The Nation Newspaper

Category: Barometer

  • Adewole and Buhari’s health status controversy

    IN two separate interviews, Health minister, Isaac Adewole, a professor of medicine, insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari had the right both to seek medical care abroad and to decline to disclose the nature of his ailment. The minister argued that if the president sought help abroad, it was probably because Nigeria had unfortunately been unable to manage information with the discreteness and circumspection that would not further jeopardise a patient’s health. He added that seeking medical care abroad did not imply that the president had lost faith in Nigeria’s healthcare system.

    Of course, in the face of death or severe incapacitation, a man would demonstrate excessive fortitude not to seek help wherever it can be found. But, contrary to what the minister said, President Buhari is not just a man, any man. He is president, elected into office, and sustained by tax payers’ money. As a public officer, he owes those who elected him into office, and the rest of the country as a whole, full disclosure concerning the ailment afflicting and probably debilitating him. No matter the severity or mildness of the affliction, the president ought to commonsensically disclose the nature of the health crisis he is contending with.

    Prof Adewole is wrong to dismiss Nigerians as incompetent in managing information. On the contrary, it is the government that has proved spectacularly incompetent in managing information. Had the government fully and timeously disclosed the nature of the president’s health problem, there would be no reason to mismanage the information or engage in wild speculation about it. Furthermore, contrary to what the minister said, the president’s foreign medical trip is undoubtedly an indication that he thinks Nigerian hospitals are incapable of handling his ailment, whether it has to do with personnel or equipment.

    The president is about to embark on another round of political campaigns. Regardless of the arduousness of the campaigns, he is now even more unlikely to want to disclose his ailment. This attitude is an indication of his own and his aides’ understanding of democracy. As far as he is concerned, he is recuperating very well, and that is all that matters. That is all the information he believes Nigerians should be entitled to, sadly.

  • Senate V. IGP Idris: Obduracy rewarded

    IF on the three occasions the Senate invited the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, he had honoured them with his ‘powerful and imperial’ presence, it would have cost him and the Police Force far less than the more than five or six advertisement pages he has taken out in a few newspapers to explain and justify his obduracy. Since he takes out advert spaces every time he is summoned and he declines the invitation, there is no telling whether a fourth invitation would not see him galloping over the heads of the parliament to appeal yet again to the emotions of the undiscriminating public. Mr Idris has turned the invitation into a test of wills; he will feel compelled to stand his ground, regardless of how objectionable it is.

    The Senate invitations were anchored on two grounds, to wit, the Dino Melaye affair, and the unexplained and unending killings in some parts of the country. Mr Idris has chosen to anchor his obdurate refusal to honour the invitations on one of the two grounds, the Melaye affair, preferring to either ignore or considerably downplay the issue of worsening insecurity in the country. The Melaye affair, a label to capture the triangular mess orchestrated by both the malevolent Kogi State government and the increasingly high-handed Police Force against the comical lawmaker representing Kogi West in the Senate, is the more emotive of the two reasons for which Mr Idris has been repeatedly summoned to explain himself.

    Last Thursday, a day after he declined the third invitation to meet with the Senate, Mr Idris published a two-page advertisement to explain why he was not inclined to accept the invitation. The first page was a 10-point thesis by the Commissioner of Police, Police Force’s Legal and Prosecution Section, David Igbodo, detailing the constitutional and legal principles upon which the IGP’s reluctance to honour the Senate invitations were anchored. He offered two corroborations to undergird those legal and constitutional principles. One is that the IGP can sometimes be so busy officially, as the Birnin Gwari, Kaduna State crisis implied, that he could choose to ignore the Senate invitation. The IGP, said Mr Igbodo, was on a visit to the crisis spot in Kaduna State with an army general and he simply could not honour the invitation.

