The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Convicted Nigerian human trafficker was Edo Assembly aspirant

    THE United Kingdom-based Nigerian nurse, Josephine Iyamu, who was convicted last  week in Britain for sex trafficking was an active player in Edo State politics ahead of the 2019 elections, according to reports yesterday.

    Iyamu was an aspirant for election into the State House of Assembly from Egor local government area.

    She lost in the primaries conducted by the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    A British court found Iyamu guilty of trafficking five women to Germany for prostitution.

    She will be sentenced on Wednesday.

    Ironically, Iyamu, who used the name Sandra Josephine Imaghodor on her campaign posters, had said her political mission was to empower women and families, online publication, The Cable, reported yesterday.

    During Iyamu’s trial, members of the jury were told that the 51-year-old nurse coerced all her Nigerian women  to swear to secrecy during “juju” rituals and to also pay for her service.

    The rituals involved eating chicken hearts, drinking blood containing worms, and rubbing powder into cuts.

    She was arrested in a joint operation between her agency and UK’s National Crimes Agency (NCA).

    The joint watchdog exercise was christened “Operation REDROOT”, itself a part of joint counter trafficking project named Joint Border Task Force (JBTF).

    She is the first person to be convicted under a new law that targets modern slavery.

  • No restructuring will be attempted before 2019

    IN a report published by the Nigerian Tribune early last week, officials of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) were said to be blaming one another for the lethargy demonstrated by their party over the Nasir el-Rufai committee report on true federalism. The report, which was submitted in January, has elicited scant attention from the Muhammadu Buhari presidency despite the highly publicised flurry of activities surrounding both its making and presentation. No one could say whether the el-Rufai panel, not to talk of its final report, got more than the cursory blessing of the party itself, for the APC had struggled to shrug off accusation of duplicity over the true federalism promise it made in its manifesto before the general elections of 2015.

    Perhaps shamed by the fact that it made a promise to institute true federalism, and afraid that the promise could become an electoral issue in 2019, the party ignored the protestations of its leader, the president, and empanelled a 23-man committee last August to look at the subject and make recommendations. The party of course did not promise restructuring in its manifesto; it only alluded to it, preferring instead to use the phrase “true federalism”, a concept that is neither necessarily interwoven with restructuring nor interchangeable with it. Nigerians were sceptical that the APC needed a panel to examine its own promise, but they nevertheless gave the party the benefit of the doubt.

    By January, after an extravagant flourish of activities across many states, the panel submitted its report and actually made some far-reaching recommendations that stopped annoyingly short of restructuring. Still maintaining their scepticism, and suggesting that half bread was better than none, Nigerians hoped that even those tame “true federalism” recommendations would somehow be embraced by the party and measures put in place to facilitate their execution. But instead of hopping towards execution, said the newspaper report, APC officials preferred to blame one another for the stasis that has enveloped the report.

    Quoting the APC publicity secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, the report said that the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) had completed its work on the subject and passed it on to the national caucus, en route to the presidency. The presidency confirmed it was yet to receive the report, with presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, indicating that the national caucus needed time to study the report, and adding that both the presidency and the national assembly were committed to ensuring progress on the true federalism matter in line with the promise of the APC. But other than constituting the el-Rufai panel, the party has not shown any substantial commitment to reforming the country’s deformed  federalism or embarking on real restructuring.

    It is a waste of time to expect the APC to do anything about true federalism or restructuring. The party is dead set against restructuring; and it will hedge for as long as it can on both true federalism, which it views warily, and restructuring, which it seems to abhor. Indeed, the party will not touch either subject before the next general elections except, by a miracle, it becomes politically exigent. And should they win the next elections, particularly the presidential poll, the party will feel justified by its indifference and interminable waffling, not to talk of being further encouraged to consign the matter to the archives.

    Indeed, for the incurable optimists who half expect the APC to demonstrate fidelity to its election promise, President Buhari’s determined opposition to anything smelling of structural change should put a damper on their hopes. In his New Year’s Day broadcast, the president suggested that rather than a problem of structure per se, Nigerians were contending with a lack of patience to allow gradual evolution of the political system. Said he: “In respect of political developments, I have kept a close watch on the on-going debate about “Restructuring”…We Nigerians can be very impatient and want to improve our conditions faster than may be possible…When all the aggregates of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems are more to do with process than structure.” The implication is that the president does not think the problem is restructuring. For, as he put it, “We tried the Parliamentary system: we jettisoned it. Now there are shrill cries for a return to the Parliamentary structure…We must give a long period of trial and improvement before the system we have adopted is anywhere near fit for purpose.”

