TAMBUWAL’S EMERGENCE
VERY little was hitherto known about Mr Aminu Tambuwal. His emergence as the Speaker of the House of Representatives in especially controversial circumstances has, however, shot him into prominence on Nigeria’s political landscape. His expression of interest in the office of Speaker of the lower legislative chamber was seen as a rebellion by the leadership of his party — the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Considerable pressure was brought to bear on him to give up the pursuit of his ambition but he was adamant to the very end. He effectively mobilised support for the realisation of his desired objective and a concourse of interests within the ruling PDP and the opposition political parties worked in his favour.
IN consonance with the power-sharing arrangement of the PDP, the office of the Speaker of the lower house had been earmarked for the South-West and the Senate presidency for the North-Central. As desired by the party, Mr David Mark retained his seat as Senate President but the House of Representatives acted in defiance of the party’s directive. Tambuwal from the North-West scored an overwhelming victory with 252 votes to 90 votes cast in favour of Mrs Mulikat Adeola-Akande, the party’s candidate from the South-West.
APPARENTLY rattled by the development, the leadership of the PDP went into a brain-cudgelling meeting the day after the election. While some members of the National Working Committee (NWC) wanted Tambuwal and his elected deputy suspended, the majority said they should be given a fair hearing. The subsequent meeting offered Tambuwal the opportunity to tender an apology which the NWC members accepted. Although embarrassed and left in a quandary, the leadership of the PDP accepted Tambuwal’s emergence as a fait accompli. It however said the party should be allowed to decide how the other vacant positions in the House should be filled so as to correct the imbalance created by the alteration of its zoning arrangement.
FOR different reasons, the support for Tambuwal cuts across groups and party lines. The PDP members predicated their position on the need for an independent legislature that will not be taking dictation from the executive in line with the principle of separation of powers. Those who lost out in the fierce contest for PDP’s presidential ticket expressed great excitement at the crushing defeat of the candidate anointed by the party on the basis of the zoning arrangement. To this group, which championed the emergence of a northern president, the party could not eat its cake and still have it by now affirming the zoning arrangement it did not enforce six months ago. On their own part, the opposition parties were reported to have thrown their weight behind Tambuwal because he was not the preferred candidate of the PDP.
Their calculation is that a candidate elected against the wish of the ruling party will not function in consonance with the whims of the executive arm of government.
THERE has been an extensive but needless lamentation over Tambuwal’s election as speaker by those who see it as a loss to the South-West. Two indigenes of the South-West — Mrs Patricia Etteh and Mr Dimeji Bankole occupied the office for six months and three-and-a-half years respectively from June 2007 to June 2011. What did the people of the zone benefit therefrom? Chief Olusegun Obasanjo ruled the entire country for eight solid years (1999 - 2007). What and where are the monuments for which he can be remembered in the entire geographical area? For the first time in its political history, the South-West moved to the “mainstream” of Nigerian politics in 2003 and remained therein for eight unbroken years. Not many benefits accrued to the people during the period. The immediate past House Speaker Dimeji Bankole has moved from the legislative chamber to the dock. Is he facing trial for the good things he did for the South-West? The achievements that distinguished the West from the rest of the country in the first republic were recorded under the administration of the defunct Action Group which was most of the time in opposition at the federal level. The mainstream politics of 2003-2011 has benefited only a negligible percentage of individuals and hardly the people.
To make all the difference, the current political leaders in the South-West must frontally tackle the problems facing the people, and commit themselves to selfless service. Wether in the mainstream or opposition, what the people need is the delivery of tangible democracy dividends in terms of funtional infrastructure, and transparency in governance.
THE POLICE HEADQUARTERS BOMBING
THE bomb blast at the headquarters of The Nigeria Police in Abuja on Thursday, 16 June, was the latest of such deadly assault on Nigerians by the outlawed Boko Haram Islamic sect. The sect, according to reports, claimed full responsibility for the attack – which left many dead Nigerians in its wake – and threatened to launch more deadly strikes in the Northern part of the country as well as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
THE chilling dimension to the latest bomb attack by the Boko Haram was the report that the sect deployed a suicide bomber to carry out the dastardly act. The driver of the car used for the operation was reported to have wilfully detonated the bomb that turned the premises of the Louis Edet House, headquarters of the Nigeria Police, into a massive funeral pyre.
