The hashtag that shatters NBA’s 60-year-old delusion

By: Elijah Olusegun

In Nigeria, it’s very sexy to flaunt what power you’ve got: political, media, legal, and, sometimes, sheer brawn and a hard nose.

The appeal seduces in a special way.

All you need for this power play is a Twitter hashtag (like #CancelEl-Rufai2020) and a bunch of nifty social media warriors.

To make the war hotter, scapegoat the enemy. The media will handle the framing, and help you escalate it into an Armageddon—a free-for-all extremists, tribal chiefs, and soldiers of fortune can join, and make bloodier.

For days, Nigerians have been watching the Nigeria Bar Association—well, some of its cliques from the south-south and southeast—fencing with Kaduna Gov. Nasir El-Rufai. This is one occasion circumstances present puny powers to bite back—or rather bite off the stubborn head of—another tiny power.

It’s happening now, days to the 60^th conference of the NBA.

For many Nigerians who aren’t as learned as these know-it-all warriors (all of them lawyers, including el-Rufai), it’s a happy hour.  What can be as entertaining as watching members of an elite class, among the few sabotaging Nigeria, cancel out one another? (Politicians, lawyers, journalists, civil servants, religions have made Nigeria the dead weight it is now).

According to el-Rufai’s camp and their media narrative, a section of the NBA from a section of the country drew the first blood last week. One Usani Odum started the petition—to disinvite the Kaduna governor to the 2020 conference of the association. El-Rufai, he believed, is a violator of human rights. Then, among others, SAN Chidi Odinkalu, ex-chairman, Nigeria Human Rights Commission and defendant in a defamatory suit el-Rufai slammed him over a year ago, amplified the petition. The Twitter storm that resulted waxed stronger as more lawyers from that region tweeted and retweeted. It’s been a whoopee since then.  Big air-punching. Warm, vigorous congratulations for the ‘awakening’ in the NBA.

El-Rufai, the crusaders agreed, doesn’t abuse only human rights, but also, in a way, lawyers’ rights—the rights to just say anything—anything defamatory, misleading, inciting, partisan.

Truly, the Kaduna governor doesn’t brook nonsense with lawyers. He bundled one, Audu Makori, from Lagos to Kaduna in 2017. There the lawyer was detained for days, charged to court, and granted bail on health ground. Learned as he is, Makori had actually tweeted false information about the killing in southern Kaduna, driving the governor apeshit. The tweet, with pictures, was so false Makori had to admit he goofed. And he apologized.

But trust el-Rufai. No mercy. No rights.

A similar thing—an allegation of false information on the southern Kaduna killing—also pitted the governor against Odinkalu, a very learned professor and SAN, in 2017. And, for emphasis, here’s the riff again: el-Rufai doesn’t believe you have any right to tweet or write whatever he thinks is false and defamatory about him and his government. He will go for your jugular (he once promised), whoever you are.  He will carry you, spread-eagle, to, if possible, jail. And he’s been at a Kaduna high court with his fellow learned Odinkalu since then. You can now imagine the liquid hatred flowing between them. That’s why the two lawyers must cancel each other out anyhow—in court or at the NBA conference. Or anywhere else the opportunity comes. The southern Kaduna killing is just an excuse—a very good one to spoil for war, if you know how much of a ferocious human rights fighter Odinkalu is.

The killing going on there is a national calamity, no doubt. El-rufai has taken a blitz of flak for trying to be politically correct in explaining the calamity. It’s the reason he’s not qualified, according to his haters, to address the NBA, an elite club of omniscient Nigerians who also like to be politically correct. And it’s okay for them to be—because they can argue it, and convince you they are learned.

You see that contradiction in their invitations to the Aug 24 virtual conference.

Amongst the keynote speakers are former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Rivers Gov. Nyesom Wike (another lawyer), and AGF Abubakar Malami. How these three stack up against el-Rufai is not worth debating—even to the unlearned.

Obasanjo has the Odi massacre in Bayelsa and the Zaki Biam killing in Benue stamped on his name and eight-year administration forever. Odinkalu himself wrote a tome about the abuse, corruption, and violation that darkened Obasanjo’s government in his book Too Good to Die: Third Term and the Myth of the Indispensable Man in Africa. The cerebral lawyer must have a superior argument that towers above our heads for not fighting to disinvite Obasanjo too for the conference.

Wike’s rights record is not sparkling, either. He once declared Rivers a Christian state. And he also carried his Covid-19 law to the extreme during the lockdown when he tore down two hotels.

Malami, up to his eyeballs in corruption allegations, wouldn’t believe he got an invite, ordinarily. Except that he, as well the NBA President Paul Usoro, understands that’s how the learned gowns roll in Nigeria. An AGF shielding murderous soldiers from prosecution, and sleazy politicians from the EFCC grip can’t be a better speaker than el-Rufai on the conference theme ‘Step Forward”. Frankly.

So it’s only the NBA—with its members clothed in sacred garments of equity, their beady eyes roving to and fro, spotting violation, corruption, tribalism, partisanship, lousy governance—that can welcome Wike, Obasanjo, and Malami as guest speakers, and shoo away el-Rufai as too unclean to stand before the bar. And it’s only the learned ones that can expect that discrimination to just go unchallenged, un-noticed even in the learned circle. Lawyers can’t go wrong, especially if they are SANs and Twitter-savvy.

But the dogfight within the NBA, since the el-Rufai dis-invitation, has made it clear these learned professionals revel in delusion of grandeur.  So far, the Jigawa, Bauchi, and the Kaduna chapters, and the Muslim lawyers group have decided to cancel out their participation in the conference. Other groups are springing up too. They all insist the same rule must apply to Wike and Obasanjo. The geniuses at the Jigawa chapter have quickly highlighted the tribal ugliness of the anti-el-Rufai petition. The Muslim lawyers also picked up the religious undertone. Others harped on the NBA failure to practise what it preaches: fair hearing.  Learning now clashes. The hidden hypocrisy heaves into sight. Facades crumble. The NBA undone.

Clearly, crispy suits and polemic are no shield against the chaos that makes us Nigerian—lawyers, politicians, bus conductors, southern Kaduna bandits, police, soldiers, and all.