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Tag: Azu Ishiekwene

  • The Road to Thanksgiving – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The Road to Thanksgiving – By Azu Ishiekwene

    I hope Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, can finally get some sleep. He deserves it. After the ruling of the Supreme Court on Friday, upholding his election, the governor told a crowd of his supporters who came to rejoice with him at the State Government Lodge in Abuja, that he had not slept for seven days, in spite of the comfort of his waterbed.

    Mohammed, a member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), said he had been awake, seven days and seven nights, “fighting former leaders” to secure the mandate of voters.

    I can imagine. This was an election that took place nearly one year ago. And yet, the governor, like his colleagues in seven other states or nearly one quarter of Nigeria’s 36 states, has spent one quarter of his tenure in court, waiting for what has now become the most important vote of all – the ballot of the court.

    If it were in my place to do so, I would have asked the governor what he spent seven days and seven nights doing in Abuja. Was he involved in a nonstop nocturnal spiritual wrestling match with the principalities and powers who wanted to steal his votes? 

    Was he in strategy sessions with ecclesiastical hosts? Was he combining these with visits to some renowned marabouts who may have been obliged to camp outside the Supreme Court, as part of the ritual of success?

    If it were in my place, I would have asked what exactly he was doing in Abuja, the domain of their Lordships, without sleeping for seven days and seven nights.

    Thanks offering 

    From what Mohammed said, however, it was not only the court that deserved the credit for the favourable outcome of the matter. Two of the other seven governors specifically thanked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his deputy, Kashim Shettima, for their non-interference. According to the Bauchi State governor, some people had gone to tell the president that he was a threat to him.

    “I’m grateful to the government of President Tinubu,” Mohammed said, “who believes in good governance – for allowing the rule of law to persist irrespective of lies and mischievous acts that have been perpetrated against me.” 

    If the governor commended his legal team at all, that part may have been omitted in the statement published in the press, which contained nothing but heartfelt praise for the Supreme Court and the president for not beating the justices.

    We die here

    Another point of interest was the physical presence of five of the eight governors at the Supreme Court when the judgment was delivered. Of course, they all have a right to be there, to receive firsthand, the much-expected good news, after days, weeks, and perhaps, even months of tension. Who wouldn’t? 

    There was once a time, though, when the drama, the intensity, the sheer uncertainty, and especially the fearsome reputation of the court in matters like these would have kept the main parties far away from the precincts of the court. 

    There was an exception, of course. In 1983, the federal election body, FEDECO (as it was then called), declared that Bola Ige of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), who had just completed his first term as governor, had lost his reelection to Omololu Olunloyo of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

    Ige petitioned the election tribunal and was in court as part of the UPN’s legal team, though not as the lead counsel. Not even during the equally bitter 1979 contest between the UPN and the NPN after the controversial presidential election, did either Obafemi Awolowo or Shehu Shagari appear in court, though at an earlier stage, Awolowo appeared at the tribunal in Ikoyi in his famous suit.

    One crooked step 

    Of course, that dispensation was different. The electoral act mandated the disposal of election cases before swearing in. But the law is just as good as those who make them and those who are supposed to implement them. Some aspects of the election law have improved in the last 24 years. In spite of the improvements, however, politicians, with plenty of help from lawyers, have also found a way to stay one crooked step ahead. And perhaps one of the most perverse outcomes of all of this is that there’s hardly any solid, reliable set of electoral jurisprudence. 

    Jurisprudential jiggery pokery has a very long history in Nigeria, even though it wasn’t always rampant or brazen. It was with a heavy, tormented heart, for example, that Justice Fatai Atanda-Williams said the judgment of the Supreme Court in the famous case of Awolowo v Shagari in 1979 was never to be cited as precedent.

    Today, the Supreme Court has made so many conflicting and confusing judgments that even if it were to make exemptions it would find itself too entangled in the knot of its own self-inflicted misery to know where or how to start. 

    How can the court which, four years ago, sacked the entire government in Zamfara in an election in which the winner, Mukhtar Shehu Idris, won 67.41 percent of the votes, on the grounds that the APC failed to conduct valid primaries (clearly a party matter), now give judgments, like that in Plateau State for example, that suggest that it is alright for courts to meddle in party pre-election matters?

    Or how can the same Supreme Court which affirmed the ruling of the tribunal and the Court of Appeal that the PDP had no business dabbling into whether Vice President Shettima had been doubly nominated by the APC because it was that party’s internal affair, reject the decisions of the lower courts that Senator Ahmed Lawan who didn’t participate in the party’s primary was the validly nominated candidate of the same party?

    And how, for sanity’s sake, did the Supreme Court, which set aside the ruling of the Court of Appeal that Senator Godswill Akpabio was not the validly nominated candidate of the APC for Akwa-Ibom North-West senatorial seat because it was a party affair, justify plunging into the arena of internal party politics and pre-election matters in Zamfara and Plateau?

    Thank the king? 

    It’s not too hard to see why politicians prefer to camp outside the court or to thank the president when cases favour them. They think that if, with the help of senior lawyers, you can purchase the courts and be in the president’s good books, your problems are nearly solved, regardless of what happened at the ballot.

    I’m still trying to figure out a situation where a politician in the UK, the US, or even in Ghana or South Africa, wins a case in court and immediately grants a press conference afterwards thanking the king, president or prime minister for not interfering. This must be a uniquely Nigerian contribution to jurisprudential courtesies. 

    Some progress has been made in our elections, no doubt. 

    Yet, if the point of elections is to make the voter’s ballot count, and also give all parties a fair chance of settling any disputes that may arise, two things need to happen immediately: we must return to the era where all election petitions are disposed of before swearing in; and limit all disputes to not more than two layers of adjudication. 

    The regrettable, perhaps unintended overall effect of last Friday’s ruling, is that it may have further undermined the judiciary as a whole, but particularly, thrown the Court of Appeal under the bus which has had, I’m told, only five percent of its cases overturned in the last two election cycles. That, quite frankly, is not only a sad but frightening thing. It is a trend capable of keeping the whole country awake at night.

  • Reflections on Adesina’s work with Buhari – Azu Ishiekwene

    Reflections on Adesina’s work with Buhari – Azu Ishiekwene

    I knew Femi Adesina when he was “Daddy Tobi.” He still is, of course. But back in the day when we were neighbours in “Olowora Inside”, a Lagos suburb, when you could call to a neighbour from your frontage, often by using the name of their first child, that was how we called Femi: Daddy Tobi.

    I have heard people complain that a friend in government is a friend lost. I have seen it too – friends who are not only lost but who are also happy to lose themselves once in power or positions of influence. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. People have their reasons.

    But Daddy Tobi did not change. He has not changed. Through the eight years of his appointment, he has been the same jolly good fellow, slow to give offence, contemplative, almost ponderous to act, anxious to be politically correct (which is why he would say, the Good Book, instead of the Bible or Quran, for example), and full of thunderous laughter.

    Understanding Buhari 

    His new book, “Working with Buhari: Reflections of A Special Adviser, Media and Publicity (2015-2023),” narrates his struggles, his hopes, his frustrations and triumphs as Buhari’s first political appointee and perhaps the longest serving media adviser in Nigeria in the last nearly three decades.

    I wasn’t surprised by his longevity, though that also brought its own miseries especially after the first two years of Buhari’s government. They’re partly reflected in Chapter Nine of his book entitled, “2017, Year of Health Challenge,” a chapter that also reminded me quite vividly of the book, Power, Politics and Death, by Olusegun Adeniyi.

    A significant difference, though, is that while Femi’s book is very personal – like a diary, Adeniyi’s is intensely revelatory, capturing not only the author’s odyssey but also the intrigues that shaped Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s short-lived presidency.

    Femi makes it clear, upfront, that his book is not about the making of policies – monetary, fiscal, foreign – or even about the fundamentals of government. It’s a journey to understanding Buhari, the enigma from Daura.

    After assuming office in 2015, Buhari enjoyed an extended honeymoon. The public was fed up with President Goodluck Jonathan and the chaos in the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    Masu gudu sugudu? 

    Buhari seemed to be the right man for the job, in spite of concerns about his academic and human rights credentials. The country was so taken in by the Buhari charm that a Hausa song, entitled, “Masu gudu sugudu,” became a hit for the dire fate supposedly awaiting the corrupt and their acolytes.

    I was against Jonathan, and for Buhari, though not as remotely as Femi, a self-confessed Buharist. My support was conditional, sometimes confused, and for the most part of Buhari’s second term, frustrated and disappointed. But sometimes, you have to be close to people to know them better, which is the point of Femi’s book.

    His reflections, however, did not assuage my disappointment about the former president’s congenital insularity or about the chaotic freedom in his government that obviously encouraged some of his appointees to run wild.

    The new book did something quite important, though. It helped me, through Femi’s eye, to see a part of Buhari that may have been flawed but was perhaps not fatally damaged by malice.

