The Nation Newspaper

Category: Idowu Akinlotan

  • Banditry, extremism and family culpability

    Banditry, extremism and family culpability

    Former Executive Secretary, National Health Insurance Scheme, Usman Yusuf, an oncologist, has as usual been talking up a storm over the Bola Tinubu administration’s plan to fight banditry and insecurity in general with every determination the government can summon. Tragically, some northerners, to whom he has directed his inciting rhetoric, appear convinced that he is the genuine article. On the one hand, the fight against insurgency in the Northeast has reached a crushing and intense level. It may be plagued by half measures, such as deradicalisation and rehabilitation of insurgents after capture or after surrender, especially ahead of their victims still marooned in refugee camps, but any indication that the counterinsurgency efforts were directed against the Kanuri has since subsided. On the other hand, however, the campaign against banditry in the Northwest appears bogged down in ethnic and religious rhetoric incomparable with any zealotry the country has seen since independence in 1960.

    The press, which today is largely against the Tinubu administration, loves to get the opinion of the eminent Prof. Yusuf. Last week he regaled the media again with his careless summation of the fight against banditry. His previous staple of deconstructing Boko Haram within the ambit of his zealous ratiocinations is no longer as marketable as it once was. He is not Kanuri. His new pastime is banditry, an affinity he shares with Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a notable northern Islamic cleric famous for his sympathies for bandits. Reacting to a question on the Nigerian Defence minister’s logic about fighting banditry to its logical conclusion, the oncologist argued that such a fight would unfairly target the Fulani and indicate prejudice against that race. He was more worried about the atrocities he claimed security agencies and Hausa vigilantes were meting out to the Fulani than respond to the cruelty and economic sabotage occasioned by the bandits.

    Never known to mince words on the painful subject of insecurity, Prof. Yusuf had said: “We strongly reject any plan by Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, to wage war against Fulani bandits. He must understand that he is now a political office holder, not a battlefield soldier, and therefore has a duty to listen to the people. We do not support a full-scale military campaign against Fulani bandits. What we demand is dialogue and non-violent solutions, not endless warfare. Any insistence on military confrontation will ultimately fail. We have firsthand experience. We have entered forests where bandit leaders are located, engaged directly, and witnessed the devastation caused by military operations and vigilante groups (Yan Banga). In reality, these bandits see themselves as freedom fighters.”

    It is true that sometimes dialogue resolves a number of sore issues in a society, but that would depend on what the causes of those sore issues are. There have been suggestions that socio-economic factors are to blame for banditry, amidst a number of other causes, including farmers-herdsmen clashes mostly instigated by shrinking grazing reserves. However, it is not clear what kind of dialogue Prof. Yusuf wants. Most Northwest states had at one time or the other entered into dialogue with the bandits, as a former Katsina State governor Aminu Masari once exasperatedly noted, but each time a truce was reached, and handsome money paid out, it was followed by only very brief spells of peace. After those spells, vicious campaigns of pillage and abductions often and constantly resumed, each campaign signposted by extreme cruelty disproportionate to the alleged cause of the disagreement between the bandits and locals.

    The governors who dialogued with the bandits and later resigned to fate are themselves Fulani. So what kind of dialogue do Prof. Yusuf and Sheikh Gumi want? While the beginnings of banditry so-called might be reasonably attributed to farmers-herdsmen clashes, they have in recent years, especially in light of the rampant and lawless artisanal mining ravaging the Northwest and parts of North Central, morphed into very lucrative kidnapping business. In turn, the kidnapping business is morphing into jihadist fantasies as the Mamuda, Lakurawa, and Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (Arabic for “Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims”), an expanding Salafi-jihadist organisation and al-Qaeda affiliate in the Sahel region of West Africa, take firm root in the Northwest. Some northern political leaders, particularly the progressive ones, are painfully aware of the dangers constituted by these groups, and the fact that banditry, not to talk of the short-sighted political rhetoric of some northern governors, opened the doors to the hyenas to ravage Nigeria.

    What is raging in the North, which Nigeria as a country has taken an unduly long time to adequately respond to, is more than a civil war between the Hausa and Fulani, or between farmers and pastoralists. A more formidable but less obvious war is also raging below the surface between the reactionary and conservative political elite in the region versus the progressive and fairly liberal political and business elite of the North. The former are cocooned in religious conservatism which they see as the be-all and end-all of life, and the second are insistent that whatever ideologies are introduced into the system must birth progress and advance the cause of mankind in a world constantly evolving through scientific and technological wonders. The fierceness of the war is indicated more poignantly in the fears of the first group as they desperately seek to prevent the inevitability of the progress advocated by the second group. The Northeast has taken an awful long time to recognise the madness they once seemed generally enamoured of. On the other hand, the Northwest is tragically the new epicenter of a deathly fight likely to determine the future of Nigeria in more ways than the erratic and infantile self-determination struggles of IPOB’s Nnamdi Kanu or the complacent and rose-coloured liberal lenses through which the Southwest has chosen to view Nigeria.

    Weeks after the United States president Donald Trump threatened to bomb terrorists and their sponsors in Nigeria and also warned against political and criminal justice part of sharia, a warning amplified by some Nigerians particularly from the Middle Belt, a group of Islamic clerics disseminated a video in which they scathingly condemned Nigerians who denounced sharia as both divisive and unconstitutional and also dared the US to do their worst. Watching the video, no one is left in doubt as to the fierceness of the conservatism Nigeria must contend with in order to make progress, or the depth of indoctrination and radicalisation that has infected the body politic. Mr Trump’s war of words, which is not limited to Nigeria or even Africa, but is directed indiscriminately, including at Europe, may grate on the nerves of Nigerians, but in no part of his declarations against Nigeria or his warmongering did he say he would bomb Muslims. But his threats have been appropriated by the clerics, and their ire directed at mostly Middle Belt Christians. The threats, expansively interpreted, have encouraged the divisive former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai and many others to amplify religiously and politically divisive posts on social media.

