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Category: Monday

When did God become man?

Not many expected the sort of headline that arrested the front pages of the newspapers on Sunday. Pastor Enoch Adeboye retires. He seemed, for many, eternal on that holy couch. Every household has become accustomed to the even keel of his voice, his equable temperament, his resonance as a raconteur, his unruffled visage, his “let somebody shout hallelujah”…

For lay and faithful, Christian and Muslim, atheist and agnostics, it is first the surprise and later the why. The why because he did not step down of his own freewill. This is not the sort of retirement that swished the former Pope out of our holy ken. Or the sort that made Apostle Paul to declare to his mentee Timothy that he had finished his work and awaited the “crown of righteousness.” It is also not the example of Prophet Samuel who poked any of his flock to say it if he erred in any way during his stewardship or whether he gave or obtained bribe.

This was the case of a state coercing a bishop to step down. The state versus the church. Adeboye stepped down, but only in the Nigerian church. We are still left with a cloud of ambiguity. He becomes spiritual leader. Does it make him also the spiritual leader of his successor in Nigeria? The church will unfold that dynamic in due course, or it will unfold itself in the relations between the two persons.

The matter is just beginning to brew. How come a law comes into place to determine how spiritual authorities determine their leaders and how long they are permitted to lead the flock? The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is the source of all this. It categorises churches with all non-profits and requires the leaders to stay in office for a specific period and step aside.

It is a case of man playing god with its institutions. It calls to mind the question asked by famous theologian and philosopher in the Medieval Age: “When did God become man?” Peter Abelard, the castrated upstart of that age, was not referring to the friction of church and state directly, but the echoes are not mistakable. The FRC may say an Adeboye, Oyedepo, Kumuyi, et al, have come to the end of the tether as leaders of the organisation they founded. But a feeling creeps in that the state is playing god over God.

The theory of the Two Luminaries in the Middle Ages bears example. The Catholic Church was the sun and the Holy Roman Empire was the moon, although it was cited then that the “holy Roman Empire was neither Roman nor Holy.” In our case, the church is the sun, the brighter light, and the Church the moon, the lower illumination.

But the Romish Church then abided in an era of ecclesiastical dominance. Today, the secular outweighs everything, including the spiritual. The church leaders have also quite often quoted Paul’s epistle to the Romans that everyone should be subjected to the “higher powers.” Even Jesus in addressing the question of loyalty to state asked his followers to see Caesar’s coin. But he said, rather enigmatically, “give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” what is Caesar’s and what God’s?

I have also been rather uncomfortable when our pastors cite Paul almost uncritically. The same Paul asserted that we would rather obey God than man. So, if one of these mainstays says that they would not step down and God had not spoken to them, what shall we say? Some may want to wring their arms with their assertions about subjection to state.

But Christ was clear: “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” Now, a conundrum brews. How that will play out is still in the womb.

But this FRC law seems peculiar to Nigeria. No one forces the Pope to step down. Nor any of the big church leaders in Europe or the United States. John Hagee has led his church for over 20 years. So did Graham, etc. The archbishop of Canterbury steps down at 70 years.

Some have argued that the problem with our churches is that they are run like monarchies. The overseer is the accountant, chief security officer, chief educationist, contractor, et al. His is part businessman, part prelate. When he sets up a board, it is no more than a sea of rubberstamp heads, eager to bow to the visions or orders of the leader.

This is different from the story of the counterparts in Europe or U.S. Even if they founded, they are subjected to a rule of law. And if they overplay their hands, they will face great revolt, even when they sin a sin unto death. The society also rises in righteous anger and the church leader cedes authority.

Those checks are not here in Nigeria. But is that the business of state? If the blind leads the blind, Jesus says, both shall fall into the ditch.

But when we look the Bible, not many of the men of God lived so long as stewards. Moses did, but he started late, and died with his vitals still intact. God took Enoch, ferreted Elijah away, allowed Paul, Peter and others to be killed in their prime.

These people were also working against the law of the land. Jesus was crucified because he was a revolutionary, calling his followers to place family lower than God’s people and naming himself the saviour with all its implication for revolution. Yet he declared that his kingdom is not of this world. If it were, his servants would have prevented him from the axe of the crucifixion.

So, the tension abounds. Where does the church fight and where obey?

That matter stands in the middle of the FRC rule. Many will miss these church leaders. The dapper Oyakhilome and his epistle of the sovereignty of grace. Part political, part evangelical Okotie. The prudish sobriety of Kumuyi. The apostolic brio of Oyedepo. The pugilist in Bakare. The genteel flow of Adeyemi’s sermons.

This will imply the birth of a new generation. Will they rise up to their founders? That is to be seen. On a secular plane, historians have said that the layer below the American founding fathers was peopled by far lesser men. They had nothing of sublimity and heroism of Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, etc.

The classes of Adeboye havemade their followers acclaim them, at times, like some followers said of Paul: “The gods have come down in the likeness of men.”

We look forward to whether and how the leaders comply with the FRC. Will they accept the church as the better luminary or the lower? Whatever the answer, they will be haunted by Abelard’s question: When did God become man to determine when a pastor should quit the pulpit. Or when did man become God to do same!

January 9, 2017
Ambode onstage

A December 11, 2016, performance by LUFODO Productions at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, was gripping enough to hold the attention of Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. After seeing a play titled Heart beat The Musical…A New Beginning, Ambode was quoted as saying: “I never believed I could sit down for two hours, I thought I would just pop in briefly and then leave, but this is awesome and fantastic, I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

What glued Ambode to his seat was the power of the performance. When a performance amounts to non-performance, the audience recognises that it has been short-changed. This is because performance and non-performance are not and cannot be the same thing. The governor was impressed by the play written by Toyin Otudeko.

It was a fitting time and place to unveil Ambode’s plan to build theatres where plays like the one he “thoroughly enjoyed” would be performed to appreciative audiences. He said: “The mere fact that I believe strongly in arts, entertainment and sports, everything that is arts, like I said, before the end of next year, we are going to have five new theatres in Lagos. We are already engaging the Terra Kulture and we are speaking to another consultant and the truth is that we want to have the theatres in Badagry, Epe, Ikorodu, Alimosho and on the Mainland. We already have one in Victoria Island. But the truth is that this is where the energy of Lagos is and that is where we should go.”

The governor’s rationale was food for thought: “It’s not so much about physical infrastructure, but 67 per cent of the Lagos population is below the age of 35, so we need to start finding things to keep the younger ones more creative and then open the space for them to be able to just show their talents.”

It is interesting that a year before he became the state’s helmsman, Ambode in May 2014 published a piece in celebration of Lagos State’s 47th anniversary. Ambode said in the piece titled “Happy Anniversary, Lagos State”: “As Lagos turns fifty in the next three years, therefore, the future beckons on whoever would take over the baton in the relay of enduring people-friendly policies to solidify and build on these worthy legacies.” His reference to legacies was a tribute to the governmental accomplishments of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who governed the state from 1999 to 2007, and Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola who succeeded Tinubu.

When he spoke about building new theatres, Ambode also said that his administration was looking forward to the climax of the celebration of the state’s 50th anniversary in May, adding that the festivities would be spiced up with several events promoting the arts and entertainment sector. In other words, the Ambode administration is preparing for a mega celebration.

