Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

Last week’s vicious attack by the duo of Labaran Maku and Jelili Adesiyan, ministers of information and police affairs respectively on Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso on  what now appears a federal government contrived crisis  over the selection of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi by Kano kingmakers and ratification by the state government has once again raised the question of whether the nation needs a motley of 40 mostly unproductive ministers many of whom serve as the president’s attack dogs in a situation where the most advanced economies of the world such as Germany, Britain and USA have just about 20.

For instance, with the Polytechnics and Colleges of Education all over the country paralysed for almost one year, what exactly is Nyesom Wike the supervising minister of education doing in government beyond waging the president and his wife’s private wars?

Long after the president dropped a number of ministers purportedly because of their interest in 2015 elections, Wike, already publicly endorsed by the president’s wife as Rivers PDP governorship candidate for 2015 is in Port Harcourt every weekend mobilizing youths and ex-militants, according to him, “to prevent the president from being disgraced in 2015”. In the wake of the abduction of the Chibok girls, the minister spent the first two weeks conducting an inquisition with officials of his ministry and WAEC officials providing evidence to prove that it was Shettima, the governor of Borno State who should be held responsible for the abduction of the girls and not President Jonathan.

Minister Olajumoke Akinjide was on hand to assail Nigerians with the tales of how President Jonathan promptly reacted to the abduction of the Chibok girls contrary to what Nigerians and the international community observed as government sloppy reaction to the abduction during the first two weeks of the tragedy. And shamelessly trying to outdo others in the defence of the president, she asked the grieving parents to direct their demand for the release of their children at Boko Haram and not the president and commander-in-chief. Before then Dr Doyin Okupe another adviser had assailed the nation with tales of how well equipped and highly motivated the soldiers were.  With the international community now coming to our aid, Nigerians can see beyond Okupe’s hot air. But the heroic exploits. of these ministers as combatants in President Jonathan’s personal wars paled in significance to the outing of the duo of Maku and Adesiyan who set aside the function assigned to their ministries and went all out as the president attack dogs.

The Kano governor’s thesis was that the Kano crisis was contrived by the president who is at war with the governor over his defection to APC and the suspended CBN former governor Sanusi who had raised what government dismissed as false alarm about unremitted US$20billion by NNPC to the federation account. First, the president’s PDP point-man in Kano mischievously sent a congratulatory message to the Ciroma of Kano, the first son of the departed emir and one of the contesting Kano princes. Kano State government believed this was what prepared the ground for the riot which followed the official announcement which contrary to federal government expectations favoured the embattled Sanusi. While the federal government followed up by ordering the police to lay a siege on the emir’s palace ostensibly to prevent potential arsonists, it curiously, allegedly ordered the reduction in the number of security personnel attached to the governor at a period he actually needed more men by virtue of being the chief host of new emir who needed protection since he, according to the federal government, was not the popular choice of the people. Putting all the drama together Rabiu Kwankwaso alleged he could feel the hand of Esau while hearing the voice of Jacob. He therefore asked Nigerians to hold the president responsible should something untoward happen to him and his family.

Then ministers as prosecutors of the president private wars waded in. Maku says to blame President Jonathan or the Federal Government for the crisis is ‘the height of delusion and irresponsibility’ on the part of Kwankwaso  He wants Kwankwaso to explain to  the people of Kano the role he and APC leaders played in the selection of Sanusi as the new emir. He then veered off, accusing   the governor ‘of one man rule in Kano’ and of ‘denial of freedom of choice for the people of Kano by imposing local government chairmen and councilors on them’. I think by bringing up these extraneous matters, Maku rather than exonerate the president and PDP has only confirmed the reasons for the federal government’s subtle interference in a purely local politics of Kano.

The heartache of Adesiyan, his counterpart in Police Affairs was that ‘Kwankwaso was abusing Mr. President’. He questioned ‘the governor’s audacity to abuse the president’. For him it was ‘rather unfathomable that Kwankwaso could insult the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria the way he likes’. He says ‘It is only in Nigeria that those who lack patriotism like Kwankwaso can insult the President at will’. And like Maku, he alleged without evidence that ’Kwankwaso’s outburst against Mr. President was an indication of a failed governor who acts against the will of the people’. And as if he lives in another planet, the minister asked rhetorically, “Have you ever seen the opposition party insulting the President of the United States of America, or the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, or Chancellor in Germany”?

The above is the picture of ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria…Unfortunately; many of the other ministers and advisers are not any better. For instance, Obasanjo was quoted to have said on a BBC Hausa service  last Thursday, that he could help reach out to the insurgents for the release of the girls, but regretted that the federal government had not yet given him the green light to act. Instead of Mike Omeri, chairman, National Information Centre, encouraging the president to take up Obasanjo’s challenge in spite of his well known mischief, he says Obasanjo has unfettered access to the president. But from the exchange of letters between the godfather and godson, we know this is not true. In any case, Nigerians now know that Obasanjo once secured conditionality for cessation of hostility by the insurgents which government found not implementable. Government loses nothing by engaging Obasanjo to open another window of discussion with Boko Haram except adviser’s relevance.

If the president and his advisers saw mischief in Obasanjo’s offer of help, we cannot say the same of the claim by Australian Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop who insisted her country had made an offer to help in the search for the abducted girls since May, 20, through its High Commissioner Jon Richardson in Abuja. According to her, “They have thanked us for our willingness to be involved in trying to rescue the girls but we haven’t had any specific acceptance of the offers that we made.” Even if “There was no specific offer from the Australian government, but an informal offer of a general kind” as Mike Omeri had claimed, what do we have to lose if one of those ministers trying to outdo each other on who best fights the president personal wars or those of his wife followed up the lead?.

