The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olatunji Ololade

  • El Rufai…armed to the teeth

    Misery, peculiar to the individual, is the genre of private experience. But when co-opted as tribal angst and wielded by a governor in his mathematic of social space, it becomes a weapon.

    Having weaponised misery, Nasir El Rufai is armed to the teeth. The Kaduna governor’s penchant for political drama assumes structure amid the spring fertility of his wiles.

    Speaking at a summit on the challenges of northern Nigeria, El Rufai said: “Nigeria consists of two countries; there is a backward, less educated and unhealthy northern Nigeria and a developing, largely educated and healthy southern Nigeria.

    He cited the north as the most impoverished region of the world and as a centre of drug abuse, gender violence, high divorce rates, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism.

    El Rufai’s rhetoric commands an exercise of the eye, not of the mind. At best, he should be accorded the passing tribute of a sigh.

    But what’s Nigeria to do? What’s the north to do? Friends, associates and aides must humour and deal with the curious workings of his lilliputian mind.

    While they commend and stroke his infinite delusions, secretly, each man and woman on his team and political radar, suppresses the mind’s wars with treacherous nature.

    Were he discerning enough, El Rufai would be guided by the parable about a tall man’s genuflection to a short man with mammoth ego; to earn his favour or good graces, the tall man may prostrate, albeit lie in the dust to toady up. He knows, however, that, moments after genuflecting, he may rise to tower above his liege.

    Thus is the unwritten rule of political survival. Many of his aides, associates and presumed loyalists are simply “doing the needful” to earn a living, hence their silence is understandable in the face of the governor’s misguided missiles.

    Controversy excites the Kaduna governor, no doubt. From his recent vituperation on godfatherism in Lagos to his shameful recant soon after he incurred widespread reproach, El Rufai suffers the ravage of random impressions.

    Given his ecstasy at every glance society casts at him, this article too, may serve as yet another victory to the diminutive governor.

    His lust for triggering any form of debate about him is visceral and spasmodic. His theatrics, while hackneyed, are hardly about issues. They are chiefly about him: subtle, brazen gambits at generating a buzz and media mention.

    In the spotlight, El Rufai feasts like the mythical Narcissus; chewing on vile drama, he reduces outrage and criticism of his plots to soupy and primeval desert.

    A man like El Rufai should be ignored, even when he hauls venom and wiles to plow the political landscape with riot and rage.

    Contrary to his belief, El Rufai does not speak truth to power rather he spits toxin to power.

    His Nigeria as a two-nation rant, for instance, elevates chicanery to inconceivable heights. Having said that Nigeria is made up of a “developing South,” the Kaduna governor whined, that, the north is in contrast, backward and impoverished thus reinforcing a trending argument and subterranean plot championed by his ilk.

    We relive El Rufai’s rant with a stunned combination of amazement and disgust.

    Call it a daemonic aria, a flight of effete imagination. If contemporary politics thrives on musical artifice, the Kaduna governor’s recent falsetto is his cipher, the fault in his organ valve that renders his melody, frantic fustian dross.

    El Rufai, undoubtedly, particularizes his execution of inflammatory speeches with frightening and uncanny detail thus inciting our outrage. But what he actually deserves is our pity. Empathy for his cumbrous afflictions.

    In his hands, power has become a conveyance of discord, and a vehicle to his nemesis. El Rufai tangled with power is like Olohun Iyo disappearing to the lure of fatal chorus.

    His tirade’s emotional power comes from the brutal contrast between his smirking vanity and the sudden melting of his features beyond recognition. Call it his holocaust and apocalypse.

    Standing at ground zero. El Rufai incinerates by innate inclinations; self-intoxicated in the electric moment before lightning strikes and he is reduced to rubble at core.

    If El Rufai fails to beat a retreat from the strange path he tows, he would eventually reduce by the sedition of his own ego, like previous travellers on his chosen path.

    Pride torn in sparagmos, they lie scorched by ecstasy and annihilation by the seductive Maenads of power.

    According to El Rufai, he speaks “the naked truth,” and he added, that, the north still has a lot to be proud of in the person of Aliko Dangote, allegedly the richest man in Nigeria.

    Going further, he said: “So, we still have a lot to be proud of. We should be proud of our culture and tradition, as well as unity. You hardly can find someone from northern Nigeria convicted of 419 or being a Yahoo boy. That is something we should be proud of…In addition, our demographic superiority gives us a very powerful tool to negotiate in politics.”

    His final call to the northern youth, characteristically, connotes the chicanery of the Nigerian ruling class. “I, therefore, call on you the youth; you account for 80 per cent of the northern population and the future of this region lies in your hands, not in the hands of Dinosaurs like me. I’m 59 and among the oldest five per cent of the northern population. I shouldn’t even be governor; I should have been governor 10 years ago. But ‘na condition make crayfish bend,’ so we are here,” he said.

    Of course, El Rufai was right by stating that men like him, should be retired from politics already. He should have been eclipsed with the administration of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

    Let us also hope, that, his target audience are aware that his speech at the summit was tailored to mute their dissent over his resounding flaws as an elder and objectionable stature amid “the oldest five per cent of the northern population,” as he rightly acknowledged.

    His rant was yet another brassy attempt to beguile the north’s youthful electorate via reverse psychology and self-deprecation.

    The only conversation the northern youth should be having right now, should be with co-oppressed youths across the country’s geopolitical zones.

    El Rufai’s platitudinous chant seeks to divert attention of the northern youth from the crucial issues that requires relentless exercise of the mind.

    Failing industries, substandard healthcare, moribund national cashcows, deficient schools, executive profligacy, and deathly politics foisted on all by the selfish ruling class are some of the issues that the northern youth, like their southern peers, must worry about.

    On the flipside, men like El Rufai should attempt humility for a change. He could start by picturing himself as a roadside mechanic, a roving cobbler or displaced fisherman of Doron Baga; would he still affect the venom he displays? Would he be afflicted by power and its infernal seductions?

    There is no pure Fulani blood, Hausa blood, Yoruba blood, Igbo blood and so on. The purity of a bloodline consists in its capacity for humaneness, justice and truth. No magnitude of kinship, racial or ancestral pride, could surpass the beaming brightness of good deserving of all.

    The northern youth must understand that the only pursuit that could count in the national arithmetic is that which situates the individual, for the interest of all.

     

  • Our rescue plans for Adeniji Adele estates — LASURA GM Lateef Sholebo

    The General Manager of Lagos State Urban Renewal Agency (LASURA) spoke with OLATUNJI OLOLADE on government’s plan to adopt public-private partnership to save Adeniji Adele estates from further deterioration.

    What has LASURA done to mitigate the persistent flooding of the Adeniji Adele estates?

    We are trying to use the PPP approach for that project. We are trying to create an incentive for private people to invest with the government to develop that site (Adeniji Adele) and not only that site. That’s our strategy for developing most of our slum areas. Investments of that magnitude takes time and resources. We are talking about $800 million (about N288 billion).

    What is the quality of response from private investors?

    The response of the private business sector has been encouraging. They are trying to get their financial analysis together and submit to us. The company is ATO/ Integral. We as government will put in the stimulus money and provide an enabling environment for the PPP to succeed. Government cannot do all.

    We are also trying to introduce government’s ability to participate fully in such efforts via the Tax Increment Financing (TIF). It has not been adopted yet, but we are in the process of getting it adopted by the Lagos State government.

    What is the gestation period of the project?

    Once the financial analysis is done and submitted to the PPP office and it has been analysed and accepted, we will negotiate with the developer in terms of what they want and what the government wants. Once this is sorted, that is when the process of development starts. And then we probably have to do it in phases based on what we agreed on. The development is a very, very big project and it is probably one of the most important government projects. You know, our development pattern is irregular and we have many substandard development projects in our communities; so it’s going to take a lot of social re-engineering and reorientation of the minds of the people to identify with our new initiative.

    How does LASURA intend to resolve the challenges posed by space constraints?

    By going vertical. Because we have a very small amount of land area and due to the rapid growth in the population of Lagos, we need to start going vertical, which is another theme of LASURA. We need to start building highrises. In order to do that, we need to adopt smart technology also. To this end, Lagos is trying to adopt the concept of the Smart City to make things more efficient and functional. Challenges of highrise technology such as fire outbreaks will be curtailed as we are building capacity to meet them.

    How would you ensure quality control in the construction of the proposed highrise buildings?

