The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Confab: scripts and speculations

Reports from committees are confirming that what the conference has achieved at the committee level is largely a reinforcement of the status quo

It is hard to ask if the national conference is going as scripted. The reason for this difficulty is that nobody is sure about the plan of action scripted by the planners of the conference. In addition, it is not clear if each delegate or group of delegates from the various constituencies had a script before moving to Abuja. But now that the conference has gotten an additional lease from the federal government, it is no longer premature to start worrying about whether it is heading in any direction that can bring any happy change to most parts of the country and to most of the individuals that made the conference possible.

There have been many variants of the scripts that might have been central to this conference. One popular variant is that President Jonathan set up the conference in order to gain some electioneering advantage over his opponents. Propagators of such narrative claimed that some disgruntled Yoruba politicians were drafted or recruited to prepare the script that served as plan of action for the conference. The hope that drove that script (according to folk commentators) was to create the loudest sound bite about a national conference billed to re-design Nigeria for success. It would not matter if at the end of the conference, nothing new happened or the unitary political command system from the centre got reinforced.

Some more uncharitable narrators even said that the ambition behind convening the conference was to galvanise Yoruba voters to vote for the current president who made a national conference that looks more serious and more credible than the last one organised in 2005 by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo. It was also believed that the conference was to just scare political and cultural leaders from the north who are generally expected to be averse to such conference, with the hope of re-assuring them at the end with reinforcement of the status quo. Such managers of grape vines of unverified stories went further to say that delegates even lobbied with everything at their disposal to get a seat for the principal reason of getting some millions of naira as sitting allowance and also getting opportunity to be in the news as co-participants in an elaborate effort to re-launch Nigeria, and with their new media connection, launch their political career under the president’s party after the conference.

Mischievous public affairs commentators went further to say that the rule made by authors of conference modalities to the effect that majority decision in the absence of a consensus would be 75% of delegates did it knowing very well that this would be unattainable and thus capable of bringing the conference to an end in a fiasco. It was also believed and peddled that the compromise that put majority vote at 70% was not without similar goal: re-affirming the status quo that has hobbled the country and made it an enemy of nation-wide development since 1966.Such storytellers pushed the narrative of conspiracy which claimed that the shift of the conference from being one of representatives of ethnic nationalities to one composed of nominees of various vested interests was an integral part of the design-to-fail character of the conference. It was such conspiracy, according to folk narrators, that silenced the existence of a Minority report by Chief Asemota until such occlusion was no longer possible. Those who felt that the denial of the existence of a Minority report to challenge the Okurounmu report was deliberate are not likely to be surprised at the ease with which members of the Devolution of Power committee tried to block the hearing of Ms. Ankio Briggs’ Minority report that challenged the position given by the committee’s co-chairmen: Victor Attah and Ibrahim Coomassie.

Many seemingly unpatriotic Nigerians are even saying, at a time that the conference is almost over, that the claim that all Nigerians consulted at the drawing of modalities for the conference clearly recognised the indivisibility or indissolubility of Nigeria was exaggerated and deliberately crafted to make palatable the imposition of the No-go area that has hobbled the conference from its first sitting: taking the territorial unity of Nigeria as a non-negotiable fact, even at a conference that was charged to work out how to make the multiethnicnation-space work for the good of all constituent nationalities. Authors beholden to stories about conspiracy even claimed that erection of No-go area was to tie the hands of delegates at their backs before they were told to run fast towards getting medals for participating in the country’s most reliable conference.

Now is the time for speculations. Partisan and non-partisan folk commentators are also already at work on what to expect from the conference. Some have affirmed that the no-nonsense stance of the north as its political and cultural leaders claim to be the backbone and strength of Nigeria falls into the pattern of what was expected by designers of the conference. Once the north, the heir to British colonialists and Nigeria’s ‘landlord’ insists that nothing is wrong with the way Nigeria is currently structured and swears loud that no force can change the status of states as mere administrative units while affirming that no constitution in the country accepts regions as federating units, conference delegates would start packing their things to go back home to enjoy their modest allowances for coming, thus confirming the resilience of Nigeria’s culture of political racketeering.

Reports from committees are confirming that what the conference has achieved at the committee level is largely a reinforcement of the status quo. The nation’s Cassandras see nothing more than the typical Nigeria Factor (of holding something that is false to be also true or vice versa) in the report about a compromise over the matter of Devolution of powers. Specifically, the decision to put oil matters on the Exclusive list but with a window of opportunity for states to have a say in the exploitation, collection of royalty and tax as well as sharing of such revenue is already being pooh-poohed by pundits as an illustration of the lack of proper focus at the committee level.

Similarly, the report that the committee on law enforcement has recommended that Nigeria is not ready for multi-level police system is being viewed by critics as another manifestation of the power of vested interests in the matter of security. This is despite the fact that the paper presented at the instance of governors from the north accepted the need for a multi-level police system, despite the region’s reactionary position on all other matters. Could it be true that it was not disagreement among regions about having a truly federal police system that led to the committee’s opposition to state police, but the fact that retired police officers on the committee advised committee members against such a move that fear mongers believe to be capable of endangering the country’s unity? Neighbourhood storytellers are already wondering if any serious-minded conference organisers would knowingly put on such important committee individuals who had retired from a police force that had failed characteristically to protect citizens and their property over the years.

I know that my readers are eager to know my own feelings about what has been going on at the conference, instead of reporting what other public affairs observers have been thinking. Seriously, I believe it is still premature to pass any more critical evaluation than folk commentators have made in their own style. I just believe I should let my readers know what I have been able to collect in terms of folk-life research since the announcement of the Jonathan national conference. I did keep my cool until the end of the Obasanjo conference. I have no reason not to have the same patience this time.

May 25, 2014
The military and its ‘enemies’

The Nigerian military finds itself in an unusual position. Over the last fifty odd years it has often been cast in the role of saviour. It fought the Biafran secession and preserved the Nigerian federation – a feat that many Civil War veterans would never let us forget.

It has, for the bulk of our years as an independent nation taken it upon itself, to ‘rescue’ the country in moments of ‘drift’, plunging headlong into the extra-constitutional role of governance. Truly, on many of those occasions when the soldiers stepped in the populace were only too relieved to see bungling politicians tossed out on their ears.

Even when the military was not meddling in government, its competence was often celebrated internationally as Nigerian troops excelled in a number of continental and United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping operations.

For such an institution used to receiving plaudits, it is hard to be humble. It is even harder when you have come to accept your billing as this great fighting machine, to suddenly be at the receiving end of trenchant criticism that raises questions about your competence.

