By Lawal Ogienagbon

One was unannounced, the other was heralded by a statement on June 11. In the statement issued hours before the programme, President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman Femi Adesina said his principal would be having an interview on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) at 8.30pm. Adesina urged Nigerians to stay tuned for the interview which will be “revealing and educating”.

Was it ‘revealing and educating’? I leave you to be the judge if you watched it. If you did not, you did not miss anything. Before the statement came, I, like most Nigerians, was already looking forward to the next day for the June 12 anniversary. I was still debating within myself whether there will be a presidential broadcast to mark the Democracy Day when the nation was alerted about the NTA interview.

The NTA is the government’s publicity tool. It uses the station the way it likes and mostly to sing its tunes. That should be expected since it bankrolls the piper. The NTA will never see anything bad in what the government does. When it comes to the President, the station is more than ready to bend backward to accommodate the First Citizen. The President is NTA’s top priority. This did not start today. It has always been so. But an interview coming some 24 hours after the one on Arise News, the television arm of This Day Newspaper? What is happening?

Was there something in the Arise interview that the Presidency wanted to correct? Must such be corrected through another interview? I found myself asking no one in particular. I later concluded that the interview would substitute for the broadcast which traditionally should come with the Democracy Day. So, June 12, which was the next day, would come and go without a presidential broadcast, I thought in my benign ignorance. On that score too, I missed the point. I was amazed when another statement came that the President would address the nation on Democracy Day.

Is this for real? The President talking to his people in three consecutive days. Just like that! Nigerians have never had it so good under him. The President had always found a way of not talking to us in the last six years of his administration. Whether by omission or commission, he has ceded that job to his media aides. Adesina and Garba Shehu have been discharging the duty to the best of their abilities. Most times, they have exceeded their brief, prompting some people like Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu to ask who they are actually working for!

The Arise and NTA interviews were really not different. The President said basically the same things in both. His expressions were similar. Check: ‘in any case, we have said we would talk to them in the language they would understand’. He was referring to those with separatist agenda and other troublemakers. His answers to some questions did not match. The interviewers would be saying one thing and he would be saying another.

His thoughts on open grazing, which has been banned by southern governors and some of their colleagues in the north, remain as controversial as ever. ‘There are cattle routes and grazing areas. They (herdsmen) were moving upcountry from north to south or from east to west and they have to go through there… The problem is trying to understand the culture of the cattle rearers. There is cultural disunity between the Tivs and the Fulanis… We are trying to resuscitate these cattle routes and grazing areas and make them accountable…’

Is that the solution to the problem? It cannot be as there are no known cattle routes and grazing areas in the southern part of the country. They can only be found in the north. By his submission, the President has clearly shown that he does not appreciate the enormity of the problem. Open grazing is like an open sore which should not be allowed to fester in the interest of our continued co-existence

In this age and time, it makes no sense for herdsmen to move on foot from north to south and back all in the name of cattle grazing. This is not good for the health of the herders and their cattle. Livestock business should be done as it obtains elsewhere in the world in this modern era. What is worth doing at all, the saying goes, is worth doing well. Except, those in power are saying cattle rearing is not worth the while.

The NTA interview was an opportunity to make some amends. It was not utilised. His responses to questions were alarming. Check: ‘I mean more than fire for fire. We will arrest them (bandits). We will try them and give them very bad publicity and then jail them…’  What has ‘bad publicity’ got to do with the prosecution of a case? Is it trial by ordeal? Then this on the October 2020 #ENDSARS Protests in Lagos:

‘The previous governor of Lagos State bought 200 buses to complement transportation and he built railway, but they (protesters) went there and burnt them. The present governor made an album and came to see me, and I said thank you very much. I took the album and put in my archives and told him to tell Lagosians to work because we do not have the money (to replace the buses)’. The way out? Let them work, the President said.

In effect, he is punishing all Lagosians for the misdeeds of miscreants who hijacked the protests to unleash havoc on parts of the state. May be, by heeding the President’s advice and working for donkey years, Lagosians, nay their government, will be able to replace the buses said to worth billions of naira.

It is good that the President came out to address the nation. He should do so more often to enable him relate more with the people. May the Democracy Day broadcast and the interviews before it mark the beginning of the social interaction between him and the people.

By Lawal Ogienagbon

That Tuesday in the cosy ambience of the State House, Abuja, better known as Aso Villa, President Muhammadu Buhari held court with the visiting officials of the electoral commission. They came to complain to him about the frequent burning of the agency’s assets. Indeed, it is worrisome the way the commission’s facilities are being torched across the country. At the meeting, the commission told the President that as at then, there were no fewer than 42 cases of attacks on its assets.

