The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • The future of Nigeria

    The future of Nigeria

    I was in a group discussing and debating our statement at the General Assembly plenary session in 1991 in New York and we got to the point of discussing the prospects of Nigeria in the future and somebody came up with the linguistic flourish that Nigeria train was entering a long dark tunnel the end of which was light and somebody jokingly said “I hope it is not the light of an approaching train?”

    The picture was so graphic that every time Nigerian runs into the innumerable difficulties, I remembered asking myself whether the joke of 1991 wasn’t a prophetic prediction. There have been many explanations for lack of progress in our national life. Some have put their hands on the ethnic plurality of our country leading to appointment to key areas of the economy not based on the revolutionary basis of careers open to talent but on tribalism, who you know, and bribery and corruption.

    There are other reasons adduced to our problems. There is problem of over population, poor nourishment of our children leading to mental retardation, dead weight of religion, lack of planning or total absence of rationality, politics taking precedence over the economy and above all the constitution which is most of the time lifted from the books of other countries and planted on the environment in Nigeria which most of the time is inappropriate if not hostile and unrelated to our political history and experience.

    The question really is whether ourselves or the constitution that have problems.

    It is true that this republic is overpopulated. The ascribed population load of Nigeria is 220 million and still growing. In all honesty, I don’t think we are up to that number. It is based on UN estimate derived from blown up Nigerian number. I say this with a sense of responsibility.

    I witnessed the last population count in Nigeria and I was surprised at the organised and deliberate inflation of numbers. I witnessed enumerators being bribed to deliver figures claimed to be expected by budget officials at state and local levels before certain allocation for social amenities can be made. Villagers and their children in urban centres were compelled to contribute for the purpose of attracting development to indigenous villages.

    If you drive  from Ibadan through  Ogbomosho – Ilorin – Jebba – Kontagora- or Mokwa – Teginna – Minna  – Kaduna -Zaria – Pabengua- Jos – Toro- Bauchi- Maiduguri, a route I am familiar with and sparsely populated between Ilorin and Kaduna and between Abuja / Kaduna and Jos before reaching Maiduguri, one is bound to doubt the authenticity to the huge numbers ascribed to these places.

    Read Also: 38 rescued Kwara abducted worshippers return home

    Apart from Kano, Kaduna, Jos and Maiduguri and not even Sokoto, there are no huge conurbations that come to mind. Ibadan, Ogbomosho and Lagos have huge populations but hardly the millions of souls ascribed to them and the rest of the urban centres in the Southwest have medium populations.

    Apart from Aba, Onitsha and Port Harcourt, there are no centres of huge population in the south-eastern part of Nigeria east of the River Niger. 

    I agree that huge numbers of Nigerians are scattered in hundreds of villages but my intelligent estimate of our total populations is not more than 150 million or less than the official figures if we use 36 million estimated population at independence and growing at a normal rate of 3% per annum.

    Whatever the population may be, we must develop a viable population policy to stop population growth outstripping food production and undermining our food security. The extant population policy in our books advices women to limit child birth to four which allows men to move from one woman to another. Secondly is excess population in Niger, Chad, Benin republic and all the way to Burkina Faso and other ECOWAS countries pouring into Nigeria their poor people. When men in Niger republic were advised by French demographers some years ago to reduce the number of wives and children they have, their response was that as their children grew up, they will emigrate to Kano or Lagos. This means our population control must take account of the growth of population in our neighbours. 

    We must develop a population policy focusing on men not women because of the plurality of wives in this part of the world. Whatever our population may be, the international community especially in Europe is worried about our population growing to 500 million by year 2050. With a huge population and with reduced educational facilities goes the quality of our people. This fact influences the development of our country because of lack of appropriate technology for development.

    In a world increasingly concerned with environmental sustainability, unplanned population growth and unmaintained cities leave too much to be desired.

    I remember attending a conference of cities of the world in the beautiful German city of Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany in 1992  representing Nigeria and I was given a platform to say something and I said I was from Lagos, a city of over 10 million souls and the chairman and host blurted out that no African  country can handle such a city especially with our low technological know-how. Today we are told Lagos has an excess of over 20 million souls. It is actually surprising that crime in Lagos is relatively low.

    The journey for sustainable development in Nigeria is very long and it will take huge resources, appropriate and applied technology, political stability, hard work and political leadership shorn of corruption to overcome the various challenges of development in a third world country burdened by poverty and apparent overpopulation.

    It is doubtful if things have changed or might have changed for the worse.

    As for our problem of ethnic antagonism, the situation seems to be getting worse because of economic competition for scarce resources especially land in the crowded urban centres most especially Lagos where ownership of land by the indigenous people is clashing with modern idea of ownership by purchase. This has led to vitriolic campaigns by people against each other which if not arrested may in future, lead to unforeseen and unfortunate physical conflicts which the country cannot afford.

    On top of competition in the urban centres dictated by economic competition, we have competition for political power tied to demographic weight. This may be solved if the holders of levers of power can tie the number of people to taxable responsibility as in many countries of the world. It is true that the multiplicity of different ethnicities in Nigeria is a hindrance to cohesion and collective development. But this should not be the case if we can learn from India with its 1.4 billion people with different peoples with their own writing and civilizations and religions still keeping together after the separation of the same people into India and Pakistan in 1947. Perhaps those who will want the splitting of Nigeria into smaller independent states should learn from the regular outbreak of war between India and Pakistan. If Nigeria were to be split where will the boundaries be? We will waste the relatively little resources that we have on armaments in readiness for war of all against all. We are one and the same black race separated by more than 250 languages, but divided into three or four main languages with some of the languages being mutually understandable.

  • ‘Saint’ Matthew

    ‘Saint’ Matthew

    • OBJ’s sermon on the Plateau

    At a time like this, all hands must be on deck in the search of lasting solutions for the nation’s security challenges. It is not a time to play divisive, ethnic and religious politics or to put the government down before the people. It is the government’s main responsibility to secure the country. There is no doubt about that. Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) is as clear as daylight on the issue.

    According to Section 14 (2) (b) of this chapter: the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. This is a huge responsibility which no government can treat lightly. It is in a secure and serene environment that the people can thrive. They move freely, meet and chat without fear, and strike business deals without any threat whatsoever. There is no gainsaying that the people today mostly live in fear because of the national security concern.

    It has become worse in recent times following American President Donald Trump’s redesignation of Nigeria as a ‘country of particular concern’ and threat to come ‘guns-a-blazing’ to take out the rampaging terrorists over what he called ‘Christian genocides’. Now, genocide is a strong word. It is not a word thrown around for the fun of it. Indeed, there are killings in Nigeria. This a fact that cannot he wished away. The government knows too well that it has a problem on its hands.

    Ever before Trump came with its threat, the government has been working on the problem. Is it a problem that can be solved in one day? It is not. If it were, the government would have inherited a country with zero security challenge. No country, not even the mighty United States (U.S.) whose leader is breathing down Nigeria’s neck has attained that level. Resolving the security challenge is work in progress (WIP). We will be lying to ourselves if we say that it is something that can be achieved in 24 hours, as some people, including those who should know better are suggesting.

    No rational Nigerian has ever argued that there are no killings in Nigeria. Every citizen is under threat. Even those going about in convoys are not spared. Nigerians do not need a Donald Trump to tell them this. To paint the picture, as former President Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Ogunboye Aremu Obasanjo did in Jos, the Plateau State capital on Friday, as if the government is denying this well known fact is wrong and self-serving. The former president should know better than that having been in government as a military leader (1976-1979), and then as a civilian (1999-2007).

