Real Reason June 12 1993 Elections in Nigeria Were Annulled.

June 12 has been touted as a grand elite conspiracy. It is not: it was a conspiracy between two, and only two persons alone; General Ibrahim Babangida and General Sanni Abacha. The twosome had to draft in the greedy, thieving elite when it became clear the situation was getting more intractable than envisaged.
In the heat of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections, Gen Muhammadu Buhari,  now Nigerian president, granted Tell magazine (or The News) an interview in which he categorically stated that the elections were not meant to work in the first place. It was a revelation that should have been obvious to everyone in the first place, the storied elections being a culmination of a macabre political transition process in which two political parties were registered by fiat by the military junta headed by Gen Ibrahim Babangida who loved to style himself the evil genius. It might sound a bit funny that political institutions in Africa were being modeled after the Republican and Democratic parties of the US but the joke turned a bit flat when Babangida started banning, unbanning and then banning again political aspirants and election dates got mired in endless postponements. It was a process meant to have one logical end but Nigerians, being the passionate and passive people they are, had to wait for Buhari to reveal it to them. When it was too late.
Yet, the interview, revealing as it was, was only a tip of the iceberg. A huge chunk of horror and distress lay underneath. Being a measured man, flames were already high and he was reluctant to pour in more petrol. Otherwise he would have revealed that when Babangida was plotting to overthrow him as military head of state, he swore to Gen Sanni Abacha, whose support was vital to the success of the coup, on the Koran, that he would hand over power to Abacha, nobody else but Abacha, anytime he relinquished power. Not that Abacha believed him, he knew Babangida liked swearing falsely, taking the name of Allah in vain. In fact, Buhari got wind of the plot against him and promptly invited Babangida, his Chief of Army Staff. 'Ibro, I heard that you were plotting a coup against me'. Babangida denied it outright and had a Koran brought in, on which he swore. So merely swearing on the Holy Book wasn't going to fool Abacha
Nobody can say with certainty how this power-transfer oath between these two men would have unraveled but two events were to later play hugely to Abacha's favor. The first was the first plot against Babangida, otherwise known as the Vatsa coup. The rebels had tried to draw in Col Alalade, an Abacha acolyte, into the plot. He refused but kept silent. Not until the conspirators set after him, fearing he would let the cat out of the bag. He was fatally wounded but did not succumb to his injuries immediately and it was on his death bed that he sent for Abacha and revealed everything to him. Abacha did not hesitate to save Babangida's skin.
Again in 1990, in a far more violent insurrection led by a young major, Gideon Orkar. As the gunfire of the mutiny died down, quelled by Abacha's troops, it dawned on Babangida that whether he was sincere in his oath to hand power over to Abacha or not, he had no choice now. Hence, the whole transition program was no more than a contraption, a rigmarole, to bring to fruition the fulfillment of a pact he swore to in 1984.
So by the time the presidential elections were held on June 12, 1993 and the results started tricking in, giving Chief M.K.O.Abiola an overwhelming lead against his rival, Alhaji Bashir Tofa, Babangida was practically a prisoner in Aso Rock, cornered like a rat in his own seat of power, held hostage by Abacha. He has made so much noise about officers and prominent northerners being against Abiola's presidency. It was all bunkum. Only one prominent northerner was against Abiola. That was Abacha. And he was the person that mattered, control of the army being completely in his hands. Babangida himself was finished militarily in the aftermath of the Orkar coup, having escaped from the mutineers in an old Peugeot 504 station wagon through a secret path out of Dodan Barracks, the then seat of power, dressed as a cook. It was the worst humiliation he would face in his life and in the wake of that, Abacha was the de facto military strongman, planting his boys and buddies in the strategic military formations. Therefore as the controversy over the polls raged, Babangida was a commander-in-chief unable to give orders to his own bodyguards. When Professor Omo Omoruyi, head of the Center for Democratic Studies visited him in Aso Rock during the crisis, Babangida intimated him of people watching all his movements and would not hesitate to kill him. He was right. Those invisible eyes were Abacha's men stationed everywhere in the seat of power, armed with the order to move against him if there was slightest inclination to do so. A move to announce the results and declare Abiola as president would have sent him instantly into his grave. In fact, Abacha would have finished him off instantly if not for the fact that it was Abacha who insisted in the first place the polls should go ahead, believing Tofa, a fellow northerner who hailed from the same Kano state as himself would win the election. It would then be easy for him to move against a fellow northerner. The average northerner does not really care about who governs them, civilian or military, as long as he is from the north. Spurious sample polls had fooled Abacha into believing that the voting patterns that brought Shehu Shagari's NPN into power in the defunct 2nd Republic would be reenacted. Northern votes would be delivered for Tofa en bloc and votes from the fractious south would be shared between the two candidates. The more discerning Babangida wasn't so sure and was for the postponement of the polls, favoring interim political arrangements, schemes in which he was well-versed. As he feared, Abiola won hands down, fair and square, taking the vital northern city of Kano, home of his opponent. There was no way Abacha was going to seize power from Abiola, northerners had been in power for a hefty 14 years, besides Abiola would have moved against him the moment he assumed power, Abacha being a famed coup plotter. Annulling the elections became the only option. An alternative was to announce the results of the elections and declare Abiola as president. And die. At the hands of Abacha. Sad Babangida lacked the courage to lay down his life for honor.

Abiola

Babangida

Abacha

Buhari, Abiola, Obasanjo and June 12.

