The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Redefining #EndBadGovernance protests

    Redefining #EndBadGovernance protests

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) administration is clearly not popular. In fact, it has few friends anywhere, whether in the administration itself, or in the media, or in the larger society. That is why, incredibly, many commentators and politicians, not to say highly placed Nigerians and meddlesome international organisations, are tagging the August 1-10 hunger protests as peaceful. In their view, everyone arrested, detained, or is being prosecuted was a peaceful protester, and President Bola Tinubu had become an apostate democrat.

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    Except media reports by newspapers and broadcast channels were fabricated or replayed from protests in other countries, no one who witnessed or experienced the riots and looting in August would conclude that no laws were breached. Quite apart from the dangers of an explosion which any such protest in Nigeria foreshadows, those whose shops and warehouses and offices were looted would not be in a hurry to be as glib and expiatory as the latter-day writers and activists and columnists distorting the facts.

    Too many Nigerians and critics still romanticise protests, preferring to view them solely from the perspective of the constitution. It is a reality, given the current economic and social conditions of Nigeria, that protests can lead in any direction, not least an unmanageable explosion. Protests cannot be contained in a test tube, as Kenya and Bangladesh, the objects of the Nigerian protester’s infatuations, recently demonstrated vividly. 

  • Atiku, Obi and Opposition Politics 101

    Atiku, Obi and Opposition Politics 101

    Apart from their make-believe struggle to determine who is the preeminent opposition politician or political party, both ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar and ex-Anambra governor Peter Obi are at bottom playing the script they cleverly, or perhaps telepathically, set out to play weeks after they lost their cases at the Supreme Court against the election of President Bola Tinubu. Since then, and sometimes on the same issues, they have synergised probably the most toxic brand of political opposition uncommon to Nigeria. Both opposition leaders are instinctively and exaggeratedly against nearly every policy enacted and every measure taken by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Between December 2023 and January 2024, the two opposition politicians insisted that the outcome of the presidential election settled the matter of who should be the leading opposition leader in Nigeria. In losing the election to President Bola Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku had 6.98 million votes while Peter Obi had 6.1 million votes. The gap between the two candidates was less than a million votes, perhaps not enough to say conclusively that the former trumped the latter. The overall voter turnout was less than 27 percent, with the former vice president taking about 29.1 percent and Mr Obi taking 25.4 percent. Neither the struggle for preeminence nor the legitimacy of the election is affected by the low voter turnout because all the candidates in that election contributed to the abysmal figures. Both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi, not to say their supporters and statisticians, had at first insinuated that the election winner’s legitimacy was compromised by the low turnout. Since the candidates could not manufacture votes, despite unfounded accusations of vote rigging, the final tally mirrored the state of Nigerian politics and the inability of the candidates to fire the imagination of the people on a scale that would lead to higher voter figures. Had the poll been cancelled due to low voter turnout, any repeat election would have attracted an even lower turnout. 

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    However, Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi have gone to great lengths to avoid provoking or antagonising each other. They have trained their guns on the ‘enemy’, and while giving the impression that they were at odds with each other, they have in fact managed to synergise their opposition style, sometimes secretively and bizarrely, and at other times a little flagrantly and nonchalantly. What is more, neither politician has shown a clear and systematic understanding of what opposition politics should look and sound like. Instead of identifying where they were coming from and where they are located in the political scheme of things, they have focused almost exclusively on the federal government, thereby indicating that the only thing important to them is how to gain the presidency. Whatever they say from now on will be geared towards seeking the best way to enhance their prospects at the next election or how to outrightly gain the presidency at first try.

    Their misdirected focus has precluded them from reforming or repositioning their parties in preparation for that great next election. Consequently, instead of applauding any good national policy, they focus on and excoriate policies that distort the system or inflict pain, even if temporary. They see creeping intolerance and fascism in government’s firmness, or perhaps conjure them; instinctively defend anyone or group which defy the rule of law, as organised labour’s Mr Ajaero has done; dredge up stories about abuses that in some cases embarrassingly turn out to be untrue, without offering any retraction; and select issues to address, not in order of importance, but often in order of emotional appeal.