    Read Also: 38 rescued Kwara abducted worshippers return home

    Did he hand over a country without security blemishes to Shehu Shagari in 1979, and Umoru Yar’Adua in 2007? No, he did not. The dynamics might have changed but the problem remains. The armed robbery, religious and sectarian crises and kidnapping for money rituals, and militancy and separatist agitations, among other related issues which were the main fares in 1979 and 2007 have converged to become what is today known as terrorism, banditry, insurgency and kidnapping for ransom.

    Obasanjo will be burying his head in the sand like ostrich if he says he is not aware that these challenges were there when he was in office. To now go to Plateau where the people have been besieged for long, even during his own time in office, to talk the way he did is not the stuff of which great leaders are made. Obasanjo should have been measured and temperate in his speech, rather than play to the gallery. What did he want to achieve by doing so? To incite an already beleaguered people against the state?

    The occasion was to sing gospel songs to soothe the pain of the people and not to add to it. Obasanjo tried to be clever by half in his claims on the security situation. He missed the point when he said the government is denying that people are being killed. Has the government ever said so? What it said and is still saying is that Nigerians irrespective of their faith, region or political leanings are being killed. The government’s denial of Trump’s claim of ‘Christian genocides’ is not the same as saying there are no killings in Nigeria. How can anybody say that when what is happening is obvious?

    Christians, Muslims, Traditional worshippers, pagans, and foreigners are being killed. So, why is Trump not taking up the case of the other victims? Why is he selective in his approach? So, the lives of muslims, traditional worshippers and pagans do not matter to him? Humanity is one, no matter the faith or the lack of it that they profess. As Trump seems concerned about the lives of Christians, so also should he show concern for the others who have been killed by terrorists, insurgents and bandits in Nigeria. It is then that he can truly lay claim to being a global crusader for peace and security.

    It is, therefore, distasteful for Obasanjo to endorse Trump’s plan to invade Nigeria to fight insurgency on this score. His submission also that the people have the right to seek external support to save them is not a statement that should come from a man of his status. How would he have reacted if such a submission had been made by someone else when he was in office? The public knows how Baba reacts to such things. He would have descended on such a person, cursing and ranting. I watched him on television, with mouth agape, as he said at the Plateau State Unity Christmas Carol and Praise Festival:

    “We are part of the world community, and if our government cannot do it, we have the right to call on the international community to do for us what the government cannot do for us”. Such an inciting statement coming from a former president at what was tagged a ‘Unity’ rally is intolerable and condemnable. Baba has no right to call for a foreign invasion of Nigeria. What he has done smacks of treason. One only hopes he realises that and clears the air. But then, like every eminent Nigerian, he is above the law. Otherwise, he should be answering questions now on what he meant.

  • The poisoned frame

    The poisoned frame

    Smoke often rises first from the smallest ember. If you understand this, you’d appreciate, perhaps, the subtle art of poisoning minds that sit before the TV screen as if before an altar.

    What Nigerians watch, they imbibe. What they imbibe, they become. And in that delicate bonding between fiction and memory, laughter and unease, something sacred is surreptitiously rewritten.

    Sometimes, the fumes spiral from a song hummed lightly on a film set, in a script polished for foreign applause, or a story retold from the purse of a patron.

    Before the fire becomes visible, it ignites quietly in the hearts of artistes who mistake attention for purpose and foreign validation for breakthrough.

    The tragedy of our age is not that Nigerian artistes are powerless; it is that too many are willing to lend their genius to the unravelling of their own society. Thus, they become envoys of a doom they do not fully understand, actors in an imperial pageant masked as entertainment. Yet, art is never merely entertainment. Think of it as a battlefield of the subconscious or a soft weapon, wielded manipulatively, until the mind bends in compliance.

    For years, the Nigerian government treated the arts as a colourful accessory; something to be deployed by politicians during campaigns, only useful when musicians rouse crowds or when actors could be paid to recite slogans.

    Beyond elections, the arts were left to starve. Grants vanished into bureaucratic crannies, training academies were abandoned, and a lot of visionary storytellers were reduced to beggars. So when Netflix, Amazon Prime, and foreign non-profits stretched out their hands, local artistes rushed forward like orphans furnished with an unexpected banquet.

    This foray of global streaming sites brought relief, fame, and a sudden gush of resources. Predictably, cinematography improved, and storytelling matured. But beneath the upgrades, a terrible rot manifested. The same door through which relief entered also ushered in a disturbing lust for foreign approval, and that lust has begun to twist the moral spine of our storytelling.

    Read Also: NDIC seeks deeper collaboration with NIESV on failed bank assets valuation, others

    Themes once alien to our cultural psyche now parade our screens clad in the seductive costume of “global appeal.” What used to be the secret shame of a society is now served boldly as the new Nigerian aesthetic—nudity disguised as liberation, profanity repackaged as authenticity, and unrooted individualism marketed as evolution.

    Filmmakers, desperate to appeal to global markets, embraced themes detached from local realities: unnatural sexuality presented as rites of passage, hyper-violent fantasies framed as courage, and gender wars curated for global applause. More worrisome is the portrayal of the Nigerian family as a relic to be dismantled. The sanctity of kinship, the dignity of masculinity, and the rituals of femininity are recast as outdated burdens deserving obliteration.

    Many of the loudest voices championing these anti-family, anti-male, and anti-national narratives are those with access to foreign funding, mostly female filmmakers celebrated by global organisations eager to bankroll stories that weaken traditional moral codes. Their male counterparts, denied similar access, find themselves struggling against a tide of ideologically curated cinema designed to disintegrate society from the root.

    And what the filmmaker destroys, the journalist amplifies. Foreign non-profits, touting benevolent grants and “capacity building,” discovered the Nigerian press as fertile ground. Thus, they till the newsroom like virgin soil, providing grants, international fellowships, instant wealth and exposure.

    Many new media founders surrendered gladly; after all, who wants to wrestle with unpaid salaries, failing printing presses, and decrepit newsrooms when foreign funding offers the good life?

    The transformation was swift. One such beneficiary, once my colleague, now a multimillionaire with a billionaire’s appetite, joked that he had “no business with poverty ever again.”

    He recounted the indignities he suffered under his former employer: salaries delayed for months, threats from politicians, and management that treated journalists like indentured labourers. Soon after he found salvation in foreign funding, another grant dangled before him, this time to advocate for same-sex marriage. He accepted without hesitation, not minding that it’s outlawed by Nigerian laws. “Nigeria doesn’t pay my bills,” he said. “I owe no one anything.”

    I reminded him that he actually owed his country, family, and society a duty. He laughed, called me a dreamer, and walked away.

    But dreams matter. Nations rise and fall by the dreams they preserve or the nightmares they import. The danger lies not in individual filmmakers or journalists finding opportunities abroad; it lies in the ideological strings tied to those opportunities and the negative framing they inspire.

    Foreign governments understand what many Nigerians ignore: cinema isn’t ordinary entertainment, and the news story isn’t ordinary publicity. Either can be used as a weapon, a lullaby, a sermon, or psychological operation (psyop), depending on the intent of the handler. It is soft power painted in words, sound and colour.

