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Sombre is the word as Nigeria celebration of its 19th year of unbroken democracy takes place on May 29, with President Muhammadu Buhari’s address making little impact on Nigerians who are still unsure of what the government is doing to destroy nepotism and enthrone equality, justice and rule of law
By Olu Ojewale
TUESDAY, May 29, was good enough for President Muhammadu Buhari to roll out the drums in celebration of his three years of stewardship as the Nigerian democratic president and also in celebration of Nigeria’s 19 years of unbroken democracy. But as it all tuned out, the president and even Nigerians were not in celebrative mood. In fact, the shine was taken out of the president’s national broadcast to commemorate the event by people’s mixed reactions.
His scorecard has been on economy, security, war against corruption and acts of politicking, among others. As should be expected, Nigerians have been having their say.
So, it would be foolhardy to say Buhari does not know where the shoe pinches. In the past few weeks, he has been confronted with opposition within and without, especially since his intention to seek for a second term in office became public. Chiefly among his virulent opponents are former President Olusegun Obasanjo and members of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the main opposition. And within the party are members of the former new PDP as well as disgruntled elements who want his plum job.
Indeed, Buhari seems to have a strong opposition against his re-election bid. His popularity even among members of his party appears to be dwindling.
The opposition seems to have given the ruling party the impetus to take seriously the threat by the former new Peoples Democratic Party, nPDP, a bloc within the APC, to dump the party. In the course of their meeting with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, on Monday, May 28, three issues were identified as reasons behind threat by the former nPDP to leave the ruling party.
The germane issues considered critical and tabled at the meeting include the shutting out of Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the House of Representatives and Rabiu Kwankwaso, a senator, from the APC ward and local government congresses in Bauchi and Kano states; and alleged persecution of ex-nPDP members by anti-graft agencies and Ibrahim Idris, inspector-general as well as non-appointment of members into key positions.
The meeting raised an eight-man panel, comprising four members from each from both sides, to resolve the issue. The eight-member committee has been mandated to resolve all the grievances ahead of the party’s national convention slated for June 23.
The meeting was a follow up to the one with the APC leadership few days ago. The group had given the party one week to meet with it over its grievances.
On Wednesday, May 30, Abubakar Kawu Baraje, the chairman of the bloc warned against comments and disclosures that could derail the reconciliation talks within the ruling party.
He said Osinbajo had asked all parties to the discussions to avoid a media war.
Baraje also said contrary to the media speculation, the discontinuation of the trial of Bukola Saraki, Senate president, by the Code of Conduct Tribunal was not part of the talks by the Presidency, nPDP and APC leaders.
Political watchers believe that the way and manner the talks between the two groups pan out would determine what happens at the APC convention on June 23.
Another major battle confronting Buhari is one waged by Obasanjo. The former president had late last year, advised the president not to seek for a second term in office based on what he claimed to be the president’s incompetence, clannishness, and failure to deliver on his promises. He subsequently formed Coalition for Nigeria Movement, CNM, which devolved into the African Democratic Congress, ADC, a political party.
In recent times, the former president and the Buhari-led administration have been exchanging altercations. On Sunday, May 27, the Presidency took a jibe indirectly at Obasanjo, by accusing the PDP that one of its former presidents of illegal removal of state governors.
Although former Obasanjo was not mentioned by name, all the facts pointed to events that took place under his administration.
Garba Shehu, the senior special assistant to the president on Media and Publicity, said in an article titled: “The real price of change-the-change campaign (2)” made available to journalists in Abuja, that the PDP under Obasanjo showed aptitude in the toppling of elected state governments using the police and secret service under their control.
He said: “A five-man legislature met at 6am and ‘impeached’ ex-Governor (Joshua) Dariye in Plateau; 18 members out of 32 removed ex-Governor (Rashidi) Ladoja of Oyo State from office; in Anambra, APGA’s ex-Governor (Peter) Obi was equally impeached at 5 am by members who did not meet the two-thirds required by the constitution.
“His offence was that he refused to inflate the state’s budget. The lawmakers had reportedly met with representatives of the president in Asaba, Delta State, and then accompanied to Awka by heavy security provided by the police Mobile Unit.
“The PDP president at that time had reportedly told Obi to forget re-election in 2007 if he did not join the PDP because he (the president) would not support a non-PDP member.
“In Ekiti, Governor Ayodele Fayose, in his first term, faced allegations of financial corruption and murder. Following the failure to heed the instruction of the Presidency to impeach only Fayose and spare the deputy, Madam Olujimi, now a senator, the PDP President declared that there was a breakdown of law and order in the state and declared a state of emergency…
“In an earlier incident in Anambra, it took an insider collaboration to thwart the unseating of Governor (Chris) Ngige by a powerful thug sponsored by the PDP administration. Thank God for Buhari, none of these absurdities has happened under his watch but the PDP is indicating their boredom with his meticulous observance of the constitution by calling for a return to the old order.”
