The Nation Newspaper

Category: Banji Akintoye

  • World is watching Nigeria’s near-implosion

    Under British rule, Nigeria did not begin to be one country until the British colonial rulers unified it with a   federal constitution in 1949-51. From that moment on, the makers of Nigeria began to make the mistakes that have now led Nigeria to unmanageable disharmony – disharmony that has now brought Nigeria close to breaking up.

    The makers of the 1949 federal constitution recognized that Nigeria was a country of hundreds of diverse nations. But in the making of the federal constitution, they chose to accord recognition and respect to only the three largest nations – the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo. There was no thought of respect for the smaller nations; all of them in each of the three regions were supposed to accept to exist happily under the large and dominant nation of their region. Naturally, the small nations in each region protested loudly and demanded a separate composite region of their own. The leaders and government of the Western Region stepped forth and supported the demands of the small nations of each region – including even the small nations of the Western Region. But, even after the British rulers were forced to set up a commission to investigate these demands and the commission had recommended that the British should grant them, the British chose to reject them.

    It was in the context of these historical happenings that Nigeria went astray in the management of its diversity. In the first place, it was gradually made to look as if seeking the interest of one’s particular nation in Nigeria was a backward looking stance, an attack on the unity of Nigeria. This got so bad that a Nigerian could not even say that Nigeria was made up of different peoples, without being called a “tribalist” – without being stigmatized a “Pakhistanist”.

    The foundation of it all was a woolly-headed superficiality – a refusal to look at facts, or a deliberate rejection of obvious and inescapable facts.  Our country is a country of very many peoples or nations, some large, some small. That is the fact. That fact does not presuppose that we cannot build our country into a harmonious and prosperous country. Sure, we can. Sure we could have done it if we had cool-headedly accepted the fact of our country as a country of many nations, and proceeded from that point to find ways to make our country a land of equitable opportunities for all its many nations, large and small, and all its millions of citizens.

    None of us needs to turn down his or her own nation, or to play down its interests, or to reject its unique heritage and ways, in order to be seen to be contributing to the unity of Nigeria or the building of Nigeria.  Building Nigeria does not demand that from any of us. But unfortunately, many Nigerians have quietly and timorously bought into the pernicious frame of mind which says that being “educated”, being “sophisticated”, being “broad-minded”, means that they must subdue any show of interest in the particular interests of their own nation. For such people, being “detribalized” (as it is called) is a virtue. And any Nigerian who shows concern about his own nation’s experiences in Nigeria becomes suspect – becomes “un-Nigerian”.

    By and by, those sections of Nigeria that desired to dominate the rest of Nigeria, and those who wanted Nigeria moulded according to the military command culture to which they are accustomed as soldiers, have succeeded in developing this rejection of Nigeria’s nations into an ideology for the building of a “united Nigeria”. The section of Nigeria that came to believe that it was its right to dominate Nigeria was the Arewa North – the Hausa-Fulani political elite of the Arewa North who happened to be the first controllers of the Federal Government at independence. Their quest for such domination generated serious conflicts in the political process, and these ultimately pushed Nigeria into an era of military regimes. And the military regimes, accustomed only to military command systems, proceeded to organize Nigeria as a country controlled only by the Federal Government. Since most of the military dictators since mid-1966 have been northerners, the excessive centralization wrought by the military regimes has enhanced northern success at domination, and therefore enjoys resolute northern support.

    Thus the Arewa North elite and the military have collaborated to foist an excessive centralism, and a mainstream ideology, on the making of the Nigerian federation, with the result that what we now have is not a federation but a unitary system. The coming of large revenues from petroleum in the years after 1970 put enormous economic power in the hands of the federal government, seemed to make full federal control of Nigeria achievable, and greatly increased the domination ambitions of those in control of the federal government. The final legal formulation of the system was effected in the making of the 1999 Constitution – a constitution which the Arewa North intellectual champions of the mainstream ideology wrote for the military regime of 1998, and which has since been touted as a constitution written by “the people of Nigeria” for the “people of Nigeria”.

    When a Yoruba citizen, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, a retired military officer turned civilian politician, was elected civilian president in 1999, there was hope that he would bring into the governance of Nigeria the typical and well-known Yoruba ideology concerning Nigeria. The Yoruba ideology proposes that since Nigeria comprises many diverse nations, each nation deserves to be respected in the context of Nigeria, and deserves to be allowed some autonomy to manage its unique concerns and desires in the context of Nigeria. Yoruba leaders (in Egbe Omo Oduduwa) first wrote the basic outline of this in 1949 as a proposal for the British colonial rulers to use in organizing Nigeria. Thereafter, succeeding generations of Yoruba leaders have restated this ideology over and over for the proper and harmonious structure of Nigeria. By the time of the Obasanjo presidency, it had become essentially a unifying Yoruba position concerning the proper and stable governance of Nigeria.    Hope that Obasanjo would follow this Yoruba ideology was heightened by the fact that he had written a book in 1998 (The Animal Called Man) in which he had advocated that the Nigerian constitution should include clauses stating the rights of Nigerian’s nations to secede from Nigeria and spelling out the processes towards peaceful secession.

    But as president, Obasanjo veered completely away from his Yoruba political heritage and energetically pursued the centralizing and mainstream ideology of other people, with serious efforts to subdue Nigerian nations (including his own Yoruba nation) to federal control. Unhappily, President Jonathan too, another president from another region that has always resisted excessive federal power, simply followed Obasanjo’s centralizing example. Even when Jonathan finally yielded to pressures to call a National Conference to review the structure of the Nigerian federation, it was obvious that his heart was not in the exercise, and that his real expectation was that his calling of the National Conference would boost his re-election chances. Obasanjo and Jonathan have thus demonstrated that it is almost impossible for any Nigerian president to accept federal loss of the control over all the power, all the money, and all the resources now controlled by the federal government.

    With President Buhari, a retired general from Arewa North now serving as Nigeria’s president, we should not be shocked by what we are seeing. He has said that he has no business with restructuring; and that he has “not bothered to read” the 2014 National Conference Report, but that he has simply tossed it into the archives.

    The only pity is that Nigeria has now absolutely reached the point of decision – either to restructure its federation or buy harmony and stability, or to refuse to restructure and thereby face implosion and break up. Conquering and subduing Nigeria’s peoples in order to keep Nigeria as one country, though attractive to those who control power over Nigeria, is no longer a viable choice. President Buhari says that he is exercising restraint over the use of military force for ending revolt in a part of Nigeria, and that is a good thing – but that is far from being good enough. The world is watching.

  • PMB: Respond to calls for restructuring

    The call for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation is being raised from most directions across Nigeria. Very many informed men and women with strong desires for the success and prosperity of Nigeria, former high public officials of Nigeria’s federal and state governments, other people with the most exalted experiences in the governance and management of Nigeria, some of Nigeria’s most respected intellectuals, professionals and businessmen, and countless civic organizations and youth organizations –all are raising their voices and calling for the restructuring of this federation, out of love for this country. All are warning that if the restructuring of this federation continues to be delayed, Nigeria could soon break up.

    Even the most radical among the youths of our country, the ones who have gone so far as to demand secession for their ethnic nations out of Nigeria, and even the ones who are engaging in blood-cuddling destruction of assets in their part of Nigeria in order to enforce their demands, all nevertheless indicate from time to time that they still have room for compromise and settlement if the Nigerian federation were restructured.

    The call for restructuring never ceases coming these days. And the warning that Nigeria could soon break up if restructuring continues to be delayed never ceases to come these days too. The chance to save Nigeria still exists. But the probability that Nigeria could implode and break up is mounting fearfully.