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu, who led his team to the Villa, said the attacks occurred in 14 of the 36 states of the federation. “Most of the attacks happened in the last seven months and they are unrelated to protest against previous elections”, he said, adding: “from the pattern and frequency of the most recent attacks, they appear to be targeted at future elections. The intention is to incapacitate the commission, undermine the nation’s democracy and precipitate a national crisis”.

This was all the President needed to make his famous civil war comment that many Nigerians found offensive. Twitter agreed with them and deleted the statement from its site, to the Presidency’s annoyance. As our leader, the President does not need that briefing to know what is going on in the country. As he said on that occasion, he gets security briefings daily on happenings around the country, nay the world. So, before Yakubu and his men’s visit, the President already knew what the commisssion is going through. But the visit suited a purpose – it became a forum for him to make his position known on some vexed issues, especially secession. Is that not a way of addressing the country, after all?

When he made that statement on June 1, the media corps of the State House was not there. There was, therefore, ample opportunity for his media aides to go through the statement with a fine tooth comb and remove whatever is offensive from it.  Rather than edit the statement, they released it as it is, since “Nigeria needs a strong man like Buhari at a time this”,  and all hell was let loose on social media, particularly Twitter. Many Twitter users were aghast by the words used by the President and without wasting time, they complained to Twitter, which has rules that it plays by. Taking at its face value, you may not find anything wrong with the statement. But when you take another look at it and reflect on it deeply, you will see the hidden threats of applying violence as state weapon.

Although, he was addressing those he described as arsonists, killers and agitators, who have made the country hell to live in, his language was harsh, too harsh. It is not the language of presidents and statesmen. Such statements are associated with touts, thugs and their political and business godfathers whose stock-in-trade is violence. There are laws to check every misdemeamour. Be it arson, killing, insurgency, treason, secession, rape, looting, destruction of farmlands and cattle rustling, the laws are there to take care of the offenders.

What the President should have said on that occasion or what his aides should have helped him to say is that the law would take its course against the offenders whenever they are arrested. But to threaten fire and brimstone against those you lead portrays that leader as uncaring, inhuman and unfit to occupy his high office. Leaders are expected to be guarded in their utterances and our President cannot be an exception. He cannot afford to throw caution to the wind whenever he speaks whether in private or in public.

What is the essence of this statement: “whoever wants the destruction of the system will soon have the shock of their lives. We have given them enough time. Those misbehaving in certain parts of the country were obviously too young to know the travails and loss of lives that attended the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the field for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand. We are going to be very hard sooner than later”. If this had come from an ordinary citizen, he would today be explaining himself to the security agencies. But, coming from the President, this is licence for trigger-happy police, military and para-military men to kill people at will.

It is unfortunate that the President made that statement and it is most unfortunate that his media aides did not see anything wrong in it to have made it public. Those words were too strong and Twitter cannot be faulted for deleting them from its site. It would have been highly irresponsible of Twitter to leave the statement on its platform after the complaints by worried Nigerians.

The outfit has rules and one of them is not to promote violence. Is the suspension of Twitter’s operation the best option in the circumstance? It is not. What is the meaning of it must show remorse before the suspension is lifted? What the government does not know is that whether it lifts the suspension or not, Twitter is not losing anything. Nigeria and Nigerians, especially, its huge youth population, are the losers. But does the government care? All it is bothered about is the bruised ego of the President, which unfortunately it is equating with the national interest.

This is why many, including those in government, are observing the President’s order in the breach. Does he even have the power in the first place to make what amounts to a law without recourse to the National Assembly? This is a question for the courts to answer. So, I will not preempt them. Yes, the social media can be excessive at times, but unilaterally suspending their operations because you are president is not the solution. As the Yoruba will say, cutting off the head is not the remedy for headache.

For Twitter, there is light at the end of the tunnel. As it was in 1984 with Decree 4 under which two journalists, Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, were jailed by the Buhari/Idiagbon regime for reporting the truth, this too shall pass.

By Lawal Ogienagbon

That is an academic question, some may be tempted to say of the title of this piece, citing the police position on the Ahmed Gulak case. As far as the police are concerned, it is an open and close case. Their position is informed by their strong belief that they have found and killed the ‘killers’ of Ahmed Gulak. Na do he dey easy? People are wondering on social media.

