The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • No-Fly Zone lands Okon in police soup

    As the new Niger Delta insurgent group makes good their threat to bomb the nation’s oil facilities out of existence, the rumour began to gain traction that the Americans have sent in their drones to put the fear of the lord into the rogue militants.  Another rumour, confusing the name of a football club, Agatu Bombers, with the real thing concluded that the herdsmen were about to be evaporated by aerial bombardment.

    One morning, snooper woke up only to find a huge “no-fly zone” banner erected in front of the house. When the mad boy was questioned as to the reason behind his antics, he retorted with a scornful glare.

    “But you can’t do this. This is a violation of federal space”, snooper pleaded.

    “Oga, I no know book, but I sabi bomb, and I sabidemOgbunike. Na dem mad Biafra boys wan finis obodo again. He get one man for Biafra demdey call Air Raid. Na him be Bomb Scare”, Okon screamed.

    One morning, the police came for the rogue and promptly charged him for disrupting the smooth flow of air-traffic. Snooper followed at a safe distance.

    “Why I am here?” Okon suddenly thundered.

    “Dem say you be among demyeye people who dey complain say president dey travel too much and you wan stone him plane,  dat one na treason”, the desk sergeant hollered with a sinister frown. Okon was momentarily flustered but he quickly regained the initiative.

    “Hmmmm. Sebi you no say I be cook?”, he demanded.

    “Hen he, hen he so what?”, the irate corporal roared.

    “And dem cook office bedem kitchen?” Okon pursued.

    “And so?” the corporal  thundered.

    “So, if dem cook come put notice say make fly and dem insect no come kitchen, dat no treason?” Okon demanded with his nostrils flaring contemptuously.

    “Kai, kai, wonnana real kata and katakata boy. Just release dem crazy crook”, the sergeant ordered, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

    “No, no, no, you must to pay me compensation”, Okon raved.

    “Compenwetin? Okay put am back for cell and let dem mad man from Mushin shit for him stupid mouth. Datna compensation”, the sergeant who looked like a deranged hippopotamus ordered.

    “Na shit go be your pension”, Okon cursed as he stormed out of the station.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Neoliberalism at home and abroad in the world: a postscript

    Neoliberalism at home and abroad in the world: a postscript

    As postscript to the series that began three weeks ago in this column, I wish to start this piece with observations and reflections that take neoliberalism on its own terms, in its own ideological self-understanding, especially with the role of our megabanks. Thus, strictly in terms of technocratic efficiency and the benefits that derive from the connection of our national economy to global circuits for the movement of capital funds across the whole world to make businesses and enterprises grow and prosper, the protectionist regulations and practices of the pre-neoliberalism period in Nigeria are uncontestably inferior to the facilities and services offered by the “free trade” financial services of the present period. To put this in a more positive formulation, it does not hurt a developing country like Nigeria to have megabanks that can move capital easily and expeditiously across the whole world; indeed, it makes a crucial area of our national economy keenly competitive both regionally in West Africa and also globally in the centers of the inter-state and international financial services industry.

    But this is true and valid only if one looks at technocratic efficiency in isolation, without extending the claims that one makes for the banking and financial services sector in Nigeria to the national economy as a whole. Perhaps it does something to our sense of collective national pride when see television advertisements around the world that feature Nigerian megabanks like GTB, Zenith, Eco Bank, First Bank, Union Bank right there among the foremost banks in the world, but has this made a real difference in the lives of the vast majority of Nigerians in their tens of millions? These Nigerian megabanks declare huge annual profits but this fact does not in the least translate to extension of credit and loan portfolios on a significant scale to the most vital and needy sectors of the national economy like farming and small scale enterprises. As a matter of fact, as in the rich countries of the world where the financial services enterprises consistently declare huge profits that are of inverse relationship to the economy as a whole, the very period that has seen the growth and the expansion of megabanks in Nigeria has seen a sharp widening of the gap between the haves and the have-nots, a phenomenon that is known to development sociologists as growth without development. This is in fact the ultimate indictment of neoliberalism nearly everywhere in the world: consistently huge profits that widen the gap between the few super rich and uncountable hundreds of millions of the poor around the planet, a gap of social inequality that exists as much between nations as within nations. Permit me to dwell a little on this particular factor of the impact of neoliberalism nearly everywhere in the world, rich and poor nations alike.

    We know enough now about neoliberalism to know that the cause of its tendency to widen the gap of inequality between the rich and the poor everywhere in the world and to foster growth without development derives from the fact that the “economy” in which for the most part it operates is a shadow economy almost completely without any meaningful connections to the real economy. In the real economy, the goods and services that sustain life and make human existence pleasurable and dignified are produced and traded: food, clothing, medicines, houses, transportation, sanitation, entertainment and leisure and the instruction of the young. In the shadow economy, no goods, products or services that anyone can eat or use are produced and traded. The bulk of what is produced and traded are services based on speculation on securities and derivatives on huge debt and loan portfolios. This unregulated or indeed unregulatable degree of speculation in neoliberalism’s shadow economy attracts far greater finance capital than investment capital that goes into the real economy. This, in essence, is what “financialization” means in neoliberalism: we are in a phase of global capitalism in which money creates more money without having contributed much to goods and services in the real economy. At previous historic stages of capitalism, finance capital was tied to something other than and beyond itself. In the mercantilist phase, money or finance was tied mostly to trading and commerce. In industrial phase of large scale factory production, it was tied to making industrial goods and heavy machinery, the machines that make other machines. In the third industrial revolution that produced advanced micro-processes to probe deep into the oceans, the heavens, the seas and the deep interiority of human genes, finance was and is largely devoted to making and doing things that both human beings and the heavy machines we make cannot do. I should perhaps add here that money devoted to making more money as an end in itself is not new and has always been around in all the previous historical stages of capitalism. However, with the full maturation of neoliberalism, it becomes more than peripheral and secondary; it becomes the dominant mode of global capitalism.In this respect, perhaps the ultimate question that we can and must pose to neoliberalism is this: whatever the unprecedented levels of technocratic efficiency in the generation of wealth, whatever the highly impressive rates of growth under neoliberalism, who benefits, who suffers; whose bellies are full to bursting and whose bellies are bloated, not with nourishment or satiation but with the unreal and artificial kwashiorkor of destitution.

    Not too long ago, at the height of the global ideological hegemony of neoliberalism, the world was for the most part divided into two halves: one half comprised creditor nations that ‘restructured’ debtor nations; the second half comprised debtor nations that were ‘adjusted’ by the creditor nations. Here is another formulation of that decisive division of the world into two halves: nations that were “SAPPED” and those that did the “SAPPING”. If we are looking for the signal moment for the rise to world hegemony of neoliberalism, that was the moment.

