Category: UnderTow

Undertow

 

RIVERS State governor Nyesom Wike is as colourful as the suspended chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole.

Both are hyperbolic, sometimes hysterical, too instinctive, love to speak on all issues, no matter how mundane or provocative, and are regarded as fearless and indiscriminate in choosing and engaging their enemies.

It does not matter who the enemies are, or just how highly-placed or insignificant: an enemy is an enemy, one to be engaged rather than avoided.

Mr Wike, a lawyer, is an educated but no less coarse variant of former Ekiti State governor Ayo Fayose. Of all the governors today, including the insensitive and self-important Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, the Rivers governor is easily the most remarkable for the earthy sense of humour that festoons his statements.

Mr Wike cannot be restrained when he is animated by governance and politics, nor mollified when he is enraged by opposition or dissent.

Former president Goodluck Jonathan and Dame Patience used to arrest the attention of Nigerians and tickle their midriffs in their days in power.

But since the dour former army general Muhammadu Buhari mounted the throne, an unremitting humdrum has settled on Nigeria, a humdrum that has in the past few years been relieved only by the activities and unguarded utterances of Mr Wike.

The Rivers governor has added colour to politics, drama to what is otherwise a tragedy, and replaced open revolt with brinkmanship.

What do his enemies think of him? It is hard to say, but they know what his friends think of him: that his essential self is more theatrical than malicious, a man who lends his guttural voice to his passion and blows his top at the drop of a hat.

No contemporary governor concentrates attention on his person and personality like Mr Wike. There are of course parallels in the Second Republic; what with the likes of Oyo State governor Bola Ige whose constant resort to the classics, epigrams and sarcasms rile his enemies to no end, Kano State governor Abubakar Rimi and his successor Bakin Zuwo whose irreverence and iconoclasm nearly tore their state apart,

Anambra State governor Jim Nwobodo whose debonair looks sometimes got the better of him and illustrated his strategic mistakes in positioning the Jim Vanguard against the Ikemba Front.

Thank God, then, for Mr Wike for relieving the country’s boring politics with his unique voice, short-lived intemperance and shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach to opposition politics.

Indeed, if he cares to know, the country is enamoured of his undiscriminating style which sees him fighting political leaders and causes inside and outside his party.

Since he assumed the governorship of Rivers State, he has not said or done anything as colourful as his view of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders, who were bent on imposing Edo State governor Godwin Obaseki on the PDP as candidate in September’s election.

Mr Obaseki had recently defected from the APC and joined the PDP after conferring with Mr Wike and other PDP governors in the zone. Until Mr Wike likened party leaders backing the Edo governor to tax collectors, it was thought that Mr Obaseki had secured the support of everyone that mattered.

In their haste to get him to join the PDP, Edo PDP leaders simply overlooked their governor’s divisive politics and invited him in.

The nature and conditions permitting Mr Obaseki’s crossing to PDP became, it would appear, more evident following Mr Wike’s recent outburst.

He said: “I told them that in Edo State, we must handle the issue carefully and carry everybody along. They must respect human beings and not behave like tax collectors.

They said because an order was obtained from a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, then I am responsible. I have had sleepless nights to resolve the issue in Edo State.

The Governors of Edo, Adamawa and Delta States know what I have done to resolve the issues in Edo State. As a result of this senseless accusation,

I have pulled out of Edo State settlement. My integrity matters…They are tax collectors. Let them challenge me and I will come out with more facts.

Nobody will rubbish me by raising false accusations against me. I will fight back.” He said enough in that statement to convey a wide range of emotions and dispositions, ranging from displeasure to candour, chastisement and insomnia.

That was not the first time he would whip up sentiment by taking on PDP chiefs.  On September 11 last year, he thoroughly cleaned out the committee set up by the PDP to investigate the emergence of Ndudi Elumelu as the minority leader of the House of Representatives.

Without mincing words or attempting to shy away from indelicateness, he expressed his conviction that the committee was the most corrupt in the history of the party.

He did not stop there; the veteran warlord went further to publicly thank Former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon Austin Opara, for withdrawing from the committee by not entangling himself “in the illegal activities of the tainted committee”.

In his telling offensiveness, he said: “The committee set up by the PDP on the illegal emergence of Ndudi Elumelu is the most corrupt committee ever set up by the party.

We thank our worthy son, Austin Opara, for withdrawing from that committee, so that he is not entangled in the illegal activities of the tainted committee.

We are warning PDP to be careful not to toy with Rivers State. The state has all it takes to withstand the PDP and fight the party to a standstill.

Rivers governor is not one of those governors that anyone can cajole. He is not one of those governors that will kowtow to illicit activities.”

Indeed, even though the PDP has been a regular subject of his ire, he is usually prepared to gut anyone who criticises him for his convictions.

If they breathed too deeply or even swallowed noisily enough to irk him, he would descend on them with all the precision and boldness of an axe on a log.

Thus, he made no bones about denouncing some PDP governors as nocturnal sycophants and even managed to stick one in the presidency’s side while at it.

In September 15 last year, he matched temper with speech and fumed: “We are the only state that the Federal Government refused to pay us our money used to execute Federal projects because I don’t go to see him in the night and I won’t go.

He is not my friend, he is not doing well, but he won in court; should I say that the court did wrong? No. President Buhari, congratulations, but carry Nigerians along. Unify the country, the country is too divided. I am saying what is right. What I will do, I will do, what I will not do, I will not do.”

If that were not indicative enough of the governor’s marauding censoriousness, his audacity moved him to match the PDP grit for grit in 2018 when the party tried to move its convention and the presidential primaries from Rivers State.

He blatantly cautioned that, “Nobody should dare Rivers State any longer. Enough is enough. PDP should know that we are not a punching bag. We are not people you can use and push. We are not harlots. Whenever you want, you come. When you finish, you push us aside.”

In April this year, a visibly exasperated Mr Wike accused powers in Abuja of attempting to introduce COVID-19 into his state through the express agency of some 22 Exxon Mobil Staff and the pilots who flew them into his state. Public chagrin directed at him for detaining his suspects prompted him to lash out in his peculiarly vehement style.

“They said civil aviation is under exclusive list and I heard there was a Minister who was quoting Law and I said the Minister should go and release them now.

We are in a democracy not a military government where you will sit down somewhere in your own office and direct me. I am not one of those Governors that will beg you for you to help me. Beg you for what? The right things must be done, especially for something that is killing people.

Every day, you hear new cases. They are not happy that there is no new case in Rivers State. They are not happy, so their own is that let us do something that will make them have new case in Rivers State.

Exxon Mobil brought in 22 of their members into Rivers State without testing. So, even if they have Coronavirus, they should enter?”

The governor’s mannerisms and oratory may appear hyperbolic, humorous, comic, and resistant to the finer graces that should emanate from his office, but his belief in what he says and his unwavering boldness in denouncing affairs which run afoul of his paradoxical moral compass  render his comments on the Edo imbroglio credible.

How could you not love the lovable rascal, Mr Wike? Indeed, so far, the PDP has released a statement lacking in Mr Wike’s distinguished conviction concerning the absence of tax collectors in their party, but it is difficult to shake off the feeling that the incendiary Rivers governor did not best his interlocutors.

 

By UnderTow

Presidential spokesmen Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu have acquire a reputation for combativeness in the discharge of their duties as the president’s image-makers. In the past few weeks, they have been in the eye of the storm, verbally cutting, thrusting and scalding critics and opponents, most of whom they describe in unsavoury language and have promoted as enemies of the presidency.

Their combativeness is probably a product of how they perceive their official duties as presidential spokesmen, especially since they assumed office in 2015. As senior journalists, they were not known to veer towards the hysterical when they edited newspapers or wrote columns. They were not always temperate as writers, but were guilty of occasional hyperboles, yet they were generally well honed, restrained and hardly exceeded the boundaries of journalistic etiquette. As presidential spokesmen, however, the two experienced media men have transformed into something close to unrecognisable. Are they too far gone to be helped?

It is pointless making references to how they have responded to those who criticise or attack the president or the presidency. From all indications, every successive month offers opportunity to reassess the two spokesmen whose official attitudes have merged into one indistinguishable whole, and whose verbal and written responses have become acerbic, unsparing and relentless.

Perhaps they enjoyed a honeymoon with the critics and enemies of the president in the early months and years of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, but no one remembers that brief interregnum today. What they remember are the spokesmen’s bilious rage and the searing and unforgiving manner they give short shrift to critics. Indeed, no month passes without verbal and literary cannons being launched against the ‘enemy’ from the spokesmen, sometimes in quick succession, sometimes in synchronised terror, regardless of public misgivings.

No sooner had Mr Adesina finished taking on the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) days ago, which he accused of being irritants and featherweights, than Mr Shehu charged into the Coalition of Northern Youth Groups (CNG), describing them as spoilsports of democracy. In both NEF and CNG, as in nearly all instances, critics of the Buhari presidency hardly go beyond calling out the president on his democratic, economic, and security policies records, often remonstrating with the president and his team gently and reasonably, but sometimes harshly.

