Religion governs the sacerdotal facet of human life. Religion does not only bring out the divine and the human in us; it also unsheathes the basest and vilest part of us, depending on where the lamp is rubbed. We are all religious beings, but with a divergent pool of beliefs.

Religion is an emotive subject; hence a dangerous and nonpartisan explosive when soused with politics. The flame from the wrong application or deployment of religion consumes all -- the genie, the lamp, and the wielder. It spares neither friend nor foe.

That which is temporal should not impugn that which is holy and spiritual. What is for the dogs should be for the dogs, and what is for God for God.

Religion has always been an undercurrent in Nigeria’s politics. It has always mattered in our elections. And it has always been of significance in our national life.

However, owing to Nigeria’s delicate religious complexion, political actors who are sensitive to the country’s unity, have always been cautionary about making religion the centrepiece of their politics. Understanding that the votes of Nigerians, whether Christian, Muslim or traditionalist, count in deciding the outcome of elections, these political actors walk the tightrope of not pitting one religion against another.

Even when religion is in the mix, it has always been subtle; whispered and operated behind shutters. Never has religion been so abused in our politics in recent history as in the 2023 elections. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party, exercised religion in his campaigns with an open assault on national unity and cohesion. And he appeared blatant, defiant, and unperturbed about the concomitants and reverberations of his methods on national unity.

To Peter Obi, the election was a ‘’religious war’’ -- perhaps with casualties, victors, vanquished, missing limbs, and torsos. This jaundiced thought process obviously set the stage for the rampaging of his ‘’Obidients’’.

Peter Obi’s politics has scourged the land. It has scorched the umbilical cord holding us together – just as his ‘’Obidients’’ continue to poison our unity dutifully. A dangerous precedent has been set. When political campaigns are driven by prejudices and ethnic contaminants, the corollaries remain long after electioneering. The leadership may find itself on tenterhooks as regards establishing trust and building cohesion with some sections of the country over vicious ethnic and religious obloquy.

It is concerning that some respected Nigerians are endorsing this naked abuse of our electoral process as the Electoral Act 2022 prohibits campaigns with the underpinnings of religion. It is fair, according to them, because Peter Obi is the protagonist today, but what happens when the table turns?

This utter disregard for our laws, all sense of decency and patriotism is precarious for Nigeria as it sets one religion against another. With such a precedent, elections may no longer be about competence and governance, but about religion and about who has the largest following among the religions.

This is a path to doom. It does not bode well for our country. It is regressive, atavistic, and destructive. What Peter Obi has done with his politics should not be rationalised by anyone. In fact, it should be condemned by all well-meaning Nigerians.

We cannot speak of building a united country and endorse what Peter Obi has done with his unfettered struggle for power in any way. It is wrong, and a blight on the national conscience.

If the purpose of seeking power is truly for the good of Nigerians, then the highest level of patriotism is expected of political actors. But why is Peter Obi so desperate for power? Why is he so menacing about the outcome of the election? What is behind this rabid quest for power? Why is he seeking to plunge the nation into crisis over his ambition?

Politics reveals the concealed hue of a familiar face; it awakens forgotten prejudices. In politics, our weaknesses are emboldened, and native fissures foregrounded.

I believe our politics is religiously and ethnically charged because good governance is not at the core of the game. Some politicians and even some citizens see political power as conquest and as a diadem to assert sectional and doctrinaire relevance and pursuits – as Peter Obi’s bent shows. We must do away with this. If it is really about leadership, then religion and ethnicity must remain on the back burner.

To radical ‘’Obidients’’ who are still in campaign mode and slinging prejudices for nuisance advantage, the elections are over, and the rest of Nigeria are now focused on governance and on advancing with Nigeria. Not that patriotism matters to radical ‘’Obidients, as they have shown themselves incapable of logic and reason, Nigeria is still a country of laws for those who may want to manifest their delusions.

Nigerians must begin to wrest the narrative from this horde. We must speak peace and unity for the country.

May Nigeria find healing.

