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Category: Sunday

‘Fire in the Sahel’

Speaking in Yobe State more than two weeks ago, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant-General Olufemi Oluyede, told Governor Mai Mala Buni that the “The Sahel is on fire. If we allow that fire to come down this way, we’ll be in trouble…It’s best as a country for us to brace up for what is coming and nip it in the bud as fast as possible.” And addressing State House correspondents in Abuja two Fridays ago after a security meeting with President Bola Tinubu, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Christopher Musa, confirmed that “What has happened of recent is that there’s a global push by terrorists and jihadists all over the Sahel area, and that pressure is what actually came into Nigeria because of the nature of our borders.” The long and short is that the Sahel is burning, and Nigeria is vulnerable.

There is obviously no disagreement about the diagnosis of what Nigeria is facing or about to encounter. What remains is how to prepare for the horses of the apocalypse galloping down the Sahel. Is Nigeria united in its bid to curtail the menace? There are doubts. As Governor Babagana Zulum wailed last week during his visit to three beleaguered local governments, he and his men have managed to decipher that some politicians and soldiers are collaborating with the enemy. He did not say whether the collaboration was induced by pecuniary reasons or caliphate dreams, or perhaps both. What is, however, clear is that apart from the cracks and confusion in the frontline states, there has been no national demonstration of unity and commonality of purpose in combating insurgency, banditry and other forms of terrorism in the country.

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President Tinubu’s first task, it is becoming clear, is not just to muster the resources and men to defeat insurgency and banditry, it is also to find ingenious ways of uniting the country behind him in the fight against the common enemy. He will encounter stiff resistance and distractions, but he must find ways to transcend those limitations and staunch the madness unfurling in the Sahel and creeping slowly down to the Northwest and Northeast. The frontlines will not be a single, identifiable front. It will be multiple. He needs to speak to this cataclysm rapidly approaching, especially in light of what is happening in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger Republic, and Cote D’Ivoire, which is being gradually undermined and destabilised.

May 25, 2025
Compulsory voting?
- ‘Nibo la tun jasi yi o’? From where to where?
Because a coin that is thrown up, irrespective of the number of times, would always fall on either of its two sides, many of us would similarly continue to tell the members of the House of Representatives who are hell bent on criminalising voting that they are merely embarking on a wild goose chase.

The bill, jointly sponsored by Speaker Abbas Tajudeen and Daniel Asama Ago, is titled: “A Bill for an Act to Amend the Electoral Act, 2022 to make it Mandatory for Nigerians of Maturity Age to Vote in All National and State Elections and for related matters”. It was first introduced in February but was presented last week by co-sponsor, Daniel Asama, of the Labour Party, for a second reading.

The bill prescribes sanctions, including fines of up to N100,000 or six months imprisonment for eligible Nigerians who fail to vote.

True, voter turnout, especially in the 2023 election, was abysmal, at about 27.1 per cent, nationally. With less than half of the eligible population turning out to vote, and no state had a turnout above 40 per cent, participation in it was said to be the lowest since Nigeria’s independence.

Indeed, the sharp decline has positioned Nigeria as the largest democracy in Africa with the lowest voter turnout.

It is also true that, globally, there is compulsory voting in about 21 countries, with punishment ranging from severe to non-existent. But then, reasons for low voter turnout differ from country to country. Reasons why there is such huge voter apathy in Nigeria are well known and these, according to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and others, are what should be addressed.

NBA President, Afam Osigwe, listed such to include electoral violence, systemic flaws, insecurity, and mistrust. Hear him: “Instead of fixing the conditions that discourage voter turnout, such as electoral violence, vote buying, among others, the state is attempting to force participation through punitive legislation.”

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Chukwuemeka Obi, an unemployed graduate from Enugu, is more forthcoming as to why many Nigerians abstain from voting: “Many of us have lost faith in politicians. They come every four years with promises and disappear after winning. If I choose not to vote, that’s my right too. Compelling people with jail is dictatorship, not democracy.”

But that is one of the major things that are wrong with us as a nation. This tendency of heaping every blame on hapless citizens. When anything is not working, the tendency is to look for the guinea pig. This, unfortunately, means hapless Nigerians carrying the can. Nigerians again are the beasts of burden for voter apathy which, clearly, is a creation of the political elite.

Sometimes I keep wondering the kind of rigour that goes into public administration in the country. Yet, the country spends a fortune keeping most of our public officials comfortable. I guess that is also part of the problem. Many of them, including rather unfortunately, people in the National Assembly (NASS) are too comfortable to know what things look like at the very grassroots they claim to be representing.

This is the kind of brain wave that a few privileged people who wear well-starched ‘babariga’ in the midst of millions of poverty-stricken compatriots have that makes them come up with all manner of funny decisions because they are disconnected from the grassroots.