    One of the things LASURA is trying to do is some kind of a material control guideline. It’s been done all over. In Dubai for instance. We also intend to provide every crucial facility in the highrises, including an internal mall, health centre, gym, car park, and so on. We have also proposed the idea of bringing work closer to Lagosians’ homes and vice versa. The intent is to reduce the travel between residents’ home and work places.

    How long must residents of Adeniji Adele wait for the plans to be realised?

    One thing I would always tell people is that development planning is not something you do overnight and achieve full implementation immediately, it takes time. It is a very long process. I have worked in the US for over 30 years and over there, development projects continue over 15 – 20 year period. Planning is not something you just rush to do. In an environment like ours, you have to think of relocation assistance for all the people that would be displaced and you have to find a way to ensure that things go on properly.

  • The gift-bringer who would be beggar

    The Nigerian, in his youth, becomes dangerous when politically dormant. He looms as dystopia to an infernal present. Sterile, he is the seed bearer who cannot engender; the gift-bringer who would be beggar. All fertile doors are closed to him.

    Where he is active, he lives captive in a zone of mortal dread, if untouched by patriotic zeal. But he hardly knows this.

    Either literate or illiterate, he serves as a tool for achieving the ends of deified others – if he doesn’t become deity. Hence his random manifestations as a political goon, arsonist, assassin, lobbyist, paid-agitator or activist-for-rent if you like.

    His words and deeds boom as a cloying mime of all shades of political correctness. Often times, they resonate as a double entendre; amidst the din, he soars into the trance of acclaim or descends its steep cliff even as society salts the ground he walks upon.

    Today, he may rewrite history via selfless, epic acts of grandeur. Tomorrow, he may corrupt it, slapping ‘sense’ and morbid fear into a defenceless nursing mother in a sex-toy shop. Think Elisha Cliff Abbo, 41. Abbo represents Adamawa North Constituency At his election, his kith and kin celebrated him; his victory at the polls resounded as a worthy reward for months of noise-making, grandstanding and sloganeering a la #nottooyoungtorun.

    Finally, a supposedly young candidate, Abbo, had been voted into office as the youngest Senator in the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That was undoubtedly some consolation prize of sort.

    The celebration was, however, short-lived in the wake of a viral video showing the youthful lawmaker slapping a nursing mother in a sex toy shop in the heart of Abuja.

    The recording was reportedly done on Saturday, May 11, 2019. On that day, Abbo, then a Senator-Elect, breezed majestically into the sex toy shop, in the company of three young ladies.

    As he sampled the sex gadgets with his company, one of the girls threw up thus messing up the shop. The female shop owner reacted angrily, stressing that Abbo’s friend should have vomitted outside her shop.

    An agitated Abbo accused the shop owner of poisoning the store’s air conditioner and the latter objected. Livid, Abbo made phone calls to the police and swiftly, the shop owner phoned her presumably influential father as the duo spoiled for a power duel.

    As the situation degenerated, one of the shop owner’s staff, a nursing mother, intervened pleading that the lawmaker should spare her boss; this infuriated Abbo and he dealt her ‘hot’ slaps repeatedly.

    Abbo would not be pacified even as his victim cringed from his wild assault. In the show of shame, a police officer in uniform, stared unperturbed at the lawmaker’s victim. He conveniently forgot the police credo: “To protect and serve.”

    Such is the temperament of a Nigerian youth. It would be unfair, however, to commit hasty generalisation by tarring millions of industrious, humane, patriotic youth with the misdemeanour of a 41-year-old elected lawmaker.

    Abbo, despite his teary and seemingly contrived plea for forgiveness, may forever grapple with uncomplimentary impressions of him as intoned by his May 11, 2019 misdeed.

    For the Senator, the political plane has become scorched earth; a temenos where his fragile repute may never bloom again.

    At the backdrop of Abbo’s misdemeanour, Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka’s clarion call to the youth, to start organising themselves for leadership positions before the 2023 elections, instills fear into discerning hearts, perhaps. He said: “Sometimes I refer to this generation of youths in which one places so much hope, as a ‘Gaseous’ generation because they are so full of gas. But when it comes to action, you are astonished because they keep calling out names like where is Wole Soyinka? Where is Joe Okei-Odumakin? Where is Femi Falana?”

    The situation undoubtedly persists due to the dearth of heroic men and women in the political space. En route the 2019 general elections, Nigeria grappled with the swell of young aspirants. In the latter, desire sprouted with seductive dissonance of savagery and surrender.

    Passion in the young aspirant was armoured by greed, hypocrisy and a fever of entitlement. Like the ruling class they sought to replace, they loomed unwise, driven by errant lust.

    And this played out in their utterances, conduct and disposition. It manifests as you read, in the calibre and temperament of characters occupying Nigeria’s public offices.

    The decline of Nigeria is a story of gross injustices by the ruling class to the citizenry. But that is only an aspect of it, the greatest injustice is that meted out by individual citizen to self – the youth particularly. And this predominant malaise often manifests in their corruptibility and disinclination to foster a more humane leadership and society.

    Today, we suffer declining standards of living, stagnant and falling wages that are hardly paid at due time. We suffer curtailment and absolute denial of our basic wages, long-term unemployment, slave labour, escalating crime wave, among other ills.

    We perpetuate gruesome realities of the weakest being crushed decisively and maniacally by the affluent and strong. Together, we perpetuate a story of unbridled sectarian, ethnic and corporate power that has taken our government hostage, overseen the dismantling of our cultural heritage, societal and entrepreneurial values. To redress the status quo, Nigeria needs a heroic league of ordinary men and women to shoulder the crusade on the voter and aspirant divides.

    According to Soyinka, “one hopes that in advance, 2023, the youths should begin to organise themselves, they must not wait till the last minute. “They should begin right now in manifesting their expectations and the possibility of the realisation of their expectations of taking up leadership positions,” he said.

    The youth are certainly in need of a platform, more selfless than the defunct, ill-fated PACT movement and more concrete than Facebook, Twitter and other social media. They need to create a rallying point where they could sit and determine a bloodless path to a promising future.

    Yes, the current leadership won’t relinquish power easily hence the need to be swift and methodical in action. There is no almighty formula to untying Nigeria’s leadership knot.

    Having created a dependable platform, the youth should identify that particular breed whose idealism and pragmatism articulates the citizenry’s painful silences and heartfelt dreams in order to actualise them. Further relations with the incumbent ruling class would be inimical to the nation’s progressive march. On their watch, Nigeria’s resources are being depleted; soon they will be exhausted. And then our hollowed-out edifice shall collapse. Impoverished and severely robbed of optimism, Nigeria’s hopeless masses, mostly youth, will rise against the ruling class in a premeditated and very savage strike – of which the citizenry would suffer the worst consequence. Like in all such uprisings, Nigeria will plunge into a canyon of blood and maniacal murders, in the name of the “revolution.” The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way.

    The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in A Short History of Progress: “..extremists, or ultraconservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations ossify and collapse. Today, we tow a similar path.

     

  • The RUGA toxic rhyme

    Muhammadu Buhari is a man beseiged by wild drama. As President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, he is thrust in the hungry maw of a plebeian spectacle. The resultant scenes prove him an unlikely hero, who keeps battling the lure of chthonian nemesis.

    Yet there are two facets to his presidential character: the fabled, passive Spartan and his innate, earthly antagonist. Both aspects of him incarnate multiple personae thus his unfurling like a cast of thousands played by one.

    The antagonist, however, overwhelms the Spartan, recurrently rifling through his politics, thus making his ultimate threat more perceptual and self-embowered.

    His proposed implementation of the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) as solution to the recurring conflict between nomadic herders and farmers, for instance, has incited outrage among all classes of Nigerians. Camp Buhari says he means well. His virulent critics state otherwise.

    And while the idea is cleverly depicted by the RUGA acronym, its precepts flare disconcertingly across public circuits. Ruga also translates to cow settlement in Hausa and this irks several nationalities of the country’s southern divide.

    Commentary on social and mainstream media meanders wildly, from abject horror to shock over what certain leading commentators have termed the presidency’s brazen insensitivity to sections of the country on the receiving end of the herders-farmers’ conflict.

    Besides pillorying the initiative as the crudest form of assault on inclusivity in a multi-ethnic Nigeria, Buhari’s critics downsouth insist he flirts with mayhem. Left to them, the initiative reeks of a desire for landgrabbing and conquest. Is it?

    In response to the widespread outcry and condemnation of the proposed project, the presidency’s spokesmen have dismissed apprehensions about the project.

    The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Umar, announced on Tuesday, June 25, that the settlements will house nomadic herdsmen who breed animals.