    And most developments and emerging realities are adding to the awful probability that Nigeria could soon disintegrate. The weakness of the economy is accelerating almost out of hand. Even the national chairman of the ruling party has now told Nigeria that his party is baffled by the depth to which Nigeria’s economy has fallen. Some months ago, there was sudden news that America and India had stepped up to resume buying Nigeria’s oil, thereby saving Nigeria from the crushing circumstance that the world was no longer buying our oil. But now, a reverse news has come that both America and India are again reducing purchases of Nigeria’s oil; that Nigeria is offering deep discounts in order to attract buyers and that buyers are not forthcoming. And, meanwhile, the source of the oil is sinking into deeper and deeper trouble as various Delta militant groups continue to destroy oil platforms and pipelines, and as the major oil-mining companies are forced to relocate their activities and investments to other oil producing countries – especially to Angola. Even if the Nigerian army does invade and overrun the Delta, the military victory is distinctly unlikely to produce a quick revival of the oil industry there, as a full scale war there would certainly result in greater damages to oil producing assets.

    Meanwhile, the attitudes of the international community are tilting against Nigeria. After Buhari was sworn in, and especially when he embarked on war against corruption, the international community felt warm towards him and Nigeria. I was in America when he paid his first visit as president to that country and addressed a gathering of Nigerians in Washington DC. We Nigerians felt good as our president was received with a surge of warmth and optimism by the American ruling class, business class, the media, and the general public. After all the gloom and doom of the last years of the Jonathan presidency, Buhari seemed to be inaugurating a new era of light, hope and growth. As a Nigerian elder resident abroad, I wrote a very optimistic article for this column in those days.

    But most of that optimism and hope has now dissipated, thanks largely to Buhari’s show of lack of understanding of the economy, thanks to his perceptible ineptitude in managing anything (including even his war against corruption), thanks to his tendency towards excessive loyalty and submissiveness to the ethnic and religious wishes and desires of his Hausa-Fulani nationality, thanks to his obvious disrespect for the party that got him into power and for political parties in general, thanks to his apparent spite for democracy – and his obvious spite for the voices of his countrymen. Informed voices in the international community are now more and more talking about fears of inevitable collapse of the Nigerian economy, of mounting poor human rights record, of lack of respect for the lives and rights of citizens, of likely mass reactions to economic distress, and of possible national collapse. Altogether, the Buhari presidency is putting Nigeria into a dark corner – a dark corner where Nigeria would steadily lose goodwill worldwide, where Nigeria would steadily lose the inflow of investment capital, and where Nigeria would find it extremely difficult to get help and support if the feared big trouble were to come.

    President Buhari needs to stop now, take a good look into and around him, seriously consider what Nigerians and foreigners are saying about his presidency and about his country, and begin seriously and resolutely to chart a different path for his presidency. As things stand today, people talking seriously and people joking on the worldwide social media are already wondering whether this man would be the last president of Nigeria, the president who would preside over the dissolution of Nigeria. That fate does not have to befall him or Nigeria. If he so chooses now, he can turn around and yet fulfil the best promises of the beginning of his presidency.

    One step that would very powerfully inaugurate the turn-around would be a new and serious attention for the demands for a restructuring of the Nigerian federation. That is where the true battle for the future of Nigeria now lies. The deciding battle no longer lies in the hands of a powerful military. Rulers tend to be blinded by their possession and control of military power. And President Buhari seems to reside most of his hope these days in the assurance that the Nigerian military can crush all dissidence, all revolts, and all attempts at secession. He is mounting troops in the South-south, South-east, and even South-west – in addition to those already in the North-east. What he does not seem to know is that crushing dissidence, revolts and attempts at secession today is no longer exactly equivalent to preserving Nigeria as one. This is not 1967-70. Nigerians have grown in knowledge and skills – especially in the awareness that they are not really weak in the world of today, and that even if they are vanquished by the army of the country to which they belong, they may still not lose their war for self-determination.

    People belonging to Buhari’s class in Nigerian society and politics, and people belonging to other levels of society, are urging him to lead our country into a restructuring of our federation without further delay. They are warning that our country could soon break up if he continues to ignore their calls. Even from his Fulani nationality where the orthodox belief has been since 1960 that only an all-powerful  and all-controlling Federal Government can serve their interests and take care of their fears in Nigeria, some leading citizens are now conceding that concentrating all power in the centre has hurt all sections of Nigeria very disastrously, and that the only way to save Nigeria now is to review the making of the states of our federation, and give to the new states the power to promote their own socio-economic development and defeat poverty among their own people – and make their own kinds of contribution to the success of Nigeria.

    Mr. President, the true need of any Nigerian people now is no longer about victory in establishing dominance over Nigeria. That has become grossly anachronistic. It has been blown away by the grinding power of poverty and the people’s determination to free themselves from poverty – poverty in the midst of plenty. You can only make yourself truly relevant by responding positively to the true need. Your destiny, Mr. President, your place in history, is in your own hands.

  • We can save Nigeria

    Nigeria’s prospects look bleak today. The economy is in serious trouble.  The federal revenue has fallen by as much as 60% in the past year. Oil sales, the pillar of the Nigerian economy, have declined from about two million barrels per day to about 1.2 million barrels. The Niger Delta Avengers, currently the most powerful militant group in the revolt against the Nigerian Federal Government in the Delta, are pushing the most extreme claims – namely, a separate Delta country – as they continue to blow up the oil platforms and pipes upon which the Nigerian oil exports depend, thereby forcing the oil exports to decline further and further. Meanwhile, world oil prices continue to fall, and even Saudi Arabia has had to cut the price of its oil. Oil’s long-term prospect does not look promising, as worldwide investments in non-oil energy sources are rising.

    The Federal Government has been forced to announce that some high priority projects in the 2016 Budget are now impossible to implement. Even federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies are experiencing underfunding, and federal investment in the economy is not happening as it should. Monthly allocations to the states have dwindled drastically. One state governor is reported as saying that he needs now to combine three months of his state’s allocations to be able to pay his state’s workers’ salaries for one month. In spite of emergency bail-outs by the Federal Government, most states cannot pay workers’ salaries. The Governor of the Central Bank was once reported as saying that if the situation continues as of now, even the Federal Government may not be able to pay federal workers’ salaries by October.

    The naira continues to fall in value vis-a-vis main foreign currencies, causing serious declines in imports. Declines in the importation of industrial raw materials are reducing industrial production. Unemployment, already disastrously high, is escalating. Inflation has surged to about 19%. Food prices are rising drastically in the market, putting more hardship on most Nigerians.

    In spite of this frightening down-turn, the Nigerian Federal Government is still having to increase expenditure on the military, in order to respond to various areas of terrorism, revolt, and troubling crime in parts of the country. The military are still fighting Boko Haram in the North-east. They are also standing ready for war in the Delta – in case, according to the high command, the Delta militants continue to frustrate the president’s attempts to resolve the Delta revolt peacefully. In the Delta also, where the president had earlier announced an end to the amnesty payments to the militants, he now appears under pressure to offer a resumption of the amnesty payments – in an effort to buy peace. Radical pro-Biafra activities have made some military build-up necessary in the Igbo South-east, while serious crime imported from the Delta to the traditionally peaceful Yoruba South-west has made some military build-up necessary in the Yoruba South-west.  If actual war should ensue in some of these places, in addition to the old war against Boko Haram in the North-east, it remains to be seen how the Federal Government will be able to find the funds to fight such wars.

    In such a dire situation as this, a widely popular government might still be able to inspire some hope and confidence among its countrymen. Unfortunately, President Buhari, who started his presidency in considerable popularity just over a year ago because of his promise of change and his immediate start of an anti-corruption war, has lost much of that popularity. Citizens in most parts of the country criticize him today for appearing to be engaged in a bid to revive the futile and disruptive attempts by his Arewa North to dominate Nigeria, and for outright nepotism in his appointments of officials into the Federal Government. He has also caused much outrage by not speaking up openly to the country about his kinsmen, the Fulani herdsmen, who have been killing farmers and destroying farms and villages in rural areas in most parts of the country. Above all, he is attracting much unpopularity for seeming incompetence in the management of the economy.

