Emeka Omeihe

Resource control is generally associated with agitations by oil bearing states in this country for greater access and control in the management of revenues generated from natural endowments within their shores. It also denotes a protest against excessive centralization and control of oil revenue and other natural resources by the federal authority.

The term seeks in the main, to confer more powers to the states in the allocation of funds generated from with their territories.  An integral part of the larger agitations for true federalism, fiscal federalism and power devolution, it seeks to whittle down the omnipresence and omnipotence of the central authority in virtually controlling the powers of life and death.

These concepts also share much in common with the raging calls for the restructuring of the country so as to give more powers to the constituent units in the control of their affairs. Not unexpectedly, the tardiness or refusal of the federal leadership to take decisive action in this regard has led to agitations and feelings of self-determination among some of the component units.

With these centrifugal feelings on the upward swing, it is surprising that the leadership of this country could be proposing legislations that will further polarize the country along ethnic and primordial fault lines. One of such proposed pieces of legislation is the Water Resources Control Bill which has again been brought before the House of Representatives in a manner that has remained very suspicious.

Tagged “A Bill for an Act to Establish a Regulatory Framework for Water Resources Sector in Nigeria, Provide for the Equitable and Sustainable Redevelopment, Management, Use and Conservation of Nigeria’s Surface Water and Groundwater Resources and Related Matters”, it seeks to concentrate the control of water resources around rivers Niger and Benue and other waterways across the country in the hands of the federal government.

When that executive bill first surfaced in the Eighth National Assembly, it generated intense controversy dividing legislators along ethnic and regional lines. The senate, on account of the sharp divisions the bill created, did not waste time to throw it away when it came for second reading in May 2018.  Curiously however,   the chairman of the House Committee on Rules and Business, Abubakar Fulata in July re-introduced the bill in a manner that is not in consonance with the rules of the House. And he appears set to bulldoze his way to push the bill through even against extant procedure for the passage of reintroduced bills.

Expectedly and like events that followed when the bill was first introduced, it has again frayed nerves, generating intense controversy and suspicion. Southern, Middle Belt groups as well as other notable Nigerians including Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka have all in unison expressed deep reservations and opposition to the proposed legislation.

It is also creating ripples within the National Assembly with many legislators vowing never to allow the bill see the light of the day. From the look of things, the bill is going to further polarize the National Assembly along ethnic and regional lines given its perception as being tailored to satisfy an agenda which the current federal leadership has been holding to its chest for some time now.

If the bill is passed into law, it will vest the control of water resources as well as river banks in the federal government. By extension, a sizable portion of the land close to those rivers will also revert to the control of the same central authority. The implication is that the federal government will not only have absolute control of the waters and the resources in them but also lands around them.

By the same extension, communities and hamlets that solely depend on these water resources and land for their daily lives will lose them all to the all powerful federal government. States and local governments will not only lose their right to water resources within their domain but portions of land very close to them. It is this foreboding reality that stands the greatest challenge to the bill.

But that is not all. The motive of the federal government in seeking the passage of the bill by all means is suspect. Allegations are now rife that the obsession for the control of water resources and adjoining lands is a subterfuge to accelerate unfettered access to pastoral lands for herdsmen especially given the futile attempts in the past to achieve the same objective.

It is largely seen as Ruga settlement, grazing reserve or grazing route in disguise. That raises the propriety in grabbing lands and water resources that constitute sources of livelihood to indigenous people to satisfy objectives of very questionable value.

Many of the communities in and around the banks of those rivers depend on them for survival. They fish there, farm there and engage in sundry productive endeavors such environment engenders. It is this category of people that the federal government seeks through the obnoxious bill to grab their means of livelihood and stifle them out of existence. The bill is anti-people and therefore cannot serve our national interest.

The suspicion of odious agenda in having the bill scale through, is further underscored by Section 2(1) of the bill which states – “All surface water and ground water wherever it occurs, is a resource common to all people”. It is inconceivable how the water resource at my back yard which over the years had served as a source of life can now be tagged a resource common to all people. Who are those people and what business do they have at my backyard?

What the bill intends to achieve is to provide cover for all manner of people including militant herdsmen whom we are told are mostly foreigners to invade the privacy of the local population. It goes with serious security repercussions. At a time this country is stretched to its elastic limits by the insurgency of the herdsmen, armed banditry and kidnapping as well as the Boko Haram insurgency, the passage of such a bill will inexorably lead to catastrophic consequences.

