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Americans love to describe their president as the most powerful man on the face of the earth largely because of their ignorance of the omnipotence of the Nigerian presidency. In Nigeria, we have been able to perfect a travesty of Federalism which gives the head of the Executive arm of government powers unheard of over the state, over ALL other arms of government, and, over the constitution, and, above all, over the life of the citizen. The Nigerian presidency has powers to decide whether you live or die. The American presidency has no such powers. The Nigerian presidency can decide whether you die alone or you go as part of a pogrom or mini-pogrom. The American presidency has no such powers.

 

The Nigerian presidency’s post-civil war pogroms on unarmed civilians includes Umuechem, Odi, Zaki Biam, Agge, and Gbaramatu kingdom. The American presidency does not have the power to order air strikes on American civilians on American soil. The White House cannot wipe out an entire county. Babangida destroyed Umuechem, Obasanjo leveled Odi, Yar’Adua ordered air strikes on Gbaramatu kingdom. In America, they would be doing life without the option of parole by now. Yar’Adua’s family would be lobbying for a posthumous pardon, which may come more than a century after his crime.

If Louis XIV stopped at “L’état, c’est moi”, the Nigerian presidency adds the literal letter of the Yoruba monarchical philosophy to that once upon a time aberration of the French state. Because the king in Yoruba monarchy is an earthly representative of all chthonic forces, he is “alase ekeji orisha” (owner/wielder of authority, second only to the orishas); his essence is demiurgic, hence, to his subjects who are mere mortals, he is “ka bi ee si” (kabiyesi): you don’t ask him any questions because he is not accountable to you. Combine these attributes of Yoruba monarchical philosophy with Louis XIV’s travesty of the state and the result is the Nigerian presidency. I say literal letter of the Yoruba monarchical philosophy because the Yoruba were wise enough to invent checks and balances that are indissociable from the institution of kabiyesi. The Nigerian presidency has the authority of kabiyesi without the checks and balances.

I emphasize the presidency and not the president for good reason. Because our presidency is an institutionalized travesty of democracy and Federalism, no President, no matter how well-intentioned, can escape the trap of despotism because even the most routine exercise of your constitutional powers, the most mundane performance of your constitutional duties, already makes you a despot in our strange democratic dispensation. It is precisely these immense and unheard-of powers that make the Nigerian presidency extremely dangerous. In the wrong hands, the Nigerian presidency is a deadly weapon. Bad news: the Nigerian presidency has always been in the wrong hands, is currently in the wrong hands, will always be in the wrong hands unless Occupy Nigeria rises up to its historic potential by forcing a fundamental redefinition of the Nigerian project.

One paradox: as omnipotent as the Nigerian presidency is, it is almost the most vulnerable to hijack in the history of modern democracy. Because of the nature of our system and politics, there is no clean and decent way to become the President of Nigeria. You get there through an accumulation of political and other dubious IOUs to “chieftains”, “stakeholders”, “elder statesmen”, and “business cartels” whose selfish interests and private agendas are always antithetical to the common good.

Every president gets to office neck deep in political and other debts; every president gets to office a peon of the enemies of the Nigerian people; every president gets to office as a mere guarantor of the first function of the Nigerian presidency: the distribution of limitless patronage to the interests who put him there.

The Federal cabinet and the president’s coterie of personal aides are always a reflection of his loyalty to these narrow interests who only exist to defend a philosophical conceptualization of Nigeria as a national cake baked only for less than 1% of the population. When the incumbent president is sick or weak, the omnipotence of the Nigerian presidency falls into the hands personal aides, powerful ministers, and select “chieftains” and “stake holders”. Welcome to a scenario that my good friend, Patrick Obahiagbon, has recently defined as cabalocracy. That was what we had with President Yar’Adua and we need not rehash that recent history here. That is what is currently going on with Goodluck Jonathan.

