The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • NDDC: New board apt for audit

    By Femi Macaulay

    Perhaps unwittingly, President Muhammadu Buhari complicated the situation at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by ordering a forensic audit of the agency’s operations from 2001 to 2019 when the agency’s new board has not been confirmed by the Senate.

    Buhari’s move to deal with the NDDC’s failure is a step in the right direction. However, in order to get the desired result, the ordered audit should logically be carried out under the new 16-man NDDC board Buhari approved in August. Subject to Senate confirmation, Buhari had approved Dr Pius Odubu from Edo State as chairman, Bernard Okumagba from Delta State as Managing Director, and Otobong Ndem from Akwa Ibom as Executive Director, Projects.

    The delay in confirming the newly composed Governing Board is counterproductive. If the purpose of the ordered audit is to get to the bottom of the NDDC’s failure, despite the rich funding it has enjoyed for almost 20 years, then the best approach is to have the probe done under a new management. Obviously, it doesn’t make sense to carry out the ordered audit under the interim management headed by Prof. Nelson Brambaifa, who had been directed to hand over to the most senior director in the Commission.

    There is no doubt that the NDDC, established in 2000 by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, has failed to develop Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta.   The first commercial oil discovery in the country happened in Oloibiri in present-day Bayelsa State, in 1956; and the first oil field began production in 1958. More than six decades later, the story of underdevelopment in the Niger Delta is a continuing story.  Nigeria is said to produce about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil daily. The country is the largest producer of oil in Africa and sixth largest in the world. The country’s oil-producing states are: Akwa Ibom, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross River, Ondo, Edo, Imo and Abia.

    It is inexcusable that many communities in the region that produces the country’s oil wealth reflect not only a lack of prosperity, but also perplexing poverty. Buhari, who was represented by his Special Adviser on Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Ita Enang, apologised for the bad governance responsible for the region’s underdevelopment   during the reopening of Oil Mining Lease (OML)-25 facility in coastal Belema in Kula Kingdom, Akuku-Toru Local Government Area of Rivers State, on October 10, more than two years after a shocking protest, involving women and children, had stopped activities at the site.

    Buhari said: “We have been to the communities (in Kula Kingdom). I felt touched that the people were asking for schools, hospitals and potable water in 2019, after 40 years of oil and gas being taken from their soils. I scooped water from the pond that the people drink. It was smeared with crude oil.

    “On behalf of the nation, I apologise to you. We will change for the better. We will not only build schools, hospitals and provide potable water for you; we will provide complete communities for you. We will work with the Rivers State government, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), amnesty office and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs.”

    Buhari’s apology and promise will be meaningful when they translate into action. By ordering a forensic audit of the NDDC’s operations, Buhari showed that he means business. Buhari was quoted as saying on October 17, after a meeting with governors of the nine oil-producing states that make up the Niger Delta:  “I try to follow the Act setting up these institutions especially the NDDC. With the amount of money that the Federal Government has religiously allocated to the NDDC, we will like to see the results on the ground; those that are responsible for that have to explain certain issues.

    “The projects said to have been done must be verifiable. You just cannot say you spent so much billions and when the place is visited, one cannot see the structures that have been done. The consultants must also prove that they are competent.”

    This may well be a sign that the administration’s anti-corruption campaign has finally reached the NDDC. Ironically, the NDDC may well be among those responsible for the region’s underdevelopment. The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, was quoted as saying:  “Let us be clear on this, it will not be business as usual; it will be business unusual as the present leadership would not tolerate persistent underdevelopment of the region. We have become a laughing stock as people now say we (Niger Deltans) are the ones responsible for the underdevelopment of the region. The NDDC is seen as a conduit for empowering the pockets of politicians and hangers-on. We will not do things the way we used to do it. The minister will exercise the powers of the President, not just to supervise the NDDC, but to control its affairs.”

    Akpabio lamented that “for over 20 years, NDDC could not complete its headquarters. It is disheartening NDDC has been paying over N200 million every year as rent…It is shameful that in the nine states of the Niger Delta, NDDC failed to have one legacy project, such as a specialist hospital.”

    It is noteworthy that the Senate has summoned the NDDC’s Acting Managing Director, Dr Enyia Akwagaga, who is expected to appear before the Committee on Public Accounts this week. The committee’s chairman, Matthew Urhoghide, said: “We want to ascertain if due processes were followed in the award of these contracts, particularly the information that we have at our disposal that they exceeded budget limits. What we know is that N2.5 billion was budgeted for the desilting and clearing of water hyacinths. We heard that the Commission has spent over N 65billion. This committee is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that there are transparency, accountability and economy, that is, there is value for money.”

    This investigation, for instance, is one of the reasons the ordered audit should not be done under the interim management. The new properly constituted substantive board approved by Buhari has the advantage of being uninvolved. Such detachment is an important requirement in carrying out a credible forensic audit.

    The Senate should confirm the new NDDC board without further delay, which will enable the board to urgently implement the presidential order to audit the Commission’s operations.

  • Three Acts

    Sam Omatseye

     

    ACT One: Father and son

    Venue: Kaduna, specifically, Kaduna Capital School.

    Characters: Malam Nasir El-Rufai, His son Sadiq, and the hectoring public.

    The story could begin at the beginning, but how can we determine that it all began on the day he registered his son, Abubakar Sadiq, as a pupil in Kaduna Capital School, or when he gave birth to the boy six years ago, or when he declared almost as a parody of government policy that once Sadiq came of age, he would enrol him in a public school.

    We might even say it started a generation ago when in 1957, the late premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, established the school as a boarding primary school as part of his strategy to breed a brainy army of northern resistance to face down the upsurge of an insolent South.

    So when the puny fellow with outsize ego took his son to the public school, he was first hailed, and then railed. The social media, ever irreverent, threw back cynical barbs at El-Rufai, the sort he is used to throwing at others. They say, oh, this could not be true. Then they learned, it was true, and gasped. They recovered and lashed out as though with facts. Leading the charge was his mortal foe, the big salary confessing, suicidal Senator Shehu Sani, who tweeted a storm. El-Rufai, he and his fellow foes asserted, had spruced up the school especially for his son. It was a case of a public school wardrobe as private, from dross to deluxe, and so the governor was only playing populism with his son.

    Was it so? Was it a case of a governor turning his son into a sort of Abrahamic sacrifice in education? If Abraham was going to put Isaac on a slab, was El-Rufai doing same for his son’s brain? Few took the time to go to the school, or even to ferret out the facts.

    But Kaduna Capital School is not a cult, nor is it a ghost lurking away from public scrutiny. Here are the facts. Yes, El-Rufai has spent about N195 million since he became governor to upgrade the school, and he has done so for quite a number of them, with Queen Amina Secondary College, gulping even a larger chunk of money. Is the school as good as the swanky citadels around in the country with state-of-the-art amenity? No, sir. Some classrooms have no seats enough for all the pupils, so late comers sit on the floor. The governor’s son shares a desk with three other pupils.

    As The Nation Reporter Abdulgafar Alabelewe has shown, his class has no air conditioner or fan, the toilet nondescript, no luxurious furniture. Some of his mates wear threadbare uniforms, so it’s a constellation crowd of the poor, neglected, middle class, redeemed al majiri, Christian, Muslim, not an elite stronghold. So, what is the point El-Rufai is making with his son who was not born in a Nigerian hospital? Why didn’t he enrol him in a primary school in Maryland, United States?

