Opinion
Perspectivising Ortom’s travails, attendant Lachrymose and palpable angst
By Tunde Olusunle
Samuel Ioraer Ortom, the helmsman of Benue State, is human after all. He had endured a truly torrid season where his ears had been relentlessly barraged by news and reports of cold-blooded killings of his constituents. He had wept his fill, his eyes periodically reddened by grief. In Mchia and Iorja communities in Mbagber in Logo local government area, (LGA) a combined 15 people were killed in one night, just last month. In Gbeji, Ukum LGA another 37 including two policemen were killed within days of each other. More recently, 16 people were eliminated in Ukohol, Guma LGA in a daytime attack in the community market. Ngban community in the same area council, was next on line 24 hours later, where six were liquidated. Within weeks of one another, rampant herdsmen had murdered over 70 innocent and helpless Benue people, leaving a trail of sorrow, tears and blood, to borrow from the evergreen compositions of the maverick Afrobeat artiste, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
The more recent killings followed a similar pattern of calculated and brazen desecration and disruptions in the socioeconomic life of the predominantly agrarian and peace-loving people of Benue State, by infiltrating marauders. The nomads have become a virtual national nuisance who, with their herds of cattle, have entrenched themselves as an integral part of the environmental furniture of even the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT). They orchestrate traffic gridlocks anywhere and anytime of the day, even in Abuja, Nigeria’s showpiece of urban planning and environmental civilization. Motorists have become accustomed to yielding right of way to the horned and humped animals, even as they leave trails of dung on paved streets in city centre. The fear of Fulani cattle it has become, is the beginning of wisdom for commuters in Abuja.
Recent developments in Logo, Ukum and Guma are just the freshest incidents in what has become the regular and routine savagery of pastoralists on aborigines. Other councils across the state have at various times suffered from the unconscionable brutality of the herdsmen. Gwer West, Tarka, Kwande, Katsina-Ala, Okpokwu, Agatu, have also experienced unimaginable communal bereavement and lachrymose, no thanks to the mindlessness, even cold-bloodedness of sundry assailants. Not even Makurdi the state capital which has been a haven of relative calm and sanity has been spared the deadly arms, ammunition and matchetes of the brigands. The dastardly activities of the infiltrators earlier this year, resulted in mortal casualties.
The tally of victims from rampaging herdsmen in Benue State between March and June this year, grazed the century mark. Four years ago, it was Ortom’s painful brief in January and March 2018 respectively, to approve of mass burials for 102 persons mainly youths, mowed by the killer herdsmen, across the state. An estimated 120 security personnel, notably from the police, civil defence corps, even the military, have been felled by the ruthless criminals. Lives lost are in their thousands, with a daily average of three to five casualties. Such has been the grand scale of mass murders foisted on Benue State, in recent years.
The operational template of the killers has virtually been the same in several instances. They besiege their targeted communities on a swarm of motorcycles, each conveying two passengers. While the riders focus on the pathways to their destinations, the passengers bear sophisticated weapons like the AK-47 or AK-49. They steal on their targets in moments when they are most vulnerable, like in their sleep at night or on their farms during the day. They have also chosen market days, when regular folks display their produce for sale, like they did in Ukohol. Life in several Benue communities, has become short, nasty and brutish, to approximate the Hobbesian maxim.
Such regular raids and assaults on unsuspecting communities and country folks, has precipitated the mass relocation of people from their primordial homelands, to makeshift camps for internally displaced persons, (IDPs). They are crammed and squeezed into spontaneously devised, hostel-style accommodation such as classroom blocks, abandoned structures and similar infrastructures. Feeding is communal, oftentimes in open-field dining arrangements. Ortom puts the number of his constituents in IDP camps, as two million. Minimum hygiene, and the propensity of communicable afflictions and epidemics in such mammoth concentrations of bodies into inadequate living spaces, takes the back-burner, when the issue is between life and death. The forgoing trajectory has been Ortom’s lot, into the six final months of his two-term tour-of-duty as governor of Benue State.
It is understandable therefore that a troubled and pained Ortom bared his mind to his visiting colleagues, earlier in the week. Preparatory to the flag-off of campaigns for elections into various political offices ahead of the 2023 general elections, Ortom invited his allies in the G-5. Since the conclusion of the presidential primary of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP) in May this year, Ortom and his colleagues from Rivers, Abia, Enugu and Oyo, have been at daggers drawn with the leadership of their party. Nyesom Wike of Rivers contested the primary and posted a respectable second place behind former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar. The assumption was that Wike will be compensated with the slot of running mate of the ticket, which, conversely went the way of Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State.
