Not Too Young to Run?

25^th July, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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ow that the National Assembly is considering passing the 'Not Too Young to Run Bill' apparently from public pressure, it is good to examine some few issues surrounding it. One question we should first ask, is age really the main barrier to youths occupying elective and non-elective public offices in Nigeria? Who are even the youths by the way? In a society where people close to 50 years old are claiming to be youths and people well above 50 years of age are occupying the ‘youth Leader’ positions of many political parties, how can you easily determine who is a youth?

Through the amendment of sections 65, 106, 131 and 177 of the 1999 constitution, the bill seeks to reduce the minimum age for contesting the Nigerian Presidency and Vice Presidency from 40 to 30 years, that of governors, deputy governors and senators from 35 to 30. Others are, reducing the age for contesting House of Representatives and state houses of assembly elections from 30 to 25. The bill also wants the councillorship contesting age to be reduced to 20 from 25 as well as youth inclusion in politics.

First, age in my opinion shouldn't even be a major electoral criterion for any candidate contesting elections anywhere. I will propose that a standard process should be put in place by electoral bodies like INEC where candidates will prove their basic capability of successfully holding the office they are aspiring for. Such a process should come with guidelines other than age for qualification to contest for any office. A candidate above 20 to 25 years should be allowed to run, depending on the kind of office, as long as he has proven his minimum ability to hold that office satisfactorily. This however doesn't mean he may not fail after getting elected; because just like age, many times, failure in public office may have little or nothing to do with capacity. There are so many factors that lead to failure in this regard.

Second, if the issue of age must be considered as a primary requirement in qualification for elections, then we should consider maximum age for which one must not run for office and not only the minimum age for running. For instance, a man above 70 or 80 years old must not hold public office for the fear that he may not be able to perform his functions properly. It may be easier for a young man to cope and gain experience from the office, than an old man whose body and spirit can’t cope with the job. This will perhaps ensure fairness against age discrimination in the electoral process.

If age must be an issue, I think, it should equally be considered in the case of the voters as well. For example, how are we sure that an 18 year old can make a good political decision while voting? What experiences does he have to ensure that he votes along national interests? On the other hand, how many 30 to 70 year old people have actually brought their experience and old age to bear while making political decisions? Don’t we have many 30 to 70 year olds in Nigeria who still vote along ethnic and sectional lines while they know clearly that it isn’t good for the country?

Third, what actually is the correlation between age and good governance? How many of our youths have been given chances to hold both elective and appointed public offices? How much difference have they made? We once had a 35 year old Dimeji Bankole as the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives. How was his tenure better than that of the then over 50 years old Aminu Bello Masari who served before him? The current age of the 36 Nigerian Governors range from between 40 to 67, what result are we likely to get, if we rank their performance by age?

There is an argument that leaders who served in the First and Second Republics were mostly young and they did well. However, the truth is that, they didn’t do well because of their age; they did well because they were disciplined and they operated in an honestly-driven system quite different from what we have today. Therefore, the best way is to let a candidate satisfy critical requirements like sanity, maturity, literacy, etc and let the electorate decide whether he is too young or not to govern.

Fourth, many of our youths have effectively proven to be the main enemies of their own progress by becoming stooges and sycophants of politicians. The Nigerian political space is dotted with hopeless youths who serve as thugs, hero worshippers, social media warriors and errand boys who do dirty works for political leaders which apart from the office they hold, are no better than them. The love for easy money has driven our youths crazy and they no longer truly aspire to be leaders themselves, they rather remain political jobbers.

The few serious and determined youths that are available and willing to make a difference are not been helped by their fellow youths. The ‘big’ political parties won't field young people for elective posts except the few ones nominated by godfathers to serve some vested interests and our youths would rather support old politicians than their counterparts in small parties. What then is the benefit of their majority? This bill cannot help Nigerian youths more than they can help themselves. It is just like the case of Nigerian women who want 30% of elective posts but will not vote for any woman who decides to contest.

Lastly, the nature of our politics in Nigeria and not age is the major barrier to youths running for elections in Nigeria. Nigerian politics seems to be only for the rich people or for people backed by godfathers with big purses. This is because many Nigerians are money worshippers and also politics has been turned into a big commercial and lucrative industry. This is why we witnessed excessive use of money to buy party nominations in all our elections from 2003 to date.

Our youths need #NotTooPoorToRun much more than they need this #NotTooYoungToRun. Let’s pass a bill that will demonetize and de-godfatherize our politics and see wonders.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

Osinbajo's Surge for National Unity

24^th June, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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hen we celebrated the 24^th anniversary of June 12 nearly two weeks ago, I was among those Nigerians who might have left deeply wondering how Nigerians graduated from a people who were willing to vote for you without caring what your religion or that of your running mate is, to a people that are sharply divided and their voting patterns only reflecting their mainly religious and ethnic sentiments over the last four national elections. 

