REUBEN'S VIEWS
It is goldmine season for Nigerian lawyers, meal time, boom time as every election season has been, but now more than ever. Every electoral process, pre- during, and after - often provides opportunities for aggrieved politicians to take their disputes to court, and over the years this has been so much the pattern that lawyers often brandish the elementary fact that election petitions are sui generis, that is that they are in special category of their own, unique, peculiar. The originating process for election cases is the filing of petitions based on the framework provided in party guidelines, the Electoral Act and the Constitution, the basic law, and in accordance with stipulated rules of procedure. Some lawyers - from the ordinary ambulance chaser to the Senior Advocate of Nigeria have so mastered the game that most politicians know who to go to when it is election time, and which judges and courts to consult. Many senior lawyers have their pre-eminence built on their reputation to pursue election petitions.
The net effect is that many politicians, veterans of election petition cases, have also become bathroom lawyers. These persons are so adept at the tactics of election litigation that they sometimes sound smarter than the counsel, when it comes to forum shopping, the resort to obnoxious ex parte applications and how to get judges to descend into the arena and pollute the temple of justice. It is such time again and we have seen signs of this as litigants are now taking pre-election disputes to High Courts. One major feature of the new Electoral Act 2022, which became effective in February 2022, is that pre-election cases are now to originate from the Federal High Courts, but even striking is how the new law provides so many grounds for likely litigations. In 2015, after the election, it was observed that litigations were few. In 2019, there was quite a number. In 2023, there would be a deluge, and the catalyst for this would be the contradictions and omissions in the Electoral Act 2022 which repealed the 2010 Electoral Act.
I should not be misunderstood. The review of the country’s electoral framework was a major subject of advocacy by the Nigerian civil society, lawyers, politicians, the media and stakeholders. Nigerians wanted an electoral system that would address the people’s grievances, as defined by omissions in previous electoral cycles, and the need to bring Nigerian democracy at par with best practices elsewhere, if not exactly, but at least to strengthen the credibility of the process, through technology, and the power of the people to make informed choices. Previous attempts to repeal the Electoral Act 2010, ahead of the 2019 elections failed. The 8th National Assembly could not find a common ground with the Executive as the President picked issues with language, timing and the contents of the proposed amendments. He rejected the Bill three times. When it became clear that the rigmarole would not end and that the elections were around the corner, the Buhari government claimed that it was better to avoid “uncertainty”.
The popular opinion on this was that the government was not ready for any reform, and would rather play safe to retain power under familiar electoral arrangements. But the agitation for electoral reform did not subside. The pressure remained so strong that the succeeding 9th Assembly that assumed office in June 2019 had to declare as one of its major priorities, a new electoral framework consequent upon a repeal of the Electoral Act 2010. In November 2019, the duo of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege (Delta Central) and Senator Abubakar Kyari (Borno North) moved the motion on the floor of the Senate for the required exercise. In February 2022, the outcome of the process, including public hearings, debates and harmonization between both Chambers of the National Assembly, a new Bill was sent to the President for his assent. When it appeared as if the President was not going to act within the stipulated time frame or that he would attempt to veto the Bill or raise objections that would amount to a repeat of the debacle of 2018, civil society groups who had been active participants in the process trooped to the streets. Opposition parties made an issue out of the President’s tardiness. Even members of the ruling party became rebellious over the right mode of party primaries that should be adopted in order to ensure a level playing field and check the menace of overbearing state Governors and party overlords who use influence, cash and the power of incumbency to subvert internal party processes.
In the end, the President signed, although with an advisory that the National Assembly should amend Section 84(12) of the Act which in his reckoning violates Section 42(1) of the 1999 Constitution. The lawmakers amended the mode of primaries providing for direct, indirect and consensus options with a strict construction of the meaning of consensus. I shall return to this anon, but for now it is to be said that the redefinition of the Electoral framework was a sort of self-redemption for President Buhari and his administration. Electoral Act 2022, like the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) and the Discrimination Against Persons Living With Disabilities (Prohibition) Act would be remembered as part of his legacy. The Electoral Act is also a kind of victory for civil society, its persistence and the solidarity of other stakeholders. For the National Assembly, it is a sort of vindication; for once, Nigerian lawmakers, the class of 2019 in Abuja acted intentionally and with courage. Before then, time, money and energy had been wasted to the consternation of the public.
The law also came as great relief, in part because of some of the game-changing provisions therein, to wit: Section 3(3) which says that funding required for a general election must be released not later than one year before the elections. This makes sense but I doubt if the provision has been complied with. Section 8(5) - on the complete neutrality of INEC officials; Section 29 on early conduct of party primaries and submission of list of candidates; Section 34 on the substitution of candidates in the event of death in an election; Section 47: which legalizes the electronic accreditation of voters; Section 50: which allows for electronic transmission of results; Section 54 (2) which allows for the participation of persons with disability; Section 51 which redefines over-voting; Section 65: gives INEC the powers to challenge any fabricated results and declare same void; Section 94 on early commencement of campaigns, 150 days before polling day. These are some of the top provisions in the Act, although there are oversights as well: the failure to include independent candidacy which is now one of the 44 Bills in the Constitution amendment process, diaspora voting which has been overlooked in both instances, and the failure to agree on an Electoral Offences Commission.
But very early in the day, we are beginning to see how controversial the new law may turn out to be. No law is perfect, but this is a landmine for litigations. First, Section 84 (12) which says basically that political appointees must resign their positions ahead of the party primaries in order to create a level playing field for all delegates and aspirants. This particular provision has pitched state governors and the Federal Executive against the National Assembly resulting in litigations from Umuahia to Abuja. The Federal High Court in Umuahia in a matter brought before Justice Evelyn Anyadike by Chief Nduka Edede ruled that Section 84(12) is unconstitutional, illegal and void to the extent of its inconsistency with Sections 37, 42, 66, 107, 137 and 182 of the 1999 Constitution. The Court ruled that the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation should delete the said Section 84 (12) from the Electoral Act. Neither the National Assembly nor the Electoral Commission was joined in the matter. The former engaged the services of Kayode Ajulo Esq. to file an appeal, and after seeking leave of the Umuahia Court which was granted, Ajulo has since filed appellate processes. While that was pending, the Peoples Democratic Party had also filed an appeal in the matter in a suit titled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) vs. Chief Nduka Edede and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF). On May 11, the Court of Appeal, Owerri Judicial Division, sitting in Abuja ruled in this particular case.
The ruling of the Court of Appeal has created more confusion than anything else, and it is perhaps the structure of the judgment itself that is responsible for this. The text of the lead judgment (there were no dissensions) began with declaratory affirmations that went beyond the main prayers before the court. Whereas it is elementary law that judges can express opinions, obiter dictum, what is of moment is the main substance of the case, the ratio. In this case, after considering the facts of the case, and the issues, the Appeal Court ruled that the High Court in Umuahia lacked jurisdiction and that the plaintiff, lacked locus and a cause of action. In effect, the case in Umuahia which Federal Ministers and others have been relying upon for protection was a nullity. But the same Court of Appeal then went further to say if this had not been the case, it would be proper to declare Section 84(12) unconstitutional. They opined that the matter would be best resolved by the Supreme Court. The media and interested politicians took the Court’s comment and went to town with it. It is not the duty of the Court to play Father Christmas. The Court must speak with clarity, and refuse the temptation to go on a frolic of its own.
What is further curious is the report in the newspapers, yesterday, that since April 29 President Muhammadu Buhari and AGF Abubakar Malami had gone to the Apex Court to seek an order of the Court to strike out Section 84(12) of the Act. The National Assembly has also filed a counter-affidavit. But what is the interest of the Federal Government in this matter seeking to invoke the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court? It would seem in this instance that what the Federal Government is doing is trying to take a second bite at the cherry. The President having granted assent to the Electoral Bill 2022, has already exercised his discretion. To have assented accordingly and now go to the Supreme Court is a most unusual move. The executive is at liberty to send further amendments to the National Assembly, to do otherwise would amount to self-indulgence. In yet another case filed by Mike Ozekhome, SAN on behalf of the Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, which has now been withdrawn, the constitutionality of the same Section 84(12) was also raised by counsel. We certainly have not heard the last story on the matter of Section 84(12).
Similarly, Section 84(8) of the Electoral Act 2022 has also raised concerns. The National Assembly suspended its recess and returned to give “expeditious consideration” of the Section 84 (8), to modify it. In the process of amending the Electoral Act, the lawmakers had forgotten to include statutory delegates in the list of those who could be delegates at party primaries. Section 84(8) refers to democratically elected delegates as persons who can participate in party primaries and conventions; having now realized that they had written themselves out of the law, the lawmakers sought to correct that oversight. This is a reinstatement of a similar provision in the Electoral Act 2010. Otherwise, it would have meant that the President, the Vice President, Members of the National Assembly, Governors and their Deputies, members of State Houses of Assembly, Councillors and other elected officials would have been excluded from the party primaries, not being delegates. But there are landmines here, and the most prominent being the likelihood that the President may not grant his assent to it before the commencement of the election of delegates. The two major political parties have fixed their conventions for the end of the month. Should the President sign after the election of delegates, it means that any special delegate that participates in the Conventions would have violated the same law. That will be a case of the law having retrospective effect which could become a ground for litigation by qualified persons challenging the validity of such participation. It is a potential source of dispute.
The same can be said of Section 84(3) of the Electoral Act which says that neither the party nor INEC can disqualify a candidate except through a court of law. As follows: “A political party shall not impose nomination, qualification or disqualification criteria, measures, or conditions on any aspirant or candidates for election in its constitution, guidelines or rules for nomination of candidates for elections…” This section of the Electoral Act is meant to check the excesses of political parties. Political parties often insist on the authority that they are entitled to conduct their own affairs without any interference by the courts except where it can be established that party rules or the laws of the land have been violated. In the on-going process, political parties have been screening candidates, and we have had many aspirants claiming that they are loyal party members and would abide by what the party says. There are persons who have also been told that incumbents have been anointed for another term and no one should bother to challenge them, and certain persons may be expressly disqualified on this. If an incumbent is not doing well, should any party talk about offer of first refusal or impose the incumbent? We can only expect many cases in court over this, beginning with the pre-election dispute already declared by a PDP member, Mr. Cosmas Ndukwe who is asking the court to stop the PDP presidential primary on the ground that the party has violated its own Constitution on the issue of zoning.
While there is no doubt that the Electoral Act 2022 has introduced some reforms, it would certainly require further amendments. In repealing Section 31(5) of the Electoral Act 2010, the new law at Section 29(5) and 29(6) grants locus in matters involving false submission of information to only an aspirant who took part in the party primaries, not any person, and under Section 84(11) and (12), only the Federal High Court has jurisdiction over party primaries. The Federal High Court is likely to be overworked! Even when an observer has truthful information about a particular aspirant, he would be dismissed as a busy-body meddling into internal party matters. There would be busy days ahead for lawyers. Let them enjoy the harvest.
The current presidential election process in Nigeria, the sixth, since the return to democratic rule in 1999, is like no other before it. It is the most contested, the most controversial, and the most demonstrative of the fault lines, and notably, the moral depravity in Nigerian politics and society. By this time in every other Presidential election before now, there was more or less a clear sense of direction and whereas there were contenders, they were few known figures. This time around, the race for the Presidency especially in the two main political parties – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) has become an all –comer’s affair, a lottery in fact, if not a comedy, at the lower end of that spectrum- a farce, a burlesque. About a week ago, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) closed the sale of its expression of interest and nomination forms, and after screening the 17 aspirants that showed interest in the Presidential position, the party came up with a short list of 15. Fifteen: the highest number of eligible aspirants ever in the 24-year history of the party! Today, Tuesday, May 10, the rival APC closes the sale and submission of its expression of interest and nomination forms, having extended this by a week to accommodate the Ramadan holiday.
The last time I checked, the APC was talking about 40 aspirants, and 24 of them having paid the high fee of N100 million, and the party boasting of over N2.4 billion in its coffers. No other electoral process has been this costly since 1999! By the time the APC closes shop for submissions today, Nigeria would have most probably on its hands, over 40 aspirants trying to be President in just two political parties. There are 16 other political . Where are they? Nobody is talking about them. They have been crowded out by the PDP and the APC, most effectively. Due to lack of capacity and prominence, it would be difficult for any other political party in Nigeria at the moment to provide better traction at the Presidential level, even if many of those other parties may have better aspirants, and that is the truth. How inclusive is the emerging democratic process? How diverse, open and fair are the options available to the Nigerian electorate? The two major political parties: the APC and the PDP project much that is wrong with the current transition process and the move towards 2023. It is worse that there is only one female Presidential aspirant!
And why do we have so many Presidential aspirants, so many that nobody is even focusing on what goes on at the State and local council levels in all the 36 states plus FCT and the country’s 774 local governments, or in other political parties? It is perhaps not so unusual in other political jurisdictions. In the 2020 Democratic Party Presidential primaries in the United States, a total of 29 candidates declared their intention, the largest number in any Presidential primaries in the US since 1972. The primaries in the US are organized in all the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the five US territories and abroad. It is not the kind of overnight affair that we have in Nigeria, rather it is staggered, and it is in comparison based on the principle of proportional representation.
In 2020, on the US Republican side, as early as April 2019, Bill Weld, former Governor of Massachusetts, Joe Walsh in August, former Governor of South Carolina, and US Rep. Mark Stanford, showed interest in the primary, but the party had earlier chosen Donald J, Trump, who was eligible for a second term. He became the presumptive Republican candidate in March 2020, after securing a majority of pledged delegates. Trump couldn’t be bothered anyway. He referred to those who dared to challenge him as “stooges”. Trump’s advantage was his incumbency in 2020. Four years earlier a total of 17 candidates tried to get into the primary on the Republican side. Trump won narrowly, even with his 44.95% majority. Those who point to the US example as evidence that there is nothing wrong if 40 or more persons show interest in the Nigerian Presidency, drawing comparisons from the US, may have the plain evidence of numbers, but the truth is that both systems are different. The numbers do not explain everything. Nigeria’s current situation points to other metrics of analysis, within a cultural, social and individual context.
The Presidential position in Nigeria is the most contested and the most attractive in Nigeria today because the position has been demystified so completely, I would not be surprised to wake up tomorrow morning to hear that a herbalist or a vulcanizer has purchased a Presidential nomination form. This demystification has been gradual, and it speaks to the failure of successive leaders to use the office to do grand things, failing to act at critical moments, alienating the people, creating spectacles of doubt and trust, and thus evoking in the general populace the thinking that even the right-thinking, lowliest placed can lead Nigeria. The bar has been set so low, it seems anybody can be President of Nigeria today. The other day, I was asked: what exactly does it take these days to be President of Nigeria? While I was trying to put an answer together, I was reminded that once upon a time in this country, a cobbler once aspired to be Legal Adviser of a political party: SDP, Kano State. When the cobbler was told that he needed to be a lawyer to provide legal adviser, he was said to have retorted famously that it did not matter! I dismissed the story as entirely apocryphal but I was again reminded that in this same Nigeria, political parties once appointed men as Leaders of the Women’s Wing of political parties, and 60-something-year-olds as youth leaders. The Presidential race ahead of the 2023 elections, notably in the two major political parties is beginning to look exactly like that.
