Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State has been giving teachers and civil servants plenty of meat to chew in recent weeks. He must hope that their ageing dentition can still cope with the tough meat he is giving them. Teachers in the state, more than any other group, have been at the receiving end of his generosity, as they perch awkwardly on the horns of a dilemma. Some 22,000 of them were sacked in 2017, and to show that the exercise was devoid of malice he replaced them barely a year later in April 2018 with close to 16,000 freshly recruited teachers. At a stage in the exercise, however, the state discovered that more than four thousand were incompetent to be teachers, and so they were again sacked. Since then, the state has been engaged in a bit of a ding-dong with teachers over competency tests. Just last week, another 233 teachers were relieved of their positions over false certificates, with the state insisting that it would still test the competence of teachers in the state. There will of course be no end to the sackings, nor to the competency tests.

The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has predictably been left agitated and distressed. It is obligated to protect its members from unfair and arbitrary treatment; but how does the union protect members who present fake certificates, or teachers who are demonstrably incompetent? But that is the crux of the matter. The state insists it has the right to subject its staff, whether teachers or civil servants, to competency tests, because it is paying the bills. But teachers and their union insist that such a task is best left, according to the law, to the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN). They have decided to boycott the test, regardless of what the repercussions would be. If they stay united, Mallam el-Rufai will have to decide again whether to sack them or back down. It is not clear what he will do. As for the teachers, they appear tired of the instability and apprehensions to which the governor’s policies have sentenced them. They fear that his restlessness knows no bounds, and that every time they give in to some of his brain waves, more surprises will come out of his repository. The governor is not always right in his politics and policies, going by his nature, but he has a right to be worried about the quality of state workers, whether in the civil service or, particularly, teachers.

However, restlessness is idiosyncratic to Mallam el-Rufai, not to say sanctimoniousness. Most of the time, he thinks he is right. Once his mind is made up, he goes at whatever it is that agitates him hammer and tongs. He will battle the state’s teachers till his last week in office. He will not nearly always be wrong on them, given the abysmal quality of many teachers everywhere, but there is no guarantee that he will laugh last. The fact is that teachers and civil servants, competent or incompetent, will outlast him. And in the long run, it will not matter whether he did what was right or not; what will matter, unfortunately for him, is how he did it. He saw the last local government elections, which his party won handsomely, as a vindication of his style and politics; but in reality it was a fickle measure of the popularity of his policy and style. Mallam el-Rufai is in the closing months of his governorship; it may be time for him to begin to reassess his style and retune his government’s policies. In seeking a rapprochement with the people he has governed for nearly seven years, sometimes self-righteously, he must seek a balance between the quality he believes is so intrinsic to his personality and the failings and weaknesses of a system that is fundamentally and structurally defective, not only in Kaduna, but nationally.

But this advice is coming a little too late for the four-day working week he has just introduced in Kaduna, starting with the civil service, and promising to widen it to embrace the private sector sometime later. It is not clear whether he did his calculations well, particularly concerning the issue of productivity, or whether he looked at the practicability of the idea. Perhaps anxious not to be accused of pandering to Muslims by hacking Friday off the existing five-day working week, he deployed the arguments of the office culture changes birthed by Covid-19, the need to spend more time with family, and leeway to practice agriculture as excuses to limit presence in office to Monday to Thursday. Though in the first instance Covid-19 has made physical presence in office somewhat redundant, it would, however, required modern technology to sustain physical absence. There is no indication that Kaduna or most civil services in Nigeria have reached that level of technological sophistication to justify extended physical absence from office. It will take some time, some doing, computer literacy, and improvement in technology and telecommunications network to reach a level where workers can be trusted to productively work from home.

Second, when the state suggests that workers need time for agriculture and family, would that be within the eight-to-five working hours the government stipulates? Some reservations have been expressed as to the real motive of the government, but it is clear that little monitoring can be done to make up for lack of physical presence in the office on Friday. Already, it is known that Nigerian public sector workers are notoriously lax, even in office. To trust them to be diligent out of office would be stretching government luck too far. Extending closing hours to 5pm will do little to increase productivity. And on Friday, it will be even more futile for any supervisor to monitor a worker beyond jumat, regardless of the volume of work and technological sophistication. Changing working hours will do nothing to raise productivity; it will lower it.

Governor el-Rufai reminds many Nigerians of the uproarious changes wrought on Osun State by former governor Rauf Aregbesola regarding public holidays and education policy. The state has battled since then to restore normality. Mr Aregbesola and Mallam el-Rufai are kindred spirits. Both are cocksure of everything, and they hardly let anyone get in a word edgeways. There is no proof that the Kaduna working week changes have been properly considered. However, once it takes root, the in-coming governor will be hard put to restore normality, unlike Osun.

New COVID-19 variant, Omicron

The Nigerian government has been unsure how to respond to the new Covid-19 variant, Omicron, detected a few weeks ago in South Africa. It is probably the fifth variant sequenced so far. Not much is known about it, but it has led to stiff measures against South Africa, including many countries barring travelers from Southern Africa. Nigeria is right to denounce the immigration sanctions imposed against South Africa, but beyond that there is no concerted effort to protect Nigerians against the new variant or ensure it does not spread further than the few thought to have been already infected in the country.