    History is full of proof. During the 1954 coup in Guatemala, the United States, through the CIA, executed Operation PBSUCCESS, a psychological warfare that toppled the democratically elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz, whose land reforms threatened the commercial interests of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company. Propaganda films and clandestine radio broadcasts were used to sow fear, while a manipulated press fueled chaos, leading to Arbenz’s untimely resignation. Also, the films American Sniper, The Hurt Locker and Lone Survivor justify the reasons behind U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by generating sympathy for the American soldiers while inciting hatred against the Iraqis and Afghans.

    China’s massively funded film, The Battle at Lake Changjin, equally  transformed a historical military failure into a cinematic triumph to reshape national memory and inspire patriotism.

    In these distant curiosities subsists a warning: foreign powers do not invest in Nigerian movies and media out of love. They invest because culture is the first theatre of irregular warfare. They invest to reshape values, chip at institutional legitimacy, weaken families, and prepare the psychological ground for political and economic infiltration. Break the home and society collapses. Incite hostilities: turn women against men, youth against elders, religious faithful against themselves, and nothing stable remains.

    Today, many Nigerians embrace any narrative, even lies of “Christian genocide” and calls for foreign invasion, simply because it comes from their favourite politician, celebrated filmmaker, viral influencer, or a journalist presented as courageous by foreign NGOs.

    This disinformation is curated, funded, and spread to destabilise the country. In its wake, several religious opportunists, separatists, and failed presidential candidates have found common cause: demonise Nigeria, sabotage reforms, and invite foreign hostility. When they realised the U.S., despite its imperialist designs, was embracing a cooperative counter-terrorism partnership with Nigeria, they intensified their campaign, conjuring tales of mass persecution to sabotage the effort.

    The Nigerian government must rise to the sophistication of this battlefield. It must recognise that movies and media shape national values more powerfully than political speeches. Government must partner with the arts and news media, not as propaganda agents but as guardians of cultural integrity. Government must identify with visionaries, invest in their craft, and anchor national messaging in good governance, transparency, and public trust.

    There are unexplored facilities—funding schemes, training residencies, international collaborations—that can strengthen creative and media independence without ideological compromise. The state must activate them.

    As Nigeria navigates the complex geopolitics of terrorism, separatist agitation, religious extremism, and foreign interference, it must treat media and entertainment as strategic assets, not ornamental distractions.

    What we write and film becomes what we remember. What we remember becomes what we believe. And what we believe becomes the fate we accept.

  • Corruption; Insecurity

    Corruption; Insecurity

    As we wind down the year 2025 and Christians celebrate Christians and all mark the end of the year and beginning of a New Year 2026, it is once more an opportunity for all to take the individual decision to the change the moral aspects of their lives for the better. No matter the profession, no matter the designation, no matter the age, no matter the sex, our society’s citizens see, face or are victims of corrupt citizens daily. Corruption is not really an unwanted disease like malaria or cancer which infects people without their consent. Corruption is like a poisonous pill that citizens can choose to avoid, throw away, dismiss or deny access to their brain and body.  Or they can take it and become ‘corrupted’ and corrupt others in their turn.

    In other words, the buildings where you work, shop, play and pray are not corrupt. In fact, the buildings rest innocently in peaceful honesty after office hours only to be corrupted again when citizens practice corruption of thought, word and deed the next day. We mistake corruption to be money related but it can be decisions, actions, lack of action, advice or wrong advice.

    We all recall the number of armed forces members who were court-martialled for corruption over the years. That corruption is particularly relevant at this time as it sowed the seed which has led to the huge tree of insecurity including complaints of problems with obtaining adequate equipment to face the onslaught of well-armed terrorist groups like Boko Haram, ISWAP. This has been contributory to the difficulties faced by our gallant troops. It is corruption that has led to the diversion of funds needed to adequately empower our gallant armed forces personnel over many years.

    The decision for-or-against corruption in every profession is personal but it has widespread consequences across the citizenry. The ongoing insecurity is the obvious consequence now. The countries we do business with also have corruption but how does the corruption level in those countries match up with our own home-grown corruption across every single endeavour and enterprise, especially government?

    How much does politics play in corrupting the society? Did you notice how much the terrorists demanded for each of the over 250 children so viciously seized from the boarding school? It was N100,000,000 , N100m each. Where did they come up with such a ridiculously huge and outlandish amount? What was their fiscal reference point? Was it they themselves or their secret advisers, since they were often foreigners unfamiliar with naira value or have lived in the bush and small villages most of their terrorist lives?

    Perhaps they were told by their sponsors or handlers to demand the amount N100m such a ludicrous figure. More likely, they got it from the media, recording the much boasted about outlandishly corrupt ‘N100m Presidential Nomination Form’ for a particular party which instantly devalued our currency. The people, all the people, including terrorist people, listen to politicians when they are setting their arrogantly politicised financial standards for themselves and many citizens feel they should be at the same or a better standard than politicians have set for themselves far above the people.

    In a way, the N100m is a good value for the life of a Nigerian citizen, but not in the way the terrorist thinks. The value should be the value the Nigerian government places on its citizens, like the value placed on the life of an American citizen by the American government which would go to any length to free captured citizens and home or abroad. But of course, in spite of this, there is still homelessness and poverty America. Nigerians deserve a far better security architecture than currently exists. We need far more armed forces personnel. We need a larger police force much better insulated from the plague of corruption accusations facing them on the streets from the fleets of keke, danfo, okada and private vehicle with or without tinted windows.

    Read Also: TY logistics park unveils plan to fix Nigeria’s $1.7bn logistics drain

    Our universities and the private sector should be on some kind of ‘war footing’ and need to be encouraged, equipped and even directed to redirect the training of our youth to become ‘drone developed’ with heat sensor and weapon-delivering capacity. This combination -technology +AI- is key to keeping the mortality among our gallant armed forces and the police down.

    We were told that 100 thousand police had been withdrawn from ‘VIPs’.

    We are thankful to see the armed forces success with rescue of some victims. Whether this is due to external pressure or not, we urge a far tougher logistic and strategic policy effort to surround, entrap and capture the terrorists rather than merely drive them from one LGA to another and claim that as a military victory when in fact, they flee to open a new front in the nearby LGA. The kidnapped children must all be returned as soon as possible with no one left behind to become the next Leah Sharibu. No one can return the life of the schoolteacher and others so violently killed merely for wanting to teach the children of Nigeria the way to a better brighter future. Fortunately, some escaped and rescued. Those children and their parents will need proper, long-term counselling as part of their rehabilitation to prevent emotional, even physical, breakdown.

    NARD is said to have ‘suspended’ its strike. We hope their justifiable demands for restitution and commensurate remuneration are met.

  • Nnamdi Kanu as political football

    Nnamdi Kanu as political football

    Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, has been a busy man lately. Yesterday, he huddled with President Bola Tinubu in the recesses of Aso Villa. Three days ago he visited jailed Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, at the Sokoto Correctional Centre where he’s serving a life term for terrorism.

    All the toing and froing is ostensibly to facilitate the release from prison of a man who was sentenced barely two weeks ago. The governor grandly assured him his plight would be resolved administratively and the convict set free.

    Otti isn’t the only prominent Southeastern political leader to make such promises. Shortly before the Abuja High Court presided over by Justice James Omotosho was to deliver judgment, 44 members of the House of Representatives largely from the Southeast released a statement urging Tinubu to invoke his constitutional powers and spring Kanu from detention.

    They asked him to convene a roundtable to find a lasting political solution to the trial of the secessionist leader which had lasted ten years.

    Given that the president has no powers under the constitution to halt to an ongoing judicial process, the lawmakers’ statement was clearly targeted at something other than justice. Inevitably, judgment was handed down in a trial which had seen Kanu jump bail and flee the country at some point.

