The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • Kabiyesi Okunade Sijuwade Waja, Erin wo ajanaku sun bi oke (1) 

    Kabiyesi or kabio kosi means nobody can query the decision of an Oba. This is to say the ruler is an omnipotent and powerful ruler whose actions are beyond question. Oba Waja means the king has escaped to the roof. This is to suggest an Oba never dies; he merely escapes to the hereafter. Obas in those days of yore were deified, kabiyesi Iku baba eye. Alaafin Sango was worshipped and deified as God of Thunder. Obas were regarded as rulers only second to the gods. Erin wo ajanaku sun bi oke signifies the almighty nature of the Oba who when he falls he cannot be woken up because he is like a hill that cannot be moved. The passing on has also been described as the tiger going into the forest. A few months ago, the royal palace in Benin said the tiger is hunting in the savannah in reference to the apparent indisposition of the Benin monarch. In the case of the Ooni, it is said the tiger has gone to hunt in the forest. In Yorubaland and neighboring Benin kingdom, Obas are usually referred to as children of the tiger, signifying the dangerous beauty of the tiger. It is interesting that the use of lions as symbols of royalty was hardly used in Yorubaland, yet tigers are not native to Africa unless one decides to translate amotekun(leopard) and Ekun(Tiger)  interchangeably

    The centrality of Ile – Ife , Or Ife ode aye ( the place from where land spread to other places)in Yorubaland , Benin and the forest kingdoms of west Africa up to Ghana cannot be overemphasised . The influence of Ife was not based on political conquest but on its spiritual and religious significance .This significant role lies in historical antiquity. As far back as the 9th century to the 12th century, Ife was home to a civilization that produced the famous Ife terra cottas and bronze figurines which were made using the cire Perdue or (lost wax) process only found among Ancient Greeks which made an itinerant German explorer Leo Froebinius to suggest that this technology may have diffused from Greece through the Mediterranean and across the Sahara to Ile -Ife! This is, of course, nonsense. Earlier on, the Nok culture of which Ife was possibly a successor had existed in the area of southern Kaduna and current areas of Plateau State. What is significant is that the Benin, Ugbo-Ukwu in present Anambra State,  Bida in Niger State and Idah in Kogi with Ile – Ife form the same artistic cultural tradition which Ile -Ife spearheaded.

    Until recently when some nationalist historians of Bini history have tried to dispute the exact relationship between Ife and Benin, it was generally agreed that the Benin monarchy is from the house of Oduduwa, the eponymous ancestor of the Yoruba people.  Jacob Egharevba,  in his history of Benin, made this assertion .The new Benin revisionism suggests that Oduduwa was a fugitive Benin prince of the  Erkhaladenhan  dynasty who ran away  for fear for his life and lived in the forest of Ile -Ife until as a result of the political disarray in Benin he was sent for to come back home . This fugitive prince was conveniently called Ideduwa who then sent his son,  Oranmiyan,  in his stead . After a brief stay, Oranmiyan after fathering a son, Eweka, left Benin back to Ife and later went to found a new kingdom in Oyo.. There is a convergence of Benin and Ife oral traditions on the emergence of Oyo which with Benin became the two most powerful empires in West Africa between the 15th and the 18th centuries. This is not the place to interrogate these myths of origin of peoples. What is important to state is the connection of Ife to Benin to the extent that even to this day the standard greetings in the palace of the Oba of Benin is how goes Ife ?(uhe ) in Edo language . The Portuguese were told in the 15th century that the Oba of Benin pays homage to his father the Oghene who lives north west of Benin . It is significant to note that the Edo generally refer to God as oghene(urhobo) .

    The late Professor Ade Obayemi raised the question of whether the present Ife is the Ife of historical antiquity since there are currently seven or nine  Ifes . Professor Alan Ryder also suggested that ancient Ife may have been north of its present location and may be somewhere in the Benue valley near Ife -olukotun in Kogi State. This is not far-fetched because migration and replication of original settlements and kingdoms is a common phenomenon in African history. The artifacts found in Ife would then have been carried from the original Ife to the present location. Many centuries of development passed on between these beginnings and future growth  in Yorubaland

    No matter how powerful Oyo and Benin later became, and the two empires shared borders in Eastern Yorubaland,  it was forbidden for them to violate the  sacrosanct  nature of Ile Ife . It was the violation of this sanctity of Ifeland when the Alafin’s forces invaded Apomu part of Ife kingdom towards the end of the 18th century that precipitated general wars in Yorubaland that lasted for a century in which a war of movement became a war of attrition in the Kiriji war. During these wars, Ife was constantly evacuated or destroyed but the stool of the Onirinsa was always restored. In those hectic days the Ooni continued to enjoy his influence in Yorubaland;  of course, at the mercy of the Alaafin whose relationship to the Ooni was akin to that of the pope and emperor in medieval Europe with the Alafins enjoying suzerainty over most of Yorubaland before the military imperialism of Ibadan in the 19th century. The coming of the British stabilized the traditional political institution not only of the Alaafin and Ooni but also in the far north of Nigeria in the beleaguered Sokoto Caliphate where there was a revolt in Satiru to replace the leadership. The British consolidated the position of the Ooni as spiritual head of the Yoruba and repository of Yoruba tradition and culture while accepting the predominant position of the Alaafin as political supremo in Yorubaland . In spite of this division of power, the Oyo-Ife axis which would have been beneficial to the whole of Yorubaland has remained at best tenuous.

    Kabiyesi Okunade Sijuwade came to the throne well-prepared. I grew up knowing him as Public Relations Director of Leventis Motors. He later founded National Motors  on behalf of the government of Western Nigeria, selling British  Leyland vehicles before he founded his own company,  the West African Technical Company (WAATECO) selling Soviet Union vehicles and equipment , somehow mirroring the shift in the Action Group party’s rapprochement towards the Soviet Union .This was obviously to the discomfiture of the then Federal Government that dreaded relations with the Soviet Union in spite of its avowed policy of nonalignment . The then Prince Sijuwade made a huge success of it and that began the story of his success in business  spanning so many other businesses from construction to trade relations with Israel and Britain.

