Mixed metaphors: The smell test

Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, last week declared his intention to run for the presidency of Nigeria in 2019.

But the ticket of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been zoned to the North, the party warned him, making him a priori ineligible.   But Fayose says he is ‘destined’ by God to be president, and will run.  Perhaps the PDP has not checked its mailbox for the memo.

The same PDP, remember, rigged Fayose back into office as governor in 2014, the plan caught on audiotape by the brave military hero, Captain Sagir Koli.

By 2014, Fayose was facing prosecution from his first governorship that included murder and mayhem in Ekiti, the kind of history we as a people we forget very quickly, to our detriment.

At the time Mr. Fayose “won” the Ekiti governorship three years ago, he was on trial by the police for murder, and by the EFCC allegedly for stealing N1.2 billion from the state treasury.  It also emerged that he may have authored a killer squad during his first governorship.

That Fayose claims to be seeking the presidency now is evidence of how much of a Baba Sala comedy Nigeria has become.  In normal-that is, PDP-style times-he would have been purchasing a Senate seat, having negotiated the terms of his departure from the governorship with the House of Assembly to include mansions, limousines, state security, annual overseas travel, and family medical care for life.

But a man of Fayose’s calculations knows the Senate won’t provide adequate bullet-proof protection for his track record of brigandage or his ego through two governorships.  In the presidency gambit, he is shooting for enough of the negotiation cards in a bigger game.

Fayose’s declaration is confirmation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s ineffectiveness as a leader.  This is not because he promises to trounce Buhari at the polls, but because it reminds you of just how long the Buhari administration has pretended to be a monster rather than a mouse.

Buhari’s poor record appears to be Fayose’s guarantee that the place to hide is in the open, where he can pretend he is not jail-bound.  It is a peerless demonstration just how brazen impunity has grown in two years.  It confirms that despite all propaganda, we are exactly whom we were.  Corruption is not fighting back; it never left.

Also last week, Nigeria returned to an old subject after achieving the sending of a Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, following 15 months of giving the world the impression the position is meaningless.

The new man, Tijjani Bande, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) of an “urgent” need, not for a more just world, but to reform the Security Council, describing its composition as “undemocratic.”

In poorly-prepared language, Professor Bande said, “Clearly, it is an anachronistic notion to have a body composed of few countries that can veto the entirety of the global community through the Council is not representative.

“It is an anomaly and I think that has been recognised but the politics of the reform not just of the UN in terms of the powers of the General Assembly and its functions.”

For an issue that is supposed to be important to her, Nigeria sounded unprepared.

To begin with, why does Nigeria speak to the world in New York through NAN when there is a press pool at the UN?  Yes, NAN is enjoying a rebirth in the hands of its current management, but it has little international presence, meaning that Prof. Bande meant only to speak to Nigerians.

This goes back to the character of Nigerian foreign policy.  Nobody knows what our goals are.  I have reported in the past of ambassadors telling me how difficult it is to obtain guidance from Abuja.  The scary truth is that with party officials and personal relatives taking the jobs of professional policymakers, our policy-making has rotted into nothingness.

That may be why, the tail wagging the dog, a Nigerian diplomat is reminding Nigerians in 2017 that the country wants to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

It is a legitimate ambition, but what is more important, and is at the same time a strong platform for seeking Security Council relevance, is the revitalization of the General Assembly.  What Nigeria ought to have done, years ago, is to develop an operational manual for her UN vision.  The UN is a slow turtle, and Security Council reform, when it comes, will be the achievement of those Member States which have put in the dogged digging.  A look at the work of such countries as Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan and even South Africa, is instructive.

For many years, South Africa has had a plan in place for her Security Council dreams; for which she uses, among others, Nigerian consultants with multilateral experience.  Nigeria has no such plan.

“This [Security Council permanent seat] journey, at the official level, started 25 years ago,” Bande told NAN, and “…it is the right of Nigeria and other serious nations to push and this is what other countries are also pushing.”

The truth is that Nigeria, unless she mistakes empty dreams for a plan, is not pushing anything.

Bande’s permanent mission staff in New York, for instance, consists of 32 persons.  This is comparable to France-a permanent member of the Security Council, with responsibility in every area of multilateral concern-with 38.

South Africa has only 20 persons and Ghana, 15.  Of the South Africa team, four are junior officers (indicating a clear policy to train young diplomats), and one Military Adviser.  Ghana’s delegation includes one Defence Advisor and one Police Advisor, but while Nigeria does not suffer even one junior diplomat, she has seven persons involved with Defence and Police.  That seven is larger than some entire delegations, and compares with Uganda’s total representation of 10 and Kenya’s of 13.

The question is whether Nigeria is three or four times more effective at the UN than those nations, or almost as effective as France, which assumes the presidency of the Security Council today with just six officials more.

So, what is Nigeria trying to achieve, multilaterally?  At the moment, the Permanent Mission in New York cannot even maintain its website, and most of its pages have not been updated for several years.

To thyself, Nigeria, be true.

Finally: Professor Itse Sagay, the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption (PACAC) who has in the past two weeks battled the Senate over their outlandish wages and allowances, and described some members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as “unprincipled.”

I fully support the chairman, but the problem is that it is the executive which is sabotaging its own cause.  The executive has failed to deliver on its promise of a robust, all-out anti-corruption offensive in which there are no friends and in which the guilty are sleepless.

Instead, there is literally a war of words propping up the same Nigeria of 2015, including the Senate and the APC.

That is why, you talk to anyone outside the executive and they ask you: What’s that smell?

Happy 57th, Nigeria!