The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Granting amnesty to kidnappers

    Granting amnesty to kidnappers

    Nigeria is a blessed nation. Its people are unbelievable. Its leaders are ingenious. Quite very ingenious leaders! From the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to the incumbent Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, our leaders have been incredible. Take, for instance, the late President Umar Sheu Yaradua. He met on ground a delicate situation in the oil rich Niger- Delta, which, if not well managed, could have torn the nation apart. Niger Delta youths were angry. Perhaps, reasonably so. They felt they were not getting a fair share of the natural resources which nature has endowed their land with. Consequently, they resorted to militancy to draw the attention of appropriate authorities to their grievances. Thus, began an era of sorrow, tears and blood in the Niger Delta. It was so bad that estimated national revenue from oil started to dwindle since expatriates working in the various oil fields across the region had to flee for fear of the rampaging militants. Sadly, as much as the various security agencies tried, they were no match for the excessively aggressive and determined Niger-Delta militants.

    This was, indeed, the situation when the late President Yaradua came into the picture. Widely acclaimed as the very first graduate president to rule over the country, Yaradua did not disappoint. The scientist that he was, he took the Niger-Delta problem to the laboratory and after series of experiments; he eventually came out with a very innovative result which gave birth to the now famous amnesty programme. The core feature of the programme is for militants, who are willing to embrace the Federal Government olive branch to surrender their weapons, within a certain period of time, in exchange for official state pardon.

    Oh, how it worked like magic! Soon, Aso Rock became a Mecca of sort with several leaders of the various militant groups visiting the villa to pay homage to Yaradua as well as pledged their loyalty to the new amnesty arrangement. In a twinkling of an eye, peace returned to the once volatile Niger Delta region. Of course, it has to be. The leaders of the various militant groups secured diverse mouth-watering deals with the Federal Government while some of their foot soldiers were sent to various schools abroad to acquire quality education aside from being put on good monthly salary packages. Thus, while the oil czars smile to the bank, the militants also have their own share of the proverbial national cake. The end result is that everybody is happy.

    Lucky President Goodluck! At the demise of his late Principal, Yaradua, he inherited a peaceful Niger Delta. But, as it is with leadership; he was soon to face his own challenge through the activities of the Islamic insurgence group popularly referred to as Boko Haram. The group, which had been in existence before the Goodluck presidency, for reasons best known to it, chose the occasion of the Jonathan presidency to demonstrate to Nigerians that it could be as daring ( if not more ) as the Niger Delta Militants. Till date, the group has continued to hold the northern part of the country hostage with its numerous acts of terrorism which have led to loss of countless human lives in addition to destruction of limitless private and public properties. The economy of most of the affected northern states, no thanks to Boko Haram activities, is now in shamble.

    Like his late principal, President Goodluck Jonathan is a scientist. Perhaps, a better one at that, considering he holds Ph.D degree in zoology. Many, understandably so, looked forward to the President coming up with his own version of another scientific solution to the Boko Haram crisis which has now led to the inglorious exit of many top security officials from office. With the President keeping his battle strategy against the Islamic sect tight to his chest, prominent northern figures began to agitate for the adoption of the now tested and trusted amnesty option to ward off the Boko Haram challenge. Soon, powerful individuals began to put pressure on the presidency to enter into dialogue with the group for the sake of peace.

    But the President would have none of that. How do you dialogue with a faceless group? He wondered. On an unusual visit to Maiduguri, a city that is perhaps the worst hit in the Boko Haram onslaught, the President foreclosed entering into dialogue with the group by reiterating his earlier held view that it is a group without identity. However, prominent leaders continue to canvass for amnesty with the revered Sultan of Sokoto adding his respected voice to the call. With time, the Federal Government shifted its position on the issue. A committee, as it is always the case, comprising eminent Nigerians, has been put in place to fashion out strategies that would bring about engagement with the Boko Haram. Most analysts see this step as a prelude to the process that will lead to granting amnesty to the Boko Haram group. To those who support this plan, if amnesty is working wonders in the Niger Delta, it should bring about the much needed peace in the crisis- ridden northern states.

    Now, as we contemplate granting amnesty to the Boko Haram group, there is another major dissident group in the country that one would like to draw the attention of appropriate authorities and other powerful individuals to. Like the Niger-Delta militants and the Boko Haram, this group is equally angry with the country. They are angry that government has not been able to solve the problem of unemployment. Their anger also stems from wide spread corruption that has continued un-abated in the system coupled with other social ills bedevilling the nation. But unlike the Niger-Delta militants and Boko Haram, their operational style is different. It is not really violent in outlook. They just look out for cash worthy individuals who could be kidnapped, for some time, in exchange for handsome sum of money and the circle continues. Welcome to the world of kidnappers!

    As it was the case with the Niger-Delta militants and the Boko-Haram, government is yet to come up with the much needed solution to tackle the activities of kidnappers across the country. But, why look for another solution when we already have one that is working well? Is it not true that you don’t change a winning formula? To stem the tide of kidnapping in the country, we need to begin the process that will bring up a national discourse on the need to grant amnesty to kidnappers. Respected traditional monarchs, politicians and other powerful individuals across the country should begin to bring the issue to the front burner. The press should, as well, echo it. Kidnappers, on their own, need to form themselves into one powerful association with functioning web site and other channels of modern communication since the government is averse to discussing with faceless groups.

    Before we all become victims of the dastardly act of kidnapping, government should begin to give serious consideration to granting amnesty to kidnappers whose main grouse is joblessness. Like the Niger-Delta militant, they could be sent to good universities abroad and equally place on mouth-watering monthly salaries. As it is often said, no development can take placed without peace. If we are to achieve the much needed national development, we should begin the process of granting amnesty to kidnappers now. Lest I forget, we could also extend the amnesty arrangement to other aggrieved members of the society such as armed robbers, rapists, pipe line vandals, 419ers among others. We must not spare anything in our quest for a peaceful society. This way, our overstretched security agencies would have a break and we shall all live in peace. God bless Nigeria!

    Ogunbiyi is of the Features Unit, Ministry of Information and Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.

     

  • State of emergency superfluous

    State of emergency superfluous

    It requires a huge dose of optimism to trust President Goodluck Jonathan’s instinct in declaring a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. I confess I do not have such an endowment, and I am not careful to hold a contrary position on this very controversial issue. Majority of Nigerians, perhaps 99 percent, favour emergency, and either abusively denounce those who don’t or equate opposition to emergency with support for Boko Haram insurgency. They are entitled to their opinion. The more supporters of emergency work themselves up into a fever over the few of us who see through the president’s manoeuvres, the more convinced I am that both the president and his supporters are misguided and intolerant.

    A day after Jonathan took the plunge and committed the Northeast angrily into emergency, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) spontaneously denounced the declaration and pointed out that the president was in fact playing politics with the issue of insecurity. But one day later, after having had the chance to reflect on the delicate matter and to measure the weight of their courage in the face of massive public endorsement of emergency, the party mellowed its stand from asking the National Assembly to reject emergency to asking them to examine it cautiously. I do not pretend to any of the party’s luxuries. I understand the need for the party to cast a wary, indeed longing, eye on the next general elections, and must therefore be careful not to distance itself too inappropriately from the herd grazing on emergency. But I have no vote to seek, and if I wish, I may even have no vote to cast in 2015.

    Of course the ACN, much more than any other party, did well to publicise its initial opposition to emergency even before it understood which way the cats were jumping. That it has had to quickly modify its original stand merely reflects that its leaders are realists who must watch the ballot box with a defensive keenness that exceeds its vaunted predatory instincts. The scale of support for Jonathan’s emergency declaration must have stunned northern leaders themselves into whooping for the measure, I suspect, against their better judgement. Indeed, in the north, whether among former heads of state or among leading politicians, all we hear is a mellifluous chorus of support for emergency. Obviously, at a time like this, discretion is the better part of valour.