Nigeria emphasizes vaccination, and boosters. But less than five percent of Nigerians has been fully vaccinated, and the country’s shambolic policy on vaccination, including forcing people to take the jab, is unlikely to be significant in slowing the spread. Other factors that had slowed the spread of previous variants and made the pandemic less fatal to Nigerians will come into play once more. Apart from this, campaigns to compel adherence to Covid-19 protocols should be ramped up, while aggressive testing should also recommence. Handling incoming travelers professionally and scrupulously adhering to Port protocols, which were badly managed in the worst of times, must now be reinvigorated.

The federal government has reiterated its commitment to enforcing a December 1, 2021 deadline for civil servants to take their Covid-19 jabs or risk being shut out of public buildings and secretariats. The government does not of course have enough vaccinations to go round, not even for 10 percent of the population, but alarmed that existing supplies were not being accessed as rapidly as expected, and believing that if civil servants wished to get vaccinated they could easily do so without delay or any encumbrances, it has decided to enforce a deadline. Clever by half, however, the federal government has left a small window, smaller than the eye of a needle, for civil servants to exploit. Public servants unwilling to be vaccinated but determined to gain access to their offices could present a Covid-19 PCR test done not earlier than 72 hours, said the government. How many tests would they take in a month?

For vaccine refuseniks, being ordered to get vaccinated or present a negative PCR test is like sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. They clearly remember that the vaccine is not foolproof in terms of its side-effects, with a few of the effects so debilitating as to lead to death, nor foolproof in terms of victims being infected or hospitalized. The religious fears of spooked vaccines may have receded, but there are still apprehensions about the unknown and unintended consequences of the vaccines. Too many people remain skeptical about the whole vaccine issue, indeed angry, in the face of the general indemnity to prosecution or liability claimed by vaccine manufacturers and governments which are nevertheless forcing the populace to be vaccinated. Many governments claim that vaccination is necessary to create herd immunity and save the larger population from infection and millions of deaths. A few vaccine skeptics, growled the government, should not be allowed to stand in the way of the larger good.

In some countries in Europe and the Americas, infection rates have begun to spike again, and their governments attribute the rising incidence to vaccine refuseniks, against whom they have begun a panoply of measures to compel adherence to Covid-19 rules and regulations, including forced vaccinations and lockdowns. Most of these countries have vaccination rates higher than 50 percent, yet infection rates have started to spike as winter looms. Responding to new restrictions, protests have broken out in countries such as Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, Croatia, and North Macedonia, among others. These were countries whose initial management of Covid-19 restrictions was far better, and their citizens enjoyed significant palliatives. Yet, equating the restrictions to imprisonments, citizens of those countries have pushed back in protests against their governments’ new restrictions.

Read Also: Of travellers and expensive COVID-19 PCR tests 

On the other hand, the vaccination rate in Africa, particularly black African countries like Nigeria, is a measly six percent or less. This low rate of vaccination is accompanied by equally inexplicably low rate of infection and mortality. The hospitalisation and deaths the world expected from Africa have failed to materialise. Stunned, Eurocentric scientists have continued to shift their baleful and apocalyptic projections of Covid-19 impact in Africa, assured that the continent’s poor healthcare facilities would soon buckle under the pressure of new strains and mutations of the virus. Yet, with each wave, fewer deaths and hospitalisations have been witnessed in black Africa. Indeed, what is inexplicable is the stridency and panic with which Nigeria’s Covid-19 response team has met the low incidence of the virus. Few now bother to use masks, and social distancing has all but been relegated to the background. Worship houses have opened up to the hilt, and events centres and wedding and funeral ceremonies have been celebrated with little adherence to guidelines. Yet, infection has remained abysmally low, and hospitalisation has all but disappeared.

Why the Nigerian response team continues to issue dire warnings about the anticipated fourth wave is hard to fathom, though they have not taken proactive steps about the new strain detected in South Africa. They poll-parrot Europe and the Americas, and are even more determined to enforce vaccination and restrictions than those countries. Scarce national resources are being shoveled down the barns of Covid-19 than are deployed to fight other scarier communicable diseases and some old epidemiological staples such as malaria and Lassa fever. Indeed, there are now fears that the Nigerian Covid-19 response has become the usual racket that splurges the country’s scarce financial resources on wasteful projects. As a matter of fact, last week, the World Bank warned that Nigerian households were yet to recover from Covid-19 impact. Food security was becoming a grave issue, and this in turn has triggered all sorts of criminalities which the country has been unable to grapple with. Yet, the government has kept adamantly to spending huge resources on a virus that has proved spectacularly tame against black Africans. In fact, the government is now determined to impose more restrictions and rules that impinge on the economic freedoms and productivity of the people. This is illogical and worrisome.

After refusing to engage its scientists in researching the course and trajectory of the virus in black Africa, and finding no reason to explain the low incidence of infection, the Nigerian government and its Covid-19 response team have abandoned the field and narrative to Western scientists and bureaucrats who alarm everyone and impose their response templates, including vaccines, on the rest of the world. If it is not too late, could the country importune their unimaginative government and Covid-19 response team to look inwards, find a homegrown solution to the virus, and design response mechanisms that do not drain and impoverish their people? Surely, this can’t be too much to ask for.

