The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Onitsha Main Market closure

    Onitsha Main Market closure

    It is getting clearer that the shut-down of Onitsha Main Market by Anambra State government did not offer the best option in addressing concerns on the market’s continued closure in compliance with the sit-at-home ritual on Mondays. Not with the spontaneity of protests and demonstrations the measure escalated last Tuesday. Not with the pro-Biafra sentiments and agitations it re-ignited for the release of jailed leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.

    The social media was so awash with such sentiments that Anambra State Police Command in a statement expressed concerns about what it called the “pattern of individuals using social media platforms to incite violence, disrupt public peace as well as the sharing of unverified videos regarding the security situation in the area”.

    Before then, the state government had amassed an armada of security agencies to ensure traders did not gain entry into the market with prospects for unpredictable outcomes. Good enough, the security agencies were able to manage the situation in the most professional and competent manner as there have been no reports of any fatality. Even then, the meeting summoned by the state government last Thursday during which they dialogued with the traders’ unions on issues relating to continued observance of the sit-at-home order long suspended by the IPOB signposts lack of adequate consultations before the market shutdown.

    It is immaterial whether the meeting was summoned at the instance of the traders’ unions as the state government claimed. The very fact the government saw sufficient reasons to hold the meeting is suggestive of one or two things.

    It goes with the unmistakable impression that Governor Chukwuma Soludo did not exhaust all avenues for the peaceful resolution of the matter before resorting to the one-week closure of the market. There is no evidence that he consulted with the traders’ unions widely before shutting down the market with an armada of security agencies.

     Had there been such discussions, neither the traders’ unions nor the state government would be quick in seeking or acceding to last Thursdays’ meeting. Issues that arose at the meeting would have been factored into government’s decision to mitigate the ruffled atmosphere created by the closure. It is probable the state government underestimated the capacity of its action to escalate sentiments surrounding the sit-at-home order.

    Video footages from the demonstrations showed the traders expressing solidarity with Kanu and calling for his release. The protest even entered the second day when some of the traders blocked the Niger Bridge linking Onitsha to Asaba, preventing entry and exit into the commercial city. It took the efforts of the security agencies to clear the obstacles and restore free movement on the bridge.

    There is no doubt the market shutdown had the potentials of injecting complications into the fragile security situation of the state but for its mature handling by the security agencies.

    Soludo may have justifiable reasons for seeking normalcy to return to the market. The state government estimates that a whooping N8 billion is lost each Monday the traders do not open the market.

    That is a huge revenue loss. Ironically, the same state government has further increased that loss by the closure of the market for one week. It even threatened to shut it for a further one month if the traders refuse to open with a further threat to bulldoze and pull down the market.

    A government that is genuinely concerned about the losses incurred every Monday and desirous of reversing the trend should not be seen issuing such drastic and counterproductive threats.

    Soludo may have been led to these extreme threats by frustration. But he should not be seen through his actions to be exacerbating the same situation he seeks to remedy. Besides, it is improbable whether the use of force or high-handedness offers the best option in addressing the issues to the sit-at-home observance.

    At the centre of it all is insecurity. Attempts in the past by some traders to resume activities on Mondays had attracted dire outcomes including loss of lives in the Onitsha axis. So, those who refuse to venture out on Mondays do so out of safety for their lives in the absence of adequate security protection from the law enforcement agencies.

    One of the protesters in Onitsha captured this contradiction succinctly when he said in a trending video clip, if the security presence amassed to enforce the market closure could be deployed to safeguard traders, he will have no problem opening his shop. But that says only part of the story.

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    That angle cannot diminish the groundswell of dissatisfaction in the zone with the judicial rather than political resolution of the Nnamdi Kanu matter. It is not for nothing that the closure immediately re-ignited sentiments for self-determination and the release of Nnamdi Kanu. So, it not just a matter of re-opening the market and doing away with sit-at-home. We may have to contend with the sentiments surrounding it for a long time to come. That is why political resolution as demanded severally by key leaders and socio-cultural organisations in the zone cannot be wished away.

    Just last week, reports had it that Yoruba self-determination leader, Sunday Adeyemo (Sunday Igboho)’s name was taken off the wanted list. In fact, he returned to Ibadan triumphantly to a rousing reception. There are parallels between what he stood for and the campaigns mounted by Kanu.

    No less a group than, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) latched on to such parallels to pick holes with what they described as presidential pardon given to Sunday Igboho. They listed the harm to lives and property which the activities of the Yoruba self-determination leader allegedly wrought on the Fulani living in Oyo State.

    The point MACBAN seemed to have elevated to the fore by such comparison is that political solution can also be found for the Kanu case. That may offer a better prospect for the full resolution of all issues to the sit-at-home observance and eventual return of peace and tranquillity in the zone.

    Even then, force in getting the traders re-open their shops is of questionable value. The relative return of normal activities in some state capitals was neither procured by force, intimidation or blackmail. It stemmed from enhanced confidence in law and order and feeling of safety from harms’ way by residents. The situation is remarkably different in the hinterlands because of the absence of these conditions.

    Former Anambra State Police commissioner, Aderemi Adeoye, captured this dialectic on one occasion with Soludo standing, when he said “it is not the duty of the police to drag people out of their homes as it will infringe on their fundamental human rights. Our duty is to make the environment conducive for those who want to come out. We have a duty to protect them”.

    Soludo should show evidence that he has caged those Christians whom he said were killing Christians in Anambra State for the traders to be sure of their safety on Mondays.

  • The Dean departs

    The Dean departs

    I walked into Lewis Obi’s office at the African Concord, and I saw a man of deceptive simplicity. Babafemi Ojudu had hinted me there was an opening in the magazine for a staff writer position.

