Donald Trump consolidated his record in demagoguery when he became the first former US president ever to be criminally indicted and arraigned in a Manhattan court on April 4. 

He was the first US president to complain about an election he won and also the first to openly express support for the body-slamming of a reporter. He has the distinction of introducing “shithole countries” into the presidential lexicon. And on top of this improbable political career, Trump is also the first US president to be impeached twice.

With 34 counts of criminal conduct hanging around his neck, mostly charges of fraudulent bookkeeping, it appears that the days of Trump’s improbable political infamy are far from over.

Others have come close. According to a report by TIME, President Ulysses S. Grant was technically the first US president to be arrested for speeding on a horse and buggy in 1872. 

Richard Nixon came very close too. He was forced to resign after the outbreak of Watergate but before he could face potential criminal prosecution, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.

Bill Clinton also came quite close. He was impeached but was later acquitted, and escaped criminal charges by the seams of his pants, after negotiating for penance in civil damages. 

But Trump, the very epitome of improbability, trumps them all. He is on the verge of outdoing even his own record in demagoguery, yet it is only fair to presume him innocent as he gets his day in court.

As prosecutors negotiated details of Trump’s arraignment with his lawyers, whether or not he would be handcuffed, mug-shot, finger-printed and so on, I kept wondering what would have happened if this surreal drama was playing out in an African country – any African country.

Of course, the process in the US, so far, has been widely praised as the triumph of strong institutions, the model that developing democracies around the world should aspire to. That’s a fair point, even though the trial of former President Jacob Zuma in South Africa, though under different circumstances, was also a significant moment.

Perhaps, it might be useful to inspect this playbook of American exceptionalism a little more. Let’s assume, for example, that on the eve of the 2019 general elections in Nigeria, the government of President Muhammadu Buhari pressed charges against the leader of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar.

The smouldering embers from the spectacular row in 2003 between Abubakar (then the vice president and his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo) was a big deal then.

The details of that dispute, involving large amounts of public funds, were so messy that if Buhari wanted to embark on a fishing expedition, the government might have found grounds to bring charges. 

And indeed, as if in some form of rehearsal, close associates of Abubakar were questioned, briefly detained and released without charges. Also, whether or not Atiku could travel to the US on account of speculations that the FBI had a warrant of arrest against him in respect of a business transaction with US Congressman, Mr. Williams Jefferson, trended in the runup to the 2019 elections.

It would have taken extraordinary nerve for the government under Buhari to formally bring charges against Abubakar, his main rival and leading opposition candidate on the eve of the elections. And even if Buhari’s government succeeded in doing so, it would have been interesting to hear what the US and other Western countries would have said.

Would they have praised Nigeria as a good example in upholding the rule of law or would such a step have been deemed fraught and politically motivated, especially in light of the pending elections?

I have nothing but contempt for Trump’s politics and style and would be pleased to pave him a road of thorns as he attempts to return to the White House. His presidency was a disaster. 

But fair is fair. It is difficult to imagine that the prosecution would come up with this raft of charges against him – and press them in court now – if he was not interested in running again in the 2024 elections. 

Those who think Nigeria’s scenario cited is far-fetched may wish to consider what is shaping up in Senegal, Nigeria’s western neighbour. In that country, President Macky Sall who has been in power since 2012, has nearly perfected plans to run for a third term in next year’s presidential election in breach of the Constitution. To give the impression that the race against himself would still not be an easy one, however, he is also planning to create his own opposition candidate. 

He has slammed the main opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, with charges of criminal libel and is determined to produce enough distractions to tie him up in court ahead of the polls.

It may be convenient to argue that Sall is neither Biden, nor Ousmane, Trump. In any case, French-speaking West Africa has been more susceptible to instability and unconstitutional changes in government often triggered by flawed elections.

Yet, it depends on who is making the argument. In the eyes of millions of Trump supporters, there’s hardly a difference between a Sall who fiddles with the Constitution to secure an illegal third term and a Biden on whose watch Trump is facing criminal charges even when President Biden’s private garage is littered with dozens of classified documents shipped off from the White House when he was vice president.

How is the rule of law served when the Department of Justice sleepwalks over dozens of classified documents found in Biden’s garage from the Obama era, while Trump, the leading opposition candidate, is hobbled by criminal charges on the eve of the next general elections?

