LURKING WITH INTENT

“The public say they are getting cynical about politicians. They should hear how politicians talk about them.” George Walden

General Muhammadu Buhari’s assertion that there will be crises if the elections of 2015 are not free and fair have drawn a torrent of reactions which are profound in their revelations. The General was reported to have said that if the government, or the government and INEC, (or “they”) fail to organize credible elections, there will be, as in Hausa language, a bloodletting involving the dog and the baboon. The expression is usually made in situations where fights draw substantial blood from all parties, and there are difficulties in identifying outright winners. The use of the word “blood” appears to have drawn the biggest flack from his opponents. Fellow members of the opposition have also rallied around him, denouncing criticisms against him and further justifying his comments.

Suddenly, the political atmosphere hit a high temperature, certainly the highest since the riots which followed the announced victory of President Jonathan in last year’s Presidential elections. The deluge of condemnation and stinging criticisms from President Jonathan’s stable and his party were matched by strident defence and equally scathing criticisms of General Buhari’s critics. A nation watched a drama involving very strong emotions and words, and wondered what the fuss is all about.

And the nation is justified in asking what all this excitement is about, and may have reached some conclusions already. One of these may be that General Buhari represents a potent source of concern in government and PDP circles, perhaps the most potent around. Just when you thought the aging General may be preparing to honour his word that he will not contest another election after 2011, the political limelight is thrown squarely on him over remarks millions of Nigerian have heard from him and from many others many times before. It couldn’t possibly be merely a reaction to comments which hint that a rigged election triggers massive social unrest, and that the biggest lesson of the aftermath of 2011 is that 2015 must be better. Could it be, then, the result of a perception that General Buhari’s long silence is over, and he may be preparing the grounds for his campaign in 2015? Could it be that talks of political alliance between the CPC, ACN and possibly a few more parties in being taken very seriously by the administration and the PDP? Could it be the result of worrying concerns that the pervasive nature of violence in the lives of Nigerians is already a major challenge, and a nervous administration abhors any further hint at another dimension to our already violence-driven existence?

Whatever he intended to achieve by the remarks he made, General Buhari has made much more capital from them than would have been reasonably expected. Given the manner of the reactions to his comments, we can discern two possible explanations. One is that General Buhari has squarely re-positioned himself as the issue in Nigerian politics. The second, related, explanation is that he will now find it very difficult to resist the pressure not to run again in 2015. Although the President’s corner had made efforts to rope in people like el-Rufai in the salvos they fired at Buhari, their reactions merely showed the General in greater limelight.

But it is important to seek a deeper understanding of the reasons behind the reactions of the administration and the PDP, other than being knee-jerk. If General Buhari is condemned for suggesting that blood will flow if the 2015 elections are rigged, it is reasonable to ask why anyone will believe that blood will not flow if elections are rigged in 2015, whether General Buhari says so or not. Could the administration be living under the illusion that 2011 was a mishap, a glitch and a one-off event that will not recur, if the same circumstances are recreated? Is it possible that no one in authority is looking into the remote and immediate causes of the riots which followed the Presidential election? Could it be the case that the administration and INEC see those events merely as the product of the hysteria which General Buhari created, and the manner citizens literally translated his demand that votes must be protected all the way? Could someone be operating under the illusion that election – related violence, particularly riots which follow announced results were created by General Buhari, and will die as soon as he does not even hint that people should protect their votes?

The comments and reactions to General Buhari’s comments should worry Nigerians. In the first place, the suggestion by General Buhari that there are people out there who could choose to conduct free and fair, or rigged elections is very worrying. If someone like the General could hint that the electoral process is under the control of interests which cannot be influenced or affected by him, his party or even the Nigerian people, it is reasonable to ask what will motivate the administration and INEC to conduct elections that are better than 2011? Secondly, the comment is likely to distance more citizens and voters from the electoral process. What is the point, many voters will say, when they labored to register; labored to vote; and some of them even protested and rioted when they thought the results were not reflections of popular will, and now they are hearing that 2015 will not necessarily be better; and if it is not, there will be even more blood on the streets? Thirdly, many of General Buhari’s supporters will be frightened when they hear him talk of violence in 2015.

No one has gained anything from the riots of 2011. Not a single vote was re-allocated; not a single seat was gained by all the fire and the blood; and all the committees and enquires have not shown how the political and electoral process should be re-engineered to stop the poor from spilling their blood and the blood of others at every election. Finally, General Buhari may not have been responsible for the dangerous maneuvers in the PDP which produced Jonathan as candidate but which exposed the nation’s critical faultlines; he may not have been responsible for the weaknesses and the shortcomings of INEC; but he should know that damaging propanga has irretrievably linked him with the riots that followed the 2011 elections in the minds of many Nigerians. For a man who may still aspire to lead a nation, or at least have his party work to replace the PDP, his image and standing, particularly in the south and some parts of the north will not be helped by his insistence on being personally responsible for providing the linkages between political contest and the dangers of routinely-rigged elections.

Which brings us to the issue of General Buhari’s political future. Now that the flack he has drawn seem to suggest that he represents a major threat to the PDP, the hands of those in the CPC who argue that he should stay firmly in the fray and contest again in 2015 would have been strengthened. His body language also appears to suggest that he will solve the emerging rancour over his successor by choosing to remain active. It is safe to say that if General Buhari does stay active, and chooses to fly his party’s flag in 2015 possibly in an alliance with the ACN, the PDP will dig in deeper in its resistance against this potentially-winning combination. President Jonathan’s yet-to-be-declared, but active interest to run again in 2015 will receive a boost from a south-south/south-east alliance. The nation will again be polarized, perhaps more dangerously then it was in 2011. In that event, both Buhari and Jonathan will be serious political liabilities in a nation desperate for some means to re-invent an all-inclusive political process.

The quarrels over the possibility that 2015 elections will be rigged, and that this will create massive bloodshed should focus the nation’s attention on preparations for credible elections in 2015. The main problem at this stage is that the administration, INEC, many sections of the country which support Jonathan, and sections of the international community which says any type of election is better than strife in Nigeria, insist that the 2011 elections was one of the best organized. Many others disagree, including Buhari and his supporters. So if 2011 was good, what should be improved? Are we going to go to 2015 with same candidates, the same bitterness, the same INEC, and a citizenry which takes its pound of flesh instantly every time it feels cheated at the polls?

