The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Idris and foreign media claims

    Idris and foreign media claims

    Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris took time out last week to interrogate characterisations in sections of the foreign media of religion-induced attacks and violence in the country. He was piqued by claims from some international platforms and online commentators that terrorists in Nigeria were carrying out a systematic genocide against Christians.

    Though he named neither the offending social media platforms nor the commentators, the minister considered their claims so grave that he had to issue a statement to correct the wrong impressions created.

    “The federal government strongly condemns and categorically refutes recent allegations by certain international platforms and online influencers suggesting that terrorists operating in Nigeria are engaged in a systematic genocide against Christians. Such claims are false, baseless, despicable, and divisive”, he said.

    He sees as misrepresentation of reality, the portrayal of Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group and that though Nigeria is faced with security challenges, couching the situation as a deliberate, systematic attack on Christians is inaccurate and harmful. He is largely right.

    The minister’s position seems to find further support in subsisting incidences of such attacks across the country. So, when he said the criminals target all who reject their murderous ideology regardless of faith, he is backed by facts.

    But that is not all there is to the matter. Yes, the criminals target all those who reject their ‘murderous ideology’ without regard to faith. They attack Muslims who do not identify with their own brand of teaching. They also attack Christians because they belong to a different religious fate. If other people who do not belong to any of these two religions are attacked, they were caught in the course of the onslaught on the two dominant religious groups. But what is this murderous ideology? And who are its purveyors in our circumstance?

     Answers to these posers may chart the part to the misinterpretation and mischaracterisation of the security challenges in the country by the foreign media.  And they may well be located in the way religion-induced violence and attacks on worship places budded and escalated in the last couple of years.

    The first bomb attack on worship places surfaced around 2011 when the Boko Haram insurgents attacked St Theresa’s Catholic Church, Madalla near Abuja on a Christmas day leaving in its trail deaths, sorrow and awe. More than 30 worshippers were killed, many others injured and properties of inestimable value destroyed.

    This was followed very closely by bomb blasts at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church Jos, Plateau State and another at a Church in Gadaka, Yobe State. Those attacks were received with mixed feelings given their targets. But Boko Haram was later to begin attacks on Mosques following mounting suspicions on its motive.

    The situation became complex when the so-called bandits whose motivation has not proved different from that of Boko Haram joined the fray. In the last two months or so, bandits are known to have mounted attacks on Mosques in the northern parts of the country bringing in their wake the death of innocent Muslim worshippers.

    Bandits struck in August this year, during prayer time at Anguwar Montau Mosque in the Malumfashi Local Government Area of Katsina State. At least 32 worshippers were killed in reprisal for the killing of their commanders by villagers the previous weekend. Malumfashi youths were so aggrieved by the attack that they took to protests blocking the Malumfashi-Funtua highway.

    A couple of days ago, armed bandits stormed a Mosque in Yandoto community, Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara State killed at least five people and abducted several others. The attack came less than a week after gunmen abducted worshippers during morning prayers at a mosque in Gidan Turbe village also in Tsafe LGA of the same state.

    Before this time, a bomb attack and mass shooting during mass service at St, Francis Catholic church, Owo, Ondo State had left more than 50 people killed. The Nigerian security agencies then fingered ISWAP for the dastardly killings. Four of the masterminds have since been arrested and are facing prosecution.

    Yet, herdsmen attacked St Paul’s Catholic Church, Aye-Twar, Katsina Ala, Benue State last August. Chairman of the Nigerian Catholic Diocesan Priests Association (NCDPA) Katsina Ala, Rev. Fr. Samuel Fila gave a disturbing account of the attack. According to him, “the attack has finally shut down all pastoral activities since all the 26 outstations have been occupied by herdsmen long before now.

    The malevolent attach left in its wake the desecration and destruction of the parish church, destruction of the parish secretariat, the burning to ashes of the Father’s House, destruction of household items, pastoral logistic vehicles in addition to many other items” the NCDPA chairman recounted.

    All these seem to reinforce Idris’ argument that the terrorists operating in the country attacks Muslim and Christian places of worship and therefore puts a lie to the narrative of a systematic genocide against Christians. What could have then, led the foreign media outfits and commentators to their conclusion? Could it be a deliberate voyage on mischief or the general biases and ignorance that sometimes blur western media perception of events in Africa and the less developed nations?

    Even as the motivations of western media platforms remain a matter of conjecture, it would appear they were deceived by the profile of the terrorists. Who are these terrorists operating in Nigeria and what is their mission?

    Top on the list is the Boko Haram insurgents. They are opposed to western education and propelled by the weird desire to institute an Islamic state. Islamic State for West Africa Province ISWAP is another. It broke away from Islamic State    (IS) another radical religious group linked to Al-Qaida. Its name gives out its doctrinaire.

    There are also the bandits whose motivations are yet to be clearly decoded. At one time, they share the same characteristics with the killer herdsmen. And at another, it is difficult to draw a line between them and the Boko Haram insurgents or other terrorist groups masquerading around. They are largely responsible for the attacks in Katsina and Zamfara among other states in the north.

    Attacks on worship places also come from the insurgency of the herdsmen ranked by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world. The case of Katsina Ala is just a tip of the iceberg of such attacks and despoliations. Of course, there are other less effective ones like the Lukarawa. The proliferation of these terror groups propelled by strange religious ideological leanings could obviously send wrong signals.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s retelling of Nigeria’s 65 years of pain, progress, gloom, bloom

    There are other forms criminalities in and around the country. But their purveyors are not engaged in mounting attacks on places of religious worship.  So, it is not unlikely that the profile of these insurgents, doctrines and their preoccupation with attacks on places of worship may have influenced the foreign media platforms.

    They may not have captured the real situation on ground. But the fact that such attacks could lend themselves to misinterpretation outside our shores, illustrates most poignantly the danger in the activities of insurgency groups propagating religious beliefs that run at cross purposes with the secularity of the country. That is the issue to contend with.

    Admittedly, the government has been waging a relentless war against the insurgency of these extremists. In recent times, arrests of key leaders of the insurgent groups have been made. There are also copious reports of their being neutralised in huge numbers by the security agencies.

