The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Dealing with the world bully

    Precisely because we are governed by law of nature – survival of the fittest, whether at the domestic or at the international level, the laws of the rich and the powerful including their whims and caprices are the laws for the rest of us. Those who control the resources of the world first told us slavery was best for the growth of the world economy; then capitalism and currently globalization, the world’s reigning god. Although the difference between the three is only in paradigm, we have been forced to swallow the fraud. The scam has been sustained though intellectual subterfuge and religion, the opium of the poor and paradoxically the foundation of western civilisation.

    If truth as defined by the powerful is being questioned today, it is not that the subjective relationship between the poor and the powerful is about to change. It has more to do with the emergence of less intellectually endowed world leaders such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and other western leaders who are today increasingly finding it difficult to convince the rest of the world that their motives in the ongoing civil war on Yemen exacerbated by rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia is different from their ignoble role in Libya, Syria, Congo and currently in Venezuela.

    First, a civil war is going on in Yemen. It was partly the result of the ousting of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the first President of Yemen, (1990-2012) through Arab Spring masterminded and designed by self-serving western society to recolonize the Arab world or indirectly take over the control of their economy. A Saudi-led coalition in command of about 190 war planes, supported by America, American weapons and Britain took sides with Saudi Arabia to unseat the Houthis that got an upper hand in the civil war after taking control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, in 2014

    Human Rights Watch has ‘documented about 90 apparently  unlawful  coalition airstrikes’ against  homes, markets, hospitals, schools, and mosques and a wedding ceremony where 22 people, including eight children died in 2018 and that of a bus filled with children resulting in the killing of at least 26 children. Human Rights Watch has identified remnants of US-origin munitions at the site of more than two dozen attacks on civilians in Yemen. As at November 2018, 6,872 civilians had been killed and 10,768 wounded; the majority by Saudi Arabia-led coalition airstrikes.

    Just about a week before the drone attack, over a hundred innocent people were killed through America-aided Saudi Arabia air strike. While many are being killed with American weapons openly shipped to Saudi Arabia, America and its allies are accusing Iran of smuggling weaponry including ballistic missiles fired at Saudi territory by the rebel Houthi movement. America that unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal jointly negotiated by the UN and world powers, imposed sanctions on Iran, embargoed the sales of her fuel and threatened nations and companies that do business with her has also decreed Iran will be held liable for any attack on foreign vessels in the Persian Gulf.

    It must also be said that the Human Rights Watch also documented atrocities committed by the Houthi forces such as repeated indiscriminate “firing of artillery into Yemeni cities, populated neighbourhoods with devastating impact on Taizz, Yemen’s third largest city, use of banned weapons such as landmines, arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances”.

    But as it was in Iraq and Libya where the preoccupation of America and her western allies after the fall of Saddam Hussain and Muammar Gaddafi was the protection of oil facilities as against artifacts dating back to 3,000 years, America seems to be saying crime against humanity can be committed by both sides as long as flow of oil is not interrupted or threatened.

    America’s reaction to last Saturday’s coordinated Houthi Drone strike which shut down about half of Saudi Arabia’s oil output seems to have confirmed that mind-set.  Celebrating the attack, a Houthi spokesman said “We promise the Saudi regime that our future operations will expand and be more painful as long as its aggression and siege continue”. But America despite that claim and despite Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif’s denial has continued to point accusing finger at Iran for the attack.  With a posture of ‘do as I say and not do as I do’, they are gathering evidence to inflict maximum punishment on Iran for daring to support the Houthis, her own ally.

    Nigeria and the United States have long been close allies. Besides being our biggest trading partner until recently, America supports our fight against corruption and efforts to build institutions of democracy such as political parties, the press and civil society organisations. Since President Trump who operates on impulse has to be managed by the American bureaucracy and tolerated by American traditional allies, we may not be in a position to influence his perception of the truth. But we can maintain our peace as most members of the non-aligned nations have so far done.

    This is why last Monday’s statement about “Nigeria standing in solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, following drone attacks on the country’s oil facilities at Khurais and Abqaiq” by Malam Garba Shehu, President Buhari’s  Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, was totally uncalled for. We suddenly remember “the attacks represent not only economic warfare aimed at damaging a government, but also innocent citizens’ livelihoods: those with no place, nor cause, to be harmed” after maintaining our silence since the outbreak of hostility in 2015 and with close to 13,600 people killed in Yemen, including more than 5,200 civilians, as well as estimates of more than 50,000 dead as a result of an ongoing famine due to the war.

    The problem with our foreign relations is that we invest heavily and take sides without tying such investments and interventions to what our nation stands to gain.  For instance, while we seem to give unconditional support to Saudi Arabia that  not too long ago disappointed President Buhari  during his desperate  search for funds while the IMF held the nation hostage over his refusal to devalue the naira, Russia,  an undisputed  power behind Iran in her battle against Saudi Arabia coalition and the western powers,  rather than taking a public position, tongue-in-cheek offered Saudi Arabia Russian S-400 ‘Triumph’ air defence systems  weapons to ward off possible future attacks on her oil facilities.

    We must not also allow ourselves to be caught between the struggle for regional hegemonic power by Iran and Saudi Arabia using schism of Shia and Sunni. In any case the age-long  Shia(Iran)  and Sunni (Saudi Arabia ) rivalry has little to do with faith but more with  war of succession following the death of Prophet Muhammed through meat poisoning without  an anointed successor. The Shia support for Muhammad’s son-in-law and Cousin Ali, who was later murdered by the Sunnis along with his sons as rightful successor was the source of age-long feud between Shia and the Sunnis.

  • Criminality in Niger Delta and absence of governance

    Illegal oil bunkering seems to have become institutionalized in the oil producing states of Delta, Rivers and Bayelsa. Large volume of oil is siphoned from pipelines damaged by criminals and ferried into waiting ships on the high seas en-route Europe and North America. This is done with impunity. Periodic lamentation is all we get from the federal government even with its control of the army, navy, air force and the police. President Jonathan whimsical award of multi-billion dollar contract to Tompolo, General Boyloaf and other Niger Delta armed militants to secure our oil pipelines only led to the booming of illegal bunkering.

    Reporting in the Financial Times issue of June 26, 2012,   William Wallis  claims ‘The Nigerian state and oil companies are losing a billion dollars or more a month to oil theft by criminal networks whose activities have expanded rapidly under the government of President  Jonathan’. In 2013 during Spring meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala the then Finance Minister and coordinating minister stated: “We estimate total loss at over 300,000 barrel per day,’’ valued at $1billion. The trade in stolen oil involves a sophisticated criminal network and international traders who provide oil at discounted prices to refineries in West Africa and in China and India”.

    Nuhu Ribadu-led Petroleum Task Force report  on the oil and gas sector put daily crude oil theft at 250,000 barrels daily at a cost of $6.3bn (N1.2trn) a year. This according to the report puts the total amount lost through oil theft in the two years of Jonathan’s government at over $12.6bn (N2trn).  Charles Soludo, one time CBN governor in his 2015 letter to Okonjo Iweala put the average loss figure at 400,000 barrels per day coming “to about $60 billion (12.6 trillion) ‘stolen’ in just four years” at a time of cessation of crisis in the Niger Delta, amnesty programme and huge amount paid for ‘protecting’ the pipelines and security of oil wells, asking if the ‘thieves’ were spirits”.

