The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Elite conspiracy against youths

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    After one year of anxiety and suspense, relief finally came for 1,050 of the 60,000 Nigerian youths that participated in the 2019 NNPC recruitment exercise.

    Releasing the list of the prospective trainees last week,   Mele Kolo Kyari, the Group Managing Director of NNPC, assured Nigerians that ‘the outcome of the exercise reflected national spread and complied with all statutory suspense requirements”.

    To help the public decode Kyari,’s statement, the exercise was not strictly based on merit but on quota system, a euphemism for nepotism which has been institutionalised as part of our laws.

    As for other participating youths who graduated four to eight years earlier, with Masters Degrees and probably equipped with all the professional qualifications in their areas of specialization in Nigeria, Britain Canada etc., they will still have to wait a little more to know their fate.

    ‘The experience Hire (HR) component of the exercise would be addressed in due course”, Kyari added with cold relief.

    That our frustrated youths had to wait for a year for the result of an exercise they knew was not going to be based on merit but nepotism, explains  why Nigerian youths are moving out in droves  to earn a living  as second class citizens in those societies where merit and justice are  important determinants in achieving one’s potentials.

    But it has not always been like this. We used to have a just and organized society where youths dream dreams.

    The turning point started with the recruitment into the Nigerian Army by the new inheritors of power.  For short term ethnic advantage, they chose nepotism over meritocracy.

    As a result of rivalry with Igbo controlled NCNC, the first republic junior coalition partners, Ahmadu Bello and other northern leaders who back then did not  even have enough qualified northerners to run  their regional bureaucracy,  insisted Pitman typing qualification be accepted as equivalent to GCE as entry qualification to the Nigerian Army.

    Merit had taken full flight from the military institution by around 1963 when the outgoing British head of the army scored Aguiyi Ironsi third in the order of preference for his successor.

    That did not stop Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ozumba Mbadiwe and Mathew Mbu from lobbying Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa who had to secure a plane to convey the pressure group to Ahmadu Bello the NPC leader and strongman in Kaduna.

    Ironically, of all the politicians that sacrificed merit in the military for short term ethnic gain, the Sardauna was the only one killed in the January 1966 coup that ended Espirit de corps in the military and built the foundation for a future “Nigerian Army of anything is possible”.

    The soldiers then banished merit and moved themselves up the social ladder by paying themselves higher salaries than vice chancellors, the second highest paid public servants before the military intervention.

    Then ill-tempered soldiers started retiring bureaucrats, professors and appointing vice chancellors on ethnic or religious and even gender basis.

    The Sultan of Sokoto and Christian Association Chairman (CAN) soon became major actors in the appointment of university vice chancellors.

    Soldiers that were not trained on how to manage society then decreed quota system of admission into the universities, military schools and other federally funded institutions.

    This was followed with introduction of quota system of recruitment into the bureaucracy and federal parastatals to ensure those who secured admission with lower scores and came out with lower grades didn’t have to compete for jobs in NNPC, FRCN, PPPRA, Immigration Customs etc.  as those with first class and second class would have been shut out.

    Instead of building capacity as El-Rufai of Kaduna is now doing by devoting 40% of his budget to education, ill-trained soldiers chose to truncate the progress of others by compromising standards.

    Since a nation is as good as its bureaucracy, decay set in with the advent of ‘quota system’ bureaucrats, doctors, judges, attorney generals, IGs and social engineers etc. while the best brains that constitute the middle class  without which a nation decays,  migrated to other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas.

    Just last Monday, Muhammadu Sanusi II, the Emir of Kano while speaking during the Kaduna governor’s 60th birthday ceremony captured this betrayal of Nigerian youths and how the concept of quota system destroyed the north, its major beneficiary.

    Read Also: INEC announces fresh recruitment

     

    He warned his people saying: “The rest of the country cannot be investing in educating its children, producing graduates  and then they watch , they cannot get jobs  because they come from the wrong states, when we have not invested in the future of our children”.

    And concluding he said ominously, “If we don’t listen, there would be a day when there would be a constitutional amendment that addresses these issues of quota system and federal character”.

    But why have our political elite either as PDP or APC, its junior brother lived in denial for so long? Unfortunately unlike those who institutionalised nepotism to protect group privileges, the current suicidal political elite, exploit it for personal gains.

    NNPC’s last week’s outing, compared with standards elsewhere in the civilized world, was a disaster.  But that was the first time such was happening since 2012.

    As was under PDP, available slots in the military schools, Customs, EFCC, DSS, are still being filled mostly by children of military officers, members of the national assembly, governors and other political office holders under APC, the party of change.

    What we occasionally had as public recruitment exercise between 1999 and 2015 was a charade. For instance in 2012, after those in power had shared the available slots in the Immigration among themselves, about 200,000 hungry youths were invited for physical exercise as a cover up. Forty-three of them collapsed with 17 ending up in the morgue.

    In 2013, Abba Moro, a quota system minister from Benue State approved the sale of 520,000 applications for available 4,556 positions, raking in millions in application fees and cost of tee shirts.

    The applicants were already at some of the centres as early as 6.am while the ministry officials sauntered in at after 9.am without provisions for tables and chairs and writing materials.

    The Abuja National Stadium tragedy where eight of the 70,000 applicants including pregnant women who had been on the queue for over three hours were asked to use one entrance with no crowd control personnel, died in a stampede, was replicated across the nation.

    The bungled recruitment drive by the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) altogether left 19 desperate job seekers dead and scores of others in critical condition in hospitals all over the country.

    Nigerian elites have not only failed Nigerian youths, they have failed the nation. A quota system military institution as we have seen can enforce neither internal cohesion nor guarantee protection of territorial integrity of a deeply divided society.

    Rather than ‘give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar’, by teaching our youths how to think, quota system vice chancellors in a nation with biggest churches and largest catholic seminary in the world, try to outdo prosperity prophets and Imams in proselytization.

    In the private sector, nepotism has killed motivation and increased frustration as reflected by the number of youths escaping from the banking sector to Canada and other western nations despite their relatively better salary structure.

  • Cost of dearth of strong political parties

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    Reminded recently of a sense of betrayal by many Nigerians who in 2015 voted Buhari because of his party’s promise to restructure Nigeria and people’s disenchantment over his current stonewalling on the implementation Nasir El-Rufai committee report on restructuring, Governor Kayode Fayemi told us it would be “unfair for Nigerians to blame All Progressives Congress (APC) or Presidency for not implementing restructuring agenda as promised in its manifesto. He wants Nigerians to take their frustration to the doorsteps of the National Assembly who “should be tasked to work on the reports of the Nasir El-Rufai committee on restructuring formally submitted to the legislature by all the APC governors”.

    Governor Fayemi has learnt very fast. He has grown from being a social activist and public intellectual to a politician, a man of many words, who has learnt through timeless world of politics, the brinkmanship of how to cope with party intrigues and balance the ambition of party and non-party members. But the consolation is that Nigerians know where the buck stops. They know those to be held responsible now or in future for their current nightmare.  Nigerians know the party that controls 65 seats in the 109 seat Senate, 190 of the 360 Lower house seats and  about 21 of the 36 state governors but lacks the political will to address nation’s crisis of nationality.