Unlike obstructionist Trump, Biden has said he would cooperate fully with the Department of Justice. Still, it would be interesting to know how tons of classified documents got to his private think-tank at a time when he had no legal basis to move them out of the White House.

If this were happening in an African country, would the US and its Western allies accept that the incumbent has nothing to do with the trial of the leading opposition candidate; that it is simply the law taking its course?

When matters get to a head in Senegal as may well be the case before the 2024 presidential election, would the US or France have the courage to call out Sall – or perhaps the increasingly authoritarian Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio – for mounting roadblocks in the way of opposition candidates?

It’s easy to yield to the seduction of American exceptionalism. Yet, apart from well-documented, but carefully preserved dark secrets of US waywardness, we have seen, especially in the last 10 years, that the US is not the undimming beacon that it often pretends to be. 

The elections that brought Biden to office were marred by allegations of programmatic flaws. The US must therefore be held to the same standards that it holds the rest of the world.

The trial of Trump on the eve of an election in which he would potentially be running against an incumbent who himself is not exactly smelling of roses, is interesting. It would give the world a good opportunity to see if America practises what it preaches.

Who knows? The improbable Trump may well take demagoguery into the Guinness Book of Records by becoming the first US president to overcome a criminal trial and defeat an incumbent. And even if he doesn’t, he would still have set the record as the first US president who went down trying.

Azu Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP  

In March 2014, at a time Boko Haram terrorism ravaged the country, 12 northern Nigeria governors travelled all the way to Washington D.C. to make a case against President Goodluck Jonathan before his American counterpart Barack Obama. These governors, who got a chance to meet Obama’s National Security Adviser Ms. Susan Rice, accused Jonathan of sponsoring the terrorist attacks. According to media reports—still archived online—Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State launched the attacks by reading a laundry list of the president’s sins to the high-ranking officials attending the meeting. Two governors specifically named as joining Nyako to attack Jonathan were Governors Rabiu Kwankaso of Kano and Kashim Shettima of Borno. It got to the point that the Nigerian Ambassador, Prof. Ade Adefuye, reportedly had to intervene and stop these men from “washing Nigeria’s dirty linen in public.”

If you wondered what the novelist Chimamanda Adichie’s name was doing in the same sentence as that of the vice president-elect, I am sure you made the connections now.

Adichie’s recent open letter to US President Joe Biden highlighting the ill-conduct of the February presidential election did the All Progressives Congress just as dirty as some of them once did Jonathan. While the US government is unlikely to publicly react to the letter, her account still delegitimises a government that characteristically looks to powerful western institutions for legitimacy. Before Adichie’s essay was published, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, had gone to Washington to market the last election as “the freest and fairest in the history of Nigeria.” For him to feel the need to travel to justify their government to journalists and international observers who must have been following the whole drama online, they must have been quite anxious to be taken seriously. Then came the open letter.

For an incoming presidency already under all kinds of scrutiny, Adichie’s letter must be a body blow. From the frenzied responses and the accompanying hormonal howls from the usual attack hounds, that letter’s contents must have touched their rawest nerve.

Expectedly, they accused her of “colonial mentality,” “anti-patriotism, and of course, “tribalism.” Since we are here, they might as well clarify if Shettima and his jesters’ crew who sidestepped all the local institutions and headed for Washington were on an agenda of decolonisation. And why did they not return there when the government of Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) similarly failed to control banditry? Which patriotic virtues drove Shettima to de-market his president in 2014 but restrained him under Buhari’s debilitating regime? It was all self-serving politics.

The APC and their supporters thundering over Adichie’s letter and the irreverence of the Obidients must combine weak memories with moral inconsistency. From all the noise they have made about Obidients in the past week, one would be forgiven for imagining that an online mob of partisan political supporters is a historically unique phenomenon. They seem to forget that it was that Buhari was once outed for inaugurating a troll farm to battle online opponents and sow discord. Apart from the shadowy ones of the Buhari Media Centre who routinely creep out of the underbelly of the internet to muddy issues, he also appointed a retinue of media aides who probably outnumber his economic team. To justify their salaries and also establish some social relevance, those ones have spent the past eight years identifying and attacking supposed enemies. So how is it possible to have an atmosphere where trolling is accorded presidential gravitas, and you would not have formally created the same enemy you claim you want to destroy? If anything, the online ferocity we are presently seeing owes a lot to the Buhari regime’s formalisation of trolling.

