After an unexpectedly sluggish start (it took him longer than usual to appoint his spokesperson, which conduced to the luxuriant flowering of avoidable rumors and disinformation), President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is finally decisively stamping his authority on the Nigerian political space with a frenetic blizzard of appointments and disengagements of the personnel of government. 

Both supporters and opponents of the president appear flushed with fervor by the ongoing whirlwind of firing and hiring. It has even infused a new leash of life to the notoriously lethargic Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), which has emerged as one of the most reliable sources of news on social media, particularly on Twitter, for Tinubu’s announcements of personnel changes.

But why are people exuberating over routine changes that herald—or should herald—every change of administration? I think there are at least three reasons for this.

The first is the enduring human thirst for novelty for its own sake, which is particularly noticeable among Nigerians who have had the misfortune of being habituated to stagnancy. You can put Nigerians in a perpetual state of suspended animation and rob them silly without their realizing it if you can sustain a never-ending parade of entry and exit of people in and out of the corridors of power. I don’t know why most previous Nigerian leaders, except IBB, haven’t discovered this. 

The second reason is that appointments to government positions are the symbolic conduits through which most Nigerians vicariously connect with governance. They feel connected with, and feel a sensation of having a stake in, an administration if someone from their hometown, local government, state, region, religion, or other forms of collective and emotional identification is appointed to an important position.

The demographic profiles of new government appointees also help people to situate a new government’s direction and to get a sense of the identity categories it seeks to privilege or demote. So far, although Tinubu’s appointments cumulatively favor the Southwest, they have shown sensitivity to Nigeria’s many intricate emotional maps.

Tinubu’s appointment of Sokoto-born, Southern Kaduna native Major General Christopher Gwabin Musa as Chief of Defence Staff not only honors merit but also provides a source of indescribable elation and emotional connection for the people of Southern Kaduna and northern Christians who had been some of the firmest foes of Tinubu and APC. I’ve read many northern Christians say the appointment has caused them to reassess their opinions of the new government.

The appointment of Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla as Chief of Naval Staff has also helped to call attention to the Igala-speaking people of Enugu and Anambra states whom most Nigerians didn’t know existed. I imagine, however, that Tinubu probably thought he was appointing an Igbo man when he considered Ogalla for his position. 

With a hometown called Enugu Ezike, a local government called Igbo Eze North, and a middle name called Ikechukwu, who would have guessed that Ogalla was an Igala (never mind that Ogalla and Igala kind of rhyme)? It was thanks to some Igbo people on social media that this bit about the man was revealed. 

Whatever it is, Tinubu can’t be accused of excluding the Southeast in the Security Council. Ogalla represents the Southeast. He probably speaks Igbo and is also probably culturally Igbo. In any case, many self-identified Igbos in Anambra and Enugu states have Igala or Benin provenance. Most people from Onitsha, for example, have either Bini or Igala ancestral roots, which they are still acutely aware of, even proud of, yet they identify as Igbo.

 As the late Professor Harry Garuba pointed out in his chapter contribution to a 2001 book titled Shifting African Identities edited by Martine Dodds, Meshack M. Khosa, and S. B. Bekker, “At the height of the Nigerian Civil War, Nnamdi Azikiwe declared that the Onitsha people really came from Benin, and were thus also descended from the Edos. A wave of public outcry from the Igbos greeted this declaration” (p. 17).

The truth is that our identities aren’t always neat, discrete, self-contained categories; they are often messy, complex, and overlapping in more ways than we care to admit.

Anyway, Tinubu’s 7 National Security Council appointments have 4 southerners and 3 northerners and 5 Christians and 2 Muslims. Given that the president and the vice president (who are also members of the Council) are Muslims, I think this is a reasonably fair and inclusive council, especially in light of Nigeria’s immediate prior experience where no more than two southerners or Christians served on the council at any point during an 8-year rule.

