The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

Rivers’ LG election crisis

The political disagreement between Rivers State governor, Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike is nothing new. It had initial manifestation in the burning down of a section of the state’s House of Assembly, polarisation of legislators along the same loyalty lines, sack/resignation and recall of key officials of the government including commissioners.

There was also an attempt to impeach the governor before the situation was brought under control through the intervention of President Bola Tinubu. The terms of the eight-point agreement signed by Fubara, Wike and other stakeholders were envisaged to restore peace in the state even as reservations on its workability were not hidden.

Fubara came under intense attack for consenting to some of the terms of that agreement. But he was to explain in a broadcast that the “peace pact is not as bad as it is being portrayed by those genuinely opposed to it. It is certainly not a death sentence. It offers some way towards a lasting peace and stability in our state”.

But it was a matter of time for the bubble to burst especially given fears that some of the terms of the agreement undermined the constitutional powers of Fubara as governor. True to prediction, the political skirmish did not abate. It could not have abated since the control of power was at stake.

Power struggle is an integral part of politics. Ordinarily, there should be nothing wrong with such power dynamics provided it is channelled through conventional institutions, structures and processes. Ironically, strong institutions and processes are yet to take firm root on this clime, giving room to all manner of subterfuge that violate the rules of democratic engagement.

That appears the situation brought to the fore by events of the last local government elections in Rivers State. The lawlessness, arson and deaths witnessed especially before and after that election mirror vividly the weaknesses of our institutions, structures and processes. Here, the political parties, judiciary and security agencies especially the police feature very prominently. The executive should also share in the blame.

The thesis of this presentation is that the near breakdown of law and order that hallmarked the local government election in Rivers State was fuelled largely by weak institutions, structures and processes. There was an obvious lack of commitment on the part of operators to allow the regulatory mechanisms of democratic engagement full activation.

Even as power struggles between Fubara and Wike were behind it all, the current pass could have been stymied had our institutions, structures and processes lived up to the roles expected of them. Of course, behind them all is the human factor.

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It is not in doubt that the actions or inaction of operators of these institutions injected complications into the smooth conduct of the election. No matter how attractive a given development construct is, its success will largely depend on the orientations, prejudices and attitudes of its operators.

We are contending with a mismatch between the political system we operate and extant political culture of the people. Samuel P. Huntington described how chaos and disorder can arise from social modernization increasing more rapidly than political and institutional modernization.

Francis Fukuyama gave further vent to this when he argued that while democracies can theoretically reform through electoral politics, they are also potentially subject to decay when institutions do not adapt. That is the danger brought to the fore by events of the Rivers State LG polls. We face the risk of political decay when our institutions fail to adapt to democratic norms and practices.

This is evident in the inability by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to uphold internal democracy in the conduct of its congresses before that election. Had there been internal democracy within the state chapter of the party leading to democratic elections of ward, local government and state officials, the party would have perhaps, gone to the election a united entity and deepened democracy.

But the leadership of the PDP would not have that. They opted to hand over the structures of the party to Wike when the sitting governor is supposed to be the leader of the party in the state. Even then, the idea of handing over party structures to an individual is everything but undemocratic. That is the level our brand of democracy continues to find itself. The growth and deepening of the democratic culture suffers immeasurably when chaos and social disorder are engendered through constant abridgement of the process.

Fubara may not have had cause to ask his loyalists to empty into the All Peoples Party (APP) had the PDP done the right thing. So the PDP has a huge share of the blame in the chain of events that nearly brought Rivers to the edge. Those who protested the holding of the election did so not necessarily for the love of the rule of law but because they knew the rug had been pulled off their feet. At any rate, they could have waited for the outcome of the election to challenge it in court instead of the resort to lawlessness.

Perhaps, the judiciary more than any other arm of the government, had direct contribution to the chain of events that posed serious threat to law and order and nearly marred the election. The conflicting and contradictory judgments by Justices Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja and I. Igwe of the Rivers State High Court contributed in no small measure, to the confusion that trailed the election.

Justice Lifu had ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to release the voters’ register to the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) until it was updated; the police and DSS not to provide security for the election. Justice Igwe issued orders to the contrary. Coming from two courts of coordinate jurisdiction, the consequence of the conflicting orders was reflected in the near anarchy that enveloped the state thereafter.

Even then, questions have been raised regarding the appropriateness of a court ruling that ousts the security agencies their constitutional powers. That ruling injected so much confusion that the police authorities had to seek advice from its legal arm which curiously, advised them to obey the order from the Federal High Court, Abuja.

But the incongruity of that action soon manifested around the headquarters of the RSIEC when the state police command withdrew its men from the Government House securing the premises and deployed another set on the eve of the election. Fubara raised the alarm that the police were there to hijack sensitive materials meant for the election and accused the police leadership of partisanship.

The state police command had to explain that its withdrawal of the policemen from the Government House was in keeping with the Abuja Court order. They however, claimed they had to deploy another set of policemen to the RSIEC office in response to credible intelligence on planned arson attack. Even if one admits the reasons adduced by the Rivers State police command, they still expose the contradictions in obeying the Abuja High Court order barring the police and the DSS from providing security for the election.

By deploying their men to secure the RSIEC office, they fully provided security for the election. That would also amount to disobedience of the Abuja High Court order. So, the police could have as well, challenged the legality of a court order that sought to oust them from their statutory duties.

There are also issues regarding the indecent haste with which the police vacated the headquarters of the 23 LGs they had secured in the past three months. Though the reason given for the action was to allow the newly elected leaders resume, events that followed shortly after, showed very clearly it was not the best thing to do in the circumstance.

The burning of three local government headquarters and deaths that ensued could have been averted had the security agencies maintained reasonable presence given the tension surrounding the election. Law and order were so much threatened that President Tinubu had to order the police leadership to secure and restore normalcy in the state. That says much regarding the handling of the Rivers LG election crisis by the police authorities.