When then Presidential Candidate in the 2011 Elections, Muhammadu Buhari and his defunct Congress for Progressive Change party were said to have scored only 500 votes or so in the whole of Bayelsa State and only about 8000 votes in the whole of Enugu State, I was left not only shocked with the amount of unacceptability or possibly electoral irregularities that could have produced such results, but also with the amount of religious and ethnic factors that allowed such to thrive. In the 2015 elections, Goodluck Jonathan scored about 200,000 votes in Kano State, a bulk of which came from Christian dominated areas mostly settled by people from the South. Today, we ask where are those Nigerians that helped MKO Abiola, a man from Ogun State to defeat his rival Bashir Tofa not only in Kano, his home state, but also reportedly in units that constitute his backyard?

There is no doubt that over the last 24 years, Nigeria’s political space has been negatively transformed. The seeds of this somewhat contemporary transformation were probably sowed in the 2003 elections when some people employed all sort of electoral frauds tailored along strong and devastating religious sentiments, ethnic campaigns and sectional divisions to remain in power. The rest, they say is now history.

Though ethnic, religious and divisive sentiments has perennially been with us since independence, but their significance and impact on national life has varied from time to time and from dispensation to dispensation as we may compare between 1993 and may be 2015 for example. Today, we are again witnessing a period when national unity is being threatened by violence, hate speech, politics, quit notices and secession. Many believe that our country have never been this divided since after the Civil War or may be even before or during it.

The Federal Government under the initiative of the Acting President Professor Yemi Osinbajo have conducted and are still conducting series of consultative meetings with various groups of leaders and people of societal influence across the country to make sure that the situation is tamed and controlled. The presidency has met separately with leaders of thought from the North and the South East, traditional and religious leaders from the same regions as well as all 36 state governors. This is no doubt a big positive step to which even the opposition Peoples Democratic Party have commended.

In continuation of such consultations last Thursday, the Acting President deemed it fit to meet with Nigerian media publishers, editors and a handful of veteran journalists and writers which I was privileged to be invited. In that meeting, few attendees representing the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, Nigerian Guild of Editors, Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, veteran journalists and two others were given the opportunity to speak before the Acting President was given the stage to lecture us on what I see as yet the best and most impressive speech I listened to this year. It was so not because, I didn’t had some few reservations about what the Acting President had said, but because the speech was so inspiring and wise that I wished every single Nigerian was listening to it at that particular time. Though I didn’t physically attended any of the previous consultative meetings, but I’ve noticed that unlike in them, Osinbajo spoke freely rather than read from a prepared written speech, except in few cases where he needed to glimpse at his tablet when reeling out some facts and statistical figures to support some of his arguments. Even then, he gave so many statistics without making any reference to that tablet.

The Acting President emphasized on four things that currently constitutes a threat to national unity; prejudice, politics, misinformation and carelessness, all of which he thinks the media have a role to play in neutralizing or promoting. Nigerians, Osinbajo had said, have built up and subsequently consumed by a series of negative thoughts over a long period of time and they only see and understand events base on such established negativities. He said some strictly but wrongly believed that the series of killings executed by Fulani herdsmen were parts of efforts to Islamise Nigeria despite overwhelming evidence on the ground that proves otherwise. The Fulani herdsmen killings is more an economic crisis that centres on struggling to use resources, than it is religious. How and what relationship does it have with Islam or Christianity? Prejudice.

Osinbajo said that, within last week or so, he woke up around 6:00am in the morning and saw a text message on his phone sent by a renowned Christian leader who said to him that one day he will account for allowing Muslims to dominate and take over the government of Nigeria. He said, he wondered what informed that sort of message while statistics show that there are two more Christians than Muslims in Buhari’s cabinet. He cited an example of a time when a Northern Senator visited President Buhari in his presence and complained bitterly on marginalization of his people. He however left with the embarrassing information that North West, his zone were leading in the number of heads of government parastatals with 47, followed by South West, South South, South East, North East and then North Central. Why didn’t this senator do his homework before complaining? Misinformation.

   

Some Igbo leaders had in the recent past complained to Osinbajo how there is no single person of their kinsmen among the service chiefs. He systematically told reminded them that there was a time not long ago, when Nigeria had two Igbo men among the service chiefs, with other zones not having any. Did they bother to ask why were they favoured at the expense of others or do you want justice only for yourself? Politics.

Osinbajo blamed the killing of some Biafran protesters on the dilapidated law and order structure of the Nigerian State which had degraded over time. For instance, from the killing of Chief Bola Ige in 2001, Harry Marshal in 2003 and so many high profile murders, how many culprits were brought to justice? Will those killers ever be uncovered? Extra-judicial killings by Nigerian security men and law enforcement agencies have never been bias, everyone, not only Igbos has been victims at different times and unless the system is adequately fixed, the problem is bound to continue. Do Nigerian security men kill base on tribe or do they just do that to the ordinary masses extra-judicially? Carelessness.

