The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Ikpeazu, Okorocha and DSS

    When the Department of Security Services DSS recently announced its investigations claiming that members affiliated with Indigenous Peoples of Biafra IPOB, abducted, murdered and buried five Fulani men in a shallow grave in Abia State, many discerning Nigerians must for good reasons, have been frightened. The shock is not only borne out of the dastardly nature of the alleged criminality but the frightening prospects of the incident ruffling the fragile peace that currently pervades the nation’s landscape.

    DSS spokesman, Tony Opuiyo, said the five men who resided in the Isuikwuato LGA of Abia State were discovered in the Umuanyi forest where they were suspected to have been killed and buried, amidst 50 other shallow graves of unidentified persons. He further alleged that the IPOB was gradually showing its real colours.

    But the IPOB vehemently denied the allegation by the DSS describing it as “fabricated lies”. The group said it was unfortunate to link a non-violent body with the alleged abduction murder and burying of five Fulani men. IPOB further alleged that the accusation was meant to instigate northerners whom they do not have any problem with against them so that there will be reprisal killing of their people in the north for no justifiable reason.

    Since then, the matter has remained at the realm of claims and counter claims as no further evidence has been adduced by the DSS to show how it arrived at the conclusion that IPOB was responsible for that murderous act.

    But a new dimension came into the controversy last week when the governors of Abia and Imo states- Okezie Ikpeazu and Rochas Okorocha addressed the press. In that media briefing after a joint security council meeting of the two states, the governors while condemning the killing of the five Fulani men in a border forest of the two states, said it was an act of kidnapping by criminals which has been rife in the states.

    More specifically, Okorocha said the killing was an act of kidnapping and had nothing to do with ethnicity. The governor said “information reaching us reveal that it is not just five Fulani men as there were two corpses believed to be Igbo from the area, so it is not just a direct attack on any ethnic group”. The governors also disclosed the arrest of the culprits who have been giving useful information with a promise that they will be made to face the full weight of the law.

    With the intervention of the two governors, it is now obvious who between the DSS and the IPOB, is telling the truth in respect of the motive behind the killing of the Fulani men. It would also seem that speculations on who is responsible for the killings have been laid to rest especially given the arrest of the suspected masterminds of the devious act.

    The intervention of the two governors, as commendable and timely as it was, has brought to the fore the conduct of the DSS in the matter. Here is a responsible security organ of the government that went to town to announce that members affiliated with IPOB abducted , murdered and buried five Fulani men in a shallow grave. And given the high regard the public has for that security arm of the government, many must have believed that the DSS must have had their facts right since they claimed the disclosure was a product of their investigations.

    But we have now been made to know after a joint security council meeting of the two states that the five men as reprehensible as their killings were, fell victim to the rampant kidnapping in the two states. What is more, two other bodies believed to be Igbo from the area were among the victims of the murderous activities of the kidnappers.

    How the DSS came to the conclusion that the five Fulani men were killed by the IPOB remains largely curious. Why it also chose to ignore the fact that there were two other bodies suspected to be Igbo victims of the murder at that site littered with 50 other shallow graves puts serious doubt on the purpose the information dished out by DSS was meant to serve.

    And given the sensitivity of such information and its frightening prospects to further compound the fragile security situation in the country, it remains a puzzle why the DSS rushed to town with information now faulted by the joint security council meeting of the two states. It is noteworthy that such joint meetings have among others in attendance, the state directors of the DSS.

    My reading of this development is that having participated in the joint security council meeting of the two states where it was agreed that the five Fulani men were victims of kidnapping, the DSS apparently admitted that the information it fed its national headquarters on who killed the Fulani men was incorrect. That was why the two governors had to announce to the public that the killings had nothing to do with ethnicity, which link the IPOB angle inevitably conveyed.

    By that also, the governors have diffused the tension and prospects of reprisal killings that may have followed that disclosure. It is nothing new that reprisal killings have before now been rampant from the part of the country where the five men come from. In the past, we have seen how even a cartoon that appeared outside this country resulted in reprisal killings in north from people who considered that cartoon offensive to their religion.

    Why the DSS could not factor such incendiary prospects while taking a decision to go public with an allegation that has now been proven wrong is a sad commentary on the proficiency and competence of those who handled that piece of information. Even at that, if the DSS had in verity stumbled at information linking the IPOB with that killing, what ought to have been its appropriate response to it? To go public with it or spread its dragnet to apprehend the culprits and make them face the full weight of the law?

    For this writer, the rational option for that security agency would have been to liaise with other security organs of the government to apprehend the masterminds of that devious act. Since it was able to finger the body allegedly connected with the incident, we presume the agency had a fair idea of those who took part in the killing. The right approach would have been to arrest and prosecute them rather than going public with unconfirmed information that could further create serious security challenges.

    We have now been told by the governors that the masterminds have been arrested and are giving useful information to the security agencies. That is the right path the DSS should have taken rather than dishing out tendentious information that would later be faulted.

    As much as one resists the lure of imputing motives into that hasty announcement by the DSS, it is utterly disappointing that that agency could not anticipate the mortal harm the development is to the lives of those on whose behalf the IPOB claims to be crusading.  Even if that piece of information was to be correct, the public had no need for it because it could result in reprisals killings. When that happens, would that agency not have failed in its statutory duties?

    We demand a thorough investigation into the circumstances leading to the filing of aspects of that report that has now turned out false. Those found culpable for acts of omission of commission should be punished. That is the right way to correct the festering impression by the IPOB that linking it to the killings was primed to precipitate reprisal killings of their people in the north.

    Above all, Ikpeazu and Okorocha deserve commendation for their bold and timely intervention that has saved the nation another cycle of violence arising from the poor handling of the matter by the DSS.

  • A season of blames

    It is not unusual given the dire economic straits in the country on account of debilitating fuel scarcity, for some introspection on how we got to this pass. For a major oil-producing country, the sight of long queues for fuel across the country, the price at which hapless citizens access that commodity and the general toll it is having on economic activities are issues that are bound to generate public apprehension.

    Not unexpectedly, reactions have come from various quarters on who or what to hold accountable for this. Opinions vary depending on the divide on which one stands. The trend however, is to heap the blame for the excruciating economic conditions at the door steps of the immediate past regime of Goodluck Jonathan.

    Revelations relating to the huge funds allegedly looted by sundry officials associated with that regime are easily propped up to support this line of contention. The argument is that if the monies said to have been diverted into private purses had been deployed for public good, perhaps, much of the economic problems the nation currently face would have been staved off.

    President Buhari had cause last week to identify with this school of thought when he blamed the past democratic regimes for the current economic woes of the country. The president said Nigeria has little to show for the huge resources it made from the sale of oil in the last 16 years despite the fact that the commodity sold around $100 per barrel for most part of that period.

    He blamed those who managed the affairs of this country within that time frame for failing to plan for the future with a promise to break that vicious cycle by ensuring that Nigeria works at her potentials rather than remaining at the level of potentials.