    “We want to put them in a place that has been developed as a settlement, where we provide water for their animals, pasture, schools for their children, security, agro-rangers, etc.

    “We are going to change their lifestyle, take them away from our streets and from wandering in the bush and develop districts, hamlets and towns and definitely in the next five to 10 years you will never see a nomad moving about, wandering or kidnapping. And this will end all these security challenges,” he said.

    In the same vein, the presidency, in a statement, said the RUGA settlement/Ruga was conceived to address the clashes between farmers and herders in the country.

    Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, condemned the “unhelpful comments regarding the plan to stop roaming of cattle herders with the attendant clashes with farmers stressing that beneficiaries will include all persons in animal husbandry, not only Fulani herders. He also stressed that the Federal Government was planning the programme to curb open grazing of animals that continue to pose security threats to farmers and herders.

    “The overall benefit to the nation includes a drastic reduction in conflicts between herders and farmers, a boost in animal protection complete with a value chain that will increase the quality and hygiene of livestock in terms of beef and milk production, increased quality of feeding and access to animal care and private sector participation in commercial pasture production by way of investments.

    “Other gains are job creation, access to credit facilities, security for pastoral families and curtailment of cattle rustling,” he said.

    And it gets quite interesting as Shehu added, that, “Stripped of the politics and howling that has attended the recent comments, there is no government plan to seize state land, colonize territory or impose Ruga on any part of the federation. Government has made it clear time and again that the programme is voluntary.

    “So far, twelve states have applied to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture…Unfortunately, some state governments that have not signified interest in the scheme and, therefore, are not on the invitation list have been misleading people that the Federal Government is embarking on a scheme to take away their lands.

    “Mostly, these are state leaders that have no explanation to offer their people for continued non-payment of workers’ salaries. It is true that government at the centre has gazetted lands in all states of the federation but because the idea is not to force this programme on anyone, the government has limited the take-off to the dozen states with valid requests,” he said.

    Vintage Shehu. With spokespersons like him, President Buhari may be assured of an eclipse of goodwill perhaps. Although he stressed that the presidency seeks a permanent solution to the unwanted conflicts, and that “efforts must be made to ensure that no innocent person faces any kind of deprivation or loss of right and freedom under our laws,” Shehu failed to address what measures have been put in place to compensate victims of the herdsmen’s murder sprees as they invaded southern farmlands to forcibly feed their herd.

    Benue still smarts from the maniacal massacre of 73 villagers and farmers, mostly women and children, in Guma and Logo local councils, by suspected herdsmen. Alleged mastermind of the attack and leader of the herdsmen gang, 40-year-old Alhaji Laggi, and cohorts: Mallam Mumini Abdullahi, 34 years; Muhammed Adamu, 30 years and Ibrahim Sule, 32 years old, reportedly confessed to the crime, acoording to the police. So did Muhammadu Bimini, who was arrested by riot policemen on March 8, at Daffo, Plateau State, with an AK-47 rifle with serial number: HC2614.

    Late Omowole Orimisan stays interred six-feet under, after he was murdered at the Hands Down area of Ore, in Odigbo, Ondo State.

    Suspected herdsmen killed Omowole while he worked on his farm. Four of the five culprits were arrested. They are Ibrahim Yussuf, 19; Soja, 20; Halti, 20; and Musa 25.

    Critics argue that via Ruga, the criminally-minded among the herdsmen, may get compensated for the mayhem and death they visited on helpless, indigent farmers. And what do the farmers get in return? Garba Shehu may consider himself truth-sayer, but the Ruga cynic likens him to the proverbial huckster, who would market dystopia to seekers of Eden.

    Rather than attack dissenters for their apprehensions, Shehu would do better to highlight plans by his principal’s administration to pacify bereaved victims of herdsmen attacks knowing that the latter’s brazen cuddling via RUGA/Ruga ought to be accompanied by mitigatory measures in the interest of their victims. If there aren’t such plans, he would do right by his principal to propose such initiatve.

    On the flipside, Buhari’s critics should quit attacking his presidency as that is akin to shooting peas at Gibraltar, and instead, direct their grievances to their state governors and other elected representatives in the National Assembly. The governors and lawmakers, they would find, are merely paying lipservice to the ongoing protest against RUGA/Ruga.

    Buhari and company would do better to reconsider the RUGA/Ruga venture. Let them be guided by Eze Onyekpere’s implied wisdom. Niger State, for instance, he opines, is about 76,363 square kilometres and home to the great Shiroro and Kainji dams.

    “It has water and provides the environment for all year-round farming and cattle rearing. Compare this with Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states with a combined land mass of 29,525 square kilometres, which is less than 40 per cent of the size of Niger State.”

    Such is the tenor of the argument against RUGA/Ruga. Of course, all Mr. President’s men would object.

     

  • Governor Fayemi’s riddle

    Now, to consider Kayode Fayemi in terms of political personae; Ekiti’s cerebral governor recently emerged as Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) thus heading a deified circuit, ritual precinct of tin gods. He may not control it but he endows it with a face and voice, synthesising glassy intellect with the forum’s coarse flux. Under his leadership, will the NGF remain state and skull, riding the serpent desires of bowel and belly?

    Knowing Fayemi, he would most likely appropriate the title of progressive hero and modern idealist in his prefectship of the NGF. But as chairman of the forum, can he truly wield his girth and repute to patch his colleagues’ shortcomings? Can he tame their vulgar inclinations?

    Consider for instance, the NGF’s curious agitation for increased ‘security vote’ and state police; there is no gainsaying that the governors’ agitation rankles an ominous note.

    Do the 36 state governors, possess the emotional maturity, intelligence and character necessary to wield such enormous powers? Despite their shrill outcry, oft touted in defence of citizenry imperilled by terrorism, gang violence and banditry in their respective domains, their antecedents reveal disconcerting truths about their capacity to wield such powers.

    Many governors would undoubtedly, pervert the provisions for state police, and promptly turn the paramilitary force into attack dogs, using them to hound the press, critics and perceived ‘political detractors.’

    The state police would also become powerful tools by which a governor may tame, harass and hound his ‘political godfather.’ In fact, the joke resounds in governors’ circuits, that, if they could achieve their dreams of establishing a state police, they would decisively silence their oft ‘overbearing godfathers.’

    Well, as far as juvenile fantasies go, that may be achievable in only the realms of their wild imaginations – as most of their handlers or perceived ‘godfathers’ are equally re-strategising to establish formidable stakes in the state police, in preparation for ‘betrayal’ by the governors, or any such eventuality.

    A likely consequence of the brewing storm is that the state police would comprise hostile factions loyal to the incumbent governor and his political godfather; eventually, each state would be cast in turmoil as warring factions seize the proposed security outfit to the detriment of the citizenry.

    Nonetheless, the Head, Media and Public Affairs of the NGF, Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, feverishly argued, that, the establishment of state police would resolve the states’ security woes, Despite the governors’ massive investments to boost their states’ security infrastructure, the state police commissioners aren’t answerable to them, he lamented, recently, on Channels TV Sunrise Daily.

    Bello-Barkindo urged people to reduce the criticisms lashed out at governors over accountability. Of course his argument is wholly untenable in the face of truth. Bello-Barkindo conveniently failed to acknowledge that many, if not all of Nigeria’s 36 state governors, get power drunk soon after they assume office and a power-drunk governor is likable to a drunkard cop with an uncorked rifle; the consequences are better imagined.

    Just recently, Premium Times reported that ex-governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun, surrendered about four million rounds of ammunition, 1,000 units of AK47 assault rifles, 1,000 units of bulletproof vests and an armoured personnel carrier (APC) to the state’s Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, from a secret armoury in the Government House.

    “Amosun’s anointed candidate for the March 9 governorship election, Adekunle Akinlade of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), had been roundly defeated by Dapo Abiodun of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the governor was now desperate to clear the Government House of any incriminating material as Mr Abiodun moved in to take charge,” the online publication wrote.

    Amosun said he procured the arms and ammunition to check the widespread insecurity in his state of 3,751,140 residents, according to the 2006 census. This is no doubt instructive about the depths a governor like Amosun could descend, for ‘security’ reasons.

    Lest we forget the NGF’s troubling clamour for increased security votes; security votes are opaque security funding, drawn monthly from the federal purse in hundreds of millions of naira, to fund often fictive security expenses.

    A significant percentage of the country’s overall security spending, these secretive, unaccounted-for outlays add up to an estimated $670 million (N241.2 billion) annually, and are never subject to audit or legislative oversight, according to the Transparency International’s Africa Director for Defence and Security Programme, Christina Hildrew.

