The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • President Buhari’s appointments and the federal character concept

    President Buhari’s appointments and the federal character concept

    Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.

    The amalgamation, by fiat, of the Southern  and Northern parts of Nigeria was done based largely  on  a 1914 letter from Lord Lugard to the Secretary of State for the Colonies part of which read as follows: “For some time it has been realised that the total isolation of the North from the South cannot continue indefinitely. The North has no access to the sea except through the South. Its revenue is insufficient to maintain its administration and deficits have to be met by annual grants from the South and the imperial treasury. It is expected that the unification of the North and South would relieve the imperial treasury of the necessity of making such yearly contributions”.

    The amalgamation consummated, it became inevitable that genuine efforts be made to ensure that no part of the country is left behind. These efforts finally culminated in what  is known  as the  Federal Character Concept which, by “virtue of the provisions of the Third Schedule, Part I-C paragraph 8(1) of the 1999 Constitution, is to give effect to section 14 (3) and (4) of the Constitution which states that the composition of the government of the federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government  or in any of its agencies.”

    Given Nigeria’s multi-ethnicity, therefore, this is a constitutional provision no Head of State, who wants to succeed, will treat with levity.

    Unfortunately, these provisions have been observed mostly in the breach especially in federal ministries and agencies. For instance, I weighed in on this same subject on an occasion when INEC was becoming something of a Northern fiefdom. In: WHAT GAME IS THE NORTH UP TO  AT INEC? , The Nation September 23, 2012, I wrote: “Can Professor Jega, a celebrated academic and former University Vice-Chancellor, double as an ethnic bigot?  Is the ‘famous’ Professor Oba, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, working in tandem with Jega in his historic role  of a northern irredentist? Or is it as simple as the Federal Character Commission becoming comatose or completely blind and toothless wherever in the Nigerian polity the North wields an unfair advantage?”  To his eternal credit, Professor Jega subsequently effected some changes though not in the appointments which had become a ‘fait accompli, but in the membership of key INEC committees which were strategically put under the control of directors of Northern extraction.

    That ethnic control of federal agencies was one of the shenanigans Nigerians believed they would see discontinued in Buhari’s CHANGE administration .Unfortunately, we are daily seeing evidences of more of the same. So unfair, and very rampant has it become that I have come to the conclusion  that those around the President are not  being  honest  in letting him have the  feed backs  arising from his appointments  most of which have gone to the North with hardly any consideration for the Southern part of the country. It started with his earliest appointments  of  those generally referred to as  his kitchen cabinet  which many Nigerians believe  can very easily  conduct  its business in the  Hausa language.  However, if those around the President have decided to cocoon him, barring him from hearing  negative  comments, I have no doubt, whatever, of my having personally  earned the right to tell the President the truth. This is because, long before his party’s  Presidential primaries  which he won, I have cast my lot with contestant Buhari and was so gun ho in my support for him that Professor Tam David West,  his  very good friend and supporter , readily quoted me where I had written in an article that “Nigeria needed Buhari more than he needs Nigeria”. I did not limit my support for him to my own views only but went further to quote from my readers’ responses; views that were very supportive of his candidature.  I am sure I won him, not a few Nigerians who ended up voting for him at the election proper. While I am impressed with his anti- corruption war which, amongst other things, has exposed the Nigerian army as an institution far worse now than when it was described, by its one time Chief of Army staff, as an army of anything goes, the President has hugely disappointed with his very insular, North-centric appointments.  Or could it be a benign disrespect for the South  as alleged by those who claimed that the President is on record as  saying  that he should not be expected to treat Southerners who voted him 5% the same way as Northerners who voted him 95 %? I can only hope that this is more than a fabrication. His appointments are so unerringly disdainful of   the South that  one begins to think  that the President has been captured by a cabal – a Katsina Mafia – as Dr Junaid Mohammed  suggests, who is dictating who to appoint to where.

    Much as I hate the comparison, these appointments very uncannily mirror what we had during the reign of the goggled general when  you  couldn’t  name  four  Southerners in  the topmost  20  positions in the country. It is extremely sad that we could have in Buhari’s administration, anything  that bears this striking similarity to what  operated  under  Abacha.  It will cheapen this column to start listing the many appointments that are circulating in the social media, all going to Northerners as if the Federal Character Commission and the law setting it up have been abrogated. And the silence, from the Presidency to the allegations goes a long way to confirm their truism.  I will be very surprised if  the otherwise hardworking pair of  the President’s  spokespersons  can, in all honesty, claim not  to have read the NIGERIAN VILLAGE SQUARE, where it quoted TheNiche’ interview with Dr Junaid Mohammed, a one time supporter of President Buhari, wherein he  said, inter alia: “Muhammadu Buhari’s relatives are the ones dictating policy in Aso Rock for 170 million Nigerians,  thus  adding nepotism to the festering allegation of narrow mindedness levelled against the president who critics say surrounds himself with Northerners in running national affairs”. This is not one allegation in which silence will be golden because Mohammed went on to name at least seven relatives of the president who are the power behind the throne in the Villa – this in addition to the heads of ALL vital security agencies who are from the North.  Dr Mohammed did not shy away from naming them  and  describing their blood relationship  with the President. He even went further to say that two of these seven are already plotting the ouster of the Acting chairman of EFCC for touching somebody  they consider  a sacred cow. I sincerely hope they won’t dare Nigerians who are still largely supporting the President because they know he did not cause their suffering.

    A troubling consequence of these appointments is that whether in the Executive, the legislature or the judiciary, the dominance of  the North is so overwhelming  and  unmistakable.  Their conquest of the leadership of the judiciary is such that a Southerner can hardly be appointed the Chief Justice of the Federation in the next twenty years and that will be in addition to decades of their complete domination. Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.  I have heard not a few Yoruba  say  that  we have been sold  cheap to the North and much as  I reply by saying that  we were  divinely sent  to save Nigeria  from President  Jonathan’s brood of kleptomaniacs ,  I think  I must say that  President Buhari  owes  those of us who literally carried him on our heads, even when all we relied upon was his integrity,  an obligation to  govern fairly  and with due  respect to all parts of the country.  That is the only way he can have a lasting positive legacy.  We, in turn, owe him a duty of  always reminding  him  that   the Federal Character provision has  not  been  edited out of the Nigerian constitution.

  • Federal Government to establish silo in Ado-Ekiti

    Federal Government to establish silo in Ado-Ekiti

    My trepidation arose from the fact that there is, already,  an abandoned 100,000 metric Tonnes Silo in Ado-Ekiti, owned by the same federal government evidence  of which is shown below in a public lecture I gave as far back as Thursday 19thSeptember 2013. 

    For the week, we are privileged to have, as part writer, Chief Samuel Bandele Falegan, a onetime Director of Research at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, as well as the first Nigerian Managing Director of the Federal Mortgage Bank Nigeria. A trained economist, and committed patriot, Chief Falegan is the Atoye of Ado-Ekiti.
    I read with a great deal of trepidation and surprise, a newspaper report that, in its determination to promote and encourage agriculture, the federal government plans to establish a grains’ silo in Ado-Ekiti. My trepidation arose from the fact that there is, already, an abandoned 100,000 metric Tonnes Silo in Ado-Ekiti, owned by the same federal government evidence of which is shown below in a public lecture I gave as far back as Thursday 19thSeptember 2013.

    “INTEGRITY IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE AND ITS IMPACT ON PRODUCTIVITY”- Being THE 2013 ANNUAL PUBLIC LECTURE OF THE EKITI STATE CHAPTER OF THE FORUM OF HEADS OF FEDERAL ESTABLISHMENTS.