Hurt by this development, Wike, in concert with Ortom, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu, Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia and Seyi Makinde of Oyo, has been at the fore of a fight with the PDP. Their argument is that the presidential ticket and the chairmanship of the party, cannot both come from the northern section of the party. Atiku from Adamawa and Iyorchia Ayu, chairman of the party from Benue, are geopolitically from the North. Ortom and Company have come to be known as the Group of Five, (G-5) or the Integrity Group, as the case may be. They have never spared any opportunity to come against what they believe is injustice in their own party, whose motto devolves around equity, fairness and justice.
At the state banquet organised in honour of his colleagues, Sunday November 5, 2022 in Government House, Makurdi, Ortom reopened the herdsmen saga which has been a sore point of his stewardship. He expressed his convictions that the harbingers of serial deaths and bereavements to his state, his people, are Fulani herdsmen. And he believes there has been unrestrained infiltration into Nigeria, of foreign Fulani from the West coast and beyond. Ortom is sure they have been emboldened in their deadly and dastardly preoccupations because of the acquiescence of their Nigerian kith and kin. “Fulani neo-colonialists want to appropriate our land as grazing grounds for their cattle,” Ortom has serially maintained. “Fulanis from Chad, Niger Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Libya, have breached our borders with the active connivance of their brothers here in Nigeria and want to take over our land.”
Ortom alluded to the enactment of an “Anti-Open Grazing Law” by his administration, to restrain the lawless pastoralists from feasting on the farms of his people who are predominantly farmers. While this has been partly impactful, herders and their acolytes incensed by the temerity of government, have sworn to constitute a recurring nuisance to the peace and stability of the state. According to Ortom: “They have resolved to make life unbearable for my people. I have indeed been pointedly targeted for elimination by these Fulani bandits, for deploying legal instruments to check their lawlessness.” Continuing, Ortom alluded to the solidarity he enjoyed from his colleagues at the height of his travails, particularly Wike. Said Ortom: “Wike spoke out. He warned that if Ortom comes to any harm, Nigeria will be unsettled. Wike, Ikpeazu, Makinde and Ugwuanyi found common grounds in our respect for truth and our insistence on equitation.” Ortom would subsequently allude to Wike’s support to Benue State in its times of tempests and challenges, which in fiscal terms is well over one billion naira.
His anger rising to a crescendo, Ortom came hard on Atiku who he accused of profiling him. According to him: “Atiku made reference to me in Kaduna last month, when he met the Arewa House.” Atiku at the event, alluded to his private chat with Ortom, where he told the Benue governor, that he, (Atiku) is also Fulani, who had reservations about the blanket generalisation of Fulanis. Ortom said the public allusion to a private chat between him and the presidential flagbearer of his party, had exposed him to attack and assault by aggrieved Fulanis. He swore to be in the trenches against the presidential aspiration of Atiku.
Sultan of Sokoto, Mohammed Sa’ad Abubakar III, last year posited that Fulanis have indeed been found culpable in sundry crimes, countrywide. Speaking at a converge with the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, (MACBAN), the Sultan admitted that “eight out of 10 kidnappers arrested in Nigeria. But this does not make every Fulani a criminal,” he clarified. Sa’ad Abubakar confirmed that Fulanis from Senegal, Niger Republic, Guinea and Mali routinely violate Nigeria’s poorly policed borders, “conduct their criminal acts and run back.” Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina State seemed to corroborate the Sultan when he appeared in an interview programme with Channels Television September last year. Many bandits and criminals terrorising parts of the country he noted, “are Fulani like me, who speak Fulfude like me and profess the same religion like me.”
Ortom’s thesis about the Fulani holocaust finds further validation in earlier and current warnings and revelations by reputable statesmen and figures like Theophilus Danjuma, an erstwhile Chief of Army Staff, and Minister of Defence, variously. At the convocation of the Taraba State University, Wukari four years ago, Danjuma frontally accused the military of complicity in the creeping insecurity in the country. “They,” (alluding to the security services), collude with assailants of our people.” According to Danjuma: “The armed forces are not neutral. They collude with the armed bandits. They kill people, kill Nigerians. They facilitate their movements, they cover them up. If you depend on the armed forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one.”