PARTS OF A WHOLE*

We could safely identify a number of fallacies which feed the current discussions around the nature of the present structure of our nation, and its future. All these fallacies are rooted in the historic tendency of the Nigerian elite to revisit the manner in which they compete, and the peculiar manner in which ethno-geophical and religious pluralism are manipulated in this competition. The current pitch of the debate regarding geo-politics, re-engineering the Nigerian State and its chances of failure, disintegration or survival is itself a function of a number of issues:

i. One is the destructive impact of large-scale corruption which is exposing the basic skeleton of the State in a most dangerous manner. The Nigerian leadership and elite are losing the last vestiges of credibility because of the routinized subversion of the democratic process, and the systematic pillage of the resources of the people;

ii. The threat posed by criminality and violence, which have stretched the security apparatus of the Nigerian State to a point where it is being seriously doubted whether the State can continue to perform one of the most basic functions of any State, which is the protection of the lives and property of citizens. These threats go way beyond the Boko Haram insurgency, although this particular threat represents its most potent and dangerous challenge. Routine and endemic killings in towns and villages, many with remote or immediate links to ethno-religions conflicts are also major threats. So are the routinized crimes of kidnappings and armed robbery which have taken up residences in many parts of the country.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬*Text of a Lecture delivered at the Symposium on “Political and Socio-Economic Challenges and the Muslim Ummah” organized by Muslim Ummah, Kaduna State Branch, 19th – 20th May, 2012.
**Visiting Reader in Political Science, Usumanu Danfodiyo university Sokoto, and Executive Chairman, D.I.T.V/Alheri Radio, Kaduna.
*** I have made comments on the current debate on restructuring Nigeria in my blog site, www.baba-ahmed.blogspot.com.

The latent threat of insurgency in the Niger Delta which has deep roots with politics in the area is also a major threat;
iii. Elite fractionalization which has become pronounced since 1997, and the increasing perception that it will be impossible to have a credible and crises-free elections and the emergence of truly national leadership in Nigeria;
iv. The failure of the political elite to provide solutions to all these problems, and hence the resort to historic tendencies to the old divide-and-rule elite tactics.

2. The fallacies which are fed by these underlying structural limitations of the Nigerian elite can be summarized as:

a. The falsehood that the Nigerian nation is built on the twin pillars of illegitimacy, and ethnic groups which have not yielded their rights to live alone or together in the modern Nigerian state;

b. The falsehood that the Nigerian federation is a federation of elites, States tribes or religions, and not of citizens and voters;

c. The falsehood that elites can determine whether the Nigerian State survives, fails, disintegrates or is restructured, and citizens have little say in the matter;

d. The falsehood that geo-political zones represent political sub-entities, and larger ethnic groups can be reference points to the determination of the nature and the structure of the Nigerian State, and the over 260 ethnic groups and 160 million Nigerian citizens do not represent basic factors in any discussions on Nigeria’s structure or future;

e. The falsehood that outlines of an alternative basis for new federating units are already emerging in the attempts to engineer a monolithic political entity in the South West; the efforts to entrench the new-found but fragile unity in the South South; the serious search for the illusive Igbo unity; the half-hearted and confused manner in which the middle-belt seeks to create an identity; and the two zones in the far north which are being identified by violence and poverty.

f. The falsehood that an elite conclave under a sovereign or whatever type of conference will address the most basic of the weaknesses of the Nigerian state, which are its increasing failure to perform the basic job of a state, and the consequent evidence that insecurity and poverty will rise and feed more of its problems.

g. The falsehood that political stability, growth of the democratic process, economic progress, peace and sustained security will only come about if an event which comprehensively examines the structural limitations of the Nigerian State is allowed to hold, or holds in spite of official opposition and has its recommendations implemented, with or without government support.

3. The basic outlines of the Nigerian State today can be identified as:

a. A State where massive disputes around political succession, the organization of elections and the absence of legitimacy have alienated a substantial portions of the citizenry. No region of Nigeria is immune from this basic failure. Indeed, the scramble to build walls around political enclaves is itself a function of the failure of the leadership to address a most fundamental requirement to govern, which is basic elite cohesion;

b. A State which is basically characterized by pillage of resources and corruption in its vital institutions. Citizens are distant from the State, and become increasingly more so as leaders systematically and routinely subvert all the values of leadership. Security is impossible to guarantee solely by use of State power and resources; and citizens who feel they have little stake in the system, or little to protect or defend, will distance themselves from state organs and institutions. The most vital of all the institutions, the democratic institutions, will be increasingly subverted by a small elite, to the extent that voters and citizens feel leaders emerge without being elected, and elective offices go to the richest, most powerful, or most corrupt.

c. A State at the mercy of threats which understand and exploit its weaknesses and fault lines. The Boko Haram insurgency raises the issue of the absence of justice, equity and honesty in governance, although it does this in a manner which presents these issues as if they affect only Muslims. Ethno-religions conflicts are products of unfair distribution of political and economic resources, as well as the cynical exploitation of the failure of the Nigerian State to effectively mediate relations between ethnic and religious groups. Violent crimes and others such as kidnapping exploit a weak and corrupt security network. The linkages between politics and organized violence are becoming more pronounced, as the competition for elective offices and the resources of the State increasingly moves away from the ballot box and becomes determined by buttets and bullion vans.

