Nigeria: In Search Of The Messiah

By Bayo Ogunmupe  

The alert that the occupants of the Bakassi Peninsula will soon become stateless, (being refugees) in Nigeria now, gives cause for concern. This alarm was sounded by the representative for Nigeria and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at the signing of the memorandum of understanding with ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja recently. The alert drew the attention of the world to the displacement of the people of Bakassi. These people are Efiks with linguistic and cultural affinity with Efiks of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Being Nigerians until Bakassi was ceded to Cameroon in August 2008 by the International Court of Justice.

Since then, Bakassi belonged to Cameroon but its residents remained Nigerians. Worse still, the two countries have not been serious in governing the territory inhabited by this people. Due to neglect by the Nigerian government, these people have nowhere to call their country. But evidence abounds that they are Nigerians because they registered and voted at Dayspring Island, Cross River State, Nigeria in 2015.

The people of Bakassi have chosen to remain Nigerians in spite of neglect. This is why we need a messiah to rescue Nigeria from predators who don’t see more than cornering oil money in Nigeria. We need a leader ready to tackle those seeking to balkanise Nigeria to satisfy their security concerns. Like the Jews who are still waiting for their messiah, we should start searching for an emancipator now. We need a leader who will emancipate Bakassi and lift us out of poverty.

Amidst the great yearning for a messiah came the confirmation by the First Lady, Mrs. Aisha Buhari that the government of her husband had been hijacked by a mafia. The Senate President, Dr. Bukola  first broke the news at the height of his feud with Buhari over his alleged alteration of Senate standing orders last year. The confirmation of the mafia takeover was a huge blow to us who view Buhari as the much awaited messiah that will transform Nigeria to the Utopian land of our dreams. It means this government is in the hands of a few jejune individuals.

Buhari: Going Aborrowing On A Market Day!

By Dare Babarinsa  

President Muhammadu Buhari may have been persuaded that the best way to kick-start our economy again is to go to the world with the begging bowl. The austere Buhari, with his simple lifestyle, represents the mood of the nation which is in need of new kind of leadership. He is unbundling the presidential fleet and removing the fat from more conspicuous muscle of the government. He has been trying. But so far, his effort has not yielded the quick fix that Nigerians expect. After all, we are a nation where the danfo driver, in order to see more clearly, consumes more and more paraga. So is this new loan our paraga?

*Buhari 

Borrowing is sweet; it is the repayment that is bitter. The President is looking for $29.9 billion from the European, the Asian and the African markets. He explained, in his letter to the National Assembly, that the money is needed for infrastructure development. With this jumbo loan, all federal roads would be reconstructed to last forever after. We would have electricity and our universities would be first class. Of course, members of the National Assembly too want their own part of the action. They believe the good time would soon be here again once we can borrow money. After all by the time our grandchildren would be paying, most of the members of the National Assembly would have already changed addresses to God’s own headquarters. Now they want the party to begin.

For us, however, it is a familiar road. During the First Republic, our leaders inherited the tradition from the British of trying to balance the budget. There was no need to spend more than you have earned. The leaders who led us to independence were great men who had great vision and tried their best to pursue their dreams. To understand the value of their service, you need to go to the universities they built. I do not know of any university in the South-West of Nigeria, and there are few in the world, that is better built than the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. It was a product of the government of Western Region during the First Republic. Ditto could be said about Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, built by the regime of Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Premier of the defunct Northern Region during the First Republic.

Aisha Buhari’s Insurgent Self-Assertion

By Alade Rotimi John  

It is perhaps appropriate to begin with the view echoed approvingly by narrators, commentators and analysts with respect to the comments of Mrs. Aisha Buhari in her a recent BBC interview to the effect that a new meaning (or, in fact, a refreshing niche) is being carved regarding the role of the wife of the President. The facile response of her husband rather than complement the deep thoughts of his wife, sadly casts a dark pall on a subject matter that is at once profound and vigorous. 

*Aisha Buhari 

Aisha has bemoaned the absence or non-inclusion in her husband’s government, of “Change!” elements representing the matrix of APC distinctiveness. She has metaphorically contrasted the scenario with a situation in which “Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop”. In this case, the proverbial monkey has worked its arse out but the baboon is mindlessly reaping the fruits of its labour to the chagrin of the apostles of change and their hangers-on.

There may dialectically be discerned in Aisha’s diatribe an almost incoherent ideological ministration regarding conflicting but germane issues of statecraft, intra-party relations, high-wired politics, cronyism, jobbery, etc.’inter se’. All these are critical or significant factors in a moral-ideological situation of a hotchpotch political arrangement which Aisha misleadingly refers to as “a movement”. The idea of a party of all-comers is in itself flawed ab initio. No unifying sense of purpose is discernible in APC’s conception or execution of policies and programmes.