    President Buhari drew example with Ethiopia which solely relies on its airline industry for survival arguing that if that country could afford to sustain its people, Nigeria with greater potentials should be able to do better. The contention that Nigeria has no reason remaining at its current level of development had our leaders meaningfully deployed the huge resources that accrued from the sale of oil for public good, cannot be faulted.

    It is also a truism that the problems of this nation for which its citizens have largely remained hewers of wood and fetchers of water despite the enormous gifts Mother nature has endowed us, are traceable to our inability to plan for the future. In its place, we have over time, been treated to a looting spree by sundry buccaneers who bestrode our political landscape like an army of occupation.

    In the last 16 years and indeed since the advent of the oil boom in the 70s, Nigeria made enormous earnings from oil sales. But the reality on the ground is that this has not translated to a corresponding level of development such that even some other African countries with meagre revenue have done much better within the development matrix. So when Buhari said there is very little on the ground to show for the huge revenue that accrued to this nation within that timeframe, he is not out of order.

    But he erred when he sought to limit that malfeasance to the last 16 years of the return of democracy. The past 16 years correspond with the periods when Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan presided over the affairs of the country under the PDP-led government. Before then and for most part of our post independence era, the military bestrode the entire landscape like a colossus. Within that period especially in the early 70s, oil also commanded reasonable price in the international market.

    How much of the receipts from oil sales translated to meaningful development during the reign of the military, remains to be seen. So there must be something in the quality of leadership and its pattern of recruitment that has made it nigh impossible for us to make real progress. There must be some defective orientation in the psyche of our leaders that predisposes them to what foremost political scientist, Richard Joseph described as prebendalism. That is the issue to contend with and unless we realistically address this tendency, the leaders of today may not come out better than those of yesterday.

    In comparative terms however, there is more on the ground development wise within this period than the years the military ruled this country. It is vital to make this point because in the past, such excuses have been capitalized upon by overzealous military officers to prematurely terminate democratically elected governments. And as has been evident from our case, the military did not post any positive record of better management of our resources.

    So the blame game can go on and on. But there must be a point at which those in authority must take responsibility. The impression one gets each time we are reminded of how the last regimes mismanaged the nation’s economy is that the current regime is not willing to take responsibility for its actions. That the PDP did not live up to the expectations of Nigerians in the last 16 years is now history. And history is only relevant to the extent it directs actions of today for the better. What is vital now is not constant recourse to the past but how to convert the experiences of that past to positively impact on the actions and policies we take today.

    With nearly one year in office, what Nigerians expect are corrective actions by the government to improve on the fortunes of the country. They expect the dividends of their votes to translate to improvement in their lives and services provided by the government. They want to see new ways of doing old things; they want people oriented policies with positive impact on the lives of the toiling masses.

    They are eager to see a government that will convert the mistakes of the past to advantage and reverse the cycle of despondency and abject poverty that ravage the country in spite of the huge revenue accruals from the sale of oil. They want quick fixes given the high enthusiasm that greeted the change of baton last May. Unfortunately however, each time challenges arise in the management of the economy, we are quickly reminded of the sins of the last government as if there are no solutions to such acts of omission or commission.

    Buhari has promised to move beyond bandying our potentials to convert such potentials to advantage. That is the way to go. He has also drawn parallels with poorer country that have been able to manage their economies implying that there is no reason Nigeria should not do better.

    We must proceed beyond the past and chart the right course to stabilize the future. Not much is gained by attempts from supporters of the regime to blame the last regime for the biting fuel scarcity. Nigerians know the last government left office about one year ago and fuel situation was not that bad then. They are also privy to the fact that much of the stabilization we had in the supply chain in the last couple of years was achieved during that regime.

    Attempts at holding it culpable for the biting fuel scarcity and the scandalous prices the commodity sells across the country, cannot fly. Much of the problems we face with shortages in domestic fuel supply have to do with the way the government reacted to the twin issues of fuel importation by oil marketers and subsidy payment.

    The government misfired in coming to the conclusion that it has the capacity to almost solely take up the importation of the fuel needs of the country. Having found out the futility of that policy, it was not surprising that it last week handed back about 54 per cent of such importation to private marketers. And now, they talk of price adjustments or price modulation such that has given rise to speculations on the re-introduction of the fuel subsidy regime. Are we still in doubt of where the blame lies?

  • Trojan horse versus work horse

    Trojan horse versus work horse

    Sometimes in this republic, some well-meaning folks have questioned the essence of a legislature. They see the National Assembly as merely a chamber of opportunists, of jobbers, of men and women of claptrap vanity. They offer little but milk the nation to the bone.

    They are like the Polish parliament after the middle ages that was part cantankerous but wholly fruitless. A historian described it as a “divinely ordained confusion.”

    But the National Assembly is theoretically a necessity, a robust counterweight to the despotic impulses of power at the centre. In Nigeria, though, our legislature hardly adheres to the principles that inspired Montesquieu to dream up this delicacy of balancing for modern democracy. We need them as we need two gangs instead of one in a neighbourhood. So, if one menaces, the other can save us. It is a cynical necessity.

    The sense of the worthless lawmaker came up last week when the National Assembly decided to strike out some cardinal gems of the 2016 budget. They turned a baleful eye to major railway projects in spite of counterpart funding and brought their knife down on major road projects.

    It is a tale of contradictory impulses: greed versus progress. They sinned against major road projects and gave their nods to road projects where no studies have begun. The executive was thinking about the constituencies. The lawmakers were fantasising about their constituency projects.

    For irony, just last week, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), rolled out for the first time a comprehensive vision of the PMB administration’s economic plan. It was the First National Forum on the Economy organised by The Nation. Presented with rigour and coherence, it answered lingering questions in the light of a cascading Naira, fuel woes, infrastructure decay, power paralysis and a rising army of the jobless.

    The two-day conference featured not only the vice president but also governors and members. Other than the vice president, the first day featured the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode and the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha. The main fixture of the second day was Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima.

    The governors of Oyo and Ogun states sent representatives. But the point was made clear that as far as Nigeria’s progress is concerned, a coherent plan is required.

    The vice president’s speech is what we should have heard since. It explained the interconnect between power and development, infrastructure and job, the power of social initiatives as palliatives in a harsh environment.

    Yet the lawmakers have thrown into it a Trojan Horse. They are saying they want to return to business as usual. They want to stem progress.

    If to generate power we need gas, we must start now. If there are no pipelines to transmit gas from East to West where the plants are domiciled, we cannot afford to wait. In the same sense, we need to get the trains from Lagos all the way to Calabar, and it entails connecting all the states in the Niger Delta and East in one line. In the Jonathan era, China was ready, Jonathan was busy wasting dollars on politics and vanity.

    Now that PMB is ready, the law makers are saying no. This is what can be called the Trojan horse of Nigerian governance. The law makers must guard against that image. With one of its leaders under the gun of moral impropriety, this is not the time for the law makers to obstruct things.

