The Nation Newspaper

Author: Emeka Omeihe

  • Deconstructing Benue killings

    Deconstructing Benue killings

    If the issues arising from President Bola Tinubu’s meeting with stakeholders in Makurdi are realistically followed up and addressed, the federal government may well be closer to finding lasting solutions to the unceasing killings in Benue and other states.

    The meeting which was part of the president’s interventions to restore peace in the troubled state followed the killing of about 200 innocent people penultimate week in Yelewata, Guma Local Government Area by militia herdsmen. Interestingly, the first shot on the seeming contradiction surrounding the killings was fired by the president himself.

    President Tinubu must have taken his audience by surprise when after establishing the purpose of his visit, he turned to the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun and asked, “How come no one has been arrested for committing the heinous crime in Yelewata. Inspector-General of Police, where are the arrests? The criminals must be arrested immediately”, he further ordered.

    The questions must have come against the background of an earlier order he gave security agencies to deploy to the state and arrest all perpetrators of the evil act on all sides of the conflict and prosecute them.

    Apparently unsatisfied with the progress in addressing the situation, the president further directed the Department of State Services (DSS) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to intensify surveillance, gather actionable intelligence, and collaborate with local communities to apprehend the perpetrators.

    It is good a thing the president interrogated the security chiefs in the open on the arrests made of those behind the dastardly killings. That has been the recurring but unresolved puzzle in the cycle of violence unleashed by herdsmen across the country.

    The relative ease with which herdsmen terrorists kill, maim and despoil communities and disappear into the thin air without detection has over the years, fuelled feelings of a sinister agenda. Curiously, matters have not been helped by the serial inability of the security agencies either to prevent such attacks or arrest the culprits to face the raw teeth of the law. That seems to have emboldened the attackers in their constant recourse to lawlessness.

    However, the arrests that were gleefully announced by the Benue State Police Command were those of 14 suspects who allegedly hijacked the peaceful protests by some youths against the killings. The police said the suspects obstructed a roadway in Apir, in the outskirts of Makurdi, forcefully stopped a truck driver and set it ablaze with the driver trapped inside. It is in the line of duty of the police to apprehend suspected culprits of that infraction.

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    But the promptness with which those arrests were made pales in the face of the inability of security agencies to arrest those behind the Yelewata mayhem. The criminals who poured petrol on innocent old men, women and children while sleeping in their homes and set them ablaze ought to be cooling off in the cells of the security agencies to imbue some confidence in their capacity to protect lives and properties of all persons.

    Nothing of such is of public knowledge. That was the demand the president made of the security agencies and it goes without saying. By asking those probing questions, the president seemed to have set the tone for the resolution of the puzzles that shroud the invincibility of the herdsmen each time they kill, maim and despoil communities.

    The president’s questions sat well with well-meaning Nigerians who had sought genuine answers to the herdsmen insurgency that regularly operates with an air of invincibility, undetected. It is a serious challenge to the nation’s security architecture that criminal herdsmen have continued to defy intelligence, operating at will in different parts of the country without their cell busted.

    Now the president has spoken for Nigerians, hopes are high of something very positive being done. Arresting the culprits of the Benue mayhem is imperative to decode those behind the incessant attacks and killings by herdsmen in parts of the country often attributed to clashes over grazing lands. It is not for nothing that these attacks and killings follow the same predictable pattern.

    Arrest of the sponsors, enablers and foot soldiers of these attacks holds the ace to president Tinubu’s assurance to end the cycle of bloodshed in the state, restore peace and convert the tragedy to prosperity.

    Chairman of Benue State Council of Traditional Rulers and paramount ruler of Tiv, Prof. James Ayatse, threw up another troubling dimension to the killings that calls for serious attention. He told the audience that mischaracterising the violence as “herder-farmer clashes” only masked the true nature of the conflict.

    Hear him, “We have grave concerns about the misinformation and misrepresentation of the security crisis in Benue State. Your Excellency, it’s not herder-farmer clashes, it is not communal clashes; it’s not reprisal attacks or skirmishes.  It is this misinformation that has led to suggestions such as ‘remain tolerant, learn to live in peace with your neighbours’.

    “What we are dealing with here in Benue is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocide invasion and land grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits which has been going on for decades and is worsening by the year”.

    Tor Tiv said wrong diagnosis of an ailment will always lead to wrong treatment and that they are dealing with something far more sinister and not just learning to live with your neighbour but dealing with the war. The paramount ruler may have been referring to an earlier statement by the presidency on the Benue killings.