    Fortuitously, that is not the end of the story and we are beginning to see a world that will gradually put neoliberalism behind it. This is because the map of the global political economy that once divided the world into creditor nations that restructured debtor nations on one side and on the other side debtor nations that adjusted has changed radically. Now, nearly all the nations of the world are debtor nations, with only a few like China and Germany still being creditor nations. The most important aspects of this change in the global political economy of neoliberalism is that most of the nations of the world are being SAPPED now. For me personally, it has been quite an experience to have seen and lived through the effects and consequences of being SAPPED in both the poor nations and the rich nations. Concretely, it has been a revelation to see and hear the protests of anguish and desperation that we have been making in our part of the world since the 80s now being made by tens of millions of people in the global North. And here I am talking not only of the most obvious cases like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Finland but even of Britain, France and the Scandinavian countries, not excepting the United States itself, the heartland of global capitalism and the center of gravity of the global ideological hegemony of neoliberalism. We could say that since what they used to do to the peoples of the poor countries of the world, the rich counties of the global North are now doing to their own people, the chickens have come home to roost. But there is no cause for gloating when all the working people, all the poor people of the world are catching hell from the ravages of neoliberalism.

    No countries, no peoples like being SAPPED! Peoples, unions, professional associations and mass movements are fighting back, not only physically as in the so-called Occupy movements but also at the level of ideas and ideology. I would go so far as to state that, at certain fundamental levels, neoliberalism is now in a sort of retreat, a sort of self-reappraisal as advocates and defenders of the welfare state, of social democracy and protection of the public sector from complete privatization and deregulation are fighting mightily against the parties of the Right and the Center that are still sold on neoliberalism. As a matter of fact, Nigeria is one of the few countries in the world in which all the ruling class parties and the majority among members of the political class still believe that neoliberal ideas and policies are here to stay forever in a quite remarkable divergence to what is happening in many other parts of the world. The very worst of these apostles and champions of neoliberalism in the Nigerian political class actually still believe and loudly declare that the problem with neoliberalism in our country is the fact that we have not gone far enough in embracing and applying its ideas and policies!

    In the months, years and decades ahead of us there will be time enough to deliberate carefully on what will come after neoliberalism, specifically in our country but also in our region and the rest of the world. The point is what is to be done now, at this moment when a new formation of the ruling class has come to power on the slogan of change, change, and change. Change without transformation, growth without development? In other words, more of the same with neoliberalism? Nasir El Rufai, will you please speak up?

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                                                    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Searching for lasting solution to Nigeria’s economic problems (1)

    The acknowledgment by governors of the possibility that their states may atrophy, if no serious intervention beyond periodic bailouts is put in place, must re-ignite the theme of re-federalisation which appears to have been relegated to the backburner since the emergence of the government of change.

    Only a few days ago, the Governors Forum met with President Buhari to indicate concerns of its members about the growing failure of states to meet their statutory duties: payment of salaries to workers and of pensions to those who had served the states in their productive years before retiring to tend their bodies and minds in their old age. Two things from the proposal of the association of 36 governors across partisan lines is acknowledgment of the negative impact of collapse of oil price on governors’ capacity to sustain their states. Another thing is the request for increase in allocations from the federation account to states. It was reported that the president also told the governors that the federal government also has problems meeting its own responsibilities but he promised to study the governors’ request and make appropriate recommendations to other branches of government. The acknowledgment by governors of the possibility that their states may atrophy, if no serious intervention beyond periodic bailouts is put in place, must re-ignite the theme of re-federalisation which appears to have been relegated to the backburner since the emergence of the government of change.

    The problem of fiscal control of the states by the central government in the 1999 Constitution is imaged most illustratively by the chairman of the Governors Forum: “You will agree with me that states are the landlords. We own the land and the people, therefore, the economy of this country lies in the states. Everything comes from the states- the oil, agricultural produce, mining and people are in the states, while the federal government is in Abuja.” Although this statement was made to support the argument for allocation of more funds from the federation account to the states, it could also have been made directly to call for fiscal and political autonomy to the states, a move that can change the architecture of governance in the country from a house of one puppeteer and 36 puppets to a house of equal siblings or partners committed to the same goal: improvement of the life of citizens wherever they may be in the country.

    As the president’s group studies the governors’ proposal, citizens and pundits will do the country a lot of good by suggesting solutions to the country’s political and economic problems. They should not assume that the manifesto of the party of change will self-propel and all that citizens need to do is to wait for each pledge to be met by the president. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State also expressed ideas similar to that of the chairman of the Governors Forum at this year’s London School of Economics African summit to suggest that governors are thinking alike about what Nigeria needs to do in the wake of the decline in oil revenue: “If we ask for tax revenue, we in the government will have to deliver something. We need to imbibe fiscal discipline in delivering the public services that our citizens so rightly deserve. This calls for a greater autonomy of state and local governments, which in turn promotes accountability. If we look at Canada for example, its decentralism has played a great part in its growth and success, allowing for maximum provincial authority in the fields of healthcare, education, taxation and social benefits.”

    Even before President Buhari assumed office and became privileged to know the depth of Nigeria’s economic problems arising principally from collapse of oil price and from systematic predation by the locusts that had governed the country for decades, he too sensed that the re-designing of the structure of governance in the country needs immediate attention. One of the core statements in his manifesto illustrates this commitment well: “Initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal Spirit.”

    The copious quotes from the ruling group are to establish the recognition on the part of current rulers of the need to re-envision and re-design Nigeria in the direction of unity of purpose, as distinct from the decades-long notion of unity per se. Now that it has taken the relative evaporation of the huge revenue from sale of fossil energy for top members of the executive branch to recognise the need for a new design of the country’s economy, pundits and the public, particularly the non-partisan ones ought to recognise the need to project the call for return to federalism outside the debate about inter-ethnic tensions, such as the conflict between Fulani herdsmen and Agatu, Igbo, or Yoruba farmers. The review of the 1999 Constitution in relation to the architecture of governance is an argument that is independent of what states or ethnic nationalities do or do not do to each other. The problem that the current constitution encapsulates was caused not by the existence of several nationalities in the country, but by the vision of several military dictators and their civilian surrogates in charge of the country since 1966.

    For readers of this column who may be too young to know how Nigeria came to this pass, it is necessary to go back briefly to history. At independence in 1960, Nigeria was a federal system based on three regions. In 1963, it became a ‘republic’ still under a federal constitution. In its ten years of self-rule from 1957 to 1966 and with very little revenue from petroleum, the three regions functioned as equals under a federal constitution and as partners with the central government to create a more conducive environment for citizens to make a living. The competitive federalism that was in play until 1966 made it possible for each region to benefit from comparative advantage thrown up by its vegetation and values. Cotton, groundnut, and cattle production drove the economy of Northern region; palm produce and rubber drove that of Eastern region while cocoa and rubber pushed the economy of Western region. Even after a fourth region, the Midwest (now Edo and Delta States) was carved out of Western region, the four regions were still meeting their responsibilities until the end of the First Republic.