    In his own words 

    I will give two examples from the book. The first occurred after Buhari removed Ita Ekpeyong as Director, State Services (DSS) in 2015, and replaced him with Lawal Musa Daura. At this time, there were already suspicions that Buhari, being Buhari, his election would deepen Nigeria’s already fragile ethnic fault lines.

    On page 166 of his book, Femi said he went to Buhari to complain about the potential ethnic blowout of the change.

    “I had asked him,” he wrote, “Mr. President, you are removing Ita Ekpeyong from the South-south, why not replace him with someone from that region, for balance?”

    Buhari replied: “Before people are recommended to me, a search must have been done by appropriate set of people or committee. And one, two or three people are brought forward, in order of performance and competence. Now, if someone comes first and I bypass him because of ethnicity or religion, Allah would judge me.”

    “But do not worry,” he told an obviously worried Femi, “the appointments would balance out.”

    It would seem, from this passage, that Buhari was genuinely concerned about merit and competence. Maybe that was the case in his first term. Documents that I obtained independently at the time appeared to support this view.

    For example, between 2015 and 2018, while the North-central topped appointments in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), with 102 appointees; the South-west came second with 101 appointees, giving both zones 35 percent or 203 of the 567 appointments made.

    But the complaint was not just about numbers but also about consequential postings. If Buhari passed the test on numbers in his first term, he failed disastrously on both counts in his second term. Not only were his appointments lopsided, he seemed so painfully absent, at least in the public eye, that any suggestions of competence or merit in his choices were commonly laughed out of hand.

    The second example from the book of Buhari’s fatal innocence, portrayed through Femi’s sympathetic lens, was the former president’s role in the naira redesign palaver.

    In Chapter Twelve, entitled, “In His Own Words…,” Femi quoted Buhari as saying, “The scarcity of money was not deliberately done to punish Nigerians…When he (former CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele) was linked with the campaign for 2023 presidency, I did not ask him, because he told nobody he was getting involved. Otherwise, I would have removed him and told the nation why.”

    Naira redesign, ‘Emilokan’

    In the goodness of Buhari’s purple heart, which obviously saw no evil, heard no evil, and did no evil, he could not contemplate the open travesty perpetrated by the Central Bank governor who took the APC to court in his own name, asking the court to protect his right, as sitting governor of the bank, to contest the presidency. Emefiele did not hide his intention from the party or, in fact, from the public. But by some spell of magic, he managed to hide it from Buhari.

    And the president who “did not want to deliberately punish Nigerians” twice publicly defended the naira redesign even when the country was chafing under its impact and in spite of a Supreme Court ruling against it.

    But it was Femi’s job to defend him, and that shone through in the book, with at least three of the 28 chapters – “Wailing Wailers,” “You Always Defend Them Because You Are One of Them,” and “Managing ‘Brand Buhari,’” – devoted to the many stripes of his valiant efforts.

    His reflection on whether or not the Villa is a haunted place as his predecessor, Reuben Abati, wrote in the famous article, entitled, “The spiritual side of the Villa,” is quite interesting. The jury is still out on that.

    Yet, there were also moments of pure drama, like when Femi and late former Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, squared off over a turf war or when Femi broke the news of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s “Emilokan” speech to Buhari aboard NAF One, only to get the parsimonious reply, “Asiwaju said all that? Thank you for briefing me.”

    As is often the case with such jobs, family and friends also suffer collateral damage. But when people who knew that I had known Femi since our Daddy Tobi days called me to lash out, I often told them that Femi’s Buhari-philia wasn’t for the money or the attention.

    And that was true. It was a matter of conviction and loyalty. As the book, which dedicated nearly 16 percent of its 488 pages to a chapter on Buhari’s achievements shows, nothing could change that.

    Not even the burning spear of a million wailers!

  • What you might expect in 2024 – Azu Ishiekwene

    What you might expect in 2024 – Azu Ishiekwene

    “Subsidy on petrol will go, sparking initial higher prices and demand for higher public sector wages by union leaders who know the truth but prefer to play to the gallery. To tackle the scandalous difference between the official and black-market exchange rates, expect the new government to adjust the official rate from the current N430-450/$ to around N550/$ in the first instance”

    – What You Might Expect in 2023, December 29, 2022

    This is my fourth forecast since 2019. Apart from a few occasions when I have had eggs in my face from unforeseen events like that wrecking ball called COVID-19 and the African surprise at the last World Cup being Morocco instead of Senegal or Algeria, I have, on the whole, been on the mark.

    This year, I’m starting with sports. Arsenal fans are currently over the moon, testosterone pumping – and why not? But they would do well to pay attention. After 20 years of a winless, Premier League trophy run, this, at last, feels like the year when the London club would break the jinx.

    Everything is going well, so far. The team is better organised, far better disciplined – in and off the field – the defence is tighter, the attack deadlier, and all without a loss of flair. Also, the desire has never been stronger. But that, roughly speaking, has been the story of the last two decades at the Emirates – a story of nearly there.

    That story will not change in 2024. I wish it would for the sake of the millions of broken red hearts strewn along the way over two decades. But the odds are not in Arsenal’s favour. The team has more depth but it still suffers a congenital momentary loss of focus when it matters most.

    With about half the games already played, there’s still something about Liverpool and Manchester City — that streak of stubborn, resilient fighting spirit — that could lift either of them over Arsenal and multiply the misery of its fans, yet again.

    Humble pie 

    I started with football because 2024 appears to hold less intensity for Nigeria’s usual obsession: politics. In 2023, we had four years’ worth of politics in one year. Apart from a number of senior lawyers in particular who also made four years’ worth of money in one year, swathes of the political elite are broke, exhausted and stranded. In 2024, they would be desperate for rehabilitation. Otherwise, their teeming supporters will dissipate and their misery will be complete.

    Before June, some top politicians who had been discreetly reaching out to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for favours, would be obliged to take their fate in their own hands and pursue their ambition more openly and less shamelessly. By the end of the year, the scramble for presidential favours would leave an already fragmented opposition in a shambles.

    Edo, Ondo and Kano 

    Of course, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is planning re-runs and bye-elections in a few senatorial districts, 11 federal constituencies and 22 state assemblies. My bet is that there would be no surprises. If anything, the bye-elections for two or three senatorial seats would increase the advantage of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the National Assembly, while state assemblies would record more of the same.

    In September and November, governorship elections would hold in two states – Edo and Ondo. Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki who assumed office in his first term as an APC governor, but switched parties in his second, would attempt to hand over to a People’s Democratic Party (PDP) successor. It’s an election that promises plenty of drama.

    Amongst others on a list of direct and shadow contenders that appears to be lengthening by the day, Obaseki would be up against his former godfather, Adams Oshiomhole, who is currently an APC senator; his “interim godfather”, Nyesom Wike, a federal minister who is neither in the PDP nor in the APC; and his deputy, Philip Shauib, who has been in rebellion for the most part of their second term.

    Obaseki is counting on a number of factors, among others, to help him hand over to his preferred successor and former Chairman of Sterling Bank, Asue Ighodalo: 1) the governor’s record of reforms in the civil service; 2) improvements in private sector investments in the state, especially in the energy sector; 3) doubling the state’s internally generated revenue from around N1.8 billion in 2016; 4) expectation that Ighodalo’s private sector experience would be Obaseki 2.0; and 5) advantage of an all-PDP local government formation.

    My forecast is that despite setting his ducks in a row, Obaseki’s candidate would lose in September. His biggest undoing would be the large army of political enemies he has created in the last eight years – some inevitably from the reforms he introduced; but others, and in a far larger number, avoidably from his mean-spirited, opportunistic politics.

    All politics is local. But if – and that’s a big if – the APC plays its card well, Edo would find in September a coalescence of local and external foes with old, fairly old, and new grudges ranged against Obaseki’s candidate in a fury that would result in a hostile takeover.

    The biggest danger to APC’s victory is Oshiomhole. After cornering virtually all federal appointments to Edo North to the displeasure of many, the South, which is the state’s vote bank could enact a Labour Party surge by pressing a candidate from its zone. Except the APC finds an overwhelmingly appealing candidate, the party could be in for a surprise.

    Ondo would be different. After months of a war of attrition with late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu that finally saw Lucky Aiyedatiwa becoming acting governor – and now governor – it’s improbable that he would lose the election to any challenger, whether from his party or not.

    He fought his election war in advance. The battle between now and November would consist largely in mopping up the snippers. Of course, there would be contenders, both from the remnant of Akeredolu’s supporters and others, including Senator Jimoh Ibrahim. But it’s unlikely that Aiyedatiwa won the war of attrition only to lose it in subsidiary skirmishes.

    As for Kano, the Supreme Court has up till January 15 to give its ruling. History does not favour Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf. As I said in a recent article on this matter, in the last over 20 years, there have been only a few cases where the two lower courts ruled in one way and the Supreme Court overturned them. It would be easier to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro on a paper kite than to expect an exception in the matter at hand. 

    Economic outlook 

    Politics promises bread, but economics bakes it and also decides how it is served. President Tinubu has weathered serious storms in the last seven months at the helm. In the new year, he will be bolder, more sure-footed – and yes, be obliged to make a few changes to his cabinet by his one-year anniversary.

