The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • When leaders play the ostrich

    When leaders play the ostrich

    The social media platform is the place to visit when you want a good laughter or wish to engage in deep reflection about our nation’s diversity. Let me share with you dear readers, the following two postings by unknown authors which I stumbled upon during my visit last week.  From its focus, it was however apparent the first posting was by a hard core President Buhari supporter.  It says: “I campaigned for change, I voted for change. I believe in change”. It went on to ask how PDP that is gearing up to take over from Buhari in 2019 expects Buhari to deliver in one year what it failed to do in 16 years. Concluding, it reminded Wike and Fayose PDP in case they have forgotten, that PDP met a bag of rice at N2, 500 in 1999 but left it at N11, 000 in 2015, exchange rate at N20 to a dollar but left it at N220, pump price of petrol at N11 but left it at N87, a tin of milk at N15 but left it at N100 and life expectancy of 59 years reduced to 42 by 2015.

    And finally, as a parting shot, it reminded PDP it inherited only OPC in 1999 but foisted on the nation Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, Niger Delta militants, the Avengers, MASSOB and IPOB by 2015 when its planned 60 years of uninterrupted reign was abridged by ‘Sai Buhari.’

    The second posting was that of a frustrated Nigerian who compared our nation to a vehicle undergoing a repair in a mechanic workshop. The mechanic discovered, after fixing the brain box, that someone had removed the tyres, and when that was done discovered the battery was gone and then the kick starter. And finally when he thought he was ready to drive off at night fall as it started to rain, he discovered the headlamps and wipers were gone. Chief Obafemi Awolowo who claimed to have taken his time to study Nigerian problems and proffered  solutions, using different imagery seem to have painted the same scenario a long while ago using the imagery of a cow held by some people while it was repeatedly milked by a few powerful individuals.

    It suddenly occurred to me that except our hypocritical leaders and those benefiting from our current anarchy, it is not difficult for ordinary Nigerians and those leaders who genuinely care about our country to clearly articulate our crisis of nation building.

    What is apparent from the second posting is that those who are pillaging our nation have no faith in Nigeria as a corporate entity. For leaders who genuinely believe in nation-building therefore, their task is finding out why people don’t have faith in their country. Strategic studies have clearly shown that lack of faith in one country arises from social discontent, marginalisation, injustice and denial of quest for self-actualisation, all of which find expression in social strife, sabotage of economic activities, rebellion, militancy and sometimes civil war. While we have experienced all these manifestations since the end of the civil war, we have done everything but address the causes of these malcontents.

    Instead of learning how other multi-ethnic societies face their own demons, our successive leaders from Gowon through Obasanjo, Babangida, Jonathan and Buhari have continued to play the ostrich while self-serving members of the governing elite demonstrate their lack of faith in the country by stealing the country blind. The state without an hegemonic power, pummelled from all sides by disgruntled restive members of the federating groups, is thus reduced to an orphan repeatedly raped and pillaged by privileged member of the governing elite while our leaders issue empty declaration about indivisibility of what for all intent and purposes, is a carcass of a once vibrant Nigeria that today needs restructuring along the lines of sustainable development.

    Let us trace our way back to Gowon after the civil war. It is on record that 11 of Gowon’s 12 military administrators who prevented him from keeping faith with his transition programme were found by judicial commission of inquiry to be men with feet of clay. Some of his civilian commissioners  including Pa Edwin Clark who back then joined others to proclaim Gowon the messiah just as he did in 2015 40 years later as President Jonathan’s adopted father, were found to have benefitted from the 1972 indigenisation exercise.

    Fast forward to Babangida regime in 1985. While he was busy turning the nation to net importer of labour of other societies by ceding the commanding heights of the economy to mostly dubious and ill-equipped members of the governing elite that ran the economy aground through asset stripping, he was getting award after award from intellectuals who christened him “Prince of the lower Niger’’ and, from the National Economic Society of Nigeria (NES) who bestowed on him a fellowship, their highest honour for his handling of the economy.

    Precisely because Obasanjo who is violently opposed to restructuring also suffers from messianic complex, he was an easy prey to those who have lost faith in Nigeria. Those who conferred on him the titles of “maker of modern Nigeria and father of the nation” went on to confiscate our budding industries through ill-implemented privatization programme of our common patrimony through self-serving monetisation government policy. As if to further demonstrate their lack of faith in Nigeria, they derailed his power sector and railway modernization projects.

    President Jonathan who as a minority is a victim of injustice by the dominant groups had an opportunity to restructure the country but completely overwhelmed, he was to confess out of office that he was caged all through his presidency. The humongous amount stolen under his nose was a testimony that those who claimed he was the answer to the national question served none but themselves.

    Almost three years into the Buhari administration, his apparent lack of commitment to restructuring, the missteps of his kitchen cabinet members who seem to shield corrupt elements and have no inclination to pretend about their sectional agenda appears to have removed the myth of Buhari messianic assignment.

    The growing frustration of his supporters that fear he is squandering away the goodwill of Nigerians by his refusal to denounce some of the activities and pronouncement of some of his aides that tend to undermine his integrity was not helped by the visit of some APC governors to Aso rock seat of power to adopt him APC 2019 presidential candidate. This was on a day Benue was burying the remains of 73 of her indigenes allegedly killed by Fulani herdsmen.  It is equally no relief to Buhari supporters that a parallel  can easily be drawn between the action of these self-serving governors who have become liabilities to their states and the APC  and Daniel Kanu’s two million Youths Earnestly Ask For Abacha  Abuja march and the trading of untruth around the country by Ifeanyi Uba-led  Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) that claimed to have secured 18 million signatories of those who earnestly wanted Jonathan as PDP sole candidate for the 2015 election.

    The unfolding tragedy  is a clear evidence our ill- equipped past military leaders and their military baked ‘new-breed’ successors  cannot give what they don’t have.

  • Righteousness as substitute to governance

    Righteousness as substitute to governance

    Most Nigerians believe President Buhari is an honourable man.  As the late Nigerian elder-statesman, Maitama Sule put it. “Buhari cannot be unfair”. The only ware Buhari had to sell in 2003, 2007 and 2011 was his righteousness which he carried around like Saint Christopher’s medal, refusing to deal with politicians who he then considered evil. This was what informed his choice of Pastor Tunde Bakare, a televangelist without a political base as running mate in 2011 without a conscious effort to first understand the role of religion in Yoruba society as many believed Buhari by his choice, shot himself on the leg and prolonged Nigerian nightmare by losing the election. But attitudes, as it is often said, are difficult to change. Buhari has continued to hold politicians in suspect even after riding on their back to power, preferring to celebrate his righteousness as substitute to governance.

    While most thought it ought to have dawned on him that he did not win the 2015 election by being righteous, he  was to declare with little reflection  during his inauguration that  ‘he belongs to everyone and belongs to no one’. As one of his critics cynically asked during a television programme, days after the inauguration, “has he suddenly forgotten he flew other people’s private jets while on campaign trail and depended on some people’s funds to prosecute the election?  But righteous President Buhari was to later display disdain for APC that provided him a platform precisely because it was owned by politicians.

    After distancing himself from evil politicians whose help he needed most, he held the nation to ransom for the next six months as he continued to celebrate his righteousness. In the absence of political party that packaged a manifesto that won the election, his government was hijacked even before it took off, first by those his critics describe as his ‘cousins and nephews from his Daura village’ who according to the president’s wife were neither members of APC nor had any idea about the party’s manifesto, and later by freewheeling power hawkers in the Senate and Lower House. Ostensibly, for fear of politicians, President Buhari for the next two and half years failed to constitute the boards of over 500 small government he needed to run a successful administration allowing PDP appointees  to continue business as usual. In an age when modern government has become a science, President Buhari continues to operate with a mind-set of an emir, listening only to his self-serving trusted men.