Last Sunday, the NEF had issued this warning signed by its leader, Ango Abdullahi, a professor of Agriculture: “Northern Elders Forum (NEF) is alarmed at the rising insecurity of communities and their properties in the North. Recent escalation of attacks by bandits, rustlers and insurgents leave the only conclusion that the people of the North are now completely at the mercy of armed gangs who roam towns and villages at will, wreaking havoc. It would appear that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and governors have lost control over the imperatives of protecting people of the North, a constitutional duty that they swore to uphold.

The situation is getting worse literally by the day as bandits and insurgents appear to sense a huge vacuum in political will and capacity which they exploit with disastrous consequences on communities and individuals…Our current circumstances in the North clearly demonstrate that President Buhari’s administration has woefully failed to achieve either. This is unacceptable. We demand an immediate and comprehensive improvement of our security in the North. We are tired of excuses and verbal threats which criminals laugh at, and our fellow citizens see as a clear failure of leadership which they see as part of them. Enough is enough.”

Mr Adesina was angry and contemptuous in his response to Prof Abdullahi. Said he: “We are not surprised by this latest statement by Prof. Abdullahi, and our past position on what his group represents remains unchanged: a mere irritant and featherweight.

The former vice chancellor signed the statement under the banner of Northern Elders Forum (NEF). Hearing that title, you would think the body was a conglomeration of true elders. But the truth is that NEF is just Ango Abdullahi, and Ango Abdullahi is NEF. NEF is merely waving a flag that is at half-mast. President Buhari steadily and steadfastly focuses on the task of retooling Nigeria, and discerning Nigerians know the true state of the nation. They don’t need a paper tiger to tell them anything.” It was clear the presidential spokesman ignored Prof Abdullahi’s complaint, choosing instead to denigrate him and focus entirely on his person.

Almost as if taking a cue from Mr Adesina, Mr Shehu also took on the coalition of northern youths who were voicing the same complaints. Led by Nastura Sharif, the youths had taken to the streets to protest against mounting insecurity, and had even called for the resignation of some members of the Buhari government.

Not only was Mr Sharif arrested, some of the protesters were also picked up, and the police insisted they would be prosecuted because their demands had become political and were designed to instigate bad blood against the government. Though public pressure led to the release of the protest leaders after two days, and the police had egg on their face, it did not dissuade Mr Shehu from opening his mouth and putting his foot in it. Said Mr Shehu in his reaction to the CNG protests: “For a start, if the group dared to issue such a comment under non-democratic method, they would have met a swift and harsh retribution from a dictatorial government. They should thank their stars that we are operating a truly democratic government, where the rights of free speech are guaranteed and protected.”

Both presidential spokesmen often speak as if they regret Nigeria’s democratic experiment, as if they long for military dictatorship to curb the people’s, and particularly protesters’ obstreperous tendencies. The constitution under which the president was elected also gives certain inalienable rights to the people, just as it spells out the duties and responsibilities of the government.

Neither Mr Adesina nor Mr Shehu is at liberty to pick what pleases them from the constitution on behalf of the president. Indeed, far more than his spokesmen, the president has generally been more restrained than his image-makers. The presidential spokesmen think that a dictatorship would help them discharge their responsibilities more easily. They are wrong. But perhaps they speak longingly of dictatorship unconsciously, without meaning to. In any case, given the intensity of public push-back, the spokesmen should by now have realised that they have propounded and propagated dictatorial tendencies far more easily than anyone in the presidency.

Many commentators, including this column, now firmly believe that since 1999, no presidential spokesman has been more intolerant of public criticism than Mesrrs Adesina and Shehu. Their image-making job is made far more complicated and unduly difficult by the disposition, not to say indisposition, of their principal, the president.

President Buhari’s political, social and economic ideas and policies are generally inchoate, uninspiring and often contradictory. Not only is the president himself unable to enunciate his ideas well, he is also unable to give them the vigorous push required to sell them to the people. In such circumstances, where critics and experts constantly pick holes in those policies and the global environment grows more hostile, the Buhari presidency is likely to be assailed by criticisms and denunciations. Unfortunately for Messrs Adesina and Shehu, the president has often met those challenges with curious imperturbability, if not outright silence. It, therefore, behoved presidential spokesmen to defend the indefensible.

But there is nothing to suggest that such a task must be handled with the natural nastiness that is unbecoming of their office as spokesmen. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo might seem from hindsight a better and more agile president than President Buhari, but between 1999 and 2007, the former military general was universally hated and reviled. He had not purged himself of his military culture and hangover, his critics snorted, and he sometimes gave the impression that he knew everything, even pretending to sham intellectualism.

But neither of his spokesmen, Tunji Oseni or Remi Oyo, descended to the nastiness and intolerance that Messrs Adesina and Shehu luxuriate in. No one could also argue that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan was a leadership treasure, a man full of ideas and inspiration. To many Nigerians during his years as president between 2010 and 2015, Dr Jonathan was incompetent, embarrassingly hesitant, and undeserving of a second term. In fact, at a time, the eminent zoologist regarded himself as the most insulted African head of state, insults he thought impatiently he did not deserve. But his spokesman, Reuben Abati, as frustrated as he was in the face of intransigent critics, and though eager to justify the unjustifiable, hardly descended to the cesspool, preferring at worst to merely skirt its fringes.

Messrs Adesina and Shehu may have very unpleasant public relations jobs to do given the nature and peculiar circumstances of the Buhari presidency, but they have never managed to give the impression that they are doing it as an unpleasant burden. They seem to love the acerbic responses they give to the most minute of provocations, and are ecstatic launching into tirades at the least criticism. They enjoy the abuse they dish out to enemies, and have indeed contributed copiously to the lexicon of presidential tirade. There must be something in them that makes them amenable to the facilities of the cesspool.

But can they change? It is doubtful. Can they be pressured to adopt a new and more moderate style? It is hard to say. What is clear, however, is that their style and approach are not inspiring and may even make more enemies for the president. The urgent task is to persuade them to try something new, something elevated. But who will undertake the task of reforming the two spokesmen is as important as whether they can be persuaded to treat the pearls of reform cast before them with the depth and circumspection fitting their offices and their journalistic antecedents.

By UnderTow

Up till a few weeks ago, the thought that banditry on the one hand and Boko Haram on the other hand had become intractable was believed to be an exaggeration. Banditry, mostly limited to northern Nigeria, is a fairly recent menace, perhaps dating back only four or five years. The increasingly virulent Boko Haram, mostly limited to the Northeast, dates back more than 10 years.

Now, both menaces reinforce each other, presenting themselves as the hammer and anvil between which Nigerians in those blighted regions are being pulverised. Some four or five years ago, when there was the exaggerated opinion that Boko Harama had been ‘technically defeated’, few thought that in 2020, Nigerians would still be grappling with the cancer, let alone having to endure the equally menacing and vicious  problem of banditry. Everyone had thought that in a matter of months, or perhaps just a few years, the two menaces would have been reduced to insignificance. Sadly, the problems have not only withstood the best countermeasures the government could give, they seem alarmingly to thrive.

Some days ago, in multiple attacks that did not seem coordinated, bandits and Boko Haram insurgents in Katsina and Borno States respectively seemed to have orchestrated a crushing blow on certain communities in Faskari (Katsina) and Gubio (Borno) Local Government Areas. By some accounts, insurgents killed more than 100 people. It was a brutal and daring attack by a group of insurgents who neither fears man nor respects government. They pillaged, abducted, killed and maimed. Above all, for hours while the attacks lasted, they were hardly challenged. They will of course be back, regardless of the orders given to crush them, for they have appeared to understand how the Nigerian security services operate, how impotent they seem, and how attractive the results of a life of crime are.

In Borno and Yobe States, as in neighbouring north-eastern states, the Boko Haram menace has metamorphosed into full-blown insurgency. In Katisna, Zamfara and other north-western states, banditry is shaping up to become full-blown insurgency. If the government and the security services recognise this impending transformation from one level of criminality to another higher and more complex one, they have not shown matching urgency and preparedness in aborting the sanguinary change.

The states are of course helpless. They neither control the military nor the police, and they have limited influence on how and when the government responds to the breakdown of law and order. But they are not entirely innocent of the criminality overtaking their part of Nigeria. Decades and years of criminal neglect of the masses by the states have bred a veritable army of disaffected citizens. Investment in education, healthcare, economy/jobs and other social services has been hopelessly inadequate. Corruption was and in most cases is still rife, and social safety nets were and are still totally absent. The result is that the states, if not the entire country, are faced with discontent that is fast morphing into unmanageable revolt.

Neither the states nor the federal government was sure how to deal with the crises of Boko Haram and banditry, with the latter incorporating many other criminal features such as abduction for ransom and cattle rustling. During its founding, Boko Haram itself indicated their reaction to injustice, as militants complained of unfair treatment meted out to their comrades.

Had the governments reached a deeper understanding of the crisis, they would probably have developed the right panaceas. But they didn’t. Boko Haram was seen and ridiculed as a poorly led religious movement of rabble-rousers, rather than a movement reacting to a combination of religious, cultural and socio-economic grievances. Banditry has also been dismissed as the criminal activities of robbers, kidnappers and cut-throat thieves. In other words, both the federal and state governments have judged rather than understood these grievances, and dismissed rather than examined the factors responsible for the revolts.