    There is a 100,000 metric Tonnes Silo estimated to cost N4 billion, started five years ago in Ado-Ekiti but, up till now, has not been completed. Much as Ekiti, an agrarian state, needs a grain storage silo, the uncompleted or “abandoned” silos raises doubts about the sincerity of those who conceived  it if, five years after the construction began, it is yet to be completed. Could it be that the N4 billion voted for it has been exhausted? In a recent interview with the contractors, apart from being doggy on pertinent questions, all I got was a mere promise to complete it as soon as money is made available. The questions which arise, therefore are these:  which one should come first, availability of, and potential surplus grains, for which there will be a need for a silo or should the provision of a silo precede availability of grains? Meanwhile, five yearly harvest seasons have passed without evidence of surplus grains in the state. That obviously raises the question  of credibility and  the sincerity of the promoters (may be, as Nigerians have  come to see since President Muhammadu Buhari’s coming,  those in charge have already  taken their “bite,” leaving the project to its fate).

     I chose the 100,000 metric “Tonnes project as an example of the waste and graft that dominated the past governments. I am convinced that the portion below quoted from that lecture is relevant to the illustration and the example I used.  That is also why one cannot but feel concerned about the obvious indifference to work which, in turn, results in lack of productivity leading to lack of vision, initiative or innovation.

     Ordinarily your work here, as officials of the federal government, ought to positively contribute to the growth and development of Ekiti. Let me pause and explain those two esoteric terms and explain the difference between them which, when not properly interrogated, are in conflict with each other. Economic growth is often measured in terms of a Nation, using such indices as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National Product (GNP) or National Income (NI).  It is, however, possible for a nation like Nigeria to have Economic Growth without Economic Development especially when its components, at the state level are understated and grassroots/ rural development, job creation and poverty eradication are under-reported and need to be captured in computing the national data. The consequence in economic terms is that some indices such as population that are exaggerated or inflated in some states in the country, (as confirmed both by INEC and the Country’s Population Census Board) will lead to conflicting per capita income which can more than distort the nation’s growth rate. Nigeria, measured largely by its one crop-product of crude oil which contributes over 80 per-cent of its revenue, is reported to have been having positive and upward bound Economic growth of about 7 per-cent annually since about 2004 up to 2012, when it declined to 6.19% in the first half of 2013.  Yet when other indices like rural development, health, employment generation, road-network, education etc all of which are indices of Human Capital Development are absent, it may turn out to be negative such that these items being religiously pursued at the state level but not computed in the national data, will result in growth without development, understate its per capita income and overstate its debt profile as recently published by the Debt Management Office. Thus, growth cannot be real but artificial as measured by the traditional method if, and where, there is no development as measured by Human Development Index. Whereas positive development will be enhanced when growth is accomplished by the latter, it is in this context that we have to measure your assignment and mission to this state. May be you don’t appreciate  the fact that your mission to this state is meant to create jobs  and employment  opportunities, leading to improved quality of life as well as improved living standards through honest execution of the projects directed at the rural population. Not only did I send a copy of my lecture to the then Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, who in his characteristic and patriotic concern about public waste, reacted positively.

    I hope the Federal Ministry of Agriculture should be interested in knowing exactly what happened to the project to which a highly regarded patriot has brought to the public space through this article.

    PDP Senators Withdraw Support From The Buhari Administration

    Senators elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP announced, this past week, their withdrawal from supporting the Buhari administration over what they described as the government’s “belligerent attitude” towards its members. They will do that, they said, until the APC government ends its belligerent attitude towards PDP members. So what is this belligerent attitude, asking thieves to return their loot? Could this be their reaction to Buhari’s refusal to align with his predecessor’s ‘stealing is not corruption’ mantra? Could it be that asking them to come and justify how they believe that fraudulently forging their extant Rules to gift Saraki the senate presidency is no internal affairs of the senate as they claim? They even talk about coercion and intimidation as if these words have new meanings. Pray, how does asking these two adults to come and have their day in court equate to intimidation and how does answering to one’s actions transmute to a case against the senate as an institution? And, as if they are just waking up from a prolonged slumber, they are not even ashamed to deploy the very serious economic and security challenges confronting the country, as part of the building blocks for their so-called withdrawal of support for the government?  When did they become ceased of these challenges? How does their irresponsible quest for life pension and immunity for their leadership fit into these challenges or which of their humongous allowances, which make them rank as the highest paid legislators anywhere in the world, have they given up? And by the way, was padding the budget and throwing the list of ambassadors on the President’s face acts of support for the Buhari administration? Who has not seen that both legislative houses now barely form a quorum at plenary since Buhari made money for bills impossible? If these PDP senators know what is good for them, their withdrawal of support for the Buhari government should have kicked off with Ike Ekweremadu quitting office as Deputy Senate President. Without a doubt, these senators sure don’t know what Nigerians think of this 8th Assembly. Rather than bellyache, I think they should be happy to have one additional court to troop to in solidarity with their compromised leaders. Nigerians cannot wait to see that charade.

  • The increasing call for restructuring Nigeria

    The increasing call for restructuring Nigeria

    We need an impartial  body  that  would proffer  genuine ways  to  properly reconfigure Nigeria  from what it presently is – a totally unworkable and, therefore, not working  ‘geographical expression’ as Chief Obafemi Awolowo called it.  

    It could not have been a surprise that the dominant theme of this year’s June 12 anniversary revolved around the matter of restructuring Nigeria. Literally everybody who spoke at the various events  marking the day  had something  to say about the subject and once they had  finished eulogising  Chief MKO  Abiola’s sacrifice for democracy,  it was the next  important  topic they  launched  into.  Restructuring is that important, if Nigeria is ever to get it right, that the Buhari government must ensure it takes it serious enough not to commit the mistakes of earlier administrations especially in the composition of the conference membership. Any attempt to pack such a conference would mean that nothing good can come from it.  We need an impartial  body  that  would proffer  genuine ways  to  properly reconfigure Nigeria  from what it presently is – a totally unworkable and, therefore, not working  ‘geographical expression’ as Chief Obafemi Awolowo called it.  The many flashpoints we are confronted with as a nation today irrefutably confirms that description. Apart from  the impossibility of wishing restructuring  away, President Buhari’s  inelegant claim that the report of the 2014 confab will rot away  in the archives, has massively upped the  ante  of  the  demand for it.  Although I did not support the conference  because  I saw it as a product of  crass political opportunism, I  have expected  that  since his inauguration, President Buhari  would  have read through the report or be properly briefed  about  it  as the recommendations cannot, in totality, be bad for the country, given the calibre of people  at the conference.  Arising  from the trenchant, negative reactions  to  his  disclosure about how he treated the report , therefore,  I think  the  president  should create the time to  study  it. He should, in fact, thoroughly study, and internalise, the reports of all the conferences that have been convoked towards finding a solution to the national question. He is guaranteed a profitable learning curve about this ‘amalgam of nations’ called Nigeria as doing so will provide answers to many of the demons presently tearing us apart.  In case he is too busy to do this personally, the president  should  empanel  a small, but smart  group  from within  his cabinet to  do a summary of the reports and,  in bullet form,  extract  the  key recommendations, especially those on which all the conferences  are ‘ad idem’. These he could effect, via executive powers, and fast track others through executive bills to the National Assembly.

    Historically, some parts of the North have constituted the greatest opposition to restructuring, but that position is beginning to change. Before the recent  call by  former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar,  suggesting that “restructuring and renewal of our federation will make it less centralised and less suffocating, elder statesman, Alhaji Ahmed Joda, had  lent  it a ringing support  when he wrote as follows: “Our country has passed through difficult times, including a civil war and has survived. We must, however, not mistake the fact of our survival to anything like military might; rather it was because ordinary Nigerians overwhelmingly desire to live together in one united country, but under some acceptable arrangement”.