By paying attention to cultural production and consumption, Ambode has shown a holistic approach to governance. It stands to reason that a megacity needs mega governance. The status of Lagos as a megacity is a reason for mega governance. Nigeria’s megacity in 2015 was listed 12th among the world’s largest 35 cities and credited with an unofficial population figure of “approximately 21 million.” Of course, a megacity has to grapple with mega challenges. Megacity challenges include slums, crime, homelessness, traffic congestion and environmental pollution.

Ambode has responded to megacity challenges with attention-grabbing actions. It is noteworthy that when in November 2015 the Ambode administration donated modern security equipment worth over N4bn to the Nigeria Police Force, President Muhammadu Buhari described the donation as a “remarkable feat.” Buhari urged other state governments to “emulate Lagos State by supporting security agencies that are trying to keep us safe.” Ambode’s exemplary donation was of national significance because security is significant.

Food is significant too. Food is a hierarch in the hierarchy of needs. When in March 2016 the Ambode administration signed a record-setting agriculture-related Memorandum of Understanding with Kebbi State’s Atiku Bagudu administration, it was an exemplary move towards a much-needed agricultural revolution in the country. “This is the first time in the history of Nigeria that two states are collaborating to develop their agricultural potential,” Ambode had declared. The logic of this agricultural partnership and how it will enable national food sufficiency and food security, apart from its employment-generation possibilities, is compelling and commendable.

These two instances should be numbered among the remarkable responses by the Ambode administration to the evolving megalopolis. There is no doubt that the governor’s holistic governance style has touched and continues to touch critical areas in need of gubernatorial intervention. He has proved to be a leader that takes his own words seriously by effectively moving from words to deeds.

“If we take the concept of resource generation, allocation and distribution into cognisance and apply the principles of good governance, we will achieve economic growth and development,” Ambode said while presenting a paper titled “Public Finance: Probity and Accountability” at a workshop organised in August 2014 by the Lagos State Government and the Lagos Business School. Also, in a newspaper interview he shed light on his understanding of good governance, which is an essential aspect of his vision:”In essence, the elected government is like a caretaker for the rest of the people, overseeing their resources on their behalf. The citizens remain the landlord while the elected officials are only caretakers. Arising from this, good government can only thrive where the resources of the people are judiciously distributed to various sectors/needs in the society in a just and equitable manner that makes life easier for every person.”

Ambode’s cultural focus shows that his understanding of “needs in the society” is not narrow and simplistic. When the promised theatres take shape, their presence will mark a cultural reinvention that may well inspire a cultural revolution. Certainly, a megacity deserves thriving cultural centres that will raise the bar for cultural production. The beauty of Ambode’s cultural imagination is the promise of civilisation. It is undeniable that cultural production has a potentially civilising influence. It is this core value that the new theatres are expected to bring to Lagos life.

Ambode has demonstrated that he is no philistine, which is a plus for a modern political administrator. The new theatres are expected to create a fertile ground for a variety of cultural services that will boost the spirit of the megacity. If Lagos is seen as a theatre with Governor Ambode onstage, it is easy to see that this performer is performing and his performance deserves applause.

January 9, 2017
The herdsman of the year

To pick a person of the year is not necessarily an accolade. Sometimes it is. Some other times, you hold your nose as though retrieving something from a toilet bowl. The write-up skewers the choice. Sometimes, it is eminently neutral. The selection this year, for instance, of Donald Trump as Time magazine’s man of the year, could be seen as double-edged. The citation called him the “President of the Divided States of America.”

When The Nation’s editors picked EFCC chief Ibrahim Magu as the person of the year, it was out of no desire to bathe him in a perfume cloud, or to toss him in a sewer. The Nation saw the double-sidedness of his doing. While he became a sort of gadfly and nemesis to thieving elite, we also saw him as a messiah with specks in his eyes.

Time started this tradition over 60 years ago and described its pick as the person who has impacted the year the most “either for good or ill.” So, it is a verdict of impact, not about devilry or righteousness. The choice is not necessarily a hero or heroine, a Marquis de Sade or Mother Theresa or Idi Amin Dada.

My pick this year is a sort of humble fellow, whose narrative is arguably nothing about that. He is the herdsman. The year began with him and ended with that fellow, not literate, nor foppish, nor colourful, not individually a headline grabber. He does not read his story in the newspaper, nor sees television clips, nor surfs the web. He belongs to the lowest caste of the society, but he commands the loyalty of the elite, and sometimes the trepidation of the masters, the hem tugging at the helm.

At the beginning of the year, the northern elite cavilled at the adjective to the herdsman. They should not be called Fulani herdsman. They are not Fulani, merely a band of shepherds with blood in their eyes, masquerading as Nigerians.

Nothing characterises the ominous ambiguity of this nomenclature than the firebombs in southern Kaduna. The diminutive impresario and Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai waded in by saying the killings were engendered by a band of criminals, not Fulani herdsmen. Then he contradicted himself by saying they were actually Fulani herdsmen from out of the country.

He then morphed from governor to foreign minister, deploying envoys to Fulani communities out of the country to broker peace, even sending bribes to soothe their boiling spirits. He said the fellow was angry over killings of his folks during the 2011 polls.

Suddenly we are right to say Fulani herdsmen, but how does a reporter now characterise them in a news report? Non-Nigerian Fulani herdsmen? We have not been given one evidence that the marauders are indeed outsiders. General Martin Luther Agwai led a panel of enquiry that blamed the Fulani outsider but failed to parade a culprit.

El-Rufai or Agwai committee may be right. But they have to prove it first. That is why the herdsman story is so intriguing. Earlier in the year, they did not only call themselves innocent, they said they wanted state governments to give mammoth acres of land for grazing. Southern locals said it was brazen.

Yet the story arose of what is called cattle rustling, where individuals steal their cattle. This led to backlashes of rage. A man steals a cow, the herdsman amasses his fellows and they turn into a band of vengeance. They target not the thief or his family but morph into a barbarous horde in the whole community, slashing throats, raping women, burning down several houses.

On my television show on TVC on Saturday morning, a caller asked us to accommodate the Fulani because he does not forgive. I asked whether it was right to kill a hundred people and declare war on a community because of one bad egg. This is a nation of laws and not of men. If a person steals, it is not his brother or mother or neighbour who stole. Get the law to punish the person.

It becomes impunity when one sin waxes into a people’s original sin that must be punished on end as we see now in southern Kaduna. Several people die even when a curfew is imposed and soldiers are deployed. When I wrote a piece last year, the Fulani herdsmen’s leader called me and told me that the Nigerian Fulani herdsmen were responsible for the killings in some communities in Benue State over cattle rustling. He said further that he knew it was not right, but the Fulani never forgave. He explained that if you kill a Fulani man, the Fulani will kill a thousand in revenge. The law has no place for such malice. It punishes what is wrong. The murdering herdsman is not above the law.

