The King Is Naked, Why Fear The King?

 By Felix Oguejiofor

A naked king is like the legendary naked truth: both are contemptible, unwanted.

As the legend goes, truth, always impeccably dressed in white, was the darling of everyone. On the other hand, lie, always dirty and in rags, was despised by everyone, a complete turn-off. One day, according to the legend, truth went to the stream to bathe and, to be sure, she removed her white clothes, put them by the side of the river and dived into the water. Lie, ever looking to better her lot at the expense of truth, took the latter’s white clothes, put them on and ran away.

Truth came out of the water in her full nakedness and ran after lie, to no avail. In one of the most dramatic examples of trading places, well before the legendary Eddy Murphy and Dan Aykroyd acted it out in the 1983 epic American comedy film, Trading Places, lie, now resplendently dressed in white (white lie) became society’s darling while truth, now completely naked and unkempt, became society’s despised and unwanted. As it is today, while many would rather be told ‘white’ lies, very many others are simply loathe to hear the ‘naked’ truth. Meaning that even truth, once it becomes naked, becomes abhorrent!

When I first read about this legend in one of columnist Ike Abonyi’s must-read pieces in his Thursday Political Musings column in New Telegraph, it struck me as quite symbolic of the current Nigerian situation: our king is, certainly, naked now and the aura of the throne gone. So, society must of necessity redeem itself. Or will the cabinet answer to a naked king on the throne? Will a land and people allow a naked king to interact and conduct business with other kingdoms on their behalf? Will the palace guards still give their limbs to protect a naked king insistent on sitting on the throne of their forefathers?

In ancient Israel, as recorded in the Bible, once the glory of God left a king, he was all but dead to the kingdom. Until his death, Saul was only a king in mouth after the God of Moses and Joshua pulled His support from His own anointed and gave it to David. It was obvious from the unimaginable missteps of Bubu that the glory of God had long left his ‘house and kingdom’ (read APC).

Indeed, while the lifeless one was king, we, at first, lived in mortal fear of him. Because we thought he was a king with his clothes on. For a moment, even our eternally erratic power supply stabilized and we were only too happy to ascribe the development to the king’s aura and our fear of him. The usually disruptive, not to say sabotaging, electricity workers, it was said, were afraid of the long, punishing hands of the presumably no-nonsense king. Until we discovered that he was nothing more that a hobbled Khalifa, one with neither the purity of heart nor the wisdom that progressive leadership required: he was just an existence in time and space – a naked king without any substance!

Needless to say that our honeymoon with Bubu was brief, nothing more than a year plus, before he was completely unmasked as a man with nothing to offer as a leader. What we did was to stop fearing him and start despising him. Any surprise that Bubu, to say the least, was such a disaster, a leader who turned Nigeria upside-down for the eight years he answered president?

Unfortunately for the current king, he became naked from the very beginning. Therefore, having known or seen him inside out, what do we have again to fear him for? As my friend Abraham Ogbodo recently offered in one incisive piece on a platform to which I also belong, Bola Tinubu has no wherewithal to recommend him for the Nigerian presidency beyond the corrupting influence of money. Of the three most prominent presidential candidates in the February 25, 2023 election, Tinubu has the least national appeal. And one doesn’t even have to believe former SGF, Babachir Lawal’s word for it. For, as they say, by their fruits we shall know them. And, of course, PBAT’s fruits aren’t exactly the universally or, if you will, nationally consumable types.

So, yes, why would the Nigerian establishment still hail this king? Striped of all moral authority (thanks to the recent discoveries about his embarrassing propensity for forgeries) to reward good behaviour or punish infractions, why would the operators of this system still appear so willing to do the bidding of this king, even to the extent of courting the risk of practically throwing the nation under the bus without a tinge of conscience? Why so eager to please a naked king?

Let’s face it, what judicial system would garland a man whose obvious infractions of the law warrant that he should actually be out of circulation for his sins? While Bubu was clean enough (or so we thought initially) to harass even the judiciary and get away with it, on what grounds would the Nigerian judiciary subject itself to the current public pillory and odium that have become its lot, for the sake of one man whose records have been proven by courts of competent jurisdiction in Nigeria and elsewhere to be unwholesome, unable to withstand any legal scrutiny?

What debts of obligation, which must be repaid even at the risk of  destroying the foundations of the nation’s democracy, does the Nigerian judiciary owe PBAT and others like him holding positions of trust in society but with personal records that are clearly at odds with what are permissible under the law? Would the Nigerian Bench and Bar so conveniently destroy the hallowed position of the judiciary as every democracy’s bulwark against dictatorship and other manipulative geniuses of politicians, simply on the altar self-aggrandizement?

