Our Buhari, Atiku’s Hobson’s choice

For those who have an eye for political details, 2019 is right before us. Nigerian politicians have been described as having one of the most elastic tissues of patience ever. For them, 2019 began the very day the election of 2015 was won and lost. But now, preparations have become more frenetic. Political office holders who hitherto inflicted whiplashes on their constituents have suddenly found their morals and they wear it on their lapel now. Politicians now seek to bond with those they hit with the biblical Rehoboam whiplashes. Under the klieg they eat corn, carry babies and hitch-hike okada rides.

Governors seeking re-election are making impressionable statements that are not part of their wont. Those who are completing a second term are struggling to hand over the baton to surrogates who would cover their maggot-filled tracks. Like God, some even decree who will succeed them and those who won’t, especially those who come from Afghanistan! Road constructions are springing up with a baffling alacrity; contracts of empowerment – which are euphemisms for grafts, most times awarded with an eye for votes – are being rolled out. The thought of Nigerian politicians is Nigerians have a very horrible memory because, as it is with what they ate yesterday that they have forgotten, the whiplash inflicted on them yesterday too, they have forgotten.

At the national level, the 2019 race is evident. Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari stormed the South East. For more than two years, the River Niger was a route that made him want to puke. He didn’t care about the unseemly profile of his disposition to the Igbo ethnic stock which had effectively been carved in the minds of the people. Apart from his un-statesmanlike comments about Igbo’s contributions to his presidency, his body language, especially the graph of his appointments into federal offices, has proven to be greatly hostile to the people. His disdain for the Igbo was merely assisted by the irreverent comments of that misguided youth, Daniel Kanu, against the federal makeup.

But 2019 is here and Buhari needed to extend his coarse hands to the people who gave him a mere 5% in 2015. And Ebonyi State, where Col Bukar Suka Dimka was arrested after assassinating Murtala Mohammed, was Buhari’s first point of call. Dave Umahi, the governor, had effectively advertised his efulefu disposition when he flew the kite of Buhari’s fitness for the 2019 election a few days earlier. And so, in a couple of days, Buhari shared camaraderie, same space, with the people he had demonized for queuing behind the one they called clueless in 2015.

All these were afoot when news filtered in that perennial presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, had resigned his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC). They all need a façade for their volte-face and for Atiku, a draconian clampdown on democracy and a derailment of its set objectives in governance, among others, were his observation while with the party. He said this in his letter of resignation from the APC. You do not need to consult the dibia to know that Atiku is headed for his old vomit, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

A couple of weeks ago, this writer theorised about the sweltering angst against Buhari and his presidency in the South West and a repudiation of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s claim that it was not his business to speak about Buhari’s fare so far. Last week, Asiwaju seemed to be disclaiming the press interview he had earlier granted upon meeting with President Buhari in Aso Rock, going by his most recent interview after meeting Afenifere leaders, Reuben Fasoranti and Olu Falae in Akure, Ondo State. Tinubu had demurred from APC governors who claimed that Buhari would be the party’s flag-bearer unopposed. Buhari would have to advertise his credentials all over again, Tinubu said and the party would make up its mind over him at the primaries. I hope Mr. Femi Odere, who did a rejoinder to this view last week, feels this temperature?

If you are conversant with the geography and have the thermometre to measure Nigeria’s presidential contests of the last one and half decades, you could guess who the two major presidential candidates would be in 2019. I do, and I hanker a guess: The contest will be between Buhari and Atiku. To be sincere with you, this is a zero choice or, if you like, a Hobson’s choice for Nigerians. It’s akin to a return to the choice between Buhari and Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.

So, for Nigerians, the choice between Buhari and Atiku is a Hobson’s choice. If intelligence, presence of mind, de-tribalism, focus, governmental acumen, grasp of the architecture of power and its usage and allied indices are at issue, Atiku would dust Buhari any day. Atiku also has a reach that is legendary. Unfortunately, that same reach would be his albatross. It is a throwback though to the argument against the presidency of MKO Abiola by the Ibrahim Babangida military gang. The gang had said that Abiola was too present in the hearts of too many power barons, was friend to too many people that he would be a prisoner in power. Atiku too has his political minions in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria that he would sure run a timid and ineffectual government. But perhaps the greatest lien on his presidency is the Olusegun Obasanjo typecast of him as corrupt. Even though Atiku struggled strenuously to disclaim this profiling, its odious fragrance still hangs around his persona today.

But, come to think of it, who among past or present Nigerian leaders is not corrupt? Oh, Obasanjo is not corrupt? Is one corrupt by volume or mere entanglement with corruption? So, is Buhari corrupt? Most Nigerians would answer in the negative. But does he run a corrupting or corruptive or corrupt government? Answers would be ambivalent, especially going by the Abdulrasheed Maina, Makanti Baru revelations and his shield of corrupt officers under him. Is Buhari the cause of Nigeria’s current woes? The writer would say, no. But has he succeeded in offering a modicum of hope in the last two and half years? The writer’s answer would still be, no. Is Buhari part of the Nigerian problem? I believe so. I think he disappointed Nigerians who believed he had a wand different from his predecessors’. His government is bereft of depth and focus. Is Atiku a choice of replacement? No. So, by 2019, all things being equal, Nigeria would just be back to its curse of stagnation as same old rolling stone that gathers no moss.
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Ngozi as Okey Ikejiani

In response to the victory last week of prolific commentator, Yushau Shuaib, in an Abuja High Court, over a suit he instituted against former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s peremptory order of his sack from the federal civil service in 2015, this writer went into the archive to bring out a piece written two years ago by, ehm, his alter-ego, Ayinla Mukaiba, in the Saturday Tribune. It reads thus:

The psychology of power, or put differently, the psychology of the dialogical relationship between the “oga at the top” and his following, especially close subordinates, is that the former, overtime, tend to clone the latter’s ways of life, his mannerism, his way of talking and several other attributes, unconsciously.