There is no allegiance or commitment, among members, to a common ideal or goal. Groups within the party are working at cross purposes for the achievement of their respective group interests. In such a situation, as we unfortunately have on our hands, governance suffers groaningly. Aisha’s worry, no matter how deep or concerned, cannot take the place of the opportunism or crass selfishness that has already been factored or ingrained into the party’s processes; it cannot reverse or undo the damage which a desultory administration has wreaked on a faithful or trustful people these one and half years. The social and ideological framework for the change of our present unethical or amoral situation lies in the cultivation of a deep-seated culture of a popular democratic social order devoid of ethnic chauvinism, disrespect for hallowed institutions of state and impunity regarding order and set rules, etc.

The response or reaction of President Buhari to his wife’s comment in which he limits her roles to the kitchen, the living room and “the other room” will appear to be anachronistic in this age of proven women super-sonic performance of roles in rocket science, engineering, the professions of medicine and law, the arts, diplomacy and, even, in governance. Buhari’s faux pas is rendered even more repulsive or distasteful as it was made in a clime that has long overcome the bogey of the presumed prowess of the male person in all spheres of life, including in “the other room”. Our exhibit is no other than the headship of affairs and events in such an advanced country as Germany by a ruthlessly efficient Mrs. Angela Merkel. At a most distinguished level, there is now an evolved distinction not glibly as between a man and a woman but between the creative energies, cultivated gravity and gracefulness as may exist between a particular man or a particular woman.

Buhari And Remembrance Of Things Past

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

As the first half of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration lurches into the twilight, it is refreshing that he has given us an opportunity to interrogate his intervention in national politics from another perspective. Beyond the well-worn exploration of Buhari as a profile in persistence, having taken him over a decade to chase a return to power, we can now attend to the   relationship between personal tragedies and national glories.

*Buhari

It is now clear from Buhari’s disclosure in Benin during his commissioning of some projects of the outgoing Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole that his tragedy of incarceration after his overthrow in 1985 as military head of state remains a stimulant for his quest for regaining power.  Buhari said that he spent 40 months in a bungalow in Benin after he was overthrown by some corrupt army officers. In fact, he said that the coup was a preemptive strike against his crusade against some corrupt officers.

From that crucible of 1985, through the next 30 years, Buhari might have realised the essence of engendering an equitable society. But as he tells us, such a society is not attainable in so far as it remains a bastion for the proliferation of injustice as evident in the complicity of the judiciary in the denial of his electoral victories on three previous occasions. Of course, Buhari’s quest for an equitable society after suffering injustice is not an isolated case. Before him, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, among others appropriated a sense of injustice inflicted by warped state powers to develop their societies.

Even back at home, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was prised from prison to cobble together a dismembering nation. But in the case of Buhari, it is unfortunate that while his regaining of power after 30 years might have served a personal cathartic purpose, it is far from playing a significant role in his relationship with the need for the development of the country. For the danger that the nation faces today under the Buhari government is that at the end of his tenure, he would have succeeded in making millions of citizens to feel a sense of injustice and alienation from the society. This is the clear possibility that Buhari would engender through his policies and programmes.

If Buhari had truly learnt the lessons of suffering injustice, he would guard against fostering a sense of injustice. But does Buhari really have consideration for the need to ensure justice for others? Consider his  appointments  since he  became president. How have these ensured justice and the strengthening of the unity of the country?  In those appointments, Buhari brazenly favoured his northern part of the country. It is such nepotism that has thrown up a situation where from the National Assembly, the military, police, Department of State Services,  other security apparatuses, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to other major government agencies, the heads are northerners.

Ken Saro-Wiwa: 21 Years After

By Dan Amor

Today, Thursday November 10, 2016, indubitably marks the twenty-first anniversary of the tragic and shocking death of Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni kinsmen, in the evil hands of professional hangmen who sneaked into Port Harcourt from Sokoto in the cover of darkness. By his death, the Sani Abacha-led military junta had demonstrated, in shocking finality, to the larger world, that it was guided by the most base, most callous of instincts. 