At the time of writing, the President has not visited or made a comment on the southern Kaduna tragedy. His spokesman’s assertion that he cannot comment on everything makes light of the tragedy of scores of families dying and living in perpetual terror. The southern Kaduna affair is not a routine robbery in Oshodi. If President Buhari can soar into the clouds in his private jet to sit below the swaggering Gambian despot in his futile trip or go to Zamfara State in solidarity over stolen cows, why not at least issue a statement to condemn the killings? Why not call for arrests and hold his intelligence chiefs to ransom? The President should avoid the suspicion that he is silent because he tacitly condones them.

We saw the Ekiti State governor also hit headline by holding the herdsman to account. It is the only time the humble fellow was humble in character. The only time he looked as humble as his cow. Law upended hubris. Many, including a popular cleric, saw Fayose as defending his people.

Throughout the year, the herdsman was humble only in caste. But it was a humility of hubris. They kept the President in silence, turned a governor into a foreign minister, converted a community into a blaze of fire and stench of funeral pyre, confounded the definition of their identity, killed several people in the Southeast and no justice found for the killers. The victims though have found their graves and have been forgotten. Even a cleric, Enoch Adeboye, gave praise to Fayose on their account.

The humble herdsman was sought in spite of these. We sought the protein in the last Yuletide as well as during the Salah festivities and throughout the year as our eba and pounded yam had ‘accidents’ ploughing through livers, thighs, ponmo, etc.

The herdsman knows the country. He sees a wide spectrum of vistas, he walks through bushes, slaps his animals’ hides through highways, through sleepy alleys, arboreal retreats, and even the blinding lights of city centres. He touches the leaves and people, he hears the accents and inflexions, he eats, dances, plays, sleeps across the land. But somehow, he reminds me of the classic novel about the “beat generation” in the United States, On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. The main character travels throughout the country. He makes love, drinks, works, makes friend, parties but he does not take with him the soul of anywhere he travels. His is spiritually alienated. He has been in those towns and cities but those towns and cities have not been in him.

The same applies to the herdsman. He is everywhere in the country, but nowhere is in him, except where he comes from. He is peripatetic without empathy. Like Jack Kerouac’s American, the herdsman is always on the road, like a rolling stone that gathers no soul.

If we cannot describe him as Nigerian and have no evidence that he is not, and we cannot arrest him, how can we start a conversation of making the herdsman part of our community? How can we give him a grazing land?

It is this crisis of identity that has erupted into a crisis of deaths, destruction and disunity that makes him my person of the year.

January 2, 2017
Magu, Lawal et al

It is as well relieving that President Buhari has ordered investigation into allegations of corruption involving some top officials of his current administration. According to a statement by his media aide, Garba Shehu, the President “instructed the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) to investigate the involvement of any top official accused of any wrongdoing. If any of them is liable he will not escape prosecution”.

The terse statement did not indicate those to be investigated. But two key officers in his regime: the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, Ibrahim Magu and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF Babachir Lawal have been in the storm over allegations of corruption.

Magu penultimate week, failed the confirmation test by the Senate based on damning allegations against his suitability for that sensitive post. The Senate cited a report from the Directorate of State Security Services DSS which accused Magu of flamboyant lifestyle as portrayed by the cost of his living apartment rented at N40 million Naira- N20 million annually. The apartment was not rented by the EFCC but one Commodore Umar Mohammed who the DSS described as a questionable business man it once arrested. Mohammed was also said to have lavishly furnished the apartment at the cost of N43 million.

Other allegations were that he travels in private jets and on first class when on international trip. In one of his journeys, he was said to have travelled with Mohammed and the Managing Director of a bank that is being investigated by the DSS over complicity with funds lodged in the bank by a former minister of petroleum.

Magu was also profiled as wearing the double personality of a no-nonsense anti-corruption czar who harbours no friends but secretly hobnobs with corrupt people. The DSS summed its report thus “in the light of the foregoing Magu failed the integrity test and will eventually constitute a liability to the anti-corruption drive of the present administration”.

In the case of Lawal, the Senate had in a resolution, asked the President to suspend and prosecute him for alleged breach of the law in handling contracts awarded by the Presidential Initiative for the North East PINE. His company which was registered for IT services was allegedly awarded a N200 million contract to clear invasive plant species in Yobe State but failed to execute it even as it was fully paid for.

The report further indicated that at the time the contract was awarded, Lawal was still a director of the company. Till date, he is still alleged to be signatory to that company’s account. The Senate held that these contravened the Code of Conduct for public officers and called for his prosecution.

Magu has remained mute on the allegations since they filtered into public domain. But third parties and masked undertakers have been making spirited efforts to save him from imminent danger into which he is seemingly irretrievably entangled. We have been inundated with veiled image laundering campaigns possibly as damage control to the damning DSS report.

The public has been treated to the seeming indispensability of Magu in the anti-corruption fight; the wrong signals it will send to the international community should he be relieved of his post now and all that thrash. Suggestions have also been proffered that the allegations may have been orchestrated by fifth columnists or those opposed to Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign to derail its success. For this lobby group, it is yet a case of corruption fighting back.

We have also heard that the apartment was rented by the Federal Capital Development Authority and Magu never benefitted from the N43 million with which it was furnished. The unidentified sources also said that at no time did Magu travel with the managing director of the said bank. These are all within the realm of speculation since nobody not even Magu, has been identified with the views. So they can be conveniently ignored.

But their objective is certain: to clear Magu and make him retain his job. If he is innocent of the allegations, he should by all means continue with his job. But that clean bill can only be established after the allegations have been fully investigated. Happily, the President has directed the AGF to do the needful.

Before then, it bears stating that some of the issues bandied to discredit the report of the DSS are not only very uncharitable but a great disservice to the overall fight against corruption. The impression of indispensability of one man in the fight and without whom the campaign will eventually derail is patently infantile. If the issue is that he is doing a good job, fine. But to extrapolate that without him the anti-corruption war will lose relevance is arrant nonsense.

Moreover, which one is more dangerous: easing him out if the allegations are proven or retaining him with his moral and integrity baggage because he purports to be performing well? And how credible is such assessment in the face of the heavy indictment by the DSS that he wears double personality in the corruption fight? Those are issues to determine.

There is also the further ridiculous suggestion that his travails are being orchestrated by those who do not want the anti- corruption campaign to succeed. Are the apologists talking of the Senate or the DSS? For all that one may wish to know, the Senate has no hand in Magu’s current predicament but only responded to an advice by the DSS. This leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that the reference is to the DSS on whose recommendation the Senate acted.

Incidentally, the DSS is any agency of the federal government domiciled in the presidency. It is unfathomable that the same agency can wake up one day to concoct damning and damaging report against the helmsman of the EFCC or contrive spurious allegations just to derail the anti-corruption campaign. Of course, the credibility of the DSS is at stake in this matter. And what the government makes of the reports, will determine between the DSS and the EFCC leadership which one should be shown the way out.

Curiously, it is the same agency that was used a couple of weeks back to hound judges for alleged corruption and it was applauded in many quarters because “a desperate situation required a desperate solution”. Why are we in a hurry to impute motives into their judgment in the instant case? Does it have to do with its prospects of exposing the duplicity in the anti-corruption campaign? Or is it being suggested that officials of this government are immune from corruption?

Lawal has come open describing the conclusions of the Senate as balderdash; an attempt to bring down our best for no just cause. He said he resigned from the company in August 18, 2015 and slammed the Senate committee for not hearing his own side.

