Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Amidst many serious national challenges, Nigerians have once again allowed themselves to be distracted by the National Assembly’s unprofitable controversy over the mode of transmission of result by INEC on election day. Many saw the defeat of the bill as a national tragedy while some others have said it was an assault on democracy. It is perhaps lost on many Nigerians that except the press, neither the current military baked new breed politicians nor their forbears that took power from the colonial masters at independence saw democracy more than the shortest route to power. That was why they wrecked the first republic barely five years after independence over sharing of perks of office, undermined the democcratisation process in the second republic by awarding themselves what Walter Ofonagoro described as ‘landslide and sea-slide victories in opposition strongholds, while Babagana Kingibe and Tom Ikimi, of SDP and NRC, traded democracy for ambassadorial positions during the still-born third republic.

Beyond stealing the country blind in the first 15 years of the fourth republic, the political elite did very little to enhance the course of democracy. Their children even forged documents to siphon about N1.7trillion in the name of fuel subsidy when in the words of Audu Ogbeh, they never imported a pint of fuel.

Little has changed under President Buhari government of change. Democracy can hardly thrive in the absence of public opinion. But President Buhari who thinks he knows what the people want without listening to them listen only to himself. He would rather deploy taxpayers’ money to build RUGA settlement for those described by World Terrorist Index as the fourth most deadly terrorist groups in the world rather than mete out the Ghana treatment to those terrorizing Nigerians as demanded by the people.

Our institutions of democracy – independent judiciary, independent legislature, strong political parties, independent press and virile civil society groups, without which democracy cannot thrive have always been weak. Unfortunately, they have come under more serious assault in the fourth republic with Obasanjo whimsically sacking party leaders, senate presidents and impeaching state governors without following due process. Under Buhari, houses of senior judicial officers were raided at night by DSS officials, lawmakers were once prevented entry into the hallowed chambers by hooded DSS men while his minister of information continues to make attempts at muscling the fourth estate of the realm that in the battle for democracy, forced out the colonial masters just as it disgraced ‘Nigerian army of anything is possible’ out of power and out of our lives.

Our politicians have always undermined the democratization process by exploiting our diversity. To remain part of Nigeria during the 1953 attempt at resolving our national question, the north insisted on controlling 50% of the membership of the legislature. Yet the Northern People’s Congress in spite of coercion and strong hand tactics of northern leaders came a distant third in the 1959 federal election with about 1.9m trailing, NCNC supported in the main by the Igbos and Yoruba with 2.1 million votes, closely followed by Action Group, the Yoruba dominant political party with 2million votes.

The battle cry ever since by the north has always been ‘democracy is a game of numbers’. This was used to justify the inconclusive 1964 elections leading to a constitutional confrontation between President Nnamdi Azikiwe and Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa which snowballed to the January and July 1966 coup and counter coup. It was similarly used to justify the 1979 inconclusive election eventually validated by the courts using Richard Akinjide’s twelve-two-third formula. In 1999, it was used to justify imposition of Obasanjo as president without a political base thereby literarily climbing the palm tree from the top. The story was not different during the 2003 and 2007 massively rigged elections. With Buhari’s landslide victories in 2015 and 2019, northern Fulani irredentist including Governor Nasir El-Rufai who downplayed the contribution of the Yoruba and later boasted about the north population  was to remind us of the North’s invincibility during elections.

It was therefore not a surprise that following the Asaba southern governors’ call for a shift of power to the south in 2023, a shadowy group that describes itself as ‘Northern Nigerian Consensus Movement’ claiming to represent 75 economic organisations, including Arewa Traders Association, Amalgamated Cattle Association of Nigeria, claim to be ready to be mobilized for the battle.

If we see the claim as outlandish, we might also remind ourselves that everything about Nigerian population since 1953 as stated above has always been weird. Our population distribution which defies demographic logic that associate higher rate of procreation to the tropical swamp as against semi-desert Sahel region is in itself bizarre. This is why besides our political elite’s conspiracy, the major threat to our democracy since independence remains the northern political elites’ outright rejection of any form of interrogation of this weird claim.

Nigerians have always suspected the answer to our strange demographic population spread probably lies in movement of stateless Fulani across our open borders especially in the north during census head count and elections. Baraje, a former PDP chairman and an APC stalwart until recently, not too long ago seemed to have given credence to this clam when he told Nigerians that APC imported foreign herdsmen into Nigeria for the purpose of the 2015 election.

Northern political elite including Governor El-Rufai of Kaduna and Masari, his Katsina counterpart who admitted negotiating and paying ransom to immigrants Fulani herdsmen terrorising their people do not seem to have anything against the presence of such Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria. Their heartache seems to be over the Fulani immigrants’ failure to stop tormenting Nigerians after collecting ransom. When another northern leading political light, Governor Mohammed of Bauchi State was recently asked by a reporter on Channels Television’s Morning Ride programme whether he considered it right to channel Nigerian taxpayers’ money towards establishing RUGA settlements for immigrant herdsmen, he said without any restraint that Fulani from any part of Africa are Nigerians.

This type of mindset and northern leaders feeling of invincibility anchored on questionable numerical strength, if you ask me, poses a greater threat to our budding democracy than manual or electronically transfer of election results. After all, a critical analysis of our election outcomes especially at the local council levels since the beginning of the fourth republic will show that there is honour among thieves. Our political leaders hardly lose elections in their strongholds.

Intra-elite feud only set in when there are aberrations such as Ofonagoro’s ‘landslide and sea-slide victories’ in opposition strong holds as NPN did in Ondo in 1983 which contributed to the collapse of the second republic; Obasanjo’s deployment of military tactics to out-fox the Yoruba Afenifere leaders and their AD party during the 2003 gubernatorial battle in southwest and PDP’s theft of other candidates mandates in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun in 2007.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Muhammadu Buhari has had almost nine months since his October 12, 2020 nomination of Lauretta Onochie, his Special Assistant on New Media as national commissioner for Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to reflect on a decision that has been roundly condemned by Nigerians, civil society groups and those who have written petition pointing out Onochie’s membership of APC and the fact that someone from her state was already on the board of INEC.  Onochie on her part has not only admitted being part of the Buhari’s campaign organisation in 2015, an endeavor that earned her a place in Buhari’s government, she also admitted to deposing to an affidavit at the Abuja Federal High Court that she was a member of the APC.

Unfortunately, President Buhari who doesn’t seem to understand that government is built around public opinion, or that public sentiments are everything; and that “Whoever moulds public sentiments goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions” as Abraham Lincoln once observed. He is hardly known for deeper reflection on national issues or for changing his mind on issues over which members of his ‘loyal gatekeepers’ especially Abubakar Malami, the justice minister has taken a position no matter how controversial or how injurious to the health of the nation.

For instance, asked during his Arise Television interview about the southern governors ban of open grazing in their states, the president half-jokingly asked if the reporter wanted him to contradict his Attorney General and Minister of Justice. He then hinted he was going to revive old grazing routes.

“I have asked to dig up gazettes of the First Republic. There are cattle routes and grazing areas. The routes and the areas are known.”

It turned out such gazette only existed on Malami’s imagination as legal experts pointed out the grazing law the president was threatening to retrieve and foist on the whole country was a dead northern grazing law promulgated by Ahmadu Bello just for the north and lasted until the collapse of the first republic.

But that was not the first time his chief legal adviser will demonstrate his incompetence or deploy mischief as a strategy. On another occasion, responding to 17 southern governors’ ban on open grazing and movement of cattle by foot in the states over cases of kidnappings and killings that have been traced to criminal elements amongst herders, Malami had said their decision was “against the constitutional right of freedom of movement for other Nigerians who are herders” and mischievously comparing the ban on open grazing to banning all spare parts dealers in the northern parts of the country.

Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo and chairman of Southwest APC Governors’ Forum  had to remind him  that “Clinging to an anachronistic model of animal husbandry, which is evidently injurious to harmonious relationship between the herders and the farmers as well as the local populace, is wicked and arrogant.”

Bala Mohammed of Bauchi in whose states like others such as Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina among many other northern core states where natives since Fulani conquest of 1806,  cannot access their own land without permission from Emir or payment of tax to the village Seriki  adding his own mischief had said  “Land is in the hands of the state and federal governments in trust but Nigerians don’t need the permission of governors or the federal government to settle everywhere”.

The president was also misled by Malami on the issue of Amotekun – the southwest regional security outfit whose set up he said “runs contrary to the provisions of the Nigerian law.”  Again, legal experts declared such declaration was driven more by politics and mischief than law. Femi Falana, a human rights lawyer reminded him that “his  purported proscription of Amotekun is hypocritical and discriminatory on the grounds that the Civilian JTF operating in Yobe and Borno states is constituted by 26,000 well-armed volunteers who have been assisting the armed forces to combat terrorism in the north east region.”

From the above record of manipulation of the president, it is not difficult to see Malami’s hand in the president’s current decision to swim or drown with Lauretta Onochie.  Unfortunately, the president’s men hardly care if foisting Onochie on INEC will amount to the president shooting himself in the foot. It appears their goal is to set a president they have long reduced into a sectional president against the people.

But what does the president stand to gain from his current war against the people? With someone already representing Delta in INEC, the president cannot claim to be waging Delta State war.  In any case, in a state where election is war and contest is often a balance of terror among militant groups and their god fathers, Onochie is ill-equipped to change that narrative if the Niger Delta political elite decide to live by their reputation.  Although Buhari has hijacked APC for his cronies since he is not contesting in 2023, but it is not likely Onochie can single-handedly do much to help APC in view of the party’s betrayal of the people these past six years even if Buhari succeeds in foisting her on INEC.

It is however hoped that the president who alone will be left to face his own demon after 2023 understands he has everything to lose.  While it has become apparent that those serving other tendencies in his government currently egging him love none but themselves and don’t really care about his legacies, he alone will face the judgment of history after his tenure in 2023.

While the battle to foist Onochie on INEC rages on, it is also hoped the president will spare a thought about his unprecedented defeat of an incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. The feat was the result of Jonathan’s statesmanship and decision to choose nation before self despite the pressure of PDP, his party.

The president should ask himself the type of INEC he intends to bequeath on the nation. Onochie as a loyal party supporter and President Buhari’s supporter can be rehabilitated elsewhere. But foisting her on the electoral body will be a betrayal as such will not only undermine people’s confidence in the neutrality of INEC but will also raise question of legitimacy for whoever succeeds President Buhari.

The president in spite of his valiant efforts and sacrifice seems overwhelmed by many of his inherited problems – management of our diversity, the economy and general insecurity in the land. In 2015, he similarly inherited an INEC praised by Nigeria’s stakeholders and hailed by local and international community for conducting free and fair election.

This feat was possible because President Jonathan chose the nation above self despite pressure from his party, the PDP that urged him not to conceded defeat. If the president cannot improve on the INEC Jonathan bequeathed on to him, he should at least not undermine it.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

Unfortunately, the Buhari era is likely going to be defined by Abubakar Malami, his Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Malami’s  disregard for rule of law, disdain for public opinion and unrestrained use of power to prove that some Nigerians no matter how criminally minded are ‘untouchables’ are some of the reasons why many Nigerians including Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State now wonder if Buhari, who won a pan-Nigeria mandate twice is Nigerian or Fulani president.

Malami shares the same mindset with Fulani supremacist  group like Miyetti Allah that often take responsibility for some of the heinous crimes committed by herdsmen across the nation,  Bauchi governor, Bala Mohammmed who arrogantly ask Nigerian ethnic nationalities to come to terms that immigrant Fulani herdsmen from any part of Africa are Nigerians and, Sheikh Gumi who freely move around  bandits camps our police and military claim are invincible only to advise government to pay salaries and grant amnesty to terrorists that engage in mindless killings of innocent Nigerians and trading in kidnapping of northern school children for ransom.

And rather than prove his critics wrong, Malami has by his controversial selective sting-operations continued to give the impression that some Nigerians including indicted criminals, are superior to other Nigerians as long as they belong to the favoured ethnic group.

Let us start with his November 2017 sting-operation which he personally executed. He had arranged a secret meeting through an unnamed third party with Abdulrasheed Maina, a fugitive offender in Dubai, United Arab Emirate (UAE). Not long after, Maina was reabsorbed into the civil service. Both the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Winifred Eyo-Ita and the acting chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), Joseph Oluremi  cited the AGF letter as the authority for Maina’s reinstatement.

Following public outcry, Malami told the Aliyu Madaki-led House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigative hearing on “the disappearance, reinstatement and promotion of Maina” that “pension fraud was beyond Maina” while admitting however that “Maina was part of a syndicate that cuts across all sectors, including serving and retired public officers, members of the National Assembly, involved in cornering N3.7b monthly from pension funds”. He also spoke of “over 116,000 ghost workers responsible for N829m monthly spread across 29 bank accounts”.

Malami abused his office to prove Maina who currently undergoing trial for the theft of about N2b pension fund was “untouchable’.

Before this, was Malami’s October 7 and 8, 2016 sting-operation. Following DSS midnight assault on residents of Justices of the Supreme Court, Justices Sylvester Ngwuta and Inyang Okoro, both of the Supreme Court; Justice Mohammed Tsamiya, the Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division, Justice Kabiru Auta of the Kano State High Court and Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja were all arrested. Others equally arrested include Justice I. A. Umezulike, former Chief Judge of Enugu State and Muazu Pindiga of the Federal High Court, Gombe Division.

The sting operation was condemned as an assault on the independence of the Nigerian judiciary by Justice Mohammed, the than CJN and chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC).

The outcome of another sting operation by Malami was the invasion of the National Assembly by hooded DSS men to prevent adversarial senators and members of the lower house from gaining access into the legislative building. Malami, the all-powerful attorney general, ordered the sting operation without informing an embarrassed acting president, Yemi Osinbajo who in August 2018 ordered the termination of the appointment of ‘untouchable’ Lawal Daura the Director General of State Services (DSS)

Malami deployed a lot of resources to the sting operation that finally caged leader of the proscribed secessionist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, who was allegedly captured and shipped to Nigeria in a chartered private jet. Kanu’s sins, according to Malami, borders on subversive activities that include “inciting violence through television, radio and online broadcasts against Nigeria and Nigerian state and institutions “. Others accusations include: “instigating violence especially in the Southeastern Nigeria that resulted in the loss of lives and property of civilians, military, para-military, police forces and destruction of civil institutions and symbols of authorities.”

Kanu’s arrest was swiftly followed by another Malami master-minded sting-operation that resulted in DSS’ midnight invasion of the residence of the Yoruba activist, Chief Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho. The Public Relations Officer of the DSS, Dr. Peter Afunanya, told Nigerians that “Sunday Igboho and his group, in the guise of campaign for self-determination, have become well-armed and determined to undermine public order.” To justify their action, we were told their  haul of weapons include “seven AK-47 assault rifles, 30 fully charged AK-47 magazines and 5,000 rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition  some magic voodoo garments” .

