Losing the plot to 2027 and the odds of a recurring self-flagellation

Whenever a child is misbehaving and about to put a seal on the dreaded application of the whip, my grandma will say in Ijẹbu dialect, ‘`iyà rẹ jùnù’. Literally, ‘your flogging is lost’. This means you are desperately doing your utmost to reach out to the whip. This is an apt description of the choice of the Nigerian electorates in recent times. We do our utmost to vote for politicians with policies that will bruise, bleed, and sometimes bury us.

Buhari displays his ballot paper

Recent Presidential election results show that politicians need votes of electorates outside their comfort zones. Ostensibly, in the last election, all the major parties got votes from all states, but in reality, they were no competition in many of them. Voting along ethnic and religious affinity is a dangerous trend for a country like ours and this brings me to wonder how we failed to run convincing campaigns. How did the candidates get their messages across to the electorates? Or should we ask, what message was put across?

While being the least educated in the country, electorates from Northern Nigeria play a decisive role in who becomes the next president. A large portion of the northern voters are malleable, yet they are the golden geese. This means that politicians and indeed supporters need to change their language, tone, and mode of communication with the electorates.  Peter Obi merely scratched the surface of available votes in the north. While this is not an outright disaster for a candidate given no chance from the onset, the campaign model needs to be reformed, rebranded, and redirected.

Indeed, while being an obidient is a badge of honour for some, it is also a trigger for others. I am obidient, and I will always support for Peter Obi’s bid because he is an outlier of a Nigerian politician. However, it is a fact that some obidients have made it difficult for others to join the ranks. Some have gone to the extreme with comments that make you gasp for air, while a few seem to be interested in stoking a civil war. Many obidients are crude while playing a game that requires tact and diplomacy. Some obidients of eastern extraction sometimes show they are inhumane by gloating over unfortunate incidents befalling people of other regions. This gloating is an aggravating factor that culminated in northerners attack on easterners before a full-fledged civil war decades ago.

Till now, no one has provided empirical evidence that Peter Obi won the last election beyond rhetoric. Not Dele Farotimi. Not Aisha Yesufu. Not Peter Obi himself or his legal team. None of Peter Obi’s foremost supporters. With respect, these associates keep telling us that Peter Obi won because they are yet to come to terms with the fact that he lost after all their efforts. The consensus within the extant legal framework is that Tinubu won – albeit from a very flawed process which we are constrained to accept. 

We all know Nigeria needs an about-face and needs to be deconstructed and rebuilt. People who threaten to form a parallel government cannot turn around to condemn one who says the current President is not her President. However, statements denouncing the legality of the incumbent's office should be avoided if there is to be an acceptable outing for Obi in 2027. Phrases like ‘…illegitimate President’, ‘…Nigeria has no President’, ‘…masquerading as President’, ‘…imposter President’, are not palatable, but since it is proven by Aisha that Tinubu did the same during Jonathan’s presidency, we have no moral justification to condemn her. You cannot be comfortable with her activism against Jonathan and Buhari and oppose her when it comes to Tinubu.

Fellow obidients, you are not more Nigerian than other Nigerians. If you want your candidate to win, you need to convince the electorates. The people you call almajiris at the slightest provocation are the ones you need most. I had doubts about polls positioning Peter Obi to win because the poll respondents are online while the greater percentage of real voters are offline. They remain offline and should be targeted and converted with a clear message. The ‘shege’ they go through may eventually reveal to them that they messed up, but the gospel of the need for an outlier as a President needs to be better disseminated. Whether they like it or not, Peter Obi is an outlier for Nigerian politicians and a better option, but have we convinced the voters about this?

The selflessness and pursuit of a saner country by Uncle Dele and Aisha in print and visual media are there for all to see – I respect them both. They desperately want a country to be proud of. But it appears to me that they have been subjective on this occasion. I hope they will untangle the elements of this loss, one of which is the failure to sell the Peter Obi candidacy to the Northern electorates. It may well be impossible, and they need to accept this if that is the case. But the fact that there were pockets of votes here and there means it is possible.

