Tag: Azu Ishiekwene

Atiku, Obi and the road to Kilimanjaro – By Azu Ishiekwene

Former vice president and presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, said on Monday that Nigeria was the bigger loser in last week’s decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. That was a convenient exaggeration to hide his misery.

But it was unnecessary. After unsuccessfully contesting to be president six times, it would have been human for him to admit that this loss, on what might well be his last attempt, was difficult to bear. He didn’t need to frame it as a national tragedy, because quite frankly, it wasn’t.

It’s the tragedy of the political elite enabled by the choices made by politicians, including members of Abubakar’s PDP, which also used to be Labour Party candidate Peter Obi’s home.

Even if Abubakar or Obi had won the 2023 presidential election, it would have been almost impossible to overturn. It just happened that they were at the receiving end.

Transmission and forgery tourism

Yet, the pursuit of redress need not be frustratingly difficult and complicated. If, for example, the National Assembly had made Section 60 of the Electoral Act on the electronic transmission of results compulsory, and not discretionary whatever the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) might have said later, it would have had no option but to comply.

The commission waffled because the law is not binding. Its non-compliance undermined the integrity of the system and opened the door to self-help, a point acknowledged in the judgment of the Supreme Court.

Another obvious source of distress for Abubakar and Obi, particularly Abubakar, was that the court refused to admit and consider the pleading that Tinubu’s certificate from the Chicago State University (CSU) purportedly filed as part of his documents to INEC, was forged.

After losing the first round of legal challenge at the tribunal, Abubakar’s counsel mounted a vigorous attempt at a US court to obtain Tinubu’s certificate and succeeded in spite of inexplicable efforts by the president’s team to block them.

Armed with the deposition from the US court, Abubakar went to the Supreme Court believing that he had eventually found the smoking gun. But there were at least two major problems which serious lawyers from other parts of the world watching the live Supreme Court proceedings on October 24 would have been embarrassed to see.

One, the deposition filed by Abubakar’s lawyers did not comply with the rules of evidence in a Nigerian court, which make the certification of such documents by the issuing courts or authorities mandatory. Instead, the Supreme Court said, the certification of the document was done in the chambers of Abubakar’s lawyers. This negligence – to have either the US court or CSU certify the deposition alleging forgery – handed a loophole to a legal system notorious for its embarrassing fastidiousness to technicalities.

Heart of the matter

But that was only a part of the coup de grace. Two, the case lost its way even before it reached the tribunal, which in the presidential election, is the court of appeal.

The whole point of the contest was not whether a forgery had been committed, though it may have been material at an earlier stage. The point was whether Abubakar’s lawyers could prove that the presidential election on February 25 had been so significantly rigged that Tinubu could not have won it.

And to do that Atiku didn’t need to go the US, except if he was doing so as Rauf Aregbesola’s lawyers did in Osun State in Rauf Aregbesola & 2 Ors vs. Olagunsoye Oyinlola & 2 Ors (2011) 9 NWLR Pt. 1253 Pg. 582, where the team used forensic help from abroad to make its case.

It was the inability of Abubakar’s legal team to meet this herculean challenge that forced them on a forgery tourism – a sexier, far less complicated route, which regrettably, often ends in a heartbreak.

In the few cases where the Supreme Court has overturned the election of governors – never those of presidents – the decisions, especially in the cases of Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi vs. INEC & 2 Ors S.C. 252/2007; Peter Obi vs. INEC & 2 Ors S.C. 123/2007 NGSC 50; and Senator Hope Uzodinma & APC vs. Rt Hon. Emeka Ihedioha & 2 Ors S.C.1462/2019, have been mainly on technical grounds. In a presidential election, however, the petitioner is faced with a different, higher level of tyranny.

He will have to prove in court, within 180 days, that elections in a substantial number of the 176,846 polling units scattered in some of the country’s remotest villages and involving an estimated 187 million odd ballots had been rigged. And this would happen in a court barely equipped or prepared for such a grind.

Moving Olympus

On top of that, the petitioner would also have to climb this evidential Kilimanjaro when the defendant is already at the peak of it, ensconced in office and exercising the full powers of incumbency.

In the face of such odds, Abubakar’s legal team desperately grasped at two straws – the allegation that Tinubu forged his certificate, and the claim that he ought not to have been declared winner because he failed to get 25 percent of the votes in Abuja, the federal capital.

On a good day, it’s improbable that any of Abubakar’s or Obi’s lawyers would say, with a straight face, that they believe that the constitution created Abuja as an enclave of super voters. Even for a constitution widely criticised for its clutter, it would be taking a malicious lack of clarity too far to suggest that the writers meant that Abuja voters were greater than the rest of us.

Not even in the US, famous for its “federational” oddities does the capital, Washington DC, hold an electoral veto vote over the other states. In fact, the whole point of the Electoral College is to equalise the states. Nigerian courts have also made this point repeatedly. But obviously, the election petition industry will stop at nothing to reinvent its growth, expansion and prosperity.

Some have used the scathing valedictory address by retired Supreme Court judge, Musa Dattijo Muhammad, delivered the day after the court’s judgment as evidence of lost hope in the judiciary. That’s exaggerated, and hardly supported by the jurisprudential philosophy of His Lordship. His call for introspection was the right one, but his record is a cautionary tale for those inclined to take his latter-day pseudo-radicalism as gospel.

Way forward

There are three things that could minimise this regular cycle of bitter election combats, which take a toll on everyone, except those for whom the combats have become a cash cow.

One, cut down the layers of litigation. In the presidential election, for example, the Supreme Court should be the first and last court. It used to be so here. And it is still so in Ghana and Kenya. In Kenya, after complaints have been made and investigated by the election management body, any party that is not satisfied goes to the Supreme Court, which has two weeks to dispose of the case.

Two, shift the burden of proof to INEC. Again, Kenya provides a good example. The election board in that country receives petitions, if the intra-party mechanism fails to settle them. It also investigates complaints fairly transparently, even though members of the board are appointed by the president but confirmed by the legislature. In Nigeria, the election board is sometimes the playground of politicians, and is frequently accused of impeding petitioners’ access to election records.

And three, election petitions should be disposed of before swearing in. Once a winner has been declared and sworn in, a petitioner faces a near-impossible task of over-turning the result.

Since Abubakar has said he is not going anywhere, he would do well to mobilise his party to ensure that whether it is him or someone else in 2027, the party’s candidate would be spared his current misery. And it would also be in the enlightened self-interest of the ruling party to join him in fixing the broken system.

November 3, 2023
Gumi’s extremism shames decency – By Azu Ishiekwene

Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, 60, is a medical doctor and retired army captain. But he has not had a job after retirement 37 years ago. His day job since has been bandits’ advocacy. He has become so used to getting away with saying what he likes when he likes and how he likes it, he hardly knows when he needs help to extract his foot from his mouth.

He could use such help. Not only for his own good, but perhaps for the good of those taking him seriously as well.

In a rambling no-holds-barred sermon last week, Gumi lashed out at the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, for planning to make Abuja “an extension of Tel Aviv,” where anyone with a long beard would be treated like Osama bin Laden and murdered. He criticised Muslims for supporting a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the last election, forgetting that others, including Christians, also voted for that ticket.

“Satan” at work

His most deadly venom, however, was not for Wike. It was for Tinubu, the enabler of the “Satan” called Wike, and the hundreds of smaller Southern devils of all faiths roaming the woods of the country in a murderous rampage since 1966 but who have resurged with Tinubu’s election, holding the trigger. Their poor, dispossessed Northern compatriots are left to occupy empty shells as offices. This translation is a mild version of what Gumi said.

He spoke for himself and not for millions of Muslims across the country who recognise that after an election whoever emerges president has an obligation not just to one religious group but to all citizens, whether they are believers or agnostics.