At the end, what the Acting President demanded from the media were simple; stop giving publicity to divisive people who are ignorant or are just mischievous. Secondly, the media must appear more informed than the ordinary citizens and must as a result help in tackling the misinformation about how things happen and why. He advised that, despite the universal convention of right to self-determination, but Nigeria is better off as one country. If Nigeria disintegrates into smaller countries that can be run over at will by powerful ones, he said, every region will be disadvantaged in different proportions. He therefore said our strengths lies in our diversities, number and size. He gave the example of Lagos State’s economy being six times bigger than that of Rwanda despite all the so-called giant strides recorded by Paul Kagame over the years. He emphasized that the country needs not disintegrate into smaller parts for people to have the opportunity of holding public office and if it is his face or that of President Buhari you dislike that you want secession, then know that, their days in office are numbered but Nigeria can live forever.

Now, tell me you are not impressed by Osinbajo’s words even though I only reproduced a brief summary? However, the question is, to what extent will the Acting President’s intellectual appeal solve the problem at hand? We understand that he had expressed his resolve in previous meetings to use the full force of the law if needs be. But I think what he should be thinking is what is the genesis of this problem despite been historical, escalating only when they came to office?

One of the major reasons I am writing this article is not only to share with fellow Nigerians what transpired in that meeting, but also to send back a message to the presidency which time and other obvious factors didn’t permit me to do so at the meeting. The message is that, no matter how it may try to absolve itself from blame, the Buhari-Osinbajo presidency must partly accept responsibility for the divisive situation we find ourselves today. The presidency was quite aware from the 2015 elections, of how divided Nigerians were socially, religiously, politically and regionally. What they should’ve done, was to make intensive and extensive deliberate and conspicuous moves in the first few days of their presidency to mend fences and unite the nation before governing it. Alas, they didn’t do that, at least not in an effective way, and by the time they wanted to govern, the Niger Delta Avengers had already plunged the nation into an avoidable recession.

It is commendable that the presidency later made efforts especially in the South-South and South-East to bring everyone to the table, but the truth is, they need to do better. It takes more than one or two meetings to achieve consensus and unity; these kinds of meetings must be continuous and must be extended to include people that are crucial to unity even if they are perceived to be enemies of government. There was a reason why Late ‘Yar’adua allowed militants into the Villa and treated them like Kings. Jonathan may have used money and patronage to buy peace, but APC must take lasting measures to solve these problems. They must also stop turning what looks like a blind eye to calls for restructuring the country.

At the end of the meeting, the Acting President took it upon himself to meet everyone on his seat, shook his hands and have a word or two with him. Such was his humility, simplicity and brand of politics. He is an intellectual leader per excellence. I strongly wanted Tinubu to become Vice President, but now I am satisfied of Osinbajo’s technical and political capabilities. If there was anything positive that religious sentiments like the Muslim-Muslim ticket brouhaha had produced, it is Osinbajo.

Usually, people in authority will give you their hands to shake, but Osinbajo is the type that will actually shake your hands. Osinbajo shook my hands firmly and when it occurred to him that I appeared star-struck, he while asking some questions, brought himself much closer to me to hear me better, make me feel comfortable or both; perhaps he had noticed I told myself, that I was obviously and by far, the youngest person in the meeting who might have undeservedly and accidentally became a participant.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez  

Why Jonathan Shouldn’t be Blamed

29^th April, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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espite his periodic and latest efforts, there are two things on which former President, Olusegun Obasanjo may never convince the majority of Nigerians from now to only God knows when. One is his claim that, he was actually ignorant of Late President Ummaru ‘Yaradua’s state of health before anointing him for the presidency in 2007. Two is that he never knew how unpresidential Jonathan was before making him the Vice president in 2007 and supporting him to re-emerge president in 2011. The best Chief Obasanjo could have done over these years was not denial, but rather focus on rationalizing why he imposed a sick man on the nation and paired him with an inexperienced one.

Listen to Obasanjo’s most recent comments on Jonathan as quoted from Olusegun Adeniyi’s new book on the 2015 Elections. “From his first days as President, he showed that he was too small for the office…….There were certain decisions taken by Jonathan early in his administration that pointed to the fact that the office was bigger than him.” The first question we must ask is that, when Obasanjo made Jonathan Vice President of an ailing President, which of the latter’s experience, expertise or track record did he relied upon to make him think he was fit for the office?