    Those who genuinely care for our country know the answer to our crisis of nation building is restructuring or “how best  we can move towards a more perfect union through better management of our diversity” as Governor Fayemi puts, it to allay the fears of those who are afraid of the word restructuring. It is the most cost effective and less painful approach towards addressing the menace of cross border herdsmen; mindless killings of subsistence farmers in the middle belt region and in other federating states across the nation; importation of labour of other societies by unpatriotic Nigerians who import or smuggle substandard goods to kill our budding industries; end killing of Nigerians through importation of fake drugs and stop the  export of  social problems of some states in form of unemployable angry youths  who grew up without knowing parental  love or equipped for challenges of modern society through education,  to some more prosperous southern states. And since we operate at different levels of cultural development, it is the only way for elite consensus between National Assembly members who want to advertise their four wives and 27 children as evidence of power and affluence and those whose forebears engaged in such past-time in the late 19th century purely for economic reasons as children and women back then provided much needed farm labour. And finally, a consensus on how to manage our diversity will end the current ‘feudal system’ in the country whereby resources of states are cornered by a dysfunctional centre  and shared or looted by a few privileged members of the political elite as various judicial and house probes have shown since the end of the civil war.

    From the experiences of other multi-cultural societies such as India, Canada, Australia and Germany, elite consensus on common values is best negotiated through political parties, the 18th century ingenious creation of students of society. Here at home, our independence constitution which guaranteed an ordered society until a military that was never equipped to manage society destroyed it in 1966, was negotiated by NCNC, NPC and Action Group.

    But confronted with social problems they were ill-trained to manage, rather than allow normal evolution of political parties through free association of those who shared identical interest and values, the military decreed two political parties, NRC and SDP headed by Tom Ikimi and Tony Anenih. It got more bizarre with an intellectually- challenged General Abacha setting up his own five parties – UNCP, CNC, NCPN, DPN and GDM, with all of them adopting him their  presidential candidate. The PDP, ANPP and AD that emerged during General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s 11-month transition program were infiltrated and hijacked by retired military Generals and their contractors.

    It was therefore not a surprise that PDP described byJohn Campbell, former US envoy as ‘an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria that came together  for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’, and its military-baked ‘newbreed’ politicians  did what soldiers of fortune do best – sharing the loot of conquered territories.

    For eight years, Obasanjo’s roadmap promised to provide stable electricity, attain agricultural revolution, end massive importation of foreign goods as well as fight corruption. President Yar’Adua had a seven-point agenda and President Jonathan added his own ‘transformation agenda’, but PDP only served the interest of PDP.

    In August 2013, the All Progressives Congress unfolded its own eight-point cardinal programme- devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care, electricity generation, war against corruption, food security,   integrated transport network and free education”; all of which Chief Olisa Metuh, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, dismissed as s “a very poor imitation and a bland parody of PDP manifesto.”

    What is not in dispute however is that PDP and APC members are all military-baked ‘new breed’ politicians and share identical mind-set. Nuhu Ribadu, a man who should know better as former EFCC boss and as a politician who has operated within the inner circle of the two parties told us that looking for saints among current Nigerian politicians will be an arduous task.

    Unlike the first and second republics, when there were strong parties and party supremacy, APC and PDP governors are answerable only to themselves.  Again, this was perhaps why Nuhu Ribadu, had during a two-day summit of Northern Development Focus Initiative (NDFI) in Kano in January 2013 said “the 19 northern state governors and the 414 local governments have nothing to show for the N8.3 trillion that accrued to them between 1999 and 2010 whereas Ahmadu Bello’s NPC with an annual budget of N44m maintained law and order and ensured effective security of life and property among other achievements.

    There has been similarly nothing remarkable about the outing of southwest governors whether PDP or APC. Intra-city and inter-state roads are in states of disrepair, rural health programmes that thrived in the first republic have collapsed. Neither Bodija housing estate for workers nor Ikeja GRA built in the first republic has been replicated elsewhere since 1999. About four ranches were located in various parts of Western State by the Action Group government of Awolowo and his colleagues within eight years but 20 years into the fourth republic, southwest continues to depend on the north for about 10,000 cows consumed in the geopolitical zone daily.

    Unlike political parties, both PDP and APC that don’t dream dreams cannot perform miracles. It is also obvious from their baleful record since 1999 that they have both failed the nation over routine responsibilities of government that do not require the intervention of angels or men with special talents.

    If anything, Fayemi’s response to the betrayal of Nigerians by his party has confirmed there is little or no difference between PDP and APC neither of which seems to have any philosophical foundation or an ideological orientation.

  • Buhari, service chiefs and political advisers

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    President Buhari needs help. The greatest threat to President Buhari’s legacy is Buhari himself. That he as a former army General, a hero of a civil war, fought to keep Nigeria united, suffers from a messianic complex  behaving most of the time like a monarch and the embodiment of the sovereign power of the nation is not unusual.

    Unfortunately, his APC party, those in his inner circle who many believe are serving other tendencies and many of the round pegs in square holes who are paid from public purse to protect the president, seem to promote this illusion.  This perhaps explains why President Buhari seems to listen only to President Buhari.

    Since his election in 2015, none seems to have had the courage to remind President Buhari that we now run a participatory democracy which makes interventions of constituents groups and individuals in political decisions and policies that affect their lives imperative.

    And when they are not maintaining their loud silence on those many occasions the president shot himself in the leg, they are embarking on vicious attack on those critics including his wife who genuinely care about the legacies of a president who got into power with so much goodwill.

    When holed up like an emir in Aso rock for six months unable to constitute a cabinet, an exercise that takes less than 24 hours in other participatory democracies, neither APC nor his new confidants his wife claimed had no idea of APC manifesto had the courage to engage the president on what his political opponents regarded as indolence.

    When it took him almost two and half years to constitute the boards of over 500 small governments he needed to implement his party manifesto and ended up with a list containing names of some dead nominees, sycophants tried to defend the indefensible.

    When the president’s minister of defence appeared to be blaming victims of herdsmen mindless killings, when the Emir of Kano was prodding Fulani settlers in Benue to embark on insurrection; when a particular governor arrogantly insisted cross-border Fulani herdsmen from other parts of West Africa must be accommodated within RUGA project to be funded with our taxpayers’ money, neither APC, nor the minister of information or any of his special assistants, who did not need to wait for the president’s permission before dissociating him from such indiscreet statements, did so.

    If anything, they by their in-actions, strengthened the hands of those Buhari political detractors who often call attention to the president’s body language as motivation for unguarded statements and criminal activities of some cross-border immigrants.

    The president and his men have thus made it more difficult for those who have no reason to doubt his pan-Nigeria agenda to dismiss such parallels.

    In view of increased spate of mindless killings, kidnapping and banditry in spite of the valiant efforts of the military, the president has ignored the various calls that the current service chiefs who were appointed in July 2015 be allowed to go on their well-deserved retirement after their tour of duty.

    Under military regulations, their terms of service expired in 2017, but the president has kept them on despite the 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.”

    The justification was based on the efforts of the military chiefs in tackling terrorism in the Northeast and addressing other security issues.