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

The Department of State Services (DSS) is an interesting organisation. It is one place the citizens love to hate. The body thrives on reverse psychology and gaslighting, saying one thing and meaning the exact opposite and making the citizens doubt and blame themselves for the failures of their leaders. Inimitable also is their ambivalence and amorphous deception in the line of duty and secrecy. Their operatives do as they like, answerable to none but the president and to the president alone. Their allegiance is therefore not to the country or the constitution. Their patriotism means standing with the president, even when the president is standing against the country.

And the president in our clime is concerned only for his self-preservation. All the talk about the so-called national interest is about the self-preservation of the president and his interest and the interests of the few that hold the reins of power with him. These interests play up the most in elections. The interest of the president and the power donors he represents dominate the succession plan at all levels. Citizens be damned!

From the appointment of the head of the electoral commission and its entire management team, the president, the power holders, and power donors carefully select the most pliable hands who will deliver either as instructed or as they may read from the body language of their appointors.

From the foregoing, one can see that it was an aberration for a certain Dr Goodluck Jonathan to thump his chest and say, “I never knew Atahiru Jega before I appointed him”. Jonathan was simply being naive. Some persons usurped his powers and forced his hands to appoint Jega, who of course did the bidding of those unseen hands and priced power out of the erstwhile president’s hand.

Buhari did not make that mistake. He carefully chose Professor Mahmood Yakubu, a product of the establishment in his capacity as an executive secretary of TETFund. Something emblematic about establishment persons is that they are experts in reading the body language of their principals even when they do not want to speak directly to them.

The great preparations and build-up to the 2023 general election were such as to make the outcome the best election ever in the annals of the nation’s electoral history. To ensure this about N400 billion was committed to ensuring that all aspects and all stones were not left unturned. The enabling law (Electoral Act 2022) was also put in place by the national assembly and the president graciously signed it into law.

Yet, as early as October 2022, facts began to emerge that INEC had abandoned the elaborate plans to ensure the electronic transfer of results in real-time. Professor Yakubu addressed a press conference that November to reassure Nigerians that results would be transmitted in real-time in line with the extant Electoral Act 2022 Section 64(4) and Electoral Guidelines paragraph 38.

Loquacious Festus Okoye issued a press statement reiterating and reechoing Professor Yakubu’s press conference at the same time. Yet, both men led the commission to abandon everything and resorted to manual collation as obtained in the Electoral Act 2010 and shut down INEC’s IReV at the nick of time to cut off real-time monitoring of the results by the stakeholders and political parties. To complete the impunity and subterfuge, Yakubu refused to attend to official complaints and utilise the one-week window created for the commission in the electoral act for that purpose before declaring the winner.

“Go to court,” was all Yakubu and the president had to arrogantly offer to opposition parties and millions of Nigerians who felt deceived and betrayed by INEC. They say this as if the judiciary was not there before INEC was set up to organise and supervise elections in Nigeria. Maybe the next electoral reforms should simply hand over the task of organising elections to the Supreme Court of Nigeria since it’s the judiciary that has been determining outcomes or winners in our elections since 1999 when the country returned to the current democratic dispensation. INEC has since lost its essence and Nigerian democracy is now better off without it. This is no longer the Electoral Commission once led by men of impeccable character like Prof Eme Awa and Prof Humphrey Nwosu.

That is the background that has led to the present quagmire. This has led to unpreceded protests, which have seen some mothers go completely naked and half-naked to drive home their frustration and disgust.

More importantly, there is a rising strident call for an interim national government (ING) to hold fort till the tribunal and the supreme court determine the winner of the February 25th presidential election.

Unfortunately, ING is unknown to the Nigerian laws and the president lacks the power to impose an ING as Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida did as a military head of state in 1993. The 1999 constitution has a clear succession plan and tenure elongation of the incumbent government under extraneous circumstances. The senate president being suggested by some to take over in the interim can only come in if the president and vice resign together or die in office (God forbid) or are impeached. Even this will not produce an interim government because the senate president can only stay for the remainder of the tenure of the president and vice replaced.

In the case of a national emergency, NASS can however declare a state of emergency and elongate the tenure of the government (executive and legislature) for the initial six months. The Doctrine of Necessity invoked by NASS under David Mark as senate president in 2010 to cause the swearing in of Dr Goodluck Jonathan as president during the Yar’Adua health and death saga does also not mirror the dire situation confronting the nation at the moment.

