The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • State impotence and crisis of legitimacy

    State impotence and crisis of legitimacy

    Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    AS if to demonstrate the limit of state power especially when a government is facing crisis of legitimacy, the abductors of 344 students of Government Science Secondary School (GSSS), Kankara, Katsina State chose the period of president Buhari’s visit to his Katsina state to perpetrate their crime. It is however a big relief that all the 344 students abducted on 11 December have now been released. And success has many fathers, it has been celebration ever since. The military through John Enenche, the Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, and Ahmed Jibrin, former Director, Military Intelligence took credit for the recue claiming they applied both  ‘kinetic and non-kinetic approaches were used to ensure all the boys were rescued unhurt”.

    Governors of Zamfara and Katsina states have also been celebrating. Masari told Radio Deutsche Welle, DW that MACABAN negotiated with the bandits to get the schoolboys released  while  Governor Matawalle of Zanfara told DAILY NIGERIAN, that he used repentant bandits and leadership of Miyetti Allah to identify those behind the abduction, and “When we established contact with them, I persuaded them to release them unharmed. And so they did. This is not the first time we facilitated the release of our people without payment of ransom. What we do is to extend olive branch to them because they also want to live in peace.”

    The high point of the celebration of the two governors and the military spokesmen was a joint photograph of a bandit holding an AK47 assault rifle, hemmed in between a senior military officer and Katsina Governor Masari . For those who may still be wondering if this was not one more evidence of absence of legitimacy, the attack , coming four days after, on  emir of Kaura Namoda, Alhaji Sanusi Muhammad Asha traveling back to Zamfara State from Abuja during which eight of his convoy members  including  the emir’s driver, two palace guards, three police escorts and one traditional title holder were killed  must have driven the truth home  while the celebrating governors, the military and the federal government continue to live in denial.

    And when does a government lose its legitimacy?  Aristotle in his ‘Politics’ believed it “depends on distributive justice-the proper allocation of rewards according to merit”. Distributive injustice, according to him only brings government instability.  Zanfara whose forest haboured the Katsina rescued 344 students was one of the old Hausa city-states like Kano, Katsina, Gobir, Kabi and Zazzau. It has been under the reign of minority with the indigenous majority Hausas treated as slaves since Uthman Dan fodio Jihad of 18004-1808 which changed the political landscape of the north. What began as localised disputes in Zanfara between migrating herders and maginalised farmers who have to pay tax to plough their land  was to degenerate into a major extreme violence, including abductions and mass killings,

    Unfortunately the natural instinct of those with power without legitimacy is to resort to force which only prolongs nightmare of people instead of resolving crisis of nation building. The first response to Killings in Zanfara in 2018 was the stationing of a full battalion of Special Forces in the State. It was followed by the launching of “Operation Maximum Safety” with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles”.

    There was also the “Joint Intervention Team of about 1000 police personnel comprised of seven mobile police force units headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police, counter terrorism unit (CTU), federal special anti-robbery squad (FSARS), anti-bomb (EOD) squad, and conventional policemen.

    The air force was not left out. Its Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, disclosed the air force was also launching its own Operation ‘Diran Mikiya’, with a coordinated air strikes and a force package of “three surveillance patrol helicopters and crew members to coordinate the operation to completely rout-out all armed bandits from Zamfara and other contiguous states”.

    The Emir of Bungudu, Alhaji Hassan Attahiru insisted killings by bandits were not abating despite the military operations against the criminals. It was perhaps for this reason that the then Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, met with the expanded executive council of the northern traditional rulers at the Arewa House in Kaduna State where he directed the traditional rulers to start “community policing in your various domains so that more information about criminal elements can be obtained in real time.”

    But the hegemonic power in the north has always opposed community policing for fear of empowering the serfs. If there was going to be any community policing, it must be that financed and controlled by the federal government.

    This is therefore the simple answer to Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) Secretary-General, Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu’s last week  lamentations:  “how can one explain the movement of the bandits in their hundreds on motor cycles without being detected? What happens to intelligence gathering that this heinous plan was not uncovered before it was hatched? How comes the bandits took their time, gather the school boys, heaped them on bikes and whisked them away without being rounded up by the security agencies”?

    Miyetti Allah, an interested party and the warring political leaders have the answers. Governor Masari of Katsina and his Zanfara counterpart who attributed the recue to the help of Miyetti Allah who negotiated with the bandits and secured their release as well as the other warring politicians have the answer. Accused by APC of sponsoring the abduction, Zanfara state governor said “I find it insulting that the APC is accusing me of sponsoring bandits in my own state. We all are living witnesses to the fact that during APC’s tenure, Zamfara State was adjudged as a colony of banditry in the whole world”, adding. “We are not claiming that insecurity has totally been eliminated in Zamfara but it is on record that terror attacks have reduced drastically in the state in less than two years than APC’s unfortunate eight years when people were running away from the state.”

    Of course “there are lapses in Nigeria’s security architecture that need to be urgently and seriously addressed”, as observed by Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu, Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) Secretary-General last week. But he is not the first Nigerian to make that observation.  Most Nigerian stakes holders have called attention to these lapses in the last five years of Buhari APC administration.  But those in power in the north and currently benefiting from such lapses are only interested in presiding over an empire of slaves.

    Zanfara state with a population of three million, has 23 hospitals with 23 doctors, 300 public primary schools manned by a single teacher each while many others in remote rural communities, are not that lucky as they have no teachers” according to Hon Murtala Adamu Jangebe, the state Universal Basic Education Board (ZSUBEB)’s Executive Chairman. Yet this is a state where lives of subsistence farmers who paid to till their own land is threatened and a state whose resources in form of gold deposit until recent government belated banning of illegal mining has only led to harvest of death of over 5000 people in Maru Local Government in 2016 in Zamfara bloody gold miners’ war of ex-generals and politicians.

    Unfortunately, winning election with 15m popular votes or deployment of awesome power of the state as we have now seen cannot resolve crisis of legitimacy. The only antidote is justice-the principle that people receive that which they deserve.

     

     

     

  • Press, greatest threat to democracy

    Press, greatest threat to democracy

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    I sympathise with embattled President Buhari who in spite of a life of selfless service to the nation as a civil war hero, governor, minister and former military head of state and his current heroic efforts at preserving the nation’s unity, is on account of the forces and tendencies many believed have caged him now, seen not just as a threat to the survival of the nation but that of its nascent democracy.

    Absence of governance, which is a threat to democracy is evident everywhere.  First, the war against corruption, the main thrust of APC manifesto is dead as a result of Malami, the attorney general’s wars against EFCC leadership over how seized properties are shared and EFCC’s leakage of Malami’s attempt to smuggle fugitive Maina now in court over alleged N2bilion pension fraud into the bureaucracy through the back door. The president kept his peace pretending not to know he was shooting himself in the leg.

    Nigeria with 370,000 police officers and a police-to-citizen ratio of 1 to 400 had the president’s nod to recruit 10,000 fresh officers into the police force. The exercise has remained stalled for about two years because of ego contest between political appointees, the Inspector General of Police, IGP and chairman of Police Service Commission who have now dragged themselves to the Supreme Court. While the macabre dance was going on with neither the president nor the party able to call the jesters to order, a lonely police officer guarding a secondary school boys’ hostel with about 900 students in Katsina was shot by bandits who ferried away about 333 students according to the state governor.