    The executive must learn not to be held hostage by the lawmakers. With Osinbajo’s coherence, the government should have moved forward with its programme. It does not need to wait for the budget approval in order to attack the heres and nows of development.

    Governor Ambode, who has started what may be the boldest initiative of these times, called for “political will.” He said it in the context of his agricultural MOU with Kebbi State, with a potential to open up the greatest agrarian push in our history. The PMB administration can roll out work on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, power projects, and work on the rail lines without the Trojan horse of lawmakers.

    The term Trojan Horse dates back to the Trojan War, when the Greeks sought to take Troy. The Greeks built a wooden Horse and left it near Troy and sailed away. The Trojans saw it as a gift, but inside Greeks soldiers hid. Once the Trojans took in the horse, the soldiers crept out and defeated Troy. Both Homer and Virgil wrote fascinating accounts about this epic battle. Virgil wrote, in his account in the Aeneid, “whatever it is, I fear Greeks, even those bearing gifts.” Hence the phrase Greek gift has come to represent an undesirable present from an enemy. Trojan horse has been appropriated in computer language as a sneaky and dangerous virus.

    If the lawmakers are now the Trojan horse bearing Greek gifts, we must wage our war for progress creatively. With the PMB almost a year in office, it ought to have mined its creative gifts to source funds in lieu of the budget. It can be done. It could be in the form of loans or grants. The Nigerian government is too big and the country too needy for huge work of development to remain in the abeyance for so long.

    Governor Okorocha made a salient point. He noted that we have big agriculture budget at the centre but no land. Spicing his speech with humour and anecdotes, he talked up the economy by emphasising practical approaches.

    Backing his presentation with slides about his state, Borno State was ravaged by Boko Haram, lost its sense of being and was even about to become a de facto theocracy in defiance of the centre. He was there come fire and bomb and suicides and Chibok, working up the civilian JTF. He spoke about his school feeding initiatives, his emphasis on agriculture, several housing projects for the dispossessed and the need for the nation to rally round the state to bring the people back from the brink. Shettima became a metaphor for hope among ruins.

    From the story of the conference, it is clear that Governor Ambode hit the bull’s eye with his call for political will. It is what will make the difference between paralysis and progress. It will make the difference between Trojan horse and work horse.

  • Impunity of the herdsmen

    For many farming communities across the country, the fear of Fulani herdsmen may as well, constitute the beginning of wisdom. From Benue to Plateau, Ondo to Enugu, the menace of Fulani herdsmen has taken such a dangerous dimension that may reduce the insurgency in the north-east to a child’s play.

    The impunity with which they attack, maim and raze down communities virtually unchallenged has given cause for motives to be imputed into their activities. They take local farming communities by surprise, attacking in commando style with very sophisticated weaponry to advantage.

    In the last couple of weeks, the Agatu local government area of Benue State has borne the brunt of these menacing attacks, ostensibly spurred by the lure of grazing lands for their cattle. So many lives have been lost with property of inestimable value destroyed. In their wake, more than 100,000 locals have been displaced from their ancestral homes while the invaders quickly brought in more than 500,000 cattle to graze on the farms of this predominantly agrarian community.

    The people of Agwu local government area of Enugu State are now living in a very fragile peace due to the arrest and detention of 76 indigenes when they mobilized to rescue two of their women abducted by Fulani herdsmen while on their farms. Reports had it that Fulani herdsmen had abducted the two women on their way to the farms and when all pleas to have them released fell on deaf ears, some youth in the community mobilized to have them freed.

    As they made to search for them, words were sent to soldiers who stormed the bush arrested and detained the villagers before handing them over to the police. They are still detained without being charged to court for whatever infractions they may be accused of. Ironically, the same soldiers showed scant regard to freeing the abducted women as their whereabouts remain mysterious.

    And in Osun State, the House of Assembly has directed that a task force be set up to monitor the coming in and out of Fulani herdsmen. The measure became expedient to check the indiscriminate grazing on farmland and the destruction of crops by the herdsmen. By this measure, the two entry points of the herdsmen through the Iwo and Ila axis are to be properly manned to control the movement of cattle into the state.

    These are just few cases in the orgy of violence associated with the activities of the herdsmen. They have also been fingered in the recurring cases of armed robbery, raping and kidnapping across the country. No less a person than the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase recently blamed much of this criminality associated with the Fulani herdsmen on those of them of foreign nationality.

    He said with our porous borders and the ECOWAS protocols that allow free movement of citizens of member countries, most of the criminal elements in the Fulani herdsmen stock are foreigners. How that claim will be useful in taming the menace of the herdsmen is yet to be seen. And if Arase has found this statistic to be correct, it will be interesting to know how he intends to deploy that information to tame the monster.

    The time bomb which the unrestrained violent proclivities of the herdsmen represent is further brought home by the lamentations of Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom. He had told reporters after his recent meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo that “the security situation in Benue, especially Agatu is getting out of hand. Right now, several settlements have been razed down, an undisclosed number of people killed and my people are now refugees all over the place”.

    Other people in Benue State have also decried the continued killings by the herdsmen even with the deployment of more military and police personnel to the flash points. Not unexpectedly, this has given rise to accusations of bias against security agencies in handling matters concerning the herdsmen. No less a person than the former governor of Abia state, Theodore Orji last week, lent his weight to this suspicion of bias in the way security agencies treat matters relating to the provocation of the local population by invading herdsmen. He said the way security personnel react when issues arise between the herdsmen and the local population tends to convey the impression that they are biased in favour of the former.

    There is no doubt that the activities of the herdsmen have become the greatest threat to the security and unity of this country. Though the issue is not entirely new, it would appear it is everyday assuming such a dangerous dimension that something more serious has to be done to tame this monster.

    There are serious grounds especially given the inability of our law enforcement agencies to pre-empt and quickly control such attacks that expansion and domination may be the latent motive behind the flashes of violence associated with the herdsmen across the country.

    A number of suggestions have been floated as a way out of the situation. We have heard of grazing routes and grazing areas for the herdsmen throughout the country. There have also been suggestions for the establishment of ranches in keeping with global practices in animal husbandry.

    Even then, the Senate is said to be working on a legislation to provide grazing lands for the herdsmen. Though the modalities for this arrangement are yet to come public, there exists some measure of discomfort with ceding ancestral lands of the local population to Fulani herdsmen just to appease them. Those in support of mapping out grazing lands for the herdsmen do so as a temporary measure given that herdsmen scattered all over the country must have to find some grazing land for their cattle. And given the itinerant nature of this business, there is bound to be regular conflict between the herdsmen and the local farmers as long as their cattle go in search of pasture.

    The idea may sound plausible but it is not as neat as it is being proposed. Soon the issue of ownership will set in. Soon also demands for self-determination and all manner of agitations will crop up. And in a setting where Fulani herdsmen or their sympathizing armed militia wield sophisticated weapons with which to attack and dislodge the local population from their ancestral homes, ceding such vast land areas to them will further come with serious security challenges.

