Seventeen years ago, during a Presidential forum on education reform, it was asserted by one of the resource persons that “by 2020 Nigeria may have a significant population of highly skilled trained criminals if nothing is done today”. This damning verdict stemmed out of the fact that out of twenty million pupils who were in primary schools, only six million (30%) would get to high schools, and out of one million yearly applicants for university education, only 150,000 (15%) gain admission.

Out of these, about 100,000 graduate yearly, with less than 30,000 of them getting into regular employment. At this rates and lower rates from the past, our societies are increasingly been saturated with idle youths ( globally youth is pegged between 15-24 years and at the upper limit 35years) who are daily exposed to make believe, get rich quick, glorification of violent demeanor from videos and politics as the only viable career rather than a hobby. For politics remain a means to an end, a platform for contributing to a dignifying public service and not an end in itself.

In 2020, The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) put unemployment rate at 33.3 percent and according to a report in BusinessDay Newspaper, The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has projected the unemployment rate in Nigeria to rise to 37 percent in 2023, four points ahead of NBS’s 2020 data. We are in 2023 already and as matters stand today, the number of unemployed, underemployed and unemployable youths keep soaring, pointing as it is to doomsday.

The major question for the incoming government of Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu will be the youth question. How can we get this army of Nigerian critical stakeholders productive? The ‘significant population of highly skilled trained criminals’ prophecy which has been rearing its ugly heads in many areas of our nation must be aborted with non rhetorical resolve this time.

To start with, Asiwaju must take a look at China over thirty years ago under the leadership of President Deng when China was confronted with an army of frustrated unemployed youths. Deng, after a thorough analysis of global trends particularly in tradable skills decided to focus on University education with emphasis on science and Information technology (IT). Today China produces over 50% motorcycles and over 30% of personal computers globally. The country churns out 350,000 engineering and computer specialists annually, registering three times more patent applications than the US; just recently their another batch of Chinese astronauts returned to earth from the moon and not too long ago too, Nigeria obtained over a billion dollar loan from China for infrastructural development.

In the 1960s Singapore and Nigeria used to be at par, with each having a $300 per capital income. But today, the gap in standard of living between the two countries is so wide. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong once declared, ‘there will be no barrier to knowledge, information and lifelong learning. Our Universities maintain open access, but rigorous academic standard, our Polytechnics impart professional expertise through a practice based curriculum, and our institute of technical education equips students with hands-on technical skills and critical thinking habits. We are also investing in upgrading the skills of the workforce, keeping older workers current and employable. On an intelligent Island, every pair of hands has to be a pair of thinking hands. None should be hewers of wood or drawers of waters’.

Nigeria was far better than Costa Rica in the 60s when our youths were productively at optimum, but today the country has successfully transited from a banana republic to a regional IT power hub just over a period of ten consistent years of planning and execution. Arias, a Nobel Laureate and former President of Costa Rica declared thus, ‘in 1998, while I was President, our government installed computers in elementary schools. Since then the program has reached over 1.5 million students, more than half of whom live in underprivileged areas. Exactly ten years after the first computer was installed, Intel, opened a $500 million micro chip plant in San Jose. Among the attraction Intel cited was the availability of an educated workforce. Today, Costa Rica’s 12% GDP comes from software sales and is the third most competitive outsourcing destination in the world after China and India vying for a piece of the global IT outsourcing market worth more than $50 billion.

Nigeria have the requisite market potentialities and is not a greenhorn in global development trends but what we have been lacking and which the next administration must tackle is dearth of infrastructure and enabling environment for businesses particularly the start ups to thrive. Luckily Asiwaju in his manifesto has promised easy access to credit, business mentorship, NYSC Reform, and business Incubation centers among other things as parts of plans to reduce unemployment from the current high to 11.9 million by 2026.

The ‘Endsars’ protest of 2020 and the recent waves of obedient movement across Nigeria are clear pointers to how disruptive to established systems the youths of any nation can be whenever they become formidable. The time is very ripe for the incoming administration to take advantage of this pool of resource to cash out heavily and produce more Dozy Mmobuosi who is about completing a 90 million pound takeover of Sheffield United Football Club in England or Shola Akinlade the co-founder of Pay stack who already bought 55% of a Danish football club Arhus Fremad. There are many of such great Nigerian youths shattering glass ceiling in various careers especially abroad. However the number is just too few; a very tiny drop in a very vast ocean. May the hope of millions of the Nigerian youths be renewed and that renewed hope rest squarely on the Presidency of Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu.

Bello, PhD, a policy analyst, communication expert and member of the APC PCC Public Affairs, writes from Abuja.

The  prominence of the identity question in the 2023 politics is a great  proof that deliberate efforts  should be made by those in power to promote national integration.

It is easy to assume that any politician or political party seeking to govern Nigeria believes in national unity. After all, none of the 18 candidates who contested the February 25 presidential election canvassed the dissolution of Nigeria. Instead, items on their various agendas were presumed to be aimed at strengthening  the Nigerian nation.  Virtually all the candidates and political parties have given some space  on their agendas for issues of power devolution, restructuring, fiscal federalism etc.  All these issues are ultimately subject to constitutional resolution.

Yet, the tone and tenor of the campaigns as well as the aftermath of the elections have brought to the fore the identity question and national unity. 

This, of course, is no surprise given the content of national conversations in over  three decades  on the nature of the Nigerian federalism and multi-dimensional threats to national unity.

As German Philosopher Friedrich Hegel argues in his works on the philosophy of history, beneath all the political activities is the struggle of humanity for recognition and dignity:  “The people will learn to feel the dignity of man. They will not merely demand their rights, which have been trampled in the dust, but themselves will take them – make them their own.” It may be unwise to dismiss this as idealism in the context of the 21st Century Nigeria.

The process of promoting national unity would be greatly enhanced when the due recognition is given to each  person and every part of the whole of the nation. No amount of constitutional engineering would be a substitute for  the factor of  recognition and dignity as the identity question is being projected in the current politics.  The recognition of identity is subjective; but it shapes what objectively takes place in  the policy arena.

There is ample evidence in the record of the Buhari administration in the last 95 months to demonstrate this point.

For instance, amidst the ferment of the campaigns and  elections, President Muhammadu Buhari took some noteworthy steps  towards the amendment of the constitution to achieve devolution of powers.

Almost unacknowledged by the advocates of power devolution and restructuring, Buhari  signed into laws last month  16 bills seeking to amend various parts of the 1999 Constitution. Interestingly, the announcement of the politically important development came from the Joint Senate and House of Representatives’ Special Ad  Hoc Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution. By virtue of the new laws, 16 items have been  moved from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list in the constitution. They  include financial autonomy of  the state legislature and  judiciary,  the power sector, airports, railway, and prisons, biometric information and criminal records. Some critics of the President have dismissed the above as giving a  “last-minute” impression of doing “something about restructuring and power devolution.” The proponents of an entirely new constitution are not impressed about the whole process of constitution amendments. They are raising a more fundamental query about the origins of the constitution. President-elect Bola Tinubu should be reflecting on how to find  answers to these questions. Meanwhile, the President says he has done his best in tackling the political problems.

With 40 days to the end of Buhari’s tenure, it might be apposite to recall what this reporter observed on this page on August 26, 2020. The column on that day was entitled “A Missing Item on the Buhari Agenda.” The missing item on the Buhari agenda  identified then was national unity. It was suggested on this page on another occasion that in addition to Buhari’s three point agenda of SEA – Security, Economy and Anti-corruption- a fourth one, Unity, should be added  to make the acronym SEAU. 

The basic argument  for prioritising national unity in governance made in the piece written 32 months ago  is the same as the one of today.

The argument was made at the time  as follows:

“President Muhammadu Buhari listed yesterday “nine priority areas” for the next 33 months.

Buhari said the areas of focus would “guide policy directions” so as “to improve the livelihood of Nigerians.”

“The areas of priority include poverty reduction, food security, power and energy, fighting corruption, security, promoting entrepreneurship, quality education, and affordable healthcare…

“Essentially, the listed areas of priority are a distillation from the broad cardinal programmes of Buhari on managing the economy to reduce poverty, ensuring security and fighting corruption.

 “Doubtless, 33 months are enough for the President to make a difference in the identified policy areas given competence in governance and sincerity of purpose. It doesn’t take eternity to demonstrate competence in governance. After all, the idea of celebrating 100 days in office has been traced to the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, who took some landmark political decisions in just 100 days after arriving in Paris on his escape from Elba. In a more modern sense, American President Franklin Roosevelt launched the largely social welfare and construction programmes backed by laws, which defined his era, in the first 100 days in office. That was a period of about three months.