Rather than be scientific about the issue, Speaker Abbas and his co-travellers resorted to military era solution of decreeing an impossibility into existence.

Is it not funny that a toxic, compulsory voting is what they are spending valuable time to debate when there are many serious problems confronting the average Nigerian?

At this juncture, I think Speaker Abbas should, in the absence of any serious matter for the consideration of members of the House of Representatives (because that is the only reason they would be chasing after shadows that compulsory voting represents), declare

the House adjourned ‘sine die’, to allow members go back to their respective constituencies to find out from the people what their actual needs are. Only people who are disconnected from their roots would be banging their heads against the walls, pursuing an objective that is not even on the reserved list of the people they represent.

Just in case Mr Abbas decides to continue to be deaf to the calls of freedom, insisting on having his way with this obnoxious bill, then he must be ready to host millions in our prisons. We have not yet seen prison congestion.

Of course, when Mr Abbas’s dream comes to pass, our prisons would be bubbling because we would have many volunteers who would want to spend the six months in the place rather than be coerced to vote.

Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), would probably be their leader, having sworn that he would rather go to prison than be subjected to compulsory voting.

Agbakoba spoke on ‘Politics Today’, a programme on Channels Television on May 19: “Look at the ridiculous one in the National Assembly about voting being compulsory. If that bill were to pass, I would say, ‘Agbakoba, we will not obey it.’ I’ll plead conscientious objection. I’d rather go to prison for six months than to obey it,” he said.

Not done, the lawyer added: “Why would the National Assembly want to impose compulsory voting? Why don’t they reverse the question and say, Why are Nigerians not interested? What is the apathy about?”

I have no doubt he would have many followers.

Anyway, more people in our prisons would also boost some people’s businesses. Afterall, tailors would be required to sew the prison uniforms; food vendors and suppliers of various shades would also experience boom in their operations. Likewise, healthcare providers, not excluding the men of God who would now have more jobs to do in the prisons than in the churches. And then, the speaker would go down in history as a man who made all of these possible, as his peculiar way of killing voter apathy in Nigeria.

But I have a better idea of how to kill Speaker Abbas’s law should it scale through in spite of our rejection. I am not ready to die for my enemies to rejoice. You can’t put anything beyond people with the kind of mindset to make voting compulsory in Nigeria. When people who have been convicted for not voting are kept behind bars, such public officials could be celebrating in their apartments that at least some of their vocal enemies are out of circulation, even as they feign to be worried about the incarceration in the public.

But, suppose those opposed to compulsory voting also feign support, go to the polling booths and, before God and themselves, decide to deface the ballot papers. Thumbprint across two or three political parties such that the ballot papers would be cancelled eventually?

Since Speaker Abbas and his co-travellers have decided to shoot without aiming, we (the people) too should master the art of flying without perching.

We should let them know that they can

only force a horse to the river, they cannot force it to drink.

Yes, they would see the millions they want to see on voting queues, but, just as they are clinking glasses that ‘yea, our law is working’, the glasses would drop from their hands when the final figures are released and with most of the ballot papers cancelled and of no effect. It is then they would know how little their thought processes were in coming up with such a bill.

I guess this is better and cheaper than going to prison over compulsory voting when those who caused the same problem and are now misdiagnosing it remain in their air-conditioned offices, drinking tea and doing in and out. Probably putting in the works another misbegotten policy or idea. Opting to go to jail in this matter smacks of falling for the enemy to rejoice (Olorun ma je ka subu f’ota yo).

I have no doubt that if the National Assembly goes ahead to pass this bill into law, the law would eventually be challenged in court and I don’t see how it would survive legal scrutiny, given the several provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) on freedom of expression, association and similar matters.

Mercifully, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has already voiced concern over the bill. Part of its contention is that, “In a democracy, voting is a civil liberty, not a legal obligation. Compelling citizens to vote through coercive measures infringes on their fundamental rights.”

I want to agree with the NBA that, to the extent of its inconsistency with this and other provisions of the constitution on basic freedoms, the compulsory voting bill would most likely be declared null and void, and ultra vires by the courts.

Before then, however, we must rise against this imposition because eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Since one cannot tell the exact destination of the proponents of the bill, it is better to assume, like the NBA, that if we allow this to pass unchallenged, worse and more draconian legislations could be lurking somewhere.

I have always argued that we as a country are where we are because we have been lethargic about governance after we returned the soldiers to their barracks in 1999. We were not this lethargic in the military era.

