The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • President Buhari: do something!

    Let me at the very outset enter a caveat: This is no hysteria or histrionics of any kind. The issues raised in this piece are absolutely in the public interest, especially in the interest of the most at risk Nigerians who literally have no voice of their own. Among them are the unemployed and the totally unemployable s to whom the Federal Government’s social security programmes might have reached, and provide a succour of sorts, have our legislators not taken to themselves a hugely disproportionate part of the national income. Certainly among the victims of this crass selfishness, are government workers, millions of who are owed their salaries for upwards of eight months and some, as in Benue and Kogi states, for over 12 months. These are people whose children, and wards’ inability to pay their school fees have either taken to prostitution or chose almost certain death in the Sahara desert or, worse still, on raging seas in North Africa. Or sold into slavery.

    And that is where they have not simply succumbed to the elements.

    Thanks to Mr Peter Obi, former Anambra State governor, we now know that everything has broken down in Nigeria. According to him: “If he revealed how much a Nigerian governor earns, the outrage would be hotter than what trailed the N13.5 million monthly pay of senators.” “None of you,” he further said, “knows what a governor earns.  Quote me anywhere, if you know you won’t be here.”

    Nigerians already have details of what senators earn, and with those figures, we can work straight away. If any of the figures are wrong or outlandish, it will be the duty of the senate spokesperson to let Nigerians know. It will be the height of disrespect to the citizenry for the senate to resort to any sabre rattling and Nigerians will take none of such insult.

    For me, Olakunle Abimbola of The Nation remains a constant source of great delight. He writes for all time, now and, forever, and always, quotable. Let’s see him in DISTRACTIONS, The Nation, Tuesday, 6 March, 2018. He wrote, and I will quote him in ex tensor: “The more the president pines, the more he is scorned, if not by the quiet majority, then by a noise-some, virulent ensemble; most garrulous among whom are unfazed past wreckers, locating their own redemption in Buhari’s destruction.

    Yet, Buhari is nary the enemy.

    “As if bewitched, critical stakeholders of the Nigerian realm have joined this self-destruct crusade. In booming business are ethnic entrepreneurs, with their impassioned Fulani roasting; tribal pigeon-holing and ethnic scapegoating, their golden but empty panacea to rural banditry (read “Fulani herdsmen”), with its wanton waste of life. Churches live in scandalous denial of the tough economic rebuilding, play politics of the belly with their congregants’ plight and worship on the altar of cheap populism. Yet, that denial negates their core doctrine: purgatory before salvation – that tough path to spiritual renewal. If you don’t purge yourself of old vices, how do you appreciate the new grace? A section of the media, smug, severe, all-wise and all-knowing, point fingers, lecture and hector: a very few from the position of condescending knowledge; a good many from self-yoked, but badly disguised bigotry; and many, many more, just echoing the din, like some Roman plebs baying for blood, but never bothering to ask why! Among the commentariat, an anarchist’s manifesto would appear writ large!”

    What he failed to do in that piece, was cast a glance at the totally disreputable Nigerian legislature, an arm of government so unfeeling its less than 600 total population takes such a humongous portion of our country’s total annual income it would not be a curse to say that some of them will, very soon, choke on gluttony.

    Cognisant of the fact that many wished President Muhammad Buhari dead not too long ago, I stopped short, in the title of this article, from doing that which Ghanaians, our neighbours and brothers, did a while ago when they called on President Jerry Rawlings to save Ghana from the likes of the predators who now predominate the Nigerian political space. Cried hapless Ghanaians: J J, DO SOMETHING BEFORE YOU DIE.

    That is the war cry I am extending to the president today. If it is the only thing President Buhari will do for the remaining part of his entire life, he must save hapless Nigerians first, from the internal slavery the Legislature has dug us into. Their out of the world heist from the national treasury is choking Nigeria. They are so unfeeling not an all-consuming recession could make them bat an eyelid or have a rethink. They took it, all of their N13.5 million monthly heist, and more. What exactly runs through these fellows veins, what? Why is shame in such short supply among them? How many times a day do they feed their ravenous palates?

    Unfortunately, the respective Houses of Assembly, save one or two,  have become nothing but slaves to their Almighty Governors and there is no way they can call them to order. It is not unknown that many state legislators are owed salaries for months but you won’t hear a word. That is why the president must also handle all these leakages.

    Mr President, it has become obvious that we, an absolutely docile Nigerian citizenry, can no longer help ourselves, and therefore have no choice than to call on the only one man we elected to govern us, despite all the mischievous antics of the antichrists that now populate our country. By whatever means, Sir, you must stop this lootocracy in high places and the place to start is to kick the ass of the soporific and useless Revenue Mobilisation Allocation Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) which has remained deaf and dumb to all the noise made by Nigerians on the ignominious obfuscations its constitutionally prescribed roles have suffered in the hands of legislators. The agency must be sacked immediately with new members appointed to breathe life into it. Most of the legislators’ allowances are self- awarded; a direct consequence of President Obasanjo inflicting two luckless presidents on Nigeria both of who became playthings of the legislature, especially during the Speaker-ship of Hon Dimeji Bankole when they not only astronomically increased their allowances, but went a-borrowing from banks, to pay illegal  allowances that  were curiously backdated.

    Subsequent on Senator Shehu Sani’s letting slip their monthly pay, traumatised Nigerians have come up with several comments. Below is one on the Facebook wall of Valiant Samson Idowu-Alaba.

    IN CASE ANY FIGURE IS WRONG, LET THE SENATE CORRECT IT AS THE ONUS IS ON THEM.

    WHAT A NIGERIAN SENATOR GETS

    1. RUNNING COST

    Newspaper allowance…….N1.24m

    Wardrobe allowance……….N0.62m

    Recess allowance ………….N0.25m

    Accommodation…………….N4.97m

    Utilities …………………………N0.83m

    Domestic staff……………….N1.86m

    Entertainment………………..N0.83m

    Personal Assistant…………N0.62m

    Vehicle Mtce Allowance…N1.86m

    Leave Allowance……………N0.25m

    TOTAL RUNNING COST ………..N13.58m/month

    This adds up to N162.96m annually

    1. CONSOLIDATED SALARY

    He goes home with N750,000 monthly.

    This sums up to N9m annually.

    1. He is entitled to N200m annually to execute projects which is the duty of the Executive branch but which they normally corner, where executed, at all.

    SUMMARY

    Annual Salary…N9,000,000 per annum

    Running Allowance….N163,000,000 per annum

    Constituency….N200,000,000 per annum

     

    TOTAL N372,000,000.00 per annum.

    This amount is over N1,000,000 every blessed day including Sundays when he/she is in church.

    HE ALSO GETS THIS

    Severance Gratuity………… N7.43m

    (Is this as many terms as he does?)

    Furniture allowance ……….N7.45m

    Motor Vehicle Allowance…N9.94m

     

    TOTAL  N24.82m. I presume once in a Senate life.

    The above are the amounts to which Nigerians can put a figure.

    So Mr President, if clearing this Augean stable is, the only additional thing you can do for Nigerians, you would not only have earned a place in our history books, you would have earned it in our hearts.

    We know you can do it.

  • How on earth can Nigeria survive when a Senator carts home N170.4m yearly

    How on earth can Nigeria survive when a Senator carts home N170.4m yearly

    What exactly is the worth of a Nigerian legislator’s service to his constituents or to the country as a whole?