FG plays ducks and drakes with El-Zakzaky

Despite their victory in the courts, Shiite leader, Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat, may have started to wonder just what else a person needs in his moral and political armament to checkmate or truly defeat the federal government. If they are not wondering what else to do, then perhaps they will be digging deep into their academic bags to redefine the rule of law in a country where the government routinely sets itself above the law, defies court orders, declines to pay damages and compensations, and sometimes even ignore the courts altogether.

Sheikh El-Zakzaky was back in court to compel the release of his and his wife’s travelling documents so that they could seek medical care abroad. In the suit, he joined the Department of State Service (DSS), which he accused of causing the flagging of the passports, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami, whom he accused of either authorising the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) to seize the passports or place a ban on the documents, and the NIS, which he said placed a red flag on the documents at the instance of the first two respondents. The passports themselves, the Sheikh acknowledges, were last seen in the possession of the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA).

None of the four persons or agencies acknowledges possession of the passport. That makes it doubly difficult for the Sheikh and his wife, and of course, their lawyers, to know who specifically to hold responsible. They are all tossing him around like a yo-yo. The Nigerian government is adept at masterminding such evasive games, and playing ducks and drakes with the feelings and passions of victims of government oppression. The Sheikh, like hundreds of activists before him, shows how hard it is to fight the government. The government was and still is wrong on the Shiite issue, but it manages to always break its victims, if not outrightly, then perhaps leaving them for dead. The lesson is that when an activist chooses to fight the government, he should burn his bridges. If he does not manage to win, or retrace his steps and compromise, he would be lucky to escape with his life either in the short run or long run.

Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike has an engaging personality. Sharp-witted, outspoken and bold, he does not shirk a verbal or polemical challenge. Many of his put-downs, whether of royal fathers, pastors or politicians, have become close to legendary. In his political party, he has managed, more than most of his contemporaries, to become a force to reckon with. Whether he can sustain that momentum beyond the expiration of his second term in office is, however, difficult to say. But in addition to his remarkable achievements in Rivers and national politics, and upon all his charisma and gift of the gab, he has added the notable characteristics of a self-righteous and messianic politician and leader. These characteristics go to the bottom of his innate self. In and out of office, this republic or the next – if there is a next – he will still be his old self. His main challenge then will be to find currency and relevance, stridency and resonance.

Mr Wike displayed his gifts once again at a thanksgiving service last Sunday while celebrating the appointment of Justice Simeon Amadi as the chief judge of the state. The governor was prepared to dish out stuff, and he did not disappoint. It may not be obvious to him that he sounded sanctimonious or triumphalist, but in addressing the crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he spoke of the impertinence of his enemies and the ineluctability of his victories. His statements may not be inaccurate, but it is uncertain whether his tone was wise or modest. “Recently, you heard there were some crises in the Peoples Democratic Party,” he began patronisingly. “Everybody who was involved, that plotted everything for my downfall – all are out. Everyone that slept, that went to a meeting, planning how they’re going to bring me down, not one survived.”

His aide who released the statement did not say whether he spoke during the service or after, for this would matter tremendously. But he was quoted well. And when he veered extensively towards the appointment of Justice Amadi, particularly the politics that heralded the years before the new chief judged assumed office, he again reiterated the messianism he believed undergirded his administration, and the triumphalism he exuded as a sine qua non to his person and administration. “Nobody will survive to plot the downfall of my government. Nobody will survive it,” he deadpanned. By saying this unapologetically, he thus equated himself with former president Olusegun Obasanjo, the only other living Nigerian leader who has claimed a special relationship with God. Chief Obasanjo’s enemies, in his eyes, always came to grief. And his requests to God? Why, they are always answered. All he needs to do is just ask, including when it involves breaking the law and the constitution. Perhaps the country should be grateful to Chief Obasanjo that he ‘did not ask’ God the toughest among the petitions that hallmarked his administration, the Third Term saga.

Messianism and triumphalism are not infrequent in political leadership and administrations. Adolf Hitler felt he was irreplaceable, his destiny becoming intertwined with the destiny of his country, Germany. Moreover, he felt the stars afforded him insurance and special relationship with supernatural forces, a fact he again alluded to when the assassination attempt against him at the Wolf’s Lair in Poland failed for the umpteenth time during World War II. Napoleon Bonaparte also spoke of his indestructibility, believing that he was under some kind of special protection from out of this world. He sometimes charged the enemy at the head of his troops when he believed they were beleaguered, and concluded that he could not be killed in war. Now, whether his belief was father to the fact or vice versa is hard to tell.

Mr Wike is gifted, and his administration, despite the uproar he sometimes elicits, is likely to leave a solid footprint in the state. He has less than two years left in his tenure. He will be acutely aware that he will retain the kind of relevance he presumes for his legacy if the PDP can somehow upset the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the coming polls. Should that happen, and probably because he would have been partly and significantly responsible for the tectonic change, he would find continuing national relevance far beyond the ephemerality of his substantial legacy projects in Rivers.  But anything short of a tectonic shift could endanger all he stands for, which he has displayed with considerable aplomb and panache. In addition to hoping for the best post-2023, Mr Wike would do well to spend the closing months of his administration salving the wounds of those whose egos he had bruised. In addition, as a man of ideas, no matter how tenuous those ideas may seem, he could also try his hands at codifying the changes he has brought upon Rivers so that future generations would relish his reign long after its light had flickered out.

