The Nation Newspaper

Category: Emeka Omeihe

  • Benue blackmail

    Benue State has been in the storm since Governor Samuel Ortom assented to a bill by the state House of Assembly banning open grazing in the state. Titled: Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Bill, the law prohibits open grazing, provides protection for both farmers and breeders with stiff punishment against infraction.

    Soon after the bill was signed into law, Ortom raised a serious alarm to the effect that a faction of the breeders association – Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore was about to launch armed attack against the people of the state in protest. He alleged they were already amassing at neighbouring states and Cameroon to attack the people of Benue.

    The governor, vowing to implement the law to the letters said he had reported the matter to the president and awaiting the arrest of its masterminds. Ortom’s outcry came few days after the association addressed a press conference threatening to challenge the law in court claiming that Fulani people were the first settlers of the Benue Valley and as such original owners of the state.

    But the group was quick to deny the allegation even as they have not hidden their opposition to the law on the grounds that it is discriminatory as it will deny them their means of livelihood. They have therefore called on the federal government, the international community and the National Assembly for intervention. They claim the law was implemented without consultation with herdsmen in the state; their members were not educated on modern methods of rearing cattle and sufficient time was not provided before the implementation of ranching.

    But the state government disagreed contending that it consulted widely and held public hearing before the law was finally approved. Coming from the chief security officer of the state, the alarm by the governor must be taken very seriously. This is more so, as the governor has taken up the matter with the president. The fact that the planners of that onslaught have not made good their devious intention may have been as a result of the pre-emptive alarm. But that does not in any way, whittle down the prospects of the trademark murderous invasion of the herdsmen. It is therefore vital that urgent steps are taken by relevant agencies to diminish the capacity of the herdsmen for such attacks.

    But even as the state is contending with the prospects of armed invasion, a report credited to one Garus Gololo, a member of the Miyetti Allah cattle breeders association, claimed that a Fulani herdsman, Mohammed Abdulkadire, committed suicide by jumping into the River Benue in the Logo Local Government area after he lost 200 of his cows to hunger and lack of water.  He claimed that since the commencement of the anti-open grazing law, Fulani herdsmen had lost 600 cows due to poor feeding and inaccessibility to water.

    According to him, Abdulkadire who had 22 children cried and jumped into the river out of frustration when he discovered that 200 out of his 500 flock had died where they were camped as he searched for means to relocate them.

    Apparently sensing danger in the report, the state government was quick to react, describing it the height of falsehood in the series of organized blackmail and propaganda against it. It said contacts with the state police command and other security agencies produced no evidence either of the alleged suicide or loss of cows. The state government placed the burden of proof at the doorsteps of the man at the centre of the allegation.

    Since the government denied any of such happened, the expectation was that Gololo would come public to substantiate his claim. He should have come public with Abdulkadire’s family members including some of his 22 children to show why he should be taken serious. But nothing of such has happened leaving us with the inescapable conclusion that the story was merely contrived to blackmail the anti-open grazing law.

    But, it is a very dangerous allegation capable of inciting the herdsmen into the kind of invasion the governor complained of. Since the said Gololo is known to the authorities, he should since have been arrested for false information that could precipitate the breakdown of law and order. That he still moves around without the full weight of the law brought against him, is a discredit to the proficiency of law enforcement agencies.

    It shows the base level people could degenerate all in an effort to discredit a law which has assumed popularity in the face of the mindless killings that trail the activities of the herdsmen. Before now, the Ekiti State government had implemented its version of the law and it has largely reduced confrontation associated with the itinerant activities of the herdsmen. Taraba State has also passed a similar law which its governor, Darius Isiaku said will take effect from January next year.

    It is clear from the positions of these governments that nomadic cattle’s rearing is living on borrowed time. Not with the mindless killings and despoliation of communities, a regular feature of the activities of the herdsmen. It is true that the laws will, in the interim, impose some challenges on the herdsmen. It is equally no less correct that they are not accustomed to modern methods of animal husbandry. But that is not sufficient reason to continue with the old practice even when it has proved a great liability to peace, security of lives and property. So the fate of the herdsmen is their own making. They should take responsibility for compelling the state governments into these legislations to protect their citizens.

    The rush to enact the anti-open grazing law was a desperate attempt to save their indigenes from the marauding activities of the herdsmen who move with sophisticated weapons in the open, attacking and maiming their hosts at the slightest incident of infraction or no provocation at all. In the face of all these, the federal government has at best, remained tepid in addressing the manifest threat to peace and security which the activities of the herdsmen have come to represent.

    They operate with murderous ease and have been rated the world’s third most deadly group after ISIS and Boko Haram. Definitely no government worth its salt can afford to sit by while its people are moved down by those who have more regard for cows than human life. The anti-open grazing laws are a child of necessity. And that is where we are now.

    Ortom said that Benue between 2012 and 2016 lost more than N95 billion worth of goods and property to the attacks by herdsmen in the state. This excludes thousands of men, women and children who were killed with some burnt alive during the clashes. Many other states have gory tales to relieve. Even states in the south have increasingly come under the gun fire of the herdsmen who operate with relative invincibility.

    A former Inspector-General of the Police shocked the nation when he claimed that Fulani herdsmen responsible for the mindless killings were foreigners from neighbouring countries. He said the inability to rein them in was as a result of ECOWAS protocols that guaranteed free movement of people of member countries. And we seemed to have accepted the base rationalization. It is sad we swallowed line hook and sinker the convoluted excuse that the said protocol should be the basis to allow foreign criminals to make mince meat of our citizens.

    It is this kind of warped excuse that has overtime, been exploited by the herdsmen – foreign and local –to levy war on innocent citizens. The fact that some of them are foreigners is the more reason they should be mercilessly dealt with. The resort to anti-open grazing laws indicates very vividly, general frustration and dissatisfaction with the activities of the herdsmen. Having stretched the patience of victims to its elastic limits, the law is simply saying we are done with that nonsense.

    That is where the situation has now left us. It is important herdsmen cooperate with the law rather than seek unwholesome means to sabotage it. Open grazing has turned out an unmitigated liability to the society and can only continue at a great risk to peace and national security.

  • 2018 budget proposals

    Given the delay in implementing the 2017 budget, it was good a thing President Buhari last week presented his 2018 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly. The early presentation is to allow reasonable time for the legislature to do its work and ensure timely approval.

    As usual, Nigerians were treated to the annual ritual of jaw-breaking figures of government’s projected revenue accruals and expenditure within that time frame. Tagged Budget of Consolidation because it is envisaged to consolidate on the gains of previous budgets, its overall outlay was N8.6trillion, representing an increase of 16 per cent from the 2017 budget estimate.

    The president took considerable time to remind the nation of the gains his administration has so far recorded even as he raised hopes of a prosperous future. He talked of the managerial dexterity of his economic team that culminated in the exit of the country from economic recession and measures in place to avert a relapse. It sounded as a budget of hope in view of the numerous promises to make life more bearable for the citizenry.

    But as he read out his programme for the coming year, what must have struck the citizenry is the future the high sounding financial figures hold for the teeming army of the toiling and suffering people. This is more so given the inability of the 2017 budget to impact positively on the overall living standards of the people.

    And for a people under severe hardship occasioned by biting inflation, debilitating level of unemployment and intolerable poverty in the face of massive official corruption, the main concern is how the trillions and billions will put food on their family tables. That is their parameter for assessing the success or otherwise of every budget. Else the trillions and billions would seem the similitude of a tale; full of sound and fury but practically signifying nothing.

