The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Tribeless crimes

    Are crimes and criminal activities ethnically domiciled? What is the tribe of stealing, armed robbery, kidnapping, banditry, murder, internet fraud and ancillary criminal tendencies organized societies have been contending with?

    These posers are germane following events in the country in the last two weeks or so. The inquisition is further reinforced by the ruinous penchant of Nigerians and foreigners alike to trivialize and view serious social maladies from very narrow confines. It is however, a sad reflection of how divided and fragmented along ethnic, religious and sectional lines Nigerians have become in the last few years that every crime and criminal activity is profiled along tribal and ethnic lines.

    The predilection to confer ethnic interpretation to any and every misdemeanour appears to have gotten to a head since the Federal Bureau of Investigations FBI of the United States of America published a list of 77 Nigerians for alleged culpability in internet fraud and cybercrimes. With a preponderance of names of suspects coming from one of the six geo-political zones in the country, ethnic chauvinists went to town with the erroneous suggestions that most of those from that zone or ethnic group are into internet fraud.

    Soon, things got awry and insinuations began to make the rounds especially in the social media that people from that zone are into one form of criminal activity or the other. The impression conveyed and miserably too was that internet fraud, cybercrime and related criminal engagements are the exclusive engagements of that ethnic group.

    As an apparent counterpoise, a list of 23 Nigerians convicted for drug peddling in Saudi Arabia and awaiting the hangman’s noose began to make the rounds. The list which was first made public last April showed a preponderance of convicts from another geo-political zone in the south. Some other zones except those that do not participate in the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina had a share of the convicts.

    The message the drug convicts’ list was meant to pass across was not in doubt. It was to checkmate ethnic profiling and insinuations arising from the list made public by the FBI. This is more so, when it is realized that those facing death penalty in Saudi Arabia had gone there to perform their annual religious obligations. By extrapolation, the message is that crime knows no boundaries, ethnic or religious affiliation. But even with this reality, not much seemed to have changed in our profiling of crimes and criminal activity.

    We are still stuck to stereotypes even when it is clear that crimes neither have ethnic groups nor boundaries. Armed robbery, internet fraud, oil bunkering, slave trade, armed banditry and kidnapping are all English words. They are well known to the western world as they are home to all their manifestations. Though these crimes may have their local variants, some of them were copied from outside our shores. It is thus inappropriate to seek to ascribe any of these crimes to any Nigerian tribe or ethnic group as some mischievous persons are currently wont to.

    A reader, who apparently was not satisfied with one of the conclusions in my article titled, “Beyond Ekweremadu’s ordeal” sent this text message: “So Federal government is incompetent? And your Igbo brothers that are competent 77 of them in America doing legitimate business? With that single sentence, the author dismissed all the issues raised in that half-page article.

    But then, the article in question had nothing to do with cybercrimes or criminal activities. As the headline clearly shows, it was essentially on the travails of Ekweremadu in the hands of some unruly Nigerians purporting to represent the proscribed IPOB. Apparently because of my name, the contributor had little difficulty in identifying my ethnic affiliation and wasted no time in ‘criminalizing’ me. So, I should not do my legitimate job just because some people from my ethnic group were fingered in cybercrimes in faraway US?

    So, one could be termed a criminal because some people from his ethnic group appeared in the list of suspects released by the FBI. If that is so, then all of us are criminals because all ethnic groups, tribes and races have their fair share of all manner of criminals.  Then, and only then did it dawn on me that those who released the list of Nigerians awaiting execution in Saudi for drug related offences had a point.

    Even then, the pattern of arrests by the EFCC of internet and cybercrime fraudsters bears out the fact that these crimes are not the exclusive engagement of any single tribe or ethnic group. Figures released by the anti-graft agency from across the country showed the arrest of 113 suspects in Benin, Edo State, seven suspected fraudsters in Kaduna, 280 suspects in Kano over an eight-month period for cybercrimes and sundry criminal activities and 105 suspects in Port Harcourt.

    Others include six suspects in Uyo, 20 in Imo, train ticket racketeers in Abuja and Kaduna and 113 others in Edo, Delta and Ondo states. Early this year and following the freeing of one Zainab Aliyu by the Saudi authorities, the nation was informed of a syndicate at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano that specialized in injecting banned drug substances in the luggage of travellers. We were told that the arrest of Zainab followed the devious activity of that syndicate. She was released when arrested syndicate members confessed to the crime.

    Early 2017, the EFCC had published a list of 86 suspects wanted for various crimes. Top of the 10 wanted suspects included a former governor of Jigawa State for alleged misappropriation of public funds to the tune of N36 billion, an ex-militant for illegal diversion of N45.9million, a former national coordinator, federal civil service staff with disabilities multipurpose cooperative society for collecting N1.7 billion under false pretence and former chairman, Pensions Reform Task Team Abdulrasheed Maina for alleged procurement fraud and obtaining by false pretence of amounts totalling N2billion.

    Of the 10 in order of the weight assigned to their offences by the EFCC, only number nine, a former Director General, National Task Force on the importation of goods, small arms, ammunitions and light weapons charged for criminal conspiracy and impersonation has names that suggest he is from the same ethnic group with those preponderantly in the FBI list. The rest of the names belong to other ethnic groups.

    Even then, a perusal of the list of all those being prosecuted as well as illegally acquired properties recovered from former public office holders by the Buhari administration does not bear out the skewed profiling arising from the FBI list. What you find is that a disproportionate number of the suspects hail from ethnic groups other than that which dominated the FBI list. It may well have to do with the domination of critical institutions of governance by other groups just like those who dominated the FBI list may have had higher representation in the US.

    But that is beside the point. The key issue is to get at the root of the internal contradictions that predispose Nigerians both in public offices and elsewhere to crimes and all manner of criminality. There is the need to re-examine the systemic and orientation dysfunctions that influence the looting of that which belongs to the public realm. We need to unravel the source of the bitter competition and rivalry between the primordial realm and the civic public for the soul and loyalty of the citizens. In them, we may locate the crux of that which accounts for the high level of corruption in public offices.

