TheNewsGuru

Author: Peter Tuketu

  • Delta PDP: Of Bruised Egos, Vaunted Ambitions; Armageddon and Peace – By Mideno Bayagbon

    Delta PDP: Of Bruised Egos, Vaunted Ambitions; Armageddon and Peace – By Mideno Bayagbon

    The Supreme Court judgment last Friday, which affirmed The Right Honourable Sheriff Oborevwori, Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, as the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Delta State, has brought some calm and opened two new doors. One to peace and the other to possible fragmentation and implosion. The first door is the possibility that the judgement will strengthen the various attempts to mend the fences of the warring parties and enthrone a mutually beneficial, cohesive peace. The other door is for both sides to stick uncompromisingly to deeply held positions, add fuel to the already flowing bad blood among the two major camps, ignite it and tear the party to shreds.

    The two camps, that of former Governor James Ibori, before now the undisputed leader, and demigod of the party in the state; and that of outgoing Governor and former godson of James Ibori, Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa, are at crossroad. They can choose either the part to mutual immolation or mutual survival. The two camps have been in a war of attrition, of supremacy, over who should decide who succeeds Okowa as governorship candidate of the party.

    Nevertheless, the door, which it seems, they are currently exploring, from feelers I get from both sides, is that of peace. There seems to be concerted efforts to resolve the agro, soothe bruised egos and chart a common ground, without which the 23 years reign of the party in the state could come to an angry end.

    Papered over in the last two years, the misgivings in the party nevertheless blew open, early this year, into a rupture of cataclysmic dimension. First, Governor Okowa was accused of attempting to breach the unwritten rotation agreement among the three senatorial zones in the state. Rotation of the governorship seat had started with James Ibori from Delta Central. Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan, from Delta South took over from Ibori and eventually, Ifeanyi Okowa, Delta North, who  is the outgoing occupant of the office. Though an Urhobo, the majority ethnic group in the state, Ibori, who instituted the rotation, had felt that without such an arrangement, other zones of the state might find it difficult to become governor of the state.

    In the seething, suspicious atmosphere in the party, the first open threat was when the Ijaws of Delta South, with the seeming, tacit support of Governor Okowa, started a campaign to have one of their own as governor. Their claim was that there was nothing like a  written rotation agreement. This was a-later-day position which Governor Okowa was also trying to canvass. The Ijaws said if there was anything like a rotation agreement, it should be among ethnic groups and not senatorial districts.

    The arrowheads of this was four times Senator, James Manager and the Deputy Governor to Okowa, Kingsley Otuaro. Both of them Ijaws were early entrants into the race. There are precedence to this: other ethnic groups, despite the rotation agreement have always contested for the position. But the unwritten agreement usually triumphs because whoever the governor is, his support is usually for the zone whose turn it was. Okowa, however, was seen to be against the majority Urhobo ethnic group who constitute Delta Central and whose turn, by the unwritten agreement, it is to produce the governorship candidate of the PDP.

    But the kernel of the quarrel and the division which emerged in the party was Okowa’s resolve never to support David Edevbie, the preferred candidate of James Ibori. His reasons I can reveal are many. The major one, however, is a lack of  trust. Ibori’s attempt to persuade the governor fell on ears already made up. Ibori too was uncompromising. For him, it is either Edevbie or it is Edevbie. Okowa decided to be his own man and chose to support Sheriff Oborevwori, an Urhobo effectively enthroning the rotation but on his own terms.

    Seen as an affront, and a demystification of Ibori as the leader of the PDP in the state, the die was cast. Attempts by the Urhobo Progress Union, UPU, leadership aligning with Ibori to have Edevbie as the preferred Urhobo candidate, a snub on the Speaker, Oborevwori; and other attempts by some groups favourable to Edevbie’s candidacy, met a brick wall. Even the externalisation of the quest  and rivalry to the national level, into national PDP and the Atiku Abubakar group, yielded no immediate beneficial results to have Edevbie as candidate. The resort to the courts, with more than 15 court cases, to thwart Oborevwori’s candidacy on the unproved allegations that he was an illiterate who parades certificates that are not his have all failed. It was one victory after the other for Oborevwori.

    Then the Supreme Court judgement which finally laid to rest the opposition within the party. Two divergent pathways opened. And the Ibori and Edevbie camp have offered an olive branch in the congratulatory message by Edevbie to Oborevwori. His support groups have all also extended congratulatory messages. But of course this seeming about turn is not a surprise. It is the open arm of the hidden reconciliation meetings that have been going on. Before the judgement, both of them had, through back channels of mutual communication, agreed on the path of peace and reconciliation. It had been agreed that no matter the outcome of the Supreme Court judgement, both teams will sheathe their swords, put aside their personal disappointments and work in the interest of the party.

    Knowing that Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, the Deputy Senate President and governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, himself a god-son of Chief Ibori, is waiting in the wings to reap from the fractious goings on in the PDP, and given that both Ibori who is a very close ally of the Presidential candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and Governor Okowa, the vice presidential candidate to Atiku Abubakar would not want to lose the state in both the presidential and governorship elections, the path of reconciliation was the only viable option.

    Commended is His Royal Majesty, Orhue 1, the Orodje of Okpe, the foremost traditional ruler in Urhobo land and chair of the Delta State Traditional Rulers Council.

     

    Mideno Bayagbon: mideno@thenewsguru.ng

  • Tompolo is new Minister, NNPC GMD, Head Navy, DSS and Custom – By Mideno Bayagbon

    Tompolo is new Minister, NNPC GMD, Head Navy, DSS and Custom – By Mideno Bayagbon

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

    ONE hundred days after General Muhammadu Buhari became president, Femi Adesina, his Special Adviser on media gleefully announced that a new Sheriff  was in town. He told the world that corruption had nose-dived and taken a flight on the assumed body language of the President. Almost seven years and seven months later, with corruption more emboldened and running riot, I am happy to announce that Buhari, dressed in that borrowed robe by Adesina has come out to denounce him and cede the position to the new kid on the block: Government Ekpemupolo, otherwise known as Tompolo. He is the new Sheriff who has generously acceded to receiving only a monthly N4 billion salary to do wonders in the creeks. And what wonders he has started doing.

    Tompolo, before now, a feared Niger Delta militant and severally a fugitive from justice, has generously accepted a waiver on his warrant of arrest from President Buhari and his All Progressives Congress, APC. What is left now is for him to be crowned the new Petroleum Minister. I dare say he should also be begged to combine this role with being Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Chief of Naval Staff, DG DSS and DG Customs. The reason is simple. What the combined occupants of these offices failed to achieve all these years, Tompolo has done in less than two months after they ceded their duties to him. Tompolo has put up a typical Nigeria drama and we are all entranced in charmed guffaws.

    Mercifully, the Petroleum Minister, Muhammadu Buhari; his deputy, Timipre Silva; the GMD NNPC, Chief of Naval Staff, DG DSS, DG Customs, etc., have not succumbed to shame, but have been typically Nigerian. Thank God we are not in climes where occupants of these offices would have been sacked, or think it wise to resign from office. In our well known culture, none of them will resign or be sacked or  arrested. None will submit themselves to investigation and, possibly, trial for their role in the humongous thievery which over the years has seen between 400,000 and 600,000 barrels of crude oil being stolen daily. No one will hold them culpable even if for negligence!

    Instead we are expected to clap for their courage. We are expected to  salute their boldness in going on photo-ops visits to the creeks of the Niger Delta as soon as Tompolo “discovered” hacked production and export pipelines. We are supposed to be impressed and should laud them. We should know, it is not them or their associates; it is not their conniving ignorance or deliberate blind eye but spirits and gods headquartered in Abuja, Lagos and other power bases who apparently rigged the pipelines. They, on whose table the buck stops, have gone beyond joining the rest of us in impotent rage at the billions of dollars the nation is losing monthly to oil thieves, and have gone themselves on sight seeing visits. That should convince us they truly mean well.

    They know that the right impression, in the right quarters, is all they need to continue to enjoy their exalted offices. That is why it is foolish not to know that they want us to believe that they want an end to the sweet, stolen crude; it does not oil  theirs and their friends private pockets. They are adept players of the Nigerian game, to wit, that ordinary Nigerians deserved to be easily fooled. A little gimmick here and there; ethnicity here and religion thrown in there and Nigerians  will move on to rant about other issues. They never seriously expect our almighty government officials to be punished . We are not a land of consequential actions visited on  infractions.

