A week of ‘barber’s chair’ politics in Nigeria and El-Rufai’s anger

Last week was full of adrenaline on Nigeria’s political turf. There was plenty of anger, hair-splitting, vituperations, and finger-pointing. While the nation’s highest leaders were in some part of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) genuflecting for a man that caused the country miseries yesteryear, some other politicians, elected representatives of the people at the highest law-making chamber of the National Assembly, were engaging themselves in a slanging match over seats. You may wonder, “What is in a senator’s seat?”

Earlier last week, there was a bizarre occurrence at the Lagos State House of Assembly. Officers of the Directorate of the Department of State Services (DSS) besieged the complex in a Gestapo fashion.

The last may not have been heard on the decision of the Senate to strike out the name of Nasir El-Rufai from the ministerial nominees’ list in 2023. The former governor of Kaduna State strongly believes it was a case of Esau’s hand and Jacob’s voice.

IBB: Beyond the negatives

Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) has said he accepted the full responsibility of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, but he never said sorry over what transpired.

“I have told Nigerians, ‘Look, I accept full responsibility; it is bigger to accept responsibility; you should see the event beyond the narrow word, sorry,” he said.

He never said, ‘I am sorry’; he never regretted; he never apologised in the real sense of the word. Given the same scenario, IBB would still annul that election 100 times over. This was why he engaged in dribbling, and Nigerians began to clap that “a sinner has come home.”

He never used the word “sorry” but tried to hide behind a finger, blaming everyone else except himself.

But despite all the negatives associated with the Babangida book and the contents therein, like the proverbial elephant, it has continued to attract varied interpretations depending on the part of the body each person grabs.

The book contains a lot of information that annoys many Nigerians. It also has some insights on how the regime managed the economy and was able to execute all the projects that are responsible for the existence of what we know today as the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) established by the Public Enterprise (Privatisation and Commercialisation) Act of 1999.

For many years now, successive governments and administrations have been selling off government-owned properties built by the IBB administration.

There are also lessons to learn about how he managed the economy, particularly the harsh period of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

The book also has other positives, such as laying to rest (as it were) the finger-pointing about the real geopolitical zone of the ringleaders of the 1966 coup.

Although the late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu had, in an interview years ago, put the records straight that the coup was not masterminded by Igbo soldiers and that it was even halted by the Igbo, the finger has continued to point in the wrong direction.

Ojukwu had said, “Now, let’s get this straight: the young officers had with them Igbos, Yorubas, and Hausas. The way the Nigerian Army was structured, you could not escape a preponderance of Igbo officers. And these were at the middle level because they were essentially majors. I was commanding a battalion in Kano.

“As I later found out, the whole aim of the coup was to halt this apparent drift in Nigeria. But significantly, you know what they wanted to do: to create a presidential commission of army officers as a safeguard of people who would guard the nation and hand over government to Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The idea was to release him from prison, make him prime minister, and hope that Nigeria would become a better place. Certainly not an Igbo coup.

“A lot of things have been said about this. Who actually halted the coup? Aguiyi Ironsi in Lagos, an Igbo; Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in Kano, an Igbo. The Igbos halted the coup. How can it be at the same time an Igbo coup halted by Igbos?”

Yet, it was on the basis of the coup that the Igbo of the Southeast have continued to be treated as pariahs and second-class citizens in Nigeria.

Despite the negative side of the IBB book, Nigerians should look at some of the seemingly positive information.

Perhaps the circle of confession will be complete when and if the likes of Abdulsalami Abubakar and Yakubu Gowon decide to launch their own memoirs anytime soon.

Natasha Vs Akpabio: What is in a senator’s seat?

Some years ago, some governors used to carry their seats wherever they went for fear of being impeached in their absence and their deputies sworn in in their stead. Although such reasoning was infantile, it showed how important seats are to politicians in Nigeria.

Senator Natasha-Uduaghan last Thursday restated the importance of “seats” and where they are placed in the Red or Green Chamber of the nation’s bicameral National Assembly.

The senator took exception to the Senate leadership’s decision to relocate her from a vantage position to an obscure place. She reasoned that it was a move to put her down and make nonsense of the respect she had built for herself in the Senate.

On stepping into the chamber for the business of the day, she discovered that her seating position had changed. Perhaps, from the body language of the principal officers, she smelt a rat.

Natasha, who had just recently been removed as chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Content and moved to a lesser committee, Diaspora and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), reasoned that the reallocation of her seating position was not just a happenstance. So, she went verbal, clutching the Senate House Rule handbook.

Why was she not pre-informed that her seating position had changed? If it was not the practice in the National Assembly to pre-inform lawmakers whose seats have been changed for any reason, it is important to make that change.

It is not tidy that a senator comes into the chamber for the business of the day and begins to move about looking for his or her seat. This may have been the reason Natasha was disoriented and consequently lost her composure.

Some observers are spotting an element of karma and history on playback in what transpired. They believe that Akpabio was merely receiving the same treatment he meted out to the presiding officer in the 8th Senate. Akpabio, who was representing Akwa Ibom north-west, had clashed with the then Senate President, Bukola Saraki, on October 17, 2018, over the seating arrangement.

So, it could be safe to describe what transpired at the floor of the Senate on February 20, 2025, as ‘penkelemesi” (“peculiar mess”) as it had precedence.

