Where Is Tinubu’s Executive Capacity?

 By Ochereome Nnanna

Even before what became the All Progressives Congress, APC, was formed, I knew it would be a disaster. I prayed for the merger not to work. But my prayers were not answered. The merger not only worked, the party won the 2015 presidential election with Muhammadu Buhari as president. Buhari’s presidency, according to the APC pact, was to be succeeded by a Bola Ahmed Tinubu presidency. When Buhari was about to finish his eight years of inept and extreme nepotism rule, he tried to block Tinubu’s turn to “rule”. 

*Tinubu

Tinubu went to Abeokuta and wailed: Yoruba l’okan( “It is Yoruba’s turn”); Emi l’okan!(“It is my turn”). When Buhari saw that the Northern APC Governors were all for Tinubu, he had no choice but to bring out his full powers of incumbency to install his political partner. You may ask: why would I, a columnist of 29 years standing, discredit a political party, the APC, even before it was formed? My answer is simple. 

Anambra: APC’s Farcical Campaign Flag-Off!

By Chuks Iloegbunam

 Salvation was to befall Ndigbo! So went the media hype. Salvation’s landfall was slated for Onitsha. And once it set down, every Anambra indigene would be happy ever after. It was the APC campaign flag off for the November 18 gubernatorial ballot. Appropriately, the conveyor of the balm to turn Anambra from ill to glory was the Gombe-born Ibrahim Jalo-Waziri, APC’s Youth Leader. Given his eminence, therefore, it was with a swagger that Alhaji Jalo-Waziri found his way to the podium.

*Anambra Governor, Willie Obiano

 Given again that most of those in attendance were in their teens and twenties – as if they had been corralled from secondary and tertiary institutions – there was rapt attention and immense anticipation. The Youth Leader had hope to deliver. Most of those drowned in mire or shot dead for carrying Biafran flags and seeking self-determination were in the same age bracket as those Jalo-Waziri would address. Perhaps he would explain to them the rationale behind the heavy-handedness. The man cleared his throat. “Vote for APC,” he intoned. “Our victory will connect you to the big contracts of Abuja”!

Governors And The Politics Of Succession

By Reuben Abati

The recent Governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states threw up a number of issues about the politics of succession in Nigeria. In Edo state, you would think it was the then incumbent Governor Adams Oshiomhole seeking re-election. He campaigned more than the candidate.  He danced, waved the broom, his party’s symbol, far more enthusiastically than the man who wanted the office...

*Reuben Abati

He even did more to put down the opposition and any likely threat to Godwin Obaseki’s ambition. His pretty wife was always in tow during the campaigns, and did she dance? Oh yes, she did too. Godwin Obaseki’s emergence as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in that election caused much disaffection within the party. He was said to be Oshiomhole’s anointed candidate with the allegation that everything was being done to ensure his victory at the polls. Oshiomhole had his way. Obaseki is now Governor of Edo State.

       The incumbent Governor in Ondo State also did as much if not more to manage the politics of succession in the just concluded Governorship election in that state.  He anointed the candidate of his party, followed him everywhere, and “fought” for him, even in the courts and on the streets of Akure. The election was more about Dr Olusegun Mimiko and what he wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that Mimiko’s choice, Eyitayo Jegede, SAN hails from the same Senatorial district with him, but by far the biggest problem was the division within the PDP, which produced two candidates on the same platform for the same election, with the courts having to decide mid-way and at the late hour, with a superior court overruling the lower court. This confusion created a scenario whereby Jimoh Ibrahim emerged for a while as the party’s candidate, only to be dismissed through a court order two days to the election.

     This did not bother the businessman-lawyer-politician, though. Giving the impression that he was not so desperate to be Governor, he declared that his mission was to make it impossible for Mimiko to achieve his goal of installing an anointed successor. On the eve of the election, he urged his supporters and the people of the state to vote for the candidate of the APC. Under normal circumstances this would be considered an anti-party activity but the PDP is right now in such a confused state as a political party - its ranks are filled with disloyal, one-leg-in-one-leg-out members.  For this reason, in Ondo state, the PDP defeated itself from within even before the election. Mimiko can also be held responsible for his chosen candidate’s defeat. He overplayed his hands in the febrile politics of succession in the state.

     There is perhaps nothing new about incumbents, at state, local and national levels, showing interest in who succeeds them. Being politicians, they could plead that they are duty bound to support their party’s candidate, but where the problem lies is the desperation that attends the choice of such candidates, beginning with the party primary. In the United States, which is an example that can be readily cited, President Barrack Obama openly supported the candidacy of the Democratic Party standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, but he did so only after she had won the nomination. If Bernie Sanders had been the party’s choice, he would still have received President Obama’s support out of loyalty to the party. In other words, it would be difficult to speak of an incumbent American President or Governor anointing a successor and imposing that successor on the party and the electorate.