    Two is the fact that after the invitation, and perhaps suspecting that his refusal could become embroiled in unseemly controversy, the IGP headed for the courts to help him determine whether he must honour every invitation in person, or he can delegate. The courts, as usual, obligingly took on the case and have adjourned hearing to May 31, 2018. The irony of not delegating his visit to Kaduna but choosing to delegate the Senate visit did not strike the IGP. In any case, consequent upon the court case, Mr Idris has chosen to interpret, as he deems whimsically fit, the law against the Senate’s inexplicable resolve to describe him in uncomplimentary language as an enemy of democracy and someone unfit to hold public office. Mr Igbodo ends the advertisement, as the police have done since the Melaye affair began, by fulsomely, if a little sarcastically, proclaiming the “very high regard and respect” the IGP has for the Senate. Surely, Mr Igbodo does not expect anyone to believe him.

    The second page advertisement, less charitable than Mr Igbodo’s, was penned by the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, an assistant commissioner of police. As he did in respect of earlier invitations, the police image maker sought to educate the Senate on the parliament’s role vis-a-vis the functions of the police. Having educated the parliament over nine paragraphs, Mr Moshood, in the 10th paragraph, dismissed the insistence of the Senate to hear from the IGP directly as “deliberate blackmail, witch-hunting with mischievous motives to arm-twisting the IGP to pervert the end of justice in a felonious and serious offenses of criminal conspiracy and unlawful possession of prohibited firearms…” The advertisement ended even more pugnaciously and acerbically with the declaration that the police owed no individual or group any apology.

    Just as President Muhammadu Buhari got away with the extra-budgetary spending of about half a billion dollars some two months ago, Mr Idris is also unfortunately likely to get away with all the insults he has heaped on the Senate. It must be clear to the Senate and most Nigerians that the IGP has high-level backing in a surreptitious campaign to whittle down the influence and prestige of a parliament that has become a pain in the neck to the government. Sadly, too, the parliament has tended to be self-destructive, unable to draw the line, like the executive branch, between private and public interest. Worse, tainted by accusations of graft and other forms of malfeasances, the parliament has struggled to stay afloat in a sea of mendacities and atrocious behaviour. Despite all this, however, there is absolutely no excuse for the conspiracy being orchestrated against the parliament.

    Indeed, much worse, those who should know the central role a parliament plays in a democracy, and who are cognisant of the frightening tendency of the executive to embrace authoritarian methods, have cynically voted to side with the petulant, abusive and imperious Mr Idris. There can be no justification for the IGP’s rudeness. The parliament, whether their lawmaking ability is applauded or deprecated, remains the people’s representatives. They may sometimes be self-serving, offensive in behaviour, and tending to frivolity, but they were elected by the people. If the people want a better parliament, they have a chance to do so in 2019. But until that change is effected, every other arm of government, all government appointees, and the citizenry have an obligation to sustain the parliament, strengthen it, coax it when necessary, cajole it when needed, and warily watch the executive in their natural tendency to undermine the parliament. Enlightened self-interest imposes an obligation on the public to support their parliament even when many lawmakers fall far short of public and lawmaking decorum.

    One of the reasons Africa has such terrible record with democracy is not just the inadequacy of elected officials, but the short-sightedness of the people themselves, their abominable inability to gauge what is in their own long-term interest. The IGP’s behaviour must be execrated, while the silence and even indifference of the presidency must be deeply deplored. If Nigerians do not resist the awful urge to undermine their parliament, if they cannot summon the discipline to wait for the next polls to elect a better parliament, if they think it sensible to withhold their support until a better parliament arrives, they will have reenacted and illustrated just how and why their forebears foolishly lost generations of their young to slavery, and their lands to colonialism. Surely, stupidity is not racial.

  • Buhari backs away from state police

    AFTER many years of pussyfooting on the question of state police, the All Progressives Congress (APC) appears finally to have made up its mind. There will be no state police, says President Muhammadu Buhari in an interview with the Voice of America (VOA) during his trip to the United States. The president was never enamoured of state police, it must be admitted. As a matter of fact, he had always been generally and generously opposed to any constitutional amendment of such weight and substance as to qualify for the progressive label of rapid, if not radical, transformation.