    Almost three years in office, not much has changed. An exasperated colleague riding with me last week as a radio station in its newspaper morning reviews mentioned the Usman Yusuf’s scandalous recall  could not help asking aloud: could this be the same Buhari we all knew and believed could do no wrong back in 1984?  Yes, but for the newspaper report of a joint meeting of the minister of health and the embattled NHIS boss reportedly presided over by the president, most Nigerians would have found it hard to believe the president had a hand in the recall of a man under an ongoing probe by EFCC.

    But what is the story? “Buhari decided to appoint Yusuf at a time the Health Management Organisations were short-changing the system, leading to a situation where subscribers to the scheme were not getting the best out of it due to sharp practices on the part of the HMOs and health providers”. He was however suspended following an indictment by a panel set up by Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, accused of perpetrating fraud to the tune of N919million. Yusuf was being probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission until a letter signed by the president’s chief of staff ordered his recall from suspension.

    My  good friend , the highly resourceful chief Mike Ozekhome,(SAN), whose judgment  on account of huge successes  he had chalked up defending ex-President Jonathan and his wife  and other politically exposed persons  on charges bordering  on  impunity and corruption, can hardly be faulted has said the president intervention is “ evidence of impunity, corruption and executive lawlessness under his administration”.

    A whole a week after Yusuf’s recall, President Buhari, probably hiding under his righteousness, is yet to talk to Nigerians. The explanation by Lai Mohammed, his, minister of information to the effect that Yusuf’s reabsorption would not colour the outcome of his EFCC’s probe only strengthened the claim by some APC lawmakers and in recent days Dr. Obasanjo, who have continued to insist President Buhari’s anti-corruption war is selective.

    Meanwhile the only thing noticeable in the health sector is evidence of failure of governance. University College Hospital, Ibadan, where the minster was once a provost remains a relic of its past glory with relatives of orthopaedic patients compelled to ferry their loved ones on their back from the ground floor to the 5th floor where the orthopaedic ward is located. Patients are running away from Igbobi where routine surgeries are said to cost as much as N400,000, to neighbouring  Togo  which boasts of the state-of-the-art equipment comparable to what obtains in France  and without fears of complications associated with administration of fake drugs . The NHIS itself remains a rip off.

    Unfortunately, NHIS and Prof Usman Yusuf’s recall scandal is not an isolated case. There have been other instances where President Buhari traded his righteousness for accountability, an important component of democracy. In the Abdul-rasheed Maina’s reabsorption scandal, besides the president’s directive that the reabsorption be reversed, Malami remains a minister despite Itse Sagay’s suggestion that he needed to be probed and the National Assembly probe that seems to question the motive behind his secret meeting with fugitive Maina in Dubai.

    In the case of Maikanti Baru, the NNPC Group Managing Director, who was accused by Ibe Kachikwu, the minister of petroleum (state) of awarding some contracts without carrying him along as the de facto minister while the president was receiving medical attention in Britain, although he admitted awarding huge contracts but said no cash was involved. And then like the current NHIS case, Baru, even in the absence of President Buhari, who doubles as minister for petroleum, insisted he was not reporting to the minister of state. Baru retained his job after President Buhari’s meeting with the duo, the same scenario that has just played out in the Usman Yusuf and Isaac Adewole face-off.

    The above contradictions seem to have forced Nigerians to now question the president’s continued celebration of his righteousness  as substitute for real governance especially in the wake of the ongoing herdsmen aggression against communities across the nation  Many now believe good governance which finds expression  in application of  few acts of statecraft such as visiting Benue instead of having to be briefed like an emir after which the governor  receives lessons on how  victims of herdsmen aggression can be their brothers’  keepers;  sending a query to the Emir of Kano for encouraging resistance to Benue laws to prove emirs are not above the law and prosecuting leadership of Miyetti Cattle breeders association who did not only support the mindless killing of 73 people in Benue but also threatened to invite their Fulani compatriots  from neighbouring countries to  unleash further terror on communities that resisted open grazing; and of course the sacking of  ministers of justice and defence whose actions and pronouncements have greatly undermined the president’s credibility, will be more reassuring.

  • OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    Obasanjo tried to justify the inauguration of his new movement last week by reminding us of the need “to rethink and retool since the instruments we have used so far in our nation-building and governance since independence have not served us well”. He says his new movement “will mobilise our population for unity, cooperation, development, rule of law, employment, law and order, justice, integration, peace, security, stability, welfare and well-being”. He also says the movement is not the third force or a political party but a means to an end and the end is “Nigeria, unshackled, united, dynamic, strong, secure, cohesive, stable, and prosperous”. For him and his group, it is “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future.”  He however says in the event the movement decides to transit into a political party, he will cease to be a member.

    The first observation is that as indicated on these pages last week, Dr. Obasanjo who hijacked and destroyed PDP along with opposition AD and ANPP in 2003, seems to underestimate the value of political parties in a democracy. Yet no modern state is known to have developed since the 18th century without political parties serving as modernization agents.  Obasanjo unfortunately shares this fallacy with  his other military adventurers including  Babangida who tried to decree parties and Abacha , who in the guise of unipartysm, hilariously decreed what the late Bola Ige described as ‘ five fingers of a leprous hand’. Finally, Obasanjo was silent on why the old system failed and why for the nation, it has been motion without movement since 1966. We will address that shortly.

    But with Col Amhadu Ali (rtd), former PDP chairman and under whose chairmanship of Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), house probe confirmed the theft of N1.6trillion by PDP stalwarts and their siblings under the fuel subsidy scam, and Olagunsoye Oyinlola who  as governor of Osun State was sacked by the courts for electoral fraud, as the movement chief drivers, it is not difficult to predict the outcome of his proposal which  in itself is a recipe for a rule of mob by ill-equipped men as we have witnessed since 1966. Since people cannot give what they don’t have, what his movement will produce will not be different  from what is generally regarded as military social engineering efforts such as NYSC, unity schools, quota admission to universities and civil service, all aimed at symptoms rather than the fundamental problem of crisis of nation-building which Obasanjo claims is his concern.

    Secondly, we cannot climb the palm tree from the top as Edmund Burke reminded us a long while ago. “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future…” has no meaning when we share no common culture, values or world outlook. No ethnic group, whether dominant or minority, can impose its culture on others without resistance. The best route to national cohesion as advised by the UN is to encourage nationalities to promote their own cultures and values. Uniformity is the language of Nigerian military and their fronts that stand to gain economically or politically from the chaos that has come to define our nation since 1962.

    There was no evidence that southern youths who read architecture and other courses in ABU in early sixties were superior to their northern counterparts. Those who came to read medicine and other courses in University of Ibadan came on merit and were never considered inferior to their southern colleagues. Unfortunately, since the death of Ahmadu Bello in 1966, except for the ongoing effort of El- Rufai of Kaduna State to address the fundamental causes of low standard of education in the north, the obsession of successive northern leaders at both national and local level was to drag the rest of the country down to their level through quota system of admission to federal institutions which were taken over from the states. While the architect of forceful seizure of institutions from their state owners has not told us how his proposed rule of the mob will contribute to nation-building, we have seen without having to reinvent the wheel, how nations like Germany, France Italy and the rest of Europe after two devastating world wars came to grips with their crisis of nation-building. We also have examples of Brazil and India, a more heterogeneous society to learn from.

