Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Godfatherism

​Professor Jibrin Ibrahim's article is rhetorically titled : Can Nigeria End the Politics of Godfatherism? He began to answer his headline's question interrogatively : Is Nigeria a shadow State controlled by criminal gangs and godfathers? In what would appear to be answer to the latter question, Jibrin recalled a January 2008 incident when Senator Nuhu Aliyu, then Chairman of the Senate Committee on Security and Intelligence threatened to expose names of criminal members of the Senate. Senator Nuhu Aliyu, professor Jibrin Ibrahim disclosed, was coaxed into silence by the then Senate President, David Mark. Thus, the question of if Nigeria is a shadow State controlled by criminal gangs and godfathers was not resolved.

​On godfatherism, Jibrin made reference to Effort Emeka as godfather of Anambra State politics in 1999 and who, in the Federal elections of 2003, was succeeded by another godfather, Chris Uba. Although professor Jibrin Ibrahim postulated that, since 2011, the power of citizens had outgrown that of godfathers in Nigeria, he expressed doubt if godfatherism had ended in Nigerian politics. His doubt is premised on the arrest, in 2018, of a professional kidnapper named, Chukwudebem Onwuamadide, alias Evans, who claimed to have earned $50million from kidnapping with which he planned to contest for the governorship of Anambra State in 2019. Professor Jibrin recalled also that the most legendary Nigerian godfather was late Oloye Olusola Saraki of Kwara State, who handed the relay stick of godfatherism to his son, Bukola Saraki, who effectively practised it in Kwara State until 2019 elections. Answering the question on the title of his article, Professor Jibrin Ibrahim concluded, "It is too early to make the pronouncement that Nigeria is no longer a shadow State controlled by godfathers but Nigerians can end the politics of godfatherism." I have summarized Professor Jibrin Ibrahim's article in order to show that he was not writing a history book of Nigerian political godfathers in which as a rule he ought to mention, if not all, important names of political godfathers in Nigeria. In a dialogue forum of this nature, nothing obstructs an interested discussant to submit or add names of omitted political godfathers in Nigeria to the ones already named by Professor Jibrin Ibrahim in his article. One may recall that the case of Lamidi Adedibu against the governor of Oyo State, Rashidi Ladoja, was of the same nature as that of Chris Uba against the Governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chris Ngige. Both Adedibu and Uba demanded to share security votes with the governor of their respective State and when the governors refused, they were removed from office by force with the aid of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Fortunately for Professor Ibrahim, he is not of Yoruba ethnic group, therefore, the intellectual ethnocrats on this forum could not accuse him of intentionally omitting the late Lamidi Adedubu's name from his list of political godfather in Nigeria on ethnic ground.