    I did not manufacture those figures. Rather, it is maximum commendation to Senator Shehu Sani, the only man of conscience in our senate of rabid takers who, for the very first time since 1999, in spite of the dozens of self proclaimed activists and ‘lovers of the masses’, who had adorned that otherwise historic institution in our country, had the pang of conscience to disclose what a predatory group of people Nigerians have for legislators.

    In articles after articles, I have written my fingers sore on these pages urging Nigerians to simply: storm this Bastille of gluttons.

    The first Nigerians got to have a wink of  what a preposterous percentage of the national cake  the members  self awarded  themselves,  was when then  CBN governor,  Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi,  informed Nigerians  that the sinkhole was gobbling no less than 25% of Federal government  overheads. In a subsequent analysis of that figure, which was found substantially  correct –  of the then federal overhead of N536.2 billion, the National Assembly was  getting N136.2 billion – a team of Vanguard newspaper reporters – Jide Ajani, Ben Agande & Luka Binniyat, in an article published on 4 December, 2010, concluded that “there is a disconnect between what members allocated to themselves in the annual budget and the responsibilities they have discharged on behalf of the long-suffering people of Nigeria”. The report went further to recall that this is a legislature (House) described by a former House member, Gabriel Suswan, at a lecture at the University of Abuja, as a pack of “un- educated and immature” people, where  less than 20 out of its 360 members make useful contributions at plenary session or sponsor motions or bills”.

    The senate can only be slightly different.

    Holy Moses!

    If there was controversy when now Emir Sanusi made that disclosure, not again as Sen. Shehu Sani has laid it all bare: each of our senators swallows a minimum N170.4 million yearly. That figure should be far less than what 360 members gulp annually in the House.

    Below is a recap of Shehu Sani’s interview and,  if his conscienceless colleagues decide to suspend him like forever, he should be more than satisfied that he has cast his name in gold in the annals of Nigerian history.

    For the first time, according to a story posted on WWW. Naija loaded.com.ng, reporting an article by THE News magazine, a member of the National Assembly has revealed the huge amount Nigerian senators earn.

    The Senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, damned all consequences as he revealed how much he and his colleagues receive monthly. In an interview with TheNEWS magazine, he said each Senator receives N13.5 million monthly besides their over N700, 000 monthly consolidated salary and allowances.

    “I think what we can say is that the running cost of a senator is N13.5 million every month,” said Sani in response to the question on the bogus salaries and allowances of Nigerian lawmakers. According to him, while there is no specific instruction on what the fund should be used for, lawmakers must provide receipts to back up their expenses from the running costs, adding that this is in addition to funds earmarked for each senator for constituency projects.

    “But, continues the senator, what I am saying is that the money (N13.5 million per month) must be receipted for what you do with it. But what you are given to go and spend without any accountability is N750,000.00. “The constituency project itself is given on a zonal basis and almost every Senator will go with a constituency fund of about N200 million. “You will be told that you have N200 million with an agency of government for which you will now submit projects equivalent to that amount. And it is that agency of government that will go and do those projects for you. (Yes senator,Nigerians know what you are talking about. They have been scammed for far too long not to know when the rain started beating them).

    “Now, the corruption comes, said Sani, when the projects are not done (as is mostly the case), and the money is taken. But right now, it is difficult to do that because NGOs and transparency groups have come into it. They track every allocation made to you and where they are being used. (as if these too are not manned by Nigerians).

    And his conscience takes over, but certainly not that of his remaining 108 colleagues: “But I can tell you that I would love a situation where we do away with running costs, constituency projects and leaves senators and members of House of Reps with salaries.

    “There are issues that we need to understand. First, I don’t believe that members of the National or even state assemblies should be involved in carrying out what is called constituency projects.

    “When people are elected into the National Assembly, they should just be involved in law making, raising motions, bills and also performing oversight functions. But we live in a society where people cannot differentiate between the legislators and the executive. “When the people come to you, they want you to build roads, dig boreholes, build hospitals, schools, give money, pay school fees for them. Now, if we have a society in which people will stop asking legislators to do those things, then there is no need for the allowances.

    “If we can be done with that, it would be okay. Now, you are talking of bogus salaries and bogus allowances – there are three steps you need to consider – the first has to do with the fact when you represent the people, expectations arose from your immediate and the larger constituencies. “But I agree with you that the salaries and allowances of lawmakers should not be discreet {secret}, but what is discreet about it when you can write to Resource and Fiscal Mobilisation Commission to get everything about what a senator earns? (Not just that the thoroughly ineffective agency will give you bogus figures if at all it responds, the Speaker of the House is known to have once played ‘ boju boju’ – hide and seek- with these figures, authorising the release of only the basic salary).

    “The only money you are not expected to account for is your salary and the salary of a senator is about N750, 000.00 per month. The other one, the running cost of office, must be accounted for. You must provide a receipt for every expense you make.” (again for a small fee, even a petrol attendant will give you receipt for any amount of your choice even if you discount the fact that many of these our current legislators could  be printing their own receipts, be it for sand or steel).

    The critical questions then are these:

    What exactly is the worth of a Nigerian legislator’s service to his constituents or to the country as a whole?

    What have they effectively done, and how has this mostly riotous 8th assembly, which had all the time in the world to line behind a senate President defending self against corruption before a court,  impacted our lives?

    How long have they sat on critical bills like the Petroleum Industry Bill, bills on recovered loots and allied anti corruption bills?

    On an average, despite constitutional provisions, how many times does the most conscientious of our legislators attend plenary?

    What should Nigerians do with/to this absolutely unnecessary distraction that gulps so much of funds that could have gone into infrastructure procurement, much better roads, good health care delivery system, an educational system rather than one conspicuous for lack of basic necessities and, forever suffused with incessant strikes?

    Shouldn’t we, for instance, just ask the senate to pack up and the House turned to a part time arm of government?

    What exactly, beyond perception, is its use to society? Shall we lose anything if both chambers are abolished, and in their place the people create a chamber of experienced technocrats to assist the executive, while an expanded council of state, rather than being advisory, is empowered to put the executive under some rigorous check?

    No, I am acutely aware of the law making role of the legislature but how have these self serving legislators made life better for the ordinary Nigerian through laws?

    And, finally, shouldn’t Nigerians just say: ENOUGH, NO MORE, and under the lead of civil societies, together with market women, Nigerian students and the, forever, traumatised hoi polloi, just move en mass , one day, and sack this unhelpful arm of government?

  • My take on Transparency International’s latest rating of Nigeria

    My take on Transparency International’s latest rating of Nigeria

    For Nigeria to significantly improve in its corruption perception rating, change must begin with every individual Nigerian.

    Nigeria and the world at large woke up on 22 February, 2018 to read the following sombre story on Nigeria’ corruption perception status:
    Corruption still high in Nigeria –Transparency International
    “Corruption is getting worse in Nigeria, according to the latest corruption perception index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI), yesterday.
    While Nigeria scored 27/100 and was ranked 136th in 2016, the latest CPI scores Nigeria 28/100 but, with a rank of 148, out of 180 countries surveyed—a significant 12 places below where it was the previous year.
    This will come as a blow to the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, which came into office on the strength of his anti-corruption credential …”

    Since the report, all manner of analysts have gone to town lambasting the Buhari government’s anti – corruption efforts, with the political opposition hoisting it as a banner to their several critique of the President’s number one programme.This piece will take a critical look at the report, which did not come as a surprise to the columnist but for reasons far more than “grassgate”, Mainagate – gate and the lot.