In the heat of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections, with nationwide protests the most visible affairs on Nigerian streets and the nation on the brink of collapse, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo formed an organisation that had as its immediate and express mandate, the re-validation of the election results. It was almost a national coalition, credible too, with the present head of state, President Muhammadu Buhari, a prominent member. In its inaugural meeting in Otta Farms, home of Obasanjo, the group issued a communique which expressly condemned the cancellation of the polls and called for their re-validation and attendant declaration of Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president-elect of the country. Gen Buhari was to give fillip to this quest by granting an interview to Tell magazine in which he categorically stated, told all and sundry, that the elections were meant to fail right from the beginning. 'The elections were meant not meant to work, right from their inception' were his words. A copy of the interview should still be available in the relevant archives. In the same interview, Buhari debunked the insinuation that the north was against the candidature of Abiola, reminding everyone that Abiola won in Kano, the home state of his opponent, Alhaji Tofa, and challenging Gen. Babangida, the grim strongman who conducted and then annulled the elections to name just a couple of those in north opposed to Abiola. With the tension in the national air so thick and Babangida cornered in his Aso Rock Villa, government headquarters, like a rat that had overplayed its hands, Buhari's bold interview was a very dangerous thing to do. It was just like laying his life on the line and in no small measure did he alarm the powers that be.
By the time the meeting would reconvene in the same venue, Buhari got the rudest shock shock of his life. In the interval, Babangida had sold the idea of the Interim National Government to Obasanjo, a stop-gap arrangement to be headed by the industry titan, Chief Ernest Shonekan, A fellow Yoruba like Abiola and even from the same city of Abeokuta. Shonekan had little compunction in playing Judas and so was Obasanjo. In fact it dawned on everyone that Obasanjo's earlier moves to side with Abiola were nothing more than a mischief to harvest some of the national outpourings of anger and put himself a bit in the spotlight. He was a guy who liked swimming with the tide but not for long. A new current and he was away with a fresh shoal. Buhari was dumbfounded when Obasanjo started to digress from the commonly-stated objective of poll re-validation and realized he had been fooled into being drafted into a fool's errand.  In fact, Buhari stormed out of the meeting halfway and was never to attend it again. In fact, the meeting was never to hold again.
Hence it is on record that Buhari was the only leader to have taken a consistent stand on the whole June 12 saga, even endangering his life in his vociferous insistence, and his decision to honor Abiola should be seen only in this light. When he became the president of the country again and the clamor to honor Abiola got strident, Obasanjo told not a few aides that doing such was going to anger the north. He simply lacked the gravitas for boldness. Now a northerner has done it and everyone is happy, north and south. 

Buhari

Abiola

Babangida

News: Buhari Plans Corruption Tribunals.

Plans are afoot by the Nigerian government to set up anti-corruption tribunals across the country.
These special judicial bodies will be located in all the six geopolitical zones of the country and will be staffed by judges at the level of appeal court arbitrators. Already, a technical committee headed by a respected retired judge of the Supreme Court has been set up and it will commence work very soon.
The Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari won the 2015 polls on a tough anti-corruption platform and so far many prominent Nigerians have been arrested and charged to court. A lot of illegal monies have also been confiscated. There is certainly improvement in the sanity of government spending, especially with the introduction of the Treasury Single Account, a consolidated financial platform that allows for greater monitoring of government revenue and expenditure but many feel he has not done enough. His critics also say that most of the high profile corruption busts involved members of the opposition. Vendetta and bias may not be all that apparent here as the opposition is made up mainly of politicians that belong to the Peoples Democratic Party, the body that ruled the country for sixteen years and under whose watch most of the brazen cases of corruption took place. However many of these politicians defected from the PDP into the present ruling party and there is widespread resentment the law has been tardy in catching up with them.
However the jailing this week of a prominent member of the ruling party has suddenly given the much needed  fillip to the fight against corruption. Reverend Jolly Nyame, the governor who ruled the north-eastern state of Taraba for eight years under the platform of the PDP but later defected to the ruling party, was found culpable of various charges bordering on high graft and was sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Buhari is very keen to build on this notable success and sees the proposed tribunals as the most viable means to consolidate on his anti-corruption mandate now that elections are fast approaching. The seeming slow pace of the fight against corruption can be traced to the conventional courts. Cases are many and trials are very laborious processes. Judges will also have to deal with other types of litigation and setting up special courts that deal solely with corruption cases will fast-track trial and punishment.
Recall that when the president seized power in a 1983 military putsch, he set up similar tribunals to deal with corrupt politicians and many of them ended up being jailed as long as 155 years. The fate that had just befallen Rev Nyame brings up faint echoes of those tough punishments.
However there are fears in government quarters setting up such special anti-corruption tribunals will have to pass though the national assembly, a body known for its high antagonism to the present executive, and there is every likelihood the move will be shot down by legislators. However, the government is undaunted and top officials are already sounding out the Chief Justice, Walter Omoghen on the ways the national assembly could be bypassed in setting up the tribunals.

President Muhammadu Buhari.

Rev Nyame.

Muhamadu Buhari, Mahathir Mohamad: The Young Turn to the Old.

Malaysia's case is the clearest indication yet of what corruption does to a nation. For over three decades, starting from the late seventies, the country witnessed unprecedented development: rapid modernization, sustained economic growth and pacy technological advancement. It soon belonged to the elite club of Asian Tigers, alongside Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and North Korea: a group of hitherto poor or stagnant countries that had shed the toga of underdevelopment and almost miraculously had delved into the realm of advancement, helped by able leadership and technological incubation and tendering. They became the envy of the whole world and served as prototypes for other countries that wished to succeed.
Fast track to 2018 and Malaysia's story isn't all that alluring again and the culprit for this downturn is the usual, old suspect: the evil saboteur called corruption. It took less than ten years to undo all that had been achieved over three decades. Allegations of corruption were sufficient, showing how potent a force of destruction this phenomenon can be. National inertia set in instantly, placing on the back foot national enthusiasm, international trust and economic coordination. The Malaysia Development Berhad scandal has refused to die down and former prime minister Najib Razak has just been ordered not to leave the country. So bad and frightening was the situation that the electorate had to rally round ex prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the man under whom the unprecedented development took place in the eighties and nineties. Mohamad is ninety two years now, the oldest head of state on earth, even ahead of the long-reigning Queen Eliabeth of England, and has certainly lost much energy and vigor and for youths of twenty and thirty to have run back to him shows the desperation of the situation at hand. It is easy to underestimate the evil of graft, yet of all the prisms that voters use to view the actions and inactions of their leaders, it is easily the most powerful. The same happened in Nigeria in 2015, when the electorate decided to put their trust in ex head of state, General Muhamadu Buhari, then 72, now75: rejecting outright the then president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, a far younger man. But under Jonathan, corruption reigned supreme, graft and sleaze became almost institutionalized and economic and social collapse was not far away. The two cases are very instructive. Age, vigor, energy and health resonate with the electorate but the very moment graft factors in, they take the back seat. Trust becomes the overriding determinant, both for young and old voters. The old want to protect their savings and the young want to save their future, no pun intended here, and if it is an old and certainly ailing man that will do the job, so be it. At 92, Dr Mohamad is not in the best of health and Buhari had paid several visits to London over his health, even indulging in extended stays to stay well, but bizarre as it sounds, both men might yet win elections again. Without being able to summon the energy to campaign hard. They already had a huge political war chest in their reputation. Choice was no brainer during th 2014 polls once voters remembered Buhari's stern anti-corruption posture in his reign as military head of state and Malaysian voters had little choice in running back to Dr Muhamad. Savings or the future had to be saved. 

