By Abuchi Obiora
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been appointing his men (and women) after his inauguration as the sixteenth President of the Federal Republic on 29th May 2023, for service by them to the country, for the next four years. In response to this development, there have been heated discussions and arguments by Nigerians in their offices, along the streets, in the market places, beer parlours, and even in the numerous corners of the grapevine.
This week’s discourse is my assessment of the President’s efforts at directing the affairs of the country during the first few weeks of his stewardship. This assessment also comes with my opinion on contemporary and burning national issues as well as serve as my contribution to the ongoing discussion. In giving my opinion, I have looked at the President’s efforts so far from the perspective of the urgent need of not only to secure Nigeria and revamp her economy, but also from the perspective of the need to clean the Augean Stable of Nigerian politics, which by the way, is the major contributing factor to the present nagging nationwide insecurity and collapsing Nigerian economy.
For the above reason, it seems to me that the first important and necessary thing to do is to reform the Nigerian political landscape and not to continue to build on a cranky foundation of sandy soil, which is exactly what the diversionary salvos of the Tinubu Presidency represent.
The accolades trailing the appointment so far made by Mr. President both in the presidency and in the armed forces is a welcome development. But being political appointments, these national assignments by Mr. President who is a known political strategist, may be reviewed anytime at the discretion of Mr. President. In order words, some of the appointments may actually be strategies to garner public sympathy and trust for an embattled presidency that has a legitimacy case to sort out in the courts.
Many Nigerians (gullible, they may be!) have been taken in by what I still regard as both a diversionary effort and a fence-mending gesture by Mr. President. Nicole di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3rd May 1469 – 21st June 1527) an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance period wrote in his political treatise, ‘The Prince’ (‘Il Principe’, written around 1513 but published five years after his death in 1532), that ‘dissimulation’ which may be said to be the tricky art of drawing the attention of the enemy away from the real issues of contest before launching the ‘master kill’, is a veritable art of conquest.
Robert Greene and Tsun Tzu, two other renowned war strategists known to contemporary world (Robert Greene) and ancient world (Tsun Tzu) are also agreed on this war strategy and decoy called ‘dissimulation’ in their books, “48 Laws of Power” and “The Art of Seduction” (by Robert Greene) and “The Art of War” (by Tsun Tzu). My understanding, therefore, is that it is most likely that Mr. President, undoubtedly a very wise and cunny man with wide experience in the structures and mechanisms of all the success quotients (including aligning with the hegemons of northern Nigeria) in Nigerian politics, has employed dissimulation strategy that I call ‘The Principle of Crowd Formation and Control’ in one of my books (The Flaming Sword). The Principle of Crowd Formation and Control captures the brilliance of setting up a phantom formation, a dummy crowd that yields to the intelligence and control of the creator who uses the numbness of a soulless crowd infused with the intelligence of the creator, to the creators own benefit.
Is it not possible that the appointments announced so far as having been made by Mr. President are mere decoys, especially with people like Festus Keyamo taking the President to court to enforce the constitutional provision of the parliament approval of the appointments of the Service Chiefs, which were skipped by Mr. President? Nigerians should read between the lines.
Observing the unfolding events in the polity and the appointments already made by the embattled President Tinubu, especially as regards those of the Service Chiefs, I feel sometimes that I could just close my eyes and wish away the huge controversies which trailed the declaration of Mr. President as the President-Elect by the INEC. Each time I dwell on this illusion of wishing away a reality fully stalking the faces of Nigerians, it dawns on me that truth can only have one shade … that of justice. Unfortunately, many Nigerians caught up in this same illusion, have swallowed it line, hook and sinker.
James Chambers (born 1st April 1948 in Somerton, Jamaica), the singer and songwriter, rock steady and soul music artist/reggae maestro known around the world with the professional name of Jimmy Cliff, in one of the titles in his music album “House of Exile” sang that “You can’t be wrong and get it right… no matter how hard you may try!.”
This lyric is not just the opinion of Jimmy Cliff. It is also a natural law. For example, in logic, the fact that you advance a good argument premised on a false foundation, though it may seem good enough and reasonable, does not make your conclusion the truth. This means that once logic is founded on false premise, it must naturally deviate from the truth and become falsehood. This natural pattern replicates itself in other professions including civil and structural engineering where the foundation must, of necessity, be capable of holding the edifice.
Everything we do in life that must be sustained, which must also pass the test of time and endure signs of decay, must be founded on the solid foundation of truth. It is within the ambit of this natural law that I think that cleaning the Augean Stable of politics and political administration in Nigeria may not sit well enough with the present set of the President’s men and women because it will not enlist the support of nature. It is within the ambit of this natural law also, that I am skeptical of the present effort of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to ‘sanitize’ the Nigerian society. They that approach equity, must go with clean hands.