    Sadly, nothing has changed under President Buhari’s government of change. Earlier this year, Rotimi Amaechi, the minister for transport alleged as much as $25 billion is lost to oil bunkerers annually. Edo State’s Godwin Obaseki, who doubles as chairman of the ad hoc committee of the National Economic Council on Crude Oil Theft recently revealed that about 22 million barrels of crude oil have been shipped away out of our shores by the vandals in the past six months. And only last Monday, September 9, SPDC’s General Manager, External Relations, Igo Weli, during a media workshop on pipelines vandalisation in Port Harcourt was lamenting that “SPDC JV is currently losing about 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil valued at N202 million and appealed to   government, communities and other stakeholders to stem the incessant attack on our oil assets in the Niger Delta.”

    The Nation newspaper editorial of September 8 titled “Flamboyant Vampires” however seems to have hit the nail on its head.  The reason the business of illegal bunkering continues to boom according to the editorial   is that “some of the security operatives assigned to protect the oil infrastructure have become the criminals-in- chief, not only aiding and abetting but also enabling, the army protects them on land and the navy at sea. Even members of the police force are also in on it. It is a massive mess”.

    And involved in the massive mess are the governors of the crime infected Niger Delta states who many believe arm the rampaging Niger Delta militant groups the elite use as foot soldiers, the traditional rulers who the late Saro wiwa described as ‘vultures’ for sacrificing the well-being of their people by receiving blood money from multinationals that pollute their environment and the federal government that treat the oil rich Niger Delta as a conquered territory.

    The nightmare of people in the Delta region started with the promulgation of the petroleum decree which wrested ownership of all land and any resource found in, under and upon the land, in the federal military government shortly before the outbreak of the civil war. Just like the foreign companies prospecting for oil in the region, the motive was greed. If consideration for the people and their environment came later, it was as an after-thought or as a result of pressure from the political elite from the area. And as it has sadly turned out, the leading light from the region including the governors ( Ibori, Igbinedion, Alamieyeseigha,  already convicted for stealing their states blind and Odilli, shielded by the courts,) who took the federal government to court over on-shore and off-shore oil revenue, the vultures who live on the blood and sweat of their people and the creeks armed gangs who after securing multi-billion dollar contracts from Presidents Jonathan and Obasanjo and today live like kings serve none but themselves. The poor whose names were used in vain are left alone to cope with consequences of devastated farmlands and polluted streams.

    Although it was the agitation by leading lights of the devastated Niger Delta area that  led to the establishment of The Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) with Decree 23 of 1992, primarily to rehabilitate, develop and tackle the ecological problems through provision of infrastructures such as good  roads, electricity, potable water, land reclamation, agriculture, fish business and transportation, but OMPADEC also collapsed under the weight of corruption perpetrated by the same Niger Delta political elite.

    OMPADEC was succeeded by Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) empowered with 13 per cent derivation revenue. It was established to develop Niger Delta and end the restiveness among the youths in the affected oil producing communities. Again, NDDC failed to achieve its objectives. Many of the youths who received technical trainings abroad returned into the service of big time bunkerers who needed their newly acquired technical knowledge to damage pipelines in the creeks.

    Criminality in the Niger Delta region, like the Middle Belt, Southern Kaduna, Zamfara, Southwest and elsewhere in the country as many have argued, is evidence of absence of governance in the country.  Most of those regarded as leaders at all levels since the beginning of the fourth republic have turned out to be dealers. Both Obasanjo’s and the Niger Delta governors, that took him to court over resource control were neither sincere to Nigerians nor to the oil producing areas. One had eyes on a third term agenda while the other set out to further impoverish their people.  President Jonathan as commander in chief handed over the protection of our oil pipelines to armed gangs who were in the employ of dealers as leaders. That served only the interest of the terror groups he and other Niger Delta dealers put in place for political survival.

    It is not yet Uhuru. Beyond instutionalisation of criminality in the oil rich Niger Delta by successive Nigerian dealers, evidence of absence of governance today abounds everywhere. While soldiers, naval officers, air force men and the police are said to be aiding and abetting criminality in the Niger Delta and elsewhere in the country, one encounters on the roads and at functions obscene scenes of two dozens of DSS men and as many policemen wielding guns and intimidating people because a minister’s convoys of several SUVs is passing by. (Ministers during the administration of President Shehu Shagari in the second republic only moved around with a police man while minister of states had none).

    The country remains dysfunctional in the way those in Abuja today carry out the normal business of government.

  • Wike & Ganduje: Metaphors for Nigerian governors

    Kano and Port Harcourt share some parallels.  Both were once flourishing seductive cities of attraction. The former, with a 1,095 years old city walls described as “‘the most impressive monument in West Africa” and an important Trans-Sahara trade centre that embraced Islamic faith in the 12th century, six decades before United Arab Emirate that hosts Dubai, the fourth most visited city in the world was born, while the latter was a great industrial centre and a celebrated garden city that was once a must-visit for Nigerians.

    Today, Kano is relics of itself, a hotbed religious intolerance populated by impoverished unemployable youths deliberately groomed by politicians to (as recently affirmed by Nasir El Rufai) strengthen their hold on power just as Port Harcourt is controlled by armed gangs groomed by politicians to serve as balance of terror during elections. And as if by design, the two cities are today under the grip of politicians who draw inspiration from Nicollo Machiavelli, the prince of politics “marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith”.

    It all started with Wike’s alleged demolition of a mosque in Port Harcourt, a charge he denied. Alhaji Nasir Uhor, the Chief Iman of Rivers and Leader/Vice President General, Rivers State Council for Islamic Affairs, also confirmed absence of physical structure of a Mosque at the disputed land. Support also came for Wike from an unusual quarter, the Coalition of Northern Youth Groups (CNYG) that dismissed the allegation as not only “false and misleading but intended to draw religious ire, stir political tension and widen the chasm of national division, which rather requires healing and bonding at this point in time”.

    This however did not stop Rivers Muslim Community and its chairman, Alhaji Abdullahi Tabaco who insisted what was demolished on August 20, was a mosque under construction. The leader of the Niger Delta’s People’s Salvation Force (NDPSF), Asari Dokubo, in fact maintained   what Wike demolished was a mosque where he as  “ a member of the congregation of the Trans-Amadi central mosque, his 21 children and 59 other children that live with him worship”. Solidarity with the group  came from far away Kano where Governor  Abdullahi Ganduje threatened  to take legal action against Wike, who has since described Ganduje’s statement as irresponsible while not forgetting to remind him that  Wike is not “dollars that Ganduje can pocket recklessly and sheepishly”.  Ganduje also found an ally in MURIC which dismissed  Wike’s administration as government of thugs, exhibiting   ‘wikedisation’ of religion, acrobatic religiousity, gymnastic impunity, political violence and administrative rascality”.  Since both governors know each other well, I think it is futile to try to interrogate their characterisation of themselves.

    What is not in dispute however is that both are metaphors for Nigerian governors. From the record of their conduct and utterances since the beginning of the fourth republic, it is clear many of our successive governors are men without character. Between 1999 and 2004, about 18 of PDP 24 elected governors were indicted for massive looting of their state resources. With the ongoing travails of some governors who lost their immunity few months back, it is obvious not much has changed under Buhari’s government of change.

    Nigerian governors are responsible for what the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial and Arbitrary Executions, Agnes Callamard after two weeks tour of Nigeria, last Monday summarized as “cultism in the oil-producing south states and other well-organised criminal gangs; local militias engaged in mining and cattle rustling in the Northwest, particularly Zamfara, increased criminality and spreading insecurity;” all over the country.