    Until we get at the core of these and provide realistic therapeutic responses to them, crime profiling and stigmatization as was the case with the FBI list, will amount to mere distraction in the overall fight against corruption.  And for our citizens who are regularly stigmatized and hounded in foreign lands, we need to ask ourselves the basic question of what accounts for their exodus even with all the resources Mother Nature bountifully endowed this country.

    These are the real issues to contend with and not that lazy talk as to which ethnic groups are made of saints and devils. You can find a mix in all ethnic groups and races. Crime has neither tribe nor boundaries. The way out is to holistically address the systemic, developmental and sociological deficits that predispose all tribes to embarrassing criminality.

     

  • Borno’s worries

    There are many Nigerians who never believe that we are at war as a nation. Boko Haram, for all its savage flares, rings abstract to them because they don’t know the victims: a dead relative, a maimed neighbour, an embattled home, a razed village, a limp athlete. They hear but do not fear because no gun rattles the next street, nor does a pregnant woman, blood on her face, run half-blind across their terrace.

    But for those who live in Konduga, where buildings lit up recently like a Christmas bonfire with body bags as harvest, war is real. Ditto to Bama where farmers only thrived when they put fear and flight ahead of planting a grain of wheat.

    It reminds one of a history course at the university called The History of the Far East. I asked myself, would those who woke up, fished and died in Cambodia or Japan regard their homes as far? In political science, they regard some wars as low intensity conflict and others as high intensity conflict. If you lose your only home in a hamlet after a scuffle, it cannot make headlines. But it is your own world war three.

    I wonder if, somehow, the war in Borno State is not sliding into a low intensity war in the eyes of those who should win it. As one who has been in that part of the country quite a few times, it gives one cause to worry. Barely four years ago, Lai Mohammed thumped his chest that the war was over and the Buhari administration had turned a national disaster into a fest.

    Today it is a different story, and it has been so for a while. The greatest tragedy is that the nightmare is becoming a routine. The goons attack a village, people die. We mourn. We move on.  Our soldier rolls back a horde of attackers; we celebrate as though the war is over. We move on. Meanwhile, the nightmare aches.

    The information minister shies away from the topic. Even the chief of army staff goofed about the army’s morale as though it was the fault of his soldiers’ faintness of heart.  We cannot underestimate what this does to governance. No one understands this more than the man who is now in charge of running the state. Governor Babagana Zulum was, as commissioner, in charge of reconstructing the state when the army seemed to have retained a grip on the territories. I called him the Marshall Plan commissioner after the United States general who rebuilt Europe from its world war ruins.

    Under the former governor, Kashim Shettima, we saw quite a few episodes of conflict between the centre and state. The governor at that time cried that the Nigerian army was inferior to the insurgents. They were better armed, better organised, and better motivated. At a point, as many will recall, the ragtag mullahs had taken over most of the state. And they loomed within a few miles of the state house. We were on the verge of a first in this country, where a military coup would involve men defiling the Koran, men overthrowing the name of patriotism, and men who did not love their neighbours or pretended to care. Jonathan had no answers and we called him clueless.

    The governor enjoyed a breath of peaceful breadth when the insurgent retreated into a silence. And with Zulum, he embarked a tremendous infrastructure work, with education, agriculture and a slew of many accomplishments.

    But even towards the last embers of Shettima’s reign, the insurgents devised a strategy. They came first with “innocuous” girls blowing themselves up in markets and mosques, and they started to regroup and recruit and excavate resources from shadowy places. Suddenly they built redoubts of terror in bushes and across the borders.

    Enter Zulum, and the war has taken up notches. It must be frustrating to him that he has toured the 27 local governments, and has embarked on an avalanche of activities since May 29. Yet for Zulum, how did it feel that in a feisty place like Konduga where he has constructed a school, distributed food items in IDP camps, built healthcare  and housing units and turned the dry lands into watery boreholes. Then the people had to kneel under the fires of insurgents who laid waste some of the gains. In Bama, he has rehabilitated the technical college, rebuilt its bridges and excavated the Banki town. Yet we know that the goons made forays into the land.

    Whether it is a prominent place like Gwoza, Chibok  and Biu or relatively little known places like Ngala, Dikwa, Mafa  and Bayo, the professor governor’s fingers are at play. But so is the threat of the Boko Haram army. Primary schools, hospitals, water, IDPs, et al, are getting facelifts, but the air of fear ripples in the ear.

    War and development are antipodal, and it is high time that the federal government realised that the first condition to improve the welfare of the people is peace. Yet Governor Zulum, just like his predecessor, has provided funds and equipment and welfare to the army. But who is even accounting for this.

    A source tells this essayist that many people in Borno believe that Borno State may be retreating to the turbulence of 2013 when the state government had to “channel energy to rebuilding more than 30,000 houses, hospitals, shopping malls, local government secretariats, police stations, palaces of traditional rulers. It seems the insurgents are trying to take us back to that era.”

    Such a scenario does not only destroy, it discourages. That is the state of affairs in the first few months of Zulum’s stewardship. President Buhari, who has devoted so much treasure into this battle, should ask for the account books and audit the soldiers. So this war does not become what Obasanjo, with gleeful mischief, prophesies will last many more years. We don’t want the fulfilment of what George Orwell quipped in his novel, 1984, where it states roguishly that “War is peace.” To those who profiteer, isn’t  this a war of peace, while most families faint and fail.

    We don’t want this war. Neither do the soldiers. As Plato noted, “Only the dead have seen the end of a war.” We want our soldiers to see the end of this one.

    Ly(i)on of the tribe

    In Bayelsa, we are seeing the beginning of a temper. But for now, it is within the opposition APC, where Heineken Lokpobiri, who once was a son of the party has turned rogue with the party hierarchs. He was a minister nominated by the same group he is now warring. Biting the finger that fed him? Now Heineken will now have to battle a sober lion, growling ominously for a battle.

    His name David Lyon, a name perceived as a double threat with Biblical implications. Lyon often interpreted as the maned beast, the lion, also is the name of one Europe’s cultural and historical cities, dating back to the warrior age of the Roman Empire. Today it sometimes competes with Paris in France. So, Lyon wants to turn Bayelsa into the city of David as the lion of the tribe.