WHILE the bombing has been attracting condemnations from Nigerians, its tragic reality that the evil of terrorism has crept into the country, however, is not lost. That the headquarters of the police, the agency charged with the security of Nigerians could be penetrated with such ease, portends great danger for the country. The Boko Haram, for some time now, has been terrorising some states in the North, particularly Borno and Bauchi, with the police appearing very helpless and making empty promises that they would uproot the evil tree that the sect has planted in the country. That the sect has now taken the war to the doorsteps of the police and wreaked such a devastating havoc is an admission of failure of intelligence among the country’s security apparatchiks, especially the police that are saddled with the bounden duty of safeguarding the country’s internal security.
IN our past editorials, we had warned about the danger of allowing the criminality of bomb attacks to become entrenched as a new culture. We berated the lax attitude of the country’s security agencies to issues that threatened national security and their apparent helplessness in such serious situations. What is particularly disheartening is that despite government’s assurances of safety, and being in charge, the terrorists seem to be unimpressed, as there has been no letting up on the orgy of violence.
From Maiduguri to Kaduna, Jos to Suleja, there has been no respite as the list of casualties has continued to grow with government seemingly prostrate.
CLEARLY, the Boko Haram strike at the police headquarters was a failure of intelligence on the one hand and indecision on the part of executives of those troubled states. It is not known if the members of the Boko Haram are spirits, but the sect members have been perpetrating the evil deeds in Maiduguri and Bauchi with such ease that it would seem that they are not humans, as only spirits can vanish without a trace. But the police in their handling of the serial bomb attacks have been acting as if they are dealing with ghosts. The patterns of attacks on Maiduguri are so similar that it should not take sound intelligence too long to piece them together. But the police, it would seem, have given up and resigned to fate.
HOWEVER while it is convenient to blame the Federal Government for the deaths, as it has the bounden duty of protecting the life and property of Nigerians, it is the duty of every Nigerian to end the evil onslaught of the Boko Haram or any such sect that preaches terrorism and prevent its spread by supplying the police and other security agencies with useful information that can aid them in their work. There should also be inter-agency collaboration, as it has become certain that the police alone cannot contain the evil spread of terrorism. The office of the National Security Adviser, the State Security Service, as well as the military must unite in this fight against terrorism, while serious attention should be paid to the country’s borders, particularly in the North, which, at present, are very porous.
THE claim by Boko Haram’s Usman Alzawhiri that it was responsible for Thursday’s bombing is one that should be taken with all the seriousness it deserves. Before now, the Boko Haram menace had been limited to Borno and Bauchi states. This makes Alzawhiri’s claim, that it has sent agents to the 19 states of the North after undergoing training in Somalia to wreak, even more havoc worrying. President Goodluck Jonathan owes Nigerians the duty of not only guaranteeing their safety, but also ensuring that the citizenry is secured. This is the time to summon all security agencies to collaborate on intelligence gathering for the benefit of Nigerians. All those found to be implicated in the funding and provision of tactical support for the group must be decisively dealt with. A situation where members of an irreligious group is masqurading under whatever guise to terrorise other citizens should no longer be tolerated. All those arrested should be tried and punished to deter others while their sponsors must be unmasked.
PRESIDENT Jonathan must note that Nigerians have placed much hopes on his administration and that is the reason they voted overwhelmingly for him in the April elections. He should be decisive in his actions, especially in this fight against terrorists, who are bent on destroying the united foundation of the country. President Jonathan must not hesitate to bring the full weight of the law to bear on whoever is implicated in the bomb blasts. There should be no sacred cows, as the administration will continue to have the blood of slain Nigerians on its conscience should it fail to apprehend the criminals behind the bomb blasts and end the evil reign of the Boko Haram.
ISLAM, as we know it, abhors the killing of the innocent. The religion frowns on terrorism in whatever guise. We do not believe that the sect is promoting or fighting the cause of Islam. It is an evil that must be contained by all means. That is the reason why Nigerians, irrespective of their ethnic groupings or religions, must unite to fight the suicidal Boko Haram. Terror must not be allowed to determine what is acceptable; otherwise, the assault on the police headquarters will be a child’s play.
