25112020 - Selfish Northerners opposing restructuring, says el-Rufai

C
M
Y
K
Gamblers and journeymen
Politics are almost as exciting
as war, and quite as
dangerous. In war you can only
be killed once, but in politics,
many times —Winston
Churchill,1874-1965
IF it is not such a sad
reminder of the depth of
mediocrity and the contempt
with which our political leaders
treat our democratic process, it
would have been amusing
watching leaders of the All
Progressives Party, APC, get all
excited at the defection of
Governor Dave Umahi of
Ebonyi State from the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, to their
party. As tradition allows, the
man who received majority of
votes on a political party
platform walked away with the
peoples‘ mandate and joined
the side his supporters helped
him defeat.
It is not illegal, but if politics
has moral standards, this
practice will be the equivalent
of the man who sells his father’s
house and then moves in with
the buyer as a squatter. To be
fair to Governor Umahi, he has
he snake is not a likeable
Tcreep. Especially if you
have had a brush with its
venomous danger as I have,
twice in my life and nearly got
finished off at the second
encounter, you have no reason
to like the snake at all, and
once you smell the danger
from a distance, you reach for
a strong stick.
This is my point of interest
this morning. As you hit the
snake, the creepy animal is
not looking at the hand
holding the stick or the owner
of the hand, the snake is
focused on the stick and
probably working on plans to
take the stick out.
Unfortunately, the stick has no
life of its own but must obey
the voice of the master, and
quickly take out the snake and
spare the society of a creepy
danger.
The outburst of the Minister
of Information and Culture,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, last
week, can lay credence to that
little allegory of the snake and
the stick. Really, Mohammed
was angry, so angry that after
the domestic channels seemed
to have been conquered with
a fine and reprimand, a
foreign channel could dare to
act as the little gadfly to
irritate the imperial
positioning of an
administration that is doing
very well!
In fact, it was not anger. It
was indignation. When I was
in the secondary school, one
of our teachers told us in the
class that the word means
righteous anger. Oh, those
teachers at Annunciation
Catholic College, Irrua, Edo
State, may God bless them. So,
that very day the Minister
removed his focus from the
#End SARS movement to vent
his frothing anger onCNN.
"CNN engaged in
joined a long, distinguished line
of politicians who see politics
in purely personal terms, and
party members and voters as
disposable irritations. There are
very few politicians in Nigeria
today whose entire journey has
been made in only one political
vehicle.
Governor Umahi says he
defected to the APC to protest
against the injustice of his party,
the PDP whose presidential
ticket has never been zoned to
the South-East zone. This zone,
he protests, has supported the
PDP since 1999, but had never
had its presidential ticket zoned
to it. He is not moving to the
APC for any reason other than
to protest this injustice. His
former party disagrees. It says
he has a strong personal reason
for defecting to a party which
can barely feel the ground in
his zone: he has his eyes on a
possible APC presidential
ticket.
His new party is not waiting
to count how many people from
his state he will deliver for
baptismal in a region bursting
with grievances but stubborn in
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Email: aihebho@yahoo.com
incredible sensationalism and
did a great disservice to itself
and to journalism. In the first
instance, CNN, which touted
its report as an exclusive
investigative report, sadly
relied on the same videos that
have been circulating on
social media, without
verification …
"This is very serious and
CNN should be sanctioned for
that. CNN merely said the
videos were "obtained by
CNN" without saying
wherefrom and whether or not
it authenticated them. Were
CNN reporters and
cameramen at the Lekki Toll
Gate that evening?"
Mohammed didn't have to
wait for long as CNN
responded immediately
saying that the organization
verified photos and videos
acquired from multiple
eyewitnesses and protesters
using timestamps and other
data from the video files.
Video footage shows solders
who appear to be shooting in
the direction of protesters. And
accounts from eyewitnesses
established that after the army
withdrew, a second round of
shooting happened in the
evening.
Now it is eyeball to eyeball.
Who will be the first to blink -
CNN or our great Minister?
This question wouldn't be
necessary only if we know
how to hold back our anger
and learn a little lesson in
crisis management. Doing the
right communication is part of
that crisis management
because when the head is in
pains, you don't need to put it
out with a hammer but apply
the right medications in order
to restore peace.