    With a capital budget performance of less than 30 per cent in the 2017 budget year, there are fears that if the current proposals go the same way, the conditions of our people may be worse off.  In fact, President Buhari himself captured this dilemma very succinctly when he promised in the current budget speech that he envisages that by December, disbursement of the 2017 budget would have peaked by 50 per cent. That in itself is a tacit admission that the previous budget had a less than average performance. December is a few weeks away. And one begins to wonder the kind of difference that will be made in so short a time.

    So what gains are we really consolidating with such low level implementation of previous year’s budget? Expectedly, there has been apprehension regarding the capacity of the government to implement this year’s budget approvals to the letter even as indications are that some of the capital projects for the previous year will be rolled over to the current year.

    Perhaps, the biggest innovation in the current appropriation bill is that out of the total revenue projections, N4.165 trillion is expected to be generated from non-oil and other revenue sources while N2.442 trillion will come from oil and gas. That sounds ambitious and a sharp departure from previous experiences given that oil and gas had been the major source of foreign exchange earnings for the funding of our development projects. Ironically, our budget implementation had suffered the vicissitudes of oil price fluctuations in the international market.

    By the new policy thrust, the government seeks to demonstrate its commitment to diversify the revenue base away from the mono-cultural economy. It seeks to make the point that we can go beyond mouthing the imperative of diversification by taking practical steps to give effect to it. That is the way to go. However, it is not clear the projections that gave the government the comfort of mind that non-oil revenue will play such significant role in the funding of the 2018 budget.

    The president is banking on the agricultural sector where he said a lot of progress has been made in many states. The solid mineral development sector is another area especially given on-going work in Ondo State to fully exploit bitumen resources to meet the nation’s domestic need of 600,000 MTS of asphalt import.

    With the full exploitation of our domestic production of asphalt, monies hitherto expended in the importation of the commodity will be deployed to fund the budget. That sounds very promising. Whether this is achievable within the budget time frame either in part or whole is another kettle of fish.

    Since we have no idea of our current local capacity for bitumen, projections that all of our domestic needs would come from the engagement in Ondo next year would appear a tall order. If we had the privilege of the percentage contribution of locally sourced bitumen to our domestic needs presently, it would have formed the basis for hope of self-sufficiency in it next year.

    The other area the government places much premium on in its non-oil revenue drive is taxes. It intends to step up efforts to ensure that all taxable Nigerians declare their incomes from all sources and remit due taxes to the appropriate authorities. Other taxes from which the government intends to fund the budget include Company Income Tax, Value Added Tax and Customs and Excise receipts among others.

    But the overall burden of funding the budget projections will fall back on the people who bear the brunt of these taxes. So the year under focus is bound to witness more aggressive tax drive in a milieu where a majority of the citizens, including the wealthy deliberately evade tax payment. With an efficient tax collection system in place, the government is bound to make more revenue. But it will impact very adversely on the ordinarily people who will ultimately shoulder the burden as it will eventually translate into higher prices for goods and services.

    When this is paired with the directive by the government banning all forms of employment in government ministries, departments and agencies the gloom picture becomes more glaring. For a country buffeted by debilitating unemployment especially among the youths, it is curious the government intends to shut down every window to give direct job to the unemployed. It claims the policy is designed to cut down personnel overhead which is already considered high. That may well be. But government as a social contract; has a bounden duty to provide job for its citizens. Whatever policies and innovations it espouses, whatever future Eldorado it intends to build, must factor in the overall survival of the people for it to make a success. After all, these policies are for the living and not the dead. So the people must as a matter of necessity live before they can savour the benefits of such policies.

    The real issue is not as much with the number of those in government employ as with the mismanagement of our collective patrimony. If the trillions and billions that are wrongly in private hands (courtesy of the festering corruption), are available to a visionary leadership, we would have by now invested heavily in social infrastructure such that would have had a major leap on employment generation. But that has failed to happen and the masses are being made to suffer the serial failures of governments’ overtime.

    Even then, with regular incidence of ghost workers in governments, subsisting statistics on total personnel outlay may not be fool-proof. We are privy to disclosures of huge amounts of government monies (federal and states) paid to the so-called ghost workers. If the government further scrutinizes its payroll, it may discover to its chagrin that it may have been misled by fictitious staff data into shutting down all employment windows.

    Overall, the effectiveness of a budget hinges on its capacity to improve the general wellbeing of the people. President Buhari must give a human face to implementation of the 2018 budget. Banning employment in the face of spiralling and suffocating youth unemployment and poor infrastructure for job creation is anti-people and an invitation chaos.

  • Limits to buck-passing

    A weird current of political discourse emerged in the last one week or so. Though the idea has been canvassed by regime supporters with varying degrees of emotion, its connotation has remained largely imprecise.

    Comptroller-General of Nigerian Customs, Hameed Ali fired the first shot when he claimed more than 50 per cent of positions in Buhari’s government were handed over to members of the PDP who fought against the actualization of his regime. Hear him: “But I must confess here that we have been infused by people who were not part of this journey and these people are the ones that call the shots today. That is why we are derailing”.

    Other key personages have publicly talked along the same line. And in the heat generated by the embarrassing reinstatement of former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abulrasheed Maina, the presidency claimed loyalists of the former regime in government were responsible for that mess.

    Such is the new dimension the blame game has taken. Before now, it was a fad for the Buhari regime to blame the previous government for the mismanagement of the economy, looting of the nation’s treasury, mindboggling corruption in the land and virtually all that is bad with the country. But with two and a half years gone, people are increasingly losing patience with such drab, irritating and escapist antics.

    Those who voted in Buhari did so in the hope that he will make the needed difference. Having voted for the change which the APC promised, the social contract they entered into is for the government to take immediate steps to make the needed difference. What they have been getting instead has been a bundle of excuses, buck-passing and blame game.

    Having overstretched the limits of these excuses and sensing public cynicism to its aversion to assuming responsibility for its actions, the same government has found a new window for doing the same old thing. This time, the strategy is to blame those in Buhari’s government dubbed PDP members for the policy summersaults and scandals that cast serious slur on the integrity of the regime especially, its much touted war against corruption.

    That was the reading of the claim by his media aides that loyalists of Jonathan regime in government were responsible for Maina’s reinstatement. That was also the purport of Ali’s claim and others who spoke in the same vein.    With the leaked correspondence from the Head of Service of the federation, we now know better. It is clear the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister for Justice, Abubakar Malami who issued three letters in three months to stampede the Civil Service Commission into that unwholesome action was appointed by Jonathan and works for him. What of the president himself who was reported to have been briefed on the backlash of the action on the overall credibility and success of the war against corruption but apparently chose to ignore it?

    As the truth is in public domain, there are attempts to harass and intimidate Oyo-Ita for the leakage of her response to the query issued her. There is an attempt to make her a scapegoat for saying all she knew about the Maina mess. And the convenient angle is to accuse her of leaking her reply. And who says the Chief of Staff Abba Kyari’s office could not have leaked the letter?  So why issue her query in the first instance when it is clear that the powers that be were privy to that development?

    It is confounding that the same president who brushed aside protocol to order the sack of Maina when the lid to the scandal was blown open is reported to be in the know of the reinstatement. Evidence of complicity by his government in the Maina scandal is not in doubt. Not with the disclosure by the family that he was lobbied by the government to return and be part of its change agenda. Not with the revelation that the DSS provided him security. The processes that smuggled the fugitive into the country and to the civil service are responsible for wherever he is hiding today. So nobody should sacrifice Oyo-Ita for doing her job very well. In a clime that rewards merit and hard work, she would have been highly rewarded for seeing the future.

