The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Gumi hides behind semantics

    Gumi hides behind semantics

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    Going by his recent postulations, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi believes that bandits are not criminals, and so they should not be addressed in such terms. In truth, the cleric is concerned with what the bandits can perpetrate in their wrath, and the public must wonder if there is after all no ulterior motive behind his bandit empathy. But not all the flak he drew for suggesting that bandits should be granted amnesty would deter him from repeatedly defending them. Sheikh Gumi has gained, in recent times, the reputation of being anti-justice and pro-terror, but in his appearance at a televised broadcast last week, he urged Nigerians to do what they will and say what they must, but the bandits, the shy men that they are, must be accorded the respect their enterprise deserves. They are simply not criminals, he deadpanned. Hardly is there a bandit kidnapping in Nigeria these days, but Sheikh Gumi would be found placating the bandits most earnestly, for he thinks them more terrible in their wrath than the country can cope with.

    Continuing his trend of bandit advocacy, the sheikh aired his belief during the televised broadcast that the media was the true criminal as it had only hounded bandits and called them criminals. He wondered how the bandits, youths in their prime, were expected to cooperate despite being ready to hand down their weapons. What the situation wanted, said the cleric, is that bandits be shown that they are Nigerians. Being primus inter pares, they must be placated and taught that it is not right to hurt children, but that they should be law abiding. Woe betides kidnapped adults then! Sheikh Gumi went on to drawl extensively and doltishly on the bandit rights and image portrayal, furnishing his arguments with the macabre logic that the best way to disarm a criminal is by deferring to the criminal’s wish, regardless of if the criminal is less armed than the potential victim is. To the sheikh, what does it matter that hundreds have died? What does it matter that people have been forcefully separated from their hard-earned money? What matters is that anyone with spunk enough to take up crime must not be addressed as a criminal but as a bandit, must not be alienated but celebrated, and must not be castigated but reintegrated and given a better life, perhaps even honoured.

    In those few arguments, the confounding cleric effectively betrayed his bias. Even those who came mightily to his defence at the moment of his initial outing have started to distance themselves from his manic doting on non-existent bandit rights. He is a sober looking fellow, they will tell themselves, but the man has a death wish. There is no way to defend the sheikh’s bucolic sense of humour. Distance will lend enchantment to whatever support they have for his slanted philosophising. Nothing anyone will say to the cleric can assure him that the bandits have erred unforgivably and cannot in any logical sense be buttered. The mere thought of amnesty for these bandits is anathema to justice, natural or unnatural. There are five crimes under Nigerian jurisprudence punishable with the death penalty: armed robbery, kidnapping, murder, treason and treachery. A good prosecution counsel will not find it hard to pin all five crimes on the bandits, meaning in a sense that it is difficult to see how the bandits will escape the death sentence when they are apprehended and tried under the Criminal Code of Nigeria. A good prosecution counsel will indeed be able to strike the fear of justice into the Sheikh by attempting to rope him in as an accomplice either by act or by omission. The fear of bandits has clearly divorced the cleric from the fear of the same God of which the Qur’an says; “And the heaven He raised and imposed the balance. That you (do) not transgress the balance. And establish weight in justice and do not make deficient the balance.”  There is neither justice nor balance in using taxpayers’ money to butter men who have hurt and murdered taxpayers ceaselessly and remorselessly. It encourages robbery to preach bandit amnesty.

    Indeed, Sheikh Gumi must draw the curtains on his offensive logic. He has had his day, he has had his moments in the spotlight, but all things must come to a necessary end, and the time has come for that. How can he persist in his views even after another 317 female students were kidnapped on Thursday night in Zamfara? He must now summon the willpower to entomb the same warped sense of justice, which has exposed Governor Bala Mohammed, Governor Bello Matawalle and other prominent Nigerians, including himself, to ridicule.

  • States and presidency in role reversal

    States and presidency in role reversal

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    In the past one week, governors speaking either on behalf of their geopolitical zones or through the Nigeria’s Governor’s Forum (NGF) have denounced open grazing as outdated and prone to security challenges. They then followed up by seeking a meeting with the president to find a way out of the insecurity that has blanketed the country. It is disconcerting that the federal government, nay the Buhari administration, which should be persuaded earlier than anybody else about the country’s jaded livestock production methods has not only remained unconvinced about this obsolescent practice, but it still seeks ways of mollifying herders more than it cares about placating their victims.

    It is even more tragic that on insecurity, the federal government had to wait to be asked by governors to meet minds, especially given the fact that the responsibility to secure the country is constitutionally devolved to the central government. Not only is Abuja at its wit’s end, unable to rouse itself to deliver imaginative and holistic approach, it has failed woefully to acknowledge what every other person knows in Nigeria and globally: that Nigeria is at war. The country is up in flames everywhere. No place, no one is secure. Not even during the civil war has this level of insecurity troubled every square meter of the country.

    But it is in the midst of all these troubles and dismay that the governors are finally taking the bull by the horns. If the Buhari administration does not know the role herders are playing in predisposing the country to impending fratricide, the governors know and are speaking to it. And if the administration does not know how insecurity has negated its very essence as a government, not to say how sweeping and enveloping the problem is, the governors at least know and did ask the president to meet with them to fashion a solution. The meeting held last Wednesday, but it was characteristically ham-fisted, full of tame resolutions, placatory talk and reluctance to hurt the president’s feelings. The country is obviously in more trouble than it acknowledges; but as governors engage in role reversal with the feds, perhaps some amelioration might not after all be too far-fetched.