    Knowing that Nigerians are easily fooled, rushing to the creeks to  display manufactured surprise that such theft is being carried out so openly is a classic act. That way, government officials are absolved. No impudent need to lie to Nigerians that the shut eyes of the President, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, the DG of DSS and Customs, the Navy and all the military forces which swarm the oil producing creeks, are responsible. Of course with the media attention on the photo opportunities, and Nigerians being condoning humans, no further action is required. No investigations should unnecessarily  be expected as to the true identity of those responsible for this astonishing economic crime. No arrests, no trial or any further action is required. That is why the Petroleum Minister, President Muhammadu Buhari should not dignify the public shock and anger, that is why he should not come out to show he is aware of the goings on, and or to make any statement. What can Nigerians do but talk and talk and move on?

    Sheriff Tompolo too is a typical Nigerian business man, that is, when he removes his militancy gear. He too understands Nigeria so very well. By pointing out a few of the points where crude oil is stolen, and with the collaborating appropriate authorities having visited and made empty speeches, it is over. Tompolo now knows he is well secured in his contract which had earlier unnecessarily generated a lot of criticism. That is, until he decided to shut the mouth of critics with a peep into the humongous thievery, no, self help, going on in the creeks.  Mistake we make is to believe that the current exposure should lead to a stop of such nefarious activities.

    Let’s take a few steps back. The authorities have been lamenting that a large part of the crude oil being produced in Nigeria is stolen. Well established syndicates, who are ghosts and spirits, are reaping between $40 million to $60 million daily. And the government with all its security forces, with all its intelligence and surveillance officials and equipment is not expected to track and arrest them. Mathematically, it takes between only 20 to 60 huge ships carrying between one to three million barrels each, coming in daily, to ferry the  400,000 to 600,000 barrels of stolen crude away. This is even against the backdrop of the NNPC, under the Buhari government, could only buy and install a N50 billion surveillance equipment to confront the daily self help.

    This is akin  to, and yet diametrically the opposite of what some ignorant Nigerians call a huge scam that is fuel subsidy.  Nigerians must not forget it is not a Buhari government creation. Under the past governments it was rife. But under this one, the nation is said, incredibly, to be powering its vehicles with only 102 million litres of petrol daily. As a result, as we should expect, subsidy ran, and still is running, into trillions of Naira yearly. That is, until, by some magic fiat, the president ordered the NNPC to reduce it to 60 million litres daily. This is laudable even if 15 months earlier, even with the scam fully in place, subsidy was paid on only 38.5 million litres daily.

    We ought to celebrate the impunity, the connivance of the syndicate in government and their collaborators. They sensibly only ballooned the subsidy payment to only 102 million litres. Think about it, If 40 million litres of imported petrol, which the NNPC Group Managing Director told the nation, not too long ago, is daily smuggled across the Nigerian borders into neighbouring countries, shouldn’t we congratulate the appropriate authorities? Assuming, but not conceding, that this is true, for this huge trans-border smuggling, 3200 tankers of  30,000 litres capacity each are required, daily. These trucks, their owners, drivers and funders are also spirits beyond the ordinary eyes of the NNPC and the security forces. Only the truly unpatriotic will ask how much lies a people can tolerate.

    That is why what is left now, is for another annual N48 billion contract, akin to the one given to Tompolo, to be awarded to one of a troublesome person up north to help monitor and curtail the activities of the spirits who bring in 3200 fuel tankers into the country daily and abscond with 40 million litres. With Tompolo handling the crude oil thefts and this fellow in the north handling fuel smuggling, two of our major economic bleeding points would have been plugged.

    Try not to cry. We are a house of comedy.

  • Obi, Atiku and Tinubu want to fool us again: let’s all say NO – By Mideno Bayagbon

    Obi, Atiku and Tinubu want to fool us again: let’s all say NO – By Mideno Bayagbon

    Two weeks after the lid on campaigns was removed, it is now clear that we are on the old road that shields candidates, masks their short comings, and makes emperors of nincompoops. We are in the season of choreographed sound bites designed to leave a sedated populace enchanted with empty bombast.  We are in the season that leaves no room for voters to make intelligent decisions on which candidate best suits the interest of the country at this time.

    Except Nigerians rise up to say a loud NO, our politics will go mad again; our situation from bad to never land. We will repeat the same mistakes we have always made; and end up, again, with a president who does not own the campaign promises made on his behalf by a coterie of well oiled media teams, opportunistic hangers-on and consultants.  We will end up with another Buhari: ignorant, incompetent, clannish, religious and tribal irredentist, in a different hue.

    Until Nigerians begin to ask vigorous questions of the candidates, grill them on their party’s manifestoes; know from them, for certain, how they intend to tackle and solve the myriads of problems which hold the nation and people hostage, we are more likely than not to make the same mistakes we have made over the last 62 years. We must not allow an empty headed ethnic, religious, economic and out-of-tune jingoist to happen on us again. We have no one to blame this time but ourselves. For, if  we end up with a sick or out-of-tune pretender to the throne, we will be, of all people, the most foolish. We will be our own worst enemies indeed.

    With Nigeria currently a crawling 62-years-old-infant on diapers, it is left to Nigerians to decide what is best in their interest. Putting primordial sentiments  far away, they have to decide who to entrust the captain’s band, to lead the way out of the woods.

    The forest of leadership incompetence is dark, thick and steep. Hence it is not enough for the parties to stage-manage mega rallies like we have started seeing. Tens of thousands of people are induced and mobilised along the old tactics of deceptive make believe. Let’s sell falsehood along the known fault lines: this is our son, our choice for you; this is our religious flag bearer  and so on. Mega rallies designed to awe and overwhelm, which bear little or no consequence on how to get Nigeria out of the woods and working again. Soon, bragging rights will be “my rally is bigger than yours” and not my ideas of how to solve the problems of Nigeria is far scalable, more authentic, more achievable than yours. Basically, the rallies remain candidates ego massaging carnivals of dance and songs. Venues for back-slapping and empty rhetorics.

    We are not going to vote for rallies or for spokesmen, or consultants, or for sexed up advertisements. If all things go well as envisaged, out of the trio of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and Mr Peter Obi, one of them will emerge as the President elect. This is the time to hold their backs to the fire, to grill them, to know for real that what they are promising is what they will be delivering. it is not enough for them to make bombastic promises of I will do this or I will do that. We need to know first, if what they are promising is what the country needs at this time. We need to know how the one who makes a promise is going to practically implement his promises; how much they will cost; where the funding will be got and how long it will take to carry out. Candidates must own their campaign promises.

    When a candidate says he will get the economy working again, we must not rush to embrace him, unquestioningly. When they say they will create jobs for the youths, fix the almost nonexistent infrastructure, including providing reliable power supply, we must be skeptical. We have been fooled too many times. Unless we do our part, and do the homework now, it is useless to tie our fate to the promises of any of the candidates. Whether you are Articulated, BATified or OBIdient, you will be a fool, be as guilty as the politicians who have raped and raped you repeatedly with so much undisguised relish if your support is borne out of foolish, emotional manipulation.  If  your activism is to insult and abuse others and leave a proper interrogation of the candidates and their promises, you are one of the enemies of Nigeria.

    Let’s be clear. It is not the turn of any of these candidates, as an imagined right. That is an insult on our collective integrity, taken too far. What arrant arrogance! Truth is : it is the turn of the brutalized and pauperized citizens. It is their turn to stand up and ensure that only the candidates who will meet the real needs of the people get their nod. If not they will still end up with, for example, buccaneer legislators who appropriate more than 25% of national wealth to themselves. The nation will witness another set of self centred National Assembly members, divorced from our common reality and grief, whose annual budget is five times what is voted for education and health. Yet they are only about 500 people. The same is true at the states, with an average of 25 legislators per state. Indeed, you only need to see the convoy of the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and their deputies; or the convoy of Speakers of the State Houses of Assembly, Commissioners and so on,  to know that the presidency is not the only waste pipe of our economy; that we must broaden our vigilance.