Here, Buhari still has good 33 months! So it would not be a misplaced optimism to insist that rather than dismiss the statement as another official gaseous talk, the Buhari administration should be put on its mettle

“There is, however, an item that is glaringly missing on the Buhari rebooted agenda. That is the imperative of working actively and honestly towards national integration. To achieve the purpose of any development agenda for Nigeria today, national unity cannot be discounted. It is a central factor. The issue has to be confronted in action and words.

The fact that Buhari did not list national unity as a priority could be an indication that the factor is taken for granted.

“Yet, all the other priorities could only be achieved within the context of a stable and united country in which people in every part feel a sense of belonging.

“In fact, the achievements in the listed areas would be gravely impaired if the conditions that could nurture warlords are created while Buhari is in the saddle. The matter is not helped by the seemingly insensitive statements by elements believed to be wielding enormous political influence in Abuja.

Such a posture on the part of those in power would amount to ignoring the realities of the nation. Nothing should be taken for granted in matters of unity. The important thing is for those who want it, especially the leadership, to make it a priority.

“It has been repeatedly emphasised here that nations are built by a committed people under a visionary leadership. Perhaps the only indispensable ingredient in the making of a nation is what a scholar calls the “collective state of mind.” The leadership should by its action and words promote this “state of mind.” It is the subjective feeling of having a sense belonging to a nation. It is more decisive than ethnicity, race, blood, geography, language or ancestry. There are people strongly committed to a nation without a state. The Palestinians are still struggling for a state. There are nations of races and ethnic groups. That is the reality of America. There are nations of different languages. Switzerland is an example. There are nations with contested territories. China once had its territory sequestered and the nation is still in the process of asserting its sovereignty on parts of its claimed territory. However, with the “collective state of mind” that a people belong to a nation all other gaps in nation-building could be filled.

“As the President spoke of his priorities in Abuja, there were reports of bloody clashes involving the State Security Services (SSS) and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) that is campaigning for secession. The other day, a prominent politician in the southeast reportedly threatened: “If Nigeria tells the elites from the southeast that they would be treated as second class citizens in Nigeria, and that they can never be president, almost all of them will join (Nnamdi) Kanu to fight for Biafra.”

“The influence of the IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu must be widening for a former governor to even project that the political elite would join in the campaign for secession.

If the militancy in the Niger Delta appears to have slowed down, the discontents in the region are far from vanishing. Leaders from the unjustly treated region have taken the federal government to court over marginalisation in federal appointments. The degradation of the environment in the Niger Delta remains largely an unanswered question.

“The cry of marginalisation is almost universal in the Nigerian political landscape. It is not only the minority ethnic groups that say that they are being pushed to the margins in the management of national affairs. Every part now claims to be marginalised.

“The separatist impulse is also evident among the Yoruba of the southwest, the region that is said to be having relatively lower indices of underdevelopment on the average. All manners of maps and emblems of an Oduduwa Republic circulate in the cyberspace. Some are even talking of Yoruba Exit (Yexit), a most inappropriate imitation of the politics of Britain’s exit (Brexit) from the European Union (EU). To some of the elite the idea of national integration has become a very naïve one, if not contemptible. Such feelings should be understandable to a sufficiently perceptive national leadership, or what the inimitable Dr. Chidi Amuta calls “enlightenment leadership.”

“As in other zones, insecurity is a major reason cited by those in the southwest losing faith in the ideology of a united Nigeria. Despite the existence of the Nigerian state, people feel helpless in the face of violent crimes. Hence, the question: “which Nigerian nation are you talking about?” This trend is being given a strident voice in the media.

“The discontents might not have assumed a noticeable separatist tone in the three zones in the north. But the failure of the Nigerian state to protect people in the east, west and central zones of the north is undeniable. There are certainly ungoverned spaces in northern Nigeria given the activities of terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and other criminal elements. There have been reports that terrorists might be moving southwards. The crisis in Southern Kaduna has clear ethnic and religious tones. The toll of the dead and the scale of material destruction are such that the crisis is now attracting bitter responses from other parts of the country.

“The circumstances of many communities in Nigeria are not the type that could generate nationalist feelings.

“A noxious combination of these trends should worry a leadership that correctly reads the socio-political barometer of the nation.

Some of the statements being made in Nigeria today would be anathemas in the Second Republic. “The context, of course, was important. It was barely a decade after the tragic civil war. National unity was a big issue. The party that controlled the centre, National Party of Nigeria (NPN) always claimed with pride that one of its achievements was the commitment to national unity. President Shehu Shagari was presented as a unity president. Despite the word unity in its name, the commitment to national unity   by the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN)  was always questioned by the opponents who could not fault its social democratic agenda. The UPN leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was never trusted by his rivals on the question of unity despite the unmistakable national character of his agenda on education, health, job-creation and rural development.

“The point is that unity was at the centre of national conversations.

“So, official indifference cannot be an appropriate response given the dimensions the issue of national integration has assumed. It is also dangerous to assume arrogantly that the discontents would frizzle out.

“What is to be done?

“The greatest immunity against disintegration is the cultivation of a sense of belonging by doing justice to the people who feel inequitably treated in the nation.

“During the civil war, the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon had a battle cry relayed daily on radio : ’To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done.’ To perform the task, Gowon needed the full weight of the armed forces on the federal side. Buhari may need to adopt the spirit (if not the words) of the slogan if things are not to degenerate further. But unlike Gowon, Buhari only needs moral and political weapons to perform the task. Political engineering should be employed as no leader can force nationalism down the throats of his people.

“Buhari should rise to the occasion as a true Nigerian leader. He should disprove by body language and concrete action the perception that he is a regional or an ethnic leader. His defenders may say he is doing a lot in this respect; but looking at the national horizon his best doesn’t seem to be good enough in many quarters. It is unhelpful to ignore the cries of marginalisation from any part of the country. It is the duty of the leader to make those who feel alienated to see the beauty of integration.

“For instance, Buhari should take a nationalist look at the report of the 2014 Constitutional Conference. He should not forget what his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), promised the electorate in its programme. The political strategists of the administration should rethink the official response to the clamour for restructuring. The administration has to decide what to do with it. To do otherwise is to create the atmosphere for the continued manipulation of the people along ethnic, religious and regional lines by the elite which substitutes its class interests for the interests of the people .

“More fundamentally, the President has to intensify the implementation of programmes of sustainable development to reduce poverty and promote social justice and equity in the interest of the poor majority, the people  who are horizontally marginalised in every town and village in Nigeria.

“That is a way of winning back those who are increasingly getting alienated from the cause of a united Nigeria.”

The proposition in the foregoing addressed to the Buhari administration  remains valid 32 months after it was written. The question of national integration will certainly remain conspicuous on the national agenda  after May 29, 2023.

In the APC agenda of  a “Renewed Hope 2023,” there are provisions for restructuring and constitutional amendments for power devolution. That formulation  might  not be enough in the present national situation. In the course of governance every step taken should be tested on the basis of how it promotes national unity. This would be akin to the universal recognition of human dignity of persons proposed by Hegel.

With the way the Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC) is carrying on under the watch of Professor Mahmood Yakubu as Chairman, it would take a miracle for the present Chairman of that controversial and embattled body, not to end up on the wrong side of history. Some jobs within the public space are by nature thankless regardless of efforts put in, but a job can be done so badly, what would be remembered are the ugly episodes and memories of failure. Professor Yakubu’s misfortune would be that it was in his time that the country came round to the idea that technology should be deployed as election tools, and that some of the reforms that Nigerians had been looking for should be addressed by updating the electoral framework.

In Yakubu’s time, Nigeria came up with the Electoral Act 2022, which indeed is a different kind of law, an advancement from the Electoral Act 2010. Everyone celebrated the emergence of the new Electoral Act as a game changer for Nigeria with the novel innovations about INEC’s financial independence in Section 3(3), early conduct of primaries and submission of candidates list in Section 29 (1), legal backing of electronic voting and transmission of results in Sections 47 and 50(2), overvoting redefined in Section 51, the non-eligibility of political appointees as delegates or aspirants in Section 84(12), special provisions for the physically challenged in Section 54, early commencement and longer period of campaigns in Section 94, provision for a central electronic data base in Section 99… Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC boasted that it had tested the law in the bye-elections in Osun and Ekiti and that during the then scheduled 2023 general elections, INEC would put all the reforms into effect. What have we seen? It turned out from the very beginning that the National Assembly did not understand the same law that it had enacted and the implications. The same people who enacted the law tried to change it. They didn’t succeed. Before the elections, INEC said it was ready. It put out messages about how results would be uploaded from polling units to the INEC Results Viewing Portal, real time. It said its officials were up to the task.

