Category: Femi Orebe

Leader of the ‘unseen’ persons ruling us, Alhaji Mamman Daura, spoke last week. He said enough of turn-by-turn presidency for Nigeria. He decreed that North-South rotation of the presidency of Nigeria should be dead; from 2023, the most competent among contenders would be put in the Presidential Villa. The Afenifere reacted sharply; the North is silent; the Ohanaeze spoke hard. Leaders of the Niger Delta also kicked against Daura’s executive order banning zoning of the presidency. But what can their puny noise do to a people who built their confidence on solid rock? When a man whose lips rarely move decides to speak out, you had better drop all you are doing and listen carefully. The man who spoke is not known to be a flippant person. He spoke as the mouthpiece of a mysterious clan of northern electoral deciders. Ignore the fuddling statement from Muhammadu Buhari that Mamman’s statement was his personal opinion. The eighty-something-year-old man didn’t speak for himself. He spoke for the opaque, predatory system he represents which has benefitted from the opposite of competence all through our national history” – Lasisi Olagunju, Sahara Reporters,  August  , 2021.

From the look of things, it appears like the North cares nothing, whatever happens to Nigeria if , by hook or crook, it retains the presidency about being vacated by President Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner. That,  it seems,  is why the President’s preferred candidate, and now National Chairman of the APC, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, could have so recklessly  – after he, a Northerner, had been made the party’s  chairman, unilaterally overturned governor El Rufai’s categorical, and commonsensical, statement of 22 February, 2022 to the effect that “we have agreed a zoning formula for all the six geo- political zones”. “Essentially, the Northern zone will have positions the South have had in the last eight years, and vice versa. It is a very simple, EQUITABLE and FAIR formula” ( caps mine).

The serpentine plot to do otherwise, had started when Alhaji Maman Daura jolted the country by flying  a  kite in July 2020 to the effect that:” Rotation has been done once, twice and three times. It is important that this nation is united as one, the most qualified/competent should be elected and not someone who comes from a particular zone”. Dr Junaid Mohammed had duly followed that up by saying that: “If you are talking about democracy you must allow free choice”. “Competence, integrity and truthfulness must be the kind of qualities to look for in a leader”. “We have to accept that zoning and rotation which we have practised for over two decades has not worked. The ultimate test of any process is if it has delivered”.”All the leaders we have produced based on this faulty premise of rotation have not delivered. Why should we continue with it?”

That coming from Dr Junaid only a few months after President Buhari’s re- election, one would now believe that the man was a prophet of sorts.

Rational as the two may appear, it is obvious that some Northern elders were  surreptitiously laying the foundation for retaining the presidency in the North at the end of President Buhati’s term. I  say this, unequivocally, because it was because of this selfsame “zoning and rotation”, that former Niger state governor, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, declared, without mincing words,  that Northern PDP governors abandoned candidate Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 to work for the victory of APC’s  Muhammadu Buhari.

One would not but wonder  how, or why, zoning suddenly became a taboo, especially to a party like the PDP, which not only used to glamorise its originating  zoning to further cohere Nigeria, but actually has it emblazoned in its constitution. Nobody is saying that those who have made a habit of  contesting every  presidential election, over the years, should not insist on throwing their hat into the ring. Rather, all the proponents of zoning are saying is that fair is fair, and that Nigeria, being a country of freeborns, and not a Sultanate or Sheikdom,  justice and equity must simply be a sine qua non of our inter relationships.

Only hegemons should be seen thinking otherwise.

Even when the campaign against zoning has not become as vociferous in the North as to see respected elders like Professor Ango Abdullahi join , my last two articles on these pages  very strongly doubted the fidelity of APC’s then assumed zoning of the presidency to the South; a doubt which I based on the premise of the North’s perpetual love of power and their fear that no elected Southern president can retain  all the inequities of the past seven years. I speak here of  inequities that have ignited the fissiparous tendencies we see in every part of the country. I wondered to no end how any patriot, group or cabal,  would like to see Nigeria continue on its present trajectory of unworkability.

That the APC leadership is not sincere has now  been  confirmed by the latest wonder from the party. As reported in several newspapers this past week,  the party has now, like it was talking to school children, “ordered its presidential aspirants to sign a   ‘Letter of Withdrawal’ which is attached to its nomination form before  they could submit their nomination papers”.

The withdrawal letter, addressed to the party Chairman, must also be signed before a Commissioner of Oath/Public Notary before submission”.

This is, without a doubt, a booby trap to, again,  force a candidate on the party. I believe it should interest Nigerians to see the wanna be presidential cretins who would sign such a degrading document. Whoever did, would merely have shown himself an unreconstructed lackey and agent of the cabal that has, for so long, controlled affairs in the party and, Nigerians must mentally put them in an eternal BLACK BOOK.

I can barely wait to see the presidential pretenders(PP) who would sign the ingratiating form.

It is a big shame that a post Buni- led APC National Working Committee, which one considered the very worst, could, in fact, be more disoriented. If the cabal didn’t provide me N100M to become a contestant – as many now believe happened – wouldn’t it be idiotic to now expect me to self – exclude by signing such a moronic undertaking?

However, what opponents of zoning must  realise is that the last seven years have been such a learning curve for Nigerian that voting at the next presidential election will be determined less by political party affiliation and far more by how people have been collectively impacted during the Buhari administration.

I shall, for instance, like to see the PDP deceive itself into thinking that  it could garner those jumbo votes it has always received from both the Southsouth and the Southeast if its presidency is zoned to the North. On the other hand, it will be interesting to see what fate awaits APC, with a Northern presidential  candidate’s in those parts of  even the same North where indegenes have been  treated worse than  foreigners; with thousands needlessly killed, their houses burnt, lands seized, village names changed, and the people’s turned to destitutes, packed, in numbers in IDP camps, but yet told to learn to live happily with their neighbours.

