Showing posts with label Dimeji Bankole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dimeji Bankole. Show all posts

Monday, April 3, 2017

Why Is Governor’s Office So Seductive In Nigeria?

By Martins Oloja
The ecclesiastical saying that there is a time for everything comes in handy today to interrogate some political matters that are weightier than the stale and inevitable tango between the sleepy executive and the restless legislature in Abuja. And here is the thing, it is time to examine what is so constantly seductive about the office of the Governor in Nigeria, that most politically active persons, federal and state legislators, returning foreign envoys, retired public servants, retired clerics, repentant militants and insurgents, special advisers and former Speakers want to contest that office.

It is curiouser and curiouser that even former governors that have run for only one term and even serving as ministers, a former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) all want to be nothing but governors. What is in it for the aspirants and even occupants of that office? Are they going to fulfill a constitutional provision for ‘welfare and security of the citizens, which shall be the primary purpose of government? Political intelligence has it that at the moment, Senator Chris Ngige, a former governor of Anambra state, a former Senator representing Anambra state, currently serving as a Minister is in a dilemma even as he is mobilizing fund to contest the 2017 election for governorship. So is Dr. Kayode Fayemi, former Governor of Ekiti State, a serving Minister who wants to return as Governor.
A former CBN Governor, a Professor of Economics who once contested the office, is said to be warming up again to plunge into the murky governorship waters. Mr. Dimeji Bankole, former Speaker of the House of Representatives who never had little or no experience before he was elected member of the House of Representatives, has been fighting to be governor of Ogun State, not minding the principalities and powers that would always frustrate him in his state. When his successor, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal raised his hand to be counted among those to challenge PMB, in 2015, he was quickly drafted by the powers behind the throne to accept to be governor of Sokoto State as a settlement. All protocols and legal processes were bent and broken for him to emerge as the only candidate. But the seducers got him with governorship ticket bait. What is in that office the occupants have added a qualifier to as “executive” governor” that is not in the constitution?
“There are a few exemplars that are quietly setting the tone for federalism at the moment: Lagos, Akwa Ibom,  Ekiti, Kano states, etc are strategically evolving as federalism brand ambassadors.” 
Ifeanyi Uba, an oil magnate, a successful football club owner and publisher of The Authority newspaper, in the eye of the storm over some allegation of missing N110 billion in his domain, would like to do all that is politically possible to be the next governor of Anambra state. Nothing else appeals to him. He had taken that road before. What is in that office?

Friday, November 25, 2016

Of Parliament, Poverty Of Debates And Corruption

By Dan Amor
In mid 2007, at the emergence of the Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh as first female Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, a very close friend of mine who was then covering the Lower Chamber of the National Assembly for a top flight national newspaper called me on phone. His message: "Dan, Nigeria has elected a Speaker who cannot speak." My friend, a honed history scholar-turned journalist, is a thorough-bred professional most interested in written and spoken words and their applications. And his message was loud and clear. He spoke against the backdrop of Etteh's alleged legendary grammatical inadequacies.
*Speaker Dogara and Senate President Saraki

As beneficiary of the old Nsukka tradition of history and intellectual erudition, my friend had lamented the complete absence of a culture of informed debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, and even the Senate.  Poor him! He had thought that our politicians would cultivate the habit of formal debate which is the hallmark of the parliament anywhere in the world and which is as old as education itself. It dates back at least in the invention of dialectics and more specifically to Protagoras of Abdera, who introduced this method of learning to his students nearly 2,500 years ago.
In fact, the rudiments of dialectics emerged from the misty past, when grunts grew into language and men discovered that language could facilitate both the making of decisions and changing them. Debate as a medium for policy-making came into being in the first crude democracy when words as well as force became tools of government. In its maturity, it prevailed over the city-state of Greece and the republic of Rome, where skillful debaters such as Demosthenes and Cicero moved empires with words. Aristotle himself considered rhetoric to be the first and most important art. The highest purpose of debate is to develop, as Emerson described it, "man's thinking in the total milieu of society and the world around him." Ultimately, debate attempts to improve a man by laying a foundation for a better understanding of himself and those around him, to inculcate habits of mind, breath of interests, and enlargement of spirit. The process of debate, therefore, becomes as important as the issues contained within it. Lest we deviate, it was this process of intellectual confrontation that my friend said was lacking in Etteh's House.