How APC Betrayed Buhari

By Joe Igbokwe

I was shocked to the marrows when I heard that some APC Senators asked the National Working Committee of the Party led by the National Chairman of the Party Chief Odigie Oyegun to prevail on President Buhari to drop all charges against Bukola Saraki at the Code of Conduct corruption trial before they stop sabotaging the presidency. Words failed me when it dawned on me that this potentially dangerous demand is coming from some APC Senators who are supposed to be the agents of change we promised Nigerians while seeking their mandate in 2015.

*Buhari, Tinubu and Saraki 

I reflected on the event of the past 24years from 1993 when we elected Chief MKO Abiola to bring hope to Nigerians and how he was crushed and decimated by demonic and satanic forces after five years struggle to defend and sustain the mandate. Time and space will not permit me to recall the quantum of energies expended to defend the mandate for five years, the wars, on the streets, the casualties including MKO Abiola and the late wife Kudirat Abiola, and many others, the damage to the national project, the devastation of our economy, the balkanization of the political entity called Nigeria, the alienation by the international community making Nigeria a pariah nation, and the ethnic division it visited on Nigeria.

After killing Chief Abiola in July 7, 1998, the same satanic and demonic forces still bent on decimating Nigeria further decided to foist PDP and retired General Obasanjo on Nigerians. In sixteen years, from 1999 to 2015 the same forces wasted huge resources running into hundreds of billions of dollars earned in times of oil boom. The unconscionable looters and unrepentant thieves diverted and stashed away these huge resources into private pockets. These funds have been traced to private accounts both at home and abroad, traced to real estates both in Nigeria and abroad, and traced to farms and some buried underground. The rest is now history.

Nigeria: Gen Bamaiyi’s Heroes And Villains

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

When the odd-defying English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking quipped that “we spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly history of stupidity,” he did not do justice to the relevance of history to a people’s development. But if he had people like a former Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi in mind when he said that, hardly can we find his postulation impeachable.

Babangida, Obasanjo and Buhari 

For in most cases, history panders to the dictates of power. Such history unabashedly transforms the foibles of its originators into virtues.

This accounts for the centuries of the denigration of the black population as a benighted segment of the human race, without history, culture and philosophy, and thus their appropriation as hewers of wood and drawers of water for their white counterparts. But we need not go far to understand the manipulation of history to suit the purpose of its writer. We find enough evidence in the history of the Nigerian civil war as different participants and observers in the crisis tweak the history of that period to suit themselves.

This trajectory of the manipulation of history has been replicated in the case of the June 12, 1993 election crisis that has defined the nation’s subsequent democratic experience. What we have witnessed is a preoccupation with a Manichean bifurcation of participants in the crisis into heroes and villains. But the tragedy is that there is hardly an agreement on whose perspective is right since the real masterminds of the crisis have refused to apologise and tell the nation the truth. The further danger is that the generation who did not witness the crisis would be left with a welter of perspectives from which they may not be able to sift out the truth.

Leadership Undercurrents In Yorubaland

By Bolaji Tunji

Soon and very soon, the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari would be two years old. The two years is the midterm of his four-year mandate. As Nigerians, we have all seen how the past few months have been, but because  I am not God, I can not say what the outlook would be in the next two years. But God has given me the faculty (brain)to project and take a leap into what the next two years would be based on happenings in the preceding months and the present situation. Without being too pessimistic, the outlook is not too rosy especially on the political front.

*Obafemi Awolowo

My concern is how the South west will fare in the coming years. There is leadership undercurrents in the south west. How will this play out in the coming years such that the Yoruba nation will still be relevant in national politics.

Most importantly, what is the manner of leadership that the Yoruba nation requires at this time. Today, it is not in doubt that the South west can lay claim to installing the present government. It is the first time that the Yoruba nation would be taking a major leap, without prodding, by any of the ethnic groups, to promote governance at the national level. Forget the fact that former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a president of Yoruba descent was there for eight years. We all know at the time he was put forward that he was not the candidate of the Yoruba race. He was “coerced” into the race by those who felt it was the only way the Yoruba race could be assuaged following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections and the death of the man believed to have won that election, Bashorun MKO Abiola and ideally fit into their agenda.

The story has always been the same from the first republic to the present. The Yoruba race has never progressed to where it was able to promote and subsequently help instal the president as we have today. Not only that, this is the first time the progressives would be in charge of national affairs, all thanks to  Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former Lagos governor and leader of APC.

