Opinion

Determining Factors For 2023 Contests In APC

Published

4 years ago

April 11, 2021

NewTimes

Salihu Moh. Lukman

Internal Contest and Inconvenient Reality

An inconvenient reality, which every APC leader and member, committed and working to protect the electoral viability of the party, should be worried about is that the strongest opponent of the APC is within the APC. The truth is, other parties, especially the PDP, are shadow opposition whose electoral prospects are largely dependent on the outcome of internal contests in the APC, mainly because of the reckless and undisciplined conducts of some APC leaders.

If anything, the lesson from the 2019 elections, which every APC leader and member should be reminded is that APC was defeated in Rivers, Zamfara, Bauchi, Adamawa, Oyo and many other places by aggrieved APC leaders who worked against candidates or leaders of the party as a result of internal disagreements around candidate selections for governorship of these states. Such internal disagreement almost cost the party the loss of Imo State until the Supreme Court confirmed the victory of the APC. In Ogun, it was a traumatic victory. The Kano State governorship election certainly had its baggage of painful experiences. Lagos State was a shocking narrow victory, no thanks to avoidable challenges. Rambo political contest led to the loss of Edo State in the 2020 governorship election.

APC leaders should also be reminded that it was internal rancorous contest that made APC to lose the 2014 Ekiti governorship election. Similar rancorous contests produced marginal victory for the APC in the 2018 Ekiti and Osun elections. The reality is that if the APC had faced any of the challenges of the governorship elections in Rivers, Zamfara, Bauchi, Adamawa, Oyo, Ogun, Kano, Lagos, Edo, Ekiti and Osun during the 2019 presidential election, winning the election would have been impossible. If anything, the absence of any problem during the internal contest for the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari as the presidential candidate of the party in December 2014 was a major source of electoral strength, which made the party to win elections in virtually all the states it won in 2019, as well as won majority seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Sustaining Electoral Advantages in 2023

How was the APC able to avoid any of the problems it had in the states it lost during the 2019 governorship elections at the level of the presidential election both in 2015 and 2019? The explanation is simple, it is because of the personal profile of President Buhari. People can say anything about President Buhari, but no one can deny the fact that his electoral strength is more associated with his personality, than any other factor. He is the only personality in the political history of the country, who polled a minimum of 12 million votes in all the elections he contested even as opposition candidate. And he contested elections under three parties – All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in 2003 and 2007, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in 2011, and APC in 2015 and 2019. This means that no matter the party, his electoral value is constant.

With such reality, it can be concluded therefore, without any dispute, that the electoral advantage of the APC is more on account of the presence of President Buhari in the party. The question, which every APC leader and member need to answer is, will the APC continue to enjoy such electoral advantage when President Buhari is not the presidential candidate of the party? Is there another leader in the APC with the towering electoral profile of President Buhari? These are not easy questions to answer, although it can also be easily expected that every APC leader and member would want APC to continue to have all the electoral advantages associated with President Buhari. Whether there is another leader with the electoral profile of President Buhari, is yet to be seen, at least not based on any electoral evidence.

Therefore, what is it that can be done to ensure that the APC continues to have all the electoral advantages associated with President Buhari? Is it even possible for APC to continue to have the electoral advantages associated with President Buhari? Note that APC was able to manage the internal process of electing President Buhari as the candidate of the party for the 2015 presidential election with very formidable aspirants such as former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former Governors Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Rochas Okorocha, and Mr. Sam Nda Isiah of blessed memory. Also recognise that the internal contest for the emergence of President Buhari as the candidate of the APC for the 2015 presidential election did not produce the conventional leadership disagreements associated with political contests.

Accordingly, part of the landmark contributions made by APC to Nigerian politics, apart from the successful political merger of opposition parties in 2013 and the defeat of the ruling PDP in 2015, was that all those who contested the primary election with President Buhari accepted the results and declared support for his candidature in the 2015 presidential election. In fact, the support of all leaders of the party, including those who contested the primary with him, contributed significantly to make the victory of 2015 election possible.

