It was not always clear that President Muhammadu Buhari had an excellent grasp of what Boko Haram denoted in Nigeria. His vacillations on the sect, particularly before and soon after he assumed office, gave rise to a number of speculations regarding the genuineness of his claims against it. Some perceived him to be dead set against the sect, and others think he would have to be dragged along to lead the fight against the group. His statements on the sect over the years, which have not been dissimilar to his perspectives on the impunity and rampage of herdsmen in Nigeria, have sadly left the public confused with the same severity as he is unclear in his mind what he makes of the sect. His reinterpretation of the sect’s raison d’être when he hosted the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karin Ahmad Khan, at the State House, Abuja, last week puzzled many observers and left them scratching their heads what to make of his analysis.

Referring to Boko Haram, the president said magisterially, “God is justice. You can’t kill innocent people, and shout Allah Akbar (God is great). It’s either you don’t know that God at all, or you are simply being stupid. To say Western education is unacceptable (Haram) is very fraudulent. That is why we are fighting them, and educating the people. And we are succeeding a lot. We came to office, when things were very bad, but we are educating the people. Education is fundamental. Religion and ethnicity are out of it. Some people have just made it a lifestyle to cause confusion, destruction and death.” Ignore the president’s comparisons about what he met on the ground and what he has achieved so far in terms of fighting the sect, what is more relevant now is his view of what Boko Haram stands for. It seemed at first that newspapers who headlined their story suggesting that the president divested Boko Haram of ethnic and religious agenda exaggerated. A close reading of the president’s statement, however, absolves the editors of sensationalism.

But in arguing that “religion and ethnicity (were) out of it”, the president seemed to admit by his nebulousness that he feared that his argument about the sect’s divested motives was buncombe. The fact is that the president needed to say something definitive about Boko Haram before the ICC chief prosecutor, something that would rebut what he thinks are unfair suggestions of his government’s insensitivity in the differential application of force to separatist agitators in Nigeria and complicity in the Boko Haram ideology. In fact he goes ahead uncharacteristically to use trenchant and scurrilous language to describe the sect’s groupthink. Killers in the mould of Boko Haram, said the president angrily, were either stupid or ignorant and fraudulent. The ICC prosecutor would leave the president convinced that the Nigerian presidency is not dilatory in the fight against Boko Haram as many had seemed to suggest.

In the early years of the Boko Haram insurgency, there was much misunderstanding about the ideology of the sect. Was it Islamic ideology or just plain nihilism? The president now seems to think that there is nothing religious or ethnic about the sect’s objectives. At last, this is some clarity from the president, of course in addition to the justificatory name-calling he indulged in against the sect. However, it is unclear that the president, after so many years of dithering and opacity on Boko Haram, has given the subject proper thought, let alone understanding. By limiting its operations and militancy to the Northeast essentially, Boko Haram appeared to insinuate ethnicity into its objectives, probably aware that as a Kanuri-based militant group it was unlikely to succeed in railroading the equally largely Islamic Northwest into insurgency. Centuries earlier, the Northwest (read Sokoto Caliphate) had also been unable to impose political Islam on the Kanem-Bornu axis. The ethnic undergird to Boko Haram may be tenuous, it is, however, inaccurate to say it does not exist at all.

There is less ambiguity as to whether Boko Haram possesses and operates Islamic ideology. Both in its founding and modus operandi, the sect had always described itself as an Islamic group. Its incendiary rhetoric that justified violence and brutality as well as tried to portray the moral conundrums faced by Muslims in the Northeast and Nigeria was and remains fully Islamic, in fact jihadist-Salafism. The Northwest may see itself as puritan adherents of Sunnism, almost to the exclusion of any other variance of Sunnism, but it does not and cannot preclude the embrace by others of any such variants, whether it is, as the president describes it, a perversion, stupidity or fraudulence. What matters is what drives the militants, how their minds work, what their goals are – whether ethnic or religious exceptionalism. The Crusades (religious wars) initiated and financed by the Latin Church in the medieval period between about 1095 and 1291 was a deep perversion of Christianity, a perversion that warred against the very core of Jesus Christ’s teachings. But to describe the Crusades as anything other than Christian, whether it was a perversion and doctrinal error or not, would be grossly mistaken.

