By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

Both Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore spokesman, Saleh Hassan, and popular Islamic scholar, Ahmad Gumi, are on the same page in their interpretation of the breakdown of law and order in the North. They suggest that dispossessed and alienated Fulani nomads are only responding violently, through banditry, to the pressures put on them by other ethnic groups standing in the way of their livestock business, either by robbing them directly and rustling their cattle, or restricting, constricting or even erasing grazing routes. In summary, they argue, the Fulani herdsmen are engaged in brutal and unrelenting existential fight for survival.

It is not surprising that the banditry crisis in the Northwest has become intractable. Sheikh Gumi and Miyetti Allah see banditry interchangeably with Fulani nationalism. That this presents a moral and political quandary to the rest of the country hardly bothers sympathizers of the bandits. A few weeks ago, Zamfara State governor Bello Muhammad, the Matawallen Maradun, explained that the bloodletting in his state and the Northwest as a whole was a manifestation of the bitter struggle between Hausa vigilantes and aggrieved Fulani herdsmen. For a long time, key northern leaders, including traditional rulers, had taken umbrage at what they complained was the stigmatization of the Fulani, insisting that crime was crime, a vice that knows no ethnic or religious colouration. Eventually, however, bandits have colonized kidnapping, and vigilantes have done their best to resist them, leading to a bloody stalemate.

But more and more, and despite his protestation, Sheikh Gumi is being accused of sympathising with the bandits. He has tried to reason with them in their redoubts, for in his opinion, reasoning with the bandits, sympathizing with their grievances, assuring them of their safety and security, and rehabilitating them would bring a cessation to banditry. The Kaduna State governor, in whose state banditry has become pronounced in the past few weeks, does not think so. They should be crushed and exterminated, said Governor Nasir el-Rufai defiantly; and negotiators and ransom payers would be prosecuted, he added.

Hear Sheikh Gumi: “They [bandits] are Nigerians. I hate to call them bandits. They are militants fighting for ethnic survival. They want to defend themselves. If there is peace, you will not see such things as banditry, kidnapping, among others. If you are talking about victims, they have more victims on their side than others. To them, they are fighting a war of existence. If you have seen them (herdsmen), you will discover they have nothing like civilization other than the guns they are carrying. We are trying to talk to them to drop their guns. There are peace processes ongoing, and they are ready to put down their arms. They are not killing people; they are just engaged in ethnic revenge. The Fulani herdsmen are victims of military excesses. The armed herdsmen are kidnapping to make money.”

The cleric’s tone can hardly be considered less sympathetic to the bandits’ cause, and he goes on to list a number of concessions that would enthrone peace in the disputed region. But is his tone defensible? The bandits ask for guarantees that are difficult to procure and dispense. How the Sheikh does not appreciate this difficulty is hard to explain. He puts the concessions wanted by the bandits succinctly: “I’ve spoken with them face-to-face and they’re ready to lay down their arms if their conditions are fulfilled, and I find all conditions they gave as justifiable. They don’t want to be lynched when they come into our markets, or be profiled just for riding a new motorcycle. These are complaints so basic. They want amenities, schools, hospitals. I hope Nigerians will come together so that we have everlasting peace.” Ignore the hyperbole about everlasting peace; however, it should jar the nerves of the Sheikh that a group could levy war against the state simply to win such ‘basic’ concessions. Nevertheless, it is true that a terrible and bloody dichotomy has been established between Fulani and Hausa, and between bandits and vigilantes.

Sheikh Gumi ends his thesis by arguing that the Fulani are so integrated with their host communities that they can no longer be displaced. Perhaps. But does that justify the attacks on, and sacking and renaming, of scores of host communities? According to the Sheikh, “What I see is that Nigeria can never displace the Fulani. I was in a meeting yesterday and one Fulani man was speaking Yoruba fluently even more than the Yoruba; there is also a Fulani man speaking Igbo. What I mean is that the Fulani are everywhere. Igbo are everywhere also, even in Kaduna … Nigeria is destined to be together; we must accommodate each other. We must realize that all these ethnic tags cannot work in Nigeria anymore, not even religious tags. In Niger Delta, there are Muslims, there are Muslims who are Igbo too, and there are Christian Fulani and Christian Hausa. It’s either we as Nigerians sit down together and iron things out or we go astray and come back to do what should have been done in the first place.”

Clearly, the inability of the government to mediate the conflicts between its people has led to a lot of excesses, to the point that divisions have become hardened, and ethnicity transmogrified in an ecosystem of bloodshed, hegemonic struggles, land expropriation, and political and cultural insularity. In proffering solutions to the unending banditry and terrorism ravaging the country, Sheikh Gumi could hardly disguise his preferences and prejudices. The problem is squarely that of state failure, the kind of failure that incapacitates institutions, undermines rule of law, promotes weak leaders, and endangers the polity. The Sheikh’s negotiation skills are overrated, and it is important that the country sidestep him and the paralysis that stultifies the government of many Northwest zone governors, particularly, Kaduna governor el-Rufai, in order to find the right mix of panaceas to restore Nigeria.

Is anybody in charge of Nigeria?

Two major policy responses by Nigerian government officials during the past fortnight put the lie to administration aides’ insistence that the president is in control. The responses were subtle, seemed even innocuous in intention, but they showed the effrontery of officials in taking decisions without recourse to the cabinet, the president or senior administration officials. In his angry reaction to Edo State governor Godwin Obaseki’s warning that printing N60bn to support the government’s runaway expenditure was ill-advised, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Godwin Emefiele shot back that he would be calling in the budget support facility of $2.1bn lent to the states in 2018. He could not have got clearance from either the president or the cabinet to issue that threat, for that decision was capable of heating the polity in ways not easily quantifiable.

Then there was Communications minister Ali Pantami’s sudden volte-face over SIM card registration which he had initially placed embargo on without calculating the impact on the economy. His abrupt response was sequel to the flak he was receiving over his alleged religious fanaticism and controversial past believed to have coloured or even tainted his job as a public officer. Almost instantaneously, he also lifted the embargo on SIM card registration, after of course accusing the telecoms sector of using his controversial past to blackmail him. If the administration was privy to the initial ban, it is unlikely that it was also privy to the lifting of the embargo, given the manner and swiftness of the reversal. These examples are undoubtedly nuanced, but they demonstrate that no one is in charge of the country, and powerful and well-connected public officers do as they please.

By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye 

After hemming and hawing for a few days, and perhaps stung to the quick by the tacit refusal of the Central Bank of Nigeria governor Godwin Emefiele to directly refute the claim that N60bn was printed to lend the federal and state governments a helping hand in their financial distress last month, Finance minister Zainab Ahmed finally eased up on her assertion that no money was printed to augment March revenue before being allocated to states. Edo State governor Godwin Obaseki had some two weeks ago alerted the public to Nigeria’s dire financial situation, which necessitated the printing of N60bn to augment the revenues of state and federal governments for March. Mrs Ahmed had initially and ferociously denied the printing of digital money in what some economists described as quantitative easing of the ignoble kind because it was merely shared and not directly or necessarily targeted at productive enterprises.

