The Danger Of A Single Corruption Story

By Moses E. Ochonu

There is a danger in equating corruption in Nigeria with the infractions of a single corrupt individual. At different moments of our national life, we tend to narrowly and naively unload our anti-corruption angst on one individual politician. We then pummel this individual like a piñata while seemingly forgetting that Nigeria’s political corruption is a group act, an orgy of theft involving whole groups of politicians and bureaucrats.

*Buhari and Saraki

We inculpate some politicians while inadvertently exculpating others. We do so to assuage our emotional exhaustion at corruption’s stubborn persistence, and its devastating consequences.

In the second republic the individual stand-in for corruption was Umaru Dikko. In the Peoples Democratic Peoples Party (PDP) era, it was James Ibori. In the unfolding All Progressives Congress (APC) period, that personification of Nigeria’s corruption is Bukola Saraki.

To hear some people talk about Bukola Saraki one would think that the Senate President is the very embodiment of Nigeria’s corruption problem and that his removal from office and/or conviction would magically banish graft and restore probity in the polity.

Reading and listening to some of these folks one would think that Nigeria’s corruption virus originated with Saraki and would end with his conviction. You’d think that Saraki’s ongoing trial was some seminal event in a revolution against corruption and that the reclamation of Nigeria hangs on its outcome alone.

Never mind that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was charged with exactly the same offense as Saraki in a similarly politically charged atmosphere and that over 70 lawyers invaded the courtroom to defend him and eventually succeeded in intimidating the judge into acquitting him. Mr. Saraki is rightly berated for trying to wriggle out of an actual trial, for seeking to have the charges corruptly dismissed. But it’s now a distant, rarely revisited memory that Tinubu, the architect and champion of change, if you believe the hype, had used a mix of legal maneuvers, bully tactics, and other shady shenanigans to evade justice on multiple occasions when the late social crusader, Gani Fawehinmi, sought to subject him to an open court process. He, too, was afraid of a trial. Today, he issues periodic sermons about how corruption has hobbled Nigeria and needs to be defeated. Depressingly, many Nigerians cheer these sanctimonious pronouncements.

Ese Oruru Affair: Power Without Responsibility

By Louis Odion, FNGE
Though isolated, the recent budget-padding comedy in Abuja and lately the Ese scandal in Kano invariably underscore one acute elite affliction in contemporary Nigeria: an obsession to exercise power and the unwillingness to bear its responsibility. 

The pathology is what manifests today whenever President Buhari goes about issuing threat to deal ruthlessly with the "budget mafia" believed to have sexed up figures in the 2016 appropriation bill in view of the dust raised at the National Assembly. But a more honest response should have been an acceptance of responsibility ab initio by Mr. president on whose desk the buck stops. 

*Ese Oruru

Apparently following their principal's odd footsteps, ministers have, in turn, made a huge theatre of publicly disowning the numbers ascribed to their respective ministries, departments and agencies as if vetting the figures was not part of their briefs as CEOs of the MDAs to begin with. Health minister, for instance, swore "budget rats" ate up the documents he originally submitted. No one is ready to defend the allocation of N3.87b for capital projects at the Abuja State House Clinic while all the nation's teaching hospitals individually got peanuts. Or why a whopping N576m was earmarked for the construction of the residences of the Vice President's ADC and CSO among other outlandish entries. 

Taken together, the impression thus created is that whereas the government is exhorting the citizens with evangelical fervor to tighten their belts for an exceedingly lean year ahead, its own hierarchs are ironically busy loosening theirs to take more fat in their mid-sections. Not surprising, various conspiracy theories have since been mushrooming around the budget fiasco. Perhaps the most outlandish is the suggestion that the whistle was blown at the Senate by forces sympathetic to the embattled Bukola Saraki as a fight-back over his unfinished business at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. 

If true, that only begs the issue. In case the Buhari handlers don't know, they should be enlightened that the signature the president appended to the document before its presentation to the National Assembly on December 22, 2015 is tantamount to a proof of ownership and, therefore, a provisional claim of responsibility. Much more compelling is the obligation to admit that the seed of the present scandal was inadvertently sown with the inexplicable delay in constituting the federal cabinet last year. 