Going by his long-term vacillations on Boko Haram, a confusion underscored by the sect’s strange offer to him to represent them in negotiations with the Goodluck Jonathan government, President Buhari may feel burdened to atone for his indecisiveness on the sect in its early years. But that atonement must not be at the expense of a clear understanding of what the sect stands for, even as it seems to be experiencing death throes. Should he remain in office far longer than the constitution allows, there is little doubt that in the hypothetical future the president would also arrive at the epiphanic junction he has seemed to stumble on regarding the ‘perversion, stupidity and fraudulence’ of Boko Haram ideology. Few would be persuaded by his argument; fewer still would be convinced that he knew all along what he needed to do to defeat the sect’s ideology and militancy.

But who is destabilising Nigeria?

President Buhari threw a poser to the nation on the subject of destabilisation during an Iftar dinner with governors, ministers and heads of government agencies. Fortunately for him, it was that kind of occasion where he expected no response. “We have the land, we have the resources, and we have the people,” he began cautiously, like a proselyte. “But I do not know why people will allow themselves to be successfully subverted to destabilise their own country.” Successful subversion? Would it not be enough to wonder why anyone would allow himself to be used to subvert his country? But leaving language alone, the greater poser is whom the president had in mind.

Two days earlier, in a flurry of Easter homilies, some Christian priests took the Buhari presidency to the cleaners for doing a shoddy job at governing the country and responding incompetently to the insecurity ravaging the land and pitting brothers against brothers. Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, who probably penned and disseminated the president’s Iftar remarks, had replied the critics by suggesting that they were in fact the ones destabilising the country and living untrue to their Christian faith. Both the president and his spokesman obviously ignored the more vital point that the critics were merely responding to the prevailing realities of poverty, insecurity, corruption, ethnic discord, etc. in the country. Critics blame the president for nearly everything.

But if the president meant insurgents of the Northeast and bandits of the Northwest, all of them products of poor governance, it would be even more puzzling to rationalise his statement of instigating them into successfully subverting their country. They do not need to be instigated; government’s incompetence and impotence already did the job, successfully, it should be added.

As expected, the presidency has again denounced the killings on the plateau. Over 100 persons were killed and scores abducted last Sunday when bandits/terrorists invaded some 10 Plateau State communities in Kanam and Wase local government areas. Warning that the killers would neither be spared nor forgiven, President Muhammadu Buhari called on ‘our citizens, the people of Plateau State’ to expose the killers and their sponsors. Sunday’s massacre was, of course, not the first time there would be killings in the state, or in neighbouring Benue State, where another set of about 23 people were slain last week. Despite entreaties by government, and occasional strong-arm measures by perplexed security agencies, the perpetrators of what the president described as ‘dastardly acts’ have remained intransigent and unfazed by the uproar that constantly follows their atrocities. On the whole, however, the federal response has been considerably tame.

In August last year, when some 22 or 25 Ondo-bound travelers reported to be Muslims were attacked and murdered allegedly by Irigwe youths and militants in the Jos North area of the state, the whole federal apparatus, including the Inspector-General of Police, the governor and other security chiefs, descended on the state in a show of rage and fury. This time, there has been no commensurate show of anger or helicopter surveillance. Perhaps everyone is tired of the relentless killings and desensitised to the deaths of innocent Nigerians. Other than the press statement from the presidency, it is unlikely that further actions will be taken in exposing and prosecuting the killers. After all, the presidency has turned to the natives to help expose the killers, even though the indigenes have disclosed that the perpetrators of the violence came from a nearby herdsmen colony foisted on them by the state and federal governments.

Thousands have been killed in both Plateau and Benue States in the past few years in pockets of conflicts over grazing land. When the killings began in earnest, rather than the federal government enforcing the law, officials and security chiefs excused the killings on the grounds that states and farming communities had encroached on grazing lands. The government suggested insensitively that indigenes must learn to live in peace with herdsmen and settlers. One official even suggested that it was better to trade land for security, for land would be of no use to a dead landowner. All sorts of malfeasant excuses and explanations were promoted by the federal government to justify the killings rather than enforce the law. Encouraged by federal diffidence in enforcing the law, the attackers, some of them aliens, have run rampant over the two states, killing, maiming, burning, pillaging and sacking and renaming communities.

Years ago, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo visited Plateau State and was presented petitions by indigenes documenting over 58 communities allegedly sacked, renamed and occupied by invaders. He promised that the lands would be recovered. Not one step has been taken since then to restore the lands to their rightful owners. The killings simply continued, disguised as farmers versus herders clashes, and have morphed into something more sinister, spreading to Kaduna and Nasarawa States. The remote and immediate causes of the killings have neither been comprehensively investigated nor policies and measures propounded to tackle the crisis in a just and fair manner. And so when presidency officials, including the president himself, express outrage, no one feels their empathy nor trusts their explanations. Harassed and displaced indigenes have resigned themselves to not getting justice under the current government. Sadly, they are unlikely to be disappointed.