    The then chairman of the Senate Committee on Army, Senator Ali Ndume, supported the move claiming we could not afford to change the military leadership because Nigeria was in a complete state of war

    In recent months, Nigerians have in view of daring criminal assault by herdsmen on innocent Nigerian subsistence farmers across the nation and resurgence of Boko Haram activities in the northeast renewed the call for the replacement of the service chiefs.

    The National Assembly have identified with the demand. Last week, the House passed a resolution calling on all of the military service chiefs to resign or be sacked by President Muhammadu Buhari. Earlier, the Senate had also expressed the view that the service chiefs had to go.

    From newspapers, the call by the two houses is backed by 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) who staged a massive protests over increasing insecurity in some Nigerian cities on Sunday as well as other opinion leaders including the founding member of the Arewa Consultative Forum and Kano politician, Alhaji Tanko Yakassi;, former Provost-Marshal, Nigerian Army, Brigadier-General Idada Ikponmwen (retd).

    Read Also: ‘Sack of service chiefs, not solution to end insurgency’

     

    And the reasons adduced by them range from: the need for new ideas, philosophy and method in the fight against insurgency in the country; the need for the president to listen to the voice of the people by reorganizing the security architecture of country; and the urgent need to remove the service chiefs, who have since reached retirement age in the military and now constitute   themselves into stumbling blocks to career rises of other officers.”

    Once again, many believe we are in this sorry pass because of the mind-set of the president and hypocrisy of some of his close advisers who seem to care more about security of their position than telling the president the truth he may not want to hear.

    President Buhari is not a monarch. Even if he humours himself and pretends to be one just like Babangida did when he adorned himself with a borrowed robe of a president after a palace coup, the age of divine rights of kings ended a long time ago.

    He needs to come to terms that he is an elected president in a participatory democracy, a new value system which rejects nepotism and provincialism as bases for decision -making and embraces bureaucracy, which according to a German sociologist, Max Weber, “constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized and insists that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency, and eliminate favoritism”.

    Destroy bureaucracy, the nation decays. That was exactly what Generals Obasanjo and Murtala Mohammed did to our country in 1975/76.

    They followed up by destroying the press to complete Nigerian military assault on major institutions of society such as political parties, universities and civil society all of which are critical for society to thrive.

    The sycophants who are claiming the president as an ex- General is best equipped to manage the military the way he likes are therefore wrong.

    They seem to underestimate the far reaching implications of undermining morale within the military institution. When Babangida did it, we ended up with “an army of anything is possible” with Generals Abacha, Useni, David Mark and a few other officers without character holding the nation to ransom.

    It will amount to living in denial to dissociate the current apparent helplessness of the military from general disenchantment, low morale and assault occasioned by political interference and disruption of its bureaucratic system.

  • State/community policing as answer to insecurity

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Statistics of daily harvest of deaths from bandits, kidnappers and herders’ siege as well as those arising from Boko-Haram’s continuous attack on soft targets in the Northeast underscore not just how cheap life has become in Nigeria, but also the verdict on President Buhari’s handling of security, the most important reason Nigerians traded their freedom for his protection of their lives and properties.

    Many Nigerians including APC sympathisers will readily agree the failure of government in this critical department is as a result of President Buhari’s mind-set.

    In an age when governance has become a science, the president and his men have continued to ignore expert advice, public opinion and the wishes of Nigerians on the desirability of local and state police in a multi-cultural and heterogeneous society.

    He has continued to show his inclination towards centralization and uniformity just as his predecessors have done since the collapse of the first republic. Government response to every sign of social dislocation has always been more centralization.

    President Buhari has turned this to an art often resorting to force to demonstrate federal might even in circumstances where negotiation and compromise have better chance of ensuring unity in diversity in a deeply divided society like ours.

    Every cycle of mindless killings in the last five years was followed by an assurance that victim communities would not be abandoned by the rest of the country, a promise that often found expression in deployment of police, soldier’s tanks and jet bombers.

    Let us start  with the president’s own Katsina State where  eight  local government areas  including Kankara; Faskari; Dan-Musa; Safana; Sabuwa; Dandume; Jibia and Batsari have according to a report in Thisday, lost about 2,000 people, with 500 communities destroyed and over 33,000 people displaced as a result of  incessant attacks.

    President Buhari’s establishment of the Air Force bases at Daura and Katsina, and a Brigade Command of the Nigerian Army, has according to Dr.  Bashir Ruwangodiya, Masari’s special adviser on higher education failed to “put an end to banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and murder, as well as other crimes in Katsina State.”

    In Plateau State, separate attacks by some unidentified gunmen according to Vanguard newspapers report (March 17, 2014) reportedly led to the death of 32 people were in Riyom Local Government, 19 in Rajat, and 11 in Atakar with about 60 houses burnt.

    In Kaduna State, the paper also claimed gunmen suspected to be Fulani, killed no fewer than 30 people in Kirim, Zagan and Zandyen villages and razed hundreds of houses in the three communities.

    Similar killings were reported in other areas of the state notably Sankwai, Tekum and Unguwan Gata villages in Maroa Chiefdom when the villages were invaded by those the villagers said looked like cross-border Fulani gunmen.

    The cycle of killings have continued in Plateau State. Just last Monday, January 27, the Police in Plateau through ASP Abu Gabriel admitted the death toll in last Sunday night attack on Kwatas village in Bokkos Local Government Area of the state by gunmen had risen to 15.

    This attack according to NAN reports was the second in the last two weeks. Twelve persons were reportedly killed in Kulben village in Kombun District of Mangu Local Government Area of the state by gunmen during the first attack.

    President Buhari’s response to last week attack on Dogon Gona forest in Niger State communities by bandits, kidnappers and cattle rustlers was predictable.

    Garba Shehu, the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, has since informed Nigerians that the president had authorised the deployment of air power to support troops and policemen deployed to the “difficult terrain,” to counter the menace of the attackers operating in the forest area bordering Kaduna, Niger and Zamfara states.

    The Police Command in Niger has equally given assurances that the planned dedicated air raids to complement the police helicopter gunship operations remain the best approach given the lack of motorized roads in the areas constantly under attack.”

    And in what appears an advance notification to the criminals to relocate before the bombing, Garba Shehu hilariously added: ‘With the harmattan dust gradually easing its hold on the skies, it is time to strike’.

    Experts have said military raids will continue to fail because of ‘the operational challenges arising from insufficient knowledge of the terrain.

    Read Also: Insecurity: Buhari stunned as lawmakers seek action

     

    Some of the communities in North-western Nigeria’s forestlands, according to Chukwuma Okoli are “located in remote areas where there is little or no government presence.

    This situation is made worse by the absence of effective community policing mechanisms capable of addressing the hinterlands’ peculiar security challenges”.

    There is a consensus among experts, concerned Nigerians and victims of herdsmen killings and bandits’ attack across the country that the cheapest and most effective strategy for securing local communities is through community policing.

    In fact the pattern of attack as highlighted above has clearly shown that it is only the local people with the knowledge of themselves and of their terrain, who speak the same language and have stakes in their communities that are better placed to prevent infiltration and the overrunning of their communities by strangers.

    Asking police men from Yoruba or Igbo country to go and confront Boko Haram in Borno State, local warlords and Fulani land grabbers in Zamfara or immigrant Fulani herdsmen and men fleeing the hostile Sahel region to Nigeria is to mistake policemen for soldiers who pledge to lay down their lives for their country.