At the October 2022 investiture of the new Aku Uka of Wukari, Manu Ishaku Adda Ali, Danjuma, a highly decorated three-star general in his days, re-echoed his earlier assertion: “The whole country is now being overrun and one very clear thing that is happening now is that these foreign invaders are destroying everything and our government allowed them to come into the country.” Espousing his theory further, Danjuma stated: “They are trying to re-colonise us and take our land. The country with the largest black population is being brought to ruin by absolutely useless criminals.” As ever, Danjuma exhorted Nigerians to dispense with optimism in the security agencies, take up arms and defend themselves.
Last August, Abubakar Kawu Baraje, a former chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, (APC), lent his voice to the origins of the festering national malaise on insecurity. Baraje confirmed that in preparation for the make or break 2015 presidential election, Fulani from neighbouring countries like Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, Niger and Chad, were smuggled into Nigeria, specifically for the election. According to him: “The Fulani wreaking havoc in the country are not Nigerian Fulani. They are those procured for the 2015 election, who have refused to return to their home countries.” Baraje tells us other concerned patriots like him, warned against such wholesale importation of non-nationals for electoral purposes. He corroborated Danjuma on the matter of collaboration between the marauders and the security apparachik.
Ortom has refused to fold his arms in despair, in the face of such colossal ruination of his people and their land. Few months back, he established a vanguard, the *Community Volunteer Guards, (CVG), a varient of the *Amotekun* concept popularised in the South West. A first batch of 1500 recruits have been taken through martial drills, including weapon handling. Ortom joined his voice with that of his colleague in Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, seeking federal government approval for the operatives to bear AK-47 weapons. While pursuing this request, Ortom has proceeded to arm the guards with pump action guns. They’ve been deployed across the state and operate side by side with the police.
It will take quite some practised restraint and divine grace for a leader at the centre of the kind of security conundrum Ortom has endured, not to be regularly agitated. His outpouring of anger, vexation and frustration when he spoke at the often quoted recent banquet for his G-5 allies, must therefore be properly perspectivised. On a good day, the regularly Bible-quoting Ortom, a grounded theologian in his own right, is sober, clear-headed, focused and witty. It was the better-known, humorous Ortom, who stood side by side with one of his security aides the other day, and requested a comparison between his, (Ortom’s) footwear and those of the security operative. Ortom’s thesis on that occasion was that his aide was better remunerated by his employers, than he was earning as governor! Such banters which typically elicit giggles and laughters, typify the true Ortom.
The statesmanly Ortom was humble enough to apologise for any hurt his utterances a few days before then would have caused, when he was recently interviewed by newsmen in Bauchi. This is despite his understandable apprehensions about the content of “security briefs,” served him every day. In the course of a midweek visit to Bala Mohammed, governor of Bauchi State in the company of his G-5 quintet, Ortom expressed regrets over whatever irritations and misconceptions his previous extempore speech might have caused. That is the mark of contrition, the insignia of leadership, the type the incumbent APC government has not been able to provide, despite wilfully running the nation aground, from “top to bottom.”
Tunde Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author, is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE).
As an indigene of Kogi State from Ijumu Local Government, I am always concerned about any issue that has to do with Kogi State’s affairs and I do my best to be involved, even if modestly, in her development. I love my state and I love my people, without necessarily compromising my patriotism to Nigeria, my country.
For some time now, I have come to notice that certain dark interests, often political, like to project all that is negative about Kogi State with a glee that is symptomatic of zonked-out analysts.
The latest half-witted article by Tunde Olusunle on Kogi State and its immediate past Governor, Yahaya Bello, portrays the journalist as seemingly away with the fairies. I will hold forth about it in a bit.
I am not a member of the APC nor a beneficiary of Yahaya Bello’s political largesse while in office. In fact, I’m not a politician in the real sense of the word. I’m an entrepreneur.
The best selling comic play titled ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again’ authored by Professor Olawale Gladstone Emmanuel Rotimi and published in 1977 best captures how to describe Tunde Olusunle as related to his recent article titled ‘Abeg, Where Is “White Lion?”‘
One would have assumed that at his age with decades of professional experience, he would have been circumspect about certain issues. Even if he wished to satisfy his paymasters who must have contracted him to pen trash about his state or an individual, he would have made an attempt not to fritter away whatever little honour he had left.