    The dispute over emergency, it must be reiterated, is not about whether Boko Haram needed to be fought and defeated or whether it should be tolerated and pampered. Everyone, except the sect’s members, agrees that the killings in the north needed to be halted. The dispute, therefore, is essentially about methods, not goals. The southern part of Nigeria never liked Boko Haram for one minute, and minced no words in vociferously deploring its methods and objectives, even at the constant and irritating risk of accusing the north of supporting the sect. A corollary of that assumed convergence between the north and the sect is the south’s dismissive characterisation of every northerner who proposes a different perspective of tackling the insurgency as a Boko Haram supporter. Indeed, in my view, the northern part was at first ambivalent to the sect, even seemingly indulgent, and only belatedly horrified and shaken by the huge scale of atrocities the militants were perpetrating.

    Readers of this column will recall my trenchant view of Boko Haram, my opposition to amnesty, except for the sect’s foot soldiers, and only because of the administrative cost of prosecuting every sect member, and my unalloyed support for secularism and democracy. Boko Haram should be fought, and the military should lead the battle. But we must be careful to plan beyond military victory. The question to ask is whether emergency will help the government and the military to explain why they failed to defeat the sect and pacify the region. I suspect it will not. Dr Jonathan’s state of emergency does not only reek of politics, it seems to me a facile and fatuous strategy to divert attention from serious issues pertaining to the long-running campaign against terror in Nigeria, such as the Baga killings. Emergency also conceals the general disinclination of the Jonathan presidency for rigorous thinking and scientific governance and foreshadows a rising dictatorship.

    The Nigerian constitution places the responsibility for security squarely on the shoulders of the president, not in the hands of governors. If anyone was, therefore, remiss in his responsibility for security in the Northeast, it was the president. In fighting Boko Haram, there has been no presidential initiative to deploy forces that the states or local governments disagreed with. Dr Jonathan had the unlimited power to add to and subtract from the number of troops deployed in the war front. He took no input from the governors about tactical deployment, and there was no part of the affected states from which federal forces were barred. Does Jonathan therefore need a state of emergency to raise troop strength? What is he doing now that he couldn’t do without declaring emergency? Warrant to search? Suspension of habeas corpus?

    Section 305 of the 1999 constitution broadly describes the procedure for the proclamation of a state of emergency. As the ACN pointed out in its initial position, emergency was already in force in many parts of the Northeast, but was ineffective. Nobody ever questioned the government’s deployments and even rights abuses until Borno elders began to notice strange killings. In fact, there are no powers granted by emergency proclamation that the people had not already vouchsafed to the president in view of the drastic circumstances of insecurity in those regions. It is, therefore, necessary for to be cautious about emergency and admonish Nigerians on why the proclamation should be considered carefully side-by-side with Sections 33 and 35 of the constitution dealing with the rights of the people. It may even be necessary to draw attention to the entire Chapter IV of the constitution for the public and the National Assembly to appreciate those rights that, in emergency, are or should be non-derogable.

    The proclamation has been sent to the National Assembly, and the two chambers have scheduled a discussion for Tuesday. It is important they remove the fears of the people that Section 305 as applied will not be used inappropriately and narrow-mindedly to derogate the rights of the people under emergency. The legislature must not allow itself to be carried away by popular emotions, nor be blackmailed by the reckless and aggressive support most Nigerians have offered the president. They must carefully determine whether the cause of peace would be served by the liberty the president wishes to take over a war he has largely bungled and prolonged by his dithering.

    By declaring emergency, it seems to me, Dr Jonathan gave the impression that someone else, perhaps the governors of the affected states and their conniving political elite, was to blame for insecurity and Boko Haram. The governors’ economic and social policies probably contributed to the beginnings of the revolt and undoubtedly aggravated it, but it is inconceivable that emergency should be expected to remedy the problem and stamp it out permanently. The president also needed emergency to deflect censorious attention from the alleged atrocities that took place in Baga, Borno State in April. The matter was being probed, until emergency was declared. Not only will the probes now be compromised, it is certain that with emergency, no other probe elsewhere will be entertained. Frightened by the countrywide unanimity of approval for the president’s extraordinary measures, northern leaders have, against their better judgement, abandoned the hapless people of the three states to be sandwiched between the extreme measures of the Nigerian security forces and the brutal fanaticism and extortion of the Boko Haram sect.

    This abandonment is anchored on the indefensible argument, advanced mainly by the south and the presidency, that the people of those states had a duty to expose the sect. In other words damned if they rat on the sect, and damned if for fear of their lives they don’t. I feel for them, and wish we had a more informed, more empathetic and more reflective president. The campaign against Boko Haram failed not because we didn’t have the troops and the logistics to fight the sect, but because the security forces failed to fight a winnable and moral war, and win the confidence of the local populace, as indeed other victorious armies in the world take care to do. It is instructive that while Nigerians were hailing the president’s show of force and firepower in the Northeast, it took a visiting British general, Robert Fry, a former deputy commanding general of the coalition forces in Iraq, to caution against the use of excessive force in the Northeast. But Nigerians would rather those states were smashed to smithereens, and the local populace blamed themselves for not pushing out the militants in their midst. It seems we have lost our senses.

    President Jonathan, I have argued, does not need a state of emergency to take the measures he has just adumbrated. But none in the National Assembly will have the heart to tell him that. I am persuaded that indeed the proclamation reeks of offensive politicking. The Northeast is anti-Jonathan, and will stay so until 2015 and beyond. The president does not have any emotional attachment to those states, and could care less what they feel, as he said when he reluctantly visited them in March. Judging from his anger as he read his speech in a tremulous voice on Tuesday, Dr Jonathan was evidently tormented by his private demons, and was intemperate, unstatesmanlike and full of unnecessary fury. His supposed fierce mien was not, as some imagined, a ploy to display presidential toughness; it instead betrayed his boyish instinct for sophistry, his rustic impulsiveness, and his burgeoning ruthlessness and dictatorial tendency.

    Future generations will recall how, on the excuse of battling insurgency and saving the union, we abandoned to the federal rampage our kith and kin in the Northeast, a majority of whom are law-abiding, and for whom sadly and mortifyingly the rest of the world feels more fellow-feeling than Nigerians. By whooping hysterically for war, rather than for a clinical and brilliant campaign to take out the offending rascals destabilising the union, we seem to say that the problem, whose roots are deeper than military defeat can extirpate, can be destroyed with a massive military blow. Nothing can be further from the reality. Military victory may be achieved in the near future, but it remains to be seen whether the fiery and indecipherable logic of the rebellion and the sect’s promotion of borderless war can be subdued permanently by conventional military tactics.

    But more saddening are those who argue that the president should have sent the governors and their legislative houses packing either for being the cause of this imbroglio or for worsening it. This is simply senseless. Are we so undisciplined that at the first hint of a major trouble we are willing to whimsically dishonour some of the provisions of the constitution, or select which part to obey and which to ignore or downgrade? Strangely, among those who make this nonsensical argument are lawyers and academics who should know better. But it is not only lawyers who are losing their heads, that is, after Aso Villa’s melodramatic buck-passing, even journalists and editorial writers have gone completely irrational. They have not only endorsed Dr Jonathan’s questionable decision to impose emergency, they, who should be the bastion of civil rights and free speech, have issued dire warnings to opposition parties to fall in line behind the president. Already, of course, and as the brusque declaration of curfew in Adamawa showed, executive, judicial and legislative powers have been abridged by the military. The governors will be ceremonial leaders throughout the emergency, even as the affected states may be coaxed into parting with a part of their monthly allocation to the war effort.