    In his Independence Day broadcast last October, the president again angrily equated the strident call for restructuring with balkanisation. Hear him, and note the sarcasm: “Recent calls on re-structuring, quite proper in a legitimate debate, has let in highly irresponsible groups to call for dismemberment of the country. We cannot and we will not allow such advocacy…At all events, proper dialogue and any desired constitutional changes should take place in a rational manner, at the National and State Assemblies. These are the proper and legal fora for National debate, not some lopsided, un-democratic body with pre-determined set of objectives.” He could barely conceal his disgust.

    Neither true federalism nor restructuring will come from the president or his party, no matter the cost. While the president sneers at it, his party engages in brazen subterfuge. Those who want restructuring must, therefore, look for it elsewhere or put up with the president’s sneers and the ruling party’s loathing.

  • nPDP pushed farther into the cold

    NO one is sure if or when the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP), a faction of the legacy parties that constituted the APC in 2014, will defect. But until they do, they will find that their options are increasingly constricted. They know it, and are saddened and petrified by its many frightening implications. The Buhari presidency, alas, also knows it, and its leading lights are daily exultant that they have their enemies by the jugular. While the nPDP leaders squirm over their limited options, presidency officials and APC leaders inclined towards the president are eager to push the knife deeper into the backs of those they claimed have made life and politics very unpleasant for them.

    Last Monday, according to a report by this newspaper, President Buhari, who was rumoured to be prepared to meet with nPDP leaders to stave off an open rebellion, had called off the effort and opted for defiance. The nPDP is virtually in control of the National Assembly, a reality that grates on the nerves of the stolid but clumsy presidency, and provokes it into fury. That control has led to the national legislature constituting itself into the main opposition to the government, though, like the government, it is also an interest group in the APC.

    Hawkish presidential aides have spoken resoundingly and animatedly about the president’s decision to call the nPDP’s bluff. They will encourage the president and the party’s new leaders who will emerge from yesterday’s convention to take the battle to the rebellious and agitated faction. They will reason that if they cannot subsume the nPDP under their control, it would be advantageous to cripple it before the next general elections. The public should therefore expect that sooner rather than later, something will have to give. The faction is being pushed farther into the cold; it will either bite the bullet and defect, with all its deleterious consequences, or submit to defeat with all its ignoble implications.

    It was unlikely that the nPDP would take a final stand before the convention. They were expected to wait and see how the cats would jump in the convention before taking a leap in the dark. As the hostile presidency turns the screws on the faction in the coming days and weeks to force the hands of the nPDP, the faction’s leaders may finally confront apocalypse with the dignified resolve that becomes their stately politics. Should the presidency win the war of internal rebellion, there is nevertheless not much to suggest that the victory would not be pyrrhic, or that the nPDP would inexorably end their time in the political sunshine holding the short end of the stick.

    nPDP

  • nPDP as sword of Damocles

    DESPITE appearing to be the antitypical Nigerian politician, what with his coldness, truculence and terseness, President Muhammadu Buhari has shown himself somewhat deft in political manipulation and showiness. He has turned the All Progressives Congress (APC) inside out, played ducks and drakes with the affections of the party’s leading lights, used carrots and sticks against whomsoever he wills, kept caucuses of his kitchen cabinet at daggers drawn, and now seems set at disembowelling the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its renegade faction, the new PDP (nPDP), infamously embedded in the ruling party.

    No one in the APC can fail to see the nPDP as the sword of Damocles poised to decapitate both the president and his party. But tired of watching the party suffer nights of agonies, unsure when the sword would come crashing down, the president and his close aides have taken the battle to nPDP, especially its chief priest, Senate President Bukola Saraki. In the early tentative days of the Buhari presidency, Dr Saraki faced the growling Code of Conduct Tribunal, which tried amateurishly to impale him upon their sharp anti-graft spikes. But that seemed nothing but mere practice.