Once APC can manage the process of internal contest for the emergence of candidates of the party for 2023 elections such that all those who contested with the winners can accept the outcomes as well as support the candidates, it is possible for the party to continue to enjoy all the electoral advantages associated with President Buhari. How the party is able to manage the process of internal contest is now the challenge. The biggest problem in politics, which compromises both leaders and members and weaken capacity to provide generic support to candidates irrespective of who emerges is the personal ambitions of leaders for elective and appointive positions. Most times, leaders and members relate with challenges based on estimation of the potential to win support to access elective and appointive positions. Hardly do leaders and members take initiatives to resolve challenges without some associated expectations, which could be linked to opportunities to access elective and appointive positions.

Partly on account of this reality, almost every position taken by both leaders and members, no matter how objectively presented, is interpreted based on the assessment of corresponding interests to access elective and appointive positions. Somehow, leaders also relate with other leaders and members of the party based on the assessment of the estimation of support or opposition for access to elective and appointive positions. Due to this particular factor, many party leaders and members are reluctant to volunteer suggestions, especially when the suggestions are not likely to be in harmony with the preferences of leaders.

Unity of APC Leaders

Against such a background, it is important to stress that the unity of APC leaders is a fundamental precondition in enabling any capacity for the party to continue to enjoy the electoral advantages associated with President Buhari. The first test of the ability of APC leaders to develop strong unity is when the party organs are able to meet and take decisions. What is very clear is that, from experiences, APC leaders have demonstrated a high level of personal discipline to support decisions of party organs, even when such decisions are opposed to personal preferences of APC leaders. This was very well demonstrated in the case of the dissolution of the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole-led NWC and the membership registration/revalidation. Although some leaders of the party were opposed to the decision to dissolve the NWC and conduct the membership registration/revalidation, once the NEC met and decided on those two issues, all leaders of the party worked together for the successful implementation of those decisions.

This means very high potential that once appropriate organs of the party are meeting and decisions are being taken in line with the provisions of the party’s constitution, processes of electing standard bearers of the party for the 2023 elections would be acceptable. Party leaders would also accept the result of the election and support the winner. This way the presidential candidate of the party can have a very high probability of being supported by all leaders of the party, including those who may have contested the party primary and lost. Part of the reality of the situations in states, especially where APC lost elections as a result of the poor management of internal processes, is that the operation of organs of the party requires a lot of improvements to guarantee the transparent and fair participation of party members. Often, allegations of manipulations by party leaders, especially around internal processes of candidates’ emergence are the common issues.

A shared expectation therefore among both party leaders and members around the dissolution of the Comrade Oshiomhole-led NWC and the appointment of the APC Caretaker Committee led by His Excellency Mai Mala Buni, was that the conclusion of the work of the Caretaker Committee will produce a new beginning, which may come with strong capacity for the APC to resolve the challenge of manipulating party organs during the election of candidates.

A factor that may be slowing down the process of ensuring that the Caretaker Committee conclude its work and return all organs of the party back to normal operations is the need for strong unity among APC leaders, and by extension members. Unity among party leaders is required to come with all the support needed by the Caretaker Committee to complete its work of returning all organs to normal operations as provided by the constitution of the party.

Noting that the APC Caretaker Committee was never designed to have a tenure longer than six months, the additional six months extension provided by the December 8, 2020 NEC was necessary because of the challenges of producing a credible membership register, which necessitated the membership registration/revalidation . To what extent are leaders of the party cooperating with the Caretaker Committee to ensure that the registration is successful? A source of problem for membership registrations of political parties is always the ambition of leaders. Are APC leaders creating problems by way of blocking so-called perceived opponents from registering as members of the APC?

Once the conventional Nigerian politics is allowed to play out, many APC leaders would attempt to control the membership of the party so that they are able to emerge as candidates for elective offices. How is the Caretaker Committee addressing such challenges? Part of the appeal that must be made to both the Caretaker Committee and all APC leaders is that they need to exercise restraint and ensure that every prospective member of the party is allowed to register. The need to allow every prospective member the opportunity to register is a determining factor in terms of whether APC can continue to enjoy the confidence of Nigerians based on which the party is able to win the votes of Nigerians. The Caretaker Committee and APC leaders must take steps to avoid any situation that could weaken the confidence of Nigerians on the party, which can negatively affect the disposition of Nigerians to vote the party in 2023 elections at all levels.