  • Disintegration: Abdulsalami Abubakar sidesteps the real issues

    Disintegration: Abdulsalami Abubakar sidesteps the real issues

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    In his diagnosis of the Nigerian crisis, former military head of state Abdulsalami Abubakar dwells richly on the rhetoric and perhaps inflammatory statements of some state chief executives but gives only a glancing tackle to the chief culprit, the Muhammadu Buhari administration, which he of course euphemistically calls the federal government in a second engagement with journalists. In the first engagement with reporters in Minna, Niger State, last Tuesday, he blames Nigerians for acting and speaking divisively and trading blames rather than coming together to block the enemy from exploiting national fissures. According to him, “As if insurgency, kidnapping and robberies are not a cupful, the recent happenings in some parts of the country of ethnic attacks are unfortunate and adding to the problems. In the last two weeks or so, tension has been growing in the country and embers of disunity, anarchy and disintegration are spreading fast; and if care is not taken, this might lead us to a point of no return.”

    The former military head of state would have done well and spoken boldly to call out the current administration for its lethargy and divisiveness as a major factor in the crisis, but he instead chooses to be philosophical, describing “these times” as demanding from Nigerians “that we all join hands to resolve our challenges so as to keep our country united.” As he puts it, “We do not have the luxury of trading blames. Thousands of our people are homeless and refugees across the length and breadth of their own country. It is true that we are all in a state of fear and collective anxiety. However, the last thing we need is for the enemy to sense a lack of unity on our part or a break in our ranks.” In other words, without affording the country a proper understanding of the root causes of the crisis which he believes may be leading the country to war, he simply goes ahead to look at the implications of the people’s misbehavior, and then prescribes what he thinks the solutions are, much of which he captures in homilies to the people and locates in their lack of resolve and inadequate sense of unity.

    In fact, it was more pointedly in his second engagement on a television programme also last week that he attempted to implicate both the federal and state governments as parts of the problem. He hopes that the National Peace Committee which he heads will join hands with other patriots to find solution to the crisis tearing the country apart. It is not clear whether the diagnosis he made while engaging journalists fully represents the sentiments and opinions of members of the peace committee. But what is clear is that as a former head of state, he was expected to be more forthright and fearless in identifying where the problems are coming from, and needed to apportion blame with such candour that the culprits would have no doubt that he was speaking to their complicity.

    Gen. Abubakar is of course not ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, the only former president who has called a spade a spade by examining the ongoing crisis and pointing at the complicity, lack of capacity and relentless malfeasance of the Buhari administration. Gen Abubakar is at liberty to carve a unique approach of addressing the issues, including making his views known in temperate language rather than the withering tones Nigerians now associate with Chief Obasanjo. But no matter how unique that approach is, the general owes the country, particularly in these testy times, not only the unvarnished truth, but truth and inescapable facts offered boldly. If he prefers to continue to waffle in these troubling times, Nigerians may start to wonder just how much depth of understanding he has of the existential crisis facing them. The problems are deep and complex, but they are not difficult to fathom.

    It is important to remind the former military head of state that the problem he fears may be leading the country to another civil war are not caused by the people he is accusing of opening up the country to warmongers. The people may not have an indomitable sense of unity as he implies, but there is little doubt that they are merely reacting as best as they know as victims to the persistent attacks on their well-being and livelihood by herders and other criminal elements. They may be inexpert in semantics of national unity and lack the luxury, patience and elegance the elites and leaders are accustomed to, but they can be trusted to know where it hurts. After all, the general must ask himself why the people all of a sudden have taken to this quarrelsome path and spoken viciously to one another after many decades of living together fairly peacefully.

    Something is terribly wrong, and if Gen Abubakar cannot find the courage to identify that terrible wrong, he should be less forward about speaking on it. The Buhari administration may want to blame a faltering economy for the country’s woes, and his security agencies may like to assume that naysayers and conspirators want to undermine the administration and compromise the peace of the country. In reality, however, analysts of the Nigerian condition must factor in the alienation inspired by the Buhari administration, its biases against certain geopolitical zones, the unfair and skewed security and general appointments, the lack of appreciation of the complexities of a heterogeneous society, the inattentiveness to things that matter as cabals seem to have sliced parts of the government and governance among themselves. Chief Obasanjo may be morally unqualified in many respects to pontificate on Nigeria, but he speaks candidly to these failings. Gen Abubakar should try to do the same, obviously in his own unique ways, and ensure that his counsel is directed to the right place.

  • Sheikh Gumi’s misplaced sympathy

    Sheikh Gumi’s misplaced sympathy

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    When celebrated Nigerian writer, satirist and literatus, Femi Osofisan, wrote and published his play, ‘Once upon Four Robbers’, he was effectively branded the devil’s advocate. Far from being criticised, he was, in fact, praised for offering a psychoanalytical insight into what was one of the more important but remote causes of armed robbery, a contemporary social scourge of Nigeria in the 70s, — social injustice. Although he was not a pioneer of criminology, he helped to popularise it through literature, a more accessible academic leisure than law. Analysts and scholars have since tried to imitate similar prudence in understanding the facts of crime and its occurrences in Nigeria before arriving at conclusions. The danger of such an approach is that the prospective analyst may become unwittingly endeared to the plight of the outlaws, the so-called Stockholm Syndrome. So what is to be made of Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud Gumi’s recent visit to bandits, and his self-professed friend, Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna’s merciless stance on the bandits?

