The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • A president trapped in age of feudal lords

    A president trapped in age of feudal lords

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    President Buhari’s last week interview with Arise Television did not reveal too many new things about him. He remains stiff and set in his ways, an image maker’s nightmare. Haunted by his sense of self- righteousness, he believes he is on a messianic mission as a former military officer, the custodian our constitution. It also confirmed that although a democratically elected, President Buhari remains stranded in the age of feudalism where the lords value honour and loyalty of their serfs who must be bound by oath of allegiance. It is not an accident that most of his loyal gatekeepers are unable to tell him the truth.

    And with a mindset of a feudal lord, it is not a surprise he sees politics as a civil war, with nothing but disdain for bargaining which is the badge of honour in deeply divided societies that are serious about achieving unity in diversity.

    By celebrating his achievements and his challenges, the interview also reinforced what we have always known – that Buhari believes he knows what the people want without asking them. For him, devolution of power for instance, is federal, state and LGAs despite Nduka Obaigbena’s lead about ceding some of the items on the exclusive list to create a residual list.

    Despite mouthing restructuring during his 2011 failed presidential bid, having restructuring as part of APC manifesto in 2015 and receiving a copy of APC special committee report on restructuring, he still sticks to his November 2018 claim that “There are too many people talking lazily about restructuring in Nigeria. Unfortunately, people are not asking them individually what they mean by restructuring”. He conveniently forgot Pa Ayo Adebanjo’s explanation that it means “autonomy, of his Yoruba people (and other ethnic nationalities) within Nigeria as an independent entity, self-sustained but not subservient to any part in a true federation”, and his admonition that “Those who don’t understand restructuring should go and read the agreement reached by our founding fathers: the Awolowos, the Azikiwes and the Sardaunas as sanctioned by the colonialists in London in 1954 and implemented in 1960″.

    But despite widespread criticism of the president’s outing, I think he also spoke the truth to our politicians who take pleasure in playing the ostrich. According to him “Two southwest governors came to me to say cattle rearers were destroying farms in their states. I asked them what happened to the grassroots security panels from traditional rulers to local governments who meet regularly to identify the root of their problems and identify crooks within their environment and apprehend the criminals, they’re trying to push responsibilities to others”.

    I think the southwest governors can do more by investing in intelligence gathering. They can also deploy part of their security votes to equip police in their state as done by Lagos State. They should also identify local collaborators especially top civil servants with a number of cattle heads in custody of Fulani herdsmen, the Yoruba ritualists and the local people involved in food supply chain.

    Nigerian governors know how to procure arms for youths during election only to face Abuja when confronted by their demons. Although Ayo Fayose was one of the few governors that creatively addressed the herdsmen menace in Ekiti State, but it is also on record that he once chased out his state’s elected lawmakers with armed thugs with whom he also secured the state boundaries. Fayose has his parallels in Rivers, Ogun, Delta and Borno and other states.

    The president was also spot-on when he spoke about the landlocked status of the southeast. Unfortunately, Igbo elite often like to live in denial. While pictures of armed thugs burning police stations in southeast and south-south cities have gone viral on social media, some Igbo leaders including Senator Kalu Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State was saying it is not in the nature of Igbo to burn properties.

    Those currently abusing Buhari in order to remain relevant, having lost the initiative to IPOB, should remember the whole of the south-south up to Port Hacourt was overrun within the first few months of the civil war because the Igbo built their castle in the air by trusting their mistrusting minorities. Today IPOB is busy drawing up maps while ignoring the warning of south-south leading lights including former President Jonathan, Governor Wike and many others who have denounced inclusion of their land in Biafra without consultation.

    But as indicated above, the president, trapped in the past, has lost touch with reality. Asked about the rampaging herdsmen, the president could only remember the Nigerian Fulani herdsmen who went around with stick and cutlass. He gave no indication he was aware of the marauding Fulani herdsmen that was in 2015 named not just ‘a terrorist group but the fourth deadliest in the world’ on account of its blood-thirsty exploits and brutal killing of 1,229 in 2014 including 200 in Galadima in one day.

    The president remembered only our stick-wielding Fulani herdsmen and not those who wrote him a 70-page letter before his inauguration warning that “the Boko Haram insurgency would be a child’s play if their demand for “an un-hindered grazing access in areas he identified as ‘trouble spots’ spread across 75 local government areas across 21 states including “ Oye Local Government in the northern part of Ekiti, Shaki in Oyo State, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Bauchi, Gombe, Yola” are not met.

    Of course, we have no evidence that when the president spoke romantically about Fulani herdsmen, he had in mind those herdsmen who according to Paul Ede, who led the coalition of protesting civil society groups to the National Assembly described “those that killed about 400 before chasing out about 7000 farmers and their families from their homes and took over the villages with their 5000 cows as ‘invaders’

    They did not include the group that in 2013 was credited with mindless murder of about 60 women and children seeking refuge in church in Plateau State while those who went out for their funeral a few days later including a serving senator, Gyang Dantong, and Gyang Fulani, the Majority Leader of the Plateau State House of Assembly, who were equally murdered.

    The president’s answer to the question about his party and rotational presidency once again confirmed he has neither faith nor respect for political party and professional politicians. Perhaps that explains why he did not constitute a government for six months and that of other 500 small government he needed to prosecute the party’s agenda for over a year.

    Buhari who contested with Dr. Chuba Okadigbo as running mate in 2003 and lost; in 2007 with Edwin Ume-Ezeoke who after losing abandoned him to join the ruling party describing Buhari as ‘having no electoral value in ANPP’; and a man who contested with Tunde Bakare in 2011 and lost but won in 2015 using the APC platform probably believed those who described him as ‘an asset to the party’ that made him president after his fourth attempt.

    That mindset perhaps also explains why he treats party stalwarts on whose back he rode to power so shabbily. The president was also guilty of anti-party offences. He once asked voters to vote for him but for other parties of their choice in other elections. When the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) on November 19, 2018 ordered its aggrieved members to stop litigating the acrimonious party primaries in line with Article 20 of their party constitution, President Buhari often criticized for disobeying court orders, suddenly became advocate of rule of law declaring – “We can’t deliberately deny people of their rights, the court should always be the last resort for the dissatisfied”.

  • A tale of two interviews

    A tale of two interviews

    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.

  • The monsters we made

    The monsters we made

    By Olatunji Ololade

    The blood-thirsty squad that invaded the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi, Yobe State, comprised adolescent boys. Moving in deathly herds, they invaded the high school on February 25, 2014, like a storm cloud split by snaky thunderbolts. They stabbed through the night with a huge spear of mayhem and pumped hot bullets into the students while they slept, killing 59 boys.

    Eyewitnesses said they threw explosives into dorms as they sprayed the rooms with gunfire. Some of the students who tried to escape through the windows landed right before the terrorists, who slit their throats. Save a few survivors, the rest were burnt to death.