    The first coup and subsequent ones put the management of the country in the hands of soldiers. The civil war fought partially for the control of the petroleum producing areas in the Niger Delta became an excuse in the hands of military rulers for tinkering with the country’s architecture.  The first attempt to shift from the federal system to a unitary one by General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi was resisted by the makers of the second coup. Shortly after the onset of the civil war, many of the foreign countries that supplied Nigeria arms made it clear that they would rather support whichever area had control of the oil. Suddenly, Nigeria was transformed into 12 states under the command of General Yakubu Gowon, who ironically came to power on the need to save the federation from over concentration of power at the centre. Even after creation of 12 states, each state was still big and resourceful enough to fulfil its duties to its citizens. But as military rulers succeeded each other, each dictator wanted to put his stamp on the country. The goal for all the dictators was to make it hard or impossible for any state to be strong enough to want to leave the union. Each subsequent ruler created more states to be funded by the apparently unlimited flow of oil from the womb of the Niger Delta. Many civilians who hoped to benefit from proliferation of states designed to be sustained by revenue from petroleum egged the dictators on. Such civilians were still calling for new states even in late 2015 although they have been relatively quiet since the coming home to roost of the chicken of petroleum. It is, however, salutary that governors are now more aware than before that the states they have governed with relative ease because of oil money are withering faster than ever under their leadership, largely because of structural problems many of them could afford to ignore when petroleum was a reliable goose laying the golden egg.

    • To be continued.

  • The government boxed itself into this corner

    In the meantime, let the governors curb their enthusiasm for victimising workers and reduce their personal excesses and expenses. Let them also stop taking themselves so seriously…

    Sometime in the week, a middle aged artisan who deals in tyres was said to have been killed with one other along a byroad in the city where I live. A vehicle had veered off its path suddenly and had gone to meet him as he plied his trade by the roadside. When I inspected the place later, reader, I found that the space between the tarred edge of the road and the rail behind him was literally no wider than one foot. I honestly wondered where and how on earth anyone could have put a vulcanising business there. I also wondered why those around him could not have told him to locate his business elsewhere other than right on a busy road. I found two reasons.

    The first is that the economy has turned so bad now that Nigerians have become desperate. This means that any undertaking that would fetch someone a daily subsistence earning is gaily embraced. It also means that where that undertaking is located is often not a strong consideration. Hence, it has become normal to see the fried yam, akara, fruit, engine oil, tomato, cement, tyre vulcaniser, meat dealers and sellers, etc., pick a spot right by the roadside to sell or display their tools, leaving them open to blind vehicles. The roadside in Nigeria is everyone’s shop. Who then is to tell another to take his trade elsewhere, no matter how reasonable the argument?

    The other reason I found is that there is a civil service official designated to cover that area from the local, state and federal governments and the police to make sure that people do not go out of the orbits of their common sense in matters such as locating businesses, displaying their wares or even in greeting relatives. Oh yes, it is possible to contravene the law when greeting relatives when you see the extent some people go. Anyway, the officials at all these levels obviously did not do their work; that was why these people died. And they are still not doing their work because people are still placing their businesses right beneath speeding tyres and stomping feet, and no one is telling them ‘NO SIR/MA, YOU CANNOT STAY THERE; IT IS TOO DANGEROUS’.

    Yet, the services of all these officers and officials are so sorely needed. We need them to beg us not to put our houses right on the river’s edge; to beg us not to take our baths in public; heck, to tell us not to do our private businesses in the open, if you know what I mean. I have been witness to a man ‘unloading’ in full view of all who cared to look. I cared to… look away. I bet you thought I was going to say something else – you! you!

    Unfortunately, our officials appear to be less than effective where service delivery is concerned. They are mostly people who have mixed business with pleasure and culture to tie their own hands behind their backs and are therefore unable to lay down the law for me and you.         A committee, said someone, is somewhere where good ideas are called and strangulated. Among all the service staff, the good ideas of laying down an orderly society gets systematically strangulated.

    What is more irksome is the fact that the staff at all these levels appear to have been really bloated to a strange degree. There are people in the service, I understand, who have no designated desks or chairs or functions. There are so many officers, so much to do, yet so little being done. A case of too many cooks, eh?

    Perhaps, Dr. Doyin Okupe was thinking of this when he called on state governments to solve their seemingly intractable salary-payment problems by reducing their civil service staff strength. He asked that governments should sack workers in order to survive; you know, like cutting off a leg in order to live. Naturally, people have been taking this piece of advice not lying low.

    To start with, people have said the doctor probably would not have made that call if his party had still been in power. And that he made the call so that the present government could be seen to have failed which would bring his own party’s ‘failures’ into less bolder relief. Perhaps, I don’t know. What I know is that at other times, the call might have made some sense, but not now, not just now.

    Listen, the Nigerian civil service did not grow overnight. It grew systematically and over a long period, right from the 1960s. The government boxed itself into this corner by deliberately enhancing the public sector at the expense of the private sector. I believe indeed it was one of the fallouts of the policy of the strong-centred government. The private sector bowed its lovely head.

    Unfortunately, the litany of bad economic policies of this strong centre followed one after another. The most notorious of this is the disgraceful import licence era when any crony of the government could bring in anything. Many did because the government found itself with many friends on its hands that it could not say no to. This meant of course that if the private sector was dead before, well, it became more dead. What we have today as the private sector is just a shadow of the old and powerful one which competed very vigorously to attract the best brains into its workforce. Let me illustrate with this story which you might say I probably have told you a power of times. Good, I’ll tell it again.

    Once, someone conceived a brilliant idea of manufacturing bicycles in Nigeria. This would not only bring the price down but it would give several thousands of people work opportunities, not to talk of the several thousands more of service providers to that company. Well, he needed some licence to import some raw materials until the company became strong enough to stand. What was his surprise when he found that a licence had been given some friend of the government to import bicycles in their entirety?!

    The government’s policies reduced the private sector to the pitiful level it is today. The government’s policies swelled the civil service to what we have today for its own reasons. So, the government must find a way of dealing with its problems. It should not make the people pay for its sins of having too many friends and putting the interests of these friends above those of the state.

    If workers are to be let go as suggested, where do they go? What will they eat? Where will they find succour? No responsible government simply throws its own people out in order to solve its own problems without providing a safe landing. For now, the public service jobs are the people’s welfare packages which cannot be taken away without an adequate replacement.

    There is no country in the world that survives without private enterprise providing the bulk of job opportunities as we do not have in Nigeria presently. Nigeria must join others by letting private enterprise take its rightful place so that the people can be given a choice.

    In the meantime, let the governors curb their enthusiasm for victimising workers and reduce their personal excesses and expenses. Let them also stop taking themselves so seriously and remember that the body that drinks champagne and the one that takes corn pap for breakfast will still become skeletons one day or another. Besides, let’s face it: we are only remembered in this world, not for the amount of champagne bottles we can afford to put away, but for the much good that we can do.

  • Herdsmen and other hearse-men

    Herdsmen and other hearse-men

    The mood of the country is foul and nasty. There is an ugly distemper abroad. There are just too many deaths and suffering for one to be sanguine and optimistic. The promise of 2015, of national rebirth and regeneration, now appears gravelly imperilled.