     Obi, soft-spoken and grave, said he had been reading me, but wanted me to prove my mettle.

     None of my scripts with Newswatch had impressed him as much as a hand-written note on a fading post-it paper from Dan Agbese. Agbese, who passed recently, had commended me for a series of stories I did where I filled the magazine from cover to cover, from soft stories to an international piece. Bylines are no guarantees you wrote them yourself. Great editors redeem poor writers.

    So, I started a journey with African Concord and with the editor I must give credit for making me bloom uninterrupted.

    Newswatch editors shaped me and honed my skill. Obi allowed me blossom. He is one of the underappreciated journalists in our history. He became editor of African Concord and the magazine was nondescript for a while until he did something extraordinary.

    He recruited some of the best minds of the trade. Some of them have become the backbone of the industry for a generation. They include Ohi Alegbe, Babafemi Ojudu, Dele Momodu, Kunle Ajibade, Femi Macaulay, Kunle Solaja and Seye Kehinde. We joined Okey Ifionu and Victor Omuabor.

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    No intruder, Obi had Bayo Onanuga as deputy and he was a sort of operations manager. The magazine became the best in the country in style, courage and content. When Obi became editor in chief, Onanuga was editor and Dapo Olorunyomi joined the crew.

    I moved to the newspaper’s political desk. No newspaper or magazine has had such a constellation before or since. Each of the fellows in that stable turned out to become leading lights. It is credit to Obi for his genius in getting all of us under one roof and engineering great intellectual discussions that lasted late into the night.

    Under Obi, I started writing essays and cover stories. He handed me a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses mailed overnight by Onanuga from London, and I had four days to read it and do a review and story of the crisis it generated.

     I returned on Friday only to be told there was a Hezbollah threat fueled by a staff of the company. A glum Obi said not to publish.

    I called him Dean of Nigerian columnists then because from the late 1980’s to mid-1990’s he wrote the best columns in the country. Few will forget his masterpiece, The Caliphate’s army. Oga Lewis, thanks for the memory.

  • Did Akintola commit suicide?

    Did Akintola commit suicide?

    History often likes its villains, sometimes more than its heroes. Heroes titillate but can make you yawn. Virtue stirs the soul. Vice pushes us over the cliff. So, Villains make us gasp for exploits of the unknown. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan tempts with tempests in contrast to Christ’s even temper.

    In the Southwest, a familiar villain is Samuel Ladoke Akintola. He was a premier, a polyglot, a wordsmith, a thinker, a wit, a maoeuvrer and a political thespian. If he had all these before he departed history, he would still be a boring, if an eminently accomplished, man. But his imprint on time is what many of his Yoruba folks highlight: his epic betrayal.

    There have been efforts in the past few decades to nuance his tale, to pose him as a man of principle and an icon of governance, and even a faithful follower of the great Yoruba avatar: Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

    This season marks 60 years since he was dispatched during the 1966 coup. Some thought he met his comeuppance while inking their displeasure at the reason behind the episode when a certain Captain Okoro led some soldiers to his Agodi Residence.

     But a question remains quiet in the tale. Why did Akintola not surrender? His deputy, Chief Fani-Kayode, was not killed. They grabbed him, and Akintola was aware. After initial gunfire exchanges, the soldiers ordered him to drop his gun. But the premier would not. He battled to the death.

    This act may benefit from historical insight from a book largely ignored. Aristocratic Rebel is a biography of Nigeria’s top spy in the 1960’s and later an inspector general of police, M.D. Yusufu.

    The book is written by Ayo Opadokun, former secretary of NADECO.

    The book was presented with Yusufu in attendance in 2006, which means he endorsed all that Opadokun wrote in that underplayed classic of the Nigerian story.

    According to Yusufu, Akintola had been invited over to Kaduna by the then premier of Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello on the eve of the coup. What was the reason? According to Yusufu, the NPC with then governor Kashim Ibrahim had asked the Sardauna to convey the decision of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC).

    “It is very clear that the Yoruba don’t like Akintola. Please, call Akintola and tell him that this alliance is off. Let him go and sort out his problem with the Yorubas.” That was the message the Sardauna conveyed to S.L.A.

    “I was the most senior Federal officer, so I had to receive Chief Akintola at the airport. The Sardauna sent along with me one of his ministers – Abuto Obekpa. That is why the New Nigerian (newspaper) photograph on the day of the coup captured me receiving Akintola at the Kaduna airport,” said Yusufu.

    According to Opadokun, …”if Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and his fellow plotters had lingered past that week before staging their coup, perhaps the course of Nigerian history would have altered.” History does not follow a script. It happens based on a constellation of forces. Hence, all true historians know that nothing is inevitable. It does not follow a dice. Hence, we cannot say the coup was inevitable.

    When Akintola returned to Ibadan, what might have boiled over in his mind? We shall never know. But it was obvious from the meeting with his coalition partners, he was a lonely man. Could he have gone back to his Yoruba folks? Could he have bended a knee to Awo and his people? Could he have apologized for his alliance with the NCNC against Awo, for his role in the wetie and the conflagration in the West? For his attitude to Ogunde and the songs of the minstrel that made him a pariah of the region? As professor Jide Akin Osuntokun has reminded us, he was disappointed with appointments at the centre with the Tafawa Balewa government. He was beginning to see that his quest for justice was now belly up. He was already seeing the fruits of treachery. He was not only isolated by his federal allies but also the Yoruba street where some had corrupted his initials S.L.A to Ese ole, that is the leg of a thief.

