The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Let them not die in vain

    Let them not die in vain

    Hardly do Nigerians see eye to eye with the police. Even though police personnel are also Nigerians, they have cat -and-mouse relationship with their compatriots. Why? The public perceives the police as too highhanded and overbearing in their dealings with others. It is because of this perception that the police do not enjoy the people’s confidence. The lack of faith in the police has, however, not stopped the people from cohabiting with them. The relationship even goes beyond living together. In some cases, we are joined together in wedlock.

    No matter how we feel about the police, we cannot wish them away. We have since learnt to accommodate the police, warts and all. The police themselves, as if they know how the public perceives them, try to woo us with the slogan : ‘’The police is your friend’’, to which many respond cynically, ‘’with friends like the police who needs an enemy’’. But hate them or love them, we cannot do without the police. They are part of our lives. They are the ones that we run to in times of trouble.

    They are the ones who take on the dreaded armed robbers, kidnappers, terrorists and cultists on our behalf. In short, they are the ones, who keep watch over us when we sleep, though they are not God. We owe our lives to them. Where will society be if there are no policemen to do some of the dirty jobs many of us run away from. At times, we tend to forget that the police comprise men and women like us, that is, they are human beings and are also subject to the frailties and foibles of life. Yes, the police may overreach themselves, as they do on some occasions, in the discharge of their duties, but that does not make them the wild animals some of us take them to be.

    Like me, many Nigerians are likely to have something to say about how the police wronged them in the past, but have we ever paused to ask themselves this question : What if we were in their shoes; would we have done better? The police may have their shortcomings, no doubt, but they remain a product of the society. The society, they say, gets the police it deserves. I don’t agree with this statement though, because no matter how rotten a society may be, if it has God-fearing and conscientious people in the police, they can change things.

    What the police deserve is our pity and not vilification. This is why I am saddened by the murder of scores of policemen and State Security Service (SSS) operatives by members of the Ombatse Cult in Alakyo, Nasarawa State, last week. The police and SSS operatives went on their way to the cultists’ shrine when they were killed in an ambush. We don’t know the number of security operatives who were on the mission But 56 of them were said to have been killed. Scores are missing. All lovers of humanity should condemn this despicable act. If the police and SSS men could be this callously wasted, who is safe then?

    In these days of Boko Haram and kidnappings, the Ombatse group is adding to the nation’s woes by opening another theatre of crisis in the beleaguered North. Today, there is no peace in Bauchi, Borno, Yobe and other northeastern states because of the activities of Boko Haram. To add Nasarawa to the mix will be too much a burden for the nation to bear. But what all this shows is that we don’t have a government that takes the issue of security serious. If the government is serious about securing life and property, the Ombatse tragedy would have been nipped in the bud through intelligence gathering. What are our intelligence officers doing that they could not smoke out this group before now?

    The Ombatse cult, according to reports, had been forcing people to join the group and killing those who refused to do so in the past one or two years. Are the security agencies saying that they were not aware of the group’s sinister activities until now? They waited for too long to cut the group to size. See the price we are now paying for our tardiness – the murder of scores of policemen and SSS officials in the line of duty. The perpetrators of this mindless act must not be allowed to go scot-free. Anywhere they are on the surface of the earth, they must be fished out to face justice. Nothing should be spared in getting these killers who murdered people in the service of their country in cold blood.

    My heart goes out to the widows, children and other members of the families of these national heroes who died in the service of their fatherland. They deserve medals of honour because not many of us can sacrifice our lives the way they did. May their souls find rest in the bosom of the Lord.

     

    Will it work?

    I hung on every word of President Goodluck Jonathan during his Tuesday night’s broadcast. I wasn’t expecting him to wield the big stick as he read on and on until he got to the point where he said “by virtue” of the powers conferred upon me…. I held my breath because I knew what will follow next. He declared a state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. Sincerely speaking, things have degenerated a lot in those states, especially Borno and Yobe, where Boko Haram seems to be everywhere, yet it cannot be stopped. Both states have become shadows of themselves because of the sect’s atrocious activities.

    Opinions will be divided on the propriety or otherwise of the president’s action. Is he right to have declared emergency rule in these states? In the next few days, analysts will be examining the rightness or not of his action. To say the truth, we got to this pass because of the Boko Haram people who have turned virtually all the states in the northeast to hell on earth. In the past four years, the sect has been killing, maiming and looting at will. To some, the emergency rule should have come earlier.

    But many are sympathetic to Boko Haram’s cause, so the government chose to tread with caution on the matter. Despite their sympathy for the group, the sect’s supporters refused to call it to order. All they were interested in was for the sect not to be touched. They seemed not to see anything wrong in its mindless killing and lately, kidnapping of people. When the sect kidnapped elder statesman Alhaji Shetima Ali Monguno a few weeka ago, it dawned on them that the group should no longer be pampered.

    If Boko Haram truly loves its supporters the way they seem to love the sect, it would have listened to them and embraced the olive branch waved by the government. The government resolved to grant the sect amnesty, yet it refused to eschew violence. It continued on its killing spree. Last week. it killed over 30 policemen and soldiers in Bama, Borno State. It has also owned up that its action led to the military invasion of Baga also in Borno State on April 16 and 17. All this point to the fact that the stage was ripe for the declaration of a state of emergency in Borno.

    But a state of emergency coming after the decision to grant Boko Haram amnesty? How do we reconcile that? Can you be hunting those you have decided to grant amnesty? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Shouldn’t the government call off the amnesty deal and go all-out for these Boko Haram elements once and for all? Amnesty and emergency rule, the two don’t go together. Which do you vote for? As for me, my choice is clear as daylight.

     

  • Under ‘enemy’ fire

    There seems to be no let-up in the massacre that has taken over a sizeable part of the northern part of Nigeria. It is daily assuming a frightening dimension in spite of efforts by security agents to bring the ugly situation under control. And the casualty figure among the security agents themselves, particularly policemen, is on a fearful ascendancy. In actual fact, at no point in the last three years or more of the orgy of violence, arson and brigandage have we witnessed the type of ‘genocidal’ attacks on security agents as happened last week.

    First, it was at about 5a.m on Monday, May 6, in Bama, a sleepy border town in Borno State. That day, suspected insurgents popularly called Boko Haram attacked Bama at dawn. Fifty-five people, mostly security personnel – 20 policemen, two soldiers and 13 prison officials – were among the casualties. By the time the dust settled, a number of dangerous weapons, including improvised explosive devices (IEDs), assorted ammunition, rapid propelled grenades (RPG), general purpose machine guns, bombs and others were recovered from the ‘theatre of war’.

    The whole nation was still gripped in the throes of grief and mourning, when less than 24 hours later, precisely, at 12 midnight the same Monday, tragedy struck again. This time, in Alakyo Village, about 10 kilometres to Lafia, the Nassarawa State capital. A contingent of policemen who were on their way to a notorious shrine at Alakyo to effect arrest were ambushed at a point on their route by deadly, blood-thirsty cultists, simply known as the Ombatse – meaning ‘Enough’ – militia group. In the ensuing gunfight, 23 policemen were mowed down. By the last count, the casualty figure of the security agents may have risen to 47. This includes policemen and State Security Service, SSS, officials. Among the dead is an Assistant Commissioner of Police.

