Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

 Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

Adams Oshiomhole, who in 2016 by-passed his  own deputy, Pius Odubu, former governor, Osarhiemen Osunbor, Osarodion Ogie, his political son, former minister, Chris Ogiemwonyi, Kenneth Imasuagbon and Charles Airhiavbere and Ize-Iyamu, a founding member of APC and  chairman for his re-election committee  to pick Godwin Obaseki as APC candidate, might have been humbled by the outcome of last Sataurday Edo election, but the real losers are President Buhari and his APC.

What was witnessed in Bini ile Ibinu) land of anger, as their Yoruba kinsmen describe them, was a protest vote against President Buhari’s mismanagement of power, his APC intra-party crisis and our crisis of nation-building. The Binis like most other Nigerians are angry with President Buhari, who loathe politicians and political parties after using them as vehicles to attain power. Although he dressed Bola Tinubu in the robes of a party leader, President Buhai is the APC party leader and the buck stops at his table.

But because of President Buhari’s incompetence in the management of political parties, he would not even sit down to listen to Governor Godwin Obaseki’s grievances. The governor ended up being tutored by President Buhari’s unelected loyal gatekeeper. Oshiomhole, his estranged godfather suffered greater indignity. Buhari worked with his political enemies to unceremoniously remove him from office despite enjoying the support of 14 of 20 APC National Working Committee (NWC) members with three against and three neutral during a stormy meeting in June.

Yet apart from Tinubu sidelined after carrying the president on his back around the country to win the 2915 election, called upon at the last minute to mend fences among warring party members across the country, Oshiomhole was the architect of Buhari’s 2019 re-election.  He inherited from Oyegun a party in disarray in most of its state chapters.   Oshiomhoile had to apply the big stick against Senate President Saraki who had made the country ungovernable for three years, the empire building governors and those who wanted to create a fiefdom out of their states.

But first the politics of Edo and its political elite. It can at best be described as “politics of water has no enemy” or politics of shifting loyalty. Edo political elite are among the most educated, most resourceful and creative Nigerian politicians.  They all share a common worldview of no permanent friends but permanent interests.

We remember Tony Enahoro who became an editor of a national newspaper at around 22 and remains the best parliamentarian Nigeria has ever produced. He had moved from NCNC to AG and later hobnobbed briefly with the conservatives before his death. There was General David Ejor who surfaced three days after rebel invasion of Benin claiming he rode a bicycle for three days to join the federal side. There was also an illustrious Samuel Ogbemudia who joined the group of Nigerian politicians massaging Babangida’s ego by serving as the face of his fraudulent ‘railway revolution’ which did not go beyond the repainting of old railway coaches in new colours.

Tony Anenih was the chairman Babangida’s decreed SDP. He sold off the victory of his party to please Babangida. In the 4th Republic, he became a leading member of PDP where as “Mr. Fixer”, presided over rigging of elections across the country until his retirement by Oshiomhole. His fellow Edo kinsman, Tom Ikimi who also headed Babangida’s other decreed party, the NRC rather than concede defeat in an election his party lost ‘round and square’, joined Abacha as external affairs cowboy foreign minister. He has in the current 4th Republic moved from PDP to APC and now back to PDP. Oyegun’s sympathy was for Yar’Adua during the short-lived 3rd Republic. He became part of June 12 and later became APC chairman. As Obaseki’s backer, he is technically back to PDP with Obaseki’s last Saturday’s victory.

Oshiomhole himself was never an ACN member. He was of the Labour Party that went into a marriage of convenience with Action Congress Party (ACN) to fight the April 2007 Edo governorship election against PDP  governor Osunbor  who has also since joined APC. Osagie Ize-Iyamu moved from APC to contest election on the platform of PDP and returned to contest same election on APC platform four years later.

What matters to the Edo political elite is their permanent interest. Their embrace of PDP politicians indicted by the judiciary for stealing the state blind in the past did not mean they forgot where they were coming from. The failure of President Buhari and his APC to deliver on their promises is sufficient impetus.  As our people say, “If the deity cannot protect me, it should at least leave me the way he met me”. Fortunately for the ever-mobile Edo political elite, this is a sentiment today shared by most Nigerians.

President Buhari may be working hard to build a solid foundation for tomorrow but a house built on a shifting sound without a solid foundation will eventually be washed away. In any case, he cannot pretend to know what Nigerian want more than Nigerians who have insisted on devolution of power because centralisation and confiscation of state resources since the end of the civil war have produced only stagnation.

While the federating states are complaining of centralisation of everything through a federal constitution which made no provision for a residual list, Buhari’s government seems to be determined to take away some freedoms secured by the states through judicial pronouncement such as state right over their waterways.

Our situation today is worse than under Lugard in 1914 and during the run up to independence in the fifties. At least under Lugard’s constitution, the native administration was staffed by locals who controlled the native treasury saddled with the responsibility of collection of taxes, half of which went to the colonial government with the native treasury retaining the other half to take care of police, hospitals, public works and local courts. That was 46 years before our independence in 1960 and 106 years ago.

The 1954 Lyttleton Constitution ensured each region had powers over law and order, education, economic development social welfare and public information. But 66 years after, Shehu Garba wants to bring community police under the Inspector General of Police that has been unable to tackle insecurity across the states while the rest of us who live in denial treat the unfolding tragedy as comedy.