They contend that if Gulak could be killed in the morning and his ‘killers’ found and killed a few hours later, why have the police not cracked the murder cases of Dele Giwa (1986), Bola Ige (2001), Marshal Harry (2003) and Funsho Williams (2006), among others, many years after they were killed? What gives the police the confidence that they actually killed Gulak’s ‘killers’? The story will be told as much as possible in the words of the police.

It all started in the early hours of May 30 when Gulak, a former aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, and erstwhile Adamawa State House of Assembly speaker, left his hotel in Owerri, the Imo State capital, to catch an early morning flight at the Sam Mbakwe Airport. He never got there. A few metres to the airport, his cab was waylaid by armed men, who shot him dead in cold blood. The two other persons with him and the Toyota Camry cab driver were spared.

After killing Gulak, the assailants drove off in their Toyota Sienna vehicle. What happened next is only known by those who witnessed the dastardly act and these are the other passengers and the driver. For now, the other passengers and the driver are only known to the police. This is understandable. Also, the police have not said anything about quizzing the other passengers and the information they got from them. The police have only volunteered information about the tips given to them by the driver that led to the tracking and killing of the hoodlums.

Ordinarily, we should be clapping for the police and saying bravo to them for their swiftness, but something is just not right somewhere. The police story does not add up. Did the driver tell them the truth or he just made up the story to save his own skin? Did the police verify his statement from the two others who were also in the cab when the incident happened? From all indication, the police did not have time for such nicety as they were in a hurry to get the assailants before they escaped.

Information from the other passengers too would have been of tremendous help in unmasking the killers, if only the police were not in haste to get just anybody to hang the killing of Gulak on. I am not saying that those the police killed committed or did not commit the act, all I am saying is was there concrete proof of their role in Gulak’s killing before they met their own death? The police may want to justify their action by saying that they acted in self defence. Their two statements, which are accounts of the last moments of Gulak before and after his death, were well crafted to absolve them of blame whenever, as they say, the shit hit the roof.

In the first statement, the police said the hoodlums operating in a Sienna ‘intercepted, identified and shot Gulak’ at a spot close to the airport. This, the police added, was based on what the driver told them. What this implies is that the hoodlums were on a mission to kill Gulak. By that statement, the police ruled out any other motive for the dastardly act. Should the police arrive at such conclusion without first investigating the case? Again, they said he left his hotel without informing the police or sister agencies in view of the fragile security in the Southeast and Imo State, in particular.

Is that the new norm? That citizens, whether high or low, must now inform the police about their movement for security reasons? Or, is this arrangement just for the high and mighy? If it is, does it not conflict with the Acting Inspector-General Usman Baba’s directive, withdrawing the police escorts of important personalities? To get the hoodlums, a combined team of operatives of the tactical unit, intelligence response team, and Police Mobile Force were quickly mobilised to the crime scene. Taking the direction given to them by the driver, they soon ran into the hoodlums where they were sharing onions allegedly seized from a truck coming from the north, to a crowd of people.

You can smell a hint of ethnicism in that line – a truckload of onions from the North seized in the Southeast – and that was coming from the police, which should know the implication of such statement. As if that was not enough, the police team now unleashed their firepower on the hoodlums who allegedly fired the first salvo on sighting them. Of course, the police are not expected to confront hoodlums with biscuits in their holsters in the course of enforcing the law. But the shooting to death of a suspect should be the last resort.

They can shoot to demobilise a suspect and prevent him from escaping in order to obtain information that will aid their investigation. Once a suspect is killed, that is the end because investigation may be stalled. I hope this will not be the case in Gulak’s murder. Did the slain hoodlums kill Gulak? Were they sent? Who sent them? Or, were they bandits? We may never know as they are no longer alive to say all they know about the incident.

Well, may be the driver, who appears to be the police prime witness, and the other passengers can be of help in this regard.

If not, the police are to blame for acting too hastily. Little wonder Governor Hope Uzodinma  described the killing as political assassination, apparently based on the police findings. This is the seed the police has sown in his and many others minds. For Gulak not to die in vain, his killers must be brought to justice. The killing of his supposed killers in an encounter has only left the police wide open to suspicion of having something to hide.

Whereas, this may not be the case. It is left for the police to prove that.

By Lawal Ogienagbon

It was just a matter of time before they saw the light. The time came last week in Asaba, the Delta State capital, and the governors from the South grabbed it with both hands. Since they came up with their resolutions now dubbed the Asaba Accord or Asaba Declaration, depending on which you prefer, they have ruffled feathers, which I will not, like presidential spokesman Femi Adesina, call ‘unruly’.