    Shortly after the bloody confrontation, a thoroughly frightened Tanko Al-Makura, the governor of the state, dashed to Aso Rock, the seat of government. There, he held a closed-door meeting with Namadi Sambo, the Vice-President who was holding fort for his principal, President Goodluck Jonathan, who was out on official visit to Southern Africa. He later told State House reporters that, prior to the Alakyo massacre, it was discovered that the militia group was holding arms and carrying out cult activities in the state. “Members of the group usually moved from one place to another, including mosques and churches, to attack helpless citizens, taking people from a particular ethnic group to come and take portions that are meant to empower them to do what they want to do. We took a decision to go to the shrine and pick on the cult leader so that the problem will be solved once and for all. As security operatives were approaching the shrine, unknown to them that ambush had been laid, these people attacked them,” Al-Makura said.

    Al-Makura was not alone. Gabriel Suswan, the governor of Benue State, was also in Abuja to report the clash in Agatu Local Government Area of his state. The clash also claimed the lives of people, including women and children, who were attacked in their sleep. He told State House correspondents: “I came to brief the Vice-President on the security situation in Benue… there are serious altercations between the Fulanis and the local farmers in Agatu Local Government… and they almost overran the local government. There were a lot of killings, a lot of property destroyed.”

    The three incidents above are as disturbing and confusing as they are worrisome. Bama to Alakyo is a distance of about 700 kilometres and nothing less than six hours’ drive. Besides, Nassarawa is a contiguous state to Abuja, the seat of government. And there is a common thread that ran through both the Bama and Alakyo attacks – ‘sorrow, tears and blood’ – as scores of security agents were callously hacked down.

    One disturbing scenario here is that criminals seem to have become more emboldened to confront security agents and slaughter them mercilessly at will. Last week alone, if you add the figure in Alakyo (47), Bama (33) – policemen, soldiers and prison officials – you will get 80. If you add that to the 11 policemen who were posted on guard duties in Bayelsa, but were recently attacked on the high seas, it gives a staggering figure of 91. The bulk of this figure, about 68, are policemen. Considering the rate these killings are going, the numerical strength of the police is being rapidly depleted. And come to think of it, how many policemen does the nation have? About 370,000, and this insufficient number is being further run down in the orgy of massacre that has gripped the nation. I am quite sure that most of the arms and ammunition of the slain security agents may have also found their way to wrong hands. This will certainly enrich the terrorists’ ‘war’ arsenal to the detriment of the nation’s security.

    A friend and a very senior police officer in Abuja agreed with me that there might have been a possible operational error in the attack in Alakyo. According to him, “I suspect there was either a failure of intelligence or that the movement of the security agents was leaked to the cultists, or they had a mole within who gave them advance tips. Otherwise, it was a moving force that was mercilessly dealt such a big blow.” When I told him that the police should have deployed helicopters for surveillance or reconnaissance duties before storming the notorious shrine, he agreed. He then emphasised that modern-day crime fighting should evolve the use of hi-tech equipments so as to be far ahead of the criminals.

    The escalation of violence against security agents may be a fall-out of the kid’s glove approach the nation has been adopting in tackling growing insurgency and banditry across the country. It is high time we rose to the growing challenge and check the rising impunity with which the criminals have been carrying out their deadly exploits.

    My police officer friend believes that those who attacked Bama were not Boko Haram insurgents, but a certain group of bandits who operate along Birnin-Gwari axis. His argument is that the real Boko Haram agents have somehow gone a bit cold because of effective security coordination in the northern part of the country, especially in recent times. But then the rise of different militias or gangsters all over the place is a sign that things are really snowballing out of control. We have heard about Oodua People’s Congress, OPC, in the South-West; Egbesu Boys and a surfeit of others in the Niger Delta; MASSOB in the East; and now the Ombatse in Nassarawa State. Yet there are more than a thousand and one such criminally-minded groups mushrooming on a daily basis all over the country.

    Al-Makura said that the Ombatse group had been identified since January this year, when their satanic exploits escalated. But what did he do to immediately clip their wings? That was how Boko Haram grew to become the monster it has assumed. Lack of decisiveness and political will to crush these groups must have been providing the oxygen needed to fester and become a malignant tumour to the nation.

    A foreign journal captured it succinctly in a headline last week: “From motorcycle fighters to grenade throwers”. Now, those who attacked Bama had RPG and anti-aircraft guns mounted on 4×4 wheel vehicles. Perhaps, we are moving to the era where these terrorists will involve the use of fighter jets for bombing raids. The way things are going, we may wake up one day to discover that Aso Rock is under heavy shelling, both aerial and land bombardments, by terrorists.

    This is the time for our security agencies to sit down and decisively address this growing insurgency and violence all over the place. There is also the need to create employment and put food on the table of Nigerians. There are far too many idle hands and hungry mouths which are fertile grounds for easy recruitment to all forms of banditry now plaguing the country. God help Nigeria!

  • Widows of violence; Police Empowerment in war and peace

    Widows of violence; Police Empowerment in war and peace

    It is difficult to write anything meaningful with so much deliberate kidnapping, murder of orderlies and the carnage in the rank and file of the police recently just outside Lafia where, in 1975, I did my NYSC in the General Hospital. It was a pleasant memorable posting and we worked very hard for the people at that time. The recently bereaved police widows receiving a token N1m, or stopping traffic with protest dirges are very real and their pain is excruciating. That pain is no different from the pain of all the other widows of this new vicious violence in the country. Many get no compensation at all except from friends and family if they are lucky. We painfully add these 40+ new widows and their children and the police families to the long list of unsung suffering relations of bomb blast victims and those violently slaughtered on a daily basis in the brutal herdsman’s war against the farmers from many states on the North-South cattle corridor. We add the families of those killed almost like clockwork at the rate of 10 murders a day in the well-engineered bloody Hausa Fulani settler Vs indigene Plateau State crisis.

    Of course the police are no saints and many will remember the odious events of Odi and numerous other incidents including accidental discharge and checkpoint killings going back to ‘Kill and Go’ days when the citizen was on the receiving end. Recently it has been revealed what the police go through to get into the police service like purchase of the application form with maybe N30,000 and also the extreme hardship in training exposed by the award-winning Channels TV Corporate Social Responsibility Project documentary.

    We all know what it is like losing a breadwinner in a family when there is no ‘social network’ to provide the daily needs of sickness and education, housing and feeding.

    Almost every Nigerian police station had to sell its soul and start to put up shops along their perimeter fence during the years of the locusts. Of course the police officers women got involved, selling shops to each other and taking years of rent in advance from traders. Now the police is facing an unpredicted security breach as there are thousands of shops right on their doorsteps available for rent by anybody as few security checks are possible in Nigeria where we specialise in ignoring databases like the INEC, Passport, cell-phone SIM card registration, ID card and road safety databases and we destroy computer based systems to allow corruption.