    In recent months, the police have proved a far more potent tool to put the senate president’s nose out of joint by accusing and investigating him for sundry crimes, including sponsoring killer cults. When that seemed a little far-fetched, the now famous April robbery incident in Offa, Kwara State, has come in handy as a battering ram. That robbery was perhaps the bloodiest in Nigerian history, with about 33 people shot dead by the robbers, among whom were some nine policemen. A few of the robbers were discovered by the police to be connected in one way or the other with Dr Saraki. Against the protestations of some of the victims of the April 5, 2018 robbery, the police have sworn to pursue Dr Saraki to his last warren to prove that the so-called connections, no matter how tenuous, are more real and substantial than they first appear.

    It is clear that neither the president nor his party is willing to stay interminably, sweatily and tremulously, under the nPDP sword of Damocles. But whether they are going about lifting the threat, or siege, with considerable legal and institutional decorum is a different matter entirely. What is important is that the president and his party are tired of the threat, and they are more than willing to confront their worst nightmare, decorum be damned. Dr Saraki himself, not to say his co-travellers, know that the nPDP and the APC are in an endgame. The only problem is that no one knows, or perhaps cares, how the chips may fall. For the APC, it should end fittingly in the total annihilation of Dr Saraki, especially. They wait for him to dare execute his defection plans. And for the nPDP and Dr Saraki, they can’t wait for the much foretold implosion in the APC. What is certain is that both combatants have crossed the Rubicon. Something’s, therefore, got to give; and someone’s got to lose. And it won’t be long, alas.

  • Saraki, NASS and IGP

    IN an unprecedented move, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, has initiated a legal action to quash the May 9 Senate resolution declaring him an enemy of democracy and an officer unfit to hold any public office within and outside Nigeria. He predicates the action on the alleged hatred and contempt he said the Senate and Senate President Saraki harbour towards him. How he hopes to get the courts to restore his standing in the society, and particularly with the National Assembly which finds his tactics and statements deeply troubling and objectionable, remains to be seen. The IGP’s court case is aside the many bitter attempts he has made to unnerve Dr Saraki and, as the Senate alleges, to also humiliate him.

    The Senate resolution came after the IGP had twice declined the invitation of the legislature to appear before the lawmakers to shed light on both the Dino Melaye affair and widespread killings in the country for which the police appeared not to have an answer. The IGP was dead set against appearing before the legislators, ostensibly because he had prior appointments, but more substantially because he feared humiliation. He is not a man given to philosophy, nor to eloquence of any kind or appreciable degree. Having just allegedly done the bidding of the Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, to humiliate Senator Melaye, the IGP sensed that the enraged senators would, by hostile questions, publicly show him up as lacking coherence and depth.

    By refusing to honour the invitations, the IGP drew the ire of the Senate, which went ahead to make the angry declarations aforesaid against the police boss. In response, Mr Idris authorised the police spokesman, Jimoh Moshood, and the Police Force legal officer to issue what the Senate describes as provocative statements against the legislature, and particularly against Dr Saraki. And to pile on the agony, the police seized upon the ongoing investigations of some suspects involved in cult killings in Kwara State and the April 5, 2018 Offa, Kwara State, robbery incident in which 33 people lost their lives, to pin a case on Dr Saraki. The senate president has since then been embroiled in managing the allegations against his person, and seething against what he describes as a wilful and insubordinate attempt by the IGP to ridicule the legislature.

    In all this, the presidency has kept a detached and gloating silence. The Senate had troubled the presidency to no end; and since the Nigerian presidential system is in fact an imperial presidency, and because the constitution wrongly assumes the country’s weak and fearful institutions can stand up to the fearsome executive, it is not surprising that NASS has been subjected to all sorts of provocations by irreverent appointees and government supporters. Furthermore, sensing that the presidency does not appear averse to their brashness and defiance, the police have upped the ante and insisted that, as far as the Offa robbery was concerned, Dr Saraki indeed had a case to answer, a conclusion that has divided Offa people and their chiefs. The police are not struck by the paradox of asking Dr Saraki to appear before them while the IGP refuses to honour Senate invitations. In the ongoing contestation of wills, the police have in fact sensed that Nigerians seem to despise both the NASS and Dr Saraki more than they revile the police. This realisation has spurred the police on to excesses and repudiation of democratic tenets.

