Category: Emeka Omeihe

By Emeka Omeihe

A teacher, Yusuf Jimoh (not real names) was overheard in a discussion with some of his colleagues lamenting he has never in his life, witnessed the kind of things that happened during the ENDSARS protests. Asked whether that was the first time he was seeing organized protests in such a large scale, he said no.

Hear him: “I was privy to the prolonged June 12 nationwide protests in 1993 and the 2014 one following fuel price increase by the regime of President Jonathan. I am also aware that the #ENDSARS campaign started sometime around 2017 but could not gather momentum”.

For him, the last protests against the dreaded police unit came out with striking features creating impressions that will live with him for the rest of his life. Even as he regretted the deaths of both police officers and civilians, he could not imagine hoodlums or whatever name they are called could one day, take up arms and unleash mayhem of the magnitude inflicted on police formations across the country and loot COVID-19 palliatives in the manner witnessed.

That such deadly attacks could be launched against the police establishment resulting to deaths, serious injuries, burning and looting of their arms and ammunitions, were things really beyond his conjecture. He never imagined the reality of a foreboding situation where the police would suddenly become a common enemy to be subjected to selective onslaught. That was the uncanny predicament Jimoh found himself. And we saw how policemen disappeared from public view for a couple of weeks for fear of being attacked by the so-called hoodlums.

Jimoh is not alone in this entanglement. I am sure those of us living today have never come across an occasion where hoodlums took up arms unleashing collateral damage on police formations across the country in such a coordinated manner as witnessed during the last protests. It is also a remote possibility that we have had an instance where police officers were so intimidated by the volume and spontaneity of such attacks that they scurried for safety with their overall morale standing at an all time low. What is even more surprising is how the said hoodlums were able to spread across the country with a good measure of success in their devious agenda suggesting they have a ‘standing army’ under their command and control. The level of moral damage the attacks inflicted on the police establishment is evident from efforts by its leadership to persuade officers and men to return to their duty posts or face disciplinary measures.

The Nigerian Police may not have given a thought to the reality that a day could come when some members of the public would turn against them either in sustained peaceful nationwide protests against their excesses or by way of violent attacks as evident from the onslaughts of the hoodlums. But all this came to pass.

So, Jimoh was speaking the minds of many when he said the outcome of the ENDSARS protests will for a long time, linger in his memory. Its memory will not only linger for a long time but also serve as a veritable source of research for students of politics, history, military and strategic studies. It is not just a mere happenstance. It touches on the real foundation of governance- the location of ultimate power between the leaders and those they govern. We shall return to this.

By the accounts of the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, a total of 22 policemen were gruesomely murdered with 26 others injured by the protesters while 205 critical national security assets, corporate facilities and private property were attacked,      burnt or vandalized.

Adamu further disclosed that 10 firearms including eight AK-47 rifles were carted away during the attacks on police stations even as 1,596 suspects were arrested in connection with the violence and widespread looting across the country.

That is the account of the police. Probably, when the civilian casualty level is added up, the weight of human loss will become clearer. But if accounts from the social media and other independent sources are anything to repose confidence on, civilian casualties are bound to be much higher. But that is beside the issue now.

Of relevance is the emerging dialectics in which some members of the society found themselves taking up arms against a government agency that exists primarily to protect their lives and property. Is it a case of failure of the social contract between the government and the governed, a measure of loss of confidence or crisis of relevance? If it is a case of any of these situations or all of them, what does it say of the type of government we run in this country?

What seems to have emerged from all this, is the picture of a dysfunctional police institution; an institution that rather than serve the people and seen to be serving them, had metamorphosed into an unmitigated liability to those it is paid to serve. It evokes the image of an agency that had become law unto itself (instead of law enforcing) where arbitrariness, extra-judicial killings and all manner of infractions held sway.

It paints the picture of public disenchantment with an agency that is not in tune with its mandate; an agency that fails to appreciate that it exists at the behest of the people and they (the people) have a say in the way it should perform its functions. If this reality had been appreciated and internalized, statements as “I waste you and nothing will happen” would not have been a recurring decimal in SARS lexicon as copiously reported. Such callous terms as ‘human abattoir’ would not have had any appeal to SARS operatives.

Sadly and implicit in the mindset captured by the above statement is the feeling that policemen can do anything including extra-judicial killings and get away with them. Who told them nothing could happen when they kill innocent souls recklessly? What gave them the impression that they are above those they are paid to protect and they could trample on their rights and get away with it? These are the issues to ponder and they speak much about the limits of state power and the level of supervision that is brought to bear in the daily activities of public functionaries.

That was the contradiction at play and the main grouse of the protesters against the SARS unit. But that the hoodlums failed to make a distinction between SARS operatives and other police departments meant they did not really see any difference between and among them. That may have accounted for the indiscriminate attacks on police formations across the country.

But the protests brought in their wake, the disbandment of SARS and the setting up of judicial panels of inquiry into mounting human rights’ abuse allegations against some operatives of that outfit. So, it is not true they can do anything and get away with them including extrajudicial killing and robbing helpless citizens of their hard-earned monies under all manner of guises. It is not true that police operatives are above the law only accountable to themselves and their supervisors for their actions. They still have the larger society that is the custodian of real political power to contend with. That was the social dynamics that was activated and there are lessons to learn.

We are concerned with the heuristics of this contradiction especially now the government has accepted the desideratum of police reforms. The reforms must be all embracing and far-reaching, touching both the psychological disposition of policemen vis-à-vis their relationship with the public, recruitment process, salaries, allowances and the conditions under which they perform their work. The police that will emerge from the reforms should be a highly reformed and motivated outfit; one that is seen as a friend rather than a foe and sufficiently groomed to function effectively in a democratic setting.

Its overall outcome should be a synthesis of the contradiction between thesis and antithesis- one that turns out of immense benefit to the larger society.

By Emeka Omeihe

If last week’s northern leaders’ meeting in Kaduna State was meant to douse the tension arising from the #ENDSARS protests, it miserably ended up producing direct opposite results.

