"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan
Showing posts with label Power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Power. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
On Politics
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Awwwwww ... I Like This
Yeah, I know the inauguration is long past and the guy is already busy at work but this is a so very nice picture. Its been on my desktop for some time now. Notice the Secret Service agents and aides trying not to look too embarrassed or looking away.
What is it with this 'head grinding' between 'Mi-Mi Baby' (a.k.a. Leader of the Fashionable World) and her 'O-Bee Darling' (a.k.a. Leader of the Free World). This and the famous 'fist-bump' (a.k.a. Terrorist Salute). See more 'head-to-head' pictures here.
Someone was obviously trying to get lucky that night and someone else couldn't wait to get out of that dress. They say power is an aphrodisiac. Stronger than burantashi. Stronger than Viagra.
Did you see them practically smooching on the road to the White House? Just to walk a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue and wave to people they were doing 'Love in Tokyo'. I doubt if any other President has done that in history.
The way these two are going ehn, Malia and Sasha may have a brother soon.
Mark my word.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Look Yonder To Thailand!
Have you heard?
If you haven't, then read this. For those of you who won't bother following the link, here's the News-in-Brief.
The Constitutional Court in Thailand court dissolved Thailand's top three ruling parties for electoral fraud on Tuesday and temporarily banned the prime minister from politics.
"Former PM Somchai's People's Power Party, the Machima Thipatai party and the Chart Thai party were found guilty of committing fraud in the December 2007 elections that brought the coalition to power with a thumping majority.
The case stems from an earlier Supreme Court conviction of a PPP executive committee member, Yongyuth Tiyapairat, who was found guilty of buying votes. Under Thai law, an entire party can be disbanded if one executive member is found guilty of electoral fraud. Similar individual cases brought down the other parties."
Can you imagine that? Why can't we have such a law in our statute books?
Of course, a Nigerian court has declared a sitting government as a nullity before. (Remember Shonekan's Interim National Government?) but that was almost immediately supplanted by Abacha's military junta. In Thailand, the military has been neutral in this matter.
I have always proposed that any political party that is found to rig an election in Nigeria should not only be dissolved and banned but its leaders jailed for a minimum of ten years without an option of a fine. This effectively removes them from circulation and possible further interference in the electoral porcess. In addition, the Electoral Officers in charge of the election should go to jail and automatically lose their pensions to pay for the election re-runs ordered by the courts.
In Nigeria today, you steal an election, you enjoy it for as long as you can, stalling in the courts, with adjournments and postponements, SMS and threats. After about two years of appeals and counter-appeals, the courts finally declare you a thief. You go on TV and talk about 'nurturing our nascent democracy' and 'respecting the rule of law' and then you declare it as 'the will of God'. Then you go home to enjoy your loot and nothing happens.
That is, if you the court does not ask for a re-run of the elections which you will steal again; as a matter of course.
Of course, the INEC Chairman has told us that it is the Nigerian politicians that rig elections not INEC but we all know that it takes two to tango. According to Chief Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo alias 4.30, 'If the theifer are not thievry, the buyer will not be boughtery'. A receiver of stolen goods is as guilty as the thief who stole the goods.
I think we should begin a process of including such provisions in our laws. What does it really take to ammend our electoral laws to reflect such? Rather than sitting down lamenting that the country is going to the dogs, we should be agitating to have those laws introduced.
For as long as there are no laws to check the politicians, there may be very little anyone can do to check the brigands.
In other news, can anybody please explain what religion has got to do with local government elections in Jos? Maybe Majek Fashek was right after all: Religion Is Politics. Or vice versa.
Less than 48 hours after 387 people were confirmed dead under his watch, the Plateau Governor Jonah Jang wants to go ahead and swear-in the 'elected' politicians into office.
How callous can you be?
If you haven't, then read this. For those of you who won't bother following the link, here's the News-in-Brief.
The Constitutional Court in Thailand court dissolved Thailand's top three ruling parties for electoral fraud on Tuesday and temporarily banned the prime minister from politics.
"Former PM Somchai's People's Power Party, the Machima Thipatai party and the Chart Thai party were found guilty of committing fraud in the December 2007 elections that brought the coalition to power with a thumping majority.
The case stems from an earlier Supreme Court conviction of a PPP executive committee member, Yongyuth Tiyapairat, who was found guilty of buying votes. Under Thai law, an entire party can be disbanded if one executive member is found guilty of electoral fraud. Similar individual cases brought down the other parties."
Can you imagine that? Why can't we have such a law in our statute books?
Of course, a Nigerian court has declared a sitting government as a nullity before. (Remember Shonekan's Interim National Government?) but that was almost immediately supplanted by Abacha's military junta. In Thailand, the military has been neutral in this matter.
I have always proposed that any political party that is found to rig an election in Nigeria should not only be dissolved and banned but its leaders jailed for a minimum of ten years without an option of a fine. This effectively removes them from circulation and possible further interference in the electoral porcess. In addition, the Electoral Officers in charge of the election should go to jail and automatically lose their pensions to pay for the election re-runs ordered by the courts.
In Nigeria today, you steal an election, you enjoy it for as long as you can, stalling in the courts, with adjournments and postponements, SMS and threats. After about two years of appeals and counter-appeals, the courts finally declare you a thief. You go on TV and talk about 'nurturing our nascent democracy' and 'respecting the rule of law' and then you declare it as 'the will of God'. Then you go home to enjoy your loot and nothing happens.
That is, if you the court does not ask for a re-run of the elections which you will steal again; as a matter of course.