The details of how INEC disappointed Nigerians is well-captured by the reports of various observers, local and international, and the tsunami of litigations that have attended the elections held this year, on February 25 (Presidential and National Assembly), and March 18 (Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly). Nigeria’s 2023 general election would go down as one of the most disputed in the country’s electoral cycle since the first general elections were held in the country in September 1923 under the Clifford Constitution of 1922. It may be said, after a fashion, that the true test of a law is in its implementation. Any piece of legislation is a living organism. Laws are made for the good of society. Thus, as living organisms, laws evolve and implementation structures and organs are aligned with the law-givers’ original intentions. I am of the view that given the contortions that have been experienced so far with the Electoral Act 2022, Nigeria needs to work further on the electoral framework, to oxygenate and deepen our democracy, and to align it more reasonably with the people’s will. The minimum lesson at this point is that when a law is made, those who are expected to operationalize it must study and understand it. State and party officials are so routinely distracted, they do not pay enough attention.

The extent to which this is so is that after the elections of February 25 and March 18, the electoral body, INEC took the decision to conduct supplementary elections in 24 states of the Federation, 2,660 polling units, 93 Legislative constituencies and 185 local governments, where elections had been declared inconclusive. Those supplementary elections took place on Saturday, April 15. INEC said it was better prepared, having learnt lessons from its most recent exercises, and having tested the Electoral Act in a general election. It was possible to believe that certain lessons had been learnt within the space of close to a month: March 18 – April 15. The Inspector General of Police lent his voice to the matter and said that the supplementary elections would proceed smoothly. But on April 15, it was déjà vu. The morning after, The Vanguard newspaper reported as follows: “Supplementary Elections: Violence, vote-buying reign as NNPP wins more seats in Kano.” The Sunday Punch told us: “Supplementary Elections: Four Killed, Houses razed, Thugs Disrupt Polls in Rivers, Anambra, Others”. The paper added in its front-page story: “Three killed in Kano for disrupting poll, soldiers shoot Kebbi ballot snatcher dead, APC, PDP, NNPP await INEC declaration of Adamawa, Kebbi gov seats.” … The report by Sunday Sun was as follows: “Violence, Apathy, Late Arrival of Materials Mar Supplementary Elections”, with the rider: “3 feared killed in Kano, Thugs, police, Ebubeagu chase away voters, abduct electoral officials in Imo, 6 persons arrested, 1 at large in Adamawa, over attempt to hack BVAS, vote buying , thuggery in Anambra, apathy, intimidation in Edo…” The Nigerian Tribune reported: “Supplementary Elections: Again, violence, ballot snatching rock exercise – 4 killed in Kano, Kebbi, EFCC arrests 12 in Kano, Katsina for vote-buying.”. The Sunday Independent said: “Sokoto Polls suffer voter apathy, late arrival of materials”.

The same weekend, party primaries were held in some of the states where off-cycle elections would take place later in 2023. The primaries were just as problematic. In Kogi state, four aspirants were reported to have rejected APC Gubernatorial primaries. The Nation said: “Sylva wins Bayelsa APC Guber Primary… Confusion as Labour Party holds factional primaries in Imo… Anxiety in Kebbi, Adamawa over guber elections”. In one word, despite all the concerns and anxieties expressed about the 2023 process as seen on February 25 and March 18, the supplementary elections of April 15, and even the party primaries in Imo, Bayelsa, and Kogi states, indicated very clearly, that nothing had changed and nothing would probably change going forward. Nigerians run a peculiar kind of democracy where anything and everything is possible and the only thing that matters is winning at all costs. It is a democracy of deaf and dumb persons fixated on only one goal and who define democracy strictly by personal standards. I have stumbled on the argument that there will never be a time Nigerian democracy will be run by saints and I am tempted to believe that ours may well be described as a democracy of villains, where the smartest villain wins. The only consolation is that the day may never come when Nigerian democracy will be black-listed by the international community as a lost cause simply because Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, the largest market in the continent, a country whose geo-political importance has direct bearing on the stability of the West African sub-region. Where then does that leave the endless talk in this country, about reforms, legacy and institutions?

Which takes us immediately to Adamawa State, Nigeria where a show of shame was enacted on Saturday by a certain Hudu Yunusa Ari, adult, male, and Resident Electoral Commissioner of Adamawa State who engaged in a violent act of breach of public peace by disrupting the collation of the results of the supplementary Gubernatorial election in Adamawa state in a criminal and roguish manner. It would be recalled that INEC had declared the Gubernatorial election in Adamawa State of March 18, 2023 inconclusive due to issues in Fufore Local Government, which caused much furore, and on the ground that the number of cancelled votes exceeded the margin of lead between the People’s Democratic Party candidate, incumbent Governor Ahmadu Fintiri and the closest challenger, Aishatu Dahiru of the All Progressives’ Congress. By 9 am on Sunday, April 16, collation officers and the returning officers at the State Collation Centre in Yola, the state capital had announced the results from 10 of the affected LGAS, with Fintiri, the PDP candidate leading with a wide margin. The Returning Officer then announced a recess for a continuation of collation and further announcement of results to re-commence by 11 am.

But before that advertised time of resumption, the State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) reportedly came into the centre and holding a handwritten note, without announcing any outstanding collated results, proceeded to announce Aisha Dahiru of the APC as the winner of the Gubernatorial election in Adamawa State. This threw the collation centre into confusion as party agents asked: How? Within a short while, the Gubernatorial candidate of the APC, Aisha Dahiru, popularly known as Binani, acting on this development, immediately gave an acceptance speech. INEC would later declare REC Hudu Yunusa Ari’s action “null, void and of no effect”. INEC said it would address the matter and asked the state REC, the Hudu Yunusa Ari man and the state Returning Officer, Professor Mele Lamido to report to the INEC Headquarters in Abuja. Yesterday, INEC directed that Hudu Yunusa-Ari should stay away from INEC office until further notice, and that Adamu Gujungu, administrative secretary in Adamawa should take charge of the office with immediate effect. The suspension of Hudu Yunusa-Ari does not go far enough. His rogue conduct must be addressed fully in accordance with the law. His behaviour amounts to impunity, criminality, desperation and such brazenness that deserves closer investigation. This is not a matter that can be swept under the carpet, because it is a mockery not just of the Adamawa supplementary election but of the entire electoral process. It provides strong justification for those who hold the view that this has been a shambolic event.

Hudu Yunusa-Ari was required to report to the INEC headquarters. If he has not done so, he should be declared a wanted person by the security agencies immediately! By INEC’s own declaration, he broke the law. One, the Electoral Act of 2022 grants specific powers to the Returning Officer as the official who is empowered to collate and announce results - see Section 64 (4) and (5). Indeed, Section 65 of the same Act uses the phrase “shall be final” with regard to the “decision of the Returning Officer on any question related to ballot papers and the declaration of results. Section 66 provides further specificity as regards the declaration of results, vested as it were in the person of “the appropriate returning officer”. The now suspended Adamawa Resident Electoral Commissioner not being the RO, knowingly violated the law. He should be made to face the full wrath of the law.

In Part VII of the Electoral Act, dealing with Electoral Offences, specific penalties are prescribed to deal with “dereliction of duty” in Section 120 (1 -6) where strong penalties are provided in Section 120(4) which states that “Any person who announces or publishes an election result knowing same to be false or which is at variance with the signed certificate of return commits an offence and is liable on conviction or imprisonment for a term of 36 months.” Sections 120 (5) and (6) also prescribe imprisonment for a term of three years. The indicted REC must be subjected to thorough investigation. Did he collude with others? Was he induced? Is he part of a ring of conspiracy? There have been allegations that sums running into about N2 billion exchanged hands. Really? Two, Yunusa-Ari’s disruptive and disorderly conduct is also questionable under Section 249 of the Criminal Code. His illegal declaration of Aisha Dahiru as winner threw Adamawa state and the entire country into a state of anxiety and confusion. Aggrieved persons in the state descended on the two INEC National commissioners who had been sent to oversee the Adamawa process. One of them was brutalized. The other, Professor Abdullahi Abdu Zuru, a former Vice Chancellor of Usman Dan Fodiyo University, Sokoto was beaten and stripped naked with blood streaming down his body. It was a case of mistaken identity. His assailants thought he was the REC that made the illegal announcement. While we do not recommend jungle justice, the attack on innocent Professor Zuru is most unfortunate. INEC has asked the security agencies to identify the assailants and bring them to book, but INEC needs to learn a lesson from here: the need to protect its officials, and pay more attention to their personal security.