    His biggest headache will remain the economy. With inflation at 27.3 percent, the naira depreciated by over 50 percent in six months, and unemployment trending up, any gains in 2024 would be marginal. The naira, still artificially sustained, would slide further and could close the year at 1500/USD in the black market, except if earnings from oil and gas rise fast enough to shore it up – an unlikely prospect with the chaos in OPEC and US’s all-time high production.

    The silver lining could be in agriculture where food inflation could drop from the current 32 percent, if weather patterns are favourable and with improvements in the security situation in the country’s food belt.

    For the troubled Central Bank of Nigeria that has, regardless, promised price stability in 2024, the report of the investigator would dominate discussions, but the leak might prove more damaging to any intended redress. Once vested interests on both sides enter the arena, they will muddy the waters and undermine confidence not just in the final outcome, but also in any possibility that there would be consequences.

    Don’t expect much from the real sector this year for one main reason: power. Even if Nigeria’s four hydro-dams generate up to 2k megawatts combined, which they could produce but are currently unable to do so, the transmission, still in government hands, remains a nightmare.

    As for the gas supply, there’s simply no gas. The Nigerian Gas Company is debt-ridden and the current market structure does not encourage private investment. More disruptions and outages loom for homes and industry.

    And by the way, anyone expecting relief in petrol supply or a drop in the pump prices, is on a long wait. Largely as a result of technical and supply chain issues, the government refineries, if they start production at all, would not do so before the third or fourth quarter, and the Dangote refinery may not commence limited production till after the first quarter.

    Sunak sunset, Trump eclipse

    Outside Nigeria, it’s a big year for elections around the world – in fact, the biggest in decades. Two are of particular interest: the UK and the US. In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has finished his job as “a stabiliser,” after the catastrophic failures of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. For reasons more real than apparent, Keith Stammer will win; but the “owners of the UK” would find out soon enough that they had traded an apple for a lemon.

    The Economist has framed the 2024 presidential contest as one between two unpopular candidates. Fair point. I wager that even though Donald Trump’s mounting legal challenges might increase both his popularity and unpopularity, he will lose to Joe Biden in November in yet another bitter contest that finally retires him to Mar-a-Lago.

    Even though Trump’s candidacy will excite sentiments that would move US politics closer to the centre, voters would likely decide that one Trump tenure was enough for the monster created in America’s Frankenstein moment.

  • Kwankwaso after the Supreme Court – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Kwankwaso after the Supreme Court – By Azu Ishiekwene

    In the last one and a half decades, Rabiu Kwankwaso has been the most charismatic politician out of Kano after the passing of Abubakar Rimi. Kwankwaso is not just charismatic; he is consequential, with a cult-like following that responds twice, even when he calls once.

    He is facing yet another defining moment in his political career. The outcome of the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case between the Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and his rival, Nasiru Gawuna, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), could well determine if the sun has finally set on Kwankwaso’s reign or whether he would get a new lease of life.

    Kwankwaso’s protegee, Yusuf, lost at the election petition tribunal and also at the court of appeal, where Gawuna had challenged his election on three main grounds: 1) That Yusuf is not a registered member of the NNPP; 2) That 165,663 out of the 1,019,602 votes scored by the NNPP were invalid because the ballots were neither stamped nor signed, therefore reducing his total valid votes to 853,939, and 3) That he, Gawuna having scored 890,705 votes with margin of nearly 36k, won the governorship election and should be declared governor.

    The lower courts agreed with his submissions in rulings – one from an undisclosed location and the other from cyberspace – that sparked widespread protests in the state, not to mention accusations of compromise. Even though a member of the tribunal raised the alarm that some persons were trying to lean on her by offering financial gifts through a proxy, all allegations of wrongdoing have been denied by the judiciary. All eyes are now on the Supreme Court.

    Nigeria’s courts have been swamped with election petitions, making election litigation one of the fastest growing industries. Voters vote, but judges choose the winners.

    In spite of the large number of decided election petition cases in the last over 20 years, however, there have been only a few where the two lower courts ruled in one way, only to have their rulings overturned by the Supreme Court. Governorship election petitions used to end at the Court of Appeal. Even after the law was amended to take governorship election disputes up to the Supreme Court, the norm was a split decision between the lower courts, before the final ruling by the Supreme Court.

    From the case involving Rotimi Amaechi and Celestine Omehia in 2007, to the ruling in 2016 where the Supreme Court set aside the ruling of the two lower courts and declared Nyesom Wike as the validly elected governor of Rivers State (without giving reasons for its decision), perhaps the most dramatic of the three or four exceptional cases was the one in 2019 involving the Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma.

    Apart from Reverend Ejike Mbaka whose extraordinary gift enabled him to foretell the outcome of the Uzodimma case in his famous “I see hope” speech, most normal, reasonable people could not fathom how a man who came fourth place in an election could become first. Yet, in a landmark decision wonderful beyond understanding, the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the two lower courts and ruled that Uzodimma won the election.

    Kwankwaso and his supporters obviously hope to beat the odds, which in any case, are perhaps not as formidable as those of Uzodimma. But Gawuna’s backers appear to have gone even one step further to secure their current juridical advantage. On the state’s Wikipedia page, for example, some folks terminated the tenure of Yusuf in November when the Court of Appeal gave its ruling. Gawuna is described on that page as “incumbent governor” from November!

    Kwankwaso has fought many wars but this battle may redefine the rest of his political days, and those of the Kwankwasiyya movement. His first significant defeat was 20 years ago, when he failed his second term bid for governorship. In the wave of political sharia sweeping the North at the time, Kwankwaso had positioned himself as a moderate. 

    His opponent, Ibrahim Shekarau, did two things: he latched onto the Muhammadu Buhari bandwagon, under the flag of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP); and more important, played the sharia card. He succeeded big, not only in dislodging Kwankwaso, but also becoming the first two-term governor in Kano.

    Shekarau defeated Kwankwaso again in the contest for a senatorial seat in 2019, after latter’s first tenure as senator. The leader of the Kwankwasiyya 

    movement was caught in the maelstrom of the APC presidential primaries, but in the run-up to the 2019 elections, he decamped back to the PDP. To be fair, during APC’s 2015 presidential primaries, Kwankwaso was the preferred candidate of the APC National Leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at the time, before a strong Northern lobby pressed Buhari into the race.

    Shekarau exploited the accumulated rage of the pro-Buhari crowd, kindled against the leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement for daring to challenge Buhari’s talismanic hold on Kano.

    But Kwankwaso has matured since, especially after his eventful second term as governor, during which he was widely acclaimed for paying serious attention to education, health and infrastructure. Also, leveraging the crucial place of Kano as the Nigeria’s largest political vote bank, he played a decisive role, along with four other governors of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015, that led to the fall of President Goodluck Jonathan’s government. 

    Perhaps the most significant marker of his political maturity was the formation of the NNPP only months to the last general elections and yet carrying one state – the most politically significant in the North West – and coming fourth in an election contested by 18 political parties. This legacy is now threatened.

    If Shekarau was his nemesis in the past, his nemesis for the last eight years has been his former deputy and Chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Ganduje. In the battle at the Supreme Court, Yusuf and Gawuna are, in a manner of speaking, pawns. The chess masters are Kwankwaso and Ganduje.

    After the last general elections, Kwankwaso seemed to have the aces. He had literally secured a third term in Kano and President Tinubu, the winner of the presidential election, needed to court him. Not just because he proved himself in present reckoning, but also because anyone in charge of Kano would be indispensable in future political calculations.

    After the elections, while Ganduje was still looking for a second address, Kwankwaso was already on Tinubu’s speed dial. He held several exploratory meetings with the President both in the country and in Paris for a potential role in the new government. I’m told that he was, in fact, considered for either the Ministry of Education or FCT.

    Ganduje and a few other influential politicians close to Tinubu panicked. But Ganduje, a man who looks incapable of hurting a fly, but doesn’t mind hunting a lion for game, waited for his time to pounce. Once he was appointed APC chairman, in spite of Kwankwaso, he slowly clawed himself back and swung the wrecking ball in cahoots with a few insiders who were also uncomfortable with Kwankwaso.

    Ganduje also consolidated his hold on the President after Gawuna won the first round of victory at the tribunal. Then Kwankwaso, whether out of frustration or defiance, made what was potentially a serious mistake. He held a closed-door meeting with Atiku in Abuja and left the press and politicians to pour petrol into the fire by making wild guesses about the motive for the meeting.

    The battle has now entered its final phase. If the Supreme Court bucks the trend and rules in favour of Yusuf, Kwankwaso would have used one judicial stone to vanquish Shekarau and Ganduje, two of his most potent longstanding enemies. If, on the other hand, the Supreme Court upholds the ruling of the lower courts, Kwankwaso’s decline will start in earnest, sucking his cult and scattering his sheepfold.

    Inconclusive is an unlikely outcome. But who knows?