As is now obvious from the preceding point, the third and most important reason Tinubu appears to be exciting Nigerians is attributable to the style of outgone President Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari started his administration in 2015 by precipitously lowering the bar of governance. Before his second term was over, he threw away the bar outright. By his second term, he wasn’t gratified with just throwing away the bar; he broke it to smithereens. Then he buried the smithereens and exited the stage. That was why I invented the term “ungovernance” to describe his style of ruling.

Tinubu has merely brought a new bar. But for people who have become accustomed to not seeing a bar at all for 8 years, the mere sight of one seems exciting, even revolutionary. I agree that Tinubu deserves plaudits for bringing the bar and for not dithering about taking decisions. But he needs to do more than that. He needs to raise the bar, assess the impact of his decisions, and be humble enough to change course if his decisions inflict material violence on the vast majority of the people.

His government’s sustained assault on subsidies that benefit the poor (such as petrol, electricity, and tuition at higher education institutions) while leaving untouched the extortionate subsidies that fund the epicurean pleasures of Nigeria’s overpampered political class won’t raise the bar of governance. He is being feted by Western financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and applauded by Western financial media outfits such as Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, but everyday folks in Nigeria are squirming in excruciating existential torment.

I don’t see how this will end well. What shall it profit a country when it pursues policies that cause the economy to “grow” but causes the people to growl? After the economy has “grown” but the people still groan, where is the growth? The most important growth isn't the rise in abstract, disembodied, World Bank/IMF-created metrics but in the improvement of the quality of life of everyday folks.

Governance is the other side of a social contract. Social contract rests on the idea that everyday members of a society have agreed formally or informally to give up some of their natural rights and to recognize the authority of people in power in exchange for security and basic economic liberties. 

Social cohesion and the sustenance of social order are guaranteed when both parties keep their side of the bargain. Anomie results when either side fails to live up to the terms of the contract. That is why citizens get thrown into jails or fined for offenses ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. 

When those who control the levers of the power structure, who enjoy the privilege of being rulers, provide neither security nor basic economic liberties for everyday citizens who give up their natural rights for the sake a common social order that works for everybody, you get rebellion, insurrection, revolt, or even revolutions.

I hope people who love Tinubu cause him to be aware that after the excitement of the welcome motions he has been making peters out, people’s material realities will push them to ask him for movement, movement in the quality of their lives. 

The IMF/World Bank-inspired neoliberal nirvana he seems intent on building in Nigeria may create a fertile environment for “foreign investment” and invite the commendations of the financial buccaneers of the West but, like elsewhere in the developing world where this is tried, it will create hell for the poor and wipe out the middle class. It’s already starting.

 I also hope that Tinubu’s supporters and inner circle learn from Buhari who was shielded from even the mildest, best-intentioned, and most innocuous criticism. Being in the field of play creates multiple blind spots for players but onlookers, as the saying goes, see most of the game.

The philosophy of true born, illegitimates and vagabonds poisons the umbilicus of society, gnawing at the core gradually until it is vanquished by its own internal contradictions.

No society makes genuine progress through classism, casteism, native ordering and social isolation.

The Igbo phylum is a variegated one as it is with other ethnic species. Homogeneity does not exist in the true sense of the word among any ethnic classification. In the south-east, there are subgroups and splinter groups within the entity. There are also many varying derivative dialects across communities and towns, some of which native Igbo speakers may not understand.

The variant of Igbo spoken in my native town is different from that spoken in other towns within the same state. There is also no homogeneity in religion. And there have been cases of clashes among communities over differences bordering on politics, land, and other contentions. In fact, my native town and a neighbouring town do not agree. There is still a disputation over land till date.

But one string binds all within the south-east and parts of the south-south ecosystem – all are Igbo. Nature bubbles in divergence and eclecticism. The beauty and wonders of our world are by the fashioning of heterogenous intelligence. Man was not made to be culturally, socially, morphologically, and linguistically unipolar.

