16/06/2024
Godfatherism and Nigeria’s Winners-Take-All Politics
By Adewale Abatan
In Nigeria, politics is lucrative. The vast majority of wealthy individuals in the country are either career politicians or politically exposed people (PEP). To an average Nigerian politician, stealing public funds seems to be their be-all and end-all of politics. A viral list recently surfaced on social media, detailing the purported amounts looted by former governors across the country from 1999 to date. The tally of the looted amount is staggering, with 53 former governors across the 36 states of the federation allegedly stealing approximately 2.2 trillion naira between 1999 and 2024! Although the EFCC has distanced itself from this list, there is a high probability that the actual amount is even higher and the names of some former governors may be missing from the list—none of the former governors of Lagos State, including the incumbent president, made the list. You believe that? Not me. Yet, despite the humongous amount already stolen at various levels of government, corruption continues to worsen in the country because the statutory institutions responsible for fighting it are themselves nests of egregiously corrupt people. From the police to the EFCC to the judiciary, the story is the same: corruption. In this country, two truths exist simultaneously: 1) justice is a commodity, and 2) the law is weak against the strong but strong against the weak.
Given the sorry state of our institutions, when politicians find themselves in elective public offices, they gradually become the alpha and omega in their political territory, especially the president and governors. Local government chairmen still remain appendages of governors. Once sworn into office, governors especially do not hesitate to throw their political benefactor (godfather) under the bus at the slightest disagreement between them. In 2016, when Adams Oshiomole was rounding up his second and final term as governor of Edo, he pulled all his weight behind his then political godson, Godwin Obaseki, who went on to defeat his main challenger, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, by a significant margin. Notwithstanding his successful career in the private sector, which culminated in founding Afrinvest, Obaseki’s political career was boosted by political patronage from Oshiomole. Before his election as governor in 2016, Obaseki was appointed to serve in the cabinet of Governor Adams Oshiomole in various capacities, including as the secretary of the committee that implemented the law establishing Edo University, Iyamho, Oshiomole’s hometown.
“For seven years in the administration of Governor Adams Oshiomhole, [Obaseki] served as voluntary Chairman of the Edo State Economic and Strategy Team as well as Chairman of Tax Assessment Review Committee for Edo State Internal Revenue Service (TARC) and the Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), respectively.” (Source: Wikipedia)
Towards the end of Obaseki’s first term, however, an irreconcilable conflict started between him and Oshiomole, who was famous for giving then-President Olusegun Obasanjo a tough fight when he led the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) as its president between 1999 and 2007, the same period Obasanjo was president. If Oshiomole had known what he now knows, he might not have publicly fought the incumbent governor—it almost ruined his political career. In June 2020, when he was the national chairman of the APC, his ward in Etsako West LGA suspended his party membership over his egoistic feud with the incumbent governor. He was subsequently removed as the party’s national chairman. Suspecting Oshiomole might use his federal connections to block his renomination as the ruling APC flagbearer for the 2020 Edo State gubernatorial election, Obaseki switched to the opposition PDP, and he got the party’s ticket to contest for a second term. Meanwhile, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, who also ran in 2016, had switched to the APC and was similarly given the ticket to contest against Obaseki again. Oshiomole, undeterred by his suspension, campaigned vigorously for Ize-Iyamu. The outcome was a devastatingly embarrassing defeat for Ize-Iyamu—and Oshiomole. To further spite his predecessor, Obaseki renamed the university he helped set up in 2016 in Oshiomole’s hometown.
Of course, this kind of political betrayal didn’t start with Obaseki, and it hasn’t ended with him. 369 miles north of Edo, there is a simmering political tension unfolding between Nasir El-Rufai and Uba Sani in Kaduna State. El-Rufai is the immediate past governor of the state, while Sani is his successor. There’s a history between them dating back to 20 years ago. Sani was a special adviser to El-Rufai when he was FCT minister and a special adviser on political and intergovernmental affairs in 2015, when El-Rufai was governor of Kaduna. In 2019, El-Rufai helped him win the party’s ticket to run for the Kaduna central senatorial seat, which he won. In 2022, Sani picked El-Rufai’s deputy, a Muslim, as his running mate for the state’s governorship race. He won the election in 2023 and has since succeeded El-Rufai. Shortly after Sani was inaugurated as governor, El-Rufai boasted at a religious gathering that the Muslim-Muslim ticket, which he started in 2019, is now the new norm in Kaduna, a state whose population is almost evenly distributed between Christians and Muslims. The former of whom suffered (and is still suffering) heavy casualties in religious clashes between them and the state-backed Muslim Fulani herdsmen when he was governor of the state. More than ten thousand people were reportedly killed over the eight years of El-Rufai’s Caesarian reign as governor of Kaduna.
However, in less than a year as governor, Sani seems to be shedding political allies, notably El-Rufai. A former Punch journalist, Eniola Akinkuotu, wrote in TheAfricaReport that not too long ago, in a town hall meeting, Governor Uba Sani said “he was struggling to pay salaries [because of] the loans taken by his predecessor, Nasir El-Rufai, which amounted to $587m, N85bn ($85m) and 115 contract liabilities.”
Political betrayal is not unexpected in a society where, in some cases, political power is the key to a state or country’s treasury, which can be used to buy loyalty, an affordable commodity in a transactional political ecosystem. In an interview with Chude Jideonwo, the host of , Dr. Reuben Abati, a veteran journalist and former aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, narrated how his principal was quickly abandoned in 2015, not long after conceding defeat to the then president-elect Muhammadu Buhari. Abati said the Villa “became a ghost town.” Though an abominable thing in certain circles and also self-serving, political betrayal is useful to keep politicians in check in a society where government institutions cannot restrain them, particularly governors and presidents, from plundering the revenue and resources of their state(s). Currently, at least two cabinet members who worked in the Buhari’s administration are being tried in court over allegations of financial misappropriation by the Tinubu government, though Messers Tinubu and Buhari belong to the same ruling party, the APC. But they are not political allies, which is a good thing for the country.