Corps members for party primaries?

The Punch last week reported the possibility of deploying National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members to monitor political parties primaries should President Muhammadu Buhari sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill which, among other things, provides for direct primaries to nominate candidates for elections. The mode of party primaries became controversial when the National Assembly began amending the Act to restrict the parties to one method of nominating their candidates. They hoped it would open up the space and curb the insane power of governors who seemed to prefer other methods such as indirect and consensus primaries to nominate candidates.

It is not certain yet, given the governors’ continuing lobby, that the president will assent the bill. And even if he does, there is no proof that if the shoe were to be on the other foot, there would be no further attempt to amend the Act sometime in the hypothetical future. Meanwhile, in this micromanaging craze, it is unlikely the NASS considered the administrative costs of restricting all parties to the direct primaries method, nor have they possibly considered that the method itself might not be foolproof.

What is worse is that no one, not even INEC, whose official confirmed the possibility of deploying corps members to party duties, has thought about who will bear the cost: cash-strapped INEC looking for funds for the next elections, or NYSC which is gasping under the load of feeding and kitting corps members. What is certain is that costs which should be borne by political parties will now be transferred awkwardly to institutions which should have nothing to do with party primaries.

Direct primaries are elegant. But so, too, are the other methods. All three can in fact be exploited and manipulated. It is foolish and needless to meddle in what is strictly within the purview of political parties simply because there is fear of manipulation. The overregulation of political parties’ internal workings may prove ultimately obscenely costly, futile and needless. The president should withhold assent.

Islamic scholar Ahmad Gumi warned that such a declaration would come at a price. He scathingly described those pressuring the Muhammadu Buhari administration to equate banditry with terrorism as arm-chair critics and “semi-illiterates and half-baked tribal heroes who have nothing to offer besides promoting tribal xenophobia”. He argued his case so forcefully and with philosophical undertones, not to say searing abuse, that it is hard to see the administration caving in to general pressures to expand its list of terrorist groups in Nigeria.

According to Sheikh Gumi, “…The acts the bandits are committing now in the Northwest have gradually, over time, become tantamount to terrorism because wherever innocent people are fatal victims, it’s pure terrorism. Yet, innocence, these days, is relative. We agreed if their children and women are also killed, they are guilty by association or collateral damage; so also the bandits may think the same way…However, the moment they are termed terrorists – Islamic for that matter – the direct foreign Jihadist movements will set in in force. And many teeming unemployed youths may find it palatable and attractive. Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ plus AK-47 against a ‘secular’ immoral society where impunity reigns are the magnets for extremists and downtrodden – the majority of our youth…”

It is hard to place the argument of the Islamic scholar. On the one hand he agrees that the bandits’ actions are terroristic in nature, and their victims unfortunate collateral damage. But he concludes, despite the logical premise of his argument, that labeling bandits as terrorists was inadvisable and would worsen the attacks. The sole plank of his argument against the reclassification, in fact proper classification, of bandits is that the word terrorism has a magical, seductive and sanguinary impact on the bandits and their vicious trade. Once banditry is described as terrorism, said the scholar, particularly of the Islamic hue, it would serve as a magnet to terror adventurists from everywhere. Sheikh Gumi has a strange mind.

Not only have bandits dissociated themselves from religion, making it known that their animus is against those – particularly Hausa vigilantes and farmers – threatening their existence, they have also subscribed absolutely to no religious objectives. They will be amused that Sheikh Gumi, who has befriended them and offered himself as their intermediary, is investing their largely ethnic and existential struggle with religious colouration. Indeed, they will be bewildered. The scholar abuses everyone who disagrees with his point of view. He claims inalienable right to hold on to his self-serving arguments, but denies the same right to those who disagree with his definitions and aggressive suppositions.

Last Monday too, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State stated unequivocally during the Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) in Abuja that there were no ambiguities in defining what constitutes terrorism. Blowing up railway tracks and bombing communities and massacring farmers and traders are nothing but terrorism, he said. On the same podium was Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai who only recently became converted to the terrorism label after initially appeasing the so-called bandits in the early years of his governorship. He needed the intensification of the attacks and killings to appreciate the terroristic evil constituted by the armed militias claiming to resist genocide against the Fulani. But Sheikh Gumi will not be persuaded. He empathises more with the ‘bandits’ than with the victims. It is not even clear whether wholesale genocide will persuade him to relent in his obtuse classifications.

It is also not clear what scale of attacks ‘bandits’ have to deploy to persuade the federal government that bandits are in fact terrorists. Mallam el-Rufai suggests that a new classification was needed to enable the government go all out against the bandits as well as use all means without running foul of international law. As an aside, what stops the government from using all legitimate means to quash the attacks laying many communities in the Northwest waste? Is Mallam el-Rufai suggesting unrestrained and illegitimate force for a problem that has its roots in socio-economic grievances but has lately become somewhat ethnic, a problem that can in fact be also partially and successfully handled by political means and other economic interventions? What is clear in all the back and forth arguments is the poverty of national leadership. Sheikh Gumi, contrary to the impression he gives, is prejudiced. The dithering federal government is inept and complicit, hiding behind definitional confusion to avoid coming to tactical and nomenclatural grip with the festering problem in the Northwest. And the governors themselves, whose decades-old misrule encouraged the breakdown of law and order in their states, have been criminally negligent and unimaginative in dealing with the nightmare.

