Women with balls

By Tatalo Alamu 13/11/2011 00:00:00

Font size:

Madeleine Albright, the former American Secretary of State, called it cojones, which is going back to its Spanish etymology. With her withering stare and caustic tongue, Albright who is now a distinguished professor at Georgetown University could freeze any man in the dark alley. So while we are still on the subject of boxing and its plentiful supply of brains and brawns, it is meet to deliberate on great women who pack the three "bs," which is brains, brawns and balls.




The late Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, was a woman of unsurpassable courage and brains to match. She had the great guts of her Ashkenazi Jewish forebears. Thinking that they could outwit her, the Americans once came up with a delicate and dangerous proposal. Why couldn’t America and Israel exchange two of their greatest generals? Golda Meir promptly concurred. The wily Americans then put forward the names of the two most outstanding Israeli warrior-generals.
"In that case", Golda Meir retorted, "we shall take General Motors and General Electric". The American beat a hasty retreat. That was the last anybody ever heard of such a loony proposal.
In traditional societies, when men foul up, they usually abandon the mess for the women to clean up. In order to avert a violent revolution, Nigeria’s diseased and disgraced elite may have to hand over the reins of power to women. This is not lightly mooted. Has anybody been watching Marylyn Ogar, the SSS public face, fielding questions on television of late? She appears more presidential, more assertive and more confident than the sad pedestrian rabble we have been saddled with. It may be that some supra-natural voice is speaking to us from outer. Mothers of Nigeria, are you going to watch this country disappear just like that?

Regime change and popular disaffection

By Tatalo Alamu 06/11/2011 00:22:00

Font size:

