When the letter written by literary icon, Prof. Chinua Achebe, to President Olusegun Obasanjo rejecting the award of Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) conferred on him, was published, many keen observers of the Presidency’s past responses to such issues raised in that letter were certain that the same pattern of response would be adopted in the latest instance. Rather than address the critical and fundamental issues raised by Prof. Achebe, the Presidency went about “educating” him on the miracles being wrought by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
As usual, the loquacious Femi FaniKayode, the President’s Special Assistant (Public Affairs) was certain to issue the response. For one, he appears to have mastered the art of telling lies and abusing people who dared question Baba’s style of governance than offering genuine reasons why Nigerians cannot reap the dividends of democracy from a Government they worked hard to enthrone. It appears the President enjoys the way Mr. Fani-Kayode takes on his critics that he prefers him to his Senior Special Assistant (Media), Mrs. Remi Oyo or the Minister of Information and Culture, Chief Chukwuemeka Chikelu, both of who have a more temperate and mature way of defending Obasanjo’s many gaffes.
When again Mr. Fani-Kayode was chosen to respond to Prof. Achebe’s letter, one was, therefore, not surprised that rather than address the issues which the literary icon raised as his reason for turning down the second highest award the nation can bestow on any of its deserving citizens, the Presidency went about wiping up sentiments. Reading the Presidency’s response to the letter, one could not help but ask, what do these people in Aso Rock think Nigerians are? A bunch of fools?
Hear Mr. Fani-Kayode “.. .no matter how distinguished and resourceful a person you are and no matter how brilliant and gifted an individual you are, if you feel that your country does not deserve to honour you, then we believe that you certainly do not deserve your country”. Continuing, especially as regards the Presidency’s involvement in the political crisis rocking Anambra State, Mr. Fani-Kayode told Nigerians that “there is absolutely no involvement” of Mr. President in the crisis. He cited the presence of indigenes of Anambra State serving in the Federal Cabinet as his justification that the President is not taking sides in the crisis, or put differently, is not backing a faction to the crisis. Mr. Fani-Kayode wants Nigerians to believe that Prof. Achebe’s rejection of the award from a non-performing administration was a slap on Nigerians. Prof. Achebe may be resident abroad but he is certainly not out of tune with the realities of today’s Nigeria under President Obasanjo’s watch.
Before Prof. Achebe declined to accept the award from President Obasanjo, many prominent Nigerians had drawn Government’s attention to the deteriorating state of affairs in the polity. They had done this hoping that in a democracy such criticisms were meant to put the Government on its toes with the possibility of such issues being addressed. One of such persons is former Military Administrator of Kaduna State, Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar (rtd). He wrote to the President denouncing his style of leadership and pointing out the inherent dangers in him treating Nigerians as if they never mattered. Again, rather than address the germane issues he raised in his letter, the same Fani-Kayode, in his usual tirades told him to mind his business and that if he thinks such letters will make the President hand-over power to his constituency, he should think again. Col. Umar was accused of venting his anger on the President because Baba refused to grant his request for political patronage.
Just as the Achebe issue was raging, global graft watch, Transparency International, ranked Nigeria as the third most corrupt country in the world. What this ranking meant was that despite President Obasanjo’s anticorruption crusade, the nation is still to rid itself of the cankerworm. Nigerians, no doubt, know why this is so. The same Government, rather than own up to the failure of its war on corruption and the obvious fact that it has been paying lip-service to the fight against graft, accused the Berlin-based corruption watchdog of using “outdated” yardstick in arriving at its ranking of Nigeria as the third most corrupt nation in the globe.
It is doubtful if the same Government will not have celebrated it if the body had, using the same “outdated”
method, ranked Nigeria 100th most corrupt country in the world. Still there’s something for the President and his anti-corruption apostles to cheer about. Between 2002 and 2003, Nigeria ranked second on the corruption index. This year we came third. May be if President Obasanjo stopped using the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) as an instrument of witch-hunt rather than a truly anti-graft body, we could go down the ladder in subsequent years and may be one day rank 100. That is may be. For now, whether the President and his team like it or not, corruption, especially in the Presidency, is still very pervasive. This point was made clear recently by the National Economic Council (NEC), which said that the accounting system of the Federal Government was not transparent.