You only need to have a group of friends or access to enough money and then wake up on the wrong side of the bed, one early morning and then just decide that if you and your friends can afford the cost of the relevant forms, you too can be President of Nigeria. Money has been the bane of Nigerian politics. It is worse today. Sums of N100 million or N50 million may look like chicken change to the Nigerian elite, when that is converted to the dollar, but to the ordinary Nigerian who has no job, facing a high cost of living crisis, and a hostile environment, that is more than a fortune. That poor Nigerian has had to witness one big man after another churning out that fortune to buy a form or two, in the past weeks, in what is at best a gamble. Many of the aspirants know that they won’t go beyond the primaries, or may never win, but they are into the lottery all the same. The Electoral Act 2022 sets a ceiling on campaign finance but it seems that this is being observed already in the breach even before the ink on the law dries off. Nobody is even concerned about the law. The Chief Law Officer of the Federation wants to be Governor in his home state of Kebbi and he is the one saying that a electoral provision arising from an enactment of the National Assembly codified as Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act does not matter, indeed that it will be expunged and deleted summarily, in line with a controversial court ruling, so why should anybody bother about what the law says?
This scant regard for the law is most signposted by the involvement of the Central Bank Governor of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele in the political process. The ding-dong over the alleged political interest of the CBN Governor has been one of the major highlights of the 2023 pre-primary process. For more than a month, a group of persuaders have taken it upon themselves to persuade the CBN Governor that he must seek the Presidency of Nigeria and that he is the best man for the job. The #MeffyforPresident group, as it is known, has held public events, printed posters, placed advertorials in the media, and paraded campaign vehicles in a show of strength and readiness. Twice, Emefiele has had cause to inform Nigerians that he is focused on his job as CBN Governor and that it is God that chooses leaders. Last Friday, a group of Mefy supporters, majorly Rice Farmers decided to take the bull by the horns. They collected expression of interest and nomination forms on behalf of the CBN Governor on the platform of the ruling APC party – N100 million!
This time around, rather than talk about his focus on his job, as the manager of Nigeria’s monetary policy, Emefiele did not disown the persuaders. He said he is consulting and seeking Divine Guidance given the seriousness of the matter, with a caveat that if he chooses to join the Presidential race, he would pay the N100 million from his own earnings in a banking career that spans 35 years. By saying so, the CBN governor simply crucified himself with his own mouth. He has confirmed that he is in fact a politician and that he belongs to Nigeria’s ruling party. It has since come to light that he has been a card-carrying member of the APC since February 2021, and the Chairman of his local ward – Ward 6 in Ika South Local Government Area of Delta, Nduka Erikpume, has confirmed this to be true. Can Nigeria’s CBN Governor be a card-carrying member of a political party and engage in partisan politics? His supporters point to the fact that in the United States, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is a member of the Democratic Party. Before her, her predecessor, Steve Mnuchin was a Republican. The example has also been cited of the Central Bank Governor of Ivory Coast, Tiemono Meyliet Kono who has now been handpicked by President Alassane Ouattara as his country’s Vice President. But what does the law say in all these places? And what does the law say in Nigeria? In the US, the Treasury Secretary, the Fed Chair, and even Supreme Court Justices are identified by their ideological and party affiliations. In Ivory Coast, the CBN Governor had to resign before he assumed office as Vice-President.
In Nigeria, the CBN Governor does not want to resign. He has gone to court, through his counsel, Mike Ozekhome, SAN, in Abuja to argue that he can be Governor of the CBN and an APC Presidential aspirant at the same time, and that Section 84(12) of the Electoral Act as amended, does not apply to him, he being a public officer (under Section 318) and not a political appointee. The matter has been adjourned till May 12, and the defendants – INEC and the AGF, have been put on notice. This would probably end up as one of the most interesting developments in the 2023 electoral process, and the biggest drama in the history of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It is the duty of the courts to interpret the laws. But it is noteworthy that before the matter is determined, many other stakeholders have been making noteworthy legal, moral and political statements. Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, former Minister of Education and former Minister of Solid Minerals Development says it means that for seven years, Emefiele had handed over, the CBN, a body that is supposed to be independent, representing the interest of all Nigerians, to one political party! That is a very serious indictment. The PDP added salt to the matter by saying that the CBN has been turned into the “finance department of the APC”. Emefiele is further accused of having broken all relevant laws: Sections 6, 9 and 112 (2)(c ) of the CBN Act, Section 18 of the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA), and Section 030422 of the Public Service Rules. Femi Falana, SAN says Emefiele has a legal hurdle to cross. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN of Ondo State, Ebun Olu-Adegboruwa (SAN), and Oby Ezekwesili, think that Emefiele’s reported ambition is a “a joke taken too far” and like many others, they think he must resign forthwith, or be fired by the President. Emefiele is right now ending his career as the first CBN Governor to jump directly from his office into the frying pan of partisan politics with oil splattered all over him and the entire institution from the Bankers’ Committee to the Banking Halls.
Somehow, some attempt has been made to mitigate the accruing damage by the report in the last 72 hours that some characters have also purchased expression of interest and nomination forms for the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, as if to show that Emefiele has done nothing wrong. The key difference is that Adesina has not uttered a word. I think he should. He is probably silent because he knows that the AfDB is not Nigeria: rules apply there! His silence fuels the speculations. As things stand, Emefiele and Adesina may never submit any forms for consideration and hence, the public reactions and the law suits including the ex parte application filed by Naapah Bariledum at a Federal High Court, in Port Harcourt, to stop Emefiele, would become academic. But would Emefiele and the CBN ever recover from this? I doubt.
It is a shame that, in addition to this sordid drama, what is predominant in the Nigerian political landscape is the politics of zoning, ethnicity and religion. There is very little about ideas. France has just completed a Presidential election in which the issues were well-defined, from far-right to the centre and the far-left, and the people made their choice. In Nigeria, there is so much smoke and no clarity. In the APC, every Presidential aspirant talks about how they have been endorsed by President Muhammadu Buhari. If indeed this is true, the President must help bring sanity to this confusing race. The seriousness of the office of the President of Nigeria must not be diminished. It is the most powerful office in the land, without doubt, but it is also the office now in most urgent need of protection from ridicule and hijack.
“My brother, when are you declaring for President?”
“Which President? I am already a President in my own right. I am the President of my house.”
“That is not the kind of President I am talking about. I mean a President with the big P, not the small one that gives you a delusion of importance.”
“My friend, don’t insult me. I took an oath of office at the registry and at the church. I paid a bride price. I got a certificate, making me a constituted authority. I have three Dudukes to show for it. What else am I looking for? Come oh, are you doubting my full authority as a President of my own house? Are my in-laws looking for my trouble? In fact, I am not just a President. I am a Chairman. The Odogwu of my Lodge… The Otunba of my own space.”
“Bros, I beg, you joke too much. I am talking about the President of Nigeria, something serious; you are talking about a three-bedroom apartment where you behave as if you are a real man just because you married a wife. This is what I tell you all the time. You need to be ambitious. Think big. Dream big. Otherwise that home you claim you have, a more capable man will come in there and disrupt everything. Even your children will turn against you. I am telling you to think big, you are saying you are the constituted authority of your house. Somebody is advising you to start seeing yourself as someone who can eat pounded yam with crocodile meat, everyday, if you want, you are telling me you would rather eat ponmo and brorkotor. Is everything okay with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me.”
“So who says you too can’t be President of Nigeria?”
“Me? President of Nigeria?”
“Yes. President of Nigeria. That is the latest Baba Ijebu game in town! Better lottery. The thing don become pool fixtures. Perm one, perm two, you fit win.”
“Please, please, please. If you don’t have anything serious to talk about, please leave me alone.”
“I am telling you. This thing called Nigerian Presidency for 2023 has become a try-your-luck game. Everybody is now declaring interest in the Presidency. That is what the thing has become. When somebody told me that it is even the latest Bitcoin, I just decided that may be you and I should go and try our luck. We should think out of the box.”
“President of Nigeria?”
“The people who have declared, do they have two heads? Let me tell you, the way this thing is going, anybody can be President. After all, an actor Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. Actor oh! In Ukraine, a comedian, ordinary comedian, Zelensky is President. He is fighting a war now, and every important country and leader in the Western world is going there to express solidarity with him. He has even addressed the United Nations. You don’t know your destiny. The way this our Nigeria is going, I won’t be surprised if a clown emerges as President of Nigeria in 2023.”
“God forbid.”
“Are you a clown? After all, you claim to be well-educated. I am saying you too can be President”
“How about you? Why don’t you too try your luck?”
“I don’t know people. You are better connected. See, the way this thing works these days, you must know people, have strong connections, and just go about saying you too want to be President, make noise and before you know it, some people will form themselves into a group, look for one fancy label and they will say you are the best man since the invention of tooth paste, and the best man for the job. I am ready to lead your campaign team”
“But I don’t know anything about politics. I have no idea.”
“You don’t need to know anything about politics. Just have the right connections. The people will buy the nomination and expression of interest forms on your behalf. We will create a Campaign Forum in your name. We will call ourselves the Patriots Forum, and we will say you are the man! That is how they do it. I want you to move fast because as we speak now, you don’t know who is going to declare this very week. Declaring interest in the Presidency of Nigeria is right now, the biggest business in town.”
“I will have to talk to my wife first.”
“Your wife! Your wife! You think your wife will object to the possibility of becoming the First Lady of Nigeria? You will be surprised that she herself may have been nursing the idea. Let me tell you something: your wife will tell you that there is nothing the people who are First Ladies have, that she too does not have. She will tell you she is even better. In fact, if you are not careful, she will say she too can be President of Nigeria.”
“Without my authority?”
“Which authority? My friend, go and sit down. We are in the 21st Century! Is it because I am trying to encourage you? If you are not interested, I can decide to push your wife to run for the position of President of Nigeria. She is actually highly qualified. And we can groom her”
“You will groom my wife? Are you mad? Abi you wan die? That is the day she will leave my house!”
“She is a Nigerian citizen. And if you say you don’t want good luck in your household, you don’t want to be president, you don’t want your wife, we will look for another person. In fact, the way my mind is working, our group will go and recruit Obi Cubana, or E-Money or White Money. They too can be President.”
“Excuse me.”
“Yes. That is where we are right now as we move towards 2023 in this country”
“White Money? Has Nigeria become a Big Brother Naija Show?”
“I don’t see the difference. They have turned the whole thing into a gamble. What do you have against White Money? At least the money is white, not black. Every other aspirant is bringing black money.”
“That is defamatory. I won’t be party to that.”
“My friend, white money is better than black money. Anybody that brings N100 million to buy ordinary form or N50 million, or even N40 million in this economy should be investigated for black money. All of a sudden, all kinds of groups and persons are buying forms on behalf of Presidential aspirants. People should stop telling us a dog is a monkey. We have eyes. We can see.”
“Count me out”
“It means you don’t understand politics. Don’t you know that some of these aspirants don’t really want to be President? They just want to show that they are relevant. Some of them just want to protect themselves. Some have lost political relevance and they want to jump-start themselves politically. Then you have the category of hungry people who are using Presidential declaration, or Governorship declaration as a fund-raising opportunity. The whole thing is a game.”
“But I hear that everyone that is declaring must get the President’s blessing. The President does not know me. ”
“You don’t need his endorsement. Every citizen has the right to contest once you meet the requirements under Section 40 of the Constitution and Section 131. Your right to occupy any political position in this country is properly defined in the Constitution. Everybody that goes to the President to say he or she wants to be President, the man says Yes. That is why they are all saying they have the President’s blessing. What do they expect him to say? Of course, he will tell them they are good to go. See, if we organize properly, and we take you to President Buhari tomorrow and tell him sir, this your son wants to be President too, he will say Yes, go ahead.”
“You think he will endorse someone like me, without knowing me?”
“Why not? He will. What do you want him to do?”
“But he once said he has his favorite and he would not name the person in order to protect him or her from being assassinated.”
“It is typical power politics, my friend. Can’t you see it? Without saying anything categorical, President Buhari has turned himself into the puppeteer, playing divide and rule politics. This is what I always say about this county. The people of Southern Nigeria don’t know how to play politics. We talk too much. We allow other stakeholders to manipulate us. We are too greedy and those who know better manipulate us. Can anybody hold the President down to anything as regards 2023 Presidency? The obvious answer is No. But anyone that comes forward, they say he has blessed them.”
“Under normal circumstances, really, his blessing or non-blessing or opinion should be irrelevant. It is the people of Nigeria that should decide. One man, one vote. And it is his duty to ensure that Nigeria holds credible elections in 2023.”
“Good point, very good. But can’t you see what is going on in the two major political parties? The PDP has abandoned its rule about zoning, specifically Section 7(3c) of its Constitution, which had in fact been adopted by the rival All Progressives Congress. PDP now says that section no longer applies and anybody can be President on its platform.”
“That has not yet been finalized though. The party’s National Working Committee (NWC) is scheduled to meet on Wednesday, this week, to take a decision on the party’s zoning format. We have to wait for that.”
“You know I always tell you that you tend to be naïve sometimes. You think PDP NWC would now zone the choice of its Presidential aspirants, after selling forms to every aspirant from wherever, after collecting too much money, and after screening everyone who expressed interest? My brother, leave matter!”
“What I know is that all the aspirants from the South are saying that in the interest of fairness, equity and justice, the Presidency must be zoned to the South and specifically to the South East.”
“Have you also heard the same Southern Nigerian aspirants saying they will abide by whatever the party decides? But I have not heard any Northern aspirant saying so. What they are saying is that the North has every right to continue in office.”
“But it is different in the APC”
“How is the APC different? Where were you when the APC Party Chairman reportedly said a few days ago, that no final decision has been taken on the zoning of the Presidency by the party?”
“He was probably quoted out of context, because if you look at the APC, all the Presidential aspirants are from the South with the exception of Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State who is from the North Central. It is safe to assume then that the Presidential flagbearer from the APC will be either a Southerner or someone from the North Central.”
“So why do you I think I am urging you to run”
“Sarcasm. You were being sarcastic. I know you well enough to know that were trying to ridicule the entire process.. You know as well as I do that the Northerners do not want a Southerner in the Presidential Villa in 2023. They have played a good game of divide and rule. In the South East and South South, there is currently no consensus. Nobody is going to step down for anyone. In the South West, the divide and rule politics is even worse. You have the most prominent APC politician from the region, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu being challenged by the same people he groomed and turned into big men. Politics in the South West this time around, has become a do-or-die affair. I am sure of that. The same people who are supposed to help Asiwaju mobilize delegates have already made sure that he would not have full support from his political base. This road to 2023 is both interesting and bumpy.”
“It looks like anybody’s game, then. And that is why I think we can get involved too, particularly now that your people in the South West are fighting over ratings in the polls. We can organize our own polls and announce that you are the citizens’ choice”
“No, thanks.”
“Really?”
“Because I really don’t understand what is going on. It is about seven months to the elections. Under normal circumstances, by now, there should be some kind of certainty or clarity about the future of the country and the general elections next year. Right now, the country is in the grips of fear and uncertainty about the future. Nobody has any idea what will happen tomorrow. The aspirants too have no clue.”
“After the primaries, don’t worry. The candidates that would emerge would start talking. They will take care of people, including naysayers like you who think they know it all about Nigeria.”
“I certainly do not know it all. But I don’t like gambling”.
“Let whoever wants to gamble do so. Nigeria itself is a big gamble. Life is also a gamble.”
“Nobody is talking about issues. I only get to hear about individual ambitions, zoning, ethnicity, and religion. In the recent Presidential election in France, President Emmanuel Macron and the opposition candidate, Marine Le Pen discussed issues of interest to the people. Who will speak for us, hapless Nigerians? I want to hear what anybody wants to do about the bad state of the Nigerian economy, inflation, unemployment, terrorism, the cost of living crisis, the loss of hope, all I hear is vote for me, vote for me, I am the best…it is my turn, individual ego, noise, selfishness!”
“Speak for yourself, my friend. That is why you have a voter’s card. “
“That does not guarantee that my vote or your vote or anyone else’s vote would count.”