The loss of Edo by APC is a pointer to what will happen in 2023 except President Buhari and his APC rediscover themselves and acknowledge their incompetence in terms of management of power, party politics, and our crisis of nation-building. Rude insults and innuendoes on leading members of ethnic nationalities that insist the president cannot substitute what he thinks Nigerians want for what Nigerians demand cannot change the groundswell of discontent as demonstrated by Edo voters. But except as some have argued, losing power to PDP in 2023 may also be part of deliberate strategy of some of Buhari’s loyal gatekeepers who are in the interest of other tendencies they serve are encouraging him to shoot himself in the leg by destroying the APC so that retailing power by the north in 2023 becomes inevitable.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Buhari’s widely acknowledged mismanagement of our crisis of nation building last week brought the forces responsible for political polarization in the country: Northern Elders Forum, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, Afenifere, Middle Belt Forum as well as Pan Niger Delta Forum, together as a consultative dialogue group. They jointly denounced the on-going Senate review of the constitution, dismissing it “as a money-gulping activity and veritable source of waste without end”.

Polarisation arising from absence of elite consensus has always been the bane of Nigerian politics. The dominant ethnic groups, the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo and the Yoruba at different levels of   cultural development do not share a common view of the world. Whilst the political elite in the West according to Awo realized the Yoruba would not vote for you because you are Yoruba except you have a programme that will impact positively on his life and therefore worked for a more egalitarian society for their people, the East and the North saw their peoples as tools for attaining political power. While the North or the East could be regarded as one-party region, elections are often fiercely fought in the West. And since democracy is a game of numbers, the two never wanted dismemberment of their regions in spite of quest for self-actualization of minority groups in their regions.

Their rivalry over the soul of the country after the constitutional crisis that followed the disputed 1964 elections led the two which share a common view of how Nigeria should be run to lure the military into politics in 1966 with dire consequences. They plunged the nation into a civil war but only to re-group as NPN/NPP coalition in 1979 with Ojukwu, the Igbo war hero returning from exile to join them. In 1999, they re-grouped as PDP imposing Obasanjo on Nigeria to spite the Yoruba that roundly rejected him.

Obasanjo, an active player since 1975 who was on hand to address the consultative group last week fitted the bill. He conceded the successful struggle for independence to the generations of the Awolowos, Nnamdi Azikiwes, the Sardaunas, Aminu Kanos, Tafawa Balewas and others and on behalf of his fellow military adventurers and their new breed politicians took responsibility for the collapse of the buoyant economy they inherited. “When I banned the importation of toothpicks, another president came and lifted the ban”, he lamented.  “At that time our maximum from all the power plants in the country was 3, 900 mw…one of the two who came after me in four years did not add one megawatt”, he added.  He was however silent on over $20b frittered away.

He expressed the fear of Nigeria drifting into “a failed state, a basket case and poverty capital of the world, and unwholesome and insecure country”.

Speaking for government, Lai Mohammed however insists “whatever situation the country has found itself in, things would have been much worse” adding “it is Buhari’s assumption of office in 2015 that prevented Nigeria from becoming a failed state. He  went on to accuse Obasanjo and some of his group of frittering away a great opportunity to put Nigeria on a sound socio-economic footing, at a time of financial buoyancy, thus planting  seeds of today’s insecurity in some parts of the country.

Lai Mohammed’s claim may be correct but that unfortunately will not wish away indicators of a failed state that stare Nigerians on the face. It has become apparent the state is finding it increasingly difficult to guarantee security in the face of warlords masquerading as Boko Haram, herdsmen, bandits, kidnappers and other criminals.

The Council of Foreign Relations 2020 global Conflict Tracker recently claimed that “Since 2011, attacks by Boko Haram, the Islamist jihadist militancy in northeast Nigeria, has led to about 37,500 deaths, 2.5 million displaced people and nearly 244,000 Nigerian refuges”. The BBC also put the figure of those kidnapped in Nigeria since 2015 at 372 while the 2019 Fragile State Index ranked Nigeria as the 14th most fragile state in the world and the ninth in Africa with three of the 10 failed African states –Chad Sudan and Southern Sudan as neighbours.

On the economic front, there is mass unemployment partly because of lack of political will of government to confront economic saboteurs who in the name of commerce have turned the country into a dumping ground for second hand and substandard goods.

Lai Mohammed also insists that the nation “is courageously tackling its challenges and building a solid infrastructure that will serve as the basis for socio-economic development”. While many will appreciate efforts of government, one is however not sure whether a government that appears to listen only to itself has reflected on why such efforts in the past brought little or no  joy to ordinary Nigerians.

After all, Babangida and his economic wizards, Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu told us the regime was ‘sacrificing their present for our future’ while Obasanjo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala promised an economic El Dorado. The reality is that the objective situation of ordinary Nigerian is today worse than it was in 1985.

But contrary to Obasanjo’s claims, the current manifestations of a weak state cannot be said to be the products of recent mismanagement of diversity by President Buhari. The ‘old fault lines’, he referred to, have never disappeared.  If there was any time ‘drums of hatred, disintegration and separation and accompanying choruses’ were muted, it was perhaps during those periods the elite who falsely swear by the names of their people were as coalition partners or party stalwarts eating with their 10 fingers.

