The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Coalition of political parties

    The shape of competition for the 2019 elections is beginning to unfold with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) by a coalition of 39 political parties.

    Tagged: Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), the group is anchored around the Peoples Democratic Party PDP and a splinter group of the All Progressives Congress APC –Reformed APC which recently announced its emergence as a faction of the ruling party.

    The coalition also has in its fold, the Social Democratic Party SDP, African Democratic Congress ADC and National Conscience Party NCP among others.  Their overall objective is to erect a broad-based coalition that will field one presidential candidate to challenge APC in the 2019 election. They also seek to present common candidates in the governorship, national and state assembly elections with a view to producing the needed constitutional majority to effect changes in the 1999 constitution.

    In this regard, they seek “to promote acceptable core values for the restructuring of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, secure lives and property, rebuild and redirect the nation’s economy back to the path of growth, respect for human rights and put right the country which unfortunately has now been dangerously divided along ethnic, religious and tribal lines”.

    But the APC dismissed the coalition contending that the so-called R-APC is not a faction of their party which remains united under the leadership of President Buhari. Its national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole called members of the R-APC mercenaries paid to cause chaos in the party. At another occasion, Oshiomhole again said he would not lose sleep if the leader of the R-APC is not happy. For him, neither the national chairman of R-APC, Buba Galadima nor the faction he claims to lead is an issue to worry about. Elsewhere, the coalition is viewed variously depending on the divide one is standing.

    Even as the APC leadership seeks to dismiss the R-APC, it is obvious that its current posturing is something to worry about especially as the elections draw nearer. Before now, members of the group operating under the sobriquet N-PDP had catalogued several grievances with a time frame for them to be addressed. Though some attempt was made to hear them out, nothing tangible came out of it.

    Apparently frustrated by the outcome of the negotiations, they transformed to a splinter faction of the APC-the Reformed All Progressives congress R-APC with Buba Galadima as its national chairman. They also made public the names of the national executive committee of the group as well as some of their state chairmen. With that move, it is no longer a matter of doubt that the RAPC has parted ways with the APC. That accounts for attempts by the ruling party to discredit them as mercenaries whose exit offers little consequence to the fortunes of the APC.

    But the picture of the overall strength of RAPC is yet to fully emerge given that some of its key promoters are yet to come public to identify with their course. It is speculated that the Senate President, Bukola Saraki; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, some three governors and a substantial number of legislators from both chambers of the national assembly are part of the game.

    In the days ahead, the full strength of the coalition and what it portends for the coming elections will begin to manifest more clearly. However, their emergence has thrown up a number of issues germane to the coming election campaigns. Restructuring the polity, security of lives and property and revamping of the national economy came top in the package with which they intend to seek the mandate of the electorate. They are also committed to diffusing the burgeoning influence of ethnicity, religion and sundry primordial tendencies that have been in the ascendancy since the current regime.

    There is no doubt issues raised by the coalition vividly capture much of the nagging challenges of this country presently. Restructuring the country can no longer be wished away given that it will not only reposition the nation for rapid development but stave off some of the systemic inequities that have overtime polarized the country threatening its foundation and corporate existence. Incidentally, restructuring was a key agenda in the manifesto of the APC with which it prosecuted the 2015 elections.

    Since after that election, the party has not shown serious commitment to it. Though it did set up a committee on the matter, the action was largely seen as a delay tactics given the increasing popularity and support the agitation is receiving from a broad spectrum of the Nigerian population. For now, it is doubtful the ruling party will activate the processes leading to the restructuring of the country before the elections. The coalition intends to capitalize on the equivocation of the APC on this critical matter to seek votes at the coming elections.

    Given the above, the APC will be hamstrung in promising restructuring given its inability to activate the process since the regime came to power. Even then, President Buhari consistently showed strong aversion to restructuring when he imputed selfish motive as the main reason for the agitation. At another time, he would want the matter be left to the National Assembly. Security of lives and property, increasing ascendancy of ethnic, religious and primordial tendencies and the parlous state of the economy will also count heavily during the coming elections. The coalition will be capitalizing on these challenges to market itself as a credible alternative to the ruling party.

    But it has huddles to scale especially given its commitment to producing a common presidential candidate to face the ruling party in the 2019 elections. How it tends to achieve this and the modalities for it, are still foggy. Will they handpick the candidate or allow all the parties vie for the position under whatever contrivance they arrive at? Is it possible for the PDP to cede that position to a credible candidate from one of the parties to the amalgam? And where will that leave the PDP in the political equation? These are some of the challenges that will confront the coalition as events unfold. Already, a former Minister of Information, Prof. Jerry Gana has unveiled his intention to run for the presidency under the SDP platform.

    From all indications, the RAPC will eventually merge with the PDP if the case it instituted against the APC seeking to be recognized as the authentic leadership fails to materialize.  Worthy of note also is the presence of the ADC and SDP in the coalition. Soon after the national convention of the PDP, some of its aggrieved members led by the duo of Jerry Gana and Tunde Adeniran accused the PDP of some ills and decamped to the SDP.  Curiously, the same Gana wants to run for the presidency under the platform of the SDP which is one of the parties to the coalition. How the coalition intends to harmonize these interests remains a big puzzle.

    And just recently, loyalists of former President Obasanjo’s third force fused into the ADC which is now part of the coalition. This signals the collapse of Obasanjo’s third force as a veritable alternative to APC and PDP. He may have come to terms with the fact that if regime change has to be actualized, it must be through the biggest opposition party-the PDP. That may have accounted for the presence of the ADC in the coalition.

