The Nation Newspaper

Category: Emeka Omeihe

  • Between Saraki and Buratai

    Since the last one week or so, no less thanthree key government functionaries have been in public domain for one alleged infraction or the other. The period saw the arraignment of Senate President Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu in court for allegedly forging senate standing rules, 2015.

    Before then, Saraki had been standing trial at the Code of Conduct Bureau(CCB) over allegations of false assets declaration. The duo has since drawn public attention to their plight alleging it was apolitical contrivance to settle old scores by getting them out of their offices.

    They contend that Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Abuja High Court had adjudicated on the matter, affirming that it is an internal affair of the Senate. For this, they view their arraignment not only as an imminent threat to democracy but a declaration of war against the senate.

    But the federal government feels otherwise. It sees the matter as personal to the two presiding officers of the Senate and asked them to bear their cross. The government would even want them resign from their respective offices to allow justice run its full course. In all, their arraignment is rationalized as part of the anti-graft war of the Buhari administration that does not seemingly differentiate between persons, no matter how highly placed.

    At another level also arose controversy over the allegation that the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-GeneralTukurBuratai bought two properties in Dubai estimated at $1.5 million. The allegation which was first published by an online medium with documents to prove drew quick defence from the Nigerian Army. Acting Director of Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman admitted the Buratai family had two properties in Dubai but claimed they were bought with personal savings in 2013.

    He saidBuratai had consistently declared the properties along with other properties in his assets declaration forms and described the report as mere smear campaign as the properties were not bought in one single transaction.

    Soon after came another defence from the Defence Minister, Mansur Dan-Ali claiming the allegation was an attempt by some persons to distract the Armed Forces from successful prosecution of the heightened campaign against terrorism in the North-east.

    Apparently following the same line of argument, Buratai claimed that the insurgents and terrorists they defeated on the land have migrated to the cyberspace, internet and other electronic media. “We want to assure them that these terrorists, the Boko Haram terrorists, who have migrated to the cyberspace, we will follow them to that cyberspace and equally defeat them and clear their doubt”.

    By the logic of this argument and the catchphrase of the Buhari government, the general was in effect saying:‘terrorism is fighting back’. By this also, we are being told to ignore the weighty issues that have been raised, part of which have been admitted with the explanation that the assets were properly acquired and declared.

    But then, the role terrorism is being ascribed to in this matter is as confounding as it is unbelievable. It is curious how terrorism could be reasonably factored into allegations that seek to hold a public officer accountable. This is more so, for a government that has sought to build its legitimacy around the war against corruption? Are we now implying that dislodged and defeated terrorists are behindthe allegation so that the war against terrorism will lose steam?It is difficult to fathom the nexus between the two.

    At best, the linkage is guilty of the fallacy of argumentum admisericordiam. It is an argument designed to whip up sentiments with the aim of obfuscating the weighty issues raised against Buratai that ordinarily should require serious investigation. By drawing puerileparallel between the allegation and the successes being recorded against the Boko Haram insurgency, a covert attempt is being made to persuade the public to ignore the allegation.Or is it being suggested that Buratai cannot be subjected to the laws of the land because he is making progress in the war against terrorism?

    We are being told wittingly or otherwise that the fight against insurgency takes higher premium over any other matter including that against corruption. The impression is also being conveyed that the fight is all about Buratai and without him all the gains will be reversed. That is my reading of the issues being bandied on the non-existing correlation between the success in the war against terrorism and corruption allegations.

    There is also the rationalization that the army chief bought the properties with his personal savings; the investments were based on capital market shareholding principles and such other trite explanations. One has no sufficient basis to disprove these claims. But their veracity or otherwise can only be proven through thorough investigations which the situation demands.

    This is more so as the same online medium has literally gone on rampage displaying another list of properties allegedly owned by Buratai in parts of the country. If he really owns these investments, the thing to establish is how he came about them. His salaries are known and the amount of savings he can make out of them can be reasonably computed.

    So it is not sufficient to claim that he bought them with personal savings. It is equally not enough to state that the assets were declared in his assets declaration forms. The purpose of assets’ declaration is for the CCB to match claims with the income of the declaring officer. And where wide discrepancies exist, that officer is made to account for the sources of such assets.

    It will therefore stand as a huge indictment on the CCB if public officers declare assets that are out of tune with their income without such people asked to account for such wealth. If it can arraign people for not declaring some of their assets, it is curious that it could opt to maintain sealed lipsover those who declare in excess of their legitimate income. That renders nugatory the high minded ideas for the setting up of that Bureau.

    Be that as it may, we are here concerned with issues of integrity and probity especially given governments’ commitment to the war against corruption. From the way the two issues are being handled, it is not difficult for oneto establish a case of double standard. The Senate leadership claims that in both the petitions and the recommendations of the police which investigated the forgery allegation, neither Saraki nor Ekweremadu was specifically either mentioned or indicted.

    They therefore query the motive for their arraignment. And since it is a well-known fact that the presidency has not been comfortable with their emergence in the Senate leadership, they may not be completely out place in the way they perceive their current travails. They have also queried what the nation stood to achieve by arraigning them over a matter they considered an internal affairs of the Senate.

    These are some of the issues to ponder. But if the government wants them to step aside for justice to run its full course, no less would have been permissible in the case of the Buratai. Instead, what we get is a cacophony of voices from sundry government quarters each competing to defend and absolve him of the allegations. That alone speaks volumes.

    But hard as they try, the signals are that varying standards exist for treating those accused of one infraction or the other within the corruption ladder. Such a tendency is all that is needed for the corruption battle to lose complete relevance.

  • Fear of real change

    It is obvious all is not well with this country at the moment. Increasingly, it is getting clearer that fundamental modifications in the structure of the Nigerian state are inevitable to stave off systemic dysfunctions that are at the root of the cycle of crises that have been buffeting this federal contraption.

    Resurging tempo of centrifugalism; a plethora of challenges at the economic level leading in the main, to inability by governments to pay salaries, loss of jobs at the private sector with the banks taking the lead and deteriorating living conditions especially of the poor, are clear evidence that we need to get back to the drawing board to get our bearing right. Though this thinking is not entirely new, for some inexplicable reasons, it has failed to receive the support of some vested interests.

    And for that reason also, whatever gains this country would have harnessedthrough restructuring have continued to elude us. But hard as we try to shy away from it, its imperative continues daily to stare us on the face. That was the uncanny dialectics at play last week when President Buhari told State House workers that it was disgraceful that two thirds of the states of the federation cannot pay salaries to their workers.

    Hear him: “27 out of the 36 states cannot pay salaries. This is a disgrace to Nigeria”. The same contradiction was equally manifest in his comments on the resurging militancy in the Niger Delta region. Again, he had this to say: “Unfortunately, the Niger Delta with their myriads of organizations that are competing over which one can do more damage to the country and the oil wells and oil companies. For how long are we going to do this?”

    The two issues are very fundamental. So also is the question of how long shall we continue to be in this pass?Answer to why states cannot pay salaries can be located in the structure of the federation while the militancy in the Niger Delta will continue as long as people of the area see the organization of the Nigerian state as inequitable and incapable of guaranteeing even development in the area. These are the issues to contend with. And how can we go about addressing themwithout tinkering with the way this country is structured both on political and economic lines?