  • The trials of Nyesom Wike – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The trials of Nyesom Wike – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The only thing that trumps the mocking viral videos of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, are the live footages of the State House of Assembly being demolished on Wednesday morning by a dozen bulldozers in what appeared like a scene from Gaza.

     Reporters were even warned to steer clear. It was no longer renovation as planned; it was a full-blown war zone.  

    Happening on Wike’s 56th birthday, it was the most unlikely birthday present from the government of Siminalayi Fubara that he installed six months ago in Rivers, Nigeria’s richest South-South state. If there was any hope that the attempt by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reconcile the warring parties might succeed, the bulldozers crushed them.

     The question is: what next?

     A few days before the dozers were deployed to flatten the partially burnt House of Assembly with the furniture, fittings, files and whatever was inside, something else was trending.

     Twenty-seven of the 32 members of the House of Assembly loyal to Wike had announced their defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), trading the umbrella for the broom and excitedly waving the APC flag on the streets of Port Harcourt. 

     They had defected they said, not out of choice, but out of necessity to escape a divided party following the refusal of the party’s National Secretary to intervene in the crisis after the fire outbreak. Also, they claimed that in obedience to their constituents, they would keep their seats, a rampant habit among politicians of straining out the insect but swallowing the camel.

     Of malaria and cancer

    The defections stirred the social media, washing up old videos of Wike in his heyday as the tormentor of the APC.

    In both the English and pidgin versions of the videos he spitefully dismissed the idea that he would leave his “malaria-infected PDP” for the “cancerous ruling APC”. Yet, after he fell out with the PDP over his shabby treatment, he supported APC’s Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the presidency, while rallying the state to vote PDP in the governorship election. 

     Suggestions that Wike might eventually join the APC are not new. In an article I wrote in September last year entitled, “Anatomy of Wike’s Endgame,” I said, “What is Wike’s Endgame? To avenge his displacement from within while securing the positions of his allies who are already carrying the PDP flag into the next election. His destination – if not by words, but by his conduct – is APC. Everything in-between is in translation.”

     Politics rewards expediency, not constancy. That was why black congressman William Clay famously said in the game of politics, there are not permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

     When, for example, a video of the former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, rallying support for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda was exhumed three years ago, the minister blamed his indiscretion on youth. “I was young, then”, he said. “Now, I’m older and wiser.” Wike might also argue that he said what he said out of exuberance.

     The more surprising thing in the drama out of Rivers State has been the speed with which Wike and Fubara fell out. Power tussle between governors and their benefactors or godfathers is not new. It is such a regular feature of transitions in our political landscape that current beneficiaries who start by despising godfathers soon become godfathers themselves. They invariably become what they hate. 

    Whether it is Governor Godwin Obaseki and his deputy Philip Shauib in Edo or the even more complicated version in Ondo between Rotimi Akeredolu and now acting Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, it’s the same old story, only in more scandalous latter-day versions. 

    In Rivers, however, the speed, depth and extent of the fallout have been spectacular. It was not supposed to be this way. Wike was, in a sense, like the biblical David who couldn’t build a house for God because he fought too many bloody wars but left it for his son, Solomon.

     Whether it was checkmating the tyranny of federal agencies, containing meddlesome Abuja politicians, showing up when federal agents descended on the state at night to arrest Supreme Court justices, or helping to rebuild the opposition as a vital force in what was fast becoming a one-party democracy, Wike never shied away from a fight.

    Blame game 

    Although he lost the war to become the PDP’s presidential candidate in 2023, he won the battle to keep his state, leaving behind rich spoils of projects and a strategic alliance that paved a highway to Abuja, all supposed to secure a peaceful reign after him. In fact, as a seal, he ended the 16-year hegemony of the Ikwerre ethnic group in Rivers State by choosing an Ijaw man as his successor.

     He seemed to have left his house in order, until October, when the first cracks appeared. Some have laid the blame on Wike, accusing him of leaving the chair, but taking its legs. He has been accused of running the state from Abuja and even asking the governor for the key to the treasury.

     None of these accusations has come directly from Fubara himself. But it’s either the governor is enjoying the mudslinging or has become captive to forces in PDP, nPDP, APC and sundry Wike foes desperate to exploit the division and hijack him. There appears to be too many people around the governor egging him on to a war he does not need at an inauspicious time, and at a cost the state cannot afford. 

     What is the point, for example, of demolishing a multi-billion naira complex built by former Governor Peter Odili about 15 years ago under Rotimi Amaechi’s supervision as Speaker, when the government already has a High Court judgement forbidding the pro-Wike lawmakers to meet there? 

    Abuja as warfront

    After the demolition of the House of Assembly, pro-Fubara lawmakers used a golden mace in storage in the Government House, as against the silver mace in the demolished complex, to receive the appropriation bill inside Government House, in defiance of an existing Supreme Court judgement in Hon. Muyiwa Inakoju & 17 Ors v Abraham Adeolu Adeleke & 3 Ors (SC 272/2006)[2007] NGSC (12 January 2007) that lawmakers cannot meet outside the House. Yet, if two wrongs don’t make a right, Fubara appears ready to try a third. 

     Wike has said Fubara’s attempt to tamper with his political structure, like a neonate dragging its mother’s womb and umbilical cord at the same time, was at the heart of the current conflict. He knows what he’s talking about, especially with local government elections coming up in February 2024. 

    If Wike was good enough to carry the governor through the dark, difficult days of their trials together when some of the governor’s ardent supporters today didn’t know him from Adam, the governor should be the last person to hang his benefactor out to dry so quickly. 

     The bigger challenge for Wike, however, is not Fubara or his army of snippers. It is not even about his legacy of projects in the state that would be hard to beat or his political structure which he can reinvent. It is how he would find the presence of mind to face his new assignment in Abuja, a city desperately in need of salvation. 

     Nearly overwhelmed with filth, pot-holed roads, street urchins, poor water supply and unlit highways, Abuja has become the warfront that Chinua Achebe was afraid of. It is the wayward place that Obafemi Awolowo would have gladly handed over to Walt Disney as a franchise. 

     This broken city needs attention 24/7. Wike will not be judged by his conquests in Rivers State; so Fubara may level the entire Port Harcourt if he chooses. The FCT minister will be judged by what he does in Abuja, a city in danger of decay in the face of a combined severe threat of livability malaria and malignant cancer.

  • Ondo back story imitates insanity – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Ondo back story imitates insanity – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Ondo is one of Nigeria’s most enlightened states. It is, perhaps, side-by-side with Oyo, one of the most significant political bellwethers of the South-West. Apart from Olusegun Agagu’s four-year spell as governor, that state has maintained its progressive credentials in the last 24 years. But that illustrious tradition has fallen on bad times.

    And you know this when the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has governed the state for only four of the last 24 years, begins to suggest to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) how to manage what is obviously a delicate intra-party power transition. With nothing left to do in the wilderness, PDP is pleased to hold the beer while APC turns on itself.

    It’s not the opposition’s fault, though. The tenure of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu will not expire till 2024, but his illness, especially in the last six months, during which he has been virtually absent from the state, has created an opening for forces within and without. 

    There are suggestions that Akeredolu who has reportedly been in Oyo State since he returned from a medical trip abroad in September, is terminally ill. No one is sure. The suggestions, worsened by his physical absence from the state, has fueled a proxy war between his loyalists and those of the Deputy Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa. There are already comparisons to similar dark episodes in the country’s not-too-distant past.

    Deja vu 

    Umaru Yar’Adua’s presidency, for example, was a troubled one. Whether or not Yar’Adua had properly transmitted power before he went abroad for medical treatment, as is required by law, and whether he had the presence of mind to continue discharging his duties as his condition deteriorated, remained a matter of feverish speculation traded on by vested interests. 

    The National Assembly had to improvise the “Doctrine of Necessity,” to remove him, paving the way for his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, to become acting president.

    Two years after the death of Yar’Adua, Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State, who, like Yar’Adua, was elected in 2007, survived an air crash that, sadly, incapacitated him. But power brokers in Taraba preserved him like a sacrificial totem, exploiting his mummified image. As long as he could still be wheeled around and papers shuffled in his name, it was good business. Suntai, who had spent less than two years into his second term, was shunted between German and US hospitals at considerable expense for 10 months, while the state was left stranded.

    When the puppeteers could no longer sustain the hideous drama, or perhaps they had just about made enough out of it, they wheeled the governor back into the country and left him in a limbo. His estranged deputy remained “acting governor” until Suntai’s tenure officially ended in 2015. Two years later, Suntai died.

    Siamese asunder

    I have been reliably informed that Akeredolu’s relationship with Aiyedatiwa is not, ordinarily, one that should warrant the insane stalemate that has made fools of the state’s wise men and women. After Akeredolu fell out with his former deputy, Agboola Ajayi – who remained in position even though he switched parties, following a failed attempt to impeach him – he chose Aiyedatiwa as his running-mate for his second term. The pair have been like six and seven. 

    Although cloak-and-dagger is a popular currency in politics, anyone who saw Aiyedatiwa’s pictures until June this year, would remember how difficult it was to spot the difference in physical appearance between him and the governor. With every inch of carefully manicured grey stubble, caps, glasses, and even posture, both of them looked like political Siamese twins.