Buhari

In most of Africa, peaceful regime changes are so infrequent that violent seizures of power or loss of hegemony by a particular faction of the ruling class often appear like revolutionary upheavals. By the time the storm clears and the din of contention recedes, it is obvious that nothing has changed, or that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Whereas in advance democracies with durable and well-developed institutional mechanism for regime change, fundamental changes in societies often appear normal and routine developments.
   Just about a century or so ago, it would have been unthinkable for a female to accede to the reins of power in leading western countries. Yet today, and barely a century after adult suffragette was extended to women, you have female leaders firmly in pole position in several western countries. Britain had earlier elected the tough no-nonsense Margaret Thatcher. America, a deeply conservative and thoroughly patriarchal country despite grandstanding to the contrary, has had three female Secretaries of State in quick succession, namely Maidelene Albright, Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. In 2008, the USA elected its first black president ahead of a female president. 
  Despite deeply entrenched vested interests against change, institutional mechanisms that facilitate peaceful changes allow these countries to experience revolutionary changes without revolutionary upheavals. In most of Africa, on the other hand, the absence or weaknesses of these institutional changes often lead to violent ruptures or even a temporary collapse of the state when it comes to a mere transfer of power from one faction of the ruling class to another. 
In Liberia, the two Congos, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Burundi, Cote D’Ivoire, Uganda,  Angola and many others, elections that ought to have heralded peaceful change led to civil wars and a calamitous collapse of the state. In Nigeria after the debacle of the June 12 1993 presidential election when the dominant military faction refused to hand over power to the legitimate winner, it took some intricate elite pacting and the Obasanjo Settlement to effect a transfer of power from the military to a pan-Nigerian civilian coalition.
  As this column never tires of preaching, elections do not resolve national questions. In fact, they often worsen and exacerbate the national question, leading to a dramatic resurgence of ethnic, regional and religious polarities. Despite being hailed as relatively and reasonably free and fair, the 2011 presidential election would appear to have worsened intra-elite contention for power in Nigeria and its nuclear fall-out. Never in its modern history has the country appeared more spectacularly adrift and rudderless. There is an upswing of national disaffection on a scale that has never been seen before. Once again, the storms are gathering. This is the time for the political elite to put on their thinking cap. 
   Yet despite sharing in the continental aberration of non-democratic elections, Nigeria remains a unique and perplexing paradox. In the last presidential election, power appears to have been prised away from a power cartel that has held the nation hostage either directly or by sly proxy since independence.  Goodluck Jonathan’s mandate appeared to have been divinely ordained; a darkly mysterious intervention in the body politic and a pan-Nigerian resurrection of the great national dream. It spoke to the possibility of a new beginning if a famously “shoeless” boy from the tidal backwater of Otueke could accede so effortlessly to the Nigerian imperial presidency.
  Ordinarily, this ought to have greatly warmed the heart. It ought to have strengthened our collective resolve for a new beginning. We have been looking for signs and signals of that new beginning, of a great stirring of the huge black behemoth. Alas, it has turned out to be a backbreaking mirage; a damp squib that suffers a huge disconnect from the great yearning of the Nigerian multitude. Apart from its profound symbolic possibility, the Jonathan presidency is turning out to be a continuation of the past by other means.
   Because it was ordered from above through the instrumentality of state power and its coercive machinery, because it was a product of a manufactured elite consensus rather than a genuine national rupture of the old order, what we thought was a peaceful revolution has turned out to be nothing more than a mere revolt by an ascendant faction of the ruling class. In the event, we have been saddled with a mere change of personnel rather a change in the personality of the post-colonial state. Some will even aver that that will do for now.
    Part of the problem stems from the fact that many voted for Jonathan for different and mutually exclusive reasons. In the restive riverine enclave which has been clamouring for resource control and power shift based on the ownership of a mono-cultural economy, Jonathan enjoyed the home-boy advantage. 
  The west gave him a tactical nod in order to give the “auld” northern enemy a historic black eye. But it hedged its bet by giving complete power to a party campaigning for regional autonomy and the resuscitation of the old federalism and  the fiercely competitive spirit which drove change and innovation up to the demise of the First Republic. The east played the traditional good boy naively and opportunistically hoping that this good gesture will guarantee its eventual turn at the till. 
  The north was fissured, fractured and fragmented down the line. While the masses were obviously yearning for change powered and driven by one of their own, the traditional power barons, outsmarted at their own game of divide and rule, outfoxed on their own natural turf, lapsed into a surly bewilderment and bitter misgiving which has continued till date.
   Rather than a genuine national consensus, this was the cocktail of contradictions that has borne the Jonathan presidency aloft and may yet shipwreck it. It requires a sober rectitude, tactical astuteness and strategic brilliance to plot one’s way out of the labyrinthine maze of conflicting and conflicted passions. But for a man who has found himself in a great foxhole, Jonathan has continued to dig in with frenetic fury. Apart from a series of unforced errors, Jonathan has been helped along in his perilous misadventure by a string of inexperienced advisers and the stony resolve of the general who will be democratic president.
   Enter the tall ramrod war-lord with the aristocratic forbearance of his Fulani forebears.  In certain moments of history and in the tumultuous flow and ebb of vital events, a particular exceptional individual may incarnate the contradictions of the age to an unusual degree. No other contemporary personality encapsulates or emblematizes the paradox of the contemporary Nigerian situation and the dilemmas of democracy more than the taciturn and ascetic former infantry general. His short spell as military dictator was distinguished by its draconian measures and the sheer ferocity of the effort to turn Nigeria to the path of rectitude. 
  Riding on the crest of popular revulsion with politics and politicians, the general did not even bother with a programme for the return of civil rule throughout his tenure. Even after he was kicked out in a palace coup masterminded by his Chief of Army Staff, Buhari has never publicly expressed any remorse over that seeming lacunae. If this abiding contempt for politics and politicians is his sterling strength, it is also the source of his undoing as a contemporary political figure.
    It is a perplexing irony that it is an unabashed former military autocrat who has done most to deepen the democratic process and to return sovereignty to the Nigerian electorate in the Fourth Republic. Buhari’s quest for the Nigerian presidency has become the stuff of fabled legends. In fact it has become the general’s odyssey and far more intriguing than his military exploits on Chadian territory or the battle fields of the Nigerian civil war.
    General Buhari has already bested Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s record appearance at the presidential polls. He has also been at the Appellate Court to overturn presidential verdicts more than any other Nigerian living or dead. In the process, he has helped to deepen the judicial process and gifted the judiciary with some landmark dissenting judgements, particularly Oguntade in 2007 and the brilliant minority judgement of 2003.
    Slowly and imperceptibly, General Buhari has also transformed from a military dictator to a cult political figure particularly among the northern masses who view him as the messiah in waiting and the equivalent of the mythical twelfth imam. For a man who is not gifted in the elocution department and who disdains oratory as sheer fraudulent rhetoric, this is no mean achievement. For the old northern political class and its diminished power masters, the fear of Buhari is the beginning of wisdom.
   Snooper has had the opportunity of watching and interacting with the general at close quarters. One cannot but be impressed by his stark simplicity and sincerity of purpose and the patriotic fervour that underlines every statement of his. There is an incandescent rage about the plight of Nigeria and its people. If only Buhari  can lay his hands at the scoundrels.
   But there is also a misdirected piety; a puritanical self-righteousness which sits oddly with a politician and which is touching in its idyllic and idealistic naivete. This leads to a mental, professional, ideological and spiritual blockage which prevents the general from seeing the total picture as it is and not as it ought to be. Politics is the art of the possible. The paradox is that General Buhari is a non-professional politician. In the murky jungle of Nigerian politics, that is as short as a suicide note can get.
    In the light of this, it is a bit rich for the Federal Executive Council to attempt to prevail on General Buhari not to seek redress at the Supreme Court. This is a classic case of chutzpah. It is reminiscent of the man who has murdered his parents asking the court to set him free on the grounds that he is an orphan. Where were they when the judicial stakes were being openly manipulated and deliberately rigged in favour of a preferred outcome? This column warned then that the removal of Justice Ayo Salami from the Appellate would strip the judgement of any legitimacy and authority. This is precisely what has happened.
    It is feeble and futile at this point to ask General Buhari to act in the greater national interest when the temporary and transient custodians of the same national interest act in a way and manner that threaten national interest. This is either cynicism gone haywire or some idle postprandial rap. Of course it is obvious that the dour and impassive general would treat the appeal with stony and affronted contempt.
   But having said that, it is now time for General Buhari to take political, spiritual and ideological stock of the struggle for the democratic emancipation of Nigeria and his own signal and sterling role in this. As a tested general, he should know that there is no point fighting a new battle with old weapons. All over the world, the adjudication of presidential electoral disputes is rigged beforehand in favour of the status quo. Luckily for Nigeria, this is not an ethnic, religious or regional affair but a pure class act.
   The protocol of judicial elders who adjudicate in these matters belongs to a caste within a class. Their revered lordships may frown and scowl but they are also not disposed to disrupting an on-going party. In any case, it is standard practice in boxing adjudication that to dethrone a reigning heavyweight, you not only have to beat him, you have to beat him up. If General Buhari’s sole ambition is to enrich the judicial process, he can continue with his quest for justice but out there in the real power canvas, the PDP will have to be beaten silly before it agrees to go home punchdrunk.
   Luckily Jonathan is providing ample ammunition to the enemy on that front with ill-judged anti-people policies and his flagrant misreading of the national mood. But first Buhari’s party will have to put its own house in order. This is bound to be time-consuming and energy-sapping. As it is, the CPC is neither cohesive nor coherent. It is a mass-action movement gone haywire. 
  The masses may vote en-masse all right, but they lack the discipline and organization to see this through. Once the vote-counters appear to shortchange them, they desert in droves to look for petrol cans or burn their voters’ card in a ritual act of electoral suicide and political self-immolation. This was what happened in the north the last time which allowed the PDP to claw its way back into contention in a suspect and suspicious manner.
    A period of sober strategic reflection is now imperative for the much-admired general. To start with, the CPC will have to break out of its regional and ethnic cocoon to become an authentic national platform. In the absence of that, the party will have to cut the much detested deal with other opposition parties. If the general finds the wheeling and dealing, the shabby horse-trading so customary of contemporary Nigerian politics too dishonorable, too disreputable and too demeaning for his puritanical mind-set, it may be time to yield place and become the Mathama Ghandi of his movement. Here is wishing Mohammadu Buhari many more years of patriotic service to the fatherland.