I know that the country is hard and some individuals whose best lives are behind them would crunch even on faeces just to survive another day, especially those in the category of pretending that all is still well with them when they are actually floundering financially – a typical tragedy of living in the illusion of past glory. That’s quite understandable.
The precis of Olusunle’s uninformed article is that it is a worthless vituperation of a frustrated and failed political wannabe whose attempts at political relevance in Kogi State have met with catastrophic denouement. I don’t want to bore the reader with bouquets of unsupported asseverations imputed by Olusunle against Yahaya Bello. Investing valuable time in such would be counter-productive. I just want to address the obvious elements of insanity in the article.
During the 2023 presidential election, a lot of the people who unleashed negative propaganda against candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu did so out of implacable personal hatred for the man.
The hatred in their speeches and writings was so clear. It was aggressive hatred without substance. It was so bad that some people were praying for him to die! Many fake prophecies from agitated prophets saturated traditional and social media on a daily basis. But the man weathered all the storms, beat them silly and eventually emerged as Nigeria’s President.
Not that his detractors have stopped, but they have been decimated significantly by the shame they bear consequent upon his victory. Former President Muhammadu Buhari also suffered the same fate.
Buhari would be the first presidential candidate in Nigeria to read his own obituary while still alive. A sitting Governor then, Ayodele Fayose, took front-page advertorials in major newspapers in the country and added Buhari’s picture to the list of Nigeria’s dead presidents and heads of state.
He claimed that Buhari might not last even one year in office. Therefore, why burden the country with such a walking vegetable? The hatred was that bad! Buhari went ahead to complete eight years in office and departed healthier and younger than he came in.
Yahaya Bello is the latest victim of deliberate personal hatred and relentless blackmail by his detractors and those he has trumped in the slick, yet complex terrains of Kogi State politics. A lot of political cavilers in Kogi State have yet to come to terms with the divine intervention that produced Yahaya Bello in 2016.
Kogi’s ethnopolitical warlords who have arrogated to themselves the permanent mandate to govern the confluence state found themselves suddenly vanquished by higher terrestrial forces beyond human comprehension. They could not believe that Yahaya Bello, from where he came, could be such a candidate for divine benevolence.
They rebelled and kicked. From day one, they chose blackmail and crude propaganda as weapons of foul warfare. For these ignoble characters and their ubiquitous social media goons, every woman who suffered a miscarriage did so because of Yahaya Bello. If their dogs died, it was Yahaya Bello. If they failed to prepare well for an election and lost, Yahaya Bello was their ready scapegoat. It was a loathsome circle of certainty.
The hatred in Olusunle’s baseless article is poorly disguised, if at all. Authentic professional journalists base their submissions on hard, indubitable facts. They do not orchestrate a bum steer, as the Americans would say. But this is what someone who, to all intents and purposes, should be a respected veteran in the field of journalism has chosen to do for survival stipends.
His claims that Yahaya Bello is in hiding are particularly spurious and nauseating. I live in Abuja and I can confirm that Yahaya Bello has been in his Zone 4 residence for a long time. He has been seen observing Taraweeh and receiving guests for Iftar throughout the Ramadan period. He goes to the Mosque for Jumat prayers every Friday.
For goodness sake, the man left Abuja for Okene to celebrate Eid in the full glare of thousands of Kogites, and entertained hundreds of Muslim faithful and his political associates for Sallah before returning to Abuja two days later. He even travelled to Lagos to pay homage to President Bola Tinubu for the Eid-el Fitr celebrations. What a way to hide!
Olusunle claims that Yahaya Bello is on the run and hiding under a bed. My question is “For what in particular?” Security agencies are not the types to base their investigations and arrests on phoney allegations as all those raised in Olusunle’s mucky script are.
They don’t pay attention to hideous misinformation being peddled by discombobulated political midgets in desperate search for long-lost relevance.
Olusunle seems to be suffering from nomenclature attachment syndrome. Psychologists have impressed on us from time immemorial that a person’s name is more than just identification.
They have educated us that when we hear our names, it triggers a unique psychological response. In this case, we may be dealing with a syndrome called pervasive egosyntonic sadistic behaviour.
In Yoruba language, Olusunle means “Olu has burnt the house”. And the Yoruba say “orukọ ọmọ lo n ro ọmọ”, meaning a child’s name influences his/her behaviour.