If Mr Abbas & Co need to be reminded, their singular decision in the NASS to buy imported exotic cars at the expense of locally-made vehicles was something that has put off many voters in future elections already. It would be difficult to persuade them to change their minds because nobody is a fool. So, Nigerians should continue to vote for people who have little or no feelings when spending scarce public funds, even as they keep telling the people there is no money?

Mr Speaker and his co-travellers should know that Nigerians’ eyes are no longer on their knees, they are now right on their foreheads!

If compulsory voting is all about civic responsibility, patriotism and all, what of rejection of local vehicles for imported, more expensive ones?

If the NASS members know what is good for them, they would do well to throw this bill away in their larger interest. It is an exercise in futility and a product of legislative tyranny and indolence which could further alienate the people from the assembly.

This compulsory voting law is a decree that its proponents want to cloak in lawful legislative garb. But it would fail. Vote-for-money, we know. Vote-for-rice, we know. Vote-for-bread, we know. But what is don’t vote go to prison?

Even soldiers didn’t give us such a draconian option. They never forced us to vote.
May 25, 2025
The 2027 jostling begins in earnest

While former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai was excitedly reeling out the names of political chieftains huddled together in the grand coalition to unseat President Bola Tinubu in the next elections, including imperiously determining who among the president’s current cabinet would be retained in the ‘next’ dispensation, the Labour Party’s former presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, was still adamant he would contest the next presidential poll on the LP platform. Don’t believe them. Mallam el-Rufai is glib and full of exaggerations, Mr Obi is evasive and full of cant, and their pied piper, the caustic former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, remains a hybrid of all their failings and personifies all their delusions.

Last week, while the former vice president dithered, Mallam el-Rufai simply cut the Gordian knot and announced that the coalition was all but fully formed, with appointments already made by the League of Northern Democrats as to who would head panels tasked with determining whether to go it alone in a fresh party or fuse into an existing one. It was nothing but an inconvenient detail that the former Kaduna governor spoke glowingly of their coalition fusing into the African Democratic Congress (formed in 2005) just weeks after he lionised the sedate Social Democratic Party (SDP) to which he had tried to lure every political malcontent in Nigeria, including the pussyfooting Alhaji Atiku. Though the former vice president has insisted he will remain in the PDP, he knows he is being untruthful, for there is no way he can secure or even procure the presidential ticket for 2027. If he is determined to stay in the party, it is probably to get his pound of flesh for their irreverence and iconoclasm.

It is reassuring that even while the coalition was still inchoate, and while they were still undecided whether to fuse into and take over an existing political party or form a brand new one, Mallam el-Rufai gazed into his crystal ball, saw victory in the poll, and began to toy with composing a future cabinet. Prominent on the cabinet list, he said without any hint of shame or irony, would be Bosun Tijani, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy. It is not clear what impressions the youthful minister made on him, but the grand and still amorphous coalition would retain Mr Tijani in 2027. What is indeed clear is that the jostling for 2027 did not begin weeks ago, when in frustration Mallam el-Rufai, with Alhaji Atiku in hesitant tow, began speaking assertively of a new coalition. Even though it was at first done in whispers, the jostling actually began moments after the electoral commission announced the 2023 election results. The rhetoric about a coalition rose to a strident level after President Tinubu assumed office, becoming deafening when the self-important Mallam el-Rufai was officially scorned.

After unsuccessfully conspiring to undermine the new government, especially with ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo giving them helpful and subversive hints in an eerie replay of the legitimisation he gave the 1993 presidential poll annulment, the opposition finally and reluctantly accepted that they erred greatly in the run-up to the 2023 poll. They should have gone to the poll united, they drawled in muffled epiphany, but went on with questionable logic to blame former Rivers State governor and now Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister for being a wet blanket in the PDP. So, the coalition leaders are precisely at a point where they have silently acknowledged their mistakes, and are supposed to be remedying them. They are instead still making many more mistakes, most of them perpetrated by the unrestrained Mallam el-Rufai who is scheming to be both the leading spokesman of the group and the indispensable fulcrum upon which the coalition is balanced. At the right time, despite his noise and rage, they will cut him to size. The coalition will of course not form a new party, for they neither have the intellectual girth to run one nor the financial heft to fund it. As a band of opportunists united by diverse grudges, their main interest is winning votes.