    At this year’s anniversary of June 12, some highly regarded Nigerians, among them the Lagos State governor, Akinwumi Ambode, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (retd) and Ayo Opadokun also threw their weight behind restructuring which they said is a must if we want to overcome our national challenges. While the governor said that what “we owe Nigeria today is nothing but true federalism, Opadokun believes that Nigeria will not get out of the woods until it restructures its skewed federal structure. At another event, this time at the 17th Annual Convention of the Igbo Youth Movement, former Vice President Alex Ekwueme; Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Prof. Jerry Gana, amongst others, also vigorously canvassed restructuring and concluded that it is only  when we have done this  that Nigeria  can have peace.

    A lot has been written about how beneficial to Nigeria restructuring would be that we need not repeat them here. Our various theatres of mini wars, North and South of the country, have turned restructuring to an urgent matter. However,  given our  current  economic and security  challenges – the naira has just been pummelled to submission – I believe  that the immediate problems confronting the  Buhari administration  should be  how to fix  the economy as well as conclusively rout Boko Haram, not convoking a national conference. The last one, we were told, gulped a princely N9Billion. If that was possible when oil was selling for more than 100 dollars per barrel, our current economic circumstances which has rendered 27  out of 36 states literally comatose, should warn us against any undue haste abut restructuring, important as it certainly is. I wish to suggest, therefore, that President Buhari should not be unduly harangued about restructuring before his 3rd year in office when we expect that the economy should have been sufficiently stabilised and Boko Haram, hopefully, no longer a major threat.

    An ideal time to begin the process of restructuring should, in my view, be during  the first quarter of  President Buhari’s  third year in office when he should pronounce the establishment  of  a Constituent Assembly whose members  would emerge from an election to be  conducted  on  a  zero party basis. In the Ahmed Joda model, the National Assembly would constitute the .Assembly but I think Nigerians have seen enough of the 8th Assembly to ever leave such a huge responsibility in its hands.  As suggested by the  elder statesman, “there should be  no representation in the Assembly for special interests because of the abuses that could engender, and  serving members of any legislative body should  not be eligible just as interested public servants must resign their posts and contest.” The Assembly should have full powers to comprehensively review the Nigerian Constitution bearing in mind, as Joda posited,  the fact  that “there is, in the extant one, too much concentration of power and resources at the centre, thus stifling the country’s march to greatness as well as threatening its unity because of  the abuses, corruption and reactive tensions  which over-centralisation generates.”

    The Assembly should have about six months to work, and present its report to the president. From this point on, in my opinion, the conference report should, at a formal national event, be handed over to the political parties to study and make to their party manifesto for the 2019 general election. This should then be regarded as the respective party’s contract with Nigerians on the basis of which each would campaign for the election. This is about the only way to cure the current constitution’s lie about ‘we the people’. It will also eliminate the controversy about whether the current constitution permits a referendum or not. Whichever party wins the general election should, ipso facto, be deemed to have secured the peoples’ mandate to begin restructuring Nigeria with effect from 29 May, 2019.

  • President Goodluck Jonathan and corruption

    President Goodluck Jonathan and corruption

    If I were President Jonathan, I would put a stop to these arranged lectures and talks until such a time my innocence would have been established

    “Nigerians know that Buhari is not the architect of their pains, which he is doing everything  to stop by stemming the bleeding caused by the rapacious PDP.. Whenever the condition in which we have found ourselves is discussed, it should be stated  clearly that Buhari has got his teeth into clearing the mess of about 16 years during  which PDP chiefs, at our expense, led a rollercoaster champagne life that would make Hollywood greats green with envy. They lived like kings and partied like movie stars. Nigerians said “enough”, kicked them out and handed Buhari the mandate to demolish the edifice of vices built by fraudsters, pranksters and gangsters parading  as leaders. Now the rebuilding has begun. It will take some time and patience. –Gbenga Omotoso, Editor, The Nation, Thursday, 09.06.2016.

    Looking at the duo of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Mrs. Patience Jonathan the other day, smooching, hugging and dancing azonto, one question that raced through my mind was: what do the Jonathan’s  now think of Obasanjo, the man who brought them fame, fortune and ultimately,  perdition? You do not need to have known former President Goodluck Jonathan up close to appreciate the fact that he was a perfect gentleman, neither  a Pharaoh nor a Nebuchadnezzar. But that was until Obasanjo, out of   his utter disdain for the duo  of  Ibrahim Babangida and Abubakar Atiku alongside the slew of Northerners keen on contesting for the presidency in 2011,  cajoled and  ended up railroading a quiet, peaceful and easy going  Jonathan into contesting the 2011 Presidential election, thus single-handedly tearing PDP’s zoning arrangement into tatters. The party recently attributed its  shellacking in the 2015 Presidential election,  majorly to that very  incident.

     I have read and heard  a whole lot of Jeremiad coming  from  those the  new media describes as the wailing wailers.   I have read and listened to many say Buhari should stop whatever it is he is doing, pack, go and let corruption come back in all its fury, a wish God forbids.  As I often say in this column, I am not here to eulogise Buhari as I do have reservations  of my own about some of the things he did and those he left undone.  For instance his appointments have been mostly sectional, rather than inclusive.  Also, he ought, by now  to have given the Fulani herdsmen’s  menace  much more attention  than  just asking  the police and the army to handle it because  undisputed  research has shown that  some  top guns in these agencies are not uninterested parties.  The President, we pray,  will come back  from his 10-day leave much more invigorated. He should   therefore waste no more time in  frontally  and properly interrogating a problem that has left thousands of Nigerians  killed for nothing. Another area of my being ill at ease with the President is how, a full year into his administration, he  still sits  pretty  seeing the National Assembly  remain  a sink hole with legislators carting home multi-millions  quarterly  despite  the country’s  parlous  economic circumstances. This past week, we saw them self-eulogising and back slapping regardless of how  greatly Nigerians  have come to loathe them. These are people who awarded themselves ridiculously huge allowances which were not approved by the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission. I think  the President should stop this illegality by whatever means he can , not minding the fact of the Legislature being a different arm of government since the appropriate government agency has  severally denied  approving such allowances. After all, the buck stops  at  his  table.

    I digress.

    With  what Nigerians now know about the  Goodluck Jonathan era,  the  suffering  we are presently  experiencing   be it power, foreign exchange  etc and  which  the wailers  never stop shouting about,  even as they left a putrefying Augean stable  for Buhari to clear, would have  been  nothing but  a child’s play  had  the former President got re-elected. Indeed, by now,  Nigeria would have become  another Venezuela, that other  country where oil boom has turned oil doom  with its citizens queue-ing to have the lowest item needed for survival .  The signs were all there as the Jonathan government has started feeding Nigerians on a daily  diet of lies.  For instance, MrsOkonjo-Iweala was serially denying the fact  that Nigeria was broke even as they have already borrowed close to half a billion naira  to pay workers’ salaries.  President Jonathan lost the election but certainly not  for lack of trying. As Orubebe was busy ranting his inanities, tying to provoke Professor Jega, the INEC chairman,  in order to precipitate a situation where their goons would teargas everybody and stop the announcement of the election results, Diezeani’s  bribe money  for the purpose of  altering the  Presidential election results  nationwide  was going round every part of  the country. As God would have it, those to whom she shelled the money knew it was too little,  and too late as  Nigerians have  put an ignominious end to the era of lootocracy. Rather than part with the money,  most  simply held to their own share of the loot. Had Jonathan won, nobody  would have heard a whimper about this humongous amount of money sourced, illegally by Diezeani from her rogue accomplices in the oil industry which she had dominated like a colossus.