    But what they really need is to address the dysfunctionality in their parties, their inability to manage or inspire subordinate party leaders, remake their ideological platforms to achieve clarity of purpose, structure or restructure their opposition to policies and methods of the ruling party, and put the interest of country above party interest or personal ambition. So far, in their understanding of opposition politics, they have both given the impression that their positions in the society and the kind of opposition they project against the administration would be justified if the country crashed. Without country, however, there would be no opposition but enemies, a distinct feature of civil war. Opposition leaders should put up a great show in 2027 rather than poison relationships on social media and through propaganda. They need to unite when the republic is threatened, such as during the last protests, rather than catalyse its collapse for partisan advantage. If the opposition does not redefine and refine their understanding of the concept of opposition, they will continue to focus inordinately on just attacking everything the government does without offering an alternative.

    So far, the two leading opposition leaders have strategically refrained from attacking each other because they trace their antecedents to the same roots, indicating that had either of them assumed power, neither would have pilloried the other with the same severity and regularity mustered today. But, contrary to their expectation, it is hard to see them translating the kind of opposition they are practising today into delivering a successful electoral outcome in 2027. If they have the time and the capacity, both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi need to relearn Opposition Politics 101.

  • Gov Ododo’s men go berserk

    Gov Ododo’s men go berserk

    Moments after the Supreme Court affirmed Kogi State governor Usman Ododo‘s election two Fridays ago, his supporters began attacking Social Democratic Party’s Murtala Ajaka, his challenger during the election, outside the court. Kogi’s nearness to Abuja where the verdict was delivered enables the state and its politicians to easily and cheaply mobilise their supporters for sundry purposes, including muscling opponents. Former governor Yahaya Bello, now a fugitive, deployed this art of strong-arm politics with dexterity. There was no reason on August 23 to believe that the ascension of Mr Ododo had suddenly purged the state of such nefarious tendencies. So, the law enforcement agencies should have anticipated the ugly display.

    It is unlikely Mr Ododo himself engineered the attack on Mr Ajaka, but he bears vicarious responsibility for the actions of the thugs. The miscreants had leaders. The governor should have, therefore, ensured his travelling supporters were well tethered. The governor’s visage exudes geniality, but he must by now have realised that he inherited a political culture from Mr Bello that is distinctly and horrendously anti-democratic. His predecessor believed in using strong-arm tactics in pacifying opponents, and Abuja and pliant law enforcement agencies had for years looked the other way. That disconcerting style, nurtured for decades it seems, nearly turned tragic two Fridays ago had security agents not regained their composure and shuffled Mr Ajaka out of harm’s way.

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    The challenger did nothing untoward in questioning Mr Ododo’s victory. It was the right thing to do, especially given the appalling circumstances of last November’s Kogi governorship election. That he lost in the courts was not necessarily an indication of the political and electoral realities of the last election; it was more an indication of his inability, and indeed the inability of any challenger in Nigeria, to prove electoral victory. In his heart, whether he acknowledges it or not, Mr Ododo knows that his victories, both at the All Progressives Congress (APC) primary and the election itself, were suspect. His Supreme Court victory, in all likelihood, reflects the controversial mechanics of Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence than it mirrored the integrity of the November poll. He doubtless expected the Ajaka challenge, and barely escaped defeat by the skin of his teeth. That his hysterical supporters failed to understand that should inspire the governor to find ways of civilising the state and its electorate.

  • Amnesty International’s contempt for Nigeria

    Amnesty International’s contempt for Nigeria

    Nigeria’s August 1-10 hunger protests coincidentally occurred at the same time with the United Kingdom’s violent anti-immigrant protests. The violence in both countries was not exactly a tale of two cities, especially considering the reasons for the violence. But the coincidence probably showed why the world’s attention was diverted away from the messy protests the #EndBadGovernance street action degenerated into. And with the Russo-Ukrainian war still raging in another corner of the globe, not much attention was paid to Nigeria, despite many top Nigerians reporting their country to the international community and asking them to step in. How? Well, in the view of Amnesty International (AI), and barely a week after the Nigerian protests, arrested Nigerian protesters should be released immediately.

