The Nation Newspaper

Category: UnderTow

Human Rights Commission decries trivialisation of life

When international human rights organisations and local civil society groups conclude that life is cheap in Nigeria, they are not guilty of exaggeration. With a Human Development Index of 0.532 and a burdensome population of over 200 million people, Nigeria is ranked among the worst countries to live in, and is ranked exceedingly low in Human Capital Index. The cheapness of life, far worse than even poverty, has made living in Nigeria a veritable nightmare. But that cheapness is compounded by governments that can’t tell the difference between good and evil and are therefore unwilling to take the trouble to mend their brutal ways on the one hand, and a people whose diverse and puerile perspectives make them vulnerable to and even complicit in their own brutalisation on the other hand.

Last Thursday, to the country’s relief, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) surprisingly described the continuing killing of Shiite members by the police as tantamount to making life worthless in Nigeria. The police, like the federal government, have become punitive, excessive, and brutal. In their unending confrontations with Shiite members, particularly the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), the police have not sought any civilised means of riot control. Indeed, to tackle every protest, the police simply wield and use assault rifles, relying less and less on riot gears, truncheons and tear gas. Inevitably, in every protest, the argument is not about whether any protester was killed but how many were killed.

Shiites in Nigeria marked their Ashura procession on Tuesday. Days before the procession, the police had warned leaders of the sect that marches were forbidden, and that if the Shiites went ahead to dare the police, they would get their comeuppance. Said the police spokesman, Frank Mba, in response to a question on what the police would do if Shiites insisted on conducting their procession: “What do you want me to say? Let them (Shiites) carry out their procession first, then you would see what the police would do.” The answer was menacing. It was not clear whether the police realised the question was a leading one, the kind of question that tried to probe whether the police and the federal government which banned the IMN in July realised the anomaly, not to say the short-sightedness, of banning an entire religious organisation.

Though the government later clarified that the Shiite ban was intended only for the IMN, and not the entire Shiite body, they were too muddled up in their thinking to explain how they would be able to differentiate the IMN members, who remain Shiites, from the entire Shia organisation when the sect kick-starts the procession. It turned out, however, that differentiating the Shiites was a luxury the government and its increasingly flagrant police were uninterested in making. To the government, both the IMN and Shiites are coterminous. Indeed, for years, despite a Court of Appeal ruling that nullified the police’s reactionary perception of processions and protests, the police have adamantly stuck to approaching every protest as both unauthorised and a threat to the government. The provisions of the constitution mean nothing.

Thus when the Shiites, true to their oath, organised their Ashura procession on Tuesday, the government, which had issued threats and equated the Shiites with the IMN, deployed force against the sect. Though the police claimed no one was killed, Shiite spokesmen insisted some 15 of their members were mowed down in cold blood. It was in the context of these alleged killings that the Human Rights Commission deplored the police approach to managing street protests, concluding that life had become inconsequential. Said the Executive Secretary of NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, through a statement signed by the agency’s spokesman, Lambert Oparah, “These acts of extra-judicial killing by the police have made human life inconsequential in Nigeria.”

Mr Ojukwu is not guilty of hyperbole. By every yardstick, human life has become meaningless in Nigeria. This meaninglessness of life did not, however, begin with this government; it has been a long-running and long-standing curse, regardless of whether it was during military rule or in a democracy. Under the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, for instance, whole communities were razed down by troops under the pretext of smoking out murderers and other criminals. Zaki Biam in Benue State and Odi in Bayelsa State were sacked by troops purporting to look for criminals who murdered some soldiers. Not only was the government’s response unconstitutional, it was also disproportionate. Sadly, national lawmakers and the public were indifferent to the killings and connived at the bloodletting, both arguing that the killing of soldiers was the ultimate defiance of authority which must never be condoned. How the massacre of innocent women, children and the aged amounted to a lawful response seemed to have escaped the public. Nor could anyone prove that sacking whole communities amounted to a sensible deterrent.

Since the police have embraced the strong-arm tactics of bloodily repressing protests without any censure from the government or the undiscerning public, the gory practice has continued apace. It surprised no one that a few days ago, the police simply came out with guns blazing to battle students of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), killing two students in the process. They claimed no one was shot dead, but students and eyewitnesses argued that the police shot directly at the protesting students. Life indeed remains inconsequential in Nigeria, with many families losing their children and loved ones to needless and brutal police shootings. The brutality continues because the public and their lawmakers approve the tragedy.

Indeed, the story of Nigeria now is appropriately titled For Whom the Bell Tolls. Fleeing suspects are shot at indiscriminately, with the bullet sometimes hitting innocent passers-by. Law enforcement agents, government officials, magistrates, some of them acting independently, herd innocent people and suspects into overcrowded detention facilities and jails. Unquestioning judges also liberally interpret the laws of the land to help paranoid governments at state and federal levels put citizens needlessly in jail, often for periods exceeding what their alleged crimes indicate in the statutes. It is, therefore, not surprising that the wasting of lives has continued. The conspiracy by the government, an uncritical public, a conniving judiciary, an opaque criminal justice system, unprofessional and homicidal law enforcement agencies, and an unresponsive legislature have all combined to render Nigeria poor, unlivable, inefficient and violent.

The Human Rights Commission’s unequivocal and censorious statement describing life in Nigeria as inconsequential, though not sufficient to trigger massive change, will hopefully stir the conscience of the country and instigate the people and their lawmakers into courageously attempting to change the climate of fear and repression that has hobbled the development and modernisation of the country. These needless killings must stop. Surely the government has not lost the capacity to feel the pains of grieving families who are burying their loved ones, some of them in their youth, simply because the law enforcement agencies can’t develop a modern crime fighting and crowd management tactics to tackle police deviants and angry citizens. Enough of the bloodletting

September 14, 2019
Gov Wike’s style and candour stoke controversy

Religion and a poor economy, acting as misshapen anvil and hammer, have become the unlikely forces between which Nigeria is being beaten into submission. No event fittingly illustrates this point more than the brouhaha over the supposed demolition of a mosque in the Trans-Amadi Area of Rivers State by the Nyesom Wike government on August 20, 2019. Former Kano State governor, Ibrahim Shekarau, was among the first to take umbrage on behalf of Muslims everywhere by condemning the alleged demolition. A little later, Abdulahi Ganduje, governor of Kano State, one of the 12 northern states practicing Sharia Law, also followed suit by denouncing Mr Wike for the audacious demolition. Despite reassurances and refutations, the controversy over the alleged demolition is yet to die down. The Rivers governor is being painted as intolerant and anti-Islam.

