Editorial Opinion

FOR a capital market that is yet to recover its verve after the bubble burst, in April 2008, it was traumatic when the nation was forced to watch the spectacle of two foremost personalities in the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE)  its erstwhile President of Council, Aliko Dangote, and its former Director-General, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke  engaging in open brawls and washing of the capital market's dirty linens on the high ways.  

ONE of the issues that have arisen from the emergence of Goodluck Jonathan as President of Nigeria has been the undying question as to whether he should or should not be allowed to run for the Presidency on his own merit in spite of the so-called People's Democratic Party (PDP's) zoning arrangement, which, in 2007, allegedly ceded the presidency to the North till 2015. 

The arguments have become familiar even if the facts underlying them remain hotly disputed. There is said to be an agreement expressed in section 7 (2) (c) of the PDP constitution under which the presidency would rotate between the north and the south after every eight years. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner, ruled for eight years under this agreement.  The Yar'Adua/Jonathan ticket of 2007 is supposed to be part of the agreement.

“WE have not been able to tap the huge resources and utilize them because of greed, love for materialism and quest for wealth…Unless Nigeria retraces its steps and take the right steps very soon, the system will collapse”. These were the words of Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday July 26, in Niger State's capital city. The occasion was the opening of the 4th National Diaspora Conference, in Minna, where the President was represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed. The message becomes more poignant as we approach the fiftieth anniversary (the golden jubilee!), on October 1, this year, of our Independence from the British colonial rule.

ON 20 April, 2010, disaster struck in the Gulf of Mexico, when an oil rig owned by British Petroleum Oil Company (BP) exploded, killing 11 of its workers. More than eight weeks after, all efforts, both by the US government and the oil company, to plug the leak from the blow-out well have yielded no fruitful dividends. It is estimated that a conservative 3.5 million barrels of crude have emptied into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico since of the occurrence of the disaster, described by the US President, Barack Obama, as “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.”  

THE Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi seems finally set to sell the seven banks “rescued” last year. At a forum in London, penultimate week, he not only announced a definite timetable of between September and October for their sale, but actually went as far as suggesting that the bids for the banks would close mid-July, 2010, in spite of the fact that the issue relating to the sale of the banks is currently sub judice.  Much unlike his earlier hard-line posture to sell banks to foreigners, however, he hinted at the possibility of some local investors being in competition in the planned sale of the banks.

THE Federal Government has reportedly requested the National Assembly to approve a whopping sum of N10 billion for the celebration of the nation's 50th birthday anniversary, in October, this year. Nigeria achieved Independence from Britain on October 1, 1960, about fifty years ago, with so much hope. Few people, if any, thought, then, that the nation-state would be in these straightened circumstances five decades on. We have missed several opportunities to emerge as a major world or, at least, African power we were meant to be.

ON Tuesday, June 22, 2010, Nigerians watched, with painful consternation and with mouths agape, the shameful fisticuffs and show of shame, which broke out in the human circus, which the House of Representatives, the Lower House of the federal legislature, represents. The 360-member Lower House, peopled chiefly by members of the ruling People's Democratic Party [PDP], and a part of an administration that prides itself on adhering to the rule of law, was engulfed in violence.

It is surprising, to start with, that only about a dozen Reps ever saw the need to enthrone equity and fair-play in the Lower Chamber of the Federal Legislature. It would be interesting to know whose interests are served when allegations of corruption are hushed or treated as though corruption never existed. And who is right between the minority whistle-blowers and the strong majority who slammed suspension on the former?

THE National Council of State last week ratified President Goodluck Jonathan's nomination of Prof. Attahiru Jega, former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and Vice Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, as the new chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The Senate is expected to confirm his Aappointment in coming weeks, by which time he would have made history as the first northerner to head the electoral body. 

PENULTIMATE Sunday, May 30, 2010, a royal father, the Deji of Akure, Oba Oluwadare Adepoju Adesina, Osupa III, went from the sublime to the ridiculous when he left his gorgeous palace, in his official jeep, and armed with some noxious substances, for the dwelling-place of his most senior but estranged wife, Olori 'Bolanle Adesina, where he inflicted serious bodily injuries on her for “her failure” to accompany him to his palace or some other place to perform some rites of divorce.

