It was an opportunity for Monguno to thump the Buhari government’s chest. President Buhari, said Monguno, is very happy about the “tremendous success” he has achieved in the fight against insecurity. “It is evident that a lot of successes have been recorded,” Monguno, known for his bombasts, announced. He based these “successes” on what he called the “large numbers of people surrendering in the north-east as a consequence of the relentless efforts of the armed forces, intelligence and security agencies.” Monguno went further: The president had also been “briefed” on the “emergency situation” of the ravaging hunger in the land.

“As far as he is concerned, it’s also an emergency situation that people should not be left to wallow in hunger, and in despair, this is something that he’s also going to look into. And he’s going to use all the necessary, all the relevant tools at his disposal to address the issue of widespread hunger,” said the Nigerian topmost security chief.

Monguno is taking us to class this morning as he has provoked the need to interrogate the concept of failure. What is failure? At what point in life is someone said to have failed? Is it ennobling to fail or, put differently, is failure noble? Is there any aesthetics in failure? In other words, should those who fail see some glamour in failure, or more succinctly, is there a philosophy of failure?

Ivan Moris, in his The Nobility of Failure: Tragic heroes in the history of Japan, examines what leadership failure means. Originally published in 1975, the book is a biography, the chronicle of the lives and deaths of nine Japanese, notable figures through the ages, who lived between the 4th to the 20th centuries. Historical individuals they were, confronted by overwhelming life travails, rather than continue to glamorize a slipping life, they each took the easy exit out by each taking one of three options. One, accepting that life was cruel in its unpleasant verdict against them, some chose to be executed in the hot battleground; others elected to be eliminated by ritual sacrifice, while some gave selves up to wither off in exile.

The Nobility of Failure is a narration of the rise and fall of some greats, figures who towered and still tower over Japanese historical and literary landscapes. It began with a tragic tale similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, of the story of Prince Yamato Takeru who died amidst a royal riddle. From it, Morris examined the death of kamikaze pilots during the World War II, down to individuals who straddled the Japanese world like a typhoon, like Saigō Takamori. Most of the stories that engage the book are of power struggles that involved powerful clans in Japan. They range from narrations of tragic heroes who made huge success at war fronts but who, at the end of the day, suffered huge casualties in betrayals. The downfall of many of them was also due to the fact that they found themselves on the wrong sides of history while many others fell so poignantly because they surrounded themselves with fawners who merely told them what titivated their egos.

While examining what yardstick Nigerians will or have been using to determine who is a failed leader, the Japanese model should be interesting to us. Most of the stories examined by Morris were marked by the fickle nature of those close to these leaders and how they brought destruction their ways. From the book, you will get away with the impression that Japanese seem to prefer a noble loser to a vindictive winner, no matter the wrong side of history they belonged. Splattered all over the book are narrations of the exploits of warriors who though won wars but who, ages after, are labeled villains, reviled and scorned by their people.

Now, using the Monguno claim of a Buhari who doesn’t want to end his tenure of office a disaster, a tenure soon to end in less than two years time, how feasible is this claim? My departing point of analysis is this famous song by late pop diva and ex-Regent of Ikogosi in Ekiti State, Bunmi Olajubu. Sang in the early 1990s and entitled Bata Mi A Dun Ko ko Ka, this song articulates what, in grim terms, are the features of success and failure, especially in the cosmology of the Yoruba people.

In the enviable world of the been-tos of the 1960s and 1970s Nigeria, what distinguished this class of people, who were just arriving Nigeria from their search for the golden fleece abroad, among others, was their stiletto shoes which made ko-ko-ka sound as they approached. This was markedly different from the uninspiring noise made by the salubata slippers of those who had no attainment, who didn’t go to school and whose approaching walks as they plodded on, in Olajubu’s song, was signified by the mere onomatopoeic perere noises of their slippers.

Olajubu’s measurement of failure and success can be broken down to the philosophical cause and effect. If a child goes to school and aspires as his peers were doing, in the Yoruba of the time’s explanation of the roots of success, his shoes will ultimately produce the ko-ko-ka sound. If, on the reverse, the child neglects this ancient wisdom and joins bad gangs, his slippers will invariably bellow out the uninspiring and irritating perere noise. This Olajubu song, whose patent belonged to pre-colonial Nigerian Yoruba homes, was one of the teaching aids deployed during this period to inspire children to go to school. Another was also Minister of Lands and Labour in Western Nigeria in 1952 under Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Joseph Folahan Odunjo’s poems in the Alawiye series which moulded most children of this period. These poems contained similar nuggets. If you see a multitude scorning education, don’t pattern your life after them; woe will betide such child, tears await a wandering child; so wrote Odunjo.