So, our democracy will continue to falter as long as our institutions, structures and processes remain weak through the actions or inactions of their operators. How can democracy grow in a situation one individual wants to control the structures of factions of two leading political parties in a state while still retaining his ministerial post? What brand of democracy is that?

We face the risk of political decay in the face of the inability of our institutions, structures and processes to adapt to the rules of democratic engagement. The choice is ours!

October 14, 2024
Border for sale

If you want to know how Nigerians think little about Nigerians, go to the border. It is the scenario of a dog eating dog. But the barking canine is a Nigerian. And it has everything to do with petrol price and its agonistes.

Here is what happens. A dealer buys a tanker of the fluid, and he is assigned to supply an Ibadan depot. His profits, going by the current price, is probably N20 per litre, which is handsome for any child of God. But he knows if moved across the border at Idiroko or Seme, the cash is tempting. So, rather than make a profit of say, five million naira, he knows a 100 times profit is calling him across the border. Is that a choice or an opportunity? Is it destiny in his lap or is he going to yield to the curse of his villagers that he will see a pot of honey but grab the bitter herb known as efirin?

Why does he play the patriotic fool and not settle for an easy boom? No, the average marketer is above curses. If a Christian, he can invoke Deuteronomy 28. He takes his tanker, and often they have dozens of them, and they abandon their longsuffering customers in the country, and rush for plum. They pray for miracles. They pray both Christian and Muslim prayers. Others could also ask the Babalawo to follow them with their beads and halos.

That is because they have to meet the law at the border. They are called Customs and Immigration. Customs for things, immigration for persons. The thing and person will meet a species called officers who are on civil service salary. How much is it? That’s the first miracle. The marketers have something the Customs and Immigration persons don’t have. Dollars.

If your salary is N200,000 a month, and someone gives you $5,000 just to visit the toilet or pick up a private call from an ailing grandma, why would you not become an imaginary invalid and soil the loo with an imaginary odour and flush an imaginary defecation for a not-so-imaginary money for just one hour. Grandma will be thankful, if she is still alive, when you send her that medicine for arthritis. And, of course, if bowel evacuation happens by accident, you might even be grateful that nature and necessity coincided with the roaring of tankers through your office neighbourhood.

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What better way will grandma accept your gift of medicine than that it was God that gave you the money to extend her life on this earth. In her feeble and quaint dance rhythm and her voice of tremulous sweetness, she would thank the God of miracle for doing it once again. As a grandson or granddaughter, you get effusive thanks from mother and father for saving them the pecuniary horror of keeping the old woman in good humour in her village.

Imagine if they get $5000 a day or every other day for 30 days and another 30 days and …You can imagine why they are the ones who choose blessing over curse and have become the model of the frontiers fighters who always win.

Meanwhile, the trucks glide across to the various destinations in Africa from Benin all the way to Sudan, when the warring armies are not bombing their tyres. They sell their fuel at far lower price than here at home, and the profits are instant and fabulous. They laugh at the meagre profits of the Customs officers when it is they who are in harmony with the big, fat take-home. They build the palaces here at home and in Dubai and London and southern France, and have their children through the portals of Harvard and Princeton and Cambridge.

Meanwhile, when the poor customer cries that the fuel is not within reach or within pocket, the blame game goes to NNPCL. This is how we hurt ourselves, in pretence of doing the day’s work at the border.

Reality is awful. The border officers don uniforms, speak like they are serious, check documents, stop some who should be stopped and arrest quite a few and impound quite a few and announce quite a robust revenue for the country. But that is the efficiency necessary to bend the rules. As I joked once, even if the Comptroller General wants to stop them, he could stand at the border and not know what is going on. Like the novel, Border District written by Gerald Murnane, whose work has even been nominated for the Nobel Prize. He writes about how a play of light and angles can erase reality before your eyes at an Australian border. Or Bertrand Russell’s definition of philosophy in which he said if you see a square table from a certain angle, you may decide it is no longer square or that perhaps “there is no table at all.”

Why are the tankers abandoning their Nigerian depot for a foreign one. We may call it greed, or others may call it opportunism, we all call it corruption, but many will agree that it is the human propensity for acquisition, or selfishness. “Man is, by nature, selfish,” wrote philosopher Thomas Hobbes. At the border, we may say it is bribe, the Customs man will go and pay his tithe for the miracle, and pray for more.

In another development, this reporter learned that the Port Harcourt refinery saw what might be disaster for all but miracle for a few. The refinery had had a plot twist of Samuel Beket’s Waiting for Godot when the NNPCL promised it would start work. It actually started work and suddenly its power shut down, and quite a few gaskets were blown up. It was a major snafu. How did the power blow up, and the gaskets immobilized? It is still a conundrum. I learned the NNPCL folks suspect sabotage but are not speaking. They had to flush out some persons in charge of security from the police and sought DSS trusted folks. If it is sabotage, from where? And for what purpose? After several put-offs, So, that is why existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre say humans are the only species who do things to harm their own interest. If there is any category of that species, they must be called Nigerians. We must humour God with our diabolical sense of humour.