    Did he welcome the coup as denouement? Was his act of defiance to the soldiers actually a bravado of surrender to fate. Was it an escape route for his pride? Was the Are Onakakanfo  playing out the last act of a Yoruba eschatology?

    This is not only a material of historical inquiry but also for a sort of psyco-history. Did death save him from disgrace? For the realist, this is a grist to investigate the last chapter of valour, a man who had been a fellow traveler of Awolowo and his Action Group, and was such a loyal deputy that he was a natural to take over from Awo as the premier of the region.

    He was a great administrator who actualized much of Awo’s dreams, from Cocoa House to the now Obafemi Awolowo University. Yet, as Shakespeare wrote, the “spirit of men is in their blood.” Akintola saw power and imbued its hubris. The artist, novelist and playwright might see the conflict between character and ambition unfold in a brilliant soul. The playwright may tempt the premise that the man saw death as an opportunity and his great escape from a public apology or opprobrium. That is what a Gibbons or Tacitus or, Ibn Battuta or any  classic historian may dig up from an Akintola narrative.

    But there is another angle, for the traditionalist or cultural historian. One, it is the belief that the Are Onakakanfo, the post of the Yoruba generalissimo, is fated to tragedy. Afonja set the blood-strewn stage. By taking that position, he had signed a cultural death warrant. Did he contemplate it that night of bullets?

    The other point was farther back when the young men of the Yoruba race went to Ife to swear an oath to accept Awolowo as the leader of the Yoruba. The deal foreordained the AG. The other part of the oath is not this essay’s remit. But Akintola was part of the young men. And a line in that oath is, eni to ba dale abale lo. He who betrays will die.

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    Eminent lawyer Rotimi Williams also swore. When he turned his back on Awo, he did not oppose him. It is said that his mother warned him against defying the oath. The man turned to his profession and was never a politician again till he died.

    Was S.L.A’s fate tied to his breaking an oath, or it is mere superstition? This is the sort of story that excites political scientists and historians. Insights into the past and its big men are  not just about what they do but how they are framed by the societies they made and made them.

    In Sophocles’ King Oedipus, the Greek playwright teases the audience as to whether the story of Oedipus’ end is a matter of prophecy or hubris, or both. Our own Ola Rotimi has no patience in his adaptation, he thunders “the Gods are not to Blame.”

    He is taking the realist tack while the play nurtures doubt and sometimes endorses the agenda of the mystical.

     In his essay about such artistic quandary, Soyinka writes of Achebe’s Arrow of God and the author’s contempt for cultural mystery.

    The Nobel laureate describes it as “the secularisation of the profoundly mystical.” Shakespeare addresses this ambiguity in his Macbeth, a king who thinks no man born of a woman can kill him. Mystic fuels hubris to death.

    But to begin any such dialogue here, historians and biographers must address the riddle: Did S.L.A. commit suicide?

  • Katsina’s peculiar banditry

    Katsina’s peculiar banditry

    Katsina State has been in the news, albeit for unsavoury reasons. Still grappling with the backlash of its decision to free 70 bandits facing trials in various courts, the state government scored another low with reports that one of its local governments has set aside N300 million in the 2026 budget for the payment of ransom to bandits.

    Former Secretary to the State Government, Mustapha Inuwa who stated this also disclosed that several councils grappling with insecurity usually make monthly payments running into millions of naira to bandits operating in their areas.  He fears the community-initiated peace with bandits in 18 local government areas of the state will retard overall development and progress.

    Under the deal, hundreds of villagers abducted by the rampaging bandits were said to have been freed. The proposed freeing of the 70 bandits facing trials is the second arm of the deal. So, it would seem a fait accompli.

    Inuwa’s disclosure on the budget for bandits has upped the ante in the controversy that recently rocked Katsina State due to its decision to free 70 bandits facing trials in the courts. Sequel to mounting criticisms over the controversial decision, the state government had sought to rationalise its decision to free the bandits on the grounds of consolidating a peace deal entered into between communities affected by insecurity and repentant bandits.

    Hear the state Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Nasir Muazu, “World over, everyone knows that after a war is fought, there are usually prisoner exchanges. If you take Nigeria for example, during the civil war, many prisoners were set free and exchanged between the Nigerian side and the Biafran side”.

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    He also drew parallels with the release of Boko Haram prisoners after an agreement was reached even as he linked the freedom of Chibok school girls to the release of some Boko Haram prisoners. “So, it is not an issue of whether an offence has been committed or not, so long as there is peace. The issue is that prisoner exchange is not a new thing in the history of war and peace”, the commissioner asserted.

    The two incidents stand out the Katsina State government very distinctly in the curious manner it responds to the challenges of banditry. But they also signpost the reasons banditry seems to be taking a very dangerous dimension in that state. This is not the first time that state government is treading this dangerous path.

    During the previous regime of Aminu Masari, the government had entered into controversial peace pacts with the bandits for the cessation of attacks on rural communities. Various incentives were offered them including money for peace to reign. In one instance, the governor posed in a photograph with bandits’ leaders clutching sophisticated weapons as a sign of a purported peace accord and eventual reining in of the marauders.

    It did not take long before the bandits went back to their former criminal ways rendering the purported peace accord a nullity. The situation has even got worse with Masari’s exit from power. The complications posed by that noxious policy must have led the current state governor to the plan to free 70 bandits standing trials under a dubious peace accord they entered into with the communities. But the disconcerting thing here is the inability of the present regime to learn from the mistakes of previous endeavours. Even then, the propositions, as well as the arguments canvassed by the state government as justification, are largely flawed.