Even with these explanations, he still has issues to explain given that the contract was awarded from his office to a company he has interest in contrary to public service rules. There are also allegations that he is still signatory to the company’s accounts even as the company had in an advertorial shown that his son bears some of his names. These are weighty allegations the SGF will have to contend with. The way they are handled will mirror the direction of the government in this crucial but herculean task.

Before now, issues have been raised about the selectiveness of the anti-corruption war. The campaign has been criticized for its seeming partisanship since corruption knows neither political party nor ethnic or religious boundaries.

It is hoped the probe will not take the pattern of the kid glove treatment given to corruption allegations against the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Tukur Buratai. Whatever the outcome, the damage has already been done as the two officials contend with credibility deficits.

January 2, 2017
Rivers re-run: matters arising

It is no longer in doubt that last week’s re-run legislative elections in Rivers state detracted substantially from a standard free, fair and credible poll. This should be a disappointment given the heavy deployment of men and materials for that singular poll.

Figures reeled out before the election showed 28,000 policemen, 18 gunboats, three helicopters, dogs and horses were handy for the exercise. This was in addition to the Army, Naval, Air force and DSS personnel mobilized to ensure that violence and all manner of malpractices were reduced to their barest minimum.

Given these, the expectation was that security agencies would provide a level playing ground for INEC officials to do their job so that the outcome of the elections would approximate the collective will of the electorate as expressed at the ballot box. Curiously, accounts from independent observers, election monitors and politicians from across the divide speak of infractions that cast slur on the impartiality of security agencies and credibility of the elections.

A coalition of about 70 civil society organizations under the aegis of Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room; observed late commencement of the elections with 10.30am as the earliest time while in some, it started later than 2pm. It reported that delays were so severe in parts of Khana and Eleme rendering them unable to confirm if voting started at all even as materials and staff never arrived in Lleuku and Nyokoro.

If these were not enough, their further report that a team of policemen and military personnel arrived in a commando style and removed election materials and staff from their locations when counting was about to start in two wards in the Gokana local government gives serious cause to worry. In Bomu, presiding officers were waiting to count; the situation was calm when a team of police and military personnel arrived in Toyota Hilux vehicles with an armored personnel carrier, chased voters away and carried materials and ad hoc staff, the coalition reported. They further observed the same curious manifestations in Etche, Andoni and Eleme local governments. The coalition summed up its observations thus: “the conducts observed called into question the neutrality of security forces and election officials”

Apparently piqued by this damaging report, the Nigerian Army was quick to deny involvement in alleged “killings, ballot snatching and mass arrests during the election”. The General Officer Commanding 6, Division, Major General Kasimu Abdulkarim said they only acted swiftly in response to security breaches to enforce the law, provide aid to the police and other security agencies.

On its part, the Nigerian Police found itself issuing two statements on the issue. In the first, its spokesman Don Awunah faulted reports by a non-governmental organization CLEEN Foundation which said the election was “marred by irregularities, large scale violence, professional misconduct and open bias by security operatives and electoral personnel” He admitted there were infractions of law in the course of the elections but the police and other security agencies rose to the occasion and ensured the election prevailed.

But in the second statement, apparently succumbing to the weight of evidence on the matter, he now said “some security personnel were arrested for professional misconduct, actions, inactions, omission and commission that were detrimental to the electoral process”. For this, he said a high powered investigation panel is currently looking into this unacceptable professional misconduct.

Before this, video clips had made the rounds in the media showing some of the INEC officials complaining bitterly of having been manhandled by the police for inexplicable reasons. INEC returning officer for Rivers East Senatorial district, Prof. Orji Onu Ekumankama gave account of how a contingent of the police and the army arrested and took them away from their location together with the results just before collation was to start. He said there was no threat to law and order before their arrival.

It is evident from these accounts that the conduct of some security operatives was a negation of the impartial role they ought to play in providing a level playing ground for a free and fair election to take place. And if one may ask, what was the rationale for carting away election materials and officials in many areas when voting had been concluded and collation just about to commence? What sort of challenge at the collation centers would prove so daunting for the security agencies that would warrant the confiscation of result sheets, chasing away accredited party agents and hauling INEC officials into waiting vans? And on whose instance were the security agencies acting?

Assuming there was threat to law and order at the end of those elections at the collation centers, what is the standard conduct expected of security operatives in such circumstances: provide adequate security for the collation to progress unhindered or cart away the materials and arrest INEC officials in very questionable circumstances?

These posers have been raised to underscore the point that the conduct of security forces contributed largely to the credibility deficits that was the outcome of the elections in Rivers state. It is therefore not enough for the army to assert that the role of its members was limited to providing aid to the police and other security agencies where there were security breaches. Neither was the attempt to exculpate them from events that compromised the credibility of that election successful.

Such excuses cannot stand in the face of several reports of the police and the army carting away results sheets and bundling electoral officers into waiting vehicles when collation was about to commence. There does not seem to be any reasonable explanation for that except the lure to put such results to partisan advantage. But for the doggedness and determination of the Rivers electorate, the outcome of those elections would have been different from the results that have been announced.

The matter is damn serious and should neither be covered up nor wished away given its frightening prospects for the success of democracy. We say so because allegations of security men aiding politicians to manipulate elections had been traded during the governorship election in Edo and the senatorial re-run in Imo.

If it was convenient to dismiss those ones, the case of Rivers has shown that we can continue to ignore them at a great peril to our democracy. During Obasanjo’s regime, election results were so manipulated that Nigerians almost lost hope in the credibility of that process. It took copious assurances and measures by Yar’Adua and his successor Jonathan to bequeath the nation an electoral process that showed substantial improvement for public confidence to be restored.

Jonathan strove relentlessly to give the nation an electoral process that was a remarkable improvement on the charade of the Obasanjo era. The true test of this was evident in the success recorded by President Buhari in the last general election.

As a beneficiary of free and fair elections, the open partisanship of security operatives in the Rivers contest should be a serious embarrassment to Buhari. And he cannot afford to sit by while the gains recorded in the democratic process are being quickly reversed through the embarrassing conduct of security operatives in conjunction with some politicians.

At a time the example set by Jonathan is having a domino effect in the West African Sub-region; it is a sad commentary that our security agencies are found neck deep in actions and inactions that compromise the credibility of the electoral process. Buhari must order a high powered investigation that will include independent actors into why in so many areas, security operatives had officials and election materials removed as collation was about to commence. That is the surest way of reassuring that we have not relapsed to the era when election results were falsified, altered and written in hotel rooms in favor of preferred candidates.

December 19, 2016
An overkill

James Ibori has been, for over a decade, the story of Nigeria’s guilt and shame. His biography has also served a menu of crime and punishment. But Ibori, former Delta State governor, has seen all these in this generation more than, perhaps, any Nigerian politician, living or dead.

Before our eyes, Ibori lived in glory. Now, all that has faded. He who once flashed with rhetoric of the throne, uttered the language of guilt. He whose face shone with hauteur had to look about in shame. He once beamed with the Urhobo beads and hats and tops to the rhythm of his royal strides. But he was forced to slouch, head down, in prison clothes, before a judge. He heralded himself in many motored convoys to parties, to official ceremonies, to airports. He had to flee, siren-free, for his dear life.