    Ironically, president Buhari who seeks answers to the posers is opposed to discussions on restructuring the polity. In his recent interview to mark his one year in office, he had in reaction to a question said he had neither read the 2014 National Conference report on how to move the nation forward nor called for a brief on it. He went further to say unequivocally that he would want the ‘report to go into the so-called archives’.

    So when just after a month he came up with the issue of how long we shall continue to live with the inability of states to pay salaries and the militancy in the Niger Delta, he was inadvertently cornered by the contradictions of the unresolved issues of our federal order. Incidentally, much of the solutions to these nagging national challenges were the major concerns of that conference report.

    So if Buhari is serious in finding durable answers to the two challenges, he has to reconcile himself with his averment to consign the conference report to the dustbin of history. In spite of differences in the management styles of state governors andsleaze in public places, the current situation where the states depend solely on hand-outs from the federal government for survival is at the root of their predicament.

    That has been the raison d’etre for calls for fiscal federalism and devolution of powers. The idea here is to whittle down the overwhelming powers of the centre and the concomitant bitter competition for its control that is at the centre of the simmering fission within the polity. States cannot pay salaries because most of them cannot survive on their own as presently constituted. They do not have the capacity to fund themselves because of a convoluted order that has rendered them mere appendages of the centre where life literally begins and ends. States cannot pay when they depend solely on oil revenue which the central government disburses at intervals. They cannot pay when a disproportionate chunk of what should go to their kitty is appropriated by a centre that espouses federal tenets but in reality unitary. And where they manage to pay salaries, other services suffer irretrievably.

    For states to do that and be in a position to discharge their statutory duties very effectively would require the restructuring of the fundamentals of our federal order.It is obviously a political action that seeks to unleash the creative energies and potentials of the component units for rapid development along their designed paths.

    With such action, the discontent that aggravates militancy due to the yawning disparity between the huge resources found at the backyard of the Niger Delta people and their abysmal poor level of development would have been adequately staved off. With it also, complaints bordering on the skewed allocation of oil wells to people almost exclusively outside the zone which the Ijaw Youths Congress has seriously complained about will be redressed.

    Similarly, the inequities that reinforce competition to control the centre and take advantage of its disproportionate resources would have been put at bay. So the answers to the question posed by the president can really be found in restructuring which has been seriously addressed in the document he has curiously relegated to rust in the archives even after the nation had spent stupendously to put it together.

    Had he read it or called for briefs on it, he may have found to his chagrin that in that document lie answers to the poser on why states cannot pay salaries. Ditto the reasons for resurging militancy in the Niger Delta and similar primordial tendencies that have reared up their ugly heads. Perhaps, he may also come to terms with the reality that as long as we trifle with the matter of instituting a true federal order, so long will these challenges be a recurring decimal.

    So when Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara state sought to make a distinction between economic restructuring and its political variant, he was merely referring to two sides of the same coin. He said in a recent interview that restructuring in the past had been based on political exigencies and that is why its economic impact has not been felt. Now, he would want it to be along economic lines. But even when based on political exigencies, its overall benefits are usually felt within the economic realm. For, the difference between politics and economy in this instance is just a very thin one.

    Ahmed however, struck the right chord when he viewed restructuring as the process of reviewing the way we have been doing things and if that has not taken us to the promised land, we seek new ways of getting there. That is the real issue and not this rabid obsession with insinuations that it is a way of dismembering the country. On the contrary, continued opposition to restructuring may facilitate disintegration more quickly as has been shown by resurgent agitations for self-determination and national sabotage.

    It is also evident in the increasing resort to holdingthe nation together through coercive apparatus of the state. But then, for how long shall we continue to hold this country together through the force of arms? Is it not a huge contradiction that 56 years after independence, we still rely overwhelmingly on gunboat diplomacy or the actual deployment of same to compel loyalty for the government?

    It also smacks of educated guess to contend as some have attempted that restructuring and the fight against corruption cannot go together. They can and do go together. For us to fight corruption decisively, we must get at the root of it. And the way to it is by understanding and addressing those negative attitudinal dispositions that starve civic structures of their attendant moral bearing thereby reinforcing corruption. In them, we will find why our society does not frown at people who steal from the coffers of the government, without qualms.  Only then, shall we be able to effect real, lasting change.

  • Osun’s school dresses

    Those who watched media clips of Baptist High School pupils, Iwo Osun State,would have been amazed at the sight of students dressed in sundry religious apparel. There were those in hijab (veil); choir dresses while others appeared in flowing white garment clothes – apparently denoting the religious mix in that particular school. Of course, there were others who appeared in their usual school uniform unmindful of the seeming dressing competition.

    The situation looked quite confused. A young man who was taken aback by the scenario could not help but exclaim “religious dresses on parade”! That was the situation in that school and it had its roots in a recent court judgment which permitted female Muslim students to attend classes in hijab.

    A suit filed in 2013 by the Muslim community against the Osun State government, had asked the court to grant Muslim students the use of hijab in some public schools where they were being harassed and discriminated against.

    Their counsel premised his argument on the decision of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin between the Provost of the College of Education and one BasiratSaliu and noted that female Catholics wear veil, Mary mother of Jesus always appears in picture with veil on her head. He then prayed the court to allow female Muslim students wear veil in those schools since they have been wearing it in accordance with the 2004 directive of the state government.

    Justice JideFalola premised his judgment on section 38 of the Nigerian constitution and Article 8 of the 2004 policy published by the state ministry of education and restrained the state government from disallowing female Muslim students the use hijab in its schools.

    But the Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) Osun State chapter did not take kindly to the matter. It has not only accused the state government of plans to Islamize the state but vowed to resist any move to implement the ruling. It went ahead to order Christian students in all schools founded by Christians to wear Christian garments and vestments as part of their school uniforms. The students who appeared in sundry Christian apparels and vestments were only following the directive of the Christian body which has also indicated its intention to appeal the ruling.

    The development generated serious tension with the state government threatening to expel students who disobey the official uniform. But the threats did not change the situation as the students, apparently buoyed by the support of the Christian body defied government threats for three consecutive days.

    An attempt to stop them at the school gate nearly resulted in crisis but for the timely intervention of the traditional ruler of the community. For now, grave yard peace pervades the state as both Muslim and Christian leaders have resolved to maintain the peace so that the legal battle will run full circle.

    That appears the most sensible thing to do since CAN has indicated intention to appeal the ruling. It has no doubt, drawn copious attention to its position on the ruling and cannot go beyond that without prejudicing the very appeal it seeks to file.

    At issue however, is why the use of hijab has become so contentious in Osun school system? This poser is pertinent when it is realized that state takeover of schools in the state dates back to 1975. If Muslim and Christian students in the state co-habited without any shred of suspicion and antagonism for over 30 years, why has the hijab suddenly become an issue? Why did the Christian schools before now operate without problems even as they were being run by the government? Why has the use of veil become such an issue that the Muslim community in that state had to approach the court to enforce the rights of their students to wear it to school?