It is amazing how people see Hitler and Mussolini in the Obidients when Buhari’s supporters are those whose election politics have serially inflicted physical violence. In 2011 when Buhari lost the election, they went on a rampage and killed an estimated 800 people. They were the ones who almost killed the man who named his dog “Buhari.” They once attacked Charley Boy in Abuja for protesting against Buhari. In April 2021, two anti-Buhari protesters were whipped in Kogi State by some Buhari supporters. Following that incident, Kogi State officials put an official statement justifying the violence saying, “We are placing it on record that the fanatical following of Mr President by Kogi people is borne out of our faith in his integrity and quality leadership.” How do you expect a society where the state legitimates violence not to face reprisals from those fed up but lacking commensurate political power?

The obvious lesson from all this is that the toxic politics that the APC sowed is overripe, and the rotten fruits are falling on their faces. The weapons of warfare that the APC used against the PDP while it was the “opposition” party are also widely available for those seeking to supplant the APC. Thanks to the internet, we have entered a historical phase where politicians seeking the highest office—and for whom the odds align—will get an online army of supporters to propagate their message and counterbalance those deemed the establishment. Every generation employs the tools at its behest to propagate the politics of its time, and this is no different. As it was in 2015 so is it in 2023 and will likely be in 2031. Unlike earlier eras where self-promoting politicians set up media houses to drown out opponents, social media now grants similar narrative power to people who would otherwise have been unheard. If they can form a mass, they can be heard. And jarring the ears of those inured to chaos entails not just shouting but lots of irreverence to boot.

The less evident part is that vengeful politics has been a good strategy for the APC. If it took Shettima from Borno to Aso Rock, it must have some viability. And if it works for them, what motivation do they have to give it up? And if those tactics work for one side, what stops the other from appropriating them?

To maintain their hold on power, they must keep holding up the specter of “the enemy” so that their supporters can concentrate their primal energies on trying to destroy it. But they must also be discovering how terribly exhausting such venomous politics can be. I am amused some aides of the incoming president have resolved to battle the Obidients to demonstrate that “nobody has a monopoly of madness.” I wish them good luck as they spend the next four years of their lives exchanging bitter words with the zestful users of the internet. Not only will they keep the rest of us entertained now that the present cohort of media aides appears battle weary, but they will also hopefully combust themselves in the monomaniac pursuit of the enemy they created in their own image.

In their bid to punch up and down at their enemies, both online and offline, they would have repudiated every allegation of righteousness and national interest once levelled against them. The good thing is that by the time they are done with their agenda of de-monopolisation of madness on Twitter, they would have disavowed every pretence of patriotism, every sliver of virtue, and every intellection they ever postured in their previous existence. I sincerely hope they do not get tired until they are entirely stripped of all pretences.

With the conclusion of the 2023 general election, it is time to review what has happened to our democracy. Since 2015 we seem to be on a climb towards consolidating democracy. This sentiment is supported by the fact that we have completed for the first time a ‘democratic’ transition from one party to another. In Africa, democracy’s major challenge is for incumbents to be defeated and they go home peacefully. Nigeria achieved that in 2015. This achievement is not a trifle. Joseph Schumpeter considers it the essence of democracy. In his view, democracy is the reality that incumbents can be defeated, and they willingly go home. In many Sub-Saharan African countries, the reality is that attempts to defeat incumbents in elections have easily led to civil conflicts and the loss of democracy itself.

But this singular achievement, significant as it is, does not mask the fundamental flaws of Nigerian democracy. The practice of democracy in Nigeria leads objective assessors to the conclusion that Nigeria is not yet a democracy. If democracy is measured by free and fair elections that are grounded in protection for fundamental human rights and impartial working of state institutions, then Nigeria is not yet a democracy, in spite of the fact of party-to-party transition. Nigerian elections always fall far short of democratic quotients. Robert Dahl lists six conditions of democracy: effective participation, equality in voting, gaining enlightened understanding of public issues, exercising final control over the agenda and inclusion of adults. For there to be equality of votes, you must guarantee to citizens opportunities to freely form opinions, freely express those opinions and organize themselves publicly in defense of such opinions. Where there are legal or illegal prohibitions of the right to organize or where state authorities repress opponents of incumbents and confer advantages to incumbents, there is no free and fair election and no equality of voting.