Dealing with this awkward situation has proven a test over which the military and its spokesmen have not handled well. Suddenly, they see grand conspiracies and enemies everywhere.

Against the backdrop of unprecedented international focus on the country following the bombing at the Nyanya, Abuja motorpark, as well as the abduction of over 270 Chibok schoolgirls, the most readily identifiable “foes” of this powerful institution have become the media – local and foreign – and the hashtag activists seeking the release of the abductees.

This last week, Director of Army Public Relations, Brig-Gen. Olajide Laleye, repeated statements that suggest the military truly believe some people want to destroy it as an institution. Speaking in Abuja at the monthly briefing on the activities of the army in the North-East where the Boko Haram insurgency has been raging, he said: ‘The Nigerian Army has been under a deliberate and concerted effort by some individuals, bodies and organisations to tarnish its good image.

“These groups and their international collaborators are trying hard to portray the Nigerian military as corrupt with myriad of problems and challenges ranging from morale of troops, equipment and troops welfare.”

The general argued that the campaigns were calculated to undermine the corporate existence of the army and downplay its achievements. The army which he said was one of the binding forces uniting the country was far from weak and ineffective.

Interestingly, the same week when Laleye was thumping his chest, the army’s Chief of Account and Budget, Major General Abdullahi Muraina, while speaking at the opening of the 2014 training week of the Nigerian Army Finance Corps (NAFC) for Warrant Officer/Senior Non-Commissioned Officers at Jaji, Kaduna State, said current budgetary allocation to the military was inadequate to meet the contemporary security challenges and cater for the welfare of the army.

Muraina broke it down for journalists this way. “The army budget for this year is just N4.8billion. Now, to provide only one item for the troops engaged in the operation in the North-East… Assuming we committed 20,000 troops, the jacket and the helmet is on the average of about $1,000. If you change that to naira, it is about N150, 000. This means they are going to spend about $20million and that is about N3billion.

“N3billion as a percentage of N4.8billion which is the capital budget for this year is more than 50 per cent and that is just one item. We are not talking about uniforms; we are not talking about boots, we are not talking about structures where they will stay. We are not talking about training – because training is key to enhancing the capability of the force.”

The issues of adequately funding and proper equipment was alluded to by Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima a while back and defensive Federal Government officials – including President Goodluck Jonathan – laid into him for suggesting that Boko Haram fighters were better equipped than our troops. Now we have the army’s purse keeper going on record to say they have issues with money.

There are serious problems hampering the effectiveness of the military’s campaign in the North-East – and they are not limited to finance alone. Those challenges are the real enemies to be attacked, not the media, #Bring Back Our Girls protesters and their so-called “foreign collaborators.”

For anyone to suggest that the media are the issue is downright ludicrous. What would be the motive driving this imaginary agenda of destroying the military?

For these charges to stick motive must be established. Anyone who understands the way the media works knows that it is virtually impossible to get them to rally behind one agenda because of conflicting proprietary interest, political affiliations and worldview.

The real problem for Nigeria’s military is that it is yet to understand that intense scrutiny is inevitable in the relentless 24/7 news cycle. Does anyone honestly expect the media not to report when troops turn their guns on the General Officer Commanding (GOC) as reportedly happened in Borno recently?

What newspaper worth its salt would refuse to report the Nyanya bomb blast that claimed 100 lives? What sort of news medium would not analyse the context in which the attack happened and ask questions about the role of the military and political leadership?

The snatching of over 270 Chibok schoolgirls from their dormitory by brutal terrorists is unprecedented anywhere in the world. It is a gripping human drama that no news organisation can ignore. It is the power of the story that attracted the CNNs, Aljazeeras and BBCs of this world. They have not focused on an anonymous village in Southern Borno ‘just to destroy Nigeria’s military.’

Whatever they have done over the Chibok story, they have done in Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and in their own countries. It is almost two years since Libyan gunmen stormed the United States consulate in Benghazi, killing the ambassador. The story of that tragic incident has refused to die because of media and congressional scrutiny. The same thing with America’s intervention in Afghanistan… No one has suggested that this scrutiny is intended to destroy the US military.

It is this same mentality that led spokesmen of the Jonathan administration to accuse the opposition of treason just because they made certain caustic and critical comments!

Unfortunately for our political establishment who don’t want to be accountable to anybody, intrusive reporting and uncommon scrutiny of their actions is here to stay. Terror is the issue of the 21st century and the world is interested. Thanks to Boko Haram’s brutality Nigeria has become the latest terrorism frontier – meaning she’ll be trapped in the global spotlight for years to come.

Politicians, the military and all those managing this insurgency must be prepared to answer questions. We opened the door when we failed to tackle what we had advertised as a local issue. Now that we have begged for foreign help, we must realise it is not a freebie. It comes with a price: scrutiny and accountability.

May 25, 2014
Fashola and the argument for a Christian successor

Responding to a campaign by a section of the Lagos electorate to vote in a Christian candidate as the next governor of Lagos, Governor Babatunde Fashola last Monday warned that Lagos politics would be vulgarised by such absurd cravings. But his own position on this quite complex and troubling issue was also almost reductionist. Hear him: “I read in the papers that a group is insisting on a Christian governor. I can’t recall the last time that a governor of Lagos was elected based on his religious beliefs. What will the preference for governor of one faith over the other even benefit us? Will it give one religion roads that other faiths cannot use? Will it give them schools that children from other faiths cannot attend, or will it bring water that only one faith can drink. Does hunger know your faith? Maybe we should begin to have Christian money and Muslim money; and in the blood banks, when life is being threatened, maybe we should begin to have Christian blood and Muslim blood.”

Mr Fashola inappropriately tendered his opinion on the controversial call at an inter-faith conference in Lagos. His arguments were persuasive, and though they oversimplified the issue, he showed a lot of courage in voicing his opinion at a forum where the import of his arguments could easily be misinterpreted in many unsettling ways. It is true that in all the governorship elections conducted in Lagos, religion never once played a role. The governor is also right to wonder whether the so-called dividends of democracy come with religious colouration. In view of the national proclivity for politicising religion, it is probably time for office holders to work conscientiously to disentangle politics from religion. Mr Fashola’s arguments are a fair way to begin.