    With daily breaking news about the heist  perpetrated under  his  nose , it is a shame  President Jonathan  is going round the world  trying to burnish his name  and claiming, tongue in cheek, that he fought corruption. So massive was the looting that his ministers  very easily  convinced him not to cooperate with the incoming administration  as a result of which he could only give his handing over notes to his  successor a  few days to his exit. By going out making those claims are we to assume that he is unaware of many of his men who have confessed to looting the treasury one way or the other? Did his cousin,   Robert Azibaola, just chanced on 40 Billion dollars  for a  contract  which the EFCC describes as dubious, for the supply  of  Tactical equipment for special forces but details of executing which it says does not exist? What of how  people around him turned a so-called negotiation for the release of  the Chibok girls to a casino? While regaling his audience in a speech at the Bloomberg studio in London claiming he fought corruption by not making money available to people, was it that he had not heard what Hassan Tukur, his Principal Secretary, was reported to have told the EFCC about the 40 Billion dollars  he, Jonathan, approved, and Azibaola picked from the office of the National Security Adviser which had  by then become an automatic teller machine, for the release of the Chibok girls? Is it possible the former President has  not heard that Tukur has confessed to diverting the money and sharing it with somebody? Or what corruption can be greater than authorising, as reportedly claimed by the National Security Adviser, the sharing of 2.1 Billion dollars meant for arms purchase for items not remotely  related to arms? And what about the millions of dollars raked in from oil crude sales which  should have gone to the federation account to relieve states,  but was diverted  and used by the  oil empress for the purpose of altering  the presidential election results?

    If I were President Jonathan, I would put a stop to these arranged lectures and talks until such a time my innocence would have been  established. Or  hasn’t he just said he is being investigated?

    Sir, this time around, silence will be golden.

     I REMEMBER

    I have received a considerable number of enquiries concerning where I REMEMBER, the autobiography of  Professor  LadipoAdamolekun can be purchased. Interested buyers can call any of the following telephone numbers:

    08029421853

    07031835130, 0706 851 7668

    07035654616

    08035663820

    08029670183

  • The Fulani menace is pan-Nigeria

    The Fulani menace is pan-Nigeria

    Nigerians would be gravely mistaken if they think that the Fulani menace is limited to rural areas or to farming communities only

    “A highly placed citizen from the North, former Governor Balarabe Musa, warned in 2014 that a new insurgency was in the offing – a new insurgency different from Boko Haram, better organized, better armed and much more dangerous than Boko Haram, and planned by some highly influential Nigerians for the purpose of achieving some major political objective in Nigeria. Are we now seeing part of that insurgency?” –GBOGUNGBORO, The Nation, Thursday, 02.06.16

    Let me begin by saying that the above title, as it is, not limited to the Fulani herdsmen, is deliberate; deliberate because the  Fulani herdsman is, after all,  a mere employee of a very big Fulani man/woman and should therefore not be singled out as the problem. It is fascinating, too, that as soon as the ferocious Boko Haram appears beat back, the North has very quickly birthed another “effant terrible” in its place in the form of a Fulani herdsman “much more dangerous than Boko Haram and for the purpose of achieving some major political objective”.

    Who can now claim that the North has contributed nothing significant to Nigeria?

    As the following reaction to last week’s article will show, Nigerians would be gravely mistaken if they think that the Fulani menace is limited to rural areas or to farming communities only. Though it will  not be a complete surprise since a retired General of the Nigerian Army once had his throat unkindly  slit at the spot by Fulani herdsmen, it will further confirm what perilous times these people are putting Nigerians through, as The Nation’s Gbogungboro has warned. The only  good thing in the reaction is  the fact that the Inspector-General of Police is already  well aware of this  danger and has, unlike the Director-General of the DSS, whose director  in Enugu  state  we have not heard was punished over the brutal Fulani herdsmen attack in that  state,  whereas  the Commissioner of Police  has since been  transferred. Both officers were reported by the governor to have assured him that  they would frustrate the planned  attack though we have since  learnt,  courtesy the Chinua Achebe Center for Leadership and Development (CACLD),  that some “Fulanis in the higher levels of the military and the Police do ask their officers to stand down when an attack is imminent”; which is one reason the President’s directive to the security agencies  to go after these killers may not yield the desired results.

    Engr Wale Ogungbe is the Managing Director of DRY WALLS SYSTEMS,  a company  specializing  in the provision of light weight DRY CONSTRUCTION solutions for all types of buildings, facades, cladding, partitions etc  and who together with many of his staff, have reasons to constantly use the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. His account: “My experience with the Nigerian police along the long bridge on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway sometime last week was a sharp contrast from my perspective of the Nigerian police. Around 11:30pm on the day, the driver called to tell me one of my trucks had broken down on the long bridge, approaching Lagos. I drove down to render whatever assistance I could as the driver was carrying some clients’ goods. By the time I got there, I met some armed police men who were already assisting. They not only stayed with him, they also assisted in securing a towing truck to move the truck with the goods to a safer location. I was surprised, but  very impressed with the disposition of the police men who asked for no gratification whatever, and we soon got talking. What they told me is so scary I think Nigerians deserve to hear it.

    According to the leader of the team, the long bridge on the Lagos – Ibadan expressway, is a particularly dangerous spot and has been identified by the police as a major black spot. He told me that Fulani herdsmen serially attack and kill unsuspecting motorists whose vehicle develops  fault along the bridge. And this, he said happens both day and night. Their usual approach is to  first pierce the stomach of their victims with a dagger and then go to ransack the vehicles, dispossessing the victims who they then throw down the bridge. According to him, people are killed daily in this fashion that the IGP had to specifically instruct a  24 –hr surveillance on the whole length of the bridge. He told me a particularly chilling one: during one of their surveillance trips, they noticed from  the other  side of the bridge,  a man in a white shirt,  trying to replace  a flat tyre  and they quickly sped down to make a U-turn at the end of the bridge to assist him. Unfortunately, by the time they got to where he was, they only saw blood on the road. Apparently the poor man had been killed and thrown down the bridge. Usually the herdsmen also jump down the bridge. His advice is that if your vehicle ever develops a fault on that bridge, just shut down the car and run away for your dear life because the next 5 minutes may be too late!  The IG, he said, has given specific instructions that there must  be no report of any attack  on the bridge again. For this reason, he said, during the day,  policemen  are stationed some 250m apart  along the bridge and in the evenings, they are  replaced with 4 police patrol  vehicles, constantly driving, to and fro, the bridge  entire length. I asked who these attackers are from his own experience and his prompt answer was that they are Fulani herdsmen who are always carrying daggers, guns and charms, and are attracted to attack stranded motorists at the slightest opportunity. Please publish this so that motorists along that bridge  would know what terrible danger they face but the question now is: why would these Fulani herdsmen, who  were traditionally known for  peacefully  grazing their cows, suddenly become a major threat to their host communities?

    I would like to thank Wale  for this public service. We have the Lagos state governor’s immense assistance to the Nigerian police, a patriotic Inspector-General as well as an effective State Police Command, to thank for the pro-active actions taken so far  to safeguard lives on the bridge. But I think I can hazard an answer to  Wale’s  question. President Buhari must have been absolutely correct when  he  said in a CNN interview  in London that some of these herdsmen are  Libyan militiamen, trained  by  Ghadafi;  well-armed and well-trained fighters who fled southwards to West Africa  when  Ghadafi fell from power. I think what our normally  reticent President refused to  add, however, is the fact that many, if not all his fellow cattle owners   – he has 270  heads of cattle as per his last asset declaration –  minus  of course the President himself, being a well known lover of  Nigeria for which he once publicly wept,  must have all gone outside the country to recruit these  murderous  Muhajideens to protect their heavy investments. I say this because the new Controller-General of Immigration is on record as saying that the department has never recorded any case of such persons entering the country with herds of cattle.

    However, as I have stated elsewhere,  if President Buhari were a Yoruba man, he would have realised ‘pe iso nrun lara oun’,  meaning  that the fart smells around him, being both a Fulani and a cattle owner. This should, therefore, have led him to very pro-actively find solutions to the many nagging questions that have arisen about the Fulani herdsmen. Among these, quoting Gbogungboro again are: “What are the true purposes of the grazing reserves being sought?  Are they designed by some people to house illegal armies of occupation in the states of the Middle Belt and the South, for the purpose of intimidating the peoples of those places? Are they meant to be jihadist instruments for forcible Islamization? Are they designed as weapons of one ethnic group’s conquest of Nigeria? Do we now have the president’s word that Nigeria is under invasion by Libyan militiamen? And, what does the Nigerian government intend to do about that?”