    What  am I driving at? I am saying that the mistake we made with a Buhari, who never truly promised us anything (in fairness to him), should not be repeated. His associates hoodwinked us with promises they never intended  for implementation. They told us what they felt we wanted to hear; what they knew we will fall for.  As we have found out, they sold to us as a strong and compassionate leader, but ended up a wimp,  who was  incapable of articulating any of the policies outlined.  The likes of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Bukola Saraki, Rotimi Amaechi, Governor Nasir El Rufai knew how to fool us. We expectedly fell for their trickery. Today, no one is holding them to account. One or more of them are even seeking elective office. They are dubiously distancing themselves from all the promises embedded in the “Change” they sold to us as the mantra of the Buhari  regime. If we had grilled Buhari and asked him to give us details about the four policy pillars on which he rode to power, we would perhaps not have made the mistake of electing him. We would have seen him for who he truly is: a parochial but resolute religious bigot who his wife Aisha has now come out to expose as one who suffered from PTSD for years.

    Let’s hold the candidates and their parties to account now. Let’s pick their promises with a fine comb; let’s sift out the rotten mangoes. Let’s ensure every one of them is clear headed, with well thought out plans and programmes borne out of a passion to reverse the downward slide in our fortunes these past many years. Let’s have the details of what they are talking about. Let  them convince us they know the problems and how to tackle them. Let’s even go to the extent of compelling them to go through rigorous health checks. We cannot afford a repeat of the situation where two of our last three occupants of the office of president were health incapacitated, with one even dying in office. We must not be fooled to take a six seconds bicycle exercise  by Bola Tinubu, or some lame dance steps by Atiku Abubakar as signs that they are healthy. We must get to know the true state of health of Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Nigeria needs a president with a healthy mind, in a healthy body to shoulder the responsibility of governing it.

    The top three candidates, we all know, are not our brightest and best. But they are what we have to chose from. That’s why we must be circumspect and pick the best. Marching for them, or even voting for any one of them is not enough. We must go for the one who is best positioned to tackle the humongous problems bedeviling the nation. We must get it right this time or there is the possibility that the nation could tip over into a political, economic and social implosion.

     

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

  • TNG Analysis: How 2023 election will be won and lost [Part 1]

    TNG Analysis: How 2023 election will be won and lost [Part 1]

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

    Truly interesting days lie ahead in our journey to the 2023 General Elections. I look at the ecstatic, confident smiles of the supporters of the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, the cocksureness of the Atikulated group and the self assured belief of the BAT brigade, and as a veteran in these games, I can only shake my head and smile.

    Don’t get me wrong. There are possibilities of a revolution afoot in Nigeria led by the youths. Politically gang-raped and neglected over time, they are up in arms. And then there is the seemingly innocuous court case which ousted the outgoing Osun State Governor, as the duly elected candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the last Osun gubernatorial elections, which he lost. The wider implication, if the Supreme Court concurs, might mean the APC cannot field any candidate in the 2023 elections. Neither here nor there yet, it is a trump card, someone up there is holding close to his chest as a simple road to Aso Rock. But that is a story for another day. There is also the hoopla, the divisions, the internal wrangling and schemings in both the APC and PDP threatening their campaigns. Chairmen of both parties are in the loop of political skirmishes and their heads may be sacrificed on the altar of Golgotha.

    Last Wednesday, the noose on the neck of election campaigns was loosed and gladiators unleashed. As predicted last week, in this column, the media war game started immediately. The Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, muscled his way into most of the national newspapers front pages, wrapping them around with his message. This financial power show, which involved possibly hundreds of millions of Naira, like we earlier noted, is the preserve of only two of the candidates in the race to be president of the Federal Republic, on May 29th, 2023. This we know are the Wazirin Adamawa, Atiku Abubabar, and the Jagaban Borgu, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. They both hold a war chest, possibly in billions of dollars. They are not afraid to unleash it on their campaigns to ensure success.

    We all know that the Labour Party candidate, even though he is also well heeled financially, is the indisputable President of “we no dey give shishi” movement. So he will, like the candidate of NNPP, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, be outspent in the media by the duo of Tinubu and Atiku. But to what level or degree, the envisaged billions of Naira spent will impact on their success is still to be determined at the end of the campaigns.

    For example, the major national newspapers used by the Atiku Abubakar campaign last Wednesday cannot boast of a combined 200,000 copy sales. Which means, it would have paid them more, if they truly desire to reach a wider audience, to have used TheNewsGuru.com, Premium Times, The Cable and the online versions of Vanguard, Punch, Guardian, Daily Trust, ThisDay. They would have reached no fewer than 80 million Nigerians as Internet subscription has reached over 84 million in the country alone. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other social media platforms are a different kettle of fish altogether. I suspect this is the road the Obi-Datti team would tow were they to go on a media spree.

    But the aspects of the campaigns which must have caught the attention of all Nigerians, including the campaign teams of the PDP and APC candidates, are two reinforcing events which happened in quick succession. Both are in favour of the Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi. First, Bloomberg, the American based, media giant, came out with a poll result which clearly shows a seemingly unassailable lead of 75% for Peter Obi. Coming less than two weeks after the ANAP poll conducted by the Okonjo-Iweala affiliated NOI polling organisation, which also placed him ahead of both the PDP and APC candidates, it was a huge booster to the Obi team and an unquantifiable dampener to his rivals. Both poll showed that if the elections were to be conducted on the day of the polls, Obi would have coasted home, easily, as winner and President-Elect.

    Of course, every attempt has been made to discredit the polls by the Abubakar and Tinubu teams. They have raised important questions including the scalability of the polls in terms of geographical spread, universe of study and methodology. These polls while buttressing educated guesses also put into question the recent ThisDay newspapers front-page analysis of the standing of the candidates across the nation. It also diluted my position that until the Obi and Datti Yusuf campaign penetrates the North East and North West, we cannot for certainty say that he will win the elections. The constitution requires the winning candidate to have 25 percent of the votes in at least two thirds of the states of Nigeria. That is in addition to having a majority of the votes.

    My position, the poll notwithstanding, is that, if the poll is conducted today, Obi might  just come out with a simple majority of votes but may fall short of the 2/3 requirement. On ground now, the old war horses: Abubakar and Tinubu buoyed by experience, more readiness to spend, superior strategy and better geographical spread will soon unleash their strategies designed to overwhelm and awe the Obi-Datti group. But the Obidient group is a phenomenon none of the old guard parties and politicians have seen before. It is self-propelling, self-funding and very determined to turn the tables. To their eternal regret, the PDP and APC have been shocked out of their cavalier attitude by the Obidient group. They now realise it poses a real threat and the youths propelling it may indeed use the ballot box to enthrone a new democratic order in the country.

    That perhaps is why both camps of the PDP and APC are now very worried about the Obi phenomenon. They are forced now to take his candidacy more seriously. Both Abubakar and Tinubu, two old men, in the ring for their last dance, are suddenly realising the drumbeats are changing and their dance steps are falling out of tune. To their astonished consternation, over the last one month, they have seen that the talk about Obi not having the structure to win a presidential race is turning out to be a fallacy. They are particularly stung by the avalanche of self sponsoring million man marches which have been springing up all over the country. For instance, last Saturday, when President Buhari was having his finale Independent Day event in Abuja, huge canvas of the Obidient_Yusful supporters, in their millions were marching in Lekki, Ikeja, Amuwo Odofin; in Asaba, Warri; in Benin; in Owerri, Aba, Enugu; in Zaria and so on. There were also some foreign dimensions to the Obidient-Yusful movement as supporters took over Trafalgar Square in London while others also congregated in New York.

    Of note, however, is the emergence of a video of a march in Lokoja, the day after the serial marches by the Obi group nationwide, by a group mostly of middle age and old women and men who marched, singing the praises of the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Mobilised by a senatorial aspirant under the tutelage of the Director of Youth Mobilisation, of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Campaign Organisation, Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state, the irony of the nature of participants did not fail to attract the attention of observers.

    Also in Lagos state two days back, groups of women singing and dancing to the praise of the Asiwaju, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, were mobilised to the government house at Alausa, where the Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, welcomed them with delightsome Buga dance steps. Though it fell short of the five different One Million Man marches which took place in about five different parts of Lagos state two days earlier, it is clear, the show of feet on the street to exact strength and popularity has begun in Lagos. The march by the women is BAT supporters’ response to the Obidients. It is to say Lagos still belongs to Bola Ahmed Tinubu and APC.

    The foregoing clearly demonstrates that if the Obidient crew think they own the streets, they have opposition knocking at their door. It is clear now that each campaign group will devise their own means of mobilising people to the streets in a show of strength and as a way of countering the belief that all Nigerians are marching for the Peter Obi and Datti Yusuf ticket. The days ahead promise million man marches for APC, PDP candidates. The fear of Obidients-Yusful taking control of the streets, nationwide, will give birth to lucrative crowd contracting businesses. The smart alecs are already positioned.