October 14, 2024
A mentor departs

He left at 91. He was Brother Joel Olusola then. Before he passed, he changed his name to Joel Solupeju. He was my spiritual mentor as a youth when I was a member of the God’s Kingdom Society. I saw him as practically taking over from my father Moses in that light. My father spent Saturday mornings after breakfast to teach his kids bible stories and subjected us, in an atmosphere of friendly affray, to quizzes. I looked forward to them, until Brother Solupeju inaugurated regular children’s meetings that opened my eyes to the various ways of interrogating scripture and lit my first fires as a debater. My immersion in Bible rigour, religious history and nuances of doctrine began with that man. He was patient, avuncular, and exercised discipline as though he didn’t. He scolded with a mellow voice, massaged my childhood fancies to higher language and truth, and he gingered me to challenge orthodoxies. Ginger was his favorite word then. My father had a lot to do with this pedagogy, but minister Solupeju also had a major role. In those days, we had a Youth Assembly, and minister Solupeju shaped me to compete in Bible quiz contest comprising all GKS branches in the country. Although we didn’t win as Ibadan branch, I became

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the star attraction in Salem City, Warri, the headquarters, after our family moved to Lagos where I led the delegation to back-to back victories. For me, Lagos took the victories, but Solupeju laid the foundation. In my Ife days, he often visited to watch on me and address my concerns. My gratitude to him always for clarifying conundrums in my philosophy class, one of which was about why God did not stop Adam and Eve from committing the sin that brought woe to the world. It was the first time I learned of man as a free moral agent. Always beamy with a laugh like an earthquake, he was one of the most genuine humans I ever met. Principled without subversion, wise without ostentation and friendly but not corny, he did not elicit any surprises when he was appointed the spiritual adviser of the G.K.S., a post he held before his final breath. My dad used to call him Olu.

The cares and pursuits of life kept us apart for decades until recently when we spoke. He was now in old age without losing any of his sparkle of old. At 91, we can say, in the words of Dylan Thomas, he went “gentle into that good night.”

October 14, 2024
N100 million, one SUV for dummies

We are, no doubt, living in an age of dunces. We saw that in recently concluded BBNaija with its participants overdoing it. Forget about its prurient dramas and its episodes of vainglorious excesses. You could be all that and still not be an airhead. But these fellows exhibited great ignorance that reminded me of a beauty contest during my Ife days when the contestants could not name the president and chief justice. A generation passeth, and another cometh like a comet. This time in a reality show. They could not say what seven times zero amount to, so no Math sense. They could not identify Awolowo in a

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currency note, so a poor sense of history. They did not know the full meaning of C.A.C., so bumbling at current affairs. One of them said the judiciary was the lawmaking organ. Columnist and investigative writer Tunji Ololade raised this in his column not long ago. But they were all there, ensconced from the world in a parody of a Joycean island, all because they wanted to win N100 million and an SUV. Great prize, except that it is for dummies.

October 14, 2024
Moneybags up north

The school was Aminu Kano Commercial College, Goron Dutse, in Kano State, and I was a teacher there during my year as member of the National Youth Service Corps between 1985 and 1986. Most of the students, boys and girls, were from the South, although some of them had blended into the seductive northern culture and borne northern names. And for most of them, you had to inquire to know that they were not Hausa-Fulani.

Because many indigenes did not go to school, it was easy after about three months as a teacher to know that over 70 percent of the students were from the South or Middle Belt, most of them either Igbo or Yoruba.

But by far my best student was named Idris Muhammad Amin. He was an indigene and has some of the physical features of Muhammadu Buhari – tall, slim, taciturn. I taught English language and Literature. Idris was fluent in tongue and pen in language and Literature, and dipped himself in the ins and outs of words and culture.

I became a sort of mentor to him, and when he was done with high school, he opted to read English at Ife in my own footsteps, although I studied history. I was impressed because in all my years as a student at Ife, the only northerners were not Hausa-Fulani. John K. Galu and the late and ebullient Sam Nda Isaiah, publisher and politician. I felt a thrill when I saw Idris on Ife campus in one of my visits on assignment as a reporter of Newswatch magazine.

Idris was one of eight students out of 88 who graduated in Second Class Upper Division. He had a short stint as graduate assistant at the Department of English, Bayero University Kano; went to University of Lagos (UNILAG) and obtained an M.A. degree in English; got a BBC appointment as a London-based producer (Hausa Service) in 1998; obtained a second MA degree in English from the University College London (UCL). He left BBC and returned to Nigeria in 2015.

I never saw him or heard from him again until about three decades later. Last year, he called me, and he said he was a business man.

Idris came to mind when I mused over the aftermath of the floods that swept through parts of the North, especially Maiduguri. I wonder how many Idris’s were washed to death and to beggary, how many geniuses. But it also stoked my sunny heart after I saw the roll call of Northern bigwigs who opened their cavernous wallets to help the weak and helpless. It seems to be a salvation day for the poor, if we seize the chance.

The donors rolled in. Let us forget the names of the politicians. But the money bags. Enter Aliko Dangote, Aminu Dantata, Abdul Samad Rabiu, Dahiru Mangal, Mukhtar Betara, Abdulsalam Kachala, et al. It reminds me of a dialogue I had with Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani on TVC before the catastrophe. He was lamenting the state of the North, and he challenged the Northern men of money to invest in the development of their society.

He remarked that if we counted the richest persons in the country today, at least half of the top-tier would be from the North. Hence it made sense that the men rose to the situation. Yet, it bothers me that all of the billions that made their way to the victims waited till they became victims.

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It is like the line from the Theban Poet Pindar as quoted in Aristophanes’ play, The Archanians: “What I’d saved to buy a coffin, I must spend to pay a fine.” It is a terrible part of our culture. When a man begs for bread, we look away. When they lose a mother, our purse opens. We have a morbid sense of generosity. When they beg, we say in our minds, “it’s your own funeral”, but when they die, we bankroll their funerals. We fear death more than the living. So, we pretend not to buy the coffins, but we pay the fine when we do not care for the living. As Shakespeare said, the dead have paid all their debts. It’s up to the living to pay our fines.

That is what Governor Sani meant. The North suffers in virtually all indices. Governor Uba Sani recalled the words of the great Maitama Sule. Hear him. “Twenty years ago or more, Maitama Sule came out and made it clear and every prominent person in Northern Nigeria was aware of that comment…that the educational gap between Northern and Southern Nigeria was …a 30-year gap.” The governor, who often shows the reflexes of his activism, also referred to the recent UNICEF report that said that of the 18.3 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, 14 million are in the North.