    In these circumstances then, Nigeria, whose stability has always been shaky since its independence in 1960, appears now to be headed into probably a terminal crash. Most of the country’s instability springs from its terrible inability to manage its ethnic and religious diversity appropriately. Those who have ruled Nigeria since independence have been strangely incapable to recognize that Nigeria is a country of many different nationalities, each of which lives in its on ancestral homeland, cherishes its own cultural heritage and its own pride, and desires to be reasonably free to manage its own unique concerns in the context of Nigeria.

    One of the nationalities, installed by the British colonialists in control of federal power at independence, aggressively strives to hold federal power indefinitely, to subdue the other nationalities to federal control, and to use federal power to impose its own kind of Islamic religion on all others. The end result of their striving is now a constitution which concentrates all power and resource control in a so-called federal government that is really a unitary government. In the process, Nigeria has experienced inter-ethnic and religious conflicts, rigged elections and violent protests, a major civil war and smaller civil wars, mind-boggling public corruption, steady escalation of poverty and steady decline in Nigerians’ quality of life, terrorism, pogroms and acts of genocide. For over a decade now, informed observers in many parts of the world have increasingly predicted that Nigeria could soon break up. Today, those predictions seem near fulfilment.

    But even in this gloom, we Nigerians can still find ways to hold our country together, and to make it progressive and prosperous. One sure way is to establish a proper federation for our country. Most Nigerians who want their country saved are increasingly demanding this – and they call it ‘restructuring’. The basic fundamental principle behind restructuring and a rational federation is that we Nigerians must respect our indigenous nations and their cultures and their self-pride, and build upon that, in our country’s constitution, the pattern of interrelationships among our nationalities in our one country.

    Restructuring consists of two basic steps. The first is to create states based on respect for our nationalities. We have about 300 nationalities, and we cannot have that many states. So we need to let some large nationalities (like the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa-Fulani) be states, and help groups of the smaller nationalities to join to form states. We must not let any nationality be split between states. In this whole way, India, with about 2000 nationalities and a total population of over one billion gave itself 28 states. We might end with about 20 states; if we choose to have fewer states, we could have a Yoruba state, an Igbo state, and a Hausa-Fulani state, and three other states each combining contiguous small nationalities – a total of six states (that is, our six zones become states). Each state organizes itself in its own way and writes its own constitution accordingly.

    The second step is to give each state much power to manage its economic life, promote its own development, maintain its own security, and make its own kind of contribution to our country’s progress. This means that many of the things now done by the Federal Government shall be done by the states. It also means that the states will control the development of their God-given resources as part of their economic development. The Federal Government shall still control the high points of our country’s economy (currency, foreign exchange, central bank, inter-state economic regulations, taxation over all resources, etc.), as well as our country’s foreign relations, military service, etc. On the whole, the Federal Government shall be much smaller than at present and our politicians will no longer fight to death to control the Federal Government.

    That is it. India had our present trouble of instability and near collapse before, and they overcame it by the kind of restructuring described here. We too can do it and save our country.

  • Nigeria’s unity not negotiable? – 3

    This is my third and last intervention on President Buhari’s statement that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. In my first two articles, I made the point that it is understandable for any president – especially a president under pressure as Buhari has been – to make the statement that his country’s unity is not negotiable or questionable. In our experience in this country, a statement like that by any president does not amount to anything. We have heard it in one form or another, again and again, from all our past presidents. What would amount to much, what we Nigerians want from any president – especially from our current president who expressly promised us change – is a plan to keep our country harmoniously together by removing the perennial reason why various ones among our indigenous nationalities have been questioning Nigeria’s unity and Nigeria’s existence as one country.

    Since Nigeria became a self-governing country in 1960, various Nigerian nationalities, or at least persons claiming to act on behalf of their nationalities, have, under certain circumstances painful to their nationalities, questioned Nigeria’s unity as one country and threatened (and tried) to terminate it. They are perpetually pushing, and forcing Nigeria’s unity to be renegotiated.

    Young Ijaw patriots led by Isaac Boro, and others subsequently led by Ken Saro-wiwa, did it. Youths of the Ijaw and other peoples of the Niger Delta are doing it now with methods that are hurting Nigeria very decisively. These youths are united by a common reaction to the horrible degradation of their Delta environment under the impact of the petroleum industry, by a rejection of the iniquitous sharing of the benefits of their homeland’s petroleum resources, and by the neglect of their part of Nigeria by an apparently uncaring Federal Government.

    The Hausa-Fulani political elite did it in May-October 1966 when they mobilized crowds of their people to demand Araba (separation) and to seek to enforce Araba by killing Igbo citizens in Northern cities.  They did these things partly because of their painful losses in a Nigerian military coup, and partly because the consequent Federal Military Government seemed determined to destroy all regional autonomy, to seize control of all power over Nigeria, and especially to subdue the Northern Region.

    The Igbo people did it by striking for a separate country of Biafra in 1967-70. They did it because their security as a people had become seriously compromised in Nigeria, and because the then Military Government under the North’s dominant control seemed to them to represent even greater   threats to their security in Nigeria.

    Youths of Kanuri and related peoples, choosing the banner of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the name Boko Haram, have been doing it since 2009. We have been led to believe generally that their sole reason is religious and that their sole objective is an Islamic caliphate, and we miss the fact that Kanuri nationalism (with a strong dose of rejection of Fulani hegemony and a desire for a separate country) is a major motivation of theirs – and we fail to see the fact that their revolt derives much of its strength from indigenous local support in their homeland in the North-east.

    Youths of the Arewa North, led by highly educated young men, did it in 2014 by holding street demonstrations and demanding that the North should cut relations with Nigeria, that “the failed experiment of Nigeria” should be terminated, and that all Southerners should quit the North within two weeks and all Northerners resident in the South should return home immediately. They did these things because they felt that their Arewa North was being disrespected, neglected and marginalized by the Nigerian Federal Government of that day, and that the Nigerian Federal Government was incurably corrupt and incompetent.

    Among the large and considerably literate Yoruba nation of the Nigerian South-west, very many youth groups, called ‘self-determination groups’, have long been itching to do it, only restrained by their adult population and the cultural sensitivities of their nation. They are itching to strike for their Yoruba nation because their Yoruba nation has been losing too much, and declining too sadly, and becoming ever poorer, as a result of the excessive concentration of power and resource control in the hands of a Nigerian Federal Government that is always inclined to resist and frustrate the progress and development of the Yoruba nation, a Federal Government  that is characterized by stunted desire for modern development, by horrific incompetence, and by mind-boggling corruption – a Federal Government that seems to be on a mission to dampen development and spread corruption and poverty all over Nigeria.

    Yes, Nigeria’s unity is being questioned and threatened all the time by various Nigerian peoples. No presidential threats, no number of amnesties, no amount of presidential bribes, no security agency’s menace, and no amount of military violence, has succeeded in shutting up our nationalities – or is likely ever to succeed in shutting them up. The passion for Biafra is much more popular today among the masses of ordinary Igbo people than in 1967; Delta militants are sharper and more difficult to subdue today than in the time of Isaac Boro or Saro-wiwa; Yoruba self-determination groups are better informed today and much better ready to promote their nation’s interests, etc. And let us not deceive ourselves –  it is these peoples that hold the final say, and that will wield the ultimate knife, on the fate of Nigeria’s unity and Nigeria’s existence as one country – no matter what presidents may say, threaten, intend to do, or do.