    No doubt, the coalition has many rivers to cross in producing a common credible candidate to face Buhari in the coming election. But that challenge is not entirely insurmountable. The emerging scenario is that of two strong political parties that will act as a check against the other. This is good for the country given the mushroom of registered parties that cannot make any electoral impact. It will also act as a check against one party state which the penchant of politicians to gravitate to the ruling party is inexorably foisting on this country. Our democratic experiment will be better for it.

  • A native returns

    SO, it’s all over. Kayode Fayemi, the donnish fellow with a guttural voice, will now return to the mound he vacated four years ago. Ayo Fayose, the governor as theatre, now retreats either to the shadow of oblivion or ignominy.

    And it was a long way coming. Like the words of T.S. Eliot in his poem The Journey of the Magi, “a hard journey” he had of it. Fayemi crouched, sulked, fought over that 2014 poll. He said he was robbed. Some believed, many doubted. The courts acclaimed the winner.  The erudite former governor seemed to have collapsed into a sort of ennui.

    But still hovering over that dreary dawn were many questions: The electronic evidence of Jonathan’s soldiers in gladiatorial electronic heist.  His political minions in a million lying tales. The birth of stomach infrastructure. Fayose as a feathery impresario and a sort of mythical tale of a returnee to power.

    Fayemi consoled himself with a ministerial toga, but what consolation. He still felt an ache. Anytime I saw him, I saw the ache in a contrived display of self-confidence, and even defiance, the sense of someone deprived. I remember he explained to me over the phone, a few days after INEC released the results, while Fayose still huffed and puffed. He said he had to concede because he did not want any “killing fields.” The ache I think is still not over. He carries it still until he is done. A big meal was at the table, but he still worked himself over the one he did not finish. Now he has the chance again at the table.

    So, while Fayose peacocked and derided him, he answered back, but his voice was somewhat muted. The narrative of stomach infrastructure rose over any rhetoric of his achievements. On my television show on TVC, just before the APC primaries which he gulped handily, I wanted him to go back to his time as governor, the charge of aloofness, of focusing an elite style over what many saw as Fayose’s “common touch.” He was not all that repentant. He had learned his lessons, but he would not sway from his task of obviating poverty.

    He is not the type to stop by a market and help women fry garri, or buy bole at the roadside, or utter imprecations at an old, ailing president. He could not do that even if it meant losing an election.

    But the ache egged him on for over four years, working the grassroots methodically and in silence, a stealth agenda to clobber the great foe of his political life. The same Fayemi who would stay away had been jolted by the necessity of victory into the humility of grassroots work. Franklyn Delano Roosevelt’s biographers have said that if polio did not paralyse him, he might not have been president. The former U.S. president, often called FDR, was too patrician to understand the common folk. Was that what happened to JKF? Was the earlier defeat an asset for his soul and political trajectory?

    But he insists he never lost, and that question remains up till now. How do we agree that he lost all 16 local government areas? But Fayose lost all but four. Yet the difference in numbers were about 20 thousand. What is clear is that what Fayemi had was a victory, not a mandate. That is critical. A mandate is an overwhelming victory. It may not be a landslide, but the difference must be emphatic.

    So, a more of the folksy heartbeat should remain with Fayemi as he remounts the throne. Few people have opportunities for redemption. But shall we say, that the great numbers that Fayemi’s opponent, Olusola Eleka, had was a vote for stomach infrastructure? That means, Fayemi must see a median between his lofty philosophy of governance and the quiet rumblings from society’s ether. Some eyewitness accounts of those who thought Eleka prematurely won chanted in Yoruba, “oju ti owo. Oju ti agbara.” Translation: “shame on money. Shame on power.”

    Yet, we cannot blind our eyes to a common story from reporters. Both sides turned election into a sort of bazaar. Money sprayed on voters. Some are saying that the people voted for the highest bidder. In Ondo, they called it “di’bo ko se’be” – vote and cook a soup. In Ekiti, the refrain was “see and buy.” If it was a battle for the highest bidder, there was no innocent party. The guilty one was our brand of democracy.

    In this age, democracy is still a bourgeois ideology. It lacks the innocence of its beginnings in Athens, a thing lamented by philosopher Hanna Arendt in her classic, The Human Condition. Political scientists say, money is the mother’s milk of politics. So, does it mean that Fayemi won because he outspent Fayose? That may be an oversimplification. But some analysts think, in an ambience of poverty, especially when civil servants had not been paid for many months, money was a great catcher.  So, are we practising cash-o-cracy or buy-o-cracy? Maybe it is one tragedy our babyish democracy thrusts on us.

    Lincoln, perhaps America’s best, often said his best triumph as president was the Emancipation Proclamation. But he could not get it through Congress without bribing. There was, in spite of Lincoln’s great morality, a Machiavellian impulse. We ought to learn from their beginning, not copy, or console ourselves that filth is permitted with the lucre at this stage of our democracy. If that is the way of politics now, it means the new rigging is not to bully the ballot but sully the mind. To rig, first rig the voter’s mind. That is the definition of rigging at source. No bloodletting. No roughnecks bearing guns.

    So, is it possible for Fayemi to ignite the common touch now.  The election shows the majority want it the Fayemi way, perhaps with the proviso that he is less lofty, his voice less granite, his eyes in softer hue.

    Fayose’s desperation in announcing the result was an act of subversion, not permissible in a democracy. It was an admission that he had lost the argument. He has opened the doors wide for his foes to floor him without a fight. He has governed with the principle of the id as official ID.

