14082018 - Saraki: Showdown on hold as NASS fails to reconvene

Vanguard, TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 2018 -- 31
Turkish De-Light
IHAVE been to Turkey several
times. Istanbul is a city that
continues to fascinate me, with its
colours, history and its unusual
blend of Asia and Old Europe
melded together in a unique
cosmopolitan harmony. I love
Ankara and Izmir. I cherish the
distant memories of
Constantinople and the ruins of
Byzantium. I am speechless each
time I behold the glories of Hagia
Sophia in Istanbul.
I have several emotional
connections with Turkey. I have
had close ties with one of the top
business families in that country,
namely, the Carmikli family who
own the Nurol Group of
Companies, a multibillion dollar
industrial conglomerate in Turkey.
One of the great British historians
during my student years was
Norman Stone, who later moved
to Turkey and has remained
Professor of International
Relations at Bilkent University. I
certainly did not like his
conservative politics, being a close
adviser and speechwriter to Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher. But
then Stone was one of the most
prescient historians of our epoch,
having predicted the collapse of
the old Soviet Empire and the
demise of communism as a global
ideological rival to Western liberal
democracy at a time nobody
expected it.
By Charles Onunaiju
HAVING been elected in defiance to
and against the will of the Nigeria’s
traditional political establishment,
President Muhammadu Buhari was not
meant to have a smooth sail in governance.
Despite the comfortable majority of the
ruling party in the two chambers of the
parliament, such key institution as the
legislature, which would have ordinarily
functioned to compliment the executive arm,
also formed by ruling party to drive
governance, was from the beginning arrayed
against it. The traditional political
establishment, overwhelmed by the popular
rage that swept the formerly “unelectable”
General Buhari to power, quickly recovered
from the shock of the “Febuhari” electoral
audacity of ordinary Nigerians and
regrouped to erect governance hurdles.
Messers Bukola <strong>Saraki</strong> and Ike
Ekweremadu, Senate President and deputy
president respectively were the desperate
political revenge to the electoral effrontery
of the popular masses to defy the will of the
deeply entrenched political establishment.
The best and easiest way President Buhariled
federal government to play into the hand
of his angry and desperate political
detractors is to go into the hot chase of
Messers <strong>Saraki</strong> and Ekweremadu, in any
bid to remove them from the leadership of
the Senate through constitutional process
of impeachment or any other means.
Chairman of the ruling APC, Mr. Adams
Oshiomole's indignation at the prospects of
the members of a minority party
appropriating the leadership in the senate,
where his party has majority whether slim
or large is understandable, but he must
appreciate that whatever the gains of an APC
leadership of the senate, snatched from the
As it happens, I am also a lover
of Turkish literature, in particular,
the poetry of the medieval mystic
and philosopher Mawlana
Jalaladdin Muhammad Rumi and
the contemporary novelist and
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. The
Turkish people are friendly, warm
and welcoming. Their kind of
Islam is cosmopolitan and
tolerant. The Turks are a highly
civilised and proud people.
Turkey is a country with a rich
and extraordinary history. Before
the Islamic conquest of 1453, the
country was known as Byzantium,
which belonged to the eastern
flank of Christendom, with its
capital as Constantinople and
influence extending as far as
Russia, Ukraine, Greece and the
Holy Mountain of Athos.
Byzantium was a glorious
Christian kingdom which was
defeated and taken over by the
marauding Ottomans who
descended from the wild steppes
of Eurasia. The Ottomans became
the terror of Europe, having
conquered much of the Balkans;
they were stopped only at the gates
of Vienna in Vienna and Nantes in
France. Until their defeat in World
War 1, the Ottomans were a world
imperial power that had ruled
much of Europe, Eurasia and
extending as far as Egypt,
Palestine, Arabia and North Africa
and Tripolitania. The emergence
of Kemal Ataturk as leader of the
Turkish Republic set the country on
the path of modernisation,
secularisation and westernisation.