d. Frightening levels of corruptions, not only of huge resources, but of basic values and institutions. As the political and democratic process becomes increasingly dependent on vast resources stolen from the public, the leadership and value systems they produce merely keep the vicious circle going. Stolen money provides stolen mandates; which are then used to steal more money. And the circle goes on;

e. Dangerous gaps which are daily increasing between the citizen and the Nigerian State. Stolen resources prevent the State from registering as an important factor in the lives of citizens. Failure to provide security and welfare for citizens erodes legitimacy and respect for leaders. In many parts of the country, new political arrangements as the solutions to poverty and insecurity are being falsely peddled. Yet the leaders who do so are from the some stock as the leaders from the zones from which distance is being created.
4. There are genuine reasons why Nigerians should worry over our current situation, for which we are told a conference or restructuring will provide a solution. What we need to appreciate are:

a. Nigeria has too many roots and branches in every village, community, state or region to be dissected and restructured along ethno-religions lines. This nation is much more firmly rooted than our elites and leaders like to believe, and every farmer, trader, artisan, housewife or labourer; and every village and community has paid its dues in the last 100 years to have a nation which should survive our current problems;

b. Our unity and survival as a nation has not been surrendered to elites and politicians with questionable legitimacy to do with them as they wish. Our nation will not fail because politicians fail to sort out their basic disputes. We will not be re-assigned, re-allocated, re-designed or re-organized on the basis of the wishes of a few members of the elite who see these as easier means of control.

c. Our unity is a unity of people with diverse ethno-religious identities, an organic unity of people, who are citizens of one nation.

d. No part of Nigeria will be safe or will progress beyond the insecurity or poverty of the others. The nature of our current challenges can only be addressed in a holistic manner;

e. The resources which God gave us belong to all of us. The tendency to seek for arrangements which keep more for a region, and deprives others of basic development resources is dangerous and self-defeating. The foundation for peace in any nation is a function of the manner the richest and the poorest are accommodated; and the degree to which wealth and poverty do not threaten unity or equity. No restructuring or isolation will make the citizens of the South West or South South safe from the negative effects of poverty in the north. Similarly, progress in parts of the country which encourage them should be welcomed, because affluence in the South West means northern farmers can sell more onions and cattle there; and use profits to expand. The prosperity, from legitimate income, of the South South should be welcomed in the north, because it boosts the strong economic ties between the regions, and is a solid source of resources and income for the north. Poverty and insecurity in the north is a serious threat to capital and enterprise from the south east, which is heavily dependent on investments and consumption in the north. Any threat to peace and security in the north central zone which affects the production and distribution of agricultural produce will severely damage the nation’s economy. All these are reasons why the nation’s foundations as a united country should be encouraged, not subverted by elites who solve problems by creting more problems.

5. All these are not to say that the Nigerian State is not showing pronounced signs of failing. Failure of the Nigeria State, which is actually a worse fate than break up or restructuring, will be the case when the Nigerian State fails to provide security, protect its territory, fails to prevent balkanization, produces multiple leadership and loses the monopoly over the use of violence. The Nigerian State will fail if its leaders fail to sustain a coherent and cohesive leadership over its critical institutions, including its security institutions; and civil society fails to organize a comprehensive resistance against failure. Those who advocate tribal conclaves or some other type of meetings to discuss our political structures and future use the fear of failure of the state as justification for their demands. The fundamental weakness of this position is that the elite who preach national conferences, restructuring or break-ups are basically the same people who are responsible for what the nation is today. Even if they do not, or have not exercised political power, they fail in terms of providing the wrong solutions for the wrong problems. For so long as the type of leaders we have continue to dominate the political level, it makes no difference how you restructure Nigeria; or how you break it up. It will remain the same, or all the parts will remain basically the same as they are.

The real challenge in terms of stopping the dangerous decline of the nation is to go beyond the agenda and schemes of fractions of the elite. A national political movement must emerge to raise real answers to the very serious questions which need to be asked of our nation. Some of these questions include:

a. What are the sources of the basic weaknesses of the Nigerian State?

b. Can we solve basic problems of unity and security by re-organizing the nature of the federal system?

c. Where should we locate our collective resolve and anger at the State of our nation, and how do we channel them constructively and productively?

d. In the event that state failure becomes an imminent reality, what can civil society do?

It will be difficult to take this debate to a national level without an increase in the crisis level of the Nigerian State. At this moment, our elite and leaders all tend to think that problems are regionalized and limited, and they can build walls around them or distance themselves from them. At some stage, the citizens of Nigeria will have to engage each other in some serious damage control, and it is reasonable to expect that issues which feed the current clamour for restructuring or balkanization of the Nigeria State will feature. Parts of the nation have issues and problems they will need to seriously thrash out before they engage the rest of Nigeria. In my view, these are some of the issues which will represent a genuine agenda of issues and concerns which the Nigerian people should take up:

i. The North should undertake a critical self-assessment in terms of its failure to manage its socio-cultural and political pluralism. It needs answers to questions over why faith has become a central issues in its politics, and the manner competition for political and economic resources are increasingly determined by faith. It needs to ask serious questions about the character of the faith of its Muslim population and its relationship with a secular western or Christian values and institutions. It needs to understand the feelings of simple Muslims, their dreams and aspirations, and the manner in which they can be processed through the political and democratic process. It needs to appreciate the changing nature of power relations between Muslims and Christians in many parts of the North, and of the critical linkages between the nature of our democratic process and the patterns of distribution of power and economic resources.
The north needs to understand why it has failed so spectacularly to develop its best two assets: its large human resource and vast agricultural potential. It needs to understand the dynamics of the Nigerian political economy, and take full advantage of its strength while limiting its weaknesses. It needs to appreciate the manner in which political competition exploits its cultural pluralism, and how it can build bridges among its communities and faiths. In a situation where it has majority of the population and voters, the north only needs a guaranteed fair electoral system to ensure that it remains a key actor in political competition.
The West will need to come to terms with the fact that it is nowhere near the politically and culturally homogenous entity it likes to believe it is. Attempts to paper over historic and contemporary cracks which exist will fail every time short-sighted opportunism and the challenges of responding to stimuli from the rest of Nigeria come calling. The West can build an island of relative economic prosperity, but it will be substantially dependent on the extensive linkages between its economy and the rest of the Nigerian economy. Politics will continue to expose the fragile nature of Yoruba politics, and it is easy to forget that only a few years ago, the PDP controlled majority of Yoruba State. The West needs a new roadmap on relating with a North with which it has deep, historical and cultural ties; on relating with the South South which it needs to stay in Nigeria as a safe and secure source of revenue and security; and on relating with the South East which it needs to deepen already extensive economic relations with. It should rid itself of the dangerous illusion that it can go its own way, because no other part of Nigeria is more Nigerian than the South West.