However, his position conveniently emphasises hope over reality, theory over practice. Rather than his largely emotive arguments about the religion of his successor, Mr Fashola should have taken a more dialectical approach by widening his discourse to include a number of elements such as acknowledging rather than ignoring the changing nature of politics in Nigeria—its morphology, so to speak – and recognizing the distortionary effects of sectarian ideologies and how they shatter society’s icons. Mr Fashola’s arguments are direct and easy to understand, but they generally ignore today’s disturbing realities. I understand the governor’s adumbration of the kind of politics he wishes Lagosians to play, but I am not sure he appreciates that nothing he says, does or hopes can insulate Lagos from the new national politics, or prevent national politics from being perfused by silly and sentimental religiosity.

As Lagos governor and a leader in the Southwest where religion was for a long time emasculated by politics and culture, Mr Fashola should show a holistic grasp of the new politics, understand its current but increasingly changing underpinnings, worry about the gradual erosion of the cultural leitmotif in Southwest politics, and enunciate what needs to be done by a vulnerable Southwest to arrest the sectarian extremism convulsing the north of Nigeria. Denouncing the call for a Christian successor, especially in the brusque and sarcastic manner Mr Fashola has needlessly done, is open to misinterpretations. One of his listeners last Monday could be forgiven if he thought the governor had his own candidate, and that that candidate was in fact a Muslim.

Mr Fashola is thought to be an isolationist, as this column speculates in the preceding essay. Otherwise, he should wisely begin to see the call for a Christian successor in Lagos both beyond its face value and as a gentle but frightening stirring in the coming diminution and enervation of politics in the Southwest. What the situation calls for is not suppressed disdain but a proper understanding of the sectarian currents and undercurrents gradually manifesting in Southwest politics, and the need to marshal a union of political and cultural forces to anticipate the course of the problem in the zone and proffer lasting and credible solutions. Like the north was remiss in tackling sectarian extremism early, there is nothing so far to show that the Southwest anticipates this impending complication or appreciates the regional synergy needed to tackle the menace.

May 25, 2014
The transformation is televised

Patriotism is indeed the last refuge of political scoundrels. Whilst we are still on the subject of the epochal crisis rocking Nigeria, has anybody been following the antics of a group of self-styled patriots and intellectual carrion feeders who go by the name of Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria, whatever that means? Sounds more like the infamous Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) and the infamous Dr Aitkins in felonious concert with the author and authority himself, Authur Francis Nzeribe.

Something new always comes out of Nigeria. This is the first time in the history of this noble concept that transformation is being televised and trivialized, and by “ambassadors”, too. Transformation has become a tea party. Rather than rolling up their intellectual sleeves to furnish Jonathan with a position paper on the manifest inadequacies of his underperforming government, they have taken to flights of fancy and abuse of platform.

One would have thought that this empty and pretentious lot would have come up with a rigorous explanation of how transformation can even be whispered in the context of inefficiency, outlandish corruption, a culture of in your face impunity, lack of accountability, sensational stealing of public funds and cosmic incompetence. Instead they have taken to familiar grandstanding, working themselves into a froth with meretricious bunkum. It doesn’t add up, or let us say that it adds up only in their personal bank accounts.

Snooper finds their adverts canvassing and campaigning for Jonathan amidst a monumental crisis of the state particularly offensive and an assault on good taste and common sense. What type of transformation agenda would further seek to inflame passions at this fragile moment? At this moment when Jonathan needs to rally the entire country behind him, they are busy fanning the embers of discord and disaffection. At a time when an entire nation is traumatized by the Chibok tragedy, telling Jonathan on television prime time that those who are for him are so much more than those against him is particularly callous and polarizing.

I had been told that an ambassador is somebody paid to lie for his country abroad. But it appears that this new set of “ambassadors” are paid to lie for their principal principally at home. If this is how serious countries set about transformation, Lee Kuan Yuan , Monhatir Mohammed and Pandit Nehru would be squirming wherever they are. Snooper is bothered about why this kind of national scam appears to be particularly attractive to a particular section of the national intelligentsia. But this is a story for another day.

As profiteers of power and parasites of national misery, let our ambassadors go and enjoy their loot. Nobody is grudging them their good luck. A fool and his money will sooner be parted. And money no dey smell, even where it is procured in the most putrid of circumstances. But our friends must remember that you cannot purchase happiness with the proceeds of other people’s misery and unhappiness. Let them ask their forebears who walked the same path to perdition.

May 25, 2014
‘They say helicopters even drop food for them…!’

To all those who fight for peace…

Reader, I am guessing you are as miffed by this boko haram thing as I am; so is everyone else for that matter, except the principal actors – I mean the bombers, slayers, gunners and hell-raisers, as well as their sponsors. Now, you and I know that every disagreement has three sides. There is the side that proposes the argument. ‘You this woman, you have started again today. What do you mean by asking me for your Ankara money this early Monday morning when I have not even been to work?’ Then there is the opposing side that responds violently. ‘If you had given me on Sunday night, I would not have asked you on Monday morning. Now, where is my money?’

Then there is the third party. S/He is the one who is interested in the content and quality of the put-downs, repartees, knock-outs flying around from both sides. He or she goes ‘Ah, what he is really saying is that you are stupid and unintelligent’ to one side and ‘Ah, what she’s really saying is that you are wicked, stubborn and untrustworthy. Are you going to stand for that?’ to the other side. Before you know it, there is a fantastic conflagration consuming the domicile of the dundees, organized and cleverly orchestrated by the interested third party because the others are too stupid to know better.

My knowledge of third party is honestly limited to the insurance I subscribe to in the interest of peace on the road; for me, that is, not the other speed-crazed maniacs flavouring our roads now. Anyway, my Third Party insurance is nothing but a document that says ‘Police, please let me pass; I left a pot of soup on the stove at home’. I have always thought that the insurance exists because; one, the police is invariably one to block one’s road; two, I am toooooo poor to pay the full insurance sum; and three, have you seen what a full insurance sum is lately? Phew, they are enough to make you cough. Worse still, you could finish paying the full sum for the blessed car, then the full sum of the insurance, only to hear the car begin to literally cough! Oh no, swearing at it cannot help you at that point. You just slowly must find your way to the mechanic while your insurance man zooms past you in his new car bought with … you guessed it.

The existence of third parties reminds me of a quizzical line in one of Achebe’s poems in Girls at War: ‘if something stands, something else must stand by it’. If you don’t believe me, just look at our governors in Nigeria. Can you point to one of them who is able to stand without his godfather standing beside him? Many of us have asked the presidency to reveal to us the sponsors of boko haram so that some of us brave ones can march right up to them and poke our digits in their cataract-filled eyes. But Mr. President will not. I think he is more afraid of my eye-poking abilities. Seriously though, anyone can see that those boko haram boys are nothing but rudderless ships living on the fringes of society and looking for someone to direct and feed them on account of having so little state intervention in their lives. So, along comes the third party who sweetly convinces your fringe-liver that killing other people in order to qualify for food is healthy living. That is your unconscionable third party.