    Amnesty’s condescension is befuddling. In a post on X (Twitter), the human rights organisation said: “The Nigerian authorities are escalating crackdown on peaceful protesters against hunger and corruption. Over 1,000 people have been remanded nationwide. Today (August 16) 441 people were arraigned in Kano, in what is set out to be an unfair trial based on trumped-up charges. Amnesty International again calls for an immediate and unconditional release of all those arrested for exercising their right to peaceful assembly. Nigeria’s government is obligated to uphold the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.” Every word in that post is riddled with contempt for Nigeria, indicating the biases many international human rights bodies are noted for, of course with the collusion of their Nigerian chapters.

    Firstly, the post made no distinction between the protesters. It said they were all peaceful protesters. Really? Of course peaceful protest is enshrined in the constitution as a right no one, let alone the government, can abridge or abrogate. But to say what happened in some of the states where the protests took place was peaceful would be straining credulity. Secondly, that Amnesty was instantaneously able to determine that about 441 protesters who were arraigned in some courts in Kano would be liable to “what is set out to be an unfair trial based on trumped-up charges” should leave every Nigerian patriot dismayed. What made Amnesty to determine ab initio that the trials would be ‘unfair’ and the charges ‘trumped-up’? Because the arrests, remand, and arraignment are happening in Nigeria? And even before the trial got underway, Amnesty was able to conclude that the exercise would be unfair. Incredible!

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    Thirdly, Amnesty called for the ‘immediate and unconditional release of all those arrested for exercising their right to peaceful assembly. The human rights body belaboured the term peaceful, insisting that the protesters did nothing wrong unconstitutionally. Now, no report by even the most sympathetic online and traditional media suggested that the protesters were in all cases peaceful. Many states witnessed violent protests, including calling for insurrection and inviting foreign military interventions. It is strange that in the August 1-10 protests Amnesty was unable to discriminate between violent and peaceful protesters, while it also lightly esteemed Nigeria and its courts.

    Conversely, Amnesty said nothing about the equally violent and racist and religious attacks against immigrants and people of colour in the UK. Perhaps the human rights body had more confidence in the UK police. It also said nothing about the rapid trial of suspects, with some of the judges barely able to restrain themselves from exhibiting their anger against the protesters in the UK. If Nigeria had been expeditious in dealing with its violent protesters, and some of the guilty were already in jail, Amnesty would have been less likely to engage in condescending pontifications. But Nigeria has approached the violent protesters nervously and cautiously, incapable of activating quick dispensation of justice and unable to ensure that as many violent protesters as possible were arrested and remanded. Protest videos and posts present damning evidence of looters, burglars and riotous individuals and inciters online. Some of them are even right now still actively calling for a sequel in October. In the UK, after the swift dispensation of justice, protesters and hoodlums will not be in a hurry to incite anyone on social media or to cause street havoc.

    It is untrue that Amnesty cannot tell the difference between violent protests and peaceful protests. They know the difference. But because Nigerians relish and even curry foreign interventions in their domestic affairs, including embracing foreign social and political values, Amnesty has latched on to that neocolonial orientation to hurl abuse at Nigeria. The UK protests and attacks were racist, sectarian and anti-immigration, and were inspired by far-right activists. The Nigerian protests were ostensibly inspired by a desire to end hunger and hardship, but managed in the same noisy breath to call for regime change. In the first case, Amnesty was silent, despite the firmness and the crushing speed with which the British justice system dealt with the vagrants. In the second case, despite Nigeria’s slowness and reluctance to bring the whole weight of the law against the inspirers of insurrection and their foot soldiers, Amnesty was loud, insufferable and contemptuous. The double standard will not change until Nigeria resolves its identity crisis.

  • Abducted medical students and aftermath

    Abducted medical students and aftermath

    The abduction two Thursdays ago of 20 medical students in Otukpo, Benue State, once again brings to the fore Nigeria’s unresolved security crisis. The students spent nine agonising days in captivity before their release. By now, most Nigerians have realised that every trip is fraught with danger, and that the response by the security and law enforcement agencies to the dire security situation of the country is not as proactive as desired. This is why kidnapping reoccurs, and why all efforts to curb it have been ineffectual.