    Now, Fayemi has a chance to return. It will begin like Jesus’ return to Jerusalem in pomp. But in Shakespeare’s words, “all is well that ends well.” In four years, that is. Will the return of the native look like Thomas Hardy’s novel of that title where the novelist is not sure whether the native’s return ends in a romance or estrangement? Dr. John Kayode Fayemi has the opportunity to write that testament.

  • Barbaric

    The party system in Nigeria is still a baby. Sometimes it appears to have grown into its adolescent years, but it quickly recoils into its cot, squealing and all teary-eyed. Its greatest feature is that it is often undemocratic. But it is undemocratic because of what political scientists call the big man syndrome.

    The big man syndrome hails from our feudal makeup in which kings and princes ride over a fawning and helpless people. Capitalism upended it, but in our country and most of Africa, democracy has not rewarded the individual freedom that helps to nourish a modern state.

    But there is a reason why we have the big man syndrome. It is the big money syndrome, which arises from a milieu of crude money makers based on rent. When money comes in, choice vanishes. That is something that is going on right now in the so-called party of change as regards the delegates system.

    It is one of the landmark actions that Adams Oshiomhole will have to make as the party helmsman as the National Working Committee of the APC meets today (Monday) over whether they should institute direct primaries or go through the indirect one, which is the delegates system. The next test of this action will be the Osun State primaries for the post of governor.

    Some members of the NWC say they want the delegates system, while the others want it to be through direct primaries. But at  bottom is the question as to what is the system that best represents the tempo and temperament of the party. This idea also refers to other parties, including the PDP. The delegates system, in and of itself, is not philosophically anathema. But it is subject to abuse in a society like ours where the big man takes precedence over choice and conscience.

    If it is the democracy of conscience we want, then we should not have a delegates system yet in the country. As a so-called change agent, the APC should not put money over choice. When the primaries are under the delegates system, it becomes not a democracy in this instance. It becomes an oligarchy. A few powerful, tendentious characters corral some men and women who are arbitrarily picked to become deciders of who becomes the party flag bearer for the top office in the state.

    So, it is a unilateral aberration. But what problematises it is that the NWC is not clearly mandated to pick a particular formula. This constitutional agnosticism opens the democratic system to fraud. It becomes the decision of a few men, and often in our society, it is the decision not of a few wise men, but a few foolish men. Put more clearly, it is the decision of a few tendentious men, who want to  cow the system and crown a man who has not felt the heartbeats of the men and women in the lower rungs of the party.

    The APC constitution says in Article 20 (vi) that “without prejudice to Article 20 (ii) and (iii) of this constitution, the National Working Committee shall subject to the approval of the National Executive Committee make rules and regulations for the nomination of candidates through primary elections. All such rules and regulations for the nomination of candidates through primary elections. All such rules, regulations and guidelines shall take into consideration and uphold the principle of federal character, gender balance, geo-political spread and rotation of offices, to as much as possible ensure balance within the constituency covered.”

    The letters of these words point to an openness of decision. But the spirit is unimpeachable. It means the decision must not be rigged by a cabal of party bigwigs. It calls for inclusiveness. How inclusive can it be when only a few men, who have held the party’s artificial jugular, decide for the ordinary man and woman who must be their candidates.

    If money is the centre of this problem, it has other branches. Since money can be received and the receiver can decide to follow conscience, some party chieftains often decide to tie these delegates to all kinds of oaths. These oaths are often diabolical. In not too long ago, a former governor locked his men in an oath. If you picked the money, you also swore to an occultic oath. This is spiritual blackmail. The delegates, often beholden to this society’s aggressive superstition, cower and obey. We cannot forget the image of the party men in a southwest state carrying calabashes on their heads. Is this a modern democracy, or the democracy of the gods, of the daemons of tradition, of men who have caved in to the spirits of the dead instead of the living.

    How do we trust a system to a few men who hail the name of orisha instead of the people when they pick our governors? Some oaths are not less diabolical when the consequence is death by non-supernatural means. The oaths that force the delegates to drink blood of goats, or rams or chicken or, as some have speculated, human blood, also means disobedience is death, or some greater body or psychological harms. The men and women obey because, it is safer to obey than to sacrifice their lives and careers. Democracy suffers and the people mourn.

    It means our politics is beholden to cabals of aggressive spiritual content, and contempt for the people. If democracy is a system of popular persuasion, we need the process to be about the people. Not about a few.

    The NWC has a chance to pick apart a system of barbaric efficiency, or pick the popular will.

  • The football hero

    As the World Cup ends, it is time to announce Nigeria’s football hero. For me, its not Rohr, nor any of the players like Mikel Obi or Ahmed Musa. The hero probably can no longer kick or identify modern soccer formations. But he is a hero nonetheless. He is former governor of Akwa Ibom, Godswill Akpabio. Reason: he has given us our only claim to glory in soccer today: the stadium in Uyo. Not the one in Abuja, which has now shamefully become a political platform rather than a place for athletic display. Nor our darling National Stadium in Lagos with its great memory of players like Haruna Ilerika.

    The hero cannot be Coach Rohr, who did not believe. Months ago, a famous television broadcaster introduced him to me at the airport in Lagos. And I asked him if he did not think we could win the World Cup. He said that was too ambitious. He said some world class teams were too good to beat. He referred to Germany, Brazil, Spain and Argentina. But these teams were routed by Davids who believed. Our Rohr did not believe, so his team did not roar. Croatia, Russia, Sweden, et al, believed. Success is not always about technique. It begins with the heart. Rohr did not instil in our men the heart of a lion.

  • 2019 and Igbo future

    It is not out of place as the 2019 election inches nearer, geo-political zones, groups and individuals are enmeshed in calculations and projections as to how its outcome would affect their political fortune.