Reactions to the governors’ resolutions from high places were swift. Senate President Ahmad Lawan, who is the number three citizen, and Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, the number four citizen, could not understand why the governors would take such stand. Gbajabiamila was cautious in his approach, submitting that: “if truth be told, we all have equal share in the blame for what is happening today. Whatever challenges we have, we must all come together to resolve them”.

The Speaker could not have summarised the governors’ thoughts better. To Lawan, the governors retreated to regionalism to address a national issue. In a nutshell, the governors were seeking a collective approach towards addressing the country’s challenges. There is division in the land today and it is a serious problem, which we can only ignore at our own peril. The governors did not say anything new. They only underscored all the problems besetting us as one, indivisible country, which are now getting worse by the day. The governors are critical stakeholders in the Nigeria Project. As governors, they owe it a duty to ensure that not only their states, but the whole country is peaceful and governable.

For now, Nigeria is standing on the precipice and something urgent must be done to pull the country back from the brink. The governors were clear and unambiguous in their demands. Many of these demands are well known. They are issues which have been agitating the minds of many non-state actors, as those not in government are now referred to. If non-state actors, who voted for them, can call for restructuring, devolution of power, ban on open grazing, and review of the federal character policy, among others, where then did governors, who are original state actors, go wrong in echoing their people’s demands?

Being in government should not stop people from fighting for what is right. Those in government should not become so acquiscent as not to speak up when occasion demands. There is a caveat though – they should remember that they were elected to be problem solvers and not problem creators. To enable them discharge this responsibility well, they need to identify the problem in order to resolve it. With their Asaba Accord, the Southern governors have taken the first step of identifying the problem. To enable them take the next step of solving it, others at the national level must work with them.

They have thrown their cards face up on the table. The Federal Government now knows where the governors, not only from the south, but also with some from the north, stand on some vexed issues. On Monday, after their meeting in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, governors elected on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) platform backed the resolutions of their southern counterparts, who cut across party lines. That is the beauty of the Asaba Accord. It was forged out of a bipartisan meeting. It was not a party, ethnic or religious thing. It came out of a deliberate and conscious effort to correct societal ills.

Apologists of government will not see it as such. They will read political and other meaning to the governors’ resolutions. My plea to them is not to throw away the baby with the bath water. Let them look at the message and not the messenger. Is there a need for restructuring? Is appointment into key government agencies and military and paramilitary organisations not lopsided? Is open grazing the best way of breeding cattle in this age and time? Are Nigerians being evenly treated under this dispensation? Has the President been talking to the Nigerian people the way a leader should? Is national dialogue not urgently required to address these and other issues raised by the governors?

This is not the time to play the party, religious or ethnic card. It is not the time to point a finger to the governors and say see those who are talking. If we do that, these problems will remain with us and may sound our death knell as a nation. It is the time to take a collective decision on our future for the sake of generations yet unborn. Come to think of it, talks are not as costly as war.

The Ahmad Lawans and Abdullahi Adamus of this world can say whatever they like because they benefit from the system. If things continue like this, they would continue to enjoy those benefits, but for how long would that be? They should spare a thought for such eventuality and millions of their compatriots who are not so privileged.

People like them should not think about the present alone, but of the future as well. Where will Nigeria be in the next 10, 15 years, if things continue this way? Lawan, especially should know how grave the situation is. Geidam, his hometown in Yobe State, is today under the siege of Boko Haram. Getting Boko Haram not only out of Geidam, but from the entire Northeast, should be his priority as the third citizen and not the entrenchment of the old order.

By Lawal Ogienagbon

When the state begins to spread fear, it means only one thing and that is, all is not well in the land. At such a time, fear becomes a weapon for whipping people into line and spreading terror. Nigerians saw this happen last week. The state and its agents went to town, making claims purportedly based on intelligence reports about plans by some religious and past political leaders to forcefully change the government.

The state has all the instruments to gather information about developments in the country before, during and after they happen. In most cases, this power is used wrongly. It is not used for the betterment of the country, but for the disruption of its peace and harmony. This is a deliberate ploy to paint some people black in order to get them out of the way. To do this, they bend and break the law. The unwise may not discern what is going on until it is too late.

It was terrible. The state spared nothing in making its claims about plans to unseat it. Though the reports it relied on are not available to the public, the government made a show of its claim on some chosen days to drive home its message. The message was targeted at critics that find nothing good in the government. It was a clear sign that the government was not confortable with these people’s positions.