General Babangida and General Abacha: A 'Friendship' that Ruined Nigeria 2.

So Babangida started plotting against Buhari quite actively the very day the latter became head of state. And his projections about the new administration came to trenchant actualities. As he expected, Buhari left the affairs of state largely in the hands of Major General Tunde Idiagbon, Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, effectively his deputy. Idiagbon was another stern, disciplined army officer who arrogantly believed Nigerians could be whipped in line in a day. But the civilian forces he was contending against were too numerous, too riotous, too stubborn and when the resistance became too intractable, it became necessary to resort to high-handed tactics. Newspapers were proscribed, journalists were jailed, unions banned and human rights abuses spiraled away. Nigerians welcomed Buhari with open arms but it didn't take long for the relationship to turn sour. In a disorganized country of 80m people with little or no civic orientation, few, very few, were ready to embrace regulated discipline. The domestic intelligence agency in those days was the National Security Organization(NSO) and overnight, its  director, Ambassador Rafindadi became a poster boy for repression and people started playing on General Idiagbon's name with that of Idi Amin Dada, Uganda's erstwhile murderous dictator. Buhari's subordinates could do all they liked knowing they would receive little or no censure from their master. It was often said Idiagbon was more powerful than the head of state himself.
All of which played into Babangida's hands. However, in order to supplant Buhari, he would have to rely on Abacha again. Abacha and Babangida were no friends. No two men could ever be so dissimilar. Babangida liked to pride himself as urbane, clever, learned and sophisticated while he regarded Abacha as dull, crude and too fond of women and drinks. On the other hand, Abacha took Babangida for a coward, a decadent sophist and a boastful buffoon. He knew Babangida's fabled intelligence to be of the dark type, one which he would use to plunge his country into political and economic disaster. Abacha relied on his sense and intuition, knowing he had more of this in his little finger than Babangida had in the whole of his brain. But if Babangida was to realize his burning ambition, become head of state, Abacha would be a necessary evil. Abacha, because of his ill-discipline and carousing lifestyle, had a huge following among officers in an army that was growing increasingly idle. He had prevailed on Babangida, who was chief of army staff, to install one of his sworn buddies, Brigadier Dongoyaro, as General Officer Commanding 2nd Mechanized Division, Ibadan, that army formation vital to the success of any coup plotter. Dongoyaro was to announce the demise of Buhari's administration on August 27,  1985. Then, in military and political calculations, the much-touted homogeneous north is in fact roughly split along Fulani and Hausa fault lines. The Buharis and the Yar'aduas belong to the Fulani group while Abacha then had the ears of the Hausa or Kano group. He was Kanuri, in far away Borno, but lived and grew up in Kano. Babangida was really an outsider, having come from Bida in far away southern margins of the north. Few Fulani officers would move against one of their own and it was imperative to garner support of the Hausa group, through General Sanni Abacha. Abacha was quite receptive to the removal of General Buhari  but he wasn't going to risk his life the second time for nothing. He too was interested in becoming head of state. He regarded himself as the Khallifa, or Successor. Kano was his adopted city, where the assassinated head of state, General Murtala Mohammed, also hailed from and there was the widespread feeling among civilian and military establishment in city that they had been shortchanged in the scheme of affairs and that they had been poorly compensated for the ill-fated regime of General Mohammed that was cut brutally short. In short, if he was going to spearhead another coup, he needed assurances he was going to get his just rewards.
Babangida said "No problem."
Abacha said he needed an assurance that looked more concrete that a verbal agreement.
Babangida then brought out a Koran and swore to the effect that whenever he was leaving power, Abacha would succeed him. That seemed to satisfy Abacha but he was no fool. He knew Babangida liked swearing falsely. Two events were to later bear him out. As the plot against him thickened, Buhari got wind of it and invited Babangida. "Ibro, I heard that you are plotting a coup against me." Babangida looked at him straight in the eye and flatly denied it and to reassure Buhari, had a Koran provided. On which he swore so volubly. The second was during the later stages of his incredibly tortuous political transition process. He had banned unbanned and banned again so many politicians that few, very few, believed the whole process had any credibility left. So when Chief M.K.O. Abiola was being persuaded to contest for president, he was naturally skeptical. So he went to Babangida who was supposed to be a great friend of his and asked if presidential vacancy truly existed in the whole political process that was looking worse than a charade every passing day. Babangida said yes and then brought out a Koran to cement the assurance.
So Abacha knew Babangida considered it fun taking the name of Allah in vain but he never betrayed a single emotion. He knew what he was going to do. He nodded and there and then, the fate of Nigeria was sealed. A horrific destination from which it was unable to free itself.
 

General Babangida and General Abacha: A 'Friendship' that Ruined Nigeria 1.