As an INEC ad-hoc staff in an off-cycle election in a northern state during my youth service, I would reject the assumption of INEC declaring non-existent votes in the north because they take elections more seriously than other regions. But I do not excuse underage voting or the violence that comes with it. From the moment Buhari openly displayed his ballot for the world to see as he did years before, he set an ugly start for the election. The secrecy of the ballot was foregone, vote-buying was easier, and intimidation was sanctioned. But voter intimidation was not restricted to APC strongholds.  Yet a whimper has yet to be said by our courts on the need to improve the electioneering process by INEC. Our courts cannot continue to certify the non-compliance in our elections every four years as insignificant and expect a better electioneering process next time. It won’t happen.

Dear obidients, just like some of you, I campaigned and spent money because of my faith in Peter Obi. But we can’t keep acclaiming victory that has eluded us to make it valid. We need to assess the situation objectively. There is no doubt that the Peter Obi movement needed northern Nigeria and failed to clinch important wins there. A post-election cold war is already worsening his chances in the next election if he does throw his hat in the ring again. The task of educating the electorates should have begun. But when we remain fixated on the unproven assertion that Obi won without empirical evidence, then we are already losing the plot to victory in 2027. I know it is difficult to start again after all that you said and did, but the Nigeria we deserve is only possible when we have the leadership we deserve.

MY LORDS, IT IS EITHER COMPLIANCE OR NON-COMPLIANCE, SUBSTANTIAL COMPLIANCE DEODORISES ILLEGALITY

 

The 2023 general elections are not just a sham as some have said. It is another seasonal show of shame of many episodes from us all. From the moment the incumbent President openly displayed his ballot paper to the whole world on election day, the ‘free and fair’ of the election became a matter of debate. It became a norm as people did it openly citing the President’s action to claim their voting-allowance from party agents. But I know, as usual, the court/tribunal will stamp it with the principle of ‘substantial compliance’ as it is wont to do. Substantial compliance presupposes that the level of compliance achieved is sufficient despite identified deficiencies which pose no greater risk than desirable as to bring damage to the process. But the thing is, using the principle of substantial compliance to defeat the tax authorities and capitalist insurance companies may be condoned but using it against the electorate is judicial complicity in electoral fraud. The taxpayer and the insured are the beneficiaries of that principle and it is strictly construed against the tax authority and the insurance companies perhaps because of the balance of power. But in elections, the balance of power lies in the electoral commission, so why construe the principle against the electorates?

The 2023 general elections are not just a sham, but a disgrace. Folks want us to compare an election in a digital era to pre-1999 election. That is utterly absurd and inhumane. It is time the Nigerian judiciary stop endorsing illegality with convenient phrases in the face of manifest wrongdoings. This only gives the perpetrators and their accomplices the confidence to do it again and again. The election tribunals must not endorse the fraudulent general elections marred by systemic and constructive disenfranchisement before election day through voter’s card absence, contrived and real voter suppression by incidences of violence and threats, and outright attacks on electorate, among others. There is a time to stop madness and the court has to show us why the law is really a tool for social engineering. It must re-evaluate this phrase called substantial compliance. For elections, it should be either compliance or non-compliance.

We are the most populous black nation, and many look up to us to take the lead for Africa. Yet, we stutter, we slumber, and we shame an entire continent. The efforts put into the new electioneering procedure is a waste if we are still going to be preaching ‘substantial compliance’. The use of technology is meant to ease the procedure and make it more transparent. Why disorganize the daily lives of 200 million Nigerians if all we will get is ‘substantial compliance’ rhetoric? What happened to strict compliance? This might appear to be a cry from a defeated opposition member. Well, maybe it is, and it would not have been if the opposition had lost fairly. It would have been a deserved victory worth partying over for the alleged winners too.

The BVAS were acquired for the purposes of authenticating voters and uploading results from the 176,606 polling units in real time. If INEC cannot deliver on this, then it is a shame and maybe there is a need for a change at the commission. The excuse of cyberattack is untenable. INEC should identify all IP addresses from which those attack came from and investigate them. They should also identify internal saboteurs in ad-hoc or permanent staff who are found wanting and prosecute them for future purposes. The lack of punishment over the years has led the manipulators to the believe that nothing can happen to them.

Our country has security challenges and there is every reason to Police election materials in my view. I am certain that all these polling unit can be policed effectively, by the Nigerian Police force and Civil Defence Corp, and the argument of militarization of election is untenable in a society where hoodlums snatch ballot boxes at will. Protecting our vote doesn’t mean we should put our lives at risk and really, when thugs are involved, only armed security operatives can stop them.  