Hence, the initiative was inadvertently ceded to bureaucrats who, from experience, are hardly any different from buccaneers. In fact, Buhari unwittingly handed them the rope to hang him the very moment he announced in faraway France that civil servants were "the ones doing the real work" while ministers were mere "noise-makers", in response to then growing public apprehension over the delay in raising the federal cabinet. 

Femi Adesina, An Embarrassment To The Presidency – PDP

Press Statement

Our attention has been drawn to a vacuous statement by the media aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Femi Adesina, in his futile attempt to counteract facts presented by the PDP that this administration is dictatorial and selective in its fight against corruption.

*Femi Adesina 

Mr. Adesina, in his habitual deceptive and diversionary manner, left the critical issues of governance raised by Sunday’s press conference addressed by the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, and as usual, embarked on insults, shadow-chasing and fouling of the media space with uncouth language.

This office has noted Mr. Adesina’s several previous unwarranted personal attacks and insults deliberately targeted at the person of the PDP National Publicity Secretary, in his desperate attempt to impress his paymaster and retain his job.

Our answer remains that inasmuch as we know that this Presidency aide lacks depth on his current assignment and has no credible defence, being overwhelmed in his job of trying to launder the image of this government, the characteristic resort always, to lies, malice and vituperations should not be an option.

While we appreciate the fact that Mr. Adesina is not conversant and knowledgeable in politics and intricate issues of governance, he should have applied the common sense of covering his hollowness in this regard and save the Presidency the embarrassment of an arrogant attempt to wave off very serious questions hanging in the face of the present administration.

The Defeat Of President Buhari’s Idealism

By Femi Aribisala
THINGS  have not been going according to plan for President Buhari.  For the last four months since his famous victory, the president has been engaged with a battle royal with the very people who put him in power.  In order to win the election, Buhari had to form an alliance with wily politicians of the old-school; men seasoned at getting their hands dirty and adept at manipulating the system to power-political advantage.

*Femi Aribasala

Buhari had tried to make it without these men in the past, but without success.  On his third attempt in 2011, he opted for Tunde Bakare as his running mate.  Bakare was not a politician but a man of known integrity: a radical Christian pastor to boot.  Nevertheless, Buhari still lost by 10 million votes to the lesser-known Goodluck Jonathan.

In 2015, he chose Yemi Osinbajo as his running-mate, another man of integrity and, yet again, a Christian pastor.  But there was something different this time around.  He agreed to dine with known  political devils.  He formed an alliance with the very political elite he had long despised.  These are men who know the crooked ropes of the Nigerian political system.  They know how to finance a nationwide campaign  with  funds obtained magically; no questions asked.  They know  how to buy and manipulate the press.  They know  how to conjure votes with the sleight of hand.

With their help, Buhari finally became president against all the odds.  The million naira question then became how he would rule alongside these strange bedfellows.  How is he going to be their anointed president without becoming one of them?  How is he going to be president without becoming another politician?  How can he become president through the help of these men without becoming hostage to them in his victory?

Buhari  has  kept Nigeria waiting as he struggled with this dilemma.  While the press nicknamed him “Baba Go-Slow,” behind the scenes, he was fighting an epic battle against his strange allies the best way he knew how.  In that free-for-all, Buhari has thrown his best punches and made his best moves.  Finally, after four months of protracted infighting in which his media handlers  tried all they could to put the best spin on the situation, he finally caved in and accepted defeat.

On 30th September, 2015, Buhari was forced to accept he could not go it alone.  On that day, he finally decided to join the APC politically as its president.  Even more significantly, he finally agreed to join forces as president with those he had despised all his political life; the PDP.  On that fateful day, President Muhammadu Buhari jettisoned his earlier druthers.  He relinquished his much-ballyhooed “change” programme and became reluctantly a full-fledged old-school politician.