From the list made public, the meeting was attended by the Senate President, Deputy Speaker, House of Representatives, Chief of Staff to the president, governors and their deputies. Also in attendance were members of the National Assembly, ministers, the Inspector-General of Police, Sultan of Sokoto, emirs and chiefs all from the northern part of the country. The agenda focused largely on events of the #ENDSARS protests.

This may not be the first of such meetings neither is there anything inherently wrong with regional gatherings. But the circumstance of this particular meeting and issues arising from it raise serious questions as to whether it was necessary in the first instance and if yes, whether its outcome is in the overall best interest of this unity in diversity?

Perhaps, a perusal of the resolutions of that meeting will open up further insights as to whether it served the collective interests and aspirations of the peoples of this country or drifted them further apart.  If the first item in the resolutions appreciating the roles of the traditional rulers in containing the menace of the ENDSARS protests in the north is not an indication of a tilt along regional lines, its commendation of efforts of northern governors in proactively addressing the ENDSARS protests in the country and the north in particular says it all.

For, whatever roles ascribed to northern traditional rules and their governors were also played in varying degrees by their southern counterparts.  Here, the intervention of southern governors, traditional rulers and socio-cultural groups in diffusing the ethnic poison which some unscrupulous elements sought to inject into the protests comes handy.

The failure of this role is evident from events in Oyigbo Local Government Area of Rivers state where Governor Nyesom Wike pointedly accused the proscribed IPOB of killing some soldiers and carting away their riffles. Wike may have his suspicion but the problem with such blanket accusations lie in the difficulty in distinguishing between the so-called IPOB members and other members of the society except the dominant ethnic group from which it draws considerable sympathy.

Knowing the temperament of soldiers when one of theirs is killed, it is not surprising that allegations of ethnic profiling and extrajudicial killings have been freely traded.  The social media has also been awash with video clips of all manner of inhuman treatment to young men from the ethnic group where the IPOB has large following. Many of their shops were destroyed and looted. But the fear is that many innocent ones would have suffered for things they know nothing about just because of their ethnicity.

That is the tragedy of Wike’s act of indiscretion. The killing of soldiers, policemen and protesting youths stands seriously condemned. So also is the wanton destruction and looting of public and private property.  But in no instance of those acts of lawlessness was a particular group pointedly held solely culpable even when investigations are still ongoing except in the Oyigbo case.

Even with recorded pictorials of men in military uniform shooting armless protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos, there is still a great deal of caution in categorically saying that soldiers did the killings. Elsewhere, such lawlessness was blamed on hoodlums and miscreants who hijacked the protests. I brought this in to underscore the inherent dangers in viewing national events from sectional and narrow confines.

Ordinarily, there shouldn’t be anything inherently wrong in northern traditional rulers taking measures to ensure that the ENDSARS protests were not hijacked by hoodlums. But the recurring emphasis on the north gives the unmistakable impression of an ‘US versus Them’ or north and south syndrome in the overall assessment of the youth protests.

Such a sectional slant especially given the times we are in, ended up widening the fault lines of our federal existence. A good measure of this is evident from the statement by southern and middle belt leaders deprecating some of the conclusions of the northern leaders’ meeting. It would have served the cause of this country better to have taken a national perspective of an event that brought youths from diverse shades to speak with one voice on issues concerning their future.

There is also the impression that the infractions associated with the disbanded outfit are largely a southern challenge. If that conclusion is right, it also speaks volumes on extant disparities in the country. But this stands contradicted in another breadth by their resolution supporting police reforms, including statement credited to Kaduna State governor, Nasir El’Rufai that the protests have further reinforced the need for state police.

The fact of this and the acceptance of all the demands of the protesters by President Buhari indicate there are merits in those demands. Then, it is hard to factor in regime change outside the ballot box as the motivation for the protests. Sentiments on the indivisibility, indissolubility and oneness of the country only reinforce the suspicion that some sections benefit from the status quo more than others. We have heard such sentiments time without number. Each time they are traded, the feelings they evoke is that of a country under threat of disintegration. That does not help matters either.

But the solution to whatever that constantly evokes fear about Nigeria’s shaky unity does not as much hinge in its constant regurgitation as in the practical and proactive steps to address the systemic dysfunctions that have kept them a recurring decimal. The solution lies in ‘working the talk’.  We can achieve those high-minded goals by identifying the lingering questions of our national existence and taking deliberate and realistic steps to address them in a manner that is acceptable to all the constituents. We can achieve national unity; accelerate the momentum of nation building through the institutionalization of a governance framework where justice, equity and fairness to all will hold sway.

When we have a social system that gives adequate protection to all irrespective of race, creed, ethnicity and religion; a system that unleashes the creative energies of the constituents to the fullest, then we would have watered the ground for the indivisibility, unity and progress of the country to endure. Then also, mouthing those national ideals at the slightest chance of systemic stress would have become patently redundant.

And that is the essence of extant agitations for true federalism through restructuring. So those yearning for restructuring are by no means less patriotic than those mouthing the indivisibility of the country while opposing the political re-engineering process that will bring it to fruition. What was expected of the northern leaders is to have been working towards national elite consensus on some of the nagging issues of our federal order. Narrow or sectional perspective of the slightest national challenge portends more harm than good because it further ruptures the fault lines.

The outcome of the virtual meeting of former heads of state called by President Buhari showed the issues are not as narrow as northern leaders saw them. Presidential aide, Femi Adesina recorded among others that the former leaders raised issues ranging from the quality of intelligence available to our security agencies; inter-agency cooperation, preventive measures and admission of the rights of the people to peaceful protests.  Adesina further reported that President Jonathan asked pertinent questions: What led to the crisis? How do we stop such in the future even after Buhari’s administration?

Jonathan further said “the root cause of the crisis had been with us far beyond the advent of the current administration and that it may last into future governments except some immediate steps were taken”. “He (Jonathan) enumerated them” referring to the immediate steps to forestall future occurrence. Nothing more to add!