    There is little doubt about that. If they can operate with the level of impunity that has now become their hallmark, one shudders what the situation will be when vast areas of land are now allocated to them just for grazing in all parts of the country. Will that not embolden them to further challenge the original owners of the lands? Will that also not amount to instituting Fulani hegemony all over the country?

    It is therefore important that in putting together that piece of legislation, our lawmakers must clearly state that the ownership of those lands devolves on the original owners. One way to ensure this is to make those herdsmen pay regular rent to the original owners of the land.  Rearing cattle is a very big business. Farming is also peoples’ means of livelihood. We cannot afford to sacrifice one for the other. With geometric increase in population given our census figures, our food needs have also grown by that same margin.

    Our local farmers should not be denied access to their farming lands just to appease the herdsmen who by all accounts have proved to be unfriendly visitors. The ultimate solution is in embracing the establishment of ranches. Then and only then would we have found permanent solutions the constant frictions between the herdsmen and their host communities.

    Before then, the federal government must do something urgent about the sources of the sophisticated arms and ammunitions at the disposal of the herdsmen. The inability of the security agencies to disarm them, fuels the festering impression that there is an official dimension to the impunity of Fulani herdsmen.

  • Agricultural revolutionaries

    this is the first time in the history of Nigeria that two states are collaborating to develop their agricultural potential,” Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode declared at the March 23 signing of a Memorandumý of Understanding between Lagos and Kebbi states toward a much-needed agricultural revolution in the country. This magical moment in Lagos may well represent a revolutionary activation of the country’s agricultural progress.

    The record-setting deal is a powerful example that should influence the powerful people that are well placed to make things happen agriculturally across the country. Kebbi State Governor Atiku Bagudu correctly captured the significance of the occasion and the vision of the collaboration: “What we are doing is that we are pioneering a collaboration that will bring other states on board later and we believe that our potential is enormous and we must have pacesetters to start that process of joint collaboration for our collective good.”

    This partnership of pacesetters reflects forward-looking gubernatorial thinking, and Bagudu significantly noted that it mirrors President Muhammadu Buhari’s aspiration to de-emphasise the country’s oil dependence.

    The logic of this agricultural partnership and how it will enable national food sufficiency and food security, apart from its employment-generation possibilities, is not only compelling but also commendable.

    Ambode painted a picture that impressively showed how the collaboration would create commodity value chains and boost food processing, production, and distribution. He said: “Lagos State is the largest consumer of food commodities in Nigeria by virtue of our state population. We have the market, with the required purchasing power also. Lagos State has an estimated consumption of over 798,000 metric tonnes of milled rice per year which is equivalent to 15.96 million of 50kg bags, with a value of N135 billion per annum.” He also stated that the state currently consumed 6,000 cattle daily, which may increase to 8,000 in the next five years.

    Ambode continued: “Lagos State is one of the largest producers of poultry and thus has a large demand for maize for livestock feed production. The state also houses most of the industrial users of wheat and sorghum; mostly flour mills, bakeries, breweries, and food manufacturersý. Kebbi State, on the other hand, is blessed with a vast arable land characterised by very large flood plains, lowland swamps and gentle slopes. In the 2014/2015 wet season, over 600,000 hectares of land was deployed for rice cultivation in the three senatorial areas of the state.”

    The beauty of this joint venture is its formalisation to the extent that it  will be implemented using a Special Purpose Vehicle called LASKEB Agricultural Production and Marketing Company (LAPMCO), which will focus on rice, wheat, groundnut, onions, maize, sorghum, and beef.

    The concentration on rice is particularly noteworthy, considering its status as a staple food in the country. Nigeria reportedly ranks among the world’s top 12 rice-consuming countries, but its rice-consumption level is dependent on rice importation. It is a testimony to Nigerians’ taste for rice that the country is reportedly “the second largest importer of rice in the world and the largest net importer in Africa”.  A recent report said: “Nigeria spends an estimated N356 billion on importation of rice annually, the bulk of which comes from Thailand.”

    It is striking that Ambode made an ambitious assertion in respect of rice importation. He said: “The era of imported rice is gone…We have the economic prowess to produce rice locally. The reality is for all of us to embrace the consumption of local foodstuff and commodities.” He added: “Our traders can become key employers of labour as distributors of ‘Ibile Rice’. We can also brand and package rice in the names of our distributors and traders. As a state, we shall adopt our local rice as a state dish in all ramifications.”

    According to Ambode, “The people of Kebbi are traditionally rice farmers with average land holding of about 10 hectares. Presently, Kebbi has over 50,000 metric tonnes of paddy in store produced from the last two planting seasons.” Interestingly, Bagudu projected that the partnership would provide 60 to 70 percent of the country’s rice demand.

    It is obvious that local rice production is still a far cry from the demand of local rice consumption. As long as a colossal gap exists between production and consumption, so long will a colossal problem exist. However, it is observable that the problem may not be about production per se. More problematic is the production standard as well as the standard of the product. Concerning acceptability and acceptance, there is no question that the production and the product will need to meet certain consumer standards. In other words, marketing local rice to local consumers must start with getting the rice right in production terms. Then it will be easier to get consumers to listen to promotional talk about locally produced rice.

    One big event recently highlighted the bigness of the country’s agricultural challenge. It may be considered a reflection of big agricultural thinking in the country’s power circle that the 8th Annual Bola Tinubu Colloquium focused on Agriculture. Appropriately, the catchwords of the March 29 event in Abuja were: Action; Work; Revolution. It is significant that the Federal Government took advantage of the platform to further clarify its agricultural vision.  Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Audu Ogbeh, who was the keynote speaker, said at the forum through Minister of State Heineken Lokpobiri: “We intend to achieve self-sufficiency in tomato paste by the end of this year and in rice, maize and soya beans by the end of 2018 as well as wheat by 2019.”

    There is no question that targets and target-setting are useful, but the question is whether the targets would be pursued with performance-mentality and result-mentality. It is easy to pay lip service to agricultural development without developing agriculture.

    Food is a hierarch in the hierarchy of needs. It is so primary and so pivotal that human survival and human society depend on it. This is so self-evident that it requires no emphasis. It is high time the country’s structures of power structured its agricultural growth.

    Lagos and Kebbi states, through Ambode and Bagudu, have demonstrated action and are set to work for the desired agricultural revolution. The revolution requires revolutionary thinking and more revolutionaries are needed.

  • In the arena

    In the arena

    The greatest asset in public life is courage. The worst is what Bola Ige, no laggard, called siddon look. Ige had to rise from the ennui of the onlooker to get his feet dirty, his brain tested and his life taken.

    All the men in our history who matter have not recoiled from the ring of action. They may fail. They may be caviled at. They may stumble and even end in disgrace. But they never want to become spectators, eyes alive and lusty but flesh weary and inert.

