactment has no place under Nigeria’s legal system – a system undergirded by the rule of law, of which Dr Jonathan himself is the foremost apostle. It has done too much harm already.

    Dr Jonathan should act with his accustomed dispatch and move the National Assembly to void the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act of 2000 and its instrumentalities, going back to the day he took office.

    It is time to end the costly and damaging misperception that corruption rather than ordinary stealing is Nigeria’s problem.

  • Chibok: monument in lieu of stolen girls

    From President Goodluck Jonathan to Chibok, it would appear a monument for grieving parents, in lieu of their missing 219 school girls.  So, the parents should forget their girls and embrace the new monument erected in the girls’ memory?

    Last week, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance minister and coordinating minister for the Economy, represented President Goodluck Jonathan at the foundation laying ceremony of the Chibok portion of the Safer Schools Project.

    It is a proposed, glittering new facility to replace the old school Boko Haram terrorists, on 14 April 2014, razed just after carting away 276 school girls from their dorm; girls about writing their  2014 May/June Senior Secondary School Certificate examinations.  Though 276 girls were kidnapped, 57 escaped by their wits, even if the military high command told a lie back then that most of the girls had been saved, even when the Jonathan Presidency was still debating in its mind if the claimed “kidnap” was not the work of mischievous enemies.

    Well, in President Jonathan’s Chibok tragic script, complicated by a shambolic campaign that seems to target votes by all means necessary, he still appears mortally scared of the Chibok hearth.  Nothing, it appears, will make him visit that blighted territory!

    When the tragedy broke, the president was busy dancing Azonto in Kano at an illicit, if not outright illegal, campaign, which his Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) put in place, well before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) blew the whistle for formal electioneering.

    When the crisis won’t just disappear, thanks to Oby Ezekwesili’s #BringBackOurGirls lobby, First Lady, Patience Jonathan settled for a scandalous harangue, which spectacularly backfired.  Dame Jonathan’s intention was to, on TV, try and intimidate the Chibok school principal and the traumatised parents.  In the end, she ended up trying herself and roasting her husband’s presidency, as callous and barren of all empathy and compassion — Dia ris God oooo!

    Then when Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager and the globe’s most famous victim of Taliban terror, came to town, a shamefaced president had no choice.  Yet, rather than surmount the fear of visiting Chibok, he summoned the Chibok girls’ parents to the Presidential Villa, an event marked by alleged sleaze.  Some Presidency officials were alleged to have tampered with the monetary gifts to the distressed presidential visitors.

    So, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s latest visit to Chibok, in lieu of her principal, appeared to continue the running tragic soap of presidential avoidance.  After the commander-in-chief’s triumphant foray to the hot Boko Haram front at Baga, visiting Chibok to launch the “new, improved” school project, should have been “bean cake” for the latterly all-conquering commander-in-chief, but alas!

    To be sure, the Safer Schools Project is laudable.  If the odyssey of the Chibok 219 gifts their hurting community safer schools, which averts future Chibok 219s, that cannot a bad thing; and the project should be encouraged.

    But the problem with the Okonjo-Iweala visit, aside from the umpteenth Chibok snub by the president, is the crass desperation for votes.  Though Mrs Okonjo-Iweala played it cool, suggesting the visit had no political colouration, you could almost feel the leashed presidential-divine-right-to-garner-votes-no-matter-our-bad-behaviours gnome, almost snapping clear of the ministerial placid surface!

    Well, it’s over to the Chibok parents.  Whether an enhanced school can replace their loving girls would be clear on March 28, when the parents do their presidential referendum.

  • Jonathan not sincere with conference report, says Southwest APC

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday faulted President Goodluck Jonathan’s claim that the implementation of 2014 National Conference Report is dependent only on his re-election.

    The party, dismissed the impression, describing Jonathan’s statement as illogical and unreasonable. It said the posture was aimed earning cheap popularity from the marginalised South-west.

    The APC National Vice-Chairman (Southwest), Chief Pius Akinyelure, said, if the Jonathan Administration was interested in restructuring, it would not have waited for three years in office before convoking the 2014 National Conference.

    He said with the lopsided nature of federation his administration inherited about six years, Jonathan should have swung into action immediately and put necessary mechanisms in place “to equitably and fairly restructure Nigeria for the benefit of all.”

    Akinyelure said the President was using the report of the 2014 National Conference as a political weapon to sneak into the hearts of the Southwest people, whose his administration “has not been fair to despite their overwhelming support for the president in 2011.”

    The party, therefore, asked the president “to desist from making promise he cannot fulfil. President Jonathan should stop appealing ethnic sentiment in order to score cheap political marks. A president, under whose watch the Ekiti election was rigged, cannot restructure Nigeria. A president that grant hardened amnesty to ex-convicts cannot evolve equitable Nigeria.”

    The party urged the people of SouthWest not to take the president serious again, noting that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had no idea on how “to move Nigeria forward. Stop deceiving innocent people. “Stop destroying Nigerian unity on the altar of ethnic politics. Stop fuelling division among groups that make up Nigeria”, he added.