I am of the opinion that the
government's position
concerning what happened at
Lekki Toll Gate will strain
terms of looking at new options.
It is not showing signs that his
arrival has raised more
questions on its claims that it is
not a party of a Northern
leadership on its way out, and
a handful of politicians from the
South West who are already
showing signs of a bruising
battle over a ticket no one is sure
will be secured by anyone in the
region.
Governor Umahi is either
exclusively privy to a secret or
an optimist with no equal. He
says he knows that PDP will not
zone its presidential platform to
the South East. It is possible he
Without a decisive
shift from the past,
the two dominant
parties may run the
country aground in
their attempts to
ride it before the
next elections
also knows that APC will
surprise the long-suffering
people of the South East by
offering them its ticket. If PDP
does choose a candidate from
the South East, Umahi will not
sip the champagne, and few
people will remember his
sacrifice because he will be in
a party that will have its own
problems in the zone and with
Nigerians.
If Umahi’s new party does
not zone the ticket to the
South East, few people will
remember his name, not to
talk of the possibility that he
For broadcasting, truth
troubled by the times
credulity any day because of
the equivocations of the
variousarms of government
before a glimmer of truth
started to emerge on the
horizons. First was the claim
by the Lagos State Governor,
BabajideSanwo-Olu that he
did not invite the Army.
Followed by the position of the
Army that its men were not at
the Toll Gate. Yet there was
It never occurred
to anybody that the
picture we were
painting was that of
failed state where
there is no
recognized
government, so
frightening that
hoodlums could be
shooting non-stop
in a vital part of the
city, and there was
no response from
the security,
whatsoever.
another opinion that
hoodlums were the ones who
shot for hours at the Toll Gate.
Then some little fragments of
truth, the Army was there on
the invitation of the Governor.
It never occurred to anybody
that the picture we were
painting was that of failed
state where there is no
recognized government, so
frightening that hoodlums
could be shooting non-stop in
a vital part of the city, and
there was no response from
the security, whatsoever. Oh,
add this. The Army has since
told the Panel that its men
Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2020 — 21
went to the Toll Gate with
Rubber Bullets and Live
ammunition. Since the CNN
story!
In plain speaking, the
government soiled its
sincerity on the Lekki Toll
Gate tragedy and should work
to right its position instead of
digging itself deeper into a
hole. Only then can it begin
to seek compassion from those
with a heart to forgive.
That little suggestion might
bring some discomfort to
Mohammed; this is
understandable because he
speaks for government. My
little concern here is the place
of truth in dispute resolution.
Concerning what happened at
Lekki Toll Gate, truth has
become a misbegotten casualty
and may upend every effort to
resolve the #EndSARS crisis
until a much needed catharsis
takes place.
Before the catharsis, let's
make a detour to
broadcasting? Is it actually
possible to punish CNN as the
Minister canvassed? Without
claiming erudition in legal
matters, meaning I am totally
unlearned as the lawyers
would put it, I tried to look at
the Act setting up the National
Broadcasting Commission
(NBC) and the Nigeria
Broadcasting Code, the bible
of broadcast operations in
Nigeria, I am unable to see
any law empowering the
government to sanction CNN.
Having failed in my quirky
search, I went to my industry
sources, who, too, are unable
to lay their hands on any local
law to punish an international
broadcaster whose global
feeds are received in Nigeria.
They were very categorical
that the most Nigeria can do
under the circumstance is to
ask for a right of reply, which
is a standard industry
practice. Outside that nothing
much can happen. Another
source noted that if Nigeria
could win a Senate seat. If both
parties poison his zone with
wealth of two tickets, he will
be in the midst of the scramble
with a valid case that he
offered to be the sacrificial
lamb. That may not count for
much in a region that is
replete with quality and tested
politicians who have remained
slightly more loyal to their
parties.
Umahi’s defection hints at
the enduring tradition in
Nigerian politics that values
such as party loyalty and
respect for rules are only
useful if they serve an
individual’s interests. The
party he has just left has
raised the standards of
disregarding rules to the
status of the Holy Grail, and
much of the stress beginning
to show in many camps is
evidence of popular
knowledge that nothing is
sacrosanct. No politician in the
PDP will hang his ambition on
the certainty that the rotation
principle in the party will be
respected in 2023. Before
2015, it had suffered such
injury from desperate
politicians that the party’s
bleeding from fights around it
contributed substantially to its
defeat.
