By Lasisi Olagunju

The Cambridge English dictionary defines ‘carcass’ as “the body of a dead animal, especially a large one.” The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was recently described as “a carcass” by one of its former governors, Mr Ayodele Fayose. Yet, that carcass defeated the reigning lion, the APC, in a decisive election in Oyo State at the weekend. PDP was dead; PDP is not dead. If I were the APC presidency, I would accept this reality as a divine warning. I would go back to work; I would talk and scheme less, I would start working truly for the people’s welfare. I would know that only this will kill the ‘dead’ enemy.

An APC leader told me that the Oyo election result was “the effect of bizarre developments in the APC.” He said the APC candidate “scored 6 (six) votes in his polling unit.” Oyo State APC truly has a huge reward problem. It has the liability of a Lagos-centric Abuja, unfair in appointments in Oyo, imperial in disposition. Does this solely explain the loss? It does not. Listen. I work and live in Ibadan and I know that the state governor, Seyi Makinde, has a firm grip on the politics of the state. His stellar performance as governor and his humility before the palace and the people have made it very easy for everyone to be his friend. It will take more than ‘federal might’ to defeat such a person now and in the future. Indeed, the by-election was a referendum on his six-year tenure as governor. It was also a pointer to how well the APC and its federal government have sold themselves to the people of Oyo State.

Defence Minister, Alhaji Muhammad Badaru Abubakar, is the immediate past governor of Jigawa State. His image handlers spent the night of Saturday and the whole of Sunday fighting off the news that he lost his Jigawa State polling unit to the PDP. Because bad news is good news, the story of the minister’s loss was quite popular on the internet. Then a report surfaced on Sunday that “Badaru did not vote at PU 001. His accredited polling station is PU 002. There, the APC secured 188 votes while the PDP scored 164 votes.”

The unit which the minister is disowning is Babura Kofar Arewa Primary School PU 001, very next to the one he claimed, and both situated in the same primary school compound. At that Unit 001, while APC polled 112 votes, PDP won with 308. Now, do the arithmetic. The minister did not vote in that unit, but his polling unit shares the same location with this unit where his party lost with a margin of almost 200 votes. Can we just add the two units’ votes together and ask the powerful minister to say something? Did his party win the election in that location? If I were the minister, I would keep quiet and nurse the wounds inflicted by a mere carcass.

The ruling party must be very unhappy at the pushback it got across the country on Saturday. The APC wants to go into the 2027 elections without opposition. And it is working really hard to achieve that. Poisoned carrots in the air; State of Emergency and defections down there; arrest and detentions here and there. Who will warn ‘them’ that what they desire is lethal? Where there is no opposition, there is no check upon corruption; the government itself becomes the opposition to good governance, and ultimately its own death. Find out why there are ample provisions for His Majesty’s Government and His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in England. There was a reason why democratic Canada, in 1905, provided a good salary for the leader of the opposition. Parliament voted that year to give the incumbent an additional salary allowance, “equal to that provided to Cabinet Ministers.”

C. P. Bhambhri in 1957 wrote ‘The Role of the Opposition in the House of the People (1952-56)’. In that seminal piece, he warns that: “In a community where no opposition parties are permitted, the alternative government is one of courtiers, policemen, soldiers and gangsters and it is only by violent methods that the government may be ousted.” It is the Indian’s argument that “an effective opposition renders a government a going concern. It prevents the formation of monopolies in politics. It ensures a neutral and non-political civil service and armed forces.”

Flood should stop thinking it will sweep away the river. What we saw in Saturday’s by-elections was a reassurance that despite everything, the opposition is alive in Nigeria, and the people and their democracy are safe. But it is not enough to be alive; it will be enough only if and when the opposition is not a living dead. A vibrant opposition is needed against a creepy dictatorship slithering into the walls of our democracy. Listen again to Bhambhri: “To find out whether a people is free it is necessary only to ask if there is an opposition and if there is, to ask where it is. The existence of a strong opposition is the greatest guarantee that there shall be no tyranny of the ruling party.”

So, the dead can come back, fight and win a war? There is a story in the October 1856 edition of the Church Missionary Society (CMS)’s ‘Quarterly Token For Juvenile Subscribers’. The story has this convoluted headline: ‘The dead, alive—The lost, found: Dasalu’s Odyssey.’ It is a story of death and of not dying. It reads: “In the Yoruba country, which you know is in West Africa, there was a town called Igbore. The Apena, or judge of the town, was named Deri. One of his sons, born about 1810, was generally called Dasalu, but sometimes Ogan. By and by, Igbore was destroyed by slave wars; but Deri and his family escaped to Iro. Afterwards they went to Ijana, where Deri died. Dasalu’s mother, Lutumbi, then took him to Ilaro, and finally to Abeokuta. Many Igbore people had settled there. That part of Abbeokuta in which they live is called Igbore. The boy grew up a bold, active young fellow, and the head of a party who used to roam about the country, seizing all the people they could, and selling them for slaves.” He later converted to Christianity and dropped his wild ways.