The context for this controversy was probably set by the often spontaneous Mr Wike himself when he declared during a religious crusade organised by the Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Church on June 23, 2019 that Rivers State saw itself as a Christian state. Said Mr Wike during the crusade, prologuing his statement on the last governorship elections: “We saw forces, but the greater force, God Almighty, came. With this crusade, Rivers State will be abundantly blessed. I repeat once again without apologies, Rivers State is a Christian State. That is why nobody can touch us. When it mattered most, the Christian community prayed and God heard your prayers. I will continue to support the activities of all churches. This Government will always partner with the churches , whatever the programme they are engaged in. I urge the church to continue to pray. Each time you pray, put us in your prayers…On March 9 2019 light prevailed over darkness. God showed himself and he is in charge. But for God, I wouldn’t have been here addressing the Christian faithful. The enemies came to Rivers State to take over the state and stop the will of the people. But God said no and the will of the people prevailed.“

It is not clear how popular Mr Wike’s view on the Christian identity of Rivers is. But writing shortly after the governor’s statement had begun to generate controversy and abuse from a number of quarters, including from a few Muslim communities, Annkio Briggs, a human rights activist based in Port Harcourt, declared that Rivers could not be blackmailed into repudiating its Christian identity at a time when some northern states had become unapologetic about their open embrace of Islam. The activist declared: “Why are Christians expected to be politically correct when it concerns their choice of religion? Gov Wike is a Christian, yet it has not stopped him from having Muslim friends amongst politicians, and it has not stopped him from according the highest regard and respect to Emirs and Muslim religious leaders. Gov. Wike is a Christian and Rivers state is a Christian state, yet these facts have not stopped him from inviting his Muslim friends to Rivers state on state functions or for other reasons. Rivers state is one highly influential state amongst the 36 states in Nigeria and we will not apologise to anyone, religion, political party or socio-cultural groups for our choice of religion, our love, respect and commitment to our religion. We will not tolerate anyone to blackmail, threaten and terrorise Rivers state indigenous peoples, government or governor for our choice of faith or upholding our laws in our state.”

If Annkio Briggs’ statement was prompted by the controversy over the alleged Mosque demolition, she did not indicate it in her article from which the above quotation was taken. Indeed, she seems more concerned about Rivers State’s Christian identity than anything else, and angered by what she hinted was a clumsy attempt by some politicians and states to advance the impression that one religion was superior to another and deserving of open support regardless of whatever anyone thinks or felt. If thinking politicians led the country sensibly, they would regard the controversy over the alleged demolition as an indication of a portentous future, a future that should demand the most logical and acceptable definition of secularity. But as is usual, few leaders are paying the kind of solemn and responsible attention to the brewing crisis as urgently demanded by the occasion.

Stung by allegations of intolerance over the alleged August 20 Mosque demolition, to which a number of northern critics and serving and former governors had reacted peevishly and threatened fire and litigation, Mr Wike denounced the blackmail and refuted the allegations. What was demolished, as proved by photographs, he said during a tour of the site with journalists, was a foundation laid by some errant builders on government land. A building foundation, the governor deadpanned, could not amount to a Mosque, even if it was meant to be one. It also turned out that the land in question had been unsuccessfully litigated by some landowners who lost the case to the state government. It was, therefore, not a question of Mosque demolition, government supporters said, seeing that only a foundation was erected on the plot, but only the demolition of an unapproved building that showed no indication it belonged to any religious organisation.

The problem, however, is not just whether a misunderstanding arose from the said demolition, or the characteristic sourness with which the controversy was conducted, or even the self-righteousness displayed by both Mallam Shekarau and Dr Ganduje whose implementation of their state laws had deeply injured the concept of federalism and secularism, but the obvious indication of a troubled Nigerian unity and uncertain future, a future so deeply troubled that it has become tentative. Twelve northern states had by their imposition of Sharia Law questioned the reliability of the constitutional principle of secularism; it was thus only a question of time, as more incidents challenged the unity of the country and underscored the absence of a national identity, before some southern states conversely began to declare and categorise themselves in terms that were clearly dissonant with the constitution. As Annkio Briggs asserted, and as Mr Wike indicated during the Charismatic Church crusade of June 23, it was important for Rivers to openly declare its affiliations just as some states in the North had done.

The country lost the opportunity to affirm its secularity in the opening years of the Fourth Republic when Zamfara under the sybaritic former governor Ahmed Sani veered constitutionally off course in the obtuse name of federalism. Now the Zamfara declaration has become the new normal, a situation that is destined with time to course through some other states and foul the trust and amity that had gingerly existed among Nigerians for decades. That amity will be sorely tested in the coming years; and the reason will be because Nigeria’s political leaders lack the courage and common sense to do what is right, to recognise the virtue and usefulness of secularism, and to put religion in its place.

It must agitate Nigerians that Kano State, which for instance denounces alcoholic drinks as unacceptable, and has taken extra steps to forcefully banish such beverages from the state, can in the same breath and in a perverted interpretation of the laws of the land, share in the VAT proceeds that come from alcoholic drinks. If federalism sanctions the demolition of secularism or enthrones its narrow definition, it ought sensibly to sanction the full retention of VAT proceeds by states that generate it, in this instance by states that sanction the production and sales of alcoholic beverages. Instead, many states have taken the appalling and lazy culture of centrally sharing revenue in Abuja on a monthly basis as a licence for making bad laws and promoting and excusing poor governance. Should Nigeria wake up sometime in the future from its deep sleep, as indeed it will do sooner than later, and compel states to be fully accountable to their people and to generate their own revenue, those states will become less impulsive and irrational in promoting anti-developmental causes, making useless laws, advocating and embracing costly political structures, and enunciating dismal and counterproductive policies.

Despite all this, Mr Wike was characteristically impulsive and unwise to openly declare Rivers State a Christian state. The Sharia states, which he contradistinctively tried to emulate, made no such open declarations. They simply made laws that showed their sectarian predilections, and ruled with uncanny disdain for the principle of secularism. Mr Wike was at liberty, together with the state legislature, to tilt government programmes and policies anywhere they wish without necessarily making open declarations. Had they done these and given and withheld approvals in line with the philosophical and religious principles by which they wish to govern their state, it is unlikely he would have drawn the flak that now seems greatly discomfiting to him.

September 7, 2019
Dramatising and politicising presidency’s reportorial lines

AT the close of a two-day retreat organised for ministers, and at their inauguration a day later, President Muhammadu Buhari told them they must go through the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, to schedule meetings with the president, and through the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) in matters relating to the Federal Executive Council (FEC). It’s a quaint dichotomy. But the directive, which is merely a restatement of the practice during the president’s first term, triggered an uproar that lasted many days. The president had said: “In terms of coordination, kindly ensure that all submissions for my attention or meeting requests be channelled through the Chief of Staff (CoS), while all Federal Executive Council matters be coordinated through the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.” Repeating the directive a day after he first enunciated it was probably an indication that the president was completely unfazed by public remonstrances.

If the president’s directive indicated no deviation from the practice in his first term, public uproar may in fact be a consequence of their experiences under Mr Kyari whom many regard, rightly or wrongly, as overbearing or paralysingly slow. Indeed, to a significant number of commentators, the CoS, rather than inspire fluidity in the presidency, has created and reinforced gridlock. The president himself did not quarrel with the conclusion that he was slow in his first term, only that the slowness was in fact a sign of his respect for deliberateness. Could the presidency run much faster than it has done, and far more efficiently? Yes, said critics. But that is unlikely to ever happen, they argue, as long as Mr Kyari sieves the president’s actions and policies through his unhurried idiosyncratic administrative style. This may account for the frustration voiced by the public, especially critics impatient with the president’s dawdling style.

But despite the president’s intransigence on how he wants his administration organised, the uproar over his directive finally elicited some trite explanations by his staff, principally by one of his spokesmen, Garba Shehu. Said Mr Shehu: “In the traditional presidential system, it is a primary function of a Chief of Staff, which may vary according to the needs and desires of each President, to supervise key State House Staff, control access to the office and the person of the President, manage communications and information flow and this includes that which binds the relationship with the two other arms of government. During the President’s first term those were the responsibilities of the Chief of Staff, and they remain the same responsibilities today. There is no change.”