A few of the attackers may be apprehended now and then, but it will do little to halt the descent to chaos that has become clearly imminent. Indigenes challenged to expose the attackers had obliged the government many times in the past, but as the slothful response to the international exposure of some Nigerian financiers of terrorism have shown, the government is strangely unwilling to deal with the unending mayhem in the Middle Belt. Unfortunately, today, the government is thought in many circles to be complicit to the attacks, and it has done nothing to disabuse the minds of sceptics. Many of the attackers are mercenaries from outside Nigeria brought in by local groups who openly accept responsibility for avenging wrongs done to them. In the face of these horrors, the government has shown paralysis. Villages sacked and renamed by attackers still dot Plateau State, yet the government has shown no appetite to reclaim them or apprehend the new settlers. But when frustrated indigenes arm themselves to resist further attacks, they are quickly apprehended and detained. Why would the killings not continue? And why would indigenes not suspect federal collusion, especially in the face of many highly placed federal and state officials endorsing open national borders?

It is feared that the federal government does not possess the will and capacity to address and resolve these killings. Its understanding of the remote causes of the killings is warped, and its solutions badly misplaced. Wracked by pain and bloodshed, and wary of one another, Nigerians are probably looking beyond this government for the resolution of a crisis that began inauspiciously but has now metamorphosed into a countrywide crisis clearly threatening national security. The fertile plains of Benue will still be contended, Plateau killings will continue for a little longer, and governmental paralysis will endure for a while. It is not certain what the National Council of State discussed at their meeting on Thursday, but a part of it must be the killings overwhelming the country. There would be no mention of whether the government’s response to the killings was weak and ineffective. Hopefully, there also would be no talk of state of emergency, since nothing constitutionally bars the government from deploying military and security assets against killer groups, as indeed it is already doing with little success.

Until the government abandons its prejudicies and decides to enforce the law first and foremost, its efforts will end in platitudes and failure. The problem is not whether the country has significant security personnel to enforce the law; the problem is the government’s poor perception of the law, a perception coloured by so many extraneous and debilitating considerations. If it is serious about finding a solution to the Plateau and Benue killings, let the government first address the issue of seized, cleansed and occupied lands. For, after all, there can be no peace without justice.

2023 and the religion card

With the entrance into the 2023 presidential race of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Tunde Bakare, both pastors, it is unlikely that anyone can deny that religion in one form or the other will play a role. Prof. Osinbajo wants to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari simply because he is the vice president. And Pastor Bakare of the Citadel Global Community Church, Lagos, prophesies that he is Nigeria’s 16th leader. In the past, particularly during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, the pastor made one or two controversial prophecies that became embroiled in controversy. This time, should his unequivocal prophecy about being the 16th president fail, there would be no grammatical or exegetical hiding place for him.

Of all the complications Nigerians fear about the 2023 race, especially seeing how the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has introduced many puzzling elements into the politics and government of Nigeria, religion seems to be the last straw. It smuggled its way into the race in 2011 when the then candidate Buhari was rebuffed for being a suspect religious diehard because of the many extreme religious statements attributed to him. But in 2015, those statements were smothered in favour of a supposedly centrist, repentant and mature candidate Buhari. The suspicions about his orientation were, however, never fully dispelled. Now a more lethal religious brew seems to be spreading like a veneer on the coming race. It remains to be seen how far both pastors can go, and whether religion would in fact ultimately colour the race.

A week after he assumed office, Anambra State governor Charles Soludo ordered public servants to ignore the sit-at-home order in the state and report to office on Mondays or be sanctioned. Arguing that the state alone loses close to N20bn every time the illegal order was enforced by unknown groups, he warned that the state’s economy was being pulverised and the masses pauperised. The order was first instituted by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to pressure the federal government to release their leader, Nnamdi Kanu. After a desultory attempt to assuage the rage of the Southeast, the federal government simply ignored the sit-at-home politics of the Southeast and faced other pressing issues. Abuja concluded that both the order and the arson that accompanied it, not to talk of the so-called unknown gunmen running rampant in the region, were in any case engaged primarily in regional self-destruction.