    It is a sad commentary that a government which seeks to justify its legitimacy by fighting corruption is being serially ensnared in covert moves to cover the same manifestations by its functionaries. The Maina incident is one embarrassment, too many. The war against corruption has sadly lost traction. Not with the tepid handling of allegations of corruption against the former SGF, Babachir Lawal and DG of NIA, Ayo Oke. It took too long for the president to sack the two men.

    Ironically, key functionaries of this regime accused of one corruption infraction or the other increase by the day. The impression we get is that many of the current office holders are not on the page with Buhari on the war against corruption. Not only have many been entangled in one corruption allegation or the other, it strikes as a verity of corrupt people fighting corruption. It is left to be imagined what will be left in a situation where corruption is left to fight itself. Unless urgent and very credible measures are taken to reeve up the momentum and credibility of the campaign, the battle is as good as lost.

    If current office holders cannot key into the anti-corruption crusade; if attitudes, orientations and dispositions of the public still predispose them to corruption, it shows how detached and artificial the current strategy for fighting corruption is. Above all, it indicates clearly that we are yet to get at the root of the objective conditions that reinforce and sustain corruption in a plural society. That has been the missing link.

    Perhaps, having realized the wide gap between its preachments on corruption and facts on the ground, regime supporters have now invented a new technology that seeks to hold PDP members in government liable for the failures of the Buhari government.

    It is unclear what those who canvass this view want to achieve. It is also cloudy what they mean by PDP members in Buhari’s government. In the face of this definitional ambiguity, the first temptation is to assume that the reference is to former PDP members who coalesced into the APC during the 2015 elections. Amongst them were former governors some of who are serving as ministers now, former legislators and key politicians with considerable war chest et al. These were the people that made it possible for the APC to defeat an incumbent president. Could it be the group Ali is fingering for not sharing in the ideals of the party that will disappear when it comes to blame sharing for the failure of the regime? Could it be they that occupy more than 50 per cent of the positions in the current regime?

    If the reference is to this category of people, then those who canvass that idea are being very selfish and unserious. Didn’t they know they were of the PDP stock when they were lobbying them to decamp? You cannot use them to scale into power only to turn round and accuse them of capturing most of the offices. It makes no sense at all. Even then, the APC was a marriage of strange bedfellows and has largely remained so years after it secured victory. What is expected of a serious political party; a party of the future is conscious efforts to wild together the diverse orientations and tendencies to the amalgam into a cohesive body sharing in a common ideology. That is yet to happen.

    The other assumption is that the reference is to all those in government-civil and public servants. This is further reinforced in the absence of evidence that Buhari appointed members of the PDP into his government. There is no evidence of any PDP member in all his political appointments to talk of 50 per cent. So we are left with career men and women as the possible targets. If that assumption is correct, Ali and his supporters would want civil/public servants to be replaced with APC members. What a dangerous and impracticable idea!

    It is difficult to comprehend the logic of this new political language. And unless its foot soldiers come clear with facts and figures of the PDP members stalling the progress of this government, their claims add up to nothing. It is a cheap tactics in buck-passing that signposts how low the government has descended.

  • Maina mess

    Certain developments in this country, oftentimes cast serious slur on our commitment to high standards of morality in public office. Even as our leaders regale in high-sounding ideals and platitudes, what you find on ground is often, a mismatch between precepts and practice.

    The failure of most government programmes and policies is largely attributable to dissonance between policy formulation and implementation. We are not lacking in new ideas. Neither are we in short supply of the needed interventions to extricate the country from the myriad of challenges that left citizens as hewers of wood and fetchers of water despite our huge resources endowments.

    When it comes to implementation, what you find is an uncanny display of negative ingenuity by some people to sabotage new policies for self-serving interests. Extant structure of our federation where the centre holds everything and controls everything, accentuating primordial competition has been fingered for this attitudinal dysfunction.

    That may also explain the current mess where a former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed  Maina, declared wanted four years ago on allegation of mismanaging N2 billion of the funds, could sneak into the country, reinstated into his former office, promoted and paid arrears of salaries and allowances. He had carried on in this infamy under questionable security protection for six months until the lid was blown off a fortnight ago.

    For a regime that touts the war against corruption as one of its three cardinal programmes, the incident was such a monumental embarrassment that President Buhari, brushing aside all protocols ordered his immediate sack. The propriety of the president’s intervention in such a purely civil service matter has been questioned. It however, shows how bad the situation had become.

    But that is beside the point. The key issue is that a man declared wanted by the EFCC and placed on Red Alert by INTERPOL beat our security architecture and returned to the country unnoticed. And without answering to charges hanging on his head, he was re-absorbed into the civil service on promotion and even scheduled for another promotion examination. It is not clear how the correspondence for his re-absorption arose in the first instance. All that we have been told is that the letter for his re-engagement emanated from the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami.

    How the mater got to Malami before he issued his advice is yet unclear. We are yet to be told if Maina petitioned Malami directly or he acted unilaterally. Available records indicate that Malami issued a letter to the Federal Civil Service Commission FCSC in April to give consequential effect to the judgment that voided the warrant issued against Maina which formed the basis for his query and subsequent dismissal.

    The FCSC deliberated on the matter and requested the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation OHSF to advise the permanent secretary, Ministry of Interior to consider the AGF letter and make appropriate recommendation to the commission. The OHSF consequently advised the Interior ministry which at its Senior Staff Committee meeting on June 22, considered the AGF letter seeking the re-instatement of Maina on grade level 17 but recommended that he be re-engaged on grade level 16 instead.

    This was communicated to the OHSF which in turn forwarded the recommendations to the FCSC for action. The FCSC considered the recommendation from the Interior ministry and approved Maina’s re-instatement with effect from 2013, the date he was sacked from service. The commission also approved his participation in the next promotion examination to grade level 17. That is the level of correspondence that smuggled a fugitive accused of corruption back into the civil service.

    We are not privy to the critical details and other observations by the OHSF and the Interior ministry. But it is strange that the official file of the suspect containing the grounds for his sack could pass the various departments and commissions without anyone raising questions. This suggests high level of conspiracy in the turn of events that brought about the mess the Maina affair has become. But even as the critical details of all that culminated in this sordid pass are yet to be unravelled, it is clear both the AGF, Abubakar Malami and the Minister of Interior, Abdulraman Danbazzu cannot escape culpability for this national embarrassment.

    It is curious Malami relying on the said voiding of the warrant of arrest, glossed over the serious case of corruption hanging over Maina’s head. Not done with clearing him for the alleged offence, he went further to recommend his re-instatement and promotion. One had expected the chief law officer of a regime that trumpets anti-corruption campaign to have taken more than a casual perspective of the Maina situation. He should have been in the fore front of raising questions with recommendation for the suspect to clear himself of the alleged offences. Either by errors of omission or commission, he failed this procedural test.

    More than any other character to the controversy, Malami has serious questions to answer. Though collusion between him and Danbazzu cannot be ruled out, details of how the former’s advice was sought before he issued the contentious memo must be unravelled. And it is only after that has been ascertained that the faces behind the mask will emerge.

    It is clear the president is not on the same page with some of his lieutenants in the war against corruption. Perhaps, that accounts for the nosedive in the anti-corruption campaign. Aside the occasional seizures and forfeiting of properties of officers of the former regime, it does appear the war means little to some of the current office holders. And the tepid handling and cover up of suspected infractions by the same government have not remedied matters.

