Is Bola Tinubu Overwhelmed Or Simply Incompetent?

 By Dan Onwukwe

When things go wrong in a country, it’s fair to ask: why? Why are things steadily getting worse rather than better since Bola Tinubu was sworn in as President of Nigeria a little more than 8 months ago?

*Tinubu
Is the worsening insecurity, unbearable hardship and a  near collapse of the economy, the result of his incompetence, or simply, that of a leader who was badly packaged and sold to  a large segment of unwary public, but is now completely overwhelmed by the weight of the challenges confronting the country? Better still, and curiously saddening, has Tinubu become the biblical Rehoboam, of Nigerians? You still remember Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, and king David’s grandson who became the instrument to punish and divide Israel?( I Kings 11:11-13). 

2019: The Irony Of Buhari’s Second Term

By Evaristus Bassey

If all politics is local, there must be an exception in Nigeria. Here, all politics is selfish, especially southern Nigeria politics. If President Muhammadu Buhari wins another four year term, it wouldn’t be because of any stellar performances; it would be because of southern Nigeria politicians. Buhari has always won large in the North East and North West until the 2015 momentum thrust victory into his hands largely because he teamed up with Tinubu the strong man of the South West.

*President Buhari 

Just a few months ago the Senate President Saraki confirmed my earlier suspicion that Tinubu’s aggressive support for Buhari for 2019 after a lull in their relationship was essentially because he hoped for Buhari to handover to him in 2023. Tinubu is quoted by Saraki as saying that he would support Mr. President for 2019 even if he Buhari was on a stretcher because it was the surest way to guaranteeing his own 2023 ambition of being president.

Nigeria: Their Tomorrow Will Surely Come!

By Dan Amor

Are Nigerians hopeful of the day after? The collective answer to this rhetorical question is a resounding NO. If Nigerians are no longer hopeful of tomorrow, they deserve pardon. For, never in the history of mankind have a people been so brutalized by the very group of people who are supposed to protect and take care of them. They ought to be pardoned knowing full well that their manifest state of hopelessness has extended beyond disillusionment to a desperate and consuming nihilism. Which is why the only news one hears from Nigeria is soured news: violence, arson, killing, maiming, kidnapping, robbery, corruption, rape.

*Buhari, Obasanjo and Abdusalami

It is sad to note that Nigeria is gradually and steadily degenerating into the abyss. Even in a supposedly democratic dispensation, a sense of freedom, a feeling of an unconditional escape, a readiness for real and absolute change, is still the daydream of the whole citizenry. Everything is in readiness for the unexpected, and the unexpected is not in sight. You cannot possibly conceive what a rabble we look. We straggle along with far less cohesion than a flock of sheep. We are, in fact, even forced to believe that tomorrow will no longer come. Quite a handful of us are simply robots without souls, as we are hopeless because we are conditioned to a state of collective hopelessness.

Nigeria: Living With Two Presidents

By Ochereome Nnanna

Section 145 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, (As Amended) has this to say about the power of the Vice President in the absence of the President:

“Whenever the President transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President”. 

*President Buhari and VP Osinbajo

Because of the cynical nature of Nigerian politics which is sadly rooted in religion, ethnicity, sectionalism and familial interests (factors that corrupt and debilitate our constitutional democracy), a constitutional enactment as precise and self-explanatory as the Section 145 is still made to seem hard to grapple with.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who has done very well in respecting the Constitution by transmitting such letters to the leaders of the National Assembly on each of the two occasions he went abroad to tend to his health problems, however, introduced confusion into the issue when he said Vice President Osinbajo would “coordinate” the activities of government in his absence. The President was heavily criticised for this strange definition of the status of the Acting President, though it hardly matters since it is the Constitution, not the President that defines roles played by everyone in our democracy.

This is the second regime in which our President had to be taken out of the country for an extended stay out of power. When the case of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua took place late in November 2009 he did not transmit any letter as Buhari does. By February 2010, murmurs over a power vacuum became cacophonous and Yar’ Adua’s handlers caused the British Broadcasting Corporation to air an “interview” he granted to show he was not incapacitated.

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.