We now also know while these ministers were trying to outdo each other as to who best prosecutes the president’s private wars, none of them had the presence of mind to prevail on the president to consider an American offer of help shortly after the abduction of about 300 girls by insurgents. Infuriated Senator McCain recently told his colleagues in the American Senate that America ought not to have waited for permission from a non-existent government or government where little governance takes place before embarking on humanitarian effort to rescue the abducted girls.

Ekiti is a land of honour. The enduring characteristics of the people are hard work, loyalty, integrity. and fanatical opposition to any form of injustice. Their nightmare started in 2003 with PDP’s subversion of these cherished values. The coming election is therefore between forces of darkness that is determined to bring back the nightmare we experienced between 2003 and 2010, and forces of light which Fayemi’s administration represents.

Let us remember where the rain started beating us. As a people who never play Brutus, Ekitis don’t betray friends and benefactors. To them honour is everything. In contemporary times, two of our illustrious sons used by forces of darkness retraced their steps and demonstrated they were, above everything else, men of honour. In 1983, NPN capitalized on the bitterness expressed by marginalized restive Ekitis who although constituted over 50% of the population of the old Ondo State but allocated only a third of available distributive resources, to sponsor an ambitious Akin Omoboriowo to undermine Governor Adekunle Ajasin his boss. He was subsequently awarded a stolen mandate in the 1983 election. The Ekitis who believe you cannot build justice on injustice denounced his action and rejected him. But it is on record that as a man of honour, Omoboriowo rejected a ministerial appointment offer by NPN and died a poor man in his son’s rented apartment in Lagos. Ex-Governor  Segun Oni who was used to prolong our nightmare for almost four years,  has according to Governor Fayemi, chosen honour in spite of opportunity to cut deals as a former governor with the presidency’  and like other PDP members make billions to build palaces among the peoples’ squalor. Oni was said to have unconditionally opted to support Fayemi in order to produce the leadership our children can look up to as role models.

The often mischievous ‘sociological explanation’ for what many other Nigerians consider as a ‘strange behaviour’ of the Ekitis by my colleagues in the Department of Sociology here at the University of Lagos  is that the Ekiti people are poor  and they can as well say the truth since they cannot fall below poverty. Conversely they say the Egbas are rich and have sworn never to be in the rain again (apology to Chinua Achebe). Thus inarguably illustrious men in their own rights such as Dr Majekodunmi who was used by the Balewa government to legimise illegalities in the old West, an Ernest Shonekan used by Babangida to subvert MKO Abiola’s victory and an Obasanjo who has behaved without grace after becoming the greatest beneficiary of an injustice done to Abiola who would have been treated with contempt by Ekitis were celebrated as icons.

But this probably explains why Obasanjo who was celebrated for act of treachery back home showed such disdain for the Ekitis and their cherished values through his imposition of an ill-equipped Ayo Fayose on the peace loving people of Ekiti. He was to become the scourge of the people as violence took over an otherwise peaceful land with prominent and highly educated indigenes and traditional rulers capriciously assassinated.

Even after the impeachment of Fayose, Obasanjo who always want to play God thought he knew what was best for Ekiti. He exploited the intra party feud within Alliance for Democracy (AD), brought in General Olurin from Egba to ensure decamping aggrieved members of AD were rigged into office as PDP senators and members of the House of Representatives and Segun Oni as governor. When a rerun was ordered by the court following persistent protest by the people, another of Obasanjo’s confidants, Madam Ayoka was brought in from Abeokuta to conduct a rerun election that had been programmed to fail. It was the Appeal Court that finally put an end to a prolonged nightmare by restoring Fayemi’s stolen mandate.

Now, it is this nightmare that President Jonathan and those Obasanjo described as ‘criminal elements that have taken over PDP in the South-west’ intend to bring back. We must ask ourselves why Ayo Fayose with his antecedents, current disabilities including record of impeachment and pending criminal charges hanging on his neck in the court, is the only credible candidate PDP identified among a motley of about 20 aspirants. Obviously for the president and PDP, this election is not about agenda, it is about who is best suited to reenact the era of Fayose. And Fayose with his temperament, disposition and empty bravado is the only one who fits that bill.

President Jonathan and PDP do not give a damn. That probably explains why they didn’t give a damn about performance in picking a man whose tenure was an unmitigated disaster to face an high achieving sitting Governor Fayemi who has received accolades from home and abroad for the faithful implementation of his eight-point programme in the last three and half years. Honours have come from his grateful Ekiti compatriots who gave him the title of “Ilufemiloye” for faithful adherence to promises made. Independent and credible voices have scored him high. Akin Oyebode, who we all know calls a spade a spade says he has done well. Chief Afe Babaloa, a PDP sympathizer and the chairman of a group Obasanjo used to recruit Segun Oni as governor has since praised Fayemi for his achievements.

Endorsements for Fayemi on the basis of his performance have come from those we all know will never hawk praises to undeserving elements.  Professor Tunde Fagbenle, Professor Segun Gbadegesin, and Professor Olatunji Dare who writing on Fayemi phenomena says “under Fayemi, Ekiti is thriving in ways it has never known; there, transformation is not a slogan; it is a lived reality,” asserting that “Unless it is too far gone in its delusion, the PDP must know that it cannot win a free and fair election in Ekiti, much less with a candidate who has nothing to offer.”