    Sheikh Gumi, after an extensive chat with the bandits, deduced that poverty and insecurity pushed the bandits into crime. In a word, he seemed to say, they are poor and shy men, victims of circumstance and fellows who would thrive under agreeable living standards. His bandit apology in part: “These people were the first victims of cattle rustling, who lost all their cattle to rustlers because then, the rustlers were having the guns. Then when they lost their cattle, they joined (the rustlers) and they started to kidnap people. In fact, most of the kidnappings, they (the bandits) are doing it to acquire weapons. They are now trying to buy missiles, anti-aircraft missiles… And what we are afraid of is that if they become religiously radicalised, it will give rise to another dimension, and it will be very difficult to control. You see what Boko Haram has become. They are not buying skyscrapers or riding Mercedes; they are still in the bush… You have to understand the psychology of these people. They are not like our governors that are stealing money… For them, cow is better than money. These people (bandits) know how to organise themselves and protect themselves and they have started attacking villages all around. Once you touch one of them, the whole of them will come together to attack a village. They mobilise themselves through the bush. So, it is not good to attack them, honestly speaking. The Hausa are suffering and they have therefore stopped attacking the Fulani herdsmen. So, we should not attack them. We should just pacify them and they are a very shy people. If you meet them, they are very shy.”

    But Governor el-Rufai and indeed most Nigerians with the exception of, perhaps, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, are in strong disagreement. They believe that having tasted blood and the ill-gotten proceeds from crime, there is no turning back. It is difficult to fault that position, despite its unlikely champion, a governor who is often under the radar of human rights activists for suspected transgressions against their rulebook. No one supports impoverishment as a valid reason for turning to crime. The bandits have tasted blood; it is doubtful whether they will now stop. They are not gentlemen of the highway; they are outlaws and scoundrels of the forests – uncouth, bloodthirsty and merciless. Even if they were offered amnesty and decided to surrender their assault rifles, they would soon heed the call of the wild, an overpowering and importunate call. Governor el-Rufai, despite his poor records on security in Kaduna State, was right to observe that these men were godless and knew no religion. It is difficult to even fault the argument that the bandits lack one of the most basic components of modern social coexistence — conscience. Contrary to Gumi’s claims, no one would want a decline in fortune or income, regardless of whether that fortune was channelled into living luxuriously or procuring weapons. The bandits and kidnappers have been making outrageous sums of money, numbering millions per victim. If the bandits really wanted to live better lives, the N200m they had coerced from the Local Governments of Zamfara alone and other such blood wealth would have been used to improve their infrastructure.

    Only the aggrieved can fully tell what damage the bandits have wrought on their lives. Advocating compensation for bandits was a stretch too much from the cleric, whose intentions are assumed to be pure and in the interest of peace. The desire for peace, however, must neither erode nor subvert moral and legal justice. Justice may not always manifest itself in the form of vengeance, but it must always prevail. After all, in matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same. Those who have suffered should not be forced to behold in horror as their oppressors are compensated while they end up with nothing; not even the short end of the stick. It would be as sorry and unforgiveable a day as it was when one bright mind in the presidency decided that the only thing to do with captured Boko Haram insurgents was to rehabilitate them, garb them in white clothes to signify purity, and reintroduce them into the society of those they had hitherto oppressed.

    The cleric seems to find wisdom in Nigeria cowering to the bandits, but cowards die many times before their deaths. Why should the Nigerian army be scared of the herdsmen simply because they have procured anti-aircraft missiles? Has the cleric been invited to appraise the extent of the Nigerian army’s arsenal? If the army is currently underperforming, then fingers should be pointed at the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, who should have made it his life’s mission, as mandated by Sections 217(2) and 218 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic, to provide everything necessary for successful defence of territorial integrity and suppression of insurrections.  But, as Shakespeare would have itched to note, Sheikh Gumi’s bandit apology and the Minister for Information’s excited agreement with the amnesty bid are blameworthy “in this – tis too much proved – that with devotion’s visage and pious action, they have sugared o’er the devil himself.”

    Osinbajo on justice, community police and unity

    After revalidating, alongside many others, his membership with the All Progressives Congress (APC), as controversially mandated by party leaders, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo made the tough call of airing his opinion on certain national matters. For years, Nigerians have speculated that he was firmly pinioned and silenced by powerful, shadowy forces operating within the presidency. Many other bewildered Nigerians, ignorant of current affairs and the constitutional limitations of the office of the Vice President, have described him as plain evil. It was therefore a show of courage for him to publicly admit that it was justice for those arrested for banditry and kidnapping to be prosecuted where the federal government’s current idea of justice is amnesty by rehabilitating and reintegrating terrorists.

    He spiced that up by adding the need to strengthen, retrain and speed up community policing structure, which should complement the Nigeria Police Force. Although he is fundamentally right, he may want to consider the push for state policing. The federal police have outlived their time and are regarded by Nigerians as an ailing dotard in need of a total overhaul.

    His call for unity was, however, timely. Nigeria will function better as a single, united entity, but not with the current unfair political structure. Minority tribes, for instance, bemoan unequal distribution of national wealth. The clamour for restructuring by Nigerians is not misplaced, and until that call is respected and heeded, ethnic, economic and social tensions will continue to upturn the country’s applecart of peace, stability, growth and development.

  • CBN’s war on cryptocurrency

    CBN’s war on cryptocurrency

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    In war, it is said that truth is usually the first casualty. While the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) continued its war on cryptocurrency (crypto) last week by threatening banks and other financial institutions that persisted in facilitating payments for crypto transactions, victims of the policy, opposition party members, and the international committee kicked against the move, describing it as unfair, oppressive and retrogressive. The latest onslaught on cryptocurrency came in the form of a letter reminding banks of a regulation preventing them from facilitating crypto payments. As an addendum, the communique compelled banks to close accounts belonging to crypto traders. It is not clear why the CBN, suspected to be acting with the federal government’s authorisation, was not more prudent in its war on crypto currency and why it left the public to speculate on the reasons behind its policies which have now been classed draconian. Indeed, the policy was not communicated to those involved in trading cryptocurrency directly, but to banks and other financial institutions, leaving those on the wrong side of the tracks to find out about the policy the hard and shocking way. It was less than ideal, unfair and insensitive to come to a decision of that nature, affecting the finances of many Nigerians, without a dialogue with stakeholders.