He spoke for himself and not for exceptional clerics and Muslim leaders like the Sultan of Sokoto Sa’ad Abubakar who have spent their lives building bridges across faiths. Gumi spoke for himself, and certainly not for voters in Abuja who, for the first time ever, elected a non-indigenous woman, Ireti Kingibe, and member of the Labour Party, instead of traditional candidates of the two dominant parties, to represent them in the Senate. Gumi was speaking for himself.

Life in Abuja

Of course, he has a fanbase – a remnant of die-hards who follow him in the mistaken notion that he would not inherit some of the incendiary rhetoric of his father, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi. Perhaps there are also a few closet admirers among temporarily displaced politicians who are happy with his bitter words. But what is Gumi complaining about, really?

That Wike is suspectedly talking to the Israelis for Abuja’s security? It doesn’t matter to me. And Gumi may not understand why. Living in Abuja, as Chinua Achebe once said about Lagos, has become like living at the warfront.

But Gumi will not understand since he goes about with police escorts, which is strange because you would expect that the exploits from his bandits’ advocacy should have set him free from all security concerns by now.

Unfortunately, life in Abuja, especially in recent times, has been dangerous with frequent reports of deadly attacks on commuters by so-called “one-chance” drivers. If talking to Mossad or Hamas or Hezbollah will keep Abuja safe, it really doesn’t matter to me. And Gumi, a retired army captain, ought to know better.

Red herring

The US, “a country of infidels”, has some of the largest military bases in the world in Muslim countries in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, where Gumi earned his PhD in Islamic jurisprudence, has five of such bases apart from a military defence pact with America. The UAE hosts 5,000 US military personnel at the Al Dhafra Air Base, just outside Abu Dhabi. President Donald Trump had planned to double it.

Wike talking with Mossad – which I suspect was just a Gumi red herring – does not make Abuja any more vulnerable than did military president General Ibrahim Babangida awarding Julius Berger, a German firm, the contract to build Aso Rock, where the Nigerian president resides.

But of course, that was not Gumi’s main grouse. He is offended by the “otherness” of Wike’s appointment. How can someone who is not like him, an intruder if you like, be appointed minister of the Federal Capital Territory?

There are many things for which you can criticise Wike, not least of which is his politics, sometimes. His decisions to shuffle the FCT administration, demand overdue ground rent, and revoke hundreds of plots of undeveloped land that have in many cases become speculators’ lottery, have ruffled feathers. Yet, they can hardly be described as self-serving.

To be fair, Gumi did not mention any of these complaints in his sermon. Even if he did, it would have been perfectly within his right to do so because public officers must be held to account. But that was not the point of his displeasure; it was not about requesting accountability, offering suggestions about a better way, if he thought there was one, or challenging the competence of the minister.

Whose sacred ground?

His attack came from a much deeper place: resentment that Tinubu who emerged president by the grace of the North had the effrontery to bring an “intruder” into a “sacred ground,” without the approval of the Landlord. This brazen sense of entitlement dressed up as a “religious wrong,” offends decency. It’s unacceptable.

Abuja does not need to be saved from Wike. It is against people like Gumi that the capital and the country must now defend itself. The original builders of this place did not conceive of it as the Boys Quarters of one tribe, religion or ethnic group. It was precisely because of this sort of complication which Lagos presented, apart from it becoming a concrete jungle, that Abuja was conceived of as the new frontier of national unity.

The original majority Gwari indigenes have complained, perhaps justifiably, of being marginalised; agitators from the creeks of the Niger Delta have complained, perhaps justifiably, that Abuja was built off the back of oil wealth from that polluted and forsaken region.

What injury has Wike’s appointment caused Gumi? In Joseph Ona & another V. Diga Romani Atenda (2000), 5 NWLR (Pt. 656) 244, the Court of Appeal put to rest any special claim to Abuja by anyone or group. Abuja has no special status and therefore cannot be claimed as anyone’s special ground.

Changing demographics

If Gumi was looking, he would have seen, from the results of the last general elections that the city’s demographics, especially in the municipal areas, are changing. For the first time in its 47-year history as federal capital, neither the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of which he is an undisguised sympathiser; nor the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), had the majority. Appointments must reflect competence and the changing demographics.

In spite of Gumi, it’s a small step forward for unity and diversity that an APC president appointed a PDP minister in a federal capital where a woman and a non-indigene, represents Abuja in the Senate.

Gumi was right about one thing, though. That he didn’t particularly see eye-to-eye with former President Muhammadu Buhari. But it’s surprising that for eight years he didn’t see anything wrong with Abuja under former FCT minister Mohammed Bello.

A man full of religious fervour, Bello was well on his way to pre-eminence in mullah-hood when Buhari diverted him with a ministerial appointment, which became his undoing. He lost his way and his catastrophic tenure has been largely responsible for Abuja’s current mess.

Bello’s failure had nothing to do with religion or the fact that all seven ministers of the city in the last 24 years have all been Muslims. After all, Nasir El-Rufai, one of the two exceptional ministers in nearly 50 years, is a Muslim.

Gumi’s followers won’t hear him say that. But the next time they listen to his hate sermon, they should ask him what matters more to him: result or religion? His extremism shames decency. He should find a job.

October 29, 2023
Making of a better society – By Azu Ishiekwene

I grew up thinking that a judicious mix of crime, sex and money might not only help a publisher turn a good profit but could also be the catalyst for a better society. But my friend, the Publisher/Editor-In-Chief of NaijaTimes, Ehi Braimah, subscribes to a slightly different model.

When he sent me a collection of the editorials by the online newspaper to review, it was obvious that he believes it is possible to change society – for the better – by using a genre different from my old, familiar mix. Which is a bit of a surprise because in his former life, Ehi was old school.

He has had such an extraordinarily buoyant social life as a younger man, he appears to be afraid of getting old. That’s probably why instead of reproducing the old school journalism that extolled sex, money and crime, he is charting a different pathway for a better society, as you would find in the new book from the stable of NaijaTimes.

My first impression of the book, For A Better Society – A Compilation of Editorials Published in NaijaTimes from September 2020 to July 2023, published by Bookcraft and released this year, is that it reflects the importance the author puts on newspaper commentary with the notion that it holds a crucial place in the overall objective of news production.

The numbers

Newspapers – print and online alike – use the weight of their editorials to achieve any or all of these three objectives: 1) influence public opinion, 2) promote critical thinking, and 3) cause people to take action.

Perhaps it might be useful to give a sense of the analytics of the NaijaTimes website. According to open-source statistics of the site as of October 13, 2023, it currently ranks 1,142,571 globally, with a country ranking of 12,882 and trending up.

That’s not bad, considering that the brand is still in its infancy. Ten percent of its users, which is the highest percentage, comes from Nigeria; 7.56 percent from Antigua and Barbuda; 2.72 percent from the Maldives; 2.46 percent from the United States; and 2.39 percent from Jersey. Other parts of the world, combined, account for 74.79 percent.

Perhaps a far more relevant statistic would be the demographics of the users of NaijaTimes, especially those who read its editorials. Unfortunately, since I’m not a staff, I’ll need to use a hacker’s ingenuity to reach the backend, a skill that is obviously against the ethos of a better society!

We can argue that traditional newspapers with both hardcopy and online presence appear to stick more to publishing daily editorials as part of their content. Many strictly online news platforms do not dedicate much energy and time to editorial publishing for reasons ranging from mode of operation, a lack of proper editorial board, the virtuality associated with content production, and a lack of commitment. The ones that do, publish editorials at intervals – say, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

Not NaijaTimes!

In 35 months, NaijaTimes published 115 editorials broadly covering nine areas, each of which constitutes a chapter in this book – governance, politics, economy, education, security, health & environment, international affairs/diplomacy, sports and tributes/obituaries.

The major events that define the period covered by this book are: COVID-19, the #EndSARS protests, the 2023 general elections, and the state of the Nigerian economy. And, maybe we should add notable deaths around the world, and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar to the mix?