    Moreover, while the international community was, on the whole, more inclined to support Nigeria’s unity against Biafran separation in 1967-70, the international community is today much more likely to arise and protect any Nigerian nationality being militarily attacked by Nigeria for demanding a Biafra or a Niger Delta Republic or an Oduduwa Republic. In recent decades, the world has become quite strongly, sensitized towards protecting its weaker peoples who, because they are trying to exercise their right of self-determination, are being subjected to brutalities and oppression by strong countries or stronger neighbours. The doctrine that weak nationalities have the right to protection by the world, and that the world has the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (cryptically put as R2P) is now a vital reality in our world.

    It is very probable, therefore, that, given the present trends, more and more Nigerian peoples will demand self-determination and separation (and a renegotiation of Nigeria’s unity) in no distant a future. It is also probable that they will do so with increasing intensity and capability. And, if some of them happen to do it together or even merely simultaneously, it seems probable that Nigeria would buckle under the pressure.

    Because more and more Nigerians worry about these probabilities, and because more and more Nigerian nationalities painfully reject the poverty, corruption, crookedness and impunity that the Nigerian Federal Government represents, more and more well-meaning Nigerian voices are being raised for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation. Meanwhile, leaders of a section of Nigeria, the Arewa North section, choose to oppose restructuring with all their might, for no other reason than to make the point that they ae dominant in Nigeria, and that only what they want has any chance of being chosen and done in Nigeria. They may appear to be winning their victory; but they are likely soon to be labouring under the terrible historic guilt of being responsible for Nigeria’s disappearance from the map of the world.

    The special point about President Buhari is that he belongs to the leadership of this Arewa North section of Nigeria, and that Nigerians, and the whole world, have the right to presume that he has the ability to persuade his people to change their stand on the all-important question of restructuring of the Nigerian federation. He has a historic duty here; and his place in history will obviously depend on what he does with that duty.

  • Nigeria’s unity not negotiable? – 2

    Here is my second response to President Buhari’s statement that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. When he made that statement, he was obviously worried about the potent threats to Nigeria’s unity arising in various parts of Nigeria. He was saying in effect that he would not let Nigeria’s unity be renegotiated under his watch – that he would hand Nigeriaintact to his successor. It was a statement of intent, the kind of statement to be expected from any president.

    However, since President Buhari made that statement, some persons and groups have echoed him affirmatively. They say yes, Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. What these people seem to mean is that, fundamentally, and by certain immutable laws, Nigeria’s unity is sacrosanct, immutable, untouchable – that under no circumstance can Nigeria be dismembered or dissolved. Whoever says this is wrong, flatly wrong. And if the president shares their meaning, he too is very wrong.

    There is no country on earth that is beyond being dismembered or dissolved. Throughout human history, countries have arisen, flourished, and then lost some parts, or broken apart. Countries that are made up of different nationalities, with the different nationalities possessing their different ancestral homelands in the same country, are particularly likely to lose some of the nationalities over time or to break up. It is common human experience that every nationality (or “tribe), no matter how small, is imbued with a fundamental desire and urge to control its own life and determine its own destiny. That is why every multi-nation empire or country in history, no matter how powerful or how long-lasting, breaks up in the end.This universal human experienceis being enacted todayon all continents of the world. No country is above it.

    See what has happened in our world in the course of only the past century – indeed, in the course of only the past 30 years. By 1900, two large and powerful multi-nation countries – theAustro-Hungarian Empire and the Turkish Empire – dominated the map of most of Europe and the Middle East.By 1918, both had broken up.In both cases, though a major Europe-wide war provided the occasion for the breaking up, the powerful and fundamental cause of the breaking up was the desire of the many different nationalities to governthemselves and determine their own futures.

    With the breaking up, many new countries immediately showed up on the world map – Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and many others. Of these new countries, some (like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and others) still contained some different nationalities. In about 1990, each of such countries broke up, and their different nationalities became separate countries. Yugoslavia broke into seven new countries – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Kosovo. Czechoslovakia broke into two –Czech Republic and Slovakia.

    For most of the 20th century, another large European country, the Soviet Union, was one of the most powerful countries in the world. It contained the large Russian nationality and many different smaller nationalities. In about 1990, this powerful country suddenly broke up into 13 different countries – Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The small country of Georgia contained the Georgian nationality and two tiny nationalities (Abkhazia and South Ossetia). Both soon separated from Georgia.

    All over Europe, any country that still includes two or more nationalities today is in trouble, because their different nationalities are agitating for separation. In Spain, the Basques and the Catalans want to separate from the Spaniards and have countries of their own. In Belgium, the Fleming and Walloon nationalities are talking separation. In Britain, the Irish separated in 1921 to have their own Irish Republic; and the Scots and Welsh are close to doing that now.

    In Asia, soon after the independence of India in 1947, the peoples of northern India separated and formed one country called Pakistan; and then, eastern Pakistan separated and became the Republic of Bangladesh. China is increasingly facing agitations for separation by its small nationalities – the Uighurs of Xsinjiang, Manchurians, Lower Mongolians, and Tibetans.

    In the Indian Ocean, the small island country of Sri Lanka consists of two nationalities – the Tamils and the Sinhalese. Since independence, the Tamils have been struggling to have their own separate country.In Indonesia, East Timor broke away in 2002 and became the Republic of Timor Leste, and many other small nationalities are also demanding separation – namely, Aceh, Riau, Ambom, Irian Jaya, and Madura.In America, French Canada is struggling to separate from English Canada and become a separate country.

    InBlack Africa, each of the countries, as created and structured by European imperialists, defies order and stability. Each combines many nationalities; each has boundaries that split up nationalities; each, in its internal structure, refuses to accord respect to its many nationalities.And unfortunately, the leaders of the various nationalities have generally proved wanting in clearly stating the real desires of their peoples.The result has been that most countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are reeling in chaos, conflicts between nationalities, rigged elections and violent protests, primitive attempts by some nationalities to dominate others, violent overthrows of governments, destructive corruption, civil wars, acts of genocide.

    In the light of the worldwide needs and demands for self-determination by nationalities, the world has had to create order – to protect every nationality. The General Assembly of the United Nations Organization adopted a “DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES” which affirms the right of every “indigenous people” or nationality to determine its own political status freely and in peace.  Its Preamble states as follows:” – – the Charter of the United Nations, the International Covenant onEconomic, Socialand Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, affirm the fundamental importance of the right of self-determination of all peoples, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. And its

    Article 3 then affirms: “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

    The DECLARATION emphasizes that indigenous peoples exercising or seeking to exercise their rights of self-determination may not be subjected to discrimination by the countries to which they currently belong, may not be subjected to any kind of violence, may not, individually or collectively, be denied their human rights or denied justice, may not have military action brought upon their territory without their consent or request, may not have their democratic rights of association or of expression interfered with, etc.

    All countries of Africa are signatories to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But in addition, the African Union (AU) has a charter on this matter – the African (Banjul) Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Its Article 19 states:”All peoples shall be equal, they shall enjoy the same respect and shall have the same rights. Nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another” And Article 20:1 affirms:”All peoples shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination”.

    Nigeria is a signatory to all these international laws; Nigeria is bound by them, andno Nigerian law limits, or can limit, their effectover Nigeria. It is therefore not true that Nigerian nationalities are barred from seeking separate countries for themselves out of Nigeria, or that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable.

    The combination of prevailing realities in our world points to the probability that agitations for separation from Nigeria would increase in number, intensity and skills, and that Nigeria would ultimately break up. The horrendous misgovernment of Nigeria reinforces that probability.

    If President Buhari is serious about preserving Nigeria as one, what he has to do, in addition to his anti-corruption war, is to lead Nigeria to restructure its federation, restore to each people the control of their resources, empower each state to fight poverty and disorder competently, cut the Federal Government to a much smaller size, and stop the perpetual strategizing of one Nigerian nationality to hurt and dominate the others. Nobody who leaves these undone can succeed in keeping Nigeria one – even with the best of military capabilities.