Mohammed Haruna, a veteran columnist you can hardly be faulted on facts even when it involves his religion and Hausa/Fulani, his weak points, predicted that despite the desperation of PDP , “Fayemi will retain his job in a free and fair election because for a state with such a meager revenue allocation (N3 billion month compared to Balyelsa’s N24 billion)  it is a miracle that Fayemi had been able to achieve most of what he promised nearly four years ago, especially in the areas of education, infrastructural development and social security”.

Even outsiders like Ikechi Emenike has also observed that “While Fayemi speaks of and works towards a future of transparency, good governance and prosperity, Ayo Fayose evokes retrogression, a fall-back to the bad old days of brigandage the intelligent citizens of Ekiti would rather forget” adding that “Try as they may, it is hard to see how the people of the Land of Honour will not queue behind a man who has been so faithful to his promises, come June 21”.

Similarly another outsider, Phil Aragbada has called our  attention to what he described as “Fayemi’s palpable empathy for the grassroots, his proximity to the rural dwellers , evinced by his novel State Assisted Community Projects Initiative acronym-ed SACPI in contradistinction to one of his opponent’s ‘Boli and guguru’ –roasted plantain and groundnut eating shenanigans”.

I have always thought one doesn’t need to say the obvious. But the Fayemi has embarked on vigorous campaign in the media and romped through 132 Ekiti towns saying the obvious because his opponents who are yet to unveil their agenda nine days to election are busy spreading messages of fear and hate. As the people of land of honour file out to vote on June 21, we must remember the battle is against detractors who have nothing but disdain for our values; that we are up against those who by our standards are half-literates but now insist their standard is good enough for us; that those who, for a pot of porridge, subvert the truth fraudulently proclaiming 14 to be greater than 16, cannot be role model for our children. Let us remember those who betray friends, their party leaders and their benefactors will betray the people. Never again must we allow our land of honour be desecrated by those to whom honour means nothing.

Boko Haram was a creation of PDP. General Owoye Azzazi, a first class military intelligence officer and one time National Security Adviser to President Jonathan was categorical. Boko Haram was the product of ‘PDP politics of exclusion”. It was for this reason his removal from office was orchestrated by PDP dealers and wheelers holding President Jonathan hostage With the intensity of politicking by PDP, in the last six months which has now dove-tailed to the president resorting to subliminal campaign messages targeted at our innermost fears and vulnerabilities, it is important to remind ourselves of this fact especially since it is often said Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia. It must also be noted that in Borno State, the epicenter of the insurgency, it is difficult to make a distinction between PDP and ANPP that has controlled the state since 1999. Both parties are controlled by a clique of friends with business and family ties. Both parties have equal strength, running neck to neck in all their past outings.

For PDP everything is politics; the running of the economy, the management of the education sector, equipping our teaching hospitals, (doctors are currently on strike over government policy of addressing and paying heads of hospital supporting services as consultants), elections to pick our representatives – a routine exercise in many countries including Ghana and Malawi – has been reduced to “do or die’ endeavour by PDP and its leaders. Even ordinary traffic control efforts of a state government are politicized by PDP. (The Lagos State Commissioner of Police has directed that about 200 arrested stone-throwing members of FERMA, a body he has declared illegal be prosecuted.) Yet like a pot calling the kettle black, the PDP is always the first to accuse others of politicking.

If we needed any evidence, the events leading to the Chibok national tragedy about five weeks ago and its aftermath provided that. We now, on daily basis witness PDP stalwarts coming out to make outlandish statements which is at variance with realities on the ground purportedly on behalf of a government that seems to be at war with everyone – Shettima, the embattled governor of Borno State, APC, the opposition party and even the grieving parents of the abducted girls who have now been banned from demonstrating on the streets of Abuja ostensibly for security reasons.

No one has tried to address the claim of Danuma Mphur, the chairman of the Parent Teachers Association (PTA) of the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School or that of the local council chairman of the area, that the police and the military commander in Chibok were alerted four hours before the attack and Mphu’s claim that it took three days after the event before security people came to ask them questions. Similarly it took over two weeks of international pressure mounted by the social media to nudge the president to speak, because he, according to Obasanjo, initially did not see any abduction but the handiwork of his detractors bent on denting his record to forestall his re-election in 2015. The picture one gets is that of politicization of a tragic event by shameless PDP spokespersons. It was as if Chibok, a Nigerian town located in Borno, one of three north-eastern states under emergency had been ceded to Cameroon as Shettima became the issue. None of the PDP’s self-serving men engaged in the trial of Shettima on television told Nigerians what became of soldiers said to be based in all the local government areas of the state including Chibok. For the inquisition of Shettima for failing to provide security after an undertaking, officials of Federal Ministry of Education and WAEC were on hand to provide indicting evidence. Locating the children became secondary while the inquisition lasted.

If we thought politicking and buck-passing would end with the offer of help from the international community, we were all wrong. Government’s response to “Bring Back Our Girls” group’s sing-song was a directive that their anger and plea should be directed at the insurgents who abducted their children. When the weeping parents remained adamant, government witchdoctors allegedly hired their own grieving parties to do their bidding. They were subsequently unleashed on the members of the Oby Ezekwesili-led ‘Bring Back Our Girls Campaign Group’ at the Unity Fountain, Abuja, breaking chairs, cameras and tripods of journalists covering the event and disrupting the group’s meeting. According to Ezekwesili, “the new group members, who came in a bus, had turned the Unity Fountain into a joke”.