#EndSARS and all that

You don’t have to travel far into the pages of For A Better Society before we are thrown right into one of the most defining moments in our recent history. On Page 4 of the book, the editorial: “End SARS protests: Time to address the hard facts,” published on October 18, 2020, the newspaper draws readers’ attention to perhaps why the massive protests eventually yielded little.

It reads: “While those in the South are in support of a complete disbandment of SARS, those in the North are not; rather, they are calling for a comprehensive reformation of the squad… Of course, this kind of argument is expected in a plural society like ours, but we call for caution so that the differences in approach do not distract from the essence of guaranteeing the rights and privileges of members of the society and saving them from the brutality of security agencies.”

In Chapter Six, four out of the nine editorial publications under the Health and Environment deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. No single event highlighted 2020 like the pandemic, and because NaijaTimes itself was launched just around the peak of it, the newspaper rightly uses it as the peg of its evaluation of the year.

The other editorial “Crisis in APC and PDP: Do Nigerians need an alternative in 2023?”, published on August 15, 2021, captures the exasperation with the two dominant parties, which set the stage for the emergence of Peter Obi of the Labour Party. Obi’s eventual performance as the best third-place finisher in decades in the election was probably a vindication of the newspaper.

One of the most controversial issues in Nigeria’s economy has been the removal of subsidy on petrol announced by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his inauguration speech on May 29, 2023. The newspaper supports the call for subsidy to be removed and for the government to speedily deregulate the oil and gas sector to allow “free but monitored market interactions to determine exploration, exploitation, processing and supply of petroleum products in the country.”

You know the rest of the story: Subsidy is gone! Subsidy is back!

Mind your language

Perhaps it would be useful to talk briefly, at this point, on the use of language. In my experience, apart from their general staleness and lack of authority, one of the other reasons why a number of readers tend to ignore editorials is the use of ponderous language, like the one I have just used – ponderous!

You may say this collection of editorials looks at the government of Tinubu with rose-tinted glasses. But you cannot say its language is ponderous or ambiguous. It adopts clear, straightforward language and examples in making its case for a better society.

Tribute editorials, for which global brands such as the Times of London and The Economist, are well-known appear to be going out of fashion in our province. Chapter Nine, the final chapter of this book, has a rich array of tributes and obituaries not only because many iconic personalities coincidentally died within the time of its compilation, but also because there is the consciousness to document their journey. From JP Clark to Jerry Rawlings, Diego Maradona to Pele and Queen Elizabeth in-between, For A Better Society got them all covered.

Except, of course, for brevity and uniformity of length, the book is a compilation of what an editorial should be. The newspaper set for itself, the lofty goal of seeking a “better Nigeria with strong institutions, respect for the rule of law and defending the public interest.” This is not a three-year goal, never mind one that can be achieved easily in a society where almost everyone is talking, few are listening, and fewer still are doing right.

A good editorial

But let me borrow the words of Singh A. and Singh S. (2006), in their book, What Is A Good Editorial? “A good editorial should express an opinion without being opinionated. It should teach without being pedagogic. It should transform without being evangelical. It should engulf without drowning. It should motivate to action without making you dictatorial. It should enlighten without getting you dogmatic, prejudiced and egotistical.”

This book is a solid reference material for policymakers and those who seek knowledge in various fields or those who simply want to read balanced and informed commentaries about specific topics. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re the old school of Ehi’s variety or a product of the Arab spring!

And when Ehi has made his money, he should not forget to pay tithe to Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, whose newspaper, Champion, has the proprietary right of the mantra, “Towards a better society!”

October 20, 2023
Bring Bibi’s Head – By Azu Ishiekwene

This is the moment the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu always feared with great anxiety. Yet when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Southern Israeli border towns in the early hours of October 7, Bibi and Israel’s elite security forces were unprepared.

In a bizarre fabrication intended to complete Bibi’s humiliation a few days into the war, social media claimed, falsely, that an antisemitic crow had given the victory to the Palestinians in a mystic moment of avian fury.

The truth is more nuanced and complicated. After over five decades of bloody conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian war has not produced winners or losers. Only a cycle of senseless violence that appears totally avoidable to everyone except the combatants and those who occasionally use them for their proxy war.

The current war, which Hamas claimed was to avenge Israeli attacks on the Al Aqsa Mosque, is one of the bloodiest in a long time, but will not produce a result different from all the rest.

Bibi’s war?

In the popular imagination, no thanks to the Israeli left-wing press, Bibi is a warmonger. The popular view is that he will make war even when peace would cost him nothing, to gratify his anti-Palestinian obsession and deflect from his ruthless control of power and domestic woes. An omen of his just desserts was summed up by the video of a crow tearing up an Israeli flag from a pole on a building in the occupied territories. It didn’t matter that it was an old video which had gone viral nearly six months before the recent outbreak of hostilities. All is fair in war.

Bibi can hardly escape some responsibility for the present state of affairs in the Middle East. After 35 years of being a part of the Israeli political establishment and 16 years as Prime Minister, it is fair to say that if he genuinely wanted a different outcome in Israeli-Palestine relations, there would be no need for the parable of the crow to achieve one.

Within the first four days, the current conflict claimed over 1,500 lives on both sides, with thousands more injured or displaced, and communities leveled in the most brutal ways. In figures that seem very conservative, the UN reports that about 6,400 Palestinians and 300 Israelis have been killed in the conflict since 2008. And that is discounting casualties in the ongoing clashes.

Anatomy of anger

But every story has at least two sides. While the world struggles for a ceasefire to bring relief to millions of innocent victims trapped in this conflict and hopefully, drag the parties back to the forlorn two-state road map for peace, those who want Bibi’s head on a platter might also do well to hear his side of the story.

Perhaps he might never have been prime minister or he might have been a different one if his brother, Yonathan, had not been brutally killed in 1976 in Entebbe when Yonathan led Israeli special forces to rescue mostly Jewish passengers who were taken hostage and their plane hijacked to Uganda by Arab terrorists. Bibi was only 27-years-old then.

Perhaps he might not have been prime minister or he might have been a different one, if Egypt, Syria and Jordan did not join hands in a single-minded pledge to wipe out Israel in the Six Day War in 1967 or in Yom Kippur six years later. Israel has mended fences with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and a number of other Arab countries since, but one or two old foes in the region have become implacable enemies, too.

Perhaps Bibi might never have been a prime minister or he might have been a different one altogether, if the Palestinian leadership from Yasser Arafat’s PLO to the current leaders of Hamas were not sworn to the destruction of Israel, at all costs. Sadly, the PLO has either become irrelevant or at best is playing second fiddle to Hamas, while the chaos in Lebanon has given Hezbollah free reign.

Is it about Gaza?

If the Israeli occupation of Gaza was its worst crime all these years, then Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from there in 2005, in defiance of Bibi and other doubters at the time, might have changed the course of that region’s history. Maybe it might even have forestalled Bibi’s emergence as prime minister many years later. Unfortunately, what Bibi said then, that withdrawing to escape terror is inviting terror to chase you, appears to have been proved right.

Author and syndicated columnist, Jonathan Power, holds a clearly different view, of course. In an article entitled, “Government supporters in Israel are dangerously ignorant of their own history,” he suggests that the same painful memories that radicalised Bibi also radicalised a significant number of five million Palestinians over the years, admonishing those who always talk about the blood libel and the Holocaust not to also forget biblical “genocides” committed by Moses on the journey to the Promised Land or the kindness of Muslim Turks or medieval Spain.

Who owns the land? This is where Bibi’s story gets even more interesting. In his book, Bibi: My story, he accuses an Arab Knesset member of twisting historical facts, in answering the question.

“The first thousand years or so,” he writes, “are covered in the Bible, and are attested to by archeological and the historical records of other contemporaneous peoples.”

He traces the history of the Jews from Ur in the Chaldeans through Abraham’s burial in a cave he bought in Hebron, to Egypt and from there to the wilderness where the children of Israel received a moral code that would change the world on their journey to the Promised Land. He recalls the conquests by Joshua and how after Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem, David and his siblings in the battle for control split the realm in two.