Obasanjo is trying very hard to absolve himself from blame of what Nigeria went through after his rule, the worst part of which is Jonathan’s time as President, which is one of Nigeria’s worst eras of mismanagement and incompetence in leadership. The truth however is, most if not all of the blame is on him as Nigeria wouldn’t have known anything close to a Jonathan-like Presidency without his help. The hypothesis of many Nigerians is that, the careful engineering of Jonathan’s emergence was a deliberate way to punish Nigerians for denying Obasanjo a third term in office; though he might not have intended the punishment to be this severe. Whether this and other related hypotheses are true is subject to another debate entirely.

Now, despite all these assumptions, we cannot blame all of the Jonathan disaster on Obasanjo. One, it may be possible that Obasanjo brought him with good intentions as he said himself “I saw the emergence of Jonathan as an opportunity to solve the problem of minority agitation. The three majority ethnic groups in Nigeria can always sort themselves out but not so for the minority………….So it was in the context of that, I had to plead with prominent people in the north to allow Jonathan run for a term.” Two, Obasanjo only facilitated the emergence of Jonathan, but he was not the one who ruled for him. Goodluck had the time and opportunity to learn enough on the job to avert the reign of impunity, mismanagement, incompetence and cluelessness that characterized his government. Why did he fail to do so?

The Peoples’ Democratic Party establishment saw in Jonathan a very good opportunity to feather their nest. While the PDP elites should have guided and helped Jonathan to success, they simply cashed on his inexperience, weakness and ambition to lead him and his government astray to their own benefit. While Obasanjo was uncontrollable by these PDP elites and the ‘Yaradua cabal were difficult to break; they penetrated Jonathan and made rubbish out of his presidency. The few one among them that actually foresaw the danger were relegated to the minority and were never carried along.

Did Jonathan’s cabinet worked to avert the disaster of his misrule? No! They aided and abetted it. If Jonathan’s cabinet had loved him the way he loved and protected them, perhaps the government would have performed better or its misdeeds be more reasonable to accommodate. Jonathan appeared to be generous to his cabinet members and gave them opportunity to perform but only a negligible number of them did averagely to above average. In fact, many of them are currently standing trials in different courts for high level corruption and every indictment of one of them is an indictment on the principal. It may be possible that the former president himself didn’t have the true picture of the level of corruption under him until after he left.

Jonathan’s kinsmen and supporters were virtually never after the success of his government. It is unfortunate that his people from the South South region who were opportune to be close to him only used him just like the PDP elites. The worst part of it is that, they couldn’t even make him to develop the Niger Delta and solve its problems. Rather, they kept projecting him as their ethnic hero, causing unnecessary trouble for him with other Nigerians and making him dangerously more and more ambitious, until he fell into a deep pit.

Where was the National Assembly, throughout Jonathan’s 5 year reign of misadventure? How much did the Senate and the House of Representatives do to checkmate his excesses? The mystery of how the ex-President effortlessly secured the tacit cooperation of the National Assembly to do what he did without much eyebrows raised is yet to be unravelled. The 7^th National Assembly can never absolve itself from the blame of allowing Jonathan run a government accused of squandering our commonwealth under the guise of security. 

Now, one thing we should ask is, what has Jonathan learnt from his defeat in 2015? Recent revelations point to the fact that he hasn’t learned much. Recent comments attributed to him have revealed how he keeps blaming everyone including INEC for betraying him. One thing he fails to understand is that, if the 2015 General Elections were actually free and fair as they should be, he would’ve lost with a much wider margin. How his agents nearly disrupted the election process when it appears he was losing cannot be forgotten easily.

Here is an excerpt from the Punch’s editorial written recently. “Former President Goodluck Jonathan, reflecting on his electoral defeat two years ago shunned deep introspection and remorse for his five-year reign of impunity. What comes out from him from excerpts of a new book is a potpourri of falsehoods, hypocrisy, lame excuses and blame for everyone but himself. But before Nigerians fall once more for his favourite tactic of playing the victim, they would do well to remember the devastating impact of his bad government.”

Depending on which yardstick to be used, Jonathan may well emerge as Nigeria’s worst leader ever particularly in handling security issues and matters of corruption. What baffles many is how he summons the courage to continue insulting Nigerians’ intelligence and sensibilities by out rightly denying many things that are pretty obvious and glaring for everybody to feel, see and even touch.

Should we blame Jonathan? No! Why? It is the system that gives him courage. The unwritten rule or convention in Nigeria is that past presidents are above the law irrespective of what they did in office. While former leaders that commit punishable offences are being tried and prosecuted all over the world, Nigeria is celebrating hers. This is what is giving past presidents the courage to insult the public.