    Nobody will be surprised if the government comes up with excuses seeking to extricate the two ministers neck deep in the Maina mess. It will not sound strange if those responsible for the security privilege Maina enjoyed since his return are not exposed to face the wrath of the law. Reports that his re-instatement was in preparation for him to join the APC and contest the governorship election in Borno State in 2019 makes the matter more ridiculous. Buhari must act very fast to disabuse the impression gaining currency that anti-corruption meant little for people in his government. He must move fast to wield the big stick before the action and inactions of some of his officers rubbish whatever credibility is left of his anti-graft war. He should set example with some of his officers mired in one form of corruption scandal or the other.

    The attempt by some of his aides to blame imaginary sympathizers of the former regime for bringing back Maina makes no sense at all. Not with clear evidence of those who authorized the re-instatement. Not with the disclosure by the family of Maina that he was lobbied, persuaded and brought back to the country by this government. Not with the revelation by the same family that the same government was responsible for providing him DSS security. The government contrived this mess and must take clear steps to clear it. The way this matter is handled will say a lot about the much touted anti-corruption campaign.

    One vital point the opposition brandishes is that most of the people jailed during Obasanjo’s regime or impeached for corruption related offences were their party members and governors. That point cannot be wished away. And it has become more relevant in the face of attempts by regime supporters to blame loyalists of the former government for any and every thing including the most ridiculous. Buhari must demonstrate that he can wield the big stick against officers that give bad name to his administration. Or in the alternative, not bother us with the noise his anti-corruption campaign has become.

  • Buhari’s horde of witnesses

    It was interesting reading accounts of emergency witnesses seeking to exculpate President Buhari from the sectional interpretation of his request to the World Bank. The deluge of self-assigned witnesses followed disclosure by World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim that in their first meeting with Buhari, “he specifically said that he would like us to shift our focus to northern regions of Nigeria and we’ve done that”.

    Not unexpectedly, the statement at once, drew stern criticisms from several quarters given the sectional tinge it conveys. And for a country where sectional and primordial cleavages are always in contention, it is not surprising the length some critics have gone to impugn the integrity of the president as a sectional, clannish and biased champion. And when this is juxtaposed against some other past actions of his, the furore generated by the statement can be better understood.

    Kim is not a Nigerian. Neither can he be said to nurse any ulterior motive either in running the president down or in the politics of the country. He was just responding to reporters’ questions. All this add serious weight to the account of his encounter with Buhari and the avalanche of criticisms that have trailed it.

    Apparently sensing danger in the surge of the attacks, two of the governors present at the occasion, Kashim Shettima of Borno State and Adams Oshiomhole, then governor of Edo State hurriedly jumped into the witness box with their own accounts of what they understood the president to have said. The main thesis of their evidence was that the president spoke against the background of the huge crisis in the north-east of Nigeria consequent upon the Boko Haram insurgency that had devastated the region.

    Buhari’s demand they said, was for more focus to the north-east given the peculiar circumstances of that region especially as Buhari had just taken over the mantle of leadership. The two witnesses were in agreement on this. They also pointed out that a governor from the south-west and south-east were equally present when Buhari made the demand. The purport of the latter is that the president could not have possibly made sectional demands with some southern governors in attendance. These governors are also Buhari’s witnesses and are there to corroborate their evidence. And since none of them has come up with anything to the contrary, neither has Kim produced fresh evidence to sustain the sectional undertone in his statement, nor is he likely to do so, we are not left with any other option that to give Buhari the benefit of doubt.

    Then, there could be two possible sources to the misunderstanding: It is either Kim did not fully comprehend what Buhari said or Buhari failed to articulate and communicate his views very lucidly or both.  Whichever, the responsibility for whatever gap there is to the discussion should rest squarely on the shoulders of Buhari. It is therefore unfair for some self-assigned witnesses and other regime apologists to be fingering imaginary enemies for allegedly twisting the discussions out of context.

    Kim’s statement is unambiguous. The much that can be argued as regime supporters have done, is that it should be situated within the context it was spoken, whatever that means. This position could also be a subterfuge to evade reality. Even then, it is still the duty of the speaker to clearly contextualize his statement to leave no room for ambiguity. And if anybody has issues with the statement, he should direct his anger to the man who failed to communicate or contextualize his statement such that Kim took his plea to be for the entire northern part of the country.

    So the attempt to blame phoney enemies for allegedly twisting the president’s statement out of context collapses irretrievably in the face of this reality. There is nothing in Kim’s account that was twisted by critics. The meaning given to it is precisely what it conveys. The main issue was perhaps, in the president’s inability to contextualize his statement such that Kim could fully understand him.  Ironically, the misinterpretation worked in favour of the northern region as the bank went ahead to focus its development in that region. Vicariously, the north is the beneficiary of that communication gap since the bank did what they understood the president to have said. So who do we blame for this? Or are we now going to re-direct such development projects to the south that has been adversely affected by the inability of the president to put his request in context?

    Beyond this however, why do we wallow in self-denial of elements of preferential treatment by leaders either present or past? Is the evidence of Buhari’s horde of witnesses meant to imply that he is a detribalized leader with no trace of sectional prompting? Or put differently, why did that level of public outrage trail the disclosure by Kim?

    Answers to these lie in public perception of Buhari’s image. Those accused of capitalizing on Kim’s statement to get even with the president were not just fouling the air. Neither can it be said they were unnecessarily alarmist and unpatriotic. Some of them may have been very hard on the president. But they adduced corroborating evidence between his previous actions and utterances and the one in contest. If that was the first time Buhari was entangled in sectional controversy, that could perhaps, have been excused. But it was not.

    Around the same period he met with the World Bank, he was also lampooned for saying he would give preferential treatment to sections that gave him 95 per cent votes as against areas that gave him five percent. Since much of his votes came from the north, the purport of that statement was not in doubt. Even then, his initial personal ap pointments were almost exclusively northern, composed mainly of his relations. His key military appointments were also disproportionately skewed in favour of the north brazenly excluding a major tripod on which this country was erected.

    The excuse then was that he needed to appoint people he could trust. Those who canvassed this view lost sight of the absurdity in having a sitting president with a mindset that he can only trust and work with his close relations and people of his ethnic stock in a country of about 180 million. The moment such convoluted and puerile excuse was accepted, was the time the stage was set for what we are currently harvesting. Even if we excuse Buhari for perhaps, not contextualizing his request to the World Bank, it is not possible de-odorize the sectional stench that pervades his actions and major decisions.

    And when elections are fought along sectional and primordial lines as was in 2015, the outcome is not hard to predict. Why do we still place much premium on rotation, tribe and religion in political recruitment instead of merit, qualification and competence? In this, we can locate why there is bound to be suspicion Buhari is deploying the office to satisfy the north in the same prebendal fashion foremost political scientist, Richard Joseph characterized the politics of the Third World. That is why every section wants a shot at that office. Until we have whittled down the enormous powers at the centre, we are deluding in collective deceit assuming that the current pass would soon peter out from our political chessboard.

    So it should not surprise anyone if Buhari indeed asked the World Bank to focus on the northern region. He could have been doing that in many other areas without notice. After all, we have had people ask: what did Jonathan do for the South-south in his six years in office? Those averse to cries of sidelining of the South-east by the current regime are quick to point at the inability of their sons and daughters who allegedly dominated Jonathan’s government to do anything for their zone.

    Shettima and Oshiomhole may have succeeded in contextualizing Buhari’s request to the World Bank. They may have succeeded in saving him from himself in the instant case. Had the president adorned the toga of a statesman; had his previous actions and utterances not given out his sectional predilection, they would have had no cause to jump into the witness box with such frenzy. But then, can the leopard change its colours?