From what we know, it is this third party, i.e., the feeders and sponsors, who put guns, bombs, devices, cars, 4-wheel drive vehicles, SUVs, etc., into the calloused, unschooled, unsociable, hungry hands of the fringe-livers. Indeed, we hear the sponsorship is so well organized that helicopters even drop food for them in their camps in the bushes! Whether this is a fact or a rumour, we cannot say but coincidences have ways of suggesting things to one’s head. How come these people are better fed in the bushes than those of us at home? Eh? So, from initially fighting with nothing but their adamantine will power, the boko haram has now graduated to fighting with sophisticated armoury that is procured and paid for by someone so lacking in self-love and so filled with self-hate. Anyone who loves anything about himself will appreciate others a bit. So, instead of giving these poor things living on the fringes of society bread, we are allowing the third party to give them snakes to play with by concealing their identity. This is where we need to direct our search: we need to know who they are.

After getting no response from Oga-on-top, I directed my footsteps to the internet from where I got many theories. The first theory says that the boko haram is being sponsored by some ex-military leaders from the north for their own personal or religious reasons. Perhaps so, perhaps not, we cannot tell; but, you will agree there have been too many rumours regarding this fact. Once, we heard that some boko haram members had been arrested in connection with a blast but orders came from ‘above’ that they be released. I ask you, I ask you!

Here you are, filled with indignation that someone could sit down somewhere and plan the destruction of someone else, and is caught for same after a great deal of evidence and pursuit, only for ‘orders’ to null all that work. Talk of corruption indeed. Why then do we bother to even search for culprits after each episode? I guess we should just fold our arms and sigh each time a bomb goes off since somewhere along the path of investigations, someone can come and say ‘Nay, I see no fault in this man’.

I next read of another theory that gave a very long and twisted account of how a superpower is orchestrating the whole thing from outside Nigeria in order to unbalance and destabilize the country, out of jealousy. Citing the internet site that is known for revealing internet mails, the account further told of how that country had gone to great lengths to recruit, train and fund members of the boko haram to cause mayhem everywhere. It also told of how that country does not want this country to reach its super power destiny. I honestly did not know whether to laugh or cry at that story but I did one thing. I immediately went into my super-prayer mode. I spat out that any force or person or power who says Nigeria will not fulfill her destiny will be consigned to the hottest hell fire, Amen! Thank you ever so kindly for echoing that with me. Imagine the nonsense!

There is yet a third account which says that boko haram members obtain their own sponsorship by blackmailing the big guns in the north to part with their hard-stolen cash. They also get some money by raiding neighbouring villages and towns. Hmm! What are we to make of this but that the falcon can no longer hear the falconer? If the little ‘uns now command the big ‘uns, I tell you things have fallen apart indeed up there.

How the centre is still managing to hold is beyond me. A quotation that made the rounds in the eighties says, ‘if you can still manage to keep your head when all around you are losing theirs, then maybe you don’t understand the situation’. Nay, I think the presidency understands that all of this is leading to a cataclysmic chaos if peace is not pursued quickly, whatever the source of their sponsorship. I think one way out is to reveal the identity of those sponsors. Believe me, the insect eating the leaf is really on the leaf.

May 25, 2014
2014 not a good year for Nigerian arms

AN unwholesome impression has been created in many foreign capitals that Nigerian soldiers are afraid to engage Boko Haram militants in the ongoing war in the Northeast. While it is evident that our troops have retreated almost consistently in every engagement with the suicidal sect, it is hardly because they are afraid. They may have become complacent and enervated by years of peace, luxury and the easy privileges their uniforms undeservedly confer on them in the towns and cities of Nigeria, however, their unwillingness to fight may have nothing to do with any intrinsic cowardice. They may be reluctant to start a battle with the sect in the vast and impossible terrains of the Northeast, but that indolence may not be related to the harshness of the weather or the strangeness of the host cultures. The reason for their diffidence may in fact not be far from their instinctive abhorrence of the chaos and decay that have overwhelmed the federal government, not to say the corruption and chaos from which the military itself is not insulated. Why, they ask themselves, should anyone sacrifice his life for a country where oil, pension and power contracts thieves, among many others, are celebrated and canonised?

However, what is even more shocking about the past four weeks in particular is not the continuing decline of governance, something we already embraced with deep resignation, or the presidency’s lack of virtue and principles cruelly epitomised by both the Olusegun Obasanjo and Jonathan governments, but the poignant and unsparing vituperations against the person of Dr Jonathan by foreign media and governments. There is not one medium or foreign government that has not derided Dr Jonathan. They deplore his style, and they gape at his amazing lack of attention. They are bemused by his policies, which they describe as universally inept, and they are galled by his unimaginative responses to the creative destructiveness of militant organisations in Nigeria. While highly critical foreign governments are more tactful in deploring Dr Jonathan’s methods, the foreign media all but describe him as a mannequin in power.

That Dr Jonathan has attracted universal opprobrium is not particularly surprising; after all, the Nigerian media, save a few writers inured to reality, have been merciless on the president. But the country had managed Dr Jonathan so gingerly over the years that he looked set to romp into the next polls quite as remorseless and unperturbed as ever. He would have secured the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party as an average and undistinguished incumbent, but nonetheless as a president. He would have gone on to campaign with the ordinary effusiveness of a politician gifted with an undeserving ticket, mouthing achievements that were hard to find, let alone feel. He would have, as usual, good-humouredly embraced and defended every electoral chicanery the more relentless and ruthless of his party apparatchiks could muster without the prickly restraint of his delicate conscience that has morphed over the years in the distorted milieu of his acquired theology.

But now if he runs, he will do so as a hostage to the money power around him. He will run not because he has anything to give, and campaign not because he has anything to say, but because to do otherwise would be unthinkable and costly for his rapacious caucus. The reason for this drastic change of circumstances is the year 2014, and in particular, the past four weeks. If the reader will permit my adapting a Churchillian metaphor about French wines and military defeat, it is clear that 2014 is not a good year for Nigerian arms. Not only has Boko Haram punished us relentlessly and audaciously, it has masterminded the brazen kidnap of schoolgirls with all the dangerous and revolting connotations of sexual slavery. The sect has demonstrated an astonishing capacity for evil, and more adeptness at infiltrating the Nigerian military. By reason of the activities of moles, the Nigerian camp is as open to the rebels as the rebel camp is closed to the Nigerian troops.

