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The wahala that will kill Tinubu’s door
Thirty years ago, Nigeria was in severe crisis. In the wake of the previous year’s elections that was annulled and the attendant protests, 1994 was an unpleasant time. General Sani Abacha had rigged his way into power through a coup and was setting the country on edge. Media houses had been shut, and journalists serially harassed and detained. Acclaimed winner of the 1993 presidential election, Moshood Abiola, was in prison along with scores of activists who had protested either the fuel prices inflation or the election annulment. Ken Saro-Wiwa too was in prison. The Niger-Delta region was restless due to the state-induced violence racking the region.
NADECO members were arrested and charged with treason for their audacity to challenge Abacha. Government critics had their homes raided, and some were attacked. That was the year Prof. Wole Soyinka went into exile. Decree after decree expanded the government’s power to punish. They could detain—without charge or trial—anyone suspected of subversive activities. The Senate that had been inaugurated the previous year was disbanded. Six of the lawmakers who had taken a stand against the government were arrested and charged with “treasonable felony and conspiracy.” They were initially granted bail, and five of them re-arrested months later. The sixth person? That was Bola Tinubu.
By now, I am sure you already see where I am going. As you would have read, this week the police arrested and charged 10 people who allegedly participated in the #EndBadGovernance protests last month for the same crime Abacha’s government had once arrested Tinubu: treason. Those 10 people, along with another 700 police said they also arrested, were some of the thousands who responded to the strangulating economic and political conditions the same way Tinubu and his fellow travellers did in 1994.
Tinubu is either forgetful of history or, since he once confessed that he took a major economic policy while under the influence of a “spirit,” has been fully possessed by Abacha’s ghost. It does not matter which is true; the shame is that a severe charge like treason is being trivialised by a government that cannot brook citizens towing the same path that brought him into power. I want to believe that Tinubu’s fellow pro-democracy activists, some of whom were imprisoned on frivolous charges during the dark days of Abacha’s rule, are looking at the unfolding chain of events and terrified at the uncanny repetition of history.
Wherever he is now, Abacha must be exultant. He should rejoice; he is not the only tyrant whose ignominious history would be tossed into the sewers of our national history. By the time their time passes, Tinubu and company would have personified the Orwellian pigs who became indistinguishable from the “man” they kicked out of the animal farm. When we find the mouth with which to tell the story, we will understand how we sought statesmen but were rewarded with executioners.
After reading the police’s press release issued by a fellow called Olumuyiwa Adejobi, I still fail to see how the protests are treasonable. Which “foreign sources” gave “substantial backing” to the #EndBadGovernance protesters? Or was it just that one Briton, Andrew Wynne, who constituted the so-called “foreign sources”? Given that last month, the Department of State Services also arrested about eight Polish nationals who were on an education tour in Kano State while the protests were ongoing, this might just be a case of using white Europeans to create a sensation. DSS spokesperson Peter Afunanya said those Polish nationals were arrested “because of where they were found during the protests and for displaying foreign flags.” I am yet to understand the method to the madness of this “foreign-phobia” among our security agencies.
There are several wild accusations in Adejobi’s document that need substantiating. I am not saying Adejobi plagiarised Abacha’s playbook, but the allegations are a frightful recrudescence of the military era. He says, “preliminary findings suggest they orchestrated and funded violent protests…to create anarchy and justify their illegal plot to overthrow…government.” But what is the pedigree of these individuals that they could organise what is tantamount to a coup? How would their supposed plan to overthrow the government through protests have led them to Aso Rock? Did they have an armoury, or the weapons of their supposed warfare were just placards? What were their plans to take over the National Assembly, for instance?
Adejobi also says they are investigating how these people planned to “orchestrate violence across the country”? I am genuinely curious how this bunch of individuals (including a shop attendant) can have the means to organise the violence that will disrupt the entirety of a complex country like Nigeria. Meanwhile, hear Adejobi on how they established Wynne’s guilt: We went to invade (Wynne’s) bookshop. As we asked questions, he came out. If you have a genuine business, are you not going to ask the police what we went to do in his shop or his office? You read that and you wonder at the quality of investigation that sort of rudimentary extrapolation of evidence can possibly produce. Meanwhile, let us not forget that the “comprehensive investigation” on which they planked their whole case took place in less than a month. If they are that efficient, how come they find it hard to solve kidnapping problems?