    At the backdrop of TI’s claims, Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, has alleged that some state governors covertly promote insecurity as justification to inflate their security vote. Magu said this at the induction of new and returning governors at the Old Banquet Hall, Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    Transacted mostly in cash, the security vote is not subject to legislative oversight or independent audit and the veil of secrecy, predictably, protects state governors, who embezzle the money and divert it to fund their political interests.

    Recent estimates reveal that the sum total of Nigeria’s security votes dwarf the international security assistance it receives. In just one year, notes TI, these off-budget expenditures add up to over nine times the amount of US security assistance to Nigeria and the total amount of counterterrorism support the UK has promised to give the country by 2020.

    Nigeria arguably would not need such assistance if it curtailed the use of security votes and reprogrammed them into the country’s formal defence and security budget, according to pundits.

    A constructive first step would be for state governors to ditch their obsession with security votes for a security trust fund model akin to the Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF).

    A more substantive fix for the states’ security problems would be for the governors to midwife more realistic models to empower the youth and minors often deployed as agents of mayhem by criminal masterminds.

    While the use of security votes has expanded in both scope and scale under President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership, Fayemi’s emergence as NGF chairman provides him an opportunity to espouse his “progressive ideals,” and work with the President and fellow governors to reverse the trend.

    So doing, he may burnish his democratic credentials for more purposeful public service.

    To the governors who may object, Fayemi may remind them of the epic ruling by the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which affirmed that failure of public officers to give an account of security votes entrusted to them amounted to stealing and criminal misappropriation akin to genocide.

    This formed part of the reasons the court affirmed the conviction of a former governor of Taraba State, Jolly Nyame, who had earlier been convicted and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment on June 30, 2018 by a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.

    It’s a good thing that Fayemi emerged as the NGF’s chairman, perhaps. Some would call him the voice of the virile statesman. But he flaunts no virility yet. Right now, amid the ranks of the NGF, he is a product of perception.

    Let’s hope he doesn’t end up a sacrificial mascot tied to a stake.

     

  • Your plague is worse than mine

    If prejudice is a disease of the human mind, it intensifies in the Nigerian, whose perception of others coerces the eye to make the mind a connoisseur of debauched reality and random, bestial stereotypes.

    Prejudice sprouts invasive wiles; it fosters disruptive points of view, and reduces human beings into nouns and adjectives, and pliable, sacrificial epithets.

    Sometimes, it resonates primal style and radically deactivates the humane, to nail the world against a picture plane. The prejudiced eye deploys vision like a sword; it dismembers and hacks, until its blinded by an excess of bias.

    In Nigeria, the prejudiced eye becomes tyrant and the act of seeing is fanatically inflamed. Thus the Hausa-Fulani, subjected to pictural filter, disintegrates. As a man, he must “possess the sensibility of a cow.” If a woman, she must be a poor, helpless “child bride.” Together, they fulfill contemporary society’s random stereotypes of villiany a la murderous herdsman, almajiri, Boko Haram (BH) terrorist and suicide bomber.

    The Igbo man must be an “armed robber,” “money ritualist,” “baby factory operator” and a “drug dealer”; if a woman, she must be a “brothel vixen.” The Edo female must be “Italy-bound and a prostitute” and if a male, “a notorious cultist” or “an armed robber.”  The Niger Deltan must be a “kidnapper,” “greedy militant,” “murderous pirate,” “armed robber.”

    The Yoruba must be a “sellout” or “indefatigable Judas,” if you like. He must be a “kidnapper,” “juju ritualist” or “prostitute” too.

    Each ethnic group suffers an ugly, frantic streotype thus collapsing our world into a heap of visual objects coveted by the bigoted for their morbid decay.

    Of these random stereotypes, however, a common narrative runs through as the thread of bias; that of the north as a haven of homicidal almajiri, BH terrorists and Nigeria’s most backward region. The almajiri conundrum resonates, quite jarringly, against the backdrop of BH insurgency, armed banditry and herdsmen’s bloody incursions into Nigeria’s southeast, southsouth, and southwest regions.

    “When I drive round the country, what upsets me most is the status of our poor people…You see the so-called Almajiris wearing torn dresses with plastic bowls. I think we the Nigerian elite; we are all failing,” said President Muhammadu Buhari, in while acknowledging northern Nigeria’s almajiri crisis, few months ago.

    Predictably, Buhari’s confession triggered yet another debate, which was wildly marred by cold, sentimental claims and counterclaims.

    While it is alright to pillory a system that condemns millions of vulnerable children to the streets thus denying them rights to parental care and decent schooling, it would be duplicitous to claim that the almajiri system constitutes the greatest impediment to national progress, as some columnist recently intoned.

    A parallel monstrosity subsists across the country’s supposedly evolved and sophisticated southern regions. The latter, despite their haughty, hieratic claims to literacy and higher evolution, merely reinvent terror; they make violence hip and experimental.

    The statistics, of course, hardly resonate the darkness and virulence characteristic of northern mayhem.

    Very few people would forget in hurry, how Lagos State cringed from the bloodlust of the infamous Badoo gang. The group of serial rapists and murderers carried out ritual killings of entire households: families of four and five, and newly married couples among others, in Ikorodu.

    Unofficial sources claimed that more than 30 persons were sent to their early graves while the Badoo horror lasted. Eventually, in joint operations by the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), the Onyabo, a local vigilante group, and the police, many of the culprits were allegedly caught.

    Lagos still cowers from the ravage of teen gangs including the Awawa cult and the One Million Boys; Imo, Anambra, Enugu, Delta, Bayelsa, Ogun, Oyo, Ondo and Edo among others, pulse with mayhem and murderous exploits of teen and campus confraternities.

    Lest we forget the terror personified by the internet fraudster aka Yahoo Boy, kidnapper, the ritualist cum pant bandit; the corrupt civil servant, banker, teacher, street urchin, commercial transport union worker, politician and journalist, whose perpetration of official corruption, hate-speech, armed violence and intellectual hooliganism, to mention a few, glorify the predatory manifestations often attributed to the northern almajiri and the terrorist.

    That these southern plague are supposed beneficiaries of advanced forms of learning, representative of Western education, professional and religious scholarship, emphasises an ugliness homogenous to Nigeria’s disparate ethnic groups and regions.

    Pseudo-psychology goads us to believe that the northern almajiri is Nigeria’s greatest albatross thus the argument within southern elitist circuits, that, until the northern elite terminates the almajiri system, terrorism, child marriage, illiteracy and underdevelopment will continually hinder the region’s bid to match the rest of the country in literacy and development.

    Those who defend and condemn the almajiri culture are undoubtedly at odds over matters of cause and context, definition and politics; many of them suffer from grave epistemological and data blind spots, a condition Pinker would blame on availability and negativity biases.

    Both northern and southern apologists rationalise the backwardness pervasive of their regions, where different forces of terrorism hold the people to ransom. Rather than admit the truth, they choose to create semblances of reality, that serve, in a wider sense, the same role that perverse pleasure serves the sexual delinquent and moral degenerate.

    Their bigotries destabilise the truth, goading all to manufacture and project alternate realities as replacement for their world’s uncomplimentary truths.

    Ultimately, we project such relative reality to justify our feelings and perceptions of each other as inspired by mirages generated by pseudo-sensibility and events.

    The sad reality of this ignorant state of mind, is that, it is mostly an affliction of the electorate. Politicians are hardly on the receiving end of such blind illusion.

    Consider for instance, the curious camarederie of successive ruling class: the Presidency, Governors, State and National Assemblies conveniently maintain a sturdy bridge, by which they navigate through shoals of inter and intra-party conflict, political brigandage, and institutionalised corruption, to attain harmony in misgovernance. Sublime, isn’t it?

    It is always the electorate, the breadlines, who get blinded by the illusion of pseudo-events and inflammatory politics. Those who slip into the mirage are eventually consumed in pursuit and perpetuation of a myth built around the presumed “cruelty” of “others.”

    The passion we commit to tiresome bigotries and inter-tribal conflict should be redirected to more productive endeavour, like value reorientation, the elevation of norms and the training of thoroughbreds habituated to reason, catholicity of depth, scholarship and culture.

    Scholarship should be geared to discourage the prejudices that bulwark society, and stamp out those that in sheer barbarity of intellect and ideology, deafen all to the wail of reason and matchless patriotism.

    Such measures are best begun from our homes; the value of the family as a crucial social unit and building block of society must be re-asserted, even as we undertake the crusade in our worship houses and schools.