The Presidential Election Tribunal judgment

TO a large extent, the judgment of the Presidential Election Tribunal has renewed the faith of Nigerians in democracy and the rule of law. It is a re-statement that notwithstanding the flaws in our system of government, there is no alternative to peaceful resolution of political differences, if indeed the country is to move progressively along with the rest of the world.
By expressing an intention to appeal, the petitioner, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), is exercising its right under the constitution; an action that can only strengthen the nation’s system of democracy and government. It is important that Nigerians of all creed believe in the judiciary as an impartial arbiter, and as the last hope of the common man.
However, the reasons being adduced by the CPC for its possible appeal to the Supreme Court are also a pointer to an inherent deficiency in the court processes leading to the judgment. Like all systems run by human beings, the judiciary is not perfect. But as an institution invested with so much reverence, it ought to rise above the ordinary to inspire people’s confidence.
In this particular instance, the judiciary seems to have fallen short of its own cardinal principle of ensuring not only that justice is done, but that it is manifestly seen to be done. That failure underlines the CPC’s complaint of a possible manipulation of the process to its disadvantage.
The CPC had challenged the presidential election of April 16, 2011 that President Goodluck Jonathan won, seeking to nullify it for non-compliance with the 2010 Electoral Act. In particular, the party contended that the election was fraught with invalidity, rigging and arbitrary vote allocation among other irregularities.
But the tribunal, headed by Justice Kumai Akaahs dismissed the petition for lacking in merit and substance, emphasising that the CPC failed to discharge its onus of proof on the various allegations upon which it founded its complaint. According to the tribunal, the evidence of the CPC’s 47 witnesses “could be said to be unsubstantiated and worthless.”
While President Jonathan, through his Special Adviser (Media and Publicity) Dr. Reuben Abati, described the judgment as “a triumph for democracy and an affirmation of the sovereignty of the Nigerian people,” the CPC through its chairman, Prince Tony Momoh, disagreed, saying the party would contest the judgment at the Supreme Court.
It is instructive that President Jonathan commended the CPC and its presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, for their respect for the rule of law and the constitution. Certainly, the judicial process is preferred by civilised people worldwide as a means of resolving conflict. In any event, there must be an end to litigation or expression of grievances.
Compared with the immediate past, the prosecution and resolution of the Presidential election petition was fairly fast, coming just five months after the government’s inauguration on May 29, 2011. However, the ideal situation remains that such disputes be resolved fully and finally before a winner is sworn in. If the CPC had won in court for instance, the country would have lost five months, and a lot of resources expended by President Jonathan, as most of the decisions taken in that period may be reversed.
The CPC’s observation that the verdict was unfair to it and predictable is equally noteworthy. The party noted that following the removal of Justice Ayo Salami as both President of the Court of Appeal and first chairman of the tribunal, the final judgment was hardly surprising. The party queried not just Justice Salami’s removal, but also the reconstitution of the judges’ panel and the panel’s reversal of an earlier order that the party be allowed to carry out forensic examination of ballot papers.
Without prejudice to the CPC’s proposed appeal to the Supreme Court, changing judicial officers at critical stage of the proceedings is always capable of sending wrong signals. No matter the motive or the factors underlying them, such decisions are bound to raise questions as to whether or not justice was being circumvented. For justice to be done, it must be seen to be done. All concerned stakeholders should be more mindful of this fact.
The court’s verdict perhaps is an endorsement of the positive assessment of the performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on the last election. The election may be better, compared to those conducted in the past 10 years, but the commission should be under no illusion that it was perfect. Rather, INEC should see the court’s proceedings and judgment as a platform to further eliminate malpractices and conduct more credible elections.
Lastly, the Supreme Court should speedily dispense with the CPC’s appeal, if and when it is brought before it, to sustain the judicial practice that seeks to avoid making decisions in futility.

