Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

With the overwhelming support and goodwill of Nigerians after President Buhari’s victory in 2015, the late Kano elder-statesman had predicted Buhari had the potential of becoming the best Nigerian president ever if he governed with justice. Reacting to Maitama Sule’s admonition, this column had argued on these pages that the only thing that could threaten Buhari’s claim to statesmanship after his presidency would be his Fulani ethnic group.  This was because, no sooner did he win the election than ethnic irredentists who ironically never supported his aspiration during his struggle for power lionized him as the new Fulani hope to complete  Uthman Dan Fodio’s dream of planting the sword at the sea. For them, with Buhari in government, might become right.

But perhaps because his cause is right, Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State has in the past five years withstood their might and by extension that of the state. Among the northern governors, Ortom has largely been treated as an outcast. In Ortom’s own words: “When I talk I am being castigated, there was nothing bad that was not said against me”.  The contempt for him was such that in the midst of the RUGA controversy, some power-drunk people, falsely swearing in Buhari’s name, ignored the land use provisions and started erecting a RUGA illegal settlement in the middle of the night on a land never ceded to them by the governor.

The legitimacy of his government was undermined. Miyetti Allah’s godfathers including Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the deposed Emir of Kano, directed Fulani settlers in Benue to disobey their host state. His people came under vicious attack by herdsmen resulting in periodic harvest of deaths. Villages were pillaged by those described as land grabbers by the governor with subsistence farmers driven from their land to IDP camps. The president’s defence minister even blamed the victims, asking that ‘what did people expect when grazing routes established by the colonial powers were taken over by states’?

In all these, Ortom has continued to vouch for the honour, integrity and sense of patriotism of the president. He insists the president was shielded from knowing the true tragedy that has occurred in Benue and elsewhere in the nation by those the president describes as “loyal gatekeepers’.

Sadly, the impression from security men deployed to protect the helpless farmers was that the herdsmen killers who often disappeared into the thin air after each deadly attack were ghosts. But that was before the recent confession by some Fulani leading lights in the country.

Sheikh Gumi after conferring with killer herdsmen and bandits inside Niger’s Tegina forest and Birnin Gwari forest in Kaduna State confirmed the bandits were invited by our own aggrieved vengeance-seeking Fulani compatriots.  Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi who declared: “I have attended one meeting where the bandits were there and I cannot imagine myself as a governor and chief security officer of a state sitting down and negotiating with them,” also confirmed “Nigeria was experiencing infiltration of criminals from neighbouring Benin Republic, adding: “The bandits are Fulani that has no one to control them, even their parents.”

With this new reality, Ortom, recently defending his person against another vicious attack by Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi insisted his only offence was trying to prevent  Benue State from being turned into a sanctuary for criminal  herdsmen. His state and his people according to him “are not against any tribe, especially the Fulani people, but rather against terrorists, killer herdsmen, bandits, kidnappers and all types of criminals within the state”.

Dismissing Bala Mohammed’s attack, he had declared “I am beginning to think that my brother, the governor of Bauchi State is part of the terrorist Fulani organisation that is terrorising this country”. This according to him was because the constitution which Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State swore to protect “does not leave room for allowing foreign herdsmen to come in without valid papers”. Yet Mohammed has not only defended the right of herdsmen to illegally carry AK-47 but has also defended illegal invasion of other federating states’ reserved forests.

But Ortom did not stop at that.  Following the pronouncements of Dr. Gumi and some Fulani leading lights after their encounter with bandits and criminal herdsmen in their hideouts in the forest, it became obvious bandits and killer herdsmen, contrary to tales by the police and military are not ghosts. The encounters also seem to have also   confirmed Ortom’s narrative that herdsmen siege on Benue land was not about cattle but about land grabbing by imported Fulani from outside Nigeria. Ortom for the above reasons decided to drag his political foes and those waging war against Benue to the court of public opinion.

At a recent interaction with journalists in Government House  Makurdi,  he called attention to various press conferences held by disparate Fulani groups to confirm that RUGA was a ruse by the president’s  ‘loyal gatekeepers ‘ to pave way for take-over of land by immigrant Fulani. He specifically called attention of Nigerians to the Kano Press conference of January 14, 2018 where some of the following declarations were made by some arrogant leaders of these disparate Fulani groups.

First, they described the call for restructuring by Nigerians as “irresponsible”. The president is opposed to restructuring and power devolution. Nigerians however understand his position was informed more by his military background than his ethnic affiliation. They also declared Nigeria as “God-ordained place for Fulani”; that the killing of 86 in Benue was well deserved because it was a revenge attack over the killings of Fulani in Nasarawa State; that because the federal government was incapable of protecting the interest of Fulani in Nigeria, Fulani in West Africa have been invited to raise funds and prepare for war.

Finally, they made it clear Fulani is prepared for war except the anti-grazing laws by various states are abrogated and replaced with federal government cattle colony policy with Fulani allowed to settle anywhere they desire in line with their culture. The statements were jointly Signed by Salisu Ahmadu, national president and Umar Shehu , national secretary.