Dahl admits that there is no ideal democracy where there is complete political equality yet argues that there must be sufficient institutionalization of these features in a polity to qualify as a democracy. To be a democracy it is not enough to have laws that promise citizens fundamental rights, or laws that declare equal citizenship. Those laws must be faithfully implemented. The reality of these rights and not their mere articulation in sacred texts and constitutional documents is the measure of democracy in a society.

This brings democracy closer to the rule of law. It is not a happenstance that there has been no truly democratic society that is not a rule of law society. Of course, we will continue to argue about the reality of the enjoyment of these rights as many members of the society are excluded, whether women and children, as in Athens, or women children and blacks in Antebellum United States. But until there is significant rule of law, democracy can never take shape. The struggles of many post-colonial African countries with democracy may be explained by their weakness institutionalising  the rule of law. Although these countries, like Nigeria, may have incorporated bill of rights in their constitutions, their politics lacks the effective checks and balances that undergird and define democracy. Democracy would be thoroughly lacking in a society where there is no separation between public and private spheres, where state institutions are normatively oriented to serve the political interests of the ruling elites and where the coercive force of the society is neither professionally managed nor diffused.

Democratic elections require that there is competition and contestation. Where there is monopoly of power or total control of state institutions, especially those that punish or reward, then there can be no competitive election in the real sense. If incumbents are not constrained by either administrative rules or by balance of force, it means that there would be no real competition and contestation. Therefore, there will be little prospect for effective participation and equal voting. This is the case with the 2023 general elections.

In the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly Elections, the election management body helped to rig the election for the incumbent political party by mysteriously shutting down the technological safeguard of transparent and credible election- the electronic transmission of result in real time. This undermined the integrity of the election results. Why would a commission that issued a regulation on electronic transmission of results and officially communicated to Nigerians and diplomatic community its commitment to follow through on the regulation now refused to activate that guarantee of transparency and credibility of results? In March 18 Governorship and House of Assembly Election, voters of Igbo ethnic descent were forcefully prevented from voting because the presidential candidate, the incumbent Governor of Lagos and his political surrogates accused Igbos of interfering in Lagos politics and mobilized the people to resist that. The Police did not intervene to protect the citizenship rights of Igbos.

The story above illustrates the truth of the insights from Robert Dahl who argued in his book, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, that democracy (polyarchy) is only possible where there is real contestation for power. There will be no contestation unless the institutions of coercion have internalized the norms of neutrality and professionalism or there is a diffusion of power such that no single person or group has overwhelming control of the economic or coercive power of the state. In the 2023 elections, we learnt a hard way that unless we can guarantee the professionalism of the security agencies and the election management body, that is ensure that they are operationally neutral of political and economic interests in the society, we cannot have any realistic prospect of having democratic election.

The rule of law approach to state building provides better perspectives to understand the failures we have suffered as a nation. Since the end of colonialism there has been a strong advocacy for democracy. The democratization movement has been largely a failure in some of the transitional and so-called emerging democracy. The problem is that democracy proponents have lost of the history democracy. Democracy is a struggle for equality. This struggle is practical but results in basic changes in law. The underlining institutions of democracy, the reason democracy works, are defined by transformations in law. Without the Magna Carta, with the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution and without the laws that expand the franchise to excluded persons, there would have been no democracy in the western democracy.

The law reform project failed in Nigeria and the rest of Africa as highlighted by Mamdani Mahmood and other African scholars. This failure, as Robert and Ann Seidman wisely noted, is the failure to use law to redefine the institutions of coercion and production and distribution in the post-colonial African states. Free and fair election requires that the security agencies are created and defined in a particular manner that guarantees that they are professional and neutral. Now professionalism and neutrality may sound like technical concepts. But they are first and foremost a matter of legal institutionalization. The manner the police, the election management body and other institutions that intervene in election matters deliver their mandates is the real determinant of free and fair election. The construction of these institutions in a manner that promote political equality is the essence of the rule of law.