    The ugly development has its roots in a recent policy of the state government to merge and re-classify schools. In some of these schools, the Christian groups that founded them have their churches and other places of religious worship domiciled in those premises. They have their own established tradition fashioned along the line of the founders. And this has worked out fairly for them especially as some of them were single sex schools.

    With the merger, they had expected that any student in their system would be brought up in their tradition since both Muslim and Christian students had co-habited without any problem. But soon, the issue of hijab resonated with the Muslim community approaching the court for their rights to be enforced.

    This of course, raised genuine suspicions. The Christian groups saw it as an attempt to Islamize the state. Though the court ruled in favor of the use of hijab in the schools, it is obvious from current events that that ruling is fraught with serious problems for peace, harmony and order in that state. For, rather than the takeover and merger of schools acting as a melting pot for sectional, religious and primordial differences, they have curiously become an embarrassing reinforcement of these ugly tendencies.

    That is quite unfortunate, to say the least. It may be convenient for the Osun state government to wash its hands off the current controversy on the guise that it was the one that was sued. That the Judge cited article 8 of the 2004 policy published by the state ministry of education on the matter, meant there is a state policy on it.

    Given the forgoing, it would be a herculean task to convince the Christian groups that the government is not remotely behind the controversy. This writer was in class three in a seminary when the then East Central State government took over schools immediately after the civil war. We were during that period, given an essay on the takeover of mission schools.

    I did argue in support of the takeover, citing my experience while growing up in a village catholic primary school. Then, it was a harvest of antagonism and discrimination between pupils of the Catholic faith and those of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) (now called Anglican)

    The way CMS was presented to us made us loathe anything having to do with their pupils. Not unexpectedly, this resulted to abuses, quarrels and occasional fights between pupils of both schools especially while going home after classes. Iargued in that essay that takeover of schools will eliminate all that negative indoctrination and the attendant rivalry and antagonism.I remember very vividly that my teacher, a Reverend, noted in my script: Are you sure?  But to my big surprise, he still scored me very well.

    Given this background, one can then understand the huge contradiction in the agitation for the use of a particular religious veil in government schools in Osun State so many years after. And if one may ask, what then happens to the veils of other religions as counsel to the Muslim community rightly pointed out. Will Catholics then approach the court to enforce their rights to veils? And what type of future shall we be erecting in the minds of impressionable youths who are being introduced to religious bigotry so early in their lives?

    These are some of the inherent contradictions. And if one may ask, how much value does the use of hijab hold in the educational advancement of Muslim students especially in a state that is largely reputed for its high level of religious tolerance and understanding? It would appear that the matter is an unnecessary distraction with loaded prospects of rupturing the peace of the state. There are a myriad of challenges of the ordinary citizens that require the attention of the government than the dissipation of energy over such mundane issues.

    Beyond this, the controversy highlights the contradictions in government policy on the takeover of schools. It also brings to the fore the incongruity in the merger and re-classification. If these policies are incapable of improving on a subsisting order, it is better to maintain the status quo.

  • One beheading, too many

    Kano State again! That was the exclamation of a young man when the chilling news filtered that a 74 year old woman and wife of a pastor, Mrs. Bridget Agbahime was beaten to death in Kano by Islamic fundamentalists on the spurious allegation that she blasphemed Prophet Mohammed.

    But the real account of what transpired was that the woman has been having a minor disagreement with a neighbour trader over the latter’s regular habit of washing his legs in front of her shop instead of his each time he wanted to pray. Reports had it that on that fateful day, the man after being cautioned as usual to wash his legs in front of his shop, went out and raised false alarm that Bridget had blasphemed Prophet Mohammed.

    Unknown to the woman who was busy attending to her customers, some hoodlums masquerading under the guise of their religion, attacked her and were on the verge of killing her husband before he was rescued by the police. The incident has attracted wide outrage and condemnation. The presidency, Kano State government and the Jama’atu Nasir Islam JNI among others have strongly condemned the killing. For the JNI, the act is un-Islamic and perpetrated by miscreants and criminals.

    But the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) northern branch is piqued at the frequency of such premeditated killings in Kano and has called for an open trial of the alleged masterminds. The CAN summed up the contradiction in the latest killing: “this type of issue is giving Kano State a bad name and image. So if your enemy is angry with you, the best thing to do is to raise false alarm using religion as a cover to kill you”.

    Some years back, another innocent citizen, Gideon Akaluka was in a similar dastardly circumstance killed and decapitated. Then, a group of Muslim fanatics had gone after the head of Akaluka after his wife was alleged to have desecrated the Koran. The police promptly arrested and detained him. But prompted by some faceless leaders, the angry group of fanatics and killers stormed the prison, captured Akaluka and cut off his head.

    They were later to put the severed head in a spike and drove around the Kano city with it in the most reprehensible manner. There is no official record of any person apprehended and brought to book for that dastardly act. Elsewhere, there was also the case of Mrs. Oluwatoyin Oluwaseesin, a teacher at a secondary school in Gombe State who was murdered by students of that institution for alleged similar infraction.

    Her offence was that while invigilating an examination, she took away a bag which a student had brought to the hall against the rules and put it away on the floor. Incidentally, the bag was said to contain the holy book and this infuriated the students who later regrouped, burnt her car and striped her naked before killing and burning her.

    These represent a tip of the iceberg in the orgy of endless religion-induced crises in that part of the country that took serious toll in human lives and property. Curiously, Kano has been at the centre of them all including the devastating Maitatsine riots.

    Perhaps, the silence of the authorities each time such killings occur has emboldened more miscreants and hoodlums to take laws into their hands to extract punishment on behalf of their religion. A society that allows any and every body including miscreants to sit in judgment, determine what sentence to award a suspect and proceed to execute same under whatever guise, is a clear invitation to disaster and anarchy.

    That is the contradiction the CAN brought to the front burner when it contended that an enemy who has a matter to settle with another can just raise false alarm using religion as a subterfuge to kill his opponent. And that is central to the case of Mrs. Agbahime.

    If motives are being imputed into the frequency of these decapitations in Kano, there are sufficient grounds for them. Those worried by such raging feelings and their prospects for the breakdown of law and order must do something now to stem the tide. The section of the country constantly targeted is already tired of spilling the blood of their sons and daughters for this country to stand.

    Even then, the landlord of the shop was reported to have before the latest incident, wadded into the disagreement, advising the man to confine himself to his shop. Sadly, it was the same person that went and recruited the hoodlums and street urchins that attacked and slit the throat of the woman under the spurious reason that she was irreverent to his faith.

    One can now see the danger in the entire sad episode. The same scenario must have also been at play in the case of the decapitation of Akaluka since nobody was apprehended and punished for that dastardly act.

    Those who murdered Agbahime and Akaluka may have been acting out a devious script written for them by some criminal sponsors masquerading under the guise of protecting their religious faith. There could also be other motives to it. It is however, heart-warming that unlike in the case of Akaluka, both the Kano State government and the JNI have come out to denounce the killing claiming it has nothing do with their religion but the handiwork of criminals and urchins.

    But, that raises a very fundamental question regarding on whose shoulders the responsibility for determining infractions to the Islamic faith resides. The poser has become pertinent because the impression these acts of lawlessness conveys is that every and any Muslim can determine when their faith has been desecrated and award punishment as he deems fit including taking peoples’ lives.