    There was no outrage in the wake of the massacre. Just silence. Convenient disconcerting quiet.

    Two months later, on April 14 – 15 to be precise, another batch of terrorists stormed the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, and abducted 276 female students aged 16 to 18. And all hell was let loose as women’s rights activists, international and local NGOs started a campaign to free the girls. The movement gained global appeal as prominent figures identified with hashtags in the interest of the girls.

    Through the hubbub, nobody paid a good mind to a curious development concerning both attacks, and several other terrorist attacks afterward: the majority of the perpetrators were boys at the cusp of adolescence. Some of the survivors of the attacks attested to this fact.

    Joseph David aka Ibrahim Al-Hajjar, a Boko Haram commander, would subsequently reveal to me in an exclusive interview that he led a troop of at least 150 teenagers and underage boys in Sambisa forest.

    David also forcibly married two of the Chibok girls: Precious a.k.a Faridah and Elizabeth a.k.a Amina, as co-wives to his first wife, Faridah, who he abducted from Madagali, in Borno State.

    A dangerous storm is brewing as you read. The boys we ignored have learnt the ropes of savage being yet nobody gives a hoot. At least, we would worry what becomes of us when they set our neigbourhoods on fire in a manic search for the warmth and attention we denied them.

    There is the argument that these boys are results of polygyny-gone-wrong in the Islamic north; self-styled intellectuals and critics are quick to point out that Islamic polygyny is a problem that afflicts the north with hordes of almajiri, who are oft recruited as cannon fodder for ethno-religious crisis and terrorism. They recommend monogamy as a better alternative. This is a cheeky and self-serving argument.

    Islam and its precepts of polygyny cannot be blamed for the protracted violence in the north. The violence was borne of extreme politics and governance failure and must be blamed on the politicians, groups, and individuals who are abusing the system in pursuit of selfish political, ethnoreligious, coital, emotional lusts.

    How do we explain the thousands of children birthed outside wedlock in the southern parts of the country? Many of them are products of broken marriages and serial monogamy. There are several cases in which children are sired by a parent across successive monogamous marriages and informal cohabitation; one marriage breaks down, and the parent moves on to another partner, and so on. Lest we forget the ubiquitous ‘love-child’ and products of high school teen lust.

    Children sired via such arrangements are often sent to live with their grannies or forced to live as house helps in the homes of close and distant relatives. Where they stay with an apathetic or extremely busy parent or guardian, they are condemned to the gruesome life of a latchkey child.

    Amid the sullied wave of awareness blowing through the country, these children learn assertiveness the way of the streets; some eventually flee the cold comfort of their parents’ or guardians’ abode – such children are called: ‘Awon omo o sanle.’ They constitute the rippling muscles of teen gangs and cult groups haunting Lagos, Oyo, and other parts of the southwest. While their peers in the northeast and northwest are forcibly recruited by bandits, Boko Haram and ISWAP death squads, they assume a different kind of terror to families, neighbourhoods, and States in the southern parts of the country.

    Hundreds of children are dumped in refuse, school, and public latrines; and subsequently condemned to shady orphanages and remand homes. If they are female, they become easy marks for sex traffickers and drug barons. If male, they end up as political thugs, drug mules, armed robbers, assassins, kidnappers, and gangbangers.

    In Osun, teenagers and young adults fleeing EFCC arrest in Lagos reassembled to practice internet fraud; recently, they rioted against frequent arrests and investigation by the police and EFCC. Many shamelessly identified themselves as ‘Game boys’ (internet fraudsters or Yahoo boys).

    Cut to Lagos, the melting pot of turf battles and teenage gang wars. The city grapples with the menace of teen cults including the Awawa Boys, One Million Boys, Fadeyi Boys, Ereko Boys, Akala Boys, Ijesha Boys, Awala Boys, Shitta Boys, Nokia Boys, No Salary Boys, One Hour Boys, Oshodi Boys, No Mercy Boys, Aguda Boys, Night Cadet, Black Scorpion, Red Scorpion, Akamo Boys, Omo Kasari Confraternity, Para Gang Confraternity (mainly teenage girls), Japa Boys and Koko Boys, among many others.

    What started innocently as a group of minors begging people for money eventually metamorphosed into a gang of fearsome underage and teen cultists and armed robbers of ages 6 to 19.

    More worrisome is Awawa’s incursion into primary schools. Just recently, 12 pupils of the Egan Community School, between the ages of 6 and 16, were reportedly caught after their initiation into Awawa, in Alimoso area of Lagos. But for a Guidance and Counselling teacher at the school, their initiation would have taken place undetected.

    The pupils were allegedly recruited by a 16-year-old girl, who attends a sister school, Egan Senior Grammar in Igando, Lagos, and were undergoing training in order to become future hitmen of the cult.

    The Awawa Boys operate in rag-tag squads of four, five, seven, 10 to 15 boys bearing deadly arms including baseball bats, clubs, meat cleavers, daggers, crude metal bars, ‘two by two’ (wooden planks with nails) and forks. For large missions, they operate as flash mobs of 100 to 150 boys.

    They terrorise Agege,  Iyana-Ipaja, Ibari, Ashade, Dopemu, Ogba, Ifako-Ijaiye, Abule-Egba, Ifako-Ijaye, Agege, Isale Oja, Ogba Ashade, Aluminium Village, and other parts of Lagos mainland and island.

    Though predominantly a cult of boys, females including prepubescent girls are recruited into the gang. An Awawa Boy can be identified by a drippy teardrop tattoo beside the left eye.

    Members of the cult are drug dependent. They binge on psychotropic substances including omi gota (gutter juice), colorado, pamilerin, codeine, cannabis, rohypnol and tramadol. And members nurse a morbid fascination for raping older women and also young girls.

    These are the monsters we created. Growing up, all they needed were exemplary masculine role models to emulate but what society offered them was an ethos of manhood that they could dumb down to.

    Nigeria treats the boy-child as an affliction to society and females, in particular; he is cast as inconsequential in the scheme of things. In truth, he is.

    This minute, he is marching as a terrorist or armed bandit, to abduct, to rape, and kill perhaps, the daughters we frantically empower and protect.

    This is the world we built; a cosmos of ‘strong women’ reliant on Atlas’ strength, yet imperiled by his shrug.

  • G7 Summit in Carbis Bay Cornwall and the rest of us

    G7 Summit in Carbis Bay Cornwall and the rest of us

    By Jide Osuntokun

    Welcome back to the Club” was how Immanuel Macron the president of France greeted President Joe Biden at the recent G7 summit that held in Cornwall England. This was the first major outing of President Biden since becoming the president of the USA in January following the tumultuous and unpredictable years of President Donald J. Trump. The G7 is an informal group of the most industrially advanced liberal democracies in the world consisting of the USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy. After the collapse of communist Soviet Union, the Russian Federation was brought in to make it the G8 but rapprochement with Russia did not last long before it was kicked out because of Russia’s aggressive behavior in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and in the Baltic and generally its involvement in meddling in democratic elections in the West.