After the shambolic 2007 presidential election, President Yar’Adua instituted a comprehensive review of the electoral system. This resulted in the radical propositions in the Justice Uwais report. The report was largely unimplemented. The proposals by Justice Uwais committee if fully and wisely implemented would have transformed the legal institution of elections in Nigeria. Those reforms that changed the legal relations in society are the heart of rule of law reform. As Professor Douglas North makes clear, institutions include all rules, procedures and humanly designed constraints and enablers of action. When we speak of the critical institutions of democracy, we mean those legal relationships in the society that prevent certain actions and mandate others. If such legal relations are wise, effective and make political equality a reality, then we are getting closers to democracy. If state governments can easily mobilize state institutions to work for them, then there is no rule of law. If rules and norms constrain them from so utilizing these institutions to terrorize their opponents, then that is a rule of law state that promotes electoral democracy. Rule of law has the dimension of substantial justice because it aims at the promoting civil and political as well as social economic rights of the people. If our laws do not actually protect these rights, then we cannot get to electoral democracy.

This invariably means that being truly a rule of law state precedes being a democratic state. If we don’t first ensure that our institutions work according to the principles of the rule of law, we cannot transition to democracy.

I hereby reproduce the Tribute I paid to Judge Bola Ajibola 5 years ago!

“Prince Bola Ajibola is a unique role model and his life is a study in academic brilliance, courage, perseverance, persistence, patience, patriotism, enterprise, focus, humility, selflessness, modesty, human decency and moral rectitude. A book for all ages and all generations! Bold, outspoken, courageous and kind hearted, Ajibola is one man whose door you knock with tears in your eyes and depart with smiles on your lips. His leadership and human relations skills are without compare and his patriotism and nationalism are beyond reproach.He takes his religion very seriously the same way he commits to humanity and services to both.”

This is a special tribute to a very special man. A very unusual man. A most under-celebrated icon of immense and immeasurable proportion. A man who towers well above several men and women who have unfortunately high-jacked national and international applause, much undeserved, to themselves.

I know many people may query my choice of the title for this tribute and may be wondering whether I was wishing Prince Bola Ajibola dead or insinuating that he had already collected his *Boarding Pass* to the other side of the *Continuum*. Far from it. It has always been my cardinal principle that people who are good should be told while alive and active that they are good, and those bad should be told so. Not elegies at the grave side which would be of no use to the dead.

One time Prime Minister of Canada Mr Jean Chretien was asked if he was bothered by what the press might write after his demise; the usually witty gentleman quipped “I won’t be there to read it!”

If one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, Michael Jackson had been shown the unprecedented love showered on him at his death, he would have died a happier man.

So, I declare that I wish Uncle Bola Ajibola more years of meritorious and active life in the service of Allah and humanity. He has not finished his mission. And he’s not about to by the special grace of Allah.

And those who may still be worried about my choice of title should find solace in the fact that I already drafted the pamphlet of the programme of proceedings for my funeral in addition to choosing the transparent plastic casket my remains would be cased in and the spot to be interred at my Ashi Bodija residence, whenever my body could no longer accommodate my *Breath of Life.*

Now back to our main subject. And I have *Wikipedia* as my reference:

Omoba Bolasodun Adesumbo «Bola» Ajibola KBE [The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire] (born March 22, 1934)[1] was an Attorney General and the Minister of Justice of Nigeria from 1985 to 1991 and a Judge of the International Court of Justice from 1991 to 1994.[2] He was president of the Nigerian Bar Association from 1984-85. He was also one of five commissioners on the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission, organized through the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Born on March 22, 1934 in Owu, near Abeokuta, Nigeria, to the Owu royal family[3] of Oba Abdul-Salam Ajibola Gbadela II, who was the traditional ruler of Owu between 1949 and 1972, Ajibola attended Owu Baptist Day School and Baptist Boys’ High School both in Abeokuta between 1942 and 1955. He obtained his bachelor›s degree in Law (LL.B) at the Holborn College of Law,University of London between 1959 and 1962 and was called to the English Bar at the Lincoln’s Inn in 1962. He returned to Nigeriato practice the Law, specializing in Commercial Law and International Arbitration.