    The President cannot afford to delay his answers to these questions in the face of the many problems Nigeria is currently battling with: economic, Boko Haram, Biafra, Avengers etc.

     

  • The looming cattle war in Nigeria

    The looming cattle war in Nigeria

    Let those in authority quickly find the right solutions so we do not have another civil war on our hands

    Consistent with my  belief that a Pan-Nigerian resolution of the Fulani herdsmen’s menace, under the lead of President Muhammadu Buhari, rather than piecemeal  and abrasive reactions to their sundry attacks  should be the way out of this dangerous matter, I wrote as follows in: ‘Chief Olu Falae: Matters Arising, 15 October, 2015 : ‘the most rabid of humanity should never have had the audacity to put Chief Falae through such ordeal and the nation on such tenterhooks that the President had to intervene. Unfortunately, sad and nauseating as that is, it is the saner part of this very unfortunate incident as what emerged later as the Afenifere reaction was totally embarrassing. So uncharacteristic was it  that  you begin to wonder if it was coming from  the same elders who wined and dined with the avatar, Chief Obafemi  Awolowo. For Awo had a template as was  captured by Idowu Samuel,  Wednesday, 15 September 2010,  in the article: Obafemi Awolowo: One prediction, one democracy in which he wrote: “When Awo stepped out to speak, the shout of ‘’Awooo…! would be thunderous and almost endless. Papa would pause for more than 30 minutes to gain control. He had to do it, sensing that the message he was to pass was germane, eternal and compelling. Awo’s style was simple, direct and aimed at the amelioration of the problem. He would draw attention, complete with verifiable facts and figures, indicate the likely consequences if situation is left unattended to, and then prescribe ways out of the problem”.

    For him, decisions were never taken on the spur of the moment.

    Again relying on  the lessons of history, this time around, the ill consequences arising from King Yunfa, the Hausa Sarkin in Gobir  hosting  a Fulani immigrant  named Usman Dan Fodiyo and his group in February 1804, his murder and how his kingdom  was  subsequently  taken over by Fulanis and renamed Sokoto Caliphate,  and the Afonja story in nearby Ilorin, I suggested in: “Neither Grazing Reserves Nor Ranches –Let History Be Our Guide”, May 15, 2-016, that neither should be cited in any part of Southern Nigeria.  I took this position in view of the well-known Fulani expansionist tendencies which will make  the presence of  Fulani communities  everywhere  all over the country extremely dangerous, in my view.

    Given my opposition to Afenifere’s banning of  Fulani herdsmen from the Southwest in the wake of Chief Falae’s kidnap as enumerated above, my initial  take on  Governor Fayose’s reaction  to the  totally  unprovoked  herdsmen’s attack on  a peaceful Oke-Ako  community  in the state was to see it  as  precipitate, unhelpful and, indeed, dangerous to both the state and Nigeria.  But  I have withdrawn these comments until I have reactions correcting the contents  of   a  report by the Chinua Achebe Center for Leadership and Development (CACLD), key areas of which Nigerians must see to know the danger on our hands.  Titled: ‘Fulani Herdsmen Killings; Modus Operandi, Those Involved & Possible Solutions, it is a very damning report, and  the onus is on those  implicated to let  Nigerians, nay  the world,  know  the truth.

    The report begins: “For a long time, the Nigerian state has been under siege by Fulani herdsmen terrorists operating under a predictable pattern of reconnaissance, attack and withdrawal, leading to many deaths and social dislocations. Since January 2016, there have been documented deaths of approximately 1000 Nigerians from these  coordinated Fulani herdsmen attacks.  They claimed to have dispatched a fact finding team to the Southeastern part of the country to unravel the intricacies and complexities of the Fulani terrorist group; a group, they say,  is rated as the fourth most dangerous by respected international conflict organizations (According to the Global Terrorism Index 2015 report; “Fulani militants” killed 1,229 people in 2014 — up from 63 in 2013, Making them the “fourth most deadly terrorist group”).

    These, the report said, are their findings:

    1. The Fulani herdsmen terrorists are Fulanis but mostly non-Nigerians with only about ten percent of them being Nigerians and live within the Hausa Fulani communities in Ama-Hausa and Garki’s in the South East and South-south regions. They are employees of Fulani cattle owners, who imported them from places like Chad, Niger etc.
    2. The Fulani Herdsmen terrorists do not own cattle: Fulani herdsmen killers’ major job description is just to kill. They do not own any cattle. Most of them are employed as “security men” whose job is strictly to protect the cattle.
    3. The Ama-Hausas and Garkis harbor 80% of the Fulani herdsmen killers. The Garkis are mostly Hausas but within them, the Fulani herdsmen killers reside. They are young, less religious with most using drugs and consuming alcohol. They are mostly from Chad, Niger, and other Fulani enclaves outside the Nigerian state. A small percentage of these Fulani youths are Nigerians born in the states where they reside. They lead these Fulanis on their regular rampage.
    4. The Fulani herdsmen that accompany cattle from the North to the South per season do not own cattle. They are owned by prominent Fulani leaders in the country. Most Nigerian Fulanis are no longer migratory herdsmen, but big men in Nigerian politics and business but still maintain their ownership of cattle. Instead of investing in ranches and buying of grasses from the South, they chose the cheaper alternative of having their kinsmen, imported from outside the country.

    5.There are about 5 million Fulani  in Nigeria out of which 3 million are Nigerians. The rich Fulani’s own almost all the cattle being reared in Nigeria. The remaining 40 percent, mostly peasants, are from outside the country.

    In Garki and Ama-Hausa settlements all over the country, there exist a few Nigerian Fulanis (some are born in these states) who coordinate the cattle business. Lastly, there is a group of Fulani herdsmen who rear the cattle from the north to the south. They only carry arrows and machetes to help them navigate the bushes on their way down to the South.

    1. Fulani Herdsmen Attack.

    We learned from the surrounding communities and from some of the Hausa elders about what constitutes a Fulani herdsmen attack. According to information we received, when there is a disagreement between host communities, or between herdsmen and farmers, the Fulani herdsmen who accompany the cattle will locate the nearest Fulani settlement and if there is none, they will locate the nearest Garki or Ama Hausa. When they arrive, they will narrate their story. The Fulani Nigerian middlemen cattle managers will notify the owners which in this case, include top politicians and others.  If an attack is sanctioned, then modalities will be mapped out and a date will be chosen for the attack. Most times, Fulani herdsmen in the military and police are notified and everyone sends a representative. Neighboring settlements send out representatives and arms cache are opened and arms are distributed to the participants. The major participants are the 20 to 40 Fulani herdsmen who reside in the Garkis and Ama Hausas. These are the Fulani warriors whose job is to kill.

    During an attack, every Fulani person in the area knows there will be an attack and all will contribute to make sure it goes on successfully. Fulanis in the higher levels of the military will ensure all commands under them stand down, and the top Fulani police officers will do the same – (no wonder you never hear of arrests, however heinous the attack and no matter, how many killed). The road is then clear for the Fulani herdsmen to carry out their attacks.

    1. Solution

     Many natives the team spoke to suggested the following as solution: ban grazing, establish ranches for the cattle in the north, let the cattle owners pay the southerners to harvest grass and send to the north. With this, everyone would be pleased with the outcome. This solution is expected to generate 1 million jobs in the South and about 500,000 jobs in the North. Also Fulani herdsmen terror will be totally eliminated.

    I am sure neither Afenifere nor those non-Fulanis who reacted to my articles claiming they own cattle know jack about these things. I went to this length to let those in authority quickly find the right solutions so we do not have another civil war on our hands in Nigeria.