    This particular meeting is the first meeting when the leaders of the G7 met in person since the last meeting in Quebec Canada in 2019 when President Trump had a public spat with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the host of the G7 leaders and called the leader of an important neighbor a liar. Trump also refused to sign the joint communiqué after the summit. The Cornwall summit lacked the anxieties and drama of the Trumpian era in American foreign policy. Biden’s inaugural speech in January promised to return the United States to the driving seat of global diplomacy. He seems to have achieved this already. First he joined the Paris Protocol to protect the global climate. He then raised the issue of returning to the nuclear agreement with Iran, the so called P5 + 1 in which the  permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany entered into a complex agreement with Iran  to prevent the Islamic Republic from  refining uranium to nuclear  bomb grade level. Negotiations about this are ongoing in Vienna. The virtual adoption of Biden’s “build back better” which was his mantra during his election campaign showed how dominant the American influence in the G7 is.

    The members also embraced the idea of rapidly moving to a green future of possibly zero green gas emissions to meet the target of not more than 1.5 degrees rise in global temperature. In the final communiqué of the Cornwall summit, the criticism of China and Russia is from the Biden’s policy book so to say. There was a promise of $650 billion loan to the IMF for lending to poor countries to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. President Biden promised to donate to the WHO for onward distribution to the poor countries 500 million shots of the coronavirus vaccines. The British added 100 million of their own while Japan promised to donate 30 million shots and the European Union promised to round it up to one billion. The WHO however said it needs 11 billion rather than one billion shots. This Is presumably why the G7 promised to loan $650 billion to the IMF to assist poor countries to buy Covid vaccines.

    Whatever may be the shortcomings of the G7, one cannot blame it for inaction provided it carries out its promises and commitment. The other vaccines producing countries like China, India and Russia can pitch in and add their own donations. The solution really is to share the technical and scientific know-how of vaccines production with countries that can produce them. This is the position of South Africa, South Korea, India and presumably Australia. But it appears the British, the Germans and the Americans do not want to breach copyright laws and traditions of their countries. Such a breach, it was argued, can discourage innovation and pharmaceutical research. There was also an agreement on corporate taxes among the G7 so as to have a level playing field to eliminate some countries being disadvantaged by very low taxes by their competitors to attract investors.

    One item on the communiqué that attracted my attention is the commitment of the G7 to match China’s spending on the  so-called “new Silk Road “and transportation grid all over the world that is allegedly giving the Chinese an advantage over their western competitors. Certainly, Nigeria can benefit from the oncoming competition between China and the West to assist us in improving our transportation grid. If the G7 manages to carry out their green commitment, countries like Nigeria had better be prepared for a hard time of not finding market for their hydrocarbons. The G7 invited South Africa, South Korea, India and Australia to observe the summit negotiations. For us in Nigeria, the irrelevance of our country fighting over cows route is made very clear. We have never had it so bad.

    The point needs to be made that the G7 is an informal club whose secretariat is ad hoc moving from one summit to the next hosting country. There is no certainty that these commitments will be met and there are no sanctions to enforce the commitments entered into by the members. One issue that has attracted me is the strident name-calling of China and Russia by Biden who is also trying to dragoon their western allies to their Chinese confrontation. The American president has also carried his strident campaign to the NATO summit which met immediately after the G7 meeting.

    I wonder what Joe Biden is about in his country’s relations with China and Russia. It is clear that America sees China as a competitor for global influence. America is right to feel the challenge of China especially with the phenomenal growth of Chinese economy even during this coronavirus pandemic that was unleashed on the world from Wuhan, China. It is amazing that China somehow seemed to have overcome the effect of the plague with few mortality compared with over 600,000 souls in America alone and millions in the West. The problem Biden is going to have to contend with is that some countries in Europe are somehow dependent on the Chinese market and Chinese investment. Germany for example has China as its biggest market overseas. It follows therefore that the Europeans will hedge their bet on anti-Chinese criticism. As for Russia, the Europeans share same continent with the Russians. America is far away and the Europeans in spite of the NATO shield feel they need to have an independent power of their own to serve as a deterrent against Russian conventional and Strategic forces.  They are also concerned about American unreliability which manifested itself during the Trump administration when Trump said he did not believe in Article 5 which says an attack on any NATO member is an attack on all. This sentiment is very strong in France and has always been there since the time of General Charles de Gaulle and France’s development of its force de frappe as its own nuclear deterrence separate from that of the United States. Biden will do whatever is necessary to convince American allies that no matter who is president in the USA, NATO is a critical component of American Defence and foreign policies. This he feels is critical at a time when Vladimir Putin is determined to put Russia back as co-equal of America in global power.

    Biden seems to play open diplomacy. He has made everyone to know what he was going to demand of Russia and China even before meeting their leaders. This is not the tradition of European diplomacy which is not always open. After the First World War which was blamed on secret diplomacy, America under President Woodrow Wilson championed the idea of “open covenants” and was supported by the Left particularly in Britain which favored “democratic control” of foreign policy. This idea of “open covenants” was included in one of the Articles of the League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations. But since then the world has reverted to secret diplomacy but it seems Biden represents the extreme example of open diplomacy.

    One wonders whether it makes sense for America to challenge China and Russia at the same time. This has succeeded in driving Russia into the warm embrace of China. Although China and Russia share a common sometimes disputed borders, where there had been fighting in the past, they are being forced to come together because of their common challenge of American belligerent posture against them. Apart from Russian opposition to NATO extending to its borders and the competition in the Arctic Circle, there are no fundamental reasons why Russia and the USA cannot establish a modus vivendi between these two nuclear weapons states. Russia is no longer an ideological opponent of the USA as it used to be when Soviet Union was a communist state involved in global struggle for ideological domination between Washington DC and Moscow. At least superficially Russia is a democracy of the autocratic type. The West will also have to understand Putin’s obsession with his idea of Russia taking care of “Russia abroad”. He must be encouraged to bring his country into the wider world rather than keeping him at arm’s length while the ordinary Russians suffer the consequences of western hostility to their country. This was why I saw some reason in Trump’s warmth to Russia. I honestly don’t see how Russia will kowtow to America unless America was prepared to engage it in physical combat. Instead of the stridency of Biden, it will be wise for America to engage Russia so that the mutual confrontation manifesting in cyber warfare can end.