Of course, the INEC Chairman has told us that it is the Nigerian politicians that rig elections not INEC but we all know that it takes two to tango. According to Chief Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo alias 4.30, 'If the theifer are not thievry, the buyer will not be boughtery'. A receiver of stolen goods is as guilty as the thief who stole the goods.
I think we should begin a process of including such provisions in our laws. What does it really take to ammend our electoral laws to reflect such? Rather than sitting down lamenting that the country is going to the dogs, we should be agitating to have those laws introduced.
For as long as there are no laws to check the politicians, there may be very little anyone can do to check the brigands.
In other news, can anybody please explain what religion has got to do with local government elections in Jos? Maybe Majek Fashek was right after all: Religion Is Politics. Or vice versa.
Less than 48 hours after 387 people were confirmed dead under his watch, the Plateau Governor Jonah Jang wants to go ahead and swear-in the 'elected' politicians into office.
How callous can you be?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Adventurers In Power
A couple of weeks ago, I was watching Moments with Mo Abudu on TV when she had as her guests the former and current Governors of Lagos state, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Babatunde Raji Fashola S.A.N respectively.
On the show, Tinubu revealed that a few months to the SDP House of Assemblies primaries in 1992, he had had no intentions of running for public office until one 'party elder' tapped him to run for the Senate in his constituency. He did and he won.
Fashola too revealed that one month before the AC gubernatorial primaries in 2007, he did not intend to run for any office but was just rounding up his activities as Tinubu's Chief of Staff, when his boss and some other 'party elders' tapped him to file his nomination. He did and he won.
This actually prompted me to look at the past leaders (rulers?) of the Nigerian state and how they got to there. Of all Nigerian heads of state/government from October 1st 1960 to date , only three of them could be said to have actively sought and got to the highest seat in the land. More instructively is that all three of them got there through the machinery of the most effective political structure in Nigeria - The Armed Forces! (you wanna argue that?)
These gentlemen are the late General Murtala Mohammed (1975 -1976); the very alive General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993) and the very late General Sanni Abacha (1994 -1998). Of these two died in office while the third was unceremoniously booed out of office.
Of all the 36 governors in Nigeria in 2006, Umaru Musa Yar Adua, Governor of Katsina state had made it quite clear that he intended to retire to his country-side farm and spend the rest of his days smoking Benson & Hedges and enjoying his family. However, in the eyes of the PDP 'elders', that made him the best candidate for President in the 2007 elections. Today, he is president.
Hapless, sometimes clueless, obviously in ill-health, but he IS the President.
Solomonsydelle asked: 'Is An Obama possible In Nigeria?'.
I will say No. And not because of the reasons given by Walter Carrington.
You see, in Nigeria, power is given to the unprepared not to those who want it. To get power in Nigeria, just be unprepared or pretend that you don't want it. Forget Jimmy Cliff. You can get it if you really don't want it. Am I even making sense?
In my last post, I mentioned Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers state as the only person to have become governor on the orders of a court without contesting in an election. Till date, some 'king makers' in Rivers state are still reeling under that judgment.
Most of you do not really have interest in political office in Nigeria and from the foregoing, that makes you prime candidates for political office? But what if you -yes, YOU -were tapped today to become governor of your state in 2011, what will you do?
What if you were tapped to become the President in 2011? What programs would you have in place? What would you do first?
Its possible you know.
Believe.
On the show, Tinubu revealed that a few months to the SDP House of Assemblies primaries in 1992, he had had no intentions of running for public office until one 'party elder' tapped him to run for the Senate in his constituency. He did and he won.
Fashola too revealed that one month before the AC gubernatorial primaries in 2007, he did not intend to run for any office but was just rounding up his activities as Tinubu's Chief of Staff, when his boss and some other 'party elders' tapped him to file his nomination. He did and he won.
This actually prompted me to look at the past leaders (rulers?) of the Nigerian state and how they got to there. Of all Nigerian heads of state/government from October 1st 1960 to date , only three of them could be said to have actively sought and got to the highest seat in the land. More instructively is that all three of them got there through the machinery of the most effective political structure in Nigeria - The Armed Forces! (you wanna argue that?)
These gentlemen are the late General Murtala Mohammed (1975 -1976); the very alive General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993) and the very late General Sanni Abacha (1994 -1998). Of these two died in office while the third was unceremoniously booed out of office.
Of all the 36 governors in Nigeria in 2006, Umaru Musa Yar Adua, Governor of Katsina state had made it quite clear that he intended to retire to his country-side farm and spend the rest of his days smoking Benson & Hedges and enjoying his family. However, in the eyes of the PDP 'elders', that made him the best candidate for President in the 2007 elections. Today, he is president.
Hapless, sometimes clueless, obviously in ill-health, but he IS the President.
Solomonsydelle asked: 'Is An Obama possible In Nigeria?'.
I will say No. And not because of the reasons given by Walter Carrington.
You see, in Nigeria, power is given to the unprepared not to those who want it. To get power in Nigeria, just be unprepared or pretend that you don't want it. Forget Jimmy Cliff. You can get it if you really don't want it. Am I even making sense?
In my last post, I mentioned Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers state as the only person to have become governor on the orders of a court without contesting in an election. Till date, some 'king makers' in Rivers state are still reeling under that judgment.
Most of you do not really have interest in political office in Nigeria and from the foregoing, that makes you prime candidates for political office? But what if you -yes, YOU -were tapped today to become governor of your state in 2011, what will you do?
What if you were tapped to become the President in 2011? What programs would you have in place? What would you do first?
Its possible you know.
Believe.
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