    Lokpobiri will have to do more than going to court to contest open primaries whose virtues were first sold to the nation in this column by this essayist. The next few days will determine whether Heineken can fight a ly(i)on.

  • Anambra market prayers

    In the last one month or so, there have been developments within the markets in Anambra State that should be of more than a passing interest to all.

    At the end of July, the president-general of Anambra State Amalgamated Traders Association (ASMATA), Ikechukwu Ekwegbalu had announced the banning of prayers in all markets across the state. The reason he gave was that politicians had hijacked the exercise; “What we see now is extortion and conversion of the prayer sessions to political rallies”.

    Just last week, the state government threw its weight behind the ban. Why it took the government one month to come public on the matter remains a matter of conjecture. But a statement by the state commissioner for information and public enlightenment, C. Don Adinuba went at length to show why the prayers can no longer serve the best interest of the state by the way they are organized and conducted.

    In their narrative, they said evidence abounds that a certain preacher conducting regular prayers in the various markets in the state had created a culture of fear and was spreading rancour in the markets. They also accused the unnamed pastor of being in the habit of ascribing every failure to the spiritual wickedness and manipulation of family members and fellow traders.

    They were also no longer comfortable with the compulsory closure of markets for prayers every Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from morning till noon as it was depriving traders the opportunity to do their businesses. The government shared the complaints of traders that frequent closure was driving away their customers to markets in neighbouring states and even outside the country.

    To checkmate this trend, the government directed each market to decide on a day and time in a month to shut down and hold prayers while encouraging traders to hold their individual prayers. With the measures, the government envisages that all challenges thrown up by the previous order of conducting prayers in markets would have been stymied.

    It is good a thing the state government felt sufficiently worried by the mode, frequency of such prayers and the challenges they threw up that they had to intervene to restore sanity in the markets. All the reasons adduced for banning the prayers in the mode and frequency they were hitherto conducted cannot be faulted irrespective of the sensitivity of issues that impinge on the religious realm.

    Issues bordering on religion can be that sensitive and may have accounted for why the state government appeared to have shut its eyes to inherent challenges and dangers in allowing all markets to be shut for six hours in those three days just to enable traders pray. It is not clear whether that praying order and the shutting down of the markets had the approval of the government before they started being enforced by the traders’ union. It is also unclear how the unnamed preacher emerged to the point of monopolizing all prayer sessions in all Anambra markets.

    Though the state government did not explicitly indicate how the prayers evolved and the process leading to the selection of the offending pastor, the impression one gets is that it had been the sole responsibility of that pastor to hold prayers in all markets in the state. And the three days set aside for prayers were to enable him alternate and superintend over prayer sessions in the major markets in the state. How one pastor was allowed that kind of uncommon leverage in a state with diverse Christian religious denominations including animists and traditional religion adherents remains largely curious.

    But one fact that has emerged is that whoever allowed a single pastor to monopolize prayer sessions in all the markets for that long was vicariously responsible for the abuse the program suffered. Given the sensitivity of religious adherents to their peculiar modes of worship, allowing one pastor to force down on others his own worshipping prescriptions and prayer mode was a time bomb waiting to explode. One is surprised that it took that long before the government came to terms with traders’ dissatisfaction with the situation in the markets.

    It should not be a surprise that much of the complaints that trailed the activities of that pastor had their root in the incongruity in finding the right mix that satisfies the worshipping peculiarities of the various religious adherents he was ministering to. The pastor was accused of ascribing all misfortunes to the spiritual wickedness and manipulation of family members and fellow traders. This cannot go down well with a lot of people even as its capacity to create rift and bad blood among traders cannot be underestimated. He was said to be responsible for the frequent market closures and making a fortune out of it. He may not be alone in this.

    He cannot wield such awesome powers without connivance from highly placed officials either from within the markets’ union leadership or officials of the government. The state government should have gone a little further to unearth how the whole arrangement was conceived and nurtured. Such investigation will definitely expose all that went wrong with that contentious praying arrangement.

    Had consultations been adequately made in conceiving the prayer sessions, it would have struck the organizers to work out a mode of worship with appeal to sensibilities of the diverse denominations being aggregated to pray together. An inter-denominational prayer session involving diverse preachers would have offered a better option. Having neglected that vital consideration, it was a matter of time for the bubble to burst.

    It is little surprising that traders have had to complain not just about the propriety of frequent markets closures but the exploitation and fake prophesies of the pastor that had set families against one another and traders against their fellow traders. The antics of the offending pastor is neither entirely new nor is he alone in it. Many families have sordid tales on how fake prophesies from fake pastors and others in similar mould claiming supernatural powers inflicted incalculable harm amongst them. It is either that someone is holding your luck or there are ancestral curses from forefathers that are vitiating progress among members of the family for which that pastor has the supernatural powers to neutralize.

    I had in this column sometime ago, written about a particular pastor in Owerri, Imo State whose technology in attracting members lay in his claims to neutralizing ancestral curses. He produced an Igbo radio jingle of immense alliterative appeal which he constantly beams on radio stations urging his audience to approach his worship centre to have such curses remedied. You cannot but be attracted to his jingle: Ibibi abubu onu, Bibie abubu onu (neutralizing ancestral curses, neutralize ancestral curses). That has been his selling point. Only God knows how many of the gullible who flooded his worship centre had the touted curses neutralized. Only his visitors can say how effective the pastor has been in making good his claims and the turn around it has unleashed in their lives.

    Your guess is as good as mine. But one thing that remains certain is that the pastor does not neutralize curses for free. That is the nature of abuse religion has been subjected to in the hands of unscrupulous preachers and pastors.

    The danger encapsulated in such false preaching was poignantly underscores by the Federal Road Safety Commission FRSC in its ‘ember months’ sensitization program last year.  The commission had while speaking on the theme ‘safe Driving, Safe Arrival’ told the public to stop believing the existence of blood-sucking demons that kill travellers on the roads during the yuletide as most accidents are caused by human factors.

    More fundamentally, the furore generated by the prayer sessions would have been averted had its authors paid attention to the distinction between matters of ecclesiastical and corporeal realms. Had the state paid heed to St Augustine’s allegory of the two cities-the city of God and the city of man, the current pass would have perfectly been averted. That is the message.