We have no evidence that the two men have been questioned by the police despite the observable parallels between their declaration and foreign Fulani herdsmen’s invasion of states’ forests and mindless killing and kidnapping across the country. The Minister for Information and the president’s two spokesmen, paid by the taxpayers to protect him even against himself have not come out to distance him from such reckless statements by enemies of the nation who have no qualms exploiting the president’s mismanagement of our crisis of nation building to achieve ethnic agenda.

Ortom however did not end his interaction with journalists without “calling everyone’s attention to the general insecurity being propelled by herdsmen from the Northwest, Northeast, North-central, Southwest, Southeast and South-south”. He also did not forget to once again appeal to the president to act fast by arresting Miyetti Allah because according to him “These are people who have taken responsibility that they have killed, maimed, raped and committed all sorts of atrocities and yet their leadership is in Abuja and nobody is confronting them”.

Beyond public relations coup against his political foes and the president jointly accused of incompetence by foreign killers who play the victim and their real victims currently taking refuge in IDP camps, Ortom has in spite of the stress and strains he went through in the hands of those who want to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it, proved the president’s Fulani compatriots are the real enemies of our nation.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Except for the political elite driven by greed for power, most Nigerians believe we have been ordained by God or nature to live together.  Our multi-ethnic groups are inter-dependent. Besides the physical features such as the drainage system and vegetation zones, which cut Nigeria out as an economic unit, other social forces apart from British imperialism would have forced us to live together.

A few days back, I was exchanging banters with a colleague who has now retired into fish farming in his native Delta State.  He was complaining about the price of millet and sorghum which he said was hitting the roof because of the general insecurity occasioned by activities of herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers. He kept on wondering if those currently mishandling our crisis of nation building actually appreciate how interdependent we are as a people.

The truth is that even the aggrieved and much abused oil-rich Niger Delta that lost their illustrious sons including Isaac Boro and Ken Saro Wiwa to the struggle for the survival of Ogoni land and the Ijaw people in general, understand we cannot do without each other. That perhaps explains why in their struggle for truth, justice and fairness, they have never visited violence on other innocent Nigerians, the Fulani or any other ethnic group for that matter.

The myth of our ethnic division has only been strengthened by greed for power by our self-serving political elite who laid the foundation for politics of falsehood, injustice and opportunism.

When Ahmadu Bello and the northern leaders in 1953 insisted on 50% of the member of House of Representatives and non-negotiation of boundaries as precondition for remaining part of Nigeria, Awo, according to Trevor Clark, had said the north should have been allowed to secede so that they could experience the consequences of secession. Awo, although an unrepentant federalist, nonetheless suggested we retain a secession clause in our constitution. At the 1957 independence constitutional debate in London, Awo who the British press claimed was the only one who spoke as statesman, insisted that for Nigerians to be truly free, regions must be created for minority groups seeking self- actualization and the issue of boundary adjustment must be resolved. Unfortunately our political elite chose falsehood, injustice and opportunism.

Since we sowed the wind, it followed naturally that we would not escape reaping the whirlwind. The chicken finally came home to roost with the outcome of the December 1959 federal election. The 1952/53 British supervised census exercise had awarded 16.5m to the north, seven million to the Easts and six million to the West minus Lagos. But in the December 12, 1959 election, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) despite intimidation and blackmailing of voters, came a distant third with 1.9million votes to Action Group’s (AG)  two million and NCNC National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon’s (NCNC) 2.5million.

To sustain the 1952 fraud, many have alleged infiltration of Fulani herdsmen across our porous borders during census exercises and elections were often encouraged by the hegemonic power in the north.  But it boils down to the metaphor of those who foolishly sought power by riding on the back of a tiger. The fear of immigrant Fulani herdsmen has today become the beginning of wisdom for most northern state governors.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai who once attributed North’s invincibility during election to its numerical strength not too long ago admitted paying ransom to foreign Fulani herdsmen and bandits in an effort to stop mindless killing of the people of Southern Kaduna. He was to admit later to the futility of trying to negotiate with bandits or herdsmen who make N100,000 selling a cow but now make a million kidnapping one person for ransom.  His Katsina counterpart, Governor Bello Masari who had paid ransom to bandits a number of times in the past must have since also come to the same sad conclusion.

If the outcome of 1959 election results was not sufficient proof that the British supervised census return of 1952/3 for the north was dubious, the recent admission of a former stalwart of PDP and now a leading light of APC that Fulani were invited in during the 2019 election from other parts of West Africa only but confirmed what most people have always suspected-

Following last week’s abduction of about 42 persons, including students, staff and their families from the Government Science College Kagara in Niger State, Sheikh Gumi visited Tagina forest where he met with bandits’ group leader, Dogo Gide and his fighters.  He also visited Birnin Gwari forest in Kaduna State to confer with bandits and herdsmen.  He revealed the bandits were invited by aggrieved Nigerian Fulani seeking vengeance. It was not made clear whether it was vengeance against those who resisted the take-over of their farmlands as they did in Benue State or over their alleged arrest and prosecution by the military as also claimed by Sheikh Gumi. His recommendation after conferring with killer herdsmen that the military and the police told us were invincible was that government should give blanket amnesty to those bandits willing to make peace.

On his part, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi who argued against a blanket amnesty however agreed with Gumi when he declared that “Nigeria was experiencing infiltration of criminals from neighbouring Benin Republic, adding: “The bandits are Fulani that has no one to control them, even their parents”.