The unmasking of rogue elements like the embattled Adamawa REC should also point to something else. INEC officials on the field during elections must be subjected to routine alcohol and psychiatric tests. This is the strongest plausible response to Hudu Yunusa-Ari’s behaviour. What worsens the entire matter in our view is that he was reportedly accompanied on his unholy mission by the Adamawa state Commissioner of Police and other policemen. In other words, the illegality was committed in the presence of law enforcement officers! Nigeria is one country where those who are supposed to enforce the law do not know the laws of the land! The Inspector General of Police had promised that the police will live up to expectations during the supplementary elections on April 15. Your guess is as good as mine. The least that the IGP can do is to ask the Police Command in Adamawa to produce their friend, the now suspended Resident Electoral Commissioner! Going forward, much better attention must be paid to the recruitment of persons for electoral duties. The INEC Chairman before the election had said that RECs, Collation Officers and Returning Officers were expected to be non-partisan, that is neutral, in the discharge of their responsibilities. They even swore on oath to that effect. Nigeria’s 2023 elections coincided with the Holy Month of Lent (Christian) and Ramadan (Muslim), and yet in the same season, the country has witnessed so much corruption and dishonesty.

Mrs Aishatu Dahiru should not have delivered that acceptance speech of shame, knowing the motivation for it to be of dubious extraction. Nigerians would be excited to have a female Governor who contests and wins an election, but that must be through fair and square means, not by ambush or fraudulent means. She owes the people of Adamawa an explanation and an apology. Many others, including Festus Keyamo, SAN jumped the gun. I have expressed the shock that more than a day after the faux pas, Keyamo, an officer in the temple of justice, was yet to take down his twitter post on the Adamawa election. The ball is now squarely in INEC’s court to ensure that the process in Adamawa’s supplementary election is concluded and that due process runs its complete course in a just manner. The big ogre in all this is how corruption is at the core of the Nigerian character from politics to catering business.

The lies are getting deeper; the propaganda steeper, and the curses and insults sicker. There should be limits to crudity. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is Nigeria’s president-elect and will be sworn in as president in a few weeks. So, naturally, he should be accorded the dignity and regard his station demands.

In the build-up to the 2023 presidential election, tale contrivers in the service of chief traducers mass produced objectionable conjectures, fibs, dangerous fallacies, and obtrusive slander against the president-elect. I would not want to repeat them here to give life to extinguished lies exiled in the sarcophagus of dead matter.

The invented tales did not stop Nigerians from signing a social contract with the president-elect. They voted for him overwhelmingly. Really, fake news is the weapon of desperate losers. And citizens could see through the veneer of the fallacies and fermented lies.

But the mischief, malice and execrable contrivances persist even after the elections. It appears every week new malicious cock and bull stories are crocheted from the lie-knitting factory of some sore individuals. These maligners should be tired by now.

Reinventing the wheel of disinformation, dissimulation and mendacity will not upend the outcome of the presidential election. It will not change the certain fate of the president-elect being sworn in. It will not change the resolve of Nigerians; it will not dampen their faith and trust in Nigeria and its electoral process.

I believe the overarching aim of these fabrications is to create doubt over Nigerians’ electoral decision and to foist a consciousness of uncertainty, helplessness, gloom and doom on the national psyche. This is what I call scorched-earth politics. Politics of where the losing side in an election retreats into the trenches to plot on how to bring down the house; politics of self-seeking; politics of war against the national interest and national security; politics of hate and prejudice.

Are these the signs of what is to come? Will the vilifiers spend the next four years on the treadmill of malediction and profanity? Will Nigeria have to contend with a maelstrom of inconsolable belligerents and inveterate anarchists? Will it be another cycle of hate-trading, vicious propaganda, and national hysteria?

I fear for Nigeria. Not because of its threshold to withstand blizzards and tempests, but because of the ominous threats from dangerous and diabolical politics of hostility. Nigeria has always survived the night; it will survive whatever darkness.

It is disturbing that opposition -- whether to government or individuals -- is not rooted in ideology, policy, or issues of governance, but morbidly depressing and inconsequential matters of faith, ethnicity, personal idiosyncrasies, and even marriage. It is deeply concerning. Is this how we are going to fix Nigeria? Is this how we will make progress – debating inanities and abandoning essential issues governing our life? May we not spend the next four years debating absurdities and abandoning substance. May we not spend the next four years debating conspiracies, ethnicity, religion, personal foibles, and asininities.

My fear is implicit in the experience of the past seven years under President Muhammadu Buhari. Not long after Buhari assumed power, did the egregious campaign against his place of nativity and religion become the defining trope of defiance against his administration.

At the time, I wrote there was more to the offensive than whatever missteps the administration might have made. Yes, the administration might have taken some wrong detours through contours, but what became the biggest subject of debate was an ethnic group.

In the next four years, Nigerians must be circumspect not to be drawn into the whirlpool of irrational opposition; destructive crusades, anarchical protests, and ethnically charged undisciplined conversations.

Criticisms and peaceful protests are critical aspects of democracy but should be expressed within the bounds of the law.

The security, unity and peace of this country should matter to us. Regardless of who we voted for, we need to bond our voices for a united and progressive Nigeria. Governance affects every citizen, whether left, centre or right. A Nigeria that works for everyone is what we need and should work for. We should oppose ideas where necessary and not dissolve into cannons of calumny. The buoyancy of democracy is in the quantity of active citizens and in the quality of ideas.

But should there be no limits to fake news, noxious propaganda, and malicious fabrications? Should we persist in an ecosystem of lies, slander and hate? How do we address the pesky problem of hate speech, fake news, misinformation, and disinformation on social media — particularly on Twitter and Facebook? How do we confront this problem? We cannot look away and pretend that this creeping monster does not portend enormous danger for Nigeria.

In cases where the extant laws have been applied against some offenders as regards ‘’cyberstalking and cyberbullying’’, there has been outrage by citizens. So, should we sustain this freewheeling to certain implosion? Does the social media space need sanitising? I believe we should not suspend our hands and watch Nigeria go up in flames from conspiracies, hate, and propaganda. But citizens’ rights must be protected at all costs and not abused.

By Fredrick Nwabufo, Nwabufo aka Mr OneNigeria is a media executive.

“It is now that I understand why Nigeria makes credit passes in English and Mathematics compulsory for certain courses, particularly Law. Forty-four years ago, Section 34 of the Electoral Decree 1977 was the issue in the twelve-two-thirds controversy. In 2023, Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution is the issue, some fractions are still in contention laced with the poison of an English word. We appear to have learnt nothing from the past misadventure. Instead of being wiser by the rains that had beaten us for decades, our bald-headed vulture’s journey has become, in the words of Hamidou Kane, L’aventure ambiguë (Ambiguous Adventure). What does the phrase “and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja” mean in that law, or, more appropriately, what is the intendment (intention) of the authors, the lawmakers?”

Land grabbers would seize your land at gunpoint and ask you to go to court. What would make one of INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) do what he did in Adamawa State yesterday (Sunday) other than the effrontery of land grabbing? Who asked him to do it? Declare a winner even while vote collation is on and let whoever is aggrieved go to court! It is a step that has taken the shamelessness of this democracy a notch higher. Fortunately, the REC’s employers were not in bed with him; they promptly annulled his impunity. We saw it before. It didn’t end well and we’ve not recovered from it. In 1979, at the end of the first ballot, none of the five presidential candidates was found to have got all that the law said they must get to be declared elected. Section 34 A (I) (c) (i) and (ii) of the Electoral Decree No. 73 of 1977 as amended said a candidate must have the highest number of votes cast at the election and must also have “not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the federation.” Three weeks to the election (23 July, 1979), the Federal Military Government enacted Decree number 3 of 1979 amending the electoral law. The new law prescribed the electoral college as the final decider of winners in case none of the candidates in the governorship and presidential contests met all the conditions precedent for declaration as winner. Nigeria, as of that time, had 19 states. Shehu Shagari got the highest number of votes but did he meet the two-thirds of all states threshold? He got one-quarter of the votes in 12 out of 19 states. Everyone with some elementary mathematics sense said, well, twelve was not two-thirds of nineteen. While the nation was waiting for the then Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) to announce a date for the electoral college to conclude the presidential election process as demanded by law, the umpire announced Shagari as the winner and an uproar followed. The Adamawa case is even worse: the facts and figures are notoriously naked in public domain. The case, if it stands, will simply tell us that you need neither the votes nor the spread to be elected governor – or even president.

Our river flows away from the ocean – and you know how it will end. We held the first set of this year’s elections on 25 February, 2023. Today, nothing is concluded even with April going to bed. We will swear in a president on 29 May, 2023 having the legitimacy of his mandate being questioned in court. For us, the past, no matter how horrible, is always better. Everything about the 1979 presidential election was concluded in 46 days. The election was held on 11 August, 1979; a winner was announced on 16 August; four days after the declaration, Chief Obafemi Awolowo challenged it at the election tribunal. The tribunal started the trial on 4 September, 1979; it delivered its judgement on 10 September, 1979. Things moved so fast that the appeal, promptly filed at the Supreme Court, was decided on 26 September, 1979. Everything was over within 46 days. The race was won and lost and the winner sworn in on 1 October, 1979. The 2023 presidential election was held 51 days ago. Litigants are still in the rain outside, waiting for the courts to begin sitting. Obviously, in 44 years, our plantain has progressively gone more rotten while we say it is ripening.