Rather than directly controvert Mr Obaseki’s disclosure, Mr Emefiele simply poured scorn on everybody’s understanding of economic theory, in particular their inability to appreciate the CBN as lender of last resort to the government. Then, angrily, also partly because the information about the printing of more money was attributed to the Edo State governor, a supposed beneficiary of that policy tool, Mr Emefiele warned that the $2.1bn Budget Support Facility lent to states between 2016 and 2018 in tranches would be deducted from the allocations to states going forward. The governors have engaged in damage control, gently rebuking Mr Obaseki for his brashness, and placating the CBN governor and the federal government. The CBN’s and federal government’s anger will probably be assuaged, for the socio-economic consequences of depleted revenues, especially in the face of mounting insecurity, may be unquantifiable.

Finding her voice a little after the din had subsided, Mrs Ahmed became more amenable to the facts of the matter. Speaking on an NTA programme last Monday on the N60bn controversy, she said: “These are very difficult challenging times because revenues are low and the demand for expenditures is very high understandably because we have to keep intervening to make sure the pandemic is contained as well as the economic impact it has caused. In our case in Nigeria, the crash of the crude oil prices really hit us very hard in terms of revenue. We have very low revenues, we have very high expenditures. What we have done so far is just to provide some stability to make sure salaries are paid, pensions are received every month; that we send funds to the judiciary and the legislature; that we meet our debt service obligations.”

Clearly she began by justifying why an intervention was needed, but only stopped short of elucidating on what kind of intervention was finally adopted. Mr Emefiele’s weak admission regarding the propriety of printing more money not backed by output, not to talk of his threat to compel the states to repay their loans, was a pointer to what transpired, regardless of the almost naïve insistence of Mrs Ahmed that nothing unusual was done. Why neither the CBN governor nor the Finance minister has thought it appropriate to own up to what the government did, thereby leaving the rest of the country to guess how the government resolved the shortfall in March, is hard to tell. Even presidential spokesmen have been largely reticent, preferring that the relevant authorities in the CBN and Finance ministry were capable of sorting out the deliberate obfuscations.

The Nigerian government is perhaps the most apt description of Arcanum, a mystery complex so interwoven with unspecified tools and policies that few can lay claim to ever understanding it, including career and appointed officials. Now it is the turn of CBN and Finance ministry to keep everyone befuddled. Years ago, it used to be the NNPC with their shortfall of remittances and inscrutable calculations of subsidies. Of course the NNPC is still a fog, but as it is increasingly clear, many government agencies have become a jigsaw puzzle, and officials, not to say the presidency itself, do not think they owe the country explanations. Nigerians must, therefore, contend with not knowing the president’s health conditions as well as how much is spent to retrofit him; and they must also carry the additional burden of trying to figure out how the Finance ministry and the CBN juggle their fiscal and monetary policies to delicately balance the books and make the country look good to citizens. Of course outsiders know the facts more than Nigerians.

In all this, very little will be heard from Aso Villa. That reclusive abode is sickened and mystified by the policy miasma in which the country is entangled. And since the president cannot speak to the issue even in a superficial way, and spokesmen will not rush in where angels fear to tread, expect the N60bn controversy to dissipate as quickly and suddenly as it burst out. With the governors mollifying the anger of the CBN governor and gently rebuking Mr Obaseki for his needless braggadocio, the controversy will be left for economists to speak about doom and catastrophe on the merits and demerits of quantitative easing, inflation and hyperinflation, and the evocation of the spectre of Uganda under Idi Amin’s fiscal madness.

Of course few Nigerians are comfortable with the way the Nigerian economy is being managed, or perhaps inexpertly managed; but trust Aso Villa, they will look on in distant amusement as eggheads knock one another’s head over a fuss the rulers of Nigeria see as pointless. Nigerian governors, since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, have been nearly all dedicated to feathering their own nests. They get worse every election cycle. Mr Obaseki, who prides himself as an investment banker, should be consoled that the heavens will not fall; but if they do, it will not be only on his head.

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Pantami’s unskillful recantation

The Communications and Digital Economy minister, Isa Pantami, is in the eye of the storm, a position that was inevitable since he imbibed the fanaticism he has now blamed on his youth. He only partially accepts responsibility for his religious bigotry and his predilection for violence. His vices, he said, were acquired by the indiscretions of youth. Indirectly, however, he was blaming his befuddled thinking and appalling religious fanaticism on his upbringing. More damaging materials are being unearthed to hang him, making all his defences intolerable and sheer afterthought. But it will now force those terribly appalled by what he represents and the violence and alleged murder he connived at to shift focus to his family, how he was raised, and the perils of familial indoctrination. His stay in office has become untenable, despite the presidency’s vote of confidence in him, and the allegation that the minister’s critics have been bought by faceless monsters.

It is even more horrifying that after all the Pantami expositions so far, the Buhari presidency, which has come out to back the minister to the hilt, pretends that the controversy will soon boil over and then quieten down. It won’t, not by a mile. If President Buhari does not sack Dr Pantami, investigate him, and arraign him in court for accessory to terrorism, he may be sullying his own presidency. The details surfacing about Dr Pantami are too sordid to be ignored or downplayed. The questions many Nigerians are asking is how deeply religious fanaticism has burrowed into the Buhari administration, which other bigoted politicians lurk in the government’s dark allies, including governors and ministers, and are influenced by Dr Pantami, and whether there is in fact a religious and treasonable conspiracy against Nigeria.

BY ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE

 

 

Speaking during his investiture as a trustee of the Abeokuta Club last Sunday, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo rued the political misfortune of Ogun State not being able to produce three presidents. Even though he got his arithmetic wrong, and probably meant his allusion to be taken lightheartedly, he still got the point out that had the late MKO Abiola’s election as president not been annulled in 1993, Ogun State would have had the distinguished honour of producing three presidents, to wit, himself, Earnest Shonekan, and Chief Abiola. But as some of the reports of the event in Abeokuta indicated, had Chief Abiola been sworn in, there would have been no Chief Shonekan as president, assuming interim head of state qualified as president.

Beyond the joke about Ogun State producing three presidents, Chief Obasanjo for the first time gave what may pass as a reason for the annulment of the 1993 presidential poll won hands down by Chief Abiola. According to the former president, peer envy, or in local parlance, bad belle, was responsible for depriving Chief Abiola the crown. It is sometimes hard to deconstruct Chief Obasanjo’s bucolic humour, but to suggest that envy was a reason for the 1993 poll annulment is to stretch the story to its inelastic limit. Perhaps one of these days, Chief Obasanjo will get serious enough to avail the public the real reasons for the annulment. The then head of state, the self-styled military president, Ibrahim Babangida, who annulled the fateful poll, has been generally reticent about the election other than accepting responsibility for the awful decision that has cost Nigeria so heavily.

There is little doubt that Chief Obasanjo knows some of the chief reasons for the annulment, especially because some six years later, after an eventful trip to prison during the Sani Abacha government, he became the chief beneficiary of the annulment. In any case, after his election as president in 1999, the concretisation of a consensus to placate the Yoruba for their losses and humiliation, Chief Obasanjo must have had the opportunity of inquiring into the real and probably copious reasons for the annulment. One of those reasons, among the few which Gen Babangida deigned to offer the curious public, was that had Chief Abiola been sworn in, there were many officers who loathed him and were waiting in the wings to overthrow him. The general didn’t say why principles and character, if he had them, did not persuade him to weed those officers out in order to do justice to a man and an election that the country could not hope to live down decades to come if it bungled it.