How should the government take criticisms? Should it accuse critics of planning a putsch for not seeing eye to eye with it? In a democracy, the state is expected to be tolerant of others’ views and not to breath down their necks for opposing it.

This is Nigeria in 2021 and not the fictitious Oceania, which George Orwell wrote about in his 1948 novel titled:1984. In the book, Big Brother, the leader of the Party, which ran the state,  abhorred criticisms. From all indications, it seems we are in the Big Brother era. Big Brother is watching all over the country, monitoring both friends and foes. The thing is in a situation like this, there are no friends, everybody is a foe, except those who can come out and support the shenanigans going on right now.

Our security agencies, as in 1984, can today together be classified as Thought Police. Under this umbrella are the armed forces, paramilitary outfits, intelligence agencies and the police. Their job is to arrest people for thought crimes. With the warning from the Thought Police last week, the prison may soon be brimming with thought criminals invited for questioning over their plans to topple the government. Is there really a plan to overawe the government, to use the word made popular under the Babangida and Abacha regimes? If there is, who are those behind the plan? Is calling for a national conference an invitation to anarchy or euphemism for a coup? What is offensive in making such calls?

Before I am accused of treason, let me state that I do not doubt the veracity of the claims of the agents of state as they are ‘honourable’ bodies, to borrow the word of Mark Antony in the popular Shakespeare play: Julius Caesar, that can never write bogus reports targeted at getting the critics of government. The problem with security reports is that they cannot pass muster if put to test. This submission may be sacrilege under a government which now perceives everybody as opposition for disagreeing with it.

For Nigerians to believe the government’s claim of the plot to overthrow it, its security agents must produce proof of the plotters’ meeting. In this age and time, it is not enough to say that people are planning to bring down the government, there must be evidence to back up such claims. Until that is done, all claims of a plot to topple the government will remain just that. As a country, we have gone past the stage where the government will just wake up one day and accuse undisclosed politicians and clergymen of fanning embers of a coup without giving details of the plot.

A security agent is not more patriotic than other Nigerians because he is a military or paramilitary personnel. Uniforms do not patriotism make. Our loyalty to the nation is the mark of our patriotism. We do not need a uniform to do that.  This is not to say that our fellow Nigerians in uniforms are not doing a great job. Many of them are, but that do not make them more patriotic than their civilian counterparts.

The Villa’s visitors!

They came in the dark of night. They were not even afraid. They breached Aso Villa’s security to rob the quarters of the President’s Chief of Staff (CoS), Prof Ibrahim Gambari, and the State House administrative officer, Abubakar Maikano. They went away with valuables. The attacks show that we are indeed, in unusual times. If hoodlums could invade the Villa twice, where then is safe in the country? What happened was a failure of security and it is shameful. By the way, is security not supposed to be at the top of this administration’s programmes? This is what the government should be working on and not fighting some phantom coup plotters.

• BarkaDaSallah to all our Muslim readers.

By Lawal  Ogienagbon

PROPHETS are not known to engage in rhetoric. They give it straight to those they are sent to. Whether the message is what the recipient wishes to hear or not does not bother them. What concerns them is delivering the message without embellishing it. But in delivering the message, the messenger must be bold and circumspect.

The need for self-control is obvious. Nobody wants to receive an unpalatable message. Leaders, especially, always want to hear exciting news. They want to be told how society is happy with them when that is not so. Even though they know that most of these messages are cooked up, they still prefer them to the truth. This is why they surround themselves with sycophants, who sing their praise day and night.

From time immemorial, it has been the lot of prophets to bring messages to leaders. In biblical time, they played a vital role in the history of Israel when it was governed by kings. The king and the prophet virtually ruled side by side. One provided secular leadership, the other, spiritual,  but the priest knew his bound and he never crossed the line. But that never stopped him from carrying the Lord’s message to the king as shown in the story of Prophet Nathan and King David in Second Samuel 12 over the monarch’s killing of Uriah after committing adultery with Bathsheba, the soldier’s wife.

Nathan’s encounter with David as documented in that chapter is a study in human relationship, especially between two strong men. The prophet coolly and calmly gave God’s message to the king, who soberly accepted his guilt and declared: “I have sinned against the Lord”. And the prophet replied: “The Lord also hath put away thy sin…” Earlier, the prophet, after his anecdote, declared to David, who was enraged by the atrocities committed by the person in the story (not knowing that it was him), in unequivocal terms that: Thou art the man. The prophet’s declaration cut through the king’s heart and he became remorseful.