    Much has been made of his extraordinary rendition from Kenya without speaking about his flight from justice. In the end he was convicted on seven terrorism charges.  The verdict rested on evidence from broadcasts inciting violence, recorded instructions encouraging attacks on security personnel and civilians, threats against foreign missions, and incitement to manufacture weapons.

    At that moment, one might have expected the debate to pivot toward rehabilitation, peace-building, and reintegration. Instead, what keeps popping up are open calls for Kanu’s release, as though political calculations can erase a terrorism conviction resulting from mountains of evidence and testimonies of witnesses who lived through the tragic chapter in the Southeast.

    Some said his imprisonment amounted to jailing an entire ethnic as though his agenda and methods had universal approval throughout Igboland. This is nothing more than cynical opportunism – a ploy to turn tragedy into political currency. It bears pointing out that for every noisy call for easy solutions, there was also the pregnant silence of uncountable powerful voices.

    The trial was neither cursory nor symbolic. It spanned a decade: initial arrest in 2015, bail and subsequent flight, re-arrest in 2021 via extradition from Kenya, multiple hearings, defence and prosecution, and a full judgment.

    In the final days in court, the IPOB leader sacked his lawyers and repeatedly shunned appeals by the judge to defend himself. Rather than do so he chose theatre: parading through court each time screaming “Show me the law. You don’t know the law!”

    With the benefit of hindsight it was clear that Kanu and the sentimental brigade had no defence for his actions, nor rebuttal for what was presented in court as evidence. The only way left for them was to politicise the trial – a dodge that failed spectacularly in the end.

    So why then – only days after the verdict – are some Igbo leaders saying “all hope is not lost,” promising a “political process” to secure Kanu’s release? Clearly, for them, Kanu was never primarily a man or a movement – he was a bargaining chip.

    What the “political solution” rhetoric does is keep them relevant. In a region grappling with insecurity, disillusionment, and weak political structures, invoking Kanu’s name draws attention – especially among younger, aggrieved Igbo and the diaspora.

    It allows them to profit from emotion. Sympathy, outrage, anger are powerful mobilisers. For politicians and some “elders,” they translate into leverage: whether for electoral campaigns, appointments, contracts, or diaspora fundraising.

    But the same people now demanding “justice” never stood up when violence raged, property was destroyed, livelihoods disrupted, or citizens killed in the wake of IPOB/ESN sit-at-home orders. Their insistence on a “political solution” is a refusal to confront Kanu’s culpability and a denial of the deeper structural failures of the region.

    When militants or criminal gangs ravage communities elsewhere in Nigeria, these same elites demand swift law enforcement. But who will deliver justice for the likes of the late Dr. Chike Akunyili, presidential aide Ahmed Gulak, Okechukwu Okoye – a member of the Anambra State House of Assembly kidnapped and later beheaded in May 2022.

    Who will atone for Harira Jibril and her children: a pregnant woman of Hausa descent and her four young children ambushed and murdered in Anambra State in May 2022. What about Justice Stanley Nnaji – a former judge of the Enugu State High Court shot and killed in May 2021?

    A witness for the Department of State Services (DSS) testified in court that between 170 and 200 security agents, including police officers, soldiers, and personnel from other agencies died due to incitement to violence by Kanu and his soldiers.

    Orji Uzor Kalu, who represents Abia North constituency at the Senate, recently lamented that secessionist agitations tied to the activities IPOB and Kanu, led to the death of over 30,000 people and destruction of businesses across the Southeast. Don’t the lives of these mostly Igbo victims matter? Who accounts for the devastation of their livelihood?

    What is profoundly shocking is the indecent haste of so-called leaders and influencers who cannot even allow for a period of reflection before shoving their political solution down everyone’s throats. It is now evident that they would gladly shut their eyes to IPOB atrocities to appease Kanu.

    Just as they are pressuring Tinubu, they made similar demand for Kanu’s release to former President Muhammadu Buhari. He replied that they had asked for a hard thing seeing as the matter was before the courts, but he would consider their request. It was a diplomatic way of saying “no!”

    A political solution so soon after a criminal conviction is a mismatch. What would be the occasion for it? That sort of intervention only happens under certain conditions. For one thing, there’s no groundswell of pressure for it either from the Southeast or rest of Nigeria.

    People can’t pretend not to notice Igboland didn’t go up in flames because Kanu was jailed. Where was the outpouring of anger on the streets if truly there was a connection with the goals and methods of IPOB? Instead what we’ve seen is people carrying on with their lives.

    The president isn’t under any pressure to free the convict and there’s no political gain for him to do so. One celebrity bar man warned that he would receive less than 10,000 votes in the Southeast in 2027 if he failed to release Kanu. But Buhari and Tinubu have proven there’s a pathway to the presidency without winning the zone. So, there’s no incentive for the president to needlessly pick up a hot potato when the judiciary has given him a convenient way out.

    There’s no pressure on the rest of the country because Kanu and IPOB focused their violence on their own people and home territory. They didn’t bomb the Southwest, South-South or North. They couldn’t export their every Monday economic paralysis to other regions. So what’s the incentive for other zones to split hairs over his legal troubles when they have no bearing on their lives?

    Read Also: National Identity: Unresolved indigene-settler issue threat to Nigeria’s unity, says Kukah

    Kanu spent much of heydays denigrating other sections of the country. Unfortunately, for him any so-called political solution would require national consensus and the buy-in of a country he repeatedly referred to as a zoo.

    When socio-economic adversity hits Igboland, his apologists are quick to cry marginalisation and demand redress. But when his broadcast fuels terror and disruption, they call for “mercy,” “dialogue,” and “political solution.” This selective deployment of indignation reveals a deeper hypocrisy. For many of these figures, the rule-of-law applies only when it serves their interest.

    What was evident in court was that Kanu isn’t remorseful for his actions and those of his followers. Even if the so-called “political solution” somehow secured Kanu’s freedom, it would deliver neither justice nor stability. It would simply reward a man and an organisation convicted of terror, by lifting him back onto a platform of martyrdom.

    What the region needs is not a convenient political bypass, but healing – some sort of truth commission. The elite should be talking of an inquiry into the tragedy that tore communities apart and led to the loss of thousands of lives. The region also needs a genuine political strategy – infrastructure investment, economic inclusion, good governance, security reform, and credible dialogue rooted in statecraft, not theatrics.

  • Re: ‘The trial of Minister Wike’

    Re: ‘The trial of Minister Wike’

    • By TJ ISHOLA

    Sanya Oni’s article, The Trial of Minister Wike, makes an earnest attempt to situate the Wike–Lieutenant Yerima incident within the broader question of civil–military relations in Nigeria. But in doing so, it performs a delicate rhetorical dance—one that inadvertently obscures more than it clarifies and shifts responsibility away from the central actors whose misconduct precipitated the confrontation in the first place.

    The article laments “institutional arrogance” within the military and warns against the inflation of Lieutenant Yerima into a national hero. Fair points – if taken in isolation. But the central flaw in Oni’s framing is the attempt to recast the entire confrontation as a morality lesson on military indiscipline, while glossing over the far more troubling and well-documented pattern of ministerial impunity that led to the encounter.

    A case of selective outrage

    Oni presents Wike’s invasion of the site as a bold, almost revolutionary attempt to “enforce the law”—a minister heroically confronting uniformed obstructionists. Yet this reading ignores the consistent and documented pattern of the FCT Minister ignoring due process, bypassing advisory mechanisms, and reducing the technical administration of Abuja to an arena for political theatrics.