When Will Nigeria Start Getting Better?

By Kanayo Esinulo
Those who are familiar with how the machine of government works will easily tell you that leaders, most leaders, are somehow prisoners of ‘Security Reports’, but what these ‘knowledgeable top functionaries’ of government will never disclose to anyone, including the leader himself and the inquisitive thinking community, is that a good percentage of these ‘Security Reports’ are often hugely inaccurate, sometimes exaggerated and a few times overtaken by unexpected sudden events. They hardly provide the leader the necessary insights and all sides of the actual situation upon which proper policy decisions can be based for the general good.

What is often submitted as security reports contain, largely, what would make the leader happy, stampede him or her into making silly mistakes or even frighten him into becoming a prisoner in Government Lodge. And because our leaders are often caged and over protected from interfacing with us, the ordinary citizens, and knowing how we really feel and how government policies affect our lives positively or negatively, the sweet-heart security reports are taken seriously by them, and policy decisions are then taken, based on the contents and conclusions of the reports. But a good and experienced leader reaches out to the people as much as possible and as much as security considerations would permit.

Let me table a quick coda: Muhammadu Buhari first struck our national consciousness during the bloody Maitesine uprisings in some parts of Northern Nigeria in 1982. He was in-charge of a command in Jos, the capital of Plateau State. Alhaji Shehu Aliyu Shagari was the President and Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces. When Maitesine, the militant Islamic group, was fully contained in Kano, they ran into neighbouring Cameroun and still constituted a menace to our national security from that flank, it was this man, Muhammadu Buhari, who mobilised troops under his command and engaged the rascals, decimated their strength, killed and captured many of them and drove them deep into the Republic of Cameroun beyond the orders of Shagari, the Commander-in-Chief. Instantly, Buhari became a national celebrity. He mesmerised and defeated the ill-trained and ill-equipped Maitesine invaders. I was with NTA News, Victoria Island at the time. We tried to secure elaborate interview with Buhari for our national audience, but he shied away from the national media. But all the same, his gallantry and patriotism became an instant hit.

So, when he surfaced after the events of December 31, 1983 as the popular choice of the coup makers against the Shagari government, he was not totally unknown to most Nigerians. His Second-in-Command in the new government, Tunde Idiagbon, was, then, relatively unknown but soon became a star in the new government, and in his own right too. The character of the regime began to manifest clearly soon after it settled down to business. There were side talks about the sectional and ethnic inclinations of the regime as exposed by the arrests and detention of our erstwhile political leaders: Shagari was kept under ‘house arrest’, while his Second-in-Command, Alex Ekwueme was securely put away in prison.

Governors whose cases were strictly under investigation, Lateef Jakande, Sam Mbakwe, Ambrose Alli, Adekunle Ajasin, Abubakar Rimi, Jim Nwobodo, etc., were scattered in various prisons in the country. Alli virtually lost his sight while in prison and upon his release by the Babangida regime eventually died a blind man. Mbakwe never really fully recovered from the illnesses he contacted while under that rigourous solitary confinement, Pa Ajasin lost form and his usual robust good health withered away while under Buhari’s gulag. Lateef Jakande barely survived the trauma of that prolonged detention in prison.

Alli, Mbakwe, Ajasin and Jakande, as Nigerians later knew, were not rich after all and by any standards. Yet, they were paraded as criminals who looted our public treasuries. Then, the big one: the unprecedented attempt to bring back to Nigeria, by force, and in a crate, Shagari’s Minister of Transport, Alhaji Umaru Dikko, for trial. The exercise failed and the world was outraged. The Israeli abduction technicians who packaged and executed the failed project for the Buhari military regime pocketed their huge price and quietly disappeared into thin air.

The truth today is that possibly Buhari was ill-advised and mis-informed before he approved the very extreme measures that his military government took against the ousted second republic politicians. But so far, he has not openly admitted that some mistakes were made, including the unnecessary ‘invasion’ and rigourous searching of the Apapa residence of the Yoruba political icon, late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I repeat: all the governors of the second republic detained during the military regime of Buhari, only very few came out of the rigourous solitary confinement with their good health intact. Go and check. The story about Ambrose Alli, a professor of pathology, and former governor of old Bendel State [now Edo and Delta]who went blind while in prison is still a story to be fully told. And Alli died a poor man.