Like Nathan, Rev Father Ejike Mbaka, Spiritual Director of the Adoration Ministry Enugu Nigeria (AMEN) has been bringing messages to President Muhammadu Buhari, the modern day king of Nigeria for some years. But, last week, he brought a message which the Presidency considered one too many. Rather than look at the import of the message and behave like King David,  they descended on the messenger. The Presidency tore Mbaka to shreds for his audacious message. Before the message which turned him to the Villa’s enemy number one, Mbaka had been in the President’s good books.

He earned that right by prophesying that Buhari would defeat President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 election. Despite the President’s under par performance in his first term, Mbaka still backed Buhari in the 2019 election. It was an unpopular thing to do and that strained his relationship with many of his lovers. But since the way of God is different from our way, his sheep had to live with their prophet’s choice since he said it was a divine message. All these messages gladdened the heart of the Buharist.

Mbaka became the Villa’s pastor, so to say, who was consulted on spiritual and other matters from time to time. He enjoyed the President’s confidence to the extent that his name opened doors for people at the Villa. He did not always have his way though and this has come back to haunt him now. Like all men of God, Mbaka cannot be strait-jacketed. What you hear from them today may be different from what you get from them tomorrow. Prophecies are not mathematical formulas. They are not what can be calculated to get certain answers.

They are words of knowledge inspired spiritually from the Throne of Grace. But painfully, these days, many of the messages are inspired by the love of money. Are Mbaka’s messages in this category as the Villa wants us to believe? When in the past, his prophecies went down well with it, the Villa did not complain? Mbaka ran into trouble with the Villa over his claim that “God is angry with Buhari”.

”I know people will say, Mbaka did you not pray for Buhari? But I ask: did Samuel not anoint Saul? What are you talking about?… By now, with what is happening, President Buhari should honourably resign. We are crying because we don’t have a shepherd. All those that will fight what I am saying now, will eventually suffer… It is either Buhari resigns or he will be impeached. This statement is too mysterious and supernatural…”

Indeed, the message is earthshaking. What makes it more intriguing is that it came from Mbaka, the same man whose praise presidential spokesman Femi Adesina once sang to high heavens. Today, the same Mbaka has become a pariah at the Villa, where he once had free access.

Adesina’s colleague Garba Shehu took Mbaka to the cleaners over the message, which he claimed, was motivated by a failed contract bid. He alleged that Mbaka came to the Villa with three men to seek contracts in compensation for his support for the President. The rejection of Mbaka’s request, Shehu added, brought about the prophecy. In essence, Shehu was saying that it was a fake prophecy. Interestingly, the prophecies were not fake when Mbaka said Buhari would win in 2015 and 2019! Should Shehu be believed? No. He was just being petty as the prophecy came from a quarter least expected.

Will Nigerians have ever heard about this if Mbaka had remained a friend of the Villa with his ‘favourable prophecies’? Why pick on Mbaka for saying what many others have been saying in one way or the other in the past few months? This is the problem with this government.

It perceives every contrary view as treason, yet when it was in opposition not too long ago, it criticised the Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan administrations to no end. Those governments took things in their strides. Why can the Buhari administration not do the same now? Heaven will not fall because the administration is being criticised just as it did not fall when those past governments faced the same challenge.

Mbaka may be a prophet, but he is not, like every man, perfect. Speaking up on national issues should not make him enemy of state; the same state that tolerated him when his prophecies were music to the Presidency’s ears. Then, Shehu and Adesina never saw anything wrong with Mbaka until, in their thinking, he crossed the line. To them, to praise their principal is patriotism and to criticise him as Mbaka did, unthinkable.

The lesson in this for all men of God is that they should learn to remain on their lane and not dabble in partisan politics to avoid being tarred with the brush of corruption whenever they speak truth to power. The unwritten rule is: see no evil and speak no evil if they want to avoid the wrath of the Garba Shehus of this government.

By Lawal  Ogienagbon

As many may know, the above title is not this writer’s original thought, it was borrowed from the 1948 work by Alan Paton, which drew global attention to the racism in South Africa. The title was chosen because it speaks to our nation’s present situation. What is happening in the country today beggars belief. Nobody ever believed that we will get to this sorry pass. When Nigerians voted President Goodluck Jonathan out in 2015, they did so with joy and high expectations of better things under President Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari was seen as a messiah that will deliver Nigeria from its myriad problems. It was the season of anomie. People had lost faith in the country. Hopelessness pervaded the land. How could there be a government and things would be upside down, the people wondered. It would be better not to have a government than to have Jonathan leading the country, they surmised.