    But the remoter the chances of Akeredolu’s return seemed, the greater the pressure Aiyedatiwa came under to discard his beard and nurture his own path to power. How long before he would step out of the shadows and live up to his name, Aiyedatiwa (the world shall become ours)?

    Loyalty tested

    “Loyalty is at the heart of the matter,” one source close to both parties told me on Tuesday. “People began to suggest to Aiyedatiwa that he could actually get power if only he could be his own man, and soon enough. To plot his way, he began to hobnob with Abuja politicians and some of Akeredolu’s arch enemies.”

    But “loyalty” to who? To a person or to the constitution and the law of the land? Anyone who remembers former Governor Babatunde Fashola’s words when, during his ministerial nomination screening, he was asked about his spectacular fallout with then former Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu, might agree that “loyalty” is one point on which politicians pray never to be tested.

    “May your loyalty not be tested,” Fashola replied to uproarious laughter from senators. But what is happening in Ondo is not a laughing matter. Especially the suspicion by Akeredolu’s camp that the deputy governor is in cahoots with some notoriously dangerous politicians in Abuja and elsewhere. 

    It’s fair to ask why Akeredolu – or those who claim to speak for him – cannot set aside personal grudges and put the interest of the state first?

    Why? Some personal grudges run deep. I’ll mention two shared by insiders. 

    One, in June, the governor was said to have signed some papers and returned them to his deputy for action. Upon receiving the papers, his deputy was alleged to have said, flat out, that Akeredolu could not have signed the papers; not in the mental state he was believed, or suspected, to be in at the time. The buzz from then on, magnified, repurposed and retailed in several salacious versions, was that there was no further need of proof that Aiyedatiwa wanted the governor dead. The world was, indeed, nearly his.

    The second point, according to sources, has nothing to do with Aiyedatiwa directly, but with his new company. The governor’s wife, Betty Anyanwu, a most robustly active political wife, if ever there was one, had set her sights on the Senate in the February general elections in her native Imo State. 

    The problem was how to get past her state governor, Hope Uzodimma, who before the presidential primaries had pitched tent with Ahmed Lawan against Akeredolu’s preferred candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. In fact, it was Uzodimma and Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, who submitted Lawan’s nomination form. 

    As for the Owerri senatorial district, Uzodimma, an enigma, had other plans. He wanted Alex Mbata instead. Betty was forced to withdraw from the senatorial primaries in humiliation.

    By the time Mbata lost to the Labour Party candidate, Ezenwa Onyewuchi, the damage had been done. The Akeredolus, still smarting from that defeat, are now also trying to get used to the fact that their man, Aiyedatiwa, is in bed with their foe, Uzodimma. Yet, if a politician sleeps with three women in one day, you can only thank God it was not four.

    Dumb wars

    For a state with Ondo’s political sophistication, it’s a bit of a travesty to suggest that petty squabbles have held it hostage for months now. But that would be naïve. From the Spanish marriages to the Crimean War over the right of access to a church key, history is full of battles fought for the dumbest of reasons. President Tinubu’s last-minute intervention has kept the fragile peace in Akure. But no one is sure how long.

    The longer it takes for the parties to find a sensible, common ground, the worse it would be for citizens whose interest they claim to serve. All said, if Akeredolu were in a position to make the call today, I’m not sure he would take a position different from the principled one he took as president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) when Yar’Adua was in a similar situation. He should resign.

    If Akeredolu cannot make this call, those who can should do so for the sake of his legacy and the wellbeing of the citizens of the state. That is the painful but proper and necessary thing to do. 

  • Weah’s new jersey for a troubled continent – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Weah’s new jersey for a troubled continent – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Liberia and Sierra Leone have a common historical legacy and often tend to imitate each other in war and peace. But events in the last two weeks suggest that while Liberia may be turning a new, refreshing page, Sierra Leone remains trapped in its troubled past.

    First, the good news from Liberia, whose capital, Monrovia, was named in honour of America’s fifth president, James Monroe. After one six-year term, President George Weah announced that he was done, even before Liberia’s electoral commission finished counting the votes in the November 17 run-off elections. The football legend didn’t wait for the referee’s final whistle.

    He called the leader of the opposition, 78-year-old Joseph Boakai, to congratulate him in an election that finished with a narrow 49.36 percent to 50.64 percent margin that a crooked sitting president could have upturned.

    Meanwhile, Liberia’s neighbour, Sierra Leone, is boiling after an attempted coup on Saturday night forced the government of President Julius Maada Bio to impose a nationwide curfew. Some unofficial reports have blamed last June’s shambolic elections as the trigger, threatening the moment of relief that Weah’s gracious concession had offered West and Central Africa, which have been the theatres of nine military coups or attempted power grab in three years.

    Fresh air

    It would be a huge disservice to allow the mutineers in Freetown or elsewhere on the continent to rain on Weah’s parade. In a region blighted by instability and sit-tight leaders, the Weah moment is a breath of fresh air. 

    In the last three and a half decades, Liberia suffered two civil wars, 1989-1997 and 1999-2003. In both, about 250,000 persons were killed and more than a million displaced in what have been referred to as Africa’s bloodiest conflicts.

    The conflicts, fueled by diamonds, were deeply rooted in the country’s ghastly identity politics. Liberia was one of the four independent African states by 1945; the others being Egypt, Ethiopia and the Union of South Africa. 

    But it was only independent in name. Liberia was a vassal of the American Firestone Company, the tire and rubber manufacturer that owned plantations there. Like Sierra Leone, Liberia later became home to blacks who worked in these plantations or those repatriated from America.

    Tyranny cycle

    But that’s not the whole story. The Americo-Liberian elite, a small but powerful group, held economic and political power for over 100 years until they were brutally overthrown in the 1980s by a barely literate master sergeant, Samuel Doe, with the backing of the United States of America.

    To the consternation of the US and the shock of the world, Doe ruled with an iron hand, which got more vicious as the years went by. He replaced Americo-Liberian oppression with that of his own Krahn ethnic group. The Gios and Manos in Nimba County were his most horrific victims. They were haunted down and murdered for sport. 

    It was in these circumstances that Charles Taylor rose up as defender and ethnic champion. Most of his early recruits were from the Nimba County from where he later launched a countrywide rebellion that led to the murder of Doe in 1990 and the wrecking of Liberia with serious destabilising consequences for Sierra Leone and west Africa. Liberia is still struggling with the effects of that brutal war.

    Weah pause

    Sirleaf Johnson’s presidency from 2006 to 2018, was thought to be Liberia’s best chance at a reset. Weah was determined to launch an earlier presidential bid that may have disrupted Johnson’s presidency. 

    Regional leaders fearing Liberia’s fragile state, prevailed on him to wait. After watching bands of mostly jobless and potentially vulnerable rural youths fall under the spell of Weah’s star power, Nigeria’s president at the time, Olusegun Obasanjo, advised the former World Footballer of the Year to suspend his ambition and return to school.

    That decision may have been unpleasant then, but it seasoned Weah and prepared him, when he finally took the helm in 2017, to manage the fraught and delicate balance in a country that has suffered some of the worst depredations of Ebola and COVID-19. Over half of the 5.4million population live below the poverty line, a perfect excuse for political instability.

    But waiting may have done more for Weah than giving him a chance to return to the classroom. Given the slight margin of defeat in the last elections, for example, had he not grown older and wiser, he might have yielded to the temptation to unleash the capricious hand of the state against Boakai, his relentless second-time challenger. Waiting has also taught Weah to manage Liberia’s cauldron of ethnic politics, its weakest inflexion point. All it would have taken to plunge Liberia into another round of crisis was for Weah to stoke the ethnic fire. He didn’t. 

    Of course, drugs and corruption were also major election talking points, with the opposition Unity Party mocking Weah whose chief of staff, solicitor general and head of ports authority were reportedly sanctioned by the US on corruption charges in 2022.

    A university professor told Al-Jazeera that, “Corruption is an unending story and will influence votes, however the deciding factor will be issues around the economy which affect Liberians directly.” 

    Yet, the ethnic fault lines in the voting pattern, heightened by politics, also explain the government’s inability to implement the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission since 2009. The country is still deeply divided.

    And no one knows this more than Weah, who picked Taylor’s wife as running mate to boost his electoral fortunes among sections of native Liberians. Conceding to Boakai even before counting closed defused tensions and gave the country hope for stability in a blighted region. 

    Bucking a trend

    Weah wasn’t lacking in bad examples to follow. Guinea, Liberia’s northern neighbour, is under military rule, as are nearby Mali and Burkina Faso. Except for late Jerry Rawlings of Ghana who exited at 53, African statesmen hardly retire at 57 or even 75 for that matter. The relics in Cameroon, Uganda and Equatorial Guinea are worth counting. 

    All it would have required was for Weah to use the familiar playbook: denounce the election, alter the constitution, sack some people in high places as a warning, or just improvise any subterfuge to undermine the elections. And he would be sitting pretty calling the shots and daring the world to remonstrate – knowing he was never the first, and may not be the last. 

