Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Long after the declaration of Fulani herdsmen as the fourth deadliest terrorists’ group in the world by the World Terrorist Index, those Nigerians who often play the ostrich and whose narrative is often promoted by the media are the same people who today assault our ears with talk of ethnic profiling. The identity of those who killed, maimed, confiscated farmlands and kidnap for ransom even before Sheik Gumi’s recent declaration that “government know them, monitors them by air view”, has never been in dispute.  President Buhari’s appeal to the people of Benue to tolerate the settlers in their midst during some of his condolence visits to the state after periodic massacres of farmers, women and children was but a confirmation the president knows those who have continued to make his job of nation building more arduous.

Both governors El Rufai of Kaduna and Massari of neighbouring Katsina that had at different occasions negotiated and paid ransom to bandits admitted many of them are Fulani immigrants from neigbouring countries. Those that were indicted for the attack on Olu Falae were Fulani. Those arrested for the killing Chief Executive Officer, Kunfayakun Green Treasures Limited, Fatai Aborode, near his farm along Apodun village in Oyo State, were herdsmen also belong to the same ethnic group.

When Akeredolu issued a fatwa for those AK-47-wielding herdsmen who illegally took over Ondo forest reserve, Shehu Garba and Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed came out not on behalf of Niger Delta militants but to defend Fulani herdsmen who they said are protected by the constitution to operate anywhere in Nigeria’s forests. Jigawa and Kebbi state governors with large herdsmen population in January joined their six southwest governors to resolve the crisis.

When elder statesman, Theophilus Danjuma fingered Fulani herdsmen as those  killing and confiscating land in Adamawa State, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, then Emir of Kano and one the patrons of Miyyetti Allah, rather than deny the herdsmen’s involvement, claimed hundreds of Fulani herdsmen killed earlier by their host communities were never reported by the newspapers.

In any case, nearly every harvest of deaths that accompany herdsmen attacks on communities, has been defended by Miyetti Allah spokesmen who have always described them as retaliatory attacks to avenge the killing of their men or rustling of their cattle.

But if ethnic profiling accusation will not wash, we can make a saint of killers and bandits by playing the ostrich. Speaking in Bauchi on Thursday, February 11, to Justify bearing of  AK-47 rifles by herdsmen, Bauchi’s Mohammed  who condemned the treatment of Fulani herdsmen in the southern  region, said herdsmen “have inalienable right to defend themselves from cattle rustlers and other challenges encountered on the road” adding “it is not his fault, it is the fault of government and the people, the Fulani tribe  is a constant target for eviction from local communities.”

Gumi who revealed “the herdsmen-bandits are engaged in an ethnic war against other peoples and sedentary Fulani in the country” was to complain that “Fulani are being profiled, killed by the military, lynched in town,” adding. “Do you know that there are situations where any man with this Fulani physique – slim, light-complexioned, even dark ones – on a motorbike is automatically arrested and incarcerated?”

For their pains, Gumi wants herdsmen who he admitted are killers and kidnappers  who are at war with Nigeria, provided with “reasonable means of livelihood including jobs, working capital, entrepreneurship training as well as clinics and school”.

Not left out are the governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, who wants “repentant bandits” to be granted amnesty by the federal government and Katsina State governor, Aminu Masari who with his policy of Dialogue and Amnesty Programme paid criminals millions only to visit more suffering on poor people of Katsina who were being forced to pay ransom to harvest their farm products.

They all chose to play the ostrich instead of telling immigrants and imported Fulani herdsmen that Nigeria is not owned by Fulani in spite of the current constitution, rigged against Nigerians by Nigerian military. Instead what we got was  Bala Mohammed’s arrogant assertion that “we cannot close border against Fulani, he is a global man, Fulani from Senegal to Nigeria, Cameroon,  are Nigerians” and Gumi’s claim that “Fulani are in all Nigerian states, we cannot drive them away because they speak local Nigerian languages” And living in denial, they tried to present those  who engage in mindless killings, kidnapping of school children and other crimes against humanity as victims that deserve amnesty and resettlement like the Niger Delta militants of the Yar’Adua era.

However, history tells us that long before the current wave of immigrant and imported Fulani herdsmen who today daily visit terror on Nigerians, Fulani herdsmen had hardly been good guests. As proof, King Yunfa (1801-1808) of Gobir who hosted Uthman dan Fodio who later helped him into the throne, ended up losing his life and kingdom. The respected cleric and reformer followed up with the conquest of all the Hausa states installing only but one non-Fulani Emir in over a dozen Emirates he created for his fellow Fulani.  It is instructive that not more than one pious Muslim could be found in the Hausa states that had embraced the Islamic faith about 400 years before the revered Jihadist and reformer came to Gobir.

The story of Afonja was not different. He lost his Ilorin throne and his life to Alimi, his Fulani guest that had earlier supported him in his revolt against Alafin of Oyo. Tafawa Balewa’s biographer, Trevor Clark, in his A right Honourable Gentleman recorded Balewa’s story of his grandmother who had wanted Fulani settlers expelled from their land or killed if they refused to relocate.

This is not to say other ethnic groups do not have their own demons. Yoruba talk of her superior culture and is held in disdain by Fulani for her overweening pride which makes her think the feudal lords need free education or egalitarian society. The Igbo think the god of Africa has ordained them to lead Africa, which forced Ahamadu Bello to observe that if you employ an Igbo man a labourer, he will aspire to become head of labourers and of course the Hausas are fatalistic which makes them see nothing wrong in becoming beggars in urban centres of the country while their Fulani overlords control their political economy and the Igbo buy up their lands all over the north.