While the federal government has oscillated between strong-arm tactics and peaceful resolution of the Boko Haram crisis, the states have also advocated amnesty one day and military operations the following day. This is a clear manifestation of a lack of understanding of the issues involved in the Northeast insurgency and Northwest banditry. The problems call for a diligent connection of the dots, to decipher the puzzle, as it were. Boko Haram might have been laying the Northeast waste for years, but banditry is now also laying the Northwest waste, and there is no indication of any abatement in the immediate future.

So what connects the dots? Religion? Hardly. Culture? Very unlikely. A few leitmotifs can, however, be observed. One is uncontrollable population growth rate; and closely leashed with that is joblessness intertwined with hopelessness occasioned by lack of education and skills. These two factors are in turn the product of bad leadership and corruption in which the commonwealth of the people is frittered away on either pigheaded projects or embezzled outright. The situation is getting more desperate as population growth rate is outstripping productivity at a time when even the little revenue generated is not wisely and frugally deployed for public good.

Reacting to the crises spawned by Boko Haram and banditry, this column only last week warned that the Nigerian government would be tilting at windmills to think force can extirpate the problem. Said Undertow last Saturday, using Katsina as an example: “Katsina’s newfound optimism may be infectious, considering how the northern states, which are reeling from banditry, take their cues from the president’s home state. However, it is not altogether clear how leaving the issues of injustice and poverty unresolved would make the states amenable to peace and development.

This hope is exaggerated. For about 10 years, the Nigerian military battled Boko Haram insurgents, a group of terrorists spawned mainly by socio-economic dislocations in the north-eastern part of the country. Though the military recorded some successes, the crisis has merely abated, not completely extinguished. The reason is that the problems that gave birth to the insurgency have still not been resolved. So too is banditry. Until the factors that render many northern states unstable and vulnerable are dealt with, neither appeasement nor military action will restore peace in those troubled regions.”

Just a few days after the warning, about 100 innocent people were slaughtered in two states. Yet, massive military campaigns are underway, initiated by a government that still fails to read the crises accurately. Some sort of law enforcement may be required to keep the problems from worsening, and indeed the government cannot be dissuaded from sheathing its swords, but ultimately, the government must read the crises adroitly and sensibly apply the right panaceas. For now, the government has little incentive to find the root causes of the crises, preferring instead to talk tough, mobilise the instruments of coercion, and threaten to bring the full weight of the law upon those who have taken to a life of crime. But more and more, the bandits and insurgents are proving the government’s threats to be nothing more than empty threats.

Not too long ago, state governments in the north organised a talkfest to interrogate the undercurrents of the revolt simmering in their region. They identified socio-economic issues among the factors, and resolved to find amelioration for the problem. But talk is cheap. The reality, alarmingly, is that the states, using their current paradigms, are simply incapable of reversing the problem on a scale that should lead to a reversal of the factors fuelling discontent. What, for example, are their initiatives for reversing their runaway population growth? Little or nothing. What are their initiatives for reducing unemployment on a scale that would keep the youths of the region busy producing wealth? Little or nothing — partly because regional officials are unwilling to change their mindset or even abridge their lives of opulence and privilege.

Before the situation gets out of hand, as it seems set to do, the federal government must meet minds with the governors of the northern states to let them know that they are imperilling the unity and stability of the country by their ineptitude and profligacy. They must find new paradigms for governing their states, re-engineering their finances, grappling effectively with population growth, and recognising that nobody owes them a living. They must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, and inspire and cater to the needs of their people. Of course, the other states in the federation cannot absolve themselves of the greed and incompetence that have snatched the bottom off the country, but they are a little better. If the southern states do not remedy their appalling default settings quickly, it is only a question of time before the ferment unnerving the North creeps upon them.

Banditry and Boko Haram are becoming intractable, opening up almost the entire North to the possibility of massive revolt. The country should not fool itself to think otherwise.

The question is how to defeat a group of disaffected people who are down and out and are determined to wreak vengeance on a country that has mistreated and shut them out? If the country can’t find the means to bring the bandits and insurgents in from the cold, these alienated and intransigent anarchists will have no choice but to fuel the fire which they have lit to incinerate everyone, including themselves.

By UnderTow

Finally, Katsina State governor Aminu Masari has come to the despairing truth that appeasing bandits never stands a chance of midwifing peace. Though banditry in the North has not substantially subsided since security forces declared war on the bandits last month, the governor has, however, concluded, after nearly one year of trying to negotiate with bandits, that no peace deal could be reached or sustained with the criminals.

Speaking to the BBC this week about the 2019 peace deal he signed with the bandits, he had groaned that it was of no use. As he put it, “We choose to sign the peace agreement with the bandits so as to avoid loss of lives and property, but it didn’t yield a positive result. This time around we will hand it over to security personnel. In our effort to honour the agreement between us, we cancelled all vigilantes and volunteer groups and we allowed them (bandits) to continue with their normal activities in the state.”

On January 3, 2019, Gov Masari had addressed a press conference and declared that his state was besieged by robbers, bandits, cattle rustlers, kidnappers and all manner of criminals. His countenance was pained, and he sounded weary and desperate. He had tried everything, prodded the security agencies to live up to their self-proclaimed billing, and rallied the people behind the government to confront the banditry menace. Said the governor: “There is no option because we are thinking of the survival of our people and state. It is now a daily occurrence as no day passes without a case recorded. It is not even rustling of cows but now kidnapping of people. Our state is currently under serious siege by armed robbers, kidnappers and armed bandits who arrest rural people at the grassroots at will and demand ransom, which if not paid, they kill their victims. The Permanent Secretary was just informing me that his close relative was kidnapped and a ransom of N5 million was demanded and the person who took the money to them was shot.”

Not done, the governor added: “Some people visited me, and as they left, they were trailed and robbed of their belongings. The armed robbers could not go away with the vehicle because it has security lock. In the past, they carried out their activities in the middle of the night, but now, they operate at midnight, 10pm and gradually in broad day light. It is not up to a month, right here in front of Government House, five electricity poles were carted away. It is getting out of hand that we should not fold our arms. Let’s return to God, let’s pray to Him to salvage the situation. So we must reach a lasting solution at this meeting to curtail this ugly trend…The people of Katsina in the 34 local governments now sleep with one eye closed and the other opened.”

Indeed, very unusually for a governor presiding over the affairs of the president’s home state, Mallam Masari had painted a very graphic account of how the daredevil criminals operated, their cocky arrogance, their daring, their brutality. By early this year, the governor was worried that the truce he reached with the bandits was not holding up, but he was nevertheless still cautiously optimistic. Alas, last week, he sighed that very little came out of the state’s peace initiative and countermeasures, and he had been left holding the short end of the stick by bandits who remained intransigent. If there would be any rapprochement, said the governor cynically, it should be between the military and the bandits, not the state government.

Last September, with security agencies seemingly paralysed by fear or incompetence, the governor had felt he had no choice but to reach out to the bandits, many of whom he said the state knew by name. He had entered into discussions with them to forge a truce. That truce seemed to work at first. But it was classical appeasement which this column had  denounced, and which was as impracticable as it was immoral. Reflecting the governor’s optimism, he had suggested that the deal would work despite reservations.

As he enthused at the time: “Now I can say that over 80 percent of people under captivity in Katsina State have been released. So, in terms of group kidnapping I can only remember that right now we are searching for only 13 people… But in terms of massive attacks since we started, there was no single massive attack on any village or community. By my account, about 57 people have been released by them, most of them women and young children. Among them even are nationals of Niger Republic. So, for us it has brought relative peace. The next step is the issue of disarming the bandits and commanders in the forest that command 200, 300, 400 fighters, fully armed on motorbikes. That’s how they operate and attack the villages. In most cases they go three to one on a motorcycle. They’ve reinforced their motorcycles and they are using tubeless tyres. They put something inside so that their tyres do not get punctured or suffer breakdown.”

The governor made his misgivings public. But so did the bandits. One of their representatives, Idris Yayande, had boldly declared that some of the bandits were driven into crime by the illegalities committed by the security agencies. According to him, “We have our complaints as well; it concerns some of our people who were arrested like Alhaji Baldu, Alhaji Lawal and Ibrahim Nakutama who were picked up on return from hajj. I was arrested also and up till now, I have not been told my offence. I was detained for 15 months before I was released. For the past five months, since the fasting period when we met with the community, we have not attacked them. We have no one in captivity. If you hear anything of such is not from this camp. Of course, there are places where attacks and kidnappings are happening because we don’t have control of such places.”

Katsina indeed provides an interesting dialectics of banditry in Nigeria. But hearing from the bandits, it was clear that the problem of banditry had its roots in socio-economic deprivation and injustice. These problems do not lend themselves easily to peace deals involving payment of regular stipends and dispensing token economic and judicial reparations.