    It is necessary for the National Assembly to scrutinise the president’s proclamation very closely and tame it. If, without emergency, the Baga incident elicited so much controversy, what should we expect with the leeway emergency proclamation confers? The legislators must understand that with the events in Rivers State, where federal might is being immoderately and perversely deployed, and the unsupportable and capricious inclusion of Adamawa in the emergency declaration, we are well on our way to a brutal dictatorship. We recall how miserably we fared when we feebly confronted the dictatorship and arbitrariness of the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo presidency; it is up to us if in the face of Dr Jonathan’s political dubieties we begin to prevaricate or, worse, wilt. We should not blame Boko Haram for exposing our poor mettle or northern leaders who failed to rally against the sect. If another president takes us for a ride again, and in the end corrupts and weakens the fabric of our democracy, we have ourselves, our weak legislature and our impressionable press to thank.

  • The “commentariat” in a time of present and looming crises: a personal credo [For Dr. Stanley Macebuh, RIP]

    The “commentariat” in a time of present and looming crises: a personal credo [For Dr. Stanley Macebuh, RIP]

    It is essential to educate the educator himself…

    Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (From Thesis Number 3)

     Ko ni su wa; ko ni re wa (We shall not succumb to defeatism; neither shall we become weary)

    A Yoruba proleptic saying

     

    The question that prompted the musings in this piece is this: Why do I write this column unfailingly every week? To this question, I could respond at a very high level of generality mixed with a desperate hope and idealism and say that I write the column to prevent myself from succumbing to crippling despair. There are two closely linked reasons for this. First is the fact that there is so much that is horribly wrong with our country and the world in which we all live. Secondly, despair is easy, it is tempting because there does not seem to be any forces, any movements on the horizon of the present capable of countering the weight and the direction of the terrible things happening in our country, our continent and the world. In such a historic national, continental and global context in which so much is terrifyingly amiss and so little seems capable of setting things right, writing a weekly column is, at least, a means of keeping hope alive for oneself and one’s readers. Admittedly, this is a very high level of generality for a question as simple and as direct as why one writes a weekly column, but it is – I hope the reader will agree with me on this – a valid, or at least a plausible reason.

    However, rather than starting from such a level of generality on the subject of why I write this column every week, I choose instead to start from a very concrete and particular factor, one that, as far as I am aware, has not been adequately engaged. This is none other than the fact that, without consciously ever intending to do so, I have become a member of what, in an arresting and playful neologism, Victor Ifijeh, the Editor-in-Chief and MD of The Nation, calls the “commentariat”. In other words, I write a weekly column because I am part of this new community or brotherhood or phalanx of the commentariat. I shall come back to the frankly idealistic and desperately hopeful reasons why I write this column, but first, I wish to explore this concrete and particular context of the rise and expansion of a “commentariat” as the background for what I write every week in this column.

    Now, the business of this “commentariat” is to write, punctiliously and diligently, opinions and analyses that are presumptively intended to add depth and perspective to the news reporting that is the main business of newspapers in particular and all forms of broadcast journalism in general. Now, my central observation here is the enormously significant historic and cultural fact that in the last three decades, this commentariat has emerged as perhaps one of the most important features of broadcast journalism in Nigeria. In the present context, I shall say only a little pertaining to the factors that gave rise to this crucial development in Nigerian journalism. Definitely, the role of The Guardian was decisive in this development for it was the first newspaper in Nigeria that more or less forever closed the gap between the popular and the scholarly, the “lowbrow” and the “highbrow” in our country’s newspapers and newsmagazines. In this respect, the role of the late Dr. Stanley Macebuh was cardinal for without him, without his visionary acuity and his intellectual influence, The Guardian could never have had the impact it had on the intellectual content and tone of Nigerian journalism. One proof of this assertion is the fact that the further that that newspaper has moved – in time and in perspectives – from the kind of intellectual leadership that Stanley Macebuh embodied and practiced, the more it has lost its pioneering, leading role in our country’s journalistic culture and ethos.

    Dear reader, does the neologism “commentariat” evoke the word “proletariat” more than it does “secretariat”? For me it certainly does. This, I would argue, is not accidental. For in general, newspaper columnists in Nigeria tend to be progressive, at least in the broadest definition of the term. This, by the way, is also partly a legacy of Macebuh’s years at the helm of affairs at The Guardian, for he it was who first gave liberalism, especially in its vigorous and ambiguous encounter with radical leftist ideas and activists in our part of the world, an intellectual rationale, a foothold in the popular imagination, and an institutional base in news reporting and analysis.

    I am not necessarily saying here that the great majority of columnists and contributors to intellectual and political debates in Nigerian newspapers and newsmagazines are convinced or consistent progressive liberal democrats. Far from this, our community of the commentariat reflects all the real and manufactured divisions in our country – ethnic, regional, religious, ideological and economic. But at the same time, I think that it is important to acknowledge that it is difficult to find columnists of note or credibility in our country who can mount a vigorous and coherent promotion of reactionary and hegemonic positions that sustain the status quo of power, wealth and authority in Nigeria.

    One reason for this is perhaps merely circumstantial: the powers that be, the scions of the political and institutional status quo in our country are so bankrupt that it would require a totally unjustifiable level of cynicism and opportunism to give them intellectual and ideological backing. But I would also ask the reader to think of this enormously crucial fact: We live in a time of deep and perpetual crises, so much so that Nigerians under the age of forty do not know that at one time there was a fairly stable status quo in this country even if the period – roughly between the decade before independence and the outbreak of civil war – was not without its own crises. But that was then. Now, in the present, we are in a prolonged period of endemic and perpetual crises. This, I contend, is the background for the idealistic and (desperately) optimistic basis for why, speaking only for myself as member of the commentariat, I write this column unfailingly every week, even though I do have a full-time job as a professional academic. I would like to conclude my reflections in this piece by briefly elaborating on this particular issue.

    Metaphorically speaking, the malaises of the national body politic are like the diseases and ailments of the physical body: you feel them concretely, existentially. This is what it means to live in a period of perpetual and endemic crises, some of which are minor but most of which are severe and acute. Let me give examples and expressions of these crises, these malaises of the body politic, making them as concrete as possible by giving some instances from daily life at Oke-Bola in Ibadan, the neighborhood in which I live. Here are some of the minor expressions of these crises. First, for a neighborhood that used to be a fairly low-density area in my childhood, it is now far gone beyond a high-density area: it is now more or less a ghetto with virtually every inch of available space built up. Seventh-Day Adventist Primary School that I attended as a child now has no playground, no school farm or garden as these have all been taken over by buildings. There are virtually no municipal services in the area: every household, every family has to make arrangements for water supply, sanitation and waste disposal, and security of life and possessions. The population of the neighborhood is overwhelmingly dominated by youths, the great majority of them not only unemployed but with no real prospects for the future. Most of the factories at the nearby Oluyole Industrial Estate closed down more than a decade ago and nothing has replaced this major employment base of the neighborhood and the city. Public or street night life is now completely gone, for by 9 p.m., everybody is inside their homes. This, in a neighborhood which in my youth had one of the most vibrantly entertaining and recreational night life in all of the southern part of the country. But religion thrives and there are dozens of churches and mosques in the neighborhood: Praise the Lord! If you have no jobs, no prospects for the future, at least you have Jesus, you have Allah, and you have the pastors and the imams.

    As nearly every reader of this piece knows, this profile is a microcosm of the rest of the city of Ibadan and the rest of the country. And as depressing as this profile is, what is truly frightening is the feeling, the intuition that the worst is yet to come, heaven help us! And as if that is not bad enough, there is hardly any indication that there is a movement afoot, a movement in its embryonic stages perhaps but that will eventually sweep away all this rot, all this suffering, all this insecurity. Those who wonder how we, the members of the commentariat, find subjects or topics to write about every week without running out of steam perhaps do not know that decadence, suffering and insecurity of life and existence all constitute inexhaustible sources of matter on which to write week after week, ad infinitum! But this is a great contradiction, this conundrum in which, so it seems, the commentariat feeds on and thrives on crises that impoverish and diminish the quality of life on such a vast scale. What is the way out of this contradiction, this conundrum? That is the billion naira question.