    It has been established that substantial part of N4b to N12b governors’ annual security votes, which they are not obliged to account for, go into funding of armed gangs to keep themselves in office. The PDP garrison commander of Ibadan politics, late Pa Adedibu, was the first to confirm the use of security funds for funding political terror groups when his dispute over sharing formula led to illegal impeachment of Governor Ladoja. President Jonathan’s National Security Adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi confirmed that Northeast politicians initially armed Boko Haram to secure advantage over political opponents. The Niger Delta’s different militant groups were sponsored by Niger Delta governors as balance of terror. It was former governor, Goodluck Jonathan who as vice president went into the creeks to address his men in the language they understood when the Amnesty Programme was first instituted by President Yar dua.

    Ayoade Akinibosun, the gang leader of armed group that robbed a bank in Offa on April 4, 2018 killing about 27 people including six policemen claimed during police integration ‘we are the senate president boys…we have been working form him since he was the governor of Kwara State, we mobilise for him and we are the ones that do political arrangements for him, we scatter elections if we don’t win”.

    Hamisu Bala alias Wadume, the Taraba State kidnap kingpin and a gun runner during interrogation by the police last week painted a similar picture: “I made so much money from politicians, as a youth leader, money meant for the youths are given to me. I am to mobilise them, hire thugs where necessary and made arrangement for weapons”.

    In Ekiti, Ayodele Fayose who went through a political tutelage under Adedibu was said to have his own gang. The group is allegedly linked to some of the ongoing cases of political assassination of his political rivals during his first term. In Lagos, Joe Igbokwe as Lagos APC spokesman reportedly admitted that rampaging NURTW leaders in the state are members of APC. In Ogun, Gbenga Daniel had his own squad claimed to be headed by the late Olatoye Temitope alias ‘sugar’, a supervisory councilor for Odeda LGA and later his special adviser.

    Unfortunately the governors while hobnobbing with drug pushers, gun-runners, armed robbers and other criminal elements, forget democracy which elsewhere in the democratic world operates on the platform of law and order, cannot survive on a culture of corruption, violence and lawlessness.

    As Wike, lionized by prosperity prophets strives to exploit religious differences in the state he holds hostage, boasting “I heard that some people are angry that I declared Rivers as a Christian State; nobody can intimidate me into changing my position”.  Dokubo insisting  “Rivers state will never be a Christian State, we are Rivers Muslims; there is nothing you can do about it” and the man Wike calls ‘dollar Ganduje’  pours gasoline from the side line, they are encouraged to acquaint themselves with development elsewhere in the world.

    Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Egypt, the most important centre of Islamic learning in the world, recently embraced and signed a powerful joint declaration for world peace and human fraternity transcending all religious, national, cultural and racial differences. The Pope during another visit aimed at boosting Christian-Muslim ties, to Morocco, praised the country, a Sunni Muslim kingdom of 36 million as a model of religious moderation. The Pope was also in Azerbaijan, the second-largest Shi’ite Muslim country after Iran where he praised Azerbaijan as a model of religious tolerance given the interfaith harmony that characterizes relations among its Muslims, Christians and Jews.

    The UAE that once supported radical Islam including the Taliban recently hosted  a conference for religious and intellectuals of all faiths in the world  where Brahmavihari Swami, a Hindu monk asked “Do we unite and flourish together? Or do we disunite and perish together?”

    Ganguje can now see clearly why Dubai is the fourth most visited city in the world while local investors are moving away from Kano.

  • Weep not for Igbo

    Our nation fell into the hands of political tricksters, economic swindlers and young men who wanted to be rich without working during Babangida’s reign of deceit in the mid-eighties. As government self-serving commercialisation and liberalization policy ceded ownership of thriving public enterprises to favoured members of the military junta and their fronts who were never groomed for such challenges, such enterprises collapsed and our nation was turned to major importer of labour of other societies. From Abacha all through the current fourth republic, it has been bare-faced stealing by those who have access to government funds directly or through tax waivers to fund importation. This was the genesis of wealth acquisition without work in our nation. It is therefore not a surprise that a whole generation of Nigerian youths between ages of 20 and 40 that are today involved in drug trafficking and cyber fraud grew up in an era of wealth without hard work and age of lawlessness.

    Now the chicken has come home to roost. Other countries are now insisting we cannot export lawlessness into their nation. Ghana our neighbor, South Africa we helped to liberate from apartheid minority rule, Malaysia whose palm oil revolution we supported through donation of oil palm seedlings and Saudi Arabia, spiritual home to many Nigerian Muslims and now America , source of N23b annual diaspora remittances are asking us to put our own house in order.

    If importation of fake and substandard drugs and goods, drug trafficking and setting up and running businesses illegally and other criminal activities are tolerated in Nigeria, putting an end to such criminal activities became a campaign issue for South Africa president, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa in the recently concluded South Africa election. Many of our youths convicted for drug related offences are on death row in Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Malaysia. Last week, it was the turn of the US to remind us that people cannot get rich without working in their country.

    Of the 80 people the US authorities indicted for wire fraud, romance scams and business email compromise crime and for swindling millions of dollars from U.S. businesses and individuals, 77 were Nigerians with 74 of Igbo extraction. As a people that prefer to play the ostrich, reactions of Nigerians and the representatives of government have only reflected this hypocrisy. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Nigerian in Diaspora Commission chief, doesn’t want few bad eggs to spoil the name of Nigeria. She has therefore urged “those accused in Nigeria to voluntarily turn themselves in to American authorities to clear their names”, adding that Nigeria should extradite the defendants “if relevant international treaties between the two governments are invoked.”

    On his part, a concerned Igbo commentator, Fredrick Nwabufo in a piece titled ‘The Igbo have a problem’ which has since gone viral in the social media blames everything on “Igbo culture that glorifies ‘’money’’ crime – ‘’ego mbute’’ – the culture of money grubbing and worship, as the-be-all and end-all of everything. He therefore wants his Igbo compatriots to “stop celebrating people of unknown fortune, name and shame those with illicit wealth in our communities and upbraid them instead of giving them chieftaincy titles and front-row seats in church”.

    Both are wrong. Dabiri trivialises our tragedy as a nation.  Stereotyping by Nwabufo also deprives us the important lesson from the tragedy that has befallen our nation.  We currently have over 50m Nigerian youths who believe it is possible to be rich without work. This fallacy has been reinforced by various institutions of society. Our orthodox churches that promise salvation through sales of grace, the Pentecostal prosperity prophets that have replaced Christ’s message of salvation in heaven with message of prosperity through miracle and our young artists that celebrate nothing but vanity, money, women and sex. Our youths neither read in order to be able to articulate the problems of our nation neither do they vote during elections except in BBN realty show which celebrates decadence, sex, and an illusion of life of leisure without work for winners of N60m in a game of chance similar to the miracle the churches and other institutions of society promise.

    Fredrick Nwabufo has no need for self-contrition. If out of the 21 Nigerians on death-row for drug peddling in Indonesia, 20 are Igbo  from his Anambra State, if lynching of Igbo citizens in Asia occurred in 2013 over alleged criminality, if some armed robbers of Igbo origin launched an attack on a bureau de change in Dubai, and if Nigerians are a pariah in South Africa partly due to the activities of some Igbo drug cartel”, it  was not just because of Igbo culture which by extension is also now the prevailing culture in our society, it is precisely because the Igbo excel more than others in whatever they set their eyes on. As Ahamdu Bello put it, if you employ an Igbo man as a labourer, he will strive to become the head of labourers. As for glorification of ‘’money’’ crime – ‘’ego mbute’’ – the culture of money grubbing and worship, as the-be-all and end-all of everything”, show me one ethnic group in Nigeria where that has not replaced culture of hard work, perseverance and selfless service to one’s community. All  those Igbo youths whether in Ghana, South Africa, Singapore of America  where they are currently undergoing persecution and prosecution,  have tried to do is outdo the rest of their Nigerian compatriots  in what has become a dominant Nigerian culture.