There is little among the reasons for the annulment to recommend the explanation of bad belle. The election was serious enough, and the politics around it, not to say the dangers of the ethnic dynamics convulsing Nigeria at the time, was testy and fractious. Gen Babangida had little to be envious about Chief Abiola. They were friends, and were nearly even in-laws. If Chief Abiola had been sworn in, he was unlikely to be nasty to his predecessor, as Gen Abacha was insolent and ruthless to Chief Obasanjo. Nigerians are in fact unlikely to get more details about the debacle from Gen Babangida, considering how fragile he has become physically. Lest he implicate himself, Chief Obasanjo is also unlikely to offer more explanations for the annulment other than the specious reasoning and rural jocosity he has offered the country. It is one of the enduring tragedies of Nigeria that its leaders owe little allegiance to the country enough to shed light on some of the mysteries that befuddle the country and complicate governance under their leadership.

Far worse, however, is the facetious remarks by Chief Obasanjo that Chief Abiola also ‘richly’ deserved the honour done him by the same Abeokuta Club. The late politician and business mogul was awarded posthumous vice-patron of Abeokuta Club. Chief Abiola was his schoolmate, said Chief Obasanjo almost endearingly. His tone, no matter how sonorous it was on the occasion, could not fool anybody. If Chief Abiola ‘richly’ deserved to be honoured, and bad belle robbed him of his poll victory, it is hard to rationalize why, for the eight years he spent in office as president between 1999 and 2007, Chief Obasanjo neither mentioned anything about that victory nor deemed it fit to honour Chief Abiola for the enormous sacrifice he made to enthrone democracy in Nigeria. Had Chief Abiola compromised in 1993 under pressure from Gen Babangida and others, there would have been no 1999; and there certainly would have been no second coming of Chief Obasanjo. After all, on at least one significant occasion shortly after his release from prison and before he contested the presidency in 1999, and exasperated that he was being reminded of the need to quash the annulment, Chief Obasanjo blurted out that Abiola was not the messiah we thought. He did not explain what messianism had to do with reclaiming a mandate rightfully given by the electorate.

Read Also: Why IBB annulled Abiola’s June 12 1993 victory, by Obasanjo

 

Many of the principal actors of the annulment period are still alive. If biographers and historians could get them to speak, the country might get a better understanding of what went awfully wrong in 1993, who were the real masterminds, and what price the country has had to pay. But it is not clear whether they show any willingness to speak. But should they speak and offer the country satisfactory explanations, perhaps a closure might be found to what is undoubtedly a stain on Nigeria’s history, a closure far better than the glib but probably coerced declaration by President Muhammadu Buhari in his first term about the Abiola victory.

 

 

Gov Uzodinma eschews wisdom

 

 

Governor Hope Uzodinma has been derided as the Supreme Court-imposed, rather than elected, governor of Imo State. That derision has unfortunately heightened as he increasingly makes unpopular decisions. He had substantial goodwill at the beginning of his tenure, especially because his predecessor reduced governance to a fatal admixture of rhetoric and theatricality, erecting statutes to vanity, and creating ludicrous ministries and agencies. The goodwill is now all but exhausted, and the little charisma he brought to office has virtually evaporated.

The past few weeks have witnessed a cruel diminution of the governor. His state had always been a fertile playground for the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and its spinoff, the Eastern Security Network (ESN). Angry that they had become lawless in the Orlu local government area of the state, Mr Uzodinma confessed that he invited the military to move in. And they did, but as some residents alleged, they overreached themselves. And when some gunmen attacked and sacked the correctional centre in Owerri and burnt the Police Command, the governor hastily blamed IPOB and asked the police to crush them.

There is no question whether the destructions visited on parts of Imo should be answered. The problem is determining what kind of response to give. It is a mark of state failure, which Mr Uzodinma is unwittingly corroborating, to visit massive attacks on whole communities for the crimes of a few. As Benue State is also beginning to witness in Konshisha LGA, many years after Zaki Biam, indiscriminate state retaliation does not solve anything. Instead, the problem is worsened and complicated, and a sanguinary cycle of revenge is initiated. And until the root causes of the crises afflicting many Nigerian communities are intelligently addressed, massive show of power and force will remain a futile panacea. It is hard to explain why the country has not learnt anything from the beginnings of the Boko Haram insurgency, the worsening banditry in the Northwest, and the raising of militias against herdsmen in the Southwest.

By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

Former Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu was replaced last Tuesday while on official assignment in Owerri, Imo State, inspecting the damage done to the Police Command Headquarters by arsonists and unknown gunmen. He was to retire last February but was granted a three-month extension by the president in controversial circumstances described by the Police Affairs minister, Muhammadu Dingyadi, as an opportunity for the presidency to carry out a ‘robust’ succession plan. That plan came to a brutal and abrupt end on Tuesday as Mr Adamu inspected the burnt Imo police headquarters. But basking in the tenure extension granted him in February, the former IGP had told the Federal High Court, Abuja, hearing a suit filed by Maxwell Opara challenging the extension, that in fact his tenure could be interpreted to lapse either in 2023 or 2024 in line with the Nigeria Police Act 2020.

Mr Opara, an Abuja-based lawyer, had on February 3 sued the president, the former IGP, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), and the Nigeria Police Council (NPC) over the extension. In their joint response, both the president and AGF had also argued that the Police Act appeared to grant the IGP tenure extension till either 2023 or 2024. On February 5, Mr Dingyadi had also implausibly defended the extension by expansively interpreting the Police Act. As he put it, “Mr President has decided that the present IGP, Mohammed Adamu, will continue to serve as the IG for the next three months, to allow for a robust and efficient process of appointing a new IG. This is not unconnected to the desire of Mr President to not only have a smooth handover but to also ensure that the right officer is appointed into that position. Mr President is extending by three months to allow him to get into the process of appointing a new one…”

A little over two months into the extension, however, Mr Adamu’s stay in office was rudely terminated in a most demeaning fashion. He was on official assignment in Imo State when a new IGP, Usman Alkali Baba, was appointed. What went wrong for Mr Adamu that he was not spared the embarrassment of being replaced while on official assignment? Mr Dingyadi’s explanation is not convincing. According to him, the replacement process was simply completed. But that does not explain the indecent haste, nor why the three months extension could not even be honoured. When Mr Adamu got his extension, it was roughly the same time the service chiefs were replaced and made ambassadors. Had he got a similar soft landing, it would have been honourable. Had the three-month extension been honoured, his dignity would also have been preserved. But in any case, the least of his expectations was the three-month extension; he was in fact scheming for 2023 or 2024. His backers had apparently assured him of a continuous stay in office.