He then added: “When President Buhari explained to ministers that they would be expected to communicate with him and arrange scheduling to meet with him primarily via the Chief of Staff, he did so as many of the Buhari’s ministerial appointments are new and cannot therefore be expected to know how matters of liaising with the President operate. This is to stress that access to the President is open to ministers. It is not true that this is denied them in the Second Term. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) on the other hand is responsible for ensuring the effective coordination and monitoring of the implementation of government policies and programmes. All cabinet matters must go through him.”

The criticism against the president’s excessive reliance on Mr Kyari’s sieving function is a total misreading of both the president and the presidential system of government. It is true that the president is at liberty to modify Nigeria’s borrowed American model, but he can legally choose to stick to it. In this case, and in some significant ways, he has largely adhered to that borrowed model. What the public may not be aware of is that while the reigning style in the presidency shows no significant deviation from the American system, not to talk of from the practice in his first term, it nonetheless masks a greater and more disturbing habit of abdicating virtually everything in the presidency to the CoS. It is hard to quarrel with the president’s style, as stultifying as it may seem, but it is less hard to revile it.

Most critics and opposition parties which joined issues with the president over his directive accused the president of abdicating his office to an unelected official, and of displaying insensitivity to the wailings of the public. Nothing will come out of their remonstration. In his first term, the president was similarly accused of abdication. Not only did he ignore the accusations, he mocked his critics with his characteristic inflexibility. It was clear that his presidency was not running as smoothly and efficiently as the country demanded, but there was no moving or stampeding him. After all, in his first term, the accusations came to nothing. The public should have learnt their lessons. And as the president has indicated regarding how the presidency would operate in his second term, it is useless criticising him or pining for a change of style. There will be no change, not even the slightest hint of modification.

By criticising the president, it is clear that the opposition and other critics fail to understand that what is at play is far more fundamental and consequential than they imagine. Policy, administrative acumen, ideology, and philosophy, among other great virtues, are not the president’s forte. It takes someone adequately equipped with these virtues to take charge of his administration, especially in a complex and heterogeneous society. Public expectation may not be misplaced; but they are dealing with a president who lacks surefootedness in modern ideas, especially their complicated interplay, and great administrative and management styles. Coupled with his lethargy, which is probably induced by his constant health challenges, the president has little choice but to cede control to someone else in the complex and challenging issues of modern governance.

If the president is aware of the political paradox of ceding control of his administration to unelected officials, he has not indicated it, and may never indicate it. He will make occasional interventions, and now and again even overrule the CoS and presidency officials, but he will be incapable of doing anything revolutionary in terms of reshuffling staff and remoulding policies whose import escape him and his staff. His ideology will remain obfuscatory, given the manner he has trapped himself in the numbing obscurantism that plagues African governments; and so it will be asking for the impossible to expect the kind of initiatives and changes he and his party have so elegantly but futilely voiced and propagandised in the past few years.

President Buhari is no policy or ideology buff. He will continue to rely on Mr Kyari, egged on of course by the fact that he is doing nothing to offend both the spirit and letter of the constitution as well as the presidential system. The president’s shortcomings would not have been so exposed had Mr Kyari himself displayed the energy needed for the times and demonstrated the alacrity indispensable for a smooth and efficient running of the presidency.

As it is, the country and grieving critics will have to manage both the president and his CoS for the next four years. Mercifully, despite their harshest policies and obtruding style, the Buhari administration will become less and less relevant after the next two years. The country will look forward to another change, either of persons or of political party. And despite his projection of tough measures sometimes, and not being a politician and nationalist of the first rank, the president is unlikely to deeply and substantially affect the direction of politics expected shortly before the end of or after his tenure. In addition, for a government already out of its depth, the stasis that will be created as a result of the president’s excessive formalisation of power and office will make many ministers stand longer in the queue, bite their tongues in order not to create offence, genuflect before the new potentates, or resign to frustration.

But for now, and regardless of whatever anyone thinks, the president will reign somnolent, and his CoS will wield unquantifiable influence over the affairs of the country, even sometimes serving as alternate president. If any revolutionary change is to occur in governance, it will be purely serendipitous rather than by design, or an act of God. However, these fail-safes seldom happen in real life. So, instead of railing against Mr Kyari or abusing the president, thus attracting the labels of terrorists and treasonable felons that the government casually throws at critics, the public should calmly weather the paralysing pace of governance and endure the lack of real or substantial change in policy, including the reshuffling of administration and security chiefs.

August 31, 2019
Buhari and the population explosion ogre

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has finally spoken emphatically on the subject of population explosion which so many commentators have warned could upend the country or even sound its death knell. His emphatic statement may be coming a little late, but Nigerians will hope that rather than just describe it as a frightening issue, it would spur him to enunciate concrete ideas about the problem and then go ahead to tackle it in a manner that will make the country grateful to him for a very long time. The president spoke on the issue during a two-day retreat for ministers-designate in Abuja early in the week. According to him, “By average estimates, our population is close to 200 million today. By 2050, UN (United Nations) estimates show that Nigeria will be third globally, behind only India and China with a projected population of 411 million. This is a frightening prospect but only if we sit idly by and expect handouts from so-called development partners. The solution to our problems lies within us.”

If he intends to present policy initiatives to tackle the danger, he did not mention it in his speech. Perhaps the occasion was inappropriate for such a delicate and unusual subject. However, it is hoped that soon, unlike in his first term when the issue received no significant mention or consideration, he will give full attention to a matter that threatens to unravel the country. During the same retreat, he had spoken about three other issues that arrested his attention before he assumed the presidency, to wit, security, economy and corruption, and indicated just how far his government went in handling them. He had said: “None but the most partisan will dispute that we have made headway in all three areas. First, we have rolled back the frontiers of terrorism; we are actively addressing other challenges such as kidnappings, farmer-herder violence, improving the safety of our roads, railways, air traffic and fire control capacities. Second, we are steadily turning the economy round through investment in agriculture and manufacturing, shoring up our foreign reserves, curbing inflation and improving the country’s infrastructure. Third, we have recovered hundreds of billions of stolen assets and are actively pursuing control measures to tackle leakages in public resources. We will not let up in fighting corruption.”

If the president could gloat over his achievements, especially concerning the three main objectives he set for himself at the inception of his first term, surely he would want to make future similar boasts regarding an issue he has rightly described as frightening, an issue that requires the most intensive and rigorous effort to control or retune into a productive and positive asset. He did not make reference to statistical facts, but he was right to suggest that something must be done urgently about the problem. Indeed, the facts and figures surrounding the problem are truly frightening. With a population growth rate hovering around 2.6 percent, a little down from about 3.5 percent some years earlier, Nigeria has become a tinderbox mainly on account of climatic and desertification challenges, poor economic management and unstable financial policies, and unimaginative political and governmental structures that produced a unitary system and constrain productivity.

Nigeria’s population figure is believed to be about 200 million, and given the unmanageable growth rate with which it is expanding, is calculated to double every 22 years. Compounding the crisis is the rather ironic improvement in life expectancy to about 51 years at birth in 2015. Some unconfirmed estimates even put it at about 60 years in 2018. Economic growth has either been slow, less than two percent, or sometimes even managing to slip into recession, such as the country witnessed a few years ago shortly after careless economic policies caused a needless downturn. With economic growth trailing badly behind rapid population growth, Nigeria, which is the seventh most populous country in the world and the most populous in Africa, appears to be heading for disaster. In all this, over the decades, and lured by insanely cheap money, the government has been spectacularly remiss in its duties. Poor financial management policies, corruption, and profligacy have all combined to expose the country to a precarious future.