Blind Trusts and Regulating Conduct of APC Leaders

Perhaps it needs to also be stressed that winning the confidence of Nigerians will be more guaranteed once the Caretaker Committee is able to complete its assignment and return the party to normal operation. Recognising that the Caretaker Committee, especially the Chairman, His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni has already achieved a lot by bringing back sanity into the party, a strong foundation has already been laid for APC to win the confidence of Nigerians. Not only that problems of leadership dispute are minimised, but the party is also becoming more attractive for political leaders of other parties.

This certainly has its problems, which include the need to ensure that appropriate conditions exist to regulate the conduct of political leaders especially elected representatives. Given that APC has become the go-to party in Nigerian politics, the need to regulate the conduct of party leaders is paramount. The inability to develop the capacity to regulate the conducts of party leaders will be injurious to the vision of developing the APC as a truly progressive party. As much as it is a welcome development that the party is winning new members, there must be corresponding effort to regulate the conduct of party leaders, based on which efforts are made to provide new orientation to all party leaders, especially the newcomers.

Beyond the need to regulate the conduct of political leaders, there is also the need to appeal to leaders of the party to rise above the narrow attitude of relating with challenges based on the estimation of support or opposition for ambitions of party leaders. Once political leaders are able to estimate support for their ambitions, what follows is blind trust for both officials of the party and decisions they take even when such decisions are wrong and contravenes provisions of the party’s constitution. The dynamic around the contestations under the Comrade Oshiomhole-led NWC between 2018 and June 2020 was a classic case of how many party leaders overlooked the obstinacies of some actions of the Comrade Oshiomhole led NWC. Had all leaders of the party been able to insist that the Comrade Oshiomhole-led NWC convene meetings of organs of the party where the required decision to resolve issues could have been taken, perhaps even Comrade Oshiomhole himself would have still remained as the National Chairman of the party.

Unfortunately, factors of blind trust by many party leaders which produced inconsiderate tolerance for wrong actions became the case. The truth is also that Comrade Oshiomhole and many members of the dissolved NWC became emboldened by the awareness of a divided APC leadership. So long as APC leaders are divided, the potential that elected officials who will emerge in the reconstituted NWC will take advantage of such divisions to manipulate internal processes and in some cases, members of the new NWC may also become part of the problem of the party, in the same way that Comrade Oshiomhole led NWC was, if not worse.

Part of the requirement for APC to be able to retain the electoral advantage of President Buhari is that factors of blind trusts in the party must be eliminate. No matter the estimation of support or opposition of members of the new NWC to the ambitions of leaders, APC leaders must have a very high moral credentials such that when the NWC erred, they are not beyond correction. Or at least they should not be allowed to be emboldened by any division in the rank of leadership of the party to block interventions by statutory organs of the party to resolve problems.

Similarly, members of the party must not relate with ambitions of party leaders based on blind trust. Members should be able to speak out and critically engage party leaders. While there is no guarantee that critical positions of party members will not become the source of disqualification for consideration to appointive and elective positions, it is important that it is recognised that no matter what, it is better to be members of a party in power working to develop Nigeria than to be governed by any party whose mission is adversative to Nigeria’s development.

The other related issue is that when all leaders of the party relate with elected representatives based on demands for appointive positions in whatever form, it also weakens the capacity of party leaders to influence the initiatives of elected representatives. Part of it also is that once leaders prioritise issues of securing appointments as the basis of relationship with elected representatives, rather than acting as sources of support for elected leaders, they become sources of distraction. This is a dynamic, which played out in APC in 2015. Moving towards 2023, this needs to be rectified.

Resolving the Challenge of Bad Public Image

All leaders and members of the APC should also recognise that being members of the party in power come with enormous responsibility. The bad political culture in Nigeria is that membership of political parties is primarily about accessing opportunities for elective and appointive positions. Once members of the party are not part of government with reference to access to elective and appointive positions, many become detached and, in most cases, become part of internal opposition, which often become more vicious than the external opposition from other parties.

Part of why the conduct of party leaders must be regulated has to do with the need to ensure respect for minimum standards of internal political contests. Many political leaders especially people who contested primary elections with successful party candidates expect some level of compensation by way of accessing other positions in government especially appointive positions. Part of the reality also is that access to elective and appointive positions become both a source of advantage to serve and also a source of strength for rebellion. The dynamics of such reality is that every leader in politics is suspicious, which makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to differentiate members and leaders of the party making genuine criticisms so that elected representatives of the party are able to resolve challenges.