*Ken Saro-Wiwa

As a student of Nigerian history, and of the literature of the Nigerian Civil War, I am adequately aware that Ken Saro-Wiwa, against the backdrop of our multicultural complexities allegedly worked against his own region during the War, the consequences of which he would have regretted even in his grave. But I write of him today not as a politician but as a literary man and environmental rights activist. We remember him because, for this writer, as for most disinterested Nigerians, Ken Saro-Wiwa lives alternatively as an inspirational spirit, and a haunting one at that. Now, as always, Nigerians who care still hear Ken's steps on the polluted land of his ancestors. They still see the monstrous flares from poisonous gas stacks, and still remember his symbolic pipe. Now, as always, passionate Nigerians will remember and hear the gleeful blast of the Ogoni song, the song Ken sang at his peril. Yet, only the initiated can see the Ogoni national flag flutter cautiously in the saddened clouds of a proud land. But all can hear his name in the fluttering of the Eagle's wing.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a modern Nigerian hero who did not sacrifice sense and spirit merely to pedantic refinements. As an aggrieved writer, appalled by the denigrating poverty of his people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their God-given land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to his country as a whole, a fair and just democratic system which protects every one and every ethnic group and gives all a valid claim to human civilization, he was an embodiment of the writer as crusader. There is, indeed, a prophetic, all-embracing commitment to a depiction of the reality of his Ogoni kinsmen in his works about which he seems helpless. For that matter, there is in his writing career, something of an overloading, of avocation and responsibilities variously devolving on the ethnographer, the creative writer, the polemicist, the politician and the activist. No doubt, Nigerians will wake up one day to discover that in the little man from Ogoni, the nation produced, without realizing it, one of the major literary voices of the contemporary world.

If Ken Saro-Wiwa weren't head and shoulders above the ranks of the organized stealing called military regime, and if he didn't amply deserve his position as a recognized and popular Commander-in-Chief of the Literary Brigade of his generation, I wouldn't be wasting my precious time here discussing his contributions to modern artistic creativity and minority rights awareness in Nigeria and the world. The great division in all contemporary writing is between that little that has been written by men and women who had clarified their intentions; who were writing with the sole aim of registering and communicating truth or their desire, and the overwhelming bulk composed by the consciously dishonest and of those whose writing has been affected at second or tenth remove by economic pressure, economic temptation, economic flattery, and so on. For Ken, "writing must do something to transform the lives of a community, of a nation. What is of interest to me is that my art should be able to alter the lives of a large number of people, of a whole community, of the entire country, so that my literature has to be entirely different." It could therefore be seen that as one who hailed from one of the marginalized minority areas of this country, Saro-Wiwa used his literature to propagate the delicate and monolithic national question.

Gov Ugwuanyi And The Rampaging Herdsmen

By Dan Amor 

Like a typical Nigerian nightmare, the incessant attacks on some communities in Enugu state by suspected Fulani herdsmen have generated more heat than light. In March this year, 70 youths on a rescue mission to extricate their people from the vice-grip of Fulani herdsmen at Ugwuleshi in Agwu local government area of the state, were rounded up and detained by security forces. 

President Buhari and Gov Ugwuanyi

On April 25, barely a month after the first incident, several indigenes of Ukpabi Nimbo village in Uzouwani local government area were reportedly killed by Fulani herdsmen. And most recently, a seminarian, Lazarus Nwafor, was killed and four others including a pregnant woman, severely injured by the herdsmen. The woman later gave up the ghost from the injuries she sustained during the attack. Apart from the usual pantomimes by the authorities that they would not tolerate criminal herdsmen, the Buhari-led Federal government appears helpless and lacks the political will to confront this hydra-headed monster threatening the peace and security of the country.

It is this ugly development which has generated sustained tension in the state hitherto acknowledged everywhere as the most peaceful in the entire South East geopolitical zone of the country. Standing in the middle of this tension is Mr. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, the governor and 'chief security officer' of the state on whose desk the buck stops. And since irrational impulses are not surprising in the stress and tension that characterise a demented society such as Nigeria, many furious indigenes of the Coal-City state are calling on the governor to declare war with the marauders. True, in an atmosphere of violence, reason is sometimes abandoned and humanitarian principles forgotten since the inflamed passions of the time lead men to commit atrocities. But the concern here is not with the psychological pathology of those who commit atrocities but rather with what has turned our nation to a slaughterhouse where human beings are daily murdered with intimidating alacrity.

It would, of course, be absurd to deny that the Federal government is implicitly or explicitly responsible for this carnival of anomie enveloping the nation. In the case of Enugu state where some of us virtually grew up, the lamentable absence of development before now, especially in the rural areas, provides an alibi for the germination and cross fertilization of criminals especially of the herdsmen variety. For instance, Enugu state parades some of the most dreaded and deadly forests in the South East. Some of these forests include Ugwuogo Nike, Umuopu Enugu Ezike, Umuogbo Agu, Ette in Igboeze North, Affa Eke Road by Ninth Mile Express, Akpakwumeze, Nimbo, Obollo Afor, Atakwu, Akwugbe Ugwu, Agwu, Ugwu Onyeama, etcetera. In fact, there are so many thick forests in Enugu state that would even make Sambisa Forests, the Boko Haram battle field pale into insignificance. For so many years, the Fulani herdsmen have been living in these forests and nobody cared any hoot to ask why they prefer to live in the forests like apes. It is in these forests that the herdsmen stay to perfect their strategies to unleash terror on their host communities since even the natives lack access roads and rural telephony to alert the police and other security agencies.