There can be only one reason why the African Union [AU] and the United Nations [UN], acting in concert, plan to reform the armed and police forces in Africa: it has to be the failure of the security agencies to self-regulate and prevent naked and unwarranted armed force from being foisted on the civilian populations in Africa. If anyone ever imagined that security agencies on the continent knew and accepted their politically subordinate positions in a democratic world, events have since proved such imagination wrong. It is evident that the relationship between the police or the army and the citizens needs to be more clearly defined and appreciated, which explains the decision of the AU/UN Strategic Security Sector Reform [SSR] partnership to fashion out a new Code of Conduct to redefine and enforce a new modus vivendi for the armed and police forces.

IT is both disheartening and worrisome that successive Federal Governments have continued to exhibit rank indifference to the Halliburton bribery saga, which has earned Nigeria untold infamy and bad record in the comity of nations. Hitherto, although the names of the culprits had been published in several newspapers in the past, the untenable excuse had been the anonymity of those involved in the heist.

It is now over a year since the Mike Okiro-led Presidential panel on the Halliburton saga turned in its report believed to have indicted four former Heads of State, two first ladies, a number of former Governors and Ministers, among the several brazen beneficiaries of the $180 million (or N27 billion) slush fund.  Government's reluctance to act on the report leaves a sour taste in the mouth, with two dangerous conclusions:  either that the powerful Nigerian accomplices in the bribery scandal are sacred cows and, therefore, untouchable, or that public morality has become dead to the felonious act of bribe taking where rich and powerful Nigerians are involved.

ONCE again, we are reminded of the widening gap between the opposing desires of the electorate and the elected. On Tuesday, May 4, 2010, the House of Representatives almost unanimously rejected the open ballot system, otherwise known as Option A4. This rejection came on the heels of widespread support of the system by Nigerians, who are desperately seeking a repeat performance of the June 12, 1993 Presidential Election, generally adjudged to be the freest and fairest election Nigeria has ever conducted.

ADDRESSING the Council on Foreign Relations during his first foreign trip abroad, to Washington DC, last April 11-14, the Acting President, Goodluck Jonathan, promised:

“…a lot of changes in INEC between now and 2011 elections…to inject new blood into the commission where necessary…the ones who we feel are not good enough to be re-appointed, we will not re-appoint…”

Good news.

Many were, however, subsequently disappointed when he also added in the same breath that “INEC and its chairman can conduct elections in Nigeria that will be free and fair”. To go or not to go, became the question! The clamour for electoral reforms by Nigerians included phrenetic calls for the removal of the out-going Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC], Prof. Maurice Iwu, whom many blamed for the seriously flawed general elections of April, 2007. It was anyone's guess if Iwu's tenure would be renewed at the expiration, on June 13, 2010, of his five years as the head of that body.

ON May 6, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as President, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria following the unfortunate demise of the President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, on Wednesday, May 5, 2010, after a protracted illness.
Regrettable as the death of the former President was, the event brought all the series of constitutional missteps that began from November 23, last year, when the late President went on a prolonged medical vacation to Saudi Arabia without transmitting a formal letter to the National Assembly as required by law. Simple compliance with that provision would have enabled Jonathan to take charge in an acting capacity and the nation would have been spared from the agony of the rancour that followed.

TRUST the former self-styled military President, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida to stir the hornet's nest, always. Asked why he was making a come-back bid for the job from which he was forced to step aside, nearly 17 years ago, he gave his reason as the absence of young persons equipped to take on the leadership of the country.

His words: “Honestly, it is our wish that God will bring the younger people that will take over from us if they are available”. He would later add that " we have seen signs that they (younger people) are not capable of leading this country, we feel we should help them… a country like Nigeria cannot be ruled by people without experience.”

He referred to the example of the United States in which President Barack Obama started from the state legislature before moving to the national scene: House of Representatives (sic) then Senate, concluding that “if our youths are like this, we will say they have the requisite experience. But we have not reached that level. Honestly, it is our wish that God will bring the younger people that will take over from us if they are available”. This was the kernel of the Babangida's interview with the BBC that some IBB-handlers brazenly tried to rationalize and romanticize.

We concede to the former self-styled military President his rights to aspire to the highest office via the ballot box  even after his eight-year foray into power through a military coup which, albeit, ended disastrously.