Buhari’s Strategists Chasing Ants

By Reuben Abati 

President Muhammadu Buhari’s strategists, if they are at work at all, are chasing ants and ignoring the elephant in the room. They do him great disservice. Their oversight is hubristically determined either by incapacity or a vendetta-induced distraction. It is time they changed the game and the narrative; time they woke up. 

*President Buhari 

It’s been more than 15 months since the incumbent assumed office as President, but his handlers have been projecting him as if he is a Umaru Musa Yar’Adua or a Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, first time Presidents who could afford the luxury of a learning period before settling down to the job, and who in addition must prove themselves to earn necessary plaudits. In making this mistake, President Buhari’s handlers created a sad situation whereby they have progressively undermined his image. 

The truth is that Muhammadu Buhari is neither a Yar’Adua nor a Jonathan. He may have sought the office of President in three previous elections, before succeeding at his fourth attempt in 2015, but he came into office on a different template. He had been Head of State of Nigeria (1983-85) and had before then served his country at very high levels as military administrator, member of the Supreme Military Council, head of key government institutions and subsequently from 1985 -2015, as a member of the country’s Council of State, the highest advisory body known to the Nigerian Constitution. 

In real terms, therefore, General Muhammadu Buhari did not need the job of President. If he had again lost the election in 2015, his stature would not have been diminished in any way. His place in Nigerian history was already assured. That is precisely why it was possible to package him successfully as a man on a messianic mission to rescue Nigeria from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and whatever is ascribed to that in the emotion-laden field of Nigerian politics. 

He might have acquired many IOUs when he assumed office in 2015, as all politicians do, but he was not under any pressure to pay back and he was so well positioned in the people’s reckoning and historically that he could call anyone’s bluff and get away with it. That much is of course obvious. Many of the persons and groups who could claim that they helped him to get to power a second time are today not in a position to dictate to him. 

Long before such persons left their mother’s homes for boarding school, he had made his mark as a Nigerian leader. He could look them straight in the eye and cleverly put them in their place. Corrupt patronage is a strong element of Nigerian politics and so far, President Buhari has shown a determination to limit the scope of such politics. Whether that is right or wrong is a matter of political calculations, and if current intimations are anything to go by, that may even prove costly in the long run. 

Nonetheless, when a leader assumes office with his kind of helicopter advantages, it should not be expected that he would hit the ground like a tyro in the corridors of power. Not too many persons in his shoes get a second chance to return to power after a gap of 30 years. As it happened in his case, he would be expected to run the country as a statesman, not as a party man, as a bridge-builder, not as a sectional leader and as father of all. 

Aisha Buhari: New Face Of The Opposition?

By Steve Nwosu

First Lady, Aisha Buhari, is definitely working for the PDP.
And we can now officially enthrone her as the matriarch of the Wailers. Now, don’t ask me if she has ‘officially’ joined the PDP yet. But to underscore the fact that Hajia Aisha is currently being tempted to publicly tear her APC membership card (OBJ on my mind), President Muhammadu Buhari told a press conference in Germany last week that “I don’t know the party my wife belongs to”.

*Aisha Buhari 

So, officially, husband and wife are no longer in the same political party. My only problem for now is that I don’t know whether she belongs to the Makarfi/Wike faction or the Modu Sherrif faction. I also don’t know how much the umbrella people paid her to do what she’s doing.

Yes, if I or any other journalist or political commentator had said what Mrs. Buhari told BBC Hausa Service about Buhari and his government, I suspect the DSS, Police or EFCC would since have come calling. Yes, they might not resort to pulling down our doors or sneaking up on us like any gang of armed robbers and kidnappers would but bank accounts might have been frozen by now. And Lai Mohammed would be on air, talking about how we had been contracted and generously paid, by the PDP, to discredit Buhari’s government.

I think Aisha is coming from our rich and long production line of strong women in the corridors of power and leadership. Soft exterior, steely interior!

In Nigeria, we are not new to presidencies where the women wear the trousers and have the balls (if you’ll indulge me that expression).
Those who were close to the Goodluck Jonathan’s would swear that it was Mama Peace that had the balls. I was not close to the Umaru Yar’Aduas, but I’ve heard stories about Hajia Turai. President Olusegun Obasanjo may have been as stubborn as a he-goat, but people close to the then first family attest that his beautiful wife, Stella, was one woman OBJ could not put down.