The South South needs to sober up over its current euphoria over a semblance of political unity, and economic prosperity. No region is more vulnerable to instability and threats of subversion than the South South. None needs Nigeria more than the South South. It cannot compete in isolation; or survive potentially damaging political squabbles, or the resistance from the rest of Nigeria if it moves too far away; or the machinations and strategic interests of the Western world which will emasculate it. The south south is tempted to threaten Nigeria with destruction of oil and gas resources, and could use this as a bargaining tool. But no region is as dependent on oil and gas resources as the south south.

The south east need Nigeria to prosper, but it has to do some serious self-appraisal. It is the most exposed zone in terms of presence in every part of Nigeria; but its towns and villages are virtual dens of crimes, forcing citizens to live nightmare existence. The moral and ethical tone of the people and communities needs a very critical self-assessment because the fabled industry and enterprise of the Igbo people is severely compromised by the endemic nature of crime in their communities. The Igbo believe they have not developed to their full potential in
Nigeria, and an Igbo presidency and additional states will unleash this potential. Yet the zone is in a deadly competition with the North for 2015, which could do serious damage to both regions. The south east is attempting to build a tribal enclave like the Yoruba are attempting under the ACN, but it suffers from a perennial split personality defect which will not let it decide whether it wants to go with or against Nigeria.

2. Nigerians should demand that real substantive issues be examined by the current initiatives to reform the constitution. These must include:

i. The cost of government;

ii. The structure of the federal system, and in particular, the need for a
structure do that does not serve only to produce leaders who steal public resources;

iii. The need to curb corruption;

iv. Improvements into the electoral process;

v. Improving national security, and the creation of outlets against periodic and inevitable ethno-religious conflicts;

vi. The creation of a nation that allows the unhindered expression of the faith and beliefs of individuals and groups;

vii. The identification of mechanisms and processes which will guarantee that all Nigerian children receive quality and affordable education.

I thank you.

JONATHAN’S WATCH

“There are three times in a man’s life when it’s useless to hold him to anything: when he is madly in love, drunk or running for office.”
Robert Mitchum.

A little over two years ago, President Umaru Musa YarAdua died, providing a natural solution to a messy political and legal logjam that was to haunt the rest of his planned four – year term. It is a sign of the present times and the conditions we live under that the Anniversary was barely noticed. There were certainly a lot more pages with paid adverts congratulating the Governor of Jigawa State for receiving an honourary degree than those which reminded the nation that its President died two years ago. Both his entrance and his exits were tumultuous events, and Umaru YarAdua’s life and death will be marked as significant watersheds in Nigerian history. He did not, strictly speaking, hand over the baton to President Jonathan. You could say he dropped it, and Jonathan had to pick it with considerable difficulty in a race which started with so much promise, finished in a most controversial manner.

Umaru YarAdua was a good but complex man. He had many good intentions, and a bag full of personal and political limitations. He came into the Presidency in 2007 on the back of the most condemned election; from a Governor in a state where he learned that Nigerians politics bred intense bitterness and took no prisoners. His entire campaign for the Presidency of Nigeria was planned, funded and carefully choreographed by others who saw huge opportunities to milk his Presidency. He tagged along, with his own agenda carefully tucked away, hoping that when, not if, he became President, he would make a clean break with history.

He began well, denouncing the election that brought him to power, and committing himself to reform the electoral process. He failed to do this, when it became clear that reform in the manner the Committee under Chief Justice M. L. Uwais proposed, would transform our electoral system beyond the capacity of his party, the PDP to control and manipulate. His commitment to entrench the rule of law and fight corruption remained hollow slogans, as corruption became entrenched in the circle which surrounded him, and the rule of law found expression only in pamphlets. Grand visions involving developments of infrastructure and reforms in the power sector, petroleum and gas and land administration were defeated by massive corruption which had dug in, and an indifferent and lethargic public service. A resolution of the crippling crimes under the name of militancy in the Niger Delta involved potentially dangerous and expensive concessions, and the jury is still out over the long-term value of the Amnesty Programme. A substantially weakened President was persuaded to give a shoot-at-sight order literally on his way out of the country when the Yusufiyya insurgency was threatening to overwhelm the Police in Maiduguri. In the execution of the order, the leader of the insurgency was executed, and the nation is being reminded of that act almost daily with bombs and bullets. An even weaker President was sold the dummy that tinkering with the rules of the public service under a tenure policy will transform the public service. The alarming crash in standards, efficiency and moral courage in the public service is the result the nation is paying for this folly. Competent and experienced hands are being retired at moments when they are most needed, and the shocking revelations and unprecedented levels of stealing around pensions and the subsidy scams are in reality evidence of the failure of the public service to protect the public and public resources from pillage.

A weak and a sick President is a liability to governance, but a weak and sick President who was propped up by interests which had scant regards and respect for the law or the national interest became a major threat. The undignified and untidy efforts made to prolong YarAdua’s Presidency and keep Jonathan away at all cost necessary (and unnecessary) did little justice to the personal ideals of Umaru himself who, for all his failings, actually saw power as a transient element. In sickness and in the manner his death came about, the foundations of a bitter succession and the perception of an parochial resistance against a Jonathan presidency took roots.

From the moment the law was turned on its head by a national resolve to end the drift after it became clear that Yar’Adua couldn’t continue, the Jonathan presidency was marked by an indelible perception that it had to fight every inch of the way against massive northern resistance. The underdog image was given a boost in the contest for the PDP ticket, and the gang-up of northern politicians in the PDP against Jonathan’s candidature created opportunities to tap into massive primordial sentiments and sympathies. Now a northern, Muslim enemy became easily identifiable, and the foundations of much of the character of our present political environment were laid.

President Jonathan’s full watch began on the ashes of four basically wasted years, when the nation moved from a crippled presidency, to one shackled by petty and destructive opportunism and fatal miscalculations. He came with a mentality that is substantially hostage to its recent past, and the riots which followed his announced victory further exposed dangerous faultiness which the political contest that produced his presidency had made more pronounced. Against a perceived far northern resistance, President Jonathan’s people whipped up their own regional passions. Our politics has never been more tribalized, and the centrality of faith in politics and governance never more pronounced.