    Special Adviser to the president on media and publicity, Bayo Onanuga had in a statement charged the state governor, Hyacinth Alia to among others, convene reconciliation meetings and dialogue among warring parties to end the incessant bloodshed and bring lasting peace and harmonious co-existence between farmers, herders and communities.

    Prof. Ayatse says these are not the real issues to contend with. He would want the president to have a proper reading of the situation for him to provide the right therapies to it.

    The presentation of the paramount ruler struck a common chord with the issues raised by a former minister of defence, Theophilus Danjuma when in March 2018, he accused the Armed Forces of aiding the ongoing killings in the country.

     He had said at the maiden convocation of Taraba State University that, “there is an attempt at ethnic cleansing in the state and of course in some riverine and rural communities in Nigeria. Our armed forces are not neutral. They collude with the armed bandits to kill people, kill Nigerians. The Armed Forces guide their movement. They cover them. If you are depending on the Armed Forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one”.

    Danjuma insisted that the ethnic cleansing in Taraba State and other rural communities must stop, otherwise Somali will be a child’s play even as he called for self-defence.

    So, the issues raised by the traditional ruler are not entirely new; that they have persisted signposts the failure of the leadership to realistically to find closure to them. Sadly, the nation continues to pay the prize for inaction, acts of omission or commission.

    If a former minister of defence could go public with similar allegations about seven years ago, then the issues are damn serious and weighty. Danjuma spoke when Buhari, a former military head of state was in the saddle as civilian president.

    There is every reason to take Danjuma seriously especially in issues of this nature. The issue has again come into the public domain with President Tinubu in charge. The way he goes about it, will determine the level of progress or lack of it in finding durable solutions to the cycle of killings that has put the nation on edge.

    There are reports of the taking over and renaming of communities where militia herdsmen sacked the indigenous populations who now live in Internally Displaced Persons IDP camps in states most prone to the attacks. Independent but unconfirmed sources had it that about 150 communities sacked in Plateau State are now being occupied by the militia herdsmen with some of the communities already renamed.

    The issues are damn serious and complex. They have gone beyond the usual skirmishes between herders and their host communities. Expansionism and land grabbing are the leitmotif. It is vital to deconstruct the Benue narrative for better understanding of the issues involved.

    Even as daunting as the allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide are, the first step to halting the scourge is to ensure that the criminals are not allowed to operate without consequences. It is the prime duty of the government to maintain law and order and protect lives and property.

    If the motivation and operational strategies of militia herdsmen are decoded, it will be difficult for them to attack, kill and maim without being apprehended. Then, the nation would have been on a sure path to consigning to the dust bin of history the cycle of bloodshed that is increasingly tilting it to the precipice.

  • Unbundling Unity Colleges

    Unbundling Unity Colleges

    If everything goes on well, the federal government will soon unbundle the 115 Unity Colleges across the country into basic and secondary schools. Consultations to that effect are already on-going between the relevant ministries and agencies of the government.

    Minister of State for Education, Yusuf Sununu, while disclosing these at a meeting of principals of Unity Colleges with the theme, “Entrepreneurial Education: A Panacea for Self-reliance and National development” said the new measure is an integral part of the National Policy on Education. He further justified the unbundling exercise on the ground that it will allow more funds to go into the basic education level which is the basic foundation for learning.

    “As at today, money accruing to the Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC is not being enjoyed by the Federal Unity Colleges. But the unbundling will allow them (Unity Colleges) to have the basic education component which will be funded through UBEC”, the minister argued. By the new arrangement, more money will go into the basic and secondary education against what obtained in the past.

    Apart from additional funds that will be attracted by the schools, it was further canvassed that the unbundling will draw further benefit from the huge opportunities it offers for self-employment and self-reliance on the part of its products. Its effects in ameliorating the escalating unemployment level in the country is also put forward as further reason why the unbundling is a thing whose time has come.

    Given the reasons adduced by the minister, the proposed unbundling of Unity Colleges would seem to draw considerable allure. This is especially so given the high unemployment level among products of our secondary schools. The socio-economic and developmental challenges that currently assail the country, further lend any policy capable of equipping graduates of such schools with the necessary skills to make use of their heads and hands to create employment a desideratum.

    But there are grey areas in the minister’s presentation that require further clarification. There was no explanation on whether the basic and secondary schools would operate from the colleges as presently constituted or entail earmarking some of the Unity colleges as distinct basic schools running subjects up to the senior secondary school level while others are designated secondary schools with subjects running up to the same level.