He was a colourful and popular personality in his Delta State, sweeping to victory twice and building a dynasty perhaps rivalling any state in the country. His dynasty is more potent because he sways even while coiled within the smouldering walls of a prison. When his term expired, he still clucked with swagger in the Yar’Adua administration, influencing appointments and policies.

As fortune flipped, so did Ibori’s form. From being the man of power and splendour, he was on his heels. The Jonathan administration, working with the EFCC and other political wheel horses, would not let him go. They would not forgive him for his days of thunder. But found revenge in the guise of a legitimate excuse. He had to answer charges of corruption. So, within a year, he witnessed the sunshine and shadow of power.

His first trial in Nigeria reflected the flaws and maggoty underside of the Nigerian judiciary. He was set free, and he indeed celebrated. But he had a man too many, including the former president who would not let him flee in peace. He eventually was arrested and put on trial on a foreign soil, and it was then that we saw, first hand, the contours of corruption in Nigeria.

The trial was seen as that of Ibori. Indeed, it was. But it was a trial of the Nigerian politician and politics. It was a theatre of revelations, of humility and humiliation, and tirades and familial conspiracy. Ibori’s life stood in the mirror, all scums and offal undisguised. It turned out it was not Ibori alone that was literally on trial. We saw he had a mistress in the story, a sister, a wife, and other friends and relations. It was also a trial of the past.

We saw that he had lived a humbler life once. The judge in London would not escape a narrative of the pre-Mercedes Benz, pre-Mansion, pre-billionaire Ibori, even daring to unearth his brush with the law with his wife for stealing when he earned a paltry $24,000 a year.

After his trial about six years ago, he was sentenced to prison and his story, even when not obtrusive, still haunted the Nigerian body politic. His story whispers in every show of corruption trial in Nigeria. The Ibori trial was handled swiftly and with professional dexterity. Yet, since Ibori was convicted in London, have we had any high-profile conviction of his stature? We have not.

That brings one to the story of the judges and corruption in Nigeria. The DSS stalked and stormed the homes of some judges a few months back, and some lawyers said it was not right. Maybe the visit was not beautiful in the night, but no one has proved the DSS did wrong. What we want is justice. But the revelations of corruption in the courts and judges reflect why a man like Ibori is now completing his term of punishment and others are still involved in judicial dances of adjournments and trials without a conviction or acquittal in the horizon.

Yet when the court in London spoke of a Mercedes Benz Maybach, another top politician here at home was also guilty. When he was accused of a lordly mansion in South Africa, another governor was also guilty in another state. Ditto to the funnelling of millions of dollars. But Ibori got his punishment. He did not only get that, he got his shame because his guilt was put on parade. The ones at home are rolling in stolen plenty, their children are getting married in opulence at home and in the world’s exotic best. Their fathers are private jet-lagged or happy. They are living in misery, if they don’t know it. Greek playwright Plautus once wrote that “nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of his guilt.” Though these men are guilty, they own the law and the process and force the lawyers and judges and the bureaucrats to eddy about in a futile whirligig at the expense of justice. They don’t act as though conscious of their guilt. Apostle Paul described them in the Bible as men whose consciences are “pierced with hot iron.”

With Ibori about to come out of jail, reports have it that some forces are calling for more trials for him. This is no more than vendetta. He has seen trial, exposed and disgraced not only in Nigeria but on the world’s public square. The open offal of his life has abused our sense of dignity and moral purity. He has been ensconced in jail for over half a decade.

I am not party to those who want to throw a party for him as he leaves jail, but he needs to be left alone. There may be other charges unanswered. If he were charged in Nigeria, as his peers are today, they would have been combined, and he would have suffered the same fate. If it is not technically a double jeopardy, it is morally. I would like to see judges do the same thing to hundreds of cases of politicians undergoing rigmaroles in court. Let justice to its course.

The current war on corruption has its great shortcomings. We are shaming some people and taking money from them in public. In private, however, some are treated like sacred cows. We take money from them, and the public do not know them. They are not allowed to undergo public disavowals or ignominy like the Dasukis, Fani-Kayodes, Obanikoros et al.

In his novel, The Great Expectation, Charles Dickens says “we need never be ashamed of our tears.” The question is, Nigerians have not shed tears enough to know the right thing. We have not lamented enough at home the abuses of the integrity of office. Let the abusers of our patrimony pay like Ibori and we will know that justice is around the corner. Ibori has had his. Let’s learn the lesson and not bring him to further suffering. It’s now the turn of others for justice. To try Ibori again is an overkill.

December 19, 2016
The year of identity

Throughout the year, we have been riveted on the bias that draped the United States presidential election. We bewailed Trump and his incendiary rhetoric. We bemoaned the sartorial evil of France of liberte, egalite and fraternite that would not let women free to wear hijab on the beaches just as we moaned when young zealots razed down lives in pubs and stadium.

We looked with horror the tents in Calais that tenanted the tears of a rootless people, what Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul designated as a people without a place, in his novel, In a Free state.

Brexit led an island nation in rebellion against one of its own Poet John Dunne, and denied it is “a piece of the continent.” Italy that traffics fancy shoes and dainty suits to other nations booted out its international leader, Renzi, and voted like Britain. Russia with its Putin is not wary of an uprooted world order and stretches world equilibrium by staking bullet after bullet, air raid after sorties to dare a quiescent Obama. Austria narrowly escaped the harmer of disharmony, but just narrowly. It looms in next-door Germany where Hitler is getting a revival in the great mall of its great city Berlin.

In all these, we as Nigerians show horror at the prejudice in a world that should canonise harmony. Yet throughout the year, we committed the same sins. We did not, could not, look in the mirror. But just like Macbeth who saw the vision and prophecy of his own bloodletting but willed himself to more malevolence, we did it week after week, month after month.

It was a year when the militants were angry, whether driven by ethnic rage or religious bile. They fought in the Niger Delta, but like invisible forces. They told President Buhari that they belonged to the place that once produced the president. They did not want peace except on their own terms. So, until that peace comes, bombs would go off. And they did go off, and they went straight to the jugular of lazy largesse: oil. They blew pipeline after pipeline. So, even when the price of oil rose modestly, we had no reason to laugh. Starvation stoked by scarcity makes the states pine for a little draught of financial air.

Yet, the president, who was weaned on the profession of guns and bullets, thought it weakness to bow. So, the militants blew, but he did not bow. What bowed? Our prosperity, if we ever had it. Shall they sit on the floor or at table? Would the president not even do humility the courtesy of visiting the Niger Delta to appear to understand? We never had it. Same applies to MASSOB and how they made streets boil in the East. No Nigerian project is good enough. No one has approached them with the language of conciliation.

Everyone, the militant, the MASSOB and the president, sat in their little covens. It was the same President that belongs to everybody and nobody. That is the very definition of soullessness. I am everywhere but I am nowhere. Translation: now you see me, now you don’t. Perhaps that’s why he has flown more to other countries than he has to states under his watch.