    And when one dies, truth may just turn out to be a lie, someone must be wrong no matter how his argument is strong. Two groups carrying weapons paid for by Nigeria confronted each other over oil bunkering- Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC and the Police. We know the Police well and their track record. NSCDC is also not an unknown quantity. In fact rumour has it as largely incorruptible. Who was right?

    The police are fond of contradicting the body count and contesting it with NGOs and the mortuary. Hear them say ‘Only 22 died’. Meanwhile 50 families are searching the mortuaries and are fatherless, brotherless, motherless or childless as a result of the ‘Only 22’. The police’s ability to limit casualties is only matched by their spectacular ‘sirening’ around the country in their new vehicles. Recently yet another State Police Fund for a federal force was inaugurated. Does the federal government have no shame? With N884 or so billion/month can it not spare N5 or 10b to quickly equip the police to help fight this escalation unrest in Nigeria before we descend into total anarchy? Already the police are ‘legitimate’ targets of undeclared war in some states. As the police belong to the federal government, does the federal government not have any conscience or responsibility to finance and empower its own frontline security employees? It is shameful for the federal to expect the states to prop-up the police. The security vote in most states is a secret fund, probably illegal, a hangover slush fund from the military. It is time the security vote becomes part of the state budget, simple! It was pathetic to see the commissioner of police in the state introducing police trust fund again and inviting corporate Nigeria and concerned citizens to contribute. We have been down that road many times and after five or 10 vehicles have been bought the rest of the money always disappears down the malignant hole of corruption. So who is a fool and who is the criminal? Indeed many real criminals are wealthy and will also donate loudly to the fund for protection. Paradoxically we were told that the murdered police in Nasarawa State were well-equipped.

    The federal government needs to declare some form of police emergency to empower it to bring the police up to international standards starting from the on-going refurbishment of basic training facilities to databases and forensic laboratories. That would help solve unemployment. It is not only Aso Rock, governor’s offices, NASS and State assemblies that need furniture and equipment and transport and electric power. Watch the TV to see what police stations around the world look like, even South Africa with clean painted exterior and interior, good quality furniture, computers, stationery, camera, video camera, communications and internet linkages -all available in Nigeria but unused. As the nation hangs in the vicious balance between war and peace, what is planned role for the police?

     

  • Still on the case of Abubakar Idris Usman

    Still on the case of Abubakar Idris Usman

    By petition last week to the Director-General of the National Youths Corps Service (NYSC) over the harsh punishment of Abubakar Idris Usman for his article in The Nation last November elicited fifty eight texts and several emails. Only six of the texts and none of the emails defended the action of the NYSC authorities. In the light of the somewhat surprising – to me at least – controversy the case has stirred, I have decided to devote today’s column to the texts. The constraint of space could not, of course, allow me to publish all but I’ve included all six that were critical of my petition.

    So far there has been no response from the NYSC authorities on the petition.

     

    Sir,When has it become a crime for someone to say the truth? The young man only shared his problem and that of his fellow corps members. For Christ’s sake, why is he being punished? This is wickedness in its highest order.

    John +2347037737577

     

    Sir,Abubakar Idris Usman is a young Nigerian with courage. I salute him for this. I don’t see any need for this scheme, when graduates are subjected to live in camps not even fit for animals. Government should do an independent investigation on this matter. I can assure you that Abubakar will be vindicated.

    Omale Omale +2348022220978

     

    Sir,I cherished your article on the travails of the corps member. Of course, he is not right to write such but the most important thing was that it was not malicious and I think they should forgive him now.

    Apalowo Thalis, Ogbagi Akoko, Ondo State. +2347066403102

     

    Sir,Well done for your open letter addressed to the NYSC DG. It’s however my view that your son, Abubakar, lacks respect for the authorities and might have been emboldened to do what he did because of you, a father or “oga at the top” that’s ever prepared to use his position to protect his child, even for ill. Given the fact that you write for The Nation which Abubakar patronised indeed gives you out as an accomplice in this matter. It was, therefore, wrong of you to have dissuaded him from retracting the article. If Abubakar didn’t learn some decency and respect while in school please let him learn it now. After all the condition at the university he attended was not perfect and yet I am not sure he ever wrote about it. Rather than therefore positioning him for appointment at The Nation after his service year, I am sure there’s a more decent way of doing so than encouraging him to disrespect his bosses.

    Daniel +2347038533474

     

    Sir, Your last week’s article was very disturbing. Kindly do me a favour – if you will spare time to do it! – by letting me know how the issue of Abubakar Idris Usman will be treated by NYSC.

    Abdullahi Dodo Maijama’a. 2348033143372

    Sir,Thank you very much for telling Nigerians the plight of Corps member Abubakar. His case has once again brought to the fore one of the many injustices plaguing this nation. I believe he should not be made to suffer unjustly for speaking the truth. It is those women without conscience who should search their minds and right the wrongs they have done the gentleman.

    Ojo A Ayodele, Emure Ekiti +2347033168889

     

    Sir,It is a pity that the NYSC is good and quick at punishing corps members. There are corps members who redeployed to Ondo State officially and have not gotten any monthly allowance for the past ten months. They will pass out next month. They have been suffering in silence. I have a sister among them. I’ve tried to use my influence to help her but without success. Our prayer is that God should court-martial those wicked NYSC officials one day.

    Adebisi P.A. Akure. +2348034703653

     

    Sir,It is important to observe the BYE-LAWS of any organisation you find yourself in. If you are new to that organisation like Usman was to NYSC, study the rules that guide it. Usman has committed an offence punishable by NYSC Bye-Laws. A corps member is not permitted to make a publication in a national media or talk to the press without the permission of the NYSC D.G. They have laid down channel of communication in camp and outside camp. I don’t think Usman had good training.

    E. Z. Dia +2348037789957

     

    Sir,Thank you for the letter to NYSC DG. Indeed the state directors pre-warn corps members never to narrate their experiences or ask the DG questions. +2348022900875

     

    Sir,What exactly is this? A young man is being punished needlessly for writing the truth! What manner of people are these who have been placed in positions to guide the young? They are, in my mind, the wrong crowd to do this! This young man need not beg to get his right. Let him seek justice! What a country!

    Dokun Adedeji, Ikeja Lagos. +2348033023620

     

    Sir,I honestly felt disappointed today with your submission. One of the most informed columns in the land became a platform for personal agitation. Bad for a nation literarily at war within. And you have access to the agency! Please for a long time reader of People and Politics like me, the dregs of the earth and the locusts in the palace, deserve focus. Please not about your daughter next week!

    Tunde Esan +2348033109878

     

    Sir,Can someone help me tell this old generation to allow us grow. We the young generation can’t rule, can’t talk, and we are not even allowed to complain on ills they daily pour on us. God save us.

    Chichi, Port Harcourt, +2348091140815

     

    Sir,Your article on the corps member brought tears to my eyes. Why should anyone be victimised for writing an article? But then, what is The Nation doing about it since the paper published the article? This is really sad.

    +2348023255224

     

    Sir,That report on the travail of corps member Usman is fair and convincing. I am sure your ward did not put his case clearly. He breached the channels of communication. None the less he should write the DG, NYSC for a review and pardon. The NYSC family is not stone hearted

    Dr. Abhuere, former Director, Corps Welfare, NYSC HQ Abuja +2348037017956

     

    Sir,In an ideal country the issues raised by Abubakar would have been addressed by NYSC authority instead of going for the young man’s jugular. This is similar to the President’s visit to the Police College. Indeed there was a country.