    State and community policing, whose central theory is that it can build relationships with their community through interactions with local agencies and members of the public, remain the best safeguard against insecurity in a deeply divided society like ours.

    Perhaps the challenge posed to Abuja by the inauguration of  ‘Amotekun’ security outfit by southwest states has finally pushed the federal government  to revisit the community policing scheduled to have come on stream since August last year.

    But there is already an apparent demonstration of insincerity on the part of the federal government. According to a Punch report, the IGP last Sunday ordered all state Commissioners of Police, Assistant Commissioners of Police and Divisional Police Officers to liaise with traditional rulers and community leaders in their domains to screen volunteers who would be engaged after passing the screening tests.

    State and community police are not arms of federal police. Since we are a federation, states or group of states who share identical values should be allowed to organize community police that can best serve their purpose.

    It is instructive that the Middle Belt Forum has already expressed preference for a regional security outfit like Amotekun which they believe would be more effective in curbing insecurity in the Middle Belt region.

    Federal, state/community police maintain their different identities in all federations including the US where sanctions for the same offence differ from county to county.

    Nigerians have no reason to doubt the president’s commitment to the country. But on account of his mind-set and his known opposition to restructuring and devolution of power including state police, not a few will view his directive and the IG’s  attempt to introduce uniformity into community policing  as part of a design to ensure the whole idea of state/ community policing is dead on arrival.

  • Malami, Amotekun and President Buhari

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    As products of our different environments, we are Hausa/Fulani, Igbo or Yoruba, Muslims or Christians by accident. No one should therefore have apologies for loyalty to his or her primary constituencies and faith.

    Charity must begin at home – to paraphrase Edmund Burke philosophy. Or as Chief Obafemi Awolowo puts it, you cannot be a good Nigerian if you are not first a good representative of your people.

    In spite of widely advertised commitment of President Buhari to his Fulani ethnic group and his Islamic faith, his commitment to Nigeria has never been in doubt.

    He fought a civil war. He was unjustly imprisoned for over three years for fighting corruption, enforcing discipline and for admonishing Nigerians to eat what they produce or starve. He fought and lost three presidential elections until he succeeded the fourth time at over 70 years of age.

    President Buhari on whose table the buck stops therefore clearly understands why he is in government. The choice as to whether he wants to be remembered as a Nigerian statesman or a Fulani irredentist, the image into which he has been cast by his Fulani kinsmen using his name to pursue what other federating ethnic groups regard as Fulani agenda to build on their 1904 conquest of Hausa states.

    The president cannot pretend not to have been warned, first by Pa Bisi Akande, the interim chairman of APC and later, Aishat Buhari, the president’s wife. They both said those who hijacked his government love neither Buhari nor Nigeria.

    For keen observers, Malami’s current unproductive war with southwest and its governors amidst a siege by cross border Fulani herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers has parallel in the blaming of victims of cross-border herdsmen’s killings in the middle belt region by the president’s Minister of Defence not long ago.

    It is also not different from the burden placed on the president by his senior media adviser who claimed his daughter was entitled to the use of presidential jet for photo-shoot.

    Now what people remember is not a president who insists his wife travels by commercial airlines but the contradiction between a candidate Buhari   who once took his war with ex- President Jonathan over the misuse of presidential fleet to London and a President Buhari who now places a presidential jet at the service of his daughter.

    And while Malami’s current war with the Yoruba and her governors’ security initiative is intensified, the picture Nigerians see is that of Lamido Sanusi, the Emir of Kano   surrounded by Hisbah police that arrest and prosecute Muslim offenders, by virtue of our federal arrangement while the same emir is openly inciting herdsmen located in Benue to disobey laws of their host state.

    The Southwest governors insisted they reached out to Police Inspector-General Adamu Mohammed and the Director-General of the Department of State Security Services (DSS), Mallam Yusuf Magaji Bichi informing them that Operation Amotekun is not different from a neighborhood watch security organization.

    Indeed the police commissioners in the affected states were present at the launching of the governors’ security initiative. But in character with the president kinsmen, these facts did not stop Malami from declaring:

    “The setting up of paramilitary organisation called Amotekun is illegal and contrary to the provisions of Nigerian law”, contemptuously adding, “the governors are aware that there are 67 items on the Exclusive Legislative List and they should have pushed for constitutional amendment to move policing to the Concurrent Legislative List.”

    That Malami is serving other tendencies or has a mindset is apparent as nearly all accomplished law scholars and eminent lawyers and the NBA faulted his position. For the NBA: ‘The law allows a person or group of persons to protect themselves within the framework of the law and/or report untoward activities to the police’.

    As for Afe Babalola, “All that the AGF said is that Article 45 of the constitution, second schedule gives to the federal government the exclusive power to manage the police, he did not say that sections 20, 40 and 45 which are superior to the schedule are abrogated”.

    And finally, for Itse Sagay “there is nothing in the constitution that precludes either states or association of states from taking care of their security.”

    Unfortunately, the colour of those who lined up behind Malami’s flawed legal position only strengthened the position of peddlers of conspiracy theories.

    First was Dr. Junaid Mohammed, a Second Republic lawmaker, who describes the security outfit Amotekun, as “nothing but a tribal militia to prosecute the region’s agenda of transforming into a separate nation through the backdoor”.

    Also lining up behind Malami was a Miyyeti Allah chieftain who said the “Amotekun scheme is political and is not the solution to the problem of insecurity. He wants the Southwest governors to continue to push for state police, (probably through the legislature); offensively adding “It is best they give up on this idea because it may affect the chances of the Southwest to produce the President in 2023”.

    Read Also: Malami stirs up hornet’s nest over Amotekun

    And finally, there was the former governor of old Kaduna State and elder statesman, Balarabe Musa, who declared “First of all, taking into account what happened in the history of Nigeria, this Amotekun will lead to a declaration of Oduduwa Republic.”

    But when has a regional agenda in a federation become a crime and why is Balarabe Musa afraid of history? We will come to that shortly.

    It is not lost on Nigerians that the common refrain from all those who lined up behind Malami are repudiation of restructuring, devolution of powers and fiscal federalism.

    It is their position that those seeking solution to our national question must go through the National Assembly where experience from 1999 has shown, it will take a camel to pass through a needle’s eye to get the above changes which are at the core of our crisis of nation-building, through.

    Now Let us return to why those who are opposed to regional agenda in a federation are afraid of history. Chief Awolowo was a torn in the flesh of coalition partners (Hausa Fulani and Igbo) for preaching ‘one man one vote’ among minorities in the north and east as the shortest route to their freedom from hegemonic powers that treated them as slaves.

    After independence, he was framed up and imprisoned for 10 years by the federal government. They openly boasted: by the time he returned if he ever did, he would be too old to question how they governed Nigeria.

    With Western Region and its leadership decimated, Igbo and Hausa Fulani warring politicians confronted themselves over disputed 1962/63 census figures finally settled in favour of the north by the Nigerian judiciary. The rivalry of the two estranged coalition partners over the soul of Nigeria led to the civil war.