    But the question many may ask is why weep over the collapse of all our parties since 1979, if democracy that cannot survive without it, like Obasanjo’s proposal will only lead to the rule of a majoritarian mob? The simple answer is that unlike other institutions of democracy viz vibrant civil society, free press, free and fair elections, independent judiciary, and independent legislature, political parties help in recruiting and training gifted and astute individuals capable of managing the majoritarian mob.

    We can now address the question of why our system failed.  It failed in the first republic and under Obasanjo because those recruited by political parties to manage majoritarian mob had limited vision.

    With the control the of state security apparatus in the hands of the north as we have it today, Fulani agenda replaced the Nigerian agenda. Coercion was freely applied as response to restiveness among the Tivs, the Ijaw and was to be used to pacify the Yoruba before the coup of 1966. In fact, anarchy reigned in the land especially in the Yoruba country when the military came in 1966.

    Although Dr. Obasanjo calls himself ‘Mr. Nigeria’, available facts do not confirm he has a vision beyond self. He has publicly admitted he manipulated the system in 1979, just as he did in 2007 when, following his third term fiasco, he imposed terminally ill Umaru Yar’Adua and an untested and incompetent Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. Before then, he had, during the aborted third republic in 1993 said MKO Abiola, the astute politician produced by Babangida’s decreed parties, was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for. He voted for an interim contraption to be headed by an Ernest Shonekan. As it turned out, he became the greatest beneficiary of MKO Abiola’s tragedy.

    As for President Buhari, his ‘extraordinary strength of character seems to be marred by his stiffness and bigotry’. He doesn’t appear to have the capacity to build consensus, an important ingredient for democracy’ and this perhaps accounts for his inability to manage even his own ANPP and CPC until Bola Ahmed Tinubu worked along with others to put the APC together. He and he alone is to be held responsible for the failure of APC.

    In a piece titled ‘what Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu, published on these pages on January 11 2013, I had advised Buhari and Tinubu to see APC inauguration as that “of a modernising party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies…to replace the current political parties moulded in the military image, with garrison commanders as party leaders”. Tragically, what Oyegun and the president succeeded in doing since riding into power on the back of APC is striving to make it a carbon copy of PDP.

    With President Buhari’s apparent opposition to restructuring,  with Myyetti Allah leaders who justified mindless killings by Fulani herdsmen and threatened to unleash more violence still walking free, with video probably sponsored by Buhari detractors promising pacification of Nigeria with help from other West African Fulani making the rounds while those in charge of the state security apparatus keep blaming victims of herdsmen violence, it appears we are once again being haunted by ghost of collapsed First Republic.

     

  • OBJ: Feeding on fears of the uninformed

    OBJ: Feeding on fears of the uninformed

    When they took power, the soldiers marched out on a straight path towards their vision of a good society. But the mission became more elusive, the closer they came towards it’’ – Robin Luckman.

    The problem with admirers of Gen. (Dr) Olusegun Obasanjo, like his other military adventurers from Nzeogwu through Ironsi, Gowon, Murtala Mohammed Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar, especially those below 60 years of age who never knew we once had an ordered society is their inability to properly articulate our crisis of nationhood.

    Haunted by a spectre of journey to nationhood in the run up to independence, Nigeria’s founding fathers had settled for a negotiated federal structure which the military in their elusive search for a vision of good society destroyed. And “confronted with the complexities of our socio-political realities over which they had little control and a task for which they were ill-prepared,” they chose to address symptoms instead of the fundamental problem.

    Last week, Obasanjo who along with Murtala Mohammed in 1976, 41 years ago, destroyed  the academia and  the bureaucracy, the two institutions that guarantee survival of any society and 23 years after hijacking and destroying the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) along with the opposition AD and ANPP through ‘mainstreaming’ misadventure, was asking Nigerians to see him as  a part of solution to our national crisis, long resolved before he and his ‘Nigerian army of anything is possible’ came to the scene in 1966.

    He first highlighted the failure of the Buhari administration in a 13-page letter by calling attention to ‘poor performance in government – poverty, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, ‘condonation’ of misdeed – if not outright encouragement of it, lack of progress and hope for the future as well as lack of national cohesion and poor management of internal political dynamics and widening inequality’. He went on to insist ‘the situation we are today is akin to what and where we were in at the beginning of this democratic dispensation in 1999 when the nation was tottering; People became hopeless and saw no bright future in the horizon’.

    It can be said that the difference between him and Buhari is that of six and half a dozen. While Obasanjo practiced nepotism in reverse by surrounding himself with people of Igbo extraction, exhibited disdain for public opinion, insisted he was not obliged listen to his advisers but only listen to God, Buhari similarly has regard for neither public opinion of that of the party that brought him to power choosing only to listen to a cabal of his cousins and nephews from his Daura village who according to Dr. Junaid Mohammed have caged him.

    Obasanjo lacks the generosity of spirit to admit ‘that like him and his hand-picked immediate successors,  Buhari failed because  all they have been doing is to address symptoms  in the absence of a political will to restructure the country along the lines of sustainable development or return to where the rain started beating us in 1966. And  even after identifying the current structure as impediment to national development in some of his books, Obasanjo still  pretends not to know that  ‘corruption, Fulani herdsmen’s menace, nepotism, indolence incompetence, dereliction of responsibility’ are the result of over-centralisation of power and resources in the hand of  an inept overbearing centre that presides over both exclusive and concurrent lists while the federating states in the absence of residual list are reduced to  parasites waiting for hand-outs from the centre.

    Many patriotic Nigerians believe a restructured Nigeria where federating units take control of their lives, by directly generating resources to plan for the health and education of their children, with freedom to protect and project their culture and values without an overbearing centre insisting on uniformity among nationalities at different levels of cultural development, is the only answer to the national question.

    But Obasanjo, an active participant in 51 years of an  elusive search for ‘a vision of good society’ , is proposing a coalition of the concerned and the willing – ready for positive and drastic change, progress and involvement’ , even after reminding us of Einstein’s admonition that ‘doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the height of folly’.

    The danger we face today is that Obasanjo who has reaped bounteously from the current unworkable structure as military Head of State and two-term president just by claiming to be a Nigerian first before being the representative of his tribe is trying to sell the same fallacy to Nigerians below 60 years of age who never witnessed an ordered Nigerian society as obtained under the old structure fashioned out by our founding fathers. Most of the names bandied around as part Obasanjo’s proposed coalition have always known the current unworkable military-created structure. The fear therefore is that they could easily be seduced with a thesis long invalidated by federalism which celebrates individuals and groups as the most important actors in a nation state.

    Obasanjo’s hallelujah younger admirers and advocates of citizenship right above group or tribe right must ask him to validate his thesis  by providing explanation as to why it is easy for an Igbo man to buy land and settle in any part of Yoruba land while, TOS Benson, first republic minister for information, a Zik ally and a staunch NCNC member publicly agonized before his death over his failure to secure a plot of land in Igbo land to build a house for the remains of his first wife who was of Igbo extraction. To validate his thesis, Obasanjo must find explanation as to why the Emir of Kano will arrogantly insist the governor of Benue State cannot implement a law duly enacted by his state House of Assembly because it did not adequately protect the interest of Fulani settlers. Finally Dr. Obasanjo must find explanation as to why the minister of defence, Mansur Dan-Ali’s reaction to the killing of subsistence farmers in Benue State by rampaging Fulani herdsmen is – “Communities and other people must learn how to accept “foreigners” within their enclaves. Finish.”