It is not difficult to understand why Malami deployed so much resources to capture Kanu who has not committed half of the atrocities that herdsmen and their sponsors walking freely around Nigeria committed.  Kanu like Igboho does not belong to the tribe of the ‘untouchables’.

However, I  believe Kanu needed to be caged because he has become a threat  to the millions of his Igbo urban immigrants across Nigeria who like the Jews often attract envy from their host communities because of their success in trade and commerce.

Kanu who was merely exploiting the ignorance of Igbo youths appears incapable of grasping the implication of governor Nasir E- Rufai claim that “Igbo occupy more landed area in the north than all the their five eastern states put together”. He was probably too ill-equipped to reflect on Senator Abaribe’s warning to Biafra agitators that “Igbo control property market in Abuja and Lagos, have the monopoly for importation of second-hand clothes as well as the electronics and ceramics markets”. Abaribe did not add that the Igbo political and economic elite capitalized on Babangida and Obasanjo’s disastrous economic policies that killed our budding textile, electronic,  pharmaceutical, battery and tyres industries to bring the nation to her kneels through unregulated importation of sometimes substandard variant of these  products.

The arrest of Sunday Igboho was also a welcome development. Of course, the Yorubas are angry. They feel betrayed by Buhari’s mismanagement of our crisis of nation building.  But Igboho cannot speak for the Yoruba especially after our political and moral leaders have clearly stated Yoruba’s position. Prof Banji Akintoye and pa Ayo Adebanjo, two of Buhari’s foremost critics have said their intervention was to prevent Buhari from destroying our country. Obasanjo, the master mischief-maker has also said his crusade against Buhari’s government was to prevent the Rwanda option to our crisis of nation building.

Above all, Malami’s sting operation has vindicated our leaders’ position. With Sheik Gumi and Bauchi governor lionizing foreign armed gangs in Yoruba’s reserved forests, Igboho cannot lead Yoruba to war with DSS  ‘haul’ of seven Ak-47 riffles, the ownership of which he even denied and some voodoo magic garments that are now in custody of DSS security operatives.

But no one is deceived by Malami latest sting-operations which were nothing but attack on symptoms while he and his group continue to live in denial by opposing peaceful resolution of our national question, devolution of power, fiscal federalism, state and community policing. Workable federal arrangement is the only social system that can liberate groups and individuals from the tyranny of the state. Our problem is the dysfunctional suffocating centralized system that insists on controlling our lives, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the education of our children.

 

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Speaking at the APC Caretakers Committee Executive meeting last Friday at the State House which has since its first inauguration on June 25, 2020 become APC new secretariat, President Buhari reminded Nigerians of “the crisis that engulfed the APC, leading to litigations and presented a picture of selfishness and division,’’ adding “We want to leave behind a legacy of transparency and fairness, which the party needs to survive.’’

Predictably, the president whose style is “delegation by abdication” refused to take responsibility for what to most perceptive minds, was more of the “hand of Esau Voice of David” to reposition his cronies in APC. He also expressed no remorse for sacrificing Oshiomhole who was booed and stoned in Abeokuta, hated and despised in other places where he had stepped on toes in pursuit of Buhari’s 2019 victory, just the same way he pretended those on whose back he rode to power in 2015 did not exist after his victory.

The caretaker committee, inaugurated in Aso Rock after the illegal dissolution of the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC), had had its tenure extended twice for six months each and now indefinitely. Ironically, Buhari as a ‘hard sell” presidential candidate took little interest in APC in the run up to 2015 election or even after his victory. He had to reach out to the rejected corner stone for the 2019 election with giant-killer Oshiomhoile helping him to chase Saraki out of APC, tamed empire and fiefdom builders in Abeokuta and Imo State and put an end to PDP’s 60 years illusion of uninterrupted reign.

However, in a smart move to reposition his cronies in APC, the president who has always distanced himself from politicians, took over the party whose secretariat he relocated to Aso Rock Villa where he had presided over two extensions and now with an indefinite extension, his cronies have time to consolidate their hold on APC. And if anyone doubts APC is now Buhari’s APC, it is perhaps such a person missed Mai Mala Buni’s opening speech where he said he hopes the committee report would  meet the expectation of President Buhari.

The following article titled “APC as threat to Nigeria’s democracy” published on December 10, 2020 is as relevant today as it was then. Happy reading.

Political parties as modernisisng agencies are expected to perform miracles by turning dreams to realities. The miracles of Japan’s industrial power, China’s poverty to prosperity and USA’s landing of man on the moon started with big dreams. Here at home, the Northern People’s Congress, later Nigerian People’s Congress (NPC) was responsible for the biggest business conglomerate in Africa between 1957 and 1962 while in the Western Region, the Action Group (AG) successfully implemented the most ambitious free education programme in Africa and went on to build and commission in three months, the first television station in Africa ahead of some European nations.

PDP, a party described by John Campbell, former US envoy as ‘a political party that came together … as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’, did not pretend in 2013 that it had any dream beyond uninterrupted ruling for 60 years. Audu Ogbeh, one-time PDP chairman was to later validate Campbell’s thesis by submitting: “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil”. Ahmadu Alli as chairman of PDP and Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, according to a House probe, presided over the theft of about N2 trillion by some of the over 140 independent oil marketers they appointed. We can add the allegation by former World Bank vice president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili, that the PDP administration of Jonathan squandered $67billion reserves left by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

For miracle-seeking Nigerians therefore, the inauguration of APC on February 6, 2013 was something of a relief. Its eight-point cardinal programme: electricity generation, war against corruption, food security, integrated transport network; free education; devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health are routine responsibilities of government that did not require the intervention of angels or men with special talents. But PDP’s baleful legacy forced Nigerian miracle-seekers to see APC and Buhari as messiahs. They gave APC a clear mandate with a popular vote of 15.4m to PDP’s  12.8million, a clear majority of 65 to 43 in the senate, 190 to 151 in the lower house and 21 of the 36 state governors.

Betrayed Nigerians came to the sad conclusion after six years that the difference between PDP and APC, neither of which has any philosophical foundation nor ideological orientation, is that of six and half and a dozen. And speaking of the two parties, Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC boss, spoke about the futility of trying to look for saints among current Nigerian politicians.

Six years of APC government of change, very little has changed. Our lawmakers remain the highest paid lawmakers in the world. Just as it was during PDP years of the locust, ministers, heads of parastatals including Customs, Immigration, Army, Police, EFCC, vice chancellors of universities cruise around in in imported bullet-proof land cruisers at taxpayers’ expense. None of our four refineries is working. We continue to import fuel for domestic consumption.

Most part of the nation is still in darkness. PDP after 14 years in government generated 3324 MW by 2015.  APC’s minister of science and technology, Ogbonaya Onu said APC generated additional 1,950 MW in six years. Add that to the 3,324 MW PDP generated in 14 years, what we get is 5,274MW. Like Obasanjo and Jonathan did before him, Buhari’s APC has just signed an agreement with Siemens to implement the Nigerian Electricity Roadmap.

On road construction, APC’s Raji Fashola, the very resourceful Lagos State governor who once asked PDP to identify 100 kilometres of road it completed in 10 years has been demystified.  Six years of APC government, Apapa Tin can Island Port Road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway like many other federal roads across the country, remain motorists’ and commuters’ nightmare.

APC promised to tackle insecurity. But seems to have no answer to rising insecurity across the country. In November 2020 alone, at least 216 Nigerians were killed and 144 others kidnapped according to data gathered by the Civic Media Lab. APC has no answer to periodic mindless killings of subsistence farmers in their farms. Now helpless Nigerians are said to be killed daily in Borno, Katsina, Zamfara, Adamawa, Niger, Benue, Jigawa, Kaduna, Taraba and other areas in the north. Last week, Professor Usman Yusuf in a widely circulated letter titled ‘Silence in the face of evil, is its self-evil” noted the APC federal government has let Nigerians down by allowing “bandits to unleash terror on the people, operates their own government by imposing heavy taxes on the people”, adding “there is no law enforcement agencies to protect the people, while the police often showed up after the carnage have been done”.