By Emeka Omeihe

A grave risk exists in the thinking that the disbandment of the Special Anti- Robbery Squad SARS on account of its excesses will ease off public disenchantment with the police establishment.  As contentious as this reasoning is, it has already begun to shape the actions of the police leadership in the new measures to fill the gap created by the dissolution of SARS.

While directing those to be deployed to the new Special Weapons and Tactics unit (which replaced SARS) to undergo psychological and medical examination to ascertain their fitness and eligibility, the police leadership had promised that none of the defunct SARS operatives will be absorbed into the unit. But they have equally been directed to report for debriefing, psychological and medical examination.

Ordinarily, there should be nothing inherently wrong with these measures designed to ensure those charged with the duty of law maintenance and enforcement are of sound psychological and medical health. But that is as far as we can go as the directive is fraught with its own contradictions.

It amounts to medicine after death to require such tests from the disbanded SARS operatives after much harm has been done. Though it could be argued the essence is to aid proper redeployment, the fact that such tests were not done before their last assignments is a measure of the yawning gaps in the recruitment process of the police force. And that may have contributed to the dismal outing of its operatives, displacing public goals with their self-serving interests.

No matter how the poor outing of SARS is viewed, selfish interest is behind it all. And in this, there is everything to suggest, either they had the backing of their superiors or their bosses were negligent in their supervisory duties such that the excesses got out of hands. Whichever way, they are all vicariously liable for the current image and credibility crisis into which the police institution has been enmeshed.

This reality has also put to serious question, the propriety and efficacy of such tests solely for new entrants into the SWAT and defunct SARS. The impression conveyed is that once new entrants into the SWAT are of sound psychological and medical health, they will not repeat the inexplicable invasion of the privacy of innocent citizens and other infractions for which the disbanded outfit was notorious.

We are also faced with an added danger in the assumption that once all is well with these two sets of operatives, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the overall efficiency and improvement in the image problems of the police force would have been satisfied. That assumption is neither here nor there. There is the further dangerous presumption that other police officers and men including the highest echelon of the leadership have no reason undergoing psychological and medical tests to re-assess their current state of health.

Yet, they were the ones supervising all the ills of the defunct SARS operatives finding nothing wrong in them. They were the ones that came out before now to announce a purported reformation of the operations of the squad assuring citizens of change that never materialized. This set of leaders need psychological and medical tests more than those they lead. What seemed to have emerged from these is that the evils of SARS are a good measure of the rot not only in the police institution but the Nigerian state.

SARS is the verity of a metaphor for all that is wrong with the police institution. It is a systemic challenge that can only be realistically addressed holistically. Thus, to isolate operatives of the defunct SARS or recruits into SWAT for medical tests or any forms of re-orientation to the exclusion of the entire police force (low and high) would amount to a reductionist perspective of the challenge. And it is bound to prove futile.

The buck for the excesses of the police established stops at the table of its leadership. What accounts for the current impression that the Inspector General of Police IG, the DIGs, AIGs et al, should be exculpated from the social malaise that infested a unit under their collective supervision?

What is therefore required is a total overhaul of the police force such that would align operatives to the dictates of modern policing in a federation. Good enough, President Buhari has reassured that the disbandment of SARS is the first step to comprehensive reorganization and reformation of the police force. He also promised to bring to justice all those responsible for misconduct and wrongful acts.

The investigation must go beyond the SARS unit to unravel why all their sordid deeds including mindless extortions and alleged extra-judicial killings went on for that long with the police leadership feigning ignorance of their prevalence. All the same, it is heart-refreshing that for once, the government appears to have taken public opinion seriously. This is in sharp contrast with the disposition of the current federal leadership to genuine complaints and demands from citizens.

But for the resilience and doggedness of the youths who have severally taken to the streets to protest SARS excesses, we could have trudged on as if all is alright or castigate them as a band of anarchists or trouble makers. The reality is that the demonstrations have exposed all that is wrong with the Nigerian Police Force. Incidentally, the police institution is not the only agency of government where such concerns have been genuinely expressed without any positive step from the Buhari regime to address them.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC under the leadership of Ibrahim Magu was severally accused of political witch-hunting and corruption. Even the DSS posted a damning verdict on his suitability for the job, yet the president continued to force him on Nigerians until recently when the bubble burst.  Much has also been said on the retention of the current service chiefs in the face of the debilitating insecurity across the country but to no avail. Do we need public demonstrations to gauge public opinion on some of these issues?

More fundamentally, the problems assailing this country, hinge more on the vexatious issues of our federal contraption. Nigeria is perhaps, the only putative federal order that still maintains a unitary police formation courtesy of the imperfections of the 1999 constitution. All efforts to have the country operate as a truly federal order through the variants of power devolution, true or fiscal federalism and restructuring have consistently met brick walls in the hands of the current federal leadership. And as long as we refuse the reality of tinkering with this structural bondage, so long will this country continue to falter.

Even then, the disposition of President Buhari to this critical issue does not give hope there is respite in sight. In his 2018 New Year message, he had said “when all the aggregate of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure”.

At another time, he described calls for restructuring as parochial and laced with interest, hence discussions and arguments on the matter failed to capture his attention. Yet, a fortnight ago, he said his government will not succumb to threats and take any decision out of pressure while reacting to mounting calls for restructuring. Where do we factor in the ultimate sovereign in a governance framework that shows consistent disdain to genuine public pressure?

If the disbandment of SARS and the promise to reform the police force do not amount to succumbing to the public pressure, what else do we call them? Do we need to tell the president that the problems of the police have more to do with the imperfections of a federal order that still runs a unitary police? That is part of the larger issues encapsulated in resurging demand for restructuring. Should we wait for public demonstrations or occupy Nigeria protests to do the needful?

Emeka OMEIHE

 

The death of an 11-year old girl, Favour Okechukwu gang-raped by some hoodlums in the Ejigbo suburb of Lagos State, has again elevated to the fore the vexatious phenomenon of rape in our society.