    There is the challenge of the propriety in discontinuing the court trials for offences the bandits allegedly committed. What of accountability for the crimes they were alleged to have committed? And is Katsina State government not indirectly rewarding criminality given the tendency of such reprieve emboldening criminals to hold the state to ransom as the current situation suggests?

    Even then, the comparisons of prisoner exchange which Muazu cited are largely flawed. It gives the miserable impression that Katsina State is a sovereign state within the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Or are we contending with the verity of a bandits’ republic which this column has in many articles severally simulated?

    The argument that many villagers abducted by the bandits across 18 local government areas have already been freed under the agreement makes the matter more frightening. The war against banditry is largely a federal endeavour even as the support of other levels of government cannot be discountenanced.

    It is inherently wrong for the Katsina State government to seek parallels between the prisoner exchange of the Nigerian civil war and the criminality of the bandits standing trials at the courts.

    Yes, there may have been prisoner exchange before the Chibok girls were released. But the fact is that such gestures never went down well with the public. Neither have they been able to stem the tide of Boko Haram insurgency till date. The uncanny irony is that some of those released under such deals were known to have gone back to their former evil ways with greater vengeance and lethality. The same fears are being evoked by the proposed freeing of 70 bandits on the guise of seeking elusive peace.

    It will not only compromise security but result in counterproductive outcomes. That such deals do not lead to fruitful outcomes except regularly oiling the purses of the bandits is evidenced by the setting aside a whooping N300 million by a local government to settle bandits. It has become a recurrent expenditure with no benefit to the common people of the state.

    But the step taken by that local government should not come as a surprise. Not with the recent advocacy by fiery Islamic scholar, Sheik Ahmad Gumi. He had at the peak of the US threats to attack Nigeria warned against such attacks with a call on governments to include the bandits in the budget. So, the said local government may just be hearkening to Gumi’s call especially in the absence of official condemnation of that dangerous proposition.

    That is perhaps, all that is needed to grow banditry as an industry. It is a vicious cycle that will not only swell the industry in Katsina and beyond but also stall all efforts to convey public goods and services to the traumatised rural communities. Things cannot continue this way without serious repercussions to law and order; the authority and sovereignty of the Nigerian state.

    Duplicity in responses of various levels of government and their agencies to banditry, kidnapping and associated criminalities accounts for why mass abductions are getting out control. That was the troubling scenario in penultimate Sunday’s initial denial by the police and the state government of the serial kidnap of 177 worshippers from three churches in Kurmin Wali, Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State. The indecent haste of the denial threw complications into the incident, stalled quick response and rescue and allowed the bandits to ferry the captives to hidden dungeons.

    Neither the purported remoteness of the area nor the imperative for caution should stand as excuse for that embarrassing bungle. It really spoke volumes on the nation’s responses to metastasizing security infractions.

  • The Kaduna breach

    The Kaduna breach

    We are living in an era of the coward.

    As we saw recently in Kaduna.

    Guns are no evidence of strength when targets bear no arms.

     A proverb says, a coward is always in the mood to fight when he sees someone he can beat. That is also the definition of a bully.

    The bandit may howl, may tout a gun, may swagger and harumph.

    But he is a tyrant without a heart. So, when they invaded three churches, one a Catholic and the other two Cherubim and Seraphim, they only glorified a faintness of heart.

    Why did they choose to strike in Kaduna? It is tempting to say that it is a violence tinged with or even inspired by ill-will.

    For the past two and half years, the state under its Governor, Uba Sani has steadily steered away the pivotal northwest state from a stereotype of blood and fear.

    So bad was the state under its previous administration that when the then candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu visited one of the hotbeds of terror, it was not a mere campaign stop. It was like an army division rumbling into Giwa, one of the underbellies of bandits.

    Today, the place, including other areas of the state, including Kajuru where the depraved souls struck, have become neon of quiet after eons of violence. Today, Giwa is pivotal to Kaduna’s good times, with loads of lorries shipping cattle down south every day.

    When the story of the strike happened, it must have jolted even those who maintain peace in the state because it might have ruffled an atmosphere of confidence, of immunity. That can happen when you take peace for granted.

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    Perhaps, without excusing the police authorities, that may have led to the tentative acceptance and affirmation of the Kajuru abductions.

    I recall the same happened in the quiescent era of then governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN of Lagos State. Robbers rumbled into town and laid waste a portion of the city. It was a shock even to the elites of security of the state.

    Residents were taken aback, and reminds one of the lines of the Caribbean writer George Lamming, who wrote: “something startled where I thought I was safest.” As they say in security parlance, you only need to be wrong once for disaster to happen. That sort never happened again under Fashola or since.

    Why I suggest that Kaduna kidnapping might have resulted from envy is simple. Kaduna State has served as an island of peace in a turbulent region.

    There are those in the politics of the state and with partisan umbrage over the repeated stories of tranquility in the state.

    They had over the past year been posting narratives to undermine the new trend of security.

    Some of them were reporting the recent abduction not because it was true but as an opportunity to gloat.

    They were not thinking of the children and babies snatched from the belly of their God.

    They were not lamenting the women who had left home with pious songs on their lips and peace for their Sundays. They were not contemplating how that breach had turned an outback village off its balance.

    They did not wonder how fear had paralysed their fellow citizens.

    The coordinated attack on a Sunday makes one wonder if it was not just a mere bandit assault but a sponsored political act of brigandage.

    That might have accounted for why Governor Sani said he was not interested in politics or numbers but the effort to rescue the citizens.

    The target of churches may also raise the spectre as to whether the sponsors wanted to ratchet up an American doubt about government efforts to beat back the bandits and reinforce fantasies about Christian genocide.

