The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ogochukwu Ikeje

  • Too much bloodshed

    With a Certificate of Return and a broad grin of relief, Bayelsa State Governor Seriake Dickson has reclaimed his crown, leaving his main challenger and immediate predecessor Chief Timipre Sylva to sulk and threaten another fight at the tribunal. But what about those whose blood were spilled in the bruising battle for Creek Haven, the state’s seat of power?

    The initial and main election was nasty, compromised by not just what is commonly referred to as irregularities but also, more frighteningly, brazen violence of booming guns and deployment of other tools of atrocity. INEC, the national electoral organ, declared the exercise inconclusive and promptly rescheduled a supplementary poll in places where election could not hold or where it did not meet acceptable standards. One can only conclude at this point that the electoral body was probably hoping that whatever was wrong the first time out would be fixed in the second round of ballot in the southern parts of the state.

    It wasn’t to be. The guns boomed again. Other weapons of brutality were freely used, again. The result: many people died. The reports vary, as do casualty figures. But one said no fewer than 12 souls were probably lost in the Bayelsa governorship election. Another account said four policemen and two soldiers may also have died in the exercise. This is appalling and should be so labeled and condemned but beyond condemnation, every effort should be made, from Yenagoa to Aso Rock, to stem the bloodshed and bring its perpetrators to account.

    The dead may have been more, and even more the injured and the terrorised. But you get this sneaking feeling that even if those who died were more, say, 20, 30 or 50, the public revulsion and reaction would still have been just about as tame as it has been after the exercise. In fact, if anything, it was the major rivals, Dickson and Sylva, who shouted the most about the violence in the election battle. The governor let it be heard from him that his election was fraught with violence, and that he and his party and supporters were appalled by the thuggish acts accompanying the exercise, and that his administration would do everything possible to fish out and punish the killers and the roughnecks. Even before he took the tribunal decision, Sylva equally, and quite vociferously, condemned the killings.

    Both men left the questions open. Who did the killings? Who hired the killers or for whom were the killers working? What will come of any inquiry set up by the state in an election contested by two major party candidates, one of who was declared winner but each blaming the other for the atrocities?

    From what we are used to, and by our unflattering standards, the Bayelsa election was always going to be mean. The Buhari and APC hurricane which swept Dr Goodluck Jonathan out of the presidency also left the hitherto ruling party with pretty little to hold on to. Only a handful of states were left standing in the PDP column. That was why Bayelsa, Dr Jonathan’s home state, looked like, in the language of a certain Owu lord, a do-or-die affair. If Bayelsa went, too, what would be left? Both Sylva and Dickson also had some personal pride issues of their own to sort out. The former was shooed off the state government house in a manner that had his disagreement with Jonathan written all over it. Worse, Dickson was drafted in from the House of Representatives and soon took over Sylva’s seat. Sylva defected and kicked off a campaign to reclaim what he lost, while Dickson did everything to ensure his predecessor failed in his comeback bid.

    All of that was clear; what was not was the bloodshed that characterised the contest between the two Ijaw chiefs. Why was there so much violence? Why isn’t there enough spirit to deter the violent elements in our midst? How much blood will be wasted before we rise up as one against such assaults? How long will people who are neither in the armed forces nor law enforcement be allowed to acquire, keep and freely deploy high-calibre weapons in a country run by constitutional laws?

    Decades ago someone made the point that Nigerians were immune to shock. Now, that someone would be shocked as to how even more hardened and inoculated we have become. We witnessed the horrors of the Niger Delta militants before they turned a new leaf, thanks to the departed President Umaru Yar’Adua. We have also seen how the Boko Haram militants scaled up their atrocities, slaughtering over 17,000 people, sending more than 2m out of their home including some 800,000 children. Homes have been wrecked, whole communities burnt alongside farmlands. Such plunder is rare even in full-scale war. We have the baby factories and all the seedy behind-the-gates acts among us. And while the baby merchants are at it, some other outlaws have turned kidnapping into an irresistible industry.

    But does that explain why we seem to have lost our collective sense of, and sensitivity to, horror? Is that why it continues to look normal and acceptable if we cannot cast a ballot decently without spilling a drop of blood? Why does it look as if the outlaws are getting the better of the authorities and, by that stretch of reasoning, everyone else?

    As I feared earlier in this piece, not much may come out of an inquiry into the Bayelsa election violence. So, what to do? Federal authorities should step in, activate all relevant laws, strengthen all necessary facilities and ensure that killers are brought book to justice.

    I pointed out in an earlier installment that fighting corruption and insurgency, as President Muhammadu Buhari is doing, is in itself a huge undertaking, in fact, practically Nigeria’s most pressing task. Now, the president must add combating electoral violence and illicit acquisition of firearms and other lethal weapons. We must reclaim our humanity. Every life must count and no one should be allowed to spill blood and get away with it. It is the order of civilisation.

  • The best of Buhari

    By the time his tenure is over, will President Muhammadu Buhari be called great? Or will he be dismissed as just another has-been, or, worse, a mistake of the presidential kind? Well, it depends. For it will depend on how he applied himself to the weight and demands of his office, and whether he managed to crack the huge challenges facing his over 170m people, or the challenges cracked him.

    Some eight months into the Buhari presidency, some have, however, started drawing their own conclusions, most of which no music to the president’s ears. On the street corners and in some other public places, the verdict is unflattering. Even in some of the most carefully-worded columns written by the best brains on offer, the impression is steadily being created that we just might have ended up in a cul-de sac, a dead-end street, without exit, the only escape being a retreat. If that is true, it is a peculiarly tough situation because in the case of the president, there are still over three full years to go, in the first instance.

    The discontent, however, is, perhaps, not without some background. The president’s fewness of words in explaining himself and the actions of his administration has manifestly unsettled his critics. So has his body language. And so have a number of other things that have happened, or failed to happen, since he took office. The slump in the economy, thanks to the oil prices crash, has kept many growling, for instance.