Three years ago, Malawi annulled a Presidential election because it was deemed to have ‘widespread, systematic, and grave irregularities’. Six years ago, Kenya’s Supreme court upheld the oppositions argument that voting results were manipulated. The court said, ‘The election commission failed, neglected or refused to conduct the presidential election in a manner consistent with the dictates of the constitution.’ I hear someone say the circumstances are different and I don’t doubt it because Nigeria’s case is worse off. What happened in Lagos particularly on March 18, 2023, cannot be called an election. It started as a ‘joke’, but Chukwudi was beaten blue and black, even Jide and Yemi who were supposed to be immune from the suppression got slapped and manhandled. Thugs had a filled day. In Rivers State, as usual, people lost their lives because of elections. In some South-Eastern states, people of different sub-ethnic inclinations threaten each other because they have candidates they want to get to victory at all costs. 3 weeks earlier, Ado Doguwa’s ‘joke’ was executed, against his own people. This still happens in 2023.

Our courts must take note of their role in the society. We say we have weak institutions, but the courts too are to blame. If a judgment is given and not respected by politicians, why are the judges going to the chamber the next day for the same thing to happen? A society where the laws are of no value is gradually sinking into lawlessness and in the fullness of time, everyone goes rogue. We all know the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time is now. But we never seem to have the courage to plant that tree. Our courts need to be firm with the conduct of elections and respect for the rule of law. Insist on strict compliance for electoral processes.

Do we ever wonder why the number of voters keeps decreasing every four years instead of increasing with our increasing population? Do we ever wonder why the courts have been a subject of ridicule especially in political cases? This general election is best consigned to the bin. 

Àwa la lèkό (Lagos is ours). But who are we?

How to turn a state with N1.2b monthly IGR in 1999 into a N6.9b state in 8 years is one thing we all want to learn from the former governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Tinubu. The 500% increase in IGR is nothing but phenomenal. Successive governments have managed to stretch this further incrementally to its current N45 billion monthly. But why is he yet to give the formula to Buhari? While Lagosian knows how much the State generates yearly, they don’t know the details of how it is spent. Kudos for the publication of the State’s yearly financial statements which tells part of the story but do not tell us details yet.

Also, what many Governors would like to learn from Tinubu is how to be a billionaire without any business. This is the biggest wealth hack which should avail him a teaching position at Harvard or London Business School. Every company we know linked to Tinubu has been denied by him, yet he is stinkingly rich. It is reported that Sanwo-Olu has recently increased Alpha Beta’s monthly commission or allocation from N800 million to N2.5 billion. This means that Tinubu collects over 5% of Lagos IGR from the state monthly. But with a 3^rd party ownership structure, it is easy to deny his involvement. Ten years ago, Dr Ademola Dominic questioned the propriety of Alpha Beta’s commission scheme and sought more details into the business relationship with the State government. Fashola refused and his refusal is a red flag. Why is public finance shrouded in secrecy if it is fair and just?

By law, Lagosians enrich Tinubu yearly through the sleazy ex-Governors allowance of 300% salary, cars, healthcare (which has recently become a monthly foreign ritual), pensionable domestic workers, security personnel, Abuja home, and other benefits. Don’t mention off-record property allocations without due process which includes conversion of public properties.

It is indisputable that Lagos is a unique state with many attractions. Federal presence in Lagos includes federal governments institutions, liaison offices, international and local airports, seaports, coastal beaches, a national theatre, a national stadium, specialized banks, companies’ registry, several government institutions, educational institutions, and parastatals, all of which combine to make sure Lagos never sleeps and contributes in no small measure to the wealth enjoyed by Lagos today. The importance of the former longest bridge in Africa at 11.8 km linking the mainland to the island is colossal to trade and commerce. If it is undisputed that Tinubu did not facilitate any atom of these, then we can agree that Lagos was long built before 1999.

Imagine for a moment that the FCT is moved away from Abuja tomorrow and someone comes after some decades to lay claim to building Abuja after constructing and resurfacing some intracity roads, some 100 meters overhead bridges, planting flowers, and sweeping the roads! Tinubu’s followers compare a former capital territory created in 1967 to Anambra created in 1991 which a few years ago was still unearthing civil war landmines of the late 60’s. Images of Lagos in the 60’s and 70’s are all over the internet and the efforts of several former Heads of State in Lagos stare us in the face daily, but the allies choose not to acknowledge them. Yes, we had the molue and bad roads, but are we saying we don’t have rickety roads on Lagos roads today or that the roads are in perfect shape? Jakande built the secretariat, house of assembly complex, low-cost estates, general hospitals, and numerous other projects just in four years. Tinubu just needed to upgrade the hospital, but no, he ‘built’ Lagos and forgot to upgrade the hospital already built for him. If he did, then he should stop travelling abroad to another hospital every month at the expense of Lagosians.