Death of a Nigerian doesn’t seem to have meanings to APC and its government. In other societies, the 43 rice farmers cruelly hacked to death by Boko Haram in their farms last week would have led to a declaration of a week of national mourning. The Sultan of Sokoto was reported to have lamented the mindless killing of 80 people in his domain. The Northern Elders Forum asked the president to resign and the APC controlled legislature only passed resolutions often ignired By Buhari.

APC with restructuring in its manifesto forgot what restructuring or power devolution meant and had to set up the El-Rufai committee on restructuring. Governor Fayemi asked Nigerians not to blame Buhari for not implementing restructuring agenda as promised in its manifesto but direct their anger at the National Assembly controlled by his party for not implementing the El Rufai report.

APC remains not just the scourge of the nation but a threat to democracy. With PDP, there might have been no honour among thieves, but their family war over sharing of our commonwealth is healthier for democracy than APC’s criminal conspiracy of silence over absence of governance and creeping dictatorship.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, three days ago, at the maiden APC Youth Conference, advised  youths to “be involved in politics if (they) are keen on how the future will turn out because social media do not transform the lives of millions for good or ill”.

Unfortunately, this appeal may not resonate well with many of our youths because of their frustration over President Buhari’s mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building these past six years. But the message couldn’t have come at a better time because our youths, social media wizards, hardly read anything beyond the garbage churned out by many uniformed Nigerians hiding under  the  anonymity of social media to cover up their ill-preparedness for leadership – a responsibility which requires a lot of sacrifice and preparedness.

I recently asked some Mass Communication majors aged 21-26 cutting across both public and private universities to name some newspaper columnists of pre-independence, post-independence and contemporary newspaper columnists. The sad answer from the majority of them working on their final projects was “we don’t read newspapers”. I didn’t ask them questions on Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, or the Nobel laureate Soyinka. I didn’t bother them about Hausa states before Fulani conquest, the Oyo Empire, the Benin Empire or how the Igbo  republican society managed their societies for centuries before imperial powers’ disruption. Neither did I ask about the Holy Bible, Holy Quran or Ifa without whose knowledge those we often regard as salt of life after graduation can manage society.

A great many of the EndSARS generation did not know that Tony Enahoro, who remains the greatest parliamentarian Nigeria has ever produced, was editor at 22, that Zik returned from Ghana in 1934 to elekzikify the Nigerian press or that Awo,  a self-made man who never had money to finish primary or secondary school, wrote the best book on Nigeria federalism The Path to Nigerian Freedom as a student at 36.

Osinbajo’s call in my view is for the youths to understand the nature of our problem, compounded by colonial and post-colonial contradictions. In fact, many of them see those calling for restructuring as the problem. I once listened to lectures by Sam Adeyemi and Awosika, two great Nigerians the youth look up to as model claiming there was no difference between Nigerians.

They forget if Germany, regarded as “German machine” is forced to cohabit with leisure-loving French elite that celebrate liberty, freedom and licentiousness over work by going to club with their spouses who they exchange with another woman and return home the following morning holding hands, and Great Britain where you have to wear maternity dress to hide your pregnancy, there will be more social dislocations than we today have in Nigeria

But more importantly, our youths must avoid falling into the same trap set by the imperial powers for the Arab and the Maghreb youths in North Africa with whom we share similar colonial and post-colonial experiences.

Faced with economic crisis from 2008, compounded by Muhammar Gadhafi’s decision to fund African Development Bank to free African countries from IMF, World Bank and Paris Club borrowings that only further impoverish African nations, the West led by America with Bush doctrine, finally settled by Obama’s flowery lecture in Egypt, the youths were set against their dictatorial leaders. From Tunisia, to Libya and Egypt, one dictator fell after another.

Today the Arab and Maghreb region are under a new wave of colonialism. Gadhafi was killed like a chicken against international law by the west and a country he turned from a desert to a paradise where students didn’t  pay fees, got subsidy for unemployment, got support to build their own homes if they get married;  where citizens were not paying electricity bill has today descended to a war-torn nation where life has become nasty, brutish and short as it used to be in Europe before their exploitation of the resources of Africa and other colonized nations of the world including India. Syria is engulfed in a civil war fueled by world power rivalry with more than half of the population in exile or killed. Saudi Arabia is armed by America to obliterate Yemen.

Today, the Arab world with 300million-strong population speaking the same language  sharing the same culture and worshipping the same Allah are at war with themselves.

The consensus among our founding fathers as it was with other multinational and multi-cultural societies was that the only social system that guarantees unity in diversity in deeply divided society like ours is federal arrangement.  It guarantees ‘individual and group rights defined in form of language, culture, and religion or socio-economic status’. It was not difficult for the Yoruba to embrace this because by nature, history and temperament they are federalists. However, the Hausa/Fulani, who, according to Richard Sklar, settled for confederacy in 1953, ostensibly because their region was 70 years behind the South in educational development and because of the South’s disrespect for their culture. The Igbo and NCNC opted for unitary system in 1959 (because of their mobility and educational advancement since they stand to gain more from a unitary system.

A workable federal arrangement, that will guarantee freedom, liberty and equality for every linguistic group described by the departing colonial masters as “the unfriendly inhabitants of the Mama Hills, the anti-social Mumuye of Muri Province and the “naked warriors and the mangrove forest”, became a lifelong pursuit for Awo who once accused his political opponents of carousing around while he burnt the midnight oil proffering solution to Nigeria’s problems. He started his crusade with the publication of his book, Nigeria: Path to Freedom, as a student at the age of 36 in 1945.

As a 39-year-old Yoruba representative at the 1948 Ibadan General Conference on the Review of the 1946 Richard’s Constitution, he canvassed vigorously for a federal structure based on ethnic nationalities as against the northern delegates’ insistence on a loose federation, with the centre controlling only defence, external affairs and customs. We went into independence with a colonial master-umpired federal arrangement.

With temporary power in the hands of the East after the January 1966 coup, Dr. Ben Nwabueze was widely believed to have drafted Decree 34 of 1966 that turned the country to a unitary system. However, after the war, the victorious North, drew up a federal constitution that guarantees the north can rule in perpetuity if we agree democracy is a game of numbers. Abdulsalami Abubakar consolidated the northern hegemony by imposing the current constitution, the sources of current social dislocations without reference to Nigerians in 1999. This therefore is the short history of Nigerian constitutional crisis

Then as if there is no coordination or consultation among the youths, Sowore, their 2019 presidential candidate chose June 12, institutionalised as a democracy day in recognition of Abiola’s victory after Babangida, the evil genius who annulled the most credible election in our nation’s history; Sonekan, the usurper, Obasanjo the accomplice, Yar ‘Adua and Jonathan had danced on Abiola’s grave for 25 years  as a day to call for the resignation of a popularly elected President Buhari. If only for its symbolism, Sowore could have chosen another day to ventilate his disenchantment with Buhari’s handling of national affairs.

Our youths who must necessarily inherit tomorrow must first try to understand the nature of our problem. That was what their forebears did. The West African Student Union (WASU) founded on August 7, 1925 by 21 law students led by Ladipo Solanke and Herbert Bankole-Bright to seek independence for West Africa countries were the first to recommend Nigeria must run a federal arrangement patterned after Swiss federation.