    Elvis Ebanehita. 2348057201481

     

    Sir,Idris is not foolish. It is our system (that is the problem). Please encourage him. His time will surely come.

    Wole Eniayewun, Lagos 2348185768334

     

    Sir,This God-fatherism role you seem to play for your son Abubakar has not helped in our youths’ disciplinary effort. It’s good you blamed him for doing what he did but you must not interfere in the job of his boss. All camps all over the world are never places of luxury and your son is privileged to be there not as a spy that washes his house dirty in public. Let his bosses do their jobs.

    Chief Bashiomele, Auchi, Edo State. +2348059956056

     

    Sir,You are a good father, but how many unfortunate corps members have been punished for telling the authority the truth? God save Nigeria

    +2348023463851

     

    Sir, You see, what’s happening to this young man exemplifies the hypocrisy that is a major part of Nigeria’s problem. You say it as it is, and they say you’re criticising the government. Is government infallible? Why should saying what’s wrong be construed as an offence? It’s all part of Jonathan (PDP) legacy to Nigeria. Remember the President’s anger when Channel’s TV did an expose on Police College, Ikeja? Fish rots from the head, my brother.

    Gab A. Uche, Umuahia, Abia State, +2348051481333

     

    Sir,My advice is that this case should be taken to higher authority. There should not be anything like plea or appeal as young man has done nothing wrong. Instead of intimidating him, he should be commended.

    Elder F.Ogorry. +2348023529722

     

    Sir,I’m glad you drew the attention of NYSC Director- General to this ugly incident. There are many other Abubakars out there whose creative talents are being stultified by leaders without vision.

    BA Ikeagwu, Owerri. 2348035664612

     

    Sir, Methinks your ‘son’ should report to Delta. Did you as a northerner serve in the North? I think the SSS should watch your son very closely. I don’t like his guts and obstinacy.

    John, Zaria +2348028721705

     

    Sir,Thank you for highlighting this injustice. The Senator representing the young man should take it up.

    +2348091906116

     

     

  • Our unfortunate police officers

    Our unfortunate police officers

    This has got to be the worst time to be a police officer in Nigeria.

    Not that there was ever a best time or even a good time for that matter, for members of the force have always been poorly trained, ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-equipped, ill-used, and poorly paid into the bargain. Four months after television pictures of the hovels in which they are trained and housed were beamed to a horrified national audience, the conditions remain unchanged.

    In the field, they lack the communication gear and the mobility that may spell the difference not merely between operational success and failure, but even more crucially between life and death for the officers themselves and those they are trying to protect.

    It has long been a standard joke that when beleaguered citizens finally reach the nearest police station with frantic calls that their homes are under attack by armed robbers. the desk officer asks calmly whether the caller can send a vehicle down to convey police team to the scene.

    Sometimes, you even have to supply the stationery for filing a complaint at the police station.

    When it comes to firepower, the police are no match for the hoodlums they are supposed to rein in. I am told that there is a location near FESTAC Town where stolen luxury cars are parked until they can be ferried across the border to be sold off. Geo-positioning technology has traced many a stolen vehicle to that site. But it is so heavily protected by guards packing the most lethal munitions that it is for all practical purposes a no-go area, even for the fearsome mobile police.

    Colossal sums of money raised in the name of the police and purportedly for the well-being of its officers end up in private pockets, and the police cannot even vigorously prosecute the arch-swindler behind the scheme. Their pension funds are embezzled with impunity by the very people who are supposed to keep them in safe and profitable custody.

    As things stand, Nigeria must be the only country where you can swindle the police and suffer no consequences.

    But that is not the worst part. The worst part is that wearing the uniform of the Nigeria police gets more fraught with each passing day.

    In what seemed to signal a resumption of the insurgency in the oil-producing delta, the police have been prime targets and casualties. In one incident scarcely two months ago, 12 police officers on patrol – I used the term loosely, in the American sense, to get round the sexism inherent in “policemen” and “policewomen” – were ambushed, dispossessed of their weapons, killed, stripped of their uniforms, and buried in shallow graves.

    Exactly a week ago, Boko Haram militants attacked Bama, in Borno State, setting alight the police station and the prison. They also attacked the military barracks. By the time they had competed their grisly errand, 55 persons lay dead, among them 22 police officers and 14 prison officials.

    The next day, in Elakyo, near Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, operatives of a little-known cult identified as Ombatse ambushed a contingent of security officials on a mission to arrest their leader. Early reports said as many as 90 members of the team had been killed. At this writing, some 30 police officers have been certified dead; their remains were mutilated in an orgy of bestiality, and then burned. The cultists are said to be holding roughly the same number of police officers hostage in a secret location.

    Every adult Nigerian probably has his or her own “police story”. More often than not, it is a story of shakedowns, extortion, arbitrariness, of grovelling ingratiation before those they perceive as persons of substance, and of more than occasional casual resort to deadly violence against unarmed civilians.

    But in an exact sense, our police officers are victims thrice over.

    They are victims of the successive governments since independence that have assigned them the task of maintaining law and order without providing the necessary tools to carry it out, without training them adequately, without providing decent housing, without paying them reasonable wages, and without guaranteeing that at the end of their service, they will be paid their entitlements without fuss.

    They are victims of the corruption that flows from the very top and permeates every layer of the police establishment.

    And yet, whenever there is talk of “reorganising” the police, the government falls back on a long line of police chiefs who contributed in no small way to its underdevelopment, the very people believed to have diverted official resources to serve private ends, or who conveniently looked elsewhere as the resources were being diverted.

    Tafa Balogun grew obscenely rich even as police officers had to pay bribes to get their official uniforms. Senior police chiefs were part and parcel of the so-called Police Equipment Fund that was a cover for pillage of public resources and private donations on a scale almost beyond belief. They were silent, funereally silent, while the Police Pension Fund was being systematically looted.

    While serving as full-time Inspector-General of Police, Mike Okiro reportedly ran on the side a construction company that routinely took loans from the banks and put in bids for government contracts. If he had invested more time and attention in projects designed to uplift the police force than he did in scheming with James Ibori, the career thief and former Delta State governor now serving time in a London prison, to hound Nuhu Ribadu out of the EFCC and the police and subsequently into exile, the establishment he once headed would probably not be in its present parlous state.

    And yet, Okiro is the person the Jonathan Administration has tapped to head the Police Service Commission, in the undistinguished company of persons re-appointed to the board despite their record of culpable negligence during their previous tour.

    These, surely, cannot be agents of the transformation Dr Jonathan claims to be promoting.

    The police are also victims, finally, of a society that cares little for law and even less for order; a society wedded to the belief that you can always bribe or buy your way out of every infraction of the law.

    Meanwhile, the Minister of Police Affairs, Caleb Olubolade, has not summoned the decency to hand in his resignation, nor President Jonathan the will to sack him.