    But the resurgence of the attacks as the tempo of the 2027 general elections draw nearer raises suspicions of political colouration. Data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project shows there have been 43 separate attacks on Church premises this year.

    This should instruct a re-assessment of the current strategy in prosecuting the war against terrorism to secure total defeat. As long as the terror groups pursue their weird religious doctrines, so long will their motivations lend themselves to misinterpretation.

  • Anglican church fights its leader

    Anglican church fights its leader

    The appointment of Sarah Mullaly as the new archbishop of Canterbury has touched off not a little controversy in Christendom.

    The contention is that a woman is not permitted by scripture to lead the people of God. Those who make such claims often cite passages of the Bible.

    For instance, Paul roared to Timothy, “I suffer not a woman to teach or usurp authority over the man.” To the Corinthians, he urged that the woman should “learn in silence.”

     Other points are that Jesus Christ did not pick a woman among the 12 apostles and 70 disciples. Paul’s assertion “Let a bishop be blameless, a husband of one wife,” presumes that a bishop must be a man. Yet in Old and New Testaments, we have women who, with the blessings of God, could be described as called by God. The word prophet means “to call.”

    We have Mariam, Deborah, wife of Isaiah, Jezebel, Huldah, Noadiah and Anna.

    Mariam fell out of favour for rebellion. But the most distinguished of them all was Deborah, who the Bible announces glowingly: “Deborah, the prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, judged Israel at that time.” Huldah affirmed the book of the law to Josiah.

    Anna was called a prophetess at the time of Christ’s birth. Jezebel was a false prophet. She was never anointed. Just like male impostors. You can be anointed and God can take it away, as God did to Saul. Hence David begged God not to take the holy spirit from him.

    Paul is known to have mixed his opinion with revelations. It takes discerning to distinguish them. After all, he himself wrote, “the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet.”

    It may well be that Men are God’s preferences but it may also be because, in Bible times, God was working through, not necessarily affirming, a patriarchal world, a world that placed women in a leash. That may explain why Jesus chose only men.

    Read Also: Medplus, Mobihealth to launch telehealth hubs across Nigeria

    Yet, Mary Magdalene played great role in Jesus’ life. And can we forget that the first evangelist of Christianity were women who saw an empty grave and proclaimed that He has risen? Is that not all the essence of Christianity. The 11 apostles hid their tails behind their legs. Even Paul asserted that if Christ did not rise from the grave, then the faith is in vain.

    Men always bit the woman’s neck like a hunting cat throughout history.

    A woman in charge challenges the hubris of the ages. Men often underplay the power of women. Great men from Sisera to Sheba died by a woman’s cunning.

    And General Namaan regained his limbs by a maid’s counsel. Scriptures show men do not monopolise strategy. Some say God allows women to reign only when men fail. But when have men not failed in history? Just like when God backed the Zelophehad daughters on inheritance rights. Or when Esther led her fellow Jews to freedom.

    Maybe women don’t want to remain under the bushel anymore. Neither does the Almighty. It is time for them to take charge and the holy spirit may be behind them. The problem with religion is that we superimpose culture on it. Church is not a man’s world. It is Christ’s.

    An irony: a king wed and divorced a woman for England to divorce the Catholic Church and start the Anglican Church. If King Henry VIII shed Ann Boleyn to beget the Church of England, Archbishop Mullaly may be enjoying history’s revenge.

  • Billionaire vs the union

    Billionaire vs the union

    There is nothing that the story of oil will not do in this country. It is black but a devious beauty. It is a tale of a beautiful woman or what poets call a femme fatale.

    Nobel Laureate Garcia Marquez in his immortal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, wafts the tale of Remedios the Beauty, a celestial vision that titillates the fancies of mortal man.

     Men lose their way, croon and drool in vain, fall and even stalk her bathroom. But the beauty does not fall for anyone. She glides on, tragedy in her wake.

    So we may say of black gold, our black beauty. It is a story that entails both our most famous billionaire and our most famous trade unions.

    Dangote versus NUPENG. Dangote versus PENGASSAN. But normally, if these two forces met in battle, where would the popular army amass? The polls would naturally say the unions have it.

    Dangote outflanks the unions in popular favour today. That is the sorcery of oil. It is what happens when, in the words of Shakespeare, “witchcraft joins with beauty.”  It is, on the surface, a contest between the people and the billionaire.

    The people lost. It is, of course, a false victory.

    The people seem to lose because of what trade unions can mean today. They hark back to American revolutionary cry to yank off the yoke of colonial England: “No taxation without representation.” We have unions without representation.

    First, it was NUPENG, and the fight over trucks. They say Dangote was going to take over their business. They have thousands of Trucks to Dangote’s a fraction of theirs. But they were defending their corruption of the oil tanking business in cahoots with top fang-men in the oil business, including the NNPC. Dangote had come to intrude but they wanted to “chop” alone.

    Dangote may have a few trucks today but, maybe, tomorrow, he will outpace them. They wanted to nip the billionaire in the bud. We are not there yet.

    And if they wanted to fight, it is what the Yorubas call  Ija’gboro, a street brawl. In school, we called it “two fighting.”

    They fought shy of going to court. That is what the United States did to tame Bill Gates, and what the European Union has done to Google. Gates was a boa constrictor. He had no pity.

    Business men are no mice. Hence Philosopher Proudhon says, “all wealth is theft.”  Don’t expect a milk of human kindness from a capitalist. Capital has no bloodstream; hence it can shed blood.

    PENGASSAN is no different. The fight was over labour.

     The man fired 800 workers, a stunning number. PENGASSAN wanted revenge. Rather than take it on Dangote, they took it on the people. Festus Osifo and company’s agenda did everything that made the people hate bad governments and oppressors.

    First, they endangered our daily bread by trying to cut off pipelines that funneled the fuel of the economy.  It was to reduce the wealth of the nation. NNPC said output dropped 16 per cent just in those few days. That meant fuel scarcity, rise in inflation because transporters would pass on the cost down to the consumer. It also means negating the downward trend of inflation in the past few months.