The joke was quickly followed up by a more hilarious one to make us laugh when we should be crying, (apology to Saro Wiwa), courtesy of Labaran Maku, the Minister of Information. Now, government has put the whole blame for insurgency and the abduction of our girls on the door step of APC. According to Maku, “90 per cent of all insurgency is in states controlled by APC party, and 90 per cent of those campaigning to bring back Chibok girls are members of that party”. He conveniently ignores the fact that former President Obasanjo recently told Nigerians that Boko Haram leaders he had a meeting with confessed they were in existence and active during his term, 1999 -2007. Maku the combative minister of information however did not say if APC equally mobilized Britain, USA, China and France that recently hosted a conference of Nigerians and her neighbours in France attended by his principal. He did not also say if it was APC that influenced the outrage expressed by people all over the world. But PDP is not a party to be easily discouraged. Another PDP stalwart, Senator Ita Enang has also opted to prolong our laughter. For him, “these APC politicians or sympathizers engineering these ceaseless rallies in some parts of the country” are politicizing the abduction of the Chibok girls”.

While the president’s men are engaged in open politicking to trivialize a national tragedy, the president himself has embarked on subliminal campaign – a propaganda technique with messages to evoke fears targeted at our vulnerabilities. The problem however is not just that effectiveness of persuasion through subliminal messages is suspect; propaganda succeeds more at the level of subconscious. But the president’s inept men with a lot of money to waste have tried to leverage on the images of Mandela, Martin Luther Jnr and President Obama whose images are too real to obfuscate our consciousness? Except within PDP, I am not sure there are Nigerians who believe their president shares the charisma and passion for service of Mandela, Martin Luther and Obama.

At a time of national emergency when the president needs a transparent and unambiguous message of appeal for support of his party and political adversaries, what is being dished out by shadowy groups such as “Alliance For Defence Of  Democracy and Protectors of Nigeria Posterity” are offensive,  foggy messages with  childish innuendo  capable of hardening the position of those who strongly feel a president that cannot guarantee the safety of life and properties of its citizens has lost legitimacy. How can a body that calls itself an alliance for the defence of democracy be asking his principal to’ carry on’ and alienate those who are against him if they truly have faith in democracy and believe democracy is a game of numbers? How can a group that calls itself protector of Nigeria posterity be counselling its principal to cultivate the ill-feelings of those who promised to make the country ungovernable for the president?

How are we sure these incompetent promoters of President Jonathan who currently ignore the ethics that makes it mandatory for them to disclose their names and sources of their campaign funds are not the same loathsome men, who having frittered away about N12 billion on ex-President Obasanjo’s collapsed third-term agenda, re-emerged as key players in Jonathan’s government

The challenges of President Jonathan as a leader of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society like Nigeria are enormous.  Overwhelmed by myriad of problems bedevilling the nation, he was forced to remind his tormentors how a lot easier it is to criticize than govern. I am sure Jonathan couldn’t have fought so hard for the presidency if he didn’t mean well for the country. I am sure many Nigerians shared his passion for the country as he bellowed during his inauguration “Today, our unity is firm, and our purpose is strong, our determination unshakable. Together, we will unite our nation and improve the living standards of all our peoples whether in the North or in the South; in the East or in the West. Our decade of development has begun”.

The fate of Jonathan is not different from those of his predecessors in office who had assumed power promising to change our country for the better but ended up leaving behind more problems than they inherited. Their failures have not been due to absence of passion or lack of trying, but in their character flaws effectively exploited by self-serving ministers and advisers. From Balewa to Obasanjo, all our past Nigerian leaders have been humbled by these men who operate without scruples.

Although  we have rightly placed the blame for our failures  on the door steps of our successive leaders because the buck stops on their desk,  this has only emboldened  many of our permanent men in government  to move  unscathed from the ruins of one administration to  emerge as key players  in the new one. In the first republic it was ministers and advisers that sold to Balewa government that stable and peace post-independent Nigeria could only be attained by cutting the wings of high flying Action Group, creating Mid West out of Western Region to spite the advocates of regions for restive ethnic nationalities. They emerged from the ashes of the collapsed first republic as key players in Ironsi regime. It was the same set of advisers who convinced ill-equipped Ironsi that the trouble with our nation was the regional framework of our federal structure and that what was required to remove the stranglehold of one region on the rest of the nation was the imposition of a unitary system on a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. Ironsi’s self-serving advisers who plunged the nation into civil war outlived him to play prominent role as NPN members in the short-lived second republic.

Operating without principles outside the desire to serve self, they supported the reckless consumption of Shagari government which in three years erased the foreign reserve left behind by Obasanjo in 1979. They embarked on the battle over the control of the minds of the people through heavy propaganda on government-controlled NTA and the Daily Times to denounce those who had warned of the imminent collapse of the economy. They went ahead to supervise the rigging of the 1983 elections remorselessly and gleefully awarding ‘landslide and sea-slide’ victories on the NTA to NPN. In the end, they laid waste the Shagari administration and buried the second republic.