As Zamfara, Kebbi and a few other states in the North have proved, banditry is at the core of the injustice and lack of economic opportunities that characterise and enervate the society. Nowhere are these contradictions so transparent than the North where elite irresponsibility and poor delivery of justice have spawned an adders’ nest of recalcitrant and bloodthirsty bands of bandits, many of which have become inured to peace and are drunk on cheap money. Zamfara under their previous governor Abdulaziz Yari began this abominable culture of negotiating peace with bandits. The former governor had also reached the end of his tethers with security agencies which, despite much grandstanding, were unable to rein in banditry in that state. Left with no option, Mr Yari believed it was better to negotiate peace with bandits.

It was obvious to critics that the former Zamfara governor simplistically ignored the fundamental fact that the contradictions in his state predisposed the state to banditry. Until those problems are resolved, which the state has not given indication it is capable of doing, Zamfara will not be able to buy peace as it naively hopes. A few months after the initial peace deal, the truce easily fell through, with the bandits returning to their unmended ways.

Faced with resurgent banditry, the current governor of Zamfara, Bello Matawalle, has sought to revive the peace deal with bandits. He has enunciated how he intends to restore the peace deal, and has in addition expressed optimism that it would work. It is, however, unlikely to work. Katsina State has finally understood how difficult it is to placate bandits in the face of continuing contradictions in the state. He had deployed the carrot-and-stick approach many times, and has now in despair reposed all his trust in military action. How far that military action will work in the face of a highly mobile and self-accounting groups of bandits remains to be seen.

Katsina’s newfound optimism may be infectious, considering how northern states, which are reeling from banditry, take their cues from the president’s home state. However, it is not altogether clear how leaving the issues of injustice and poverty unresolved would make the states amenable to peace and development. This hope is exaggerated. For about 10 years, the Nigerian military battled Boko Haram insurgents, a group of terrorists spawned mainly by socio-economic dislocations in the north-eastern part of the country. Though the military recorded some successes, the crisis has merely abated, not completely extinguished. The reason is that the problems that gave birth to the insurgency have still not been resolved. So too is banditry. Until the factors that rendered many northern states unstable and vulnerable are dealt with, neither appeasement nor military action will restore peace in those troubled regions.

By UnderTow

 

The Fourth Republic is about 21 years old. Like the previous three republics, there is little to suggest it has come to stay, let alone flourish, if attitudes to the fundamentals of democracy do not change. Conventional wisdom suggests that Nigeria is running a democracy.

In speeches and writings, it has become normal to describe the period since 1999 as democratic. But regardless of that manner of speaking, there is no consensus that what Nigeria is operating today is a democracy or that the politicians running it appreciate democratic principles.

The haphazard and half-hearted approach to Nigeria’s difficult democracy since the beginning of the Fourth Republic indicates that troublous times lie ahead for a country that is in a quandary over what nature of democracy it should practice: Pakistani, Chinese or Egyptian model.

A manifestation of this ominous trend is intolerance by the political class, particularly their loathing of free speech. Governors, ministers, commissioners, local government chairmen, councillors, policemen and all manner of public officials are completely intolerant of harsh commentaries about their character and policies.

In responding to what they believe is unadulterated abuse by members of the public — whether journalists or bloggers — appointed and elected officials have themselves subverted the laws of the land and violated the constitution in their response to the vitriol served them by a frustrated public.

Three fresh examples illustrate just how dangerous the trend has become, and how close to unravelling Nigerian democracy has come.

Information minister Lai Mohammed, Abia State governor Okezie Ikpeazu, and an Ebonyi State council chairman Ogbonnaya Oko Enyim typify the official loathing of free speech and the distress that now afflicts democracy in Nigeria.

It is indeed strange that after more than three eras of trying to get the fundamentals and practice of democracy right, Nigerians, particularly elected and appointed officials, have become even more alienated from the public and unsure of the kind of attitude that accords with a liberal political system.

Typically, this behaviour manifests among those in office. Mr Mohammed’s case involves a traditional poet, Rotimi Jolayemi, whose bold and rhythmic excoriation of the minister took the social media by storm a few weeks ago.

Since then the Yoruba language poet has drawn the ire of the security services, particularly the police. Mr Mohammed dissociates himself from Mr Jolayemi’s misfortune, but few believe him.

The poet, according to the police, disseminated his composition on April 14 or so, and since then, particularly on WhatsApp, the poem had gone viral and brought Mr Mohammed to public ridicule and opprobrium.

In the poem, which drew upon many literary facilities, including puns, alliterations, traditional proverbs, and good old abuse and exaggerations, Mr Jolayemi was unsparing of the minister.

The traditional poet also took the Humanitarian Affairs minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq, to the cleaners, alleging corruption against her, complete with a clip of the hearing in the National Assembly in which her feathers were considerably ruffled.

The poet also made oblique references to her morals. Miffed beyond forbearance, the poet was ferreted out of his rat hole by the police for questioning and detained with contemptuous disregard for the constitution. His sins were too grievous to deserve constitutional protection.

In the charge sheet against him, the police disclosed why they harried Mr Jolayemi. Said they: “That you, Jolayemi Oba Akewi, male, aged 43,  on or about the 14th day of April 2020 at Osolo Compound, Ekan Nla, Kwara State, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court did send audio message through your Android phone device to a group WhatsApp platform known as ‘Ekan Sons and Daughters’ and which went viral immediately after it was posted for the purpose of causing annoyance, insult, hatred and ill will toward the current Minister of Information and Culture, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Alhaji Lai Mohammed,  and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 24(1)(b) of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention etc) Act 2015.”

The police rap sheet was silent on what pains the poet caused the Humanitarian Affairs minister. The oblique references the poet made concerning her were rather too delicate to be tabled before a judge for public titillation.

Besides, unlike the case involving the Information minister, the other minister’s case could lose focus and revolve around entirely unforeseen and tangential issues. For now, officials reason, better not to litigate those sort of things.

However, without prejudice to what Mr Jolayemi’s lawyers might argue, or the success or otherwise of the attempt by Mr Jolayemi and his family to beg the minister to bury the hatchet, critics are questioning whether the poet had exceeded the limits of decency or Mr Mohammed had become unbearably thin-skinned.

Mr Jolayemi was not immediately ‘captured’ for interrogation. In the interim, his wife, Dorcas, and brothers, John and Joseph, were ambushed and hauled in for interrogation and partially used as hostages to arrest the fleeing poet.

Before then, their phones had been bugged, and having established their communication with the fleeing poet, were arrested for obstruction of justice. Clearly, many issues pertaining to the sustenance of democracy arose as a result of the whole affair.

First, did the police establish a prima facie case against the poet? Second, did the poet go beyond the boundaries of free speech provided for by the constitution? Third, did the police have a right to detain him for 17 days before charging him in court? Fourth, are the police empowered to hold anyone as hostage, contrary to the law, to entrap a fleeing suspect? Fifth, did the police obtain a warrant to bug the phones of those concerned, particularly Mr Jolayemi’s relations?

All these questions strike at the root of democracy. How they are answered will indicate the state of health of Nigerian democracy.

What is not in doubt is that when Mr Mohammed was a spokesman of the opposition party in the years before 2015, he and his party’s supporters poured far worse scorn and invectives on the government of Goodluck Jonathan without attracting commensurate heavy-handedness.

The Information minister has tried to distance himself from the whole saga, but few people are buying his excuses.

He owes it to himself, his reputation, and democracy to approach the matter openly, courageously and lawfully while seeking redress to his image battered by the poet. Tomorrow, the shoe could be on the other foot, and democracy could once again be imperilled.

If Mr Mohammed’s lack of inspiring example is portentous, the other cases involving the Abia State governor and an Ebonyi State council chairman portend even much worse, bringing to the fore the dire condition in which Nigerian democracy is constrained.

An Abia State lawyer, Gabriel Ogbonna, was alleged to have made some defamatory remarks about Gov Ikpeazu on social media and was arrested by the police on March 24, charged in court for cybercrime almost immediately before a magistrate who had no jurisdiction to hear the case, and admitted to bail some 14 days later.

He is, however, still detained by the Department of State Service (DSS), his bail frustrated. Mr Ogbonna’s case recalls the case of a Kano-based Islamic cleric, Bello Yabo, who took Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai to task for keeping religious centres shut on the pretext of fighting COVID-19 pandemic.

The cleric described Mallam el-Rufai in uncomplimentary terms, in one instance painting him as a little bird. Days later, the police were in Kano to haul Mallam Yabo to Kaduna for insulting the governor.

But a son of Gov el-Rufai had a few weeks before threatened on social media to gang-rape the mother of a critic and also made hateful comment about an ethnic group, and no policeman nor law officer has whispered a word about the affair.

The threat to democracy is so bad that even council chairmen now give free rein to themselves in dealing with impudent members of the public.

Angry that an activist, Okochi Obeni, questioned his sincerity and integrity as a public official, the chairman of Afikpo North local government, Mr Enyim, allegedly dispensed with the niceties of law, and dispensed crude justice to the activist.

The activist was lured into a trap, tortured, forced to recant his accusations, and left on the verge of paralysis. The police claim to have made some arrests, and said investigations were continuing, but little has been done so far, especially with the main suspect still walking free. In Nigeria, when it comes to public functionaries, law enforcement is customarily timid and toothless.