What makes Jonathan even more courageous? His successor’s government is making some of the same political mistakes he made, particularly protecting close erring cabinet members who are doing more harm than good to the administration. Besides, many of the personalities that helped Jonathan did what he did have now been fully embraced by the new Ruling Party and transformed into saints. Furthermore, Buhari’s anti-corruption war is not diligently prosecuted with many corrupt people likely to walk free at the end of their trials. There are also genuine concerns of selectiveness in the fight which affects the credibility of the war itself.

The lacklustre attitude of many Nigerians towards corruption is a factor that is helping Jonathan. His army of supporters nationwide who continue to support him despite startling revelations of monumental corruption by his administration as well as the diversion of funds meant to fight a dreadful insurgency that have killed over 25,000 people, is a proof that Nigerians still hold corruption lightly. In other climes, Jonathan would have since become a political outcast whom everyone would not want to associate himself with. But, with the irrational ethno-religious and sectional divisions in Nigeria that always promote sentiment over reason; Jonathan is considered a political hero by the people who in one way or the other were also victims of his misrule.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez  

Will Our Politicians Ever Learn Some Lesson?

15^th January, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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y early 2019, many elements of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) may have reached the climax in reaping the dividends of the rotten political system they helped nurtured in the country between 1999 to 2015. When the PDP normalized and regularized impunity, weakened and destroyed opposition through deliberate efforts, politicised the nation’s judicial and security institutions, monetized and materialized our politics, made our civil service and government agencies partisan, rubbished our electoral umpires; little did they know that they will one day become opposition and by implication become the victims of all that they helped put in place.

Many politicians have between 2014 to 2016 jumped ship from the PDP to APC in an apparent attempt to eat their cake and still have it. Perhaps, they don’t want to become victims of the type of system they helped put in place while they were still in the PDP. However, a close look at unfolding political events suggests that the rewards of their actions will gradually follow them to wherever they go; that is, if it hasn’t started already.

Let us take an instance that happened in Kano-a state where the former and current governors are at loggerheads, last year as an example. An official of the state’s radio corporation was reported to have been suspended simply for mistakenly or may be deliberately playing a political song praising the former governor, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso. The camp of the former governor widely publicized and bitterly complained about the incident as injustice and witch hunt. Of course it is, but they have forgotten that, it was their hero who laid the foundation for the radio station to operate as a puppet. During his first term as governor, between 1999 to 2003, Kwankwaso turned the state radio station into his personal toy of transmitting sycophancy. That was how the station has been shaped over the last 16 years; their duty is to serve the interest of the governor first and then may be or may be not, the people second.

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The current governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike is complaining almost on daily basis on how operatives of the Nigerian Police, military and the DSS are ‘harassing’ him and his government. However, he has basically forgotten how between 2013 to 2015, he was reported to have actively participated or even masterminded the deployment of same operatives he is now complaining about in making the state virtually ungovernable for his predecessor. So far, he has not received arguably up to 10% of the treatment he and his paymasters allegedly meted against his immediate predecessor, but he has forgotten in a hurry how the unprofessionalism and partisanship of the Nigerian security operatives was taken to an unprecedented low in Rivers State during the time of the government he served.

Today, Rotimi Amaechi on the other hand is still licking his wounds over how the Rivers State 2015 gubernatorial elections were widely acclaimed to have been violently rigged and how his anointed and beloved candidate was brutally deprived of the chance to succeed him. Amaechi must still be having a tough time accommodating Wike as governor, but he has forgotten that Rivers is one of those states in Nigeria who are believed not to have had any meaningful free and fair election since after 1999. Most importantly, he has forgotten the central role he and his then PDP played in turning the state in particular and the south-south region in general into a notorious PDP rigging territory. Why will he and his candidates be immune to the system he helped built?

Some State Houses of Assemblies were easily used to impeach or threaten state governors especially between 2005 to 2014. However, what many people forgot is that it was those state governors who trained and forced the state legislators to be rubber-stamps, dependent, inefficient and corrupt. Governors removed the speakers of these assemblies at will. Little did they know that such assemblies that always do their bidding would one day be used by a superior authority against them, since they are trained not to be independent but to obey orders right from start? Many governors have complained of betrayal by their successors, but in essence, it is not their successors that are betraying them, it is the system that they bequeath to them that is haunting them. While out of office, many of them will criminalize in others what they themselves earlier legalized while in office.

The former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar have been muscled out of one presidential contest after another since 2007, many a time not because he wasn’t a good or even the best candidate, but because the bulldozing system he helped built between 1999-2007 have now outgrown him. Now that he wants to enjoy transparency and fairness in electoral contests, the former system which once made him an object of worship won’t allow it.

The Nigerian political terrain is replete with many similar examples. It is evident that those who were in the position of leadership across all political parties between 1999 to 2015 didn’t do justice to our political system. Many of them have become victims of the system, others will sooner or later be, but the question is that, are they learning any lesson at all?