The first challenge of those who gathered in Abuja last week is to admit we need help in form of an umpire. As a multi ethnic society with different value systems, no one group can impose its value on others as the military has tried to do since 1975. The threat of a big brother was the secret of the 1946 constitution which brought regionalism and provided support for unity in diversity; the 1951 constitution which created House of Representatives with 136 elected members, 68 members from the north, 31 elected members from the west plus three members of the House of chiefs and 34 elected members from the east.  The 1953 London Constitutional conference allocated specific powers to the centre leaving residual powers to the regions and the 1957 Lancaster London Conference paved the way for self-government for the west and east while it allowed the north to wait as long as it desired.

Compare the above with Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo whose 1988, 1994/95 and 2005 confabs were designed to commit fraud. Jonathan on the eve of election embarked on his 2014 doomed conference for the purpose of seducing Yoruba voters, the advocate of restructuring.

President Buhari is a symptom rather than the cause of our current crisis of nation building which his predecessors including Obasanjo who today blames ‘inadequate dialogue, old prejudices and bias and lack of commitment to the love of the country’, had opportunity to redress.

As presently structured, Nigeria is a nation without stakeholders. This is why she is an easy target of rape by abusers such as migrating Fulani herdsmen, insurgents and callous importers of fake drugs and substandard goods. Return the country to its owners, the ethnic nationalities who have stakes in their communities and allow them to develop at their own pace within the greater Nigerian nation without interference from a dysfunctional centre, most of our crisis of nation building will disappear in three years.

 Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Muhammadu Buhari, because of his sense of self-righteousness is an easy prey for political schemers. Although he loves Nigeria to a fault, he is easily distracted by those he regards as his ‘loyal gate-keepers’ who do not often share his pan-Nigerian vision.  Egged on by fifth columnists who had their own agenda, he embarked on unnecessary wars against the press and critics during his first coming. He refused to listen to the voice of reason spearheaded by the likes of Wole Soyinka until he was removed in a palace coup by the same characters that had lionized him. Their justification: he “was too rigid and uncompromising in his attitudes to issues of national significance; efforts to make him understand that a diverse polity like Nigeria required recognition and appreciation of differences in both cultural and individual perception only served to aggravate those attitudes”.

But for his love of the country, Buhari has no business struggling to return to power after serving as a minister, governor and head of state and a prisoner for three and half years for staying on the side of the people.

Unfortunately, President Buhari who still does not appreciate that his critics are those who share his passion and want him to succeed has learnt very little from his first coming as a military leader. He has in the last five years treated critics who reminded him of his campaign promise on restructuring as mere distraction. Egged on by fifth columnists and those he described as his ‘loyal gate keepers’ who many believed hijacked his government without necessarily sharing his pan-Nigeria vision, he ignored the report of the committee set up by his party to address our crisis of nation building.

Then herdsmen, said to be non-Nigerians, laid a siege on the Middle Belt region of Nigeria killing farmers and confiscating farmland of their displaced victims. As against appeal by concerned Nigerians for a decisive action against the invaders, the president trusted the thesis of his then minister of defence that the killing was a necessary reaction to the blocking of colonial  grazing routes created after amalgamation of 1914 and long before Nigeria graduated from a federation of three regions, four regions and todays 36 states and 774 LGAs. Miyyeti Allah and their sponsors while playing the victims insisted open-grazing is part of their culture and that grazing anywhere in Nigeria is their right under Nigerian constitution.

In the wake of kidnapping and other criminal activities by those alleged to be herdsmen and their local collaborators, some state governments demanded for community policing. While the federal government was dragging its feet, Amotekun security outfit was established by governors of southwest. The president’s media adviser, Garba Shehu has continued to insist that ‘Amotekun or whatever name it is called must come   under the control of the IG”.

The latest unnecessary distraction is the bill, entitled “National Water Resources Bill 2020,” thrown out by the 8th Senate following widespread objection by the public. The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Water Resources, Dr. Musa Ibrahim says the National Water Bill was aimed at “centralising water administration under the Ministry of Water Resources”. The bill was believed to have been arbitrarily reintroduced in the Green chamber, in breach of its rules, legislative convention and provisions of the 1999 constitution.

The latest move has been widely criticized.  The Nigerian Labour Congress says the National Assembly leadership is working surreptitiously with vested interests outside the assembly anxious to pass the bill without due legislative process”.

Soyinka on his path has warned that “passing a roundly condemned project, blasted out of sight by public outrage one or two years ago,  exhumed and sneaked back into service by none other than a failed government, into law would hand the president “absolute control over the nation’s entire water resources, both over and underground”.

Leaders of ethnic nationalities, chiefs Edwin Clark of PANDEF, Ayo Adebanjo of Afenifere, John Nwodo of Ohaneze and Pogu Bitrus of Middle Belt, who in their separate reactions described the bill as “destabilising, obnoxious, draconian and anti-people”, stated  that the bill was anti-federalism and negated the right of Nigerians to their God-given resources”.

Civil society groups believe the ‘bill will deny Nigerians the right to water’ while leading Nigerian newspapers welcomed it with powerful editorials with the Vanguard warning: ‘It will be a recipe for disaster. The conflicts and bloodshed that this provocative law will trigger will be endless’ adding ‘The purveyors of these predatory laws are enemies of our national stability and must be stopped’.