    The CBN statement read: “Further to earlier regulatory directives on the subject, the bank hereby wishes to remind regulated institutions that dealing with cryptocurrencies or facilitating payments for cryptocurrency exchanges is prohibited. Accordingly, all Deposit Money Banks, Non-Bank Financial Institutions, and Other Financial Institutions are directed to identify persons and/or entities transacting in or operating cryptocurrency exchanges within their systems and ensure that such accounts are closed immediately. Please, note that breaches of this directive will attract severe regulatory sanctions. The letter takes immediate effect.” Why would someone who trades legitimately suddenly have their accounts closed, with banks being banned from facilitating any payments in their legitimate business?

    The altruism or otherwise of the CBN’s choking policy remains moot for the moment, but the jury is out on their being up to no perceptible good. Like every other digital innovation, cryptocurrency has its advantages and disadvantages. It is a decentralised currency operated on what is called blockchain. Blockchain simply means that the digital security and records of the currency are not on just one computer, but on multiple computers linked by a peer-to-peer network. In a word, it is not subject to the same dynamics of national currencies. The currency is used for trading in goods and services primarily on the internet. There are applications called “wallets” where people can store any of the more than 4000 known cryptocurrencies and withdraw money to their bank accounts or to paypal. It is perfectly legal and many governments around the world have acknowledged the currency’s validity, seeking instead to regulate its use. It is difficult to trace since it is not physical but can be transferred from one party to another through those wallets without the government knowing about it. So, how does the government plan to kill a ghost it cannot trace? The CBN may be embarking on a wild goose chase with the war on cryptocurrency. Many traders have promised that the CBN will be buying itself a place in the sun with its intended policy to prevent Nigerians from trading in cryptocurrency, for there are more avenues for trading cryptocurrency than the government can monitor. The paint was not dry on the announcement banning financial institutions from trading in crypto than international crypto brokers advised Nigerians to employ peer to peer trading and exchange. The only disadvantage to this method and the injury that crypto traders have suffered is that they now make less profits from their trade since they first have to trade their cryptocurrency with a foreign currency before converting to the naira. More, the stifling policy has given bored programmers something to think about, and think they will.

    The federal government has often emphasised its desire to diversify the economy. Cryptocurrency should have been an avenue for that much needed diversification. A research released last month showed that Nigeria alone transacts cryptocurrency worth $200 million every month. That is money got from outside the country and put into circulation within the Nigerian economy legally through cryptocurrency. It was also a creator of highly paying jobs and revenue for Nigerians. Although it was thoughtful of the federal government to recognise the risks associated with cryptocurrency, it was a trade that was more beneficial to the economy than it was detrimental, and, in a country that witnesses several woes daily, it was not the brightest idea to stir a nest of sleeping hornets.

    It would have been a small matter to meet with stakeholders and create progressive policies to regulate trade in crypto and mitigate the attendant risks as every other country in the world except China has done, including the western world that the government has perennially imitated in its abysmal handling of COVID-19. It was this same hasty decision making process that made the federal government shut the country’s borders, preventing trade and causing an avoidable inflation. That hasty decision is one the government has since regretted and reversed but not learnt from. The risks are known to traders who deal in the currency, as well as the international companies that now transact with them. Many Nigerian youths trade in cryptocurrency due to lack of jobs and the need for a legitimate means of survival. How does the CBN not know that when people’s ability to choose their own business risk is taken from them, they will revolt in many different ways? Are there no thinkers in the halls of federal power to remind decision makers that it is hubris to assume that federal might is reposed in the few politically appointed office holders and not the people?

    As with any other policy, the benefits of the affected issue have to be weighed on a scale against its demerits. This is a step most of the western world has taken to mitigate the risks that the CBN appears interested in eliminating. To become a crypto broker, the prospective crypto trader must have a minimum share capital of $25m. That way, should the cryptocurrency crash, the investors would not be on the receiving end; the broker will.  There are those who argue that most of the affected people who trade in cryptocurrency are international companies and youths. These youths are becoming experts in financial technology (Fintech) and have developed payment platforms for carrying out many transactions in several currencies. The unemployment woes in Nigeria are not strange to anyone. It is well-documented that many graduates with degrees do not have jobs due to the failure of successive visionless governments to create an enabling structure that will maximise the potential of the Nigerian labour market. Graduates apply for jobs as drivers while their less educated counterparts simply take to crime. Remote working, freelance working, digital marketing, forex trading and cryptocurrency trading are some of the few legal avenues youths have taken to in their bid to mitigate the harsh reality of a visionless leadership that has alienated them and still not chosen to acknowledge their potentials.

    There are many countries that would give anything to have a population of youths as literate and zealous for work as Nigeria. There are also many countries that would want to diversify their economy to allow for ample inflow of money through crypto trading. South Africa, for instance, has five bitcoin ATMs. The progressive thing for the Nigerian government to do was to support a trade that did what they failed to do — provide employment for the youths — through regulations to reduce the risks associated to the barest minimum. The CBN’s policy primarily affects the youths who have for a long time been quiet in the face of oppressive and bad governance. It is not clear why federal appurtenances are goading them to wrath again.