For eight years General Babangida took the nation for a ride.  His ministers and advisers told Nigerians there was no alternative to Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP); that political parties can be decreed and that democracy can be taught in classrooms. Babangida’s economic and political advisers who destroyed our economy and took us through eight years of fraudulent transition emerged as key players in the aborted third republic while others that fervently worked and schemed for him to remain in power later became foreign ministers and ambassadors under Abacha. Those ministers and advisers behind “Abacha today, Abacha tomorrow and Abacha forever” band became prominent actors in the politics of the forth republic. And of course Obasanjo’s recent admonition to President Jonathan to be wary of advisers was an indirect admission that his larger-than-life image was destroyed by advisers and ministers who fraudulently organized loans for him to buy Transcorp shares, secretly financed the collapsed third term agenda claiming without Obasanjo there will be no Nigeria only to turn up as Yar’Adua and Jonathan ministers, advisers and board chairmen.

In the last three and half years, Jonathan who came after a landslide victory, has been a captive of his  self-serving ministers and advisers made up of  repentant militants, elder statesmen as militants who once advised General Gowon against handing over power,  and others  imposed on him by PDP wheelers and dealers. Events and activities of these men in the run up to and after the abduction of our Chibok girls have clearly shown that they, like their predecessors, are neither loyal to Jonathan nor to Nigeria.  For weeks they unleashed their caustic tongues on critics who tried to link the relative ease with which insurgents overran military barracks, police stations and maximum security detention facilities to underhand practices by those in charge of procurement of needed weapons for our armed forces.

Now  the US and Britain after tongue-lashing the president  for presiding over a corrupt administration have  brought  in their  sophisticated planes, drones and other war-heads to aid intelligence-gathering for our ill-equipped soldiers blindly fighting insurgents without borders.  Ministers and advisers who have for months insisted our soldiers were well kitted have not told us why  a nation that spent 130 billion in four months on war against insurgents could not afford at least two  drones at a total cost of about a million dollars  from South Africa’s defence industry .

If the president needed the help of international community to come to terms with corruption in his government, the only evidence needed to validate the thesis of his political adversaries who had accused him of running kindergarten government were the recent embarrassing and disastrous outings  of some of his ministers.

If the tenure of the immediate past Minister of Police Affairs who spent most of the time politicking  instead of equipping police stations routinely sacked by Boko Haram insurgents was a disaster, the response  of  the  current one to the abduction of the Chibok girls was tragic. Asked by reporters about government’s plan to rescue the abducted girls when sighted at a birthday bash for the Olubadan of Ibadan a day after the kidnapping, the minister drew blank, first doubting the event took place before appealing to the insurgents to release the girls because such act was unislamic.

Last week’s confrontation between Olajumoke Akinjide’s and the weeping ‘Bring back our girls’ group led by Obiageli Ezekwesili, a smart, sharp, razor-tongued intellectual who will give Hillary Clinton a run for her money in a debate contest, and who like Obasanjo fights like a bull holding no hostages, was a total disaster for government which many believe indulges more in politicking than governance. First, Akinjide, whose father recently rated President Jonathan as one of the best Nigerian presidents, was ill-suited to confront impassioned protesters against Jonathan’s inept handling of the abduction of the Chibok girls.  Then the minister falsely claimed government acted from day one of the abduction when it was in fact government’s indifference and politics of buck-passing that sparked off demonstrations by Nigerian women and the international community to wake President Jonathan from his deep slumber.  And finally, as if to confirm people’s fears that the president and his ministers do not give a damn about governance,  Akinjide  asked those who traded their freedom and liberty for government protection  to direct the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ plea at those who abducted their daughters. It cannot be any more tragic. As it is in Police Affairs Ministry and Ministry of Abuja Territory, so it is in Defence, Aviation, and Petroleum and Education ministries. All we see is politicking by self-serving ministers.

As it is often said, evil triumphs when good men keep quiet. The current crisis in Borno State festered because men of goodwill from that part f the country kept quiet as the current state actors engaged themselves in a war of attrition, not because they care for the governed but out of shared greed to hold on to power. As the world today embarks on efforts to rescue the abducted children of Chibok Government Secondary School, Governor Kashim Shettima who is one of those responsible for the 15 years baleful legacies of ANPP in Borno State has finally admitted that “the security challenges confronting the state and the nation as a whole can be traced to poverty, unemployment and lack of education among the youth population, which create tension and idleness among the youth making them susceptible to deviant behaviours.”

But as President Jonathan, one of the external forces fishing in the troubled waters of Borno State has rightly reminded him, it was not the federal government but the local politicians that are responsible for a situation where only 27% of children of school age attend school, a situation that makes them easy targets for recruitment by confused people who preach hate ideology and religious intolerance, killing helpless women and children and kidnapping teenage girls as sex slaves in the name of their strange god.

The major motivation for the 14 years war of attrition by the Maiduguri warriors is power. Their common ideology is greed. They are comfortable operating freely whether under the banners of APP, ANPP, AD or PDP and APC. They are all friends, business partners and quite often, children of those who have cornered disproportionate share of the state resources. First, was Mala Kachalla, financed by wealthy Ali Modu Sherif, to become an elected governor of Borno State in April 1999, on the platform of  All People’s Party (APP) . Not long after, the party became ‘All Nigeria People’s Party’ (ANPP) as a result of fractionalization.  To survive the dangerous mine field of Maiduguri politics, Kachalla  in February 2001 established a Sharia Implementation Committee, in a state with  about 60% Muslims and 40% Christians. And because there was no ‘clear cut demarcation between Borno, Chad,  Niger and northern Cameroon, a region plagued by armed rebels and trafficking in illicit arms and children’ as Kachalla himself once observed, his ‘political sharia’ was hijacked  When his financier and godfather, Ali Modu Sheriff in 2006, decided to become a king himself, Kachalla sought refuge in the  Alliance for Democracy (AD). Following his defeat by his godfather, he joined forces with PDP to wage war and make Borno State ungovernable. He died in the process in April 2007.