    No one can predict how the whole saga will end, whether it will end well for the individuals involved and for the country, or end badly. But after the tit for tat has ended, after Dr Saraki might have known his fate either within or outside the ruling party, and long after the IGP has vacated office, both officers will face the fury of life after office. In the case of the politician, if his enemies do not succeed in unhorsing him, he will continue to maintain some relevance. The same thing cannot be said of Mr Idris. Having endured ridicule over his competence and elocution in the past few months, he will find to his dismay and embarrassment that he will be shunned in polite circles and subjected to merciless lampoons in the press, particularly on social media.

  • CJN Onnoghen on politicisation of judicial appointments

    SPEAKING at the first Biennial Lecture of the Lagos State judiciary two weeks ago, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, complained of both the undue political influence brought by politicians on the appointment of judges and the declining quality of lawyers. To tackle the second complaint, it seems a question of time before the study of Law is reviewed and made a second-degree course. But of more immediate concern is the CJN’s first complaint, the politicisation of the appointment of judges. Apart from probably predicating the appointment of judges on a second law degree, the CJN must by now have realised that it is not only politicians who influence the appointment of judges; the judiciary itself has become in large part a camorra of influence peddlers.

    Sometime last year, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo drew the attention of the nation and the judiciary in particular to how judges were appointed in other climes, and advised that Nigeria must make the process very rigorous and fool-proof. His observation was seconded by a number of top jurists even as the Court of Appeal was about to begin the process of appointing appellate judges. Could the judiciary say since then that it had adhered to the rigorous selection process Prof. Osinbajo and others rhapsodised? Too many extraneous considerations have found their way into the appointment of judges, with the consequent negative effects on the quality, scholarship and independence of the Bench. The Bar may be inadequate; but obviously, the Bench is even more so.

    Let Justice Onnoghen walk the talk and embark on rigorous internal reforms backed by relevant amendments to the law. If the cycle of mediocrity is not broken someday, who can tell when it will be, or just how low the country must sink before the people are angry enough to force radical changes?

  • Bafarawa’s 10-point political caterwauling

    ON Democracy Day, former Sokoto State governor, Attahiru Bafarawa, poured out his heart in a full-page advertisement decrying the sad turn democracy and the rule of law had taken in Nigeria. He did not fully explain why he addressed the advert to the All Progressives Congress (APC) national leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But he did that, it seems, because he is persuaded that Asiwaju Tinubu has earned a leadership position in the ruling party and the democracy movement in general on account of his pedigree as a major contributor to the founding of the Fourth Republic, his role in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), and his pivotal work in the APC. He justifies the open letter to the former Lagos State governor in the expectation that the recipient will, in case he has not already done so, rise to the stature of the conscience of his party, or, more grandly, the conscience of Nigerian democracy.

    The letter is quite more plaintive than it wails. It came from the depths of the former Sokoto State governor’s heart without its swaddling emotions weakening or demeaning the letter’s loud and rousing rationalisations spread over 10 uneven, and in some ways incendiary, paragraphs. The former Sokoto governor focuses on two principal issues in the letter, both of which he says require the intervention of Asiwaju Tinubu. One is Alhaji Bafarawa’s abhorrence of what he describes as the APC government’s abridgment of the rule of law, a cardinal political sin that has led to the witch-hunting of many opposition leaders. The opposition leaders, he sneers, are charged with corruptly enriching themselves, while many APC chiefs, some of whom were until recently members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have been spared the ordeal of prosecution.

    Two is Alhaji Bafarawa’s observation that opposition leaders are being “unjustly arrested and detained” for sundry but unfounded crimes, including spending public funds for political campaigns. According to the former governor, no PDP leader funded his party in the last polls any different from how APC chiefs funded their party’s campaigns. Yet, it is only opposition leaders that are subjected to all forms of indignity, he concludes. It was clear that nearly all his complaints were anchored on the arrest and prosecution of PDP chiefs, of whom he is obviously one.