The position of the law, therefore, is that the president-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be sworn in as substantive president and will remain so unless otherwise declared by the supreme court. The fear that he would deploy instruments of the state to ensure that he retains power is germane but unfortunately, that is what is legally plausible left for Nigerians.

That is the scenario the DSS is reacting to and confirming the plot for an interim national government by those the Service has angrily described. The Service says the plot, which is being pursued by some entrenched interests, is not only an aberration but a mischievous way to set aside the constitution and undermine civil rule as well as plunge the country into an avoidable crisis.

The Service also claimed that planners have weighed various options, which included sponsoring endless violent mass protests in major cities to warrant a declaration of a state of emergency and obtaining frivolous court injunctions to forestall the inauguration of new executive administrations and legislative houses at the federal and state levels.

Assuming these allegations are true, are these options being pursued not legitimate in a democracy i.e. organising protests and going to court for redress?

Weighed from a reverse psychology perspective, what the DSS is doing is anti-democratic and tantamount to gagging the people and the judiciary. The DSS mandate does not include determining which court orders are frivolous. Any frivolous order will certainly be set aside by the two appellate courts of the land – the court of appeal and the supreme court. After all, both INEC and the president asked those not satisfied with the outcomes of the February 25th election to go to court, and to court, they have gone. So, why the hullabaloo?

More importantly, stopping the people from protesting within the laws of the land is also antithetical to the ethos and tenets of democracy. Or, are the DSS and its principals saying Nigerians must accept Bola Tinubu as their president whether they elected him or not?

Opposition political parties and indeed the Nigerian people need their political space and democratic rights to vent and test the validity of the election of Bola Tinubu. The DSS ought to know that the issue is not whether the election was peaceful in most parts of the country or that Tinubu is the beneficiary of the opaque process. They ought to worry that officially up to 27 fellow Nigerians died and that is hardly a good definition of a peaceful election and the seeming deliberate blindfolding of Nigerians ought to be peacefully challenged to avoid a repeat of such a heist in the future and possible truncation of democracy.

The Service is aware that till today, all the polling units’ results are yet to be uploaded by INEC to the IReV. Yet the uploaded results are a precedent to results’ collation and declaration. Despite this, a president-elect has been declared and is about to be sworn in. In civilised climes, Professor Mahmood and his management team ought to be in the DSS office answering pertinent questions. But unfortunately, it is the victims of their subversive activities that are being hounded by the DSS. This is what is regarded as a means-end inversion in psychology. It is gaslighting – brazenly lying to Nigerians to manipulate, and ultimately control and make them scapegoats using coercion.

The Service is therefore blaming and taking it out on the victims – Nigerians. It ought not to be for the sake of posterity!

Mefor is a senior fellow of The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought. He can be reached via +234- 9056424375 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. He tweets @DrLawMefor1

IN the rascally days of the military, when generals were wedded to coups, a military officer arose in their ranks called Oladipo Donaldson Oyeyinka Diya. He was unknown to the public until January 1984 when the coup plotters led by General Muhammadu Buhari, who had overthrown the Shagari administration, announced him as the Military Governor of Ogun State.

The populace had thought the military seized power to alleviate their suffering, but soon realised that their state had worsened. So in Ogun State, they started referring to Diya, which literally means ‘reduce our suffering’, as Kunya which means: ‘add to our suffering’.

An August 1985 palace coup sent Diya back to military duties while his colleagues continued to mismanage the country. The military shifted the handover to civilian rule thrice before aborting the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola just so they would not return to the barracks.

After the annulment of the election, the Generals put in place a contraption called the Interim National Government, ING, headed by one of their civilian ‘boys’, Chief Ernest Shonekan. But it was strange to the country in all ways and the Nigeria body rejected the foreign object. An upcoming Justice Dolapo Akinsanya declared the ING illegal, and that was when Diya became quite active amongst his fellow Generals.