    Two, they would compromise national security. Oil and gas pipelines bake our bread and make us safe. Pipeline busters are often men of the underworld: militants, hoodlums, bandits, etc.

    It shows that they had taken over the role of the criminal. They had turned themselves into corporate fangs. They are the new corporate raider, raiding the peace of the land. Labour union as terror.

    In the past, the labour union was a terror of ideology. We have a name once associated with NUPENG and PENGASSAN. It is Frank Kokori. He is the first name in oil heroism in Nigeria. He may be abstract to many. But when heroes matter, Kokori is named.

    During the tumult of our democracy struggles, the army lost sleep because of him. Whether they slept or rose, they had nightmares about this man.

     Kokori was the secretary, and he was the man who signed off or signed on for strike. If our present oil agitators are seeking their pockets, he was living a cause above oil and gas. Kokori gave up the promise of compromise with Abacha and goons. He shunned bribes or seductions. Not for him a big car, or a holiday in Honolulu, or a mansion in southern France. He wanted peace and food and representation with the people. He wanted the military to vacate power and hand the mandate to democracy’s jewel: the people.

    He did not want Abiola’s ballot to yield to the bullet. He won the election. The people had spoken. They wanted him as president.

    Read Also: FULL LIST: 10 Most affordable Nigerian states to live in 2025

     The country was to shut down unless they bowed to the popular will or what Jean Jacque Rouseau called the “collective will.” If the military would not, he would not. Kokori became a vagabond for the people. He moved from place to place, hotel to hotel.

     He never saw wife or family. He never attended parties or funerals. He never had oxygen outside an enclosed place except when he was on the run.

    But he never surrendered until he was betrayed. That is the quintessence of a union leader.

    Today, the folks who control PENGASSAN and NUPENG are money men, so, it is not a billionaire versus the masses, but a big rich man versus a cartel of rich men who masquerade as the people’s conscience.

    The men had the guts to stop our spigot of life, our economic jugular, and yet they claim they love us.

    That is the story of black beauty. It is a dangerous beauty like Marquez’s Remedios the Beauty. It provokes ire and turbulence like the Trojan War that  Helen of Troy gave us, the beauty in the telling of Homer’s epic The Iliad.

     But we can make our black beauty a sublime one, of grace and prosperity like the black beauty Shakespeare serenaded in his Sonnet.

     The bard laments, though, that black beauty has been profaned, just like our crude oil. For him black “beauty (is) slandered with a bastard shame.” He adds that “Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, but is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.”

    PENGASSAN and NUPENG have cast a shame on black gold as crude beauty.

  • Lighting strikes again

    Lighting strikes again

    Nuhu Ribadu, the slim, sometimes soft-spoken, tall and deceptively quiet former police officer has a rare second act in public office. The first was as the pioneer head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Even though he was not president, he was the most dreaded man in the country. He was not afraid to make enemies, but he was an easy man to befriend.

    His voice is soft until it is fiery. He did not worry that some accused him of going after Obasanjo’s enemies. A thief, whether Obj’s friend or enemy, was an enemy of the people. He did his job with verve, and often with class.

    Read Also: Tinubu, dignitaries grace church service to mark Nigeria’s 65th Independence anniversary

     His foes tried to get him, but he was not only a survivor but also a triumph. Many a mighty man fell in his time and under his authority, including an inspector general and top politicians. Few know that he also did not spare one of his close relatives.

    There were two quotes I associate with his time as EFCC boss, one from him, and another on the streets. He once quipped when they accused him of not following due process: “Did they follow due process when they were stealing the money?” The other I heard from a young lady to her wooer who boasted he had money. “Ah, you don’t have EFCC money?”

    At last, conspirators got him out of the way. Let the thieves steal in peace, they said to themselves.

    Now, Ribadu’s lightning is striking again. It is another type of corruption: violence. This is a vaster and delicate responsibility. If he was the pioneer EFCC boss, he is the first police officer to be the national security adviser. He has carried that job with panache and severity, combining the ruthless with the graceful. The records are there as tell tales.

     He has downed many a mighty terrorist, the latest being the Ansaru wizards and the ironically named Gentle de Yahoo in the Southeast. In spite of critics, the story is clear. Under his watch, the criminals are on the run, like snakes on the wall.

    They strike but they are in danger. That is the untold story of the men of fear. Ribadu lightning is shedding light and burning the hoodlums.

  • Joe and Mefi

    Joe and Mefi

    I met a politician of high pedestal the other day and the question of former President Goodluck Jonathan came up. He composed the contradictory traits in the former president in one epithet: He called him an “innocent fool.”

     He did not say it out of contempt but out of pity bordering on affection. I thought that was a weighty onslaught on someone some have described as a statesman.

    In arriving at his characterization, he recalled some entanglements with the former president in his plumy days in Aso Rock.

    He was easily conned by the seductions and flatteries of fellow politicians, he narrated, and they conjured up billions of naira from him on flimsy promises to deliver some states for him during the 2015 election.

     Perhaps his loss as epiphany explained why Goodluck Jonathan lamented at a birthday bash recently that no politician could be trusted.

    That knowledge has not restrained him from his ongoing itinerary. Is the politician right, then, that he is an innocent fool? He has been flattered again into self-belief that he can be president again. We can call it an odyssey of contradiction in courtesy visits for apparent gestures to test his chances of return. He is hugging the same motley men of perfidy. Enter Peter Obi. Enter David mark. Enter Jonathan. Enter naivete.

    But as one reflects on the former president, another name comes to mind. He is Godwin Emefiele. Their resemblance in temperament is intriguing.

    They have the same mien, a look that is easily hostage to the mischief of conmen. The same naïve, groveling kindness that makes them seek approval through gestures of generosity.

     The same lack of rigour or intellectual curiosity that subjects them to the persuasions of thinking quacks. The same courage that ends up as mere bravado, like a bullet as empty shell.

    They are both funny but no fun. They exude comedy in spite of themselves as though asking the world to laugh at them. Playwright Samuel Bekett calls it risus purus, a laugh laughing at itself. It is an abysmal farce.