“It is up to you what you do with your PVC.”
“I just hope we’d still have a country when this is all over. The future has never been this uncertain in this country.”
The Lagos State Government following reports of an alleged “rape incident” involving an 11-year old female student of Chrisland Schools Lagos, and male pupils of the school, during a trip to the World School Games in Dubai (March 10 -13, 2022), promptly shut down the school, to investigate exactly what happened. A video was put into circulation showing the girl, in a dominant cowboy position, riding a young male student like a horse in an amorous fashion, with one of the students watching and recording the bedroom scene. Some other people said the girl was also shown in a reverse osmosis position, whatever that means. The public was shocked. These are primary school children for Heaven’s sake engaging in activities straight from the pages of Kama Sutra, the iconic text on sex and dalliance that their mothers, fathers and grandparents may never have ever heard of or experienced. Raw sex in a primary school!, photographed and videoed and put into circulation. It was like a screen shot of Sodom and Gomorrah. Matters got worse when the mother of the girl involved raised an alarm and made statements to the effect that the school, Chrisland, had failed in its duty to take care of her daughter while on a trip to Dubai, under its auspices; on the return of the students, her daughter was taken for a pregnancy test without her consent, and that when the video became public, every attempt to engage with the school failed, and that the school had told her daughter not to say a word to anybody about her experience. Her daughter, she claimed, went to Dubai as a virgin, and returned as the protagonist in a sex video, traumatized, afraid to return to school.
I followed the story closely. The Lagos State Government having shut down the school and its various branches warned the public to desist from sharing the video. Long before the state government reminded everyone that the circulation of pornography would attract a penalty of 14 years imprisonment, the video was already in circulation in any case, and many social media sites used it as click-bait. But what would any parent gain from a group of minors exploring adult experience? Many must have been motivated by sheer curiousity and the native belief that seeing is believing. The Lagos State Government has now re-opened the Chrisland Schools, and the students are on their way back to the classroom in all the locations where the school has branches: Victoria Garden City where the incident occurred, Idimu, Ikeja, Festac, Lekki and elsewhere.
Chrisland is one of those well-appointed schools with a strong reputation and record of achievements dating back to 40 years. The Awosikas, owners of the school, have through their educational system produced generations of students who have become established in many fields of human endeavour at home and abroad. In the absence of a functional public system, many parents patronize schools like Chrisland which aspire to and maintain higher standards of instruction. Nigeria is a country where education is still valued in terms of the acquisition of certificates, observing the routine and the process to the letter. Even if a child is still going to end up as an internet fraudster or as a Boko Haram soldier, parents believe that a starting point is to give their child, good education. This is more the case among the troubled Nigerian middle class, especially in the Southern parts of the country. Elsewhere, in other parts, the story is different. The North, for example, has the largest collection of out-of-school children. In parts of the East, the enrolment of the boy-child in trade apprenticeship schemes, by the way a global business model, continues to compete with enrolment in the formal school system.
This then makes it all the more surprising when it is reported one case after another that there are serious issues with the same schools that middle class parents and their wannabe colleagues patronize. In the same Chrisland School in question, there was a report around 2019 about a male teacher who was said to have defiled a 2-year-old. The man was convicted. In Abuja, there was also the case of a victim of sexual abuse, 14-year old Keren-Happuch Akpagher who died in one of the elite secondary schools – Premiere Academy, Lugbe. Before the latest incident in Chrisland, there was also the matter of Dowen College in Lekki, Lagos, in which 12-year old Sylvester Oromoni died. The Dowen College matter, still unresolved, with the family still protesting an attempt to sweep the matter under the carpet, was a big scandal. These are three of the reported cases of similar incidents in schools across Nigeria and in Lagos State. Many more of such incidents would go unreported, given the culture of silence that governs the Nigerian cultural and social space. Now, after the temporary closure of Chrisland Schools and police investigations, Chrisland has now been reopened by the Lagos authorities. The Police and the Lagos state government probably acted swiftly in order to prevent the ugliness of the Dowen College affair from re-occurring. To start with, I think, a review is necessary. In this country, we forget too soon, too easily. Things happen at such a frenetic pace, that we hardly have the time to reflect on what may have happened, before we move on to the next incident. Our present-mindedness, that is temporocentrism, is the biggest affliction that holds this country down.
I was struck by three major reactions to the pre-teenage sex scandal of the Chrisland students. Tonto Dikeh, the star actress was the first to raise the alarm, having watched the video she said she did not think this was a case of rape or sexual violence, and that from the way the child was riding the male horse beneath her, it was obvious to her that this was not the child’s first sexual encounter. She actually calculated the rhythm of the motions, it would seem, and surmised that the girl must have had sex at least five times and that there must be an adult somewhere who exposed her quite early. I am tempted to believe Tonto Dikeh. She is a mature, experienced, woman of multiple talents. I am therefore not in a position to doubt her ability to read bedroom, erotic movements and put a date and a stamp to same. But her more cogent point is that parents need to pay more attention to their children. The second reaction came from Shola Ogudu, the mother of Ayo Balogun’s first son, Boluwatife. Ayo Balogun is the superstar musician known popularly known as “Whizkid or Star Boy.” Ms Ogudu in a statement disclosed that her son attends the school in question and that she accompanied her son to Dubai for the World School Games – 76 students from Chrisland and incidentally, the school won about 34 medals which no one has bothered to talk about!
Ms Ogudu indicated that there was no way she could have allowed her son to travel alone to a foreign country, in the midst of 76 children and others! She advised parents to be more attentive, and devote more time to their children. Unlike the aggrieved mother in the story, Ms. Ogudu was full of praise and support for Chrisland Schools. The third reaction that caught my attention was the statement by more than one psychologist that both the girl in the video and her parents need psychological counseling. And I ask: how about the boys too? What kind of 11-year old male child starts having sex so early? What kind of homes are these characters from? I have heard some people arguing that parents do not have time. Schools and teachers are expected to act in loco-parentis. This is where the problem lies.
In our time, growing up, our parents were hands-on guardians, coaches and advisers. They drummed values into our ears at every turn. Each time you tried to venture out of the house, to attend an event or return to school, you would be told: “Remember the child of whom you are.” This had nothing to do with money but everything about values, character, dignity and integrity. But in the new society in which we have found ourselves, many parents have abdicated their responsibilities. They claim that they are busy looking for money to meet everyone’s needs. In the course of that pursuit, a child is handed over straight from the maternity ward to a retinue of nannies, home assistants and aides. In our new society, we throw money at everything including our children. Daddy has no time. Mummy is too busy trying to compete with the Joneses. The children are given all the toys that they want - from TV, to Play station to 24-hour electricity supply. These uptown babies of the new society do not cry. As Max Romeo and the Upsetters put it: “They don’t know what hungry is like/Uptown babies don’t cry/They don’t know what suffering is like/They have Mummy and Daddy/Lots of toys to play with/Nanny and Granny/Lot of friends to stay with…”
As soon as they are old enough to press numbers, they get a sleek, smart phone – usually the costliest in the market, with unrestricted access to social media. Some parents even open instagram and TikTok accounts for their children as soon they start crawling. This Gen Z group is soon introduced to all the negative stuff that social media can offer. Even outside that space, they are exposed to the dissolute lives of their parents: twerking moms, violent, 12 o’clock Dads and a community of sick uncles and aunties who set very bad examples. There are many households out there in which parents and their children are strangers to one another. When the children then fail in school, morally and academically, the same parents blame the teachers. They claim that they have paid so much money so that their children can get the best training possible. The truth of the matter is that money cannot buy everything. There are just certain things money can’t buy. Many parents themselves are in need of parenting! What do you make, for example, of those overgrown babies who wake up in the morning, eat spaghetti and spend the rest of the day playing games in front of the TV. They don’t have to work: their own parents have made enough money to feed the next five generations of idle sons and daughters! These idlers father children and the cycle continues.
It seems to me that all cases of reported misdemeanor in our schools should trigger introspection in every right-thinking, concerned stakeholder. The problem is not that of Chrisland Schools. It is an indication of the deepening moral turpitude in our land. Everything that can go wrong is wrong with the younger generation: juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, value system, cultism, the kind of music they listen to- there is even a gang called the Naira Marley Gang – you don’t want me to describe the sociology of that. Adolescent sexuality is on the rise, with promiscuity now the order of the day. Aristotle told us that “a child learns by imitation” Nigeria has taught its children bad imitation, and that is why the children replicate the bad behaviour of their parents. It is beyond the schools. After all, one Christian university in this same country once decided that it would conduct compulsory virginity tests on its new female students. Many of us complained at the time that this was discriminatory and gender insensitive. The school authorities stood their ground. After two sessions, they didn’t need to be persuaded to abandon the practice without any argument, when they discovered that among the teenage female university entrants, a virginity test was no more than a futile search for a virgin in a maternity ward!
When incidents such as the one under review occur, processes are important. I hope that the Lagos State Government and the Police would make their findings public. By deciding to re-open Chrisland Schools, both authorities must have made some findings and reached a conclusion that the school has no case to answer. Many parents are relieved. But the public has a right to know more. Parents in particular, need to know. There are also lessons to be learnt from how Chrisland Schools management has controlled the crisis and managed the communication process. They have done much better than the managers of Dowen College who practically slept off in the face of a crisis until things went out of hand. The team of crisis managers at Chrisland stayed on the matter and bombarded the public with their own version of the story before the alternative could gain ground. They had the support of other stakeholders who helped to intensify other aspects of the narrative, including detailed revelations about how the girl in question is an indulgent, over-pampered child with a reputation for sexual displays on social media and a wayward, bad-girl-attitude for which she is reportedly unapologetic!
Chrisland School has done a good job of rescuing and protecting its brand all through the storm. In a statement signed on behalf of the school by Akin Fadeyi, a member of the school’s Advisory Board, the school has in place a strong child protection mechanism. Going forward, the school must see the need to invest more in that mechanism, and constantly engage with parents to provide the best possible arrangements for students. Besides, Mrs Winifred Awosika needs to take a second look at the Victoria Garden City (VGC) branch of the School. It was in this same school three years ago, that a teacher was eventually sentenced to a prison term of 60 years for sexually abusing a 2-year old. Is there something amiss in that school that needs to be addressed? Could it be the celebrity environment on the Island? Lagos State has more than 20 thousand schools – public and private, from the primary to the tertiary level. The Government should strengthen the Inspectorate Division of its Ministry of Education to make it more efficient, vigilant, and productive for the good of all. To parents, a simple message: wake up!
Pursuant to the powers to exercise the prerogative of mercy vested in the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Section 175 (1—6) of the 1999 Constitution the Federal Government last week granted state pardon to two former state Governors, Rev Jolly Nyame of Taraba State and Senator Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, along with 157 others. The effect of pardon amounts to the nullification of punishment or consequences of a crime and conviction. The person is fully restored as if he never committed the offence in the first place. It is perhaps for this reason that Justice John Marshall in US v. Wilson (1833) describes a state pardon “as an act of grace”. The President of Nigeria grants pardon as a prerogative or an act of discretion to correct perceived injustice, wrongful punishment or judicial excesses and this could be a tricky point given the salience of the doctrine of separation of powers. The easiest defence however is for the government to hide under the cover of public policy, or the fact that no law is broken when state pardon is granted since it is a constitutional function. The only caveat is found in Section 175 (5) which requires the President to seek the advice of the Council of State and Section 175 (6) which asks the President to act “in accordance with the advice of the Council of State.” In Nigeria, the power to grant pardon is vested in the President with regard to federal offences (section 175) and in State Governors in respect of state offences (Section 212). A pardon is not the same as amnesty which is granted before prosecution, as seen under the Presidency of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua when he granted amnesty to Niger Delta militants nor is state pardon a form of judicial review as defined for now under Nigerian law.
Nigeria has a fairly long history of state pardon. In 1966, before the civil war, the Yakubu Gowon regime pardoned Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Action Group, and former Premier of the defunct Western region, and Chief Anthony Enahoro, journalist and politician, who first moved the motion for Nigeria’s Independence in 1953, both of whom had been convicted of treasonable felony in 1963. President Shehu Shagari pardoned General Yakubu Gowon to nullify the accusation that he was involved in the 1975 Bukar Dimka coup that led to the assassination of General Murtala Muhammed. The same Shagari administration pardoned the Biafran leader, Odimegwu Ojukwu, for leading the Biafran secession between 1967 and 1971. General Babangida granted pardon to Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson, two journalists with the Nigerian Guardian newspapers who were jailed under the draconian Decree 4 imposed by the Muhammadu Buhari regime. General Abdusalami Abubakar pardoned then General Olusegun Obasanjo who was convicted of involvement in a coup plot by the Abacha regime. President Obasanjo pardoned a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 1999, Salisu Buhari was convicted for forging his certificate- the famous Toronto scandal. His sins were later officially forgiven. In March 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan granted pardon to former Governor of Bayelsa State, Chief Diepreye S. Alamieyeseigha along with Lt. General Oladipo Diya (rtd.), Major-General Abdulkarim Adisa (rtd), former Managing Director of Bank of the North, Shettima Bulama, In April 2020, the Buhari administration granted pardon to former Governor of old Bendel State, Prof. Ambrose Alli, Chief Anthony Enahoro, Col. Moses Effiong, Major E.J. Olanrewaju, Babalola Ajayi and 44 others.
Presidential pardons have been controversial in Nigeria. The general public often subjects the pardoned persons list to rigorous scrutiny, with questions usually raised about the criteria for determining who gets pardoned and who does not. This stems from the concern that it is often the privileged and well-connected members of society who have run foul of the law that are often ever so lucky. Even if this may not be completely true, the point is well made that a President with monarchical powers or a state Governor seeking political patronage may exercise the powers of pardon without restraint, resulting in abuse. There are also moral and emotional concerns. In this regard, perhaps the most controversial pardon granted so far in contemporary Nigerian history would be that of Chief DSP Alamieyeseigha who escaped from the arms of the law in the United Kingdom, only to return to a hero’s welcome in Nigeria and the subsequent nullification of all the sins he was alleged to have committed against the people of Bayelsa state. The pardon that was granted him by the Jonathan administration in 2013 was seen as an act of affront by both local and foreign analysts. Alams, as he was known, was accused of having corruptly enriched himself with the resources of Bayelsa state. What was overlooked in this particular case was that the pardon for Alamieyesiegha, initiated by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and later effected by President Jonathan was conditional. President Yar’Adua had involved Alams in the amnesty process in the Niger Delta with a promise that in appreciation of his contributions to the cause of peace and stability in that troubled part of Nigeria, he would be granted pardon. Sometimes the trigger of controversy may simply be blatant error on the part of the authorities as in the case of the April 2020 pardon of Chief Anthony Enahoro. Enahoro was convicted and sentenced in September 1963. He was pardoned by the Gowon regime in August 1966. He went on to become a Federal Commissioner for Information and Labour in 1967. To pardon him a second time was a loud demonstration of absent-mindedness, and to think the pardon was duly gazette. Some government officials failed to check the records!