    The police, National Security Adviser (NSA) and the Department of State Service (DSS) joined forces to bring the Benue abduction drama to a safe and fairly quick resolution. Parents and students, not to talk of the federal government, will hope that all future abductions will end as safely and quickly. A few Kogi State Confluence University of Science and Technology (CUSTECH) students out of the 32 abducted on May 9, 2024 were not so lucky. They were killed while the rest were released. Thankfully, the case of the 20 medical students was different.

    But the case of the medical students should draw attention to the role state and local governments also need to play in securing their states and councils, notwithstanding the federal monopoly of the instruments of coercion. Whether Benue liked it or not, the abduction was on its soil, at a spot said to be notorious for such crimes; and while it lasted, it placed the drama squarely on their turf, indeed on the desk of the governor. The states may not have the final say on how the Police Force is run, but they can determine to some extent how states security agencies are deployed, and how the borders of the states are policed and locked down when the need arises. The states also have under their total control some paramilitary agencies and vigilance groups; they should deploy them tightly and deprive kidnappers and attackers of oxygen. It will be difficult and fairly expensive, but it is not impossible.

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    Relying almost exclusively on federal forces to police the states is to court trouble and disaster. Everything is not about money. There is a place for intelligence gathering, and a place for rapid deployment of local vigilance groups. States, therefore, have an urgent responsibility to rethink their security architecture. Importantly too, the federal government is constantly and almost consistently shown to be flatfooted when kidnapping challenges and other killings occur, as the Emir of Gobir case showed last week. Clearly the current security paradigm is stuttering and incapable of curbing the menace soon enough for grieving families. And with state policing agenda stalled in the labyrinth of bureaucracy and constitutional amendment, it is time the federal authorities engaged in soul-searching and reorganisation.

  • Threatening and blackmailing Nigeria

    Threatening and blackmailing Nigeria

    In the space of three weeks, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) twice threatened the federal government with strike. For the trade union, strike has ceased to be an instrument for advancing workers’ rights; instead, it has clearly become a political instrument. In the early days of the hardship protests, particularly after a few people reportedly lost their lives, the NLC threatened to take action. According to the union, “…With unconfirmed reports putting casualties at 40+ in two days of managing the #EndHunger protest across the country, we have sufficient reasons (backed up by reports and video clips) to call to question the professionalism of our security personnel as this represents nothing but MASSACRE of citizens…Members of organised labour will be left with no choice than the moral burden to act in the protection of ordinary citizens.”

    The NLC has, in short, partly become a human rights organisation. After the police raided a rented shop in the NLC building (Labour House) in Abuja on August 7, the union again threatened to embark on industrial action if “harassments of its members persisted”. It went ahead to call for international inquiry. It is an indication of the contempt many Nigerians have for their country, that every offended person reports Nigeria to the international community. The union has also indicated that it might call for nationwide shutdown if the government did nothing on the invasion of the Labour House, where the national headquarters of the NLC is domiciled. Though the NLC itself occupied only a section of the building, and has let out spaces to other businesses, one of which the police said they targeted in their search for terrorism backers as well as sponsors of the August 1-10 protests, the union remains unpersuaded. For the union, every provocation could lead to a strike.

    In Edo State, Governor Godwin Obaseki is also issuing his own fiery threats. If a free and fair governorship election was disallowed in Edo in September, it would trigger a major crisis, he warned. But such Trumpian dictum was not the exclusive preserve of Edo. Kano also used it to devastating effect when its governorship election result was still under litigation, and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) had secured victory at the Election Tribunal and Court of Appeal. Kano would burn if the Supreme Court did not validate the election of Abba Kabir Yusuf, the Kwankwasiyya movement bellowed. Whether the government took heed and enabled the courts to succumb is not clear. What is obvious is that Governor Yusuf retained the coveted throne. But these threateners are by no means alone. Even the hardship protesters also issued and continue to roll out their own doomsday threats. The threats can only mean one thing: too many Nigerians have absolute contempt and hatred for their country. Some protest leaders and lawyers have issued ultimatum to the government to release protesters still in police custody or face legal action, with dark hints of some other subterranean countermeasures. It has not occurred to the protest leaders that some of the protesters might have breached the law by inflicting violence on the society or engaging in looting.