What Obahiagbon failed to add to his cogent coinage is that cabalocracy transforms the Nigerian presidency into a deadly weapon in the hands of the people who hold the president hostage, misadvise him, and transform his presidency into the number one enemy of the Nigerian people. While Yar’Adua’s cession of the immense powers of the Nigerian presidency to the hijackers who surrounded him can be somewhat excused on account of his illness, three reasons account for the much-similar scenario now unfolding with the Presidency of Goodluck Jonathan: personal weakness, intellectual inferiority, pedigree deficiency.

It is no longer news that the likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Diezani Allison Madueke, Mohammed Adoke, on the one hand; and aides like Oronto Douglas, Reuben Abati, and even the[b] lowly Reno Omokri whose brief is Facebook and Twitter on the other hand,[/b] are the new presidential hijackers in town. Of course, more hijackers abound in the sinewy mould. I have only limited the list to the most garrulous ones.

President Jonathan is a study in personal weakness and intellectual inferiority, never mind his alleged doctorate in zoology. Imagine the combined intellectual firepower of the incorrigible paracletes the Bretton Woods/Washington consensus theology around him: Okonjo Iweala, Allison Madueke, and Lamido Sanusi Lamido. Do you believe that a president, who cannot even successfully place one incoherent sentence after another incoherent sentence in a scripted address to the nation, can hold his own in a strategy meeting on the economy with these IMF/World Bank agents? Worse, as Dele Momodu reminds us, Iweala, Madueke, and Lamido Sanusi are aje butter kids who enjoy immense class and pedigree superiority over the shoeless kid from the backwaters of Otuoke. They intimidate him. Do you also see the President holding his own in a conversation with Reuben Abati, the latest convert to the anti-people philosophy of the Bretton Woods jihadists who have hijacked the president? Reuben Abati is a First Class product of the Arts and, until recently, one of Nigeria’s most formidable public intellectuals. Really, the President stands no chance.

It is easy to see why the aforementioned hijackers of presidential powers and initiative are extremely dangerous. In their hands, the omnipotent Nigerian presidency is a deadly weapon and the fuel subsidy removal tragedy makes all of them guilty of assault with a deadly weapon against the Nigerian people. The hijack scenario also foregrounds the necessity of a struggle to redesign and redefine the Nigerian presidency. The nightmare we experienced with the hijack of the presidency under Mr. Yar’Adua was an occasion for us to go back to the drawing board and put measures in place to forestall a reoccurrence. There should have been a process to punish the hijackers after Yar’Adua’s death. Michael Aondoakaa and all the Yar’Adua cabalocrats should have been tried and convicted for numerous offences against the Nigerian state. That would have established precedence and deterrence. That would have warned future aides and Ministers that our democratic polity is now more conscious of the nature of the advice they give to the president: that there is a price to pay for irresponsible advice.

As with all things Nigerian, we did nothing and we are now paying the price. We have a worse and more corrupt Attorney General in Mohammed Adoke who understands that Aondoakaa got away with his crimes against the Nigerian people. A vastly intellectually superior breed of hijackers has emerged and their pawn, Goodluck Jonathan, is even weaker and intellectually inferior to Yar’Adua.

Therefore, the future we envision must necessarily be one in which Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Allison Madueke, Mohammed Adoke, Labaran Maku, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, Oronto Douglas, Reuben Abati, and[b] Reno Omokri, shall face formal consequences for their role in this national tragedy.[/b] The era of walking free after an irresponsible hijack of the presidency must be over after the current brood of hijackers. Beyond N65.00 and sundry issues, Occupy Nigeria must take a close, hard look at the Nigerian presidency. Unless that Presidency is demystified and redesigned, we will always temporarily postpone our problems.

http://mobile.saharareporters.com/column/nigerian-presidency-assault-deadly-weapon-pius-adesanmi

Whao!

Nice one there man. You articulate my position that good intentions are not enough for governance. You equally need a vision and a vigour to reasonably pursue it but unfortunately GEJ is visionless.