Buhari is a mere symptom of our unworkable structure.

 

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Buhari’s last week interview with Arise Television did not reveal too many new things about him. He remains stiff and set in his ways, an image maker’s nightmare. Haunted by his sense of self- righteousness, he believes he is on a messianic mission as a former military officer, the custodian our constitution. It also confirmed that although a democratically elected, President Buhari remains stranded in the age of feudalism where the lords value honour and loyalty of their serfs who must be bound by oath of allegiance. It is not an accident that most of his loyal gatekeepers are unable to tell him the truth.

And with a mindset of a feudal lord, it is not a surprise he sees politics as a civil war, with nothing but disdain for bargaining which is the badge of honour in deeply divided societies that are serious about achieving unity in diversity.

By celebrating his achievements and his challenges, the interview also reinforced what we have always known – that Buhari believes he knows what the people want without asking them. For him, devolution of power for instance, is federal, state and LGAs despite Nduka Obaigbena’s lead about ceding some of the items on the exclusive list to create a residual list.

Despite mouthing restructuring during his 2011 failed presidential bid, having restructuring as part of APC manifesto in 2015 and receiving a copy of APC special committee report on restructuring, he still sticks to his November 2018 claim that “There are too many people talking lazily about restructuring in Nigeria. Unfortunately, people are not asking them individually what they mean by restructuring”. He conveniently forgot Pa Ayo Adebanjo’s explanation that it means “autonomy, of his Yoruba people (and other ethnic nationalities) within Nigeria as an independent entity, self-sustained but not subservient to any part in a true federation”, and his admonition that “Those who don’t understand restructuring should go and read the agreement reached by our founding fathers: the Awolowos, the Azikiwes and the Sardaunas as sanctioned by the colonialists in London in 1954 and implemented in 1960″.

But despite widespread criticism of the president’s outing, I think he also spoke the truth to our politicians who take pleasure in playing the ostrich. According to him “Two southwest governors came to me to say cattle rearers were destroying farms in their states. I asked them what happened to the grassroots security panels from traditional rulers to local governments who meet regularly to identify the root of their problems and identify crooks within their environment and apprehend the criminals, they’re trying to push responsibilities to others”.

I think the southwest governors can do more by investing in intelligence gathering. They can also deploy part of their security votes to equip police in their state as done by Lagos State. They should also identify local collaborators especially top civil servants with a number of cattle heads in custody of Fulani herdsmen, the Yoruba ritualists and the local people involved in food supply chain.

Nigerian governors know how to procure arms for youths during election only to face Abuja when confronted by their demons. Although Ayo Fayose was one of the few governors that creatively addressed the herdsmen menace in Ekiti State, but it is also on record that he once chased out his state’s elected lawmakers with armed thugs with whom he also secured the state boundaries. Fayose has his parallels in Rivers, Ogun, Delta and Borno and other states.

The president was also spot-on when he spoke about the landlocked status of the southeast. Unfortunately, Igbo elite often like to live in denial. While pictures of armed thugs burning police stations in southeast and south-south cities have gone viral on social media, some Igbo leaders including Senator Kalu Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State was saying it is not in the nature of Igbo to burn properties.

Those currently abusing Buhari in order to remain relevant, having lost the initiative to IPOB, should remember the whole of the south-south up to Port Hacourt was overrun within the first few months of the civil war because the Igbo built their castle in the air by trusting their mistrusting minorities. Today IPOB is busy drawing up maps while ignoring the warning of south-south leading lights including former President Jonathan, Governor Wike and many others who have denounced inclusion of their land in Biafra without consultation.

But as indicated above, the president, trapped in the past, has lost touch with reality. Asked about the rampaging herdsmen, the president could only remember the Nigerian Fulani herdsmen who went around with stick and cutlass. He gave no indication he was aware of the marauding Fulani herdsmen that was in 2015 named not just ‘a terrorist group but the fourth deadliest in the world’ on account of its blood-thirsty exploits and brutal killing of 1,229 in 2014 including 200 in Galadima in one day.

The president remembered only our stick-wielding Fulani herdsmen and not those who wrote him a 70-page letter before his inauguration warning that “the Boko Haram insurgency would be a child’s play if their demand for “an un-hindered grazing access in areas he identified as ‘trouble spots’ spread across 75 local government areas across 21 states including “ Oye Local Government in the northern part of Ekiti, Shaki in Oyo State, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Bauchi, Gombe, Yola” are not met.

Of course, we have no evidence that when the president spoke romantically about Fulani herdsmen, he had in mind those herdsmen who according to Paul Ede, who led the coalition of protesting civil society groups to the National Assembly described “those that killed about 400 before chasing out about 7000 farmers and their families from their homes and took over the villages with their 5000 cows as ‘invaders’

They did not include the group that in 2013 was credited with mindless murder of about 60 women and children seeking refuge in church in Plateau State while those who went out for their funeral a few days later including a serving senator, Gyang Dantong, and Gyang Fulani, the Majority Leader of the Plateau State House of Assembly, who were equally murdered.

The president’s answer to the question about his party and rotational presidency once again confirmed he has neither faith nor respect for political party and professional politicians. Perhaps that explains why he did not constitute a government for six months and that of other 500 small government he needed to prosecute the party’s agenda for over a year.

Buhari who contested with Dr. Chuba Okadigbo as running mate in 2003 and lost; in 2007 with Edwin Ume-Ezeoke who after losing abandoned him to join the ruling party describing Buhari as ‘having no electoral value in ANPP’; and a man who contested with Tunde Bakare in 2011 and lost but won in 2015 using the APC platform probably believed those who described him as ‘an asset to the party’ that made him president after his fourth attempt.

That mindset perhaps also explains why he treats party stalwarts on whose back he rode to power so shabbily. The president was also guilty of anti-party offences. He once asked voters to vote for him but for other parties of their choice in other elections. When the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) on November 19, 2018 ordered its aggrieved members to stop litigating the acrimonious party primaries in line with Article 20 of their party constitution, President Buhari often criticized for disobeying court orders, suddenly became advocate of rule of law declaring – “We can’t deliberately deny people of their rights, the court should always be the last resort for the dissatisfied”.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

As the nation moves dangerously towards the cliff with mounting daily harvest of deaths from bandits’ assault on Nigerians across the land amidst ethnic profiling by Nigerian ethnic nationalities, Obasanjo last Saturday in Abeokuta during the 16th edition of prayer Breakfast organised in his honour by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Ogun State chapter, recommended prayer to God by Nigerians as the answer to the “overwhelming challenges” confronting the nation on many fronts.

Because the challenges according to him are beyond “what we can handle”, we have to cry to God. “Our land needs to be healed; those in government, executive, legislators, public servants, civil servants, private sector, are overwhelmed, God cannot be overwhelmed. He is omnipotent, omnipresent. I believe God will heal our land”, he had declared with a sense of righteousness.

OBJ unarguably is a man of great faith. Having missed death by the whiskers during the February 13, 1976 Bukar Dimka-led coup that claimed the life of Murtala Mohammed, his boss and also escaped the fate that befell Yar Adua who was poisoned while both were jointly serving jail term for a phantom coup, Obasanjo has continued to admit receiving an undeserved special favour of God. Who would have been responsible for his change of status from a prisoner to president but God?

It is therefore understandable why OBJ, in power, chose to listen to only God’s voices even for government policy thrusts rather than official advisers paid through taxpayers’ sweat. He once publicly declared that the God that brought him out of prison to presidential palace would punish him if he fails to listen to his voice. Unfortunately, Obasanjo was the only one who was hearing God’s voice.