    And we ask, are there no extant processes for apprehending such suspects and making them face trial? Are there no laws to which those accused of one infraction or the other are supposed to be subjected to before punishment can be meted out on them? Why is there always a standing army of fanatics ready to decapitate any time such allegations arise? And on whose behest do they exist? We raise these questions because of the constant recourse to mob justice each time allegations of desecrating the Muslim faith arise in Kano especially now we are being told such killings are the handiwork of criminals.

    It would appear there are issues leaders of that faith have to straighten out with their teeming adherents especially the illiterate and those exposed to radical teachings. It is clear from these unfortunate incidents that self-help in matters of this nature is the message that subsists in the minds of many adherents.

    What the situation calls for is the intensification of enlightenment campaigns on inter-faith cooperation and co-existence which the JNI said its scholars had embarked upon. Such campaigns must centre round the sanctity of the human life and the fact that nobody has the right to extract capital punishment in the name of his religion. Such messages should be extended to the schools, market places and other places of public interest in the most engaging and aggressive manner.

    Muslim scholars and the leadership of the JNI must get it down to their adherents what steps and institutions to contact any time there is suspicion of any infraction to their faith. It is obvious there is still much work to do in this direction. Had there been sincerity and sufficient education on this, we would have been saved the unfortunate situation where Citizen Bridget had to be slaughtered like an animal just for an individual to settle personal scores hiding under religion.

    Above all, trial of the suspects in the instant case must be handled openly in such a manner as to drum the message very clearly that the era of jungle justice in such matters has gone for good. Then, we can take seriously the condemnations, claims and assurances pouring in since the killing of Bridget. We are watching!

  • Citizenship and nation-building

    Citizenship generally refers to the right conferred by law or custom on an individual as a member of a state. It is usually denoted in the form of reciprocity or social exchange between the citizen and the state.

    Its origin was a major concern of social contract theorists- Thomas Hobbes and Jean Rousseau and it is intricately linked to the theory on the evolution of modern states. They had characterized the conditions of primeval man in the state of nature as that of ‘war of man against man’.

    At a point, man in that state of nature, got fed up with the lawlessness of that order and decided to surrender some of his rights to a sovereign, who will in turn, provide him with some form of protection- thus the twin concepts of state and citizenship.  It involves rights on the one hand, duties and obligations on the other.  By this reciprocity, the citizen owes the state certain duties and obligations and in return claims some rights from it.

    Nation-building which is closely linked to the former, involves conscious efforts to inculcate in the citizens a sense of common identity as a member of a given state. It is a psychological process of mind reconstruction to elicit in the citizens attitudes and dispositions that make for the good health of the state.

    It seeks for instance, to make Nigerians out of the various ethnic, religious and cultural groups that make up that political entity, in the same way leaders of the emergent state of Israel deployed the kibbutz system to inculcate the twin ideologies of socialism and Zionism in their people.

    That accounts for the strong attachment the average Israeli citizen has with his home state in the same manner Americans are very proud of their country. Success in nation-building will then make the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba ethnic nationalities etc to see themselves as Nigerians rather than from the current narrow primordial prism.

    Nation-building bears positive relationship with the foundation of modern states especially ones in which people of different ethnic, cultural and religious groups were lumped together to form a state by a former colonial power.

    Given the very manner these groups were lumped together by colonial Britain coupled with its policy of divide and rule, mutual suspicion and mistrust had arisen even before independence. Matters were not remedied by disparities in the level of education and development.

    Thus, bitter competition reared its ugly head as these inclusive units struggled with one another to take advantage in the affairs of and institutions owned by the federal government. The imminent departure of the colonial masters coupled with some of the strategies adopted by our nationalists while campaigning for their exit succeeded in alienating the people from the government.

    With the advent of military rule, things took a turn for the worse as the command and regimentation system of the military, led to the centralization and concentration of virtually all powers of the state at the federal level. The federal government thus became omnipotent and omnipresent dispensing almost entirely, the means of life and death.

    This in turn, accentuated bitter competition among the various ethnic groups for the control of the centre so as to take advantage of the enormous resources at its disposal.  That accounts in the main, for the scandalous level of corruption that has wrestled this country to the ground.

    Today, these primordial cleavages are in stiff competition to control the centre and all efforts to restructure the country, diffuse the debilitating rivalry and unleash the creative energies of the population for rapid development are being resisted by interests that profit from the decadent order. It is a pipe dream to nurse the idea that we can possibly make Nigerians out of these competing interests the way things stand.

    Peter Eke in his theory of the two publics, made a distinction between the primordial and civic publics which have different standards of morality.  He contended that though these two are different, politicians operate in both the primordial and civic publics and the problems of African politics are traceable to the defective moral bearing that accompanies the civic public.

    The relationship of the people with the civic public is characterized by an amoral linkage while there is a high level of moral attachment to issues that impinge on the primordial realm. Thus, while one is seen as an avenue to be impoverished or even incapacitated (civic public) the other (primordial realm) is conceived as one that needs to be cared for and protected.

    This has been the reason for the constant competition between primordial tendencies and the central government for the soul and loyalty of the citizens. Nearly 56 years after independence, centrifugal tendencies have continued to impose the greatest obstacles to nationhood.

    You are considered smart if you steal from the coffers of the government because that government is thought to belong to nobody and could be conveniently incapacitated by members of the various ethnic groups for themselves and members of their inner groups. Foremost political scientist Richard Joseph dubbed this prebendalism- politics for the benefit of one’s immediate families and ethnic groups.

    It is therefore neigh impossible for nation-building to take root in such a fragmented, disoriented and dysfunctional political environment. What we get instead is the ascendancy of primordial and parochial tendencies to an all time high. Separatist tendencies denoted by communal violence, agitations for self determination, sectarian and religious fundamentalism have had the combined effect of whittling down any prospects for nation building.

    Today, the nation is still battling the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east part of the country; militancy in the Niger Delta region is again in an upsurge. Agitations for the independence of the sovereign state of Biafra have also resonated with great ferocity while the insurgency of the Fulani herdsmen has taken a dramatic but dangerous dimension.

    All these fissiparous tendencies cannot allow the psychological reconstruction of the mind for a common national identity which nation building requires to flourish. Matters are not helped by the increasing disposition of the government to the notion that military might is all that is needed to wield this country together. Coercion may succeed in quelling dissent or outright rebellion but it is of very limited value when it comes to nation-building as has been clearly shown by the resurging centrifugal tendencies. We need a rethink; new approaches to festering challenges.

    For this country to make real progress in nation-building we must first, restructure the polity; reduce the over-concentration of the powers of life and death at the federal level. Fiscal federalism will whittle down the concentration of all the finances of the government at the centre and reduce the unbridled competition for its control by the competing primordial cleavages.

    The mind-bugging looting of public funds, illustrates the amorality that is associated with the affairs of the civic public. There is no way nation-building can take root in a clime replete with these negative attitudinal tendencies.

    It will require very serious and conscious efforts at social re-engineering and mind reconstruction to elicit trust in the capacity of those in authority to be just, fair and equitable to the federating units before the brand of citizens that will be easily amenable to nation-building can emerge.