The Jonathan government celebrates what it describes as the restriction of Boko Haram to the Northeast instead of the sporadic attacks the sect was making some years back. But the sect has merely changed tactics by repudiating its previous tendency to overextend its operational matrices, while concentrating on a more manageable theatre of battle for maximum impact. In that self-imposed cocoon, Boko Haram has deployed more viciousness and inflicted horrendous punishment on the civil society and to some extent the military marooned in their barracks. The consequence is that it is in fact the Nigerian troops that are overextended and demoralised, and are sometimes outgunned and outmanoeuvred. Before the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted, there was little tactical wizardry on display by the Nigerian Army, and no remarkable battles won. According to some sources, the soldiers were running into ambushes wielding low-calibre and misfiring weapons, and were even allegedly short-paid their allowances. The problem came to a head last week at Maimalari Barracks in Maiduguri when some of the soldiers violently disobeyed orders, leaving commanders scrambling to determine whether the soldiers’ behaviour constituted mutiny or not.

Dr Jonathan has passively acquiesced to foreign military help from over five countries. Soon after it became obvious that external help had materialised, the president glibly declared that Boko Haram was on its way to defeat. He also tactlessly ruled out negotiations with the sect over the abducted girls when he should have left his options open. I loathe negotiating with terrorists, but considering the fact that world unanimity and support looked set to compel Boko Haram to let the girls go, the president ought to have been more circumspect. The president’s newfound vitality evoked a World War II scenario when allied powers managed to evacuate from French beaches hundreds of thousands of their troops entrapped by the advancing German Army. On that occasion, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, cautioned his exuberant countrymen that wars were not won by evacuations.

It is now common knowledge that Nigerian troops have no answer to Boko Haram. It is not an enviable reputation to have. The foreign help Nigeria is receiving at the moment is essentially to rescue the schoolgirls. But even if the help transmutes into a longer and larger effort to help contain the sect, it would still amount to merely dealing with the symptoms. Given the way Dr Jonathan has spoken and acted, an approach the world has roundly condemned as unimaginative and superficial, there is absolutely nothing to indicate he, his aides and military commanders understand what to do about the sect or any other militant group still hibernating. In terms of policy, the government is vacuous. In terms of fighting unconventional warfare, the effort has so far been shambolic. And in terms of winning the confidence of the populace, the government’s repressive and insensitive approach to law enforcement has made its efforts appear dubious and desultory.

The challenges of the modern era, whether military, economic, societal or religious, require the highest form of intellectual appreciation of very complex and interconnected issues. The Jonathan government has not shown any iota of competence in that regard, nor have his cabinet and military shown the qualification and intuition necessary to tackle the challenges of the day. If he wins in 2015, is there hope that Dr Jonathan’s six years of impotence on the throne would abate in the next four years after 2015? I doubt. Indeed, it is highly unlikely.

There is no proof that Boko Haram or its independent splinter groups can be permanently defeated even with foreign help. If Dr Jonathan had the requisite competence, and the Nigerian military deployed the right measures in the sect’s early years, Boko Haram would not have metamorphosed into the dragon it has become. Foreign troops will not help Nigeria beyond exercising the military option; and as everyone knows, military option alone, even if we were capable of delivering it with the expertise and ingenuity the times demand, will not resolve the increasing disposition of Nigerians to violent resistance to fundamental or state-inspired disequilibrium. The Nigerian civil war produced its heroes; so far the Boko Haram war has produced none. Indeed, it seems that in the end, only villains will be produced. But perhaps I exaggerate.

May 18, 2014
The Tragic Presidency

Like a badly damaged second hand tape, the Jonathan presidency is unraveling before our very eyes, reeling its way into a tangled mass of confusion. It is not a funny sight, more so since Goodluck Jonathan started out with an outpouring of genuine national good will. All that has disappeared now, leaving in its wake angry nationals and affronted citizens. Increasingly, Jonathan himself is looking like a tragic figure but without the elemental force of personality, the grand passions and the towering pathos of those titans of historical tragedy.

Of late, he has been showing some irritability and testy distemper which sit oddly with the carefully cultivated and calibrated image of a man of Olympian equanimity and profound self-possession. Manipulated by his own manipulations and by the mannequins of power and state marionettes surrounding him, he is beginning to imagine himself as a victim of some apocalyptic conspiracy on a national and international scale.

The past fortnight must have been a nightmare. History moves like a cattle rustler: silently, secretively and with much stealth. Six weeks ago, no one could have imagined Chibok and the Bring Back our Girls Campaign. But now they are with us, and the venom and international outpouring of grief have exposed the septic underbelly of the Jonathan presidency. It is unlikely to survive the opprobrium. When all is quiet, it shall be said that at a time of grave national emergency, Jonathan dithered and dissimulated when he ought to have acted with swift expediency and compassion for the victims.

But let no one rejoice. This is a collective tragedy. It is a collective tragedy because Jonathan is a product of our collective imagination. In rooting for him, we plumbed for youth and national idealism at the expense of experience and granite integrity. It was a defining moment in our national history. For once, most Nigerians spoke with one voice, which was that there must be no ethnic bar or barrier preventing any Nigerian from aspiring to the highest office in the land. The Nigerian presidency is not the perpetual birthright of any religious cabal or ethnic conclave however self-regarding or self-perpetuating.

Yet as Shakespeare famously noted, youth is a stuff that will not endure. Neither is national idealism particularly when not leavened by pragmatic expediency. Jonathan may well be a mess. But he is not just his own mess. He is our mess. We must bear this in mind as we contemplate the tragic mess of the Jonathan presidency. Going forward, we must focus on the ball and not be distracted by attractive but meretricious ephemerality. This is the only way to learn the correct lesson from the tragedy unfolding.

Jonathan’s die-hard apologists are wont to see an ethnic conspiracy in even the most innocuous of criticisms. But they have forgotten that the Jonathan presidency is itself a product of a grand pan-ethnic conspiracy. They often point out that some people had vowed to make Nigeria ungovernable if a “foreigner” should come to power. But no one can be forced to stumble unless such a person is already predisposed to wobbling. In any case, it is a reflection of Jonathan’s miserable gifts as a leader of a complex multi-ethnic nation if he is unable to hold together the pan-ethnic alliance that propel him to power in the first instance. People make history but never under the circumstances of their choice.