  • Makinde still missing the point

    Makinde still missing the point

    Barometer

    The recent showdown in Oyo State between Sunday “Igboho” Adeyemo, Yoruba freedom fighter, and herdsmen operating in the state has left Governor Seyi Makinde up a gum tree. For months, silence had covered the crimes meted out against farmers and villagers of different communities in Oyo and the governor inscrutably manned the helm under that projected false sense of ease. Now, even he has been dragged into the faceoff, yet he continues to misunderstand both the nature of the conflict and the role he has to play in it. So far, he has spoken a lot but said nothing truly comforting or reassuring to the people and elders of Oyo, and they will be allowed to agree with former United States Vice President, Dan Quayle, who once observed that verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

    Had the governor a proper understanding of Oyo history as he claims, he would have recalled that there is no love lost between Oyo, which once stood at the apex of pre-colonial Yoruba political might, and the Fulani, who constitute a major unit of the modern herdsmen groups. There remain those who have neither forgiven nor forgotten the treachery of Afonja, the commander of Yoruba forces up till 1817 who invited the Fulani to assist him in invading Ilorin before he was eventually toppled. This was also why the Fulani were able to play an obscure but important role in the Kiriji wars of Yorubaland until their defeat by Ibadan. Although there were also Hausa and Ebira herdsmen, the involvement of the Sarkin Fulani of Oyo should have triggered all the governor’s antennas. The incidence should have been met by the governor with decisive action ab initio. The herdsmen crisis is by no means a cat burglar on the Makinde administration. Residents of Ibarapa claim that their warnings and cries to the governor had fallen on deaf ears for long. Continued silence from the government made them believe that they would only find succour from the state when pigs fly, hence their recourse to the more proactive Igboho.

    Ibarapa community leader, Prince Ademola Ayoade, in a scathing interview, revealed that the Sarkin Fulani had grown so powerful that he occasionally threatened even the police if they did not bend to his will. He was fingered as a negotiator between kidnappers and victims and a protector of criminals. Worse, Secretary of Lanlete Rennaisance Group, Abimbola Adeyeri explained that, “The governor did not read the riot act… Yet the few bold men who stood up to defend their communities are labelled criminals by their own governor and the IGP declaring their arrest. The governments should bury their heads in shame and not fan any ethnic crisis as a result of this defence of our territorial integrity.”

    Systemic invasion was clearly déjà vu for the people, and as a last resort they summoned Igboho having heard tales of his feats in Igboho and Igbeti. Indeed, the man’s reputation preceded him and he quickly did outside the law what should have been done long ago within the law. Rave reviews followed his performance. There are those who feel that the governor is pursuing a private agenda with his perceived lack of sympathy, and that he has his sights set on lofty rewards. They believe he is willing to trade his kingdom for a horse, and going by his comments last Monday, he is not helping matters.

    He said, “One of the things we found out is that opportunities are very limited at the top. We will continue to do our best to strive to expand our economy and provide opportunities for a whole lot of our people and we believe when we do that, the tension will definitely go down.” On Wednesday, he met with the president and reiterated his controversial solution to the problem. “So, I requested for more Mobile Police Squadrons to be deployed to Oyo State and also asked for support for the joint security outfit because the underlying issue here also has to do with limited opportunities. The tension will definitely go down if a lot of our youths are gainfully employed… For instance, what triggered all of these was that Dr. Aborode was brutally murdered; that is criminal. But on the other hand, the Seriki, Alhaji Kabir, has been staying in that same place for 40 years.”

    Has the governor really been as deaf to the people of Ibarapa as they accuse him of being? He managed to reduce insecurity with undertones of ethnic tension to unemployment. Indigenes starved because of insecurity, and he did nothing that helped. If he is to mitigate the ignominy of citizens resorting to illegality to tackle problems he failed at, then he must be wiser to the complete dynamics of the tension in his state. His primary duty is to his people, whose security he is constitutionally charged to ensure. How the people of Oyo must look longingly at Ondo state wondering where they went wrong.

    PDP’s pedestrian plea

    Last Sunday, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, issued one of his worst cringeworthy statements. Although the party has a rich history of conducting its opposition politics with banal logic, the recent statement was a new low, for it exposed the party’s limited understanding of the concept of sovereignty. It also revealed just how badly the party is interested in taking power that it is not afraid to stoop to sordid depths of juvenility.

    The grating statement read in part, “Now that President Biden has settled down to work, our party urges him to look into the records, especially the report of the Department of State, and note the litany of infractions on our polity by APC leaders and officials of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration. President Biden is invited to act on the report of the Department of State detailing cases of human right abuse, arbitrary and extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests, detention, torture, shooting and killing of voters, massacring of peaceful protesters as witnessed in the EndSARS protests…”

    By this statement, the party, not unlike many other myopic analysts, feels no shame in reporting their country’s government to another country, urging that other country to take action. The 1999 Constitution of the country recognises the legislature and the judiciary as the only other arms of government and only between three arms are the powers of Nigeria shared, the third being the executive arm. When executive recklessness culminated in the attack on Capitol Hill in the United States (US), their legislature rose to the occasion. They handled their mess like any sovereign country should. Nigeria’s legislature has, sadly, been fingered as being under par in performing its oversight duties on the executive arm of government while a multitude of factors has lamed the judiciary.

    The problem with PDP’s inordinate statement is that they appear willing to trade the country’s dignity for their own selfish gains. The moment the US acts against the government, what is to say it would stop there? The Nigerian government’s sanctity must be protected at all times, notwithstanding what individuals sit in office. If the PDP is as unhappy with the federal government as most of the country is, then they should seek constitutional ways of checking the president. The Nigerian constitution also has an impeachment clause, so if the United States could do it, why can’t Nigeria. Until PDP displays the required prudence to oppose the government from an ideological viewpoint, they will continue to offer puerile comic theatre instead of a sincere and effective alternative.