    The enemy is within. As usual,we do not need to look very far. The deadly virus is locally sourced. Between the herdsmen and the hearse-men, the national obsequies are loud and clear. The person who wants to die has met the person who wants to kill. Anarchy looms.

    Call them the horsemen or outriders of the imminent apocalypse, and you will not be wrong. The crude motorcade of national disintegration is manned not just by homicidal herdsmen but also by the hearse-men of ethical impunity. Once again we ask, where are our surviving statesmen?

    For General Buhari, it never rains but pours. All the major contradictions of the nation are coming to a boil at once, and what a riotous mix! This is beginning to look like the second political crucifixion of the same man—a rare historical occurrence. When he is not dealing with an ethically challenged senate, he is grappling witha morally diseased political elite running rings around him.

    When he is not dealing with crippling fuel shortage and severe power outage, he is contending with state larceny on a scale that beggars belief. While the enemies of progress and the redoubt of retrogression rally with surprising ease and ferocity, the man from Daura is left clutching at judicial and executive straws even as the ruling party decomposes before our very eyes.

    From now on and for the foreseeable future,  all the determined enemies of the retired general need to do is simply to latch on to the unresolved menace of the maniacal cattle rearers and their own crimes and infractions against the nation pale into utter insignificance. Killing is after all more deadly than stealing.We are setting the stage for an exchange of prisoners.

    The nation is squeezed to death between the murderous hordes of primitive herdsmen on the rampage and the rallying hearse-men of social and economic cannibalism feasting on its entrails while screaming blue murder. There is genocide and there is genocide. Cry, the unbeloved colonial contraption.

    Let anybody perish the thought that this is by any stretch a mitigating plea for the herdsmen and the genocidal malice and venom with which they have hacked and shot their way through large swathes of the country both north and south leaving a trail of gore and mayhem in their wake. It is an appeal to focus our eyes on the ball so that we do not confuse the symptoms with the real malady.

    There can be no excuse whatsoever be it cultural, social, historical or economic for the merciless bloodletting of this murderous group. Indeed, let it be stated right away that if General Buhari were to suffer a second political martyrdom, much of the blame will be placed at the doorstep of his stubborn fixations, his indiscretions and lack of a firm and resolute approach to a grave national security crisis.

    The herdsmen menace has been with us for some time. It predates Buhari’s second ascendancy, but it seems to have gone worse with his second coming. As a dedicated cattle rearer himself and a notable scion of the nomadic worldview, he has had enough time to study the phenomenon and how its arcane ritual of untrammelled roaming is locked in fatal contradiction with the sacred dictates of the modern nation-state, particularly a multi-nation country.

    This is why the much expected response of the government leaves much to be desired in its vacuity and vacant non-sequiturs. It is not enough after so many lives have been lost to order the security forces to crack down on the herdsmen.  This is nothing but officialese at its most uninspired and uninspiring.

    As many others have noted, what the nation expected was a well-reasoned intellectual template for confronting the menace and a militarily coordinated programme of action for bringing the tragedy to heel and the offenders swiftly to book. There was nothing like this; neither was there official solace and succour for the injured of the land. At the very least, the president ought to have addressed the nation.

    Contrary to the dangerous bogey being fed to the nation, the herdsmen are not a new mutation of Boko Haram. There might have been an influx of arms and munitions from the Libyan debacle and the open corridor of the Maghreb through Mali. There might have been a militarization of herd-protection as a result of organized cattle rustling and organized resistance to free roaming as the logic of settled and sedentary culture violently collides with the logic of nomadic free passage.

    But while Boko Haram is ideologically driven and principally targeted at the state, the herdsmen are culturally propelled; a regnant residue of ancient customs and nomadic shuttling which targets entire communities and their people.

    Yet because it is ideologically driven, the Boko Haram scourge eventuatedin anarmed uprising against the statewhereas if left untreated,  the cultural chauvinism of the herdsmen may eventuate in an armed collision with other people and communities leading to the possibility of genocide and ethnic vacuuming.

    This looming Rwandanizationof Nigeria is a threat that cannot be taken lightly. There are two pressing reasons why violence-happy herdsmen constitute a threat to the survival of the nation even more than the Boko Haram. First unlike Boko Haram, the herdsmen, or their sedentary segments, are already firmly embedded in many communities from the north of the nation to the southernmost tip.

    Second, nobody knows when an apocalyptic massacre of the host community will trigger a reprisal on a scale that will tip the entire country into ethnocidal mayhem and anarchy. The herdsmen may then be able to call upon the travelling Taliban and equal opportunity jihadists that might have infiltrated the country through its porous borders in a war of all against all.

    Let it not be forgotten that there is a historical and spiritual factor in all this which unites both the Boko Haram and the herdsmen. Whether ideological or cultural, both groups are driven by contempt and disdain for the norms of the secular modern state which finds resonance in a primitive and pre-modern strain of Islam dominant in the northern part of the nation.

    As we have seen with al-Qaeda and ISIS, this type of Islam has no truck with the modern nation-state which it believes is an imposition of western civilization. Yet it partakes of the gain of western civilization, particularly the western modernity imposed on the world through the Industrial Revolution and the onslaught of two waves of globalization.

    While the northern master-class send their children to the best schools in the world and enjoy the luxury of the latest western consumer goods, the under-class are the herdsmen who are armed to roam the length and breadth of the nation tending their cattle. Who knows whether their current genocidal restiveness is a form of social rebellion?

    Whereas the two other ethnic majorities in the country have largely transcended this feudal contradiction by cocking a snook at their old ruling classes, in the north the master class remains solid and impregnable, an ironic tribute to political wizardry and power of cohesion and organizational acumen.

    But no one can stall or arrest the relentless march of history. The Boko Haram phenomenon has demystified the northern ruling class and made nonsense of their hallowed aura by deposing and assassinating the rulers at will. It will amount to double jeopardy if they were to allow the unruly herdsmen to put them in terminal contradictions with other sections of the country where they do not hold sway.

    Hence once again, the historic centrality of General Buhari to the resolution of the Northern Question and Nigeria’s crisis of modernization. When the politically chaste and tactically fumbling general allowed BukolaSaraki to nick the senate presidency from his divided and disloyal party, this column noted that the retired general had committed the equivalent of a “self-coup”or what the Latin Americans call autogolpe  which would haunt him for a long time and stymie his second coming. Recent events are bearing this out.

    Once again, we must wager that if the retired general allows the herdsmen palaver to get out of hand, it will spell terminal doom for his presidency and the nation at large. As this column noted once, the historical providence behind a Buhari presidency at this point in time stems from the fact that he is the only one with the integrity, the mass appeal and the moral charisma to carry out the painful cultural, political and spiritual reform needed to bring the north at par with the dictates of a modern nation state.

    If Buhari fails in this venture, there is every possibility that the nation will disappear or dissolve into a confederalist arrangement under the supervision of the international community.  The idea of herdsmen roaming freely all over the country, particularly in areas where they are not domiciled, is a cultural anachronism which clashes with the precepts of a modernizing nation-state and can only be sustained by violence.