He was the chairman of the panel set up by the Plateau State government to probe the 2008 Jos riots.[4][5] He established *CrescentUniversity* in 2005 in Nigeria which is an Islamic and co-educational institution.

I had wanted to write this tribute since 2005 when Judge Bola Ajibola was appointed the Chairman of the 50-member Ogun State Elders Consultative Forum in Abeokuta. I found in that appointment a confirmation of the esteem I have held Prince Ajibola when I met him in his very active and articulate days as the fire-brand President of the Nigerian Bar Association [NBA] [1984-1985].

Ogun State Elders Consultative Forum paraded heavyweights like emeritus Professor Theophilus O. Ogunlesi, Nigeria’s first professor of Medicine, Justice Sogbetun, Professor Akin Mabogunje, Sir Kessington Adebutu, Chief AA Degun, Professor Adebayo Adedeji, Apena Adebisi Macgregor, Dr Ona Soleye, Ambassador Koleoso, Professor Anthony Asiwaju, Chief Olu Okuboyejo, Professor Biyi Afonja, Ambassador Segun Olusola, Olori Yetunde Gbadebo, Asiwaju S A Onafowokan, Ayora Kuforiji-Olubi, Dr Lateef Adegbite and Dr Sunny Kuku [ the youngest of the group listed] who was chair of a sub-committee. I kept postponing and postponing.

*Then came Sunday August 12 and the Punch of that day spurred me to action.*

*In reporting the wonders performed by Islamic Mission for Africa Model College, Abeokuta, the Punch* wrote: Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice Prince Ajibola SAN has given glory to Almighty Allah on his immense joy at the overwhelming performance of excellence by the students of one of his educational establishments at the just concluded WAEC Examinations. Ajibola thanked God for strengthening him to have madeIMA International Model College happen and for the College’s feat which netted for it A1 parallel in Mathematics at the African standard examination. This is proof of Allah’s endorsement of the sacrifices of this global figure who served his fatherland as Minister for over six years without taking salary.

*The Crescent University* Abeokuta [CUAB] the peak of the educational establishments of the Olori Omo Oba of Owu Kingdom is today one leading private university in Nigeria with its excellent stride as ‘citadel of moral and academic excellence’ emphasized the Sunday Punch.

When *Crescent University* celebrated her 10th Anniversary [2005-2015] the elated Founder and Proprietor, former World Court Judge enthused: “This is a fulfilment of our dream of nurturing people of academic and moral uprightness in the sight of God”, adding “we do not want you [the students] to become educated beasts”.

The University which is a perfect reflection and image of its founder may be the country’s answer to all the problems facing other Nigerian universities. The University has never recorded a single day of strike or closure in the last twelve years and has not recorded a single case of cultism. From a humble beginning with accreditation in Banking and Finance the University now boasts over 20 accredited programmes with Colleges of Law, Social and Management Sciences, Natural and Applied Sciences, Information and Communication Sciences and Environmental Sciences topping the chart.

All these Prince Ajibola has accomplished without beating drums about them.
Because of his commitment to human capital development and enthronement of excellent morals in our youths Prince Ajibola sold virtually all he had to found the *Crescent University*.

I must add that Judge Ajibola is very rich in humour and jokes and if you do not want your ribs cracked up, you may be advised not to engage in dialectics with this bundle of wit, witticism, and syllogisms.

Brought up in the royal palace; dignity, royalty, elegance, comportment and decorum always ooze out of his usually well ironed agbada.

With contacts and connections all over the globe, and with a wide network of leaders of thought throughout Nigeria Judge Ajibola is at home in Kano as he is in Calabar and very much in good company as he is in Australia and in Austria.

Prince Bola Ajibola is a unique role model and his life is a study in academic brilliance, courage, perseverance, persistence, patience, patriotism, enterprise, focus, humility, selflessness, modesty, human decency and moral rectitude. A book for all ages and all generations!

Bold, outspoken, courageous and kind hearted, Ajibola is one man whose door you knock with tears in your eyes and depart with smiles on your lips. His leadership and human relations skills are without compare and his patriotism and nationalism are beyond reproach.