    Is it vanity of false humility? Is he a born-again patriot, is it a sort of oedipal disdain for his son? Or is it a devil-may-care feeling that he has many other children who have tasted it abroad, so he wants Sadiq here to buck the family trend? Is he a lab rat for him? Or is he going to give the boy a special lesson at home to undo the imperfections of the school? Is it part of a political ploy to stave off arguments of lack of patriotism against the political brass whose bodies are here but their souls thrive abroad? The hospitals, schools, holidays, et al, happen there. They make the money here, and the money remakes them abroad.

    Those who dismiss the Kaduna State chief executive that he did it for populism would have to prove it. But I am willing to forgive a populism that compels a government to renovate schools so his son can attend one of them. I don’t know of any governor in this era who has permitted himself the adventure of placing his ward in a school here. Ditto hospitals. If they make hospitals because of their sick children, at least the hospital will benefit all. It may be a cynical move, but I prefer it to withdrawing our money into a slush fund account in Honolulu.

    But if El-Rufai did it out of a pure mind, it reveals how the elites have rigged the system against themselves. If they mean well no one believes them. They have made everything bad and of low quality, so the prince is not trusted when he abides with the pauper, dross oozes beside deluxe. That is perhaps the great lesson of this father and son tale. That’s why what El-Rufai has done is revolutionary. No revolution bears a saintly army.

     

    Act Two: Father and daughter

    Scene: Government House, Asaba

    Characters: Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, daughter and critics

    The Delta State Governor called his daughter qualified, and that is the eternal truth. By appointing her an aide on government salary, he has abused the dignity of that office. He has appointed her to take care of the issue of girl-child. The question here is not whether she is qualified. The shame is that the governor thinks she is so qualified that no other person should have the job but his daughter.

    When the press and critics balked, he replied that he knows his daughter. But before that he became defensive, saying that it was just one of his daughters he gave the job, not the two, as though that was enough to canonise his nepotism. It is also the sort of monarchism that governors arrogate to themselves when they occupy the high chair. It is a Nietzschean moment, when a governor sees himself as a superman. That is why in our politics anyone can be anything so long as the governor says so. It is bad enough when it goes to a crony, but when it goes to a son or daughter, as we have seen so often in this democracy, it is a fly in the face of decency. Okowa has been a decent man in his public life until this moment. His daughter should not sully that image.

     

    Act Three: Governor and DPO

    Scene: State House, Alausa

    Characters:  Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Celestina Kalu

    Kalu, a divisional police officers, saw a robbery victim in the throes of death. Others abandoned the guy. She would not. She took him to the hospital and borrowed money to force the medics to care for him. The man survived. Kalu’s conscience was not the place of joy. The other was the heart of the state’s chief executive, The BOS of Lagos. He quickly responded, and gave her an award in the top chamber in Lagos State, the Executive chamber, and it happened in the presence of the media and members of the executive council.

    This is governance by compassion. The governor personally paid a visit to the victim, Friday Ajabor, and that must have given the victim and Kalu a jolt of peace. That is the human face, the ultimate colour of the soul.

     

     

    Jerry Boy, the soldier

     

    JEREMIAH Useni, a general who was in the Senate as though he wasn’t because no one knew he was there, wanted to be governor. He ran for the post. We looked for him on the platform of victory. Again, he wasn’t. He plotted desperately to torpedo the religious agreement to balance the ticket. He failed. Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong floored him, a humpty-dumpty fall of a general. He went to court.Lalong

    The tribunal ruled against him, especially because he did not even contest that he lost. He just wanted to be a governor in his hoary age. His wish was not granted. He now remembers that he was a soldier. I remember when I was a soldier… Remember that song? He said he is going to fight for the mandate because he is a soldier. Haba! This is democracy, not the days when he was a governor of my state, Bendel State, where he left nothing great as legacy. His first gubernatorial dossier does not recommend him for a second chance.

     

  • Widening poverty

    By Emeka OMEIHE

    A number of events last week again, elevated to the public domain, the debilitating poverty ravaging the country. The verdict from them all, miserably evokes a picture of Nigerians as hewers of wood and fetchers of water due to leadership failure to convert to advantage, the huge natural and human capital this country is bountifully endowed . The narrative is in sync with the disturbing image of the country as the world’s poverty capital.

    OXFAM International, quoting World Poverty Clock’s latest findings said no fewer than 94,470,535 people in Nigeria live below extreme poverty line. Last April, the same body had put the number at 91,501,377 people. What this means is that 2,969,158 people entered the extreme poverty index within a six-month time frame. That should be something to seriously worry about.

    President Buhari added another dimension to the galloping poverty index within the same week when he disclosed that Nigeria’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few people living in four or five states including the Federal Capital Territory, while about 150 million other citizens are languishing in poverty in the remaining 31 states. He neither named the source of his data nor the states with the largest concentration of the nation’s wealth but noted that this lopsidedness “drives the migratory and security trends we are seeing today both in Nigeria and across the region”.

    And since the diagnosis of an ailment is half way to its cure, the president told his audience at the 25th session of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group that policies are being put in place to deliver prosperity to all Nigerians through enhancing security and eliminating corruption in the public service. In effect, his therapeutic response to this social malady is to enhance the security of the citizens and eliminate corruption in our public life. But that is not all there is to eliminating the extreme poverty in which a majority of our citizens have since been entrapped. We shall return to this shortly.

    As mindboggling as these statistics are, not a few Nigerians would be surprised that they largely represent the level of abject poverty ravaging the country. They live with it; feel its pangs in their daily lives and do not require copious statistics from agencies of government (local and international) to come to term with its reality.

    Read Also: Driving poverty alleviation, inclusivity through technology

    But the figures denote an uncanny irony for a country that is largely endowed by Mother Nature but which has serially failed to convert these humongous resources to promote the greatest good of the greatest number of its citizens. It is also a statement on the dialectics confronting a country that was at the same level of ‘underdevelopment’ at independence with China, India and Singapore among others but which has since been left far behind by the trio in the development matrix.

    The embarrassing verdict is also a pointer to the visionless and rogue leadership that has had the ill-luck of superintending over the affairs of this country overtime. Definitely, solution does not lie in dramatizing the level of abject poverty in the country. Neither is the matter remedied by platitudes, political rhetoric and empty promises. What the situation requires is quick action by a purposeful and visionary leadership, one that commands the confidence of the citizenry that it has the entire country as its constituency. It requires leadership that understands what it takes to make this country great and has the political will to embark on fundamental re-engineering and restructuring processes to free the creative energies of our people for quantum leap within the development ladder.

    Corruption which is at the root of this serial retardation has a positive correlation with the defective federal contraption and a number of systemic deficits that aggregate to stultify nation building and meaningful development. And as long as the inefficient structures and attitudinal issues that encourage bitter competition between the central authority and the component units for the loyalty of the citizens persists, so long will the cankerworm continue to defy solutions.

    So it not enough to rehash the widening poverty level in the country. Neither will promises do the magic of reversing the trend. The government must match these figures with concrete actions and measures capable of reversing the ugly trend. And as can be gleaned from the World Poverty Clock records, almost three million people were added into the extreme poverty index within a period of six months. This figure is very startling. A responsible government must embark on a combination of policies responses to check the geometric slide to the extreme poverty line.