    But first, two very illuminating take on the report by two individuals who know exactly what they are talking about.

    First Professor Bolaji Aluko who in: “http://www.nigerianmuse.com

    /2 0061213120517zg/sections/essay s/nigeria-10-years-of-transpar ency-international-monitoring- perception-of-nigerias-corrupt ion/

    And

    http://nigerianmuse.com/essays /?u=corruption_nigeria_how_why .htm has for long demonstrated a keen interest in analysing T.I’s reports on Nigeria, dating back to both the Abacha and the Abubakar years. He wrote as follows on the latest report:

    “This gleeful conclusion cannot be correct, and buys into a biased narrative. TI’s corruption index is 0 to 100, with 0 being worst and 100 being best. Nigeria has successively scored 25, 27 and 28 in 2015-2017 – and yet the conclusion is that “Corruption is getting worse in Nigeria?”

    No, our anti-corruption is yielding fruit albeit slowly, and so slowly that other nations’ efforts are outstripping ours so that they are out-ranking us.  That is a distinction with a big difference, and may be an indication of how much corruption is entrenched in our country, and the need to take more drastic action.   It also calls on us to look at what those who recently out-ranked us did to pull off their feat

    I have been studying TI index for over 20 years now, particularly Nigeria’s position in it, I look not only at the index itself, but the rank, the number of countries ranked, the indices used and even weightings.  These change from year to year, and only the uninitiated just looks at one number or another, and then says Aha, that is an undisputable conclusion.

    I am fully aware that the worst corruption of the PMB administration in these three years is nowhere close to the rapaciousness that I observed at close quarters under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration in six years, or under PDP in sixteen.   Nigeria is a pyramid of corruption – and yes we are going through challenging times, and corruption is fighting back. No doubt, Babachir and Oke and Kingibe (at NIA), Maina at Pencil, NHIS’ Yusuf and the Magu/NASS fiascoes have put a dent into perceptions, but the anti corruption effort must continue. If we stay the course things will improve significantly”

    Wrote multi- award winning journalist, Adewale Adeoye:

    “Transparency International works on verifiable data through its numerous agencies in Nigeria. Our country remains ‘fantastically corrupt’. Just this morning, I read in The Punch how NDLEA in Enugu abducted a man. He was forced to visit his ATM and 160k extorted from him at gun point. He raised the alarm. Police came. The NDLEA officials settled the police and police left. The most graphic images of corruption confront any visitor to Nigeria right from the Murtala Mohammed International Airport. The officials openly ask for “What did you bring.” Right outside the airport, you are welcomed by the social disorder and chaos that rule Nigeria from head to toe. The policemen on the highways continue to collect bribe in our very eyes. Fighting corruption is not just about arresting and putting in jail some big men. Fighting corruption means changing the values and mindset of the Nigerian people. This may involve using state controlled strategic means of mass communication and this must be legalised through leadership examples.  I totally agree with the views that corruption will continue as long as the current Senate leadership remains. At present, the APC is half PDP and half APC. PDP is entrenched in APC and makes the machine difficult to roll by. The thickening plot to democratically overthrow the President Buhari government is being hatched. The plot began on May 29, 2015. The agenda was to use President Buhari to stabilise the wobbling system, having used him, it is now time to throw him away like an empty sack. Unfortunately, President Buhari is less endowed with critical thinkers and an effective strategic caucus. He is also slow and less decisive.  If he had, he would have long cut into pieces the wings of the rogue cells that have effectively taken over the two arms out of the three arms of government.”

    However, my take on the report, which is far simpler than those of the two eggheads quoted, but which daily stare us in the face, go as follows:

    I am not in the least surprised at the latest T. I report on Nigeria. In the first place the party that stole  Nigeria to bare bones  in its 16 year stranglehold, still has within it, not only humongous, stolen financial resources,  but much more malignant is its usurious connection,  and power, over the top echelons of both the Nigerian  judiciary and  middling to senior levels within the Nigerian  security apparati. With these, and as long as money is still in use in Nigeria, they will continue to leverage on these strategic assets to make nonsense of almost every anti corruption agency or effort, thereby, keeping corruption alive and kicking even luxuriating.

    It is under these instrumentalities that the following happened in Nigeria in the last three years:

    1. Saraki and co got installed in senate leadership using significant financial resources from PDP elements who have since literally taken over the inner core of the legislature, forever doing its best to frustrate Buhari’s every effort since  majority APC members are nothing more than birds of passage in the party;
    2. Judges homes became richer than any bureau de change as copiously shown by efcc’s discovery of millions of dollars, yen, pounds from them in a sting operation;
    3. SANs continue to buy judges, and court decisions, for their high heeled clients who pay fees and bribes in millions of dollars. This has been duly attested to by judicial authorities which has disciplined many, and therefore, not hearsay.
    4. Some leading members of the silk introduce their clients to judges and funnel the bribes. There are cases in court affirming these.
    5. Whilst the above happen, only God knows how much PDP looters, anxious to escape justice, have bribed elements within the police and other security personnel;

    There’s no way Transparency International, working through its local resources, could have missed out on these infamies, or on the fact that bribery within the Nigerian police, especially through bribes right on the highways which has been shown through documented research, totals in billions daily.

    For Nigeria to significantly improve in its corruption perception rating, change must begin with every individual Nigerian. We, as citizens of this otherwise great country, must change our anti social and evil ways. There is no two way to it and since Buhari’s well known personal integrity has not succeeded in changing us, we must all now realise that we will all, on the last day, account to God for all our actions on terra firma.

  • Of Nigeria’s pitiable looters and their surrogates

    As you read this not a few of these looters are under intense heat, running helter skelter, begging President Buhari to allow them plea bargain.

    “It is indisputable that no-one has a say on where and to whom one is born or his ethnic nationality. Accordingly, a far-sighted government should blunt the rough edges of ethnic and religious idiosyncrasies by putting in place policies based on equality of status and opportunity in furtherance of self-actualisation of every citizen. But what do we see today? Increasing emphasis is being placed on ethnic origin, native language and religious persuasion which is not only dysfunctional and counter-productive but also seriously flawed and inimical to the corporate needs and interests of the country as well as national unity, social well-being and collective progress”. – Prof Akin Oyebode

    Of all that you can ascribe to Nigerian looters, aka PDP, and their surrogates, I never thought un-seriousness was one of their ailments because to succeed in mercilessly raping a country, to its very depths as they did Nigeria, you would think they sure had some moments of infinite focus, and concentration. So when you now hear that because a convicted South African President Zuma resigned for corruption, therefore, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who among other things, is today’s African Union’s anti corruption Tsar must also resign, you know that some people have gone real berserk. Or how can you begin to put a meaning to that? How do you ask a man under whose lead, integrity and policy, nearly a trillion naira, proceeds of corruption, have  been retrieved from our public rogues, to resign from that office? As you read this not a few of these looters are under intense heat, running helter skelter, begging President Buhari to allow them plea bargain. Crooked thieves that have among them the high and mighty of only yesterday, who burnt their ugly hands stealing in trillions, funds that should have been deployed into procuring for the country much need infrastructure, good health care delivery, a good education system, incomparable transportation system throughout the entire country but which their greed led them into stealing, buying stupid houses they may never see, or sleep in, their entire miserable life. Isn’t it the limit of madness thinking you have to provide, ahead, for nine generations? These are the corrupt men, and women, using their stolen billions to hire educated young men and women, who but for these their patrons should have been gainfully employed, keeping them busy the hour round on social media preaching inanities, the last of which is this their loud nonsense that President Buhari must resign from office. How can any sensible people hoist a call for Buhari’s resignation on a convicted Zuma’s forced exit from office even where you have around him a slew of alleged very corrupt persons like the former Secretary to Government and the recalled NHIS Executive Secretary or a Maina, who are, unfortunately being protected by some Fulani elements and some Kanuri hangers-ons, within the Villa. Can the presence of this miniscule number of misfits serve to completely vitiate Buhari’s incandescent integrity?