    The man who would never belong to that tribe of low blood pressure is another Bola, who turned 64 last week to great eclat. He had what some philosophers will call the promethean spirit, a restless energy to rebel, to challenge, to endure, to imbue humanity with the brio to conquer his environment.

    When Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was celebrated last week, it was that vitality that seized the minds of his compatriots. But more specifically, it was to acknowledge what he started, the history he dared to foist not only on a nation, but a political class noted for its complacent surrender to quick profit.

    But those who saw him begin the idea of an APC hardly expected the turnout. Some took up the idea as just a compulsive activity. The man wanted to dare Jonathan. What else did you expect of him? He was not going to go far. The new project would lumber, meet an obstacle, lose oxygen, asphyxiate, die.  The prospect seemed daunting. Jonathan’s rating had hit the heavens and his swagger menaced the potential opponent.

    Tinubu had Southwest. Buhari was still sulking from a shellacking. Politicians were flocking to the PDP. The price of oil was over $100 per barrel. Pock was barreling into the pots of any political harlot. It was not a case of David daring Goliath. In the imaginations of many, David was not even born.

    Others shrank into their ethno-regional comforts. CPC in the North. ANPP in the Northeast. APGA in the East. AC in the Southwest. PDP everywhere. It was no suicide to remain so. But Tinubu started. He worked the phones, called meetings, contrived committees, flew from one wheel horse to another.

    But it was clear he was knocking on the door of many who preferred their sleep to hunting at night. Many of them saw the Jonathan triumph, and had developed the anti-heroic tranquility of Lord Jim in Joseph Conrad’s immortal novel of the sea, Lord Jim. They wanted action. They wanted to be heroes. They did not see their opportunities. When they saw it they were reluctant to take advantage. Like Jim, they jumped into the sea rather save others in a shipwreck. Nigeria was a shipwreck in the making. The news had begun to show Jonathan’s footloose attitude to the nation’s purse. Billions had been devoted to projects that never took off. A certain somnolent surrender had overtaken the men of politics. Let us wait for the election cycle and we will see what can be made of it. That was their thought mode.

    Asiwaju was ready to wake them up. He was like the United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who would rather fight than faint. Hear Roosevelt on the man in the arena:

    “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

    Roosevelt, often called TR to distinguish him from his relative FDR, remade himself from the profile of a high class to a frontiers man, rugged, warrior, intellectual, a nature romantic, a sort of Renaissance man.

    Asiwaju was told of the menaces ahead. The big egos. The territorialism of those party bigwigs who thought him an interloper. The Jonathan men would plant spies that would undo the party. We saw that with OBJ in Labour Party. Ethnic bigots would derail them. Others said the issue of party leader would destroy the coalition. If not that, the presidential candidate.

    He knew all that, and he said he had formulas for every obstacle. He who dreamed the project had seen the scenarios. Each time it happened, he sailed it. It was a fight with wrinkles. The victories came all the same. But always with wrinkles. Giants don’t fight without bruises. Bruises are often badges of honour. Sometimes he confronted roadblocks and dream enders. He took the attitude of the Ballad of St. Andrews: “I am struck and wounded; I lay me down and rest awhile and I will rise and fight again.”

    He did not take this project without attention to detail. At one stage, the issue of the symbol of the party, or the name of the party, created its own challenges. Egos clashed. But he had a way of giving everyone their sop. He sacrificed much of the AC to get APC. He thought it was worth it.

    Yet while it is easy to say the APC is his best political achievement yet, we may sometimes forget his best trait. In a series of tributes to him on his birthday, perhaps the best words came from party apparatchik, Ismaila Ahmed, who noted that Asiwaju had made more leaders than any leader. We know some of them: Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), Abiola Ajimobi, Kayode Fayemi, Rauf Aregbesola, Akinwunmi Ambode, Adams Oshiomhole, et al. It is a tribute to self-confidence and selflessness. The first task of a leader is to make leaders.

    But not least of all is that he knows how to make leaders win. You have to win, or else you will never be realised. In spite of the opposition of bigwigs, he stuck with Buhari, and worked the game like a chess player. The other contenders saw Buhari overcome the negatives as they, with money and other virtues, fell. Buhari, sometimes aplomb to a fault, might have been dazed to see Asiwaju the prophet turn right at every turn.

    When the story of this generation is written, he will be on the front ranks of those who stopped this republic from falling, and from being charmed into decay or one-party tyranny by prostitutes and carpet baggers. In fact, if he were not here, it seems no one else was ready for the task with what Buhari called his “creativity” or even the courage and sense of timing. The other imponderable he came with is called charisma.

    But the task to right the wrong has just started, with fuel queues, cascading naira, and jobs lost, he knows he has to play a role to make this era whole.

  • History populariser

    In Nigeria, the study of History isn’t dead; but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is alive. Perhaps it is in that twilight zone where life and death commingle.

    It was fitting that a concerned senior citizen seized the opportunity of a celebration of history to prompt cerebration on history. In his speech during the celebration of the 50thanniversary of the Federal Government College (FGC), Warri, Delta State, J.O.S. Ayomike said:  ”I wish to use this occasion to make a call close to my heart. It has bothered many Nigerians that ‘history’ as a formal discipline is no longer taught in our schools up to the tertiary establishment. I call on the education planners in the country to rethink and go back to teaching history.”

    Ayomike was honoured with ‘an award for an exceptional life-time achievement’. It is impressive that the author of historical books and Chairman of the Itsekiri Leaders of Thought did not only demonstrate history consciousness; he also made a historic donation to promote history consciousness.

    Ayomike said: “On my part, as a first step, I make a donation to your library of historical tools that are significant to our development. (Obtained from UK museums): “Two large framed photographs of: (a) Nanna’s palatial residence, out –houses and stores in Ebrohimi before the war of 1894; (b) four British warships booming cannon fire on Ebrohimi (air filled with smoke) about a week before the fall of the town; (c) a dozen copies of the Biography of Prince Ogbe Yonwuren (A potentate, whose community where he lived over 100 years ago abuts your school premises); a dozen copies of other valuable books…”

    It is relevant to highlight the story of these newsmaking pictures. A June 16, 2015, report said: “The Johnson Ayomike family of Warri, Delta State, has acquired from a museum in the United Kingdom (UK) some historic photographs taken away by colonialists from the Nanna Living Museum, Koko, Warri North Local Government Area of the state.” The  report quoted the Chairman of Warri Study Group, Edward Ekpoko, as saying that the photos were those of the  Nanna palatial residence, adjoining warehouses, stores and town, as well as four British warships, Phoebe, Widgeon, Alecto and Philomel, depicting scenes in Ebrohimi before and during the British/Nanna war of 1894.  According to the report, Ekpoko said that the family would hand over the photos to the Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments for the Nanna Living History Museum.