Elsewhere in the world (as we recently saw in the case of Atiku Abubakar v Bola Tinubu in the district courts of Illinois, Chicago, the United States), the judiciary gets people who infract the law to account for their actions, irrespective of their status in life.  Immediate past President of the of the United States, Mr. Donald Trump has been in and out of courts since leaving office in 2020 for his alleged offences against the law, in his private and business life. Every attempt by President Tinubu’s lawyers to prevent the Illinois courts from forcing Chicago State University (CSU) to release the president’s academic records expectedly fell through because the United States courts couldn’t be dissuaded from releasing the documents whose release, the courts were persuaded, was in public interest.

 

 The American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had initially said it would not make public its files on PBAT until 2026 but had to decide otherwise, agreeing to release them batch by batch starting this month (beginning from October 23, to be precise). The FBI’s change of plan followed a freedom of information request filed last year by Aaron Greenspan, owner of PlainSite, a website that pushes anti-corruption and transparency in public service,  in collaboration with Nigerian investigative journalist David Hundeyin. Again, the need to serve justice in public interest overrode the technicality of the seeming inviolability of FBI’s rules and schedules, hence the decision to release PBAT’s well ahead the earlier scheduled 2026. Although PBAT’s lawyers are fighting hard to prevent those FBI files on him from being made public, it is most likely that, as in his case with Atiku, the Nigerian leader will have his files with FBI made public as already scheduled by the agency.

 

That is what Nigerians expect from their judiciary: to always courageously stand on the side of justice for the many and not destroy its own essence just to serve the interests of a few powerful elements in society. As the Supreme Court hears LP presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi and his PDP counterpart, Atiku Abubakar’s appeals against the ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) dismissing their petitions against INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as winner of this year’s February 25 presidential election, starting this Monday, the question many have asked and continue to ask is, will the Nigerian judiciary ditch technicalities and stand on the side of justice for the many this time around?

Soon, very soon, that question will be answered one way or another.

*Oguejiofor is a commentator on public issues 

On The People’s Train With Peter Obi And Datti Baba-Ahmed For Nigeria’s Redemption

 By Sola Ebiseni

Our presence at the momentous OBIDATTI rally in Ibadan last Wednesday, November 21, was the ultimate evidence that we have boarded the people’s train with Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed for the redemption of our country.

*Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed 

To those who could not see beyond the conventional and are irredeemably fixated on the search for structures that have only held our nation and people hostage, let them know that the Obidient phenomenon is not a joke they thought would soon frizzle out. 

A brother and learned colleague, out of sheer love, described our move, after my initial television interviews justifying the Afenifere’s endorsement of the ObiDatti ticket, as a descent to political Golgotha. We are quick to remind him that the way to redemption is paved with torns and a burdensome cross that must be borne at Golgotha, which Nigeria must experience, willy nilly.

Nigerians Can’t Wait To See Buhari Go

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

President Muhammadu Buhari has finally admitted that he is overwhelmed by the job he craved and cried for. But Nigerians came to that conclusion long before him. Having waited patiently, albeit fruitlessly, for the president to deliver on his 2014 campaign promises, beleaguered Nigerians who are still wondering how they allowed themselves to be conned seven years ago, have, however, moved on.

They no longer place any stock on his ability to get the job done. Even members of his party – All Progressives Congress (APC) – are too ashamed of the mess Buhari has made of governance.

*Buhari

So, when the president quips that he is eager to go as he did on Monday when he received some APC governors, legislators and political leaders at his residence in Daura, Katsina State, he needs to be told that the feeling is mutual, Nigerians are more eager. They can’t wait to see his back in Aso Rock.

“I am eager to go. I can tell you it has been tough. I am grateful to God that people appreciate the personal sacrifices we have been making. I wish the person who is coming after me the very best,” Buhari said.

Of course, whoever that will succeed Buhari needs all the prayers because the damage is enormous but it sounded ridiculous hearing him lament the phantom toll official duties had taken on him.

When he talks about his personal sacrifices in running the country, it smacks of entitlement. The hubris is insufferable. Buhari thinks he is doing Nigerians a favour being president when he is not.

Muslim-Muslim Ticket: A Disastrous Error!

 By Babachir Lawal

I thought I will be able to avoid commenting on the disastrous error by my very good friend, Sen Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his choice of a running mate.

I will be the very last person to stand in the way of my very good friend Tinubu’s path to the presidency. This is because, since 2011, my consuming passion has been for him to succeed Buhari as President of Nigeria. 