Modern Turkey has a population
of 80 million, with a GDP of almost
US$1 trillion and a per capita
income of US$11,000. Economic
reforms and sound public
management have led to a stable
currency, growing external
reserves and a push towards high
exports drive and an increasingly
prominent role in international
economic relations. Turkey has
been a strong member of NATO
and the Western alliance.
Unfortunately, her application to
join the EU has always met a dead
end, largely due to human rights
issues and the dominant role of the
army in governance and the highhanded
treatment of dissidents and
Kurdish nationalists associated
with the PKK.
The current leader of Turkey,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has
overseen a remarkable period of
accelerated growth. He is no doubt
a strong leader who has reshaped
the constitution to give him a
stronger role as leader of the
country. His economic success has,
unfortunately, been accompanied
by a greater leaning towards
authoritarianism as well as
erosion of Turkey’s secular status
and its identity as a centrist and
moderate European country.
Turkey has been very hot in the
news these days – for altogether
negative reasons. It all began with
a dispute over an obscure
American missionary pastor by the
name of Andrew Brunson who
headed the Izmir Church of
Resurrection in Izmir. Following
the 2016 coup attempt that led to
the loss of over 250 lives, the
Erdogan government accused the
American of supporting the exiled
Islamist leader Fethullah Gulen as
well as showing sympathy and
aiding the Kurdish PKK terrorists.
He was sentenced to 23 years in
jail.
President Donald Trump took the
decision to freeze the assets of
some Turkish officials connected
with the decision to jail the
American pastor. The Turkish
government retaliated in like
manner against some American
officials.
Compounding this diplomatic
stand-off has been the recent
decision by the Trump
administration to launch a trade
war against some of its major
trading partners. In August 10,
Washington slammed higher tariff
duties on Turkish exports of steel
and aluminium. President Donald
Trump tweeted as follows: “I have
just authorised a doubling of Tariffs
on Steel and aluminium with
respect to Turkey as their currency,
the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly
downward against our very strong
Dollar! Aluminium will now be
20% and Steel 50%. Our relations
with Turkey are not good at this
time!”
The decision has plunged the
Turkish economy into turmoil. The
lira slumped to a low of 7.19 to the
dollar, from 6.4 during the
previous week. From the
beginning of this year, the Turkish
lira has experienced a 45 percent
fall against the dollar. Financial
markets around the world have felt
the ripples. The Hang Seng Index
in Hong Kong lost 1.5 percent of
its market capitalisation. The
Leave <strong>Saraki</strong> and Ekweremadu alone
incumbent holders will not be worth the
fight, even as the 8th senate is in its twilight.
Senate president <strong>Saraki</strong> and his handlers
should be left to bask in the moonshine of
their political maneuvers and the political
limelight it has so far showered on them.
There will be no better way to further the
cause of Senator <strong>Saraki</strong> and his princpals
than to make him look like a victim of a
high-handed and desperate political witchhunt.
Senate presidency, for the ruling APC
There will be no better way
to further the cause of
Senator <strong>Saraki</strong> and his
princpals than to make him
look like a victim of a highhanded
and desperate
political witch-hunt
in the remaining few months of the life of
the 8th senate, would not confer any
meaningful political advantage or help the
electoral fortune of the ruling party. It would
rather, give the ruling party, an important
electoral mileage, if Messers <strong>Saraki</strong> and
Ekweremadu led leadership in the senate is
publicly perceived to be using their vintage
positions to obstruct governance, a role they
would most likely relish to play. Instead of
pushing to canonise them as democratic
icons, tormented by a ruling party and a
harsh government it produced, Messers
<strong>Saraki</strong> and his senate leadership should be
encouraged to ride roughshod on all known
parliamentary conduct and practices to
demonstrate the staying power of his
In the building of the
New Nigeria of our
dreams, we would
want to build solid
win-win relations
with Turkey and other
emerging economies.
But we should make
sure we protect our
national system from
mindless adventurers
political maneuvers and lead him down to
political irrelevance, the well known
political cost for arrogance of power.