  • Desperate situation, desperate solution!

    Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose took the bull by the horn when last week, he banned grazing and rearing of cattle in the state. In their stead, he wants all those interested in cattle farming to get their own private ranches. A bill will soon be sent to the State House of Assembly to make the movement of cattle from one location of the state to another a criminal offence.

    Apparently irked by incessant attacks in the state by suspected Fulani herdsmen which peaked with killings and maiming in Oke Ako in the Ikole Local Government of the state, Fayose promised to confiscate any cattle seen anywhere in the state, except the ranches created for them by their owners.

    For those who have followed the murderous activities and criminality of the herdsmen in parts of the country and the seeming inability of the federal government to find a handle to them, Fayose’s therapy would seem a desperate solution to a degenerate problem.

    Before now, tempers have been high across the country due to the relative ease with which heavily armed Fulani herdsmen attack, kill and destroy villages ostensibly to settle disagreements with their host communities. From Benue to Kaduna, Enugu to Oyo states, their activities have left in their trail, sorrow and awe as host villagers are murdered and rendered refugees in their ancestral homes by an invading insurgent group that operates with near invincibility in the face of the inability of law enforcement agencies to apprehend them.

    Day after day, week after week, the scourge has refused to abate despite the outcries of the most vulnerable communities of the herdsmen onslaught. As things stand, it would seem the fear of Fulani herdsmen has taken the toga of the beginning of wisdom. Why not? Not with the dexterity and near invincibility with which they operate. Not with the inability of the local population to match the superior gun power of the invaders. And when you add these to the inability of law enforcement agencies to apprehend them in action or abort their plans, the situation becomes that ugly. Not unexpectedly, this has encouraged the herdsmen to take laws into their hands in the style of the atavism of the state of nature.

    Even in cases where villagers had prior information of impending attacks and promptly reported to the law enforcement agencies, nothing was done to forestall them. That was precisely the case with the killings in Enugu State where even after the governor was given copious assurances that security agencies were on top of the situation, the worst still happened.

    Events in the latest attack in Ekiti State curiously followed the same predictable pattern. There were reports that even when the villagers reported the attack as it was going on, no respite came their way as the police refused to go into the bush with them.

    Given the foregoing, the frustrations that led Fayose to these rather drastic measures can be understood. It is a desperate effort to protect his people from the frequent killings that are now consequent upon cattle rearing and movement of cattle from one place to another. It also underscores most poignantly the inherent contradiction in the seeming high premium cattle breeders now place on that animal over and above human life.

    If the measures succeed to checkmate the clashes between his constituents and the herdsmen thereby saving valuable lives, the end has justified the means. It is not a matter of whether one likes Fayose or not. We all do not have to like him anyway. That is hardly the issue now.

    We may also not like the messenger. But it is not a matter of taking the message and discarding the messenger. No! Both the message and the messenger are very relevant and useful in the instant case. After all, is it not said there is sense in nonsense?

    The measures stand as Fayose’s solutions as chief security officer of the state to the clashes between the herdsmen and the local farmers. They may seem radical; they may appear harsh and capable of creating difficulties for genuine cattle breeders on the short run. There is also the difficulty of immediate enforcement in view of the fact that the herdsmen are already in the bushes in the state. For now, that is his response to the wanton slaying of his people by an invading insurgent group that places higher premium on cows over and above human lives and it cannot be faulted. Those who criticize his approach to this debilitating problem should come forward with their own solutions. He could ill-afford to sit by while his people are slaughtered by an invading insurgent group that has scant regard for human lives.

    He wants to get at the source of this crisis and stem subsequent attacks. And in this, he sees controlling the movement of cattle from one place to another as the appropriate starting point.  He is interested in saving lives and any other consideration should count less when it comes to the first law of nature – self preservation. Those were the issues of prime concern to the governor especially given suspicions that there are other motivations for the resurging onslaughts of the Fulani herdsmen.

    It is difficult to fault the decisions irrespective of the difficulties they will create for cattle breeders in the interim. There could be the issue of where breeders will house their cattle between now and the time such ranches are established. All these immediate problems are to be admitted. But they have arisen because those whose duty it is to provide solutions to the drift to the precipice have failed to take action. They have become relevant in the face of the failure of the state to rise to its basic function of guaranteeing law and order.

    So it is not enough to fault the strategy adopted by Fayose. He saw a yawning vacuum and sought to fill it. Those who created that vacuum should take vicarious liability for whatever shortcomings there are in Fayose’s therapy to the looming conundrum these attacks have come to represent. It may turn out the most dramatic way of drawing attention of the authorities to the potent danger in the senseless killings by Fulani herdsmen across the country.

    And if the measures succeed in challenging the federal government to the reality of finding lasting solutions to this debilitating ill, then they have achieved their purpose in a teleological sense. Responses from the government have centered round the creation of grazing reserves. It has set aside N940 million in the current budget for the creation of such reserves across the country. There have also been denials over a purported bill before the National Assembly for the creation of grazing routes.

    But whereas grazing reserves can be created for states in the north that are traditional cattle rearers, it makes no sense to talk of such reserves in the south. For Oyo State governor, Abiola Ajimobi, his state has no land for gazing reserves. Not only is the proposal against the Land Use Act, Ajimobi contends that it is also against the “law of natural justice to grab someone’s land to cater for another one’s cattle”. He spoke for many.

    The other idea of grazing routes is also a contradiction of sorts as evidently dramatized in a recent interview by the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbe. He underscored the contradiction in the proposal when he said you cannot create a grazing route to someone else’s farmland. So we are left with the ranches which Fayose prescribed for those interested in cattle breeding in Ekiti State.

    More seriously, this government must act quickly to diffuse the time bomb which these attacks have become. Resurging feelings by communities that they have no alternative than to resort to self-help in the face of the inability of the government to rein in the insurgents can only lead to anarchy. Fayose’s action should be a sufficient signal to the degenerate level the situation is inevitable sliding.

  • A matter of conscience!

    Inherent contradictions in some of the issues relating to the current increase in fuel price from N86.50kobo to N145 were last week, brought to the fore by frontline rights activist, Senator Shehu Sani.

    In a statement, Sani had condemned in very strong terms what he perceived as orchestrated campaign of calumny by the federal government against the Nigerian Labor Congress NLC for speaking out the minds of poor Nigerians against the fuel price increase.

    Commending the NLC for leading mass protests against fuel price increases in the past, he argued that it would be hypocritical to condemn the labour body for its principled stand on the issue now. “Our quest for justice and equity must not depend on the government or persons in power but must depend upon the matters of principles at hand. Those who stood against increases in the price of petroleum products yesterday and stood for it today have betrayed the very principle which they claim to represent”, he further contended.

    Sani’s thesis is quite unassailable. And it is at the heart of the plethora of policy failures that have been the sad tale of governments on these shores over the years. Because of the dangerous politics we play in this country, many very well intentioned policies and programmes of the government have not been allowed to see the light of the day. Most often, criticisms of such policies are based on the quarters they are coming from rather than their larger heuristics for public good.