    Little introspection is going on over the Nigerian condition in many parts of the North as leaders and communities double down on their extreme positions. No lessons are learnt from the tragedy that took place on Australia’s Bondi beach where two radicalised persons, a father and his son, took up arms and enacted a slaughter directed against Jews. Indications are that they were influenced by the Israel-Gaza war, which in many circles has been equated with a war between Muslims and Jews instead of a war over land and living space. Even in Nigeria, and shockingly among the enlightened, any crisis or conflict between Palestinians and Israel is often seen as a war between Christians and Muslims. Such intensely binary view of conflict is also indicated in Nigeria where every disagreement balances on the fulcrum of ethnicity or religion, and seldom on issues, ideology, political platforms or even class division. This binary treatment of issues has permeated families, leading to the radicalisation of children and household members compelled to view life through the prism of religion or ethnicity. But it is not only political opportunists like Mallam el-Rufai, or former vice president Atiku Abubakar, or former governor Peter Obi all of whom recklessly appealed to ethnic and religious sentiments during the 2023 elections. Many other political leaders are guilty of the same sins. The radicalisation has now ended up producing millions of extremists, some of them operating from closets, and constituting existential danger to Nigeria’s fragile unity, stability and development.

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    Addressing the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) National Executive Committee meeting late last week in Abuja, President Tinubu underscored the fragility of Nigeria in his promise to go all-out against non-state actors and terrorists. The truth is that he has no choice, caught as he is between the US rock and Nigeria’s insecurity hard place. But almost immediately, revisionists like Prof. Yusuf decided to ethnicise the war against terror as if Fulani and Muslims were to be specially targeted, just as Mallam el-Rufai has painted a dismal but fallacious picture of Muslims being purged from office and power. Such incendiary and opaque views are believed to resonate in some parts of the North, especially among the gullible. However, Nigeria’s economic indicators show that if growth is not sustained at a high level, the country’s rising and unchecked population could trigger chaos or revolution. But how can growth be assured when insecurity gulps a significant proportion of national resources, not to talk of young men and women consumed by needless war in at least four regions of the country?

    As the northern elite take their eyes off the ball in a wild goose chase for ethnic and religious advantage, they have virtually forgone billions of dollars in tourism revenue. (Kenya makes about $3.5bn annually). The North has multiple tourist destinations either in game reserves or other destinations: Yankari and Borgu game reserves, Mambilla Plateau, Gurara Waterfalls, Wikki Warm Springs, Kajuru Castle, and dozens more. No one visits those exotic and beautiful destinations anymore. Tribe and religion, and years of indulging northern youths and neglecting to curb their bloody tendencies when they were still amenable to control, continue to rob the region of huge earnings. The region’s dominant political and business elite concentrate on Abuja and political power, gorge on oil earnings, and by their incompetence and exploitative orientation impoverish their population. No elite and no generation have been so irresponsible. Worse, no remedies are being conceived or applied save in a few states led by modern and progressive governors who see no future in the bestial return to atavism overtaking the region.

    The disintegration of Somalia, the ongoing civil war in Sudan, the irresolvable chaos of Libya, and the coup-ridden countries of West Africa offer no lessons. That was why Russian flags were hoisted in parts of the North during hardship protests in August 2024, and why some members of the elite sold the idea of a coup d’etat, a bait bought by some incurable optimists unable to appreciate that Nigeria had become too big, too exposed, and even too fractious to fall under the magic wand of military officers. The times have changed, ethnic and religious differences have ossified, and political divisions have become intractable. It is sheer fantasy to expect that a country of more than 230 million people can consequently be mesmerised by a few officers armed with guns, a coup speech, and promises of utopia which their military ancestors failed to midwife for the more than 28 years they seized power and wrecked the country. Reforms are being undertaken, even if imperfect, and democracy, though it continues to wobble, is taking roots. There is free speech, rule of law, freedom of conscience whether they are what they are cracked up to be or not. If the elite will not eschew the madness that is consuming them and find ways of minimising the differences that unsettle them, and if they continue to embrace and wink at the waspish rhetoric of yesterday’s men like Prof. Yusuf and Mallam el-Rufai, then they most brace for calamity, for it will come as surely as day follows night.

  • What next for diminished PDP?

    What next for diminished PDP?

    Sometime in 2010, on BBC HARDtalk programme, former president Olusegun Obasanjo argued that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) could not control 28 states out of 36 states and still lose the presidential election of 2007. Asked whether such dominance was ethical, he shot back: “Should the PDP go and tell the electorate not to vote for the ruling party? Asked again whether it was not tantamount to turning Nigeria into a one-party state, the former president deadpanned: “What is wrong with that?” So far, Chief Obasanjo has restrained himself from condemning the dominance of the current ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and has not said a word, at least publicly, on whether the 27 states controlled by the APC after some defections risked turning Nigeria into a one-party state. He is unlikely to say anything in that regard, lest they prosecutorially play the tape of his interview to him. He may be sanctimonious; but it is uncertain he is also hypocritical.

    By the last count, the ruling All Progressives Congress boasts of ruling 27 states, with a distinct possibility of bagging a few more, perhaps two or three in the weeks ahead. And so the once dominant PDP of yesteryears has become the Lilliputian of today: diminished, battered, disoriented and, for the first time since 1999 when it first won high office, in danger of asphyxiation. It had weathered many storms, most of them self-inflicted, and fought many battles with the stoutheartedness befitting a Leviathan. But victory after victory had dulled its senses of anticipation and awareness of danger. Proud, irascible and inured to reality, its muscles beginning to atrophy, it has now lost both the skill and will to fight. And when its complacency made it vulnerable to dangers of all kinds and predators of all hues, the adaptability needed to save it from destruction was sadly lacking. It is now left with only six states, but is likely to lose two to the APC in the coming weeks.

    The PDP never acquired the skill to respond imaginatively to adversity. It was always dilatory. In 2007 when it sensed its hold on the polity weakening, it made recourse to a rigged election unequalled in the annals of Nigerian elections. Nevertheless it tenaciously held on to power for another eight uneventful and crippling years. At the end, assailed on every side by the opposition and buffeted by economic downturn, and with no one in their leadership able to marshal the troops and imbue them with the right tactics, it collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions in 2015. If in 16 years since 1999 it could not produce a generation of brilliant and imaginative leaders to slow its attenuation, it has fared much worse since it lost office in producing tactical fighters who could imagine the future and respond to it adequately. Their loss in 2015 led them to desperate and tactless measures instead of the measured and patient response that should lead them to sacrifice one next election in order to gain many elections thereafter, not to talk of inspiring them to rebuild and reform their party instead of the mindless preoccupation with the present that led them to ruin.