    Because of these traits, both men project the worst of all: a delusion of grandeur. It is that delusion that has given them the belief they have the right – scratch that -, that they have the ideas and charisma to be president. It is after this self-characterisation that they part ways. Jonathan condenses his ideas and characterization in his projection of humility.

    Read Also: ISA Act will revolutionise Nigeria’s capital market, says Ezugbor

    Hence, he told of his ‘fable’ of a boy who grew up without shoes. It is a fable because, for those of us who were raised in the Niger Delta in those days, it was not a special endowment. It was routine. In Warri, we called it walking on 10 toes. I did it. My mates did it. Nothing for which to win any epaulette.

    As for Emefiele, the former CBN chief, he did not propagate humility. Rather he rode on defiance, the peacock dignity of appropriating a high office because he was a big man. It is the sort of trait we saw in classic heroes of history like Caligula and Commodus in Rome and, in the 20th century, King Leopold of Belgium, who was described, in his quest as an emperor, as the “big minded man in an insignificant kingdom.” Hence, in one of his court trials, the former CBN governor twirled a exaggerated bible as a marker of his great and extraordinary piety.

    Before the APC  primaries, he was notorious for the fleet of campaign vans, wild blossoms of campaign posters, and a speculated war chest. He predated this with his caskets of rice pyramids that mocked the genuine ones in Kano when he was a student.

    Emefiele was miffed by my mockeries in those days, and his minions bought two advert pages in this newspaper to sponsor a counterattack that was a casket of brilliance. Mefi, as he was known either out of mockery or affection, fizzled away easily. We sought him at the primary, and he could not be found.

    Both Jonathan and Mefi thought they had a meal before them, and fell to dinner until they learned they were gobbling a pottage of sacrifice, a meal of the gods. It was forbidden. It is what in the Bible is described as the abomination “that maketh desolate.” Prophet Daniel coined that phrase when the Roman army desecrated the temple at Jerusalem.

     And referring to a runup to what Christians call the great tribulation, Jesus cried, “when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand where it ought not to…”

    Well, that was on a higher plane. For Joe and Mefi, their ambition was like touching the unclean thing. Their ambitions are what in Niger Delta we called “over nikka, over shirt, or money miss road.” It means he is too small for his garments.

    Every political season throws up its own clown, and we have had them from the First Republic. Many would not know that S.L.A. Akintola was one of them, and hence his initials S.L.A was corrupted to ese ole in Yoruba, meaning the leg of a thief.

    I don’t know that I would call Joe and Mefi innocent fools. There was a character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, described as a saintly fool, or holy fool. But those persons are actually conscious mockers of society. They make fool of their societies by acting like fools. They are sublime characters like Feste in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Philosophers, literary critics and psychologists have elaborated on this.

    I would not say Joe and Mefi are saintly fools either. They are not mocking their societies. They do not even have the talent to do that. Akintola and Olunloyo and even K.O. Mbadiwe will wear that laurel. Joe and Mefi are more sublime than that. Rather they are a mirror of a society. They are unconscious actors of a society full of men and women imagining themselves.

    Joe’s story is more terrible. He tasted the forbidden fruit, and he did not satisfy his soul. He was led out of the kitchen. He wants to return to the scene of the crime. Mighty Bible in hand, Mefi is pleading innocent in court.

  • Gombe’s out-of-school children

    Gombe’s out-of-school children

    Though eighth in the list of states in the country with the highest number of out-of-school children, Gombe State government appears sufficiently worried by its standing. This is evident from the measures it is undertaking to reverse the sliding trend.

    Kebbi, Sokoto and Yobe states respectively top the list of states with the highest number of out-of-school children while Imo and Anambra states occupy the 36th and 37th positions according to data provided by the Cable Index. The Federal Capital Territory, Abuja was counted as one of the states and listed in the24th position.

    Apparently dissatisfied with its ranking, Gombe State government last week inaugurated an elaborate School Enrolment Campaign for the 2025/2026 session with a threat to prosecute parents and guardians who fail to send their children to school.  The state government drew attention to Section 19(2) of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) Amendment Law 2021 which prescribes punishment for defaulting parents and urged them to ensure their children or wards attend and complete primary, junior and senior secondary school education.

    “Any parent who contravenes section 19(2) of the law commits an offence and is liable upon conviction, to pay a fine or serve a one-month prison sentence. Subsequent convictions also attract substantial fine or imprisonment for a term of two months”, chairman of the state’s SUBEB, Babaji Babadidi warned.

    He said the state government adopted the measure to ensure that every child has access to quality basic education. That is not all. The state government also invested heavily in the sector, offering free education through which it targets enrolling 400,000 pupils into primary schools this session.

    This will entail supplying the children with free exercise books, school bags and other school materials as incentives for massive enrolment. The target is to give quality education to the children in addition to skills that will make them self-employed.

    If these investments and incentives fail to achieve the desired result, prosecution of defaulting parents and guardians will be the next line of action to ensure compliance.

    It is heart-refreshing Gombe State is so challenged by the rising number of out-of-school children that it decided to confront the scourge head on. Though the state ranked eighth in the scale of out-of-school children, figures furnished by its commissioner for education, Prof. Aishatu Maigari, put the number at over 700,000.

    This no doubt, is staggering given estimates by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) which put the total number of out-of-school children in Nigeria at 18.3 million. This figure confers on Nigeria, the unpleasant tag of harbouring the greatest number of out-of-school children in the world. In practical terms, it translates to one, out of three school children in the country not enrolled in school.

    The northwest and the northeast account for the largest chunk of the figure. It is little surprising that Gombe which harbour over 700,000 of these out-of-school children has taken measures to halt the drift. It did not only develop models to reduce the numbers but state-specific strategies to arrive at the same objective.

    The school enrolment campaigns which coincided with the new school calendar year are meant to sensitise the rural communities and boost the enrolment of children in schools as they resume the current session.  It also enabled them to sensitise and explain government’s investments in the field of education and the need for pupils to take full advantage of them.