    Obasanjo also says “The development and modernization of our country and society must be anchored and sustained on dynamic Nigerian culture, enduring values and an enchanting Nigerian dream. We must have abiding faith in our country and its role and place within the comity of nations”.

    We must stop deluding ourselves. There is no one Nigerian culture. There is similarly neither an enduring values nor a common Nigerian dream. One proof of this is the ongoing mindless killings across the country by herdsmen who insists open grazing is part of Fulani culture over which they are not prepared to compromise. Similarly importation of fake and substandard goods including drugs that kill Nigerians in their thousands cannot be evidence of an abiding faith in Nigeria. It can only be a demonstration of lack of faith in our nation as a corporate entity.

    Obasanjo’s “coalition of the concerned and the willing – ready for positive and drastic change, progress and involvement,” can therefore not be the ‘’only one choice left to take us out of Egypt to the Promised Land”. It cannot be a substitute for restructuring of our country along the line of sustainable development in an age when the federal arrangement is driven by market forces. It is similarly not an alternative to political party – the 17th century ingenious creation of the political elite which as a modernization agent is credited with creation of a more egalitarian society and the emergence of modern states across the world. As Bode Thomas once warned and as was demonstrated by the Yoruba in 1999, the nation must reject being led once again by a one eye-king.

  • Fulani as Buhari’s burden

    Fulani as Buhari’s burden

    President Buhari whose commitment to the Nigeria project has never been in doubt has gone through severe stress and strain since the Fulani herdsmen’s last round of killing which claimed another 73 lives in Benue. With renewed and continued restiveness between those regarded as his people and farmers across the country, with emirs trying to dictate from their fiefdoms to governors of federating states, with the northern-dominated security apparatus of state unable to arrest let alone prosecute anyone in the last two years, and with Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association threatening to resist anti-grazing laws in some 75 local government areas in 21 states where they are already active, Buhari needs no enemies as he weighs his options as to whether to seek reelection in 2019.

    These are times when for Buhari, who like other Nigerians should have no apologies for the tribes they belong to, membership of his Fulani tribe becomes more of a burden than an asset.

    But beyond the threat to Buhari’s election, I think we must start to get worried about the danger some Fulani leaders with a mindset of “born to rule’, two centuries after the age of ‘divine right of kings’ poses to our corporate survival as a nation. History tells us that  the Fulani arrived Nigeria with about 200 families  in early 1800  and under the leadership of Uthman dan Fodio, an Islamic scholar, and  their revered warrior, conquered  Gobir  and overran all other Hausa states between 1904 and d 1908,  planting 11 Fulani and one Hausa as rulers of the conquered territories. But two centuries after and in an age when democracy has long become the reigning god, his descendants have continued to insist they are born not only to rule their great-grand father’s conquered territories but the rest of the country. Indeed until recently, car plate numbers in Sokoto where the ruling Fulani caste constitutes less than 20% of the population, carried ‘born to rule’ as “Cross of St. Christopher”.

    Unfortunately, any perceived threat to this pathetic and farcical mindset has since the run up to independence in the 1950s met with “fire and fury”. Enahoro’s 1953’s motion  ‘that this house accepts as its primary political objective the attainment for self-government for Nigeria in 1956″ which Ahmadu Bello considered a threat to the north was received with a threat of secession and reference to Lugard’s amalgamation of the north and south as the “mistake of 1914 coming to light”. And reacting to insults hauled at his entourage by Lagos mob at Ido railway terminus, he had said “when next I come, I’ll come with a sword’ and was overheard later talking about a union with French Niger”. If secession was averted at that point, it was largely due to the effort of Dan Bappar Mujibir, one of the three northern minsters who had argued “with patience, the north will win at the end, while to cut the rope under the chain now was to concede defeat to the south”.

    With the control of the security apparatus of state power firmly in the hands northern leaders (Prime minister Tafawa Balewa, in control of the police and the army, Ribadu, as minister of defence and Shehu Shagari, as internal affairs minister), social conflicts that required political solution such as the quest for self- actualization by the Tiv of Benue valley and other minority groups in the north were met with force. Their sympathisers such as Awolowo and his Action Group (AG) that had canvassed ‘one man one vote’ as the shortest route to throwing off the Fulani hegemony were not spared.

    Awo’s other cardinal offence, according to Trevor Clark was that he  “enraged the Sadauna and permanently antagonised the Muslim northerners by a gratuitous reference to ‘the bones’ of Shehu dan Fodio; the tactlessness of this manner of naming the revered warrior was something neither he nor the other southern members  were able to recognise, let alone admit then or since” .

    Consequently, cashing in on intra-party crisis within AG, security probe of how public fund was channeled to AG account (which was not different from the practice of NPC since that was the source of implementing their different party programmes) was ordered and this led to Coker Commission of Inquiry.

    When Awo was charged for treasonable felony over what he had dismissed as fabrications, Shehu Shagari as internal affairs minister was on hand to ensure that Gratian, Awo’s British lawyer who was also a member of Nigerian Bar Association was barred from entering Nigeria.

    With the victory over Awo, Balewa on behalf of the north that had wanted secession but reluctantly agreed to a federal arrangement  which they were sure to control in the run up to independence, held a press conference where  he predicted “there would be such a time when we would have a unitary government in Nigeria. It may be after me, but I am certain it would certainly happen”.

    But when the equation changed in January 1966 with temporary take- over of power by Igbo, Ironsi’s Decree 34 of 1966 which turned the country to a unitary system was met with “fire and fury” by northern mutineers led by Murtala Mohammed who after ferrying their wives and children to Kaduna in a hijacked British aircraft, threatened northern secession and sinking of Lagos with a bomb.

    Just as Ahmadu Bello conceded leadership to a “fulanised “ Tafawa Balewa, a minority from southern Bauchi whose grandmother had prayed that Fulani be driven from their land or be killed, as Prime Minster in the first republic,  Murtala Mohammed also conceded leadership to Yakubu Gowon, a Christian minority from southern Zaria after the July 1966 vengeance coup. That both were answerable to their northern natural leaders was indisputable. For instance, Balewa who as Prime Minister whimsically imposed a state of emergency on a federating region over throwing of chairs inside the assembly by some opposition members, an event that lasted for less than five minutes, was unable to act when violence engulfed the west with dead bodies littering the streets because Ahmadu Bello was on Hajj to Saudi Arabia. Similarly, after the vengeance coup of July 1966, Gowon saw the resolution of the national question from the stand point of the north, a decision that plunged the nation into a civil war.

    From their baleful legacies such as taking the country for a dubious  eight years transition only to annul an MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigeria mandate to satisfy some northern leaders, creation of more states and local council areas for the north and imposing Obasanjo, their preferred candidate  to replace  MKO Abiola who died in military custody protecting his mandate in spite of protest of Yoruba leaders, and the imposition of the current unitary military constitution on the country, it was very clear whose interest Babangida, Abacha and Abdul Salami Abubakar were out to serve.

    Opposition to restructuring is today loudest among northern governors, emirs, and others benefitting from current unjust system. Others of course include “fulanised’ northern minority leaders who also share a mindset that only Fulani can provide leadership. In this category, we have David Mark who says restructuring is in our minds and Audu Ogbeh, who sees creation of dominions for cows across the country as substitute for an economically viable state or zone made up of Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Kogi and other areas, with state and local police to protect farmers from cross-border infiltrating Fulani herdsmen.

