The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • On El-Rufai’s demographic superiority

    At the Northern Youth Summit organized by Northern Hibiscus Initiative in Kaduna last week, Governor Nasir El-Rufai spoke about the following naked truths northerners needed to tell themselves: ‘the north is backward, less educated and unhealthy in comparison to a developing, largely educated and healthy southern Nigeria’; ‘Nigeria has the largest number of poor people in the world, mostly of northern extraction’; ‘Nigeria  has the largest number of out of school children, all virtually from the north’; ‘Northern Nigeria has become the centre of drug abuse, gender violence, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism’, and that the northerners ‘have also been associated with high divorce rate and breakdown of families’. But what gladdens his heart and the northern rulers in spite of these dark statistics: is that the ‘North’s demographic superiority gives them a very powerful tool to negotiate in politics’.

    El Rufai was not the first representative of those who have held  the north hostage to spread these form of false narratives in order to give an impression they care for the northern poor on whose blood they feed. We  all remember the former CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi, current emir of Kano who often jarred our earlobes with tales about how proud he is of his illustrious grandfather who supervised the ‘famed Kano Groundnut pyramids’ while remaining silent on the fate of the children of the real groundnut farmers who were condemned to life of servitude even as children of cocoa farmers, their counterparts in the southwest were aided to cross the poverty line as lawyers, doctors and professors by a visionary leadership that understood it was in their own enlightened self-interest to create a more egalitarian society for the underprivileged.

    But those who held the north hostage saw such advantage including the West’s head start in education which led to Richard Sclar’s assertion that the north was 70 years behind the south as an affront. The Kaduna Mafia, the new inheritors of power by the end of the civil war, came up with a new policy thrust deliberately designed not to liberate their subjects but to slow down the progress of the south. It created uniformity by lowering standard through JAMB and quota system of recruitment even into military schools with typing qualifications as equivalent to GCE qualification, all of which produced “Nigerian Army of anything is possible” of the eighties and the military-baked ‘new-breed politicians’ that destroyed not only the strong institutions and public enterprises they inherited, but also like an army of occupation shared the national patrimony kept in their custody.

    Nigeria’s hostage-takers clearly understand no part of a whole can be holier than the whole. Sick North and ailing South are the result of their social engineering design. Outside prosperous Lagos, poverty strikes you on the face wherever you go in Nigeria. An army of seasonal unemployed youths in the north has been replicated by an army of unemployable graduates, secondary school drops out, area boys and political thugs, frustrated angry okada riders and urban social malaise in the name of urban street hawkers with many unable to read and write. Just as 80% of pregnant women have their babies delivered at home without the help of trained maternity attendants in places like Jos South Local Government of Plateau State, the Southwest that have only the relics of a thriving  primary health care system before hostage takers took control over their lives, is not different. Just as banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and other violent crimes have come to characterise the neglected north, no one is also safe in the forest region of the south from Lagos through Benin to Enugu and Port Harcourt where it was once a delight to drive in the night. A professor kidnap-survivor recently confirmed his Fulani immigrant criminals worked hand in glove with Yoruba ritual killers and food vendors in the thick mangrove forest of western Nigeria.

    El Rufai was however right in his claim that “north’s demographic superiority is a powerful tool northern political elite have successfully deployed to negotiate in politics.  In 1951, Hausa-Fulani constituted only 54% of the population of the north out of which the hostage takers was less than 8%. With politics of figures, they demanded and secured 50% of the membership of the legislature as a pre-condition for allowing our compatriots taken hostage from the north to remain part of us. In 1959, we were all held hostage in spite 4,586,941 combined popular votes of the two southern based parties, NCNC and AG (153 seats) as against NPC’s popular votes of 1,922,179 (134 seats). For us, the 1962/63 census head count crisis eventually settled through judicial pronouncement finally invalidated the law of demography which claims those in the mangrove swamp procreate at faster rate than those in the semi-arid desert region. Subsequent disputed returns of census exercises beginning with 1972 which Awo tore into pieces only consolidated this absurdity. The hostage takers have continued to ensure election results, revenue sharing, infrastructural distributions are made to reflect El Rufai’s north demographic superiority. But for a good measure, Nigeria is regarded by the international community as a nation that plans without statistics.

    No one knows how many we are. Nigerian is as defined by the hostage-takers. Survivors of herdsmen’s mindless killings claim their assailants spoke neither English nor any of our local dialects; Miyyeti Allah and their patrons insist they are Nigerians. In an age when Botswana, a small country of about 2.3m with a cow population of about 2.6m has become one of the world biggest exporters of beef,  Miyyetti Allah insist open grazing  is an important part of Fulani culture.

    Then, their patrons in the 7th assembly sponsored a bill to create a cattle route across the nation. They warned their colleagues of the dire consequences if the bill was not passed. Nigeria became a killing field all through the eighth assembly. It was in the midst of harvests of deaths with thousands driven from their land to IDP camps that an insensitive minister for agriculture came up with cattle colony proposal which was roundly rejected by angry Nigerians.

    While credible voices but mischief-makers like Obasanjo, Danjuma and surviving victims of herdsmen trespassers in search of justice were blaming the President for what they term Islamisation and Fulanisation agenda of his government, a surreptitious attempt was made to foist Ruga, described as forceful acquisition of land for Fulani settlement across the 36 states of the federation. An embarrassed President Buhari was forced by public opinion to suspend the exercise last week.

    But many questions remained unanswered. When was Ruga discussed?  Who authorized the lawless enforcers? And if it was not the hostage takers surreptitious design to replicate the Zango Kataf experiment, why was Ruga not restricted to either Borno or Niger State with landed areas twice the size of both southwest and southeast instead of further impoverishing people where as many as 30 extended family members survive on less than half an acre as subsistence farmers?

    With Wole Soyinka’ last Sunday call on ‘Nigerian nationals across state demarcations to defend the sanctity of their ancestral lands, most Nigerians know the greatest threat to nationhood are hostage takers and hawkers of “demographic superiority”.

  • Ogunlewe: Lesson from a rebellious son

    It is often said that there is always something new out of western Nigeria. It was the first participatory democracy in this part of the world where an elected premier rather than step down honourably following his constitutional removal from office, opted to pull down the whole edifice (Akintola taku).

    It was also the first democracy where, following Chief Remi Fani-Kayode’s boast that the election would be won whether the people voted or not, a regional premier was elected without the electorate. It was also from the West that a leading national opposition leader was framed up by his kinsmen and handed over to his political foes that promptly sent him to 10 years imprisonment for recommending the path to Nigeria freedom.

    It was also from there that a flamboyant politician who after securing a pan-Nigeria mandate in a nationwide election in which he trounced his opposition in his Kano base, was denounced by his kinsmen who after claiming he was not the messiah Nigerian were waiting for, handed him over to his political foes who ensured he spent his four year tenure, not in a presidential palace but in prison where he died mysteriously.

    Last week, from the West also came  what can be described as political socialization in reverse order with a 76-year old Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe, a veteran of Lagos politics, looking up to his son for political direction. Announcing his plan to decamp from PDP some 30 days earlier, he had said “my son is already there and he is expecting me to join him”. And that was exactly what he did last week while proclaiming “I have no regret decamping to APC”.

    Political socialization thesis speaks of a process through which children acquire values and opinions that shape their political beliefs and world view, through agents of socialization starting with family, schools, media and religion inclination. The world view of children who having nothing to compare their fathers with and naturally see their fathers as the greatest in the world, is often heavily influenced by preferences and world view of their parents.