Tinubu has repeatedly stated that he will replicate his Lagos mojo in Abuja. If this includes increasing the IGR, it also includes enriching himself. For every N100 Tinubu’s company collects, over N5 goes into his pocket. We know from the statement on oath of Dapo Apara that Tinubu owns Alpha Beta. The company has its business in many other States beyond Lagos and they are not experiencing the Lagos mojo because it is no mojo. You simply cannot give what you don’t have. The uniqueness of Lagos with the infrastructure of a former Federal Capital Territory as stated above is what makes it able to generate revenue as much as it does. Again, there is the ethical revenue generation in the areas of income taxes which is the duty of LIRS and not Alpha Beta and most annoying the unethical revenue generation as exemplified by LASTMA particularly. Not long after LASTMA was created a year after Tinubu’s stewardship in Lagos, it became a revenue-making agency rather than a traffic agency.  With a set target of revenue yearly, it is beyond doubt that there will be injustice in its operation, and I can attest to it that trials in court are formality as personally experienced. What Tinubu created was a beast to extort and inconvenience Lagosians daily. The penalties range from N20,000 to N100,000. The big IGR of Lagos is more of a rip-off in many shades. The Lagos state MVAA has perhaps the highest rate for vehicle licensing in Nigeria, others are motorcycle riders licensing scheme, commercial vehicle stickers fee, unjust tolls on roads, signage and advertisement costs increasing the IGR. All these compounds cost of businesses on Lagosians.  

Tinubu is a model crook cum politician, able to deceive and blur the footpaths of a shady past with a dependent army of sworn followers, a piece of the media space, and most importantly a host of pawns in various offices from the State level to the Federal, with a Governor in Lagos who is not actually a ‘Governor’, and those in the federal executive currently managing a battered nation.

Nigeria’s problems are multi-faceted, and I do not envy the next President. But I am sure the Tinubu that said, ‘…your voter card is expired, they may not have told you’, the one that implied that labourers are the wretched of the earth, the one who thinks Boko Haram would end by employing 50 million youths is not going to take us anywhere. We may not all agree with Hundeyin reportage but please how did the young daughter pay millions of dollars for that property? We would be fools not to reject Tinubu at the polls if we say we want a better country than we have.

The few owners of Lagos make personal gains from the inconvenience passed to Lagosians daily and inflated contract like the rail-line, road tolls, self-allocated properties, and are the ones entitled to claim Lagos as ‘Our Lagos’. The earlier we realise this, the better for us and the need to reclaim it from them. Àwa la lèkό! But who are we? Shareholders, taxpayers, or party members? This is a question that begs for answers next election. 

The crazy part of our democrazy: How monetised politics is pushing us to the edge.

 

While heavenly rain made people seek shelter in some places on convention days, others elsewhere savoured the rain of dollars from the presidential aspirants of PDP and APC. Did Moghalu just insinuate it did at the ADC too? All I know now is that the winners clinched their party’s nomination tickets through clandestine and covert negotiations as the delegates who are our ‘egg-heads’ have been ensnared by filthy lucre. They left the candidate that had something for their future for the one that gave something ‘now’. We all are the losers. The primaries are now over, and many are thinking how did we get here? While some of these men were strategizing how to win, a Prime Minister elsewhere had his heart in his mouth for contravening lockdown rules.  The big 2 have offered us moneybags, we must now choose between Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President, and Bola Tinubu, a former governor. But we have other aspirants, don’t we? When they say other candidates don’t have a structure, what they mean is that they don’t have money. Sadly, that is very true. They have monetised our polity, the delegate’s poverty needs to be cured today before he can think about tomorrow. Afterall, what if tomorrow never comes?

The level of poverty is a design of the political elites to keep using these voters when they are needed. We all remember how CACOVID food supplies were hoarded, and they wanted us to be begging for it. We are so blessed, we should not be thinking of what to eat tomorrow, yet we lack food. A serious government will create an enabling environment for the private sector to boom or provide jobs or government support for people without jobs. In other places, there are food banks here and there and not having something to eat is almost a matter of choice. We should learn that every kobo spent by these contenders to get this office are not for charitable causes, they will be recovered in multiple folds when they get the position they so crave.