    Remarkably, for the significant issue of state police, the president anchored his conviction on the single but simple element of states’ financial solvency. Asked by his interviewer, Aliyu Mustapha, what his position on state police was, the president responded: “I want the Nigerian Constitution to be consulted first and see what it says. If it says they should be allowed, then they should be allowed. But don’t forget, how many times did we have to release money to states in the name of bailouts to enable them pay salaries? How many states are able to pay their workers in time? And you add the police to them? People should look at this matter very well.”

    Apparently not satisfied with the president’s rhetorical statement and how he seemed so sparse in his answer, the interviewer pressed him further to know why he seemed unconvinced about state police. The president responded: “No, I am not convinced. We should have solved the current insecurity in the North-east and South-South by now. Can the states be able to shoulder the burden of the police? You cannot just give someone guns and ammunition, train him and refuse to pay him, you know what will eventually happen.”

    It is not only the interviewer who was mystified by the president’s response. Everyone would be surprised that for a question that demanded his best philosophical response, complete with a discourse on federalism and examples from other polities, and a reasoned argument from him about why Nigeria should toe the line of the majority or be different, the president simply dismissed the grave constitutional conundrum with a terse and uninspiring reply. Worse, he seemed even unsure what the constitution says on the matter. No, he didn’t seem unsure; he actually did not know what the constitution says.

    More and more, it is evident that there will be no serious effort to rework Nigeria. If the president cannot appreciate the significance of the insecurity problem overwhelming Nigeria, where soldiers are deployed in about 32 states to carry out police duties; if he cannot understand the tragic implications of deploying more and more soldiers around the country with all the support infrastructure, including brigades and operational bases, then clearly Nigeria will keep on mindlessly adopting the same jaded measures and expecting different outcomes. It is clear that, as his position on many grave national issues indicate, the president has made up his mind on state police without giving the matter any serious thought whatsoever.

    With the president making up his mind so facilely, supported largely by confused commentators averse to fundamental structural and constitutional changes, the idea of state police may be dead for now. But it cannot be avoided in the long run, of course, and things are going to get far worse before Nigerian leaders recognise that they had been tilting at windmills. The president’s response also shows the hypocrisy of the APC and the disconnection between him and his party. In January, the APC ad hoc committee on true federalism indicated that a majority of respondents agreed with the quest for state police. It is not clear whether the president consulted with the recommendations made by the committee set up by the party he leads.

    Importantly too, in February, perhaps flowing from the work of the party’s ad hoc committee, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo cautiously threw his weight behind state police. That same February, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), pursuant to a national security summit they held in Abuja, all but accepted the inevitability of state police, but hedged it with the caveat that only states able to fund it should go for it. The governors did not make the argument about the possible misuse of the police, even though it is a genuine reason to dilly-dally.

    Overall, the president is wrong to hinge his distaste for state police on the issue of funding. Not only is the federal government grossly underfunding the police, it is not also able to innovative in structuring and running it. If the states had not weighed in to provide financial succour for the police, the law enforcement agency would have since collapsed.

    It is also frustrating that the president simply cannot make a connection between the increasing deployment of soldiers in states for police duties and the fact that the present structure, control, funding and operations of the police indicate both gross inadequacy in federal management of the organisation and the need to develop a new police and law enforcement paradigm in its entirety. But perhaps the president and his aides are still capable of presenting far more plausible and coherent arguments to sustain their needless and counterproductive opposition to state police. The public would like to hear those arguments.