By late morning on February 13, 1976, Col. Buka Dimkah and his co-conspirators had succeeded in assassinating the head of state, General Ramat Mohammed, and in capturing the national radio station where he made his infamous broadcast of imposing a dawn to dusk curfew. It was as far as he got. Loyal troops rallied quickly and it was left to Col. Ibrahim Babangida to persuade him the game was up. And at the same time, carry out a bit of reconnaissance. Considering the heat of the moment, it was a task that would require tremendous bravery, even foolhardiness. Babangida went and instantly catapulted himself into national fame. And power. Overnight, a mid-level officer started dining and wining with the head of state himself, and other powers that be. Pictures would later emerge of Babangida playing checkers with General Olusegun Obasanjo and General Theophilus Danjuma, head of state and chief of army staff respectively, the two most powerful men in Nigeria at that time.
The taste of power would never leave his mouth and as early as 1981, was himself already plotting the overthrow of President Shehu Shagari, the civilian regime that supplanted the military regime of General Obasanjo in 1979. He had enjoyed the trappings of power and had evidently seen that those who were his superiors in the military regime he helped sustain were not better than him intellectually and morally. Which was a grave indictment of the superiors because Babangida's moral quotient was abysmally low and the intelligence he often prided himself on bordered mostly on the charms of a confidence trickster. As he himself unwittingly confessed, comparing himself to Diego Maradona, the great footballer whose celebrated dribbling skills must have inspired the general in weaving intricate and outlandish political, economic and social twists and turns around hapless Nigerians while he held sway as president. The goodwill, if there was any, that Shagari enjoyed on coming to power barely lasted three months. His administration was horribly effete, dominated by incredibly venal subordinates who were far more powerful than he was. But corruption wasn't the only evil of his regime. In 1982, he orchestrated the massacre of hundreds of his own kinsmen in Bakolori, Sokoto State, poor folks protesting the confiscation of their farming lands for a dam project without being paid adequate compensation. The army moved in and mowed down hundreds in what would later become known as the Bakolori Massacre. The 1983 national elections, the only one his regime would superintend easily became the last straw that broke his back. These were so rigged that ballot boxes and papers were being hawked in the open streets and the outrage and violence that greeted the polls was the coup de grace Babangida needed to stage his own coup. Helped ironically by the sheer cowardice Shagari himself displayed in refusing to disengage him from the army, having been warned several times, by all and sundry, that if his regime was to last, Babangida held the key to that longevity. Babangida had acquired tremendous wealth in the defunct military regime and in the intervening years had bribed and corrupted many a military officer: buying for them luxurious vacations, building houses for them, sponsoring children's education abroad. He stuck out as a dangerous sore thumb to the civilian regime and the fact that nobody deemed it expedient to move against him was a sordid testament to Shagari's overall weakness.
Nobody was going to shed tears, sincere or crocodile, if Shagari was removed but then Babangida would still have to need troops and several other officers and the officer that mattered most was Brigadier Sanni Abacha, General Officer Commanding 2nd Mechanized Division, Ibadan, a formation that had under its command all the army formations in Lagos, the seat of power. Apart from being a fearless army officer, Abacha himself had a large following in the army. A lifestyle dominated by women and beer had ensured he was not without a plethora of buddies that he could count on at any time. Abacha himself was to announce the overthrow of Shagari's regime in 1983.
Babangida later claimed in an interview that in a meeting of senior officers convened to choose a successor to Shagari, most of those present tried to prevail on him to accept the post but that he declined out of altruism, or whatever he attributed to his decision. He had his own loyalists, no doubt, but General Muhammadu Buhari was the obvious choice. Like Shagari, he was a Fulani and it would be of less consternation to the Hausa-Fulani power base if a Fulani man overthrew another Fulani. Babangida was not even technically Hausa, his origins being farther south in Bida, Niger State. Then there was the resolute stance of General Mamman Vatsa who was Babangida's friend and knew him very well. Mamman stood up, he was a poet, and in trenchant eloquence, harangued his fellow officers that if they were removing Shagari as a result of corruption and inefficiency, it made sense that the efficient, spartan and incorrigible Buhari should supplant him. Mamman was to be later executed by Babangida for plotting against him when he would eventually become head of state. That would be about four years later and General Domkat Bali, a top member of the Armed Forces Ruling Council that confirmed Vatsa's death sentence, had admitted that the evidence they relied upon to nail him was weak, in reality, the seeds of his death was sowed in that meeting that chose a successor to Shagari. Babangida was not happy about his snub. He had plotted, organized and financed the coup and it must have necessarily riled him to be denied his just rewards but there was little he could really do. He quietly swallowed his bile and decided to wait for another chance.
Which he knew would certainly present itself. And he was emboldened in his expectations by his intimate knowledge of Buhari. He knew that Buhari would never succeed in a country gone to dogs like Nigeria. He knew Buhari was disciplined and incorrigible, traits that made him the archetypal army officer, but he also knew him to be a poor administrator. Buhari was a 'civil service' army officer. In administration, he could be counted upon to leave tasks, even important one that demanded personal attention, to subordinates. He would leave tasks and instructions to subordinates and expect them to carry out their performance to the letter. With the civil service Nigeria has, that was going to be a recipe for disaster. In many instances would he be unaware of what was going on in his own administration. The qualities that made Buhari a splendid officer were going to be grossly inadequate as the head of state. Babangida started plotting against Buhari the very day Buhari became head of state.
  

Rex Tillerson: Serving God and Mammnon.