“The northern kingdom, Israel, is destroyed, its ten tribes lost to history,” Bibi writes. “The southern kingdom, Judea, is conquered and Solomon’s temple destroyed by the Babylonians by whose rivers the exiled Judeans weep as they remembered Zion.”

He then traces the history of the Jews from Roman rule and the destruction of Herod’s Temple in 70 CE to the times of the Byzantines when the Jews were finally reduced to an insignificant minority. “It is not the Jews who usurp the land from the Arabs,” Bibi writes, “but the Arabs who usurp the land from the Jews…the Jews are the original natives; the Arabs the colonialists.”

Lion and the lamb

This is a story that is hardly told, understood or believed. And perhaps the course of history might also have been completely different if Britain, which maintained control over Palestine under the League of Nations mandate, had implemented the two-state solution instead of dumping the problem at the doorstep of the UN in 1948.

Anyone familiar with Britain’s legacy of elegantly concealed systematic violence against its colonies which watered the seed of apartheid in South Africa and created the Kashmiri and Cypriot problems, will not waste time blaming that country for the 75-year-old problem in the Middle East. To adapt Max Siollun, the whole object of British occupation was not only to protect the people from themselves, but also to set them against each other.

Yet, the choices made by Palestinians and Israelis over the years have mostly worsened a bad legacy. Blighted as the region may be from its colonial legacy, it cannot be hostage to the hate or personal injuries of its present elite. After the depredations of COVID-19 and the serious supply chain problems caused by the Russia-Ukraine war, the world could use some respite.

Bibi is right to feel that his worst fears about Gaza and the West Bank under the current Hamas leadership and a weakened PLO was confirmed by the recent unprovoked attack of innocent civilians at a peace concert in Israel.

But his current objective of “wiping out Hamas” even if it succeeds, which is improbable, is not a guarantee that a worse mutation of Hamas will not rise again in Gaza. A stubborn pursuit of his goal might produce in young, innocent Palestinians today the same sentiments that pushed him to the far right.

The lion and the lamb must find a common ground in their shared, chequered history.

October 13, 2023
Are you in that number saved by Uzodimma? – Azu Ishiekwene

In a country of 133 million multidimensional poor, with youth unemployment at 53.40 percent, it would be a pity if anyone looking for an opportunity to earn a living missed the chance to hear the Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma recently.

In a campaign speech for his second term, Uzodimma promised, as my father would have said, what Napoleon in all his extraordinary conquests and ambition could not even have dreamed of.

In my humble view, it’s Japa 2.0, a giant leap forward for the youth delivered in a moment of creative genius, the last of which was seen when the Supreme Court’s ruling on his election petition sprung His Excellency from number four position on the Imo ballot list of contestants in 2019, all the way to the Government House.

I must dispense with any further rigmarole and get to the point, while the governor’s generous offer lasts. The governor told a crowd of excited, cheering youths who came to visit him at the Government House on September 26, that he had finally come up with a plan to put at least 4,000 of them out of unemployment, as part of his “Skill Up Imo” programme. He said he had spoken with representatives of some Canadian and European firms in Nigeria. The companies would not only train these youths, but also send them to different choice destinations in North America and Europe to work.

As if that was not enough, he then added that his government was prepared to pay the flight tickets of all 4,000 eligible persons once their employment has been processed, with the possibility, I might add, that a few lucky ones may even fly first class!

Upon hearing this bonanza, the crowd roared and roared in raptures of ecstasy. Of course, the governor didn’t have to say this too-good-to-believe offer was tied to the potential beneficiaries voting for him at the November 11 governorship election in the state. Quid pro quo was implied.

Campaign in lullaby

Mario Cuomo’s dictum that politicians campaign in poetry doesn’t really do justice to politicians of the Nigerian variety. They do much better – they campaign in lullaby.

In 1999, for example, a fellow called Ahmed Yerima campaigned for governorship, promising to make Zamfara the believer’s paradise. He vowed to end corruption and enthrone justice and prosperity through political sharia. The seed of his green-eyed fanaticism has bred a deadly variety of bandits that haunt that state today.

Another fellow, Saminu Turaki, promised that if he was elected governor, Jigawa would become Africa’s Silicon Valley, with a tablet for every voter. It turned out, however, that the only time there was Internet service in the state for most of his tenure was immediately after he received billions of naira in monthly allocation from Abuja. Once the money entered the state’s treasury all lines to the Government House were unreachable until the next allocation.

There’s even a more recent example of campaign by lullabies, the sort that is now ensuing from Imo State. A gentleman governor called Professor Ben Ayade promised among a litany of things during his campaign that he would build a 260km superhighway from Calabar to Katsina-Ala in Benue State. He also promised a deep-sea port in Bakassi and a cargo airport in Obudu.

Voters bought his snake oil and repurchased it by giving him a second term. After eight years, they woke up to the harsh reality of the empty musical notes of Ayade’s broken promises.

Uzodimma-nistan

Perhaps Uzodimma would be different? What is the price of a vote, anyway, compared with the prospects of a new life, so bright and beautiful that the vistas only compare with a terrestrial realm which, permit my limited imagination, I can only describe as Uzodimma-nistanat this time?

As I watched the excitement and anticipation in the mostly young crowd, I felt sorry for Uzodimma’s opponents who have so far been thoroughly unimaginative. All they have been doing when they’re not pressing for the Charter of Equity that they say should disqualify the governor from re-contesting, is to talk about some plan to make Imo safe and secure again, and how to end graft and corruption in government.

After listening to Uzodimma’s extraordinary redemption plan for Imo youths, his opponents should humble themselves and take remedial classes from this man who has been a consummate snake oil salesman long before Imo River.

The governor’s announcement on September 26 may appear ordinary to the undiscerning, but a friend of mine and obviously a closet Uzodimma admirer expanded the grand dimensions of the governor’s Japa 2.0 programme, totally hidden from my simple heart.

When I criticised the scheme as a cheap and foolish campaign gimmick, my friend admonished me promptly. How could I compare Uzodimma with Yerima or Turaki or Ayade? Couldn’t I see the governor’s ingenuity, he asked?

New industry

First, he said, all the talk about insecurity and corruption would vanish once the 4,000 ambassadors started working and remitting foreign exchange back home. And second, how could I not also see that the announcement by the governor, an accomplished salesman, had unleashed a cottage industry of sorts in the state already?

According to my friend, as soon as the governor promised to provide jobs for 4,000 youths in Canada and Europe and also to pay their airfares, some smart folks in and around government would take the matter to greater imaginative heights

In the next few days or weeks, for example, expect some people who might start hawking forms for Cohort One of either the Canadian or European editions of “Skill Up Imo.” If these retailers of snake oil charge only N5,000 per form, for example, they would have made N20m, if only 4,000 bought forms – a very conservative estimate in a state with an estimated population of 5.2 million, mostly youths!

Imagine what that means for both the personal and government internally generated revenue. Between the sale of forms to the multiple rounds of screening, tests and final selection, my friend said, surely the good times would be back again.

Think of the hundreds, if not thousands, of young people who instead of risking their lives in the desert of North Africa and the perilous Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe now have the opportunity of not only being trained by some of the best companies in the world but also being employed by them. And all of this on Uzodimma’s ticket, just for the price of a vote to return His Excellency to office!

Reverse migration never looked so potentially profitable and America and Europe should have no difficulty seeing the win-win in this grand scheme. I therefore urge all busybodies trying to fact-check the governor to think about the implication of their action on this laudable and patriotic project and to desist forthwith.

My regret

My only regret perhaps is that non-indigenes registered to vote in Imo may not benefit from this programme, although it is likely that given the wild excitement that greeted the announcement and the likely political harvest, the governor may extend this scheme to non-indigenous voters as well, as long as they vote for him and retain a certified true copy of their ballot paper.