He is not saying the problem will be solved by the Northern billionaires alone. He said it was a collective effort. Governors, including the Federal Government, have a role to play. He said it was not enough to bellyache over the anguish and suffering. It is high time to sit on one table and map the path to prosperity.

The government role is to create an enabling condition. That is, build infrastructure, power, and health care facilities. These are the enablers. We should not wait for floods and disasters to ennoble them. It is charity without family. In the last riots, the overwhelming majority of the protesters were al majiris who know nothing of the economic issues. They don’t buy in the market, don’t pay school fees or rent, don’t buy fuel or travel, and they do not read or write to make them know what is going on. When they raided a library in Kano, the only precious thing in the building was the only thing that survived. The gods of letters had blinded them to rows of books. They went for ephemeral sop with a lifespan of a soap bubble. Governor Sani said if the boys were engaged in a factory or office, they would not be out there plundering their own patrimonies.

It only shows the dark side of feudalism. For the North to rise above its educational ennui, its private sector must counter its feudal infrastructure. To do that, it must track it from the ground up. With more educated citizenry, contempt for the feudal structure will gradually raze down its strongholds.

I recall when now Vice President Kashim Shettima was governor. We had just visited one of the schools he built in Maiduguri. The convoy had hardly hit the road when youths erupted from houses and over the walls and streets. They encircled the convoy and chastened its speed. They were boys as mendicants, a battalion of mercy. They wanted charity. They are part of the Nigerian family. Then Governor Shettima remarked, “If we don’t take care of them now, they will take care of us in the future.”

Capitalism overthrows feudal ramparts with more capitalism. It happens with enlightened minds. Track Chinese and Hongkong histories. Track the rise of Europe after the medieval rut. Perhaps that is why my former student Mohammed chose business. One good thing from this act of charity is that the feathered class up North are aware of their environment, and they have brought open pathos into it. They are not just cocooned in their mansions. Although, as Henry James describes it in his novel, The Ambassadors, “There is detachment in (his) their zeal,” we can see some “curiosity in their indifference.” That curiosity should translate into action.

Those who attribute poverty to the sway of banditry and terror in the North may have their point. But poorer communities in the world still live in peace. Poverty does not always beget violence. Something else happens to collapse the culture of tolerance, and anger boils over. The North was always poor without bloodshed before now. Other aspects of society, including cynical politicians, exploitation of religion, cynical religious elite, modernity and alienation, rank among the reasons poverty is used as excuse to foment turmoil.

That explains why Governor Sani’s admonition makes sense, and why more Idris’s with their brilliant minds should not be allowed to waste. As the novelist Erich Maria Remarque notes in his All Quiet on the Western Front, “When the sun sets for the final time, it sets on the lives they never lived.” Let it not be so to many geniuses wasting away because of neglect.

October 7, 2024
Patience goes home with grace

Governor Umo Eno is in mourning for his departed wife and partner for decades. When the Akwa Ibom State Governor remarked that she had all the virtues in a wife, no one can confirm that more than 22-year-old Grace Emmanuel. Emmanuel bombed twitter with the pathos of her story. She is a mother of four pushed to the limit by her destitution. She was employed but not gainfully. So, she was feeding her children with chicken and fish feeds in the poultry farm where she was a staff. She was actually stealing them in an act of desperation.

Patience Eno heard of the story and she was moved. She unfurled a N500,000 donation to the young woman. But it was not a cynical gesture for throwing money and looking away. She gave her a furnished accommodation with kitchen utensils, and food supply for at least three months. The girl was earning 15 thousand naira a month in her work place, but the First Lady supplemented it with N20,000.

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She had a psychological grasp of Miss Emmanuel’s condition. A mother unsupported by the children’s father. A lone at that age to care for family.

Hear Patience Eno’s words: “We are mindful that this is a girl that is still a child, doesn’t have a bank account, no phone. You don’t raise money and give to her in bulk. She is already vulnerable. So, anything you give her that could make her live flamboyantly, she is going to fall prey. People will come under the guise of love and deceive her,” she added.

She said she should go through counselling, and if she was ripe for proper work, she would get proper training. That was the last public testament of Patience Eno. She goes home with a halo of compassion and humanity, a halo of grace.

October 7, 2024
Imo: Cost of misinformation

A gale of suspicion has enveloped the burning by arsonists, of sections of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and country home of a former senator, Frank Ibezim both in Nsu, Ehime Mbano Local Government Area of Imo State.

The unfortunate incident followed a recent visit to the NOUN, Nsu centre by a team led by the Federal Commissioner for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons IDPs, Tijani Ahmed to inspect training facilities there. Soon after the visit, the video clip of a national television news report which conveyed the impression of plans by the federal government to train refugees, migrants and IDPs at the facility went viral.

The television report lent itself to varying interpretations creating in the process doubts in the minds of the people as to the real purpose of the visit by Ahmed and his team. The accompanying caption by the authors of the video clip had expressed shock at the information, asking … what is this… who sold out…please say NO to this”, among others.

Apparently relying on the said video clip, a social critic in Imo State recorded another video which appeared in the media space, questioning the propriety of training the category of persons portrayed by the television clip in the centre. The issues raised by the development were such that both the state government and Ibezim were quick to issue statements clarifying the purpose of the visit and the objective the centre is meant to serve.

But before the clarifications could make the desired impact, parts of the NOUN centre and the country home of Ibezim had been set on fire by arsonists. The speed with which all these took place, no doubt, created serious puzzles in the minds of the discerning public. There are questions regarding the uncanny connection of the two video clips with the arson that was visited at the NOUN centre and Ibezim’s house. Blames are being traded and accusing fingers pointed in some directions.

This is not entirely unexpected especially given efforts by the Imo State government and Ibezim to clarify the objective the centre is meant to serve. Even then, a voice note trending in sections of the social media has equally raised issues with the propriety of the visit by the team led by Ahmed.