You could not blame them for thinking like that. What they experienced informed their stand. You could tick off your fingertips all the bad, bad things, as Fela would put it, in the land. Check: abduction of Chibok girls from their school. Check: Boko Haram’s occupation of many local governments in the Northeast states of Borno and Adamawa, where the sect hoisted its flag. Check: The sect’s use of Sambisa Forest as its base. Check: insurgency, kidnapping, robbery, maiming and raping all over the place.

Added unto this was the problem of the economy. So, Jonathan had to go for Buhari to come in and turn things around! We thought we had no country then. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that was a hasty conclusion. It is now that the true meaning of the title of the late renowned author, Prof Chinua Achebe’s memoirs, There was a country, is dawning on us. Achebe’s book centres around the civil war and its aftermath and how Nigeria has not got back its bearing since the end of that bitter enterprise over 50 years ago.

Really, the people of Southeast, who were hard hit by the war, believe that it has not ended despite their surrender over five decades ago. So, they concluded long ago that, at least for them, Nigeria is no longer a country, a thought which Achebe gave vent to in his memoirs. When Achebe used that title about 10 years ago, I thought it was hyperbolic. There was a country! How can that be? Is Nigeria dead? It is a figure of expression which meaning was not lost on the people. But since they did not perceive things from the same perspective as Achebe, the message did not sink home.

It has now. If things were bad six years ago, they are worse now. There was nothing that happened under Jonathan six years ago that is not happening on a larger scale today. Abduction of school children has risen beyond comprehension. Boko Haram has become more vicious. Terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping, maiming, looting and raping have taken a turn for the worse. Oh! What about herders’ menace. That is a different kettle of fish.

Police command headquarters, prisons and military formations are now invaded at will. Thousands of inmates have been let loose on society in the past seven months following their escape from different prisons across the country. The society is topsyturvy and the government is confused.

If it is not confused, it should have found an answer to what is ailing the land. It does not know what to do, that is the simple truth. If it did, its agents will not be caught napping when these hoodlums strike at public facilities. The hoodlums are so daring that they also take on governors, confronting Samuel Ortom of Benue on his farm and attacking the countryhome of Hope Uzodinma of Imo. Yet, we have a General at the nation’s helm. The General promised us heaven and earth if he became president. Talk is indeed cheap. This is what painfully we have come to realise after wasting our votes on him to become president.

Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) are taking the nation for a ride. This is something that they would not like to hear, but we have to say it. If we could take the Jonathan administration to the cleaners for things not as bad as we are witnessing today, why then should we keep silent in a government under which watch the nation is bleeding, to use their own word? The shouts of secession and self determination are rife because the President is perceived as being more loyal to his ethnic group than being a national figure. Yet, he promised to be for nobody and to work for everybody! Can the President thump his chest today and say that is what he is doing? These things are hard to say, but we must say them for the sake of our country.

Our country is at a crossroads. Children are no longer safe in school. Their parents face danger at home. Over a month ago, 39 students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation in Afaka, Kaduna, were abducted from their hostels. Over 20 of them are still in captivity. Their parents have been running from pillar to post trying to get them released. On April 20, 20 students and three workers of Greenfield University, also in Kaduna, were abducted. As I write this on Tuesday night, five of the students have been killed by their abductors, who are demanding N800 million ransom.

They killed the students to show that they mean business and to silence Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, who has been running off his mouth. The governor should know that this is not the time to talk tough, but to tread gingerly because the lives of other people’s children are involved. If their distraught parents have their way and the means, they would have settled with the kidnappers in return for their children. By their action, the kidnappers showed the beast in them. You do not waste precious lives to prove a point. What point are they really trying to prove? That they can kill defenceless children for blood money?

These are no humans but barbarians and soon, very, very soon, they will get their just deserts. What happened to value for life? What happened to our humanity? What is the government doing to salvage the situation? When will the President publicly empathise with the distraught parents?  My heart goes out to the families of the late Abubakar Sanga, the late Dorathy Yohanna and other slain students. Things cannot continue like this, otherwise our disintegration is at hand. May God heal our land.