Neither Mr Adamu nor the former service chiefs were, in the estimation of Nigerians, as effective as the country desired, nor quite what the country needed to adequately respond to mounting security challenges. It would have been more dignified had the former IGP honourably retired in order to spare himself the ordeal and humiliation that ended his service. He will probably now require many months, if not years, to live down the humiliation. In the alternative, he should also have lobbied for ambassadorial posting, a largesse inconsiderately dispensed to the service chiefs by the presidency as if a nation of 200 million people was their private estate.

The humiliation of the former IGP is a clear reflection of the power play and intrigues that characterise the presidency, as cabals and powerful individuals jostle for influence and position themselves for the 2023 presidential election. As the Buhari administration cowered in its first few months behind ethnic shield, it was obvious it had no desire to placate the ancien regime of electoral and administrative powers in the country. Mr Adamu’s three month tenure extension was probably a preparation for a lengthier extension pursuant to the Police Act. In Mr Adamu’s humiliating fall, somebody or a cabal in the corridors of power obviously lost out. They will of course not give up, and may seek out new alliances. The new IGP’s backers may not be immediately known to the public, but they are there in the corridors of power pulling strings and pulling their weight. The consolation is that the dynamics of the power play that enthroned the new IGP will not stay hidden for too long.

It is, however, difficult to say that lessons have been learnt. Once in office, especially with the impunity and imperiousness that accompany key offices in Nigeria, their occupants are less likely to respect the rules, obey the constitution, reject any ploy to use them for nefarious individual or group goals, and are unprepared to relinquish power either as a protest or at the end of a tenure. It is a culture that is alien to Nigeria. But much more, having made a habit of playing intrigues as their directive principles of state policy, members of the Buhari administration will not stop the game of thrones until 2023. Mr Adamu was just collateral damage. Worse damage should be expected in the months ahead.

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Nigeria goes slam-bang downhill as governors squabble over insecurity

It is not clear where he got his figures, but former head of state Abdulsalami Abubakar filled Nigerians with dread when he disclosed that about six million weapons of all kinds were in the wrong hands. Millions had been displaced, and some 80,000 people killed as a result, he lamented. Gen Abubakar, who is also the chairman of the National Peace Committee (NPC), disclosed these facts during a dialogue session between the NPC and stakeholders. The likelihood of the weapons being retrieved from those wrong hands is remote, and stanching the flow of blood, at least in the short run, is also far-fetched. The government at all levels will have to think and strategise their way out of the quagmire.

But how to remedy what has clearly grown into a national crisis is proving even more complicated than ever.  Indications of the national dissonance in resolving this crisis appeared during the 2nd Annual Colloquium of the Sultan Maccido Institute for Peace, Leadership and Development Studies held at the University of Abuja last Wednesday. While Governor Gboyega Oyetola of Osun State advised his governor colleagues to establish Amotekun-like outfits to combat insecurity and restore peace in their states, the conservative Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State, who is also the chairman of the South-South Governors’ Forum, suggested that strengthening the police was a better way to approach the crisis. His Southeast Governors’ Forum counterpart, the vacillating Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State deferred his diagnosis to when his region’s governors would deliberate on the matter. In short opinion is split among the governors, from North to South.

The federal government has never been sure what to do, even though in its hands the crisis has festered badly and is proving even more intractable. The country teeters on the brink, and old, unworkable methods, not to say infantile appreciation of the issues surrounding insecurity, have not worked. Until revolutionary methods are embraced, and until they have a better and deeper understanding of insecurity in Nigeria, the country will continue its relentless march downhill. The governors may not agree what to do; what is, however, not an option is the paralysis that has engulfed the federal government, and its deliberate and exasperating inertia in the face of increasing and more violent and audacious threat to the peace of the country. The problem is finding the people who have the ear of the president to spell it out to him that his options are shrinking.

By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye 

In early March, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered security chiefs to shoot anyone, other than security agents, wielding AK-47 on sight. He was doubtless frustrated by the inability of security agents to control the rampage going on in the Northwest. Responding to doubts that the president issued the order, perhaps after years of lethargy over the same problem, presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, quoted him as saying that drastic measures had to be taken, including shooting those who carry assault weapons illegally. Apart from the finer details of how to determine from a distance who is carrying AK-47 illegally, there were doubts the president could have issued the order.

The president, however, soon dispelled all doubts. During an expanded meeting with security chiefs and traditional rulers, he shocked everyone by his lack of depth as he thundered: ‘‘But what surprises me is what is happening now in the Northwest where the same people, with the same culture are killing one another, taking their livestock and burning properties. As a result of that, we had a four-hour meeting of the National Security Council attended by the Ministers of Internal Affairs, Defence, Foreign Affairs, Service Chiefs, Chief of Defence Staff, the Inspector-General of Police, and others, and we gave clear instructions. One thing that got to the press which I read myself was that anyone with AK-47 will be shot. This is because AK-47 is supposed to be registered and it is only given to security officials. We closed the borders for some years but the intelligence report I’m getting on a daily basis is that those who are conducting the abductions, the killings and so on are still not short of arms and ammunition.’’

In the same March, shortly before he left for London for a medical check-up, the president also owned up to another tough talk on the criminal activities of bandits. This time, the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, a retired major-general, delivered the president’s message to the press. Paraphrasing him, Gen Monguno said: “On the issue of kidnapping and banditry, this menace still persists, especially in the Northwest and the North-Central zones. Mr. President has been very emphatic; he has stated very clearly that this problem must be brought to an end, but using the traditional methods that the armed forces have been trained to deploy. Mr. President has made it very clear to both the intelligence and operational elements that the first assignment will be to identify the leaders of these bandits, kidnappers and take them out, in order to restore confidence in those areas. Mr. President has said that he will no longer tolerate a situation whereby bandits and kidnappers are the ones dictating the pace and setting the tone and he will not also condone a situation in which our own operations are reactionary rather than being proactive.”

First was the ‘shoot on sight’ order with all the attendant complications of not easily and immediately knowing who a security agent is, especially when miscreants of all sorts wear uniforms to perpetrate crime. There is also the legal implication and insinuation of such shootings, if they occur, becoming summary executions, instead of arresting and prosecuting the suspects. Then, second, was the tonal finality of ‘taking suspects out’, again when the expectation is that bandits or sponsors of banditry would be arrested and prosecuted. It is hard to draw a line between taking out and summary execution. Going by his military background, the president does not seem to be keenly aware of how dangerously his orders sound, how they jar the democratic sensitivity of Nigerians now used to elected governments, and how ultimately shortsighted and defeatist such draconian measures are. His aides, who should be aware of the damage the president’s orders could cause, have also become acculturated to the military way of doing business that they did not feel any qualms releasing the video of the president issuing the draconian orders.

It takes a lot of sleuthing to discover the sponsors of banditry. It is intelligence-led. How do you take such people out with all its dangerous connotations of summary execution? It is clear what the president meant. If it were not clear that there would be no controversy over the president’s orders, his aides could argue that the controversial phrase meant simply jailing them and putting them out of circulation. According to the Collins English dictionary, “If you take someone out, you kill them, or injure them so badly that they can no longer fight or do anything to harm you.” It is doubtful whether that solution is a sound one in the circumstance, especially when Nigerian laws are adequate enough to tackle the matter, and arresting and prosecuting the suspects and sponsors will enhance the war against banditry, kidnapping and terrorism as a whole. There is no ambiguity about what shoot on sight means. But executing that order is fraught with a thousand and one landmines, and prone to a lot of mistakes and extrajudicial killings.