Using Olajubu as a paradigm and taking into consideration the Monguno’s claim of Buhari’s aversion for ending up in 2023 as a colossal failure, are the president’s shoes already sounding ko-ko-ka, making the perere noise or will ultimately do so?

Recently, I read Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media’s eulogy of his boss’ infrastructural interventions which he relishes as sine non qua non among contemporary Nigerian presidency. If you travel with Adesina on this route, you may easily be infected by this adumbration of what success is, assuming it to be the true meaning of success. Passengers who travel in Buhari’s commendable railway trains cannot but become prisoners of this mindset. 

For decades, successive governments watched the Nigerian railway system die.

Forget the insinuations that China is on a second slave raid of Africa and Nigeria is one of its captives with the multiple of billions incinerated to get these railways. Forget also that, judging by the age-long symbiotic graft culture of China and Nigeria, billions in graft must have lined the pockets of those entrusted the task of these railway projects. Forget also that though there is a railway route from Kaduna to Maradi in Niger Republic, there is not even a functional railway in Nigeria’s southeast, Buhari the master finisher, in the words of Adesina, has finished Nigeria with railways. Same suffices with the Second Niger Bridge, Lagos/Ibadan expressway and many others, a la Adesina. The question to ask is, are these what define a president as successful? Are they the indices, the observance of which makes a leader to escape being called a failure?

The truth is, as individuals, as a nation, as a state, as leaders, we determine whether we want to be successful, ab initio. In some other cases, we determine in our minds to be successful but unconscionably tread the path of failure. Take for instance the circumstance of young Muhammadu. History tells us that he started off as a cow boy, a herdsman if you like in today’s Katsina state. At a point in his life, he decided to tread a different route from his herder peers. He enrolled to go to school and passed out of secondary school. As he vied to write the Nigerian Army Qualifying exam in 1961 at age 18, his choice was to be a success as a military man. Coup had become Africa’s pastime then, with the overthrow of Togo’s Sylvanus Olympio and Nigeria’s Tafawa Balewa. Perhaps Buhari had in mind that someday he would be a General in the army and become a military Head of State. He was a success in this regard as he achieved the two ambitions. Many of his herder mates of the period in the village today cannot unbuckle his sandals and are spent and broken That is success.

Having been ridden roughshod upon in 1984 and torn off power like you do a sodden rag by Ibrahim Babangida and his coupist colleagues, Buhari apparently wanted to come back to power. Thrice when he was denied, he wept like a melancholic baby. Those who believed in him thought the tears were shed for Nigeria’s loss of his kind of leadership. Six years down the lane after he became president, the narration has assumed a teary dimension. The twine that binds Nigeria’s three dominant but fissiparous ethnic groups together has lost its tether under Buhari. Nigeria had never been this divided along ethnic fault lines since amalgamation and the challenges of the country had never received this level of ethnicization.

It will be selfish and uncharitable to lay all blames by the feet of Buhari. Nigeria was not wired to be peaceful by Britain. All that the colonialists wanted us to do, in the word of Immortal Bob Marley, was to “keep on fussing and fighting.” From Tafawa Balewa to Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerian rulers worsened the British quicksand Nigerian superstructure. But pre-2015, Nigerians still retained some modicum of affection, love and admiration for one another. All these things bright and beautiful, all our togetherness great and small, all the Nigerianness that were bright and beautiful, Buhari smashed them all into pieces. How did he do it?

His body language. Buhari is grossly insensitive to Nigeria’s diversity. First is that, most likely because he has complex for A-list aides, associates and ministers, his choice of cabinet members and aides is less than meritorious. He lusters in an assemblage of aides and advisors who have no minds of their own. Even Jonathan, with his burnished ignorance, didn’t possess that level of complex and surrounded himself with people who could hold their own in the world.