Read Also: Knocks for Gumi over visit to Igboho

Whether it declared ‘bandit’ attacks as terrorism or not, the federal government should have dealt with what was a largely socio-economic problem before it morphed into ethnic conflict. The government should be pressured into living up to its responsibility, a duty it sadly repeatedly disavows when the pressures become intolerable. Alarmingly, Sheikh Gumi is trying to indirectly invest the conflict with religious overtones. They should also not let him. Terrorism is a wave of violent attack, or waves of violent attacks, often to achieve political objectives. Bandits do not have to wave self-determination flags before they qualify to be labeled as terrorists, as the federal government erroneously thinks. Their indiscriminate violence qualifies them. Flags of self-determination, on the other hand, do not constitute terrorism, again as the Nigerian government ignorantly presumes.

Both the administration and Sheikh Gumi will not allow facts, science and truths to inconvenience them. They have chosen not to apply terrorism label against bandits. They are unlikely to shift ground, regardless of the ethnic and religious connotations many disappointed Nigerians read into that failure. The public should, however, pressure their government into dealing with the menace destroying the Northwest, however they choose to do it. They should not hide behind definitional fog to be indifferent to or pull their punches in dealing with the bloodletting going on in the zone. If labeling the menace banditry will salve their conscience, let them embrace that label. What is not an option is to let banditry live on. It is cruel and shortsighted.

NASS, parties and primaries

Whatever the merit of the position taken on primaries by the National Assembly, it nevertheless appears to be an overregulation of the political system and the Electoral Act. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has a provision in its constitution for the use of indirect primaries to elect its candidates for various offices. The All Progressives Congress (APC) on the other hand provides for the use of indirect, direct and consensus modes of electing its candidates. In the ongoing amendment of the Electoral Act, both the Senate and the House of Representatives provide for the use of only direct primaries. Why they think it appropriate to meddle in how political parties, not to say the states, select their candidates is hard to fathom.

Responding to the amendment, which is yet to be adopted by NASS, governors have reportedly begun to lobby the legislature against instituting the direct primaries mode, believing that the amendment was designed to whittle down their burdensome influence on the candidates selection mode. Coupled with the autonomy granted the legislature and the judiciary, with their budgetary provisions put on first line charge, governors feel an overwhelming sense of nakedness. This contrasts with their previous monarchical, if not outrightly autocratic, bearing on the political process.

Autonomy, yes. But determining for parties, nay ordering them, on how to nominate their candidates is tasteless and nonsensical, all this because they want to curb the powers of the governors. How many more things are they going to regulate? Let the parties evolve their methods, traditions and practices.

Last week, Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai inaugurated the first Interfaith Religious Preaching Regulatory Council. The council will, among other things, ensure that faith leaders and preachers do not practice their faiths in ways that create conflict among the people of the state or antagonize and inconvenience others. It will also determine who by training and education is qualified to preach without provoking crisis. Members of the council are Munnir Jaafaru (chairman), Comfort Bangoji, Sheik Kabir Qasim, Engr. Iliya Duniya, Sheik Ishaq Yunus, Rev. Dr. Simon Haruna, the state Attorney-General, the state Commissioner of Police, State Director, DSS, Director-General, Bureau of Interfaith, Commander, Kaduna State Vigilance Service, and the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Internal Security & Home Affairs.

The inauguration follows the passing into law of a bill to regulate preaching in the state, pursuant to the legislative review of the Religious Preaching Edict of 1984. The state had tried to undertake the review work in 2016 but met with legal and political obstacles. The 2019 ruling by Justice Hajaratu Gwadah of the Kaduna State High Court that the state government had a right to regulate religious activities in the state but no right to screen and issue licence to religious preachers enabled the government to proceed. It is not clear how the council would determine who ‘by education and training’ could preach in the state when the 2019 court ruling bars the government from screening and issuing licence to preachers.

If the government surmounts that legal and administrative grey area, and can disabuse the minds of Kaduna people that the composition of the council is not by default skewed against one religious group, especially in light of the antagonism of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to the law, it will nevertheless encounter far worse opposition regarding sermons that ‘provoke and inconvenience others’. Sermons by nature are subjective, often impassioned, and sometimes rightly and reasonably stray into politics or transgress religious boundaries. What does it take to instigate opponents of one religious group or even a sect into rage? Very little, especially in the tempestuous environment of northern Nigeria, as Hisbah (Sharia police) activities underscores to the chagrin of constitutionalists and civil liberty organisations.

One reason CAN is opposed to the law is the history of the early church in which Spirit-filled Christians who did not necessarily have any formal training or education in theology became anointed to preach the gospel to the world. So who determines which Christian preacher has the education and training? By empanelling a council to grapple with some of those knotty questions, Mallam el-Rufai has seemed to kick the nuisance down the road, away from the table of the executive branch. It is uncertain that the council, headed by a Muslim, would appreciate all the nuances of Christian exegesis, notwithstanding the presence of some Christians on the board. The council will also have to grapple with the Sunni-Shiite divide to which many northern elite have themselves become susceptible or even partial.