Prof. Soludo’s battle with non-state actors represents a limiting factor to whatever ideology and programmes he as governor might propound. Those who elected the Anambra governor believed him to be progressive; but whether he is pragmatic or progressive may count for little if non-state actors persist in their destructive and counterproductive activities all over the state. The sit-at-home order, despite the governor’s directive to civil servants and IPOB’s renunciation of the tactic, is still somewhat effective. Prof. Soludo is not just an ideologue, he is also stubborn. He knows that the sit-at-home order cannot be sustained for too long. If he continues to stay the course of opposing the disruptive order as well as giving battle to its enforcers, he will gain the upper hand sooner or later. In matters such as the illegal orders of non-state actors, it is a fact that states do not easily give in; while on the contrary, the lawless brigades behind the orders often become wearied by time.

Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai is, however, already questioning that truism. Having combated bandits and terrorists in his state for nearly seven years, but made little progress, he has lashed out at the federal authorities for their inaction and tardiness, stopping just short of labeling them complicit in the wholesale destruction going on in some local governments in the state. Though he did not help matters when the hydra-headed problem first reared its head, and has now even become less discriminating and scientific in his diagnosis of the disease blighting his state, Mallam el-Rufai has lapsed into seeking what can best be described, in the language of World War II, a ‘final solution’. But he is right to suggest that the bandits wreaking havoc on Kaduna State are well known, not only their phone numbers, but also their locations, what with the tedious registrations of SIM cards and National Identity Numbers (NIN) and their linkage with BVNs.

Mallam el-Rufai is also right to suggest that the federal government’s approach to dealing with and combating banditry/terrorism in Kaduna has remained ham-fisted, probably complicit and conspiratorial, and largely ineffective, despite possessing lethal force in its arsenal. Frustrated, disappointed and now desperate on account of the conflagration that seems poised to consume the state, the governor has accused everyone but himself of aiding and abetting the massive terrorism disrupting the economy of the state and predisposing the entire Northwest to chaos. Despite the loquaciousness of some federal officials, the federal government is unlikely to respond adequately to Mallm el-Rufai’s accusations and condemnations. Officials know they bear ultimate responsibility for the breakdown of law and order in Nigeria, and they also know they have been remiss in tackling the disease. It will, therefore, be pointless to pass the buck or pretend not to appreciate the direness of the situation.

Unlike Prof. Soludo who met a broken, disoriented and underachieving Anambra, Mallam el-Rufai inherited a state whose immediate past leaders had done fairly well in pacifying religious and ethnic champions bent on mutual destruction in the state. His response to killings was initially placatory of the Fulani herdsman, and even compensatory. His rhetoric was also sadly one-sided, made worse by his intolerable and dismissive cocksureness, under which boils his incandescent rage and prepossessing ethnic exceptionalism. But years of unremitting bloodletting have seemed to heighten his awareness as a governor of all the ethnic and religious groups in the state as well as moderate his characterisation of the bloodletting as a refusal by minority ethnic groups to tolerate their Fulani neighbours, the same abhorrent thesis still running rampant in the presidency. Yes, Mallam el-Rufai may have his faults, but it is not clear that the undiscriminating bombings he is advocating can remedy the complex social, economic and political crises plaguing the state.

What is far clearer, however, is that the massive disruptions in Kaduna and Anambra States, not to say in almost the entire Southeast and Northwest, are capable of truncating the best developmental theses the best leadership and governorship brains can conceive. Despite his faults, Mallam el-Rufai has made significant impact on the socio-economic life of his state. His pragmatism is, however, severely hamstrung by the attacks and arson. Prof. Soludo brings a lot of pragmatism, in fact progressivism, to Anambra, what with his enviable and highfalutin Dubai-matching and Asian Tiger-making exploits and programmes. But if he does not find a way around the IPOB and unknown gunmen crises convulsing his state, his bright ideas will in the long run count for nothing.

Both Prof. Soludo and Mallam el-Rufai will hope that the next elections will foreshadow the real change their states desire and possibly deserve. In the case of Kaduna, a great electoral outcome in 2023 will be too late to salvage Mallam el-Rufai’s bright ideas and progressivism. In the case of Anambra, it cannot come sooner.

Wike for president? That’ll be the day

Last Sunday, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State declared his improbable interest in the forthcoming presidential race. He made the declaration in Makurdi, Benue State, where his long-suffering host, Governor Ortom, lent him a listening ear and qualified endorsement. Mr Wike had long been speculated to be interested in the 2023 presidential race, first perhaps as running mate, but later and more assertively as standard-bearer. Finally, after much hemming and hawing, he has declared his interest, choosing the beleaguered Benue State harried by killer herdsmen as the place of annunciation. It is hard to know whether he truly wants to run, considering his threat to pull out of the race entirely if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) declines to zone the presidency to the South.