    If he had chosen this path, there is little evidence that the AU or even the ECOWAS would have lost sleep. They were silent when Senegal’s Macky Sall toyed with extending his tenure, before he pulled back from that travesty, which in any case, Cote d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara has managed to get away with. 

    The regional bodies made all the right noises about coups in Guinea, Niger, Sudan, Gabon, and Mali and even threatened military action, only to leave Nigeria’s President and ECOWAS leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, eating his own words.

    Weah has chosen a different path, he has done the honorable thing. Even though conceding defeat doesn’t immediately solve Liberia’s deep, underlying problems, it gives the country a good chance to continue the hard work of rebuilding. And just as important, it offers Liberia’s neighbours and the continent as a whole a redeeming example.

  • Letter to rich Nigerians: Why the poor are mad – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Letter to rich Nigerians: Why the poor are mad – By Azu Ishiekwene

    It’s not only the poor that are mad, if you get my drift. Even folks who once thought of themselves as middle class, that is, neither wealthy nor poor, are in maddening distress. They can hardly believe how life has come to be what it is today. Perhaps the most frequently asked question is: how did we get here?

    My mother used to pray that things should never be difficult for her and for those who could help in a time of need. Now, both the needy and the helper are in distress.

    When you have to think twice to buy a loaf of bread; to choose between a baby’s milk and the whole family sleeping hungry; when you have to agonise before showing even basic charity to otherwise hardworking folks who have fallen on hard times, then you know there’s very serious trouble.

    Inflation is about 27 percent, with food, energy and transportation costs being the most affected. In a country that imports virtually everything, relying mostly on oil exports for its foreign earnings, the over 50 percent depreciation of the currency in the black market in six months has worsened price levels. Everyone uses the fallen currency as excuse to charge more or hedge.

    Deeply rooted

    Our misery predates the presidency of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We had barely recovered from COVID-19 and the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war on the global supply chain when it turned out that perhaps the more difficult problem was within.

    As the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, said rather bluntly – I hope not at a high, post-dated political price – last week, Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari was broke. Yet, in spite of being technically insolvent, for every 100 naira we managed to earn, we paid 73.5k on debt-servicing.

    Still, we were borrowing to pay the country’s N77trillion projected debt as of May 2023, with each Nigerian now owing 385k. Thanks, of course, to the inexhaustible patience of the Chinese creditors who, at some point, seemed ready and willing to lend us even their treasury to keep us borrowing.

    All of the anger for the current distress may not be targeted at Tinubu, though he has been widely criticised for hastily announcing fundamental changes without thinking through how to manage the fallouts. Nor is it fair to blame it all on Buhari who wept to take office but after succeeding abandoned his government to hijackers for the most part.

    Troubled world

    The high cost of living is, believe it or not, currently a major problem worldwide. According to a World Bank food inflation hot spots cited by Bloomberg, “Domestic food prices remain high with people in Venezuela, Lebanon, Argentina, Nigeria and Egypt particularly hard hit…In real terms, food price inflation exceeded overall inflation in more than three quarters of 170 countries where figures were available.”

    Ghanaians have spent more time on the streets than in their homes protesting the high cost of living and calling for the resignation of President Nana Akufo-Addo. Earlier this month in Malawi, dollar shortages forced the government to devalue that country’s currency by 44 percent. It’s a tough world out there.

    But that’s not why the poor and their newer cousins from Nigeria’s impoverished middle class are mad.  They are not mad because they believe that Tinubu is the cause of all their problems, that Buhari’s government was taken hostage or because they think Nigeria should have suddenly become a paradise of sorts.

    They’re mad because in a number of serious countries also facing hard times, politicians appear to be making honest efforts to solve problems. But our politicians, enabled by different branches of the elite, appear not to care. The promise to make life bearable only a few months ago has been met with daylight robbery. 

    Echoes of the past

    Let me start with the states. If you think that the palliatives’ scandal three years ago (when hungry and angry protesters broke down warehouses only to find them stuffed with rotten supplies) was the height of official callousness by states, you would be mistaken.

    Since protesters have learnt to attack warehouses to help themselves to food supplies, state governors have also learnt to secure palliatives where protesters cannot reach. You will recall, for example, that a few months ago, the Federal Government approved N5billion to states to mitigate the effects of runaway food and energy inflation. The money was supposed to ease the pain of the poorest of the poor.

    Some states said they bought basic foodstuffs, especially grains, for residents. What we saw on the streets, however, were videos of whole communities holding up super-small plastic bags of rice or beans, barely enough for meals for two families.

    And that’s in a country where Abia, a state thought to have one of the most conservative governors by most accounts, spent N223million on food in three months; and Lagos is struggling to explain how N440million would be used to buy a special VIP jeep. But these tales of obscene spending, among many, are only a small part of the ingenuity of governors who have found creative ways of managing palliatives.

    Dollar game

    Multiple sources told me, confidentially, that what a number of state governors did after 36 of them received N2billion each, as the first tranche of the N5billion palliatives fund from Abuja, was to raid the black market. They converted significant portions of what they received into dollars, giving palliatives engineering a new currency.

    On June 1, three days after Tinubu took office the naira traded at N734.67/$ in the parallel market. A few weeks after the federal government released palliatives to states, the naira recorded its worst slide on October 26 at N1272.62/$, the sharpest drop in value in six months.

    That’s why the poor are mad. But that’s not all. They’re also mad that the evidence of politicians asking them to tighten their belts is hardly seen at the centre, long notorious for its obesity. How can federal legislators justify the purchase of SUVs costing at least N160million each on the ground that the expense is for necessity, and not to indulge their vanity?

    How can they argue, openly and brazenly, that the legislature has a right to compete with the executive arm in the race for profligacy? It’s the sort of argument that turns the stomach. Some legislators even remind you that they can actually afford these luxury cars. What’s the big deal?

    A fool’s ride

    The big deal, as you may have seen from a trending video of a tanker buried in what is supposed to be the Nsukka/9th Mile Ngwo Expressway in Enugu State, in a long train of other marooned trucks, is that there are, in fact, no roads on which these luxury toys may be driven. Yet, it would seem that one more toy in the legislators’ garage to be used mainly inside Abuja’s central business district is not a bad idea, after all. That’s why the poor are mad.

    They’re mad that at a time like this, the Federal Government is proposing a supplementary budget of N2.18trillion from which N13.5billion would be spent on renovation or construction of new buildings and offices for the Presidency; N4billion on a presidential yacht; and some more billions on vehicles. 

    All of this after an earlier federal appropriation of N21.83trillion which, like Hadi Sirika’s Nigeria Air, appears to have vanished into thin air. And yet the insanity of the political elite only scratches the surface of our misery.

    If you, unlike those in 19th century France in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, are neither mad nor moved to any redeeming action by our current situation, you should ask yourself: why?

  • Can We Survive The “Attack” of Big Tech? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Can We Survive The “Attack” of Big Tech? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    “Every morning a lion wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death…It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, you better be running”

    First attributed to Dan Montano in The Economist, but popularised by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat.

    If, 20 years ago, you asked me whether big technology (or big tech) companies were a threat to journalism, my answer would have been an emphatic yes. After all, these companies do our job without our job description. They also disrupt the media space while taking little responsibility for content.

    Perhaps I should explain that there is a slight difference in form, but not always in substance, between big tech and big search engines.

    While big tech could sometimes be a dominant player in information technology hardware, like Samsung, or in e-commerce, like Amazon, search engines are software monsters although both core hardware and software providers in this field have the capacity as we have seen, for forward or backward linkages. I will focus more on search engines, at least a few in the big league that have significantly disrupted our work, for good or ill.

    I’m sure you know them – Google, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Yahoo, YouTube, Baidu and so on. Please don’t add MySpace to this list; it died before they could write our obituary.

    The buzz-word these days, is “sustainability.” What does it mean? One of the most practical definitions I have seen is, “sustainability consists of fulfilling the needs of the current generation without compromising the needs of future generations.”

    As to whether big tech poses an existential threat to the survival of the Nigerian media and the way out, if indeed such a threat exists, we shall see soon enough.

    How media earns

    Traditional media’s two basic sources of revenue are advertising and circulation or subscription sales. On the face of it, the fear of a journalistic doomsday appears justified in light of catastrophic declines in revenues from these two major sources of media income.

    The relationship between big tech and traditional news media is already complex enough. But I can assure you that the impact of big tech on the media as we know it is just beginning.  The Reuters Institute has already predicted this year to be the breakthrough year for artificial intelligence and its application for journalism.

    The institute rightly said the arrival of ChatGPT has transformed the debate over whether AI is here to stay or not. In its journal, Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2023, the Institute said about ChatGPT, “Its speed and capabilities are awe-inspiring and frightening at the same time. While the underlying models have been around for some time, ChatGPT has turned these into an accessible prototype that gives a real sense of where AI may be heading. It can tell jokes (but has been trained not to tell racist or sexist ones), come up with plots for a film or book, write computer code.”