*Tinubu

It will not be true if I say that I did not see it coming. I have often read his body language, picked up snippets from several discussions with his lapdogs (some of whom, sadly, are Christians but most of whom are Muslims), and I have conveyed my reservations to them against the pitfalls of a Muslim-Muslim ticket towards which I sensed they were drifting.

As part of my obligation to him, a close friend, I had on many occasions argued the merits and demerits of both ticket permutations to him. 

Nigeria At Intensive Care Unit!

 By Hashim Amao

Across sectors, the tempest in Nigeria had doubled, and in some cases, tripled with the failed regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.). Sai Baba is not the sui generis of Nigeria’s woes, but he has forced Nigerians to tread more throes. Like Umar R.A would smile and sob anytime he remembered the dark days he made his god with Meccan dates, worship and still feast on it when hunger visits; anytime this writer recalls the days of his stellar support for the “godsend Buhari,” the superficial things he did to sell Buhari to his people, laughter and sadness would knock in synchrony. For, we had thought Nigeria was sick then, but now, it is at the intensive care unit, gasping between life and death.

Crippled economy, insecurity, hunger, hike in commodity prices, incessant strikes, corruption and disregard for the rule of law; frankly, in Adipele’s multi-layered dentition, I don’t know how many teeth to count. But one thing so clear is: Baba Yussuf has failed Nigerians, deplorably, that his wife had once vented her vexation as a result of her “sense of justice, and not confrontation or disrespect.”

Nigeria ranks sixth in the 2022 Global Terrorism Index, no thanks to Boko Haram, Unknown Gunmen, killer pastoralists, kidnappers and other agents of doom that have provoked the peace of Nigeria. Sadly, Nigeria is no longer sitting on a powder keg; it is reclining on an atomic couch, while we hope it does not explode. Human lives have been devaluated that, sometimes, people get slaughtered in some parts of the country and there is low media coverage for the attacks.

Musings On President Buhari’s Eldorado

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

By not preceding his quest for re-election with an apology for his current poor performance, President Muhammadu Buhari has taken the citizens he is seeking their votes for granted. His is a campaign driven by the notion of the citizens as not being discerning enough to know what is right for them. Buhari and his party are propelled by the illusion that the political enlightenment of the majority of the voters is still at an inchoate stage. 

*Buhari 

Buhari would only realise the falsity of this notion when he has been sent back to Daura. In Daura, he would rue his not taking cognisance of the fact that it was the same voters whom former President Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) disdained by not living up to their expectations who sent them out of Aso Rock.

Nigeria: Metele As Price Of National Swindle

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Aside from the occasional death of soldiers in their battle against Boko Haram, the nation is now confronted in Metele with a seeming culmination of the military’s losses to the insurgents in the north-east. The government has often fumed at the obduracy of its traducers who instead of trumpeting the wonders of its military in Sambisa Forest have rather warned that more still needed to be done to defeat the insurgents in the light of the occasional suicide attacks on civilians and losses of two or four soldiers to the insurgents.

But the recent killing of about 100 soldiers in Metele, Borno State, so shattered the charade of triumph over the insurgents that President Muhammadu Buhari had to dispatch his defence minister to Chad for more collaboration in defeating them. Clearly, the dead soldiers deserve all the garlands for their bravery and patriotism for which they have paid the supreme price.

Nigeria: President Buhari: Resign And Run Far Away!

By Sonala Olumhense

Finally, President Muhammadu Buhari has confirmed what has been known to many for nearly three years: he wants to remain in power for four more years. According to Mr. Buhari, this decision is owed not to his personal desire, but to popular clamour.  

*President Buhari 

It is always amusing when people who seek office, or want to cling to it, cite popular pressure.  The truth is that only Buhari’s circle of loyalists wants him back.  No Nigerian whose desire or interest is leadership rather than power, does. 

I am not necessarily saying Buhari will not win the re-election contest, but if he does, it will not be because he deserves it.  To begin with, voter turnout was high for him when he won in 2015, hope in full bloom.  

In 2019, betrayed Nigerian voters may revert to indifference.  Already, it is curious that mountains of voters’ cards are being ignored by their owners nationwide.  

Checking Inequality In Nigeria’s Security System

By Oludayo Tade

The attitude of the leadership of Nigeria and its security institutions to the safety of the poor and vulnerable is condemnable. In the same system, the social structure ensures the securitisation of the rich.

While the tenets of the rule of law prescribe equality before the law, supremacy of the law and fundamental human rights, the practicality of these in Nigeria is gradated to one’s social position. The poor are worse off in security of lives and property, food security, health security, education security, road security, human rights security, among others.