There’s a saying in my neck of the woods that if a fashion designer is offering to make you a special wear you must first look at what he is wearing. Surely, anyone like His Excellency, who registered a company in 2012 with a share capital of N5m and won a dredging contract of N26 billion five years later which was diligently not executed, should be trusted to send only 4,000 Imo voters to the moon and back, without much difficulty.

As they say in the South East, “Ya kpo tu ba!”

October 6, 2023
A school crime scene that won’t go away – By Azu Ishiekwene

In the Bible, Keren-happuch was the youngest of the three beautiful daughters of Job, who against the norms of a patriarchal society, inherited her father’s vast latter-day wealth along with her two other sisters. But in the sometimes inexplicable twist of fate, this is the story of another Keren-happuch whose sun set before it rose.

Her story as told by her mother was hard to follow. Even if I had eaten the head of a tortoise, the fabled medicine for anhedonia, the woman’s story, especially her futile search for justice, would still have broken my heart into many pieces.

Perhaps you have heard it, too. It’s the story of Mrs. Vivian Akpagher whose 14-year-old daughter, Keren-happuch, died two years ago in circumstances that still leave the woman and her family broken and traumatised.

Sometime in June 2021, Keren-happuch, a student of Premiere Academy, Lugbe, Abuja, had managed to place a call to her mother to complain that she had eye infection and needed proper medical attention outside the school. It wasn’t a normal call, according to her mother. After an earlier call by a matron who appeared to have tried to downplay the situation, Keren-happuch used the phone of a sympathetic teacher to call her mother.

Unusual call

Her mother was confused. The Keren-happuch she knew wasn’t the kind of daughter that took her studies lightly or one to raise a false alarm. Yes, she was diabetic, but she had learned how to use her insulin and also to watch her diet. So, what was this about? As far as teenagers go, her mother said, she was a jovial, happy, lovable girl who along with her three siblings – all boys – had come to terms with the passing of their father.

Of all the things her mother thought about when Keren-happuch made that second desperate call from school, the last thing on her mind was that that could be the beginning of her last days with her daughter.

After she arranged for her to be brought to a hospital from school in company with the matron and it was time for them to take her back, she refused to follow the staff, insisting that her mother must follow them to the school and get a pass to take her home.

The school staff tried to assure her that Keren-happuch would be fine, that it was only a minor problem, perhaps a bacterial infection, which would be managed at the sick bay. But her mother instinct kicked in. She brushed aside the assurances and drove behind them to Premiere Academy. On arrival, the misery she was subjected to before she could finally take her daughter home was an indication of the foreboding days ahead.

Like Keren, like Syl

She was vetted and coldly scrutinised. And in a school where she had two other children, her ID was taken and snapped at the gate before Keren-happuch was finally released to her after hours of cat-and-mouse with the authorities. As she departed, she had an eerie feeling that she was walking into a trap, but the relief from retrieving her daughter and hope that she would be fine overcame her sense of the looming danger.

Sadly, what she was afraid of would not only happen to her, a slightly different but no less traumatic variety of it would happen again five months later to another family in another school nearly 700 kilometres away in Lagos. Grief likes company.

Like Mrs. Akpagher, the Oromonis also had their son, Sylvester, as a boarding student in Dowen College, one of the elite private schools in Lagos. For a long time, school bullies and absent-minded administrators ignored Sylvester’s anguished complaints, which he recorded in videos.

His parents obviously didn’t notice on time, too. Everyone, it seemed, turned a blind eye until Sylvester took ill and died from circumstances related to his abuse shortly before his 12th birthday.

Abuse and bullying have become epidemics in our schools. According to a 2007 study by Elizabeth Egbochukwu in the Journal of Social Sciences, four out of five children are at risk, the sort of risk that may have claimed the lives of Keren-happuch and Sylvester within five months of each other and which Keren-happuch’s mother probably thought she could prevent by rushing to take her child home on that day.

Of course, schools love to show off their safety records and virtually all would claim low incidence and tolerance of abuse. But even at 99 percent, the one percent of students who may die or be damaged from abuse or bullying is some family’s 100 percent.

What I feared…

As Keren-happuch’s mother’s story goes, the night after she took her daughter home, the girl became gravely ill. She had to be taken to Queen’s Clinic, Area 6, Abuja, where urine and virginal swap tests had allegedly revealed dead spermatozoa, apart from a piece of festering condom also removed from her inside.

When her personal effects were retrieved from Premiere Academy, she had marked a place in her Bible, “What I always feared has happened to me (Job 3:25).” There was a strong suspicion at the hospital that she may have been sexually abused.

Her mother said she was told her daughter died from sepsis. She claimed that she kept officials of the school informed from the moment of Keren-happuch’s admission, up to the point where she later died and about all that happened, including what the doctor said.

On its part, the school has denied any wrongdoing, insisting that Keren-happuch wasn’t gravely ill when her mother took her home and that she might have died from her mother’s negligence. The school has also reported the doctor who allegedly said a used condom was retrieved from Keren-happuch to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN).

With Keren-happuch’s mother and the school at dagger’s drawn, you would expect the police to take a genuine interest to find out the truth. But after two years on this case, it’s beginning to look like even if you beat the police on the head with the facts, they would still not recognise them. On occasions when the police are determined to work, they do very well, in spite of the challenges.

But when the police decide to bungle a case – which is more often than not – they make such a thorough mess that leaves no sensible margin of common sense whatsoever for either the process or outcome of the matter.

More questions than answers

How, for example, can the police explain that neither Keren-happuch’s mother who was squeezed to pay over N1 million for her daughter’s DNA nor her representatives were present at Queen’s Clinic when DNA was taken, whereas the school and the police were there? And how come Mrs. Akpagher who paid for the test can no longer have access to it?

How can the police explain that two years after Keren-happuch’s death, the matter is still languishing in the court, while police sources tell the press they are being leaned upon to kill the matter? How? And isn’t this malicious official negligence the same reason two years after Sylvester’s death, the police have also failed to do what is required to get the coroner’s report ready?

It’s not only the police that should be getting a beating here. The report in LEADERSHIP on Sunday also indicated that the House of Representatives in the 9th National Assembly took a casual look at the matter, and almost immediately abandoned it, since it’s not typically the sort of case that allows them to eat with two hands.

The current assembly, especially Senator Ireti Kingibe, representing the FCT and the House Committee Chairman on FCT, Muktar Aliu Betara, will do well to revisit the matter immediately.

Nothing will bring back Keren-happuch, of course. But this is a good test case for the new Inspector General of Police Kayode Egbetokun, who has promised that the force on his watch would turn a new leaf.

He can’t walk past this crime scene without justice for Keren-happuch’s memory. It was Keren-happuch yesterday and Sylvester the next day. The only incentive an abuser needs to get their next victim is for Egbetokun to do nothing about Keren-happuch and Sylvester.

September 29, 2023
Begging for a seat at the table – By Azu Ishiekwene

Following the G-20 summit held in India, I have been amused by the debate about whether or not Nigeria should be more than a guest again at the next G-20 meeting in Rio, Brazil. If South Africa is a member, why not Nigeria?

How do you offer Africa’s largest economy only a complimentary ticket every time to such an important global event, leaving it with the rather humiliating option of begging for a place?

I thought that we had outgrown the belief that respect is earned by size or by simply hanging out with the right crowd, regardless of performance. If it’s not just another boost for the testosterone of a few African leaders who attend such meetings, it’s difficult to understand why they cannot see that they would have to put their house in order first to earn respect on the outside.

I don’t know what President Cyril Ramaphosa’s membership is doing for South Africa or what the AU membership of the G-20 is doing for the continent. Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu obviously feels that if Ramaphosa can be on the stage at this pageant of global powers, then so can he also.

But I frankly think that both of them and others on the continent have barely paid enough attention to the opportunities that come with building truly vibrant regional and continental institutions. African leaders must pay attention to what is happening back home, in their own backyard. It’s the sheer force of their record of performance that would compel the world to notice and take them seriously.

Lesson from EU

The EU, one of the world’s most prosperous trading blocs today, started as a trading community of six European countries with a combined population of 170m at the time. Today, it has grown to 27 members with an economy of approximately 16 trillion euros.