    As for China and America, the competition between them is inevitable. It is one between an economically dominant country now in decline and a rising Eastern power with all the underlying racist undertones. China is also not particularly popular in Asia despite the showering of billions on loans and grants to countries in South Asia and countries on the Pacific Rim. Recently, America was able to put together a five -country liberal democratic alliance of Australia, India, South Korea, Japan and the USA to try and rein in Chinese aggression in Asia. And most of the ASEAN counties are also suspicious of Chinese intentions. This gives America the chance for diplomacy to contain China. The good thing is that the Chinese and American economies are intertwined with the Chinese holding trillions of United States dollar bonds while the Chinese economy depends on accessibility to American and western markets. In this struggle, both China and America are likely to try to enlist the support of other countries especially African countries. The world seems to be going back to the old days of diplomatic struggle to seek for support in the rest of the world. We seem to be back to the past when non-alignment became the wisest policy for the so-called third world. It is a case of plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose?

  • Abiola: Another anniversary

    Abiola: Another anniversary

    By Gbenga Omotoso

    ELEVEN years after, they just won’t stop talking about him. His strong character, his vision, his wealth and, of course, his women.

    The other day, it was a colleague who remembered when he was on a flight with him. He recalled how the exceptional businessman brought out his wallet from his pocket and flashed a photograph of a woman. He smiled, shook his head in excitement and said huskily: “Every woman wants to be Mrs Abiola; they know it’s a good investment.” The late Chief Moshood Kasimawo Olawale Abiola was referring, according to the journalist returning with him from a soccer match somewhere in East Africa, to a Kenyan professor who fell in love with the accomplished philanthropist.

    Abiola’s story is an open copy. He had .a good run. From an unknown drummer boy to a star accountant, frontline businessman, newspaper publisher and a great politician who taught the military a lesson in how to respect the people’s will. He died fighting to reclaim the mandate he was freely given by Nigerians on June 12, 1993. In fact, here lies the paradox of his life; that in dying, he keeps living — in the hearts of all lovers of democracy. It was another anniversary of his July 7, 1998 death on Tuesday.

    It is yet another opportunity to recall the essence of the late Abiola. If he had been accessible, MKO, as he is fondly called by his large army of admirers, would surely have loved an update on the political landscape. Ever so vivacious, the late Abiola would always enliven a discussion. But what will MKO say about the polity – if the dead could talk? Let’s just imagine one of his numerous calls to the Concord newsroom. Here we go:

    Hello… this is MKO. How’re you?

    Ah! Fine; thank you sir (the reporter is shocked).

    Good. I trust all is well with you.  What’s going on in town?

    It’s the anniversary of your passing on sir. A few days ago, it was June 12, the anniversary of your historic election as President.

    Oh yes! You’re right. What happened?

    There were many events to mark the day. It was a holiday in Lagos where the day is seen as the real democracy day as against the one decreed by some of the forces that stand for everything but democracy.

    In Ekiti, Pascal Bafyau (remember him?), the bumpkinish former labour leader, mounted the rostrum to say that your election was annulled because he was not chosen as your running mate. He said you had an agreement with the military to choose him, but that you bowed to pressure from Social Democratic Party (SDP) governors and chose Amb. Baba Gana Kingibe. He said he it was, in fact, who persuaded you to run. Many thought that was gibberish.

    Bafyau? Aaaaah! (He laughs). I remember him. I think he is suffering from some horrific hallucinations. I never promised to make him my deputy. In any case, I wasn’t the party; the party decided. Besides, why battling to abort a pregnancy when the child is already born? You can’t do that. No!

    Anyway, how is Kingibe, Sai Baba?

    He should be fine sir. He was Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Then they kicked him out after allegations – which I learnt he denied strongly- that he couldn’t draw a line between government work and politics. They said he was nursing a big ambition which was not really stated by his traducers. He was alleged to be holding nocturnal meetings and the authorities wasted no time in showing him the door as soon as, so goes the story, a security report nailed him. The last we heard of Kingibe was that he had been elected last month member of the elitist Nigeria Golf Federation (NGF). And, just yesterday, a Lagos television station, TVC, was showing clips of the June 12 struggle. I saw Kingibe sitting beside you as you delivered that indelible tirade at Epetedo. He was one of those hailing you. Sir…are you there?

    Oh yes! Oma se o (shaking his head). Poor chap. He should have known that “the bigger the head, the bigger the headache”. Remember he, apparently without any deep thought, abandoned our mandate to join Abacha. Even when we asked our prodigal sons to return home, he stayed put, until…

    How are our people in Ogun?

    Oh that! It’s all muddled up sir. The leading lights of the state keep fighting one another, with the leadership sulking over an apparent loss of grip on the situation and blaming it all on external forces, like a baby denied of his lollipop.

    How? I don’t understand. What’s happening?

    The other day, a newspaper published the nude photograph of one of the lawmakers fighting the executive. He was said to be taking an oath to be loyal to the cause of his G15 colleagues. It was degrading in its obscenity and appalling in its conception. Loathsome. But the lawmaker whose photograph was published owned up – many felt there was little else he could have done – and said he was, in fact, photographed with the governor and that the oath was to be loyal to him. Now the public whose voracious appetite for such salacious stories, especially when it borders on sex and nudity, is legendary, won’t stop crying for more. They say the tell-it-all show must go on; the lawmakers should go all the way and cause to be published the photograph of His Excellency at the oath-taking session. The show is, a colleague said yesterday, already sold out, with a flood of bookings that the organisers are battling to cope with.

    The state government, apparently confused about the veracity of the threat, is howling that there are plans to manipulate the computer to configure Governor Gbenga Daniel taking the nude oath. But the public would allow no killjoy. The show must go on, they insist, asking: why jump the gun? Let the photograph be published and leave us to judge its authenticity, they say.

    In Ogun State? Haba! Where are the elders?

    Sir, the elders too are immersed in the mud of intrigues and political chicanery. Chief Olusegun  Obasanjo, the former president, is said to be locked in a bitter quarrel with the governor. On his side are party chiefs and some elected officials.

    Oh! Obasanjo. Remember he was the one who said I wasn’t the messiah Nigeria needed after I had won that election. Then, I…I ..I learnt, he became the biggest beneficiary of the sacrifice that I made. Anyway, I told him then: “You can’t abort a pregnancy when the child is already born.” I understand he stood rigidly against suggestions that I should be honoured for the price that I paid. He and many others don’t know the symbolism of that election. Pity. One day, the story will be told in full.

    It’s already being told sir. There have been so many confessions, half-truths and pure lies. Humphrey Nwosu, the professor who conducted the election and disappeared when he should have declared the result, showed up recently with a book he promised would let us into the invisible drama that led to the June 12 fiasco. It turned out that the man had not been weaned completely from the lethal phobia that drove him into exile. He failed to tell us whether it was true they put a gun to his head and dared him to announce the result. What did your friend Ibrahim Babangida tell him when he was summoned to the Villa? It was an anti-climax.

    What of Ibrahim, the general? You called him my…mmmy  friend. That’s true – or so I thought. But, remember that I once said that with a friend like IBB no one needed an enemy. I never knew water would be the one to cook the fish.

    Sir, till date, IBB remains unrepentant about his role in the annulment of our freest and fairest ever election. He has refused to name the officers who forced him to take that ignoble step.

