23032019 - Osun Gov Poll: Court nullifies APC’s victory

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34—SATURDAY Vanguard, MARCH 23, 2019 A very gruesome murder caught my attention recently. One agbaya (a good for nothing person) butchered his 99-year-old aunt. According to the report, the nephew is a gambler. He had “permed” some numbers and was sure of winning a betting game, but his dream did not come true. Mind you, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, played the same game, so his probability of winning was about 0.0000001! Yet, he blamed the aunt for bewitching him and making it impossible for him to win! He also accused the aunt of being responsible for his impoverished life. He not only killed, but beheaded the old woman. Sad as the tale is, it is commonplace in Africa. Underachieving children hold their aged parents responsible for their lack of success. In some situations, they kill their parents. Nephews and nieces blame their uncles and aunts for their lack of breakthrough in life. If these aunts and uncles do not have their own children, they are in big trouble. They get bullied or/and killed like the case above. Old age has become a huge burden. Ironically, nobody wants to die young, we all want to die at a ripe old age. Some people, in fact, want to inherit the earth. So, we are all potential “suspects” in future unless our children, nephews and nieces become “successful.” Nature has not helped matters. As many people age, they wrinkle, shrink and begin to grow “ugly.” All of a sudden the dashing young man or ravishing beauty of yesterday becomes a bag of bones and cuts the image of that old, wicked witch or wizard in those horror movies. But it is a phase in life. I am troubled by a few misconceptions and I want to share them with these people who see elderly parents, uncles, aunts and other relatives as witches and wizards that hinder their progress. Let us start with the life of our subject matter above. He wants to be rich by gambling. Go through the list of rich people globally and how they made their money. I am yet, to Burden of old age;agony of ignorance see anyone whose source of wealth is gambling. People do not gamble their way to stupendous wealth and remain wealthy. Most wealthy people became rich through systems and processes that create, sustain and protect their wealth. Google lottery winners, who went home with millions of dollars; most of them have blown their entire winnings. Only a very negligible number are still around and doing well. Betting is not a career or source of livelihood. So why blame anybody for your financial predicament when you are not engaged in any meaningful economic activity? I know quite a handful of people who blame older relatives for all their predicaments in life and I am going to categorise them presently. Some of them are like the servant in the Bible who dug his talent in the ground. They do not do anything; they do not know they can do anything. All they do is the blame game; lamentation is their hobby. There is another set. They are engaged in economic activities, but they will not commit to it properly. Some are not reliable and have lost many clients in the process. I know a tailor, a genius for that matter, who can disappear with your dress for six months. If the dress is meant for an occasion, what happens? I know another genius, the best electrical person that has worked for me, but he is irredeemably fraudulent. I could not just put up with him and we had to part ways. The last time I saw him, he was not looking good. In spite of the prodigious talents, he cannot retain clients. How can a business survive without retaining clients? Tomorrow, he will blame some old people in the village for his financial misfortune. And yet there is another group; they are immensely People who are so fixated on witches and wizards, do not make progress in life talented and good at their jobs, but price themselves miserably cheap. I used to know this mechanic; he was very good. He could spend a whole day fixing a car. When he is done, you ask him,”how much is your bill?””Oga, give anything when you get.” Then if you insisted that he named his price, he would call one ridiculous amount for a whole day’s work! At a point, we thought he was making money from the spare parts he sourced. Even when we bought the parts or when no parts were replaced, he still charged ridiculously low. So how does he meet up with his financial obligations? In no time, such a person will feel that he is hard working, but does not see the fruits of his labour. Witches and wizards must be after him! Finally, we have those who are very good at what they do, charge premium for their services or products, but do not seem to know where all the money goes. When I was young, I knew somebody who made about N1,000 monthly. Mind you, a brand new Mercedes Benz 200 was N13,000 then, so you do the arithmetic. He was always broke before the middle of the month. It was a mystery and he decided to consult a native doctor. Trust native doctors, he told him that before his N1,000 salary is handed over to him in an envelope at the end of every month, diabolical family members would have opened the envelope and spent the money! Looking back now, the man had two problems: he did not know how to say no to friends and family members who asked for assistance. Secondly, he loved life and lived it to the full. He was an unrestrained unrestrained and nobody can build a fortune with unbridled spending. Now the conclusion of the matter; most of the people I know, who blame parents, aunts and uncles for their lack of progress in life, are Christians. They serve an