    But the government also intends to wield the big stick if parents fail to enrol their children in schools. Though prosecution will throw up its own challenges, the essence is to draw the attention of possible defaulters to its consequences. One striking feature of the state’s-specific strategy by Gombe is the setting of benchmarks and targets on the number of school children it seeks to enrol in the current academic year.

    If the state is able to register 400,000 pupils, then it would have substantially reduced its share of out-of-school children to 300,000. That will be a remarkable feat. If that trend is replicated next session, Gombe should be on the path to eliminating the scourge from the state’s education system. That is barring other extenuating factors that incubate, propel and sustain the phenomenon especially in that part of the country.

    The example by Gombe State is noteworthy. Yet, there is little evidence of other infrastructural investments in technical education that gives some modicum of assurance that products of its 6-3-3-4 education will be able to use their heads and hands to create jobs instead of depending on elusive government employment.

    Free education and such incentives as free exercise books, school bags etc. are essential in addressing the challenge of low school enrolment. But that is not all there is to it. Whereas such incentives will enable the poor to have access to schools, they cannot address the root of the debilitating material conditions and dire privations in which a majority of our people live.

    Tackling out-of-school children challenge cannot make reasonable progress without evolving adequate therapeutic responses to the multi-facetted systemic dysfunctions that propel and sustain the malaise. Poor budget allocations to education at all levels of the government is a serious factor even as the little funds allocated suffer from the large scale corruption that hallmark public offices in this country.

    This reflects in the poor infrastructural facilities that have become the face of our public schools. In many states, children study in ramshackle buildings, some without roofs even as others sit on bare floors for their daily lessons. Such negligence acts as serious disincentive to school enrolment.

    So, governments must upgrade the level of facilities in their schools’ system to make them attractive and conducive for teaching and learning. That also brings in the importance of addressing issues relating to the welfare of teachers and other ancillary staff.

    Child labour, certain cultural and religious practices are other inhibitors which state governments must work to address. But by far, the greatest challenge to a quick reduction in out-of-school children is the multi-facetted insecurity tilting the country to the precipice.

    Read Also: FULL STEPS: How Nigerians can travel to St. Kitts and Nevis without visa

    This is especially so for the northeast and north-western parts of the country. That is where the Boko Haram insurgency that professes weird religious ideology holds sway. Boko Haram which literally translates to ‘education is evil’ speaks eloquently of the incalculable harm strange religious doctrines could wrought on school enrolment.

    Boko Haram and its splinter insurgent groups had severally demonstrated their strong aversion to western education in serial abduction and ferrying into the thin air of hundreds of school children. Schools in Chibok, Borno State, Kuriga in Kaduna State and Jangebe in Zamfara State were some of the key victims.

    The wider repercussions of these abductions propelled by strong aversion to western education are felt in the high number of out-of-school in those two regions. There are also other regular abductions in rural communities by the so-called bandits whose motivations are yet to prove different from those of the insurgent groups. These have resulted in mass dislocation of families with children of school age at the receiving end.

     Faced with cascading insecurity, many of the states with high out-of-school children have increasingly found it difficult to decisively tackle the monster. That is why the current war against all forms of insecurity in the country must be waged to its conclusive end. It will amount to grand illusion to expect drastic reduction in out-of-school children in states where the insurgent groups campaign against western education, abducting and killing those they find in schools.

    Besides, the various governments must work to reduce the debilitating poverty in the land through huge investments that will guarantee decent life to the greatest number of the citizenry. This will entail husbanding and harnessing the collective wealth which Mother Nature bountifully endowed this country to uplift the citizens from scorching poverty, misery and privation due to mismanagement by self-serving rulers.

     It is not a coincidence that Nigeria which had earned the unenviable rating of the world’s poverty capital, is also home to the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. Does that say something?

  • Niger and allegory of two cities

    Niger and allegory of two cities

    Many must have been taken aback penultimate week, when the news filtered that the Niger State government placed a ban on all forms of religious preaching in the state. The secularity of the country and the prospects of the new regulations infringing on the rights of citizens to freedom of religious worship and expression, resonated as issues of concern.

    Thus, the motive of the government was bound to come under suspicion as the Director General of Niger State Religious Affairs, Umar Farooq, confirmed the ban in addition to the requirement that preachers must obtain licences before they can be allowed to preach in the state.

    “It is true the state government has banned preaching. Any preacher who wants to preach must secure a licence between now and two months”, he said. Farooq further explained that what all prospective preachers are required to do is to visit their office and fill out a form. Thereafter, they will face a panel that will screen them before they are allowed to preach.

    But when the state governor, Mohammed Bago appeared on a television interview last week, he said the measure was not a ban on evangelism but a way of checking inciting messages that could threaten peace and security. Hear him, “I didn’t ban evangelism. For anybody going to sermon on Friday, he should bring his scriptures for review, and it is normal”.

    Bago drew parallels with Saudi Arabia where such rules exist and contended that you cannot say because you have been given the opportunity to be “a cleric, you will go out and preach the gospel that is anti-people and anti-government”.

    What seems to emerge from the above is that the state government did not ban religious preaching in the state. Rather, its new regulations on religion require preachers to get the authorisation of the government before they can preach. In other words, the new regulation vests the right to determine and approve qualified preachers on the shoulders of the state government. That immediately raises questions on the propriety of government officials delving into matters that impinge on the ecclesiastical realm. How qualified are they for the self-assigned role?

    The above question is further reinforced by another strand of the directive which mandates all preachers to submit their sermons for the approval of the government. 

    Ostensibly, the measures are designed to prevent indoctrination and public incitement thereby enhancing the maintenance of law and order. The state government could also seek to justify the directive on the serial exploitation of religion by unscrupulous people to cause trouble. Ours is a country that is not strange to weird religious doctrines and beliefs.

    Read Also: Remi Tinubu shinning jewel in Nigeria’s crown, says Otu

    In the last couple of years, the country has been embroiled in Boko Haram insurgency with about four affiliate insurgency groups propelled by strange religious doctrines, joining the fray. That should say something about the danger in allowing unfettered access to the public, of inciting religious ideas.