    The Niger Delta remains Nigeria’s enfant terrible. The President has offered amnesty to militants, but rather than thaw out to allow the oil business go on smoothly, the militants are getting more daring as if to tell the military to go to hell. They say they are fighting poverty amidst wealth.

    You see, let them read Farewell to Poverty, my economic blueprint in which I said by the grace of God in five years, no Nigerian child will go to bed hungry.

    Thank you and God bless.

     

    • Omotoso is Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy
    • This article was first published in The Nation in July 2009
  • The Twitter tunnel

    The Twitter tunnel

    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.

     

  • Statesmen, not prayer warriors

    Statesmen, not prayer warriors

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    As the nation moves dangerously towards the cliff with mounting daily harvest of deaths from bandits’ assault on Nigerians across the land amidst ethnic profiling by Nigerian ethnic nationalities, Obasanjo last Saturday in Abeokuta during the 16th edition of prayer Breakfast organised in his honour by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Ogun State chapter, recommended prayer to God by Nigerians as the answer to the “overwhelming challenges” confronting the nation on many fronts.

    Because the challenges according to him are beyond “what we can handle”, we have to cry to God. “Our land needs to be healed; those in government, executive, legislators, public servants, civil servants, private sector, are overwhelmed, God cannot be overwhelmed. He is omnipotent, omnipresent. I believe God will heal our land”, he had declared with a sense of righteousness.

    OBJ unarguably is a man of great faith. Having missed death by the whiskers during the February 13, 1976 Bukar Dimka-led coup that claimed the life of Murtala Mohammed, his boss and also escaped the fate that befell Yar Adua who was poisoned while both were jointly serving jail term for a phantom coup, Obasanjo has continued to admit receiving an undeserved special favour of God. Who would have been responsible for his change of status from a prisoner to president but God?

    It is therefore understandable why OBJ, in power, chose to listen to only God’s voices even for government policy thrusts rather than official advisers paid through taxpayers’ sweat. He once publicly declared that the God that brought him out of prison to presidential palace would punish him if he fails to listen to his voice. Unfortunately, Obasanjo was the only one who was hearing God’s voice.

    But Obasanjo set out early at dawn because he knew God does not work for man but help only those who help themselves. After trading away MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigerian mandate for Babangida’s illegal contraption called Interim National Government, he started hearing God’s voice assuring him of becoming president in place of the jailed winner of the election. Because he wanted to make sure it was the voice of God, he had to run to Nelson Mandela of South Africa who advised him to follow his instinct and also Desmond Tutu, also of South Africa who told him  ‘you have served God, you have served your people, are you now saying you are tired of serving God and your people?”

    Not satisfied, he sought the spiritual intervention of Pastor E. A. Adeboye who he said later told him “God said you should go.”

    In office, it was difficult to know if all of OBJ’s actions were the result of God’s voices. But what was not in doubt was that he also embarked on self-help. For instance, unable to wean himself off his Yoruba peoples love of the Mosaic love of “an eye for an eye” law, he fell back on Yoruba traditional management of power which probably predates Niccolo Machiavelli, the arch apostle of ‘naked force’ and politics without morality which recommends elimination of all your political enemies along custodian of the secret of your rise to power after victory (afobaje ni oba npa).

    First Obasanjo descended on Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural group responsible for his rejection in the Southwest including his ward during the 1999 election. Using military strategy, he went for Bola Ige, the group’s deputy leader who he said was the only Yoruba he feared in the run-up to the election. He lured him into PDP where he was murdered in his room while serving as Attorney General and Minister of Justice by unknown persons. He completed the humiliation of the Pa Adesanya, the Afenifere leader by luring his daughter to join his government.

    In 2003, he did not wait for God’s voice before out-foxing the Yorba socio-cultural group by rigging all its AD governors except Lagos State out of office. In 2007, following his third-term fiasco, he rigged terminally ill Umaru Yar’Adua into office as president.  Besides establishing himself as an ardent student of Machiavelli while in office, out of office, he has also correctly identified mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building as the sources of our social dislocations.

    In this regard, he had in an 18-page letter titled “Before it is too late”, dated December 2,  2013 accused President Jonathan of spawning a support base of ethnic militants, corrupt politicians and armed militia, all for the personal agenda of political survival.  He went on to pitch his tent with President Buhari who later defeated Jonathan in the 2015 election.

    Following his fall-out with President Buhari, he in another letter dated July 2019  had warned “we are on the precipice and dangerously reaching a tipping point where it may no longer be possible to hold danger at bay because government treated herder/farmers crisis with kid-glove instead of hammer allowing it to develop into banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and killings all over the country”.

    The mindless killings, kidnapping and banditry are but manifestations of the fate that Obasanjo predicted would befall Nigeria if Buhari failed to properly manage our crisis of nation-building. His call for prayers, coming on a day Nigerians were assailed with newspaper headlines such as “Bandits kill 93 in fresh Kebbi, Kaduna attacks; 25 killed by herdsmen in Igangan Oyo State and 53 killed in Ebonyi State, were attempts at playing the ostrich.

    Today out of office, Obasanjo talks of mismanagement of our crisis of nation-building. In office, he heard many voices except that which would have directed him to restructure the country by devolving power to the states. It will therefore appear our leaders only resort to prayers to cover up their failures as politicians. Obasanjo heard God’s voices and was a regular guest at Pastor Adeboye’s prayer crusades. Jonathan in office moved from church to church in Nigeria and to Synagogues in Israel sometimes with indicted ministers. He conveniently forgot to implement the report of the National Conference he set up.

    We already have too many prayer warriors. Gowon has been going around the country praying for our redemption in the past 40 years. Vice President Osinbajo hardly missed any prayer crusade at the Redemption Camp. President Buhari himself prays five times daily. We are told he sometimes leaves guests waiting in order to fulfill his prayer obligation. Besides Redeemed Church and its well-respected overseer, Pastor Adeboye, there is Oyedepo presiding over Canaan land which boasts of the biggest church in the world. There are the Deeper Life Ministries, Mountain of Fire and T.B Joshua’s Synagogue of all nations. Our own Catholic Church has the biggest seminary in the world located in Imo State. Besides our Bishops gave us “prayer for Nigeria” which we recite during mass since June 12 crisis in 1993 and all through the Abacha dark years.

    I think instead of playing the ostrich, Obasanjo should mobilise Nigerians of goodwill and leaders of  Nigerian ethnic nationalities to educate unbending the president  that politics is not a civil war but a process of bargaining and accommodation on the basis of  agreed rules and procedures between cultural groups that have agreed to live together harmoniously; that separatist movements, revolts and insurrections are but manifestations of alienation of aggrieved groups and that  retracing our way back from the brink starts with ensuring the nation-state serves as arbiter between competing ethnic nationalities as against the current perception where the aggrieved believe it serves the interest of only the privileged Fulani ethnic group.