But as usual, we may be looking for the wrong lesson in the right place. The presidency of any nation is a perpetual work in progress. A particular president needs not be a great person or a great president. It is in the nature of human folly and modern anxiety that we expect too much from a president without factoring into the equation the circumstances of presidential progeny. If only when the time comes, and very soon, too, Jonathan will bid goodbye to the presidency with the same courtesy, civility and decorum with which he acceded in the first instance, history will give him a grudging applause. This is a glorious legacy that will survive the current appalling mess.

But if he were to plunge a country that he owes so much into a terminal civil war in a futile bid to hold on to power, he stands the chance of entering the history books as the worst ruler in Nigeria’s blighted history. Even a poor ruler must have a sense of an ending, or he may invite a terrible tragedy on himself and his nation. That end appears to be in sight for the tragic presidency of Dr Goodluck Jonathan.

This morning, in order to arrive at a correct perspective of what is going on, we publish excerpts from two old pieces which welcomed Jonathan’s ascendancy but which also foreshadowed its tragic trajectory. The one hailed his surefootedness in negotiating the political landmines while the other compared him with President Gerald Ford. Perhaps it will help Jonathan’s most rabid propagandists to regain their balance and sense of perspective.

May 18, 2014
Does the president need help?

I’m afraid, he is the only one that can help himself

It is not in my character to react to people’s comments. But I found the comment by Jide Ajani of Vanguard titled “Goodluck Jonathan: A president in need of help” quite interesting. The beautiful piece was published in the May 11, 2014 edition of Vanguard. The piece was a recap of the Presidential Chat of May 4 and the dinner that followed.

It is not that Ajani said anything that we did not know. But the beauty in his write-up is that what he said was not based on conjecture or wild imaginations, but an account of what took place at the president’s residence. When, for instance, we say Nigeria’s rulers are surrounded by sycophants, we tend to see the sycophants as some ghosts that mill around the seat of power, ever ready to sing the praise of whoever is in charge. This ‘dance-on-we-are-solidly-behind-you orchestra’ is as old as the country’s seat of power; perhaps older. I cannot recollect any government where they did not feature; interestingly, they almost always have the ears of those in power. This means that our rulers love being deceived or flattered. The sycophants last so long in government while those who say it as it is don’t.

Those who have worked closely with some of our political rulers, including presidents, governors and even local government chairmen know that this is one of their worst challenges. A former governor in the south-west had an information and strategy team when he became governor. For the better part of his first term, this team functioned well and was able to help the government, which also made the job easy for the team by its initial impressive performance. But decline set in when political considerations and petty ego took over, with sycophants making the governor to see only what he wanted to see.

There is no doubt that it takes the grace of God for one to be able to maintain a cool head while occupying certain influential positions. One will indeed pity these rulers when you see the caliber of people deceiving them (the rulers) usually for what to eat and sometimes for inexplicable reasons when one realises that some of the sycophants are men and women of means and not those of straw. Even many of us who only have the privilege of managing a few hundreds of people sometimes become something else with the little powers in our hands.

Most of us saw the last presidential chat and we rated it poorly as usual; vintage President Jonathan. But, according to Ajani, the president’s handlers hailed the performance. Hear him: “At the end of the two-hour session, the coterie of staff and a few friends were all smiles. ‘Mr. President, well done’; ‘Mr. President, that was a good one’; ‘Mr. President, that was great”. Those were the comments from virtually everyone around. So, you needed to do a reality check: Were these guys referring to the same media chat that had just ended; a chat that saw Mr. President avoiding some questions and instead launching into a series of expeditions? But then, you were quickly reminded that by Mr. President’s own standards, this was one of the best performances”.

Now, to specifics, quoting Ajani again: “On the question of corruption and the NNPC, President Jonathan missed some points. He did not need to attempt to define corruption and its relationship with stealing. He did not also need to drag the legislature into it – by saying he smelt legislative dictatorship in the conduct of the activities of the House of Representatives; he also did not need to attempt to draw a parallel between corruption, inflated pump-head price of petrol and the popular rally of January 2012.

“On the need to curtail the excesses of petroleum products’ marketers who are selling beyond the official rate, President Jonathan sounded very distant. There is the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, statutorily mandated to monitor activities in the sector. But Mr. President first embarked on a voyage of disbelief; that he finds it difficult to believe that the claim was true; and that Nigerians were responsible for the serial inhumanity against fellow Nigerians. Then suddenly, Mr. President remembered that there was DPR which, he admitted, should begin to do its job”.

This is what Mr. President’s aides were commending. Curiously, Ajani singled out presidential spokesman Reuben Abati and Labaran Maku, the Minister of Information, as being different from the pack. Well, I do not know whether he merely said this to humour them because, I may not know Maku well but the Abati I knew would have written volumes and volumes of negative things about the Jonathan presidency if he is not involved. I said I do not know if he is humouring the duo because Ajani spoke of Maku in the same piece thus: “Watching our Information Minister on CNN, shouting and attempting to use decibel to break down their microphone smacks of panic response. Yet, I can bet you, as indecorous as that action may be, there would be some people in the Villa who would say, ‘Well done, Mr. Minister,’ ‘You did well, Mr. Minister’.

Of course, we do not need Ajani to tell us that people who commended this kind of terrible media chat were jesters. I have no problem with the president surrounding himself with jesters, but they must be quality ones and not those who “cracked jokes that were at once dry and unproductive”, as Ajani puts it.. With this kind of jesters in the Villa, the president’s sense of judgment in recruiting his aides or even choosing those around him becomes questionable.

Even if they are deceiving someone and those deceiving the person pretend not to know they are deceiving him, the person being deceived ought to know when he is being flattered. If your handlers say you had a great performance today and the next day, the media and other opinion moulders condemn the very thing they said was a scintillating performance, then you should know something is wrong somewhere. The worst disservice many Nigerian rulers do to themselves is to see every criticism as being politically motivated. If, for instance, any news medium said the president did well during that chat, that medium would be shooting itself in the foot. If it persists along that line in its treatment of matters from or concerning the Jonathan presidency, it is only a matter of time for that medium to begin to rely on crutches from the seat of power instead of its own integrity and professionalism for survival, and consequently consign itself to history. President Jonathan would be naive to think that the media can do well by reporting that he is doing well when even the blind can see that he is not. The media mirror the society even as they set the agenda.

Matters are not helped by President Jonathan’s kith and kin in the Niger Delta who believe that their ‘son’ is being vilified because of where he comes from. I find this sickening because the president has not just ‘naturalised’ as a south-south indigene; we knew he was from there when he was massively voted in in 2011. If today the music has changed or is fast changing, it has nothing to do with where the president comes from; it is more of a function of a people who are disappointed that the man they invested a lot of hope in three years back does not have an idea of how to solve any of the country’s multifarious problems.