I consider it incidental that Professor Jibrin Ibrahim only mentioned Effort Emeka and Chris Uba of Anambra State as examples of political godfathers in Nigeria between 1999 and 2003. In order to illustrate the involvement of criminals in politics , he also mentioned a professional kidnapper arrested in 2018, named Chukwudebem Onwuamadike, alias Evans, who admitted to have earned $50 million as ransom for the purpose of contesting for the governor of Anambra State in the 2019 election. Emeka, Uba and Onwuamadike are ethnic Igbo from the same State in the Southeast. Professor Okey Iheduru, being an Igbo ethnic person self, would not accept that Professor Jibrin Ibrahim should choose mostly Igbo persons from Anambra State to illustrate the practice of political godfatherism in Nigeria. In his not only the Igbo play godfatherism in politics response, Professor Iheduru fired the salvo that Jibrin "should not be taken seriously because he omitted to mention Sir Ahmadu Bello (the Sardauna of Sokoto), Chief Obafemi Awolowo, or the Jagaban BAT - Bola Asiwaju Tinubu, the grandfathers of godfatherism." No one can miss the fact that Professor Ibrahim's article limited his consideration of the period of politics of godfatherism in Nigeria only to 1999 and years later. Yet, Professor Iheduru, for reasons best known to him, thought it was wrong of Professor Ibrahim not to have mentioned Ahmadu Bello who was murdered in the coup of 15 January 1966 and Obafemi Awolowo who died on 9 May 1987. Professor Iheduru's reference to Bello and Awolowo as grandfathers of godfatherism, which he erroneously classified as omission by Professor Jibrin Ibrahim,  would have made sense if both were still alive in 1999, the year from which the author of the article chose to begin his essay on godfatherism in Nigeria. Astonishingly, Professor Okey Iheduru is not disputing that Effort Emeka and Chris Uba were not political godfathers in Anambra State, his only grouse is that Jibrin did not name enough of other tribes as political godfathers in his article. That was the main reason why Professor Iheduru had to add the names of Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo, who were political colleagues of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Dr. Michael Okpara, without telling readers what they did to qualify as grandfathers of Nigeria's political godfathers? Riding on the ethnic motivated assertion of Professor Iheduru, Professor Moses Ebe Ochonu spat fire and furry thus, "Forget hypocritical and duplicitous pundits who write about Godfatherism but will not mention Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a.k.a Hameed Sangodele, the biggest godfather in contemporary Nigerian politics, who is a cocaine trafficker, certificate forger, and an imposter to boot." Expressing himself in present tense, Professor Ochonu says that Tinubu is a cocaine trafficker and a certificate forger. Questions that beg for answers from Professor Ochonu are : from where and to where is Tinubu currently trafficking in cocaine? If Professor Ochonu has evidence that Tinubu is a cocaine trafficker, why has he not reported Tinubu to the law enforcement agencies of the country from/to which he, Tinubu, is trafficking cocaine? Is there any ongoing court trial of Tinubu for certificate forgery? Has Tinubu ever been tried and convicted for cocaine trafficking and certificate forgery? If the answer is yes, where and when? The accusations of drug trafficking and certificate forgery levied against Tinubu by Professor Ochonu are very serious and weighty and unless he can produce evidence to support his case he, Ochonu, is liable to be named as, what the Yoruba people call, ÒSÓNU, meaning an ill-minded or ill-natured person, better known in pidgin English as bad belle. Professor Jibrin Ibrahim's reaction to his critical ethnocrats is to brand them silly, prompting Professor Segun Ogungbemi to ask him to retract the expression, silly, as if the word is more terrible to apply to someone than calling a person a cocaine trafficker and a certificate forger.

​Nigeria's political and economic problems are caused by Nigerian intellectual ethnocrats because public officials, whether elected, selected, appointed or employed are all ethnocrats. They lay claim to offices in the name of their tribes even though they serve neither their tribes nor the nation in general but themselves. Nigerian intellectual ethnocrats are more concerned about the ethnic language spoken by officials rather than their competence and efficiency in producing goods and services their offices are created for. When the then Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, on 27 May 1967 sliced the existing four regions into 12 states, the political epithets Northerner, Westerner, Easterner and Mid-Westerner were thought  to have been buried for ever. With proliferation of State creations that bequeathed Nigeria with her present day 36 States, the country in reality is a United States of Nigeria. Nevertheless, Nigeria's intellectual ethnocrats insist on sharing offices along federal character of incompetent, inefficient, corrupt and roguish ethnic groups. Whenever a corrupt and roguish public servant is arrested, intellectual ethnocrats will jump up to defend the criminal official on the ground that other criminal officials are not arrested at the same time. Professor Jibrin Ibrahim wrote an article on how the politics of godfatherism can be ended in Nigeria and intellectual ethnocrats flared up. They lampooned and vilified him for not listing all Nigeria's political godfathers in history as if to say by doing so will end the politics of godfatherism. I beg to disagree.

​S. Kadiri

​

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Skickat: den 21 april 2019 22:14
Till: 'chidi opara reports' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Godfatherism

 

Yes silly it is to make a social scientific argument that godfathers cannot be discussed outside what PDP intellectuals consider to be their Tinubu problem. My attitude is to respond to those who respond to my arguments rather than a narrative of theirs they have constructed about why they think i write. Nonetheless, I do not question the right of all those who so wish to build and destroy their straw man.

  

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

On Sun, 21 Apr 2019 at 21:01, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdullah@gmail.com> wrote:

Ex-comrade Jibo the physician! Please heal thyself: takes a silly dude to identify same! 

Sent from my iPhone

On 21 Apr 2019, at 15:10, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:

Oga Jibo,

This isn't an argument. It's akin to an offender justifying his current transgressions by arguing that he had been fair in a previous transaction. A previous "good" deed does not atone for a current "bad" deed.

