APC Stupid Blunder

Let me start out by saying that I am no fan of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, and based on current performance index, I do not believe he deserve to win a second term. My missive today however has more to do with the blunder of his political party opponents than anything GEJ has done or is doing.

What APC did recently beggars belief and may cost them the opportunity of becoming a viable opposition to People’s Democratic Party vice grip on Nigeria political terrain. Imagine your political opponents are locked in a deadly schism. The implosions are public and comedic. One of the leaders of your party opponent, an ex president wrote a scathing damning letter to his party’s current president and made the missive public. This was before your party opponent governors decamped to your political party and made it a condition that you have to meet with some of the scions of their erstwhile party. The list of the people you are asked to meet consist of the folks you have successfully ran against and won elections by labeling them as satanic politicians. You then sheepishly agreed to these conditions and then set out to meet with these characters at their respective abode.

Permit me to state that the essential gripe of the arrow head of this diatribe against the sitting president by the letter writer's own admission is that the sitting president allowed the oppositions to win a free and fair election in his enclave when the president should have rigged the election in favor of their party!

If this scenario appears to you like a bad Nollywood script and stranger than fiction, you are not alone. But sadly, it is very true. The fledgling opposition party in Nigeria made a serious blunder this month when it decided to meet with former president Olusegun Obasanjo. What they stand to gain from that meeting beats me and why they trudge to his enclave remains a mystery. It is not that the governors who championed the visit have anywhere to run to if the leadership of APC refuses to meet this ludicrous demand. What is more, at the end of the meeting they gained nothing!

As Professor Wole Soyinka rightly stated “the opposition party's approach as [is]lacking in moral focus and tantamount to political prostitution” . It was also downright stupid and I am sure they will rue the day they made that journey to Ota. 

Nigerian Civil Right Activist Wins Human Right Award

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HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDS HONOR THREE

Student, individual and organization receive City’s first award

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A North Central High School student, member of the City Public Defenders Office and the NAACP were honored Thursday morning as the inaugural winners of the Spokane Human Rights Award during a ceremony in City Hall.

Winners were announced in three categories: individuals, youth (under 21) and organizations, for their commitment to promoting human rights.  The winner for the youth award is Purnima Karki, a North Central High School student.  The individual winner is Francis Adewale with the City of Spokane’s Public Defender’s Office and the organizational winner is the Spokane NAACP.  All of these awardees have worked diligently in 2013 to promote human rights in Spokane. 

“It has long been our goal to honor the individuals and organizations who make a difference every day in our community,” Lisa Rosier, chair of the Spokane Human Rights Commission said. “Now we are able to say thank you with the City’s first award recognizing the citizen’s commitment to human rights in Spokane.”

The Human Rights Commission strives to promote and secure a mutual understanding and respect among all people.  The Human Rights Awards were created to recognize the outstanding commitment of those who support human rights and make a difference in Spokane.

Karki, a refuge from Nepal, has dedicated her time to acting as an interpreter for the Nepali community and helping this community understand American culture and what they need to do to become a citizen. She also volunteers her time weekly to read to students at Holmes Elementary. She was nominated by Paula Korus.

Adewale, an assistant public defender, helped people from different nations integrate into our community and connected refuges to resources and information.  He was instrumental in hosting an annual training symposium at Spokane Falls Community College to help refugees and immigrants with the basics of state law, and participated in a street law program on the weekends to help low-income people with a variety of legal issues.  He was nominated by Kathy Knox.

The NAACP has been instrumental in promoting diversity in the community, sponsoring and producing the annual Martin Luther King Jr. march in Spokane. Members of the NAACP participate in a variety of social events every year to promote human rights and social justice. 

Presenters at the ceremony included Mayor David Condon, City Council President Ben Stuckart, Tony Stewart from the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations and Lisa Rosier from the Human Rights Commission.  Transitions New Leaf Bakery provided breakfast.

The State of the Nigerian nation

"We have reached a moment in time when the national condition seems neither
lifeless nor deathless. It’s like the barren but sensuous serenity of the
natural world in late autumn, before Thanksgiving, containing the promise of
rebirth and the potential for resurrection."-anon

I am so saddened by the current state of affairs in Nigeria that I feel like drowning my lap top in my bathtub. Not only has the leadership failed the people but the people of Nigeria themselves leave a lot to be desire. No one is speaking against evil. Crime after crime, daily kidnappings, armed and pen robberies, the society just moved on. We are now so impervious to things that we do not care anymore. It is sad and saddening indeed.

When you need a panel to fire a corrupt Minister you have failed as anti-corruption crusader

"Nations have been known to survive in a state of advanced decay or through merely living on the brink. Some are dubbed banana republics, others client nations to more forceful and productive ones. They carry out orders which may or may not coincide with the interests of the people who constitute the nation. “ – Wole Soyinka (2011)


The problem with Oduahgate is not just the level of impunity exhibited by the leadership of Nigeria in every strata but the brazen stupidity of the bureaucrat we employed to man the gate. The defense of indefensible is laughable. The denial of the obvious is ludicrous. The cover up is criminal. We are at a point in our democracy where corrupt politicians need to know that the people of Nigeria may not have power to remove them through the ballot box due to the corruption of the electoral process but we do have power to embarrass and shame them.