Controversial pardons are not limited to Nigeria. However, in the United States where the pardoning process is as in Nigeria, vested in the President, the history of pardons has been more acrimonious. Just to cite a few examples: On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford granted full and unconditional pardon to former President Richard Nixon over his involvement in the Watergate scandal that led to his unceremonious resignation from office and any crime that he may have committed as President. Many Americans felt that the pardon was undeserved. It was a controversial decision but Ford stood his ground. He paid a heavy price for that. His popularity rating dropped. Similarly, in 1983, President Bill Clinton’s pardon of millionaire Marc Rich was generally considered too oily a bargain. On his last day in office on January 20, 2001, President Clinton announced more controversial pardons including left-wing Patty Hearst, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans. He also pardoned his own half-brother, Roger Clinton who was convicted for drug trafficking! His last day in office has been described as “pardongate” – a total of 140 pardons! Clinton was known for inciting public outrage with his pardons as was the case when he chose to commute the sentences of 16 FALN terrorists in 1999. His own wife, Hillary Clinton voted against the decision when it was tabled before the Senate but the President could not be stopped because he held power of discretion to grant pardons. The whole idea of presidential pardon in the American system, a hold-over from the British system was first proposed at the 1787 Constitutional Convention by Alexander Hamilton but over the years, there have been fears about how such absolute power, resting on the discretion of one man could be abused, and indeed in his last days in Office, it was thought that President Donald Trump could grant himself a pardon in advance to protect himself legally from the fall-outs of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. President Trump tried to meet Clinton’s record, if he did not surpass it. In the final hours of his Presidency, Trump granted 70 pardons to mostly financiers and lobbyists, and executive clemency/commutations to 73 others.
Back to Nigeria, it should in fact not be surprising that so much outrage has greeted the announcement of pardon to two former Governors – Dariye and Nyame. Those who have commented on the list are not necessarily bothered about the 157 others, but the two former Governors. The sentiments expressed so far are similar to the reactions that attended the pardon of Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in 2013. Like him, Nyame and Dariye were accused of corruptly enriching themselves at public expense. Dariye, Plateau State Governor (1999 -2007) was charged for money laundering (N1.16 billion). His matter went from the High Court all the way to the Supreme Court, at the end of which he was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment by the High Court; this was later reduced to 10 years by the Court of Appeal, and his conviction was finally upheld by the Supreme Court. Rev Jolly Nyame, Governor of Taraba State (1999-2007) was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. And now both men have been freed, completely without conditions. A pardon may be with or without conditions. Theirs is without any. Femi Falana SAN, Jubrin Sam Okutepa, SAN, Governor Nyesom Wike, Reno Omokri and a host of others have argued that this is a form of endorsement of corruption coming from a government that says one of its cardinal tasks was to fight corruption. In his Easter homily on April 17, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto says there are many innocent people languishing inside Nigeria’s “broken system” who should also be freed. His words: “I thank the President for accepting the report of the Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy and granting pardon to over 150 Nigerians serving various terms of imprisonment. The more serious challenge is to immediately free all innocent Nigerians who are held captive and whose only crime is that they are living in Nigeria.” Mike Ozekhome, SAN in an informed commentary on the matter argues that the crux of the matter is that “granting pardon to people convicted of corrupt practices, whether still serving or having served, may be construed as tacit approval of such corrupt practices.”
He argues further that the Council of State arrived at the endorsement of the pardon in error because the two former Governors committed the offences for which they were convicted under state law, the Penal Code Act and not under a Federal legislation, and to that extent, the appropriate person to grant them pardon would seem to be the Governors of their respective states under Section 212 of the 1999 Constitution. He asks: “where lies the justice for the impoverished people of Plateau and Taraba States who will now watch their tormentors stroll out with red carpet treatment?” Incidentally, it is not only lawyers and civil society activists that have expressed shock. It has been reported that even the officials of the anti-corruption agency, the EFCC and their lawyers are alarmed and demoralized. The agency reportedly spent 11 years and millions of Naira on investigation and prosecution of the two former Governors, and now both men are free. They have been cleansed of their sins. Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike says the judges who convicted both men have been exposed to ridicule, and that the pardon is politically motivated - Nyame and Dariye are members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The strongest objection that has been put up is the impression that has now been created that the state protects the rich and that the poor in Nigeria have nothing to regret more than their powerlessness and lack of connections. Hence, Femi Falana SAN observes: “A Nigerian was jailed for stealing noodles in Abuja, he was not granted state pardon. If you want to pardon your friends, you must extend that pardon to other people in the spirit of equity and fairness.” Falana wants all thieves in prison to be pardoned – in other words, what is good for the big thief should be good also for smaller thieves.
The reality check in all of this is that the deed is done and the President is unlikely to reverse himself. Ozekhome raises a cogent question about the people of Plateau and Taraba. I am surprised he overlooks the fact that some people in both states, including incumbent Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau, even Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State have been thanking President Buhari for pardoning their kinsmen. The same people will organize a hero’s welcome for the two former Governors. The effect of their unconditional pardon, after all, is that they have become new men - novus homo! As the political parties prepare for their presidential primaries, it is not impossible that these same men could show up as political candidates – for Senate or Vice-President or even President! The other point made by Ozekhome, with due respect, is to be seen as part of the crisis of federalism in the country. It is true that the two Governors committed offences under state law, but the affected states never investigated or prosecuted them. It was the Federal Government as an interloper that did, and so, the Council of State acted according to the process in place.
Beyond the moral anger that has been displayed, we should be more concerned about how to prevent the abuse of presidential pardon to ensure that the main beneficiaries are not the rich and mighty and that the near-absolute powers exercised by the President are curtailed to prevent a situation whereby pardons go more to friends of the ruling party or kinsmen and political associates. The Council of State, created by Section 153 (1)(b) of the 1999 Constitution, and which is referred to in an obligatory sense in Section 175 (5) and (6) is more of a ceremonial or advisory body. Its members have no powers to overrule the President in respect of state pardon, in the same manner in which the Legislature can challenge the President or the judiciary can question Executive powers by defining what the law is. The power of a President to grant pardon, while an act of benevolence, is rather slippery. He is, in any case, the Chairman of the Council of State. In order to develop our Constitutional framework further, the judiciary should be involved in the pardoning process to check arbitrariness, reduce the scope of discretion, and to ensure that there is a judicial review of the pardon list to bring it more in conformity with the laws of the land and the end of justice. But should this appear as if the judiciary is being brought into the fray to become a judge in its own case, then the Council of State should be given more powers to be part of the process of determining the pardon list, instead of being brought in at the last minute to rubber stamp an Executive decision.
Last week, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), a government agency under the Ministry of Communications, currently led by Minister Isa Pantami, took the decision and made same public that any user of a GSM phone who is yet to link his or her National Identification Number (NIN) to a Subscriber Identification Module that is SIM cards, would be barred from making any further calls on the country’s telecommunication network. The telecommunication operators were so ordered to effect the directive and so by April 4, over 48 million phones had been barred from making any GSM calls. The idea of having mobile telephone lines in Nigeria linked to NIN was first mooted in 2020. Ten times so far, the Ministry of Communications and its subsidiary agency, have extended the deadline for compliance ten times. In December 2020, over 72 million lines were barred from making calls. Following appeals to government, the deadline was again extended the tenth time.
The original reason given for the registration of SIM cards was national security. Too many persons, the government observed, commit crime through mobile telephony, from the use of the lines to kidnap persons collect ransom, lure persons into ritual killings, rape, murder, extortion advance fee fraud and all kinds of criminal activities. In a country of over 200 million people, it made sense to use mobile telephony penetration to track the people and gather data. The linkage between the Nigerian Communications Commission and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) in this regard made sense. Data is the biggest problem in Nigeria. Nigeria plans without data. Nigerians do no respect data. They are more likely to operate on the basis of faith and superstition. Nigerians don’t even know how many they are. With the increasing penetration of mobile telephony, a veritable tool of inclusion and democratization, there is no doubting the quality of data that can be mined from such a strategic and accessible public and open resource foe development planning and national security reasons. It is in this regard that I think the NCC/NIMC intervention was useful and advisable, absolutely in principle. Indeed at a point, the Nigerian regulator fined MTN, the biggest telecommunications company in the country, $3.9 billion for failing to disconnect unregistered SIM cards.
But where are we at this moment and why? In the last week, many Nigerians whose phones are not yet linked to the NIN, are busy agonizing. They cannot make direct calls. They can only receive calls through their WhatsApp applications. Over 48 million Nigerians have been shut down. I can no longer count on my finger tips or the strands of hair on my head, the number of Nigerians who are literally weeping and gnashing their teeth that living without their mobile phones is like a trip to purgatory. Businesses have been affected. Love lives and relationships as well. this reminds me of an essay I once wrote wondering how we used to live before the advent of mobile telephony. I recall those days when every Femi, Chuka and Musa used to go to NITEL offices to make phone calls, only to get lucky or unlucky after many hours on the queue. Few persons had phones at home at the time, and those who were privileged what kind of phones did they have? - early 20tth Century grandfather phones that left your fingers bruised after every call and after a usually annoying encounter with the disrespectful staff at the telephone exchange who could be heard often times eavesdropping on your conversation and giggling at your expense.
The revolution in the telecommunication industry in Africa put an end to all that. It brought the people more than anything else, freedom. It shattered one aspect of the illusion of elite privilege and superiority. Telephone exchange staff became irrelevant – nobody needed them any longer and the gossip that they enjoyed ended. For a hwile there was something called Thuraya Satellite phones! All those women who got carried away by men who wielded those bulky phones, just before the democratization of telephony must be wondering why they got carried away so easily by something that became nothing within such a short space of technological advancement and innovation. Today, Femi, Musa and Chuka can hold a phone, and call anywhere in the world without anyone’s assistance.
The only problem I see here are those Nigerians, the annoying ones who don’t load credit on their own phones, that is the “Oga, Oga, I don’t have credit, please call me back” crowd. When you call back,, the same person who has no credit on his or her phone wants to beg for money from you, but he or she would never think of borrowing credit to even borrow from you. This is why my favourite feature on mobile telephony is True Caller. Once you can memorize the list of time wasters and the greedy crowd, it is easy to just ignore their calls, except they are willing of course to make the call, before that usual line: “Brother mi,, please I need your help oh.” The danger is that every request is a matter of life and death, and the response is expected immediately. Nobody cares about your own circumstances. When you tell them you don’t do this thing they call bank transfer, they would even offer to travel down to set it up for you, so that any time they need a handout from you, there will be no delay - Nigerians and their terrible sense of entitlements and the discontents of mobile telephony!
If people suffer this much in the hands of extended family stalkers, extortionists and abusers, I have no problem with the state qua state saying that it needs to have a record of everyone who makes a call, or owns a phone. A mobile phone looks good. It is a tool of communication. It is also a status symbol. Indeed, when some Nigerians step out of their homes in the morning, they do not hold one phone, they carry about three, and in terms of cost, those three phones are more than enough to buy a plot of land and start the foundation of a building. Some people are so vain, despite the poverty in the land, that when you move beyond the value of their many phones and assess the cost of their jewelry, and apparel, the total combo would be enough to build a house! With such display of insensitivity and the crime level in the country, the Nigerian government is right to seek to know what people do with their phones. And who owns which phone? These small gadgets that people hold in their hands and call mobile phones can be used for good and ill. It is the same instrument that is used to announce good news, that terrorists use to deliver messages of evil. Freedom is a good concept in human societies, but it is not an absolute proposition.
But why would Nigerians refuse to obtain the NIN and link their phones after ten postponements by the National Communications Commission (NCC), over a period of two years. The first thing is that the people do not trust their governments. We have reached a sad point in this country whereby the people consider government their Number One Enemy. They doubt anything that is related to government. Whatever government proposes, the people are likely to think that the primary interest is not theirs but the selfish interests of government officials. Without any deep reflection, they reject any government initiative almost instinctively: The fact that religion, ethnicity and ego are often thrown into the mix makes everything worse. Nigerians are also the most superstitious human beings in the world. They read meanings into everything. When this whole drama about NIN/SIM started, Nigerians were naturally suspicious. Nobody allayed their fears and so the conspiracy theories grew wings. Do they want to monitor our phone calls? What do they need NIN for? Do they want to use this as an excuse to bring in people from Niger and Chad to manipulate 2023 General elections? Even if we take the numbers, who will protect privacy and guarantee integrity?
As is typically Nigerian, nobody could offer any clarifications. The approach adopted by government was to bully the people and issue threats. That worked. People trooped to the registration centres. The centres were chaotic. Long queues; abusive staff. There were reports of extortion to get just a number. NCC addressed that by getting the telecommunication companies involved and setting up new centres at some point. It was at that point that I got involved. I had to get to the service centre at 6 am, alongside Ms. Ijeoma Nwogwugwu and Mr. Adibua Okwesa. Still, we met a queue. It is so strange that in Nigeria, you cannot get certain things, including visas to foreign countries, or a National Identification Number, (NIN) except you go through a night vigil or its equivalent. The Federal Government of Nigeria may insist on its policy choices in this context, but the point is that it was a terribly managed process. The repeated extensions were also in part due to failures on the part of government and its agents. The NCC and the Federal Ministry of Communications jumped into the process without any clear thinking, completely without preparation and without enough public enlightenment.
The second thing is that the people don’t really care. Why should NIN/SIM card alignment be a priority when Nigerian borders are so porous and there is so much poverty in the land?
What I cannot understand is the chaos and confusion that people have been subjected to in the last few days. Suddenly and after a fashion, many NIN registration points are no longer working in parts of the country. Persons who had even obtained the NIN and who may have forgotten to link the NIN to their phone lines are being told to wait. They are asked to wait either because their numbers cannot be traced or that the electronic system in these places is down. People are desperate. They have learnt to rely on their mobile phones. Losing a phone is like being castrated; holding a phone and not being able to make a regular call with it is like mental torture. People around me have been screaming. They are losing it because they can’t make calls without their phones. They shout on top of their voices when I tell them that we once lived in this same country where a certain military chief, a Minister of Communications, who later became a prominent politician and Chairman of the country’s legislature, boasted, one of those days, that telephones are not meant for the poor! They think I am talking fiction, but it is the truth, even if the man’s media handlers have tried to water down the statement over the years. These days the poor own the phones and they are very assertive about their right to also make phone calls.
I want to appeal to the Federal Ministry of Communications and the National Communications Commission to take a second look at the latest deadline. When the queues built up and the people complained, the government was helpless. I commend the agencies, however, for the decision to extend the deadline further until now.
I also admit that the Federal Government had given so many earlier warnings. But that is Nigeria for you. The people do not obey directives by government until they are convinced that it is something deserving of their concern. But by now, it must be clear to Nigerians that government means business with the registration of NIN and SIM cards. Their reluctance to comply is more of a comment on people-government relations than the people themselves, or perhaps both to be fair.
I recommend a more cautious approach. Even those who had their NIN cannot link up. The NCC must look at their back-end operations. It is either the operating system is overwhelmed or there is a need to look at whatever is happening at that back-end. Phone users have been told to go quickly and sort out their NIN/SIM registration and many are out there in compliance but the confusion is enormous. It would be wrong to project the typical Nigerian attitude that the people deserve to be punished. No. Many are actually innocent offenders. It seems to me that the alignment of the NIN and SIM cards should be a permanent, on-going process. There must be more creative ways of making sure that the people comply. What are those other options? Candidly, I have no technical ideas, beyond common sense, but I think mounting additional pressure on a population that is already under the weather as a result of existential uncertainties is most unkind: a national currency that is heavily devalued, the cost of diesel going up so badly even the rich now ration electricity supply, no jobs, no water, no electricity and yet in the midst of it all, some people are beginning to show up talking about 2023 general elections and promises that they do not intend to keep.
The barred GSM lines should be opened up for another reason: the cost to the economy and the effect on the mental health of the people. I suggest that the government should meet the people half-way, encourage them, and show a little more empathy. The people should also meet the government half-way by simply obeying the directive that every barred SIM card should be registered and thereby get unbarred.
“Omo, shine your eyes oh, all of una wey say APC no go fit do Convention, una don see am, abi una no see am? No be say we just do Convention we do better one sef.. Orrr bih. APC on top!”
“Are you okay?”
“I am okay. My party is doing well. We will win this election in 2023 and we will rule this country forever.”