As for the source of this executive bill, described by some ‘as the repugnant and detestable land-grabbing Bill, in favour of Fulani herdsmen and Miyetti Allah cattle breeders, it is a matter of ‘the witch crying last night and the baby dying this morning’.

Boss Mustapha whose legal interest is said to include privatization commercialization and liberalization of public companies/corporate and government parastatals with a passion for how waterways assets are managed is today Secretary to the Government of the Federation. He was on Channels television before the controversial bill was thrown out in 2018 by the 8th Senate saying something to the effect that Lagos and Ogun cannot lay claim to their waterways because Ogun River took its source from Osun State.

Unfortunately, it is the nation that pays for these distractions. During Buhari’s first coming in 1984, the nation earned foreign exchange from sale of refined oil. Five years into Buhari’s second coming, none of our four refineries is working at optimum. Modular refinery, we were told, takes less than a year to put in place. We have no evidence any has come on stream in five years of this administration. The country, a net exporter of crude oil continues to be at the mercy of fuel importers.

Under Buhari in 1984, Nigerians rode cars assembled in Lagos and Kaduna with batteries, windshield, brake pads and seats and tyres locally produced in Ibadan and Lagos. Today, President Buhari’s ministers, vice chancellors of universities, comptrollers-general of Customs, Immigration and security service chiefs cruise in imported latest SUVs costing millions of naira.

Back then under Buhari, our clothes came from the UNTL, Aswani and Chellarams textiles mills in Lagos and Kaduna, our shoes from Bata and Lennards in Lagos. Our bread from our own wheat. Today, Buhari’s Nigeria has become the world biggest importer of used second hand clothes and shoes. Our TV sets were assembled by Adebowale Electricals in Lagos and Sanyo in Ibadan, our refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners were manufactured by Thermocool in Lagos, our WC and tiles from Kano and Abeokuta. Today, Buhari’s Nigeria has become a dumping ground for electronics from all parts of the world.

And with the death of WTO and ascendancy of protectionism arising from trade rivalry between Trump’s USA and China, the Buhari we all knew back in 1984 would have insisted that government officials ride Innoson Nigerian cars, that we all go naked or walk bare-footed until we are able to return to the pre-Babangida era when my total estacode during a three week holiday trip to London in September 1983 was N500.

Today, the exchange rate in Buhari’s Nigeria is N500 to $1.

But for his distractions and misguided wars, Buhari would have whipped us out of our indiscipline without forgetting to force those who mortgage the future of our children, sharing our national patrimony after selling to themselves Nigeria total investment of about $100b for a paltry $1b pay for their sins against the nation.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

The reality today, despite the initial gains of president Buhari’s war against insurgency, is that we are increasingly sliding back to the pre-Buhari era when soldiers could not protect themselves even in their own barracks. Recently, 24 soldiers were ambushed and killed along the Gamboa-Maiduguri Road in Borno State.

At least 19 others were killed In Katsina. About 20 were also ambushed and killed elsewhere in the north. With the reported “over 236 soldiers voluntarily resigning from the Nigerian Army”, many soldiers are no doubt losing their fighting spirit.

The above facts came from Senator Ali Ndume, chairman Senate Committee on Army, who in a recent motion titled ‘Matter of urgent national importance, asked the CDS and the service chiefs to step aside over the killings of soldiers by insurgency and banditry in some parts of northern Nigeria. It was a followed up to two earlier upper house’s resolutions asking the president to sack the service chiefs. Back in February, Nigerian opinion leaders including the founding member of the Arewa Consultative Forum and Kano politician, Alhaji Tanko Yakassi, as well as Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF; Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) had asked the president to allow the tired service chiefs go on their well-deserved rest.

Their soldiers are demoralized. As it was during President Jonathan administration when Brigadier-General Ransome Kuti and some courageous military officers who had raised alarm about lack of military equipment were court-marshaled,  today Major General Adeniyi, who admitted that “only 29 of our gallant soldiers were killed with 61 injured in the ambush”, which he blamed on ‘false military intelligence supplied by the military authorities and inadequate equipment’ which led to a suicide mission whereby over a hundred soldiers along with explosives and other munitions were caged in the same vehicle,  is in detention.

Today, Nigeria which ranked third behind Afghanistan and Iraq out of 163 countries in the 2019 Global Terrorism Index is under a siege.  Boko Haram and militant herdsmen declared in 2016 as being among ‘the top four deadliest terror groups in the world’ are let loose on helpless Nigerians.

Amnesty International, last Sunday claimed at least 1,126 rural dwellers in seven northern states of Kaduna, Katsina, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba and Zamfara, have lost their lives to rampaging insurgents since the beginning of the year. It affirmed: “Insecurity is worsening in the North  ‘due to the Nigerian authorities leaving the backstreet communities poorly-policed’ and  blamed “terrifying attacks on rural communities on the failure of security forces to take sufficient steps to protect villagers from  predictable attacks”.  It called attention to Katsina State, home of President  Buhari, where “ at least 33,130 people are now in displacement camps,  with thousands of farmers unable to  cultivate their farms during the 2020 rain season.

A Punch editorial of August 12, quoting a pressure group, ‘NigeriaMourns, tallied 2,503 persons killed between January and June, 339 of them security agents. The paper quoted another intelligence research firm, which claimed  2,700 Nigerians died violently in 33 states and the FCT in the three months to June adding that a  “string of violent attacks in Southern Kaduna has assumed pogrom proportions”.