But if Olu must burn anybody’s house, he should choose his father’s house to burn, not another person’s house of honour. Meanwhile, Kogi State is a house that no jackass can burn down.
Exacerbated insanity defines the character of purveyors of allegations that cannot be substantiated. To answer your question, writer Olusunle, White Lion is everywhere, going about his normal activities, and discerning Nigerians are aware. But blind, frustrated critics won’t find him.
– Olorunfemi Obadofin Braimoh, a security consultant and public affairs analyst, wrote from Abuja.
By Ehichioya Ezomon
While most Nigerians still clink wine glasses in toast to Abia State Governor Alex Otti for belling the monstrous cat of life pensions for former governors and deputy governors, three Abia ex-governors have punctuated Dr Otti’s enviable limelight, by denying drawing pensions, and the accompanying perquisites of office.
Under the repealed law, former governors and deputies were to be paid lifetime salaries; get houses in Abia and Abuja; receive 100 per cent of annual basic salaries of the incumbent governor and deputy; get two brand-new vehicles worth N20 million every four years; and have three police officers and two operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS), and cooks, stewards, drivers, and gardeners.
The denial by immediate past Governor Okezie Ikpeazu (2015-2023) came on March 20 – a day before Otti signed into law the bill repealing the pensions. A statement by Dr Ikpeazu’s chief press secretary, Onyebuchi Ememanka, refuted reports “mischievously couched to give the false impression” that Ikpeazu’s among former governors receiving pensions from Abia State.
Ememanka stated: “Dr Okezie Ikpeazu wishes to make it abundantly clear that since after handing over the reins of power as Governor of Abia State on May 29, 2023, he has neither requested for, nor received from the Abia State Government, any dime under any guise whatsoever, and has no intentions of doing so.
“Former Governor Ikpeazu has since moved on with his life and is currently engaged in other areas of interest to him and advises the Abia State Government and her various organs to face the business of governance and desist from engaging in needless media sensationalism. The general public should be properly guided, please.”
Former Senator and ex-Governor Theodore Orji (2007-2015) also debunked claims of benefiting from the pension largesse, saying on March 21 that, “he hasn’t received any pension, he hasn’t asked for it, and he’s not interested in it.” Orji spoke via his former chief liaison officer, Hon. Ifeanyi Umere.
Umere said: “Nobody should link Senator Orji with the said pension law because nobody has paid him any pension after leaving office as Governor. He transited from Governor to Senate and he made it a point of morality that he will not, and he didn’t ask for any pension or question anybody about it because he is not interested in it. He didn’t receive any pension from Okezie Ikpeazu and he didn’t pay anybody, too.”
And Sen. and former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu (1999-2007) – whose government established the pension law in 2001 – said he didn’t receive any pensions since 2007. One of Kalu’s aides was quoted: “As a former governor of the state, T. A. Orji did not pay him (Kalu) a dime as pension, and Okezie Ikpeazu continued in the same manner.”
Recall that Dr Kalu, fielding questions from journalists at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA) in Abuja on February 20, 2017, distanced himself from the 108 ex-governors that a national daily claimed were “living off their states through pensions and other entitlements.”
As reported by Vanguard on February 21, 2017, Kalu said he hadn’t received “any payment, entitlements or privileges of any sort from his successors (Sen. Orji and Dr. Ikpeazu), adding that the Abia State government had “withheld and refused to pay his pensions and entitlements, making him the only ex-governor in the 36 states that does not receive pension.”
Kalu said on leaving government on May 29, 2007, he left behind “all the government vehicles and every other thing that belonged to the government,” and that, “none of the privileges, like security details or vehicles that accrue to former governors has been extended to him.”
Asked if he’s broke because of non-payment, and his next line of action, Kalu said: “It is not about being broke or not. The pension law of the state did not exclude me from being paid as expected. In fact, it is illegal, according to the law, to deny one his rights and privileges.”
Also reacting to the abolished pension benefits, former Deputy Governor Ude Chukwu, under the Ikpeazu regime, said: “Nobody has given me a dime. I am aware of the law. For me, it (the law) is as good as not being there. If all past governors said they have not been paid anything, what is the essence of the existence of the law?”