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Two things will, however, shape the politics of the next 12 months before the primaries are conducted. One is whether the coalition can really get their act together and give the ruling party a run for its money. And two is the response of the ruling party itself, whether it can effectively and continuously turn the table on the coalition. For the coalition to get its act together, they will have to go beyond hijacking a party to also running it well and imbuing it with purpose, drive and vision. Should the ADC be their final destination, they will need to display humility and become team players. But Alhaji Atiku has a short attention span in which he has compressed his ambition, an ambition that sadly excludes nearly everyone else. He is also domineering. Of course he will let you have your say, but in the end it will have to be his way, and if the resistance seems plucky, he will wear it down with financial muscle. On his own, Mallam el-Rufai is prickly, arrogant, and talkative. He will not let anyone get in a word when he is in full rhetorical flight. In addition, he has a fondness for second-guessing everyone and jumping the gun. If there is no one able to browbeat or outwit him, the party will become captive to his caprices. Should the mercurial Kayode Fayemi, former Ekiti State governor, finally abandon his tentativeness and throw in his lot with the coalition and the ADC, he might offer some intellectual perspective deeper and better than the flighty Mallam el-Rufai’s, but his casual approach to principles will leave the party unprotected.

Wherever Alhaji Atiku goes, the weakened former Osun State governor, Rauf Aregbesola, will also go. He has a long-running grudge he is nursing against President Tinubu. Saddened by his former mentor’s 2023 electoral victory, and armed with his half-baked religious and ideological philosophies, he has dedicated himself to joining anyone willing to and capable of unhorsing the president. No mean troubadour himself, he is keenly aware of the saying that there is strength in numbers and he has thus surrounded himself with praise singers and rhapsodists who inflate his ego. Former Rivers governor Rotimi Amaechi will of course also be numbered among the coalition leaders. Diminished by his long absence from office, and having derived meaning and sustenance from being in public office all his adult life, he will yearn for the new beginning a coalition offers, which enables him to speak sarcastically , sometimes bordering on treason, and to display the self-deprecating humour that partly signposted his governorship.

If they can somehow magically discover a leader who will drive and inspire their coalition and perhaps the party they might fuse with, they will make hay out of the ruling party’s weaknesses. They were too impatient to wait for a little longer before shooting their feeble arrows at imaginary targets thereby forcing the growling All Progressives Congress (APC) out of its lair. Now that the jostling has really begun, the battle may be over before it commences. For while coalition and opposition leaders are still shuffling their feet and unable to determine exactly how to proceed, the ruling party has moved stealthily to depopulate, deplete and degrade their ranks. The coalition bared their fangs prematurely and unwisely, thus enabling the APC to reshuffle its cards and anticipate and checkmate their every move. Even if they overcome the initial and deadly hurdles the ruling party will strew all over their path, it remains to be seen how in light of the country’s delicate ethnic balancing, which far outweighs religious balancing, the coalition would overcome the informal but all-important rotation principle that disadvantages a northerner from receiving a significant hearing from the electorate at the next presidential poll.

The APC partly banks on this rotational necessity as well as the radical and fruitful measures it has taken to reposition the economy. Every coalition movement and statement will in the months ahead likely be interpreted as being tantamount to political intolerance and promotion of either regional or ethnic exceptionalism. Given the tenor of the defections so far, it does appear like the next electoral contest will be judged significantly against the coalition’s opportunism. Mr Obi knows this, and, as a southerner whom Alhaji Atiku has assured of succession on a joint ticket and is thus being used to spook the APC, he is positioning himself to take advantage of this scenario should all else fail. In addition, key movers and shakers of the core North know this and recognise and reflect on the danger to national unity of aborting the South’s eight-year reign. The meddlesome Chief Obasanjo, despite his tactical impotence in political strategy also senses this, thus his promotion of political neophytes. But much more, the APC knows this even more abundantly and has been content to let the coalition forces welter in the coming storm.

May 25, 2025
Trump’s nasty, ambush politics and diplomacy

If this generation had not witnessed the election of Donald Trump a second time as United States president late last year and experienced his ignoble approach to politics and diplomacy, they would have died with a smile on their faces convinced that America was infallible, invincible, thoroughbred, and an exemplar of all that is noble. In his first term, which was truncated by the mitigating election of Joe Biden, President Trump did his best to abridge his worst instincts and habits. He was of course no less nasty and insufferable, but he tried his best not to extend his brutishness beyond American borders. Even when he did, it was half-hearted and unconvincing, with many analysts still giving him the benefit of the doubt. Barely a hundred days into his second term, he has shown without a shred of doubt that no one, no matter how gifted, can plumb the depths of his nastiness.

In one area, he has demonstrated he cannot be bettered: he is condescending to heads of states, except the autocrats among them. And he has fiendishly displayed the art of diplomatic ambush of the meanest kind. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the first to taste of President Trump’s galling style during a visit to the White House two months ago to solicit for help in the war against Russia. Instead, he was ambushed, ridiculed, taunted and even haunted out of the Oval Office. He held his own quite alright, but because he was the one who needed help, he left the US in unquenchable grief. It began inauspiciously as President Trump baited his visitor; then when it seemed Mr Zelensky would ride the storm with surprising eloquence and logic that far outweighed and bettered the performance of the incoherent US president, a planted and groveling newsman asked a dismaying question about the visitor’s ‘inappropriate dressing’. Even this, too, the Ukrainian president tackled with aplomb. Sensing their quarry was getting away with a stellar performance, Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in on cue with a nasty comment to a visiting head of state no vice president was ever thought capable of. The ambush of February 2025 was complete.