The state police command has condemned the arson in very strong terms with a promise to take measures in synergy with other security agencies to bring the perpetrators to book.

But as the security agencies conduct their investigations, the issues that brought about this odious pass must be properly situated especially given attempts to politicize the matter. We are contending with misinformation, its possible link to the arson.

It is important that all the issues to the controversy are fit into their appropriate positions. The original source of the misinformation (whether intended or not or an error of judgement) needs to be identified to ensure that justice prevails in this matter.

The news report by the said national television, the independent video clip from the social critic, statements from Ibezim and the commissioner for information Imo State, Declan Emelumba will be useful in this inquisition.

The television news headline read “…Imo State, where the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons IDPs has concluded plans for the training of refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons on skills acquisition. Federal commissioner, Tijani Ahmed stated this during an inspection of the facilities for the training at Nsu in Ehime council area.”

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Its senior reporter went ahead to provide the details. A pictorial was displayed with the caption –Refugees and Displaced Persons; and a rider: FG inspects facilities in Imo to train vulnerable people. But those shown in the pictorial as refugees and displaced persons were adorning attires remarkably different from the dominant dressing mode of the Imo people.

Ahmed said at the occasion that his agency has what they call “arrangements for the preparation of our concerned people in order to provide for their training in different trades”. He rated the facilities okay for what they intend to do, while noting that it has a lot of laboratories not only for the use of peoples of concern but students in the area.

In the video clip by the social critic, he raised concerns about the story in the media space on the proposed training of refugees, migrants and IDPs in Imo State wondering what business Imo has with such training. He questioned the rationale in bringing these categories of people for training in a state that is bereft of those scourge.

The social critic then played the national television news broadcast video clip to buttress his point, warning of dire consequences in allowing refugees, migrants and IDPs to be brought to the state for the purported training. He also called for protests and petitions from the people of the area to forestall such idea given the precarious security implications it entails.

When this is paired with the contents of the television news broadcast on the visit, the source of the misinformation stars everyone on the face. It is not in doubt that his was a reaction to the unambiguous information in the television news broadcast which claimed the said federal agency had concluded plans to train such categories of persons at the NOUN Nsu, centre. That conclusion is the logical interpretation of the television headline news. It speaks for itself.

It is a different kettle of fish if it was an honest error of judgment on the part of the reporter and his news managers. But it cannot be denied that those who packaged that news item did not show sufficient consciousness to extant sensibilities and temperament in the zone.

This point was driven further home by Ibezim in his statement on the development. The former senator who said he was compelled by some ‘misinformation’ arising from the television news coverage of his visit to NOUN, Nsu centre, clarified that “the video of refugees attached to the television broadcast which has caused understandable anxiety was not filmed in Imo State”.

He said the facilities at the centre are already in use with over 200 students enrolled since 2023 and the visit was for the agency to assess them to determine if they could be used for specialised skills. First, Ibezim admitted that the television coverage of the visit contained some misinformation. Second, disowning the video of refugees as not having been filmed in Imo State is a tacit admission of the complications the linkage created for the people of the state.

So the source of the misinformation is clearly not in doubt. Those who reacted questioned the propriety in bringing refugees, migrants and IDPs for training in Imo State. They said the state has no business with such categories of people since it is not known to have generated any. They are on point. They are also within their rights to insist that such trainings facilities should be located within the zones from which such people were dislocated. This makes sense especially given the security implications they entail.

It was therefore somewhat untidy for the Imo State government through its information commissioner to single out the social critic for the misinformation that arose on the issue. The critic may have exaggerated his fears but they are not entirely unfounded. They are also not substantially different from the reservations in caption attached to original television video clip from which he made his own video. The state government did not fare any better when they accused him of notoriety in inciting the Igbo against northerners.

There is no justification for the lawlessness that was unleashed on the NOUN centre and the residence of Ibezim. The security agencies have swung into action and some arrests have been made. There should be thorough and discrete investigations to unmask those responsible for the arson. No lead should be foreclosed in matters of this nature in view of the blame trading and its politicization by the opposition parties and agents of the state government. The role of fifth columnists in the chain of the unsavoury events should not be ruled out.

It is also instructive that Ibezim whose official role in the visit has remained a moot issue clarified that the NOUN, Nsu centre has been operating for some time. This contradicts claims by the state government that the training facility is being attracted to Imo as part of the share of the Southeast. If one may ask, what is really being attracted to the state-the NOUN, Nsu centre that has been in operation or the training facilities warehoused therein?

In sum, Imo State is contending with the cost of misinformation that may not have been deliberate. It is all part of the challenges news managers face on a regular basis. So, the scope of the investigations must go beyond the source of the misinformation, those who relied on it to offer dissenting views and expose opportunists who may have capitalised on the mix-up to wreak havoc. At any rate, we are yet to be told how the ‘people of concern’ differ from refugees, migrants and IDPs.

October 7, 2024
Akinkunmi: An anti-climax

Ultimately, the Federal Government dishonoured the designer of Nigeria’s flag, Taiwo Akinkunmi, who was finally buried on September 6, more than a year after he died on August 29, 2023, aged 87.

Following his death, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, had led a Federal Government (FG) delegation that paid a condolence visit to his family in Ibadan, Oyo State, where he was based.

“He designed one of the most powerful symbols of our collective existence as a country and a nation,” the minister said at the time, adding, “Mr President shares with them in this grief, and the FG is with them throughout this period, and whatever the request the family puts forward, the FG will look into it.” Also, the Oyo State government officially expressed its condolences in a letter to the family signed by Governor Seyi Makinde.

However, the public show of interest by the federal authorities turned out to be a show without substance. Perhaps it was simply done to get positive publicity. The expected action never happened.