    This is more so in a clime where ethnic, religious and sundry mundane considerations heavily impinge on political action and choice. Based on these perceptions, decisions are made as to the particular line of action that would maximize the collective interests of these zones, groups and individuals.

    Often, opinions are also offered by outsiders on the course of action which in their estimation would best serve the collective interests of other groups. Such is the nature of partisan political activity. But those who proffer such opinions must deliver them in the most civil and responsible manner so as not to invade the sensibilities of others. Perhaps, the southeast more than any other group, has always been at the receiving end each time outsiders proffer opinions as to their rational route to the presidency of this country.

    At a rally organized by Governor Rochas Okorocha in Owerri, to drum support for Buhari’s re-election bid, Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Boss Mustapha threw caution to the winds when he said – “2019 is an election that will make or mar the chances of Igbo in Nigeria. I want the Igbo to make a paradigm shift. We have to know that the position of the presidency is negotiable. You can argue from the point of strength and not from point of weakness”.

    Within the context he spoke, the purport of Mustapha’s statement is that unless the Igbo massively support Buhari in the 2019 election, their political future will forever be doomed. Put differently, he is saying that the political destiny of the Igbo hinges on voting massively to re-elect Buhari in his second term bid. That is the most callous and most irresponsible thing to say. The political destiny of the Igbo cannot and does not rest in the hands of any one man or a group of men. It is a matter of divine providence just as the political fate of any other people or group irrespective of their temporal positions in the current political ladder. It will remain an unmitigated insult to the sensibilities of the Igbo race for any person to seek to tie their fate to how they respond to the re-election plan of Buhari. Where the Igbo will be tomorrow and in years to come is a composite of so many factors including the resilience and determination of their peoples despite whatever temporal constrictions imposed by events of today.

    Mustapha like Okorocha who organized the rally, is within his rights to canvass support for his boss. But it would have made more sense if he predicated his campaign on perceptible indices in the last three years of Buhari’s regime and efforts of his government to accommodate and give a sense of belonging to the people of that zone. That would have served as a veritable litmus test of what they should expect when next time he comes around.

    Cajoles and veiled threats as to the calamity that awaits the Igbo should they fail to vote for Buhari, invade the sensibility of the average Igbo. Curiously also, they seem to convey an air of finality as to the possible outcome of that election. Yes, the Igbo legitimately desire the presidency as one of the beacons on which this country was erected. Since it is all about control of the huge resources of the federal government in the prebendal sense, they also need the advantage of such awesome powers to satisfy the same objective for which some sections will not let go their hold on power.

    To that extent, the Igbo are within their rights to seek a shot at that highest political position in the country. They are also not in short supply of a surfeit of qualified and competent human capital that can redirect the rudderless ship of this country away from the precipice.

    It is however, a different thing altogether if their ascendancy to that office approximates the best route to their collective good in this country. As desirable and attractive as that office is, the future of the Igbo does not and cannot lie in its occupation. In fact, an Igbo president will be so engrossed trying to appease other groups that his race may end up short-changed. If he attempts to address some of the misgivings of his ethnic group, the level of conspiracy and acrimony it will generate, will be such that can even see him out of that office. Lt Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, the first Igbo officer to occupy the office of Chief of Army Staff decades after the civil war, had a sour taste of this when a phoney group sprouted to accuse him of ‘Igbonizing’ the Nigerian army even as the reverse was the case. He was also accused of attempting to avenge the killing of Igbo people during the civil war when he deployed troops to combat the Boko Haram insurgency. Today, we know better. A president of Igbo extraction is bound to suffer more of such organized blackmail to prevent him from doing anything for his people. Igbo will end up a victim of reversed discrimination. Former President Jonathan can also tell his story in this regard.

    I do not see an Igbo president who will surround himself with members of his nepotic class and get away with it. It is also neigh impossible for such a president to appoint virtually all his personal aides and heads of the commanding heights of the security architecture from his geo-political group. The Igbo ethnic group stands to gain little from that except the name that one of theirs has been there. It will neither put food on their tables nor better the lot of their kinsmen just as the north has remained largely poor despite the several years its parasitic political elite has held power

    Yes, members of the ruling party in the southeast and elsewhere are at liberty to invent reasons why the zone should vote for Buhari next year. Such reasons should include but not limited to actions, programmes and projects of the president in the southeast. They should also capture the disposition of the president to them and their perception of it. If the zone getting the presidency after Buhari offers the greatest selling point, they are free to hold to it

    My worry is that it is based solely on mere arithmetic calculations rather than credible and supportive indices. The trite calculation is that if Buhari goes for a second term, it will offer the Igbo the shortest route to the presidency. On the other hand, it will take the Igbo eight years should another political party ascend the saddle. Good arithmetic but it ends there! The issues to contend with both (endogenous and exogenous) are complex and do not lend themselves to such simplifications.

    The best test for sustaining such claims should start with the actions of today. It should start with how accommodative Buhari has been of the interests of that zone and their position in his appointments including the commanding heights of the nation’s security. It should reflect in his current programmes and projects in that zone. These are the basic statistics for the campaign and not such highly elusive and contentious issues as prospects of ascendancy to the presidency.

    Even then, a president from that zone may be of little help in assuaging their feelings and overall aspirations with extant limitations of the Nigerian federal order. Subsisting structure of the Nigerian state will continue to pose a serious inhibition to the full realization and maximization of their potentials, the number of times the southeast is allowed to occupy the presidency notwithstanding. What is required is a structure that is fair and equitable and allows the various groups to realize their full potentials and aspirations without constrictions by systemic inequities. They neither demand nor need preferential treatment. They only seek a level playing ground for all citizens.