Maina’s Reinstatement: A Classical Example Of Honour Among Thieves – PDP

Press Release

Jeffery Archer, the British Author in his classical novel, Honour Among Thieves, postulated that “criminals do not compromise the actions of other criminals."

2. It is in the light of this that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), wishes to state that we are not too shocked at the steps taken by the Administration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in reinstating a supposed criminal and fugitive, Abdulrasheed Maina to office instead of getting him arrested.

*Abdulrasheed Maina

3. Birds of a feather flocks together.

4. All people of good conscience will not forget in a hurry that Maina, who was given an assignment by the Last Administration of the PDP to superintend the now defunct Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, dipped his hands into the Jar and helped himself to N100 billion of what he was supposed to safeguard.

5. With good conscience at fighting corruption, the PDP Government then, mandated the Anti-corruption Agencies to perform their constitutional duty. Maina fled, only to resurface in the Country four months ago under the Buhari Administration.

$25 NNPC Scandal: Money For Buhari's Reelection – PDP

Press Release

NNPC’s 25billion Dollars Scandal And The Hypocrisy Of Buhari’s Anti-Corruption War

*President Buhari 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wishes to express our shock at the loud silence of President Muhammadu Buhari on the humongous corruption scandal and other illegalities currently being exposed at the nation’s cash cow, the NNPC in which two of his henchmen, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu and the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Maikanti Baru are the dramatis personae.

1. As a political party, we expect that the President, who prides himself as an indefatigable corruption fighter, would for once try to live above board, by genuinely allowing one of his own, accused of corruption, get properly investigated and prosecuted as a show of his impartiality in the war against corruption.

2. He should do this to correct the open impression Nigerians have about his so called anti-corruption war; that it’s just a tool of persecution of perceived enemies.

 3. We view the allegations levelled against Baru by Kachikwu as too grave to be swept under the carpet and we insist that the NNPC GMD must be treated like an accused who should not have the opportunity to influence investigation into his alleged misdeeds.

Buhari, Kachikwu And NNPC

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

No matter how much we strain to sustain the illusion that the President Muhammadu Buhari government is on the right track, we are often jarred into reality by his regular missteps and seemingly intentional negation of the common good. Buhari’s platitudes about patriotism and the indivisibility of the country notwithstanding, we are confronted with a situation where it is clear that he ignores the exploration of the opportunities that have frequently come his way to blur the fissiparous tendencies in different parts of the country.

*President Buhari and Dr. Kachikwu

We have seen this in his refusal to heed the calls for the restructuring of the country as a means of quelling agitations for equity that clearly threaten the unity of the country. Rather, Buhari has a penchant for regarding those criticising him for taking wrong decisions as courting government’s attention in order to be settled – a euphemism for bribery. But by making this argument, the government is rather indicting itself. For the government is only saying that public service in the Buhari era is still fabulously lucrative; a means of self-enrichment as it has not been made less financially attractive. If it had done this and public office had been rightly turned into just a means of serving the people with its attendant sacrifice, it would not have considered government officials as privileged Nigerians who other citizens are striving to join or replace.

Osinbajo Panel Report: One Month After

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

When President Muhammadu Buhari cancelled the August 23, 2017, Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, the first on his return from a 103-day medical trip to the United Kingdom, in order to receive the report of the Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo-led committee, which was asked to probe the allegations of fraud against the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, and the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ayodele Oke, some Nigerians were scandalised.

*VP Osinbajo and President Buhari 

And the reason was simple. The Council remains the highest policy making organ of the federal government and after a three-month absence from Nigerian shores, many had thought that the president would have had the urge to be brought to speed on the happenings in the country by those he entrusted with the responsibility of making the authoritative allocation of our collective values while he was away convalescing.

So, to such people, the reason for the cancellation was preposterous. What does it take for the president to receive a report? Is it no longer a matter of scheduling? Besides, that week’s cancellation would be the fifth time the president would be in the country but unavailable for the meeting of the Council which consists of himself, his deputy, Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief of Staff to the President and the ministers.

Nigeria Police And Audacity Of A Squealer

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

After years of a tempestuous relationship with the police, the citizens have become very familiar with a plethora of cases that reify the ignoble identity of that security institution of government as a site of unbridled corruption. Thus, they were by no means suddenly hoisted onto an uncharted territory when the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) last month alerted them to the egregious indices of the corruption under which the police chafe. Nor did the recent allegation by Senator Isah Misau that the police reek of corruption expressed in cronyism, patronage and financial misdeeds come to them as a surprise.