Accommodation Racket At the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN)

By I. B. Nga

Since the commencement of this new academic session, several students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), have been badly destablised by the very frustrating method deployed by the Student Affairs Department in the allocation of hostel accommodation to students. Worst hit are the final year students, many of whom have been left stranded. Instead of devoting time and energy to their academic work at this very critical and terminal stage of their stay at the university,   they are running from pillar to post trying to secure hostel accommodations, all to no avail.

 The computerised system should have made the process of hostel allocation very easy if it was managed by honest people. To obtain a hostel accommodation at UNN, one has to visit the UNN internet portal (http://unnportal.unn.edu.ng/), log in with one’s Student’s Identification Code and apply for a bed-space. If the student is allocated, he or she will print out an allocation confirmation slip and use it to go to the designated bank to pay for the accommodation.  

But from the very date the university reopened for this first semester, it was an uphill task for several students to even access the UNN portal online. When eventually, some of them succeeded and logged in to apply for bed spaces, the page kept giving out the following message: "All Rooms Have Been Allocated." But while many of the unallocated students remained stranded and distracted from their academic work which has since commenced in full force, those with “connections” always got privileged information as to the exact period the system would be activated by the university officials to start allocating again. And these would rush and log in to the portal to secure rooms for themselves, settle down and face their school work. But when the information eventually spreads and the other students start logging in also, the website would start again to say that "All Rooms Have Been Allocated." After sometime, it would begin to announce something different, namely, "Try Again Later." What a frustrating situation.

Now, despite these developments, there are still many rooms that are yet to be allocated at UNN. And from time to time, those with the "right connections" get informed when the portal would start allocating and would rush to secure rooms before information reaches other students who would only log in when it has stopped allocating. 

Not too long ago, there was a fire incident at one the hostels at the UNN and the building  is yet to be renovated as to be in use. The officials are hiding behind the modest shortage this has caused to perpetrate their nefarious activities. And so they create an artificial scarcity in order to give the accommodation to their preferred students – who probably may have greased their palms.

Nigerians, Beware Of Beauty Pageants!

By Uche Ezechukwu

I was billed to officiate at a beauty pageant-cum award giving ceremony, last Friday at Owerri, as keynote speaker. I had written what I considered a good speech and had got an expert to translate it into Igbo, as the entire proceedings at the Asa Igbo pageant would be in Igbo language. It was that refreshing departure from the norm, as well as the assurance by the organizers that it was not going to be like the run-of the mill pageants, about which I had since become suspicious, that had made me to agree to participate fully.

*Chidinma Okeke

I did not only agree to participate but had also made this newspaper, whose editorial board I chair, to throw its weight behind the planning and execution of the event with publicity. We had publicized and popularized the event as professionally as we could. We were convinced that we were supporting a good course, because the Asa Igbo pageant would be an occasion to glorify and promote Igbo language, values and culture.

The paper I prepared was directed at that noble theme. I had since started frowning at the promotion of female cleavages and nudity as signifying beauty. Hence, in the eyes of the different organizers of beauty pageants in the West and which has been copied line, hook and sinker by Nigerian organizers like Ben Bruce and co., the most beautiful maidens are those that flaunt their feminine attributes best and most alluringly before male audiences and judges and most audaciously. As a typical African, this definition of ‘beauty’ appears very defective to me, because in our African milieu, the beauty of a woman, especially the nubile female, is defined more by inside, unseen values than by the outward attributes which can be cosmetically achieved.

In the other words, many of the Miss This; Miss That which most of our beauty pageants have been turning out might, in fact, be painted sepulchers with stinking inside attributes, which to the ordinary African, does not constitute the beauty of a woman.

The organizers of the Asa Igbo pageant had assured us that they had the same lofty objectives as I was espousing when I first discussed with Mike Akabueze, the president of the Asa Igbo Foundation, as a condition for agreeing to the partnership with The Authority. They had assured me that their beauty queen would be one that could stand out any day as the ambassador of Igbo beauty as defined by Igbo culture and philosophy. I was completely bought over and made up my mind to deliver a paper that would add some colour to the event. The title of my paper was: The Woman as the Glory of Her Society, which I would have delivered in Igbo as: Nwanyi bu Ugo Mba.

Obasanjo And His 25 Billionaires

By Remi Oyeyem

The brief exchange (as reported by the News Agency of Nigeria via PUNCH newspaper on October 30, 2016) between Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Mrs. Folorunso Alakija at the 2016 Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Forum last weekend was very instructive in so many ways. It was very instructive because it underscored the kind of mentality possessed by those who have had the chance(s) to govern Nigeria. Or it underscored the misfortune of Nigerians to have been governed by the kind of leaders they have had so far.