    In case you missed it, AI even mocked our industry in the report by summarising the challenges facing local news media in 50 words!  Here’s the Q&A:

    “NI: Can you summarise the challenges facing local media in 50 words.

    ChatGPT: The challenges facing local media include the decline of print media and advertising revenues, competition from online news sources, and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on local businesses, which are the major sources of advertising revenue. These challenges have made it difficult for local news outlets to sustain their operations and continue to provide important coverage and information to their communities.”

    More news outlets, including News24 of South Africa, are training their systems with the voices of their popular anchors with astonishing accuracy.

    Big Tech: Archenemy, Frenemy, or Friend?

    Big tech may be playing more actively in our industry than us, taking an increasing share of our money and maybe our jobs without being responsible – both in proprietorship and accountability – for the information it disseminates. It has exploited its unmatched reach, ability to use algorithms to tailor content to suit consumers, and real-time engagement advantage to retain consumers. But as they say, there are two sides to a coin.

    Positive Impact:

    1. Increased Exposure:
    Big tech platforms provide news media companies with a vast audience. Articles and videos can be shared and spread rapidly on these platforms, leading to increased visibility and traffic for news outlets.

    2. New Revenue Streams:
    Some tech platforms have revenue-sharing agreements with news media companies. For example, YouTube shares ad revenue with news organisations that post videos on its platform, once you reach a certain threshold.

    3. Better Analytics:
    Tech platforms provide news media companies with sophisticated analytic tools that allow them to better understand their audiences and tailor content to user preferences.

    4. Engagement Opportunities:
    Social media platforms allow news outlets to interact with their audience in a way that wasn’t possible before. They can receive immediate feedback, address concerns, and build communities around their content.

    Negative Impact:

    1. Ad Revenue Competition:
    Big tech companies have diverted advertising revenues away from traditional media outlets. They offer targeted advertising based on vast amounts of data, which is often more appealing to advertisers. I was scandalised during the recent general elections in Nigeria that folks who had built their careers in the mainstream and whom we were banking on left us high and dry, with the excuse that their principals wanted minimum use of legacy media platforms! But I understood, even if I did so with a heavy heart! Why? A BBC online report www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zd9bd6f/revision/7 said, “Politicians are investing heavily in the use of websites, blogs, podcasts and social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter as a way of reaching voters.”

    “During the 2019 election campaign,” the BBC report continued, “the Conservatives spent one million pounds on Facebook alone, at a point, running 2,500 adverts.”

    Let’s look at some more numbers: Google earned about $3bn from sales to China-based advertisers in 2018; Google UK earned £3.34bn in 18 months ending December 2021 as total revenue in the UK market; in 2022 Google’s share of UK digital advert market was 38 percent of all adverts valued at £5.72bn.

    If the UK media is complaining, I’ll advise they should not do so as loudly as us. Why?  I’m sure most of you already know that on revenue from traffic, for example, while you can get as much as $2 in CPM from traffic from the UK or the US, the best you can hope to get from local traffic, that is, traffic from Nigeria regardless of the size, is probably 80cents per 1000! Sure, this example is related to revenue from traffic; but the ratio, even for advertising is not significantly different.

    2. Spread of Misinformation:
    The ease of sharing on social media platforms can contribute to the spread of misinformation. This not only misleads the public but also undermines trust in news media.

    3. Algorithmic Control:
    The algorithms used by tech platforms control what content is seen and what is buried. This can lead to a loss of control for news media over how and to whom their content is distributed. In an article by Kanchan Srivastava, published on February 27, 2023, entitled, “Surviving the algorithm: News publishers walk the tightrope as Google ‘updates’ hit hard,” the author quoted a respondent as saying, “Google has released major algo updates in 2022, which impacted search traffic across publishers.” Publishers didn’t find two major updates last year by the big tech funny at all.

    4. Dependency:
    News media companies may become dependent on these platforms for traffic and revenue, which can be risky given the changing algorithms and policies.

    5. Potential for Censorship:
    Big tech companies have the power to censor or prioritise certain types of news content based on their own policies or external pressures, which can impact the democratic discourse.

    6. Data Privacy Concerns:
    There are concerns about how big tech companies handle user data, and these concerns extend to the partnerships between tech platforms and news media companies.

    7. Dilution of Brand Identity:
    Being lumped together with a multitude of other content producers on a single platform can dilute a news outlet’s brand identity.

    8.Room for redress
    Complaints about discriminatory business or editorial practices from Nigeria and a number other developing countries are hardly treated with seriousness

    All About Algorithm, the Devil? 

    Not all the challenges summarised by AI were brought upon the traditional media by big tech. Nor are we here solely because of Google’s malicious fiddling with its algo. We in the traditional media space share in the blame for what took our industry from distress to life support.

    I will tweak HBS Professor Clayton Christensen a bit by saying for a long time, we were innovating our products in response to technological shifts, with very little attention to our business models, or if you’ll pardon my drift, what E. Jerome McCarthy described in his book, Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, as the 7Ps of marketing – Product, Promotion, Price, Place, People, Process and Physical Evidence.

    Nothing depicts this more tellingly than media organisations’ need to reconsider obsolete editorial culture and imbibe new ones, especially in the areas of collaboration, audience-centered production, and creating an audience community.

    To be able to compete favourably, media houses may have to take another look at the redundancy levels in-house. Reuters Institute predicted that more newspapers would stop daily print production due to rising print costs and the weakening of distribution networks. It also predicted a further spate of venerable titles switching to an online-only model. They are happening before our own eyes.

    Let me be local. In LEADERSHIP the average production costs of our major consumables – newsprint, plates, ink, energy – have risen, with the most significant rise being in energy cost, which increased by 40 percent in one year, while our advert rates have remained largely constant.

    Survival in the media industry used to depend on rivalry in the media; now it depends on collaboration. Recent collaborative works on the Pandora Papers, BureauLocal, and the #CoronaVirusFacts have shown that media organisations can work with colleagues across boundaries to share resources for the common good.

    In 2020, Aliaa El-Shabassy, a teaching assistant at Cairo University, listed six reader needs outlined by the BBC for media organisations that want to stay ahead and compete with tech platforms. Why should other media companies listen to the BBC’s advice? Well, its global reach in 2020 was 468.2m people a week!

    El-Shabassy wrote, “During Corona’s peak when audiences needed a trustworthy source to rely on, BBC News scored the highest reach among other international media organisations. Moreover, according to the annual Global Audience Measure, a total of 151 million users per week are accessing BBC’s news and entertainment content digitally.”

    Six reader needs that any Media Practitioner must be aware of, according to the BBC are:

    Update me – which means in the era of information overload, your audience should know in a new light what they already know about.

    Give me perspective – it is a newsroom’s own goal to believe that perspective can only be shaped by the newsroom. Your audience can provide perspective.

    Educate me – everyone wants to learn about an exciting new thing. Once you provide diverse content with curiosity value, your audience will be eager to find more from you.

    Keep me on trend – audiences want to be kept trending. Perhaps that was why the BBC reached a record number of people during COVID-19.

    Amuse me – one of the reasons tech platforms prioritise user-generated content (remember Facebook’s pivot to video) over professionally produced content is that they have better entertainment value to attract adverts. The simple truth is that if you make your audience smile, they will most likely come back. It doesn’t always have to be serious! The more entertaining yet informative your content is, the more your institution is likely to grow.

    Inspire me – inspiring stories attract younger audiences more than others and younger audiences source content through tech platforms more. Do the math!

    Big Stick for Big Tech

    Yet, big tech can’t get off lightly. In 2021, and despite heavy criticism, the Australian government pioneered a new media bargaining code that compels tech platforms to negotiate payment to local news media outlets for using their content.

    Initially criticised as a form of subsidy from big tech to big media, significantly because of the role played by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the law has been hugely successful. Both big and small media outlets have benefitted from the law while the country’s journalism practice has also been revitalised, leading to the creation of new journalism jobs.

    In an article published in 2022 by Brookings, Dr. Courtney Radsch, Fellow, Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, UCLA, wrote that Australia’s big tech regulatory efforts were developed around three thrusts: taxation, competition/antitrust, and intellectual property.

    The bargaining code therefore allows publishers to collectively bargain without violating antitrust laws; requires tech platforms to negotiate with publishers for the use of news snippets; also requires them to pay licensing fees to publishers; and taxes digital advertising and uses the revenue to subsidise news outlets.

    The EU, US and India have since adopted their own media bargaining code and the idea of compelling big tech to pay for news they don’t produce but use and sell is gaining momentum, has been gaining global support since Australia took the bull by the horns.

    I’m aware that the Newspaper Proprietor’s Association of Nigeria (NPAN) set up a committee in July to examine the possibility of collective bargaining with big tech.

    Staying in business

    Understanding that consumers hold all – or most – of the aces, is the first step towards sustainability. For perspective, a paper entitled, “The Newspaper: Emerging Trends, Opportunities, and Strategies for Survival and Sustainability,” by Frank Aigbogun presented at a retreat for NPAN on July 18, 2023, said between 2010 and 2015, audience time spent spend on online media consumption soared to 150%. In that time, audience time spent on television decreased to -8%; radio, -15%; magazine, -23%; and newspaper, -31%.