Gautama Buddha was recorded to have said that “Truth is an open wound, only justice can heal it”. The four way test of Rotary International Club demands that some questions must be asked to evaluate the capacity of the decisions we take to ensure justice, equity and fair play. These questions are:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Nigerians of virtue and good conscience know that the Bola Ahmed Tinubu presidency has failed in all the above tests. If this is true, what purpose will the presidency whose initial actions are presently being hailed by some Nigerians, serve? My answer is that it will not serve any positive purpose for Nigerians but it may serve positive purposes to the few Nigerians who criminally brought it to be.
In a larger pictorial format, a cat may resemble a lion but in real life, a cat is not a lion and can never act as one. An illusion can never become the reality in like manner that shadows can never become the objects. Not to face the truth and explore all its possibilities as a result of the fear of the unknown as is being displayed by some Nigerians who have been taken in by the inappropriate reign of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is an act of both cowardice and absence of virtue. It is also in the divine nature of man to conquer his environment and improve his life on earth. For example, were it not for the audacity of a few people in history who challenged the status quo either as scientists to discover new equipment or as social reformers (as is presently happening in Nigeria) whose efforts changed and re-directed human society to the path of sanity, people on earth would have continued to dwell in the stone age, both in their relationships with the world in respect to their archaic implements and in socialization with each other the beastly way.
This is to say that at some points in the life of a person or existence of a nation like Nigeria, the choice must be made in favour of discarding the old order. But a major handicap to checkmating this necessary revolution of discarding the old order had long been woven in the Constitution of the Federal Republic by people who have been exploiting the inadequacies of the social order to their selfish benefits. This handicap is located in the law which permits a President-Elect whose election is being challenged in the courts, to be sworn in. This provision of the law is against the spirit of justice to the aggrieved parties and needs to be reviewed because the aggrieved parties may have enough grounds to seek for the nullification of the presidential election result declared by the INEC.
This scenario dubiously anticipated by people who smuggled that law in the constitution is already playing out in Nigeria today. With what is presently happening in Nigeria, it is not unlikely that this booby-trap was deliberately inscribed in the Nigerian constitution by the Nigerian slave masters to achieve the purpose that it has just achieved wherefore a President-Elect whose declaration by the election umpire is seen by those who challenge the process of that declaration is going ahead to appoint officials of a government that he has not fully secured the mandate. Most strangely too, the law which makes him the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces allows him to appoint officers to the strategic positions of Military Service Chiefs. This is wrong and should also be reviewed.
While they severally make mincemeat of the Nigerian judiciary which they dubiously employ to achieve their nefarious aims and satisfy their whims and caprices, Nigerian politicians have also learnt to desecrate the supposedly apolitical Armed Forces who they also employ and deploy to achieve such same purposes as they use the judiciary to achieve. Recently, complete sets of senior military officers of certain course batches had to be listed for compulsory retirement because their Commander-in-Chief, the President of the Federal Republic, has his eyes on some less senior officers who are ways down below in military course batches.
Unfortunately, this decision, a fiat by their Commander-in-Chief, did not take into consideration the vast experience of the soon-to-be-retired officers and the huge financial investments on them from the national treasury which equipped them with the expertise Nigerians are proud of, in their military generals. Their Commander-in-Chief did not also consider the huge lost in specialized manpower that Nigeria will suffer by disengaging these officers in their primes when they could be very useful to a country that desperately needs their services.
It is a paradox that must be prevented in our polity that corrupt, mean and undisciplined politicians who most probably have found their ways to the grand and exalted office of the President would lord it over the authorities of their Lordships in the judiciary as well as act as the Commander-in-Chiefs of a military high command known across the world as a disciplined force, having the capacity for excellence and actually have demonstrated this excellence in numerous peace-keeping assignments and other specialized military missions and engagements around the world. Herein lies the need again, for whom it may concern, to thoroughly clean the Augean stable of politics in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, there have been observation in the President’s appointments of Military Service Chiefs by some experts in military matters and international security consultants. These professionals say that the President’s wholesale appointments in the military are likely to impinge on professionalism and command control within the military. Apart from observing some breaches and undue incursions by the President in the core military obligations of the Service Chief to appoint junior cadre officers to their respective positions, the experts also observed that the development is unusual in Nigeria and definitely against the laid down military procedure and tradition of the hierarchical order of military command structure.
But more worrisome is the fact that the military experts and international security consultants suggest that such an action by Mr. President could be a pointer to the Commander-in-Chiefs future meddling in issues that, as rules, will be normally handled by the military command structure. This negative development, the experts say, comes against the backdrop that the President, already mired in lawsuits challenging his emergence through a means that is less than due process of the law, involved himself in ‘queue jumping’. By the way, the people challenging his declaration as President-Elect accuse him of ‘queue jumping’.