    Unfortunately, vested interests that reap from the convoluted and defective order will not allow reason prevail. The key issues that would form the central thrust of campaigns for the 2019 elections are: the unity of the country, national security and economy. Buhari will have to contend with these rather than the tale by the SGF laced with sound and fury but signifying practically nothing. 2019 can make or mar the political future of Nigeria and not just that of the Igbo. Igbo future

  • Lalong and security restructuring

    It is ironic that Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong is faced with a storm, despite his philosophy of peace.  He rushed back home from the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Convention in Abuja following June mass shootings in which hundreds of people were reportedly killed in the state, despite the presence of  a special military taskforce in charge of security, Operation Safe Haven. The shocking bloodletting in Barikin Ladi, Riyom and Jos South Local Government Areas has been attributed to   renewed antagonism between farmers and herders.

    It is noteworthy that President Muhammadu Buhari acknowledged Lalong’s positive role when he met leaders of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in the North at the State House on July 5. Buhari observed: “We must not forget that the same Plateau State which has been crisis-ridden for years has in the past three years been celebrated for its peace. The governor’s hard work for peace and the presence of the military’s Operation Safe Haven must have had some impact.”

    Buhari drew attention to three special military intervention forces in troubled zones:  Operation Safe Haven to secure Plateau State, Operation Whirl Stroke 1 (OPWS) to secure Benue, Taraba and Nasarawa and OPWS 2 to secure Zamfara and Kaduna States. “These forces are supported with investigative and intelligence gathering capabilities from the Nigeria Police Force, Department of State Services and other agencies,” he added.  Obviously, the scale of military intervention is a reflection of the intensity of the security crisis.

    It is understandable that the latest mass killings in Plateau State intensified the question of state police and the search for an answer.  In a reaction, Governor Aminu  Tambuwal of Sokoto State called for a review of the country’s  security structure while  opening a meeting of the  National Executive Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Sokoto.

    Tambuwal argued: “Whether we like it or not, there is seeming justification for state police and there is seeming justification for state governments to have some measure of control over security personnel. You call the police commissioner and that call is ignored is unfortunate and unacceptable.”

    Just before the recent Plateau tragedy, Zamfara State Governor Abdul’aziz Yari made a tragic observation:  “We have been facing serious security challenges over the years but in spite of being governor and chief security officer of the state, I cannot direct security officers on what to do nor sanction them when they err. As chief security officer, the nomenclature is just a name.”

    Lalong is also in this category. What is a chief security officer without power over security?  Lalong told journalists after a meeting with President Buhari:  “We are all concerned about the killings…This issue of killings must stop…No governor will sit down and encourage or allow crisis. Even by omission, if you see it, you must address it squarely.” Given the current security structure, Lalong is faced with a clear security handicap.  In other words, security restructuring may well be the solution.

    Indeed, security restructuring is an inevitable aspect of political restructuring. In 2016, former Inspector-General of Police (IG) Solomon Arase had painted a picture that showed just how under-policed the country is. He had said in an interview: “When you say the number of policemen we have is 370,000, you have to take into consideration that we have traffic wardens, civilian staff, medical doctors, engineers and drivers. If you put those ones together and minus it from the 370,000, it will come down greatly. So, it leaves us with few operational policemen who we can give firearms to.”  Considering that Nigeria’s population was estimated at 178.5 million in 2014, the extent of the existing policing gap is extensive.

    More fundamentally, Arase had tried to dance around what may well be the primary problem. He had said: “On the recruitment of new 10,000 policemen that was ordered by the President, we want the recruitment to be state-based because we want to encourage community partnership. If we want to encourage community partnership, for instance, somebody from Kano who understands the language and culture, as a constable, he will be able to serve better and gather information in that area after training instead of taking somebody from Lagos who does not understand the culture to go and dump him in Kano and then take a young boy who has not passed through Kaduna before to be dumped in the South-East. So, we want to discourage those things and ensure that it is local government and state-based by the time we recruit.”

    It is unclear whether Arase’s successor and current IG Ibrahim Idris Kpotum is thinking along similar lines. But thinking along those lines isn’t enough.  The truth is that no matter how hard the authorities try to invent a substitute, there is no real substitute for state police properly so called.  The concept of state police goes with federalism properly so called, which means that Nigeria’s version of federalism is an oddity because it doesn’t accommodate state police, among other essentials.

    Following the Plateau killings, it is interesting that the National Assembly endorsed state police on July 3. The Senate and the House of Representatives described the country’s security system as a “failed architecture,” and backed the call for the establishment of state police to tackle the rising killings allegedly by herdsmen across several states. The two chambers of the National Assembly agreed to amend the constitution for this purpose. Specifically, the Senate has asked the Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution led by the Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, to present an amendment bill within a specified period.

    Of course, it is one thing to talk about state police and it is another thing to take action in the direction of completion. It is on record that the National Assembly rejected a proposal for state police three times in the past.

    To present the big picture, the Plateau problem further illustrates the necessity for a federal arrangement that will give a governor like Lalong the powers to pursue public peace, prosperity and security to the best of his ability and without hindrance by a flawed federalism.

  • The “Rs”

    The birth of the Reformed APC has set a problem for those interested in the clarity of language, especially the spoilt brat called the adjective. I say so, because this new incarnation will collide with the remainers in the party. After the wave or waves of exit from the APC as we have known it, the faithful to the old order will describe themselves with another adjective: real. They will be the real APC. They won’t need to prefix theirs, but they may feel the compulsion to distinguish themselves.