Next >

Author of this article: Editor

Tinubu reiterates Southwest’s commitment to regional integration

By Sanni Onogu, Abuja 12 hours 26 minutes ago

Font size:

•At Ojude Oba, Awujale calls for creation of Ijebu State

Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) National Leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu yesterday said there is urgent need for regional economic integration of the Southwest.
  He spoke in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, at the annual Ojude-Oba Carnival, hosted by the paramount ruler of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona.
   The ACN National Leader said the regional integration is critical to the survival of the region under the lopsided federal arrangement.
He paid tribute to Oba Adetona, whom he described as a honest, steadfast, committed and patriotic ruler, recalling his support for the pro-democracy crusaders agitating for the restoration of civil rule during the military era. 
Urging other traditional rulers to emulate the Awujale, Tinubu said the monarch has not been in the league of traditional rulers playing bread-and-butter politics.
At the ceremony, which was witnessed by Governors Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun), Dr Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Chief Rauf Aregbesola (Osun); Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu; and Obi of Onitsha, Offala Okagbue.
Oba Adetona called for the creation of Ijebu State from the present Ogun State, urging the people to remain united and peaceful to enable the area make further progress. 
Noting that the Southwest is marginalised, Tinubu, who was the guest of honour, opposed the mainstream politics canvassed by the conservative bloc in Yorubaland. He noted that the region could take its destiny in its hand.
Tinubu said: “Yoruba must come together as a united nation and be the symbol of development. We must build our regional economy. Nobody will give us any handouts. There is a gap between poverty and wealth. Our graduate youths are unemployed. The cost of living is no more bearable.”
To achieve the goal of integration, Tinubu urged the people of the Southwest to shun the antics of the Peopled Democratic party (PDP) and cooperate with the ACN governors, whom he described as the symbol of new hope and progress. 
He said: “Yoruba is not lazy. We can make it. We need encouragement so that our Moses will not return to Egypt after crossing the Red Sea.”
The ACN leader congratulated Amosun, who was attending the carnival for the first time as governor, assuring the residents that he would take the state to greater heights.
Tinubu stormed the Ojude Oba arena, a mini-stadium opposite the Awujale’s palace at 9am. He was received by ACN faithful, led by the Lagos State Deputy Chairman, Alhaji Abiodun Sunmola, an Ijebu indigene. 
Tinubu  was accompanied by Chief Pius Akinyelure; Alhaji Afolabi Salami; Lagos State Assembly Speaker Yemi Ikuforiji; Commissioners for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs Ademorin Kuye; his Housing and Information counterparts - Bosun Jeje and Lateef Ibirogba; Ojuwoye council chairman, Yemi Ali; his Amuwo and Ojokoro counterparts - Ayodele Adewale and Benjamin Olabinjo; Tunde Braimoh; Bayo Osinnowo; Dele Alake; and Toyin Hamzat.
Other dignitaries at the festival were Ogun State Deputy Governor Segun Adesegun, former Ogun State governor, Aremo Segun Osoba, Senator Olabiyi Durojaye, Ounba Subomi Balogun, Alhaji Rasak Okoya, Mrs. Sherifat Aregbesola, Prof. Adebayo Adedeji, Senator Gbenga Kaka, Chief Osca Ibru, Olorogun Sunny Kuku,  Justice Oguntade (rtd), Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Judge of Ogun State Justice Tokunbo Olopade, Head of Service Mrs Iyabo Yusuf, Commissioner of Police Nicholas Nkideme, Chief Alex Duduyemi, Chief Bisi Rodipe, Hon. Lanre Oduote, Hon. Ipoola Omisore, Hon. Ade Famurewa, Mrs Modupe Oguntade, Adetola Hassan, Mrs Sina Williams and Mrs. Tade Okoya, among others.

Jonathan: How far can luck go?