  • Buhari, Trump and Obasanjo

    EVIDENTLY buoyed by the outcome of his state visit to the United States, President Buhari has been quite upbeat in reporting and reminiscing about his interactions with the flaky and cantankerous President Donald Trump. In one widely publicised photograph of the visit, the US president leaned fondly over President Buhari with an avuncular grin and a penetrating gaze at the camera. The Nigerian president himself beamed as he signed the visitors register. There are no details yet to illustrate how well President Buhari held his own during his private meeting with the abrasive and impatient Mr Trump. But if their joint press conference is any guide, then President Buhari’s lingering and celebratory mood may be hard to explain or justify. The Nigerian president managed to avoid a disaster, but there were many gaffes and uninspiring moments, with the American president coming to his aid now and again.

    Perhaps feeling justified that the president’s unimpressive performance was striking enough for everyone to see, former president Olusegun Obasanjo used the US visit as a handy tool to fiercely debunk social media gossips suggesting that he had endorsed the president’s re-election bid on account of that visit. Ex-president Obasanjo was excoriating, according to a statement by his spokesman, Kehinde Akinyemi. He writes: “For the record, Obasanjo has not and cannot endorse failure. His position remains as stated in his January 23, 2018 statement on the state of the nation. Chief Obasanjo sympathises with the plight of the campaigners and supporters of Buhari. He doesn’t believe dishing out fake news that can only be believed by imbeciles will turn black into white. Nigerians know that Chief Obasanjo has only spoken the truth about widening poverty, alienation and social disunity and near disintegration of the country through Buhari’s incompetence. Obasanjo will continue to exercise his right to free speech and no amount of hate speech will assuage Nigerians who are in need of a brand new leadership. The mediocre performance of Buhari cannot be described by anybody as ‘superlative’ even by morons, not the least President Obasanjo.”

    Obviously, there will be no let up in the former president’s attacks against President Buhari, especially as the general elections draw near. But expect, as the president’s exultant mood in the US showed, a more confident and daring President Buhari to boldly take on his enemies, including Dr Obasanjo, who until last week the presidency treated with deferential esteem.

  • Modu Sheriff gets dizzy crisscrossing parties

    LEFT to the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, would probably have been a welcome change to the dreariness overtaking the ruling party in its stalemated indecision between going forward with a new chairman, possibly Adams Oshiomhole, and retaining the status quo with the current chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun. Senator Sheriff (Borno Central, 1999-2003), is undoubtedly the antithesis to the APC. He is not known for indecision like the APC, for he firmly and boisterously often prompts himself into new deals, political and business-wise. Middle of last week, his supporters were reported to have broadcast the news that the former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) interim chairman was set to defect to the APC. National officials of the APC, however, disclosed that Sen Sheriff was expected to resume his party membership from his ward in Borno State.

    Most of Sen Sheriff’s associates and former state chairmen when he was PDP interim chairman have defected already to the APC. It seems a question of time before he himself will find his way into the ruling party. Given the warm welcome his men received when they returned to the APC, any cold feet by party leaders to Sen Sheriff’s return appears contrived and tentative. Sooner or later, the return, the new deal so to say, will be consummated. After all, for a brief but significant period during the APC’s formative months, the Borno senator was a ranking and vocal member of the APC. But whether he is capable of developing the political principles and fundamentals that transcend his idiosyncratic passion for partisan politics remains to be seen. It may even be possible that neither his hosts in the various political parties he has sojourned in nor he himself finds it compelling to develop or be enamoured of such principles.

    The Borno State chapter of the APC is completely unenthusiastic about the return of the peregrinator. They see him in those troubled Boko Haram regions as someone who loves to foment trouble, and someone who stays with that trouble to its bitter, logical and intractable end. Pejoratively described as Alhaji Allah both for his insouciance and arrogance, and possessing a taste and manner that are at once grandiloquent and offensive, Borno APC leaders, including the governor, Kashim Shettima, have kept up an adamantine resolve to abort Sen Sheriff’s return to the APC come what may. The Borno APC leaders, rather than the party’s national officials, were probably responsible for the miscarriage of the return ceremony of the imperious former governor last Thursday. But he is used to being opposed, even viciously. Made of sterner stuff than his enemies allow him, he never sees an opposition he is not capable of overcoming with the accustomed exuberance and drama of his enigmatic presence.