But many observers believe that the real reason for the face-off between the Senate President and Natasha may not be in the public space, as there must be more to it than meets the eye.

The last may not have been heard on the standoff as the Senate President on Tuesday referred the matter to the Ethics Committee for investigation. While the probe is yet to begin, Natasha has dragged Akpabio to court over alleged defamation.

Natasha was riled at a post on Facebook allegedly posted by an aide of the Senate President, claiming that she had little understanding of legislative rules and that being a lawmaker was not solely about “pancaking her face and wearing transparent outfits to the chambers.”

In the suit, Akpoti-Uduaghan said that the post was defamatory, provocative, and damaging to her reputation.

Do you wonder why no senator, neither female nor male, rose in defence of Natasha? Your guess is as good as anybody else’s.

DSS’ meddlesomeness in legislative affairs

Some officers of the Directorate of the Department of State Services (DSS) on Monday, February 17, 2025, invaded the Lagos State House of Assembly. They prevented the speaker, deputy speaker, and acting clerk of the house from entering their offices. The real reason for the invasion has remained controversial.

The clerk of the House later said that he invited the DSS to forestall a breakdown of law and order following a rumour that the impeached speaker, Mudashiru Obasa, was going to storm the legislative premises with his supporters for a possible forceful reinstatement of the lawmaker.

But some members of the House described the action as a rape on democracy. The question on the lips of many Nigerians has been, why would a revered institution like the DSS be meddling in partisan politics and internal political affairs?

The impeachment of Obasa on Monday, January 13, 2025, by the majority members of the Lagos State House of Assembly over allegations of gross misconduct and abuse of office and the subsequent election of Mojisola Meranda as Obasa’s replacement have continued to generate a rumpus among party leaders in Lagos State.

But the DSS has continued to lower its credibility in the sight of many right-thinking members of Nigerian society. The agency has taken over the jobs that regular police should handle. Does it mean that the DSS has no job to do these days, that they are into everything? Is the revered agency reducing itself to a debt-recovery agent?

Some years back, there was an aura that enveloped the DSS that mere mention of it drove shivers down the spines of citizens; not anymore.

Prophet Jeremiah watched the dwindling fortune of his people in old Jerusalem and took up a lamentation, thus: “How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! How like a widow she has become. She, who was great among the nations! The princess among the provinces has become a forced labourer!

The DSS must step back and allow the Assembly to perform their legislative functions in the interest of the people and of the state.

If the feelers from the lawmaking chamber in Lagos are anything to go by, Meranda may step back to her former position as deputy speaker for power balancing in the state. Meanwhile, Obasa is still in court contesting his ouster. Fingers crossed!

The El-Rufai’s rage

One of the wonders in the current dispensation is the absence, in the Bola Ahmed Tinubu cabinet, of Nasir El-Rufai and Yahaya Bello, former governors of Kaduna and Kogi states, respectively.

Shortly after the 2023 presidential election, radars were pointing to the two politicians as “sure bankers” in the Tinubu administration.

Although El-Rufai was not known to be a Tinubu man, his closeness to former president Muhammadu Buhari and his insider roles in the Buhari administration gave the impression that since it is the same party affair, the Kaduna man would have an easy ride.

El-Rufai had also, during some interviews, said he was willing to serve in the Tinubu administration if invited. In fact, he started to say patronising things about the then-yet-to-be-inaugurated president.

For Yahaya Bello, he was seen by many as the reason the APC performed well in Kogi in that election. Bello was brutal to the opposition and openly warned anybody who was not ready to vote for the APC and Tinubu to stay indoors.

He threatened fire and brimstone and did everything possible to swing victory for his party.

Since the pendulum refused to swing to their own side, El-Rufai decided to “sing.”

His case was a little bit different from Bello’s in that his name was even forwarded to the National Assembly for screening, but an unseen hand played the fast one on him. The former governor has since blamed President Tinubu for instructing the Senate to shoot him down in the manner that King David ordered the execution of one Mr. Uriah at the battlefront. It is all about politics!

So, when he appeared on national television a few days ago, for the first time since he left office on May 29, 2023, El-Rufai let out some vituperations.

“I think along the line, either the president changed his mind or something else. Please, don’t believe the story that the National Assembly rejected me. The president didn’t want me in his cabinet, so he changed his mind. Whatever it is, frankly, I don’t care,” he said.

The former governor, who can be described as wounded, spoke about those allegedly plotting to destroy him. He did not spare his party, saying that things have gone terribly bad and that he was contemplating moving to yet another undisclosed party.

He said, “I am not ready to retire from politics, so sooner or later, I may have to find another platform to pursue those progressive values that I believe in if I can’t find them in the APC. I am not leaving the APC; the APC has left me.”

El-Rufai also expressed disgust at the manner of appointments by Tinubu, saying that the president was not just being tribalistic but also appointing only his boys.

“The president’s appointments are not being made because the appointees are Yoruba, but because they are his own boys. Most of the appointments do not even reasonably cover the South-West,” he said.

But political watchers have said that the former Kaduna State governor was being hypocritical in attacking Tinubu over the same pattern of appointment that the Jagaban merely inherited from Buhari.

The thinking out there is that while Buhari “Northernised” Nigeria through his appointments, Tinubu is “Yorubanising” the country, as it were, and that El-Rufai does not possess the moral high-ground to throw stone in this wise.