By Rotimi Fasan
AS is the custom in parts of Nigeria where the book on a deceased person is not considered closed until what is called the ‘final’ or ‘second’ burial is done, victory at an election is not complete until it has been declared at the relevant election petition tribunal.
Elections in Nigeria are quite fraught processes that carry their own terminal germs right from the moment of conception; they are programmed with internal devices to ensure that somebody or a group is duped or, at least, feels so at the end of the day.
To this end, election petition tribunals which, as the name suggest, are appellate bodies that politicians turn to to lodge their electoral complaints are the last port of call for an electoral victor. Until a politician has been issued a certificate of victory by one a contested seat is still up for grabs. This was the case between the Peoples Democratic Party and its arch rival in the last 2011 presidential election, the Congress for Progressive Change. The CPC had challenged the victory of the PDP at the April presidential polls.
Its presidential candidate, Mohammadu Buhari, a veteran loser and petitioner at the tribunal had in his customary way, since 2003, headed for the tribunal after Goodluck Jonathan was declared winner of the election. Buhari and his party believed, as they still do, that the entire poll was flawed from the beginning and riddled with electoral malpractices. They wanted the PDP victory annulled.
The PDP felt it won fairly and squarely and tried to stop the CPC challenge of its victory. Suspended President of the Court of Appeal, Ayo Salami, would not oblige the PDP that had sought to throw out the CPC complaint via a technicality, namely, that the CPC had filed its case on a Sunday. In a move that probably made the PDP uncomfortable and no doubt set the stage for the controversy that has followed his ouster from the judiciary, Justice Salami said the CPC had a right to challenge the PDP. The Supreme Court would support the CPC. But in the end, Jonathan’s victory was upheld by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, President Jonathan won. Many would say, without prejudice to the intrinsic merit or otherwise of the PDP defence, that the consequence of a contrary decision is better imagined. Buhari has been at this point twice in the past, and twice he had lost. His latest loss makes it the third time he would be losing in similar circumstance. This probably makes him the Chief Mourner in the entire saga.
But in the PDP house, it has been unending celebration. President Jonathan who tried to be generous in victory by praising Buhari has not been left out of the celebration. In the past, Buhari had spurned such hand of fellowship by refusing to recognise the authority of the victor. He demonstrated this by staying away from events presided over by the victor. It remains to be seen how he would respond to the latest setback. But that wouldn’t appear to be anything of concern to the PDP that has been very unabashed in its victory dance across the country.
Certainly many of those celebrating with the PDP and, particularly, Jonathan had good grounds for their behaviour. Any disruption in the movement of the PDP gravy train would have been quite visceral for them; it would have been more than a personal loss as both Jonathan and the PDP have become the meal tickets of many. If for nothing else, at least they’ve been assured of over three more uninterrupted years of ‘chop and clean mouth’. Any sudden death decision would have been most unwelcome at this point. Yet, we may need to ask ourselves if there is any justification for the celebration in the PDP camp.
Are there genuine reasons for Nigerians who are not members of the PDP to join in this celebration that Jonathan’s victory has been validated at the very last point where such validation is important? To put it starkly, has Jonathan done enough to justify three more years in office?
The truth is that the room for improvement is still very much wide and it is best to hope that the President can yet redeem himself and justify the confidence many had in him as, maybe, a breath of fresh air from past leaders. His credentials as a ‘new breed’ politician which worked in his favour now seem a liability that projects him as lacking in the right kind of confidence expected of a Nigerian president at this point in our history.
Jonathan’s achievement, if they can be so called now, has been at best very modest. Surely, seven months may not be such terribly long enough time to assess the time of a four-year term president in office, but those seven months could serve as reasonable pointer to what Nigerians could expect from the time the President has left to spend in office. What is more, Nigerians cannot forget so soon that President Jonathan had completed the term of President Umaru Yar’Adua.
When that is thrown into the equation, Nigerians have a right to expect more from Jonathan who many thought had been impeded in those early months by the fact that the time under Yar’Adua had not been his and he had had to function under the malevolent gaze of people who never wanted him to step into the shoes of the then ailing leader. But that argument wouldn’t wash now and Jonathan now appears to have more job to do convincing Nigerians that he is indeed the right man for the job.
While not much could be put against his name in terms of achievement, personal or corporate, he seems to be opening up his side with his attempt to propose a new term of six years for elected leaders. For someone yet to convince many that the years at his disposal wouldn’t turn out to be time wasted, additional six years could only amount to biting off more than he could chew.
But in what may yet look like the final routing of the President by his critics, he is bent on removing what successive governments continue to call subsidy on oil products in Nigeria. In the many years since previous administrations have been removing it, one would have expected that we would have got to a point when Nigerian oil could be said to have achieved the right pricing.
But that is never the case as we are constantly badgered with arguments of how money spent on subsidising oil can be better put on providing necessary amenities for longsuffering Nigerians. Yet, it has to be said that a travel down such road, even for Goodluck, may amount to stretching luck too far.