  • Kachikwu/Baru diatribe

    Perusing the response of Group Managing Director of the NNPC (GMD-NNPC), Maikanti Baru to allegations against him by Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu shows clearly that the matter cannot be resolved in the court of public opinion.

    With yawning gaps and inability to address some of the substantive issues to the letter, an independent inquiry is the way to get at the root of the matter. Since Baru’s response following President Buhari’s directive raised new issues and therefore cannot put a seal to the controversy, it became difficult to fathom how the new issues will be addressed especially in the unlikely event that Kachikwu will come public with fresh facts.

    For a man still battling suspicion of having leaked his letter to the president to the media, he will be definitely hamstrung in taking on Baru to clear some of the new issues, inaccuracies and distortions he may find in that response. The dilemma is: should Kachikwu have responded to the new issues or not? If he did, he would be adding to the credibility baggage of a government whose image was badly dented by the weighty and scandalous disclosures. It could also be construed as a further attempt to discredit the government and enough grounds to associate him with the leakage of the letter.

    If he did not, he would have played into the hands of Baru and the government especially given the attempt in some quarters to dismiss the allegations as lacking in substance. There is no doubt that the government is uncomfortable with the turn of events and would seek every avenue to fault Kachikwu. Baru himself has been busy renting support as is evidenced by the solidarity visits/support for him by labour unions in the industry even when the allegations are yet to be determined.

    And one begins to ponder what business the unions have in a matter that is still unfolding. Or is it part of the culture of division and fear the minister referenced upon in his letter?

    Apparently to unknot this dilemma and save Kachikwu the burden of allowing Baru get away with some of the gaps; inaccuracies and inability to address some of the troubling issues, associates of the minister would not let go. They have come up with searing posers to show that the issues are not as simple as Baru has made the public to believe.

    The substance of Baru’s response is that extant laws and regulations do not mandate him to consult either the minister of state or the board of the NNPC in the award of contracts. Hear him: “the law or rules do not require a review or discussion with the minister of state, or NNPC Board on contractual matters”.

    He believes that since the president combines his executive powers with that of minister of petroleum, he has no business letting Kachikwu into the running of the affairs of the organization. And since he claimed no money was lost to the organization, it is deemed all the necessary and sufficient conditions for transparency and due process has been satisfied. He armed himself with the further claim that Kachikwu followed the same process when he held forth as the GMD of the NNPC.

    Hiding under this legal angle and the fact Buhari combines the portfolio of the petroleum minister with his executive position; Baru would want to be cleared of any wrongdoing even if he loses nothing taking the minister of state and the board into confidence. Ironically, that is not all there is to the legal dimension.

    Attention has been drawn to Section 130(2), 148(1) of the constitution and Section (1) of NNPC act. This section of the constitution deals with the powers of the president. Nowhere did that section allot the portfolio of the minister of petroleum to the president. In other words, it was not intended by the framers of the constitution that the president should usurp the powers of the minister of petroleum. So Baru cannot find safe haven in the legal angle since the constitution takes precedence over and above the NNPC and Procurement Act.

    Even then, issues have been raised regarding the claim that the Tenders’ Board rather than the Board of the NNPC has the responsibility to award contracts. The technicalities of these cannot be resolve here as they should be left to a commission of inquiry. But even without apportioning blames, it is obvious that Baru made a desperate attempt to take refuge under technicalities to evade the scandal of having the tenders’ board solely appointed by him as the final authority on contractual matters without reference to NNPC board.

    The same NNPC Act also stated that “the affairs of the corporation shall be conducted by a Board of Directors of the Corporation” and has overall supervisory powers of the corporation. How possible is it then to contend that these supervisory powers preclude the award of contracts. And what interest is served by ousting the board such roles in matters of contracts running into billions of dollars? Or put differently, what does Baru stand to lose if the board is taken along in such awards? Again, is the course of due process and transparency not advanced by openness rather that secrecy?

    Baru’s contention has to be taken with a pinch of salt given that even when he sidetracked the minister of state and presented some of these to the acting president for approval, he was duly advised to clear them with the minister. But he would not have any of this. It was therefore obvious that Baru was more interested in short cuts to circumvent the prying eyes of Kachikwu in the affairs of the corporation. Such conduct cannot further transparency and due process irrespective of the legal loopholes under which he sought to take refuge. There is more to it.

    He claimed Kachikwu as the GMD of the NNPC followed the same reporting line. In this, he is economical with the truth as the situations were quite different. As at the time Kachikwu reported to the president, there was no minister of state and no board for the NNPC. So, citing the instance to justify his situation cannot hold water. At best, it is an attempt to conceal information and deceive discerning members of the public.

    But even if Baru could conveniently hide under legal technicalities on the award of such humongous contracts, what laws supported the key appointments he made without either reference to the minister of state or the NNPC board he chairs? Is it surprising that he evaded aspects of this allegation against him? The fact of this casts serious slur on whatever point he sought to make on the position of the law on the award of contracts in the corporation. And as we have seen, even his claims are still largely provisional.

    Since new facts were adduced by Kachikwu’s loyalists to throw more light to the claims in Baru’s reply, the NNPC has come forward again with new claims associating the minister with some of the contracts it awarded and other decisions of the corporation. We may yet be treated with another response from those loyal to Kachikwu and the altercation will have no end.

    That is why an independent inquiry such that the Senate has promised to initiate points to the way forward. Such a panel of knowledgeable and legal minds will have the comfort of mind to go through our laws and make recommendations that will put a check to some of the embarrassing disclosures emanating from the current controversy.

    Beyond this, it is very clear Baru was merely exploiting gaps in extant laws to run the affairs of the NNPC as a sole proprietorship. The motive cannot further the course of due process and transparency. Even if one was tempted to give him the benefit of doubt on the position of the law in the award of contracts, the fact that he sidetracked both the minister of state and the board in making the controversial key appointments exposed the duplicity of his motive. Or is it surprising that the appointments excluded the South-east in the same manner Buhari excluded the zone in the composition of the board of the corporation.

    The government might be making efforts to cover up this huge embarrassment as was with similar cases where key officials of the regime were accused of corruption. But it cannot afford to leave the weighty allegations hanging without dire consequences to its touted war against corruption.

  • Of facts and fiction

    Facts they say, are sacred but comments free. Perhaps, this universal prism provides the right angle to examine some of the issues thrown up by President Muhammadu Buhari’s 57th independence anniversary speech.

    In that speech, the President made certain claims that should not escape serious scrutiny else unsuspecting members of the public swallow them as nothing but the truth. For him, Nigeria has in the past two years recorded appreciable gains in political freedom: “A political party at the centre losing elections of state governor, National Assembly seat and even state assemblies to opposition parties is new to Nigeria”.

    Though the President did not give specific cases where these elections were won by the opposition since his regime, the re-run governorship election in Rivers State and the very recent senatorial election in Osun State easily come into mind. Whereas the Rivers’ re-run election was marred by large scale irregularities, the circumstances of the Osun senatorial election and the role of imposition of an unpopular candidate in bringing about that pass are too well known. These shortcomings however, did not detract from the fact that the elections were won by candidates from opposition political party.

    But that is beside the real issue. The problem is not as much with the fact that a party different from the one at the centre won the elections as with the claim that opposition parties’ winning elections is ‘new to Nigeria’ and therefore a credit to the current administration. Far from it! The history of Nigeria’s electoral process cannot bear this claim out. Such a conclusion will definitely pale into insignificance when confronted with the weight of evidence to the contrary especially since the return of democracy in 1999. Lagos State, before the current regime, was for 16 years governed by an opposition political party.  During that period, the opposition won the governorship elections four consecutive times.