  • 70 years after the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan

    Earlier this week, the world marked the 70th year of the first and hopefully the last time of tactical use of the atomic bomb in warfare. This incident changed the course of history. Ironically, the use of such destructive arsenal has helped to prevent global war since the end of the Second World War in 1945. It has not brought universal peace because there have been several proxy wars such as the Korean, Vietnamese wars, several military confrontations between the forces of global capitalism and socialism in Latin America and the various liberation wars in Africa  and the current wars in Ukraine following other wars in Georgia and in the Caucasus areas of Russia where national groups are justly struggling to be free of Resurgent Russia.

    Following the successful development of nuclear weapons towards the tail end of the Second World War, it was left to President Harry Truman and his advisers to take the decision of if or when nuclear weapons will be deployed in the titanic struggle between the Axis and the Allied powers. It was not an easy decision. The forces of the Nazis were on their knees in Europe and American forces were closing in on the Japanese after rolling them over in the Philippines  and were on their way to take Okinawa in the Japanese homelands. The Japanese were still fighting ferociously in the name of their God-emperor  Hirohito. Each soldier rather than surrender was prepared to commit hara-kiri.  And to knock out Japan, America decided to use the ultimate weapon in their arsenal, the nuclear bomb.  The argument then was that this act would save the lives of American service men and put an end to the suffering of everybody including the Japanese! Once the decision to use the bomb was taken, the Pentagon awaited the go-ahead to drop the fat boy from President Harry Truman.

    It is now known that when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima about 125,000 people mostly civilians were incinerated while more were to die later from radioactive fallout. A few days later another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki which also wiped out about 70,000 souls not counting those who died later from their injuries. If the import of the first bomb was unclear, the second quickly led to Japan’s surrender. Their war leader Hideki Tojo and others were tried and hanged and there were demands for trial and execution of the emperor himself but good sense prevailed and the frail old man was spared while all his powers were taken away from him and a constitution imposed on Japan forbidding it to rearm.

    The effect of the atomic weapon was dramatic globally. Movement for nuclear disarmament sprang up especially following the ability to split the atom by Russia on the heels of the American success. Even many top nuclear physicists like the famous Albert Einstein began to fear for the survival of the human race. Einstein once said if nuclear weapons were ever used in the Third World War, the 4th world war will be fought with sticks and stones, meaning human civilization would have been wiped as a result of nuclear holocaust.

    The immediate result of the use of nuclear weapons was that it stopped the war as was predicted. It is also clear that if the Japanese had developed it first, they would have had no qualms or scruples in using it against their American enemies. Adolph Hitler would probably would have used it if he won the nuclear race before the Allies. This is however not to downplay the doubts raised by the use of this war changer of a weapon. Nowadays with new morality people are asking if the use of the atomic weapons on civilians was not a war crime. Some people have even read racial motives into its use on Japanese – a non-white race while the Germans were spared of this horrific consequence of the use of this revolutionary weapon. There is evidence that tens and tens of Germans were deliberately targeted by aerial bombing by the British carpet bombing of the city of Dresden towards the end of the war in Europe with apparent no strategic significance than to punish German civilians and to carry the war to them so that there will be no question that they lost the war unlike in the First World War when Germans saw no enemy troops on their soil but rather thousands of German troops had to withdraw from enemy territories after the armistice of 1918.  This led the Germans to feel that it lost the First World War because it was stabbed in the back by internal enemies. Anti German feelings in Britain was so high that if it had the bomb it would have used it against the Germans while with a preponderance of German descendants in the USA using nuclear bombs against them was out of the question. The use of atomic weapons in tightly packed Europe may also have had unintended consequence on other people other than the Germans. Whatever the case may have been, 1945 was a watershed in military history.

    It meant that wars would have to be fought with either conventional weapons or nuclear weapons with a range of strategies including  use of tactical neutron bombs in war theatres, strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, consideration of second strike capability  and even possibility of deployment of anti-missile systems in space to prevent being hit by enemy nuclear weapons. The futility of this has however made the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable by rational human beings. The fear of these weapons in the hands of rogue or unstable states led to the signing nuclear non proliferation treaty which unfortunately has not prevented determined states such as Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan acquiring the weapons. The fear of Iran following suit has led to the recent signing of an international treaty with Iran with the hope that the Islamic republic can only use its nuclear know-how for peaceful purposes and not for making atomic weapons. What is clear is that some countries now see nuclear weapons possession as the ultimate deterrent against possible attack by enemies. It is now seen as the ultimate symbol of equality in the international system. They are probably right. It is inconceivable that a nuclear power will ever be attacked but this is not the same as putative nuclear power taking on a global power.

    The saddest part of the possibility of the use of nuclear bombs is that if it is ever used, it is likely to be in South Asia where India and Pakistan face each other with both countries possessing nuclear weapons and hating each other so much that they would use these weapons in the face of a conventional military defeat. Furthermore religion which is sometimes irrational has been brought into the cauldron with Pakistan claiming it has the Islamic atomic bomb and evidence that it shared its knowledge with North Korea and Iran in the past. One can only imagine the dangerous consequences of introduction of nuclear weapons into the tinderbox of Middle East politics. The prognosis is not too good.

    Even now the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, dancing to the tune of Japanese nationalism wants to remove the peace clauses in the Japanese constitution preventing the country from rearming. One cannot blame him in the face of growing militarism in China and provocation by North Korea which regularly tests missiles across Japan. This is why the world needs to listen to the plea of the Japanese government for universal nuclear disarmament. Nigeria and the rest of Africa should support and embrace the Japanese position. We in Africa should not be smug about our continent being  a nuclear weapons free  zone because in the event of a global nuclear holocaust, we would not be spared. We may not be hit directly but mankind would wither away as a result of radioactive fallout. This is the scenario President John Fitzgerald Kennedy meant when he said in 1962 that in the event of a nuclear war the living will envy the dead!

  • The oil subsidy scam

    Former Governor Rotimi Amaechi recently said one of the reasons that caused a friction between him and former President Ebele Jonathan was his opposition to subsidy to petrol importers that ballooned from N300 billion a year  to N1.9 trillion. Amaechi was acting on behalf of the governors of the country then  as leader of the informal association of governors  forum. Dr. Jonathan by this time had been pocketed by the cabal of corrupt petrol traders who were also funding generously the PDP and enriching those in the corridor of power . The then president apparently realized at a point that there was something odd in a country spending more money on petrol subsidy than on development and wanted to do something about it. This led him to increase the pump price of petrol but did not have the backbone to resist public outcry  and quickly reduced what he had been advised as the true price of gasoline. The hostility of the public arose from their perception of the rampant corruption in the country. People felt they were not prepared to make sacrifice while the number of private jets was increasing daily. The president himself celebrated this as an index of prosperity  in the land where Nigeria’s rebased GDP gave us the appearance of a rich country and rich people. His so-called coordinating minister of the economy was everywhere alluding to this manufactured achievement of economic prosperity to the discomfiture of the ordinary citizen. Stories were told of washermen, carpenters, garbage collectors being asked to fill forms that they were petrol importers and being subsequently paid billions of naira as subsidy. Young children of party bigwigs became billionaires overnight.