Carrying illegal weapons and sponsoring banditry, given the dire situation in the Northwest in particular, have tasked the capability of security agents and pushed the peace, safety and security of the nation to breaking point. These problems and challenges require tough and urgent measures. But in a democracy, rather than in a military government, there are laws and precedents competent to handle the crisis the country carelessly and knowingly walked into. Abridging or distorting those laws must never be countenanced, notwithstanding the president’s difficulty in ridding himself of a culture he had embraced as a young soldier.

Nigeria repeatedly fails her citizens

No one in government has till today explained why in negotiating the release of 110 abducted Dapchi, Yobe State schoolgirls in 2018, one of the students, Leah Sharibu, a Christian schoolgirl, was left behind. Since then, nothing has been heard from her except that she had been forcibly married off and may have had a child or two. She waited in vain for rescue by her country, a country that shirks her responsibility or has calloused ears. Who was to tell her that four years before her abduction, approximately a third of the 276 abducted Chibok, Borno State schoolgirls, would still be in captivity, virtually abandoned by their impotent and unfeeling country? These are some people’s children. Only the Nigerian authorities can tell why the country’s leaders can sleep well with those girls pining away in captivity.

But it is not only in abductions that Nigeria demonstrates her impotence and confusion. Last week, in Bauchi State, a water vendor in Sade village, Talle Mai Ruwa, a resident of Darazo LGA, was seized from a police outpost by irate religious bigots and murdered and then burnt for blasphemy. His ordeal began with a misunderstanding with a young girl who accused him of blasphemy. He was arrested and detained by the police in the village. But an angry crowd stormed the police outpost and dragged him out and murdered him. The police did not ask for reinforcement and could not protect the middle-aged water vendor who was speculated to be mentally challenged, and once again the country failed one of its citizens. He was not the first, and no matter what anyone writes, he will not be the last to be murdered in cold blood, openly and provocatively.

There will be more abductions, more extrajudicial killings, more schoolchildren taken captive, all as the country watches helplessly, in undisguised impotence. It would not be misplaced for citizens to wonder why their country had become so incapable of protecting them; and indeed has become adept at betraying them. But they will receive no answer, just as the abducted schoolgirls scattered in terrorist dens in and outside Nigeria will hear only silence from their distant, callous rulers immersed in the sophistry of whether to negotiate with kidnappers or not.

By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

The controversy triggered by the refusal of grant-aided mission schools in Ilorin to allow Muslim students in hijab to attend classes has once again exposed how tenuous religious relations are in Nigeria, and how many states lack the mature and wise leadership required to modernize their states and grow their economy. It also demonstrated the abysmal low level of religious tolerance in the state, particularly in Ilorin. Kwara’s governor and religious leaders have hammered out a tentative peace, but it is not yet fully known what the terms are, whether at the centre of it is justice, and whether the terms can endure and lead to a better understanding among the people as well as help demolish age-old customs, beliefs, animosities, fanaticism, and the sweeping and insensitive conclusions about who and what the state represents.

The controversy turned violent when the Christian schools – about 10 of them – put their foot down and rejected hijab in order to ensure sameness of uniforms and retention of the character of their schools. The schools had at first been shut for a few weeks to avert looming violence; but when they were eventually reopened, obviously against the wishes of the missions, nothing could prevent the ensuing violence from spilling into the streets. Passions had been badly inflamed, and sensing that they had the sympathy of the state government for the wearing of hijab, Muslims in Ilorin took the fight as a constitutional and religious issue. After all, as some of their elites curiously but falsely argue, Ilorin is a Muslim town.

Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq bears direct, if not sole, responsibility for turning what had long been a simmering dispute into a zero sum-game likely to stain his government till the end. Obviously, the dominant thinking in his government is that the mission schools are public schools, and that because of the judgements given by the state High Court and the Court of Appeal sanctioning the wearing of hijab, the government was justified to eschew the neutrality that should routinely inform its actions and policies in the schools. Indeed, over the years, the government and education policymakers in the state have skewed the appointment of teachers to create a Muslim dominance. But the schools were neither taken over nor became public schools. It is not certain how the governor misread the so-called ‘takeover’ of the mission schools supposedly enacted under the military governorship of Col. David Bamigboye, nor why wisdom did not inform him that while the dispute was still pending in the Supreme Court, patience and restraint were required. Only he can explain his miscomprehension of Col Bamigboye’s schools intervention policy, and impatience to wait for the Supreme Court to give the final decision on a case instituted by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to reclaim their schools and ward off what they regard as a surreptitious, backdoor takeover implied by the tangential decision to interpret hijab as a constitutional, rights issue.

There is nothing in Col. Bamigboye’s intervention in the affairs of the mission schools that imply the roles being insinuated into their administration by the state government and hijab agitators. Indeed, when the military governor read that his action was dubbed a takeover, he had to issue another statement to rebut that interpretation, insisting that there was no takeover, and spelling out in more details what was expected of the mission schools and how far the state would go in interfering in the running of the mission schools to which the state was extending grants. Till today, the schools are referred to as grant-aided. A grant-aided school cannot magically become a public school. As Col Bamigboye declared at the time, the reasons for the intervention were: “(a) The need to have job security for teachers in Voluntary Agency Schools.

(b) The need to improve as well as unify service conditions of teachers in all Voluntary Agency Institutions.

(c ) The need for uniformly high standards between Government and Voluntary Agency institutions.

(d) The need to narrow, with the ultimate aim of closing, the gap in educational provision amongst the various areas in the State.

(e) The need to ensure adequate staffing for all schools.” There was no religious sentiment involved, nor anticipation of one. The intervention was unwise and lacking in foresight, but it still left the schools squarely in the hands of the missions. It is covetous to now want to take them over trickily and present the missions with an unjust fait accompli.

In refuting the ‘takeover’ interpretation, Col Bamigboye was unequivocal. He had said: “It is appropriate for me at this juncture to clarify some misgivings about the State Schools Board. The term ‘takeover’ has become very current in our newspapers that it needs to be clarified in respect of our establishment of the Schools Board. I mentioned in my Budget Speech that my Government has not yet decided to take over Secondary Schools. What will now be taken over is the staff management in grant-aided post-primary institutions and NOT the institutions themselves. A total takeover of schools by Government means, among other things, a change in ownership of schools. In this connection, I want to remind the Voluntary Agencies that they are still the owner of their schools and therefore retain the rights over as well as responsibilities for them. For avoidance of doubts, let me mention some of your rights as proprietors under the new dispensation:-

(a) The right of ownership of institutions. Proprietors still retain the greatest of proprietory rights namely, ownership of their grants aided institutions.  It should be noted that the existence of the Board will in no way detract from this.

(b) The names of schools remain as given by proprietors.

(c ) Religious orientation and practices in the schools remain generally undisturbed.

(d) The right to nominate Board of Governors with responsibility for the day-to-day management and welfare of the institutions remain unchanged. The Board of Governors will continue to function normally except in regards to staff matters which responsibility is now taken over by the State Schools Board.