    Sadly, indications from other policy initiatives of the current government do not leave one in comfort that the situation will not get worse in the days ahead. If certain measures in the 2020 appropriation bill the president presented to the National Assembly are anything to go by, the extreme poverty rating we are confronted with stands to worsen in the days ahead.

    That budget is primed on the increase of Value Added Tax VAT from the current five per cent to 7.5 per cent. The federal government premised the increase on the need to put more funds in the hands of the state governments given that only 15 per cent of VAT is taken by it while 85 per cent goes to state governments. By their calculation, this will aid the states to effectively carry out their obligations to their constituents including the controversial minimum wage increase.

    But these assumptions are not foolproof. There is no guarantee that the monies will be gainfully deployed. The profligacy of some of the governors and their penchant to divert monies earmarked for projects as seen in the Paris Club refund, do not imbue confidence that funds derived from VAT will not suffer the same miserable fate. The common man is better off with the current VAT regime than taxing him and expecting that he will reap the benefits of the tax in the same measure. Things do not work that way.

    Even then, the burden of VAT is borne by the consumer in which class we have the extreme poor put at 94 million people by World Poverty Clock as well as the 150 million others Buhari said are languishing in poverty. The overall impact of such a policy targeted largely on the vulnerable groups in the society is bound to be very devastating. It is therefore a contradiction of sorts that we are increasing VAT and still purporting to fight poverty. The two cannot go together without dire repercussions for the down trodden.

    It was in apparent recognition of the incongruity in increasing VAT and purporting to be fighting poverty that the government delisted some food items from that consumers’ tax. But even with that, VAT on the remaining items will still worsen the living conditions of the vulnerable groups that need protection from the government. They are not going to fare any better with a multiplicity of taxes especially given other hidden tax issues in the budget proposal.

    At another level, the same government is also gearing to reintroduce toll fees along the federal highways. There are speculations of a disproportionate distribution of the toll points with the southeast having allocations that exceed that of three other zones put together. Even as these remain at the realm of speculations, it is hoped that there is no attempt to make life miserable for a zone that is still reeling under the pangs of a multiplicity of police check-points that exist largely to extort travelers.

    Re-introduction of toll fees will no doubt, come as an additional burden to the citizens. It will lead to increase in fares and prices of all commodities including food items since the road remains the lynchpin of the nation’s transport system. So, it remains to be conjectured how meaningfully we can make substantial progress in reducing extreme poverty in the land when some of the current policies will produce direct opposite results.

    That is the contradiction the government has to come to terms with especially given the controversy surrounding the N30, 000 minimum wage approved earlier this year. The way it is seen in resolving this puzzle will be a veritable measure of its sincerity in extricating the vast majority of our citizens from the scorching poverty that has left them former ghosts of themselves.

  • A presidential apology

    By Femi Macaulay

    IT took the power of a protest, involving women and children, to make President Muhammadu Buhari apologise to the people of the oil-rich Niger Delta for the Federal Government’s age-long neglect of the region. Buhari, who was represented by his Special Adviser on Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Ita Enang, apologised for the bad governance responsible for the region’s underdevelopment   during the reopening of Oil Mining Lease (OML)-25 facility in coastal Belema in Kula Kingdom, Akuku-Toru Local Government Area of Rivers State, on October 10, more than two years after a shocking protest had stopped activities at the site.

    Buhari said: “We are coming here at a very good time. Just two days ago, the draft 2020 budget was presented to the National Assembly. Now that I have seen what you are going through, we are going to take this message to the members of the National Assembly, to redirect the budget to know what they are providing for you.

    “We have been to the communities (in Kula Kingdom). I felt touched that the people were asking for schools, hospitals and potable water in 2019, after 40 years of oil and gas being taken from their soils. I scooped water from the pond that the people drink. It was smeared with crude oil.

    “On behalf of the nation, I apologise to you. We will change for the better. We will not only build schools, hospitals and provide potable water for you; we will provide complete communities for you. We will work with the Rivers State government, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), amnesty office and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs.”

    A report said: “There was also the groundbreaking of 1.5 million-litre potable water and 12-kilometre treated water reticulation project for Oko-Ama and Belema by the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari.”

    Buhari’s picture captures the paradox of painful plenitude in the oil-producing region. It is inexcusable that the oil-rich area reflects not only a lack of prosperity, but also perplexing poverty. Sadly, the picture is true of not only the communities in Kula Kingdom, but also most of the communities in the region that produces the country’s oil wealth. Buhari’s apology and promise will be meaningful when they translate into action.

    The Belema flow station had been occupied by residents of the Belema and Offoin-Ama communities since August 11, 2017. At the time, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), in a statement, said it “had carried out an emergency shutdown of production ahead of the illegal occupation but has been unable to access the facilities since then to ensure a safe shutdown over a prolonged period. The continued illegal occupation for several days exposes people at the plant to higher safety risks, as anything could trigger a spill or fire with potentially serious consequences.”

    SDPC added that it remained “committed to the development of the Niger Delta, especially host communities including Belema and Kula. The SPDC JV partners have contributed $29b to the economic growth of Nigeria between 2012 and 2016.” Before the disruption, the Belema flow station produced about 35 barrels of crude oil per day.

    The protesters, who occupied the facility for more than two years, had suffered neglect for too long to be bothered about the safety issues raised by SDPC. Their decision to occupy the facility and disrupt normal activities there showed that they were desperate to get the attention of the authorities.  In a move to resolve the problem, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, had visited the facility last month. A report said he “pleaded with the women to return to their various homes with an assurance that their requests would be addressed.”

    The Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) Chairman, Chief Edwin Clark, who was represented by his deputy, Dr. Godknows Igali, said during the reopening of the facility:”When the Group Managing Director of NNPC came here on September 28, he promised to grant all your requests, with steps now being taken to fulfill the promises. We are all winners. We have, by this struggle of the past two years, redefined the struggle for resource control.”

    The first commercial oil discovery in the country happened in Oloibiri in present-day Bayelsa State, in 1956; and the first oil field began production in 1958. More than six decades later, the story of underdevelopment in the Niger Delta has not changed, and will not change unless there is a change in the thinking of the political players who can cause changes to happen.

    Nigeria is said to produce about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil daily. The country is the largest producer of oil in Africa and sixth largest in the world. The country’s oil-producing states are: Akwa Ibom, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross River, Ondo, Edo, Imo and Abia. The first four states account for 80% of the crude oil produced. This explains why members of the underdeveloped host communities at the centre of the occupation of the oil facility in Rivers State feel shortchanged.

    Ironically, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) may well be among those responsible for the region’s underdevelopment. The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio, was quoted as saying:  “Let us be clear on this, it will not be business as usual; it will be business unusual as the present leadership would not tolerate persistent underdevelopment of the region. We have become a laughing stock as people now say we (Niger Deltans) are the ones responsible for the underdevelopment of the region. The NDDC is seen as a conduit for empowering the pockets of politicians and hangers-on. We will not do things the way we used to do it. The minister will exercise the powers of the President, not just to supervise the NDDC, but to control its affairs.”