    In Imo State, the incumbent governor, Rochas Okorocha, flying the flag of a relatively underrated party, APGA, defeated an incumbent PDP governor during the 2011 governorship election. The case of Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State also followed the same pattern. He won the 2012 governorship election on the platform of the Action Congress AC. This writer cannot forget in a hurry the superlative jargons with which political commentators described that feat by Oshiomhole.  Even then, Anambra State has for three consecutive terms been won by APGA.

    If these facts were lost to Buhari, he should not have forgotten in a hurry that flying the banner of his party, the Congress for Progressive Change CPC, Tanko Al-Makura came from an obscure position to win the Nassarawa governorship election in 2011in a contest with an incumbent governor. Or has Buhari forgotten that he owes his current office to the defeat of an incumbent President? So where do we now fit in the purported feat the President wants to take credit of?

    Given the above, it amounts to a falsification of extant facts to have arrived at the incongruous conclusion that opposition parties’ winning elections is a novel achievement which Buhari should take credit of. It is a sad commentary that the President was misled by his speech writers into such a fallacious conclusion.

    Since the issue attracted Buhari’s attention, the sentiments expressed could be taken as an expression of hope and commitment to free and fair elections. Its veracity will definitely come to test during the coming elections. He has the coming governorship elections in some states to prove that he wants to make history in the conduct of free and fair elections. That chance is still open. Opposition parties winning elections on these shores are nothing new.

    The President would also want to assume some credit for guaranteeing the freedom to associate, to hold and disseminate opinion. But he went off tangent in his conclusion that recent calls for restructuring are responsible for agitations in some quarters for the dismemberment of the country. It is exactly the other way round. Restructuring is viewed by many as a therapeutic response to agitations for self-determination especially, in the face of the inability of the government to attend to nagging national questions.

    Agitations for restructuring, true federalism, devolution of powers or resource control predate the current regime. That was why we had the various national conversations during the regimes of Obasanjo and Jonathan. Perhaps, the inability to implement the pristine recommendations of those conferences is part of the reasons the agitations have festered.

    If the agitations are now widespread as we have seen in recent times, they are perhaps an indication of the insensitivity of the current regime to and its manifest inability to take along the sensibilities of the constituents in its governance agenda. It is not enough to blame calls for restructuring for the rising agitations for self-determination. Neither is it helpful disparaging genuine discussions on restructuring on the faulty claim that they emboldened some groups to canvass for the dismembering of the country.

    That suggestion is at best, a clear attempt to blackmail, frighten and intimidate canvassers of genuine conversation on the systemic deficits that have held this country prostrate over the years. The target is to give restructuring a bad name and dampen the momentum of agitations. So what type of political freedom is Buhari talking about in the above circumstance? In dismissing the calls so offhandedly, he left no one in doubt on his serious aversion to genuine discussions on the way forward.

    It is not enough to decree that such talks can only be undertaken at the level of the national and state assemblies. Neither will issues be resolved by placing the blame for the rising agitations on the doorsteps of leaders of communities where the agitations emanate. Both the blame and solution lie on the response of the government to emerging national challenges. And as can be deciphered from the President’s speech, he carries a mind-set that is unhelpful in the circumstance.

    The national and state assemblies where he wants the conversations to take place are also circumscribed by the same systemic and structural debilities. It is not surprising that the same interest group opposed to any form of structural alteration has found them willing tools in spurning genuine efforts to amend sections of the constitution. We have not forgotten in a hurry how the National Assembly recently threw away proposals for devolution for powers and the national outrage that followed it.

    It is obvious Buhari is averse to any form of discussions on vexatious issues of our federal order. He sees such discussions as an attempt to break up the country. By the same inference, he can neither drive any discussions in that regard nor provide the necessary executive prodding that will drive the process. For him, everything is all about security, securing the country and force. Fronting security concerns each time serious national issues arise is in my view, a subterfuge for evading reality.

    But even in the area of his greatest competence- security, is this country better secured today with all the criminalities and threats to life and property? If anything, the recurring deployment of soldiers across the country under operation this or that, to fight social vices attests to upsurge in insecurity in the land. This should instruct that we tinker with undue fixation on extant structures, institutions and processes that have kept the components polar apart and stultified genuine efforts at national development.

    It is time to think outside the box rather than enslaved by a status quo that has at best remained counterproductive. It is high time we democratized the political process by electing civilians into the highest political office in the country. Buhari’s handling of genuine democratic engagements, his preference for force in resolving civil concerns constitute a sad reminder to the years of the locust denoted by military rule. That is the unfortunate signal each time he responds to nagging national challenges. Ironically, force has proved inherently defective in genuinely and permanently addressing some of the issues that confront this country many decades after Independence.

     

  • Anniversary thoughts

    Yesterday October 1, marked the 57th anniversary of Nigeria as an independent country. On that day, the Nigerian state was founded. With the foundation of the new state, the expectation was that nation building which involves the construction of a common sense of national consciousness and identity would follow.

    This is more so given that the emerging Nigerian state was an amalgam of disparate ethnic, religious and linguistic nationalities. This background threw up the urgent task of inculcating and imbuing in the federating groups, a common bond that is supportive of co-habitation so that the task of national development and progress can be collectively pursued.

    With this heterogeneity, very conscious and concerted measures needed to be called to action to wield the various peoples together and stave off the disruptive influences of unbridled competition and suspicion among the groups on the one hand and the central authority on the other. Taking into confidence the sensibilities of the disparate groups was a more profitable way for national development to progress unhindered.

    But the political elite soon found themselves entangled in a web of bitter competition for supremacy which took ethnic and religious coloration. This was followed by a military coup, counter coup and a three-year civil war.  The cycle of military dictatorship continued only to be punctured with a brief civilian rule that saw Alhaji Shehu Shagari as the president. With the sacking of his government by the same military expeditors, the dictatorship of the military continued unfettered until 1999 when a new civilian government headed by Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in.

    It is worthy of note that all the years the military held sway could be aptly tagged as stages in the foundation of the Nigerian state. One thing central to this period in the history is the predominance of military influence or force in its institutionalization. This period is largely concerned with the establishment of institutions, structures and paraphernalia of government. All have no choice than to obey the command of the military. It allows no space for either dissent or alternative persuasions. And in such arrangement hallmarked by arbitrariness, command and control, it would be foolhardy to expect the sensibilities and overall interests of the constituents to find reasonable expression and accommodation.

    The military finally exited governance after 28 years in the political saddle. But that was after they had done a lot of damage; initiating several measures in several fronts with very profound implications for the organization of this unity in diversity. They created states and local governments at will without any objective criteria. They bequeathed a constitution to the democratically elected government without taking inputs from the very people over whom the constitution is meant to govern. They handed over a federal arrangement that is to all intents and purposes a unitary system; concentrating enormous powers on the central authority.

    Not unexpectedly, the arbitrariness of the military in decreeing forms and structures and a constitution for the federation, has since been the greatest source of friction, threatening the very foundation of the country. These systemic defects elicited agitations across the country for a federal arrangement that is fair and equitable to the constituents. There are agitations for whittling down the awesome powers of the central authority so as to stave off the bitter competition for power at that level.  Calls have also been made for more powers and revenue to the states and local government to facilitate development.

    The unbridled corruption and looting spree that hallmark governance on these shores are inexorably linked to the omnipresence and omnipotence of the federal arm which literally controls life and death. These calls have come in the forms of restructuring, true federalism, resource control and devolution of powers. Central to all these is the desideratum of some form of constitutional re-engineering such that would devolve more powers to the federating units and lessen their overdependence on the central authority for hand-outs.