    This jamboree went  on for years until the country nearly went bankrupt following low price of crude oil in the world market forcing the corrupt government to shine some light on the oil imports sector. It found many  people culpable and made some noise and took some people to court including party top dogs or their children but it was all motion without movement for no one has been convicted  neither has money been recovered. To make matters worse, some of the people involved also ruined some of the country’s banks  while the huge foreign reserves Obasanjo left was drawn down on  subsiding this corrupt fuel importation. This  is how we got to this juncture of broken down four refineries and huge importation of refined fuel  which is an embarrassing situation for an oil producing country. The subsidy guzzlers were not interested in functioning refineries. They also never thought of selling the refineries  as part of their market driven economic reforms. Obasanjo had gotten private  operators interested in buying some of the run down refineries but they preferred the so-called annual  turn around contracts award  for the refineries. As usual these contracts went to party hacks who knew nothing about refineries. Instead of calling on those who built the refineries to rehabilitate them they gave the contracts to traders who simply pocketed the huge amounts given them while making some donations to the ruling party. They did this annually with impunity damning the people especially those with conscience to protest or go to hell.

    Now change has hopefully come and we hope and pray that things will change for the better. President Buhari has cautiously said he will not rush to take a decision on oil subsidy. He said he will study the situation first. But it is clear from the several studies done and advice by experts and friendly countries and development partners that that the oil subsidy and the oil sector generally constitute the bedrocks of corruption in Nigeria. We cannot be talking of fighting corruption while dilly-dallying on the oil subsidy issue. If the president does not strike while the iron is hot, subsidy beneficiaries with their enormous resources will mobilize to ensure the failure of its removal. Surprise is a well known military strategy and this president with his huge goodwill  should make up his mind quickly. Besides in the last two months, most Nigerians have been buying fuel at deregulated prices ranging from 100 to 130 naira a litre. If this is the price to pay to release money going into subsidy for development we should be prepared to pay it. Imagine what two or three trillion naira that was being spent for subsidy by the Jonathan government  can do for the development of this country. Delaying a decision on this issue may haunt us in the years to come especially if this government allows the oil oligarchs to mobilize against subsidy removal. The right policy is deregulation. Let the market determine the right and correct price of gasoline and let all who feel they can make profit engage in fuel importation and sell all the refineries at give away price to oil companies engaged in oil production in Nigeria or if they are not willing to buy  them, sell them to those who can run them but certainly not party people and preferably to foreign investors and I repeat at a give-away price of even a dollar provided the buyers promise to put them back into oil refining.

  • Nigeria- Canada relations

    When Nigeria hosted the Commonwealth in 2004, there were series of events lined up culminating in the summit which was graciously declared open by Queen Elizabeth II. One of the events was a lecture on the evolution of the commonwealth by Professor Lalage Bown from the United Kingdom.

    At question time Ambassador Olisemeka, former Permanent Secretary and later Foreign Minister of Nigeria surprised some of us when he said the Commonwealth had no meaning or relevance to him simply because his son could not secure a student visa to go to Canada for university education.

    I studied for my Ph.D. in Canada at Dalhousie university between 1967 and 1970 . I was an Izaak Walton Killam Scholar, the equivalent of the British Rhodes scholarship which was highly sought after in those days. I was very young, having graduated at the age of 24 from the University of Ibadan. The commonwealth ties in those days were very strong to the effect that as a commonwealth citizen I did not need a visa to go to Canada.

    When I finished my studies,  Professor Jack Ogelsby from the University of Western Ontario came to Halifax, Nova Scotia to offer me a job and to file for what is called landed immigrant status for me so that I could legally work in Canada. Life was good in those days! After a year, I left to go to the University of the West Indies in Barbados, another commonwealth institution, after which my mother put pressure on me to return home.

    I came home as a friend of Britain, Canada and the West Indies, places where I had studied and worked. I was particularly fond of Canada. I was one of those who founded what we called the Maple Club of Nigeria bringing together Nigerians who studied in Canada. By stroke of luck or coincidence I was asked to go to Canada to open a Nigerian University Commission office in Ottawa in 1978 when Nigeria embarked on expansion of its universities. Furthermore I voted in the election that brought the mercurial and unconventional Pierre Trudeau to power as a young prime minister of Canada.

    In the late 1980s when I was special adviser to the minister of external affairs, I had occasion to meet Canadian prime ministers and foreign ministers like Jean Chretien and Joe Clark and as chairman of Nigerian-Canada Chamber of Commerce I hosted a few of their ministers when they visited Nigeria. Years later I helped register the Nigerian-Canada Chamber of Commerce and I was foundation chairman.

    My children, two of which were born in Canada in the 1970s, also went to University of Toronto, Dalhousie University and Ryerson University.

    I say all this to show how close my relationships have been with Canada. My personal story mirrors the warm relations that happily existed between Canada and Nigeria. The bitter interlude of the Abacha years when Canada took a principled stand against the brutal dictatorship of military rule did not do irreparable damage to the good diplomatic relations then existing between our two countries. Nigeria has always found Canada a good partner because Canada has no imperialistic tendencies in her relations with other countries and has always supported African aspirations during the struggle for decolonization and against institutionalized racism of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa. Canada along with Nigeria, Australia, Guyana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia constituted a commonwealth ministerial committee on apartheid and I remember the role of Mr Joe Clark the former prime minister who later became foreign minister played in putting economic pressure on South Africa between 1988 and 1991. I participated in these meetings held in Zimbabwe, Australia and Canada.

    Unfortunately for inexplicable reasons, our relations with Canada has apparently become merely tolerable if not hostile from the Canadian side. I say this because it takes approximately 54 days for a Nigerian to get a visa renewed to travel to Canada. Your passport remains with the Canadian visa office during which time you cannot go to any other country making one feel trapped! This has been my experience in these last 50 days and I find it galling that I am confined to my country through the activity of a friendly foreign mission. Yet any Canadian wanting to come to Nigeria gets his or her visa within three or four days. That is the instruction given to all Nigerian missions in countries of potential investors.