    Akpabio lamented that “for over 20 years, NDDC could not complete its headquarters. It is disheartening NDDC has been paying over N200 million every year as rent…It is shameful that in the nine states of the Niger Delta, NDDC failed to have one legacy project, such as a specialist hospital.”

    It remains to be seen whether President Buhari’s apologetic intervention will change the Niger Delta’s underdevelopment.

  • The good soldier

    An eyewitness  tells the story of a sprightly young man in the creek during the civil war. Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, then a major, saw a runaway Biafran. This kinrinade could not swim. But a sprinter he was. He would not allow the Biafran to escape. The squad was already conquered. But this Biafran would not surrender. Akinrinade asked him to stop. The man wouldn’t.  So, he pursued him in a race to the death, through the turns and traps and treacherous marshes of the bushes. According to the account of his fellow soldier, both pursuer and pursued darted out of sight. In his book, The Tragedy of Victory, General Godwin Alabi-Isama, recounts his astonishment when Akinrinade materialised with his fleeing quarry, arrested barehanded.

    In the quicksand and intrigues of war, Akinrinade might have been gunned down by a Biafran straggler the same way Adaka Boro fell. It was not only a testament to the man’s physical prowess but his mental acumen, a feat he demonstrated throughout the civil war. He evinced the full package of a man of war. He had physical courage, not only in the eye of battle as he conquered Aba, after others failed, but also in managing the tranquil tension of conquest. He showed strategy, advising Murtala Muhammed to foreswear his marabout whose counterfeit eyes foresaw victory instead of body bags for exposing men of the Second Division through the Niger Bridge. He also furnished Benjamin Adekunle (aka Black Scorpion) similar advice about the peril of attacking Owerri. Both commanders shunned his advice and many soldiers were cut to death in bungled forays.

    He manifested himself a man not only of wise daring, but also of wise counsel in his reflex as commander, as a natural leader. When Obasanjo took over from Adekunle and the Third Marine Commando derailed and lost momentum to Biafra, morale fell. Alabi-Isama complained and was redeployed to the Second Division in Enugu. Obasanjo often ran to Lagos under the guise of updating the headquarters on the state of the war. Akinrinade stepped in, inspired the trust and confidence of his fellow officers, and he took the destiny of the proceedings in his hands.

    Before Obasanjo knew it, Uli-Ihiala Airstrip symbolising the Biafran vertebral bone had fallen into Akinrinade’s hands. The famed Achuzia had to obey Effiong’s order to surrender to the lieutenant Colonel Alani Akinrinade. At that time, Obasanjo was on a wild goose chase elsewhere. Akinrinade inspired and perspired for victory. But when Biafra expired, Obj stood over the ruins and took over the surrender. One man builds, another occupies. The builder, Akinrinade and his men, were humble enough up till today not to boast of his triumphal soldiery.

    He is not a man of malice. After all Obasanjo did by ignoring advice and undermining his men after taking over from Adekunle, Obj was in trouble during the Dimka Coup attempt of 1976. Akinrinade knew that with Murtala Muhammed assassinated, Obj was next in line. According to Alabi-Isama’s account, Akinrinade decided to lay siege to Obj’s hideout in the home of Chief S.B. Bakare until the fog cleared and he ascended as head of state. In his My Command, Obj did not acknowledge Akinrinade’s heroics.

    It is in Obj’s character to be afraid to say thank you. It is what psychologists call the fear of gratitude. Somehow, he did not want Akinrinade to appear to have saved his life or played a role in his good fortunes.

    Hence, when Akinrinade turned 80 last week, Obj was absent in the roll call of attendees. The list was like a cultural pageant. Enter governors: Gboyega Oyetola and Kayode Fayemi; ex-governor Abiola Ajimobi, Oluwole Rotimi. Enter kings, Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi,  Alaafin of Oyo, the erudite Lamidi Adeyemi III, the Awujale  of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, et al. Of course, fellow generals like Alabi-Isama and T.Y. Danjuma. Enter friends; enter business men like Alex Duduyemi; enter socialites, intellectuals. Enter honour. Absent obj.

    Yet what few know about the latest octogenarian is his unassuming dignity. Handsome, spry and warm, he never draws attention to himself. He speaks with a debonair charm, smiles without the hauteur of a general, relates without the bruises of a war. If you saw him in a crowd, you would as quickly dismiss him as not a soldier but just a regular man with savoir faire, a sometimes ascetic oasis at public gatherings. Once in a while the warrior peeps out – a reflex of a spark in his eyes. Yet beneath this is an intersection of bonhomie and principle.

    The most interesting thing about his biography is how the soldier embraces the republican. In his tribute, Gen. Rotimi talks of his Damascus journey, a conversion from the soldier to an anti-soldier. Buhari has been credited with such Pauline conversion. But the democrat always cooed in Akinrinade, a reflex for consultation and cooperative action, not the instinct of fiat and orders often attributed to brutes and hectoring commanders. It was in that spirit he wanted to save lives of fellow soldiers by advising Muhammed and Adekunle against adventures in suicide. He was a good soldier, and while there he played the part. During the civil war, he captured Bonny, an important economic stronghold because of oil and the push to Port Harcourt.

    He is also a patriot. Hence he did not want to kill the runaway Biafran. The fellow, according to what Akinrinade himself told me, became his friend long after the end of the hostilities. He did not hate Igbo, hence he was a great soldier who did his duty in line with Poet William Yeats: “Those who I fight I do not hate.” Akinrinade the democrat was an easy switch if we recall that he retired early from the army at 42 because he thought the institution had lost its soul. He wanted an army of principle and patriotism. The army, as we now know, became a bedlam of rogues, scallywags and adventurers in avarice.

    A story is told also when during the war Akinrinade left his personal box in a room, but when he returned he saw two. The other was full of money from the paymaster. Rather than corral it, he raised hell and punished the paymaster before ordering him to return the money to Lagos. It is a different army that Akinrinade left at 42. He was in tents of war but a tenant of principle who would not neglect the tenets of honour. If he was a warrior, he was also a worrier for good of all.

    He became a democrat and committed professional suicide, fighting against the institution he helped to build. If he could not purify the army from within, he had to save the nation that gave birth to the army. Governor Fayemi noted in his tribute that the general funded the first set of electronic material for the pesky Radio Kudirat, showing he applied his life and treasure to freedom. His home was bombed in the NADECO days and he, a soldier, had to take shelter from the bullying of his juniors who had sullied the army and its high ideals.

    I asked him a few years ago why he had not written a book. He said many of his evidence were destroyed in the bombing incident, in which he nearly lost his child. He did not want to write without proof.

    In spite of that, we need him to pen something, or have something penned. He has too much integrity for his story to be frivolous. The records beckon; history pines. His narrative command will command integrity. Fayemi said with men like the general, 80 years is the new 50. His father died a centenarian, so his gene is promising for a book. So are the hopes of many who want his story.

  • Who is safe?

    If the police rescued 231 kidnap victims countrywide in two months, August and September, it suggests that the kidnap crisis has escalated.   The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, interpreted the number of rescued kidnap victims as evidence of “the stronger relationship between the police and the citizens.” In the same period, Adamu said, the police arrested 216 kidnapping suspects. He announced these figures during his monthly conference with senior police officers in Abuja, on October 3.