    Thus, it is not strange to find a policy option which attracted trident opposition during one regime being hailed shortly after a change of guards even with the objective conditions remaining the same. That has been the uncanny dilemma thrown up by the recent increase in fuel price by the Buhari regime. Curiously, the prevailing conditions and arguments for such a price regime have remained largely the same.

    When in January, 2012, the Jonathan regime came up with an increase of N141 per litre of fuel, hell was let loose. The nation was virtually brought to a standstill as organized labour, opposition political parties and diverse civil society groups mobilized to oppose such increase given the deleterious consequences it was bound to have on the lives of the toiling masses that are usually at the receiving end of such policies.

    That government was forced to drop the astronomic price increase despite the weighty arguments on which it had premised the adjustment. Before then, both Jonathan and Obasanjo had variously spoken of the looming danger of a revolution, if no conscious efforts were made to create job for the teeming army of the unemployed.

    Jonathan went further to predict that the nation would be broke in the next one and a half years if fuel subsidy was not removed. He justified the removal on the grounds that it will open up vast opportunities for Nigeria’s school leavers and population of unemployed graduates in the new refineries and petrochemical industries that will emerge after deregulation.

    He also sought to take responsibility for his action when he said “even if we deregulate and I am shamed; posterity will be there to judge me, that I did the right thing and I will be vindicated when Nigerians start enjoying the benefits of my decision”.

    In an article in this column shortly before the price increase of January 2012, this writer had taken up the arguments canvassed by Jonathan to persuade the public to accept the price increase. His prediction of the possibility of a revolution coupled with the financial mess the nation was inevitably heading to, were issues that came under serious focus.

    For a man that was rather considered weak to have spoken in such strong terms on the imperative of deregulation, with a promise to embark on a programme of carefully selected social relief interventions to ameliorate its pains, I had argued that the scenario presented a game situation with two options- to deregulate or not to deregulate. And since it was a matter of rational choice, rational calculation, the choice Jonathan should opt for is that which will minimize his losses in the event of the worst outcome. The scenario was that of a choice between going broke with the prospects of a revolution on the one hand if we fail to deregulate and excruciating hardship for the vulnerable population on the other if we deregulate. Given the above, the rational option for Jonathan then was to deregulate. If he deregulated, he would have saved the nation the pains of bankruptcy and revolution. Thereafter, he could sit back and put in place all those social intervention palliatives that will reduce the pains of deregulation.

    We then concluded that irrespective of the genuine reservations we had on fuel subsidy removal, Jonathan should be allowed to take responsibility on this singular issue if he is so convinced and rise and fall together with its outcome. These issues have been brought to focus given the furore generated by the recent fuel price increase and the defence of same by persons who hitherto opposed the idea.

    Today, the policy has received endorsements even from those who hitherto opposed it. Those who were known to have hailed organized labour for stridently opposing such increases in the past are now either equivocating or inventing subtle way to frustrate extant agitations against the current price increase.

    The same arguments are being recycled with nothing new to add. We have now been told by the government that the price increase or subsidy removal is inevitable because the nation is broke; the same prediction Jonathan made out four years ago. Issues like this are not likely to go down well with people of principle. That is the matter the likes of Sani have found difficult to contend with, his political leaning notwithstanding.

    He finds it hard to reconcile why the labour body is now being divided just to cripple the momentum of their opposition against the price increase even when the masses will be worse for it. He cannot find sufficient justification why those who stood against the price increase yesterday will today be singing a different tune.

    It is an issue of conscience; an issue of morality we must fight hard to justify. And the degree of success made in this direction will be a pointer to some of the systemic dysfunctions that have over the years held this nation down. It is the sincerity or lack of it in the way the political class perceives policies and programmes of a government that may not be in their good books, for whatever reasons.

    So at what point should national interest come in? For how long shall we continue to pander to the selfish predilections of a political class that says one thing today and entirely another tomorrow? For how long shall we continue to sacrifice issues of national interest and principles on the altar of some selfish, parochial and ill-defined exigencies?

    These were some of the issues that pricked the conscience of Sani. And in this, he is with many. Sani is an apostle of conscience; a man of principle. He is the type of man this nation direly needs. He may not really be against the arguments being put forward to support the current price hike. But his worry is that they are issues that have before now been copiously canvassed and rejected. Why all of a sudden, they have become a matter of popular appeal is what he needs to be convinced of.

  • Sheriff’s PDP congresses

    Sheriff’s PDP congresses

    If feelers emanating from the congresses of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP are anything to go-by, history is fast repeating itself. There is now a groundswell of evidence that the PDP may have failed to learn from history. And the indiscretion of repeating historic mistakes could this time around, come with very devastating repercussions.

    That appears to be the current pass the party has irretrievably been entangled given the outcome of its congresses which commenced throughout the country in the last few weeks. Reports from across the country, speak of disregard for the rules guiding free and fair congresses, imposition of candidates, writing of results and the usual impunity that was the undoing of the party at the last national elections.

    In Ogun, Imo, Anambra, Ekiti and Plateau states parallel congresses were held due largely to the inability of the congress committees to unite the people and come up with a generally acceptable guideline for the congress. There was also the issue of the vaulting desires of selfish politicians to undo others, take advantage and control party structures.

    For most part, congresses were conducted in utter disregard to extant party guidelines. In Imo state for example, there were reports of shoot-out and hijacking of election materials for eight local government areas in the Imo West Senatorial constituency. Many prospective candidates were shortchanged as only one form was distributed for each elective position.

    This in effect, shunted out all other candidates who desired to take a shot at any elective office of their choice. In many other states, the story was the same depending on the peculiar circumstances of the area. Generally, the congresses fell short of the standards of practice expected of a party that lost the last general election due largely to its inability to accord internal democracy a pride of place within its scheme of affairs.

    Having bungled the conduct of the ward congresses, subsequent ones were predictably bound to run into troubled waters. That accounted for the avalanche of parallel congresses in many states. In some, the congresses were conducted in three different places by three different factions indicating how deep differences among members had sunk.

    It was on account of these disagreements bordering on scant regard for rules that concerned PDP stalwarts led by former governor of Niger state, Dr. Babangida Aliyu called on the national chairman of the party, Alhaji Ali Modu Sheriff to postpone the national congress to avert a looming danger. They had also complained about the manner in which the zoning of party offices were altered by a poorly attended National Executive Committee NEC of the party contending that it was inconsistent with original party principles

    Their views were summed thus, “the procedure and conduct of the congresses nationwide were flawed with resultant disagreements and disaffection” Despite these observations which came shortly after the bungled ward congresses, the party has refused to accede to popular feelings, trudging on as usual as if the views of the people count for nothing in the exercise of that elementary civic duty.

    From all indications, the party is repeating the same mistakes that led to its implosion and defeat. Many of its former governors who defected on the eve of the last elections, had issues with lack of internal democracy and unbridled impunity in the running of the party affairs. There were issues with the bravado and arrogance of the party leadership. They operated in such a fashion that suggested they could do away with the people and still win elections.

    There were even suggestions that the party would be in power for the next fifty years or more. With that mindset, it was not surprising why the party treated its members as items it could dispense of at its whims and caprices. But all that have come to naught. All those vaulting optimisms have been flatly deflated by events of the last elections. The party is currently entangled in a huge crisis of survival and relevance.