    The question is not whether the military can be overbearing. It can be. But in this case:

    It was not the military that allocated land in breach of planning regulations.

    Read Also: ‘Reliance on foreign model stunts growth’

    It was not the military that failed to follow established administrative procedures before attempting demolition.

    It was not the military that showed up with cameras, commissioners, and a full parade of senior civil servants in the middle of an unresolved dispute.

    Sanya Oni calls the official entourage a “horde of directors,” but fails to acknowledge that their presence is itself an indictment of the FCT’s governance style: spectacle over substance.

    The central issue: Abuse of executive discretion

    The article accuses the military of “obstruction” but fails to mention the unresolved legality of the land itself, or Wike’s obligation to obtain a court order or follow internal resolution protocols before attempting enforcement.

    Instead of asking the obvious questions—

    Was the revocation lawful?

    Was the process complete?

    Was enforcement premature?

    Did the minister follow internal dispute-resolution channels?

    The columnist opts for easier targets: military arrogance, public sentiment, and the supposed irrational defence of the uniform.

    It is a misdirection. Civilian oversight does not mean ministerial absolutism

    Oni rightly notes that the military must be subordinate to civilian authority. But subordination does not mean blind obedience to ministerial overreach. Civilian authority is exercised within the rule of law—not through public outbursts, ad-hoc enforcement, or personalised interpretations of power.

    When a minister attempts enforcement in a legally contested scenario without exhausting procedural requirements, the duty of any disciplined officer—military or civilian—is to prevent escalation, not to surrender judgment at the altar of political theatrics.

    Yerima’s conduct is not above scrutiny, but neither does it warrant demonisation simply to vindicate the minister’s excesses.

    A troubling attempt to normalise the deployment of soldiers for private purposes

    Oni rightly criticises the use of naval personnel to guard private property, yet simultaneously treats Wike’s manner of intervention as a legitimate assertion of state authority. But one abuse does not sanitise another.

    The real scandal is twofold: A former service chief appropriated public land and deployed uniformed personnel for private security; a serving minister, instead of pursuing legal redress, chose confrontation as spectacle.

    Reducing this complex illegality to a quarrel over “respect for the uniform” trivialises the matter.

    The heroism debate: A false binary

    Oni mocks the framing of Lt. Yerima as a hero. But the defenders of Yerima are not necessarily valorising him—they are condemning what they perceive as Wike’s habitual disregard for institutional norms.

    The pushback is not about the heroism of a young Lieutenant. It is about the public humiliation of a junior officer by a minister who has developed a reputation for conflating personal authority with the authority of the state.

    And to dismiss this concern as “nonsense” is to ignore the repeated incidents in which this minister has insulted civil servants, berated professionals on camera, and treated the FCT like a personal fiefdom.

    If Nigeria is truly committed to building robust democratic institutions, then the conversation cannot begin and end with military subordination.

    We must also ask:

    What are the limits of ministerial power?

    When does executive impatience become executive lawlessness?

    Should a minister be permitted to perform enforcement operations live on camera?

    What safeguards exist for junior officers dealing with politically powerful figures?

    These are the questions Oni’s article sidesteps.

    The drumbeat of dangerous hyperbole

    Oni criticises Buratai’s comparison of verbal confrontation with treason—a valid criticism. But the article remains strangely silent on the minister’s own use of inflammatory, provocative language that escalated tensions rather than de-escalating them.

    You cannot criticise one side’s hyperbole and treat the other’s as administrative enthusiasm.

    Conclusion: No one is above the law — not the military, not the minister

    Oni is right that we must resist the militarisation of civilian life. But we must also resist the political personalisation of public institutions.

    Wike’s conduct was neither an ode to democracy nor a defence of the rule of law. Yerima’s action was neither heroic nor treasonous.

    The incident is simply the latest illustration of the institutional disorder that arises when public officials—civilian or military—operate outside established procedures and accountability frameworks.

    Nigeria does not need more articles framing this confrontation as a morality tale with heroes and villains. What we need is an honest conversation about executive impunity, military overreach, abuse of state resources, the politicisation of law enforcement, and the weakening of institutions through personal ego and performative governance.

    On these matters, Sanya Oni’s article is unfortunately more obfuscation than clarity.

    •Yusuf writes from United Kingdom.

  • Sir Festus Ogunrinde, author at 90 years

    Sir Festus Ogunrinde, author at 90 years

    Last Saturday, at a beautiful birthday party, this writer had the honour to review the newest book by Sir (Chief) Festus Dele Ogunrinde, who turned 90 years on November 20. The 171-page book is titled Destined Marriage – A Legendary Experience. It tells, as the title implied, the faithfulness and forthrightness of man who kept faith with his beloved wife who was bedridden for 23 years. The book also tells the story of the amazon of a woman, who was not just the destined wife of Ogunrinde for 52 years, but his friend, business partner, and acolyte in their life of monumental charity.

    One of the stories that touched the audience, was that of a blind widow, whom the Ayofunke Ogunrinde Foundation set up by Sir Ogunrinde and his beloved wife, Lady Funke Ogunrinde, had sought out, set up on a monthly allowance, and is training her son in a university. The book also contains deep teachings and practical lessons on faith, love, marriage, philosophy, and human relationships.

    As I said in the review, the small but mighty book, critically reflects the saying of the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, that: “while many men in power and public office are busy carousing in the midst of women of easy virtue and men of low morals, I, as a few others like me, am busy at my desk thinking about the problems of Nigeria and proffering solutions to them. Only the deep can call to the deep.” Chief Ogunrinde belongs to that class of men who devote their time, treasure and thinking to finding solutions to the challenges of life.

    Read Also: ‘Reliance on foreign model stunts growth’

    Indeed, Sir Ogunrinde despite his small size has the gargantuan weight of a bulldozer. He started philanthropy with his late wife Lady Funke Ogunrinde, since 1974, with scholarships for five indigent students, and more than 50 years (half a decade) later, at 90 years of age, is still engaged in philanthropy. The blockbuster of a book, tells the story of Chief’s unshakable faith in God and love for His creature, man, especially the downtrodden.

    Like Jimmy Cliff sang, the book shows that Sir Ogunrinde’s love for God is as solid as a rock. His love for his late wife, Funke, was as solid as a rock. His love for his late mother was as solid as a rock. His love for the poor, the disposessed, the widow, the destitute and the downtrodden, is as solid as a rock. Clearly, the stories in the book shows that Sir Ogunrinde has earnestly prepared for the standard set in the gospel of Matthew 25:34-36.

    The book has a forward written by a very erudite Catholic priest, Very Rev. Fr. Melvis Mayaki, Parish Priest, Holy Family Catholic Church, and Dean Festac Town, Deanery. He intones that the book will inspire, challenge, and perhaps transform the readers understanding of love and companionship. I agree totally with him. The book is a potpourri of Sir Ogunrinde’s writings, and the writings of a few others, connected to his work of philanthropy. Chapter one, bears the title of the book: Destined Marriage – A legendary Experience. There, chief elucidates on religion, catechism of the Catholic Church and his personal philosophy of life.

    He enjoins every man to ascertain the purpose for which he was created. He says that purpose is what we call destiny. I quote him: “Once you are a creature, your destiny is attached to you to be fulfilled before you return to your Creator.” He furthered: “Therefore, let no man, woman, soothsayer, or fortune teller tell you the direction of your destiny.” The book teaches the reader to have utmost belief in God as the curator and master of destines and see life challenges as one’s destiny.