But this admission has not stopped Governor Bala Mohammed from playing a game of mischief as long as it guarantees his clinging to power as he has done since 1984, serving  at different times as Director of Nigerian Railway Corporation, Nigerian Meteorological Agency, Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals, senator, and as  Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Minister of Aviation and Minister of Power and Steel, with little or no impact on the people he claims to serve,

Attacking Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State over enforcement of his state’s 2006  Forestry Law forbidding farming, logging or pasturing of cattle in any part of Ondo reserve forest, he had said: ‘no one owns Nigeria forest’. Defending his support for  illegal occupation of southwest reserve forest by herdsmen who  move around with AK-47 assault guns,  his press secretary said: “To interpret such a temporary stay as a form of ‘land grab’ by the Fulani herdsmen is completely incorrect; adding, “in actual fact, neither does such temporary habitation of the forest inconvenience anyone …”

If Governor Mohammed is unaware of herdsmen’s siege on his neighbouring Benue State where sacking and confiscation of villages have forced displaced farmers to take refuge in IDP camps, oblivious of Gumi’s narrative of his encounter with killer herdsmen inside Birnin Gwari forest, reprisal killings in southern Kaduna and the tale of woes by victims of herdsmen and bandits assault elsewhere in the north, it is most unlikely he would have heard about the mindless killing, kidnapping and raping of women in the southwest farms, forest and roads in the last three years.

Unfortunately, it is this type of hypocrisy, mischief and disdain for truth, which Bala Mohammed, like his forbears, driven only by greed for power, exhibited last week  that continue to prolong the nightmare of ordinary Nigerian victims of our elite’s conspiracy.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Youths across the nation protesting against police brutality, extra-judicial killings and unfair profiling  embarked on a protest to demand the scrapping of the dreaded SARS outfit in October last year. They also wanted justice for victims of police brutality and a total reform of the Nigerian police force. The protest in Lagos was anchored by Yoruba and Igbo youths. Northern youths however organized a counter protest to denounce the EndSARS protesters in the south. This was followed by public expression of support by their northern governors who insisted SARS was needed because of criminal activities of bandits, kidnappers and cattle rustlers in majority of states in the north.

One of the first to take to the streets was the 22-year old Rinu Oduala, an activist. Armed with a letter for President Buhari, she and her group had set up a camp outside the Lagos governor’s office In Alausa, Ikeja on October 7, 2020.  Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu demonstrated his solidarity with the youths not just by calling for the disbandment of SARS but by promptly taking the youths’ letter to President Buhari in Abuja.

While this was going on, another group led by some musicians ignored Ikeja seat of government and Gani Fawemi garden in Ojota where many protests had taken place in the past opting for Lekki toll gate as the epicentre of the EndSARS protest. Although the protest was not against Lagos State, economic activities in the whole of the Lekki axis was paralysed for 12 days the siege on the toll gate lasted. Intervention by the military according to Amnesty International claimed 10 lives, a figure disputed by the military and the state governor who directed those who lost loved ones to present evidence before the judicial tribunal of inquiry set up to look into the youths protests.

However, following the judicial commissions of inquiry ‘s recommendation that the toll gate be reopened , some aggrieved youths who felt it was ill-timed issued statements threatening to take over the toll gate with the police also  declaring the place a no-go-area for protesters. Some 17 youths including Jay D Boy, a comedian, who dared the police were arrested on Saturday night. Calling attention of journalists to his predicament from inside the Black Maria, he had said he was there “for human rights”, adding “three of my friends were killed here last year. And we are not hearing anything about it.” Many will however argue the right place for such submission is at the on-going tribunal and not the toll gate.

Lekki, a high-brow area, is a pride of Lagos. The opening up of the area was said to have been initiated by Alhaji Lateef Jakande, governor of Lags State (1979-1983) who died few days ago. But like the Metroline project, derailed by the late President Shehu Shagari and buried by Buhari’s military regime, the project could not start because of funds until the administrations of Tinubu and Fashola. The toll gate, one will assume, was one way of recouping  the huge investments in forms of loans and taxpayers money that have turned Lekki into an exclusive preserve of the wealthy.

Events have since shown, the obsession with Lekki toll gate by some youths was all part of Lagos State PDP politics. In the heat of the protest, Chief Olabode George, former deputy national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had called for the dismantling of the Lekki and Ikoyi toll gates at a press conference attended by PDP party chieftains and members.

And finally his ill-will against Lagos and its current temporary power holders became obvious when he tried to justify the curious choice of Lekki toll gate by a section of the Lagos protesters. According to him “the choice of Lekki toll gate as the epicentre of these legitimate protests was very symbolic about the massive aberrations in the state”, adding for effect: “Lagos was gutted from within and outside”.

From the above, one can draw a parallel between a telephone conversation of two ill-informed young girls with Bola Tinubu the morning after the military assault on the protesters.  They accused Tinubu of inviting soldiers to shoot protesters at the toll gate because of the losses he was incurring as a result of the toll gate lockdown. The two girls were not convinced by Tinubu’s argument that he was not in government and could not have possibly influenced deployment of soldiers to the toll gate in which he had no personal stake. Curiously, the conversation was aired live by Channels.