So, we suffer, while each party sinks in self-righteous despair. Up North we see the same thing. The religious bigots under El- Zakzaky understand themselves and no other. The Sunni majority understands Allah the way the Shiites don’t. But all inhabit the same pious space, worship the same God and invoke that same God against the other. This is against the logic of Boko Haram that sees a theocratic vengeance in every bomb, in the willowy menace of the girl bomber and the muscular stealth of the boy bomber. All of them talk to a people not happy to live together.

We also see in southern Kaduna where a people are subject to the routine savagery of a band of bandits. They burn houses and slaughter in droves. At the last count, 102 persons have been consigned either to heaven or hell, or purgatory, or whatever. Houses and hectares of land gone. They see no government presence to help, and the governor claims a group that has never been publicly paraded or evidentially convicted as culprit. He invokes similar rapine in Zamfara State. By claiming the victims there are Muslims, he exonerates the herdsmen. No evidence, so no excuse. But the larger blame lands where the Army is. They probably have not enough men. So, we ask, why not provide self-defence in the absence of official defence. Just as we have vigilante where police is absent.

The herdsmen were a story of our lack of mutual understanding. Herdsmen say they have the right of way, and it has translated into the right to maul, kill, rape and steal. They want life and more abundantly at the expense of the land owners. The federal government even flirted with the idea of giving them the land that belongs to others. In the Middle Belt, the herdsmen would revenge those who rustled their cattle. That I move illegally should not make you a thief of my cow. Right. So, no understanding except bloodshed.

Even in our electoral politics, the story is the same. In the Edo as in the Ondo and the Rivers State near-war electoral contests, it is a people who bear the same nation, sometimes the same name, fighting to the death against the other. Each group is either pelting the other with the charge of lack of good faith or good taste. But what is not good is our fate because of the flawed process and we have accepted it as an emblem of our flawed existence or coexistence.

We are not better than Trump, or the Brexiteer or even the Manila villain Duterte. Or the French who disavow hijab. We just saw them as excuse to levitate ourselves as moral superiors. But what does this tell us, that this is a year of identity. Everyone wants to assert who they are without pretence. It is the boldness of the bigot, the murderer, xenophobic. But they also claim they are not. They claim to be fair. They may genuinely feel so, and that is the conundrum. Some who voted for Trump say they loath his divisive rhetoric but love his trade bill or just loath Clinton’s hypocrisy. It is therefore the year of Shakespeare’s best play by critics, or at least the most contemporary: King Lear. When many saw Trump as a devil, his followers said, like one of the best lines in the play, “the prince of darkness is a gentleman.”

No one who voted for Trump or voted for Brexit, or calls for immigrants to go, would call themselves racists. Nor will a herdsman call himself a murderer. They are just doing right. Hence the 21st century person defies definition, just like when Lear, in a clarity of madness, asks: “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” The clarity eludes Harvard theorist Samuel Huntington who calls it “the clash of civilisation.” Yet the irony, they speak the language of the bigot. Trump calls Hispanics rapists. The British foreign minister used the word piccaninny when Obama visited the United Kingdom to lobby against Brexit. They “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” Another shot from King Lear.

So, we like our little cubicles. We talk to ourselves, smell the same, sound the same, and would not accept the other just the same way it happens in King Lear. Hear this: “Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds in a cage.”

Irony, large numbers don’t think like this. But the frightening thing is that they have the important numbers and they are the most mobilised. They have dredged up the wrong identities. As we go into the new year, need not push away the other tribe or faith or face, but we need John Dunne’s cry to prevail: “I am involved in mankind.”

December 12, 2016
When python and David danced

Despite explanations by the Nigerian Army, the controversy generated by its launch of Operation Python Dance in the South-east appears not abating. In its response to the flurry of criticisms trailing the decision to deploy the army to the zone between November 27 and December 27, the army said the aim was neither to kill secessionist agitators nor cause untold hardship to people of the region.

Army Deputy Director, public relations, 82 Division, Col. Sagir Musa said the measure is to ensure crime-free yuletide and free flow of traffic within the region during the festivities. According to him, it is a command post and field training exercise to enhance troops’ preparedness across a spectrum of contemporary security challenges peculiar to the South-east.

“It is only a field training exercise that is designed to, where necessary, dovetail into real time activities such as anti-kidnapping drills, patrol, raids, cordon and search, checkpoints roadblock and show of force. The aim is to checkmate anticipated rising wave of crimes usually prevalent during the period”.

To further disabuse the minds of those who read other motives to the exercise, the army reeled out similar exercises it had conducted in other zones given their peculiar security challenges. These included operation Shirin Harbi to take care of insurgency, cattle rustling and other sundry crimes in the North-east, Harbin Kunama against banditry, insurgency, cattle rustling and other crimes in the North-west and Crocodile Smile in the Niger Delta against illegal bunkering, oil theft and piracy among others.

For them, operation Python Dance is targeted against armed robbery, banditry, kidnapping, herdsmen-farmers clash, communal clashes and violent secessionist attacks. As if these were not enough, Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State has taken a step further to reassure people of the zone that Exercise Python Dance was not an army of occupation but targeted at wiping out crime in the region.

But unknown to him, he raised issues germane to raging scepticisms on the deployment of soldiers to the zone during this season when he said two and a half years ago, the state government raised “operation Kpochapu which cleared the state of crime such that today, Anambra is the safest state in Nigeria and that the army have always assisted the Joint Task Force we set up and they have not disappointed us”, Obiano disclosed this as the Chief of Army staff, Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai visited the headquarters of Operation Python Dance in Awka and reassured that soldiers will respect the freedom of the people while the exercise lasted.

Evident from the governor’s disclosure is that the fight against armed robbery and the sundry criminal tendencies on which basis the army is now deploying its men and officers to the South-east has been an ongoing thing. As a matter of fact, the army had always been part and parcel of the Joint Task Forces that have been combating crimes in the zone.

If this is so, what point is there in another campaign requiring the deployment of an armada of troops and ammunitions to duplicate checkpoints and ‘show force’ in the zone during this season? Before now, especially since agitations from the pro-Biafra groups seeking to break away from the Nigerian state gained momentum, the army has maintained checkpoints and roadblocks at some designated areas within the zone including the Asaba end of the Niger Bridge in Delta State.

Their handling of peaceful protests by those agitating for self-determination was the subject of a recent report by Amnesty International in which it accused the military of shooting peaceful pro-Biafra protesters and bystanders among other human rights violations. The army has since denied the accusations. But despite the denial, the fact remains that its handling of peaceful demonstrations by secessionist groups is the main source of the suspicion on the motive of Operation Python Dance.

Since that encounter, military checkpoints have permanently been stationed in strategic locations in parts of the South-east. During the same period last year, people travelling through the Niger Bridge saw hell as the checkpoints and roadblocks contributed heavily to the traffic gridlock that kept travellers at one spot for several hours. The situation is bound to worsen this time with the cordon and search, checkpoint roadblocks and show of force which operation python dance entails. So fears of the exercise creating serious incontinences for travellers during the festive period are well founded.

Though there is usually a general rise in crimes in the weeks preceding the Christmas and New Year celebrations, these are by no means peculiar or limited to the South-east. Armed robbery, kidnapping, communal clashes and herdsmen-farmers’ clashes constitute serious security challenges to other zones. The only security issue that seemingly stands out the zone for this operation is what the army has termed “violent secessionist attacks”.