Shehu wondered what pushed the PDP to write a letter to the United Nations, laying false claims to constitutionality and alleging that democracy is currently under threat. He argued that the present administration had fared well in various policy fronts and there was a long list of achievements to flaunt.
Levelling a similar accusation, Tony Momoh, a former minister of Information, and a chieftain of the APC on Tuesday, May 29, accused Obasanjo and Nuhu Ribadu, a former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, of destroying Nigeria’s democracy.
He pointed out that both of them barred certain politicians from participating in the 2007 general elections without recourse to the rule of law.
Momoh who spoke in an interview with a national newspaper also accused Ribadu of breaching the EFCC Act which stipulates that he should charge alleged corrupt persons to court after completing his investigations.
He alleged that Ribadu upon completion of his investigations handed over the case files to Obasanjo, who in turn set up committees to determine who should be pardoned or who should be investigated.
He said: “Based on the recommendations of the committee, many eligible politicians were barred from contesting election in the country owing to Obasanjo’s personal judgement without any court pronouncing them guilty.”
Momoh said: “In my view, he (Obasanjo) destroyed Nuhu Ribadu because I wrote that Ribadu had been led astray. Everybody like Ribadu because of what he did in EFCC.”
“Based on that, they disqualified people from contesting election which was outside due process. Unfortunately, my sister Oby Ezekwesili was a member of one of the committees that disqualified politicians from contesting election. That was in the area of destroying our democracy. They just messed up our Due Process.”
Fayose has since distanced himself.
Lere Olayinka, the special assistant to Fayose on Public Communications and New Media, has since distanced his boss from the controversy. He said: “These people should rather fight their battle alone because when they were going to Obasanjo’s house to prostrate for him to get his support, they didn’t remember that he was a despot and that he spent $16bn on power.”
Olayinka challenged Buhari to go ahead and arrest Obasanjo and to probe him.
“What are they waiting for? As far as we are concerned, Obasanjo and Buhari are allies in the comity of dictators and treasury looters. It was under Obasanjo that Buhari served as the Minister of Petroleum and the NNPC chairman in 1977 and N2.8bn oil money went missing from the accounts of the NNPC in Midlands Bank, United Kingdom. N2.8bn as of that time is like $2.8bn (over N1tr) now!”
Indeed, Buhari, at the previous week, set the tone for a renewed controversy over the Nigerian National Power Project, NIPP, by accusing the Obasanjo administration of wasting $16bn on power projects without any visible result.
In prompt reaction, Obasanjo, late on Tuesday, May 22, told Buhari that he was ignorant about the $16bn power project allegedly wasted during his tenure.
He stated that the statement of the president was based on ignorance, adding that he (Buhari) was relying on the unsubstantiated allegations against him by the then leadership of House of Representatives over the project.
The former president, who spoke through Kehinde Akinyemi, his media aide, said lack of proper understanding prompted the president to make such a comment.
He said among others: “For the records, Chief Obasanjo has addressed the issues of the power sector and the allegations against him on many occasions and platforms, including in his widely publicised book, My Watch in which he exhaustively stated the facts and reproduced various reports by both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, which conducted a clinical investigation into the allegations against Chief Obasanjo, and the Ad-Hoc Committee on the review of the recommendations in the report of the committee on power on the Investigation into how the huge sums of money was spent on power generation, transmission and distribution between June 1999 and May 2007 without commensurate result.
“We recommend that the president and his co-travellers should read Chapters 41, 42, 43 and 47 of My Watch for Chief Obasanjo’s insights and perspectives on the power sector and indeed what transpired when the allegation of $16 billion on power projects was previously made. If he cannot read the three-volume book, he should detail his aides to do so and summarise the chapters in a language that he will easily understand.”
He challenged anyone not satisfied with investigations conducted by the National Assembly and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to initiate another probe into the matter.
The claim and counter-claim have no doubt divided many Nigerian leaders of thought just as the Buhari’s style of governance.
On Thursday, May 31, Dino Melaye, an embattled senator representing Kogi West Senatorial District, and a member of the ruling APC, raised a point of order at the Senate plenary in which he described Buhari’s recent comments against the National Assembly and its members, as “not presidential.”
He noted that the president’s body language towards the National Assembly was the reason why Ibrahim Idris, the inspector-general of Police, and heads of ministries, departments and agencies often refuse to answer invitations by the lawmakers.
Indeed, the President had, on Tuesday, May 29, attacked the National Assembly members at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, while receiving members of the Buhari Support Organisation led by Hameed Ali, a retired colonel and the comptroller-general of the Nigeria Customs Service.