    A few months back, the president in response to massive unemployment of youths approved recruitment of 774,000 young Nigerians. That again remains stalled because of the on-going war between APC-dominated senate and the APC minister of labour.

    And if further evidence of absence of governance, which poses a great threat to democracy is needed, the fact that the ministers of education and labour that have been unable to prevent ASUU even if it involves using the big stick, from keeping our youths out of their universities for eight months, are still on their seats, is all that is needed.

    Like the executive, the judiciary, the legislature and the civil society groups that have become tools in the hands of politicians pose no less threat to our democracy. But none of the above institutions of democracy poses as much danger to the health of our budding democracy as the press.  Democracy can hardly survive without a vigilant press. It is however a paradox that Nigerian press which was the weapon freely deployed by our founding fathers and nationalists against the imperial powers in the struggle for independence and  in recent years by NADECO, Nigerian civil society groups to end military dictatorship and herald in the current democratic dispensation in 1999 has today become the greatest threat  to democracy.

    The travails of the press started at the birth of the fourth republic when a section of it was hijacked by non-journalists who saw it as an instrument for amassing wealth and influence among the new emergent inheritors of power who in 1999 spoke of recouping their expenses having sold personal properties to fight the election.

    They started with promotion of governors that the press as the fourth estate of the realm was expected to keep on their toes. They creatively came up with what was known as ‘Governor of the year’ award, moving from states to states, hawking awards. It did not matter that by 2007, about 17 of the ruling party’s governors many of them recipient s of the dubious media awards were in court facing EFCC charges for stealing their states blind.

    They then moved to the banking sector where some favoured banks, probably the highest bidders were getting the ‘Banker of the year’ award year after year. Again as it turned out during the era of Sanusi Lamido Sanusis as CBN governor, some of winners of the ‘awards were fraudsters who  engaged in insider-trading in addition to diverting depositors monies to buy choice properties in Dubai and elsewhere in the world and private jets in the names of their children.

    With another source of cheap money closed, the new media moguls embarked on what was a desecration of sacred newspapers’ news pages. First it was pages two and three which traditionally attract only a strip advertisement of about 12 inches. The targets once again are the politicians who have free monies to spend. One is slammed on the face in the morning with full page adverts on the otherwise news pages 2, 3 4 and five of newspapers. Other media houses soon joined.

    Then the battle shifted to the front and back pages with what is often described as wrap-around which initially attracted about N5m. With other newspaper joining the rush for a bit of the action, it todays attracts between N10m and N22m. Mast heads are freely traded for cash. Again the targets are the politicians especially governors who intend to make dubious claims of achievement or respond to attacks by political opponents.

    The TV stations have joined the bandwagon with their 30 or 45 minutes slots at princely cost of about N10m per segment. While the airing is in progress, news stories or breaking news are set aside. Again the targets are the politicians especially governors who often take slots for a quarter, six months or a year.  Those who have had the patience to watch various advertorials from states like Ekiti under Fayose, Imo under Okorocha and Delta under Ifeanyi Okowa must have come to the conclusion that there would be nothing left for future governors of those states to do in areas of roads infrastructure.

    Finally most of the new TV stations anchored not by trained journalists but by neophytes or those who just want to advertise their superior intellect do not see their platforms as institutions of democracy. During the EndSARS crisis, I stumbled on a programme anchored by two women shouting hysterically about “Massacre at Lekki Toll Gate” and using incendiary language bordering on incitement. There was another platform where the anchors of a programme had invited the political opponent of the Oba of Lagos whose palace was looted and burnt by hoodlums. From the manner of leading questions the guest was asked, it was obvious the programme was sponsored by the Oba’s opponents who wanted to drive it home the Oba deserved what he got.

    Of course we also know as Professor John Swinton of both The Sun and later the prestigious New York Times once said “there no such thing, at this date  of the world history, in America as an independent  press.  That the media is an instrument for waging battle of consciousness is evidenced by the on-going ideological war between CNN and Fox news.

    Similarly, the state is not a ‘night watchman state’, an impartial arbiter” that acts or should act on behalf of all. Quite often the state is acting on behalf of some interests or tendencies and depend on the media to implement its agenda.

    But whether the media is serving owners of society or temporary power-holders, there are rules and ethics to follow as an institution of democracy. Unfortunately, Nigeria press today seems to operate in a jungle.

     

  • APC as threat to Nigeria’s democracy

    APC as threat to Nigeria’s democracy

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

    PDP, a party described by John Campbell, former US envoy as ‘a political party that came together … as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’, did not pretend in 2013 that it had any dream beyond uninterrupted ruling for 60 years. Audu Ogbeh, one-time PDP chairman was to later validate Campbell’s thesis by submitting: “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil”. There was also a suppressed Heineken Lokpobiri Senate Transport Committee probe report which alleged that from 1999 to 2009, government was surcharged to the tune of N49m on each kilometre of some 4,752 kilometres of road purportedly constructed. Ahmadu Alli as chairman of PDP as well as that of Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, according to a House probe, presided over the theft of about N2 trillion by some of the over 140 independent oil marketers they appointed. We can add the allegation by former World Bank vice president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili, who was education minister in the Obasanjo administration, that the PDP administration of Jonathan squandered $67billion reserves left by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

    For many miracle-seeking Nigerians therefore, the inauguration of APC on February 6, 2013 was something of a relief. Its eight-point cardinal programme covered electricity generation, war against corruption, food security, integrated transport network; free education; devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care. Although, the eight-point programme were routine responsibilities of government that did not require the intervention of angels or men with special talents, PDP’s baleful legacy forced Nigerian miracle-seekers to see APC and Buhari as the messiahs Nigerian were waiting for. And they went on to invest heavily on APC by giving it a clear mandate with a popular vote of 15.4m to the ruling party’s 12.8million, a clear majority of 65 to 43  in the senate, 190 to 151 in the Lower house and 21 of the 36 state governors.

    Six years down the line, betrayed Nigerians seem to have come to the sad conclusion that the difference between PDP and APC, neither of which has any philosophical foundation nor ideological orientation, is that of six and half and a dozen. Indeed Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC boss, and a politician who at different times sojourned in both parries was to tell Nigerians he brutal truth about the futility of trying to look for saints among current Nigerian politicians.

    Six years of APC government of change, very little has changed. Our lawmakers remain the highest paid lawmakers in the world. Just as it was during PDP years of the locust, ministers, heads of parastatals including Customs, Immigration, Army, Police, EFCC, vice chancellors of universities cruise around in in imported bullet-proof land cruisers at taxpayers’ expense. Six years into APC administration, none of our four refineries is working as we, without shame, continue to import fuel for domestic consumption.

    Most part of the nation is still in darkness. PDP after 14 years in government generated 3324 MW by 2015.  APC’s minister of science and technology, Ogbonaya Onu’s said APC generated additional 1,950 MW in six years. Add that to the 3,324 MW PDP generated in 14 years, what we get is 5,274MW out of which only 3400 MW can be distributed. Like Obasanjo and Jonathan did before him, Buhari’s APC has just signed an agreement with Siemens to implement the Nigerian Electricity Roadmap.