Democracy is endangered because of the attitude of elected and appointed officials who obviously know or care little about democracy, about the justice system that has been compromised and castrated by the executive branch, about a conniving legislative arm that hero-worships or stand in awe of the executive, and about law enforcement and security agencies whose dignity has been taken away by years of mistreatment, poor remuneration, and misuse.

If insulting public officials now warrants wholesale abuse of the rights and privileges of the citizenry conferred by the constitution, if no one else but civil society groups and the media are left to defend democracy and are themselves victims of horrendous abuse, democracy may be in far more danger than anybody thinks.

It is doubtful whether Nigerians have ever had their rights, particularly free speech, so debased, surely not in the First or Second Republic.

The Third Republic was aborted. The Fourth Republic is supposed to be a marked improvement over the other republics; instead it has arguably become less inspiring, indeed, bland and unremarkable.

If the public will not rise as one man to defend their constitution, they will be surprised to find in the years ahead that they had carelessly lost it, or were compelled to live with a constitution so weakened and distorted by state officials that it is of little use to anyone.

By UnderTow

It is not only the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 (PTF) that can sometimes be inconsistent in their battle against the deadly but somewhat overrated coronavirus disease (COVID-19) , the law enforcement agencies, particularly the police, are even less consistent. Late on Tuesday, the police suddenly countermanded the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari that allows essential services workers free movement in the discharge of their duties.

For reasons not clearly stated, only a few state police commands, including Lagos and Ogun, implemented the new order by the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu. Last Tuesday, essential services workers, particularly health workers and journalists, were either detained at checkpoints or arrested and detained in overcrowded police stations.

It was not until the following day, Wednesday, that the order was rescinded following public outcry. Virtually the whole country was united in condemning Mr Adamu’s effrontery. They wondered where he got the boldness to disregard the president’s directive or misinterpret it. In all his three nationwide addresses on the war against COVID-19, the president had been explicit on free movement for essential services workers during the regimen of restrictions put in place to help combat the pandemic.

The president’s order was reasonable and unambiguous. If health workers did not have free movement during national or state lockdowns, how could the disease be confronted effectively? And if media professionals did not enjoy free movement, how could they report the war or serve as intermediary and information disseminators between the government and the people? But even during the earlier lockdowns, the police had sometimes resisted the presidential order, though not as flagrantly as they did last Tuesday.

Indications that the police were uncomfortable with the presidential directive first emerged in Lagos when they defied the directive on the movement of essential workers as contained in the president’s speech when he imposed a nationwide curfew and interstate lockdown. The police in Lagos, probably acting on orders from above, detained media professionals on the incomprehensible pretext that curfew was not the same as lockdown, with curfew, in their view, interpreted to be more severe and total.

How they came to that conclusion is baffling. However, it required the intervention of the Lagos State government to enlighten the police that the president was clear in his speech about those who qualified for free movement during the curfew, and that in any case, essential services during a health crisis could not suddenly mean something else simply because lockdown had transmuted into a curfew. The police muttered some curious explanations and then backed down.

But given the enthusiasm with which the police defied or misinterpreted the president’s order on the free movement of essential services workers, barely three weeks after the first defiance, some analysts have suggested that there must be more to the second defiance than the excuse the police have given. The police had suggested that the presidential exemptions were abused, and that some of the so-called essential services workers were guilty of that abuse.

The police did not corroborate their accusations. In fact the IGP was clear on Tuesday when he held a virtual conference with top police officers that the implementation of the curfew was to be total. According to him, there would be no exemptions whatsoever. Why and how it did not occur to him that it amounted to insubordination to forbid exemptions in direct opposition to a presidential address that admitted exemptions is still unclear.

It took an outcry and threat of a sit-at-home protest by medical workers to jolt the police awake. Or perhaps top government officials waded into the matter. But whether the IGP was himself countermanded or he responded on his own volition to the protests, it is noted that he reversed himself barely a day later. Three disturbing facts, however, come out of the whole sordid controversy over essential workers’ movements. First, the IGP once again gave wing to the suspicion that his professionalism can sometimes lack surefootedness in moments of crisis. It was expected that he should ordinarily understand the president’s unambiguous directive about who qualifies for free movement  during a crisis such as the one engendered by COVID-19. No one has disputed the clarity of the president’s directive. Therefore, what part of the president’s directive did the IGP not understand?

Second, the fiasco also raises apprehension about how the police are led. When the IGP issued his counter directive during the virtual conference with his top officers, could the Police Force not boast of a few officers who had read and digested the president’s speech to the point of remonstrating with Mr Adamu on the implications of his new directive on essential services workers? Was there no debate during the conference? Did the IGP simply and fiercely issue the directive, and then ended the teleconferencing without allowing any input? Or did the officers wholeheartedly agree with their boss because they were either afraid of him or harboured grudges against doctors and journalists? Surely, they cannot all say it never occurred to them that if doctors were barred from unhindered movement, it could cost some people/patients their lives. Nor can they say that they did not need reporters to cover how the police were giving effect to the presidential directives, assuming the directives were not so ingloriously misinterpreted.

Third, it is curious and shocking that state governments themselves did not immediately counter the police directive, especially because of the potential harmful impact the IGP’s new directive would have on the war against the disease. Lagos was the most affected by the aberrant police behaviour of last Tuesday, a fact that led the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) in the state to react forcefully to the arrest and detention of doctors. States should never allow the police to complicate their efforts. They should immediately have reached out to the presidency and ensure that the misinterpretation of the president’s order was corrected barely a few hours later. More, they should have pushed for sanctions against the IGP.

The health crisis Nigeria is facing, not to say the attendant and disruptive economic effects, is too dire to be messed up by policemen unprofessionally interpreting or countermanding presidential directive. The misinterpretation was deliberate and offensive. The states should have denounced it openly, particularly resting their condemnation on the earlier presidential directive, or at least verbally defied it. It was an occasion that required the states to be forceful and unapologetic.

The police may do as they please, even in the face of clear presidential orders, unafraid of sanctions; and the states may be timid, as they often are when they confront federal meddlesomeness, but what of the federal government itself? Could they pretend not to be aware of the police misdeed, or did they think little of it? On some occasions in the past, the police and other security agencies had flouted presidential directives and the constitution, and had not been sanctioned.

Perhaps, this explains the levity with which the police, smarting from accusations of incompetent policing of the interstate lockdown, twisted the presidential directive. Yet, neither the federal and state governments nor the police are unaware of how other countries are responding to the COVID-19 threat, particularly how the media, health workers and law enforcement agencies in those countries are discharging their responsibilities. It is shameful that this momentary lapse of common sense ever occurred. The image of Nigeria is further sullied by a Police Force that finds it difficult to interpret who is an essential service worker.

It is not enough that the federal government put a task force together to supervise the country’s medical response to the disease. The task force and the government must be on top of the situation in every material particular. They must not allow the country to be ridiculed again, or give the impression to the rest of the world that in things as elementary as dealing with the administration of a lockdown or curfew, Nigeria and its security agencies wrestle with directives and interpretations. If the country can’t get little things right, how can it be trusted to get the bigger matter of a search for COVID-19 cure right? If heads of agencies, whether law enforcement or administrative, know that there would be consequences for egregious behaviour, especially one that borders on flouting presidential directive, they would be less lackadaisical or imperious.

Undertow

 

WITH COVID-19 infection cases in excess of 1,400 out of a national total of a little more than 5,000, and 33 deaths out of over 160 for the entire country, Lagos State is reportedly weighing its options on whether to repeat the lockdown imposed on the state by the federal government on March 30 or simply continue with the regimen of relaxing the measure.

The lockdown lasted for two unbroken weeks in the first instance in April, was extended by another two unbroken weeks, and then extended by another unbroken week, before an indeterminate 8pm-6am curfew was imposed after the easing of lockdown began.

For as long as the lockdowns lasted, the rate of infection did not abate. Indeed, even with the imposition of curfew, infection has still not abated.

There is no significant statistical difference in infection rate between the lockdown period and post-lockdown/curfew period, but the Lagos State government still thinks there should be a re-imposition of lockdown.

It reasons that since Lagosians were not adhering to the rules and regulations guiding the easing of lockdown, they were making a second lockdown inevitable.

Though the state has not presented any statistical analysis to show that the rate of infection was gentler under lockdown than after, it has seemed to discount the fact that before the five-week lockdown the rate of infection was in fact slower than after the lockdown was imposed.

In particular, in March, some 71 Lagosians were infected. In April, some 920 Lagosians were infected. And in May, so far, some 1065 people have been infected.

These figures translate into 1,196 percent increase in infection rate for April under the lockdown (March 31, one day after lockdown began to April 30, four days before lockdown ended), and 16 percent rate of increase between the end of the lockdown, May 4, to May 13.

In other words, the rate of increase of infection between the beginning of lockdown and end of lockdown was 1,489 percent.

However, the fact is that the low rate of testing, both before and after lockdown ended, makes it difficult for statisticians to paint an accurate picture of the gentleness or steepness of the infection rate in the state.

Statisticians have managed to give a spatial picture of the infection, indicating which parts of the states suffer infections, but they have been unable to do precious little else.

It is, therefore, confusing what picture of COVID-19 infection rate the state is seizing upon to consider a second lockdown. It was a mistake in the first instance to impose a lockdown, because little or nothing was gained from it other than perhaps identifying with the global convention of making general lockdown look sexy.