The president was quoted as saying: “Let anybody come and confront me publicly in the National Assembly. What have they been doing? Some of them have been there for 10 years. What have they been doing?”
Melaye, however, described Buhari’s comments as “un-presidential and derogatory.” He also faulted Ali for leading an electoral campaign for the president’s re-election, even as a public officer.
Perhaps, what is more instructive is the newspaper interview published on Monday, October 16, 2017, in which Emeka Anyaoku, former secretary of the Commonwealth and elder statesman, he said: “Since the 1967 Civil War, I do not think this country has been as divided as it is now.”
Indeed, since Anyaoku made that statement six months ago nothing seems to have changed or ever going to change with the way the Buhari government continues to ventilate its controversial policies.
In the past three years, there have been unprecedented separatist agitations for the Republic of Biafra, Niger Delta Republic and Oduduwa Republic.
But it was the agitation for the Republic of Biafra led by the now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, which got the full wrath of the government anger. It designated the group as a terrorist organisation and proscribed it from existence in September 2017. Leaders and members of the group are now persona non granta.
“It is this obvious lopsided distribution of commonwealth and leadership style of President Buhari that led to his quick proscription of the separatist, but non-violent and unarmed group, Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, tagging it a terrorist organisation, while Fulani herdsmen that have been killing, maiming and raping Nigerians are treated with kid glove, for instance. Many have indeed, argued that in the present dispensation, the life of cows seem to be more important than that of some Nigerians,” said Rose Moses, a columnist.
In the course of the crisis between government and the IPOB, there was the notice issued by the Arewa Youths Coalition to Ndigbo to leave the North by October 1, 2017, which again brought about another political tension across the country. Mercifully, the tension did not blow over.
Nevertheless, that cannot be said of the menace of Fulani herdsmen rampaging the whole country, killing and maiming innocent people including priests and destroying farms and properties.
The divisive events are no doubt pushing Nigeria to the brink of disintegration as insinuations are being made that Buhari is tactically supporting the herdsmen. No explanation seems to have convinced many Nigerians, especially those from affected areas to believe that government is looking after their interest.
As if that is not serious enough, the president is being suspected of trying to Islamise Nigeria. If not for anything, his statements, including one particular before his inauguration appears to suggest the president’s bias.
His position as an apostle of the Islamisation/Northernisation agenda was affirmed in a speech he, as president-elect, delivered before an audience of exclusively prominent Northern Muslim leaders on May 2, 2015, at Queen Amina Hall, Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria, Kaduna Sate.
Buhari said: “I charge you to join me as we build a new Northern Nigeria in a generation… the best investment we can make in the North is not finding oil in the Chad Basin…we will start with one local government in each state until we get to every school in all of Northern Nigeria.
“To achieve this, I have secured a Northern rehabilitation fund…to rebuild the North after the devastation of Boko Haram insurgency… Join me my brothers and sisters and let us finish the work our forefather, Ahmadu Bello, started.”
Indeed, in October last year, Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group, disclosed how Buhari, in his first meeting with him, requested that the bank concentrated its intervention programmes in the North, something he said the bank had been doing, but proving very difficult. But Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, said the president did not make request for the development of the North alone but the whole country.
That notwithstanding, the president appears to be nonplus about the criticism of his lopsided appointments to strategic positions he made since assuming office. Of the altogether 31 such appointments, 24 or nearly 80 percent, go to Muslims from the North, seven to the South, distributed four to the South-West, three to the South-South and nil to the South-East.
The strategic nature of the 24 appointments, include secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF; national security adviser, NSA; chief of staff to the president; attorney-general of the Federation, AGF; chairman, Independent Nation Electoral Commission, INEC; managing director, Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA; group managing director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC; inspector-general of Nigeria Police Force; director, Department of State Security, DSS and most of the top offices in the department; chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC; among others.
The Northernisation agenda has also been given impetus through appointments to 15 top offices in the NNPC. The North has 10, South West has three while two places went to the South West, and nil again to the South-East.
“The Islamisation/Northernisation agenda, as it is faithfully being implemented by the Buhari federal government, shows that government to be a government for one section of the country, the North, to be precise. It is not the all-inclusive government that Nigerians desire.
“These appointments, the concentration of 80 percent of them in the North and the total exclusion of the South-East from them, is an affront to justice, social justice and equality in the administration of government,” Ben Nwabueze, SAN and an elder statesman, said in a newspaper interview.
Besides, the professor of Law, noted: “President Buhari owes it to the Nigerian people to admit that the divisions tearing the country apart are caused by his actions and utterances; he should now begin the process of self-correction which involves the making of amends for his misguided past actions and utterances.