Ali Modu Sheriff himself like ‘the godfather who never sleeps’ schooled, lived and joined  his business tycoon father’s construction company as a director  in Maiduguri.  His PDP rival Hashim Ibrahim who  holds the traditional title of Mutawalli Borno, a senior councillor to the Shehu (traditional ruler) of Borno, whom he defeated in 2003 and 2007  was his childhood friend, business partner and  like  him was a privileged son of an illustrious father, Ibrahim Imam, ‘the motivating force of the progressive Borno Youth Movement.

Senator Khalifa Ahmed Zannah, another major actor in the Maiduguri elite war of attrition is also a Maiduguri-based successful businessman, and a member of the board of many federal establishments. General Ibrahim Babangida was his godfather. He,  along with others in 2007 organised the Democratic Women Forum, an organization that supported the political aspirations of the former military dictator.  Contesting as a PDP candidate in the 2011 Borno Central Senatorial election, he defeated Ali Modu Sheriff, the two term governor of Borno State by 189,232 to Sheriff’s 120,377 votes. Now, Senator Zannah, whose nephew  Shuaibu Bama was arrested in Modu Sherif’s house and accused of having links with Boko Haram has in turn accused Modu of being the sponsor of Boko Haram. The arrest of his brother according to him was “part of the campaign to declare him a Boko Haram member, financier, sympathiser, and harbourer and declare his seat vacant, all to pave way for Ali Modu Sheriff”.

Shettima the current governor who is a prominent member of the on-going war of attrition was also based in Maiduguri before he became Modu Sheriff’s Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, later commissioner in the ministries of local governments and chieftaincy affairs, education, agriculture and  health.  The assassination of Engineer Modu Fannami Gubio, the ANPP governorship candidate, by yet-to-be identified gunmen paved the way for his emergence as ANPP candidate. He  later went ahead to defeat his PDP opponent, Muhammed Goni  in  the April 2011 elections,  with 531,147 votes to  Goni’s 450,140 votes.

Shettima in his inaugural speech as a governor described Sheriff, his godfather as “indefatigable, visionary and politically sagacious whose immense contribution to the development of our great party and his demonstrated managerial and administrative acumen in governing our dear state in the last eight years remains unassailable”. But the governor was silent on the fact that those eight years witnessed several religious riots in which many churches were destroyed, with massive killings and destruction of property by the Boko Haram fundamentalist Islamist sect.  If the policy direction of Shettima’s administration which he said was predicated on “Restoration of peace and tranquillity in the state” has failed, it was perhaps because it was based on falsehood.

Shettima and his group who have been in power for about 14 years are all grassroots politicians with cells of support in all the 27 local council areas of the state. They have spent all their lives in Maiduguri and served their communities in various capacities as party officials and commissioners. It is therefore inconceivable that they will not have an idea of those who have laid siege on Borno State in the past few years. APC should be asking the Borno State government hard questions. If Shettima gave an undertaking that the abducted girls would be protected, what measures he put in place to guarantee this or forestall possible sabotage by an unfriendly federal government that has demonstrated its hostility?  I am sure APC is aware that if an Ogbeni Aregbesola gave such an undertaking, he would probably be there physically with his army of happy volunteer’s workers to serve as human shield.

Although Lagos State is not at war, but Borno State governor could have borrowed one or two things from Governor Fashola’s creative approach to security in Lagos State. He did not just wait on federal government he once alleged sent two patrol vans to a police division where about 50 are needed, but creatively raised funds to equip the force. If the authorities in Borno State had gone beyond politicking and embarked on fund-raising in Abuja, Lagos and other major cities of the nation, ordinary Nigerians incensed by Boko Haram’s sheer madness would have made contributions. Taking out a million naira out of the state meagre resources to pay the family of each dead soldier is not money creatively spent. Such amount could have been more creatively deployed to keep the soldier alive.

It was recently disclosed that Obasanjo negotiated and obtained from Boko Haram a set of conditionality for a truce which the government ignored opting for outright use of force, while paying lip service to negotiation.  As this column, along with other well-meaning Nigerians, has canvassed in the last three years, self-inflicted crisis by Maiduguri’s self-serving politicians cannot be resolved by force of arms.  The way forward will be to allow the warring elites face their demons no matter how hard to swallow the demands of the insurgents are. We cannot continue to shy away from compromise which is said to be the highest badge of honour in a federal arrangement as in democracy even when other options are readily available.

APC should order its militants to release the girls; Tinubu as commander in chief is in a position to do that. Your anger against Jonathan will consume you” (0817974198)

Since I do not belong to APC, I am not privileged to know if the party has a military wing as contained in the above reader’s reaction to my piece “The buck stops at the president desk” ;( May 1). But one thing I can assure the reader is that if indeed an APC military wing exists, General Muhamadu Buhari who as a GOC in Jos, did not wait for President Shagari’s orders before chasing insurgents who crossed from Chad to terrorise Nigerians, taking over a chunk of their territory before accepting a truce would have redeemed  the  battered image of a country where Boko Haram runs a ‘Sambisa forest republic’ where they kept 270 innocent girls plucked from their dormitories, daring Okupe’s two battalions stationed in Borno State, to  enter while their commander-in-chief is taking some lessons in Asonto dance steps in Sokoto and Kano.