    It is not in doubt that religion has been serially exploited and manipulated by unscrupulous and self-serving persons to foment trouble of unimaginable proportions with dire consequences for co-habitation, peace and progress.

    If that is Bago’s concern in insisting that preachers must be licensed before they can preach in the state, one can understand. But the regulation veered off tangent when it sought to arrogate to government functionaries, the powers to licence preachers and determine sermons good for public consumption through vetting.

    This is as dangerous as it is practically impossible given the multiplicity of such sermons (written and unwritten) that regularly emanate from the numerous religious organisations. It remains to be seen how the government intends to access sermons from the nooks and crannies of the state, some of which are hundreds of kilometres away from the state capital. It presents huge logistic challenges.

     Even if the government drastically prunes down the number of preachers (which is clearly outside its mandate), it will still have to contend with the right to regulate sermons meant for the pulpit in a plural society of diverse religious persuasions.

    The state government gave away its motive when it asserted that the measure will act as a check against anti-people and anti-government sermons. By extrapolation, the government’s goal is to ensure that preachers do not author sermons that criticise its actions and policies. That would rather sound strange. If religious leaders cannot offer constructive criticisms to government’s policies and actions taking advantage of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, then the human society is in big trouble.

    Freedom to criticise government policies and offer direction to the people is different from public incitement. And the churches should have the right to determine that. At any rate, the laws are there to check possible abuse. Niger State government is also flawed when it seeks to capitalise on what it called anti-government sermons to seek to gag preachers.

    Such assessments can be subjective as we have seen in the constant arrest of journalists on the orders of some governors. Clerics have a duty to call the attention of and redirect the government and the society when things are drifting. And they have been doing that.

    Besides, politicians are not immune to religious exploitation to serve their selfish predilections. For in verity, much of the religion-induced crises this country has encountered, were in the main, instigated, sponsored and promoted by politicians in their inordinate ambition to win elections by hook and crook. Politicians are notorious for deploying religion and ethnicity to whip up sentiments when their influences significantly diminish. The cascading insecurity in the country has its roots in the inordinate desires by politicians to achieve their political objectives through devious means.

    It remains to be conjectured how the same politicians can be the new face of credible religious sermons. The new regulation depicts the Niger State government as one afraid of criticisms. That is the uncanny contradiction in assigning the powers to vet religious sermons in the hands of politicians in Niger State or any other part of this country. Politicians cannot be trusted with the role of moral compass on religious matters.  

    Events in Niger State again, elevate to the fore, the distinction by medieval philosophers between the corporeal and the ecclesiastical realms. The measures strike at the heart of the division between the purviews of the state and religion.

    St Thomas Aquinas believes that the state (temporary authority) and the Church (spiritual authority) are distinct but complementary. The state focuses on worldly matters while the church presides over the spiritual realm. For him, the state and the church are distinct governments that should work harmoniously with each respecting the other’s domain.

     Aquinas captured the nature of that relationship when he contended that if a state’s action conflicts with moral law or spiritual wellbeing of its citizens, the church has the right to speak out and provide guidance. That is the red line Niger State is bound to cross as it seeks to prevent clerics from sermons it considers anti-government.

    St Augustine captured the thrust of this division in his allegory of two cities-the city of man and the city of God. He described two cities built on contrasting loves-the earthly city built on love of self to the point of despising God and the city of God built on the love of God to the point of despising self.

    These are not literal cities but spiritual societies with members of the earthly city pursuing temporal power and glory while members of the city of God seeking God’s glory and eternal life. The two philosophers captured all that is required to be said of the relationship that should exist between the state and religion.

    They are two separate spheres of authority guided by different motivations. Though their roles can find complementarity in some instances, they largely exist to pursue and serve different goals. Niger State government is definitely going beyond its boundaries by not only seeking to ‘ordain’ preachers but in vetting and approving their sermons before they can go public.

    Such a policy amounts to combining the powers of the state and religion in the hands of politicians. Bago’s parallels with Saudi Arabia where preachers submit their sermon for vetting every Friday says little given the secularity of Nigeria. His government will also have to contend with Sunday sermons from an assortment of religious denominations.

    Let Niger State government contend with the challenges of the CITY of man and leave the CITY of God in the hands of the religions.

  • Drumbeat on Kaduna streets

    Drumbeat on Kaduna streets

    In his play, Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen traded in irony. The main character who was presented as the public enemy was actually the beloved of the people’s interest. It is that irony that played out last weekend when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu visited Kaduna State for a wedding and a condolence.

    If you listened to the ululations of some so-called voices of the north from Kwankwaso to El-Rufai to Dalhatu, you would not expect that there would be a wedding. Yet the wedlock began on the streets of Kaduna. Whether it was on the road side or on flyovers, the youth lined up and admired. It was no passive cheer but one happy enough for chants.

    It was a tying of hearts not of a young man and a nubile, but of a septuagenarian leader and his people. The real wedding took back stage to the wedding of metaphor. There was no “I do,” but a hint of “we will do.” It came in chants like Baba Continuity and Tinubu Continuity.

    Read Also: Otuabagi: Oil-rich land turns burial ground for children

    Was it not a wedlock of sorts when a public heckler like Sule Lamido melted into a hug, and bluster became banter between him and President Bola Tinubu.

    The happy day was not based on a vacuum, but an acknowledgment of work done. It began with the President’s latchkey to the Kaduna heart, its chief executive who the president calls comrade: Governor Uba Sani. He has chosen peace over human rubble, building roads over Golgotha, food over feud, unity over division, good image over pillage. It is the same north that a man like Kwanwaso said was an enemy, the same north that is catching the rhythm and ember of “Omo logo.”

    If we say it was a wedding, literary classics have sometimes written about weddings leading to funerals, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and -, and Aeschylus’ Iphigenia. The hint here is that the president’s visit sets the stage for a funeral pyre for those northern politicians who dreaded the wedding of the people and their leader last weekend.