*President Buhari and Senate President, Saraki

Buhari’s first mistake was to presume his campaign idealism could carry him through his presidency.  Having won the election comfortably, the president decided the decent thing to do was to allow the legislators in the National Assembly to choose their own leaders without interference from Aso Rock.

This was a departure  from the procedure of his predecessors and his naïve supporters praised him for it.  This was the Buhari they voted for; a man who would breathe new life into the clogged political system.  But the whole thing backfired disastrously as the president became a victim of his own attempted saintliness.

The Plot To Unseat Sen. Ike Ekweremadu

*Ekweremadu

By Dan Amor
We must get the record straight. As Senator Ken Nnamani, the last President of the Fifth Senate and one of the finest legislative minds in the country has asserted, the floor of any chamber of the Nigerian bi-camera legislature is not a party secretariat. So, those calling for the resignation of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President are enemies of our democracy.

President Muhammadu Buhari was recently quoted as saying that the emergence of Senator Ike Ekweremadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as Deputy Senate President was unacceptable to him and his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). "I cannot work with enemies of my party— Buhari,” so goes the headline, whatever that means. This position of the President was followed by the alleged invitation of Ekweremadu by the police to be quizzed over the alleged doctoring of the Senate Rules to facilitate his election as Deputy Senate President. It is like the fable of the owl crying in the night and the child dying the following morning.

The reported invasion of the hallowed chamber of the Senate by the police ostensibly to question the Clerk is outrageous, to say the least and must be condemned by all Nigerians who fought the military to a standstill to bring about the current democratic dispensation in 1999.

North In Conspiracy Against The Yoruba –Bisi Akande

Statement Issued On Sunday, June 28, 2015, By The Former Interim Chairman Of The All Progressive Congress (APC), Bisi Akande 

Some times in 2013, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) resolved to merge and set up a merger committee to work out the modality for gluing together as one political party under one name, one constitution and one manifesto. A splinter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) sought to be included in the merger. An application made to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to this end by All Progressives Congress (APC) National Interim Committee, composed of ACN, ANPP, CPC, and factions of APGA and Democratic People’s Party (DPP) was approved in July, 2013.

Between Bola Ahmed Tinubu (an ACN leader) and Kashim Imam (a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader), the idea came up and was adopted that the new party should embark on a membership recruitment drive to certain PDP governors, whose main agenda was to see President Goodluck Jonathan out of power. The recruitment efforts took APC leaders to Rivers, Kwara, Niger, Sokoto, Kano, Jigawa and Adamawa states. Eventually, five PDP governors of Sokoto, Kano, Adamawa, Kwara and Rivers, together with the majority of their PDP National and State Assemblies members and other PDP National Assembly members from Gombe, Bauchi and Nasarawa, under the banner of the new-PDP, joined the APC.

The APC thereafter organised membership registrations in all the over 120,000 polling units and followed up by using these registered members to conduct congresses in all the almost 8000 wards, in over 770 local governments, in all the 36 states (including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and a convention at the National level, thereby creating one united APC party structure all over Nigeria. With this air of oneness, APC went ahead to conduct primaries to select candidates for state governors and Houses of Assembly and for the presidency and the National Assemblies.

Tragedy Of Peter Obi’s Defection

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Peter Obi’s defection from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not surprise me.  

Unlike Bianca, widow of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, I knew the former Anambra State governor was going to take that fateful political step.

Every discerning political observer knew that despite Obi’s protestations and despite his vow that he would quit partisan politics any day he left APGA, he had a crush on the PDP. His body language betrayed him.

 That Obi had the patience to serve out his second term as governor on the platform of APGA was the only surprise.

I did not want to comment on his defection until I read Bianca’s interview in the Daily Sun and Obi’s reaction.   Bianca is pained by what she calls Obi’s “betrayal and unimaginable breach of trust.” She is livid that Obi did not take her into confidence.

Peter Obi receiving an award in Spain from Mrs. Bianca

Ojukwu, Nigeria's Ambassador to Spain, on December 4, 

2013