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    Gluttons for punishment, and unwilling to learn from history, they again approached the 2019 electoral debacle with hired gunfighters, chief among whom was the redoubtable former vice president Atiku Abubakar, a man so obsessed with today that he heartily cursed tomorrow. There would be no reforms and no rebuilding, and there was to be no real introspection to discover what part of their electoral culture made them susceptible to constant failures. They, therefore, staggered into the 2023 presidential poll hiring the same inflexible champion; only this time, he was even more desperate, less discerning, and more prone to simple but costly mistakes. The war of attrition had taken its toll on the former behemoth, and it had become shorn of tacticians, philosophers, and the kind of roughnecks like former Rivers governor Nyesom Wike guilefully adapted to Nigeria’s bare-knuckle electoral fights. Now effectively split into two main factions, and degraded by the APC, political circumstances and self-induced crises, it has completely lost its composure and has been reduced into making plaintive appeals to the United States and the European Union to save Nigerian democracy.

    For the PDP, the 2027 election is lost. It should reconcile itself with that sombre reality. It will be lucky, if not foolish, to try to present a presidential candidate when it cannot even legally present a governorship candidate. For there is clearly no consensus between the two factions of the party regarding which camp has the legitimate right in the eyes of the law to sign a candidate’s election forms. It is unlikely that in the next few weeks it can reach that consensus or unite its warring factions. After it officially lost Rivers State to the APC last week, one of its factional chairmen, Abdurahman Tukur, sarcastically and despondently wished Governor Siminalayi Fubara good luck. It has reached such depths of despair today that it has lost the will to fight. As they lose more states and lawmakers to the ruling party, their economic fortunes will continue to dwindle until they are drained of every pint of blood in their veins. Oyo State’s governor Seyi Makinde had tried a last-ditch attempt to rally the troops in the November 15 Ibadan convention. As predicted, that rally miscarried, and with it the party’s last hope. With no messiah left to rally anyone, and with nearly all its troops deserting to the enemy, the PDP may be shouting its last hurrah.

    After the 2019 election debacle, the party still had the services of Mr Wike to carry the party’s burden and soldier on. Today, there is no one to carry the burden or even think for the party. Mr Wike is too triumphant and vindicated to care what happens to the party, despite his rhetorical feints and dribbles about principles and practices of partisan politics. Ensconced in the ruling APC where he is treated with Byzantine splendour, he cannot be of any help to the sinking PDP. After Mr Makinde organised the Ibadan PDP convention by sheer will and humongous resources, he has become so deflated and exhausted that no air is left in his lungs, let alone be able to exhale about the future or romanticise the past. Former party chairman Umar Damagum is relieved that he had passed the poisoned chalice to the luckless Kabiru Turaki before the party imploded. He will make sermons and offer prayers for the party on the sidelines, and will resist every attempt to drag him back into a fight he neither chose nor had the skills to fight. Bauchi’s previously talkative governor and chair of the PDP Governors’ Forum, Bala Mohammed, now speak in dulcet tones. The frenetic pace of events in the party was too much for him to cope with, and has lost interest in taming the fractious factions and leaders of the party.

    The PDP’s only hope is to come to terms with the task it had avoided for so long when signs of distress began manifesting in the party in 2013-2014. News of its impending demise may be exaggerated, but it will likely go extinct if it persists in its fooleries, or if, like former Osun State governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, it continues to blame President Tinubu and the APC for its troubles. While it really needs to demonstrate a willingness to fight for its survival, it should beware of reposing hope in messianic intervention to vivify their party. Unfortunately, nature rarely gifts the indolent the reward which PDP leaders expect. After all, the APC is unlikely to implode now, regardless of how much the PDP wishes it. So, if the PDP can get a trusted and gifted organiser in their ranks, they may yet find a straw to clutch. That unusual leader must focus on nothing else for the next few years but reform, and rebuilding and remaking the party. At his command, they will not only refine their platform and reinvigorate the party with the right and inspiring philosophy, they will perhaps give themselves time to heal.  

  • Dominant APC waits with bated breath

    Dominant APC waits with bated breath

    Once set in motion, the defections begun months ago to the All Progressives Congress (APC) have become almost unstoppable, an avalanche even. It is not inevitable that a ruling party can withstand divisions simply because it is in office, but after the APC won the third presidential election in a row, and sent opposition parties reeling, the party seemed impregnable to storms. That impregnability has attracted defectors of all kinds, causing the party to grow in weight and gravitas in inverse proportion to the despair afflicting the opposition. The one-way defections will continue apace, though the party is now almost filled to saturation. What should worry the party, however, is not whether it has room for more defections or whether it is nearing the end of its carrying capacity. Indeed, the party may already be unnerved by the almost sepulchral silence in the opposition save occasional eruptions of fiery denunciations over one policy flaw or another misstep by the administration.

    Convinced that it has become infeasible to defeat the APC by the pure art or even science of balloting, the opposition has retreated into its shell to store energy and assume a strike position. There is euphoria in the APC, though now tethered by a strange and uncomfortable feeling of anxiety. And conversely, there is despondency in the opposition mitigated by the fact that they have nothing to lose. So, the now clearly dominant and unassailable ruling party must wait with bated breath to see what other weapons the opposition parties have in their armamentarium. The ruling party knows by experience that the opposition are in possession of lethal weapons, for before it won the 2015 elections and assumed office, the APC also wielded deadly weapons and was unabashed in deploying them with fury.

    It is not yet known whether the opposition will be an agglomeration of the country’s main opposition parties, but it will not be just the PDP alone. Regardless of how many they are, the APC will worry whether the enemy will fight as one hobgoblin or on many fronts. Should the opposition choose to fight as one man, they might do a lot of damage, having demonstrated how nasty and skewering they can be. If they choose to fight individually and separately, the APC will worry about fighting on many fronts, wondering just how well they can fence off their enemies. The first accusation the opposition is broadcasting everywhere is that the APC is at fundamentally antidemocratic and determined to reverse democratic gains and render Nigeria a one-party state. The campaign will resonate with many people if the ruling party can’t find a bigger and more convincing argument to deflect the hooey.