    A 76-year old veteran looking up for political direction from his young son might appear bizarre but I think rather than invalidate the political socialization thesis, it only reinforces it. Since the thesis posits that people don’t join political parties by accident but often as a result of a long period of preparation and acquisition of political beliefs, it is safe to argue Moyosore Ogunlewe abandoned his father in PDP and embraced APC whose progressive ideals align with those he had acquired under his father while growing up long before his father embraced “come and chop” PDP politics of Lagos State.

    Available facts show Adeseye Ogunlewe has always identified with Lagos’ progressive politics. That in fact was the reason he was elected a senator on the platform of AD in 1999. The story was that although Obasanjo was said to have won the 1999 election, he remained a political orphan having been roundly rejected by his own people. He then needed a political base at any price.

    Ogunlewe’s political enemies claimed he was given an offer he could not resist. Unable to find credible argument to severe the umbilical cord between him and his progressive family members and to rationalize his defection to PDP, he had accused Bola Tinubu, the then governor of Lagos State of awarding contracts to his friends.

    If any proof is needed that Ogunlewe was driven to PDP in 2003 by selfish interest, his political foes have pointed out that he is today remembered not as Obasanjo’s Minister for Works, but more for fighting Obasanjo wars like a slave. He publicly canvassed for a third term for Obasanjo.

    He took a leading role in Obasanjo’s ‘mainstreaming’ agenda, designed to pacify the West and humiliate its leaders including  Pa Adesanya, the late Afenifere leader who told Obasanjo to his face in the run up to the 1999 elections that the Yoruba would not give him support since he has never identified with aspirations of the Yoruba people.

    As a further proof, Ogunlewe in 2004, organized thugs in the guise of federal road traffic marshals to unleash terror on officials of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority that Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Alliance for Democracy administration had creatively put in place to tackle the perennial Lagos State traffic problems.

    While Ogunlewe was busy prosecuting Obasanjo’s ‘mainstreaming’ agenda, the state of federal roads in the country became more deplorable despite federal government allocation of billions for road rehabilitation.  Some governors including that of Lagos started rehabilitating federal roads within their territories in order to alleviate the sufferings of their people.

    Ogunlewe’s July 2003 announcement that the federal government would invest about US$2.85 billion in rehabilitating and upgrading the nation’s highway network, and planned to make all roads in the country accessible by year end, remained mere promises. It was the same with his August 2004 announcement that the World Bank and the African Development Bank planned to cooperate with Nigeria to build the Trans-West African Highway from Lagos to Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott and his October 2004 declaration that the year 2005 would see faster rapid progress in road repair and construction.

    Ogunlewe was dumped by Obasanjo in March 2006. His earlier services to Obasanjo did not however stop him from being questioned and detained temporarily over the death of Funsho Williams, the political opponent he was to square up with in the 2007 PDP primaries for Lagos governorship ticket. It also did not stop his indictment along with Anthony Anenih and other ministers of works for  “alleged serial malpractices” in road contracting over a 10-year period by Heineken Lokpobiri’s November 2009 Senate ad hoc committee’s report.

    Ogunlewe attributed his last week decision to look up to his son for political direction to the unending crisis in Lagos PDP. Without admitting his role in destabilising the party as an intruder, he moaned: “You see, for now, there is no chairman in PDP. We don’t have leaders and you don’t expect me to stay in a party that is not stable and with people that lack focus”.

    Then he went on to accuse his party members of greed and selfish interest. “What these people care about is only their selfish interests and not the interest of the party”. But he forgets that objective watchers can easily observe that when Ogunlewe points one finger at others, the remaining four are pointing at himself.  Here was a man who secured a ministerial appointment without being a foundation member of the party in Lagos State.

    This also perhaps explains why Adeseye Ogunlewe, all through his sojourn at PDP, was at war with Lagos State PDP foundation members. He once called on the leadership of the party in the state to invite the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to probe Chief Bode George over the N50 million campaign funds disbursed by Abuja for local government elections in the state.

    Despite Ogunlewe’s feeling of self-worth, he and his son lost all the elections in which they participated as chieftains of PDP in Lagos State since 2003. Without electoral worth, one can hazard a guess that what drove Ogunlewe out of APC to PDP is not different from what is today driving him back to APC: Self-preservation.

  • Our crisis of nationality

    President Buhari’s commitment to a more peaceful and prosperous Nigeria has never been in doubt. This is a sentiment shared not only by his supporters but also those political foes who disagree with his style and politics.

    This commitment is perhaps behind his last Thursday’s appeal during the inauguration of the 2019 – 2023 National Economic Council (NEC) to the 36 states governors of the federation, the CBN governor, ministers of finance, budget and national planning, agriculture, FCT and the Minister of State, Petroleum, to join him in fighting the menace of poverty, challenges of decayed education, health, and agriculture sectors as well as the ongoing insecurity in the land.

    Unfortunately, these are mere symptoms of our crisis of nationality. And this perhaps explains why they have remained intractable despite the valiant efforts of President Buhari’s immediate predecessors in office. What the nation is confronted with is crisis of nationality. And as it has been shown by experiences of other multi-ethnic societies around the world, crisis of nationality is often resolved through politics by the political class with eyes on history.

    President Muhammadu Buhari had during the said inauguration directed the governors  to “enforce very rigorously the statutory provisions on free and compulsory basic education especially Section 18(3) of the 1999 Constitution as amended (designed  to eradicate illiteracy and provide free and compulsory education) and “Section 2 of the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act which mandates every government in Nigeria to “provide free, compulsory and universal basic education for every child of primary and junior secondary school age”.  Like his predecessors, he also did not forget to reassure the governors of federal government assistance to access the counterpart funding provided by UBEC for the development of basic education.

    That all the nation has to show for similar past appeal and commitments by President Buhari’s predecessors are today’s over 10 million children of school age that are out of school,  is evidence enough  that chasing shadows instead of a return to ‘the path to Nigerian freedom’ never taken, is not likely going to produce a different result.

    In the department of health, the president said he strongly believes “it is in our collective interest that each and every citizen gets at least a minimal access to healthcare, including primary, preventive and emergency care.”  He went on to express the hope that the implementation of the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund, will ultimately achieve “at least 65 percent increase in the share of the population covered by primary healthcare by 2023, up from the 12.6 percent we cover at the moment”. President Buhari therefore wants  the governors to strive to make the universal health insurance scheme  work in their respective domains while assuring them of federal government assistance to enable them cover “the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, who cannot even afford to pay the premium.’’

    Unfortunately, Nigerians have passed through that route before. Similar past promises remain just promises. The old Western Region ran a successful primary health care system between 1952 and 1966. However, Nigerians in the rural areas today derive little or no joy from the involvement of a federal government that cannot successfully manage teaching hospitals or State House hospital located under the nose of the president, in the primary health centres spread around remote areas of the country. This is a betrayal of federalism. The states and local governments who know their needs are better equipped to manage their own affairs.

    In the area of agriculture, the president challenged the governors to imitate the federal government by deploying more resources to the sector while not forgetting to remind them that “Of our nearly one million hectares of land, about 77% is confirmed suitable for agriculture”.

    What the president did not admit however is that of the one million hectares, the federal government does not possess an inch. The truth of the matter is that beyond the funding of federal research agriculture centres, the bulk of annual appropriation on agriculture should go to the states instead of a dysfunctional centre that is known to throw money around blindly.

    And finally, the president who alone controls the security apparatus of state wants the governors to secure their states in the face ongoing assault by banditry, kidnappers for ransom and armed robbers. In this regard, the president according Governor Kayode Fayemi, chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, has promised to “work with them to address questions of intelligence, broadening community policing, ensuring inter-service coordination, among the various security agencies”.