    Diplomacy operates on the principle of reciprocity. It seems that the Canadians are not playing by the rules of the game of international relations. In my case, I have a daughter and her family living there and grandchildren that I want to see. What harm can somebody of my age do to a country that has been good to me and my family? I understand that Nigeria is now a country with security concerns regarding the activities of the hoodlums in the north east but certainly a country like Canada can separate wheat from the tares!

    I appeal to the Canadian mission in Nigeria to review its visa regime and our government should step in and appeal to the Canadians to behave as a friendly nation we all know it to be.

  • State finances after federal bailout

    We must give thanks to President Muhammadu Buhari’s rescue package for all the states of the federation that could no longer discharge their financial obligation to their employees following the drastic reduction in federal allocations consequent upon the drop in earnings from crude oil sales. With the exception of a few states, most of the states of the federation were under stress and acute distress. I visited the secretariats of Oyo and Osun in Ibadan and Osogbo respectively when both states were on strike I was struck and saddened by what I saw.  The two places were virtually lifeless and deserted presenting a scene that I had never experienced in Ibadan where I had practically lived all my life. The situation reminded me of glory departing from Israel as a result of sin and conquest by its enemies. Ibadan which has withstood enemy conquest since its foundation circa 1830 presented a sorry situation. Osogbo was also a sad reflection of what I saw in Ibadan. Yet these two state capitals had never witnessed the kind of stupendous development that governors Abiola Ajimobi and Rauf Aregbesola had accomplished since their creation. The road networks in Ibadan put to shame all previous governments in the state since independence. Aregbesola has definitely transformed Osogbo not only in terms of roads but by building modern and  up-to-date mega-schools in the state as well as feeding school children once a day a phenomenon that states collecting jumbo federal allocations have not been able to replicate or match. You can blame this young man for too much optimism but certainly not for corruption or squander-mania

    My prayer particularly for Aregbesola is that through internally generated revenue he will  be able to finish all the projects he has embarked on especially the dualisation of Akoda to Gbongan which will lead to the emergence of a conurbation stretching from Osogbo through Ede, Ode-omu to Gbongan  with common services for all the towns brought together and increase in the tax base and springing up of  industries enjoying economy of scale  because of the size of the new market. While still on Osun, I wonder why there has been so much negative focus on the state as if it were the only state lagging in payment of salaries. Perhaps this has something to do with the over-exposure of the governor or perhaps people have come to expect too much from him. Whatever the case may be, there has been all kinds of do-gooders demonstrating more enthusiasm than wisdom offering help and even food to the so-called starving population of Osun State!

    It is of course true that the APC states in the South-West borrowed money for infrastructural development following hostile treatment by the PDP-controlled federal government. With the decline in the value of the naira, these states may in future be the better for the loans they took. If they had waited longer, the kind of work done with minimal allocations one sees in Ekiti under Fayemi,  Osun under Aregbesola , Ogun under Amosun, Oyo under Ajimobi and the giant strides in Lagos under Fashola may never have been accomplished. It is only when one visits neighbouring states of Kogi and Kwara in the same cultural environment that one can appreciate what has been accomplished in these states.

    All I have said is  of course no excuse for poor planning and not saving money against  lean times. But when faced with absolute and abject underdevelopment, does it really make sense to postpone responding to the development yearnings of our people? This is the question we should ask ourselves.

    The answer lies in each state becoming self-sufficient and not depending on revenues accruing to the federal government that itself, unhealthily in economic sense, depends on hydrocarbon sale and taxes levied on multinationals involved in their production. We must as a people and a country move away from dependency on oil and gas. Our country is blessed by God. We are in the tropics where we can grow crops all the year round unlike in the temperate regions of the world where for half of the year, the land is too cold to support agriculture. With a population one ninth of that of India and vast arable land lying fallow, we should not be importing rice from India Thailand, the USA and Bangladesh of all places! We should not be importing vegetable oils from Malaysia and Indonesia or textile from anywhere when all our textile mills are mothed up and moribund due to lack of use. We should not be importing any kind of wines including champagne of which we are the largest consumer outside France. We should refrain from eating or using whatever our ingenuity cannot produce. The only concession I would make is industrial machineries, industrial inputs, transportation and electrical grid and maybe, chemicals and drugs. We should do away with our indulgent lifestyles of conspicuous consumption .This was the strategy the Chinese adopted that leapfrogged their economy from the laughable level it was a few years ago to the fastest growing economy in the world. This prescription is at the macro level of the nation.

    But at state level, we must allow the people to own the government. The situation at present where only salary earners pay taxes is one of the reasons why the people do not care if state officials are corrupt or clean. The unearned income from oil and gas is a curse and this is why we suffer when their prices like a yoyo go up and down

    We must bring back the regime of flat or poll tax on all adults. Jangali or cattle tax should be levied road tax should also be paid. The federal government should allow states to collect VAT and VAT which is actually luxury tax which need not fall on the poor should be increased to 20 percent . We should not wait until our economy goes the way of the Greek economy and international caretakers are called to impose unbearable conditionalities on us before we can access development assistance. States must also levy commodities tax on cash crops and recreate commodities boards that used to exist before the craze of market forces determining price of commodities. This will help stabilise prices paid to producers who will be protected from the vagaries of rise and fall in the world market. All the states of the federation should be asked to explore charging annual land use and development tax on home owners in such a way that the least able to pay are excluded. Transparency will be the watch word. If the people see what is being done with their taxes, they will respond positively to these changes. All this will be unpopular to begin with but it is the duty of government to explain to the people their responsibility. This is the meaning of representation based on taxation which is at the core of democratic governance. Dependence on oil and gas revenue will not last and the earlier we get used to paying for the services we need the better and the less painful it will be in the long run.

    Finally, the federal and state governments should stop meddling in the financial affairs of their universities. There is no where in the world not even in the richest countries in the world where university education is free. Councils of universities should be allowed to draw up their budgets and spread the cost to users of their services so that they can operate maximally and efficiently. The present situation where salaries are not paid particularly in the state universities leads to poor graduates and inability of these tertiary institutions to contribute to the pool of knowledge and consequently to industrialization and wealth creation. A situation where school fees in universities are pegged at N25,000 or N50,000 a year is not just laughable but very sad and shows us as an unserious country. States that cannot fund one university as in the case of Ondo goes ahead for purpose of vainglory to establish three! And before you know it all other states will join in a race to establish funny institutions and call them universities.