An investigation by this newspaper published in its edition of Sunday August 16 confirmed 17  of Borno State 27 LGAs  are under frequent attack by Boko Haram insurgents with most people relocating  to their LGA headquarters and  farmers unable to go their farms. The report also confirmed claims by senators and representatives of these areas that they could no more visit their constituents. Only seven southern Borno LGAs enjoyed relative peace while Sambisa Forest, the Mandara Mountains, and Lake Chad fringes are in firm control of Boko Haram insurgents.

The Borno people led by Babagana Zulum, their governor   told Buhari last week that they nurse no grudges against their “son, Gen. Yusuf Burutai the Chief of Army Staff and other service chiefs but also told him the truth he has refused to accept: “the war is sliding and fatigue has set in for some officers and troops”, some of whom they alleged are “ now fish and cattle merchants in Baga”.

Coming from the voters, it is hoped the president will understand we operate a democracy, which prefers bureaucracy  that “adopts systematic processes and organized hierarchies needed for maintaining order and maximizing efficiency”, instead of arbitrariness and  nepotism by complying with  military rule that says “no officer shall be allowed to remain in service after attaining the retirement age of 60 years or 35 years of pensionable service whichever is earlier.”

Since the 2016 launching of Operation Sharan Daji (Sweep the Forest), Operation Harbin Kunama (Scorpion Sting) and Operation Diran Mikiya (Eagle Fighting), and the stationing of a full battalion of special forces in Zamfara backed by “Operation Maximum Safety with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles” , this did not stop the sacking of three LGAs by “300 AK- 47-wielding bandits riding 150 motorcycles  and the killing of seven soldiers”.  Experts have long argued solution to local security is local policing.

Until the setting up of Amotekun security outfit by Southwest to address their peculiar problems, the federal government had stood against the idea of local policing by states. Garba Shehu, the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity recently listed government fears as including adequate funding, training and procurement of equipment, and enlightenment of the public without forgetting to add the “need to streamline the processes embarked upon by the states and the sub-regions.”  He went on to add: “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”.

Garba Shehu’s reference to funding was to cover up government real motive which is “to have a single type structure community policing across the country”. Not long ago, Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjan, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)’s executive director, while calling ‘for security reform to end spate of insecurity across the Nigeria,’ during seminar held in Kaduna,  disclosed  that the security votes of governors Garba claimed cannot fund local policing which is put at N208.8bn annually “outweighs the annual budget of police, army, as well as air force and navy combined in the last five years.”

Why must all federating states run the same system? Problems of Zanfara, Sokoto and Katsina which many see as the struggle  between landless oppressed majority and their minority oppressors is different from the ethnic rivalry between the Tivs and Jukun which  is still different from Fulani immigrants’ lust over luxuriant Benue Plateau  land inhabited by Tiv Bantu immigrants. All the above differ from bandits unleashed on Yoruba country by failed northern leadership who join local miscreants and area boys to visit violence on people in their farms.

It has therefore long been concluded that in an heterogeneous society, local communities are better at policing themselves. Unfortunately, attempts to substitute federalism with unitarism since the collapse of the first republic has continued to take us father away from ‘path to Nigerian freedom’, envisaged by our founding fathers.

Jide Oluwajuyitan

I was at a shopping mall with my daughter on July 29 when a young lady approached us. She said she was doing a marketing survey for Lever Brothers. As evidence she gave two Lever Brothers products to my daughter. She said she needed our names and telephone numbers for the survey. While my daughter was asking why she needed our names and telephone numbers, I persuaded my daughter by confirming Lever Brothers often engage in periodic market surveys for their products.

But I was wrong. Within five minutes there was a call purportedly from a member of our University of Ife alumni associations. That was the beginning of my ordeal. Within 10 minutes, more than 10 people called to inform me that my number had been hacked. The following day, I headed for an MTN office nearest to me to show them the MTN number the fraudster used. To my greatest surprise, the young man simply said there was nothing MTN could and advised me to go and appeal to the fraudster.

The security of life and property of citizens, protection of their rights and reconciliation of differences that naturally exist between groups are the primary responsibilities of a state. This task of the state is made relatively easy because of its monopoly of coercive use of force. And democracy which we ascribed to makes only two demands on government – respect for the will of the people and an abiding faith in the rule of law. Unfortunately, governance is one thing that has been in short supply since the beginning of the fourth republic. One manifestation of absence of governance is the take-over of the nation by brigands and fraudsters.

Unfortunately. like national interest, it is he elected sovereign that determines who the enemies and friends of state are.  Thus, President Buhari as military Head of State back in 1984, identified journalist who report truth that embarrassed government officials as enemies of state and went ahead to jail Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor of The Guardian. As elected president, his close associates seem to have identified herdsmen killer squads as friends of the nation while victims trying to protect their land and farm crops are identified as bad hosts and enemies of the state.

His successor, the Babangida’s regime equally identified journalists as enemy of state and Dele Giwa Giwa paid the supreme sacrifice when he was killed by a parcel bomb in his dining room. Abacha identified NADECO, which was rechristened ‘Agbako’ by his deputy, General Oladipo Diya as enemies of the state.  The regime chased leading members of the group into exile while many of those who waited at home to confront his evil regime were assassinated.