But to aver that I am angry with President Jonathan, to whom we traded off our rights to freedom and liberty for his protection of life and property, is an understatement. And I am not alone. There is anger on the streets of major cities in Nigeria. From Chibok to Maiduguiri, Lagos to Abeokuta, Ado-Ekiti, Port-Harcourt, Calabar, Uyo and Abuja, the mood is the same. Elsewhere in the world, New York, London, Paris, Senegal etc; the mood is the same. There is anger against what Prime Minister Cameron of Britain described as Boko Haram’s “pure act of evil” and what Hillary Clinton described as “government failure to protect its people”.

Like everyone else around the globe except PDP leaders whose voices have remained tepid, I am angry with our president. I am incensed with a president who spent the first three weeks of the capture of our daughters praying long after the Jews who like their Arab cousins stubbornly resisted acknowledging Christ as son of God, have nonetheless  imbibed His teaching about  following up prayers with actions. I am anguished because our president waited for three weeks only to tell us he did not know the where about of our 270 abducted teenage girls. I am tormented by the foot-dragging that followed the Chibok tragedy and this has left me with a deep sense of shame, embarrassment and a feeling of total helplessness.

Like Cameron who fondly reminded the British Parliament he has two daughters, I as a doting father who sneaked to my daughters’ boarding school thrice a week, to catch a glimpse of my adorable angels, a father who packs food to his undergraduate teenage sunshine in her studio daily, I feel terrified when I see fathers and mothers crying on television over their kidnapped little angels. And as a therapy to ensure I am not consumed by my anger against our president, tears also flow freely from my eyes in solidarity with grief-stricken weeping fathers and mothers.

With Chibok, PDP and President Jonathan can no more live in denial as Wole Soyinka, one of the remaining few Nigerian credible voices told CNN Amanpour last week. Before now all critics of President Jonathan’s inept handling of the nation’s affairs have been blackmailed.   Newspaper columnists doing their job of helping the public interpret news of government activities are proclaimed ignoramuses by Aso rock’s know-all attack dogs of Doyin Okupe and Ahmed Gulak.  Now critics of PDP wheelers and dealers and the president style to have been vindicated.

Hillary Clinton the US immediate past Secretary of state only last week dismissed the PDP administration headed by President Jonathan as irresponsible, asserting that “The government of Nigeria has been, somewhat derelict in its responsibility for protecting boys and girls, men and women”.

The well respected London Economist equally dismissed President Jonathan government as incompetent lamenting that “the worst aspect of the Nigerian government’s handling of the abduction is its seeming indifference to the plight of the girls’ families. It took more than two weeks before Jonathan addressed the matter in public.” But the Economist has gone further to condemn the meddlesomeness of the president’s wife who it accused of “indiscriminate use of power even when she was not a constitutionally elected official” by ordering “the arrest of two leaders of the protests, bizarrely accusing them of belonging to Boko Haram and of fabricating reports of the abduction to smear the government”.

Amnesty International intervention also seems to have confirmed the fears of Nigerians that our military might have not been properly kitted in spite of humongous defence budget of about one trillion naira, a quarter of the nation’s annual budget, a claim  often dismissed by government contractors as spokespersons or image makers.  Netsanet Belay, the body’s Africa Director (Research and Advocacy) accused government of “a gross dereliction of duty to protect civilians, who remain sitting ducks for such attacks.” According to the body, Nigeria’s military headquarters in Maiduguri “was aware of the impending attack soon after 7pm on April 14, close to four hours before Boko Haram began their assault on the town.”, but was alleged to be unable to “to muster troops – due to poor resources and a reported fear of engaging with the often better-equipped armed groups – meant that reinforcements were not deployed to Chibok that night. The small contingent of security forces based in the town – 17 army personnel as well as local police –attempted to repel the Boko Haram assault but were overpowered and forced to retreat.”

The New York Times asserts the president ”leads a corrupt government that has little credibility.” For long the president and his party have lived in denial insisting corruption is not an issue in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary They briefly forgot in the new globalised world, sovereignty is dead. The world can see through a president who tries to wash his hands clean by attributing the non successful prosecution of those accused of stealing N1.7 trillion to the wheel of justice which he says grinds slowly in our environment. It is not hidden from the world how Boni Haruna, former governor of Adamawa state got a judicial relief on the eve of his appointment as a minister after an inconclusive seven years judicial battle with EFCC. The world can make an informed judgment from action of a president who openly supports a minister accused of frittering away N10 billion (enough to buy 10 unmanned drones from South Africa at a unit price of about US$500,000) on hiring of aircrafts. And as for the president’s party, the world can see that of the 23 PDP elected governors in 1999, 17 are either in prison, still serving jail terms, or in exile trying to escape from justice.

Chibok has brought it home more graphically to the international community that we are fast moving towards becoming a failed state with our commander-in-chief requesting for military and logistic support to penetrate Mambisa forest enclave an area said not to be much bigger than Ikeja and where 270 innocent girls have been kept for close to four weeks. America, Britain and France which currently harbour millions of Nigerians must have now realized it is in their own enlightened self-interest to save Nigeria from PDP, President Jonathan and Boko Haram.