    Speaking for myself and a few other colleagues within the community of the commentariat that I know well, perceptive and insightful commentary and analysis, though badly needed in our current conjuncture of endemic and perpetual crises, can and will never replace movements of the Nigerian peoples for real and meaningful change in the conditions of their lives. The commentariat is a part within a whole; it is not a substitute for that whole. Moreover, as Marx observed in the first epigraph to this piece, there is a need for the educator himself to be educated. The very process of commenting on the crises we are all living through, admittedly unequally, is a composite testing ground for our commentaries and analyses. I am not engaging in hypocrisy when I assert here that one of the most productive and useful benefits of writing this column is the fact that I learn a lot from the experience, especially in light of the absence of the mass movements of workers, professionals and intellectuals that were such a vital part of my young adulthood. Thus, compatriot, I write every week and will keep writing as long as possible in the hope that what I write may provide a little light, a little illumination in the vastness of the enveloping darkness that is a product of the crises we are currently living in. But I have no illusions: if we are lucky, writing may be a spark for the changes we are seeking, but it can never be a substitute for it.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • Jonathan’s emergency

    Jonathan’s emergency

    The question is no longer whether it will come, but how far it can go

    For once, President Goodluck Jonathan did something, at least within the ambits of the law, with his proclamation of emergency rule in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states on Tuesday. This was a decision that was even late in coming, given the havoc that Boko Haram has wreaked on the nation. At this point, we have to call a spade a spade, and not just a farming implement. And we shall do just that today.

    If political Boko Haram is real (as I believe it is), perhaps the genesis is in the emergence of President Jonathan as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the 2011 election. I have said it before that I do not believe in zoning; I stand by this. But then, I can say that without the heavens falling because of who I am. Everything may look good on a fowl’s neck, definitely not a rope. A PDP stalwart cannot say this in all honesty because he or she knows that is not the position of their party. So, when the party chiefs did wuruwuru to the answer to prop up the present president as the party’s candidate, saying that zoning was dead or that it never existed, other party chiefs should have cried foul. They didn’t. They should have asked when zoning died in the party; where it died, whether it died of natural or other causes; they should have asked who did the autopsy, or when it was buried, where and other matters. They did nothing of the sort.

    Rather, they slept facing the same side, with the northern political elite that thought it was their natural turn to produce president feeling marginalised. Please do not get me wrong; nothing I have said should be taken to mean that the south-south from where President Jonathan hails did not deserve to produce president at that time; no. As a matter of fact, if any region of the country has been marginalised with respect to the presidential office, it is that region from where the money spent in the country comes. But the process should have been tidier; with the party resolving the issue of zoning long before the election and giving zoning a befitting burial once they agreed that it was time to kill it.

    But what the PDP did with regard to zoning then is the same fraudulent way the country has been run. The only difference in this case is that it hit some of their own, and that is why we cannot sleep with our two eyes closed ever since. It is for this simple reason of dishonesty, among many others, that it will be easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for this country to make progress. Americans, as permissive as they come, care so much about who they put in leadership positions. If any party did what the PDP got away with here in 2011 in the name of politics in a civilised country, that party may lose votes simply on account of such infidelity over little things. Americans, for instance, would not trust that such a party which can trample on its own clothes would not tear theirs into shreds without batting an eyelid, if voted into office.

    Boko Haram may jolly well be the result of the loss of our moral soul as a people. But it is also a case of thunder aiding the bomb. If the northern economy has not been as bad as it is, that is, if the northern leaderships in the past had done the needful to lift their people from poverty, there may not have been a ready army of suicide bombers that would want to die over nothing. If the people had received the right education, they would not have been as ignorant as they are to want to lose their lives in anticipation of the privilege of enjoying some beautiful virgins if they die in the course of whatever they are fighting for. They would have known that this world is too sweet to depart so soon, and that some of the best of the beautiful virgins fthat they are rushing to heaven to enjoy are theirs just for the asking right here on earth. As a matter of fact, it is in the north that some of these virgins are already being enjoyed, considering the number of under-aged girls put in the family way in the name of early marriage. So, if the men are not having the desired sensation, it is probably because they are not allowing the virgins to ripe before plucking them. With a little patience, these virgins will be ripe and mature with age, and with the appropriate tantalising statistics for the believers in the heavenly virgins to enjoy right here on earth, and without any blood on their hands!

    It seems the northern elite know that they are responsible for this whirlwind that the country is paying for, hence their inability to openly condemn Boko Haram but would rather speak from both sides of the mouth when talking about the sect. The only unfortunate thing is that the sinners responsible for this crisis are not suffering as much as the innocents. If we have reaped more bloodshed in the Jonathan presidency, it is as a result of that little unfaithfulness. May be the president himself realised this, hence, his being slow to come up with emergency rule in the troubled states. But if some people support him now that he has proclaimed emergency, it is not because they are unaware of this fact; it is just that they know it is better to first drive away the thief before telling the owner of the stolen property that he too did not keep his property well.

    As a matter of fact, there does not seem to be any alternative, especially as the insurgents have rejected amnesty. It was only in those days when we still had our sanity intact that a thief would run away if pursued; these days, the thief would turn round to challenge the owner of the stolen property and get some of the best senior advocates to argue his case. Emergency rule is good to the extent that it is able to achieve its aim of bringing about peace in the affected states. This is a sine qua non for meaningful development.

    But, should there be any Nigerian who thinks power will last forever in any part of the country as it was in the past; that is wishful thinking. And, should there be people behind this mindless orgy of violence in the country, such people will pay dearly for the shedding of innocent blood just to make cheap political points. The mere fact that they had this power which they never used well in the past, leading to where we are today, is enough to convict them in heaven and on earth for the innocent blood they are causing to be shed daily, needlessly.

    However, President Jonathan must honour his promise that the wolves in human skin that delight in killing human beings will not go unpunished. I have said it several times that when a leader speaks, his words are like those of the oracle. On this score, I am with the President. But when the handshake is getting below the elbow again, it would be ‘to thy tent, Oh Israel’! The fear of many is that the emergency rule is a step towards full blown dictatorship. Given where we are coming from, that fear is both real and potent.

  • Thoughts on the emergency

    Thoughts on the emergency

    As is to be expected, the declaration by President Goodluck Jonathan of a state of emergency in the Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states, continues to generate considerable heat for all manner of reasons.

    What on the surface seems like a surgical procedure against a cancerous growth threatening national security and unity is open to be interpreted as equally dark political manouver – depending on which side of the fence you sit.

    While many have expressed surprise that Jonathan would pull the emergency stunt barely a fortnight after celebrating with much fanfare the inauguration of the Boko Haram amnesty committee, I take the position that his latest action was inevitable. In fact, what is amazing is that it took him so long to take the decision to move against the insurgents in a more muscular fashion.

    In the end, the decision was virtually made for the president as before his very eyes huge chunks of the nation were becoming no-man’s land where gunslingers was lords of the manner. In other parts where there was no organised insurgency the fear of kidnappers has virtually paralysed society.

    What I get from much of the criticism of the emergency declaration is that it hinders the smooth running of our democratic structures. The harsh truth, however, is that democracy had ceased to function where the insurgency was hottest. Many local government officials had fled their bases, and newspapers were beginning to carry headlines like ‘Boko Haram: Fear of kidnap grips governors.’

    It has also been argued that the latest move will not solve the problem. While I agree that the best we can hope for from the military action is pacification of the troubled spots in the short term, I don’t agree that what Jonathan was doing prior to sending in the troops was the right thing.

    Frankly, he was floundering – one day talking tough and denouncing the terrorists as ghosts who needed to show their faces in order to be taken seriously as potential partners in a peace process. The next minute he’s caving in to pressure after a night time visit by prominent northern elders, and accepting to offer amnesty to the same “ghosts” he just refused to do business with.