  • Nigeria’s unity not negotiable?

    President Buhari says that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. He means, obviously, that Nigeria must never be dissolved and that no nation that is now part of Nigeria can ever take leave of Nigeria and become a separate country. Well, we must concede that he is saying what a Nigerian president is supposed to say. It is inconceivable that anybody who happens to be the president of any country would say that the country he presides over could break up. No way.

    However, when a president says that his country’s unity is not negotiable, the world has a right to ask him what he intends to do to preserve his country as one. That question is particularly apt if the country is swaying on the verge of breaking up. Nigeria is manifestly swaying today on the verge of breaking up. There is not much of a doubt about that. One only has to take a look at the trouble spots across Nigeria to see this most clearly.

    Take the Igbo South-east. Many Nigerians are used to assuming that the Igbo people are not really serious about Biafra – that the Igbo people are too attracted to (and too spoiled by) the benefits of Nigeria to act definitively to break away from Nigeria and start a separate country of their own. But, today, that assumption about the Igbo no longer stands as solid as before. The many Igbo organizations clamouring for Biafra, the increasing numbers of youths, older adults, and organizations involving themselves, and the fervour, passion and political skill they are increasingly bringing into the struggle (both at home and in the wide world), allseem to point to one probable outcome – namely, that Biafra could indeedbecome a reality someday.

    Take the Niger Delta. Many Nigerians also commonly assume much the same kind of things about the peoples of the Niger Delta as they do about the Igbo. But it is critically important that we should assess the Niger Delta situation correctly. When Isaac Boro started the Niger Delta fight against Nigeria in the early 1960s, he was leading only a handful of passionate youths like himself. His chances of succeeding against the power of the Nigerian Federal Government were nil. Today, with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), and some other less known Niger Delta militant groups, the story is totally different. There are not many other separatist groups in the world today that command the same magnitude of weaponry and financial resources that these Niger Delta groups command. It is very little known to Nigerians that, under the amnesty programmes of succeeding federal governments, many thousands of Niger Delta youths were able to go abroad to acquire various kinds of training in weaponry, combat, and the flying of aircraft.

    In short, Nigeria is being confronted in the Niger Delta today by a series of considerably capable military outfits. These boys are superior to Boko Haram in many respects – and Nigeria has been fighting Boko Haram with only little success since 2009. Also, though the North-east does feature a lot of geographical difficulties for the Nigerian military, such difficulties are minor compared with those of the Niger Delta. To attempt to subdue the Niger Delta, the Nigerian military must be ready to fight endless amphibious battles – against people who are seasoned inhabitants of the creeks, lagoons and swamplands of the Delta. It is in the light of these tough realities that President Buhari has wisely suspended military campaigns in the Niger Delta and chosen to urge various citizen groups to appeal to the Niger Delta militants for peace.

    Moreover, unfortunately, if more serious war were to come, Nigeria does not now command the alliance that fought against Biafra in the civil war of 1967-70. It is no longer possible for Nigeria to amass the hordes of Middle Belt and Yoruba soldiers that won most of the victories of that civil war. The Yoruba and Middle Belt peoples have found that there is hardly any benefit for them in fighting for Nigeria. All the policies put together by the military regimes since 1970 with the support of theArewaNorh elite,all the centralization of power and resource control and its outcome in horrible poverty across Nigeria,  all the federal attempts made to suppress most other peoples of Nigeria and their cultures, all the strange claims of the Arewa North  elitefor sole control of Nigeria’s federal power, all the religion-based killings of Southerners in parts of the North, all the aggression against the peoples of the Middle Belt and the threats against the Yoruba and other peoples of the South, all the weird happenings ofBoko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen’s killings and destruction in the Middle Belt and the South, all the apparently perpetual strategizing to hurt the peoples of the Middle Belt and the South – all these have fragmented Nigeria beyond measure. A country of many peoples like Nigeria can only be sustained by mutual respect, by a common sincere desire to prosper together, and by a general agreement to obey the agreed rules of co-existence. Unfortunately, Nigeria has been trying hard to forge unity through the weakening (and even destroying) of its various peoples, and has been bruised through impunity after impunity. The sense of “common country” has been vitiated.

    Since Buhari has said that the unity of Nigeria must remain, we must understand him to mean that he intends to take steps to mend the wounds of Nigeria in order to ensure Nigeria’s continued existence and unity. We must therefore ask him what the steps are that he intends to take. Until now, over a year since he was sworn in as president, he has said not a single word about such steps.

    Countless Nigerians, from all parts of the country, have been clamouring for a restructuring of the Nigerian Federation – to the ends that viable states might be created, andthat much of the powers and resource control perversely crowded into the hands of the Federal Government be devolved to the federating units in order to empower the federating units to promote socio-economic development again, fight poverty, and restore hope to Nigeria. His answer to these demands has been that restructuring is a no-no with him – even though his election campaign promises had included restructuring as an important piece in his Change Agenda.As blood has been continually shed in most parts of Nigeria by well-trained Fulani herdsmen and foreign Libyan mercenaries all armed with highly sophisticated weapons, President Buhari has chosen not to speak to Nigeria, to explain what is happening, to elaborate what the Federal Government of Nigeria intends to do about it, and thereby to allay the fears of Nigerians. On the contrary, reports keep circulating that the Federal Government is intent on getting state governors across Nigeria to grant land for so-called “grazing reserves” for the Fulani herdsmen, even though most Nigerians are expressing  fears that those grazing reserves are yet another plan aimed at hurting various Nigerian peoples. Finally, from most parts of Nigeria, the protest has been loud that President Buhari’s appointments into his government, especially his appointments into the security forces, have given undue emphasis to his North and even ignored some other parts of Nigeria, but his response has been to continue to do more of the same.

    From no more than the above, it seems very unlikely that the Buhari presidency will do much to redirect Nigeria away from dismemberment or breaking up – and that would be a pity. Of course, he might intend to use force to keep Nigeria together – but, given the realities of our times, that is a step with very doubtful outcomes. And, in any case, what sort of unity can exist in a country that is kept together by wars and the military conquests of its various peoples? If it comes to that, how many Nigerian peoples, large or small, look like weaklings who will surrender perpetually to armedforce – force by either the regular Nigerian military,or force by irregular militias and Mujaheed in such as Boko Haram or the armed herdsmen and their Libyan mercenary support? No, it is to be hoped that President Buhari will yet choose other paths that can lead to sure and sustainable unity for Nigeria.

  • Why Nigeria is failing – 1

    More than a few times, I have said in my university class lectures, and in public speeches, that America is not merely the greatest country in the world but the greatest country in the history of the world. I say it now again. America is simply an incredible country. America is great because America’s systems work. And America’s systems work because Americans are phenomenally loyal to the systems of their country.

    I have taught courses on the American Idea in various American universities. Yet, one frozen winter morning not long ago, as I drove in my car and listened to an interview on my car radio about an American public institution, I was still simply awed. The interviewer was asking questions from an author who had just written a book on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – the highest police and secret service institution in America, the equivalent of the Federal Police and Secret Service in my country Nigeria. To listen to that interview about the FBI is to listen to the best expert lesson on how to make a country work – how to make a country stable – how to make a country prosper. For me as a Nigerian the message was clear.  My country does not work because my country’s systems do not work.  It is almost impossible to find a Nigerian public servant who believes that the public system he works for was really meant to do the task it was designed and created for. We Nigerians simply do not have any aorta of concept or consciousness of systems loyalty or systems integrity.

    The author who was being interviewed told this story at one point: An American president was being investigated once for some alleged wrong doing. As part of the investigation, two FBI agents went to the White House with authorization to collect forensic evidence (in form of blood) from the president’s person. The president had no choice. He rolled up his shirt sleeve and let the FBI agents pull the blood from his arm and go their way!  Think of it:  The president of America is the most powerful man in the entire world. Shouldn’t he be above that kind of thing? In America, the answer is NO. The American president is the most powerful person on earth, but he is the servant of the American system that is more powerful than any person in America!