Senator George Akume at one time was possibly the most powerful politician in Benue State. He governed the state under PDP for 8 years between 1999 to 2007, but by mid-2008 he has almost been relegated to the trenches in the power game primarily by the man he helped installed as successor in collaboration with other forces. The same Akume who was once as big if not bigger than the PDP itself was forced and humbled out of the party. He joined the defunct opposition ACN and by 2013, when the APC was formed, Akume was a force to reckon with again and among the most powerful opposition figures in the North Central zone. How did he use his new power? He reportedly used it to force a gubernatorial candidate on the APC in his state, a candidate who just joined the party from PDP, days or hours before the APC primaries. Senator Akume has forgotten what this type of action in 2007 caused him.

Weeks ago, the PDP caucus in the Senate staged a walkout, because the Senate President refused to declare the seat of their colleague from Ondo State who decamped to APC because of the on-going Makarfi-Sheriff debacle, vacant. They have forgotten that it was their party who protected all those who illegally decamped to their fold in the past.  Today it is the once might PDP leaders that are complaining about the Nigerian police oppressing them and subjecting them to humiliation asking them to seek for permission whenever they organize even the most minor of gatherings. Return them back to power tomorrow, they will not learn any lesson. Few years ago, it was the APC leaders (formerly in opposition) that were the victims of the police impunity and bias, two years into their tenure, they don’t deem it fit to address the issue.

We are no longer asking our politicians to fear God or to fear the hereafter, neither are we asking them to fear us the voters; we are asking them to fear the consequences of their actions. While we congratulate the PDP for reaping the fruits of the kind of political system they helped put in place, we caution the APC to remember posterity and reform the system now if not for the good of we the citizens but for the good of their own unknown and uncertain future.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

Who is Optimistic About 2019?

20^th November, 2016

By: Amir Abdulazeez

F

ew days before the U.S Presidential Elections, I became excessively addicted to many websites and social media platforms that provide regular updates regarding the activities of the candidates standing in the election and its likely outcome. There is this particular pro-Democrats page on Facebook whose updates two to three days before the election were largely and confidently about how Hillary Clinton is going to have a smooth ride over Donald Trump. Hours before the election, the tone of the updates from the page started showing some signs of nervousness and apparent decline in confidence. Immediately after it became clear that Donald Trump was unassailably going to win, the updates didn’t stop, rather, they quickly shifted towards rolling out plans and strategies on how to defeat the Republican in 2020.

The narrative above is to a large extent, a reflection of how thousands, if not millions of typical Nigerians are building up their minds towards 2019. While the pro-democrats are quick to start the plans of how to unseat the yet-to-assume-office President Trump without analysing the circumstances that made it possible for a person of Trump’s calibre to emerge president, some Nigerians are quick to go to the polls in 2019 to replace our current leaders without first finding solutions to the circumstances that makes it possible for the kind of inept leaders we have to emerge and keep emerging.

Ordinarily, we shouldn’t be talking of 2019 as we are only in 2016, but since talking about it appears to be what many Nigerians like, it isn’t completely out of place if we dedicate some paragraphs to it. However, we must accept the fact that by allowing 2019 to dominate our political discussions this early, we have subconsciously abandoned our duty of monitoring those currently calling the shots as well as the obligation of holding them accountable for as long as they remain in office. Meanwhile, how have we faired with the instruments our constitution gave us to checkmate our leaders without necessarily waiting for elections? For instance, how many legislators we accuse of wrongdoing have we recalled?

Just like 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015; 2019 is most likely not going to be much different in terms of the kind of leaders that will emerge. If we like, we may keep changing the individuals but as long as we don’t reform the system, the individuals will behave and remain the same. Now just think of this; has the attitude and conduct of an average Nigerian state governor in 1999 or 2003 been significantly different from that of 2011 or 2015? How about the national and state legislators, local government chairmen and councillors? This is not to say that there are no exceptions, but we can’t expect a negative system to produce positive results except in extremely rare cases.

While we look forward to 2019, we must remember that it is still largely the amount of money you have that mainly determines your success in primary elections; people win elections without any manifesto; party officials at virtually all levels are not elected but selected; godfathers are still the movers and shakers of politics; majority of Nigerians are still largely politically ignorant without any effective mechanism for voter education in place for the foreseeable future; election offenders and fraudsters are still not punished; local government elections are still a sham; there is no level playing ground for non-incumbents against incumbents; our courts are largely seen not to be doing justice to electoral disputes; our electoral laws are still at the mercy of senators who are more partisan than patriotic; a theoretically independent electoral commission and so many other unaddressed issues.   

The desperation through the employment of money, violence and fraud with which participants approached the recent gubernatorial elections in Kogi, Bayelsa and Edo states as well as the numerous re-run elections in many states across the country is an unfortunate eye-opener of what to expect in 2019 elections. Leaders who keep emerging through such a process will neither care to reform the process, nor will they feel seriously obligated to deliver on their responsibilities.