    Purists of the language always warn writers and practitioners of the writing craft to beware of adjectives. They often denote the failure or inadequacy of the noun to express their thoughts or reality. With the imperatives to deploy the adjective to describe that APC is authentic – another adjective -, it is clear that the noun is in trouble. APC now stands more as a word than an acronym, just like GOP in the United States. So APC is, for sure, in trouble both in word and fact.

    The bigger problem will be for the R-APC because it has no choice but to set itself apart by using the ‘R.’ But we cannot escape the contest of ‘Rs’ as the electorate tries to come to terms with what version or what group of the party represents their interest.

    The APC that elides an ‘R’ will start with an advantage, because it is more familiar. Unless, as the speculations go, the R-APC is a stage in the metamorphosis of the disgruntled in the party. They may morph into another group or a coalition of groups.

    If that happens, APC will wriggle free of the ‘R’ wrestling, and also say goodbye to any adjective to say who they are. The adjective could be very powerful, when excavated with the imagination. For instance, Poet Samuel Coleridge says “anticipation is more potent than surprise.” The word potent comes away fresh and unexpected. But we better remember his “water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink.” No adjective. When Soyinka wrote the lines in one of his poems, he says, “You must set forth at dawn/I promise you marvels of the holy hour.”

    The bard appropriates, in a seizure of genius ,’holy’ from the religious or sacerdotal order and brings it to the secular ritual of existence. But the APC folks may want to learn from John Keats when he wrote the famous first line: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” He had first written: “A thing of beauty is a constant joy.” His editor knew it needed redemption. Until after many toils and many days, they found the immortal lines by ejecting the adjective “constant.”

    I am sure the R-APC knows it cannot remain so for long. Just as the nPDP blossomed into APC. But meanwhile, they will want to sell themselves as the authentic APC because they believe that the real APC is not the APC of their dreams but the reformed because the party has lost its way.

    The Real APC will say they are the original and there is no point sullying the honey as it is tapped from the hive, however unclear and dirty it looks. There is no upending the original.

    So, a Saraki, or more, really, an Eleyinmi, would say his Senate clipped a wayward presidency. A Kwakwanso will yell his role in birthing the party for Kano before a Ganduje and his fellow hunters drove him, out of ingratitude, out of town. But the R-APC is merely a megaphone today. Its backers seem dead from the neck up. Speculations are running riot, but Galadima, their stalwart, is the only one with a throat on the hilltop. But Galadima is not a gladiator, but the garment seems bigger than his puny frame. We want to hear the real voices of the R-APC. But their supporters urge patience. Party intrigue is about strategic daring, not an extravagance of claptrap threats and boasts.

    What if they are going nowhere but want to throw the so-called real APC in a wrenching, gladiatorial wrestling-in-the-mud? They may not want any coalition. After all, that will mean they are being swallowed up, their idiosyncrasies lost in the mesh of the new alliance. Will they want to merge with the PDP, still wracked with discord and the flavour of big egos? The real contest is the search for who will overthrow Buhari and win the polls next year.

    We have a list, but only a few have declared they belong to the R-APC, or are even ready to challenge Buhari, who is presumably the APC nominee next year. What they are is not R-APC but the shadow of the nPDP. That group of glorified renegades whittled Jonathan’s PDP with their exit and embraced the APC, strengthening its appeal and giving it moral heft.

    But how reformed is the R-APC? Maybe the word disgruntled better captures their sentiment. Yet they were able to articulate their grievances. Pity none of the grievances really looked with insights some of the obvious failings and failures of the Buhari administration. They merely focused on patronage. Some offices they did not get, some contracts they did not corner, some egos that were left in the lurch of consultations.

    It was about what they could get. It is a reflection of how low our politics has gone that a major political upheaval is about to take place not because of what the masses have failed to eat but what the politicians want to grab.

    I had expected some rigour as they broke down where Buhari has erred. Rather than pork, they could have referred to contracts that created ripples and storms, especially with regards to the NNPC. Or about appointments, they could have looked with jaundiced wisdom at the ethnocentric charges. Or at the economic travails of the day. Or proffered solutions on security. They are party malcontents at the moment, until we see any party wheel horse abandon Buhari and pitch their tents with them.

    They have tried of late to take advantage of the bungling of the herder crisis, but they have not come with a solution. There is not an ideological breakaway, the sort we see in the west with the birth of the Lib Dems or the revival of the Labour Party in Britain, or the rejigging of the Republican Party in the U.S. under the populism of Donald Trump.

    Hence alliances are easy in Nigeria. You are not asked if you believe in their idea. They want to know if you clutch a talisman of victory.

    They failed to call themselves nPDP but R-APC, showing that they have identity crisis. Should I stay or should I go? That’s the quandary. What face are we seeing? Is it the new, improved PDP or the reformed APC? The real one will be known in good time just as Odysseus returned home in disguise. He became known when he had almost killed all the suitors who wanted to take his wife when he was away.  Will the disguise work for R-APC? Or will it look like Napoleon, who pulled off a spectacular escape from Mount Elba prison but was recaptured at Waterloo, humbled, impotent, detained till his death behind the windswept cliffs of St Helena, where he probably died of poison or neglect.

    So, R-APC is still bugged down and boggled by its identity. We shall know in time if its adjective is a plague or blessing. But they should read Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague, where an epidemic disappears at the time a writer perfects a sentence by removing the adjectives.

    So, let’s see whether the adjectives disappear or it will be a battle of the “Rs”.

    Meanwhile, both APCs are entitled to their own adjectives.