    Obasanjo has demonstrated he understands ‘heavens help only those who help themselves’. Those we today urgently need are not prayer warriors but statesmen.

  • Africa in despair, desperation, despondency and disaster

    Africa in despair, desperation, despondency and disaster

    By Jide Osuntokun

    There is no point denying the fact that the situation of Africa as a whole is dire. We can also say the global condition of the whole world itself is not too good but there is no place on earth as distressed as Africa. There is nothing to cheer us up in Africa. There is no island of tranquility in the chaos that characterizes this continent where man became man if we are to believe the evidence of physical anthropology. It is here that homo erectus became Homo sapiens. But since the beginning of time and the migration of man from Africa to settle in other continents in the world, there has been retrogression rather than progress. God has departed from the House of Israel, so to say, to put it in Biblical parlance.

    The title of this piece derives from the 1979 BBC Reith lecture given then by Professor Ali Mazrui, the Kenyan political scientist who in later years became a towering intellectual. He was quite optimistic about the place of Africa in the world then but I am not that optimistic now seeing the terrible political and economic topography of the continent today.

    Starting from the Maghreb, only Morocco has some semblance of stability and marginal economic development and growth. It’s neighbor, Algeria is being eroded from within by the forces of FIS (Front Islamique de Salut). What you have there is a resuscitation of the FLN (Front de la liberation nationale), the armed Algerian national liberation front that fought French colonialism and the settler French pied noirs who had to leave the country in their millions when General de Gaulle in 1962 felt there was no point fighting against the hurricane of African nationalism and withdrew French forces from that country, ending 130 years of French settler colonialism. Since then, Algeria has not managed to transform itself into a modern state and the president who took over from Ben Bella and Houari Boumedienne, Ahmed Bouteflika overstayed in power until he was rendered useless by the coterie of palace cabal ruling in the name of a sick man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and who could hardly recognize members of his government. The country has not recovered from the immobilism arising from absence of a dynamic leader. Libya, its neighbor to the east is now afflicted by war lordism and foreign intervention from Egypt, Turkey and Russia. The remnants of Ghaddafi’s army and the African mercenaries he recruited to beef up his security have now become a scourge on the whole of the Sahel from Mali across Burkina Faso, Niger, Northern Nigeria and Chad. The entire West Africa is besieged by this Ghaddafi renegades. Egypt itself has replaced the ineffective government of the Islamic brotherhood with a brutal military dictatorship of General Mohammed Abdel Fattah Al Sisi which means Egypt is back to square one and one-man rule until there is another general uprising and another man on horseback comes to salvage the situation.

    The proliferation of light weapons and small arms in the hands of jihadists and ethnic armies and dissidents in the Sahel and the whole of West Africa has led to mass movement of poor people into the few pockets of safety which in turn creates suspicion and irritation among host communities branding them as fifth columnists of jihadist forces lurking in the recesses of ungoverned spaces and forests in the region.  With the exception of Senegal, Benin, and Ghana, the whole of West Africa is a tinderbox waiting to ignite. Guinea is internally divided and enemies of the geriatric Alpha Conde are just waiting for him to expire before the place explodes. Mali is bifurcated between the jihadists in its northern part and the government in Bamako. The chaos in Mali has affected Burkina Faso where hundreds of people were slaughtered recently by jihadists driven by blind fury.

    Niger’s government’s writ is only in the Southern part of the country while its Sahel North is a no man’s land in the hands of roving desert Berbers determined to create some kind of caliphate from northern Mali to Chad and Darfur.  Nigeria the so-called giant of Africa, has been politically reduced to a drunken giant with marauding herders slaughtering farmers while its government looks on unconcerned. Crime is being daily committed without the certainty of punishment thus leaving victims to resort to self-help and retribution. The north-eastern part of the country is beset by the ravage of Boko Haram and ISIS in West African province (ISWAP). Their declared aim is creating an Islamic caliphate apparently adopting the brutal methods of ISIS and Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden. The result of this in a religiously and ethnically plural country is the chaos unleashed on Nigeria while its government seems incapable of putting an end to what is an existential threat, giving rise to secessionist and centrifugal tendencies in the country which may yet succeed unless the federal government reverses its highly divisive sectional and religiously discriminatory policies and actions which are obvious and apparent to all observers except the government. The massacres of people in Darfur by the Arab Janjaweed from the Sudan continues without let or hindrance. The Sudan, both North and so-called independent Southern Sudan remain hell on earth and havens of ethnic militias and undisciplined army that seems to rejoice at killing its own people. Somalia is a sad commentary on how not to be a country. There is no government in the country that is now divided into three separate entities each vegetating in uncontrolled violence and mutual slaughter by their people. There was the recent spectacle of the president of Somali Republic taking on his prime minister in a boxing challenge at a cabinet meeting with bare knuckles in which the expertise of a dental surgeon was needed to put some of the teeth of the prime minister back in the poor man’s mouth. The situation in Ethiopia calls for caution and concern. Tigray, the site of the Holy city of Axum was invaded by Ethiopian federal forces ironically joined by the former secessionist Eritrea to put down rebellion in Tigray occasioning destruction of historic sites, raping and murders on an industrial scale in the name of national unity. No African government has raised its voice against genocide going on in our continent apparently because the same phenomenon is going on in their own countries. It is sad for this to be going on in Ethiopia which faces an existential threat from Egypt and The Sudan over the Ethiopian dam on the Blue Nile in their territory which the two Arab governments have threatened to destroy. One would have thought this is a time for unity in the face of external threat; rather than this, the Addis Ababa government is bent on self-destruction over an illusory national unity and is resorting to force where diplomacy would have sufficed.

    Rwanda of Paul Kagame is perhaps the only going proposition while Burundi and the vast area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo remain largely ungoverned and in the case of the Congo, governed by war lords. The DRC appears too large for the governmental ingenuity of the African in a territory larger than Western Europe and potentially a great and rich country blessed with minerals, which, if properly exploited and accounted for, will give its people decent lives far better than their present miserable lives. The less said about the Central African Republic which has been reduced to a place of contending ethnicities perpetually at war with each other, the better. The other Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea have remained each ruled by one family for almost half a century while foreigners cart away their wealth while dropping some for the rapacious rulers who collude with them to rob their countries.

    The former settler countries in East and Southern Africa seem to do better than the rest of Africa. If we excuse the non-democratic practices of the governments of Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe, we can at least see stability in South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania while the situation in Mozambique is very concerning particularly the recent jihadist attack of its northern part, a situation which caught everybody by surprise. It is hoped that SADC would be able to take a leaf from what ECOWAS states did in the 1980s by forming a military component of their economic organization to assist Liberia and Sierra Leone. SADC should help Mozambique to resist external and internal forces of destabilization.