    If for example, one is destined to die by accident “The type of accident, the time of death, and the circumstances surrounding the death are predetermined and will come to pass at the appointed time. If an enemy is involved, he or she will be present at the time and place of the accident.” He contends that destiny is by design and not coincidence. Sir Ogunrinde however argues that the fulfilment of destiny can be aided by prayers and supplication.

    He said that for destiny to change, “First, the person must have absolute faith in God. Second, God examines the person’s prayer and their reason or need for the change. Thirdly, God evaluates everything involved and decides whether the change will be to the person’s advantage or not.” While further exploring the subject of destiny, he wrote: “The man who will be a woman’s husband has already been chosen by God – even before either of them was born. Whatever happens in the marriage, whether success or struggle, is still part of destiny and cannot be changed except by God.”

    Chapter 2 gives a glimpse on how Sir Ogunrinde practices what he preaches with strength, unimpeachable character and candour. He opened with a penetrating and instructive statement: “As previously written, destiny governs the life of every person created by God, and I am not an exception. This truth is particularly evident in my marriage to my destined wife, Funke.”

    Considering the enormous contribution of his late wife to the huge success he became, the author borrowed from Chief Awolowo, in describing his wife. He wrote: “As Chief Obafemi Awolowo once described his wife as a ‘jewel of inestimable value’, I can boldly say that Funke is my own “wonderful jewel of total inestimable value”.  

    Their marriage produced six children, the first being Folasayo Ogunrinde, in 1968. She was named in honour of chief’s late mother. After Folasayo came five boys, all successful in life and contributing to global economies across the world. Chapter 3 is subtitled, Caring and the Development of the Family. Here the author takes his readers into Ogunrinde’s exceptional world of philanthropy.

    Chapter 4 deals with life and trials of the author’s destined wife, Funke. Chief writes with candour on the travails of his beloved wife. What started as mere headache soon transformed into a grave medical emergency. Funke the once vibrant backbone of the author soon became a heavy burden, which the author bore with equanimity. The chapter exposes the challenges of medical practice in Nigeria, and in the words of a practitioner “Our doctors are good, but our facilities are poor.”

    Chapter 4 deals with the transition of Funke, the beloved wife of the author, after 23 years of confinement. She died on July 1, 2019. The author captured the faithful day in three key descriptions, quiet exit, serene face and spotless body. Chief, a Knight of St. Mulumba, commended the Ladies of St. Mulumba for their steadfast love to his wife.

    Chapter 5 deals with Sir Ogunrinde’s tribute to his beloved wife. A beautiful essay written with poetic cadence. Chapter 6 is titled summary of our destined marriage. Under the chapter, the author eulogizes the special virtues of Funke. The story of a bush illiterate boy at nearly 20 years, who became a giant Iroko tree, an iconoclast, a colossus, and a man with an indomitable spirit should be read by everyone. The proceeds of the book will go to his charity foundation.

  • Mazi Kanu: Still on the heart of the matter

    Mazi Kanu: Still on the heart of the matter

    Igbo people of Nigeria whether at home or as urban immigrants have always been led by leaders who see them only as instruments of political bargaining. From the great Zik of Africa who came with his own brand of American journalism to ‘elezikify’’ Nigerian press , the smooth-talking Oxford-trained Odumegwu Ojukwu and now the rude, crude and probably disturbed Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, they have in one way or the other betrayed those who look up to them for direction. And associated with them are such tales of clash of interest in African Continental Bank (ACB), Ijora land deal the proceeds of which went into building of ‘the palace of the people’ amidst his people’s squalor to those with of high taste of fast cars and multi-million golden braziers acquired after a season in NNPC often described as a cesspool of corruption.

    Igbo urban immigrants in Lagos who had for a long time looked for a spokesman earnestly welcomed Zik of Africa’s return to Nigeria from Ghana. They trusted and loved him. Zik’s every word was law to his admirers including Lagos intelligentsia of the period except cynical jounalists like Ernest Ikoli, a pioneering journalist and first editor of the Daily Times.

    Not long after Zik returned with his fellow NCNC members from London where they had gone to campaign for constitutional change, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and few other members of the group had accused Zik of mismanaging funds contributed by their party members for the trip. Zik said he was being so shabbily treated because he was an Igbo man. That was all his supporters and Yoruba in Lagos needed to buy off all the cutlasses in Lagos market in preparation for war.

    Awolowo in 1949 and a few Yoruba Lagos intelligentsias founded the Egbe Omo Odudowa to unite the Yoruba that had just come out of 16 years civil war. Of course by this time, Igbo National State Union with Zik as president had existed for about three years. It was under that platform Zik had given his most controversial speech as Igbo State Union president where he declared god of Africa had ordained the Igbo nation as leader of Africa. But the same Zik now passed a ‘fatwa’ on Egbe Omo Oduduwa as anti-Nigeria. To destroy the Egbe, he deployed his West African Pilot, while the Zikists carried out physical attack on members of the Egbe in Lagos and their properties.

    Zik and NCNC did not win the 1957 Western Region election. Those elected as independent candidate led by Adisa Akinloye had appealed to Zik to nominate a Yoruba member of NCNC, (a Yoruba party with only one Igbo man at inauguration) as premier-designate as a condition for joining forces with NCNC. Zik, supported by Mbadiwe, insisted he must become premier of West even with an easterner heading the Eastern Region government and a northerner heading the Northern Region government. Akinloye and his  group joined Awo’s AG.  For deciding to hold their destiny in their own hands, Zik named Yoruba as tribalists. That was the narative told Igbo youths since 1957. Chinua Achebe even  wrote his “There Was a Country” where he falsely claimed he saw NCNC members crossing over to AG side in the Western Region House.

    Ojukwu was another Igbo leader worshipped by his Igbo people. Although he admitted starting his war with Nigeria with 16 rifles after all the shout about “No power in Africa can defat Biafra”. He was to blame Awo who had said Yoruba would pull out of the federation if East was pushed out by acts of commission r omission”. He was silent on the fact that Awo visited Enugu to plead against secession following Gowon’s creation of 12 states structure with a landlocked Biafra surrounded by hostile minority neighbours that Igbo had oppressed for years. But he failed to listen to Awo.

    Read Also: Tinubu meets former Defence Chief, Musa amid recent security concerns

    Kanu also emerged as Igbo leader, riding on the crest of freedom fighter in 2012.  He has never told his supporters of how the Igbo, occupying a space in the north bigger than Igbo’s five states in the east, according to Nasir El Rufai former Kaduna State governor will fit into his new Biafra. He has also not told his Igbo compatriots who have taken over trading centres in Yoruba urban centres and villages, including Lagos where they now want to be governor following their success in the 2023 presidential election, how they will relocate their business and mansions to his new Biara.

    Except Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, the senator representing Abia North, who was courageous enough to admit that activities of Nnamdi Kanu, led to the death of over 30,000 people.

    “But people are just talking about soldiers killed and not the rest of them” he lamented. He also spoke of the destruction of businesses across the Southeast including that of his mother’s friend whose shop was ransacked and went bankrupt unable to pay the N4.2million she owed his mother. He also spoke of efforts he made to get him released on bail in April 2017 to face trial for ordering people to kill others.

    But ill-informed youths with only one side of the civil war story  and some political officeholders are ready to swear by the name of Kanu, the  self-appointed Igbo leader who in the words of Justice Omotosho  “remained arrogant, cocky, and full of himself without realising the magnitude of his crime and the effect of what he has done against his people in the southeast”.