    Here, however, I must enter a caveat, a strong one at that even while I feel absolutely certain that a President Jonathan victory in 2015 would have since seen Nigeria become a Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan or, worse still, Syria. By the time he left office, Boko Haram was not only in near total control of the Northeast, the Niger Delta urchins were already attacking waterside area of Lagos State at will, at a point completely demobilising the Egbin power plant and it was not in doubt that the OPC would have had no choice but to come out in all its ferocity to defend Lagos and Yoruba land, at large. The thought should therefore be perished that Buhari has led Nigeria down the hill, these three years, than a second term Jonathan would have unerringly done. Additionally, on the economic front, the likes of Diezani, that one who cannot now come into a Nigeria on whose behalf she claimed to have burnt N10B junketing round the world in all manner of air birds, Madam Patience, who is all tears today begging to be allowed to plea bargain, and the likes of then former FCT minister, also now plea bargaining, would have had nobody to rein in their greed as President Jonathan had effectively outsourced governance to those manner of characters. President Jonathan, is funnily, one of those Obasanjo is now romancing to help him salvage Nigeria just because he eternally loathes being completely out of the power locus.

    I indicated earlier that I will enter a caveat and present evidence of some passable reasonableness, even if it falls far short on the long run, of the call for Buhari’s resignation. Simply put, it is the Fulani’s unmitigated craze for power, unaccountable power, because this exactly is what the Mamman Dauras, the unelected powerhouse in the Buhari Presidency, have demonstrated without let or hindrance. And Nigerians cannot claim not to have heard ample notice of this unmitigated disaster that has literally rendered the Buhari administration prostrate, leaving a good man, a patriotic President Buhari being daily pelted from every corner, in spite of his integrity – thanks to Dr Junaid Mohammed and the First Lady who never held back on the Villa shenanigans.

    Apart from accusations of protecting rogues within the executive branch, another area of valid criticism is the long delayed, and very poor handling of the murderous Fulani herdsmen’s problem. But if that can be rationalised by saying it is not a new problem, and you cannot buy options to open grazing off the shelf,  how do you begin to explain the following nepotistic appointments in a federation of supposed equals; appointments which the Fulani cabal obviously forced on Buhari in the belief that they own Nigeria:

    The Chief of Army staff – North.

    The Chief of Air staff – North.

    The IGP  – North

    The CG immigration –  North

    The CG Prisons   –   North.

    The CG Nigeria civil defence –   North

    The EFCC chairman   – North

    The DG Dept. of SSS   – North

    DG NIA – North

    The National Security Adviser – North.

    INEC Chairman – North

    Defence Minister – North

    to mention but a few?

    I could not but pity the eminent one, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, when this past week, he had to remind Nigerians that when Uthman Dan Fodio founded the caliphate many years ago, he said conscience is an open wound, and that only truth can heal it. Continuing, he said: “the worst word you can hear nowadays is the Fulani issue. There are millions of Fulani who don’t even know what a cow is. I am a Fulani and I am not a herder. I am a proud Fulani. But everyone believes that when you see a Fulani, he is a killer. It is not true. If the government has failed, let them call us to come and help out”.

    Your Eminence, please call your Emirs and enlist every relevant Northerner to join you in helping Nigerians; call out to these selfish and totally unaccountable cabal holding the president literally captive to stop giving Buhari a bad name and branding Fulanis as well as northerners, in general, as very inconsiderate people, forever chasing after naked power. Neither the wife, children nor the family of a Yoruba Head of State can ever have such negative hold on a Nigerian President of Yoruba extraction. Remember, Your Eminence, that Obasanjo serially lost elections in his own ward.

    Let me conclude this article by saying that those asking Buhari to resign are wrong now, and will, forever, be wrong. And in support of this claim, let’s press Prof Ishaq Akintola of MURIC into service. Said he: “It reveals South Africa’s mature democratic practice where a president is booted out for being corrupt whereas in Nigeria, our own president is being pressurised to leave office for fighting corruption.” Here lies the monumental paradox. The outside world must be laughing at Nigeria as they watch the unfolding drama. Two former heads of state have openly asked President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek a second term. The National Assembly is also fighting tooth and nail to get rid of the president as many of its members are enmeshed in corruption cases. The man owns no house abroad. His selling point has always been his incorruptibility. Foreign countries endorse him as a leader of unassailable integrity.”

    While Buhari must, forever, be a dagger at the solar plexus of  owners of hilltop mansion and private universities, only wailers will read this as a recant as I am standing ramrod behind a Buhari’s whose integrity thumps any other’s in this country, despite all the grandstanding of the past few weeks.

  • The putrefaction of the Nigerian political system

    The putrefaction of the Nigerian political system

    Today, these unelected cabal no longer allow Nigerians to see the good in Buhari that made millions vote him in 2015. Here is a man who, though retired as an army general, was military head of state, chairman Petroleum Trust Fund and now,a civilian President but  yet has no hilltop mansion, no private university, not a filling station not to talk of an oil block..

    Defined in its original, medical term, Putrefaction is the fifth stage of death, following pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, and livor mortis. This process references the breaking down of a body, a post mortem In broad terms, it can be viewed as the eventual breakdown of the cohesiveness between tissues (political parties) – WIKIPEDIA.

    Like the Nigerian economy when the highly regarded, but  now late economist, Prof Sam Aluko, described it vis a vis the world economy in the ’80s, the Nigerian political system is like somebody going to Kano but  headed towards Port Harcourt. The more he runs, the further away he is from his destination. Twice, in as many months, two sister African countries, first Zimbabwe, and then South Africa, have demonstrated in unmistakable terms, how immature and thoroughly Lilliputian, the Nigerian political system, especially its political parties, is. In those two countries, without money changing hands as would have happened in our  own National assembly,  serious politicians, working strictly through their political parties, yanked off their Heads of state from their giddy offices and replaced them, constitutionally, without precipitating any crises. In Nigeria, not only would the matters still be festering, several bureau de change would be extra busy.

    It has not always been this bad in Nigeria until President Olusegun Obasanjo effectively decimated, and destroyed, not only  his party, the PDP, de registering any, and every member with a voice, who could stand in his way of untrammeled, one man show, but also coyly plated chairmen on opposition parties. So powerful did he become subsequently that he single handedly inflicted two luckless presidents on both his party and the country. Both Presidents would be so weak, and unsure, the national assembly  would upstage them and has since awarded its members whatever salaries and allowances caught their fancy. As the Emir of Kano said this past  week, half of  a senator’s monthly salary of N35M  or a Rep’s N25M haul will give 200 Nigerians  tidy appointments, with each earning a minimum of N90,000.00k monthly.

    This is one of Obasanjo’s ringing, but little known, contributions to the Nigerian political system.