    The Igbo man is hardly the enemy. Neither is the Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, Ibibio, Itsekiri native among others. Nigeria’s mortal enemy subsists in the incumbent ruling class.

    It’s about time we took our country back from them.

     

  • Nigeria’s new prodigals

    the governors’ forum staged its opening act on a tableau of presumed impotence. Yet from the pack, each governor emerged breathing spunk and fire, setting in motion, sporadic outbursts of a feigned vigour.

    Each governor would insist that his vigour is real as lackeys and aides caress the swollen belly of his lies; the charade will persist until fabricated repute splits to reality’s vengeful lashes.

    Until then, he remains self-embowered, dour and stuck in mental indolence. His passion pales to the spunk of classical Athens’s ephebic youth, thus he is persistently impaled by his alter ego, the colossus which infects him with a crooked sense of the reality of things around him.

    Eventually, like the proverbial prodigal, he assumes bestiality of self, squandering goodwill, misappropriating trust and state funds. Such is the disposition of the incumbent governor.

    Last dispensation, his personality was regressive, an artifact of aggressive forging.

    In time, he would face his nemesis, the conflict between good and evil; right and wrong; savagery and humaneness; definitiveness and dissolution of self.

    Rather than strive to become a national treasure, he mutates to become a national terror, smothering hope and siring strife across gubernatorial wastelands.

    Power grants the governor a dangerous freedom. That savage streak supposedly consigned to religion’s medieval hell, now sprouts in the palatial glade of the State House and the soggy crevices of the governor’s psyche. Ultimately, it returns to its old place in nature; the abyss of the misguided functionary’s tyrant mind.

    Power intoxicates and corrupts. Thus under its influence, the governor’s mauls and steals. Paid sophists and the now ubiquitious media attack dogs attempt to rationalise his coarse boundaries of selfhood, claiming he is hopeless before the ravages of power or that he is lured into acquiescence by its sensual beauty.

    These are the voyeurs and errand boys of power. Those who like to slave and watch. They are the cohorts and lackeys of powerful governors – even among these, we have social hierarchies, a totem pole by which status, favours and privileges are dispensed. They are the ‘Yes-men.’ I would call them ‘associate savages,’ and they include the so-called captains of industry, journalists, non-profits, law enforcers, political party chairmen, to mention a few.

    Together, they pervert the provisions of the constitution; the 1999 Constitution – the fourth since independence – imposed by previous military government, increased states’ responsibility to provide social services and infrastructure.

    Perhaps intended as an interim document, the constitution was deliberately vague about demarcation. Thus while Nigerians clamour for a more realistic and humanely wrought constitution, overlap and ambiguity of responsibilities across government tiers persist with intense debate and confusion.

    Education governance, for instance, is split across the three levels of government (federal, state and local), but the collapse of primary and secondary schools nominally run by local or state governments forced the federal government to intervene through the Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme to reduce illiteracy.

    Transparency is equally lacking in state fiscal governance, something the Africa research Institute (ARI) attributed to unclear definition of responsibilities; ARI findings revealed that no state government has issued verifiable audited accounts since 2013 while there is little public scrutiny of state revenues and expenditure.

    Many state governors lack character, managerial expertise and tact thus they negotiate and grab power through fraud, bribery and brigandage; oftentimes, they flood state assemblies with lackeys, who will never hold them to account.

    And while the federal allocation is meant to supplement the revenue state governments generate from taxes on personal income, property and other sources, in several states, the federal allocation provides over 80 per cent of the total revenue; states’ internally generated revenue (IGR) often fall short of personnel costs.

    Consequently, some governors have resorted to frantic measures to improve the fortunes of their states. For instance, Ondo governor, Rotimi Akeredolu’s recent decision to foster the farming of indian hemp on a commercial scale and as a major revenue earner without viable economic and social safety measures betray a pathetic lack of practical, developmental ideas.

    A governor’s character and intentions are crucial to his state’s performance but in Nigeria, “Many elected governors have no programme or blueprint at the start of their tenure and instead of working out a few priorities that the state can afford, they set up expensive projects which they pass on to the federal government to fund, or abandon them when the funding runs out, according to Yussuf Tuggar, a 2011 governorship aspirant in Bauchi.

    True, in Ogun State, the immediate past governor, Ibikunle Amosun, in flagrant disregard of reality and managerial wisdom, initiated an international cargo airport project, which has rendered over 5,000 farmers landless and incapacitated in a severely depressed agricultural economy. And just recently, Amosun’s successor, Governor Dapo Abiodun, bemoaned the heartrending condition of the state’s major health facility, the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH). He decried the rust and mould-ridden wards, decrepit operating theatres and collapsed ceilings.

    At this juncture, you could be forgiven for seeking the wisdom in ex-governor, Amosun’s noisy celebration of a “250-bed” hospital complex at Oke Mosan, while the only university teaching hospital in the state and several Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) fell apart.

    Ill-conceived and moribund state-funded projects are found throughout the country, from Cross River’s failed plan to rival Dubai as a global tourist attraction to a former governor of Jigawa’s scheme to turn his Sahelian state into an IT hub, Nigeria seems beset by impractical governors.

    Lest we forget the sad case of a former governor of Katsina, who ignored infrastructure woes in his state to build and commission a new residence for the governor of Niamey Region in Niger Republic, valued at N60 million few years ago.

    Four years ago, oil rich Akwa Ibom equally derived almost all of its N462 billion (US$2.3 billion) budget from the federal “handout.” The handout covered only a fraction of its recurrent costs and when receipts from the federal revenue pool in the first nine months of 2015 halved compared to the previous year, due to the collapse in global oil prices, most states rapidly became insolvent.

    Thus one of Buhari’s first decisions as president was to authorise a bailout fund for 27 indebted states endowed with N338 billion (US$1.7 billion) of federal government funds. In addition, the Debt Management Office converted N324 billion (US$1.6 billion) of state debt to long term bonds.

    A former state finance commissioner told ARI, “Even when the oil price was high, virtually all the states were spending more than they earned,” adding that Buhari, “could have imposed conditions – revenue and spending targets – on the states before agreeing to bail out their debts and approve new money.”

    The federal government, in effect, he said, refunded the costs of state mismanagement and profligacy.

    It’s 2019 and Nigeria’s newly elected governors have begun what is known in street parlance as “Initial Gra-Gra” (IGG). On their watch, the states will manifest as a sick rose even as they wildly paint alternative portraits of their domains as a bower of bliss. The governors’ frantic art of concealment necessitates that truth’s approach must take the form of a raid. The press and civil society must rise to the challenge.

     

  • These sickly organs

    The joke subsists in moral circuits, that, when brigands and outlaws copulate, their incestuous liaison produces the lawmaker – the Nigerian lawmaker to be precise. If you would excuse the ribaldry therein, you would find that the contemporary lawmaker hardly epitomises unimpeachable humaneness and civilisation which are prime essentials of the Legislature.

    Neither does the legislative chamber symbolise the conurbation of nationalism, detribalised evolution, altruism and high art oft associated with evolved species of humankind.

    In Nigeria the lawmaker sticks out like a metastasized tumour; a priapism of vice and nuisance to be endured, like varicose veins or ethno-religious bigotry.

    A surfeit of theatrics and high jinks perpetrated on the floor of the country’s Senate and House of Representatives further establish them as an assembly adult delinquents.

    Last dispensation, for instance, the Eighth National Assembly carried on like changelings, men and women whose moral compass cringed beneath their storm of whim and arrant obscenities.

    From their frantic bid to pad the national budget, and muzzle free speech via online censorship, to their desperation to ‘protect’ and ‘serve’ the interests of peer being investigated for financial fraud by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), members of the Eighth Assembly betrayed grievous lack of character and integrity.

    But they were only being true to tradition. Their predecessors in the chamber had a penchant for sleaze and wild drama. One week after a male senator was forced to apologise to his female colleague for dealing her a blinding slap, a chairman and deputy chairman of a House of Representatives committee got locked in a fight with the deputy chairman, a woman, dealing the chairman several blows.

    The latter completely lost his balance as the impact of the assault from the heavily built female legislator shattered his eye glasses to smithereens and left him with a bloody eye. Pandemonium ensued when he tried to retaliate but he was prevented by their colleagues who formed a ring around his female aggressor.

    Cut to another hodgepodge of members of the Federal House of Representatives embroiled in a free-for-all fight, street-brawler style. The lawmakers engaged in fisticuffs on the floor of the House as members opposed to the embattled speaker at the period, tried to introduce a motion for his impeachment over corruption allegations. Parties loyal to the aggrieved rebels pounced on them and they exchanged blows to the amusement of the world.