  • Raring to go

    In his swaggering white agbada and sometimes supernova smile, the BOS of Lagos set his cabinet in motion. Many had waited for that moment. In a solemn, sometimes vivacious air, the roll call of the commissioners and special advisers turned the morning ceremony into a foretaste of the years to come.

    The governor called his cabinet “unique in diversity.”  From the experience of Tunji Bello, to the youthful promise of Olatunbosun Alake to  the new voice of a Joe Igbokwe, and my colleague, Gbenga Omotoso, we anticipate a new edge. There are also the women. So, from east to west, the BOS of Lagos is now raring to go. He inspired the team, at once praising and challenging them.

    His speech-making is growing from its initial tentative pace to a relaxed, rhythmic control, his pauses holding that power to tease… For instance, when announcing the portfolios, he brought an air of playful mischief when he announced Bello’s portfolio. Knowing the audience expected Environment, he reversed it and said, “water resources,” and the audience resounded through the hall with “ha!!” He smiled and completed it by saying “and environment.” It is the quality of an orator’s stagecraft.  He has so far run his affairs with stately poise and dignity without airs.

    So, Lagos is unlike some other states in the rear. Governor Sanwo-Olu promises to be on a tear. So much to do, from traffic to environment to the expansion and restoration of infrastructure and education. He knows he cannot be in the rear, but rare. That is the goal he has set and that is the glare he will get.

  • A modest applause

    It is not often that a writer can see his words travel from the page onto the stage of action. Not the playwright’s stage, which is often in the province of fiction; but when a piece of suggestion or observation translates into government action.

    This essayist has enjoyed this rare gift within one month. Not long ago, in the essay, Eye in the Sky, I suggested that the drone as a stealth strategy could radicalise the war on bandits. Barely 10 days later, President Muhammadu Buhari weaponised it as a major policy. Drone in the air, death on earth to goons.

    Barely two weeks afterwards, I suggested that the lanky Timipre Sylva be made the minister of state for Petroleum, and in a short, compelling sway, this column homed in on the former governor’s hefty credentials and competence. Again, Buhari’s ears opened and he picked Sylva to assist him in that ministry of ministries.

    Even the minister of Interior, the ebullient Rauf Aregbesola launched his service with a policy thrust on how to gather intelligence. As if under the spell of In Touch, he said the National Security and Civil Defence Corps would focus on intelligence gathering to complement government agencies, especially the military. In Eye In the Sky, this essayist also called on the government to domesticate intelligence agencies that could help as Nigeria’s private eye, stalkers and whispers in the fashion of Kashim Shettima’s Civilian JTF.  Aregbesola was also borrowing a leaf from himself as governor.  His Osun State stewardship refined the idea of youth mobilisation on many fronts, from agriculture to security. He is bringing that chorus to the centre.

    It is kudos to the President and Aregbesola that In Touch cruises into policy. It detracts from the view of some cynics, who see this essayist only in the light of a bulldozer. In Touch is a two-edged sword. This writer has, for polemical and patriotic standpoints, stirred some bubbles in the polity. And no apologies. In contrast, some can point to a tranquil record of official engagement as well, which has happened unadvertised several times over the years. I am not puffing and huffing like Norman Mailer who wrote, An Advertisement for My Style. As Yorubas say, Mi o sako. Warri people say, I no do yanga. Just stating the facts.

    On grander scales, writers have fuelled rebellions, revolutions, wars. William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper fomented the Spanish-American war. The writer of Uncle Tom’s cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, met American president Lincoln. And the 16th U.S president quipped: “So, you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this war.”

    Just as I predicted Sylva, permutations perfumed the air. Intrigues flared beneath the public glare. Some names were thrown into speculative maelstrom and some writers positioned them as inevitable. Jeddy Agba was seen in some quarters as the minister of oil. But they may have overexposed the man. They did not have In Touch’s prose and polemics but the Agba narrative revealed a basic skein of the ministerial intrigues. Names on the burner became targets of incineration. That may have given Sylva the upper hand since the argument of technocracy and politics favoured the former Bayelsa governor.

    Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) was another factor of speculation. Part of it was the Ambode factor. How could Fashola, the pre-eminent minister, lose his slot to Ambode, a new arm? Many asked. Ambode, according to reports, had lobbied laboriously. Some even said Buhari would pick him to spite the Lagos bigwigs and repay him for going into the doldrums after only one term as governor. Here again, the man was overexposed.  Buhari did not only reappoint Fashola, he also picked another Lagos man and party loyalist, Olorunnimbe Mamora.

    Fashola has two ministries. When he was given three ministries in the first term, he was a cynosure of envy and praise. I designated him three-in-one minister which gained traction more than the bellwether nomenclature. Now, he is given two, some have argued why not one? His typifies the contradiction in the debate over whether we should reduce the cost of governance. With one minister in three, he saved cost. One cost has been added. But power is a unique ministry. The fundamental problem of how the DISCOs and GENCOs emerged has to be tackled. The minister, as Fashola pounded into our ears, has no powers other than policy. Most of it has not been ironed out in the deals with the GENCOs and DISCOs. In the words of Prophet Ezekiel, we have to overturn and overturn and overturn until who deserves to run the shows of the agencies and the rules of engagement. Other than that, nothing can happen in power. We will generate and not distribute.

    Fashola as the Trojan of Works has opportunity to work without let. Eleyinmi and co did not give him money to work for political reasons. The minister, too, would not yield to blandishments and coercion from the lawmakers who wanted him to veer from his constitutional mandate. I hope the new assembly knows what is at stake.

    I am curious about the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management. It is curious. Is it going to take over some of the Vice President’s work, especially the social security part? Or is it bringing in more imagination to welfare?

    Many predicted Godswill Akpabio as Niger Delta minister and Festus Keyamo – Government College Ughelli old boy. In spite of Keyamo’s law acumen, few expected him to be attorney general. Malami had it wrapped up for all his failures. So too for Lai Mohammed for Information and Amaechi for Transportation. Amaechi’s job is pruned, but his hands are full with the rail project, though.

    Sunday Dare was expected to go to Communications, having served as the poster face of the NCC for the past few years. But he takes on Sports, a virile assignment that he has grabbed with gusto. Thinking legacy, he is talking up the revival of the Moshood Abiola Stadium in Abuja.