    The voice of the lady interviewer in that radio interview was quivering as she asked, “Are you then saying that it is impossible for anybody, no matter how high in office, to hide any misdeed done in the American government?” The author answered, “Well, it is virtually impossible for any public office holder to hide anything, or to get away with any misdeed, in America’s government, federal, state or local. Somehow or other, the truth will come out. Someone will do his duty and reveal the truth. And then the justice system will go into action.”

    Can we Nigerians imagine that? Can we imagine a country in which even the highest public officers cannot easily hide, or get away with, any shady act they do in the government? Our Nigeria is a country in which loads of crooked deeds are perpetrated, hidden, and gotten away with, hour by hour, in our practice of governance.

    But in America, it cannot be done; nobody can do it. The integrity of the system – the readiness of the people to uphold the system – always wins in the end. The justice system is more powerful than any person in America, no matter his or her office or popularity. There is no shrine in America that the FBI, or even the lowest local police, cannot enter. And trying to bribe one’s way out of an FBI investigation, or even out of a local police investigation, is literally like trying to commit suicide.

    Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that Americans, or rulers of America, are above corruption, crookedness, criminal behaviour.  Not at all. Human beings are human beings everywhere in the world.  In the government of any country, there are many individuals who can act illegally or criminally, and who can take advantage of their positions to appropriate some things improperly to themselves or their families or friends.

    The difference always is in the integrity of the system – in how much support the system enjoys among its people to maintain integrity; how each person employed to work in the system will, on the aggregate, do his or her little job in it; how, ultimately, the general citizenry, on the aggregate, has been conditioned by history and culture to view and regard the system.

    Of course, people do all sorts of inappropriate things, illegal things, crooked things, criminal things, in the portals of America’s government. The beauty of the American experience in this matter is that most, or at least a good many, of such people will find the justice system coming after them and will be made to suffer the punishment they deserve.

    For instance, it does not look odd to Americans when their country’s Attorney General, who is appointed by the President, institutes some criminal investigation against the president that appointed him.  I was a young visiting professor in an American university when President Nixon was facing investigation in the Watergate allegations in the early 1970s.  I saw a lot of things that would be inconceivable in my country. For instance, a Special Investigator appointed by the Attorney General was digging up lots of evidence that could destroy the President; the President told the Attorney General to fire the Special Investigator; and the Attorney General refused to fire him.  And in the end, it was the president’s own Chief of Staff that advised him that the game was up – as a result of which the President offered his resignation.

    I have seen the American justice system tear a Vice President apart because of allegations that he had evaded taxes years before, when he had served as governor in his state. I have seen them pursue him relentlessly until he gave up the job of Vice President.

    Like most Africans of my time, I loved President Clinton during his presidency.  Therefore, I watched every minute, every twist and turn, of his travail at the hands of the justice system during the investigations of his alleged misdeeds with Monica Lewinsky. I was unhappy about what my friend was suffering, but I loved and respected the awesome majesty of the system.

    In America, I have seen many state governors facing criminal investigations, I have seen many forced to resign from office, and I have seen some arraigned before criminal courts or sent to jail.  I have avidly followed the cases of many erring members of Congress, many Senators, as the American justice system has dealt with them.  I have seen many popular and powerful members of Congress or Senate, when the justice system steps into their lives, lose the support of their once adoring colleagues.  I have seen many city mayors wriggling in the hands of the justice system, and I have seen quite a few go to jail.

    That is the American way. Nobody is above the law in America. And that is one secret behind America’s stability, strength and success.

    And, let’s face it; no country can succeed without having systems that have integrity – systems that work as they were designed to work – systems whose integrity enjoys the loyalty of its people.  In spite of Nigeria’s many other weaknesses, if we had made it a high priority from the beginning to make our systems work, we might have given our country a fair shot at stability and success.

    We Nigerians generally attach little or no importance to giving integrity to our systems, and that is a major reason why our country has fallen into ruins in our hands. In our country, corruption of all kinds and sizes, even criminal actions as big as murders, have become part of the privileges of men and women in high places.  Just see what our public officials are capable of doing today to stall the ongoing war against corruption. See how accused public officials easily get the support of their colleagues in office, or the support of their political parties, or bribe important functionaries of government for support – and thereby avoid punishment for their crimes against our country. Given all these, what chances of survival and success does Nigeria have in the world?

  • What is happening in the Niger Delta?

    This past week, I was in the company of some highly educated Nigerians, some of them influential citizens of our country. The conversation drifted to the story of Vice-President Osinbajo’s recent visit to the Niger Delta to initiate the cleaning up of the Niger Delta. President Buhari had been billed to go and perform this function but, because he could not go, the Vice-President had had to go for him. Surprisingly, very few of the otherwise highly informed Nigerians in our little group that afternoon really knew anything much about what needs to be cleaned up in the Niger Delta part of our country. It is something that Nigerians seriously need to know.

    Most Nigerians know, and almost all suffer the impact of, the general picture of the rape and degradation that Nigeria has been subjected to since independence by the men and women who have been ruling Nigeria. The total picture of that rape and degradation is surrealistic. It is as if leading Nigerians are a sub-human species – a sub-human species naturally incapable of recognizing, appreciating or desiring the higher values of human group life, a sub-human species confidently absorbed in snatching at, and scrambling for, whatever is low and degrading and bestial in the making of man. Since President Buhari started the war against public corruption over a year ago, the constant revelations of greed and public robbery have given us a hugely increased chance to see more and more glaringly the repulsive face of these predators whom we Nigerians call leaders.

    But that is the general picture of the rape and bestialities. From that general picture, a photograph displayed on the worldwide web many months ago grabs and holds my attention as I write these words this morning.  It is a photograph taken in our oil-rich Niger Delta in 2012, near the village of Nembe in Bayelsa State. The earth and the vegetation in all directions are black from oil spillages that have, apparently, been going on repeatedly for decades. The stream through the scene carries a surface layer of black crude oil. It is lifeless and serene, because the oil has long killed the fish, the frogs, the crabs, and all other aquatic life. Dead trees stand like ghostly witnesses to the devastation that has been done over and over in this place for decades. In the distance, a wild fire rages on – most probably from some natural gas being destroyed by flaring.

    Thus in one single snapshot, this lone photograph captures the multi-faceted picture of our brigandage and shame as a country. Our Niger Delta produces virtually all the enormous revenues that keep our Nigeria alive. But we are content to let the Niger Delta die, and to let its inhabitants perish. From privileged positions as a Nigerian senator and member of the Senate Committee on Petroleum and Energy in 1979-83, I saw some of the beginning of the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta in 1981-2, and I was horrified. From all accounts, the situation has grown progressively worse since then. World-wide economic experts and international agencies say that the Niger Delta probably experiences more oil spillages than all the other oil-producing countries of the world put together.

    Because our leaders and rulers have been too busy salivating at the sight of the enormous cash inflowing daily form the oil revenues, and too engrossed in schemes for stealing and sharing the money, they have had no room for concern for the destruction that has been going on in the Niger Delta. Various courts, Nigerian and international, have judged at various times that some of the major oil-exploring and oil-mining companies engaged in the Delta do too little to prevent oil spillages, and do virtually nothing to clean up after oil-spillages have happened – things they would never dare in other parts of the world. They leave the oil pipelines which they have constructed across the face of the Delta to age, corrode and break, spilling countless barrels of crude oil per minute. Quite commonly, such spillages are left going on for months.