    Indeed no one should weep for the Igbo nation. Rather we should weep for ourselves. What we are faced with is a national plight and all of us are going to suffer the consequences. Diaspora remittances put at about N23b will be affected. Unfortunately, immediate victims are recipients who are mainly old and elderly people. The real estate as well as the capital market will also be affected.

    And as part of the price we have to pay for not putting our own house in order, South Africa which is currently investigating about 6,000 Nigerians is excluding Nigeria from her free entry visa lottery.

    With the latest American action, the rest of the outside world, concerned about the criminal activities of some of our youths will most likely start to tighten the noose against us. With Ghana and America deporting our youths, with lynching going on in South Africa, beheading in Saudi Arabia and with a generation of Yoruba and Igbo youths at home who want money without work now exploiting the herdsmen/farmers  crisis to visit terror on their own people, our harvest basket is full.

    The challenge is not just for the federal government but the state governments who have failed to provide security for their people despite collecting between N4b andN10b as security vote every year, the bulk of which is said to go into upkeep of political thugs and for destabilising their own political parties.

     

  • Trouble with Southwest governors

    The state, we all agree is evil and tyrannical. Everyone therefore blames the state as represented by the centre for all our woes and crisis of nation-building, lack of vision, underdevelopment, insecurity, corruption, inability to feed ourselves and the collapse of the education and the health sectors.  Even our elected governors that preside over 42% of the nation’s annual budget when not pretending to seek solutions to their states problem from the centre join us to rail wail and throw stone at the devil forgetting the devil is in us.

    Unfortunately unlike the first and second republics  marked with the giant strides in education, rural development, agriculture and infrastructural development  secured through the  versatility and brinkmanship of men of great vision such as Obafemi Awolowo, Samuel Akintola, Anthony Enahoro, Alfred Rewane as well as, Adekunle Ajasin, Bola Ige, Ambrose Ali, Bisi Onabanjo and Lateef Jakande, many of the fourth republic inheritors of power are regarded as unscrupulous, venal, egoistical with naked ambition, surviving only on intrigues.

    Awolowo was in power for only seven years. He initiated the free education programme. The number of Western Region youths sent on scholarship to foreign universities during his second year in office was more than the total number of Nigerian youths that enjoyed scholarships under the colonial administration for three years. In the second republic, visionary southwest leaders established universities in Edo, Ondo, Ogun and Lagos. As a result of the efforts of these visionary leaders, the old Western Region was regarded as the most educated part of Africa before the birth of the fourth republic. Today the educational sector has virtually collapsed.

    In a report titled Nigeria: WAEC Results as metaphor of collapsing education standards in Southwest, in The Guardian of September 14, 2017, Iyabo Lawal reported the dismal performance of the southwest in the last few years. According to the report, while Anambra, Imo, Edo and Rivers top the list for that year, the southwest states like Ekiti, Ogun, Osun and Oyo once synonymous with high education standards were at the 14th, 19th, 24th and 29th positions.

    Anambra State according to the report earned the position because of the state’s investment in education. While the southwest governors who probably never bothered to study the educational revolution under the Obafemi Awolowo’s administration in the first republic or that of Lateef Jakande in Lagos State in the second republic, were neck-deep in the politics of take-over of schools from their initial owners , building of mega schools and self-induced crisis over uniformed uniform for all students, Governor Peter Obi,  quietly  “returned 1,040 primary schools to the missions that established them, awarded N6bn to the schools as grants, donated buses, laboratory equipment, transformers, generators, dispensary consumables, sports gears, computers and other tools to the schools.”

    In 2015, Abia and Anambra took the first and second positions while Osun took the 29th position, Oyo the 26th; Ogun 19th; and Ondo 13th while Ekiti came 11th. In 2014, Anambra, topped the list with Abia coming second. “In terms of education, Nigeria’s Southwest states, the report concluded, “are fixated on the past, lost in the present and without vision for the future”.

    In other departments, the southwest equally lives on its old glories. In the area of agriculture, the southwest also set the pace in the first republic. The region was self-sufficient in food production with farm settlements set up for products of primary schools that were prepared to work to raise money for their secondary school education. The region was popular for her Igbimo and Ofada rice. There were cattle ranches set up in about four locations in the region. Today, the same southwest under our new inheritors of power depends on the north for yam, pepper, tomato and about 8,000 cattle valued at about N1.6b consumed in Lagos daily. The N700m Ikun dairy farm set up by Adekunle Ajasin’s administration in the second republic after ex-Governor Oni’s initial efforts at rehabilitation was abandoned and allowed to rot away by his successors in office.

    Since there is no vacuum in nature, other states have seized the initiative from the southwest. Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi State started his rice production initiative with about N4b loan, an amount far less than the N5.4b Ayo Fayose spent on building 1.3km bridge over land in Ado Ekiti.  The governor recently disclosed that three giant rice millers, Wocat Rice Processing Mill, Dangote Rice Processing Mill and Dadangari Rice Processing Mill are working at full capacity with the state earning about  N150 billion from sale of rice last year alone. Currently about 200,000  farmers are cultivating about 400,000 hectares of land for rice production, many of them  under the Central Bank of Nigeria Anchor Borrowers programme. There is also the World Bank $15million assisted ‘Nigeria for Women Project’ in three local government areas of the state. The state which according to the governor is also the highest producer of rice, onions and pepper in the country has also entered into partnership arrangement with an indigenous company for an ultra-modern world class sugar processing plant with a total cost of about $330million when completed

    With its Ebonyi State’s current 72,000 hectares of rice production, Eboyi rice is already available in every supermarket in Lagos. The Zero Hunger Forum, headed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has also now pledged to assist Ebonyi to generate N48.4bn from rice production annually through offer of technical support.

    Road infrastructure has virtually collapsed in the south west with Intra-state and inter-state roads, all in state of disrepair. Governor Fayemi has just announced the award of an N8.5b contract to reconstruct the collapsed Ado Ekiti Itawure Osun boundary road. Travelling from Ondo to Ekiti, Ekiti to Osun or Abeokuta to Lagos is a nightmare.

    Yet, of the N3.97tn domestic debt owed by the six geopolitical zones of the country, the southwest according to a Punch newspaper’s last Tuesday August 20 report, credited to  statistics from  the Debt Management Office, accounts for N1.04tn. Unfortunately instead of investment on power generation, road infrastructure and light rail to link the southwest states, all our new inheritors of power in the southwest  have to showcase are 1.3km bridge over land in Ekiti, abandoned stadia scattered around Osun towns, commissioned empty swamps in Ogun,  mega secondary school buildings in Osun and mega massive hospital buildings in Ondo.

    The new inheritors of power seem to have learnt nothing from their illustrious forbears. The southwest  for instance has been in the forefront of the struggle for devolution of power and state policing .With President Buhari’s approval in principle provided states can fund state policing, one would have expect Fayemi and his southwest colleagues to seize the initiative. The zone seems to have lost that opportunity with the excuse of Governor Fayemi that state policing cannot take off until there is a consensus among the governors.