He takes his religion very seriously the same way he commits to humanity and services to both.

A man of unimpeachable integrity Judge Ajibola is one leader who would/could have pulled Nigeria out of its morass if he had turned his attention and immense talents and brilliance to politics. Unfortunately, Nigeria has no need for such an upright man who would not steal, would not lie, would not kill or get people killed for him and would not tamper with his female Ministers’ under pants!

The post-election conversations have been a putrid salad of prejudices, recriminations, and elevated provincialism. Our wits, resolve, temperance, capacitance, and stability threshold as a nation are being tested, and they will be tested further in the months and years ahead.

Our history is always ready ammunition to be dispatched in any ethnic combat in that ungoverned social media neighbourhood. Contending sides launch missiles from the war rooms with their own ‘’droppings’’ of history. I will not be a soundboard for those tiresome and unyielding conversations here. The duty of the citizen is to be a dispassionate arbiter, divining truth from untruth, and staying irrepressibly on the side of the nation’s interest. I believe instead of these contentions which re-emerge in our public discourse every now and then, we can learn from our past and forge a better country.

The truth is, history is subjective. Every group has their own version of history -- as regards their social and political existence in Nigeria. But we cannot keep recycling the epics of woes that have bogged us down as a people. We must move forward and look forward.

Nigeria’s past is not a very glossy one, yes. It is replete with tales of pain, sorrow, and blood – depending on who is telling the story. Fatal mistakes were made, but must we keep reliving the errors of our past? Are we doomed to remain a rendition of our past? Can we not move forward – beyond our past?

Nothing changes because the old ways remain the same. We must think a new Nigeria, and a new Nigeria begins with new progressive thinking. We cannot take a leap into a glorious future while we are still stuck in the rut of the past. Our past has become today’s pain, and tomorrow’s burden.

But does this imply we must abandon our history? Absolutely not. We embrace it, but learn from it as well, and stop repeating the same mistakes. The current confusion shows we have learnt nothing from our chequered history.

Our past should teach us to be respectful of one another; it should teach us caution; it should teach us tolerance; it should teach us understanding; it should teach discipline, and it should teach us the very essence of unity.

Like Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, said to Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe: ‘’Let us understand our differences. I am a Muslim and a Northerner. You are a Christian, an Easterner. By understanding our differences, we can build unity in our country.”

We must manage our diversity with ‘’care, mutual respect, understanding, caution and trembling’’. We cannot discount our points of divergence, but we must also recognise that we have solid arcs of convergence. What unites us should be stronger than what divides us.

It is unfortunate that to reinforce prejudices, some deploy self-archived ahistorical accounts. Our past as a country should not be a springboard for hate exchanges, but a source of learning to forge a better country. We hold on to "history", whether manufactured or inverted, to accent our biases. Evolving means we are better than yesterday.

No one can hold their own version of history as truth everyone must chow down. There are villains and heroes in every story. It is depressing that our much-vaunted past has become stuff of propaganda passed down from one generation to another. Hate transitioning from one generation to another. We must break this circle of hostility.

Really, we cannot make progress as a country if we remain on this treadmill. We must sanitise our conversations, discard epithets, and evolve into a wholesome whole.

We must deconstruct revisionist fabrications and pretensions to make good of the future. Knowing that we started off on a shaky foundation should thrust us into consciously working out our destiny. We cannot hold on to an acrimonious past as a precedence for the present and the future. As I said previously, we take the lessons from the past and forge a new path.

We dissipate so much energy on ethnic bouts of supremacy but leave very little to interrogate fundamental issues of governance. We must make our existence as a nation about jutting issues that govern our lives as citizens – economy, security, education, and health.

In conclusion, it is insalubrious to ascribe the actions of deviants within a certain pool to any group. I have maintained this position since the wave of baleful propaganda against the Fulani. I will not deviate from the path of unity and peacebuilding no matter how perilous the road becomes.

The invidious and menacing enterprise of Peter Obi’s ‘’Obidients’’ has driven the dagger deep into the national umbilicus. Sore points quickened, passions inflamed, and bottled-up emotions unlatched.

First, we need to address the ‘’Obidient’’menace full-frontal, and we need to strengthen national and community concord. We need new ententes brokered for national cohesion or unity. We need to talk. We need to have those difficult conversations in civilised and decorous fora with a view to healing our nation. We need to talk with one another, not at each other.