I don’t know how the military leaders coped with their own wives, but legend has it that IBB stood no chance of ever making it to Maryam’s bedroom again if he had insisted, with the then Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), that Asaba should not be the capital of the then about-to-be-created Delta State.

Nigeria At An Anti-Corruption Rally

By Dan Amor

For most dispassionate observers of the Nigerian political scene, the only thing which has destroyed the fabric of this country even more than any conventional war, is corruption. This hydra-headed monster has become Nigeria's middle name. Aside from the untoward image this menace has wrought on the country and the insult and embarrassment it has caused innocent Nigerians abroad, it has inflicted irreparable damage to the basic foundations that held the country together. Corruption has stunted our economic growth, our social and physical infrastructure, our technological and industrial advancement and has decapitated our institutions, which is why our over 40 research institutes are no longer functional because they are headless. 

(pix: AFP)

Even our academic and military establishments and other security agencies cannot in all sincerity be exonerated from the deadly effects of unbridled corruption. The determination of President Muhammadu Buhari to combat corruption and to go after suspects irrespective of their ethnic or political leanings should enlist the sympathy of all well-meaning Nigerians. It is the more reason why even the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which controlled the central government and a greater number of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, until May 29, 2015, recently endorsed the corruption war.

As Nigerians we certainly do not need any soothsayer to tell us that ours is a corrupt country. We see corruption live everyday. We see Mr. Corruption stalk the streets, the roads and the highways across the country. We see Mr. Corruption bid us goodbye at the airports and welcome us back into the country. We Nigerians greet Mr. Corruption at the seaports and border posts as we clear our cargoes into the country. We shake the juicy hands of Mr. Corruption as we savour the winning of a lucrative contract. Truly, Nigeria, which in 1996 was ranked by Transparency International as the second most corrupt country in the world, achieved the utmost when in 1997, it was voted the most corrupt country on the face of the earth. Ever since, the country has had the misfortune of being grouped among the five most corrupt countries in the world. There can never be any stigma as heinous as this in the comity of nations across the world.

Since the current democratic political experiment started in May 1999, all successive governments have had to place anti-corruption war as part of their programmes of action, popularly known as manifestos or agendas. Yet, all had paid lip service to the fight against corruption except the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari which is showing signs of its determination to tackle the monster head on. As can be deduced from the body language and actions of the President himself, Nigerians are now confident that this battle will commence with the resoluteness it deserves. Successive administrations, in spite of their much vaunted hoopla over corruption war, were ironically refuting the claims of the Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) that Nigeria was stinking with the evil stench of corruption.

Jonathan: An Unlikely Avenger

By Amanze Obi

I am fascinated by the brewing effort by the authorities to package and sell our ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan, as an avenger. A section of the media had reported that the former president was involved in the formation and ongoing activities of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA). The story was not speculative. It was declarative enough. If your imagination, like that of many Nigerians, has been saturated with the oddities that change has inflicted on us, you cannot but see the new image being foisted on Jonathan as comical, and therefore, fascinating. It will provide us with the opportunity to be treated to some more histrionics.

*Jonathan and Buhari

According to the newspapers that carried the ‘scoop’, the story is the product of an intelligence report.  The report claimed that Jonathan started meeting with the avengers before the 2015 general elections.  The militia group, it said, was put in place to respond in prescribed ways should Jonathan lose the elections. One such way was to do what it is doing at moment. The renewed militancy in the Niger Delta region is, therefore, believed to be the product of Jonathan’s loss. That is the story before us.

But we must note that before its recrudescence, militancy has been an issue of concern in the region. The return of civil rule in the country after many years of military interregnum brought with it a new fervour. It provided the citizenry the opportunity to let off steam. The military muzzled free speech. Civil rule was the obverse of that.

It was in the wake of the new order that some elements in the oil-rich Niger Delta, who felt that they were not getting their due from the oil exploration and exploitation in their domain began to raise voices of dissent. They queried the situation where the goose that lays the golden egg is being starved. Their repudiation and rejection of this state of affairs eventuated in the agitation for resource control. That was the political angle to the agitation.