Despite all these, we must acknowledge the fact that our political system have recorded some progress especially between 2007 to 2015, but it is still largely not what it supposed to be for obvious reasons. The defeat of PDP for instance represents a massive triumph for democracy not because those who collectively replaced them were very much significantly better, but because it signifies the dismantling of a monstrous cabal that was hell-bent on holding Nigeria ransom for only-God-knows when. The current crisis and lack of cohesion in the APC is a big plus and blessing in disguise for ordinary Nigerians because it may mean that the party will find it difficult to have the strength and energy to develop into a PDP-like cabal. Already some cracks in the APC are appearing to be beyond redemption. While, we advocate for strong and durable political parties in Nigeria, we abhor a situation where they become too strong to be answerable to Nigerians.

Apart from the defeat of PDP, we must acknowledge as another blessing the fact that elections between 2011 to 2015 are largely freer and fairer than those between 2003 and 2007. While we are happy about this development, we must be wary of the level of its collective sustainability as well as the increasingly monetized and abused process that usually paves way to such General Elections. We must accept that an election, even if free, cannot be fair if it was preceded by a rigged process.

There is this talk that secret preparations have reached advanced stage towards coming up with a third alternative party to APC and PDP by early to mid-2017. It is rumoured that the new party will be driven by aggrieved bigwigs from PDP and APC. This is very laughable to say the least. So, Nigerians should wait for politically aggrieved politicians with myopic partisan interests to lead the way in 2019? Anyway, they can always count on the gullibility of Nigerians, which is so much that a mere change of alphabets in a political party can make them pardon individuals who were and still are the major architects of their predicaments.

Those eagerly waiting for 2019 to replace President Buhari as the ultimate solution to our current problems, have the right to do so, but must broadly understand that our problem is far beyond that. Personally, after 18 months at the helm, I may have given up on Buhari becoming Nigeria’s version of Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania or Kwame Nkurumah of Ghana who unlike Buhari were able to unite their countrymen, but I still back him do very well before the end of his tenure, especially if he makes the necessary adjustments which are not beyond his ability. While I pray and hope, he does well, I also wish he initiate bold reforms that will sanitize party democracy in Nigeria and to organize in 2019, a more credible election than the one that brought him to power; and he shouldn’t be a candidate in it. Not seeking re-election in 2019 will consolidate the good legacy we hope he will build by the end of his tenure and will help him to peacefully retire amidst old age.   

Observably, one problem we are dangerously facing is how many Nigerians have concentrated their attention on the President thereby neglecting other numerous national, state, local and even traditional stakeholders in the Nigerian project. One of the reasons we are experiencing the current problems was our excessive concentration on Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, thinking that replacing him is the only and ultimate solution. Yes, we replaced him which was fine, but we went ahead to vote for so many incompetent legislators and state governors, which we are paying the price today.

In view of all these, there is honestly no basis for optimism towards 2019 without first a thorough reform of our political system electorally, judicially, morally and socially. The system we have in place keeps producing leaders that are more interested in politics and wealth than they are in governance and legacy. Few weeks to 2017, we may appear to be late, but we can still do something.

Where do we start? I don’t know? But here is an idea; how about we quickly start thinking of a political party backed by ordinary Nigerians and not one populated by aggrieved PDP and APC politicians; one that nobody will need millions of naira before clinching any of its tickets?

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

When Change Begins with Nobody

20^th September, 2016

By: Amir Abdulazeez

T

here are so many things that signify a doomed society. One of such is when nobody wants to sacrifice and take responsibility of moving it forward. The history of the world is dotted with the stories of leaders and followers who made sacrifices to either pull their society out of backwardness or to move it further than it is on the prosperity ladder. That the Nigerian journey is still searching of how to progress and not actually progressing is most unfortunate as this means we are not even on the right road, not to talk of travelling it, no matter for how long.

The President Buhari administration’s launching of the ‘Change Begins with Me’ campaign was greeted with mixed reactions. While some agree even if theoretically that change begins with them, others feel that the change should begin with the president and his team. While this debate is needless to say the least, two things are clear; the new campaign is now over-politicized and already dead on arrival and we are once again on a habitual wild goose chase on how actually we should go about fixing Nigeria morally, socially, economically and politically.

First, one begins to wonder whether APC has any blueprint in the first place or it is now that it is coming up with one. During the campaigns, the party and its candidates strongly emphasized that it was the head that was wrong with the fish and once the head is not rotten, the body remains fresh. Some 16 months after clinching power, the party is now launching a campaign that suggests that it is the body of the fish and not the head that matters most. Granted that every society cannot move forward without its members actively playing a role, but APC should have properly coordinated this clearly and vigorously right during the campaigns or at least from the very beginning of its administration. That this is coming 16 months after been in power suggests that the party is embarking on a gradual and unfortunate journey to cluelessness on how to handle some critical issues.