    Most experts have cited state policing as the panacea to insecurity in the states. Unfortunately, the governors instead of letting the president know during the said meeting that he cannot swim against the tide of public opinion, chose to engage  in needless adulation treating the president as an emir as against an elected servant of the people.

    Fayemi  who cited funding as a potential disincentive to state policing after declaring “Already, all of us are involved in funding; there is no governor that is not buying security vehicles, ammunition for police, giving allowances to our security agencies, be they SSS or police or in some cases, the military, where the military is involved”, cannot be right. I think it is a question of states getting their priority right. It is claimed the state governors collect between N250m and N1b monthly as security votes. And when the federal government stops its unconstitutional interference in the affairs of LGAs, the state governments can do away with many parasites populating the so-called third tier of government or integrate those that are qualified into the state or LGA police force.

    Our problem is the tyranny of the state as represented by an all-powerful federal centre that has always stood against ‘the path to Nigeria freedom’. With government off our back and with devolution of powers to the states, a state like Zamfara, abandoned to warlords by the current governor who like his predecessors is said to have taken refuge in Dubai, will be able to mine her gold and other precious gems, pay tax to federal government and still have enough to employ doctors to run their 30 hospitals currently manned by a doctor each and hundreds of schools that could currently boast of only one teacher per school.

    And with oil rich Niger Delta in charge of her resources, paying taxes to the federal government as it was in the first republic, when revenue sharing was on the basis of derivation, sponsorship of frustrated unemployed youths by self-serving Niger Delta politicians to sabotage the economic interest of the nation will become less attractive. State police will not only end insecurity across the land, it will bring prosperity to all with herders and farmers forced to run their businesses as an ongoing enterprises and prices of their products determined by market forces.

  • Legacy of Saraki’s 8th Senate

    Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the 8th Senate chairman, Committee on Media and Public Affairs, last Sunday said their 8th Senate “remains the highest performing senate in the history of the country”. Abdullahi, who probably forgets that in an age of internet and social media, history as the past expressed with written documents cannot be shaped by temporary political office holders, wants the 8th Senate, Saraki and his ‘like-minds’ senators judged not by sentiments but by their achievements. He listed them as including “128 bills in 26 months weighed against the 5th Senate that passed 129 bills in four years; the 6th Senate that passed 72 bills in four years; the 7th Senate that passed 128 bills in four years.”; clearance of 82 petitions ‘juxtaposed against the 6th and 7th Senates’, the ‘review of the Public Procurement Act and the passage of one out of the three Petroleum Industry Governance Bills (PIGB). Beyond this, he also wants the 8th Senate given credit for the 2017 derailed constitutional review exercise.

    Since not all Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia, I am not sure many Nigerians share Abdullahi’s sentiments. Indeed many, including Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption believes “the 8th Senate is by far the worst in Nigerian history”. He justified his position by what he described as its attempt to “grab executive powers; it’s confrontation with the president and vice-president as well as love of self-serving legislation and total insensitivity to the common interest of Nigeria”.

    But first, what are the documented facts of history? Nigerians still remember Saraki secured the leadership of the senate through a civilian coup described by Sagay as “‘a victory for impunity, a victory for fraud and a victory for political desperation and indiscipline”.

    Read Also: 8th Senate adjourns indefinitely as Saraki bows out

    To pull off the fraud, it is also on record that an interim police report confirmed that the senate standing papers were forged.   And to sustain the fraud, Saraki and his ‘like-mind’ senators adopted self -help tactics that reduced the senate to a house of deals where majority had their say and minority carried the day.

    The result of this was that as against a senate as a chamber of “sober second thought” populated by  men of honour, saddled with making laws, amending budget or repealing public policy and guaranteeing  freedom and preventing tyranny, Saraki’s  8th Senate  gradually descended into a chamber of corruption, greed, treachery impunity and vileness.

    At the end, Saraki’s 8th Senate served none but its members. First, the senate ignored the recommendation of the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC to fix for themselves outrageous salaries. Senator Shehu Sani’s revelation that members of the 8th Senate earned N13.5m monthly immediately made Saraki’s Nigeria’s 8th senate a record breaker as the highest paid lawmakers in the world. Sagay who claims “What they are earning “exceeds the minimum wage by 1,666 percent” could not help dismissing the lawmakers as “all ‘come-and-chop’ characters, with no sense of service” or thoughts for the country.

    Their periodic padding of budget seems to further validate Sagay’s thesis. In fairness to Saraki’s 8th Senate, budget padding did not start with them. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Minister of Finance under the Jonathan administration had told Nigerians how National Assembly during the David Mark/Ekweremadu 7th Senate coerced the Jonathan administration to part with an additional N17 billion before passing the 2015 budget.

    But despite the 2016 Technology Organisation-BudgIT’s revelation that about N350billion appropriated by the National Assembly in respect of about 2,516 projects spread across the country in the last five years never took off even after full payment had been made, Saraki’s 8th Senate according to Audu Ogbeh, the agriculture minister, returned the 2016 budget to the ministry after five months with 386 “strange” projects worth N12.6billion inserted by the National Assembly after reducing the ministry’s budget proposals from N40,918 billion to N31.618 billion to accommodate their own constituency projects. The Minister of Transport raised similar alarm about the cancellation of the Lagos –Calabar rail project to accommodate N3b National Assembly constituency projects such as provision of tri-cycles, town-halls and bore-holes.

    In the 2018 budget, the National Assembly, according to President Buhari, had made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion.

    Not a few respected Nigerians also believe the 8th Senate was driven by greed. For instance, Col. Dangiwa Umar (rtd) in fact believes the 8th Senate, besides being driven by greed, was also “on a mission to crash the federal government’s war against corruption using the power of ‘oversight’ as cover.” As proof, he cited the case of a powerful senator whose company imported 1,200 metric tons of rice in 30, 40-foot containers, fraudulently declared as yeast to evade payment of appropriate duties. There was also a parallel to this when an imported SUV jeep which carried forged papers to evade tax payment was traced to the senate president by Customs.

    It is also a documented fact of history that out of sheer greed, some members of the 8th Senate, especially former governors, for a period earned double salaries according to EFCC. The testimony of the Secretary to the Kwara State Government, Alhaji Isiaka Gold, during court proceedings that Senate President  Saraki was only collecting a pension of N578, 188.00 which increased to N1, 239,493.94 monthly from October, 2014 as other past governors in the country did not invalidate such fact as such practices is against public service rules.

    Obasanjo, who was godfather to leading members of the 8th Senate including Senate President Saraki and Dino Melaye who at different times worked for him as special assistant on budgeting and on youths have the final verdict on the 8th assembly. According to him: “The National Assembly stinks to high heavens. It needs to be purged. The National Assembly cabal of today is worse than any cabal that anybody may find anywhere in our national governance system at any time…The National Assembly is a den of corruption by a gang of unarmed robbers.”

    And now as for the 8th Senate’s celebrated achievements, what Abdullahi did not tell Nigerians was that most of the bills including the one that attempted to change the sequence of the 2019 elections were self-serving. While Nigerians had thought the 8th assembly will advance the course of federalism through the 2017 constitutional review by ensuring LGAs become responsibilities of their states, they were more interested in promoting injustice in the name of equity with Sokoto which once enjoyed the same status with Lagos but now carved into four states with about 87 LGAs drawing revenue from the federation account as against Lagos’ 20.