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    But by far the worst threats have come from faceless protesters and some known activists who specialise in inciting the populace. They warned that if the government failed to address their grievances, they would regroup and return stronger. Other protest leaders have even set a date, October 1, for street action the government would not be able to manage. EndSARS would be a child’s play, and the August 1-10 protest would be like a dress rehearsal, they said ferociously. Their demands were anything from 10 in some cases, to 15 in other cases, and 20 for another group of protesters. Many of the demands had little to do with hunger or economic hardship, while other demands were brazenly political and partisan, to the point of even calling for the overthrow of constitutional order without a corresponding plan to get Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities to consensually agree to that wish list or ensure peace during the constitutional reprogramming.

    Like the October 2020 EndSARS protesters, the EndBadGovernance protesters also undermined their agitation by diluting their demands. The August protest was supposed to be about economic hardship, but very quickly it became a partisan political advocacy with one or two opposition political parties becoming the locus of the campaign. Then, rather than provide leadership for the protest, the inspirers talked themselves out of providing leadership for the street action for fear of arrest, lent themselves to politicians to use, unadvisedly captioned their protests “10 Days of Rage”, and allowed violent persons and groups, many of them children, to hijack the protests barely a day after they began. In the end, the government has reportedly traced the financing of the protests to shadowy and aggrieved political characters and discovered that the reasons for the protests transcended hunger or hardship.

    Indeed, had the United Kingdom protests not occurred simultaneously with the Nigerian protests, Nigerian protesters would still be hyperactive denouncing their government on social media had the UK not exhibited political and judicial toughness in handling their protests. The threats may not necessarily reduce in frequency and intensity, but neither the threateners nor the government will henceforth take the frenzied noise on social media at face value, especially if, like the UK, the social media inciters are brought to book.

  • Lagos govt and monthly sanitation

    Lagos govt and monthly sanitation

    Nostalgia will not let Lagos State government rest. Hints from government agents and environmental activists suggest that the Lagos State government might be contemplating restoring the monthly environmental sanitation rightly and sensibly scrapped in 2016 for being ‘economically unrealistic’. There are still no sound economic or social arguments for the restoration of that monthly three hours shutdown in a megacity, for every hour of arrested economic activities is a great and unquantifiable loss unmitigated by the benefit of any cleanup. Sanitation should not be episodic, as the civilized world already knows, but Lagos thinks otherwise, perhaps because some states still retain that anachronistic measure.

    But perhaps Lagos is awash with cash and can afford to shut the state down for three hours every month. However, most Lagosians are not awash with cash; they are barely eking out a living. It would be unwise to deprive them those few hours, believing wrongly that it is after all just a brief period. But by far the most pertinent reason against monthly sanitation shutdown is the fact that the country’s nerves are still very raw from the protests, and citizens are still suspicious and resentful of the people in government whom they consider privileged and unfeeling. The police recognised that danger of a still restive population and quietly withdrew the e-CMR revenue scheme days before the last protests.

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    Enforcing the monthly sanitation scheme, after many years of abandoning it, will provoke unnecessary resentment against the government. More importantly, it will not keep the state clean. Why make more enemies and create resentment over needless regimentation? If the state can’t find a better and smarter way of keeping the environment clean always, erroneously believing that one Saturday in the month is the answer, it would be clear they have not given the subject any serious reflection. In any case, if Lagos returns the errant scheme, it can rest assured the next administration will scrap it, assuming the contradictions that will follow the scheme will wait that long. Restoring monthly sanitation is an admission of failure; it is humiliating to the Lagos government that it is even considering that ancient model for a modern city and economic hub.