Reports had it that the poor girl who was sent on errand by her mother, was lured into a nearby house by some bad boys who took turns to rape her. Unable to bear the pains of man’s inhumanity to his fellow human being, the girl was said to have given up the ghost in the room of one of the accomplices.

Fearing that the long teeth of the law will catch up with them, the five-man gang hurriedly fled and disappeared into the thin air. All this while, the mother of the victim who had been thrown into confusion by the inability of her daughter to return, had kept hope alive that by divine providence she would come back.

But it was only after Favour’s father Dickson Okechukwu returned from the day’s work that they began to search for her as it was getting dark. The search took him to all her classmates living around but to no avail. Parents of her classmates joined him on the search but it could not yield any positive result.  Apparently confused, Okechukwu did not give up even when he did not have any clear idea of where else to look for her.

Hear him: “I started walking like a mad man asking everybody I saw about her whereabout. I saw a man who lives with me on the same street and asked him if he saw my daughter. He told me he had to close early because a little girl was raped to death in a building close to his shop”.

Okechukwu then decided to go to the scene of the incident to find out whether it was her daughter that was involved and was quickly accompanied by the said neighbour. When he got to the place, he met three people outside and on telling them his mission, they pointed at the room where the incident took place. He was shocked to the marrows to find his daughter naked with her lifeless body covered in blood all over. All efforts to resuscitate her proved futile as she lay stone dead.  And that was how that promising Junior Secondary School girl was sent to her early grave by some demented men.

Some other accounts had it that when the rapists found out that Favour’s health had degenerated due to the body injury inflicted on her while the ordeal lasted, they procured the services of a nurse to resuscitate her. But all to no avail as the damage had already been done. It was also reported that the gang involved in this murder is notorious in the area and that was not the first time they would rape someone in that building.

The gang, said to be notorious in smoking Indian hemp and all manner of crimes around the area had for long been a nightmare to residents as they operate as if they are above the law. The incident is as callous as it is despicable. It is one rape and murder, too many!

In May this year, a 100-level student of the University of Benin, Edo State, Uwaila Omozuwa was raped and killed inside a church where she had gone for some church activity. A week later, Barakat Bello, an 18-year old student of the Federal College of Animal and Production Technology, Moore Plantation Ibadan, Oyo State also suffered similar fate.

Three armed men capped this devious record in Ekiti State when in June, they gang-raped a 17-year old street hawker at Oja-Oba market in Ado-Ekiti. Elsewhere in the country, it has been the same sad story with the media awash with all manner of rapes resulting in all manner of fatalities. The furore generated by the development was so much so that serious calls arose for more stringent laws to make rape a dangerous enterprise.

It was in the wake public outcry that the Kaduna State House of Assembly passed a bill which has since been signed into law by Governor Nasir El’ Rufai stipulating stiff penalties for those convicted of rape. That law provides for surgical castration for those convicted of raping children under 14 years age. Anyone convicted for raping of a female who is more than 14 years of age has a date with life imprisonment.

The Kaduna State Penal Code (amendment) Law 2020 also prescribes bilateral Salpingectomy (removal of fallopian tubes) for females convicted of raping children under 14 years of age, Though that law was received with mixed feelings on account of its inherent shortcomings and contradictions, its enactment underscored how bad the situation has become in this country.

It was a verity of desperate response to a degenerate situation. But the solution to the rampant cases of rape in and around the country does not really lie on the absence of extant penalties in our laws to debar prospective offenders from the illicit act. Our laws are surfeit with stringent punishments to discourage prospective offenders.

But the problem has been more with the inadequacies of our justice and legal systems. Even where victims muster sufficient courage to shun the social stigma associated with coming up openly to challenge those accused of raping them, the difficulty in proving such cases as required by law has also not helped matters. This is more so given the peculiar nature of rape cases and the difficulty in getting witnesses for an act committed secretly and by force.

That is where the judicial system has a serious role to play. It is not enough to enact new stringent laws to stem the tide. Neither is the absence of such laws the real issue to contend with. Those charged with the dispensation of justice must begin to factor in the peculiar nature of rape cases in arriving at judgments without compromising the imperatives of fair hearing.

So many people are reluctant to go to court on rape issues because they believe it is difficult to secure justice. And when this is paired with the stigma associated with the incident, one can then imagine why rapists have been on the prowl. All these challenges must be taken into account in ensuring that our justice system does not constitute an impediment to the war against rape in our society.

Favour’s father is seeking justice. I watched him weeping in a video clip calling for help from whoever is moved by the callous murder of his daughter to enable him secure justice. Ordinarily, that should have been taken for granted. But not on these shores! Favour’s murder is no doubt a very peculiar case that must not be allowed to suffer unnecessary delays given that the evidence for diligent and successful prosecution is overwhelming.

But what manner of justice will he get that will bring his daughter back to life? That is the sad question. He knows that his daughter is dead and may not come back to life. He is not oblivious of the fact that no amount of punishment can bring his daughter back to life. But he wants the penchant by all manner of criminally minded persons to murder innocent girls in the guise of rape to be made a very dangerous enterprise. He wants the police that have arrested the criminals that murdered Favour to hasten the process of investigations and prosecution of the case for the culprits to face the raw teeth of the law.

Fortunately, the murder took place in someone’s apartment. The identity of the owner should not be in doubt even as he is said to have named his accomplices in crime. The Lagos State Police Command must act swiftly and decisively by not only publicly parading the suspects but must hand over the case to its experienced personnel for diligent prosecution.

It is a test case that should be used to gauge the commitment of the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary to public disenchantment with the increasing spate of rapes culminating in the senseless murder of victims. Good enough, our extant laws have sufficient provisions when enforced would act as sufficient deterrent to offenders.

Favour must find justice. Those who had hands in this criminal and despicable murder must be made to pay heavily for it. We are watching!