    The question to ask is what is responsible for all these problems. The answers lie in the artificiality of the African states where unrelated people are lumped together to create states on the paradigm of 19th century European states. The borders of these African states have been declared inviolable by the African Union and Africans are therefore stuck with these rather unnatural states. Secondly, many of the African states are economically unviable. Where they are viable, their internal structure lends support to internal colonialism and ethnic arrogance with one group lording it over others. Sometimes those who generate the wealth are shunted aside while those who contribute little appropriate larger share of the national resources. A country like the DRC is just too big and has little interconnecting transportation grid with the result that people from one part are foreigners to one another. Bad governance manifesting in rampant corruption, autocratic dictatorship and looting of national resources and carting them abroad and living the poor masses to indulge in violence to satisfy their needs is another problem. From this survey, the smaller the country, the better the chances of good governance. Perhaps we need to look at the situation in Africa and allow culturally distinct people lumped with others to separate even though cultural homogeneity in Somalia has not led to stability. What seems most important to me is economic development. With a developed economy, with people employed and with high standard of living and with enough for everyone to satisfy their need not their want, Africa may yet stretch its hand to God and realize its potentiality and destiny.

  • Amotekun, still a beast of illusion

    Amotekun, still a beast of illusion

    By Olatunji Ololade

    In Amotekun we entered animal aura. It promised magic, white and tame, black and wild. Enchantment corrupted psychic space and made it temenos. In this ritual precinct, the security outfit manifested as a sacred creed of mind; a political logic of space, nature and expediences.

    Yet this minute, it unfurls to dominance and defilement. But who domineers? Who is defiled?

    Recently, the police in Oyo State confirmed the death of 11 people in an alleged herdsmen attack on Igangan community in Ibarapa area of the state. Gunmen suspected to be herdsmen, allegedly stormed Igangan with about 25 motorcycles on Sunday morning and torched buildings including the king’s palace. Gory videos and pictures of human casualties have since been shared on several social media channels, inciting outrage and inflaming the social space.

    Reacting to the attack, Ondo governor and chairman of the Southwest Governors Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu, in a statement on behalf of the forum, condemned the killings stressing that, “certain elements are bent on causing friction among the peoples of this country with the sole aim of achieving a pernicious end. We on our part are resolved to defend our people, their property, and all legitimate means of livelihood against both internal and external aggression. On this, there will be no compromise. We cannot afford to fail.”

    The attack on Igangan comes months after the head of the Fulani community in the town, Salihu Abdulkadir, was ejected by self-acclaimed activist, Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho, who accused him of complicity in the murders and abductions of farmers and residents of the community by criminal herdsmen. Although Abdulkadir denied the allegation, he was forcibly ejected from the community.

    In the wake of the recent killings, pundits accuse Oyo governor, Seyi Makinde, his SGF peers and the state security agencies for failing to preempt the attack.

    Again, the debate segues to the efficacy of the Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN) code-named: Operation Amotekun as well as the politics of power and self-preservation that informed its establishment. Apologists of the vigilance group enthused that it would protect lives and property of Yorubaland. The group was expected to work with the police and other security agencies to protect the region from killer herdsmen, robbers and kidnappers among other terrors, claimed the southwest governors.

    “Whoever comes to Yorubaland to kill are known. Amotekun has 10,000-year-old technology that nobody knows. Amotekun must stand, it is a protective force for Yorubaland,” said an apologist.

    It’s easy to get smitten by the romanticism and rage of it all. The politicised arguments, seasoned justifications, foxy upbraids and catlike ripostes attained harmony in the jarring snarl of the southwest’s feline sentinel.

    The drama intensifies but the effort has, so far, been unproductive. In the wake of the Igangan killings and similar attacks in Papalanto and Sagamu in Ogun State, many have questioned the relevance of the security group.

    While shared militia, driven by an autonomous but integrated command structure founded on superior, native intelligence seemed a worthy and commendable response to the forays of murderous herdsmen, armed bandits and kidnappers tormenting the southwest’s outliers, the success of the venture depends on the quality of commitment vested in it by the SGF and other stakeholders.

    The falsehood of bromides and artifice disinters to sinister truths; for instance, the politics and drama of Amotekun was predetermined along the rigid straits of the southwest regions socioeconomic and political realities which like previous initiatives of similar nature, fulfilled Orwell’s Animal Farm stereotype.

    While career courtiers and so-called “social media influencers” donned face powder and powered the governors’ raucous orchestra, none acknowledged that we are at this sorry pass because the SGF and their peers across the country failed the electorate.

    The southwest needed an Amotekun because the governors had over time, failed to commit state resources to actualise development plans and policy objectives.

    If they had spent judiciously on education, health, economy, and infrastructure, the region may have appreciated in scholarship, medical services, security and industry. The region, would thereby enjoy improved quality of youth and living standards, and an army of builders and progressives undeserving of enlistment as members of Amotekun, or the rampaging hordes of “real” and “fake” killer herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers.

    The spectre of social unrest pervading the southwest, like neighbouring regions, feeds off the greed and ambition of inefficient leaders. While the region’s vulnerability to attack manifests as a consequence of the unforeseen economic collapse, civil disobedience and widespread violence wracking neighbouring states, it’s noisy plummet down the steep slope of anarchy is attributable to inefficient leadership.

    While we applaud Amotekun as a worthy response to the southwest’s insecurity problem, the governors must facilitate seamless cooperation between Amotekun and state security outfits. They address, for instance, police contempt for the vigilance scheme. Several police officers have scoffed at the idea, lamenting that funding committed to Amotekun could serve better purpose if funnelled to improve police operations.

    The governors must also seek the cooperation of their northern and southern peers, who have so far done little or nothing to improve cross-border security operations.

    More importantly, they must rapidly re-enfranchise unemployed youths into legitimate, mainstream economy, and tear down the frames of the highly politicised, exclusive socioeconomic circuits to accommodate the impoverished divide. At the moment, the region suffers a dislocation between the short-term interests of the ruling class and the longer-term interests of the electorate.

    The southwest governors must work against the notion that they haven’t been able to resolve the region’s security and development challenges because they are rich. Wealth and privilege insulates them from the major afflictions of the poor electorate; these include bad roads, substandard healthcare and education, and comatose infrastructure. Affluence permits them to turn those around them into compliant and expendable workers, hangers-on, sycophants, and candidates for lifeboat palliatives, like Amotekun.

    Wealth, argues Fitzgerald, breeds a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities.

    Although the governors affect a protective mien, their actions resonate as chilling neglect of the miseries of the impoverished outliers.

    Sadly, the citizenry’s inability to grasp the pathology of their leaders as members of an oligarchic corporate elite makes it difficult to organise a resounding change in their fate via the ballot box.

    Politics looms entwined with money and power across the region, two cuffs of its shackled-lyre.

    Armed with the cuffs, the governors turn the electorate into docile subjects of their godlike delectation; there is a vast disconnect between what they say and what they do. Sadly, the masses are blinded and enchanted by their illusions. No thanks to a fawning press and civil societies.