Apart from the EU’s institutional membership of the G-20, three EU countries – Germany, France and Italy – are also members of the group in their own rights, because of the sheer size of their economies. They didn’t have to beg for membership.

Consider, for example, how shabbily Africa has so far treated the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), perhaps its single biggest opportunity in decades to remove trade barriers amongst members, lift millions out of poverty and earn a significant spot on the world stage.

Five years into AfCFTA, the continent still pays lip service to free movement of people, with Africans requiring visas to travel to at least 60 percent of the 54 countries, never mind the monumental obstacles to free trade.

Compared to India, for example, where only three compulsory documents are required for import-export processing, Nigeria’s Customs requires nearly 12 to process intra-African goods and services, and you’re just getting started.

While Africa’s population has grown to double that of Europe, intra-African trade accounts for about 11 percent or $170 billion, which is merely five percent of intra-European trade. Intra-African trade also lags intra-Asian trade.

Missed opportunities

Nigeria is not even among the eight countries currently participating in AfCFTA’s Guided Trade Initiative (GTI), a platform that is supposed to boost the region’s trade policy framework. How can Nigeria, which ought to be in the forefront of turning this state of affairs around, but which is sadly one of the laggards in AfCFTA commitments, covet a table at the G-20? And on what terms when, like most of the continent, Nigeria is still largely a market for primary commodities with the inherent disadvantages?

According to Tom Burgis in The Looting Machine, “In Africa, the outflows (as of 2011) amounted to five to seven percent of GDP, the highest proportion in any region and growing at a rate of 20 percent a year. African losses from trade mispricing alone are roughly the equivalent to the continent’s income from aid.”

To add insult to injury, Nigeria, Ghana and Chad were listed by Burgis as first, sixth and ninth respectively among the countries that suffered the worst illicit outflows from 2005. This sounds more like a continent that needs to look after itself than one whose leaders should be hankering for a courtesy ticket for a front-row seat outside.

If you add the current state of political turmoil across a number of countries on the continent, especially the so-called coup belt, the situation becomes even more deserving of serious homework and introspection.

Whereas the OAU of those days challenged apartheid and fought against minority rule and oppression in Zimbabwe and Namibia while supporting more African states to attain political independence, its successor the AU is sleep-walking through multiple conflicts, content to make only perfunctory noises.

Meanwhile, the new crop of military rulers from Chad to Mali and from Burkina Faso to Gabon continue to dig in, sparking a dangerous wave of copycats and self-doubt about the value and use of democratic rule.

Africa’s 1.3 billion population is perennially a source of cheap labour for developed and middle-income countries in a manner reminiscent of the slave trade; while its landmass of 30 million square kilometres has remained a booty for external forces to exploit, loot and cart away as the continent slumbers.

Instead of trying to cross seven seas to join the G-20, Nigeria should be more concerned that even though it was also a guest to the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg in August, it was not among the six countries that would get membership from January 2024, with the two new spots in Africa going to Ethiopia and Egypt.

Indo-China love

What’s more? In an increasingly multipolar world, the unspoken message by absent Chinese President Xi Jinping to the last G-20 meeting, was that his country was no longer happy to play second fiddle to US hegemony. Rather than coveting that same company Nigeria and other African countries should do more to chart their own course. And they can do so without holding out the begging bowl.

Ambition to play in the big league is not a bad thing in itself. A spot on the big stage, however, requires more than a large ego, more than an extravagant claim of untapped potential, and certainly, much more than a sense of entitlement.

For a start, since Nigeria’s president obviously loved what he saw at the G-20 in Delhi he should have asked Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to share the story of India’s journey to the G-20 with him. As of 2005/2006, more than 640 million people across India were in multidimensional poverty.

A 2019 UNDP report on multidimensional poverty however found that in about six years, the number of multidimensionally poor had fallen from 640 to 365 million. And in just nine years of Modi, access to electricity has increased from 70 percent to 93 percent, while states with basic sanitation coverage across India are over 90 percent.

That is the sort of record that makes a country both an eligible and inevitable member of the G-20 or any other respectable global platform; not covetousness, begging or a sense of entitlement.

September 22, 2023
From the Mouth of His Lordship – By Azu Ishiekwene

It’s not often that you meet Supreme Court justices, serving or retired. I first met retired Justice Sunday Akinola Akintan casually at a reception in Abuja, for my friend and radical lawyer, Yinka Olumide-Fusika, who had been admitted to the inner bar. Then, we met again about one year later, this time, through his book.

Years after his retirement from the Supreme Court in 2008, Justice Akintan wrote a book, entitled, “Reminiscences: My Journey Through Life,” which Olumide-Fusika, SAN, asked me to review. What struck me was one of Akintan’s motivations for writing the book. It was an answer to T.O.S Benson’s advice not to be buried without writing a book, which would be a waste of a life’s worth of library.

If his lordship decided to write just to remember the road he travelled and to share his odyssey, it would still have been a good book. But it was even better because in a profession where the burden of office elevates discretion almost to the oeuvre of a cult, his desire to shed light is a valuable gift.

There are a couple of rare insights in the book. One of them, which has assumed significant monstrosity over the years, is how the judiciary could not see that getting more and more involved in deciding electoral outcomes would drag it in the mud.

Or maybe the judiciary saw it but decided, with a helping hand from the inner bar, to take Oscar Wilde’s advice to overcome the problem by yielding to it. And now, it’s beyond entanglement; the Bench is enmeshed!

Over 10 hours of studiously reading a judgment which five judges of the Court of Appeal must have thought was their utmost to deliver justice still left behind a trail of disenchantment, suspicion and criticisms. Not a few, rather sadly and regrettably, still believe it was the judicial equivalent of a grudge match.

As it was…

The judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) last week in the case involving the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar; Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP); and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) in which the panel dismissed the petitions against the February 25 election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has once again put the judiciary in the spotlight.

In the midst of the outrage that followed the judgment, especially among the supporters of Abubakar and Obi, I turned, once again, to Justice Akintan’s book for help to find my way through the maelstrom. And he should know. He’s seen election petitions since 1979.

It’s a measure of how we have learnt to forget that the account of the retired justice of the Supreme Court of what happened 20 years ago reads like excerpts from today’s newspapers. If we had paid any heed then, it’s unlikely that the country would be in a place today where the outcome of virtually every election depends not on who voters choose at the ballot, but on who the courts decide.

In Reminiscences, Akintan writes that one of the two most significant things that happened to him when he returned to the Port Harcourt division on a rare second tour of duty as Presiding Judge of the Court of Appeal, was dealing with matters arising from the 2003 general elections.

There was something about the 2003 election that set his hair on edge and raked his conscience over the coals of the sacred pledge he had made to himself and his family at the beginning of his career not to stain his name. Post-election litigations up and down the country were fierce and bitter.

But the one between ANPP’s presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and candidate of the PDP, Olusegun Obasanjo, after the 2003 election was so bitter and so fierce that Buhari called for nationwide protests, because he said the judiciary had been compromised.

Clear, present danger

That was only a foreshadow of what was to come. As the years went by the judiciary came under increasing strain. The stakes, for politicians, got even higher. “They exposed the judges and the entire staff of the judiciary to contacts with the politicians,” Akintan writes, “with the attendant possibility of exposing them to corruption.” What was then a possibility is now a consuming danger.

Akintan was assigned 52 petitions in Port Harcourt alone. On top of that, the President of the Court of Appeal told him he had to go to Jos for eight pending governorship election petitions, which the president of the court obviously needed a trustworthy judge to handle.

To avoid contact with litigants and their lawyers, never mind the felicity of some determined folks even thinking of sending him Sallah ram directly or by proxy as we heard in a recent case in Kano, Akintan moved his base from Port Harcourt to his home town, Idanre, Ondo State.

In spite of the severe scarcity of petrol at the time, it was from Idanre that he commuted weekly to Jos through Abuja. Even in Jos, he still could not trust his driver would not be used to get him.

