“By doubting we come to question, and by questioning, we perceive the truth.” (Peter Abelard, 1079-1142)
Four Questions on ... Vice President Jonathan Goodluck
There was a period in the Yar’Adua presidency when the only thing we knew about the Vice President, Jonathan Goodluck, was what he wasn’t being or going to be doing. He wasn’t being sworn in as Acting President whenever Mr. President was away (or on leave).
He wasn’t going to be taking over as President if anything happened to his boss. He wasn’t saying much about the Joint Task Force activities in Delta State either. But suddenly, it’s all about the Veep: reading the riot act to Ministers, chairing the Presidential Steering Council on the National Integrated Power Projects, launching the re-branding committee on behalf of Mr. President, chairing the National Economic Council … these days, the Veep is everywhere, as though he really is a Very Important Political Person. Perceptor is intrigued. Perceptor has a few questions ...
1. IS the Veep a VIPP after all?
Well at first, you might think that the way the Mr. Veep has been getting all this exposure now could very well mean that he is, or has become one. Perceptor remembers that there had been insistence in some parts of the country that if anything were to happen to Mr. President, Mr. Veep would not be allowed to stand in for or to complete his term, since he comes from the wrong geopolitical zone of the country. But now that Niger Delta militants have got the country by the throat, is there perhaps some realisation that if the Veep is seen being forced from office (not of course, that anybody expects anything to happen to Mr. President) even those Niger Delta militants who might be persuaded to lay down arms as a result of Mr. President’s amnesty offer, could get angry all over again? Could the thinking be that one way to avoid that is to stroke the Veep’s ego well, very well?
2. Or is he being set up as the fall guy?
The things that Mr. Veep is being headlined for, Niger Delta, Power Supply, Vision 2020 – are ... tough. Very tough. Perceptor hopes that there will be some good results for him to report. But right now, on each one of those issues, things are worse now, than they were when Mr. President and the Veep came to power two years ago. Hmmmmmm.
3. Or is he the only one left who might be able to achieve results?
It could be, Perceptor speculates, that things are now so very bad that it’s clear that Mr. President isn’t going to be able to breathe any life into them. So perhaps Mr. Veep is being wheeled out because he has suddenly acquired the personality (Perceptor means, has suddenly and belatedly been recognised as having had the personality all along) needed to drive the administration’s agenda (such as it is) forward? Let’s hope that Mr. Veep has magic to pull something out of the hat ...
4. So, how will we know if the Veep has been able to perform?
The Veep was front and centre in the mid-term review of the Federal Government’s programmes, at which Ministers were warned that they would be held responsible for the success (or failure) of the march towards Vision 2020. Wisely there was no talk of the Seven Point Agenda because, as readers of this blog will know, Perceptor insists that a list of topics isn’t an agenda. But since the style of this government doesn’t seem to have anything to do with gradual progression towards a defined goal, instead, it’s a question of réculer pour mieux sauter – stepping back to make a better jump – or in other words, things get a lot worse before they then get a lot – or even a little – better (and we seem to be stuck in the ‘lot worse’ phase right now), given that propensity of our government, Perceptor wonders how Mr. Veep intends to measure whether the Ministers are performing or not. Will it be by how much better things have got? Or (on the réculer pour mieux sauter principle) by how much worse?
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Three Strikes and ... Comrade Governor ... is ...!
Of course, Perceptor knows that no matter how many ‘strikes’ a Naija politician makes, he (yes, he – Patricia Etteh’s case shows that there are different rules for women – one strike and you are GONE baby!) he is never out. He’s just like the Terminator in the movies. Still, Perceptor is getting concerned about some mis-steps by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole since he became Governor of Edo State, and Perceptor thinks that if we can’t stick with the baseball thing, we can at least do the football thing and show him a yellow card before he derails completely. Perceptor doesn’t claim to know whether he is doing a fantastic job in Edo State, it’s the externals that worry Perceptor. Now, before he won at the Court of Appeal, people were getting uneasy that even though he had won at the Election Tribunal, Comrade was rather too fond of hob-nobbing with characters such as ex-Delta State Governor James Ibori, but Perceptor was ready to overlook all that because after all, the man was waiting to assume power. Probably he had nothing doing, and we all know where the devil’s workshop is, don’t we? But now that he should be busy with Edo State, Perceptor is still uneasy ...