    Cattle-rearing has since undergone several Copernican revolutions in other parts of the world that have transcended fetishes and primordial superstitions. In any case, there is not much economic value to the business except a fondness for a past that is divorced from pressing material reality.

    Research has shown that cattle force-marched for thousands of miles through hostile and inhospitable territories would have lost much of their fat and muscles by the time they arrived at their destination. Despite the protective affection of their minders, they have become an example of man’s inhumanity to animals.

    Despite its stupendous riches and promise, this country is hobbled by ethnic, religious, regional and cultural polarities at the horizontal level and by a sharp and accelerating division between the master class and the underclass at the vertical level. It is a miraculous wonder that it has survived so far.

    The Nigerian political elite has shown that it lacks the visionary impetus to come up with core values binding all elite factions of the nation and the will to pursue a programme of shared wealth and integrative prosperity that leads to social harmony. Beyond fighting corruption, it is now imperative for the Buhari government to come up with a coherent programme about how to overcome these crippling divisions, starting with the menace of the murderous herdsmen.

  • Megabanks, megachurches, mega-looters: neoliberalism at home and abroad in the world (3) [Random thoughts and notes]

    In this closing piece in the series that began two weeks ago, let us begin with the question with which we ended the discussion in last week’s column: How did we move from Sabo Bakin Zuwo to Sambo Dasuki? Let us recall the contents of this question. When tens of millions of naira were found in his bedroom after the coup of 1983 that terminated his incumbency in the Kano State executive governorship, Sabo informed the police detectives that since the money was “government money”, Government House was a logical place in which to stock the money. Moreover, Sabo later vehemently denounced the detectives who carted the stolen loot from his bedroom for underreporting the amount they took away from “Government House”. Last year, 2015, when millions of monies in dollars and other foreign, convertible currencies were found in Dasuki’s house, what did the former National Security Advisor to Goodluck Jonathan say? Well, we don’t know exactly what he said to the EFCC operatives that found the monies in his house; all we know is that in his place, his lawyers, a phalanx of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), have been speaking for him in the law courts. So far, these lawyers have said little or nothing about either the monies found in Dasuki’s home or the immensely vaster sums of the billions of dollars lodged in both Nigerian and foreign banks. To the contrary, Dasuki’s lawyers have been fixated on consolidating the terms of his release on bail so that he can travel out of the country for medical attention.

    What points, what lessons concerning looting in the age of neoliberalism am I making in this matter of the move that we havemade in our national economy from Sabo to Dasuki? First point: compared to the monies found in Dasuki’s home in 2015, the loot found in Sabo’s house in 1983 was, as the Americans would put it, peanuts. Second point: the loot found in Sabo’s bedroom was all in naira, not in dollars or any other foreign currencies. Third point:  although Sabo’s puerile explanation of government money in Government House fooled nobody, it is significant that he found it necessary or convenient to invoke the government as the real owner of the money. Fourth point: Sabo did not speak through any lawyers, any SANs; he spoke in his own voice, as raucous and impudent as that voice was. Fifth and final point: Sabo launched a counter-offensive on the police detectives that carted the monies from his house by alleging that they, too, had stolen “government money” by not reporting the actual sum they took from his bedroom. Well, let me add a sixth point which, I admit, is mere speculation on my part: Sabo was keeping the stolen loot in his bedroom in readiness for the time when he could convert the millions of naira to foreign currencies on the black market and then have them smuggled out of the country in suitcases.

    For readers under the age of forty to whom, I imagine, this whole scenario of Sabo and “government money in Government House” might seem so strange as to come from another age, another era, this was in fact how the disposition of looted monies from our national coffers typically organized at that stage of our post-independent economic history. In other words, Sabo’s case was not an exception, not an aberration: government and those who looted monies from its coffers confronted each other directly; and the government was the undisputed superior protagonist in the confrontation.As strange as it may sound now, there was a widespread or common assumption that government money did belong to the government, just as there was a belief, an expectation that “government” mattered and could and would act to protect the monies held in trust for all Nigerians. Dear reader, if you know nothing else about the extraordinary changes that neoliberalism has wrought in our country and many other countries of the world in the last four decades, please know this one particular fact: government did matter as the trustee, the guarantor of our commonweal, of the health and justness of the institutions and processes that make our collective experience as Nigerians safe, secure and dignified.

    Yes, “government” very often not only often failed to deliver on these assumptions about its place in our collective existence, it was in fact sometimes turned into the very antithesis of these expectations. But these were aspects of, or enclaves within “government” – like the military and their rapacious self-serving coups; or the civilian politicians and their nepotistic political parties; or the civil services of the federation and the states in their entrenched practices of using administration to feather their own nests; or especially the police and the notorious “wetin you carry” expropriations that they tirelessly make from the already meager resources of the Nigerian masses. No, typically government has been far from perfect, in our country and indeed in most countries of the world. What neoliberalism did was to go far above and beyond the imperfections of government to more or less perpetrate a massive retrenchment or displacement of “government” in favour of something called the market or market forces. In other not to lay myself open to the charge of distorting neoliberalism in its relationship(s) to the government of our country and the governments of the nations of the planet, let me put this point in the language of neoliberalism’s own self-understanding, its own ideology: “the business of government is not business”.

    Of course the apostles of neoliberalism and the warriors of its policies and programs never quite clearly come out to say that they are intent on the complete retrenchment of government. Their keywords and phrases are “privatization” and “deregulation”. Their favorite slogan is free trade devoid of so-called protectionist distortions. Their choice targets are trade unions, both public sector and private sector unions. They also do not care much, if at all, for governmental or state investment in public sector institutions, services and utilities like education; physical infrastructures like roads, highways and bridges; and human enrichment projects like health care delivery, public sanitation and waste disposal and the care of the young in state supported preschool and kindergarten programs. But dear reader, think of this crucial fact: about the only enclaves of the government from which the apostles and warriors of neoliberalism have, at least so far, not extended their mega-project of privatization and deregulation are the armed forces, the police, and the prisons. We could add the three arms of government – the executive, the judiciary and legislature – to this list, but everyone knowsthat for neoliberalism to do this, it would have to bear the cost of maintaining these institutions that, for the most part, are not income-generating “enterprises”. Moreover, neoliberalism is in its essence a global and globalizing phenomenon; it is content to leave the “business” of governance in every nation in the world to these three arms of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. But with this comes what we might regard as the real cleverness, the true genius of neoliberalism: national governments are made everywhere to take a back seat to market forces. And in turn, the powerful and the wealthy control and manipulate these market forces.