“APC is not forever. Be realistic. You call what you guys did a Convention? Was that a democratic process?”
“Yes it was. I don’t expect any member of the opposition to say we did well. As the new Chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu said, you people are full of tears and sadness. And as the President said, he does not expect the PDP to be happy. All of you predicting that the APC will collapse, or that the Convention will end up as a Third World War, please listen to this Breaking News. On Saturday, the APC, Nigeria’s ruling party organized a successful Convention. The party respected all the rules. INEC kept a watching brief. Everything went smoothly. On Sunday, a new National Working Committee of the party was inaugurated. Oya, come on with your hate message”
“The whole thing was illegal and unconstitutional.”
“Hate speech,”
“Your new Chairman has EFCC cases all over his head. Many unresolved cases.”
“Hate speech. Nobody has ever convicted Senator Abdullahi Adamu. Be careful. You can be sued for defamation.”
“Is the man going to keep his seat as Senator representing Nasarawa West? You people don’t know the law.”
“That’s none of your business. When we get to that bridge we will cross it.”
“What was all that drama about unity list? Governors behaving like Zombie. The President gave them a list and everybody just complied. The whole APC Convention was a violation of the principles of internal party democracy.”
“In your head”
“One aspirant from Lagos even wept. One woman refused to step down. Another one protested that he had been a founding member of the party, only for someone to come from nowhere and parading himself as a consensus candidate.”
“That is democracy. We are a party of many sides. We accommodate everybody including people who think it is good to weep in public.”
“Is that how to run a party? Make people weep?”
“It is supremely human for people to weep, shout and disagree. Tell me something else that I don’t know.”
“I hope you know that the PDP has a case in court about that your APC Convention”
“PDP should go and worry about its own problems. That case is dead on arrival. It has become completely academic. Is it PDP that will determine what we do in APC? I keep telling you, una no well”
“We want to take power from you people? We will grab it.”
“Come and grab it and let’s see. Who will give you power?”
“No. Governor Wike has made the point. We will grab it.”
“Who is Wike?”
“Wike is the Governor of Rivers State. The Indaboski of PDP politics…. exponent of the mad man hypothesis in Nigerian politics”
“I beg. You see that your Indaboski, go and advise him, because the day he leaves office as Governor and his immunity expires, he won’t even be allowed to enter his car. We will grab him.. You saw Willie Obiano wearing boxer shorts. Wike will not even be allowed to wear common singlet.”
“Are you people okay?”
“Try us. You people go about threatening madness. We will show you the meaning of madness. You think we are joking?
“So that is why you people run a Convention of coercion. You intimidate people and you think you can intimidate all Nigerians?”
“Our party is a party of disciplined people. Our leaders took a decision and we all complied. Those who did not comply were allowed to have their way. In the end, there was peace, progress, and solidarity.”
“In your mind, hen?”
“No. In your face!”
“I can tell you for free, that your party the APC is about to implode. Not everybody is happy. I see some of your party chieftains leaving the party and forming a Third Force.”
“You know what I think? Honestly? I really think the time has come for President Buhari to declare the fight against drug addiction a national emergency.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Just what I have said, because I don’t understand why an adult like you will stand before me, in this hot sun, and be hallucinating, jabbering and jam-talking. It doesn’t look normal.”
“I am very normal. Don’t insult me because of politics.”
“You are raising your voice.”
“Don’t tell me I am raising my voice? Because of APC politics?”
“Can you calm down?”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! Diesel is about N800 per litre. Where I live, they always put off light. We are told, the facility managers cannot afford to give us electricity. Fuel is expensive. Even prostitutes have raised their rates. They have become very arrogant. When you argue, they will tell you that the Dollar-Naira Exchange rate has gone up. What has FOREX got to do with monkey business?”
“Everything, actually, because - you have no shame. I think you know that. We are having a conversation and you are talking about prostitutes. Am I expected to have an opinion on what prostitutes want or what they charge?”
“Prostitutes are human beings. They are an important part of this Nigerian economy. I can talk about them if I so wish. In fact, I can write a whole book on that sub-economy.”
“Sorry oh, the spokesman of the Prostitutes Association of Nigeria. I get that. Yes, I get it.”
“You cannot say that. In fact, your party is a party of prostitutes. Are you not even ashamed that all your major newly elected officers came originally from the Peoples Democratic party? The same people you pushed out of power in 2015, they are now the ones leading your party.”
“We like it like that. Leave us alone. It is called democracy”
“So, who is going to be your Presidential candidate?”
“How is that your problem?”
“I am just asking as a stakeholder. Are you people going to have a Consensus Presidential Candidate? A CPC!”
“Go and hold stakes in your own party”
“I am a citizen, an eligible member of the electorate. Who is that CPC candidate going to be? Will the choice be Asiwaju Bola Tinubu or someone else? I want to know who I may vote for.”
“You can keep your vote. Go and give it to PDP and waste it.”
“Arrogant”
“Yes, for a purpose. We are the ruling party.”
“Nonsense. In another two months, President Muhammadu Buhari would be lame duck. Nobody will listen to him again.”
“And so? And what if nobody listens to him?”
“And so”
“Okay you wait and see. When that duck is ready, we will serve you for breakfast.”
“But jokes apart, I hope you know that your party is still going to have problems.”
“We are a unified party. Stop spreading fake news.”
“There will be political war in 2023.”
“If you start any violence, you people will end up in prison. We will not tolerate any nonsense!”
“Are you God?” Are you people God?”
“You want power. Come and take it now.”
“Nigeria is in trouble. God help us.”
“Please. I hope you know all your Pastors are with us. You too should come and join us, join the winning train.”
“All your trains are always breaking down between Abuja and Kaduna and Ibadan and Lagos. Even airports are no longer safe.”
“It could have been worse. It could have been worse.”
“The philosophy of the defeated”
“The mantra of the triumphant.”
“Just let us get to power in 2023 and you people will see.”
“The more reason we will fight and die on top this matter. We will not allow agents of hatred to take over this nation.”
“I just hope that the people know what they are doing.”
“Which people?”
“The Nigerian people and their PVCs.”
“PVCs?”\
“Yes”
“Like seriously”
“Yes”
“You must have been watching too much television. Please I have some other things to attend to.”
“No. I have not finished. I have a point to make.” \
“Unfortunately, I am done. There is no point.”
“I want to say something about the power of the PVC and the electorate.”
“That’s fine, but please, can I take this phone call? Na God I take beg you…”
The Super Eagles of Nigeria, the country’s national team would file out today to play against the Black Stars of Ghana in the return leg of the final qualifying match for the World Cup in Qatar, November 2022. Africa has five slots in the tournament. Four days ago, the Eagles and the Black Stars in the first leg of their final encounter ended the match 0-0. That was a very disappointing match. A winner must emerge today. The winner will go to Qatar 2022. The Ghanaians have been boasting that they would stop Nigeria. They must not be allowed to do so. The matter between Nigeria and Ghana goes beyond football. It is all about national pride, brand and identity, from football, to jollof rice, women, men, culture and fashion.
Austin Eguavoen and his team must be told very clearly, that they cannot and they must not disgrace us. We are Nigerians. Our political leaders may not mean well. Our institutions may not work. The national currency may be sliding. The country’s unemployment rate may be high. But we, as a people, are diamonds. We do not like to be disgraced. We do not enjoy humiliation. We love to win.
Last week, the Super Eagles against Ghana at the Baba Yara, Kumasi Stadium played as if Ogbono soup had been splattered all over the football field. The only man who could stand firm was the goalkeeper, Francis Uzoho. Nobody must fall down anyhow today as if they are wearing banana peel boots. Nobody must put us to shame. Eguavoen and his team must not disgrace us.
Play whatever pattern you want: 4-2-3-1, 3-5-2. Just score the goals and shut up the likes of John Dumelo, a Ghanaian actor who thinks he can run his mouth all over Nigeria’s reputation. Wake up Eagles, do something good! The best gift anyone can give Nigerians at this moment is a 2022 World Cup ticket.
We may all be so busy watching the World Cup, the 2023 general election may end up as just another event.
Let’s show the Ghanaians that our football, like our jollof, is better than theirs. As they say on the streets, today na today!
Omoba Adedoyin Ajibike Okupe - the man popularly known at the “attack dog” of Nigerian politics, who eventually re-christened himself “the attack lion” is 70 today, March 22, 2022. Yesterday, friends and family gathered in Lagos, to honour him at the public presentation of a book he has written to mark the occasion: Double Jeopardy-The Doyin Okupe Story. There are further celebrations today; a church service and a party in the evening. It was a great pleasure for me to have been invited to review the book at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). Although I got the book around 6 pm on Sunday, Dr. Okupe is one of those persons to whom it is difficult to say No. His personality is compelling. He is forever persuasive and genial. Reading the book turned out to be a great delight: for a text written in six weeks, it is an impressive outing. No one else can tell the Doyin Okupe story better than the man himself, and indeed after four decades in the Nigerian public space as a medical doctor turned political marketing guru, politician, and Presidential spokesperson, Okupe has a story to tell. He delivers his narrative in a lucid, racy, engaging and chronological manner.
I find the title of the book curious, however. Why double jeopardy? Jeopardy has a negative connotation. Double jeopardy is a legal term referring to the conviction of a person for the same offence, based on the same facts, twice. Okupe considers his unceremonious exit from the Obasanjo administration which he served as Special Assistant on Media, clearly as first jeopardy. His second jeopardy is described as his exit, without profit, from the Jonathan administration when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost the Presidential election in 2015. Okupe’s book could well have been titled “My Odyssey”. What he chronicles is a long, eventful and adventurous account of his role in the Nigerian political and social space in more than 40 years. His life has been one of privilege, accomplishments, and opportunities. At 70, he can indeed look back with a feeling of fulfillment, and pride, that he has so far had a good run, not double jeopardy and he is not yet done. Very few people have been as privileged. In the business of political marketing, perhaps the only two persons in recent memory that can be rated higher would be Chief Duro Onabule, who served as spokesperson of General Ibrahim Babangida’s military government for close to nine years, and may be Igwe Alex Nwokedi who was an outstanding communicator who served a military Head of State (General Olusegun Obasanjo) and a civilian President (Alhaji Shehu Shagari). If there is any other, such persons may not be of the same rank as Doyin Okupe in terms of reach, colour and capacity for heavy-hitting political communication. It is not for nothing that he is known as the “attack lion”. Over the years, Okupe has carved a niche for himself in that genre.
The irony is that he is originally a medical doctor. Double Jeopardy – The Doyin Okupe Story is 316 pages long. It is divided into two parts, and has a total of 40 Chapters. The first part of the book tells the story of his beginnings, upbringing, education, his life in the medical and political theatres and what he has seen in the politics of Nigeria as role player, citizen and aide to Presidents. In the second part, he presents more or less a manifesto for leadership as he expresses his opinions about key national issues such as the rule of law, the police, insecurity, structure, education, housing, youth employment, inadequate power supply and health care delivery. This therefore is part-autobiography, part-manifesto and a memoir on Nigeria’s contemporary political developments. Okupe has written an insider-participant’s account with such forthrightness that is unmistakable. He does not even spare himself. With a bold face, he documents his record as a polygamist, or serial monogamist, with a record of four wives and nine children and a retinue of grandchildren. He is himself a product of a similar background. He is the child of the 9th wife out of his father’s ten wives, and the 17th child out of 41 children.
Born in Iperu in 1952, his father, Chief Matthew Adekoya Okupe was a haulage business owner who in 1945 established a bank – the Agbonmagbe Bank which had branches in the North and the South in Zaria, Ebute Meta, Mushin, Ago-Iwoye and Ijebu Igbo. The bank would eventually become the National Bank, and transmute into a new brand, what is known today as Wema Bank. Chief Okupe eventually went into politics, a contemporary of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, H.O. Davies, Akin Maja, and Alhaji S. O. Gbadamosi. Okupe’s foray into politics was not influenced by his father, but the elder Okupe was his first hero, who taught him about values, temperance and faith. In this book, Okupe pays tribute to many mentors: those who have impacted his life positively and given him opportunities in life. These include his maternal grandmother, who taught him the art of discipline, his half-sister, Dr (Mrs) Adeola Olumide (nee Okupe), a medical doctor who insisted that the best path for him in life would be a career in medicine, Chief Akin Ogunmade-Davies who introduced him to the world of political communication and public relations, Chief Duro Onabule, who as editor of the National Concord newspaper taught Okupe the rudiments of media practice and writing, and gave him a platform to be heard. There was also Biodun Shobanjo, of Insight Communications with whom he worked on political marketing for the National Republican Convention (NRC).
Many in the Nigerian political space know Okupe for his rambunctious style. Whatever rascality anyone may ascribe to him seems to have been acquired in his days as a student at Igbobi College, Lagos where as a young man nicknamed “Dorrie”, he acquired quite a reputation for unconventional behaviour. He eventually ended up at the University of Ibadan. He gained admission to study Medicine at the age of 19. He graduated at 24. By his own account, he was an excellent student who took his studies seriously, and also enjoyed the privilege of having very good teachers. He is so proud of the training that he received, he tells his readers: “I have not practised medicine for a long time but I can still consider myself very proficient in Medicine because this lecturer of mine took me through every aspect of medicine. …Till today, you can’t fault my diagnosis. I learnt medicine from a genius. It was the knowledge in Medicine acquired from Professor Bademosi that I used in Surgery, Cardiology and other departments.” (p. 35). Well, I don’t know about diagnosis. What this writer knows is that when he was Dr Doyin Okupe’s colleague at the Presidential Villa during the Jonathan years, we used to crack jokes behind his back that he had left his chosen field of Medicine for so long, and made a detour into politics for too many years, nobody should accept any prescription from him - even for Malaria, because he might not remember!
Dr. Okupe actually practised medicine for a short while. After his National Youth Service year in 1978, he worked briefly at the St. Nicholas Hospital in Lagos, and also at Juli-San Clinic, also in Lagos. In 1982, he and two others - Dr. Seyi Roberts and Dr. Ladi Okuboyejo teamed up to set up a joint practice, The Royal Cross Medical Centre in Obalende, Lagos. The practice thrived. The young doctors had great fun, and there was Iya Modinat, who sold delicious rice “a stone’s throw from the clinic,” whose joint soon became a major attraction for many young Executives who patronized her and also stopped by at the clinic in the evenings. Dr. Okupe did not stay long in the Medical Theatre. He had developed interest in politics as a part-time vocation. He attended meetings of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the ruling party in Nigeria at the time, but an opposition party in Lagos. He chose the NPN because he wanted to play politics at the National level. He rose quickly within the party ranks to become the Vice Chairman for Epetedo Ward, and later Secretary of Eti Osa Local Government in 1978/1980. Okupe was an associate of Dr Wahab Dosunmu who would later become Federal Minister of Works and Housing. In 1982, he contested for the Federal House of Representatives. His career as a politician had effectively begun. A substantial part of the book is understandably devoted to this new career, with Okupe’s account of his membership and participation in such political groupings as the Liberal Convention, the Alagbo Group, the National Republican Convention (NRC) which he would later serve as National Publicity Secretary, the People’s Democratic Party, the National Accord Party, and others.
His political journey is the perfect stuff of adventure. He tells not just his story, but his encounters and relationships with others, across the country, North and South. In over 40 years, Okupe comes across as an experienced politician and bridge builder who was either at the ringside or inside the arena during critical moments in Nigerian history. Readers would find particularly interesting his account of the processes leading to the formation of political parties and groups, the politics of June 12, the formation of the Oodua People’s Congress, the emergence and activities of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) as well as his interaction with key political figures: Chief Tom Ikimi, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, Rufus Ada George, Bamanga Tukur, Awwal Tukur, Bashir Tofa, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Bola Ige, Chief Segun Osoba, Buruji Kashamu, Chief Edwin Clark and others.
