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The remark by
Adeyemi Ikuforiji, Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, that
the executive arm of government is more corrupt than the legislature
was the second thing last week that reminded me of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s
observation: “There is no settling the precedence between the flea and
the louse.” Announcing the formation of a pressure group for
legislators, Ikuforiji was indignant (and rather too garrulous) on
behalf of his colleagues:

“Right now, the
whole Nigeria is shouting down on lawmakers but what they are stealing
is not as much as that of the executive. They complain about us buying
cars. Is the money we spent buying cars up to what they spend on
parties in the governor’s office? Is it as much as what they spent on
announcing the governor’s 100 days in office? When commissioners
collect cars, who speaks up? They make a noise about lawmakers as if
they are the only ones who are corrupt.” So that’s alright then.

The other thing
that reminded me of the same Johnsonian wisdom was the struggle within
the ruling Peoples Democratic Party over its presidential ticket, and
the release by the Atiku camp of the Jonathan’s alleged campaign
strategy, “The Man – Mr. Fox. A profile.” Perhaps not so much the flea
and the louse, as Mr. Fox and Mr. Tortoise.

The Jonathan camp
has denied authorship of the document. But, to paraphrase Mandy
Rice-Davies upon being told that British Defence Minister John Profumo
had denied any relationship with Christine Keeler, mistress of a Soviet
defence attaché: They would say that, wouldn’t they? Nobody willingly
admits damaging facts unless they are inescapable, and/or they have had
time to massage public opinion round to the idea that the facts – in
this case, the plans – are no big deal, at best just one possible
blueprint of whose acceptance by President Goodluck Jonathan there is
no proof. (Except of course, the uncanny coincidence between his recent
programme and the plan!) It may not have been accepted, or even been
seen by Jonathan, but the ring of authenticity comes from not just the
cynical calculations about using what ought to be independent organs of
the Nigerian Federation such as the judiciary, the Nigeria Police Force
and the Police Service Commission, or the meetings designed to showcase
Jonathan as the forward-thinking, non-sectional, father-of-all (yet
young) President of tomorrow, or even the entertainment celebrities and
journalists who are to be brought (or bought?) onside to polish his
image.

What gives it the
stamp of authenticity is the hopeful thinking reflected in the
assessment of support for the pPresident and his chief contender, Atiku
Abubakar, across the country. Only in his home state is ‘Mr. Fox’
allowed as much as 30%. For the rest, apart from Borno, Abia and Imo
(20%, but ‘OBJ’ is going to work on those last two states), Lagos and
Rivers (15%) and Enugu (10%) he is allowed only 0-5% support in the
remaining 29 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Mr. President on
the other hand, can expect as much as 90% support from some states.

Thus have
political fixers ever deceived their principals;. oOr mentally psyched
them up: after all, what’s the point of going into the thing as if you
don’t believe you can win? It’s the same ‘Ko ni FAIL’ imprecatory
approach of the roadside mechanic who knows full well that you can’t
get more than 250 metres with his emergency repairs, yet hope springs
eternal … These figures seem to have been the result of soundings made
before December, and luckily for Mr. President, only relate to
delegates in the PDP. Because if, after the near-unrelieved blackout
with which the majority of us ‘celebrated’ almost the whole of the
Christmas holidays (while complacent – or is it complicit? – newspapers
reported record power generation figures), soundings had to be taken
among the actual electorate; even the ‘Ko ni fail’ brigade would have a
job to massage the results.

But if the
intra-PDP struggle is uninspiring and deceitful, we should not be
mesmerised into forgetting that there is life outside the ruling party
or convincing ourselves that any opposition candidate ‘can’t win’ and
see them as nothing more than foils to allow the ruling party candidate
to claim that there will indeed be a ‘democratic contest’ (but not, as
the Mr. Fox profile suggests, too democratic) once the PDP has sorted
itself out.

With Nuhu Ribadu
at last putting his candidacy on something more solid than
‘anti-corruption’, and the ACN and CPC having to ask themselves some
hard questions about how far each of them can go it alone, we have the
makings of a real contest at the presidential level for 2011.

The PDP victory in
the Ikorodu by-election should serve as a reality check for the ACN
after the euphoria of the Ekiti and Osun gubernatorial victories. It
really isn’t good enough for it to whine about PDP dirty tricks. What
did it expect? More importantly, what is it expecting next year? Or had
the Lagos party started to believe the hype about Governor Babatunde
Fashola (and by extension, his party) walking on water? Not to Ikorodu
he doesn’t.

But that’s apparently something that Speaker Ikuforiji could have told us anyway.