    In the end, each society gets the kind of police force it deserves. We will never get the perfect society, and we will never get the perfect police force. But unless and until our police officers are substantially empowered to operate as citizens with a stake in the scheme of things rather than as alienated victims of a pernicious system, their woes will continue, and so will the nation’s.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • If the heavens will fall…

    If the heavens will fall…

    Going through the newspapers or listening to news broadcast especially in the last few weeks, a first time visitor to Nigeria could be forgiven for thinking that the country is about to cease to exist.

    If he is a would be foreign investor he would be perfectly in order to reconsider his position especially after listening to the drums of war being beaten by supporters of President Goodluck Jonathan who would want the whole world to know that there would be no country called Nigeria post 2015 presidential election, should their son, Jonathan, fail to clinch re-election as Nigeria’s president in two years time.

    The would investor and indeed the first time visitor would be mistaken however to think too seriously about all this noise of Jonathan in 2015 or no Nigeria by some over fed glorified thugs speaking on behalf of President Goodluck Jonathan.

    The likes of self proclaimed jihadist and Niger Delta militant Alhaji Asari Dokubo, Niger Delta activist Ms Annkio Briggs and regrettably, chairman of the Niger Delta amnesty committee, Mr Kingsley Kuku are now the leading voices in the Jonathan camp threatening the rest of us to either return their son as president in 2015 or face the music, as if that music will also not be played in the Niger Delta.

    Why anybody who takes them or their likes seriously would be mistaken is not because what they said was not strong enough to warrant serious action being taken against them in a more “serious” society, but because here we have gone through that route before and nothing happened. Anybody here during the Abacha military era and listened to the likes of Mallam Wada Nas or “Noise” would think that if anything happened to his man Abacha, Nigeria would collapse. Abacha died and Nigeria is still alive.

    When Asari and co said its either Jonathan or nothing in 2015 I am sure they are either looking for more money from the president or just trying to justify the money they had just collected. If their position is based on sound reasoning they would have known that in a democracy decisions are made by votes and the majority carry the day. If they want Jonathan to be re-elected in 2015 it is not by threatening the rest of us that their son would get our votes, they have to plead with us and convince us why Jonathan deserves our votes again. And they should begin their charity at home in this regard first, by convincing the Niger Delta people that their son had done well to earn their support for a second term. They should point at the East-West Road that he had “done”, the rivers and creeks of the Niger Delta that he had “cleaned up”, free of oil pollution and now conducive for fishing and farming, the gas flaring that he had “stopped” and/or converted to energy, millions of their children that are now “gainfully” employed and other physical infrastructure including healthcare and education that they now enjoy.

    When they leave there they should come to the south west and point at the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, how their son had turned it into a ten-lane super highway, how the people now sleep with their two eyes closed thanks to the super efficiency of his police force, how the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan now ranks among the best in the world in healthcare delivery.

    Before venturing into the north to campaign to the Hausa/Fulani people, they should cross the border to Iboland and tell Ndigbo how Jonathan has been able to eradicate erosion ravaging their land, end their “marginalization” in the scheme of things in the country and his plan to install an Igboman as his successor in 2019.

    Going up north I think does not require much talking, they should just walk the streets of Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri and Damaturu in particular and tell the people how their son confronted and defeated Boko Haram to restore peace to their land. In particular they should hold rallies in Baga, Biu, Potiskum and trumpet the achievements of the president in the areas of security and job creation. How he was able to wean their children from the scourge of Almajiri and set them on the path to western education. They should hold a big rally in Jos to celebrate the restoration of peace to the Plateau.

    And to cap it all, a mother of all rallies, drawing no fewer than five million Ijaws (as the 4th largest ethnic group in Nigeria as they claim) and may be another five million from elsewhere in the country should be held in Abuja where Asari Dokubo, Annkio Briggs, Pa Edwin Clarke et al would real out their son’s achievements to include uninterrupted power supply across the federation, first class healthcare, education and fantastic road network among others. If they can do this and Nigerians see the proof, they won’t think twice before voting for Jonathan in 2015. But in the absence of this, no amount of threat and intimidation from Asari Dokubo and his likes would deter Nigerians from voting out Jonathan in the next presidential election if they so desire.

    By the way, are these presidential salesmen telling us that all is well with our polity and their man is the best we can get or deserve? Was it not this same Asari Dokubo that told Jonathan not too long ago to forget 2015 because he has not performed well? Was it not him that openly confessed that he would be ashamed to go out to canvass votes for Jonathan again as a fellow Ijaw because the man has let his people down? This was sometime last year. Between then and now what has changed for better in Jonathan’s performance index to warrant Dokubo and co threatening to bring down the nation if he failed to win in 2015?

    When he made that statement last year many thought he was making sense but those who know him better said the man was talking because Jonathan had just revoked his multimillion-dollar pipeline protection contract and wanted the president to know that he was not happy and could ruffle a few feathers. Has the contract been restored?

    Whether the man is working for his money or not I think he is doing more damage to Jonathan than the opposition could ever have done and those close to the president had better call him to order. I don’t subscribe to ordering his arrest as being canvassed on the floor of the House of Representatives, it would only be conferring relevance on a thug, while at the same time I do not buy the argument of those criticising the call for his arrest on the ground that those who had previously made similar inflammatory or treasonable comments were not arrested. One, two wrongs don’t make a right and if what the previous hate mongers or anti-Nigeria sentiments peddlers said then are manifesting now, it’s because allowed it.

    If those who vowed to make Nigeria ungovernable for Jonathan if he became president are actually behind the insurgency in the North, they are succeeding because they know the president can not do anything. And nobody can do anything to Asari Dokubo because he is speaking the mind of the president.

    There are too many Dokubos around Jonathan but they and their principal should know that nobody can predict the outcome of a war or when it would end. You can only talk about the beginning. And as the Yoruba would say, if the heavens are going to fall, they would not fall on the roof of one man. If Nigeria is going to be history if Jonathan is not re-elected as Dokubo, Kuku et al have threatened, where would the Niger Delta be? Before Nigeria would cease to be the Niger Delta would have taken one of the heaviest beatings in modern warfare. So, those beating the drums of war had better thread softly less they are consumed by the sounds of their music. Biafra thought Nigeria could be history; we all know the story.

    Jonathan would do better to focus his energy and attention on bringing peace and security to the land and deliver on his promise on power supply, tackling corruption, providing social and economic infrastructure, improving the economy, creating jobs and so on instead of unleashing his thugs like Dokubo on us to insult our sensibilities. If for whatever reasons Nigerians fail to re-elect him president in 2015, nothing will happen, Nigeria will continue.

     

  • Kano as a construction site

    When I sauntered into Kano recently, I got swept off my feet. I marvelled at what I saw, just some four months after my last visit. From the Zaria road entry route down to my destination, I saw impressive development projects springing up, all over the place. Kano, all of a sudden, is like a new capital city being built from the scratch. It is turning into an Abuja of sort – or even something higher – with the level of ambitious projects all around. While the FCT’s construction works is largely concentrated on roads, that of Kano cut across all infrastructural needs. As I pondered over the foresightedness and patriotism fuelling execution of such mass projects, I wondered if my brother, Ibrahim, who has been in Malaysia in the last three years could be able to identify certain places upon his return. It was this homecoming that also made me realise why some folks on the social media platform, Facebook, shower praises on the governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. I never cared to join such discussions around the personality of the governor who some people call Audu Bako of the modern age. I thought it was the usual political gimmick and that odious attitude of bootlicking that our politicians are so much adept to. However that weekend trip to Kano changed all that pre-conceived opinion I had about what is happening in Kano.