Later that morning, those who tuned to Channels and Arise could observe well-dressed young men leading  mobs to torch business concerns  including TVC and Channels suspected to belong to APC stalwarts in Lagos State. The palace of Oba of Lagos was not spared. So were the Lekki toll gate and many Lagos State’s newly purchased buses. Assets replacement cost for the 12 days siege on Lekki toll gate and destruction of Lagos state assets was put at N1.1 trillion.

Surprised at the extent of damage to lives and properties in Lagos, chairman of the Southwest governors, Rotimi Akeredolu, said during their visit to Lagos State governor: “We will be right to say Lagos was turned into a war zone. We are deeply concerned with the ease with which public buildings, utilities, police stations and investments of our people have been burnt despite the proximity of security agencies to those areas”.

It must however be of interest to Nigerians that while TVC and The Nation owned by an APC stalwart were torched by arsonists, Lagos-based media concerns of PDP stalwarts such as Silverbird, AIT, Arise, Daily Independent and Daily SUN were all spared . And with TVC off the air and The Nation off newsstand, it was nothing but a sardonic humour that the narratives and views of the above papers on honour, integrity and patriotism became the dominant view.

And for the Yoruba youths that joined other groups to destroy Lagos, and their patron, Bode George, whose only known legacy in Yoruba land was selling of public enterprises he and his fellow Yoruba military administrators inherited to non-Yorubas, they must be reminded that Lagos is no more Nigeria’s federal capital city and for her pains in providing for the millions of immigrants, she does not enjoy special federal subvention.

They must also understand that those driven by forces of competitive federalism to take refuge in Lagos are fortune seekers. They have no stakes in Lagos. And if a proof is needed, it would be recalled the other day when the Oba of Lagos threatened to curse those who would work against the interest of Lagos after making their fortunes in Lagos, not a few groups protested openly.

Finally, the Yoruba youths must be reminded that the Yoruba nation has paid dearly for waging other peoples wars including supporting the self-actualization quest of some Nigeria middle belt groups who Ahmadu Bello insisted were his great grand-father’s slaves  and the marginalized Ijaw, Efik, Anang and Ibibio minority groups of the old Eastern Region. The elites of the former have since the collapse of the First Republic behaved like slaves until the current revolt by the likes of Theophilus Danjuma; rather than be identified with the Yoruba aspiration, they have always aligned with the Hausa/Fulani of the north.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

To be sure, the herdsmen had acquired a notoriety for mindless killings that earned them an unsavoury reputation as the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world long before Buhari became president.  But there is no doubt the irresolute deportment of President Buhari on whose desk the buck stops contributed to the arrogance and unconscionable language of Miyetti Allah and emboldened the criminal elements among the herdsmen to carry their deadly trade of kidnapping, banditry and killing of innocent farmers to the southwest region after sacking and confiscating farmlands of victims who were reduced to candidates for IDP camps in the middle belt region.

In a December 2018 report titled “Harvest of death, three years of bloody clashes between farmers and herders”, Amnesty International claims over 2000 Nigerians were killed in 2018 alone because “the authority’s lethargy has  allowed impunity to flourish and the killings to spread to many parts of the country inflicting greater sufferings on communities who already live in constant fear of the next attack”.

Not much has changed. Many Nigerians now believe government’s apparent indifference or inadequate response to the activities of unrepentant killer herdsmen poses greater threat to the survival of our nation as resorting to self-help tactics by aggrieved groups could lead to chaos, anarchy and civil war. Those who however swear by the president’s patriotism and integrity put the blame squarely in the court of the president’s ‘loyal gate-keepers’  who  appear to shield him from knowing the truth by trading in insults, ethnic stereotyping and sometimes outright lies.

With periodic harvests of death inflicted on Benue people by herdsmen expelled for not obeying the state rules, Governor Samuel Ortom last week took the battle to the president’s loyal gatekeepers. He urged them to tell the president that all is not well with Benue State and indeed the rest of the country where kidnapping, raping and killing have become the mainstay of many communities.

Wole Soyinka who, while not supporting self-help approach of some individuals believes the war  was brought to the door steps of the Yoruba people  who want to live in dignity and not as slaves in their own land, challenged the president to publicly denounce the herdsmen, Miyetti Allah and those fraudulently using his name as Saint Christopher’s barge for good luck while engaging in  banditry, kidnapping, murder and illegal occupation of other peoples land. So far, it has been a deafening silence from the president.

Mindless killings of farmers and some prominent indigenes of Igangan and the whole of the Oke Ogun area  by suspected Fulani herdsmen have been going on since 2015.  The killer herdsmen are believed to be shielded by Seriki Fulani, Alhaji Saliu Abdul Kadiri,  the godfather of  migrant herdsmen and who according to governor Makinde’s  special adviser on security, also doubles as chief ransom negotiator  in many kidnap cases. The indigenes insist that most of the kidnappers disappear into the Seriki’s sprawling enclave while the police treat him with kid gloves after each report.  Failure of government forced Sunday Adeyemo and his groups to react the only way they knew – self-help.