President Buhari has drawn attention to what is probably the most pressing issue the country must contend with in the coming years. But beyond drawing attention to it, it is not certain that much else will be done to arrest the drift or mitigate the effects of the looming crisis. The population catastrophe he alludes to has been brewing for years. Neither the president in his first term nor any of his predecessors had done anything significant about it. They seemed helpless, or were uninterested in grappling with a nuisance they felt was sensitive and incurable. President Buhari says it is a frightening problem. That is an understatement. No one is sure that Nigeria has the luxury of a few more years to put a lid on the problem, as the president seems to imply. The crisis is urgent, if it is not already too late. Such an urgent crisis requires very drastic solutions, solutions that call on leaders to think outside the box and to reflect on novel panaceas or embrace structured and unorthodox ideas.

If disaster is to be staved off, the government must take a very hard look at its financial management orthodoxies. This goes beyond fighting corruption or catching a few thieves. The government must strike at the root of the problems that engender inefficiency. The first step is to restructure the country away from huge spending on needless items such as bloated bureaucracies and bogus political institutions. Parliamentary spending has become uncontrollable partly because the parliament is unwieldy and costly, and partly because the country’s political structure itself commits everyone to a centralised rather than a federal system. In addition, the configurations of states is more than the country needs or can sustain, and bureaucracies are unwisely and needlessly replicated. Funds that should be allocated to capital and infrastructural needs are senselessly spent on recurrent and unproductive needs. In fact most states are not viable and have become a national and unbearable burden.

But in addition to tightening Nigeria’s fiscal supports and restructuring the polity, it is also urgent for the government to jettison its parochial predilections and seek out policies and programmes that would not in turn produce future crises. Land and grazing policies, for instance, must reflect modernisation trends, away from backward, ancient, crisis-ridden and ethnic-inspired policies. Climate change is real and unrelenting. The government must find practicable and lasting solutions to desertification. Israel did it; others have done it; Nigeria can also do it. Instead of conniving at ethnic-inspired seizure of lands under the aegis of grazing policies, the government must face the reality of the moment and think of the future. But can they?

Population growth cannot be arrested overnight, especially with the subtle hints by some analysts that larger population figures are an electoral asset. After all, the initial failure of the polio immunisation programme in some parts of Nigeria was attributed to suspicion that the programme was designed to reduce or limit population increases in certain states. But in the long run, something major must be done to check the crippling expansion of population growth and to take more and better cognisance of economic growth policies. Checking population expansion must also go hand-in-hand with other social, political and economic policies to ensure sound financial management, sensible and efficient bureaucracies, and a far better political cum economic structure designed to take care of the needs of the future. What is not tenable is to make noise over the issue, label it as frightening, and end up doing nothing about it. If nothing significant is done now, the country must prepare for apocalypse.

August 24, 2019
Shiites: damned if they do, and damned if they don’t

AFTER a few incidents of killings inspired by the federal government against members and leaders of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), from Zaria in Kaduna State to Abuja, the federal capital city, and with obviously no end in sight given the obstinacy of the Shiites and the intransigence of the government, the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has, it seems, finally found a clever and judicious way out of the impasse. It has consented to the application by the IMN leader, Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat, to be granted leave to undertake a medical trip to India for treatment for their ‘war’ wounds. It is not clear why they had not been treated before now, other than that IMN lawyers’ had insisted that Nigeria lacked the equipment and personnel to handle the grave injuries suffered by Sheikh El-Zakzaky and his wife.

Seizing upon the small window of calm occasioned by the ban placed on the IMN, not to say the court ruling in Kaduna that granted the IMN leader and his wife leave to seek medical attention in India, the Department of State Service (DSS) promptly acquiesced to the court order and declared its preparedness to comply. It appeared the federal government, despite its high-handedness, was more sensitive to the security implications of further denying the IMN leaders’ bid to travel abroad for treatment. Should he die in custody, the consequences would be unpredictable. And should he be denied his medical trip, no one could tell just what texture of flare-ups to expect from the movement’s boisterous and increasingly apocalyptic members.

Inexplicably, the Kaduna State government, which does not bear responsibility for the peace of the country, and which very often carries itself as an Island responsible to no one, not even to God, has sought to hedge the Kaduna court ruling with incendiary caveats, seven of which are as provocative as they are insensitive. It will be strange indeed if the court, to which Kaduna has returned to seek curious reliefs, were to entertain the overindulged state government. It should be in the interest of the federal and state governments to quickly allow the Shiite leader and his wife seek medical care abroad. And it is a shame that what ailed the Shiite leaders could not be handled in Nigeria, a testament to the continuing, appalling and for now deplorable state of healthcare in Nigeria. The federal government is not known to be too restrained about many things; but under Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, the Kaduna State government is even less restrained and less scrupulous.

Sheikh El-Zakzaky and his wife will travel abroad for treatment whether under favourable conditions or under hostile Kaduna State-induced circumscriptions. Nigeria must hope that the sheikh, particularly, should survive the ordeal he has gone through in the past few years. Should he not survive it, IMN and other independent exponents of democracy and the rule of law would attribute his fate to the federal and state governments’ pussyfooting, if not deliberate orchestration. Both the federal and state governments may feign indifference, but given the many deaths they have authored against the IMN, which deaths no one or institution has been held accountable for, the general conclusions would be that the government is wholly responsible. Should he survive it, and resume his trial, the state of tension would resume in full, and with other predisposing anarchic conditions in the country, could at any time take a turn for the worse.

The deadly Nigerian Shiite conundrum is, sadly, the making of the government. That the IMN grew into the menace the government and the sect’s Zaria neighbours have alleged is largely due to the incompetence or connivance of security and law enforcement agencies. Over the years, they had watched as the sect expanded its operations and began muscling its neighbours and other road users. In its early years, had law enforcement courageously and intelligently handled the sect’s obstreperous tendencies, the situation would not have gone out of hand. Instead, politicians and other government officials handled the sect with kid gloves, pandered to their whims, and glossed dangerously over the dichotomy and subterranean struggles between the minority Shia and majority Sunni. Even when security agents embarked on spasmodic response to the so-called IMN menace, they invariably preferred high-handed, simplistic and short-termist approach in tackling what is evidently a complex problem.

In addition, by killing more than 300 IMN members in December 2015 in a bid to tame them, the government simply muddied the waters and complicated the crisis thereby raising all sorts of intractable human rights and constitutional issues. The government will of course still be held accountable for the 2015 massacre. But the problems triggered by that explosive rage of December 12-14, 2015 will last far longer than the lifespan of this government. The crackdown on protesting IMN members demanding the release of Sheikh El-Zakzaky last year and early this year leading to the killing of scores of IMN members and disruption of peace in Abuja, the federal capital city, indicates quite clearly the futility of deploying force to tackle a problem that is both religious and ideological. Furthermore, it is hard to see how beliefs, whether mainstream Shia or not, can be legislated away or juridically extirpated.

The federal government may already have begun to sense the hopelessness of the situation, and may warily be reconsidering the foolish tactics of killing more IMN members simply to pacify the revolt and restore normality. Not only that, the ban on IMN is as misplaced and simplistic as the mindless killing of its members is ineffective and counterproductive. The IMN may be a noisy and unruly neighbour, but the answer cannot definitely be extermination, as the Kaduna governor seems disturbingly enamoured of. All over Nigeria, sects, tribes and socio-economic groups have constituted themselves into unruly neighbours to one another. Stereotyping them, not to say massacring them, is as dangerous and criminal as the offence committed originally by the intransigent groups.