    Nigerian government sources have it that more than 7,000 spills occurred between the years 1970 and 2000.  During my time as a senator in the Nigerian National Assembly (1979-83), we federal legislators made some effort to get to see what was happening to the Niger Delta, to call attention to it, and to demand that the executive should do something about it. It was probably because of our actions that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) admitted as follows in a report in the 1980s: “We witnessed the slow poisoning of the waters of this country and the destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operations. But since the inception of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than twenty-five years ago, there has been no concerned and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil operators, to control environmental problems associated with the industry”. The situation has not changed since then.

    The general situation in the Delta is made worse by the practice of gas flaring. Natural gas is commonly associated with petroleum in the ground, and is commonly released when the oil is mined. In most other oil-producing places in the world, care is taken to tap the gas for sale or to re-inject it back into the earth. Oil fields in Europe take care of 99% of the associated natural gas in these ways. But in Nigeria, virtually all the associated gas is destroyed by flaring away. It was once estimated that, in this way, Nigeria loses about $2.5 billion every year. But gas flaring also increases the poisoning of the country and constitutes a serious threat to the people’s health. Both the Nigerian government and the oil companies readily admit that oil flaring is bad, wasteful and dangerous to human life.

    The destruction of much of the Delta’s farming land, and the poisoning of the rivers and creeks, resulting in the wiping out of aquatic life, has destroyed much of the traditional means of livelihood of the people. It is estimated that over 20% of the ecosystem has been thus destroyed – and that the destruction may reach 40% in the next few decades.  The degradation naturally occurs in patches, leaving some parts more intensely devastated than others. An international agency, Amnesty International, once estimated that more than 70% of the citizens of the Niger Delta subsist on less than one US Dollar per day. The oil spills do not only destroy farmlands, crops and fishing places, they also widely contaminate drinking water sources. And such contamination poses very serious dangers of disease (especially cancers) to the people.

    It is important to add to this picture the fact that when the Nigerian federal authorities who control the Nigerian oil industry do take action to allocate certain benefits of the oil industry to some prominent Nigerians, the citizens of the Niger Delta hardly ever get much share. A list of federal allocations of oil blocks down the decades shows that most allocations usually go to big men in the North and hardly any goes to citizens of the Delta.

    This then is the background to the violent revolts and destructions constantly going on in the Niger Delta. These started not long after Nigeria’s independence – with a Niger Delta youth named Isaac Dappa Boro as leader. It flared very massively when the phenomenally talented Saro Wiwa (who had been avery notable undergraduate student of the Ibadan University when I had been a graduate student there) stepped forth in the 1990s to champion the cause of his battered homeland and people.

    Moreover, more and more, the impoverished folks of the Niger Delta have been pushed into the practice known as “bunkering”. To find ways to survive at all, daring youths from the villages risk their lives to venture into the dangerous terrains in order to steal crude oil for sale, usually having to sabotage the oil pipe-lines to achieve their purpose. According to some reports, this practice has grown into a big underground industry, and is still growing.

    In the past few months, the revolt has reached greater heights than ever before, with a youth organization named Niger Delta Avengers constantly and competently destroying oil mining and pipeline installations. The Niger Delta Avengers have been proving very successful in disrupting the Nigerian oil industry and cutting down Nigerian oil exports –and thus seriously depressing the whole Nigerian economy. And not surprisingly, other local youth bodies have been springing up to add muscle in their own ways to the revolt. Not surprisingly too, a demand for secession of the Niger Delta from Nigeria has increasingly formed an objective of the revolt.

    Obviously, Nigeria cannot let the Niger Delta situation continue to fester. Fundamentally appropriate solutions must be substituted for the failed policies that have been employed for over 50 years. For a president who promised us change, here is a field to pursue and achieve real and permanentchangethat offers the Niger Delta and Nigeria a chance to progress and prosper. It can be done.

     

  • Mr. President, very many Nigerians live in fear

    Dear President Buhari, in the light of the on-going Fulani herdsmen’s killings and destructions in many places in our country, many of us Nigerians are living in fear. In most of our rural countryside, our farmers and their families are afraid to do their accustomed work on the farms. Across our country, farms, the handwork and means of livelihood of our farmers and their families, are being destroyed by roving cattle. When farmers’ families go to sleep in the night these days, they are no longer sure whether their farms will be there in the morning, or whether the cattle herds would have wiped out everything during the night. They are no longer sure whether their villages will be allowed to sleep peacefully through the night, or whether the killer herdsmen will come in the dark, kill villagers, destroy and burn the houses, and rape the women and girls. Nobody is sure where and when the sudden attacks will come, or what the magnitude of the killings and devastations will be. State governments, local governments, and traditional rulers, all are unsure what to do to protect their people. One governor burst into tears when he saw the scene of rampage in a village in his state.

    The situation is desperate, Mr. President. As you very well know, we seriously need to improve agricultural productivity in this country. To that end, most authorities and leaders of our country have been trying to encourage our people to return to the land. Since you became president, you have repeatedly contributed your very influential voice to the call for agricultural growth. And you have made it a priority in your policies, plans and programmes. In many parts of our country, especially in most of our southern states, the return to farming is still very slow and very hesitant. But now, the Fulani herdsmen are scaring farmers away from the farms. A very major disaster is being enacted.

    In response to the disaster, a whirlwind of agitated comments and cries is sweeping through most of our country. To allow these fears and this whirlwind to continue is inimical to the well-being of this country. It could even wreck this country – and lead to its collapse. Mr. President, you must take steps without delay to bring this dangerous situation to a satisfactory end. We need to have a definitive and lasting solution. Merely ordering the Nigerian military and police to stop these herdsmen from attacking farmers and villagers, as you have done, is not enough. As long as these killer herdsmen remain, and as long as important questions about them remain unexplained, the wild and inflammatory speculations will continue to shake Nigeria.

    We Nigerians need, want, and demand, to have answers to many questions concerning this situation. Who really are these so-called Fulani herdsmen? From official and non-official sources, we are getting loads of information about their identity, about why they are behaving as they are now behaving, and about the sources of their strength.

    We are told that these people are ordinary nomadic cattle herdsmen. We are also told that the recent civil commotions in the Maghreb (especially in Libya) makes it easy to get sophisticated weapons in the Sahel parts of West Africa, as a result of which these herdsmen have been able to acquire even such highly sophisticated guns as AK47. But, how do ordinary nomadic herdsmen afford to buy expensive things like AK47 rifles? How are they able to train to use such sophisticated weapons?

    The suspicion is being voiced in the media that some rich and influential Nigerian citizens have been supplying the herdsmen with these weapons, and training the herdsmen to use them. If yes, who are these rich and influential Nigerian citizens? What are these rich and influential Nigerian citizens trying to achieve?

    You, Mr. President, were recently reported to have revealed in an interview with CNN in London that some of these herdsmen are really Libyan militiamen, trained under Ghadafi, well-armed and well-trained fighters who fled southwards to West Africa after the fall of Ghadafi. If so, how did these militiamen become cattle herdsmen in Nigeria? Who gave them thousands of cattle to herd?

    You said in the interview, Sir, that these militiamen have become an Africa-wide problem. Why has the government of Nigeria never informed Nigeria about this problem? What steps has the Nigerian government taken to prevent the problem from coming into Nigeria or to expel it from Nigeria? If no step, why?

    Why have some prominent Fulani leaders been representing these militiamen to us as merely Fulani herdsmen and claiming Nigerian citizens’ rights for them – even though they must know that they are, in fact, extremely dangerous Libyan killers? Why have some Fulani spokesmen been threatening that they would break up Nigeria if these Libyan militiamen are thrown out of Nigeria?

    Do we now have the president’s word that Nigeria is under invasion by Libyan militiamen? And, what does the Nigerian government intend to do about that?