By Lawal Ogienagbon

After all said and done, we are all guilty for what happened. We should all share in the blame that a person like Isa Pantami rose to become a minister of the Federal Republic. It should not always be about brilliance, but character and good conscience. No matter how brilliant a person may be, without character and conscience, he is nothing. Pantami did not descend from the moon, he came from among us.

It is certain then that many people must know him and what he stands for. These are the people he interacted and still interacts with. It is easy to blame others and not ourselves when things like this happen. Reason: it is difficult to believe what we hear or see. We wonder then why people kept quiet in the first instance when they knew the truth. Did they keep quiet for altruistic reasons? Did they keep quiet in order not to be accused of envy? Did they keep quiet for the fear of their lives?

Pantami did not just happen on us. As a brilliant young scholar, people flocked to him. The young and old courted him; he was the teacher and preacher of the time. They believed every word that poured forth from his mouth and were ready to do whatever he said. That is where the danger lies. His ability to rouse fanatics, who see themselves as the most faithful of all, to pick up the cudgel against others who they describe as infidels. Pantami was a fiery preacher and he is still as aggressive as ever. You should have seen him in the early days of the ongoing linking of the National Identity Number (NIN) to the Subscriber Identification Module (SIM). He was quick to anger over the simple question that the people were not given ample notice about the exercise. A dead giveaway trait of people of his ilk.

The fiery preacher in him took over as he abandoned decorum to accuse the same people who pay his salary for their tardiness about Project NIN to SIM. It is now obvious why he is in so much hurry about the exercise. He could have made his point without being combative and abusive. Even, the media was not spared. But that is not his style, that is not his character. He is used to the old aggressive way of mallams,  who believe that you must always do things in a crude and rude manner in order to achieve results. I hate to call people out on the basis of their faith. I am forced to do so in this circumstance because the person of Pantami cannot be separated from his faith, or if you like, his religion.

Now that he has been exposed for who he truly is, he wants to renounce his past. But he is doing it half-heartedly. He is doing it for bread and butter. He is doing it in order to hold on to the high office of Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, a post he should not have been appointed to if all of us had been vigilant. May be we were all under his spell. There is nothing ideologues like him cannot do. As a die-hard mullah, it is easy for him to use his powers to cast spell on people in order to get what he wants. Was this what happened in the case of his appointment, first, as director-general, Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and later as, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy?

By their fruits, you shall know them. As a fiery preacher, he rallied his flock to war. He spoke in support of terrorists and terrorism. He saw nothing wrong in standing by Al Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram and other fundametalist groups, which stock-in-trade is the waging of war, which they try to justify as Jihad to make it acceptable. These are the groups which give Islam and good Muslims a bad name. These are the groups he associates with. Being well read, Pantami should know better. But he used his education the wrong way. He used it to spew hatred and bigotry under the guise of propagating Islam. He used it to point the gullible to the path of perfidy. He used it to create problems in the Northeast where he hails from as can be seen from what Boko Haram is doing in that region today. That was not Islamic propagation, it was a battle cry and the weak in mind was roused to kill and maim.

A student lost his life to Pantami’s extremist views. Many today are members of the Boko Haram sect, which has been wreaking havoc on the Northeast, because of his preachings. His views are as strong and provocative today as they were then. Just listen to him speak on NIN registration and you will know that he is not fit to hold public office, notwithstanding his education. Education does not confer wisdom; it does not confer gumption; it only opens our mind to others’ views and makes us tolerant of them. For President Muhammadu Buhari to continue to keep Patanmi as a minister is akin to having a fire on our roof and going to sleep. Pantami constitutes a clear and present danger as long as he remains in office. It is time for him to go.

But the preacher turned politician wants to retain his job badly. When news of his excesses first broke, he threatened to go to court and was able to get the publication to retract the story and apologise to him. When things became too hot to handle, he lost his mojo. The fiery preacher became a jelly and took back all that he said in the past. He said they happened when he was young and now that he is old, he knows better. Iro nla (big lie). In one word, he is pleading to be asked to go and sin no more. He wants to be given the chance which he did not give that student who was killed years ago through his fault. Does he deserve that chance? That is for the security people to say.

One thing is sure though. People like him should never be allowed to find their way to public office again. In this wise, we all must be vigilant and be ready to speak up whenever anyone with a tainted past is nominated as minister. ‘If you see something, say something’, to borrow what has become this administration’s mantra. It is is not the job of the security agencies and the lawmakers alone to check out ministerial nominees, it is our collective duty. If we do not do our job as citizens, someone worse than Pantami may end up being president one day. And we all know what that means.