    If that is true, then the sponsors, if there were, must be very naïve. It is easy to understand that someone, somewhere does not have peace in their desperate hearts over the rebirth of peace in that land.

    Being an island of peace comes with a price.

    In a recent address at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Governor Sani had stated that some flashes of violence his government has observed came from other states.

    Could that have been the case with the church abductions? It was observed that the churches were located on the border of forests that abut on highways.

    As a writer stated recently, what happened in Kaduna State is a breach, not a norm.

    The media, in a hurry to report the event, has not put in context the calm of the state in the past couple of years, which must have raised questions as to whether it was a breach taking advantage of police and intelligence complacency, or the work of cohorts with political mischief. Or both.

    It indeed is a matter for investigation. In Shakespeare’s great play of plots and intrigues, Julius Caesar, a character says, “There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Caesar.

    If thou beest not immortal, look about you: security gives way to conspiracy.” We cannot ignore the words of the bard. To investigate is to emphasise vigilance. As Joseph Conrad noted in his novel: The Secret Agent, “protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.” The first line of protection is to watch from the tower.

    Governor Sani, as a man with a human and civil rights pedigree, understands that security is not the only solution to insecurity. Hence, as the move to release the abductees continue, he scored two major infrastructure goals. One, with unveiling of the Durum – Kuruntumawa road, leading to eclat and jubilation in Makarfi Local  Government Area, a feat the locals say they had not seen in close to a generation.

    Another is the Audi-Kako asphaltic road in Zaria Local Government Area.

    He has also attacked the issue of unemployment with over 2.5 million citizens empowered with cash for investment. He has also established the largest hub for artisans and training in the subcontinent.

    Efforts like these ensure that to improve security means not thinking about it as security alone.

    It is the work of a governor to ensure the communities work together. That sets the foundation. Security forces take over from that.

    The synergy ensures success.

    Hence Sani over the past two years has stressed this cooperation with Abuja. It should continue. Gov Sani has always stressed the idea of inclusion, and one of his latch keys has been religious harmony.

    He is beloved of southern Kaduna today because he has brought them back into the Kaduna commonwealth. One of such symbolisms is the Christmas Carol services. It does not take away his Muslim fidelity. It shows he is at peace with his faith. He is also showing he is governor of all.

    But what is important for now is to bring home the innocents from the clutches of the cowards. That will be in spite of the Shakespeare line that “security is the chief enemy of mortals,” especially partisan mortals.

  • Awujale uproar and other stories

    Awujale uproar and other stories

    The uproar of the Awujale throne reflects a truth we deny in our souls. That we are republicans first. We may love democracy, go to polls, elect our governors and presidents, embrace constitutions and heckle our lawmakers.

    But everything shows that we love our monarchies just as much. The British created the House of Chiefs to defang the kings. They subjected them to civil authorities. The British were pretending to give us democracy without its cardinal tenet: freedom. It reminds one of the quote from Poet Lord Byron on Metternich of Austria: “he had no objection to true liberty except that  it will set them free.”

    Our kings have been without power. That is hard power, apologies to Harvard Professor Joseph Nye. But they have not lost soft power. And at the core of that soft power is honour, which philosopher Montesquieu says is the highest asset of monarchies. That honour is at the core of our spiritual sense of being.

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    That honour is the reason we have seen battles for the thrones not only in Ijebuland but across the country. We are still watching from the ringside the battle for supremacy between the Alafin of Oyo and the Ooni of Ife. Not long ago, the Ibadan traditional throne roiled after former Governor Abiola Ajimobi tweaked the status of lower cadre of rulers. In Benin, the former governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, was in an atavistic battle with the Oba of Benin by trying to upset his supremacy with upstart chiefs.

    The Kano throne continues to excite the nation with the spectre of two emirs and the governor playing a delicate balancing role. The courts are also coy at resolving it.

    All politicians technically are above the kings. They dare not tell their subjects so, or even flex a superior eye. Even presidents will rile them at their own peril. Let us stop pretending that we are republicans. Modernity may be seductive. But our roots are too deep to yield.

  • Arrest of Ekpoma students

    Arrest of Ekpoma students

    Powers of Nigerian Police to arrest and bring to book individuals or groups found to have run against the laws of the country are not in any doubt. Society would have been a jungle characterised by the atavism of the state of nature in the absence of modern institutions to regulate conduct and ensure compliance with law and order.

    But the discharge of these duties should not be done in a manner that negates the very objectives these institutions exist to serve. That seems the dilemma brought to the fore by the police handling of last week’s protest against escalating insecurity allegedly by students of Ambrose Ali University (AAU), Ekpoma Edo State.

    The students had reportedly embarked on the protest against rising insecurity and inexplicable killings in the area. In the course of their outing, the protest turned violent leading to the pulling down of some billboards mounted by politicians for the 2027 elections.

    Some shops were also reported to have been looted by the protesters who were apparently joined by hoodlums. The palace of the Onojie of Ekpoma was not left out as it had its own dose of vandalization.

    The protesters accused politicians of prioritising campaigns over the safety and welfare of the people of the state even when the lid on political campaigns was yet to be lifted.

    Curiously, as the protest was on, there was no evidence of police presence either to guide the students or prevent it from sliding into lawlessness. So, the protest ran its full course and fizzled out even as some shop owners suffered losses.

    About a day after the incident, the police in Ekpoma embarked on a midnight raid, arresting students from various hostels across the university town for allegedly participating in the protest. The action caused serious panic among students and residents, many of them having nothing to do with the protest. When the raids were over, about 52 students were taken into police custody.

    Several students lamented that police operatives stormed their rooms in commando style as they were asleep and indiscriminately arrested those they found inside.