Mr Wike knows he does not stand a cat in hell’s chance of clinching the ticket, nor if he did, winning the race in 2023, nor worse still, presiding over Nigeria, regardless of the far less endowed men who won the presidency. At some point his aspiration will flounder, not only because the PDP is in turmoil and unable to chart a clear path out of the mess enveloping it, but also because there are probably far more qualified aspirants in the race. He is, therefore, expected to play a spoiler role; and he will play it to the hilt. He condemns former vice president Atiku Abubakar for playing political truancy, describing him as unworthy to be called a founding father. And he also described other aspirants as opportunists. He will run riot with his tongue, skewering, excoriating and disemboweling. He is of course a gifted master of verbal putdown; but should he get the ticket, he will, like former United States president Donald Trump, indulge that talent two-thirds of the time in demolishing others than in building them. President Wike? Well, that’ll be the day.

The cold war in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Edo chapter, gets grouchier by the day. On one side is Governor Godwin Obaseki, and on the other are some powerful leaders of the state chapter of the PDP. The two sides remain strange bedfellows who cohabited in September 2020 to win the Edo governorship poll by an incontestable margin that nevertheless masked the dreadful unease between the cohabiters. They began their journey casting withering glances at each other; now they are openly and unrepentantly hostile. Edo PDP leaders are aggrieved that the governor’s tactless disregard of the PDP state machinery makes them look bad in the eyes of the party rank and file. But the governor is discomfited by their intransigence, and puzzled by their lack of reverence and submission to him. They won the electoral battle in 2020, but they have been unable to win the peace. For the next two years and more, they will probably be at daggers drawn for the rest of Mr Obaseki’s governorship.

Last week, the now visibly irritated governor issued an ultimatum to intransigent PDP leaders in the state to accept his leadership or quit the party. He insisted that the party had been ‘harmonised’, suggesting that the All Progressives Congress (APC) members he brought into the PDP when he defected in June 2020 are now indistinguishable from the host party. Only malcontents remained, he growled, who give the impression that the party was torn in two. His abrasive denunciation of the querulous PDP leaders was wanting in tact, diplomacy and moderation. As he put it during a meeting last weekend of the expanded caucus of the PDP, and with undisguised barbs directed at the National Vice Chairman, South-South of the PDP, Dan Orbih: “There is no division in Edo PDP. Let the party be open to accommodate others. PDP is democratic. The hallmark of democracy is ensuring that the majority has their way, as the minority can’t dictate to the people. I heard that Chief Dan Orbih went around, saying there is no harmonisation in Edo PDP. This is really irresponsible to say and an insult to members of the party, as the party has truly harmonised in the state. PDP in Edo State is harmonised because before we made any appointments in any ward, we made sure the party at that level was harmonised. We are gathered here now as election timetable is out; harmonisation has been done, appointments made, and we are ready to win any election before us.”

State chairman of the party, Anthony Aziegbemi, was at the meeting, and he seemed to corroborate the governor’s interpretation of happenings in the fractious party. Perhaps Mr Obaseki was right after all. Perhaps he paints an accurate picture of the condition of the PDP in Edo State. And perhaps Chief Orbih, who was immediate past chairman of the party in the state, was wrong. But before the governor and his PDP crowd get carried away, former Senate Chief Whip, Roland Owie, a prominent member of the PDP in the state, weighed in on the side of Chief Orbih, fully rebutting the harmonisation claims of the governor. Said Sen Owie: “It is unfortunate that our son, Governor Obaseki, has allowed himself to be dented politically by palace jesters around him. He is educated and can read the PDP’s constitution. There is no provision for harmonisation. The issue of APC members that came with him to PDP in Edo State is a matter that can be settled easily, without offending the party’s constitution. No leader in Edo PDP that I know, including Chief Dan Orbih, is fighting you (the governor) at all. Those fighting you (the governor) are those around you, who do not believe in you, but are only interested in their personal ambitions and urging you on to wage unnecessary war against those who gave you shelter, when others drove you into the rain. I have sought many appointments to meet with you, since after the September 19, 2020 governorship election in Edo State, but it was not possible.”

Not done, the senator adds with a hint of sarcasm and defiance: “Our people should not think that we do not advise you. Some PDP members in Edo State are telling you that they have registered 500,000 plus new members in PDP. Remember the Anambra State APC’s registration and what happened to APC at the governorship election. Check the total votes for PDP and APC in the September 19, 2020 governorship election in Edo State. Governor Obaseki, shine your eyes.”