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    Fortunately for the APC, and despite former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai’s mendacities, the opposition will be unable to deploy the religious argument as they did during the 2023 polls. Mallam el-Rufai, now a cipher in the ADC, has tried to both associate with and amplify the argument that the Bola Tinubu administration had caved in to the Christian lobby and filled the higher echelons of government with Christians to the detriment of Muslims. That religious campaign is unlikely to gain traction, not even if it is decked in regional colours. The APC is of course not a pushover in trench warfare, especially if that warfare becomes messy and bloody. Indeed, the ruling party may already have an inkling into what the opposition parties are planning, and just how deep they will plumb to find the filth they need to bespatter the enemy. If the APC is worried, it has done its best so far to conceal that anxiety. But how long it can keep its composure will be known when the campaigns hot up and turn nasty.

    From all indications, the opposition will not train their guns on the APC as a party, for the party, as a result of recent defections, is much stronger than it has ever been. Instead, they will face the president squarely. They will bring out their heavy guns, believing that once they destabilise and rob him of his confidence, the job of unseating him and the ruling party would be easier. One stone, they seem to think, would kill two birds. They will go through his INEC filings with a fine-tooth comb once again, and they will go through his records. The slightest inconsistency will be sufficient for them to deploy to maximum advantage. They will not even mind half-truths. The APC may have run rings round the opposition, and has done it with great aplomb, but what they will need to pay particular attention to are the weapons the opposition will deploy against the president, not against the party. The winner would be the one who had anticipated the other more adroitly, and had prepared, like a chess player, answers to puzzles yet to be raised. And if all else fails, why, they will try the often gory terrorism/kidnapping ploy regardless of the censorious gaze of the Americans.

  • Benin Republic demons

    Benin Republic demons

    Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger Republic have remained hostile to Nigeria because of its opposition to the overthrow of democracy in the three French-speaking West African countries. Had last Sunday’s coup attempt in Benin Republic led by Lt. Col. Pascal Tigri succeeded, Nigeria would have been ringed by military juntas at a time when political polarisation and harsh economic conditions in recent months have led to campaigns for the overthrow of democracy. It was, therefore, a terrible misreading of the coup plot in Benin to suggest that Nigeria was doing French bidding by helping President Patrice Talon quell the Tigri-led rebellion moments after the coup unfolded in Cotonou. The intervention was also self-preservation for Nigeria.

    The fascination with coups in the region is depressing. Analysts have suggested that the antidote to coup is good governance and political freedoms. This is simplistic. There are many countries in the world battling with economic headwinds and incompetent governments which have not been bitten by the coup malady. The Niger Republic coup preempted the now deposed President Mohamed Bazoum in 2023 from sacking the coup leader and head of the presidential guards, Abdourahamane Tchiani. Justifying the putsch on the grounds of insecurity and poor governance was inadmissible. Both Mali and Burkina Faso also anchored their coup on the need to economically and politically delink from France, in addition to insecurity. But both countries remain coup-prone and unstable, and the counterinsurgency operations in both countries have not fared better than before the coups.

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    Benin Republic’s economy had been growing at a healthy 7.5 percent before the coup. So the coupists cited insecurity in the northern part of the country and political repression highlighted by the attempt to impose the president’s favourite, Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni, as successor. Yet, Mr Talon was due to vacate office in April 2026 after the expiration of his tenure. What is incontestable is that everywhere a coup has taken place in West Africa, those countries had made little or no headway because soldiers are not trained to govern. There is nowhere, not even in Nigeria, where they have left sterling records. It is indeed tragic that citizens and social media influencers have been instigating some of the coups in West Africa, as they nearly succeeded in doing in Nigeria.

    Gunboat diplomacy is already mothballed, but it is clumsily being revived by US President Donald Trump. Nigeria did the right thing by waiting to be invited officially to intervene by the sitting government of Benin Republic. Nigeria could not intervene in Guinea-Bissau because both the sitting president and the army plotted the arranged coup. Should a coup take place in Nigeria, it is not only unlikely to succeed, it may spell doom for the country. To, therefore, suggest that because Nigeria had not solved its insecurity problem it had no business intervening elsewhere, is a disservice to the country and the region. Meanwhile, regarding the Benin coup, a few social media influencers who allegedly incited the rebellion have been declared wanted. They will be held accountable. 

  • Defence minister must first find his feet

    Defence minister must first find his feet

    General Christopher Musa had a very successful military career, and was well regarded as the former Chief of Defence Staff. Reappointed and elevated as Minister of Defence barely a month later, Nigerians, not to say those who appointed him, consequently have high hopes his infectious can-do spirit would galvanise the country into relieving the siege laid to Nigeria by bandits, terrorists, and insurgents grabbing land and seeking the fulfillment of caliphal dreams. Expectations, though high, may, however, need to be moderated. The retired general, now in civil office and obviously yet to find suitable civil dress, still needs to find his feet.

    It is possible he is a natural, and will fill the role with aplomb, uniting policy and implementation, and serving as an unbreakable bridge between the executive branch and the often imperial military class which guards their command structure and war plans sometimes very rigidly. In short, Gen Musa will henceforth have to be partly civilian and partly military. Walking that tight rope, a feat that eluded his predecessor, former Jigawa State governor Mohammed Badaru, will test both his resolve and his acumen in a way that may mystify him, try his soul, and temper his confident élan.

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    Given the fact that insurgency and banditry had festered for so long, there will be no quick fixes. Indeed, bandits especially will be ecstatic to play the spoilsports. In addition, and more crucially, despite being a retired member of the top military brass, he will have to find ingenious ways of gaining the confidence of his former colleagues accustomed, in the Nigerian way, to jealously guarding their administrative turfs. Decades of military rule had corroded the hierarchical structure that should make the civil and military positions work seamlessly. It will, therefore, take a little longer to reset the structure to fit into a democracy. But Gen. Musa can pull it off if has the patience and the brilliance. Guided by the country’s high expectations, motivated by his confidence to put down the revolt breaking out in many parts of the country, and assured that there is no alternative but to succeed, the influential general may achieve the breakthrough everyone craves.