Whether they like it or not, protests are a democratic right. You can charge people who committed crimes of looting or violence during protests, but you cannot stifle the right to protest. I never thought the day would come that I would look back and compare Muhammadu Buhari’s government favourably with anyone, but looking wistfully from inside the fire of Tinubu’s government, I am beginning to think we were better off inside Buhari’s frying pan. Even in all his pathological madness, Buhari did not go to the extent of charging the #EndSARS protesters for treason. He did accuse them of trying to topple him, but the ghost of Abacha that had been haunting Aso Rock did not possess him fully. The ghost waited until the perfect person usurped his path into power before completing Abacha’s historic mission of perpetuating himself in power using democratic means.
You listen to the families of those arrested and you realise these people have no new game; they are stuck in historical time. Unfortunately, we are trapped along with them. The Nigeria of 2024 is not that different from that of 1994. There is hardship in the land. Prices of goods and services are skyrocketing; purchasing power is dwindling, and it is getting harder and harder to get by. The marriage of Asiwaju and Shettima of last year has become Àşetì 2023. Nobody’s hope has been renewed, and people are more combustible than the fuel they are expending hours on their lives on extended queues just to purchase. The days ahead are likely to be filled with protests, and the government is preemptively charging protestors with arrests to intimidate.
Meanwhile, this same government faces a million other challenges. There is economic insecurity, a serious threat to the lives and livelihood of Nigerians. Shouts of “ebi ń pa wá” have replaced the “on your mandate we shall stand” anthem in many mouths; hunger is resetting the political loyalties of those whose heads were climbed into power but have now been forgotten. The government appears confused by the complexity of the situation; they have undone several economic knots, and they know not how to re-tie them. Then there is the issue of kidnapping that has become a national epidemic and revealed the police as impotent. Let us not even talk about banditry, plus the one million problems of poor infrastructure that bedevil the country.
Rather than the Tinubu administration concentrating on what it can solve, it compounds its own problems by investing administrative time and energy hounding people for treason. Like the Yoruba door that eventually gets unhinged when endlessly swung back and forth, the Tinubu regime too has found the wàhálà that will wear it down. I almost feel sorry for them.
Culled from The PUNCH
If 21 governors including Ifeanyi Okowa, running mate to Atiku Abubakar in the 2023 presidential election could lose their states in the presidential election and a “special magic” had to be performed to save Kashim Shettima, the Vice President from embarrassment of losing his home Borno State, nobody should lose sleep even if the entire governor of the 36 states empty into the same party.
This was the response of Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) to the mass defection of political office holders including state governors into the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), in support of the re-election of President Bola Tinubu.
A guest of The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on ARISE NEWS television network, the former SGF, said nobody should lose sleep over the development as electoral victory resided with the people and not the governors or any other political figure, as they were incapable of influencing anything.
The former SGF said the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, is a committed and active member of the group championing the coalition campaign to wrest power from President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2027.
Lawal, also took a swipe at governors and political leaders from the North West, who recently endorsed Tinubu, saying their was no basis for doing so since their zone has remained the most ravaged by activities of criminals in the mode of terrorists and bandits, adding all they did was to lie and deceive the people.
His words: Most of the politicians that are defecting to APC are probably driven by the desire to safeguard their stomachs and to safeguard their luxurious lifestyles that they had acquired while in government, using the people’s money. To them, it’s okay. They can go that way because that’s what they chose to do.
“As for defections, I saw a study last week that showed that 21 governors could not deliver their states to their preferred candidates, which means that the governors have little influence on the voter at the polling unit. Yes, within the party platforms, they have their influences. They can rig the party primaries. A Senator for example who is out of favour with his governor is endangered in that sense because the governor might not give him his return ticket. He could just order everybody not to vote for him.
“But no governor can influence the voter. Take for example, Delta State. The Vice-Presidential candidate for PDP was the serving governor on seat. But he could not deliver. Peter Obi beat them flat. In those days, they will say he lost deposit. In Borno State, it is well-known that the Vice President could not deliver Borno State to the APC until they did magic on the result so that he’s not embarrassed.
“But he knows, the voters know that he was disgraced woefully. So, defection is nothing. It is just the character of the person. Somebody without character will easily abandon you when his interest is threatened rather than when the interest of the masses are threatened.
“So, that is my position, we’re not bothered about defections. It will continue to happen. In 2027, we’ll go to the polls and we’ll see the result. People from the North West shamelessly gathered themselves, drank tea and coffee and said they endorse Bola Tinubu. To do what? “There’s no place in the North West that is safe. The poverty level in the North West is so huge and so terrible, much more than anywhere else. If their so-called leaders choose that it is the path they want, then, good luck. But everybody knows that they’re just liars. They’re deceiving themselves and they’re deceiving their own people.