    Dear readers, please do not just take my words, my testimonies at their face value in these matters. Look deeply and carefully at the innumerable manifestations of these things that I say in this series in our country in the last two and half decades. Look especially at the triad of megabanks, megachurches and mega-looters that I have made the prime exemplars of neoliberalism in our country and our national economy at the present time. Each one of the three seem so strong, so impregnable that they seem to be above the Nigerian government as a national government, a government of one country and one country alone. For instance, the vast majority of Nigerians rather naively thought that the mega-looters would flee the country in their private jets with the Second Coming of Buhari, but did this happen? Have the mega-looters not stayed and fought back, in defiance of the wishes and aspirations of the Nigerian government and peoples?As for the megachurches, have we not seen how much influence, how much authority their proprietors have on politicians at home in Nigeria itself and across the whole of the West Africa region? And is the whole world not the hunting and haunting ground of these megachurches, with branches and franchises as far away as in Eastern Europe and the Asian Far East, not to talk of Western Europe and North America? Did not one of the eminencies of these megachurches boast that their intention is to have a church within five minutes of walking in every city, town and village in the developing world and within five minutes of driving in every city in the developed world?

    What of the megabanks? Ah, the megabanks, great tidings of joy! Just this week, a friend from home in Nigeria visiting me in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rather proudly showed me his credit card from one of the megabanks at home that he has been able to use quite easily without any fuss in ATMS across America. As I reflected on this information, my mind went back to the 1980s around the time of Sabo Bakin Zuwo’s “government money in Government House” wahala. At that point in time when I was still teaching at Ife, if you wanted to get forex for your naira to enable you to go to conferences abroad, you had to go all the way to Lagos where you would go for approval from first, the office of the Secretary to the Federal Government; then to the Ministry of Finance; and finally to the Central Bank.In most cases, the amount did not or could not exceed $500. And of course, at that time there was nothing like domiciliary or dollar accounts in Nigerian banking. If you were desperate enough, you smuggled forex that you got by any means possible concealed somewhere on your person. Or in suitcases if you were one of the looters. In that period, that age, what is known in the jargon of neoliberal economics as “financialization”, the most important, the most dominant and hegemonic sector of contemporary global capitalism, had not yet made its way into Nigerian banks. In our closing piece in the series next week, we will start with how this came to the Nigerian banking system without the slightest beneficial impact on the poor but to the great benefit of the very wealthy, especially the mega-looters and the megachurches.

     

    • Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • Stop the herdsmen now

    Stop the herdsmen now

    Herdsmen must think so highly of themselves as untouchables! If not, why should they behave as if the whole of the country is their grazing land and can therefore move into any community and exhibit what Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, last Thursday aptly described as “undisputed impunity”.

    Long before the recent cases of their serial massacres across the country that have led to an outcry for the federal government to take necessary measures to curtail them, the herdsmen have always overrun various farmlands with their cows, destroying crops and killing whoever dared to challenge them.

    Under the guise of reprisal for the killing of their cows, hundreds of persons have been killed as if the lives of their cows are more valuable than innocent victims of their attacks.

    The genocide in the Agatu community was the height of the reign of terror of the herdsmen and as usual, the police found it difficult to stop them. Even when the community raised an alarm about the number of persons killed, it was dismissed as an exaggeration.

    Not only did herdsman kill and destroy properties in the Agatu communities, they occupied some villages and prevented the indigenes from returning home.

    They have since repeated same dastardly acts in Taraba, Nassarawa, Kogi and now Enugu where over 50 persons were gruesomely killed.

    The first time I saw herdsmen in my village in Imagbon, Odogbolu Local Governemnt area of Ogun State, I was very worried and have been praying that my people back home don’t get the “herdsmen treatment” someday whenever they attempt to curtail the herdsmen’s usual excesses in disregard for their host communities.

    Worse still, their nefarious activities are not limited to rural areas. In Lagos, there have been cases where cows take over main roads, resulting sometimes in vehicles being damaged. On express roads, there have been accidents caused by cows that get in the path of speeding vehicles.

    The audacity usually exhibited by the herdsmen, who are now reported to carry sophisticated guns, instead of sticks, is such that have left Nigerians wondering if they are above the law and can’t be treated as criminals which they are.

    For too long, the excesses of the herdsmen have been tolerated and it is time they were stopped before they plunge the country into another major crisis. If communities are gracious enough to allow them to graze their cattle on their land, the herdsmen must know their bounds and not claim rights they don’t have.

    If only in the past, herdsmen have been arrested and punished for offences committed, then they would not have continued to carry on as if they are above the law.

    Deliberately, I didn’t call the herdsmen Fulanis as not all of them may be like the northern governors argued on Friday. Whoever they are and wherever they are from, they have to stop being outlaws.

    Professor Soyinka hit the nail on the head with his declaration last Thursday that the federal government’s failure to offer legal, logistical and moral response on the matter is responsible for the unrelenting violence being perpetrated by the herdsmen.

    Soyinka’s counsel should be taken seriously. What is required to halt, once and for all, the barbaric acts of the herdsmen is an articulate and firm policy on non-tolerance of violence acts by any group.

    The rampaging herdsmen must be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial and have their cows confiscated. It may also be necessary to treat the herdsmen like terrorists if they refuse to cease fire.

     

  • Herdsmen as indicators of leadership woes

    Herdsmen as indicators of leadership woes

    IF herdsmen-farmers clashes have suddenly assumed national security concerns, it is simply because past governments treated the crisis irresponsibly and amateurishly as a law and order problem — of nomadic cattle rearers versus angry farm owners. It is, however, far beyond that. Though the government sometimes recognised the clashes as a cultural and tangentially climatological issue, they have done precious little to anticipate the mushrooming crisis, not to talk of proffering farsighted and realistic solutions. Indeed, the crisis is one of the most powerful emblems of leadership failure in Nigeria, far surpassing any other problem in politics, including disputed and bloody elections and crooked democracy, and far exceeding the disaster in the economy, regardless of how vicious the meltdown is.

    The clashes have been nurtured for decades, indeed cuddled as a totem of unimaginative leadership. If the current leadership appreciates their apocalyptic potential, they have neither shown it nor acted to forestall it. From minor eruptions in the past months, the crisis has grown to become major eruptions capable of threatening national security. Since there was no deliberate and imaginative effort to tackle the crisis, it has festered quietly but dangerously. Indeed, it is remarkable that President Muhammadu Buhari has not directly commented on the problem, at least in recent times, as troubling and portentous as it is. He has spoken through both his spokesmen, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, and he has also spoken through Lai Mohammed, the Information minister to order a crackdown. For reasons only he can explain, he has refrained from commenting directly on the crisis. He probably still will.

    But if the president has so far failed to comment on the matter, he has even more curiously not visited any of the areas that have experienced devastating attacks and clashes. The problem is deep and complex, and the bloodletting consequent upon the clashes endless and profuse, not to talk of the grave national security implications. The problem deserves urgent attention, and it is time the president formulated a solution and visited the blighted areas to placate grieving victims, whether they are host farming communities or nomadic Fulani. The lack of action, or seeming inattention, has baffled many Nigerians, triggering speculations that the president was in a quandary what to do on account of his Fulani background, and unsure how to act one way or the other, and afraid whichever way he acted that his actions could be misconstrued.