Mallam el-Rufai has demonstrated boldness in confronting delicate ethno-religious issues. He has not always been astute and discerning, nor futuristic and altruistic, but he has always been prepared both to denounce critics of his style as well as glibly abjure his convictions when he is put under sufficient pressure. He is also often unable to discern the difference between short term and long term gains. In the last governorship poll, he embraced a Muslim-Muslim ticket on the grounds that it would not matter to the outcome, and that the largely Christian Southern Kaduna would not vote for him should he take a Christian running mate. He was right as far as the electoral outcome was concerned; but that choice has further driven a wedge between him and Southern Kaduna, and made his opponents implacable.

His boldness prompted his desire to review the 1984 preaching edict, which past governors had unsuccessfully grappled with. He believes it is a question of political will rather than a question of inherent contradictions and juridical obstacles. Coming less than two years to the expiration of his tenure, it can be surmised that the new law, not to say the council, will encounter a lot of normative pitfalls, chief among which will be how to define poisonous sermons. Kaduna’s sectarian conflicts became intractable not simply because sermons were inflammatory, but largely because no one brought troublemakers to book. Decades of Maitatsine conflicts attracted few or no prosecutions, thus conferring impunity on religious groups who desired to ‘cleanse’ the state and the larger region of ‘other’ religions. There were always laws to guide religious excesses; the problem was that they were never really enforced.

Unfortunately, ‘s sanctimonious administrative style, which sometimes borders on the obsessively fanatical, portrays him as incapable of moderation. The state needs to put a lid on religious fanaticism and sermonic recklessness, but it is doubtful whether the panaceas suggested by the governor are relevant to the disease or capable of providing long-term solutions. His casual denial of some of his own solutions, when they backfire, is troubling; but much more troubling, and indicative of a terrible flaw in his personality and methods, was his inability to handle the Sunni-Shiite schism in his state without provoking the murderous assault on Ibraheem el-Zakzaky’s followers in 2015. Mallam el-Rufai is right to want to tackle the sermonic dissonance and rampage in Kaduna, and righter still to approach the matter with boldness, but he has both overstated the distressing and long-lasting problem of religion in the state as well as proffered the wrong remedies.

Anambra poll and overwhelming force

As predicted, the Muhammadu Buhari administration has opted for overwhelming force to police the November 6 Anambra governorship election. The state and the entire Southeast have witnessed recurrent violence in recent months, partly designed to frustrate any chance of elections. Speaking to the press after last Thursday’s National Security Council (NSC) meeting attended by the country’s security chiefs, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, said the president insisted that elections must hold as scheduled, and troublemakers kept at bay.

Said he: “The president has directed that under no circumstances will anything be allowed to stop the elections from taking place successfully…The president has made it very clear that the armed forces, security agencies, and law enforcement agencies must make sure that the elections take place, if it means overwhelming the entire environment with the presence of security agencies.”

Rampant attacks have been unleashed on the Southeast for more than a year, some of them targeting INEC and law enforcement offices in the zone. Anambra is merely the latest manifestation of the problem. Having been unable to combat the eruptions effectively, it was only natural that with elections looming in the state the federal government would take drastic measures. Whether the measures will succeed, however, is a different thing. The poll will hold, as the president has directed, but the turnout will be low. With civil disobedience looming in the zone and becoming coterminous with ancient grievances, voters are more likely to heed the disrupters, knowing full well that the nation’s security forces would be unable to protect them.

Not only will the election’s legitimacy be questioned, regardless of whoever wins, the situation can only get worse with the administration’s half-baked solutions which rely almost exclusively on the use of force. A more rational approach would have been for the administration to adopt scientific means of extirpating the factors menacing peace in the region. To do this, the administration will have to climb down from its high horse. The chances of doing this are, however, remote. The country should simply brace up for the worst.

When commentators insinuate that insecurity has worsened under President Muhammadu Buhari compared with the Goodluck Jonathan era, presidential spokesman Femi Adesina throws a tantrum. He and other presidential aides and spokesmen are right to feel bothered by the comparisons. Even if they don’t believe that the current administration is what it is cracked up to be, they still have a duty to sell it above average price, predictably above the price of the last administration. Speaking on Channels Television last Monday, Mr Adesina had suggested that it was ‘disingenuous’ to conclude that the pre-Buhari era was better in tackling security issues.

According to him, “In some areas, we may not have performed well like in other areas. There were three main promises and these promises were expanded into nine priority areas. One, we met an insecure country. We went at it and there was some stability and after a while, it exploded again and became hydra-headed.” He, however, grudgingly acknowledges a difference. “Before, the insurgency was the only issue, but now banditry, kidnapping and cultism came in. So, it’s a serious issue.” But defiantly, he adds in a tone of finality: “In all truth can we compare the security situation of 2015 to what we have now? As of 2015, yes it was only insurgency then, but the way bombs were going off like firecrackers in all cities, can we compare that to today? It will be disingenuous to say that there has not been improvement in certain areas of security.” But must he always compare two eras, even if injured Nigerians do?

Mr Adesina sometimes spreads a veneer of scripture on his comparisons and assessments. He has mercifully not done so this time, obviously not for want of scriptures. But that is not to say he cannot always find a theological basis for his arguments. As long as the insecurity nightmare under the Buhari administration continues to remain on the front burner, grieving families who are victims of insecurity, not to talk of travelers who can no longer move around the country without holding their breath, will be tempted to compare the Buhari era with the immediate past Jonathan administration. Mr Adesina has unwisely met them at their grieving turf, where the current administration cannot hope to win the argument.

If the presidential spokesman reposes so much faith in his comparisons, judging insecurity only in terms of the Jonathan era, not only will the premises of his argument be questioned and derided, few Nigerians will presume him to be objective. They will distrust his arguments, as they will ridicule his conclusions. They know by painful experience that whereas they could travel safely around the country, with the exception of the Northeast, during the Jonathan administration, that possibility no longer exists. At home and on the highways, and in the fields as well as in the forests, they have tangible proofs that their lives are no longer safe. They are, therefore, unable to fathom what different, otherworldly experience impels Mr Adesina into his highfalutin comparisons, and are astounded that despite his admission of the ubiquity of insecurity under this administration as against its localization during the last administration, he still bathes the Buhari era in glowing and scented pomade.

Mr Adesina should resist the temptation to compare administrations, especially in matters that are as open and incontestable as insecurity. There is, however, little proof that he will heed the advice. But should he deign to, and in order not to lie through his teeth, let him limit himself to the achievements of the Buhari administration. Let him paint a vivid picture of what his master has done, and hope that the facts and figures will speak for themselves. For even if the Buhari record on security is hopeless, perhaps his records in other areas of national life would speak for him and to his strengths. The expiration of the president’s second term is only 19 months away. No one sees the possibility of the administration quieting the rampant storm of insecurity convulsing the country, much of it triggered, perhaps unconsciously, by the administration’s heedless policies.

Comparisons, the English say, are odious. On insecurity, comparing the past administration with the present, especially through the lens of subjective presidential aides, is odious in the extreme. They have done the best they could on the subject. Perhaps they should let their records in other areas speak for them.

Methodist prelate, Boko Haram and bandits

In a recent interaction with the media in Abuja, Prelate of the Methodist Church Nigeria, Samuel Chukwuemeka Kanu-Uche suggested an engagingly simple solution to the insurgency and banditry ravaging the northern part of Nigeria. Arguing that the militants were hungry, he suggested that amnesty and palliatives should be able to do the trick. “Let me tell you,” he began without mincing words, “these boys are being used by politicians. If you engage them and be paying them N25,000 monthly, they will not kidnap. All they want is food. I support amnesty for them, the way it was done in the Niger Delta region; it quelled the tension. Let government also offer amnesty to Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Adeyemo, and say ‘come, let us dialogue’.”

If it were that simple, banditry and insurgency would have long ended. Boko Haram may by their recent desperation indicate that they are hungry, but they want more than food. Some religious leaders may also dispute Boko Haram’s clerical fidelity to the tenets of Islam, but, like the hedonistic ISIS in Syria and Iraq, they have anchored their faith and campaign on religion. The allure of caliphate is far more than gourmet taste of food. And to suggest that bandits would and should take N25,000 to halt violence is so unrealistic that it requires no elaboration. Inflation has made nonsense of that sum. In any case, is he suggesting that all a desperate person needs for national handout is to take up arms against the state? Moreover, who told the prelate that Messrs Igboho and Kanu want amnesty when they insist that their self-determination campaigns are not against any known law?

The Methodist Church has not always been adept at propagating liberation theology like the Catholic, Anglican and some Pentecostal Churches in Nigeria. It should not try to play anyone else’s script or steal another church’s thunder. Dr Kanu-Uche himself has been somewhat awkward in intervening in Nigerian politics. He simply doesn’t have the disposition or the natural resplendence in secular politics. The problem is not that his choice of polemical subjects does havoc to his immense theological talents; the problem is that his panaceas are so out of sync with reality as to be decidedly awful.

Gov Obaseki exceeds himself

In stamping his monarchical authority over the Edo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Governor Godwin Obaseki insisted that if another governorship poll were to be held today he would score about 85 percent. The governor chases chimera. He will of course lose, for the state, in fleeing what it feared was Adams Oshiomhole’s incipient godfatherism, has now come to the realization that their governor is neither as technocratic as he was painted nor a democrat of any colour worthy of the immense sacrifice indigenes made in embracing change they gloated must be different from that of Lagos. It is possible Mr Obaseki is so inured to reality that he neither feels nor sees Edo’s disillusionement.

By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye 

Just as Boko Haram insurgency became synonymous with the Northeast, particularly Borno and Yobe States, banditry, a peculiarly Nigerian form of terrorism, has become synonymous with the Northwest. In both geopolitical zones of the core North, full-scale military counterinsurgency operations are ongoing. The operations have, however, met with qualified success. Insurgents are being degraded, but the fundamental causes of the revolt have neither been fully understood, nor acknowledged, nor significantly tackled. The same oversight is being replayed in the Northwest where banditry was allowed to fester, its dynamics only partially understood, and its remedies applied half-heartedly for reasons not quite understood.