Barely three months later, as if thirsty for more blood, another ambush has been sprung against visiting South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa who asked for and received an invitation to visit the US to try and convince President Trump that no White genocide ever took place in South Africa nor was any contemplated. In visiting the White House after the Zelensky debacle, Mr Ramaphosa obviously reposed too much confidence in his composure, eloquence and the logical unassailability of his position regarding allegations of state-sponsored crime. It was a big mistake. The problem Mr Zelensky encountered with President Trump was not that he did not have a similarly unassailable position nor was he devoid of eloquence and poise, particularly under fire. The Ukrainian president’s problem, Mr Ramaphosa should have known, was that Mr Trump resorts to despicable tactics when he encounters his betters, or when he is losing an argument. More, Mr Trump has a closed mind and tunnel vision of diplomacy: once he makes up his mind, often without any spadework, he is both unmovable and implacable.

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But Mr Ramaphosa, perhaps grieving over the fallacies Mr Trump had peddled regarding an inexistent White genocide, thought that if he went to the White House armed with facts and truths, his host would relent. Alas, his host does not work with facts and has contempt for truths; he is fascinated by lies and fabrications. The more the South African president displayed profundity, the surlier the US president became, until finally he sprung the said ambush using wholly tendentious videos and photographs depicting a so-called genocidal grave. Mr Ramaphosa was stupefied in a way Mr Zelensky, with his perfect and combative ripostes, was not. The South African was so badgered with falsehoods concocted in the US that he even began to doubt himself, asking tremulously at a brief point whether Mr Trump had verified the so-called genocidal graves. The American president simply waved off Mr Ramaphosa’s queries, for he had made up his mind, and would not and indeed could not be flustered by any doubts or facts to the contrary. It was not until later when he addressed the press unencumbered by the antics of his host that the dazed South African president found his voice. Of course, on the whole, he conducted himself excellently well, and gave a great, not just a good, account of himself. But with Mr Trump, it is futile to argue armed with facts.

More, with the American president, it is futile to visit him except you are an unremitting autocrat he had taken a fancy to, or a gift-bearing and sinister head of state. After the Zelensky and Ramaphosa debacles, Mr Trump’s appalling tactics have been made very clear and unmistakable to the world. Not too many stouthearted presidents would be willing to visit the White House henceforth. Here, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu should learn a lesson. He should give the American president a wide berth, not out of fear, but because of common sense. It will be pointless dealing with such a man at close quarters. There will be nothing President Tinubu can say or show to convince Mr Trump that Nigeria is not carrying out genocide against Christians, not even if the Nigerian president were to show proof that his cabinet and military commanders are, to the last man, Christians. Mr Trump will simply goad a nasty reporter to ask the Nigerian president a tricky and provocative question, and then all hell would break loose. Not only should President Tinubu give President Trump a wide berth, he should also proactively put machinery in motion to ensure that for the four years the American president would hold sway in Washington, the Nigerian president should never be invited. Better safe than sorry. As the English say, discretion is the better part of valour.

May 25, 2025
Atiku not a nationalist

The topic above is another sanitised way of saying that former vice president Atiku Abubakar is the most self-centred politician in Nigeria today. But he is not fazed by whatever label anyone slaps on him, nor discomfited by rules, regulations, agreements, or conventions. In 2003, he ignored the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rotation principle and tried to vie for the presidency against his boss, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo. The principle was and remains an informal mechanism to infuse inclusion into Nigerian politics. Since 2003, and down to the 2019 presidential election when a northerner stood to spend eight successive years in office, Alhaji Atiku has studiously disregarded any principle that has the capacity to regulate and stabilise Nigerian politics.

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A week or so ago, pretending to ignore former Kaduna State governor’s giddy revelation about the former vice president ditching the PDP, Alhaji Atiku told the media that he had no intention of defecting anywhere. Of course no one believed him. But whether he would go to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as Mallam el-Rufai revealed months ago, no one could tell. Finally, it seems all but clear that he will be jumping ship and landing in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in his obsessive bid to run for the presidency one last time. It is all about him, after all, never about the country. By now, everyone is conversant with his messianic complex and his passion for ethnic exceptionalism. Yet, far more remarkable is his absolute lack of concern for the mechanisms by which the country’s ethnic, religious and social diversity must be balanced if the country is not to tilt over. He really doesn’t care, and has never cared. If he doesn’t get what he wants, balancing be damned. But just balancing? No; for a man so patently truculent and whose hatred for those who upstage him has remained malignant and incandescent, the entire country itself be damned.