  • Makinde, Igboho cross swords

    Makinde, Igboho cross swords

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    On Friday, Yoruba Gestapo commander, Sunday Adeyemo, otherwise known as Sunday Igboho, was at Ibarapa in Oyo State with a huge crowd of followers in defiance of the state governor, and spoke many assuring words to the people. His aim had been to totally banish Hausa/Fulani herdsmen from the state and he had delivered an ultimatum to that effect last week. The herdsmen, fearing for their lives and interests, heeded the ultimatum and fled the state, a status quo which indigenes celebrated. The people gave him a thousand kisses and pats on his back and he returned their confidence by promising to replicate the same in other states in the Southwest, and visit the fear of the Yoruba people on herdsmen who had a penchant for banditry. The people were rapturous; they had found their personal Robin Hood, but Governor Seyi Makinde was boiling.

    Although Igboho claimed his actions were for a good cause, they were illegal. In law, the end does not justify the means; the means justify the end. Yet, the means, despite the controversy surrounding them, were not completely illegal, as Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State has shown to the chagrin of certain forces operating in the presidency. The ideology of it was sound and for the most part legal, but it was procedurally illegal, as Igboho was not a state actor duly elected by the people to represent their interests nor was he appointed by the government to execute its policies. It was due to what many within the state had described as the government’s sloppiness that he was unduly appointed to act decisively by those among the people who had suffered directly from the wave of insecurity. His method was madness, but it was a populist sort of madness which many loved in the state. Governor Makinde should have been the one to take any decisive stance on quelling the upsurge of banditry in the state, in which capacity he would have done it more methodically and less madly provided he has the ideological depth to manoeuvre such a delicately nuanced ethnic maze. He would have probably also entered all the herdsmen grazing in the state into a database, like his Ondo counterpart is posturing to do, and put together a strategy for monitoring them. He, in a word, should have done something. He failed to inspire confidence in the people, which was where Igboho excelled, and which is why he was summoned by villagers to help them.

    In truth, despite the illegality of Igboho’s actions, he has been able to accomplish more than the state governor has, but at what cost? The fear is that he has not been circumspect about the steps he took. How will the north receive the news that their kinsmen — rank and file, guilty and innocent — have been summarily expelled from the southwest? They have a history of vindictiveness which has resulted in the constant enmity between both the north and the southeast. The hope is that they will be more circumspect than to retaliate openly. What if the bandits among the herdsmen have not retreated fully but have only gone up for air planning to return armed to the teeth while the people are at ease with lowered guards? The bandits are not known to obey the en garde principle which requires swordsmen to pre-inform their opponents of their intention to attack.

    The governor’s faceoff with the freedom fighter has all the makings of a good-cop-bad-cop scene. While the governor, who is the embodiment of the people’s power by law is publicly preaching peace and sanity, Igbhoho, is getting his hands dirty and embodying the people’s might outside the law. He operates outside the thin blue line. More, the faceoff is needless and petty, and should have been nipped in the bud rather than protracted to its current impasse. Igboho’s pointed comments allude to a pre-existing relationship with the governor. No one knows the full details of this relationship, but trusting the strength of that relationship, the freedom fighter has repeatedly dared the governor to act against him. Of course, both parties have been making veiled comments; hardly mentioning names but supplying enough information for even the blind to identify and correctly guess the subjects of their messages. The governor should have called Igboho into a meeting long ago and diplomatically solved the faceoff. The former has the law on his side while the latter has the people on his side. Both elements of the state should work together against the common enemy, insecurity. In Oyo, they are working against each other.

  • Obaseki governing under a cloud

    Obaseki governing under a cloud

    Paul Ade-Adeleye

     

    Just before the end of his first tenure as Edo State governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) where he won the elections in 2016 to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Prior to that defection, however, he had been sparring with the state’s chapter of the APC. Unfortunately, the governor, according to analysts, ran roughshod over law. He got away with it by cleverly capitalising on the internal struggles within the national APC ranks, particularly the controversial ostracising of former national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole. When the APC sought to beat him at his own game of playing foul, he simply jumped ship and landed in the PDP where analysts say he has not relented.

    One of his earliest extralegal steps was the blitzkrieg of Edo House of Assembly. The state’s legislature is an arm of government constitutionally coequal and mutually exclusive from the Government House, which domiciliates the state’s executive arm of government. In principle, the legislature should check the excesses of the government, but the irony of the Edo state case is that the excesses of the executive were visited upon the legislature. Acting innocent and unaware, observers say the governor craftily crippled the legislature to prevent an impeachment. With the state legislature lamed, he has since carried on governing the state with what appears to be one arm of government and no system of checks and balance. It therefore fell to the opposition to check his every step in the best way they can.

    They have pelted him with accusations that he has not been able to convincingly reply. An example was the accusation last week that he was governing the state without a legislature. But, seemingly lacking a complete understanding of the concept of democracy, he has carried on impervious to criticism. More, they have accused him of governing without a cabinet months after his re-election, but he has not responded. When accused of secretly trying to obtain a loan of N18 billion despite obtaining a N25 billion loan in December, he ignored them. The best that appeared as a reply was a doltish and virtually jejune statement by Edo PDP’s publicity secretary, Chris Osa Nehikhare.

    For long, Governor Obaseki has governed in a pampered way, riding his luck and getting away with everything through clever but anti-democratic stratagems including demolition of opposition businesses and selective media briefings. The country is, however, beginning to take notice and he will have to rethink his politics or risk his strategy eventually backfiring against him. He may want to take particular care to heed the request by a civil society organisation, Civil Empowerment & Rule of Law Support Initiative (CERLSI) and ensure there is fiscal and policy transparency in Edo state. He has largely underwhelmed and not shown the depth of character or care that he was thought to possess, so questions are being asked. For how long will he dodge them and will he have the answers when the time comes?