On their part, the people of Ondo State have had enough of criminal herdsmen who after each act of violence against the people disappear into Ondo forest reserve they illegally occupied. The state governor hearkening to the cries of his people, ordered the vacation of reserve forest and an end to open grazing in the state. He also took the first step in bringing sanity to his state by ordering those who want to live and do business of cattle grazing in his state to register.  I am sure governors of Kebbi and Jigawa and Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) who were with Akeredolu at the meeting anchored by Nigeria Governors’ Forum would readily admit that no Ondo indigene can convert any of the parks in their state to living quarters or other people’s land into rice-farm without permission or registration of their businesses with government.

Besides kidnapping and destruction of farm and farm products, for Ondo State, there is much more at stake.  For instance, while following the 2007 Nigerian Conservation Foundation  recommendation, the state stopped logging, hunting, farming and human settlement on the 829 km2  Oluwa Forest Reserve whose 40 per cent  natural forest harbours elephants and chimpanzees, rampaging herdsmen with respect for neither law nor authority had no regard for forest bio-diversity. Neither they nor their cows similarly recognized the Idanre Forest Reserve designated ‘nature reserve’ by International Union of Conservation of Nature and its elephants and chimpanzees habitats.

The  Osse River Park, formerly known as Ifon Forest Reserve established through a 1951 Gazette for the protection of Wild Game such as many wildlife species recognised by many international treaties and conventions including the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species was similarly not spared.

The way forward is for the governments of Southwest to clear its forest of all herdsmen including those that take delight in nocturnal grazing. They must be made to key into modern pastoral practices as obtains elsewhere in the world. Experience from the middle belt has shown that as long as there are vestiges of herdsmen left behind, unforgiving Fulani who lust over other people’s land will always invite diaspora Fulani to visit violence on those who refused to be driven from their land. Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna not too long ago confirmed those visiting violence on southern Kaduna farmers are trans-border Fulani immigrants. The besieged farmers of Igangan in Ibarapa part of Oyo also recently accused  the Seriki Fulani in the area  of inviting trans-border herdsmen through Benin Republic.

Southwest governors whose citizens like Epicureans consume 10,000 head of cows every day should pull resources together or take part of the federal government surplus RUGA fund to establish ranches that should  be run as a public enterprise just as Awolowo’s administration did in the first republic. Herdsmen who are ready to embrace modernity should be encouraged to buy into the business.

Those who however insist open grazing is part of Fulani culture including Miyyeti Allah and  Shehu Garba , the president spokesman who also doubles as  herdsmen’s spokesman  are at liberty to condemn children of the poor among them to nine months in the  Kebbi and Jigawa forests or  Zamfara and  Runka reserve forests established  in 1919 by the British colonial regime and later converted  into a grazing reserve to prevent seasonal migration of pastoral Fulani from north to south and vice versa.

A former PDP chairman now APC chieftain while celebrating his 70th birthday last week narrated how the north encourages influx of Fulani immigrants from the Sahel region into the country during elections. This perhaps explains why most of those who kill, kidnap and rape in the north and now in the southwest are hardly found to face justice after their heinous crimes.

Governor Akeredolu has started well. If we intend to seriously address the problem of insecurity, states must register her citizens and those they host. It is hoped those serving other tendencies in President Buhari’s government who after rejecting state and local policing  derailed Fashola’s first initiative will not sabotage Akeredolu’s current efforts but have it replicated in all the states.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Buhari had while on a visit to Katsina on January 20, accused Nigerian elites of harassing his person and administration without taking into consideration the serious crisis of nation-building he inherited in 2015 and his heroic efforts at addressing them these past five years. Before this, he had on December 12, 2020 during the graduation ceremony of 78 participants of the Senior Executive Course 42 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), blamed the elite for the nation’s intractable social-political problems.

Playing the victim, the president  wondered why the elite  would not acknowledge  his efforts at rehabilitating our collapsed infrastructures including roads, rail lines health facilities and  providing monies to the states to clear backlog of unpaid salaries by states piled up by his predecessors at a time the nation was selling a barrel of crude oil for over $100. If they were not impressed by that, how about his government plan to lift  100million out of poverty in 10 years which took off with N30,000 grants for taxi, bus, okada, Keke Napep, Uber, Bolt drivers, and cart pushers across the country?

I don’t think the president needs to lose sleep over elites’ opposition to his government. A journey through memory will clearly show the elites, because of their greed, intrigue and conspiracy against Nigeria, have always been the scourge of the nation. The bitterness that accompanied their struggle for elective position in the 1920s was what probably forced Oliver Stanley to conclude that “through the greater part of the colonial empire, it is the British presence alone that has prevented a disastrous disintegration and the British withdrawal today would mean for millions, a descent into turmoil of warring sects”.

Many of the nationalists were also believed to have been driven not by altruism but by personal ambition and were prepared to set Nigerian ethnic nationalities against each other in other in the pursuit of power. It was also perhaps for this reason Hugh Clifford, the then Nigerian Governor-general in an address to the Nigerian Council on December 1920 articulated a British policy designed to produce a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers’.

On his part, Chief Obafemi Awolowo observed as far back as 1945 that “given an option to choose between our educated elite, the traditional rulers and the colonial masters, Nigerians would choose in reverse order”.

The constitutional success the nation achieved between 1914 and 1958 was therefore in spite of the Nigerian educated elite for whom democracy was just a means to an end.  It was therefore not a surprise the new value system collapsed in less than five years of independence.