    The victorious cornered the loot of war. Military social engineering methods have since been applied to ensure more states and LGAs for the north, federal take-over of state-owned institutions, establishment of federal unity schools and JAMB, and quota system of admission and recruitment into federal schools and federal bureaucracy to prevent a return to pre-1966 Nigeria where meritocracy allowed people to develop at their own pace without interference from a dysfunctional centre.

    The current war by Malami and the tendency he represents seems to confirm the fears of the people of southwest that the flooding of their territory by cross-border herdsmen, bandits and poor jobless street urchins is a continuation of war against a people whose only sin is to desire what they want for themselves for others.

    Unfortunately, except President Buhari who critics believe lives in denial, most Yoruba who are today no more safe in their homes, roads and farms believe the war has become  intensified under Buhari presidency they helped install.

  • Tehran crowd, warlords and American justice

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    The ongoing cycle  of violence in the old Persian Gulf of Iran, Iraq and Syria that led to the  cold-blooded assassination of Iranian nationalist, General Qassem Soleimani,  branded a regional terrorist by America who, by killing him on Iraq soil can also under the international law be regarded as international terrorist, President Trump’s threat to unleash  his ‘$3 trillion beautiful machines’ for harvests of more deaths and the unintentional  downing of Ukrainian airline leading to the death of over 172 mainly Iranians nationals were all but  a confirmation that Homo Sapiens are beasts whose natural habitat is the jungle where life is cheap, brutish and short.

    It is not that God does not know the nature of man, the worst of His creation. “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Moses in Genesis 6:5) It is on record that Cain even went on to murder Abel, his brother forcing God to decree “So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.  When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth.”

    God’s institutionalization of His commandments to check mankind’s avariciousness and recklessness only hardened the minds of accursed fugitives who responded by institutionalizing injustice through, first, slavery, then capitalism and globalization, all designed to appropriate human and material resources of endowed underdeveloped nations of India, (‘the jewel of the crown’), the Persian Gulf, the Democratic Republic Of Congo, Libya and Nigeria among other African nations.

    The enduring dominant narrative even as warlords and their gangsters live on the sweat and blood of their victims is ‘the white man’s burden’.

    Thus after sponsored streets demonstrations, Muhammar Gadhafi who deployed the oil riches of Libya to create an egalitarian society, turned a disparate desert villages into a modern state and also liberated African nations from the strangle-hold of IMF and World Bank, had to be murdered by British, French and American gangsters in breach of international law to save democracy-craving Libyan youths from their despotic leader and regional terrorist.

    Iraq’s Saddam Hussein who Britain, Germany, France and USA armed to fight their proxy war with Iran for eight years was declared a terrorist and murdered by American forces ostensibly to save the people of Iraq from their despotic ruler.

    The narrative was not different last week when Iranian nationalist Qassem Soleimani who was organising attack on Iranian enemy- rings in the Persian Gulf was labeled terrorist and killed by those who believe ‘might is right’ and who under their policy of maximum pressure campaign, characterized more by emotion, imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran after unilaterally withdrawing from an internationally-negotiated agreement which all participants and UN Inspectors agreed was working.

    But how and did Iran become a regional terrorist to enforcers of American justice?

    Iran was an Old Persian Empire with a highly developed culture at an age when the forebears of her today’s enemies were living in the caves. Her abundant resources especially fossil fuel deposits, controlled by Britain until 1952, were to become her curse.

    William Knox D’Arcy, a wealthy British who played a prominent role in the oil industry in Nigeria also played similar role in Iran through Anglo-Persian Oil which later became British BP.

    Read Also: Rouhani to Iran military: explain plane downing

     

    An attempt by Iran at self-actualization and control of her resources following the lowering of the British flag in 1952 led to the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. As a result of the tension that followed, Britain and the CIA in a code-named operation Ajax overthrew democratically elected Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq.

    This was followed by jailing and killing of many leading Iranian political activists from the Nationalist and Communist parties. Winston Churchill, who as British First Lord of the Admiralty helped Britain to secure a large portion the Anglo-Persian Oil  before World War 1 played a prominent role in the decision to overthrow Mossadeq and  reinstate  Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had been overthrown in the Iranian revolution,   back to power

    Iran which was never at any time a British -colonised nation was between 1901 and 1951 a client state. It was the British that encouraged Reza Khan who later crowned himself king (Shah) to carry out a coup. It was the same British that replaced him with his son Mohammed Reza Shah when British interest was threatened.

    And  for nationalising Iranian oil, it was the British that labeled  Dr. Mohammed Mussadeq, the prime minister whose  support came from the streets and the students a “megalomania  verging on mental instability who could only be stopped from allowing Persia to fall into Communist hands only through coup d’état”.

    It was the British that drove Iranian politicians to seek support of ‘the Tehran crowd of traders, students, poor urban urchins and misguided poor Iranian religious zealots.

    And finally,  It was the pursuit of  British neo-colonial and Anglo-Iranian oil interest that led to  “the fall of the Shaz In 1979,  the bringing back of Ayatollah Khomeini with Islamic courts, veiling of women, stoning of adulterers and chopping off of hands of thieves” (Brian Lapping, End of Empire’)

    In the last two weeks, the world has been given an opportunity to see different faces of the ‘Tehran crowd’: the hungry, the ugly and the angry, creations of Britain, France and Germany who believe that in in the animal kingdom, some animals are more equal than others and of course America whose new definition of American justice is ‘might is right’

     

  • Threat to our republic

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Nigeria is a republic. And sovereignty in a republic belongs to the people. The ruled within the republic expect their elected or appointed representatives to be guided by the rule of law.

    Unfortunately 57 years after Nigeria became one of the world 159 sovereign nations that go with the “republic’ prefix, President Buhari and some his political appointees have become the greatest threat to the survival of our republic.

    President Buhari who seems to be driven by messianic complex is hardly moved to action by public opinion. His administrative style, best described as “delegation by abdication” which allows his political appointees to operate in their own world does not help matter.

    We have therefore in a federal republic seen a minister of defence coming out to attribute the mindless killings of subsistence farmers on their lands by intra-national and international cross border herdsmen to the blocking of grazing route by federating states.

    We have seen an attempt to smuggle an indicted fugitive offender back into the bureaucracy. We have seen an abuse of   the Department of State Service (DSS), a security arm of the state by the president’s political appointees that hijacked and used it to invade the National Assembly chambers, desecrate hallow chambers of justice and undermine rule of law, the pillar of a republic.

    Tragically, everything is done in the name of President Buhari who sometimes forgets the buck stops at his table.

    And because of the president blind’s faith in the goodness of his political appointees, they on their part don’t think they are answerable to Nigerians whose taxes sustain them.

    Those who have kept Dasuki in detention for over three years despite judicial pronouncement did not even bother to proffer explanation for their perfidy or betrayal of our republic.

    For keeping Sowore, a social media tiger who lost woefully in the last presidential election in detention after securing a court bail, he became a rallying point for President Bhuhari’s domestic and international detractors. He was turned to an instant hero as a result of ineptitude and disloyalty of some people in government to our republic.

    Because of their folly, major Nigerian newspapers took turns to condemn President Buhari’s lawlessness and his administration’s assault on freedom and liberty of Nigerians. They in their different editorials waged a common war against government’s assault on rule of law.