The council with Vice President Atiku Abubakar as its Chairman comprises the 36 State Governors, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the Chairman, Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission. In supporting a request for audit of the federation account and its revenue because of its murkiness, the Council said that nobody is sure how much we generate from oil as revenue. The council also spoke of the appointment of an Accountant General for the Federal Government in addition to the current Accountant General of the Federation. It insisted that the present arrangement does not favour the federating states. For the highest economic body in the country to pass such a verdict on the Federal Government’s accounting system and records shows how bad the situation is.
This was partly why we were adjudged very corrupt but for now let us return to Prof. Achebe’s letter. In rejecting the honour, the Author of the Best Seller, Things Fall Apart told the President that “for sometime now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own State of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence of the Presidency” in the crisis. He added that “Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 Honours’ List”.
Nothing can be more apt in describing the nation’s current woes than this conclusion from the renowned author and poet. Indeed Nigeria has never seen it this bad. Since the inception of the current democratic dispensation, prices of petroleum products have been on the increase yet prices of the crude in the international market keep rising. Our refineries are not working despite billions of naira pumped into the so-called Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM). Nigeria, the world’s sixth largest producer of oil, imports the product. There is fuel scarcity in both land and aviation sectors.
Kerosene, which is very important for the common man, is also scarce in the Niger Delta where crude oil is found in abundance. Same for Kaduna, which despite the presence of a refinery, still cannot boast of regular supply of petroleum products. Power supply is still epileptic notwithstanding that several billions of tax payers money has been sunk into the power sub-sector. Many prominent Nigerians, including members of the President’s cabinet and party, had been murdered in different parts of the country and the President’s comments, actions and inactions have left many wondering whether the killers are known but cannot be touched. More and more Nigerians are living below the poverty line. Many manufacturing concerns are closing shop daily. The nation’s roads are nothing but death traps. The President, rather than sit down at home to solve these problems, prefers to junket round the world in search of the elusive investors and offer unnecessary Chairmanship of World bodies such as the African Union and the Commonwealth, etc.
If one tolerates the Presidency’s claims that the economic hardships facing Nigerians today are as a result of the on-going economic reforms, certainly no sincere and serious-minded Nigerian would accept that the President is not partisan in the Anambra political crisis. It is a hollow talk to say otherwise. At the onset of the crisis in July 2003, when attempt was made to illegally remove Governor Chris Ngige from office, the President was away to Maputo. He was thus given the benefit of doubt that he did not know what his boys were doing back home. With the sacking of the Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) Zone Nine, Umuahia, Abia State, the late Mr. Raphael Ige, who led more than 500 heavily-armed mobile policemen to abduct the Governor, Nigerians tended to believe that Chief Chris Uba, the self-styled godfather of Anambra politics, was stretching his luck too far and was merely abusing his relationship, whatever that is, with the President.
But having watched events since then, particularly the President’s public utterances on national television on the issue, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice’s selective interpretation of the various court judgements and the order delivered by an Enugu High Court then presided over by Justice Stanley Nnaji and its so-called partial fulfillment by the Inspector-General of Police, only a fool will believe Mr. Fani-Kayode that the President is not taking sides in the crisis. Or how else can one explain the brazen disregard for the Order of the Appeal Court sitting in Enugu, which ruled, following an appeal by Governor Ngige, that the Justice Nnaji’s order should not be touched nor enforced in any form and that the Governor should not be prevented in any way whatsoever from the performance of his duties? How else can one explain that despite the sacking of Justice Nnaji over the order, the Governor’s security details, which were withdrawn in partially enforcement of his order, are yet to be restored?