    But whether his complaints were connected with his own personal troubles with the anti-graft body, the EFCC, or not is hard to say. In the advertisement, he glosses over the court case brought against him by the EFCC for allegedly receiving N600m from a former minister, Bashir Yuguda, who in turn allegedly collected the money from the detained National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, a retired army colonel. Alhaji Bafarawa had sought to decouple his trial from that of Col Dasuki (retd.), but has so far failed. He has said repeatedly that if given accelerated trial, he would be absolved of every wrongdoing.

    The import of the advertisement, therefore, is to alert Asiwaju Tinubu to the gradual attenuation of democratic principles under the APC government, a disaster Alhaji Bafarawa says requires someone of the status of the former Lagos governor to speak up about and possibly arrest the drift. It is tempting to dismiss the whining of the former Sokoto governor, especially considering how really tenuous most of his observations are. But there is no doubt that his observations have been given fillip by the increasing predilection of the APC government to want to personify, rather than be the custodians of, the law and the constitution. A few human rights organisations, some of them with global purviews, have made the same observations regarding how awkwardly the APC government has handled or interacted with the rule of law, the rights of individuals, and democratic principles.

    Given the way the APC is structured, where for the past three years it seldom acted or operated as a well-knit political party, it is doubtful whether Asiwaju Tinubu would heed the plaintive admonition of Alhaji Bafarawa. Even when the former Sokoto governor’s observations are genuine, it is not certain that anyone’s interventions would be of such value as to tug at the conscience of the party or recalibrate the operations of a party led along patrician lines. The party seems increasingly enamoured of populism, and its approval ratings have not quite sagged as its sometimes incompetent handling of statecraft deserved. It is not immediately obvious how many Nigerians think Alhaji Bafarawa’s observations are genuine or justifiable. Nor is it clear whether anyone in the APC would be willing to put his reputation on the line to coax the ruling party into a more futuristic and less populist mode. Nor, yet, is anyone sure that the party leaders are even amenable at all to well-meaning interventions.

    Indeed, it will take a celestial sleight of hand to create a critical mass of opposition politicians and hostile circumstances to force the APC off its high horse. The ruling party is sitting pretty in the saddle, assured that no one of stature in the opposition is able to galvanise the kind of opposition required to force the APC to examine grievances and renew its social contract with the people. Until these take place, Alhaji Bafarawa might just be tilting at windmills.

  • IGP and Senate’s tactless visit to presidency

    A DAY after the police leadership concluded plans to transfer to Abuja a group of suspects arrested in Kwara State for cult-related offences, Senate President Bukola Saraki raised the alarm that he feared he was about to be framed for crimes he knew nothing about. The police immediately denied the allegation of collusion and conspiracy. Weeks before, however, especially following the controversial Dino Melaye affair poorly and melodramatically handled by the police in Abuja with the suspicious connivance of the Kogi State government, the Senate had declared the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris an enemy of democracy and unfit to hold public office. The IGP had thrice been invited by the Senate to answer questions relating to the poor handling of the Melaye affair and the country’s dangerous lurch towards anomie; but thrice the IGP declined, thumbing his nose at the senators, questioning their bona fides, and lecturing them on the duties and responsibilities of the parliament.

    Infuriated by his presumptuousness and the many barbs he threw at the Senate, and affronted by the widespread nods and winks from the public, the Senate huffily dismissed the IGP as ignorant and incompetent. It was while the back and forth between the parliament and the IGP was still seething that the Kwara cult case popped up, a case the Senate appears convinced was contrived by the police to frame Dr Saraki. After all, said the Kwara State government, the case was not buried nor downplayed; investigations had been concluded and advice from the state’s Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) had been secured; and the suspects were due to be charged in court. Both the state and Dr Saraki said they were mystified by the peremptory decision to move the suspects to Abuja knowing full well that they could neither be tried in Abuja nor kept there indefinitely.

    The following were the sentiments that set the stage for this inordinate and demeaning grandstanding. Dr Saraki had said: “This plot is part of the strategy by the IGP Idris to settle scores over the declaration by this honourable Chamber that he is not qualified and competent to hold any public office, within and outside the country and that he is an enemy of Nigerian democracy based on his usual disrespectful conduct towards lawful authorities. In my own view, this plot is an act of desperation, blackmail, intimidation, abuse of office and crude tactics aimed at turning our country into a Police State where top officials cannot be made to obey the law, follow due process and subject themselves to constituted authorities.”