But all is not lost in spite of our thousand demons. Our visionary founding fathers adopted a federal arrangement, the social system that allows each group to battle its own demon without a threat to other members of the federating nationalities.  As Chinua Achebe puts in his No Longer At Ease, “we are strangers in this land, when calamity befalls the owners of the land, we move away leaving the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods”. The curse of our nation are our current political leaders. As the major beneficiaries of our current nightmare, there is neither political will nor incentive to go back to “the path to Nigerian freedom” they rejected because of greed.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

I sympathise with Sheik Gumi who out of share envy by detractors has been going through severe stress and strain since his triumphant return from the den of killer herdsmen, kidnappers and vicious bandits; a no-go area for our soldiers, police and the DSS. His daring adventure has brought some relief to Nigerians. Contrary to what our security men made us to believe, at least we now know the mythical bandits that kill, kidnap, confiscate farmlands, reducing in the process, their surviving victims to candidates of IDP camps were not ghosts that disappear into thin air after each harvest of deaths. We now know they are, according to Gumi, disgruntled Fulani herdsmen that, Abubakar Kawu Baraje , former PDP chairman and until recently APC stalwart, claimed were imported by politicians for elections with no incentive to return to their country after graduating into lucrative banditry and kidnapping business with the potential to make millions from one victim as against selling one cow for N100,000.

There are other reasons Gumi has come under vicious attack of disgruntled shortsighted Nigerians who freely deployed hate messages against the respected cleric. With near absence of governance following President Buhari’s unique administrative method of ‘delegation by abdication’ which allows his ‘loyal gatekeepers’, who many believe do not necessarily share his pan-Nigerian vision, issue statements on all issues in his name, there was a vacuum of leadership in the country. With a caged president and governors who were “attending wedding parties while Nigeria was burning”, Gumi by his daring intervention, easily fills what many Nigerian see as a leadership vacuum.

We must not forget the narrative before Gumi’s daring trip to the lion’s den. First there was a change of fortune for our soldiers. The government declaration of technical victory over Boko Haram was at the end a pyrrhic victory as ‘liberated’ Sambisa Forest’ the military told us was going to be converted to games village was retaken by the insurgency.

Then killer herdsmen unleashed free reign of terror over the middle belt region of Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa and Taraba. The battle then shifted to the north-western states of Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto. Both Kaduna and Katsina states tried payment of ransom to criminal herdsmen without bringing much relief to the residents of both states who have to pay ransom to harvest their farm products.

In no time killer-herdsmen cells were discovered in the mangrove forests of southern states of Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo and Ogun with many recorded cases of mindless killings, kidnapping and raping of women. In the case of Ogun State, hundreds were driven from their homes by herdsmen to the neighbouring Republic of Benin. Then there was a looming anarchy as Shehu Garba and governor of Bauchi State encouraged AK-47 wielding herdsmen illegally occupying Ondo’s Forest Reserves to resist Governor Akeredolu’s quit order.

With the president caged in Aso Rock presidential palace refusing to personally react to pressing national issues, there was an appearance of absence of governance.  Gumi quickly took up the challenge of leadership. He first met with the invincible gangs in Kaduna and Zamfara to negotiate an end to mindless killings, displacement of thousands from various communities in the north and their peaceful surrender. He then met with the bandits behind the abduction of 27 students and 15 others from the Government Science College, Kagara in Niger State rounding his adventure with a meeting with Niger State governor, Abubakar Sani Bello, on February 19, informing him: “I’ve spoken with them (bandits) face-to-face and they are ready to lay down their arms if their conditions are fulfilled and I find all the conditions they gave as justifiable”.

However, Nasir El-Rufai, who paid condolence visit to Kerawa, Zariyawa, government areas where 41 people were slaughtered after deploying taxpayers’ money to pay bandits raised objection, noting that the bandits cannot change from their ways and should be brought to justice instead. He believes bandits terrorising Nigeria have lost their rights to life under the constitution.

His declaration that “In Kaduna State, we have zero tolerance for bandits. We don’t give them amnesty; we don’t negotiate with them” has however only led to renewed siege on Kaduna resulting in recent kidnapping of about 20 students of Greenfield University in Kaduna State which Garba Shehu, the president’s senior special media assistant attributed to “the ongoing military and police offensive against terrorists in the Birnin Gwari and Kajuru forests”.

Add the above to  the looming anarchy in Imo State following the torching of the state governor’s personal house as well as many  police stations across the state leading to death of many policemen, with Sunday Igboho’s crusade against suspected killer herdsmen in Oyo State, with minister of defence asking Nigerians to confront AK-47 wielding bandits and kidnappers, with Obasanjo’s warning about forcing Nigerians to self-defence and Theophilus Danjuma actually calling on Nigerians to defend themselves against killer Fulani herdsmen;  with the fear of the infiltration of many institutions of state by terrorist sympathisers, With Miyetti Allah insisting there would be no peace in the country except their members in line with Fulani culture, are allowed to embark on open grazing across the country and with a crumbling economy under the weight of  $86.3 billion (N32.9 trillion) national debt, inflation above 18 per cent,  unemployment at 33%, and the naira exchanging for N480 to the dollar,  the country needs a messiah.

Let us rate the front runners.

By rejecting negotiation and insisting banditry must be crushed when all he could get from the presidency after the latest attack on Greenfield university leading to the abduction of 20 students was Garba Shehu’s “expression of the presidency’s deep sadness and regret over the bandits attack”, El Rufai was ignoring Zik’s admonition that it is only a mad man that argues with a man with a gun.

On his part, Gumi claims he is making “attempt at talking to herdsmen to drop their guns, insisting they are “militants fighting for ethnic survival, and are kidnapping to make money… adding it’s either we as Nigerian sit down together and iron things out or go astray and come back to do what should have been done in the first place”.

President Buhari, who promised to lead from the front is nowhere the rear. He probably thinks the problem will disappear without action. All we hear are the hollow voices of his ‘loyal gatekeepers’ whose every incendiary pronouncement appeared designed to portray their principal a Fulani president as against a man who secured an overwhelming support of Nigerians and a mandate to resolve our crisis of nation building.