    If only we will be honest with ourselves and be less selfish and ego driven, I doubt if there is anybody in government in this benighted country who does not know that we are punching bellow our weight both nationally any internationally.

  • APC, softly softly

    There is a  strategy I adopt in writing my columns. When the issue is current  and tempestuous,  I always like the good historian that I am, allow the dust to settle before I get involved in the debate. Until recent times, documents on matters of national importance  in Great Britain were not released to researchers until after 100 years. The same was the case in most western countries. I think the practice now is 50 years. In some really sensitive cases,

    they may never be made available to researchers. The reason for this is national security and the protection of those who may have done something unethical in the service of the nation. For example, the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has not yet been fully disclosed especially why it was used in Japan and not in Germany although the bombing of Dresden towards the end of the war was equally devastating and some will say criminal.

     

    The ongoing battle among the factions of APC in both houses of the Nigerian parliament may not compare with the global events cited above but for us in Nigeria, if not properly handled, it may pose existential challenge to us as a people. We have enough problems coping with serious economic problems and it will be foolhardy to add serious political problems to the brew.

    Politics is about people in society and the eternal question has been the way to conduct ourselves so that the good of the community can be realized. In the process, individuals sometimes equate what is good for them as what should be good for the people. This eternal question was postulated in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the general will. Which in fact may be known to a few or even one person who could then force the rest of us to obey. Of course the smart philosopher that he was protected his flank when he argued that if it is truly the general will, it will be beneficial to all and through this we will know that it is truly the general will. This is the kind of argument Plato marshaled in his Republic where the omniscient philosopher king would rule in the interest of all humanity. We know of course that there is no such utopia anywhere; Karl Marx’s workers paradise remains a failed  idea after the collapse of communism in Europe and in Cuba; and China where it  is still the political dogma it has been reduced to centralized gerontocratic autocracy.

    We know this about foreign countries but what is going on here? I dare ask. It seems to me that our system is political warlordism masquerading as democracy. This is why contest for legislative positions are seen  as contests between individuals who are not even in the parliament. The media has been particularly irresponsible in this case. In any presidential or parliamentary system, leaders of minority parties automatically become leaders if and when their parties become majority parties. In the case of Nigeria therefore, Senator George Akume and Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila should without argument have become senate president and speaker respectively. But what did we see here? The two gentlemen were simply portrayed as candidates of Tinubu and consequently deemed unacceptable. Even when  Senator Lawan, candidate of the President was proposed, he too was cleverly manipulated out of the position for president of the senate on the grounds that he has the support of Tinubu. It now seems the only way to have support of a faction of the party  is if Tinubu is against you. Yet Tinubu is one of the leaders of the party and was critical to coupling the disparate parties that came together to form the APC.

    Mistakes have been made all round and we need not complicate the situation by dwelling on the past. President Buhari must assert himself from now on and give marching orders to the rank and file of the party. I remember when my friend, General Ike Nwachukwu wanted to be Senate president against the wish of President Obasanjo  in 1999. We campaigned throughout the night. I bumped into Haroun Adamu, a friend who was special assistant to Obasanjo on the morning of the vote. He jokingly teased me about my friend’s ambition knowing quite well the position was sewn up  so to say through presidential power. I was in the  senate chamber when the vote was called. To our horror, nobody nominated my friend not to talk about winning!

    I respect Buhari for his stance of not wanting to meddle in the parliament’s affairs. But from privilege of hindsight his strategy was wrong. What he has to do now is to ram the party’s candidates for other posts in the parliament down the throats of the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate. The power of the President of Nigeria is awesome and nobody would like to stand in front of an approaching train. Buhari should  not hesitate to use this power to save his party and his presidency.

    This is the only way forward  if we are to have peace in the party and in the parliament.

    I want to appeal to my brotherhood of the pen to leave out Tinubu from every and all future disagreements in the party. Tinubu’s place in history as the giant killer is settled. He does not need anybody to make enemies for him. Tinubu belongs to everybody  if I may borrow part of our president’s quote. Some have been trying to draw a wedge between Tinubu and even Fashola, Tinubu and Kayode Fayemi, Tinubu and Niyi Adebayo. Tinubu has enough political enemies in old Afenifere, he does not need new ones. Bukola Saraki must come down from his Olympian height and play politics of accomodation. Whatever ambition he may have cannot be realized by bruising opponents. Nigeria is not Kwara State and without peace in Nigeria, no state can thrive. Politics of north-south dichotomy is old fashioned and we must do whatever it takes to eradicate it and try to cultivate others. The south-west APC faction must see Saraki as a brother because that is who he really is in spite of whatever appearance that is momentarily advantageous. For goodness sake, we need not misuse our past history to vilify any present player on the national political stage. We in Yorubaland easily fall victim of our history of vindictive tendencies and unforgiving spirit which has plagued our land since the 19th century and we need not relive it, rather we should learn from it and not dwell on it.

    Finally, some of us have invested so much in the coming to power of Buhari and we do not want him to fail. He does not need distractions of any sort. Time is also of essence and we need all hands to be on the deck because if Buhari’s salvage and rescue operation fails, then it is goodbye to responsible and good governance in this much-abused and looted country. We cannot always get what we want in politics and we should avoid falling easily to victim-hood arising out of our different nationalities. It is the easiest thing to do  when we do not get  what we want but when we get plum jobs and contracts, we do not remember what nationalities we belong to; all we remember are our families and bank accounts.

  • Terrorism: A historical perspective – 5

    The Boko Haram at its inception was more of a religious movement founded by Muhammad Yusuf apparently of Kanuri extraction and with some level of western education. Because of the grinding poverty and unemployment of the youth, he attracted some followership to himself and it seems in the competition for power by politicians his services were sought but after electoral victory, he and his movement were discarded and security forces were unleashed on him before he was killed in police custody. His death was a signal for widespread revolt which is now led by certain Abubakar Sekau who may be in the pay of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and with possible link with the Somali Al-Shabab.