Relatedly, former Lagos State Governor and ex-minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola (SAN), has revealed that his monthly pension is N577,000, after eight years in office (2007-2015). Mr Fashola, appearing on ARISE TV programme, ‘Perspectives,’ on January 20, said:
“The benefit I get, I think, is a N577,000 monthly pension from Lagos State. So, in spite of all the stories that we got several billions of money (after leaving office), I’ve come out to deny that repeatedly. Well, I don’t know how long it lasts, but all I know is that I get N577,000 per month consistently,” without stating if he’d enjoyed the “full package” pre and post-effort by the Lagos State House of Assembly (LGHA) to halve the pensions in 2021.
The poser: If Otti’s predecessors in office denied receiving any pensions, why the Labour Party (LP) governor’s bravado to sign into law the pensions repeal bill passed by the Abia State House of Assembly (ABHA)? Was it to score political points by painting black Dr Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen. Orji (PDP), and Sen. Kalu of All Progressives Congress (APC)?
Perhaps, Otti wanted to fulfil a campaign promise, and guard against any governor resurrecting the dead law in future. Signing the law on March 21, Otti stated: “Even before this new law came into place, a lot of people, who have followed our views in the national discuss (discourse), understand that we were not going to continue the practice of paying pensions and allowances to this set of former government officials.”
That said, pensions for former governors and deputy governors aren’t “illegal,” as the issue is perceived in the public. What Nigerians detest and question is the morality of and insensitivity in awarding huge severance pay, lifetime pensions, allowances and material benefits to former governors and deputies.
Some former governors-turned senators or ministers also receive emoluments in a couple of places: pensions from their states, and salaries and allowances from the National Assembly (NASS) or the Executive, against the rules that exempt farming as the only avenue to possibly earn extra pay, while boosting the country’s food production and security.
In 2023, some members of NASS were enticed by the mouth-watering pension packages for federal and state executives, and proposed same for the President and Deputy President of the Senate, and Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives – an incentive for State Houses of Assembly to follow suit. But the bill was shot down due to public outcry.
In the oft-quoted Lagos High Court judgment of November 26, 2019, in suit no: FHC/L/CS/1497/2017, filed by Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo queried the legality or validity of pensions for former governors and deputy governors, but pushed the burden of discovery to the Attorney General of the Federation.
Justice Oguntoyinbo had differed from the position of then Attorney General Abubakar Malami (SAN) that, “the States’ laws duly passed cannot be challenged,” and said, “I do not agree with this line of argument by the Attorney General that he cannot challenge the States’ pension laws for former governors.”
“In my humble view, the AG should be interested in the legality or validity of any law in Nigeria and how such laws affect or will affect Nigerians, being the Chief Law Officer of the Federation,” the judge said, and then gave the following commands:
“AN ORDER of mandamus compelling and directing the Attorney General, AG, to urgently identify former governors and their deputies collecting pensions from their states and to seek full recovery of public funds from those involved.
“AN ORDER of mandamus compelling and directing the AG to urgently institute appropriate legal actions to challenge the legality of states’ laws permitting former governors, serving as senators and ministers to enjoy governors’ emoluments while drawing normal salaries and allowances in their new political offices.”
Based on the orders, SERAP asked President Bola Tinubu, in a letter on March 23, “to immediately obey,” to recover pensions collected by former governors, and to challenge the legality of states’ pension laws permitting those involved to collect such “outrageous pensions.”
Equally instructive is an Appeal Court ruling, in suit no. CA/A/810/2017, against the Kogi State Government seeking pensions and severance packages in the state, which’s referenced by Alex Enumah in an opinion piece, “Pension Laws for Ex-Govs: The Abia Example,” published by THISDAY on March 31, as follows:
“The court held that the fact that elected public office holders and political appointees were paid huge amounts of money as monthly salaries and other forms of allowances while in office makes it morally wrong for them to demand pensions, gratuities or severance allowances for holding such an office for four to eight years as the case may be.
“The three-man panel of the appellate court, which had Justice Emmanuel Agim, Justice Abubakar Datti Yahaya and Justice Tinuade Akomolafe-Wilson, submitted that it amounted to gross social injustice, and unjustified in the context of the nation’s present social realities.
“The lead judgment, which was delivered by Justice Agim (now JSC), said it was wicked and morally wrong for political office holders and political appointees, who helped themselves to public funds while in office, to claim entitlement to pension and severance allowances.
“He submitted that it was wrong for political appointees and elected public office holders, who do not work as long and as hard as career civil servants to quickly get paid huge severance allowances upon leaving office, in addition to the huge wealth they acquired while holding such offices and without having been subjected to any contributory pension schemes.”