    When APC leaders welcomed the return or defection of Sen Sheriff’s men, their enthusiasm was truly infectious as they gushed about the political and electoral possibilities it would open up for the ruling party. It is unlikely that the same leaders would not see Sen Sheriff’s return to the APC in even grander colours. The defections, probably accompanied by the senator’s return sometime later, are seen not only for their value in swelling the ranks of the APC but as a more potent means of depleting the ranks of the struggling and exhausted PDP. The APC has not really presented an alternative to the PDP in substance, character and ideology. Party leaders will, therefore, seize upon any action or event, no matter how flimsy and ephemeral, including encouraging self-centred defections, to affirm their illusory claim to superiority and exceptionalism.

    But more importantly, there is the nagging suspicion that party leaders are really keen on the defection of Sen Sheriff because of his potential capacity to tilt the scales in the struggle between party leaders for the heart and mind of the APC. Chief Odigie-Oyegun, the party’s embattled chairman, is struggling to diminish the president’s endorsement of the Oshiomhole candidacy, and in one fell swoop also swing support away from what seems to him to be the steady accretion of power by the Bola Ahmed Tinubu point of view in the party. Sen Sheriff and Asiwaju Tinubu have remained, since the former’s hasty exit from the young APC coalition in 2014, at daggers’ drawn. With the schism in the APC pronounced between the Odigie-Oyegun and Tinubu persuasions, the re-entry of Sen Sheriff may be expected to have some limiting effect on the latter and serve as a catalyst for the ambitions of the former.

    The former Borno State governor from 2003-20011 may have built a reputation for being a political nomad, having moved from the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) to the APC, and then on to the PDP, and now planning to return to the APC. Yet he remains a dogged fighter, a suspect agent provocateur available for anybody’s use, a feisty conservative ideologue paradoxically ready to fit into any progressive construct, and a bold, wealthy and hard working political leader. His presence in Borno APC may no doubt be superfluous, but party leaders in Abuja are likely to see him fit into the role of a national game changer, partisan pugilist in the coming campaigns, and unquestionable zealot who would never shirk a fight, any fight. But whether his undeniable gifts and precarious manners are altogether suited to the contemporary needs of the APC is a different thing completely, as his trajectory in the giddy months of the PDP schisms showed very amply.

     

  • Shiites, El-Zakzaky and APC’s legal snafu

    MORE than two years after he was detained in a so-called “protective custody” shortly after the December 2015 clash between Shiites and the military in Zaria, Kaduna State, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, the sect’s leader, has been charged in court with, among other counts, murder of one soldier and wounding of another. Nothing was said of the 347 Shiite members killed and buried in two mass graves by the same security forces who engaged them in the fight at the gates of the sect’s headquarters. Nothing was also said about the court judgements ordering him to be released and compensated. Nothing was said, too, about his wife who was charged with him, but whom the secret service had said insisted on her own volition on staying with her husband in detention.

    An eight-count charge was brought against the sect leader, his wife, and two other Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) members. The Kaduna State government is so powerful that it will not offer the people any explanation why it took more than two years to file a simple eight-count charge against only four suspects. And while the charges seemed to be a response to the continuing protest of IMN members on Kaduna and Abuja streets, it also seems clear that the state government working in tandem with the federal government is determined to keep the Shiite leader locked up indefinitely.

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) claims to be a great proponent of the rule of law, loves and is eager to promote democratic principles, and aspires to run a responsive and ethical government. But the Kaduna State government, together with soldiers in 2015, did not flinch at the killing of more than 300 Shiite members, was not alarmed by its own insensitivity of refusing to document and identify those killed, flaunted its power by demolishing the headquarters of the sect in Zaria, arguing that the sect was never liked by its neighbours anyway, and celebrated what it described as its proaction in forestalling the emergence of another Boko Haram sect in IMN.