    The reality of digital media is that evolution has brought about new competition and fresh opportunities. Solutions journalism, citizens journalism, and a deeper interface between journalism and technology are the order of the day. There was a time when we consumed music via turntables, stereos with records, and then cassettes and then compact discs. Album sales are no longer used to measure the success of a body of work.

    Now it is streaming, the playground of big tech companies such as Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, TIDAL, Pandora, etc. If technology did not pose an existential threat to the music industry, I do not think big tech would end journalism.

    Reuters Institute said, “Better data connections have opened up possibilities beyond just text and pictures and smartphone adoption has accelerated the use of visual journalism, vertical video, and podcasts.”

    Good content should not be free. What technology is doing, therefore, is to offer traditional media the opportunity to reach more people and make a profit.

    Through the use of content and tech-led innovation, a growing list of brands are expanding into broadcast and streaming TV to grow and engage their audiences, and bring in new revenue streams. This involves the use of new formats, new technology, and new products to broaden and retain the audience base.

    In addition, feedback tools, such as engagement matrices, are being used to “galvanise the industry on loyalty” (according to the Financial Times, which now uses the RFV – Recency, Frequency, and Volume of reading its digital content).

    Traditional media organisations in Nigeria also need to rethink their business models, from content to distribution and personnel costs. One of the ways some media organisations are going about change in business model is by targeting niche markets, while others invest in research, education and learning.

    Other ideas you may find useful in turning an existential threat to an opportunity for sustainable growth, are:

    – Diversify: Think about Julius Berger now into massive production and export of cashew nuts! Think about games, films, books, special events & publications, etc
    – Preserve your candle: Don’t give content free and still not collect and deploy customer data. Know your audiences and cultivate them
    – Re-purpose content
    – Review your systems and processes regularly and take tough decisions
    – Be ethical
    – Invest in talent

    Keep running!

    Let me return to the first sentence of this presentation. Yes, big tech poses a threat because of the opaque relationship it has with traditional media. However, is this threat going to pull the plug on journalism? I’ll say no. I’ll be the first to admit that the prevailing mood in the media industry is one of uncertainty.

    To be certain, nothing will bring back the days when advertisement and circulation were enough to successfully run a media organisation. Also, because the media is a kind of cultural sector that does not necessarily respond to the principles of demand and supply, media organisations that fail to swim with the tide will continue to struggle or pack up altogether. If we invest in what feels relevant and useful to consumers, then we have nothing to worry about because technology will help us know exactly how to adapt and reach our target audience.

    What we should worry about instead is how to retain the ethics of our practice in the face of robotic and artificial media which might just overpower the audiences we share.

    Remember: whether you’re a lion or a gazelle, you better be running!

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP. This is a slightly modified version of the paper he presented at the 19th All Nigeria Editors Conference (ANEC) at the Akwa Ibom Hotel & Gold Resort, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, on Wednesday, November 15, 2023

  • Small chance for INEC to save itself in a big way – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Small chance for INEC to save itself in a big way – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Elections in Nigeria this year might be nearly over but the war by other means could well receive fresh fire from three state elections this weekend.

    The year began with general elections in February and March, and is closing with off-cycle elections in Imo, Bayelsa, and Kogi on November 11.

    Conducting elections for three governors after the major round of governorship elections in March that covered 28 states, including the legislatures in dozens of states, and the federal elections before that, might ordinarily look easy.

    But they are not. These three off-cycle elections are in fact products of either violent electoral outcomes or bitterly fought court decisions. Apart from the post-election chaos that Nigeria has had to deal with, on a good day, each of the three states on their own, is a political cauldron – a nightmare for organisers, participants, and observers alike.

    Imo special

    Of the five states in the South East, for example, Imo is arguably the most violence-prone with widespread reports of random fatal attacks, jailbreaks, attacks on security personnel, police stations and government facilities. Even Governor Hope Uzodimma, the chief security officer of the state, has lived largely behind heavy barricades and moves about like a general in an active war zone.

    To be fair, the violence in Imo predates him. It goes back to the years of the farmer-herder clashes; the rise in separatist agitations under MASSOB – a much earlier and far less deadly franchise than IPOB; and then followed by the upsurge in a variety of loose cannons. The situation has been worsened by years of poor governance.

    But Uzodimma’s dramatic emergence and his brand of politics appear to have brought a new, more dangerous salience to the violence in the state. If you add the ongoing dispute between the national headquarters of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the state government to the mix, then you might understand why this weekend’s election could be a perfect storm.

    Labour has vowed to avenge the black-eye its president, Joe Ajaero, received at the hands of security personnel allegedly at the behest of Uzodimma. It has announced a flight ban on the governor and promised to follow up with a ground offensive.

    Inside Bayelsa’s creeks

    Bayelsa is chaotic in its own way. Though the state managed to survive the turbulence after the forced removal of Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in 2005, its brand of violence has often stemmed from an explosive mix of hostage taking and crude oil politics. A state with some of the country’s most forbidden creeks, Bayelsa is a logistician’s nightmare. It is also a base of former militants ready, able, and willing to outspend politicians to secure their political stronghold.

    Bayelsa has enjoyed a fairly unchallenged reign of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) since 1999. A brief intrusion by the All Progressives Congress (APC) came to grief when the Supreme Court ruled that Governor-elect David Lyon could not be sworn in because his deputy filed false documents with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    But with former PDP governor and junior Petroleum Minister Timipre Sylva now running on the platform of the APC, power could change hands. Yet, PDP stalwarts still licking their wounds from the defeat in the presidential election, are unlikely to stand idly by and watch the fall of a durable PDP stronghold in the Niger Delta.

    Kogi, white lion’s den

    The omens in Kogi with its history of political violence — the most horrific in recent times being the 2019 murder of PDP Kogi woman leader, Acheju Abuh, who was burnt to death inside her home — are no less frightening. The ruling APC and opposition parties have continued to trade allegations of violence even days to the election and no arrests have so far been made.

    Apart from Kogi where Yahaya Bello is ineligible to contest again, Imo and Bayelsa have incumbents itching to retain their seats.

    In a country where incumbency is a rock to be circumnavigated, the records suggest that unseating an incumbent takes more than guts. Among the miserable tally of incumbents that failed a reelection bid, were Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi (2015-2019), Ramalan Yero of Kaduna (2012-2015), Mahmuda Aliyu Shinkafi of Zamfara (2007-2011), Ikedi Ohakim of Imo (2007-2011), and current junior Minister of Defence, Bello Matawalle (2019-2023). If performance mattered there would probably have been more.

    Add to this the huge mutual suspicion of the political players, and the mistrust by the voting public and you might understand why only winners come out of every election season, acclaiming democracy and certifying their victory as the popular will.

    Voter apathy

    Voter apathy remains a serious concern. According to a Guardian report on Tuesday, “only about 30 percent of registered voters may decide the outcome in the three states combined.” However, from recent history whether at federal or state elections, 30 percent would be good turn-out.

    The presidential election in February recorded 26.7 percent. While other elections are only marginally better, the South East has remained a catastrophically low performer in recent years. The election that brought Anambra Governor Charles Soludo to power two years ago, for example, recorded a historic low turn-out of 10 percent.

    If Guardian’s low forecast turns out right, it would be mainly for two reasons. One, the spike in violence in these states in the run-up to the elections, and two, the bitter aftertaste of the general elections held earlier this year. Seven months after the polls, the elections of a number of governors are still being challenged in the courts. Even if the courts existed solely for the pleasure of politicians, there still won’t be enough justice to serve their desperation.

    Political campaigns, if they have existed at all, have been a joke. Politicians in the three states where elections would hold have been making scandalous promises ranging from free tickets to European job fares, to promises to turn water to wine.

    Voters inclined to go out to vote in spite of these ridiculous offers are concerned for their safety because complicit security services and their political paymasters have refused to punish past perpetrators of violence. There is no indication that it would be different this time.

    INEC’s albatross

    Yet, more than anyone else, INEC knows that its poor handling of the general elections and their aftermath, could also be a strong reason for voter apathy. Voters won’t come out if, on top of safety concerns, they don’t also believe their votes would count. The commission is once again in the spotlight. It cannot afford to fail.

    Again, the commission has promised that polling unit results would be uploaded directly to INEC’s viewing portal even in largely rural states like Kogi and Bayelsa where there are limited communications and electricity infrastructure across large swathes of polling areas. We can’t afford to have another round of excuses this time.

    No one wants to hear about glitches, attempted hacking, failing batteries or poor networks. The bulk of the complaints in the last general elections, which later became the subject of litigation, have been about INEC’s competence, credibility and the transparency of the process.

    Elections in Edo and Ondo are next, but the three this weekend offer the commission redeeming grace. All said, since the elections would be held in states outside the top 10 in the country’s voter population, they offer INEC one big chance to repair its image.