    Against this background, it is interesting that a Benin bronze sculpture known as Okukorrecently hit the headlines following its official removal from the dining hall at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, UK. The bronze cockerel was among the hundreds of treasures looted by British troops involved in a “punitive expedition” that resulted in the 1897 conquest of the old Benin Kingdom, which is now part of Nigeria. What happened in those days shouldn’t have happened.  This 19th century demonstration of the beastly aspects of humanity remains a haunting reminder of colonialism and its unflattering sins.

    It is noteworthy that the decision by the university’s authorities to take down the sculpture followed a campaign by the college’s student union in the context of increasing activism against symbols of Britain’s colonial past. The Jesus College student union had passed a motion saying that the sculpture should be formally handed over to Nigeria. The students said:  ”The contemporary political culture surrounding colonialism and social justice, combined with the university’s global agenda, offers a perfect opportunity for the college to benefit from this gesture.”

    Considering that the sculpture was a donation from the estate of a former British officer, George Neville, who died in 1929, the students argued that its continued display was a minus because it was plundered. The cockerel sculpture has been at the college since 1930 and symbolically reflects the surname of its founder, John Alcock. The college’s crest displays three cockerels’ heads.

    It is striking that the institution’s authorities reviewed the position of the sculpture after over 80 years. A university spokesperson was quoted as saying:  ”Jesus College acknowledges the contribution made by students in raising the important but complex question of the rightful location of its Benin Bronze, in response to which it has permanently removed the Okukor from its Hall.”  The spokesperson added: “The College commits to work actively with the wider University and to commit resources to new initiatives with Nigerian heritage and museum authorities to discuss and determine the best future for the Okukor, including the question of repatriation.”

    Worth mentioning is the report that the students’ “Benin Bronze Appreciation Committee” said it was in contact with a Nigerian government official who wanted the sculpture returned to Nigeria.  Since Nigeria gained independence in 1960, the country has pursued the return of hundreds of Benin bronzes looted by British expansionists as well as other artistic gems transported immorally and illegally to Western countries, especially during the colonial era.

    The drama of Okukor’s removal brings to mind the findings of art historian Philip J. C. Dark. In his work titled “Benin Bronze Heads: Styles and Chronology,” Dark said that about 6, 500 Benin artefacts could be found in an estimated 77 places across the world.  Of this number, the British Museum is believed to be in possession of 700 while the Ethnology Museum in Berlin holds over 500.

    At the heart of the looting of African artefacts by Western invaders is the question of morality. It is the same question that drove the campaign for the removal of Okukor from its pedestal in a foreign land. Hopefully, Okukor would be returned to where it belongs. Also, it is hoped that there would be an intensification of the campaign for the return of looted artefacts.

    The beauty of Ayomike’s example is that it is a lesson in history. It would appear that his concern about the teaching of history is well-founded. Listen to what columnist Kofoworola Bello-Osagie said in a December 2015 article titled “The History Curriculum question”: “I am tired of reading about the exclusion of History from the Nigerian national curriculum.  The subject is there.  It was never removed…However, while people should be glad to heave a sigh of relief that it has not been expunged from the curriculum, there are serious challenges facing the teaching of the subject in Nigerian schools.  So, the concern about the fate of the subject is in order.” She continued: “History is one the 12 subjects categorised under the Humanities department that secondary school pupils study from SS1-SS3. But one of the concerns of critics, which is worthy of attention, is that History is not taught right from primary school; and, even when it is taught at senior secondary level, it is an elective subject.”

    Johnson Oritsegbubemi Sunday Ayomike, who will be 89 on April 7, deserves to be celebrated for his services to History.  The country needs more popularisers of History like him.

  • And poor Joan died!

     

    If the furor generated by the conduct of the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination UTME has abated, the family of Emmanuel Egemba, a retired assistant superintendent of the Nigerian Customs will for long, nurse the bruises inflicted by that singular exercise on them.

    The predicament of the Egemba’s has nothing to do with the regular complaints that marred the examination in many centers: malfunctioning computers, multiple results as evident in the disparities between results received through text messages and computer printouts, inability to take the exams and inappropriate loading of questions among others.

    Theirs, was the cruel fate that befell their 20 year old daughter, Joan scheduled to write the exams at a center far from her family residence but abducted and murdered by suspected rapists as she made for her center on the eve of the test billed to commence by 6.30am.  Accounts have it that the poor girl who lived at the Odo Eran, Sango Otta area of Ogun state, in a bid to meet up with the 6.30 am exam time, left her home for the center at the National Open University center at Awa Ijebu on the eve of her exam date.

    Apparently because of her family’s anticipated difficulties in meeting up with the 6.30 exam time given the distance, she was encouraged by her parents to go a day before and possibly pass the night at the exam center. That decision turned out the greatest mistake the family will ever live to regret.

    According to reports, when Joan eventually arrived at the center that evening, the security man at the gate initially refused to open the gate for her and some other candidates who had also arrived there because of anticipated difficulties in meeting up with time were they to set out on the morning of the test.  Joan was later to speak with her father around 7pm that the security man had eventually allowed them entry into the center to pass the night there.

    From then, things went awry. Subsequent attempts by her father to speak with her on phone failed as it was switched off. A search conducted a few days after she was supposed to have written the exams, resulted in the discovery of the strangulated body of the poor girl. The manner she was killed suggested she might have been strangled by suspected rapists as she resisted the assault on her. Her body was discovered at Ijebu Igbo following information received at a building beside her exam center that a girl was kidnapped around the area on that fateful night. Ironically, the security man who allegedly opened the gate of the center for the candidates denied knowledge of the fate of the poor girl.

    To make matters worse for the Egemba’s, reports lodged at the police station in the area were not attended to as the divisional police officer at Awa Ijebu was said not to have acted on the matter four days after the report was lodged in his office. And that has turned out the uncanny fate of the young lady whose thirst for higher education led her to opt to sleep in an unfriendly environment in order to meet up with her exam time schedule.

    For now, the Egemba family is in dire distress. They are devastated and full of regrets on the circumstances that led to the premature killing of their daughter. So many ideas would have by now been running through their minds. They will have to come to terms with the propriety of their decision to allow their daughter proceed to the center without any arrangement as to how she would be accommodated that night.

    Had they anticipated the outcome of that decision, they would have preferred the life of their daughter to UTME exam that has brought in its trail sadness, sorrow and awe. But they did not have that premonition. Neither did they anticipate such impending calamity. They may have underestimated the level of criminality in the Nigerian society today such that gave them the comfort of mind that their daughter was not being exposed to a huge danger.

    They may also have been constrained by other circumstances to arrive at that painful decision. But the worst has happened that will leave sour memories in the hearts of the entire family. It is a very unfortunate and heart-rending story.  My heart goes to the family at this trying moment. The Egemba’s are not alone in this predicament arising from the curious scheduling of the UTME exams by 6.30 for some of the candidates. Given the constraints posed by limited exam centers, many candidates found themselves posted to centers far away from their places of abode. Those of them who had schedules very early in the morning, had to make sundry arrangements to ensure they do not miss out given the difficulty in hitting the centers on time were they to take off from their homes.