     

    Overt optimism and shallow reflection

    The president is the only one who can dispel those unflattering speculations, if he wants to. He really should, for the issues surrounding the problem, and the implications of continuous dithering, could prove not only damaging to his presidency but even more so to national security. Sooner or later, the president will have to speak directly on the matter in order for the country to know what he thinks of the grave matter that has lathered and troubled the country in the past few months. The president must trust his instinct to say and do what is right on the subject. After a few missteps in the past, he must by now have had enough time to reflect on the matter, and more time to come up with what he thinks is the solution worth the trouble of pushing through the legislative process and the mill of national discourse. This may be overly optimistic, for there is always the chance that his reflections on the subject might be either shallow or altogether inappropriate. This column will help him to equip himself to deal with this problem and other problems in the following paragraphs.

    Before then, it is important to point out that the failure of leadership evident in the herdsmen-farmers clash is not limited to the presidency; it is also clearly noticeable in the security agencies. The Department of State Service (DSS) and the police are the principal security organs that should tackle the problem: one to anticipate the crisis, and the other to nip it in the bud in case of eruption. Both failed. In the case of the murderous attack on Ukpabi-Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State last Monday, the indigenes reportedly passed on intelligence about an impending attack to the security agencies. The police were still caught flat-footed, if not criminally negligent. But whether the Ukpabi-Nimbo attack was foiled or not, it still would not have absolved the security agencies of lack of professionalism. In virtually all the previous herdsmen attacks, the security agencies had turned a blind eye to the arming of nomads in defiance of the law. In addition, as the police leadership showed in the case of the Agatu, Benue State killings, they are busy second-guessing the presidency on whether or how to tackle the continuing breakdown of law and order in many parts of the country, especially involving farmers and herdsmen skirmishes.

    In the Benue State killings, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) was exasperated that the media was blowing casualty figures out of proportion because the Agatu and their political representatives, such as former Senate President David Mark, had indicated that about 500 people, including women and children, were slaughtered. Some police officers even suggested without proof that the herdsmen were non-Nigerians. But when Fulani leaders addressed the press on the Agatu killings, they indicated they were retaliating the murder of a few respected Fulani leaders, even supplying graphic details of the aforesaid provocations. Yet, the police have neither invited the avengers for questioning nor even embarked on investigations into the vendetta. Self-help, the police seem to be saying, is not out of place. But more accurately, the police are simply second-guessing the president, perhaps on account of what they presume to be his loyalties.

    And in the case of the Ukpabi-Nimbo killings, where more than 40 people lost their lives in gruesome circumstances with the potential to provoke ethnic backlash of stupendous proportions, the police even suggested at first that the attack was the handiwork of ordinary hoodlums rather than herdsmen. This was despite the intelligence report the locals got and passed on to the security agencies, which report the police handled with lack of professionalism; and this was also irrespective of the fact that the local Hausa/Fulani leaders confirmed the impending attack and promised to help avert it. It is one thing for the police to complain of being outgunned and outnumbered; it is another thing to be negligent in their responsibilities on account of the delicate or untouchable background of the lawbreakers. Well, the implication of the lethargy of the presidency and the security agencies is that the country is now soaked in tension, while inter-ethnic relationship is needlessly and badly frayed. Nigerians must hope that the damage has not scarified the polity nor pushed the country closer to the tipping point.

     

    Multitasking profundity

    Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan did not address the herdsmen-farmers age-long conflict on a scale beyond simple law and order approach. The roots of the problem were left severely alone, pristinely untouched. His predecessors were similarly negligent and unimaginative because they all suffered from one major defect or the other in their leadership expertise. But they are all out of office now, and Nigerians can only make passing references to what they did or did not do. The man in office today is President Buhari, and he must be made to discharge his responsibilities in conformity with his oath of office. So far, he has not often acted with the impulse and character of the president of a country made up of more than 250 ethnic groups. Nor has he often acted with the dispatch and multitasking profundity of an elected leader. It is time he remedied these weaknesses and began to address his failings. He has some failings, which he must acknowledge in order to begin the onerous task of governing a potentially great but complex country of differing and sometimes antagonistic cultures and civilisations.

    Once President Buhari reaches this eureka moment, he can truly begin to birth changes beyond sloganeering. He is deficient in two things, and he must tackle them headlong. First, he must acquire a deep and immeasurable sense of justice that transcends, and if possible obliterates, his ethnic, religious, social and political backgrounds. Until he does this, his actions and policies will continue to be coloured and undermined by those limiting cultures of his boyhood and adolescence. There is simply no way to build a presidential legacy, let alone the mystique he appears to desire so badly, without passing through this refining furnace of shedding the conflicting and variegated habits ingrained in his persona and worldview. President Buhari really needs to sit down and ask himself what his presidency should look like and what he hopes to be remembered for. Few Nigerians think he has transcended his background. He now has an opportunity to prove sceptics wrong.

     

    Transforming and liberating virtue

    President Buhari is a disciplinarian, but he has sometimes acted as if that is an end in itself, and not a means to the nirvana which the transforming and liberating power of that virtue can bring about. Nigeria is deeply divided, a division exacerbated by the Jonathan presidency, a division that corrugates the polity, economy and society revealing many fault lines, a division which many closet religious fanatics masquerading as leaders and finding themselves in position of leadership have aggravated. President Buhari needs to begin the work of healing the country. Given his penchant for discipline, he has begun the work of cleansing the land of corruption, a war he is fighting courageously, albeit sometimes misguidedly. Even though his political opponents accuse him of persecution, and thus deny the achievements he has recorded in the anti-graft war so far, he has improved measurably in observing the rule of law. He has no choice, nor would the country let him have a choice when it comes to that subject. However, he must not give the impression that all his capacity for discipline is useful only to fight corruption when the equally salient issue of ethnic discord is crying for his tough and disciplinarian attention.

    Apart from acquiring a deep and implacable sense of justice to help him navigate the treacherous rapids of his presidency, the president must more importantly saddle himself with a great and sublime assignment for the country, an assignment that surpasses the routine task of putting food on the table of Nigerians, building roads and hospitals, and fighting robbers and insurgents. These assignments are doubtless great and indispensable; but they are incapable of defining his presidency and marking him forever as a legend and erecting a memorial in the minds of his people for generations to come. This column does not get the impression that President Buhari sees his assignment beyond the prism of anti-corruption war and reviving the economy, or that he possesses an acute sense of history. Indeed, as a former French leader once said, there is no indication yet that he thinks of moulding Nigeria for the newspapers of the day after tomorrow. And if his ambition and vision for Nigeria are hardly sufficient for today, let alone for the day after tomorrow, how can he develop the ambition and vision to master Africa, as indeed seems the destiny of the largest black nation on earth? Had President Buhari acquired this solid, sublime and encompassing vision, it would have been impossible for him to treat the herdsmen-farmers clash in the ephemeral and insouciant way he has done, or fight corruption unmindful of the damage to the other ennobling virtues vouchsafed by the constitution, or assemble his aides and cabinet without the breathtaking expansiveness that the world’s greatest leaders are capable of by the force of their character.