So, controversies trail pensions for former governors and deputies not for being “illegal” but because they’re overbloated, and a huge drain on the lean resources of many states, which owe months and even years of backlogs to retirees, some of who spent over 35 years in service and retired into penury, as their pensions are withheld by governors, who are “qualified” for hefty pensions and adds-on for life, and even pay themselves upfront part of the packages before they leave office.
It’s reassuring though that former Governors Ikpeazu, Orji and Kalu have denied receiving pensions, and challenged Otti’s sweeping statement that, “we were not going to continue the practice of paying pensions and allowances to this set of former government officials.” But can hundreds of other former governors – accused of drawing huge pensions and entitlements from their states – emulate the Abia trio by disavowing the allegations against them? The ball, as they say, is in their court!
Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria
By Ehichioya Ezomon
Abia State Governor Alex Otti’s the rave of the moment among his peer governors, and most Nigerians, for “infrastructural development,” and particularly for signing into law a Bill passed by the Abia State House of Assembly (ABHA) to repeal life pensions for former governors and deputy governors of the state.
Under the repealed law, former governors and deputies were paid lifetime salaries, and got houses in Abia and Abuja, prompting ex-Head of State and former President Olusegun Obasanjo – on a visit to Dr Otti to commend his novel move – to describe the life pension laws by state governors as “rascality” and “acts of daylight robbery,” and urged other governors to emulate the Otti example.
But did retired Gen. Obasanjo, Ph.D, also send similar entreaty to President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly (NASS), to repeal pensions and entitlements for former presidents, vice presidents and heads of state? Or only former governors and deputies should curb their appetite for free money and materials after “retirement” from government?
Obasanjo’s advocacy should touch all former elected or appointed executive officeholders, as we shouldn’t have a “special breed” of Nigerians: former military heads of state, presidents, vice presidents, governors and deputy governors, who enjoy government’s freebies, and live in luxuries at the expense of toiling Nigerians in need of the bare essentials of life.
It’s as well to recall that in a valedictory session of the Federal Executive Council at the State House, Abuja, on May 24, 2023, then Vice President Yemi Osinbajo called for an upward review of pensions for former presidents and vice presidents.
Osinbajo, referencing President Muhammadu Buhari’s “personal integrity,” said: “Part of the problem with that is that sometimes, you and I end up getting the very short end of the stick. If you look at the laws today, our retirement benefits, yours (Buhari) will be N350,000 a month by law and mine will be N250,000 per month.
“Those, of course, as you can imagine, are very tiny amounts of money. And I think that one of the things that we must do is to, perhaps, see how we can amend that law so that I will not come to you in Daura (Buhari’s hometown in Katsina State) and ask for some of your bulls to sell in order to survive.”
As Sunday PUNCH findings, first reported on May 28, 2023, indicate, “severance packages for Buhari and Osinbajo, state governors and other political appointees leaving office in 2023 might cost the country about N63.45bn,” adding that, as stipulated by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission (RMAFC), “President Buhari will get a severance pay of N10.54m, which is 300 per cent of his annual basic salary, while Vice-President Osinbajo will receive N9.09m.”
In a manner of, “What a man can do, a woman can do it, and even better,” then First Lady, Mrs Aisha Buhari, also solicited increased out-of-office benefits for ex-presidents and vice presidents, and for the incorporation of former first ladies “among the beneficiaries.” She spoke on May 25, 2023, in Abuja, at the launch of a book, ‘The Journey of a Military Wife,’ written by Mrs Vickie Irabor, wife of then Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor (retd).
Mrs Buhari’s plea: “The Federal Government should consider us as people that need help not as magic makers. And on the privileges given to the former presidents of Nigeria, they should do more. It is still not enough considering what people go through in that house (Presidential Villa). And at the same time, I want them to incorporate women, the former first ladies, among the beneficiaries.”
Many Nigerians have lent voices to the Otti gesture, especially coming at an time of economic strangulation of the average and below-average citizens since the advent of the Tinubu administration, following the withdrawal of subsidy on petrol, and floating the Naira, which’s crashed against major foreign currencies, and sent inflation and the cost of living sky-high.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has asked President Tinubu to swiftly obey a court judgment, which orders the Federal Government to recover pensions collected by former governors, and to challenge the legality of states’ pension laws permitting those involved to collect such “outrageous pensions.”