    The police leadership should play down self-congratulation, and focus on self-examination. The number of rescued kidnap victims raises questions about the number of unrescued kidnap victims and the meaning of rescue. Kidnap victims who are released, possibly after a ransom is paid, can’t be said to have been rescued.  Was Adamu talking about kidnap victims who were set free by the police, and didn’t have to pay a ransom to kidnappers?

    Interestingly, a few days before the police chief released figures meant to highlight the anti-kidnapping effort, news of the release of Mrs Ogere Siasia, octogenarian mother of former Nigeria coach and player, Samson Siasia, who was kidnapped more than two months ago, had grabbed the headlines. “She wept like a baby, tears rolling down freely from her eyes before a battery of television cameras and a horde of reporters,” a September 30 report said.

    “It was terrible,” she said, asking: “Why do they like to kidnap me? … “They said my son is a millionaire.” Three days after she was kidnapped, her kidnappers demanded   N70m as ransom. They later reduced the ransom to N50m.  It is unclear whether a ransom was paid.

    A gang of gunmen abducted the old woman from her home in Odoni, Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, around 2am on July 15. Mrs Siasia’s case was particularly striking because she had been kidnapped once before, in November 2015, and was released after 12 days in captivity.  It is unclear whether a ransom was paid then. It is also unclear whether her previous kidnappers had returned to kidnap her again. It is possible that kidnappers could try to kidnap her a third time.

    Another striking aspect of Mrs Siasia’s second abduction was that the man who took a ransom to her kidnappers was held hostage. “According to him, on getting to where they directed him, gunmen surrounded his boat, blindfolded him and took him away,” a report said.

    Those who kidnapped Mrs Siasia on both occasions are still unknown and unapprehended. Her second abduction and captivity for more than two months further exposed police incapacity. The incident, from the beginning to the end, was bad for the public image of the police and their anti-kidnapping campaign.

    Kidnappers grabbed the headlines again on October 3, the same day the Inspector-General of Police pubicised the number of kidnap suspects arrested in two months. The police spokesman in Kaduna State, DSP Yakubu Sabo, said in a statement:  “The Command received an information through DPO Tall Gate, in the early hours of today 03/10/2019 at about 0310hrs that, some armed men gained entry into the Engravers College, a Boarding secondary school in a remote area near Kakau Daji village in Chikun L.G.A and took away two staff of the college and six (6) female students to unknown destination. On receipt of that information, the Command immediately mobilised combined teams of Anti-kidnapping, SARS, and conventional police to the area for possible rescue of the victims and arresting the perpetrators of the unfortunate incident. IGP’s Intelligence Response Team (IRT) has been contacted for technical support.” The kidnappers are said to have demanded a ransom of N50million.

    According to a report, Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai said he received intelligence report three months ago that kidnappers might target schools in his state. What was done to safeguard schools in the state?

    El-Rufai unwittingly exposed his administration’s failure to protect Engravers College. He said:  “Until the kidnapping happened, I didn’t know the school. It is right in the middle of the bush along the Abuja/Kaduna road. It’s in the middle of nowhere really, that’s why it was vulnerable. Other schools are protected…” Was Engravers College the only unprotected school?

    The governor spoke glibly about his administration’s security approach regarding schools, which sadly failed to protect Engravers College:  “Schools are being watched and we do regular surveillance. We use the Nigerian Air Force planes, we use drones. We do regular surveillance all across the state and we get intelligence as to likely targets. So, with the help of security agencies, we are doing the best we can on this.”

    It is reassuring that the Inspector-General of Police also said  special trainings were being organised for the special units, including the police mobile force, special forces, counter-terrorism unit, anti-robbery detachments, anti-kidnapping squads and the criminal investigation operatives. “This is with the intention of equipping them with the right orientation for policing in the 21st century and to align their operations within the expectations of the law and the citizens,” Adamu stated.  But the anti-kidnapping campaign needs less talk and more action.

    Not the kind of mob action at Dutse Alhaji area in Abuja on September 30 when three suspected kidnappers were burned alive.  “The suspects were three young men,” a report said. A Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO) officer, Mr Aminu Umar, was quoted as saying that the incident happened at about 8:00 a.m. when a lady in a moving vehicle was heard screaming for help.

    Umar’s disturbing account: “The lady was suddenly pushed out of the vehicle while screaming. A motorist, who saw what had happened, pulled over in front of the vehicle and blocked it under the Dutse Bridge. From there, Okada riders (motorcyclists) surrounded the vehicle and told them to come out. They asked them if the vehicle was one chance (kidnappers) and the next thing; they started beating them and eventually set them on fire, and also the vehicle.”

    If kidnappings and kidnappers continue to grab the headlines at such an alarming rate, then who is safe?

  • Kill ideology, kill terrorism!

    Whose calling for the head of the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai over his recent advocacy of spiritual warfare as the most potent strategy for ending the war against terrorism should hold it. This is because much of those criticisms do not appear to detach his person from the wider context of the issues he sought to promote.

    Apparently due to public cynicism and dissatisfaction with the prosecution and progress of the war against terrorism; leading to calls for a change in military leadership, we now run the fatal risk of losing the heuristic value of the thematic issues arising from last week’s seminar organized by the army in Abuja. In that seminar titled “Countering insurgency and violent extremism in Nigeria through spiritual warfare”, Buratai had sought to establish a positive correlation between the nurturing of weird religious ideologies and the growth and thriving of terrorist activities.

    The thesis of his presentation was that military might alone is not sufficient to wipe out terrorism and that since weird religious ideology is the incubator for terrorism, a more enduring handle is also to eliminate that source of oxygen. For him, terrorism and terrorist groups cannot be eliminated by military action alone unless religious bodies and organizations come to the forefront of this ‘spiritual battle’.

    Hear him, “it is a well known fact that terrorism or terrorist groups cannot be totally eliminated by mainly military actions. The need to defeat the ideologies of Boko Haram and ISWAP is based on the awareness that it is the ideologies that enhance their resources and help to recruit new fighters to their fold and as such, kill their ideology and terrorist movement withers and dies”.

    Reactions to this postulation have rather been on the negative side. Some of those who volunteered opinion, read meanings ranging from admission of failure by the army in the war against terrorism, buck-passing and a vote of no-confidence on the part of Buratai in the continued prosecution of the war. They saw the argument as good evidence for the long expected overhaul of the nation’s security leadership.

    But these would seem a limited perspective of the wider issues thrown up by the army chief. Acquiescing to such calls would lend us guilty of leaving out the issue and attacking the person- a fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. And we run the risk of throwing away the baby with the bath water if we do not separate the person of Buratai from the fundamental issues of the fight against terrorism that seem to have emerged from that seminar.

    And what are they? He says weird ideologies are the source of oxygen for terrorism and terrorist activities; that negative ideologies breed terrorism and no matter the strength of military arsenal deployed to wipe out terrorism, it will continue to resonate as long as the source of its life is not terminated. The thing to consider is the veracity or lack of it in that proposition.  Is it true that weird ideology- religious, ethnic or economic is the incubating house for terrorism? And can we finger elements of wrong ideological promptings as the driving force for the Boko Haram insurgency and ISWAP? Those are the questions begging for answers.