     

    TO BE CONTINUED…

  • Atiku and Tinubu set to drown Peter Obi in the media – By Mideno Bayagbon

    Atiku and Tinubu set to drown Peter Obi in the media – By Mideno Bayagbon

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

    As the campaign season officially kicks off, the national space is set to be agog with the noise  of political activities. At the federal level, the three major parties will be parading the Asiwaju, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, (APC); Waziri Adamawa, Alhaji  Atiku Abubakar  (PDP); and the gadfly, table shaker, Mr Peter Obi, (LP). They will attempt to sell themselves to the electorate for a chance at Aso Rock, as President. At  the state level, hundreds of candidates will be aspiring to become their state governors. Thousands still will be pounding the cities and villages across the country to be considered for election as Senators, House of Representative members and States House of Assembly members. The die is cast.

    The season of fake promises, barefaced lies, rent-a-crowd rallies, surreal political advertisements to enchant the populace is on us.  Finally, the incompetent and much abused President Muhammadu Buhari, will have a breather. The thunderous political decibels will draw the national focus from him and the many hydra-headed political, economic and social problems which his incompetence has plunged the nation into. With political cash flying around, the critical issues of insecurity, harsh economic realities will take the back burner. For a man who cares only for himself, as he is reputed, President Buhari can sleep better now, go on his extensive health tourism and indeed gallivant all over the world in the remaining months of his better forgotten misrule of Nigeria.

    But unlike other climes where clearly thought out policies, probity of candidates: their character and history, determine who gets elected, the next four months or so, our politicians will take us on a fool’s ride. Leaving the substance of our reality, they will regale us with inanities, with attacks and counter attacks on opposing candidates. We will not know where they stand on most issues because obfuscation will be the tactical order of the  day. The game plan will be to cleverly proffer outlandish solutions to the major problems confronting the country which are the badly managed economy, the wanton insecurity of lives and properties and the many ill-conceived policies of the Buhari government. With vague promises, will come an attitude of we will cross the river when we get there. Peter Barnum’s reputed quote: let the people be fooled will be on full display.

    Strategically, most will avoid occasions and situations where probing questions will be asked of them. It is clear that most of those who will be coming out to canvas our votes have not the faintest idea how to solve the legion of problems bedevilling the country. Of course, in all sincerity, we all know that is not why they are contesting for the positions they are vying for. For most of our politicians, winning an election is  an end in itself; a do-or-die affair because it is their legitimate route to accessing the national wealth and privatizing it to self. It is the openly concealed path for them to dip their grubby fingers into the national cake. It is the ticket to be part of the sharers, not bakers, of the national cake. The only objective, therefore, is to do everything and anything it takes to get pronounced as winner of the particular election.

    Ninety-nine point nine of those, for example, who want to be governors of their states have no idea, no plan other than the wishy washy, glossy and empty headed “manifestoes” which some smart alec consultant has put together for them to wave at whoever cares to ask. Most of them do not know a thing about how to grow their state’s economy or what to do about mobilising their populace for growth and development. Rather, we will hear of such fanciful inanities as youth empowerment which means they will buy some tricycles, some sewing machines, some hair clippers and so on, and pretend that they have done what is required of them for the youths and women. Most will run their governments on some quirk, harebrained suggestions from emergency consultants. Some will end up as governments by proposals. So why would they bother themselves to come  public and convince their electors with well thought out and designed programmes for growth and development? Rigging and vote buying are better options to them.

    At the national level, one would expect that removing the lead on campaigns will afford the three major candidates the opportunity to convince Nigerians why their programmes and policies will be what the country needs now to pluck it out of the slope to infamy. One would expect they will come out to lay bare how they intend to tackle the economy, the multi-pronged insecurity problems and many other problems bedevilling the country. How, for example, do they intend to tackle the power problem? The fuel subsidy imbroglio. This as we all know is the biggest scam in town.

    A notice of the reluctance of the candidates to engage their opponents in debates and in live interviews has already been served by Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He told reporters who were asking him to feature in live interviews on television to perish the idea.  As many are beginning to suspect, the Jagaban, because of some yet unannounced ailments, may not be able to engage in rigorous interviews to explain what he stands for. He intends to brag his way through. And we can be sure that a well-planned leeway has been fashioned out by his handlers. We wait and see how they will harangue the populace into quiet acceptance of this.

    His attempt to avoid the public assessment of his current intellectual and physical capabilities may just be the adopted pattern of most of the candidates across the country.

    Four wasted months of bamboozling and filibustering lie ahead. The exception to this, however, might be the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, whose ambition has been bolstered by the media and the youths who have adopted him as their own. He not only enjoys making the media rounds to canvas his points, he uses the media in ways the two or three other candidates, though green with envy, have avoided so far. Atiku Abubakar though has consented to and  done one major interview to try and explain why he wants to be president may also try his best to avoid interviews and fora where he will be thoroughly examined. That is, apart from the fact the he too, like Tinubu, thinks it is his turn to be president! The man is officially the oldest of the candidates at almost 77 years old currently.

    Nevertheless, the media and internet space are going to play major roles in the coming elections. That perhaps explains why preparatory to the campaigns kicking off, some of the candidates camps have constituted hard nosed, lavishly funded media units, who they expect to go to war on their behalf against their opponents. Most telling of course is the thousands of “internet rats” they have recruited and empowered with electronic gadgets and data. These are people who will be on the social media space 24 hours of the day. They will have two major functions: create as many negative opinion about their opponents, colour them in gory ethnic, religious and other contentious points before the public. They are to also counter every negative write up, even in the remotest of social media platforms, with abusive and insulting personal attacks, confuse the issues with shameless lies and repeat same all so often, and be relentless. In all these, their mission is to position their candidate as the only saint since Jesus Christ. Through their intransigence, and belligerent postures, they are also to try and force people to support their candidates through every gimmick they can muster.

    This is especially so since the youths who are the bulwarks of the Peter Obi campaign are digital natives. These recruited media contractors will match Obi and each other’s supporters word for word, abuse for abuse. Hellish Armageddon is about to be unleashed on our social media space.  For your sanity’s sake, social media is a place to avoid for the whole campaign period.

    As the politicians attempt to destroy themselves while shamelessly avoiding the issues that bedevil the nation, the rest of us, even when we avoid the mayhem in the social media, will still be afflicted by their sound bites, preposterous advertisements full of dance and songs yet telling us little about why we should vote for the particular candidates. With the war chest at the disposal of both the Alhaji Tinubu and Alhaji Abubakar, a lot of media spend is envisaged. Obi and Kwankwaso, with their lean financial base will be easily outspent in this game to fully overwhelm, deceive and win over the electorate. Atiku Abubakar and Ahmed Tinubu will own the paid media space and will drown out Obi and all the other contenders.

    How this old tactics will hold in the face of current realities is left to be seen.

  • Atiku is up to something and Tinubu faces possible disgrace – By Mideno Bayagbon

    Atiku is up to something and Tinubu faces possible disgrace – By Mideno Bayagbon

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

    Anyone who has been around the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, in the last two months, would not have failed to notice something peculiar about the air around him and his team. There is a suspicious confidence, a certain, palpable  arrogance, a cocksuredness that is troubling. You cannot but suspect that there is something underground, something going on that you just can’t put your finger on. The Waziri Adamawa himself behaves and carries on as if he is already president or a sitting monarch or even emperor. He carries on as if he is just waiting for the day of crowning and inauguration.

    Around HIM, there is scant attention to what the two other prominent candidates’ camps are up to. They behave as a group just waiting to step in, as if the elections won’t matter, as if it is going to be a fait accompli. I nose around them and I come out with the impression that most of them believe that nothing, except perhaps death, can stop Atiku Abubakar from becoming the incoming president. And I am intrigued. Something may be loading for which the public has no knowledge. A conspiracy is possibly afoot. As it is, only an intervening circumstance can bring them down from their Olympian euphoria, of certain victory, to the reality of what they are perhaps failing to see or envisage.

    This has given room to speculations and suspicions. That this bird, dancing on the road, has musical backings from the nearby bush. Questions include: what are they depending on, what fuels their confidence? What are they doing or seeing that the rest of us are not seeing or that their opponents are not seeing or doing? What role is Aso Rock, and the emergent, opportunistic ruining class created under the Buhari misrule, and the plot to use religion to hoodwink the masses, playing in fuelling this feeling?