    Joan was a typical case of one of those candidates. Had her exam not been scheduled that early, the cruel fate that has befallen her would have been avoided. There are other candidates that suffered serious risks and inconveniences on account of the early morning examination schedule. But Joan’s case has perhaps, turned the worst of such sad encounters.

    This writer was in one of the exam centers in the first two days of the exercise with his son who was billed to write the exam by 9.30 am in nearby Ogun state. Though we arrived at the center around 7am since we could not predict Lagos traffic, the exam did not start until two hours after the scheduled time. As I was waiting for my son to finish the exam which eventually ended around 4 pm, I had sufficient time to interact with the army of parents who accompanied their children to the exams.

    I can recall very vividly that as we waited and got tired hanging around, some of the parents lamented that during their time they went for similar exams unaccompanied. One of them even suggested that children of today are over pampered by their parents. But another objected to that suggestion.

    She said things have since changed and those who accompany their children to the centers do so for fear that harm may come their way. She said she had two children writing the exams that morning and that they had to drop and pick them one after another for their safety.

    Many of the discussants concurred that things have changed and it is better to be sure of the safety of your children. To them, any sacrifice made for the safety of the children is worth the trouble especially with the spate of armed robbery, kidnapping, cultism and sundry criminalities. With similar discussions, we were able to ward off the boredom of having to wait for our children for more than nine hours. But if some of us had the privilege of ferrying our children to the exam centers, it is not so for so many families as Joan’s case has shown.

    One could therefore imagine how those parents who were part of the above discussion will feel on learning of the fate of the Egemba’s. All the fears they expressed were after all, not unfounded. We have seen how the criminally minded cashed in on the predicament of the poor lady to snuff life out her. What a sad way to die. We commiserate with Joan’s family on this sad incident and urge the law enforcement agents to do all within their powers to track down the culprits.

    In this task, the security man at the center will have useful information on all that transpired that night. It is also sad that the police did not act quickly when information on the missing girl was reported to them. The Ogun police command must swing into quick action to unravel the circumstances behind the dastardly act.

    Beyond this however, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board JAMB has vicarious responsibility in the matter for scheduling exams as early as 6.30 am. In the face of a poor transportation system in the country, acute fuel shortages and mounting insecurity, asking candidates to arrive at the exam centers by that hour is to say the least, very inconsiderate. In subsequent arrangements, the board must do away with the idea of scheduling exams that early. That way, the sad fate that befell Joan will not repeat itself.

     

     

  • When things fell apart

    When things fell apart

    The Rivers State imbroglio just revealed one of the ailments of the Nigerian mind: a compulsive amnesia. We sometimes act as though the past is either too heavy with sorrow or casts us in bad light, so we forget. Or it is so light we lose sense of how to make it into a weight of glory. The media, just like our political elite, are culprits of the mnemonic sin. The media reports and comments suffered from a scant well of historical backgrounding. Our politicians ape the trend. In the end, we act as a people without a past.  Socrates knew this and so devised a system of recall that is now called the Socratic Method in philosophical studies. Socrates says our senses deceive us and that we know more than we think we know.

    The bloodshed and intimidation a week ago rekindle the need to study history. The media have simply reported it as an Amaechi-Wike standoff, as though the story began either last year or in the run-up to the last elections into the local and national legislatures.

    A brief history may help rejig our anaemic memory. After the Obasanjo years, the militants soaked the diaries of the region in blood and near anarchy. The new governors of the region as well as the late President Umaru Yar’adua set out to tackle the enveloping nightmare. Governor Timipre Sylva initiated the amnesty programme that led to the dropping of arms, especially in Bayelsa and Delta states. The Rivers State dimension was different.

    Before Amaechi became governor, Rivers State, especially the capital Port Harcourt, crawled with fear and blood. Amaechi disdained amnesty and would not reconcile with them. He confronted them. He basked in the support of the centre.

    Just as Yar’adua backed the amnesty deal, he put the nation’s military resources behind Amaechi. Port Harcourt hummed with hoodlums. Sudden bursts of gunfire, melee on the main arteries, yelps for help, bodies lying on roadsides became part of the narrative of the once-lauded Garden City.

    Innocents walked the streets and commuted with doubtful hope of a peaceful journey. I visited the city a few times then in 2007 and was amazed to see citizens trek with grave brows and upraised hands. I asked why, and I was told it was to show they had no arms. Two bare hands, raised up, protested innocence.

    One of the ghoulish familiars of the times was a place ominously called “the evil forest.” It was the lair of the militants. There they built and stored armoury, hatched plots of unrest, also lived in unspeakable opulence. They farted violence and fattened on it. Foreigners fled the city from the commonplaces of harassment and abduction and the rapine of their businesses.

    Commerce stagnated, jobs depleted, governance was stultified and gangsters reigned. Eventually, the lords of the murderous rings were flushed out of reckoning. The evil forest became a historical relic. It was a triumph of federal-state cooperation. For about six years, Rivers State grew steadily back to its halcyon past. Rotimi Amaechi was a PDP chieftain and even became the head of the Governors Forum without controversy.

    Things fell apart between Amaechi and Goodluck Jonathan. The reasons were in the public space. Mama Peace, in her lack of grace, foregrounded a drama about a hovel of crime and bandits that Amaechi levelled. It was in Okrika. I propounded a question in Jonathan’s meeting with editors in Lagos. He responded cavalierly. In his usual dodgy style, he spoke as though he knew and didn’t know of the incident.

    But since then, the President and the Rivers State Governor did not enjoy any cordiality. Amaechi claimed later that it was because of pecuniary pressures from Mama Peace, the first primitive first lady in our history. We saw the fight in other incarnations. Over oil wells with Bayelsa State, the neglect of Rivers State projects from the centre, etc. Some have accused Amaechi of lack of tact. He had a confrontational style.

    But the problem lay in the conventional wisdom that because Amaechi hails from the President’s region, he should bow to his will, willy-nilly. He also had a face-off with the judiciary. NJC, in a nepotistic way, bent its rules to favour the party and government of the centre.

    Amaechi would not remain in the party with the President. He joined the APC after the New PDP morphed and grew out of the PDP. That, historians will note, as the beginning of Jonathan’s fall. Some of Amaechi’s kinsmen would not forgive him for humiliating their son. He might have sinned. He might have been inept. He might have been sly and vicious. He was their son. You have to serve your sentiment even if it is inscrutably stupid. That was how the violence of Rivers State moved from rhetoric and emotional fracture to blood and death. His victory over the Governors Forum machinations by Jonathan and his PDP kingpins scarred the landscape further.

    The first sign that the matter was bound to violence was with the appointment of Mbu Mbu as police commissioner. In a recent interview, the former CP said he had not met Jonathan or first lady and Amaechi prejudged him and that led to strains in relations. He must think he was speaking to fools. If he did not know them, did that account for his wanton acts of irresponsibility, his contempt for the rule of law? We were all witnesses to these. If Amaechi prejudged him, was that excuse to prove Amaechi right? President Obama, in response to not bombing Syria after a threat, has said, “bombing because you promised to bomb is not a good reason to bomb.” Decency reveals character.