    Rather than make life easier for Jonathan, Boko Haram kept thumbing their nose at the government with series of lethal strikes that embarrassed the security establishment.

    While the killing at Baga may have represented a frustrated military straining at the leash to engage the foe, the insurgents sortie into Bama – in which 55 persons were killed – represented an unprecedented display of strength by the terrorists.

    The question which critics of the emergency have not addressed their minds to is what other option was available in the short term? A national conference of whatever hue, provisions of full employment for all the hungry and disaffected youths in northern Nigeria would take a long time to put together.

    Something needed to be done urgently. The insurgents were beginning to hold ground – even planting strange flags on territories they had conquered. Senator Ahmed Khalifa Zanna has been quoted in the media as saying 23 of the 27 local government areas in Borno State had fallen to the sect.

    Every time the insurgents carried out a fresh and audacious attack, and were greeted with pacifist sermons from Aso Rock, they became emboldened. They never showed either by their utterances or actions that they were remotely interested in the pack of goods Jonathan was peddling. To have delayed action a day longer while innocent people were being indiscriminately executed would have been a more criminal act.

    So much has been made of the brutal ways of the members of the Joint Task Force (JTF) in the conflict zone. The fact that these soldiers are fighting the bad guys does not make human rights violations and extra-judicial killings acceptable on their part. But then Nigeria has shown that it has the capacity to bring to justice members of the security forces who derail. That is evident in the trial of policemen fingered in the killing of the late Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf.

    What is so disappointing in all of this is that thousands of Nigerians had to lose their lives before the president came to the conclusion that the country was at war. No war is every pretty: people will lose their heads and accidents will happen. Sometimes even your friends shoot at you. We should not be surprised therefore if there are more tales of JTF excesses. But that is not enough justification for the government to sit on its hands and do nothing.

    Some have argued that if the January 2012 declaration of state of emergency in 15 local government councils failed, there was no reason to expect the latest exercise to be an improvement. I disagree. What Jonathan did at after the Christmas Day bombing at the Catholic Church in Madalla was to give emergency rule a bad name.

    What was done was not only badly conceived, it was ill-timed and executed halfheartedly. The soldiers were so thin on the ground they were virtually invisible. It was no hard task for the insurgents to simply drift into surrounding local councils and states and carry on business as usual.

    Anywhere in the world where an emergency proclamation is made the intent is to prevail and restore order; not just make an announcement in the vain hope that your tormentors will simply disappear because you made a speech. What Jonathan is doing now is what he should have done in January 2012: go against the insurgents with sufficient force to calm the situation and restore some semblance of order.

    In the course of the week, some northern elders led by the increasingly vocal former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Professor Ango Abdullahi, likened the emergency proclamation to a declaration of war on the region. They would rather the peace track being pushed by the amnesty committee had been maintained.

    Unfortunately, while the said committee were roaming around like tourists, the insurgents never let up in their brutal killings. Should those atrocities have been left unchallenged because we are talking peace? If by the government’s action war has been declared on the region, should we take it then that what Boko Haram had been doing all this while was spreading peace and love?

    Ultimately, we need to address the root causes of the insurgency in the North-East and rampant insecurity in other parts of the country. This is not just about poverty and unemployment, underlying the Boko Haram agitation is a battle for the right of some people to live and run their lives in a particular way.

    They should not be denied that right. But by the same token they must be made to understand that no Nigerian can be browbeaten into accepting any religion or way of life by force. It can only be through a negotiated settlement. Until they understand that they cannot prevail by force of arms, I cast an unqualified vote for the ongoing crackdown.

  • Where is Emmanuel?

    A two-year relationship between a U.K-based Nigerian, Emmanuel, and a Caribbean lady which was supposed to end in marriage in June this year has ended abruptly with the whereabouts of the prospective groom unknown after a visit to the country. Lekan Otufodunrin reports

     

    Initially it was supposed to be a case of a fiancée missing in transit. Rachael from a Caribbean Island whose Nigerian fiancée, one Emmanuel Adebanjo, travelled home to Nigeria from his United Kingdom base to see his mother suddenly became incommunicado.

    The last time she heard from Emmanuel who she usually communicated with every day before his sudden disappearance was in February. All her attempts to contact Emmanuel who she was supposed to get married to in June this year after two years of courtship failed. “I had a phone number for which just rings without anyone responding,” she recalls.

    Just when she began to panic about Emmanuel’s fate, she started getting messages from some “relatives” of her husband to be claiming that Emmanuel was involved in an accident a day after he arrived Nigeria and he was the sole survivor.

    The “cousins” refused to give Rachael the name of the hospital where Emmanuel was being treated and other information to locate or speak with him because they said she was not yet known to the family. They claimed they were trying to raise money for Emmanuel’s treatment after selling some of his property and asked how Rachael was willing to assist them.

    In an email to ST the cousins wrote: “Hello madam, you have to be patient until we can get back to you… We have not told his mother about what happened to Emmanuel because she will be so devastated with shock and only close family members are informed.

    “We are making arrangement for him to be flown back to the UK, but the financial side of it is yet to be concluded. You have not visited Nigeria before, hence no member of the family knows nor ever seen you before. So we cannot release him to your care. Our hope lies on the fact that the moment he is able to get better, we will ensure he speak with you and he will decide if he will come direct to you or to the UK. Have a blessed week and God bless you. Kunle.”

    Although she had reasons to suspect that the cousins may be scammers, she found it difficult to believe that Emmanuel could be part of the scheme.

    “I know him well. He has nothing to gain by trying to scam me because he knows I am not a rich person”

    In her search for information on Emmanuel’s whereabouts, Rachael reached out on the phone to someone he had introduced to her as an uncle in Nigeria. In their first telephone conversation, the uncle said he had not heard from Emmanuel for some time and was not aware if he was involved in any accident since he is not sure he was in Nigeria.

    The only home address ST had for Emmanuel in Nigeria, was 41-43, Ashabi Cole, Agidingbi Road, Ikeja, Lagos which turned out not to be none existing. The street was none residential.

    Much later when Rachael told the uncle she was going to hire a private investigator to fish out Emmanuel, he called the following day to say that Emmanuel was in the UK and had an accident, was not working, had no job and was embarrassed of his situation and could not face her.

    With the hide and seek now over and Emmanuel still incommunicado, Rachael, family members and friends are shocked at the turn of events.

    “This is a man who was coming back and forth to our country over a period of two years- something is still amiss to me here- while here he met my family, friends, boss, church priest, etc helped my children paint the house, and more- he was a very mild mannered, polite, calm, but always on the computer – I wonder if his resume was in fact legit- it was very long and detailed- should have had a job easily with that.

    “Everyone of my friends are shocked, the men who met him tell me they are depressed because they all can’t believe it. It is not a regular thing for us here to run into this type of thing or people. All I can say that he is lucky my father is not alive. He had a lot of contacts. I am not sure if Emmanuel would have been able to hide from him,” Rechael said.

    Rachael and Emmanuel had known each other through a Nigerian for about two years and he usually visits the Island from his UK base staying about a month each time.

    According to Rachael, “when he came here it was not to do anything, but to get to know one another better- you cannot have a long distance relationship with someone unless someone goes to visit the other person often before taking it to the next step.

    “I thought it better for him to come here around my people to check him out – and they all thought he was a great person – who knows – so when he came here we went to the beach swimming, concerts, movies, church, family get – together, he even went to my class to help me get ready for the beginning of the school year in September – I mean he just fit in with everyone.”

    For now there has been no word from Emmanuel or his uncle and cousin.

    “I have not heard a peep from anyone – but I can see someone coming and going off line on Yahoo Messenger, but they have not made any further contact and neither have I. It is almost as if he has dropped off the face of the earth- or so he wants me to think.”

    The chain of events still seems like a bad dream for Rachael, but she is glad she didn’t get married to Emmanuel before finding out about his true identity.