    The absurd manner of police action was captured succinctly by one of the students: “they came to the hostel at midnight and started arresting students. Many of those arrested were sleeping in their rooms and were not even on the streets when the protest took place”. That captures the contradiction in the manner the police in Ekpoma went about arresting those suspected of involvement in the protest.

    Those arrested were bundled into waiting vehicles only to be arraigned at an Edo High Court on sundry charges. The presiding judge, Justice William Aziegbemi said he lacked jurisdiction on the matter. He ordered the suspects to be remanded at the Ubiaja Correctional Centre and adjourned the case to February 26.

    Events leading to the protest, the arrest and detention of the students have not gone down well with the public. And the reasons are not hard to locate given that the protest was primarily activated by escalating cases of kidnapping and bizarre killings within the area.

    It should be seen for what it is – a spontaneous response to the breakdown of law and order, threat to human life in the area. Those protesting must have been so frustrated by the rising incidence of kidnapping and killings in the face of the inability of the security agencies to live up to their statutory duties. The resort to self-help should sufficiently challenge the authorities to the danger in allowing the degenerate security situation to fester.

    Being a spontaneous and desperate response from people within the area, it was little surprising that the police had no inkling of it. Apparently frustrated by its inability to control the protest while in full swing, the police opted to storm the hostels of the students at midnight, arresting those they found there for allegedly being part of the protesting mob. There is everything wrong with this manner of indiscriminate arrests.

    Even if the assumption was that AAU students masterminded the protests, what was the justification in storming hostels around the university town, arresting students found sleeping in their rooms for an alleged offence they may know nothing about? What evidence have the police to charge those arrested except that they are students of the university?

    It is not only a faulty strategy but guilty of hasty generalisation by assuming that any and every student of AAU was involved in the demonstrations. How the police intend to prove a case of complicity on the part of those arrested remains foggy. But, it is a complete failure of intelligence that the protest ran its full course without the knowledge of the security agencies.

    Even then, the statement by the Edo State government that the protest was not carried out by the students but stranger elements has injected complications into the police action. The president of the AAU students’ union equally corroborated this position when he said neither the union nor its national body was involved in the protest. That reinforces the narrative of spontaneity of the action.

    How the Ekpoma police arrived at the initial assumption that the protest was the handiwork of the students remains curious. It is speculative and capable of inflicting grave injustice on the innocent ones. They may have been deceived by the preponderance of the students’ population in that university town. This is by no means to suggest that some students may not have been involved in the protest. That possibility cannot be ruled out.

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    What has not gone down well with the public is the assumption that every student of the university took part in the protest – an assumption that led to the midnight hostel raids. Such a mind-set is loaded with the frightening prospects of muzzling students’ activism.

    Nigerians students have before now played active roles in reshaping unpopular government policies. The cases of the Nigerian-Anglo Defence Pact of 1960 and the 1978 school fees increase tagged, “Ali Must Go” stand out distinctly in this regard. Things seem to have gone awry in this country with the docility of Nigerian students in the face of bad and unpopular government policies.

    It is good a thing Edo State government said it has started releasing the remanded students with a promise to release the remaining ones. That process should be carried out expeditiously.

    Beyond the arrests, the spontaneous protest in Ekpoma highlights the increasing frustrations by the public with the unabating insecurity. Citizens are increasingly getting impatient with the reign of terror by criminals masquerading under various guises in the face of the inability of the government to tame the monster.

    The Edo State government and security agencies should address the dire security concerns that precipitated the protest. They should investigate further, the pattern of vandalization that occurred during the protest rather than exploit the vulnerability of the students as the line of least resistance.

  • Where is Enwonwu’s ‘Drummer’?

    Where is Enwonwu’s ‘Drummer’?

    How can a public sculpture by a master artist vanish without any explanation from the authorities? The curious disappearance of the commissioned 1978 4-foot bronze masterpiece by the legendary Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu, titled “The Drummer,” is the subject of a viral post by artist and writer Mudiare Onobrakpeya. His January post is titled: “The Missing Drummer: Ben Enwonwu’s Lost Landmark at NITEL House.”

    The disappearance of this sculpture is a hot issue in the Nigerian art world. It was commissioned for the NET Building (later the NITEL/NECOM House), which was the country’s telecoms nerve centre, on Marina, Lagos. The work stood there majestically from 1979 until it disappeared mysteriously around 2022. 

    It depicted a traditional drummer and was meant to symbolise telecommunications—the drum being Africa’s oldest long-distance signaling system. “The Drummer was a masterstroke of symbolism,” Onobrakpeya observed.

    The piece remains missing. Art historians and the artist’s family have raised questions about its “silent disappearance.” Onobrakpeya lamented: “Not relocated with ceremony. Not conserved in a museum. Not publicly documented. Simply absent—absorbed into the familiar silence that surrounds cultural loss in Nigeria.” He said: The seriousness of this disappearance lies not only in the artwork itself, but in what the building represented… proof that modern Nigeria could rise high without abandoning its cultural voice.”

    According to him, “the story of the sculpture’s fate is riddled with contradictions. Some public records suggest it is still there. Others—more credibly—state that it was removed. A national newspaper quotes Enwonwu’s son confirming that the work used to be at NITEL before it was taken down. Architectural commentary suggests it remained visible until around 2022, making its disappearance recent, traceable, and verifiable.”

    He argued: “This confusion is precisely how cultural assets vanish in plain sight. When certainty dissolves, accountability follows.

    “NITEL’s institutional collapse and the murky afterlife of its properties created ideal conditions for heritage loss. But one principle must be stated clearly: the sale or transfer of a building does not automatically include the right to remove public art.”