    But the IGP responded thus: “The Force (therefore) wishes to categorically state that there is no iota of truth in the allegation and false assertion by the Senate President of plot against him by the IGP to implicate the Kwara State Government and the Senate President in any criminal matter. Until investigation is concluded, any person (s) or group(s) who tries to interfere in the investigation process by action or utterances is committing an offence.” The IGP also added that his interest was to ensure “that justice prevails in the matter. Nobody, no matter how highly-placed, would be allowed to interfere or obstruct police investigation to pervert the course of justice.” He then gave dark hints that the Senate President, by his hasty conclusions, could “dissuade and discourage living victims/deceased families of those who must have been killed by this vicious hired assassin gang from coming forward to give evidence against them.” Nonesense.

    While it is difficult to vouch for the police, not to talk of trusting the IGP himself, given the way he has conducted himself over the Melaye affair, it is even harder to make sense of the decision by the Senate to send representation to the president over the Kwara cult matter. The police did not persuade anyone it didn’t have an axe to grind on the cult case, nor that it was not motivated by some subterranean goals, but they still can manage on the surface to justify their decision to transfer the case to Abuja on the excuse that they want more diligent investigation. Do Nigerians, after all, not sometimes petition Abuja to take over a case if they feared that it had been compromised by some vested or powerful interests?

    The Senate can sensibly justify why it is at daggers drawn with the police. The IGP, despite his grandstanding and abusive and disrespectful statements, has not inspired confidence that he is independently minded, that he is not at the whimsical beck and call of the president and possibly some other shadowy groups. If therefore the Senate takes him to task, regardless of their own embarrassing weaknesses, they do so as the parliament. But senators are supposed to be smart enough to know that the IGP is working very closely with Aso Villa, for he sees himself first and foremost as a tool in the hands of the presidency, not as Nigeria’s chief law officer. The IGP does not think in the grand perspectives of a chief law officer, and indeed appears incapable of doing so, going by his appalling and disrespectful statements against the parliament. It takes a misguided public officer not to know that there is a difference between some individuals in the parliament and the National Assembly as an institution.

    Had the Senate thus guided itself in deciphering the IGP’s worldview, they would have moderated their anger against him. More crucially, and surely, the Senate knows that the presidency itself does not appear ruffled by the views and shenanigans of the IGP. Indeed, they give the impression he is working at their behest. So, why would the Senate needlessly raise a team to report the IGP to the president? What good could they hope would come out of it? They should have kept dignified and magisterial aloofness, continue to make laws as deftly as they can manage, make pronouncements on errant public officers and appointees even if the government and the public scorn them, and put as much pressure as possible to defang their enemies, especially the so-called enemies of democracy. The Senate may not know it, but the fact is that while many may object to some of the parliament’s abhorrent practices and disposition, they also have no illusions whatsoever about the total lack of nobility of appointees like the IGP and how indifferently he and others like him try to undermine democracy.

  • A very taciturn 2018 budget

    THE 2018 N9.12trn budget is famous for its lateness, both in terms of the deliberations by the National Assembly and the reluctance by ministers to defend their estimates. It strangely and inexplicably took the intervention of the president, after complaints by the parliament, to get the relevant ministers to grudgingly defend their budgets. But the final budget is even more famous for what it didn’t say, for all the things it is silent over as far as sectoral allocations are concerned.

    Among the allocations, Power, Works and Housing got N714.6bn; Interior got N576bn; Defence received N575.6bn; and Education took N541.2bn. First, it is significant that the parliament had to raise the Works, Power and Housing allocation from the original allocation of N555.88bn, and Education from N496.9bn, when the government ought to naturally raise the allocations without any persuasion. Second, without saying it, Defence still takes the largest vote if the extra allocation of N78bn to such sub heads as Operation Lafiya Dole is added.

    Third, the Education allocation is embarrassingly low at N496.9bn, and it had to take the parliament to even add a little to it thus bringing the total for that sector to N541.2bn. Fourth, it is wrong to regard the Power, Works and Housing allocation as the highest. It is not, when it is considered along its traditional classification. Previously the ministry comprised two powerful, separate ministries of Works and Housing, and Power and Steel.