Following a SERAP suit no: FHC/L/CS/1497/2017, Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo in a 20-page judgment on November 26, 2019, granted “AN ORDER of mandamus compelling and directing the Attorney General, AG, to urgently identify former governors and their deputies collecting pensions from their states and to seek full recovery of public funds from those involved.”
“Justice Oguntoyinbo also granted ‘AN ORDER of mandamus compelling and directing the AG to urgently institute appropriate legal actions to challenge the legality of states’ laws permitting former governors, serving as senators and ministers to enjoy governors’ emoluments while drawing normal salaries and allowances in their new political offices.'”
Then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), had argued that “the States’ laws duly passed cannot be challenged.” But Justice Oguntoyinbo differed, saying, “I do not agree with this line of argument by the Attorney General that he cannot challenge the States’ pension laws for former governors.”
“In my humble view, the AG should be interested in the legality or validity of any law in Nigeria and how such laws affect or will affect Nigerians, being the Chief Law Officer of the Federation,” the judge said, adding, “I have considered SERAP’s arguments that it is concerned about the attendant consequences that are manifesting on the public workers and pensioners of the states who have been refused salaries and pensions running into several months on the excuse of non-availability of state resources to pay them.”
Justice Oguntoyinbo didn’t expressly pronounce on the legality of awarding life pensions to former governors and deputy governors. Perhaps, the plaintiff, SERAP, didn’t include that in its averments and prayers. Which somehow left the judge to push the responsibility to the Attorney General – “being the Chief Law Officer of the Federation” – of finding out the “legality or validity of any law in Nigeria and how such laws affect or will affect Nigerians.”
But the National Industrial Court – as posted on the African Law eJournal on March 25, 2020 – had ruled that pensions for former governors and deputy governors are legal, as nothing in the amended 1999 Constitution of Nigeria precludes or prevents state houses of assembly from enacting laws to give such benefits to former state chief executives.
Michael Dugeri of University of Ottawa, Canada, posted the court’s ruling in the case of Incorporated Trustees of Human Development Initiatives & 39 Others v. Governor of Abia State & 73 Others, which borders on “legal validity of state pensions laws for political office holders in Nigeria.”
“The National Industrial Court, in this case, was invited to determine the question of whether any law, especially by the State Houses of Assembly, that stipulates pension of such public officials already covered by the constitutional mandate of the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation & Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), is ultra vires, null and void. The Court answered in the negative,” the report said.
Yet, as first reported by Vanguard on March 24, SERAP, while noting inaction by the Buhari administration on the Justice Oguntoyinbo judgment, urges President Tinubu, in a March 23 letter by its Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, “to emulate the good example of Governor Otti by urgently obeying the judgment.”
“Unless the judgment is immediately obeyed, former governors and their deputies, including those now serving as ministers in your administration and members of the National Assembly who receive pensions, would continue to evade justice for their actions,” SERAP says.
“Immediately obeying the judgment would show the sovereignty of the rule of law in Nigeria and go a long way in protecting the integrity of the country’s legal system. Obeying the judgment would also show you (Tinubu) as a defender of the Nigerian Constitution of 1999 (as amended), the rule of law, and public interest within government,” SERAP adds.
SERAP lists former governors, “who continue to collect double emoluments and large severance benefits” from 22 states, including Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Edo, Delta, Ekiti, Kano, Gombe, Yobe, Borno, Bauchi, Abia, Imo, Bayelsa, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Ondo, Ebonyi, Rivers, Niger, Kogi, and Katsina.
As reported by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on March 20, the Abia pensions repeal law isn’t the first, as a few states had moved to abolish the law, but “many states showed nonchalant attitude toward doing so.” Still, the “Abia State Governors and Deputy Governors’ (Repeal) Law 2024,” which took effect immediately on Thursday, March 21, 2024, after Governor Otti signed it, forecloses former governors and deputy governors earning pensions.
But did the Abia repealed pensions law include other perquisites of office, which make the pensions per se to look like pocket money for a boarding-house student, who doesn’t really need extra money, as their parents or guardians have settled accommodation, feeding and provisions for them?
This and more will be explored in part 2 of the series, amid denial by two former governors of Abia State, Sen. Theodore Orji and Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, of receiving pensions since they left office, even as Governor Otti continues to enjoy the limelight of abolishing pensions for former governors and deputy governors of Abia State!
Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria
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