Opinion
The Nigerian Condition: Paths Out For The Nation (3)
Published
3 years agoon
By
Toyin Falola
In the natural order of things, solutions are implemented where problems arise—or, at least, debates on what those solutions mean. In Nigeria, there have been attempted solutions to find a way out of the Nigerian condition. There have also been debates on the best path out of the country’s predicament. There have been talks, in fact, moves, on what the national response to the Nigerian condition should be. However, the more ideas we debate and explore, the more contested the prospects of getting out of this Nigerian condition become.
Before delving further into the Nigerian condition, it is essential first to examine the consummate ideologies, problems, actions, inactions, and mentalities that have led to the formation of the malignancy of the Nigerian condition. Why has it been so difficult, even seemingly impossible in some instances, to get out of the Nigerian condition? How have the Nigerian people contributed to that which they seek to run away from? Are the country’s problems compounded, not by some bad fortune, but by the very acts that everyone parades? More so, in what ways have Nigerians attempted to escape from the Nigerian condition?
Discussing the difficulty of getting out of the Nigerian condition without reference to the associated causes will constrain that conversation and make it incomplete. So, when presenting arguments, the roles of the average Nigerian in our national calamity must first be engaged. Of these roles, we have the longstanding problem of disinterest. If the focus and attention of the average Nigerian citizen are considered, it might be amusing to find the country on the bottom of the rung. For many out of the about two hundred million people in Nigeria, agitating over the country’s issues holds little weight.
At the general elections in 2015, a fragment of the country’s population voted the administration into power. In 2019 again, Nigerians demonstrated their nonalignment with political issues by spending the day at home. Even during states and local governments elections, the general attitude of the Nigerian populace leaves voting as a task for a specific class. But a few years down the line, the right of complaints became free for all. Individuals, voters and non-voters, lament the collective sorrow that has befallen the citizens. And while this is an acceptable reaction to suffering, one should not forget the point from which it all began. Already, for many Nigerians, election days are desirable public holidays rather than days for performing their civic duties. If this is continued, then we might as well call the quest an odyssey, for it will indeed be a long journey.
READ ALSO: The Nigerian Condition: A History Of Division (2)
Furthermore, at the core of Nigerian society is a problem of internal division. From the inaugural days of the amalgamation down to the challenges of the 21st century, people have been at loggerheads with their affiliation. Rather than be branded Nigerians, a name that confers fellowship with other ethnic nationalities, many defend their ethnic roots while the nationality is saved for international passports. Attitudes that prevailed in the days of Nigeria’s infancy have been passed down through generations. Differences along religious and ethnic lines are at the forefront of any political consideration. In Southern markets and communities, Northerners are glared at with suspicion, and in the North, a slight misstep by an “outsider” is all the precedent for crises. This tense relationship and dissonance from a sense of nationality make it challenging to prompt Nigerians out of the Nigerian condition the right way.
Explicitly, the citizens seek a way out of the Nigerian condition the wrong way because their motivations are problems in themselves. Ethnic loyalty drives many quests out of the Nigerian condition, making ethnic disengagement from the Nigerian state the goal of these quests, a move that has proved unsuccessful, not once or twice. More so, the mention of religion or ethnocentric loyalties drives charged responses to national issues. Thus, Nigerians worsen a condition that would be less complicated without underlying rifts in ideology.
Similarly, the issue of grassroots corruption exists. Another hindrance dangling above the breakaway from the Nigerian condition is the diffused nature of corruption within the societal fabric. In Nigeria, corruption is a learned principle. Young minds are nurtured in an environment that justifies corruption and lampoons uprightness for its seeming absurdity. Even as anti-government rhetoric is never far from the tongue, the cheating mindsets of critics prevent these from gaining seriousness. Many Nigerians only see evil in corruption—one of the fundamental causes of the Nigerian condition—if they are not at the helm of affairs, calling the shots for corrupt moves. The moment they also get a chance at being corrupt, they forget that corruption is evil. This has blinded many Nigerians from the truth.
Break up into different factions all we will; the Nigerian condition will not suddenly roll away because two ethnic groups decide to split up and become independent states. If Nigeria were divided into different countries today—Biafra and Odua—we would, sooner than anyone can imagine, start to talk about the Biafran condition or the Oduaist condition, which would hardly make any difference on the Nigerian condition.
READ ALSO: The Nigerian Condition And The Exit Options (1)
In demanding justice, many Nigerians contemptuously treat their obligation to act reasonably. Corruption is a worn standard of practice for people in the civil service and other government offices, yet it is in these same circles that the government is most likely to fail. So, while it is convenient to shame political officeholders at every point, the citizens bear the fecal stains that are often overlooked. But as long as they remain, the validity of this quest remains in doubt. If we were to cast the above reasons in stone, a fundamental error would be committed, which is the failure to understand.