With a mandate all of his own since 2011, the nation could legitimately ask what all that struggle by President Jonathan to become President was all about? To prove that he had a right to aspire and occupy the position, yes. To prove that South South people can ‘rule’ Nigeria, yes. To prove that the northern establishment could be humbled and humiliated, yes. But what about going beyond the pound of flesh? Is it purely coincidental that Jonathan’s watch has been marked by the most frightening manifestation of threats to our security, and revelations of mind-boggling corruption? Certainly, it is fair to say that he had inherited some of these problems, but Jonathan was part of the Presidency since 2007, and effectively President since 2010. To say his presidency has been crippled by incipient regional hostility, a determined insurgency and unspeakable corruption is akin to saying that thieves have made the night guard’s job difficult. The job of the guard is to keep the thieves away, and not use them as the excuse for perennial theft.

By any standards of judgment, President Jonathan’s watch is a difficult one. But he wanted job, and he got it. From the moment he sat in Yar’Adua’s chair, he called the shots. Now he is being judged by how he responds to the challenges he faces. Will he reign in run-away corruption by prosecuting people who swindled us of trillions in fraudulent subsidy? Can he prosecute the big names behind the pension scam; the collapse of the capital market; the scandalous sales or ‘dashing’ of our assets under the privatization programme? Can he find a way to limit and eliminate the dangers posed by the Boko Haram insurgency? Can he make a tangible difference between now and 2015 in the areas of power supply, unemployment among the youth and reform of the electoral process? The job of being a Nigerian President must be the most difficult in our current circumstance. It’s made more difficult because President Jonathan cannot blame anyone, if during his watch, Nigeria sinks deeper into crises.

A NORTH WITHOUT PEOPLE

“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
J.K Gailbraith, 1969.

The Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima says the north of Nigeria will be inhabitable in five years if the current security situation is not addressed. Actually, the details of his remarks dealt more with the dangers he sees in the creeping alienation which is breeding lawlessness, crime and impunity particularly among young people. The rich and the privileged are no longer safe, and young, unemployed (and unemployable) persons now grab whatever they can, and they target the wealthy and the powerful with pronounced venom. This, the Governor says, is the result of poverty. He says if in five years time, the leaders and the wealthy and the privileged in the north do not address poverty and insecurity decisively, nobody will stay or live in northern Nigeria, because it will be profoundly unsafe to do so.

It is instructive that the Borno State Governor who sees the destructive power of violence crime and poverty daily, made these remarks when some members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) visited him to sympathize over the virtual siege under which citizens of the State live. If his visitors whose party runs three-quarters of the nation had flown to Maiduguri and then drove to the Government House, they would have observed the tragic consequences of the prolonged damage and garrison existence under which citizens of Maiduguri live. Between Boko Haram insurgents who live and operate almost at will from within its communities, and security forces who act as if the entire population is the enemy, the once thriving economy of Maiduguri has shrunk beyond recognition. Poverty will obviously highten. Bitterness will feed the insurgency. It will fight with sustained vigour, hoping that the strong-arm tactics of the state will tilt the balance of public sentiment in its favour.

If the PDP bigwigs had driven to Borno State capital from a neighbouring State, they would have seen even more damage to the economy and the social system which is making people even more desperate. If they started from, say, Kaduna, they would have left a city which lives with fear and uncertainty. Its many checkpoints have not stopped frequent attacks, and they are becoming more daring and spectacular. If they drove through Kano, they would have seen evidence of the panic and pain under which the BUK community lives, the long faces of parents, colleagues and friends who lost loved ones recently, and many more checkpoints. They would have seen burnt-out and demolished police stations, and maybe even a few demolished residences where security forces say they encountered Boko Haram insurgents. If they drove through Bauchi and Gombe, they would have seen fear and suspicion on every face, and alert security men and women who are anxious to know who is the enemy and who is the friend. They would see that banks now close up around 2 or 3pm; markets are haphazard, people cannot park in church premises when they go to worship; all police and military facilities are heavily barricaded, and all motorcycles have to be pushed past checkpoints.

If they drove up through Kano to Yobe, they would have left hundreds of families from the south in the process of relocating, or fiercely resisting the pressure to move, from families down south. In Yobe State, they may have stopped to offer sympathies to the people of Potiskum who were recentlyvictims of a massacre, and who rose up in protest against what they alleged was security connivance or indifference. They would have heard, if they saw the Governor there, that the town was promptly placed under curfew as a result of the protests. If they visited the Governor, they would have heard similar lamentations regarding the state of insecurity and its linkages with poverty as they heard from Governor Shettima.

There are serious issues, however regarding the lamentations of governors over poverty and insecurity arising from Boko Haram activities in the north. To single out poverty and blame the current state of insecurity on it is fallacious and dangerous. Poverty has predated Boko Haram, and is quite likely to survive it. To create the impression that you will solve the threat of Boko Haram by throwing money at it is shortsighted and self-serving. Certainly, the levels of poverty, boosted both by large-scale corruption, inept and insensitive governments and massive demographic changes taking place in the north, are unacceptable. If crushing poverty and hopelessness arising from total lack of opportunities were the sole fuel of Boko Haram, half of all young Muslim northerners will be Boko Haram insurgents; or they would have created their own versions of the insurgency. Addressing poverty is likely to limit the appeal, attraction and sympathy for Boko Haram among the young, but it is wrong to think policies which should routinely and specifically improve infrastructure, quality of education and reduce corruption should be pursued only as a strategy to fight a religious insurgency which appears well-funded to continue to threaten the Nigerian State.

The Governors in the north which Governor Shettima says will lose its people in five years time are responsible for much of what the north is today. Many of them say they inherited massive problems, and they have no resources to solve them. May be so, but this is not an excuse the people in the north will accept. Governments in the north mean a lot to the vast majority of the people. The failure of governments to build and equip schools and recruit teachers literally means that millions of children will not receive any education or acquire skills. Many parents who cannot send their children to modern schools send them to almajirci schools. This way, they are at least assured that they may grow up as good, even if poor Muslims. Rural roads transform economies. Rural health centers transform quality of lives in villages. Investment in infrastructure creates jobs. All these are the businesses of governments. When they do not do them, citizens who are already crippled by poverty are unlikely to do or provide them.