    To many, such statement only underscores the dearth of vision among Southwest’s new inheritors of power. With good husbandry of their resources, many believe each of the southwest governors who collect between N300m and N600m monthly (N3.5b-N7b per annum) should have no problem funding state police.

  • Angry youths and misplaced aggression

    It is a season of anger. As institutional fighting replaces bargaining and compromise, cherished values of the democratization process; anger takes control of all: the federating nationalities,  the power addressees, election losers, those short-changed by the system: kidnappers, bandits, armed criminals, herdsmen and farmers with everyone playing the victim. There also those past leaders who led us to this sorry pass showing their own anger by sowing seeds of discord and divisiveness. There are of course our frustrated  angry youths who without proper articulation of Nigeria’s crisis on nationality last week angrily declared a day of rage for the take-off of their now aborted revolution to take over the country from democratically elected President Buhari.

    It is not as if there had not been periods of anger in our land in the past. In 1953, as a result of the insult hauled at northern leaders over their rejection of Chief Anthony Enahoro’s 1956 motion for independence, Ahmadu Bello had sworn when next he was coming to Lagos, he would come with his sword. Chief SLA Akintola’s subsequent attempt to mobilise northern Kano youths for his AG party’s support ended in Kano 1953 violence which left 46 dead and over 200 wounded. But at the end, reason prevailed among leaders whose strained relationship caused the anger. They sat down to negotiate Nigeria’s future and came up with a working constitution. In the spirit of give and take, they inserted a safety valve in form of non-interference clause in the affairs of federating regions to prevent the take-over of the country by the north with advantage of land space and population. If that arrangement failed in 1962, it was as a result of brinkmanship of Ahmadu Bello who celebrated the takeover of the country by giving a horse to Zik and a copy of the Quran to Balewa, the prime minister while expressing satisfaction for handing over the country to his two trusted loyalists. And when Zik fell out of favour after the constitutional crisis of 1964, he was promptly replaced with Chief SLA Akintola, who in turn received a gift of a sword from Ahmadu Bello.

    The difference between then and today is that we are confronted with poverty of ideas. Our past ill-equipped leaders who by their acts of commission or omission  between 1975 and 2015 reinforced  Ahmadu Bello’s  ‘mainstreaming’ agenda are the same people fuelling the institutionalised fighting currently going on in the country. Instead of sitting down to negotiate our defective structure, they are busy demonizing Buhari, a mere symptom of our crisis of nationality. Unfortunately, our youths who should know better have forgotten that it was Babangida who after fraudulently declaring ‘for their tomorrow we sacrifice our today” introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme that turned Nigeria to importer of the labour of other countries leaving today’s youths to roam the street without job. Our social  media tigers who have no knowledge of  yesterday do not know that it was  Obasanjo who after declaring  that “youth constitute Nigeria’s only hope for a real future”,  took off from where Babangida stopped, selling off through ill-implemented privatization programme, public enterprises set up at a cost of over $100b by our founding fathers to take care of the less privileged, build a foundation for a middle class and guarantee an egalitarian society,  for a miserable $1.5b to the members of  the political class. The angry youths probably don’t understand that Obasanjo, Atiku and other government officials under-funded our universities that once compared favourably with the best in the world in order to pave way for their high fees paying universities. Since many hardly read, they probably don’t understand these angry past leaders came up with government monetization policy that allowed them to share prime properties dating back to colonial period kept in their custody for our children yet unborn among themselves, their family members and their in-laws. If there is darkness in the land, the angry youths are not asking why those who allegedly spent $16b on the power sector generated only darkness. While our teaching hospitals remain consulting clinics, they are not asking those using them as pawns why huge contracts for the refurbishment of the teaching hospitals were awarded as patronage to party stalwarts who ended up supplying obsolete equipment. If President Buhari is now borrowing money to construct standard gauge  railway lines, our angry youths did not bother to read about how a section of the media celebrated what was described as ‘a railway revolution’ when all the late Samuel Ogbemudia did was to repaint some old railway coaches.

    Of course President Buhari can do better. He was after all elected because of the above betrayals by his predecessors in office. But the response to his imperfections is not anger but strategic thinking and planning. Inpatient Sowore did not take pains to digest what the late Dr Okadigbo described as the ‘arithmetic of Nigeria elections’. He did not also take pains to find out why Chief Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello, both celebrated for their successes as regional premiers started as at the local government level .But all the same, Sowore and others  who have never been registered members of political parties, contested elections or demonstrated proper articulation of Nigerian crisis of nationality thought they could defeat President Buhari who as a result of his cult-like followership among the northern masses, secured 13million votes during each of his three previous outings as opposition candidate.

    Sowore and his angry youths who after failing to achieve their objective through the constitutional process, threatened to take over power by force did not bother about history. Our current defective federal structure works in favour of any candidate supported by the north. That was the case in 1964, 1979 and 1999 when the north arrogantly chose Obasanjo as Yoruba candidate and elected him president without Yoruba vote. Experience since the birth of the fourth republic has also shown that constitutional amendment not supported by the north cannot sail through the National Assembly, state houses of assembly and the 774 LGAs.

    Sowore did not also attempt to take advantage of the experiences of his illustrious Yoruba forbears who have been in the forefront of the struggle for a restructured Nigeria since the end of the civil war. Besides the old guard represented by Pa Ayo Adebanjo, his children, Bola Tinubu, Segun Osoba and Wale Oshun, Professor Akin Oyebode recently disclosed to close friends that the Yoruba were the only group at the Jonathan 2014 Confab armed with about 400 page document to support restructuring. Professor Bolaji Akinyemi who was also a member of the confab not long ago said Buhari, because of his massive support in the north, is perhaps the only northern leader uniquely placed to convince the northern political elite that by acceding to restructuring, the north would not be committing political suicide. Governor Fayemi also reminded Yoruba social media tigers and others calling for Yoruba withdrawal of support for the Buhari administration on account of his body language on restructuring that ‘Yoruba alone cannot effect restructuring of Nigeria’.

    By his demonstrated impatience and contempt for Yoruba traditional leaders and Yoruba political office holders, it is doubtful if angry Sowore understands Nigeria’s crisis of nationality can only be resolved through debates, dialogue and bargaining.  His temporary incarceration one hopes will afford him an opportunity to reflect on the futility of his reported suicide threat which according to Fela Kuti will amount to “dying wrongfully”, a crime DSS say it is trying to forestall by his detention.

  • Beyond Presidency/Yoruba Obas politics

    Obaship in Yoruba nation is service. And the Obas are powerful to the extent they identify with the aspirations of their people. With the six southwest states controlled by APC in the run up to the 2019 presidential election, the courtesy visit to President Buhari by the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, along with the Awujale of Ijebu, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona and other monarchs from the Yoruba country was in the service of their subjects. As expected, they insisted the visit was not political but to point out the good things the government is doing and ask for more because as the Ooni put it: “the only politics Yoruba Obas who are fathers to all play is the politics of development of their people”. As kidnapping, armed robbery, herdsmen violence and other crimes continue to claim lives and devastate the southwest country with people no more safe neither in their homes, farms and highways, the Obas led by the Ooni were last Wednesday again back in Abuja, all in the service of their subjects, to ask the president to stand up to his constitutional responsibilities.