The fact that the mainstream press initially shy away from the story is in itself telling on the complicity of the press in Nigeria. Without the ever present vigilance of the burgeoning blogosphere in Nigeria, we may as well give up on our democracy. The valiant work of the likes of Saharareporters and others should be commended. Sometimes they get it wrong and we rightly excoriated them, but in the long run the internet self publishing journalism has saved us more than our mainstream press have done. Their fearless work in mobilizing the citizenry against corruption in the governance of Nigeria should be commended. This is not however to say that we do not need the mainstream press. Their reach cannot be understated. It is heartwarming that they immediately jumped on board as soon as it was apparent that the scandal of overpriced bullet proof car for an aviation minister who celebrate deaths on our airways is for real.

The question is what is next. Many have asked that the president should suspend the minister. I concurred. This will follow the precedent set with former minister, Adenike Grange and Gabriel Aduku. This is the standard worldwide. You don’t allow a suspect to guard the crime scene. There is prima facie case that a crime was committed, the president appears to have agreed, what should follow is suspension. Nothing more and nothing less, every day the minister spend in that position give her opportunity to tamper with evidence, intimidate witnesses and interfere with investigation. The panel set up by the president is at best a ruse and a cover up. Members of the panel are neither prosecutors, lawyers of law enforcement. The NSA chief is incapable of identifying a crime if it smacks him in the face. The other panel member is a military officer and former head of service. To quote one recent writer “What's needed is expertise, patience, and methodical reasoning.” These have long since banned from Goodluck Jonathan administration.

Nevertheless, this scandal is a big test on President Goodluck Jonathan readiness to defend the integrity of our democracy and fidelity to our constitution, if he failed to dispense justice in a bid to protect his hirelings we should be ready to expose his regime for what it is: corruption ridden malfeasances!

We need to continue to put pressure on the president and the national assembly to expose every facet of corruption in Nigeria. Our future and the future of democracy depend on it.

When the Hunter Became the Hunted: The Ironic case of Olagunsoye Oyinlola

“History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior. -Vladimir Putin

There are some Nigerians who enjoy the coterie of power so much so you can’t remember when they were ever out of the loop of power. They are the AGIP-Any government in power- group. They are constantly moving up in governmental circles; in fact they will do anything to stay in power. They have little or no scruple or principles; they abuse those who dare criticize their masters. They are always available to be use to launder the image of whoever the traducers in power might be. Among these motley lots is my state former governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola (I say Prince guardedly as that is what he now wishes to be called, even though he was a former military man turned militricians).

Oyinlola has been within the circle of governance in Nigeria since 1993, holding the levers of power as military administrator (Lagos State), governor (Osun State) or national secretary (People’s Democratic Party). In any and all of these positions there is nothing you can point to as achievement during his misrule. On the other hand, there are abundance of evidence pointing to corruption, abuse of power and anti-democratic tendencies. For example, in September 2009, a spokesman for the United Action for Democracy (UAD) accused Oyinlola of being the 'chief conspirator' in the alleged murder of Kudirat Abiola, wife of the acclaimed winner of the 1993 presidential election Chief MKO Abiola, who was assassinated on the road between his (Oyinlola’s) office and that of the Canadian High Commission.

In July 2009, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, banned Igbo people in Osun state from parading themselves as Eze Ndigbo (king of Igbo), an unprecedented executive overreach. In his words he did this “in order to protect the Igbo culture and traditional institution from ridicule.” At the same time, he sought constitutional responsibilities for traditional rulers in the country, something outside the current constitution, he had sworn to protect and defend. He used the levers of power to hound his opponents as governor of Osun state, so much so that at one time he practically put the state capital on lockdown for more than 48 hours in other to stop the opposition party from campaigning against him. He empowered the local government administrator he handpicked to ride roughshod over the citizen of the state with impunity, and one of them actually crush the skull of a respected citizen of my hometown-Ilesa. He used his power as state governor, to detain and brutalized his then opponent, who is now the current governor of Osun state, Comrade Rauf Aregbesola. In April 2009, as national secretary of PDP, Next magazine reported that Olagunsoye Oyinlola was caught on tape telling local PDP politicians he would supply army uniforms, arms and ammunition so they could rig the runoff elections in Ekiti State. I could go on and on, but you get my drift, the lists of his misdeeds are endless.

Now fast forward to present interesting times. After 20 years of hobnobbing with the rich and almighty in Nigeria, he has now found himself out of corridor of power for the first time in over 30 years. Not only is he out of power, he is also getting a huge dose of what he doled out to democracy activist when he was in power. His new PDP has been locked out of their secretariat contrary to an order of court which expressly prohibits police officers from interfering in intraparty brouhaha. He is now constantly watching over his shoulders as he could be arrested by agents of President Goodluck Jonathan and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur-the party chairman. He is hunted by the ghost of his past and the realities of his present. He is as much a wanted man as he once made many who oppose his misrule.

The ironic thing here is that he now runs to some of us in the prodemocracy activism in Nigeria to rescue him. And sadly, we have to defend him. As our principles, especially on freedom is not hinged on who is being deny the rights we are fighting for but the very existence of freedom itself! The fact that Oyinlola is suddenly a “democrat” at least for the moment, matters little to the fact that freedom endures. He is now ruing the misrule at the center, attacking his party boss with the constitutions, the same paper he never read but used to wrap “akara” and “boli” when he was in power. Let me made it abundantly clear though that the irony is only lost on him.

I think it was Vladimir Putin (himself a dictator) who was quoted to have said “History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.” I wonder why they never learned this homily when they are in government. Irony does writ large at these interesting times of mankind history.

Impending book publication

As I make final preparation for my new book launch, this quote came to mind:

“Outside of a dog a book is a man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”- Mark Twain

Where are the Nation's Leaders???

There was a time when people look to Nigeria for leadership in all spheres. In recent years, leadership in Nigeria is in the negative ...(cont'd)