    However, no matter how degraded political parties have been rendered, there should be no reason APC should have just been handed over to President Buhari as we now have. APC started off, de novo, as a party of equals, and nothing should have thrown the party into the Presidency’s laps, at all.. That started very imperceptibly.

    Rather than now Senate President Bukola Saraki getting holed up in the smallest of cars, in the national assembly premises, plotting  how to be elected Senate President, he as a leader of  the PDP,  the third most influential of the  legacy groups that founded APC, should have, as a matter of right, asked the party to concede it to his group since CPC and ACN have gone sway with the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. Also the deliberate choice of a very good man, Chief Odigie Oyegun, but who had almost  nil political base, was a further minus concerning how effectively the party could hold itself.

    The minute the minders of President Buhari, an absolutely patriotic, honest  and honourable human being, if ever there is one in the Nigerian political firmament, saw this lacuna, that totally atrocious mafia needed no prodding  to take over the government, ensuring that it is literally  governed for the benefit  only of the Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri portion of a country of nearly 200Million people..

    Today, these unelected cabal no longer allow Nigerians to see the good in Buhari that made millions vote him in 2015. Here is a man who, though retired as an army general, was military head of state, chairman Petroleum Trust Fund and now,a civilian President but  yet has no hilltop mansion, no private university, not a filling station not to talk of an oil block..

    Party members must fight tooth and nail to rescue their political parties and take them away from party leaders who, because of  the monies they hope to steal, and positions they intend to hold, would rather play quislings to whoever is in power. But the place to start is to rationalise these funny political parties, bring their number to less than ten and let Nigeria start afresh.

    Enough of these pseudo political parties.

  • Of OBJ, IBB and Father Hassan Kukah

    Of OBJ, IBB and Father Hassan Kukah

    Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and Bishop Hassan Kukah have, in their various ways, written themselves into Nigerian history, if not yet folklore, and they will always be celebrated for one thing or the other. This, in essence, means that mentioning their names have become an imperative wherever, and whenever, Nigeria is mentioned. This fact does not, however, suggest that there can be no glitches in that rendition as there sure are: the aborted Third Term Project, which General Obasanjo has, like forever, denied (‘If I wanted it, I would have told my God and He would have granted it’, or words to that effect), in spite of many beneficiaries of the accompanying bribe not only confessing but displaying millions of naira in public; General Babangida’s annulment of the freest, ever, election in Nigeria – that of Jun 12 1983, in which Nigerians unanimously voted billionaire businessman, M.K O Abiola of blessed memory, and for Bishop Kukah, his recent, totally incongruous invitation to the military to again intervene in the affairs of Nigeria. Just as these men are celebrated, history must, uncannily, record these glitches so that they are shown to be human, after all, and liable to commit their own mistakes like you and I, ordinary mortals. Let us therefore, proceed apace, to document these individuals as they occurred in our recent history beginning from the Bishop who, because we must quickly dispatch this section of our story, I go no further than pressing into service, The Nation’s newspaper HARDBALL column of Thursday, 8 February, 2018 which wrote, inter alia, as follows, but edited for space, in what it captioned as Kukah Cooking Full Emptiness: “The revered Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, just cooked his latest broth. But it is nothing but full emptiness — taken from the angle of the good priest as sound public thinker, with a deep knowledge of Nigerian contemporary history and who loves to impress with great polemics — a little to the left; and a little to the right, like Ibrahim Babangida’s doomed two parties. Has reason so spectacularly failed among Nigeria’s most rigorous thinkers, Hardball wrote further, that their forensic minds must throw up past debacles and future miracles? Father Kukah let it slip, rippling with avant-garde knowledge and holy wisdom, that Nigerians could not afford to, much longer, “take the military for granted”. Pray, who are the military and what might that mean? Are the military a political party, constitutionally free to join political frays? Or, on the philosophical plain: the military, all-wise and supremely above board, should come, post-haste, and sack the democratic order yet again? This, proceeded the column, is a most condemnable baiting — if not outright goading — by a man who definitely ought to know better. It is a sickly reminiscence of that sorry period of Nigerian life, when some otherwise respected “intellectuals” would hug to crass emotions, and with sententious zest, beckon the military to come roll in their tanks.

    No surprises though.

    When Buhari’s anti-corruption war debuted in 2015, Father Kukah did not quite ripple with priestly zeal, to clear Nigeria’s public finance of sleaze. Rather, he called on Nigerians to “move on” because President Goodluck Jonathan had done fantastically well for losing election and quitting. Was he supposed to stay put, holy Father? Now, he is suggesting the military, which by the Constitution, are subordinate to the democratic order, as having intervening rights. That is bordering on high treason, no matter how putative. That is why the Catholic Church must call this priest to order. He sure has rights as a citizen. But his right ends when he starts insinuating extra-constitutional ideas, just because there is tension in the land”

    Such love of country, and grandstanding! Need I add a word more?

    Since General Obasanjo made his Special Statement and launched his movement, I have read nobody contests his right to talk from now till kingdom come. All they have said is that there are ways to talk, especially when you’re not only a highly regarded statesman, two-time president of Nigeria who has, with considerable justification, been described by none other than a colleague columnist of mine on The Nation on Sunday, as the greatest pilgrim to the Villa since Buhari’s fresh coming. It has been further contended that, by launching his movement to take over from Buhari, who he says must return to Daura, as if we have all forgotten his own, still denied, third term ambition, Obasanjo was opportunistically deploying the coup tactics of raking up all the hardship in the polity, using them for purposes of hoisting a MUGABE SPIRIT, of forever wanting to be in power, even if, from the shadows. Or who of his recruits into the movement, would boss the general? His launch, and all the supporting appurtenances, they say, uncannily reminded them of the murderous, goggled infantry general justifying their December 31, 1983 coup, and claiming that Nigerian hospitals have become no better than consulting clinics.

    But, they say, you cannot deceive all the people, all the time. Commenting on this recently Dr Jide Oluwajuyitan  wrote:”But with Col Ali (rtd), former PDP chairman and under whose chairmanship of PPRA, house probe confirmed the theft of N1.6 trillion by PDP stalwarts and their siblings under the fuel subsidy scam, and Olagunsoye Oyinlola who as governor of Osun State was sacked by the courts for electoral fraud, as the movement’s chief drivers, it is not difficult to predict the outcome of his proposal which in itself is a recipe for a rule of the mob by ill- equipped men as we have witnessed since 1966.

    General Babangida, they said, did not disappoint at all with his famed Maradonic peccadilloes – three statements in as many hours – whilst famously throwing one of his spokespersons – one we must say, who self-righteously decided to input himself into the banalities he was sent to deliver, by adding his own, special anti-Buhari diatribe, and has since been running from pillar to post when law enforcement came calling, right under the bus.

    Nigerians, the smart people that they are, can see ‘the collusion, and the treachery of the generals’ as they remember, only too well, all those serpentine meetings on the Minna hilltop as Buhari was battling for dear life in a London hospital.

    Lest the columnist be egregiously misrepresented, let me remind my readers that nothing here should be taken as justifying the self-inflicted woes of the Buhari government. I have written my hands sore deprecating the president’s unexplainable clannishness which, saw almost the entire Nigerian security architecture in the hands of northerners, and was recently demonstrated in the re call of Prof Usman Yusuf, the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, a man under EFCC investigation over an alleged, humongous N919m fraud, who should have been made to first clear himself of this grave allegation. This is a big slur on the President’s number one programme – the anti-corruption war which, very encouragingly, successfully retrieved about N500B from our yesterday thieves in 2017. How unfortunate.