It is not in doubt that he practically assured the presidency of President Muhammadu Buhari who had to contend with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former Kano governor, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso, Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha and founder of Leadership newspaper, Sam Nda-Isaiah, even the present Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki had actually signified his intention to also vie for the ticket. It is thus clear and straightforward that Asiwaju actually took the Yoruba race to the centre through the alliance he coupled with the Hausa-Fulani. In one fell swoop, he achieved what late Premier of Western region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola was unable to achieve. For the records, Akintola had favored an alliance with the North at the time. It never worked. Tinubu brought the West and the North together and helped instal the Buhari presidency. For all that is worth, he is responsible for whatever the Yoruba race has to contend with today.

But where does that take the Yoruba nation? There have been speculations that Asiwaju has been sidelined and has been made irrelevant in the present administration. Is that really the case? Is it really true that he has been sidelined and if that is the case, how did this come to pass? What did Asiwaju do, or did not do that led to him being sidelined, in an administration he helped installed. And most importantly, if he was actually sidelined, what would be the position of the West in the build up to 2019? Lastly, how relevant would Asiwaju be in the general equation as 2019 gathers momentum?

June 12, Not May 29, Is Nigeria’s ‘Democracy Day’

By Mike Ozekhome

On Sunday, June 12, 2016, leading lights in the human rights and pro-democracy movement in Nigeria, gathered at the late M.K.O. Abiola’s house, to mark “June 12”, 23 years after this talismanic, watershed and cornerstone of a people’s election. I was one of them. We paid tribute and sang solidarity songs. We x-rayed the state of the nation. We laid wreath at his tomb. We did not forget his lovely wife, Kudirat, who was martyred with him. We prayed by her graveside. An amazon that carried aloft the liberation torchlight after her husband’s incarceration in military dungeon, she epitomised women’s potency, fervour  and ardour.

June 12 is very stubborn. It is simply indestructible, ineradicable, indelible, imperishable and ineffaceable. It sticks out like a badge of honour, the compass of a beleaguered nation. It cannot be wished away. Never. Aside from October 1, when Nigeria had her flag independence, June 12 remains the most important date in her annals.

Nigeria and June 12 are like Siamese twins. The snail and the shell. They are inseparable.  Like six and half a dozen. Like Hamlet and the Prince of Denmark. You cannot discuss May 29 without its forebear and progenitor, June 12. To attempt that is comical, droll chucklesome, even bizarre and freakish. June 12 is not just a Gregorian calendar date. It is Nigeria’s authentic democracy day. That was when genuine democracy berthed in Nigeria. Nigerians had trooped to the polls to vote for Abiola. On June 12, 1993, Nigeria stood still. Nigerians became oblivious to religious sensibilities and ethnic nuances. They did not care that Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, Bashorun and Aare Onakanfo of Yoruba land, was a Moslem who was running with another Moslem, Alhaji Babagana Kingibe. The gods and goddesses of ethnicity, tribalism and religious bigotry were brutally murdered and interred.

The apparitions of gender, culture and class discrimination, were sent back to their graves. Abiola, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, squarely won the election under Babangida’s option A4. He trounced his challenger, Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC). He had campaigned with “Hope 1993” (a message of possibilities later adopted by Obama in 2008). His was “Farewell to Poverty” manifesto. Both resonated well with Nigerians. Abiola, who had joined politics at 19 under NCNC, in 1959, had used his stupendous wealth to water the ground and build bridges of unity, understanding and acceptability across the length and breadth of Nigeria. He had Concord newspaper and airline to help propel his ambition. He regarded money as nothing but manure with which, like plants, human beings are nurtured. Abiola had defeated Bashir Tofa, even in his Gyadi-Gyadi Ward, Kano.

Kudirat Abiola: 20 Years After

By Hafsat Abiola-Costello

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of my mother, Kudirat Abiola.

A young woman, not quite 44 years old, Kudirat was different things to different people. She was a loving mother to her seven children, the youngest of whom was seven at the time of her death. She was also a dutiful wife and a principled Nigerian who believed that an electoral mandate given to her husband during the June 12, 1993, democratic election could not simply be set aside on the whims of a small band of men, whether they were armed or not.

*Kudirat Abiola 

I continue to draw strength and inspiration from her clear example in a country where, for most people, everything is negotiable. From her, I learned that it is better to stand with the truth even if it is to stand alone. 