To write about "godfatherism" in Nigerian politics and omit Bola Tinubu is legitimate cause for censure. I thought you would defend his exclusion from your article with logic instead of invoking a previous article in which you criticized Adams Oshiomhole and the APC as a cover.

I find that reasoning faulty on so many levels. First, you assume that people read everything we post here. No, they don't. People are infragibly wired to be selective in what they expose themselves to. I for one have no idea what article you're talking about.

Even if people have read the previous article you're referencing now, they are justified to expect, at the very least, a pretense to scholarly thoroughness in your article given your admirable pedigree. You can't exclude Tinubu in an article on political "godfatherism" in Nigeria and expect people who are interested in this topic not to be alarmed. This isn't about petty political partisanship; it's about basic scholarly decency. Until you come out to openly repudiate everything you ever stood for--cosmopolitanism, analytical rigor, careful scholarship, etc.--people will continue to call out what they see as your descent to the sort narrow, knee-jerk, primordial loyalties you spent a great part of your career railing against.

Farooq

On Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 7:19 AM Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com> wrote:

Too many silly people on this platform, why did you all keep quiet when I castigated Adams and the APC people just three weeks ago?

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

On Sun, 21 Apr 2019 at 04:01, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

Okey,

Forget hypocritical and duplicitous pundits who write about Godfatherism but will not mention Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a.k.a Hameed Sangodele, the biggest godfather in contemporary Nigerian politics, who is a cocaine trafficker, certificate forger, and an imposter to boot. No, he is the one whose name must not be mentioned in association with any evil, even when he is the poster boy of that evil, because he is an ally of Baba, our Dear Leader. These are the same pundits who will write about electoral malpractices in the Kano gubernatorial elections but praise the equally shambolic and brazenly rigged presidential elections two weeks prior and would even state in their current column without a hint of self-judgment that Nigeria has made strides in electoral integrity since 2010. We knew that human beings can compartmentalize issues and can be oblivious to their own cognitive dissonance. We didn't know that they could invent two completely different narratives for a single event and still claim to be detached analysts.

Ikhide Ikheloa is absolutely correct. Our intellectuals and pundits are not just complicit in our problems, they are sometimes the reasons we can't even name these problems properly, not to mention solving them. Selective outrage, rank hypocrisy, and moral duplicity are our national trademarks.

On Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 7:28 PM Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com> wrote:

This is either shabby writing (that needs serious editing and spell-checks!); or rank hypocrisy, as one has now come to expect of this columnist. You wonder if the author has ever heard about Sir Ahmadu Bello (the Sadauna of Sokoto), Chief Obafemi Awolowo, or the Jagagban BAT--Bola Asiwaju Tinubu? Can any columnist on godfatherism in Nigeria be taken seriously if he cleverly omits these grand fathers of this malignant cancer on Nigerian democracy but chooses to focus on a quixotic kidnapper that's not even allowed to set foot in his father's compound. 

On Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 10:06 AM Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com> wrote:

Can Nigeria End the Politics of Godfatherism?

Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday Column, Daily Trust, 19^thApril 2019

Is Nigeria a shadow State controlled by criminal gangs and godfathers? It's a legitimate question to ask when we recall that moment in January 2008 when Senator Nuhu Aliyu, at that time Chair of the Senate Committee on Security and Intelligence, threaten to expose the names of his colleagues who he was investigating for Advanced Fee Fraud (419) when he was Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department. Senate President David Mark immediately threatened him and forced him to withdraw his allegations – (Thisday, 24^thJanuary 2018). I was furious that we were denied the chance to know the criminals who were parading themselves as distinguished Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The context of the debate was that several Senators were busy attacking the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for doing their work and the angry Senator and former police boss lost his cool and told Nigerians the true professional status of some of his colleagues.  

Nigeria is famous, or rather, notorious for the significant role godfathers play in the country's politics and political economy. I still remember when Chris Uba, the onetime acclaimed godfather of Anambra State politics in a moment of intense self-satisfaction after the 2003 general elections declared that, "I am the greatest godfather in Nigeria because this is the first time an individual outside government single-handed put in position every politician in the state." This effusion of self-satisfaction signalled the eclipse of Emeka's Effort, the previous pretender to the throne of godfather in Anambra who in 1999 had determined the governor of the state and about 60% of the state legislature. Mr. Uba was able to advance from imposing 60% to 100% meaning he determined who became governor, three senators and members of the Federal and State Assemblies.