The high point of Dr Doyin Okupe’s political career is readily his appointment by President Olusegun Obasanjo as his government’s Special Assistant on Media. This raised Okupe’s profile and shot him into national and international limelight. He gives a detailed and robust account of an appointment that gave him so much joy and fulfillment but he was shocked when the President sacked him! Thus began a period in his life that he classified as “Half-Time”, a period of about 11 years (2001 -2012) during which he tried his hands at entrepreneurship and had to hustle for survival and capital. As fate would have it, he had the opportunity of a return to the Presidential Villa under President Goodluck Jonathan as Senior Special Assistant, Public Affairs in 2012. We worked together. He was a very attentive and committed heavy-hitter. One of his first declarations on assumption of duty was that he was no longer “an attack dog” but an “attack lion”. The Jonathan administration needed a lion in its attacking mid-field. The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the coalition of opposition forces that created a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) called the All Progressives Congress (APC) bombarded the administration with hypertensive and hyperbolic attacks. Governance turned into vitriol and war by another name. There were issues on the table: the abduction of the Chibok Girls, Boko Haram. In 2015, the PDP lost the Presidential election. Okupe tells the story of the last days and what he calls “an unpleasant ending” that is - the second jeopardy. He insists that “the APC never won the 2015 Presidential election.”
At 70, Okupe has seen quite a lot and learnt so much about the nature of Nigerian politics and the character of the average politician. In reporting this, he draws attention to the intrigues in political corridors, the sycophancy of politicians, the use of money as a tool of influence and the fetishization, the reign of occultism, in Nigerian politics. A recurrent refrain in his narrative, however, is his faith in God, and how God has been faithful to him at every point in his journey, including when he first discovered that when he prays to God from the comfort of his bathroom, the “prayers are always speedily answered.” Okupe defends himself: he says he does not believe in the use of politics to amass wealth and that he has never stolen a penny. But he says he prefers to forgive those who have wronged him.
The second part of the book is his political manifesto: his plans for the reinvention of Nigeria. Whereas there is little to argue about in the earlier parts of the book which focus on the author’s experience, his prescriptions for Nigeria may generate debate and difference. It would be recalled that Dr. Doyin Okupe has since declared interest in the 2023 Presidential election in Nigeria. His chosen political platform for pursuing this ambition remains unknown. Questions have also been asked about how he intends to fund what is clearly an even more expensive enterprise, and a far more contentious proposition given the politics of zoning and power rotation as Nigeria embarks on the transition to another change of government at the Federal level. Okupe’s Double Jeopardy may well be taken as a campaign material: he presents himself warts and all, and he defines a social contract for Nigeria. Whatever anyone thinks of his ambition to be President, and the prospects, no one can deny that this is one man who has been here and there, who has lived a life of meaning and impact, and who beyond being a Prince of the Agbonmagbe dynasty of Iperu Remo in Ogun State is all things considered, a jolly good fellow, a media man, a prolific family man, a politician of great rank and so as he turns 70, he deserves hearty cheers, a song and a dance. Congratulations, Dr Okupe:
Iperu Akesan
Akesan Bale Oja
Ara Oju Ona
Obi Owo nso ti won Oro’woka
Akesan d”ade
Omo re da Oja
Olori re ni da Oja…
Best wishes and many happy returns.
It is difficult to imagine that the Church in Nigeria and its leaders would not be interested in politics as Nigeria begins preparations for the general elections in 2023. A heated and emotional controversy was stirred last weekend when it became public knowledge that the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) had set up The Directorate of Politics and Governance. Many raised an eyebrow. Why would the Church create a Department of Politics and Governance? Publisher, veteran journalist, newspaper columnist and Presidential aspirant Aare Dele Momodu described the development as “an invitation to Armageddon” in an essay titled “My Kobo Advice to Redeemed Christian Church of God” (ThisDay newspaper, back page, March 12, 2022). His main concern was what he described as “the general conspiracy theory that our church was setting up an extensive network for the obvious Presidential ambition of the current Vice President, President Yemi Osinbajo”, whereas there are other members of the RCCG, including his good self who are interested in the Presidential race. Why should the Church favour one person over and above other members?
In a notable response, Kolade Segun Oke-Owo, Deputy Director, Directorate of Politics and Governance, PFN, Ogun State, and National President, Believers in Politics writes as follows: “…The RCCG did not actually create the Directorate of Politics and governance. The creation of the Directorate is a brain child of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria under His Eminence, Bishop Wale Oke, its National President. The RCCG only became the first among other Pentecostal Churches in Nigeria under the leadership of PFN to kowtow and subscribe to the vision of the Directorate of Politics and Governance. It may also interest Uncle Dele Momodu that the National Directorate of Politics and Governance of the PFN is not headed by a member of the RCCG but a General Overseer from another denomination in the person of Rt. Hon. Pastor Femi Emmanuel.”
The fact that only a few days after the Dele Momodu essay, the Daily Trust newspaper and others published a story indicating that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has now notified President Muhammadu Buhari of his interest in the 2023 Presidential race, before that was refuted, lent greater currency to the Dele Momodu protest. The truth indeed is that over the past few months, a group of hidden and open persuaders have been threatening to sue Vice President Osinbajo if he did not throw his hat into the 2023 ring. Members of the RCCG have also not helped matters. They have often said that the General Overseer of the Church, Pastor Enoch Adeboye once predicted that a day would come when a member of the Church would become President of Nigeria. When Professor Osinbajo emerged as Vice President of Nigeria in 2015, the members were excited. They talked openly about a prophecy that was about to be fulfilled. Professor Yemi Osinbajo is not just a member of the RCCG Congregation; he is a Pastor and one of the most visible leaders of the Church. Dele Momodu’s essay is a statement of caution: that the church cannot turn itself into a political machinery and a partisan campaign platform for one individual enjoying a special advantage. He is also a member of the Church. The wife of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, also a Presidential aspirant, is equally a member and a Pastor of the Church. He wants the church to be neutral. Equality before God should translate into equality of aspirations under the umbrella of the Church. Dele Momodu’s supporters have suggested in accompanying reactions that the Church should stay out of partisan politics. In 1961, the Sage, Obafemi Awolowo had put up the same argument as Momodu’s. He said: “It follows that in order that it may discharge its functions, a religious organization must be independent of Government and its patronage and must never be subordinated to its dictates or whims… A religious organization should never allow itself to be regarded as the mouth piece and instrument of the powers-that-be…”. This may be a difficult argument to sustain.
The Church has been enmeshed in politics from time immemorial, from the Roman Empire, to the Medieval Era and to the present day. In the New Testament, the word “ekklesia” which is used to refer to the Church actually means a political assembly, a political association, a gathering. The separation of the State and the Church, or the separation of secular and religious power, has not always been so clear-cut. During the Crusades (circa, 1095 - 1291), Christians fought wars to acquire or regain territory. The Holy Book itself is full of this intersection between the Church, power struggles and secular politics. The clergy are not just spiritual leaders, they fight political battles worse than what is found in the secular community. The argument that the state and religion should be separated is largely theoretical. In 1534, King Henry VIII of England established the Church of England, away from the Catholic Church following disagreements with Pope Clement VII on the scope of papal authority over marital choices. The politics of it is well captured in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. The Anglican Church continues to play a dominant role in British politics. Back home here in Nigeria, the kind of politics that church leaders play, including litigations and open quarrels, is far more vicious than what is found in the regular political arena. To give a case in point would be the acrimonious conflicts over control and succession in the Celestial Church of Christ since the passing of the founder, Samuel Bilewu Joseph Oschoffa in September 1985. In 2015, Pope Francis advised that Catholics must participate in politics. Just as Christians won’t hands off secular and sectarian politics, being human beings and political animals, leaders of the Muslim congregation are also just as involved.
It should be recognized also that ethnicity and religion are perhaps the two most central factors in the politics of power in Nigeria, as has been proven and examined in such works as Religion, Politics and Power in Northern Nigeria by Matthew Hassan Kukah, Iheanyi Enwerem’s A Dangerous Awakening: The Politicisation of Religion in Nigeria, and Religion and Politics in Nigeria: A Study in Middle Belt Christianity by Neils Kartfelt. Nigerian politicians over the years have used both ethnicity and religion as instruments of manipulating the people for their own purposes, exploiting the people’s fears about domination by the other. Religion has featured prominently in ethnic conflicts in the Middle Belt, on the Plateau, Southern Kaduna and elsewhere, with one group persecuting the other through repeated cycles of violence, and the State, which should enforce peace and justice, is usually partial and biased, taking sides, most cynically, depending on the religious affiliation of the persons in power at the moment. It is this linkage between religious belief and how power is exercised that has resulted in the political patronage of religious groups and the rise of partisanship in places of worship. Nigerian politicians, regardless of the express provision of the Constitution that there shall be no state religion (Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution) have nonetheless turned religion into a special centre of engagement. In every Government House in the states and the State House in Abuja, there is usually a Mosque and a Church, power shifts between both locations depending on the religion of the main leader in charge, who accordingly appoints Special Advisers and Assistants on Religious matters. Christian leaders send members of their constituency on pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Muslim leaders do the same for members of their religious community. Despite assurances over the years that the state shall no longer fund religious trips, the Pilgrims Welfare Boards of Nigeria continue to exist at all levels.
The assumption is that a Christian leader would defend the Christian faith and a Muslim leader would do the same for his own constituency as well. In every election at both Federal and State levels, Nigerians have adopted the convention of a Christian and Muslim ticket, in joint political races, to give the people a sense of balance, access and proximity to power. The most remarkable exception to this pattern occurred in 1993 when a Muslim-Muslim ticket of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Presidential candidates- Bashorun MKO Abiola and Alhaji Baba Gana Kingibe won the Presidential election. Given the manner in which religion has further driven a wedge between Nigerians, it would be difficult to reproduce that magical moment again, either now, or in the immediate future. The Church in Nigeria believes that the time has come to do more than preaching and praying and become an active political force.
In yet another statement on the matter, titled “The New Dawn: Church Prophetic Political Delivery and Responsibility of the Church (March 11, 2022)”, Bishop Theophilus Taiwo Ajose, Ph. D declared that all church fathers and leaders are required to direct their members and followers to “register for and update their Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) and “urgently join any political party of their choice at the ward (grassroots) levels and participate actively in political activities of that party while upholding righteousness.” It is important to further understand the context of this ideological declaration. Hitherto, the Church in Nigeria acted as the moral compass without necessarily being partisan. During the struggle for democracy, 1993 -1999, Catholic Bishops, leaders of the Anglican Church and the Pentecostal Federation fought for the rights of Bashorun Abiola and Baba Gana Kingibe to be given their mandate. It didn’t matter that both men were Muslims. The Church was a modulating voice of reason. The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria and the Catholic Secretariat through the Justice Development and Peace Departments of the Church fought for democracy and development. The Anglican Church and the Pentecostal Federation were also in the forefront of the struggle. Many would remember the heroism of the Rt. Rev Peter Adebiyi, one of Chief Abraham Adesanya’s most trusted lieutenants, popularly known as the NADECO Bishop, Bishop Bolanle Gbonigi and his fiery sermons and the stinging interventions of John Cardinal Onaiyekan, as well as the activism of the likes of Fr. Matthew Hassan Kukah, Fr. George Ehusani, Fr. John Uba Ofei and and Fr. Iheanyi Enwerem. Catholic priests on one occasion trooped to the streets in defence of democracy! Today, Nigerian church leaders and the Congregation are more interested in fighting for their own. They want their own people in power, even at the traditional, grassroots level. But that didn’t start now.
I recall that as President Goodluck Jonathan’s spokesperson in the lead up to the 2015 general elections, in the course of the campaigns, our campaign train visited as many major churches in the country as possible. We saw crowds of potential voters. Prayers were offered. There were declarations of vision and revelations. The Church was not necessarily fighting for democracy in 2014/2015. It wanted to protect its members who had become victims of religious and ethnic conflicts. Church leaders wanted a Christian President to remain in office to address the emerging crisis. Later, when I ran on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party as a Deputy Gubernatorial candidate in Ogun State in 2018/19, it was part of my schedule as the Christian on the PDP Muslim-Christian ticket to interface with the Christian community. We had a high-ranking member of the PFN in our political camp who made the necessary arrangements, and hence, we went from one church to the other, preaching to church elders. I even participated in debates organized by churches for political party candidates. It was clear to me from the interactions that church leaders in Ogun State wanted power to shift to a Christian candidate, the outgoing Governor then, being a Muslim who had spent eight years in office. If the church leaders saw any visions, they did not tell me.
It is perhaps the same drama that is now playing out ahead of the 2023 general elections. With a Muslim as Nigerian President for eight years, and with the Nigerian Christian community convinced that a Muslim-led Nigerian Presidency persecutes Christians and pampers Muslims, the Church of Nigeria appears resolved to get into the arena of action. It seems Christian forces are now ready to sponsor candidates and mobilize the Congregation, armed with PVCs. The Church has also been drawn into the politics of zoning and rotation. It won’t be long before the various branches of the PFN begin to have chapters of political parties. No one should be surprised if some churches ask every soon that they should be designated as polling units or centres! When that happens, sermons in churches would become political manifestoes. It would be a reflection of how desperate every Nigerian constituency has become, how badly religion has divided us, and how high the stakes would be in 2023.
The truth is that churches in Nigeria today have become far more secular than they were a few years ago. The original words of the Lord Jesus Christ distinguished between the secular and the spiritual thus: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12: 17). But in Nigeria today, those in charge of God’s affairs are threatening to contest with Caesar. They seek to move from a place of independence and spiritual power to the main arena. Many churches are personal estates. Many are business investments. The other day, the General Overseer of the Christ Living Hope Church with Headquarters in Anambra, Rev. Ugochuckwu Emmanuel Ekwem was caught at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport by the Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) trying to smuggle 54 sticks of drugs to Kenya. Religious faith is in decline in Nigeria. Political belief is about to dilute religious belief, far more aggressively. The church is seeking redemption through politics. How far will it or can it go?
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So much has happened locally and globally recently - the nerve-wracking fuel scarcity in Nigeria, the war in Ukraine, the signing of the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill and the attendant controversies, the amendment of 68 clauses in the 1999 Constitution also, so much really that the Nigerian commentariat has more or less overlooked some of the quiet significant issues within the Nigerian polity. While this may be understandable given the relative weight and urgency of news, it seems to me that one issue that should be highlighted is the political crisis in Zamfara State, and how this speaks to the character of Nigerian politicians, the politics of opportunism and the fault lines of Nigerian politics. For the benefit of those who may have forgotten, after the 2019 general elections, the All Progressives Congress in Zamfara State was declared winner of the Gubernatorial election, having won the majority of the votes. But some members of the party challenged this outcome, on the grounds that the party did not conduct a lawful primary to select the gubernatorial candidate as required by the Electoral Act. Ahead of the 2019 general election, the APC in Zamfara state was in fact, divided right down the middle.
It eventually ended up as one of the three states whose Gubernatorial elections were altered through court cases. In May 2019, the Supreme Court voided the victory of the APC, and awarded victory to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which was a very distant second to the APC. In the election, the APC Governorship candidate, Muktar Idris, was declared winner with 534, 541 votes to defeat Bello Muhammad Matawalle of the PDP who had 189, 452 votes. In the State House of Assembly, the APC won all the available 24 seats. The main ground for the ruling was that the primary conducted by the APC was unlawful. The injury to the APC was thus self-inflicted. The party’s plight was in other words, akin to an own goal in a football match. The PDP that benefitted from this did not even score up to two-thirds of the votes. Every effort to get the Supreme Court to set aside its ruling in the Zamfara case and the Imo case in which there was some strange arithmetic that threw up the fourth person in the in the election race, did not succeed, raising further concerns about the importance of pre-election matters and how political parties conduct their affairs.