He is also entitled to his views on the Nigerian leadership dilemma. Yet all right-thinking Nigerians have asked to know if IBB has not, more than any other Nigerian, living or dead, contributed to the mortal rupture of the process of its orderly evolution and development. Did IBB not embark on a most elaborate and wasteful transition programme in the annals of this country, where actors were banned and unbanned at will and with Maradonnic dexterity, a foxy trick that culminated in the criminal annulment of the June 12, 1993 polls, which were clearly won by the late business mogul, Moshood Abiola? Is not the eventual mysterious death of the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election (ask Prof. Nwosu) directly or indirectly traceable to the president who annulled the beautiful election? Did the executive murder of journalists not start during IBB's evil regime, which saw to the diffusion of rank corruption in the body politic? Was the bastardization of the Nigerian currency not perpetrated by him? Was the politicization of all the sectors of the Nigerian socio-economic and cultural life not his brainchild?........

We would have thought that his much publicised comeback bid would focus on the forgoing and kindred questions for which Nigerians have been yearning for answers after the fiasco of his eight years of unbroken rule.  

Such questions would naturally include the killing of the foremost journalist, Dele Giwa, through a parcel bomb, a crime in which his administration was fingered as having a case to answer. Could we say that the death of Chief Gani Fawehinmi now emboldens him to come out to declare his intention to rule Nigeria again? He must be imagining that the collective memory of other Nigerians must be morbidly short!

The matter of the $12.4 billion Gulf War earnings which his administration squandered on non-regenerative projects remains an unresolved issue. His operation of dedicated accounts  which brought about unparalleled corruption and profligacy; the unequalled record human rights abuses, the iniquitous Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which sounded the death knell for Nigeria's industries and fostered the environment in which the nation became a net importer of every conceivable item of manufactures: These and a lot more still rankle. 

Not a few Nigerians are nonplussed by the temerity of such a man who carries such a heavy baggage on his back to seek to be rewarded with a come-back, all because he believes that there is a dire shortage of young people with requisite experience to move the nation forward. And while he is at it, he wants us to get drunk on his familiar admixture of conceit and hubris  that he alone possesses the magic wand to take the country out of the socio-economic and political morass which he and his generation sired in the first place. 

At past 70, he probably deserves pity.  Seventeen years out of office, he probably needs to relieve his loneliness and perhaps find an outlet for boredom. However, it is necessary to contest his claim of experience, his type of experience, an experience that left the polity fractured and disoriented. A foxy experience which could neither fix the economy nor attend to the enablers of the real sector but which occasioned the total collapse of the state. Is IBB referring to the experience that produced the mass exodus of the nation's brightest and best to other realms (where there is sanity), a direct consequence of his hare-brained economic policy of SAP)?

The grave matter of course is IBB's contemptuous dismissal of Nigerian youths. We consider it an insult to disparage the youths, and in the foreign press for that matter. No amount of white-washing can cure this gaffe. It should be a rallying battle-cry for Nigerian youths to unite in opposition to the man who did so much to contribute to the misery currently being experienced in the land.

For Nigerian youths to fail to mount a robust challenge to IBB and his ilk is to surrender the space to the heavily monetised politics of which the likes of IBB are grandmasters.  It is not enough for Nigerian youths to decry the divisive and toxic politics of IBB, the time has come to offer credible alternative by getting mobilized to support the leader they can trust. That, for now, is the challenge.

TWO related developments seem to have signalled the imminent return of the erstwhile Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu, into the country.

BY the tie the accounts of the inordinate absence of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua are fully rendered, one group whose role did a lot to complicate the contrived logjam is the so-called Nigerian Governors' Forum (NGF), a body that is fast emerging as club of influence peddlers.
For a forum that has been in existence since 1999, their impact did not creep on the nation until February, this year, when it co-authored, with the National Assembly (NASS), the so-called doctrine of necessity by the instrumentality of which Vice- President Goodluck Jonathan emerged as Acting President. With the National Assembly's phenomenal success in the legislative activism, which changed Jonathan's status, the NGF, which has no basis in the nation's Constitution or laws, began to preen its feathers and apply its beak to every nook and cranny of the nation's body politic. How the strange freak called NGF came to be has left a big question mark, which only the governors of the Forum can answer.