    Civil society groups joined forces with the media, organizing protests and staging demonstrations in Abuja and other cities. International media and American State Department also joined the campaign against what was described as President ‘Buhari’s creeping dictatorship’.

    Through all this, The Attorney General and the Minister of Justice who has committed treachery against our republic kept on acting as if Nigeria is a private property of some people or a nation not governed by law.

    But last week, following the intervention of people described as the president’s “confidants, including governors and ex-security chiefs,” who reportedly pointed out the “political and international implications” of continued detention despite court’s ruling, Dasuki and Sowore were released by a presidential order. By ordering the immediate release of the duo in line with pre-existing judicial pronouncements, the president clearly understands Malami’s folly and betrayal of our republic may at the end define his presidency.

    Malami in a statement admitted directing “the State Security Services to comply with the order granting bail to the defendants and effect their release in line with the provisions of Sections 150(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), and in compliance with the bail granted to Col. Sambo Dasuki (Rtd) (as recently varied by the Court of Appeal) and the bail granted to Omoyele Sowore”.

    To confirm he was reluctantly carrying out an order, he added “Whilst the Federal High Court has exercised its discretion in granting bail to the defendants in respect of the charges against them, I am also not unmindful of the right of the complainant/prosecution to appeal or further challenge the grant of bail by the court having regards to extant legal provisions, particularly Section 169 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015.” Malami did not tell Nigerians while he did not take that route before the president’s action which was an expression of lack of confidence in his competence.

    Read Also: How we waged ‘Wetie’ crusade of the First Republic -Basorun

     

    Close observers of the presidency would have noticed that Shehu Garba, the president’s senior media adviser shares the same mindset with Malami. It was therefore not a surprise that like Malami, he in his own press release wants Dasuki and Sowore to regard their temporary relief a pyrrhic victory reminding them of existing provision that allows federal government to appeal against their release.

    On Sunday, Malami who had earlier claimed the decision to release them was necessitated by compliance with the bail granted the duo by the court without telling Nigerians why the court order had been met in default for over three years in the case of Dasuki and four months in the case of Sowore said “the release of the duo was not due to pressure but was done out of compassion.”

    Abubakar Mallami was undoubtedly on top of his games.  But even Nigerians are suffering from collective amnesia, they live in Nigeria and not on planet Mars.

    In all this, I think the greatest loser is President Buhari whose presidency at the end may be defined by the follies of those who many suspected serve as fifth columnist in his administration.

    It was only last Monday Kogi State’s Governor Bello reacting to to those who describe President Muhammadu Buhari as a dictator said “Mr. President is the most democratic president I have ever seen.

    This is the first time we are seeing a former military head of state that is so democratic to the extent of allowing things happening in his home front to be democratized”.

    While this might resonate well with Nigerians who could recollect Buhari’s predisposition to his loss of three presidential elections that went up to the appeal court or the hijacking of his APC victory by Saraki and Ekwerenmadu in 2015 while trying to advertise his democratic credentials  by not interfering in the election of principal officers of the National Assembly, it will not resonate with victims of abuse of rule of law and Nigerians who feel diminished by government assault on rule of law under the leadership of minister of justice Malami in the last five years.

    With the over-ruling of Malami, by an embarrassed President Buhari whose own democratic credential is in tatters, if it were to be in other climes he would have resigned honourably.

    But as with DSS recruitment scandal, the Dubai misadventure and Maina scandal, Abubakar Malami will stay on inflicting more injuries on President Buhari’s administration and more assault on sensibilities of Nigerians.

  • Oshiomhole vs Obaseki the dearth of democratic ethos

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Democracy has its own ethos. As a representative or majoritarian rule, character, or what Aristotle described as ‘balance between passion and caution” of political actors is important if democracy is to be anything other than the tyranny of the majority.

    For democracy to thrive therefore, political actors must be committed to a set of ideals. Unfortunately for us our political space has been largely populated since independence in 1960 by political actors without character.

    But it should be a relief if it is understood that by the very nature of man coupled with  today’s unbridled individualism, men of character are in short supply everywhere.

    In fact it was for this reason that when democracy became an idea some three hundred years ago, philosopher Michel de Montaigne according to James Kloppenburg’s ‘Toward Democracy’, rejected democracy saying he did not believe ordinary people were capable of the self-restraint democracy required.

    The ongoing Oshiomhole and Obaseki feud must therefore be seen as a symptom of our crisis of democracy- a new value system we embraced without its ethos.

    The feud also has a parallel with what happened in the old western region between Awolowo and Akintola and during Obasanjo and Atiku in the fourth republic, when men generally regarded as patriots rose to power exploiting democracy as a process for attaining power only to undermine democratic ideals in other to cling to power either by resorting to violence or by engineering constitutional amendments.

    Awolowo had preferred Rotimi Williams or Anthony Enahoro to Akintola as successor in 1959 but gave in to party supremacy.

    But Akintola was to ignore the democratic ethos by refusing to step down following his constitutional removal by the same party.

    He instead sought and got the help of coalition partners who were desperate to settle scores with their political opponent to interfere in the affairs of a federating region in breach of the constitution.

    Realising his vulnerability in the parliament, as soon as motion for vote confidence was raised, Akintola’spocket of supporters led by Chief Remi fani Kayode resorted to violence, throwing chairs indiscriminately, an excuse the federal government needed to declare state of emergency in the west.

    At the end of the illegal emergency, Awo remained  incarcerated while Akintola was installed Premier without election.

    Nigeria judiciary upheld Akintola’s decision to undermine the democratic ethos that aided him in his rise to power.

    Even when the Privy Council, the them highest judicial body in the land upturned the victory Akintola secured through Nigerian court, it was a pyrrhic victory as political actors without character passed a retroactive law to make the privy council’s ruling unenforceable.

    We have no evidence Obaseki loves Edo state less than Oshiomhole, his god father who in 2016 used power of incumbency to impose him at the expense of other APC stalwarts such as Chris Ogiemwonyi(former minister of state for works) former army general Gen.

    Charles Arihiavbare and former deputy governor, Dr. Pius Odubu. If anything, Oshiomhole attested to Obaseki’s passion for Edo. Asked by reporters on October 24 2016 the reason for his blind faith in Obaseki, Oshiomhole had said Obaseki was “more competent than him and would bring more development to Edo”.

    Reporters are known to be cynical. One had asked how he would take betrayal by Obaseki if that ever happened. He shot back “I have no interest to be betrayed”, adding “I am not the state; I am only one out of about four million Edo people. So his obligation and his loyalty should be to the people of Edo State.”

    Today, with his second term bid threatened, Obaseki is on the offensive. He started by first removing the only commissioner his estranged god-father nominated to his cabinet.

    Read Also: Edo APC crisis: Oshiomhole’s faction dares Obaseki

     

    Attempt has also been made by Obaseki through his media adviser, Taiwo Akerele to rubbish some of the projects Oshiomhole initiated.

    Obaseki as a good student of Nigerian politic has refined Akintola’s 1962 strategies thereby foreclosing the possibility of being impeached by Edo House of Assembly.

    Represented in Abuja by a PDP senator and PDP member of the lower house, Obaseki understands he has a week political base and has decided to take the bull by the horn.