The oil industry where Rex Tillerson made his mark was a fairly certain arena. The newly-drilled oil-well is guaranteed to produce; new technology was going to make shale oil commercially available and the shady atmosphere enveloping Nigerian oil was always going to get cruder and darker. Only instability in the prices of oil was going to be of much challenge but that too wasn't exactly rocket science and for a man who had risen to the top echelons of his calling, he could be counted on safely to handle that. In short, the world he was familiar with was stable, rational, fairly predictable: always within his grasp. It was a place of gentlemen and handshakes.
So, it must have been a shock to him when he decided to switch jobs and throw himself into politics. Politics is a calling rough enough and American politics is a particularly toxic variant. It wasn't an arena for gentlemen, handshakes being very, very rare and fists in ample display and use and nobody was going to pull punches. And the most combative of the pugilists was the man he was going to serve as Secretary of State, President Donald Trump, a boxer who was going to play very unfairly, not hesitating a moment to punch below the belt. And the most volatile part of American politics would certainly be found in the State Department, in foreign policy. There he would have to deal with players even worse than his master. A place as stable as earthquake-engendered tsunami. An arena where the appalling Rohingya crisis could break out at any time, where Russian hackers and exterminators were going to cause trouble at any time. An arena filled with irrational souls as Mugabe, Kim Jong-un. A theater savaged by unpredictability such as the North Korean rascal making a volte-face and proposing talks with the US all of a sudden. Moments defined by not only not knowing when the next nuclear test will take place but also not knowing whether the missile was flying towards Hawaii, or flying over Japanese mainland or was going to end up shortly in the Pacific Ocean. Torrid moments of terrorists freshly abducting schoolgirls in Nigeria. Intolerable situations in which Turkey, a NATO ally would attack  Syrian Kurds, America's staunchest allies in the Middle East, and both the president and his top diplomat would be tongue tied. Tillerson was stepping into an insane world he was never prepared for, both by training and temperament.
A world that was perfect fit for his master, by temperament. Tillerson was supposed to be America's face to the outside world but it was an America that that gone Trump, a guy who was as brash and unpredictable and unrestrained as his worst adversaries in the diplomatic boxing ring. A chap whose remarks are often off cuff and whose most coherent foreign policies could be found only on his lips and tweets. It was eerily difficult imagining Tillerson as Trump's Secretary of   State. The Rasputin Coefficient was horribly non-correlative. Tillerson, in Trump administration, was practically serving God and Mammon at the same time.
Hence he would think the Iranian deal to be reasonable while Trump would savage it as nonsense. He would lay into Russia over the Salisbury spy poisoning while his president would be uncharacteristically taciturn and quiet all of a sudden. You would think that if the president was going to accept talks with North Korea, he would consult his secretary first. A dove, so to say, wasn't going to serve a hawk. Tillerson was more studied, careful, restrained than he was a pacifist but he wasn't going to do well in a regime stuffed with hardliners and of which head was a sheriff likely to shoot first before asking questions later.
Trump admitted he didn't agree with Tillerson on most issues. Sacking him behind his back was his most poignant testament to that disagreement.   

Between Hitler and Merkel: Women Reign over Peace and Grace.

Today is the International Women's Day.
If you believe in providence, then the obvious place to be or refer to in order to underline your faith is Germany. Hitler envisaged a supreme Germany, a nation that would be master over any other nation on earth, a state before which every other state must tremble, and then set to actualize his vision by building a mammoth army, manufacturing state-of-the art weapons and then underlining his resolve with a frightening philosophy in which racism was the chief creed. Aryans were the superheroes and every other race was subhuman. He did not mince words. He was going to exterminate all Jews on earth. He held nothing back too in launching a devastating war in which millions perished and whole cities were flattened in his quest to achieve greatness for Germany. A political continuum, the Third Reich, which he heralded, was supposed to rule for a thousand years. Germany was not going to be master of Europe, but master of the universe. It took approximately five years for his empire and dreams to unravel. His grandiose, male-dominated world in which women were barely allowed even a whimper.
Fast forward to 2018 and Germany is at least master of Western Europe, a key voice in international affairs and an economic superpower. Greatness achieved through hard-work, economic ingenuity, tolerance of differences and healthy respect for the rights of others. A healthy superiority achieved without firing a single shot and vividly contributed to by the same Jews Adolf Hitler did all he could to remove from the surface of the earth.
And it is all so apt that a woman should now preside over this greatness. Angela Merkel reigns in Berlin and her ascendancy, and Germany's own, is pure testimony to the fact that the most resilient rise of nations are the ones achieved not by war and conquest but by healthy desire and determination. And God places women on thrones so uplifted to show all of us the wonderful grace and charm and peace these superb creatures possess.
But if you don't believe in providence, then come down to Ikole-Ekiti, in the state of Ekiti, south-western Nigeria, to isinmole, a traditional festival that usually holds in August. For two or three days during this cultural fest, women are usually barred from the streets. A phenomena of interest to the sociologist, no doubt,  but of very shocking impression to the visitor. No matter how many times he has witnessed it. A frightening air of desertion, desolateness, sweeps the streets and the immediate impression is that not a half of humanity is missing, but three-quarters of it. Humans have two legs and a woman is the third leg of the tripod on which our world stands. Without them, folks, we are toast.
It might seem  a bit condescending, setting out a special day for women, a sop to our chauvinistic societies, but so do we set out a special day to celebrate Christ. After God, these amazing creatures are next.
Happy women's day to everyone.   

World Wildlife Day: These Cats Don't Even Have A Life.

Few animals in the wild excite us as the great cats: lions tigers, cougars, leopards, cheetahs and so on. We admire them for their beauty, speed, strength, power and predatory instincts. Unfortunately, these admirable attributes are also their greatest undoing. They are the reasons we think claws, teeth and other parts of tigers can boost sexual prowess in China and the skins and bones of cheetahs can be made into charms and amulets that can aid rapid workplace promotion in Nigeria. The human mind thrives on inventiveness and superstition, especially senses not prejudiced by science, which constitute 99% of all perceptions on earth and men can attribute anything to anything. The appeal of big cats was always going to be boundless and with globalization and spread of AK-47s and other assault weapons all over the world, these wonderful creature were going to be under sustained and prolonged siege.
Their numbers are dwindling very fast, especially in Africa where legislation of any kind is very poor and law enforcement is even weaker. In Nigeria, game officials consider bribes from poachers as traditional perks of office. Naturally, they look the other way while these cats are slaughtered in thousands. Leopards, tigers and lions no longer live in the wild in south-western Nigeria and in the savannas of the northern regions where they used to thrive, a single sighting in a month now elicits sustained exclamation.
It is a great step, the decision of the UN to dedicate this year to the great cats. And many admirable measures have been put in place to curb illicit hunting of and criminal trade in these species but the average guy in China with a lot of money and a huge libido is going to need tough convincing that Viagra can as well perform the feat he thinks leopard skin can do. At a far cheaper rate and with less burden of destroying beauty and grace on his conscience. An even greater task is bridging the notorious income gap prevalent all over the world. This is the main combustible ingredient fueling the destruction of the great cats and other fauna. The rich have too much money and the poor have too few and it is easy for the rich to give the poor guns and money to go and kill the big cats for parts that will help flavor their insane, conspicuous consumption. The poor have few other choices anyway. A huge number of families live on poaching in Africa, a dangerous type of living they will easily avoid it the bread-winning males can get jobs that pay as low as $20 in a month. Creating jobs will go a long way in creating future safe havens for our great cats.