The fact that Nigerian godfathers have had the effrontery to define themselves as men, yes, they are almost exclusively male, that have the power to substitute themselves for the voting citizenry is deeply disturbing. During  elections, they have been able to determine who gets nominated to contest for elections in political party primaries and who wins the subsequent elections. Godfathers could behave in this manner because they control the levers for the organisation of electoral fraud. Since 2011 however, the integrity of elections has grown and electoral fraud has reduced in a dramatic fashion. This means in principle that the power of the citizen has grown over that of the godfather. Is this the case in practice? I certainly hope so. 

Let us not forget however that last year, a professional kidnapper, Chukwudubem Onwuamadike, also known as Evans, was arrested and he confessed that he had extorted over $50 million from his victims with the intention of using the money to context for the seat of governor in his Anambra State. It is useful to recall that the question of Godfatherism in which kingpins of the criminal underworld played a major role in politics first hit the political science literature in relation to pre-war politics in Chicago, the United States. At that time, the heads of criminal gangs sponsored politicians in elections, manipulated the elections to get them elected and in return received protection and contracts from their political godsons. That era has significantly evolved in the United States and must do likewise in Nigeria. 

The most legendary of Nigerian godfathers was of course Oloye, Olusola Saraki. He determined four successive governors of Kwara State starting with Adamu Attah (1079 to 1983) to Cornelius Adebayo and later Mohammed Shaba Lafiagi. In 2002, a few months to the general elections of 2003 Olusola Saraki bragged that: "I have made three Executive Governors in Kwara State. The fourth one, Bukola my son, is coming." The following year, his son Bukola did become governor having defeated the previously anointed godson Lafiagi. 

 

Godfathers were however frustrating for Oloye because he could impose a governor but could not always make them behave as he pleased, which was why he eventually decided to appoint a biological son. His son ended up being his nemesis when in 2011 he decided his son should pass over the mantle of leadership to his daughter Gbemi. The son rejected his sister, the father sought to impose her through another party and the son defeated his godfather father in a battle befitting a Greek tragedy. The father never recovered from the defeat by his godson and biological son.  

 

Saraki the son succeeded in his ambition of becoming the new godfather, imposed the governor and the legislators he wanted, went to Senate, then later became Senate President and worked hard to get the nomination of his party to be the Nigerian President, which would have sealed his fate as greater than his father and therefore the greatest godfather in Nigerian history. It was not to be. He did not get the presidential nomination of the PDP, which he sought for.  He settled for Senate hoping he would regain his current position as Senate President. Again, it was not to be. A massive movement emerged in Kwara State known as "O to ge", meaning "enough is enough" - we have had enough of godfathers. All the candidates he sought to impose as governor, senators and state house of assembly members in Kwara were defeated and routed.  Kwara State celebrated what they called the end of the yoke of political subjugation by the Saraki family.

 

It is too early to make the pronouncement that Nigeria is no longer a shadow State controlled by godfathers. What we can say is that the significant increases to electoral integrity since 2011 has provided citizens an instrument, which in politics is called the franchise, to wrest power from godfathers and seek to be masters of their own political destiny. Citizens are beginning to learn to use the instrument with efficacy and the quality of Nigerian democracy is bound to continue to increase. Godfathers in the country will however not give up, they will continue to devise stratagems to control the political process.

 

I am referring here to only one type of godfather, the ones that operate from the shadows. The other type of godfathers in Nigeria are the ones with institutional control of the executive branch of government. The president and state governors in Nigeria are extremely powerful and tend to control party machines and thereby significantly control the political process. This type of power is insidious and more difficult to contest. Gladly, Nigerians are undaunted and fighting back. In the 2019 elections, we saw many governors frustrated by citizens as they sought to impose their godsons to succeed them in office. Many could not even get the Senate seats many governors assume to be their birth right immediately they finish their two terms in office. Yes, Nigerians are on the march and now know that godfathers can be fought and defeated. The franchise has long since been granted to citizens by the Constitution but it has taken two decades to learn how to fight to truly own the Constitutional right. The verdict emerging is that Nigerians can end the politics of godfatherism. The struggle continues. 

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

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Just published "The African Corporation, 'Africapitalism' and Regional Integration in Africa" (September 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785362538.

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