    Some of the 8th Senate’s other self-serving  bills include Bill No. 4 – Financial Autonomy of State Legislature which allows states houses of assembly to be funded directly from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. Bill No. 5 – Distributable Pool Account for Local Governments which abrogate the State Joint Local Government and Bill No. 8 – Immunity for Legislators for Acts in Course of Duty. These along with their other selfish anti-people proposed alterations of the constitution, according to Sagay, “demonstrate their contempt and disdain for federalism and women, and their inordinate self-love and self-indulgence, amounting to narcissism, at the expense of all other Nigerians”.

  • June 12: Triumph of truth over forces of evil

    “The truth”, Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once wrote “is rarely pure and never simple”. But as the Austrian-born philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein however pointed out, “truths are facts that have no spatial locations”. They remain the same. President Buhari’s statesmanship and courage in the historic institutionalization of June 12 as against Nigeria’s forces of evil’s June 29, as democracy day in honour of MKO Abiola’s heroic sacrifice that democracy may thrive in Nigeria, confirms a similar Yoruba saying that “Bi iro ba lo logun odun, ojo kan lotito yoo baa (No matter the quality of an untrue account, the truth shall always prevail”. All those that have tried to replace the truth of June 12 with falsehood have either ended up in grief or have continued to be haunted by their inglorious past.

    But first, for the sake of our youths who were not born 26 years ago, the diary of the debacles: (apology to Olatunji Dare). Babangida, the self-styled ‘evil genius’, after toppling Buhari in a palace coup, set up in January 1986 a Political Bureau of 17 accomplished Nigerians to ‘search for a viable political future and provide guidelines for attainment of this objective’. At the completion of their work after 15 months, he, in July 1987, inaugurated his transition programme. He first decreed two parties, National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Although the two parties conducted their primaries on February 6, 1992, it was not until November 18, 1992, few months to the end of his “transition without end” that Babangida cancelled the results claiming ‘stability of the nation cannot be sacrificed on the altar of time’.

    Following  pressure from respected Nigerians including chief Anthony Enahoro and Obasanjo who warned that  “any attempt to prolong military rule will not only bring the armed forces into disrepute but will be a declaration of war against the sovereign right of the people of Nigeria to choose their own leaders and conduct their own affairs in accordance with the constitution”, Babangida, from his bag of tricks, brought out  option A4  which against all expectations, produced two of his friends Bashir Othman Tofa and Moshood Kashimawo Abiola as presidential candidates.

    Two days to June 12, 1993, the rescheduled date of the election, Arthur Nzeribe and his ABN, which had earlier unsuccessfully campaigned for “four more years for Babangida” as military president, secured a midnight interlocutory injunction from Justice Bassey Ikpeme’s Abuja High Court, to stop the election despite Decree 52 of 1993 that protected the election against court injunctions.

    Humphrey Nwosu, on the strength of the said Decree 52, went on with the election as scheduled. But less than 12 hours after the election, Nduka Obaigbena, the publisher of defunct This Week magazine and a failed NRC Senate candidate from Delta State was on CNN, calling for the cancelation of the election because   MKO Abiola, contrary to the provision of the electoral act, wore a dress with party logo to the polling booth on election day. In less than 24 hours and with the announcement of results in 14 states, Dahiru Saleh, Chief Judge of Abuja (FCT) in response to Arthur Nzeribe’s new prayers, stopped further announcement – an illegal order Attorney-General Akpamgbo ordered NEC, the electoral umpire to obey.

    On June 23, the forces of evil prevailed with the federal government’s cancellation of  the presidential election, suspension of  NEC and  repealing of the laws on which the eight years transition was anchored through an undated and unsigned statement read by Nduka Irabor, press secretary to Vice President Admiral Augustus Aikhomu,  claiming the decision was to “ensure that a judiciary that had been built on a sound and solid foundation was not tarnished by the insatiable political desire of a few persons”.

    Obasanjo who had during an earlier Council of State’s meeting informed Nigerians that “under Babangida, all the values we hold dear are under assault; the nation is racked by tension and despair; hope has become a scarce commodity and fear a constant companion”, made a 360 degree U-turn to join him in imposing an illegal Interim National Government, to be headed by Ernest Shonekan, Abiola’s fellow Egba compatriots. And wearing the borrowed robes of John the Baptist, he announced self-conceitedly that ‘Abiola was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for’.

    The Guardian, in an editorial, posited that the “interim national government was an aberration, entirely without legitimacy and therefore lacked the authority with which to govern”. Justice Dolapo Akinsanya of Lagos High Court lent credence to the paper’s claim when she, shortly afterwards, declared the ING contraption illegal.

    Abacha seized power on November 17, 1993. He clamped MKO Abiola into prison on June 11, 1994 following his self-declaration as president at the famous Epetedo declaration. He went on to declare war on Nigerians with state sponsored assassination of Alfred Rewane, Kudirat Abiola among many others and the chasing of NADECO opposition members into exile. He then designed his own four-year transition programme to terminate in October 1998.

    He registered five political parties, described by Bola Ige as ‘the five fingers of a leprous hand’ viz Democratic Party of Nigeria,( DPN); Committee for National Consensus, (CNC); Grassroots Democratic Movement, (GDM); United Nigeria Congress Party, (UNCP) and National Centre Party of Nigeria( NCPN), with all of them adopting Abacha as their sole presidential candidate. Amidst sycophants’ songs such as “Abacha today, Abacha tomorrow and Abacha forever’, and Daniel Kanu-led one million Abuja match christened ‘Nigerian Youths Earnestly Yearn for Abacha”, the man died a miserable death allegedly eating apples with Indian prostitutes inside the presidential palace he illegally seized and immorally occupied.

    General Abdulsalami Abubakar succeeded Abacha.  Abiola who was said to have collapsed and died on June 7, 1998, in the presence of Thomas Pickering, visiting United State under-secretary for foreign affairs, died under his nose. Haunted by MKO Abiola’s ghost, as against Babangida’s eight years transition and Abacha’s five years’, Abubakar packed his own transition into a tight eight months, September 24, 1998 and May 25, 1999 at the end of which he and his distrusted ‘army of anything is possible” released Obasanjo from prison and imposed him on Nigeria to operate a military-midwifed constitution neither he nor Nigerians had seen. Obasanjo, the major beneficiary of Abiola’s tragedy spent eight years in office dancing on his grave. His fellow PDP members betrayed the spirit of June 12 by stealing the country blind in the name of democracy for another eight years.

    Yesterday’s final triumph of truth is but a confirmation of time tested aphorism of Uthman Dan Fodio, the late spiritual leader of the 19th century Fulani Jihad, (1754-1816) that ‘conscience is an open wound that only the truth can heal. As it was in the first republic, all those who elevated falsehood above truth, dead or alive, have all come to grief. Babangida the evil genius who tried to set the country ablaze by fraudulently claiming he annulled June 12 to please northern political elite opposed to Yoruba presidency is today a shadow of himself. Abacha died a cheap miserable death inside Aso Rock Presidential palace he immorally occupied. With anarchy let loose on the land, Obasanjo is today a witness to the ruins of the ‘mainstreaming’ efforts he first embarked upon in  1976, all through second and fourth republics when he tried hard to obliterate the legacies of his more illustrious Yoruba compatriots  in order to please those he today accuses of planning to ‘Fulanise’ and ‘Islamise Nigeria. Danjuma, David Mark and their fellow Christians without the spirit of Christ who ran and ruined the country for 15 years in denial of what June 12 represents are in the United Nations accusing those on whose back they rode to into prominence of ethnic cleansing.