    Years after the disgraceful incident, one of the major characters whose dress was torn to shreds as he got beaten to a pulp, made the news again. The controversial senator’s name will not be mentioned on this page, lest it desecrates this column and offends the sensibility of decent folks. The hilarious character in a fit of decadent rage allegedly threatened to beat up and impregnate a fellow senator.

    At the backdrop of these shameful proceedings, you could be forgiven for likening the National Assembly to a mental asylum – apology to rational, decent lawmakers. There is no gainsaying the fact that the upper and lower legislative chambers move epic clowning, violence and tomfoolery into the open air of gangsterism and debauchery.

    In the Eighth Assembly, institutions and culture faded to irrelevance as the ‘honourable’ legislators mutated into impediments to progress; more worrisome was their feverish quest to tame and woo the Executive into a sleazy romance, having succeeded with the Judiciary.

    But President Muhammadu Buhari would have none of that; the retired General from Daura nurtured a different view of governance, one that left him perched on a two-legged stool of contrived supremacy and invincibility to onslaught by antagonists in the Legislature and the Judiciary.

    Last dispensation, lawmakers loyal to the embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki, considered his interrogation by the EFCC and trial by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), an affront and slight on the honour of the country’s National Assembly.

    Many of the aggrieved lawmakers claimed President Buhari was trying to tame and pocket them. But they were only being mischievous with the truth.

    In truth, Buhari sought to eradicate diseased plants from the nation’s fields of enterprise even as he sowed sickly seeds under the roof of the Nigerian barn house. Crucial appointments he made and wanton concessions he approved of, apparently in the spirit of political expediency, neutered the impact of his anti-corruption crusade. And his antagonists in the legislative and judicial arms of government were quick to finger the specks in his eyes.

    Now, a desperate thing has happened; shady characters masquerading as patriots within the country’s Ninth Assembly, have coalesced to thwart Buhari’s renewed bid to unmoor the predatory and corrupt, from their holy place of sleaze within and outside the circuits of governance and industry.

    The current National Assembly, like its predecessor, is infested by shades of poorly, selfish characters. Thus, Nigeria’s hope rests on the Executive and the Judiciary – the Presidency in particular, as most governors still personify the worst of Nigeria’s afflictions.

    Last dispensation, Buhari and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, cut a portrait of hope and prosperity for the nation by their fairly touted distaste for corruption and their predilection to truly serve.

    This dispensation, their leadership rides on a great deal of presumption and moral baggage. Although they symbolise hope, prudence and the capacity to redeem the country’s badly worn and bastardised institutions, their inclination to shun unchaste expediences would ennoble their leadership and prepare Nigeria for the journey to the attainment of an ideal state.

    Going forward, Buhari must shun the compromises and expediences that rendered him conflicted in personal and administrative ethics during his first term. Certain appointments he made and politics he played, accentuated the ridiculous bent of his presumed bigotries. Hence the catalogue of failures and inaction listed in his wake.

    His cabinet ministers, for instance, were dubious change agents feigning his moral and growth crusade. Like certain governors and lawmakers operating on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), they epitomised a moral, philosophical duplicity.

    They negated and rejected the strife of contraries by which true, positive ‘change’ evolves. Hence the parlous performance and exaggerated growth figures churned out by their ministries.

    President Buhari, of course, must be aware of their fraudulence and failures as a bitter reality of his first term. If he isn’t, then he must be truly naive and incapacitated by his overwhelming desire to grow bananas out of a pine tree.

    As it is now, Nigeria is caught in the vortex of dysfunctional public institutions and organs of government. The Executive, Legislature and Judiciary crush the hope of the citizenry and stifle the birth of progressive vistas of the future, in a cycle of ethical cannibalism, enacted by male and female tin gods, who attack and retreat in obsessive cycles of victory and defeat.

    In the crushing, bloody symbolism, the Executive faces a frantic conspiracy of the Legislature and Judiciary. The masses are cast as a babe, violently dragged, and mauled by the ogres, who nail her to a rock, bind iron thorns around her head and waist, pierce her palms and feet, and cut her heart out to make it feel the heat and frost of their inordinate hankering for spoils and bloodlust.

    Each organ of government lives on the shrieks and cries of the babe. Together, they nourish from her blood and forcibly suckle from her unformed tits.

    It’s about time we reversed the cycle.

     

  • Dwindling fishes Doron Baga

    HUNGER sprouts where the river recedes in Doron Baga. The village bemoans the decline of its fish market.

    For most of the natives, things started to fall apart in the twilight of 2014, when Boko Haram (BH) insurgents invaded their town, leaving behind a trail of blood and devastation.

    Audu Maitaru, a fisherman, lost “everything” in the chaos. “They killed my father, my pregnant wife and two daughters,” he said, adding that the insurgents took away the little savings he made from his fish business.

    “I am only alive today because I was lucky to have left home to collect a debt owed me by a friend and business partner,” he said.

    Today, the 37-year-old is struggling through grief to rehabilitate himself and resuscitate his moribund fish business.

    Last year, he returned to Doron Baga, hoping to rebuild his home and start afresh. But moving on proved far more difficult than he imagined. Memories of his home in time of peace haunt the widower; his daughters’ hearty laughter, his wife’s playful tantrum and winsome smile, when heavy with child, and the careful racket of his father’s silence as fine rain fell, haunted him day and night.

    Grief-stricken, Maitaru gathered what’s left of his belongings and relocated to  Maiduguri, where hardship on the streets and the Dalori IDP camp, forces him to reconsider his stay in Borno even as you read.

    “I am relocating to Kano. I will go and live with my cousin in the city. He sells bread, egg and tea. He promised to help set me up in the fruits market,” he said.

    Like Maitaru, Abu Momodu lost his livelihood and home when BH insurgents sacked his community in Baga. The 42-year-old cried helplessly as the terrorists abducted his wife, whisking her away to their enclave in Sambisa forest. In 2016, however, she was rescued in the wake of a military onslaught on the base of the terrorist sect.

    Momodu’s wife was rescued along with thousands of fellow captives but to his chagrin, she returned with child. It broke his heart to find out that besides the two-year-old with her, Hadejia (his wife) was four months pregnant for her Boko Haram husband.

    Three weeks after she returned home, the 17-year-old fled to live with her BH husband. “Shaytan has taken over her heart,” said Ibrahim.

    The shock was too much for him to bear. Severely shaken and humiliated, Momodu fled from Baga to Maiduguri, Borno’s capital, where he does menial work and seeks alms to survive. He said it’s more dignifying than staying back to live where he lost his wife and once profitable fish business.

    “My wife made me a laughing stock. While I struggled to make peace with my agony and take her back, she was dying to return to the insurgent who kept her as a sex captive and impregnated her.

    “One day, while I was on a fishing expedition, she stole the N57, 000 I saved from my petty fish trade. It was everything I had. And she absconded from home. She left a note with a neighbour’s wife, promising that her Boko Haram husband would refund the money and the dowry I paid on her. She said she could no longer survive on my meagre earnings from fish,” said Momodu.

    Unlike Maitaru and Momodu, Abubakar Ibrahim witnessed no hideous massacre of his family, but he lost his livelihood after Boko Haram militants drove him from his village more than a year ago. He is now finding his feet again in Chad with the help of a UNHCR-backed project.

    A father with 16 children and two wives, he was among the hundred refugees or thereabouts, who were recently given the chance to fish at a camp near Tagal, a small community on one of the many inlets of Lake Chad in Western Chad.

    There is no gainsaying that fishing is important to Doron Baga as well as the northeast regional economy. From the local market in Borno, fish is transported across the country and into neighbouring markets in Cameroon, Niger and Chad, whose borders converge at the lake.

    The prolonged insurgency has, however, led to a dramatic decline in the abundance of artisanal fishermen in the region. Fishing communities along the Lake Chad basin have suffered an exodus of fishermen and fish traders to presumably safer havens within and outside the country.

    Consequently, there has been a general decline in fish abundance and artisanal fishing in the region, following an overall decline with a yearly pattern prevalent in 2015, 2016 and 2017, according to fish merchants in the area.

    More than 2.9 million people in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe will face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity and require urgent food assistance between June and August 2019, the most recent Cadre Harmonisé (CH) analysis indicates.

    This figure represents a slight decrease from the estimated 3.0 million people who were in need during the same period last year.