Aborting legally sanctioned processes helps no one. Shehu Shagari, the man who was enthroned in 1979, was famously called ‘President by Mathematics.’ There is, in fact, a book of that title authored by long-gone ace journalist and administrator, Simeon Labanji Bolaji. A one-paragraph review of that book says it is “a comprehensive examination of the Nigerian general elections in 1979, and how Mr Shagari emerged as President, eventually – with the help of the judiciary.” How fair (or democratic) is it to have a governor or president elected by Mathematics and crowned by the unquestionable gavel of the judiciary? Mathematical historians tell us that maths isn’t a product of invention but of discovery rooted in necessity. From the clay tablets of Mesopotamia to the Egyptian papyruses, the primary, necessitating reason for mathematics was justice and equity in sharing and giving. Nothing defines my thought here better than the oríkì of a Yoruba lineage: pín’re/ làá’re/ Ìkan ò gbodò jù kan (share it fairly/ divide it equitably/ one must not be larger than the other). Even the more problematic, complex, modern mathematical fields of algebra, geometry, calculus and trigonometry are rooted in the unassailable logic of precision and fairness. But the nature of Nigeria encourages degeneration — it is, in fact, degenerative. When Mathematics, aided by the judiciary, is the ultimate elector of presidents and governors, the redemptive values of the subject is degraded and democratic logic is inverted. Never mind that Albert Einstein, in panegyrical lyrics, described Mathematics as the poetry of logical ideas, or that Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and physicist, said nature is written in mathematical language, and that nature does nothing uselessly (Aristotle). Mathematics is forced to lose its innocence here; it is made a colluding tool in sidestepping common logic and in undermining democracy. The 1979 legal contest was about the arithmetic of two-thirds of 19 states; it appears this year’s main presidential battle will be about that same fraction, now of 36 states but problematised with the use of an English word- ‘and’ – connecting the states to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Section 134 (2) of the 1999 Constitution as amended says: “A candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected where, there being more than two candidates for the election- (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and (b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.”

It is now that I understand why Nigeria makes credit passes in English and Mathematics compulsory for certain courses, particularly Law. Forty-four years ago, Section 34 of the Electoral Decree 1977 was the issue in the twelve-two-thirds controversy. In 2023, Section 134 of the 1999 Constitution is the issue, some fractions are still in contention laced with the poison of an English word. We appear to have learnt nothing from the past misadventure. Instead of being wiser by the rains that had beaten us for decades, our bald-headed vulture’s journey has become, in the words of Hamidou Kane, L’aventure ambiguë (Ambiguous Adventure). What does the phrase “and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja” mean in that law, or, more appropriately, what is the intendment (intention) of the authors, the lawmakers?

The layman in me often wonders why we want to spend millions of naira and sweat through 180 days at the election tribunal and another 60 days at the Supreme Court in search of the intended meaning of the word ‘and’ when we can just summon the surviving authors of the constitution to come forward and explain what they meant. But that is just a layman’s lazy ‘unlearned’ conjecture; it makes no jurisprudential sense. The law is a beast ridden rough-shod by lawyers and judges in asinine circles. The operators confound the world by fiddling and searching for what may not be really lost. They talk about strictly following their books and whatever their rules say even when our Rome is on fire. Lord Denning, breaker of ranks, once threw up his hands and moaned: “I know that people are prone not to accept my views unless they have support in the books…” He also spoke about a case which “ought to have been simple, but the lawyers have made it complicated.” Complicating issues is a lawyer’s fort. A testator in his will gives all his vessels to X; lawyers ask whether the word ‘vessel’ means the man’s boats, ships or his drinking cups!

American poet, Haniel Clark Long (1888 – 1956) calls himself a layman “who should not willingly forgo being a listener.” He says, however, that “sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice.” I have listened to and read people who said voters in the FCT, Abuja would be made super and special if the FCT provision in Section 134 of the constitution is read to mean a candidate, after fulfilling other conditions, must score 25 percent of FCT votes to be elected president. But, I want to ask: Are we just knowing that Abuja, our Federal Capital Territory, is more than a normal capital and that it is a super city and its privileges extraordinary? Our capital is no Washington D.C; it is no Brasilia; it is no Canberra, Australia. Yet, it is a purpose-built capital of a federalist state like all those three I just listed. It is a territory that is structurally at home with orò and administratively in bed with Egúngún. Let me explain. From 27 May, 1967 when Lagos State was created, till 12 December, 1991 when IBB moved the seat of Nigeria’s Federal Government to Abuja, Lagos had the enviable status of a state capital with a governor in charge of its affairs but which also was the federal capital with the president/Head of State ruling the federation from there. The two were in Lagos but there was no contest on who was responsible for the governing of Lagos. The state’s chief executive was the governor; the president had no role, he was a tenant. This is not so with today’s FCT. We have a constitution that says Abuja must be treated as a state and that the president of Nigeria is also the ‘governor’ of FCT, Abuja. Section 299 of the constitution says that “(a) all the legislative powers, the executive powers and the judicial powers vested in the House of Assembly, the Governor of a state and in the courts of a state shall, respectively, vest in the National Assembly, the President of the Federation and in the courts which by virtue of the foregoing provisions are courts established for the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.” So, Abuja’s structure is the very opposite of its predecessor, Lagos of 1967 to 1991. The president is today also the FCT governor with all the powers exercisable in that respect. If that is the case, therefore, will it not be proper, right and equitable that the candidate seeking to be governor of FCT Abuja fulfill the requirements demanded of other governorship candidates in other states?

What I am saying is that we have an objectionable constitution that makes Abuja a state and the president its governor. Does that then not make a presidential election in that territory a double-barrel: shoot one, get two? As voters there elect the president, they also, impliedly simultaneously elect their governor. Anyone who would eat double in that FCT farm must therefore ‘perform’ double –get 25 percent in 24 states to become president; get 25 percent in the FCT to become its governor. Otherwise, a day will come when someone who scored zero votes in Abuja will be preparing and implementing its budget, appointing and disappointing, ruling or ruining lives there because he is the president of Nigeria. What do I know? A layman.

But, seriously, can we say that those who took this FCT matter to court are doing so with clean hands? There are two principal parties in court making huge legal mountains out of that contentious provision because the declared winner was roundly rejected by Abuja voters. Each of the petitioners wants to be made president even when it is clear that they do not have the highest number of votes cast in that election. One of them has the Abuja 25 percent cap but he lacks the head, the votes; the other has neither Abuja nor the plurality of votes. So, where is their pathway to power? Someone said the unfolding Adamawa governorship election case has come handy for them at the right time; it is a way. If it is possible in that corner, it should happen too in Abuja. Shame. In 1979, Awo did not ask to be made the president by the court. His demand was a further election by the electoral college as provided in the Electoral Decree No. 73 of 1977 (as amended) which governed the process. No one wants that tortuous route today. The battle cry is ‘snatch it; run away with it.’

Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist calls the law “a ass, a idiot” and wishes that the law’s “eye may be opened by experience…” The current controversy festers because the law here disdains experience and all its benefits. The global negative attention and head-shaking we got from the 1979 outing never benefited us. We run our affairs in a circular, interminable line of (deliberate) confusion. On 28 September, 1979, two days after the Supreme Court okayed the presidency of Shagari, and two days to his inauguration, Nigeria quickly deleted a part of the law that prescribed the convocation of an electoral college to resolve the logjam which the courts 48 hours earlier had crudely resolved (See Awolowo v Shagari- A Case of Compromise between Law and Political Expediency by M. Olu Adediran, 1982: 56). What we learnt from that episode is this deeper, newer problem of what to do with our ill-defined federal capital in a presidential election.

Even when the number of states has moved from the very odd prime number 19 to the more genial perfect square 36, the draftsmen still complicated it in the 1999 constitution with that odious “and the FCT” clause. It is all part of the Nigerian conundrum. Only a structurally defective Nigeria and a wùrùwúrú federation would unleash what we saw in 1979, wouldn’t learn positively from it and would worsen it with what we are about to see in 2023. We make and re-make these insidious, poisonous laws of electoral fractions (and infractions) because we know we are a flawed federation running a criminally expensive presidential system. We think we can use legislation to cure the Nigerian eunuch of his impotence. Do we really need a president who must be everywhere in Nigeria prostrating to man and gnomes to win an election and be allowed to rule after winning? Even the British who created Nigeria did not think so. What they gave us was a prime minister elected quietly from his corner of the country and who became the national leader only after his equals in parliament made him so. He did not need the kind of bank-breaking ‘bastard’ money that we see every four years in party presidential primaries and in the election proper since 1999.