But Obasanjo set out early at dawn because he knew God does not work for man but help only those who help themselves. After trading away MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigerian mandate for Babangida’s illegal contraption called Interim National Government, he started hearing God’s voice assuring him of becoming president in place of the jailed winner of the election. Because he wanted to make sure it was the voice of God, he had to run to Nelson Mandela of South Africa who advised him to follow his instinct and also Desmond Tutu, also of South Africa who told him  ‘you have served God, you have served your people, are you now saying you are tired of serving God and your people?”

Not satisfied, he sought the spiritual intervention of Pastor E. A. Adeboye who he said later told him “God said you should go.”

In office, it was difficult to know if all of OBJ’s actions were the result of God’s voices. But what was not in doubt was that he also embarked on self-help. For instance, unable to wean himself off his Yoruba peoples love of the Mosaic love of “an eye for an eye” law, he fell back on Yoruba traditional management of power which probably predates Niccolo Machiavelli, the arch apostle of ‘naked force’ and politics without morality which recommends elimination of all your political enemies along custodian of the secret of your rise to power after victory (afobaje ni oba npa).

First Obasanjo descended on Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural group responsible for his rejection in the Southwest including his ward during the 1999 election. Using military strategy, he went for Bola Ige, the group’s deputy leader who he said was the only Yoruba he feared in the run-up to the election. He lured him into PDP where he was murdered in his room while serving as Attorney General and Minister of Justice by unknown persons. He completed the humiliation of the Pa Adesanya, the Afenifere leader by luring his daughter to join his government.

In 2003, he did not wait for God’s voice before out-foxing the Yorba socio-cultural group by rigging all its AD governors except Lagos State out of office. In 2007, following his third-term fiasco, he rigged terminally ill Umaru Yar’Adua into office as president.  Besides establishing himself as an ardent student of Machiavelli while in office, out of office, he has also correctly identified mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building as the sources of our social dislocations.

In this regard, he had in an 18-page letter titled “Before it is too late”, dated December 2,  2013 accused President Jonathan of spawning a support base of ethnic militants, corrupt politicians and armed militia, all for the personal agenda of political survival.  He went on to pitch his tent with President Buhari who later defeated Jonathan in the 2015 election.

Following his fall-out with President Buhari, he in another letter dated July 2019  had warned “we are on the precipice and dangerously reaching a tipping point where it may no longer be possible to hold danger at bay because government treated herder/farmers crisis with kid-glove instead of hammer allowing it to develop into banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and killings all over the country”.

The mindless killings, kidnapping and banditry are but manifestations of the fate that Obasanjo predicted would befall Nigeria if Buhari failed to properly manage our crisis of nation-building. His call for prayers, coming on a day Nigerians were assailed with newspaper headlines such as “Bandits kill 93 in fresh Kebbi, Kaduna attacks; 25 killed by herdsmen in Igangan Oyo State and 53 killed in Ebonyi State, were attempts at playing the ostrich.

Today out of office, Obasanjo talks of mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building. In office, he heard many voices except that which would have directed him to restructure the country by devolving power to the states. It will therefore appear our leaders only resort to prayers to cover up their failures as politicians. Obasanjo heard God’s voices and was a regular guest at Pastor Adeboye’s prayer crusades. Jonathan in office moved from church to church in Nigeria and to Synagogues in Israel sometimes with indicted ministers. He conveniently forgot to implement the report of the National Conference he set up.

We already have too many prayer warriors. Gowon has been going around the country praying for our redemption in the past 40 years. Vice President Osinbajo hardly missed any prayer crusade at the Redemption Camp. President Buhari himself prays five times daily. We are told he sometimes leaves guests waiting in order to fulfill his prayer obligation. Besides Redeemed Church and its well-respected overseer, Pastor Adeboye, there is Oyedepo presiding over Canaan land which boasts of the biggest church in the world. There are the Deeper Life Ministries, Mountain of Fire and T.B Joshua’s Synagogue of all nations. Our own Catholic Church has the biggest seminary in the world located in Imo State. Besides our Bishops gave us “prayer for Nigeria” which we recite during mass since June 12 crisis in 1993 and all through the Abacha dark years.

I think instead of playing the ostrich, Obasanjo should mobilise Nigerians of goodwill and leaders of  Nigerian ethnic nationalities to educate unbending the president  that politics is not a civil war but a process of bargaining and accommodation on the basis of  agreed rules and procedures between cultural groups that have agreed to live together harmoniously; that separatist movements, revolts and insurrections are but manifestations of alienation of aggrieved groups and that  retracing our way back from the brink starts with ensuring the nation-state serves as arbiter between competing ethnic nationalities as against the current perception where the aggrieved believe it serves the interest of only the privileged Fulani ethnic group.

Obasanjo has demonstrated he understands ‘heavens help only those who help themselves’. Those we today urgently need are not prayer warriors but statesmen.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

These are not the best of times for all Nigerian politicians especially with the creeping anarchy in the Southeast where separatist non-state actors have restricted elected governors to their state houses while they set fire on government symbols of power, releasing prisoners, indiscriminately killing members of security forces  and even visiting guests;  and Southwest, where Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho, and Gani Adams, the leader of banned militant Oodua group are exploiting southwest governors’  failure to stop herdsmen’s mindless killing of people in their homes, forest and  farms to proclaim themselves leaders of pan-Oduduwa Republic separatist movement. The duo are today so popular among frustrated victims of herdsmen marauders that the former, a self-styled Yoruba activist and pan-Oduduwa Republic agitator, has threatened to eliminate politicians of Yoruba extraction who solicit for the support of Southwest sons and daughters during the 2023 general election.   As for the latter, while Pa Banji Akintoye who provides intellectual support for the Yoruba quest for self-actualisation was prepared to pursue the Yoruba case through ‘the right to self-determination’ provision in the UN Charter, to which Nigeria is a signatory, he believes destiny has positioned him as the one to lead the Yoruba separatist battle by virtue of his traditional title of Are Ona Kankanfo that he has started complaining of infiltration of  some  prominent politicians in the Southwest..  “So for those who have been infiltrating the struggle, I will curse them for seven days and if they fail to heed the warnings, I think they would have themselves to blame”; he recently declared.

The president, the foremost politician in the country is conspicuously missing while his aides seem to be engaged in what late Gbolabo Ogunsanwo would have described as ‘crooked syllogism’- extending human rights provision in section 41 of our constitution to cattle so that they can freely ravage farmers farms unchallenged.

As for our representatives in Abuja, who for fear of bandits dare not visit their constituencies, they are busy playing the ostrich, moving around our major cities protected by the police, doing the same thing they have done for 22 years- pretending to amend a defective superstructure with a defective foundation and expecting a different result.

The nightmare of being a Nigerian politician today goes beyond their inability to meet the challenges of the moment.  Their  let-downs  are daily brought to the consciousness of Nigerians through newspaper howling depressing headlines such as  – Bandits kidnap 200 students of Islamiyya school in Niger; “We paid N180m to free our children-after 38 days in captivity-parents”; “MDAs failed to remit N20.6b to Consolidated Revenue Fund”; “Former Minister Diezani Madueikes’ $40m (N14b) seized jewellery, gold iPhone, to be auctioned”; Ebonyi herdsmen killings rise to 52″,  “Niger bandits kill 16”; ACF Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbe, issued a travel advisory to northerners planning to visit the South-East” and “We close shops when Hausa youths were brandishing cutlasses”.

Unfortunately, that a great many Nigerian politicians are ‘unscrupulous, venal, cheats’, that for some of them, sincerity is naiveté; candour, artlessness and dishonesty and improbity, real-politick, does not mean we can do without them. We also know that those among them who genuinely set out to serve sometimes have to contend with party intrigues and ambition of party and non-party members and self-interest of pressure groups as against public interest.