    Besides the Fulani with a mindset of born to rule, the other threat to President  Buhari’s re-election bid is the prevailing perception of victims of current Fulani aggression that Fulani, whose aspirations they believe he shares, only want Nigeria they can continue to exploit.

  • Fulani herdsmen, sponsors and patrons

    Fulani herdsmen, sponsors and patrons

    Apart from its iniquity and brutality, very little was known of Nigerian Fulani herdsmen, rated by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world,  coming after Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab. They reportedly killed about 1,229 Nigerians between 2013 and 2014. And since our traditional Fulani herdsmen don’t carry sophisticated arms, many had thought only infiltrators from neighbouring countries could have inflicted so much sorrow on innocent women and children across the Middle Belt of Nigeria. Armed with sophisticated weapons, these men whose identity, state of origin  or nationality are  unknown, killed, maimed and disappeared, leaving many in pain. Government even with its control of awesome apparatus of state power has yet to apprehend or prosecute any of their members.

    The narrative however changed with last week intervention by Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II and Alhaji Sale Bayeri, the Secretary-General of Gan-Allah Fulani Development Association and member of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association’s (MACBAN) Board of Trustees. The former admitted he is a patron of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, the body that gives protection to Fulani herdsmen. Other patrons according to him include the Sultan of Sokoto, Lamido of Adamawa and emirs of Zazzau and Katsina.” The objective of the Fulani herdsmen umbrella body according to him is the “protection of the fundamental rights of herdsmen as Nigerians including constitutional right to freedom of movement and the ownership of private wealth and peaceful conduct of their business.”

    He traces the cause of the crisis to “demographic implosion in the North, desertification, reduction in water reserves and competition for resources, crop production, animal husbandry and fishing” but blames the prolonged crisis and the attendant terrorism to “failure of political authority, the cynical manipulation of ethnic identity by failed governments and the impotence of our security machinery.”

    He however vigorously defended the action of the herdsmen citing the alleged murder of “800 Fulani women, infants and the elderly.” whose  personal dossier he claimed he “ personally handed over to the Federal Government with the names and pictures’ as well as  names and addresses of persons known to have participated in these acts of ethnic cleansing”.

    The latter, Alhaji Sale Bayeri, chose to warn us about the “grave consequences if 18 million Fulanis continue to perceive deliberate injustice”, threatening that “the Boko Haram insurgency would be a child’s play if herdsmen and farmers’ conflicts are not resolved in a way that is acceptable to all sides.” And what would appease the rampaging herdsmen, he said was contained in a 70-page letter he had sent to President Buhari before his inauguration. In it was a demand for an un-hindered grazing access in areas he identified as ‘trouble spots’ spread across 75 local government areas across 21 states including   “ Oye Local Government in the northern part of Ekiti, Shaki in Oyo State, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Bauchi, Gombe, Yola”.

    And with foreboding finality, both Fulani leaders insist “Benue anti-grazing law cannot work”, while Bayeri seems to demand as of right that “there should be open grazing for those people who think it is traditional and cultural to do it because that is their only form of exercise, leisure and pleasure.” The ‘leisure and pleasure’ of herdsmen he seems to say, take precedence over ownership of cultivated farms or uncultivated land belonging to private individuals.

    With such robust defence and backing of Fulani herdsmen by their principals, we need not ask the source of their sophisticated weapons, what embolden them to act with impunity and why no one has been brought to book to date.

    The contempt and the arrogance exhibited by the aggressors while the bodies of their victims were about to be laid to rest once again raise the issue of restructuring as the only answer to our crisis of nationhood. It is apparent that some of our compatriots don’t believe we are running a federal system of government. This can only be the explanation why the Emir of Kano believes he can from his Kano fiefdom dictate to Benue State governor how to run the affairs of his state. Under a federal constitution, especially in an age when the federal arrangement has become market driven, the only option available to Emir Sanusi of Kano is to encourage settlers who are dissatisfied with Benue laws to migrate to Kano, if his fiefdom holds better prospects.

    Within a federal set up, desert encroachment, population implosion or competition for resources may attract federal support but cannot be sufficient reasons to demand by force, free grazing zones in the farmlands of federating states or threat to invite fellow Fulani across the borders to unleash further terror if the federal government fails to prevail on recalcitrant states.

    Beyond capturing territories, which His Royal Highness , Emir of Kano says is ‘daft argument’, it is not lost on many Nigerians that it is only those with mindset of feudal lords that will demand as of right to embark on open grazing across the farm lands of other federating states.

    I sympathise with Governor Samuel Ortom and the people of Benue State who have just buried another set of 73 victims in the vicious cycle of terror that started in Tiv land long before independence. Unfortunately, until Governor Ortom, successive Tiv leaders betrayed the spirit of Joseph Tarka who along with Awo paid dearly for their attempt to create an identity for the Tiv people.  Successive Tiv leaders including the David Mark, eight years Senate President and his group who are now threatening to set up an army have betrayed the Benue people by choosing to pick crumps from the table of those who have openly declared Tiv land as spoil of war following their great grandfather’s conquest of Tiv land.

    And finally, I sympathise with President Buhari whose failure to seize an historic opportunity to become a statesman, with all his imperfections, alleged nepotism, cronyism and soft spot for Fulani herdsmen, he is the only Nigerian leader that has truly put Nigeria first not necessarily because of what he stands to gain politically or financially. He is unlike Obasanjo whose claim of being ‘Mr. Nigeria’ secured for him a military head of state and a two-term president when he would have not risen beyond a local council chairman due to the nature of politics of his Yoruba people.

    I recently asked, unfortunately without getting an answer, someone I believe is sufficiently close enough to know the way the mind of the president works. It is curious that President Buhari would ignore the wise counsel of Nigerian patriots like Wole Soyinka, Emeka Anyaoku and others on restructuring and then move on to squander away the goodwill of millions of Nigerians who had wanted to make an Abraham Lincoln out of him, choosing to swim along with those with mindset of feudal lords and their public face like David Mark who has asked those who identified  restructuring as answer to our crisis of nationality to  “first restructure their minds”.

  • Dele Momodu VS PMB

    Dele Momodu VS PMB

    Dele Momodu is a star wildly celebrated by thousands of his admirers. As publisher of ‘Ovation International’, one of Africa’s most popular celebrity bi-lingual magazines that celebrate human vanity, he is patron to many of these fame and prosperity-seeking youths. For politicians, traditional rulers and others in society who derive joy in celebrating their sense of importance, he is an indispensable ally whose friendship is widely cultivated. As the author of a weekly Thisday back page column called “PENdulum” where current affairs and issues in Nigerian politics are critically examined, he is highly regarded   by many of his admirers. Above all, as a former presidential candidate, he is to many youths especially those who have been taken hostage by the social media, the hope for tomorrow. For all the above reasons and more, when our multi-talented Dele Momodu speaks, it is incumbent for us to pay attention.

    He recently, in an open letter, advised President Buhari ‘to quit while the ovation is loudest’. His reasons:  non-performance and a sudden realization that Buhari’s administration is worse than that of President Goodluck Jonathan, his predecessor in office. Of course we can advance many reasons why President Buhari should go and take a well-deserved rest and hand power over to a younger person as Mandela did not too long ago in South Africa were our circumstances to be the same.  But comparing Buhari with Jonathan is odious, just as a charge of non-performance is not supported by available fact.  Momodu’s motive therefore is not only suspect, his current intervention raises the question as to whether his politics is not just an extension of what he does for a living – celebration of ego.