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

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

    Death of a Nigerian doesn’t seem to have meanings to APC and its government. In other societies, the 43 rice farmers cruelly hacked to death by Boko Haram in their farms last week would have led to a declaration of a week of national mourning. Instead of threatening the president who has arrogantly ignored suggestion by Nigerian stakeholders including representatives of our ethnic nationalities, the Sultan of Sokoto who was reported to have lamented the mindless killing of 80 people in his domain, the northern elders forum that has asked the president to resign and the legislature that has passed different resolutions advising the president to sack the tired service chefs, the APC controlled legislature was inviting President Buhari for a talk.

    APC with restructuring in its manifesto forgot what restructuring or power devolution meant and had to set up the El-Rufai committee on restructuring. Governor Fayemi, now says it will be unfair of Nigerians to blame All Progressives Congress (APC) or Presidency for not implementing restructuring agenda as promised in its manifesto. He wants Nigerians to direct their anger at the National Assembly controlled by his party for not implementing the El Rufai report.

    APC remains not just the scourge of the nation but a threat to democracy because of its criminal conspiracy of silence in the face of incompetence of the executive.  With PDP, there might have been no honour among thieves but their vicious struggle over sharing of our national patrimony pitched Obasanjo against his PDP thieving sons and Saraki the ‘whistleblower’, against in his colleagues involved in the theft of N1.7trillion in the fuel subsidy scam. And when his PDP family members made PDP too hot for him, he teamed up with APC to defeat his estranged party.

    As it has turned out, PDP’s family war over sharing of our commonwealth is healthier for democracy than APC’s criminal conspiracy of silence over absence of governance and creeping dictatorship.

  • President Buhari as the curse of APC

    President Buhari as the curse of APC

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    President Buhari has faith neither in politicians nor in political parties.  For the former, he has nothing but disdain and the latter for him is nothing more than a vehicle to take control of government. That perhaps explains why after his 2015 electoral victory, his first victims were those tested politicians on whose back he rode to power after three failed attempts and APC, the platform that aided his ascension to power which he later abandoned to political dealers and wheelers while he was in self-isolation for six months.

    He personalized victory that rightly belongs to APC while refusing to constitute a cabinet or the boards of the over 50 smaller governments APC urgently needed to implement its manifesto, the basis on which the electorate voted it into power. He, in the process, ignored the most important duty of an elected representative of a political party- the pursuit of the special interest of party members and party supporters.

    President Buhari unfortunately believed APC victory for which he is only a custodian was his victory; believing the fallacies and crooked logic by the likes of  Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Dele Momodu to the effect that he won the election on his own merit on account of his integrity, an integrity that did not help him in his three earlier disastrous outings. Sycophants downplayed the role of the APC platform and the contributions of those who criss-crossed the land to sell the candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari who on account of his human right abuses during his first coming in 1984, many believed was incapable of purging himself of his dictatorial tendencies.

    President Buhari did not only deny APC participation in APC government at all levels but has continued to undermine the APC platform that aided him to power in 2015.  First he ignored the warnings of Pa Bisi Akande, APC first interim chairman and that of Aisha Buhari, his wife that his trusted loyal gatekeepers who did not contribute to his victory and who as outsiders could not properly articulate the manifesto of APC were merely exploiting the president’s well known weakness of trusting only old allies.  Then out of share incompetence, he had allowed the government he was holding in trust for the APC to be he hijacked by Senate President Bukola Saraki and his 84 like-minded senators led by Dino Melaye. Between 2015 and 2019, the government was in disarray while the party displayed only instincts of factions with divergent tendencies, only interested in power as distinct from true political parties, the 17th century ingenious creation of intellectual elite to espouse vision and mobilize people for development.

    It wasn’t until the eve of the 2019 presidential election that President Buhari remembered Bola Tinubu, the rejected cornerstone. He was saddled with reconciling warring APC members and their governors who, like the president, had institutionalised impunity in the management of state chapters of the APC. Tinubu and Adams Oshiomhole, a firm believer in party supremacy then set to work in earnest.

    Bukola Saraki who until then had all his past wars fought for him had never experienced failure. But that was until he met Oshiomhole, his nemesis who declared “We went to Kwara, we did ‘otoge’ (Enough is enough). As a senate president, we uprooted him as a senator, we uprooted his nominee for governor and senators, while we were saying that we will impeach them, their people said they would rather bury them”.

    In Ogun State, Amosun was the lord of the manor. He disallowed candidate Dapo Abiodun from campaigning in Abeokuta where his supporters also disrupted President Buhari’s campaign rally. He, according to Oshiomhole prevented his preferred aspirant from “participating in the primaries organised by the working committee; picked himself as a senate candidate to replace the incumbent, picked the governorship candidate and his deputy, the next speaker and deputy speaker, and declared that of the eight House of Representatives members, seven will not return. He then arrogantly declared “I, Senator Ibikunle Amosun will not work for any other candidate that they are rooting for to become governor. No way. They are free to do whatever they want to do, but I will not support them”. He also supported 26 aggrieved aspirants vying for Ogun State House of Assembly seats that had defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Allied Peoples Movement (APM). Then Oshiomhole taught him a lesson in humility.

    Then, Adams crossed over to Imo State where he ended Governor Okorocha’s dream of establishing a dynasty in Imo Government House.  “What is painful”, Okorocha later lamented, “is that Adam Oshiomhole that I literarily put into this position…has become part and parcel of this high level of conspiracy to bring down Rochas politically”.

    In Zamfara, Governor Abdul’aziz Yari wanted to impose a successor.  Oshiomhole insisted he must follow APC rules. Eventually, the Supreme court ruled that the party did not conduct valid primaries in the build-up to the elections. It also decided that a party that had no valid candidate cannot be said to have emerged winner of the general elections. The Independent National Electoral Commission confirmed Bello Matawalle of the People’s Democratic Party, as the governor-elect of the northwest state. It also confirmed other PDP candidates for the National and State Assembly seats

    In Rivers, while Minister Rotimi Amaechi backed Tonye Cole to clinch the party’s governorship ticket in the 2019 governorship election, Magnus Abe claimed that he was the party’s authentic governorship candidate, having scored the highest votes in a primary conducted by his faction. The two political gladiators went into a protracted legal battle that denied the party the opportunity to field candidates in governorship, national and state assembly elections. Amaechi had an axe to grind with Oshiomhole for not supporting impunity.

    Because the party was behaving like factions, its National Working Committee (NWC) warned members who had taken the party to court to withdraw the suits or face sanction, citing Article 20, Subsection 10 of its constitution. But in flagrant subversion of the party constitution, President Buhari directed aggrieved party members to disregard the party’s threat and pursue their grievances in court.

    For ‘doing the right thing, in the words of  Chris Ogiemwonyi, former Minister of Works, Oshiomhole came under attack of aggrieved APC governors, merchants of impunity and others who according to Bola Tinubu, the national leader of APC, “perceive the chairman as an obstacle to their 2023 ambitions”.  The only plausible reason one can advance for President Buhari’s decision to join hands with aggrieved APC governors who unconstitutionally humiliated him out of office is to say President Buhari loves none but self.