But more seriously, current sentiments in the country are for the whittling down of the powers of the federal government through restructuring. Through restructuring or power devolution, the constituent units are to be empowered to effectively take over more of those unwieldy functions that are currently suffocating the federal leadership. The nagging corruption in public offices, the rancorous and deadly competition for power at the centre which accentuates amateur leadership are all linked to the defective federal contraption we have had to contend with.

It is a thing of immense worry that instead of seeking ways to align with the dictates of true federalism, the same executive is obsessed with further expanding the noxious frontiers of such powers. All this seem to reinforce the suspicion that some people nurse an agenda to dominate others by surreptitiously appropriating the resources of the constituents to serve clannish and self-serving predilections.

Or how else do we rationalize the scant heed by those entrusted with power to the sensibilities of the people they claim to rule? It is not uncommon to see leaders equate their self-serving interests to that of the collectivity they claim to serve.  It is also not out of place that people in leadership sometimes displace national interest with their own personal interest. That often leads to the erroneous notion that loyalty to the government in power equated to loyalty to the country. They are two different things. We have seen leaderships that constituted unmitigated liability to the collective interests of their constituents.

It is hoped we are not contending with that verity. Or how else do we rationalize the crass insensitivity of the federal leadership to the current mood of the country evident in the desire to grab lands and waters resources through the contentious bill. That piece of legislation is an evil omen. It is divisive and potentially explosive and must not be allowed to scale through.

By Emeka Omeihe

Penultimate Sunday’s clash in Emene, Enugu State between security agencies and suspected members of the outlawed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra IPOB has again brought to the fore the appropriateness of the latter’s responses to perceived security threats.

As should be envisioned in matters of such grave nature, the circumstance of that escalated clash has since been mired in controversy as both the security agencies and the IPOB have treaded blames. In a statement by its spokesperson, Peter Afunanya, the DSS said its patrol team was attacked in Emene by members of IPOB. The agency which did not indicate where and how the attack occurred said it lost two of its personnel in the violent and unprovoked attack.

But the IPOB has a different story to tell. Its publicity secretary, Emma Powerful said in a statement that its members were holding a peaceful meeting when operatives of the DSS stormed the venue and started shooting sporadically. He claimed that 21 of their members were killed in the ensuing shoot-out even as 47 others were arrested.

Independent accounts had it that trouble started when IPOB members who gathered at St Patrick’s community school were infiltrated by the DSS operatives in an apparent attempt to stop the meeting. This led to arguments and some scuffles with the DSS calling for reinforcement. In a jiffy, about a dozen patrol vans loaded with well armed security operatives comprising of the police, army and the DSS stormed the venue and started shooting.

In the ensuing melee, sounds of gunshot filled the air between St Patrick’s secondary school and St Joseph’s Catholic Church that was in an early morning mass session disrupting the service as people ran for their lives to escape the flying bullets. Despite the disagreement on how the matter degenerated between the security agents and the IPOB, there are certain salient facts that stand out very distinctly.

The first is that the venue of the clash was St Patrick’s secondary school where IPOB members had gathered for a meeting for whatever purpose. It is also clear that they have been having meetings at that venue on Sundays for quite some time now. The second point is that the DSS had privileged security information that such meetings go on there every Sunday. The agency may have been there that morning to abort the meeting but unfortunately things turned awry. These are clearly established facts.

But there is a disagreement regarding the purpose of the gathering. While the DSS imputes ‘sinister’ motives to the meeting especially given that IPOB is outlawed, the latter says their meetings are peaceful as they are not known to bear arms or take to any form of violence. There were even suggestions that IPOB members were there preparing to attack only God knows who. It therefore stands to reason that misreading of the purpose of the meeting may have been largely responsible for the way the security agencies reacted to the matter such that resulted in the casualty levels that have drawn outrage across the divide.

And that is the issue to contend with. It raises issues on the propriety of the responses of the security agencies to perceived security threats. Yes, the DSS had credible information that IPOB members meet there every Sunday. And given its current status, security operatives are to liberty to monitor their activities. In the instant case, they read some sinister motive to such gatherings.

Having found out that IPOB members usually meet there, what ought to be the right responses to any security threat they seemingly posed? Did the management of the situation represent a measured response to whatever suspicions nursed by the agency? The answer is that the matter was poorly handled. And that is the crux of the issue.