  • Kanu, Ekpa, Natasha and prolonged litigations

    Kanu, Ekpa, Natasha and prolonged litigations

    The trial and conviction of Biafran agitator, Simon Ekpa, in Finland present a contrast to the Nigerian justice system and expose the unsustainable and seemingly lackadaisical approach to criminal litigation. From all indications, the lawsuits involving Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan may also take eternity to resolve, or perhaps until everybody is tired or amenable to out-of-court settlement. The debilitating prolongation of court cases, however, poses grave risks to individual liberty and national security, as the IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu case is showing. There is, therefore, a crying need for reform, reform capable of refining and streamlining legal and judicial procedures, and staving off the global ridicule directed at Nigeria’s justice system.

    Mr Kanu’s case took all of 10 years to resolve one way or the other, after years of drama that evoked escapades of The Scarlet Pimpernel, strong-arm military tactics, and indefensible legal twists and turns. Arrested in 2015, granted bail in 2017 and jumped bail shortly thereafter, rearrested in 2021 through extraordinary rendition and rearraigned, detoured to the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court for about a year, and in 2025, shorn of any other legal trickery, he was finally taken through eight months of trial that culminated in his conviction last November. He had done and said enough, including botching his own case by his histrionics and self-representation, to merit conviction more than twice over. But it took 10 years of unflattering legal drama to reach that facile conclusion.

    Mr Ekpa is Finnish, and a soldier to boot. He is reportedly familiar with Finland’s legal field, having worked as an intern in his ex-wife’s law firm. It would be surprising if he thought Finland’s justice system was as laborious and inefficient as Nigeria’s. Perhaps his 2023 arrest and acquittal over alleged illegal fundraising lured him into the excesses that saw him rearrested and detained in November 2024. Whatever his motivations, once his trial on terrorism-related charges commenced in May 2024, it was slam-bang downhill until he was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison last September. Four crazy months, and it was all over, a solid two months before Mr Kanu, whose trial began about 10 years ago, was hauled into jail in Nigeria. It was a mortifying study in contrasts.

    But Nigeria is incurably optimistic about everything, never one to be taken aback by minor issues like prolonging a trial for more than a decade when a few months would be more than enough. So, the country does not learn from experience and history. Senator Natasha, as she is better known rather than the formal Sen. Akpoti-Uduaghan, appears also embroiled in a potentially elongated trial over criminal defamation and contempt charges. The suits, other than one from herself, were brought against her by the federal government, senate president Godswill Akpabio, and Mrs Akpabio. Begun in February 2025 with a suit against Sen. Akpabio for N100bn, the litigation has grown into a countersuit by Senator Akpabio for N200bn, by Mrs Akpabio for N350bn, and a follow-up criminal defamation suit by the federal government that promises to be exhilarating. Already, one of the cases has been adjourned till February 2026. It is just the beginning of lawsuits destined to be dragged into a long dark maze of legal sleights of hand.

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    What baffles nearly everyone except defendants in these convoluted cases is how Nigeria’s judicial authorities have seemed helpless over the delay tactics often employed by litigants and their counsels. Land cases are even more notorious for elongation. In land disputes, a claimant gets all of 12 years to file his case, but as a result of gridlock in the court system, or procedural issues, or cross-appeals at multiple levels, or the difficulties encountered in evidence gathering, the suit can snake its way through the courts for decades. Nigerians seem to have reconciled themselves to that atrocious judicial slow motion. But to subject a crime case to 10 years of trial, not to talk of perhaps many more years of appeal, is truly bewildering. Reform is desperately needed, and Mr Ekpa’s case in Finland should shame Nigeria into looking for a way out.

    Reform is urgent, as Mr Kanu’s case makes very obvious. By prolonging a criminal trial, a charismatic defendant can sometimes turn the table against the state and complicate or even neutralise the charges. By lasting 10 years, Mr Kanu ended up becoming even more charismatic to his heedless supporters, and in the process entrancing, if not bewitching, a whole region. The enlightened probably saw through his legal chicaneries, and were horrified by Mr Kanu’s idiosyncrasies; but like most societies, the enlightened are often in the minority. The IPOB leader has signified his readiness to appeal; and if he loses at the Court of Appeal, it is certain he will take his case to the Supreme Court. The Southeast wants a political solution, but that is unlikely to happen until the litigation comes to an end.

    Mr Kanu’s case exposes nearly all the loopholes in Nigeria’s legal system. Judicial administrators cannot insist they don’t know what to do. The evidence is before them, and they have enough bright minds to determine what to do and how to plug the loopholes. They must not allow the Sen. Natasha case suffer the same excesses and manipulations as the Kanu case. If the Sen. Ike Ekweremadu organ harvesting case lasted a measly 10 and a half months from arrest to conviction in the United Kingdom, Nigeria’s judicial authorities should be deeply mortified that Mr Kanu took 10 years off them, and they still seem casually prepared to make the Sen. Natasha case last for years. By the next adjourned date, the senator’s case will be hugging one year. All for what? Nigeria must not forget that the Flt. Lt. John J. Rawlings court-martial did not last one month before he was sprung from detention because of his charismatic displays and other factors. Lengthy cases are a disservice to any nation, and can be very divisive, as the 1894-1906 Captain Alfred Dreyfus case also illustrated in France. Whatever they do, and notwithstanding the desire to be thorough, Nigeria’s judicial authorities must not be apathetical to the crucial matter of fighting the cancer of delayed justice or prolonged trial.

  • Insecurity: Northern govs solutions not far-reaching

    Insecurity: Northern govs solutions not far-reaching

    To demonstrate their earnestness in resolving the troubling matter of insecurity bedeviling the North, 19 northern governors and traditional rulers council met in Kaduna last week to determine what to do. The meeting, also attended by some security chiefs, was not short on the whys of insecurity. But, despite not been far-reaching enough, the communiqué was cryptic and perhaps epochal on solutions. Compared to previous meetings convened to deliberate on issues affecting the region, last week’s communiqué was neither long nor tedious as past communiqués. It may not be deep or wide-ranging enough, but the solution the governors and rulers suggest is anchored on three major pillars: Immediate suspension of all mining activities for six months; Establishment of a Northern Regional Security Trust Fund; and Full backing for state police.