But it also had a military wing. Some angry youths, who do not have the patience for verbal engagements resorted to brute force. Many took to oil bunkering. They needed the proceeds from the crude to line their pockets and feel a sense of belonging. If they could not share in the oil wealth legitimately, they can, at least, help themselves with the crumbs.  It was in this way that some of them seized oil and gas installations and bombed them at will. Those who stood in their way, especially foreign nationals, were taken hostage and freed only when some handsome ransom was paid.

As should be expected, the unwholesome activities of the militants pitted them against the government. But it took ex-president Umaru Yar’Adua’s amnesty programme for some level of sanity to return to the region. The Jonathan administration, being an offshoot of Yar’Adua’s, also enjoyed relative peace from the Niger Delta militants.

But all of that have changed under the Muhammadu Buhari regime, owing largely to the disposition of the president to the Christian South. The president’s actions and inactions, so far, give the impression that he wrested power forcefully from an enemy and, as such, the enemy must be stigmatised and punished. 

Why Hasn’t Biafran Spirit Died?

By Asikason Jonathan

” What had started as a belief was transmuted to total conviction; that they could never again live with Nigerians. From this stems the primordial political reality of the present situation. Biafra cannot be killed by anything short of total eradication of the people that make her. For even under total occupation Biafra would sooner or without colonel Ojukwu rise up again”

– Frederick Forsyth

Let me start by disagreeing with Forsyth that apart from total eradication of Biafran people that Biafran spirit cannot be killed. The problem here is with the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and what Achebe described as the ‘Igbo problem.’

The 1999 constitution of the  Federal Republic  of Nigeria did not only incorporates the colonial mistakes of 1900s which made the Northern Nigeria a force  to be reckoned with in the country’s politics but it created also a leviathan out of the federal government to such a nauseating level that the component units are seen as dependents and not co-ordinates.

Many people have asked: what do Igbo people want? The answer is very simple! We want political inclusion, we want a society where fair play, justice and equity, rule of law and meritocracy reign – that’s just what Ndi Igbo want!

The resurgence in the agitation for Biafra lies on fact that the Igbo – 48 years after civil war – are yet to find their bearings in the Nigerian federalism. We are yet to distinguish between the dictionary and the political conception of the maxim: No Victor No Vanquished. Let us not forget Ojukwu’s question: What did he [Gowon] do to make the victor not being the victor and the vanquished not being the vanquished?

Corruption War In Nigeria: A Vote For President Buhari

By Dan Amor 

For most dispassionate observers of the Nigerian political scene, the only thing which has destroyed the fabric of this country even more than any conventional war, is corruption. This hydra-headed monster has become Nigeria's middle name. Aside from the untoward image this menace has wrought on the country and the insult and embarrassment it has caused innocent Nigerians abroad, it has inflicted irreparable damage to the basic foundations that held the country together.

*Buhari 

Corruption has stunted our economic growth, our social and physical infrastructure, our technological and industrial advancement and has decapitated our institutions, which is why our over 40 research institutes are no longer functional because they are headless. Even our academic and military establishments and other security agencies cannot in all sincerity be exonerated from the deadly effects of unbridled corruption. The determination of President Muhammadu Buhari to combat corruption and to go after suspects irrespective of their ethnic or political leanings should enlist the sympathy of all well-meaning Nigerians. It is the more reason why even the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which controlled the central government and a greater number of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, recently endorsed the corruption war.

As Nigerians we certainly do not need any soothsayer to tell us that ours is a corrupt country. We see corruption live everyday. We see Mr. Corruption stalk the streets, the roads and the highways across the country. We see Mr. Corruption bid us goodbye at the airports and welcome us back into the country. We Nigerians greet Mr. Corruption at the seaports and border posts as we clear our cargoes into the country. We shake the juicy hands of Mr. Corruption as we savour the winning of a lucrative contract. Truly, Nigeria, which in 1996 was ranked by Transparency International as the second most corrupt country in the world, achieved the utmost when in 1997 it was voted the most corrupt country on the face of the earth. Ever since, the country has had the misfortune of being grouped among the five most corrupt countries in the world. There can never be any stigma as heinous as this in the comity of nations across the world.