In Port Harcourt in 2018, 12
Northerners lined up to be
selected as flagbearer.
Southern PDP politicians
salivated at the prospect that
it will be their turn in 2022.
They started to lose sleep
when they began to hear
rumours that the zoning
feels very strongly about the
CNN broadcast, it could take
the diplomatic channel to
lodge a complaint. Overall,
they believe the press
conference by the Minister
was unnecessary and capable
of putting Nigeria in very bad
light as a country without
capacity to stomach
inconvenient truth. Oh, the
country already has enough
problems than to add the
status of a pariah state! They
moaned.
But how much of truth do we
have to confront the
presentation by CNNapart
from the hackneyed
ventriloquy of fake news? In
some battles you must arm
yourself with the right words,
and drop them as little bombs
where necessary. Nigeria did
that in the past and there was
a vindication, even if not total.
In 2007, there was a CNN
reporter in Nigeria called Jeff
Koinange, of joint US-Kenyan
nationality. In those troubling
days of Movement for the
Emancipation of Niger Delta
(MEND), Koinange had
sources that gave him lethal
information for great stories.
Reporting Nigeria, he quickly
became a star, some say,
superstar on the platform of
CNN. But the Nigerian
government thought that
something was wrong and that
Koinange was staging stories
to build his own image. The
government was strong on the
point that Koinange was
paying MEND members to
stage stories for him. Mind
you the government of the day
never tried to invalidate the
operations of MEND but did
not like the reportage which
looked suspicious.
But from an unlikely source
came a confirmation of the
suspicion by the Nigerian
government. A Swiss author
turned girlfriend, Marianne
Briner, released emails she
had exchanged with Koinange
principle was being reinterpreted
to mean that
someone from a region must
win and exercise power before
the other region smells an
opportunity to field a
candidate. The ghost of
President Jonathan’s
desperate effort to disown the
principle was also being
invoked to suggest that the
principle of rotation had died
from anemia caused by bad
faith and desperation of
politicians.
Threats of dire consequences
that will follow the refusal of
both parties to cede tickets to
candidates from any of the
three zones in the South do not
appear to have impressed
some powerful Northern
politicians or voters. A few of
APC’s bigwigs have suggested
that it will serve the interest of
justice to have a candidate of
the party from the South. These
voices are being drowned by a
torrent of indignation at the
mere suggestion that the party
will dare field a candidate from
the North.
There is a particularly strong
sense of entitlement to the
ticket from the South West, but
the region is being seriously
damaged by a civil war. There
are also strong cases being
made by other Southern zones
that it makes better politics to
plant the party in lands that will
nourish it with appreciation
and certainty that it will have
life after President Buhari
ceases to have any political
relevance in the country.
where the latter bragged of
paying sources for CNN to get
great stories and he, his fame.
That did it. In February of that
year, CNN issued a denial that
the organization does not pay
for interviews. Koinange was
recalled from Nigeria and he
left CNN in May 2008. The
Nigerian baggage never
allowed him to take his head
above troubled waters.
My little question is: does
the government have the
convenient truth to dilute the
CNN report or are we
pursuing the Shakespearean
Macbeth to tell us a "tale full
of sound and fury signifying
nothing"? Some say we
shouldn't pursue the answer
but look at other things that
trouble us. Quite a number of
people are of the opinion that
the #EndSARS movement is
a little window into our rotten
state of being and that the
government should do
something urgently.
The nation is in grave
danger. In the past two weeks,
I have had the little bad luck
of flying into Asaba in Delta
State, moving into Edo State
by road, and hitting the state
capital after a few days in
some other locations. With
airport arrangements in Benin
completely messed up, one
had to return to Abuja by road!
On the road, I remembered
my friend, Anikulapo - the
one who wears death in his
pouch but this was not a sense
of invincibility. You literally
see death every inch of the
way but between Auchi and
Lokoja in Kogi State is a
complete void, a despicable
absence of governance and a
perilous fraternization with
nihilism.
Were somebody to follow the
road with a camera, how will
the government describe the
report? Fake news? Will the
people who live along the
route believe their government
or the report? What then is the
definition of truth? My prayer
is for the people not to give
the answer because such
response would overwhelm
the government in whatever
way.