    Akinyelure said the APC presidential candidate, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and his running mate, Prof. Oluyemi Osinbajo had made a covenant with the people of Nigeria contained in the 2015 Buhari/Osinbajo Manifesto.

    The party said once elected, the Buhari/Osinbajo government would initiate action “to amend the Nigerian Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties, and responsibilities to states in order to entrench true federalism and the federal spirit.”

    It added that the Buhari/Osinbajo government “will restructure governance for a leaner, more efficient, and adequately compensated public service sector, while promoting effective participation of the private sector for more robust job creation programmes to employ the teaming youth.”

    It said the Buhari/Osinbajo government would bring to an end an arbitrary deduction of statutory allocations due to states governed by the opposition party and the backdoor allocation to the states that are not critical of an anemic national government under the PDP.

  • Jonathan timid, cowardly, says MEND leader, Henry Okah

    Jonathan timid, cowardly, says MEND leader, Henry Okah

    •Dismisses Edwin Clark as a tribalist

    Leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Henry Okah, is hitting hard at President Goodluck Jonathan from his prison cell in South Africa.

    Okah who was sentenced to a 24-year jail term in March 2013 for terrorism, sees the President as timid and cowardly.

    In a lengthy interview published by this newspaper today, the man who President Jonathan once accused of masterminding the attempt on his life during the 2010 Independence anniversary in Abuja said he found it difficult to speak about him (Jonathan) without “saying something uncomplimentary.”

    Going down the memory lane, Okah said of him: “I have met President Jonathan. I knew him though not closely when he was the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State. My cousin Chief (Diepreye) Alamieyeseigha was then governor.

    “I had a meeting with Jonathan in Pretoria in 2007 when the late President Musa Yar’ Adua sent him to speak with me. He was accompanied by Chief Timipre Sylva. I have spoken to him on occasions.

    “In one instance, he was traumatized emotionally by the attack on his country home which he was misled into believing I had a hand in. The last time I spoke with him was in April 2010 when he asked for my support personally. Since my recent arrest, I have had no direct contact with him.

    “It is difficult to speak about President Jonathan without saying something uncomplimentary. I truthfully find him timid and cowardly. His discussions are unintelligible revealing a lack of intellectual depth.

    “As governor of Bayelsa State, and a man whose home had been violated, I expected him to be angry and indignant at this sacrilegious act. Rather, he was physically trembling, terrified and incoherent as he spoke weeks after the attack.”

    Okah said he has been vindicated by the president with his performance since assuming the nation’s leadership six years ago.

    “I warned Nigerians about Goodluck Jonathan but some people assumed I was speaking in anger and arrogance,” he said.

    He added: “Nigerians have now seen President Jonathan for exactly what I told them that he is.  There is little difference in his speeches and that of Asari.”

    Drawing a comparison between Jonathan and his main challenger in this month’s presidential election, General Muhammadu Buhari, Okah said: “I was quite young when General Muhammadu Buhari was in power so I am compelled by this fact to look at him in awe. This has nothing to do with his personality. General Buhari kept quiet for a long time and I have not kept up with him since after he was deposed in a military coup. He does not appear vain and would very likely be a more prudent civilian leader. This is not to say that I would vote for him in any elections as much as I respect him. I am disillusioned with Nigerian politics and have never voted or participated in any form of politics at any level.”

    He prayed that “Nigeria gets a responsible and sensible president who sees the need to properly address the situation of the North and South in the face of Boko Haram and the Niger Delta issue.”

    Okah was also unsparing in his evaluation of the Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark and ex-militant, Asari Dokubo.

    He dismissed Chief Clark as  a tribalist and an opportunist and “one of those people in the Niger Delta who parade themselves in oil companies pretending to have control over militants.”

    He wondered what “this decrepit man can do with all the money he is gathering.”

    Of Asari Dokubo, he said: “He is unintelligent and has forgotten the different versions he has given in the past. This man once said I was fighting against Goodluck Jonathan because Jonathan displaced Alamieyeseigha. Another time he said my wife is Itsekiri which was why I supported Itsekiris. My wife is from Enugu.

    “He has also said in yet another interview that I am not Ijaw. But Ijaw historians and scholars will tell him that I am a purer Ijaw than he can ever be. Even as I say this I must tell you that the issue of tribe is unimportant to me because I am not tribalistic and regard myself first as a Nigerian before an Ijaw.”

    He seems disappointed with Nigeria’s human rights community for showing no interest in his case. According to him,”I don’t know if any human rights organization in Nigeria has any interest in my case. Most African human rights organizations are lame and can be very easily influenced by governments through bribes and intimidation into ignoring rights abuses.

    “Citizens of most African countries receive no support from their governments or home NGO’s leaving them open to abuse in foreign prisons.”

    •EXCLUSIVE SOUTH AFRICAN PRISON INTERVIEW,

    —Pages 31 -33, 36-37