  • That ‘Igbo must leave’ antic

    That ‘Igbo must leave’ antic

    Too many crazy things happen on social media, and too many crazy persons are eternal habitués of the social media. One of such fixtures on social media who uses the Lagospedia Twitter handle, aping the #EndBadGovernance protesters, decided to target the Igbo, the object of his pet hatred. He sought to begin a campaign to compel the Igbo to leave Lagos State or face protests between August 20 and 30, 2024. For him, it seemed, it would be a magical follow-up to #10 days of rage. The post presumes he is a Lagosian, probably as insular as they come; for why would he campaign for the Igbo to leave Lagos and not the Southwest? The petulant Lagospedia is, however, not finding takers for his cause, having clumsily and opportunistically tried to latch on to the largely violent hunger protests of August 1-10. The reasons are not too far to seek.

    Posted on X (Twitter) on July 27, 2024, the notice to the Igbo reads: “Lagosians and every Southwest stakeholder should prepare for the massive protest of #IgboMustGo on the 20th – 30th of August. They have one month from now to leave and relocate their business from all southwest states. We urge all Yoruba living in the southeast to return home.” There has not been one tiny support for the Lagospedia anti-Igbo campaign; instead the police and Lagos State government have opened investigations to unmask him and his motives. Unfortunately, however, the post has also generated reactions that stereotype both the Yoruba and the Igbo, depending on who is speaking. A Methodist Archbishop in the Southeast dismissed Lagospedia as follows: “What they are saying is a defeatist attitude; they know that the wealth in Lagos is Igbo’s. Remove whatever the Federal Government did in Lagos, remove whatever Igbo have done in Lagos, and there will be no Lagos…” Lagospedia was probably acting alone, but he has, in the estimation of his critics, morphed into a group. Even a group of Lagos indigenes under the aegis of De Renaissance Patriots Foundation disseminated its own peculiar resentment against the larger Yoruba people whom they see as suffocating the state. “We have nothing to do with the campaign,” they growled. “It is the handiwork of Southwest Yoruba, who are non-indigenes in the state. They are either residents or sojourners whose aims and intentions are to capture the state permanently and dominate the natives.”

    When the law catches up with him, Lagospedia will not be amused by the unmasking. But meanwhile, he will be excited that he has raked the polity with his ethnic incendiary, angering many Igbo groups and perplexing Yoruba elders. According to the Yoruba Council of Elders, “We are strongly committed to having one Nigeria in line with President Bola Tinubu‘s desire. So, asking the Igbo people to go away will be at variance with the President’s position. We must not be a divided nation.” But for the Ohanaeze Youth Council, the “Yoruba should give an award of honour to Ndigbo because the significant development done in Yoruba land is done by the Igbo. Ndigbo brought fortune to Yoruba in commerce and industry…” In fact, first from the starting block of attacks against Lagospedia were both former vice president Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party presidential candidate in the last election Peter Obi. Said Alhaji Atiku on the Lagospedia twaddle: “The recent call on X (formerly Twitter) for a protest under the #IgboMustGo, demanding the forced relocation of Igbo people from Lagos and other South-West states, is deeply troubling and fundamentally opposed to the principles of unity and coexistence that define our nation. Such rhetoric is not only divisive but also endangers our peace and security…I call on the Nigerian government and relevant authorities to take immediate and strong action against those inciting such hatred and division. It is imperative to investigate, arrest, and prosecute individuals promoting ethnic discrimination and violence…”

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    Mr Obi was also unsparing. Said he: “Let me pointedly warn that such rhetoric threatens our unity and is fundamentally opposed to our Constitution. Those in authority must show leadership and urgently speak out against such divisive rhetoric. Immediate action should be taken to investigate, arrest, and prosecute those behind this heinous agenda.” It is hard to explain convincingly why both Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi took umbrage at Lagospedia’s petulant statement, as objectionable as it was. When both politicians campaigned for the presidency last year, they resorted desperately and shamelessly to currying ethnic and religious sentiments, with Alhaji Atiku reminding northerners to vote for northerners, and Mr Obi importuning Christendom and describing the election as a religious war and he as the Christian champion. Hate speech has no two definitions, and both politicians had indulged in it when it suited their purposes.