Nigeria of 2023 owes no duty to fidelity; the courts are short-cuts to power; everyone wants to use the court as elevator to the top floor. That is what I see in the efforts of all the parties – ‘winners’ who ask ‘losers’ to go to court, and ‘losers’ who are in court with confounding claims. America’s greatest of all time, Abraham Lincoln, said in all he did, his concern was not “whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” It is left to the court to decide on whose side it will stand in this matter.

‘The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things’
(Ronald Reagan)

It was in the light of the above powerful words of one of America’s greatest leaders, Ronald Reagan that I had joined good people three times here to encourage our outgoing leader, President Muhammadu Buhari to make history by getting good people around him to do one of the greatest things – signing the Electoral Act Amendment Bill into law to begin a clean process of leadership recruitment in our failing country. I had also then enjoined the President to embrace another critical issue that could enhance chances of making history: restructuring through return to federalism we lost since 1966. I had noted then that the lanky General from Daura could make history despite his apparently poor performance through restructuring of the electoral process and the polity.

I had then added that our leader should begin with calling the bluff of the retrogressive forces in APC, his Party and signing the Electoral Act Amendment Bill into law before the 2019 election, lest he would slip into the dark side of history. I had then written:

‘This is possible only with a sincerity of purpose as the driving force. This is what drives me to think that at the moment, the President needs encouragement more than condemnation from any quarters: He is surrounded at the State House, Abuja by only his kinsmen most of whom would not like to tell him what he could do to leave Nigeria better than he met it…’

As I was saying here too, specifically, in the beginning, the president didn’t have a great cabinet. It is beyond dispute that the presidential bureaucracy and the first cabinet in 2015 could not have helped him to make history. He failed then to realise that no leader could do well in office with a mediocre presidential bureaucracy and a cabinet of ordinary party supporters. After about six months of assuring the people that he was head hunting good and reliable thinkers, what he came up with was quite disappointing, after all. No insult is meant here, please. This is without prejudice to the few good ones in the cabinet who have been unequally yoked with mediocrities (not mediocres, please) that abound in the presidential palace. We are just discussing simple points in nation building within the context of the new world order that social and digital technologies daily disrupt.

Yes, only leaders who surround themselves with very smart managers can make history in the new world of business and politics.

What else can we deconstruct? Our president who curiously compressed his agenda to fighting corruption and insecurity in the last eight years has no remarkable baton to pass on to his successor. Can any honest observers today (apart from paid town criers) claim that our taciturn leader has really made history with fighting corruption and insecurity even in the North East Zone and North West zones where the evil ones are now permanently resident? Here is a piece of evidence: 98 out of 276 Chibok schoolgirls abducted on April 14, 2014 are still in captivity. Leah Sharibu, the only Christian schoolgirl left in Dapchi, Yobe state abduction captivity since 2018 is said to be giving birth to children by her unknown abductors in an unknown forest of the wicked. Despite all appeals she is still her captors’ den.

What is worse, the military establishment that we used to be proud of appears to have lost its mojo and myth under our out-going commander-in-chief. Even the presidency doesn’t believe in operational efficiency of the police force for internal security, anymore. We see the spirit of errors everywhere, especially in the North East and North West where the Air Force once erroneously bombed an IDP camp. We have lost so many officers of the Nigerian armed forces to insecurity in the North. That has since spread to all parts of the country. The other day, there was a supplementary budget of about one trillion naira to fight insecurity at the time university lecturers were gearing up for yet another industrial action. That is what happens when the illiterate of the 21st century are allowed to take charge as major state actors. That is the view of a writer on leadership and management, Alvin Toffler, who always muses on “rethinking the future”. According to the futurist, ‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn’. This is why most modern leaders always strengthen their governments with strong men and women who can learn, relearn and unlearn even in office.

Let’s look at the machinery for fighting corruption. There are three agencies comprising the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB). The arrowhead here has always been the EFCC. But the President’s ruling party was once so disorganised that the first EFCC acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, nominated since November 2015, was not confirmed by the Senate dominated by the president’s party before he (Magu) was removed in 2021 over corruption allegations.
How else does one understand the politics in the presidency where the Secret Service chief executive twice wrote to the Senate that Magu should not be confirmed? Magu was somehow stranded for six years and even the influential Attorney General and Minister of Justice (who supervises EFCC) appeared to be at war with him throughout his turbulent tenure.

Curiously, Buhari’s presidency didn’t settle their rift. How can the president make history through his war on corruption when Magu too was once quoted as saying that he was losing the war? Even the ICPC chairmanship was once in a hibernation mode: a board member once acted as Chairman from July 2017 when the tenure of the Chairman expired in December 2018. Acting Chairman of EFCC since 2015. There was once an Acting SGF from May 2015; There were once so many ‘actors’ in office in Buhari’s presidency of anything is possible.

How could the president have made history with this kind of executive inertia and ad-hocism? I once noted here: ‘Can there be history making in fighting official graft without reforming the NNPC according to the new Petroleum Industry Act?Now there is a Petroleum Industry Act. But what has changed apart from the name of NNPC as a company limited by shares? Has NNPC changed its way in any fundamental sense? Again I once noted here: ‘That is why I feel we should begin to encourage the President to pay due attention to the Committee his party, the APC set up to prepare a blueprint on the hurricane called ‘restructuring’. There is some sense in that critical national assignment…’

Despite the fact that some president’s men may not like Malam Nasir el-Rufai’s face and politics, the Kaduna State Governor and chairman of the APC Panel on restructuring definitely has enough cognitive resources to handle the critical assignment. He gave the Party and the President a good document on restructuring since 2018. No deal till the present. The only trouble with the APC Committee may have been a vicious cabal around the President who might have been obsessed at that defining moment with politics of a second term without thinking about the implications of absence of major achievements in the first term..

In 2022, the President signed the Electoral Bill into law. That Electoral Act 2022 was to be a game changer in 2023 elections. But what game did it change despite the president’s repeated assurances that he would leave a legacy of free and fair elections? The 2023 elections that we should have hailed as the best in our history has turned out to be so controversial that even the winning party is still campaigning for validity and validation after elections. What is worse, even presidential mediocrity almost paralysed the country through a curious currency redesign on the eve of the elections. The scars even on our Supreme Court are sill there. What a legacy!
I also once wrote here:
‘But the president should note that if he continues to adopt I-don’t- care attitude to clamour for restructuring of the federation as most hawks around may advise, the consequences of the verdict of history may be harsh on him. He will go down in history as a military leader and politician who just wasted our time in office without any significant achievement…’

On June 7, 2020, I also wrote here about ‘Buhari’s presidency and near-success syndrome’. Then I quoted Socrates who said, ‘The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new’. I also quoted Abraham Lincoln who reveals to us that, ‘Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most’ to encourage our leader to be decisive.

It is quite important for us to understand what this enemy called ‘Near Success Syndrome’ (NSS) is all about. If several times, you have been so close to achieving a goal, dream or desire in your life but it seems like the moment you are on the verge of breakthrough, something comes and snatches it away from your grasp, you are welcome to the roots of this deadly syndrome. When this occurs, it can really hurt. That was the deadly virus that his party men were foisting on him in 2019 when they asked him to withhold assent from that significant electoral bill then. They won the 2019 election but lost the people’s organic mandate.

So, as the debate continues on all fronts about the place of the outgoing president Buhari in history, it is pertinent to remind the in-coming president that there is one fundamental objective he should adopt the morning after May 29: celebration of meritocracy! Buhari celebrated mediocrity for eight years. After 2023 elections, focus should shift to governance nurtured by nation building efforts. Doubtless, crass mediocrity nurtured by tribalism displaced Buhari from history making spots for eight years. That shouldn’t be an inheritance of a new government in Nigeria at this time.
First, the presidential bureaucracy comprising the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, (SGF), Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), Chairman Federal Civil Service Commission, and the Chief of Staff to the President (imported into the bureaucracy) should be a solid foundation – for a ‘government of national competence’ as already desired. Then, there should be a Bill to the National Assembly on further dismantling of the behemoth called Exclusive Legislative List in the Constitution – to restructure the convoluted federation for a national culture of efficiency. President Buhari is still withholding his assent to a number of Bills on Constitution Review 2022. The alteration of the Constitution on the power sector is good but not enough for classic restructuring of the federation. Even the federal bureaucracy compounded by too many redundant agencies that carry unbearable wage bills is too burdensome for the nation. All told, there must be ‘Government of National Competence’ that has eluded us for so long. That is a part of Buhari that should not be found in Tinubu the morning after May 29, 2023.