  • 2023: Yahaya Bello plays the truant

    2023: Yahaya Bello plays the truant

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    Egged on by sycophants, opportunists and merchants of fortune, Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello, may soon turn a dreamy eye to Aso Villa. It is not immediately clear if he will try to campaign for the presidency, especially as he has done the politically correct thing of publicly saying he is currently more focused on developing Kogi than mulling 2023 presidency. That reaction, however, meant that the governor may very well fancy his chances of vying for power. He has also kept a close watch on the American stage and has watched Joe Biden going about his business after the effective drubbing of Donald Trump. More, he has beheld with gleeful eyes the appointment of Kogi indigene, Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo, as an Associate Counsel to the president-elect.

    Felicitating with her, he said many sweet things and celebrated her “wealth of knowledge and experience” hoping that it would be of some use in bettering Kogi state. Funny he should mention that, seeing as many people have asked him what he, the state’s governor, has done to develop the state. Some Kogi citizens have accused him of following the book of his predecessors by sidelining the Okun people and community, one of the ethnic tripods upon which Kogi State rests, in favour of the more prominent Ebira and Igala people in the state. Badejo, with whom he now fetes publicly, belongs to the Okun group of people. Now, if he cannot run an inclusive government in a state such as Kogi with only about nine ethnic groups, what well of ideology or experience does he want to draw from when he finds himself in charge of 253 ethnic groups?

    Beyond his perceived lack of success at running an inclusive government, the governor has been accused for years of bumbling about with policies, yet having nothing to show for it. One of his more recent policy scandals is the now-forgotten bread levy plot. After scratching their heads and shrugging confoundedly, the public let the matter go and both Mr Bello and his administration heaved a sigh of relief and buried the case. Close shave. His loyalists know this; they cannot anchor their calls for his presidency on anything concrete, so they surfed doltishly on the virtually spent tidal wave of the recent EndSARS protests to compel him to declare his intention to contest for 2023 presidency. Forming a nebulous association called GYB2PYB, which some believe was orchestrated and sponsored by the governor himself, they stormed the Kogi State Liaison office in Abuja where they were received kindly and amiably, and issued a 14-day ultimatum to him.

    Hear their blather: “We are aware that Kogi State today is the government of the youths, by the youths and for the youths. We are aware that Kogi State today has over 90 percent of its appointees from the youth group, both men and women. We are aware that in Kogi State today, all the 21 Vice chairmen are all women. We are also aware that in Kogi State today, all the 21 council leaders are women. We are also aware that all the secretaries to the council chairmen in Kogi State today are youth council coordinators. And, we have discovered that if Yahaya Bello, the Executive Governor of Kogi State, is doing all these wonderful things in Kogi State, Nigeria deserves to have a feel of what Kogites are currently enjoying… We want to give him a 14-day ultimatum to give us a positive response else the Nigerian youths are ready to shut down this nation. We are sure the governor would not want to witness a repeat of protest similar to the #EndSARS protests that happened in this country in October, last year.”

    The witless claims for a youthful president to messianically retire the older generation from power must not tempt the governor, who may not know how little his support base is outside of a few toady men in and around Kogi State. Merit and character, not age, qualify a person for office, as Nigerians have learnt. Nigerians have also learnt that the next best option is not necessarily the best option — a mistake they made to usher in the current floundering government. Before directing his gaze to the presidency, where former and allegedly reformed military dictator, President Muhammadu Buhari, currently sits in anonymity, he must direct an inward eye to introspect and consider his phantom legacy in Kogi State. Would anyone want a governor with no tangible record of achievement or sound judgement and evidence of a solid ideology for his state to man the country’s helms? Would anyone want a man, who left his office in Kogi to go to Abuja and line up to welcome the President’s son when he returned from surgery following a speed bike accident, as president? Would anyone want a governor, who still denies the presence of coronavirus in his state despite the federal government’s claims that all states have been affected, as president? It is doubtful. If he, however, choses to boil the ocean and contest for presidency, he will learn the hard way what he should have learnt by patient meditation — critics and analysts may be more truthful than fawners in politics.

    FG’s insouciant approach to vaccine

    Since the production of the COVID-19 vaccines in both the United States and the United Kingdom, something or someone is believed to be confounding the counsel of the federal government, and this with great success. That the government did not lift a finger towards grabbing the bull by the horns and charting a clear, workable policy says a lot. The COVID-19 pandemic was the sort of global distress that Nigeria could have capitalised on to attract fame and glory. Despite the weakened state of healthcare and pharmaceutical development in the country, Nigeria is inherently equipped to deliver when called upon.

    Where the Nigerian government has gallivanted in the woods, Dr Nevers Mumba, Zambia’s President, has come out strong, blazing a trail and setting a clear path for Zambian action. He has declared that the constitution of the vaccine will be subjected to strenuous verification. Zambia may be poor, he declared, but the country is not stupid. It would have been sensible if the Nigerian government or its overstretched Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 had been the ones to take such a firm and responsible stance on the vaccine. But they didn’t. NAFDAC is tentatively gearing up to do the needful, but the PTF has not seemed to reckon with their role in the vaccine importation and distribution. The country chose instead to fling N400 billion at the vaccine, not knowing what exactly they were procuring. Who spends that much money on a product they have not seen?

    N400 billion is a scandalous amount to spend on the procurement of vaccines, but more mortifying is the federal government’s sharing formula which dictates that Kogi state, which has denied the existence of the virus within its borders, gets more vaccines than the Federal Capital Territory and 10 other states. Lagos state, meanwhile, the epicentre of the virus, gets lesser number of vaccines than Kano State. Did the federal government cast lots? State governors’ only objection to the sharing formula was that they were not consulted. They did not think that where the federal government failed in taking charge, they should have stepped up. Where the blind leads the blind, both will roam endlessly.