*President Buhari and IGP Idris

Indeed, Nigerians live daily with a catalogue of woes the police inflict on them. We are quite familiar with these: the police shoot to maim or kill commercial bus drivers or motorcyclists popularly referred to as okada riders because of their refusal to part with N50. They do not respond to emergency calls when the citizens are under the siege of armed robbers. It is only when the armed robbers have finished their operations and gone that their victims would be harassed with the sounds of police sirens. And that is if the police come at all. In most cases, they place obstacles in your way: they tell you that they cannot respond to your call because they have no vehicles; if they have, they are faulty; and if they are not faulty, there is no fuel in them. If you go to make a report at their station, the police would ask you to pay for the pen and piece of paper with which to make your complaint. After the complaint, you need to give them money to investigate your case. On the walls and doors of a typical police station would be emblazoned the warning: bail is free. But you must pay for detainees to secure their freedom. 

Buhari And His Divided Government

By Rotimi Fasan

President Muhammadu Buhari sits atop a government that is very divided. The administration is apparently in confusion with close members at war with one another. The confusion that has resulted in Buhari’s warring and, one might say, fumbling administration began, it can now be said with insight, when the president decided to form a so-called kitchen cabinet of close associates and relatives, persons directly or indirectly connected to him by marriage, blood or religion.

 

*Buhari 

These people feel answerable only to the president and exploit their closeness to the president to wrongfoot his policies including his arrowhead anti-corruption war. The president’s self-inflicted injury was exacerbated by a National Assembly that was dominated by a divided All Progressives Congress, APC, whose members elected a leadership that has enjoyed neither the support nor trust of the party leaders.

The frosty relationship that this would engender between the legislators and the executive arm of the administration (particularly the presidency and anyone thought to be connected to it) can be seen in the fate that has befallen Ibrahim Magu in his failed bid to be confirmed as chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

But I’m a bit ahead of my explanation. So let me return to how President Buhari brought all this upon himself and what this now implicates for his government. Muhammadu Buhari The first appointments made by Buhari were of a nature that got many Nigerians complaining given its lopsided arrangement. The appointments, mostly of his immediate minders, were almost to the last person made up of Muslim men of northern extraction. It both reflected as well as demonstrated a tendency for mind-closure and parochialism.

But this was apparently lost on the president who couldn’t be bothered about it, not even the fact that the Igbo presence in the government is almost of cipher value. He ignored all questions raised about this and, when he chose to respond, simply went ahead to defend the appointments, explaining it all in terms of the pattern of votes that got him elected.

Double Life In The Buhari Presidency

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is only those who have been inordinately enamoured of the Buhari presidency who are now shocked at the bleak fate that has befallen its anti-corruption campaign. But for critical observers who have been contemptuously branded as the stabilising forces for the regeneration of an era reeking with corruption, the campaign was bound to suffer a calamitous end. It was expected, like most of the policies that have been associated with the Buhari government, to be afflicted with the reverse Midas touch. Indeed, the crash of the anti-corruption campaign that has been so much-hyped as the lynchpin of the Buhari government’s quest for the development of the country is symptomatic of the failure in every other provenance of governance in this current administration.

*Buhari 

Clearly, the policies of the government are sullied by a certain antithesis to the improvement of the wellbeing of the citizens because they have been underpinned by unrelieved provincialism that has made them turn out badly. In the case of the anti-corruption, it was bound to fail because the presidency did not pursue it in a way that would have ensured its success. There was no way it would have succeeded when it was not targeted at all corrupt persons who have benefited from the national treasury at the expense of the common good. It was rather targeted at perceived or real enemies of the president, his cronies and political party. This is why politicians who are patently corrupt keep on decamping to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to seek protection from prosecution. And this is why those who consider their political careers endangered by decamping from their parties keep on taking full pages of advertisement pledging their support for Buhari and his anti-corruption campaign. If they knew that whether they decamped or pledged support for the anti-corruption campaign they would be prosecuted, they would not bother themselves with all this.

Because it was not to serve the interest of the country, Buhari did not bother to prosecute the campaign in line with the constitution of the country. The campaign that should have been for the whole country became defined by an us versus them mentality. It was thus inevitable that Ibrahim Magu who knew that he had breached fidelity to constitutionality in a bid to please the president would end up resorting to the same illegality to enrich himself at the expense of a genuine and selfless anti-corruption fight. With the approval of Buhari, Magu prosecuted an anti-corruption campaign that brooked no obedience to the rule of law. Court judgments were remorselessly disregarded. In this atmosphere of illegality, a former National Security Adviser Col. Sambo Dasuki is being held in detention despite judgments from the nation’s courts and even the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice.