The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Yoruba obas, secession and Gbajabiamila outburst

    Yoruba obas, secession and Gbajabiamila outburst

    By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye 

    Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila will do his best to walk back his controversial statement on southern secessionists, but he will be only partially successful. The media had quoted him last Wednesday as suggesting equivalence between southern secessionists, including Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Yoruba Nation agitators, and Boko Haram/ISWAP insurgents, prompting critics to excoriate him as a government lickspittle. The following day, however, he explained that his speech was misinterpreted, insisting that he never referred specifically to either IPOB or Yoruba Nation. His message, he argued, was directed at criminal elements in all secessionist groups. It is hard to determine whether he was misinterpreted or not, but for nearly all commentators and media analysts, Hon. Gbajabiamila was guilty.

    Here is his original statement last Wednesday: “In the South of Nigeria, East and West, miscreants, and criminals masquerading as separationist activists have emerged to wreak havoc, take lives and commit economic sabotage against fellow Nigerians and against the state. These people, in their inclination for devastating violence against fellow citizens, their appetite for the destruction of private property, their disruption of academic activities, commerce, and industry, their propensity for defiling institutions of the state, society, and community, their refusal to engage in debate, or to consider the possibility of dissenting opinions and alternative viewpoints are no different from Boko Haram and ISWAP. Given space and time, they will take our nation down the same path of destruction. We know from experience that neither appeasement nor overwhelming violence alone will work.”

    Hon Gbajabiamila is right to insist that his statement referred only to criminal elements masquerading as secessionist agitators, but few people will accept that he was not in the same breath referring to, for instance, IPOB whose members were recently accused of doing some of the things the Speaker mentioned in his speech. Hon Gbajabiamila is peculiarly disadvantaged by the fact that, on the same day, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu issued a vituperative statement condemning the Yoruba Nation group for participating in a protest involving IPOB. The protest was organized by the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS) which stormed the UN headquarters in New York early last week. Mr Shehu was mindlessly scathing, and he came across as obsessed only with southern self-determination campaigners in strict disregard of the factors that prompted their agitations. Hon Gbajabiamila had the misfortune of speaking candidly the same day Mr Shehu hysterically and dismissively characterized the Yoruba Nation group.

    The popular interpretation of Hon Gbajabiamila’s statement that saw him equate self-determination groups with Boko Haram will grab attention for a long time. The public will not give him the benefit of the doubt. He was careful to refer to and denounce criminal elements masquerading as secessionists, but by appearing to equate self-determination groups as a whole with insurgents, he was in fact sailing near the wind. The equivalence was unnecessary. That was where he came to grief. Had he limited himself to denouncing violence and every threat to public peace by any group he would have sounded like a statesman and, more importantly, like a lawmaker and principal officer of parliament.

    Last Monday, the Vanguard newspaper also reported that some Yoruba obas denounced secession and suggested that the Yoruba stood to gain nothing from separation. The obas should have declined to offer half-baked opinions on self-determination, particularly the difficult and controversial subject of secession. They have not updated their knowledge on the subject. In 1957, the Federation of Malaya became independent, and together with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore became Malaysia on September 16, 1963. But in August 1965, Singapore was  from the federation and became a separate independent country. No one today would say Singapore has not done very well as a separate country. Students of history know that as far as federations, unions and empires are concerned, nothing is cast in granite, especially countries destitute of justice, inclusion and equity. Yugoslavia broke up, and the world has not spun out of orbit. The former Soviet Union, which like Nigeria was a nominally federal union of multiple national republics, also broke up in 1991. Its former constituents are also doing well. Czechoslovakia, created in October 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary, also separated into two parts, Czech and Slovakia in 1993. Neither has regretted the dissolution of the union.

    There are more examples. The Yoruba obas misspoke by suggesting that secession would not augur well for their race. Their conclusion is neither backed by history nor logic. Instead, the obas should have emphasized the factors that promote Nigeria’s unity and greatness, but add that those factors are absent and the country was spiraling out of control because of bad and unenlightened leadership. Were they afraid to speak the truth? It is hogwash to keep harping on unity in the absence of inclusion and justice, and especially in light of the poor leadership it has been the lot of the country to endure in the past few decades. Instead of denouncing secession, the obas should have expressed their worry that the fate of Nigeria, given the centrifugal tendencies overwhelming the country, seemed to have been sealed.

    David Umahi searches for meaning

    Ebonyi State governor David Umahi has been controversial for a long time. Until his second term runs out he will remain controversial. In August, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu announced that like Katsina, Ebonyi had received N6bn from the federal government for ranching. The state denied the story, insisting that land for ranching was the exclusive preserve of the people, regardless of what the Land Use law says. And since the people say they have no land for ranching, surely that must be the end of the matter, according to Mr Umahi. But whether on the ranching controversy or the Southeast security outfit, Ebubeagu, observers in the Southeast are wary of Mr Umahi and his controversies. He may have mobilized Ebubeagu in his state and passed the buck on ranching lands to Ebonyians, however, the Igbo distrust him for his defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and wince at his unduly enthusiastic display of warmth and affection for the president.

    Mr Umahi plays unorthodox politics. He has stridently denounced IPOB, and has been amenable to federal and presidential matters, arguing that he was merely toeing the step of the great Nnamdi Azikwe. This may account for why he seized upon the federal projects being implemented in the Southeast to laud President Buhari. Early September, he rhapsodized the president by describing him as a national benchmark. Said the governor after a visit to Aso Villa: “But I continue to say that power rests in the hands of God. And God, will also give us the next president who has a good heart like President Buhari for the good of this country.” Neither he nor many in Igboland appear convinced that his superlative description of the president will resonate with the Southeast or most Nigerians. He will continue to make such superlative comparisons, as he said, because he owes nobody any explanation.

    The problem is not that Mr Umahi feels beholden to Aso Villa, which he has demonstrated raucously like Imo State governor Hope Uzodinma; the problem is that he has become controversial, if not disoriented, as his detractors say, because of the effusive manner he demonstrates that support. Is it just about power rotation and the APC presidential ticket? Hardly. There is a yawning vacuum in his soul and a flaw in his character that prompt him into excesses in good causes as well as bad causes. His search for meaning will not end after his governorship, nor will it be terminated after the Southeast is passed over for the presidency next year.

  • Dilemma of surrendered insurgents

    By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye 

    The idea of deradicalsing and reintegrating Boko Haram insurgents was first proposed in September 2015 at a Nigerian National Security Council (NNSC) meeting. By July 25, 2019, the fourth batch of deradicalised insurgents had been processed and graduated preparatory to being reintegrated into the Northeast society. A few had been settled in other parts of the North, including Kaduna State, through a programme called sulhu. However, some of the deradicalised insurgents had found their way back into the insurgency, an indication that the programme was either not thorough enough or not properly executed. Indeed, an obscene and curious haste marked the conception of the programme and its execution. Last week, the military disclosed that more than 5,000 insurgents had surrendered to the Army, ready to be processed.

    That number is bound to be controversial, not only in terms of explaining what leg room is left in their detention facility(ies), but also in explaining whether recruitment into Boko Haram over the years could justify that number when at their peak experts didn’t think the insurgents numbered more than five or six thousand. If the proposal to entice the insurgents to surrender was first heard in 2015, it could in fact suggest that the previous administration was unready to entertain the controversial idea, especially in the thick of a raging insurgency. On the other hand, September 2015 was undoubtedly too hasty for the new administration to contemplate a controversial soft landing for the insurgents. In any case, even if the idea was mooted so quickly, there was nothing to suggest that it should not have been subjected to thorough debate and appraisal, both among experts that transcended the military, and among the civil populace, particularly the Northeast population that was to reabsorb the insurgents.

    On balance, the Northeast population has been uneasy about the idea of being compelled to live with the so-called deradicalised Boko Haram militants. They had not been readied to receive their former tormentors, and are exceedingly wary of how to interact with those who throttled them and murdered their relatives. It is unclear whether the deradicalisation idea is popular within the military. The affected state governments in the Northeast first opposed the idea, but have since softened into an indescribable dither, with their moods fluctuating as events unfold, and as they brood over an irresolvable dilemma. Both the Northeast populations and their state governments have thus approached the controversy warily, unsure whether they were not damned if they went along, and still damned if they didn’t. On the other hand, the federal government, which has not sought to convince the civil populace nor readied them for such radical programmes, has been resolute in going ahead with and funding the programme. It does not entertain doubts, regardless of arguments to the contrary.

    But a few discomfiting and provocative issues remain unresolved. Soldiers who fought and are still fighting Boko Haram are puzzled by the programme, and have found it difficult not to compare the treatment given to the deradicalised and surrendered insurgents with the treatment given to troops either in the theatres of battle or where they are being nursed back to health. The Northeast populations have also bitterly complained that resources are being expended on the surrendered and deradicalised insurgents while the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps are in bad shape. The IDPs are not just puzzled, they are angry. It is unclear whether the federal government has given the matter a careful thought, for too many questions have been left unanswered.

    In 2020, Borno State senator Ali Ndume, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Army, succinctly aggregates the trepidations and suspicions of the civil populace on the deradicalisation and reintegration policy being extended to surrendered Boko Haram insurgents. Said he in November 2020: “I am in disagreement with the government on the issue of deradicalising and reintegrating repentant Boko Haram members. I still maintain that. You can’t be resettling people, pampering them while the war is still going on. The senate committee is on the same page, and I believe many Nigerians are on the same page with this. In my village, mallams that are Muslims, not ordinary Muslims but mallams, elders above 60, were taken to an abattoir and slaughtered by Boko Haram. 75 of them.” Two Saturdays ago, the senator reiterated his position on the distressing issue, saying: “My stance on this has not changed…There is a national law that should guide all these and there is international law that guides this because this is not the first time we’re having this sort of challenge in various countries. Normally, when you get to war level, you are expected to either defeat the enemy or the enemy surrenders. Once the enemy surrenders, you lose the right of summarily executing him because he is an enemy. You also don’t have the right to summarily declare him innocent and say, oh, you have sinned, go and sin no more. What I’m saying initially and I still maintain this position; in as much as we welcome the surrendering of Boko Haram, it is very important that we follow the due process, according to the law of the land and international law. That is to say, take them in, profile them, process them, investigate them, interrogate them, and then those that are innocent, should be let go, and those that have blood on their hands, they should be appropriately prosecuted.”

    It is uncertain that the federal government has paused to reassess the reintegration process, especially following protests from incredulous Nigerians who insist that victims of the insurgency be allowed to heal first, and that in any case the insurgents not be released until the war ends. Instead, apart from going ahead full throttle, the government has sought to persuade as many people as possible to its own viewpoint. This incredibly comes at a time when the government has seemed transfixed in refusing to process and prosecute identified sponsors of Boko Haram, years after an Abu Dhabi court convicted six Nigerian financiers of Boko Haram. In combination, the government’s strange ways have convinced a sizable number of Nigerians that the administration’s objectives on the Boko Haram war in its entirety are not as honourable as it professes. This is a tragedy that is unlikely to be left unaddressed sometime in the future.

    Uche Secondus fights back

    In the ongoing legal and political jousting between Uche Secondus, the suspended PDP chairman, and Nyesom Wike, the Rivers State governor, the party has tried to reach a disingenuous compromise. That compromise, when it was first hurriedly cobbled together, led the party, almost unanimously, to give the advantage to Mr Wike. Before the fight, Mr Secondus was to vacate office in December if his tenure was not renewed. The compromise in effect hacked two months off his tenure, with the party asking him to go in October when the national convention would be held. The tempestuous Rivers governor had wanted him to go immediately.

    As if Mr Wike knew the chairman would be intransigent, he had taken the precaution of concocting some witches’ brew back at the chairman’s ward in Rivers. That brew proved to be lethal to anyone who caught a whiff of it, first Mr Secondus, who now stands suspended, and then three judicial officers, who ladled out spoonfuls of it in their courts. They may be quartered by the National Judicial Council (NJC) for granting ex parte orders on political disputes.

    Sensing that the weather in the courts might not be as clement as his enemies wished, Mr Secondus has begun to fight back by insisting that he must be allowed to see his term to the end. The PDP itself, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, has begun to waffle and fidget. They are on pin pricks, unable to navigate between what their conscience tells them about justice in the clear case of tenure rules and the bearish growls of Mr Wike that so consternate them. Mr Secondus revels in their dilemma. He will exact a pound of flesh from his enemies even if they bled to death as he positions himself for desperate concessions from the party that badly mistreats him as a leper.

  • Edo, Ondo, Fed Govt irresponsible on Covid jabs

    Edo, Ondo, Fed Govt irresponsible on Covid jabs

    Nigeria has so far taken delivery of less than 10 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, enough for approximately five million Nigerians if the less than 180,000 doses of Johnson and Johnson one-jab vaccines are discounted. But the federal government is already thinking of how to make access to services, public and private as well as international travels, conditional on taking the vaccination. Nigeria’s population is estimated at a little over 200 million. Edo and Ondo States are also jumping ahead of themselves by announcing a strict regimen of living in their states that is conditional on the vaccinations. Ondo’s population is a little less than four million, while Edo is also less than four million. For the about eight million Nigerians in both states, not more than 300,000 vaccine doses are believed to have been delivered. But tackling the virus spread from the demand side rather than the supply side as common sense would dictate, both states have warned their indigenes to take the unavailable jabs in two weeks or be damned.

    The tone of the federal government is no less threatening and ominous. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, who also doubles as the chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19, has warned that soon, the government would make the vaccination compulsory, first for civil servants. He argues that since Western countries are in the process of making the jab compulsory, and plan not to admit the unvaccinated into their country, Nigeria should start making the jab compulsory. The federal government, Edo and Ondo have behaved irresponsibly. Not only do they not have enough doses to make vaccination compulsory, let alone bar the unvaccinated from accessing public facilities such as hospitals, banks and worship centres, they have so far remained unpersuasive about the efficacy of the vaccines. As is their custom, what they could do by persuasion, they lazily prefer to do by force. Emotional, abrasive and contemptuous of the public they have been elected to serve, they prefer to apply force despite the associated legal and constitutional pitfalls.

    By their own admission, the federal and state governments do not at the moment have enough jabs for their target population, even though they want to abridge the rights of everyone, including the population excluded from the first stage of the vaccination. Worse, both Edo and Ondo have given very short deadlines for the vaccination. Where on earth would they get the vaccines? What kind of mediocre public policy is this? Some right-thinking citizens have taken Edo government to court, and the court has restrained the government; but the governor, Godwin Obaseki, is doubling down. Mr Obaseki is not a sound administrator, and is proud, peevish and vindictive. If the statistics of available vaccines vis-à-vis his state’s population does not convince him, what will? He was elected to serve his people not to lord it over them. If certain policies have their drawbacks, he is expected to see the problem and proffer logical alternatives. He has not done that. Instead, he sees every exception to his often controversial policies as a challenge to his person and government.

    It is not an exaggeration to say the Edo and Ondo policies are egregious and mediocre. Here is how they put it, starting with Edo State: “From the second week of September 2021, large gatherings will only be accessed by those who have at least taken one dose/jab of the vaccine. From the second week of September 2021, people will not be allowed into worship centres (churches and mosques), event centres and receptions without showing proof of the vaccination cards. From the middle of September 2021, you can no longer access the banking services, if you have not been vaccinated.” Ondo is hardly less irrational. According to the Information commissioner, Donald Ojogo, “All residents of the state must be vaccinated against the Covid-19 pandemic in view of the ongoing efforts of the government to contain the spread of the Delta variant of the virus. Aside existing protocols, all residents must be vaccinated with effect from two weeks from now. After the expiration of this two weeks notice, evidence of vaccination will be the condition to access public places, churches, mosques…”

    The federal government has been less frantic and less ugly. It recognises its limitations, particularly the shortfall in vaccine availability. But by hinging its policy on foreign government’s policies, it abdicates the responsibility it has to Nigerians. The vaccines are experimental medical products with no-liability attached to their administration on humans. Such products require patient persuasion, clever propaganda, a lot of publicity and demonstration of understanding, particularly to disabuse the minds of religious groups who have unfortunately attached spiritual connotations to the vaccine. It is foolish to want to ram the product down the throats of a people who have proved more non-secular than the excessively secular Western countries. Second, even though it is statistically insignificant so far, there are individuals whose bodies have reacted badly to the vaccines, and no one can guarantee what the long term effects would be. It, therefore, requires some patient persuasion to convince people to play Russian roulette.

    Third, and perhaps most significantly, the Nigerian government has been wholly irresponsible and incompetent in undertaking independent studies on Covid-19, especially to determine why the virus has not hit Africans the way Western medical experts anticipated. Such studies are going on abroad. The fact is that hundreds of thousands of Nigerians have been exposed to the virus without knowing it, treated themselves with homemade remedies when they thought they had a fever, and recovered. Testing for Covid-19 in Nigeria is abominably low. If an accurate count was established to determine the incidence of the virus, officials would be alarmed to discover that millions had been exposed. It is either their bodies shrugged the virus off or they successfully treated themselves with common remedies. But Nigerian officials abandoned homegrown studies and remedies, and have relied exclusively on Western orthodoxies that are sometimes inimical to Africans or inordinately harmful to their fragile economies. Now Edo, Ondo and others are adding to their mediocre public policies by embracing hysteria certain to worsen the problem. If only their hysteria had also been directed at other diseases such as cholera, malaria, Lassa fever, and meningitis.

    PHCN/Discos transfer inefficiency to consumers

    Last week, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) vowed to embark on strike if the country’s 11 electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) implemented a planned hike in tariffs. Throughout 2020, Labour and the DisCos had engaged in a push and pull over the same issue. The government stepped in and the planned hike was tempered. Now, the DisCos insist the hike is needed to help sustain the business, probably due to cost overruns. But both Labour and the government are unrealistic and are chasing shadows. The DisCos have, however, subterraneanly implemented tariff hikes through an ingenious method of transferring their inefficiency to the consumers, and making the unwary consumers accomplices.

    By conceiving and executing differential tariffs for providing the same unit of electricity to segmented consumers, the DisCos have not only already implemented the hikes, they have erected a template for doing it on a continuous basis. The distribution companies, with the permission of the government and its regulatory agency, have segmented the consumers according to their incomes deduced through the lens of how affluent their neighbourhoods are. In addition, and more insidiously, they have also created a wholly abusive and illegal segmentation of neighbourhoods desirous of enjoying extended hours of electricity. Rates have been configured in line with the hours of supply a neighbourhood wishes to enjoy per day, thus masking and distorting the original goal of public utility efficiency. According to the Discos, the higher the tariff, the more hours of supply enjoyed. This is not only cruel, it is unjust.

    Whatever strike the NLC wants to call, and regardless of how the government reacts directly or through the regulatory body, it will take a discerning and progressive government to put an end to the injurious falsehood being perpetrated by the DisCos. The tariffs are already unsustainable, and in company with other rising levies and taxes, the question is not whether there would be a blowback, but when.

  • Gov Masari’s panacea

    Gov Masari’s panacea

    Bandits have laid siege to Katsina State for months. Every attempt to tame the well-armed and now wealthy bandits has proved futile. Frustrated that none of his remediation measures was yielding the desired result, especially after he had deployed the carrot and stick approach, the governor of the state, Aminu Masari, has finally asked his people to arm themselves against the bandits, arguing that the security and law enforcement services could not do the job alone. Security, he suggested, was everybody’s responsibility. He made the drastic suggestion while paying a condolence visit to Jibia town, Jibia local government area, some two weeks ago after operatives of the Nigeria Customs Service crushed 10 people to death in the town during a hot pursuit.

    As expected, the radical advice has elicited animated discussions. That Katsina is President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state was not the issue, though it was telling that, according to some state lawmakers 32 out of the state’s 34 local government areas, including the capital city, Katsina, were besieged by unrelenting and increasingly daring bandits. It was also not controversial that the governor carefully sidestepped the obvious and mortifying truth that the country’s security system and law enforcement had virtually collapsed. The main controversy, mercifully, is that such arms would have to be procured illegally, especially arms that could match the bandits’ arsenal. Police Affairs minister, Mohammed Maigari Dingyadi, spurred the dispute when he insisted that the self-defence arsenal be legally procured in order not to run afoul of the law.

    Last February, after the Kagara abductions, Defence minister Bashir Maigashi had bristled at Nigerians who supinely acquiesced to bandit attacks, suggesting to them that whatever weapons they had should be deployed to defend themselves against rampaging bandits. But he sidestepped the issue of the legality of reprisal and what kind of arms – knives or guns – the people he was urging to war could legally carry in the face of the sophisticated arms deployed by the bandits. On the other hand, Mr Dingyadi is of course right to be worried about how those arms would be procured, and what would happen to them after the siege had been lifted. He is right to be worried, though he didn’t allude to it, that the arms could also be deployed to settle personal scores. Indeed, there are so many tangential and grave issues surrounding self-defence that should elicit sober reflections.

    It would be callous of Mr Masari to encumber himself with seemingly insurmountable legal obstacles when instead of leading the state’s developmental drive he had been transformed into a condolence visitor to all parts of his state. He cannot be unmindful of the pitfalls of arming all and sundry to quell banditry, but in the face of a national security system suffering from inertia, and seeing that scores die daily as bandits rape, maim, pillage and extort, the governor may be right to seek desperate relief. He knows that no matter how well armed the bandits are, they would think carefully before attacking a community that has armed its people to the teeth. Last year, Mr Masari had first embraced total war against the bandits. Then seeing the ‘war’ falter, he had sued for peace and amnesty. But as that option also fizzled, he had wondered about the fruitlessness of doing nothing more than verbalizing his frustrations and staying ruefully above the fray. When the option of neutrality also flickered out, he has finally come to the conclusion that only self-defence could work. The security agencies, he testily and half-satirically observed, needed to be complemented rather than excoriated.

    Mr Magashi obviously left out from his inciting talk the inconvenient details of how besieged states should summon the courage to face bandits. Mr Dingyadi also left unaddressed the bureaucratic bottleneck the people would face in legally procuring arms to fight bandits. And Governor Masari also ignored the propriety of how arms should be procured, whether legally or illegally, preferring instead to focus on the irrational and relentless manner the people of Katsina were losing their lives in droves to bandits. All three gentlemen have their points. But the common denominator is that bloodshed was drenching Katsina, and something drastic needed to be done. The country will always insist on legalism, with Mr Dingyadi for instance advising that community policing should be encouraged instead of arming the public. But community policing will also be hamstrung by the same strictures that have crippled the regular law enforcement agencies. It was never clear that when Mr Magashi enjoined the Northwest to face bandits squarely and courageously, he was not in fact expecting that they would merely wield cutlass and bows and arrows in the hope that such brave displays would dissuade the bandits.

    The crucial point, however, is that Katsina people have heeded their governor and are reportedly arming themselves to a man. Their arms may not be as sophisticated as the bandits’, but there is no doubt that merely arming themselves and willing to stand their ground may be sufficient to constitute a deterrence to bandit attacks. But whether that deterrence would prove to be the tipping point in the war remains to be seen. Mr Masari has been attacked for his radical suggestion, and for not sparing a thought for what would happen to the arms after the war with bandits is won. It is likely, however, that in conceiving a solution to banditry, he had spared a thought for the aftermath; but whether he came to a rational and tolerable conclusion is not clear. What is urgent is to defeat the bandits; he will leave every other consideration to the armchair philosophers who pontificate from the safe distances of Abuja and Lagos.

    An Afghan paradox

    When the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15, a culmination of the 20-year war to retake their country from foreign occupiers, they indicated by action and propaganda that their determination to regain their freedom was the kernel of their campaigns. They have a history of resisting foreign invaders, among whom were some of the fiercest and most brilliant conquerors known to history. In the past century for instance, and until this August, they had resisted the British, the Soviets, and now the Americans. Should any future power ignore the lessons of history to embark on an Afghan adventure, it would probably learn the hard way. It is embedded in the hardy Afghan gene to resist occupation, regardless of how long it takes, and what inordinate suffering it elicits.

    For a people so enamoured of freedom and so entranced by resistance, it is a paradox that they deny freedom to their own people, and are even more ruthless and brutal in repressing freedom in others. They mock the defeat of their oppressors and occupiers, but they laud the oppression they inflict on others, their own people. Days after they rode dashingly into Kabul, the end of their swift reoccupation of their country after a deal with the Americans to withdraw, they began to enforce strict compliance with their own social, cultural and religious ideologies. The rights of women, general human rights, and political freedoms, which they hinted would be respected, went up in smoke as soon as they retook key Afghan cities, including Kabul.

    Why the Taliban are not struck by the paradox their military campaigns and politics engender is hard to tell, especially in the face of their dogmatism and fanaticism. They have the right to determine their system of government and all its circumscribing strictures. But do they also correspondingly have the right to determine those rights outside of the acquiescence of the people on whose behalf they claimed to have fought for freedom and independence? It was no wonder that as soon as they swept into key Afghan cities, as many Afghans as possible who could get out embarked on a frenzied and sometimes bloodied emigration bid. The fact is that the Taliban are uninterested in the niceties of freedoms and rights. They have taken power, and that is the most important thing for them. They will, however, find out in the years ahead that if they do not moderate their style and concede rights to others, governing under their insular philosophy would prove excessively difficult, if not impossible.

  • Nigerians burdened by taxes, levies and inflation

    Nigerians burdened by taxes, levies and inflation

    Experts anticipate that one of the uncontainable side effects of the recently signed Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) would be the upward review of pump price of petrol. It is speculated that it could rise from the already crippling N165/litre to as high as N300/litre, or if the governors have their way, to an astronomically and indefensibly high N380/litre. In the nirvana the PIA is dreaming to usher in, subsidy would be a thing of the past, government revenue would increase significantly to enable the execution of projects and implementation of developmental policies, and even salary payment that has proved difficult to manage would become easy. It is classical tunnel vision that produces the exhilarating feeling of benefit analysis without a corresponding consideration of the cost.

    But that is not all. Many Nigerians fear that where the past government chastised the people with whips, the current administration seems prepared, even eager, to chastise the people with scorpions. Road taxes are being contemplated already. First mulled in 2017 by the Senate through a National Roads Fund (Establishment, etc.)Bill by Kano State lawmaker Kabiru Gaya, who was then the Chairman, Senate Committee on Works, the baton has passed to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) which, through its executive chairman, Mohammed Nami, announced last week that it was working on a bill to introduce road taxes. The bill, he suggested, is pursuant to the approval given by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to reintroduce toll gates. Neither he nor the Works minister has given indication as to what happened to the 2017 Bill, nor how to reconcile the new policy with the old policy that led ex-president Olusgeun Obasanjo to demolish toll gates in 2003, nor yet what has happened to the road tax on every litre of fuel proposed and implemented by the same Obasanjo administration.

    In the midst of these alarming news to already impoverished Nigerians, food prices are skyrocketing at a furious and apocalyptic rate, vehicle and driver’s licence fees have also gone up, and electricity consumption tariffs have reached beyond the roof. Meanwhile wages have stagnated, are not even paid as and when due, to the point that workers in private and government sectors are owed for months without consequence despite the law. Somehow and strangely, the government appears to rationalise these taxes and levies on the grounds that with the provision of infrastructure, which cost in Nigeria nearly doubles that of other countries, utopia would be attained. It is not clear how advocates of these higher taxes and levies hope the people can endure the oppression for much longer. Perhaps they take the people’s docility for granted.

    It is, however, not just higher taxes and bigger levies that Nigerians are contending with. They must now in addition navigate their way through bandit and kidnapper territories, with all the frightening possibilities of huge ransom payments, run the gauntlet of insurgents and extortionist law enforcement agencies, and watch with great frustration and bemusement as the government pampers the so-called repentant, ‘de-radicalised’ and reintegrated insurgents. But schools are closed in many parts of the North, leaving schoolchildren stranded or, if abducted, unfortunate to remain captives in kidnappers’ dens, Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps are in a sorry state in violence-wracked states, and the country, already running an expensive and corrupt political system, struggles to rationalise its abhorrent and do-nothing policy of not negotiating with kidnappers. Is preventing the abduction of schoolchildren not also a policy?

    With the national assembly already subservient to the presidency, it is unlikely lawmakers would take too much exception to the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) being proposed for the next fiscal year. Accustomed to doing the executive’s bidding since 2019, the legislature will approve the government’s spending plans and revenue structures and projections. Taxes will grow, levies will balloon, and prices of all commodities, be they fuel or electricity, will surge and keep surging. The people will get no reprieve, and the revenue agencies of government will become more exuberant and daring. On the receiving end, the people will keep shifting ground as long as there is space between them and the impregnable metaphorical wall of endurance. The government should, however, worry that there is no reliable or globally acceptable measurement of just how much or long the people can endure pain and oppression. That point could be breached before 2023, or it could extend beyond that time. But once breached, there will be no telling how or whether it can be contained. What is clear today is that fewer Nigerians can endure the rising prices, taxes and levies, while the government remains obstinate in pursuing anti-people policies. Corruption has always being the safety measure by which people endure the unendurable. But even that safety tool is shriveling in the face of an increasingly angry populace.

    There is supposed to be an opposition party capable and willing to exploit the unpopular financial and social policies of the current administration, a political party that should present sensible alternatives to the government; but the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has also stagnated between the sterility of its plans and the cowardice of its leaders. Ripped by dissension within its ranks, it is battling to make sense of what it looks like or what it has become, not to talk of summoning the will and materials to fight the ruling party. Whether in the near term it can get its act together to discover its identity and begin to fight for relevance is anybody’s guess. If they manage to transcend their limitations and mediocre status, however, they will find in the dissatisfied populace a people ready to march with them in battle to overthrow the oppressiveness of a ruling party that has become adept at oppressing its members and outsiders alike.

     

    Gov Zulum’s dilemma

     

    Wrther the criticisms leveled against federal government policy of reintegrating Boko Haram insurgents were directed at him or not, Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State, a professor of engineering, felt it was appropriate to respond. In doing so, he has proved that he possesses the character of a leader, while his response has been the only sensible answer any government has given, far more realistic than the federal administration which has stuck to its guns and refused to address the people’s fears. Apart from bringing assiduity to bear on state governance, as he travels through Borno to succour his people wearied by war and dispossessed by cruel and rapacious insurgents, Prof Zulum has demonstrated that he is capable of holding his own as a leader who possibly has an eye for the future. He is known to be cosmopolitan, but who knew he could also be so broadminded as to good-naturedly tolerate withering criticism of a major plank of the federal policy regarding the reintegration of ‘repentant’ Boko Haram insurgents?

    Said Prof Zullum last weekend as he addressed military officers and community leaders in Bama and Gwoza in Borno State: “We in Borno, are in a very difficult situation over the ongoing surrender by insurgents. We have to critically look between two extreme conditions and decide our future. We have to choose between endless wars or to cautiously accept the surrendered terrorists which is really painful and difficult for anyone that has lost loved ones, difficult for all of us and even for the military whose colleagues have died and for volunteers. No one would find it easy to accept killers of his or her parents, children and other loved ones. In the last 12 years we have been in this war, and we have lost thousands of fellow citizens…We must come together to carefully analyze the two extremes and come up with a workable framework.”

    Nigerians recognize that it is not up to Borno State alone to determine what to do with the insurgents. But with a federal administration that appears unwilling to prosecute the surrendered militants, Borno State can only acknowledge the fears and loathing of the people, especially victims of insurgency, as he has sensibly done, and hope that a middle ground can be found between the rock and hard place the state has found itself as the epicenter of the revolt.

  • Chibok abductions remind Nigeria, media of impotence

    Chibok abductions remind Nigeria, media of impotence

    After seven years in captivity, Ruth Nglari Apagu, one of the over 200 schoolgirls Boko Haram abducted from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, in 2014 finally regained her freedom. She was supposedly rescued. But more accurately, she and the Boko Haram insurgent to whom she was forcibly and unlawfully married had surrendered to Nigerian troops on July 28. The insurgent belonged to the losing faction of Boko Haram headed by the bloodthirsty Abubakar Shekau who was killed in a factional fight in May. Rather than fight on the side of the victorious faction that has now coalesced into the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) headed by Abu Musab Al-Barnawi, many insurgents have opted to surrender to Nigerian troops. Miss Apagu may be a beneficiary of that fortuitous event. More than 100 schoolgirls are thought to still be with their captors.

    Little is known about the insurgent who fathered Miss Apagu’s two children. He is being profiled. But it is disheartening that while that profiling is still ongoing, the media have described him as Miss Apagu’s husband. Hopefully, despite the soft approach to the de-radicalised Boko Haram militants, it will not preclude the government from taking a tough stance with the insurgent who fathered Miss Apagu’s children. The law is, after all, still the law. In view of what has transpired over the Chibok abductions, and indeed all other abductions since 2014, the media were expected to be more sensitive about their terminologies and labels. The federal government may persist in their ill-advised de-radicalisation of insurgents, quite to the detriment and consternation of victims of insurgency still languishing in IDP camps or whose lives have been damaged forever, the media must contrast this by showing more sensitivity and empathy toward the victims of insurgency.

    Miss Apagu may rejoice at her freedom and reunion with her family – and she really deserves the relief – but as the Borno State government implied going by the series of counseling they have promised to give her, she may be more traumatized than the wan smile on her face suggests. Soon, as she begins to hear stories of some of her more fortunate classmates ransomed earlier, many of whom have gone on to acquire university education, the pain of her long ordeal may resurge. It will in fact take a lot of counseling for her not to feel embittered by the federal government’s appalling, irrational and shoddy rescue efforts. No one, except the officials involved in the rescue efforts, can explain why the government paid ransom for some and declined to do the same for all the young girls. The same shoddiness manifested in Dapchi where another schoolgirl, Leah Sharibu, was abandoned with her abductors while all the other abducted girls were ransomed.

    The return of Miss Apagu, especially in the circumstances in which she was found, should remind the Nigerian government of its incompetence and impotence, assuming they have the capacity for reflection. The return should also serve as a wake-up call to the media to more professionally contextualize their reports, be more precise in their terminologies and descriptions, and courageously call a spade a spade as they grapple with a national government confused about its responsibilities to citizens and unable to determine who bears the ultimate responsibility for security. In reporting some of the stories that involve the difficult subject of terrorism and insurgency, the media have often been patronizing of government, meekly acquiescing to official accounts, terminologies and indiscriminate use of words. It is time they changed.

    Read Also: Chibok girl reunites with mother seven years after abduction by Boko Haram

     

    Media gatekeepers have been lax in questioning reporters’ use of words and labels. Consequently, in place of the ‘release’ of abducted victims, the media have embraced the official word ‘rescue’. When the insurgent and rapist accompanied Miss Apagu to surrender to Nigerian troops, the media spoke of him as her husband. When frustrated and disenchanted insurgents belonging to the more brutal Abubakar Shekau faction surrendered to troops, the media reported those who received their surrender as ‘gallant’ troops. The same carelessness in news reporting lionized and promoted police detectives like Abba Kyarai to ‘crack’ detectives. Immersed in needless superlatives, and uncritical and unquestioning, the media have become grossly susceptible to imprecision, wrong use of terms and labels, and end up publishing reports that are patronizing at best and tendentious at worst.

    It is not certain that the federal government can make amends particularly in the face of daunting challenges to an economy hollowed out by debts, poor economic management, and pig-headed policies that are soft on insurgents and generally indifferent to victims, but the media have the opportunity of redeeming themselves if media managers would take the trouble of forcing their gatekeepers to be professionally alert and sensitive. They must begin to question official accounts without being cynical, and must have all their antennae working to detect misnomers, terminological imprecision, and embarrassing superlatives. Perhaps then the government, which is itself conceptually challenged, will be less motivated to tamper with the freedom of the press as they ignominiously and fanatically desire.

     

    Abba Kyari, Hushpuppi and Police

    The police have set up a panel to inquire into whether decorated policeman Abba Kyari, a deputy commissioner of police, engaged in criminal collusion with infamous internet fraudster Ramon Abbas, alias Hushpuppi, and whether in the process the course of justice was perverted. Hushpuppi was arrested by American federal agents in Dubai last year, extradited to the United States, and is being interrogated. He had mentioned DCP Kyari, a former head of the Inspector General of Police Intelligence Response Team (IGP-IRT), as one of his accomplices. Mr Kyari had also headed the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). It is not clear whether the investigation authorized against him would go as far back as his SARS days. It could turn out to be revealing.

    The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with which Mr Kyari is now entangled, is a persistent and thorough agency which hardly ever let go of its quarry. They seem to have the Nigeria police officer by the balls. They will keep squeezing, and won’t relax their hold, nor will they let the Nigerian government, which is adept at exonerating favoured sons, to interfere. Whatever investigative rigmarole Nigeria is engaged in with its own panel is merely to save face and to seek ways to limit the circumstantial damage. Perhaps the Nigerians will be thorough, as they cannot but be in the discomfiting circumstances they have found themselves. But seeing that the eyes of the world are on them, they will be more circumspect than usual in investigating the favoured Mr Kyari. More, they will hope that the matter can be brought to a speedy end, even if it means sacrificing the promising but probably flawed officer, hoping that more senior police and intelligence officers would not be implicated.

    But whatever happens to Mr Kyari and whatever other damage his case inflicts on Nigeria are unlikely to critically affect the deeply and almost irreparably flawed guardrails circumscribing public ethics and etiquettes. Nigeria is a badly constructed federalism with an untenable and disruptive political structure. Until the problem is dealt with at the foundational level, cases like that of Mr Kyari, irrespective of the collateral damage to the nation, will not produce fundamental changes. The EndSARS protest, as genuine as it was as an indication of the remedies needed to be undertaken urgently, has not led to any significant changes in politics and governance. Indeed, President Muhammadu Buhari incredibly believed that EndSARS was organized for regime change. The police are back to their bad ways, and other security and law enforcement agencies have simply become more brutal, corrupt and incorrigible. Until deep and fundamental structural changes are effected in the body politic, perhaps as a response to anomalies created by the Kyari and EndSARS cases, little gain would be made. Mr Kyari may go down, but little or nothing will change.

  • Pastor Bakare’s flip-flop on Buhari

    Pastor Bakare’s flip-flop on Buhari

    BY ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE

     

    In his July 25 sermon, Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Citadel Global Community Church was unsparing in his criticisms of the failings of President Muhammadu Buhari. He decried the president’s personalization of power, his intolerance and his inability, in fact lack of capacity, to run Nigeria well. He ended by declaring war to set Nigeria free. This would not be the first time the fiery pastor had taken the president to task since the All Progressives Congress (APC) took office in 2015, nor would it be the last. It was therefore not unprecedented that the pastor was scathing about the president’s inability to live up to the billing, nor was it the first time he would quickly walk back his criticism of the president. But what precipitated the latest recantation was that part of his sermon that involved the declaration of war. War against whom or what?

    In the July sermon, Pastor Bakare had declared: “I dare you to come after me since that is the usual style now… I worked with you; I worked for you; I supported you to get there (where you are). When I talk now, I now have a smelly mouth. I’m not interested in meeting you any longer; no more visits. Now, it is war, because Nigeria must be set free. Have you forgotten that you vowed never to contest again? I said ‘not so’. I showed you how you can win the next election and you agreed to run and you won. I was not considering myself but concerned about how Nigeria can become great. Winning an election is a different thing; doing the right thing is another. No one must behave as if Nigeria is a personal property. Nigeria must be set free and any obstruction along the way must be removed; it must get out of the way.”

    An excerpted video of the sermon indicates that the congregation was quite animated. The eminent pastor had, it seemed, captured the feelings and opinions of the public about the Buhari presidency. Had the president become intolerant and prosecutorial? Undoubtedly. Did Pastor Bakare not fear that given the presidency’s bent for McCarthyism, Aso Villa aides’ fury could be directed against him? Yes, for sure. Did the pastor not surmise that the president had become ungrateful? It is a sensible deduction from the sermon. And did the sermon not also suggest that the president had been unable to rise to the demands of leadership apart from winning the presidential election? Yes, the pastor thought that a dichotomy had been needlessly created between winning and governing. What indeed remained to be correctly interpreted is the pastor’s reference to war. “I am not interested in meeting you any longer; no more visits,” the pastor had growled. “Now, it is war, because Nigeria must be set free.”

    In the following Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Bakare, citing unending phone calls and pressures, insisted that his reference to war was misquoted and misapplied. Said he to the congregation: “I’m not pitching you (church) against anybody. I don’t control your PVC. But if the reason for voting PDP out is because of insecurity and corruption, and now it is worse, in fact added to it is banditry and kidnapping, then you know what to do. This is why we are crying out so that before it is too late, Muhammadu Buhari can wear his thinking cap and think of his legacy, rise up and say this will not be my legacy. I’m going to flush out every bad egg. Everyone diverting money meant for arms and ammunitions must be brought to book whether in the past or present. We must wage this war. This is the war we must wage and fight. It is one thing to desire power; it is another thing to know how to use it. Mr President it is not about you. Let no one deceive you. It is about 200 million people whose lives are at risk, who are being kidnapped, whose wives and daughter are being raped daily, who are being devastated. It is not about you. When I declared war last Sunday, it’s about the wicked, those perverting justice in our land. Their days are numbered.”

    Read Also: Come after me if you can, Bakare dares top FG official

     

    It is not clear why the Citadel Church congregation was fired up on Sunday 25, but perhaps the declaration of war against the unmentionable was one of the reasons. By walking back that poignant reference to war – of course the church understood that their pastor was not preaching taking up arms – Pastor Bakare seems to have taken the sting out of that sermon. And by suggesting in his laborious recantation that the campaign was not about President Buhari, when in fact in his July sermon he made the president the focal point of his umbrage, it turned both sermons into a farce. As a matter of fact, though the pastor struggled not to make the president the focus, he still ended up making him the centre of his criticism of the administration.

    The pressures on the pastor may have borne fruits. He walked back on that part of his sermon that referenced President Buhari. Yes, many top officials have perverted justice and promoted wickedness in high places, but the president still remains the main issue. Had he shown capacity and weeded those bad officials from his government, the country would not be in the mess it is today. There is also the lingering suspicion gleaned from Pastor Bakare’s July 25 sermon that the Nigerian situation had provoked into the open the unflattering image of the president as fundamentally sectionalist, intolerant and incapable. It is not clear at all from the pastor’s make-good sermon that he had dispelled those notions of who the president is fundamentally. Pastor Bakare is a man of sound intellect and principles. Though he sometimes mixes religion with politics, in a way that raises doubt as to the real message God has committed into his hand from time to time, he has said a lot now and in the past to show that he is unyielding in the face of tyranny and incompetence. He may have bowed to pressures somewhat, but he reassuringly livens his congregation and the rest of Nigeria with enough gems in his person and sermons to reveal his true take and feelings on the national question as well as his real opinion of the president’s appalling failings.

     

    Bethel Baptist students shame Nigerian leaders

     

    When 28 Bethel Baptist High School, Kaduna, students abducted on July 8 were released two Sundays ago, it was gut-wrenching watching them reunite with their parents. A few more students, out of the 121 abducted, have since been either released or escaped from the kidnappers’ den. The released students, most of them under 15, looked gaunt, bedraggled and traumatized. They are young, and perhaps will recover from the trauma of abduction and torture, especially with the fear of death hanging on their heads each day in the den. Little has been heard of the even much younger 136 pupils of Islamiyya School in Tegina, Kaduna State, or of the over 80 students of the Federal Government College, Yauri, Kebbi State, taken in June. The abductions have been humiliating, horrifying and shameful. They have cast Nigeria as a failed state, and its leaders as callous, irresponsible and incompetent.

    Sadly, state and federal leaders have not risen to their responsibilities, and do not even seem to appreciate the global damage the abductions do to their reputations as well as the image of the country. The global community holds Nigeria in contempt for allowing their young ones to be so maltreated and brutalized and even murdered openly without let or hindrance. Some of the Chibok Secondary School Girls abducted in 2014 are yet to be found, and the only girl shamefully and callously left behind when the Dapchi Girls College students were released by their abductors has not been found. The shame is unimaginable, and the leadership incompetence is unfathomable. Yet, the governments proudly say they abhor ransom payment. Hogwash. If they don’t want to pay ransom, because of the ethical pitfalls involved, then rescue the children and make future abductions impossible.

  • Bishop Kukah’s shriek of urgency

    Bishop Kukah’s shriek of urgency

    BY ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE

     

     

    Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, once again denounced the attacks he believed democracy was being consistently subjected to in the present dispensation. Democracy was endangered, he wailed, and could be cancelled out by dictatorship if Nigerians did not resist the attacks or were not vigilant enough. He spoke on Wednesday in Abuja at an event organised by The Kukah Centre and Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA). It is hard to explain why he is being attacked for his views, particularly his passion for civil liberties. He may sometimes appear frantic and even hysterical, and at other times partisan and resentful of the present administration’s excesses, but there is no doubting his seriousness, concern, love for Nigeria and unimpeachable logic. Better a Bishop Kukah partisan and defender of democracy than a Bishop Kukah neutral and impassive to the vicious attacks currently being inflicted on civil liberty.

    In his remarks last Wednesday, the bishop argued: “Democracy is not an exercise undertaken by good men and women, which is what Nigerians have always fallen victim to; that we are looking for holy men, men of integrity, men of dignity to govern us, and we assume that managing a diverse Nigeria does not require some level of deep intellectual reflection and understanding on the complexity involved in managing a society so energetic. The tragedy that has now afflicted our country is no excuse for us to become despondent. The Year 2023, whether it happens or whatever the case may be – we prayerfully hope it happens – it gives us another opportunity to think of the mistake we made. Using the agents of state, those in power have also sought to close the (civic) space. Democracy is a work in progress. All of us engaged in democracy and opening up the civic space must realise that it is a long journey.”

    It takes a nuanced mind to appreciate his nuanced exposition on democracy and elections. He probably did not suggest it, but his logic could be extrapolated to explain voting behavior in the last elections as one which in place of competence sought an untested and puritanical leader incapable of rising to the complex demands of a civic culture. Sure, Nigerians got the ‘holy’ leader of their fertile and sanctimonious imagination only to realize too late that they had bought a pig in a poke. Bishop Kukah hoped that after that spectacular faux pas voting behaviour in the next polls would be informed and shaped by more nuanced understanding of the country’s complex needs. He was not too optimistic, and in fact seemed to despair despite counseling that the nation’s experience should not lead to despair. But he held out hope that by some peculiar celestial intervention, Nigerians would eschew ethnic and religious considerations, and transcend their fears and limitations to vote in leaders who, though flawed, would both defend democracy and inspire development. No, the bishop did not explicitly adumbrate these hopes, but his remarks at the event probably exposed his frustrations with the electorate’s voting behaviour.

    Those who attack the bishop and customarily denounce his interventions have obviously neither given a thought to his arguments nor dispassionately examined the sinking national feeling that attends the gradual erosion of the country’s democratic culture. The bishop is right to suggest that democracy and dictatorship cannot coexist. He is even righter to argue that one would inescapably cancel out the other. And he is dead right to observe that democracy is on the retreat in Nigeria because of the culture of tyranny and impunity that is being enthroned, particularly since 2015. Not only have armed gangs running riot all over Nigeria been tolerated and succoured by official policies, the remonstrations of the victims of the continuous bloodletting have correspondingly and conversely been despised, smothered and depicted in treasonous terms.

    When the bishop spoke about 2023 offering Nigerians another chance to think of and correct past electoral mistakes, he seemed to have given up on the present administration’s capacity to recognise and appreciate what needs to be done to sustain and energise democracy. It is difficult to fault his conclusions. Few Nigerians still repose hope that the Muhammadu Buhari administration will do anything to advance the cause of democracy. Indeed, most of them fear that the last two years of the current administration could prove lethal, if not fatal, to democracy. The bishop, for instance, hopes that 2023 will come, but he is not certain it would. If or when it comes, hopefully it would not be so damaged that a little watering and pruning would not prove sufficient. Nigeria is fortunate to have voices like Bishop Kukah as sentinels for Nigerian democracy. The country needs more people to believe, people who would not live in denial, people willing to tolerate the excesses of democratic expressions in order to avoid constraining and suffocating democracy.

    The number of people defending democracy has shrunk. They are discouraged and despondent in the face of the administration’s persistence and defiance. The administration itself is not a fan of democracy, and can’t conceivably stand up for it. Even then, too many people also give the impression that they are unable to understand when democracy is being assailed. The country has men like Bishop Kukah to thank for both understanding when democracy is under attack and possessing the courage and wit to defend it, at home and abroad. Their exertions and careful support should not be allowed to flounder.

     

    US lawmakers and arms sale to Nigeria

    In June, about six months after the United States State Department presented a proposal to the US Senate to sell military hardware to Nigeria, the Nigerian government tactlessly banned Twitter for taking down a presidential tweet that violated the social media giant’s regulations. In that same June, with the pressure on Nigeria already building, Sen Bob Menendez, powerful chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for a “fundamental rethink of the framework of our (US) overall engagement” with Nigeria. Only the Nigerian government can explain why they needlessly moved against the interest of a US multinational when a little patience would have helped them to achieve their overall goal of buying arms from the US. Information minister, Lai Mohammed, has, however, denied the story, insisting that Nigeria does not have any controversial or unconsummated arms deal with the US, not to talk of one worth that huge sum.

    But according to a report by US journal Foreign Policy, Nigeria’s arms shopping list worth about $875m includes “12 AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters, 28 helicopter engines produced by GE Aviation, 14 military-grade aircraft navigation systems made by Honeywell, and 2,000 advanced precision kill weapon systems—laser-guided rocket munitions.” It is not clear whether Nigeria presented its weapons purchase proposal before the Nigerian National Assembly, or whether it had secured appropriation for the purchase, but the US could not sell weapons overseas without approval from their legislature. Last week, six A-29 Super Tucano attack planes arrived Nigeria among the 12 Nigeria had placed order for in April 2018 without appropriation.

    Citing corruption, human rights violations and other concerns, two US senators in the Foreign Relations Committee, Senators Menendez and Jim Risch, are reportedly leading the effort to prevent Nigeria from buying the weapons. The past administration of Goodluck Jonathan also suffered from a similar prohibition. With some administration supporters comparing Nigeria’s human rights record with that of Saudi Arabia, and accusing the US of bias, it remains to be seen whether Nigeria, which has become increasingly repressive, will have any incentive to improve its appalling human rights record.

  • Middlemen not reason for rising food prices

    Middlemen not reason for rising food prices

    By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye 

    In his Eid el-Kabir message last Tuesday, President Muhammadu Buhari reflected on the vexed issue of inflation and explained the factors responsible. Apart from the disruptive hangover from the Covid-19 crisis, insecurity and terrorism, he says that the callous activities of middlemen are also to blame. It is strange he mentioned middlemen, a continuing leitmotif of his leadership’s interpretation of economic maladies. “COVID-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the economies of all countries, including Nigeria,” he says. “In addition to the fact that floods have caused large scale destruction to agricultural farmlands, thereby impacting negatively on our efforts to boost local production in line with our policy to drastically reduce food importation.” Continuing, he also asserts that “No government in our recent history has invested as heavily as we are doing to promote local production of about 20 other commodities, through the provision of loans and several other forms of support to our farmers.” Then the clincher: “Apart from the destruction caused to rice farms by floods, middlemen have also taken advantage of the local rice production to exploit fellow Nigerians, thereby undermining our goal of supporting local food production at affordable prices.”

    In September last year, days after he allowed a spike in fuel prices, the president also found the rationale to blame middlemen for rising food prices. He had said at the time: “We are also engaging with food producers associations and groups to tackle the issue of exploitative behaviour by middlemen and other actors, which is one of the factors responsible for the high food prices being experienced.” Alas, the ubiquitous middleman. It is not clear just what the president, his speechwriters and advisers think of the laws of demand and supply; but clearly, he has made up his mind whom to blame and what factors to recognize for the costly food crisis the country has battled with since his assumption of office. In his first tour of duty as a military head of state, he had also blamed middlemen for rising food prices. He will doubtless leave office firmly convinced that middlemen were the scourge on the food chain, and a pest that must be controlled, if not extirpated. But if he is disquieted by the fundamentals of economics, particularly the principles that guide what social scientists call the allocation of resources, should his advisers and those men and women whom he placed in charge of managing the Nigerian economy not educate him and calm his fears and suspicions?

    A textual analysis of his last sallah message reveals that he also blames insecurity, Covid-19 and terrorists for the food crisis Nigeria is facing. Probably deliberately, he was careful not to expatiate on the terrorists he blamed for the problem, and was rather expansive, and thus imprecise, in also blaming

    bandits. He said nothing about rampaging Fulani herdsmen, a major cause of the food crisis being experienced in the south. But perhaps he subsumes the criminal herdsmen under the general category of insecurity and terrorists, even though he had not for once described them as terrorists. Instead, he has sought to corral state administrative and security apparatuses to enable and succour the herdsmen, regardless of how much Nigerians in the Middle Belt, South-South, Southeast and Southwest blame them for disrupting food production and destabilising farming communities. By refusing to zero in on the major causes of insecurity and terrorism, the administration is unlikely to make a significant headway in solving the crisis of rising food prices.

    Middlemen, whether now, last September or in 1984, are not the significant factor the president has made them out to be in explaining Nigeria’s economic crisis. Like other factors which the president has focused on inordinately, middlemen respond to simple economic stimuli by charging high prices to move food crops and other agricultural products to sea ports and retail markets. The roads are bad, and are infested with all manner of criminal elements, including kidnappers and bandits who extort itinerant traders and motorists. Fuel prices have gone up, and it is befuddling that the administration does not expect a significant cost-push dynamic to meddle with prices and inflation. Moreover, herdsmen have depopulated farmlands and made the production of food crops tedious, exorbitant and unappealing. If the administration had got its economic basics right, it would have put emphasis on eliminating the factors that instigate price increases rather than sentimentally blaming and castigating middlemen who are also victims of the same atrocious factors militating against food production. Which middleman will stand in the way of surplus food supply by hoarding or charging high prices? Middlemen do not operate as a cartel, and are in no position to defy the laws of demand and supply. But as long as the administration can’t determine whether the country is dealing with demand-side or supply-side economics, they will always misplace their priorities.

    In 1984-85, the then Buhari military administration never made headway in dealing with the country’s economic crisis because it blamed middlemen, instituted price controls, broke warehouses open and forcefully sold what the public pejoratively called essential commodities (essenco), and developed all manner of populist measures that simply constricted the economy and pushed the economy into a downturn. The same jaded factors and perspectives are now being systematically exhumed. They will not yield fruit. Few Nigerians thought the Buhari administration had an economic team of knowledgeable theoretical and developmental economists. In fact, the administration has in consequence been largely ad hoc and eclectic. With approximately two more years to go, it is unlikely that it would heed advice to go back to basics. It won’t happen. The administration will muddle through with practically nothing to show for their piddling efforts, while the people become more and more impoverished.