allpowerful and all-knowing God, who is above all principalities and powers. Yet witches and wizards are holding them down? Something is wrong somewhere. Witches and wizards might be there, but look within yourself; there lies the solution to your problems: take a second look at your means for earning a living (that is, if you have one), how you manage your resources and your relationship with your God. One more thing, people who are so fixated on witches and wizards, do not make progress in life. They either live in a permanent state of anxiety or look for excuses instead of facing life’s challenges squarely. Cling to your God and face life squarely. C M Y K 2023 and our grammar-blowing politicians In the days when the leg endary Lamidi Adedibu reigned over Oyo state with his Amala politics, his cunning as well as the culinary skills of those in his massive kitchen were the main sources of his political power. His reach- which stretched as far as Abuja and even beyond the shores of Nigeria- was reinforced not by his ability to speak grammar but his genius at networking and bringing people together. It is fabled that one of the candidates for the governorship in his home Oyo state whom the kingpin favoured had been mocked by political opponents and their sympathisers for the latter’s poor grasp of the English language. The poor fellow had approached Adedibu for inspiration, and the story goes that the kingpin had in comforting him, brought out two currency notes from his pocket in full view of other visitors. Charging the candidate to ignore (his) detractors, he held up the 1000 and 200 naira notes and asked the latter to name the notes, which he duly did. “How then can they say you do not understand English?” he was said to have asked rhetorically. Another insider gist was of the so called Oracle of Molete promising the now embattled Rasheed Ladoja the governorship of Oyo state in 2003 with the conveyed intention of unseating the incumbent, Lam Adesina, who incidentally also had strong ties to the old man. On a visit to the Molete compound of Adedibu where legend has it that at least a hundred people were fed daily in the precursor to ‘stomach infrastructure’, Ladoja had seen his arch rival Lam Adesina in a strategic position in the Molete complex, devouring a bowl of hot amala and gbegiri for which the venue was famous and appearing totally relaxed and at home. In protest, Ladoja was said to have drawn the attention of Adedibu to the scene while registering his displeasure. In the conversation that ensued, the former governor was said to have asked in the native Ibadan dialect: “You said I would be governor; is that not Adesina eating amala in your compound?” Adedibu was said to have replied him in the words now written on marble:” Lam is eating amala and that is all he will eat. You will be the one to ‘eat’ the governorship”- playing on the word “eat”, which connotes a dual meaning of both mastication and ascendancy. Things turned out exactly as the godfather had predicted. A fortnight or so before the 2019 presidential polls, female presidential candidate Oby Ezekwesili shocked her followers when she dropped her candidature of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria to do what some pundits had predicted she was planning to do all along. The pundits laugh last, freely casting aspersions on her integrity and claiming she led them astray. The truth is, this is what politicians do everywhere in the world and the problem with our crop of new age presidential candidates is not that they do not know what is wrong with Nigeria or even that they cannot fix it, but that they do not understand politics enough. It is like a man who wants to go to London by foot and thinks he will get there before the man going by air. You cannot reach a destination without a vehicle and leave it or take it, politics is the only vehicle by which the destination of political office can be reached creditably, and technocracy or elitism cannot make up for that. The reason Adedibu was a better politician in his era than the grammar speaking lot is that he understood the value of local influence. This influence is believed to have been acquired by the daily provision of steaming amala and gbegiri/ewedu to all who thronged in. Some swear that he fed the stuff to hundreds of devotees daily. But while stomach infrastructure has its own value- and it is remarkable within certain economic climates- it takes a combination of psychology and networking skills to be able to wield the level of influence that he did, even on far more educated folks. As the political class once more has influenced us with a view to electing them into various positions this 2019, it is only to be expected that every tactic imaginable under the sun has been deployed. Unfortunately, politicking is no more as fun-filled as it once had been. The new age politicians are a tad too serious, though human rights activist and lawyer Femi Falana recently called into question the very continuity of their existence, referring to the expansion of the democratic space as exploitation by people of ill-motivated agenda who set up all kinds of political associations and proceeded to register them as political parties. Their dismal performances while expected, might more accurately be a reflection of their weakness as the constituted opposition to the ruling APC and their very raison d’etre might well have been for the devastation and fractionalization of existing opposition. In the next four years, the new age politicians have all the time in the world to learn how to build structures, begin conversations, explore networks and just play politics.