    The same regret must go to the poor handling of the matter of the murderous Fulani herdsmen which has run the entire country into a stupefying tailspin these past few weeks. I have written severally on these pages, counselling that the fact that the president is Fulani and owner of cattle, make it incumbent on him to quickly find a lasting solution to what has turned the entire North Central into a killing field. It is unbelievable that being so close to the problem, the president did not realise that, if not properly handled, and on time, it has considerable potential of significantly, if not fatally, affecting his acceptance in key areas of his party’s support. It is sincerely hoped that the Army’s Operation Cat Race now being put in place to fight herdsmen attacks, would not be a flash in the pan even though Nigerians are already sceptical, given the ethnic configuration of the leadership of our security agencies, about the possibility of these murderous elements being fought with the same ferocity as the equally terrible Boko Haram vermins.

    In concluding, let me just say that it is the wish of most Nigerians that our two respected military heads of state and the Bishop, would be kind enough to allow Nigerians choose their leaders in an atmosphere of peace, and concord, at transparent elections, without any unnecessary hectoring.

    We can only hope that this is not too much to ask.

  • Why Gen. Obasanjo’s habitual election cycle tantrums?

    Apparently Nigerians would learn one day – when the Ota  opportunistic charm has lost its efficacious effect -I e ti ewe ba sunko. Obasanjo does nothing but for self. He has, again, already anointed somebody he again wants to inflict on Nigeria”. Femi Orebe on Face book.

     

    BACKGROUND

    Killing, even of only one person is terrible enough not to talk of the horrendous slaughter of 73 as happened in Benue state.

    May the good Lord grant them eternal rest.

    As I keep saying, the unprecedented looting PDP subjected Nigeria to in their 16 years will, for a long time, remain the GOLD STANDARD OF PUBLIC THIEVING IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY and will continue to haunt Nigeria.

    Just begin to count our losses: infrastructure, the roads, hospitals, schools, and above all, ENHANCED SECURITY that should have stopped foreigners coming in all over our porous borders, to also kill and main innocent Nigerians. This is one more reason we must be careful going into the next elections.

    We must not allow present agonies over these killings to make us forget where we are coming from.

    OBASANJO ON RESTRUCTURING – M comments, 24 hours before his bombshell letter.

    The time has come again for utmost care as General Obasanjo is back with his serpentine conspiracies, always wanting to play God. The utmost obscurantist, those Nigerians with short memories have already started to celebrate him for calling for restructuring. He is starting out to play his usual obfuscating games at which he is a past master. Whoever reads this column will know that I am an unrepentant supporter of, and advocate for restructuring and has, in the past decade, deployed over a million words, proclaiming it an inevitability, indeed, a sine qua non, for our country’s overall development. That has to be said lest am misunderstood.

    As late as 26 August, 2017, in a speech published by The DAILY TRUST, Obasanjo was vehemently opposed to restructuring.

    But he has suddenly experienced a Pauline conversion, as only yesterday, on seeing President Buhari at his weakest point, at his discomfiture over the heinous killings in Benue by his compatriot Fulani murderous herdsmen, Obasanjo has changed tack, intent on cohering opposition against the President like some Yoruba leaders who have since  rushed to Enugu as if they were not in Nigeria when, between 2013-14, these herdsmen reportedly killed 1229 Nigerians without them raising a single word against President Jonathan.

    I suggest that it is to Obasanjo’s latest plot, we must ascribe his daughter, ‘EZEKWEZILI’s’ RED CARD. Nigerians should therefore expect to see more Ezekwezili’s who will be nothing more than Obasanjo foot soldiers, whose sole motive is to make life uncomfortable for Buhari. For the Buhari government, it must now be bare bones because Obasanjo never allowed any embarrassment to his government, even when he longed for an illegal Third Term rather than devolve powers from a thoroughly bloated centre. The security agencies must ensure there are not a single selfish addition to our current multiplicity of security challenges. Such persons, however high or regarded, must not be allowed to play god with a small ‘g’, ever again. They must be kept in check through the due process of law.

    A stitch in time, they say, saves nine.

    I must, however, salute the Presidency’s response which was very mature, and non tit for tat, and hope it served as a learning curve in communication ethos, especially at that level.

    FIRST REACTION TO HIS LETTER 

    My initial reaction to his letter read as follows: “Nobody needs call Obasanjo names at all over his diatribe. Only those who don’t know him will go that route. This is Obasanjo at his best and I cannot be happier that I wrote at length about him in the past 24 hours or thereabout. When I saw  Orby Ezekwezili, brandishing  a red card a few days ago,  and commenced a round of television appearances, I knew Obasanjo was at work and that the egungun himself would soon be out in the open, smoking. That he has now done.

    But just like GOD makes them do who wants to play god with a small g, Obasanjo threw both the APC and PDP, if not the entire Nigerian political class he did everything to corrupt during his time, to the dustbin of history – the classical opportunist at  work, with all the coy,  clever sermonising, like the minister of god he says he is. He barely stopped short of asking us to come to Ota to beg him to salvage Nigeria, again. The Obasanjo I know,  he already has the party name, the presidential candidate he hopes to inflict on us a third time, and his cabinet ready.

    This is the time to tell Baba Obasanjo we are all Nigerians and that none of us has two heads. Time has actually come for him to leave the local political scene to concentrate on the international engagements he so generously listed for Nigerians to know and spend time with his grandchildren as well as play the Ayo (game) he has come to make popular.

    The film show  has opened  and will remain open from now till May 2019. We promise to stay ready, God willing.

    REACTION TO OLU ALUKO’S POST ON OBASANJO’S LETTER

    Didn’t I tell you Fayose knows Obasanjo the most of all Nigerians? Osoko remembers the bad ‘jobs’ he gave him to do. He knows how he wanted to sacrifice him to get at Atiku together with whom PTDF funds and several other Nigerian funds were used  for private purposes. Didn’t Obasanjo consider himself an untouchable or did he appear before congressional enquiries on the 16B dollar Electricity money  which procured only darkness or the  senate sitting on PTDF funds etc.

    How can he now pretend to being our messiah, our moral compass, as Simeon Kolawole perspicaciously put it? Obasanjo should just register his party and canvass votes. He may still be elected president even without any sermonising letter. Nigerians already knew everything contained in his letter long before those words were penned.

    CONCLUSION

    When I wrote on 23 January, only Obasanjo’s group, and a few perspicacious Nigerians who have come to know the man like the back of  their own palms, could have known, or thought,  that he had, even while going and coming out of the Villa, smiling with Buhari at his side, been fast at work, cooking his latest treachery.

    For long before that, Obasanjo and the likes of Orby Ezekwesili, had long conceived of their RED CARD concerning  which Orby had proactively commenced a round of the television networks, propagating  ideas like she too is another of our ‘super patriots’, even though she was in no way re inventing the wheel as their group had already been  up, and doing, under the structure indicated below.

    What the membership and the strategic positions held by some individuals showed, however, is that Obasanjo is back with his nation disrupting tactics. That he  was not joking when he called on Igbo’s to contest the 2019 Presidential election; a suggestion for which a thinking Igbo elder statesman, Chief Ikokwu, rebuked him saying: “ the call is belated because he had a golden opportunity in 2005 when he should have restructured Nigeria and return the country to a true federation. Concluding, Ikokwu had told him: “Majority of Ndigbo are not interested in the Nigerian presidency in our skewed and dysfunctional constitutional system, which is presently unitary instead of truly federal”.