    The Clerk of Edo House of Assembly, Yahaya Omogbai, was said to have ushered seven members in a house of 24 laws makers-elect into the chamber at midnight and read out the Obaseki’s letter of proclamation with which Honourable Frank Okiye the governor’s anointed candidate for speaker was elected.

    With that coup, it has been victory after victory for Governor Godwin Obaseki.

    Following The Senate and the House of Representatives resolutions on the findings of committees led by Senator Sabiu  Aliyu Abdullahi and Honourable Abdulrazak Namdas for the respective chambers to invoke section 11, subsection 4 of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria “In the event that a new proclamation is not issued as recommended within the period of three weeks”, Obaseki sought and got a relief from Justice Kolawole Omotosho’s Federal High Court Abuja.

    The national assembly was told “it could not compel Obaseki to issue another proclamation within the lifespan of an existing proclamation”.

    The court also ruled “NASS lacked the power to take over the functions of Edo Assembly or any other state House of Assembly in the country”.

    Beyond judiciary victories, Obaseki is consolidating his otherwise unassailable position by befriending the erstwhile political enemies of his estranged god-father.

    Thus after attributing the underdevelopment of Edo until 20006 to “non-state actors empowered by political class, collecting revenues as an alternative government and constituted themselves into an army that were used for political activities”, Obaseki who also confirmed his government is training 4000 youths to provide security in the state has decided to partner with the same non- state actors as 2020 draws near.

    Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, the Esama of Bénin Kingdom and a chieftain of PDP  who was fought to a standstill by Oshiomhole for allegedly confiscating land and other resources of the state and whose son, Lucky Igbinedion, a two-term governor was indicted for financial crime against Edo state was at the government house to praise Obaseki  for his sterling performance. Chief Igbinedion thereafter endorsed Obaseki for a second term.

    Similarly Tom Ikimi a former PDP stalwart, who became a founding member of APC before retracing his way back to PDP, was reported to have visited Obaseki to discuss how his oil palm plantation could be supported.

    While endorsing Obaseki for a second term, Ikimi also lauded him for what he described as “the on-going development, especially in healthcare, education, infrastructure and housing across the state’

    Also on endorsement mission was Chief Osamede Adun, another PDP chieftain who hailed Obaseki for his “focus on infrastructure and development-oriented projects” after declaring ‘APC is my house.

    I went to PDP before, but I have come back to my house.’ Chief Adun’s motor park along the Oba Market government had before the visit ordered ‘must be removed’ because “it is built on a major drainage”.

    As these PDP stalwarts  and erstwhile powerful non-state actors were falling over each other to praise and endorse Obaseki for a second term, the Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Chris Nehikhare was blaming Obaseki for the “growing level of poverty, insecurity and unemployment” in Edo while alleging “commissioned” 5 star specialist hospital is still home to reptiles, Tayo Akpata University of Education, an unfulfilled political greek gift, College of Agriculture Ogierieki, a victim of policy lip-service, the gele gele sea port project is still a mirage and the industrial park is still at the MOU level”

    In an age of unbridled individualism when politics has become brinkmanship with unscrupulous political actors openly celebrating private affluence amidst public squalor, Obaseki is entitled to the choice he makes.

     

  • Amaechi’s transport varsity

    Our democracy is in crisis not just because our institutions of democracy are weak but more because ours is a democracy without democrats. While compromise after rigorous debate of all issues including government policy thrusts is democracy’s highest badge of honour, our successive ex-presidents and  their  appointed political office holders since the beginning of the fourth republic in 1999 operated  like sole administrators, with total disregard for the constitution, party manifesto and even the electorate on whose back they rode into power.

    Since the states in principle are not inferior to the central government, state governors on their part behaved like emperors, answerable to none but to themselves.

    Obasanjo in office publicly declared he was not obliged to listen to advisers. Buhari like Obasanjo, the PDP crowned ‘father of the nation” suffers from a messianic complex, sometimes behaving as if he was doing us a favour by condescending so low to govern us.

    Capitalising on President Buhari’s insensitivity to public opinion, his ministers seemed to have perfected the art of watching his body language before acting on any issue. This terrible defect in the president’s governing style  was what Minister Rotimi Amaechi exploited before moving on to take personal ownership of what was meant to be a public policy freely using phrases like “I engaged CCCECC’;

    I insisted I will sign only if three things are done” and ‘nobody influenced me “on where to site the transport university. Amaechi’s apparent admission of application of the rule of the thumb on government policy thrust that required input of all actors in policy formulation and implementation explains while most government policies since 1999 including privatization, monetization and rural electricity project among others failed.

    It is worse at state levels where no one monitors what governors who are accountable neither to the electorate nor to the centre that spoon-feed them do.

    When their excellences, the governors are not building bridges over land, stadia in every LGA headquarter, five-star hotel in a village, they are competing for multi-billion local and foreign loans to build mega schools, mega hospitals or unviable airports which will eventually become economic drain on the purse of their states.

    Whereas, public policy in a democracy is often a response of the political system to demands arising from its environment, anyone listening to Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister for Transport while defending his decision to site  N18b transport university in Daura, the president’s village cannot fail to observe the unmistakable sycophancy as he  bellowed “Daura is in Nigeria, it is not in any other part of the world.

    It is not in Niger Republic, Biafra or Mali, it is in Nigeria. So, what is wrong in siting the University of Transportation in Daura?” adding “”When we sited a factory at Kajola, there was no noise, nobody debated about it, nobody abused us for it unlike the site for the university.”

    President Buhari like all humans is not perfect. But I am sure few doubt his sense of decency. While it is true that Daura is eminently qualified to host University of Transportation, it is  most unlikely President Buhari would have gone out of his way to insist Daura of all the towns in Katsina state and of the close to two scores  states in the north must host the university.

    For the president, performing the groundbreaking ceremony of the university in Daura on Monday, December 2, was a force majeure.

    Amaechi, the master of his game had already secured 400 hectres of land from a jubilant Governor Masari who as a politician was expected to facilitate bringing such huge investment to his state. Rejecting Amaechi’s Greek gift which had become a fait accompli would have therefore pitched the president against his own people.

    With ministers like Amaechi, President Buhari who has been accused by some prominent northern leaders of nepotism and provincialism for allegedly filling some key positions in his government with close relatives from his village needs no enemies.

    Read Also: Buhari commends siting of university of transportation in Daura

    I think Amaechi has done a great damage to the president’s sense of decency.

    There must be something to learn from the modesty of our founding fathers, Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello and Awolowo who did not site any of the enduring projects such as stadia, institutions of higher learning, government estates that have outlived them in their villages or states.

    Sadly, unlike selfless and public-spirited first and second republic politicians, neither modesty, morality nor ethics matter to our current military-baked new breed politicians many of whom cannot in the manners of Zik, Awo and Ahmadu Bello articulate our crisis of nation-building let alone proffer solutions.

    Today’s political stars are made not on account of their ideas as to how to make society better than they met it but on the basis of the number of school buildings they erected, the number of market stalls they built or bus-stops they constructed. For a season, Amaechi was the governor to beat in this regard with our own Wole Soyinka drafted to Rivers to commission projects.