From Florida to Nigeria, Officers are not doing their Job.

This is a global platform in a world wondrously interconnected and there is a lot to think and write about but it is very difficult not going back to the tragic events in Parkland, Florida. Back to Deputy Scot Peterson, the Broward County deputy sheriff who arrived ninety seconds after the start of the carnage and failed to intervene when he had close to five minutes to move in and at least divert the shooter. He was the M.S. Douglas High School Resource Officer and it is easy to think he would at least have some responsibility to the kids under his watch. President Trump did not mince words in calling him a coward and he is evidently in the bad books of many.
Which his defense of his actions is not going to erase soon. According to him, he waited in inaction thinking the shooting was coming from outside the school. You would think it a bit odd that a fifty-four year old officer with more than twenty years of experience would find it difficult determining the direction sustained gunfire, any gunfire, was coming from. Then he left while the firing was still going on. In fact it continued for a further minute after he had left. So if the carnage was coming from outside into the school, the shooter would not have encountered anyone to confront him. In attacking Mr Scot, President Trump has been badly drawn and quartered in some quarters but it seems our president is now having the last laugh: even assuring that if he had been in the same situation as the Deputy, he would have certainly gone in to confront the Mr Nikolas Cruz. That doesn't sound much like a boast now. We are not really in any position to doubt our president now but paraphrasing James Hadley Chase, if you believe the excuses being bandied by Officer Scot, you would believe anything. Perhaps the three other Broward County deputies alleged by CNN to be also present in inaction while the shooting was going on were also crouching behind their cars with drawn weapons thinking the shooting was coming from outside. In this tragic situation, the law and its purveyors have been in serious remiss. It would have been far profitable if Mr Scot had not said anything at all, allowing us to tumble and tumble in our in distance-effected doubts and conjectures
Which brings us to another serious remiss, the recent kidnap of 101 schoolgirls from their hostel in the town of Dapchi in northern Yobe State by Boko Haram terrorists. You would think Nigerian security agents would have learned from their shortcomings in the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls a couple of years earlier. Especially in a large girls' school in a town just eighty kilometers south of the border with Niger Republic, a demarcation as porous as an old colander. Of course the police were at their illegal checkpoints collecting illegal duties from motorists and couldn't care a damn if all the women in Yobe were carted away by Boko Haram. The Nigerian police runs the largest extortion and debt collection agency in the world and safety of lives and property was going to be very low in the priority of its officers. And for a reason or reasons anyone in the army or government has not been able to relate even satisfactorily, a couple of weeks before the abduction, troops were withdrawn from Yobe, a hiatus Boko Haram did not hesitate to ruthlessly exploit.
From Florida to Nigeria, officers collect fat salaries and give very, very little in return.  And their excuses are even worse than their lapses.

How Obasanjo Killed the Yar'aduas 2.