As political animals, we need politicians. We owe our continuous survival as an organized society to their flexibility and adaptability to new realities, skilful manoeuvring of very often heavily-mined political field, their ability to easily exploit our innermost fears and their easy reconciliation of private affluence with public squalor.

 

Of course one understands the righteous indignation of many Yoruba youths who identified with Sunday Igboho and Gani Adams. But being no politicians, they cannot give what they don’t have. They cannot serve as Yoruba pathfinders.

We survived the conspiracy of the Hausa-Fulani and Igbo political elite between 1962 and 1966 because of our politicians including Awo who was unjustly jailed. He saw his travails as a sacrifice for his people. We did not also go to war over MKO Abiola’s annulled electoral victory because of our political leaders including Abiola who spoke of sacrifice during a television programme in the run up to the election by saying “in Yoruba land, when you are called upon to carry a calabash of sacrifice as restitution to the river, you may end up being washed away by the river along with the sacrifice you carry.”

The Yoruba similarly had an answer to the marginalisation by President Jonathan that they helped into office. Secession can therefore not be the answer to the mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building by President Buhari who has only two years left in office. What we were taught was that “bi owo eni o ba te iku ida, a ki bere iku ti o pa baba eni”. (You must carry out strategic studies and weigh the consequences of your action). Those counting on Igbo support if war breaks out have forgotten Ojukwu admitted declaring secession with only 16 rifles. Decision making is important aspect of Yoruba culture.

I am sure the Are Onakankanfo and those beating the drum of war on social media or from far away London are aware of the case of Àsá, a small town in Yewaland of Ogun State invaded by those described as Fulani bandits some weeks back. They reportedly gunned down or slaughtered those who could not escape after which they set fire on their houses. Those who escaped are now refugees in the neighbouring town, of Egelu in Benin Republic.

It must also be said that Garba Sheu and Malami’s unrestrained statements cannot be said to be a proper reflection of northern elders who have since insisted open grazing is no more feasible in Nigeria and Ganduje of Kano who as Fulani not only identified with the same views but has offered to rehabilitate all Fulani herders that desire to practice ranching  in Kano.

Minus bad politicians which cut across the country, and military adventurers including Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida and Abacha, Nigeria, our country is a beautiful country.

‘’Secession’, as Dr Olajide of Yoruba Elders Forum has observed “is (Igboho’s) personal desire which the present circumstances in our nation do not favour and will not make it achievable, and the fact that Yoruba have invested so much in the unity of this country and the making of Nigeria. The tribe cannot choose to opt-out without any adequate plans”.

Even Prof. Banji Akintoye in spite of crusade for Yoruba self-actualisation has never foreclosed it could happen within the greater Nigerian nation. Thus he has continued to say “This is our country. We have to pay attention to what is happening to it”. It is not a good thing to allow it to break up…It will break up if we don’t do something in a hurry”.

It is as well therefore that Bola Tinubu, the current Yoruba political leader along with Pa Bisi Akande, Segun Osoba and Southwest APC elected governors and General Alani Akinrinade came out last Sunday to call everyone to order. Leadership is responsibility. Our political leaders have spoken.

Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

President Buhari has been accused of surrounding himself with associates who rather than identify with the pan-Nigerian vision that swept him to power in 2015 have chosen to exploit his personal inadequacies to serve other tendencies.  Sadly, Shehu Garba, the president’s media aide and Abubakar Malami, his Attorney General and Minister of Justice have done everything these past six years except prove cynics and the president’s political foes wrong.

By siding with killer herdsmen who Sheik Gumi, Governors Masari, El Rufai and Mohammed confirmed to be Fulani immigrants from outside the country against Nigerians who are daily assaulted, kidnapped and killed, the duo have not only undermined the legitimacy of President Buhari who has failed in his primary responsibility of protecting lives and properties of Nigerians, they have in the words of Governor Ortom of Benue tried to reduce him to president for only the Fulani.

If we need further evidence that Garba and Malami work for neither President Buhari nor the country, their current display of blind fury and  fierce opposition to the banning of ‘open grazing’ by 17 southern governors provides just that.

Before now, Garba Shehu fiercely opposed ‘Amotekun’ security outfit, established through duly enacted laws by Southwest state houses of assembly.  “Whatever name they call themselves, they must operate under Federal government control” he had roared.  He was however silent on the setting up of 10,000 strong Sharia Hisbah police corps by northern Sharia governors who believe their priority was to arrest anyone sporting “indecent dress”, prevent “gender mix in commercial vehicles” or seal-up hotels selling  alcohol while bandits and killer herdsmen  turned kidnapping of school children for ransom into an industry in nearly all the northern states. We have no evidence southern governors were consulted when their northern counterparts embarked on their crusade to rid the north of indecent dressers.

There was similarly no evidence these two “loyal gatekeepers” currently at war with southern governors over the banning of open grazing, raised objection when  the National Economic Council as far back as April 27, 2018, agreed to  trade  ‘open grazing’  for the Livestock Transformation Plan of the federal government. They similarly kept their peace when the Northern Governors Forum banned open grazing in all states in Northern Nigeria on February 9. It is also curious that Garba and Malami who raised no objections when the Nigeria Governors Forum banned open   grazing in all the 36 states of the federation on February 11, found their voices only after southern governors followed the initiatives of the Northern Governors Forum and Nigerian Governors Forum.

As late as last Tuesday, Garba Shehu was still full of fury over southern governor’s action. Claiming to be speaking for the president, he insisted the southern governors’ intervention was no solution to the herder-farmer clashes “that have been continuing in our country for generations”. Although not a lawyer, he questioned the legality of the southern governors’ initiative. “It is equally true that their announcement is of questionable legality, given the constitutional right of all Nigerians to enjoy the same rights and freedoms within every one of our 36 states (and FCT) – regardless of the state of their birth or residence”, he fumed. He concluded by falsely inferring the rights and freedom of northerners had been breached by southern governors.

Reacting earlier, Malami tried to draw a parallel between criminal immigrant Fulani herdsmen in southern forests and Igbo spare parts sellers in the north.  “The banning” he had said was “as good as saying, perhaps, maybe, the northern governors coming together to say they prohibit spare parts trading in the north”. He then challenged the governors to go “back to the National Assembly to say open grazing should be prohibited and see whether you can have the desired support for the constitutional amendment”. Finally, he mischievously added: “It is a dangerous provision for any governor in Nigeria to think he can bring any compromise on the freedom and liberty of individuals to move around”. Like Shehu Garba, he also falsely insinuated the rights, freedom and liberty of northerners in the south had been abridged by southern governors.

But except for Garba and Malami, who seem to play the ostrich, Nigerians know the southern governors’ ban of open grazing has nothing to do with ‘freedom and liberty of individuals” but everything to do with the failure of the federal government to secure lives and properties of Nigerians.

And except for those playing the ostrich, Nigerians can easily acknowledge that just as there are many Igbo spare parts sellers in the north renting shops and acquiring properties to do their businesses, there are thousands of northerners including the likes of Aliko Dangote doing legitimate businesses that employ thousands of Nigerians in Lagos and Ogun states. We also have more thousands of Hausa beggars in the street of major cities in the south doing the only thing they know how to do-begging for survival, a bad commentary on the leadership of self-serving northern politicians.

Malami therefore does not need Femi Falana to remind him that “right to movement under section 41 and 43 of the constitution does not cover free movement of animals to destroy farmlands”, except he is admitting having the same mindset with members of Miyetti Allah who believe the life of a cattle in Nigeria is worth that of several men. They have at least on many occasions owned up to the killing of scores of men, women and children and sacking of communities in retaliation for their alleged stolen or rustled cattle.