    Lagospedia was not just divisive, he was indeed also childish. But his views are a carry-over of the campaigns of hatred and bigotry the country appears to be immersed in lately, some of which played out last week in some parts of Nigeria during the hunger protests, particularly in the core North. In June 2017, responding to the May 30 shutdown of the Southeast by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the Coalition of Northern Youth Groups gave the Igbo three months to vacate the North. They were brazen, cocky and reckless. Hear them: “The persistence for the actualisation of Biafra by the unruly Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria has lately assumed another alarming twist which involved the forceful lockdown of activities and denial of other people’s right to free movement in the Southeast by the rebel Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its overt and covert sponsors. This latest action and similar confrontational conduct which amount to a brutal encroachment on the rights of those termed as non-indigenous people residing and doing lawful businesses in those areas illegally demarcated and defined as Biafra by the Igbo, are downright unacceptable and shall no longer be tolerated.”

    They then added, even more provocatively: “As a first step, since the Igbo have clearly abused the unreciprocated hospitality that gave them unrestricted access to, and ownership of, landed property all over the north, our first major move shall be to reclaim, assume and assert sole ownership and control of these landed resources currently owned, rented or in any way enjoyed by the ingrate Igbo in any part of northern Nigeria…With the effective date of this declaration, which is today, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, all Igbo currently residing in any part of Northern Nigeria are hereby served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the east are advised likewise.”

    Three days later, in contrast to Lagospedia’s asinine fulminations roundly condemned by Southwest elders, the Northern Elders Forum, through their spokesman Ango Abdullahi, a professor, backed the northern youths to the hilt. He denounced the calls to sanction the northern youths whom he described as “agile and progressive” and also condemned northern governors for denouncing them. He alluded to the hero’s welcome given Nnamdi Kanu when he was admitted to bail in 2017, and wondered why anyone would object to the northern youths’ ultimatum to the Igbo.

    Indeed, years of indulging separatist ideologies and hateful speech have spawned a bed of snakes all over the country. And with social media fouling the polity and destroying civility, it was but a little time before Nigeria came smack into the destructive inanity of Lagospedia, not to talk of the madness in some northern states instigated by hunger protesters’ 10 days of rage. Lagospedia is nothing more than a distressing manifestation of deep-seated fractures in the polity, fractures birthed and encouraged by inept leaders over the past few decades. It is unlikely hysteria is the solution.

  • August 1 protests and partisan media

    August 1 protests and partisan media

    Social media has done so much to subvert the popularity and patronage of traditional media, causing the latter to sometimes injuriously imitate the instantaneous reporting style and recklessness of the former. In the ongoing protests in Nigeria, social media was virtually the vehicle by which information, discussions and mobilisation was done. Until societies find ways of regulating it and curbing its feral inclinations, it will retain the potential for causing much harm to individuals and the stability of nations. Not much by way of accurate reporting was, therefore, expected of the social media. Alarmingly, in the same last protests, the embers of which are still smouldering in some states, the usually respectable and moderate traditional media joined the hysteria and disseminated screaming headlines and partisan news items that showed its increasing lack of concern for the stability of the nation. Even the hijack of the protests and the ensuing violence in some states were insufficient to ameliorate the traditional media’s processes and orientation.

    With the exception of one or two newspapers and television stations, the traditional media has shown a shocking disregard for professional headline casting, preferring instead biased and sensational reportage of faceless protest organisers. And when some of the organisers showed their faces, the media still ignored the need to contextualise news emanating from those individuals or even probe their backgrounds despite some of them being avowed anarchists. The television stations on their own slanted news reports and discussion programmes in favour of the protests as a component and even manifestation of constitutionally guaranteed free speech, and incredibly painted some of the protest organisers as heroes of democracy. With hyperbole, the newspapers meanwhile suggested through columns and opinion pieces that the October 2020 EndSARS protests would pale in comparison to what would come on August 1-10. It seemed like macabre gloating and baiting. For the media in reference, there was indeed little thought about the portents swaddling the protests, and absolutely no concern that some African states like Sudan, Somalia, Libya, etc were contemporaneously living the nightmare of unresolved and unmanageable protests.