May 25, 2025
SNAPSONG 256

You capture the evening’s rapture

     With the vigilance of your camera

Your piano finger on the button

     Which unfolded the shutters

Quiet evening, almost night

     A friendly wind whispers among the eaves

The walls endure the murmurs

     Without betraying their loyal silence

Above the trees

     Below the sky

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And the moon which looms above the trees

     Like an orange lamp

What colour of Paradise

     The leaves are wearing tonight

Do they swing and sway, as always

     To the summons of the silent wind

And you on the balcony

     Of your book-embowered house

With a heart full of songs

     And a goodness that never wanes

Your camera captures the tropical temper

     Of a sky that is evening into night

Behind its orange moon is a dawn

      Crystal-cool from the diamond of the dew

May 25, 2025
The saga of foreign herders

Two Thursdays ago, the Director of Defence Media Operations, Major-General Markus Kangye, told newsmen that most of those involved in violent and extremist attacks in Plateau, Benue and other states were foreign herders. He is probably right, especially given the brutal fashion those militants have levied war against local Nigerian communities. But he stopped short of stereotyping them as Fulani. The foreign herders’ racial identity is, however, not in dispute, despite loud protestations from a section of the Nigerian elite. What in fact puzzles Nigerians is how the said herders traversed the farthest parts of the North of Nigeria with all their weapons to perpetrate unimaginable violence against the Middle Belt. Victims of those horrifying attacks finger local conspirators who fantasise racial hegemony at all costs, facilitators for whom territorial borders and national identity mean nothing.

Throwing more light on why the Nigerian military believes the attacks are planned and executed by foreign herders and their sponsors and accomplices, Gen. Kangye explained: “When you hear them talk in some instances, you’ll be able to decipher whether these people are from here or not, and from the North. For instance, if I speak Hausa and my brother from the South-East speaks Hausa, you’ll know that his Hausa is a borrowed one, and Hausa language, like any other language, has different versions and intonations. If somebody from Sokoto, for instance, speaks Hausa, and my friend from Katsina speaks Hausa, you’ll hear some differences, and somebody from Kano, you’ll hear some differences. So the Hausa spoken in Nigeria is different from the Hausa spoken in Mali, Central African Republic, or Ghana. So when we arrest these herders and terrorists, even from the way they speak and appear, it is clear to see, and even the hair will tell you that this person is not from Nigeria. I think the only community in Nigeria that has hair similar to the Shuwa in the Sahel region is probably the Shuwa Arabs in Borno State, but they don’t even have the same. So, one will also admit that many of those terrorising our people are foreigners, even though some of them are also Nigerians.”

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There has been little doubt that foreign herders are the arrowhead of the ethnic cleansing going on in Nigeria, regardless of the contrary arguments adduced by some northern political and traditional leaders. Nevertheless the criminal herders constitute just one of the tripartite existential threats facing Nigeria. The bandits of the Northwest form a second vicious component of the threat, while the Boko Haram/ISWAP insurgents constitute probably the deadliest terrorist group threatening Nigeria. Smaller spinoffs have now arisen in the Northwest whose modus operandi borrow aspects of the ideologies and characteristics of the three other major threatners. These spinoffs are the Lakurawa group which operate from the Sokoto-Kebbi axis, and the Mahmuda group which operates from the Benin Republic and Kwara State sectors. The knives are out for Nigeria, with at least five terrorist groups fighting to carve huge slices of the country into either feudal enclaves or jihadist caliphates. In the face of these threats, however, Nigerian political and ethnic leaders have deliberately and conspiratorially equivocated.

Gen. Kangye’s submission on the identity of just one the terrorist groups battling Nigeria, the foreign herders, need no further interrogation. One or two Fulani associations in Kaduna State and elsewhere have tried to argue that the problem is largely homegrown, insisting that the attacking herders are mainly local and are reacting to grazing restrictions and cattle rustling. In fact, to illustrate their audacity, after every attack, the associations come out to justify the herders’ actions as well as give the authorities conditions that must be satisfied for the restoration of peace. But none of the associations’ arguments persuasively contradict the assessment of the Nigerian Defence Headquarters concerning the identities of the marauding herdsmen, most of whom, the military has established, do not even engage in livestock business.