    The inevitable question: What happened to the artwork? “There are only three plausible scenarios,” Onobrakpeya reasoned. His thoughts: “First, removal for renovation or safety—if so, there should be records, condition reports, storage locations, and photographs.

    “Second, quiet transfer into private hands—where silence slowly converts patrimony into property. Third, outright theft disguised by bureaucratic confusion.”

    According to him, “Any of these scenarios is traceable—if the will to investigate exists. Public sculpture is not like private painting. A painting can disappear into a home. A public monument disappears in full view—and the public is told to move on. When a society accepts that, it signals that stealing from the commons is easy.”

    There is no question that the situation demands action from the authorities. Onobrakpeya called for: “A public declaration of the sculpture’s status. A proper inventory of Enwonwu’s monumental works. Heritage and law-enforcement involvement. And a recovery effort focused not on scandal, but on restoration and public access.”

    Ultimately, he argued, “The Drummer is not just missing bronze. What is missing with it is governance—the discipline of knowing what we own, where it is, who is responsible, and how it is protected.”

    He added that until the missing sculpture is clearly accounted for, “every institution connected to that building remains part of the chain of disappearance.”

    Ben Enwonwu, a painter and sculptor, died in Lagos in 1994, aged 76. He was born in Onitsha, in present-day Anambra State. Described as “arguably the most influential African artist of the 20th century,” he was “one of the first African artists to win critical acclaim.” He exhibited in   Europe and the United States and was listed in international directories of contemporary art.

    A beneficiary of a joint Shell Petroleum Company and British Council scholarship, in the 1940s he studied at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, and the Ruskin School, Ashmolean, Oxford University. He received an honorary doctorate degree from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, in 1969.

    He was appointed the first professor of Fine Arts at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife, from 1971 to 1975; and also, art consultant to the International Secretariat, Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in Lagos, 1977.

    His public sculptures include “Anyanwu” (1954–55), commissioned for the Nigerian National Museum in Lagos; and “Sango” (1964), a 14-foot representation of the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning, holding his double-axe staff, symbolising power and energy, displayed in front of the Eko Electric Distribution Company (EKEDC) (formerly NEPA) on Marina, Lagos.

    In two striking cases, the sale of Enwonwu’s art after his death highlighted the growing global recognition and value of African art.  His portrait, “Christine” (1971), was in October 2019 sold at Sotheby’s in London for £1.1 million (around $1.4 million USD). Another portrait, “Tutu” (1973), was in 2018 sold at auction for £1,205,000 by Bonhams.  

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    It is thought-provoking that while Enwonwu’s private paintings are being rediscovered overseas and sold for millions, his public bronze monument, “The Drummer,” has disappeared from Lagos.

    It is commendable that important advocacy groups are currently pushing the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) to move beyond “general audits” and launch a specific task force to locate “The Drummer.” These groups include the Ben Enwonwu Foundation (BEF), the Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation (BOF), and the Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA). The NCMM is targeted as the agency responsible for enforcing recovery.

    Curiously, there has been no formal confirmation from the Nigerian government or the current owners of NECOM House regarding the whereabouts of the sculpture. The entities involved in the building’s privatisation and current upkeep have not responded to public inquiries about whether the piece was moved for “safekeeping,” sold as part of the real estate, or stolen.

    The crux of the matter is that the sculpture was commissioned for a state-owned corporation (NITEL) that was later privatised, making it vulnerable to being treated as private furniture rather than a national treasure.

    The Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy and the NCMM must demonstrate a sense of responsibility, and pursue this issue to a logical conclusion.

  • No deadline for Oga Ray

    No deadline for Oga Ray

     We called him Yakky. We last met at the presentation of his memoirs, Beyond Expectations. When I left the NIIA venue, I did not know I was saying a final goodbye to Yakubu Mohammed.

    He was one of the four Newswatch Magazine founders, and the project of a generation was even his idea. He organized the seed financier. I never met Dele Giwa, although he was a sort of mentor and inspiration from afar. I learned different traits from Dan Agbese and Ray Ekpu. The great trait I learned from Yakky was to lead without being a bully. No one feared him. He never wanted anyone to fear him. But he was immensely respected. That is how I have tried to operate as a manager. It is Machiavelli, who recommended that leaders should be feared more than respected. That is weakness.

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    When we were paying tributes to Agbese a few weeks ago, Yakky was alive. No one thought he would be rested in the earth before my beloved Dan the Butcher. The one man alive is Oga Ray. Whatever you do, Oga Ray, you are not permitted to go. We are praying to Olorun Jehovah on our part. But on earth, beware of what you eat. How you exercise. Don’t stress, don’t eat that thing that upsets your guts, or take that beer a sip too much.

    You are a master of deadlines. There are no deadlines for Ray Ekpu. This is an order. Give us time to absorb the agonies and obsequies of Dan and Yakky. Please, spare us another. Not now.

  • Imam who saved Christians

    Imam who saved Christians

    Today, I reproduce my encounter with Abubakar Abdullahi, the genial matador for human coexistence, after he saved at least 500  Christians from a rage of bandits in Plateau State.

    Before he was an Imam, he was a man. He was 90.

    Before embarking on the journey, some locals said it was not far from Jos. Maybe 30 minutes. They may have been right if they reckoned with the landscape. The vision ahead promised booby-traps of bumps and body aches, even in a Toyota Land Cruiser that subdues rugged terrain into peculiar expressways.