    This was brought to play in his open letter to President Buhari. The letter for instance opens with a celebration of his own sense of importance. He first reminded Buhari about how valiantly he fought on his side during his 2015 presidential contest against Jonathan; he took pains to present the president with a compilation of his articles as proof.

    And opening his assault, Momodu said he “never expected that our situation could ever get worse under the APC government that almost literally promised heaven and earth”. Momodu’s verdict finds parallel only in the claim of some of his followers on social media that Buhari has failed because the $1000 sent home by those who managed to escape the hell that is Nigeria fetched them N360, 000. Momodu doesn’t seem to believe there is a need to tighten our belt and become self-sufficient in things we can produce following the collapse of price of crude oil, the major source of our foreign earnings, from Jonathan’s all time high  of $120 per barrel to $35 in the world market. It is most unlikely, Momodu will not understand that the only alternative to enduring some pain now in expectation of a better tomorrow, is a path that leads straight to Venezuela especially since the return to Jonathan profligate years he is craving for is no more an option.

    It is also hard to believe Momodu actually thought Buhari “truly possessed the magic wand and talismanic effect to make all our problems evaporate and vamoose in a jiffy”. But if he did, it must have been a serious error of judgment on his part.  This probably misled him to dissipate energy campaigning for Buhari, an endeavour he now regrets, when he could have cast his lot with our prosperity prophets, the only people millions of Nigerians look up to for life of bliss without work, a luxury the Jews – the chosen people who labour daily to turn desert into farmlands – do not enjoy.

    Momodu also has an axe to grind with President Buhari for allowing a ‘cabal’ to hijack his government. As he put it: “We definitely want you to succeed but it seems some demons are desperately determined to make you fail by all means”. But Momodu could not have suddenly forgotten that when Pa Bisi Akande first identified the presence of this cabal in Buhari’s government, a section of the media labelled him a Yoruba irredentist fighting Yoruba war. And instead of Momodu joining the crusade against those harbouring anti-Nigeria agenda back then, he chose to lionise Buhari, claiming he won the election on his own merit as if Nigerians did not know he had tried and failed three times before a coalition of some disparate political interest groups swept him into power in 2015.

    Momodu also says Buhari’s administration is “directionless”, blaming this on the quality of his appointees. “The quality of your appointees in recent time points to how directionless your government has finally become”, he says. He doesn’t seem to think much of some of Buhari’s shining stars in FIRS, Customs, Nigerian Ports Authority, EFCC etc.

    Momodu at the end made it clear he was withdrawing his support for the president.   “Your Excellency”, he declares with brutal finality, “it has become very difficult, if not impossible to defend the excessive shortcomings of your government”.

    I am however not sure if Buhari, a leader who prides himself on his righteousness will see Momodu’s threat beyond self-promotion by a man who lives on celebration of vanity. He will remember it was not too long ago that Momodu lionised him and more or less proclaimed him a messiah.

    As a final shot, he predicted defeat for Buhari in 2019 if his advice is not heeded, claiming Buhari has nothing to “tell and sell to the electorate this time, particularly after the colossal failure of the last three years”.

    Now Buhari’s supporters have taken the battle back to Momodu, using his major platform-the social media which has become abuzz with a unique campaign copy, targeted at the private fears and anxieties of Nigerians.  “Now that they say you have failed, dear PMB, they plead: “come May 2019, give them back their corruption, their terrorism, their thieving military Generals, their Tompolos,  Dokubos,  Shekaus and their corrupt judges”etc.

    And now the battle line seems clearly drawn. While Momodu’s nostalgic craving for the return of PDP was apparent from his virulent attack,   Festus Keyamo, claiming he was ‘one of those who fought to oust PDP and its bad ruling system’, has said a call for change is a call for “a return to culture of misrule of the past, executive recklessness, impunity, leadership visionlessness, indiscipline and irresponsibility and merciless looting of the resources of Nigeria”. In the absence of a third order political system, the only option according to him “is to continue to engage the present one for better delivery of government services and improvement”. Unlike Momodu, for him, Buhari’s government “is still a lot better compared to the past one”.

  • Buhari was elected to govern

    Buhari was elected to govern

    The reappearance of long queues at filling stations with thousands of Nigerians desperate to spend the Christmas and new year holidays  with their loved ones, stranded at motor parks across the country and the recent release of some 1,488 names including ‘dead appointees’, to fill vacant board positions are all symptoms of absence of governance. The president admitted this much with his apology to Nigerians during his New Year address four days ago. He told Nigerians that he was “saddened to acknowledge that for many, this Christmas and New Year holidays have been anything but merry and happy”, blaming  everything on our compatriots who, “Instead of showing love, companionship and charity, chose this period to inflict severe hardship on us all by creating unnecessary fuel scarcity across the  country.” He promised ‘to get to the root of this collective blackmail of all Nigerians and ensure that whichever groups are behind this manipulated hardship will be prevented from doing so again.”

    For several days before this apology, it was a blame game. The Senate asked us to hold NNPC and independent marketers responsible for our sufferings. This was followed by buck-passing between NNPC, Independent Petroleum Marketers of Nigeria (IPMAN) Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC). Then followed the theatrics of Dr. Maikanti Baru,   the NNPC-Group Managing Director as he spoke of attempts to arrest tankers trying to cross the borders in the north, or agonised over those diverted from Abuja to south-east or personally sealing off defaulting fuel stations. On his part, Ndu Ughamadu, the NNPC spokesman was asking no one in particular questions which he and his boss could answer such as why our daily consumption of 30million litres of fuel suddenly jumped to 50million litres. As in the many times we passed through this familiar path in the past, government officials’ diversionary tactics did not bring relief to desperate Nigerians searching for fuel for their cars or to power their generators.

    And why is absence of governance a betrayal of sacred trust between the government and the governed? It is because thinkers all over the ages discovered that of all God’s creations, man is the most evil. They are fortune-seekers who often want freedom for themselves while abridging freedom of others. The privileged who often live on the blood of the weak and poor want freedom without responsibility.  Because of man’s inhumanity to man, life was nasty, brutish and short. To cage man who more often than not is insane, thinkers settled for government. And to head the government, they recommended not a righteous man such as a pastor or an imam but a Leviathan-a huge fearful sea monster whose authority cannot be questioned once we promised our allegiance and traded our freedom for his protection of our lives and properties.

    For his honesty and patriotic zeal, Buhari earned our trust. We therefore in 2015 elected him to replace Jonathan who instead of governing allowed his party men and ministers to convert our commonwealth and national patrimony to personal use. We equipped Buhari with awesome apparatus of state power starting with the police, secret police, soldiers EFCC, ICPC etc. to hunt down well known evil men among us such as armed robbers, kidnappers thieving governors, budget padding senators and assembly men, some NNPC and PPPRA officials and their fronts-the oil marketers. We didn’t ask Buhari to appeal to man’s conscience because we found that to be a scarce commodity among enemies of state. We had expected his government to take protective and pre-emptive actions when the stability of state is threatened but Buhari chose not to govern.

    For instance, this column like other concerned Nigerians has in the last two years appealed to him and his APC to constitute the boards of some of the over 500 small government his administration needs to execute his programmes. Instead of hearkening to our plea, he chose to put his fate and by extension fate of Nigerians in the hands of members of his self-serving incompetent kitchen cabinet and institutions like NNPC and PPPRA.