Tired of waiting for the FG to participate in planning for his funeral, the Akinkunmi family eventually buried him on September 6, in Ibadan, without the participation of the federal authorities. Akinkunmi’s son, Akinwumi, said the family received funding for the funeral from the Oyo State government.

His interment at his Ibadan residence was preceded by a funeral service held at the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium, Ibadan, which was attended by representatives of the Oyo State government. The FG was unrepresented. The Oyo State Deputy Governor, Bayo Lawal, was reported saying Akinkunmi was a national figure and the FG should have been involved in his burial.

In June, Akinwumi told BBC they found out that the National Institute for Cultural Orientation was tasked with arranging a state funeral. The agency, he said, only phoned the family once.

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In May, a concerned group, Yoruba World Congress (YWC), UK, wrote an open letter to President Bola Tinubu, saying Akinkunmi “did his best for this country and his body should not be allowed to remain in the mortuary without attention and without a befitting burial.”

The family had said they were paying N2,000 daily for mortuary services. They had initially planned the funeral for December 7 and 8. When there was no response from the federal and state authorities, they changed the dates to April 10, 11 and 12. This did not change the situation. The burial was further delayed.

Then the family decided to go ahead and bury their patriarch, and stop waiting for the federal authorities to get involved. “My late father was an easy-going person who didn’t want anything to tarnish his image,” his son was quoted as saying. At some point, the state government stepped in to provide support.

Akinkunmi was in his early twenties when he designed the national flag, after stumbling upon a newspaper advertisement calling for the submission of designs for the Nigerian flag ahead of the independence of Nigeria from British rule in October 1960. He was then studying Electrical Engineering at Norwood Technical College, now known as Lambeth College, in London.

His design was a vertical white band with a radiating red sun, which was flanked by two vertical green bands. It was selected from among about 2,000 entries as the winning entry because of its ingenuity and profundity. He got 100 pounds for his effort. The judges, however, removed the red sun, leaving only a green-white-green design for the national flag. The green colour signifies agriculture; the white colour stands for unity and peace.

“I was well known all over the place. Everybody was calling me Mr Flag Man,” he said. After his education in the UK, he returned to Nigeria in 1963 and rejoined the civil service in Ibadan. He had been employed by the government of the Western Region after he left Ibadan Grammar School (IGS) in 1955. He retired as a civil servant in the early 1990s.

Interestingly, it can be said that he became anonymous after some time, until one Sunday Olawale Olaniran, then an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan, helped to put him back in the spotlight. Olaniran, who called him a “hero without honour,” was doing research on Nigeria’s history for a pamphlet when he decided to search for the designer of the country’s flag.

“People said he was dead, that I should forget about looking for him and just write about the flag,” Olaniran was reported saying. But he kept searching until he found the flag designer in Ibadan. Akinkunmi was said to be living alone, and lacking proper care. When they met, according to Olaniran, he “was incoherent and kept talking to himself.”

The researcher was moved to tears. “So, I got in touch with a journalist and we went back two days before Independence Day,” he said. “Even the journalist couldn’t believe the man was still alive.”

Akinkunmi was a pensioner, but his pension payments were irregular, the researcher said, adding, “Some Nigerians went to him and donated foodstuff, clothes.”

When the story of his sad situation appeared in The Sun on October 1, 2006, Olaniran said, it attracted the attention of many Nigerians who were unaware of his plight. Two years later, in 2008, Olaniran was contacted through his blog by a representative of the organisers of the Nigerian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? They wanted to get in touch with Akinkunmi.

He later appeared on a special edition of the TV show, and got a cheque for two million naira. His son said the money “given to him by the telecommunications giant, MTN, when he was a guest on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2008,” enabled him to complete the building of his house in Ibadan. The house, painted in the colours of the Nigerian flag, made a strong statement about its owner.

His eventual appearance on the list of national honours’ awardees in 2014 was the climax of a difficult journey to deserved recognition. It was a long road to that juncture. Oddly, Akinkunmi received the country’s national honour more than five decades after he designed the significant symbol. The delay was inexplicable and inexcusable. The national honours were instituted four years after the flag was officially hoisted on Nigeria’s Independence Day, October 1, 1960, in replacement of the British Union Jack. The honours are for Nigerians who have rendered service to the benefit of the nation.

After a campaign by Nigerians who felt he deserved a national honour, Akinkunmi was finally honoured by his country in September 2014, under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. He received the national honour, Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR), and was also symbolically appointed as a salaried honorary life presidential special aide. He was 78 at the time and a retired civil servant.

The Federal Government’s failure to choreograph Akinkunmi’s funeral demonstrated disconnected governance in Nigeria. The authorities should redeem this failure by naming a place after him.

September 30, 2024
The matter of elections

Penultimate Saturday witnessed one governorship as well as local government elections in two states. Edo State had its governorship off-cycle election in which the candidate of the All Progressives Congress APC, Monday Okpebholo emerged victorious. He scored 291, 667 votes to beat the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP, Asue Ighodalo who scored 247, 274 votes according to the figures released by the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC. The candidate of Labour Party LP, Olumide Akpata came a distant third with 22, 763 votes.

Enugu and Imo states also held elections into the various local government councils on the same day. Perhaps, the latter round of elections did not enjoy national prominence because it was an affair solely with the purview of their respective State Independent Electoral Commissions, SIECs.

That does not in any way diminish the significance of those rounds of elections closest to the people at the grassroots. Of late, state governments appear in a hurry to have elected local systems in place. The ruling of the Supreme Court nullifying the contraption known as caretaker committees and ordering the withholding of federal funds from non-democratically elected local government councils account for this rush.

It would however, seem that the enthusiasm to get the councils run by democratically elected people is informed more by political expediency than the love for democratic governance at that level. It is more of an act of desperation to ensure that federal allocations to the councils get to them. So the state governors have to contrive their own brand of elections to satisfy all righteousness, irrespective of their deviation from the rules of free, fair and all-inclusive democratic engagement.