  • FG frets about sovereignty

    FG frets about sovereignty

    By Paul Ade-Adeleye

    After taking careful measure of the state of Nigeria’s foreign policy and image, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, came to a spirited conclusion, which he delivered with some vim at a New Year media briefing on the achievements of the government in 2020. Without a doubt he was trying to talk tough, but the success of any tough talking relies extensively on the strength of arguments giving spine to the talk. This was where the minister ventured into the valley of the shadow of cavalierness. In a word, he argued back and forth, concluding that Nigeria’s very sovereignty was at stake and the government would not sit around to condone that rot.

    Among other things, he declaimed as follows: “Let me say straight away that Nigeria is fending off attacks on many fronts, not just from terrorists and bandits, but also from some human rights organizations and the International Criminal Court (ICC) which seem to have colluded to exacerbate the challenges facing the country in the area of security. While our security agencies continue to battle these bandits and terrorists, the ICC and some international human rights organizations, especially Amnesty International, have constituted themselves to another ‘fighting force’ against Nigeria, constantly harassing our security forces and threatening them with investigation and possible prosecution over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes…It beggars belief to see that a nation that is fighting an existential war against bandits and terrorists is constantly being held down by an international body which it willingly joined. Nigeria is a sovereign state and will not surrender its sovereignty to any organization. ICC, Amnesty International and their cohorts should desist from threatening our troops and putting the security of our country in jeopardy. Enough is enough.”

    The minister may believe that he is right about all of his facts. Indeed, there are those who will argue that he is. However, marshalling those facts into the conclusion that Nigeria was fending off attacks from the ICC is a different ball game. To start with, the minister should learn to differentiate the person from the office. If a person abuses his office and receives flak for this abuse, it does not mean the office is threatened. Contrary to the minister’s belief, the ICC, which has a Nigerian and a widely acclaimed, honourable patriot for its president, Justice Chile Oboe-Osuji, is not attacking the country’s sovereignty. One of the ICC’s purposes is to hear cases on genocides or acts of violence by those in power against their own people. Nigeria willingly joined the ICC, as the minister noted. Nothing in the ICC’s decision to deliberate on an issue that occurred within Nigeria threatens the country’s sovereignty. The body will not make any decisions that affect the independence and sovereignty of Nigeria, but it may make decisions that affect individuals who have abused authority to the detriment of the people.

    Moreover, it is not immediately clear how or why the minister believes the ICC is antagonising Nigeria. If the parties to the issues to be deliberated upon are innocent, then they have nothing to fear. The ICC does not directly legislate, save by judicial precedence, but it adjudicates on matters pursuant to extant legal instruments. As such, it is those instruments, which no one can make for Nigeria or force Nigeria to accede to except the country itself, that limit the extents to which defence and security operatives may go in the discharge of their duties.

    The minister again interpreted the CNN report on the events of October 20, 2020 as an attack on Nigeria. While many local journalists have criticized the quality of CNN’s report and the body has retired for the moment, unlikely to breathe a word on the issue again, the report does not appear to constitute an attack. It could have been anything, including an attempt at yellow journalism, but it was not an attack on either the Nigerian government or the officials in government. If anyone would lay claim to being attacked by the CNN, it would be the smarting Donald Trump, who for all his goofiness was still able to differentiate an attack on his person from an attack on the country, and even this did not stop him from performing what he believed in his eccentric way was his constitutional duty. The minister may want to reflect on how avoidable the situations were altogether instead of alleging that the country was under attack.

    NIMC: A comedy of errors

    By waking up one morning and asking network users, on threat of disconnection, to link their phone numbers with their National Identification Number (NIN), Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami, effectively directed the spotlight on an erstwhile obscure drama. For many years, inattention had covered up the monumental rot and farce that was the NIN affair, but the minister’s ill timing and controversial policy blew it into the limelight. In less than 48 hours, staff of the National Identity Management Commission went on strike and suspended it. The minister was not prepared for the drama that followed his policy and it is difficult to tell if he was unaware of the situation before announcing his policy, or if he was aware but deliberately negligent about it.

    The rankling theatre commenced shortly after the threatening announcement and heavy backlash saw the government give an extension of six weeks for subscribers without NIN to register. As at last count, over 100 million Nigerians were unregistered. The idea behind the policy is welcome; there must be a database for technology. Unfortunately, every other country is trying desperately to avoid physical gatherings due to the ravaging coronavirus pandemic; not Nigeria. As if to prove the ungodly nature of the timing, when the NIMC workers declared their indefinite strike on January 7, they alleged that their workers were exposed to COVID-19 hazards. Although they demanded payment of their allowance, they were particular about the lack of personal protective equipment.

    Although the workers have suspended their strike, the federal government may never be able to explain why it did not deploy the initial foresight to prevent this farce in the first place. This is just one of the many federal missteps which have come to light in recent months after remaining obscure for years. Many have asked why they need to still link their NIN with their phone numbers when they use the same phone numbers to retrieve the NIN in the first place. Some others have asked why there was a cost attached to it only for the government to remove those costs. The government has so far been reactionary rather than anticipatory, a mark of inefficiency. Should there not have been a procedure to streamline the entire affair? Is Nigeria still so digitally backward after trying to take so many steps forward? Unable to continue with plastic cards, they have developed the e-card. More reactions instead of anticipations.

    The government has so far not shown it is capable of handling the simple task of getting everyone enrolled in a database with their NIN. If things continue at this pace and with the same level of inefficiency, the government will have to face the embarrassment of about-facing on the NIN registrations. To avoid that, it would do well to put definitive measures in place to address the Cerberus of COVID-19, logistics, and staff welfare, until which time it will continue to falter in the NIN fiasco.