But I think Falana should save his breath. Malami who once jetted to Dubai to have a secret meeting with fugitive Maina he later tried to smuggle back into the bureaucracy, Malami who replaced Magu, the former  EFCC’s helmsman  after a vicious battle, with a candidate from his state who had to be promoted with retroactive effect trailed by public outcry, knows what he is doing.

He knows it is illogical to draw a parallel between northern-based Igbo spare parts sellers operating according to the laws of their host communities and those Kano’s Governor Ganduje described as “ECOWAS’s herdsmen who first came to Nigeria with AK-47 assault rifles to protect themselves against farmers but now use the guns to commit crime”.

When he disingenuously says southern governors should refer the settled issue of open grazing to the National Assembly, he knows no serious structural changes can be effected by the current National Assembly members, the major beneficiaries of 1999  constitution rigged against Nigeria.

I therefore think that instead of dwelling on Malami’s incompetence in jurisprudence, we should be worried about the possible fallout of his current game of mischief.

Today our nation is already standing on the precipice because of President Buhari’s failure to identify with popular sentiments of Nigerians that elected him on issues of restructuring, fiscal federalism and state/community policing.  Garba and Malami, the president’s loyal gatekeepers, with their well-scripted game of mischief pose no less threat to the survival of our nation.

All that the ill-informed millions of out of schools street urchins the northern political elite freely deployed to unleash terror during social dislocation in the past needed to be told to embark on a renewed orgy of killings is that northerners in the south have been shortchanged.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

In the ongoing uneven confrontation between Israelis and their Palestinian Arab half-brothers, there is no hiding place for the two million Palestinians in the occupied Gaza strip and others spread around about 165 ‘islands’ across the West Bank. As at Tuesday morning, in the re-scripting of Moses law of ‘an eye for an eye’, Palestinian armed group’s rockets have killed about 10 Israelis while Israeli air and artillery bombardment have killed over 213 Palestinians, half of them women and children inside their homes. About 7000 buildings have been leveled in Gaza strip with 53, 000 Palestinians mostly women and children taking refuge in schools under a United Nations flag waiting for humanitarian aid. Roads, residential buildings and other economic interest of the occupied territory continue to come under assault by the occupier whose right it is to protect the occupied.

America that provides Israel with $200b military aid and ever supportive of Israel, right or wrong, has blocked three different United Nations attempt to issue a joint statement condemning the aggression against a people that have been under occupation for 53 years. America wants Israel, the fourth most powerful military power in the world, to defend itself against stone throwing occupied people without freedom, without government and without an army.

The cynical Europeans who have been praising Benjamin Netanyahu for defending his people want Hamas, declared a terrorist organisation to learn a lesson on how not to dare a Goliath except you are an anointed David. Europe has far showed no interest in encouraging Israel to stop the carnage.

America and Europe, the scourge of warring Jews and Palestinian Arabs pretend not to know the root cause of this crisis was resistance to occupation and struggle for homeland by Palestinians they made homeless some 70 years ago in an effort to create ‘homeland’ for the persecuted, abused and pogromed homeless European Jews. They conveniently forget the plight of two million Palestinians ejected from their homes in East Jerusalem some 70 years ago with many of them and their grandchildren today taking refuge in refugee camps in Jordan. They are similarly silent on the two million Arab Jewish citizens treated as second class citizens in Israel. They also don’t think the two million Palestinians caged inside occupied Gaza have a right to freedom and aspirations like other free people in the world.

But for Europe, driven in the main by selfish interest, the cause  of justice has hardly ever featured in her intervention in the affairs of other nations whether during the  exploitation of productive African human resources through shipment of 12.5 million Africans to the New World between 1525  and 1886 to build the foundation of their today’s capital, their imperialist scramble for Africa and exploitation of her rich mineral and agricultural resources, and persecution, killing, expulsion and pogroms of Jews across Europe  or the setting of 300 million Arabs who speak the same language, share the same culture and worship the same God against one another.

Europe has in fact never pretended to be driven by anything but selfish interest. Greatly influenced by Darwinian theory of evolution, for them, it is the survival of the fittest. If you are strong, you survive, if you are weak, you die.

Greed-driven European nations have been responsible for the nightmare of the Jews and the Palestinians since the 4th century when they first adopted Christianity and fraudulently presented Jesus Christ, a man of colour as a Caucasian. Palestinians and the Jews bore the consequences of the 1095-1271 crusaders siege on the Holy Land to dislodge the Muslims. It was also in the 13th century, European nations started the expulsion and confiscation of Jewish properties across Europe.

It was the turn of England’s King Edward in 1293; Switzerland in 1408; Austria in 1421; Spain in 1492; France in 1495; Portugal in 1496; Frankfurt in 1614;  pogroms in Russia Empire in 1910; stripped of citizenship and pogromed from Italy in 1944,  the holocaust of European Jews, also known as shoah during World War II carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators  resulting in the murder of six million Jews by incineration in gas chamber  between 1941-1945.

Europe after persecution of Jews for over a century under various excuses including labeling them the ‘problem of Europe’ to a bizarre allegation the Jews killed their illustrious son, Jesus Christ. And when they discovered the holocaust, they had thought was the final solution to the Jews only brought shame, they embarked on efforts at resettling the Jews anywhere outside Europe.

They first tried the US. But the first 900 shipped to Mississippi were rejected and returned to Nazi Germany where more than half of them were murdered. Uganda in East Africa was proposed by Joseph Chamberlain in 1903 after the Russia pogrom. In the 1930s, the Kimberly region of Australia was considered, while Davey in Tasmania was proposed in 1939.

Finally on May 14, 1948, to satisfy Arab nationalism and Zionist nationalism, Palestine, inhabited by 94% Arabs and 6% Jews was partitioned through 1947 UN resolution 181. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their state is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state.’

The United States recognized the new state on the same day, followed three days later by the Soviet Union. However, Arab nations of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan alleging injustice crossed the borders of Palestine on May 15 to attack the new state of Israel.

Britain which was the first world power to endorse the establishment of Palestine as ‘national home’ for the Jewish people during the Balfour declaration of 1917, took side with Israel. America and major other European nations including France, Italy, Belgium, Russia with blood of Jews dripping from their hands, rallied round Israel who with superior fire power has gone on to annex Palestinian initial land, expelled millions from Jerusalem while locking  the rest in the Gaza and West Bank cage and deciding when they breathe or take water.

But Europe loves neither Israel nor their Arab half-brothers. If she pitches tent with the Jews today in the face of monumental injustice against helpless Palestinians, it is because apart from being haunted by their past repression of the Jews, it is part of their Darwinian world view that ‘the weak dies, the strong (Israel leading the world in everything from science, to commerce, medicine to literature, agriculture to computer and space exploration) survives”.

The tragedy for the warring siblings is that Israel and her successive rebellious leaders who in the last 70 years rejected many UN resolutions including the one calling for a creation of state for Palestine with her capital in East Jerusalem have forgotten so soon the 1947 UN resolution 181 that spoke of “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations” is the same right they now deny their half-brothers.

Hamas’ violence cannot be an excuse for denying Palestinians the right to self-actualisation or statehood.  The Jews in their struggle for statehood were no less violent. In fact, David Ben Gurion who made the declaration of state of Israel and later became the first Prime Minister and his group were at the beginning regarded as terrorists by the British. In any case, as offspring of Abraham, violence rebelliousness is in the blood of Jews and Arabs.