Even then, we do know as a matter of fact that the pro-Biafra groups are not violent and they have stated this for the umpteenth time. They neither carry arms nor have they engaged the military in any armed confrontation- the kind typified by the insurgency in the North-east and North-west that gave rise to operation Shirin Harbi and Harbin Kunama respectively. We have not seen them in the kind of mindless killings that have become the hallmark of the activities of Fulani herdsmen in the North-central. Neither have they taken up arms as was the case in the militancy in the Niger Delta.

So the operations cited to justify the dancing of the python in the South-east at a time the people are usually in their best of mood do not add up. And if one may ask, why should the python dance in the zone at a time of mass return if it has no intention of preying on the returnees? If anything, the timing of such a scarring engagement is bound to send fears into the spine of all those who plan to return to their ancestral homes from far and wide.

So those who smell a rat over the exercise have ample grounds for it. Mounting military checkpoints and roadblocks here and there, cordoning and searching indiscriminately during the period will add to the suffering people usually encounter at the period. Moreover, the crimes for which the exercise is being justified are usually at their lowest ebb once the festivities have commenced.

For some reason, criminals also take days off to enjoy their loot at their homes during the season. That is why crimes are usually in the upsurge during the weeks preceding the festivities and drop once celebrations have commenced. So the usual joint taskforces should be able to handle whatever security challenges that may crop up during the season without the show of force denoted by operation python dance.

The python will only dance at the sight of its prey or after feeding fat on it. The prey of the marauding python should not be the innocent and harmless people who have no issues with security agencies.

IPOB/MASSOB has declared operation David Dance advising its members to keep away from the battle-ready soldiers during the season so that harm may not come their way. Not surprisingly, operation David Dance does not denote confrontation with the soldiers but a prayer for divine intervention over the siege in keeping with their non-violent posturing. Their fear of being the target of the exercise may not be unconnected with the fact that among the security challenges for which the operation has been rationalized, only secession is peculiar to the zone.

In sum, the problem of marketing operation python dance in the zone is the making of the military leadership for two reasons. The first is with the choice of code name. The other hinges on timing. When next they come, their code name must reflect the challenges on the ground. But for the assurances of not interfering with peoples’ freedom as the operation lasts, time will tell.

December 12, 2016
The pen versus the gun

The crisis in southern Kaduna has raked up in my mind an incident in Bayelsa State when Goodluck Jonathan was still governor. Militancy was in bloody blossom, and their growls and goons and hoods overtook the power of state. Probably without his vintage cap and top, Governor Jonathan fled from Government House, and anarchy had more power than order.

The hoodlums had undermined the throne. It also took my mind to many years ago when I was in Canada. When I was at the University of Toronto, I had a fierce debate with a few PhD students on the issue of whether African states were strong or weak. I was of the view that it depended on where you came from. According to established theorists, a weak state is that state that has failed to accomplish the classic objectives of a government, including the provision of peace and order, health care, education, etc. In that argument, African states were weak. I thought that point of view was a little self-congratulatory of the human spirit.

I noted that my country was under military rule, and the leaders did not share those lofty objectives. They wanted to suppress freedom, steal public coffers and perpetuate poverty. In that regard, they had succeeded and they were strong states. My fellow students did not agree with me while finding my perspective intriguing.

We are facing similar situations around the country. The Niger Delta militants keep bombing oil pipelines, the kidnappers still run rampant in Ogun State borders of Lagos, and in southern Kaduna, 25 villages have suffered consistent attacks from herdsmen, with 102 persons killed, 50,000 houses burnt and several wounded, about 10,000 persons displaced, and hectares of lands in ruin.

In spite of the presence of the army, police and secret service, the situation has been out of control. Many parts of the country do not feel the arm and shadow of government. It is the case in southern Kaduna.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has cried out and the government has seemed unable to stanch or even anticipate the attacks, again and again. It shows that we have so many ungoverned places although the government is supposed to cover every nook and cranny of the country.

The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has said that it was not the rapine of Fulani herdsmen and that it was mere criminality. His argument is that the hoodlums were Fulani herdsmen from outside the country, and that they have been silenced with filthy lucre. Therefore, the new wave of violence must be from hoodlums. He argued that the same bandits were responsible for the crime in Zamfara State where the Fulani were the predominant victims. So, if it were genocide, the Zamfara violence would not have happened because the victims were Fulanis.

El-Rufai’s point will make sense if we can have on parade the criminals who did harm to southern Kaduna and Zamfara, and an undisputed link is made. A panel led by General Agwai was reported to have proved that link, according to the governor. Where are the culprits? Has any gone to jail or even been identified publicly? We need answers to these questions. It is not even whether the outcry of CAN over genocide is right or wrong, the question is, why is the government failing the people over and again?

It brings to mind a book published earlier this year titled, Nigeria’s Ungoverned Spaces: Studies in Security, Terrorism and Governance. It is a scholarly work of essays edited by Professors Richard A. Olaniyan and Rufus T. Akinyele. The book identifies so many ungoverned spaces. The eight-chapter book looks with rigour at various areas from northern border security to pipeline vandalisation to the pastoral Fulani herdsmen, and shows the state has found it difficult to live up to its billing to govern many spaces.

It must be a frustrating time for the Kaduna State Governor but it is also one of the larger problems of security in the country. State governors are chief security officers but wield that power only as ciphers. They command neither troops nor artillery, but have only the impotence of rhetoric as armour.

But the issue of ungoverned spaces does not fall within the ambience of law and order alone. The province of the mind is an important ungoverned space in Nigeria. Especially in Nigeria where education does not flow enough to the rural reaches, government can indeed be said to be failing in that sector most of all. The preponderance of gangster violence can be traced essentially to the poverty of the mind.

Some states have tried to address this issue. One of those states is the Sokoto State under Governor Aminu Tambuwal. With the provision of ICT across the length and breadth of schools at all levels, whether tertiary, secondary or primary school, the government is able to pass on not only pedagogic material to a good number of the institutions, but it is also able to institutionalise it. He came into office showing palpable concern for the girl child syndrome, a point the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar 111, had harped on since he mounted the throne a decade ago.

Governor Tambuwal and his government received recognition as the top state in the country in e-governance with an award from the National Information Technology Agency (NITDA). Sokoto State represented Nigeria at the Smart Cities Programme in Washington, D.C. in March this year. It was jointly organised by NITDA and the United States government.

As the Sokoto State government has demonstrated, the issue of ungoverned spaces is best tackled in the mind. According to Cicero, “the diseases of the mind are far more numerous and more dangerous than the diseases of the body.” Corruption, ignorance, murder, ethnic and religious bigotry and mayhem spring from the corrupt mind. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is,” said King David in the Bible.

If we do not take the issue of reorienting our people, we shall continue to deal with the explosion of perverted minds.

I must say that not all ungoverned spaces are evil. Many places where meetings were held to undermine the military era in the aftermath of June 12 turned out to be of public benefits. The so-called NADECO route was an ungoverned space. Revolutionaries also inhabit ungoverned spaces. Lenin, Napoleon, Castro, Cromwell, Mandela thrived in ungoverned spaces. Shakespeare asserted that truth sunk into the earth shall come out again. That is the nature of ungoverned spaces.