*Obasanjo: Celebrating his 25 billionaires? 

Mrs. Alakija, according to reports, had fired the first salvo accusing the Obasanjo administration that it “illegally took an oil block” allocated to her company after her family had “invested all” to “strike oil in commercial quantity.” Mrs. Alakija said the following in addition:

‘She said, “This oil block is in 5000 feet depth of water and was extremely difficult to explore. It took 15 years from the time that we were awarded the licence in 1993 till 2008 when we first struck the first oil.

“When this event happened, 60 per cent out of our 60 per cent equity in the business, was forcefully taken from us by the government of the day without due process.

We had to fight back by going to court to seek redress and it took another 12 years for justice to be served in our favour.”

Obasanjo in his response had reportedly explained that the “action of the government then was in line with the Mining Act which regulates oil prospection and exploration.” He insisted that it was “not fair” for Mrs. Alakija to claim that she was denied what was rightfully hers. Obasanjo –Onyejekwe added “I do not know you from Adam and there is no reason I would have denied you what rightfully belonged to you. So, you struggled, and you have struck oil. God bless your heart.”

Then Obasanjo dropped the bombshell:

“My delight is to be able to create Nigerian billionaire and I always say it that my aim, when I was in government was to create 50 Nigerian billionaires.

“Unfortunately I failed. I created only 25 and Madam, you are one of them.”

There is nothing unusual about Obasanjo’s failing to create 50 Nigerian billionaires as he intended. He has always failed Nigerians in every endeavour he has been involved. But the larger question remains the inability of our leaders to follow due process in exercising power. Our rulers often act as if they are kings of the jungle and that the laws of the land do not apply to them. They exude beastly instincts permeated with ruinous vendetta in manifesting congenital need to demonstrate crude power.

To Mrs. Alakija, until she was allotted oil wells, no one has really heard about her. She was never associated with any known business endeavour. She did not descend from any rich family or was previously married to a billionaire of credible means. She became a billionaire because she was allotted oil wells. She is emblematic of the mis-governance that has always characterized our clime. She got to be allotted oil wells in a system where nothing was ever fair and without due process. She only used her connections with our power aphrodisiacs euphemized as rulers, to get the oil wells.

Mrs. Alakija is a Yoruba woman. Like the retired General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma she got many oil wells because of her proximity to crude power in Nigeria. None of them is from Niger Delta. With the publicly available list of the owners of oil wells in Nigeria, the people of the Niger Delta have been evidently short changed. How many Niger Deltans became billionaire as a result of owning oil wells?

Nigeria: Democracy Minus The PDP

By Abraham Ogbodo  

This is Nigeria’s fourth attempt at democracy hence the ongoing dispensation is aptly called the Fourth Republic. Ordinarily, some measure of mastery should be assured having gone through the same process four times over. But if nothing is learnt or mastered in subsequent performance and the approach remains constant, sheer repetition of a process is not going to translate to different outcome.

Last week, Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko visited Aso Rock Villa. It could be described as unplanned visit because the decision by Mimiko to be at the headquarters only propped up after INEC had made statements about parties and their candidates in the upcoming governorship election in Ondo State. Specifically, the governor was in Abuja to tell President Muhammadu Buhari that Ondo State is being pushed to the precipice following the decision by INEC to stay with Jimoh Ibrahim, instead of Eyitayo Jegede, as the PDP candidate in the November 26 election.

The background to all of this is rather familiar. There is a certain Ali Modu Sheriff who has become like a shadow that cannot be detached from the substance except darkness is induced. This is what has forced the PDP to have two leadership faces. Modu Sheriff is one and the other is former governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi. This monstrous outlook has subsisted even when the party has gone extra lengths within the prescribed rules to prove that it has only one face represented by Makarfi. Somehow, the party is not able to use all the means of communication available to it to say to who its national chairman is and who is not.

Others who seek to reap political benefits call the current state of affairs in the PDP intra-party crisis. Because the crisis is not yielding to judicial arbitration, the capacity of the party to attack and kill the snake in its house is greatly weakened too. If nothing is done, the PDP could be obliterated to free the democratic space of opposition politics. There is no other quicker way for a conscious society to migrate on its own volition from democracy to dictatorship.

For now, this whole thing about the PDP’s inability to solve its problems may taste very sweet. The official position is that the APC and the presidency have no hands in what is happening in the PDP, contrary to the belief in some quarters. The problem has been fully offloaded at the doorstep of the judiciary to crack. It is taken that the courts have the powers to decide even, in spite of the PDP, who between Modu-Sheriff and Ahmed Markafi is the authentic chairman of the party. Consequently, persons and institutions central to the imbroglio and which can at least voice opinions to create a refraction in the narrative are showing an unusual degree of piety.