    In all, the argument that it is a cabinet of politicians, not of technocrats is either ignorant or mischievous. To ignore those who worked for your victory is ingratitude. Yet we forget that many of the so-called politicians came into the fray as technocrats. Is it Amaechi, or Fashola, or Sylva, or Mamora? Or Keyamo or Akpabio? Technocrats became politicians and we forget because political flourish tends to overwhelm the life of a professional.

    Well, it’s time to work. Legacy beckons and there is no excuse.

  • Beyond Ekweremadu’s ordeal

    Condemnations trailing the humiliation of former deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu by some Igbo youths in Germany are clear indicators of public dissatisfaction with the unruly conduct of his assailants.

    As I was writing this article, I had cause to replay a video clip in which the group identified as members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra IPOB chased the former deputy senate president as he ran for his dear life. It was hard for me to control my emotion seeing how the alleged IPOB members almost tore his dress to shreds.

    It then dawned on me that the incident was anything but a civil protest. It was a violent encounter that exposed the life of Ekweremadu to mortal danger. Even the most unrepentant antagonist of Ekweremadu would deprecate the action of that mob irrespective of whatever grievances they have. There are more civilized ways of registering such grievances than the lynch mentality that hijacked the unfortunate encounter.

    Yes, the alleged IPOB members have a right to their grievances. They are also within their rights to convey their disapproval on issues they consider detrimental to the wellbeing of their people to those representing their interests at decision making levels of the federation. They may have seen Ekweremadu as one of those key leaders of substance and decided to vent their anger on him. It is not unlikely they saw him as a target of impact to most poignantly drive home whatever grievances they have against Igbo leaders and the federal government. Ekweremadu thus, denoted a metaphor of all that is wrong with the country in two respects.

    For one, they considered him a symbol of the federal government authority having occupied the number four position in the country. And since they have had a running battle with that government over their agitations for self-determination, attacking him may have been envisioned as an attack on the federal government. Secondly, and as a key Igbo leader, he may have been seen to represent all that is untoward about Igbo leadership. Hence the attack!

    And what are the issues? They were heard during the unfortunate encounter accusing their victim of sitting-by while their relations at home are killed, maimed and raped daily by the rampaging herdsmen without any concrete action by the federal government to tame the scourge. They also complained about the dire economic situation in the country and the mismanagement of our collective patrimony by rapacious and uncaring leaders. They also have issues with situations in the country that forced them out to foreign lands in search of greener pastures despite the enormous resources mother nature bountifully endowed this country.

    Ekweremadu was therefore a symbol of an incompetent federal government and an uncaring Igbo leadership. The traditional dress designed with Nigerian coat of arms he wore to the occasion and the high positions he variously occupied at the senate appeared to have reinforced this perception. These may have accounted for the tearing of his dress as a mark of protest and to make the greatest impact.  And they appeared to have achieved it. Yet, their action went beyond tolerable limits.

    It would have made better sense if they carried placards expressing their grievances. They could also have heckled and prevented him from addressing the audience without physically bullying him to the point of tearing his dress. These would have been better approaches at driving home most strikingly whatever points they wanted to register. The violent manner they went about it casts serious slur on whatever grievances they may have had.

    Yet, we run a grave risk if we ignore the overall import of the encounter. It would amount to throwing away the baby with the bath water if we fail to reason beyond the actions of the protesters or allow their faulty approach to becloud a potent danger we are confronted with. Even as it was widely reported that the IPOB is responsible for the attack, it will amount to a grave error to view the attackers solely from the prism of disenchanted proscribed members of the IPOB.

    Even when their local chapter has sought to claim responsibility for their conduct, there are no sufficient indicators that all those involved in that encounter belong to the organization. The right approach is to view the attackers as Nigerians of Igbo extraction dissatisfied with the way this country is run and the apparent inability of their local leaders to redress the situation. That is the substance of the matter.

    If we must avert reoccurrence of such disgraceful incidents, it is imperative to venture beyond their faulty approaches to the substantive issues that propelled them into such unruly conduct.  The fact remains there is a wide gamut of resentment among the burgeoning population of our youths against leaders at all levels of government.

    This feeling of resentment, despair and frustration is not peculiar to our citizens abroad but constantly fuelled by the suffocating and dehumanizing conditions in which they have had to eke out a living in foreign countries. They easily get angry when they recall the enormous resources this country is bountifully endowed with but which are regularly frittered away by some rapacious and rogue leadership. They get impatient each time our leaders jet out to foreign lands for medical tourism because they left a decrepit health care delivery system behind.

    Our citizens abroad hear of humongous sums of money stashed away in foreign banks by some of those who have had the fortune or misfortune of presiding over the affairs of the country. Some of them are even better informed about the level of stolen public funds hidden in foreign banks than those of us at home. And they get easily irritated by it.  They are piqued at the low rating of the country in all human development indices in spite of the huge earnings that should have catapulted quantum economic development if effectively deployed.

    They are no strangers to the reality that at no time has Nigeria been so divided and fragment along primordial, ethnic and religious lines than now. It worries them that the fears expressed by Chinua Achebe in his book “There was a country’ are quickly assuming the toga of a self-fulfilling prophesy as they may have no country to return. All these evoke feelings of despondency, frustration and despair. And they are spurred to hold our leaders accountable wherever they find them.

    It would be an underestimation of the matter to view the development as the mischievous escapades of a proscribed group of trouble makers. We will be oversimplifying the inherent contradictions at play to consign it to an Igbo affair. It definitely goes beyond that. The reality is that our citizens are increasingly losing patience with the wobbling and fumbling that have characterized statecraft in the last few years.

    They are increasingly getting more disenchanted with frittered opportunities and the reluctance or outright refusal by those in authority to take the right decisions to reposition this country on the path of steady development, peace and progress.  It is a wake-up call on the federal government that many of her citizens outside our shores are tired of business as usual and something urgent has to be activated to redress the situation.

    It just started with the incident in Germany. There have also been threats against other personages beyond the Igbo race of dire consequences should they venture into foreign countries. Nobody can say for certain the dimension such protests will assume in the future. Not with the common chord its message struck with the #RevolutionNow movement, protests anchored by detained Omoyele Sowore.