Although Gumi will reject the title of a messiah having pointed out that Isa (Jesus) was punished because people called him a messiah, but if you ask me, I will readily agree the country be handed over to him lead to lead. After all, it is said, a people deserve the leadership they get.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

I sympathise with Isa Ali Ibrahim, Minister of Communication and Digital Economy who has been going through stress and strain this past week. He has denounced his past, attributing it to age of ignorance before enlightenment. He has paid restitution. As the Yoruba adage goes: you asked a thief to drop his loot, he complies, what else do you want of him?

Pantami is a resourceful academician, committed Islamic scholar and a man of great faith. His academic pursuit took him through Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi, Robert Gordon University Aberdeen, Scotland, for his PhD and to Harvard and Massachusetts both in the USA and Switzerland for other management studies.

For his clerical training, he studied under great Islamic scholars with radical views including: Umar Fallatah  who narrated from Sahih Muslim  that “Eesa (Jesus) the son of Maryam; Allah created him from a mother and he does not have a father”; Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen  who wrote  that “the time will come when Islamic rulers will cleanse the land of Arabia and the neighbouring lands from  Jews and Christians; and Abdulmuhsin ibn Abbad, the author of the ‘Status of Sahabah, who  wrote: “Whoever among you wishes to follow (someone), let him follow one who has died”.

It should therefore surprise no one that Pantami grew up to become a Jumu’ah Chief Imam,  a Shurah member and Deputy Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Shari’ah (SCS) in Nigeria  and espoused  radical teachings and support for Islamic terrorist groups.

Pantami was a product of the era when northern governors, his pathfinders, protesting the shift of power from the north illegally introduced sharia law in core northern Muslim states and dispatched many innocent northern youths to Sudan for indoctrination under Osama Bin Laden. It was therefore not unexpected that amidst global terrorism of the period, he would express support for al-Qaeda and Taliban: “Oh God, give victory to the Taliban and to al-Qaeda,” and informed his home audience that: “This jihad is an obligation for every single believer, especially in Nigeria”.

Pantami in his innocence back then did not see anything wrong in his advocacy. Neither did his pathfinders in the north. In fact if his past featured at all, it was probably on the a positive note when warring Buhari’s ‘loyal gate keepers’  recruited a terrorist sympathizer  from the Islamic University of Madinnah in 2016, first   as the Director General/CEO of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to develop the ICT infrastructure to counter Boko Haram terrorism and later as  minister for the sensitive communication and digital economy ministry in 2019.

Following overwhelming disapproval of is earlier support for violent Islamic groups, Isa Pantami, last week tried to backtrack on some of his extreme views that must have no doubt radicalized terrorist groups in Nigeria.  ”For 15 years, I have moved around the country while educating people about the dangers of terrorism. I have travelled to Katsina, Gombe, Borno and Kano states, and Difa in the Niger Republic to preach against terrorism”, adding:  “I have engaged those with Boko Haram ideologies in different places. I have been writing pamphlets in Hausa, English and Arabic. I have managed to bring back several young persons who have derailed from the right path”.

But the genie has escaped, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. Those he had earlier radicalized have turned his new crusade centres into a killing field and havens for banditry and kidnapping of innocent school girls and boys. Unfortunately, those with radical views according to experts “don’t change overnight”.

As expected of an opposition party, PDP weeping louder than the bereaved wants Pantami sacked by Buhari, predicating its stand on the “heightening concerns in the public space and in the international arena of possible compromises by the communication minister, who has access to sensitive government documents and information, in addition to data of all individuals including high profile personalities in the public and private sectors as well as the traditional and faith-based circles”.

PDP may be right; the appeal however was misdirected. President Buhari doesn’t sack people. That is the exclusive preserve of his loyal gatekeepers. The only two appointees that have suffered the indignity of being unceremoniously sacked in six years were Babachir Lawal, the former secretary to government and Ibrahim Magu, the former EFCC helmsman, both victims of internecine wars of loyal gatekeepers. If the Buhari we knew were in charge, Pantami would have not lasted beyond 24 hours after subjecting 100 million Nigerians to danger and untold hardship in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic. This was Identity Card project successive governments have used to fleece Nigerian state of billions of naira and which in any case, it cannot stop millions of non-Nigerians from neighbouring West African nations from illegally obtaining.

If one may ask, what has Pantami done that others have not done.? If the issue is about sympathy for terrorists, both PDP and APC are tarred with the same brush. It is on record that PDP is the father of terrorism in Nigeria. The party, by the confessions of some of its leading light created Boko Haram and the Niger Delta militant groups because of disagreement over power sharing.

In fact, President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012 was to admit his government had become a haven of Boko Haram sympathisers . According to him “Some of them are in the executive arm of government, some of them are in the parliamentary/legislative arm of government, while some of them are even in the judiciary…Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies”.

If anything, it only got worse under Buhari’s government of ‘delegation by abdication’ from 2015. With the control of all political appointments in the absence of any form of governance by his warring ‘loyal gatekeepers’, religion orientation and ethnic identification carry more weight than efficiency or loyalty to the state. It was obvious those who attempted to smuggle fugitive offender Abdulrasheed Maina back into the bureaucracy and those who knew the antecedents of Pantami and yet eased his appointment love neither Buhari nor Nigeria. It was also impossible for Pantami’s past to have escaped DSS during screening before his nomination was sent to the National Assembly for confirmation, a former DSS retired officer told Channels TV last Monday.

As for our National Assembly, unlike the US senate where rigorous preparation go into the screening of political office holders, here, it is a depressing exercise where candidates are asked to bow and take their leave. It brings little relief that some of them have admitted a number of senators are terrorist sympathisers.

Pantami was the victim rather than the villain. At the beginning of the fourth republic, not many northern politicians especially the Sharia governors opposed radical and extremist ideology or violent preaching If Buhari did, it was not until Boko Haram made an attempt on his life in Kano. And even as president on whose table the buck stops, until his recent ‘shoot at sight’ order of those herdsmen illegally carrying AK-47, he has been widely criticized for refusing to declare herdsmen as terrorists long after World Terrorist Index had declared ‘Fulani herdsmen the world fourth most deadly terrorist group”.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

It is often said a man does not become left-handed at middle age. The problem with President Buhari, who not too long ago spoke glowingly of his ‘loyal gate keepers’, is that he hardly finds fault with friends whose judgment he values. As it was in 1985 when Babangida complained of “state of uncertainty, suppression and stagnation (resulting) from the perpetration of a small group” to justify his palace coup, so it is today. Many have argued his government was hijacked even before its inauguration by a small clique of loyalists who did not necessarily share his pan-Nigeria vision. Since 2015, President Buhari has been running a government of ‘delegation by abdication’ a euphemism for absence of governance. And nothing demonstrates this than the ongoing waves of strike of workers across the nation.

Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), made up of Nigerian 69 polytechnics, Colleges of Agriculture and Colleges of Education are on an indefinite strike over non-implementation of an agreed new salary scheme and the settlement of members’ salary arrears and promotion allowances owed by some state governments. Judiciary workers, under the aegis of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN), declared an indefinite nationwide strike to press home their demands for the financial autonomy of the judiciary, a policy initiative of the president himself. Similarly, the non-teaching staff of Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities and Educational Institutions (NASU) are at war with the government. As part of a groundswell of disenchantment with the government, National Association of Resident doctors of Teaching Hospitals (NARD) across the nation are also on strike over “universal implementation of the Medical Residency Training Act,” and “group life insurance for doctors and other health care workers and payment of death-in-service benefit to next of kin/beneficiaries”. And of course, all these are coming after 10 months of ASUU strike, suspended only on December 22, 2020 after Nigerian university students had lost a whole session.

Segun Adeniyi of ThisDay at one of his outings during the Christian annual platform lecture series called the attention of Nigerians to the fact that no one becomes a minister in Malaysia without first returning to school to obtain a Master’s degree in Public Administration in addition to a degree in their core areas of interest.  Although many of President Buhari’s ministers are successful and illustrious Nigerians, many of them are ill-equipped for the ministries they run. What we therefore have in many of the ministries are square pegs in round holes.

And the problem is with Buhari who, to quote Babangida’s August 27, 1985 coup speech again, “is too rigid and uncompromising in his attitudes to issues of national significance”, in spite of “efforts to make him understand that a diverse polity like Nigeria required recognition and appreciation of differences in both cultural and individual perceptions”.

That most of the above settled issues have become subjects of industrial action now paralysing the judiciary, the health and educational sectors while his loyal gatekeepers and appointed ministers appear clueless once again raises the question about the capacity of President Buhari to make a decision objectively, authoritatively and wisely.

Let us start with information. For those who understand the prominent role of communication in the integrative or non- integrative process in the political system of any society, effective communication is key to political control. This was why Karl Deutch in his ‘Nerves of Government ‘wants special attention to be paid to “perception, communication of messages, speed of messages, distortion of messages and response and interpretation of messages”. In 2015, President Buhari needed a trained communication expert. But caving in to pressure of self-serving ‘loyal gatekeepers’, he opted for a celebrated political party spokesman.

Haunted by his past success, a very resourceful Lai Mohammed was soon rechristened “lying Mohammed”. Buhari re-appointed him to the same position after his re-election in 2019.

Since the medium is the message, many Nigerians stopped believing any government feedback conveyed by Mohammed. ENDSARS protesters increased the tempo of their agitation just because government feedback to their demand was conveyed through Lai Mohammed.  His no massacre submission was out-rightly rejected.  The report of US State Department that supported his claim only incensed some Nigerians who due to perception cannot accept government can be right.

As for the troubled Labour Ministry, the question is what prepared Chris Ngige, a medical doctor by profession, for the ministry? His unrelated experience was as assistant national secretary and zonal secretary of PDP in the Southeast region. His 2003 pyrrhic victory as Anambra state governor was packaged by the Uba Brothers after an oath before an Okija shrine. And for defying the Okija gods, he was forced to write a letter of resignation after being kidnapped and locked up like a common criminal by his godfathers on July 10, 2003. His election was later annulled by the courts and confirmed by an Appeal Court on March 15, 2003. During his 33 months in state house, the Uba brothers wielded power.  For the president and his small group or loyal gate keepers, that was all Ngige needed to be appointed Minister of Labour.

Adamu Adamu, the minister of troubled education ministry received a Bachelor’s degree in accounting from the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and a Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. He worked in the New Nigerian newspapers as special correspondent rising to become deputy editor of the newspaper and chairman of the group Editorial Board. That unrelated experience was what in President Buhari’s judgment prepared Adamu for the all-important Ministry of Education. It is not a surprise that vice chancellor and pro-chancellor positions are today’s fiercely fought for by politicians.

Rauf Aregbesola, the Internal Affairs Minister attended The Polytechnic, Ibadan, where he studied Mechanical Engineering Technology. He was commissioner of works in Lagos before returning to Osun to serve to serve as governor. There was no other preparation for his position as Minister of Internal Affairs. With report of mindless killing by criminal immigrant Fulani herdsmen, banditry and kidnapping in Zamfara and the invasion of southwest forests by criminal herdsmen , not much has been heard from Aregbesola in two years beyond his last week’s declaration that prisoners set free by criminals would be pardoned if they voluntarily return to their prisons.

Okechukwu Enelamah, Nigeria’s former Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment earned a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard University. That prepared him for the ministry of industries. Yet during Buhari’s first coming, our clothes came from the UNTL, Aswani and Chellarams textiles mills in Lagos and Kaduna,  our shoes from Bata and Lennards in Lagos;  our TV sets assembled by Adebowale Electrical in Lagos and Sanyo in Ibadan, our refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners produced by Thermocool in Lagos, our  WC  and tiles from Kano and Abeokuta.