Obasanjo identified the Yoruba who insisted on restructuring of the country as enemies of state. He marginalized the Southwest while ordering the members of Odua militant group to be shot at sight. For him, Asari Dokubo, head of the militant group who confessed receiving mouth- watering contracts from Obasanjo is a friend of the state.

For President Yar’Adua, James Ibori who was later jailed for his sins against his people was a friend of the state while Nuhu Ribadu who probed Ibori who was rescued by an Asaba High Court and put Tafa Balogun, the former IG in chains, forced him to regurgitate the billions of police equipment and welfare funds he stole, was enemy of state who must be haunted out of the country.

Like Boko Haram, a creation of some PDP warring northern governors according to General Owoye Azazi, the then President Jonathan’s National Security Adviser, the Niger Delta militants responsible for the loss of about 400,000 barrels of crude oil to oil bunkering daily was a creation of Niger Delta governors. But President Jonathan who according to the Financial Times of London empowered leading members of the groups with multi-billion-dollar contracts to secure of our waterways and protect oil pipelines while the navy remained under-funded saw Niger Delta militants as friend of the state.

Absence of governance finds expression in corruption, greed and debilitating poverty amidst bandits’ illegitimately acquired opulence. Absence of governance is also a recipe for a failed state whose signs we are told include endemic corruption by the governing political class, absence of transparency and accountability by the political class and loss of confidence of the ruled in the existing institutions. There are other socio-economic consequences. In the name of privatisation and commercialisation, brigands and fraudsters sold all the commercial concerns established by the founding fathers to themselves and their cronies. The economy came under severe strains. Part of SAP legacy is that an exchange rate which was almost at par with American dollar in 1985 is today N460 to $1.

Babangida and Abacha groomed new breed of politicians that bred nothing but corruption. El Rufai disclosed how, through the instrumentality of Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), members of the gang shared among its members, most blue-chip Nigerian companies. It is also on record that PPPRA set up government in 2003 was used by members of the political elite and their children to siphon about N1.7 trillion under the fuel subsidy regime.

When President Buhari first came as military Head of State in 1984, his presence as the leader of responsive government was felt by his absence. The fear of Buhari was the beginning of wisdom. Today by paying little or no attention to lawless brigands and fraudsters, he has allowed the state to undermine her role as a neutral arbiter that guarantees ordered society through laws and rules.

Apart from the economy, other manifestation of absence of governance and reign of gangsters is the ongoing mindless killings by herdsmen across the Middle Belt region of the country. Not too long ago, Theophilus Danjuma, former Chief of Army staff and defence minister called on Nigerians to get ready to defend themselves. With army formations and police contingents Kaduna governor El-Rufai called for, we are assaulted everyday with newspaper howling headlines of many that have been killed by invaders who simply disappear into the thin air without trace.

Community policing has been adjudged as the best solution to insecurity in communities. And the logic is unassailable.  While federal police posted to remote communities in the country have little or no commitment to the people beyond doing their official duties, police from within the community have a stake in their communities. The Nigerian Police do not swear an oath to die for Nigeria. They therefore don’t have apologies for not going beyond their lines of duty. The Nigerian police we see at every remote area openly collecting bribes from motorists do so because they are protected by their anonymity.

Jide Oluwajuyitan

 

 

I dread travelling on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway because of tales of agony by those who regularly traverse the road. But two Fridays ago, I had to leave Lagos at 8am for a meeting scheduled for 10am in Ijebu Ode. I spent about four hours between Berger and the Redeemed Camp arriving at my destination at 12noon. In the early eighties, Lagos to Ibadan was just one hour and about two hours from Lagos to Ilesha.

The road, plied by about 25,000 vehicles daily is said to account for 75% of movement of goods across the nation. Yet the road accounts for the worst accidents in Nigeria. Multiple accidents involving petrol tankers are common occurrence. In one particular night on May 31, 2018, over 24 vehicles were burnt with several lives lost.

Government had in 2009 signed a concession agreement with Bi-Courtney under Design Build, Operate and Transfer arrangement. It was to be at no cost to government but to be managed by Bi-Courtney for 25 years to recoup its money. A presidential committee set up in 2013 to review the agreement recommended it be upheld since “it offers a quick and reasonable solution to the problem”.

But President Jonathan’s Works Minister Mike Onolememen, claiming that because no real progress was recorded in four years, government was prompted to terminate the agreement “to put an end the carnage on the road”.

Contract for the reconstruction was awarded to Julius Berger Nigeria Ltd and Reynolds Construction Company Limited at a sum of N167billion. Flagging-off the reconstruction in 2013, Jonathan said “we have adequate funds arrangement” while then PDP acting secretary insisted it was “another manifestation of President Jonathan’s transformation agenda” to ‘‘put the lie’ to the insinuation of marginalization against Southwest by the Jonathan administration’. This column immediately dismissed the exercise as Jonathan’s Shagamu road show’.

It was not difficult to see the opportunism on the eve of an election by an Azikiwe Jonathan who could not deliver on his promise on the Second Niger bridge in four years playing politics with important Lagos-Ibadan expressway,  described by his Works Minister, Onolememen’s as “a major artery that connects Lagos, major Nigerian seaports, to other states of the federation and forms not only a part of the Trans-Saharan Highway that links Lagos on the Atlantic Ocean to Algiers on the Mediterranean Sea but also part of the Trans-African Highway”.