    For a party that found itself in the current pass; a party faced with serious image deficits, the minimum expectation would have been to pause for a while, pose certain questions and seek answers to them. The answers it will get would definitely advise against treading that familiar path that led to its down fall. But that did not seem to have happened.  Maybe it failed to do some introspection; it did and got the wrong answers or it did not believe in the outcome of the results it got.

    Whichever way, the repercussions of repeating the mistakes of the past are bound to be more destructive this time around. They could even destroy the party and alienate those who hitherto believed in it. That is the stark reality which that party must come to terms with.

    At the center of this mess is the ambition of Sheriff to metamorphose as the substantive national chairman.  To have an easy sail, he is said to be nonchalant to raging complaints from across the country on the manipulation of the results of the congresses to produce a list that is likely do his bidding.

    And in this devious objective, he has found accomplices in chameleons within that party who are not amenable to changing their colors. The party seems to be living in the past when it could do anything and get away with it. Then, it was in power and the allure of the center recruited an army of supporters including fortune seekers for it. Then, it could deploy the coercive apparatus of state and perquisites of office to sway support in its direction.

    Today, the situation has substantially changed. The PDP has neither the largesse to disburse nor coercive apparatus of state to compel followership. Its strength should ordinarily lie in a re-invented party that will command the respect of party men and women; a party that respects rules and regulations, a party in which the sovereignty of members in electing their leaders will reign supreme. But that has failed to happen.

    Events of these congresses have shown the party towing same familiar but ruinous path. From all indications, the party is drawn to a very long and fierce battle among its members given the parallel congresses in various states. There have been instances of litigations and more are to follow.

    In the face of these disagreements, nothing encouraging seems forthcoming from the national leadership as if it comfortable with the situation. There have been no visible signs from Sheriff to put the PDP house in order except the cancellation of the congresses in three states. Matters are not remedied by suspicions that he has a hand in the impunity and subversion of internal democracy that has marred the congresses in some states.

    The PDP is in dire straits. It has no need for the luxury which the current disputations represent. It has no need for the acrimony within if it wants to survive as a party. It is not just enough for some of its governors to be pontificating on how they are going to recapture power come 2019.  The starting point is to get the congresses to satisfy the yearnings and aspirations of members by being truly free and fair. In its absence, the PDP may as well brace up for further implosion and obvious relegation to irrelevance.

  • Shettima’s warped argument

    Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima must have shocked many when he sought to absolve Fulani herdsmen from the series of criminal activities associated with them around the country. The governor who addressed the press on behalf of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF) faulted what he saw as the increasing profiling of all criminals as Fulani.

    Hear him: “We want to unequivocally condemn the recent killings in Enugu and other parts of the country. But we equally condemn the politicization or permit me, the ethnicization of the whole crisis. It goes beyond Fulani. If anything happens, they say Fulani herdsmen. To me, it is an insult”.

    He drew a parallel with kidnapping to illustrate his point, arguing “kidnapping in the country originated in the South-east, were they called Igbo kidnappers?

    Not unexpectedly, his statement has been interpreted as a veiled attempt to absolve Fulani herdsmen from the murderous activities and sundry criminality that have come to be associated with their activities. The uproar generated by Shettima’s rationalization was such that the deputy governor of Benue State was put under pressure to deny that the NGF absolved Fulani herdsmen from the killings that have left that state a former ghost of itself.

    It would have been suicidal had he been associated with the interpretation which Shettima’s views on behalf of his colleagues seemingly conveyed. Shettima and his colleagues may not have deliberately set out to absolve Fulani herdsmen from the killings in Enugu, Benue and other parts of the country. It would have been absurd and insensitive for them to have done so. They seem concerned on the way and manner Fulani herdsmen are being linked to all manner of criminal activities in parts of the country.

    They fear that some of the criminal activities attributed to Fulani herdsmen may not have been actually committed by them. That could be possible. There is also the suggestion that it is not just the Fulani race that is in the herdsmen business as some other groups are also into it and could be part of those involved in the killings and criminal activities. This point was further openly canvassed by northern senators when they addressed the press on the festering crisis. Senator Abdullahi Adamu who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, had said that he had seen some herdsmen who are of the Igbo and Yoruba stock. That appears in tandem with the analogy of Shettima when he claimed that kidnapping originated from the South-east yet nobody has termed all kidnappers as Igbo.

    But that is where Both Shettima and Abdullahi run into troubled waters. The first problem with their analogy is that they twisted the facts about the origin of kidnapping in the country. Kidnapping never originated in the south-east as has been erroneously bandied. The first reports on kidnapping in this country involved militants who took expatriates of oil companies for ransom.

    It was a protest against the despoliation of the oil producing communities by oil companies without regard to their sufferings. Definitely, this did not take place in the south-east as the theatre was always in the high seas and the creeks. The south-east does not have the advantage of such seas and therefore the Igbo could not have been the initiators of kidnapping as Shettima would want us to believe.

    It is true that the devious technology was later copied by sundry criminals in Igbo land and elsewhere and executed in the most embarrassing manner. It is no less correct that the kidnapping bug later infested all ethnic groups and spread like wild fire. Today, Fulani herdsmen are fully into it. So it is not possible to profile all kidnappers as Igbo as other ethnic groups are fully into it.

    But unlike in the case of the herdsmen, we are yet to know of any other ethnic group that is largely in that business. The association of the Fulani with the business of herding is legendary. It is a cultural thing. They control cow rearing almost 100 per cent. If you find any other person outside the Fulani race in that business, they are doing it at the behest of their Fulani masters.

    So when crimes are committed by herdsmen in parts of the country, they are easily traced to the Fulani cattle tenders. It has nothing to do with wrong profiling, politicization or ethnicisation. It is the reality on the ground. By that, no attempt is made to categorize the Fulani race as criminals. Nobody in his right senses would venture that. For when we talk of criminals in the society, either of the Igbo, Fulani or Yoruba stock, they are deviants consisting of an infinitesimal percentage of these populations. So it is not possible to label the Fulani race as criminals because of the activities of the few criminals from that race. That is a trite point Shettima should have taken for granted.

    Beyond this however, it is a different ball game altogether whether this is the right time for such trite arguments. At a time many lives have been lost and property of inestimable value destroyed by the herdsmen in parts of the country; at a time tempers are very high and the nation drifting to the precipice on account of the failure of the state to rein in the herdsmen, raising such arguments amounts to insensitivity to the pains of those who have lost loved ones and properties to the senseless invasion of their communities.

    It is crass insensitivity to the current mood of the nation for the governors to have condemned the killings with the right hand and the alleged labelling of the Fulani as criminals with the other. Such, is least expected of that distinguished meeting of governors. It is not for nothing that that statement has been interpreted as tacit support for the activities of the herdsmen.

    Given the current challenges posed by the activities of the herdsmen, the governors should have come out with concrete suggestions and measures to at least, temporarily halt the smouldering inferno. Sadly, rather than do that, their position has further given vent to suspicions that there may be more to the activities of the herdsmen than ordinarily meets the eyes. That the people of Benue State felt so concerned with the position of the northern governors that they had to confront their deputy governor on the matter shows how intemperate that statement was considered.