Emeka OMEIHE

 

Edo State governorship election has come and gone. But, its outcome denotes different things for different people.

President Buhari set the tone for credit appropriation when he commended the outcome of the election restating his “commitment to free and fair elections is firm, because without free and fair elections, the foundation of our political and moral authority will be weak.”

Toeing the same line, chairman of the Caretaker/ Extraordinary National Convention Planning Committee of the APC, Mai Mala Buni in his congratulatory message to the winner said the outcome represented victory for Nigeria’s democracy. He aligned the party with Buhari in affirming their commitment to free and fair elections in order to strengthen the foundations for political and moral authority.

But even as Obaseki considers his victory as the triumph of the peoples will as expressed at the ballot box, the significance of the election for him, rests squarely on the fact that it signalled the defeat and dismantling of godfatherism in the state’s body politic. In his own words, the verdict of the election has tamed and caged the lions, the tigers and behemoths of Edo politics.

So the trio somewhat scramble for some credit on the outcome of the election, ether from the prism of its largely free and fair outcome or the doggedness and determination of the voters to take their destiny in their hands. In some sense, all claimants are right. Victory they say has many friends both the real and the fake.

Buhari and the APC are at liberty to take credit for the successful outcome of the election. The language of political discourse prior to that contest overheated the political space such that genuine fears were nursed as to the prospects of extreme violence.

If the election had been marred by serious violence or failed integrity test in truly representing the expressed will of the people, the blame would have been heaped at the shoulders of the president and the ruling party. Now that all seemed to have gone well, it will be uncharitable to deny them the credit of savouring the success of that election irrespective of what their preferences would have been.

This is more so given that two days before that election, the president had in a statement by his media aide while restating commitment to free and fair polls said: “I want this commitment to be one of the legacies I will leave behind when I leave office”. Though he raised the hope of seeing higher democratic standards raised at every level, he added a caveat that these cannot be achieved when politicians resort to do-or-die tactics to gain power.

Ordinarily, these should come as heart-warming statements given the rancorous politics that has stunted development in all spheres of our national life. Yet, they must be taken with serious caution. Even as one is delighted by the president’s admission that the foundation of their moral and political authority is weakened by compromised elections, that rhetoric on its own may amount to little. To many, it is a worn out cliché full of sounds and sentiments but practically of little weight when the chips are down.

What should be of interest to Nigerians at this moment is the practical institutional steps and safeguards the president is taking to stave off the proclivity by rogue politicians to compromise the outcome of elections at each point. We recall that before the 2019 elections, the Eighth National Assembly unanimously passed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2018 and sent same for presidential assent. That bill contained provisions that would ensure the credibility of elections.

It provided for the swift prosecution of election violence and vote-buying through the setting up of special courts for that purpose. It also made it mandatory for the use of card readers, on-the-spot live transmission of results and above all the imprisonment of any INEC staff that contravenes the Act. In sum, the bill had all that was needed to check sundry electoral infractions that had overtime compromised the electoral process on these shores. It contained all provisions to institute that legacy of credible elections which Buhari claims he wants to bequeath the nation before he leaves office.

Sadly, thrice the bill was sent to him for assent and thrice he refused to assent to it. The last time it was sent for his endorsement, it suffered serious delay only for him to come out belatedly citing time constraints and proximity to the 2019 elections as part of his reasons for refusing to assent to it.

Off course, the subsequent general elections were marred by serious infractions such that shook the confidence of the people in the continued relevance of elections in approximating the collective will of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box. In some states, it was a war situation as all manner of weapons were deployed by politicians and compromised security agencies to thwart the will of the people. It is not surprising that the 2019 election marked an embarrassing reversal of some of the gains previously recorded in the country’s electoral process.

It is a measure of loss of confidence in our electoral process that the United States of America, US imposed visa ban on some officials of this country for their ignoble roles during recent elections. The United Kingdom UK has even threatened to seize assets and prosecute such offenders under international law.  And we are here still parroting the sanctity of free and fair elections as if it is a national anthem. There may not be much in visa restrictions. At any rate, must these officials travel out? But it is a verdict that all is not well with our electoral process and it must align to serious democratic standards or give way to other forms of governance framework.

It is now a year and four months Buhari was sworn into power. Nothing has yet been heard of that bill.  And we are being treated to expressions of hope and precept rather than concrete examples. One would have expected Buhari to have gone beyond trite statements and take concrete and concerted steps in liaison with the National Assembly to rectify whatever defects there are in that bill and assent to it quam celerrime.

That will make better meaning. You cannot leave a legacy of free and fair elections without the necessary institutional framework to approximate it. As at now, there is nothing on ground except the deployment of security agencies in numbers that could even frighten and intimidate the voters. INEC officials and politicians are still their former selves. And the judiciary too! These are the things to contend with.

Buhari should go beyond what he hopes to bequeath the electoral process and initiate concrete action for us to see it happen. The electoral process is still largely porous with serous loopholes for manipulation. It is high time such gaps are plugged. The plethora of litigations after each election is a huge statement on the process. Ironically, this has come with some dangers as even those who clearly lost elections see the courts as another avenue to achieve through unwholesome means, what they failed to get through the ballot process.

Curiously, the judiciary has found itself entrapped in the same complex web that accentuates loss of confidence in the integrity of the electoral process. Some of its recent verdicts clearly failed the standard test of impartiality. We are witnesses to a candidate who trailed fourth in a governorship poll being declared winner by the Supreme Court even when the results used did not tally with INEC’s accredited voters for that election among other serious shortcomings.

That is a clear instance of the weakening of political and moral authority which Buhari talked about. It is a serious legitimacy challenge in which the judiciary should not be found complicit. The role of the judiciary has become a serious threat to democracy. Something urgent and serious must be done to extricate it from the ambush of desperate and influential persons seeking to thwart the will of the electorate.

Emeka Omeihe

It is a common aphorism in medical practice that the diagnosis of an ailment is half way to its cure. That should also hold sway for other ailments either of economic, political or social dimensions.