    This budget, despite claims about its magnitude and the hope reposed in it, lacks philosophical grounding. If it works, it will be accidental rather than planned, and thanks a little to the parliament rather than the executive.

  • Benue bishops and Osinbajo’s dilemma

    AS the killings in parts of the Middle Belt continue to test the patience and impartiality of the Buhari presidency to its elastic limit, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, an evangelical Christian and professor of law, will find himself responding more and more testily. The government he serves is accused by some people of being biased against Christians and condoning the senseless murder of people in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. He will find it increasingly difficult to navigate the treacherous waters of religious politics in Nigeria, particularly in his response to allegations that the president seems covertly biased.

    On Tuesday, the vice president nearly lost his patience when he responded to the severe statements made by some Christian and community leaders during his visit to Benue State, particularly the unsparing words of the Catholic Bishop of Gboko, Williams Avenya. The bishop had suggested that the vice president was not speaking up enough as a Christian about the atrocities perpetrated by herdsmen in Benue State. “The point I’m trying to make,” said the bishop critically and a little censoriously, “is that a day is going to come when you, as the vice-president, will bear the brunt of that problem of injustices in our land, especially those perpetrated on smaller ethnic groups that have no one to fight for them. So, as a Christian person, exonerate yourself from this situation.”

    Prof Osinbajo seems to have recognised the dilemma he and other Christians in government face regarding how to react to wrongdoings around them, particularly in government. They often merely hint at that noxious dilemma; they have not indicated whether in fact they have ever condemned such wrongdoings; or whether indeed they have a Christian approach to responding to anomalies in governance. Barely a month ago, when he attended the 50th birthday celebration of Binta Masi Garba, a senator, in Yola, Adamawa State, the vice president cooed about the presence in the Buhari government of a few top Christians. “The truth of the matter is that in the government of today, we have some of the most erudite Christians, some of the best Christians occupying positions in government,” he had enthused. “Boss Mustapha, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who is a pastor; the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, and of course I, the Vice-President, are all Christians. But it is not enough to have Christians in government like myself. It is never enough. If you look through the scriptures, whether it was Joseph, Daniel or Esther, every person who made an impact in governance in the scripture that we see was supported by the prayers of the people of God. God is not moved unless we move His hands in the place of prayers. We are in a period in history when God wants to do something; that is why some of us are in government. The opportunity must not be lost, your prayers to God will make that difference.”

    A little over a month after this, Prof Osinbajo was confronted by Christian leaders in Benue who feared that he was not speaking up enough, going by the dithering of the Buhari presidency over the killings in the state and the befuddling tendency of the government to explain the killings rather than act against the killers. Indeed, it seemed that the bishop and others feared that the vice president had become timid since all the views on the killings have come from government officials who seemed more bothered by extraneous considerations and justifications than the tragedy of the killings.

    Needled, however, Prof Osinbajo responded testily: “My Lord Bishop, you said you are not a politician, I am also not a politician. As a matter of fact, I’m also a priest and I’m a Christian, a born again Christian. Because I’m a born again Christian, my destiny is not determined by any man but by God who I serve. Let me assure you that under no circumstances, none whatsoever, will I give up my faith or refuse to stand up for my faith. You can take that to the bank. Even the position that I currently occupy, I did not ask for it and I’m prepared to leave it at a short notice. It doesn’t mean anything…How possible is it that anyone can say that the killing of women and children doesn’t matter because he is vice-president or because he is President? How is that possible? Certainly, it cannot be for a person who is born again. A renewed mind will know that there is justice, there is consequence even if there is no justice here on earth.”

    What the bishop and Christian leaders wanted to hear from him was not an asseveration of his faith, or the integrity of his Christian walk, but firm assurances that the killings would stop, and that in fact the government he serves is clear about the killings and what should be done. The Buhari presidency has neither given those assurances nor are they clear what on earth the killings are about, nor have they so far been able to stem the flow of blood. Prof Osinbajo should not be surprised that Benue’s Christian and community leaders put his feet to the fire; they are the victims, and they have buried too many of their relations and parishioners to fear the look on his face, or salivate at the rendering of his Christian credentials.