    Of course, on my visit in December, I had noticed a number of things springing up here and there, including the wonderfully designed and constructed blocks of classrooms dubbed Kwankwasiyya; itself an ideology springing up out of the governor’s demonstrated patriotism a la Awoism and Zikisim. The classrooms, which are also tastefully furnished using modern building mechanisms, dot the roads and alleys of Kano from Bebeji local government (on coming from Kaduna State) to the farthest or remotest part of the state. There were equally other road expansions here and there.

    However, on this recent trip, the projects are overwhelmingly many and gigantic in sizes. From Kwanar Dawaki area, there were two mass housing schemes that welcome one to the city of Dabo. The projects, I understand, will collectively provide 32,000 houses in what is called Kwankwasiyya city – located at Amarawa in Kumbotso local government – and Amana City, situated at nearby Gurjiya, in Dawakin Kudu local government. The third of the threesome called Bandirawo is being sited at Tumfafi, on the way to Katsina State. The housing scheme, I came to discover, was also not your type of government mass housing that would be constructed without provision for necessary infrastructure. Already, the government had pumped billions to provide amenities such as dual carriageways complete with drainages, water reticulation and electricity. Provisions have also been made for schools, a five-star hotel and international conference centre apart from the houses that were also categorized in such a way that all manner of people could be able to queue in. As we drive into Kano that Friday afternoon, all I could see from each of the two sites was appreciable level of work as many of the buildings were nearing completion. I learnt that the same situation applies at the Bandirawo City located on the other side of the town.

    Move a few kilometres to Karfi, around the headquarters of 7Up, one will observe expansion of the Zaria road being done by the state government. The scope of the project involves expanding the ever-busy road to three lanes. Drainages are also being constructed on both sides, as well as streetlights. This extends up to the popular Silver Jubilee round about where construction of the first ever fly-over in Kano city is fast taking shape. The objective of the ambitious fly-over project was not only about beautification of the city centre but also to ameliorate the gruelling traffic jam that is often times characteristic of the city, and a hindrance to its commercial activities. The fly-over, which starts from the Kofar Nassarawa, from the walled city, flies over two major roundabouts and descends on State Road by the Audu Bako Secretariat. It is a twin fly-over with the other one starting at Gidan Murtala and crossing over to Radio Kano roundabout, at the intersection between IBB Road, Ibrahim Taiwo Road and Obasanjo Road.

    For the two days that I drove around the metropolis, I saw literally a thousand and one construction works, from roads to schools, fencing and interlocking, making me to keep juggling with the phrase that eventually I am using as title of this piece. Because the level of infrastructural decay is so appalling, the governor has to literally declare a state of emergency on bad roads and decayed infrastructure generally. A couple of roads are under construction at Farms Centre, Kabuga-BUK New Site Road is being expanded and dualised; Dorayi-Panshekara is under construction, so also Sharada Road. I began to wonder; how is this man financing these gargantuan projects? Because there was a time in Kano when we were told that government could not do much because of paucity of funds due to large salary voucher but here is Kwankwaso doing it all without sacking any worker. Well, the governor had actually blocked revenue leakages and exorcised the civil service of all ghost workers following months of difficult but worthwhile verification exercise. It is a little wonder therefore that the governor announced 2013 fiscal year with a whopping N20 billion as backlog cash in the government’s kitty.

    There is no gainsaying that Kwankwaso is a messiah for Kano at this material time, looking how he tackles various developmental problems head-on. While appealing for government to fast-track what it is doing especially by ensuring timely completion of these road projects (like the Sharada and Sheikh Jaafar Roads), I am bold to echo the commendation for Governor Kwankwaso as espoused by the Kanawa; this is yet another Audu Bako in administration and patriotism and an Aminu Kano in ideology.

     

    • Safiyanu writes in from Gwarimpa Estate, Abuja

     

  • Once upon a Nigerian state?

    Once upon a Nigerian state?

    When a coward sees someone he can beat up, he becomes hungry for a fight – Igbo proverb, courtesy Chinua Achebe

     Prof. Adebayo Williams, the inimitable and formidable verbal pugilist, in informal discourse, called it post-state cancer – so piqued is he with the ease with which under-class bands run rings round the Nigerian state; and triumphantly claim the scalp of the once-dreaded security personnel.

    In Goodluck Jonathan’s Nigeria, the state is well and truly demystified!

    Indeed, when the Igbo proverb quoted above is fed in the combustive mix, it conjures some gallows humour: ragtag groups, the latest of which is the Ombatse (ironically translated ‘Time is now’ – for total anarchy?), contemptuously flexing its muscles and taunting the fleeing Jonathan Presidency to bring it on!

    Already, the cult group, domiciled in Nasarawa State, has claimed a reported 47 scalps in confirmed deaths of police officers – including the missing Mohammed Momoh, which an online news publication claims is dead; but which local authorities could not confirm, beyond his missing status.

    Having worsted the Police soft target, is Ombatse now, willing and ready, awaiting the military big guns, like Boko Haram before it? Remember Boko Haram started with throwing bombs at police personnel and attacking police and prison facilities on get-away bikes locally dubbed ‘Okada’?

    And talking of Boko Haram, the Jonathan Presidency’s Amnesty-biko (Igbo for please) offer suggests the “e don beg me” hilarious episode, another tragicomic affair involving the late Afrobeat Kingpin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his gaoler, Justice Okoro Idogu.

    After a visit to an infirmary where Fela was inmate while still serving his prison term, for offences not a few believed the Buhari military government trumped up, Fela claimed the conscience-stricken judge had apologised to him – e don beg me!

    That claim triggered a chain of events that led to Fela’s release from prison. But it also landed the involved jurist in hot controversy. Justice Idogu bellowed his denial and innocence, amid a bedlam of condemnatory voices. But not a chance! His was a lone voice buried by a hostile din.

    But back from Fela and Okoro Idogu, where was the Commander-in-Chief, when the likes of Boko Haram, Ansaru and now Ombatse were flexing their muscles: slaying innocent citizens and dutiful security operatives?

    He was probably busy elsewhere flexing his own muscles; against real or imaginary political foes, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the Rivers governor, being the latest to be crushed. Indeed, when a bully sights one he can maul, he becomes hungry for a fight!

    Indeed, whatever is happening today, in this polity, makes a mockery of all those concepts in basic Government, none the least the concept of the state; and of course, the much maligned federalism. This two-some got a routing in this latest and bizarre Ombatse massacre.

    The pristine state is supposed to have overwhelming force – if not a monopoly of it – to impose its will: if you factor in the concept of the Social Contract, in which all citizens surrender their rights to the state in exchange for common protection.

    But at Alakyo, an Eggon village near Lafia in Nasarawa State, it was a lunatic fringe that got the better of the all-mighty Nigerian state.