    Due to the stringent conditions in the region, about 10 to 20 people per group are forced to share one canoe for fishing activity in a new humanitarian scheme. The groups are given boats by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the Development Society of Lake Chad (SODELAC). With only one boat per group, the fishermen have to share everything, including their catch. Some have borrowed nets from the locals and they share their fish with them.

    From December, 2014 through January 2015, over 2, 000 people were killed within and around Doron Baga by BH insurgents, fueling a mass exodus across the lake to the Chadian shores.

    While many Nigerian locals suffered internal displacement, seeking refuge in less volatile communities nearby or the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, more locals have been forced to seek refuge across the lake in neighbouring countries.

    For instance, over 7,000 Nigerian refugees have landed on the Chadian side of the lake, where they are living in the Dar es Salam camp, just outside the town of Bagasola.

    An ecological catastrophe bordered by four African countries: Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad, is not only an ecological catastrophe but it is fast becoming a very human disaster as well.

    Lake Chad has shrunk to less than 10 percent of its original size, according to figures from the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC).

    “The lake has receded from (a surface area of) 25,000 square kilometres to less than 2,000 sq km in the past 30 years. It keeps drying up due to climatic conditions and human activities at the up-stream,” stated Dr Ibrahim Goni, a geologist at the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), in Borno State.

    “We have seen drastic reduction in rainfall in 40 years. Rainfall has reduced by half, from 800 millimetres (per year) in the 1960s to around 400 millimetres at the moment,” Goni said, adding that this has resulted in incessant drought.

    Worse still, rivers and the tributaries that feed the lake have shrunk due to poor rainfall, which seriously reduces the volume of water they empty into the lake.

    Upstream of the lake in Nigeria, catches are dwindling as a result of low volumes of water in the Hadejia river, one of the tributaries of the Komadugu-Yobe river that eventually empties into Lake Chad.

    The spread of a species of cattail reed (Typha australis – known locally as kachalla) is also creating problems for fishers and farmers alike. The tall, deep-rooting and fast-spreading reed has been rapidly spreading along the river since the Tiga dam was completed in the 1970s. The altered flow of water through the river system allowed shallow water to stand for longer periods, perfect conditions for the spread of kachalla, particularly on the fertile flood plains adjoining the river.

    Fishing is made more difficult where the reeds choke waterways. Kachalla also provides an ideal habitat for the destructive quelea bird, huge flocks of which frequently destroy crops just before harvest.

    The drying-up of the lake water and deterioration of the production capacity of its basin have affected all the socio-economic activities, leading to increased pressure on the natural resources and conflicts between the populations.

    In addition to the approximately 60 per cent decline in fish production, there has been degradation of pasturelands, leading to shortage of dry matter estimated at 46.5 per cent in certain places as far back as 2006, reduction in the livestock population, and threat to biodiversity, according to experts.

    In the beginning…

    Before Boko Haram struck in 2013, Doron Baga’s fish industry constituted a significant portion of the economy of Borno State. Dwindling fortunes, however, beset the sector as the insurgency got bloodier.

    For instance, about 58 fishermen were killed when Boko Haram struck Doron Baga in November, 2014. They reportedly ambushed the victims on a Friday morning as they returned from a fishing expedition. They forced them off their boats, dispossessed them of their haul and slit their throats.

    Earlier on May 1, 2013, a BH terror squad beheaded some fishermen in the same area. Thereafter, the sect launched attacks on military units and seized trucks conveying fishes from Doron Baga to Maiduguri.

    Investigations by the Nigerian Army revealed that the terrorist sect used proceeds from its robbery operations to fund its terror campaign in the area. As the situation aggravated, thousands of fishermen and traders fled to safety in Maiduguri, while some crossed the border into neighbouring countries, Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic.

    In response to the worsening situation, the military authorities shut down the Baga-Maiduguri route in late 2014 thus grounding commercial activities in the area, the fish business in particular.

    Following mop up operations and displacement of BH insurgents in the area, military authorities reopened the Baga-Maiduguri business route, and activities commenced in full swing.

    The supply of fish from Baga to various places within and outside Borno State officially commenced on Tuesday, August 1, 2016 at the Doron Baga Fish Market.

    However, the fish industry remained dormant until October, 2017.

    The reopening of the Maiduguri-Baga road by the military reignited hope for fish dealers and consumers in the region, no doubt. Prior to its closure, the route served a crucial role as the main channel by which fish dealers and traders conveyed fish to the suburban markets, where many households that depend on fish diet for business and consumption, made their purchases.

    Sekiya Abdullahi, a smoked fish retailer, stated that although the reopening of the trade route was greeted with a wave of joy by fish traders and consumers in the Maiduguri and environ, the industry is yet to attain the vibrancy of its past.

    The Doron Baga fish market

    The Doron Baga fish market is located about six kilometres from Baga town, which is about one 196 kilometres from Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. This landing site, on the shores of Lake Chad, used to be the biggest fish market in the whole of northeast of Nigeria.

    In the market, the marketing channel of dried fish is divided into two parts comprising wholesalers and retailers of fresh and already processed fish. The wholesalers and retailers of fresh fish are located on the upper part of the channel followed by raw fish processors who also sell the processed fish. The raw fish processors buy from the wholesalers and sell through commission agents or directly to wholesalers of already dried fish, who then sell to the retailers and consumers. There are also retailers of raw fish who buy raw fish from producers and wholesalers, processed it through fish processors, before selling to the consumers.

    On the lower part of the channel are wholesalers of dried fish who use the services of commission agents to buy from fish processors, who are wholesalers of processed dried fish or buy directly from the processors and sell to retailers and consumers.

    The flow of goods and services from their origin (producer-fishermen) to the final destination (consumer) involves along the channel, agents who perform physical functions in order to obtain economic benefit. The market channel for dried fish in Maiduguri metropolis, for instance, is as long as there are many intermediaries in the marketing system, resulting in high price.

    difference in prices between producers and urban consumers.

    In his analysis of the economics of the fish business, Dr. Waziri Ahmed Gazali of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), affirmed that the transportation of fish from Doron-Baga to Maiduguri and to the rest of Nigeria is a profitable business.

    The volume of traffic from Doron Baga to Maiduguri and other parts of Nigeria is largely determined by the season of fishing as well as by the market days of settlements along the Nigerian shores of Lake Chad.

    For instance, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are usually brisk days for Doron Baga. These days, being the market days for the settlement, witness the greatest business transactions during which hundreds of cartons and sacks, worth of millions of Naira, are loaded on to the waiting trucks for transportation to Maiduguri and from there to cities such as Lagos, Enugu, Ibadan, Onitsha and Ilorin.

    Expert analysis estimates the Borno fish industry at N1.4 billion monthly. Published by YENews, the analysis shows that in spite of the constraints, a total of 10,000 boxes can leave the market weekly to different parts of the country.

    In the market’s ‘hidden economies, 10,000 boxes of fish sold at N35,000 each amounts to N350million weekly.Thus in a month, N1.4 billion worth of fish will leave the market. On full-scale production, the quantity is likely to be two to three folds more, according to the analysis.

    Allegations of extortion

    The Doron Baga fish market operates twice in a month during which seven to 10 truckloads of smoked fish leave for Maiduguri.

    Traders, however, lamented unfair levies, claiming that they are forced to pay N2, 500 to fishery association officials, who unilaterally hijack the transportation of fishes from Baga to Maiduguri, in collusion with military officers. They claimed that before the conflict, traders paid N2,500 per truck but the levy was radically amended to N2,500 per carton. Each truck contains about 1,500 cartons of fishes, that amounts to N3.75 million per truck.

    This, according to Idrissu Abubakar, a fish dealer, has led to an increase in the price of fishes. At a point, a carton of fish, which cost between N15, 000 and N20, 000, sold at N35, 000.

    In response to the claims, Abubakar Gamandi, chairman of the Nigerian Fishermen and Fisheries, Borno State chapter, dismissed the accusations as unfounded and political. He stressed that the N2,500 charge was on each truck and not per carton of fish.

    Gamandi, who is also the Acting Chairman, Lake Chad Basin Fisheries Association of Nigeria, maintained that he was not receiving any such levy or conniving with the military to extort fish traders as alleged.

    A stitch in time

    To mitigate the impact of the protracted conflict on the natives, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (UN-FAO) and European Union (EU) created a lifeline for fishermen forced out of the Lake Chad due to the insurgency.