If the DSS suspected sinister motives were behind them, there are more credible and effective rules of engagement options than what we were treated to on that fateful Sunday. They were at liberty to have liaised with the authorities of the school to stop such meetings from holding at that venue. Additionally and where this fails to rein in the IPOB members, they could have arrived the venue early and barricaded it before the IPOB members arrive. As they arrive individually or even in small groups, the presence of the security agents would have told them that danger was lurking around. In other words, the strategy should have focused more on prevention rather than outright confrontation. Then, also the chances of the provocation that precipitated the killings would have been perfectly averted.

But nothing of such happened. Rather, the DSS went there apparently at the peak of their meeting with insufficient personnel to stop them. And when the agency could no longer manage the situation, it had to call in reinforcement resulting in the gory events that followed. It is also possible as some have insinuated that the decoy was to provoke them into some form of mob action so as to provide the ground to deal mercilessly with them.

What appears obvious is that the situation was poorly managed by the DSS. The overall objective should have been to abort the meeting rather than simulate options that will lead to the application of maximum force. It says a lot of our security agencies especially in a democratic setting that makes unfettered allowance for freedom of assembly and expression.

Unfortunately, the Emene incident bear the imprimatur of events that led to the Oraifite killings in the Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra State not long ago. In that incident, an intra communal misunderstanding over masquerades had turned bloody when the police went to the ancestral home of the IPOB lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor to arrest him over allegations bordering on abduction, assault and malicious damage to property.

The police went to his house the first time and could not find him. On their second coming, they claimed they were attacked by IPOB members stationed in that compound. One event followed the other and mayhem broke out. At the end of the day, the police claimed two of their officers were killed by the IPOB members. But accounts from the community revealed the destruction of property of inestimable value even as two innocent people were also said to have been killed through the firepower of the police and a combined team of sister security agencies that came on reinforcement.

The same buck-passing and blame trading that now characterize the Emene incident was also at play during the Oraifite encounter. It is thus not surprising that suspicions are being raised that security operatives are deploying the outlawed organization as a subterfuge to carry out some agenda. A civil society group, Intersociety has chronicled 15 instances since 2015 where similar killings have taken place ostensibly under the guise that there were IPOB members confronting the security agencies.

Sadly, the feeling is festering that security agencies are now capitalizing on the outlawing of the IPOB to attack and inflict maximum harm on any gathering in areas where such sentiments hold sway. Ironically, the very manner of the coordinated attacks, the dexterity and precision with which they are carried out appear to be in contradistinction with their performances in nagging security challenges in many other parts of the country.

There is something untidy in the feeling that maximum force is all that is required to tackle issues of this nature. Our experience especially with the Boko Haram insurgency should have served a better lesson. It is fact that the mismanagement of the Boko Haram uprising at its early stages through the deployment of excessive force was largely responsible for what it is today. Having realized that very belatedly, the government has had to change strategy including de-radicalization and re-orientating repentant members.

It will serve the collective interest of this country better when we begin to identify and address the misgivings that compel groups like the IPOB to lose faith in the capacity of the government to protect their collect interests and aspirations. These are the issues to contend with rather the seeming obsession with the deployment of maximum force at the slightest provocation.

Emeka Omeihe

Disputes between governors and their predecessors are not new on this clime. This is especially the case where such successors rode to political power courtesy of the sponsorship and goodwill of their predecessors.

Since the return to civil rule, the nation has hardly been spared of devious altercations and their disruptive effects on governance as one governor or the other battles his predecessor for political relevance. In some instances, the misunderstanding is rooted in the vaulting desire of such benefactors not to allow incumbents be themselves. At some other times, beneficiaries bring about the pass through indecent haste to cut off the umbilical cord holding them to their benefactors.

Both tendencies have been at the centre of the recurring disputes between successors and their predecessors in many of the states. But the raging quarrel between Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State and Rochas Okorocha is one of a slightly different hue. Though Uzodimma (given the nullification of the victory of Emeka Ihedioha by the Supreme Court) can pass for Okorocha’s successor, he does not owe his current office to Okorocha.

As matter of fact, Uzodinma was one of the arrowheads of the vociferous opposition in the APC that made it impossible for Okorocha to foist his son-in-law as governor in the last election. Though he came fourth in that election, the highest court in the land had since declared him winner in circumstances that still puzzle not a few.

He was an adversary of Okorocha in that election. And Okorocha did all within his powers to scheme him out to pave the way for his son-in-law but to no avail. Having emerged governor in the circumstance he did, it remains somewhat foggy how Okorocha expected the issues at the centre of their current disputation to be resolved in his favour.