In case the governor still insists that the PDP has been harmonised, and assuming his vituperation can be discountenanced as indicating a fracture in the party, his deputy, Philip Shaibu, complained loudly and unabashedly on Channels Television that he and his followers remained ostracised in the PDP. According to him, “For me as Philip Shaibu, I have no plans now to leave, but for Philip Shaibu and his followers and the followers of Obaseki that left APC to PDP, there are plans to leave PDP, but to where? For now, I don’t know where, because we feel not accepted in PDP, and that’s the reason we are actually thinking that it is time to throw in the towel and leave.”

Still embittered by the lack of harmonisation, the deputy governor moaned: “The truth is the governor has been appealing, and you can see from yesterday’s meeting, some of us were not happy with the governor’s statement saying that he is not leaving. So for us, we felt we left APC because of the governor not because we wanted to join PDP. We even had to jettison the relationship we had with the godfather then. So, we followed the governor to PDP because the leadership asked that the governor should go. Having escorted him there, unfortunately, we have not been accepted, and for us, we are now telling the governor it is either now or we leave…”

If Mr Obaseki can’t manage the peace in his adopted party, and can’t even find common ground with a majority of elected state lawmakers whom he refused to inaugurate, how can he be trusted to project democracy as he proclaimed in 2020 before the governorship poll? There is little anyone can do now about Mr Obaseki. He will keep fighting the legislature, PDP factions, and even prominent politicians in the state. He is a fighter, it must be acknowledged. But he is not a democrat, as many who voted for him mistakenly believed. With nearly 100,000 vote margin against his main rival, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, in the last poll, Edo extravagantly ushered him into the Government House. Edo broke the merchandise; they must summon the equanimity to own it.

Sunday Igboho’s release

Last week’s release of Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho, by a Beninoise court is one more saddening example and reminder of how the rule of law in some minion African countries trumps the rule of man which Nigeria has become infamous for. After eight months in detention and later prison, Mr Igboho regained freedom, albeit in a circumscribed form. He will remain in Benin Republic for a little longer to attend to his health.

He should rejoice. The implication is that Nigeria cannot organise his rendition from that neighbouring country like they did to IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu. To all intents and purposes, Mr Igboho may continue to enjoy qualified freedom till the end of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency. His case in Benin Republic courts will make slow and grudging progress. But most importantly, the case will remain a standing refutation and mockery of the Nigerian justice system in which the judiciary in many respects has become fused with the executive branch of government.

Mr Igboho is, however, not one to be restrained, nor one known for moderation and good judgement. He has begun to make loud proclamations. But he should keep largely silent so as not to jeopardise his qualified freedom. He needs it after more than eight months of painful and controversial detention.

That the 1999 Nigerian Constitution is incurably defective is no longer news. There have, therefore, been many attempts to remedy it through amendments. The latest effort is being superintended by the 9th National Assembly. How successful they will be will depend on just how exquisitely they can put new wine in old wineskin. Meanwhile the lawmakers in both the Senate and House of Representatives have continued to tantalise the public with amendments that appear welcome, feasible and even significant. But the process is just starting; it still has a long way to go after harmonisation. How the amendments will fare at the states is also anybody’s guess.

The National Assembly has done well to drive the Electoral Act amendment to its final destination. It is doubtless imperfect, but it is a good beginning. In that same can-do spirit, the lawmakers are giving the constitutional amendment process their best push. Should they succeed, and there is no reason for them not to, they will be lauded far above their self-abnegating decision to please the presidency at any cost. They deny the accusation of being subordinate to the executive arm, and are doing their best to prove their independence by pushing through fairly radical amendments. It is unknown how persuasive they are in convincing everyone of their legislative independence. Yet, even if they succeed in their latest constitutional effort, that success would be qualified, obviously circumscribed by the nature and limitations of the constitution they are seeking to amend.

Nigerians would do well to moderate their expectations. At the end of the process, no one is sure that the initial euphoria that has greeted the amendments so far would be sustained. There is no doubt a little something for nearly everyone, like separating the office of the Attorney General from that of the Minister of Justice, and granting autonomy to state legislature and judiciary. It is not clear how local government autonomy, which they are recommending, will work. But the fundamental challenge thrown by the constitution has not been touched. Women, for instance, are up in arms about affirmative action to demand for special seats at national and state levels, including in the legislature and executive cabinets, but they have not justified to the legislature why in an open system in which there are only largely self-imposed limitations, including cultural and religious strictures, they must need to hold certain groups down in order for women to be better positioned or represented. Overall, there are some 68 or so amendments expected to be worked and voted upon. Not all will pass, and not everyone will be pleased. Perhaps, as time goes on, more amendments will be proposed and passed.