    But the apparent conclusion that we have a bad president on our hands is hasty, in my opinion. Some kinder commentators have pointed out that it is too early to judge Buhari but I daresay that these eight months have been quite promising, and that if sustained, the country is well on its way to redemption. The anti-corruption campaign and counterinsurgency onslaught offer sufficient hope, and, though the doubters may not be impressed, the economy too might tick up sooner than feared, with a bit of concerted effort from the ministries and agencies, especially the agric and solid minerals sectors.

    That is not to say the optimists, one of whom I fancy myself, think the Buhari administration has not put a foot wrong. His first media chat further gave the president away as a crusader with the blinkers on, not wishing to be distracted by anything or anyone in the war against corruption. He even appears to see the judiciary process as a clog in the wheel. The bail granted to former National Security Adviser, retired Col Sambo Dasuki, which the administration has repeatedly flouted, is proof enough that sometimes the judiciary grates. Another irritant to the president is “that one you are calling Kanu”, as he referred to Mr Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Independent Peoples of Biafra or IPOB during the televised chat. The “revelation” that the IPOB man has two international passports, none of which he allegedly came into the country with, among other reasons, seemed to have convinced Mr President that the guilt of the accused is too grave to be fouled up by the judiciary. Even in the Zaria Shiite affair in which some hundreds were allegedly shot and killed by soldiers, Buhari did not seem to think it necessary to mask his convictions (that the sect members were guilty as charged), even though he said he was waiting for the reports of the investigations.

    These dispositions do not sit well with the principles of democracy and the rule of law. The president will do well to reverse those tendencies and temper his natural impulses. His ministers and aides as well as commentators should keep nudging him on the right democratic paths.

    But no one should lose sight of the fact that in the history of this most proverbially blessed, yet so pitiably and relentlessly raped country, Buhari is the only president who is attempting to slay the rapist-beasts. His stiff approach and clear frustrations with the elaborate and slow-grinding wheel of the law are only human faults, to which no president is immune. Sir Winston Churchill, perhaps Britain’s finest, unsettled his compatriots so much that some were persuaded that they were probably better off without him. He had such courage and stunning turn of phrase that he kept British fighters marching on during WWII and eventually gave their country victory, else, as some feared, the Brits would have been speaking German. But in 1915, in the ill-advised Gallipoli military campaign in the Dardanelles strait, Britain, with Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, lost about 120,000 troops, excluding those who fell ill, in nine months of battle to conquer Istanbul on the way to hitting Russia. Among other minuses, Churchill was criticised for advocating the use of poisoned gas against Kurds and Afghans in 1919, and was also accused of holding some racist and anti-Semitic views. There were so many other rotten things with which Churchill went to his grave but was justifiably given an unrivalled hero’s burial.

    Former actor, governor and United States President Ronald Reagan, in his time, swept Jimmy Carter out of the White House and wormed his way into Americans’ hearts by shrinking taxes, and government while tuning up old-fashioned family values. Today, any Republican presidential aspirant who wants to best Hillary Clinton invokes Reagan, yet it was Reagan’s tax policy which spared the rich and punished the poor. It was Reagan who sold arms, and gave money, to Iran, and funded Nicaragua’s rebels, a scandal which he unsuccessfully fought to play down. Like Churchill, he too had plenty drawbacks, but it took nothing away from his place in the heart and history of the most powerful country in the world.

    Older history is replete with great leaders with better-forgotten other sides and mistakes, from British kings to Alexander the Great and beyond.

    The point to note is that leaders do not simply become bad simply because of some of their faults or mistakes. They become great when put on the scale and judged, positively, on the great things they did.

    Buhari, clearly with faults all his own, has taken on Nigeria’s most devastating and all-consuming monster. For years Nigeria was one of the most corrupt nations on earth, according to Transparency International or TI. In 2000 no nation was more corrupt than ours. The following year only one country performed worse that Nigeria on the corruption index. It remained in that position from that year till 2004 when it staggered to the position of third worst behaving country out of 145 surveyed.

    Corruption has wrecked everything in the country. It has stifled business, taken away credibility from elections, made nonsense of transportation, reduced education to a joke, undermined the military and the police, made the civil service unappealing, rendered infrastructure comatose, removed the soul of religion, even killed more than anyone can keep track of.

    Buhari should not copy other leaders’ bad traits but his best side is clearly fighting Nigeria’s most notorious monster. May that side win so that he will be great.

  • Pitfalls Buhari must avoid

    Pitfalls Buhari must avoid

    There are dangers President Muhammadu Buhari must avoid if he intends to make his Aso Rock tenancy  count. Let us begin on a personal note. Such was the venom of the campaign attacks that handlers, agents and foot soldiers of his main rival laboured to create the impression that his age was at once a personal setback and a national risk. Kicking off his presidential quest at 61, Buhari will be 77 by the time he is rounding off his first term in 2019. He will do well to ensure that what he brings to the table will shut his attackers up for good.

    Besides, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, younger by 15 years, from whom he took over, made such a mess of governance that it was clear from the election that majority of Nigerians were fed up with him and the old order. That reinforces the  legacy question and increases Buhari’s leadership obligations.

    To be sure, his presidency faces grave odds. Oil upon which every other government ran, now counts for pretty little, a fact compounded by the weakening naira and vanishing foreign exchange. That leaves the president with a peculiarly tough job on his hands. How will he, for instance, manage an economy that has since been outsourced to other economies from which ordinary Nigerians draw everything, including toothpick and nearly their very lives. But as the president’s foes and friends have pointed out, that is why he is president. He has to find the answers somehow, whatever the questions and circumstances.

    There are other pitfalls deadlier than economic downturn or oil price crash, and because he is president, Buhari must steer clear of them. One of them is such an unnecessary clash as took place between the Chief of Army Staff Lt.-Gen Tukur Buratai’s men and Shia Muslim members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria in Zaria, Kaduna State, on December 12 which spilled into the following day. Some reports said over 300 members of the Shiite group were killed by soldiers.