The divorce epidemic in the world and its attendant crises in divorce property sharing assumed a different colour last week in the matter of Moroccan, Achraf Hakimi Mouh and his erstwhile wife, Spanish actress, Hiba Abouk. Hakimi is reported to be Africa’s sixth highest-paid player whose extreme popularity has stuck to him like a lapel since he led his home country, Morocco to the semi-finals of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The French magazine, First Mag, had reported that in her claim upon the grant of the divorce by the court, Hiba had requested for half of Hakimi’s assets and fortune. However, the actress, reported the magazine, was shocked when her lawyer found out that Hakimi literally had nothing in his name as the beneficiary of his salary and wealth was his adored mother, Saida Mouh, to whom he transferred his wages for several years. The news reverberated across Spain, France and Morocco and indeed, the rest part of the world.

Hiba is of Libyan and Tunisian descent. Full name Hiba Aboukhris Benslimane, she was born in Madrid as the youngest of four siblings. Her parents, who migrated from Tunisia, had earlier settled in Spain. Hiba studied at the French Lycée, Madrid and graduated at age 18. She thereafter underwent courses in Arabic philology, graduating with a licentiate degree in drama. Renowned for her roles in television series, the most exampled being El Príncipe, in a 2012 show, she starred in comedy series for the first two seasons. She later appeared in a debut El Príncipe crime drama series which was featured on a Spanish free-to-air channel called Telecinco. Watchers of the drama series were estimated to be in the neighbouhood of five million. From 2010 when her acting career began, Hiba was on record to have featured in six movies.

Her husband is the 1998-born Moroccan professional footballer who plies his footballing trade with Ligue 1 Club of the Paris Saint-Germain. He is known to be friends with Kylian Mbappe and recently gained global attention in the reported unusualness which his divorce from Hiba took.

Indications that the marriage between the duo had hit the rock was given by the actress when on March 27 of this year, she took to her Instagram account to announce that she and Hakimi had separated and were waiting for the court to finalize their divorce proceedings. The marriage was blessed with two sons, Amín, 3, and Naim, 1 who were birthed in 2020 and 2022. There was earlier fear that Hakimi’s investigation in Paris on allegation of rape had fuelled the divorce. On March 3, 2023, Hakimi’s indictment was pronounced by a Paris investigating judge who, on the pending allegation of rape he was ensconced in, placed him under judicial supervision. Hakimi had been accused of raping a 24-year old lady right in his Boulogne home while his wife and kids had travelled on holiday. The alleged rape, which took place on the Sunday night of February 26, was broken to the world by the popular tabloid, Le Parisien. Though his lawyer, Fanny Colin, put up a spirited denial of the allegation, the proceedings went on nevertheless. Replying to Le Parisien, Colin had been quoted to have said, “The accusations are false. He is calm and is making himself available to the authorities”. Part of the legal proceedings was a ban placed on Hakimi never to contact the victim of his alleged rape binge. He was however allowed by the court to travel out of the French territory.

Details of the divorce proceedings between Hakimi and Hiba came to the full glare of the world last week, indicating that the couple had been working towards separating legally even before the alleged rape matter cropped up. Suspicions became rife when Hiba expunged her pictures and Hashimi’s from her Instagram page which took place almost immediately the Moroccan international got embroiled in the February rape case. From what was known about Hiba, she had a fortune of hers and probably made the claim to have her pound of flesh on her allegedly adulterous husband.

In comparison with her husband, Hadi is said to be worth the sum of $2million while Hakimi’s net worth is $24 million, eighty percent of which is in the possession of his mother. She is said to be responsible for all the purchases made by Hakimi which included cars, jewelry and clothes. Hakimi’s monthly earning from PSG is said to be $1million, sharing this high worth with Lionel Messi and Neymar da Silva Santos Jnr. The 20 per cent of his paycheck that he keeps is also said to be in the neighbourhood of about $215 weekly. Were the Moroccan defender’s wife to succeed with her claims in the divorce proceedings, she would have got a whopping sum of $8.5million awarded her.

While it was not an issue when they got married, the African conservative abhorrence of a wife older than the husband in matrimony was said to be one of the reasons that triggered the move towards the divorce. A sizeable age gap exists between the duo. While Hakimi is 24, Hiba is 36, a whole twelve years separating them. In an interview in March with El Cierre Digital, Hiba had said her decision to get married to Hakimi was her desire to have a home life, in concert with her husband and children but found out that Hakimi relished the life of a sybarite, partying and living the reckless life of a bachelor.

On the March 27 statement she released via her official Instagram account, Hiba defended her silence on the rape issue but doubled down on her divorce plans. The El Pais, a Spanish newspaper, had quoted her as having said, “After having taken the decision to legally separate and to stop living together whilst awaiting the divorce procedure, which you can imagine, on top of the pain brought about by the separation, as well as having to accept the sadness that a failed project, which I gave my body and soul, brings, I was supposed to face up to this disgraceful act? I needed time to come to terms with this shock. One must trust the legal process, especially considering the gravity of the accusation. Nonetheless, in my life, I always have been, and always will be, on the side of victims.”

Since the details of the divorce property sharing in the proceedings were made known to the world, stands have been taken by people from all walks of life for and against both Hadi and Hakimi. When a legal action is instituted to terminate a marriage, one of the issues that come out of it is how the property which was accumulated during the pendency of the marriage must be shared between the two parties. While this is alien to most of Africa where patriarchy is the order of the day, which is a major bequeathal from traditional African practices of centuries ago, in many other civilized countries, the sharing is pegged on a matrimonial property system. This depends on the particular type of system the parties chose when they were embarking on the marriage.

The African traditional system is in support of divorcing women, for various reasons. Ezinna E Enwereji of the Abia State University’s College of Medicine, Uturu, in her paper entitled Indigenous Marriage institutions and divorce in Nigeria: The case of Abia State of Nigeria, named these reasons as “infidelity, infertility/barrenness impotence, probing a husband’s sexual life inability to reproduce male children and/or large number of children, laziness in taking on assigned gender roles, including farming, cooking late and/or inability to cook delicious food, disrespect to husband and his kinsmen, deviant actions like stealing, prostitution, witchcraft, fighting, especially in public, cases of leprosy, tuberculosis, epilepsy and sexually transmitted infections.”

Though divorces were frowned at in Africa, whenever they occurred in the pre-colonial era, the wives lost totally, even losing the right to custody of the children of the marriage. In some societies of Africa, it was even a taboo for a wife to demand from her spouse whether he had extramarital sexual relationships, catching him red-handed notwithstanding. If she does, she might get divorced for this audacity. When such husband divorces the wife, he will return her to her parents and defrost her of all the resources she might have acquired during the marriage or even which they both labored for. He will then demand the repayment of the bride price he paid on her. It does not matter who initiated the divorce. When the bride price is returned, it is a signification that the marriage had come to an end. Even in the case where a marriage is dissolved by the order of the customary court, the court will still hold that “it is the refund of the bride price or dowry that puts to an end all incidents of customary law marriage and not an order of any court dissolving such marriage. Any order dissolving any customary law marriage without a consequent order for the refund or acceptance of the bride price or dowry is meaningless”. The woman thus divorced is visited financial hardship and most of them never recover from it.

While the customary law marriage pretends that there is Settlement of property in it, it is applicable in theory only as an available relief while, in practice, it is non-existent. Among the Igbo, for instance, wives are still viewed traditionally as one of the chattels and property or possession of the husband and thus, whatever she must have acquired while under the roof of the man, stricto sensu, is the man’s. In such a case, it is always very difficult to ascertain what property belongs to the woman upon divorce. Even when assets are singly or jointly acquired, they can only be ceded or parts given to the woman upon the “magnanimity” of the man. Thus, in settlement of property under customary law, it becomes a discretionary relief for the man to grant his exiting spouse settlement of property.

The above must be the reason many men, including Hakimi’s countrymen and women, were fuming at what they considered Hadi’s “legal ploy” to take a half of her husband’s wealth upon the dissolution of the marriage and their excitedness that Hakimi “outsmarted” the actress.

However, many jurisdictions are conforming to the advocacies of feminist activists who have argued that such system was too punitive against the woman and should be reversed. One of the countries that has tinkered with its own divorce property system is South Africa. There, the legal system is based on the inherited colonialists’ model and codified in the Matrimonial Property Act 88 of 1984. It controls the property sharing model. This Act spells out the different matrimonial property systems which are available to couples in the country, depending on the type of marriages or unions that they choose to bind them legally, from civil, customary marriages and civil unions.