It is the reason I have always argued that Nigeria’s multiformity is not the dominating factor for its seeming ungovernability. Rather, it is the abuse and exploitation of differences; abnegation of civic duty, denuded understanding of citizenship, refusal to submit to the collective interest, native nationalism, and the absence of a rallying identity and cause, that are the denominators of Nigeria’s quandary.

Those who say Nigeria needs to splinter according to ethnic ordering to achieve unity, peace and progress are ignorant of the complexities of natural design. “Presumed homogeneity” does not guarantee unity, peace, or progress among a people.

In fact, a good number of the world’s most successful countries are so endowed by the nourishment and talents of their diverse population. There is wealth in diversity.

So, essentially, the argument that a Nigeria carved up along sectional contours will become united and prosperous is a slothful one. It shows a vacancy of thought and reason. Nigeria’s challenge is not its diversity, but the unwillingness of its people to be deliberate citizens.

The antagonism, prejudice, hate and bias among the Igbo taxonomic category have reached depressing proportions in recent years with the birth of the terrorist group – IPOB. The group has put a dagger to that which holds us together; turning brother against brother; clan against clan, and community against community.

This group has played on the sentiments of the Igbo, weaponising native differences to keep the people in its thrall. According to this group, ‘’authentic Igbos’’ are those who support Biafra, and ‘’fake Igbos’’ are those who are against it. This is the propaganda deployed by the proscribed group to divide the people. IPOB has been decimated, but its dissentious philosophy prevails.

It is concerning that an element of this divisive philosophy has been adopted by some to determine who is true-born Igbo and who is not.

The revulsion to the appointment of Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ikechukwu Ogalla as chief of naval staff, who is from Igbo-Eze in Enugu, by people of the same stock is embarrassing. Those opposing his appointment says he is not Igbo enough – that he is from Igala speaking part of Enugu. This is mortifying. This revulsion plays into the prevailing philosophy of the proscribed group.

Does this imply being ‘’Igbo enough’’ means one must be seen as an ethnic crusader; hold corrosive views of division; show prejudices and biases against other citizens? Does it imply one must be seen as representing the clan instead of the country? This is an abhorrent philosophy.

Going by the proclivities of these traducers, it is clear that the only Igbo fitting for appointment is one who represents their biases. How tragic.

I believe Igbo elders led by Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo should take an interest in the declension of Igbo society and in this disharmonious concept of ‘’fake and authentic Igbo’’. Why should a Nigerian of Igbo origin from Delta state, Rivers, Benue, Kogi deny his origins? It is a question we need to address. The reason is partially implicit in this schismatic philosophy.

There are aboriginal Igbo populations indigenous to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, and other countries. But why is there no plan or programme to make them a part of the larger Igbo fold, recognising and giving them a sense of family-hood?

No society makes real progress through casteism, native ordering, and social isolation.

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

Seven African leaders stunned the world on June 16 and 17, 2023 when they went on a peace mission to warring Ukraine and Russia. The reaction from many in the West was that of contempt; how is it the place of lowly Africa to intervene in a war of Europeans? In fact, Poland tried to scuttle the mission by detaining for 30 hours the aircraft carrying the protection unit of President Cyril Ramaphosa, leader of the delegation.

Its claim was that the security men carried “dangerous goods”(weapons). Did they expect them to carry candies? The protocol all over the world is for the paper work for the weapons to be submitted; but Poland declined. Eventually, the aircraft which also had a dozen journalists on board, could not join Ramaphosa as Hungary barred it from using its airspace. These are clear indications that some Europeans countries do not want peace.

The United States had also tried to scuttle the peace process by its Congress insisting that sanctions be imposed on South Africa for being a member of the Brazil, Russia, India , China and South Africa, BRICS, economic initiative and promising to allow President Vladimir Putin on whom it had imposed unilateral sanctions, to attend the BRICS meeting in South Africa without any consequences.

The reaction of some in Africa was one of self-denigration: how can African leaders think of making peace among Europeans, especially when the Pope, the United Nations and China had failed? Some, in trying to portray the African leaders as jobless busy bodies asked: what is Africa’s business? I will tell you what our business is by retelling a true story.