“Once we arrived in the court in Jos,” he recalls, “I used to collect the car ignition key from my driver to ensure there was no breach of the car being taken into town for any reason.”

According to Akintan, by the time he retired from the Supreme Court in 2008, the system had almost been overwhelmed with politicians working hand-in-gloves with lawyers to suborn elections. Trust and confidence had become casualties.

“The position grew so wild after the 2015 elections,” he writes, “that the number of election petitions far outstripped all other cases filed in all the courts in the country. Many of the senior lawyers who had cornered the very lucrative briefs from the election petitions amassed stupendous wealth.”

Unfortunately, and in spite of the valiant efforts by a few conscientious judges still on the Bench, the cloud of suspicion has, regrettably, thickened.

Abuja special status

Apart from Akintan’s personal decision to be different, there was something else in Reminiscences that caught my attention: the judgment in Joseph Ona & another V. Diga Romani Atenda (2000), in which he played a leading role. This judgment by the Court of Appeal, in my view, addressed one of the vexatious points in Obi’s petition that a candidate must have 25 percent of the votes cast in Abuja or else cannot be declared validly elected.

Until I read the summary judgment in the book, I was under the impression that Abuja residents had two heads; that apart from having a special political status, the dichotomy between “settlers” and “indigenes” was also real.

But in the judgment in the case under reference – a case of trespass, harassment, humiliation and defamation in a land dispute – which was, in fact, referred from the High Court to the Court of Appeal for determination, the court made it clear residents of the Federal Capital Territory are by no means special.

In the words of Akintan, “It is (therefore) totally illegal for any of them to claim any special right over any other Nigerian occupier of the territory.”

Conclusion of the matter

If there is no dichotomy in the status of residents, and they have no exclusive proprietary right over and above citizens anywhere in the country, how can they claim a casting vote that holds the country to ransom at elections? It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court answers this and other questions that would come before it in the Abubakar-Obi appeal.

What I hear former Supreme Court Justice Akintan say, clearly in Reminiscences, is that the fewer court-imposed candidates we have – and one might add, the less crooked the political parties, the election management body and the media – the better for the electoral system and the judiciary.

September 15, 2023
Obaseki and Shaibu deserve each other – By Azu Ishiekwene

It’s more than one year to the next governorship election in Edo State, which prides itself on being the “heartbeat of the nation”. But in a maelstrom that has forced the state’s heart to beat faster than is good for it, you would be forgiven to think the election is tomorrow.

The bad blood between Governor Godwin Obaseki and his deputy, Philip Shaibu, is so bitter and so strong it has spilled beyond Osadebe House in Benin, splattering as far as Abuja courts, and daily smearing the front pages of newspapers.

Reports last week said the governor, fed up of seeing his deputy’s face, is preparing an isolation centre for him in the precincts of the Government House, but far enough to keep him out of sight.

One cynical way to look at it is to say Shaibu is getting what he deserves for trying to do what Napoleon could not do. In Nigeria’s 24 years of unbroken civilian rule there are few examples of deputy governors who have succeeded their bosses by election, and only two of them – Mahmud Shinkafi (Zamfara); and Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano) – did so by mutual consent. The others, whether in Bayelsa, Kaduna, Sokoto, Ebonyi, Yobe or Oyo, were either by default or defiance.

Except Shaibu intends to make his luck, which will not only include raiding the vote bank in Edo South, but also subverting the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) structure in the state, and overthrowing Obaseki’s ego, history is not on his side.

Making his luck?

How can Shaibu make his luck when he is throwing everything into battle at once, the very opposite of Napoleon’s famous manoeuvre sur les derrie ‘res or the strategy of inferiority? He doesn’t even enjoy support in his Edo North home base, where the rival All Progressives Congress (APC) could have thrown him a lifeline.

Senator Adams Oshiomhole, APC leader in Edo and Shaibu’s former staunch backer, has told him that APC has no room for internally displaced politicians (IDP) in search of a rehabilitation camp. That may sound harsh, but I’m sure that Shaibu knows he deserves his current misery. Loyalty is not a virtue in politics, sadly. But if Oshiomhole is dressing Shaibu down, he has earned the right to do so.

Of course, Oshiomhole’s snake may have its hand buried in its womb, but it was this man, for all his hubris, that extended a helping hand to Shaibu, a former Prisons Service officer, after an electoral defeat in his early political career in 2003 nearly left him for dead.

That helping hand, which he would later turn round to bite, was the hand that paved the way for him not only to later become the majority leader in the Edo House of Assembly, but also to represent Estako Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives in 2015.

According to one account, in the good old days of comradery conviviality, the infernal idea of inaugurating a minority House of Assembly of 10 members in 2019 after which the majority of 14 (APC) were locked out for entire four years was suggested by Shaibu, who was House Leader between 2009 and 2015. It was a coup that benefited all the plotters.

Yet, however deserving he may be of his current misery, it would be unfair to ignore the circumstances under which Shaibu parted ways with Oshiomhole in 2020. Oshiomhole who was then party chairman of the APC had supervised shambolic primaries in a number of states.

Things fall apart

The primaries in Edo were obviously meant to settle scores with his protegee, Obaseki, who had developed a mind of his own. Shaibu joined the train of “conscientious objectors,” ostensibly led by Obaseki, who were obliged to part ways with the APC, taking refuge under PDP’s umbrella provided by the former Governor Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike.

But Obaseki, the other significant party in this pathetic drama playing out in Edo, is a man of infinite contradictions, whose chameleonic gifts are matched only by his ruthless deployment of power. Against the run of fair play, Oshiomhole imposed him as his successor in 2016, in a self-aggrandising bid to copy the Tinubu-Fashola model in Lagos; he being the Tinubu of Edo, and Obaseki, the former stockbroker from Afrivest, Edo’s Fashola.

The experiment turned out to be a catastrophic fiasco. Barely two years after take-off, the falcon began to defy the falconer and the monster created in the process now threatens not only the creator but also the supplicant who has dared to challenge it.

Birds of a feather

Obaseki and Shaibu deserve each other. And Oshiomhole, the father of this incorrigible pair and high priest of their shenanigans, must be sorry at what his experiment has brought upon the people of Edo. In all of this, my heart goes out to the people who must now endure 12 months of a government in disarray, hampered by in-fighting and back-stabbing.

The deputy governor has been stripped of his responsibilities of monitoring and reporting the collection of Internally Generated Revenue and also benched from supervising the Sports Ministry.

But it gets even pettier. Shaibu’s sister-in-law, Sabina Chikere, who was until recently permanent secretary of the Sports Ministry, has been redeployed to “Central Administration”, an administrative wasteland. She was lucky not to have been lynched by a politically motivated mob as she tried to retrieve her personal effects from her former office.

And to asphyxiate his deputy, Obaseki sacked media aides attached to that office in a vendetta straight out of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s playbook during his face-off with Atiku Abubakar.

A resident, Edosa Okunbo, described the fight as “selfish, shameful and diversionary at a time when the state is bedeviled by bad roads and daily killings by rival cult gangs.” Another resident, Isaac Olamikan, said, “The people will be the worse for this in-fighting.”

Even as videos of the governor’s convoy stranded in flooded Benin roads trend, there is still something he manages to do well: calling out the Federal Government’s profligacy. How a governor can superintend over a shambles at home, call out Abuja with a straight face, and also win local elections overwhelmingly at the height of his hubris are part of the inexplicable alchemy of Nigeria’s politics. I don’t get it.

But it doesn’t matter. The emergence of Obaseki in 2016 propped by political heavyweights and supported by some of Nigeria’s high and mighty, including Aliko Dangote, must feel like an investment in junk bonds now. And the governor’s union with Shaibu, must feel like a marriage made in hell.

I can imagine that folks in Edo Central who have been hard done by over the years must be fancying the clash between Obaseki who is from the South, and Shaibu who is from the North, with extraordinary amusement. It may well be the argument that advances their case for a shot at power in 2024.