It is the same story with more than 75% of Buhari’s 44 ministers. Fashola, a Leviathan as Lagos State governor was tamed. For four years as minister of power, he could not secure pre-paid meters for consumers. And in a few cases like the Ministry of Justice where President Buhari was forced to consider specialization, the decision was informed more by politics than competence. It is after all the non-implementation of the President’s executive order of 2020 that has placed Malami’s Ministry of Justice in the league of current troubled ministries

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

One tragic example of the fall-out of cultural imperialism is the fanatical and uncompromising faith of Nigerians in Islamic and Christian religion. The zealotry of our Muslim brothers would make people of Mecca, the birthplace of Prophet Mohammed green with envy.  In the case of their Christian counterparts, they are more Catholic than the Pope. And of course, that is when they are humble enough to concede the Pope is a Christian. The Jews, adherents of Judaism that along with Islam and Christianity makes up the Abrahamic religion, recently celebrated her dominance of the world through science with Benjamin Netanyahu boasting of a technological break-through that allows Israel to practice agriculture in the skies. The Israelis think the rest of us are sick.

And while the Pope in the belief that adherents of Abramaic religion worship the same one God, has been visiting Muslim countries across the world including Abu Dhabi, UAE which is already hosting “Mary the mother of Jesus mosque,” preaching peace and reconciliation, our Muslims zealots here are issuing fatwa to Bishop Kukah of Sokoto for criticizing government as if President Buhari and his administration are owned by Muslim fundamentalists.  As for their equally intolerant Christian counterparts without the spirit of Christ, touching or reading the Holy Quran, inspired according to Prophet Mohammed by angel Gabriel, the Christian Annunciation angel, is sacrilegious.

And more tragic for the nation is that since the beginning of the fourth republic, many poor, ill-educated and unemployed miracle seekers have become tools in the hands of equally ill-prepared new breed politicians who, when confronted with social problems, often resort to exploitation of religious sentiments by appealing to innermost fears of Nigerians.

The truth is that unlike our first and second republic politicians who went through some form of political socialization process, our current set of military-baked “new breed’ politicians are ill-prepared for challenges of governance. The late Ahmadu Bello who welded the multi-ethnic and multi-religious north together started his long years of political socialization at the Local Council level. Obafemi Awolowo, his counterpart in the West, started as a Local Council chairman.

But Kwara’s AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, the son of the first northern lawyer in Nigeria was said to be a successful businessman and a philanthropist until his adventure into politics when he went straight in 2011 to contest for governorship on the platform of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), then for Kwara Central Senatorial District on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and, by 2019, he was an elected governor on the platform of APC.

His political opponents insisted “the commitment extracted from him to singlehandedly bankroll the election in Kwara without the support of the Presidency and national leadership of the party” was what qualified him for the position.

They alleged that unable to meet the promise “to liberate Kwara state, the state of harmony pauperized by the political rulership of Sarakis dynasty” and also “ensure all secondary and primary schools in the state, are fully equipped with standard facilities and the needed manpower… to make products of schools in Kwara State tower above their contemporaries in other states of the federation, he dabbled into religion to cover up his inadequacies.

If he was not up to some mischief, they ask, why did he need to set up a kangaroo committee to look into an issue before the Supreme Court.? The committee’s report upholds the “the right of Muslim students to wear their head covering” and the governor went ahead to reopen the 10 closed school saying “All the schools are government-controlled and fully funded; they are not Christian schools”. And that became the battle cry of aggrieved Muslim parents.

There was no evidence the governor tried to find out if the decision of the Muslim parents to make admittance of their wards to Hijab unfriendly Christian schools was on account of the high standard of such schools. That would have been an opportunity to upgrade the Hijab-friendly Muslim schools to prove his campaign manifesto on education was not just an empty promise.

But he chose to settle for the usual Nigerian strategy of ‘if you cannot meet the standard of some groups in the country, truncate their progress and lower the standard for everyone” as done through federal take-over of universities, recruitment into the bureaucracy and admission into universities through JAMB.

The response of Muslim parents who vandalised and made attempt at torching Christian schools that rejected their Hijab-wearing children only confirms the fears of Christian schools’ stakeholders. Here Solomon’s Biblical historic judgment between two women fighting over a child readily comes to mind. Muslim parents who tried to torch Christian schools are probably driven by envy.

Unfortunately, I have searched without finding any difference between the warring Muslim and Christian parents. I think the Christian parents are Christians without the spirit of Christ. It is most unlikely that with their battle cry of “We shall not allow Hijab in our schools., we will defend our faith and defend our inheritance” which led to a clash that resulted in 20 injured, they ever sought the opinion of their children. They would have been pleasantly surprised that their children have no misgivings about their hijab-wearing colleagues. For the innocent minds, the cloak does not make the monk.

I attended St Joseph’s Secondary School, Ondo where those of us in the Novitiate mixed freely with regular students and Muslim students who despite having opportunity to go for their Friday prayers outside the school participated in our morning masses. Some of my closest friends some 50 years after were my Muslim classmates whose main attraction back them was in their beautiful Muslim strange names such as Rafiu, Majeed, Tofeek etc which were different from our own John, James and Peter etc.

It is true that mission schools were set up to promote Christian values and set moral standards for students. But I cannot see how wearing of Hijab undermines those objectives.

Members of the St. Barnabas Cathedral, who, decided to hold a worship service at the entrance of the school despite the bitterness in their hearts and those who decided that a truckload of sand must be heaped at the entrance of St. Anthony’s school to prevent Hijab wearing children of their neighbours from entering probably never bothered to read about their patron saint.

St. Barnabas, was a peacemaker and patron of Cyprus and Antioch who sold his property, and gave the proceeds to the community (Acts 4:36–37). While others were suspicious, he agreed to sponsor St. Paul’s after his incredible conversion. Barnabas, together with Paul, struggled against those who required that Gentiles first be circumcised in order to become Christian (Acts 15, 1¯2).

And those preventing children from entering St Anthony School must be reminded that St. Anthony, born into a wealthy family, was a patron of the poor. His major aim of joining the Franciscan order in 1220 was to have an opportunity to preach to the Saracenes (Muslims) in Morocco and be martyred. He was known for his undying love and devotion to the poor.