    How else could one explain the entrapment and massacre of 47 security personnel, purported on a mission to round up members of this lunatic fringe, who earlier even had had the temerity to capture a senior police officer, torture him and force him to swear an oath of allegiance to the Ombatse god? Is this 1st century Africa or 21st century Nigeria? The state-as-relic could not have been more starkly painted!

    Then the sight of His Excellency, Tanko al-Makura, the Nasarawa governor, slithering for cover at Aso Rock like some frightened snake, and bawling for help, was a wicked thumbs-down for Nigeria’s peculiar federalism.

    How does a governor enforce security when he has no control over the Police, the basic security agency? And what is Nigerian federalism worth if a governor has to scurry for presidential help on basic security? That, in full technicolor, shows the inherent absurdity of a state government without state police. Yet the gubernatorial fop is grimly humoured as the chief security officer (CSO) of his state!

    But even in all of this all-too-Nigerian tragedy, some new comic always emerges! Imagine, Ibim Semenitari, the Rivers commissioner for Information, while warning off presidential storm-troopers bent on putting her governor’s nose out of joint, reminding the political invaders that Governor Amaechi remained Rivers’ CSO! A peculiar CSO without troops? And a tiger proclaiming its ‘tigritude’ (apologies to Prof. Wole Soyinka) if ever there was one!

    Of course, al-Makura arrived to find the president, not unlike the fictional Chief Derin, the great one for junk trade missions abroad (in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters), met his commander-in-chief, before whom every governor must bow and tremble, blissfully abroad in South Africa.

    Hardly a crime, to be sure. The South African trip could even pass for dutiful tour of duty, since it had something to do with the World Economic Forum (WEF). The snag however is that you find in Jonathan a gravely distracted president, who seems more consumed by plotting four more years of incompetence and impotence; than solving the grave security situation and sundry infractions he faces in his troubled current term.

    Of course elsewhere, a political jobber without; and a trashy talker within, have upped the ante by sabre-rattling of a peculiarly lunatic hue.

    To Kingsley Kuku, a presidential aide, 2015 is nothing but Hobson’s choice: vote in Jonathan or forget peace in the Niger Delta. To trash-talking Asari Dokubo, a former militant, deny Jonathan re-election and face war!

    And to Jonathan’s grand political godfather, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo-Clark, whose earlier libel of everything and everyone for the Jonathan cause paved the template for the all-muscle-no-brain bombast of the duo: the lads’ outbursts are regrettable – but whoever blocks Jonathan’s way is looking for trouble! Now, how are six different from half-a-dozen?

    Besides, Pa Clark let drop a costly Freudian slip: never mind Dokubo, he assured; Ijaw would not go to war. So, the Jonathan cause is not even a South-South cause again – it is an Ijaw agenda? Geez!

    Even to the Northern elite, at the fore-front of power-change: as Heraclitus the philosopher said, even they cannot step in the same river twice! Nigeria is so rapidly changed that old northern ideas about power are tragically out of date. It is time, therefore, everyone subscribed to new ideas.

    It is end times for Lord Frederick Lugard’s arbitrary forge, now lumbering into its centenary with utmost stress. How will the endgames be: peaceful or violent?

    Pa Clark suggests a national conference before 2015. That is hardly novel. But there is hardly any other way to renew and federally restructure the Nigerian union before it collapses on everyone. The ongoing spectre of once-upon-a-Nigerian-state is sure trouble before the final collapse.

    After the Jonathan debacle with all the vacuous power talk, Pa Clark’s suggestion shows at least some good can still come out of his house of Israel.

  • Madam Rufa’i’s unlucky babies

    Madam Rufa’i’s unlucky babies

    Nigerians are by now, only too familiar with the spectacle of highly placed public officers helplessly wringing their hands in feigned supplication to an absentee god when confronted with the problems they were hired to fix. Last month, Nigerians were treated to another spectacle by the number one steward in the education ministry – Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai. She told journalists after monitoring the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) only 520,000 candidates stood the chance of gaining admission into any tertiary institution out of the 1.7 milion candidates who sat for the examination.

    Here is what the media quoted her to have said: “The major challenge is a country like Nigeria having 1.7 million sitting for examination. The space we have is 520,000 for federal, states, private universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. If one million passed, what are we going to do with the rest 500,000? We will not expand the carrying capacity without expanding the facilities”.

    Not done, she asked: “What are we going to do with the large number of students out there? I feel the pain. Mr. President is very much concerned. If you have students that have passed examination and they cannot have access, you can imagine their thought in the long run.”

    If the ministerial prerogative to lapse into lamentation over problems, which is ordinarily deemed to be within the capacity of the administration she represents to solve is accepted, to present the problem as something of a fresh challenge is however a different call – a tough one to accept. The problems are of course hardly new. What they require are fresh and imaginative thinking the likes of which the minister and the top guns in her ministry seems ever so unwilling – or rather ill-equipped – to undertake.

    The administration obviously believes in the centrality of “carrying capacity” to the resolution of the problem. A measure of this line of thought is the dramatic step of opening nine new universities even when the older federally owned universities could do with better funding. It may partly explain the minister’s call for opening of more access – through perhaps the establishment of more private tertiary institutions.

    Is the issue really one of “carrying capacity”? Or put in another way, is the crisis simply one of numbers that can be solved merely by doubling or quadrupling the existing carrying capacity of our tertiary institutions?

    I have no doubts in my mind that the current capacity needs to be expanded to ease the problem of admissions. I am aware that there are those who will argue that even a mere thousand taken out the vicious cycle of despair is worth the consideration. It is however a different matter to suggest that the boosting of the combined investments of federal, states and indeed the private sector would at some point satisfy the demand for tertiary education without a fundamental shift in our educational paradigm and a corresponding shift in national values and priorities.

    My position is of course that our concerns with tertiary education has become somewhat misplaced. Now, the quest for a university or polytechnic is certainly legitimate. The reality however is that not everyone that desires it would get one. This is true of developed as well as developing countries. What the developed countries have done is find a balance between the quest for learning – which is life-long, with the need to fit into the labour market.

    Today, part of the problem is what tertiary education is supposed to offer its recipient. Thirty years ago, such issues was regarded as irrelevant. Access to higher education what somewhat given and indeed, came close to a ‘right’ just as the debate about what it is supposed to offer would have been academic. Today, I will wager that anyone would argue that tertiary education, as against basic education, is a ‘right’ under current realities. Secondly, only a few entertain any illusions that their quest for tertiary education is driven by any other factor aside availing opportunities to corner available jobs.

    That, obviously has great implications for the educational sector as a whole; now, this is not only in the context of the state of youth unemployment, but also in the light of the emerging skills gap.

    The issue is – and this is generally accepted that three out of possibly five eligible youths are unemployed. A sizeable proportion of these are holders of college degrees and diplomas. The other component of the troubling equation is their lack of relevant skills and by this I do not mean the meaningless jibe about our graduates being unemployable, but the absence of identifiable, competitive skills needed in the services and the industrial sector. The big irony is that the existence of this large “unemployable pool” has rather than diminish the appetite for higher education seems to have fuelled it.