    If a further proof of absence of governance is needed, it would be in Garba Shehu, the president’s spokesman’s claim that “the president’s trips for medical attention slowed down completion of the process,” of appointing board members. If the president was away, there was an acting president. And that no one cross-checked the list to ensure round pegs are not put into squared holes is sufficient evidence that the list was released not for the purpose of implementing party policies but probably to forestall a backlash from disgruntled party members in 2019 which is just around the corner.

    Most of the small governments whose boards Buhari is now trying to belatedly constitute have been in the hands of his political opponents in the last six years. For instance, PPPRA was a creation of PDP as a response to artificial fuel scarcity they created at the beginning of the fourth republic with a bill passed into law by NASS in February 2003 and assented to by Obasanjo in May 2003.  Before Buhari took over reins of power, this was “an agency with staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22-man strong board, earning a scandalously whopping salaries and allowances of N57.9 billion per annum”. Its mandate: To “liberalise the downstream sector of the petroleum industry, privatise the refineries, deregulate and liberalise the imports of petroleum products and, generally, make the products available at reasonable prices”. Incidentally, this mandate happened to be a mere duplication of that of Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, (PPMC) which was set up in 1988 to “profitably and efficiently market refined petroleum products in the domestic as well as export markets, especially in the ECOWAS sub-region, provide marine services and also maintain uninterrupted movement of refined petroleum products from the local refineries.”

    The staffs of PPPRA were the greatest defenders of Diezani Alison-Maduekwe, the former minister of petroleum, now facing money laundry charges in Britain. They once told Nigerians that “the minister of petroleum resources has put measures in place that consistently prevented corruption in the downstream sector of the oil industry” even at a time a house committee report confirmed that a theft of N1.7 trillion occurred in PPPRA in 2011, when Col. Ahmadu Alli served as chairman of the body.

    What, if one may ask, is the relevance of these parasitic bodies two and half years into President Buhari’s administration?

    In his intervention on the fuel scarcity crisis, Prof Wole Soyinka, our elder-statesman reminded us that faced with fuel scarcity crisis in 1977, Buhari as minister for oil had back then assured Nigerians it would be over in one year. That was 40 years ago and two and half years as President doubling as oil minister. It is Soyinka’s belief that Nigerians as “a people, are surely credited with the most astounding degree of patience and forbearance on the African continent – except of course among themselves, when they turn into predatory fiends”.

    But has it not be said that, a people deserve the government they get? Buhari might have not been able to properly articulate our crisis of nationhood, but the successes he has recorded in his anti-corruption crusade, Boko Haram insurgency war and the battle against economic saboteurs are clear demonstrations of his commitment to the nation. The question at this critical period in our nation’s history therefore is – if not Buhari who else? Can we conceive of Saraki, Ekwerenmadu, Dogara, Dino Melaye El-Rufai, David Mark or any of those former ex- governor turned senators’ presidency today?

  • $1b ECA fund and its critics

    $1b ECA fund and its critics

    I think the question as to whether President Buhari needs $1b approved by the governors’ forum for the purpose of ending the Boko-Haram insurgency is legitimate. The latest report of Global Terrorism Index has after-all only recently confirmed that terrorism in Nigeria has decreased by unprecedented 80% in two years compared to 40% in Iraq, 24% in Syria, 14 % in Afghanistan and 12% in Pakistan.  Some have called attention to other demands on government such as decayed infrastructure and unemployment. Some would rather have government go through the National Assembly (NASS) for appropriation if such huge amount is required while a few others believe the governors’ forum has no constitutional right to decide on how the LGA’s part of the excess crude fund is deployed. But as it is often said in this business, the medium is the news. The question is how credible and sincere are some of those now trying to pontificate on how Boko Haram war should be fought.

    Yari, the chairman of the governors forum has explained to Nigerians that   because the governors felt they ‘should not compromise the issue of security for the entire country’ they agreed to forfeit $1bn out of our (their) own share of excess crude ‘to purchase equipment for the military’. Such a decision, he added also happened during Jonathan’s era when they all agreed ‘to withdraw $2bn to procure equipment and logistics for the military’. Of the 32 governors in attendance when the decision was taken, there was, according to him ‘no single opposition’

    Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti has however dissociated himself from decision insisting ‘all accruals to the federation must be shared by the three tiers of government’. His argument is that Ekiti’s problem is not Boko Haram but Hunger-Haram. His trenchant cry has since become   “I want my Ekiti money”, asking, ‘Since they said they have defeated Boko Haram, what else do they need a whopping sum of $1bn (over N365bn) for, if not to fund the 2019 elections?’

    For Governor Dickson of Bayelsa however, Fayose was only up to his antics. According to him “Our duty is to collaborate among ourselves, collaborate with the federal government on two critical issues of national security and issues of the economy… and I think that we leaders must be circumspect in terms of creating controversies on issues of national security”.

    The new PDP, like Fayose, was however suspicious, such amount might be diverted to fighting the 2019 election. This is understandable. Both are not strangers to the use of funds budgeted for military hardware and soldiers welfare as war chests. Fayose according to EFCC and Senator Musliu Obanikoro who ferried N3 billion of $2.1 of arms funds from Dazuki Jonathan’s NSA in two aircrafts confirmed Fayose received the money. EFCC has since traced the said amount to personal accounts of Fayose and linked some of the funds to properties he acquired in Lagos and Abuja. Like Fayose, the current PDP leadership was also privy to the sharing of the said military hardware votes by PDP stalwarts and ministers as war chest.

    Unfortunately, since there is no evidence Fayose invested any part of this money in Ekiti, it is difficult to believe his current trenchant cry of “give me my Ekiti money’ is motivated by love for Ekiti. This is also a man who traded off Prof Adeniran, his fellow Ekiti compatriot and the best of all the PDP chairmanship contestants for a possible VP slot in 2019. Fayose, like his brother governors who took Obasanjo to court citing constitutional backing over the sharing of the excess crude oil funds, is driven by anything but the love of Ekiti people.

    And a man who cannot remember it was only yesterday  Obasanjo took him from Adedibu, the Ibadan garrison commander, and made him governor of Ekiti State but now publicly accused him “of opening his rotten mouth to criticize PDP that gave him an opportunity to be a two-term president” adding, “where is Obasanjo today? His era is gone. We are now in charge” cannot be taken seriously if he read motives to President Buhari’s actions.

    While it will be uncharitable to lump other critics together to clowning Fayose, I think three quick observations can be made in respects of the fears they expressed. First, our current federal arrangement is a fraud.  The umbilical cords that link the LGAs together with the states cannot be severed just because of an aberration that the former is funded with other peoples’ resources by a centre they are not answerable to. The governors can legitimately speak for their LGAs.

    The sincerity of those asking Buhari to put his fate in the hands of the current NASS is also questionable. We cannot pretend not to know that ‘the cloak does not make the monk”. There is no difference between David Mark/Ekweremadu’s 7th Senate and its offshoot, the 8th Saraki/Ekweremadu Senate. The former worked against the interest of Nigerians. While it was busy sharing our national patrimony with David Mark leading the way with his confiscation of the Senate President’s mansion, a national heritage, other PDP stalwarts and ministers looted the nation. The 7th Senate was also busy serving its members while Generals stole military hardware and soldiers’ welfare funds resulting in Boko Haram insurgents hoisting of caliphate flags in some conquered areas of the north-eastern Nigeria.