To the less cynical, with a temperament for PDP comedy and President Jonathan’s sardonic humour as they junket around the country, dancing with serial cross-carpenters and others with criminal charges hanging on their necks in a desperate bid for re-election in 2015 even as the nation burns, the recently concluded parley by governors of the 36 states of  the federation, service chiefs and religious leaders, may appear a genuine attempt at finding solution to the problem of security of lives and property especially in the besieged north-eastern part of the country. Hitherto the ruling party whose immoral seizure of disproportionate share of our national resources is the source of bitterness among the deprived has been blaming others for Boko Haram’s mindless killing of innocent Nigerians. It first fingered the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Lamido Sanusi shortly after falling out of favour with government for pointing out financial infractions in the NNPC presided over by some leading members of the party. From Sanusi, they moved to, General Buhari, former military Head of State and  President Jonathan’s main rival in the 2011 election. Lately, the party suddenly woke up to realise that the newly formed APC, the opposition party, is the sponsor of Boko Haram that has made the north-eastern part of the country ungovernable for close to three years.

And as for the president, until the current effort, he has, besides engaging in mudslinging with Kashim Shettima and Murtala Nyako, governors of besieged Borno and Adamawa states, chosen to seek God’s intervention after each dastardly act by those who kill children, rob banks and abduct young school girls as sex slaves in the name of God on whose behest they claim to crusade.  From the synagogues of our home-based grace hawkers, he had embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and of late, to Rome where he also sought Pope Francis’s intercession on behalf of our nation.

But to the cynical, who lack the stomach for hypocrisy and politics of perfidy of the president and his party, the meeting was totally unnecessary. And they seem to have been vindicated by its outcome which merely reinforced their strongly held position that the buck stops on the desk of the president and commander-in-chief.

For instance we were told that the parley “stressed the importance of rising above partisanship when dealing with security issues, as well as tackling it in an objective manner with security agencies being professional”. I am sure most Nigerians have not forgotten it was the president who created a division among the governors by proclaiming losers in the governors’ forum election, winners. Nigerians also know that the  president is the one who has been going around exchanging words with victims of Boko Haram’s mindless killing who out of frustration wanted the president to live up to the oath of his office as commander-in-chief

We were also informed that the meeting resolved that “data should be shared across board among security agencies”, and that “a holistic approach in curbing terrorist activities, including the anti-poverty approach should also be adopted.” This also, like other nebulous declarations are the exclusive preserve of the president and commander-in-chief. He is in charge of warring Generals who are not sharing data. If for inexplicable reason, 230 female students were ferried away by insurgents in a state under emergency where every five kilometre is expected to be manned by soldiers, there is nothing governors and religious leaders can do to help a commander-in-chief who chooses to dance while his garrison is under siege.

It was also disclosed that security agencies were mandated to “do everything to ensure that the abducted children are rescued from their abductors which the military assured”. Again, we all know the assemblage had no power to mandate the military.  Such responsibility is conferred on the president and commander-in-chief by the constitution. In any case,  the military under whose nose, 230 of our promising female children studying science and humanities were snatched by sick minds knows it’s not only the integrity of the military that is at stake, they have been challenged to redeem the battered image of our nation which  has become a laughing stock in the comity of nations. There is nowhere else in the contemporary world except perhaps in Nazi Germany under Hitler that 230 young girls will be abducted by criminals for weeks without a national emergency being declared. The soldiers know what is at stake.

And finally, it was claimed that in order to forestall further clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers, “the meeting agreed the Fulani herdsmen would be relocated as a short time measure with the final objective of ensuring all the grazing routes and the grazing areas that had not been gazetted, be properly gazetted for peace to reign”.

But  the federal government, prior to this meeting had pretended not to know the identity of those behind the indiscriminate killings in the besieged states of Adamawa, Kaduna, Benue, Plateau and Katsina  The question to ask then is when did government that has in spite of its control of  the military, police, SSS, immigration etc. been unable to arrest any of the marauders who according surviving victims, often operate for several hours killing in hundreds and burning down whole villages discover they are Fulani herdsmen?

But let us even accept for once that government has decided to stop playing the ostrich, that government is right and General Gowon and Senator Jubril Aminu who have tried to exonerate Fulani herdsmen are wrong, the directive of the meeting will still be an exercise in futility because it is only President Jonathan that is constitutionally empowered to perform such role.  To underscore this point, the president shortly before the parley last week mandated the minister of agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina to inaugurate a committee to look into the issue of grazing routes.

The parley was unnecessary. Our tragedy is President Jonathan’s reluctance to perform his constitutional responsibilities. Yet he passionately loves the title president. He assiduously schemed to get the job by colluding with Obasanjo, his godfather and some northern leaders to subvert PDP constitution. He has even in a desperate bid to hold on to the job  denied ever giving an undertaking to spend only one term as alleged by his godfather, ex-President Obasanjo. He is prepared to fraternize with the forces that can retain him in power no matter how despicable.

For instance, it is unimaginable that the president as commander-in-chief would not have had security report on Princess Stella Oduah and Coscharis’ armoured car scandal. Even after an indictment of the minister by a National Assembly probe, the president refused to act. It is equally doubtful that the president has no security report on petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke’s alleged frittering away of over N10 billion on hiring aircraft. Is it also really possible the president has no security report on those who have turned Middle Belt’s beautiful land into killing fields? It will be strange if President Jonathan has no access to security reports on those former northern governors that Ambassador Olu Dada  claimed hobnobbed with  Osama Bin Laden when he had his headquarters in Sudan as well as the names of northern youth sponsored for jihadist training in Al-Queda training camps.

Unfortunately, cynics who believe that President Jonathan who value the company of indicted enemies of Nigeria and those with criminal charges because of their potential to influence his political fortunes also think he may for the same reason not be prepared to take on his PDP northern political Sharia advocates currently mortgaging the future of northern youths in the name of religion.