    While hope may yet flourish in its presence, this minute, Amotekun subsists as a frantic mental caress that induces weeping instead of applause. The masterminds (governors) grope and stroke their beloved (electorate) with calloused palms, violating the latter’s psychic spaces even as you read.

    Until they match in virtual lock-step with their campaign promises, the governors will loom as marketers of illusion, skittish shamans channelling deceit to trade in confusion. They would be continually seen as crafty fabricators of mood and gesture, prowling the edges of duty cloaked in deceit. These are truths that can’t be ignored.

  • Your children will be slaves

    Your children will be slaves

    By OIatunji Ololade

    Our collective personae as a nation is reflective in the governor who stole $4.2 million from his state’s coffers and stashed it to fund his vanities abroad, not minding what good such loot could do in resolving the educational, healthcare, and infrastructure woes of his state.

    It is reflective in the shenanigans of the female minister of petroleum, who raped Nigeria silly until she suffered the industrial strokes of scarcity and recession. Yet she frantically fights to walk free and her cronies in government are eager to let her off with a pat on the back – thus the protracted drama of her prosecution at home and abroad.

    Cut to a hodgepodge of governors looting billions of naira via “security votes and hyperbolic capital projects, outrageous life pensions, among other frills,  even as poverty, policy failure, and insecurity devastate the electorate and crucial social institutions on their watch.

    Our collective personae flourish in youth feverishly flying ethnic flags in support of their ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ lawmaker, minister, governor, and even president irrespective of the atrocities committed by the former, and criminal charges levelled against them.

    The Nigerian government, from the Presidency, the National Assembly, to the state governors and their pet legislatures and local councils embody our frantic culture of dubious citizenship. They legitimise our culture of being, which enables and justifies a public officer’s immediate descent into a basement of opportunism right after emerging as an elected representative.

    The latter locks himself (or herself) in that amoral cellar, against the ethical rungs and wise counsel of sterling statesmanship. As the citizenry sinks in wretchedness, he embarks on a quest of inordinate acquisition and counts his spoils in material possessions.

    He is, however, a mere fragment of our bigger cultural dilemma. Think of him as the pointed end of the spear of our culture of greed, administrative rapscallionery feverish pillaging, and criminality, in whom the triggers of consequence-free theft, sponsored violence, ethnoreligious carnage, gender, and sexualised menace are fused.

    In concert with fellow wild personae prowling Nigeria’s corridors of power, he reinvents, with creative malice, the penetrative outcrops of our national maelstrom. Optimists would call them salvageable ogres from our dark, primal aspects but their cruelty attains deeper resonance in their manifestation as poster icons of our corrupted personae.

    They are our decadence. Our disease. Like the millions of citizenry they supposedly represent, they are products of our moral void; the sickly stems bearing our poisonous petals. Little wonder we suffer a carnage of incarnations.

    Yet even as we have rightly identified their emergence as an affliction of the eye and disease of the mind, our chances at healing are hindered by chinks in our surgical armour: the fissures of ethnoreligious bias, illiteracy, willful degeneracy, greed, poverty, savage ego, and sheer malevolence.

    These constitute severe impediments to our healing. Thus as usual the political class have corrupted the debate on our parlous situation; we should be discussing and taking decisive steps to rid governance of their savage afflictions but they have hoodwinked Nigerians into yet another emotional fog by making an issue of the southwest governors’ ban on open grazing and the calls for true federalism. The latter engage their northern rivals in intense bickering, presumably in defense of their people. Of course, the people have fallen for their gimmick, threatening war and secession from the Nigerian enterprise in solidarity with their dubious representatives.

    It’s a familiar scene, a Nigerian reality that often resounds like the fable of doomed Odysseus and the labouring ships.

    In the backdrop of these shameful proceedings, the argument persists in academia, social and political circuits, that the future is blurry and bleak due to youth absence in politics. But the youth had been in politics as armed thugs, assassins, arsonists, and internet trolls for several years.

    Lest we forget our more ‘youthful men and women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s control the country’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and major opposition platform, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    To sustain their legacies, their clannish pride bequeath the country’s leadership to their wards even as they draft boondocks young as cannon fodder and enforcers of their never-ending cycle of sleaze and mayhem. But the youth are hardly the preys they are thought to be. They are often willing participants in a dehumanising ritual of violence and bloodshed.

    This minute, the image persists of the nation’s youth as human assertions imagined in degenerate stillness, by specific and random politicians. Unlike the artist’s immobile masterpiece, sculpted in bronze and stone, the youth evolve like plasticine, easily malleable and amenable to devious plots.

    Some have attributed the youth’s afflictions to structural banes and the perverse culture of citizenship by which they are weaned and ushered into adulthood.

    In the wake of plausible and often far-fetched analyses, too many ‘patriots’ conveniently absolve themselves of blame. Some propound the tragic theory of Nigerians as being innately incapable of self-determination and self-governance.

    These arguments have over time attained a language of their own and thus evolved as a dialect of dissent and exaggerated self-abnegation. The nation’s elite frequently marshals clashing precepts as solutions and in condemnation of the status quo according to their biases.

    A more damning view identifies the electorate’s persistent claims to victimhood and sense of entitlement as whiny and symptomatic of a dense and irresponsible citizenry. Between the conflict of hyperbole and informed sophistry, Nigeria suffers the affliction of intellectual miscreants and promising youth-turned-fetal-adults.

    The coordinated tragedies afflicting our consciousness daily, append the only real structure to our lives as impoverished Nigerians. From burdensome realities of fast slipping youth, recurrent rites of bigotry to the ethical quandary of coping with strict moral codes of adulthood and ideal society, our lives obscure in purpose and meaning.

    Thus the scorning of ethics by the youth for fast, illicit riches even as ripples of their actions keep hundreds of millions more in binds of despair.

    Consequently, the revolutionary dissent that sprouts from oppression is pitiless and unbending. It radically splits our world into ‘insensitive ruling class’ and ‘clueless lower class,’ ‘elite’ and ‘downtrodden,’ ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ It fosters even more fragmented discord that continually pits Nigerian Christians against Muslims, Hausa against Igbo, Igbo against Yoruba, Yoruba against Ijaw.

    While this piece too may resound as hackneyed howl and lamentation, a regurgitation of towering monstrosities we have become, it need be said that our ultimate solution lies in our will to effect true change.

    None of the existing parties can foster a progressive nation. They are programmed to a recurring cycle of rebirth and self-destruct. In the vortex, they show occasional flashes of brilliance and daring against familiar odds. But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

    It’s about time the youth united progressively and adopted a party of true patriots, driven by men and women of unimpeachable character. The change Nigeria deserves is anathema to the prominent parties and the political class. Real change requires neutering them in capacity and real-time.

    To the youth, I would say: “Failure to do this will sustain your status quo as slaves and your children as slaves to your oppressors’ children.”

    But could the youth save Nigeria if gifted with power?