    The president admitted the traditional rulers ‘form a critical part of governance structures, especially in their respective communities, where they feel the pulse of the people at the grassroots level”. As the ‘guardian of our culture and the pivot on which our security rests’, the president expects traditional authorities in their communities, to provide government and the security agencies with details of those coming in and out of their communities. In this regard, the president spoke of his administration’s planned “commencement of community policing, a robust revamping of police intelligence gathering capacity and the significant boosting of the numbers of security personnel in our local communities which in specific terms will include recruiting a lot more police officers and doing so right from their local government areas, where they would then be stationed in the best practice of community policing.” Finally the president assured the Obas of his commitment to protecting lives of all Nigerians and ensures that every Nigerian in every state is safe; enforce the law, prosecute lawbreakers and secure an atmosphere of tranquillity for all Nigerians wherever they choose to live..”

    Apart from the president’s political foes, I am not sure if the Obas or other Nigerians doubt President Buhari’s good intentions and commitment to the wellbeing of Nigerians. The problem however is that good intentions are not enough. The president after all had four years to address our crisis of nation building but squandered away the goodwill of many Nigerians by what those who claim to know him describe as his provincialism manifested by his lopsided appointments and slow response as commander-in-chief to the mindless killings of farmers and confiscation of their farmlands by suspected herdsmen from neighbouring countries. Few are impressed by the lethargy that seems to have defined President Buhari’s first term. For instance, many will say the demand he was making on the traditional rulers’ amount to putting the cart before the horse.  The traditional rulers would have been better-equipped to protect their immediate environments from immigrants from neighbouring states or countries if he had hearkened to popular demand for restructuring, devolution of powers including state and community policing.

    It is on record that the president has in the last four years turned blind eyes to some provisions even in his party manifesto, the recommendation of a committees on restructuring set up by his party as well as the wise counsel of many credible Nigerians on the steps to take in addressing our crisis of nation-building if we were to achieve unity in diversity. But giving the impression that he and he alone knew what Nigerians wanted, he had dismissed the interventions of patriots like Wole Soyinka and Emeka Anyaoku, going outside the shores of Nigeria to feign ignorance as to what they meant by restructuring.

    Pained by tragic turn of events, Soyinka who like Buhari went through his own purgatory by spending  over three years in prison for a just and united Nigeria, whilst admitting last week that governance is not “an easy task in a country like Nigeria with her complexity, its culture, historical background, and its formation  and the need for balancing here and there” insisted “Nigerians problems had overwhelmed the president” and has therefore called for “a national dialogue among all the people across party and ethnic lines”.

    On his part, Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary General and one of Nigeria’s most respected opinion leaders, last week once again reminded the president that “Every diverse federal country throughout the world achieves political stability and socio-economic development through successfully managing its national diversity, either through inclusive central government which gives the peoples of the component parts of the federation a sense of belonging or adequate delegation of powers to the federating units to enable them to handle their internal security and significant aspects of their socio-economic development.”

    Demand for restructuring, since the president is at a loss as to what it means, is a call for a federal arrangement which has the potential to liberate individuals and groups from the tyranny of the state. It is a call for an end to the war against a negotiated federal arrangement by President Buhari and his predecessors which has so far resulted in grooming of disgruntled and disloyal groups and individuals. Today nearly all Nigeria’s major ethnic groups-the Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Ijaw, Tiv Biron, Ogoni, and Munshi etc. are at war with the state. Last Saturday, a coalition of 406 indigenous youth groups in Nigeria and the Diaspora, under the aegis of the Nigerian Ethnic Nationality Youth Leaders Forum (NENYLF), also raised an alarm about the creeping anarchy in the country admonishing “no responsible government and its leadership could continue to fold their arms pretending that all is well”.

    If groups and their representatives are not loyal to the state, it is foolhardy to assume institutions manned by disgruntled representatives of these groups will be loyal to the state. The report of herdsmen/farmers violent clashes during Obasanjo’s administration which led to the killings of about 50,000 people accused the Nigerian police of taking side. General Theophilus Danjuma, a credible opinion leader from the north-east recently accused not only the police but even the army in the ethnic clashes between his people and herdsmen. Some concerned critical minds have raised an alarm that the federal police might be aiding criminals that have turned southwest high ways and forest to hell since no cows have so far been traced to these new highway/forest herdsmen.

    Beyond the presidency/Yoruba Oba politics, President Buhari must understand that equipping the police force with advanced technology and equipment; approving licensing for states requesting the use of drones to monitor forests and other criminal hideouts” and putting plan in place “to install CCTVs on highways and other strategic locations are not answers to nation building. Nation building is giving the people what they want. And what the federating groups and all Nigerians want today is for government to get off their back so that they can take control of their lives.

  • Beyond N270b abandoned constituency projects 

    Budget preparation is strictly a function of the executive. The legislature debates, examines and authorizes spending of public revenue. To protect the interest of their constituencies, the legislature, like all other actors such as NGOs, pressure groups and international donors, are expected to lobby the executive at the budget preparatory stage.  The constitution clearly identifies areas of cooperation between the two arms of government in the budgeting process as implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting. Absence of constitutional ambiguity has however not stopped massive corruption in the name of constituency projects by the legislature and their collaborators in the executive.

    Between 2011-2016, N350billion was appropriated by the National Assembly in respect of about 2,516 projects spread across the country. Those projects according to Civic Technology Organisation-BudgIT never took off even after full payment had been made. In its July 2016 survey of 436 projects across 16 states, 211 projects covering water bore-holes, rural electricity and roads projects and primary health centres designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor according to the body were abandoned.  The legislature was soon to confirm that the whole idea of constituency projects was designed to serve none but themselves.  In July 2016 Abdul Mumin Jibrin while reacting to his removal as chairman of the appropriation committee following a claim he ‘unilaterally padded the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State attributed his travails to his refusal to ‘admit into the budget almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers”.

    Not much has changed under President Buhari. In 2015, speaking at a one-day summit organised by the House of Representatives and Conference of Speakers in collaboration with the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), the then Secretary to Government, Babachir Lawal, told Nigerians that his principal was posed to change the practice whereby “constituency projects had been the conduit pipe through which lawmakers embezzled money”.

    Only last Saturday, four years after that solemn promise, BudgIT’s Tracka’s Head, Ilevbaoje Uadamen told Nigerians that “Constituency projects costing about N270 billion, nominated by federal lawmakers between 2015 and 2019 are lying uncompleted or poorly implemented across the country”. He also drew attention to   ”wasteful empowerment projects” in the 2019 Zonal Intervention Projects which according to him account for N58 billion of the N100 billion budgeted for Constituency Projects.

    If anything has changed, it was that the  8th assembly law makers became more daring intimidating  ministers and threatening to impeach vice president Osinbajo  as Acting President for criticizing diversion of  budget allocations from government critical projects to law-makers’ pet  constituency projects. They even held the nation to ransom by sitting on the president’s budget proposals for six months.

    The government however appears determined to continue the battle with the law makers. The Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Professor Bolaji Owasanoye recently inaugurated the Constituency Project Tracking Group (CPTG) steering committee with members drawn from ICPC, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Media and other stakeholders such as the National Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS) to look into federal constituency projects that had been funded from years 2015 to 2018.