     

  • Renewed Plateau killings

    When shall government and its security agencies evolve new approaches to halt the insurgency of Fulani herdsmen? This question has once again, been brought to the fore by last week’s massacre of innocent villagers in three local government areas of Plateau State by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

    As typical of such attacks, more than 100 people were killed, many more wounded and properties of inestimable value destroyed. Video clips trending in the social media showed truckloads of those butchered in the most callous and despicable manner. It was a scene of surviving women, children and the aged fleeing their ancestral homes to escape the superior gun power of the herdsmen.

    Curiously, the reaction of the federal government and its security agencies has followed the same predictable fashion of inability to prevent the attacks only to deploy men and ammunitions after much harm has been done. Then, we are treated to condemnations, condolences, excuses and rationalization.

    True to type, the government fingered geographical and economic indices as contributory factors to the herdsmen/farmers clashes. It went further to accuse politicians of taking advantage of the situation. Before now, media aides to President Buhari had on two different occasions also accused politicians of sponsorship of most of the attacks. The allegation however, fits into the hallmark buck-passing and refusal to take responsibility of the government unless they unmask the said politicians.

    Yet, in a statement the presidency released after the Plateau massacre, they said they had information that 100 cattle was rustled by a community in Plateau and some herdsmen killed few hours before the invasion of the villages and the subsequent loss of lives and property.

    By implication, cattle rustling and killing of some herdsmen by the said Plateau community were the immediate causes of the well coordinated attacks and subsequent killings. It was a reprisal onslaught. Sadly, even as the government was fully armed with this information especially given the temperament and antecedents of the herdsmen, it never took pre-emptive security measures to forestall the impending attack.

    At the centre of the latest clashes and killings are alleged acts of criminality by some Berom youths. These criminals allegedly rustled some cattle belonging to the herdsmen and killed some of the herders. Due perhaps, to the inability of security agencies to apprehend the criminals and recover the lost cattle, the herders reorganized and went on revenge attack. Sadly, most of those killed have nothing to do with the alleged criminality of the rogue youths.

    It is the duty of government to fight such criminal tendencies, apprehend the offenders and make them face the full weight of the law. Our laws do not provide for self help in redressing such infractions no matter the level of pains they inflict on the innocent. Three hundred cows for 100 lives; meant for each three cows, one human life has been dispensed with. That shows scant regard we assign to human life. Very sad! What of the injured and properties destroyed?

    The development has opened a new chapter to some of the claims hitherto bandied regarding those responsible for the killings. President Buhari had on a number of occasions sought to absolve the herdsmen of complicity in the killing by making copious references to traditional herdsmen whose only weapons consist of sticks and probably machete to cut foliage to fed their cattle against the ones wielding sophisticated weaponry. At another time, he placed the blame on armed bandits trained in Libya by the late Gaddafi. These excuses also featured during his last visit to US president, Donald Trump.

    But from what we have now been told and public suspicion all along, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria MACBAN, has the capacity to levy war on any community that incurs its wrath. This is more so, as they have well established branches in virtually all the geo-political zones of the country. Whether they are the ones directly doing the killings or some other groups do it on their behalf as has been suggested, they cannot escape culpability. That the killers strike each time herdsmen are aggrieved is at the centre of the accusation that the latter are the masterminds. It should be a big puzzle that apart from the herdsmen, no other group, organization or tribe muzzles the awesome capacity to battle indigenous people in their ancestral homes and escape unhurt.

    Before now, there have been calls for the leadership of that association to be arrested and arraigned for the serial killings by herdsmen. Some have gone further to rightly route for its proscription given the devious technology of the herdsmen to levy war on indigenous populations. Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom had severally pointed accusing fingers at that association as the brain behind the killings and demanded the arrest and prosecution of its leadership to no avail. He had repeatedly told who cared to hear that he knows the sponsors of the killings.

    Fulani herdsmen have also featured regularly in Global Terrorism Index report. It is rated the fourth deadliest terrorist group coming after ISIS, Boko Haram and Al-Shabab.  Despite this criminality profile, the government has been ambivalent in admitting the potent danger which their activities pose to the peace, unity and security of this country. What we find has been a curious attempt by the government and its functionaries to rationalize the killings.

    It is however, one thing to rationalize the causative factors for the killings arising from farmers/herders clashes and entirely a different kettle of fish to evolve effective therapeutic responses to stem the scourge. That is where the government has appallingly been serially found wanting, fuelling feelings that it has more than a passing interest in the killings. What interests do such rationalizations serve: stem the tide or escalate the killings?

    Each time the government or its official attributes the clashes to geographical factors, anti-open grazing laws and blocking of grazing routes, the impression is that of justifiable reasons for the clashes. Little wonder the killings have continued. There could be tangential connection between these and the clashes. However, what purpose is there in regurgitating them each time the killings occur instead of focusing on why those killers serially escape the prying eyes of our security agencies?

    That is the key issue. The killers usually come in their hundreds with sophisticated weapons; wreak havoc and disappear without any trace. Yet, they operate in states where indigenous people dominate. How possible is that without some connivance? There must be something in the current security arrangement that allows that to happen. It must be tinkered with to reflect the heterogeneity of the country.

     

     

     

     

  • Are they spirits?

    I must first bow to the Imam who saved about 262 lives in a village during the barbarous episodes in Plateau State. He granted an interview to BBC in pidgin and was able to stay off the beasts of plunder and murder by denying that he was hiding Christians under his holy shelter. The village, known as Ingha Yelwa, had fallen under the demoniac wave of slaughter.

    About 79 bodies were buried that ignoble day in just that village as part of the bloodletting that, in some accounts, ran into more than 200 fatalities. If that story is true, he must be the epitome of the Nigerian that this Federal Government has failed to imagine or conjure among his defence team. A team chockful of dynamites of fanatics and incompetents.