There is a purpose for religion in all societies.  Religion is therefore not the problem of Nigeria but the use into which political actors without vision, prosperity prophets, Muslim fundamentalists and Christians without the spirit of Christ put it.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Unlike in the developed democracies where politics serves the interest of interest groups, Nigerian politicians serve none but themselves. The ongoing shedding of crocodile tears by politicians over last week’s attempted assassination of Governor Ortom of Benue State by suspected herdsmen has once again confirmed Nigerian politicians respond to inputs from their environment only when their interest is threatened. To the politicians who take delight in playing the ostrich, the attack came as “a shock and a reawakening”. But to ordinary Nigerian folks, it did not come as a shock. Our politicians sowed the wind. It naturally follows they reap the whirlwind.

But let us set the record straight by going through memory. It was the politicians who at the onset of the fourth republic in 1999 introduced what Obasanjo back then described as “political Sharia”, embraced by the 13 contiguous northern states and hailed by leading northern politicians including General Muhammadu Buhari. The politicians sent some innocent northern youths to Osama Bin Laden, then hiding in Sudan where he was grooming terrorist and planning his attack on World Trade Towers in New York, for radicalization. They set up a terror group that later graduated to Boko Haram, as a balance of terror to settle scores with political opponents. The politicians provided arms and intellectual support for the Niger Delta militant youths, with the aim of replacing their foreign exploiters who deploy Niger Delta resources to build bridges over land in Abuja. It is widely believed Ex-President Obasanjo took sides with a faction of the Niger Delta militant group to serve his own political ends. In the Southeast where election is war, the politicians armed the youths to checkmate political opponents. Thugs were also weapons of election in the southwest with a sitting president deploying state funds to secure the support of banned Odua militant group in 2014.

With the legitimacy of elected politicians being fiercely challenged by the demons they foisted on Nigeria, the chicken has only come home to roost. But rather than address our crisis of nation building, our politicians have continued to play the ostrich. Last week, Garba Shehu, the president’s spokesman told us that his principal who for five years failed to tame rampaging immigrant herdsmen as was done in Ghana due to lack of political will, “has directed the police to undertake a thorough investigation into the attack involving the governor and into all such incidents affecting individuals and communities in the state.”

Once again, the president chose to address the symptoms. Ortom has on more than one occasion publicly claimed he had written more than five different letters to the president and the nation’s security apparatus, calling attention to the fate of Benue people condemned to IDP camps by those who confiscated their farm lands. The president also paid a condolence visits to Benue following the 2018 Agatu massacre and mass burial of about 72 people.

But trying to outdo the presidency in a game of living in denial are our governors. The Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), perhaps the only group that saw the attack as “shocking and a rude awakening”, now says  “it will continue to encourage its members to stand firm in the service of their people regardless of the evil machinations of those who don’t wish Nigeria well”.  Still trying to read the body language of a president who has directed AK-47 wielding criminals threatening Nigerians to be shot on sight, the groveling governors are still unable to talk about criminal herdsmen.  Sadly this was long after some members of the forum, including Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna, Aminu Masari of Katsina and Bala Mohammed of Bauchi have publicly denounced the criminal activities of foreign Fulani herdsmen that continue to visit violence on Nigerians even after receiving restitution for their alleged killed cows.

The PDP has also expressed its outrage and “demanded the federal government lives up to its responsibility on the protection of life and property in the state.” The party wants President Buhari to “put machinery in motion by ordering an immediate manhunt, arrest and prosecution of the assailants and beef up security around the governor.”

Other outraged PDP members include Rivers’ Nyesom Wike, a favourite of the militants who according to Itse Sagay, rode to power on the blood of the people. Blowing hot and cold, he told the president: “If you kill Ortom, then be prepared to bury Nigeria.”  There was also incensed David Mark who says: “If our government and security operatives can no longer guarantee people’s safety in their homes, farms or places of business, I am worried that the situation may compel citizens to resort to self-help”.

David Mark, a PDP leading light was in the senate for about 16 years serving as senate president for eight years. In 2004, unidentified gunmen attacked the convoy of George Akume, then governor of Benue State. Over a dozen politicians were killed in the first five years of the fourth republic with perpetrators seldom found.

The long list includes the vice chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, Aminasoari Dikibo, who was shot dead in his car while traveling to a party conference in Delta State. There was also Bola Ige, who as Obasanjo’s minister of justice and attorney general was killed in his bedroom. His assailants are yet to be found.

Under his watch in March 2014, Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State, escaped death by the whiskers when his convoy was ambushed by suspected Fulani mercenaries at Tee-Akanyi village in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State. This was just after the rampaging invaders had sacked about 64 villages on the Daudu-Gbajimba axis of the council, killing no fewer than 37 persons.

Also playing the ostrich is Plateau State’s Simon Lalong  and his Northern Governors Forum. The forum wants the incident investigated thoroughly. But Plateau had its own fair share of killing. We can easily recall the attack on Razat, Ruku, Nyarr, Kura and Gana-Ropp villages of Gashish District in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State which claimed no fewer than 100 lives. The killing was said to be in retaliation to the killing of over 300 cows according to Danladi Ciroma, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders’ Association, MACBAN chairman, North Central zone. The report of the investigation into the incident which many claimed indicted the then IG was suppressed.

Indignant Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo’s vice president for eight years was also out to be counted. He wants “a rejig of the nation’s security architecture and a constitutional framework that empowers the states to control their internal security.” But, Paul Unongo as the then  chairman of the Northern Elders Forum,, had alleged that besides having more cattle than anybody, he was  the chief financier and most influential member of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, a charge Atiku has since denied

Unongo, a Fulani and a Tiv who should know better also told Nigerians that Miyyetti Allah is “an establishment of the big people, a very rich group of Nigerians and they pack small boys to take their cattle all over the place and then buy all these arms to give herdsmen to go and kill people, and the government is doing nothing!”

Unfortunately, with little or no governance going on under President Buhari’s APC government, it is Unongo’s words against Atiku’s.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

As a protest against the mindless stealing of the nation’s resources by PDP stalwarts and their children while Jonathan took refuge in Nigerian churches and Jerusalem synagogues, sometimes in company of those indicted by the National Assembly for financial malfeasance, Nigerians in 2015 overwhelmingly elected President Buhari.  But Buhari was demystified within his first two years in office.