  • Buhari’s one year: Let Nigerians take capital punishment for corruption and economic sabotage to a referendum

    Given the fact that corruption has become systemic in Nigeria,  I think the time has come for us  to take the issue of capital punishment for corruption and economic crimes  to a plebiscite

    “There is a complex web that links the Petroleum Ministry, the DPR, the Navy, the NPA,NIMASA,PPPRA, DMO, CBN and Commercial Banks in the Oil subsidy fraud. Documents like the sovereign debt statements and the sovereign debt notes flew about and our money kept disappearing. From about 30 companies in the scheme under both Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, the number shot up to 300. Monthly, billions of Naira was paid out to people who have never had any contact with a Jerry can of fuel in their lives. No verification, no authentication, nothing. Money was being paid with reckless abandon. It got so bad that some people will arrange with ship owners…, take a two day hire of an empty ship, move it to Lagos Port, and berth it there. Officials of the PPPRA, Petroleum Ministry, DPR will come there to inspect an empty vessel and certify that the empty vessel carried 10,000 metric tons of petrol, collect their money and walk away. The vessel simply sails away and three weeks later, close to N6 billion will be paid as subsidy when not even a single drop of petrol was brought in”. – Being the online testimony of a Legal counsel in one of the biggest indigenous players in the downstream petroleum sector during the Jonathan administration.Given the fact that corruption has become systemic in Nigeria, leading President Goodluck Jonathan to bequeath both a collapsed economy and an empty treasury to President Buhari, I think the time has come for us  to take the issue of capital punishment for corruption and economic crimes  to a plebiscite. For me, this will also be a logical reaction to the weighty criticisms that are daily being heaped on the APC, but more specifically, on President Buhari. I shall illustrate these insults with the views of one single commentator who praised contestant Buhari to high heavens in 2014/15 but today so viscerally derides him. No, please don’t misunderstand me. I have a thousand and one reasons of my own for which I am unhappy with the President, among them:  his politically amateurish: “I belong to nobody”, his “I can work with anybody”, his sentimental retention of anti-Buhari Jonathanians in government for far too long, leaving his party members helpless and at the mercy of PDP governors all with deleterious consequences; the most being the totally uncooperative National Assembly.  But truth be told, President Buhari did not cause our current problems. Rather, we should look to former President Olusegun Obasanjo as Nigeria’s kill joy. More about that anon.

    In my trilogy of articles: “Periscoping the ideal APC Presidential candidate”, in which I concluded then, and still maintain, that Nigeria needed Buhari more than the obverse, I quoted a young Nigerian Actuary who wrote as follows on 21 September 2014: “WHO SHOULD FLY THE APC FLAG? “The simple answer to this poser is that in the eyes of most Nigerians, evidences of previous electoral contests affirm that the most acceptable of APC’s likely candidates, and who can surely win massively, is General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd). The simple truth is that he is honest and associated with honesty of purpose, and to date, no Nigerian has come up against him with any shred of a shady financial deal in all the positions of responsibility he held. Unfortunately, his weak campaigns did not publicise his personal qualities of honesty, and unalloyed commitment to the public good.” Now, compare the views of that  same individual in an April 2016 Whatsapp message: “Buhari uses 10 jets, runs a large government of 36 ministers, pays politicians the old way they were paid  under PDP, runs huge expenses on unnecessary foreign trips, leaves privatised PHCN entities in the hands of Jonathan and his thieving associates, runs a fake anti-corruption agenda that has failed woefully to date, has no strategic thinking to halt unemployment, carries on with huge number of government ministries and agencies he met on ground.  What then is Buhari doing differently to justify why people elected him? Buhari has no single bill before the National Assembly in his now one year leadership. Can any person reasonably justify Buhari’s continuous occupation of the presidency of Nigeria when he is not solving any problem, has not solved one to date, and has not shown how he would solve any?

    I haven’t the slightest doubt that he was, of course, unduly hasty, sentimental and superficial in his critique of the President given the Augean stable Jonathan left, smack in Buhari’s hands. And this, in my view, is where former President Obasanjo comes in and why I am suggesting that Nigerians should seriously consider capital punishment for corruption.  What, for instance, should make anybody steal billions, if not a pulsating sickness in their medulla oblongata?  Capital punishment for corruption and economic crimes looks like the only thing that can put the fear of the Lord in these crazed Nigerians. Relying on his past knowledge of Nigerian politicians, Obasanjo was particularly hard on the traditionally corrupt legislature.  Unfortunately, he goofed when, in an unprecedented act of one-upmanship, he opted to become the power behind the throne of his successor/s. For that selfish reason he single-handedly inflicted on Nigeria, two pathetically weak successors whose concern in office was how to sustain their rule and be victorious at the next election.

    Hence, they both governed by abdication.

     While Yar’Adua, no thanks too to his frail health, ceded governance to an insular Katsina mafia, Jonathan completely abandoned it to the whims and caprice of his many women. The negative consequences, especially under Goodluck Jonathan, were horrendously colossal. Amongst these, the legislature simply became a monster. They legislators rubbished the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal agency, and took whatever suited their fancy from the national treasury. They went a-borrowing, ballooned their allowances and backdated the unappropriated allowances many years back and promptly became the highest paid legislators anywhere in the world.

    1. Under Jonathan, the Nigerian Armed Forces, once regarded as highly disciplined became a thieving sinkhole with some officers stealing government funds to buy outlandish houses at incredible amounts for themselves and their children. President Buhari should simply haul them, not before any EFCC, but Court Martial’s for trial.
    2. The Judiciary,  always a  troublesome arm of the Nigerian government  with historic sayings like, ‘my hands are tied’  and with decisions barred from being cited as precedents, became a  source of  utter disquiet with hundreds of  senior lawyers shamelessly  accompanying  to court, colleagues  in whose company they should be embarrassed to be  seen.
    3. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, our banks became bribe distribution centres for purposes of altering election results.  But worse was to come.
    4. President Jonathan loved the office as much as he loved his bottle. He completely abandoned governance to others, chasing after re-election. For the latter purpose, he turned the Central Bank of Nigeria to an Automated Teller Machine through which vaporized hundreds of billions of Naira meant for buying the much needed equipments to arm the Nigerian Army against a ferocious Boko Haram. Not done, he went round the palaces, like a possessed marathoner, distributing dollars. By the time you add the scams: oil subsidy, pension, crude lifted but not paid for, as well as the ones stolen, President Jonathan  must have succeeded in multiplying corruption in Nigeria a hundredfold.

    But the man really never wanted to be President, going by his initial body language, until President Obasanjo cajoled, as well as conscripted a decent but certainly, ill-prepared man, to the headship of the most important country in Black Africa. Obasanjo must therefore carry most of Jonathan’s can.

    These are the Jonathan legacies to the Buhari administration and they translated, in turn, to trillions of dollars stolen from Nigeria; a fraction of which should have made our present dire economic circumstances unknown. President Buhari’s government would most probably be selling fuel at no more than N50/Litre today and housewives wouldn’t be buying a single tomato for N100 either. It is to solve this corruption palaver that Nigerians should take a closer look at the death penalty for economic sabotage. Those who said we are fantastically corrupt know exactly what they are saying. The President should let Nigerians debate this proposal for 6 months, and like BREXIT, take it to a referendum.

    And let the peoples’ decision become the Law.

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

     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 all doubt.

    “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. 

    History, it has been said, repeats itself as tragedy.  This we must try to avoid as Nigerians but since successive Nigerian governments had only been toying with the idea of having a genuine, and honest, national conference where we would tell ourselves the truth, and nothing but 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 blood feast which accounted for about 500 deaths but which Sale Bayari, Secretary-General of  Gan Allah Fulani Development Association (GAFDAN),  rhapsodised as the consequence of the Fulani’s unforgiving spirit – if they kill 10, we kill 100 in return, he enthused in Sunday Punch  interview. All the opposition is asking for, is simply that whoever armed these herdsmen should please disarm them.