The Buhari administration has, indeed, been a learning curve, and it is time our Northern compatriots realise that the  basis of zoning is nothing besides justice and equity. Where these are non existent, people are merely turned into flotsam, and jetsam, in  their own fatherland where foreign Fulani herdsmen, of whatever age, can carry AK 47  to maim, kill or kidnap, but with no questions ever asked.

There’s no way such iniquity can last because it is too much in your eye.

These are the reasons why, first, for political parties,  and for Nigeria itself, the 2023 election will be very consequential. It will, indeed, be a watershed. It will help open eyes, and put an end to the “monkey dey work, baboon dey chop” philosophy that has ruled our country like forever.

,No single Nigerian is more Nigerian than the other irrespective of office   or status.

If APC will, therefore, not be like the proverbial dog that wont hear the hunter’s horn because it just must get  lost, then  it must permit itself to profit from the following  wise counsel of Rotimi Akeredolu, the Ondo state governor:

“It is the turn of the southern part of the country to produce the next president and the party leadership should have no difficulty in making pronouncements on this very important issue just as it has fixed various fees for the purchase of forms. This must be done without delay”.  “We must not keep our party men and women guessing on the position of the leadership of the party.  “No statement must suggest, even remotely, that the party harbours certain sentiments which may predispose it to consider throwing the contest open. This is certainly not the time for equivocation  as the  current democratic dispensation is anchored on an unwritten convention that is driven by a principle of equity, and we must do nothing capable of tilting the delicate balance against the established arrangement which guarantees peace and promotes trust”.

Wise words, indeed, but some people are trying to be clever by half, and it’s like Nigerians are about to see why a man who showed no interest, whatever, in contesting for the chairmanship of the APC,  emerged its National Chairman.

But as the Yoruba would say: oun to wa lehin ofa, o ju oje lo, that is, what comes  after 120 is far more than 140.

Bala Mohammed, the ethnic irredentist governor of Bauchi state, was back this past week, lecturing us about Fulani exceptionalism, about how the Fulani is a global person who should not be expected to obtain a visa to enter any country, whatever. It is not his first time as i had cause to write about him  as follows on September 29, 2019: “Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state must have sent not a few Nigerians into utter delirium when,  some two weeks ago on Channels Television,  he waxed lyrical, authoritatively telling his listeners  how Fulanis  all over West Africa, are eligible  to participate in  the National Livestock Transformation Plan. Every question thrown at him to explain this dubious claim saw him telling Nigerians how every Fulani is a Nigerian because he, Mohammed, has relations in the Cameroons, or such like inanities”.

Now he has upped the ante.

Because the Buhari government cannot, according to him, protect Fulani herdsmen, (as if anybody, or even, travellers on trains are) they are at liberty to carry AK 47 about”. –  ‘What Voodoo Economy Is This?’ – 14 February, 2021.

Last week on this column, I insinuated that zoning the APC presidential candidacy to the South  could very well be a ploy, indeed, a ruse. I based that  assumption  on two grounds: one, that given everything that President Buhari has done for  the North during his now 7 – year old administration, he cannot, reasonably, be expected to  undo them by so soon handing over power to a  Southerner who, even if he were an Arewa hireling,  would not be able, to allow the North continue to enjoy all those undue advantages, all products of injustice. The second is that President Buhari’s choice, no his insistence, on Senator Abdullai Adamu, a man who had not in any way famously distinguished himself, wether as governor of  Nasarawa state, or nationally in his many  years in government, as APC  National chairman, could only have been the result of his unreflecting  support for a nation wide establishment of  grazing routes, a suggestion rejected  by some core Northern governors, but which the President simply adores..

Also, what in all decency  should have suggested the name of ex- President Jonathan to anybody in APC if some people were not up to some plot  to disorganise  long suffering APC members in the South in order to have  an easy fall guy when the North votes for the PDP presidential candidate, in a rehash of the 2015 experience when Northern PDP governors deceptively  worked for President Buhari’s victory thus confirming the impression that for a  Northerner, party affiliation  means nothing, only power does.

Festus Eriye answered this question  concerning President Jonathan when in his article: ‘2023: The Curious Case of Goodluck Jonathan’, published in The Nation of Wednesday, 26 April, 2022 he wrote as follows::”In the run-up to the 2015 polls, the then opposition identified the economy, corruption and insecurity as Jonathan, and the PDP government’s weakest points. They made these the focus of campaign attacks to great effect. Seven years after, these problems have metastasized. If he wasn’t good enough to deal with them back them, resulting in voters rejecting him, what makes him the solution now that these challenges have become monsters? Beyond playing statesman, there’s no evidence the former president took a refresher course at any School of Competence since losing power”.

Of course, as we have seen, these people are not bothered about finding a solution as we would have since been rid of insecurity in Nigeria.

But surprise awaits those thinking like that   as  those on the negative side of government action in this administration should know exactly how to vote, come the next presidential election.

Apparently, those  pushing the project are too consumed by their love of raw power to think through all the ramifications.

President Jonathan, indeed,  must have chuckled to himself when Ralph Okorie, speaking on behalf of  a non – descript Citizens Network for Peace and Development in Nigeria, which is out canvassing  his  candidacy, claimed the other day, that “allowing candidates without a clear cut vision to get into the Presidential Villa in 2023, would not only be suicidal but would be like aiding and supporting incompetence over competence”. Did President Jonathan, as president, once showed that he had a clear-cut policy for Nigeria?

That his  name came up at all only confirms the selfishness of the Northern oligarchy which believes it can tolerate power shift for no more than four years, if at all it must.

Going to  beg President Jonathan to throw in his cap only confirms  the fact that the North will not be  averse to working for the  PDP  candidate in 2023 as long as he is a Northerner, since all that matters to them is having  power back soonest, discounting the fact that the North has ruled Nigeria far longer than the South since independence.

It is equally interesting, as explained above, that the same factor which recommended Senator Abdullahi Adamu for the APC Chairmanship, is  the same reason which underpinned Governor Bala Mohammed’s  emergence from Babangida’s inspired elders – love of the Fulsni simpli cita. That Senator Saraki’s name  featured at all, is for me,  another ploy, as only a full- blooded Fulani  can fit the bill.