    The latter, Saraki/Ekweremadu 8th Senate has only improved on the baleful legacies of its forbears.  It has for the past two years despite public opinion, served none but its members. They have demonstrated their opposition to Buharis anti-corruption crusade.  Twice they rejected his nomination for the chair of EFCC for no other reasons than he had earlier investigated corruption cases against some of their members. President Bubari’s Special Anti-corruption Court bill named “Special Criminal Courts Act” has remained unattended to since last year. The Anti –money Laundry Bills have been in the Senate since 2015. And without the passage of this anti-corruption courts legislation, special anti-corruption courts cannot be created to speed up corruption trials. For now, the over N2trillion recovered looted funds cannot be used for the benefit of the people since the cases are still going to the Supreme Court.

    And lastly, with nothing but sabotage coming from  the legislature, the judiciary and even some segments of the media, we seem to have forgotten that Buhari as an elected sovereign in a democracy cannot cite these impediments  as excuses for not fulfilling his electoral promises at the end of four years.  As a democratically elected sovereign, he is allowed to employ blackmail, intimidation and stick and carrot approach and if needs be, only the stick for the greater good of the greatest number of people in society according to his interpretation. (This is currently going on in Trump America, the home of democracy).

    The problem with President Buhari is that he has been too timid to use the power of the sovereign. This was perhaps why exasperated Itse Sagay said not too long ago that the enemies of Nigeria in the National Assembly are lucky he was not the President. In a democracy, the tale does not wag the dog.

    And finally, I think it will be short-sighted to cite the near or total defeat of Boko Haram as excuses for not equipping our armed forces for future challenges. There must be something to learn from our recent history. Obasanjo and Yar’Adua saved for the raining day but probably paid less attention to our armed forces. And after Jonathan and PDP, like Epicureans ate everything kept in their care for our tomorrow,  all we had when Boko Haram struck, was an army that could not  defend its own barracks where Generals died while literarily protecting their families members under Boko Haram siege inside a church with their bare hands.

  • Danjuma at 80

    Danjuma at 80

    This piece “In Defence of General Danjuma” was first published in The Guardian on July 2, 1988. It is as relevant today as it was 29 years ago.

    There is an on-going war by plebeians against General Theophilus Danjuma (rtd), a hero of war and a hero of peace. They have taken up arms against him precisely because he had said there might be no democracy in his lifetime and that there has never been a civilian government worth defending.  But sadly, his adversaries who are now pitched in a battle royal against him know very little about this courageous man with a heart of steel who can lay equal claims to being a hero of war as well as radical intellectual.

    In July 1966, when an armed mob turned against their superior officers in Abeokuta and Ibadan, Danjuma, then a Major in the Nigerian Army, selected the most able loyal northern soldiers (there were only 50 Yoruba soldiers out of 500 based in Ibadan and 26 out of a battalion based in Abeokuta in July 1966) to replace Major General Aguiyi Ironsi’s normal guards. Thereafter, he preceded single handedly to arrest his General. He had told Major General Ironsi with bravado “you are under arrest, you organized the killings of our brothers in January… you will answer for your action”. The rest is history.

    This act of bravery is not the only thing that marked out Danjuma. He was to become the most positive influence for sustaining the Nigerian federation when the armed rabble in Lagos headed by our hallowed late General Murtala Mohammed and Martins Adamu insisted, after ferrying their families out of Lagos in a hi-jacked British Airways VC-10 airline, that the north must secede from the federation. Their other objective was to sink Lagos with dynamite. General Danjuma was apparently one of the few sane soldiers that averted that calamity.

    General Danjuma was to later become one of the best Chiefs of Army Staff Nigeria has ever produced. He established the Staff College at Jaji for the training of unduly radical officers, demobilized the mostly illiterate ex-service men that had then become an albatross for General Gowon.  Above all, he built befitting officers mess for his men.

    General Danjuma’s adversaries who may not know or appreciate the above achievements may also not know that his disenchantment with democracy or what Schumpeter aptly described as “the rule of politicians” did not start yesterday. About 10 years ago, he had refused to see 13 years of military rule as an aberration.

    To him then, the intensive preparation for civilian rule did not mean a return to democracy. His thesis: “we have never had a democracy in Nigeria precisely because Nigeria’s grasp of democracy and her commitment to the rule of law is extremely tenuous relative to some countries of the West”. To him therefore, it was a fallacy to talk of a return to democracy. His verdict: “the more I wonder whether democracy is possible in a country where the easiest means of becoming a national hero is to assault the police and where everybody threatens secession whenever his petty ego is hurt”. To him therefore, “democracy will remain a mirage in Nigeria for as long as the politician is not prepared to respect all processes of democracy”. That was in 1978.

    We can easily see General Danjuma as a man who abhors “religious bigotry and parochialism” and to whom pretence of any form has always been abhorrent and has remained consistent. This is one reason he is shoulder high above many of his inconsistent fair-weather adversaries who have today taken up “arms” against him.

    We can easily understand the problem of his adversaries.  The Democrat is a newspaper that only thrives at the advent of civilian rule. We can also sympathize with The Guardian’s slavish commitment to liberal democracy and abhorrence for “unlettered” soldier’s rule. One can similarly understand the problem of Haruna Mohammed who was sincere enough to admit that General Danjuma has always faulted his now predictable stand on national issues. Ditto for the Maiganis, the faceless Candidos and Abba Dabos. We know where their interest lies.  But the strength of General Danjuma seems to end with the above weaknesses of his adversaries.

    It appears to me that his thesis, like most of all soldiers’ and politicians’ suffers from what Karl Popper describes as “poverty of historicism”. Because of the brevity of time, his theory has no universal applicability.  When he first propounded his theory in 1978, the civilian had only ruled for barely six years as against the military’s 12 years of socio-political and economic chaos. His exposure in politics, which was the only basis for his pessimism, is too short to support the force of his assertions. His other thesis that there has never been a civilian government worth defending easily raises the question of whether there has ever been a military regime worth defending.

    If his righteous indignation is based on the financial indiscipline of the discredited politicians, we can assuage his injured moral sensibility by reminding our highly respected General Danjuma that the miasma of hopelessness that today characterizes our economy and the current unprecedented human suffering were indeed nurtured by the military politicians during our profligate years of abundance. If on the other hand, his raw feelings were a reaction to the pervasive corruption that has become synonymous with our system; we can chill these feelings by admitting that neither soldiers nor politicians enjoy any credibility.

    The verdict is that we are all guilty. Under the military for instance, an audit examination at the Nigerian External Telecommunications traced financial abuses back to 1978 with $53 million dollars unaccounted for. The administration of the Federal Housing Scheme led to the loss of $43 million dollars while the renegotiations of the Jaguar jet contract saved the nation $30 million dollars in kickback.

    In the same vein, the chairman of the investigation panel into the activities of board members notably those of the Federal Mortgage Bank blamed them for “acting in concert to render the bank impotent by systematic plundering and looting of treasuries”, and for the Delta Steel Company of “stupendous fraud”. The siphoning of millions of naira from the National Youth Service Corps, the widespread corruption at the Abuja Capital Development Authority, the illegal export of refined petroleum products that was then costing the country over one million dollars a day were all products of a conspiracy between the proprietary classes, consisted of the bureaucracy, military elite, business class and other marketable professionals who share identical interests.

    If, therefore, financial indiscipline, lack of control in the public economy and privatization of public funds are joint efforts of all the ravaging elites, it becomes difficult to make a distinction between civilian and military governments. In our peculiar historical circumstances, perhaps it is even more difficult to make a distinction between civilian democracy and military regime.