Then the president’s wife, Patience. We know that there is little we can do concerning what God has joined together. We also know that love is thicker than water; even if Mr President has not done full disclosure by giving us an idea of how madam performs at the home front, her marital and conjugal duties and all, but we know her meddlesomeness in governance is unhelpful to her husband and the country.

One thing that President Jonathan should understand is that he cannot be doing the same thing the same way and expect a different result. I do not know if it is not late in the day for him to retrace his steps because if the perception of his government must change, then he has to do away with many of those aides that have been giving him the wrong feedback about how Nigerians rate him and his government. I know political exigencies and even the fear of missing their melodious even if ultimately injurious tunes may not make that possible. But the ball is in his court. As they say, ‘heaven helps those who help themselves’.

May 18, 2014
On really bad days, electricity goes for only about five hours: ambiguous thoughts on an enclave of light in a sea of miasmic darkness

I swear it. For a very, very long time, I have been meaning to write about this experience that I share with neighbours at my part of Oke-Bola in Ibadan: we have electricity supply nearly all the time, day and night, day in and day out, from week to week and month to month. And this has been going on for more than three years now. We are, you might say, an enclave of light in a sea of darkness that surrounds us once you get past an invisible line that separates us from Oke-Ado and other areas of the city along the Ijebu Bypass Road that leads out of Ibadan toward Lagos going by the old route that goes right through the city. It has been on my mind for a long time now to write about this experience in this column, but somehow, I have never got round to doing so until now.

I hesitate to say why I have not written about this experience even though I have been dying, metaphorically speaking, to write about it. I hesitate because I am frankly embarrassed by the reason. For the truth is that I have been somewhat superstitious, feeling rather irrationally that once I write publicly about it, then perhaps our great privilege in enjoying stable and regular power supply when other major areas and sections of the city are in darkness most of the time, will disappear. When you live in a country where very few good things happen, a country where life, daily life is very hard, very challenging for nearly everyone rich and poor, if one good thing happens and keeps happening, you worry deep down that it can’t and won’t last. More pointedly, you worry that if you talk about the good thing happening consistently to you and your neighborhood, if you as it were broadcast it to the whole world, then it will be taken away from you. Well, at last, I am writing about it now, superstition be damned! But getting rid of the superstition is easy, what of the myriad of other ambiguous feelings and thoughts that go with this unique privilege that I and my neighbours enjoy?

Before I get into this question, it is perhaps necessary to give some real-life context for the discussion. You see, about six years ago, power supply in our neighborhood was as bad as anywhere else in Ibadan or in the country for that matter, with the exception of course of Aso Rock Villa and the Mansions of the Executive Governors of the states of the federation. The situation was so bad that I bought, at different times, three electricity generators. One was very large and could carry everything in my own small household and also keep the borehole that met our water needs running. The second generator was of medium scale and could keep all power-driven equipments and appliances working, with the exception of electric cookers and my microwave oven. The third and smallest generator was used to keep appliances like the fans, the radio and the television set running when NEPA struck, as it did all the time. On top of the three generators, I also invested in an inverter that was a sort of standby for the times when neither NEPA nor the generators were of any use. For sometimes, all the generators broke down from overuse. Discovering this, I bought the inverter so that when NEPA and the generators colluded with one another and plunged my house into darkness and unbearable heat, I could turn to the saving grace of the stored power in the inverter.

That was about six years or so ago. Things were so bad then in my neighborhood with power outages – as in nearly all other neighborhoods in Ibadan and the country – that I even wrote about it in a series in this column which was then appearing in The Guardian on Sunday under a slightly different name. I wrote about it with some self-deprecating, self-directed irony in investing so heavily in generators and an inverter just so as to have the basic necessities of life in the 21st century. In the series, I wrote that all that investment in generators and an inverter was made not just for ease and comfort but because in my line of work, I have to have power supply all the time. This is because I read, write and do research nearly all the time. I must keep up with the state of knowledge in my fields of academic expertise and I must stay in touch with my students through the internet. This is true for all academics, at least the dedicated ones among them. And as a dedicated academic, when and if you’re prevented by power outages from doing your work, especially repeatedly and endlessly, you begin to, as the saying goes, “lose it”.

In that same series about six years ago, I also wrote that having three generators and an inverter constituted only a part of something much larger and more portentous that was gradually happening nearly everywhere in our country without anyone paying much attention to it and pondering its consequences. Simply stated, I said that nearly every household in the country was gradually turning into a municipality in itself and for itself: you generate and supply your own electricity; you supply your own water through boreholes; you provide your sanitation services by contracting the collection and disposal of your waste and garbage through private contractors. And you even supply your own safety and security needs by hiring night guards and watchmen. In my youth and up to my young adulthood when I taught at the Universities of Ibadan and Ife, all these were municipal services that were met by public utilities and law and enforcement agencies. God bless the old PDW, the Public Works Department!

Erratic and inadequate power generation and supply was at the base of that extreme and compulsory atomization and privatization of municipal services in our country. The cost in value added production to the economy is incalculable. The cost in needless, avoidable lack of human comfort, safety and security is simply beyond calculation. For those among us who in the course of our professional lives travel a lot around the world, it is extremely burdensome to come back again and again to one’s country to find daily life under the bondage of erratic and inadequate power supply. The private power generators are at work nearly all the time and are contributing their own share to the excessive noise pollution that reigns in our country. Night life, civilized, recreational night life in Ibadan has more or less disappeared. Not too long ago, Eddie and Bene Madunagu and I had cause to drive from one end of the city to another late at night because we had stayed too long in a visit to a friend. As we rode through the city, we all fell silent, awed by the sense that we were travelling through a ghost city, everyone indoors, nearly every area we passed through enveloped by a darkness that was so pristine, so miasmic that it felt as if we were back to the beginnings of time before creation. At last Bene broke the silence and asked me, “BJ, are we still in Ibadan”?

My neighborhood in Oke-Bola is in Ibadan and we are in a state of euphoria because we have power supply most of the time, and nearly round the clock. On the bad days, the really bad days, electricity goes for at most five to six hours. And this has been the case, the reality for about three years now. I think I speak for everybody in the neighborhood when I say that while we are very happy that we are enjoying this euphoric privilege of having constant and regular power supply most of the time, we are not sure how long it will last. To tell the truth, we are all doubtful that it will last. In our country, hope and faith are not based on the assurances of the realities and amenities of 21st century civilization; they are based on the mantra that “God is in control, IJN”! In the face of the great uncertainties and hardships that the great majority of our peoples everywhere in the country face on a routine basis, hope and faith cannot be pinned on the performance of government and the utilities – unless and until people experience good performance as a constant, invariant reality.