How can one believe that the President is not supporting Chris Uba in the crisis when he moves about with dozens of mobile policemen and sometimes challenges the Governor of the State? Who would believe that the President is not partisan in the Anambra imbroglio when a court ordered the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) both at National and State levels not to hold any meeting in any part of the country for the purposes of electing a chairman for the State PDP and yet rather than challenge the order in an Appeal Court, Chief Chris Uba and his gang moved over to Abuja and purportedly elected one Mr. Uche Emordi as “chairman”.
Who does not know that the President has absolute control over the NTA?
In attempting to hoodwink Nigerians into believing that the President is not neck deep in the Anambra crisis, Mr. Fani-Kayode forgot to tell them that the President was backing Chief Chris Uba because his elder brother, Mr. Andy Uba, the President’s Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs, one of the Anambra indigenes in Obasanjo’s cabinet whom he mentioned, was being positioned for Governorship of the State come 2007. He forgot that Nigerians know that the Ubas are afraid that if Governor Ngige is allowed to make progress as he is doing currently, it will be a Herculean task upstaging him in
2007.
Most importantly, the National Judicial Council (NJC), having sat over a petition against Justice Nnaji, found him guilty of judicial recklessness and ordered his dismissal from service, which has since been effected and Justice Nnaji is somewhere in Enugu licking his wounds, yet the President and his Inspector General of Police are still obeying that order and still remains impartial in the Anambra crisis.
The role of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Chief Akin Olujinmi (SAN), in the entire matter also calls to question the President’s impartiality in the Anambra crisis as claimed by Mr. Fani-Kayode. Any court judgement that satisfies his master is quickly complied with and the ones against him or his boys are interpreted differently. What manner of impartiality is this? One does not have to come from Anambra State to know that the people are at peace with their Governor. Reports from the State show that the Governor has turned around the fortunes of the State. Salary arrears, which were owed workers/teachers during Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju’s era, have been cleared. Current salaries are paid as and when due.
Pensions are said to be paid on the new rate of 142 per cent. Gratuities are, for the first time since the creation of the State in 1991, being paid to retired workers. One report said that a massive road construction programme is being executed by the Governor. Same for other sectors like water, security of lives and property and prudent management of resources. Schools, which were at a point closed for one calendar year on account of unpaid salaries, are open and running. Yet the Governor is not receiving special allocation from either the federation account or from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). So, rather than support these efforts, which reports further said, have restored the name of the President’s party in the State, Governor Ngige is being hounded. His offence being that he has refused to open the State Treasury to looters.
This writer is not holding brief for Governor Ngige or Anambra State neither is this write-up meant to serve as a public relations piece for the embattled Governor, but one cannot help but respond to the Presidency’s reaction to the complaints made by Prof. Achebe in his letter to President Obasanjo. The Presidency could do better. The President could have written Prof Achebe personally explaining the situation of things and assuring him that he means well. Prof. Achebe is respected globally and so are his comments. What the Presidency issued through Fani-Kayode lacks merit and at best pedestrian.
The concerns raised by Prof. Achebe in his one-page letter are genuine and many Nigerians share his observations. Rather than write another The Thouble with Nigeria, Prof. Achebe prefers to summarise the current troubles brought about squarely by inept leadership in a one-page letter; a letter that is concise and completely accurate. It does not matter if the President agrees or not, Nigeria’s condition today is too dangerous for men of honour to keep quiet. Prof. Achebe is one of such men and he has spoken. He is respected locally and internationally. So are his comments and opinions. The investors President Obasanjo is looking for will read him. They will also believe him and stay away from Nigeria.
The President has to convince him, Nigerians and indeed the international community that he understands the pains of his countrymen and women and that he is making genuine efforts to address them. He should stop ridiculing the esteemed office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by backing some renegades in Anambra State who are bent on milking it dry and leaving it pauperised. The President should rise up to the challenges of leading Africa’s most populous nation out of its current socio-political problems. He has to respond critically and convincingly through concrete actions to such criticism as the one from the respected Prof. Achebe. If he cannot do that he should stop the likes of Fani-Kayode from insulting the sensibilities of Nigerians with this type of hollow ritual. It is nauseating.