No thanks to his warring ministers, political office-holders and ‘loyal gate keeper’ permanently engaged in war of attrition, not over how best to serve Nigeria but over  ‘who gets what, when and how’.  Following the president’s inability to manage his warring men who many believe are serving other tendencies in his administration, he frittered away the goodwill of Nigerians.

And for the president, it was a double jeopardy. It is today a sort of sardonic humour that the same men that delegitimised Buhari’s “divisive administration of confusion and crisis”,( apology to Sule Lamido ) that are now hawking APC’s 2023 presidential  ticket to President Jonathan who was humiliated out of office in 2015.

And in recent times, for President Buhari, it does not just rain, it pours. While Monguno, his defence minister and the now retired service chiefs who had held the president hostage with tales of possible coup were engaged in war over procurement of arms, an emboldened Boko Haram regrouped. Although government denied control of any Nigerian territory by the insurgents, what is not however deniable is that the deadly insurgents have now made killing of our ill-equipped and out-gunned soldiers their pastime.

Similarly, bandits and criminal herdsmen emboldened by the president’s warring disorderly men with incoherent messages, have turned kidnaping of students and demand of ransom as high as N500m into an art. With subtle encouragement of AK-47-wielding herdsmen by Bauchi’s governor, Bala Mohammed and a plea for amnesty and compensation for criminal Fulani herdsmen by Dr Gumi, replacing expected coherent response of the federal government, criminal herdsmen illegally occupying reserved forests of the southwest are not in a hurry to obey the laws of their host states.

That the war of attrition between warring Monguno, Buhari’s National Security Adviser (NSA) and the president’s retired security chiefs did not end with their long over-due retirement came in bold relief during his press interview with BBC Hausa service last week.

He had said without restraint: “The president has done his best by approving huge sums of money for the purchase of weapons, but the weapons were not bought, they are not here.. I’m not saying the former service chiefs diverted the money, but the money is missing.… The fact is that preliminary investigation showed the funds are missing and the equipment is nowhere to be found. When the new service chiefs assumed office, they also said they didn’t see anything on the ground.”

Defence of the former service chiefs came immediately from another warring member of the president’s ‘loyal gate keepers’- Shehu Garba, the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media whose every intervention on behalf of the president seem to position his principal as being at war with those he governs.

Faulting Moguno, he had said: “About the $1bn taken from the Excess Crude Account with the consent of state governors used for military procurements, I want to assure you that nothing of that money is missing. The reference to it in the interview of the BBC Hausa Service by the National Security Adviser has been misconstrued and mistranslated. NSA made two critical points – one is that we don’t have enough weapons, which is a statement of fact; and two, procurements made have not been fully delivered.”

For the president’s political enemies who were once told by a Senator Shehu Sani, then a leading APC member, that the president fights corruption among opposition party members with insecticide but with deodorant among his supporters, Monguno and Shehu Garba’s different narratives was just one more  example of the president’s double standard in his anti-corruption crusade.

Nigerians could not have also forgotten the Malami/Magu rivalry. After series of embarrassing public duel by both men serving the same principal, Abubakar Malami, wrote to the president, listing several allegations against Ibrahim Magu including mismanagement and lack of transparency in managing recovered assets; diversion of recovered assets for personal enrichment; discrepancy in foreign currency recovered and the lodgment of its naira equivalent.  Magu was detained on July 6, 2020 and a panel started investigating him on July 31, 2020.

Magu was also believed to have leaked Malami’s secret meeting with fugitive Maina in Dubai before his controversial recall to the Nigerian civil service.  Malami masterminded along the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, the recall of Maina, who was then wanted for alleged N2 billion fraud. He  was condemned by Nigerians and civil society groups, forcing President Buhari to order his “immediate disengagement”  from the civil service while “demanding  a full report of the circumstances of Maina’s recall and posting to the Ministry of Interior.”

Perhaps there was no other issue that set Buhari against Nigerians than the unrestrained comment of Mansur Dan-Ali the Minister of Defence on the mindless killings of harmless Nigerians by criminal herdsmen.  Speaking at the end of a meeting of the National Security Council over the Benue killings on January 25, 2013, he had said: “Whatever crisis that happens at any time, there are remote and immediate causes.  Since the nation’s independence, we know there used to be a route whereby the cattle rearers take because they are all over the nation… If you go to Bayelsa or Ogun, you will see them. If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen?

“These people are Nigerians and we must learn to live together with one another. Communities and other people must learn how to accept foreigners within their enclave. Finish!”

But the killers as it turned out are not our own Fulani herdsmen. The minister while using blocked grazing routes as justification for killings subsistence farmers in their farms in federating states was silent on about 500 grazing routes that suffered similar fate in the north. And because the minister who kept his job was never cautioned by the president, Nigerians hold him responsible for Ali’s unrestrained comment.

President Buhari was also missing when his two warring men, the Inspector General of Police and chairman of the Police Service Commission held the nation hostage with herdsmen, bandits and cattle rustlers terrorizing Nigerians. Perhaps as a compensation for rejecting demands of states for state police, the president had approved the recruitment of 10,000 police constables. But for over a year, the government policy could not be implemented as the president’s warring political appointees dragged themselves to court. Even after an appeal court led by Justice Olabisi Ige had unanimously held that the IGP and the Police lack the power to recruit the constables, the IGP went to the Supreme Court in October 2020. All Nigerians got from an elected president was a deafening silence.

Lastly, the president was also missing as his misguided  Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami,  plodded on with his  poorly thought-out attempt at depriving millions of Nigerians from the mobile smartphone and digital space, through a mismanaged National Identification Number (NIN) policy. Matami wanted 100m Nigerians in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic to comply with his two weeks deadline (December 16, to December 30, 2020) after which all SIMs without NINs will be blocked from service providers’ network. As it later turned out, all those who have bank account with BVN numbers didn’t need to have wasted between N2000 and N10,000 to secure NIN.