(e) The total tone of the institutions remains the responsibility of the Board of Governors as the main organ of the Proprietors.”

There were no ambiguities in the intervention of the Kwara State government. If the schools have not by any sleight of hand become public schools, as Mr AbdulRazaq and his aides argue and perhaps want, it is inconceivable that the government would determine their policies and premise their expansive interpretation on the grants afforded them. The governor betrayed his biases, allowed himself to be lured and stampeded by vested interests, some of them his aides and advisers, and opened himself to political blowback in future elections. He was not only impatient in handling the hijab controversy, which predates him, he was also unwise, despite his last-ditch attempt to secure a tentative, face-saving peace.

The state government should have resisted pressures to forcefully resolve the hijab controversy. After all, before some Muslim groups joined the case before the courts, the missions had only gone to court to compel the state to return full control to them, including the recruitment of teaching staff and all. The problem of education in Kwara State, nay Nigeria, is not the uniforms the students wear, nor the religion they practice. Education has been virtually abandoned by all tiers of government in what is a criminal disservice to future generations. Mr AbdulRazaq has enough secular support and tools from the constitution to avoid worsening the religious crisis in Kwara State, particularly in the education sector, regardless of the indefensible and insensitive utterances of those who provocatively insist Ilorin is a Muslim town, a description unknown to the constitution.

It is not clear what the worldviews of those who surround the governor are, or how he staffed his aides, but he should have limited himself to coaxing the mission schools to embrace an agreed mode of hijab, failing which he should move on and recommend those insistent on wearing hijab to set up their own schools. Whether he likes it or not, and no matter what other good he does, his poor handling of the hijab controversy in mission schools will stain and stymie him for the rest of his governorship. To allow religious controversy to define a government is the last disaster any governor would want. Mr AbdulRazaq willfully hanged himself upon that scaffold.

By Paul Ade-Adeleye

Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State has perfected the art of being all things to all men. How the irony of his flip-flops does not make him fret is hard to say. During an expanded state security council meeting last Tuesday, he spoke magisterially, indeed like a statesman, about not negotiating with bandits and kidnappers. When did he experience that epiphany? No one but el-Rufai knows. What is indisputable is that he kept a straight face as he made that thunderous declaration before the gathering of traditional rulers, government officials, security agents, religious leaders, and others, probably forgetting that in the early days of his administration, his governing style was defined by a curious eagerness to negotiate with and pay killer herdsmen. In those days, for him, appeasement was tolerable. He has also probably forgotten that his appeasement policy easily set the tone for the principle of negotiating with brutal and vengeful killers, a tone at first ridiculed by Northwest political leaders, but later adopted by them as bandits and kidnappers ran them ragged.

Mallam el-Rufai is always colourful in his postulations, as a matter of fact very voluble and casual in the way he repudiates his own assertions. At the state security council meeting, he had said: “We will not engage with bandits or kidnappers. Private citizens like clerics and clergymen can do so in their individual capacities, to preach to them and ask them to repent. We also want them to repent, but it is not our job to ask them to do so.” He is absolutely right. But why has it taken him so many years to come to this elementary truism? His statement about the right of clerics to negotiate with bandits is a reference to the likes of Sheikh Ahmad Gumi who made highly publicized forays into bandit’s dens to negotiate with them. Sheikh Gumi’s expeditions have not been altogether well received, nor have they been as impactful as he and his admirers hoped, but they form an essential element in the dialectics of banditry, particularly in Kaduna State.

More critically, however, Mallam el-Rufai’s non-negotiation policy is also believed to be a reference to the abduction, two Thursdays ago, of 39 students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation in Kaduna, many of whom were wounded, half-clad or tortured. A video of the ill-treatment the abducted students have been subjected to has distressed and angered the public and left parents of the victims disconsolate. If Mallam el-Rufai could negotiate with killer herdsmen and even pay them, admittedly in the early part of his governorship, why has he suddenly become uptight about negotiating with bandits over the unfortunate students? The governor has not offered any convincing or rational explanation other than the general impression that paying ransom feeds the crime of kidnapping.

By some unverified estimates, Kaduna has lost nearly a thousand people to bandit attacks. Unspecified but huge amount of money has also been paid as ransom, a fact that has wearied and frustrated many Nigerians and policymakers. Even before the College of Forestry abduction had been resolved, bloodthirsty bandits staged other attacks at a school in Ikara local government area, Zangon Kataf, and other parts of the state. Indeed, Kaduna State appears overwhelmed by banditry, with hundreds of students, travellers and businessmen abducted and extorted. In short, the logical conclusion drawn by many Nigerians, not just Kaduna people alone, is that if ransom payment continues, there will probably be no end to the attacks and abductions.

But who could watch the video of the Forestry students’ torture and not groan? Mallam el-Rufai may be right to suggest that ransom feeds kidnapping, and there must be an end to negotiations and payment of ransom, but that is only one part of a very painful story enacted in Kaduna on his watch. He used to pay ransom to known and certified killers but has now changed his mind. He needs to convince the public that there is no political undertone to his epiphany, and that his refusal to negotiate has nothing to do with the expendability of the students. More crucially, he forgets that in line with the country’s defective constitution, which the political class has refused to tinker with, he is the state’s chief security officer. He can, therefore, not abdicate his responsibility to the abducted students. Simply declaring that ransom payment is offensive is not enough. More than philosophising or making memorable statements, he has an overriding duty to urgently resolve the College of Forestry abductions one way or the other.

What the Kaduna abductions prove is that the security network he boasts his government has put in place is either defective or ineffective. He has made grandiloquent, judgemental and often insensitive statements about the rights of individuals, political parties and their leaders, and sometimes about other people’s constitutionally guaranteed but disagreeable views. But cocksure of everything and indifferent to other people’s views or way of life, he has, however, fallen badly short of the leadership quality expected of him. It is time he spoke and judged people less; and it is time he rose up to the demands of leadership. More, it is horrifying that he could leave the Forestry students’ abductions unresolved for over a week. It is indefensible. He may have changed his view on the value of negotiating with killers and kidnappers, and is right to do so, but he has no excuse whatsoever to leave the students with their captors for so long.

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Fed Govt irresponsible on securing schools

In an interview with The Punch, the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, confessed that the federal government was unable to secure everyone, let alone schools. The statement is probably true, given the shambolic approach to security adopted by the government he serves as a minister. But it is a statement that should never be admitted openly. The minister had said: “Eternal vigilance is the price for security. Every nation is always concerned about the consciousness of its people. The Federal Government cannot secure every house. Everybody needs to be vigilant. We have passed this message to all our schools so that anywhere they are, if there is any threat, they know the nearest security agency to contact. As you may also be aware, even if you put up a fence, these people (bandits) have been known to come through gates. So, perimeter fencing, by themselves, are not too effective. The security consciousness is the thing. If you hear where some of them are being held, you will know that it is a question of self-consciousness and communities informing officials on time.”