    Katsina ranching and Gov Ortom’s displeasure

    Two Thursdays ago, Katsina State governor Aminu Masari confirmed the receipt of N5bn from the Buhari administration as financial assistance to enable the state develop its ranching programme. The total package is N6.25bn, out of which the initial sum had been paid into the coffers of the state government. The governor did not disclose the circumstances surrounding the release of the fund, whether it is a loan or a grant. Katsina is All Progressives Congress (APC) like the president. This probably prompted Benue State governor Samuel Ortom of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to question the propriety of the financial assistance to Katsina, insisting that Benue State should also be given about N100bn to develop its ranching programme. The president will pay no heed to Mr Ortom.

    The Buhari administration has been sorely lacking in finesse. It can assist states, companies and individuals in any project designed to benefit the country and aid economic growth and development. But it must do so under a coherent and consistent policy or programme, in an open and transparent manner that makes the use of public funds accountable. In giving Katsina the N5bn, it behoved the administration to explain the rationale for the assistance as well as indicate how many states would benefit from the programme, and how much would be given and when. Indeed, if the Katsina State government had not disclosed the payment of the N5bn, probably no other state would know. It is also significant, but disturbingly so, that such assistance began with the president’s home state.

    The National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) indicates that the four states of Nasarawa, Adamawa, Plateau and Gombe willingly accepted to be part of the pilot stage of the plan. Each should have benefited from the first set of grants, especially because in February the government announced that the Dutch Investment Agency (RVO) had given Nigeria 400,000 euro for that purpose. But it seems the NLTP is dead, and in its place an unaccountable and opaque ranching grant has been instituted. The administration will whimsically determine the beneficiaries; and those who loath the administration’s ranching plan will be punished for their intransigence.

  • Kanu/IPOB conundrum just beginning

    Kanu/IPOB conundrum just beginning

    BY ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE

     

    It is becoming obvious that in ‘intercepting’ Nnamdi Kanu in Kenya and forcing him back to Nigeria through the process of extraordinary rendition, the Muhammadu Buhari administration did not pay enough attention to the political and diplomatic consequences of its action. Evoking images of the failed 1984 plot to abduct and transport Umaru Dikko, ex-president Shehu Shagari’s Transport minister, back to Nigeria, the Kanu abduction is shaping up into a legal and diplomatic conundrum. Lightning never strikes the same place twice; but in the case of the rendition of Mr Kanu, the impatience and lack of reflectiveness of the Buhari administration cast doubt on that idiomatic expression. Mr Dikko was abducted in London with the help of Israeli Mossad agents, crated, and was nearly successfully transported back to Nigeria. During his exile days, and being an in-law to the deposed ex-president Shagari, he had been a remorseless critic of the Buhari military government. Until his abduction and rendition, Mr Kanu was similarly and probably the fiercest critic of President Buhari and an unrepentant exponent of secession.

    This column, together with others, had warned that abducting and trying Mr Kanu in Nigeria was bound to have repercussions for the administration’s already battered image. The government should have let bad enough alone, this column counseled. Not only would Mr Kanu now exploit his trial to paint the government as irredeemably evil, even exaggerating the minute details of what the government did and did not do, he would in contrast paint himself as a hero, of course valorizing his every deed and painting them in loud colours. It would have been far better to keep Mr Kanu at arm’s length, where he was engaged in nothing better than a shouting match with the administration, while simultaneously countering his propaganda back in Abuja, the seat of government. But the administration, lured by James Bond movies and frustrated by the relentlessness of the IPOB leader’s verbiage, decided to ‘intercept’ Mr Kanu in Kenya. It must now contend with the blowback of eventually disclosing the details of how the fugitive was abducted, and who its accomplices were. If the Kenyan government was not officially involved, then the non-state actors involved in the saga would have to be identified.

    This case is, however, complicated by Mr Kanu’s presumptive dual nationality. Even if Kenya displays espirit de corps with Nigeria, the United Kingdom (UK) is unlikely to follow suit. The legal system of the UK, to which Mr Kanu and his allies will probably make recourse at one point or the other, is not susceptible to the unhealthy extraneous and political influences Nigeria is conversant with and has taken for granted. Unlike Nigeria, not even the British government can exert any influence on UK courts when the case finally finds its way into the British legal system. Had the administration been careful enough, had it subjected the abduction to a thorough debate among key advisers, up to the point of even appointing a devil’s advocate in case of unanimity among advisers, someone among them would have counseled against moving against a target that would evoke the 1984 Dikko affair. And with President Buhari still receiving medical attention from Britain, what it stands to gain from having Mr Kanu controversially and dubiously ferried back to Nigeria, possibly receiving help from Kenyan security agents, pales into insignificance with the healthcare services he stands to continue receiving from that country of laws.

    The Kanu Affair could still turn out to damage the Buhari administration beyond repair. Mr Kanu is a fugitive; but there are laws governing extraditions, especially between countries that have extradition treaties among themselves. There are no indications that the so-called ‘interception’ of Mr Kanu followed any law or international convention. These grey areas will be dispelled or affirmed during the trial. Though neither the Kenyan president nor any of his cabinet members has spoken up about the affair, one or two Kenyan officials have denied any official association with the abduction. In other words, Kenya is prepared to plead plausible deniability. On its own, after the initial euphoria of staging a James Bond-type rendition, the Nigerian government has begun to discover that in almost the entire south, few people applaud their action. The administration will, therefore, go on to rely on propaganda in order to whip up emotions against Mr Kanu, hoping that the evil ascribed to him would mitigate the lawlessness of his interception.

    Shortly before President Buhari was due to depart for a medical follow-up late June, he cancelled the London trip. There are suggestions that he was aware of the Kanu abduction, which was announced four days after the president’s trip was cancelled on June 25. His spokesmen have not confirmed anything, and are probably not under any obligation to disclose anything. But doubts will persist in the minds of the public regarding who knew what and when, and how high up the knowledge went. Whatever the case, the Buhari administration must prepare for the blowback that will certainly come. How damaging that blowback would be remains unclear. Of course, given the idiosyncracy of the administration, even when the blowback comes, no one will be punished for inspiring and executing the extraordinary rendition. For such a small benefit as bringing Mr Kanu to retrial, instead of enduring his verbal effusions, it is in the character of the administration to disproportionately stake virtually everything on virtually nothing.

    Kaduna-Kano-Maradi by rail

     

     

    When he performed the turning of the sod of the Kaduna-Kano rail line project on Thursday, a visibly elated President Buhari enthused about its possibilities, including connections to inland dry ports, Apapa Port, and linkage to Maradi, Niger Republic. No matter how hard he tries, however, he is unlikely to succeed in convincing most Nigerians about the viability of the rail line to Niger Republic. So far, the administration has been manifestly uninterested in working out the economics of the Port Harcourt-Jos-Maiduguri railway, which is infinitely more beneficial to the country both in the short and long run than the Kano-Maradi line. Yet, like a military regime, the administration took the decision to build a rail line to Maradi and even borrow more than a billion dollars for that purpose.

    By turning the sod and committing resources already, President Buhari knows it would become a sore political point for the next administration to cancel the Maradi project without attracting political consequences. There is some suspicion that he might angle for a third term, or, like his predecessors, install a successor who is pliant to him and the ruling party. He may even influence the ‘election’ of a successor, if the country lets him, but he cannot take a third term without dooming his presidency and probably taking the nation along with the ill-fated project.

    The Maradi project, a more fitting name by which to identify it, is an emotional one for President Buhari. He pretends to some sound railway transport economics to persuade the public. In reality, however, the president has always felt a closer bond to Nigeria’s northern neighbours, particularly Niger Republic where he says his cousins live, than to any of the country’s southern neighbours. He was always provincial, never cosmopolitan in any way. At his quite advanced age, and having secured a second term in which he is no longer beholden to anyone nor compelled by conscience to appreciate one good turn, there is now no changing his person or style. He will proceed insularly in that direction until he oversteps the bounds of decency.