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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