    Forget the rascalities, and measured tantrums of the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike and his band of four governors and other senior members of the opposition PDP. But take a look at how Atiku and his handlers have chosen to handle them. Truth be told, the feelings one gets is that they do not give a hoot about whatever the Rivers state governor chooses to do. They don’t care. They believe he is expendable and peripheral to the envisaged, assumed victory of the former Vice President. That perhaps explains why they have chosen to give him the caustic side of their tongues. That too explains why they have continued to ignore and rubbish his grand standings.

    From my findings, I can confess that they have a working plan to outwit him, even in Rivers State where he is currently the  political tin god. Part of their strategy has been to go behind him, recruit all those with a grudge against him; those who have been sidelined, those who plan to position themselves for the possible goodies of an Atiku presidency. And they are legion. The Uche Secondus, the Austin Oparas, the Chibudum Nwuches and so on have already abandoned the Wike train to team up with the Atiku gang.

    Atiku is doing the same thing in Oyo state where Governor Seyi Makinde is sitting on a keg of conspiratorial detonators. They plan to ensure that he doesn’t get a second term. An alliance with several elements including the Accord Party in the state is in the works. Even in Benue, the same underground schemings are afoot. Even while not going for outright wins, the target is to get the enabling all important 25 percent votes across these states.

    But all these are child’s play compared to what they are said to have perfected to do in the North. Deep throats urges one to just cast a discerning eye on the All Progressives Congress and the underground schemings going on in the North West and North East. The prediction is that a repeat of the Jonathan treatment is being perfected.

    Which brings me to the one his fans love calling Asiwaju or Jagaban. I am talking of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. From intel on ground today, except something major happens within the next few weeks, he will find himself a victim of the scam those masquerading as the party’s political leaders in the North East and North West have perfected. Tinubu, from all indications, may probably find out, too late, that he has been taken on a foolish man’s ride; on a superior political gimmick, on the road to monumental disgrace. He and his supporters will be shocked, when a day after the elections, despite spending, huge, uncountable billions of Naira pushing his aspirations, he ends up third behind Atiku and Peter Obi.

    The feeling is that though the governors under the APC flag in the north threw their weight behind Asiwaju Tinubu during the primaries of the party, they will either appear hamstrung in what will likely appear, as ineffectual support for the APC candidate, or blatantly throw an underhand support for the PDP candidate. Pundits already predict that more than half of the APC states will fail to return victorious votes for their party in the presidential elections.

    Observers are currently of the view that should the hoopla around Peter Obi candidacy continue, unabated, that should the self-funding mobilisation find a leeway into the North East and North West, and the youth and marginalised elites queue behind it, the Obi-Datti phenomenon may just be the real surprise.  In share numbers, it is predicted that the Labour Party candidate may just garner a majority of the popular vote. But it is likely to fall short of the 25 percent votes in two thirds of the states in the country. This in itself will bring about a new headache for the electoral body who may be forced to declare the candidate with the two thirds requirements as winner.

    As at today, it seems, from what can be gleaned from careful speculation on the support base of each candidate and party, PDP is more likely to get the 25 percent votes in two-thirds of the states of the federation than the APC and Labour Parties.  Tinubu and the APC will need to struggle very hard to get up to the required numbers. As it is, the South South and South East may likely return the 25 percent vote to him in less than four of their eleven states. This will make him come second in this regard but he might still end up getting less total votes than Atiku Abubakar and Obi. These speculations sound crazy now but they might eventually turn out as the reality.

    My assumption is that, perhaps, these calculations and speculations are what majorly fuel the almost invincible confidence being displayed by Atiku Abubakar and his circle of handlers.

    But then, Tinubu is known to be an astute political strategist. And as they say, a day in politics is a very long time. Who knows, the seemingly impossible can still happen. But my guts feel, as at today, sees this race as a youth versus the old brigade.  With the expected betrayal of Tinubu by the northern elites, projected, the result might just turn out to be a contest between Obi and Atiku Abubakar.

    PRESIDENT BUHARI TO BE A STAND UP COMEDIAN AFTER LEAVING OFFICE

    To those who were not privileged to listen to President Muhammadu Buhari make the announcement himself, here is the news: he is to retire to the budding profession of stand up comedy immediately after handing over as President on May 29th, 2023.

    The President, who was a guest of the one, the media and his enemies call the Supreme Court Governor of Imo State, gave the reasons why he will opt for that profession. Nigerians are hard of hearing; they are blind to all his good works and they are diseased in the mouth. That is why they keep claiming that they have not seen all the monumental accomplishments which his government has chalked up in the last almost eight years.

    Giving himself a pat on the back, even if those who should do so refuse to, the President was particularly unhappy with fifth columnists in and around his government and party, APC. He says they have so far refused to turn on the Goebbels loudspeakers to announce to the deaf, dumb and blind Nigerians all the goodies he has blessed Nigerians with since he became President. For example, those who should be hailing him, like his garrulous, caustic and propagandist spokesmen, his lying Minister, his party flag bearer, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu and all those campaigning under his party flag, are all making strenuous efforts to distance themselves from his government’s achievements. Why?

    As one of his major supporters, I agree with him that not enough publicity has been given to the gross governmental incompetence, the avalanche of killings, terrorism, kidnapping, unemployment, the Naira getting cheaper than toilet tissue; hunger induced by bad economic policies or lack of same of his government; ASUU strike and the general downward spiral of everything in Nigeria. Not even the railway line to Maradi in Niger Republic, or the refineries built and donated to them by his government are getting publicity. Instead, the little efforts on the 2nd Niger Bridge, the Lagos to Ibadan railway and all the other too insignificant to mention things are what they are excited about and magnifying, and dishing out to the public. Nigerians keep yapping about the N42 trillion debt burden he is leaving behind. What is wrong with them? Why are they so ungrateful? Why are they so mean?

    Out of office next May, President Buhari will surely rake in millions of Naira as a top range comedian as he tries to convince the nation that no other Nigerian President will ever achieve the level of calamity he has visited on the country.

  • Peter Obi Phenomenon: Sitting On A Time Bomb

    Peter Obi Phenomenon: Sitting On A Time Bomb

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    mideno@thenewsguru.ng

    Like most Nigerians, I have watched with awe the phenomenon that is the OBIdient-Datti Movement. From seemingly nowhere, Peter Obi, former Anambra State Governor, former Vice Presidential candidate and new entrant into the Labour Party, has captured the national imagination. Like magic, he has ingrained himself into the imaginations of the youths, the elites and ordinary Nigerians spread across the nation’s geographical spectrum. From absolute nothing, and without the backing of the political who-is-who in the land, the Obi/Datti movement has evolved into the nemesis of the established political candidates and parties.

    Earlier mocked as a social media phantom and structureless; predicted to fizzle out in no time, the contrary has become the reality. Now there is palpable fear in the camps of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidates. Officials of both parties now spend more time attacking and denigrating the OBIdient movement than on selling themselves. As it is, no one in his right political senses today describes the movement as a fluke, or as a Shakespearean tale, full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. The fear of Peter Obi and his running mate, Datti, the potential earth shakers, is now the beginning of wisdom. Still evolving and full of possibilities, it is nevertheless, far from its goals of taking over the reins of government. Critically, it is yet to ground itself in the Northeast and Northwest of the country.

    However, despite the speed of its spread, the ObIdience phenomenon is a mere coincidence. Not even Peter Obi can boast that he planned or even anticipated what has become of his campaign so far. It is a chance encounter. An opportunity, an anguish, wanting a way to express itself. A frustrated body of youths and the elites, caged in the hopeless political quagmire which has grounded the economy, and every aspect of society, found an outlet in the ambition of Peter Obi. But the movement, at first, had nothing to do with Obi in the truest sense. He is just the adopted symbol whose lifestyle and politics resonates with the groaning and wishes of the people. On him, and on his running mate, is now vested the frustrations, hopes and expectations of nearly 200 million Nigerians. A heavy, national burden rests on their shoulders. They now embody the dreams, the aspirations, the future, at least in the thinking of their supporters.

    At no time in the nation’s recent history has the hope of the entire country be invested in an individual as we now have. The #ENDSARS movement has reincarnated in the ObIdience movement. Recall  that, nearly two years ago, there was an insurrection of the youths who vented their frustration in mega rallies, mostly at the Lekki Toll Gate and in Abuja, Enugu, and some other cities. Their immediate bone of contention was the brutality of the special police unit: Special Anti Robbery Squad, SARS. SARS operatives arrested, detained, robbed, maimed and killed at will, with apparent impunity. Immediate cause of the protests, however, was the viral video of a young man allegedly being killed by SARS operatives. This became the springboard on which their collective frustrations, and anger at the poor way politicians have ruined the nation, was vented.