Biggest Scandal In Oil “Subsidy Removal” Fraud By Farooq A. Kperogi Posted: November 5, 2011 - 10:14 To begin with, the idea that the Nigerian government is subsidizing fuel for the masses is a willfully double-tongued twaddle. Only four kinds of people believe that: the hopelessly ignorant, the mentally subnormal, masochists with a perverse thirst for self-abasement, and beneficiaries of real government subsidies such as our indolent, unproductive, and ruthlessly acquisitive government officials and their equally debauched cronies in the private sector. Many informed commentators have conclusively proved that. But there is an even more treacherous scandal in this “oil subsidy” scam that the Nigerian national media is either not aware of or has chosen to ignore. Two weeks ago, when I compared fuel prices amongoil-producing nations of the world and showed that Nigerians pay the highest price for petrol even though they receive the lowest minimum wage among their peers, I actually did a gross disservice to my argument. The situation is a lot worse than that. I will come back to this point shortly.  I pointed out that the petrol I use for my car in America burns A LOT SLOWER than the one I use when I visit Nigeria, meaning that, at the current rate, Nigerians (with a miserable minimum wage of N7,000 per month or about $45 per month— against America’s over N180,000 minimum wage per month) actually pay more than or about equal to Americans for petrol. It takes a remarkably heartless person to ignore this heartrending fact. But that’s an issue for another day. A Nigerian online citizen investigator who goes by the handle “Viscount” revealed on a Nigerian Internet discussion forum recently that Nigerians not only pay the highest price for fuel in OPEC; they also consume the worst imaginable grade of petrol among oil-producing countries. That means comparing fuel prices between Nigeria and other oil-producing countries—or even countries in Europe and North America— is actually like comparing apples and oranges. These countries not only pay considerably lower prices than us for high-quality petrol, Nigerians have been paying unconscionably high prices for toxic fuel for the past 12 years, as you will see shortly. And they will pay even more for it next year. If this is not sufficient reason to give up everything and “occupy” Nigeria until the oppressors are brought to a standstill, I don’t know what is. At the center of the tragic importation of toxic petroleum products into Nigeria—and other West African nations— is an Amsterdam-based multinational company called Trafigura. Keep that name in mind as you read this. Many Nigerians know that the fuel they consume domestically isn’t derived from the crude oil their country exports. They also know that they have one of the world’s best and finest quality of crude oil. What many of them don’t know is that the cabal of rapacious oil importers that the Jonathan administration—and the administrations that preceded him—mollycoddle with “subsidies” actually import toxic, low-quality oil that is not fit for consumption in Europe or North America—or in any society that cares for the welfare of its citizens. In 2010, a group of journalists from the UK, Norway, and the Netherlands won a prestigious international journalism award for a series of investigative reports they did on Trafigura’s barbarous dumping of toxic petroleum waste on Cote d’Ivoire. The waste killed scores of people and sickened thousands more. In July 2010, an Amsterdam court found the company guilty and fined it 1 million euros. (The caustic petroleum residues were dumped on Cote d’Ivoire on July 2, 2006). On June 24 this year, Afrol News, an Africa-centered news agency, reported that it had been “given documentation” that shows that the same Trafigura that was fined for dumping deleterious waste on Ivoirians had offloaded “dangerous and poor gasoline [i.e., petrol]” in the “Nigerian port of Lagos.” This toxic petrol, which Nigerians have been consuming for years and which our governments “subsidize,” according to the Afrol News report, “is highly unstable, not enduring sunlight exposure, and will cause damage to vehicles. It will also cause environmental damages due to high sulphur values, and can therefore cause human health damages. The product is strictly illegal in Europe and the US, but may in some cases be within legal quality and environment standards in some West African countries.” But this wasn't a one-off occurrence. It's been happening for over a decade. So, ordinary Nigerians are being forced to use their hard-earned money to buy inordinately overpriced and demonstrably harmful petroleum products. Yet the Nigerian government says this isn’t bad enough; it wants to increase fuel prices again next year. And the government has no plans to repair our refineries so that we can refine our own crude domestically and bring down the cost of petrol. But the bigger scandal is that in January this year, the Jonathan administration signed a multi-billion-dollar annual contract with the same Trafigura of toxic fuel dumping infamy. And there was no due process in the award of the contract. According to Business Day of January 4, 2011, “Under the agreement with the Nigerian government, Trafigura is expected to pick up Nigerian crude oil and in return, supply her with refined products; but it is unclear why the firm, which has supplied refined products to Nigeria in the last 12 years, was favoured for the deal. “Trafigura agreed to an annual contract with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on the basis of taking 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day in exchange for refined products such as gasoline and gas oil of equivalent value estimated at around $3 billion a year.” An oil industry expert who spoke to Business Day said just “$1 billion of the amount would have put the four refineries in proper shape.” When I wrote two weeks ago that Nigerians were faced with a choice between death and life, I didn’t even know about all these. I am going to leave the reader with “Viscount”’s parting thoughts: “Nigeria will give Trafigura (confirmed supplier of bad petrol), 60, 000 barrels of oil per day in exchange for their mega tonnes of DEADLY-sulphurous petrol! Yep, Jonathan's government is paying a foreign company to systematically KILL Nigerians. And poor Nigerians are being asked to be happy jare! “So, Nigerians, when your brand new Tokunbo engine knocks - just like that, thank Trafigura! When your I-better-pass-my-neighbour generator's fume smells funny and leaves a film like Casper the Ghost - just like that, thank Trafigura! When you are walking in Lagos, or any other Nigeria [city], and you are experiencing a choking sensation from the mundane act of breathing in - just like that, thank Trafigura! Nigeria!”

Regime change and popular disaffection
By Tatalo Alamu 06/11/2011 00:22:00

In most of Africa, peaceful regime changes are so infrequent that violent seizures of power or loss of hegemony by a particular faction of the ruling class often appear like revolutionary upheavals. By the time the storm clears and the din of contention recedes, it is obvious that nothing has changed, or that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Whereas in advance democracies with durable and well-developed institutional mechanism for regime change, fundamental changes in societies often appear normal and routine developments.