Buhari may not be featuring in 2023,;his APC will however most likely pay for the perfidy of his warring men.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

It is the view of not a few Nigerians that the Nigerian political class that has since independence shortchanged the masses on whose back its members rode to power, is the scourge of the nation.  The only time the ordinary Nigerians featured in the calculation of the political class after attaining power was the brief period between 1952 and 1959 when the fear of the imperial powers kept the then aspiring new inheritors of power on their toes.

If anyone is in doubt, all he needs to do is to take a look at the 1963 Republican Constitution midwifed by our political class.  There was nothing in that superstructure about the masses of Nigerians.  It was all about acquisition of additional powers by the leading actors of the ruling coalition NPC/NCNC. Government policy thrusts including creation of Mid-West Region were driven by self-interest of actors without consideration for the future of the nation.

When they finally pulled down the whole edifice over sharing of political offices after the 1962/63 census crisis and 1964 disputed election, the military that came in 1966 only followed in their footsteps. Instead of the new self-proclaiming messiahs fighting ‘ten percenters’, they institutionalised corruption through self-serving government policy thrusts including the 1978 Land Use Decree which allowed military governors on posting to share state priceless land to strangers and Babangida’s commercialization policy which allowed military men and their fronts to share the nation’s public enterprises.

The emergence of military-bred ‘new breed politicians’ that breed only corruption in 1999 only increased the nightmare of ordinary Nigerians.  In the name of privatization, the political class sold Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b for a little over $1b to themselves, leading to the collapse of our budding manufacturing sector and turning of the country into importer of labour of other societies while our young graduates roam the streets for job. Following in their fathers’ footsteps, their children, according to a house probe, forged papers to steal N1.6trillion from government under the government’s fuel subsidy scam.

That the political class often unleash armed thugs on the people during election has gone beyond the realm of speculation. We have it on the authority of President Jonathan’s former National Security Adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi that Boko Haram was a creation of North-eastern politicians. We also have it on the authority of Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, former chairman of PDP that Fulanis from Mali, Sierra Leone, Senegal and others were imported into the country to win the 2015 elections just as we have it on the authority of Dr Abubakar Gumi that most of the bandits terrorising Nigerians are aggrieved Fulani herdsmen seeking vengeance over government unfulfilled promises.

Unarguably, the Nigerian political class is tarred with the same brush. But in terms of greed for power and impoverishment of the masses of Nigerians, the northern political class has no rival.  Unfortunately, the preoccupation of northern leaders since the end of the civil war has been to bring the south down to the same level with the north through various government policy thrusts including JAMB and now attempts at exporting self-inflicted social problems of the north to the south.

Government has become a science. State and local policing have been found to be the answer to insecurity. But majority of northern governors with the exception of Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna, for fear of losing grip on the poor masses of the north, are opposed to state and local policing.

Last week’s belated decision to embrace ranching and the decision of the Northeast governors to join their counterparts in the South to demand for state and community police after all the killings, cattle rustling kidnapping and seizure of farm lands can at best be described as actions of rulers who are not answerable to the people.

For instance, a 2017 study titled ‘Conflict and Insecurity in Northern Nigeria’ by Mike Shand/International Crisis Group revealed the following facts.

That in 2016, over 2,000 people were  killed and tens of thousands displaced in Benue and Kaduna states alone.  Incidents involving herders accounted for 44 per cent of all fatalities in the country in 2016.

Read Also: Governors: NAFDAC must guarantee efficicacy

While northern governors opposed state and community policing,  the study also pointed out that “large bandit groups operate with mounting audacity throughout the north, with the main theatres as the Kamuku forest in Kaduna, Falgore forest in Kano, Dansadau forest in Zamfara and Davin Rugu forest stretching through Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara states”.

The study quoted another report which estimated that in 2013, more than 64,750 cattle were stolen and at least 2,991 herders killed in states across the north-central zone. From 2011 to 2015, bandits, cattle rustlers and other criminals killed 1,135 people in Zamfara state alone, according to the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) quoted by the study.

The economic toll was also said to be huge with a 2015 study, indicating the federal government was losing $13.7 billion in revenue annually because of herder-farmer conflicts in Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa and Plateau states with the   four states also losing 47 per cent of their internally-generated revenues. In fact, in March 2017,  Governor Samuel Ortom claimed  that attacks by herders coming possibly  from Cameroon and Niger, had cost his state N95 billion  between 2012 and 2014.

The report called attention to creeping desert which is fast turning 50-75 per cent of the land area of Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara states, to a desert. Most of the youths armed with motorcycles and unleashed on southern cities especially Lagos could have been deployed to embark on the process of reforestation of the affected area.

While one minister of defence was defending mindless killing of subsistence farmers on the excuse  that grazing routes were taken over by farmers in the Middle Belt and the south, while Governor Mohammed of Bauchi was defending the incursion into Ondo State’s reserved forests, and  while Defence Minister Bashir Salihi Magashi was ordering federating states to abrogate their state’s anti-grazing laws  to forestall further herdsmen violence, they were silent on the 415 grazing reserves established by the northern regional government in the 1960s “which have succumbed to pressure from rapid population growth and the associated demand for farmland, overrun by urban and other infrastructure, or appropriated by private commercial interests”.

The northern governors since 1999 rejected the idea of state and local policing of the thinly-policed areas identified by the study –  “the main theatres of banditry…the Kamuku forest in Kaduna, Falgore forest in Kano, Dansadau forest in Zamfara and Davin Rugu forest stretching through Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara states”.

The northern governors have failed the masses. The federal government has failed it its core responsibility of protecting lives and properties of Nigerians. Federating states are therefore adopting self-help strategies in form of anti-grazing laws and ridding their reserved forest of illegal intruders and criminal herdsmen in order to fill the gap created by the federal government and compromised security apparatus. Attempt to read ethnic meaning to these efforts can only be interpreted as calculated attempt to export northern social problems to the south.