    After days of massive protests, the Buhari government on October 20th, 2020,ordered a scotch earth action against the protesters who were singing the national anthem and waving the Nigerian flag. A yet to be determined number of them were allegedly slaughtered by the military who were deployed to end the protests. And in that crazy night of bullets and bloodshed and tears, the youths were pummelled and driven off the streets.  President Buhari was to later confess that the protests were organised to truncate his government and remove him from office.

    But they are back now, in full force. They have rechristened themselves the OBIdient Movement. More than ever, before our eyes, a revolution of sorts is shaping up.  And it is not led by urchins. Diverse and seemingly unstructured, a  determined body of youths, who want to use the political process to change theirs and the nation’s ugly story is amalgamating. The same coordinated tactics used in organising the #ENDSARS protests is being deployed. The social media which the Tinubu and Atiku camp so derided, is the weapon for strategic organisation and mobilisation. This can be attested to by the hugely successful One Million Man marches. Without any visible structure, they have continued to mobilise millions of youths to the streets. They are marching;  showing their might in humongous numbers, in cities across the South and Middlebelt.

    They are self funding and determined to have their say and way in the coming elections. That is why to every careful political observer, Obi and Datti are convenient tools in the determination of the youths to end the terribly poor leadership, the downward slide of the country in all development indices. It is their own way of saying Enough is Enough; their own way of issuing a red card to the old guard political gladiators who have misruled the country into becoming almost the worse country on earth to live in.

    Should they win and Obi emerges the President of Nigeria, there is little to envy President Obi about. The job is already cut out for him. It is huge and almost insurmountable. This is because, for a people who have been persistently gang raped by those who call themselves their leaders in the last 23 years, Obi is a hope long lust for. On him will be placed the all encompassing virtues of a messiah, a superman, a magician with the wand to right all wrongs, fix all the problems bedevilling the people. They will hold him to his rhetorics, the solutions canvassed, the opportunities promised. They would hold him to a working, better Nigeria forgetting the huge bottomless rot he will inherit.

    However, should the dreams of a better way of governing, of a better, caring, selfless leadership coalesced into a victory for the Obi-Datti ticket, one thing is sure. They can only be foundation builders. The rot is too deep for any significant impact in their first four years. Yes, they can arrest the drift into anarchy on all fronts. They can make the youths, the elites and ordinary Nigerians believe in Nigeria again. They can begin the right stimulation of the mentalities of the youth and elites, redirecting and empowering them, upscaling their skills and engineering them towards production; releasing their creative juices to lay a new foundation for a new Nigeria which must now begin to climb the ladder of development, howbeit from the very bottom rung of the ladder. That will be the hope of the common people in the villages and towns and cities across the length and breath of the country.

    But should the Obi-Datti ticket lose the presidency next year, especially if the youths are convinced they were cheated , robbed and the system unfairly manipulated, trouble looms. The aborted #ENDSARS protests might just be resurrected. The season of the  Nigerian spring might just happen on us. That truly might be the real revolution.

    Things cannot be any longer as they have been in the last almost 23 years. This is why all men and women of goodwill must come out now to be counted. The 2023 elections is a double edged sword. It could bring about the long awaited seed of good governance or it could led to street protests never imagined or seen in the country before. INEC whose chairman says it is ready to conduct the elections in all the territories of Nigeria must do more than talk. I am sure a repeat of the farce of 2019 where over 80 percent votes were allegedly recorded in the terrorists hotbeds of Borno, Yobe, Zamfara and so on cannot be tenable in the 2023 elections. Nigerians must see that the elections are transparently free. The electronic transfer of results must not only be deployed nationally, its must be convincingly free of manipulations.

    While any of the three major candidates: Atiku, Obi, Tinubu can win the elections, INEC must be proactive. Rigging and vote buying must be checkmated. The Police, the DSS and the military who are usually accomplices of the systematic rigging machines of the parties must be patriotic. Or they must be brought to book if they are involved in any infractions. We cannot continue with politics as usual and expect different results. The country is in death throes, walking blindly in the dark valley, at the tipping point of anarchy. Whoever emerges winner of the 2023 presidential elections must be seen to have done so freely, fairly and acceptably.

  • Nyesom Wike, the hot beautiful bride of Nigerian politics – By Mideno Bayagbon

    Nyesom Wike, the hot beautiful bride of Nigerian politics – By Mideno Bayagbon

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

    Love him or hate him, by some smart political engineering, Nyesom Wike, Governor of oil rich Rivers state, is now the must-go-to bride of current Nigerian politics. Through sheer bravado, tough talking and a seeming careful positioning, and by assuming possibility of causing humongous political damage, his shrine has become the must-visit place of political worship. The camps of Atiku Abubakar, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi, all now want his support for their presidential ambitions.

    Those who called him an irrelevant paper weight, a toothless bulldog, a thug of uncommon proportions are all scampering into silence. Or they are being warned by their principals to sheathe their swords, and leave Nyesom Wike alone. Nobody, in the current struggle to emerge the political king of the 2023 presidential elections, is unmindful of the possibilities in a Nyesom Wike support. His state warehouses three million electoral votes, he is a “generous giver” who is not stingy about doling out stupendous amount of  his state’s funds for any cause he believes in. And he has the support of almost half of the PDP governors.

    That is not even mentioning some heavy weight PDP juggernauts who believe the Atiku camp has behaved badly towards the caustic-mouthed Governor. Most members have not forgotten too that it was the Rivers State Governor, who, in the last seven years, spearheaded the opposition to the ruling party, breathing down their necks and showcasing the incompetence of the Buhari government. It was he, too, who provided most of the funding for the party in those dry arid years of learning to be an opposition party after 16 years in the saddle as ruling party. All these have coalesced into making him not just the beautiful bride in the PDP but the potential, must steal, bride to the two other leading candidates in the All Progressives Congress and the Labour Party.

    He is having the political time of his life, snapping victory from the gruesome teeth of defeat. And he is doing it with so much style and braggadocio; the kind of panache only the politically astute can muster. His political enemies  are seething with impotent anger. He is the bull in the china shop of the PDP. Everyone is carefully courtesying and getting out of his way or desperately angling to have him on their side. Those who thought it was the political end for him when he was defeated at the Peoples Democratic  Party, PDP, through the cunning and subterfuge of the Atiku Abubakar team, are now having a rethink. Acknowledging his damage causing potential is the beginning of wisdom in the Atiku faction of the PDP.

    For political watchers, Wike has carried on, faithfully, the tradition of positioning Rivers State, and whoever occupies the Government House in Port Harcourt as a political centre which the nation and indeed power mongers cannot ignore. First it was Peter “Dey Pay” Odili. But for some last minute mischief and gang-ups, he would have succeeded Olusegun Obasanjo as President. He was such a gigantic force in the party then. He outspent everyone only to be kicked in the groin.

    Then came in, the one his supporters call the Lion of Ubima, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, rechristened the Dan Amana Daura under the Buhari government. Like Peter Odili, like Nyesom Wike, high powered betrayals and political mischief denied him the ticket of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the last presidential primaries. He came second to eventual winner, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. And now the Tinubu camp is ignoring him and are in a steaming dalliance with his successor, Wike.

    In the last 23 years, Governors of Rivers State have had the uncanny ability to hold strong levers of power, to focus attention on themselves and their state. Hence it is a truism: ignore Rivers State Governor and Rivers State at your own peril in the current political calculations.

    Atiku Abubakar and his team opened the floodgate. Through a faux pax, he enhanced the image of Wike in the public eye. As the Presidential Candidate of the PDP, who constitutionally can choose whoever he likes as his deputy, he chose to ask his party to organise a screening committee, composed of serving governors and political heavyweights in the party, to choose a vice presidential candidate for him. They overwhelmingly picked Governor Wike. Atiku Abubakar thought otherwise, jettisoned their report and picked Delta state Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa.