    If we can detect the role played by ideology in sustaining these terrorist organizations, then, the diatribe on Buratai for recognizing that link would have been patently misplaced. And what is the ideology of the Boko Haram insurgents and their ally ISWAP?  It can be summed up as Jihadism. At inception, Boko Haram was non-violent as their main aim was to ‘purify Islam in parts of the north’.  But they have since aligned with the Islamic state of Iraq and that says it all.

    Even then, the name Boko Haram translated as ‘education is evil’ speaks volumes about the doctrinaire battle the group sprang up to champion. They are against anything western and their intention is to establish a theocratic state. It is in the denial of this reality before now, that the leadership of the country including Buratai would deserve some harsh words. We shall return to this shortly.

    Within the context Buratai spoke, he was only drawing attention to the difficulty in conclusively prosecuting the war against Boko Haram insurgency and ISWAP without commensurate efforts to diminish the negative religious indoctrination that blinds followers into that perilous activity. His contention is that religious indoctrination is the source of the oxygen that nurtures and sustains Boko Haram and ISWAP and they can only be effectively neutralized by reversing that indoctrination. He is not alone in this view.

    For him, because ideology helps the groups to recruit new entrants into their fold, reversing those negative teachings (if it is possible) will deny the groups new entrants and ultimately lead to the end of terrorism. That goes without saying. And when this is combined with the efforts of the military to degrade terrorism, the nation would surely be on the right path to terminating the insurgency that has held parts of this country down for some years now.  That is why he wants religious bodies and organizations that interface with the grassroots to be at the forefront of this spiritual battle by stepping up their roles.

    The call for a spiritual angle to the battle is by no means, a vote of no confidence on the military option and it is not intended to be so. It is just an admission of the limitations in prosecuting the war against terrorism without commensurate efforts to diminish the source of negative teachings that lure prospective recruits into the fold of the insurgents.

    When it is realized that terrorism is propelled by wrong doctrines and cannot endure without new recruits, the potency of Buratai’s postulation becomes self evident. And what is left of terrorism without indoctrination. Indoctrination sustains terrorism; suicide bombers and all manner of high impact and atrocious activities for which it is highly dreaded. It is only logical that when this dimension is substantially and realistically tackled, we would have gotten to the root of that which nurtures and sustains terrorism.

    It is good a thing Buratai has now admitted the impact and role of negative religious ideology in stultifying military campaigns against Boko Haram insurgency. Before now, our leaders have been living in denial of the real factors that propel, nurture and sustain Boko Haram insurgency.  Not surprisingly, dubious attempts have been made to detach religion as the prime motivating force of the insurgents. The killing of Muslims and Christians alike is often and dubiously rationalized as evidence that theocracy is not at the centre of the Boko Haram insurgency. Yet, we are all living witnesses to how Boko Haram emerged on the Nigerian scene, the initial targets of their attacks and their professed agenda. It would appear Buratai has been compelled by hard circumstances to put a lie to all that by recognizing that re-orientation by religious leaders is compelling for ending the fight against terrorism.

    But there is also the economic dimension to the war. Abject poverty, illiteracy, unemployment are also at issue. Terrorism is nurtured and reinforced by the mindless squandering of the collective resources of the country by rapacious and rogue leadership that is often propelled by the lure of the pocket. Terrorism will wither away and die when these systemic deficits are addressed with the Nigeria state in a position to convey public goods and services to the greatest number of its citizens.

    Beyond all this, the seeming impatience of the Nigerian public with the prosecution of the war on terrorism is inflicted by the double speak and exaggerated claims on the actual state of progress of that war by the government. Having been told four years ago that the war had been technically won and terrorists can no longer to muster sufficient capacity to mount organized attacks on our military, it is not surprising Burarai’s call for spiritual warfare now is being viewed with utmost cynicism and scorn.

    These are some of the monsters we create which in the fullness of time, turn around to haunt us. That is the burden Buratai has to bear for the misreading of the germane issues in his advocacy.

  • ‘To secure, we have to love: herdsmen, kidnappers, Boko Haram and the climate of fear’

    It is also a story of economic hierarchy. The herders are not the owners of the cattle. Some of them are owned by shadowy big men, who encourage them to bring home the profits. So those who argue against the herdsmen also are pitching battles by proxy against the Fulani hegemon. It makes the matter even more complicated.

    The question of banditry has become another hobgoblin. Is the herdsman a bandit, or it is just the bandit masquerading as herdsman. If the herdsman was so busy trying to sell its cows, what time will they have to sell their cows if they lay ambush everyday on highways?  According to some analysts, the herdsmen exist who have always been with us. These men still occupy the farms and wreak havoc. They still want grazing fields for their animals. Yet, when we see them, we only see sticks. They don’t read. They don’t follow the fire and outrage of contemporary angst and debate. They just go about their businesses.

    But some say there are bad herdsmen, but most of the havoc we see come from bandits who have lost their way in the world. So, they live and die by killing and dispossessing the victims. According to recent reports of captured marauders, some of them are trained outside the country. They steal into the country through the borders. Yet, the reports show that they would not know their way around the country if they did not make companionship with locals. That is why the economic blends with the cultural. The Zamfara case tells us that it is essentially an economic matter.

    Zamfara State would, in a properly governed environment, be a near Eldorado with networks of highways, high-rises, shopping malls, a buzzing airport, the panoply of spinoff commerce, burgeoning cultural exports, et al. But it’s the hallowed ground of bandits and crude adventurers. It is the economic equivalent of a hoodlum’s paradise.

    Tied to this is the perception of the bandit crisis as class warfare. Take, for instance, the rage of elite kidnappings, especially in the north. The Abuja-Kaduna highway is now a thoroughfare of woe for even the Fulani elite. Those who say the bandit crisis is Fulanisation and Islamisation should answer why a governor, a minister, a permanent secretary, a money bag of the Fulani extraction would not travel that road with all the array of cars and security men. Rather they would huddle with others in the rowdy comfort of a train. The story is told of an imam who gave a pep talk in Abuja and told his audience that the Abuja-Kaduna expressway was safe. After his glowing delivery, it was time to return home to Kaduna. He did not hit the express. Rather his hosts escorted him to the train station. His faith was not tailored to his own soul, but to those he encouraged. Do what I say, but not what I do.

    Nothing demonstrates the confluence of class warfare and economic imperative than the issue of kidnapping. They have redefined the value of human capital. You kidnap a judge or a minister’s son, and that is a great investment in human resources. The return could be more profitable than drugs. Within hours, you can make as much as N20 million or N50million, or even more, depending on the opulence and desperation of the captive and their family. Why would the talakawa, who neither reads nor write, and who cannot earn with all his manic muscles more than N20 thousand Naira a month, neglect so great a financial salvation? Within a week, he can stun himself with enough to buy a new car and build a house and enjoy all the soft life and luxuries that Maigida has taken for granted. All he has to do is kidnap again. It becomes addictive. Any catch translates into a generational wealth in their eyes. He becomes a money-miss-road, dross in gold. So, to such gold diggers, they don’t see Fulani, they see Eldorado.