    With Mai Mala Buni-led National Caretaker Committee of APC which ousted  Oshiomhole from office pursuing its own agenda while selling a dummy to the eastern politicians, with the party behaving like factions in many states including Imo where Dan Nwafor-led state executive is facing crisis of legitimacy, Ekiti, Rivers, Zamfara, Ondo where internal wrangling are tearing the party apart and  Ogun State where the caretaker committee of the party loyal to Governor Dapo Abiodun and former governor of the state, Chief Olusegun Osoba, last Monday allegedly broke into the state secretariat and took over the office, the party is set for implosion while the president pretends all is well.

    Those APC leaders queried or suspended for their anti-party activities by Adams Oshiomhole committed no greater crime than President Buhari who during the 2019 electioneering campaign told voters in Zamfara, Imo and Ogun states to vote him as president but feel free to vote for any candidate of their choice for other political offices.

  • In defence of Lai Mohammed

    In defence of Lai Mohammed

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    I sympathise with Lai Mohammed, our very resourceful Minister of Information but a victim of President Buhari’s self-inflicted crisis of legitimacy. Transiting from a creative party spokesman that battled PDP in a fiercely fought 2015 election, to a government information minister, it was obvious he would be haunted by his past. And serving an elected president with a mindset of an emir exercising authority based on tradition was to be an information minister’s nightmare. Of course, it did not take long before defeated and injured PDP and its powerful media re-christened Lai Mohammed  “Lying Mohammed”.

    Unfortunately precisely because President Buhari and his loyal gatekeepers did not understand that communication, which Karl Deutch (1963) describes as ‘nerves of government’ and a guide to statecraft for the modern prince,  has implications  for perception and interpretation of government messages, he reappointed  Lai Mohammed as minister of information.

    With a ministry of information no one believes even when it says the truth and a president that has nothing but disdain for public opinion and who often behaves as if he is answerable to none, the governed loses faith in the government and the result is crisis of legitimacy. The EndSARS crisis and its fallout brought it out very clearly that President Buhari’s government faces serious crisis of legitimacy in the. southern part of the country.

    Evidence: Six soldiers and 37 policemen killed, 196 policemen injured 164 police vehicles destroyed and 134 police stations razed”. Then there were about 57 other civilians killed, 269 private/corporate facilities burnt or looted, 243 government facilities burnt or vandalised and 81 government warehouses looted” and the 1,957 prison inmates set free in six states of Lagos, Edo, Abia, Delta and Edo and Ebonyi.

    Few people in the south and even in the north where we have free reign of terror with senior police officers kidnapped for ransom have faith in government. Even when there was no evidence of massacre, those obsessed ‘with massacre without blood or bodies’ just didn’t want to believe. Lai Mohammed had challenged promoters of ENDSARS campaign that accused soldiers of mass killing of innocent peaceful and unarmed protesters to produce evidence of mass murder. No one turned up.

    We have a superior social organisation in Africa where according to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and President Trump’s opponent in the 2016 American election, “it takes a village to raise a child”, than an atomised western society. It is therefore unimaginable that someone would lose his child and would not cry out after two weeks. Yet no one believes the military’s claim that “soldiers were present but fired their weapons in the air and used blanks, not live rounds” at Lekki Toll Gate.

    Lai Mohammed, echoing military’s claim that they did not shoot at protesters, appealed to anyone with information about anyone killed at Lekki Toll gate should head to the judicial panel “with available evidence as against CNN’s “first world case of massacre without blood or bodies”.

    But Nigerians without faith in their government insinuated soldiers carried corpses of their victims away in trucks without proof. And CNN said because the military admitted it had live bullets and blank bullets, they must have killed some people. It claims its “investigation included evidence that bullet casings from the scene matched those used by the Nigerian Army when shooting live rounds. Their crooked logic is that some people must have been killed.

    But, not too long ago, the same award-winning CNN reporter that wrote Lekki report without visiting Nigeria, writing on the ongoing war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, referred to Hodeida front lines, where shells of millions of dollars’ worth of abandoned American armoured vehicles litter the road as a “graveyard of American military hardware”. American senate member of defence committee admitted neither the government nor the American army knew anything about how the arms got to “militias which is expressly forbidden by the arms sales agreement with the U.S.”

    But CNN which did not call for sanction against American government is now blackmailing Nigeria claiming “A US State Department spokesperson told CNN on Saturday, that they were “closely following the Government of Nigeria’s response” to the events at Lekki Toll Gate adding, “We urge that the investigation be thorough, impartial, and appropriately transparent and that perpetrators be held accountable.”

    But the same CNN that now claims to infallibility only on October 23, was said to have tweeted from its verified Twitter handle that “the military killed 38 people when it opened fire on peaceful protesters on Tuesday October 20”. And that was not the first-time activities of CNN would come under scrutiny. It was once accused of paying for and staging a report that showed 24 Filipino hostages being held by masked gunmen in the remote mangrove swamps of southern Nigeria.

    One-time Minister of Information Frank Nweke Jr had back then said “We have evidence that some of these people were actually paid to put up a show,” a charge Jeff Koinange, CNN’s Africa correspondent who wrote the story also then denied. But we must remind ourselves that while Nigerians believe CNN cannot err, over 72 million American Trump voters consider everything from CNN as ‘fake news’.

    We have our own problems. But we are not a Banana republic but a sovereign and independent nation, governed by established institutions. Only last Monday, embattled EndSARS activist Olowoyo Moyinoluwa Victor, accused along others still at large, of setting ablaze the building of the Nigeria Police station, in Ikere Ekiti on October 20, was granted bail by Magistrate Abdul Lawal on liberal terms. It is perhaps only those who made fortunes from EndSARS crusade through sponsors identified through their bank that are sneaking out of the country to seek asylum claiming they will not get justice in Nigeria.

    Today, except for the Coalition of Civil Society for Human Rights and Good Governance Africa, that condemned (CNN)’s report alleging massacre of #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos, on October 20, Lai Mohammed is the last man standing defending our sovereignty and appealing to the sense of patriotism of our youths seeking foreign help to distabilise our nation. Buhari’s other ministers and self-serving governors that presided over hoarding of COVID-19 palliative are talking from both sides of the mouth.

    I think what the minister is telling those who are currently sitting on the fence or inviting outsiders is that Nigeria has always confronted its own demons. We fought our civil war alone. If America and Britain that initially sat on the fence eventually joined, it was for the fear of Russia. Nigeria’s civil society groups and the press forced Babangida, the evil genius to step aside. We ended Sonekan’s illegal Interim contraption. When Abacha held the nation hostage along with the winner of a free and fair election for five years, America did nothing. NADECO fought him paying heavy price.

    America only helped itself by ensuring that following  Abacha’s inexplicable sudden death at the presidential villa, they ensured MKO Abiola who was in high spirits when he was brought out of detention, drank tea before he collapsed and died with the US Undersecretary of State and UN Secretary General as witnesses.

    If Buhari is holding us hostage today with his much talked about provincialism, mismanagement of our crisis of nationbuilding and his incompetence, a people deserve the leadership they get. We must as usual be the architect of our own fortune since 2023 is just around the corner.

    America with its threat and Britain with its last Monday parliament resolution are driven only by their nations’ interest. Foreigners and foreign powers cannot love us more than ourselves.