What is even worse for the federal and state governments are the campaigns and propaganda they have authored against the IMN. The IMN is the largest Shia group in Nigeria. The government has tried to paint them as a minority within the minority. Furthermore, they have tried to justify the many crackdowns and massacres visited on the sect, suggesting that they could be guilty of futuristic crimes, such as their supposed capacity to replicate the debilitating insurgency practiced by Boko Haram. In addition, the government has lied against the IMN leaders, who were shot outside the epicentre of the clash in Zaria, and denied them justice based on contrived legal rigmarole. Sheikh El-Zakzaky got a judgement against the government in December 2016, a judgement disdained by the federal government. It was not until May 2018 that the Kaduna State government filed a murder charge against the IMN leader and his wife, a charge that indicates pure governmental mendacity and oppressiveness. The government then turned round to use the 2018 murder charge to justify the prolonged detention of the IMN leader and his wife since 2015.

The El-Zakzaky case is a reflection of the complicated and difficult approach the government has adopted to rein in dissent and protests. To them, there is no midway between desirable passivity and undesirable agitation, nor a better law enforcement approach than the application of force. However, what is really at play is the lack of understanding of what modern governance entails, including how to project law enforcement tactics within constitutional ambits, and what democracy demands from leaders and the led alike. As long as the government is unable to safely navigate this treacherous terrain between war and peace, as long as they reason predominantly in terms of military rather than civil tactics, they will continue to instigate more societal conundrums, and groups like the IMN will remain damned if they do anything, and damned if they don’t do anything. Both instinct and history should remind the rulers of today the ephemerality of power and the karmic possibility of falling prey to their own tactics, policies and laws. The IMN, despite their follies and foibles, will survive long after President Buhari and Governor el-Rufai have left office. This should tell them something, if they are capable of embracing the lessons of history.

August 10, 2019
Edo hands of fellowship

With barely a year to the next governorship election in Edo State, these are interesting times for political observers with keen interest in the politics of the state.

With the rumour rife that all is not well between Governor Godwin Obaseki and the former governor of the state and National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, every move in the camps of the two politicians is bound to provoke interest.

Such is the above picture of Obaseki and a chieftain of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Pastor Osagie-Ize-Iyamu, at the birthday thanksgiving service in honour of Pastor Ize-Iyamu and his wife in Benin City yesterday.

Considering that the two were bitter foes in the 2016 governorship contest with Obaseki as the candidate of APC and Ize-Iyamu flying the flag of PDP, one cannot but wonder what discussion the two statesmen are so engrossed in that they can hardly afford to bat an eyelid.

Could they be reviewing the poll? Could they be previewing a possible re-match? Obaseki has said he would seek a second term, but Pastor, as Ize-Iyamu is called by his admirers, is yet to throw his hat in the ring. Will he try a second time? Could they also be reviewing the situation in the state, particularly the crisis rocking the APC in the state?

Obaseki has said he would not share the state’s money with anybody, a statement interpreted in enlightened quarters as a jab at Oshiomhole, his estranged godfather and former governor of the state. In the 2016 election, Pastor was at the receiving end of Oshiomhole who accused him of fronting for the godfathers that he (Oshiomhole) had retired. Could they have been discussing godfatherism, its relevance in the politics of the state and the merits and demerits of the phenomenon?

Would Obaseki have visited Pastor two years ago when he was in the good books of the comrade ex-governor? What is this telling us about 2020? Is this a sign that there could be a realignment of forces in the state as we inch towards 2020? Will Pastor queue behind the governor to try and retire the comrade ex-governor from the state’s politics like the latter says he did to those elders the pastor kowtows to? Is he telling Obaseki “l’m coming to retire you and your godfather?”

The unfolding drama in Edo is indeed interesting.

June 22, 2019
June 12, the speech, the politics

FINALLY, after many years of pussyfooting and controversies, June 12 has finally become the public face of Nigerian democracy. President Muhammadu Buhari proposed memorialising the date months ago by taking the first tentative steps towards redeeming it, then he submitted an executive bill to back it, and has now signed the proposition into law, complete with a national holiday package and, perhaps soon, formalising it as inauguration day. This president has been giving the pro-democracy and human rights communities things to celebrate, and the recipients are all pleased, including those who see it as a Greek gift and those who regard it as a superficial gesture. In whatever way June 12 is regarded, the gains of the past one year, which began with the president apologising to the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, MKO Abiola, has culminated in a public holiday proclamation that is unlikely to be reversed.

Many top politicians and analysts, particularly from the Southwest, have damned the June 12 gains with faint praise. While a few critics see the gains as a red herring, many others see it as nothing more than a symbolic but largely empty gesture in the direction of democracy. They argue that the country’s fundamental problems, such as a poor and misshapen structure and weak institutions, can only be tackled by a deep and scientific re-examination and remedy of the issues that destabilise the polity. Mere amelioration or administration of palliatives will amount to futile tinkering. The critics do not admit that President Buhari has wrong-footed them on the matter of June 12 consistently for about a year; instead, they see him as playing realpolitik. They squirm over the integrity of the June 12 declarations and law, and castigate the dissonance between the apologies and declarations on the one hand, and the president’s own consistent and obvious anti-democratic practices on the other infuriating hand.

It is indeed possible that the president may not be fundamentally disposed towards anything that has to do with June 12, or have an inspiring understanding of its many nuances and implications for democracy and the rule of law. It is even possible that privately, the president, who has never come across as someone with a great sense of history, may be offended by the persistence of many activists on the need for the nation to come to terms with the issue of June 12 and find a closure to something that has inflicted so much pain on the nation. It is also possible that the position of June 12 in the nation’s history as a watershed may completely or partially escape the president. But because these analysts and sceptics are not mind readers or soothsayers, they may in fact be unfair to the president to suggest he is acting mala fide. Even if it is argued that he had never said anything persuasively favourable on June 12, there is nothing to suggest that he has not become converted to its historical significance.

Happily, however, many commentators from the Southwest, including the region’s leading political figures, have suggested that President Buhari has done and said the right things about June 12. They acknowledge that it would be futile to cavil at the president’s apology offered on behalf of the country to the Abiola family which bore the brunt of the June 12 harassments. They also find nothing evil in the president acknowledging Chief Abiola as the winner of that fateful election. And they enthuse over the national holiday proclamation and the recognition of June 12 as Democracy Day. Indeed, it is hard to fault their summations. It is even harder to support those who grumble against the president’s many, though piecemeal, efforts to come to terms with the event of that date and find a fitting closure.

If President Buhari meant his efforts on June 12 as politics to curry favour with the electorate, it is inconceivable that he should be denied his due as a politician. And so whether he is genuinely persuaded about June 12 or not, he has said and done the right thing. If righting the many wrongs surrounding June 12 is meant to give sop to the devil in preparation for unleashing evil upon the land, it still does not make sense to second-guess him or rebuff his salutary efforts because of some anticipated evil. What if the other shoe does not drop? The nature of politics is to estimate and judge every move on its own merit, and from time to time. Some soothsaying may be apposite, and some complex ratiocinative exercise may come in handy, but these must never be to the detriment of correctly gauging the mood of the times and judging the rightness of the issues. President Buhari has taken agreeable steps on June 12; he must be encouraged to do more than naming a national monument, the National Stadium in Abuja for instance, in honour of the winner of the June 12, 1993 president poll, Chief Abiola. The late politician needs to be officially declared the winner who everyone, including the electoral umpire of the time, knows him to be; symbolically installed president, and his privileges and transferable entitlements be accorded his family. His business empire was virtually crushed. The nation needs to make reparation. There will be some arguments about whether to make June 12 MKO Abiola Day, but in the end, making that day Inauguration Day seems to trump any other suggestion.