“His actions and utterances under reference manifest a pre-determined Islamisation/Northernisation Agenda with the war against corruption serving as a cover.
“The existence of such agenda is not something conjured up just to discredit him; on the contrary, it is an irrefutable fact.”
To right the seemingly wrong wroth by the Buhari government, Nigerians across all the political and ethnic divides have been clamouring for restructuring of the country to unite more than 300 ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.
Perhaps, that was why Kola Ologbondiyan, publicity secretary of the PDP, said under the Buhari administration celebrating Democracy Day would be a mirage. He said since the president assumed office, he had violated all tenets of democracy, trampled on citizens’ rights.
Ologbondiyan said in a statement: “Indeed, this administration should not come close to the emblem of democracy, as such would be an unpardonable spat on the faces of the millions of suppressed Nigerians and the graves of victims of extra-judicial executions under this administration, as catalogued by international bodies including, Transparency International, Amnesty International and even the United States Department of State.
“Instead of celebrating democracy, Nigerians are today groaning in regret for electing an administration that has completely turned against them, engaging in clampdown with utmost impunity, setting aside our constitutional provisions and desecrating all democratically established institutions.”
Ezekwesili on her part, asked Nigerians to give “shareers of oil revenues” red card.
In a tweet on her official twitter handle @obyezeks, she demanded that electorates must ask candidates to explain how they would turn the country’s economy around before voting them to power in 2019.
“Citizens should tell presidential and governorship candidates for 2019 elections to give us their VISIONARY Presentation on: ‘How I Will Build a New Nigeria Beyond Oil’.
“All these Shareers of Oil Revenues should definitely get #RedCards and marched off the governance field!”
Ezekwesili has always been an advocate of transparency and development.
Shehu Sani, chairman, Senate committee on Local and Foreign Debt, on Tuesday, May 29, listed the achievements and failures of the APC government led by Buhari.
The senator representing Kaduna central senatorial district, in reviewing the president’s achievements in the past three years in office, wrote in a tweet: “Democracy Day; The nation under this govt has recorded achievements in the areas of fighting corruption, self-sufficiency, economy & completion of projects: And has failed in areas of respecting human rights & protecting human lives & respecting principles of separation of powers.”
Ebongabasi Ekpe-Juda, security expert, said in an interview that he was not happy with Buhari because he was no longer the man he supported in 2015. He said the Buhari government had done well in setting a precedent of probing its predecessor.
According to Ekpe-Juda, Buhari “has tried in the aspect of recovering of stolen funds and improving government internally generated revenue. Look at what Customs and JAMB have remitted to the government in the last two years.”
Nevertheless, he argued: “But Buhari security and Isamalisation policy is against our democracy. Also I’m not happy with him for keeping quiet while blood is being shed in the country every day. He is the father of the nation and cannot keep quiet while his people are massacring people in hundreds and he sees nothing wrong with it. God will hold him responsible for the blood of innocent Nigerians killed every day. What did the priests and worshippers do that they went to the church and kill them?”
Similarly, Chidiebere Oti, a businessman, accused the APC-led government of bringing more pain to Nigerians than expected. “Buhari government came with the slogan that he would defeat Boko Haram and after three years you are saying in your speech that you have degraded the same people you came to defeat. It means that you have technically taken out defeat to use degraded.
“This means that the person from the beginning came with deception. And this is a security issue you promised that once you come you will end it. Remember he transferred the command headquarters of the army to Maiduguri. And the head quarters is still in Maiduguri degrading Boko Haram.
“So it is a national disgrace and if I must say the truth, APC are rapers of democracy. And I wonder how they will be telling Nigerians that they are celebrating democracy day. APC is a government that cannot obey the rule of law, a government that cannot protect the masses and a government full of anti-people orientation,” he said.
But Cairo Ojougboh, a chieftain of the APC, argued that there had been an improvement in Nigerian democracy under Buhari, when compared to the previous administrations in the country. He claimed that there is freedom in the country now than before and that development has become more participatory.
“A lot that has been happening in the last three years. Look at things that would bring results in the next few years. The rail systems that are being designed, the super highways that are being done in the South-South where I come from and in the South-East. And the reconstruction and completion of abandoned projects by the former administration and if you put all these together you will see that democracy has come to stay and we must fight for it to stay.
“But a new problem emerged in the process, the security issue which is the platform this government came. Before then, corruption became sophisticated, which is another platform under which this government came. These are all the things you look together and know that this government is doing very well,” Ojougboh said.
That notwithstanding just as the president has himself advised electorate, with their permanent voters card, Nigerians will be in a better position to show in 2019 whether or not they approve his political brinksmanship.
– Jun 1, 2018 @ 20:00 GMT |
Tags: Three Years of Buhari’s Political ‘Brinkmanship’