During the Dahomian invasion of Abeokuta on March 2, 1851, Dasalu was at the war front, defending his land. After the war, he was discovered to be among the missing. His elder brother, Lujobi, on the fifth day, claimed that he had found a headless corpse in a bush. He then proceeded to seize “the poor fellow’s property, to the amount of fifty pounds, as the headless corpse was claimed to be his.” However, it was later discovered that Dasalu had been captured, not killed, and was taken as a prisoner toward the coast. “Great was the stir the news made in Abeokuta. Well it might! Had not his dead body been found? So, everybody thought at the time. Everybody? Did Lujobi? Or did he knowingly pass off some other dead body (it was headless, remember) for Dasalu’s? Lujobi’s cruel conduct afterwards seems to condemn him.”

From his place of captivity, undead Dasalu managed to send a coded letter (àrokò) to his wife: a stone, a piece of charcoal, a pepper-pod, and a grain of parched maize, or Indian corn, all tied up in a rag.” What did this mean? “It meant that he was quite well, and as hard or strong as a stone. The prospect before him was, however, very dark, like charcoal. This has made him hot as pepper, and his body had dried like parched maize. While as for his cloth, it was a mere rag.” All attempts to ransom the man failed because he was known by his other name, Ogan. Years later, freed Yoruba returnees from Cuba brought news that Dasalu was alive there, writing as “Dasalu, the lost one.” He had been shipped as a slave but ended up in Havana after his vessel was seized. The British Consul eventually found him, and he was taken to England, where his photograph was made. So, Dasalu, once thought dead in the Dahomian war, was actually captured and enslaved, later found in Cuba, and eventually freed to return to his wife, Martha, in Abeokuta. His case is a dramatic story of loss, faith, betrayal, survival, and redemption.

The grim content of Dasalu’s aroko to his wife aptly represents the state of things with the PDP today. Like Dasalu, the carcass of the PDP rose from the cemetery to defeat the ‘Dahomians’ on Saturday in Ibadan. The Ibadan North Federal Constituency by-election saw a “dead” party blindsiding the all-powerful APC with 18,404 votes; the Abuja party struggled and netted 8,312. Now, do the maths: the difference is 10,092 votes. When a contest records such a margin of win, the Englishman would say it was a shellac. I would have borrowed from the Germans the word ‘blitzkrieg’ (lightning war) but that would have been grossly inappropriate to describe the Oyo State operation. It was not ‘surprise’ that overwhelmed the defeated on Saturday. No. Ogun Àwítélè means a war foretold; the defeated knew they would fall.

Check how the newspapers reported the result of Saturday’s electoral contests across the country; read the headlines: ‘PDP clears all 12 wards In Ibadan North by-election as APC candidate loses PU’;

‘Violence, vote-buying mar by-elections in Ogun, Kaduna, Kano;’ ‘Kano by-election marred by electoral malpractice, APC alleges’. Indian scholar, Railul Ramagundam, in January 2005, did a paper on the relationship between newspaper headlines and how a society is run. He entitled the piece: ‘The ‘State’ Revealed in Newspaper Headlines.’ The man says: “From a newspaper headline one can draw not just news and views about a society, but also ascertain the nature of the society and the state itself.” Those headlines are proof that Nigeria is very far from what the enemy designed for it: a one-party dictatorship.

Ramagundam wrote about India, but because scholarship is universal, we feel the validity of his thesis here, daily. Take this headline from last week: ‘After spending N21bn, FG budgets 180x more for Third Mainland Bridge repairs’. Someone in government would read this and wonder who the ‘subversive’ sub-editor was that cast that headline for Business Day newspaper. To announce the latest trillion naira contract binge of the Federal Government is to tell us that because opposition has collapsed in the parliament, money has become rainwater here. Almost all federal roads in the South -West are ‘dead’, less than two trillion naira will fix all of them. But works minister, David Umahi, said recently that he was begging the president for funds to fix the collapsed South-West roads; yet our president casually and calmly approved N3.8 trillion for a bridge repair in Lagos. And he will campaign for 2027 votes outside Lagos.