    The governors argue that illegal mining has been a major driver for insecurity, which a temporary halt to operations in that sector and a carefully managed revalidation process could help realign with national security needs. They also believe that a monthly one billion naira contribution by the states deducted at source into a security trust fund might help ameliorate the frenzied drive towards apocalypse. They admit they have not worked out the details or the framework. One billion naira per month from each of the 19 states in the region should release N114bn for six months or N228bn for one year to the fund. That is substantial; assuming the framework for its spending can be trusted to be adequate. The third leg of the communiqué involves the region intensifying constitutional amendment efforts to create state police. If all the states buy this suggestion, it should give fillip to the national drive to decentralise policing and make governors more accountable on security.

    But the crisis in the North is much direr than the communiqué appears to suggest. The region is confronted by a plethora of other significant but deeply troubling and cataclysmic challenges which nothing they have suggested appears capable of dealing with fundamentally and substantially. What the governors and the traditional rulers have done is to scratch the problem on the surface and also probably demonstrate their unwillingness to grapple with the ugly face of the problem confronting them. They rightly see the problem as an existential challenge capable of causing the North to unravel, but they need far more courage, depth and readiness in dealing with it than they have shown so far. They are familiar with the rampant poverty in their region, the lack of access or low budgetary allocations to education and health sectors, and why they should urgently design policies to remake their society. They are also familiar with the debilitating consequences of climate change and creeping desertification, and are keenly aware that they could not afford to surrender to nature. Yes, they are right, but much more needs to be done.

    Indeed, there are other major factors predisposing the North to conflict and insecurity. If these factors are not tackled bravely they could make other measures such as the ones contained in the communiqué ineffective or redundant. The governors and traditional rulers must first come to grip with these other factors before they can proceed. The first factor is their inattentiveness to the issue of terror financiers, powerful but extremely wealthy individuals who have the North, if not the entire country, by the jugular. If the North cannot collectively press the federal government to deal with these well-known individuals and financiers who now clearly control militias and small armies, little will be achieved by the newfangled measures the governors have propounded in their communiqué. The terror financiers whose identities had been made public in 2017 after the United Arab Emirate (UAE) arrested six Northern Nigerians among dozens of other foreign terror suspects, and tried and convicted them in 2019, and upheld their convictions in 2020, still constitute an open wound. Linked to the six northerners were some other 40 individuals and entities in Nigeria implicated in the crime but who have not been prosecuted. What is evident is that both the North and the federal government are undecided what to do, even as terrorism has intensified and morphed into a multi-billion naira criminal kidnapping enterprise.

    Read Also: Naming and shaming of sponsors as solution to escalating terrorism in Nigeria

    The North also needs to deal with the second but closely related factor of redefining and refining their criminal justice system. The system is so messed up in the region that injustice in many instances has become normalised and unfortunately dichotomised between the faiths. Once the signal filters out that justice depends on a person’s class, faith and ethnicity, as is currently the norm in some areas of the region, impunity and exceptionalism will reign and spawn lawless groups, entities and individuals. This may at bottom explain why terror financiers have been left unpunished, why bandits and insurgents have become cult heroes, why insurgents are rehabilitated and reintegrated ahead of their victims, and why incredibly members of the regional elite have sought to draw a comparison between bandits/insurgents in the North and Niger Delta resource control activists. There is a deliberate and orchestrated plan to succour and appease northern insurgents and bandits.

    The third factor, sometimes regarded as an intangible for obvious reasons, relates to the indecision of the region to make a choice between modernism or moving into the embrace of religious conservatism. The region can’t have its cake and eat it. The fast developing countries of the Middle East, much more than North Africa, have seemed to make their choice between conservatism and progressivism. UAE, Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, surprisingly Syria which is just emerging from al-Qaeda-led revolt against the more secularist Bashar al-Assad, and, until a few decades ago, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, all demonstrate that balancing faith and development is neither anathema nor impossible. On the contrary, northern Nigeria has gone in the opposite direction, seemingly insisting that development appears to be anathema when it comes to issues of faith. This is not just conservatism; it is reactionary. Not only has the North lived in denial for years regarding the true identity and objectives of insurgents and bandits, they have extenuated the mindless savagery of the criminals.

    Pooling N114bn or N228bn to tackle the crisis in the North, support state police and reestablish firm control over legal mining or curbing illegal mining altogether are excellent ideas. But until the North defines who they are and properly frame their existential goals, particularly relating to the future of the region and what that future holds for generations to come, they will be tilting at windmills. The region is wracked by too many contradictions that do not lend themselves to the kind of solutions they have stated in their communiqué. Consequently, they must accept responsibility for the breakdown of law and order in their region and find courage to deal with the problems their inexpert approach to complex issues and probably cowardly refusal to grapple with the shifting dynamics of their region have inflicted upon the country. They have militarily and financially encumbered the rest of Nigeria with homegrown terrorism, and until last Monday have sometimes given the impression that the crisis in the region is a collective problem. There is nothing collective about the crisis. The northern elite need to repair the damage by themselves. They should make up their mind what they want: a progressive and secular society where justice and self-actualisation are not predicted on ethnicity or faith, or a theocracy as they seem unrepentantly enamoured of that dooms them into the embrace of international terrorists who see Nigeria as fertile ground for foolish hallucinations and endless bloodletting.

  • Abductions revive Atiku’s opportunistic politics

    Abductions revive Atiku’s opportunistic politics

    Despite a pending case instituted by the Nafiu Bala-led faction of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the Federal High Court, Abuja, former vice president Atiku Abubakar has finally registered with the party in his ward in Adamawa State after pussyfooting for a little over four months. The registration caught reporters napping. In July when the former vice president and his men orchestrated the official takeover of the ADC, and former senate president David Mark and ex-Osun State governor Rauf Aregbesola were appointed interim party chairman and interim national secretary respectively, it was expected that Alhaji Atiku would follow hard on their heels by consummating his registration. For inexplicable reasons, it took more than four months before he finally crossed the Rubicon. His months of dithering reflected the tentativeness of his politics and the opportunism of his ambition. Characteristically uncommitted to anything save his ambition, or to ideology or to political party, or to persons or principles, he has always had an eye on the main chance.