  • Buhari and the Economist: Between Growth and Development

    By the law of Mother Nature, the strong survives and the weak dies. It is the survival of the fittest wherelife is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. This was what forced men out of hostile European environment to Africa in search of food, gold and glory. With superior fire power, they soon forcefully integrated African society into the world economy by shipping 12.5 million Africans to the new world between 1525 and 1886, out of which 10.7m survivedto lay the foundation forwestern Europe’s prosperity. From slavery to globalization, it is all about law of nature-the strong feeding on blood of the weak. The agreement to substitute natural law with international law after 67 years of brutal European wars did not change the narrative.

    International organisations such as World Bank, World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund (IMF) formed after the Breton Wood conference in 1944 to foster global growth and economic stability by working with developing nations toachieve macro-economic stability and reduce poverty only consolidated the mindset. Help comes  only after vulnerable help-seekers have met the IMF ‘conditionalities’or what is also known as ‘Washington consensus’, whichinclude austerity measures (to further impoverish the people), devaluation of currencies, trade liberalization or lifting of import and export restrictions and of course privatization or divestiture of all state-owned enterprises.

    Even with the assault on the economyby President Shehu Shagari, party-chairman Meredith Adisa Akinloye and their NPN between 1979-1983, our economy was still resilient with our naira as strong as the pound sterling and twice as strong as the US dollar.But that all that changed with Babangida’s ill-advised IMF inspired Structural Adjustment Programme, earlier rejected by Muhammadu Buhari but vociferously championed by Olu Falae and Kalu Idika Kalu.  As demanded by IMF, our market was opened to manufactured goods from Europe and America leading to instant collapse of our budding industries including the vehicle assembly plants, electronics, and shoe, battery, tyre and textile industries among many others.For instance, theKano Gaskiya textile factory commissioned in 1985 by Muhammadu Buhari with staff strength of 4000 was about thelargest in West Africa.It finally collapsed in 2005. In all, over 300,000 jobs were lost in the textile industry alone.

    With no lesson learnt from Babangida failed commercialization rip-off, President Olusegun Obasanjo between 2003-2007, also embraced the IMF inspired privatization programme. But despite meeting IMF deregulation, liberalization and privatization conditionalities’, the National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS) and the State Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (SEEDS).,its related initiative at state level, designed to raise the standard of living of Nigerians failed. Other objectives such as rebuilding decaying infrastructure, creation of 7 million new jobs, diversification of the economy, boosting non-energy exports, increase industrial capacity utilization, and improve agricultural productivity were never achieved.

    But there was growth. In 2013, our economy was ranked as the largest economy in Africa, the 27th-largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, and the 22nd-largest in terms of purchasing power parity. Nigerian GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) was said to have almost tripled from $170 billion in 2000 to $451 billion in 2012. Indeed, Citigroup report published in February 2011, predicted Nigeria will have the highest average GDP growth in the world between 2010 and 2050. But it was growth without development. The multinationals and their local representatives were the major beneficiaries. Unlike development, growth had no positive impact on quality of education, health services, infrastructural development, communication, political participation and overall quality of life of the ordinary Nigerians.

    As it was in 1984, Buhari in 2015 decided to change the narrative by rejecting the Breton Wood growth-focused economic policies (Lamido Sanusis, Emir of Kano also recently expressed regret for his blind faith in Breton Woods Economic policies as CBN Governor) which serve only the interest of multinationals and their local representatives. For the nation’s decayed infrastructures he sought help from China for support. And since, the nation could not feed herself in spite of the celebrated growth between 1999 and 2015, he deployed huge resources into the agricultural sector to ensure self-sufficient in food production.

    But perhaps because The Economist of London only uses growth as index of measurement of prosperity, it says Nigeria has become the poorest nation on earth in the last four years of Buhari, predicting more misery for Nigerians in the next four years.In its May 31 edition, it also says ‘with 94m Nigerians surviving on less than $1.90 a day, a quarter of very poor people in the whole world would be Nigerians by 2030. It criticized the federal government’s social investment programmes (SIP), and government school-feeding programmes. For the nation to escape the terrible fate that it believes awaits her,The Economistpredictably recommends further assault on the poor through the devaluation of the naira and raising the pump price of fuel.

    But since it is often difficult to serve two masters with equal fervor, TheEconomist cannot be expected to be an unbiased umpire. It is therefore not unexpected that it has not taken notice of government efforts at changing the focus from growth to development.In any case, a news magazine which oncedescribed itself as “a product of the Caledonian liberalism of Adam Smith and David Hume” and has remained an unrepentant promoter of classical and economic liberalism that supports free trade, globalisation, immigration and cultural liberalism was only being true to itself.

    It was, for this reason, Karl Marx, the socialist theorist dismissed The London Economist “as the European organ of the aristocracy of finance, (which) described most strikingly the attitude of this class”, and the reason the Guardian concludes “its writers rarely see a political or economic problem that cannot be solved by the trusted three-card trick of privatisation, deregulation and liberalization. Others who question the impartiality of  the news magazine include  John Raston Saul, who says it is a “magazine which hides the names of the journalists who write its articles in order to create the illusion that they dispense disinterested truth rather than opinion” and Edward Baptist the author of‘slavery and American capitalism’ who attributed the news magazine’s harsh review of his work to its adherence to “free-market fundamentalist” theories, “the idea that everything would be better if measured first and last by its efficiency at producing profit.

    Of course questioning the neutrality of the London Economist is not to say many Nigerians including those who had no choice but to vote for President Buhari in the last election are satisfied with his below-average performance during his first term. That will amount to living in denial. Many are still angry with the president’s handling of herdsmen siege on the middle belt food region of the country, the endless reprisal  killings in southern Kaduna, the take- over of Kaduna-Abuja road by hoodlums, the reign of terror by cattle rustlers, banditry and illegal gold miners in Zanfara and kidnapping for ransom across the nation.Unfortunately, until the President’s last Monday reported approval of state and LGA policing, the cheapest way to tackling insecurity, many Nigerians believe, because of his disregard for public opinion, he and those terrorizing Nigerians are jointly responsible for holding Nigeria hostage.

  • Yerima and Yari: 20 years legacy of ruins

    As a result of their greed and dishonesty, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a torn in the flesh of Nigerian educated political elite that at the end sent him to prison, swearing he would be too old to question how they governed Nigeria by the time he returned once said “Given a choice between the white man, the traditional rulers and the educated elite, the average Nigerian would choose in reverse order”, picking the white man first because with him he was sure of fairness and justice.

    There is nowhere else this is truer than in the northern part of Nigeria where according to Nuru Ribadu, the former EFFC chief (thief catcher), successive northern governors between 1999-2015 had little to show for the billions of naira they collected from the federation account.  Poverty, high unemployment rate, over ten million children of school age out of school and  the un-going  revenge of the impoverished  in most states of the north including Katsina, the President’s own state is closely linked to the greed of northern educated political elite that have been in power for the greater part of our political independence in 1960.

    Unfortunately, as if  Turkey, United Arab Republic (UAR) and Saudi Arabia where women now fly fighter jet planes are not Islamic states, Islamic religion is what   educated political elite from the northern states including Zamfara where those who have no stakes in society are currently engaged in violent rebellion against  their perceived oppressors often employ to impoverish their people while their counterparts in the south strive to create a more egalitarian society for their own people through massive investment in education.

    It is on record that between 1999-2004; more than a dozen northern states introduced political sharia with as many sending some of our impressionable youths to different Islamic nations including Sudan where they received indoctrination from Osama Bin Laden.   On their return, many were first used  as enforcers of sharia law  and  later as terror groups against political opponents unleashing violence  in Kaduna, Kano , Bornu and other parts of the north to divert attention from their misapplication of public funds on private properties and on promotion of underage marriages resulting in what the United Nations (UN) describes as ‘feminisation of poverty’ among northern women, 70% of who are married out between the ages of 13-18 to men who treat them like marketable commodities.