Why do I say so?

As I wrote last week, give it to the  Fulani for the they have in their intelligentsia.  Consisting, in the days of yore,  as the likes of Ahmed Talib, Yahaya Gusau, Liman Ciroma, Ali Akilu, Adamu Ciroma, Adamu Fika, Hamza Zayyad, Muhammad Bello, Mamman Daura, Mahmud Tukur, Ahmed Joda, MT Usman etc, they are, to this day, “a select group of people with a certain ancestry, intrinsic quality, high intellect, special skills or experience”, as well as being undiluted Northern patriots. Mostly ascetic, self – effacing and, forever working stealthily, their sole concern is power – its acquisition, retention, and its usage for the North.

Anything else matters not.

There is no way, therefore,  these very smart people would have agreed that it is judicious, even reasonable, to now allow power to move away from  the North, especially after the very  North- centric Buhari administration. For them, what this time  requires is power consolidation.

And what do I mean by the Buhsri administration being North – centric?

Not even during the First Republic of the Sadauna, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and  Prime Minister, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was the North in such total control of Nigeria as is now the case all within 7 short years of  President Buhari’s administration. As you read this, the North not only controls the 3  arms of government – Executive, Legislative and Judicial, it  controls all arms – bearing  agencies, all Intelligence services, military and civilian – inclusive of both  Immigration and Prisons. Same goes for nearly all the major revenue generating, and disbursing agencies of government, as well as most regulatory agencies, whether in Health, Education, Aviation, Data, Communications, Pension, Sovereign Wealth, to name but a few.

Add to that the fact that the conditions which predisposed the North to let power move to the South in 1999 simply no longer  exist today. So there  is no overarching reason for, especially the APC,  to have  so meekly zoned  the presidency to the South, or the North to ‘abandon’ power, if there isn’t something some people  know but which we dont know here in the South. I sincerely doubt the next President will come from the South.

This is where, I believe, ex- President Ibrahim Babangida’s intervention became inescapable.  Past master in political trickery, I verily believe that  General Babangida is  working for the North, not  just for a party. And his involvement is the climax,  not the  beginning of  a plot  which started as soon as President Buhari was sworn in for his second term.

Or  when, in Nigeria’s political history, has   Northern elders been this involved in who emerged the presidential candidate of any party? None, of course, but as I see things, the need to maintain the status quo, post Buhari, has become the urgency of now for the Northern oligarchy. This is  more so as no ELECTED President of Southern extraction can allow all this injustice to continue.

Efforts had been on for about 3 years to recruit Southern politicians who would play ball. Readers old enough would recall how military President Babangida used to promise just about anybody the presidency during his time. This time around, it is believed that some were even shown security reports, confirming  them as the president’s choice of a successor.  Apparently, failure of the effort  in the Southwest must have led the Buni- led interim committee of the  APC  to the Southeast and the Southsouth where they hit gold, succeeding in prising away two state governors from the PDP. One of them would, even shamelessly,  claim that a fellow state governor, of the same PDP, scared him out of the party rather than confess he fell prey to a sweet scam.

Today, he is a contestant.

Jokers!

General Babangida has, however,  over reached himself and denunciations have since  come aplenty; all because, apparently, not everybody was in on the scheme. They  will soon be pacified, anyway,  and President Babangida will continue with his seeming last hurray apace.

Long may he live.

There is  equally already in place,  the excuse to  profer for the APC defeat when, or if, it finally happens. In a classical case of blaming the victim, Nigerians would be told that even though the North genuinely supported APC in zoning its candidacy to the South, too many exuberant Southern politicians, who all wanted to be President  messed up the party’s chances.

I shall honestly love to be proved wrong in all these but as  far  as I can see, the party will be exceedingly lucky to have President Buhari  hand over to the APC candidate on  29 May, 2023.

What piece warned that if he (President Buhari) failed, it will be on account of his Fulani kinsmen who saw his presidency as an opportunity to consolidate their hold on Nigeria. Unfortunately, nothing has changed. His abdication of his responsibilities to a crusading team only led to the collapse of governance with immigrant herdsmen, bandits and insurgents making the country ungovernable”.

“Last week’s call for Buhari’s resignation by Baba Ahmed of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) because “we cannot continue to live and die under the dictates of killers, kidnappers, rapists and sundry criminal groups have deprived us of our rights to live in peace and security”, captured the anguish and fears of Nigerians, especially Northerners who are not only unsure of their tomorrow, but scared of another one year of President Buhari’s platitudes”.

“President Buhari’s crusading team is a refuge for his ‘loyal gate keepers, political appointees, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeder Association, the umbrella body for Fulani Herdsmen that threatened to resist anti-grazing laws in some 75 Local Government Areas in 21 states shortly after Buhari’s election, and their patron Emirs who, from their fiefdoms, encourage herdsmen to disobey anti-grazing laws of their host communities”.

Ordinarily, one would have expected that rather than joining the long queue of Southern APC presidential contestants, these people will calm down, and wonder as to why President Muhamadu Buhari would like to see power out of Fulani hands, at this point in time, when his entire administration had been largely devoted to Fulani exceptionalism.

Or why would

nearly all his consequential appointments, literally his entire security apparatti, his policies, including that in which he has his greatest achievement, that is, railway transportation architecture,  at very heavy borrowing, which had to terminate in a foreign country, all now be put, in the foreseeable future, in the hands of a non Northerner(Fulani preferably) given all we have seen of the  usually toxic relationship between former Presidents, and their successors?

Did these ever- excited Southern contestants ever  asked  themselves why it was that easy zoning the  presidency to the South in the APC?

Or what what exactly do they think would  have happened if interested Northerners were as adamant as those in the other party? I hope to God they  did not think that any Northern politician was influenced, one way or the other, by the Southern governors saying that the presidency must be zoned to the South.