Curiously, this time cherished maxim has been of little help in addressing the challenges buffeting this unity in diversity called Nigeria. Even with considerable national consensus on the road to extricate the country from continuing drift, our leaders act as though they want these problems to linger.

We are sadly regaled with attempts by the authorities either to live in denial of subsisting realities or deliberately obfuscate them for some inexplicable considerations. This disposition has tended to convey the unmistakable impression that it is either they are far removed from the lot of those they rule or we are contending with the displacement of public goal with others of parochial and clannish hue. This curious tendency may account for why these problems have festered to the point of constituting potent threats to the collective wellbeing of the citizenry.

Nothing bears out this ruinous culture of denial or political rhetoric more eloquently than the reaction of federal functionaries to recent observations by Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo on the state of the country. Obasanjo had said Nigeria was fast drifting to a failed and badly divided state, and that economically our country is becoming a basket case and poverty capital of the world and socially firming up as an unwholesome and insecure country.

He further observed that “these manifestations are products of recent mismanagement of diversity and socio-economic development of the country, old fault lines that were disappearing have opened up in greater fissures and with drums of hatred, disintegration and separation”.

But the presidency in keeping to the tradition of defending the indefensible launched a vitriolic attack on him. They accused him of attempting to divide the country even as they claimed ‘Buhari continues to promote nation building and the unity of Nigeria’.

Did I hear that Buhari promotes nation building and Nigerian unity?

Is there anything in the statements of Obasanjo as reproduced above that amounts to an attempt to divide the country? Or put more succinctly, is there really anything in those statements that are not already in public domain? The answer to the latter is that Obasanjo said nothing new. All he said have been said before not only from within our shores but through the ratings of some international bodies.

He may have reinforced what is already within the public space because of his weight and influence. But they are nothing new. It is therefore uncharitable to label his intervention as an attempt to divide the country instead of a patriotic call to save it from the precipice into which it is inevitably headed. For, it is said that evil thrives where men of good conscience keep quite. Obasanjo may not qualify as that good man to some but he is undoubtedly, a man of conscience.

Whether one likes it or not, Obasanjo is fast assuming the place of the conscience of this country. He did it during the regime of Jonathan even going to the extreme of alleging that Jonathan was training snipers to eliminate opponents. Then, not many understood his intentions. It is increasingly dawning on us that he knew things that were to follow if things went a particular way. He was desperate to avert that foreboding outcome. Jonathan never read the signals correctly otherwise he would have done one or two things to avert that potent danger. He is at it again and his views should not be dismissed offhandedly.

What are the issues? He said Nigeria is fast drifting to a failed and badly divided state. Wikipedia defined a failed state as a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer functions properly. It went further to say that a state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly.

The question is whether Nigeria in her current circumstance properly fits into the above categorization? Before that question is answered, it will be helpful to take other views on the subject matter. In its 2019 Fragile States Index, a yearly report of the Washington DC-based think tank Fund for Peace, Nigeria ranked 14th most fragile state of the world and ninth in Africa out of the 178 countries surveyed.

These countries were assessed across 12 indicators of risks and vulnerability: security, group grievances, economic decline, brain drain, legitimacy/human rights, rule of law, demographic pressures, internally displaced persons and refugees. Challenges of insecurity, group grievances, economic decline and demographic pressures featured very prominently in Obasanjo’s observations. So also are issues of legitimacy and division.

Even then, the verdict on debilitating poverty had long been captured by the World Poverty Clock. It reported that Nigeria had overtaken India to become the country with the world’s highest number of people 87-million living in extreme poverty in comparison with India’s 73 million people. These indices had long been in the public space before Obasanjo spoke.

Of the other issues hinging on polarization along the fissures of the fault lines of the country’s federation, the evidence is overwhelmingly starring us on the face. The competition between the primordial realm and the civil public for the loyalty of the citizens has not only been reinforced but gained further momentum since the current administration. It is not only palpable from the upsurge in separatist agitations but has been given fillip by the criminal disregard to the key balancing processes without which a federation will lose relevance.

This is evident from extant appointments to the commanding heights of the military and paramilitary institutions that now seem an exclusive preserve of people from a section of the country. What can be more brazen than the assault on the federal character principle given the reality that both the chairman and the secretary are from the north contrary to extant tradition? If such a balancing institution can be subverted in such a manner, what else is left of its constitutional objective?

And someone was talking of Buhari promoting nation building and national unity. What nation and unity are we really talking about? Nigeria is yet to evolve as a nation as the process of nation building and the unity it forges, has been put on reverse gear through the actions and inactions of the current leadership. What we have is a country of a multiplicity of nations- about 380 of them. Sadly that constitutional provision for forging a common sense of national consciousness and identity among the disparate nations has been largely observed in its breach. Little wonder citizens still see themselves more from the prism of their ethnic identities than as Nigerians.

So when apologists of the government talk glibly of nation building, the feeling one gets is that either they are ignorant of the real context of the subject matter or they are merely expressing a hope that is at variance with facts on the ground. It was the expectation that with amalgamation of the country and independence, those who preside over its affairs would commence the process of nation building. That has failed to happen with Nigerians more divided today than ever before.

The fact that we are yet to perfect such a rudimentary thing as a fool-proof national identity card, says it all. Rather than nation building, fissiparous tendencies and loyalty to the composing nations have been the order of the day. This is clearly manifest from the current allure of regional security outfits. It is a reinforcement of confidence and trust in regional protection as opposed to that provided by the federal authority. It is a serious legitimacy issue.

Instead of living in denial of subsisting realities, the presidency must come to terms with the issues raised by Obasanjo. The challenges of insecurity, debilitating poverty, a convoluted and disjointed federal order and leadership actions constantly assailing the confidence of the constituents and reinforcing separatism are signposts of a failing state.

By Emeka Omeihe

Is it a case of the monsters we created turning around to haunt us? Or are we contending with the verity of a tribe that speaks from both sides of the mouth?