The European countries in search of territories, and to exploit the world’s human and natural resources went on a voyage to colonise the rest of the world.

As is often the case with the greedy tortoise, they came close to blows, and in 1884, met in Berlin to agree on how they would steal the resources of other peoples without fighting themselves. But greed has no limit, so on July 28, 1914, they commenced an All-European War. Since there were no persons to mediate, the Europeans were left on their own and at the end, 16 million human beings were killed in what they beatified as the First World War.

Despite the Europeans proclaiming that the First World War was a “War to end all wars”, they were back at another endless slaughter from September 1939. This time, some 85 million human beings were killed. They christened this slaughter, the Second World War. In each of these wars, genocide was a side menu. In the first, Armenians were the main victims, while in the second it was six million Jews. In all these, innocent Africans, Asians and Latin Americans were killed as they were forced to fight for both sides.

So today, with the same countries engaged in another slaughter, is it logical for anybody to ask what the concern of Africa is?

 If the senseless war in Ukraine were not brought to a quick and peaceful end as the African leaders are trying to do, is anybody in doubt that all humanity would be affected and that part of the war would also be fought on African soil as it happened in the Second World War?

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday told the African leaders that he is not interested in peace and is confident of resolving issues militarily, is anyone fooled that his faith is in the decimated Ukrainian armed forces? Is anybody in doubt that the war in Ukraine is an international one with the military from various countries, including America, Asia and Europe, engaged? Are we to pretend that since those armies are not fighting under their countries’ flags, then they are not on the battle field?

Did those querying the business of Africa in pushing for peace, listen to Putin when the African peace ambassadors asked him if the Russian nuclear weapons recently deployed to Belarus would be used? He had retorted that in case of a “threat to the Russian statehood” they would be used. He emphasised: “In that case, we will certainly use all the means that the Russian state has. There should be no doubt about that.” So, is Africa to do nothing in the face of a possible Third World War in which nuclear weapons will be used or do people think all these is a joke?

Those who argue that Africa has no business initiating peace in Ukraine are like occupants of a multiple storey building who claim that it is not their business if an occupant on the ground floor decides to blow up his flat.

Some scoff that the African leaders returned home empty handed. Such people do not seem to understand that a peace process is not a quick fix; once it is not going to be an imposition, it is often a marathon race. An African saying goes: an elder that listens to only one side of a story to pass judgement is a wicked elder. So the African leaders have gone to Kyiv and Moscow, listened to the combatants, poked them for response and watched their body language. A wise step the African leaders also took was to ensure their team includes friends of the warriors and their allies who might be beating the drums to which they are so energetically dancing. It is a known fact that South Africa is not opposed to Russia; Egypt is an ally of the United States and Senegal strives to be in the good books of France.

Again, there are those who argue that we have not been able to settle African conflicts like the senseless one in Sudan. True, but that does not mean we cannot strive for peace in Ukraine as we are also doing in Sudan. By the way, who praised Africa for the peace process in Ethiopia?

Then, there are those who query why the African countries went on the peace mission rather than the African Union, AU. To me, it is not on all issues we must wait for the bureaucracy of the AU to agree before an action can commence. In any case, how do they know the AU was unaware of the peace mission? How do they know the delegation did not get the nod of the AU before setting out?

I wish the African peacemakers: Presidents Ramaphosa, Macky Sall of Senegal, Comoros’ Azali Assoumani and Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly of Egypt and the envoys from Congo-Brazzaville and Uganda, success. Africans cannot just sit back and watch the Europeans engage in another mutual slaughter or ignite a Third World War.