We need new alliances cementing the north with the south, and the east with the west in holy matrimony. But to achieve this, we need to talk.

The aftermath of 2023 General Election, without a shadow of doubt, have exposed some politicians and “celebrities” who have been masquerading as patriots and objective intellectuals.

“But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.”– Romans 2:8.

“The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel influences the way you act” (The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren, 2002).

The internationally acclaimed Nigerian novelist and essayist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, wrote and published an utterly biased piece titled “Nigeria’s hollow Democracy,” without providing any material evidence for her reprehensible and repugnant illogical conclusion. The ludicrous piece under microscope is a display of profligate arrogance which is not borne out of patriotism but embedded in self-serving, self-seeking, Igbocentric, and myopic reluctance to accept her own shortcomings. The totality of the piece, indeed, expose her hollow view of humanity. What is the point of being a much-hyped internationally acclaimed Nigerian novelist when you cannot positively promote, or be a good ambassador of your country of birth where you had your first foretaste of this world? This subliminal fact is akin to allegiance and patriotism. It is of note that there are over 176,000 polling units across Nigeria. In Lagos State, there are approximately 13,500 polling units. The pertinent questions to ask is; What is the percentage of the polling units where violence and malpractices actually occurred?

The unpalatable fact of the 2023 General Election is that the winner, Bola Tinubu, won in 12 States, Atiku Abubakar also won in 12 States, Peter Obi won in 11 States. In numerical strength, Bola Tinubu of All Progressive Congress (APC) scored 8,794,726 votes and came first, Atiku Abubakar of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 6,984,520 votes and came second, Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) scored 6,202,533 votes and came third, and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) scored 1,496,687 votes and placed 4th. If Chimamanda genuinely have any issues with these election results, she should have directed her letter to our President, Muhammad Buhari, or wait for the Supreme Court final verdict.

It is also doleful that a perceptible writer would advertently, through measured actions, seek to damage our international reputation and heighten the negative perception and downbeat narratives about Nigeria and Nigerians. This preposterous act of national betrayal is not some sort of magical intervention or revolution, it is insane to diminish your Country and fellow citizens because of bread crumbs and half-baked endorsement. This is exactly what her letter to the United States President amount to. At what point do we end our colonial mentality and adoration of foreigners?  A rational mind need to be cognizant of the fact that you do not demean your country and then hope to swim in celebrated honour. Eniti o ba ta arale e lopo, kole ri ra lowon.

As an impenitent Igbo woman, Chimamanda Ngozi is Igbocentric in all ramifications. I am constrained to remind her and other cohorts that the same Igbocentric mentality led to the devastated January 15, 1966 Coup d’état perpetrated by a number of Nigerian military officers of Igbo extraction, largely driven by mortification tendency, visceral hatred, and ethnicity-based agenda. The malignant ordnance act destabilized Nigeria and eclipsed the country for more than 50 years. We have also witnessed some primordial belligerence and pugnaciousness exhibited by some of her kinsmen. An Igbo leader, Eze Igbo of Ajao Estate in Lagos, threatened to mobilize and invite members of the proscribed IPOB to Lagos State. The Eze Igbo is now cooling off in DSS custody. Another kinsman overtly called the Yoruba’s “political rascals”. You exhibit malignancy at any slight opportunity while consciously attempting to ignite waning flames, yet you are desperate to rule Nigeria. With this deep-seated ethnocentric mentality, it will take a monumental supernatural occurrence to rule Nigeria again.

As overtly stated in my recent piece, there is no region or tribe in Nigeria that has the monopoly of bigotry and visceral hatred. The South East and South South are not the only composition of Nigeria, there are other four geo-political Zones meaning that Nigeria is a vast country with different idiosyncratic culture, religion and tradition, and blessed with natural resources and human capital by virtue of population and geographical size.

As virtuous citizens, lets encourage Chimamanda Adichie to concentrate on her perpetual hollow hairstyles and fictional storytelling, that is her calling.

Femi Amosun is a UK-based management professional and politico-economic analyst with distinctive zeal for sustainable development through responsible governance and accountability.