    Please recall how Obasanjo deceived Dr Goodluck Jonathan into contesting the 2011 election and the consequences simply because of his unmitigated hatred for Atiku and Buhari but certainly for no minorities’ consideration, as he later framed it.

    I digress.

    Obasanjo’s NIM, the acronym for his National Intervention Movement, operates under the following  Provisional Tasks, Teams and Steering Committees and had long been in existence.

     

    1. Steering Cmmittee
    2. Finance  Committee
    3. Secretariat

    Ideology  Commission

    Political Commission

    Contacts & Mobilisation

    Students & Youths Cells Team

    Strategy & Marketing

    Legal

    Diaspora

    National Secretariat

     

    There is absolutely  nothing illegal in what they are doing but Baba needs write no jeremiad to Buhari. Rather, he and his crowd should work hard  to get  their party registered, and then  start to canvass for votes.

    Who knows, he may yet emerge a third time elected President of Nigeria.

    Let me conclude by saying that I do not believe a word of his disavowal of any interest in power. That will not be the Obasanjo Nigerians have come to know too well.

  • President Buhari’s 2nd term: Where will the votes come from?

    President Buhari’s 2nd term: Where will the votes come from?

    When on Sunday, 15 September, 2017 I wrote the article below (slightly edited for space) on these pages, my intention was to rouse President Mohammadu Buhari, free him from the suffocating grip of a mafia whose mindset is cast in the 17th century, and wake him up to the reality that he is president of a multi- ethnic, multi-religious and, a culturally diverse country of almost 200 million in population. That those hopes have largely been dashed became clear to me after the totally unconscionable appointment of a Northerner to replace the former Yoruba Director – General of the National Intelligence Agency, thus completing the banality of Northerners’ complete control of the Nigerian security apparatti, the effect of which we now see in the shambolic way the security agencies are treating the murderous Fulani herdsmen.

    If the article was advisory then, things have so degenerated now that if APC is to have any hope of victory in 2019, the Buhari government must be rescued from that un-elected cabal.

    Declared the President’s wife, First Lady Aisha Buhari last year on BBC: “The president does not know 45 out of 50, for example, of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years.” “Some people are sitting down in their homes folding their arms only for them to be called to come and head an agency or a ministerial position. … if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again or ask any woman to vote like I did before. I will never do it again.”

    “My prayer had always been that God will restore President Muhammadu Buhari to perfect health, to  such an extent his health will not even be an issue in the 2019 elections. That prayer has largely been answered in the affirmative. The question to now ask is: where will the votes come from, to earn him a second term? To answer that question, let us examine the man and his government.

    Relying exclusively on what I knew of contestant Muhammadu Buhari up until 2014/15, and seeing how then President Goodluck Jonathan had firmly enthroned systemic corruption in the country, I wrote on these pages, shortly before the APC primaries of December, 2015, that Nigeria needed Buhari more than he needed her.  But can I, in all honesty, say that today?  President Buhari showed very early in his administration that he was not going to be his own man when, in what many saw as a dig at Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man who gave a leg and an arm for his victory, he said he was for nobody, but for all, as if anybody said he should be beholden to Tinubu.

    By the time he ended his ‘search’ for his ministers – a mere five months – his relations, and assorted Hausa/ Fulani/Kanuris, to the near total exclusion of Nigerians from other ethnic groups, have taken over the government. That the country’s entire security architecture is in the hands of Northerners must have been the icing on the cake. If all that was resented in the Southwest which had been crucial to his election, what about the North Central geopolitical zone which the progressives won for the very first time ever? Political pragmatism should have informed the President to encourage the party to cede the senate Presidency to the nPDP after CPC and APC had taken the Presidency and the Vice presidency, respectively. That is how, very easily, the extremely polarising executive –legislative face off which has since haunted the party, and the government, could have been avoided. The President did no such thing. Today, the National Assembly is controlled by the ruling party only in name.

    How then have these avoidable missteps affected President Buhari in the performance of his duties, and how, in turn, will they affect election 2019?

    The President has recorded considerable achievement in the discharge of his promises to the electorate on anti corruption and the fight against the all pervading insecurity he inherited from President Jonathan, even though some critical, but avoidable, challenges remain. While inter agency squabbles have significantly hampered the anti corruption war, despite EFCC’s sterling performance, and not insignificant successes, the judiciary has been most unhelpful, with some judges, despite ACJA, still granting unreasonably long adjournments, and giving rulings that show they don’t care a hoot if Nigeria goes to the dogs, far from the decent society of law and order which Nigerians crave. The judiciary, especially some judges and a few, very identifiable members of the senior bar, have constituted themselves into a bulwark of support for corruption’s ferocious fight back. Many Nigerians, quite unfortunately, attribute the consequences of this judiciary-corruption entente, to President Buhari who, of course, cannot by himself jail persons accused of corruption.

    Similar mitigating challenges are also trail the war against insecurity, especially Boko Haram which though, severely degraded, remains not only a potent enemy of state, but one on which so much money is being expended. With President Jonathan having largely played politics with Boko Haram, it has succeeded in establishing serpentine liaisons with the local communities which has made its complete rooting out literally impossible. Kidnappings, armed robberies, serial killings etc continue to be the bane of every Nigerian citizen. Cost of living is high just as youth employment gnaws at heart of most parents’.

    All these should tell President Buhari he has his job well cut out for him from now on. Nor can a resurgent PDP, which is already stoking the embers of citizen’s malcontent, be taken for granted. In this respect, President Buhari must realise that Nigerians have very short memories. Yes, PDP is a party of buccaneers, yes they stole the country blind, yes, they literally turned the country into Somali and Southern Sudan combined, but hey, if Nigerians are still this hungry by 2019, the electorate will not remember that it was President Jonathan who turned the CBN to an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) and got, on his instructions, a 2.1Billion dollars earmarked for the military completely incinerated by his acolytes. How has the Buhari government fared on such key subjects as Education, top posts of which are also dominated by the North, Healthcare delivery, Housing, road infrastructure etc? Why so many strike in our institutions of higher learning and how come labour has become so unduly restive?”

    When the above was written, the Benue genocide and the Taraba bloodletting were still aeons away. Police men have not become game for Fulani herdsmen, with our security agencies looking askance. An arrogant, Emirs -backing, and probably shielding, miyetti Allah, confident the government would never lift a finger to check its murderous excesses, was still talking largely in whispers. Not now, when they are in the open, not only killing and maiming, but burning villages and farmsteads, and telling state governments what laws they can, and cannot enact.

    Happily, President Buhari still has some time, though not much, on his hands, to rouse himself, re brand, restrategise, and begin to run an inclusive government. He must ensure that these murderous killers are brought to justice, as killers must get their comeuppance; albeit, through the due process of law. The President must wean himself off his excessive ethnicity. It is as unjust, as it is unexplainable in a multi-ethnic society. He must see every part of the country, especially the thoroughly shortchanged southeast, as deserving of fairness and equity. He must abandon his insularity and let other parts of the country also enjoy the dividends of democracy. His shortcomings are largely the undercurrents fast turning the demand for restructuring into a pan-Nigerian obsession which he would soon discover is an inevitability, and a sine qua non, for peace and development.

    Nigerians must have a new lease of life. He must equally take interest in the affairs of the APC which is presently neither here, nor there, with problems in several of its state chapters. Key elections are fast approaching in some states and the President must be at the vanguard of ensuring internal party cohesion, especially immediately after the heat of the respective primary elections. He must realise that how the party performs at the elections will be a pointer to 2019, especially for the electorate.