    The clash, reconstructed by media reports, looked pretty much like what obtained in the ugly past when civilians often paid dearly for daring to cross the path of uniformed personnel, be they military or police. In the Kaduna incident, the Shiites reportedly blocked Gen Buratai’s convoy, preventing the uniformed riders from continuing with their journey, despite the army chief’s plea with the sect members. Some accounts said the sect members threatened the general, and could well have assassinated him, if not for providence.

    The Kaduna State government, on December 17, set up a judicial commission of inquiry into the incident to ascertain the facts. But neither the state’s intervention nor the army’s position that the Shiites were the aggressors, has managed to calm frayed nerves including those outside the shores of the land. Iran, a reported backer of the sect, has since taken sides, waiting impatiently for the government’s response, if not appropriate sanction of the soldiers. Some others have called for Buratai’s outright resignation. Buhari, in his first media chat, on Wednesday, said the Iranian president has telephoned him on the matter and that he was waiting for facts from the investigations before making any comments. Still, he criticised the sect for “creating a state within a state”, and its teenagers for stoning generals.

    This column is as concerned with the lives lost in that incident as with the brazen provocation, if that it turns out to be, by the sect members, and just as bothered by the possible consequences of such an unnecessary tragedy on the federal government. This is where the Buhari administration must make its position clear. It must establish the facts, take the path of justice, apply sanction where appropriate, and make it clear that its armed forces including the police must not first shoot to kill civilians before exhausting avenues of peaceful settlement, or of avoiding death.

    For Buratai, where a detour is necessary, he should take it. Where inviting the police is required, he should take that option, and where even a retreat will save civilian lives, he should cooly retreat. We must begin to tell ourselves and everyone else that life counts, even in the face of brazen provocation.

    The Shia sect in Kaduna founded by Ibrahim el-Zakzaky reportedly boasts some 3m countrywide membership which can put up a protest capable of distracting the president. Already, some of the members of the group have reportedly taken to the streets of Kano. It may well come to naught, but a president on a mission, as I believe Buhari is, should avoid such snares.

    Down the Southeastern flank, an agitated band of Biafra-type protesters has caused a few problems. Their protest which has coursed through a good part of the region and a slice of the Southsouth, started peacefully but grew bloody. There have been reports of some of their members being shot and killed by soldiers. Members of the Independent Peoples of Biafra or IPOB demand the unconditional release of their leader Nnamdi Kanu, and their own republic.

    Why do they need a Biafra republic now? What triggered the agitation? What has changed for the worse in the Southeast now that Buhari is in government? Are the youths being used?

    These questions deserve answers but to the answers must be added peaceful engagement and an unwavering persuasion against violence. The challenges of the region, especially of the infrastructural kind, should be addressed. The people not only deserve it; it is not too much to ask of a government that wants to succeed in its mission.

    In the Northeast, Boko Haram, founded in 2002, has caused maximum harm, killing some 17,000 and forcing over 2m from their homes since 2009 when it launched its bloodthirsty campaign. Buhari has said his administration has technically defeated the sect in line with the December deadline given to achieve the directive. There is much peace on that front now, and displaced persons may be gradually returning homewards. There is much to cheer but also a lot to be cautious about. Insurgency is not that easily crushed. It manifests in various guises and disguises, a fact that even the safest countries of the world know all too well.

    The Buhari administration will do well to keep that in mind and not exult or imagine that the Northeast or any other part of the country, for that matter, is now too safe to be attacked. That is a pitfall to avoid.

    The burden of bringing a crippled economy back on its feet is daunting enough without adding the battle against corruption. And now that the anti-graft campaign is cruising, the president must avoid every distraction. We need to have a country before we can celebrate the end of corruption. With unchecked pitfalls you might not have such a country.

  • Don’t despair on Buhari

    Two major camps have appeared since President Muhammadu Buhari showed up in the national space after his third attempt. One group is just as itchy and uncomfortable with his presidency as the other. Both have kicked and griped, quarreled and agonised over almost every step he has taken or not taken, and over just about every word that has fallen out of his mouth.

    For the one group, which is decidedly older than the other in the criticism business, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about their bellyaching. They are composed mainly of old PDP types or of beneficiaries of the party and its sympathisers. There is nothing anyone can, or should, do to cure their gloom and grievances. Not even the president can help in this regard. Even if he manages to reinvent the wheel it is unlikely to cut any ice with them. Should he silence the insurgents for good or create enough jobs to absorb the teeming idle youths or bring the naira at par with the British pounds, it will do no good.

    The other group sounds more coherent, nationalistic and progressive, even in criticism and gloom. In this camp you find people who believed in the Buhari project in the run-up to the presidential poll but are now scared stiff that their prospective hero was turning out a limp nonstarter.

    To be fair, the president, willy-nilly, unsettled this second set of critics. Deciding to give the presidency a fourth shot, winning his party’s presidential primary last December and going ahead to sweep the poll in late March, the critics reasoned it should not have taken Buhari a clear seven months to have a cabinet. Concerns are also being raised over his now frequent foreign trips, something for which a certain Owu chief was interminably criticised. Even Buhari’s immediate predecessor took a fair amount of unsparing assessment for his shuttles. More worrying to the patriotic critics is the fact that President Buhari has not quite given any hint of his revolutionising vision or transformational blueprint for the nation beyond his vigorous anti-graft and terrorism battle.

    The patriots in the second camp of critics seem to be losing heart because they may have thought a Buhari presidency would stimulate a national rebirth complete with not just a buoyant economy but also a country known for something everyone else can envy. They probably looked forward to Buhari giving the country a new image, and if he failed to lift it up and away from the uninspiring Third World, should, at the least, be seen to have sown such transformational seeds as will sprout in no distant time. Some have asked the question in different words why Nigeria under Buhari cannot begin to transit, as Singapore did under its hero Mr Lee Kuan Yew, from an unflattering partner with Malaysia to a buoyant independent nation which attracted the West and everyone else apart from giving its people something to hold on to.