That is the foreboding signal emerging from the local government elections in Enugu and Imo states. The outcome of those elections as announced by their SIECs saw the ruling parties in both states sweeping all the chairmanship and councillorship polls.

In Enugu, the PDP cleared all the 17 local government chairmanship positions. Chairman of the SIEC, Prof. Christian Ngwu said the commission did an excellent job of conducting free, fair and credible polls. Though he said he was yet to get the full compilation of all the 260 ward councillorship positions, all indications pointed to the same pattern of victory.

Imo followed the same pattern with the APC sweeping all the chairmanship and councillorship positions in the 27 local governments of the state. The state ISIEC and party bigwigs have been beating their chests for the feat which they attributed as evidence of the return of peace and tranquillity in the state. For Imo State House of Assembly, it was the defeat of banditry and insecurity that made the successful conduct of the polls in the 27 local government areas possible.

The two states are entitled to their views regarding the credibility and integrity of the local government elections they held. They are also at liberty to lay absolute claims to their popularity and connection with the various interests and segments of their states that made the feat possible.

But, there is everything wrong with an election where all the victorious candidates are members of the ruling party. Not that this pattern is entirely new in elections conducted by the SIECS. NO! It has been part of the electoral dysfunctions that question the relevance and propriety of the continued retention of the SIECs.

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Before now, there have been calls for the scrapping the SIECs on account of their inability to provide a level playing ground for other political parties to participate in the local government polls in a free, fair and credible manner. That call peaked with the Supreme Court ruling against any form of government at the local governments that does not derive its mandate from the people.

The danger in allowing the SIECs continue with the LG elections’ conduct has been laid bare by events of the two elections. The desire of state governors not to allow opposition parties win any LG seat is part of the larger agenda to continue to corner funds at that level. If the Supreme Court bars us from constituting caretaker committees, we will make sure those who emerge in LG polls are people who will do our bidding, the reasoning goes.

That is why everything has to be contrived including make-shift primaries, selection and shunting out opposition parties to get anointed candidate mount the saddle. The situation has become so bad that the public has virtually lost confidence in the transparency of LG polls. Yet, we are being mocked and our consciences assailed by the touted transparency of a process that was primed to produce predictable outcomes.

But that shows our strong aversion to western democracy. Our brand of politics has continued to show clear signals that political actors abhor opposition. The evidence is there in the rancorous and do-or-die politics. It is manifest in intolerance to opposition and winner takes all syndrome. It can be discerned from the increasing slide to one state.

Yet, our leaders grandstand on democracy, eulogising it as if it is an end unto itself rather than a means to public good. It is commonplace seeing our leaders talk of democracy in glowing terms, taking credit for their sacrifices to wrest that governance construct from the military. But when it comes to upholding pristine values on which the model revolves, the same people become the greatest obstacles to its proper functioning. We really have a choice to make.

Of more national significance was the Edo governorship election. It has come and gone with winners and losers known. But its value does not as much lie with winners or losers as the processes that produced those outcomes. Though the election progressed well in terms of accreditation, voting, counting and recording of results at the polling units, the collation process ran into troubled waters due to alleged compromises in some centres. Incidences of vote-buying, intimidation of INEC officials, observers and party agents were rife despite the huge security deployment.

One of the civil society groups that monitored the election, Yiaga Africa rated the outcome as having failed integrity test. “While key processes such as accreditation, voting, counting and recording of results at the polling units substantially complied with the procedure, the results’ collation process was compromised by the actions of some biased INEC officials in connivance with other actors” the group said.

The group said it recorded incidents of results’ manipulation and disruption during ward and local government collation in Ikpoba/Okha, Etsako West, Egor and Oredo local governments including intimidation of officials, observers and agents.

Reservations on the outcome of that election also came from other quarters especially the PDP which described its outcome in very disparaging terms with a vow to contest the outcome in the court. But the APC sees their victory as evidence of the acceptance of the leadership at the centre.

There is the temptation to view reservations on the conduct of the Edo governorship election as part of the culture of disputes that characterise elections on this clime. The hallmark inability or refusal by contestants to accept defeat even where there were clear outcomes could be cited to support this viewpoint.

But there is grave risk of reductionism in stretching this line of argument further especially in the face of the obvious infractions. It was one off-cycle election INEC needed to demonstrate its capacity to run a credible, undisputed election, one that satisfies all parameters of free, fair transparent process.

The credibility deficits INEC suffered during the last general elections is one reason it should have gotten its acts right. But that failed to happen. Reports of collated results deviating substantially from those posted in INEC result viewing portal (IRVP) cast serious slur on the whole essence of deploying technology to enhance the transparency of the exercise. It questions the competence of INECs leadership; the relevance of the agency and its impartiality.

We have passed through this odious route before. It is sad the nation is again being confronted by the same lapses that nearly marred the last general election. Then, IRVP was said to have witnessed glitches such that results could not be compiled directly from it. Why INEC was unable to compute the results directly from the portal in a single off-cycle election is the greatest puzzle of the Edo poll.

It is getting clearer that we are not prepared for democracy despite proclamations and pretences. But for how long shall we continue to falter each time the sovereignty of the electorate in democratic engagement is put to test?

The choice is either to make democracy function through transparent periodic elections, allow it atrophy or opt for contraptions that suit our whims and caprices.

September 30, 2024
Taming the bandit

Blue Duck is his name, but he is not as pretty. He invokes the fear of a bandit because he is one. Fierce, unforgiving, blood in his eye. He is a big shot in the wooded and woodless wilderness and part of the reason is that he is a good shot. His gun is a magnet to any target and his skills and tenacity beat the bird in Achebe’s novel that has learned to fly without perching since men have learned to shoot without missing.