     

  • Diminishing leadership

    Diminishing leadership

     Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    As I struggled through the Ibafo/Mowe perennial traffic gridlock along with other frustrated motorists last Monday evening, what struck me was the glaring evidence of absence of governance and lack of ambition of our southwest political leaders to work for public good just like their illustrious first republic politicians and trail-blazers. The solution to the traffic problem in that portion of the road is simple for those who understand government is service. This portion of the road was reduced to one-lane because of the over 20 years ongoing reconstruction of the 120 kilometre Lagos- Ibadan Express road, a brain child of Gowon regime that took only three years to construct in the late seventies.

    Then Ogun State in its wisdom then decided to create or tolerate the existence of markets and bus stops at the foot of the pedestrian bridges at Ibafo and Mowe. The governor and the local council chairman ought to have realized that was a license for commercial bus drivers to park indiscriminately, a development that most often resulted in three or more kilometres long traffic gridlock. And in the absence of traffic wardens, trailers, fuel tankers laden with inflammable petroleum products, passenger buses and cars dangerously compete for the right of passage. It is however possible that the governor, Dapo Abiodun has not experienced the nightmare that portion of the road has become for motorists since many of the southwest governors are said to move around by leased helicopters. But that cannot be the case with his state government officials and local council representatives who cannot escape passing through the route even if with their police escorts.

    It is an irony this is happening in Ogun State known for public spirited individuals in and out of office. We remember with nostalgia the selfless services of public-spirited giants such as the Simeon Adebos, Ransome Kutis, Tai Solarins, Ayo Adebanjos, Bisi Onabanjos, Osobas among many others. We also remember

    Chief Obafemi Awolowo, president of Action Group, a political party adjudged the ‘best financed, and most efficiently run political party in Nigeria” which faithfully implemented its party’s manifesto of “Freedom for all and life more abundant through Freedom from British Rule, Freedom from Ignorance, Freedom from Diseases, Freedom from Want”.  Richard Sklar (1963: 422) The legacies of these public spirited leaders remain not just unmatched, what we have tragically witnessed in Ogun State and by extension the whole of southwest since the beginning of the fourth republic  in 1999 is diminishing leadership.

    In this regard, Ogun State in recent years has produced a governor Gbenga Daniel whose major legacy was locking up his state House of Assembly after chasing elected lawmakers out of town with thugs. He was also on record as ferrying desperate ex-President Jonathan seeking re-election to Isheri North area of the state where he was misled to commission an empty swamp as completed project.

    Gbenga Daniel has his parallel in Ekiti.  Governor Fayose did not just chase state lawmakers out of town, he stationed thugs at the state borders to prevent them from returning to the state to campaign for re-election. Like Daniel, Fayose was also on record as dragging ex-President Obasanjo to Ekiti to commission a non-existent N14b poultry farm forcing Obasanjo, a successful chicken farmer in his own right, to wonder why Fayose’s poultry farm was without characteristic fowl-smell.

    We have no evidence other southwest governors of the fourth republic showed any inclination towards leaving enduring legacies like the 1952 -62 team did in the departments of education, health, establishment of residential and industrial estates, the Oodua conglomerate, agriculture and general infrastructural development. Most of the once flourishing companies the new inheritors of power inherited collapsed under their watch.  Like Glo and MTN, Oodua governors secured telecommunication license, but it was bungled because of their self-interest as against public interest.  The 1952-66 team had cattle ranches in four different parts of the old Western Region. Today, the new inheritors of power in the southwest have no plan on how to meet the demand of their people who like the Epicureans consume 10,000 heads of cows daily.

    The southwest is also today characterized with infrastructural decay with Ondo and Ekiti, like Osun and Oyo, Oyo-Ogun and Ogun and Lagos, unable to maintain their interstate roads.  With the exception of the brief period of Tinubu and Fashola, Lagos is not different from other southwest states in terms of infrastructural decay. Mile2- FESTAC LASU roads remain a nightmare to motorists and residents. Akinwunmi Ambode derailed Fashola’s National Theatre-Okokomaiko light-rail project. It has taken both Ambode and Sanwo-Olu more than two years to complete a one kilometre rehabilitation of Ojota-Odo Iya Alaro portion of Ikorodu road.  Access and inner roads in most other Lagos communities including Oworonshoki, Bariga- Ilaje-Akoka St Finbar’s University of Lagos road collapsed over two years ago.

    However, it must be acknowledged that diminished leadership and disappearance of public-spirited leaders is not the exclusive preserve of the south-west region.  The north has since 1999 continued to also experience diminished leadership. The legacy of Ahmadu Bello, the Sadauna of Sokoto  for whom “independence was but the fulfillment of Britain’s frequent promises to restore the Hausa-Fulani Islamic ruling class to power”, who therefore dedicated himself to building a nation as a compliment to the building of the Fulani empire by his great-great-grandfather remains unmatched.

    Reminding current northern leaders of Ahmadu Bello and his 1952-66 team’s selfless service to the people of the north, Nuhu Ribadu, the former EFCC helmsman not too long ago said: “It is important to state that with scanty resource, they were able to maintain law and order and ensure effective security of life and property for this vast region. They built Ahmadu Bello University, the largest in sub-Sahara Africa; they built Ahmadu Bello Stadium, one of the largest and best in Africa at that time. They built NNDC, the largest black owned conglomerate in black Africa; they built many textile factories, good roads, marketing boards, efficient water supply where it was available and good sanitation, well planned urban areas with trees and good hospitals with ambulances; good primary and secondary schools; Kaduna Polytechnic that is the largest in black Africa.

    This same “Northern Nigeria which Sir Ahmadu Bello led at independence which is now 19 states and over 400 local government areas,” according to him, “got a total of N8.3 trillion from the federation account between 1999 and 2010, with little to show for it.”

    With over 50% of children of school age out of school in most of the northern states, mass unemployment, widespread poverty, kidnapping, banditry, cattle rustling and general insecurity, there is no doubt the current unambitious northern politicians like their southwest counterparts have betrayed the people on whose back they rode to power.

  • Trump and systemic racism in America

    Trump and systemic racism in America

    Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Except for the pre-Columbian indigenous native Indians of North and Central America, all other races in America are immigrants. More than half of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the US are immigrants with Filipinos arriving California in 1587, Europeans in the east coast in 1619 while importation of Africans as slaves started in 1619. America as Pope Francis not too long-ago reminded Donald Trump, “is a nation of immigrants”. Trump’s parents like Biden’s grandparents were all immigrants. Systemic racism, American original sin, started with slavery, a model that reduced Africans shipped to the new world to marketable commodities.

    The recent murder of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery as the nations of the world watched only but confirmed how deep-rooted systemic racism is in America despite the American civil war and the heroic efforts of the civil right movement. In case some people are still living in denial, Donald Trump’s harvest of 70 million Americans votes in last week election in spite of his refusal to condemn white supremacist his core base, his separation of 1,030 children in 2018 from their parents of whom only 485 have had their parents found, banning citizens of some Muslim nations of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen with his Executive Order 13769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States in 2017, a list expanded on January 31 to include Nigeria, Eritrea, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan Sudan and Tanzania.