When Obasanjo was drafting Umaru Yar'adua into the presidential race in 2006, he was already a wounded president: at loggerheads not only with the entire country that he governed, but also with most of his subordinates. The legacies he had tried to entrench were in dire tatters and he had just suffered a humiliating blow over his Third Term Agenda, a quest to run for a third term, one above the constitutionally stipulated two. All it needed was a stamp of approval by the Senate and he spared neither time nor cash to lure the lawmakers, folks who had worn the corrupt tag all their lives. But even if his popularity had not nosedived, there was no way Nigerians could ascertain that a Fourth Term Agenda would not supplant a Third Term and beyond that...Dictatorship of any kind, civilian or military, was a tune that sounded a bit sour in the streets, Nigerians just about shaking off the trauma of the brutal dictatorships of General Babangida and General Abacha. Besides, northerners felt it was their turn to occupy the seat, their case premised on the unwritten agreement that the cause of national stability would be best served if the presidency was rotated between the north and south. Most people in his Yoruba ethnic stock were even less interested. Even if he had not alienated most of them, they were the most sophisticated group in the federation and were not likely to buy into any ethnic scheme. The result was predictable, except for cronies who were feathering their own nest from the scheme. The rejection in the Senate was devastating and Obasanjo was said to have held on to the sides of his chair trying to steady himself in the shock of the humiliation. And it was especially bitter because the party that brought him to power, the Peoples' Democratic Party, had an overwhelming majority in the Senate.
The president sulked for days unending. He had been made a laughing stock. Naturally, he didn't like parting with money and it hurt him to the doldrums he had lost a colossal sum for nothing. Colossal it was, money having been trucked into the Senate in special, capacious sacks called Ghana-Must-Go to bribe Senators. The gentlemen collected the money and then turned to give him a black eye. He had come out badly battered in what seemed a political Ponzi scheme.
 But he had to hand over power to a successor in barely a year. That was when a little smile flitted across his eyes. If they could prevent him from succeeding himself, there was virtually nothing anybody could do to stop him from anointing a successor. And Umaru Yar'adua sprang instantly into his mind. But the then governor of Katsina State was a very sick man, a fact that was well-known to everybody. He had been a heavy smoker all his life, with the attendant medical consequences, and in fact had had a kidney transplant. But that didn't matter a jot to the president. Yar'adua was his man. If he performed creditably in office, he would be credited with installing such an effective successor; if his illness hampered him from achieving much, well, Nigerians had given him a black eye, they deserve their own eyes to be gouged out. It would serve them right, very right. As military leader, Yar'adua's elder brother, Shehu, was his second in command and there was do doubt he would wield considerable influence on the younger one, gratitude being an associated factor, appreciation for choosing him from among thousands of healthy, capable northerners. Anointing Yar'adua as his successor would be a win-win case for Obasanjo.
The rest is history. Obasanjo spared no effort to make Yar;adua president. The cash left over from the Third Term bribery operations was promptly deployed to buy delegates during the PDP primaries and the general elections were a stroll for Yar'adua. It didn't matter that he collapsed during one of the presidential campaigns and had to be rushed to Germany for treatment, it didn't matter the presidential elections were heavily rigged: and even if they had not been rigged, the electorate were too ignorant to worry about the health status of an incoming leader, at any rate the electorate had hardly mattered in Nigerian elections.
So Yar'adua became president, placed under a burden that was too heavy for his health, a frame of mind and body that could hardly support lesser duties of governance in tiny Katsina State. There was no guarantee he would have lived longer if he had not become president but kidney failure and pericarditis were two things the toll of governance in a country infernally difficult and complex as Nigeria was going to exacerbate.  
   But Yar'adua was smart enough to know that Obasanjo's scheming was not out of genuine love for him. He knew he was going to die soon anyway and it wouldn't be bad if it was written he became president of his country even for a day. However he didn't die without exacting a little pound of flesh from his supposed benefactor. Obasanjo was to suffer a little hurt when the first pronouncement his protege made in office was to denounce the same electoral process that brought him to power, Obasanjo's retaliation against Nigerians. But the Nike Grange affair almost delivered a mortal blow. Recall that Nike Grange was Obasanjo's protege and was nominated by him into Yar'adua's cabinet. As Minister of Health, the professor of pediatrics allegedly flouted the president's order to return all unspent money in ministries to national coffers. Yar'adua was enraged. Obasanjo felt it imperative to intervene but the president, his protege, would have none of it. Iyabo, Obasanjo's daughter was also involved in the scandal, as senator superintending over the health ministry, but her father wouldn't care a hoot if she got her ass fried. It was Nike he was interested in saving but Yar'adua would have none of it. Yar'adua actually felt no compulsion to take orders from Obasanjo. He was of a radical persuasion, having been member of the leftist Aminu Kano-led PRP in the Second Republic while his own father was briefly vice-chairman of the conservative NPN. He had a master's degree in chemistry and in fact was the first university graduate to become president of Nigeria while Obasanjo barely finished secondary school before joining the army. He rebuffed all Obasanjo's entreaties and was to compound recalcitrance and ingratitude by bringing Nike to court in handcuffs, an act that brought Obasanjo fuming to no end. "Shehu gan ko le ba mi dan eleyi wo." An English translation of that Yoruba cliche would read: "Shehu(Yar'adua's late elder brother) would not have tried the insubordination with me."

The Curse of Liberators.

All countries on earth, without a single exception, have been under one sort of occupation or the other before attaining their present sovereign/independent status. Either the occupiers were foreigners, or were native rulers who had visited so much toil, ruin, suffering and unease on their own people that they soon grew to become horrid, repulsive aliens.In both cases, they had to be driven out by largely peaceful but intense political pressure- India, Nigeria, Ghana- or by violent insurrection, uprising: Russia, China, the US, Zimbabwe, South Africa.
But it is expedient to look into recent political history to understand better a scourge that is just becoming well-defined but which has always ravaged, on all fours, polities as diverse as Liberia and Ukraine. We have all heard of the curse of resources in Nigeria and Congo, yet it is the same African continent that has seen the worst of the curse of the freedom fighter, a pestilence that ate its cancer so unobtrusively into the social, political and economic fabric of the countries under its invasion that it is only now the full extent of the hideous damage it had wrought is being fully felt. Yes, we are talking about ANC, ZANU-PF, FLN, to mention a few of the insurgent groups that played a key role in the decolonization or, to use a more glamorous term, liberation of Africa. But we are not talking about the copious atrocities they too committed even on their own populations while driving away the much-hated, arrogant foreigners: excesses that have been poorly recorded, acknowledged, Excesses that were even celebrated in the euphoria of grand heroism. What eventually mattered was what they did with the power they wrestled from the terrible occupiers. The present scourge in Zimbabwe did not start with the British, it started when that hero of liberation, Mugabe, started entrenching himself as a long-term dictator: too long for his own good or for the good of his country. It was a common plague in Africa. Hardly had the colonial masters left when they were supplanted by the torrid dictatorships of Gaddafi, Siaka Stevens, Sekou Toure, Dauda Jawara; freedom fighters and independence heroes of yesteryears. It could be argued that similar outcomes unraveled in Russia, China, Vietnam, but rickety republics like Nigeria Liberia, Burundi had no technological prowess, economic resilience or organizational acumen to paper over the defaults and in many cases of these African countries, fresh political upheavals such as coups and  mass rebellions had to inevitably erupt  to resolve some of the scourge. Often unsatisfactorily. The victims have been social, political and economic progress. The symptoms have been appalling poverty, telling political repression and a wave of migration most of which end up in the watery graves of the Mediterranean.
Authoritarian regimes or lines of party succession that were as far from democracy as Timbuktu is far from Toronto and likely to throw up characters as outlandish as Jacob Zuma. Succession that implied George Washington telling Americans: "Hi folks! We did well to secure your freedom from the infernal Brits and it is legit if your leaders till eternity come out of a line anchored on me, or my comrades." It wouldn't be monarchy, but certain blood must prevail.
The blood is increasingly going under the microscope and folks must necessarily turn to China, a country whose influence is growing very powerfully in Africa and whose leaders have become very adept at tweaking the line. In Zimbabwe, the military had to step in to effect a mini purge, before Grace Mugabe got too powerful, a situation that looked like a perfect recreation of the Gang of Four conundrum after the death of Chairman Mao. And still borrowing from China, the ANC has done very well to ease out Zuma. Jacob Zuma is actually a likeable guy but the controversies surrounding him were getting a bit tiring and he could have been more careful of his association with the Guptas. As shopkeepers or as managers of big enterprises, Indians have a business reputation a bit on the unsavory side in Africa. Of course nothing really has been proven yet. It might even have been a myth made popular by the infamous Idi Amin but Zuma should have realized his hobnobbing with the Guptas was going to profit him little.
He had to go. Not for his own good but for the continued good of the ANC. Cyril Ramaphosa has his work cut out and perhaps our Zuma would have more time to perfect his celebrated recipe for AIDS cure.