    That was not all, the PDP candidate in a moment of impolitics, at a time he should have kept his mouth shut or try to conciliate, toe the part of peace, chose to add insult to the injured ambition of the Rivers State Governor. Recall, Wike before then had, with one side of the mouth, boasted he cannot be vice president to anyone. On the other, curiously, he lobbied heavily to be Abubakar’s deputy after his own ambition to be the flag bearer fell through.To Abubakar, Wike does not possess the qualities he seeks in a vice presidential candidate. He is too loud, too uncouth and too scatterbrained to be the choice. This is my summation of what Abubakar voiced out as the reason he ignored the committee’s recommendation and choose to go with a malleable Delta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa.

    Abubakar’s henchmen: former Governors Babangida Aliyu and Sule Lamido brought a level of unpardonable arrogance to their reprimand of Wike’s anger at his slight. One would assume they think Abubakar has already won; or can win with or without the support of Wike and his governor friends. That much the party Chairman, Iyorchia Azu voiced two days back. The kind of arrogance we see around the handlers of the disastrous Muhammadu Buhari is their adopted stance. Not a few party members have squirmed at their intemperate postures. The fear is, should Atiku Abubakar emerge winner of the presidential race next year, the total stranglehold on power witnessed in the current regime is set to repeat itself. The South which has been so badly treated by Buhari and his cohorts are in for another spell in the dark trenches. The impression being given by his close northern associates is that it will be a continuation of the north-centric damn-the-South position.

    That said, pundits think Wike’s day in the sun are numbered. That the night of his reign cometh. Unbeknownst to some, Wike they claim, is actually in a very hard place. Whatever side he chooses to perch on, post 2023 elections, one of a few things can happen to him for some simple reasons. Should he remain in PDP, having rammed through the conditionalities he set before Abubakar, he will at first be humoured and tolerated. But he will end up a pariah, consigned to irrelevance. That is, if Atiku Abubakar emerges President.

    If on the other hand, he goes with Ahmed Tinubu, he will also be humoured and tolerated. Nevertheless, he would have scored a further goal against his former principal, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi. Knowing Wike’s ego and love for power, he will definitely ask to be made leader of the APC in Rivers State, and indeed the South South region. Amaechi who is already being sidelined by the Tinubu camp will have no choice than to move to another party or retire prematurely from politics.

    Nevertheless, several road blocks await the Rivers State strongman. One of these is that he will, eventually, end up a peripheral political player. First, PDP might expel him and he may end up moving frontally into APC. But those in his camp who want to contest elections cannot change party affiliation midstream. So they will remain in PDP. After the elections, and with Wike out of government house, his camp would likely split if Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi emerges President. Then truly his woes will begin.

    That is why, how he, and his team, are able to negotiate their demands in their meeting with Atiku Abubakar  and his core  hard-stance team  will play a major.role in his political life after now. The beautiful bride with time has to pick one of her suitors.

    As I have always maintained in this column, South South leaders, when they delve into national politics, never learn until it is too late. They misjudge their importance and the loyalty of people from the rest of the country, especially the power bloc in the north, who dump them at critical junctions.  They suddenly find themselves as small fishes in the ocean of national politics, without a base or political support. Will the case of the beautiful bride, Wike, be different?

  • I fear for the Nigeria and Nigerians of 2023 and beyond – By Mideno Bayagbon

    I fear for the Nigeria and Nigerians of 2023 and beyond – By Mideno Bayagbon

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

    Truth be told, the average Nigerian is as guilty, if not more guilty than the thieving politicians, we are all fond of vilifying. Every Nigerian you meet is finger-pointing at some politician, at some corrupt policeman and other, who they believe, is the problem with Nigeria. But in their day-to-day lived reality, corruption in all its goriness is celebrated privately and hypocritically condemned publicly.  For most, it is corruption and condemnable, when it is others who are thriving in it and we are the victims. We mount pious pulpits, flood the social media and discussion forums to vehemently condemn it; unless, of course, we or our relatives are the beneficiaries. In that case, with stony hearts, we invent excuses, resort to ethnic and religious sentiments, fan the embers of our fault lines and wear shining bright white robes over our soiled and darkened souls.

    From Buhari’s  “top to bottom” despoliation of the country, more and more Nigerians are being recruited daily into the cesspit of corner cutting, corruption and all the perfidy that currently define us. Yes, it predates the Buhari misgovernment. But it is no longer a secret that even our  teenagers have joined the mad rush to be rich, by all means; any means even if it means sacrificing mother, father or some random girl for money rituals. Probity, equity, integrity, hard work, fairness and piety are dead. In our own small way, most Nigerians are now economic, political, social and religious Boko Haram, and terrorists.

    Yet we are, outwardly, such a religious people. Almost  an equal number of Nigerians identify as either Christians or Moslems. We wear our religion as a badge, a chameleonic cloak of acceptance; but ultimately, deceit. We block roads, look for every conceivable spot and mosques on Fridays; we jampack churches on Sundays; but work in Satan’s vineyard all week. The most religious country in the world has become the most corrupt, the most unliveable, the headquarters of Satan, the Devil.

    While the media focuses on the unbearable security situation in the country, while it has become our past time to lambast the government in power and heap all our woes on them, as we ordinarily should, we turn a blind eye to our children, our brothers, our sisters, and our parents committing even worse havoc on their fellow citizens and indeed the nation. We celebrate and encourage ill-gotten wealth, no matter how gory the path has been. Almost every Nigerian would do the unthinkable to their neighbour if that would spiral their economy into some sort of temporary wealth. So we turn a blind eye to our children being engaged in economic sabotage through what is now glorified as Yahoo Yahoo. Or the most repugnant, Yahoo-Plus, which involves the killing and harvesting of human parts for money rituals. We turn a blind eye to our brothers and sisters who are politicians and are milking the country dry  for their personal estates. We gladly accept pittance from them while hailing them as messiahs.

    Some poor parents, can today, be heard proudly informing that their children are “learning Yahoo-Yahoo.” They beg, borrow or steal to send their children to Ghana or some other places in Nigeria to become apprentice Yahoo-Yahoo entrepreneurs. Our conscience, morality, ethics; our humanity is dead on the altar of trying to survive the harsh economic woes. We prey on each other. But we posture otherwise. Listening to the average Nigerian lament the woes of the Buhari government,  you would think you just visited a heavenly ordained saint.

    A few shocking stories I heard recently have further ingrained in my mind the feeling that Nigerians are truly not ready to get the country back from the brink. We are not ready to set it on the path of social, political and economically acceptable development. We are not ready to replace the dubious fast lane with integrity and hard work. We are not ready to shun evil of unearned wealth; curtail the excesses of our politicians. We attempt to mask our greed and lack of morals on the “situation of things in Nigeria”. With a mouth full of  excuses, top of which is the bad governance the corruptly inept government of President Muhammadu Buhari has foisted on the economy, and indeed on all spheres of national life, we make lame excuses why making it by all means is the order of the day for Bola, Emeka, or Jubril. We blame the politicians but forget our role in electing them because of N1000 – N10,000 bribe we took.

    A friend’s wife had gone shopping recently and her bill came to a tidy N50,000 for the few items she picked. She had expected to pay either through the POS or transfer into the company’s account. She didn’t have that kind of cash on her. To her surprise, she was told the POS was not functional; neither is the official bank account of the supermarket. She was offered a ready but crooked solution. She was asked to make the transfer into the personal account of one of the staff. She resisted and asked for the manager who was nowhere to be seen for over 15 minutes that she insisted on speaking to some authority figure to confirm the authenticity of the request to make the transfer into the staff personal account. With no manager in sight, she reluctantly made the transfer. But she was still uncomfortable with the whole business.

    As God would have it, as she was about driving off, she saw a friend who is an acquittance of the owner of the business and told her what had just transpired. Shocked, the friend called the owner of the Supermarket who confirmed that there was nothing wrong with either the bank account or the POS. Long story short, the Police were invited. The four staff on duty, including the security man who was supposed to check receipts against the goods purchased, but who conveniently waved the customer through without any check, were picked up. On intensive interrogation, it was discovered that that week alone, the band of boys, all under 23years, have siphoned over N2 million into their private bank account from the sales.

    The masterminds, two UNILAG students, home because of the ASUU strike, who were temporarily employed, through pleas of their parents, one of whom is a Professor and the other a cleric, confessed to have used their  IT hacking skills to compromise the account of the owner and were easily diverting monies from sales into their private accounts.