Second is Buhari’s rabid tribal bigotry. Pass mark for appointment into critical offices, for him, is region and religion. Daura is A-pass mark for Buhari. These less than forward-looking people he surrounds himself with, coupled with his limited oeuvre, is what signify what is called gravitation towards the path of failure. You cannot oscillate among a combine of failure and you won’t fail. For you to qualify to climb high in Buhari’s mind, you have to first and foremost be Fulani, from the North, then a Muslim. Thus, it is not unlikely that you will see passion-full people from Daura and environs clapping and saying rankadede to Buhari while he made a spiffy show of walking on Daura streets during Sallah.

The Controller General of Immigration, Muhammed Babandede, from Jigawa State, will be going on retirement on September 21, 2021, after initial extension of office by Buhari. Since its inception, the North has appropriated headship of that organization. When Buhari appoints Babandede’s successor presently, it will be another rankadede. That is how ethnic bigotry defines appointments into offices under Buhari, in contravention of global indices of adjudging leadership.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the Harvard Kennedy School in the United States, for instance, have concluded that Nigeria was at a point of no return and manifesting all signs of a failed nation. By extrapolation, Buhari is a failed leader, they insinuated. In the research conducted by their senior fellow and former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell and founding director, Robert Rotberg of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Programme on Intrastate Conflict and president emeritus, World Peace Foundation, they even maintained that Nigeria under Buhari was in its final phase and would eventually collapse.

Many of the afflictions that today plague Nigeria under Buhari are unexampled in modern history. Naira is far becoming a replica of the Zimbabwean dollars under Bob Mugabe, falling unaided like an acrobat. Hunger, which Monguno referred to, is wracking the bellies of Nigerians and lack had never been this pervasive. Forget that chest-thumping by Monguno, insurgency has almost crippled the north, with some parts of Nigeria in the hands of these jihadist bombers. So when Buhari and his commissars flaunt infrastructure as index of his success in office, they are either talking out of naivety or plain wickedness.

If Buhari didn’t construct a single meter of railway, no single kilometer of road, nor even a length of bridge but strengthened our togetherness as a people, even if he, like those Morris’ Japanese tragic heroes, was regarded as an infrastructural failure, he would be a noble failure. If this then is so, Nigerians, like Japanese, would be said to prefer a noble loser to a vindictive loser.

Dr. Festus Adedayo writes from Ibadan, Oyo State Southwest Nigeria 

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In a joint judgment, a three-man panel of the court expunged the requirement that Dasuki produced a Level 16 civil servant, who must own a property worth N100million within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as surety.

In the lead judgment, Justice Stephen Adah said the inclusion of civil servants as surety was an oversight on the part of the court.

He also ordered that Colonel Dasuki should instead; produce two sureties, with property worth N100 million within the FCT.

Colonel Dasuki, who is currently being held in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) despite being granted bail, challenged his continued detention since December 2015 before the Federal High Court in Abuja through a fundamental rights enforcement suit.

According to the July 2, 2018 judgment, the Federal High Court granted Dasuki bail but attached conditions, which the ex-NSA found too stringent to meet.

He asked the appeal court on that issue and sought a review of the bail conditions, a request the appellate court acceded to in its decision of June 13, 2019.

Part of the new conditions set by the Court of Appeal was that Dasuki produces a surety, who must be a Level 16 official in the Civil Service of either the Federal or state government, who must as well  own a property worth N100m within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Dasuki who also found this part of the latest conditions difficult to meet, returned to the court, via an application, and prayed for a further review.

He said in the application that it was difficult to find a Level 16 Civil Servant who could own N100m worth of property in Abuja through his legitimate earnings.

Justice Adah, in the Appeal Court judgment, said the court’s decision to request that Dasuki produce a civil servant as surety was an oversight.

“Of concern to us is that we as a court must be ready and sensitive enough not to do anything that will run against the laws of the land.

“The issue of involving civil servants or public officers in the service of the federation or the state in bail of people accused of offences has never been the practice anywhere that is civilised, and we should stop it at this level.

“It was an error that we allowed that to stay. So, it is in this respect that we will act ex debito justitiae (as a matter of right) ensuring that aspect of the condition is removed from the conditions of bail that were granted.

“It is in this respect that we grant this application, thereby inaugurating a new regime of bail. Bail is now granted to the appellant/applicant in the sum of N100m with two sureties in like sum.

“The sureties shall be resident within the jurisdiction of the trial court and each of which shall furnish evidence of ownership of the property in Abuja. This shall be the order of the court,” Justice Adah said.