These primary elections have revealed to us that we are in a pseudo-democracy. The best rainmakers won in the primaries. We can blame the delegates, but what justification do we have when these delegates reflect what many Nigerians exhibit daily? Most of us complain when we are not in that position of authority but once we get there, we change. Many Nigerians will use their position of authority to get what they want at the Police Stations, at the Local government, in their school, in their immediate community, even in the courts, and this is exactly what these aspirants have done.

Atiku and Tinubu have many things in common. They both vacated their last office on the same day over 15 years ago and both have questionable wealth. No doubt they are political allies who have used their past positions in public offices to create businesses that rake in big money for them. Both have been accused of tax default or fraud over the years. Does their inexplicable wealth ever bother us? Both will come on air tomorrow to castigate the party of the other and how much destruction the party of the other has pilled on Nigerians while pretending that their emergence in the first place is flawless. Party delegates have laughed to the bank and given us the highest bidders in their respective parties. Governors and lawmakers have cut their own deals too. On election day more dollars will put one of them in charge (I hope not) and we go again, complaining for years. If the vote buying at the primaries are exterminated and cut off, better aspirants at primaries will mean absence of vote buying at the general election. We cannot continue to complain of the same thing every four years and do nothing about it. Many wanted these parties to field Peter Obi and Yemi Osinbajo, but the war chest goes beyond the good intent of good men.

It is true that developed nations must have gone through their own difficult moments to nurture and perfect their democracies. But it is also true that we can learn from their mistakes and leapfrog their formative era errors, but we choose to wallow in our own misery. Its criminal that our political elites have weaponised poverty to be able to use it against us. The ugliest financial crimes are here, and the law enforcement have chosen to take a nap. Politicians at that level will not overtly share money at the event and the presence of law enforcement agents will achieve very little. Get the names of delegates and investigate them. If we choose to turn a blind eye, we will keep complaining for decades. We need to fight this electoral crime if we need this nation to progress, else these modern-day neo-colonialists and imperialists will keep us subdued and colonised for a long time. If the Professor is also guilty, let there be consequences for actions. We need to save an atrophying nation.

How Nigeria is building a University of kidnapping and banditry

 

While growing up in the 80’s, the term ‘gbomό-gbomό’ literarily ‘child-kidnapper’ was the only form of kidnapping we knew. The men who perpetrated this evil were thought to be surreal or spiritual. We were instructed not to pass through certain routes and forbidden from talking to strangers because we may well just disappear if we do so. Gbomό-gbomό of those days had no guns, but lure you with candy and other attractive goodies like money carefully planted on your way. They can also talk you into coming with them. Adults were rarely kidnapped and the victims were random persons.

Times have changed and today's kidnappers have no patience to ensnare their victims. They profile, target, waylay, and whisk them away at gunpoint. The victims’ families and acquaintances then begin the race of gathering funds to free the victim from the kidnappers. This effort is on somewhere in the country right now as I write. The effort of the kidnapper is repaid in days or weeks and sometimes both camps will smile, sometimes bloodshed ensues. Everyone and anyone can be kidnapped the next minute. Students especially are like the industry’s gold. Kidnappers have become untraceable within a state that keeps asking us for more for tax for better governance while amassing more debts, a state seeking more personal identity of individual and monitoring their finances with nothing to show for it. Criminals have evolved, policing should evolve even better. A police force modeled like ours will certainly fail with the chain of command as presently constituted. It is obviously time to decentralise for effectiveness but some benefactors of this system are saying it’s good.

In yet another evolution, a new breed of kidnappers has now emerged. Rather than call them kidnappers, someone chose a less harsh description by referring to them as ‘bandits’ and we also agreed to that appellation. We don’t want to hang these criminals by labeling them ‘kidnappers’ or ‘criminals’ because the political class appears to have an interest in them. If today an advert for a ‘bandit’ job is posted, the number of applicants will be in their hundreds. We have chosen to enthrone a system that repays criminality handsomely, so how do we deter future crimes?