    I also refer with praise to the template set by Simon Lalong, Plateau State Governor, for co-existence between the Fulani and other ethnic groups. It has worked for most parts with relative quiet and copied by some other states. Only a few reports here and there of collapse into bloodletting. But it developed a strain and we saw the fatalities. Such arrangements require good faith from all. Plateau is not an island, and where its neighbours fall under the spell of such pestilential inanity of bloodshed, such tragedies must occur. The constitution makes governors helpless, yet the Federal Government acts with impotence. Hence Zamfara State governor resigned as chief security officer.

    Not long after the Plateau mayhem, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association came with two voices. The one saying that the dead deserved it for rustling cattle, and the other rebutting it in cowardly, condescending language. In the rebuttal, they shifted focus to the other group known as Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore and some other shadowy bodies. They implied the other bodies may be cradling the killers. They claim they are innocent. Even as they mounted their defences, the president visited after his vice president in an unprecedented show of concern.

    This is no time for symbolism. This is the time for truth. Bloodshed has become routine in my country, and it is foolish for anyone to think that solution is at hand from the visits by the two men. They have failed to change the security architecture or fish out the killers before the courts. While we were waiting for him to sack his inept, bigoted security team, he signed off the deployment of permanent secretaries.

    Not along after that, the Berom have announced that Fulani herdsmen have flushed them out of 52 of their villages. In the same breath, one Abdullahi Bodejo of the Kautal Hore, said the Fulani own lands all over Nigeria.

    The Federal Government has demonstrated no interest in solving this crisis. First, if the villages of Nigerians are under colonial occupation by marauding Fulani, it means these killers are not spirits. They are waiting there to be caught, arrested and prosecuted. Yet we have a minister of defence with a crude, unrelieved caliphate mentality. The Inspector General of police who should be sulking in retirement disgrace defied his own president by disobeying his orders and bragging about it. The president did nothing.

    Our chief of army staff does not understand how armies operate in the 21st century. The team is lopsided to the north, yet it is called a Nigerian security team. This is a travesty.  So, why are the marauders basking in other peoples’ villages, lounging in their homes and cowing their churches to their cow lifestyles, feasting with epicurean gloating on their farm crops.

    The president said it was unfair to say that he has been silent on the crisis. He probably mistakes the jejune, soulless press releases of his spokespersons as his voice. If his voice has been loud enough, the marauders would have heard. He is an executive president, not a rhetorical president. It is not his voice we need. We need him to act. By leaving the security chiefs intact, it means he is happy with their job. Well, when they kill innocents in Plateau, Taraba, Zamfara, Adamawa, Nasarawa, Benue, et al, it is not good enough. They are  bumbling, never-do-wells as guarantors of our security.

    Recently a crop of young Christians killed a herdsman in cold blood. He was quickly sentenced to death. Over 2000 children, women and men have been despatched out of this world by the herdsmen. I don’t know of any case in court. Some 22 men have been arrested over the Plateau killings. I have heard nothing about a court action.

    The Miyetti Allah rival groups control most of the cattle men in the country. If they are sure the killers are not their men, they should clarify who are the killers. Their defence that they did not back the killings does not convince even the gullible. The position that the Fulani does not forgive or that they will revenge the killing of one man with a hundred or cattle with a whole village is not a new thing. They and their members have said this in the past. So, when cattle are rustled, they exchange human blood.

    From all accounts, the MACBAN as well as the Kautal Hore have always in the past two years been able to explain why the killings happened. Yet they protest their innocence. How did they know? Why did they not stop them or report their grievance for official response? The goons know that once they undertake their killings, there would be no consequence. And they have been proven right, even in the case of the Plateau where no one has been charged to court over a week after it happened.

    The claim that they are not Nigerians, or that they have Nigerian accomplices are charges we are waiting for. But when they are not identified by names, as Oby Ezekwesili has asked, or their biographies revealed so we know where they come from, then there is official complicity. These men are fanatics with delirium in their eyes. They are not human but savages. How can a modern government shield or coddle savages!

    What is clear is that we have terrorist organisations in Nigeria. If MACBAN says it is not them, have they been formally investigated? No evidence about that. What of the other groups? MACBAN seems to know them from their assertions. So what are we doing about flushing them out and telling us whodunit?

    The lands acquired only reminds us of Hitler’s Lebensraum, where he craved with a bloodthirsty eye for a living room for the white race. Is that not what is going on with villagers routed from their own homes?

    It is obvious these men are not spirits. But they are like flies humming over our meals because they know we have no hands and the man feeding us with spoons does not care if the flies drop their body poisons on the food.

    On the surface, we are in a state of war. But the attackers see it as conquest. The victims see it as tyranny. The government is full of excuses.

     

     

  • Big man, big brain

    It looked like eternity that morning when we resumed for the second term in class one at Government College, Ughelli. Mr. Asoro, our class teacher, was making a rollcall and when it was the turn of the smallest guy in the class, he said, “Ehimare Braimah, small boy, small brain.” He said it tongue-in cheek. Braimah had topped the class in the first term. Decades later, Ehi Braimah is still in the skies. This week he will be installed as the 58th president of the Rotary Club of Lagos, the oldest and perhaps most storied club in Nigeria.

    Braimah, who later earned his degree from the University of Benin, has been a big factor in the advertising and public relations world, listing macquee companies in his clientele and bringing to us many vintage shows that have delighted Nigerians, including Gulder Ultimate search.

    Congratulations Ehi, and more cheers as you keep aloft. I now call him big man, big brain. He is no longer the skinny kid, even if he still maintains an alert mind.