    The issue clearly isn’t just about expanding the opportunities for tertiary education but to expand and upgrade alternative opportunities available to youths to develop themselves. Part of the consequences of the deplorable state of things is situation where you find the Togolese and other ECOWAS nationals as artisans and technicians taking over our services sector, while their Nigerian counterpart, ever so ill-equipped hang out in search of a job.

    Time it seems to get back the craft schools – the veritable institutions for training artisans and craftsmen. Time to go back to the era where our artisans are not only graded but are paid wages commensurate to their certification. We need to return to the basics of dignity in labour and due reward for honest work.

    Now, I get amused at the suggestion that the fundamentals of the current crisis can be remedied by the introduction of the so-called entrepreneurial studies at our higher institutions. I certainly agree that a good knowledge of entrepreneurship principles will do no harm in the circumstances. But then, they represent mere placebos as against the cure drugs. The key is to make the vocational training option accessible, attractive and to align it with the demands of industry. This is what like Lagos, Ekiti and perhaps Kano are doing by collaborating with some world-class companies to ensure transfer of skills to their youths. What I have in mind is for the educational ministry to champion the effort.

  • Like a thief in the night

    Like a thief in the night

    A sense of perfidy hits the air. So rather than cavort over the flowering of democracy, we confront the nascent hubris of a dictator. I use the word “nascent” advisedly. We have not seen tyranny in its barefaced and full form.

    It is furtive and deceptively tentative, but carries the barbarous aura of the inevitable. Not long ago, the former governor of Zamfara State – no fan of mine – was picked up by the police because he said the APC would stage a peaceful protest if his party was rigged out of the 2015 polls. The Sharia-flaunting lover of nubile flesh did not offend against the law. He exercised a natural instinct of the politician in an ambience of electoral fraud.

    Months later, former gun-swinging denizen of the Niger Delta forests, Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, warned that if his kinsman, Goodluck Jonathan, is not tenanted at Aso Rock in 2015, militancy will dissolve the apparent peace in the home region of the president. He merely echoed the sentiment of an officered sympathiser of the militants, Kingsley Kuku, who is special adviser to the president on amnesty. None of them, in spite of the discomfort of the National Assembly, was even called for questioning over clearly subversive threats.

    The one threatened peaceful protest and was picked up. The others mouthed apocalyptic prophesies but they spoke back in defiance. Their grandfather and fuddy-duddy of Nigerian politics, rather than intervene in wisdom, played the role of an agent provocateur at over 80 years of age. He joined the delinquency and juvenile ranting and explained that others in the North had said similar things.

    In this instance, the office of the inspector general of police iced over with cowardice.

    Recently, Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s official aircraft was grounded at Ondo State. The aviation authorities said he had no papers, which the Rivers State Government has challenged. Not long after, the police swooped on a local government headquarters. The excuse was that the governor should not have dissolved the executive, which happened through the state legislature.

    This did not only fly in the face of the principle of a federal state, but it violated the principle of the rule of law. If they don’t like what the governor did, why not go to court? It is common knowledge that the battle for Rivers State is the continuation of the friction between President Jonathan and Governor Amaechi by other means. The story, at least in public, can be traced to the open shame of rhetoric from Dame the Vain, first lady Patience Jonathan, in Rivers State during the closing days of Governor Amaechi’s first term. She openly lashed out at the governor over activities in Okrika, where she hails from. Since then, tension has crackled between Port Harcourt and Abuja. What we see today, including the fulminating shallowness of Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike, represents a proxy war. From his reptilian redoubts in Aso Rock, he is unleashing venoms abroad.

    What is going on in Rivers State, with the strong-arm hysteria from Abuja, foreshadows the rough and tumble of 2015. It is the story of a snake trying to encircle his enemies in a jungle where law and order play coy to the logic of the unbridled giant.

    We also saw the introduction of a legislation to bar private aircraft owners from carrying what is perceived as passengers. To the undiscerning, it is a clever way of slowing down opponents who would hit the hustings for 2015 election when they compete with him for the meaty prize. It is a legislation for aerial supremacy through monopoly in the air battle of the 2015 campaigns. It is a metaphor of modern warfare. The law seeks to create a no-fly zone for the opposition. So while the president and his team corral the air and unleash the gunfire, the ground battle belongs to the opposition who will lie hobbled below, pinned down and ponderously weak, an army without the aerial sway. President Jonathan can now wield the nimble power of the sky with its lethal ferocity.

    As a well-known top politician told me in the aftermath of the Amaechi aircraft saga, no one should take a romantic view of tackling Jonathan and his cohorts in 2015. It came close to journalism recently when two journalists with the Leadership Newspaper were held rather than taken to court. He plots to slam a state of emergency on Borno and Yobe states. By this he is trying to turn his failure to combat terrorism into an advantage for political control against 2015. Our greatest tragedy is the absence of the rule of law. It is in that sewer that tyrants breed.

    These are just a few of the signs of what I called nascent tyranny. Because we live in an ostensible democracy, we take those actions for granted. Tyranny comes like a thief in the night. In the early days of Joseph Stalin, complains streamed the news media of a budding tyrant. A prominent New York Times reporter denied it. The evidence of killings, anti-Semitic slayings and concentration camps were regarded as little irritations.

    The then well-known critic Edmund Wilson visited from the United States and gave Stalin the thumbs up. Even novelist and essayist Maxim Gorky came from exile and resettled in his home country and lunged at prose spirit Vladimir Nabokov for cynical error for raising a false alarm. Gorky once argued that the only people who deserve freedom are those who are ready to fight for it every day. He ignored his own religion. But he was one of the early victims of Stalin’s purge. Alexander Solzhenitsyn fell into his snare and even fought in his army, before his disillusion and exile. His Gulag Achipelago, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer War are three masterpieces on the Stalin era that won him the Nobel Prize.

    In the early days of the Abacha regime, Ken Saro Wiwa during a BBC interview praised the coup that ushered in the tyrant. I wrote an op-ed piece then in the National Concord cautioning the novelist and playwright. I also noted that he was mistaking his cozy embrace with the general with the general apathy in the land. Saro Wiwa replied that he was cut from a rare gem. Just like Gorky, he became a tragic victim of a tyrant he helped nurture. It is one of the sore memories of my life that he visited me a day before he was arrested. A similar fate almost happened to Wole Soyinka who outgrew his chumminess with the foxy IBB and lived in exile during the Abacha era.

    Asari-Dokubo said President Jonathan has performed. He should leave that to voters. He is one man, and his Ijaw nation, whose lives he has not lifted, are one people. When he swept to power in what they gleefully designated as a pan-Nigerian mandate, they should have told him that he ought to rise up to the challenge. Democracy has shown historically that it does not guarantee freedom or well being. It calls for vigilance. That was why right-wing economist – I hate to quote this guy – once asserted that “perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.” He is Friedrich Von Hayek.

    Nascent tyranny thrives on a false perception of leader’s innocence. I recall the novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, where innocent children carry out the worst tyrannies in themselves. The only solution is vigilance, and a fighting conscience from within. That is what Ghandi referred to when he said, “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.” This tyrant is the counterfoil to the other tyrant.