We are calm and mute while the fragility of the nation undergoes further violation by the overfed political class.  Not a day passes by without some of us thinking of October 20, 2020 when the voices of men and women asking for a better country were drowned in a pool of their blood. Some while clutching the flag of their country in a show of nationalism. That single act is the final strike of the hammer driving a nail into the coffin taking away our voices. We will have a discussion about this incident one day when those who perpetrated this act will certainly be troubled and haunted. Sadly, not a whimper has been heard from the Governor who sought the help of the shooters since then. The President under whose nose this atrocity was perpetrated is still enjoying taxpayer’s money. The ‘man’ in some of us has no choice than to sleep till 2023 or risk the bullet, let them say the man died. Whether we will have a nation to wake up into by then is another cause of concern. While some Nigerians abroad wish to come back home because this is their home, some of those at home are scheming to have an alternative for where they call home.

Someone should tell the truth to the powerful politicians holding us to ransom. The corruption-destruction mantra of this government seems to be an irony for corruption-enabling. How else do we justify the continuous Boko Haram war ongoing for decades, now under the leadership of a war General? How do we justify the NASS spending billions of naira on itself while the people it represents are living in penury? How do we find it convenient to continue cattle migration with the destruction of farmlands that comes with it? Everyone knows that President Buhari is the best person to put a stop to cattle migration as a means of feeding cattle and that the National Assembly is unapologetically a branch of the executive.

The kidnap of schoolchildren is a norm now and we have forgotten that it was an aberration some years ago. Yes, news travels faster these days with social media, but criminality has also reached new heights. Unknown to us, our insanity is been daily upgraded. Abnormal is the new norm with our psyche getting emblazoned with new lows repeatedly. We are stoic, lest suicide would have been a daily occurrence. But without basic amenities, our mental limit will snap soon, and something must give way.

The October 2020 protest was a response to certain events and something will trigger us to react to this aberration when the time comes. At a time when education is evolving globally, the Nigerian government is stealthily building a specialised University of criminality informally by neglecting the future especially in the North of Nigeria. These people are being trained informally in criminality every day. It starts with being a pickpocket, to breaking bottles, and gun-wielding. They won’t turn on each other but turn on the hapless citizen who sweat it out daily to earn a living and the rich.

It is obvious that we are not paying attention to the future. The leaders of tomorrow 30 years ago are now living in a country of a-thousand-vices with some of them being the device for the vices, and some of them being the victims of their mates. Only time will tell how much more we can go at this rate before imploding.

MAKING A LEGACY OUT OF POLICE REFORM: HOW BUHARI CAN BE REDEEMED

I want to reach out to the President but I know his handlers have him in their palms where they want him. I am still constrained to write however as one who voted him into office. His key co-aspirants made my choice of voting easier and I would still have voted for him given those circumstances at that time. Mr. President has not disappointed me, it is an understatement to say so. He tells his Ministers and almost everyone near him to go and sing his praise, but they cannot come to the village square to say some things without being stoned. Buhari’s name evoked positivity years ago but today many of us wish 2023 was tomorrow. We hope the  ‘wicked counselors’ and ‘rogue advisers’ who have him in their palms would have a rethink. 

Feedback is key to every project. As a shadow director of a monopolistic company, will you believe your line manager’s report of good public perception or your company’s customers who complain of bad company policies? The customers are stuck because of a monopoly, and that is where Nigerian are. STUCK and HELPLESS. The recent protests were never about ‘regime change’ as they made the President believe. It was borne out of oppression, brutality, abuse of office, and outright disregard for law and authority. I almost shed tears watching Miss Chineye Igwetu narrate to the Abuja SARS Panel how her sister due for NYSC passing-out in few hours was murdered in Abuja.

Someone close to the President has to tell him the truth. The ‘change’ promised in 2015 meant more to us. Mr. President knew we suffered years of abuse and promised to bring us a ‘change’. It was meant to bring institutional realignment, a detour from the directionless journey we had embarked on many years ago. Build the foundations for justice and equity first and other needs will follow almost effortlessly. 

Human rights abuses have become a culture under the entire spectrum of our security outfits, from the Department of State Services to the Police, and the Army. Ironically, we have laws we don’t enforce and enforce non-existent (laws) rules. Officers ask for immediate gratification because of low morale, but the Presidency and NASS take a huge bite off the yearly budget. The Police as an institution needs reform and cannot be reformed by the present Inspector General who has succeeded in burying so many complaints against his officers. So many judgment debts on Human Rights abuse have been abandoned under his leadership further putting the judiciary in a bad light. So many atrocities have been buried under his watch and he has no willingness to punish them because they possibly have something on him too. I would have recommended an outsider to clean that stable, unfortunately, the Police Act has constrained Mr. President to choose from the top crop of Policemen. I hope there are a few good men there if well sought.