President Buhari may have played politics with June 12, particularly wrong-footing his political opponents, but who prevented his sulking predecessors, all of whom had the chance to find a closure to the matter, from coming to grips with the issue, staring down his critics and the controversies that hamstring it, and delivering their own closures? Who denied them that leeway? They probably lacked the courage, or are convulsed by guilt, or lacked the conviction, or lacked a sense of history. It is misplaced anger to blame President Buhari for exploiting the issue to position himself well in the eyes of the public. The place in history he has chosen, just like the sacrifice Chief Abiola courageously made, will remain indelible.

But while the president may have done a lot on June 12, including renaming the national stadium and rechristening inauguration day, and also said the right things, he gives little indication in his inauguration address that he fully appreciates the symbolism of the moment. No one compelled him to defer his May 29 inauguration address to June 12; but once he did that, he had an obligation to judge the moment and give an inspiring speech that would rally the country, sans religion and tribe, behind a lofty banner he had hypothetically concretised in words and defined with philosophical aplomb. Not only did the speech read like a tedious budget address, except for the redemptive elements of the stadium renaming and one or two pearls, it was a humiliating disservice to the spirit of June 12.

It was an opportunity for the president to soar to dizzying rhetorical heights, after delivering so illustrious a tantalising package of events and sayings which had incubated in him for about a year. But what came out very clearly, which his opponents tried to exploit to belittle the plaudits he should receive over June 12, was that he is at bottom a president who is uncomfortable with democracy and its disciplined and rigorous concomitances of the rule of law and respect for institutions. Consequently, he made no profound statement on democracy, federalism, rule of law and the rights of the people. He is unlikely to make any such statement anytime soon or in the distant future, let alone advocating the complete subjection of the three arms of government to the strict provisions of the constitution.

The president’s detractors can neither change nor obliterate what he has done on June 12. They accuse him of being presumptuous and hypocritical. Since they know so well what else he should have done on the issue, they are at liberty to continue to advocate for a refinement of those things until June 12 reaches a transcendental and glorious finale, an apotheosis that no one in Nigeria can gainsay.

June 15, 2019
APC openly embraces self-destructive bent

AS the battle between the All Progressives Congress (APC) national chairman and his detractors rages, some state chairmen of the party have asked President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene and coax a truce out of the combatants. They fear that if the struggle between the party’s titans festers, it could cause the ruling party to implode. On May 28, 2019, Lawal Shuaibu, the party’s deputy national chairman (North), had asked Mr Oshiomhole to resign his position for being complicit in the loss of Zamfara and four other states during the last general election. In his letter, he obviously derived his daring from the fact that APC lost five states during the last polls but gained only two — Kwara and Gombe States. Mr Shuaibu emphatically blamed Mr Oshiomhole for the loss of Zamfara to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The APC seems today considerably complacent. If, like the PDP, it had no president to run to for resolution of conflicts, who would be its conciliator and arbitrator? Does the party not have internal conflict resolution mechanisms? The PDP is of course not without its own troubles. But having exhausted itself years ago in internecine conflicts, most of them quite needless, and suffered severe electoral losses in consequence, it has suddenly become fairly mature, a little cerebral even, and, more ominously, increasingly quiescent. In contrast, the APC has seemed louder, pampered, bad-tempered, querulous and grasping. The president has waded into the fray to help his party present a common front in the coming elections of the National Assembly’s principal officers. And he is now being called upon to find the peace formula for resolving the conflict between the party’s cantankerous leaders.

No single person can, of course, be made to shoulder the blame for the party’s loss of five states in the last state elections. Indeed, no two states share the same factors for the APC’s embarrassing dethronement. The reasons for APC’s defeat in the states of Adamawa, Oyo, Bauchi, Imo and Zamfara are as variegated as they are both internal and external. Rather than examine the reasons for their defeat in the 2019 polls and find ways to avoid a similar disaster in the next general election, party leaders, for private and other reasons, have tried to find scapegoats, with some of them seeing one in the fearsome Mr Oshiomhole. For a party that has become naturally and eternally fractious, it is hard to dissuade them from their self-destructive course. Should President Buhari wade into the fracas, it is uncertain that whatever magic wand he waves would bring a permanent solution.

After Mr Shuaibu wrote his incendiary letter to the APC chairman calling for his resignation, other party stakeholders have joined him, including the smug, self-serving and illiberal former Communications minister, Adebayo Shittu, who tries to hang the Oyo defeat on his exclusion from the state governorship poll. Grandiose and full of himself, Mr Shittu even tries to put down the loss of Oyo State suffered by the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in 1983 to the conspiratorial manner he was denied the senatorial ticket in that election. He accused UPN leaders of collusion and despotism, just like, in his view, Mr Oshiomhole.

Even former APC chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, has found his voice after what everyone sees as his disgraceful exit last June. Buoyed by the rising opposition to Mr Oshiomhole, Chief Odigie-Oyegun has vengefully waded into the party fracas by doing a very unsavoury character portrait of his successor. Said he: “Oshiomhole fails because he lacks the temperament that is required to run a political party. He lacks the capacity to manage the different interests and tendencies that constitute a political party. He acts in direct opposite of decisions taken by NWC. No minutes of NWC meetings which, in any event, take place outside the party secretariat. How would you not have crises in states with the confusion that Oshiomhole created when he gave the states freedom to choose their methods of choosing candidates for elections? Much of the crises in states arose out of sheer incapacity on the part of the current chairman…He (Oshiomhole) engages his mouth before engaging his mind, so he offends party members. Only a bad carpenter quarrels with his tools. Indeed Oshiomhole is degrading and ‘demarketing’ the party. Rather than seek to bring more people on board, he is chasing people out of the party with his agbero style of engagement.”

But, contrary to what Chief Odigie-Oyegun thinks, there is nothing to suggest that Mr Oshiomhole has failed. The party chairman is under ferocious and relentless attack, and is portrayed by some party members and leaders as intemperate and impulsive. But no one among his detractors has shown conclusively that he is ineffective, a weakling, or a leadership failure. In fact, as party chairman, he has managed the re-election of President Buhari, kept the party’s majority in the states by 20 to the PDP’s 16, has a firm control of the National Assembly, and if the party plays its cards right, will have an even firmer control of the NASS leadership. The party may be instinctively fractious, but it has continued to keep a semblance of unity, a unity that appears to be anchored on unaccustomed internal discipline. The APC may not be as ideological as it has boasted for years, but under its new chairman it is less conservative and reactionary today than it has ever been. These gradual and indeed salutary shifts are in large measure due to Mr Oshiomhole’s intuitive and iconoclastic approach to politics. Undoubtedly, the party chairman still has a lot to learn, and has an even greater distance to go in reforming his often scabrous approach to politics, but he has not degraded the party like Chief Odigie-Oyegun did.