    The tragedy of Zamfara started at the birth of the fourth republic with the launching of political sharia by Senator Sani Yerima. The state  successive governors and current actors  who irrespective of party affiliations had Yerima picture added to their posters as evidence of his endorsement during the last election jointly spent over N370B  over a period of 20 years with nothing to show for the huge expenses beyond decayed infrastructure, collapsed education and health sectors and the ongoing violence.

    Yari on his path has been a total disaster. While the state burns, he allegedly spends most of his time in Abuja, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Broadcaster Kadaria Ahmed  who was moved by the  spate of killings, kidnapping and banditry to organize the #MarchforZamfara protest describes  Yari  as ‘the most useless governor in the history of Nigeria’ because his ‘reaction to the killings in his state was to resign as the Chief Security Officer”

    The less than inspiring response to spate of killing in Zamfara by Yari who holds tight to perquisites of office of a governor including huge security votes he does not need to account for, was a plan to employ 1,700 charmers to join the civilian joint task force to tackle bandits, kidnappers for ransom and cattle rustlers, that in the words of Seun Lari-Williams has turned Zamfara to a land where “citizens are uncertain of far too many things: if their daughters that went to the stream would return; if their husbands at the farm would make it back home safe; if they would make it through the night without a saw cutting through their door with bandits loudly barking orders and where Bandits storm huts at the dead of night to abduct” helpless victims for ransom.

    Yet, for Yari, the above forlorn and baleful legacy was sufficient incentive to impose a successor which he tried to do by by manipulating the governorship primaries to deny Marafa, the APC  governorship ticket. Abubakar Faki, chairman of the election committee, was forced to cancel the exercise while the national working committee (NWC) of the party subsequently disbanded the executive committee of the APC in the state and set up a fresh panel to conduct another primary. But “Just as Yari threatened to kill Oshiomhole if he tempered with his group’s list, Marafa was opposed to Yari’s candidate just as he was equally opposed to the attempt by the party to short-change” him.  He went to court to seek relief with a little encouragement from the Centre for Community Excellence (CENCEX), a human rights group, which accused Abdulaziz Yari, governor of Zamfara, of brewing violence and political unrest in the state. 

    The judiciary put an end to Yari’s dream of having his anointed as successor and transiting to the senate. His hope was rekindled by an appeal court but this was short lived as his ambition finally crashed with the apex court unanimous judgment by a five-man panel of Justices led by the acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Tanko Muhammad, which held that the APC did not conduct valid primary elections to nominate candidates for any elective position in the state and as such did not have any valid candidate in all the elections that held in Zamfara State. It therefore ruled that having conducted invalid primary elections, the runner up in all the categories of elections that fulfilled constitutional provisions should be filled in as winners’. (the governorship position, three senate seats, seven House of Representatives members and 24 members of the state house of assembly.)

    A thoroughly chastised Governor Abdulaziz Yari has attributed the loss of his party and the ordaining of Dr. Bello Muhammad as governor to Allah. The coming of Dr. Bello Muhammad Matawalle, he assured the people of Zamfara, “will surely yield dividends of democracy and ensure developmental progress of the state and assist in arresting the escalating insecurity situation that is bedeviling the state.”

    Senator Yerima, Governor Yari and their other errant Zamfara politicians are after twenty years of irresponsible leadership leaving a state under siege and in ruins for the in-coming governor, the first from PDP since 1999. The launching of Operation Sharan Daji (Sweep the Forest), Operation Harbin Kunama (Scorpion Sting) and Operation Diran Mikiya (Eagle Fighting), by the federal government to tackle the insecurity in the state has not stopped the spate of killing.

    Most schools in Zamfara have only a teacher each. In 2016, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) identified 240,560 out-of-school children in just two LGAs-Bukkuyum, Maradun and Zurmi. In 2014 only 1,345 students from Zamfara were admitted into tertiary institutions as against Osun’s 22,453 while in 2015, the figure was 1,303 as against a total of 24,871 candidates from Imo State.

    The health sector has also collapsed. The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, recently said that Zamfara State with 24 state hospitals has only 23 doctors managing these health institutions having earlier lost 20 doctors because of the state’s inability to pay salaries.

  • British, Obasanjo and military adventurers

    The Fulani wanted to make a fiefdom of Nigeria and the British obliged them through her divide and rule policy. Nigerian military adventurers helped them to consolidate their position after settling the battle for the soul of Nigeria in 1970. As a persevering schemer and calculating fortune hunter, Obasanjo from the onset saw the value of being in the good books of those who constitute the hegemonic power in Nigeria and resolved to perfect how to navigate the tight rope of Nigeria’s politics.   When therefore the opportunity to influence the future direction of Nigeria came his way in 1979, he invested wisely by picking an ill-prepared Fulani – Shehu Shagari who had wanted to be just a senator over tested Obafemi Awolowo, his kinsman.

    He patiently waited and allowed Nigerians including the late Obafemi Awolowo with his prophetic  “ship of state heading for the rocks”  warning, to battle Shehu Shagari who smoked away as NPN (National Party of Nigeria) stalwarts destroyed the economy before administering the lethal blow that swept Shagari away. He allowed Babangida, a Fulani puppet, to run out of wits as Nigerians battled him over his ill-advised economic policies and eight years transition without end before talking about a leader “without honour who compromised all we hold dear as a people”.  He installed ailing Umaru Yar’dua as president and watched as his life ebbed away before advising him to resign and allow Sule Lamido,  another Fulani take over if he could no more perform his functions.

    In 2015, he supported Buhari, a Fulani as president. In 2019, thinking that the herdsmen crises and APC intra party feuds that made the country ungovernable had weakened Buhari, he tried to replace him with Atiku Abubakar, another Fulani man.  President Buhari however survived Obasanjo’s intrigue.

    The prevailing atmosphere of disenchantment of Nigerians with President Buhari over his handling of the ongoing herdsmen killing, banditry in Zanfara and kidnapping for ransom across the land yet provides Obasanjo another opportunity to delegitimize Buhari’s second mandate he had been unable to truncate through the ballot box. Obasanjo’s strategy is to blame Buhari for all that is wrong with us as a nation including the ‘fulanisation’ of Nigeria.

    For instance, only Buhari, an image maker’s nightmare can adequately defend himself against the accusation that he responded with greater fury to cattle rustling by promptly deploying soldiers to flush out bandits than he had done with herdsmen killers who allegedly took over sacked villages with surviving farmers marooned   in IDP camps.  He alone can find explanation for the pro-Fulani body language of some of his political appointees. For instance while survivors of herdsmen vicious attack are claiming that their assailants were not traditional Fulani with whom they had lived for years but violent AK 47 wielding herdsmen who speak neither English nor any known Nigeria local dialects but French, the President’s Minister of Defence seemed to be defending the killing by claiming:  the blockage of grazing routes across the country was the remote cause of killings. As he put it “If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen? “These people are Nigerians and we must learn to live together with one another. Communities and other people must learn how to accept foreigners within their enclave. Finish”

    It is also on record that while Miyetti Allah cattle breeders associations out-rightly rejected ranching insisting grazing is part  of their culture, their patrons, , Sanusi Lamido, the emir of Kano,  Lamido of Adamawa and emirs of Zazzau and Katsina  and the sultan of Sokoto Saad Abubakar their grand patron have not condemned  violent resistance to anti-grazing laws  enacted by some of  the besieged  states of a federation where states by the virtue of the constitution are not answerable to the federal centre.