I don’t want to go into the atrocities and accusations against men of the Police. A Policeman once told me, ‘go and tell the CP (Commissioner of Police) I asked for money’ when I reminded his bail was free. Mr. President I am sure was told our Police is one of the best, and so think we are exuberant, the reason for the recurring use of the phrase ‘a few bad eggs’. We are not being exuberant, they have pushed us to the wall and the rot is deeper than imagined.  If the ‘few bad eggs were just asking for bribes, the stoic Nigerians we have become will not be on the street protesting, they are taking human lives and maiming our friends and family. How do we live with this when it is exactly what criminals do and what they are paid to prevent? I opined somewhere after Mr. President's first victory at the polls that we would need to organise demonstrations, sit-outs, and engage in civil disobedience to get our demands. This I premised on the fact that freedom is never given to the oppressed but won by them if they need it. But, October 20 still gives me mixed feelings about this.

People often tell me that politicians and lawyers are part of the problems of Nigeria. Their argument is that while the former steals, the latter gets him off the hook for a share of the loot. That’s not true, Mr. President, with an effective Police you may not need the EFCC and ICPC. If investigations are water-tight, lawyers will be asking for plea-bargaining for their clients, but this of course comes with good funding, training, and access to tools. The National Assembly is a liability to our democracy and must be pruned. But of course, the President has to lead by example.

Mr. President, the EndSARs protest is not child’s play like your Media-aide said. We shouldn’t be asking you for a CHANGE you promised us. Getting the Police right is key to solving many problems in our country. If you can achieve this and ignore those praise-singers you will be leaving a towering legacy and posterity will forever be kind to you. Mr. President, Adamu (IGP) may be your friend, but the Police is not your friend.

Gov. Fayose's call for action on Lawal and Oke's report: A needed reminder

Governor Ayodele Fayose has assumed the responsibility of Spokesman of the PDP in recent times. As the Chairman of the PDP governors’ forum, he has taken it upon himself to be the voice of the opposition. This is commendable as Olisah Metuh fights his own battle. Fayose like all our past Governors has been testing his popularity and looking for the next safe spot in political offices. He has considered completing his 7 months of impeachment for which he had paid himself upon resumption in his second term, he is considering the Presidential office, though he is not a Presidential material, in my modest opinion. Eventually, he would likely come back to where his ilks go and lack the immunity that he is shopping for - the den of undistinguished fellows at the National Assembly - the Senate.

In an effort aimed at standing for the people and acting like a Presidential candidate, Fayose in his usual manner wrote the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo to demand for the immediate release of the investigative panel report on corruption allegations against the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation and the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency. He is also asking the Vice President to actually act on the report. This is undoubtedly good to our ears, as there was a time frame within which it was expected to be completed and action taken – except the Presidency stage-managed it all expecting Nigerians to forget about it over time. No, we have not forgotten, and not the opposition especially. That assignment must not be a waste of time and resources from the Vice Presidents Office. Did he go through the investigations to give us nothing? Are they hiding or shielding something or someone? Is the fight against corruption truly objective? These are the many questions the actions and inactions of the Vice President brings to fore.

To act on the report is to take a position on the status of the duo of Lawal and Oke. The Vice President cannot be the investigator and the executioner at the same time as the rules of natural justice precludes him from punishing if the report indicts. Fayose is asking Osinbajo to release the report, but the question remains to whom. The assignment was given by President Muhammadu Buhari, can he submit or release the report to another person without ‘repercussions’? If Fayose gives an assignment to his Deputy and he reports to another would it not amount to insolence? In so far as the suspended officials remains suspended, there should be no cause for alarm.

Governor Fayose has gladly threatened to go to the court to compel the Acting President to release and act on the report. This is the right course of action that will guarantee results and form part of our jurisprudence in administrative law. While the buck stops at the President’s desk on the report, the Presidency whether through the President or Vice President must demonstrate that the war on corruption is not selective and ensure that there are no sacred cows in its fold. Whoever is found culpable should be handed over to the EFCC to show to Nigerians that the APC led government is serious about fighting corruption.