In the face of the blistering attacks on Mr Oshiomhole, the APC spokesman, Lanre Issa-Onilu, rose spiritedly to his defence, particularly denouncing the former chairman for crass insincerity. Said he: “Let me agree that the NWC that led the party into the 2015 elections and continued till June 2018 did nothing different from what you would find in PDP. It was a period the party was seen as a mere vehicle to attain political office. The system accommodated impunity as certain members appeared to be superior to the party. Their interests were far more important than the collective interests of the APC, even when most times such interests are at variance with the ideals the party stand for…” He continued: “The leadership under Chief Oyegun, with due respect to him, condoned all sorts of acts of indiscipline from certain members. It is not surprising that the current National Working Committee inherited such a huge mess, where the party was struggling to differentiate itself from the delinquent PDP. We all know that PDP was practically dead following the devastating defeat of 2015. The PDP bounced back not because the party has changed its insidious way or did anything different, but because APC did not live up to expectations. It goes without saying that when an organisation is unable to enforce its own rules, it would suffer the consequences sooner than later. We should not be ashamed to say that our party’s leadership under Chief Oyegun lacked the courage required to confront the pockets of political despots who could not operate by the party’s rules…”

The ongoing misunderstanding within the APC may turn out to be a storm in a teacup. Whether the president intervenes or not, Mr Oshiomhole is likely to survive this gale. But his enemies are unlikely to relent. His imposing style, which the party needs to restore normality and discipline, will grate on those who prefer a softer, more indulgent approach to party administration. And because Mr Oshiomhole is unlikely to moderate his stand, not to say his style, enemies will proliferate under him until one of the combatants blinks first. One of the dire consequences of Mr Oshiomhole’s affirmative handling of the party is the concomitant loss of influence by governors. That powerful but unconstitutional body is unlikely to give up its obtruding ways having themselves tasted the allure of power and imposition.

If the APC is to survive in the years to come, it must rely paradoxically on Mr Oshiomhole’s strong-arm approach to party administration. The party is at the moment disunited, hesitant, and lacking in savvy and conviction. They must find and imbibe the virtues of a strong and cohesive political organisation faster than the PDP is reforming, if they are not to come to grief in 2023. The president must also not allow himself to be cajoled into aborting that refining process simply because some interested but aggrieved officials are reading to him a different and frightening narrative.

June 8, 2019
Fed Govt embroiled in definitional quandary

INFORMATION minister, Lai Mohammed, presidential spokesmen, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, and to some extent the president himself, Muhammadu Buhari, constitute the main public face of the federal government. The national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, now and again also blurts out statements and sprouts philosophies on behalf of the government to indicate he belongs to the same league. Each is a part of the rich facial tapestry of the government, and all of them are ardent spokesmen of the government in one form (and severity) or the other. However, all of them have managed to define their concepts and terms in ways that puzzle, agitate or sometimes amuse the citizenry.

In September 2017, to the bemusement of the whole world, but convinced it was doing the right thing, the federal government declared the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) a terrorist organisation. It was clear that the government had a different but possibly pragmatic definition of terrorism from the rest of the world. They knew they were treading on quicksand, and would draw aggressive and unrelenting flak, but they proceeded nevertheless to redefine the term, terrorism. Here is how they did it using IPOB as the guinea pig: “The acts and utterances of IPOB were acts and utterances of terrorists. For instance, Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader was caught on tape saying that they want Biafra and not peacefully, but by force. He declared that if they did not get Biafra, Somalia would be a paradise with the kind of mayhem they would unleash on Nigeria. The group openly embraced arms and ammunition and the leader set up Biafra National Guard, Biafra Secret Service and openly attacked army formations.”

This engaging definition of terrorism was offered on a BBC Focus on Africa programme in September 2017. Even the anchor of the programme was gobsmacked. He asked why other militant groups like the Fulani herdsmen were not declared terrorists. The Information minister deadpanned: “Acts of criminality should not be confused with terrorism acts.” With his parallels neatly drawn, and indifferent to any other person’s perspectives, the minister gave the impression that the government was not afraid to defy the world in the use of English. But dismayed by the sweeping use of a term that has clearly become a major security concern all over the world, the governments of France, United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) threw back the definition of terrorism in the face of Nigeria. Herdsmen, they chorused, were terrorists, and IPOB was not.

Defining herdsmen as terrorists had been a tough and long struggle, with many top northern leaders insisting that the Fulani were being unnecessarily stigmatised, despite the inexorable link between the ethnic group and the violent methods of herding cattle in Nigeria. In the same vein they had many years ago stubbornly resisted defining Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation, believing that it was a ploy both to restrict and stereotype the northern part of Nigeria and to put a general obstacle in the path of innocent Nigerians who might want to travel abroad. Nigerians would be subjected to additional scrutiny at international borders, they cautioned. Up till today, the government has waffled considerably in delineating Boko Haram. They are just criminals, they say, and are not even Islamic, they smirk.

Mr Shehu, one of the president’s spokesmen, caused an uproar early this month when he likened the umbrella body of herdsmen, Miyetti Allah, to some southern-based socio-cultural organisations like the Yoruba Afenifere and Igbo Ohanaeze. It did not occur to him that both southern groups and others like them have nothing to do with the economic activities of their people, nor ever openly agitated for a break-up of the country, nor sanctioned violent migratory practices, nor even promoted ethnic supremacy. Indeed, after Mr Shehu spoke, it finally became clear to many observers that nothing could make the government declare herdsmen as terrorists, as it continues to regard their often militant approach to herding cattle as a minor misunderstanding over grazing lands and practices. As a matter of fact, many government officials, including security chiefs, have refused to denounce the herdsmen’s violent approach to grazing.

But the government’s definitional puzzles are not limited to hard issues like herdsmen and IPOB. The president himself, on his return to Nigeria in May after a ‘private visit’ to the UK, equated efficiency with weight. There was neither scientific nor philosophical underpinning to what is clearly a puzzling definition. For the 10-day period the president was away, during which the country witnessed some horrendous attacks by bandits, Boko Haram insurgents and herdsmen, it became urgent for Nigerians to find a solution to their security nightmares. The president knew he was expected to offer something drastic, particularly, as some suggested, replacing his security chiefs who were considered a little tired. But suborning the concept of efficiency to the argument, the president mused that the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, who was standing before him as he disembarked from the presidential plane, had lost weight, an indication of how hard the police boss was working to regain control of the country’s security situation. Many were appalled by the unorthodox equation, but the presidency simply moved on. The government had given an insight into the definition of the term, and was satisfied with it, even if in the government’s cynical opinion some Nigerians bespattered it with politics.

If the president meant equating efficiency with weight as a joke, critics said, it was both bizarre and misplaced. But the trouble is that no one else these days seems to know when the president is joking or serious, especially given the gravity of some of the issues confronting him and the country he presides over. Topics like mass murders and frequent abductions, everyone seems to agree, do not admit of jokes of any kind. So, according to some of the president’s critics, he was probably serious in the deployment of that definitional cocktail. Whether the IGP took the definition both seriously and as a compliment or not, no one knows, for Mr Adamu is so taciturn that there does not seem to be a light side to him.

But no definition took the biscuit quite like the president’s view of the rule of law. Speaking during an inappropriate dinner with senior members of the judiciary, the president pledged to abide by all judicial decisions. “I respect the institution”, he intoned. “I came before you three times before I got here on the fourth run for the office. Your word is the last word on any given issue.” Even though this is the first time he would indicate that he was pleased with serially litigating his defeats, partly because he eventually won without litigation, his previous position had been that the third arm of government was irredeemably corrupt. Does this unusual definition of the rule of law — that their word is the last on any issue — mean that he will henceforth abide by judicial decisions, seeing that he now proclaims an epiphanic respect for that institution? Or does it mean he in fact truly believes that he had always understood the concept, without needing to redefine it, and always obeyed court judgements? It is hard to say.