    A highly placed citizen from the Middle Belt, Governor Balarabe Musa, warned in 2014 that a new insurgency was in the offing – a new insurgency different from Boko Haram, better organized, better armed and much more dangerous than Boko Haram, and planned by some highly influential Nigerians for the purpose of achieving some major political objective in Nigeria. Are we now seeing part of that insurgency?

    Some Arewa North citizens have threatened again and again in recent years that the North would go to war rather than accept certain kinds of change in Nigeria. And they have also repeatedly assured us that the North is more ready for war than the South. In the background of these threats, there have been repeated reports in the media since 2012 that large quantities of arms are being illegally imported into Nigeria.

    Are today’s depredations by the Fulani herdsmen part of what these various members of the Northern elite have been threatening? Are the Libyan militiamen part of a mercenary army that some influential Nigerians have hired to wage war against some parts and peoples of Nigeria?

    Some Northerners are frenetically demanding “grazing reserves” for the herdsmen. Some are threatening that we Southerners will find ourselves in greater danger if we refuse to grant land for such grazing reserves. Some say that they will break up Nigeria if the herdsmen are refused entry into Southern Nigeria. We Southerners suspect a hidden agenda for these grazing reserves. What are the true purposes of the grazing reserves?  Are they designed by some people to house illegal armies of occupation in the states of the Middle Belt and the South, for the purpose of intimidating the peoples of those places? Are they meant to be jihadist instruments for forcible Islamization? Are they designed as weapons of one ethnic group’s conquest of Nigeria?

    Mr. President, you owe Nigeria clear, truthful, and statesmanlike answers and explanations on this situation. More importantly, you owe Nigeria policies and actions that will remove this horrible threat from our country – in the interest of the peace and existence of our country. We Nigerians pledge our strongest support to such policies and actions when you design and implement them. But delay is dangerous.

  • President Buhari and Fulani herdsmen

    I think it is a great pity that the Buhari presidency, which started with a promise of change and hope for Nigeria, is now letting itself be defined by the most primitive development that this country has ever experienced. I refer to the series of barbarous invasions of various rural communities and small villages across Nigeria by the people whom we all call Fulani herdsmen.

    In the past few years, the rampage has been mostly in the Middle Belt, where a long succession of destruction of villages and massacres of their inhabitants has ultimately painted an unmistakeable picture of deliberate and systematic genocide. Today, no serious minded Nigerian can doubt what the citizens of the Middle Belt have been saying – namely, that there is a plan by the Fulani to wipe out some Middle Belt peoples and take over their territories.

    This Middle Belt picture is bad enough. The fact that it is taking place in today’s Nigeria disqualifies Nigeria to be regarded as a member of the modern world’s comity of nations. Worse, it is enough to eliminate Nigeria’s claim to be one country at all. And it continues, without any hope of letting off.

    At first, only few scattered forages of this sickening crime reached the states of the Nigerian South. But that has now changed. The rampage has now spread fully to the states of Southern Nigeria, even all the way to the states in the thick, and sometimes mangrove, forests of the Atlantic coastlands where there is not much grass to attract cattle. Suddenly bursting on rural communities in the dead of night, blatantly killing, maiming and seriously wounding men, women and children, burning homes and barns, and, reportedly, raping women, and then slinking away in the dark, this army of invasion has struck in almost every state of Southern Nigeria. A couple of weeks ago, the governor of Enugu State burst into tears when he saw the scene of total horror left behind by the invaders in a part of his state. Today, the Governor of Ekiti State is mourning the dead and struggling to save the lives of the maimed and wounded men, women and children of the small town in his state where the invaders struck a few days ago.

    It is getting worse. From the way this whole thing is shaping up, it can only get worse and worse. Nigerians are wondering why none of these desperadoes are being arrested. From time to time in the war against Boko Haram, we get reports that some of the Boko Haram terrorists have been captured and arrested; we are even shown pictures of these in the media. Nigerians cannot help asking, why the difference? Why are these people not being arrested?

    Indeed, why are they still able to move across this country at will and strike at will wherever they choose to? Why does it seem as if nobody, no authority, is doing anything to stop them – or even to restrain them even a little?

    Yes, Nigerians know that the president has ordered the military and police authorities to stop these people’s attacks on villages and farmsteads. But why is it that the president’s order seems to be producing no measurable result? Why, in spite of the president’s order, are these killers still freely and boldly spreading across Nigeria, killing, maiming and destroying, and getting away through long distances, all without encountering any disturbance by Nigerian law enforcement?

    Can Nigerians be blamed if they say, as they are now increasingly saying in the open media, that they suspect something fishy in this whole situation? Can Nigerians be blamed if, for instance, they say, as more and more of them are openly saying that they suspect that Nigeria’slaw enforcement authorities are afraid to deal with these killer herdsmen as they would deal with all other citizens because the killer herdsmen are the ethnic kinsmen of President Buhari?

    Moreover, since the Nigerian government has chosen to give little or no information to Nigeria about this killer gang, about its ways and means of operation, and about its purpose and objective for its hideous brutalization of peaceful Nigerian citizens across the face of Nigeria, is it surprising that Nigerians are themselves finding ways to fill the information gap? We have all tended to identify these people as Fulani herdsmen, but most of us are now saying that, though many of them are indeed Nigerian Fulani herdsmen, very many others are neither Fulani nor herdsmen. That very many are foreigners who have come to Nigeria.

    Very importantly, President Buhari himself has strengthened these suspicions. Without directly informing Nigeria, President Buhari let out the information in an interview with the CNN in London some days ago that many of the killers are indeed Libyans, elements from the highly trained and well-armed private militia of late President Ghadafi of Libya, most of whom fled south into West Africa after the fall of Ghadafi. Nigerians at home and abroad are wondering and asking, why did President Buhari not give this very important information at home and to his country? Why has he not done so even days after his London CNN interview? Why?

    Is President Buhari aware of the implications of that information to the CNN? Can’t he and his officials see that our president has said that foreign militia elements entered our country – invaded our country – and are killing people at will across our country, and our government has done, and is doing, nothing about it?

    How is it that they cannot see that a full statement – a full explanation of all circumstances of this crisis – has long been due from the President of Nigeria? Are we to live with the disturbing surrender to the fact that such a statement will never come from our president?

    The effect of this whole shady handling of this crisis is being reinforced daily by the kinds of statements emanating from significant Fulani citizens. Since these significant citizens know that foreign militiamen have been involved in the attacks on various parts of Nigeria, why have some of them been repeatedly claiming that the attackers are all Fulani herdsmen, Nigerian Fulani citizens who, as citizens, are free to go anywhere in Nigeria? Why that huge piece of misinformation?

    Is it surprising then that Nigerians are now increasingly coming to the belief that some very major, some extraordinary, objectives underpin this whole development. Many Nigerians are asking openly in the media whether this is not a heightened phase of the old Hausa-Fulani efforts to establish their sole and perpetual control over Nigeria, or to forcibly Islamize the whole of Nigeria. That is, have some in the Arewa North elite now gone so far as to recruit and bring into Nigeria Ghadafi’s uprooted private army, to hide among Fulani herdsmen, and to masquerade as Fulani herdsmen, for the purpose of intimidating the rest of Nigeria into some sort of surrender?

    Inevitably, over-arching the whole atmosphere of fears and suspicions generated in this crisis is its impact on the Buhari presidency. If President Buhari does not hurry to come open before the people of Nigeria, to give them full and ascertainable details about what is happening in their country, and to announce and convincingly follow up with plans to rid Nigeria of this terrible threat, his whole presidency could be doomed. Already, he must be aware that his stock has been falling gradually. Even his anti-corruption war, which started with a great deal of excitement and support, is losing enthusiasm and support as this Fulani herdsmen crisis grows bigger and bigger. It would be a great pity to see Buhari lose his once   considerable political capital over this squalid issue. It would be a greater pity to see Nigeria fall over it.