    But I think the new initiative is bound to fail. Massive budget fraud in the legislature with active connivance of a few in the government is a mere symptom of our crisis of nation building. The current system, everyone agrees is not built on justice. The leaders have no faith in a system while the led have no axe to grind with their representatives who are in Abuja sharing a national cake that belongs to everyone but to no one. As for the led, prof Wande Abimbola, former vice Chancellor of University of Ife  and a former senator says : the peoples mindset is  “we vote them (the law makers)  to go and steal and bring home the loot”  He narrated how on one occasion while travelling from Ibadan to Lagos in danfo(commercial bus) the other passengers who did not know he was sitting in front had wondered why a former senator like him would be going around by taxi with one in fact suggesting “people like him who could not steal should not be voted”

    If the president really wants to know, the constituencies whose war he sets out to wage do not begrudge their leaders for collecting their own share of Abuja free cake. They are at peace with their Obas and his traditional chiefs who receive 5% of LGA Abuja free allocation without doing any work They have no axe to grind with their local council counselors who put off massive building after six months in office, their Abuja representatives who without asking  what the people want institute  irrelevant empowerment progammes , give out free motor cycles, sewing machines to favoured members of the community or nominate members of the community as contractors for projects that had been designed to fail.

    It will also interest the president to know that the same constituencies will ensure no one toys with funds contributed at village level by villagers for development of their communities. No one steals from his community. In the first republic, no one, and not even the federal government dared toy with funds generated through the labour and sweat of the people in the regions. It was said the western region once threatened secession from the federation if anyone touched cocoa money they were using to prosecute their free education programme.

    But unlike during the first republic when the state was strong with stakes holders sustaining it with revenues they generated from their regions, the Nigerian state today is an orphan with Abuja, a no man’s land. This is why none of the law makers accused of constituency project fraud or who according to Wall street Journal receives between N160m-N240m annually as constituency allowances, the bulk of which goes into the kitting of the law makers’ political war chests and their loyalists have been reprimanded or recalled by their constituencies since 1999.

    It is also on record that in the first republic, poverty reduction was through creation of self-sustained and skill acquisition programmes for rural people as against today’s free gift of commercial motor cycles and sewing machines procured through Abuja funds that belong to everyone but no one. Effective constituency projects such as roads, provision of health care facilities, construction of class rooms, school laboratories and libraries were funded through the taxes of the people and their farm products as against current practice where according to Tracker, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) allocated N1.5b in the 2019 budget for ‘for provision of ICT, Mathematics, and English language textbooks for JSS1-3’ with no details of the states, local governments and senatorial districts of beneficiaries. It is obvious why similar government efforts since 1999 have only earned us a place in Guinness Book of records as a nation with over ten million children of school age out of school

    The problem is our dysfunctional structure. And to get government off our back, we must end mainstreaming which we embarked upon in 1970 when our current leaders resuscitated the dead British policy that allowed them seize resources of conquered territories for ease of administration. After seventy years in the wood we need to retrace our steps back to the ‘path to Nigeria freedom’ never taken.

  • Ethnic groups in political process

    Dr. Garba Abari, the Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), the man with arduous task of communicating government policy, staying abreast of public opinion, and promoting patriotism, national unity, and development of Nigerian society is angry with those he claims are politicizing the issue of Ruga settlement policy. I don’t think anyone should begrudge him for being unhappy. He is after all, doing the job for which he is being paid. I however sympathise with him for attempting to demonise those he describes as promoters of ethnic identity. There is nothing wrong with promotion of ethnic identity in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. The federal system has long substituted individuals with group as the most important variable in a participatory democracy

    Ethnic groups formed the foundation of our federal system. Our early political parties were in fact offshoots of ethnic groups with the exception of NCNC which at the end also ended up as an ethnic party. Nigeria People’s Congress (NPC) started as Northern People’s Congress. Action Group took its root from ‘Egbe Omo Oduduwa’, a Yoruba socio-cultural group. Our founding fathers who later emerged as Nigeria’s celebrated statesmen, all started as representatives of their ethnic groups except Zik who also discovered at the end that charity must begin from home when his failed attempt to become premier of Western Region forced him to return home to become premier of the Eastern Region. Ahmadu Bello started as chairman of Local Council. He opted to remain in Kaduna to serve his people rather than come to Lagos as prime minister. If Awo was at the end of his life described by Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Biafra civil war leader as “the best president Nigeria never had”, it was on account of having served his Yoruba people as a regional premier with distinction.  It must also be remembered that even the policy thrust of the then outgoing British colonial power  was that each ethnic group should develop at its own pace by taking advantage of the wisdom of their forbearers.

    I understand we need to doubt the motive of the cunny British imperialists. It can be argued that Nigeria like most other African new states was designed by the imperial powers  that –  at their Oct 1884-Feb 1885 Berlin Conference –  arrogantly declared  Africa was terra nullis (nobody territory), and went on to share African territories among themselves with state boundaries set for their convenience rather than for our welfare was programmed to fail. The foisting of what Basil Davison describes as the black man’s burden or ‘the curse of the nation state’ on Nigeria undoubtedly contributed to today’s mutual suspicion among her many ethnic groups including the Yoruba, Hausa, Karuri, Igala and Igbo that had for centuries engaged in free trade among themselves without movement barriers.

    But it is also on record that the British colonial government also institutionalised a federal arrangement which formally recognizes groups as legitimate and autonomous participants in the political process. It was this new emphasis on group identity that forced leaders like Ahmadu Bello to dedicate his life towards bridging the 70 years gap between the north and the south in terms of western education by sending brilliant northern youths either to the military or to the best universities in the world. It was what propelled him to build the biggest conglomerate in Africa. It was what also encouraged Awo and his group to exploit the culture of their people to introduce free education in an effort to lay foundation for an egalitarian society for their Yoruba nation. Of course it was what also encouraged Zik to resolve in 1934 that the Igbo must catch up and obliterate the head-start Yoruba had in education, a feat he had accomplished by 1960. This healthy group competition went on without posing any threat to the health of the nation. What eventually abridged our march towards modernisation was the attempt by two of our three dominant groups to impose their world view on Nigeria. This was the root cause of the collapse of the elite group consensus that produced the golden age of Nigeria 1952-1962.

    From the end of the civil war to 2015, groups were demonized by self-serving Nigerian rulers who also made efforts to turn Nigeria into a unitary state through ‘mainstreaming’. Groups that once served as centres of development were broken into 36 states and 774 LGAs, all, going periodically cap-in-hand to Abuja for life support. Like the colonial masters who destroyed the various emerging nationalities they inherited to pave way for nation state (the Black man burden), the unviable states and LGAs were designed not for the welfare of the people but for short-term political advantages of those in power.

    After the destruction of our political socialization process, IBB decreed two parties which ended up presenting his two friends as presidential candidates in the June 1993. Abacha created five parties with all ‘the five fingers of the leprous hand’ picking him as their presidential candidate. Abdulsalami Abubakar imposed a constitution no one had seen before the inauguration of President Obasanjo in 1999. Obasanjo set up a constitutional conference ostensibly to find solutions to our crisis of nation building but in reality designed to rubber stamp his failed third term agenda. Jonathan set up a constitutional conference but only as a bargaining tool for his 2014 failed re-election bid. Similarly government policy thrusts all through this period such as JAMB, Unity Schools, Quota admission to universities, federal character policies were all designed not to promote justice and merit but to lower standard and institutionalise mediocrity for the benefits of the tendencies those in power represented.

    Dr. Abari’s demonization of ethnic groups as a response to indolence, incompetence or hypocrisy of government as the opposition PDP has alleged, seem to confirm nothing has changed under President Buhari’s government of change. Efforts by those who are passionate about Nigeria especially critical stakes-holders in the Nigerian process such as  Afenifere, Ohaneze and the Northern Elders Forum groups, to make the president understand that restructuring and devolution of power in a plural society where people require a measure of autonomy is not a threat to national unity has failed. His resolve to listen only to himself has led to frustration and bitterness among those who believe they have been reduced to second class citizen in their country.