And little lesson was learnt as the elite regrouped in the fourth republic under what John Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria described as, a “cartel with no ideological or programmatic basis but as essentially a club of elite for sharing oil rents and political spoils” who in the name of election, between 1999 and 2015, reduced Nigerians to periodic participants in a selection ritual of those a British court also described as “thieves in state houses’.

It was the same elite who according to BPE’s one-time chairman, Nasir El Rufai, that presided over the sale of Unipetrol, AP/National oil, Ashaka Cement, WAPCO, CCNN, BCC, Calabar Cement, Capital Hotel, Abuja Sheraton, and FESTAC 77. Others include Ikoyi residential houses, Tafawa Balewa Square, Ikoyi Federal Secretariat, 1004 residential flats, Abuja legislators’ residential quarters, vice president’s guest houses, senate president’s residence, etc. to their cronies who had access to state resources at 0.5% of $100b government invested on these public enterprises between 1970 -1979.  Lawan, the committee chairman, speaking on the killing of Daily Times which he said was ‘one bad example of privatization” concluded that “In most cases, most of our enterprises were dashed out”.

Unfortunately, President  Buhari still does not realize that it was because of elite betrayal Nigerians saw  a messiah  in him; that the  northern poor (talakawas) massively voted  for him in spite of his de-marketing by the northern establishment  who said he was not ‘pure Fulani’ and the  southwest that led a crusade to remove him from office because of his human right abuses during his first coming as a military head of state  also supported him believing he was better placed to resolve our political problems.

The Southwest was not alone. Late Maitama Yusuf Sule, two-time minister and former Nigerian Permanent Representative to the United Nations also shared those sentiments. At the head of the northern leaders delegation to congratulate him on his victory in 2015, he had described him as “a great Nigerian nationalistic compatriot…It is the same Buhari that gave Nigeria a sense of direction when he was a military leader, this time around I’m sure Allah has brought him to correct the ills of the past, to reform”.

In power, President Buhari who listens only to himself also pretends he knows what Nigerians want without asking them. He is committed to rehabilitation of roads even when motorists for fear of kidnappers dare not drive through them.

What Nigerians, who understand very clearly that lack of elite consensus, corruption and infrastructural decays are but symptoms of a dysfunctional political system want is solution to their political problems made intractable by political, economic and military elite, the main beneficiaries of the nation’s nightmare. As Kwame Nkrumah put it “first seek the kingdom of politics, every other thing will follow.

Majority of federating nationalities want state and community policing to protect themselves from rampaging herders. The polluted oil producing Niger Delta that can no more support fishing or farming and whose resources are being used to build bridges over land in Abuja want justice.  Lagos with the same population as Kano and Jigawa that whimsically allocated over 80 LGAs as against her own 20 wants justice. The Kogi and Kwara Yoruba which constitute about four per cent of the northern population want to join their kith and kin in the southwest.

In an age of competitive federalism driven by market forces, while it is perfectly normal for Lagos, the fifth biggest economy in Africa to attract immigrant from even across West Africa, the state must be able to take control of those who live within her territory including thousands of non-Nigerian okada riders

Justice is the foundation of peace. Justice rather than guns, bombings and other forms of violence has better prospect of ending banditry, kidnapping and insurgency.

The late Nigeria elder statesman, Maitama Yusuf Sule believed resolution of our political crisis through institutionalization of justice is a task not beyond President Buhari.  “With justice”, he had told him, “you can rule Nigeria well, justice is the key. “If you are going to judge between two people, do justice irrespective of the tribe, religion or even political inclination. Justice must be done to whosoever deserves it.”

President Buhari still has two years to decide whether he wants to be remembered as a statesman or as an ethnic irredentist.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Nigeria is an endowed nation. Its citizens are very resourceful.  Unlike the atomized Western societies where long queues of hungry people waiting for food rations became a feature of many cities in the US during COVID-19 lockdown, we are our brothers’ keepers. The more affluent among us donate money and food items to their less privileged neighbours. Ordinary Nigerians are at peace with each other because there is no part of Nigeria where the rights of settlers are not protected.  Hausa fruit hawkers, Yoruba food vendors and spare-part sellers at Ladipo spare-parts market mingle freely and threw banters. Those of them engaged in tomato, pepper and yam trade at Mile 12 food market in Lagos are at peace with their Igbo and Yoruba middle men. I have witnessed in Kano market how Igbo trader enthusiastically took over the chores of Hausa traders during their five times daily prayers.

All Nigerians therefore ask of their government is an enabling environment to carry out their daily chores. Unfortunately all they got as feedback for this modest demand since the end of the first republic were impoverishment, deprivation and debasement of their humanity in the name of ill-conceived and often ill-implemented government policy thrusts.

First it was the civil war with harvest of three million deaths. The immediate cause was disagreement over policy thrusts (Ironsi’s unitarism, Ojukwu’s confederacy and Gowon’s federalism) by ill-equipped leaders who wanted to impose policies on a people whose consent they did not seek. Not long after, Murtala Muhammed and Obasanjo with little understanding of how society works waged their own war on our civil servants, Ivory Towers’ residents they envied and the press.  Then came Babangida with his ill-conceived Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which destroyed our budding industries. He along with Obasanjo who through the ill-implemented privatization policy, turned our nation to importers of labour of other societies while our trained university youths roam the streets for job with many others emigrating to the west in search greener pastures are responsible for today’s travails of our youths.