    The huge support Trump secured from his base once again brought out the major weakness of democracy. Free and fair election, the hallmark of participatory democracy which often involve group bargaining sometimes throw up a nightmare. His last week defeat by Biden was however a big relief to America and her allies Trump traded for dictators. It is a new dawn in America with President-elect Biden pledging to end the Muslim ban on his first day in office, include Muslims at every level of his administration and address issues of racial and religious discrimination.

    Trump message of hate resonates with his disgruntled, racist, Islamophobic, uneducated white workers. Ian Kershaw, a professor of modern history at Sheffield University, and the author of Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution, writing for New York Times back in 2008, had warned about skillful politicians in the mode of Adolf Hitler proved adept at using democratic structures to erect forms of authoritarian rule. Kenshaw went on to advise on the need for international cooperation to restrain potential “mad dogs” in the world before they bite. The horrors of the Second World War foisted on the people through the follies of a mad man was probably the source of Kenshaw anguish. Hiding under nationalism, Hitler slaughtered about 11 million people including the six million Jews incinerated in a gas chamber.  Trump’s last week defeat was something of a relief because there are just too many similarities between Hitler and Trump.

    There is a frightening parallel between the social dislocations in Hitler’s 1929 Germany and Donald Trump’s 2007 and 2008 US economic crisis. And just as the great economic depression which followed Germany’s defeat in the First World War provided a fertile ground for Hitler to exploit the misery of his compatriots for political power, Trump capitalised on the marginalized Americans after the 2008 depression and exploited the political divisiveness within the Republican party following the loss of power to Barak Obama, a black man. The Trump battle cry became ‘we must take our country back’ and this resonates with his white supremacist base. Lying without shame and sounding like Hitler before the “Jew final solution”, he had declared ‘we have problem in this country. It is called Muslims; we know our current president is one, he is not an American…they have training camps where they want to kill us’; we want to take our country back’.

    Like Hitler, Trump does not believe in political parties. But Just as Hitler used Nazism as springboard to take over power, Trump hijacked the Republican Party to secure the party’s presidential ticket. Just as Hitler didn’t believe the party needed to serve the people, Trump after using the party to achieve his aim, assaulted the core values and the soul of the Republican Party. Like Hitler, he humiliated the real leaders of GOP. And just like what Hitler did to his party’s leading members, in the face of open assault on Republican Party values, no elected member of his party in the Senate or Congress could confront him.

    Hitler had a ‘barstadisation’ policy for children born in Germany but of non-German parents. He believed they were inferior to German children and cannot be given citizenship because citizenship was by blood of the Aryan race. Trump, like Hitler, is against the Fourteenth Amendment which confers citizenship on all children born in America. Trump wants all such children deported.

    Both are against freedom of expression. If Trump like Hitler had his ways, the state should control the press and use it as instrument for propaganda. Both have no regard for the famous declaration of Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of American declaration of independence (1776) that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”.

    Trump’s ‘I am the only one who can fix America’ is not markedly different from Hitler’s delusion that he was ordained to protect the Aryan race. Just as Hitler blamed the Jews for most of the problems and evils in Germany as well as the world, Trump blames China for unemployment, Muslim for terrorism while his right-wing supporters engage in periodic orgy of violence. Trump like Hitler engages in rabid nationalism bordering on fascism.

    And finally, Trump and Hitler did not believe in democracy. For Hitler, ‘democracy will in practice lead to the destruction of a people’s true value’.  His plan as reflected in his ‘Mein Kampf’ was to “destroy democracy with the weapons of democracy.” In other words, secure power through democracy and then become a dictator because for him, “one works best when alone.” –a rejection of participatory democracy.

    For Trump, like Hitler, democracy is a means to an end. There can be no other more compelling argument than his current attempt to undermine the foundation of the democratic process by insisting in 2016 he would only accept the outcome of the coming election if he wins. A week after Trump was defeated round and square by Biden, he is yet to concede defeat.

    Trump like Hitler is a danger not only to America but to the world. It was a poetic justice that his downfall was brought about by the African American community he hated with passion. Biden admitted this much in his victory speech last week.

  • EndSARS crusade and our ill-prepared youths

    EndSARS crusade and our ill-prepared youths

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    With seasonal exodus of our educated youths to the Americas and Europe, migration of our most talented to the more rewarding creative industry and the rest obsessed with European football teams, our youths’ well-organised EndSARS crusade against police brutality some three weeks ago was something of a relief to many concerned Nigerians who had expressed doubt about their readiness to assume their historic responsibility.

    Before the EndSARS crusade, it was always tales of marginalization as if they never took pains to read the biographies of Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe, two great 21st  century Nigerian self-made men that left indelible marks on the sands of time or ever heard of President Kennedy’s admonition that  American youths should not ask for what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country.

    They shut Lagos down within the first three days. The army of contraband goods street hawkers and truck pushers unleashed on Lagos by their irresponsible state governors along with thousands of jobless youths driven to Lagos by Boko Haram insurgency and herdsmen’s mindless killing of subsistence farmers were left with no choice but to identify with the crusade by staying at home.

    A government that hitherto listened only to itself acceded to our youths’ demand and disbanded SARS. It was obvious the president clearly identified with the youths’ demand. If he had referred the SARS bill to the National Assembly where since 1953, the north which constituted 50% of its membership often assess bills on the basis of what is in it for the north as against what Nigeria stands to gain, it would have been dead on arrival.

    Lai Mohammed, the minister for information announced to the public: “When you look at the demands of the #EndSARS and the decisions of the federal government, it is clear that there is no single demand of the group that has not been met”.  The Presidential Panel on the Reform of the now-disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad, according to a Punch report, “approved the five-point demands put forward by EndSARS protesters. And Vice President Osinbajo apologized for government sloppiness. “I fully understand how many young people feel. Many feel that we have been too silent and have simply not done enough. These feelings of frustration are justified”, he admitted.

    But our youths have tasted blood.  They wanted more having discovered how vulnerable elected governments in a participatory democracy can be. Beyond demand for institutional reforms, they insisted on the handover of the remaining government enterprises, obviously to those who earlier bought   the country’s investment governor El Rufai claimed was worth $100b for a little over $1b. They also wanted “criminal offenders to face trials in their homes”.

    It was as if they never read Prof Wande Abimbola’s lamentation about how his people abused him and swore not to return him to the senate for ‘refusing to steal while representing them in Abuja as a senator. It was as if they completely forgot  President Jonathan’s thesis that ‘stealing government money was not corruption’, the reason three former governors of his state stole the state blind, the same reason a thieving governor of  neighbouring state was set free by the state high court and when he was jailed for the same offence in foreign land, his people welcomed him back with a talking drum and the reason  another minister indicted by National Assembly was compensated with a senatorial seat by her people.

    Besides Nigerian jobless youths and those brutalized by SARS, EndSARs crusade provided an opportunity for political enemies of a president who had frittered away goodwill of Nigerians by his disdain for public opinion and his ‘delegation by abdication’ style, a euphemism for absence of governance.

    There was also the electronic media especially those owned by his political foes. They egged the boys on and when trouble broke out at Lekki toll gate, they freely traded unverified figure of victims to inflame passion leading to attack on government and private properties by hoodlums. There was also ASUU and its aggrieved members. That they supported the continued shutting down of the economy was understandable. They have after all received salaries for six months for work not done. That doesn’t happen anywhere in the world.