Before grappling with the subject matter of this column today, I feel encouraged to get readers acquainted, if they are not already, with certain universally applicable concepts and perspectives of law. They are Natural law, Positive law, Judicial activism and the Separation of powers.They provide a meaningful backdrop to the surveillance of the rule of law in Nigeria 

According to my sources, ‘the theory of natural law believes that our civil laws should be based on morality, ethics, and what is inherently correct; that laws should reflect moral reasoning and should be based on moral order.This is in contrast to what is called “positive law” which holds that there is no connection between law and moral order’.

Proponents of judicial activism are persuaded ‘that the courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of its decisions.The specific decisions that are activist are controversial political issues’. 

‘Separation of powers is the division of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government among separate and independent bodies

The purpose is to prevent the concentration of power and provide for checks and balances’.

Now to the column proper- beginning with the rave of the moment, namely, Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa. He confessed:

“Mr. Chairman, I must say that okay, to round off, since that is what you want me to do, I will do that and I must thank particularly my wife whose freedom and independence I encroached upon while she was in office and she has been very tolerant and accepted my encroachment and extended her help to my colleagues.”“I know – I look at faces in this chamber whom have come to me and sought for my help when my wife was the President of the Court of Appeal and I am sure…”

In a left handed salute and acknowledgement, Nigerians owe a debt of gratitude to Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa for laying bare before the public glare, what we have always suspected of the Nigerian judiciary. We now know for certain that the culture of rampant corruption in the Nigerian judiciary is alive and kicking, thanks to the loving husband of the former president of the Nigerian court of appeal.. 

The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the law in Nigeria and the ultimate destination for all cases before the lower courts. As such, the apex court is the personification of the Nigerian judiciary, in its entirety. Hence it is from its conduct that we draw the exemplars of the culture to which Mr Bulkachuwa speaks. 

First, on the last governorship election in Imo state in 2019, the Supreme Court rules:

“It is thereby ordered that the appellant votes from 388 Polling Units unlawfully excluded from the appellant vote declared shall be added and that the first respondent, Emeka Ihedioha, was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes cast at the said election.”

Responding to this judgement, here was fellow Supreme Court Justice Chima Nweze:

“The decision of the Supreme Court in the instant matter will continue to haunt our electoral jurisprudence for a long time to come. This court has a duty of redeeming its image. It is against this background that the finality of the court cannot extinguish the right of any person. This Court has powers to over rule itself and can revisit any decision not in accordance with justice,”

In tandem, we learnt from another source that ‘Professor Ben Nwabueze accused the Supreme Court of playing a discreditable part in manufacturing a jurisprudence of electoral impunity, lamenting the failure by the Court to appreciate that the question of who should rule Nigeria is not one to be decided by a perverse and narrow legalism, by the technicalities of the rules of evidence, practice, and procedure and by considerations of.expediency.”

Second, is the Supreme court judgement on the eligibility of Senator Ahmed Lawan and Senator Godswill Akpabio to contest, simultaneously, for the presidency and the Senate haven taking no part in the APC primaries: Delivering the unanimous judgement of its five-member panel led by Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, the Supreme Court held that the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal were wrong to have assumed jurisdiction in the suit because the issue of candidate nomination lies squarely with political parties.

The explicit implication of the judgement of the Supreme court here is that regardless of how the party candidate emerged, with or without participation in party primaries, such a candidate is eligible to contest. It also found no offence in contesting for two electoral officers at one and the same time.

Another instance is the upturning of the conviction of Senator Orji Uzor Kalu: “The trial court found him guilty of corruption in December 2019 and was sentenced to 12 years in jail. But in one of a series of questionable judgements given by the Supreme Court, his jail time was nullified on technical grounds: that the judge who jailed him was ineligible to handle the trial having been elevated to the Court of Appeal’s bench as of the time he concluded the case”.

There will always be bad eggs in any institution or organ of government including the Judiciary. In any functional society however, such bad eggs are the exception and not the rule. A situation of crisis therefore arises where the bad eggs become the rule rather than the exception. In this latter instance, what you then have amounts to institutional subversion. 