    Let Kaduna State go on with the trial of the four Shiite members in a mock acknowledgement of the rule of law. The time will come sometime in the future when the dead 347 Shiite members will get justice, and when all those who participated in the killings and the suppression of truth will be called to account. That day will come, whether democracy survives or not.

  • Al-Makura and Nasarawa killings

    IN January, Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom, had criticised his Nasarawa State counterpart, Umaru Al-Makura, for harbouring the herdsmen who perpetrated the New Year’s Day killings in Benue State. The Nasarawa governor was quoted as saying that the anti-open grazing law passed by Benue State was unnecessary notwithstanding the horrendous attacks orchestrated by the herdsmen who were thought to be mostly Fulani. Mr Ortom was to later apologise for his harsh comments which he attributed to the grief that overcame Benue people as a result of the January massacres. In his response, Mr Al-Makura had insisted that neither he nor his state as a whole was insensitive to the killings, suggesting ruefully that Mr Ortom probably responded too hastily. But whether Mr Al-Makura was insensitive or not, or whether he truly opposed the anti-open grazing law or not, it was clear he was unable to vicariously feel Mr Ortom’s pains when Benue farmers and indigenes were massacred by herdsmen.

    Mr Al-Makura, all reports indicated, was more restrained than Plateau State governor, Simon Lalong, in his comments over the trauma the neighbouring Benue State endured in the opening days of January, a trauma that has sadly become relentless.  Mr Lalong had openly and unambiguously attributed Benue’s unending killings to the anti-open grazing law, which he said he had advised against. He was to apologise later for being so insensitive. But while sporadic killings have continued in Plateau State and persisted with sickening orchestration and ferocity in Benue, the neighbouring Nasarawa State is finally having to grapple with herdsmen’s mass killings. And contrary to his philosophical aloofness when the bloody shoe was on the other foot, Mr Al-Makura is now very flustered with the killings spilling over to his state with deadening regularity. Last Sunday, some 32 persons were reportedly killed by herdsmen in Keana, Obi and Awe Local Government Areas of Nasarawa State. The razed settlements were quickly depopulated, with many of the indigenes taking refuge in Internally Displaced Persons’ camps.

    Evidence of Mr Al-Makura’s testiness came when he visited the IDPs last Tuesday. As he attempted to address the grieving and distressed displaced Nasarawans, the youths of the camps reportedly become impatient with him and unruly. Unable to stomach their sourness, the governor blurted out that their unruliness perhaps had political roots. He thus proved how infinitely easy it is to pontificate before coming under herdsmen attacks. Said he to reporters after the disruption in the IDP camp at Agwatashi in Obi LGA: “The reaction from the people is understandable, given their plight and we have to use diplomacy to address the issues. Continuing to address them at the moment would not yield any result, so we have decided to avoid further altercation.”

    Had he sustained this understanding throughout his interaction with the press over the vexed issue, he would have been applauded for his unearthly calm. But he was apparently boiling underneath the cold, placid exterior. He continued: “However, this action (the unruliness of the youths) appears to indicate that the problems in some of these communities are self-inflicted. If people can conduct themselves in this way, then you know that there is more to it than what is happening…If you will want to take laws into your own hands, you will be left to defend yourselves. However, as a responsible government desirous of protecting lives and property, we shall explore all avenues to ensure the safety of the people.”

    If Mr Al-Makura could lose his cool so quickly, what if herdsmen had replicated in Nasarawa the relentless killings it continues to inflict on Benue? Would he not be transformed into a worse firebrand than Mr Ortom? It was unfortunate that the governor insinuated that the herdsmen attacks on Nasarawa communities could have been triggered by their impatience and negative behaviour. In what way? Just because they were, as he suggested, unruly? Or perhaps he saw them as intransigent, and that if they had been more accommodating, perhaps the herdsmen would have spared them. He spoke in codes and would not spell out exactly what he meant.