    Meanwhile, while there was no incentive to vacate Lekki toll gate with free flow of hundreds of Domino Pizzas and take-away food packs for jobless youths who sometimes even have extra to take home, there was a growing army of potential arsonists, criminals and looters among those who survive by their wits on the street now caged at home without food. It was just a matter of time before an implosion. And when it finally came, Lagos was brought to its knees.

    EndSARS initial success soon became a pyric victory. With southern governors identifying with EndSARS crusade and the northern governors mobilizing support for SARS that has brought no relief to Southern Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Sokoto, Katsina and Zamfara that have continued to experience daily harvest of deaths from activities of bandits, criminals, cattle rustlers and terrorists, it was clear SARS was but a symptom.  Brutalisation and periodic raping of Nigerians, occur in all federal institutions: the executive, legislature, judiciary and the fourth estate of the realm; Immigration, Customs and Nigerian Ports Authority. Unlike other Nigerian victims of the brutality and bestiality of these other institutions, EndSARS crusaders’ experience was limited to only the police.

    Now that our ill-prepared but social media-savvy youths have left the streets, the harder work begins. They must first try to understand the nation’s post-colonial contradictions so that they don’t fall into the same mistake as post-colonial states of North Africa and the Maghreb region, with whom we share a common fate. Not too long ago, they destroyed their society through Arab Spring using the instrumentality of the social media. Today, Libya one of the best administered African states has fallen from paradise it was under Gadhafi to a desert it used to be where life is ‘nasty, brutish and short’. Syria is at war. So is Yemen. Egypt is ruled by a modern-day pharaoh.

    Our youths who will inherit tomorrow must first try to understand the nature of the problem. That was what our forebears did. They applied intellect. This was why all the giant steps Nigeria made since 1920s came through the youths.

    West African Student Union (WASU) was founded on August 7, 1925 by 21 law students led by Ladipo Solanke and Herbert Bankole-Bright to seek independence for West Africa countries. They were the first to recommend Nigeria must run a federal arrangement patterned after Swiss federation.

    Obafemi Awolowo wrote his ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’ where he recommended a federation of ethnic nationalities as a student after taking pains to study federation in multi-ethnic societies across the world. Bode Thomas the author of regionalism died at just 32. The monumental achievements of Action Group in the West between 1952 and 1962 was a product of deep intellectual engagement by young professionals and experts in education, information, sociology economics and culture.

    An attempt to trade intellect for violence in the 60s only led to our youths being consumed by violence. The good news however is that our current youths are better endowed than both the 1920s and 1960 youths.

  • The combative president’s spokesman

    The combative president’s spokesman

    The major responsibility of a presidential spokesman more so in an age of information is to maximize the impact of favourable messages, and minimize the impact of unfavourable ones. Chief Duro Onabule did this with distinction in his days as spokesman for General Babangida, the self-styled evil genius who hilariously called himself president after a palace coup. Double Chief even successfully distanced his principal from the June 12 debacle after publicly admitting that his regime interfered to save the judiciary. Confronted by international election observers and reporters over his principals deceitful ‘transition without end’ and treachery against MKO Abiola, his friend and by extension, the nation, Double Chief with straight face and serious countenance insisted “government had in no way whatsoever interfered in the conduct of the election either before or after”. He reminded those who were in doubt of Babangida’s Decree 52 of 1993 which stripped the jurisdiction of the courts. He ensured the unsigned instrument of annulment written on a sheet of paper came out through Nduka Irabor,  the press secretary to Augustus Aikhomu, Babangida’s deputy.

    Aso rock seat of power has since 1999 produced a number of combative spokesmen  with some remembered more for the enemies they made for their principals. But none has worked as hard as Garba Shehu to change the public perception of his principal. Much as the president tries to sell an image of a democrat by his actions and inactions, Garba’s every intervention reinforces people’s perception of Buhari as a dictator. Some segment of the media today addresses him as a General while Garba’s last week unrestrained attack on Pastor Adeboye and others that had canvassed restructuring as answer to our crisis of nation building has led more Nigerian especially Christians to now openly refer to the president as Pharaoh.  His outbursts against eminent Nigerians that offer alternative approach to the resolution of our crisis of nation building continues to undermine the goodwill the president hitherto enjoyed among Nigerians. And his other encounters with Nigerians in the name of President Buhari, whether over Miyetti Allah  grazing rights, non-Nigerian Fulani herdsmen terrorists, community and state policing or the larger issue of restructuring, the president has often come out worse, with bartered image.

    So who exactly is Shehu Garba who has even been criticized by the president close relations working for?

    Who for instance gains from his attempt at setting the president against elected southwest governors over the floating of the Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN), a community police, code-named Amotekun? Despite the outfit’s support by the police at its formative stages, Garba Shehu went on to declare without restraint: “Whatever name they go by, Amotekun or whatever, they will be streamlined and run in accordance with the structure as defined by the Inspector General of Police”.

    Who gains from Garba’s attempt at creating disharmony between the president and leaders of Nigeria’s federating nationalities over Miyetti Allah? The cattle breeders association took refuge in the 1999 military constitution to insist they have right to embark on open grazing inside any of the federating states.

    Then Garba’s crooked logic: “The Miyetti Allah group is like Ohanaeze and Afenifere. It is a socio-cultural group. There are criminals within the Yoruba race and you cannot say because of that, Afenifere is a group of criminals”.

    Reacting to Pastor Adeboyes’s call for  “the United States of Nigeria and his warning that “It is either we restructure or we break up,  Garba, had dismissed the cleric’s  views along with those of other concerned Nigeria stakes holders  as “unpatriotic outbursts”, warning that  the “government will not succumb to threats”.

    Whose government? Many will swear Shehu Garba spoke for himself not President Buhari.

    In any case,  Adeboye is not alone. Politicians, Nigeria’s opinion leaders, leaders of ethnic nationalities such as Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, the major stakeholders  in the Nigeria project, as well as elders statesmen,  traditional rulers , retired generals, former  presidents, scholars, have at different times identified restructuring of the country as parts of solution to our crisis of nation building. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, had on September 28 also warned that Nigeria could break up if efforts are not made to address cracks in the nation, adding; “Fortunately for us, our walls are not yet broken, but what we have are apparent cracks that could lead to a break if not adequately addressed”.

    Many will argue the president did not ask Garba Shehu to dismiss the interventions of these eminent Nigerians as well as that of the vice president as “unpatriotic outburst”.  It also defies logic for Shehu Garba to assume that it is only he and the interest he represents, who are fiercely opposed to community policing, devolution of power, fiscal federalism, fairness and justice are the only people that love Nigeria.

    Chief Awolowo hinted over 80 years ago that Nigerians were better assured of justice by the colonial masters than our educated elites. Some of what today constitute parts of our crisis of nation building such as devolution of power, fiscal federalism and right of nationalities over their own affairs were settled issues before 1920. They were regarded as rights not as privileges by foreign powers.

    For instance, Lord Lugard in his Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa had identified two critical administrative principles viz; decentralization by ruling the people through their indigenous authorities, and principle of continuity, by utilizing indigenous institutions and authorities in order to  preserve continuity with the past while laying foundation for progressive improvement of indigenous society.