Once internal dynamics is such that criticism within the party equates to rebellion, it can only amplify the voices of political opposition located in other parties, especially the PDP. As a result, therefore, it become a case of the voice of internal opposition providing all the legitimacy for the damaging campaigns of external opposition. This is the reality facing APC, which requires some urgent response by both the party and governments it controls, especially at federal level. This is a function more about strengthening capacity for public communication, which should prioritise engaging Nigerians and strategically getting citizens to support and own initiatives of governments. This is not just about propaganda but about creating the needed space for government representatives to listen to Nigerians.

At the level of APC, it is important that leaders of the party are able to also listen to party members. A situation whereby party leaders only relate with members remotely through rallies during electoral campaigns, is inadequate and must be expanded to cover sessions where leaders are able to interact with party members to review challenges facing the party and initiatives being taken to address these challenges. An important precondition for this to happen is the confidence of leaders. The reality is that many leaders could be uncomfortable with having to sit in sessions where they are criticised and sometimes abused. Leaders should be able to develop both the capacity to control public sessions and ensure that they produce outcomes as well as also develop the needed thick skin to deal with criticism positively.

It is only when leaders are able to develop the needed thick skin that they could be able to make better use of public criticisms. Otherwise, it will be a case of dismissing every criticism. Once the attitude of leaders is about dismissing criticisms, an important leadership quality would have been lost, which is being able to recognise that actions of leaders are always contentious and hardly popular. And given Nigerian political reality whereby everybody relates with political leaders based on one form of expectation or the other, no matter what, no leader can meet all the expectations of citizens. Inability to meet expectations strengthens probability of resentment. The requirement therefore of responding to expectations based on assessment of what is needed and capacity of individuals to competently support the execution of tasks to achieve the set outcomes should be the consideration of leaders.

Being a party with a vision of progressive politics, there is the need to appeal to APC leaders to depart from the conventional approaches of determining who merit appointment in government based largely on factors of loyalty, which can be attributed to blind trust. In many cases, this has created a situation whereby many political appointees especially at federal level, instead of being drivers of government initiatives based on which they are competently facilitating public engagements and winning the support of citizens, they have become passengers.

There is no reason why APC and its controlled federal government under President Buhari should be having bad public image given all the infrastructural developments, social investment programmes and agricultural initiatives being implemented. Combinations of internal disagreements within the APC, very weak public engagement by appointees of federal government and also weak membership engagement by the APC leadership are contributing to the sad reality whereby false allegations against APC federal government are made to appear legitimate.

Designated federal government appointees need to produce assessments of comparative scorecards of accomplishments made under six years of APC controlled federal government as compared to sixteen years of PDP administration. Under no circumstances should APC leaders allow a situation whereby the campaigns for 2023 is not based on empirical evidence of work done. For instance, how many kilometers of road was constructed under six years of APC administration as compared to sixteen years of PDP? What was the status of execution of rail development throughout sixteen years of PDP? What is the status of rail development in the country after six years of APC? If the anchor borrower initiatives of the APC controlled federal government has produced rice pyramids in Kebbi and Gombe States, what is the corresponding scorecard of the sixteen years of PDP in the agricultural sector?

Every ministry and agency of government should produce similar scorecard and both the government, and the party must take the appropriate steps to popularise the scorecard as part of the strategy to resolve the current bad public image associated with the APC and its governments. Any Minister or head of agency who is not able to produce a comparative scorecard ahead of the commencement of the 2023 campaigns, or use the scorecard to effectively engage Nigerians, such a person should be blacklisted by the party based on which he or she is disqualified from any consideration for accessing any elective or appointive position.

Conclusion

It is conventional to all democracies that parties in power always have the higher advantage of winning elections. To that extent, APC has all the advantage of winning the 2023 elections. The big challenge is whether APC leaders will take the necessary steps to retain all the towering electoral advantages of President Buhari, which will require first and foremost that the Caretaker Committee is able to complete its tasks of returning party organs to normal operations in line with provisions of the APC Constitution. This should be followed by allowing organs of the party to take decisions, which should be the basis for the unity of all leaders of the party.