In any case, the Yoruba who had experienced eight years of marginalization from Obasanjo, their son expected no special favours from Jonathan but good governance having experienced such in the past under late Obafemi Awolowo.

Besides, it amounts to shedding crocodile tears for the Yoruba who have alternative routes to their country when in fact those hit most are other Nigerians that have no alternative of ferrying their goods from the country’s major port and the nation’s economic nerve-centre.

But the tragedy of Lagos-Ibadan expressway and indeed many other abandoned roads in Nigeria did not start in 2013. Obasanjo, Jonathan’s godfather once embarked on similar road show when he flagged off with fanfare, the Ibadan-Ilorin expressway in 2001. As at 2014, a minister of works was still talking of efforts ‘to complete the Oyo-Ogbomosho portion of the road.’ That story has not changed.

There was also Works Minister Adeseye Ogunlewe who first flagged off the rehabilitation and reconstruction of this same Lagos-Ibadan expressway in 2003 shortly before an election Obasanjo desperately needed to win. The over N300billion budgetary allocation for roads construction, under the late Tony Anenih brought little relief to Nigerian road users.  The picture of Diezani Alison-Maduekwe as works minister, weeping like a baby over the suffering of motorists on the collapsed Sagamu-Ore Benin expressway even as journalists tried to console her is fresh in our memory.

For President Buhari and his APC resisting change and digging deeper into the hole, let us also call their attention to the report of the Presidential Projects Assessment Committee (PPAC) set up in March 2011, to look into cases of abandoned federal government projects. It claimed there were 11,886 abandoned projects that will cost an estimated N7.78 trillion to complete.

The Institute of Project Management of Nigeria (IPMN) and the then president’s Special Assistant on Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Professor Sylvester Monye gave   the breakdown and the spread of some of the projects as follows:  the 400 metres-long Utor Bridge along Asaba-Ebu-Uromi road awarded in 2006 but abandoned in 2009, Ikorodu-Sagamu road and Lagos-Otta road project awarded in 2001 but abandoned by both Impresit Bakolori PLC and Julius Berger because of ‘inadequate funding,’; the 36 kilometres Bodo-Bonny road in Rivers awarded in 2002; the abandoned 285 NNDC projects and 1,994 rural electrification projects among many others spread around the various geo-political zones of the country. The story has not changed. Ikorodu-Sagamu and Lagos-Otta roads which I am familiar with are still death traps.

But as Governor Nasir El Rufai, observed back then, “rather than these figures compelling the government to find solutions, it would rather engage in weekly charade of awarding new contracts or re-awarding old ones at higher prices during its weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meetings”.

This structure will not work even with an angel. “Show me 100 kilometres road your government completed in four years”, Fashola back in 2014 taunted Jonathan. Fashola after five years in the saddle recently admitted that Lagos–Ibadan expressway will be completed in 2022. In fact, as at May this year, only 61% (24 kilometres) of the 43 kilometres Ojota-Sagamu inter-change have been completed according to Kayode Popoola, Federal Controller of Works.

The system is the problem. A system that expects President Buhari and his minister of health who cannot manage the state house hospital under their nose to manage all the teaching hospitals and federal health centres in 774 LGAs of the country is doomed to fail

While President Buhari who claims not to  understand what restructuring or federalism is all about, America whose constitution we copied has moved on from cooperative to competitive federalism patterned along the lines of market economy whereby residents of states whose governors are  indolent move to states whose governors are more creative and more resourceful.

In the US, the government has a body of experts that handles federal roads, awards contracts and pay as per work done and as scrutinized by journalists. Here one minister in spite of 36 ministries of works, controls all the federal roads in all the nooks and corners of Nigeria.

A federal road runs from Akoko through Ado Ekiti, Ogotun Ekiti to Ipetu Ijesha; the only portion of the road that has endured, outliving even the state roads constructed with free federal allocation is the six kilometres portion that meanders through dangerous crevices, cracks, gorges and  valleys linking my town with Ipetu-Ijesha constructed with taxpayers money by Awolowo in 1959.

The reconstruction of Lagos-Ibadan expressway constructed within three years (August 1974-July 1977) which now has defied heroic efforts of four presidents spanning 20 years is a symptom of our crisis of nation building. The solution is a workable federal arrangement that guarantees the rights, freedom and liberty of groups and individuals ‘defined in form of language, culture and religion or socio-economic status’.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Niger Delta leaders are the curse of Niger Delta- a region blessed by God but cursed and turned into a scotched land by her privileged leading lights.

The ongoing probe of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) opened with the incredible story of its immediate past Acting Managing Director, Dr. Joy Nunieh about how pressure was mounted on her to give out Christmas palliatives to the tune of N10 billion package covering among others an emergency consultancy contract to “construct Infant Jesus”.

Then the incredible story by its Acting Managing Director, Prof Kemebradikumo Pondei of how N81.5 billion was frittered away between January and May under various headings- ‘COVID-19 palliatives for NNDC staff’ (N1.3 billion); media support for forensic audit (N641m); travels (N85.6m); condolences (N122.9m) etc. all at a period of COVID-19 lockdown.

Senator Godswill Akpabio who claims to be on a mission to change the narrative fingered corruption as the bane of NNDC  which according to him once spent N4.2b in one day and yet  ‘could not even buy a house they could use as an office after 19 years”.