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. 

Investigate Allegations Against Amaechi, Onu

By Frank P. Ujuh

The anti-corruption war is getting messier everyday with some startling revelations. After the Department of State Services (DSS) sting operation on some judges in the country and government’s explanation over what most Nigerians regarded as an attack on the judiciary, some of the judges have started dishing out their own side of the story.

Rotimi Amaechi and President Buhari 

First to throw the salvo was one of the arrested Justices of the Supreme Court, Justice John Inyang Okoro. Justice Okoro had in a letter to the National Judicial Council (NJC) alleged that his refusal to do the bidding of the Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, over election matters in Akwa Ibom, Abia and Rivers states is the source of his travails.

According to Justice Okoro, “My Lord, I strongly believe that this my travail is not unconnected with the verbal report I made to you on February 1, 2016 about the visit to my official residence by Rotimi Amaechi, former governor of Rivers   State and now Minister of Transport. In that report, I told you my lord, that Amaechi said that the president of Nigeria and the APC mandated him to inform me that they must win their appeals in respect of Rivers State, Akwa Ibom State and Abia State at all costs.”

However, Amaechi’s media aide, David Iyofo, has denied the allegation. He said that “This accusation from Justice Okoro against Amaechi is a figment of his imagination, concocted to obfuscate and politicize the real issues for his arrest and the DSS investigation of allegations of corruption against him.

"The claims by Justice Okoro against Amaechi are blatant lies, bereft of any iota of truth or even logic. Amaechi did not, and has never approached Justice Okoro in respect of the cases Okoro mentioned or any other case. This is a cheap attempt, albeit, political move to drag the name of Amaechi into something he knows nothing about. Justice Okoro should face his issues and leave Amaechi out of it.”

When the dust raised by Okoro’s allegation is not yet settled, another Supreme Court Judge, Justice Sylvester Ngwuta came up with another weighty allegation of corruption against Amaechi and the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu over election matters. Justice Ngwuta had in a letter addressed to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, explained that his problem dated back to 2014 when Amaechi approached him to set aside Ayo Fayose’s election in order to make way for the former governor of Ekiti State and now Minister of Solid Mineral, Kayode Fayemi.

According to Ngwuta, “My present plight started sometime between 2013 and 2014. I represented the then Chief Justice of Nigeria in an event organised in the International Conference Centre. He begged me to ensure that Fayose’s election was set aside and another election ordered for his friend Fayemi to contest. I told him I would not help him and that even if I was on the panel, I had only my one vote.”

*Dr Ogbonnaya Onu and  President
Muhammadu Buhari

Justice Ngwuta also alleged that a former governor of Abia State, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu contacted him to help sway the Court of Appeal’s decision on Ebonyi State governorship election matter. Amaechi’s media aide, David Iyofo said that “Justice Ngwuta’s allegation is nothing but pure fiction, a dubious diversionary tale concocted to muddle the very serious issues of his arrest and investigation by the Department of State Services (DSS).”

In the same vein, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu has denied the bribery allegation by Ngwuta. According to Onu, “ I am astonished that Justice Ngwuta made such statements against my humble self, especially considering that he is my brother, friend and long standing associate of almost three decades.”

Onu further pointed out that “I have labored with other compatriots to strengthen the depth and reach of participatory democracy in our beloved country. in doing so, I am conscious of the essence of the rule of law as a vital component of true and enduring democracy and the important need to treasure, protect and defend it at all times. Even as a student, teacher, engineer and administrator, I have always worked tirelessly to uphold the rule of law.”

Despite the spirited denials by the two ministers, the allegations made by Justices Okoro and Ngwuta against Rotimi Amaechi and Ogbonnaya Onu are too weighty to be dismissed with a wave of the hand. The aim of the fight against corruption will be utterly defeated if these allegations are not thoroughly investigated. In fact, the relevant investigative organs should wade into the matter without any further delay.

The investigation has become necessary considering the fact that the allegations border on bribing judges against election petition matters, especially those in Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Abia, Ekiti and Ebonyi states. It is worrisome that all the states concerned in these allegations are in the hands of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and those named in the bribery allegations are chieftains of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

While we hold those mentioned in the allegations innocent until the contrary is proved, we call for urgent investigation of the sundry bribery allegations against the serving ministers of this administration. It is in the interest of the ministers that the matter is investigated.

For the investigation to be thorough, the two ministers must step aside. Since the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo has affirmed that corruption is in all arms of government, the fight against corruption should be extended to those involved in the executive arm. Much of that had been the lot of the legislature and recently of the judiciary.