     This clarification is germane for clear distinction between the current proposal and the 6-3-3-4 policy on education around which the nation’s secondary school education revolves. This is more so as the proposed new initiative shares the same objectives with the 6-3-3-4 policy on education which came into place since 1983. When the 6-3-3-4 system was introduced, all the nation’s secondary schools including the Unity Colleges had to cue into it.

    Ironically, the same reasons that had all along been adduced to justify the 6-3-3-4 policy on education are the very ones the minister is putting forward to justify the unbundling of the Unity Colleges. It was then argued that on completion of the six-year secondary school system split into junior and senior secondary schools, their products would have had vocational training inculcated into them such that will make them self-employed and self-reliant if they are not able to proceed to the university.

    By this, the government would indirectly reduce the scourge of unemployment that has been growing in geometric progression with its associated social vices. The minister spoke along these lines when urged principals of Unity Colleges to cultivate the entrepreneurial mind-set on their students by integrating it into the school curriculum to empower them to become job creators than job seekers.

     “Entrepreneurship education offers a solution to this challenge as it prepares students to think creatively, innovatively and develop the confidence to take calculated risks”, Sununu further eulogised the proposed initiative. This argument is nothing new.  It was the lynchpin around which the 6-3-3-4 education system revolved.  

    After more than two decades of its implementation, facts on the ground indicate very appallingly that the policy has been unhelpful in producing school leavers capable of self-reliance or creating employment for themselves. The touted self-reliance and self-employment from its products have largely remained a grand illusion. This should not come as a surprise.

    A combination of factors added up to rob the policy of its advertised potentials. Lack of adequate skilled manpower to see the students through vocational training, the absence of home grown technology, institutional corruption and dearth of supportive infrastructural facilities have remained the key obstacles to the high-minded goals of the 6-3-3-4 education system.

    So when Sununu presented the unbundling of the Unity Colleges in the same fashion the 6-3-3-4 system was dressed but failed to deliver on promise, public cynicism was bound to greet it. There are reservations as to whether the unbundling will not suffer the fate of other policies before it. There has been no substantial change or improvement in the conduct of public affairs to give confidence that the unbundling will not suffer from the same systemic challenges that worked against the realisation of the goals of the 6-3-3-4 system.

     It is not just enough to justify the unbundling of the unity colleges on the premise that it will allow more funds from UBEC to be injected into them. Neither is it enough to expect that once the schools are split and additional funds injected into them, all the necessary and sufficient conditions they require to deliver on promise would have been guaranteed. Far from that. How these funds are utilised in a system notorious for official corruption is at issue.

    Moreover, it is yet uncertain how the government intends to address such systemic deficits as requisite skilled local manpower, the attendant technological base and such infrastructural facilities as the epileptic power supply that are sine qua non for the kind of revolutionary change in skills acquisition.

    But then, the term unbundling throws up feelings that leave sour taste in the mouths of the citizenry. Nigerians encountered that term when the oil sector was broken down. They also saw it in action in the case of the National Electric Power Authority NEPA. Unbundling was dressed as the elixir to the challenges in those sectors.

    But the efficiencies and economy of scale that were to be derived from those unbundling exercise have been hard to realise. Rather, they have brought with them the same inefficiencies that marred their predecessors and high costs which the citizenry have had to pay for their services.

    So when the minister spoke of unbundling the Unity Colleges, the images the citizens got was that it would entail increases in school fees. But the explanation that the envisaged additional funds would come from the UBEC with the introduction of the basic education component seemed to have put that possibility at bay.

    Before then, there had arisen speculations that school fees in the unity schools had been increased to N386,000. The Federal Ministry of Education was quick to deny it. It had in a statement; described a document to that effect, which it said was circulating among parents as fraudulent. It said the highest fee paid by students in the unity schools was N100, 000 only for new students.

    It is good the speculated increase arose before the unbundling exercise was announced by the minister. We now know that additional funding for the new initiative will come from UBEC. That should be heart-refreshing. But the federal government must do proper homework this time around. It is not just enough to tout the advantages the unbundling of the Unity Colleges will bring forth.

    This country has not been lacking in churning out policies designed to set the nation on proper developmental direction. But there exists a whole world of difference between policy formulation and its implementation to achieve the desired goals. Secondary education that equips their products to make use of their heads and hands to create jobs is the way to go.

    But the fundamentals must be gotten right. The consultations presaging the unbundling must ensure all the supportive infrastructure and technological manpower to inculcate the envisaged entrepreneurial skills on the students are adequately in place. That will make the difference between the deficits encountered by the 6-3-3-4 system and the current one.