    These are the irreducible desiderata, if he must win in 2019. President Buhari’s shortcomings notwithstanding,  and they are legion, I can never support the idea that we throw the baby out with the bath water and allow known thieves and predators, come back to steal, again, all the billions  already recovered  from them and return to  themselves, the hundreds of houses already forfeited to the nation. Buhari’s integrity remains unblemished: a former Head of state and chairman, PTF, he hasn’t a gas station, not to talk of an oil block, no hilltop mansion, nor a private university. He remains, Nigeria’s ‘numero uno’, politician of integrity, alive.

  • Neither grazing reserves nor ranches: Let history be our guide

    Neither grazing reserves nor ranches: Let history be our guide

    “Nobody can stop the government from acquiring land anywhere. Government is government. If anybody thinks that he is violent, government has a monopoly of violence”. –Senator Abdullahi Adamu –Chairman, Senate/House Joint Public Hearing Committee.

    I sometimes think that if our governments, at various levels, would hearken unto the several suggestions of many a newspaper columnist, subject them to necessary, in-house process of decision making to distil their way forward on sundry issues, Nigeria would not be where it is today with thousands of needless, heartless killings, and  several flash points all over the country. I reproduce below, the article which appeared on these pages on Sunday, 15 May, 2016.

    History, it has been said, repeats itself as tragedy. This we ought to do everything to avoid as Nigerians but since successive Nigerian governments have only toyed with the idea of having a genuine, and honest national conference where we could tell ourselves the truth, I think it behoves concerned individuals to try their humble best to help the country out of this conundrum. Resolving the naughty issue of the herdsmen is one issue on which we must allow history to guide us, lest we further complicate our problems. Some of these truths have been coming out at the ongoing Joint National Assembly Public hearing where the representatives from Benue and Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Edward Ujege, President General of Mdzough U Tiv and Dr Paddy Njoku , respectively, as well as that of Southern Zaria, vehemently objected to the Grazing Reserve Bill. Beyond the public hearing, at least two governors from the Southwest have equally voiced their opposition. These objections are the result of the sad experiences Fulani herdsmen had inflicted on people in various parts of the country, the most recent being the Enugu killing of about 40 persons and the Agatu bloodfest which accounted for about 500 deaths but which Sale Bayari, Secretary-General of Gan Allah Fulani Development Association (GAFDAN) rhapsodized as the consequence of the Fulani’s unforgiving spirit –”if they kill 10, we kill 100 in return”,  as he enthused in a Sunday Punch interview. What Nigerians are asking for is simply that whoever armed these people should  disarm them. The time has come for government to read the riot act to these murderous herdsmen and their employers who operate behind the mask. It is a lie to claim arrogantly that government has a monopoly of violence and one would have thought that Boko Haram has proved that beyond doubt. Let me, therefore, suggest two ways in which the big men who own the businesses, and are arming these vermins can reasonably do their business without constituting needless danger to others. First, they should blow their cover and come out into the open. They should then submit a list of their herdsmen to government, disarm them completely and promptly enter into  agreement with the various governments, affirming their vicarious liability for any of their employers’ transgressions, and pay compensation. Secondly, and for the long term, given the contribution of pastoralism  to the country’s  economic  development , the business owners should look solely  to the North for both their grazing reserves, and ranches. The North should be turned, essentially, to the country’s grazing zone. As to weather constraints, science and countries like Israel have proved  conclusively  that grass can luxuriate anywhere under the sun. And to effectively do this, they should approach either their banks for long term loans or their state governments for partnership. They should then exploit the entire value chain by establishing meat processing companies with incredible, and foreseeable possibility of a quantum economic leap. Not only would their animals be more productive and the business more profitable, massive employment opportunities will open up for all Nigerians and many of our currently under utilised airports doting the entire country could be reconfigured for cargo haulage as the entire West African sub region would easily become their market. Nor would there be a shortage of buyers coming from the South to buy cows and processed meat just as they go to the North today to buy yams, tomatoes etc.

    Sometime in the 80’s, I seriously considered exporting raw foodstuffs abroad, especially to both the U.S and the U.K where my children were then studying. Once I did the feasibility study, the first practical step I undertook was to go to Kuta in Niger State, where my inquiries had shown was the best source for yams. Rather than go in a car, the gentleman who accompanied me, Mr Omole, and I went by public transport for me to properly understand what I was getting into. After discussions with some yam sellers right in the market and speaking  to one or two  big  farmers introduced to me, we bought yams which my partner then brought  to a Medoya at Mile 12, Lagos, with whom I have  agreed  a sale arrangement for whatever was excess to my export requirement. At Kuta, I noticed that unlike in the South, farmers do not have to make big heaps to harvest huge yams. I narrate this personal story to show that buyers from the South will continue to go to the North to buy cows which will no longer have to be taken, months, through hundreds of kilometres down South, destroying farms as they go.

    There is, however, another very fundamental reason which makes one believe that as a united country, under God, desirous of peace, and disavowing of all these unnecessary bloodletting, we should allow history to be our guide.

    That brings me to the following Whats app chat that has been trending for some time now. Titled: “WHY ANY GRAZING BILL MUST BE STOPPED”, the story is told of how King Yunfa, the Hausa Sarkin in Gobir (now called Sokoto) hosted a Fulani immigrant called Usman Dan Fodiyo and his group in February 1804. As a result of that act of hospitality, and the subsequent killing of Yunfa in 1808 by the immigrants, the entire Hausa kingdom was lost, a booty to the Fulanis, who promptly turned it to Sokoto Caliphate; an eventuality that happened simply because the Fulanis were given access to grazing land by their hosts ( though they claimed to have been fighting syncretism -additions mine.) Nor did the Fulanis stop there. In Ilorin they killed Afonja who had colluded with them and, in his place, installed the Alimis as emirs over a predominantly Yoruba kingdom till today. And had the Yoruba not defeated them in Osogbo in 1840, there would most probably be Fulani emirs all over Yoruba land today. Continues the story: “It is the descendants of these same Fulanis who are now angling for grazing reserves and a corridor throughout the entire federation. Such grazing reserves, if  allowed, will see history repeat itself , now  properly as the  mother of all  tragedies  because Fulani settlements  would  soon  become  communities and later  translate to  Local government areas with their own elected officials”. Concluding, the author wrote: “The grazing bill is a subtle continuation of the 1804 Fulani jihad by today’s fully-armed, and well protected Fulani herdsmen with the  same  age-old agenda to overrun and Islamise Nigeria. The grazing bill is not an attempt to solve the problem, it is a subterfuge to progress the agenda. It is an age-old political strategy: create a problem, come up with a “solution” that advances the cause, and then give it a legal backing to make it look like a win-win situation.”

    All these may look like hogwash to some but my Yoruba people have this  saying : ‘ina esunsun ki jo ni le e meji, meaning, you don’t make the same mistake twice. In reaction to the Whats app story, I have heard people say it is an attempt to dip the Quoran in the Atlantic Ocean as the Alhaji Ahmadu Bello once promised. It was further argued that whether it is a grazing reserve or a ranch, Fulani settlements would emerge everywhere in the country and given the Hausa/Fulani culture to always have a radio transistor  with/on  them, somebody, somewhere would one day just give the command  to attack, and  Nigeria, as we know it, would be history.