However, there is nothing to be done now or in the near future regarding amending the constitution that will transform the controversial document into a lasting, stabilising and cohesive grundnorm. It has foundational problem. Until that foundation is comprehensively rebuilt, whatever is built upon the existing document will only last for a while. But once the foundation is right, the competition for the presidency would be modulated, gender equity would become less controversial, and the basis for ethnic and religious interrelationship would be addressed and agreed upon. Despite all the hue and cry, and regardless of the purported federal nature of the constitution, the country has clearly not agreed the basis for unity.

What is even worse is that in tinkering with the constitution, with the frightful prospect of a worse tear occurring as the country mends its torn constitutional garment with unshrunk cloth, nothing significant has been said about one of the major issues undermining both the constitution and the country as a whole. That issue is the cost of governance. The problem is that without restructuring the country, preferring instead to only mend the existing one, it is nigh impossible to reduce the cost of governance and free funds for development. The present cost is prohibitive. It cannot be sustained. It must be admitted that women need to agitate for better environment for their gender to thrive politically and even economically, and had they joined hands with others to press for a significant reduction in the cost of governance in favour of, say, education and health sectors, the society would be better served, while the affirmative action issue would be regarded as foresighted and altruistic.

Rather than tinkering with the constitution, it would have been far better and more sensible and visionary to advocate a new one. But neither this set of lawmakers nor the executive arm will countenance the constitutional change necessary to assure the stability and progress of Nigeria. They won’t hear of it, they won’t do it, and they will always argue that there is no legal or political basis to carry out the kind of fundamental changes sufficient to guarantee peaceful coexistence in the country. In their myopia, the law enforcement agencies are already guaranteeing that, regardless of the intolerable social and economic pressures.

Read Also: Adamu Adamu’s bad day at the office

Education minister Adamu versus NANS

Last week’s impromptu meeting between the Education minister, Adamu Adamu, and representatives of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) led by their president Asefon Sunday didn’t go well at all. Bad but subtle temper suffused the discussions. Neither side behaved nobly. Many analysts have pointed out that it was time students grew up and upped their unionism tactics. They are right. Not only must students’ union leaders refine their methods, students themselves must change their mindset in electing their representatives. At the impromptu meeting, Mr Asefon exhibited commitment and passion, and there was no doubt, despite his struggle with eloquence and misrepresentation of facts, that he knew what the students desired of their government.

The meeting, however, ended abruptly without achieving anything because the minister lacked the emotional capability to deal with the tantrums of the students’ union leader. Mr Asefon misrepresented the minister, and even spoke without the decorum and wisdom expected of him; but by peevishly responding in less dignified manner to the students’ provocations, the minister exhibited the common and condescending approach of Nigerian leaders to citizens’ queries and demands. It is not enough that the students were wrong; it is important that ministers and leaders must be right as well as conduct themselves as servants of the people. They are not the people’s masters, as they are often portrayed by government.

Mallam Adamu was wrong to have walked out on the students, even though reports suggest that he returned later in the night to meet with the students to remedy the faux pas. The students as well as most Nigerians would interpret the minister’s reaction as rude and his manner insufferable. Did the students speak disrespectfully to the minister? Did they twist facts relating to the minister’s family or children? There are suggestions they did, perhaps unknowingly. But a better approach would have been for the minister to correct the misrepresentations and gently and maturely rebuke the students’ manners. There are a thousand and more ways to handle the students, most of whom at the meeting were not too old to be his children. Mallam Adamu forgot he was in public office, and that a far nobler spirit of leadership and service was required of him.

If the minister had had the presence of mind to appreciate the sufferings of the students forced to endure repeated ASUU strike, if he knew the cost to parents of keeping their children in school beyond the school calendar, if he knew how disruptive the interruptions to academic calendar has become, he would be more amenable to their pains and cries. Their irreverence and mistaken conclusions would not have mattered at all. Now, everyone sees the minister as a callous man serving a government that is indifferent to educational issues.

In the run-up to the 2023 elections, all sorts of crazy permutations and endorsements will inundate the polity. The permutations will keep the country entertained. Some permutations may be far-fetched, and endorsements hypocritical, but grumblings will not deter political groups and individuals from sticking out their necks in favour of candidates and political parties. It would not matter whether the endorsers and pundits get it right or not, or whether they fizzle out almost immediately; what will matter is that the press will always be there to give them a hearing.