    And some have said if government is interested in finding a lasting solution, why don’t they deploy what is left of the N100b approved by President Jonathan in 2014 to build ranches in virgin Sambissa forest said to be the size of Lagos instead of confronting farmers in their farms across the country.

    And finally, the president alone has an answer as to why he has not declared Fulani herdsmen a terrorist organization long after Global Terrorism index had named it the fourth deadliest known terrorist group after Boko Haram, Isis, and al-Shabab following its mindless killings of 1,229 Nigerians in 2014

    When we add the above to the fact that the north has more states, more LGAs, controls majority in the two federal houses, all of which make the clamour for restructuring, devolution of power, state and community policing, fiscal federalism a mere academic exercise, it becomes difficult to understand that Obasanjo’s sinister motive in choosing this period to alert Nigerians about the fulanisation of Nigeria is to delegitimize Buhari’s new mandate.

    Believing Buhari was very vulnerable; Obasanjo carefully selected an exclusive Christian audience that has consistently claimed the president habours an Islamic agenda. He also carefully chose Oleh, Isoko South council area of Delta State as his venue. There, he told his captive audience that the aim of the terror sect Boko Haram and herdsmen is ‘Fulanisation’ of West Africa and Islamisation of Africa. He blamed government for deploying outdated materials and equipment and soldiers poorly trained, poorly equipped, poorly motivated, and poorly led without intelligence support. He blamed government for payment of ransom, to secure the release of some of the abducted girls because such an act according to him only strengthens the insurgents.

    And concluding, he said security threat by the Boko Haram insurgency and cattle rustling in the north, “is no longer an issue of lack of education and lack of employment for our youths in Nigeria which it began as, it is now West African fulanization, African Islamization and global organized crimes of human trafficking, money laundering, drug trafficking, gun trafficking, illegal mining and regime change.”

    Many including parents of the abducted school girls may not agree with Obasanjo on the payment of ransom. And if soldiers are poorly kitted, Obasanjo could not have forgotten so soon that he and his PDP boys were in power from 1999 to 2015 and that those who are currently trying to defend their honour in courts for sharing $2b cash meant for procurement of arms are his adopted children. And since most informed Nigerians know that the country has already been fulanised by Obasanjo and his military adventurers, he should as a global statesman reach out to his international friends to prevent the fulanisation of West Africa if that is his objective.

    While Nigerians are grateful to Obasanjo for reminding them of “fulanisaion” of Nigeria, they no doubt understand that the distortion of our constitution and our negotiated federal structure were responsible for Fulani strangle-hold on Nigeria, insecurity, herdsmen mindless killings, banditry, Boka Haram etc.  I am not also sure  Nigerians who believe what is needed is a political will on the path of the political elite to address our national question will agree with Obasanjo that the way forward is to rely on ex-presidents, ex-generals ex-IGs ex-governors ex-law makers, the sources of our nation’s nightmare and beneficiaries of current anarchy.

    The final intriguing question Nigerians would also want Obasanjo who claims to be driven by altruism in all his interventions in the affairs of our country is whether he would have shown this type of concern about the ‘fulanisation’ of  Nigeria, an enterprise in which he had played a leading role if Atiku Abubakar, his anointed Fulani candidate had won last March’s election.

  • Yoruba nation under siege

    With tepid response to the spate of herdsmen killings and kidnapping for ransom by bandits across the country, Nigerians are, in spite of President Buhari’s impressive outing in last March’s presidential election, becoming increasingly impatient with a ‘government of excuses’ after recurring harvest of deaths. Amnesty International’s report late last year indicted the federal government for failing to stop the killing of 3,641 Nigerians by herdsmen in the last three years. Many frustrated Nigerians who understand that the primary responsibility of government is the protection of life and property have asked the president to act his position as commander-in-chief instead of appearing in tears as ‘mourner-in-chief’ after each cycle of senseless killings.  Abubakar Atiku, Buhari’s main rival in the said election captured the frustration of Nigerians when he reminded the electorate that ‘After every attack, either by herdsmen or by kidnappers, the government will vow to get the culprits and punish them. Then more deaths will occur and the government will repeat its vow’. He had then appealed: ”Unless Nigerians vote out the All Progressives Congress administration, killings by herdsmen will continue and ultimately spark series of ethno-religious crises that will be irreversible”.

    Atiku might have lost the election, but his warning seems to have become a self-fulfilling prophesy with the renewed spate of killings in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, with Kaduna- Abuja road taken over by kidnappers and Zamfara state seized by war lords in spite of government show of force. While government’s apparent loss of grip in the besieged communities in the north has led to increased hostilities among the restive ethnic groups, the southwest that has always been home to those fleeing from the war zones of the north and others that seek peaceful environment to actualize their potentials is fast becoming the new theatre of war. The Yoruba whose leaders have striven to create a more egalitarian society are now being forced to suffer from the follies of northern political elite that want freedom for themselves while scheming to preside over an empire of slaves. Herdsmen, unfortunate victims of a culture of ‘labourer born labourer’ ideology instituionalised by northern political elite have brought their war home to the southwest.

    Yinka Odumakin,  speaking for our war-weary Afenifere elders, recently cited  the murder of  a Permanent Secretary of Osun origin, Mrs. Funke Kolawole along Okene-Lokoja road on her way to Abuja as one more example of ‘renewed onslaught of herdsmen in Yorubaland while the ‘federal government turned the other eye. The peace meeting brokered by Oyo State Commissioner of Police Abiodun Odude between  herdsmen, farmers and leaders of agrarian communities of Oyo State  in Eleyele, Ibadan had hardly ended when his officer-in-charge of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad in Saki area of the Oyo State Police Command, Sheu Magu, and a member of his team were brutally murdered by suspected herdsmen. With last week’s abduction of Olayinka Adegbehingbe, a professor of surgery at the Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital, the war was finally taken to Ife, the ancestral home of the Yoruba. He identifies his abductors as six Fulani herdsmen bearing Mark –IV machine guns with several rounds of ammunition. Their ransom demand of N30m, negotiated down to a little over N5m was paid by his family members and friends in order to secure his release.

    There must surely be a cheaper way to win this war. Fortunately President Buhari is not being called upon to re-invent the wheel. Close to a century ago, faced with insurrections, interstate wars, and world wars, Europe discovered a cheaper alternative to coercion was a workable federal arrangement that allowed all the warring groups to imbibe the values of compromise and coexistence. President Buhari who many regarded as the only stumbling block against restructuring of the country, as CPC candidate in 2007, 2011 and APC in 2014 mouthed restructuring. In 2015 his party had restructuring as parts of its manifesto. His victorious APC also set up a committee that came up with a recommendation in 2017. The president who often defies public opinion by behaving as if he is doing Nigerians a favour for being elected once again mouthed workable federal arrangement last week.

    The Yoruba nation is today under siege with people neither safe on their farms, on the roads nor in their ivory towers. The peaceful and accommodating Yoruba people who want the best for themselves as they want for others are also dying from side effects of imported substandard products including drug and food items.  I think it is time to tell the president what the Yoruba want. This is the time our elders, political leaders and elected representatives must demonstrate they are ready to secure freedom of our people. Many perhaps can no longer remember that not all the federating units in Nigeria secured self-government at the same time. Nigeria became a federation in 1954. While the Eastern and Western regions gained internal self-government in 1957, the Northern Nigeria achieved the same goal two years later. No sub unit of the federation should therefore be allowed to hold the nation to ransom. We don’t need war to achieve this.