    Months before the July ADC takeover, he had assembled a flotilla for the unique purpose of finding a platform with which to make his final bid for the Nigerian presidency in 2027. The flotilla comprised sundry politicians grieving over their displacement in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), men and women anxious to see Alhaji Atiku announce his membership of the party in consonance with his huge financial commitments. Instead, he balked. Some suggested it was because the party was rent in two by discord over who was the legitimate chairman of the party, especially seeing how controversially the previous chairman Ralph Nwosu hastily relinquished office. Others suggested that though he resigned his membership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on July 14, 2025, the former vice president was at sixes and sevens over whether to finally commit himself to the ADC into which he had led most of his lieutenants. Gen. Mark coaxed him; Mr Argbesola entreated him; the talkative and vengeful Nasir el-Rufai tugged at his flowing robes; and the vast assemblage of journeymen looking for political relevance raised a din – all of them to have him lead the charge, not remotely or virtually, but from the front, physically, even if sluggishly.

    The 2027 party primaries are just months away. When by early November Alhaji Atiku was still vacillating, many members of the ADC, particularly those bewitched by his uncompromising talk, were beginning to panic. They wanted a political war in 2027, and were eager to draw their swords; but they were sobered by the enormity of the task ahead and chastened by what needs to be done to secure victory. Vacillations, they reasoned, would not deliver the main prize. But the more the former vice president was entreated, the more detached he became, until of course early last week when he dropped the other shoe. The party leadership may be flummoxed by their leader’s reluctance to take risks and are vexed by his seeming indifference to the dangers his tentativeness exposed them to, but the party rank and file are now openly animated. Alhaji Atiku had kept a tight grip on the funds needed to vivify a party long used to being hijacked and ravaged by ambitious politicians; now, they seem assured that at last, the spending would begin in earnest.

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    As unflattering as Alhaji Atiku’s political style is, and regardless of the many contradictions in which his presidential ambition over the decades had weltered, he is at bottom a cautious man and spender. He waited long enough to see that the PDP had become irredeemable; waited still to see that the ADC was unlikely to unravel over its disputed chairmanship and leadership fights; and also waited until the last two weeks when a spate of terrorist killings and abductions began ruffling the feathers of the ruling party. He was indeed still prepared to wait even further to gauge the right moment when he would feel and see the Achilles heel of the administration. But suddenly, buoyed by the terrorist abductions in Kebbi and Niger States as well as the startled incomprehensibilities of the APC administration in responding to the siege being woven around the country, Alhaji Atiku has found his voice and seemed to gain political weight. Finally, he senses that the APC can be beaten. Though he sometimes rails against the administration’s economic policies, he knows at bottom that the APC is not doing badly at all in reviving and, even more encouragingly, resetting the Nigerian economy. Using economic issues as a campaign tool, he suspects, will not resonate. It has to be insecurity. And in the last two weeks, a carefully choreographed wave of abductions and merciless butchering has triggered a jaunty response from the ADC and Alhaji Atiku. Forgetting that he is of the Fulani stock accused of being the main inspirators of insecurity in Nigeria, a charge also levelled at former president Muhammadu Buhari for being the chief originator of insecurity, Alhaji Atiku appears emboldened to claim he has the magic wand to cure the insecurity cancer. Few are likely to believe him.

    But it hardly matters. The former vice president is probably the most accomplished exponent of political opportunism. He has seen enormous possibilities in the choreographed terrorist attacks and abductions across some northern states, not to talk of the intensification of other attacks in states torn between suing for peace or fighting it out. He will deploy the ensuing public anger and helplessness to drive his campaign and position himself, despite his old age, as the deus ex machina Nigeria desperately needs. That mentality – of seizing the opportunity of lawlessness to make political profit – is rife among a section of the political class. It is illogical, but it is rife. Former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai also once enthused, as governor, that being Fulani, he was in a position to stop the killings pervading the southern part of the state. However, all he did throughout his governorship was to pay the killers and, by his reckless statements and prejudiced disposition, stoked the fire of more killings in the state. Should Alhaji Atiku become president as he hopes, he cannot do better than President Buhari or Mallam el-Rufai. He will make stupendous promises, but he would be chary of drawing too much blood from his kinsmen. If his kinsmen saw the Buhari presidency as licence to deliver carnage, and found plausible excuses to justify and bask in the bloodletting, it would not be different under Alhaji Atiku. He has not shown himself a principled and ideological politician, and had in his past campaigns urged Muslims and the political North to be discriminating in their voting.

    No one believes that the killings and abductions are happenstances. Some, however, say they are enacted to thumb the nose at the United States which had threatened to bomb the perpetrators of Christian genocide to smithereens. This view is sheer nonsense. While baiting the US may seem foolhardy, perpetrators of killings and abductions, though they are in many instances Fulani, know that executing a military campaign by air or on foot in Nigeria is indeed hard to carry out with precision. Most Nigerians think the intensity of the terrorist attacks, particularly in the Northwest, was designed to produce both a political message and a political advantage. Alhaji Atiku is unbothered by whatever anyone thinks or whatever justifications are adduced for the rampage. All he sees is an administration discomfited by the events of the day, and an advantage for him and his beleaguered party to soldier on. Whether he can sustain the advantage beyond a few months remains to be seen. Though chafing under the table, the administration should count itself fortunate to have to contend with the recrudescing terrorist attacks about six months before the primaries and more than a year before the elections. If they cannot find a way to neutralise the political effect of insecurity as a factor in the campaigns, then they have themselves to blame.

    The attacks and abductions have clearly made the ADC and its leaders both hopeful and exuberant, a sort of profiting from an opponent’s misery. This is politically legitimate. But there is also increasing realisation that cells of terrorist attackers lurking in the forests in many southern states, their agenda speculated to be either land grabbing or the establishment of a religious caliphate inspired by ISIS ideology, is a disincentive to vote Atiku. Those speculations stand more chance of dooming the Atiku campaign than energising it as he anticipates. Mallam el-Rufai is characteristically more upbeat than even Alhaji Atiku. He swears that with the ADC’s newfound zeal and the muddle in which the APC has found itself, Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna would be swept away in 2027. His fixation is predictably with Kaduna where his reputation had been bludgeoned by former supporters who encountered and embraced the inspiringly urbane style of the governor and marveled that governance could be so easy and entrancing. The ADC national secretary, Rauf Aregbesola, has not met with such good fortune. His reputation is in tatters and his politics generally uncouth and unappealing. He zeroes in on Osun; but as regicidal as that state is, they do not have the reputation of being calculating and nostalgic. To them, Mr Aregbesola is history, and in Osun, they forget history, especially when it traumatises them.