    In the northeast, the Boko haram flame has failed to abate. When it is not smothering lives in firestorms of surprise attacks, suicides bombs and all, it is smouldering in intermittent skirmishes. Yet, it all began with a class narrative. The poor under the cynical watch of former Borno State Governor, Ali Modu Sherriff, were used for elections and cast away. They needed shelter, food, and wives. A certain messianic creature known as Mohammed Yusuf provided them all these. All he wanted from them was his own version of Islamic piety. They are under the thrall of the man who gave them food. He works under what the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky designates as the triad of oppression. They are authority, mystery and miracle. These three weapons under a person’s command can make him a god on earth. That was Yusuf, and the founder of Boko Haram. After providing the Sheriff castaways with food, shelter and wives. He had made them his children, his urchins. As Dostoyevsky noted in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov, “anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom.”

    With mystery, he gave them faith. With miracle, he gave them food, shelter, and all of that gave him authority.  To other classes of humans, food may not be miracle. To the poor who is hungry, especially the destitute, food and shelter are miracles from God. Again, as Dostoyevsky defines it, “In a realist, faith does not spring from miracle but miracle out of faith.” You define your own miracle.

    So, his followers now decided to strike. Was it about Islam? Well, yes, the extreme variant. But was it about class? Plenty. They brought down emirs, razed tony mosques, pillaged the markets, carted away the girls that would be brides to the rich, etc. They saw themselves not as evil people. They saw themselves as messengers of the Almighty, who loathed the moral squalor of the feathered class.

    Yusuf took away their freedom and gave them his own. They all want to be free to be terrorists. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin noted that freedom was not only about the classical idea of western liberal thought. Anyone can define it their way. As the Marxist wants his freedom, so does the terrorist, so does Boko Haram.

    Within the Nigerian state, we therefore see all of these clashes in the family. Each one wants a different definition of comfort and peace. In that ambience, peace is the major casualty, and where there is no peace, fear abounds.

    When Boko Haram was at its peak, the military brass backed by its Fulani elite waged a quiet genocide against the Kanuri. Anytime they saw a Kanuri gathering, or a kanuri traveller with their distinctive tribal marks, they were targeted for arrests, harassments and killing. The shoe, as they say, is in the other foot now. The targets are Fulani today. No one trusts them, including the Hausa. Even the elite Fulani suspects the talakawa up north. As Samuel Coleridge once noted, even “whoring brothers disagree.” So, we have created fear as an instrument of governance. It will take fear banishment and as sense of fairness for the fear to go.

    With each afraid of the other, we cannot stop banditry, or herdsmen crisis, or even Boko haram. We need a leadership of fairness and fearlessness. Is that not why the issue of banditry even in the southwest has become even a big problem. On the military level, why are we not using drones to target and isolate and knock out the hoodlums? Are they not living among us? Are they spirits?

    What did the former Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima deploy to flush out many Boko haram players from among the people? They were the Civilian JTF. They are the unsung heroes of modern Nigeria. We need drones as intelligence since the intelligence agencies in Nigeria have failed us. We need to create civilian equivalents of the JTF in the southwest and other parts of the country. Then the drones can track their hideouts, and the Air Force and soldiers can go to work. In short order, we can deal with the scourge. That is a short term solution to the herdsmen bugbear.

    After that, we can face the perennial issue of distrust. If we cannot stop it, it will haunt us, and the scourges will emerge in other dimensions.  We have to awake the right identities and paradigms for the future. That accounts for why the philosopher Rene Descartes said, cogito ego sum, “I think therefore I am.” In his own book of polemics titled, The Rebel, Albert Camus wrote, “I rebel – therefore we exist.” In his novel, Satanic verses” Salman Rushdie declares, “to be born again first you have to die.”

    So, it means we have to pursue a new birth and a new identity. Hence I titled this piece, “To secure, first we have to love.” That is love each other. It means a leadership of cooperative charisma beyond class and tribe and primordial loyalties. Or else we shall solve one and go into another problem. For instance, as Femi Falana has warned, the followers of Sheikh EL Zakzaky are fuming and growing. Is that the next bandit? Or cover for one?

    So, the problem is not in anywhere else but in us. It is because we fear ourselves.

  • Holy cow!

    Nothing demonstrates the state of our democracy at independence like the cow, and the drama in Ondo State. The episode hit everyone in the country like a jolt.

    The cows wanted to graze. The lush, green fields appetised the herds. The sky was soft and blue. Witnesses deny a cloudburst was in the offing. No one, not the herdsman, saw any omen in the heavens. They mooed and mulled to the mountain for a refuge of food and comfort.

    The gods thought otherwise. The locals warned, just as the custodian of the deity. It was forbidden ground, don’t go there. But temptation often overpowers the senses. The cow shall not live by words, but by every blade of grass that lodges in the jaw.

    Against the warning, they went. All 36 of them. It has a highland, close enough to the finger fury of the gods. Before they knew it, the sky opened with rage. Lightning flashed, thunderstorms roared, and all 36 fell. It was not like T.S Eliot’s A Journey of The Magi,  whose wayfarers knew “a cold morning they had of it/ just the worst time of the year.”

    The locals, and not a few Nigerians, believe the bovine tragedy was a case of divine revenge. The animals died. But the humans survived. Some have looked at it not from the scientific point of view. The study of geography shows that cows should be wary of grazing on mountains. One, it is close to the tempest of the sky. Two, they are often too exposed to get shelter, except trees which are actually traps of nature. You cannot avoid the storm by going under the tree. You should avoid the tree instead.

    Superstition or not, some have said, aha, this is the solution to the herdsmen crisis. Let us import the gods of Ijare Hills – sounds like Soyinka’s Idanre Hills – and send them to the farms of states of Plateau, Enugu, Nasarawa, Mambilla, Benue, et al, and dare the bandits.

    What happened was the spiritual equivalent of the abattoir. The bovine train did not need prodding. No lashes, no grumbles, no coercion. A Golgotha with a smooth trail. They mooed along of their own volition. The gods beguiled them to the pasture. A voluntary submission. They obeyed for the sacrifice. It was also different from the gas chambers of the Nazi era, where the Jews and Gypsies knew that it was death by incineration. When the gods struck, there was no mistake. The gods don’t shoot to miss. They fell all their targets. The spiritual abattoir is more to be dreaded than the familiar ones.

    Except that it is not the cows that the people loathe in the farmers-herders crisis. It is the owners, not the cows. After all, even the custodians or priests of the gods also crave the temptation of a cow meal. Yet, not a hair of the herder died. According to all reports, it is the herder who harasses. They do the reconnaissance, they wield the guns, they mow, maul and destroy. They simply lead the cows along.

    Here again, it is a story of how as a nation we always go after the wrong targets. We destroy what we should preserve. It is a metaphor of how we waste human resources, as we have done in the past 59 years. From day one, the prodigal has been our first principle. What have we preserved? Cocoa, groundnut pyramid, palm produce, rubber, crude oil, human talent?  As William Wordsworth noted in his poem, “The world is too much with us/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

    But the herdsman is the proper Nigerian, especially the elite. We do not respect rules, or the rule of law. They were warned to stay away from the hallowed ground. But greed overrides propriety. Just as we have not followed the rules in mining our resources across the 36 states, so the 36 cows symbolise the states of the federation. All of them fall to meaningless squander. It is Illegal bunkering on crude oil and gangsters of mineral resources. In agriculture, it is corruption. We import to kill the local farmer. Let us look forward in hope to see what we shall make of the border closures, which I support if we can turn it into policy to galvanise local productivity.