    The colonial administration therefore on its own decided to preserve our cultural diversity by preserving the indigenous political structure they met on ground. The native police policed their area and administered the prisons and the native and Alkali courts administered justice except where the punishments fell short of British ideal of natural justice and humanity. They did not impose Christian schools because the Islamic schools were well developed except where the chiefs wanted Christian schools for their children.

    The British without prompting freely did all the above for colonized Nigerians over a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, they came under attack at the first opportunity the new inheritors of power had at making constitution in 1963.

    Today, 60 years under the reign of our new inheritors of power, Abuja is imposing in the WAEC, religion syllabus on Nigerians children. Garba Shehu and the interest he represents are saying our villages must be policed from Abuja. Instead of Abuja directing its energy towards helping the north which was 70 years behind the south in education at independence, they are disingenuously using JAMB to slow down the south.

    Garba Shehu the combative president’s spokesman must understand that restructuring along negotiated federal system poses no threat to our corporate existence. It only frees all of us from the tyranny of the state so that we will once again enjoy freedom, fairness and justice, our enduring colonial legacies which the new inheritors of power took away in the name of independence.

    The only people that have something to lose are our internal colonisers that have held the country hostage since the collapse of the first republic in 1966.

  • Sixty years in the wilderness

    Sixty years in the wilderness

    Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

     

    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’. Driven by greed, the Nigerian political elite who often falsely swear in the name of their people remain the curse of Nigeria 60 years after independence.  And independence as it has turned out was only freedom by the political elite to preside over an empire of slaves while democracy, a new value system was nothing but a means to an end. Sixty years after rejecting the path to Nigeria freedom, our current power holders continue to dig deeper into the hole.

    Nigeria’s golden period in terms of constitutional development was between Lugard’s 1914 amalgamation and 1958 London Independence Constitution midwifed by the British. The 1963 Republican Constitution midwifed by NPC/NCNC coalition, the new inheritors of power erased almost all the country’s gain at nation-building between 1914 and 1958.

    Lugard’s constitution introduced devolution of powers through indirect rule. The people collected their taxes, gave to Caesar what belonged to Caesar, and provided security for themselves through community policing.  In 2020, 106 years later, our current inheritors of power are quibbling about the meaning of devolution of power.

    The Clifford Constitution of 1922 introduced the elective principle which led to the formation of political parties such as Herbert Macaulay’s National Democratic Party (NNDP) of 1923. It is a paradox that almost a hundred years after, it is military leaders of ‘Nigeria Army of anything is possible’ such as Generals Babangida and Abacha  and ex-military dictators like Generals Obasanjo and Buhari, that will be teaching Nigerian how to form or manage political parties.

    Arthur Richards Constitution of 1946 created regions for the West, East and the North thus laying the foundation for federalism – a system that protects the rights of individual, guarantees freedom, liberty culture and religion rights and equality of every linguistic group. That was at a period Nigerian political leaders who lived in denial were advocating unitary system and confederacy. It is today very depressing that about some 74 years later, President Buhari and his APC will be feigning ignorance as to what restructuring meant.

    Macpherson Constitution of 1951 installed parliamentary system, created House of Representatives and regional legislatures with wide powers to legislate for the good of their people. Revenue allocation was based on derivation, need and national interest.

    Recognising the diversity of Nigeria, Oliver Lytleton Constitution of 1954 consolidated the federal arrangement by giving more powers to the regions and regionalizing the civil service. There was commitment to finding solution to our crisis of nation-building. Regional police commissioners for instance reported to their regional governors who in turn reported to the Governor-General. In 2012, Shehu Garba an unelected, Nigerian is declaring without restraint that security outfits set up by elected governors as chief security officers of their states as a result of the failure of the federal security apparatus must come under the control of the IGP.

    During the 1957 London Independence Constitution conference, the imperial powers had to apply the carrot and stick approach to secure a consensus among our warring politicians.  Chief Awolowo insisted that independence for Nigeria must mean that: “The people of Nigeria must as individual citizens enjoy liberty, prosperity and equality under the law and Nigerian constitution”.  While the northern and eastern leaders rejected the quest and demand for self- actualization by minorities in the country, he had advocated for the creation of regions for the minorities.

    But the administration of the police was to be handled by the Police Council, its operational aspects by the Inspector General of Police while federal and regional police were retained.  And as if to confirm Awo’s earlier expressed sentiments that Nigerians have more faith in the British judicial system, the British umpire ensured the highest judicial power was vested on the Privy Council in London as against our Supreme Court.

    But if further reasons are needed to confirm that our political elite were driven by greed for power to serve selves and not the people on whose names they falsely swear, the 1963 so-called home-grown Republican Constitution provided just that.

    Its major provisions include creation of office of president, Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to replace office of Governor-General, making the Supreme Court the highest judicial body and abolition of Judicial Service Commission with judges to be appointed by the president on the advice of the prime minister. There was also the retention of the emergency powers which allows the federal centre to deal with any regional government that fails to toe its line.

    Besides the above self-serving provisions, nothing in the Republican Constitution advanced the course of ordinary Nigerians or addressed the national question. It was all about grabbing of powers by NPC/NCNC coalition partners which they misused in 1962 when they declared state of emergency in the West over the throwing of chairs at Western House by a handful of lawmakers while nothing happened in the north where there had been the Tiv insurrection suppressed only with the use of the military.

    Indeed, a journey through memory further confirms that the greed for power by our aspiring new inheritors of power only heightened divisions among ethnic groups in Nigeria.

    The Lagos Youth Movement was formed by Dr J. C. Vaughan, Mr Ernest Ikoli, Oba Samuel Akinsanya and others in 1934. But when Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe who joined it in 1937 upon his return from Ghana lost a bye-election for the Lagos Legislative Council seat to Jubril Martins  by  90 votes to 33, he tried to undermine the body with his West African Pilot forcing Senator Odutola to blame him for ‘all the confusion and tribal hates then rearing their heads as products of Zik’s New Afica’ adding  ‘During the days of our old Africa, the Ibos and Yoruba lived together as Nigerians’ and admonishing him to return his ‘New Africa’ to America by post.

    In 1941, when Oba Akinsanya, Zik candidate for Sir Kofo Abayomi’s Lagos Legislative Council seat declared vacant to Ernest Ikoli,  Awo’s candidate, Zik pulled all Igbos and Ijebus out of the body accusing Awololwo who had supported an easterner against his fellow Ijebu kinsman of tribalism and the Zik crowd believed him.

    The schism between the Yoruba and Igbo could also be traced to 1951 Western Regional Parliamentary Elections. Zik supporters claimed he won but prevented by from becoming premier of the West while the AG pointed out the list of its candidates published by the Daily Times of September 24, and the list of 38 names of its victorious candidates published in the paper’s edition of September 26, 1951.

    The military intervention of 1966 was also the result of power struggle between the Igbo and Hausa Fulani political elite following the disputed 1964 federal election. An ill-equipped and ill-educated military later plunged the nation into a 30-month civil war (1967-1970), and later replaced a workable federal structure with an unwieldy 36 states and 776 LGAs.