It has taken so long for the tree of democracy that she and other women sacrificed so much to plant to show the promise that motivated them to take a stand. Yet, even now, it is still glaring in its failure to include women in elective positions. In this one thing, we reveal a flaw in how we understand and practice democracy. For if power were understood as primarily a tool to be used to serve all people, women would be encouraged to play their part. 

The absence of women reveals the fact that the current wind of change has not altered the fundamental perception of power as an instrument, not of service but of domination. Unfortunately, when used in this way, everyone loses as the cycle of divide and misrule that Nigeria has witnessed time and again will simply continue producing poverty, conflict and misery.

As we reflect on the fact that the National Assembly has only six percent women (6%), we need to be aware that Africa’s largest economy lags behind all but one other African country on this and gives us a ranking of 177 out of 193 countries.

Today, let us remember that when Chief Abiola was in detention when many pro-democracy leaders had fled the country to continue the battle against military dictatorship, Kudirat Abiola and others kept the flag flying at home. She led the marches. She sold her properties to support her husband’s household and to finance the movement. She gave interviews on national and international media channels. She was incarcerated and frequently threatened but remained undaunted. And ultimately she was gunned down on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria.

I remember her today as I do every day and pray for the continued peaceful repose of her soul. But on this day, 20 years on, I want to ask our leaders to be fair to the Nigerian women. No bird, no matter how strong, can fly with one wing. No country, no matter its potential, can thrive while keeping its women back. 

Most local government councils will hold elections this year and next, nation-wide. This time, parties should put in place mechanisms to ensure 30% women representation at the local administration level. The local government is a good level to begin fostering gender equity since it has purview over primary health care as well as primary education, issues of particular concern to women.

This democracy came at a price, which women and men paid, and should be made to work for everyone. It will work better when women are allowed to play their part.
 
*Hafsat Abiola-Costello is the founder of Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND)

Nigeria: A Stunted Democracy?

By Eddie Mbadiwe

Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Com­mons in 1947 in the course of which he said that de­mocracy is the worst form of government except for the other forms that have been tried from time to time now has universal acceptance. China, Russia and Cuba, apart from the Western world and the so called Third World countries practise one form of democra­cy or the other. The icing on the cake is that even North Korea as recently as three weeks ago had democratic elections and crowned Kim as Supreme leader.

For Nigeria, the journey has been long and ardu­ous starting with the pre-independence struggle led by Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and the Sardauna of Sokoto. The military intervened post-independence and we had many years of stagnation and little growth. NADECO stepped in to drive away the military and there were lots of sac­rifices and casualties but the heroes remain MKO Abiola and the aborted June 12 election.

Democracy involves active people participation and you can take it as given that nobody will attempt to rig the June 23 European Union Election in Britain. More than 70% of eligible voters will actively take part. Same can be said of Canada, Australia, Norway and Denmark. As the Buhari Administration just clocked one year in office, there has been a lot of parroting of seventeen years of uninterrupted democracy. The question is at which cost and at what level of develop­ment. This is not a critique of the PDP which had been in power at the centre for most of those years or the APC. We must be courageous and accept our collec­tive incapacitations, afterall 60% of the major players in APC had executive power as PDP Governors etc. As one preacher paraphrased on radio not long ago, we have all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of our maker, God.

For people like me, it is important to know our past and that is why I think it is wrong not to make history com­pulsory in WAEC. However, dwelling daily on the failure of past administrations is not only irritating but a sign of unpreparedness to govern. What is the way forward – that is the real issue today.

Like in any field of scientific research, proper diagnosis is 50% of the cure or solution. Long – term mass education must remain at the core of our social emancipation. But what of the short and medium – term objectives? As long as politics remains attractive in terms of remuneration, so long will money which is at the root of all evils continue to occupy centre court in Nigeria. Courage demands that we take the bull by the horns and bring public officers’ pay at par with what obtains in civilised countries. There is a league of pay structure and Nigeria has to decide where she falls in.

The next thing Nigerians cannot afford to sweep under the carpet is the 2016 Appropriation bill. Section 58 (4) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (Amended) states “When a bill is presented to the Presi­dent for assent, he shall within 30 days signify his assent or that he withholds assent” The President said he refused to assent because there was a lot of padding (a word new to our lexicon) and it took another six weeks presum­ably for the bill to be unpadded. One is on the same page with the President and will not sign what is shrouded in dense clouds. The question now is, who has contravened our constitution and are there any consequences? The six weeks delay will negatively affect budget implementation .