The statement is not just an admission of failure; it is also a confession of incompetence in policy formulation. By failing to secure schools, it should be plain to the federal government that its education policy, or whatever is left of it, is under threat. There are doubts the government ever had a concise and futuristic education policy, one capable of standing the country in good stead in the coming decades, but whatever semblance of educational system and policy it still had should be defended at all cost. But even this middling effort eludes the government. For many states in the core North, with schools being shutdown in a flurry, it would seem that Boko Haram in the Northeast, which made it a cardinal objective to destroy Western education, and the equally nihilistic bandits of the Northwest, have won in their campaigns to return Nigeria to the Stone Age. If the government realizes this fact, they have not shown it by their casual, defensive and desultory approach to advancing, modernising and protecting schools and the educational system.

By Paul Ade-Adeleye

Whether hoping to curry public sympathy or seeking to enlighten the public on the legislature’s state of affairs, House of Representatives spokesman, Banjamin Kalu, revealed last week that the country’s lower chamber was hard up, broke even, and in dire financial straits. Contractors could not be paid, he moaned, adding that the cash crunch in the country’s economy and the disheartening exchange rate of the naira had piled the agony on the house. In response, Nigerians had neither sympathy nor concern, but only scorn to give. A man who has lost his office pen does not expect to be taken seriously when he decides to complain to a farmer who has lost his harvest. It is not a practicable venture, but Mr Kalu undertook it nonetheless.

He revealed at a press briefing: “Yes, the House is broke. I have said it before and I am saying it again. I am not afraid to say it. The House is broke and it is afraid to appropriate sufficient amount needed for members to do their job… That is why the hearing rooms are not fixed. That is why the House is indebted to contractors who provide one form of service or the other… The budget of the National Assembly is supposed to be reviewed, in view of its purchasing ability, on the basis of the services that will help the parliament to move forward. At the moment, it is a weak budget, and this is the truth. I have actually fought with the leadership of the House and I have asked the question: ‘Why are you afraid to raise the budget of the National Assembly to enable us conduct our services efficiently and effectively?’ We appropriate for agencies to run effectively; yet, we are in penury to our own constitutional mandate. It is a disservice to Nigerians. The poor budget of the parliament is a disservice to Nigerians.”

Although many Nigerians think that the current House of Reps has been more proactive than the Senate in checking the executive arm of government, they are still not satisfied that they enjoy appropriate representation in the national legislature. Hon Kalu’s enthusiasm for increased budgetary provisions will also not be shared by Nigerians who have sneered at the House of Reps’ predicament. The immediate reaction that trailed Hon Kalu’s revelations was that the House, and not the representatives currently in office, was what had come to such a sorry pass as to be in debt and disrepair. No harm done then, they conclude. Public analysts advise that if the representatives would simply cut down on their hefty personal remunerations and allowances, then they would find the funds to pay off their bills. Everyone has bills to pay, and even those with a leaner budget than the House of Reps are paying theirs. Clothes must be cut according to the cloth. But even on the issue of the lawmakers’ remunerations and allowances, there is some dispute.

Simon Karu, member of the House of Reps, noted last October that, “…the official salary of a member, House of Representatives, which I also receive monthly, is N800,000. The office running cost of a member of the House of Representatives is N8.5 million.” This amounts to about N9.3m monthly. Another member, Nicholas Ossai, denied this claim, stating that he had never received such funds since he became a member of the house. He has been a federal lawmaker at the House of Reps since 2011. As at 2017, it was revealed that each representative cost taxpayers N169.6m to maintain annually, amounting to N14.1m monthly. It is therefore not clear why he said he had never collected that amount of money. This sum is, nevertheless, significantly higher than other more recent reports which put the monthly basic salary of each representative, including allowances, at N794,000. Non-regular allowances, such as furniture allowance, vehicle loan allowance, leave allowance and others, have not been factored into this lesser calculation since they are by nature non-regular. Transparency of lawmakers’ salaries and allowances has remained a sore point in Nigerian democracy.

Seeing therefore that their salaries and allowances are intact (and some will argue too much so), Nigerians are determined that the lawmakers can continue to bemoan lack of funds all they want, but they will not believe them. One of the criticisms of the Nigerian federal structure is the cost of governance. It will cost the country about N125b to maintain the legislature comprising some 469 elected individuals. Duplication of offices, especially between the Senate and House of Reps, continues to irk Nigerians and try them highly, so they will not agree that the House of Reps’ budgetary constraint is any disservice to them. Some even wonder why the National Assembly should receive any funds, whether N200m or less as reports say, to execute projects in their constituencies.

The disregard and contempt for the House of Reps’ financial incapacitation is simply a consequence of the overall economic atmosphere in the country. A country that has over 105 million people living in extreme poverty is not likely to sympathise with its House of Reps because it cannot afford to service its burdensome running costs. The National Assembly in its entirety should have been alive to the regressive and perambulating policies espoused by the executive arm, which contributed alongside other factors to the impoverishment of Nigeria. For now though, the House of Reps will attract no sympathy.

 

Ibori loot provokes paradox

When news broke that £4.2m of the James Ibori loot would be returned to Nigeria and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, wanted the money spent on federal projects, there was an uproar. The AGF’s position was that it was a federal crime that was violated in looting the funds in the first place and so it was through federal procedures that the funds would be recovered and spent. Those minded to equity advocated for Delta State, to wit that the money was taken from the state and should be returned thence. But, he who must come to equity must come with clean hands. When the looting suspected to be as gross as £100m was discovered, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) hounded the former governor and his suspected freebooting cronies. Delta State government at the time reportedly frustrated the efforts of the EFCC to recover the funds, and more or less alleged that no money was stolen.

The former governor could, however, not escape the law in the United Kingdom though he evaded it in Nigeria. He served time in prison and returned home where Nigerians hissed at him except those in Delta state, the primary victims of his theft. They feted his return and almost politically deified him. So, the question asked of the advocates for equity is why money that was never officially admitted stolen should be returned to them. This may later come to be known as the ‘Ibori paradox’ when lawyers with a creative bent document the issue.

Whatever the case, the AGF has explained that one of the criteria for the repatriation of the funds was that the money should be used for public projects. The projects listed did not include federal projects in Delta state. Could this be federal vengeance? Although their representatives have sought a motion seeking to halt the spending of the funds, the federal government will be minded to ignore them.

By Paul Ade-Adeleye

After toying with taciturnity on the issue of banditry in Nigeria and allowing it to culture into a perfect ethnic storm, the Buhari administration swung into action last week, issuing a licence to kill and for soldiers to deploy against any non-security agents carrying guns. For months, failing to adequately gauge the monster banditry could become if unchecked decisively, the president said little and did even less to curb the trend. He dallied while the entire country called for the replacement of the former service chiefs who appeared to lack any innovative ideas to tackle insecurity in the country. Kidnappers meanwhile operated virtually unchecked. It became a national issue to determine whether or not ranching was not a better idea than transhumant or nomadic pastoralism in the 21st Century. It was not until it became a manifest source of mortification to the government that action was taken, in stages, and finally to the extreme with license to kill.