Blue Duck can shoot down any quarry, mighty or small, running into or debouching from a hiding, in the air, under cover. He rapes women and rips men apart. Law officers dread him while in his hunt. Many of them have fallen under his attack and his grin of menace. For him, gore is not gory, but a form of glory. For him to be a martyr, other humans must not matter.

But he is at once admired and feared, mistaken for a shadow here or a rustle in the bush there, floating in myths and legends, his acts overtold and his humanity spelled out as though narratives of a priest or a monster. He is a charmer and a brute. In the words of Oscar Wilde in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, he has all the qualities of a peacock except beauty.

Blue Duck is not in northern Nigeria. He is not in Nigeria, but he is a representation in a great American novel written by Larry Mcmutry called Lonesome Dove, a big tome of almost a thousand pages about the so-called wild, wild west when that country crawled with bandits.

As it is no more so in the United States, we hope so for ourselves. That same expanse of land now boasts such sprawling habitues of civilization from Houston, Texas to St. Louis, Missouri to Denver, Colorado.

It did not happen overnight. We have to do the work. It begins with small, methodical triumphs. Some caviled at the president for thanking the men in uniform for perishing a man who gave peril, headache and death to Sokoto and its neighbours. It only shows how hatred can blind us to our own blessings. Recently, also, T.Y. Danjuma made it a cakewalk to oust them. This same Danjuma, who only knew coups, and not democracy. He served in the civil war. He is not like Gen. Alabi Isama, who has experience in handling bandits. Danjuma knows conventional battles. In the civil war, his area under General Shuwa was the easiest. It was Brigadier Adekunle’s Third Marine Commando that won the war.

Recently, the Chief of Defence Staff, Christopher Musa, announced the gains of the military against some well-known scourge of our homes, schools, highways and forests, and we should only goad him on. The battle is still on. But some big names and not-so-big names have been killed of late. Some of the big names that have gone include Ali Kwaje, Kachalla Hililu,Alhaji Bello, Baleri Kaduna, Damana, Dangote, Shadari, Umaru Nagona, Dogo Gudale, Buharin Yadi, Nawagini, Abulkarim Pacha-Pacha, Kachalla Dan Baleri, Kachalla Dogo Kwaddi, Lawali Dodo, Kachala Naguru, Bello Kaura, Nagalla, Malami Dan Idde, Babangida, Ali Karami,Kachalla Zakiru.

These were men to be feared. They loved to be feared. They killed, and justified their killing in the name of God. They remind one also of a tale in Lonesome Dove about a man who stole 15 horses and when he was caught, he was sipping tea and poring over his Holy Bible. He cast a sort of divine aura over his larceny. Like Blue Duck, these men evoke a sort of brutish glamour among the Nigerian people. They may not be loved, but they are admired. That is part of the war against bandits. It is also to demystify them. They are seen as the beau of the bush, rich, powerful, even indomitable. They don’t pretend to fight for light and beauty as we know it. They define their own beauty and it works for them. They are like American bandit Jesse James, who felt slighted when he was called a thief. “I am not a thief. I am a robber,” he quipped.

So, when the army cut down the above names, it is a success not just against the criminals but also their crimes, and the crime is, in part, the glamorization of evil. They all had boys, some as many as five hundred, who kill and maim and steal. They have created a sort of distorted brotherhood. Not the sort that Shakespeare extolled in his play, Henry V: “But we in it shall be remembered/We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;/For he to-day that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile.”

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Our bandits have capsized the sublime promise of that oath. So, when they die, that band that began as a foul bond dies. Some of these fallen were into gold mining like Lawali Dodo and Ali Kwaje and Kachalla Halilu. Others planted themselves on highways like Baleri Kaduna and Dangote. Others snatched expatriates, others kidnapped anyone of importance. They had division of labour and division of territory, and they cooperated and sometimes were at war with each other over loot and place.

But they all met their end. Kawaje, who had over 500 boys, was connected to 10 bandit leaders. He was downed by an airstrike. Halilu also had over 500 boys and was named the king of bandits. He died in a military operation. Dodo died with him. After his death, Alhaji Bello also was struck down in an airstrike. Damana died from a gun wound. Dangote perished from a battle with a rival gang, so did Zakiru. Shadari died in a military operation. An IED was Gudale’s vanquisher. A vigilante group wiped out Nawagini in Katsina. Pacha-pacha perished in a military action, so did Dan Baleri, Idde and Karami, while Kwaddi lost his life in a combo of a vigilante and military operation.

But we are still in the throes of war as a few big names are still lurking. They include Kachalla Dogo Gide, Bello Turji, Dan Karami and Black and Standard, and others. Dogo Gide, one of the most feared, is believed to have gone underground, but he is still trying to do havoc in such places as Sabon-Birni, Birnin Gwari and Saulawa in Kaduna but the eye of Governor Uba Sani has chastened his ability to do harm. He also operates in Shiroro, Kagara, Zungeru and Munya in Niger State, Madada, Dan-Dallah, Babbar Doko, Dan-Sadau in Zamfara State.

Turji is the kingpin of them all. To get him, according to security forces, will be “seen as the fall of banditry in the Northwest.” This is because he has a vast network, and has access to a huge cache of arms. He is laying waste many communities, and is involved in gender violence. His lieutenants are also very influential. Dankarami is next to Turji in strength and influence. Both are rivals who, however, cooperate to duel security forces. Some consider him more lethal than Turji, perhaps because he is older. His mother has been arrested. It is not clear whether as a bait or because she was an accomplice.

Black broke away from Turji just as another known as Standard cut away from Dankarami. Both now work together as one militant group known as Black and Standard. They still relate with their former masters. The fight will not be easy, but it seems to have begun. When the Americans were gunning down Al Qaeda bigwigs with intelligence powered by satellite technology, victory seemed farfetched until they became limp. We can do same with the same technology and persistence.

September 30, 2024