    Not long after, the hoodlums paraded the streets of Port Harcourt in an extravagant display of brawn, arms and intimidation. They were backed by the federal might. The army and police with which Amaechi flushed them out had new masters. Amaechi was now bait. Since then violence gradually took over the city and state. It festooned in the 2015 elections where brawn took over law. The Supreme Court gave judicial armoury to bloodletting by privileging technicality over realism in law in Wike verdict. Go thou now; kill and maim and destroy, implied the verdict. It was fulfilled in the recent polls.

    The Buhari administration did not learn from this history. The Bayelsa poll was a signal. Violence determined who won. The President also said he was not going to be involved. No one wants the President to be partisan. But if violence succeeded in crippling and determining the outcome of the proceedings, the blame lies with the commander-in-chief. We know that some soldiers and police see elections in cynical terms to compromise peace in lieu of filthy bribes. The same discipline that has made the Boko Haram fight succeed should apply to elections. Bad security eggs, bad elections.

    It is damnable enough that Amaechi and Wike have to see it as their fights for supremacy. It is more damnable that the security infrastructure made this possible. If the centre was able to paralyse any privatisation of security infrastructure, Amaechi and Wike would have looked on as the citizens cast their votes without fear. The signs leading to the polls were clear. Soldiers killed, APC chairman beheaded. Violence begets violence. The umpire – part INEC, part Federal Government – failed and gave in to anarchy. If Amaechi brought peace because of federal-state cooperation, peace failed this time because of lack of it.

    This shows that we do not understand the value of history. We have become a historical society. Our students no longer study history at every level. Our media and political leaders don’t either. A novel, A History of Violence by Paul Wagner, also adapted into film, tells how ignorance of the past wrecked a family. What is even worse is the absence of what philosophers like Hegel and Nietzsche have called “historical consciousness.”  Apart from history as discipline, some United States universities now study historical consciousness as a course. It interrogates how societies interpret major events and incidents to shape attitudes to similar contemporary affairs. In Nigeria, for instance, our interpretation of Biafran uproar today will be probed by such a study.

    We are not there yet. Hence the Rivers imbroglio seems intractable.

  • Picking the pieces

    Picking the pieces

    We must be thankful that the Northeast is not what it used to be. Today’s state is a prelude to become what it used to be before it lost its innocence. Things have more than a little subdued now, in spite of the occasional irritations. That is, the hijab girl as ticking bomb and the menace of driver-by motorcycles.

    Some of the leaders, especially the governors, now exhale with relief and triumph. Before now, they inhaled the smoke of a terrorist’s threat. In Borno State, the news was frenetic. City after city fell. Villagers eviscerated. Emirs and leaders either captured, slaughtered or on the run. Flags soared impudently in the name of Boko Haram. No schools, no hospitals, no local governments, no mosques, or churches.

    To many, the Nigeria Army was effete and defeated. It became of target both of rout and international shame. Borno Governor Kashim Shetima cried but it only elicited silence, and sometimes cowardly scorn, from the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan. He warned that Boko Haram was better armed, better trained. They made mincemeat of the army of the biggest black nation on earth. He was governor, but he did not control the army. When Maiduguri remained the only major city yet to fall, he did not get succour from the centre.

    The state capital was besieged such that only one road in and out of Maiduguri was relatively safe. That was the Maiduguri- Damaturu- Kano road. Others cringed to the goons. The Maiduguri-Bui road, the Maiduguri- Bama road, the Maiduguri–Gworza road and the international road that snaked away to Cameroun and Chad. Fear whistled with the dust in the city air. The seat of government was only five kilometres away from the machine of the greatest terror threat in our history.

    It was a matter of time, and we might have witnessed for the first time a popularly elected government fall to a gang of renegades in the cloak of God. Yet, a cynical game was going on in the army and the political elite. They were not arming the soldiers. They were profiteering on the blood of their men. They even had the temerity to charge them with mutiny and desertion. Officers as rich man. The boys as Lazarus. Those who had courage were made to look like mice.

    The average citizen was displaced. They ran anywhere but home. They went to Chad, to Niger, to Kano, and even down south. They had a country, but they had no home. It was worse than what Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul delineated in his book, In a Free State. The novel was about a people without a place. We are witnessing it now in Europe. Hordes of people, women, children, men, in long treks, on rafts in turbulent waters, behind stockades of barbed wires from hostile host nations, some dying of hunger, some drowned, etc.

    History is no stranger to these. Biafra witnessed a horrific horde of the displaced. The World Wars, the Middle East, Asia, all saw the turmoil of moving people. They are all seeking to return home. The existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, noted that every human activity is directed towards going home. No matter where you are and whatever luxury you enjoy, if it does not feel like home, you are full of misery. Hence first generation of settlers are never rooted. That pleasure belongs to their children who never knew where their parents were weaned from.

    Even when they return, can Gworza or Bama citizens still recognise what was there before the coming of the goons? Not the houses now razed, or the other landmarks now vanished, but the spirit of the place, the indefinable something called home? The memories of terror, lost ones, butchery and rape may discolour the landscape in their souls.

    That is the task for Borno and the other Northeast states that lay prostrate for years under the militants. Governor Shettima is now faced with a big task. For him, it is like beginning over again. His priorities: education, healthcare, gender empowerment and agriculture.

    All of the pathology in the state began with water, or lack of it. In its proud era, Lake Chad was the lifebuoy of the people. It powered commerce, agriculture and culture. It was their River Nile. Desert encroachment lapped up the water from its big sweep of 25,000 square kilometres to 2,000 square kilometres. Since the Obasanjo era, feasibility studies had been commissioned, and five million dollars released for it. No word has been heard since. The Buhari government has asked to be updated on the matter. Hopefully, the project, under the canopy of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, could work the lake back by opening a source in the Congo River. As Fela said, water, e no get enemy.

    Shettima had ticked up school enrolment 35 per cent when he introduced free busing. It rose 45 per cent with free meals. He laments that he has to start over. The number of schools in Ibadan alone supersedes all the schools in Borno and Yobe put together.

    This cannot be done without a sense of emergency from the centre. Fund raisers have pledged about N58 billion, but they have not been redeemed. The President ought to help that part of the country. The main source of the crisis was underdevelopment. It was in the same Borno State that Shettima’s predecessor ripped journalists by saying that his citizens could not read so their reports had no effect. The same man was associated with Boko Haram and is the chairman of the PDP.

    The infrastructure of government is returning gradually as Boko Haram has been deprived of its capacity to maintain a standing army. Intelligence will play a big role in turning the group from a sporadic menace into a limp and disappearing force.

    Governor Shettima must be the most relieved chief executive in the country. He must also be the most challenged. It’s time to work. But it is not his task alone. Boko Haram was a collective disruption. We must pick the pieces together.