It is evident that the APC did not utilize its early days in power when goodwill was more than abundant adequately. The apparent indecision of its government and its failure to hit the ground running in the guise of trading carefully and clearing of the PDP mess, are all coming back to haunt it. Many things that the ruling party ought to have initiated or executed during its first few weeks in power are now being introduced only recently. It took the presidency many months to appoint an INEC chairman for instance and well more than a year to appoint commissioners for the electoral body. Whether this also requires trading carefully and clearing some PDP mess is what many don’t understand. The commission is now dropping some hints of its potential inability to conduct a conclusive and credible 2019 elections.

The APC and the presidency have also failed largely to rise above the shackles of partisanship to run a truly unifying government. The way it is running its affairs largely reflects the results of the 2015 elections. The style and politics of the party is yet to be significantly different to that of the PDP. It gives the impressions of ‘everyone-is-a-wrongdoer-except-us’ and ‘we-came-to-rescue-Nigeria-alone’. The President appears to have critically left out important stakeholders from the onset of his government, the result of which we have seen clearly. The successes recorded by the APC government could be far more than this and some of the problems we are facing shouldn’t be as much especially the likes of the Niger Delta militancy.

Those who argue that change should begin from the president, his cabinet and the ruling party are only right if that doesn’t mean that they are pretending not to have any role to play in effecting that change themselves. Others that are arguing along the same line are doing it for political reasons, thanks to our culture of politicising almost everything. The word ‘Change’ consciously or subconsciously reinforcing the political dimension of the campaign itself is not helping matters. It would be better if the government can rebrand the campaign if possible to cleanse it of what largely looks like an APC affair.

It is true that the Presidency and the ruling party which also controls the National Assembly have not shown enough change yet. While the cost of governance is still seen as exorbitantly high, impunity in government dealings is still apparent. From so many alleged secret and unmerited recruitments in key government parastatals which used to be a regular practice of the past to the presidency allegedly turning a blind eye to allegations of corruption against some of its kitchen cabinet members, many citizens now feel change should begin from where these things are being done or perceived to be done.

Some Nigerians believe they have tolerated enough of the economic hardship currently in the land; they see themselves patient enough to have tolerated the chronic fuel scarcity at first and then price hike later. It is because the people were on the side of the government that the NLC strike against fuel price hike failed woefully. All these are in addition to the peoples’ perseverance and resilience in making sure that the APC government came to power. Because of these and many other obvious reasons, many citizens feels change or progress if we are to coin it apolitically, should not begin with them or at least, they shouldn’t be its focal point.

Those who argue that change should begin with citizens are only right if they are not doing such only for the purpose of partisanship and blindly defending the government or the party which they are sympathisers. One should genuinely believe progress begins with him for sacrificial and patriotic reasons. While some have patriotically accepted that they need to change their own attitude, if at all Nigeria stands any chance of progressing, others are only out to sycophantically defend every action of government. These kinds of people are everywhere and they have stubbornly refused to allow people who constructively criticize the government and genuinely want it to succeed to be listened to.

That the ordinary Nigerian has not done enough to move the nation forward is well documented. He sees the solutions to his country’s problems coming from all other quarters except himself and he always forget that alongside his other country men, he is the most critical stakeholder in nation-building. Many of the socio-political catastrophes inflicted on Nigeria by the PDP over the last 16 years were partly possible due to the fact that we lack active citizenship. Our ‘I-don’t-care’ attitude is legendary; beside our ethnic and religious problems, our greed, selfishness and carelessness have refused to allow us do simple things that would collectively place Nigeria on the prosperity map. We always think that other countries developed exclusively because of good leadership, we don’t seem to care to find out what roles citizens played in ensuring that such leadership existed and succeeded.

Since the debate is not about whether change or progress should begin or not, the debate is rather on where it should begin from, can we simply recommend that it should begin from everybody? No need for anyone to wait for the other; it should begin in earnest from both leaders and followers. It should begin from Buhari, Jonathan, APGA, APC, PDP, Modu Sheriff, Makarfi, Oyegun, Tinubu, Lai Mohammed, Femi Adesina, akara seller, university lecturer, student, shoe shiner and from everyone else.

Personally, I may have my reservations on APC and President Buhari, but my being Nigerian or wanting her to progress didn’t started with Buhari and APC and it is not going to end with them. My hope and efforts of being a good person and Nigerian will solidly remain irrespective of whether APC does its job or not. While I may pressurise President Buhari and his team as well as every other Nigerian to do the needful in their respective capacities, I would accept that #ProgressBeginsWithMe as an individual and I won’t compromise that.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez