Strictly Personal

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, By Jideofor Adibe

Published

6 months ago

November 7, 2023

The recent Supreme Court judgement which affirmed the ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, was not unexpected. As Abimbola Adelaku, one of my favourite columnists, summed it in The Punch of November 2, 2023, “everyone – and by that I mean people who did not become Nigerians just last night”, did not expect a different outcome.

“Apart from a few who love histrionics and pretended to be pleasantly surprised, I do not know of anyone who imagined that a court that could remove an incumbent president in Nigeria had been composed,” she further wrote.

As the Court of the last resort in the country, the ruling brings to a close the legal challenges to the outcome of the February 25, 2023 presidential election. There are however lasting implications of the election, its aftermath and the ruling of the Supreme Court for the country. These include:

One, some overzealous supporters of the Tinubu government are already pushing the narrative that the ruling of the Supreme Court should be ‘the end of politics’ (to paraphrase Francis Fukuyama’s famous 1989 essay, ‘The End of History’, which he later published as a book in 1992). But this is only triumphalism masked under phrases such as “the time of politicking is over, it is now the time for governance”. Or: “The President should be allowed to concentrate on governance.”

The irony is that the advocates of “the end of politics” are themselves being political. They are either trying to stifle the voices of opposition or blackmail critics of the government, both of which are needed to keep the government on its toes in a democracy, for optimal performance. The self-appointed defenders of the polity would often grudgingly welcome “constructive criticisms” without telling us the metrics for determining the constructiveness of criticisms or who determines what is ‘constructive’ about any criticism.

The truth is that governments want to hear only the echo of their voices or their lap dogs and are usually uncomfortable with criticisms and critics. This constitutes a potential threat to democracy and is one of the reasons why the distrust of government is very high in mature democracies. This in turn is one of the reasons for the high premium placed on freedom of speech in such democracies.

Two, contrary to what many people think, it is not only political parties that could play opposition to the government of the day. Sections of the country could do that – as we saw with the South-West during the Second Republic, the Yar’Adua and Jonathan years (to a less extent). The South-East was also a bastion of opposition to the Buhari presidency. Civil society and labour groups could equally play the role of an opposition party. In this sense, the fear about the possible emasculation of opposition parties and groups which would imperil our democracy seems unlikely..

Three, it will be difficult for INEC to overcome the sort of legitimacy crisis that has engulfed the electoral umpire since the last presidential election for as long it is headed by Professor Mahmoud Yakubu. True, to be chairman of INEC has always been a poisoned chalice and losers always cry foul. However, in the last election, perceptions of incompetence and complicity in perpetrating electoral frauds were so widespread and so well documented by both local and international observers that confidence on the electoral body seems to be at an all-time low since the tenure of Professor Maurice Iwu. In climes where public officials care about honour, Professor Yakubu would have since stepped aside, if not for anything, as a way of taking responsibility for the failings of the electoral umpire despite the humongous sums sunk into it.

Four, the election and the subsequent Supreme Court judgement also underline the need for more electoral reforms. First, there is an urgent need to make it mandatory that all legal disputes are concluded before the inauguration of the President because as Abimbola Adelabu aptly put it in her very compelling column, the court that will have the gravitas to remove an incumbent President from office is yet to be constituted – and may not be constituted in the nearest future. Second, it may be time to consider having a Presidential Council of six (one from each geo-political zone) where the Council members will take turns in being president for two years while others will serve as Vice President with constitutionally designated powers.

This rotational presidency arrangement, currently practised in Switzerland and the European Union, will not only address fears of being marginalised by various parts of the country, it will also speak to the anarchic nature of our politics. One of the reasons for the Hobbesian nature of our politics is its winner-takes-all character: there is a pervasive fear that the group that wins the presidency will use its enormous powers to privilege its in-group and disadvantage the others.

The Buhari government took this abuse of fairness to a new low (while apparently mocking the rest of us with periodic declarations that his conscience was clear on allegations that he was nepotistic. The Tinubu government seems intent on continuing or even besting that legacy of nepotism, which could mean that by the time he completes his tenure, this may become ‘normalised’, and future leaders will see their tenures as the ‘turn’ of their own ethnic/religious group.

By having representatives of the six geopolitical zones in the Presidential Council, and enshrining in the Constitution that certain decisions or appointments must require the concurrence of all members of the Council) the fear of marginalisation will be attenuated. A single term tenure of 12 years for the Presidential Council will equally give everyone a break from politics which seems to have deepened our fault lines. In any case, it will seem that an increasing number of Nigerians do not even believe that their votes count or that elections are credible vehicles for leadership recruitment. So why waste time and resources on them every four years?