    But with less endowed Wike who was not too long ago christened “Mr. Project” by Vice President Osinbajo, outperforming Amaechi after only four years, it has become apparent, the number of projects in Rivers is a function of the quantum of naira the state receives as monthly allocation which  most times eclipses what some other states receive in one year

    That Rivers State in 2019 is today still defined by poverty, violence and insecurity is a sufficient proof that erecting structures does not guarantee an emergence of a more egalitarian society.

    It can be argued that the state remains poor in spite of huge revenues because of ‘misapplication” (apologies to Augustus Aikhomu, Babangida’s vice president) of funds by Amaechi, his predecessors and successors in office. Many believe most of the resources of the state were ploughed into unviable projects or deployed for self-promotion.

    It is for instance on record that while Amaechi as governor acquired a brand new Bombardier Global 5000 (N565RS) from Bombardier Canada for $45.7million (N7.3billion), Rivers State had an AW139 helicopter, which was leased to a commercial airliner.

    The state also had two other aircrafts –an Embraer Legacy 600, which was sold off because the state claimed it was too expensive to maintain and the other, a Dash 8-Q200 aircraft also sold to Cross River State for $6million.

    “I have no regret siting this university where I have sited it; it is not because I want to get any gain.”  Amaechi has no patience to reflect on the soundness of a University of Transportation with scores of underfunded federal universities offering courses in transportation all over the country.

    But Amaechi is not alone. Soundness of policies counts for little among today’s political stars.

  • Garba Shehu Vs. Alexander Ogomudia

    Responding to the comments by a former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Alexander Ogomudia (retd.), to the effect that “Nigeria may be restructured violently”, presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu last Sunday reminded him and other apostles of restructuring that as “a constitutional democracy, changes to the country in structure, its systems, policy and politics must abide by the norms of democracy”.

    Garba Shehu’s restatement of the obvious should ordinarily not raise any storm.  However because of his past  unrestrained comments on  sensitive and sometimes divisive issues such as the killing of our compatriots by cross-border immigrant herdsmen,  equating of Miyetti Allah cattle breeders association with ethnic national groups such  Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Pan-Niger Delta Forum, and his misleading comments on the controversial RUGA government programme, Shehu has left many with   the impression he is serving other tendencies in the presidency  instead of  representing the  public face of the president. His latest attack on Ogomudia seem to further confirm the fears of those who believe he is in the presidency as representative of those tendencies that view democracy not as a process that places high premium on leaders’ accountability, citizen participation and an open society with a just and equitable social order, but as a method of decision making by those who have gained power through a competitive electoral contest only to hold Nigeria to ransom.

    Democracy, rather than serve as a tool for creating a more egalitarian society for Nigerians, has been used by those who fraudulently swear by the name of those on whose back they rode to power only to end up waging war against them and other Nigerians.

    Read Also: Defections fallout: Tough times for Saraki, Dogara, others

     

    During the 1959 election, Action Group’s flags were banned in the north with its UMBC/AG alliance members imprisoned.  This was done in the name of democracy. When in 1962, the tendency imposed their stooge on the West in other to pave the way for the take-over of the region, it was carried out in the name of democracy.

    By 1952 census, Yoruba constituted 76.4% of the population of Western Region, Igbo 64.5% and Hausa/Fulani 54% of their respective regions. But in 1963, the later created Mid-West which is only 23.6% of the population of the West and kept silent on the on 36% and 46% minorities in their respective regions that had at different times in their quest for self- realization engaged in insurrection suppressed only by federal military might. The tendency insisted it was democracy at play.

    In 1963, tendency fought a war of attrition dragging themselves to the Supreme Court over the disputed 1962/62 census figures. Both in the name of democracy sought the support of the military over the constitutional crisis that followed the disputed 1964 elections and by their error of judgment dragged the military into politics   with dire consequences for the health of the nation.

    The response of a faction of the tendency that had since 1953  insisted their association with Nigeria must be predicated on Nigeria they could control to Ironsi’s  Unitary Decree 34 of 1966, widely believed to have been drafted by Dr. Nwabueze was the symbolic change from unitarism to federalism,  in name but not in content. Even as they plunged the nation to a civil war, both had insisted the motive was not greed for power but love for democracy.

    Babangida who hilariously called himself president after a palace coup took the nation through eight years of ‘transition without end’, destroying in the process, our political socialization, and annulling the most credible election in our nation’s history purportedly on behalf of this democracy loving tendency. And it was for the same love of democracy, General Abacha, the maximum ruler decreed five parties described by late Bola Ige as ‘five fingers of a leprous hand ‘with all of them nominating him as their presidential candidate.

    From 1993 to 1998, successive military regimes ensured more states and more LGAs were created for the north. The current constitution,  federal in name but unitary in content with   68 items on the exclusive list, 52 on the concurrent list and none in residual list, signed in to law in 1999 by General Abdulsalami reflects the tendency’s view of how Nigeria should be run .

    In 1999, the tendency conceded leadership of the country to the Yoruba to assuage their raw feelings over the death of their son, MKO Abiola who died in detention for winning an election. But they arrogantly insisted on picking for Yoruba nation, Obasanjo who went on to literarily climb the palm tree from the top by winning a presidential election despite having been roundly rejected by the Yoruba nation even in his ward. Again we were told it was democracy at play.

    Between 1999 and 2019, all efforts at amending the imperfect document which allows resources of state to be seized by the centre and distributed without objective criteria among indolent 36 states and 774 LGAs, an arrangement which according to General Akinrinade “cannot lift us all up, let alone one part at the expense of the other” has been resisted by the tendency.

    The 2014 Confab report with its modest achievement on devolution of power was rejected by the tendency  according to Bashiru Dalhatu, who was a Minister of Power and Steel in the Sani Abacha government, because  “The 2014 national conference had 492 members and the north which constitutes about 70 per cent of the country’s landmass and 55 per cent of its population was allocated 189 delegates while the south with only 30 per cent of the landmass and 45 per cent of its population was given an incredible 305 delegates.” The NDF therefore “called upon any group of sponsors or individuals agitating for any form of restructuring of the federation, first and foremost, to respect the existing constitutional order and to seek to do so within the bounds and parameters stipulated under our constitution and law. To suggest otherwise would lead to chaos and anarchy,” It said.

    The rhyme between above Bashiru Dalhatu’s mindset and Shehu Garba’s “mindsets and entities rooted in the idea of violence as a means to change” and “such individuals, groups and entities peddling ideologies of violence and hate” is unmistakable.

    In July 2017, Senate President Bukola Saraki of the 8th Senate speaking on the defeat of the devolution bill at the senate had said. “I think what happened was that a lot of our colleagues misread, misunderstood or were suspicious of what the devolution of powers to states was all about; whether it was the same thing as restructuring in another way or an attempt to foist confederation on the country”.

    With the baleful legacy of the National Assembly in constitutional amendments between 1999 and 2019, it is difficult to fault the argument of those who claim Shehu Garba’s campaign for “healthy dialogue through popular platforms including elected parliaments” is on behalf of the same tendencies that have used their numerical strength to frustrate constitutional amendment since the beginning of the fourth republic. In the same vein, one  cannot also fault those who read mischief  to Garba’s reference to” mindsets and entities rooted in the idea of violence as a means to change” and “such individuals, groups and entities peddling ideologies of violence and hate”  on the basis of Ogomudia’s timely warning to those tendencies that relish listening to only themselves.