    “We live and learn – but suppose we had married? He would then have had access to much more than he would by this act, so I appreciate God spared me that. Always look for the silver lining in any situation,” Rachael said.

  • Bigfoot is about

    Bigfoot is about

    Fear stalks the land. There is trepidation all over the nation. Uncertainty and a sense of foreboding, of an approaching apocalyptic meltdown, grip the citizenry. The omens are dire. Never in the history of this country have its people felt more insecure, more vulnerable to man-made misfortunes. A huge monster roams the land, threatening to overwhelm its already weakened defence and resolve. It recalls the fabled Bigfoot or even the more celebrated Yeti, the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayan Summit.

    Mercifully, Jonathan has cut short his foreign trip. He ought not to have gone in the first instance. It is an elementary law of sovereignty that you do not leave your domain when there is fire on the rooftop. This is the time to talk straight to ourselves. There is nothing to sell or advertise abroad about the nation at this particular point.

    It doesn’t appear as if the Nigerian ruling class appreciates the grave dimension of the current crisis in all its tragic, nation-evaporating possibilities. Let us no longer quibble about our situation. Nigeria is embroiled in an unusual civil war. We are faced with a grave emergency. The earlier we recognise this fact, the better for everybody. It is no longer possible to sustain Nigeria under its current configuration.

    Those who plotted the endgame of this gifted but troubled nation and the dark scenario of a war of all against all could not have been more prescient. They are spot on their money. Political prophecy has gone scientific. These amazing futurologists know the kind of political elite they are dealing with, that they will fiddle and fumble while Rome burns. A self-fulfilling prophecy requires a self-destroying political class.

    This past week has been very scary for those who bear aloft the torch of hope for this dysfunctional nation. Bigfoot struck serially and severally again. The Boko Haram people returned fire in what observers consider to be a reprisal raid for the Baga mayhem. They put the town of Bama to sword, attacking police and military formations before descending on the civilian populace. By the time the smouldering and belching cloud cleared, the town had become a ghost town clogged with horrendous casualties.

    As if this was not enough for a nation coming to terms with the utter devastation of its northernmost fringes, a hitherto little known traditional sect calling itself Ombatse struck in the Nasarawa village of Alayko. According to the sect, they ambushed and killed 95 security personnel in retaliation for the killing of nine of its members . It was a re-enactment of Dante’s inferno. In the fiercest of wars, the casualty figures could not have been higher.

    If the police force is this vulnerable in a country, it says a lot about the state of the country and its capacity to fulfil its most fundamental obligation to its citizenry. In a ritual of reverse victimhood, the police authorities have directed their personnel to wear black bands for one week as a mark of respect and sympathy for their fallen colleagues.

    It should tell us that something very serious is going on. Hitherto, it used to be the populace complaining about police brutality. Now the police authorities are loudly complaining about brutality against their own. With that level of morale, it is clear that the state is on its own.

    It is instructive to note that this past week, two current state executives were known to have taken refuge in Aso Rock as the security situation in their states deteriorated beyond their capacity and capability. In Ibadan, a calamity was averted when traders at the Bodija Cattle Market discovered that some of their colleagues had been murdered in Borno State where they had gone to buy cattle.

    The insurgents were reported to have separated the ambushed traders into their ethnic stock before murdering those from a particular ethnic group. As soon as the news broke, Snooper spent the entire day answering desperate inquiries from abroad, particularly from affronted intellectuals of Yoruba origins, who wanted to know just when enough would be enough. How long will restrained and civilised people put up with this flagrant provocation?

    As if these flashpoints, any of which could tip the nation into terminal and irreversible chaos are not enough, Bigfoot has been at work in the Rivers State, in a political dress rehearsal for actual war. The whole place has become a boiling cauldron simmering and sizzling with intent. Only luck and his own gritty determination separate Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi from sure impeachment by a minority assembly. It is said that when that happens, heavens will not fall.

    The pundits claim that such state outlawry and executive lawlessness have illustrious precedents. If heavens did not fall in Oyo, on the plateau and in nearby Bayelsa where serving governors have been tomahawked twice, why should it fall in the Rivers State? Meanwhile, the whole thing is assuming a nasty ethnic dimension with the Ikwerre people pitched against the Ijaw nationality. Are we still in a democracy or the rule of despotic strongmen who do not give a damn about the fundamental tenets of democracy?

    As it is usually the case when law and order take a flight and chaos prevails in a society, the lawless and chaotically minded rule the roost, Mojahid Asari Dokubo has been feverishly and ferociously rattling his sabre, threatening the corporate existence of the nation in the process. Asari Dokubo has become the principal Ijaw spokesperson in a land that has produced the illustrious Professor Tekana Tamuno, the great Professor Allagoa and the extraordinarily cerebral if occasionally controversial Professor Tamuno David-West.

    In a war situation, it is the man with the men and material that matters. How many arms bearing militiamen can the professors come up with? This is not a matter of book piracy. The real pirates are up and a-hollering. The nation is gradually coming under the odoriferous armpit of political warlords. When last did you hear of a man of ideas in Mogadishu? If the CNN is to be believed, one of Somalia’s best known professors of political science has taken up refuge in a college in Minnesota. There is no point pontificating about the post-colonial state when the real thing vanished over 20 years ago.

    So while Asari Dokubo prevails as the pre-eminent warlord of the Niger Delta, the Boko Haram rules the roost in the north with the Sultan, the military and spiritual heir to Othman Dan Fodio, reduced to pleading with the sect to accept amnesty. It doesn’t occur to the well-regarded Sultan that if amnesty had succeeded in the Niger Delta, there ought not to be an Asari Dokubo still threatening the corporate existence of the nation.

    Meanwhile, other insurgent groups appear to be cottoning in on the act. The Ombatse folks may yet succeed in carving out a wide swathe around the nation’s heart for themselves. In the east, MASSOB is heaving with Biafran bathos. In the west, the old militia majordomos are stirring again hoping to leverage federal political patronage to reinforce rusting ramparts.

    But they will meet with other nascent civilian armies in the combustible region. The dominant political tendency in the region will not allow itself to be so summarily dispossessed by force. You cannot step into the same river twice. Bigfoot is truly abroad and God helps Nigeria and all of us boxed into the tinder box. Like a wanton schoolboy, somebody is busy setting up explosive crackers all over the country.

    What we are witnessing is the failure of the post-military amnesty vision in all its material fundament. Genuine amnesty involves considerable contrition and remorse for past misconduct. What is being confused with amnesty in Nigeria is the payment of gratuity and gratification to unrepentant criminals for the cessation of hostilities against their fatherland. It is a question of political and economic expediency since the cessation of hostilities remains a temporary truce. There may yet be some method to Asari’s madness.

    The fear of inter-regional and intraregional domination is real and palpable; so are the grievances. Jonathan and his government are looking for Bigfoot in the wrong direction. BOKO HARAM, MASSOB, MEND, OMBATSE, OPC etc are products of these fears with different inflections and intensity. Unless we remove the structural disfigurement of the nation which produces these fears, we will continue to be saddled with economic, political and spiritual warlords.

    For many, the Bigfoot is real, an evolutionary bypass, a throwback to the age of Neanderthal hunters haunting modern man. For others, it is a myth, a mirage a troubling reminder of unfinished business, a reflection of humanity’s fear of the unknown. In other words, if the Bigfoot, the Yeti or the Yoruba ologomugomu do not exist, we will have to create them. It is left for each society to plot its way out of the dark abyss. Nigeria is not doing too well in that department. And time is not on our side.