  • Wike and his enemies

    Wike and his enemies

    Nyesom Wike’s story is etched on this era. Those who hate him may say he is the boor. But they cannot say he is boring. His foes hate him as though they crave him. They fight him as though they love him.

    If, God forbid, he drops dead today, those who hate him would want to prop him up, and invoke the Lazarus hour with Jesus. It is like the line from Walt Whitman’s poem ironically titled, Reconciliation.

     He writes: “My enemy is dead – a soul divine as myself is dead.” It is like the fight between Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. They both died within an hour of each other, with the other’s name on their lips as they expired.

     Jefferson said: “So John Adams lives.” Adams reportedly predated his expiration with the same sentiment about the third president of the United States.

    Online rodents who want Wike dead  are no real enemies. He laughed them to scorn. They are mercantilist, just like rumours that the President was bedridden and waiting to be flown abroad as well as Senate President Godswill Akpabio. They are hungry for Google’s paycheck.

    Wike’s real foes are companions. Critics of John Milton’s Paradise Lost assert that even the rendition of the devil in that epic is more impressive than that of God or Christ.

    Hence Wike’s best fights are even among those who were with him. With them, like the clergy, he has broken bread. Name them: Rotimi Amaechi, Atiku Abubakar, Aminu Tambuwal, Umar Damagum, Bala Mohammed, Sim Fubara.

     In a short story, The Lagoon, Joseph Conrad asserts that “there is no worse enemy and no better friend than a brother.” When politicians work together, they are like brothers, until money or ego poisons the honey.

    Not that Wike has not squared off with persons on the other side of the street. He gave us a hint last week in his interview with Seun Okinbaloye  on Channels Television, with reference to a top soldier and a police officer, one he called a killer and the other an assassin.

    He does not fear libel nor restrain from name calling. He does not forswear his position, neither does he apologise for his tender parts.

    Read Also: CJN to inaugurate 57 new SANs September 29

     When he sings, he throws barbs. It is Wike who would croon with visceral gusto about Tinubu’s mandate song in front of chief of staff Gbajabiamila. He is the only politician in memory whose impulse on a rostrum transformed into a hit song embraced as armoury to fight enemies, to win friends, to invoke God and devil simultaneously.

    The vertebral bone of his last interview was his audacity. But it is not that he is not conscious that his foes have a voice. They do. Yet he spared no foe. He poked or choked, and he accused them with facts or the threat of facts. He can be caught in a contradiction, but Wike, to the best of my knowledge, has not been caught in a lie in public. That may be what scares his critics. His facts are offensive for being facts.

    Politicians lie for a living. His first big fight was with his predecessor, Rotimi Amaechi. He has said at least two things about him that Amaechi has not contradicted. He spoke about him and a deal while he- Amaechi – was governor.

     He said that his predecessor garlanded him that “after God, it is Wike.” That is potent. He said it was a public declaration. Men should not be saying such things in public again. The last person to say so on record was Rauf Aregbesola about the president. See how it turned out. See how it has turned out for Amaechi unless he comes out and debunks it.

    He called a certain police officer a killer, and repeated that noun for emphasis to a flustered interviewer. When you put Wike on stage, you get what you asked for.

    He can boast as though he does not. When he said he made Iyorchia Ayu PDP chairman and ousted him, it did not come across as a boast, but as a confession. He did it, and what can anyone do about it, he seemed to say. Remember, he threw epithets at him, including “prodigal father.”

    He did not spare Atiku or Tambuwal, and he said even if he lost the primary, he won the war: the presidential election. He took a swipe at former army chief Aliyu Gusau, and painted him as the shadowy hegemon who brokered the downfall of the PDP in the last election.

    We forget that Wike was on the cusp of winning the PDP presidential primary. I recall I was in a dinner with a few top media men, and one of them asserted that Wike was going to win the primary. I predicted he would be derailed in the last minute. The man was too feared by the high and mighty in the party to hand him the fat of the PDP. It seemed far-fetched at that time. I did not know how it was going to happen, but I knew that Wike had done charity to so many in the party. But they didn’t have the love to repay. If Apostle Paul says charity “never faileth,” Wike’s was an exception for PDP.

    The most important question in that Channels encounter was Wike’s poser, “Has anyone said I have betrayed him one day?” That is what I mean by the silence of his interlocutors. I am really waiting for anyone to say so, and if no one has anything to say, they should keep their peace.

    At one of his first live interviews organized in his office as FCT minister, he said with a frown of agonised self-assurance: “I always win.”

     He said it in the early days of his joust with Fubara. How does it look today? Who seems to have triumphed, at least for now? Maybe he has profited from treachery, that is a victim. Better to be betrayed and win than to betray and lose. That seems to be Wike’s charmed life so far.

    Wike and Fubara’s story recalls the tension between President Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, his successor. It all ended in a gala night after years of recrimination. Taft walked up to his former mentor and gave him a hug. Claps and cheers drowned the venue.

     It was a moment of proud humility. It is still to be known whether Wike and Fubara fought as enemies who are friends or as friends who are enemies. The coming months will show. But for now, it is Wike’s triumph, and the Channels interview was a sort of seal to that battle. For all his incandescent rhetoric, Wike deserves credit for not taking a victory lap.

    Many who say he betrayed PDP by joining the Asiwaju government did not listen to him during the campaign. He made no bones about where he stood and for whom. He says he belongs to the PDP still, and that he is in the government for one reason only: Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Hence, he lashed out at the soldier. And when Okinbaloye pointed out that they are in the same government, he replied that he was there for Tinubu, and nothing else. His logic may not satisfy you, but that is fine with him so long as he is happy with himself.

    For this essayist, the interview was serious theatre if, for some, he entertained to embarrass, or embarrassed to entertain. Whatever it was, this is not the last of Wike’s immortal outings.

    The beat goes on.

  • The ‘gospel’ by FCT Police

    The ‘gospel’ by FCT Police

    Federal Capital Territory (FCT) police command, is seriously worried that offering its officers bribe or other forms of inducement will compromise their duties, taint the integrity and credibility of that institution. It therefore cautioned the public last week, to desist from such acts as they are not only unlawful but could impede the performance of the responsibilities of the officers.