    For households affected by the insurgency, the FAO, on April 2, 2019,  launched the first in a series of fish farming clusters across Borno; an initial five fish cluster, which includes 50 individuals, received fish farming kits in Monguno and Jere Local Government Areas in Borno State under a European Union Trust Fund-financed project to restore agriculture-based livelihoods in the state.

    Clusters received fish farming starter kits, including fish rearing tanks, fish feed, juveniles, water pumps and other accessories, to enable immediate fish production in a scheme geared to engage about 200 male-headed households in fish farming and train as well as equip a further 100 female-headed households in fish processing and marketing in the state.

    At the backdrop of these noble efforts, the Nigerian government has increased its drive to end the insurgency and secure the livelihoods of the region’s farmers and fishing communities.

    Simultaneously, Boko Haram is making more frantic forays into the region. Yunusa Ya`u, executive director, Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), a northeast-based non-profit, disclosed that the group has been able to effectively neutralise the fish supply from Lake Chad, established new markets in Chad and Niger republic, and use revenue flow from the business to fund its operations.

    “ISWAP has effectively neutralised the biggest fish market in West Africa, the Baga Fish Market situated in Maiduguri, Borno State, instead they have created two major fish markets outside Nigeria, one is in Kusiri in Chad, while Nigerian traders mostly from South Eastern Nigeria now access through Mubi in Adamawa state.

    “The second fish market created by the group is situated in Kinchhandi in Niger Republic where traders from Hadeija in Jigawa and Kano states access for their market stocks,” Ya`u said.

    Before the insurgency disrupted business activities in the northeast, fishermen in Doron Baga embarked on random fishing expeditions without hindrance, to fulfill market demand. Today, they must sail in secret, to evade rampaging insurgents and military blockades.

    It’s all part of a desperate strut that has strangled livelihoods and caused scarcity of a once-staple food.

  • Gateway to the grave

    The tragedy of Ogun State transcends language. Its lurid narrative of bad roads and commuter deaths, ghostly clinics and industry, resonate casualties of London’s Bubonic plague.

    Yet through its miseries, the “Gateway State” heaves to a smorgasbod of political orgasms, because its all that truly matters to vested interests within and outside the state.

    Who cares if the citizenry perish on highways turned death corridors? While the state contracted through spasms of its former governor, Ibikunle Amosun’s insipid lusts, for instance, President Muhammadu Buhari honoured him with state visits.

    If Ogun people nursed any hope of attaining succour by Buhari’s recent visit to the state, they have been schooled. In a deliberate, measured tenor, Mr. President commended Amosun for his performance and affirmed, that, the governor had prepared very well for governance.

    He also said: “I congratulate Amosun for having the foresight and saving enough resources to ensure his footprint remains permanent, very clever person. The infrastructure he took me through, the flyovers, the bridges, the hospitals and this complex are first class. He has done very well for himself and for Ogun State.”

    Thus by such pricey words and a patronising smile, Buhari ennobled Amosun’s “legacy projects.” So doing, he ignored the fact, that, the Adire Mall at Itoku market, the Judicial Complex along Kobape road, the amphitheatre at the city centre and the renovated old Governor’s office at Oke-Ilewo, are mere powder blur, Amosun’s esthetic dressing of the gashes and sores inflicted on the state by his ineffectual leadership.

    How relevant is the “250-bed ultramodern hospital” at Oke Mosan to poor, helpless mothers and newborns dying by maternal/infant mortality across Ogun State’s rural enclaves, where Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) have been transformed into goat pens and a playground for rodents?

    Of what use is the Wasinmi International Airport in Ewekoro Local Government Area(LGA), where rural folk are choking and dying under a vicious cloud of cement dust and poisonous lead, carelessly discharged into their communities, rivers and farms, by LafargeWAPCO Plc, in collusion with government officials?

    The purported disbursement of a N500 million compensation to 5,000 farmers in the 20 villages of Wasinmi, affected by the international airport project, reignites echoes of Amosun’s legendary rice pyramids, no doubt.

    That Buhari publicly acknowledged the “shrewdness” and “foresight” of the immediate past governor of Ogun State is simply one way to look at the issue.

    On the flipside, the president’s carefully chosen words: his allusion to Amosun as a “very clever person,” who “has done very well for himself and the state,” bears shrill, indigestible undertones, perhaps.

    The president could have called Amosun “brainy” or “brilliant” but he opted to use “clever” not minding its uncomplimentary synonyms. Whatever the true import of Buhari’s words, Amosun’s contrived accolades hover in an interpretative cloud, the consequence of his fabricated super-self.

    Aside the wildly glamourised “legacy projects,” Buhari lacks adequate knowledge of the reality of travelling and living in Ogun State on Amosun’s watch.

    The president could, however, be forgiven for failing to see through the smokescreen of Amosun’s “legacy projects.” Having landed in the state via the presidential chopper, NAF 540, Buhari was spared the horror of travel on Ogun State’s death roads.

    In a saner clime, Buhari would opt for road travel, from Lagos to Oke Mosan, if only to feel the pulse of the electorate about his leadership. But the presidential cabinet understands the folly of imperiling Buhari via such road travel. How would it seem to expose the president to interminable traffic, on a highway, where containers fall off articulated trucks to crush commuters to death?

    Thus when his chopper touched down at the State Secretariat, at exactly 10:30 a.m, Buhari probably kept to time and avoided traffic, unlike thousands of imperiled folk travelling through Ogun State’s deathly corridors, every day.

    Were Buhari in Amosun’s shoes, would he become stonily deaf and blind to the transit townships’ grief for eight years?

    There used to be a death trap at Owode junction, just before you get to Ifo. Today, that dangerous pothole has birthed numerous craters, incessantly claiming lives and property in ghastly auto accidents.

    The gory picture accompanying this article, for instance, shows an accident that reportedly occured at the Techno-Ashimolowo axis of Ifo, on the Lagos/Abeokuta highway, recently.

    The lives of poor, helpless residents of Ijoko, Agoro, Ijako, Iyana-Ilogbo, Ilepa, continually expire on Ogun State’s muddy and badly cratered roads. The devastation persists in Alade, Elekunmefa, Imise, Onihale, Singer, to mention a few, and to residents and traders of Lusada, Atan-Ota and Igbesa in the Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area of the state, the roads leading to their communities are nightmarish and inimical to growth.

    For the over 70 industries located in the Atan-Agbara region of Ogun State, the distressing road network constitutes a major hindrance to productivity as they lose goods and vehicles worth millions of naira to road accidents.

    Ugliness subsists in Lafenwa, Aiyetoro, Olugbode and various communities along Itele road. More roads present an eyesore at Oju-Ore, Ilo-Awela and Oke-Aro, Toll-gate junction, Joju, Temidire and environ, because these hotspots and scenes of multiple deadly accidents were inconsequential to Amosun’s “legacy” venture.

    As the eyesore festered, Amosun’s government claimed to have spent about N174 billion on federal road repairs, yet till his tenure expired, neither the governor nor his lieutenants could convincingly articulate, how such expenditure was made.

    Was it on the riverine bridge at Alagbole, Akute, where commuters wade through a stagnant river of mud, everyday?

    Lest we forget the people of Ewekoro, who are still dying, slowly, from the poisonous fumes persistently discharged into their communities by LafargeWAPCO Plc. A five-part investigative series of the cement giant’s unwholesome activities in the area was fitfully scorned and condemned by Amosun’s government, until it spurred his government to stage a theatrical intervention, which eventually produced a remedy that barely addressed the health and developmental challenges foisted by LafargeWAPCO on its host communities.

    A careful reconsideration of Amosun’s antics en route the recently concluded general elections, may leave you marvelling at the absurdities symptomatic of the ex-governor’s tenure. President Buhari, for instance, got pelted with missiles by APM flunkies, on Amosun’s watch. Not quite gubernatorial perhaps. Apology to Omatseye.

    The jury is out. Ibikunle Amosun failed to live up to his hyperbolic cant. His radical theatricality, no doubt, extinguished the bright beams of hope radiated by his leadership during his first term.

    Notwithstanding, Camp Amosun would crucify this writer as yet another detractor. They will conveniently forget my humble challenge, four years ago, to write glowingly of Amosun’s achievements, if he ever fully matured into a competent administrator and statesman. Did he?

    To Amosun’s frantic apologists, I pray, May Almighty God, in His infinite justice, make your lives evolve exactly the way Ogun State evolved under the leadership of Ibikunle Amosun. May He make your twilight become what Ogun State became by the governorship of Ibikunle Amosun. Amen.

    Nonetheless, Amosun has earned himself a senate seat and the possibility of reprieve.