  • More than ever, the president now needs to inspire

    More than ever, the president now needs to inspire

    Judging from the way he talks, gestures and ruminates, sometimes angrily and at other times dismissively, President Goodluck Jonathan often gives the impression his pressing problems should be laid at the doorsteps of Nigeria’s boisterous and sometimes cantankerous media and the political opposition. The media is deeply judgemental, probing and censorious, and it has given Jonathan’s presidency no quarters. But it has always been all these, and will continue to be much more well after the Jonathan government; for even before independence, it never suffered fools gladly, not the white man and not his docile and colluding black servants. It is pointless for anyone to think that the media can now be tamed or diminished both by legislation and by brute force. Not only will such efforts remain undesirable, it will be ineffectual. On its own, the opposition, whether during military rule or civilian rule, is grounded on constitutional and cultural approbation. To attempt to put a leash on it is to try to make water flow uphill. It is as unrealistically unnatural as it is deliberately quixotic.

    It is, therefore, time for the Jonathan presidency to take the predilections of the media and opposition parties as a given and try to locate the problems, weaknesses and limitations of his troubled government elsewhere. Since he assumed the presidency, Jonathan has been suffering from insufficient appreciation of the country’s structural imbalances and disequilibrium, poor policy coordination, unprecedented security challenges gradually metamorphosing into full-scale insurgency, rampant militia activities such as the proselytising Ombatse cult in Nasarawa State, schismatic ethnic politics, and a self-inflicted underachieving cabinet, among others. Singly or collectively, these problems have caused and nurtured instability in the Northeast, dislocated the economy, created a frustrated and destructive army of unemployed youths, rendered Jonathan’s government desperate and insular, and pushed the country firmly towards the precipice. The media merely reports these issues, and opposition parties merely capitalise on them. Neither group has infringed the law or common sense. And neither has acted improperly or with less circumspection than is generally required to keep the president and his government on their toes.

    The Jonathan government is not underperforming because these problems are unique, unprecedented or severe. He is not failing because anyone wants him to fail or because he was programmed by legal and constitutional strictures to falter. And he is not confused because the problems are complex and interwoven. The Jonathan government is lost in a self-created labyrinth because he either lacks the capacity to grapple with the problems that mass before him, or he is naturally uninspiring, and so can no more inspire anyone than he can eat or converse with aristocratic finesse. It is well known that governments in Nigeria win elections against the run of play and in defiance of their appalling records. Perhaps Dr Jonathan hopes to capitalise on that historical antecedent by winning elections undeservedly, achieving unplanned breakthroughs, and solving crises either by avoiding them or ignoring them. If he embraces any of those options, he will have it tough going. For, this time, given the intensity of the socioeconomic and sectarian revolt in the North, it is hard to see how his customary pussyfooting and policy inexactitude would guarantee the survival of the country beyond the portentous 2015 an American military think tank warned a few years ago.

    Dr Jonathan needs to reinvent himself along the lines his flashes of verbal brilliance and candour indicate. In his many public engagements, he sometimes spoke with simplicity and honesty, almost with engaging bipolarity, as if he always needed to subordinate his real self to his public self, his tortuous and perhaps contrived Christian consciousness to his more popular and secular nonconformism. Not only is it time for him to determine who he wants to be, it is also time to ask himself whether he really wants to save his presidency and what is left of his reputation. He came into politics without having had the opportunity to define politics in terms of the values that shaped his life and upbringing. And from the time he became deputy governor, through the frenetic pace of his meteoric ascendancy, and up to the time he mounted the highest throne in the land, Jonathan did not appear to have paused to define his politics, what he intended to do with power once he got it, and what sort of country he hoped to mould out of its riotous disparateness.

    The national crises that weigh on his soul and grieve him endlessly call on him to vote one way or the other. That vote has been long in coming. Since he came in unprepared, he did not have a prepared template to face the problems. If he does not now take a walk in the wilderness and commune with his own soul, it will be difficult for him to make a choice, let alone the right choice. Worse, instead of scientifically and methodically confronting the evils threatening to undermine his presidency and even plunge the country into anarchy, he may find himself conceiving and administering ad hoc solutions. A president must come to the epiphanic realisation that he needs to change himself first before he can attempt to change the country.

    But rather than the hard and productive way of changing himself in order to change the country, inspiring himself in order to inspire the country, acquiring knowledge in order to lead the country from a position of knowledge, Dr Jonathan may be embracing all over again the unproductive and hackneyed method of summoning his security chiefs or cabinet whenever he faces an outbreak of crisis. In the past two years or so, the insurgency in the North and militia activities in other parts of the country have combined to unleash a steady stream of bloodletting on the country. The bloodbath never stopped for a moment; but the president has had to cut short his visit to parts of Southern Africa to attend to the killings in Bama, Borno State, and a village near Lafia in Nasarawa State. What initiatives does he hope to bring to the table? Indeed, what initiatives has he brought to the table in the past few months when horrendous killings took place?

    Cutting short his visit to Southern Africa is a mere public relations stunt. He had no choice than to do that, for not to do it would have compounded the blame he continues to receive for his inability to stanch the flow of blood in the country. But nothing serious will come from the renewed attention the president is giving the present crisis. His style and approach to the crisis will not change until he changes himself. When he changes, he will no longer go to the scene of rebellion and pass the buck to the elders of blighted communities, or make utterances that inflame passion, alienate the people, and aggravate the insurgency. And he will not also endorse the bloated impression the security forces have of themselves: that their uniforms somehow make them superior, invincible and untouchable. Now that militias and insurgents have defied his warning that no security agent should be murdered without eliciting a disproportionate response from the state’s awesome security machine, what does he intend to do to avenge the Nasarawa killings? Wipe out the entire state?

    The country is exploding into many theatres of war. It is time Dr Jonathan took the right and urgent steps. First, he needs to reinvent himself, discover who he is, what kind of politics he wants to play, and what concrete vision of a strong, free and democratic country he wants to have, enunciate and bring about. He cannot discover himself by simply sitting at the head of the table in situation rooms and listening to the same jaded ideas from his incompetent aides, misguided advisers and overwhelmed security chiefs.

    Second, he needs to take very bold steps to restructure the country if it is to survive beyond 2015. The first step here is to cause the devolution of the security structure away from the current unitary system. The more he delays, the more likely the kind of ugly incident that occurred at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital between grieving policemen, doctors and morgue attendants will repeat itself. That unfortunate incident is a pointer to the fact that nerves are getting frayed and patience is snapping dangerously. It is only a matter of time before the unimaginable happens. Worse, even if perpetrators of the Nasarawa killings are caught and dealt with, it does not mitigate the fact that more and more groups are defying the state, demystifying the security agencies, and signifying that the country is fast running out of time.

    Third, it is incredible that the president does not know he is actually the one playing politics with insecurity, wrongly accusing the media of insensitivity and sensationalism, and unfairly denouncing the opposition for warning of disintegration. It is in fact Jonathan that needs a new, invigorated, bold and effective cabinet. Apart from unadvisedly surrendering a crucial part of his responsibilities to one or two powerful ministers in his cabinet, the president has unfortunately surrounded himself with what a columnist with this newspaper described as ethnopolitical zanies, most of whom don’t know their left from their right, and whose preoccupation is greed and parochialism.

    The country is not decaying beneath a welter of crises, much of it sectarian, sanguinary and disruptive. The country is in fact decaying beneath a lack of leadership, uninspiring, insensitive, glacial, but deceptively bellicose, leadership. Dr Jonathan is lucky to be faced with the crises assailing his government. His problem is not that the crises are many, terrible and complex. His problem is how he is responding to them. So far, those responses have not been stirring. But they need to be if he is not to go down into 2015 a failure hoping to be rewarded with a second term for having led his country into chaos and decay.

  • The fire-eating quartet of Jonathan, Amaechi, Kuku and Asari-Dokubo

    The suspicion in many quarters is that President Goodluck Jonathan actually thinks he has done substantially well enough to justify his party presenting him for re-election in 2015. Kingsley Kuku, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, and Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), a militant group physically but not psychologically repentant, think so too, and have reiterated that fact in very unpleasant and annoying language. While the president has kept prudently but disingenuously silent on his records and 2015 ambition, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State has spoken imprudently loud about his well-known enemies, their Abuja backers, and the subterfuge perpetrated by the presidency in the riverine state.