“Ironically, while using presidential powers to privilege a President’s in-groups and disadvantage or weaken others seen as rivals or non-supporters may be the new normal, it actually attracts resentment to the supposed benefitting ethnic group. For instance, it is thought that one of the reasons why it was easy for the rest of the country to unite against the Igbo (who formed the majority in the short-lived Biafran Republic) during the Civil War was the resentment against them arising from their perceived domination of the country during the First Republic.

Similarly, Buhari’s perceived privileging of Hausa/Fulani / Kanuri Muslims during his presidency, led to an unbridled and unfair profiling of the Fulanis during his tenure, with talks of ‘Fulanisation’ morphing into an anti-government mantra. Additionally, quite often some members of the supposed benefitting in-group will be among the most vociferous critics of the act of injustice against others as we saw with Northern Muslims leading the criticisms of Buhari’s nepotism and some Yoruba intellectuals already complaining loudly that cornering the juiciest of appointments does not reflect what the ethnic group stands for.

Five, the election and subsequent Supreme Court judgement once more highlights the fickleness of human loyalty and the transactional character of some politicians, sycophants and influence seekers and peddlers. For instance, shortly after INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as the President-elect, some in the above named category gradually began to adjust their rhetoric to court the attention of the new man in power. One particular character who, prior to the declaration of Tinubu as President carried himself as Atiku’s alter ego, suddenly and shamelessly began to sing a new song.

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Strictly Personal

If I were put in charge of a $15m African kitty, I’d first deworm children, By Charles Onyango-Obbo

Published

4 days ago

May 13, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

One of my favourite stories on pan-African action (or in this case inaction), one I will never tire of repeating, comes from 2002, when the discredited Organisation of African Unity, was rebranded into an ambitious, new African Union (AU).

There were many big hitters in African statehouses then. Talking of those who have had the grace to step down or leave honourably after electoral or political defeat, or have departed, in Nigeria we had Olusegun Obasanjo, a force of nature. Cerebral and studious Thabo Mbeki was chief in South Africa. In Ethiopia, the brass-knuckled and searingly intellectual Meles Zenawi ruled the roost.

In Tanzania, there was the personable and thoughtful Ben Mkapa. In Botswana, there was Festus Mogae, a leader who had a way of bringing out the best in people. In Senegal, we had Abdoulaye Wade, fresh in office, and years before he went rogue.

And those are just a few.

This club of men (there were no women at the high table) brought forth the AU. At that time, there was a lot of frustration about the portrayal of Africa in international media, we decided we must “tell our own story” to the world. The AU, therefore, decided to boost the struggling Pan-African New Agency (Pana) network.

The members were asked to write cheques or pledges for it. There were millions of dollars offered by the South Africans and Nigerians of our continent. Then, as at every party, a disruptive guest made a play. Rwanda, then still roiled by the genocide against the Tutsi of 1994, offered the least money; a few tens of thousand dollars.

There were embarrassed looks all around. Some probably thought it should just have kept is mouth shut, and not made a fool of itself with its ka-money. Kigali sat unflustered. Maybe it knew something the rest didn’t.

The meeting ended, and everyone went their merry way. Pana sat and waited for the cheques to come. The big talkers didn’t walk the talk. Hardly any came, and in the sums that were pledged. Except one. The cheque from Rwanda came in the exact amount it was promised. The smallest pledge became Pana’s biggest payday.

The joke is that it was used to pay terminal benefits for Pana staff. They would have gone home empty-pocketed.

We revive this peculiarly African moment (many a deep-pocketed African will happily contribute $300 to your wedding but not 50 cents to build a school or set up a scholarship fund), to campaign for the creation of small and beautiful African things.

It was brought on by the announcement by South Korea that it had joined the African Summit bandwagon, and is shortly hosting a South Korea-Africa Summit — like the US, China, the UK, the European Union, Japan, India, Russia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey do.

Apart from the AU, whose summits are in danger of turning into dubious talk shops, outside of limited regional bloc events, there is no Pan-African platform that brings the continent’s leaders together.

The AU summits are not a solutions enterprise, partly because over 60 percent of its budget is funded by non-African development partners. You can’t seriously say you are going to set up a $500 million African climate crisis fund in the hope that some Europeans will put up the money.

It’s possible to reprise the Rwanda-Pana pledge episode; a convention of African leaders and important institutions on the continent for a “Small Initiatives, Big Impact Compact”. It would be a barebones summit. In the first one, leaders would come to kickstart it by investing seed money.

The rule would be that no country would be allowed to put up more than $100,000 — far, far less than it costs some presidents and their delegations to attend one day of an AU summit.