There is also the need to depart from the political convention in Nigeria whereby leaders relate with everyone based on estimation of support or opposition of ambitions to access appointive and elective positions. This create the problem of blind trusts, which in turn can lead to a situation whereby appointed officials of governments controlled by the party are more or less passengers. Once appointed official become passengers, the capacity of the party and governments it controls to engage Nigerians and win public support will be weak. This can produce the unacceptable reality whereby both the party and governments it controls face challenges of bad public image.

Taking every step to ensure that conducts of party leaders are regulated to conform to minimum standards is therefore necessary to ensure that all appointive officials of the APC-controlled government are able to develop comparative scorecards ahead of the 2023 elections. APC must take all the necessary steps to ensure that campaigns for 2023 are based on assessment of empirical evidence of performance and not perception.

Dr Lukman is the Director-general,Progressive Governors Forum, Abuja. His position here does not represent the view of any APC governor or the Progressive Governors Forum.

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Opinion

Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State

Published

36 mins ago

December 22, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.

(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.

From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.

However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.

First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.

Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.

No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.

If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.

To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.

The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

Opinion

Fear Of Witchcraft And Politics In Zambia

Published

23 hours ago

December 21, 2024

NewTimes

Witch Burning, Impunity And Abuses Linked to Witchcraft Beliefs In Benue State

Dr Leo Igwe

By Leo Igwe

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.

This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.

Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?

The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.

Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.

In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.

Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!

Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

Opinion

Burning Issues: (FCT Minister And Paulosa) (2)

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

The other burning issue, apart from Farotimi and Babalola’s, which I wish to take a look at – and which I am taking a look at now – relates to what is happening in our capital territory. What is this burning issue – which our human rightists and civil society organisations and personages are surprisingly and un-satisfactorily not inclined to focus attention on and examine as they should? I may be wrong, but it surely seems to me that this issue, this burning issue, which is of more importance than Farotimi and Babalola’s – which has been given undue adulation – is deliberately being neglected and depreciated by proclaimers and heroes and heroines of human rights, justice, equity and equality of rights in your country my country our country. Why, why, why and why, why, why? Anyone who has any iota of patriotic sensibility, feeling and judgment well watered and buttressed by a very great influence upon his or her critical judgment will keep on asking the question I am asking.

Mr. Nyesom Wike, as almost everybody who can read and write a little knows, is the current minister of your, my and our Federal Capital Territory. His post or office is akin to that of a governor of a state. As the immediate past governor of Rivers State who was drafted, after his two terms there expired, to continue in the FCT as its new minister-governor or governor-minister under the auspices of a party he is not a true member of, Mr. Wike cannot but be seen as a lucky man. He is in every possible and impossible way. Minister-Governor Wike is a lucky man and a very fortunate one indeed. No former governor of Rivers State (or of any Nigerian state), as far as I know, has achieved what the famed political rouser of rabbles has achieved in one short gubernatorial life-time, and at a relatively young and fertile age. His dual achievement with and in two different political parties at this delicate point of Nigerian politics indicates to our politicians and us all that there is always time for a reminder that there are ready-made high rewards for arch-angels of betrayals. And Mr. Wike may go down in Rivers and Nigerian history as both an arch-angel and an emperor of betrayal of us all if we attempt to indicate what I have defined here as his dual achievement.

We can roughly divide, briefly, Wike’s political development into two periods. During the first, excluding his lower political positions before he became the governor of Rivers State, he quickly adapted his style to that of an emperor who became a rabble-rouser of rabble-rousers whose gubernatorial efficiency moved from stiffness to stiffness. He did not at any time feel that he needed suppleness to govern Rivers State. “Let the heavens fall if they must fall!” We are not there yet in this attempted analysis of the stiff-hearted and stiff-minded one. True? But he is already demonstrating this characteristic in Abuja. False? Judge and give the answer yourself.