    The concerns are genuine, yet probably a bit too much to ask. Buhari is not Mr Lee or anyone else, although the Singaporean leader also vigorously fought corruption as he is doing. In his other life some 31 years ago, Buhari gave enough hints as to what stuff he was made of, and it had little to do with a commanding new economic or such transformational national philosophical order. If I read him right, the president wants a country whose people are probably just as trim as he is, not physically, without the baggage of indiscipline and corruption, a country where you can do honest business and thrive thereby.

    Buhari’s war against graft and terror look more convincing than whatever took place in the past. Political opponents and their hangers-on could gripe interminably about what the president is not doing right but he seems to be on course in taking the fight to corruption, a monster which has reduced a prospective giant to an ineffectual Lilliput. Despite their abundant human and natural resources, what comes first to the foreigner’s mind upon meeting a Nigerian is that fellow from that thieving, crooked country. This hurts but it explains why Nigerians are screened and searched at other airports more than any other human who walks the earth.

    For some time now, former high office holders have been trying to explain their sides of a mind-boggling corruption story running into billions of naira. By the time the courts are through with them, some could be set free, having done nothing wrong. Still, the fact that these huge sums of money are being mentioned points to the fact that they are actually missing and may never be recovered. That speaks of nothing if not corruption. It speaks of a people who never quite fashioned out a way to keep the hands of the corrupt from the public cash. Better endowed analysts and commentators have documented the depressing perspectives of this corruption saga in a beleaguered country.

    But it won’t hurt to consider one more question. What if Buhari had lost the election and Jonathan had won? It is unlikely that those who now have appointments with the courts would be fretting.

    If Buhari fails to make a Singapore out of Nigeria it may well not be his worst fault. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo before him bungled the opportunity to make the country great, though that did not stop politicians and other office seekers from flocking to him from time to time. Unfortunate health challenges and eventual death robbed President Umaru Yar’Adua of the opportunity to present his own scorecard for analysis, though he brilliantly kept the Niger Delta insurgents quiet during his short spell. For whatever his presidency was worth Dr Jonathan left office as one under whose nose corruption was elevated and canonised as some form of service to the fatherland.

    Presidents should be kept on their toes, lest they forget why they are presidents. But to be consumed by despair does not help. Neither do ill-intended attacks.

    If the president fails in his first four years to make an appreciable dent on corruption, God forbid, it is certain to declare that the country may well be beyond redemption. And that will indeed be sufficient reason not only to despair but to sweep him out of power at the next ballot. Until then, cheer up. Let us take one day at a time.

  • Why America & Co. should find the girls quickly

    VIRTUALLY everything you expect in a tragedy is present in the Chibok abduction saga. There are genuine tears and heartfelt grief from Chibok town itself to the entire nation and right across the world’s cities and towns. There is also high drama, a good dose of politicking, even money-making, to say nothing of official clay-footedness, cluelessness and denial, among other distractions. The Americans have also stepped in, as have the world’s leading powers and they have one thing in mind: to find the over 200 Chibok schoolgirls, free them from their captors and bring them home. To do that, the United States and the world powers it leads must overlook the apparent distractions and do what they came to do, and do it as fast as possible. Everything depends on it. Since Boko Haram terrorists swooped on Chibok and took the schoolgirls away, each day has brought up everything but the girls. We have had issues with the actual number of the abductees, and then with whether anyone was indeed abducted in the first place. Some even declared matter-of-factly that there was no abduction else the identities of the victims including their pictures would since have been available. Politicians have fussed and fought over the Chibok girls. Activists have shouted their own contribution. Designers may also be making some cool cash judging from the thousands of black body gear and red headscarves sported by energetic protesters. The insurgents have also taunted the grieving nation and its leadership, saying in a video that the girls would be sold, and that there is a market where humans are articles of trade. That hurt because when the purported leader of the sect was mouthing off those words, Nigerians and everyone else were clueless as to the whereabouts of the girls and what had become of them. The sect’s position has now been modified with a swap deal offer: you free our detained fighters and we release your girls. It is unclear how the Jonathan administration will respond. Some say the government should accept the exchange proposal, some that it should not. The confusion is characteristic of the administration’s approach to the sect. In one breath President Goodluck Jonathan has threatened fire and brimstone, leaving no room for dialogue; in another he has cooled things down, reaching out with a right hand of peace. This ambivalence may have unsettled the U.S. and the international community considering that Jonathan vigorously opposed the Obama administration’s push to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organisation. Now, the U.S. and United Kingdom have accused the Nigerian government of shunning their initial help offer to join in the rescue effort. This is in addition to reports that the authorities were informed of the Chibok raid long before it happened. This is damaging to the Jonathan administration and deepens the grief of the missing girls’ parents and everybody else. Still, America and the world powers should help find the girls and bring them back alive. The Nigerian government may have had an unhealthy spell of footdragging in accepting foreign help, and Jonathan’s men and service chiefs may also have too combatively defended the government’s dodgy rescue efforts, but that is no reason why anyone who can help should not. In fact, there are reasons why America and company should help bring the girls home safely and quickly too. The President, who continues to assure that the girls will be found, has admitted that he and his security team have no idea where they are, even though they have combed the Sambissa forest where the insurgents are believed to be hiding. The Americans and Europeans should help a government and its people in need because they cannot help themselves. Economic interests should also spur the West into making a success of the rescue efforts. America and Europe know that much of their future lies in Africa, its untapped or under-tapped resources, and its people. Since Nigeria holds out the most tempting promise in this regard, the West has a duty not to allow the country sink. There are other reasons. One is that if our military hardware and personnel are incapable of sorting out the Chibok nightmare, the same cannot be said of the famous might of the West. This is an opportunity for Obama, Britain’s Cameron and the rest to prove their prowess. The drones, which Nigeria does not have, should bring back valuable information leading to where the girls are kept. Our emotions and well-being are at stake, but so is the integrity of the world powers. Another reason is the Chibok girls themselves. One month away from home and their familiar environments is enough to haunt them every second of the day. What about their parents? They have been going from Chibok to the Yobe State Government House watching the video released by Boko Haram and mass produced by the state government. It is an agonising, child-identification exercise, not a pleasure cinema pastime. Many of the abducted girls have been recognised by their parents, but that alone brings little comfort. What is the joy of identifying your child in the clutches of terrorists if the child is not brought home alive? That is the scenario the U.S. and the world powers must quickly do everything possible to avoid.