    What is significant now is the apparent foreign involvement in what is going on. Compared with the Islamic revolutions of the Western and Eastern Sudan, Boko Haram and Maitasine movement can hardly be said to be Islamic movements. Boko Haram seems now to be rooted in local grievances against constituted authority and its followership is the army of the unemployed and uneducated and those with smattering knowledge of the Holy Quran and with the possible sponsorship of aggrieved politicians and the enemies of Nigeria both inside and outside the country.

    What is common to all these ‘Sudanese’ Islamic movements is their roots in economic grievances and political oppression by the rulers. They seem to begin during the dry season when food and water are in short supply and when the hard times prevailing lead people to expect the coming of the Mahdi sent divinely to bring liberation and succour to the oppressed. Boko Haram with its murderous campaign of killing Muslim and non-Muslim men and women including children can hardly qualify as an Islamic movement.

    Finally, in the long history of Kanem Borno dating back around 800AD when Sayf Bin Dhi Yazan founded the Sawfawa dynasty, the area has witnessed political eruptions necessitating transfer of its capitals from Njimi during the 12th century and to N’gazar Gamu in the 15th century. Borno also witnessed the invasion of the kingdom by the Fulani jihadists which precipitated a change of dynasty from the Sayfawa to that of Muhammad el-Kanemi in 1810. Borno again was invaded by an Arab conquistador named Rabih Fadl Allah who occupied the place between 1894 and 1897 before he was driven out by the French and the British imperialists in the area.

    Chad itself had never from colonial times till now been a stable country and has never been under civil administration. The French referred to it as territoire militaire du Chad and it has continued to be governed by soldiers after independence from France with consequent instability necessitating Nigeria’s military intervention in the country in the 1980s. In other words, what is happening now in the area is history of political instability repeating itself.

    The joint military operation by Niger, Cameroons, Chad and Nigeria whose territories are now threatened by the terrorist regime of Boko Haram has become a necessity because Nigeria alone can no longer protect its borders. In 1983, General Muhammadu Buhari as GOC (General Officer Commanding) of the Third Armoured Division of the Nigerian army had to send the 23rd armoured brigade under Colonel Joshua Dogonyaro to drive away Chadian rebels invading Baga, a city that witnessed the killing of 2000 of its citizens by Boko Haram terrorists recently.

    It is hoped that the 7500 African troops presumably coming from the neighbouring states to Nigeria would be able to drive out the Boko Haram and destroy all their fortifications. It is unbelievable that a movement that started from local grievances has now snowballed into a major threat to Nigeria’s sovereignty. The lesson in all these is the appreciation of the nexus between domestic and foreign policies and the need for military preparedness knowing that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

    On the whole, terrorism globally cannot be easily wiped out. This is because the root of it is deeply rooted in the inequality and uneven development in the world. Furthermore the relationship of the under developed world with the West has been like the partnership between the horse and its rider for centuries and the effect cannot be easily wiped out. Furthermore religion and faith are not subject to rational thinking and since religious differences exist they will continue to be exploited by unscrupulous leaders to advance whatever causes they espouse.

    Racism is also an ingrained problem and it is sometimes the basis of the arrogance of one race against the others. Racially inspired violence and acts of terrorism has found the black man most of the time at the receiving end. Terrorism will continue to be a problem, until through education and determined political action the world decides to attempt to remove the root of the problem.

    Since terrorism cannot be stamped out, it is obvious that what is needed is containment. This is because the deep seated prejudice of one group against the other cannot be legislated out of existence. In any case there is no world government with effective sanctions to call to order any group, nation and non- state actors that may go out of line with what is globally acceptable. One can only hope that the futility of terrorism will eventually dawn on its advocates and with time terrorism may go out of fashion.

    Whatever the case may be, force is not the most efficacious way to put an end to terrorism because a lone wolf terrorist who is determined to die and take others with him or her is beyond the watch of whatever military force that may be marshalled against him or her. At the end of the day liberal education, global commitment to fairness, poverty eradication, racial equality and religious and cultural tolerance and accommodation seem to be the way out.

    • Concluded.

  • Terrorism: A historical perspective – 4

    In order to put these movements in perspective, it will be clearer if one looks at religious movements in the Sudan broadly defined as a whole. In the modern history of the Western and Eastern Sudan stretching from the Senegal valley across to the upper valleys of the Nile, Islamic fundamentalism has played a very important role. The most well known of Islamic revolutions in the Western Sudan is that of  Usman Dan Fodio, whose son Muhammad Bello and brother Abdullahi founded the Sokoto caliphate. Usman Dan Fodio was an itinerant preacher against syncretism, corruption and misrule among apparently Muslim rulers in Hausaland.

    Islam had been well planted in Hausaland since about the 8th century A.D particularly in Kano and Katsina with many clerics from North Africa visiting Kano and Katsina to lecture at mosques there. But over time, the Muslim rulers of these areas became more materialistic, corrupt and dictatorial in the conduct of state affairs. Taxes were arbitrarily levied on and collected from the peasants and the Nomads. It was these grievances that Usman Dan Fodio exploited to lead a rebellion against the Habe rulers between 1804 and 1808.

    This movement succeeded beyond his wildest dreams and drove away from their thrones Hausa, Nupe rulers and the Yoruba ruler of Ilorin. There is no doubt that Usman Dan Fodio was a pious man but one needs more than piety to found an empire. The political and military prowess of his son Muhammad Bello and Abdullahi his brother facilitated the emergence of the Sokoto caliphate. By the time the British overthrew the caliphate; almost all the evils of the Habe rulers had resurfaced in the caliphate and had undermined the moral fabric of the state. This point was proved by the Satiru revolt of 1905/1906 led by the blind cleric Saybu Dan Makafo who was able to mobilise people against the corrupt practices of the caliphate leadership and its English and French successors both in Sokoto and Dosso.

    The example of the Fulani-led revolt and the creation of the Sokoto caliphate were followed by fellow Fulanis in Massina now part of Mali and led by Sheikh Amadu Bakr Lobbo El-amin in 1810 and between that time and 1845, an ascetic type of Islam was imposed on the community and the Sharia and Islamic jurisprudence were strictly followed. A much wider movement in the Western Sudan was led by Al-hajj Umar Tall. He was a Tukolor, a group closely linked with the Fulani who also established along the upper Nile valleys, a so-called Segu-Tukolor empire in which he imposed himself on the largely Malinke ethnic groups in those areas.