The Federal Government should not bury this matter under the carpet. This matter should not be treated like a family affair. Since these allegations have been brought to the public domain by the Supreme Court Justices, they deserve to be investigated. To do otherwise will jeopardize the current anti-corruption agenda of the present administration.

Every person accused of corruption must be thoroughly investigated and there should be no cover up of any kind. Nigerians are watching to see this happen. It will be recalled that the anti-graft war of the present dispensation has been accused of being selective and political. Nigerians want a departure from such posture. Let all corruption allegations against those in power also be investigated.

Ujuh writes from Abuja

Biafra Not Nigeria's Problem

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Biafra is not one of the problems besetting Nigeria. Those un­able to appreciate this fact may require a dose of creative thinking. Nigeria's stubborn thorn in the flesh is its adamant repudiation of the self-evident concept of the changelessness of change, upon which sits a crippling unwillingness to engage that same constancy of change. There are two random but famous declarations – one little remembered today, the other something of a mantra – that neatly wrap up the na­tional antiparty to inexorable change and its management.

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu taking
 the oath of office as the Head of State of the Republic  of Biafra in 1967 

On January 15, 1970, there was a ceremony at Dodan Barracks, Lagos, the then seat of political power. Biafran acting Head of State, General Philip Effiong, Colonel David Ogunewe, Colonel Patrick Anwunah, Colonel Patrick Amadi and Police Commis­sioner Patrick Okeke had gone to submit Biafra's docu­ment of surrender, which of­ficially marked the end of the civil war. "The so-called rising sun of Biafra has set forever," declared Head of State Gen­eral Yakubu Gowon, on that occasion. In the leaps and dips of Nigeria's turbulence, it is common to hear politicians of varying persuasions de­claring, as a way of "helping" to stabilize the listing ship of state, that "Nigeria's unity is not negotiable."

Between Gowon's pre­sumption of Biafra's finality, which rode on the crest of tri­umphalism and was hailed as prescient by many, including Gowon's biographer Profes­sor Isawa Elaigwu, and the incessantly voiced exclusion of terms on Nigeria's one­ness, lies the country's prob­lematic. General Gowon is alive and bouncing. Were he to honestly comment on his 45-year old declaration today, he would readily admit to not having thoroughly considered all sides of everything. For it is clearly outside the bounds of political authority to decree the irreversible amputation of human predilection and proclivity. The current hoopla around Biafra lends credence to the assertion.

Now, there is something baffling in the oft-repeated statement on Nigeria's unity not being negotiable. The statement does not mean that Nigeria's unity is a fait ac­compli. It simply insists on a spiteful denunciation of any thought of mapping out a sus­tainable road on which the assumed or anticipated na­tional unity must travel, free from iniquity and cataclysms; a method for mastering the imperatives of national unity which is, anywhere in the world, a particularly daunt­ing proposition. It is because Nigeria has kept its back ob­durately turned to change that even the littlest molehill on its uncharted road invariably becomes a precipitous moun­tain. 

Rotimi Amaechi: Test of Buhari’s Anti-Corruption War

By Wale Suleiman

A judge is not a lawyer, and neither is he an advocate. A judge is a priest. His vineyard is the temple of justice. But a judge doesn’t make prophesies. He doesn’t have a crystal ball. He only makes pronouncements. But he’s guided, not by the gods, but by the rules that define justice. He is an interpreter of the law when justice is at stake.

That is why he is a revered priest because in his interpretation lies life and death. He must not succumb to the human whims, yet he is a human being. He must keep fidelity to the lifeless words of the law. That is why the law has been described as an ass. The law is a tyrant, and the judge is always a victim of that tyranny.

That is why dubious politicians don’t take chances. They find ingenious ways to sway the judge. They hire lawyers in good reckoning of the judges who act as go between, and dangle sometimes irresistible offers. Some judges succumb to the lucre and desecrate the temple. They compromise the law, and justice. This country has seen it often and often.

Thus when the Department of State Security recently raided the residences of some senior judges believed to have soiled their robes, many were not surprised. But many were scandalised only by the manner of the raid, which portrayed the system as crude and uncivilised.

But since after the raids, the tables have started turning and the hunters are becoming the hunted. The judges whose homes were raided started fighting back. It was Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal Capital Territory High Court who fired the first shot. He wrote a well-publicised letter to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, and Chairman of the National Judicial Council, NJC, explaining why he became a target of the DSS. He pointed fingers at the Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice as the man behind his travails.

He said his arrest was a revenge from Malami, whose arrest and detention he ordered over a professional misconduct while he was judge in Kano between 2004 and 2008.