  • Before cattle have right of way

    THESE days of reckless slaughter, all manner of decisions including bizarre ones are being taken in the name of ending the bloodbath and ensuring peace. The federal government’s plan to map out grazing routes and reserves for herdsmen’s animals is one of such wacky decisions. One is not ignorant of the need to stem the blood-flow. As hinted in the opening line, the wanton killings can move a stone statue. Boko Haram fighters are running wild in the North, wasting thousands of lives and wrecking businesses and social infrastructure valued in millions of naira. They have sent families fleeing their homes and sources of livelihood. They have attacked military facilities, even claiming lives in those confrontations. Three states in the North are under emergency rule, yet insurgency seems to be increasing in frightening proportions, one of the latest instances being the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in Borno State. Any wonder why the Jonathan administration, among other things, contemplated talking things over with the terrorists? Lay down your arms and renounce violence, and we will forgive your atrocities, even rehabilitate you, the federal administration told the fighters. What was the answer? We will have none of your overtures, Boko Haram replied. If anything, we are the ones to forgive you if we choose to. Deadlock? Yes, deadlock, but the bloodletting has worryingly continued apace. Consider, too, the onslaught of the presumed herdsmen. They have run riot across the land. Of the 36 states in the federation only a tiny few have been spared their attacks. In Ogume in Ndokwa-East Local Government Area of Delta State, 10 youths were reported killed by invading herdsmen on April 6, 2013. The killings reportedly resulted from a disagreement with host community farmers. Nigerians are well acquainted with more of such invasions and killings in Plateau State. Although many attacks go unreported, everyone knows that herdsmen’s clashes with farmers are as much an issue in Taraba as they are in Nasarawa, and indeed in much of the federal land. In Benue, local residents have been reduced to refugees, huddled up in primary schools or open camps after their homes were attacked and their farms and produce wasted by invading herdsmen. Any wonder that federal authorities are about to establish tracts of land, from the North to the South, where cattle will literally have right of way. A panel has been reportedly set up to, as we say, work out the modalities of such dedicated grazing reserves. This is strange and unlikely to help in any way. It may well be argued that since the herdsmen are Nigerians, they reserve every right to graze their cattle everywhere within the confines of their country. This argument is cheap, too simplistic and even likely to create more problems than it may solve. Here are the reasons why. One, the days of innocence seem over in the country. To the shame of the populace, ethnic harmony has since been replaced by mutual suspicion and in some cases even hostility. In Jos where I lived for a decade and relished my time there, I hear the tin and temperate table land has since been divided along ethnic lines, destroying the peace and harmony we knew back in the 80s and early 90s. Back then, the sight of Fulani herdsmen in their wide-brimmed hats and trademark sticks across their shoulders was not frightening. They led their animals up and down the rocky hills with hardly any incident with farmers or locals. In all my time in the Tin City, I never saw a herdsman clutching an AK 47. That is why some of us ask, why do otherwise simple herdsmen now carry sophisticated weapons? Where do they get such arms from? Who is backing them? There is another reason why the dedicated grazing reserves will not solve any problem. There is nothing to convince anyone of the willingness of the authorities to genuinely resolve herdsmen’s squabbles with farmers? How many trouble makers have been tracked down and punished according to the law after such clashes? How many of those who killed the 10 Ogume youths have been arrested at least to explain why they did what they did? How many killers in those Plateau attacks have been apprehended? Has anyone been held by the police and the law for throwing Benue farmers out of their homes and farmlands and into misery? Why should anyone be hopeful that the grazing reserves will end all hostilities? Before cattle start to roam and graze freely in reserved land from North to South and from East to West, the federal government should consider these few points. Since some of the reserved land is likely to be someone’s source of livelihood, what compensation, if any, will be adequate for the farmer? Will it be fair to dedicate a Northern community’s fishing waters to, say, the Ijaw who mostly depend on water and fishing for sustenance? What about hunters from the Southwest and Southeast having the goahead to hunt game in designated parts of the North, and as frequently as they please? In the final analysis, it is even unhealthy, crude, backward, risky and costly to take animals across the length and breadth of this vast country in search of grazing fields. With the huge resources available to government, it is wiser, healthier and more economical to breed and graze cattle in the home states of their owners. What is required is developing and fertilizing the land for the animals. That way you solve more problems than you would create allowing the animals a free roam up and down the country.