Northern leaders also need to be careful about the manner they rise to like Boko Haram insurgency with the poverty they should fight. They are not likely to get much sympathy and the huge amounts they think they will get from a national leadership and a people which blame them for creating or sustaining the conditions for the emergence of the current levels of poverty in the first place. Secondly, they create the false impression that Boko Haram’s mission is all about bread and butter. This insurgency speaks a different language, and it is important that it is engaged in the language it speaks. It raises fundamental questions at the ideological and political level, and northern governors know only too well that it is at this level that an affective engagement will occur.

But the Governor of Borno State is also wrong in his assumption that the north will have no people in five years. It will certainly lose many of its affluent citizens, who will move to safer areas with their wealth and families. But its 90 million citizens will stay put, quite possibly in worse conditions, if the governors do not do something dramatic and genuine to arrest the decline engendered by poverty and violence. Northerners also need to read between the lines: their governors and other leaders are likely to jump ship in five years time, if the environment, for which they have full responsibility, does not improve. There will be people in the north by 2017, but they are likely to be more desperate and more threatened, unless the federal and especially northern governments move from lamentations to action.

I AM A DELTAN

“One fifth of the people are against everything all the time.”
J.F. Kennedy.

All columnists are used to having feedbacks, some abusive, others encouraging. Indeed, these feedbacks mean a lot, even if, in many instances, they come from people who have either not read what you have written, or understood it. Since I started writing for the Vanguard sometime last year, I had braced myself every week for the on-line comments as well as the many more which I receive through my e-mail address. A large number of the responses I get, no matter what I write on, are informed by my geo-ethnic origins (and this is usually couched as “abokie” “goat-rearer”, “book-haramist” “malam” “almangiri”) and nothing I write is good. I take comfort from the belief that many more readers will have opinions which, though they may not express them, are generally less negative. In fairness there have also been many responses from people I have extremely high regard for from the south, who have communicated with me privately on what I write. I found those bits particularly inspiring.

Last week I wrote on the reports that the government of Delta State had planned to spend over N7b to demolish a hill (which others said was a pile of sand) around the Asaba Airport to expand its runway, and allow President Jonathan’s plane land for the South South Economic Summit. I questioned the cost, rationale and viability of the project, and I made the point that it is projects of this type that give people like the Governor of Niger State, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu the basis for suggesting that all this money that goes to the South South leads to some waste and mismanagement. While making the case that the President and other leaders from the Niger Delta State have a responsibility to ensure that the quality of governance in the region is improved, I also mentioned that every Nigerian has a right to insist that people of Delta State get value for money from their government.
As usual, there were mixed responses. A few thought it was encouraging to have a northerner comment on a matter so far away from him. I reminded those people to see the extensive and impressive effort made by a “northern” newspaper, Daily Trust, to look into this issue, and the extent its reporter went (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) to get the government of Delta State to state its own side of the story.

But the most robust response came from someone I know very well. I had worked with him at a very high level in the federal civil service, and though I was his senior in the service, I had called him “Sir” because he was older than me. He had retired before me, and somehow I had lost touch with him for the last few years.
As it turned out I had also lost touch with his political re-orientation. When he contacted me through my e-mail initially, I was so shocked by the manner of his response and the issues he raised that I had to ask if it was the same person I interacted with as a colleague in the public service for almost 15 years. When he answered in the affirmative, I was stumped. We all have many parts to our characters and personalities; and even values which we think are settled in our lives can be severely tested by changing contexts, circumstances and environment. My friend says he is not an employee or appointee of the government of Delta State, even though he is an indigene of Asaba. He took particular exception to me making it my business to devote a whole page on an issue which affects the people of Delta State, instead of raising matters about Boko Haram, child beggars or the silent exodus from the north, of people from the southeast and south south. What, he asked, is N7.4b to a people blessed by God with unlimited resources, if it expands the airport and in five, six or ten years, it becomes the hub of air travel around the Delta and Gulf of Guinea? What will I do next, now that I have nothing about the north to criticize: snoop around every government project in BRACED, and write columns? Have I heard the NSA say northerners in the PDP are responsible for Boko Haram at the Summit? Isn’t that more useful to write on than the Delta airport?

Naturally, these were questions coming from him in a rather lengthy engagement, to which I responded. I have to say, however, that I did not succeed in getting my (now former) friend to see my point of view. He conceded only one thing to me: he said he believed me when I assured him that I was not paid to do a hatchet job against the Governor and Government of Delta State, and that it will be very helpful if the State Government itself puts forward its own position on this matter.

I admit I felt deeply saddened that the current state of the nation where our failure to manage our pluralism
through an all-inclusive political process, failures of leadership and emergence of threats to national security which appear to be pitching sections of the country against each other are making casualties of our senses and perceptions of each other. We see this type of bitter, shallow and stereotyped characterization of each other in chatrooms and other social media where the younger generation of Nigerians reside almost permanently. But to see it in a man over 60 who has given his entire life to the service of the nation is profoundly saddening. More worrying is the possibility that there could be many more like this elderly Nigerian who have drawn rigid lines around the concept and practice of one nation; and of a citizenry linked by bonds so strong that the recent massacre of 50 people in a cattle market in Potiskum, Yobe State is bound to have a major impact on the local economy, Igbo cattle dealers, transporters, consumers in Potiskum, Owerri and Asaba, and on the cattle industry generally. The insecurity we live under appears to be blinding us to the fact that the innocent lives bombed and shot at the Bayero University Kano recently are being locally mourned by millions, many of whom are Muslims who also lost loves ones in many recent attacks in Kano. All this talk about regional development and blueprints for possible autonomy is creating a false consciousness that parts of Nigeria can just walk away from the nation anytime they feel like it.