The on-going brutalization and dehumanization of millions of Nigerians as they struggle across the nation in a season of COVID-19 to beat the government deadline to obtain National Identification Number, NIN is one more example of how government wage wars against the people they govern.

The Nigeria national identity project was first conceived by Obasanjo in 1976.  However, it was Shehu Shagari’s administration that first awarded the contract in 1982 to the least qualified bidder- Avant Incorporated, a company which had earlier been disqualified by the technical committee of Ministry of Internal Affairs.  From then on, the project, according to Prime Times report “continued to be torpedoed by executive high handedness, mind boggling corruption, sheer irresponsibility of government officials and asinine abuse of power”.

Avant and its partner Afro-Continental could not deliver at the end of the agreed 18 months. When Buhari overthrew Shagari in 1983, he also overthrew the $100m ID card project.  Babangida resuscitated it and frittered away $70.7m. Then in 1998, the Abdulsalami Abubakar regime added another $38.4m to the drain.

In 2001, Obasanjo ignored an existing government contract with CHAMS which Chris Onyemenam, the Director General/CEO  of NIMC had sat on for over two years and re-awarded it to SAGEM, an action Justice Esho who awarded  damages of  $410.390.60. against government at an arbitration court described as “unprecedented irresponsibility’.  Beyond implicating the late Internal Affairs Minister, Sunday Afolabi, who later died in prison, his successor Mohammed Shata and Labour Minister Hussain Akwanga in a $2m bribe scandal, SAGEM did not deliver despite government cumulative expenditure of about N121billion.

By May 2020, six years after, Jonathan’s initiative had led to the registration of about 41.5 million Nigerians. It then dawned on Buhari government of change that the answer to insecurity challenges in the country was in linking of NIN numbers with telephone numbers of subscribers.

Then as if to punish Nigerians for government inefficiency, President Buhari directed over 100m Nigerians to obtain NIN within four months, threatening to direct private telephone service providers to deregister telephone subscribers who fail to meet the deadline.

Since the directive, it has been tale of woes across the country for Nigerians who have been spending hours at designated NIN centres without relief.  A neighbour of mine, a retired civil servant was asked to bring an identity card and had to go and spend N40,000 to renew her expired international passport. When she got back, her contact who turned out to be a security man at the centre told her the illegal charges had gone up from N5,000 to N7,000. Another one narrated how she paid N7,000 to get captured at about 8pm in a private school somewhere in Lagos. It is the same story all over the country.

While Nigerians are going through this nightmare, Obasanjo had his own NIN issued to him  on November 3, 2014 at his Hilltop Estate Abeokuta by no other person than  Director General/CEO  Chris Onyemenam and other NIMC management staff.

Unfortunately, we seem to be chasing shadows if the current attempt to link NIN to telephone numbers is designed to address our insecurity. Many have argued that some of the herdsmen, bandits cattle rustlers who are suspected to be non-Nigerians  buy SIM cards from neighbouring countries which they then roam to Nigeria. If that narrative is true, then the kidnapers, bandits and terrorists that have taken abode in the mangrove forest of the southwest will continue with their trade unaffected by this government new-found answer to insecurity.

We have also not been told how this desperate attempt to link NIN to telephone numbers will affect thousands of wild-looking dark-skinned boys who ride Okada all around Lagos, Ibadan and other parts of the southwest and those healthy looking middle-aged men that one sees as one drives out of Lagos towards Ogun State pretending to be beggars. In any case, if people can be captured in private locations in Lagos after payment of illegal fees, how do we guarantee the capturing machines are not taken across borderless areas of Nigeria to capture non-Nigerians?

Unfortunately the on-going visiting of hardship on helpless Nigerians is not the answer to our security challenges. It is only those who have stakes in their communities that can best secure their communities. The other day, Tunde Fashola as governor of Lagos State decided to register those who live in Lagos for better planning and separation of genuine Lagos residents from criminals who were pretending to be beggars. Abuja and the likes of ex-governor Peter Obi of Anambra rose against him claiming it was unconstitutional. Nigeria is perhaps the only federal state in the world where governors as chief security officers of their states have no control over those who reside in their states. How can Governor Akeredolu of Ondo State guarantee security in his state when the president’s spokesman from Abuja says the so-called herdsmen who took over ‘reserved forest’ in his state without permission are protected by the constitution?

Replacing this constitutional fraud written by 49 selected people and promulgated into law by 40 Supreme Military Council members without any input from Nigerians has a better prospect of addressing our security challenges than the on-going NIN exercise we have no guarantee will not end like the past efforts. It is also perhaps the only way to end state wars against ordinary Nigerians.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

The middle class in any society is regarded as ‘the salt of life’. Without it, society decays. Often made up of youths with university degrees, they constitute the bulk of bureaucrats, professionals including doctors, lawyers, journalists, university teachers, accountants, engineers etc. It carries the awesome responsibility of designing and constructing the roads we traverse, the dams that supply our drinking water, finding solution to physical and psychological ailments and determining the quality of the education our children receive. In return for their immeasurable services to humanity, all it ever asks for its highly trained members are freedom and security to plan their lives, own houses even if through mortgage, receive non-slave wages that guarantee a decent living and ability to send their children to good schools with some savings for their old age.