Uzodimma had at a stakeholders meeting of the All Progressives Congress APC in the state said “there were two requests Okorocha made to me when I became governor. The first was to dissolve the panels set up by Ihedioha to probe his administration. I refused to grant the request because I think the mood of the Imo people was in support of the probe. The second request was to allow Dan Nwafor to remain chairman of APC in the state”.

Uzodimma said he also declined the second request on the ground that there are party rules to guide everyone on the matter. But he went further to allege that Okorocha made the requests to pave way for his ambition to run for the presidency in 2023.

These allegations did not go down well with Okorocha. In his reaction, he claimed he has no problem with Uzodimma and accused him of inventing problems where none existed. But he curiously went ahead to list a number of actions of the governor he claimed were ruffling feathers in the state wing of the APC.

He claimed the government in the state is masquerading as APC when in reality it is PDP reincarnate. The former governor strove to justify this claim citing the composition of Uzodimma’s government which he said is almost exclusively of those who were with him in his faction of the PDP to the total exclusion of any known APC member.

On the request for the dissolution of the panels set up by Ihedioha, Okorocha said he had gone court to challenge the propriety in the EFCC probing him on account of petitions raised by the then state government only for the same government to set up about 12 panels probing him on the same issues. But he was quick to add that “real APC members in the state have been wondering why an APC government would retain panels set up by PDP government to probe APC government”.

His reply to the claim that he asked that the faction of the APC led by Daniel Nwafor should be retained was that the issue has gone beyond such pleas since Nwafor has a court order recognizing him as such. But he accused the governor of doing nothing to resolve the impasse even as he wondered how the retention of the factional chairman would advance his purported presidential ambition come 2023.

Though Okorocha set out to show he has no problem with Uzodimma, he curiously ended up proving he has serious issues to sort out with that government. These are not only evident in his submission that Uzodimma’s government is almost composed exclusively of his faction of the PDP to the total exclusion of ‘real’ APC members, but also in the listing of the names of former PDP members he claimed to be occupying key positions in the current administration.

His grouse is also self-evident in his observed incongruity in some of the actions of the governor as it affects APC members. One of such was his claim that ‘real’ APC members have been wondering why an APC government would retain panels set up by a PDP government to probe an APC government. Unless Okorocha does not fit into the tag “real APC members’ he is presumed as one of those rattled by the continuing probes. It is hard to fathom how a senator of the party cannot qualify as a ‘real member’ of that party. The fact that he is the one under probe also suggests that he should have more cause to worry about the probes and must be the arrowhead of such worries.

That is as far as the matter can be stretched. What can be discerned from Okorocha’s responses is that he has more than enough reasons to be unhappy with Uzodimma despite his seemingly futile attempt to deny it. He sees something wrong in Uzodimma carrying along his structures in the formation of the government. But he has also forgotten in a hurry how he actually enlisted into the APC as an elected governor under the platform of the APGA.

He has also wished away how he totally schemed out all the big names in the state APC including a former governor that was the arrowhead of that party right from the ACN to when the merger was actualized. He would want to obliterate the scheme of events that followed his admission into APC. That is hypocrisy in its raw form.

Did he not carry along his own faction of APGA when he was allowed entry into APC on account of his power of incumbency? So why complain now? Or is it a case of poetic justice? At any rate, what difference is there between the APC and the PDP members of that party for all the noise about Uzodimma’s government being more of the PDP than the APC? Okorocha is just piqued that his own faction of the APC or AA is being denied recognition by the state government. That is his cup of tea.

The real issue at stake is the control of the soul of the APC in Imo State. The contention about the authentic party chairman is all about the control of the structures of the party. In the events leading to the last elections, Okorocha had those structures in his pocket and ruthlessly deployed them for his self-serving political ends. Having lost out, he still wants Uzodimma to commit political suicide by ceding the structures of the party to him. That cannot possibly happen. That is all the talk about PDP members in APC government and all that thrash.

But that is not the real issue of interest to Imo people. Their concern is about good governance and the capacity of those in power to deliver quality public goods and services to the constituents. That is yet to happen. Neither can self-serving altercations over the control of the party be of any help. Uzodimma said the mood of the people of the state supports the probes. That is right. Not only do they want the probes to run their full course, they yearn for a quick resolution of the plethora of allegations against the Okorocha’s government.

Serious grounds exist for the probes. A government worth its salt especially one battling legitimacy challenges cannot afford not to align with populist and well intentioned programmes irrespective of the government that instituted them. Okorocha must not be allowed to hide under the APC government that also claims to be fighting corruption to evade those probes.