    There were undoubtedly grounds for the August 1 protests, which social media aggravated by irresponsible and hateful posts and discussions. But few expected that the traditional media would not exercise caution in reporting the crisis before and during the protests. The reasons may not be farfetched. The 2023 presidential election generated in its wake contentious issues of ethnicity, religion, unmet political ambitions, which left many media establishments trapped in the thicket of political partisanship and loyalty to hardly concealed primordial attachments. For the media houses in reference, exorcising those attachments and ameliorating unmet goals were both difficult and excruciating, especially in light of the hardships the new administration’s policies and measures produced. The protests, in the eyes of the media in question, were thus legitimised by the hunger and hardship not attenuated by the relevance of the administration’s economic panaceas or vitiated by the excessive rot triggered by the previous administrations’ laxity.

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    Television anchors asked tendentious questions and even proffered superficial analyses and remedies. Too many television stations, despite the regulations guiding their operations, openly and irreverently identified with certain political tendencies and politicians. And newspapers editorialised in their headlines, rolled out iconoclastic opinion pieces and columns, and gave the impression they were not averse to any method of upending the country’s constitutional arrangement. Examples from far and near of how such impatience and extremism led some countries down the road to perdition meant nothing to the media. That if chaos ensued neither the traditional media nor, in some cases, even the social media, would survive, let alone flourish, seemed a distant concern. Nothing and no brakes were sufficient to dissuade the media from hara-kiri. Before and after the August protests were clearly not the best of times for Nigeria’s traditional media, whether television or print. Given the pattern of media ownership, weak regulatory environment, and absence of institutional ramparts, not to talk of their declining share of media market, it is unlikely the situation would improve or objectivity and influence become the watchword.

    The traditional media has nearly morphed into the online market. Unable to respond adequately to the corrosive invasion and intrusion of the social media, they will likely become more desperate by lending their influence and integrity to the highest bidder, politician and advertiser alike. Media regulators and ombudsmen are in a predicament over how to handle the problem posed by flagrantly and sometimes disgracefully partisan media. To what extent could they come down hard on offenders without attempting to erode their distinguishing features and even competitive edge? How does a regulator put the brakes on fiery columnists who do not necessarily defame but incite, especially in the absence of a universal definition of incitement, as indeed other countries, including the developed world, have shown?

    In whatever ways these issues are tackled, both by industry regulators and the laws of the country, the incontrovertible fact is that in the ongoing protests, the traditional media’s performance has been less than stellar. If no industry-wide ameliorations are brought upon their operations, it would be left to each media house to carry out self-examination on its editorial policy, market share, and influence. If the divide between the social media and traditional media continues to narrow, as it is already evident everywhere, it is the unimaginative traditional media that will suffer the effects of the fusion.

  • Middle East turmoil and Nigeria

    Middle East turmoil and Nigeria

    The assassination of Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, both proxies of Iran, has predictably heightened the possibility of all-out war in the Middle East. Israel has claimed the killing of Mr Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon, last Tuesday but has remained silent over the killing of Mr Haniyeh in Tehran last Wednesday. The Jewish nation has been engaged in full-scale war in Gaza since October 27, 2023 after Hamas militants invaded Israel, killing about 1,143 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 hostages. Israel has now also confirmed the killing of Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif on July 13, warning that it would not relent in assassinating those who mastermind attacks on Israel.

    It is a measure of the restraint exercised so far in the region that the war in Gaza and the involvement of Iranian proxies in Yemen (Houthis), Lebanon (Hezbollah), and Iran itself, have not triggered a conflagrating regional war. But the region inches closer, and it may end up dragging many more countries into the conflict. No one can, however, predict the permutations. Iran has armed its Hezbollah and Houthi proxies to the hilt, while Israel can count on the support of the United States, and to a little extent a few European countries. And while any war in the region will be potentially devastating for Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Yemen, it is not clear whose side other Middle Eastern countries will take, given their antipathy towards Iran which they view with suspicion for its regional ambitions.

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    Sadly, economically challenged Nigeria, which could be an oasis of promise and some measure of stability in West Africa, is needlessly contending with burgeoning civil disorder. Nigeria’s challenges, self-styled as a youth revolt, will very likely be forgotten in the whirlpool of global conflagration, probably dooming quick resolution and exposing the country to the forces of disintegration. In the face of a Middle East conflagration, few will pay attention to Nigeria’s self-imposed catastrophe if it chooses to be foolish and irrational.