    But even more unfortunately, in anger, he briefly hinted that the sacked communities would be abandoned to the ravages of herdsmen, as he put it, “to defend (themselves)”. The fault of course is not Nasarawa’s, nor, as it is clearly evident for Mr Al-Makura to see, that of Benue’s anti-open grazing law. The fault is squarely the federal government’s. By allowing the problem of herdsmen killings to start, gather speed, and then fester, while it dithers over who the identity of the attackers and what ailed them, the federal government showed it either lacked the courage to serve justice in the matter or it was complicit. There are no indications that Nasarawa or Benue, or any other attacked state, would be able to curb the killings, for the attackers have become more vicious and ubiquitous. The job is squarely that of the federal government’s, anti-open grazing laws or not. But by waffling, as villages and towns are sacked and pillaged by herdsmen, the federal government seems unpatriotically to be preparing the template for total anarchy.

  • Theresa May’s provocative medicine

    DURING her Tuesday address to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), British prime minister, Theresa May, suggested very carelessly and needlessly that Nigeria and other nations that had passed anti-same sex law should rethink the issue because the law is outdated. Why she should be obsessed with that piece of legislation, among the welter of legislations designed to improve the lives of the people of the Commonwealth, is hard to say. She then went ahead to promise British support for any nation that would heed her advice, without stating exactly what kind of support she had in mind.

    If Britain could vote Brexit because it feared the invasion of hordes of immigrants from Eastern Europe, why should Mrs May be flustered by Commonwealth countries which, for cultural and religious reasons, determined a unique moral code for their peoples? Britain is entitled to police her borders the way she wants in according with her understanding of her sovereignty. So, too, are those countries which have a different view of morality, especially in accordance with their understanding of their cultures and religions.

    If it suits the British to expand the frontiers of sex and sexual experimentations to its elastic limit, far beyond human comprehension, they must nonetheless accept that their own liberalism cannot be forced on other countries, just as it exercised the freedom to resist the rest of the European Union over Brexit. Of all the pressing issues that pertain to human happiness, it must be quite distressing, if not outrightly base, that Britain and the irreligious Mrs May should choose the mundane and hedonistic matter of sexual preferences to pontificate on at the all-important CHOGM.

  • Shehu Sani, Dino Melaye and Nigeria’s policing conundrum

    POLICING in Nigeria just got more curious with the Kaduna State Police Command inviting the senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, to respond to allegations of criminal conspiracy. The senator, who is locked in battle with the tempestuous Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, has suggested that the invitation is a ploy to frame him in the same manner the senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye, was framed for sponsoring and arming thugs. This column observed last week that the Kogi case contained in it more than met the eyes. Barely two weeks later, Sen Sani is also embroiled in a curious police case. Both senators are thought to be stridently indifferent to the camp, and re-election ambition, of President Muhammadu Buhari.

    The Kaduna police commissioner, Austin Iwar, was quoted as saying that a case of murder transferred to the police by the military in Kaduna allegedly mentioned the name of the senator. The suspect in the case, one Isa Garba, was said to have mentioned the name of the senator in the murder of one Lawal Maiduna. Said Mr Iwar in the letter to Sen Sani: “This is in connection with a case of criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide transferred to this office by 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Kaduna, alongside with exhibit audio CD, in which your name was mentioned by the principal suspect.” The police declined to give more clarification, insisting that it was impolitic to do so at the moment.

    The police are of course free to investigate any case reported or transferred to them. But Mr Iwar is wrong to suggest that the police were not required at the point of invitation to elucidate on the case, especially given the suspicions and tensions souring relationships and enveloping politics in the state. It is always necessary, even at the preliminary stage, to dispel any notion of the police being used to facilitate harassment of anyone opposed to both the governor and the president. The police need to jealously and scrupulously guide their image and credibility. Already, the senator himself has considered the invitation as harassment, and likened it to the ongoing mystifying case the police are incautiously building against Sen Melaye in Kogi for being an outspoken critic of both the governor, Yahaya Bello, and President Buhari.