    If the ruling party manages to turn the corner in respect of insecurity, the lull the ADC experienced for months when their dithery leader, the former vice president, agonised over whether to commit himself lock, stock, and barrel to the fringe party, will return to haunt them. But having been inattentive to and mystified and mortified by the country’s economic recovery, Alhaji Atiku will do everything in his power to prevent the APC from getting a reprieve. The abductions chaos has now gifted the great opportunist a chance to indulge his pastime of profiting from other people’s misery; he will nurture that anomaly for as long as he can manage. Given the brittleness of his politics, his unsteady gait in withstanding headwinds, and the way he plays ducks and drakes with the love and support of his followers, it is hard seeing him weather the storm when the political hurricane against his ambition reaches Category 5.

  • Trump auctioning Ukraine?

    Trump auctioning Ukraine?

    US President Donald Trump is neither a fan of history nor a deep thinker, but he has been very lucky. It is, therefore, not surprising that he tried to foist a 28-point peace plan on Ukraine in order to bring the Russo-Ukrainian war begun in February 2022 to an end. Largely drafted by the Russian official, Kirill Dmitriev, and containing provisions such as imposing a limit on Ukraine’s armed forces (to some 600,000), preventing the invaded country from joining NATO or allowing NATO forces on its soil, and Russia keeping the entire Donbas region, the deal virtually rewarded Russian invasion. As expected, Russian president Vladimir Putin gave cautious approval to the plan. But against the strident opposition from Ukraine and European Union countries, with President Volodymyr Zelensky poignantly suggesting that the deal was a Hobson’s choice that left Ukraine with the awkward option of keeping the friendship and partnership of the US or keeping its dignity, the deal has been considerably edited and watered down to 22 points to the chagrin of Russia.

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    Probably the only advantage for Ukraine in the original 28-point deal is a security guarantee by the United Kingdom, some European countries, Canada, Turkey, and implausibly Russia itself. The controversial deal, sold by US negotiator Steve Witkof as a US deal when he knew it was a Russian deal, reminds the world of the June 1919 Treaty of Versailles which not only inaccurately cast Germany as the loser in World War I but also subjected it to burdensome reparations. The Treaty of Versailles presaged the grand 1938 Munich appeasement that failed to prevent World War II. Now, another appeasement, probably worse than the World War I stalemate and the Munich Agreement, is in the offing. It remains to be seen whether Mr Trump’s shortsighted appeasement will not in turn produce a worse debacle in the years ahead, even after the guns have long fallen silent in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

  • Security emergency needs structure

    Security emergency needs structure

    President Bola Tinubu’s declaration of a nationwide security emergency last week requires comprehensive follow-ups to be effective. The declaration followed a string of school and church attacks and abductions that once again exposed Nigeria to global ridicule. The continuing attacks, intensified in the past few weeks, indicate a mockery of Nigeria’s security paradigm and a scorning of American threats by President Donald Trump to attack terrorists and sponsors of terrorism on Nigerian soil. There is, however, also a growing suspicion that the synchronisation of the attacks is far more indicative of politics than anything else, whether they be scorning foreign threats or mocking governmental inertia. Whatever the reasons for the attacks, President Tinubu’s declaration is a step closer to fully taking on the evil coterie that has waged a relentless war on the country. The government may not have quite appreciated the declaration of war by terrorists on the country, but gradually, the whole picture appears to be getting clearer. The country is at war, even if the phrase seems harsh and apocalyptic.

    Last week, during a Christmas carol and praise festival in Jos, Plateau State, former president Olusegun Obasanjo strongly suggested the cessation of any negotiation or accommodation with terrorists. But in the view of the government there are actually extenuating circumstances that permit negotiations, especially in light of the permanent presence of hostages at terrorists’ lairs nationwide. Overall, President Tinubu’s security emergency declaration seems to acknowledge that public patience appears to be wearing thin. Indeed, Nigerian leaders know at the back of their minds that the country is just a few moments away from catastrophe. How they manage the next few months will, therefore, define the success of the administration itself and the future of the country.

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    If the security emergency declaration is to have teeth, the administration will have to go beyond mere declarations. It must put a structure in place, and forge a template and anchor staff to manage the emergency. It must not take for granted that the security agencies know what to do. The government has mandated the recruitment of extra personnel for the task, including 20,000 men for the police, and an indeterminate number for the army. In addition to explicating the ranching issue in line with the Livestock ministry mandate, the president’s statement also tasked the Department of State Service (DSS) with clearing the forests, in league with Forest Guards, of all terrorists. These are sensible but reactive measures that could give muscle to the anti-terrorism fight, though it is not clear why the government thinks the DSS should carry out an assignment the military has struggled with.

    But something is missing. An ad hoc team is needed, and it must be tasked with coordinating all the measures to stanch the flow of blood and curb abductions on a scale that must be seen as significant. The president must, therefore, task the service chiefs to draw up a plan, suggest a structure and composition, and list the desired objectives, including timelines. The security emergency declaration gives the impression that the administration and indeed the country have the luxury of time. They don’t. The terrorists are relentless and aggressive, and their sponsors, whether political (and invariably theocratic campaigners) or mining barons or even land grabbers, are determined to push through their sanguinary agenda as they gloat in accompaniment. These powerful non-state actors will do their worst to sustain the bloodshed. The genie they conjured and let out of the bottle more than 10 years ago will not let itself be put back into the bottle.

    As indicated in the main piece above, if the terrorists are not significantly degraded or even destroyed before the primaries some six months away, it could menace the country’s political calendar. More crucially, if the terrorism and abductions problem persist into the campaigns, not to say into the elections, the ruling party must prepare their minds for disaster. But for that disaster to be obviated, the administration must step on toes, face the problem more squarely than it has done in the estimation of the public, and decapitate the monster, not scorch it. Nigeria has been called many names, including ‘shithole’ and ‘disgrace country’. If the epithets are to prove undeserved, then the administration must see the current attacks and abduction challenges as threats to be confronted frontally and defeated with flourish for future generations to reference in their essays.