    Given the above circumstances, the time has come for the 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 all doubt.  Let me, therefore, suggest two ways in which the big men who own the businesses, and are arming these dangerous herdsmen can, in the interim, do their business unmolested in spite of the massive objections from the other geo-political zones. 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 an agreement with the various governments, affirming their vicarious liability for any of their employers’ transgressions. Secondly, and  for the  long term,  given  the  business’s contribution  to the country’s growth and development , the business owners  should look to the north for  both  their grazing reserves  and ranches. The north should be turned, essentially, to the country’s grazing zone. As to whether constraints, science and countries like Israel have proved copiously 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 fetch more money,  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 could readily become their market.  Nor would there be a shortage of buyers coming from the South to buy cows, as well as processed meat just like they come to the north today, to buy yams, tomatoes etc.

    I assure any doubting Thomas that these are things I have thought over very well. Sometime in the 80s, 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 very first practical step I undertook was to go to Kuta in Niger State, where my inquiries had shown was my best source for yam. Rather than go in a car, the gentleman who accompanied me, Mr Omole, and I went by public transport to properly understand what I was getting into. After discussions with some  yam  sellers right in the market and  speaking  to one or two farmers introduced to me, we bought yams which my partner then brought to a Medoya at  Mile 12, Lagos, with whom I had agreed to help sell on commission basis. At Kuta, I noticed that unlike in the south, farmers do not have to make big heaps to harvest huge yams. I narrated this personal story to show that buyers from the south will continue to come up north to buy cows which will no longer have to be taken, months, through hundreds of kilometres from the north.

    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 guide us in these very dangerous times. That brings me to the following Whats app message 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 has become lost, a booty to the Fulanis which has since become the Sokoto Caliphate; a venture that happened simply because the Fulanis were given access to grazing land as a result of the hospitality of 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 kings 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. Continued the story:  It is the descendants of these same Fulanis who are now angling for grazing reserves and a corridor through the entire federation. Such grazing reserves, if ever allowed, will see history repeat itself as tragedy because Fulani settlements,vlater,  communities and, finally local government areas with their own  elected officials will spring up all over Nigeria”. 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 age-old agenda to overrun and Islamise Nigeria. The grazing bill is not an attempt to solve the problem, it’s 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”. Those interested in this story should Google WIKIPEDIA -the free encyclopedia for more information.

    All these may be hogwash, but my Yoruba people have a saying to the effect that: 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 Quran in the Atlantic Ocean as the revered Alhaji Ahmadu Bello was rumoured to have 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 on them, somebody, somewhere would one day just give the command or a fatwa to over run, and that would be all.

    If, therefore, there is no such ulterior motive behind the quest for a grazing bill, which, ab initio, presumes that the federal government immorally wants to fund some peoples’ private business, I would like to repeat that the suggestions earlier made in this article should prove reasonable and viable; indeed, it should be a silver bullet to the herdsman’s palaver.

  • Thinking aloud about Ekiti party politics – a wake up call for APC

    As I asked last week on these pages, what is the president or the party doing to assist the APC in states where it is not in government? 

    The above topic was what trended on ekitipanupo this past week, and with elections coming very soon in both Edo and Ondo states, I expect that an APC, riven down the middle, no matter the pretences, should be able to learn one or two things from our discussion. By the way, ekitipanupo is an Ekiti intellectual roundtable with about 2000 members, home and Diasporan. As is my wont when I use issues on panupo in my articles, contributions, except my own, will not be attributed. The discussion came up shortly after the Ekiti State governor commissioned some projects recently and the Panupo Back Office (BO) came up with this question: “Does this (group) photograph depict a governor under siege as the APC internet political activists and e-platform radicals/revolutionaries would like us to believe? Responses came furiously and in tens. The first, from a university lecturer, surmised that crowd sponsorship cannot be equated with popularity and was followed up by a party loyalist who posited that the state governor would go to any length to rent a crowd even if the crowd would later fight over money.

    From that point on, the discussion became far less emotional as contributors  drove the discussion to a wider platform with a view to extrapolating  far more important conclusions, especially as it concerns APC, not only in Ekiti but nationally. Wrote the next contributor: “President Buhari is not an infantry politician like Atiku, Kwankwaso, Tinubu, Amaechi or Oshiomhole. The leadership of APC, he continued,  is weak at both the state and national levels  as its leaders  appear deficient in  loyalty, discipline, co-operation, trust, focus and team work and the party is, therefore, intrinsically weak. He asserted that there is an urgent need for a review of the party’s alliance/consolidation memorandum since the party does appear cohesive. He opined that the nPDP elements in the party have since, mentally returned to PDP, their natural habitat, even though still physically present and while the CPC group is carrying on with the aura of a conqueror. The name of the game within the party, according to him, is scramble for power and pecuniary benefits. He contended that President Buhari does not have a grip on either the party or on national institutions thus signifying that he is really not in control. He, however, believes that all these problems could be sorted out if the different power centres within the party would willingly work together.

    Then came one I would describe, with due respect, as an iconoclast. Aligning with the Back Office, he asserted that there is no way the APC can tackle the state governor if it remains in disarray as it presently is. He believes that from what he could observe, one of the  defectors  from the PDP would most likely clinch the party’s gubernatorial slot because they are working harder than those who consider themselves owners of the party in the state: a situation which he hazards, will be dysfunctional, as it could polarise it on the long run.

    My contribution was concerned more with addressing some of the issues already raised by the earlier contributors namely: what the BO described as ‘APC internet political activists and e-platform radicals/revolutionaries’, the state of the party in the state and the apparent lack of encouragement or assistance from the party, especially the presidency since, unlike the president, the state would be facing an election long before the President and therefore does not have the luxury of time.

    I therefore began by saying that the earlier contributors made a lot of sense and that what strikes me the most is that in spite of the high rankings of some of the Ekiti leaders in the party’s national architecture, this has not translated to party activities or effectiveness back home. I observed that given the rapprochement that party leaders have achieved, post the last governorship election, it is curious that party affairs are still as lukewarm as they are, reduced, almost exclusively, to the yeoman’s efforts of the Publicity Secretary. Since we can only logically compare like with like, I referred to happenings in Rivers State where, although the party leaders remain actively engaged in the state, Governor Wike not only  completely rules the roost, APC members in Ogoni land are being asked to leave town, and for their safety, I am informed, some have, indeed, voted with their feet. That is in a state where the party could leverage on its national leaders.

    As I asked last week on these pages, what is the president or the party doing to assist the APC in states where it is not in government? In case the APC leadership has not realised it, the security services, especially their leadership, are still very beholden to the PDP people who ensured they made tonnes of money when that administration lasted. That is one reason PDP governors are calling the shots everywhere. I was, for instance, completely flabbergasted when the President handed over to Mr. Mike Okiro, a well known PDP sympathiser, the responsibility for recruiting the new 10,000 police men without appreciating the fact that this would give PDP an undue advantage come 2019. Even if Okiro is Chairman of the Police Commission, is his chairmanship a traditional inheritance? Or are Nigerians now not well aware of the diabolical roles EFCC alleged that another member of the commission played in then President Jonathan’s publicity efforts towards winning the last election?

    Truth be told, APC leaders and loyalists in Ekiti who, had they benefitted from their exertions towards the Buhari victory, would now have been busy propagating the party ahead of the next governorship election, are today busier on the internet, especially on WHATSAPP groups that have  since mushroomed,  discussing politics online but hardly engaging with the grassroots except  when they had to spend  their personal money on party members who see them as rich people and therefore run to them for financial assistance on various issues.  There is presently considerable dissatisfaction, if not unhappiness, amongst a people who have given their all to the party. This is one more reason President Buhari must now dissolve boards, send PDP people who are still most probably in the majority home, and extend some democracy dividends to persons he will come to rely on in another three years for either his, or his party’s victory. If party leaders who have access to him don’t tell him these things, we owe him a duty to let him know. As I also said here last week, I am not unaware of the economic straits Nigeria is in, but these people deserve the government’s appreciation. The president could very well reduce both the number as well as the sitting allowances but he just has to do something. Indeed, since he  has no way of knowing this, many of  his party members people look up to in their communities are fast turning to a laughing stock because not a few of them spent their own money for the party during the campaigns.