    It will appear IPOB and its violence against Igbo people is acceptable to Igbo elite. For instance, on the eve of the judgment, some 44 members of the House of Representatives, acting under the aegis of Concerned Federal Lawmakers, asked the federal government to discontinue the case in favour of a political solution.

    Justice Omotosho had hardly finished pronouncing his verdict when

    Senator Adolphus Wabara, a former senate president was lamenting that “jailing Kanu was like jailing the whole Igbo race”.

     From Obi Cubana, came a warning to President Tinubu: “as long as MNK remains in jail, you cannot and will never get up to 10,000 votes in southeast come 2027”. As for Peter Obi who dared not disobey Kanu’s sit-at-home order during his 2023 campaign season,

    “Kanu ought not to have been arrested in the first place”. This was after Chukwuma Soludo who now governs Anambra which Obi once presided over has told the world that 99.9% of those arrested and prosecuted for violence “were Igbos killing Igbos”.

     The Southeast caucus of the House of Representatives is also of the view that the continued detention of Mazi Kanu has contributed significantly to tension and agitation in the Southeast. The caucus therefore believes that the release of Mazi Kanu, through pardon, would open space for broader engagement between the federal government, elected leaders, and community stakeholders to chart a sustainable and peaceful path forward”.

    But Igbo political leaders and unitarists that have consistently frustrated efforts to return to federal arrangement, a social system known to guarantee unity in diversity.by forming an alliance with those with whom they share a common worldview of how to run Nigeria, should know it is time to return to the road never taken.

    Unfortunately, current Igbo leaders are making the same mistake Zik made in 1957 during the London Constitutional Conference. Lagos was the target of current Igbo leaders promoting citizenship as answer to the national question.  But no one has forgotten the lamentation of TOS Benson, a First Republic information minister about how he begged a southeast governor for a plot of land to erect a house where he intended to bury his wife who was of Igbo extraction but his request as turned down.

    Flooding  the streets of Nigerian urban centres with hawkers of substandard goods is also not an option as it only serves the interest of political elite that used them for political bargaining during election (If in doubt, check all those areas where Obi secured huge support during the 2023 election) or cannon fodder during political or religious violence.

    If some Middle East nations can turn their desert countries to paradise, Igbo can turn their land to Taiwan of Nigeria.

  • Security emergency

    Security emergency

    Before President Bola Tinubu’s announcement of nationwide security emergency, this column was putting together an article titled, “Gumi: A budget for bandits”. 

    The title had to be stepped down to accommodate the far-reaching measures in the president’s statement meant to address the contradictions thrown up by Gumi’s advocacy on how to handle the insurgency of the bandits. Even then, some of those nagging issues still reared up their ugly heads in the negotiations heralding the safe release of abductees from Eruku in Kwara State and the 24 school girls in Kebbi State.

    Securing the freedom of the abductees unharmed came as a huge relief given the deadly and violent manner they were ferried out by the bandits. But the account of the negotiations by the security agencies which left gaps as to the fate of the terrorists/kidnappers created some puzzles. It fuelled speculations as to whether the authorities had succumbed to Gumi’s advocacy even as the government said no ransom was paid.

    What did Gumi really say? The fiery Islamic scholar who has not hidden his uncommon expertise on what constitutes bandits’ grouses had in a viral video in the wake of the threat by the United States of America (USA) to attack terrorists in Nigeria, vehemently warned against military action.

    “Attacking the bandits will be a mistake. The cause of this chaos is because they are not included in the budget. So, USA attacking them will cause more chaos in the country. The best solution is to negotiate with them and they should be included in the budget. Give them what they want for peace to reign”, Gumi sternly warned.

    That was the setting in which the abductees from Kwara and Kebbi were released through negotiations with the bandits which the presidency said were to ensure the safety of the victims. The government defended the approach on the ground that bandits use the victims as shield and it would have inflicted collateral damage had the kinetic option been called into action.

    But the government did not leave anyone in doubt that it had the capacity to neutralise the bandits after credible intelligence revealed their location. That could as well be though the previous regime had argued along the same lines. Ironically, the terrorists have not relented in their devious enterprise.

    Curiously, the position of the presidency shares some traits with the warning and recommendations by Gumi on how to go about the matter. Bandits were not attacked. And there were negotiations with them. What we are yet to be told is whether any concession was made by the government before the bandits acceded to release their victims. Did Gumi’s warning play any role in the negotiations? If yes, what implication does it hold for the authority and legitimacy of the government?

    There is everything wrong with this advocacy even as the grouse of the bandits has, at best, remained opaque.

    For one, it goes with the unmistakable impression that the bandits have morphed into an alternative government and can in verity square up to any threats from the government. That should be a serious challenge to the authority and legitimacy of the government. And for another, including bandits in the budget would amount to recognising them as a sub-national unit. So, in preparing the national budget, allocations will be made for the bandits. That sounds strange indeed.

    Perhaps, the question Gumi needs to answer is the activity the budget will be deployed to? And in what domain – a bandits’ republic?

    In this column in 2021, I wrote an article titled: “A bandits’ republic”. The thesis of that presentation was anchored on the dialectics and inherent dangers in allowing the bandits to operate as if they were a government in a government. Attention was drawn to the foreboding prospects of emboldening the bandits through policies that allow them dictate the terms of engagement

    Events are quickly pointing to that direction. Or how else do we explain the demand from Gumi that bandits should be included in the budget and be given whatever they want for peace to reign? What manner of peace can there be in the atavism of the state of nature? In saner climes, Gumi should have been interrogated to say all he knows about a budget for bandits and the purpose it will be applied to. And within what domain?

    Read Also: Nigerians urged to support FG’s fight against insecurity

    This is not the first time Gumi is entering advocacy for the bandits. Before now, he had called for amnesty for them. He is also known to have asked that bandits be treated the same way the Niger Delta issue was handled. But none of these is as offensive as the demand that bandits should not be attacked, should be included in the budget and given whatever they demand. Where on earth is that done?

    This advocacy is at the centre of scepticisms on the nature of negotiations leading to the release of the Kwara and Kebbi abductees. Those who pick holes with the idea of treating terrorism with kid gloves are on point. It emboldens them to the point of threatening the authority of the state.

    This danger is brought closer home by the kidnapping of 11 people in Isapa in the Ekiti Local Government Area of Kwara State shortly after the release of those kidnapped from the CAC church premises. Isapa’s closeness to Eruku says it all. There have also been other kidnappings since the release of the two sets earlier kidnapped. So, at what point will the negotiations stop and the kinetic option called into quick action?

    That underscores the weaknesses and futility of any policy that seeks to reward criminality. In Afghanistan, concessions to the Taliban including prisoner-swap allowed them to re-group. They eventually succeeded in overthrowing the entire government and restored their own rule. And in Mali, deals entered into with the bandit/jihadist groups allowed them to spread violence to neighbouring countries.

    Back home, the so-called de-radicalisation and rehabilitation of Boko Haram insurgents allowed the group to transmute into five splinter groups. It is not hidden that much of the reverses suffered by Nigerian troops in the fight against Boko Haram were as a result of insider sabotage. So, we have our own experience to draw from.