    The position of the governors is a sad reminder to the ambivalence of the northern elite at the budding stages of the Boko Haram insurgency. At a time they ought to have spoken out and condemned in very strong terms, the activities of that fundamentalist religious group, many were found equivocating and rationalizing until the scourge got out of hands. One is afraid both the northern governors and their senators are treading this devious and very familiar path again. Then, we were even treated to such arguments as the Boko Haram serial killers were not Moslems. Yet, they professed that faith, abducted the Chibok girls and converted them to the faith. We were also told by no less a body than the Northern Elders Forum that most of the crises in the north were being instigated by people from outside the region. No less a person than the former governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako even alleged that Boko Haram was a contrivance to depopulate the north. Today, we now know better.

    Today, we are again being told that there are Igbo and Yoruba elements into cattle rearing. Even if it is possible to get some other tribes in that business, to what extent does that detract substantially from the fact that it is an age-long business of the Fulani? Does that safely exculpate the Fulani herdsmen or their armed militia from the attacks they are known to have been associated with? It does not.

    Instead of wasting valuable time on issues of this nature, both the northern governors and their senators should come out with measures to end these senseless killings by the herdsmen. Disarming them should be the starting point. Then, the profiling associated with their activities which is being complained of, will fizzle out unilaterally.

  • Before we are overrun

    When recently I wrote on the “impunity of the herdsmen”, one had thought it would be pretty long before again, commenting on the potent danger which senseless killings by Fulani herdsmen has become to co-habitation and national unity. But that would not be.

    Not with last week’s attack on the Ukpabi Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani Local government Area of Enugu State. Not with the complications surrounding the attack that left in its wake 48 innocent villagers killed, 60 houses and shops razed down with 56 injured.

    Not with the fact that reports of the impending invasion by Fulani herdsmen were in public domain and even published in the media before the mayhem was eventually unleashed on defenceless villagers in the characteristic style of the insurgents. All these make it a very high risk for us to continue to ignore, treat with levity or paper the worrisome dimension which the orgy of violence that has now become the trademark of the herdsmen has become.

    Security reports had filtered earlier that Fulani militia numbering about 500 were offloaded from two lorries in nearby Kogi State in preparation to attack the community. Following that report, the state governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi convened a security council meeting where the matter was tabled. But the security chiefs gave copious assurances that they were equal to the task and would foil the attack.

    The militants eventually struck, overpowered the entire village without resistance and unleashed an unrestrained orgy of violence that left in its wake shock, sorrow and awe rendering the experiences of that rural community during the civil war to a child’s play. The invaders deployed sophisticated weapons such as grenades, AK 47 riffles and other dangerous weapons shooting and indiscriminately cutting down and killing those they could find.

    The villagers are now so frightened that they could be so mercilessly mowed down in their ancestral homes by invaders with nobody to their rescue. They are so scarred and frightened that they are now at the mercy of the Fulani attackers who could still strike as it pleased them. They are counting their losses, picking the pieces and unable to come to terms with the reality of the senseless killings and destruction of properties. On issue was a suspected loss of some cows by the herdsmen.

    Many have been rendered homeless and help is nowhere in sight. Life has become a similitude of the Hobbesian state of nature where the law of the jungle reigns supreme. Life for that community is now nasty, short and brutish. Yet, we claim to be in a civilized society that came into being through a covenant between the people and the sovereign. That covenant or social contract requires the citizens to surrender the atavism of the state of nature to a sovereign who will in turn protect them.

    But what we find in the unrestrained insurgency of the Fulani herdsmen is a scandalous failure of the state to protect its citizens. It is the failure of government; a failure of the social contract basis for the existence of modern governments. It is a collective shame that Fulani herdsmen could operate with such impunity that has continuously defied the government of this country.

    And what is there left in a government if it cannot protect lives and property? What moral justification does such a government have to command the loyalty of the citizens in the face of the relative ease with which Fulani marauders levy war on parts of the country and go scot-free?

    What are the options? To allow a relapse to the state of nature as the Fulani herdsmen’s devious onslaughts suggest; allow the law of the jungle to hold sway or take decisive action to restore order and discourage the increasing resort of the herdsmen to armed banditry and serial killings?

    President Buhari must come to terms with the drift to the precipice right away. Though he has asked the Chief of Defence Staff and the Inspector-General of police to halt the menace of the herdsmen, it is regrettable that a group that has scant regard for human lives was for a long time, allowed to hold hostage sections of the country in the fashion of a standing army of occupation. Tempers are now very high and motives are being imputed into the relative ease with which the herdsmen who value cow more than human lives have serially operated in parts of the country unchallenged.

    Questions are increasingly seeking answers as to the sources of the grenades, sophisticated riffles, arms and ammunitions the herdsmen put into advantage when attacking host communities. It is increasingly assuming a big puzzle the sophistication and dexterity with which the herdsmen defeat villagers in their ancestral homes and whether conquest mentality for religious or political motives is not behind it all. It is also curious why such armed bandits could easily pass through the security checkpoints undetected. And when they were offloaded in Kogi State, nobody made any effort either to search or arrest them. We need to get at the root of this seeming complicity on the part of the security agencies.

    In their characteristic manner, the police downplayed the number of death and the incalculable damage to property and announced that normalcy has returned to the area. It said it has commenced full investigations.

    But what manner of investigations are we talking about when the mortal harm has already been inflicted? What can such an investigation achieve when the security agencies had prior knowledge of the impending attack but failed to prevent it? The investigation that will make sense now is the unraveling of the reasons behind the failure of the security agencies to nip this singular attack at the bud given that security reports on its imminence were available to them.

    It will also interest the public why security operative did not quickly deploy to the area, cordon and search for arms and ammunitions. There is the need to know on what basis the security chiefs hinged their assurances to Ugwuanyi that they were on top of the situation- an assurance that has turned out a colossal disaster.

    This is perhaps, the first time an attack of such destructive proportion would be carried out in Igbo land by Fulani herdsmen or their hired militia. Not unexpectedly, tempers are now very high. The people are very livid with anger and not likely to take the matter lightly. They suspect that the orgy of violence that left communities in nearby Benue State a ghost of their former selves is about to be replicated within their soil. They are worried that Fulani militias now operate as if they have monopoly of the means of violence.

    Concerns are mounting as to whether any other ethnic group could venture into Fulani soil, attack and kill their people and get away with it the way they have done. The people of Ukpabi Nimbo, some of who may have fled the north due to sectarian strife, cannot understand why the insecurity that compelled them to flee those areas has now been brought to their backyard by the same people. Such realization is bound to ruffle feathers; it is bound to challenge their collective will to protect their inalienable right to life.

    And if every community resorts to self-help in defending themselves; if they resort to self help in seeking remedy to loss of property, then society would have relapsed to a verity of the state of nature. That would amount to a failure of the government. That is the foreboding prospect that has been brought to the fore by the unrestrained escapades of Fulani insurgents that convey the miserable impression that they have become law unto themselves. Enough of that rubbish now! Buhari must rise to this challenge before we are overrun by Fulani insurgents or take full responsibility for the looming state of anomie.