    It is also envisaged with devolution, undue competition for power and its disruptive effects on national progress and stability would be stymied. There have been calls for a return to the arrangement we had with the 1960 and 1963 constitutions during which period the regions made substantial progress based on their competences and comparative advantages.

    That was the period the country had a semblance of a federal structure where the federal government bequeathed more powers to the regions. All these were substantially altered with the advent of the military. But with the return to civil rule in 1999, agitations for a more equitable federal structure resonated. Obasanjo responded by empanelling a constitutional conference. The conference did its work but its recommendations were thrown overboard for fear of his using it as a springboard for his infamous third term game plan.

    Jonathan who took over from Yar’Adua faced similar agitations and came up with the national constitutional conference. The conference concluded its deliberations and made far-reaching recommendations that would aid the country overcome some of the debilitating challenges that stultify national progress and development. They could not be implemented before he lost power.

    But the agitations peaked since Buhari took over, threatening the very foundation on which the country was erected. It has manifested in the various agitations for self-determination- IPOB, MASSOB, Yoruba Liberation Command, Niger Delta Republic, Arewa Youths and Middle Belt. Central to all these, is the perceived inability of extant federal order to provide the enabling ground for the constituents to approximate their full potentials.

    The federal arrangement has to be tinkered with to get the right mix that will unleash the creative energies of the people for even development and self-actualization.  As national leader of the ruling APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu succinctly captured: “it would be better to restructure things to attain the correct balance between our collective purposes on the one hand and our separate grassroots realities on the other”.

    Restructuring envisions a new order that will task and drive productivity in the different regions of the country rather than the old fashioned dependence on revenue sharing that encourages indolence and laziness. The attraction lies in its capacity to shift and focus attention to new wealth creation areas, promote productivity and competition in the bid of the federating units’ struggle for survival. Overall, it will convey development faster to the constituent units.

    Despite being the way forward, restructuring has not been well received by a section of the north ostensibly on suspicion that it may deny them some of the advantages they currently enjoy. Some have raised fears that it will lead to dismembering of the country even as others have sought to disparage the idea hiding under definitional issues. Yet, the issues to restructuring are unambiguous and very compelling.

    At 57, we ought to have stabilized our governance framework such that the task of nation building can commence. It is a sad commentary that we are still contending with such things as the form of structures to adopt, issues that are usually thrashed out during the foundation of states. It is also a huge embarrassment that primordial cleavages are still in very stiff competition with the central authority for the loyalty of the citizens. It is a mark of collective failure in nation building that October 1 appealed to a group of northern youth as a veritable timeline to quit sections of the country from the north and confiscate their property. It is a veritable statement of our progress in national integration.

    It is not enough to rehash the unity, indivisibility and non-negotiability of the country. Neither can the reliance on force to achieve these suffice. The solution lies in constructing the right mix between our collective aspirations and diverse interests of the constituents. Buhari has a chance to write his name in the sands of history or make a hero of his successor as the new momentum can only be delayed. Its alternative could be disastrous.

  • A harvest of terrorists

    With court declaration that the activities of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra IPOB amounted to acts of terrorism and illegality, the debate on the legality of earlier classification by the military appears to have been foreclosed. Yet, the government tackled the problem from the answer before establishing the processes that would lead to it. Solving a mathematical puzzle from the answer is bound to draw the ire of any examiner.

    The military had declared the IPOB a terrorist organization on allegations of forming a Biafra Secret Service, Biafra National Guard, blocking of public access roads, extortion of money from innocent civilians and possession of weapons (stones, Molotov cocktails, machetes and broken bottles). The classification at once, elicited two sets of criticisms. The first hinged on the right of the military to make such declaration given that our laws have no place for them in the process.

    Perhaps, the most contentious of the criticisms was whether the reasons proffered satisfied both the necessary and sufficient conditions for declaring IPOB a terrorist organization. Even the worst critics of the strategies of the IPOB will hesitate to buy into the argument that these constituted sufficient grounds for them to be labeled a terrorist organization. That is the truth of the matter.

    The proscription of IPOB is a fait accompli even as experts have faulted the court order and the overall competence of the ruling. It is needless dissipating energy on the processes that led to it; whether it was the right option in the circumstance or what interests it is meant to serve. It is also too late to pontificate on the non-violent disposition of the group, the fact that they neither carry arms nor are they known to have attacked targets (hard or soft) inflicting harm on lives and property for impact.

    Their first encounter of throwing stones and blocking road for the enforcement of the on-going Operation Python Dance exercise turned out their greatest undoing, attracting proscription and a terrorist label. Before then, they had largely operated as a very peaceful and non-violent organization. The indecent haste with which the military termed the group a terrorist organization enabling the government to tow the same line raises suspicion. This is more so given the delay and opposition from the north against tagging the Boko Haram insurgents a terrorist group even when they had bombed the UN building in Abuja and many churches killing hundreds of innocent worshippers.

    But the question that agitates the mind especially given IPOB’s focus on self-determination is the efficacy of the proscription and profiling in addressing issues to the agitation. We will also have to contend bias and double standards in the processes and circumstances culminating in the current fate of the group.

    The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed has of late been bandying all manner of allegations against the group. He has alleged foreign funding; that Kanu was caught in a video in London in 2015 soliciting money for weapons and openly solicits for arms and funds.  He also accused France of being the financial headquarters of IPOB and claimed the UK rebuffed their request to shut down radio Biafra.

    Ironically, much of the statements emanating from Mohammed are laced with high level propaganda. Mohammed is entitled to launder the image of the government in the face of strident criticisms that have dogged the mishandling of the IPOB matter. He is also at liberty to bandy frivolous claims around as is now evident from the reactions of France and UK.

    He can go ahead and heap praises on northern governors for forestalling reprisal attacks in the north. He is free to simulate danger of any magnitude and proportion to the incidents in Port Harcourt, Umuahia and Aba and downplay the ones in Jos, Kaduna and Sokoto. He can pontificate and reel out claims that will justify a non-violent self-determination group as a terrorist organization. He is entitled to his views especially as the end has already justified the means.

    But in overdramatizing the issue, he should not gloss over the fact that this country is home to mindless and unprovoked attacks on lives and property by sundry groups under various guises.  Religion-induced riots that claimed lives and property of inestimable value have been rampant in some parts of the country. There are also the deadly escapades of the Fulani herdsmen. The last time I checked, I could not remember any time there were reprisal attacks from those who lost their loved ones and property from such frequent and unprovoked attacks. Given the minister’s over dramatization of the issue of reprisals, it would appear the enormous sacrifices by sections that have borne the brunt of these attacks are being taken for granted.

    Northern governors are on point for counseling their subjects to refrain from self-help even in the face of provocation. Their delegation has also been in the South-east to build confidence, reassure their indigenes that all is well and save the country from plunging into further crisis. That is commendable.

    All the same, it is wrong to convey the impression that the infraction witnessed in the South-east in the last couple of days compares with the activities of the herdsmen to warrant the treatment they have now received. It is also difficult to fathom how Fulani herdsmen declared by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest group in the world can escape the tag of a terrorist organization. In this deadly matrix, the herdsmen came after Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab.

    Yet, the Nigerian government sees nothing wrong with their murderous activities. Ironically, the same government that deliberately shut its eyes to the huge danger the herdsmen constitute to the peace and security of the country went into a frenzy to invent all manner of reasons to hound and obliterate all that IPOB stands for irrespective of whatever procedural defects that may have trailed some of their actions. It is also a curious coincidence that the action of the government has met the demands of Arewa youths who wrote to the UN to label IPOB a terrorist organization.