At its maturation, this phenomenon is characterised as state capture- which refers to the way ‘formal procedures (such as laws and social norms) and government bureaucracy are manipulated by government officials, state-backed companies, private companies or private individuals, so as to influence state policies and laws in their favour’ 

It is within this concept of state capture that we can best locate the crisis of the judiciary. The other organs of government namely the legislative and the executive are, of course, equally implicated. What we then have is a systemic crisis in which none of the organs can be meaningfully isolated for remedial action.This is presently the case with Nigeria. The argument is that given the near criminal capture of all the arms of government, it is unrealistic to assume that the judiciary will not follow suit.

Nonetheless there are several dimensions to the crisis of the Nigerian judiciary. The crisis (of the judiciary) is the crisis of the Nigerian constitution, especially in regard of overcentralisation of power at the centre. Lord Acton aptly admonished that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Today, the most destabilising factor in Nigerian politics is the take no prisoners pursuit of the Nigerian presidency by contending factions of a self-destructive power elite.

In its zero sum dimensions, “the premium on political power became so exceedingly high that political contestants regarded victory at elections as a matter of life and death struggle” The judiciary is thereby co-opted and subverted to become the hired gun of desperate unscrupulous politicians. From this subversion at the national level, those at the subordinate levels have duly taken a cue.

Of equal significance is the utility of the unintended consequence of federalism. There is the profitable coincidence that federalism is, at once, the cure prescribed by the wholistic systemic crisis diagnosis of the entire Nigeria sickness and of a judiciary gone rogue.There is however the caveat that this ascriptive role (of federalism) is Nigeria specific. Taming a criminally implicated judiciary is not a generic role of federalism 

We have come to learn that the institutional subversion of the judiciary has largely emanated from its power of adjudication over the eligibility of who should contest and who should not contest elections; who wins and who loses elections especially at the governorship and presidential election levels. 

The overcentralisation of powers at the centre has precipitated and fuelled a desperation that is subversive of any legal and moral norm in the pursuit of its acquisition. Being the final arbiter of formal political conflicts, it is inevitable that the judiciary will become the major casualty of this anomaly. It then follows that any countervailing measure such as devolution and decentralisation of power will commensurately diminish the incentive to subvert the institutional integrity of the judiciary. 

There is the saying that all politics is local and by dint of the same logic, it can be validly argued that all development challenges are local. For development to take root, it has to be localised and owned by the beneficiary local population especially in a polity that is defined by large scale diversities and disparities. This self-prescriptive decentralisation and devolution of powers is the philosophy behind the Nigerian federalism. It was true in 1960 as it is true today.

Even if we did not have the crisis of the judiciary in mind, whenever the case is made for the restoration of federalism, it is now clear that this constitutional remedy has the potential to tame the monster. Without the murderous desperation to acquire the presidency, it is improbable that there would be a judiciary buyer of the sale of the inducement to subvert the course of justice.

Another dimension to the ailment is the immanent threat of facistic encroachment where presidents begin to arrogate to themselves the arbitrary privilege to determine what constitutes the boundaries of legitimate judicial intervention and

pronouncements.The proper recourse for any president who is not satisfied with the conduct of the judiciary is the national judicial council. The president has no power in the constitution to appropriate and arrogate such leviathan sovereignty to himself.  

In this tendency to take liberty for license we need look

no further than the exemplified pronouncements of Presidents Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu. Said Buhari “Our apex court has had cause to adopt a position on this issue in this regard and it is now a matter of judicial recognition that; where national security and public interest are threatened or there is a likelihood of their being threatened, the individual rights of those allegedly responsible must take second place, in favour of the greater good of society.” In similar fashion, Tinubu threatened that “It has become imperative to state here that the unnecessary, illegal orders used to truncate or abridge democracy will no longer be tolerated.”. 

To recap, the problem of Nigeria is a near systemic collapse which must to be addressed as such if the country would survive. Pending the acceptance of this prescription, all attempts at isolating the sporadic and episodic manifestations for remedial initiatives will end up in self-defeating smokes and mirrors.