What is, however, clear is that until now, and in line with his redefinition of the rule of law, he had always chosen what court judgements to obey, as evidenced by Sambo Dasuki V. Federal Government, and El-Zakzaky and ors V. Federal Government. If he chooses to obey court decisions now, could it not be interpreted as resoluteness consequent upon his achieving or contriving the desired leadership of the judiciary? Whatever the case, his definition is suspect and untested until his government comes face to face with adversarial judgements, especially those that strike at the root of his government or question the legitimacy of his actions and policies.

Having immersed itself in a deep definitional quandary in the past three years and more, the present government will encourage the Information minister, Mr Mohamed, to continue to pick up the broken pieces of its non-sequiturs and mop the sodden floors of its policy and primordial biases, especially if he is retained in the cabinet, as indeed seems plausible. For only Mr Mohammed, quite unlike many Information ministers that preceded him, appears capable of arguing two contrasting and contending positions with detached plausibility. No one holds the candle to him, not even Tom Ikimi, nor Uche Chukwumerije. But Mr Shehu is hard on his heels.

June 1, 2019
Garba Shehu on Afenifere, Ohanaeze and Miyetti Allah

ON Tuesday, Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, needlessly courted controversy when he likened the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, and the Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze N’digbo, to the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN). Mallam Shehu was a guest on a Channels Television programme, Sunrise Daily, where he made the controversial comparison. He had tried to justify the group’s legitimacy, suggesting that their raison d’être was neither criminal nor unusual. According to him, “It is a mistake to say the Nigerian government is talking to bandits. The Miyetti Allah group is like Ohanaeze and Afenifere. It is a socio-cultural group. There are criminals within the Yoruba race and you cannot say because of that, Afenifere is a group of criminals. The Nigerian government is speaking with the leadership of the Fulani herders association, Miyetti Allah.”

But instantly, both Afenifere and Ohanaeze spokesmen deplored the comparison and insisted that, unlike Miyetti Allah which harbours and defends killer herdsmen, the southern organisations were dedicated to the promotion of regional and cultural unity of their people. In their opinion, the only socio-cultural group in the North that bears resemblance to the two southern cultural associations was the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF). On the TV show, Mallam Shehu had been taken to task over the meeting held between the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, and Miyetti Allah. Observers had wondered why the police should be holding what seemed to be a placatory meeting with a group whose members were rated to be among the world’s leading terrorist organisations. It was in response to this puzzle that Mallam Shehu made the comparison with other socio-cultural groups, and also insisted that it was wrong to criminalise Miyetti Allah.

The presidential spokesman was defensive, so too were the police who characterised their meeting with Miyetti Allah as exploratory of peace and disarmament. Mallam Shehu did not say why neither Afenifere nor Ohanaeze had ever been accused of bearing arms, and di not point at any time when they prevailed upon them to help disarm anybody, militants or otherwise. As the two southern groups argued, they harboured no militants, nor excused violence on the grounds of propagating social, economic or cultural agenda. The mere thought of some herdsmen carrying weapons around the country, and sometimes using them boldly, should have reworked the logic of the presidential spokesman to become wary of defending them, let alone comparing them with other socio-cultural groupings that do not condone the use of arms or excuse violence.

Mallam Shehu may never successfully defend the police meeting with Miyetti Allah leaders, and is even more unlikely to win the argument of whether it makes sense to compare the cattle breeders’ association with other socio-cultural groups. Both Afenifere and Ohanaeze, not to say a significant number of Nigerians, suspect that the entire security organisation of the country as well as the presidency itself seem defensive of Miyetti Allah. They have not openly endorsed the violence the herdsmen inflict on the country, but they have not, in the view of many, treated the consequent bloodletting with the severity their crimes deserve. They recall how in the past few years top government officials waffled over the violence perpetrated by herdsmen, and how at some incredible and unguarded moments they even blamed the victims who are mostly farming communities. They also recall that nothing has been said or done to reclaim farming communities sacked and occupied by herdsmen, particularly in the Middle Belt.

It is in those contexts that critics assailed the decision of the law enforcement agencies to hold placatory meetings with leaders of Miyetti Allah, ostensibly to enjoin them to prevail on their members to surrender their arms and allow peace reign. Few Nigerians are fooled. They recognise that the underlying problems engendering herdsmen-farmers conflict are yet to be resolved. In what context, therefore, would armed herdsmen surrender their weapons? By meeting leaders of Miyetti Allah, the police logically acknowledge that armed herdsmen are members of the group. More, the police also seem to acknowledge their impotence in the face of a group described as vicious and terroristic. Yet, neither the police nor Mallam Shehu, nor anyone in government, has come out to explain why the law enforcement agency was conducting exploratory and placatory meetings with leaders of Miyetti Allah. The government has also so far refused to endorse the global categorisation of the group as terroristic, but contradistinctively hastily categorised the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as terroristic.

Critics were not just flailing at the police and Mallam Shehu for merely seeming to be defensive of Miyetti Allah; they were in fact quarrelling with what they suspected to be a discriminatory approach to law enforcement in Nigeria, a discrimination they consider ethnically, rather than issues, inspired. They are shocked that the federal government hastily labelled IPOB as a terrorist organisation, though the group carried no arms and murdered no one, while resisting the world labelling Nigerian herdsmen as the fourth most vicious terrorist organisation. Nigerians also recall that years ago, Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, acknowledged that some herdsmen, whom he had located and interviewed, were involved in killings in Nigeria. But rather than seek their prosecution, he confessed that he used taxpayers’ funds to compensate and placate them. Why is Mallam Shehu therefore surprised that he is being pilloried for his unsavoury comparisons, and the police for their timidity, effrontery and tactlessness?

Mallam Shehu’s defence of Miyetti Allah and the police is futile. Of course, he had no choice but to respond to interviewers’ questions the best and safest way he could. But though his answers lacked logic and believability, they were sadly consistent with the federal governments’ dithering over the issue of violent herdsmen. It is now very unlikely any reporter can get any member of the current government to resolve the herdsmen puzzle in a way that inspires justice and fairness. The officials will all waffle considerably and stubbornly continue to defend the indefensible. More of the kind of embarrassing questions posed to Mallam Shehu will be posed to many more government officials and spokesmen in the foreseeable future, especially as the controversy over armed herdsmen and sacking of farming communities continue. Government officials will expect such hard questions, but the public will hardly be able to make sense of the answers they will get because those answers will remain, for reasons not to hard to understand, fundamentally flawed and skewed.

For the umpteenth time, it is necessary to draw the attention of the government and its spokesmen to the point that it has become more urgent than ever to find a lasting and just solution to the herdsmen-farmers conflict. Gradually, the country is being sucked into the vortex of bloody skirmishes that spare no one. If the flow of blood is not halted, if sacked communities are not restored to their rightful owners, if a few prominent government officials unwisely continue to take sides, then they will be naive to expect the restoration of peace and development. There are many factors — social, economic, political or climatic — predisposing many groups to violence. Whatever the factors are, it is the responsibility of a thinking government to find permanent solutions rather than justifying violence and raking up exculpatory reasons that favour only one side.

For as long as the crisis of confidence between farmers and herdsmen persists, and the schism between Nigeria’s main ethnic and religious groups ossifies, it will be impossible to free the government of poor judgement and bias or lessen the foul rumours of monetary compensation associated with the meeting between the police and leaders of Miyetti Allah.

May 11, 2019