C M Y K In the week that New Zealand woke up to the horror of terrorism for the first time in its history, Nigeria was confronted with its own all-toofamiliar instrument of mass deaths in the name of building collapse. The former claimed 50 lives, mainly adults. The latter 20, mainly innocent children. Ordinarily, the avoidable death of innocent children should win hearts all over the globe. Yet, it was the death of 50 adults that got mouths agape, and virtually stopped the world in its tracks, while the death of those little innocents hardly got a mention outside of Nigeria. Within a few hours, the video of the terrorist’s attack had gone viral. Facebook had to step in quickly to stem the circulation of the video because of far reaching consequences. That was the extent of the reach and spread of the news. As a journalist and former Editor, I can understand why. The parameters for assessing news are both objective and subjective. It is not always about numbers, although that helps. It is not always about location. It is also not always about age or gender. And it is not always about religion or ethnicity. These all tick the necessary boxes, but the deciding factors for most editors must be the rarity and gruesomeness of an occurrence. If something, however, its level of horror, happens too often, it loses its news value. It becomes degraded to use the language of the weather man. New Zealand got the attention of the world because it has never had a terrorist attack of any kind. New Zealand is perceived by the rest of the world, as a small, friendly and religiously tolerant country. And because of its location, it does not have the kind of immigration pressure that many European countries have. In terms of security and social inclusiveness, New Zealand, must be up there with the best in the world. The terrorist attack is therefore seen as an aberration. A dangerous one. Hence the huge coverage. The building collapse in Nigeria is one of Aides and supporters of the Prof. Mahmud Yakubu led Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, were until not too long ago, claiming that the spate of inconclusive elections did not start with its administration. However, after spurning the most rudderless election in the history of the country only the most biased aficionados are still going with that narrative. More than one month after the February 9, date the commission gave to kick-start the general election, there is still no end in sight for when the general election would end. It is even more remarkable that Prof. Yakubu, was reportedly, a consultant to the Prof. Attahiru Jega led INEC management that conducted what is generally acclaimed as one of the best elections in the country’s history. The fairness of the 2015 election was judged by the fact that at the end of the poll there were very few candidates who expressed enough dissatisfaction as to seek arbitration at the tribunals. The clumsiness of the present INEC is bolstered by the fact that even as at now the commission is still unsure of what it did that it is yet to post what was claimed as the result of the presidential election on its website for rigorous interrogation. However, amid the gaffes of the election management body, came the exemplary fidelity to principles by one of the commission’s senior officials, Mr. Mike Igini, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, for Akwa Ibom State. Ahead of the elections, Mr. Igini Every y death matter ers s to someone many. Hence the sparse coverage. Unfortunately, that is the story of Nigeria. Death has been degraded so much that it hardly commands the sense of horror that it should or media coverage that it should. Nigeria has been battling terrorism for over a decade. It has lost people in hundreds as a result. In addition to that, it started battling farmers/ herdsmen clashes on a scale that has . Everywhere you turn, there seems to be death lurking around the corner become alarming. The situation in Kaduna is hard to pigeonhole and it would be irresponsible of me to describe it as ethnic cleansing. Suffice it is to state that deaths are occurring there on a regularity that is disconcerting. Just as deaths are occurring in the Benue/Plateau through on an uncomfortable regularity. Then there are the political deaths with their attendant impunity. We lost many Nigerians during this election just as we lost many Nigerians during the last election and the ones before that. The Offa deaths remind us of SATURDAY Vanguard, , MARCH 23, 2019—35 closure; either to the family or the nation itself. We all saw the way the Prime Minister of New Zealand took decisive action not only to hand over the culprit to justice, but also to make sure that such a repulsive action never happens on their shores again. She showed a righteous anger when it was necessary. She also showed sympathy and empathy when necessary. She did everything a leader was supposed to do to assure a nation, a community and an aggrieved religious section. And in doing so, she started the process of a national healing that is always critical at times like this. There was no double speak in her words, her actions or body language. She is my kind of leader. Our society and leaders must say: ‘enough is enough’ to wanton killings. A death is a death whether it is political, tribal, religious, domestic or just plain robbery. Killers and murderers of whatever hue must be pursued with all vigour and handed over to justice as soon as possible. One difference between our society and some others is that many killers don’t get away with their killings in those societies. Here, we tend to think a stray bullet is excusable; a political killing is somewhat acceptable; ethnic killers must be appeased not apprehended; murdering herdsmen are merely protecting their