    More seriously, its message should not be lost on Igbo leaders whose actions, inactions and utterance have tended to compromise the collective interests of their suffering people. Those of them notorious for sabotaging the collective interests of their people for a mess of porridge have a bitter lesson to learn. Governors of the southeast seem to have quickly got the message as evidenced by their open letter to President Buhari on the difficulty in assuaging their peoples’ impatience with the rising insecurity and debilitating economic challenges in the zone. But they have their own roles to play to mitigate the situation.

     

  • Original sin

    It is easy to say Ibraheem El Zakzaky played a fast one on the Buhari administration.  With both legal and medical feints, the man wove out of detention, flew first-class to India, asked for a first-class hotel, evaded a pre-test with a pretext, roped both the Nigerian and Indian government in a conspiracy charge, decided the whole sojourn was a dud, and returned to Nigeria.

    As he touched down on his home soil, he was back where he began his travail: in jail. The rigmarole could have been funny, except that on both sides, we have witnessed a theatre snap the ribs with laughter. But so absurd was the drama that anyone who laughs should be laughed at. It is what Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett designated as Risus purus, a laugh laughing at itself.

    But at the bottom of it all is the concept of the original sin. The federal government thinks El Zakzaky ate the forbidden fruit first. The Islamic Movement of Nigeria thinks Buhari’s men, especially the army, played Adam and Eve. Some observers may think the sins coeval. The forbidden fruit is the breaking of the Edenic purity of the rule of law.

    Buhari’s men time the sins differently. They say the group has been an outlaw forever. They have been predators predating Buhari’s ascent to power. In its flashback, The IMN dates it to a scene in the early days of the Buhari administration when soldiers rammed into their rampart in bursts of gunshots that snuffed out quite a few. It was a revenge action at an earlier act of bravado. The IMN fomented a standoff when its men defied the chief of army staff and his convoy and would not allow them a right of way on a major national artery.

    The IMN thought in the language of Prophet Isaiah. They saw the road as not only a highway but their way of holiness. The army was unclean and should not pass over it. But it belonged to them, El Zakzaky and his faithful, though regarded as fools by those who err.

    The original sin, in other quarters, is more recent. It tracks from the decision of the federal government not to release the IMN leader when the court gave the order. The order has hung over the Buhari administration like Banquo’s ghost. They charged the man to court. They refused to obey court order. It is, in the eyes of many, the original sin that cancels other sins.

    So when El Zakzaky acted defiant in India he was acting under the cover of absolution from his own original sin. He probably believes his sins have been forgiven, and the federal government’s sins have washed away his. After all, without the washing of blood, there is no remission of sin. The soldiers have shed some of their blood. He may even believe he has not committed any sins at all.

    If the law court says to unlock him, then when he went to India, he acted as the law’s free man. When he sought his own doctors, he did it as a free man. He exercised that liberty when he demanded the luxury of a five-star hotel. It’s because that is what an IMN leader deserves when he is receiving treatment. He sees himself as a sort of national leader like the president of Nigeria. So, if Buhari could receive five-star treatment when crippled by an ailment, then EL Zakzaky feels entitled to the same honour and languor of comfort. He was acting in defiance of the administration but in obedience of the court. He has capsized the tale: the jailbird has made an outlaw of the jailer. Like Asa’s immortal song Jailer, in which she says of the jailer, “you are a victim, too.” The Sheikh was saying in earnest, if the DSS would not obey the court order, he (El Zakzaky) would. He felt a triumph at it. He felt he had made his statement. He returned satisfied he had titillated the DSS into a tizzy.

    The DSS did not know the mind of the reticent mystic. They probably thought him naïve. A man who reigns over the minds of men and women? For him they would make an abattoir of themselves, overthrow the system, wrack the National Assembly, pelt stones at the president, throw fear in the hearts of governors and dread in the populace. Such a mystic is cunning, a craft master of the mind. He conned the government and coddled his followers. He slighted the DSS with his sleight of hand. It is a case of counter-intelligence.

    Reports confirm that the man is, in fact, ill. The diagnoses unveiled a raft of afflictions. But the political one was that pellets of bullets had not dissolved in his mystical blood. That is an accusation that the soldiers indeed shot at him and his wife. His followers must believe he is a living miracle. That inspires their hatred and invigorates their rage.

    So if the man took his illness seriously, why did he not forget the politics and accept to be treated? Obviously, the mystic wanted to grandstand more than he wanted to live. He did not want any treatment. He is a mournful comedian, playing a game in which laughter is possible but not permitted, a theatre where he fires his followers with his sense of martyrdom and sways the neutral public his way. The government, too, should have obliged him the doctors he sought under close observation.

    Even if the Sheikh was clever, it was the DSS who made him so. His aura has provoked a lack of cheer in most of the north. He had been a rogue presence on northern highways, a big, irritant gadfly, a cenacle of unrelieved devotees, and an omen around law and order. The law was going to eventually catch up with the fellow. But the DSS lionised him, just as they did the phony revolutionary. He has looked more blessed than he is. He has turned the moral raft upside down. He now looks like the prophet wronged by a profane system.

    He has committed the original sin of culture and faith. He has prosecuted his belief with the reckless conviction of a zealot and subvert. The Sheikh and his group also offended against the law in its original sin with the episodes of brigandage and street disruptions. But on his matter, the federal government has executed a protracted fest of flying in the face of the law by being the law giver in a democracy.

    An original sin is an inlet into other sins. Since this standoff wears on with both sides priming its arsenal and soldiers, we cannot guarantee how this will end. For now, El Zakzaky claims a moral victory with his sect members while the federal government wears the badge of a taskmaster. To Nigerians, the best each side can claim is what the Roman general said after a victory that seemed like a defeat. Pyrrhus said glumly: “Another victory and we are done for.” We seek no further victories, just justice.

    Golden at 75

    Turning 75 is not about being three scores and 15 but about what you scored in those years. Senator Anthony Adefuye has just marked that landmark age.