    Sen Sani and the senator representing Kaduna North, Suleiman Hunkuyi, are known to be adamantly opposed to the governor in particular. Their opposition is of such severity that the governor had felt both disgruntled and impelled to return fire for fire against the intransigent senators. Pursuant to this, a few weeks ago, the governor had controversially ordered the demolition of the temporary campaign headquarters of the All Progressives Congress (APC) faction embraced by the two senators. The governor alleged that the said building in Kaduna was converted to purposes other than that for which it was registered, and that in any case the building had defaulted in payment of land use charge.

    In the case of Sen Melaye, he is perhaps the most articulate and trenchant opponent the young but inexperienced and unwise Kogi State governor contends with today. For his trouble, a recall process has been instigated against him; and to pile on the agony, a criminal charge has also been brought against him. He is in fact expected to appear in court soon in order to be charged. Sen Melaye has dismissed the allegations against him as trumped-up. He insists that one or two of those whose testimonies were relied upon to charge him in court were precisely those who masterminded an attack against his person sometime ago.

    The police have often given the impression that they can suffer no consequences for sloppy or misdirected investigations. This is why thousands of suspects are needlessly locked up in police cells or remanded in prison custody for flimsy and legally unsustainable reasons. Apart from the public confidence in the police ebbing, especially in recent years, it is important for the police to be made aware of the fact that they must answer for shoddy investigations or for allowing themselves to be used for political reasons. The Nigerian constitution gives enormous powers to the police. But those powers have often been used irresponsibly or for the wrong reasons. The country eagerly awaits a fundamental restructuring of the Police Force to make it answerable for its actions and to ensure that its enormous powers are used responsibly.

    Contrary to what they think, the police have a duty to disabuse the minds of the public that the two senators are not being needlessly and irresponsibly persecuted at the behest of certain political interests. They owe the public explanations, and those explanations must be given promptly and copiously to assuage any lingering suspicion. The police must be made aware that, so far, Nigerians are dissatisfied with their approach to policing, the inefficiency with which their men are deployed in the face of increasingly fierce and sophisticated criminality in many states, and their often enthusiastic tendency to lend themselves to be used by either powerful interests, particularly the government, or the highest bidder who contemptuously views the police as a mercenary organisation rather than an ethical law enforcement agency.

  • Offa bank robbery and Senate probe

    LAST Thursday, the Senate Joint Committee on Police Affairs and National Security and Intelligence has been mandated to probe the gory Offa, Kwara State, bank robbery that took more than 30 lives, including some 19 policemen. It remains probably one of the most traumatising  losses ever suffered by the police in one single attack. It is not clear what the Senate hopes to unearth at this stage when police investigations are still fresh and ongoing. The Senate can inquire into any issue, in line with constitutional provisions, but it owes it to itself to carefully select what those issues are and when the probes should be carried out.

    The Senate unnecessarily burdens itself by empanelling its joint committee to investigate a robbery which the police, at this point, need single-minded resolve to investigate and solve, especially with the robbers still at large. It is possible, as some fear, that the police are not quite as equipped or proactive in handling most issues of law enforcement, and an external probe could help uncover those fault lines. It is also possible that the police could engage in a cover up if they were left to carry out that act of self-reflection. In consequence, an external inquiry could be of great value in finding out what went wrong in the Offa robbery and how a future re-occurrence anywhere else could be avoided.

    The Senate can still investigate these shortcomings sometime in the future; but for now, the police need all the concentration they can muster to hunt the fleeing robbers and to mourn their dead. It is not yet time for the Senate to call the police to task. The timing is premature.