The ruling political elite in Western societies understands very clearly that once they are able to make their middle class, the providers of labour and the major consumer of goods and services, happy, they can rule as long as they want in the name of democracy, their new god, whether the Trump’s variant, Boris Johnson’s or  Vladimir Putin’s.  As President Obama who believes “America does best when the middle class does better” puts it: “When the middle class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services businesses are selling, it drags down the economy from top to the bottom”.  In fact many analysts believe it was his inability to fully meet the aspirations of America’s middle class that produced Trumpism. Jake Sullivan, the incoming American Security Adviser responding to a question  about Trump’s nationalism on a CNN programme last Sunday, admitted  that because they did not “ elevate and centre middle-class concerns in our foreign policy and national security meant that we were not delivering for the American people as well as we should have…”

And since the middle class is made up of universal citizens, it necessarily follows our ‘salt of life’ will gravitate towards where their services are needed  if their demands are ignored by our political leaders. At the height of the glory of our middle class, our naira was stronger than the dollar and almost at par with the pound sterling. Our bureaucrats including judges, doctors and university professors and our young men and women in the corporate world of Pfizer, Beecham competed favourably with their counterparts from the rest of the world while operating from home.

The rain however started beating us with the emergence of ill-equipped soldiers as leaders in the mid-sixties. Generals Gowon and Murtala Muhammed who did not understand that society decays without its intellectuals and bureaucrats started ordering university teachers out of their Ivory Towers and retiring senior civil servants, products of long years of training with ‘immediate effect”. Then Babangida and Obasanjo who craved for the approval of western leaders destroyed the budding industries that had sustained the middle class through ill-digested western-inspired policies including ‘commercialisation and privatisation” that turned our nation to importers of everything under the sun.

And just as it was during slavery when  leading Europeans including clergymen, driven by greed, claimed to be introducing Nigeria and the rest of Africa into the world economy by violently capturing and shipping millions of our able-bodied men and women that constituted  our own productive middle class to Europe in exchange for mirrors, spirits and horses, our today’s ill-equipped leaders watch as our middle class escape in droves to work as second class citizens in Europe and the Americans, consolidating in the process,  the capital immorally built-up through the sweat and blood of their forbears.

To sustain periodic migration of our youths and guarantee there is never a deficit of middle class- the wealth creators in the wake of reduced rate of procreation in their societies, Europe and America came up with different government policy thrusts including American Visa lotteries to secure permanent residency – green card and Europe welcoming with open hands, well-educated married professionals. But in both cases, the targets are not the new immigrants but their children who after assimilating the culture of their new environment, just as Barack Obama and Steve Job did, will have no incentive of returning to the countries of origin of their fathers.

To stem the exodus of our middle class, we must return to where the rain started to beat us. The starting point if we are to bring that era back is a productive base to sustain middle class. After all  up to 1981,  our  young professionals working in the pharmaceutical, textiles, tyre, battery, etc. industries even as they engaged in competition with their counterparts working in similar companies elsewhere in the world had no inclination of migrating to the metropolitan offices of such companies.

The south western region has had six ministers of agriculture. While the region doesn’t produce the tomato, pepper, beans, onion, rice and 10,000 head of cows they consume daily, most of the agriculture graduates from the region are working in Europe and America. The country plus Abuja has 37 ministers of agriculture, but instead of adding value to our farm products including cocoa to sustain our middle class, we continue to export it in a globalized world where what Ivory Coast, the world highest producer earns in a year is less than 10% of the profit of just one chocolate manufacturer in the US.

But more importantly, our political leaders including governors and ministers must stop playing the ostrich. Tony Enahoro as Western Region Minister of Information in 1959 spent only three months to build and get the first television station in Africa commissioned. Even while the buck stops at President Buhari’s table, it is today hard to imagine we have a Minister of Interior or Minister of Defence with daily harvest of deaths from herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers across the country. Ministers of education and labour kept our universities closed for nine months. In a digital age when one opens bank account and can transfer millions from one’s room, we have a minister of communication who, after failing to think out of the box and solve a problem in nine months, decided to prolong the nightmare of about 150million telephone users by decreeing two weeks ultimatum even in the midst of COVID-19 restrictions.

Few Nigerians today remember we had a Minister of Health when UCH was one of the best  three Teaching Hospitals in the Commonwealth of nations. I once visited  a colleague at UCH while Professor Adewole, a former Chief Medical Officer of the institution was a minister of health. I fled as soon as I opened the door of one of the toilets to ease myself.  But even with the sea of heads that greets one from any department one visits any day of the week in UCH, Adewole, confronted by a journalist over the exodus of over 9000 doctors to USA and UK was quoted as saying doctors are at liberty to emigrate because we have too many doctors in Nigeria.

Some of our uninformed ministers who today celebrate $24b diaspora funds while ignoring the repatriation of over $25b as profit back to the west by multinationals share the same mind-set with our forebears who traded our middle class for mirrors, spirits and horses during slavery, a synonym for globalization.

Unfortunately, some of our round pegs in square holes of ministers only provide additional incentive for our qualified professionals to flee the country.