The top priority concerns of President
Buhari’s administration – securing, the
country by defeating terrorism or
substantially degrading it, battling down
corruption to the point of considerably defanging
it from been a serious threat to the
country’s survival and recovering the
economy and setting it on the path of
sustainable and inclusive growth; can
certainly go far with complimentary
legislative collaboration but cannot be
stopped, let alone reversed by hostile
legislative behaviour. While the
administration should remain focused on
these core agenda and assiduously cultivate
legislative inputs to advance them, it should
nonetheless be dutiful in engaging
legislative collaborations but never to be
seen, to indulge in any compromises to the
core three-fold agenda, on which it won the
electoral approval of the majority of
Nigerians.
Chasing after Messers <strong>Saraki</strong> and
Ekweremadu in a senate leadership tussle
as the chairman of the ruling APC, Mr.
Adams Oshiomole has threatened, would be
a wasteful distraction from the important
issues of governance, for the which the
government has committed itself.
The economy is at a very low ebb, and
most of the rescue measures which
government has put in place are significantly
correct therapies but their full effects on
recovering and growing the economy is in
the future, and except Nigerians understand
these measures and buy into it, they would
be largely vulnerable to the narratives of
Nikkei in Tokyo nosedived by 2
percent while the FTSE Index in
London saw some 0.5 percent
wiped off its balances. The South
African rand lost 7 percent of its
while the Indian rupee went down
to 69.8 percent against the dollar.
By contrast, safe haven currencies
such as the U.S. dollar, the Swiss
franc and the Euro made some
gains.
Meanwhile, finance minister
Berat Albayrak is set to roll out a
reform package to salvage the
economy and restore confidence.
Last week, the reserve bank of
Turkey made some interventions to
shore up the lira, but it had little
effect, largely because markets no
longer believe that the central
bank is an independent and
credible institution.
Turkey’s future as a member of
the Western alliance and as a
prospective candidate for
membership of the European
family of nations has become more
uncertain than ever before.
President Erdogan suffers from the
hubris of indispensability. His drift
towards the Arab world will render
it a more difficult partner for the
West. Over the past few years,
Turkey has become an important
trading partner for Nigeria and
other African countries. During the
2016 coup attempt, President
Erdogan accused Nigeria of
harbouring some of his bitterest
opponents by allowing them to set
up schools, universities, hospitals
and other businesses. A Turkish
businessman was allegedly
apprehended not too longer ago
for bringing in a shipment of arms
into our country. Nigeria has
become a free playing-field for all
sorts of arms dealers and terrorist
adventurers. In the building of the
New Nigeria of our dreams, we
would want to build solid win-win
relations with Turkey and other
emerging economies. But we
should make sure we protect our
national system from mindless
adventurers.
quick fix that has no prospect for long term
and enduring solutions. Instead, of the
ruling party to chase after <strong>Saraki</strong> for the
take-over of the senate “palace” and its
“crown,” it should focus on helping its
government to win over the patience and
understanding of Nigerians on the bright
and future prospects of the government’s
current policy to usher in, a Nigeria of
sustainable economic growth, inclusive
social and political order, with equal
opportunities and profound sense of national
identity.
The lure of political office-holding is the
greatest undoing of the Nigeria political
elite and therefore animates, their passions
for public life, making politics to fall victim
of an ignoble unpopular definition as the
game of numbers. Politics is patently the
struggle for values and to remain in public
life without even an office but steadfast in
upholding the cherished values is the
greatest reward of a meaningful political
life. A value in politics is the belief in a
certain way or method by which the greatest
interests of the majority of the people can be
better served and fulfilled.
The political affront of the Senate
President, Bukola <strong>Saraki</strong> is tempting enough
to lure the ruling party and even the
government into a hot chase, but they will
be doing that, at the detriment of President
Buhari’s bankable political goodwill and
electoral fortune, which he needed to secure
firmly; for the next phase of consolidating
his vision and policy.
It is much better to leave Messers <strong>Saraki</strong>
and Ekweremadu alone and allow them to
burn out the glow of their Pyrrhic victory in
capturing the senate.
*Mr. Onunaiju, a journalist, wrote from
Abuja.
C
M
Y
K