    The same youth group issued the quit order to the Igbo. The government may have decimated the IPOB through the ban. It may have as well driven them underground. Those found with evidence of some form of connection with the group henceforth, stand to face the raw teeth of the law. They also face other severe consequences depending on the circumstances and the agencies that caught them.

    But do the measures remedy the issues that threw up the IPOB? The answer is no. Are they capable of eliciting favorable dispositions and reconstructing the minds of the agitators away from the complaints that compelled them to the discipleship of Kanu? I do not see that happening. If anything, the proscription will further reinforce those fears for which they fell for Kanu’s Biafra option. They will be more inclined to see the high-handedness of the Buhari regime as a further proof that they do not really count in the affairs of this country.

    They will continue to wonder why the same government kept mute while the Fulani herdsmen held the nation hostage. They will begin to nurse the feeling that perhaps, if one of theirs was occupying the highest political office in the country; if they had representation at the highest echelon of the military, their situation would have been different. The ban cannot change the minds of those who believe in what IPOB stands for. It cannot decimate agitations for Biafra until the systemic dysfunctions that gave rise to them are decisively and realistically addressed. At any rate, there are still three other groups professing the same ideas that are not affected by the proscription.

    The government erred by the indecent haste with which it tagged IPOB a terrorist organization. It is one thing to ban the group and entirely another to label it a terrorist organization. The latter goes with serious repercussions. With Boko Haram, the deadly escapades of the Fulani herdsmen and now IPOB, we have made a clear statement in the world terrorism index. We will have to contend with this dialectics.

  • Show of force

    Unprovoked attack on journalists inside their Umuahia secretariat, Abia State by soldiers of ‘Operation Python Dance’ and the heightened tension sequel to their deployment underscore most poignantly, some of the potent dangers in the exercise.

    Soldiers, ostensibly on a show of force, stormed the secretariat of journalists beating them up and smashing their working equipments including phones and I-pads. They claimed they saw some of them taking pictures of their convoy.

    But we are told it is a show of force. And when you display force in public, is there still anything to hide? If the display of force is for the public to see the readiness of the military to confront any threat to public peace, what difference does it make if such information is further made available to others outside the vicinity of the action by the media? We raise this to highlight the incongruity of the soldiers’ action and the dangers in the current posturing of the military campaign in the South-east.

    Good enough, the army apologized for the excesses of their men even before the September 15 advertised date for the commencement of the exercise. Given that the so-called operation python dance was billed to commence on September 15, what campaigns were the soldiers involved in skirmishes penultimate Sunday at Nnamdi Kanu’s country home and those that attacked journalists last Tuesday prosecuting?

    It is vital for this riddle to be resolved for the public to really appreciate what is really going on in the South-east. Was the action of the military well ahead of the planned Operation Python Dance part of it or a precursor of what to expect? The army has to provide answer to this given conflicting accounts of what transpired at the home of Kanu on that Sunday. The army denied attacking or killing anybody. It claimed suspected IPOB militants blocked the road against troops of 145 Battalion on a show of force along FMC-World Bank Road, Umuahia; insisting they would not pass and started pelting stones. Troops according to them, fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd.

    But the account of the state police commissioner ran thus “what happened was that the military was parading a new armoured carrier and passed through Kanu’s residence. It was while they were passing that some people threw some stones and other things at them”.

    However, video clips on the incident showed a military tank and other vehicles at the residence of Kanu moving back and forth. Several gunshots boomed at the background while some youth, presumably IPOB members with sticks and stones hauled some pebbles at the military tank. A young man seen with deep wound on his leg soaked in blood was being assisted by some youth who claimed he was shot by the army.

    It was not clear whether the shooting preceded the hauling of pebbles or the vice versa. But what seemed apparent was that the skirmish took place in front of the residence of the IPOB leader. And prior to this, there was tranquillity within the area.

    When the military launched the first version of this exercise between November and December last year, it said the objective was to tackle armed robbery, kidnapping, violent crimes, herdsmen-farmers’ clashes and violent agitations. But this time, the word violent was dropped from agitations, thus conveying the impression that even lawful and legitimate agitations were some of the targets of the operation.

    Little wonder the current conduct of the soldiers and public apprehension at the sight of the armada amassed in the South-east. Many have questioned the propriety of deploying sophisticated military arms and ammunition to fight the societal ills for which the military sought to justify the operation. There have also been opinions that our laws do not permit the use of the military for functions that ordinarily should be the statutory responsibility of the police.

    Issues have also been raised as to whether the President has the powers to deploy the military in such a massive way without the approval of the Senate. Even in the case of the Boko Haram insurgents that were clearly waging a military warfare against the Nigerian government, former President Jonathan got the approval of the Senate before declaring the partial state of emergency that enabled him to deploy troops to that area.

    So why are extant rules of organized conduct being observed in their breach even on issues of non violent agitations for self-determination that are still within the competences of the police force? We raise this question because the posturing of the military in the current exercise is loaded with frightening prospects of rupturing peace and escalating tension and clashes between the soldiers and the civil populace.

    Given the temperament of the military as we have seen in the unprovoked attack on journalists, there is everything to expect the situation will degenerate if they continue to show force the way they are going about it. Already, allegations of killings, inhuman treatment, abuse of human rights and scant regard for rules of engagement have been traded. Ethnic clashes and reprisal attacks have also been reported in Rivers, Kaduna and Plateau with Abia and Plateau states declaring dusk to dawn curfew.

    Unless the overall objective is to escalate tension and find excuse for what the army knows best, utmost caution and restraint must be applied in the on-going campaign. It is very delighting the army apologized to journalists attacked by their men with a promise to replace their damaged equipment and punish the offenders. The way things stand, the deployment of troops in the South-east and the conduct of the soldiers have escalated tension and suspicion among the distinct groups that hitherto co-habited resulting to attacks and counter attacks.

    A situation that has compelled law-abiding citizens to nurse genuine fears on the safety of their lives leaves a sour taste in the mouth. The right thing to do in the circumstance is for the soldiers to be withdrawn immediately to enable the police being deployed to the states to maintain the peace.

    The operation has also been queried given what appears its very selective nature. Armed robbery, kidnapping and sundry crimes for which reasons the deployment has been rationalized, are by no means on top of the scale in the South-east. Neither is agitation for self-determination or threats of it limited to that zone. Constant killings, despoliation of communities and raping of women in their farms for which armed Fulani herdsmen are notorious, especially around the North-central have not attracted this manner of military deployment. Yet, they operate with the sophistication of well organized insurgents. This has given cause for suspicion of bias.

    Even then, military checkpoints have since remained a regular feature at the entry and exit points of states in the south-east zone. It would appear the body language of the government is that the new phase of Operation Python Dance is primarily targeted at those agitating for self-determination especially the group led by Kanu. The army has reacted to video clips depicting soldiers dehumanizing IPOB members in the most chilling manner with a promise to investigate the report. It calls for independent investigations.

    Former President Obasanjo had at a recent workshop on “preventing violent extremism” attributed the escalation of the Boko Haram insurgency to a disproportionate use of the ‘stick’ rather than ‘carrot’. And in an interview with the BBC last week, he said Boko Haram started from a position of gross underdevelopment and youth frustration and as such, we must be treating the disease and not the symptom. Buhari should find answers to the objective conditions that propel these agitations and address them rather than muzzle and drive dissent underground.