   Just about a century or so ago, it would have been unthinkable for a female to accede to the reins of power in leading western countries. Yet today, and barely a century after adult suffragette was extended to women, you have female leaders firmly in pole position in several western countries. Britain had earlier elected the tough no-nonsense Margaret Thatcher. America, a deeply conservative and thoroughly patriarchal country despite grandstanding to the contrary, has had three female Secretaries of State in quick succession, namely Maidelene Albright, Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. In 2008, the USA elected its first black president ahead of a female president.

  Despite deeply entrenched vested interests against change, institutional mechanisms that facilitate peaceful changes allow these countries to experience revolutionary changes without revolutionary upheavals. In most of Africa, on the other hand, the absence or weaknesses of these institutional changes often lead to violent ruptures or even a temporary collapse of the state when it comes to a mere transfer of power from one faction of the ruling class to another.

In Liberia, the two Congos, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Burundi, Cote D’Ivoire, Uganda,  Angola and many others, elections that ought to have heralded peaceful change led to civil wars and a calamitous collapse of the state. In Nigeria after the debacle of the June 12 1993 presidential election when the dominant military faction refused to hand over power to the legitimate winner, it took some intricate elite pacting and the Obasanjo Settlement to effect a transfer of power from the military to a pan-Nigerian civilian coalition.

  As this column never tires of preaching, elections do not resolve national questions. In fact, they often worsen and exacerbate the national question, leading to a dramatic resurgence of ethnic, regional and religious polarities. Despite being hailed as relatively and reasonably free and fair, the 2011 presidential election would appear to have worsened intra-elite contention for power in Nigeria and its nuclear fall-out. Never in its modern history has the country appeared more spectacularly adrift and rudderless. There is an upswing of national disaffection on a scale that has never been seen before. Once again, the storms are gathering. This is the time for the political elite to put on their thinking cap.

   Yet despite sharing in the continental aberration of non-democratic elections, Nigeria remains a unique and perplexing paradox. In the last presidential election, power appears to have been prised away from a power cartel that has held the nation hostage either directly or by sly proxy since independence.  Goodluck Jonathan’s mandate appeared to have been divinely ordained; a darkly mysterious intervention in the body politic and a pan-Nigerian resurrection of the great national dream. It spoke to the possibility of a new beginning if a famously “shoeless” boy from the tidal backwater of Otueke could accede so effortlessly to the Nigerian imperial presidency.

  Ordinarily, this ought to have greatly warmed the heart. It ought to have strengthened our collective resolve for a new beginning. We have been looking for signs and signals of that new beginning, of a great stirring of the huge black behemoth. Alas, it has turned out to be a backbreaking mirage; a damp squib that suffers a huge disconnect from the great yearning of the Nigerian multitude. Apart from its profound symbolic possibility, the Jonathan presidency is turning out to be a continuation of the past by other means.

   Because it was ordered from above through the instrumentality of state power and its coercive machinery, because it was a product of a manufactured elite consensus rather than a genuine national rupture of the old order, what we thought was a peaceful revolution has turned out to be nothing more than a mere revolt by an ascendant faction of the ruling class. In the event, we have been saddled with a mere change of personnel rather a change in the personality of the post-colonial state. Some will even aver that that will do for now.

    Part of the problem stems from the fact that many voted for Jonathan for different and mutually exclusive reasons. In the restive riverine enclave which has been clamouring for resource control and power shift based on the ownership of a mono-cultural economy, Jonathan enjoyed the home-boy advantage.

  The west gave him a tactical nod in order to give the “auld” northern enemy a historic black eye. But it hedged its bet by giving complete power to a party campaigning for regional autonomy and the resuscitation of the old federalism and  the fiercely competitive spirit which drove change and innovation up to the demise of the First Republic. The east played the traditional good boy naively and opportunistically hoping that this good gesture will guarantee its eventual turn at the till.

  The north was fissured, fractured and fragmented down the line. While the masses were obviously yearning for change powered and driven by one of their own, the traditional power barons, outsmarted at their own game of divide and rule, outfoxed on their own natural turf, lapsed into a surly bewilderment and bitter misgiving which has continued till date.

   Rather than a genuine national consensus, this was the cocktail of contradictions that has borne the Jonathan presidency aloft and may yet shipwreck it. It requires a sober rectitude, tactical astuteness and strategic brilliance to plot one’s way out of the labyrinthine maze of conflicting and conflicted passions. But for a man who has found himself in a great foxhole, Jonathan has continued to dig in with frenetic fury. Apart from a series of unforced errors, Jonathan has been helped along in his perilous misadventure by a string of inexperienced advisers and the stony resolve of the general who will be democratic president.

   Enter the tall ramrod war-lord with the aristocratic forbearance of his Fulani forebears.  In certain moments of history and in the tumultuous flow and ebb of vital events, a particular exceptional individual may incarnate the contradictions of the age to an unusual degree. No other contemporary personality encapsulates or emblematizes the paradox of the contemporary Nigerian situation and the dilemmas of democracy more than the taciturn and ascetic former infantry general. His short spell as military dictator was distinguished by its draconian measures and the sheer ferocity of the effort to turn Nigeria to the path of rectitude.