Between late August and mid-September, Zamfara, Katsina, Niger and Kaduna States – Sokoto State joined a little later – announced a number of measures as their coordinated responses to banditry.  The measures included the suspension of weekly markets, movement of cattle, sale of petrol in jerry-cans, and restrictions of motorcycle and keke transport modes in some local government areas. On the whole, the measures came rather late, after the problem had been left to fester, while in the panic to announce and execute the measures, their implications had not really been studied or understood. Kaduna State has raised the ante further by announcing a three-month plan to curb the menace, including the suspension of telecoms services.

For Kaduna, the measures are almost cataclysmic in proportion. They include:

1. Total ban on the use of motorcycles (Okada), for commercial or personal purposes, for three months in the first instance.

2. Ban on possession of or wielding of dangerous weapons.
3. Tricycles to operate only from 6am to 7pm.
4. All vehicles used for commercial transport must be painted in yellow and black within 30 days. Vehicles that are part of ride hailing services are to carry yellow and black stripes.
5. Ban on the sale of petrol in jerry-cans or other containers in Birnin Gwari, Giwa, Chikun, Igabi, Kachia, Kagarko and Kajuru LGAs.

Other containment measures previously communicated remain in place. These include:

1. Ban on felling of trees and forestry activities in Birnin Gwari, Giwa Igabi, Chikun, Kachia, Kagarko and Kajuru LGAs.
2. Ban on firewood and charcoal transportation.
3. Ban on the transportation of livestock into and out of the state.
4. Cessation of weekly markets in the frontline local government areas of Birnin Gwari, Giwa, Chikun, Igabi, Kajuru and Kawo weekly market of Kaduna North local government.

Implementing the drastic anti-banditry measures on a fortnightly basis was challenging enough; to impose a three-month lockdown would be incredibly stifling, and may even prove counterproductive. The Northwest states could of course not afford to do nothing, or do little, in the face of the chaos engendered by banditry. But the states may soon discover that it is far easier to enunciate measures than to execute them. For largely agrarian economies struggling to transform into 21st century businesses, especially in impoverished and troubled communities, the Northwest measures may further plunge the states into poverty, misery and chaos.

Banditry did not metastasize overnight. It took years in developing, according to studies commissioned to explicate the crisis. Not only was little done to respond to it, especially seeing how it unfortunately began to ossify along interethnic lines, the federal government, which has total control of the security agencies, was alarmingly lethargic in formulating measures and tactics to deal with the emerging crisis. The problem called for drastic and urgent federal reforms and structural and paradigmatic changes in internal security, but only superficial attempts were made to respond to a crisis that in a few years metamorphosed into chaotic erosion of the country’s foundations.

Banditry and related crimes are bound to remain with the country for much longer than anyone might desire, particularly because of poverty and appallingly outdated and untenable political and economic structures. The problem calls for a rethink of the country’s structure, social relations, security architecture, and leadership paradigms. Decades of prebendal military rule, and a few more decades of incompetent civilian administrations in the affected states have produced a conglomeration of social and economic challenges finding expressions and manifestations through dangerous fault lines. As the measures announced by the Northwest states show, there is obviously still a demonstrable lack of capacity among state and national leaders. The states’ responses have been largely emotive, desultory and short-termist. Banditry is after all a manifestation of deep societal and economic fissures; the response must, therefore, be surgical and focused.

Given the massive implications of some of the measures announced by the north-western states to combat banditry, it is not clear how they hope to sustain them. The states want to be seen as doing something about the problem, partly because they genuinely worry about letting banditry go on unfettered. But there is no consensus that the measures are appropriate or tenable. One of the states has in fact extended the timeline of some of the measures, while Kaduna mulls a three-month timeline. If they have thought of the consequences of their measures, they have not indicated it, nor spoken to their opportunity costs. The states should reassess the fight. While they must do something about the problem, it is even more urgent that they must do the right thing that takes cognizance of the lives and wellbeing of the people they are trying to save from the effects of banditry.

AGF Malami should worry

Justice minister and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami probably acknowledges that he is one of the most controversial ministers in the Muhammadu Buhari cabinet. If he cares about the noisome buzz around him, he has managed to conceal it. But whether the buzz is expressed or concealed, it is important that he should worry. His tenure will be assessed after he leaves office, and posterity will judge him. He has less than two years in office, and for the about six years he has spent in that hallowed office as the country’s chief law officer, he has reeled from one controversy to another, topping it with an ambitious run for public office. But neither he nor anyone else seems to know what office he covets.

Last week, in New York, Mr Malami argued that the controversial issue of Value Added Tax (VAT) was on the exclusive legislative list. He will probably be advising the president and the administration along that curious line. If so, it is not clear which constitution he is talking about, though he has carefully avoided citing any provision. Instead of seeing himself as the unbiased chief law officer of the country, whose interpretative prowess is beyond cavil, he has become embarrassingly partisan, and views himself more and more, and from one controversy to another, as the northern states’ chief law officer, the ruling party All Progressives Congress (APC) chief legal adviser – refer to his unsolicited advice on the 2015 Kogi governorship election rerun – and the personal chief law officer to both the president and the administration.

How he expects, in the face of his brazen partisanship and subterfuges, to escape historical censure and opprobrium is hard to fathom. There is life after the administration. More, he would be lucky indeed if after office he is not one of these days caught in one of his interpretative traps. Who knows, someday, as he struggles to enforce his rights, someone will confront him with his belief in the subordination of individual rights to national security interest.