    A second story involved a former top banker who used his retirement entitlements to go into distributorship of drinks with one of the nation’s notable breweries. He was a sub-distributor to a major distributor. Daily the company driver and a young employee were sent to go and distribute drinks to customers in the company’s van. This they do dutifully but with an evil motive behind their zeal. The money they collect as payment, they pocket. And to cover their nefarious track, they  would head straight to warehouse of the major distributor and restock the quantity of drinks sold to customers whose payment they have pocketed. They then return the new stock to the warehouse of their employer claiming they didn’t make any sales. That way they ingeniously  pocket the sales profit and leave their employer high and dry. Yet at the end of the month, they collect their salaries. And soon enough, the company was wrecked and the retired banker is left with a huge mountain of debts. Of course these stories are just a tip of the iceberg. Anyone who has bothered to set up a company in Nigeria, in recent times, has his/her own  tale of woes in the hands of Nigerian workers.

    The rot has become systemic and endemic. Parents, unfortunately have a mountain of guilt on their conscience. Our children study us and study their environment. The internet of things has not helped either. They grow up seeing a society that glorifies unearned wealth. They see government officials aggrandize public funds with impunity and they are hailed by the society, by those who should have risen up to oppose them. They grow up seeing people with no visible means of livelihood driving the best of cars, living in the most alluring of houses and having policemen and soldiers as their security details. They grow up seeing so called Men of God living Pop star lifestyles, fleecing their poor congregants while living the heavenly life here on earth but persuading their members to be heaven focused.

    A society that welcomes and tolerates wealth by whatever means will definitely be in death throes as Nigeria currently is. Yet it will get worse. With Nigeria earning less than it needs to even service her debts, the future looks like a project patterned after the Hobbesian state. With over 70 percent of our graduates jobless; with “handwork” conveniently shunned, dogs are set to eat dogs. The more the pity for the politicians who are angling for positions in the coming dispensation. Soon they will become public enemies number one. The current situation in most of the North of Nigeria, and to some degree in the South, where politicians can no longer go home to their states, will be child’s play. The current sense of entitlement and impunity that reign all over the nation will bear implosive conflagrations. Nigeria of tomorrow, except God intervenes, is loaded. I do not envy whoever emerges President and Governors and Senators, etc next year. Tough years ahead await unveiling.

  • We may end up with a President worse than Buhari – By Mideno Bayagbon

    We may end up with a President worse than Buhari – By Mideno Bayagbon

    By Mideno Bayagbon

    (mideno@thenewsguru.ng)

    Her decision to quit our class WhatsApp forum was so shocking, that most members were left nonplussed, dumbfounded and searching for answers. She was and is still the life of the class: naughty, full of mischief; witty, sarcastic, caustic and one who could take a hard punch in the face in the form of a joke, and retaliate with devastating tons of iconic humour. We call her our DG for affidavits being the only one who remembers each member’s birthday and who in her usual manner would award a ridiculous age to each and every one, in hilarious mischief. You can be 37years old this year, if in her estimation, you have been a good boy or girl; and be 90years old the next birthday! We, on such occasion, call her “winch!” Of course, behind her back! Only few of us dare call this outstanding lady with a golden heart “winch” to her face.

    Take the instance of these two posts at her naughtiest best: “Next year, I ll state exactly how old Yusuf is. I ll go through all his affidavits thoroughly and get him to swear somewhere; I suspect he is almost 80. I remember that he had grey hair at Jackson Building. No amount of money will stop me.”

    And ….“Victoria was 35 last birthday and she will be 31 on her next birthday. I m working furiously on her documents.” This for someone who is close to 60!

    In this class where almost everyone should be and some are indeed grandpas and grandmas, the camaraderie is infectious. In our forum, no one has ever grown beyond those four years, long ago that we spent together at Nsukka. In this class full of billionaires, professors, top executives and senior civil servants, some of whom have retired, it is a forum of our youth. The place where our school nicknames and yabis are the order of the day. It is the place we not only tug on to our youthful past, but also renew it. It is our place of laughter, a sanctuary to di-stress.

    So you can imagine when she decided to hit us all in the face. Surprise, surprise. She simply, uncharacteristically dropped a note and exited the forum. It was as if she died. Shock. Gloom. Unanswered questions poured in in torrents. Why? Why? we all screamed. But her note said it all.  She earlier dropped a hint which didn’t quite hit home: “Is it possible to leave out the 2023 elections from our discussions? Can we create a new platform like Freedom Square for that?”

    All she got were silence and more divisive political posts. Then she threw in the bomb: “….(my) spirit left the group,” she wrote and tried providing some explanations: “I try these days to ensure my physical and mental well being and won’t think twice about jettisoning anything that will threaten my peace. Many here didn’t lose as much as I did during the war. Most will never understand what it took to still be here after that war.  A lot of us won’t know why I often hated that my mother resisted when my dead father appeared in a dream and demanded to go away with his malnourished children. I don’t see these things like many here. My spirit has left here and any other space plaguing my peace. It will return after 2023. …will be in charge of affidavits henceforth.”

    Badi Gal, as I call her, was, like majority of members of the class, fed up with the divisiveness and the enmity the strident and uncompromising positions those who have pitched their tents with one presidential candidate or the other are afflicting the class with. It was as if the devil himself had sneaked in, pitched tent, stubbornly, in our class WhatsApp group. Caution has gone with outpouring of emotive outbursts. Laughter and camaraderie, the conjugating seal of the class have taken flight as the gods of ObIdient, BATification and ATIKUlating parked their Ukraine vs Russia war arsenals on the class’ “door mouth”.

    Nevertheless, It took all of us bombarding our DG Affidavit’s phone and pledging to be of good behaviour and most importantly,  to stop  posting all divisive political posts, to persuade her to change her mind. But her finger is still on the exit button, her left eye peeping to see who would dare post annoying political posts on the platform.

    As it turned out, the experience of my classmates is not unique. From discussions with friends, colleagues and family, the entire country, at least among the elites and those described as digital natives on the social media, is in the vice grip of  this new demon. Friends are tearing themselves apart, families are embroiled in needless altercations, no longer seeing eye to eye on any political issue. And the language: abusive, abrasive and abhorrent.

    It is clear that we, Nigerians, are one of, if not the most, obdurate set of humans on planet earth. Every group of Nigerians, wherever they gather, are united by one thing: poisoned positions on the coming 2023 presidential elections. We are very dogmatic and very vociferous about our support for the candidate of our choice. We strive to ram this down the throats of our “listeners” with a stance that only our choice is correct and every other persons’ wrong.

    Painfully, for most of these gladiators, logic and our lived-reality is not the basis of their convictions. We concoct lies and propagate them as gospel truths which others must swallow without questioning. We browbeat and use every conceivable gimmick to try to paint the other candidates in devil’s regalia. We manufacture lies and use them to try and pitch Nigerians against themselves. Others respond with equal venom and untruths. Take the case of my friend, Sam Omatseye, an otherwise good writer who out of loyalty to his benefactor tried to paint the Peter Obi campaign as an IPOB campaign, the Igbos as a never to be trusted group of Nigerians. All sane Nigerians could only wonder what would drive an otherwise respected intellectual into the cesspit of atrocious hate speech.

    What for example drives some of those who claim OBIdience to the Labour Party candidate into the asinine and very annoying insults and threats, against anyone who does not agree that Peter Obi is the messiah Nigeria needs now? They are toeing the notorious path Buharideens, those social media rats who attacked and insulted whoever was in disagreement with President Muhammadu Buhari, perfected and used in haranguing the rest of Nigerians. Those who say they are Atikulated  are also not left out.  It is bedlam out there in the social media and even in regular interaction platforms.

    They are all drumming war songs, preaching ethnic and regional satanic verses that could tilt the coming elections into a fratricidal warfare.  The traumatised economy, the serious security problems bedevilling the people; the historically high unemployment and under employment rates hovering around 70 percent are forgotten in their bid to sell their candidates. Yet none of these candidates has come out with concrete plans of how they intend to salvage the economy, end terrorism and generally restore a sense of security, equity and social justice in the nation. None has convinced us that they can end the haemorrhage, and stop Nigeria from tipping over the precipice.

    I have since stopped visiting groups whose past time is the attack and counter attack of people of opposing political views. That is my own way of maintaining my sanity. It is a shame really. Those who should be in the forefront of agitating for a better Nigeria and scrutinising those who are asking for our votes are the same people who are obfuscating the issues, muddling the pool and hurling insults at themselves. How the politicians must be having a good laugh at our expense.

    Truth told, with the attitude of these class of Nigerians, don’t be surprised if a candidate worse than Buhari is declared elected as President next year. But then can any of these candidates ever be worse than President Buhari?