Even after he left Rivers State a short while ago as governor, he is still trying to control happenings there to the political discomfiture of his hand-picked successor, his erstwhile “boy” and “son” – with whom he has fallen out. As the minister-governor or governor-minister of the FCT, Wike is occupied with the other taste of the emperor-juggernaut formulator – doing the work of two key political masters in one room and desk of political jugglery. Since his appearance in the FCT, minister-governor or governor-minister Wike has allegedly attempted to recover or transform for Abuja what is not traditionally or socially Abuja’s, for example, the city’s social idiom and landscape and terrain as well as its environs. In doing this he sometimes over-steps his bounds and mark of human/inhuman decency/indecency and psychological understanding of human nature, if you follow well what I am saying; he has so far become at best not really better than a typical pedestrian Nigerian lawyer and officer of political power: in his explorations so far in the Federal Capital Territory we have come to the realization, as T. S. Eliot would say, that “it is so often true that only by going too far can we find out how far we can go.” But one has to be a very negatively obstinate and self-serving emperor and a thorough-bred arch-angel of betrayal of the people and masses to justify such perilous and perfidious expeditions and adventures.

Last week, I saw on Arise Television “The Morning Show” Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, the dutiful widow of the late Nigerian supreme patriot and soldier, Colonel Ogbebor (of Benin stock) battling, so to say, to wrest the legacy of her late husband from the tight grip of the adventurous FCT minister-governor who has registered his name and signature in the hearts and consciousness of the people as the depriver of their possessions. The three anchors of “The Morning Show” were in their respective ways splendid in their structures of remarks and questions to Chief (Mrs.) Rita Lori-Ogbebor whom I have had occasions in times past to call patriotically Rita A-K 47 on account of her natural right to fire her beautiful tongue at any person, usually an enemy, of just actions. When she made the case she made to protect the estate of Paulosa Nigeria Limited, her late husband’s aforesaid legacy in the FCT, she was in her natural territory, habitat and element where even at age eighty-four, she never ever loses her stability – although she unusually restrained herself in the Arise Television appearance. Dr. Reuben Abati, Rufai Oseni, and Ayo Mairo-Ese clearly explored seriously but delightfully the mind of the mother-hen of Warri – my other coinage and appellation I gave her in my poetry. Her “The Morning Show” appearance enabled me to see the poignant cry de profundis of the FCT inhabitants whose property and residences in different guises have been demolished. She did not say anything that was out of joint. She spoke and came out as a mother, protector and symbol of the people who have suffered – and are suffering – from the state of affliction and anguish Wike’s demolitions have placed – and are placing – the people.

Ojy Okpe in her delicious and delectable “What is Trending” slot on the same show, showed without exaggeration but with further elaboration what people in and outside Abuja/FCT think of the mighty Wike’s demolitions, a burning issue that the Senate has asked “Let Heaven Fall” minister-governor Wike to halt as the committee the Senate set up on the issue starts its work. Of course, we cannot but assume that Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, Mrs. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as well as Mrs. Ireti Kingigbe, the senator representing the FCT in the Senate and other patriotic senators diligently did what they did on the floor of the Senate when the burning issue was tabled for debate with the gracious understanding and authorization of the Senate President.

I need to state further that the “The Morning Show” anchors did well and extremely so by giving the minister-governor the opportunity to air his anti-Paulosa story. His senior special assistant on public communication and social media, Mr. Olalere Olayinka, stood in for him. After he gave the reasons for the clamp-down, his responses to the questions the anchors put to him followed the usual pattern of denials by artificial men in power – denials that they always use to intimidate and betray the people. In fact, Mr. Olayinka’s ploy to ride easily over our dear Rufai Oseni, a wholesome representative of the deprived, that the chap (or is it guy?) and his boss always employ their colloquial speeches and remarks to dishonor, failed. Yes, the ploy failed woefully. In stanza after stanza of the exchanges between Mr. Olayinka and the Arise anchors, he deteriorated – and his deterioration was hall-marked when he unwittingly revealed that the Paulosa land had been acquired by his minister-governor’s close cohort, an act that was nothing short of gross abuse of power and authority.

Because the Senate is already using its authority, power and privilege to resolve the burning issue, hopefully, in a way that the late Colonel Ogbebor’s legacy and family will not be subjected to any kind of degradation, I will utter no more words for now. I trust, however, that the liberties the Senate is taking – or has taken – are for the sake of order to favour the down-trodden.

As for the minister-governor, the PDP emperor at large, here is an immortal quote from Marcus Aurelius, the magnificent and authentic Roman Emperor and philosopher (A.D. 121-180): “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” You lose nothing by giving us a slice of your humanity by your right acts and correct words. Everything changes and passes. Be humane as a human being.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.