  • A time to shiver

    THESE are days of savagery. In subtle, bizarre and brazen ways, this country of prodigiously endowed citizens and uncommon resources has been consistently revealing its dark and frightening underbelly. And each time this cruel brutality rears its head, it snaps at the very cord that holds our sanity and humanity. Perhaps the worst form of the savagery is the fact that precious little is being done by the authorities whose mandate it is to keep the country as sane and humane as possible. For some time now, to cite one example, we have been seeing pictures of dizzyingly long lines of young women, some of them in their early teens, nursing varying degrees of pregnancy. Are they married? No. Are they bearing love-children, those conceived by sometimes young girls in love? Not quite. The young women are in effect baby-making factories, bearing babies for the owners of squalid and unlawful facilities where they are quartered. We have seen this in the Southeast and also in the Southwest. Now, some have said that the so-called baby factories exist to fill such needs as providing childless couples with babies they can call their own. It is also said that some of the young women, that is, the real baby factories, are themselves beneficiaries of certain kind gestures, and that upon finding themselves pregnant but unwilling to bring the shame home, they resort to putting to bed quietly and peacefully at a “home” where some godly woman would help look after the unwanted child. But we also know that our country has long been unfortunately associated with ritual killings and the sale of body parts to rich folks or those who want to become rich very quickly. The fact that these baby factory reports are not isolated incidents in one part of the country, but are indeed widespread across the land, makes it imperative for state and federal governments to treat the matter with the urgency and thoroughness it deserves. Relevant agencies in the states and at the federal level should, among other things, determine who runs such facilities, the purpose to which they are put, how they recruit the young women, who patronises them, and especially what becomes of the babies born in those places. There is one other matter: allow the law deal with owners and operators of such facilities. So far, it is unclear how these issues raised are being tackled, whether or not operators of baby factories are in custody or are being, or have been, tried, set free or sentenced in accordance with the law. If there is no clear vision or concerted effort to stamp out these criminal and unwholesome practices, the whole country will steadily slide into one huge dump of bestiality, which will worsen by the day and keep drawing closer and closer to the doorposts. If the authorities cannot or will not halt this slide, their bona fides and claim to governance will forever be in doubt. Now, consider the evil forest of Ibadan where scores of people were rescued from their captors and where it has been reported that trade in human parts booms. This is strange. One latest report said the place may have been in operation for about 10 years. The same report said people work near the place. Will the police, who have been busy since the Soka forest was discovered, nab the brains behind its activities and appropriately bring them to book? One other thing: will the public be obliged with the facts of such justice? It is important for such corrective measures to be taken, otherwise the country and its people will, wrongly, be classified as one savage whole. Consider also the savagery of the Boko Haram sect, and why it is imperative for the Jonathan administration to work harder, and beyond working harder, avoid being perceived as insensitive. After the Nyanya Park blast in which 150 reportedly died, although police said 71, and health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu 72, respectively, it became clear that the Islamist sect was sworn to causing as much damage as possible, and that its fighters are not afraid to strike anywhere they please. Before that attack, the Federal Capital Territory had known some peace. It was in mid 2012 that they had last struck. In that attack, outside an upscale nightclub, there were no casualties. Before then, ThisDay office was hit, in April 2012, claiming some souls. It was in June and August 2011 that the sect carried out their most devastating attacks, the police headquarters and the United Nations buildings, in Abuja. Since then the security community strengthened their forces and managed to keep the insurgents at bay, until April 14. Now President Goodluck Jonathan’s security team must do what it did to keep the FCT calm before the Nyanya blast and not just in the nation’s capital but also across the North, especially its eastern flank. In that part of the country, if pupils are not murdered in their sleep, school girls are abducted. Thankfully, most of the 100 girls seized and taken away from their school in Chiboki, Borno State, have regained their freedom, but the search for and rescue of the remaining ones must continue in earnest. Some questions remain, though. Why do the insurgents seem to attack with such ease and at such frequency especially in the Northeast in spite of the presence of a battery of federal and state security teams? And why did the president fly to Kano the day after the Nyanya tragedy obviously for political reasons? These developments give you the shivers.

  • Of dead fish and Boko Haram

    There was death in Lagos waters, blood-flow in the Northeast. One second, the picture looked like that of millions of grains of rice left to dry in the sun. The next, it became clear that what lay in the sun was not rice but thousands of dead fish washed up on a Lagos coast. The picture led our paper on Tuesday, beneath which a caption simply said the fish were killed in a creek by fuel from a ruptured pipeline in Imoren village. Curiously, there was no report accompanying the award-winning aerial shot. And since then, nothing has been said about the violence to aquatic life and to nature. All that was reported elsewhere was that vandals breached a supply line of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in Imoren village near Navy Town. There were warnings by state emergency management officials to the locals whose community was awash with the gushing petrol. They were told not to strike a match, whether to cook or to smoke a cigarette, and that they should not also start their cars. Anything could happen, the officials warned, if there was as much as a spark anywhere. Many moved their entire families out to neighbouring communities. There is a crime there, isn’t there. There is also violence to humans and to flora and fauna. It is unclear if the authorities understand the horror of the Imoren oil spill or that they are doing anything about it beyond mop-up routines. Is there any credible and effective plan by the NNPC to protect the pipelines or catch the vandals and severely punish them? Is the health ministry concerned that Nigerians are seriously endangered any time fuel spills? What is the ministry doing to prevent any health compromises resulting from such spills? There may be no wildlife activists in these parts, which may explain why we have heard nothing on the dead fish. How long will it take the surviving fish in that poisoned water to regain its lost population? And, by the way, who can be sure that what exterminated the fish in a matter of hours will not have any adverse effects on humans not only in that community but also beyond, since water is essentially borderless? Has anyone pondered any possible harm on other forms of life beyond fish and humans? Is anyone worried that the spill occurred near Ijegun which has been hit by pipeline fire before, claiming scores of souls? Or that the weekend incident happened not too far from Navy Town which hosts perhaps the largest military armoury in West Africa? There are questions and more questions. No answers. In the Northeast, the Islamist militant sect Boko Haram is still running riot, spilling blood wherever it goes. Last May President Goodluck Jonathan imposed a state of emergency on three states in the Northeast but it is clear that the sect’s fighters do not care. At some point during the military onslaught, it was thought that the group was being pushed back. Now people are starting to revise that position. This week the sect’s fighters wasted enough lives for everyone to believe that they are neither ready to retreat, nor surrender. They even seem to be emboldened by the day in spite of the best assurances of President Jonathan or his security chiefs. The latest onslaught of the sect started shortly after newly-appointed Chief of Defence Staff Air Marshal Alex Badeh announced that the insurgency would end in April. There is a distressing pattern to the violence when you consider that the more the authorities denounce militancy and promise to crush it, the worse things get. Recall that back in 2007 when Mr Mike Okiro was appointed Inspector-General of Police, he threatened to bring down fire and brimstone on Niger Delta militants. He said the police were ready to contain them. He failed. Even the military did not succeed to crush the fighters, until the late President Umaru Yar’Adua wisely got the combatants to embrace amnesty in 2009, a strategy that his successor Jonathan adopted which substantially scaled back aggression in the region. Air Marshal Badeh has started off in the Okiro path, and like the retired police officer, he has also been rudely shocked by the gang he swore to put out of circulation. Shortly after Badeh issued his April deadline for the end of Boko Haram, the sect unleashed a bloodchilling wave of violence in Adamawa State. On Sunday, men bearing guns and explosive devices picked out a Catholic Church in Waga Chakawa village in session and set off bombs among the worshippers. The congregants who did not fall by the bombs were felled by bullets. But that was not enough. When they left the church, where some 22 reportedly died, the invaders began to burn houses, one after another. In four hours, according to reports, they terrorised the villagers, some of whom were taken hostage. On Monday, it was the turn of Kawuri, one of the largest towns in Konduga Local Government Area of Borno State. There, over 300 houses were reportedly set ablaze. Fifty-one residents were killed and many more wounded. One soldier died. In Bauchi State, on Thursday, 10 gunmen sacked a divisional police headquarters, leaving a policeman with bullet wounds in the leg, as they fled with a security van, which they abandoned later. Surely, that was a week of violence and of unanswered questions. It was violence to life in the waters, violence to life on land and violence to other lives. Can Jonathan and his security chiefs find a way to stop the blood-flow?