    It can bear repetition that the Southwest has not been particularly well served by this government and just like most Nigerians are currently dissatisfied with the situation, though this is not the president’s fault, there is every need to proactively attend to members in states like Edo, Ondo and Ekiti where elections are due before 2019. Indeed, members in all the states of the federation deserve to be appreciated and compensated. Otherwise, the current situation of anomie will not bode well for the party on the long run.  PDP is presently, eagerly re-strategising, setting up reconciliation committees and going the rounds of the nPDP members, who have actually left the APC in spirit, to source their 2019 Presidential candidate. They are also furiously working towards making their party chairman, a man for whose membership of the merger parties, Metuh once described APC as a Janjaweed party. Only God knows what exactly is driving them but the APC cannot be too careful. One way of checkmating the PDP, in addition to giving Nigerians dividends of democracy and making Change real, is to ensure that APC members are not treated like a wet towel.

  • Is presidential kinship the Fulani herdsman’s new intoxicant?

    Yes, Buhari is not Obasanjo but must he always turn the other cheek or has presidential powers been diluted since he took over on May 29, 2015? 

    My dear aburo, the engaging essayist, Louis Odion, it was who first adverted his mind to this question when he wrote: “Now is the time for President Buhari, himself a cattle farmer, to go beyond the normal call of duty to stave the dangerously growing perception that seeming official lethargy – if not indifference – to the continued killings is dictated by the spirit of kinship he shares with the rampaging herdsman or that the normad’s renewed audacity, this genocidal reflex, feeds on the opium of expected solidarity from the top”.  For confirmation of the above as the reason for this resurgent ‘post-Boko Haram pestilence’, as Professor Wole Soyinka described it, seek no further than the totally arrogant article: “Ranches Or Prisons For Herdsmen”, written by one Sale Bayari, the self-described Secretary-General of  Gan Allah Fulani Development Association (GAFDAN) and  published in The Nation of 27, April 2016. Increasingly, these fellows make one sound like a bigoted ethnicist.

    But no matter the risk of being so accused, it is important to let them know that Nigerians are no fools. In the impish, thoroughly insulting and arrogant article, just a day after more than 40 indigenes of Enugu State were mercilessly mowed down by the murderous horde of Fulani herdsmen, with the day’s newspapers awash with pictures of a weeping governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State, this guy comes out taunting, blaming the victims, lambasting everybody from the farmers to journalists and quoting profusely from the Nigerian constitution on freedom of movement and allied matters. Not once in his silly defence of the herdsmen’s  right to murder and mayhem, did he quote that portion of the constitution which permits these men with scanty cloths on their backs, to slaughter Nigerians like rams because of some cultural inanities. In vain did I search his thoroughly insensitive article hoping to see him empathise with the bereaved families. No, not Bayari, just as we have never seen the big men who arm these poor souls, who they hardly look after, apologise for the murders; responsibility for which Allah will hang vicariously on them, no matter how important they think they are. Nor did Bayari thought it fit to suggest a reasonable way out of this new ‘Boko Haramites’.

    All that concerns him is the rights only of the Born To Rule.  For ease of reference, let us quote from Bayari’s absurdity: “It appears the Nigerian Constitution is under an unprecedented attack and assault by farmers, their academic and media sons and daughters. Not only is the Nigerian Constitution under an aggressive, brutal and savage affront but also the government and all those law abiding citizens that seek to protect the country and its constitution. These fiendish and scurrilous attacks are all geared towards the herdsmen’s freedom or its curtailment in an effort to make their lives worthless. As much as Nigerians love freedom, both local, national and international, when it comes to the rights and privileges of the Nigerian herdsmen, constitutional freedoms and rights can go to hell.” See the illogicality:  just because non-Fulani Nigerians cry out against Fulani herdsmen’s totally unprovoked murders, the Nigerian constitution is now under unprecedented assault?  How illogical, but that exactly is how arrogant some people can be. I am aware that for a very long time Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Niger had been their killing fields but for their misadventure in Ondo State where they laid their filthy hands on a traditional chief, the highly regarded Chief Olu Falae, they have never been this aggressive, as we just saw in Enugu, in the South which naturally leads one to believe that their employers must have told them they can now get away with murders, however gruesome.But concerning this government, is President Buhari overwhelmed? As Professor Soyinka wrote: “It is not merely arbitrary violence that reigns across the nation but total, undis-puted impunity. Impunity evolves and becomes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal, logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tolerance for the serial massacres which have become the nation’s identification stamp.  I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated.

    The nation is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject appeasement and encouragement of violence on innocents. … I have yet to encounter a terse, rigorous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram repudiate its founding cleric.”

    And one needs say with all the emphasis at one’s  disposal, that this is sorely needed, not only in the herdsmen’s case but in all the theatres of the absurd we see all over the country like we do not have a superintending authority: when APC members are not being slaughtered in Wike’s Rivers State, they are being expelled from Ogoni land, being asked to self-deport from their villages as if this is not an APC government; the shenanigans in the judiciary are legion, like we did not see President Jonathan deal with even upright jurists, suspending them at will. Today, judges who received bribes for judgment, from lawyers, are still there giving their tainted decisions.  No, it is not like I don’t understand that President Buhari is operating on a Change mantra, but for God’s sake must people who saw him to victory be at the receiving end of these illegalities, even in his administration? Must APC members feel like orphans in many parts of the country, even when they can claim they are in government? No, I perfectly understand what a pain in the neck Saraki and his G.77, who are most probably sworn on oath are to Buhari, and I am not blind to what a mess a man being tried for corruption is making of both the budget and the judiciary with lawyers as  his pawns? But for Christ’s sake, is President Buhari obliged to tolerate these inanities?  Yes, Buhari is not Obasanjo but must he always turn the other cheek or has presidential powers been diluted since he took over on May 29, 2015? Nigerians, especially his party members, are waiting and watching as he works towards seeing the APC snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, come 2019. I am not asking him to be a dictator in a democracy but why, for instance, are fraudsters who illegally tampered with the senate standing orders not already on trial? Why is the Attorney-General shielding them or can President Buhari claim ignorance of this brazen illegality of protecting felons after Police investigation has confirmed same? What is happening for Christ’s sake? What exactly is this government seemingly afraid of? If it is the threat of impeachment, then this selfish senate must be ready for the mother of all battles with Nigerians.

     

    RE: THE 8TH SENATE

    “Although Dokun Adedeji text did not say so, perhaps his vilification is not directed at me personally as Orebe alluded. Perhaps!

    Hence, I apologise to Dokun, Femi Orebe and others whom I have disappointed for taking the issues so personal. We live and learn”.                       That is the concluding part of Senator Sola Adeyeye’s very mature reaction, published first on Sahara Reporters and later in The Nation of Thursday, 28, April 2016 to my article of Sunday, 24 April in which I literally made him carry the can for a very unfeeling senate. There, I think the matter should end except to add that a subsequent, very long telephone discussion with the senator conclusively proved that I could never have imagined half the pain he endures being a member of the 8th Senate. Having thus been convinced he spoke to Dr Adedeji out of frustration, not indignation, I can say without mincing words, that Professor Adeyeye is certainly an exemplar in that senate, always permanently counting with the few voices of reason, on the side of moderation and responsible behaviour. For the sake of all Nigerians, I pray that his tribe may increase in our overall national politics, not just at the senate.