    The situation calls for urgent and decisive responses from the government to restore order and protect the dignity of citizens seriously assailed by unabating terrorism. That is where the president’s directive for the recruitment of additional hands into the military, police and allied security agencies to root out terrorism comes in handy. His order to security agencies to deploy into the forests and smoke out undesirable elements taking refuge there to levy mayhem on citizens is the way to go. There is no doubt that strong government presence in notorious forests and a rapid implementation of the policy on ranching will rid the forests of all undesirable elements. But the president must muster the political will to confront the sponsors and enablers of terrorism in high places. That will give real meaning to the demands of national security emergency.

  • The maidens of Maga

    The maidens of Maga

    Let us not spin the story of Maga the way we did the others. What others? Chibok and Dapchi. But why not? The names of the towns or villages may not sound exactly the same, but each leaves the tongue with two syllables. And they were all about girls. They were about night raids, guns and bandits.

    It was defiance, if not skullduggery. It was outlawry, if boys of slaughter. It was failure of security, if not the matter of AWOL. It had all the stains and iniquities of rape, even when they returned whole. Only in Maga did they return whole.

    What is whole? A nubile is no more pure when a man or boy, in the language of holy books, knows her. To know, in this context, is to hurt, bruise and sigh without her permission. That also means “to defile.”

    Now, some may think the girls came whole, and undefiled, because we heard no tales of rape. We did not hear that about Maga in Kebbi State when the bandits stormed the Government Girls Secondary School. We saw the girls return, speaking, sometimes with glee, and say “amin” to a male prayer. They seemed intact, swathed in hijab and even donning smiles, each taking her number in the count.

    Not so with Chibok, after the night raid. Years later, they returned in trickles. Those who were girls became women in their youths, became wives and mothers. Single mothers. Abandoned wives. Comfort to the barbaric passions of distorted souls.

     They became echoes of their past elegancies. They were, in one word, raped into maturity. Families rejected some of them, having regarded them as dead and buried. They were ghost from the past.

    From Dapchi, it was the same story with 110 young bloods. The poster image is that of Leah Sharibu, who reportedly would not renounce her faith. The politicians ululated, soldiers’ boots pounded forests, media cried, poets sang, yours truly devoted a volume of poems to her. She was alive, she was dead, she was alive again. She became no more Sharibu.

     She inhabited everyone’s imagination. She was everyone’s daughter, sister, student, neighbour, each with their vision of the demoiselle. She also became a convenient foil to forget the other 109, as though a tear from Sharibu was a tear for a hundred. It soothed the conscience.

    But to rape is not always to take a girl’s pride by direct sex. Western law has expanded the meaning in the definition of sexual harassment, including the portent of a smile. Geofrey Chaucer wrote tales of the vulnerability of the girl child, especially the Knight’s Tale with the themes of honour and fidelity with the maiden Dorigen. So, what happened to the maidens of Maga?

    We may say they returned maidens. That may be true up to a point. The girls were in their hostels at night. They were asleep. Intelligence had it that the goons were going to strike. The governor, Nasir Idris, knew, and he notified the army and asked for protection. In earnest, soldiers were deployed in the school.

    The students may have seen the uniform and guns and jackboots on campus. Hard enough to lull them to sleep.

     In hostels, students sleep early. By midnight, the hostel air might have succumbed to a choir of snores. By 1 am, the soldiers had a new song. They were asked to vacate the place. Why? No one is telling us.

    Reports say it was a soldier, a sergeant, who led them there and he was the fellow who asked them to leave. Forty-five minutes later, the demons blazed into the school. It was a thoroughfare. If a snore party, a new party had arrived, a party of ruffians, daredevil mission as their identity. They had barks for melody and guns for percussions.

    All 25 of them were whisked away, but one escaped. Imagine fear in their hearts. The rough handling. The bullying words, the shoving, the sight of guns. For the few days, it was the foreboding. Did they eat? Could they eat? They had diets they did not ask for. They had bath? Who supervised it if they had? If they didn’t, was it because they did not want to strip in the ambience of their abductors? Did any one see them the way God made them? Did any suffer menstrual miscue? How did they survive it? What kind of water, if at all. If they drank, what kind of water, what taste, what colour, what smell? Where did they sleep? Or could they? Compare that to the familiar beds in daddy’s home or the hostel where they were possibly dreaming. If this was not rape, then the word does not mean violation. It was a rupture of their familiar sense of peace, or even routine. What Alexander Pope ribbed in his mock-heroic poem, The Rape of the Lock.

    Had they ever been to a forest? Had they ever seen a gun up close? Had they been around boys of rapine who spoke without courtesies and who acted without finesse?

    The foreboding was worse. Imagine what they were imagining. Would they be taken to wife? What is the life of wifehood with hooded men?  Where is daddy, where is mummy? Where is my home? Where is governor? Why did the soldiers leave us? We saw them before we slept. In novelist George Lamming’s words, “something startles where I thought I was safest.” What will they think of the male species? May they not follow Alexander Pope’s line: “Beware of all/but most beware of man.”Our Maga girls in hijab may need rehab.

    In their young souls, their bodies were their cathedral, and so their yearnings. What they experienced was murder in their cathedrals, apologies to T.S. Eliot. In that play, very part of the building was sacrosanct except what happened inside. An ethereal collapse.

    That is why we must ask, why did the soldiers leave? Why did they abandon young girls half an hour or 45 minutes to the coming of their jackals? They left them in the lion’s den. If the reason is that they were not well-armed as some speculations say, why did they not call for reinforcement? They cannot say they are not aware of the sort of weaponry these boys wield in the forests, the Ak 47, Ak 49 et al.

    So, they should have armed the soldiers enough to eliminate them.  If they could deploy the armoury needed before the time, why did they not take them along and empty the school ahead of the invasion. Retreat is part of military activity. Even during conventional wars, soldiers have been known to evacuate territories ahead of enemy onslaughts. We saw that in Europe during the Second World War. It is no cowardice. Retreat is not surrender. So, were the deployment and military evacuation a charade? Was it just a show? They appeared to disappear, like Black Dog in Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of buccaneers.

    Read Also: 8 strategic guides to surviving expensive times in Nigeria without losing your mind

    It was therefore callous for them to be left to the justice of bandits. Who was that soldier who gave the order for them to leave? If it was a sergeant, we are not hearing the full story. A sergeant does not have an authority for such an order unless in defiance of higher authority. If it is a higher authority, then we must put in context the cry of Governor Idris that some people are working against the government.

    The word is sabotage. We learn that the sergeant was summoned to Abuja, and it is supposed to give us hope that the truth will come to light. But what is even more potent is the suspicion that some people high up in politics and military are in on it, and they tolerate it. They even bask in the miseries of the north.

    The tragedy is that they are northerners, whether in the army or in the establishment. Who are the parasites? Who are the failed men who should preserve our schools, our girls. Rather they have spawned an economy of blood, where the weak, including maidens, are the wares of transaction.

    The head of the Arewa Consultative Forum, Bashir Dalhatu, wants to compare the bandits to the Niger Delta militants. So, he wants us to show them a hand of friendship. Dalhatu did not speak from a heart of peace. He may want to be friends with the goons, but he does not want to be friends with Nigerians. The Niger Delta militants did not abduct girls or raid villages to evacuate citizens, burn homes, rape girls, behead men. If we want to change them, they must bow. We cannot allow men like Dalhatu to lead a respected body like ACF. He is a politician. ACF should rid itself of partisan mongrels.

    We cannot solve the violence by coddling forest tyrants. I believe, with political will and cooperation of northern elite, we can flush out these vermin in our blood in six months. It is a choice and not a difficult one. Bello Turji and Dogo Gide are human beings. The bandits are not spirits. We only need to be spirited.