    Al-hajj Umar is well known in West African history as the man who was responsible for spreading the Tijanniya brotherhood, a revolutionary form of Islamic tariqa that preached equality of all peoples. These three Islamic revolutions by and large purified the society and brought new regimes based on the Sharia that were more favourable to the ordinary people. Although over time their decline and eventual fall became inevitable. These movements had positive impact on the Western and Central Sudan. Even though they involved some element of violence, it was violence with a positive purpose.

    A much bigger and militant movement employing modern methods of warfare as well as sophisticated arms took place in what was then known as the Egyptian Sudan in 1881. This has gone down into history as the Mahdia or the Mahdist state which lasted between 1881 and 1898.

    The Sudan was for several decades under Turko-Egyptian control and oppression in the form of arbitrary taxation, corruption and inept rule was characteristic of the regime. It was not too difficult for a millenarian movement led by Mohammed Ahmad who proclaimed himself Al mahdi in the tradition of Islamic thought prevailing in that area. This was based on a doctrine that in difficult times, an “Imam of the age” would come and take over rulership of the state, purify the society and bring the society nearer to God.

    Sheikh Mohammed Ahmad declared himself this “Imam of the age” and the Messiah ‘Mahdi’ the people were waiting for. He was able to found a state between 1881 and 1898 before the combined forces of the Egyptians and the British defeated him under a Bible-waving General Charles Gordon, whose death aroused national sentiment in England. The man who later became British Prime Minister and Second World War hero, Winston Churchill took part in the fighting against the Mahdist leadership. The Mahdia has left an indelible imprint on Sudan even up till today and the Umma, a political party led by the grandson of the Mahdi, the Oxford educated Sadek el-Mhadi has been in and out of power several times.

    It is quite clear that any movement claiming to be an Islamic movement should aim at purifying society and since Islam generally does not separate politics from religion, such a movement must have a plan of creating a state in which the Sharia would be the law and some kind of theocracy would be the mode of governance.

    The closest thing we have to Boko Haram therefore was the Maitasine uprising in Kano in 1980 and its blind fury and murderous campaign against the society generally did not conform to any reformist paradigm of Jihad. It did not appear to have had a programme of creating a state or replacing the then political status quo. It was also secretive and syncretist in nature. It mixed Islam and traditional African religion. The Maitasine revolt however was on such a scale that a division of the Nigerian army had to be deployed against it. Muhammad Marwa its leader was apparently killed in the campaign against them.

    This Maitasine revolt later reared up its ugly head in 1982 in Yola, Adamawa state and Bulunkutu, Borno State at the outskirts of Maiduguri. It was also on the same level of violence as the one in Kano and thousands of people perished in Yola and Maiduguri. This latter offshoot of the Maitasine was apparently led by Musa Makaniki who after the violence in Yola escaped to Gombe and from there to the Cameroons before he was caught in 2004.

  • Terrorism: A historical perspective – 3

    It was not until recent times that terrorism became easily identifiable with Islamic religion. This was what influenced the American Political Science Professor, Samuel Huttington to suggest that a clash of civilisations between Christianity and Islam was inevitable. Even though he has not been proved completely right, there is an element of truth in what he has suggested because the worldviews of Islam and the West are different but not necessarily antagonistic.

    The Islamic struggle against the West earnestly began when Al-Qaeda (The Base) founded by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdullah Azzam and Osama Bin Laden between 1988 and 1989 championed a struggle against the West. Their ideology was heavily influenced by the Islamic brotherhood that was unhappy about American influence in the Middle-East and was violently opposed to American military presence in Saudi Arabia, the Holy land of Islam. This movement was also opposed to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

    Initially, some of them were aided by Americans in their fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. But when American forces displaced the Taliban and occupied Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda turned against the United States. They had for some time been involved in targeting American economic interests in the Middle-East until the dramatic event of September 11, 2001 when a young team of 19 Arabs, mostly Saudis hijacked three planes and flew into the World Trade Centre, bringing it down with thousands of people dead while at the same time, hitting the Pentagon in Washington DC and another trying to hit the White House but after struggling with passengers crashed into the fields in Pennsylvania.

    Since the American-British wars of the 1776 to 1783, there had been no enemy attack on the United States mainland until this time. Targeting, the Trade Centre in the New York, the heart of capitalism and the Pentagon, the symbol of American military power all at the same time showed the seriousness of the attack. The world has not been the same since that time. America unfairly accused Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq for state terrorism and stock-piling of weapons of mass destruction for which reasons America invaded the country and later occupied it and went further to occupy Afghanistan.

    From that time up till now and in-spite of recent American military withdrawal from both countries, the struggle between the West and Islam has been accentuated. The most dangerous aspect of this war is the possibility of terrorists taking over Pakistan and proclaiming possession of Islamic nuclear bomb since Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state. The Middle-East has become so complicated because of the struggle of the Palestinians particularly HAMAS which the West has labelled a terrorist group occupying the West Bank of the river Jordan and involved in fighting several wars with Israel.

    HAMAS is seen by most Arabs and Iran as a Palestinian nationalist movement while Israel is perceived as a terrorist state in the Arab and Islamic world. Until recently the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) was also seen as a terrorist organisation. Resistance against Israel and the West has fuelled the rise of several terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which thrived in Yemen for many years attacking American economic interest and shipping. It was particularly dangerous under Anwar-al-Aulaqi, an American born Yemeni.

    A particularly large and dangerous group regarded as terrorist by the Americans is Hezbollah (party of god) in Lebanon. It is a Shia Islamic militant group and political party under Hassan Nasrallah. This group has been involved in destabilizing Lebanon and fighting against the Sunni and Christian elements in that country as well as confronting Israel in large scale military engagement. The climax of this complexity is the emergence of IS- Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant bringing in as a nucleus of an Islamic caliphate, some territories in Iraq and Syria under a murderous regime headed by one Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

    There is no doubt about the terrorist credentials of this regime because it has beheaded hundreds of people, burned people alive, killed Christians and non-Sunni Muslims, raped women as a strategy of war to the extent that the whole world including the Muslim community is coming together to get rid of this cancer from the global community. Variants of this extremism exists in Africa in form of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) in Algeria and in Libya the so-called Islamic caliphate has raised its flags after the disintegration of the country due to the NATO support of insurgents to overthrow the Muhammad Ghadafi regime.