In Zamfara, the obvious beneficiary of the crisis was Bello Matawalle and 24 members of the State House of Assembly who got into office by sheer default. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, a Professor of Law drew attention to this recently when he argued that the courts should probably pay more attention to the expressed will of the people rather than technicalities. My response to that was that it was strange to hear the Law Professor questioning what looked like a straightforward application of the law on the basis of his own partisan commitments. The Vice President was speaking at the 53rd Conference of the National Association of Law Teachers in Kano on the theme: “Law, Democracy and the Electoral Process”. Recent developments in Zamfara State have now raised fresh questions, beyond the judgment itself.
Matawalle, who became Governor by default, was a member of the All Progressives Congress in Zamfara State in the lead up to the 2019 Gubernatorial election. He had been in the ANPP, then he later joined the PDP. He wanted to get power by all means. He tried the Gubernatorial race in 2015 against then Governor Abdulaziz Yari and failed. He would later become the face of the PDP in the state. But to consolidate his position and to strengthen himself against speculations that disgruntled elements in the APC who had disagreed with then Governor Abdulaziz Yari and were on their way to the PDP led by Senator Kabir Marafa, Abu Magaji, and Dauda Lawal, Matawalle felt a need to strengthen his hold on the PDP. He simply linked up with General Aliyu Gusau, the de facto leader of the PDP in Zamfara state and a man of great influence in Nigerian affairs, both political and administrative. This was how General Aliyu Gusau’s son, Mahdi Ali Gusau, a lawyer, became Matawalle’s running mate. As providence would have it, he became a Supreme Court Governor, with Mahdi Gusau as his Deputy.
It was obvious that the APC was not happy with their loss of the Governorship seat in Zamfara state, just as they were determined to mount pressure on other PDP Governors in the country to join the APC, or return to it. It is on record that apart from wooing the PDP governors, the APC, being the ruling party in the country also used the coercive instruments of state to intimidate the opposition members that they thought could swell their ranks. It was therefore not surprising when Bello Matawalle, began to trace his roots back to the ANPP wing of the APC. It did not matter to him that under the relevant laws, it is a political party that wins an election, not the candidate. He practically took the victory awarded by the Courts to the PDP back to the APC. This is the height of opportunism. What point is Matawalle trying to prove? Is he telling his opponents in the APC, the likes of Abdulaziz Yari, Marafa, Magaji and Lawal that he is originally an APC member, having started his political career with the ANPP and that no one can push him out of his old political constituency? So, has Professor Yemi Osinbajo been vindicated when he asked that the courts should pay more attention to the people’s political preferences and behaviour?
The major comma in Matawalle’s opportunism is that his deputy, Mahdi Ali Gusau refused to defect to the APC with him. Ali Gusau stood by his decision to stay in the PDP. He argued that the party’s electoral victory in 2019 belonged to the party not its candidates. For this, Gusau has been heavily victimized. He was accused of having dismissed members of the House of Assembly as “illiterates.” Ali Gusau may have acted out of loyalty to his father, but his conduct also shows loyalty to the platform, that is, the party, that brought him to power and a commitment to principles. He has projected a different attitude to politics, a moral high ground that is unusual. Beyond this is the vulnerability of Deputy Governors under the Constitution. Since the return to democratic rule in 1999, Governors have treated their Deputies with disdain, like spare tyres. On February 23, the State House of Assembly, the same lawmakers of Zamfara who also got to the House by default, responded to a report by a certain judicial panel which considered “allegations of abuse of office, criminal self-enrichment and failure to discharge official duties” against the Deputy Governor. Twenty two of them were in attendance. One lawmaker had refused to jump ship. The entire process was concluded within a matter of hours. Governor Matawalle had already stationed a replacement nearby – Hassan Nasiha Gusau, a serving Senator representing Zamfara Central, who was immediately sworn in as a replacement. Note the cynicism. A Gusau is removed. Another Gusau is appointed in his place!
The process for the removal of a Deputy Governor from office is outlined in Section 188 (1-11) of the 1999 Constitution. It is clear that Mahdi Gusau was subjected to a kangaroo process and a victimization trial. He being a lawyer, and the PDP have since gone to court, but of note is - Section 188 (10) of the Constitution which is clear in stating that “no proceedings or determination of the Panel or of the House of Assembly or any matter relating to such proceedings or determination shall be entertained or questioned in any court.” Mahdi Gusau’s and PDP lawyers are likely to argue however that the House of Assembly that removed him is illegal and unconstitutional, the whole House having defected to the APC, without any division within the PDP, as the Constitution stipulates, and therefore, if anything, they, along with the Governor, are the ones to lose their seats.
While it may be difficult to predict the outcome of the case in court, it is important to state that the Zamfara story is a bad omen for the polity. The fact that this has been followed up by the failure of the APC, Nigeria’s ruling party, to put its House in order is even a worse demonstration in this regard. Yesterday, for example, security personnel had to cordon off the APC Secretariat in Abuja. After initial reports that there was no division in the APC, but only disagreements, we all saw yesterday that the party is in fact divided. Nigerians politicians have a character flaw. They cannot be trusted either as individuals or as a class. They keep jumping from one part of the fence to the other for strange and selfish reasons. Is there anything that could be done by the people, or by the authorities, if not now, may be in the future, to strengthen Nigeria’s political party process, and to check the impunity of the ruling elite? In other jurisdictions, despite the quarrels within parties, politicians do not jump ship the way ours do in Nigeria, moving around like a yo-yo. We must find a way of making integrity the pillar of political participation in Nigeria. The crisis in Zamfara is all about the behaviour of the professional political class. Mattawale gets to power with the PDP and the Gusau connection. As soon as he settles down, and he thinks he has enough muscle of his own to call the shots, he dumps his benefactors, and begins to offer an unsolicited lecture on loyalty while betraying the same code. The same drama is being played out within the APC at the centre. By the time the dust settles, no one should be surprised if the APC alliance crumbles and the component parts go their separate ways, for selfish reasons.
The lesson of this is that we should begin to subject candidates seeking public office to more rigorous enquiry. All kinds of persons present themselves for public office, but by the time we realize who exactly they are, it is often too late. But think about this: when and if we manage to unmask them, can we get them removed? That is near-impossible considering the complexities of the Nigerian arrangement. Also, what is the temperament of the Nigerian politician? Would he ever stand on the side of the rule of law and resist the temptation to bend the rules in his own interest? These are issues that are germane to the democratic process but are not covered in strict terms by the enabling laws. As for the drama in Zamfara: I do not think it is over politically for Mahdi Ali Gusau. By removing him, Matawalle may have unwittingly, with his own hands, laid the red carpet for his ascendancy in politics.
It is noteworthy that this year’s International Women’s Day, March 8, that is today, will be marked against the background of blatant misogyny and retrogressive patriarchy at the 9th National Assembly of Nigeria. The theme for this year’s celebration is “Gender Equality for a Sustainable Tomorrow: Time to Break the Bias. Women play a significant role in every part of our lives – the family, climate change, agriculture, the economy and basic human relationships. In Nigeria, women constitute about 50% of the population, any form of discrimination against that substantial part of the population would amount to a reduction of the country’s capacity and an act of bias. Nigeria is a signatory to major international conventions and treaties on the Empowerment of women, including protocols to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, or the Gender Equality Strategy 2022 – 2025. It is a fact that Nigeria publicly endorses these protocols, but without understanding the import of the same commitments.
The other week, during the National Assembly’s review of clauses relating to women empowerment in Nigeria, the lawmakers rejected the bills that are meant to further promote inclusion with regard to gender rights. These include the right of women to have their foreign spouses become Nigerian citizen; a proposal for women to claim their husband’s states of origin as theirs after five years of marriage, 35 % affirmative action for women in political parties and in appointive positions in government. The original Bill proposed by Hon. Nkiruka Onyejocha representing Isikwuato/Umuaneochi Federal Constituency also asked that additional seats should be created for women at the National Assembly – 37 in the Senate and 74 in the House of Representatives and one additional seat exclusively for women in the State House of Assembly. The lawmakers didn’t think these were important proposals. Rather, they voted for the re-affirmation of patriarchy. Currently the National Assembly has 5% female representation. Out of the 109 members in the Senate, only seven are women. In the House of Representatives, there are 12 women out of 360 members. Nigeria has never had a female Governor except Mrs Virgy Etiaba who became Governor briefly only because the incumbent Governor, Peter Obi was once impeached in Anambra State.
Should anyone be surprised? This is the same National Assembly where a lawmaker once paraded his four wives, and introduced them to the Assembly one after the other, to prove the point that he is a very capable man. The same lawmaker would return later to announce the birth of his child No. 28 and how fertile and prolific his wives are. He demanded that his house should be declared a polling booth because by 2023, if he so wishes, he would have produced up to 30 children! Indeed, this is the same National Assembly where the lawmakers have consistently rejected any Bill that is against child marriages and the rights of the girl-child. In February, the wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari and a retinue of women including the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen, visited the National Assembly to lobby for a productive and progressive amendment in support of gender equality. The wife of the Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo also followed suit, a day after. But the lawmakers could not be swayed. They do not think that there is a need to break any bias against women. Ironically, Nigerian women are often blamed for their own woes.
On March 2, Nigerian women stormed the National Assembly carrying placards in protest. Today, in commemoration of the International Women’s Day, they have further organized a one million women march in protest. They want to “Break the Constitutional Bias, and Break the Political Bias”. They have my support.
For Nigerians, the crisis in Ukraine is not far away at all. It is next door, in fact it may be said that the war is having a major effect in many Nigerian homes and families. This is not about crude oil, the spot price of which has gone beyond $100 per barrel, and the same government that relies on crude oil receipts is now saying this is tragic for the country. This is not even about the geo-politics of the Russia-Ukrainian conflict. Russia does not want the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) setting up a military base at its door step – in Ukraine, Sweden or Finland, or anywhere near Russia. The more urgent concern and this is our departure point, is the humanitarian crisis that the failure of diplomacy and the inequity in international relations has generated in the Eastern border of Europe. Since the crisis began, I have listened with great concern to the anguish of friends, former colleagues and their family relations calling, sending messages, to report how they are affected by the war in Ukraine. A former colleague during my tour of duty at the Presidential Villa has three children in Ukraine. His sister’s son is also there. They are all hunkered down in a shelter.
My friend says he and his wife and sister are permanently on the phone trying to monitor the welfare of their children. All four – my friend’s 3 and his sister’s only son- are all studying Medicine in Ukraine. Many Nigerian families send their children to Ukraine to study Medicine, Computer Engineering, and the Sciences. Out of the 10, 000 medical doctors produced by Ukraine annually, about a third are Nigerians. The fees are affordable compared to the arm and a leg that Western Universities demand. Ukraine is also developed with strong education, science, agriculture, and engineering sectors. Historically, it was the strongest of the units that made up the Soviet Union. In contemporary times, it remains a very resourceful country with enormous strength in minerals, agriculture and science. Apart from the medical students from Nigeria, there are others studying in other fields. There is even a Nigerian church in Kiev, led by Pastor Sunday Adelaja. In total, there is probably close to 20, 000 Nigerians or more in Ukraine. Pastor Sunday Adelaja has managed to abandon the congregation and escape (he says Putin is looking for him as a target!), but the majority of Nigerians, and other Africans, are stranded. Their agony and the frustration of their families should constitute an important part of the review.
In the age of globalization, democracy and free choice, it would make no sense to query why some people leave their countries and travel to other places to find meaning and fulfilment. The history of humanity is based on migrations across geography and seasons. Nigerians in particular are extremely peripatetic. In the most remote places of the world, you are bound to find a Nigerian, studying, teaching, driving a cab, doing security work, serving in an international capacity, running a corner shop, playing football, or comfortably married with a family. But in the case of Ukraine, most of the Nigerian nationals out there are students or religious workers. Whereas it is a status symbol for an average Nigerian family to send their children abroad for studies, it is also the truth that despite the fact that Nigeria has over 100 universities, many families send their children abroad because it is easier to get admissions into foreign universities if you can afford the fees, and you are at least sure that the university calendar will not be disrupted by teachers and other university staff who are perpetually on strike here in Nigeria, over unpaid salaries and allowances.
University students in Nigeria are also forever subjected to all forms of harassment: dirty halls of residence, the menace of oppressive lecturers who sell handouts, and torment female students for sex, and a general community outside the campus that inflicts mental torture on everyone. Parents therefore try to insulate their children from the psychosis in the land, at least for a period in their lives. To keep their children in good schools, many parents sell property, take loans, or save towards the same investment and if that option is not achievable, they look for other means. I doubt if any Nigerian parent would ever imagine that with all that, their child or children would end up in a war zone. But that is what has happened in Ukraine. Many Nigerian parents took their cue from the 12 countries, including the UK, Egypt, Morocco, US, and India, that issued early travel advisories and asked their nationals to leave Ukraine immediately because it would only be a matter of days before Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine, and hence, they pulled their children and families out. But then, it is not every family that is equally circumstanced. Air fares shot through the roof. And it is natural for a largely religious community to think that a miracle would happen. Ironically, one of the men preaching such miracles was the first to flee to safety! Fact: thousands of Nigerians are stranded in Ukraine.
They are victims not just of the confusion that the war has brought, but also racism, which worsens their plight. In the wake of the Russian invasion, the people of Ukraine began to flee towards safer neighbouring countries, especially Poland, Romania, Hungary and Moldova. Persons trooped to the train stations hoping to get a place on one of the vacation trains ferrying people to safety. Nobody knows when or for how long the trains would come. But when a train then shows up, there is gross discrimination. The co-ordinators of the flight from the turbulence insist that Ukrainians must board first, then children and women in that order! But the arrangement is not colour-blind. Africans are told to wait, and so there are many of them, sheltered in nearby buildings who do not know when it would be their turn. I saw a video showing a Nigerian whose pregnant wife managed to get onto the train, and he was disallowed from getting on board. It was painful watching him screaming: “Give me my wife! Give me my wife!”
War may be the legacy that past ages bequeath to us, as Wole Soyinka points out in A Dance of the Forests, humanity being in a perpetual state of conflict across the ages, but as we have seen in the writings of Sun-Tzu (The Art Of War), Carl von Clausewitz (About War) and Raymond Aron (Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations) on the subject, and as the experience of previous wars show (World War I, II, the Korean War, the Gulf War, the Nigerian Civil War etc), there is simply nothing good about war. Nobody wins, everyone loses; it is only the degree that differs. The crisis in Ukraine has thus thrown up all the key divisions in international relations at both the person to person levels and at the bilateral, multilateral, geo-political levels to remind us all that whereas there is a body called the United Nations, created after World War II to bind the world together, the world remains divided, the people in it do not like each other and that international relations based on the principles of jus cogens, including the sovereign equality of states, enshrined in Article 2(1) of the United Nations Charter (1945), is at best a myth in reality.
There has been so much talk about human equality, a societa humana in this regard, but even human beings within the international order, do not regard themselves as equals. International law practitioners have tried to provide a linkage in terms of the alignment of sovereign equality with human equality through the UN Resolution on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P, 2005). In the situation that we are currently witnessing in Ukraine, the host community is struggling to defend itself in an unequal match against Russia. It cannot even protect its own citizens. A humanitarian crisis is afoot, with Poland, Moldova, Hungary, much smaller countries dragged into an extremely difficult situation. The Polish Ambassador to Nigeria has had to deny that Poland does not want to help stranded Nigerians. Where host communities fail to discharge their responsibilities to protect foreign nationals in their country, in the event of war and chaos, what should the home countries of the affected persons do? They are bound by the same principle.