The more germane question in all these,  however, is this: does President Buhari seem to these people who are about  dropping a humongous N100M nomination fees, like one who would like to undo all he has done for his people?

If these self – consumed Southern politicians who seldom read, and pay scant attention to things around them, Fulanis on the other hand have, from time immemorial, been a highly intellectual race, which depends a great deal on their intelligentsia. That is why many marvel at how they romance power, always to their advantage and to the chagrin of others. It is the power of their intellectual group e. g, the Kaduna Mafia, which they respected a lot.

One thing many are ignorant of  is that in spite of all that President Buhari has done for them, Fulanis still consider themselves endangered species in Nigeria.

Let us, for instance, press Ahmadu Shehu, PhD, into service here.

Writing in an article he titled: ‘Fulani  As Endangered Species In Nigeria’, he claims:”It is generally considered an impossible hyperbole when the current trajectory of ethnic profiling against the Fulani people in Nigeria is linked with the road to Kigali. But, except something drastic is done, for most dispassionate observers, this is as sure as the sun rises from the east. Therefore, as Mbororo (i.e. a herdsman), I write from experience to call the attention of Nigeria and the world to the danger facing not only the Fulani but also millions of Nigerians who look like them. With this article, I hope to save the world from escapism and blame-game when our negligence eventually allows the deed”. …Today’s Nigeria is to a Fulani what Rwanda of the 1990s was to a Tutsi. The prerequisites for the looming disaster have been met and are consistently, persistently and comprehensively being propagated, promoted and disseminated. Of this, the world must not claim ignorance. Despite their historical contributions to the Nigerian and African civilisations, the economic value chains they have helped sustain and subsidise for centuries, the scholarship they have institutionalised on the continent, and their passionate, patriotic contributions in the creation and growth of this entity called Nigeria, the Fulani are today being commodified and dehumanised in deliberate ethnic profiling. Like the Jews in Europe, Fulani folks are the herders of Nigeria, holding the largest share in the country’s livestock sector”.

Master of the hyperbole, not to call him names, he continues: “Unfortunately, this cultural means of livelihood has fallen under persistent attacks and other bigoted attempts to impoverish the herding population. Once the most prosperous, most self-reliant and wealthy in northern Nigeria, millions of the Fulani people have become destitute, impoverished by the twin evils of bad governance and climate change. The results of this are apparent: many have turned to criminality as means of survival. Instead of treating the root causes of this menace, the Nigerian governments at all levels have resorted to criminalising every Pullo and whoever that looks like “them”.

The “master trickster” proceeds at his incredible ingenuity: “At every checkpoint of the Nigerian security agencies, one demography is a primary target: The Fulani. The state that has deliberately refused to educate and enlighten them, despite being the highest tax-paying single ethnic group, has turned its security agencies into lions that hunt and extort these vulnerable citizens without discrimination. Police stations, prisons and other detention centres around this country are filled with innocent, young Fulanis without being charged or tried”

I think somebody should tell this gentleman exactly who preferred feudalism to education and ensured that the children of the poor – their current nemesis – did not go school. In case he doesnt live in Nigeria, he needs be told that though Fulani herdsmen attack in hundreds, maiming and killing, the Nigeria police is dexterous in never arresting any – and you know why – but in the unlikely even that they arrest and charge to court, they hardly ever get convicted. And that is where such a case is not summarily terminated.

But more substantially, who would believe that Dr Shehu was talking of the same people the reverred Sultan of Sokoto, HRH Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, was referring to when he said “seven to eight out of every ten kidnappers arrested in Nigeria are Fulani”. Coincidentally, His Eminence said this in Abuja at a meeting of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders’ Association (MACBAN). And it is the exact same people the Emir of Muri , Abbas Tafida,  gave a 30 day ultimatum to leave the forests in Taraba State, or face consequences for allegedly being involved in killing, kidnapping, and raping residents”.

So why all these backgrouding?

For me personally, I have not stopped to marvel at President Buhari’s indescribable insistence at having Senator Abdullahi Adamu as the National Chairman of the APC.  Here is  a man who few weeks to the convention had not even shown any interest in contesting but was, rather, leisurely resolving disputes in the party; a programme designed as a never ending one, to give some people some advantages, whenever it was the severally postponed convention, finally held.

I scoured the internet to locate what must have so fervently recommended him to the president.

Below is what I got.

“Nobody can stop the government from acquiring land anywhere in Nigeria. Government is government. If anybody thinks he is violent, ýgovernment has monopoly of violence,”.

Senator Adamu said that at a public hearing organized by the Joint Senate Committees on Agriculture and Rural Development and National Security and Intelligence  while vigorously defending herdsmen  and making a case  for the establishment  of grazing reserve routes, nationwide, long after the governors of Kaduna and Katsina had denounced this 17th century mode of herding.

You would never have thought that Adamu was once a state governor, and know a thing about ownership of lands in  states.

Add the following to all the above,  and the purpose of this article would have been served.

I quote from the Vanguard newspaper:”One time governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, has said that Northern governors, under the auspices of the Northern Governors’ Forum, NGF, agreed to deliberately work against the second term bid of Jonathan”.”He said the decision was informed by what he described as Jonathan’s failure to honour an agreement he had with them in 2011″. When former Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau state controverted this in the Vanguard of 18 April, 2021, it was merely to say that not all of them did so. It is necessary to mention that in order to fake unanimity, the PDP leadership decided to print only ONE Presidential nomination form which contestant Jonathan picked, and must have felt convinced that he was coasting home.

For the APC in the 2023 Presidential election, I urge: UBERIMA FIDEI, that is utmost good faith. But then, to the contestants, I say: eternal vigilance, is the price of liberty.

Facts are facts, they are sacred and immutable, and so must be told without mincing words. These are very dangerous times in Nigeria. The Buhari government overwhelmed, no matter the spin. The Nigerian condition today is gangrenous. I did not say cancerous because all politics is local, which accounts for the serious variations between the South and the North.