But when Inyang Okoro, a Justice of the Supreme Court, made his own ‘pronouncement’, and narrated how Rotimi Amaechi, Minister of Transport, committed blasphemy, it was not only damning, it was earth-shaking! Okoro, in a letter to the CJN wrote that his ordeal was tied to Amaechi’s visit to his residence, alleging that the minister “said that the President of Nigeria and the All Progressives Congress mandated him to inform me that they must win their election appeals in respect of Rivers State, Akwa Ibom State and Abia State at all costs.”

Corruption: Suspension For All

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

While the plaudits tend to dim the caution against the danger of repudiating the constitutional forts that guarantee the stability of our society in the guise of prosecuting the anti-corruption campaign, we must keep on reminding ourselves of the desiderata for the realisation of the vision of a transparent society that President Muhammadu Buhari seemingly holds.

*Buhari 

As this column has often stressed, there is no doubt that corruption is an enervating plague that must be rooted out of our society to pave the way for an equitable distribution of the wealth with which this nation is immeasurably endowed.

Yet, in arresting and prosecuting the corrupt among us, we must guard against being befuddled by our identification with the ruling party. It is such uncritical alignment that has blurred the vision of those who should have declared the obvious excesses that have smeared the anti-corruption campaign intolerable.

True, no one who is keenly aware of the grim reality that the nation has suffered despoliation due to the complicity of the corrupt guardians of the laws of the land would query the raid on the residences of judges who allegedly have been living on sleazy funds. Again, we cannot easily render impeachable the idea of the judges being on suspension until they exonerate themselves from their alleged involvement in practices that strongly detracted from their professional integrity.

Thus, the National Judicial Council (NJC) may soon buckle under the pressure being mounted on it to suspend the judges. The NJC may no longer bear being accused of complicity with the judicial officers whose residences the Department of State Services (DSS) raided for allegedly perverting the course of justice after being bribed with dollars. Of course, apart from the DSS and the president, no one else knows how compelling the incriminating evidence against the judges are. But to save the judiciary from the moral absurdity of judges accused of corruption presiding over cases of financial sleaze, they may have to be suspended while their investigation lasts.

But it would remain an ominous omission that mocks the anti-corruption drive if it is only the judges that would be on suspension because of the allegations against them. This is where the Buhari government must allow equity to lend credibility to the anti-corruption campaign. The judges have alleged that they are being haunted by the security agency of the government not because their professional credibility is in question, but simply because they have refused to do the obnoxious bidding of some of those in the ruling party.

Indeed, they did not mince words. Justice Sylvester Ngwuta accused the Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and Ogbonaya Onu of asking him to influence judgments in their favour. Ngwuta alleged that Amaechi asked him to illegally remove Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and Nyesom Wike of Rivers State as governors. Before then, Justice John Inyang Okoro accused Amaechi of asking him to pervert justice by making sure that election appeal cases for Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Abia states favour him.

Those Spoiling Nigeria

By Sunny Ikhioya
The foundation of any nation state is based sorely on unity, you cannot attain unity without peace and justice. And, you cannot attain peace and justice without love and honesty. To enable us understand this further, let us look at our national anthem that we all stand up everyday to honour.

 Those who composed our national anthem had this in mind when they wrote in the last verse of the first stanza thus: “One nation bound in freedom, Peace and Unity”. Have we really considered the weight of this verse as we recite when the opportunity presents itself? Have our leaders really tried to govern this country in an atmosphere of fundamental rights, as enshrined in the United Nations charter on freedom?

Has it not been a situation of the strong always oppressing the weak ? Have the minority rights ever been upheld to the letter as enunciated in our Constitution? One good thing that is happening in this country is the discovery of crude oil in places outside the Niger Delta, like in Lagos and a few in the north as being touted in certain circles. Will these oil producing areas be treated the same way the Niger Delta region has been treated, with disdain and neglect? My answer is no.

Already, the rumour mill is rife with stories about relief and compensation given to areas affected by the oil drilling activities in the north, especially to  Emirs. The NNPC is in position to clarify details on this but surely they will not get the Niger Delta treatment. I do not know if our leaders take time to read and digest the national anthem, the second stanza, verses five and six which speaks of  building a nation  “ In love and honesty to grow, And living just and true”. Have we related to ourselves in love and honesty? Where the Jigawa man is saying that the oil in Bayelsa belongs to Jigawa?

 Why have the Niger Delta people been completely deprived of the control of their natural resources? The Petroleum Industry bill, PIB, designed to take care of the interest of all, has been kept in the cooler by the majority ethnic groups in the National Assembly for almost eight years now. Where is the justice in that? The last verse of our national anthem says; “To build a nation where peace and justice shall reign”.  It is indisputable that, in a nation where peace and justice reigns, progress is guaranteed. The composers of our anthem noted this fact and all of our past and present leadership have accepted it as such. It therefore follows that all the past leaders,  including the present leader ship have failed to govern with justice, honesty, fairness and equity.