Strike ONE: Almost before the ink was dry on the Court of Appeal Judgment Comrade Governor popped up as part of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s Economic Crisis Committee, or whatever it was. Well, you may say, Mr. President probably wanted the workers’ point of view, and it would have been unpatriotic of Comrade Governor to decline. But since he joined the set-up, what has his contribution been?
Strike TWO: Comrade Governor was part of the team of governors who junketed off to the United States (didn’t he do enough travelling before he became Governor?) and then decided that it would be a good idea to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the John Kennedy School of Government to go on a course WHILE THEY WERE GOVERNORS! Well, The Guardian editorial has said all that there is to say about that bit of chicanery, and though the Comrade Governor has progressively distanced himself from the whole sorry affair – first he apologised, then he didn’t sign the Memorandum of Understanding (so what was he apologising for then?) - frankly Perceptor is just waiting for the claim that he wasn’t on the trip at all – but until that happens, just for being there, and for displaying a woeful lack of political judgment (until the furore, there was no apology was there?), Perceptor must count this as a strike against the Comrade Governor.
Strike THREE: Edo State treated June 12th as an ordinary working day. In fact, only Lagos and Ogun States declared June 12th as work free days in their states. Ogun State is a PDP state, but we all know that Governor Gbenga Daniels jumped into that party because the powers-that-be in the Alliance for Democracy had decided that Segun Osoba would be their candidate for Governor in 1999, and anyway, Ogun State is MKO Abiola’s home state. In Lagos State, there is enough political nous and savvy to understand that there need to be issues around which opposition groups can coalesce, and as the heart of the actual struggle, definitely June 12th was going to be marked in Lagos State. But what happened in the other AC state, Edo State? NOTHING! Perceptor is afraid that not only is this a THIRD STRIKE but that it forces Perceptor to remember the Comrade Governor’s (lack of) role during the actual June 12th saga. Of course, we’ve now heard Paschal Bafyau – then NLC President – and his self-serving explanation about why Ibrahim Babangida annulled the presidential election, but the embarrassing truth is that Comrade Governor’s name didn’t feature much in the June 12th struggle at all! It was Frank Kokori of NUPENG whose was the name on everybody’s lips, and who will ever be associated with Labour’s fight on the side of the people, for democracy in Nigeria.
Well, Perceptor hopes there won’t be occasion for any more strikes on the Comrade Governor, but Perceptor hopes that he will change his ways and be a bit more careful about the company he’s keeping!
The Blame Game
*It turns out that it is the fault of oil firms in the Niger Delta who are responsible for the crisis in the Niger Delta. According to Niger Delta Affairs Minister Ufot Ekaette and other ministers and civil servants concerned, the oil firms have been negligent in their operations and caused oil spillage, gas flaring as well as water and air pollution. And it is this, together with their failure to live up to ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ to their host communities that has caused ‘youth restiveness’. This is all quite a revelation to Perceptor, who was under the impression that this country was being governed by persons who claim to have been elected as President, Governors and so on, appointing and directing the activities of such persons and agencies as Ministers, civil servants and the Nigeria Police Force. But it turns out that they don’t have any Responsibility at all, whether Corporate, Social or ordinary moral! No doubt these oil companies are the ones that keep on extending the date for prohibiting gas flaring, and it is certain that they are to blame for leaving the fines payable for continued gas flaring so ridiculously low that it pays oil companies for paying them. Frankly, Perceptor is not entirely convinced that this attempt to shift the blame for government’s own dereliction of duty will wash. But even if it does, Perceptor is bound – as is Perceptor’s nature – to ask: What does Government intend to DO about it?