President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and his femme fatale (pardon this French intrusion which means a destructive female), Patience, have perfectly acted the script of the despotism of Emperor Nero, the manic of Shaka and the bewitched thirst for vengeance of biblical Herodia who asked for the decapitated head of John the Baptist, in the Rotimi Amaechi rout, as well as other instances of despotism of the last couple of years. A news report recently alleged that Patience had ordered security chiefs to Bayelsa state and berated them for failing to give a prompt clinical finish to the Amaechi saga.

It does occur to me that Amaechi’s real offence isn’t a clash with Jonathan but his insubordination to the Villa empress in the Okrika stand-off some years ago. Again, if you study the psychology of power, one of the quickest and easiest ways of clashing with power beacons is to have a tiff with their wives or if the latter’s chemistry does not jell with yours. There are ample examples in history. When the biblical Mordecai sought to take vengeance over Hamman, Esther was his weapon. In no time, Hamman was hanged in the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.

Sorry, I digressed. My beef today is the harrowing fate of Mallam Yushau Shuaib, erstwhile publicist of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), in the hands of the Almighty Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Let me paraphrase the matter as has come to my knowledge. I am sure very scant people who follow issues of our contemporary society would not be apprised of the man Shuaib. If there was anyone who has a burning passion for socio-political normalcy in Nigeria, it is that gentleman. Prolific, concerned about Nigeria, he could be found almost everywhere on the pages of Nigerian newspapers with his apt interventions and prognosis into the cancerous problems of Nigeria. At the end of those interventions, you would find an affiliation, which I can almost cite by rote now, “Shuaib wrote this piece from Wuyeb estate, Abuja.”

I have been reading his interventions since the early or mid-nineties. Shortly after, his name came up again as publicist to Alhaji Tukur, the pioneer Chairman of the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission. The journalists I have been able to interact with told me Shuaib was like a God-sent in that commission and was responsible for the blitz and rave review that the commission and its czar received in the media. Shuaib still never ceased to offer Nigeria and its government unpaid-for consultancy service of volunteering opinions on how to move Nigeria forward. As despotic as Olusegun Obasanjo was, this renowned public commentator’s views were never censored nor did anyone upbraid him for castigating the policies of government.

A few weeks ago, Shuaib, as is his wont, wrote a piece in the newspapers criticizing Okonjo-Iweala, the Almighty czarina with a self-confessed panoply of knowledge on how to bail Nigeria from the woods. The beef of the piece was Ngozi’s perceived tendency to go the way of Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani by staffing the Ministry with Igbo, at the detriment of other tribes. Oh, you don’t know Ikejiani? He was Chairman of Nigerian Railways in the First Republic. At a time, there were mordant criticisms of Ikejiani for arrant nepotism. He was accused of stuffing the railways with his Igbo kinsmen.

Indeed, a letter to the editor, published in the Sketch of 1964 and written by one Odafe Othihiwa, entitled £11,000 for Ikejiani alone? puts the issue in perspective.  Therein, Otihihiwa alleged that “serious allegations of nepotism and tribalism had been leveled…It is strange to observe that while we cry over unemployment in this country, people like Dr. Ikejiani are holding at least five different posts on an alleged total salary of £11,000… I also call on the Prime Minister to probe the activities of Dr. Ikejiani.”

Sketch, in the same edition, carried a rather sarcastic story on its front page with the title, Yoruba nru, Ikejiani nsanra, meaning that, while the Yoruba race was going lean, Ikejiani (and invariably, his stock) were getting fatter. The S.L. Akintola government later released a White paper that detailed allegations of nepotism against Ikejiani, alleging that out of a grand total of 431 names on the staff list of the corporation, 270 were Igbo and 161 of other ethnic groups; of the 57 direct senior appointments made by the corporation, 27 were Igbo, 8 were other tribes and eight others were expatriates. Twisting Ikejiani to a Yoruba adaptation, so as to suit his pillory, Akintola, a reputed orator and very deep in Yoruba morphology, was wont to ask his audience, “the first (Igbo man) would have, the second (Igbo man) would have; what have you got?”

What Akintola did that got him acclaim at the time, was what Shuaib did that has got him a satanic attack from Madam Minister and the Jonathan government. Spitting fire like dragon, Ngozi was said to have threatened to deal with “common Shuaib” and stormed the front of Jonathan who ordered hemlock to be administered on the freelance commentator. Right now, Shuaib has been removed from NEMA, deployed and SGF Anyim Anyim has ordered a panel to deal with him.

Some bunkum has been written in defence of this Hitleric rout and ministerial intolerance. One, that as civil servant, Shuaib should have no voice. This is archaic at variance with modern governance. It is indeed why there is rankling hypocrisy and demagoguery in the service. As Citizen Shuaib awaits his fate for speaking truth to power, I am still in shock at Madam Minister’s palpable intolerance, her Herodia –bid to use hammer to kill a people’s person gnat.