How Obasanjo Killed the Yar'duas 1

The Yar'dua brothers have been dead for some time now but few ever realized the role Olusegun Obasanjo, ex head of state, played in their demise. These two powerful Nigerians were closely associated with him in their lifetime but even though he later fell apart with them, it would be a bit ridiculous to suggest he would even wish death on them but two grave errors of judgement on his part would eventually send the two to the great beyond. The elder Yar'adua was the Chief-of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Obasanjo's deputy when he was military head of state. Yar'adua was barely a colonel when the then head of state, General Ramat Murtala Mohammed, was assassinated in an abortive coup detat in Feb 13, 1976. Obasanjo who was his deputy was promoted head of state by the selfless insistence of General Danjuma, Chief of Army Staff. and in order to assuage the wounded feelings of northern elements in the polity, Colonel Yar'dua was promoted to brigadier and soon major general in order to qualify him for the position of Chief- of-Staff, Supreme Headquarters, in effect vice-president. Colonel Muhammadu Buhari, presently president, was also considered for the post but deemed too incorrigible and inflexible for the highly political post of vice head of state.
Many an officer would be naturally miffed by this exceptional promotion. One of them was Colonel Sani Abacha, a Kanuri man from Borno but brought up in Kano who grumbled, albeit very silently, that he should have been at least considered for this special favor, having come from the same Kano as General Murtala.  But he understood too well the unusual circumstances that prodded his resentment and didn't make much fuss of it. Besides Abacha was very fond of women and beer and as long as the two flowed freely, the world wasn't such an unfair place even though while Yar'dua retired as major-general in 1979, Abacha, who was his mate, only got promoted to brigadier in 1980. Nobody knew what precisely caused the rift between Abacha and Yar'adua while they were in the army. Perhaps Abacha didn't grumble too silently and a whisperer could have been up to a mischief. Yar'adua was from a well-heeled family, his father having been minister in the First Republic and could be a bit condescending to others. His new, sudden position too was making him feel a bit heady and he and the stubborn Abacha were not likely to be great friends. By 1978, he had included the name of Abacha as one of the officers to be retired from the army. Abacha hit the roof. Here was a guy who was his mate in the army, who got unfairly promoted over him...who now had the nerve to root for his retirement. Yar'adua's attempted  betrayal really cut him to the quick. He loved the army, it was the only life he had known and had done nothing to warrant a premature retirement. To worsen matters, Yar'adua arranged for Abacha to be failed in one of army assessment examinations. Yar'adua however got a shock when the list was presented to Obasanjo. His hands as head of state was very weak, he got there fortuitously and those who installed him must be stronger than him, but on this matter, he stood his ground. He loved Murtala who was not only his boss, but was also helping Obasanjo maintain peace in his own family and would not want to visit premature retirement on any officer from Kano. He firmly had Abacha's name erased from the retirement list and that was how Abacha survived Yar'adua's purge. He would later become Nigeria's strongman in 1993 and Yar'adua would die in his prison later. Abacha never forgave Yar'adua for that retirement move. When Obasanjo and Yar'adua were being tried by Abacha  for a coup in 1995, Yar'adua told Obasajo 'Boss, did I not warn you of this man?'

Trump, Immigration and Walls.

President Donald Trump like his things big and bright, a one off image that catches on all fours and swamps everything else. Hence everywhere you go in his immigration policy, the wall looms large. If he's trying to erect a fence to keep out immigrants along the border with Mexico, why should the whole project borrow a controversy from the horribly contentious Dreamers' Project? Not by any stretch of imagination are the two related.
But he knows the immigration conundrum will not just go away with erecting a wall. It is too complex for that project no matter how big it is. He has to back to the roots of the problem, which are as spreading and diverse as the roots of the West African red mangrove. He would need to start from Africa, a shithole as shitty as they come. Poverty is simply grinding; the leaders who run the shitholes are too powerful and helpless folks do the only thing they can: risk the horribly dangerous journey across Sahara Desert and then cross the Mediterranean Sea in any boat they can find to Europe. It is not foolhardiness. It is desperate survival. America is lucky, so to say. The Atlantic Ocean is a much larger divide than the Med and Africa versions of Vietnamese boat people are not going to be a sight soon. From Africa and Europe, some migrants will find their to Mexico, to Trump's wall but whether it will be an unbreachable obstacle remains to be seen. If the Berlin Wall could not could not keep folks from bursting out from behind the Iron Curtain, I don't see how a wall  in sections of the infernally long Mexican border will be a greater obstacle to those who have crossed the Sahara and the Med. In an age where human desperation and ingenuity are increasing by leaps and bonds.
A Harvard professor was in Nigeria recently and he did see people virtually boiling leaves for food. Which is just a very tiny, tiny fraction of the gory picture. Millions are surviving on less. Mr Trump could be at the forefront of the fight against those who steal money meant for food and stash them away in other countries. He could impose severe sanctions on countries that readily accept and hoard such loot. The Oghara Independent Power Project, a Ponzi Scheme organized by the Delta state government of Nigeria, led to the bleeding of 25 billion naira from the state coffers. Many officials simply shared the money, closed shop and relocated to the US, leaving millions of people in the impoverished region to a fate of hunger and malnutrition. Trump could ask serious questions of folks like that. Britain is already asking investors to explain sources of their wealth. Such proactive steps will not me unnecessary meddling; it could help a lot of folks in Africa and Asia become a bit contended and save the money meant for building the wall for other pressing needs.