[b]If low lives like this criminal called Reno ever worked for IBB or any military dictator, they would have gone to further extremes to mess with Nigerians. Even up to the extent of torturing opposition, and killing them in cold blood. You can tell by his insane and fevered anger against any form of opposition. To them, opposition MUST lose or die. They are never wrong. And there is never any reason to re-evaluate their actions. Talk about been so power-drunk
This guy is just a mind-player. Hes not even half as wonderful as he think he is. I will direct him to go study Charles Colson, Henry Kissinger, Heinrich Himmler who handled the Nazi Radio propaganda, and made the Germans love Hitler at all cost, and our contemporary scum-dirt called Karl Rove. This guy is like a complete charlatan and a peanut besides this elephant. And the button line is: they all failed. Beaf long failed as well. And thank God for his likes, GEJ is now public enemy #1. Thanks to Reno, he outdid BokoHaram. Talk about winning at all cost [/b]

Abeg front page fast fast

This guy just said it all.

Please moderators, take this thread to the front page. It is a must-read.

Nice write up that has summarised our 'presidency' and made us to understand the real reason things are happening as they are. We need God's direction in Nigeria.
Moreso, only those who have really experienced Nigeria can understand our pains and give us good governance. Too many 'imported' people making/enforcing rules and regulations.
Enough is enough!

aba when will you guys start ignoring that isoko lowlife ediot

The nightmare we experienced with the hijack of the presidency under Mr. Yar’Adua was an occasion for us to go back to the drawing board and put measures in place to forestall a reoccurrence. There should have been a process to punish the hijackers after Yar’Adua’s death. Michael Aondoakaa and all the Yar’Adua cabalocrats should have been tried and convicted for numerous offences against the Nigerian state. That would have established precedence and deterrence. That would have warned future aides and Ministers that our democratic polity is now more conscious of the nature of the advice they give to the president: that there is a price to pay for irresponsible advice.

As with all things Nigerian, we did nothing and we are now paying the price. We have a worse and more corrupt Attorney General in Mohammed Adoke who understands that Aondoakaa got away with his crimes against the Nigerian people. A vastly intellectually superior breed of hijackers has emerged and their pawn, Goodluck Jonathan, is even weaker and intellectually inferior to Yar’Adua.

I personally talked about the above non-stop after those who treasonously held Nigeria to ransom were defeated. GEJ, back then, showed that he stood for nothing and had no integrity by merely waving goodbye to Aondoakaa, Muthar, Ruma, Aliero, Edevbie et al. In any case, and as I always argue, those who are part of the problem can never be the solution. We all remember that GEJ was one of those who propped up the deciet that YAr Adua was lucid and in charge. They were all involved in a shameless conspiracy that saw Yar Adua's signature forged so they could all get the 'assent' that released more billions to be decimated.

The Achilles heels of GEJ was always fairly obvious. Because he has no integrity, believes in nothing and was placed far above his station, the desperation to hold on to a position he could never aspire to meritoriously led him to do so much wrong. He bribed even the lizards crawling around Abuja !!!!! Now the perception is that this is a very corruption-friendly President who will never punish anyone regardless of their  sin. If he can ignore treason against Nigeria, what is mere corruption?  To that extent all under him , like Adoke Bello, are now stealing Nigeria blind with total impunity.

So badluck Johnathan is being controlled like a puppet on strings then?

It would appear so. The bit about imagining him in a strategy session with okoonjo, lamido, diezani and co particularly strikes home. There is no way in heaven or hell he will be able to contradict a single word they say. They are so vastly superior to him in all things that he will have an inferiority complex. He might have some questions for them but will keep mute for fear of looking dumb. He cannot go toe to toe in a debate. It should have been obvious from the moment he disgracefully ran away from the presidential debate last year. Watching Beaf defend that one was nauseating. I almost threw up.

Nice write-up. The writer captures it very well.  It's a shame what is going on in the inner circle of Nigeria. The owners of Nigeria have found the perfect stooge in GEJ.
A president that can do their bidding for them while the evil cabal lurks in the background while they continue to laff all the way to the bank.
Tail or head, Nigerians lose with these monsters in charge.

great write up from this poster.very soon bush meat go catch the hunter for this our naija.the clock is ticking for all the sycophats in the corridor of power.