Much about that anon.

So much happened in the past one month that anybody who loves Nigeria must now be thinking of what fate lies ahead of it.  No longer do we require a Professor Chukwuma Soludo, as he did in a series of exchanges with Dr Ngozi-Iweala in 2015, to know that whoever succeeds President Buhari would face torrid times ruling. If Soludo was talking then of macro- economic challenges, what President Buhari’s successor would face will certainly have to do with Nigeria’s very survival as we know it.

Nigeria is on tenterhooks.

It  is therefore a surprise, that if on 18 October, 2006 President Olusegun Obasanjo could, proactively, declare a state of emergency in Ekiti, then about the most peaceful state in the country, even without as much as a pint of blood shed therein, claiming he did so “to stop the state from descending into anarchy and threatening the security of Nigeria”, President Buhari could, in the face of all the horrendous killings happening all over the country, but especially so in the Northern states of Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Zamfara and others, still need to be persuaded to do the same if only to nip the killings in the bud.

This past week, some of Nigeria’s most respected religious leaders poured cold water on the likelihood of the 2023 elections holding as scheduled. But worst of it all, and not for the first time, was that the highly regarded Northern Elders Forum (NEF) advised President Buhari to resign from office.

Speaking through its spokesperson, Dr Hakeem Baba Ahmed, the Forum said that “The administration of President Buhari does not appear to have answers to the challenges of security to which we are exposed. We cannot, they continued, “continue to live and die under the dictates of killers, kidnappers, rapists and sundry criminal groups that have deprived us of our rights to live in peace and security. Our Constitution has provisions for leaders to voluntarily step down if they are challenged by personal reasons or they prove incapable of leading. It is now time for President Buhari to seriously consider that option, since his leadership has proved spectacularly incapable of providing security for Nigerians”.

These, indeed, are weighty words from a very respected organisation but the President has to be seen doing something beyond meetings with security Chiefs. Just as promises or condolences messages to bereaved families will no longer do.

It is either we have a country or not. Should we not have a country even if Amnesty International and other do – gooders, would continue to shout themselves hoarse, blaming the victim of terrorism, which Nigeria has since become? Why, rather than getting its citizens killed daily, should Nigeria not be able to turn its Tucano’s on these killers and carpet bomb them out of existence as El Rufai, the Kaduna state governor, has severally advised?  Must President Buhari wait until Nigeria becomes Afghanistan? Why not wipe out a people who kill without mercy, especially so that we have a well-trained, though overstretched army, which has the fire power to make insecurity history in Nigeria? Or is President Buhari constrained by religion and ethnicity, which will then tantamount to a dereliction of duty? Are we suffering from a Stockholm syndrome, seeing how thousands of Boko Haram killers are being re-integrated into society?

And, worst of all, why does the Northerner citizenry just sit down watching the carnage going on, unabated; around them, unconcerned?

Is it because they neither question authority nor elders, even if wrong?

Nigeria would be so different today if these horrendous killings were happening in the South. ‘nough said.

Where are the Emirs, the billionaires, the elite but, especially the women – wives and mothers? What, for God’s sake, are they doing to help President Buhari call out these children of evil or must these killings continue, ad infinitum? How exactly do they see life, precious or dispensable?

Is it culture or consanguinity?

How do they think the world sees them? What is the council of traditional rulers and Ulama, especially the latter, doing to rein in these devils many of who worship in their mosques?

I urge the North to rise up today, do something or large swathes of the North may soon find themselves as refugees in lands unknown, because these uncircumsticed killers are dead serious.

It is not a curse.

These are the reasons I believe that President Buhari ought to have long declared a state of emergency in those now totally unsafe states in the country. Such will significantly assist our fighting forces to more easily do the required reconnaissance to monitor the movements of the killers, isolate and keep them off their supply of, especially petrol, and, thereby render them hors de combat.

We must appeal to President Buhari’s love for Nigeria and sense of duty, demonstrated severally at extremely difficult and challenging times in the past, to declare these required emergencies today and give Nigeria a new lease of life.

Now back to my point about all politics being local. Even though APC has failed totally to fulfil its campaign promises at the National level – an issue members of the Buhari government now angling to succeed him, must be ready to explain to Nigerians – it is not so in many states where APC states have performed.

That is why I will eagerly campaign for the APC towards the governorship election slated for June 18 in Ekiti state because the government of Governor Kayode Fayemi has performed creditably. The party has, as its candidate for the election, a young man, Biodun Oyebanji who I know will equally perform to the admiration of Ekiti people.  Biodun has age and vitality on his side, in addition to having the requisite training and experience, having had his tutelage under two of the consequential governors the state has been privileged to have in her turbulent political history.

He also has Governor Fayemi’s sterling performance to run and ride on.

I have been a ring side observer/participant, and should know.

I remain ever proud of what Governor Fayemi has done for Ekiti. A development expert himself, it is no surprise that several international development agencies are busy funding several projects in the state. For instance, the World Bank is funding the N3.7B Ero Dam, the largest water project in Ekiti State, which will provide improved water as well as solve defecation problems.

This in addition to financing some 635 micro-projects in the 133 communities in the state. Also, because Ekiti is adjudged as one of the best implementers of its projects, the World Bank recently approved for it, a grant in excess of $20M in its post- Covid stimulus fund, surnamed NIGERIA CARES project. This is not to forget the Ikun Ekiti Dairy Farm in which the state is in partnership with Promasidor which has since invested over $5M into what is now a fully operational livestock/ milk production company.

Or his monthly subsidy stipends to the elderly – the first of its kind in the country – from which thousands of our elder’s benefit.

I am equally excited that the hopes I expressed concerning his wife, the First Lady, Erelu Bisi Fayemi, in my article: ‘ELECT ONE, GET ONE FREE’ on these pages on Sunday, 19 June, 2011, have uncannily more than come to pass.