These posers come in handy in the current debate on the propriety of the removal of subsidies on fuel and electricity by the Buhari administration. The negative emotions they engender are further given added impetus by the manner officials of the current regime strive to justify the astronomical hike in the prices of these commodities.

This doublespeak has been so much so that one begins to wonder if something has gone awry. Those who were known to have cast aspersions on the subsidy regime dismissing it as a monumental fraud are all of a sudden, singing different songs. They would want us all to see the measure as the best thing that ever happened to Nigerians. Ironically, these later day apostles of subsidy removal have turned out the greatest undoing of attempts by officials to persuade Nigerians buy into the touted altruism of that policy.

If one labels such disposition as unnecessary politicization of the subsidy regime, you are right.  If it is seen as bitter and rancorous politics at play, one would also not be far from reality. It also bears the trademark of dubious attempts to obfuscate reality so as to get even with political opponents. That has been the ugly face of the fuel subsidy removal all this through. But in this attempt to politicize an ordinarily economic decision, Nigerians have turned out the loser. That is the uncanny irony.

All of a sudden, revisionism has resonated and the seemingly bitter pill is being sugar-coated so that it can be easily swallowed. Or how do we rationalize the statement from a presidential aide that history will be kind to Buhari for “eliminating the evils of corruption embedded in subsidies” What of the other claim that “these are reforms that are necessary and overdue. Blueprint upon blueprint, timeline upon timeline had come and gone but the courage to take bold decision was not there”.

If one may ask, was it cowardice that prompted the Jonathan regime in 2012 to announce the removal of fuel subsidy by increasing the pump price? And what happened thereafter? Did the opposition not go into the trenches with its Occupy Nigeria protests? Was Jonathan not forced through organized protests to rescind that decision?  Why was the verdict of history not allowed then to run its full course?

Maybe what Jonathan did not do then was to muzzle his way through by repressing the protesters. Or he did not have the control of those with the devious technology to organize mass protests. Perhaps, for not allowing that price regime considered by many as suffocating to subsist, Jonathan lost the necessary courage required of a leader. That is the courage Buhari is said to have summoned for which history will judge him fairly. But the views credited to him then, did not indicate he had the necessary understanding of the matter or he had but for reasons best known to him, opted for the line he took.

And what was Buhari’s position then? He was credited to have said that anybody who claimed that he was subsidizing Nigerian oil is a fraud, asking ‘who is subsidizing who’? When his government was later taken up by Jonathan for increasing the pump price of fuel even with the sharp drop in international oil price, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed had said “those who accuse this administration of propaganda and lies in the fuel supply sector, did not tell you that whereas they paid between N800 billion and N1.3 trillion as subsidy yearly without making the product available, this administration is not paying any subsidy, yet all products are currently available at competitive prices and fuel queues are now history”.

That was far before it became public knowledge that that government was discretely into underhand subsidy deals. It took two years of secret subsidy deals before it was exposed. Today, the same government is saying that fuel queues will re-emerge if subsidy is not removed. Who is now fooling who? Today also we are being made to believe that the country stands grave risks of survival if we revert to a regulated fuel price regime. Why that view was not heard from those now at the corridors of power when another regime was canvassing the same message, is at the heart of the difficulty in convincing Nigerians that total removal of subsidy at this point is at the best interest of the toiling masses already buffeted by all manner of taxes. Far from it!  Rather, it will further reinforce the poverty index of the country which the World Poverty Clock rated as hosting the highest number of people in the world living in extreme poverty.

How the hike would serve public good with rising unemployment, debilitating inflation, general rise in prices of goods and services patronized by the poor in face of the COVID-19 pandemic is left to be conjectured? In effect, the greatest challenge government apologists’ face in marketing the total deregulation of the oil sector is how to swallow the vitriolic attacks they mounted before now, to de-market subsidy removal. It is yet to be seen the progress made either in fixing the refineries or the fight against corruption to repose a modicum of confidence that monies realized would not be frittered away as usual.

Before he came into his current office, the president believed subsidy was a monumental fraud. Apparently haunted by his previous position, his government had made concerted efforts to conceal the reality that they were paying subsidy before the bubble burst. Now, we are being made to believe that subsidy removal is the only thing that can guarantee the survival of the country. That could as well be. How come this reality only dawned on him after he had mounted the horse such that they now cajole us to view the matter from a developmental perspective rather than partisan predilection?

Why did patriotism and national interest not count when another regime came up with the same idea? Or are we contending with a verity of Frankenstein monster? Perhaps, if positive disposition had dominated reactions to earlier attempts at deregulation, Nigerians would have by now got adjusted to its reality. And whatever benefit there is in it would have been harnessed more bountifully this past years.

But that did not happen due to contrived and negative opposition. Elite consensus which was vital in selling the idea to the masses was in short supply because politicians wanted to get even with their opponents. Having made strident attempts to discredit the idea of subsidy removal, it stands a tall order trying to convince Nigerians on why they should accept it now.

Comparative statistics on the pump price of fuel or electricity tariff in the sub-region are of little consequence in changing the minds of the people that subsidy is of any benefit to them. Even then, price differentials as shown by Mohammed are of little empirical value in assessing the complex indices that impact on the lives of a people.

He needed to proceed further with data on comparative income regime, the number of citizens gainfully employed, inflation rate and the positions of those countries in the world’s oil production chart. Even then, some of the countries listed depend on Nigeria for their fuel and electricity needs. Why will the cost of these items not be high there?

The issue is not just about the price of these commodities being among the least in the sub region. Neither is it all about putting more monies in the coffers of the government. We are contending with a conflict between the quest for increased government revenue earnings and the survival of our citizens. It is a clash between increased revenue earnings that may be stolen by rapacious and rogue officials and the lives of a vast majority of our people who remain hewers of wood and fetchers of water in a nation bountifully endowed.