In a recent television interview, Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa, identified international conspiracy and foreign sponsorship as factors explaining the viciousness and longevity of the terrorist threats facing Nigeria. He is right, even though there is also local conspiracy by political and traditional elites fascinated by jihadist and hegemonic ideologies. Because there has been no sense of national identity, and since Nigeria has remained structurally skewed, the country has become a fertile ground for all kinds of extremist forces. It is thus not only in the geographical sense that the borders are porous, in the ideological sense, the country is also fragile. That is why little or no effort has been made to restrict the influx of foreigners, whether herders or traders or clerics, and a sense of entitlement has been forged among the attacking hordes. What began as a manageable case of herder-farmer conflicts has thus morphed into a far more frightening and probably apocalyptic crisis deliberately orchestrated to carve Nigeria into fragments.

The military may have got their analysis right, but together with the government, they have so far been unable to devise holistic solutions to the burgeoning threats. What began as Boko Haram after a few hundred militants achieved a foothold in the Northeast in 2009 has now morphed into recombinant ISWAP, banditry, Lakurawa and Mahmuda. The threats to Nigeria’s existence are real and foreboding, and the time to find an answer to the crises is running out. In the face of a lack of elite unity to tackle these cancers, even if the terrorists are pacified today, nothing suggests the diseases will not recrudesce tomorrow far more virulently.

May 18, 2025
Propping up Akinwumi Adesina

Retiring president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has had a stellar tenure at the foremost African bank, serving for two terms since 2015 when he was first elected into the position. A first-class scholar and economist, it is not surprising that the 65-year-old meets the classical definition of a technocrat. Perhaps bored by technocracy, he seems, according to wide speculations, to be interested in veering to politics. If so, he will be following in the footsteps of another illustrious technocratic forebear, the late Adebayo Adedeji, a professor of Economics and former executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) between 1975 and 1991. Like Professor Adedeji who briefly forayed into presidential politics before discovering that the presidency demanded a different kind of endowment, Dr Adesina, who is rumoured to be propped up like his illustrious forebear by the restless ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, may soon discover that the Nigerian presidency is a bridge too far for technocrats.

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It is not clear whether there is any truth to the rumours, but Dr Adesina has been visiting people and dignitaries, locally and internationally, such as the Egyptian president Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and former president Muhammadu Buhari. It seemed like a goodbye tour of some sorts, but commentators are reading meanings, including asserting that Chief Obasanjo is toying with the idea of using him to rob the hated President Bola Tinubu of a second term in office. So far, Dr Adesina has not directly responded to the rumours, but soon he will. Whatever he decides, he will, like Prof. Adedeji, discover that running for the presidency is unlike anything taught or learnt in the university, whether the student is a first-class scholar like him, or a precocious scholar like Prof Adedeji who became a professor at 36.

May 18, 2025
Trump consistently exceeds himself

United States president Donald Trump is an ominous example of how empires and kingdoms begin their precipitous fall. His general and contemptuous disregard for the US constitution, rationalisation of $400m Boeing 747-8 aircraft gift from the government of Qatar, ongoing development of his $5.5bn luxury resort in the same Qatar, flip-flop over Iran, Gaza, Syria, and the three-year-old Russo-Ukrainian War, not to talk of the dizzying somersault over tariff wars with friends and enemies alike, all show both the unpredictability of his administration and the greed that has become the fulcrum of his policies.

President Trump and his advisers have tried to defend the Qatari gift, but the US constitution stipulates congressional approval to receive such gifts. He has waffled considerably over Iran, annulling agreements and whimsically restarting negotiations, has welcomed the Sunni-led Syria perhaps on the prompting of Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States from which he is receiving gifts, and has left Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu apoplectic over the Gaza War as he mildly berates him for the continuation of the war, just stopping short of blaming Israel for undue exuberance. And after months of pampering Russia and falsely blaming Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky for igniting the war, he has seemed to lose interest in the instant peace deal he initially fantasised.

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Other than some Americans, few global affairs analysts expected anything stable and progressive from the Trump administration. But the US president has exceeded even his own inconsistencies, upending and endangering the global security and power balances, and redefining the ethical structures upon which relations between countries as well as global politics are built. The Gulf States have become Mr Trump’s Kryptonite, after recognising how easily they can deploy hundreds of billions of arms deals and investments to get him to do their bidding. And he has wiped the self-satisfied smirk from the faces of many of his admirers and early supporters, like Mr Netanyahu, while the rest of the world waits with bated breath, if not disgust, to see what unprincipled moves he would make next. It was said of the Army of Frederick the Great that it could not be bought or sold. It is sad that Mr Trump has turned America into a mercenary nation available for hire.