*In March, the committee on power that is headed by the Vice President blamed an unknown generator-importing cartel for ‘frustrating’ power projects. At that time, the committee complained of attacks ... in the press! Perceptor isn’t sure whether it is these press attacks that prevented the unknown or unnamed from becoming known and named, or even more importantly, prevented the Vice-President’s Committee from being able to explain why the power supply situation has worsened since March, but all Perceptor knows is that in a country where several areas have been without power for months on end, generator-importers are perceived as saviours, not saboteurs! After all, nature abhors a vacuum, and if those blaming the generator-importers sat down and watched them sabotage the public electricity power supply without doing anything to stop them, whose fault is that? Are the generators being SMUGGLED into the country? Is CUSTOMS DUTY not being paid? Perceptor thinks that the practitioners of the Blame Game should remember that when you point one finger at someone, at least three digits are pointing right back at you!
Christmas is Coming
Perceptor is definitely looking forward to Christmas this year. Because Perceptor ceased to enjoy the services of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria quite some time ago, Perceptor is particularly looking forward to December, when Nigerians are to enjoy 6,000 mw of power according to Mr. President. But now, there is even more to look forward to! Mr. President has announced that peace and stability will return to the Niger Delta in six months, which, when Perceptor counts it, means Christmas!
Now Perceptor knows what you will be thinking. That Mr. President has made promises before, and has disappointed. That the more Mr. President and his minions keep talking about the 6,000 megawatts of power coming in December, the less power we actually enjoy right now. That the whole country will be on generator power by December. That Mr. President was in the middle of signing papers with the Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev for a joint venture between the NNPC and Russian energy giant Gazprom to produce gas for export, and that it might not be encouraging for the aforesaid joint venture’s prospects if there is still war, destruction and sabotage in the Niger Delta, so Mr. President kind of had to say what he said.
But Perceptor’s hope, belief and trust in Mr. President is set to rise, like a phoenix, from, well ... from the ashes of all his previous broken promises ...
Seven Point Agenda ... Update
As usual, Perceptor is baffled. The Yar’Adua administration insists that all is well with the Seven Point Agenda despite the scorn heaped on it by the new Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi and a host of others who have urged Mr. President to pick just one or two things and concentrate on those.
Rather cleverly, in Perceptor’s view, the government claims that one of the items on the agenda where things are going brilliantly is agriculture. Clever, because it probably knows that not many journalists are going to go to the rural areas to check whether agriculture really is booming or not, so they can invent as many statistics as they like. So gentle reader, you may ask: why is Perceptor baffled? Well, Perceptor is baffled because despite the reported, claimed or alleged boom in agriculture, Perceptor has not noticed any decrease in food prices such as might be expected if more crops were being grown. Well, perhaps the huge increase in output is being exported? Not according to CBN figures. So, if the increase in agricultural production isn’t producing reduced prices at home, and isn’t producing increased exports abroad, where can the increased production possibly be? Perceptor refuses to believe that it is only in the Yar’Adua administration’s imagination. No, it must be that what the farmers are doing is simply all refusing to sell their crops cheaply, but have all decided to increase their prices. That must be why prices haven’t come down. Unfortunately Perceptor is far too lazy to go to the rural areas to check, and what’s more, Perceptor’s back isn’t quite up to the bone shake, rattle and roll that any trip off the beaten path involves. Or that any trip even ON the beaten path involves, if it comes to it! (Although of course, rich farmers will probably soon insist that Build Operate Transfer chaps start their operations on roads to their villages because they can afford to pay the toll.) In any case, Perceptor expects that rich farmers will soon be coming into town to spend their surplus wealth on luxury items and see the sights, thus saving Perceptor the bother ...
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