Each of the parties in Saturday’s by-elections across Nigeria must have learnt some lessons in how not to take the people for granted. For parties that are rent by the dog-eat-dog posture of politics, I recommend the Bible’s Mark 3:24-25: “And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

Folklorist Solomon T. Plaatje, in ‘English in Africa’ (September 1976) has this story for parties of the avaricious: Once upon a time a Bechuana village was attacked by an army, which chased the people from their homes. There remained among the ruins a cripple and a blind man. These two invalids agreed that the blind man should carry the cripple, that they should flee and follow the people. While they were passing through the country, the blind man carrying the cripple, the one who could see, saw some vultures hovering. So he told the one who had the use of his legs about it, and they went towards the place (where the vultures were hovering). There they found some vultures assembled round the carcass of a wild animal.

When they had driven away the vultures, a dispute arose between them (over the meat). The cripple said: “It was my eyes that found this anima”; the blind man said: “It was my feet that found it.” When their dispute became more heated, and they would not give in to one another, the cripple crawled away from the blind man. Then the blind man, being unable to see neither his companion nor the animal, called out: “My friend, it is evident that you are our eyes. Why should you lose your temper? I know that the animal was found by you.” The cripple heard his partner and came back and led the blind man to the animal, their food.

Our politicians will never step back as the blind man did. They quarrel over spoils, over positions, and over privileges, and won’t mind losing everything to birds of carrion.

The Bechuana tale speaks to the folly of selfishness and the wisdom of cooperation. It reflects directly on the greed of the avaricious in our politics. We wait to see which politician or party learns from this as we jog towards 2027, the year of the apocalypse. The cripple and blind man story teaches all scammers in power that collective survival depends on honest partnership; that those with vision need those with mobility, and vice versa. In 2015 and 2023, the wily among politicians forged alliances to take power; they succeeded in their mission; but the king and his men scammed many allies; they rewarded a few. They consolidated and moved further, scamming the people. Today, they elevate political 419 to state policy. With exclusive claims, they own a free meal they didn’t prepare. But do they know that their conduct invites vultures to come over, inherit and eat what should have sustained everyone?

Those who lost Saturday’s by-elections will lose the 2027 general elections unless they stop taking the people to be Shakespeare’s “blocks, stones… worse than senseless things.” The people may be hungry and powerless, but they are not stupid. They are waiting and watching. It is a cliché to say they will laugh last. Niyi Osundare says it better in ‘The Eye of the Earth’: the people always outlast the palace.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Abdul Oroh is an unlikely avatar of the Nigerian dream. An Afenmai from Ivbiaro in Owan West Local Government Area of Edo State in the south-south of Nigeria, Abdul had the privilege of seeing Nigeria’s promise at independence and its descent to the edge of the proverbial precipice. Born in August 1960, he was less than two months old at the celebrations when the country attained independence on 1 October 1960.

Six and a half decades later, Abdul has worked his way through many careers, managing not to quit any. After a decade as a senior journalist and editor in some of Nigeria’s leading newspapers (including the Guardian and Vanguard), Abdul spent the next decade leading Nigeria’s best known human rights organization, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) during and after uniformed military rule. He then went into active politics, becoming elected as a member of the House of Representatives on the platform of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). Thereafter, he joined the executive arm of government at the state level, becoming the longest serving commissioner in the administration of Adams Oshiomhole in Edo State. Abdul trained as a lawyer and remains in active legal practice.

Abdul’s life as a serial detainee began under President Shehu Shagari. On the day that the NECOM House – headquarters of Nigeria’s telecommunications monopoly, NITEL – went down in a suspected arson in January 1983, he was a reporter on the beat when the then Chair of NITEL, Dr. Ibrahim Tahir, arrived the scene of the fire. As Dr. Tahir made his way into the burning building, Abdul joined the scrum, a reporter-witness in the company of Piranhas. It was not long before Dr. Tahir noticed him. When he confessed to being a reporter, Dr Tahir asked the police to arrest him. His first experience of detention lasted 16 days. Over the next one and a half decades, Abdul was detained successively by the military regimes of Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, and Sani Abacha for his work both as a journalist and a human rights advocate.

Along the way, Abdul Oroh came across, interviewed and worked with many of the figures who defined post-colonial Nigeria. He was friends with Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and a close collaborator with Fela’s brother, Beko, in the fight against military rule. Legendary lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Gani Fawehinmi, chaired his wedding reception, and he counts another celebrated SAN, Olisa Agbakoba, among his closest friends. Abdul was a confidante of Alhaji MKO Abiola as well as an ally of Bola Ahmed Tinubu in exile. Having survived military misrule, Abdul served in the National Assembly as a member of Olusegun Obasanjo’s PDP and in the Edo State cabinet first as a member of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and then of Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC).