  Riding on the crest of popular revulsion with politics and politicians, the general did not even bother with a programme for the return of civil rule throughout his tenure. Even after he was kicked out in a palace coup masterminded by his Chief of Army Staff, Buhari has never publicly expressed any remorse over that seeming lacunae. If this abiding contempt for politics and politicians is his sterling strength, it is also the source of his undoing as a contemporary political figure.

    It is a perplexing irony that it is an unabashed former military autocrat who has done most to deepen the democratic process and to return sovereignty to the Nigerian electorate in the Fourth Republic. Buhari’s quest for the Nigerian presidency has become the stuff of fabled legends. In fact it has become the general’s odyssey and far more intriguing than his military exploits on Chadian territory or the battle fields of the Nigerian civil war.

    General Buhari has already bested Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s record appearance at the presidential polls. He has also been at the Appellate Court to overturn presidential verdicts more than any other Nigerian living or dead. In the process, he has helped to deepen the judicial process and gifted the judiciary with some landmark dissenting judgements, particularly Oguntade in 2007 and the brilliant minority judgement of 2003.

    Slowly and imperceptibly, General Buhari has also transformed from a military dictator to a cult political figure particularly among the northern masses who view him as the messiah in waiting and the equivalent of the mythical twelfth imam. For a man who is not gifted in the elocution department and who disdains oratory as sheer fraudulent rhetoric, this is no mean achievement. For the old northern political class and its diminished power masters, the fear of Buhari is the beginning of wisdom.

   Snooper has had the opportunity of watching and interacting with the general at close quarters. One cannot but be impressed by his stark simplicity and sincerity of purpose and the patriotic fervour that underlines every statement of his. There is an incandescent rage about the plight of Nigeria and its people. If only Buhari  can lay his hands at the scoundrels.

   But there is also a misdirected piety; a puritanical self-righteousness which sits oddly with a politician and which is touching in its idyllic and idealistic naivete. This leads to a mental, professional, ideological and spiritual blockage which prevents the general from seeing the total picture as it is and not as it ought to be. Politics is the art of the possible. The paradox is that General Buhari is a non-professional politician. In the murky jungle of Nigerian politics, that is as short as a suicide note can get.

    In the light of this, it is a bit rich for the Federal Executive Council to attempt to prevail on General Buhari not to seek redress at the Supreme Court. This is a classic case of chutzpah. It is reminiscent of the man who has murdered his parents asking the court to set him free on the grounds that he is an orphan. Where were they when the judicial stakes were being openly manipulated and deliberately rigged in favour of a preferred outcome? This column warned then that the removal of Justice Ayo Salami from the Appellate would strip the judgement of any legitimacy and authority. This is precisely what has happened.

    It is feeble and futile at this point to ask General Buhari to act in the greater national interest when the temporary and transient custodians of the same national interest act in a way and manner that threaten national interest. This is either cynicism gone haywire or some idle postprandial rap. Of course it is obvious that the dour and impassive general would treat the appeal with stony and affronted contempt.

   But having said that, it is now time for General Buhari to take political, spiritual and ideological stock of the struggle for the democratic emancipation of Nigeria and his own signal and sterling role in this. As a tested general, he should know that there is no point fighting a new battle with old weapons. All over the world, the adjudication of presidential electoral disputes is rigged beforehand in favour of the status quo. Luckily for Nigeria, this is not an ethnic, religious or regional affair but a pure class act.

   The protocol of judicial elders who adjudicate in these matters belongs to a caste within a class. Their revered lordships may frown and scowl but they are also not disposed to disrupting an on-going party. In any case, it is standard practice in boxing adjudication that to dethrone a reigning heavyweight, you not only have to beat him, you have to beat him up. If General Buhari’s sole ambition is to enrich the judicial process, he can continue with his quest for justice but out there in the real power canvas, the PDP will have to be beaten silly before it agrees to go home punchdrunk.

   Luckily Jonathan is providing ample ammunition to the enemy on that front with ill-judged anti-people policies and his flagrant misreading of the national mood. But first Buhari’s party will have to put its own house in order. This is bound to be time-consuming and energy-sapping. As it is, the CPC is neither cohesive nor coherent. It is a mass-action movement gone haywire.

  The masses may vote en-masse all right, but they lack the discipline and organization to see this through. Once the vote-counters appear to shortchange them, they desert in droves to look for petrol cans or burn their voters’ card in a ritual act of electoral suicide and political self-immolation. This was what happened in the north the last time which allowed the PDP to claw its way back into contention in a suspect and suspicious manner.

    A period of sober strategic reflection is now imperative for the much-admired general. To start with, the CPC will have to break out of its regional and ethnic cocoon to become an authentic national platform. In the absence of that, the party will have to cut the much detested deal with other opposition parties. If the general finds the wheeling and dealing, the shabby horse-trading so customary of contemporary Nigerian politics too dishonorable, too disreputable and too demeaning for his puritanical mind-set, it may be time to yield place and become the Mathama Ghandi of his movement. Here is wishing Mohammadu Buhari many more years of patriotic service to the fatherland.