JONATHAN’S PARLEY WITH THE PARTIES
PRESIDENT Jonathan has repeatedly stated that he wants to establish an inclusive government. He has broached the idea of a government of national unity. He has also reached out to various associations and bodies in his bid to carry everyone along in the hope that the process of transformation of governance and economy, which he has promised the electorate, is owned by the people. Recently, he held a meeting with the leaders of opposition parties promising that he would not play “politics of discrimination but run a “collective government”. Leaders of all significant political parties, with the exception of the Congress of Progressive Change (CPC), were present at the meeting. The parties were also represented by their high political leadership.
DURING the parley, the president declared that building the country and making it great requires non-partisan collaboration. It requires the cooperation of all the political parties. The president stressed that he needs to cooperate with the political parties to “run a stable government”. He appealed to the leadership of the opposition parties to support his desire to set up “a government that will take the interest of the country at heart and work towards solving the problems that are dear to our people”. He even admonished the leadership of the opposition parties to impress it on their members in parliament to note that they are not in parliament to work for the president but for the good of Nigeria.
WHILE this move appear to be necessary and well meaning, it is important to look beyond the avowed basis of the president’s action to judge their implications.
Indeed, history suggests that the president’s justification of the need for a “collective government” is suspect. This is the case if the experiences of governments in Africa from the 1960s to the 1980s are anything to go by. It is also the case if we examine Nigeria’s experience since 1999 under democratic rule.
IN the immediate post independence period, the emergence of single parties and sit-tight rulers was based on the fact that multi-party politics was divisive, time wasting and distracting from the enormous and urgent challenge of development and nation-building. Many presidents originally tried to incorporate the opposition and when this did not work resorted to highhandedness and repression. In the end neither remarkable development was achieved nor was the parties institutionalised. Rather power was personalised and human rights abuses, corruption and economic mismanagement became the order of the day. Jonathan’s reference to the need to shore up the aspiration of Nigeria to represent Africa in an expanded security council given the “political crisis in Egypt”, is very reminiscent of this tendency.
SINCE the return to democratic rule in 1999 the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has succeeded in dominating government by incorporate elements of the opposition parties. This process of incorporation begins with a suggestion of a government of national unity or the need to join hands with the government to develop the country. A few members of the parties are offered ministerial or special advisory positions in government. They eventually cross carpet or become agents of conflict within their original parties. This strategy helped in no small measure in circumscribing the Alliance for Democracy and the All Nigerian Peoples’ Party during the first and second terms of this Fourth Republic.
GIVEN that history renders the current move by President Jonathan suspect, we call on the opposition parties not to mortgage their future possibility of wrestling power from the PDP for a cheap mess of porridge that they may gain by securing political appointments for their members under this PDP led government. Unlike in previous elections the opposition parties have been able to deny the PDP of an absolute majority in both chambers of the National Assembly in the 2011 general elections. We think the time has come to consolidate pluralism and ward off the looming sceptre of one-party dominance that had been threatened by the PDP whose leaders have publicly declared their aspiration to rule for 60 years as Africa’s biggest party.
DEMOCRACY can only be consolidated if there are at least two strong competing parties in the country. This will enable power to alternate from one party to the other. Without such alternation we cannot be confident that we are on the path of democratic consolidation. The effect of alternation is that it establishes electoral contest as a non-zero-sum game. It will establish the reality that electoral contest is no longer a do or die affair.
THE ruling PDP, under President Jonathan, must be prepared to take responsibility for its actions. It must realise that the performance of the government will count in determining the outcome of the 2015 elections. The leadership of the opposition parties must continue to review critically and constructively the actions of the PDP government. They must also provide creative and innovative policy alternatives to the policies and strategies put forward by the PDP. They must establish their capacity and eligibility to rule by this means. Embracing the PDP government as advised by President Jonathan is likely to deprive the electorate the multiple options to choose from. There is high chance that they will be co-opted and their parties weakened.
0 comments:
Post a Comment