Needless to say, I reminded my friend that I am from Delta State. I am also from Osun, Benue, Abia and Sokoto. I hurt when the resources which God endowed us with are plundered or abused, and it doesn’t matter who does it. I hurt when bombs go off, whoever the victims are. I hurt when I am told that the problems of the north, of child beggars, decaying infrastructure, corruption and impunity are the problems of northerners. In case there are citizens of Delta State reading this, the N7.4b being spent on the Asaba airport should be explained, at the very least. It’s your money, and mine.Delete ReplyReply ForwardMovePrint Actions NextPrevious

UMARU YAR’ADUA: FLASHES IN THE DARK.

“A politician is someone who believes you don’t have to fool all the people all the time. Just during elections”
Stanley Davies.

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died two years ago. Most of the footprints he left have been virtually swept off the landscape by horrendous setbacks in governance, and it will amount to speculation over whether he would recognize the nation he left two years ago. To be sure, he was in large part an architect of much of what we have in our hands today, but would he approve of the structure he helped design? In a way, this would summarize the dilemma in the political life of late President Yar’Adua: great vision, poor execution and severely compromised outcomes.
The Yar’Adua legacy in his 8-year tenure in Katsina State is being hotly disputed. The rump of his loyalists say his successor and trusted deputy, Ibrahim Shema, has re-written Yar’Adua’s script. Shema’s people say he is building on the solid foundations of Umaru’s legacies, and he has no apologies for writing his own script. Katsina State is today one of the bulwarks of the PDP machine in the nation, but its political clout and economic progress have been highjacked by forces outside the state, and the north. The schools and roads Umaru built of such high quality are failing in many parts, and the considerable number of enemies and adversaries he made when he sat tightly on public funds have found their ways into favour. The state struggles to put something on the ground after paying salaries, and it must be costing more than an arm and a leg to preserve the difficult control of the PDP over the political terrain in Katsina, and the disposition of Shema himself as a man who counts pennies before parting with them must be making it even more difficult to keep the CPC at bay.

But it is at the federal level where Yar’Adua started with the appearance of a man determined to make a relatively clean break with history that even more profound changes have occurred in the last two years. Against the most vociferous resistance, he denounced the elections that brought him to power, and pledged to reform the electoral process. He followed through with a credible effort under the Justice Lawal Uwais committee, but abandoned the process when it became clear that a reformed electoral process was going to take too many casualties, with his own party, the PDP as the biggest. He declared his assets publicly, and set alarm bells ringing when all political appointees thought he would judge them negatively if they did not do same. He did not. His was a symbolic gesture to send a message that he would fight corruption, and would be a servant leader. He raised hopes around the mantra of rule of law as his fundamental concern, and said times without number that a corrupt leader could not be a good leader.

Those flashes of hope and courage were swamped by forces far stronger and more entrenched then President Yar’Adua. Far from fighting corruption, corruption fought back under his watch. His baggage included some of his closest advisers who had many hands in tills; scandalously-corrupt former and serving public office holders who had substantially bankrolled his campaign; and scheming politicians who saw weaknesses in a good man who trusted too much, and made enemies too easily.

His brilliant mind and native intelligence showed brightly in his initial conception of his agenda; but it fell victim of a past which had just dug in. He thought he could address the crippling problem in the Niger Delta by a master-stroke of granting amnesty to people who had made billions through crime, hiding behind genuine communal concerns, and a radical reform of the entire oil and gas sector. Against advice which exposed the deep-rooted linkages between politics and militancy in the Niger Delta, he embarked upon an expensive and potentially dangerous amnesty programme. Today, there are hints that beneficiaries of the programme are being groomed to provide the backbone of a skilled manpower which the south south could use, in the event that the region has to chart a course on its own. The Petroleum Industry Bill (P.I.B) which was knocked together at great pains by Rilwanu Lukman and his team has many versions today; and may never see the light of day, no thanks to the potential for vicious resistance against which the late President was warned. Massive corruption and a lethargic bureaucracy frustrated his plans to expand the power sector. His great vision for reform of the land administration system in Nigeria, for agriculture and water resources and road and rail networks was blunted by indifference beyond his immediate, small circle, and a public service which served corruption more than it served the public.

President Yar’Adua wanted to be his own man, but was shacked all around. He was the product of a political campaign which was funded by people he detested even to be in the same room with. So he preferred not to know how he got to the Villa. He wanted his party, the PDP, an institution which will win the Nobel Prize in subverting the democratic process to toe the line of his mantra of the rule of law, but there were too many debts to settle; too many interests to pander to; and a godfather who was very much around and very demanding. He had a most profound respect for President Obasanjo, and was therefore reluctant to unplug many of the latter’s decisions and schemes, yet they offended much of his definition of good governance, and the manner he defined his own administration. In the end, he neither pleased Obasanjo nor himself. Behind him, or over his shoulders, he had the constant presence of Atiku Abubakar, another elder he respected tremendously, but who is now a political rival; and of General Muhammadu Buhari, a politician he knew only too well, and who retained the potential to uproot his disputed victory for a long period during his presidency.

His circle expanded or narrowed with his health. He had a group which became obsessed with protecting his failing health and personal dignity and the integrity of his office by all means necessary, and unnecessary. He also had others in the group who saw in his failing health and stubborn streak an opportunity to use his authority to their own benefits. Long before the nation became aware that his failing health was becoming a major issue in governance, a small clique had positioned itself around him. The facade of normalcy was carefully orchestrated, and a determined effort was made to keep his deputy, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan as far away as possible from the Presidency. A weak president was persuaded to approve a shoot-at-sight order on his way, literally, out of the country, when the Boko Haram insurgency had overwhelmed the police in Borno State in 2009. Today, the nation lives with the consequences of that decision. A weak President was persuaded to approve a policy of removing public officers from service against the basic rules of the service, with claims that the policy will radically transform the service. Today, hundreds of senior officers are being retired at the very moment when they are most needed, and the fundamental breach which that decision caused in the manner it violated sanctified values of the service is being made worse. The public service is collapsing at an alarming rate, and the pension scam, and the subsidy exposé are symptoms of failures of the public service to protect the public and political leaders against corruption and impunity and may be just the tip of the iceberg.