    Reacting to the massive disapproval that greeted his statements warning of economic sabotage and war if Dr Jonathan was not re-elected, but enjoying every bit of the publicity and attendant notoriety, Asari-Dokubo has goaded the public with yet more boastful and provocative comments. He could not be arrested, he threatened conceitedly, because the last time he was arrested and detained, oil production was cut down by a significant margin. This time, he thundered, his arrest would bring oil production to zero. Such buffoonery! There is no doubt that there are lots of troublemakers in the country, many of them lacking in restraint and sense of proportion, but the many silly remarks Asari-Dokubo made showed him to be a halfwit who should be noted but ignored.

    Hon. Kuku, who also heads the well-funded Presidential Amnesty Programme, was even more loquacious, insulting and conniving. “It is true that the Presidential Amnesty Programme has engendered peace, safety and security in the sensitive and strategic Niger Delta,” he began incongruously. “It is only a Jonathan presidency that can guarantee continued peace and energy security in the Niger Delta,” he concluded. He also managed to attempt to blackmail the United States warning them that if they fail to support Jonathan’s re-election it could threaten national stability and oil and gas exports. Unlike Nigeria, which is being blackmailed into precipitous appeasement of all sorts of malcontents, the US never likes to be arm-twisted. By now, after hearing all the careless talk by close aides and advisers of the president, foreign powers will have taken the measure of Nigerian rulers’ minds. They will not be surprised that Nigeria is embroiled in crisis.

    But much worse is the proxy war between the president himself and the governor of Rivers State. It is a turf war in which two leading politicians are fighting for supremacy. But the war is unsettling the state, promoting animosity, undermining the constitution, and worsening the tension that has enveloped the country from North to South. While the president’s men are fighting for control of the state in order not to lose it in 2015, Amaechi’s men tamely clutch only to the law and the constitution in a desperate struggle to stay afloat. It is not certain how the struggle will be resolved; whether the constitution will be sustained, or whether federal might will destabilise or even overwhelm the state.

    Whatever the situation in Rivers, and however the looming apocalypse in the Northeast, and now North-Central, plays out, the country should prepare for tough times ahead. The president can lower the temperature if he wants to. But there is no proof he knows how to or why he should, or more critically, the consequences of aggravating the turmoil in the country.

  • Mixed signals from constitution amenders

    Legislators are not giving clear signals on amending the 1999 Constitution

    It is becoming more difficult by the day to know what the lawmakers amending the 1999 Constitution are up to. Just a few weeks ago, they released results of votes on areas suggested by the assembly for amendment. It is clear from the list that the amendments to be expected from lawmakers are likely to push the country further into the pit of unitary rule. But the lecture by the Speaker a few days ago in Lagos suggests that the assembly is also contemplating pushing most items on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent list.

    When Nigerians called for a national conference to create a people’s constitution to replace the one foisted on the nation by the country’s last military dictator, lawmakers quickly came out to say that the legislature embodies the people’s sovereignty. They argued that it is not proper to jump over their heads to create another group to amend the constitution, claiming that they were duly voted into legislative office by citizens. On the contrary, federalists argued that lawmakers were not given a mandate to write a constitution, arguing further that the 1999 Constitution is too far from the constitution upon which Nigerian communities agreed to become an independent nation in 1960. Critics of lawmakers’ position also stressed that the constitution the legislators wanted to amend had no input from citizens and that it was at best a document to support transition to democracy superintended by General Abdusalaam Abubakar. The proper thing to do, citizens affirmed, is to extend the rights inherent in democratic governance to citizens to elect their representatives to negotiate a post-military constitution.

    Apparently, the National Assembly has been calculating in handling the amendment exercise. It has used the media to give the impression that the amendment is driven by a truly democratic process. First, the Assembly invited self-appointed spokespersons to come to their zonal headquarters to indicate what citizens slated for change in the constitution. It did not matter if such spokespersons consulted with anyone in their constituencies. It did not matter to lawmakers if citizens could afford to travel to zonal headquarters in large numbers or if they could afford accommodation away from home. What mattered was the fact that some persons showed up at each venue to discuss the 1999 Constitution with elected legislators from their zone. Another thing that mattered was the informal voting on issues by unelected participants at the public hearing. One other thing that mattered was that lawmakers were able to publish the results of the voting they conducted over constitutional provisions. At least such open communication with the electorate enabled legislators to show the weight of evidence in favor of further de-federalisation of the polity.

    Moreover, it mattered to lawmakers that they were able to publicise their own voting on items determined principally by them. It did not matter if such items are related to worries of citizens about overconcentration of powers at the center in the 1999 Constitution. But legislators felt obliged to demonstrate to citizens that there is correlation between voting patterns at the public hearing and in the hallowed legislative chamber, especially to show evidence that lawmakers agreed on most issues with positions of unelected spokespersons at the zonal public hearings. At best skeptics would call this process good packaging and at worst working to the answer.

    What the legislators are now invoking is the principle of majority rule. But what they are missing is that the distribution of legislative seats in the 1999 Constitution is one of the issues that citizens believe should be subject of negotiation at a sovereign national conference or an ordinary constitutional conference. They also appear unaware of the fact that a constitutional conference could have led to a different way of distributing legislative seats among the federating units known for having starkly different attitudes to census figures for the country. Optimists on the issue of lawmakers’ amendment of a constitution believed to be bereft of citizens’ input must have expected legislators to come up with a more federal constitution, to assuage the feelings of federalists who had been calling since 1993 for a sovereign national conference to negotiate a people-authored Union Charter. It is looks like the pessimists might win: the amended constitution is now likely to be more unitary than the 1999 Constitution itself.

    Amendments are likely to allow local governments to be divorced from the states to which they belong. The issue of a third tier of government created by military dictators without any reference to the federating units is now likely to be strengthened by amendments by legislators, as funds to local governments may go directly to local governments. The federal monopoly over securing of life and property of citizens is now more likely (than not) to be reinforced in the amended constitution. The provision for State Electoral Commission is also likely to be removed from the current constitution, thereby creating a centralized electoral commission to conduct election to federal, state, and local offices.

    If the claim by the Speaker that there are plans to push most items on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent is true, how will that fit into the items already approved by legislators? Federalists need to be more attentive at this point. If lawmakers are shooting for emptying most exclusive items into the concurrent list with the ultimate goal of creating a residual list, this may be a ploy to change states into glorified sites for Lugardian-type of indirect rule. With the principle of federal supremacy intact in the constitution, transferring more items from the exclusive to the concurrent list may be another working to the answer. The provision of federal legislative supremacy over items on the concurrent list in the current constitution can be used to render states irrelevant. State governors and legislators may be reduced to the status of traditional rulers under indirect rule: allowed to do whatever the overlords approve of and prevented from carrying out responsibilities that federal government wishes to seize from them. This is already happening. The federal government has succeeded in preventing Lagos State from installing surveillance devices to protect life and property of citizens in the state, on the flimsy excuse that the federal government has the intention to install similar cameras in the country’s major cities.

    As federal lawmakers continue with the amendment exercise, they need to be made aware of two principles inherent in federal democratic system: the principle of Federal Loyalty and the principle of Federal Comity. The former refers to commitment on all sides to achieve the objectives and fulfill the needs of the federal polity. Citizens including opponents of the 1999 Constitution showed this commitment when they bought the argument that legislators be allowed to amend the constitution. The latter principle is about willingness by all sides to compromise, exercise forbearance, and understand the point of views of others. The handling of the amendment process by the National Assembly does not show there is respect for such principle. Nobody should be surprised if after the amendments are finally out, they succeed only in refueling the call for a sovereign national conference.