  • Politics versus governance

    In their raw, basic forms, politics and governance may offer something to lift your spirits. While the one basically entails influencing other people, the other essentially hints at the tangible and intangible contribution of a governing body to the welfare of the governed. At home, since they say both terms exist there, too, a father or mother may actually relish balancing the strengths of one child over the weaknesses of another, the boisterousness of one over the aloofness of the other, the nagging of a girl-child over the independence of the boy. Parents must work hard at this and succeed, not just for their own peace of mind but also the welfare of the children. At this level, politics and governance may be fun, even something to look forward to and acquit one well in. But at the level to which our politicians, sometimes also called people in government, have brought them, both terms have since become unwholesome, dirty and scary. Last year ended on such an inglorious note. And the new year is taking off on an even more troubling note as we count down to election year. Putting politics and governance side by side, I sometimes wonder which is better. Can you take one and leave out the other? They say both are inter-woven, but I ask, why do we have more politicking than governing? And why is the politicking getting more devious by the day, and governing less apparent as the clock ticks? The politics and governance of today are measured by the standards of our past heroes, and oftentimes modernday efforts fall far short of what used to be. Now, that is a tragedy. Society must progress or it retrogresses. There is no luxury of mid-point stagnation. This is because the world continues to revolve, and this is not merely a geographical fact. Ghana was once derided in this region, its people thought of merely as itinerant cloth-menders and the like. Those days are long gone. The table has since turned, and Nigerians are besieging Nkrumah country for education, for business and for a breath of fresh air. Japan once inspired little respect, thought of as that country of copycats. In time, the copycats began to come to their own, even exporting their produce, mostly electronics, to a once scornful world. The China apotheosis is much too loud and clear to warrant analysis in this space. Politics and governance in these parts fall far short of the country’s famous potential. To that extent, the world’s most populous black nation is yet to take off, and even its eventual takeoff is difficult to see. Last year ended with Nigeria’s leaders and their aides quarelling in, or over, open letters. The same year, Nigerians watched, bemused, as governors simply could not choose any of them to chair their common forum. So what did they do? They promptly split in two, with Rivers State Governor Chibuike Amaechi presiding over the majority half, and Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang settling into the smaller part. But as if that was not troubling enough, the Presidency fancied cosying up to the Jonah half, rather than the Amaechi camp, neither mending the rift nor minding the reproach it brought to the entire country and its people. Beyond party politics, there should be standards below which no society should fall. Such divisions detract and distract. They rob a country’s leaders of focus, of their debt of governance to the people. I mentioned a while ago that our national politics and governance are gauged by the standards of past leaders. The names of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello and some others are invoked by present-day politicians partly to lead us to believe that today’s men and women have not forgotten yesterday’s heroes, and partly to further claim that the new players are keeping pace with Nigeria’s genuine leaders of yore. This mindset is disgusting, in the least. First, by this token, present-day politicians and office holders create the impression that they are still under the shadows of their predecessors. This is a multiple tragedy. A child is expected to achieve more than the parents, not tell the world that the shoes of his father is too big to be filled. Our past leaders were great, but they were nowhere perfect, nor did they achieve even half of what they should have achieved. Awolowo blessed the Southwest with free education. Why shouldn’t the crop of new leaders in the region better his effort by significantly raising the quality of learning? Awo fought poverty with agriculture. Have we checked to see how many are poor and unemployed in the Southwest? Michael Opara left unforgettable infrastructure in the Southeast, in places far removed from the state capitals of today. But what is the profile of growth in the region now? How does the Igbo man fare today? The Sardauna unified the North but how united is the region after his departure. Now, if we today’s leaders cannot match yesterday’s heroes, what hope is there of even bettering past standards? The fundamentals of politics and governance are missing in this country.

  • Health Minister, revolution and leadership

    Health Minister, revolution and leadership

    On Monday, in Abuja, Health Minister Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu cut a miserable picture. He sounded frustrated, not just with himself but also with the entire country and the way things seem to be going. He called for a revolution.