    Our elders who jar our hears with name of Awo and young politicians who go around wearing Awo cap as St. Christopher’s badge for good luck should revisit the template Awo and his visionary group set up for the liberation of the southwest. ODUA conglomerate was once the largest cooperative organisation in Nigeria with diverse business interest across the southwest with interest in manufacturing, packaging, hospitality, travel and tourism, corporate security and hygiene services, agriculture, real estate oil and gas etc. Its objectives include promoting economic empowerment of members at the grass roots, according to cooperative values and principles, allowing market needs to determine choice of products and services, driven by the zeal to do the right thing at the right time for customers and other stakeholders.

    It is a sad commentary on the quality of leadership the west has thrown up over the years that the same area is today at the mercy of peddlers of fake drugs, killer vegetable oil and vehicle spare parts.

    There are enough resources to reactivate some of the moribund companies ran aground by successive military and civilian Yoruba administrators. These include such  loose monies as  the N250m constituency project funds  from the 18 senators representing the Yoruba states,  their counterparts in the lower house and part of the security funds the governors collect monthly. If setting up industries is out of fashion, nothing stops them from using some of the moribund companies for importing genuine drugs and other goods needed by our people.

    Bola Tinubu, Wale Oshun and all the elected governors and lawmakers must remember this is exactly what Awolowo, Abraham Adesanya, Adekunle Ajasin our forbearers who saw government as service would have done.

    And of course with the reported directive of the minister of defence whose village in Zamfara State has become headquarters of kidnappers, to emirs to start community policing in their domains, our governors will have no excuse for not protecting our people from deviants among us and deal decisively with settlers who want to impose their values instead of living by our own rules.

  • Zamfara killings and challenges of nation building

    With the savagery going on in Zamfara State, the mindless killings by herdsmen in the middle belt region, reprisal killings in Southern Kaduna and kidnapping for ransom between Kaduna highway and Abuja seat of power which has now extended to other parts of the country, the chickens have finally come home to roost.  Concerned Nigerians  have been warning since Babangida’s  whimsical annulment of the 1993 elections, considered  the most credible election in our nation’s history, that  an election, a mere divisive periodic ritual through which the elite decide who takes over power is not an answer to our crisis of nationality. They called for the convocation of a sovereign national conference to work out a new constitution to determine how we live together in peace in spite of our ethnic diversity. This was roundly rejected by those who are benefitting from the nation’s current nightmare, especially the northern political elite and their like-minded counterparts from the south who prefer the culture of ‘labourers born labourers’ to that of building a more egalitarian society.

    Today, we are haunted by consequences of the betrayal of the less privileged in our society with the nation held to ransom by bandits, kidnappers and herdsmen who have nothing to lose. Unfortunately, these are symptoms of crisis of identification, participation and legitimacy, often associated with nation building which can neither be resolved through elections or use of force.  The less than 35% (lowest in Africa) that participated in the 2019 election, cannot in good conscience be said to be evidence of fidelity or genuine sense of duty by all Nigerians. While the voting pattern reflects the deep division in the country, the endless dispute over unfair distribution or sharing of resources questions the moral legitimacy of any segment of the elite that take over power.

    Political stability as Aristotle pointed out in his ‘Politics’ a long time ago, depends on distributive justice-the proper allocation of rewards according to merit. When there is distributive injustice, on the other hand, the government, he says, becomes unstable. Unfortunately the natural instinct of those with power without legitimacy is to resort to force, and resorting to force as we have now seen cannot resolve our crisis of nation building. If anything, it only prolongs our nightmare.

    The killings of about 11,000 male adults which started in Shinkafi and Maradun Local Government Areas in 2011  according to Aminu Sani-Jaji, (Kaura-Namoda/Birnin-Magaji Federal constituency and  chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on National Intelligence and Security, first forced the president to accede to the request of the Minister of Defence, Brig-Gen. Mansur Dan Ali (rtd) for the stationing of a full battalion of Special Forces in Zamfara State, and the operationalization of the newly-established 8 Division of the Nigerian Army in Sokoto in the new Order of Battle (OBAT).

    That did not prevent the killing of 203 people from Zamfara among the 1,071 persons killed, and 685 persons kidnapped across the country in the first quarter of 2016. The response of the former IG, Ibrahim Idris to the killings was the launching of    “Operation Maximum Safety” with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles”. This according to Jimoh  Moshood, the police spokesman, was followed by  a “Joint Intervention Team of about 1000 police personnel comprised of seven mobile police force units headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police, counter terrorism unit (CTU), federal special anti-robbery squad (FSARS), anti-bomb (EOD) squad, and conventional policemen”. Their mandate: “rout-out, arrest and prosecute armed bandits, vicious kidnappers for ransom and cattle rustling gangs operating in some parts of the state.” The DIG arrived Zamfara State in November 2018 ‘with three surveillance patrol helicopters and crew members to coordinate the operation to completely rout-out all armed bandits from Zamfara and other contiguous states”.

    The Nigerian Air Force was not left out. According to its Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, it  also launched  its own Operation ‘Diran Mikiya’, with a coordinated air strikes and a force package of two attack helicopters after intensive Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions .

    There was also the launching of “Operation Puff Adder,” by  Mohammed Adamu , the current IG aimed “at taking the battle to the doorsteps of the criminals” especially in Zamfara.

    All the above show of force by the police army and air force personnel could not  prevent  the mindless killings of about 50 people and wounding of over 31 others when Dangurgu, Kunkilai, Birnin Magaji, in Maru, Gusau and Birnin Magaji local government areas of the state came under attack over the weekend. The Emir of Bungudu, Alhaji Hassan Attahiru, has also confirmed that killings by bandits are not abating in Zamafara State despite the military operations against the criminals. In his words:  “Just on Saturday, in my domain, the bandits struck in broad daylight and killed 15 people. Thirteen people died instantly, while two others gave up the ghost later.”

    After all the blunders by a government that only listens to itself, the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, was said to have met with the expanded executive council of the northern traditional rulers at the Arewa House in Kaduna State where he directed the traditional rulers to start community policing and establish local security councils in their domains to tackle banditry and other security crises in the region.  He was quoted as saying “community policing in your various domains so that more information about criminal elements can be obtained in real time.”

    Since it is on record that northern governors, including those of besieged Zamfara (the ‘political Sharia’ former governor, Senator Ahmad Sani Yerima and his godsons Mahmud Shinkafi and Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari) have always been opposed to devolution of power including state and community policing, revenue sharing based on derivation or fiscal federalism, one is not sure if Dan Ali is saying the north can unilaterally choose which of these items they like or dislike and whether his directive also covers the southern states.

    If Ali’s sectional approach to a crisis of nationality is indicative of government’s new thinking, one can guess the narcissistic Buhari administration has finally seen the futility of using force to settle crisis of legitimacy. It is only but a dysfunctional government with  unhindered access to revenues it does not generate that would opt for  massive security operations involving deployments of ‘Air force Operation ‘Diran Mikiya’, with a coordinated air strikes and a force package of two attack helicopters, 1000 policemen with counter terrorism unit (CTU), federal special anti-robbery squad (FSARS), anti-bomb (EOD) squad, “Operation Maximum Safety”  with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles”, followed by “Operation Puff”  when there are far cheaper options such as ‘institutionalisation of compromise relationships’ open to an embattled president facing legitimacy crisis over the challenges of nation building.

    But for the opponents of workable federal arrangement, a fraction of the resources wasted on Zamfara failed project would have changed the face of a state with a population of three million, 23 hospitals with 23 doctors, 300 public primary schools manned by a single teacher each while many others in remote rural communities, are not that lucky as they have no teachers” according to the state Universal Basic Education Board (ZSUBEB)’s Executive Chairman, Hon Murtala Adamu Jangebe.