SINCE the dissolution of the entire Executive Council of the Federation [ExCOF], there has been no shortage of suggestions as to who would make the final cut. This new cabinet would be significant for many reasons. With a constitution that practically ignores the office of Vice President [VP], that is, not going beyond acknowledging its existence in a couple of sections, this was a chance for a former VP to show that he had never been bereft of ideas. Of course, the circumstances of his emergence as Acting President through a contrived political solution sought outside the purview of the Constitution when all else seemed to have failed, could not be ignored. Dr. Goodluck Jonathan needed to show the incredulous lot who were not greatly enamoured of his conversion to Acting President, or who insisted that there was no vacuum even with the absence of President Yar'Adua, that the change was necessary, inevitable, transcended political permutations and was beyond all reasonable doubt.

THE fragile peace in the Niger Delta was ruptured A couple of weeks ago, when two bombs exploded in the vicinity of the Government House Annex in Warri, Delta State, the venue of the two-day post-amnesty conference, sponsored by the Vanguard newspaper.
One or two persons reportedly died while a few others were injured in the blasts.

IT is not for nothing that, in the past couple of months, Nigerians have witnessed each arm of the Armed Forces of Nigeria pledging 'absolute loyalty' to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and, indeed, to the Acting President. If, well before President Yar'Adua left for Saudi Arabia on medical vacation, rumours had gained currency about a possible incursion of the military into the arena of governance [not again!] ostensibly because politicians were failing Nigerians, events that have played out since he went on medical vacation, in November last year, have done nothing to diffuse that rumour. At the height of agitation by Nigerians for information and honesty from political office holders regarding the health and whereabouts of the President, some reports had even alluded to 'pressures' from politicians asking 'soldiers' to intervene.

The situation was grave enough for the military authorities to warn politicians to leave the military out of its politics and politicking, and going further to restrict the movement of officers and men to within the barracks from 6.00pm. In fact, even before November 23, 2009, the Chief of Army staff, Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazzau, went round all military formations in the country, reiterating the role of officers within a democracy, especially with regard to the need for deferring to the Constitution at all times. They had assured that they had no intention of interrupting government, pledging instead their undiluted allegiance to the Constitution.

All that declared policy of neutrality and supposed insulation of the Forces from politics fizzled out of Nigeria's consciousness on the 24th day of February, 2010, when troops were deployed, by the Brigade of Guards, to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport and its environs, plus the Federal Capital Territory, to ensure the secrecy or surreptitiousness of Yar'Adua's return from Saudi Arabia to Nigeria, without the knowledge of the Acting President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria. It may be common knowledge that the best military practice recognizes the routine deployment of troops by the Brigade to protect the President and his family. But is it also the practice that such a routine practice is done behind the back of an Acting head of state and commander-in-chief?

The questions thrown up by the action of the Brigade of Guards are myriads. We shudder to imagine the spectacle at the airport that morning in Abuja. Movement of any sort witnessed in the wee hours would ordinarily be worrying. We can only imagine the apprehension and fear many would have experienced that morning with the intimidation by troops. If reports are to be believed, while the Acting President was asleep, the presidential wing of the airport was blocked and barricaded; citizens, visitors and foreigners who had legitimate reasons to be at the airport, were harassed to the car park, without regard to their rights; airport lights were put out to prevent anyone from seeing anything happening on the tarmac. A plane landed, supposedly bearing the President; an ambulance moved him to Aso Rock, and all this while, the Acting President was asleep.

We think Nigerians deserve a clear statement from the Brigade of Guards and even from the Acting President, particularly on the role played by the National Security Adviser, who was removed from office. We need to be reassured that when night falls and all citizens are asleep, there is a mechanism in place to protect us from invasion or being over-run. What more needs to be done to overthrow a government, if troops are moved without the authority of the commander-in-chief? Is there real loyalty here? When President Yar'Adua was received clandestinely by the military, that is, without even the knowledge of the Acting President and commander-in-chief, because what the Brigade of Guards did was routine, when was the Acting President allowed to see the ailing President after his return? Couldn't the military itself figure out that there was brazen politics in the whole arrangement?

We dare say that it is situations such as this that give room to trouble-makers to start rumours of stories about army chiefs professing allegiance to only presidents from a certain section of the country. Sections 217-218 of the 1999 Constitution are clear on the duties and line of responsibility of members of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria: They should steer clear of partisanship and tread on a path of absolute political neutrality, in the interest of democracy.