There would also be no pledges. Everyone would come with a certified cheque that cannot bounce, or hard cash in a bag. After all, some of our leaders are no strangers to travelling around with sacks from which they hand out cash like they were sweets.

If 54 states (we will exempt the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic for special circumstances) contribute $75,000 each, that is a good $4.05 million.

If just 200 of the bigger pan-African institutions such as the African Development Bank, Afrexim Bank, the giant companies such as MTN, Safaricom, East African Breweries, Nedbank, De Beers, Dangote, Orascom in Egypt, Attijariwafa Bank in Morocco, to name a few, each ponied up $75,000 each, that’s a cool $15 million just for the first year alone.

There will be a lot of imagination necessary to create magic out of it all, no doubt, but if I were asked to manage the project, I would immediately offer one small, beautiful thing to do.

After putting aside money for reasonable expenses to be paid at the end (a man has to eat) — which would be posted on a public website like all other expenditures — I would set out on a programme to get the most needy African children a dose of deworming tablets. Would do it all over for a couple of years.

Impact? Big. I read that people who received two to three additional years of childhood deworming experience an increase of 14 percent in consumption expenditure, 13 percent in hourly earnings, and nine percent in non-agricultural work hours.

At the next convention, I would report back, and possibly dazzle with the names, and photographs, of all the children who got the treatment. Other than the shopping opportunity, the US-Africa Summit would have nothing on that.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. X@cobbo3

Strictly Personal

AU shouldn’t look on as outsiders treat Africa like a widow’s house, By Joachim Buwembo

Published

1 week ago

May 9, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

There is no shortage of news from the UK, a major former colonial master in Africa, over whose former empire the sun reputedly never set. We hope and pray that besides watching the Premier League, the managers of our economies are also monitoring the re-nationalisation of British Railways (BR).

Three decades after BR was privatised in the early to mid-nineties — around the season when Africa was hit by the privatisation fashion — there is emerging consensus by both conservative and liberal parties that it is time the major public transport system reverts to state management.

Yes, there are major services that should be rendered by the state, and the public must not be abandoned to the vagaries of purely profit-motivated capitalism. It is not enough to only argue that government is not good at doing business, because some business is government business.

Since we copied many of our systems from the British — including wigs for judges — we may as well copy the humility to accept if certain fashions don’t work.

Another piece of news from the UK, besides football, was of this conservative MP Tim Loughton, who caused a stir by getting summarily deported from Djibouti and claiming the small African country was just doing China’s bidding because he recently rubbed Beijing the wrong way.

China has dismissed the accusation as baseless, and Africa still respects China for not meddling in its politics, even as it negotiates economic partnerships. China generously co-funded the construction of Djibouti’s super modern multipurpose port.

What can African leaders learn from the Loughton Djibouti kerfuffle? The race to think for and manage Africa by outsiders is still on and attracting new players.

While China has described the Loughton accusation as lies, it shows that the accusing (and presumably informed) Britons suspect other powerful countries to be on a quest to influence African thinking and actions.

And while the new bidders for Africa’s resources are on the increase including Russia, the US, Middle Eastern newly rich states, and India, even declining powers like France, which is losing ground in West Africa, could be looking for weaker states to gain a new foothold.

My Ugandan people describe such a situation as treating a community like “like a widow’s house,” because the poor, defenceless woman is susceptible to having her door kicked open by any local bully. Yes, these small and weak countries are not insignificant and offer fertile ground for the indirect re-colonisation of the continent.

Djibouti, for example, may be small —at only 23,000square kilometres, with a population of one million doing hardly any farming, thus relying on imports for most of its food — but it is so strategically located that the African Union should look at it as precious territory that must be protected from external political influences.

It commands the southern entrance into the Red Sea, thus linking Africa to the Middle East. So if several foreign powers have military bases in Djibouti, why shouldn’t the AU, with its growing “peace kitty,” now be worth some hundreds of millions of dollars?

At a bilateral level, Ethiopia and Djibouti are doing impressively well in developing infrastructure such as the railway link, a whole 750 kilometres of it electrified. The AU should be looking at more such projects linking up the whole continent to increase internal trade with the continental market, the fastest growing in the world.

And, while at it, the AU should be resolutely pushing out fossil-fuel-based transportation the way Ethiopia is doing, without even making much noise about it. Ethiopia can be quite resolute in conceiving and implementing projects, and surely the AU, being headquartered in Addis Ababa, should be taking a leaf rather than looking on as external interests treat the continent like a Ugandan widow’s house.

Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:buwembo@gmail.com