In his memoirs just published, Abdul exhales with a tale of what he has learnt from a life of unusual coalitions and coincidences. The title, Demonstration of Craze, is a homage to his friend, celebrated musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. The book advertises itself as a tale about “Struggles and Transition to Democracy in Nigeria.” In reality, it is more a story about the triumphs and tragedies of post-independence Nigeria told from the vantage a ringside seat by a master craftsman in the art of storytelling. The 611 pages of the book, weighing 1.1 kilogrammes, could arguably have been two volumes instead of one and could put off all but the most committed of book-lovers, but the narration is both authentic and fast-paced to the point of being totally spell-binding.

Demonstration of Craze is arguably the most authentic account of the struggles against military rule and for democracy in Nigeria. It is easy to intermingle these two; they are related but not necessarily interchangeable. The central argument of the book emerges in the tension between the determined optimism of the author and the brutalities of the Nigerian condition or what the book describes as “the reality of our existence as children sharing the burden of a nation with congenital disabilities and managed by people ill-prepared for the tragic role.”

The trajectory of post-colonial Nigeria that emerges from the book is of a struggle between these forces which have prospered since before independence on the one hand, and the broad coalition of resistance against them on the other. The country has been beset for most of its post-colonial life by the experience of “colossal failure and grotesque waste of the nation’s resources.” To redress this, the author argues for “a conspiracy of hope.” What he leaves unsaid is even more weighty: that the country has been defined and defied by a conspiracy against hope.

The participants in this conspiracy have been an unusual alliance of soldiers, civilian politicians, judges and senior lawyers. As a pioneering judicial correspondent, the author saw the judges and lawyers up close at the beginning of the descent into judicial impunity under the military regime of Muhammadu Buhari: “I saw judges bending the law and the rules to achieve an inevitable end”, he testifies.

The human toll of this conspiracy against hope in the country is large, long, and traumatic. The story begins immediately after independence in the crises first in Tiv-land and then in the Western Region before peaking in the millions killed in the 30 months of the civil war.

Many people wonder how many were killed on the road back to elective rule in 1999. No one will ever be able to answer this for certain. In the aftermath of the annulment of the June 12 elections in 1993, the author illustrates with some numbers: “On a single day in July 1993, we lost 243 protesters in Ikorodu Road, Lagos. In other parts of Lagos, Ibadan, Benin, Ekpoma, and across the country, the number of people killed since the annulment was about 6,000.”

There were also the unacknowledged tragedies covered up, such as “the murder of a police Sergeant assigned to the residence of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mohammadu Gambo”, who was “alleged to have stolen £50,000 belonging to the wife of the IGP who, consequently, tortured him to death.” The book narrates that “the police authorities tried to cover up the story, alleging that the Sergeant died of tuberculosis.”

One strength of the book is the author’s skilful management of the multiplicity of transitions between times, theatres, and titans. Much of the book is devoted to insightful vignettes on some of the leading characters in this conspiracy against hope in Nigeria. Olusegun Obasanjo, Muhammadu Buhari, and Anthony Anenih come out of the narrative looking pretty damnable.

Demonstration of Craze pulls no punches. Perhaps the most damned is Adams Oshiomhole, the former labour leader under whom Abdul served for two terms as Commissioner in Edo State. Upon becoming Governor, the author narrates, Oshiomhole was derailed by “absolute power and authoritarian impulses”, and “became intemperate and impervious to advice and good reason.” Having been propelled to the governor’s office by popular vote, Oshiomhole’s “appreciation of the one-man-one-vote campaign was short-lived” and he chose to turn election rigging into a national crusade.

Some may see in this book evidence that Nigeria is beyond salvage. Yet, the fact that someone with Abdul’s background and credentials could rise and live to tell this tale is itself evidence for hope. It is not the only such evidence in the book. The book bears ample testimony to the heroic leadership roles played by women in the struggles against military rule in Nigeria: Ayo Obe, Isabella Okagbue, Ama Ogan, Reverend Sister Anne-Marie Ezenwa, May-Ellen Ezekiel, Nkoyo Toyo, among many others.

In Demonstration of Craze, Abdul Oroh’s life and message merge into one theme. Arguably, one of the most surprising and hopeful revelations in the book is the scope of the unusual coalition of indigenous philanthropy that sustained the struggles against military rule. It is no surprise that one of the backers was Atedo Peterside, founder of Stanbic-IBTC. General TY Danjuma was a supporter too well before the death of Abacha. And Paul Ogwuma was surely a surprising funder. He was Managing Director of First Bank before General Sani Abacha appointed him to become Governor of the Central Bank. The struggle against military rule in the end was a struggle against Abacha.

The biggest message of the books is a positive one: It turns out that even the biggest beneficiaries of the conspiracy against hope themselves may harbour a wish for the success of the conspiracy for hope.

Abdul Oroh, Demonstration of Craze: Struggles and Transition to Democracy in Nigeria, is published in Ibadan by Bookcraft. Price: N30,000

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.