Chief Gani Fawehinmi had some days after the verdict on the ING launched a book on the subject during which the legal icon and advocate of the masses called on the “revolutionaries” in the military to seize power. I got up at the public forum to oppose the call on the basis that we do not know revolutionaries in the highly compromised military which behaves like a lion that had tasted human blood. I insisted that civilians must take over; and on behalf of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Nigeria, declared that we would oppose and fight any new coup plotter on the streets as we had done with the Babangida dictatorship.

The newspapers next morning carried the open disagreement between Chief Fawehinmi and I.

Then, Dr Olu Onagoruwa, a noted lawyer, minority rights activist and pro-democracy leader, asked me for a meeting. He told me he had read the altercation between Chief Fawehnmi and I, but would suggest I make no further public comments against a coup as one was coming in a few weeks.

I told him I was aware that General Diya was coordinating one and had consulted a number of civil society groups, including those in the leading Campaign for Democracy, CD, but assured him that even if it will take hundreds of lives as it did under Babangida, we were going to take on any new military regime.

The coup was staged on November 17, 1993. A reticent, seemingly apolitical General Sani Abacha with a voracious appetite for alcohol, women and public funds, was named Head of State and Diya as his Deputy. Dr Onagoruwa was named Attorney General and Minister of Justice, and my former employer in the GUARDIAN Newspapers, Mr Alex Ibru, became Interior Minister.

The more boisterous Diya, coordinator of the coup who seemed to have control of the new regime and the backing of many Generals, ran the show, while Abacha appeared to have taken a back seat.

The popularised objective of the coup was the de-annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and swearing-in of Abiola as president. But this was not happening fast and there were worries. The impression was sold that a publicised meeting between Abacha and Abiola with Diya and Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu as witnesses, had ironed out things.

Some five of us leading the pro-democracy movement, including our leader, Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, Dr Frederick Fasehun and Femi Falana met Chief Abiola the next day. First, we protested his public endorsement of the coup plotters. Secondly, we warned him that the Generals are untrustworthy and thirdly, made him know that we would oppose the new regime.

We were also angry about the elevation of Abacha who had on July 6, 1993 personally led heavily armed soldiers to maul down protesters demanding the restoration of Abiola’s mandate. On that day, Abacha and his murderous soldiers had shot dead 118 pro-democracy protesters in Lagos.

Abiola had characteristically tried to make light our protests. He told us that he met the diminutive Abacha because: “If you want to greet a dwarf, you have to bend down to his level.” Beko had responded that a dwarf can be placed on a pedestal rather than bending down to his level.

As the regime consolidated, it was not certain whether the Diya wing was still “standing on”, “sitting by” or even supporting June 12 mandate restoration.

Since Dr. Onagoruwa appeared quite influential and respected in the regime, was very close to Diya with whom he shared the same Odogbolu homestead, and was a mutual friend, Beko and I decided to have a talk with him. He invited us to his Odogbolu country home for a weekend where he assured us that Diya was in charge of the regime and could, if need be, instruct “the boys” to clear off Abacha who he said was called ‘Baba Go-Slow’ in the Executive.

Diya completely underrated Abacha and was basically incapable of reading the political situation. Even when those of us, outsiders could read changing situation, he could not. By the time Diya realised he was riding on a tiger’s back, he had practically ended up in its stomach.

Abacha had Ibru shot on February 2, 1996; he survived, but lost an eye and two fingers. He got his killer squad on June 4, 1996 to execute Mrs. Kudirat Abiola, Chief Abiola’s wife, on the streets of Lagos. Abacha went after Onagoruwa by killing his son, Oluwatoyin, a lawyer, on December 18, 1996. He then sent Diya to officially commiserate with him. Then, he went after Diya.

After two assassination attempts on Diya, including in December 1997, blowing up the aircraft he was to take on official assignment to Benue State, Abacha manufactured a phantom coup under which Diya in April, 1998, was sentenced to death. It was the second of such coups. The first was in 1995 under which men like retired Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Shehu Yar’Adua were convicted. The latter was poisoned in Abakali Prisons.

After the sentence, videos emerged of General Diya kneeling down before Abacha, weeping and begging for his life. His life might have been spared only because Abacha lost his own on June 8, 1998. That enabled Diya to live another 25 years in virtual obscurity before he finally bowed out on March 26, 2023. May we never witness such regimes in Nigeria again. Amen!