    While his party beamed with celebrities from political and social circuits with the ageless Sunny Ade singing luminously, few can forget that this Senator has been one of Nigeria’s most consistent progressives, especially in the quicksand politics of the Southwest.

    For the ages, he will count as one of the Trojans who stopped IBB from making this country a hunting ground for dictators. Still spry, agile and engaged, he still has a few more muscles to flex for his fatherland. Congratulations

     

     

     

  • Between Makinde and Ihedioha

    Events in Oyo and Imo since after the elections, recommend the two states to some form of comparison. They have a lot in common in terms of shared characteristics especially since the new governors mounted the saddle of leadership. But they also have their distinctiveness.

    These will come handy in understanding the nature and character of current dispute between governors Seyi Makinde; his predecessor Abiola Ajimobi on the one hand, Emeka Ihedioha and Rochas Okorocha on the other. One significant thing though, is the similarity they share as the two states in the southern part of the country the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress APC lost to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party PDP in the last governorship elections.

    Both states share this similarity. And events since the swearing-in of the two governors seem also to be following the same pattern. But there are sharp departures also. Why are events in the two states seemingly following the same predictable pattern? Is there anything in the style of governance of the two states or the personalities of their former helmsmen that predispose them to the altercations and rancour they have been embroiled in since the change of leadership? Or can it be said as Okorocha has alleged that his current predicament is motivated by witch-hunt or vendetta because he is of the APC stock even when he is still on suspension by that party?

    To resolve these posers, it is vital to identify the issues in contention. What are they? Before we go into them, it is apposite to point out that Oyo and Imo states are by no means the only states in the country where the opposition wrestled power from the ruling party. Neither was such change of baton only to the advantage of the opposition as the ruling party equally benefited from it. So looking at the recriminations between the two governors and their predecessors from this prism could obfuscate the salient and more serious issues of governance that are at the root of the matter.

    Now the issues! Both governors had complained of arbitrary actions and looting of government property in the last days of their respective regimes. We shall look at specific cases of alleged infractions and how the new governors went about them.

    The direction of Makinde’s line of action was set when he declared, “all transactions either contractual or in terms of appointments and promotions between March 11, and May 28, 2019 would be given closer scrutiny particularly because of the obvious mischief that had been introduced into governance within the period”. The period under review falls within the time a new governor had already been declared following the outcome of the last elections.

    In specific terms, there were allegations of last minute promotions and appointments into the states civil service. There was the hurried elevation of about 15 permanent secretaries with scant regard to extant regulations; allegations of looting of government property especially vehicles by officials of Ajimobi’s regime. There were issues also with a plethora of last minute spending and refusal by the Ajimobi regime to cooperate with the transition committee set up by his successor. These were viewed as deliberate attempts to strew thorns on the path to the effective take off of the new regime.

    How did the governor go about tackling them? He did not waste time in reversing some of these promotions including the appointment of permanent secretaries on the eve of the departure of the last regime. Makinde also empanelled a committee on the recovery of assets and properties illegally taken away by officials of the previous government.

    This saw the governor and his predecessor in a diatribe on the propriety of the claims that government properties and cars were looted without regard to extant regulations. Ajimobi had described the allegation as a minor issue claiming that his aides paid for the vehicles they took away in keeping with subsisting understanding. But Makinde countered that they are concerned with only official vehicles carted away without legal instruments.

    The government said most of the vehicles carted away illegally are new and in good working conditions. And they had no issue with vehicles boarded and paid for by officials of the last government. The government has therefore vowed to retrieve all such vehicles and properties. There are also issues bordering on poorly executed contracts and abandoned road projects. These are the issues in contention and have more to do with probity and accountability in public offices.

    And what do we find in Imo State? Okorocha and his aides were not only accused of mindless looting of sundry government property but the clinical manner it was executed was legendary. Overnight, every household item in the government house quickly developed wings and fled as if an army of occupation had just evacuated. Government properties in some other establishments especially conference centres suffered the same fate.

    Okorocha also initiated actions in several fronts in his last days in office to constrain the in-coming government. It was a bazaar of promotions and illegal employments as cronies, relations and accomplishes were given accelerated promotions with some of the letters of appointment back-dated. The former governor was to emerge one afternoon to announce the establishment of six new universities, four polytechnics and two colleges of education on the eve of his departure. Not done, he also proceeded to announce appointments into the commanding heights of those institutions.

    Boards of statutory bodies, agencies and departments were also curiously constituted on the eve of his exit even when he showed strong aversion to these when he held way. When you pair these with his refusal to cooperate with the transition committee set up by his predecessor, what you find is a deliberate attempt to lay landmines against the effective take-off of the new regime. The reasons Okorocha went into frenzy when he realized he was living on borrowed time are not hard to fathom. For a man that had run the government as family estate courting the unenviable record of publicly showing strong aversion to due process, it was not surprising that he saw any attempt to hold him accountable for his actions as an act of vendetta and witch-hunting.

    Besides, his scant regard for due process, gave rise to indiscriminate award of contracts such that the Council for the Registration of Engineering Practice in Nigeria COREN warned that bridges being constructed by Okorocha were “accidents waiting to happen as they had no engineering designs”. Before then, it had become an open fact the roads constructed by that government had earned the sobriquet ‘China roads’- a mark of sub-standard execution.

    Ihedioha like Makinde set up a taskforce to retrieve all stolen government vehicles and properties. He also commissioned integrity tests on those bridges and flyovers suspected to be death traps. Their findings have been quite revealing of the mindless looting and sub-standard projects that hallmarked that regime. The governor also set up a high-powered committee on the six phoney universities and other tertiary institutions. A committee is to investigate the funds of the 27 local governments in the last eight years even as a judicial commission of inquiry into land matters from 2006 to 2019 has been empanelled. Ihedioha also reversed some of the illegal appointments and promotions done in the last days of the Okorocha regime.

    All these have not gone down well with Okorocha and he has bandied allegations of attempts to discredit him. Of recent, he alleged the measures were against the APC and President Buhari just to curry sympathy and cover up the mess he left behind. But the same man had before now alleged that the APC was conniving with the EFCC to arrest him when he leaves office. He had even gone to court to stop such arrest. And since he left office, many properties traceable to him and his family have been sealed by the EFCC.