The press gave a hearing last Tuesday to a group of lawmakers who described themselves as Forum of Members of State Houses of Assembly under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South-South. On Monday, they claimed to have endorsed Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello for the presidency in 2023, arguing that the North Central, where the two-term governor comes from, had been marginalised since 1960. The news was contrived of course, and lest reporters be accused of missing the awful story, they dutifully filed it back to their headquarters. In the story, there was a list of the South-South states involved, to wit, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Rivers States, but there was precious little else, not even the names of the conveners, prominent speakers at the forum, and sensible, credible arguments justifying the inane considerations about who was qualified for the presidency.

According to a newspaper excerpt of the communiqué said to have been written by the lawmakers, the main plank of their argument is that the next president must come from the North Central. But if the presidency must rotate to the so-called marginalised region, why Mr Bello then? Well, the largely anonymous but clearly unrepresentative regional lawmakers have made their choice. They cannot be bothered by anything else. Did anybody put them up to it? No one is certain. But given the extraordinary manner their pick was announced like a bolt from the blue, it is hard to imagine that their hearts were not influenced. They can’t be so taken by pure mendacity that they would pretend not to know that Mr Bello, a braggart youthful governor, is a chronic underperformer in office.

Here is the lawmakers’ justification: “That the APC State Assembly Legislators of the South-South, who were elected by the people of the six states that make up the geo-political zone believe that the best thing for our party as we approach the 2023 general elections is to give room for marginalised zones to produce the next President. Consequently, we appeal to the national leadership of our party, the APC, to zone the Presidency to North Central for fairness and sense of belonging to prevail. We hereby state that we agree to support our colleagues in the North Central to contest for the position of the President of Nigeria in 2023 – which is a position that the zone had hitherto been deprived of since Nigeria became independent in 1960.”

Indigenes of the North Central have their grouse against the system, but it is unlikely they will subscribe to anyone categorising them as deprived of political power since 1960; what with Yakubu Gowon, a former general and head of state for about nine years, who hails from the region. What is significant about the South-South lawmakers’ endorsement is not even where the next president should come from, but what qualifies Mr Bello in their estimation. The Kogi governor is in his second term, and has campaigned vigorously. He has brought in influence peddlers from diverse walks of life, including the film industry, sports and the media. Those junkets were of course paid for. Every visit to Lokoja, Kogi State, to endorse Mr Bello never went beyond singing his praise. There was nothing sincere about the praises, their acknowledgement of his youth and vigour, and occasionally their references to his inexistent achievements, some as nebulous and specious as describing him as a guarantor of security.

The reality is, however, much different. Mr Bello is regarded in the state as a do-nothing governor who, in his last-gasp years, is preoccupied with two or three legacy projects. He has spent a larger part of his tenure despoiling the state, cruelly mistreating workers, unable and incapable of conceptualising a development paradigm for the state, not to talk of executing it, and on the whole, leaving the state much worse than he met it. Since he never had any leadership quality in him, it is not surprising that he has neither offered nor spoken of one. Those who endorse such a fringe player idling most of the time in Abuja and imagining himself a leader and statesman believe that they have done no harm to anybody. They must be joking.

South-South lawmakers, assuming the group that met last Monday in Calabar is real and representative, can of course endorse anyone and any party other than their party, but they owe their electorate the responsibility of making sensible and defensible decisions on whom to support. There is nothing to deter the public from running away with the impression that the lawmakers who settled for a Bello presidency are not a bunch of dummies. Nigerians may be generous with praise and even possess a macabre sense of political humour, but they are not so foolish as not to know when they are being goaded with outright fallacies.

Micromanaging Nigeria to death

The Senate is reportedly considering a bill sponsored by a Taraba State lawmaker to prescribe punishment for family members proven to have benefited from the proceeds of corruption by a public servant. The spirit behind the bill is of course sound, and undoubtedly many family members have benefited directly or indirectly from the proceeds of corruption perpetrated by someone in public service. There have been records of such family members also punished along with the perpetrator of corruption. The Abdulrasheed Maina pension scandal is an example.

So why does the country need a special bill for a common, if not commonplace, crime? It is not clear. It is even less clear, assuming a fresh law can be justified, how effective the law would be when existing laws that appear adequate for such family crimes have managed not to deter anybody. Many laws are in the works all over the country, all designed to tackle mundane specifics. The urge to make crime-specific laws was responsible for inspiring hasty and careless legislations against ritual killing and kidnapping. Notwithstanding specific laws, these two crimes, for instance, have not abated.

Obviously, something is amiss. That something is not the law; the problem is enforcement. Nigerian law books in most cases have existing laws to punish many of the crimes now inspiring a plethora of new laws. In short, new or old laws, the problem is enforcement. Until something changes structurally to remake Nigeria, the tendency to repose confidence in new laws to battle old crimes will continue.