    It is the same lack of respect for the rule of law that makes a Sowore to remain in detention in spite of court order, or Sambo Dasuki – no hero – to still squeak in silence. The herdsman is the elite. The cows, the masses of sort. When the storm comes, the elites have a way of escape.

    He is safe, and all he needs is to tap into resources and start again, with a fresh consignment for plunder, or recruit new people for his schemes. The herdsman here represents the Nigerian state, as well, who leads the people astray.

    They have no sense of justice, or vision to see what dangers lie ahead because they know that, somehow, they will always survive. The herdsman is no hero of his flock. He does not have the fidelity or empathy of Christ, who said if he loses one sheep he would leave the others and go after the lost one and make sure there is one sheep, one shepherd. Our leaders lead the flock to doom.

    It is a lack of vision, and that has flourished darkly in our lack of grasp of systems. We have debated whether we should retain the presidential or Westminster system, as though we have not tasted both. The parliamentary system led us to civil war and bloodletting of siblings. The supporters say it is cheaper. Bunkum. It is not the system that it is cheap or expensive. It is Nigerians that are spendthrift. Unlike the presidential system with many rules, the parliamentary system anticipates the good conduct of the practitioners. Good conduct is a casualty with Nigerian politicians. Take for instance, if Nigeria faced a knotty case like BREXIT,  the republic would have collapsed. But it is the level-headedness of the political elite in Britain that has maintained a brilliant chaos in the country. Ours led to civil war. The French, even the Russians, accept a mix, so that that the strong office of the president can rein in the parliament’s tendency to anarchy.

    The presidency was tested when Yar-adua took ill, and we almost lost this republic but for the intervention of a strong system the made us appeal to the doctrine of necessity. The parliamentary system would have given us a death warrant.

    The bovine episode also reflects the failure of the ecclesiastical order in the land. It is a land of worshippers, but not a land of progress. We believe but are not redeemed. The church leaders, Islamic clerics and juju priests have always been factors in our land, but they have never come through. Rather they leave us a mess, sometimes worse.

    Now, what is left of Ijare matter but stench. There is plenty of meat, but they are all rotten. The gods will not clear them. Locals are staying away because the frowzy air threatens their peace. The state government has nothing to do with it, but the locals want the government to clear them. Will they need special auspices from the gods before government workers can dispose of the dead cows? Even the traditional ruler visits it once a year and after special permission. We don’t want any tragedy in which lightning strikes the workers. It will need an extra dip into government revenue to clear the mess the gods have made.

    Of course, the locals fear diseases. It is not enough for the carcasses to fall in the wilderness. It is whether we can survive them.

    This is how we waste our wealth. At 59, Nigerian leaders have a cow lesson.

  • El-Rufai: Beyond the show

    Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has some explaining to do. After grabbing the headlines when he took his six-year-old son, Abubakar, to Capital School, Malali, Kaduna, a public school, to begin his primary education, on September 23, El-Rufai has questions to answer.

    True, El-Rufai has been commended publicly for putting his son in a public school, but he has also been criticised publicly for allegedly playing to the gallery.

    Senator Shehu Sani, who represented Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the eighth National Assembly, told reporters in Kaduna that the governor’s action “was simply a 2023 political stunt set up for the media and people who live outside Kaduna because those who reside here know what public primary schools look like.” What do public primary schools in Kaduna State look like? Why did El-Rufai put his son in that particular public primary school?

    Sani said: “It is not because I have political difference with him, no. But whoever lives in Kaduna State knew that what the governor did with his son by enrolling him in a public school was just a comedy…He would have done better by upgrading schools in Kaduna. You cannot spend N195million in a particular school and then take your son and the media to that school and think you have done anything different.”

    Is it true that the El-Rufai administration spent N195 million to improve Capital School, Malali? How was the school improved? Why was the alleged cost of the improvement so high?

    Sani added: “I know that the children of former Governor Ahmed Makarfi attended this same Capital School. I also know that other public officials’ children go to that school too. So if you are not being cunning, deceptive and comical, you would have allowed all your children to enroll in public schools. Public school doesn’t mean primary schools alone; there are public secondary schools and public universities.”

    How many children does El-Rufai have? How many of them are in school? How many of them are in public schools? Abubakar was quoted as saying:  “I am sad that I will miss my old school, my friends and my teachers. But I have to help my father keep his promise.”  Which school was he talking about?

    El-Rufai wants to seen as a man who keeps his word. In a state broadcast in December 2017, he had promised to enroll his son in a public school when he is six years old.  At the time he made the promise, he was two years into his first four-year term as governor. He had said: “We are determined to fix public education and raise their standards so that private education will become only a luxury. As we make progress, we will require our senior officials to enroll their children in public schools. And I will by personal example ensure that my son that will be six years of age in 2019 will be enrolled in a public school in Kaduna State, by God’s grace.”

    His first term ended in May 2019. It wasn’t certain that he would still be governor of the state in September 2019 when he put his son in a public primary school. El-Rufai was re-elected governor for a second term, which is why he was able to grab the headlines the way he did. What if El-Rufai had not been re-elected? Would he still have put his son in a public primary school?

    El-Rufai’s words to journalists after the show at Capital School, Malali: “I made that commitment because I believe that it is only when all political leaders have their children in public schools that we will pay due attention to quality of public education. I went to a public school like this. In fact, the school I went to is not as good as this one, but here I am, because of the quality teaching I got.”

    He added: “My intention is to ensure that all our public schools offer quality education, and so we are encouraging all our senior public servants to send their children to public schools. Once the public schools are improved to a point they are nearly as good as or even better than private schools, no one will waste his money taking his child to private school.”

    What is the cost of primary education at Capital School, Malali? Who are the parents of the children in the school?

    In January, El-Rufai had publicised how his administration reformed the state’s education sector. While playing host to the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Ms Amina Mohammed, he said his first-term administration inherited 4,200 public primary schools that were in a bad condition. He also said that in 2015 he had inherited enrollment rate stagnant at 1.1 million pupils, with about 50 per cent of pupils taking lessons on the floor because of lack of furniture.

    He said: “In our effort to improve teaching quality standards, the Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) had in June 2017 conducted a Primary Four competency test for teachers.” According to him, 21,780 out of 33,000 teachers that sat for the competency examination failed.  He stated:  “As part of our education reform programme, we sacked the failed teachers and recruited 25,000 new teachers…We have also expanded access to education by making the first nine years of schooling free for boys and the entire twelve years of primary and secondary education free for girls. This has led to increase in School enrolment from 1.1 million to 2.1 million almost doubling the number of pupils in the State.”

    In a tweet on his education sector reforms, El- Rufai had said: “After a review of the cost and analysis of the demographic trends data as it relates to overcrowding in the classrooms, we decided to build multi-storey school blocks with more classrooms to accommodate 30 to 40 pupils per class. By January 2017, about 500 of the schools had been rehabilitated at the cost of about N6 billion. Our investments have contributed to the total overhauling of the education sector. We have introduced a Schools Rehabilitation Programme to provide decent classrooms, furniture, water and toilet facilities.”

    But El-Rufai needs to respond to Sani’s remarks and other remarks that call into question his dramatic appearance with his son at Capital School, Malali.