    Okorocha has serious issues with Imo people. He has issues with the EFCC; he is haunted by his scant regard for due process and rule of law. He is being called upon to justify his actions. He must rise to that challenge, take his destiny in hands and desist from blaming phantom enemies for self-inflicted injury. His fate is not different from those of his former colleagues who saw governance as family estate.

  • Revolution When?

    The story of a revolution can be strange. Sometimes it can start because of pepper like the Yoruba Wars that changed the face of the tribe, even some say Nigeria, forever. Bread can provoke it as in the rumble of the French Revolution that capsized the history of Europe and even civilisation.

    Or the killing of a mere duke as in the Sarajevo potentate. It sparked the First World War that altered the course of the 20th century. Or even because of the svelte vanity of a belle known in myth as Helen of Troy. For her puff of passion, men growled in randy waves and set off a revolutionary conflict. The Poet Homer memorialised it into an epic of the Greek world in The Illiad.

    Nor is the meaning of revolution so easy to understand. When a mere coup happens, or when a king dies, some say it is enough to pass that definitional muster.  Yet on fewer occasions in history do actors in a revolution know they are fermenting a fundamental change. They tend, as historian David Thomson noted, to pursue a narrow goal, maybe to bring down the price of bread as in the French turbulence. But they end up winning the big prize, which is a change of system.

    When they start, the players expect to attain a goal, in their lifetime they achieve a second, but history proves they have accomplished a third. Such is the facile virtue of human life. So when Omoyele Sowore blustered about a revolution, did he really know what he meant? Did the DSS really go to school and studied the ages of revolution? It is one of the clichés of the world. But we know it when we see it.

    The Sowore case was a comedy before the DSS made it a farce. It was like Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in which a servant permitted himself the grandiose self-belief that he could marry the countess. In her case, the countess locked up Malvolio for delusion of grandeur, not a threat to her chambers. In our case, the DSS locked up Sowore, making the Shakespeare’s play to cry for a sequel. Sowore had a mere 33,000 votes compared to Buhari’s millions. So, how come the mighty is afraid of the scanty? It is one of the ironies.

    Another irony is that the DSS is supposed to know if Sowore had the capacity to foment a revolution. Was he armed? Where is the evidence? They arrested him first, and then sought evidence to justify it. We can recall the case of Aikhomu when IBB arrested a certain business mogul. The then IBB deputy announced that the government was going to jail Umana. His press aide Nduka Irabor pointed out he had to be prosecuted first. Aikhomu, acting as though he had acquired new wisdom, quipped: “Yes, we will try him and then jail him.” He did not know he had become at once the prosecutor and judge. In a military era, what did we expect? But in a democracy, that chapter is haunting our DSS.

    Read Also: Sowore urges court to vacate detention order

    Did it occur to them that a man who could not pull an ant’s percentage of Buhari’s voters could not stir the country, a man who is even in crisis in his own party over how he spent election funds? A man who was also suspended by his party for playing monkey with its money? He may be innocent, but the charge hangs over him. So he could not mobilise the party that gave him that small following. When threatens to overthrow a leviathan on a video announcement?

    Again, what was special about Sowore’s? Yes, he uttered reckless words, but they were empty. In democracies, we are stronger when we allow free speech than when we muzzle it. Free speech, especially of the reckless sort, tends to amount to nothing because of the greater resilience of democracy. He has his say, but we all go our ways.

    Did we not witness a few years ago the world-wide Occupy movement, triggered in the United States. Did they occupy anywhere other than the geographic spaces of their protests? Did we not have it here? Did we not see Oby Ezekwesili in her protests? Did she threaten the system? Did Buhari himself not lead protests in his quests to be president? Did he not utter the blood and baboon rhetoric? Did it overthrow the system?

    The DSS cast a vote of no confidence in itself by arresting and lionising the online publisher. It showed that it had no facts to work on. The sort of lack of intelligence has been exhibited in the Boko Haram, in the surge of banditry, in the kidnaps, et al. Rather than focus on where it has failed mightily, it is working up itself and the nation into a meaningless frenzy over a fringe revolutionary. Even when the protests were to happen, it became the news of police impunity rather than the protesters who were probably too few to raise any dust.

    Revolution Now slogan was sweet but impotent. It has made Sowore into a sort of counterfeit Che, with the sense of messianic impatience. He is tapping into a malaise in the land, with hunger, fear and despair tearing apart many homes today. He seems to be making himself into the urgency that John F. Kennedy uttered: “If not us, who? If not now, when.” Hence his “Now.” But revolutions are not a matter of logic. It does not happen because the people are in deep distress, or because it seems ripe. As Lenin noted we can have a revolutionary situation without a revolution. Marx thought his revolution would happen in England or Germany, but Russia held the torch. Nigeria has been ripe for revolution since I was a school boy. It seems riper now, but it guarantees nothing. Revolutionaries must address our joint pains and know how to bring us jointly to treat them.

    The irony is that revolutions tend to happen when the people see that things are getting better. In our case, they are getting worse. As Tocqueville explained, “in a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.”

    It can be in the people’s minds, but it may just be a wish. John Adams said the American Revolution was “in the minds and hearts of the people.” They were fortunate. We are not yet.  When Lenin was in Switzerland,   he had many self-doubts and enemies within the revolutionary circuit. Nobel laureate Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, no friend of Marxists, novelised Lenin’s lonely moments in his book, Lenin in Zurich. Some of the men Lenin did not like he described as revolutionary cretins.

    We may have a lot of cretinism today in the civil rights and revolutionary society in Nigeria. A few of course are genuine. We should not treat them by locking up, but by addressing the concerns of democracy. And just as Fred Hampton wrote, “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail a revolution.” Ask Mandela in his grave.

     

  • Daring nominee

    One of the ministers of Buhari’s second term is Sunday Dare, and it is cheering that he has made it.

    He performed well at the screening, answering questions with ease and intelligence about his performance as commissioner in the NCC.

    He is also a journalist of long standing who played a role for The News magazine in the rough-and-tumble NADECO days.

    A polyglot, he speaks Hausa like a native. We expect him to do well as an ambassador of journalism, to show that journalists are “write na do” and talk na do.”