Average infections in March in Lagos were 2.29 persons per day, and in April, the month of the lockdown, 30.67 persons.

To consider administering a second lockdown simply because Lagosians are believed to be remiss in adhering to rules and regulations guiding the easing of lockdown will, therefore, be a terrible mistake.

The Lagos State government has now inexplicably decided to pass the decision about a second lockdown to the public through online polling.

It is a decision that should normally be taken by a panel of the state’s scientists, medical experts, economists, law enforcement agencies and political leaders. Where the state got the brainwave to go online and subject the proposal to public opinion polling is hard to fathom.

Online polling is the wrongest place to go for such a grave decision regarding a pandemic that constitutes an existential threat to nearly all parts of the world.

Online pollsters are often concerned with a narrow range of options; they have no means of informing the public what factors to consider in coming to judgement about how to vote.

For the pandemic and the lockdown, there is little to suggest that the public is fixated on anything else but the deaths that accompany the COVID-19 infection.

In March, when the federal government first unilaterally imposed a lockdown, many Lagosians actually and sensibly believed it was disruptive of the original measures thoughtfully embarked upon by the state.

The state had embraced a gradual shutdown, significantly reduced traffic on the roads, banned religious gatherings and other forms of social entertainments, and encouraged companies to coax their workers, as much as practicable, to work from home.

These were necessary first steps; and they were applauded and thought to be fairly effective. In addition, these measures were thought to be cost-effective, not needing wide scale financial or material interventions in the existence of either the middle class or the vulnerable.

Unfortunately and heedlessly, the federal government, thinking itself to be decisive, barged in and ordered a lockdown, deigning only to inform the states affected by the rash decision.

Since then nothing has been the same. Not only did cases spike, the vulnerable nearly caused a socio-economic revolt. And still the federal government has still been unable and incompetent to administer palliative measures.

It is, therefore, shocking that rather than appreciate all the attendant problems triggered by the federal government’s abrasive measure, including correctly assessing the competence of lockdown to address the rise in COVID-19 infection cases, the state has merely looked at the COVID-19 infection curve that has refused to flatten, and felt the need to blame the public for not adhering to the rules and regulations guiding the easing of the lockdown.

Worse, it has felt that the best way to address the problem is either by threatening the people with a second lockdown, which they know is quite disruptive, or devolving the decision to the people themselves through online polling.

This is not only unfair, it is hard to understand how the state could come up with what is evidently a retrogressive measure in the face of global easing of lockdowns even as infection rates have not abated in many parts of the world after huge expansion in testing.

A lockdown is useful only when the authorities can do what they cannot otherwise do without a lockdown, such as widespread testing and expansion of facilities for isolation and treatment.

Second, it would be a gross dereliction of responsibility for a state imposing a lockdown not to competently distribute palliatives such as financial assistance to endangered companies and factories, and food and provisions to the people, especially, but not limited to, the vulnerable.

In the first lockdown ordered by the federal government, Lagos State was left to grapple with the issue of palliatives and all other attendant complications. The federal government’s palliative intervention was disruptive, tokenistic and controversially targeted.

Sadly, too, Lagos simply went along with the federal lockdown without looking at and addressing its local peculiarities like Ogun did.

That approach was uninspiring and unfair to Lagosians. The state allowed the good work it had started to be corrupted by an unthinking and panicky federal government.

Lagos State must begin to trust its instincts, rather than abdicate the responsibility of determining whether a second lockdown is required.

Another lockdown is not needed, and it will be to a considerable extent defied by a people whose lots have worsened abysmally with the first extended and unbroken five-week lockdown.

Ogun State gives three days break in one week in the implementation of its lockdown. It knows it cannot intervene significantly in terms of distributing palliatives to its people.

Indeed, it has since given up on that. Yes, Ogun people have more lockdown freedom than Lagosians, but its people have nevertheless become needlessly exposed to all sorts of privations. Yet, a significant number of Ogun people live in Ogun State but work in Lagos.

Denying them movement to their work places is counterproductive. Sadly, too, the state has unwisely inspired itself to consider going online to ask for permission to elongate the unproductive lockdown it has elevated as public policy.

How many tests have they done during the lockdown? And do they even need a lockdown to carry out extensive tests? Lagos has carried out a little less than 10,000 tests and found about 2057 infected people.

But the economy of Lagos is in dire straits, like the rest of the country, and the people are famished. Does the state need another lockdown to carry out more testing? And do the test kits even give accurate readings?

Online is not the place to seek validation for a policy that is clearly heedless and retrogressive. If the state wants to impose another lockdown, let it go ahead and please itself, instead of blaming the people for failure to adhere to rules that should be policed by the state in the first instance.

But it must find a better way than it has shambolically done in the past few weeks to ameliorate the dire conditions of the people. It must find ways to provide food and provisions to nearly all Lagosians and give financial succour to distressed companies.

The federal government will not do it; it is too distant and aloof. It is thus the responsibility of the states that have imposed lockdown. Those who are voting for lockdown online are not doing so competently.

They should instead ask the government to police the easing of lockdown or be prepared to face civil disobedience in case of a second lockdown.

Using mass deaths to alarm the people or extrapolating unverified and statistically unsubstantiated mass infections in the coming months is unhelpful.

The government has a responsibility to limit the rate of new infections using the most cost-effective means. Forecasting apocalypse or locking the state or country down is hardly the way to go.

It should do its work rationally and responsibly and leave scaremongering and simplistic online polling severely alone.

UnderTow

With a coronavirus disease infection rate galloping in Nigeria on a daily basis, and deaths inching disquietingly towards the catastrophic, the public and the media have focused almost exclusively on the disease which first broke out in China in December, 2019. Labelled by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as COVID-19, to distinguish it from other forms of coronavirus diseases, it has taken the world by storm and raised a number of other worrisome and tangential issues.

The broadcast media now devotes more than a half of their newscast time to the disease, barely leaving room for any other thing, especially politics at a time and season when politics, elections and governance should take more than 90 percent of public attention. The print media unapologetically emblazons news of the virus daily on their front pages. Nothing will threaten the dominance of the virus in the months ahead.

The Nigerian economy was of course heading for trouble weeks before COVID-19 burst on the scene, with public attention riveted on the nearly $30bn loan the Muhammadu Buhari presidency had planned to take in order to fund their budget deficit. The public had taken issues with the loans, lambasted the government for its obsessive thirst for and reliance on foreign funds, and marvelled at the inurement of their National Assembly to the pitfalls of unbearable and burdensome loans, not to say their vexatious subservience to the executive arm in the manner they authorised the loan application. Not only did Nigerians worry about the ballooning public debt, they also fear that they had lost their parliament which felt increasingly beholden to the executive than the electorate. It took the brilliant force majeure of COVID-19 to halt the finalisation of the bloated loan deal already approved by the parliament after a superficial debate.

Before late February, when Nigeria’s complacency was pricked by the coming of the first index case from Italy, the political sector was buzzing loudly, indeed raucously. The political opposition might have done little but bleated feebly, with the voice of the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), barely heard above the soft din. But there was still some excitement in the air. However, the voice of the PDP was not mellifluous or consistent, nor did it pack any significant oomph, but they registered their presence in their constant and perfunctory denunciation of all that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) stood for.

PDP press releases, whenever they came, often paid more attention to grammar and style than to substance and power. The statements were also sometimes provocative and verbose, and rarely had any impact on the thin-skinned ruling party that mocked their logic and ridiculed the scanty issues they addressed. The statements also seldom caused enough tremors in the ruling party potent enough to arrest the attention of the public or ruffle the feathers of their main rival already ensconced in office and luxuriating in power.

Late last year, a gargantuan effort to unseat the APC chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, was garishly executed. The coup, whose authors were self-professed progressives and ostensible future beacons of democracy, miscarried very badly. The politics of the plot to throw off the yoke of the party chairman, not to say the law of it, arrested the interest of Nigerians, whether PDP or APC, or any other party. The legal provisions relied on by the coupists to actualise their plan disturbed the public but kept them enthralled for weeks, with the proponents of the coup scurrying to and fro the federal capital, Abuja, restlessly, feverishly, and petulantly. Then the politics of the coup itself. It was sheer bliss to party faithful, legal aficionados, and media professionals whose gay copies and thunderous blather on the front pages of their newspapers warmed the cockles of many hearts.

But just when the coup seemed on the verge of succeeding, and with party leaders adding their moral support to powerful voices agitating against the coupists, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. The collapse of the coup was spectacular. But no one expected that weeks or months after that collapse, no more news would be heard about the frenzied plots. Alas, it turned out to be the last flickering move, at least for now. COVID-19 had done the job no party or presidency or political chieftain could do. Now, all governors are preoccupied with tackling what the United States president Donald Trump sarcastically referred to as the Chinese (or Wuhan) virus. Indeed, it is proving more difficult for the governors to tackle the virus than to plan coups against one another or against their chairman. Their lack of fecundity has been badly exposed.