May 18, 2025
And JAMB’s Oloyede wept

Last week, following the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) debacle, JAMB registrar’s Ishaq Oloyede’s high-profile and well-oiled media and public relations machinery went into overdrive. While countless commentators brought out the scalpel asking for the registrar’s head over the technical and human errors that undermined the examination and invalidated the results in the Lagos and Owerri zones, savvy media relations experts worked round the clock to reduce the stridency of the negative narrative against Prof. Oloyede. By last weekend the two sides were gently stalemated. The glitches affected nearly 380,000 candidates who sat for the examination, leading to outpouring of anger and grief among parents and students alike. One disconsolate candidate reportedly took her life, adding to the urgency of the crisis. But by last weekend also, the rescheduled examinations were already being written.

After the results were first released two Fridays ago, JAMB officials defended the integrity of the examinations and adduced logic for the abysmal scores of about 75 percent of the candidates. Infuriated, some experts, affected parents and students insisted that something was definitely wrong with the exams and markings. Startled by the unusually loud and persistent outcry, JAMB ordered a review, and discovered, grief-stricken, that in fact, part of the blame for the unflattering scores was attributable to the exam body. In the process of reading his prepared speech in which he accepted full responsibility for the errors, Prof. Oloyede choked and wept. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) would make amends, he promised. But by that time, the image and reputation of the institution had been dented. This probably explained why some commentators asked for his head, indicating that they were unmoved by any emotions. Conversely, because he owned up to the errors and accepted full responsibility, other commentators, including highly placed government and legislative officials, saluted his courage and asked that he should be allowed to continue in office. In short, whether he resigns or stays put is entirely up to him, at least for now.

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Since he assumed office in 2016 as JAMB registrar, Prof. Oloyede has made sterling contributions to the growth and performance of the exam body. He has inspired groundbreaking and transparent innovations to modernise the institution and make it accountable. But even as sterling as his contributions have been, neither JAMB nor any other institution saddled with such humongous and centralised responsibility is immune to the kind of glitches that undermined the 2025 UTME. Some commentators who damned him with faint praise have also been quick to counsel him to ensure avoidance of a repeat of the glitches. Perhaps the debate should not be about Prof. Oloyede, regardless of his exemplary contributions, but about the huge remit of JAMB, particularly whether the exam body should be saddled with such overarching responsibilities in a vast and heterogeneous society of over 230 million people.

In the UK, to complete secondary school, students have to write the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam. Afterwards, they could either pursue subject-based qualifications such as A-levels or take vocational qualifications for two years. Different universities and colleges have variable requirements for each undergraduate course. Most require qualifications, subjects and exam grades and assess students suitability based on skills, experience, personal statements, interview performances and national tests (only) for medicine and law programmes. Applications are usually made through a Universities and College Admissions Service (UCAS), which also limits the number of universities that each student can apply to. Undergraduate requirements in the United States are quite different. There is no national entrance examination administered by the state or federal government or general admission service. Each university has its own admission requirements. Many undergraduate programs require one or more U.S. standardised test (SAT or ACT) scores as part of the application process. Institutions then evaluate these test scores as well as students academic record, before offers of admission are issued based on those assessments.

If the 2025 UTME could be undermined by technical glitches and human errors, despite the best efforts of officials, the problem could repeat itself in the future with dire consequences. While stringent measures are usually employed to ensure the integrity of examinations and academic tests in many parts of the world, no system is completely immune to errors, for a chain is as strong as its weakest link. For example, far more technologically advanced societies like the United Kingdom witnessed an embarrassing failure in the conduct of a centralised professional examination involving the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK some two years ago. The federation admitted that about 283 doctors who sat the Part 2 examination in September 2023 received incorrect results. This suggests that the doctors who believed they had passed or failed the exam, in reality had different outcomes. As reported by the British Medical Association (BMA), an estimated 1,451 medical doctors took the exam, which is a key component of the three-part assessment required for doctors in the Internal Medicine Training pathway to graduate to higher specialty training. Prior to the release of this statement, some of the affected candidates had gone on to sit for the third part of the exam and a few had secured higher specialty training positions based on their perhaps flawed results.

Prof. Oloyede’s tears exaggerated the flaws that undid the 2025 UTME. He has done very well in elevating the standard of the institution he assumed responsibility for in 2016. Whether he throws in the towel or not, it will not diminish his contributions. He may have got entangled in the whirligig of innovating the institution into the future, but even then the conversations Nigerians should be having now should transcend his innovations or the complacency of some of his officials. After all, if he steps down, nothing guarantees a better or more innovative registrar would be found for the exam body. The UTME debacle should instead lead Nigeria into reassessing its counterproductive centralisation of its affairs. Whether it relates to politics, economy, or social programmes, it is time to alter course and find more workable and less cataclysmic methods of running the affairs of the country. It is not about Prof Oloyede; it is about the implausible and dangerous unitary system upon which the country pivots. When a crash occurs, the consequences are always unnerving and disastrous.

May 18, 2025