Almost to the day, the President who took over after Yar’Adua died is grappling with worsening levels of corruption and insecurity. He has had a public falling-out with his National Security Advisor (NSA) over the causes of the Boko Haram insurgency, but the nation is being told that it has failed to really understand the NSA. The problems, we are being told, is that Yar’Adua’s kith and kin have been sponsoring an insurgency against President Jonathan, even though he, Yar’Adua, a northerner, had almost single-handedly engineered the amnesty programme in the Niger Delta. Thousands of Yar’Aduas fellow citizens, majority of them Muslims, are dying daily at the hands of an insurgency which says his administration is responsible for having their leader killed illegally, and they will continue to wage war against the Nigerians State and Christians who offend Islam. The nation is already in the grip of opening skirmishes towards 2015, even though basic issues around the 2011 elections and the post-election violence have not been addressed. The nation Yar’Adua thought he could give a new lease of life is showing signs of failure due to unspeakable levels of corruption, unprecedented threats to national security, and a weak leadership. All told, the period during which Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was President of Nigeria look just like flashes in the dark.

EXPENSIVE SAND

“All politics are based on the indifference of the majority”

James Reston, American Journalist.

By the time you read this piece, a pile of sand around the Asaba Airport which had been planned for removal at the reported cost of N7.4b to allow President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential plane to land at Asaba may have been cleared, or may still be there. The pile of sand was adjudged to be an obstacle to the desire of the government of Delta State to have the President land in the State capital, rather than in far away Benin, and then drive to Asaba by road. The President was expected in Asaba for the south south summit on Wednesday last week. As at Wednesday last week, what the State Government referred to as a hill, but for all intents and purposes is a pile of sand, was still visible and present. It may still be there today, either in its original form as part of the natural landscape of the area, or in a slightly modified form. The N7.4b estimated for removing the offensive obstacle may still be there, or may or may not have been committed, in part or in whole. The President did not land in Asaba, or Benin. In fact he did not attend the summit at all. He was represented by the Vice President who, among other things, praised the Airport at Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

If this pile of sand is eventually removed and a plane the size of Mr President’s eventually lands, it may quite possibly be among the most expensive ventures embarked upon by any government. The hill or pile of sand story reminds one of the story behind the legendary Fela Onikolapo Kuti’s album which he named, “expensive s..t.” The story was that Fela was about to be arrested for possession of a rather large wrap of Indian hemp, which he promptly swallowed. The police, desperate to prove he had injested the substance, detained him for days, and duly collected and submitted all his excretions to a laboratory for analysis. Fela said it was the most expensive excretion ever made, and lambasted the Nigerian State for wasting public fund in vain.

The government of Delta State said this pile of sand is a hill that must come down, so that it can expand the runway to accommodate President Jonathan’s plane in time south south summit. Others said the hill is just a pile of sand, the same type of sand that needed to be cleared before the existing runway was constructed in 2007. Experts insist that evacuating the sand alone will not amount to expansion of the runway. Those who know of the history of the airport project say it was initially to cost N12b, which then went up to N17b, then N24b and is now costing more than N40b. There have been flights in and out of the airport the way it is, but not Mr President’s. The people of Delta State, whose N7.4b is planned to be spent have not been told the long-term economic utility of the airport, and you dare not say without being labeled enemy of progress. If a Deltan or another Nigerian had said the President could land in Uyo, or Benin and then take another smaller plane to Asaba, or even go by road to see more of the economic potentials and assets and the people of the south south, he would have been condemned as an even worse enemy.

To be fair to him, one cannot say with any certainty that President Goodluck Jonathan was privy to the decision to spend N7.4b to clear a sandly hill so he can land his substantial presidential plane in Asaba. If he knew of the decision of his state Government and did not advise against it, he is also as guilty of insensitivity as the Delta State government itself. If he did not know that such expenditure was being made within a few days just to have him land in Asaba, it is worse. A nation which has been told that the former Bayelsa State Governor had set new standards in waste and profligacy, including abandonment of some of Mr President’s former projects, and that this new one anointed in Abuja will be better, will not be impressed, by what may appear to be some distance in improving the quality of governance in the south south by Mr President.

As it turned out, Mr President did not land in Asaba, or Benin, or Uyo. In fact, he did not attend the summit at all. He travelled out of the country on ECOWAS matters. So it is legitimate to ask: is work to remove the sandy hill at the reported cost of over N7b going on? Would it go on, and perhaps feed another expansion project, until the runway is large enough to allow President Jonathan’s plane to land in future? In the end, how much will it all cost? Whose plane of the size of Mr President’s will land at Asaba airport when President Jonathan is no longer President?

Or, as most Nigerians will hope, has the project been abandoned? Will the N7.4b now be used to reclaim land so that more Deltans will build homes and have farmlands? Will part of it be used to provide potable water and build rural roads and improve power supply? Will it improve skills acquisition and build more classrooms in a State which is among the poorest parts of the south south?

It is almost heresy these days to tell South South governors that they have a responsibility to spend their comparatively – stupendous wealth judiciously. Niger State governor, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, invoked their full wrath when he hinted that South South States do not spend their undeserved share of the national wealth as they should. Well, it should not be the last time leaders of the south south would hear that having all that oil money tends to produce Iboris, and Alaiyemesiaghas’ and other governors who spend N7.4b to clear sandy hills so the President can land his plane on a particular day. The existence of poverty and crime in some parts of the country is in part a function of unearned wealth and insensitivity in other parts. The South South may not be directly responsible for the crushing poverty in many parts of Nigeria,and its is citizens are entitled to live under its full benefits. Because they are Nigerians, they also need to know that N7.4b will make a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of fellow citizen currently living under the twin effects of terrible violence and depressing poverty.

The grandmaster, Chief (Dr) E. K Clark, as well as other leaders like Peter Orubebe, Ken Gbagi, Chief Godwin Ogbeluo, Dr Cairo Ojugboh, B. K Alasen and Simeon Efenudu among others will find that their job of providing cover for President Jonathan is made much easier if they improve the manner the South South is run. When they tell other Nigerians to back off from the incessant, nationwide critique of President Jonathan’s competence, it should not be because other Nigerians have no right to inquire into how fellow citizens in Delta State and the South South live under their governments.