The experts concluded by saying that these coincidences give credence, though in very subtle way, to the fact that Nigeria may be in for a civilian dictatorship for the next four years. This expert opinion of a looming dictatorship is also substantiated with the fact that against the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the President appointed the military Service Chiefs who have already been handed over their new offices to and decorated, without their confirmation by the Nigerian parliament. Like many analysts of Nigerian politics, I foresaw the unfolding events as soon as INEC made its controversial declaration of a President-Elect while the electronic systems deployed for the election was still transmitting, processing and storing election results.
The statement credited to the Sultan of Sokoto that there must be an inauguration on the 29th May, 2023 whether the opposition liked it or not was both weighty and ominous. It reinforced the opinion of the government of the former President Mohammadu Buhari that anybody who felt aggrieved on the hushed declaration of a President-Elect while the election still remained inconclusive, should ‘Go to Court!’. Both the statement of the Sultan and the opinion of the government took advantage of the booby-trap in the constitution, which I have already discussed in a previous paragraph of this discourse.
The truth is that the cabals who have held Nigeria on her jugular trying hard to snuff the life out of her since independence, have never had it this rough and bad before in their dangerous permutations to keep Nigeria and Nigerians tightly held in their grips. For the reason of the above, political analysts and pundits on contemporary matters in Nigeria suspect that the Tinubu presidency is a placeholder government for the oligarchs. While he holds forth temporally for the oligarchs who were recently humiliated at the polls by a consensus of opinion of Nigerian youths who came out and voted en-mass in favour of change of the status quo, it is not unlikely that the shocked and bemused oligarchs retraced to their shells and planning dens to strategize unfolding events portend the end of opportunities for the mischief makers. Nigeria seem to be at the nick of liberation.
Is it not possible that even the political appointments for which the President is being hailed could be a decoy, a dissimulation to once again obtain the support of Nigerians as the oligarchs get ready with other methods of subjugation of Nigerians?
Let us reflect on the history of Nigeria to prove the points that I have just made. All the successful coups during the long period of military juntas in Nigeria were those championed or supported by the hegemons of northern Nigeria under the full control of a known minority ethnic nationality. Accordingly, all the unsuccessful military coups in Nigeria through which many military officers were executed were those ones which the hegemons did not initiate or support. People should stop saying that we should forget the past because he who does not remember where he is coming from can never understand where he is, or where is going to.
In like manner, the so-called democracies or transfers of democratic beacons that have ever been successful in Nigeria were those either initiated or supported by the northern Nigerian hegemons with stooges who they use as placeholders, domiciled all around Nigeria. Chief M.K.O Abiola’s attempt at Nigerians presidency failed because the hegemons, not trusting him anymore, suddenly withdrew their support with a hushed, midnight election annulment reminiscent of the 2023 hushed midnight election result declaration.
Now, Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s attempt at leading a democratic government in Nigeria against the wish of Nigerians is being forced on Nigerians by the same hegemons because he is in their good books, having helped them several times to maintain their stranglehold on Nigerians. Will this work out this time? The Nigeria of today is not that of 1993. So many things have happened between these two periods to enhance political awareness amongst Nigerians. This is actually why the hegemons are finding it difficult to push Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidency through the stonewall created by the people’s political awareness.
Nigerian politics stinks. It sticks to high heavens, in its effusive, pervasive, stinky and corrosive odor, Nigerian politics corrupts anything and everything that comes in contact with it rendering it as abnormal and un-performing as itself. Is it any wonder that all known and tested social and economic laws which work as applied in other climes yield negative results when they are applied in Nigeria? This is the weird political value system that will be either legitimized or discarded depending on the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) in the suits that are challenging the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Let me conclude the discourse by saying that in spite of the deafening noise from some sections of Nigeria about what I may regard as motion that is yet to (if ever it will?) yield movement, Nigerians, I mean the greater number of Nigerians free from ethnic loyalty and religious bigotry, are still waiting on the PEPT, nay the Nigerian judiciary, to point the way forward for Nigerians.
What happens at the PEPT will either dismantle or legalize an emerging obnoxious value system founded on bravado, violence, crime and arm-twisting, which are all against the recognized and established order of sanity, equity, justice, and rule of law in civilized and modern societies. The implication of the tempting new definition of Nigerian social order, if it happens, is that the elaborate document called the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will be worth less than the paper through which it has been delivered since such a development would have derailed and deviated from the recommendations of the document. This development, if it does happen (I repeat!), will be a disaster and the beginning of the end of the country called Nigeria irrespective of the fact that the slave masters have consistently put fears in the minds of Nigerians making them believe that the sovereignty of a country where the majority of people are enslaved is not negotiable
Addendum
I regard the skewed sovereignty logic of the slave masters as errant nonsense which does not reflect the true position of events in other countries around the world.
The sovereignty logic/issue will constitute the subject matter of our discussion for another day in The Kaleidoscope Achieves.
ABUCHI OBIORA
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