I hope, however, for the sake of the long-suffering people of the state that the governor and his deputy will sheathe the sword, let common sense prevail and serve the people they have sworn to serve for their remaining time in office.

I have seen what appears to be a letter of rapprochement by the deputy governor addressed to the DSS, the governor and the chief judge, on official letterhead and was pleased that Shaibu still has access to his letterhead. I hope the truce holds. As things are now, apart from the two contenders, the only people profiting from this ego-fest are political opportunists and assorted jobbers.

Edo people deserve far, far better than being spectators in a pointless, diversionary ego war.

September 8, 2023
Saving Abuja from Wike, Really? – Azu Ishiekwene

Abuja is not in a hurry to change. However, in a city famous for its bad habits fostered by wayward politicians, I think the dial may have moved a bit in the right direction. It’s hard to say if this slight movement has been fortuitous, or whether it had anything to do with the threat of the new minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, to tackle lawbreakers with an iron hand.

I have noticed that one week after Wike’s swearing in, more traffic lights in and around the Central Business District began to work. More than I can remember at any other time in the last two years at least. I got so used to seeing dead and malfunctioning traffic lights, I began plotting my commutes around these mostly dead or dying instruments, even if it sometimes meant using longer routes.

After my car was bashed once at an intersection where the traffic light had failed and the warden was absent, I learnt to skirt around the lights to save myself from Abuja’s suicidal drivers. Even in the few places where the lights work, it would be foolish to move without first looking left and right, and left again. For the sane few the restoration of more traffic lights is a welcome relief.

However, in a city nearly overwhelmed with filth, dead street lights, bad roads, occasional deadly police brutality and rising crime – not to mention well-connected land speculators and violators of the masterplan – it seems like trivia to talk about traffic lights back in service.

Yet, it is, in fact, because of the festering decay and spectacular all-round collapse of the city that a small matter such as the restoration of a number of traffic lights has become even more noticeable.

Not that Abuja’s numerous drivers from hell care, light or no light. They will not stop at a road sign even if you beat them on the head with a flashing light pole. The point is, the resuscitation of the lights gives hope that perhaps there just might be fewer than the 348 motor vehicle accidents, 39 of them fatal, that occurred in Abuja between January and December 2022, according to data from the FCT Transport Secretariat.

Broken city

Yet, the story of the failure of Abuja, as I said before, is more than the chaos in the Central Business District, more than its malfunctioning traffic lights and, certainly, much more than all its crazy drivers combined. Abuja is a victim of elite abuse. It took me years of living and working in and out of the place to understand and sympathise with the city over its misery.

In fact, sometimes I secretly wished that Obafemi Awolowo had won the 1979 election and invited Walt Disney to make the place an amusement park as he contemptuously promised during his presidential campaign that year.

Like most typical Lagosians, I disdained Abuja. Not out of a feeling of metropolitan hubris, but because even in its hubris, Lagos has a method, a soul. Until 2010, I tried, if I could help it, never to stay more than one day in Abuja, which had earned a reputation as the refuge of scoundrels.

Of course, Nigeria’s former military head of state, General Murtala Mohammed, who first announced Abuja as the new Federal Capital on February 3, 1976, had very good intentions for doing so. The argument of the military, under General Yakubu Gowon, was that Lagos had become congested and unlivable. Nigeria’s capital of the future had to be more than a concrete jungle.

Squandering of riches

President Shehu Shagari tried to move things along rather gingerly but anyone who has watched Onyeka Onwuenu’s BBC-NTA documentary, The Squandering of Riches, might see where Abuja finally lost its way and inherited its perverted DNA.

When the military government of General Muhammadu Buhari struck in 1983, the mess in Abuja – huge contracts awarded at fantastically inflated costs – was a part of the charge sheet against Shagari’s government and a number of politicians of that era.

After Gideon Orkar’s 1990 coup attempt in which military president General Ibrahim Babangida, escaped by the skin of his teeth, however, he felt vulnerable in Lagos. He gave construction giant, Julius Berger, a carte blanche denominated in sweetheart crude oil deals, to get Abuja ready for his government.

If Abuja looks like a shadow of its former self today, a far cry from the model of Brasilia, planned by the US consortium of three companies – Wallace, Roberts, McHarg and Todd; and its Central Business District is anything but what was conceived by Japanese architect, Kenzo Tange, it’s not because of lack of effort by at least two notable persons to save it.

Major General Mamman Vatsa was one. Julius Berger may have done the main construction work, but the credit for the greening of the new Federal Capital goes to Vatsa, an outstanding poet and humanist whose execution remains a big stain on the Babangida era.

Somehow, where the lush greens, gardens and open spaces in FESTAC Town, Lagos, could not withstand the philistinism of elite land grabbers, Vatsa’s green footprint legacy in Abuja has managed, at least in the many parts, to withstand the ravages of the elite and assorted trespassers.

The second notable Abuja steward was former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, when he was minister of the FCT. In a city where politicians believe they can get away with virtually anything, El-Rufai’s fanatical insistence on compliance with the Abuja masterplan brought him in collision with the high and mighty.

But it was a fight worth having. Without El-Rufai’s stubborn insistence, Abuja would be a far worse place than it is today, especially as a result of the collapse of many industries in the North, not to mention Nigeria’s dysfunctional federalism. Imagine a city where the CCTV cameras installed with a Chinese loan of $460 million which was supposed to help manage crime became a crime scene, with the cameras, cables and poles all stolen on former Minister Bala Mohammed’s watch?

Achebe’s warfront

And as if that is not bad enough, we’re now being told in a Bloombergreport on Tuesday, that the city train service, a star project of Rotimi Amaechi’s era, is an example of “how not to build public transit!”

Abuja is not yet like living at a warfront, which was how Chinua Achebe once described Lagos. But I guess it depends on which Abuja you’re talking about. The rise in insurgency in the surrounding states, especially Niger, Kaduna and Nasarawa, in the last 10 years, has led to a surge in the city’s population from 2.2 million 10 years ago to 3.8 million.

Abuja has become Nigeria’s fourth most populated city, and life in such satellite towns as Bwari, Kubwa, Karshi, Gwagwalada, and Kuje may not be too different from warfront existence, not to mention slums like Deidei, Mpape and Nyanya, Abuja’s own copies of Ajegunle in Lagos.

These places are congested and chaotic, bereft of basic amenities, and frighteningly unsafe. The satellite towns, apart from being hotbeds of crime, have also become flea markets of sorts exploited by Abuja landlords for house-helps, drivers, cooks, nannies and clerical staff. The Kuje Prisons, one of the most popular landmarks of that satellite town, is a metaphor of life not only in Kuje but also in other satellite towns surrounding the city.

Any revival plan by Wike that excludes the satellite towns where the bulk of Abuja’s population resides, and respect for the culture, landmarks and wellbeing of the indigenous people, will return to haunt the city.

Framing Wike as an urban bulldozer misses the point. Abuja needs salvation not from Wike but from decades of elite abuse. Otherwise, we may hand the city over to Walt Disney as a zoo franchise!

Now, Gabon…

Libreville, the Gabonese capital, is only roughly two hours’ direct flight from Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. In the early hours of Wednesday, soldiers struck, deposing President Ali Bongo, who has been in power for 14 years. It was the country’s first successful military coup in its 63 years of post-independence history. But it was also the seventh successful coup in Africa in five years, extending the coup belt southward. It’s OK to blame Bongo, and in fact, excoriate him for the notorious incest that kept Bongo father and son in power for nearly 55 years. Indeed, all previous deposed leaders in the region have also been blamed for failing to deliver on their promises. But show me one African country that has fared better under military rule and I will show you at least three that have done far better, in spite of the obvious imperfections of democratic rule. I’m afraid that at this rate, the next coup may arrive at a destination less than two hours away from Lagos, carrying the letter, “C.” There must be an end to this epidemic!

September 1, 2023