Justices Abubakar Yahaya and Emmanuel Agim, who were also on the panel, agreed with the lead judgment.

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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), in a statement disclosed that Mr Metuh made the revelation before Justice Okon Abang.

The erstwhile publicity secretary was said to have explained that the fund was for “a special national assignment” in the run-up to the 2015 general elections.

Metuh is being prosecuted by the anti-graft agency along with his company, Destra Investment, on seven counts bordering on money laundering to the tune of N400 million.

Reacting to questions from the prosecution team, Mr Metuh emphasized that there was never an instance where former President Goodluck Jonathan directly paid any money to him.

He insisted that the N400 million was for the national assignment as directed by the then President.

Upon being shown the statement of his account which had N6.6 million before an inflow of N400 million into it on November 24, 2014, the former PDP spokesman informed the court how he disbursed the money which he said was for a national assignment.

He said there was an outflow of N7.5 million from the amount through a cheque to a company, CNC Connect on December 2, 2014, and another payment of N21.7 million to late Chief Tony Anenih and N50 million to Kanayo/Olisah.

On that same date, Metuh narrated that there was another outflow of N31.5 million to one Richard Ehidioha, adding that two separate payments of N200 million and N300 million were made to Daniel Ford International also on December 4, 2014.

Other subsequent expenditures, according to him, include payments to CNC Connect in the sum of N70 million on December 15, 2014; N25 million to Abba Dabo on December 16, 2014, and N5 million to Mrs Kema Chikwe.

Metuh also told the court that a final report he submitted to the former president had all the expenditures of the said N400 million, captured in receipts and signatures for all payment of monies in cash and through several accounts for the special assignment.

He said he had about 19 accounts of which more than five were in Diamond Bank, adding that he made an investment of $2 million in cash in ARM, through its official, Miss Nneka Ararume.

After the cross-examination, Justice Abang adjourned the matter until Monday next week for the continuation of trial.

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Fayose was re-arraigned on Tuesday before Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court Sitting in Lagos.

The re-arraignment follows the re-assignment of the case to Justice Aneke after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) expressed loss of confidence in Justice Mojisola Olatoregun, who was previously handling it.

Fayose was initially arraigned last October 22 on an 11-count charge of receiving and keeping N1.2billion and $5million stolen funds from the office of National Security Adviser (ONSA) contrary to the Money Laundering Act.

He was also arraigned alongside a company, Spotless Investment Limited.

At the Tuesday’s proceedings, the charges were read again to Mr Fayose and he pleaded not guilty.

Fayose’s  counsel, Ola Olanipekun (SAN) then applied that he should be allowed to continue to enjoy the bail earlier granted by Justice Olatoregun.

The EFCC counsel, Adebisi Adeniyi raised no objections and Justice Aneke subsequently admitted the former governor to bail on the terms and conditions earlier granted by Justice Olatoregun.

The court had  earlier Fayose bail in the sum of N50 million with two sureties in like sum.

The judge had also ordered that the governor Fayose  must deposit his passport with the court and must not travel out without the court’s permission.

At proceedings today, Justice Aneke ordered the release of Fayose’s Passport to enable him travel to South Africa for medical treatment.

The judge gave this order after considering an application filed by the former governor to that effect.

Justice Aneke directed that Fayose must return the Passport to the court’s deputy registrar on or before September 16.

He then fixed September 16 to 19 for trial.

The former governor is facing trial in connection with the sums of N1.299 billion and $5.3 million allegedly allocated to him by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) from N4.65 billion slush fund allegedly shared by the ONSA.

Already the EFCC has lined up 22 witnesses, in proof of its case against Fayose and his company, Spotless Limited, which is the second defendant, in the case.

The witnesses include: Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, Alex Otti, Ayotunde Owope, Salisu Shuaibu, Jamilu Uba, Imisi Ilesanmi John, Adekunle Adetimehin, Joseph Mechleb, Joseph Ghossen, Mechleb Maroun and Patrick Nimidam.

Others are: Adeyemi Oyindamola, Galatians Olugboyega, Taiwo Olumide Ogundemi, Olukayode Shokunbi.

Also lined up to testify are a Representative of Diamond Bank Plc and a Representative of Zenith Bank, as well as three operatives of the EFCC, Abubakar Madaki, Alexander Precious, Usman Alli, Jackson Edet and Nura Buhari.

The post Court Grants Fayose Permission To Travel Abroad first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

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