Regardless of questionable societal trends, however, an overwhelming responsibility lies upon the government. In many cases, the citizens’ responses to dynamics are attempts to adjust to emerging situations. Yet, any drug that must cure the Nigerian condition must work in both ways—a reformation of public mindsets and a concurrent attitude of change from administrative levels. On that note, let us look into the various paths that have been tried, all in the bid to find a lasting solution to the Nigerian condition. To wit, each of these paths finds strength in diverse arguments. Popular among these paths are talks of restructuring, agitations for secession, and fiscal federalism.
Restructuring
This is perhaps the story-changing solution that no one really understands. To many Nigerians, restructuring means different things. These may be classified into two: broad application of the term “restructuring;” and restructuring in a more specific sense. A broad application of the term finds faith in a loose portrait. Here, Nigerians characterize restructuring as anything, even the slightest shift, that differs from the current operation of the government structure. This model has no particular demand. Instead, it leads people to believe that satisfaction will be found in a change, no matter its form. It might even be argued that this is likely what most Nigerians accept because of uncertainty. There may be a clamor for a reorganized system, but where an understanding of what that should look like is absent, people tacitly accept a form that says, “anything goes.”
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However, there is a more specific application of the term “restructuring.” Here, the word is not specific because it is universally agreed upon but because the purveyors have mentioned, in succinct terms, what they posit it to look like. To the purveyors of this more specific form of restructuring, there should be reforms such as state policing, devolution, and decentralization. The advocacy for state-run police units posits that internal security management should not be within the unilateral purview of the federal government.
Instead, these powers should be adequately centered in the states. As opposed to the current structure, federating units can run their police forces, design and deploy them according to the peculiarities of respective territories. The idea of state police is mainly born out of prevalent security challenges across the country’s subregions. The federal response to this has been in the form of “community” police officers, another fancy word that portrays policing as one that grows out of the neighbourhood itself. In a burst of geopolitical dissatisfaction, governments in the southwest and the southeast have established their security networks—Amotekun and Ebubeagu.
Nevertheless, evolution and decentralization carry a broader political weight than their preceding counterpart. In this model, power is parcelled and redistributed from the central government to the component units. Responsibilities of the federal superstructure are limited to matters like defence and external affairs. Most sectors where the administration was formerly dominant will directly engage the states. Thus, the reins of power are held by hands as many as the number of states.
Secession
We can define secession in two names—Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho. It does not take much to understand where this is headed quickly. Amongst all the solutions in the public space, this is perhaps the most radical, most combative, and best attempted of all. No administration likes to hear the word, and those who say it are wary of what could come. In the context of the names mentioned above, what applies is years of litigation and maybe, in a rare demonstration of government clout, detention in foreign countries. Secession rends the fabric of the Nigerian map and gives each region its piece. It is a farewell to what we once had.
READ ALSO: Rethinking Missing Pieces In The Idea Of Nigeria’s Development
There have been arguments against the plausibility of secession for any one component of the Nigeran state, arguments that find their footing in the provisions of the Constitution. There have also been arguments about the secession ratio: will those who secede do so based on the size of their ethnic population? What fraction of the national land would become theirs? Will minority ethnic groups join the seceded nation? There are many questions, arguments, and governmental moves; some backed by the law, others not so backed, which have stalled the success of any secession. The closest any part of Nigeria came to seceding was the first agitation for the Biafran nation, which led to the Nigerian civil war.
Fiscal Federalism
Fiscal federalism possesses ties to the incumbent vice-president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. The model presses for stronger financial muscle in the states as opposed to prevailing norms. Rather than have components that scramble for bread bits, fiscal federalism poses to have fewer dependent states. Without mincing words, it considers finance as the primary cause of political ramblings. Will the corruption-inclined nature of the Nigerian state allow for the success of fiscal federalism? Undeniably, there is a quest to get out of the Nigerian condition. The phrase “Nigerian condition” is not to be viewed at face value, for it truly represents a spreading disease whose symptoms are manifest on the surface and visible to passers-by—other countries of the world.
Nigerians are not wrong in seeking ways out of the Nigerian condition. In fact, Nigerians who have made moves to help the people out of the Nigerian condition should be applauded for trying. Yet, here we are, and it seems like the situation is getting worse by the day, making people wonder why this is so. In the last part of this series, we would look at why the attempts to find a solution to the Nigerian condition have proven futile and how we can genuinely end the Nigerian condition.
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Part 3 of 4 of the series on the “Nigerian Condition,” commissioned by the New Times. In Part 4, the concrete exit options will be examined.
Falola is a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Opinion
Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State
Published
7 hours agoon
December 22, 2024By 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
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.
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.
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