In the civil matrimonial property system of South Africa, there exist three main matrimonial property sub-systems. They are, out of community of property and in community of property. The last is what is called the accrual system. In the out of community property system, if a divorce proceedings is instituted, the property in the marriage is very easy to share and the marriage easier to dissolve because each of the party owns its own estate and their individual assets and liabilities, from the beginning of the marriage, have been known and delineated by the two of them as held separately.

In the in community property system, the estates of the spouses are merged to become a single joint estate during the pendency of the marriage and thus, the husband and wife, during divorce proceedings, are forced by law to share all their assets and liabilities. In this system, when dissolution of the marriage is effected, the court will pay all their liabilities and the balance of this joint estate will be divided in equal measure between the spouses.

If the spouses got married through the accrual system, as their estates multiply during the marriage, they will equally share them but retain their individual estate. Whatever is the accrual from these estates will go into their individual separate estate. Another feature of this system is that spouses cannot be held liable for debts incurred and during divorce proceedings, this sharing method automatically governs the dissolution of the marriage and the asset-sharing system.

The Nigerian matrimonial divorce systems under the Act and Customary Law are both clones of the old traditional practice that sees women as chattels and undeserving of partaking in the property of their spouses, upon dissolution of marriage. It is why Nigerian men have been most vociferous in the celebration of the “feat” of Hakimi. There is no doubting the fact that the ordinary rules of property law which are applied in the determination of the property rights of spouses in Nigeria have wrought financial hardship on women who are seen as weaker vessels. It should be known however that, while men are perceived as ones who go out to provide for the home, no financial or material wealth can surpass the glue and hold that women provide for the family.

While the Hakimi case will look as if he was a Smart Alec, there are some pivotal issues that favour him against Haidi. One is that, the marriage was only three years old. Thus, if the request of the Libyan-born actress had been granted, she would have reaped from where she didn’t sow because the footballer must have been amassing his wealth before their marriage. The second issue, which would have availed that marriage, is the benefit of conciliation which Africa usually witnesses in matrimonial disputes but which, I guess, was not available to the ex-spouses due to the nature of the individuality of the west. Now that potential wives have seen the Hakimi case, subsequent men who try to be smart like Hakimi may not be lucky as potential wives will most certainly begin to poke their noses, with audacious scrutiny, into the process and procedure of the wealth of their future husbands.

All said, the Nigerian property sharing model during dissolution of marriage is repugnant to natural justice as it affects women. There should, as a matter of urgency, be a reconsideration of the matrimonial property rights arrangement among spouses that is operational in Nigeria today. This piece calls for a review of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1970, the main law that governs matrimonial relations in Nigeria. This should be done with the view that the concept of due and equitable sharing of “matrimonial property” can be made applicable and operational during the pendency of marriages, as well as the critical stage of divorce in Nigeria.

Mbabai, the village where Tarnongo Mike Utsaha was buried on April 1, 2023, used to be part of the municipality of Makurdi, the capital of Benue state. It only became part of the Guma local government area in Benue north-west in 1987. The current governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, also comes from Guma.

The LGA derives its name from River Guma, which empties into the River Benue, part of a network of freshwater sources that have historically defined that part of Nigeria as the nation’s food basket. With arable land drained by an abundance of freshwater sources on the foothills of the rainy season, this is a neighbourhood that should ordinarily bustle at this time of year.

The journey into Guma with Mike’s remains revealed the opposite. Mbabai and its neighbouring villages had long been drained of life by mass atrocity. Mourners to the funeral needed the forceful presence of a massive deployment of hundreds of well-armed soldiers along the route and in surrounding bushes to reassure them about their safety. The compound in which the burial itself took place was nearly desolate. A capacious country home belonging to Mike’s dad, a retired judge, had been burnt twice over in attacks reportedly perpetrated, the villagers said, by armed herders. All the mourners could do was linger in the village long enough for the body to be laid into the ground before everyone scampered, grateful that there were no atrocity incidents.

As the mourners left, it was impossible not to ask how the people of Guma, nearly all of whom cannot afford what it takes to secure the kind of martial deployment that accompanied Mike’s cortege, bury their dead. It did not take long to find out.

Mgban is a village also in Guma, not too far from Mbabai. Like Mbabai, Mgban has also been decimated by regular attacks from armed herders. Most of the village lives in internal displacement. By an arrangement involving the state government and the Benue State Emergency Management Authority, the Benue State Police Command deployed several police officers every evening to guard the Local Government Education Authority (LGEA) primary school in Mgban, so that those left in the community can go there to sleep at night.

That was until one week after the burial of Mike Utsaha. Shortly before midnight around Good Friday, according to survivors, the police officers deployed around the LGEA Primary School in Mgban all entered their vehicles and left the premises without warning. The villagers already at the school to pass the night had no place else to hide. Moments after the police retreated, armed attackers arrived, making game of every person in sight, mostly the aged, women, and children. The initial casualty count was over 43 killed by sunrise. By the end of the morning after the massacre, another 45 had also been evacuated to nearby hospitals in critical conditions. The dead got a quick and perfunctory mass burial.

Less than 36 hours before the Mgban Massacre, on Wednesday, also in the Christian Holy Week, another attack on mourners in Umogidi in Entekpa-Adoka District of Otukpo LGA reportedly killed at least 52 persons. Another mass burial was all that they could get. 48 hours before the massacre in Umogidi, a similar attack liquidated at least 47 unarmed persons in Ikobi village in Apa LGA, including the local chief.

Amidst this orgy of massacres, Benue state governor, Samuel Ortom, who has since lost the ability to safely visit his village in Guma, travelled to Port Harcourt, Rivers State, around April 6, reportedly to attend the commissioning of projects by his counterpart in Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, both of them as guests of Rivers state governor, Nyesom Wike. It was a characteristically thoughtless journey by a man who had long ago lost any sense of what a governor exists to do.

The symbolism of the encounter in Rivers state between the governors of Benue and Kaduna states, once implacable political foes, was not lost on many. In Port Harcourt, they could have been mistaken for a compatibly contented political pairing. Less than two years ago, in May 2021, they were at each other’s throats exchanging choice epithets with the abandon of drunken sailors in a bar-room brawl.

Between them, these two men have presided over arguably two of the worst records of mass atrocity in Nigeria in the past eight years. In 80 days in the first quarter of 2023, Kaduna state reported at least 125 killed and 60 abducted. Those who specialise in tracking these incidents would swear that these numbers massage the reality. Over five days in the first week of April 2023, Benue state lost at least 134 persons in a killing spree. In the period since the end of the presidential election in February, over 400 have reportedly been massacred in Benue state alone.

The timing of these massacres is significant. On April 8, 2023, Daily Times reported that “[p]alpable fear pervades the entire horizon as renewed incidents of banditry, kidnappings, killings take centre-stage after a ‘cease-fire’ noticed in Nigeria ahead of the general elections in February and March”.

The previous day had witnessed the high-profile abduction of a law professor and former deputy governor of Nasarawa state near the Federal Capital Territory, Onje Gye-Wado. The newspaper also recounted a staggering rise after the election of mass abductions of children as well as massacres in many states around the country including Benue, Edo, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, Nasarawa, Lagos, Zamfara, among others.

Confronted with this trend, President Muhammadu Buhari, whose primary job is to guarantee the safety and security of all these people, had a statement issued in his name calling for “an end to extreme violence”. It was disconcerting to see the president mistake himself for a non-governmental organisation and be reduced to condemning violence and calling for something to be done about it as if he had forgotten that it was his place surely to do that something. The statement also seemed to imply that violence was alright if it was not considered “extreme”, but provided no criteria with reference to which to determine what extreme violence means. It was a very odd kind of thing for a president to say. But this Nigerian president has built his brand around toxic awkwardness.
Then, three days after issuing this statement, entirely in keeping with his habit of disregard for Nigerians over the past eight years, the president sauntered off to Saudi Arabia on April 11 for a nine-day long jaunt. What he went there to do was unclear, a fact not much helped by the desperate effort by his team of media handlers who were busy spreading false information about the trip.

While Buhari remained in Saudi Arabia, Samuel Ortom quickly announced the demobilization of the Benue State Livestock Guards, the militia group established to enforce the state’s anti-open grazing law. Many people read this to mean a suspension of the law itself. The governor begged to differ, claiming that the law still remained very much in force without explaining who will now help him to enforce it.

Those who wonder how these killings have lasted and deepened in intensity for as long as they have need not worry anymore. With a law without enforcers and a state rapidly turning into a cemetery, Benue state’s Governor Ortom probably knows one or two things most others may be unable to voice. First, the owners of the atrocity killings in Nigeria are back after the business of election rigging. Second, it is not difficult to know who they are.

When the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, spoke in his Easter message about the urgent mission of helping Nigeria “recover from the feeling of collective rape by those who imported the men of darkness that destroyed our country”, he knew what he was talking about.