    A contrast to what I had always known of Plateau State, with its breath-taking verdure, arboreal paradise and climate imported from Eden. The road to Yelwa Gindi Akwati was bald and ferocious with its dips, sways and rises on a rocky ride. Past tin mining sites, past monster rocks, riding through sand-clogged streams, the air sometimes crisp, sometimes a riot of dust. On mine sites, the graders lay still in mud-spattered cradles. Wealth lay beneath but everywhere you looked, poverty snorted. Someone remarked it was the scar of a failing federal system. Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong has lamented how rogue oligarchs with brigands siphon its mineral bounty.

    Peaks and valleys drape our vehicle with lights and shadows as we ride up and down the ragged road. We navigated a clump of trees here, a lone mango tree here and row of pear trees there, sometimes stunningly lush and some fading out of glory, all like sturdy fingers pointing to a baleful firmament. Also a cluster of grassy lawns had lost their lustre, but remain as insistent green carpets defying a birdless sky and an arid stretch of undulating land.

    “That is the first house they attacked and killed people,” a guide said, pointing to a mud house. The blend of thatched and zinc roof, black from fire, scattered all over a broken wall. We saw quite a few of such houses. It happened June 23, when a band of renegades rattled into Yelwa Gindi Akwati about 4pm with AK47, and undertook an orgy of killings and made a bonfire of homes. Their targets: Christians. That village also tenanted our hero.

    In the midst of this barbarous temerity, an 83-year-old man, Abubakar Abdullahi, stood for God and humans. He opened his mosque and his home. All who could enter he would defend. He had no arms, no brawn, no army. He, a fragile old man, with a soft voice and granite heart, asked the mosque to be locked, including an adjunct mosque. The mosques were filled. The overflow headed to his home of about five rooms. Men, women, children, all took shelter with their faith and an imam as their anchor. The goons came. The man stood at his door, between the militants and the helpless beings. The sky burst with rain, and the Imam fended them off with a plea. His mien appealed to them to save the souls.

    “I didn’t say anything to them,” he told me. “I was praying in my heart and looking at them.” The men were hooded, and spoke Hausa, Fulani and English, he said. As he stood before them, he tripped and fell. Rather than step over him, they stepped away, banged at the door of the mosque as well, but also left. All the lives were saved. Most of them Christians, as attested to by the Birom I saw there and his fellow custodians of the mosque.

    Were they 300? I asked. He said they were so many he could not count. I entered the mosque. If it was crammed full with people lying on the floor, it could have taken five hundred. It was not only Christians from his village but also those who fled there from neighbouring communities, including a place called Ex Land.

    In a region where Christians and Muslims have been reported to be at daggers-drawn, where the so-called herdsmen and farmers only met in blood puddles, this Imam bucked the narrative. He dared to disdain his personal safety for others and valorised human life without prejudice to religion. Because of him, hundreds of Nigerian men, women and children, secure a second chance in a year of wanton waste of sacred lives under the slaughter of ethnic and religious militants.

    He shunned the apocalypse of religious conflict and embraced peace now. Much was said about our Shero, Leah Sharibu, who stood her ground and would not surrender her Christian conscience on pain of death. She was a story of innocence and assertion of human resolve over the pressure of zealots. She represented the insistence of faith and human right.  The Imam staked his life to save hundreds of children like Leah and fathers and mothers. She tempted sectarian fealty, while the old man hailed over borders.

    Abubakar is a universal spirit. The Christian zealot will see remorse, the Muslim fanatic will find a new path, the atheist will coddle human pathos. He was a man with true evangelical zeal. A puritan of love and peace.  A partisan of harmony, not sects. He is not like the clerics who yelled for revenge, some in churches and others in mosques, cutting human society in cleavages of faith and murder.

    He did not abandon the Christians because they serve a different deity. “We are all children of God. Both faiths want peace.” He said.

    He counters the narrative where Christians in the United States bar Muslims from their country, and radical Muslims in the Middle East rape and slaughter Christians, where in North East, Boko Haram turns blood-filled eyes at The Holy Spirit, where a minister of defence is howling for grazing routes. Also a misguided president utters a wry plea for neighbours to accommodate each other. Mass deaths, mass burials. Dusk rapines, night raids. Families in disarray. We had all these where a man said no to slaughter, and yes to life.

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    Abubakar moved there like other Hausa-Fulani folks have done over the decades. The village has been a model of inter-faith harmony and even marriages. He arrived there in the early 1950’s when the Sardauna became the premier of Northern region.

    “The Christians welcomed us and gave us land,” he said. “We have lived together in peace ever since.” He noted that the Christians gave them the land where the mosque was built and they even contributed about N60,000 to build it.

     He also said those who preach hate between the religions have not studied the books.

    “I have read the Bible as well as the Qur’an,” he asserted. He read Hausa version. He spoke through translators. He said he saw many similarities between both faiths, and he read about Jesus’ miracles and all the stories, especially in the Old Testaments. “Jesus was mentioned about 25 times in the Qur’an and Mohammed five times,” he said. So he saw no reason for any frictions.

    Unlike many clerics, Christian and Muslim, who never face the ultimate test of faith, Abubakar excelled. In the novel Middlemarch by George Eliot, a young man who was undertaking a training to be a cleric raised doubts in the minds of some young women.

     A character said: “He would be a great hypocrite. But not yet.” It is like what Prophet Isaiah says of the weak,’’the children came to the birth, there is no strength to bring forth’’. Until a cleric excels like Abubakar, the potential of hypocrite hovers. Few are chosen.

    As for courage, he has no equal. He even turned down the government’s offer for protection. He deserves one of our highest national awards.

    He wanted to be a soldier and fight during the civil war. However, he had to remain at home to nurse his ailing father. When he died, Abubakar became Imam.