So, I am sure that I will be hearing from some of my neighbours after this essay appears in print. I can well imagine what they will be saying to me. “Ah, Professor, why have you written about this matter in your column? Why are you drawing attention to us? You want them to come and take it away from us? Don’t you expect that other neighborhoods will protest and NEPA or PHCN will have to take it away so that they don’t appear to be practicing favoritism to one area and dishing out discrimination and deprivation to other areas?” Well, I am preparing myself for such queries from my neighbours. Good fortune – if our constant and regular power supply is indeed a happenstance of good fortune – should not be hoarded and kept to oneself, one’s community only; it should be shared by all and for the benefit of everybody. Every religious faith and every secular ethical system preaches that profoundly humanistic expression of generosity of spirit. Le there be light – to every neighborhood, every corner of the land.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

May 18, 2014
How close is Nigeria to federalism? (3)

If the South is to take care of environmental challenges resulting from oil and gas exploitation, why can the North not find solutions to the problem of diminishing land for cattle grazing in the North?

We concluded last week’s piece on the note that the North’s desire to make the current Centralism the defining character of the Nigerian State encouraged it to present a position paper that views the North as the major shareholder of the Nigerian State while the former Eastern and Western regions are minor shareholders. We added that constructing Nigeria as a space occupied by main and minor owners is, more likely than not, capable of threatening the national unity that the North seems eager to sustain.

Just about every page of the 46-page paper on “Northern Nigeria: The Back Bone and Strength of Nigeria” is marked by inflation of the self (the North) and deflation of the other (the South). The major motifs celebrate the North as the sole financier of Nigeria as a whole and of the South in particular. This self-adulation makes it easy for the North to claim that Nigeria is using the demand for resource control to victimize it, in order not to show appreciation for what the paper called the willingness of the North to sacrifice its own interests for the development of Nigeria: “The North sacrifices in resources and human life to develop the oil industry, and protect the Niger Delta from total eclipsing by the protagonist of the Biafra contraption.”

Claiming further that the contribution of petroleum to Nigeria’s economy is exaggerated, the North wants the country to remember that its contribution to agriculture is more substantial than the funds allocated to the region from petroleum earnings. For example, it claims that the funds allocated to the region’s largest state, Kano, come to an average of N462 per person per month and that it is other self-generated “sources that provide the bulk of the revenue for sustenance than the revenue received from the Centre.” If Kano is able to generate more revenue than what it takes from the Federation Account, perhaps, the North needs to re-examine its opposition to federalism. Most proponents of federalism base their argument on the premise that subnational governments are in a better position to bring development to citizens.

With respect to contributions to the economy of the country and of states, figures for 2005 available at the Federal Ministry of Finance demonstrate that no other activity brings as much to the Federation Account as petroleum: 88.1% of revenue to the Federation Account came from mineral resources during the first four months of 2005. If this figure is accurate, this shows that the contribution to the federation account is not exaggerated and counters the North’s claim about “fallacious assumption that oil is the major contributor to the national income.” The North also needs to examine some other points about federal allocation to states. For example, in November 2013 revenue allocation to the regions is as follows: North West N28,330.739.1; North East N21,366.583.3; North Central N25,935,033.7 with the North earning 56.9% while the South earns N132, 727,401.15 43.02% distributed as follows: SS N19,989.106.9, South East N16, 433.120.2; and South West N20, 672.818.3. In addition, Local governments during the same month in 2013 received the following allocations: North West N34,269,981.8, North East N21,387,387.1, North Central N23,250,883 adding up to N78,908.252.6 2, or 54.9% in contrast to the following allocations to the South: South-South N21,684,502, South East N16,404.741.38, South West N26,856.234.4 with a total of N64,945.477.98 or 45.1%. If these figures from the Federal Ministry of Finance are accurate, then the oil-producing areas are making substantial contribution to the development of the North in a way similar to the North’s claim that it made substantial contributions to the development of the South between 1914 and 1946.

The North’s desire for further strengthening of the current Centralist constitution, designed to provide additional advantages to the “owner of 80% of the country’s land mass” appears to have forced the North to accommodate a lot of omissions and contradictions in its “Key Issues before the Northern Delegates to the 2014 National Conference.” One of such omission is the North’s claim that it helps the economy of the South by sending cattle to the region. Was the North not paid for the cattle it sent to the South? When the North claims to have contributed cattle tax revenue to the federation account, it must have forgotten that it was the buyers of the cattle sent from the North to the South that paid such taxes, along with the cost of the cattle supplied to the region. A similar omission is the claim by the North that it supplies agricultural produce to the South, as if it gives such produce to the South free of charge.

One contradiction is the North’s call for an immediate end to all forms of special initiatives for the South: Ministry of Niger Delta, NNDC, at the same time that the North calls for special assistance from the federal government for agriculture in the North. How is the call for special grazing corridors and reserves all over the federation for cattle farmers from the North devoid of special initiatives for the benefit of the North? If the South is to take care of environmental challenges resulting from oil and gas exploitation, why can the North not find solutions to the problem of diminishing land for cattle grazing in the North? Modern animal husbandry methods in other countries have put a stop to any form of nomadic cattle breeding.In addition, the claim by the North that the federal government has abandoned funding for agriculture in the North is not supported by what has been spent on agriculture as parastatals’ expenditures so far in 2014: N17.166.3 million or 57% of total expenditure in contrast to N12.850.1 million or 42.8% in the South. The ratio of expenditures on water resources shows that N12.307.2 million or 62.9% of federal funds has been spent in the North while N7 million or 37.1% has been spent in the South.

The North’s demand “that Traditional Rulers should be accorded specific responsibilities with commensurate delegated authority for security management” and for inclusion of “traditional institutions at national, state and local levels in the areas of religion, security, and immigration matters” assumes that Nigeria is no longer neither a secular State nor a Republic. Furthermore, by invoking the 1999 Constitution to support the North’s claims, the region forgets that it is the flaws in the 1999 constitution that necessitate National Assembly’s efforts to amend the constitution as well as the convening of the ongoing national conference by President Jonathan.

For the sake of sustaining the country’s unity, it is necessary for all the regions to avoid self-celebration and denigration of other regions in their position papers at a conference that is charged to find ways to enhance the country’s unity and make it sustainable.

May 18, 2014