“If somebody from the Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi, Kaduna, says he’s endorsing Tinubu because his security policies are working, he’s a shameless liar. Whatever induced them to say that is between them and their God and their conscience. But Nigerians know that it is not so. Insecurity has now grown; in places it was not before, it has expanded. They have not done anything.
“This government should better not talk about insecurity. When talking about it, about the economy, it is exactly the same thing. The poverty has multiplied exponentially. Even those who were doing well feel now threatened because there’s no economy, it has collapsed, completely collapsed.
“We are just surviving by the grace of God on a hand to mouth basis, everybody. So what economy? They are putting money that doesn’t arrive in Nigeria before it is spent, even when it arrives in Nigeria, they spend it on intangible things that we cannot show, that are not visible, you know.
“Economy is not for this government, it is not their intention, their attention is to run down this country. That is their intention. But now, it appeared that he just deceived us in those days all along, and now he has gotten the power and is in the mood to ruin the economy, to ruin the security of the country.”
The former APC chieftain, also spoke about the coalition of political leaders in Nigeria to end the tenure of Tinubu, in which he acknowledged being deeply involved say the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had no place in it, having been infested with an “incurable virus.”
His words: “In all the meetings I’ve attended so far, nobody has ever bothered about adopting the PDP as the platform. We all agree that PDP has an incurable virus. No anti-biotics can cure what is ailing the PDP and we don’t want to go into a house that we cannot modify that is not willing to change.”
A truck heading to Ibadan, the Oyo State capital from Lagos, on Wednesday morning, reportedly lost control as a result of brake failure and rammed into the Isheri market at OPIC junction, along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
Channels Television reports that the incident led to the death of one person identified as a tea seller, while an unconfirmed number of people also sustained injuries from the impact, quoting an witnesses who was at the scene of the accident.
The source, a commercial motorcycle operator, was quoted as saying: “I’m the security man of this place. Every morning, I sit with my people before they open for the day because I work at night. I had just called the tea seller to give me tea, and I had only tasted it once when I heard loud noises.
“I stood up, and the truck pushed me and I fell. It’s God that saved me that I fell to the right side, assuming I followed the other side I would have died. The man who gives me tea is the one who died.
“While I was at OPIC bus stop roundabout, a container coming from Lagos reached OPIC bus stop. When he was coming, there was no traffic on the express, he didn’t have brakes when he tried to enter the estate, he then crashed into the market and killed a person,” the motorcyclist said.
The report, also said that emergency responders and local authorities have arrived at the scene and the truck driver has been arrested and held in the custody of the Isheri Tactical Unit as investigations commence.
“The army does not have the necessary equipment on ground to fight the insurgency. Right now, the insurgents are using drones to fight soldiers on the ground,” was the stark reality Babagana Zulum, Governor of Borno State, painted on Wednesday, to explain the current onslaught in his state, which has remained the hotbed of decades-old terrorism ravaging the North East.
Against the backdrop of the resurgence of activities of terrorist groups, particularly Boko Haram, which has been killing residents since 2009, Zulum, a guest of News Central television network, on Wednesday, said terrorists were now deploying sophisticated technology in their operations.
Bemoaning a situation in which the bureaucratic bottlenecks attached to the procurement of military equipment, had remained a major challenged, the governor insisted that the situation must be remedied urging President Bola Tinubu to listen to the army on what it required to end insurgency in the north of the country.
He added: “We must prioritise security. National and subnational governments must pool resources together to procure equipment. A few days ago, I visited the Chief of Army Staff. He said he is looking for about 32 drones and he would end the insurgency.
“My plea is that let us deal with this matter decisively. The President of Nigeria should listen to those that can distinguish between the right and wrong. Those that can tell him the right thing and not sycophants.
“He needs to understand what is happening on the ground. A few days ago, I said there is an insurgency in Borno state. I commended the federal government for doing very well and that we should come together to resolve the issues. Some people said there is no insecurity in Borno state. We should not politicise insecurity.”
Regarding the debate on state police, Zulum, who seemed not to be in support of the idea as the immediate panacea, maintained that the existing security apparatus should be strengthened rather than create a new policing system.
Tinubu is gone – Babachir *Shettima, Okowa, 20 govs lost their states in 2023
TRAGEDY! Ibadan-bound truck, loses control, rams into market in Lagos
BREAKING: Army lacks modern equipment to face terrorists – Zulum
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