Policies fired by economic or political exigency must find common ground with the existential realities of the people. That is the missing link. But next time, constructive opposition is the way to obviate the shame in having to re-market a policy that was once discredited just to get even with opponents. Maybe, some lessons have been learnt but at a huge cost to the country.

Emeka Omeihe

Resource control is generally associated with agitations by oil bearing states in this country for greater access and control in the management of revenues generated from natural endowments within their shores. It also denotes a protest against excessive centralization and control of oil revenue and other natural resources by the federal authority.

The term seeks in the main, to confer more powers to the states in the allocation of funds generated from with their territories.  An integral part of the larger agitations for true federalism, fiscal federalism and power devolution, it seeks to whittle down the omnipresence and omnipotence of the central authority in virtually controlling the powers of life and death.

These concepts also share much in common with the raging calls for the restructuring of the country so as to give more powers to the constituent units in the control of their affairs. Not unexpectedly, the tardiness or refusal of the federal leadership to take decisive action in this regard has led to agitations and feelings of self-determination among some of the component units.

With these centrifugal feelings on the upward swing, it is surprising that the leadership of this country could be proposing legislations that will further polarize the country along ethnic and primordial fault lines. One of such proposed pieces of legislation is the Water Resources Control Bill which has again been brought before the House of Representatives in a manner that has remained very suspicious.

Tagged “A Bill for an Act to Establish a Regulatory Framework for Water Resources Sector in Nigeria, Provide for the Equitable and Sustainable Redevelopment, Management, Use and Conservation of Nigeria’s Surface Water and Groundwater Resources and Related Matters”, it seeks to concentrate the control of water resources around rivers Niger and Benue and other waterways across the country in the hands of the federal government.

When that executive bill first surfaced in the Eighth National Assembly, it generated intense controversy dividing legislators along ethnic and regional lines. The senate, on account of the sharp divisions the bill created, did not waste time to throw it away when it came for second reading in May 2018.  Curiously however,   the chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Abubakar Fulata in July re-introduced the bill in a manner that is not in consonance with the rules of the House. And he appears set to bulldoze his way to push the bill through even against extant procedure for the passage of reintroduced bills.

Expectedly and like events that followed when the bill was first introduced, it has again frayed nerves, generating intense controversy and suspicion. Southern, Middle Belt groups as well as other notable Nigerians including Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka have all in unison expressed deep reservations and opposition to the proposed legislation.

It is also creating ripples within the National Assembly with many legislators vowing never to allow the bill see the light of the day. From the look of things, the bill is going to further polarize the National Assembly along ethnic and regional lines given its perception as being tailored to satisfy an agenda which the current federal leadership has been holding to its chest for some time now.

If the bill is passed into law, it will vest the control of water resources as well as river banks in the federal government. By extension, a sizable portion of the land close to those rivers will also revert to the control of the same central authority. The implication is that the federal government will not only have absolute control of the waters and the resources in them but also lands around them.

By the same extension, communities and hamlets that solely depend on these water resources and land for their daily lives will lose them all to the all powerful federal government. States and local governments will not only lose their right to water resources within their domain but portions of land very close to them. It is this foreboding reality that stands the greatest challenge to the bill.

But that is not all. The motive of the federal government in seeking the passage of the bill by all means is suspect. Allegations are now rife that the obsession for the control of water resources and adjoining lands is a subterfuge to accelerate unfettered access to pastoral lands for herdsmen especially given the futile attempts in the past to achieve the same objective.

It is largely seen as Ruga settlement, grazing reserve or grazing route in disguise. That raises the propriety in grabbing lands and water resources that constitute sources of livelihood to indigenous people to satisfy objectives of very questionable value.

Many of the communities in and around the banks of those rivers depend on them for survival. They fish there, farm there and engage in sundry productive endeavors such environment engenders. It is this category of people that the federal government seeks through the obnoxious bill to grab their means of livelihood and stifle them out of existence. The bill is anti-people and therefore cannot serve our national interest.

The suspicion of odious agenda in having the bill scale through, is further underscored by Section 2(1) of the bill which states – “All surface water and ground water wherever it occurs, is a resource common to all people”. It is inconceivable how the water resource at my back yard which over the years had served as a source of life can now be tagged a resource common to all people. Who are those people and what business do they have at my backyard?

What the bill intends to achieve is to provide cover for all manner of people including militant herdsmen whom we are told are mostly foreigners to invade the privacy of the local population. It goes with serious security repercussions. At a time this country is stretched to its elastic limits by the insurgency of the herdsmen, armed banditry and kidnapping as well as the Boko Haram insurgency, the passage of such a bill will inexorably lead to catastrophic consequences.

But more seriously, current sentiments in the country are for the whittling down of the powers of the federal government through restructuring. Through restructuring or power devolution, the constituent units are to be empowered to effectively take over more of those unwieldy functions that are currently suffocating the federal leadership. The nagging corruption in public offices, the rancorous and deadly competition for power at the centre which accentuates amateur leadership are all linked to the defective federal contraption we have had to contend with.

It is a thing of immense worry that instead of seeking ways to align with the dictates of true federalism, the same executive is obsessed with further expanding the noxious frontiers of such powers. All this seem to reinforce the suspicion that some people nurse an agenda to dominate others by surreptitiously appropriating the resources of the constituents to serve clannish and self-serving predilections.

Or how else do we rationalize the scant heed by those entrusted with power to the sensibilities of the people they claim to rule? It is not uncommon to see leaders equate their self-serving interests to that of the collectivity they claim to serve.  It is also not out of place that people in leadership sometimes displace national interest with their own personal interest. That often leads to the erroneous notion that loyalty to the government in power equated to loyalty to the country. They are two different things. We have seen leaderships that constituted unmitigated liability to the collective interests of their constituents.

It is hoped we are not contending with that verity. Or how else do we rationalize the crass insensitivity of the federal leadership to the current mood of the country evident in the desire to grab lands and waters resources through the contentious bill. That piece of legislation is an evil omen. It is divisive and potentially explosive and must not be allowed to scale through.