    What the subsistence farmers of Benue, Plateau, Adamawa who under deadly attack of invading herdsmen who kill and allegedly confiscate land need is state and community policing to implement their state laws. The demands of the helpless Zamfara people held hostage by bandits, kidnappers and illegal miners is not different. The prayers of those in the Southwest whose forest reserves have been taken over by criminals is for federal government to get off their back so that they could manage their lives. The president who appears only listens to himself however seems to believe the answer to insecurity in the above areas and across the country is underpaid and ill-equipped federal police from Abuja, drafting of soldiers to highways and use of fighter jets against bandits who operate inside thick mangrove forest.

    Unfortunately for angry Dr. Abari, the attempt to surreptitiously railroad Ruga, a controversial government policy denounced by both the National Economic Council (NEC), crop farmers and nearly all the major Nigeria’s ethnic groups, has sadly left the impression that it is another self-serving policy thrust designed for short-term political advantage of those in power who like their preceding self-proclaiming messiahs, pretend to know what Nigerians want without asking them.

  • Osoba’s reward for his forbears’ unfinished war

    Leadership in Yoruba nation is earned. Among a people that read meanings to ordinary greetings, leadership cannot be bought through distribution of patronage to siblings of your political opponents  to undermine their credibility, terrorizing people with political thugs to prove you are in power or by whimsically declaring yourself a ‘constituted authority’. Leadership requires selfless service. And it is not just to the Yoruba people but to the larger society.

    The Yoruba who  are  in the modern times led by a socio-cultural council of elders with Afenifere acronym – wanting the best they want for themselves for others, fully understand that the wellbeing of others is the only guarantee for their own continued wellbeing and security. By 1947, their leader, Awo had come up what he called ‘Path to Nigeria’s Freedom’, where he recommended a federation of major ethnic groups as the building block for Nigerian federation.  At the London 1957 Constitutional Conference, Awo, regarded by the British press as  the only one among the nationalist leaders who spoke like a statesman, insisted not only on freedom for ethnic nationalities but independence for individuals as citizens of the new nation.

    Awo and his Action Group party from then on led a crusade for the creation of states for minorities in the North notably Benue and Plateau and, Ijaw, Ibibio, Efiks and Anang, in the Eastern Region. Barely two years after independence, he was framed up and jailed by those who wanted to run the country according to their own distorted vision of society.

    Following his release from prison in 1967 by Gowon, he embarked on his crusade for a return to the ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’ never taken while those who plunged the nation into civil war regrouped as NPN and NPP. In the Second Republic, the new inheritors of power in the West took up the crusade by establishing free primary schools and state-owned universities in Midwest, Ondo, Ogun and Lagos which were opened to everyone from other parts of the country.

    Olusegun Osoba, Bola Tinubu and others took up the battle from their illustrious fathers during the short-lived Third Republic and in the Fourth Republic, when they rejected Obasanjo and his ‘mainstreaming’ agenda.  Speaking of Pa Abraham Adesanya during his burial ceremony, Obasanjo confessed: “Pa Abraham told me if I join, things will change but I refused to join them. I went back the second time but they refused to work for my emergence…I went there again the third time but Afenifere maintained their stand, they refused to vote for me but I secured my votes outside Yoruba land”. Of course Obasanjo lost even in his polling booth in Abeokuta even though Pa Adesanya never publicly asked anyone not to vote for Obasanjo. The same scenario played out in the First Republic when in 1965, the Yoruba roundly rejected Samuel Akintola, imposed on the West by the Balewa’s federal government. In recent governorship election in Ogun State, the people rightly identified Osoba as their true leader in spite of the antics of Amosun. In Yoruba nation, the people know their leaders and leaders speak for their people.

    Read Also: Osoba at 80

    In 2003, when Obasanjo who has always claimed to be a Nigerian leader pretended to identify with aspirations of Yoruba people, they demanded no special favour for the Yoruba nation. According to Chief Segun Osoba, “The conditions presented to Obasanjo, among others were: the restructuring of the Nigerian federation, devolution of power, including moving some items from the exclusive to the concurrent list and ensuring fiscal federalism. Obasanjo was made to agree to organise a credible and transparent national census”. Obasanjo according to him assured them that he was satisfied with all the conditions tabled before him but as documented in his book, “It was later that we realised that we had been fooled. Obasanjo merely played along with us and ended up deceiving us by telling our leaders what he knew they wanted to hear, but which didn’t come from his heart.”

    Obasanjo was responsible for the division in Afenifere. But while speaking to Fasoranti, leader of the pro-PDP Afenifere faction shortly before the 2019 election, he had said. “You have been talking about the interest of Yoruba, while I have been talking about the interest of Nigeria. Our paths crossed.  Our priority is now one. If we did not repair this country, it will be disastrous.” Obasanjo says the solution is in rescuing the country from the hands of the All Progressives Congress and President Buhari.

    But Osoba, who prides himself as having undergone  a tutelage under Awo and “did his PhD in public life by being mentored” by him understands Buhari is just a symptom of our crisis of nationality  and that the way forward is retracing our way back to the ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’ never taken through restructuring of the country. He has therefore suggested the 9th National Assembly be allowed to carry out that function. And with the encomiums pouring in from his political associates, his professional peers and from powerful people from across the nation, during the launching of his autobiography The Battle lines: My Adventures in Journalism and Politics, all extolling his virtue as a patriotic Nigerian, who built bridges across ethno-religious divides, the question as to who between the two Egba chiefs speaks for the Yoruba is settled.

    Everyone attested to Osoba’s selfless service to his people and to the nation. President Buhari affirmed that “the real impact of his wealth of experience, selfless spirit and many sacrifices in leadership will continue to resonate in the many lives he had touched”.

    Babajide Sanwoolu, Lagos State governor praised him for the “documentation of his journey as an elder statesman, as a politician, a true Nigerian, a true democrat, an Afenifere to the core, a NADECO stalwart”. Bola Tinubu, his soul mate in the struggle for implementation of ‘Nigeria’s Path to Freedom’ spoke of his “honesty and openness adding that even when Osoba was sick, his main concern was the struggle for Nigeria”. Abdulsalami Abubakar, said he and Osoba possessed deep interest in the affairs of the nation and that they both “want Nigeria to remain a blessing for Africa, want Nigeria to move higher worldwide and want Nigerians to believe in their nation”. Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (rtd) in his “Tribute to a great mind and uncommon Nigerian” described him as “detribalized and a patriotic Nigerian who speaks truth to power.”

    Everyone also admitted Osoba has massive contacts across the country. But like his illustrious forbears there is no evidence Osoba ever exploited these contacts for personal gain. He could have bargained for oil block, private bank or private university licence for himself. The only time he sought the goodwill of Abdulsalami Abubakar, his friend of many years was when he wanted Yoruba-backed AD registered as a political party. And he did this, not for himself or even for the Yoruba, but according to him, for the stability of the Fourth Republic.

    Osoba’s recognition as ‘a detribalized and patriotic Nigerian leader” despite waging his forebears’ uncompleted battle for ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom” for years has shown there is no contradiction in being a good representative of your people and being a patriotic Nigerian. Indeed as Awo, Osoba’s mentor observed, ‘You cannot be a good Nigerian without first being a good representative of your people’.