Nothing demonstrated the ungoverned space like the underground Railway during the abolitionist era in the United States. This is dramatised in the new novel The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, a hallucinatory account of how blacks and whites built, through sweat and dedication, networks of rail-road tunnels where blacks fled to safety from their blood-thirsty hunters.

The issue of the violence in southern Kaduna should go beyond rhetoric. Recriminations abound when government has failed, and blame games do nothing but stoke the fire. I asked a question in a recent tweet, posing whether the people of southern Kaduna have a right to defend themselves if government has failed them. Some people, out of ignorance or tendentious misinterpretation, saw it as a call to arms. If government fails, we create ungoverned spaces. That is not the job of government. We do not want a repeat of the situation where the Itsekiri had to end their battles with the Ijaw by arming themselves. It was a balance of terror that ended that bloody chapter. The same thing happened between the Muslims and Serbs. Bill Clinton government armed the Muslims and led the Serbs to go to the negotiating table. Even communities have organised vigilantes in their estates because government cannot fill the vacuum.

To obey is better than sacrifice. Government should stop the violence, and let all of us live together in peace. If we resort to education, fewer people will think of the gun instead of the pen.

December 5, 2016
Ebonyi and foreign rice ban

Apparently buoyed by emerging support for its ban on the sale and consumption of foreign rice, the Ebonyi State government has to set up a task force to ensure full compliance.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh had commended the state government for the decision to ban the sale and consumption of foreign rice during his assessment tour of some rice projects in the state. Ogbeh who was accompanied by the chairman, Presidential Committee on Rice Production, Abubakar Bagudu and CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele commended Governor Dave Umahi for ensuring massive rice production in the state. He said “I heard you banned the sale of foreign rice in your state, God bless you for it”.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Abdullahi Adamu had in a different forum, endorsed the ban thus: “I support the ban on sale of foreign rice in Ebonyi. We have to start somewhere. What we know is that local production is not enough but we should consume it and that is not an excuse for importing rice”.

Umahi directed the taskforce to “confiscate foreign rice found in our markets, the person should give us the certificate of the quality of the rice and has to provide the import duties paid for it, where he bought it from and give us Standard of Organization of Nigeria certificate to prove that the rice is not poisonous”. He sought to justify these measures on the grounds that some foreign rice were poisonous having been stored for over 20 years abroad before they were smuggled into the country.

On the face value, it would seem all is well with the decision of the Ebonyi State government to ban the sale and consumption of foreign rice. This is especially so as the seeming overall objective is to discourage the consumption of imported rice and boost the consumption and production of local variant. This thinking is further supported given that Ebonyi has great potentials for the production of local rice which is said to be of better nutritive value than the imported variety. There is also a lot of economy of scale that will follow if our people are made to consume the rice we produce. It will create jobs, enhance income per capita and catalyze a positive leap in the general well-being of our people. These benefits are not in doubt.

There is also the compelling imperative to discourage the seeming insatiable appetite of our people for what is foreign. Thus, the inward looking approach for solutions to our developmental problems cannot be faulted.

These may have been some of the considerations that compelled Umahi to ban the sale of foreign rice –a product the state has elastic capacity to produce. Through the ban, it is seeking to encourage the consumption of locally produced rice which will in turn lead to increased production, job creation and improvement in the general well-being of the people. Conceived along this line, the ban would seem a step worth its while.

But its success would depend on a number of extenuating variables some of which are beyond the control of the state government. The first presumption of the policy is that Ebonyi has available, enough local rice to meet domestic demand. The veracity of this claim is clearly in doubt. For a start, it is doubtful if the state government has accurate statistics on the quantity of rice consumed in the state yearly. It is unlikely to have one since it has no way of monitoring the quantity of foreign rice that hitherto came into the state.

Even if it is privy to the quantum of local rice produced in the state, the unavailability of reliable data on consumption could in effect, render the policy nugatory. There could be scarcity of the product which in turn, will lead to price increase. It is also doubtful Ebonyi can produce sufficient rice to feed its people when the commodity is sold and consumed beyond the shores of the state.

If Umahi discovers that the rice produced in his state cannot go round as it is sold in other states, will he then turn around and ban its sale outside the boundaries of the state? This poser is at the heart of the contradiction brought to the fore by the sole action of that state in banning the sale of foreign rice contrary to extant policy of the federal government. The same contradictions were at play when Umahi directed the taskforce to extract from foreign rice sellers such information as certificate of quality, duties paid on the commodity and certificate from SON that the rice is not poisonous.

These issues are beyond the mandate of the state government as we have a surfeit of regulatory agencies for such assignments. Moreover, Ebonyi State is a land locked state. It neither has a seaport or airport nor does it share borders with any foreign country. What then is the propriety in going into the markets to inundate retailers with all these details that ordinarily should be supplied by importers at the ports of entry? Why hold the poor retailers responsible for issues they know little or nothing about?

How many of our rice importers have their head offices in Ebonyi and how many of them are from that state if any? These posers have been raised to underscore the incongruity in some of the demands the task force has been assigned to confront foreign rice seller with. They also reinforce the problems we run into when we roll out an isolated policy that ignores extant position of the federal government on the matter.

Ebonyi State went beyond its mandate to have unilaterally banned the sale and consumption of foreign rice in the state. The action is loaded with more problems than whatever benefits it is bound to achieve. Apart from the fact that it cannot guarantee sufficient supply of local rice, it will amount to an undue harassment of foreign rice sellers, most of whom are middlemen and retailers.

For such a ban to have meaning, the initiative should come from the federal government. But it cannot do so because of the mismatch between domestic production and consumption. Besides, Nigeria is signatory to many treaties on trade liberalization that frown at trade restrictions or outright ban on the importation of commodities. So where does the Ebonyi case fit within this matrix and of what value will it be in the overall national calculations to increase the consumption and production of local rice?

The federal government said it has initiated measures in several fronts to boost domestic rice production. These should be pursued with greater vigour. Audu Ogbeh has promised government’s rehabilitation of the Ettem Amagu Ikwo Dam, supply of rice harvesters, threshers and parboiling drums to the state. These are the issues to be vigorously pursued by the Ebonyi State government to ensure it gets its fair share of them.

The overall objective now should be to substantially increase domestic production of rice that can fairly compete with the imported ones. Once this has been achieved, the lure of force as a veritable tool to secure local consumption compliance will fizzle out unilaterally. Then, Ebonyi will have no need for a task force that will confiscate imported rice within its shores.

More importantly, with the phenomenal high price of imported rice, the availability of cheaper local variant should be a soothing relief to the people of the state. By simple economic laws, this will result in a shift of patronage to the cheaper alternative. If we still depend on force to get our people to consume our local rice despite its cheaper price, it should instruct we are yet to get our acts right.

These are the issue to worry about. The right approach is to get more rice produced, refined in such a way that will command local patronage. Then, there would be no need to worry about foreign rice influx and use of taskforces to harass sellers of the commodity. For now, the approach of the Ebonyi State government to the matter is a verity of putting the cart before the horse; an exercise in shadow chasing.

December 5, 2016