The president started by declaring that bandits should be treated as criminals; next, that there would be no parley with them; and then he ordered the shooting on sight of bandits carrying rifles. Unfortunately, this policy poses a moral dilemma to Nigerians. Every suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty, even if he were arrested in flagrante delicto. The power to determine the guilt or innocence of such suspects is vested in the judiciary by virtue of Section 6 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 306 of the Criminal Code notes that it is unlawful to kill any person unless such killing is authorised or justified or excused by law. Does the law authorise, justify or excuse the president’s kill order? If it does, what law?

Analysts argue that there is no such thing as a perfect knight and that the direness of the situation with armed bandits and kidnappers required measures as drastic as the president’s kill order. What was the presidency doing until banditry gangrened such that between January and February, 720 people were kidnapped and N10bn was paid as ransom, according to some estimates? What justification is legal enough to allow such a ‘license to kill’ operate within Nigeria? Legal minds posit that the right to life is so sacred to the law that only the courts, the law and executive orders, not the president’s orders, can derogate it. If a person has to take away the right to life from another, then it must be on lawful grounds, such as self-defence as excused by Section 286 of the Criminal Code or Section 59 of the Penal Code, or provocation as justified by Section 283 of the Criminal Code.

There are other lawful grounds that justify the killing of armed bandits, but generally they must furnish the requirement of “reasonable force”. The issue is by what test “reasonable force” is to be measured since usually one party is already dead and the only testimony to work with is that of the suspect. How does anyone know if a bandit who was shot and killed on sight was willing to surrender his weapons and submit himself to be tried according to the prescriptions of the law? How can the army differentiate between those licensed to carry weapons, few as they may be, from those illegally wielding them when it is too busy shooting on sight? When did it become punishable by death to be found in possession of weapons? The debate may end up being academic and only for the purpose of fulfilling all righteousness by the law. Those who have spoken against the kill order only did so from the law’s perspective. It is hard to find anyone rising to the armed bandits’ defence except, perhaps, bandit empaths such as Sheikh Gumi and Governor Bala Mohammed.

Will Buhari hear Zulum?

Addressing the Northeast Governors’ Forum, Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State spoke against the unjustifiable policy of rehabilitating captured Boko Haram insurgents, because the so-called deradicalised terrorists, upon reintegration, became spies for the terror sect and later returned to their old and familiar crimes. This was nothing more than re-echoing the general sentiments of Nigerians who had voiced their displeasure and disappointment at the policy of reintegrating Boko Haram extremists into the societies they once terrorised. Labelling it oppressive and subliminal to justice and soundness, they felt that the bandits would never truly be reformed and would constitute nothing more than the continuing effects of an old injury that should otherwise be healing.

At the Governors’ meeting, Mr Zulum revealed: “Another aspect of the war against the insurgency that needs to be urgently reviewed or modified is the issue of deradicalisation of Boko Haram terrorists who have been captured or have willingly surrendered themselves to the authorities. It has been confirmed that the concept of deradicalisation or ‘Safe Corridor’ is not working as expected. Quite often, those who have passed through the ‘Safe Corridor’ initiative, or have been deradicalised, usually go back and rejoin the terror group after carefully studying the various security arrangements in their host communities, during the reintegration process.”

When Nigerians raised the objection earlier, the presidency turned a deaf ear to them. Will it turn a second deaf ear to Governor Zulum whose state, more than most, remains a favourite hunting ground for Boko Haram insurgents? The presidency cannot explain its persistence with operation ‘Safe Corridor’ in any sense of equity and sustainability with this new revelation by Governor Zulum. It must resist the urge to turn a deaf ear to this new security alarm or risk upsetting Nigerians and demoralising the army which laboured with great losses to apprehend the insurgents in the first place.

Yahaya Bello’s vaccine contempt

Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State cannot understand the fuss about COVID-19 vaccines. Never mind that the virus crippled most of the western world and Nigeria for months and has caused the deaths of 2.58m people. Mr Bello is not bothered and will not trouble himself with what he clearly thinks is the contemptible act of taking the vaccine. More, the good people of Kogi State, Mr Bello says, are not guinea pigs, so he will not be forcing them to take the vaccine. His argument sounds painfully similar to that of President Nevers Mumba of Zambia, but lacks the circumspection that attended the Zambian President’s logic.

Dr Mumba had declared that the vaccine would not be taken without scrutiny, but Mr Bello argues that COVID-19 is not a serious enough challenge for him to be bothered about. There was the more pressing scourge of Lassa fever for him to deal with, and there was no recorded case of coronavirus in Kogi, said the governor.

Really, Mr Bello? The man is a marvel and not exactly the endearing kind. True, the federal government could and should have done better with the way it went about the vaccine business, but however badly they performed, they did not deny the presence of the virus in the country. Mr Bello’s deadpan statements grate on the nerves of Nigerians who have lost people to the virus. If he must remain annoyingly apathetic, he should try being quiet for a while.

By Paul Ade-Adeleye

Fresh from vaulting confrontations within and without Rivers State, Governor Nyesom Wike has set his sights on the National Assembly and echoed a general Nigerian sentiment concerning their disappointing stance on the former service chiefs whom they recently confirmed as non-career ambassadors. His attack on the National Assembly could not have been timelier. “Most Nigerians are disappointed at the Senate for that decision. Convey this to the National Assembly. We must be courageous in whatever we do. Everything must not be done on party affairs. Senators discussed and agreed that service chiefs should be dismissed because they were not performing,” he said when members of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta visited him last Wednesday. “Now, the same people who couldn’t perform have been confirmed as ambassadors. What kind of country are we in? In anything we do, we must remember that there is tomorrow and our conscience must be key.”

In those remarks, the outspoken governor displayed a deeper understanding of Nigerians’ mood than the presidency or the confounding senate. For years, Nigerians had campaigned heavily to have the service chiefs removed and retired from public space. Nigerians felt that the men were overdue for retirement and replacement and the senate had called for this at various times. Following their retirement, many people rejoiced, but commentators who were savvy to the fidelity the presidency had to the service chiefs waited for the caveat attached to their retirement to manifest. It did not take long before the announcement that they had been nominated for non-career ambassadorship. Hope was reposed in the legislature to do the right thing, but to the chagrin of the public, they were confirmed.

Perhaps Nigerians are fed up with the presidency and have given up on its ability to do anything with sense and depth. Perhaps Nigerians have become so hapless and tired of talking that they often look on pitifully as the presidency dares their disgust. Whatever the reason for the muffled discontent that attended the service chiefs’ confirmation, more prominent Nigerians should have joined Mr Wike in asking the senate to return to the straight and narrow path. No one knows the relationship between the executive and legislative arm of government anymore. Do they check and balance each other? Are they simply comrades in frustrating Nigerians? What exactly was the rationale behind confirming men whose removal they had called for? Senate minority leader, Enyinaya Abaribe, tried gallantly to question the motive behind confirming the envoys, but the senate majority walked over him.

It is a contradiction that the senate minority echoed at that moment the sentiments of majority of Nigerians and the senate majority simply served its own interests. Very few people will agree that the senate is the voice of the people; they feel completely disconnected from the legislative arm of government due to its non-inclusive style. Mr Wike’s concerns about the service chiefs will go unheeded and he knows it, but he was at least the governor with courage and attention enough to knock the senate over its unscrupulous confirmation of the service chiefs.