    On the day Osama Bin Laden’s militants brought down the twin towers in New York in 2001, the city’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, told the media that among the first steps he took was to bury his head in a few books of great leaders to reacquaint himself with how they responded to crisis. No leader can be great if he has not learnt to inspire himself with the actions of great world leaders. Nor can a leader reach greatness if his vision for his society is not futuristic and breathtaking. That vision, in the greatness chain of command, cannot be generated if a leader has not immersed himself in the ideas, policies, behaviour and actions of past leaders. President Buhari is in his first year in office, let him see the challenges confronting him as an invitation to rid himself of the habits and weaknesses of the past decades, and as an opportunity to boldly and imaginatively reach for greatness so that when the curtain falls on his presidency, as former United States President Richard Nixon once observed, the lives of Nigerians will have been transformed forever in ways unimaginable.

  • We won’t call cow ‘brother’ because we want to eat meat

    We won’t call cow ‘brother’ because we want to eat meat

    President Buhari should tame the herdsmen

    President Muhammadu Buhari must do something and fast too, about the rampaging Fulani herdsmen who have turned themselves to terrorists sans borders. The main reason is simple: the president himself is Fulani and people are now wondering why the herdsmen have suddenly become laws unto themselves, maiming and killing, and leaving tears and sorrow in their trail wherever and whenever they decide to unleash mayhem. It is in the president’s interest to rein in the hoodlums masquerading as herdsmen so that their activities would not erode his hard-earned goodwill.

    Since I was born, I have always known Fulani herdsmen to carry sticks and may be some local weapons for their personal safety and the security of their cattle; due to the itinerant nature of their job. But now, things have changed. Fulani herdsmen are no longer satisfied carrying local weapons; they have become so sophisticated in their choice of firearms with which they now terrorise people all over the country.  This is unacceptable. A situation where Fulani herdsmen would sack people from their ancestral communities is vexatious and unsustainable. The Federal Government must show in unmistaken terms that it frowns at these tendentious and savage practices. At the rate at which things are going, it would get to a point where the entire country would combust when people begin to see that they are on their own whenever Fulani herdsmen come, or that the long arms of the law are too short to protect them from the rampaging herdsmen. People will not continue to flee from their places of origin on sighting some ragtag bandits who believe they have the right to graze their cattle anywhere and whenever they please, even at grave risks to other people’s farms and other economic properties.

    A major question to ask is, where do the herdsmen get their arms from? The kind of sophisticated weapons they parade is unlawful for anyone to carry without licence. If, therefore, they are carrying arms illegally, what are the security agencies doing? But if their weapons are licensed, then carrying of guns should be liberalised for all so that there can always be a balance of terror; or at least, as a form of self-defence.

    It is important for the Federal Government to act fast because what we have on our hands is graver than Boko Haram. The government can gauge the mood of the nation on this matter from the recent reactions to the rumour of a grazing bill said to be before the National Assembly, but which has been denied. If anyone is still thinking along the line of having the Federal Government making such law to compulsorily acquire lands for herdsmen to graze, then that person should perish the thought. Indeed, that is one law that is dead on arrival. If herdsmen who are acting illegally now are this murderous and audacious, we can only imagine what would happen when they have a modicum of legal protection to hold on to. If people in other parts of the country cannot get beef to eat from the herdsmen, they can make do with something else, from within the country or from without. No one should let the herdsmen continue to get away with this false sense of entitlement that they have a right to graze wherever and whenever they desire. The point must be made poignantly and unambiguously too, that the herdsmen are not doing anyone a favour; it is a symbiotic relationship that should be done within the ambits of the laws of the Federal Republic. But if grazing their cattle beyond their own borders is going to be this costly and problematic, then they should look elsewhere for their market while their customers too  look elsewhere for their cow meat. We won’t call a cow ‘brother’ simply because we want to eat meat!

    President Buhari’s statement on Wednesday is reassuring. “Ending the recent upsurge of attacks on communities by   herdsmen reportedly armed with sophisticated weapons is now a priority on the Buhari Administration’s agenda for enhanced national security and the Armed Forces and Police have clear instructions to take all necessary action to stop the carnage”, the president said. But he should do more than talk the talk; he should walk the talk. Concrete action must be taken and must be seen to be taken to arrest the ugly trend before it is too late.

    Cattle rustling, (which the herdsmen use as excuse to take laws into their hands) is a crime that should be punished whenever the culprits are identified. But that should not be a license for the herdsmen to take laws into their hands, robbing, raping, maiming and killing in the name of retaliation. We are not in a banana republic. The last time I checked, we are still a country governed by a constitution which defines the rights and privileges of citizens and institutions, as well as how they are to relate with one another.

    Cows are not government property; they are owned by individuals. To that extent, they do not deserve being given land by the government, not even as a temporary solution as President Buhari once mooted. These herdsmen will not leave once they are given space all over the country. We must have seen that by now and the governors should not oblige the president any such request whenever he presents it; that is if he has not done so. It is the business of the cattle owners to find ways to feed their cattle. If it means that the cows would be costlier, Nigerians would not mind to pay more for cow meat or look elsewhere for it. It is better to buy expensive cows from the herdsmen than give these kind of characters who believe that the land and other things therein is theirs, irrespective of the part of the country the land is. With people like these, you don’t take chances at all.

    Anyway, now that the security agencies have been given a marching order (I doubt they needed that if they knew their onions), nothing should be spared in efforts to rein in the herdsmen. They are worse than the Niger Delta militants that the president has threatened to treat as economic saboteurs. They (herdsmen) are going for the nation’s jugular in their assumption that they can graze their cattle just anywhere, not minding if they destroy other people’s livelihood in the process.

    Just imagine, this year alone, the herdsmen have left trails of anguish and blood in several parts of the country. What is it! “Fulani herdsmen attacked two villages in Gashaka Local Government Area of Taraba State and killed 15 people”. “Farmers in Lagun, Iyana Offa, Offa, Atagba, Lapata and their surrounding communities in Lagelu Local Council Area of Ibadan, Oyo State, alleged that a group of Fulani armed men attacked their communities at night, injured a guard and carted away valuables”. “Twenty-five local government areas in Delta State grounded activities on the Benin-Asaba Expressway. They reported that the herdsmen allegedly killed over 23 persons. Interestingly, the police recovered 20 AK-47 rifles, 70 dane guns, 30 double-barrel guns and over 1,000 live ammunition, mostly from Fulani herdsmen during this period”. Ten communities were razed while no fewer than 500 lives were lost” in Agatu, Benue state. (Source: Jiji.ng). These were before the incident last Monday in Ukpabi Nimbo in Enugu State, in which more than 40 people were killed!

    Honestly, the president must do something before some people hijack this and turn it to another (Boko Haram) money-making machine that Nigerians would be picking the bills. Land is too important an issue in the country and no one is prepared to forego his or her ancestral land just to please marauding herdsmen. As a matter of fact, the way some of the people who we think are enlightened in the north speak on this matter should convince anyone that the herdsmen should not be given an inch anywhere the people say they do not want them.