Shortly before the disease outbreak, the September and October Ondo and Edo governorship elections sat unchallenged and pristinely on the front burner. In both states, there were a couple of aspirants who made the governors quake in their boots. The Ondo State governor Rotimi Akeredolu had nearly a dozen challengers, a few of whom are not only politically versatile, but also intellectually sound and robust. In Edo, Governor Obaseki, who was numbered among the unrepentant coupists that nearly unhorsed the Edo-born Mr Oshiomhole, had engaged in frenetic politicking to entrench himself and secure a vantage position for the coming polls. More than displayed in Ondo, Mr Obaseki had organised a lot of activities and manoeuvres to wrong-foot and disadvantage his opponents. The result has been varied and uncertain, but he has not been deterred.

With COVID-19 edging out every other news and activities from the front pages, whether politics or religion, or whether society or even crime and the economy, Ondo and Edo have suddenly become the addendum, sometimes on the front pages, and sometimes on the inside pages. Both Ondo and Edo governors are in fact in a dilemma how to respond to their opponents, many of whom have since morphed, in the estimation of the governors, from being mere opponents to implacable enemies.

In Edo, the governor has demolished his opponent’s buildings, attempted to send some of them, including his party chairman, Mr Oshiomhole, into exile, and has made edicts and laws banning this and that, or indeed anything that remotely connects with his enemies or gives them advantage. The Ondo governor has been less grandiloquent, and seems sometimes fragile and lethargic. But he appears prepared to meet his opponents at any place of their choosing, and is eager to give battle as ardently as he can manage. The two incumbent governors’ valiant political efforts have, however, been rendered pianissimo, despite been saddled with the daunting responsibilities of fighting COVID-19 as well as waging re-election battles against opponents who are single-minded.

Even the Buhari presidency, which in the best of times and all through the pre-COVID-19 era had been staid and reclusive in its approach to politics and governance, has on the excuse of fighting the disease shrunk further into gross anonymity and inscrutable silence. A few appointments have no doubt been made, thus giving the impression of an administration still very active, but beyond that they have seemed tremendously pleased that no political challenges have been flung at them either by the opposition or by circumstances. The government is satisfied battling coronavirus. Politics had always seemed to addle them anyway. They would rather fight any other hideous monster than be compelled to respond smartly and adequately to political challenges.

The hugest regret belongs to the PDP. It cannot politicise COVID-19, for that most presumptuous of diseases is no respecter of person or party, let alone the sarcastic. The Kano State Works and Infrastructure commissioner who scathingly denounced the president’s late chief of staff, Abba Kyari, after the latter was bumped off by the impudent virus, is himself down with the virus, having hailed from a state in denial over the disease. Are the states fighting the virus smartly and comprehensively? Not at all. The war is hobbled by incompetence, confusion, and years of mediocrity and negligence. The opposition knows all this, but having ruled for 16 years, it knows it cannot be absolved of blame. So there can be no politicisation of anything; after all, some PDP leaders or members of their families have also fallen victim to the virus.

The solemnity that has characterised politics in the past few chaotic weeks will, therefore, continue for some time to come. Indeed, how Ondo and Edo governorship aspirants hope to campaign, participate in primaries and fight the elections will remain uppermost in the minds of everybody in the two states, including the relevant electoral agencies. For years, the public had campaigned for electronic voting. Now the country must actively weigh that option, even if the Ondo and Edo polls will for now be exempted. Many other things will change in politics, when its engine begins to rev again, but for now, all will remain quiet on the political front, so quiet that the September, October polls will shock everybody by its sombreness.

By Undertow

Barely two weeks after Northern states governors vehemently asserted their reluctance to embrace lockdown as a measure to combat COVID-19 pandemic, they have panicked, embraced the measure, and even embarked on many other desperate, perhaps superfluous, tactics. The decision to oppose a lockdown was taken at a virtual conference by the governors, with their chairman, Simon Lalong of Plateau State, issuing a press statement underscoring the inadvisability of the drastic measure. In the statement, Mr Lalong  argued: “They (northern governors) agreed that at the moment, each state would adopt the measure suitable to its setting because total lockdown of the region will come at a very high cost since most of its citizens are farmers who need to go to farms since the rains have started. Another issue discussed by the northern governors was the issue of palliatives from the Federal Government where they regretted that so far, no state in the region had received a dime as special allocation despite the fact that some of them have recorded cases while others are making frantic efforts to prevent any outbreak, as well as prepare against any eventuality.”

There is of course some logic to the northern states governors’ argument. Lockdown has huge economic costs, and there is in addition no global proof that it is capable of achieving the desired health goal of curbing the coronavirus disease that has infected nearly 2,000 Nigerians and cost more than 50 lives. It is also true that with the advent of the planting season, farms desperately need labourers to kick-start and energise next season’s agricultural cycle. A lockdown would cost the agricultural sector dearly, the governors say, and dispose the region and perhaps the country to hunger, if not needless deaths far more impactful than the novel virus. They are right. So, what has changed in barely two weeks that has led the governors to abandon their distaste for the lockdown measure?

When they robustly denounced the lockdown measure on April 13, only a handful of states in the region had been affected by the virus, and insignificantly few deaths had been recorded. In two weeks, however, only a handful of states — indeed by the NCDC account, just one — have remained unaffected by the virus, with the outbreak in Kano and Borno States filling the governors with horror and consternation, particularly the rapidity with which the virus has spread. The region had many weeks of unhindered advantage to prepare for a worst-case scenario of COVID-19 outbreak. They instead adopted a far more optimistic and rose-coloured perspective of the virus, with both the governments and the governed making light of the disease, pretending to some unearthly immunity, and assuming that a perfunctory approach to the disease and minimal preparation in terms of isolation centres would suffice to rein in a health crisis they were not sure would occur.

While the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) kept warning that an outbreak in the region was only a matter of time, perhaps alarmed that nothing substantial or concrete was being done to prepare for it, the northern states kept stonewalling. Kogi State, for instance, has suggested it had an app with which to battle the disease. The state has, however, not indicated how an app could do the job of forestalling a disease outbreak, nor shown the scientific connection between the disease and a computer programme. Indigenes of some of the northern states, particularly religious associations, have ridiculed public paranoia over the disease, arguing that the region had seen off other epidemics, and are assured that even coronavirus would fall before their invincibility.

Alas, finally, coronavirus has berthed in most of the northern states, bar one or two states by the last count. Kano’s controversial death figures, following a disease they continue to argue is of unknown aetiology, has infused panic into the system. It even seemed that whatever disease is killing off the indigenes of the state is playing a cruel and morbid joke on the powerful and influential, killing off more than a dozen of them in almost one fell swoop. Not only has the state consequently declared a complete lockdown, without graduating from mild or severe restrictions, it has had to embrace a further two-week lockdown imposed by the federal government. Just like the northern states which for over a month did not even have one testing centre bar the one in Abuja, for a few crazy days Kano’s only testing centre, which was erected rather late in the first instance, was out of action. It was restored a few days ago after indecipherable theories of conspiracies had run riot in the state, including one by one Prof Ishaq Akintola who incredulously tied the absence of a testing centre to a plot to depopulate the largely Muslim North.

Testing centres, though late in coming, are beginning to spring up in many states in the North. Better late than never. But vital moments have been lost. Perhaps, now, the true picture of the COVID-19 incidence in the North will manifest as a result of the establishment of more testing centres. By and large, the region is unfortunately not ready to handle the pandemic. But the NCDC and the federal government are beginning to rally to the side of the region, and are expected to pour money and resources to a problem that could have been handled more timely and successfully had they been less superstitious and superfluous in their naive approach to the disease.

The fear in the region and Nigeria as a whole is that the northern states are less prepared or competent, on account of their socio-cultural milieu, to tackle the pandemic. Medical facilities are few and far between. And where they exist, they are not well staffed, nor well equipped. If the outbreak becomes an avalanche, then a tragedy of truly monumental proportion would quickly manifest. Like the rest of the country, and perhaps worse, the gross and continuous underfunding of the health sector will expectedly take a heavy toll on the country. Poverty is also more widespread in the region, and few mitigating measures have been taken generally to address a long-standing health crisis that is now certain to be compounded by COVID-19.

For decades, the northern states, which are plagued by the unremitting almajiri problem, have been lax in addressing many of their outdated and outmoded cultural and religious practices. The almajiri problem has led to the proliferation of thousands, if not millions of youths, who are sent to poorly equipped and unregulated Quranic schools where they must fend for themselves at a tender age. They have often been fodder for violent religious or any other kind of protests. Neither their parents nor their Quranic schools have generally been held accountable for the children banished to religious schools, and not catered for or nurtured roundly into adulthood. They school in overcrowded classrooms and live in heavily overcrowded and abominable hostels. The northern states have for many years spoken glibly of abolishing the practice; but they have lacked the courage and the vision to handle the problem sensibly and pragmatically.

Indeed, early this week, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, bemoaned the neglect to which Nigerian youths, in this case, the almajirai, have been subjected. Speaking during the daily briefing by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 last Monday, Mr Mustapha warned: “There is nothing wrong about them learning the dictates of their faith. But we must prepare them equally for the future. Equip them, skill them so that they can become educated in their states and also become productive citizens in the future. If we do not deal with the issues relating to the almajiris, we are building an army that would overwhelm us as a people and as a nation in the future.” The SGF was, in other words, saying that hastily banning the almajiri practice was not enough to mitigate its deleterious effects. There must be a scientific approach to a cancer that had been foolishly allowed to fester for decades.