Let me quote at some length from the piece, written over a decade ago:

“ BOGOF, meaning ‘buy one, get one free, was an aphorism made popular in the Clintonian era in the United States of America, largely because of the symmetry between President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. “… and I make bold to say that with respect to passion for Ekiti people, and the state’s socio-economic development, the only difference between Dr Fayemi and his spouse, is that the latter was not voted for by the good people of Ekiti.

With two Masters degrees in History and Gender Studies from the Universities of Ife, Ile-Ife, and Middlesex University, U.K, Erelu Fayemi has recently been recognized as one of the world’s leading 100 personalities working for the interest of women and children. Only last Friday, June 10, 2011, she drew a large crowd of who is who, at the launch of her Ekiti Development Foundation, EDF. She is, of course, not new to this type of structured philanthropy, having founded the African Women’s Leadership Institute which has trained over 5000 women all over Africa as well as co-founded the African Women Development Fund, which has supported over 800 women’s organizations in 42 African countries.

She established EDF to do the following in Ekiti state:

Support initiatives which will economically empower women and youth by providing capital on revolving basis for co-operative societies; support civil society organisations, promote the rights of women and enhance their leadership capacities, as well as encourage women political participation and focus on health care, education and give financial assistance to women with multiple births as she has, indeed, been doing before the launch and not a penny of these would come from state funds.

Erelu has not stopped. Rather, she has since “influenced the passage of six bills into law at the State House of Assembly, all of which have enhanced the status of women and children and protected them against victimisation and dehumanisation. They include: Gender Based Violence Law, Equal Opportunities Law, HIV Anti-Stigma Law, Treatment, Care and Protection Law for Sexually Abused Minors and Gender Composition Law which affirm 35 per cent representation for women in political positions. Her Obirin Kete Cooperative Scheme has “provided 3,544 poor women with access to credit facilities to boost their businesses, while also serving as a platform for a virile political participation for women”.

It will not be superfluous to mention that I have sat, severally, at all night long committee meetings interrogating ways of improving the lives of the generality of Ekiti people. Interesting at these meetings, is how she would, like our great father of blessed memory, and former governor of Ondo state, Chief Michael Aiasin, who would sit through a whole day’s meeting without drinking water or as much as going to pee, Erelu would sit ramrod straight, all attention, while some others, to stay awake, would be quaffing coffee, like it was going extinct – a thoroughly hard working author of many books.

The above is the interesting scenario, Dr Olayemi Oyebanji, by God’s grace, will seamlessly step into, come October 2022, to take ownership, and sustain the wonderful legacy Erelu has laid. This is why I urge all my Ekiti compatriots, as well non- Ekiti residents, registered to vote, to once again troop out to Vote APC, Vote BAO, Vote Continuity and Vote for enhanced security, peace and continuing development in our dear ILE UYI, ILE EYE.

Victoria acerta.

About 500 bandits invaded our tomato farms/process factory in Kebbi state 2 weeks ago, killing 5 policemen and 1 local security man. How all our employees, local and expatriate, got evacuated to safety could only be the special grace of God. Those boys came with all kinds of lethal weaponry, including RPGs, which they used to take out most of our armored security vans. We have since suspended operations. We have invested about $54m in the farm and factory to date. We are empowering over 5000 local tomato out – growers. Farm and factory have generated over 5000 good, paying jobs and we are developing the entire Yauri communities by the bank of the river Niger: clean water, electricity etc.  Now all these investments are at a serious risk. Tomorrow if these our Spaniards pull their investments and go back home, folks will start complaining. They won’t understand that this country is very unfriendly to business. And that the country is gone!” – Quoting a staff of GBFoods Africa, in Gafara Village, Kebbi State – an attack that was reported by the Daily Trust newspaper of 15 March, 2022.

“We knew what the problem would be. We knew we needed to have digital security equipment. We applied for it. “Because if we had those equipment, you will see everybody on that track. And I warned that lives will be lost. Now, lives are lost. Eight persons dead, 25 persons in the hospital. We don’t know how many persons have been kidnapped. And the cost of that equipment is just N3 billion. The cost of what we’ve lost is more than N3 billion. We’ve lost tracks, we’ve lost locomotives and coaches. We’ve lost human beings. And the equipment is only N3 billion. “To fix all the things on that track now will cost more than N3 billion. When you come with sincerity to government, and your colleagues and people are stopping you, it is annoying.” – Rotimi Amaechi, Hon. Minister for Transportation.

“We have enough intelligence for us to take action. The Air Force undertakes enough ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and the DSS  has informants all over the place. “We know what they (terrorists) are planning. We get the reports. The problem is for the agencies to take action. Don’t wait until they attack before you respond. The Army should go after their enclaves to wipe them out. Let the Air Force bomb them”. If you bombed them before they were categorised as terrorists, you would have had issues with human rights organisations and international criminal courts and so on. “But, now that they have been so declared by the court, they can be legally killed without any consequences from international human rights organisations.” – Governor El Rufai of Kaduna state.

The three epigrams above represent my thoughts on how far President Muhammadu Buhari has fulfilled his 2015 campaign promise to Nigerians to fight insecurity to a standstill. Before  delving into that, however, my heartfelt condolences go to the families of those who were killed in the bombed Abuja – bound train, as well as to those who were injured or kidnapped. I also commiserate with President Muhammadu Buhari whose government’s major achievement in seven years, that is, railway transportation infrastructure procurement, is now so compromised, travel by train has been rendered no safer than on our dangerous roads.

The Kaduna-Abuja attack throws up many questions about the essence of government, and more specifically, about the incumbent Buhari administration.  It showed, for instance, the total ineffectiveness of the government.  There is no other thing to call it, if it can happen this close to the seat of power, which reminds one that only a few months ago, the Niger state governor warned federal authorities that his own besieged state was only one or two hours away from Abuja.

There is hardly any country in the world today that is immune to these unfortunate happenings, the difference in Nigeria being that here, killings and kidnappings are not occasional, but daily occurrences; a fact that is, unfortunately, being hid from the one person, that is, the President, from whom we can expect to get a reprieve.