But he has also been fingered by Peter Nwabaoshi, chairman of Senate Committee on Niger Delta Affairs of collecting contracts worth N500 million from the NDDC in 2017 alone without execution, a charge he denied saying the contracts were never awarded let alone paid for.

He however did not deny lobbying Nwabaoshi for the contracts.  Akpabio for now has the last words.  Nwabaoshi, along with lawmakers from the Niger Delta states according to him cornered over 60% of NNDC contracts.

But the rain started beating the helpless and impoverished people of Niger Delta long before the warring Nwabaoshi and Akpabio.

The region’s traditional rulers,  military stars,  celebrated politicians, thorough intellectuals,  journalists, and the business elite have all betrayed the poor people of Niger Delta that look up to them for direction.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, who told us Africans kill their own “sun” was consumed by Niger Delta traditional rulers he had described as “vultures” for collecting bribes from multinational oil companies polluting the rivers, the air and the land.

But there are other more vicious blood-feeding vultures-the successive Niger Delta governors. Diette Spiff was a governor under Gowon at about 25.

His only legacy was scraping the head of Journalist Amakiri with a broken bottle for reporting a strike threat by unpaid River State teachers, a report he regarded as an embarrassment on his birthday.

The young governor who could not pay teachers was missing during Murtala Muhammed 1975 change of government and was to be located on the high seas days later carousing with women inside his private ship, later seized by Murtala Mohammed along with some 16 ill-acquired properties in Port Harcourt.

Peter Odili, accused of financial infractions against his own people by EFCC secured a notorious  perpetual court injunction, conferring immunity on him even out of office.

And but for the British intelligence, we would never have known how much Alamieseigha the self-styled ‘Governor General of Ijaw” squandered on properties in France, Britain and German Town, Maryland in USA.

It was also a British Southwark Crown court that “on April 17, 2012  jailed James Ibori for 13 years after he ‘pleaded guilty to 10 counts of money laundering and stealing $50m from the Delta State treasury’.

Intellectuals and journalists from the Niger Delta have similarly failed the Niger Delta poor. The former after providing intellectual support for the region’s quest for bigger portion of the national cake often end up joining the thieving politicians in government.

The latter control the commanding heights of the print and electronic media but it took the intervention of CNN after Obama’s stiff penalties for multinational oil companies responsible for oil spillage in South America, to call the world attention to pollution and degradation of Niger Delta environment that had gone on for over 50 years.

Niger Delta business elite are unarguably among some of the most accomplished business men in Nigeria. Yet while the Benin – Warri portion of Benin – Port Harcourt road contract awarded in the early 80s to one of their members remained unattended to until the 90s, all they did was to fly their private jets from Lagos to Warri from where they connected their various villages.

Even with the already toxic Niger Delta rivers, air and land, it was a Niger Delta businessman that imported toxic waste that Europe didn’t want to bury in Europe because of its effect on human lives and the environment to Koko, a remote village in Niger Delta.

If the north as it is often claimed, controls more oil wells in the Niger Delta than the rest of the country, it is probably because there have been many Niger Delta petroleum ministers ready to sell their birthright for a pot of porridge.

Apolitical Tam David-West as petroleum minister tried to be more Nigerian than Ijaw forgetting that charity begins at home.

All he got for his pains from Babangida, was a jail term for a gift of wristwatch. Dan Etete was a ‘true son of the soil’.

He secured for himself a very lucrative oil well and kept his peace while Abacha continued from where Babangda stopped.

The status quo remained under Diezani Alison-Madueke as petroleum minister under a Niger Delta president.

She however took care of her close associates and family members that, according to EFCC, own multi-billion-naira prime properties in Britain and Dubai.

Unfortunately even Pa Edwin Clark who has spent all his life serving the Niger Delta  people – Mid-West Commissioner of Education (1986-710) Bendel State Commissioner for Finance and Establishment (1972 –75), Gowon’s Federal Commissioner (1975) and a Senator (1979-1983), has paid attention more to external enemies than looking inward to see the real curse of Niger Delta.

He not too long ago in a reaction to critics of endless looting by Niger Delta politicians angrily queried: “Who are they to tell us how to spend our money?”

On the other hand, few initiatives to improve the lots of Niger Delta poor that can neither fish nor farm due to polluted rivers and scorched land have come from outsiders.

While Niger Delta politicians were trying to outdo themselves in sponsoring  militants and oil bunkerers specializing in vandalisation of oil pipelines with its negative effects on the environment, it was Obasanjo who in 2000 set up the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) with the mandate of ‘developing the Niger Delta and ameliorating the suffering of the poor’.

And it was President Umaru Yar’Adua who, while retaining the NNDC, created in September 2008 the Ministry of Niger Delta.

But for Pastor Tunde Bakare and civil society groups that embarked on Abuja demonstrations that forced the National Assembly to come up with ‘the doctrine of necessity’, Jonathan who was fiercely opposed by the Yar’Adua mafia headed by James Ibori would never have become an acting president. He was to later ride on the back of Obasanjo who after outwitting the north over PDP rotational policy, carried him on his back around the country to become the first minority elected president.

Niger Delta however is a metaphor for Nigeria which Awolowo had likened to a fattened cow held down by some while being milked by a few powerful individuals.

The curse of Nigeria are Nigerian leaders who as a result of the benefits they derive from our current lack of direction, out rightly rejected “the path to Nigeria’s freedom”.