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Saturday 26 September 2015

Conflict of powers and interests by DAYO SOBOWALE

The African wisecrack that when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers is the compass  for our safari today into the corridors of power globally. We  shall  look at events in Nigeria where the President of  the Senate is on trial on his asset  declaration in the past and   has  declared in open court that his trial is  political. We shall  draw an inference and lesson from that in the light of Nigeria’s presidential  system which operates on the concept of strict  separation  of powers. We  then  proceed to  Russia where the President received the Prime  Minister  of Israel in the Kremlin amidst global  concern that Russia had decided to step  up militarily  its support for the Assad regime in its fight against rebels and ISIS and  the import  of  that for the influx  of  refugees to  Europe. We  then round up on the role of  German motor  giant  Volkswagon  in   using technology to fool environmental regulators in the US on  diesel engine emissions tests and  the import  of that for global  corporate  governance  and ethics
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The  trial Nigeria’s  Senate  President Bukola Saraki  took a very political diversion when he appeared in court and decided  when asked to take a plea of  being guilty or not, to embark on a very interesting tirade. He  declared that he had not been notified of the charges on his assets  which amounts to an accusation that he has not been offered a chance  of fair hearing and that he was on trial because  he  is the Senate President. I do not think he can be correct on both counts. First  he had sent his glittering array   of Eminent SANs to the courts  to stop the tribunal on various grounds but the courts did not agree with his lawyers arguments and did not restraint the tribunal  at least for now , from trying him.  So  on what grounds were his lawyers confronting the courts to restrain the tribunal  if he the client  who   gave them their briefs was ignorant  of the charges against him? Certainly  something is amiss  with his claim  of ignorance on the charges.
Secondly Senator Saraki is the incumbent Senate President of Nigeria but he is not above the law either personally or officially. Nobody is, according to the Nigerian Constitution.  Nigeria operates a presidential system that has a legislature , an executive arm and the judiciary.  Saraki’s  trip to the court for his trial was a private one that concerned  his past as Governor of Kwara State. It  has nothing to do with his office as President  of Nigeria’s  Senate  a position he assumed this year  as an elected  member  of the  APC which  he  betrayed with impunity in the way and manner he got elected  as Senate  President. If  he  now  sees his trial as persecution by the APC government in power then  he is either  seeing shadows  or  developing a clear malady  of   massive  political  compunction and that in his case is to  be expected.
Shakespeare  put the  situation succinctly  in Macbeth when  he said after the murder of King  Duncan by Macbeth that Macbeth has murdered sleep and  would  not  sleep  again. Obviously the Senate president is not aware  of an elementary definition of politics which  I learnt  in my first year  in the Faculty  of Social  Sciences in the great  University of Ife, Ile  Ife. The   definition  says – Politics  is Who  gets What, When and How. It  follows  therefore that the Senate President  should  ruminate  ponderously  on his route  to power  and the  opportunity cost  of  that,  to know if indeed the end justifies  the means. For  now he can  only sleep  with one eye  open as  he is on tenterhooks with Nemesis, which  is inevitable , retributive  justice  and Nigerians are watching his odyssey to  power in our senate with keen interest and unusual  vigor.
Benjamin  Netanyahu’s  visit  to Putin  over military  aid  for the besieged President  of  Syria was a journey  born  out of sheer desperation on Israel’s  security in the Middle  East  given the  emergence  of ISIS. Funny  enough both Putin and Netanyahu  have a common enemy arising from sheer personality clash  and that  person  is the US  President  Barak  Obama.  Indeed  it is an open secret that  both  gentlemen  don’t get on with the US president  at  all .Netanyahu  is mad  at  Obama over the Iran Nuclear Deal which he thinks is a major threat to Israel’s  security but  Obama  is hell  bent  on seeing through. Putin is furious over  US  sanctions  on freezing the foreign  accounts of his close aides after he invaded Ukraine  and Putin felt that  was  a coup  to topple  his government and there  has been  no love lost between  the two  leaders although it has been rumored they  may  meet at next week’s UN General  Assembly  meeting.
The  lesson  history  offers  on the spat between the leaders  of  Russia , US  and Israel is  to be found  in the role of  Germany under its present  Chancellor Angela Merkel  on the refugee crisis  and the influx  of migrants to Europe.  It  is simply  ironic   that  Hitler  used the Holocaust  to wipe out the Jews and  their  settlement in Palestine in 1948 has  been the cause  of Arab  hatred  for Israel ever since  and six wars  have  been fought over this.  Now  it is a German Chancellor  leading Europe in terms  of  kindness,  money  and  foresight to accommodate Arabs  fleeing wars in Syria  and  Afghanistan. You  may say Germany is  paying  for Hitler’s  madness  but  you  have  to admit that Angela Merkel has changed  the sovereign reputation  that Hitler  bequeathed  Germany since  the last World  War and  she  has  my admiration for  Germany’s  new  found humanity and  kindness as a nation.
On  the contrary  Volkswagon has dragged   the  sterling   reputation  of  German engineering and manufacturing in the mud in the way  it admitted  side  tracking US Environmental  Regulation on diesel emission  tests on its  vehicles – all  well  known brands – and is to recall  thousands of  sold  cars  leading  to huge  losses. The  German  company  simply  outfoxed  the Americans  by putting in a software  that gives false  data  during testing only  to revert to normal  after testing .At  the end of the day  the German cars  were emitting 40%  Nitrogen above  what the UN Environmental  law  allowed.
The  recall  will  cost  Volkswagon  a lot in terms  of money but  far more in terms  of  Corporate Image. The  board  of the car giant  has fired its CEO in  charge  at the  time  of the dishonest  act which  of course was a technological  feat  on its  own  merit. It  was   however  an innovation that was negative in that it was meant    to deceive  and that should  not  be undertaken  by  any company  worth its  salt not  to talk  of a global  giant  like  Volkswagon.  The  firing  of the boss  and the recall have restored sanity  and good  corporate  governance  and ethics and one  hopes  the  Germans   would direct their engineering prowess  in a positive  direction  like their Chancellor  is doing in purging  Hitler’s Germany of its bad image and portraying Germany  now  as the nation of hope and succor  for those fleeing war and violence  globally.
ref: http://thenationonlineng.net/conflict-of-powers-and-interests/

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