Kebbi State governor, Abubakar Bagudu, told the media some 10 days ago that northern states governors had agreed that almajirai in the region would be returned to their home states to allow the governors and the states to deal with the pandemic and to tackle a practice they see has evidently become a disease vector. The North is littered with trucks conveying many of the almajiri youths back to their home states, all of them cutting a pitiful picture of abuse and abandonment. It brings into sharp focus the absolute lack of responsibility demonstrated by the affected state governments and parents in dealing with a problem that should never have been allowed to take root in the first instance.

Yet, in all the effort to repatriate the almajirai, little has been said about parents who have wilfully subjected their children to such degrading treatment and practice, a practice sometimes implausibly defended as not being inconsonant with religious precepts. The affected children are being returned to their states, as indeed they should, but the state governments have a duty to fish out parents who deliberately abandon their responsibilities to their children. Surely the states can find a corollary of the law to charge such offending parents in the court. If the mounting COVID-19 cases in the country are a true reflection of the spread of the disease, and not a scheme to finagle the system of the little left in the national treasury due to shrinking oil exports and revenue, it is time then to fight the neglect, irresponsibility and abominable practices that have fostered the rampage of a disease the country should have controlled far better than it did. While the entire country cannot be absolved of blame for allowing the pandemic to run riot, northern governors share a huge and inglorious part of the blame.

By UnderTow

David Umahi, the 56-year-old civil engineer and governor of Ebonyi State who plunged carelessly into the eye of a media storm last week, has a rough edge to his politics and life. Elected for a second term by a plurality that shamed his opponents, unlike his first term when he eked out a disputed victory against his co-contestants and the wish of his predecessor and mentor, Martin Elechi, he has acted and spoken like a potentate from Africa’s dynastic past. His ire was drawn by two reporters from The Sun and Vanguard newspapers who clearly did Nigeria proud by helping to expose to the country the real Mr Umahi behind the governorship mask.

The Sun’s Chijioke Agwu had written a story on the outbreak of Lassa fever in Ebonyi, based on statistics sourced from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). The governor said the report was a fabrication. On the other hand, Peter Okutu was said to have painted a distorted and disparaging picture of the alleged military invasion of Umuogodoakpu-Ngbo community in Ohaukwu LGA, and allegedly also reported a cholera outbreak, reports that drew the ire of the local government chairman who promptly ordered his arrest. The police, obviously at the prompting of the state government, waded in and detained both reporters, while the governor unprecedentedly vented his spleen at them in a live broadcast last Wednesday. Mr Umahi’s bellicose statements were widely quoted by Nigeria’s offended media.

Hear the governor: “If you think you have the pen, we have the koboko. I want to say that I am very displeased with the president and leadership of the Nigeria Union of Journalists and I am going to seize their allowances for two months because they have failed to discipline their members. Ebonyi State is no longer a dumping ground. Only the other day, Chijioke Agwu (that is, The Sun correspondent) wrote that Lassa Fever was killing Ebonyi people in droves, and a few days ago, Mr Peter Okutu of Vanguard did his own. Okutu is fond of degrading Ebonyi State, and I don’t know why my officials have allowed him to continue to do that, because he is not from Ebonyi State. I want to ban him for life with Chijioke Agwu. I don’t want to see them anywhere in any government facility. We are not begging you to give us good report, because the only person that gives good or bad report is God. We are all accountable to him. If you think that Ebonyi State is a dumping ground, try it again.”

In case Nigerians found Mr Umahi’s threats improbable, here is how he summarised his anger against the two reporters: “If you think you have the pen, we have the koboko (horse whip). Let’s leave the court alone. Ebonyi people are very angry with the press, and let me warn that I won’t be able to control them or know when they unleash mayhem on you, if you continue to write to create panic in the state. I want you to write it that way, that I said, press in Ebonyi is trying to create another COVID that is more dangerous and that is to create panic in our people. The other one wrote that cholera had killed 20 people in Ohaukwu. If you try it again, I may not know when Ebonyians might react. This is important for the NUJ to know. If you are an Ebonyi man or live in Ebonyi and you don’t feel our pains, it is a shame on you. Maybe, the press people claim they are untouchable. I have reported to the National President of NUJ, I have reported to (the) State leadership of NUJ and I have reported to the public. Now, the die is cast. May God save us in this time.”

Nigerians will probably blanch with horror at the governor’s threats. The people remember how valiantly and democratically Mr Umahi, a former deputy governor before 2015,  fought to get his party’s nomination in 2015 against the wishes of the then governor, his boss Mr Elechi. They also recall that his victory, which was challenged by a host of political parties, was legitimised by the courts. How someone who has profited from democratic practices could project dictatorial tendencies and threatened and instigated violence against reporters is hard for watchers of Ebonyi to comprehend. The Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) has rightly taken offence and lodged a complaint against the state government with the law enforcement agencies in Abuja, especially seeing how complicit the police in Ebonyi have seemed.

Civil society organisations (CSOs) have also openly challenged the governor, decrying his authoritarian streak and wondering whether, instead of threats and arrests, there were no legal provisions to help him challenge and shame tendentious reports. Like the NUJ, the CSOs have complained that it was both wrong and undemocratic for the governor to bar reporters from performing their constitutional responsibility of holding the government accountable to the people. Mr Umahi has now stirred a storm, but no one is sure whether he gives a damn. He is in his second term and, like his predecessor, might wish to influence the election of his successor, or at least the success of his party in 2023. Could he afford reckless boasts against the constitution and the press, not to talk of embarrassingly flouting the laws of the land? Mr Umahi has not been spectacular with his views and his government since he assumed office in 2015; his latest controversy however seems to take the biscuit. He may have, and exercise, state power, but he is unlikely to have the last say on the matter. Reporters living and working in the state may fear him, going forward, but reporters outside the state will naturally take liberty with their opinions and analyses of his controversial, if unsatisfactory, performance as governor.

Mr Umahi has promised to ban the two reporters from covering government activities for life. For life? How and where on earth does he think he can muster such influence? At best he has about three years to go, not a lifetime tenure. He could forbid the reporters and use state power to back his decision, but there is no ambiguity at all in the constitution that he does not possess the powers to do to reporters what he has proposed. The governor says his state is not a dumping ground, a manner of speaking perhaps referencing reports that are adverse to him and the state. He should simply refute reports that offend him and leave the public and the affected newspaper publishers to determine the quality or otherwise of their reporters’ work. Mr Umahi adds that only God gives good or bad report. It is not clear where he got his theology, but God has never arrogated to Himself that distinction of being the only one to grade people’s work. For eons, God has shared that distinction with man. Mr Umahi will in fact be graded by man, including the media, just as God will have His say. After all, the voice of the people, they say, is the voice of God.

More worrisomely, the Ebonyi governor insinuated violence against the reporters and any non-Eboyian bold enough to dump unfavourable reports about the state government on the people of the state. He then darkly hinted that the courts would not be allowed to be the arbiter when he takes on his media enemies. Not only does the governor unforgivably swear to pretend not to know when violence would be meted on offending reporters, thereby indirectly instigating the people to feel aggrieved and to do something about it, he also asserted that the horsewhip would be more efficacious as a tool of discipline than the pen. The media will get the hint. Worse, he has suggested that the ordinary Ebonyian should feel aggrieved, and must in fact be ashamed not to feel offended, and he urges them to do something about their pains. This is clear instigation to violence. And Mr Umahi calls himself a governor and a democrat? Incredible.

But the media must also feel scandalised by the governor’s Freudian slip that saw him announcing that he would withhold the monthly allowances paid the NUJ. It is not clear whether he is referring to reporters as a whole or the leadership of the NUJ in the state. But it is obvious that Ebonyi, according to the governor , and perhaps like most other states, pays state correspondents working in the state. If such payments exist, they would be unwholesome and unethical. How the ethical standards of the press had become so dulled by economic necessities as to be perpetuated for years is hard to explain. However, it is still a credit to the NUJ leadership that regardless of any such payments, they have still felt the necessity to denounce the governor’s authoritarian actions and deplorable threats.

Mr Umahi may rightly take exception to some of the reports published about the state in the media. But as an elected governor who swore to uphold the constitution, he should know how to ventilate his grievances with the decency and temperament of a robust democrat. Sadly, he has acted brashly and heedlessly, like a dictator and lawless politician. He is one more evidence, as if any was still needed, that most Nigerian governors and elected officials are overrated and unworthy of the offices to which they have been elevated by public votes. Is Mr Umahi’s predecessor, Mr Elechi, still acclaimed today? Where, indeed, are all Nigeria’s former governors? How many of them are still spoken about fondly by most Nigerians? Mr Umahi’s tenure will soon come to an end: he has the choice of making that end noble and distinguished, or ignoble. If he does not realign his perspectives with the laws of the land, the levity with which he takes both the constitution and his oath of office seems fated to render him inconspicuous and insignificant in the future.