    The disintegration of Somalia has also witnessed the emergence of the Al-Shabaab that has been a scourge to countries in the horn of Africa as well as the East African states of Kenya and Tanzania. And recently in the last five years, north-eastern parts of Nigeria have suffered from the same Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist under the name of Boko Haram- Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati wal-Jihad founded by Ustaz Mohammed Yussuf. This group has recently placed itself under the guardianship of Al-Baghdadi’s IS (Islamic State).

    Let me dwell briefly on Boko Haram insurgency. Is Boko Haram an Islamic insurgency? The answer to this question depends on the aspect of Boko Haram one is dealing with. It seems that there are three types of movement coalescing into what is now called Boko Haram. One is a religious movement, another is a political movement and the third is a criminal component and it seems each is feeding on the other. Unfortunately, there is now evidence that some army personnel who are not loyal to Nigeria are beginning to surface in the ranks of Boko Haram.

  • Terrorism: A historical perspective – 2

    The anarchists did not intend to build states neither did they establish political parties to espouse their plans but they rather engaged in blind campaigns of terror, killing innocent people and destroying institutions. They can be said to be the first terrorists in modern times. This blind fury of undirected violence seemed to have gone to sleep for several decades after the Second World War but suddenly resurfaced in Europe, South America and in Asia in modern times.

    In Columbia, as a result of disillusionment with political liberal reforms, a guerrilla army known as FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) founded around 1948 by Pedro Antonio Marino took on the army of Columbia and has been fighting since that time. Its modus operandi is kidnapping for ransom and shooting down military and sometimes civilian planes flying across the vast territories it controls in the Columbian jungle. It is a large terrorist organisation constituting a threat not only to Columbia but to the whole world because of its export of cocaine to raise needed funds for its activities.

    It is involved in a protracted negotiation with the legitimate government of Columbia and there seems to be no end to the protracted negotiation whiles its terrorist campaign continues. In the same vein and sharing the same ideology is the Sindero Luminoso (Shining Path) which was the original communist party of Peru founded around 1980 by Abimael Guzman Renoso. Its emphasis was the instigation of a peasant revolt and when it did not succeed, it embarked on kidnapping and other acts of terrorism in the state between 1980 and 1992.

    But earlier on in Germany, the so-called Baader Meinhof group or Red Army faction led by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler and Ulrike Meinhof  had embarked on the campaign of terror in Western Germany between 1970 and 1998 leading to tens of deaths and 296 bomb attacks and arsons. It was not until the German unification in 1994 that many of them were caught and before an end was put to their murderous terrorist campaign.

    The oldest terrorist group in Europe, although it has now ceased fire, in their fight with Great Britain was the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It evolved from the Irish volunteers of 1913 and those involved in the 1916 Easter rising against British domination and for Irish independence. In spite of the concession through the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 which created the Irish-free state, while Ulster that is Northern Ireland, remained part of the United Kingdom.

    Their dissatisfaction with this treaty led to their continued existence and years of terrorism against the British in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland culminating in the attempt to kill by bombing, the British Prime minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, while succeeding in killing Lord Mountbatten, a member of the British royal family. Happily, the Irish Republican Army is now involved in decommissioning of its weapons while the political arm of the organisation is now part of the Northern Irish administration.

    It is not only the West that is confronted by terrorism, Russia faces its own unique kind of terrorism especially in Russia’s soft under belly in the Caucasus where Chechen and other Islamic groups had been waging hit and run campaign against Russia and Russian interest since 2009. This group is led by a certain Doku Khamatovich Umarov.

    Terrorism in modern times is a worldwide phenomenon and the Japanese have had their own experience when a doomsday cult called Aum Shirinko founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984 killed hundreds of people in Tokyo subway by releasing sarin gas on them in 2006. The Chinese too have witnessed terrorist eruptions in Xinjiang province by Muslim Uyghur, a largely Muslim ethnic groups protesting against Han Chinese settlers. These have been going on with repeated occurrence since the 1980s till now. These Uyghurs appear to be mounting a secessionist movement which Beijing will hardly be expected to tolerate.

    It will become clear that most of the modern day terrorists are Muslim groups who because of the domination and occupation of their land by more powerful groups have had to resort to some form of Islamic fundamentalism as a useful strategy of resistance. Perhaps the reason why Islamic groups are disproportionately represented in global terrorism is because Islam makes no distinction between secular and spiritual authority.

    Consequently, many of the so-called Islamic movement are political groups hiding under the mask of religion.  Even a small island like Sri-Lanka has suffered serious acts of terrorism.  For years between 1976 and 2009 the Tamil Tigers of Sri-Lanka were involved in a campaign of secession and terrorism against the majority Sinhalese Government of Sri-Lanka leading to the loss of millions over the years and the retaliatory killings of Tamil civilians by the Army.

    It is to be noted that there was a religious/ ethnic dimension to the problem. The Sinhalese were largely Buddhist while the Tamils were Hindus.  The impression must not be given that terrorism is unique to the Islamic world; there are extremists also in Christendom. For example, the Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony started fighting the Ugandan Government in 1987. This group in Ugandan and Southern Sudan was originally known as the United Holy Salvation Army or Ugandan Christian Army.

    Its war aim was the ruling of Uganda according to the Ten Commandments. It has engaged in terrorism across the Ugandan borders to South Sudan, some parts of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR). There is an international hunt and prize on his head and he is yet to be caught. Kony is not the only Christian to be involved in terrorism. Sometimes in the 1970s and 1980s, a group of Catholic priests in South America preached what they called Liberation Theology and led their peasant followers with the Bible in the left hand and the Kalashnikov Rifle in their right hand.

    There seems to be a link between terrorism and the inequality in western industrial societies leading to frustration and determination to change things by force.

    Sometimes young people take to violence without counting the cost properly. I personally witnessed between 1968 and 1969, Europe wide students’ socialist activism against constituted authorities in Germany and France in particular. Most of the grievances of these students were against American involvement in Vietnam. They were echoing the revolt of young Americans particularly students against the Vietnamese war. Students’ rebellion in Europe first against the shortcomings of their universities and later against constituted authorities was a movement without borders.

    That was why a German student, Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit was not only a leader of the revolt in Paris eventually leading to the fall of General Charles De Gaulle; he also led the students’ movement fighting against the government in Germany as well. They were not called terrorists but the security police regarded them as such. They were young people looking for some adventure away from their boring and prosperous lives. This was a foretaste of what was to come in the future when affluent young people in the Middle-east would take to acts of terror.