Since the current democratic political experiment started in May 1999, all successive governments have had to place anti-corruption war as part of their programmes of action, popularly known as manifestos or agendas. Yet, all had paid lip service to the fight against corruption except the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari which is showing signs of its determination to tackle the monster head on. As can be deduced from the body language and actions of the president himself, Nigerians are now confident that this battle will commence with the resoluteness it deserves. Successive administrations, in spite of their much vaunted hoopla over corruption war, were ironically refuting the claims of the Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) that Nigeria was stinking with the evil stench of corruption.

Buhari, Obasanjo And Emeka Offor

By Mohammed Al-Bishak

No sooner had Premium Times published on Monday, August 3, 2015, the first part of its interview with erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo than it went viral. Though the immediate context of the interview was the publication of Obasanjo’s controversial trilogy entitled My Watch, the questions from the interviewers were forthright and wide ranging, and the responses quite interesting. Early in the interview, Obasanjo devoted considerable time and sentiments to an evaluation of a controversial government contractor, Emeka Offor, and his activities.

*Emeka Offor

“Take for example the decision on privatizing all refineries”, remarked the former president in respect of certain decisions he took in the days of his administration which were reversed by the succeeding Umaru Yar’Adua governemnt which he had handpicked. “I explained (in my memoirs) that what I met were refineries that were not working, refineries that were given to an amateur for repairs, for maintenance, what they call turn-around maintenance, to the company of the Emeka Offor group. Where has Emeka Offor maintained refineries before? Where has he? That’s what we met. So, refineries were not working.”

The diligent team of reporters tried to find out from him why he did not bother to recover the huge amounts paid to Offor’s companies, and the retired army general, noted for ebullience, surprisingly sounded helpless before a mere civilian, a mere government contractor, almost half his age. Here are his words: “ (Recover money from)a man who was paid upfront? He had people. He got some police….People were there. And Emeka Offor, after I left (office), became friends with every government that has come”. Offor was, no doubt, friends with the Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan governments. With this interview, Obasanjo is strongly warning the new Muhammadu Buhari administration to avoid controversial contractors like a plague. Otherwise, they would ruin the new government they way they destroyed governments before it. I should think there is merit in the wise counsel because Buhari is globally recognized for high personal integrity, and his government is the last hope of the Nigerian people to get out of the corruption cancer which has metastised all over the country.

 

*Buhari and Obasanjo

It is necessary to explain the relationship between Offor and the refineries. Offor founded a firm known as Anchoff Strongholds which was a clearing agent for the Warri Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals Company (WPRC) and later became its supplier. Between 1993 and 1994 it stunned the petroleum industry worldwide by becoming the first African company to carry out a turn-round maintenance (TAM) on the 125,000 barrels per day WRPC. It was assisted by Gidado Idris, then permanent secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, who was to become chairman of all of Offor’s companies. But practically no work was done. A probe led by Aret Adams, the best group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) ever, was instituted. The report recommended the dismissal of the WRPC managing director, Dr Owokalu, for his role in the scandal. The government acted promptly. The report also recommended the blacklisting of Anchoff Strongholds and its promoters and their ban from ever doing business with the NNPC. It was accepted.

But in the typical Nigerian fashion, the latter recommendations were circumvented. Anchoff promoters formed a new company and named it Chrome. Meanwhile, Gidado Idris had taken over from Aminu Saleh as the new Secretary to the Government of the Federation under General Sani Abacha’s military dictatorship. Chrome was awarded the contract to do the TAM on the 210,000barrel per day Port Harcourt Refinery and Petrochemical Company, which is much bigger than the Warri refinery whose TAM had become an international scandal. Ever since then, all the country’s refineries have become comatose. This is the background to Obasanjo’s anger over the sweetheart deals between various Nigerian governments and Offor.

Yet, I have tremendous difficulties with the impression which ex President Obasanjo has sought to give about his relationship with Offor. There is overwhelming evidence that Obasanjo not only empowered Offor but went out of his way to do so; in the process he violated all known rules and ethical standards. I would like to cite just an example which I know pretty well: the Joint Development Zone (JDZ) between Nigeria and the twin island of Sao Tome and Principe.