This is what the likes of the minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, and several top functionaries of this government do with such consummate perspicacity, just so the President, according to them, would not hear bad news. I am lost as to what exactly they are afraid of. Or is it that they are that awe – struck once with the President?

God help us.

Take this for an example: only a few hours before that major security breach on that very expensive railway infrastructure which led to loss of lives and much more, Lai Mohammed was gloating about how life is daily becoming safer under the Buhari government.  That, in spite,  of the daily terrorist killings, kidnaps, ritual killings etc, everywhere, like we were in one time Afghanistan.

Reeling out the many ways in which he said government has strengthened the capacity of the security forces, he lounged, illogically, into the conclusion that this has easily translated into the level of security Nigerians yearn for, in spite of how the security forces have been, unlike elsewhere, uncharacteristically, spread thin, over the entire country, with the army severally being called upon to do police work; a police that is, meanwhile, not itself adequately equipped. So protected from hearing bad news is the president that I have no doubt that some of the several condolences we read as coming from him, actually started and ended with his spokespersons.

Also in the sad circumstances of our country today, there is this one event that clearly demonstrates the obvious lack of synergy in the Buhari government.  Rotimi Amaechi, the Transport minister has, since the tragic incident, been bellyaching about how he was let down by some government functionaries who refused to approve funds for the technology he believes would have ensured that the bombing never happened. That is buying a technology that would have revealed any illegal human activity on the rail line.

The first question to ask the ‘annoyed’ minister is whether this could ever have happened in a serious government or, if rather than politicking about, he had put his mind on the job for which he is being paid.

Given the fact that Nigeria is borrowing heavily for the railway infrastructure which he overlooks, should such technology not have been an integral part of the China – funded project right from the beginning and, certainly, not an afterthought?

And by the way, did he report this to the president, his boss? I can wager he did not, because for most of them, President Buhari just must not be disturbed.

We must remember, however, that lack of synergy in the government is as old as the government itself. Or who could have forgotten that once when the President was recommending the confirmation of the Acting Head of the EFCC to Senate, an agency of the same government was submitting to the same red chamber, a thoroughly scathing report which audaciously countered the President.

May be somebody would be punished for that effrontery tomorrow.

Finally, going by our epigrams, let us take a deeper look at the intervention of Governor El Rufai. Like him or not, this is one man you cannot stop from saying his own. According to him, he has long recommended that these terrorists be carpet – bombed out of those forests.  Supporting this, he says that his own Kaduna state is at war.  Happily, he said, government knows the terrorists’ whereabouts and also that the security agencies do eavesdrop on their discussions. What then, he asks, stops government from deploying simultaneously, a combined air and ground attack to flush them out?

Here is what I consider to be the crux of our security problem as it speaks to our ethno-religious diversities. It was in recognition of this fact that Nigerians heavily criticised President Buhari for so cavalierly handing over the Nigerian security apparatti to Northerners at the very start of his administration. Even when he was pressured, and had to change his first set of security chiefs, nothing really changed. The result, as well as the consequences, have been sobering.

It is worth recalling that when President Obasanjo was in office, he ordered that unruly members of OPC (a Yoruba group) be shot at sight while President Buhari , through his utter silence, gave Fulani herders, many of them complete foreigners, the belief that they can roam, kill, destroy farms and do whatever it is that pleases them such that today, according to a trending WhatsApp post, we have the following realities on ground:

Many villages and communities forcefully taken over by Fulani herdsmen in many parts of the North, especially in the Middle Belt, with the indigenes now living in IDP camps.

It also says that in Kaduna south, the indigenes are being killed on a daily basis, with most of the people, especially women, children, and old people now living in primary schools as IDPs. It has also been suggested that the herdsmen have changed the names of such communities and that INEC has, in fact, gone ahead to capture the new names for the purpose of the 2023 elections, to which I say, God forbid.

Worse is the fact that security agents look askance as all these happen. Indeed, when President Buhari went to Benue state to commiserate with them on the killing of about 70 indigenes who were mass buried, his words of condolence to them was to learn to live in harmony with their ‘neighbours’.

It, therefore, cannot be too much to assume that El Rufai’s patriotic suggestions have been treated with benign disregard by a security people that choose to act according to the President’s body language and, therefore, spared these “18 – 20 year olds”, who are already very conversant with operating sophisticated weapons, and may actually be needed in the very near future. To further lay the foundation for this suggestion, of the about 500 terrorists that attacked GBFoods Africa, in Kebbi State, and killed 5 policemen, and a local, not a single one of that huge number of terrorists was reported killed.

The summary of what we are going through in Nigeria today is that as long as the raison detre of government, which is the protection of life and property, all anchored on equity and mutual trust, are observed only in breach, so long will Nigeria remain a beleaguered and thoroughly unsafe country.

In a statement on 21 February, 2022 Salihu Lukman pointedly accused Governor Mai Mala Buni of working to stall the holding of  the national convention so that he (Buni) could preside over the Presidential primary and, ostensibly, work for his emergence as Presidential running mate. The former Director –General  disclosed that three other state governors, namely, Yahaya Bello, Hope Uzodimma and Dapo Abiodun, were working in cahoots with him on the hidden agenda of postponing the convention till it holds alongside the Presidential primary. While noting that as a result of their machinations, “other members of  the CECPC had been reduced to observers because meetings hardly take place, and even when they hold, decisions are seldom implemented.” – Dr Salihu Lukman was former  Director – General, Progressive Governors Forum.

Any keen follower of this column, especially in the last two months, must have been at his or her wits end, wondering if this writer has not tanked out mentally, the way he has been writing on almost nothing besides the shenanigans of the Buni – led CECPC which  had merely sat  pretty on its buttocks, doing nothing in preparation for the party’s severally postponed convention but instead, in a serpentine move, allegedly inspired a court decision banning the holding of the convention.  The court decision, according to Governor Sani Bello of Niger state, and the new CECPC Acting Chairman, was to have been dropped on the party like an atomic bomb, a few days before the scheduled date when it would have been practically impossible to have it vacated.