    “It is unlawful to give our officers money or any form of inducement while they are performing their duty. Let them discharge their responsibilities diligently without interference”, the FCT Police command stated. This is the second time in three months that the police command has come out with this admonition.

    Last June, its Commissioner of Police (CP), Ajao Adewale similarly cautioned residents against offering bribe to police officers as it is a criminal offence under section 118 of the Penal Code Act. He had then warned officers to stop illegal detentions, extortions and unlawful interference in civil disputes particularly land-related cases.

    Re-emphasising that bail is free, he warned that any officer found demanding money for bail or documentation will face severe disciplinary action. Before now, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, had also issued copious warnings on police zero-tolerance for extortion, corruption and impunity.

    He ordered the specialised units including the IGP X squad, the monitoring unit and the Complaint Response Unit to intensify their oversight functions in tacking these unethical practices.

    The warnings came amidst mounting complaints by residents of unlawful detention of individuals over bail-able offences, demand for money before commencement of investigations and police involvement in matters clearly outside their jurisdiction.

    The sermon from the FCT police command amplifies the concerns by the IGP. But there is a substantial difference in the approach of the FCT command to the matter.

    It is not just confronting the cankerworm from the angle of police officers who compromise their duties by asking for and receiving bribe or other forms of inducement. No! It recognises that in this fight, there are two sides to the coin-the giver and the receiver. It works from the prism that if there are no givers of bribe, there will be no receivers. That goes without saying.

    The sermon is justifiably propelled by the logic that a comprehensive and realistic fight against corruption cannot make any headway without tackling the two sides in the game. If those who offer bribe refrain from such acts, police officers will not have any choice than to carry out their duties in accordance with the demands of their offices.

    The sermon goes beyond the police institution to touch on the key role of the public in the fight against corruption in public places. It seeks to make the case that, corruption within the police institution and in our national life, will continue to suffer reverses as long as the public continues to aid and abet it.

    That is not to whittle down the overarching pressure rogue police officers could exert in exacerbating the malfeasance. Rather, it is an admission of the efficacy of a two-pronged approach in addressing the harm wrought on the nation’s institutions by suffocating corruption.

    That seems the essence of the gospel by the FCT police command. But the issue is not just about the conduct of FCT residents or police officers in that command. It mirrors the larger moral decay in the society and the constraints it poses in the quest for economic, social and political development.

    Good a thing, the FCT police recognises that for the fight against corruption to gain traction, the attitudinal disposition of the public towards the matter must change. It strikes as a clarion call on the public to resist the temptation to offer bribe even when pressured by some unscrupulous officers.

    It remains to be seen how much impact moral suasion will make on FCT residents on the subject matter. Even if it succeeds in dissuading residents from offering bribe to police officers, that would still amount to scratching the surface of the pervasive corruption that inundate all facets of our public life.

    As valuable as the gospel from the FCT police command is, it cannot go far in addressing the complex issues that have overtime rendered the war against corruption a nagging illusion. This is in spite of proclamations by governments after government to tame the monster.

    Police appeal for public cooperation highlights other potent dimensions to the fight against the scourge. It should re-direct the minds of this country’s leadership to the complexities presented by the current strategies in the fight against the social malaise. The leadership of the police has been issuing constant warnings to officers on what awaits those caught receiving bribe and other forms of gratification.

    How far such preachments can go in bringing about rapid attitudinal change in a society characterised by weak institutions and processes is anybody’s guess. Weak institutions create an environment where corruption thrives due to lack of accountability, transparency and effective enforcement mechanisms. That is the dilemma in Nigeria’s situation and the reason the fight against corruption has not recorded reasonable progress.

    The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in a report published in August 2017 rated police officers and judges as the most corrupt in Nigeria. The report was based on a survey conducted in April and May, 2016 across 36 states and the FCT.

    Though the police authorities cited empirical and survey instrument defects as well as inability of the report to factor in their achievements during the period to fault the survey, that rating does not appear to have significantly altered.

    In May last year, an Inspector attached to the Imo State police command was demoted after he was caught on camera collecting bribe from motorists on the Owerri-Onitsha expressway. That is just a tip of the iceberg in the mindless extortions that take place at various police formations and checkpoints across the country.

    And in April this year, some police officers were caught on viral video receiving money from a Chinese national. It was such a huge national embarrassment. Police authorities described the incident as “unprofessional and unethical”, with a promise to discipline those involved.

    Read Also: Obi visits Ladoja, hails Ibadan’s strategic role in Nigeria’s development

    The FCT police command must have been so frustrated in fighting corruption given extant realities that it had to resort to sermonizing to arouse the consciousness and seek the cooperation of the public. They have good reasons for it.

    So, it is not just all about placing the blame at the doorstep of police officers. The public also shares in it. They are culpable when they show scant regard for law and order. And when they run against the law in many civil matters, they seek quick escape by compromising the law enforcement agents.

    But that cannot explain the mindless open extortions by unscrupulous police officers across the country. Neither can it rationalise the demands for money for bail or touted documentation processes. Pervasive corruption bears positive correlation with the material conditions of a people. Especially so, where national wealth is not deployed for public good but rather appropriated by a self-serving, privileged few.

    Fighting corruption is a huge national challenge. It is not just a matter for police authorities alone. Corruption trickles down from the leadership at the highest levels to the grassroots. Corruption is officially instituted when elections are rigged by hook and crook; it manifests in vote buying and sundry electoral infractions that subvert the collective will of the electorate. It demands drastic and holistic national therapy.

    Corruption is at the root of the inability of this country to record meaningful progress in economic, social and political spheres. Empirical evidence has consistently shown that the higher the level of corruption, the lower the level of economic growth and development and the vice versa. That is the stark reality facing the country as it continues to rank low globally on most development metrics.

    The choice is ours. It is either we confront corruption headlong and quicken the pace of national progress and development or stagnate. Something more fundamental and far-reaching, including value change and re-orientation in the mould of the sermon from the FCT police command will make the difference.

    It will entail leadership by example rather than precept.