    Chukwu was speaking at the inauguration of councils and boards of health regulatory bodies, but as he seemed to contemplate what lay ahead of the new council and board members in the sector, he could not help but ponder the fact that the ministry of which he is chief is almost in tatters. Less than two months ago, doctors called off an industrial action which lasted over two months. As the new boards and councils were being inaugurated, three fresh threats of strike were issued by professionals in the sector and in fact lay on the minister’s table. Chukwu sounded overwhelmed and unhappy.

    The health sector is losing respect, he growled, before declaring that the sector has indeed lost respect. Only a revolution would salvage the situation, he concluded, managing, for effects, to throw in the ongoing university teachers’ strike.

    The ‘r’ word is not new in these parts. Lots of people mouth it, saying it is what the country needs to find its feet again in almost all aspects of its existence, not least integrity.

    So why does Chukwu’s revolution call matter? It is because leaders like him rarely call for a revolution, which is why the idea of sovereign national conference, for instance, irritates Nigeria’s presidents. It is also because Chukwu is hired and paid very handsomely to fix the problems which now seem to choke him.

    I believe that, bad as things may be in the country, there is nothing to suggest Nigeria’s challenges are insurmountable. I have made this point fairly frequently, convinced that the reason things seem to work in other places, and do not here, is largely because of leadership failure. My position has always been that we often fail to plan, and when we do, fail to enforce the rules. There are potential thieves everywhere, but they thrive where they are allowed to, where they are given a slap on the wrist or completely ignored.

    Chukwu wondered why government employees always fought with their employers even though government pays “twice” what the private sector pays. When he graduated as a doctor, he said, “the private sector was paying two to four times what we earned in government.”

    The minister conveniently glossed over the dwindling standards, choking existential challenges, unfriendly condition of service, incompetence of government officials, unflattering atmosphere in today’s workplace and unfulfilled promises, among other factors. Why are his colleagues leaving the country in droves? Chukwu has demonstrated that when leaders are bereft of ideas, they shift the blame. He has also joined government officials who believe that governing this country is tougher than rocket science.

    Indeed, the Chukwu revolution call inspired a flashback to a piece I wrote previously. The article entitled “Is Nigeria too difficult to govern?” is now reprinted:

    “Our leaders do not like to admit it, but it is clear all the same. They are finding the business of running this country too tough. You can tell from what they say, and how they say it. You can glean it from even what they fail to say. But above all, we can tell from the body of evidence that stares us in the face.

    Let’s start from the most basic of things. The impossible roads have humbled everybody including the leaders; the roads have had the better of our cars and our motorcycles. The loss of life and property on them leaves everyone in torment. And so does the unremitting destruction brought on vehicles. Perhaps, the only ones smiling in this are the auto mechanics whose industry has since been elevated to a vibrant money-making enterprise, no longer a fringe job for school dropouts. The very fact that their workshops are crammed with broken-down or badly battered vehicles leaves them in good cash and better spirits. Things have been looking up for Nigerian mechanics.

    We have also found it impossible to convert our plentiful water into usable household commodity. And this has thrown up all manner of water industrialists and merchants, wholesome and unscrupulous, all extracting handsome profits from the poor consumer.

    In the same way, generating and distributing electric power has become a mystery no one can crack. And as in the case of water, a whole new alternative but very expensive power industry has emerged. Almost every home, no matter how small or economically challenged, has a power generator whose maintenance and running costs far outstrip the meager resources of the breadwinners.

    Security of life is an eternal challenge. Increasing population and joblessness seem to be breeding more outlaws than the police can handle. But beyond that, even the high turnover of the police leadership and the circumstances surrounding their retirement do little to allay our worst security concerns. Almost every Inspector-General of Police leaves office in a cloud of one scandal or another. It is unclear yet how Mr Hafis Ringim, the incumbent, will ride the storm gathering over him since the terrorist attack on the police headquarters penultimate week.

    Now consider the anguish of Nigerians over kerosene and petrol. In the days of President Olusegun Obasanjo, no effort was spared in trying to ram fuel subsidy removal down Nigerians’ throats. At every opportunity, the President’s foot soldiers reeled out statistics and charts to convince Nigerians that sustaining the subsidy was inimical to the country’s resources. They also went on to tempt us with the idea that the billions of naira that would be saved from the subsidy removal would be used to resuscitate our comatose infrastructure. Obasanjo’s men often fell into a chant. Hospitals would be built or rebuilt, they sang. Drugs would be available in the hospitals. The insufferable roads would be fixed.

    Without shame they told us why ought to pay more for what God gives freely and in such awesome abundance. Even in the pre-Obasanjo era, the argument has been running. They used to ask in the late 80s why a bottle of soft drink should cost more than a litre of petrol. We have been paying more ever since, and still suffering.

    The latest round of suffering is experienced right from the kitchen to the filling station. Cooking stoves empty, lamps dry, women and children, and sometimes men, have mounted a sustained search for kerosene. Failing to find it in the neighbourhood where it has gone for anything between N250 a litre and 600 for two and a half, the searchers have often ended up at filling stations. There, a waiting queue curls round the facility or even outside it, cutting a picture comparable only to fuel lines and traffic gridlocks. A man narrated how he went from one filling station to another, keg in hand, searching for precious kerosene. His search covered a few miles before he located the cooking fuel, he told me. Then he walked all the way back. When these terrible things happen, it is always the poor that suffer.

    Why has it been impossible to build just one refinery in the country, or make the existing ones work? Perhaps, there is no end to the incongruities of Nigeria. Otherwise, why should a country be so blessed with such resources and yet remain so cursed and afflicted? Why should so much money be sunk into so many projects (electricity, roads, refineries, etc) and yet nothing works? What is the logic or wisdom of extracting crude with foreign expertise, only to export it for refinement and then import it into the country?

    Perhaps, running the country is truly tougher than some of us imagine.”

    •First published on June 26, 2011