One of these days, somebody will have the temerity to tell Nigerians how the governor of a state, being daily traumatised by an unremitting insurgency, was considered the right person to rebuild a party riven down the middle as a result of the consequences of  the sack of its erstwhile Chairman, Adam Oshiomhole, though in far less ignominious circumstances than Buni’s, whose name, and that of  his lickspittle, John James Akpanudoedehe, have  allegedly been swept clean off everything concerning the party’s convention which they had hitherto treated like it was their personal property.

In a rapid fire fashion between the short period spanning January 16 – 20 February 2022, I  wrote the following articles, highlighting  how Governor Mai Mala Buni and his cabal, both within, and without the CECPC, had upturned its prescribed responsibilities and, instead, went on a frolic of their own, adding extraneous tasks  just so they can sit tight in office.  Not even  INEC’s release of the  2023 election cycle, and other programmes, was sufficient  to rouse them from their self – inflicted lethargy.

Governor Buni was, no doubt, enjoying his holiday away from a tormented Yobe state even  though the elected governor, even as his colleague, Governor Zulum of nearby  Sokoto state, was busy, daily confronting  the ravages of insecurity.

Had Governor Buni’s self- centered activities gone unchecked, they could, very well, have eventuated in grave consequences for the APC ahead of the coming elections.

And he would not have had to re- invent the wheel.  After all, according to Ex-Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State, some Northern PDP governors – and this is believed to have included a Chairman – were alleged to have worked against the interests of the PDP during the 2015 election. And should care not be taken even now, the same thing could happen in the APC in 2023, if a Southern candidate emerges who the North is not comfortable with, since the overriding concern of some people has always been that power must remain permanently in the North.

Vigilance, therefore, is a sine qua non, if internal treachery within the APC is to be nipped in the bud.

The articles referred to above are, in their order of publication, as follows:

 

Enroute 2023 APC Must Try Everything Not To Self-Immolate (16  January, 2022)

At Long Last President Buhari Aborts CECPC’S Chicanery

(23 January, 2022)

Is APC Unravelling? (6 February, 2022) and

APC:  Is CECPC Working Towards an Inconclusive Convention? (20 February, 2022)

They all detailed how Governor Buni was inexorably, and perhaps deliberately, working towards the party’s unravelling once his group saw the futility of  all their efforts to retain the presidency in the North, which appears to be CECPC’s primary raison detre; or why choose a Northerner to replace Oshiomhole when the party’s chairman has always, (traditionally) come from the South – Chiefs Bisi Akande,  Odigie Oyegun, and Comrade Adam Oshiomhole.

Those using the CECPC for their own ends, especially its acting Chairman, merely took undue advantage of the fact that all the members have elective or  political appointments and, unlike Buni did not consider it a joke abandoning their jobs to come and sit down permanently in Abuja. Of the 12 or so members, it was only the full time governor of a state  under siege, and his Secretary, who could afford  such luxury now for over 20 months.

The result was that the chairman torpedoed the critical primary functions of the CECPC which were to conduct the convention within 6 months, as well as settle the bickering in many of the party’s state chapters. While Governor Buni did practically nothing to advance conduct of the convention, he did everything to further splinter relationship within the branches.

What they did first was to add unnecessary tasks to the CECPC’s prescribed agenda.

That done, they began to pair some Northern politicians, as presidential candidates, with their putative Vice Presidents from the Southwest. This went on for a considerable length of time until they saw that the idea of a Vice President did not resonate with people in the Southwest who, as co and equal founders of APC, bringing into it the highest number of state governors through the ACN, believed that after 8 years of President Muhammadu Buhari, the presidency should, for purposes of equity,  go to the south.

Buni and co, therefore, balked and began to hawk the presidency to opposition politicians  all over the Southeast and the Southsouth.  There they succeeded beyond their wildest imagination, and today, as promised, the two PDP state governors they succeeded in prising away from their party have since declared interest in contesting the presidency in 2023.

Governor Buni’s selfish interests, for which he went to all this trouble went on apace and after three term extensions by the President, WhatsApp aficionados, like me, must have seen several posts of Governor Buni being paired, either as Presidential candidate, or Vice, not just with the incumbent VP, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, but also with former President Goodluck Jonathan and CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele.

Governor Mai Mala Buni has deployed several feints and decoys, just to remain in office to conduct the APC Presidential primaries. Among them are creating additional problems in troubled states like Kano to which the CECPC sent two different teams to monitor the state Congress and in Zamfara where, given how the state lost all in 2019, any rational party leader should have realised that you can only mess up either of former Governor  AbubakarYari or Senator Kabir Marafa to the detriment of the party.

That is a state to which Governor Buni ran to start wooing a thoroughly unsettled Governor Mata wale who has not been able to effectively handle the insurgency which has made the state its  very bastion in the country.

Left to Governor Buni, he would turn settlement of differences in the state chapters to such an elastic programme that, to his advantage, should even outlive the Buhari administration.

His multi- pronged personal schemes are those things that has led him to try to outsmart  even the President who, once he was out of the country, not only Buni, but the CECPC Secretary, simply refused to do those things the President  had ordered done to ensure that the convention holds on 26 March as now scheduled. They were, instead, printing different copies of the President’s approved zoning agreement with one, indeed, not only altering where the Party Secretary should go to, but insultingly gifting it to Akpanudoedehe.

Such effrontery.

As things stand today, Governor Mai Mala Buni can be likened to a tsetse fly perching delicately on APC’s scrotum. The party must, therefore, know exactly how to handle his case lest it goes down with him.

Some powerful APC lords sowed the wind, we can only hope, and pray, that the party itself does not reap the whirlwind. The party may have to be reminded that opposition parties are waiting, and watching with bated breath.