livelihood etc. The killings we cover up because of expediency don’t go away unfortunately. They come back to haunt us in the form of more deaths through reprisal killings that are aided and abetted by our reluctance to confront them. In this second coming, President Buhari must make a vow to himself, his country and his God and like Jacinta Arden of New Zealand, make a loud statement against the various forms of killings in the land. It is high time we put a stop to the nonsense in Kaduna, in the Benue/Plateau trough, to farmers/herdsmen clashes and to political hitmen who masquerade as thugs in the daytime and armed robbers at night. We need to start bringing culprits, including their sponsors, to book. We have shed too much blood. It is time to heal the land. The President’s second term is as good a time as any to start. political thugs who become armed robbers. We have not yet had tornados and cyclones like in southern Africa. But we have lost lives through flash floods and other natural disasters. We have had kidnaps that have gone awry resulting in deaths. Military officers are also not exempt from the general insecurity and wanton deaths. Then there are stray bullets. As I was writing this article, the news came on TV, about a 17-year-old student who was felled by a stray bullet in front of her home. We can go on and on. Everywhere you turn, there seems to be death lurking around the corner. As pervasive as these killings are, we must never be so inured to deaths and killings that we begin to accept them as a part of our lives. I feel scandalised and angry when the police try to play down a killing by calling it an armed robbery attack as opposed to assassination. It is as if one is less deadly than the other. Or one is more acceptable than the other. Every death is a loss to someone at least, if not to the family or the community or the country. Every untimely death is an unfinished project; a dream unfulfilled. Every unresolved death is not only a stain on the fabric of the country, it is a scar on the very skin of the country. It cannot be washed away or discarded. Worse, an unresolved death prevents Conclusion of inconclusive matter ers was the target of a vicious propaganda onslaught by a section of the political class in Akwa Ibom. At one point they asked for his redeployment on the claim that he was in bed with the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in the state. The assault on Mr. Igini’s character came with the arson attack on some of the commission’s facilities in the state. Till now, no valid case of compromise has been proved against Igini, a reliable veteran of the civil rights movement. What came out of the election he conducted was that political giants compelled to go through a fair electoral process easily fell to the bemusement of the generality of the population. The development in Akwa Ibom also shows why the Prof. Yakubu team should not be totally castigated. After all, they were asked to arbitrate a process in which political actors turned against one another as savage beasts determined to break every rule of the game to subdue the other. It was like asking a human being to stand as a referee in a fight between a lion and a hyena! The clumsiness of the present INEC is bolstered by the fact that even as at now the commission is still unsure of what it did that it is yet to post what was claimed as the result of the presidential election on its website for rigorous interrogation It is possible that the mess that has become the lot of our election process was the outcome of the pressures piled on the system at INEC. The stalemate in Rivers State is particularly exemplary of the desperation of the country’s political actors to achieve their objectives irrespective of the damage to lives and institutions. This year, the situation was compounded by the involvement of state institutions as players in the political arena. That was demonstrated by the action of security agencies and INEC trading blames over the stalemate in the state. The president’s refusal to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill (2018), did not help matters. Having reached this particularly sorry state, it behooves the country’s political stakeholders to push for a revolution that would stop the mess that is the country’s electoral system. The revolution will start by eliminating the human factors that undermine the country’s electoral system. Nigerians have lately circulated the idea of configuring voting machines that work like Automatic Teller Machines, ATMs. Given that several Nigerian engineers have been able to produce machines with similar capacities and configurations, getting the machine will be no problem. As circulated by some on social media, all it requires is for one to present himself at the machine, identify himself the way you identify yourself to pick up money at the ATM, and cast your vote which is automatically transmitted to INEC headquarters the way account balances are deducted after every transaction. That will scale down the huge budget spent by INEC on elections with no need for presiding officers, party agents, and of course, the immense blood that is allowed to flow on account of the struggle for power by desperate politicians. It will also reduce the vast industry that is also being created by civil society activists infiltrating and beclouding the integrity of the electoral system through their profit-driven partisan positions. Of course, the behemoth that is INEC, would cease and with it, will be the decisive conclusion of the narrative of inconclusive matters that have now become the narrative of our elections!
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23032019 - Osun Gov Poll: Court nullifies APC’s victory

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