The Nigerian Government has been criticized heavily for its failures in terms of citizen diplomacy in the face of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the fact that many Nigerians are trapped in the crossfire. From Kiev to Abuja, the Nigeria foreign policy machinery behaved as if its carburetor had issues. It failed to fire the engine correctly. The machinery abandoned the Nigerians in Ukraine even while other countries openly helped theirs and gave specific travel advisories. When the blow-out occurred, the Nigerian Embassy in Kiev issued a statement in which the officials told Nigerians in Ukraine, that if they find the situation “morally disturbing”, they should make private arrangements to keep safe, make sure they have their consular documents in place and should they wish to return, the Embassy would be available to assist with consular duties. What kind of talk was that? Is it possible not to find a war situation “emotionally disturbing?”
This caused some outrage and in the face of that, the Embassy in Kiev immediately circulated another statement it had issued on January 26, to the Nigerian community in Ukraine, but really there is no difference between the first and the second intervention. Nigerians in Ukraine were simply told that “they are on their own” in the following exact words: “Nigerians are hereby further advised to take their individual and collective safety and security very seriously, avoid unnecessary travels within the country, especially to identified hotspots in Eastern Ukraine; and ensure that they carry requisite identification at all times”. The Embassy says it would make periodic announcements and offer consular services available where necessary. Both the National Association of Nigerian Students in Ukraine (NANS-Ukraine) and Nigerians students in distress have spoken up (including Anjola-Oluwa Ero-Phillips) to declare that every effort to get the Nigerian Embassy to help them failed. Ms Eunice Eleaka, President of NANS-Ukraine, whose parents managed to evacuate before the blow-out had to send an urgent SOS message to President Muhammadu Buhari. The outrage that has greeted the mishandling of the Ukrainian crisis by the Nigerian Government is in order.
It has now resulted in a flurry of last minute activities. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs after expressing surprise that there was an issue in Ukraine (apparently the only government agency in the world that is surprised, even with the Western allies raising the alarm, weeks earlier, that an invasion was imminent), decided to summon G7 ambassadors in Nigeria, and the Ambassadors of Poland, Russia and Ukraine. The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission also woke up and started offering advice, backed by phone numbers and escape routes out of Ukraine into Poland. Nigeria also put up the equivalent of “small yansh diplomacy”, telling Russia to pull out of Ukraine and respect the international order. The best that African countries can do in this matter is spineless diplomatic twerking, to use a more decent phrase, so they should not deceive themselves, but they can do more in terms of helping their stranded citizens who are trapped in the crossfire. Nigeria’s House of Representatives did well by making the crisis a matter of urgent public importance, and resolving to send to Ukraine forthwith, the House Majority Leader and the Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to bring home stranded Nigerians in Ukraine. We would like a feedback on that. Did they travel? Are they back? How did the intervention of the House help?
It is perhaps selfish, to express concern more about the plight of our compatriots in Ukraine. Indeed, it is the whole of humanity that faces a problem. And the people of Ukraine will bear the brunt of their country being turned into the battle ground for the politics between Russia and NATO and the balance of power in the world. It would be a while before Ukraine recovers from the storm that has fallen on its roof. Its people have been displaced. The country has been thrown into turmoil. Age-old animosities between the Russian speaking Eastern parts and other groups have been re-ignited setting fire to the Minsk Agreement in Belarus, 2014. Vladimir Putin may be accused of all kinds of atrocities, and he is probably guilty, but the US and the allies are not particularly innocent either. NATO says it welcomes all countries that are interested in joining it. Putin’s Russia insists that there was a promise by NATO not to expand East-wards but since then it has added 14 new members. Putin hates the Alliance and does not want it anywhere near Russia. Those who know the story argue that the agreement of September 1990 referred to East Germany and not the whole of the East, but isn’t Putin right to argue that any further enlargement is a threat to the sovereignty of Russia? He is aggrieved because he knows that the intentions of the Allies are not necessarily holy. Has anyone thought of the Monroe Doctrine, and the 1962 US Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, the Gulf War, the attack on Libya, and the cross-current details?
The Allies have imposed sanctions, from sports to SWIFT, making Putin and Russia look like they have just walked into a trap. What is the end-game then? Could it be to cripple Russia and create rebellion inside the Kremlin and get Putin out of the way? The Russians probably have that figured out. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov says: “The Western sanctions on Russia are hard, but our country has the necessary potential to compensate the damage”. It is the world that will suffer in the end, and as the agony of Nigerians connected with Ukraine has shown, there is a lot more beyond gas prices, higher inflationary rates, the clout of a divided UN Security Council and economic sanctions, with greater cost better measured in human terms.
Hopefully, by the time this commentary is in print, on February 22, 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari should have given his assent to the re-amended Electoral Act Amendment Bill which was transmitted to him on January 31, 2022. If so, the President would have laid to rest all speculations and conspiracy theories as to why he does not want to sign the Bill or the possibility of what happened ahead of the 2019 elections repeating itself. If the President does not sign the Bill into law, however, he would raise concerns about his commitment to leaving a legacy of credible elections behind and would deepen tension and uncertainties within the polity. The President does not need the stress. It is in everyone’s best interest for him to grant his assent. He can subsequently send further amendments to the National Assembly as he did with the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) and the Appropriation Act 2022. In 2018, President Buhari rejected the proposed amendments to the Electoral Act 2010, four times, citing as justification - all kinds of irregularities, including drafting issues, sequence of elections, and even the phrasing of words in parts of the then proposed Bill.
In the end, no amendments took place and Nigerians went into the 2019 general election with the same old electoral framework that stakeholders wanted the legislature to amend. The final excuse given by the government in 2019 was that there would be no time to effect the amendments before the general elections whereas it was the back-and-forth over the granting of assent that was the problem. After the 2019 elections, the process of amending the Electoral Act began afresh under the 9th National Assembly. In November last year, an amended Electoral Act Bill was forwarded to the President for his assent. Section 58(4) of the 1999 Constitution provides for a window of 30 days within which the President can grant assent or withhold it, and in the event of the latter he can be vetoed by the National Assembly.
The President exhausted the entire 30-day window only to object to the National Assembly’s restriction of political parties to direct primary as the mode of selecting candidates for elections by political parties. He cited insecurity, the cost of conducting direct primaries and infringement on the rights of Nigerians to participate in governance as reasons. He promised that if this could be reviewed to allow for both direct and indirect primaries, he would grant his assent. The National Assembly threatened to veto the President, but it did no such thing. Instead the National Assembly reviewed the contentious Clause 84 of the Electoral Bill (originally Section 87 of the Electoral Act 2010), and replaced direct primaries, with an option of direct primaries, indirect primaries and consensus candidacy with a strict definition of what constitutes consensus and the other two options. The Committee of the Whole of the National Assembly then decided to insert in Clause 84, a provision that any one holding a political office - Ministers, Commissioners, Special Advisers and others - must relinquish such a position before he or she can be eligible to participate in the Electoral process either as a candidate or as a delegate. Previously, government appointees and political office holders could serve as delegates, go into elections, lose and then return to their jobs. In other words, the National Assembly modified and went beyond the President’s request.
The newspapers reported yesterday that the President wants this Clause removed before he can grant his assent. He reportedly met with the leadership of the National Assembly over the weekend. Some APC Governors are also said to be uncomfortable with this, as well as the definition of consensus by the national legislature and they are purportedly putting pressure on the President not to grant his assent. This is the main source of agitation and concern among Nigerians who think that an old, familiar script is about to be played out again. If the President does not grant assent, the Bill goes back to the National Assembly, the lawmakers would huff and puff, then they would re-amend the law again and add new things for effect, transmit the new twice re-amended Bill to the President, he or the Governors would again pick issues with some Clauses, wait till the last minute to register objections and then the process would begin again until time and resources would have been wasted.
This is the mischief that concerned Nigerians do not want. The objection to Clause 84 as phrased is that it automatically infringes upon the fundamental rights of political office holders to participate in the electoral process and it is to that extent illegal. What has not been pointed out is that the same Clause 84 allows any aggrieved person under that Section to approach the Federal High Courts to seek redress. Whereas Clause 84 may not derive directly from the public hearings conducted ahead of the Electoral Act Amendment process, it stands to reason that the express objective is to create a level playing field for everyone who takes part in the party nomination or candidate selection process. Hitherto, political office holders use government resources and access to state privileges to dominate party primaries within the ruling party. They are also ready tools in the hands of their principals, especially the Governors. They are expected to do the masters’ bidding since in any case they need the opportunity to return to where they came from if they fail in their bid. I see no problem with Clause 84, as it provides a recourse to the courts, and ensures a level playing field for all parties involved.
The other issue is the fear that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would be left with no option than to change the dates for the 2023 elections if the President does not sign the Electoral Bill as proposed by February 22, 2022. For now, INEC is yet to issue guidelines for the conduct of the 2023 general elections on the grounds that it is waiting for a new Electoral Act. According to Section 28(1) of the proposed Electoral Act 2022, INEC is required to issue a notice of election not later than 360 days before the appointed date for an election. INEC has since scheduled the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly Elections for February 18, 2023. To meet up with that provision and date, the deadline is February 22, 2022. So, whereas the President still has up till March 2, by virtue of Section 58(4) of the 1999 Constitution to sign the Electoral Amendment Bill, if he fails to do so, by today, February 22, INEC would be forced to reschedule the 2023 elections, or at best, use the extant law, which is the Electoral Act 2010. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) object to such a possibility. It is not only the 2023 general elections that would be affected. Off-cycle elections in Ekiti and Osun states too. The investment in coming up with an Electoral Act Amendment Bill would have been wasted and all the more positive sides of the Bill would have been discarded needlessly.
Hence, about 26 civil society organizations have threatened to embark on a protest today. They insist that President Buhari must sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2022 as a “matter of urgent national importance.” I can’t immediately think of any other piece of legislation that has generated this level of intentionality in recent memory. Civil Society Partners on Electoral Reform, the umbrella group of the CSOs argue that Clause 84 is not a problem, it can be amended at any time but there are more important provisions in the Bill that must not be thrown away. Enough is Enough (EiE) one of the CSOs, identified these critical provisions in an advertorial titled “Top Provisions in the Electoral Bill, 2022” at page 53 of ThisDay newspaper on Sunday, February 20, 2022. EiE argues that “Granting Presidential assent to the Electoral Bill 2022 on or before February 22, 2022 is in the best interest of our electoral democracy. Any amendments can be sent to the National Assembly later.”
According to Enough is Enough (EiE), we should not throw away the baby with the bath water, for the following reason that we need to be reminded of: 1. Clause 3(3) – early release of election funds to INEC. Indeed if all funds required for a general election are released a year ahead, INEC would be more financially independent. 2. Clause 50: Electronic transmission of results. This again is in order. Nigerians have always asked for electronic transmission of results to prevent fraud and manipulation. 3. Clause 65: Power to Review Election Results Declared Under Duress. This particular clause truly empowers the INEC. There are persons who became Governors in this country simply because there was no clause such as this in the extant Electoral Act, thus subjecting the electorate to the excruciating impact of a stolen mandate. 4. Clause 8(5): Political Neutrality of INEC Personnel. Here, it is proposed that any INEC official who is affiliated to a political party if caught, is liable on conviction to a fine of N5m or imprisonment for two years or both. This is a very essential provision. Too many electoral officials, including INEC, security personnel and ad hoc staff are embedded partisan gladiators. They help to thumb-print ballot papers. For a fee, they switch results. This particular provision puts them on notice that there are consequences for bad conduct. For far too long they have been getting away with sheer impunity. 5. Clause 47: Legalizing Electronic Accreditation of Voters. Nigerians have been clamouring for this: how technology can be used to upgrade the Nigerian electoral system. INEC may have introduced some technology in form of Smart Card Readers and Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in previous elections but because these are not provided for in the extant Electoral Act, they have been declared inadmissible by the courts in a number of cases.
Otherwise, Alex Otti of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) would have been Governor of Abia State in 2015. He won at the Court of Appeal when he challenged the 2015 Abia State Gubernatorial election victory awarded to Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Ikpeazu was removed. But Alex Otti later lost at the Supreme Court in part, because there was no provision for electronic accreditation or the use of smart card readers in the enabling law. The ruling of the Court of Appeal was accordingly set aside on technical grounds. Clause 47 in the proposed Bill would make electronic accreditation admissible as evidence, and help check fraud and manipulation. 6. Clause 54 (2) - Inclusion of Persons with Disability. If nothing else moves President Buhari to sign the Electoral Bill 2022, into law, this should. This is about the rights of persons living with Disability and it is a matter of public record that it was President Buhari that signed the Prohibition of Discrimination Against Persons Living With Disabilities into Law in 2019. He should be seen to be more interested in their inclusion, not the rights of political office holders pursuing selfish interests and their own stomachs. 7. Clause 51: Redefined Over-voting – Great provision. Only the total number of accredited voters at a polling unit will determine the validity of the voters. Hitherto, nobody paid enough attention to this. Nigeria is a country where ghosts show up on election day, including ghosts from other countries as far away as Brazil and they vote and their votes are made to count. 8. Clause 29 (1): early conduct of party primaries and submission of list of candidates. The thing speaks for itself here and it is better to quote the EiE statement: “Every political party shall, not later than 180 days (-6 months) prior to election day, submit the list of its candidates, who must have emerged from valid primaries conducted by the political party, to INEC”.
Nigeria must be one of those strange countries where the electorate doesn’t even have the opportunity to know the candidates in an election. Some political parties boast that if they put up a goat as candidate, Nigerians would vote for that goat without knowing, because the extant law weighs more heavily on the mandate of political parties. It is important that Nigerians begin to know the candidates well in advance. 9: Clause 94 – Early Commencement of Campaigns. In this section, political parties now have more time for campaigns, from 90 days to 150 days before polling day and 24 hours before election day. This is likely to increase the cost of campaigns but on a positive note, it provides the electorate a better opportunity to know the aspirant or candidate. Finally, 10: Clause 34 – Substitution of Candidate in the event of Death in an election. This is to correct the debacle in Kogi State about succession under such circumstances, following the death of Alhaji Abubakar Audu of the APC, in 2015.
It may be argued that all things taken together, the amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 is the most comprehensive and pragmatic effort that the National Assembly of Nigeria has embarked upon since it was resolved that having a credible electoral framework is crucial for the integrity of elections and the leadership recruitment process. The issues identified by EiE are practical responses to the realities of the Nigerian electoral experience, as distilled by stakeholders, processed by the legislature, and codified into legislation to raise the quality of Nigeria’s democracy. Whatever anyone may have said to President Buhari about Clause 84, relevant as it is to the interest of a self-seeking, alimental minority, the feelings of the larger majority, and the future of Nigeria’s democracy, should be more important to him. President Buhari should be more interested in keeping his promise that he intends to leave Nigeria’s electoral framework better than he met it. He has nothing to lose for doing so. He would be remembered for moving the needle forward in the direction of public good. The dilly-dallying notwithstanding, INEC also cannot give the excuse that it is waiting on the President. Irrespective of the extant law, arrangements should be made for the next elections. When the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2022 is eventually passed, necessary adjustments can be made. INEC, by conduct or inaction, passive or otherwise, must not give credence to the speculation that it may be part of a hidden agenda to compromise the democratic process. The President must be encouraged to leave a legacy of just and credible elections that he himself can be proud of. Mr. President, sign the Bill. History should not repeat itself.