The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Europe as scourge of Israelis and Palestinians

    Europe as scourge of Israelis and Palestinians

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    In the ongoing uneven confrontation between Israelis and their Palestinian Arab half-brothers, there is no hiding place for the two million Palestinians in the occupied Gaza strip and others spread around about 165 ‘islands’ across the West Bank. As at Tuesday morning, in the re-scripting of Moses law of ‘an eye for an eye’, Palestinian armed group’s rockets have killed about 10 Israelis while Israeli air and artillery bombardment have killed over 213 Palestinians, half of them women and children inside their homes. About 7000 buildings have been leveled in Gaza strip with 53, 000 Palestinians mostly women and children taking refuge in schools under a United Nations flag waiting for humanitarian aid. Roads, residential buildings and other economic interest of the occupied territory continue to come under assault by the occupier whose right it is to protect the occupied.

    America that provides Israel with $200b military aid and ever supportive of Israel, right or wrong, has blocked three different United Nations attempt to issue a joint statement condemning the aggression against a people that have been under occupation for 53 years. America wants Israel, the fourth most powerful military power in the world, to defend itself against stone throwing occupied people without freedom, without government and without an army.

    The cynical Europeans who have been praising Benjamin Netanyahu for defending his people want Hamas, declared a terrorist organisation to learn a lesson on how not to dare a Goliath except you are an anointed David. Europe has far showed no interest in encouraging Israel to stop the carnage.

    America and Europe, the scourge of warring Jews and Palestinian Arabs pretend not to know the root cause of this crisis was resistance to occupation and struggle for homeland by Palestinians they made homeless some 70 years ago in an effort to create ‘homeland’ for the persecuted, abused and pogromed homeless European Jews. They conveniently forget the plight of two million Palestinians ejected from their homes in East Jerusalem some 70 years ago with many of them and their grandchildren today taking refuge in refugee camps in Jordan. They are similarly silent on the two million Arab Jewish citizens treated as second class citizens in Israel. They also don’t think the two million Palestinians caged inside occupied Gaza have a right to freedom and aspirations like other free people in the world.

    But for Europe, driven in the main by selfish interest, the cause  of justice has hardly ever featured in her intervention in the affairs of other nations whether during the  exploitation of productive African human resources through shipment of 12.5 million Africans to the New World between 1525  and 1886 to build the foundation of their today’s capital, their imperialist scramble for Africa and exploitation of her rich mineral and agricultural resources, and persecution, killing, expulsion and pogroms of Jews across Europe  or the setting of 300 million Arabs who speak the same language, share the same culture and worship the same God against one another.

    Europe has in fact never pretended to be driven by anything but selfish interest. Greatly influenced by Darwinian theory of evolution, for them, it is the survival of the fittest. If you are strong, you survive, if you are weak, you die.

    Greed-driven European nations have been responsible for the nightmare of the Jews and the Palestinians since the 4th century when they first adopted Christianity and fraudulently presented Jesus Christ, a man of colour as a Caucasian. Palestinians and the Jews bore the consequences of the 1095-1271 crusaders siege on the Holy Land to dislodge the Muslims. It was also in the 13th century, European nations started the expulsion and confiscation of Jewish properties across Europe.

    It was the turn of England’s King Edward in 1293; Switzerland in 1408; Austria in 1421; Spain in 1492; France in 1495; Portugal in 1496; Frankfurt in 1614;  pogroms in Russia Empire in 1910; stripped of citizenship and pogromed from Italy in 1944,  the holocaust of European Jews, also known as shoah during World War II carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators  resulting in the murder of six million Jews by incineration in gas chamber  between 1941-1945.

    Europe after persecution of Jews for over a century under various excuses including labeling them the ‘problem of Europe’ to a bizarre allegation the Jews killed their illustrious son, Jesus Christ. And when they discovered the holocaust, they had thought was the final solution to the Jews only brought shame, they embarked on efforts at resettling the Jews anywhere outside Europe.

    They first tried the US. But the first 900 shipped to Mississippi were rejected and returned to Nazi Germany where more than half of them were murdered. Uganda in East Africa was proposed by Joseph Chamberlain in 1903 after the Russia pogrom. In the 1930s, the Kimberly region of Australia was considered, while Davey in Tasmania was proposed in 1939.

    Finally on May 14, 1948, to satisfy Arab nationalism and Zionist nationalism, Palestine, inhabited by 94% Arabs and 6% Jews was partitioned through 1947 UN resolution 181. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their state is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state.’

    The United States recognized the new state on the same day, followed three days later by the Soviet Union. However, Arab nations of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan alleging injustice crossed the borders of Palestine on May 15 to attack the new state of Israel.

    Britain which was the first world power to endorse the establishment of Palestine as ‘national home’ for the Jewish people during the Balfour declaration of 1917, took side with Israel. America and major other European nations including France, Italy, Belgium, Russia with blood of Jews dripping from their hands, rallied round Israel who with superior fire power has gone on to annex Palestinian initial land, expelled millions from Jerusalem while locking  the rest in the Gaza and West Bank cage and deciding when they breathe or take water.

    But Europe loves neither Israel nor their Arab half-brothers. If she pitches tent with the Jews today in the face of monumental injustice against helpless Palestinians, it is because apart from being haunted by their past repression of the Jews, it is part of their Darwinian world view that ‘the weak dies, the strong (Israel leading the world in everything from science, to commerce, medicine to literature, agriculture to computer and space exploration) survives”.

    The tragedy for the warring siblings is that Israel and her successive rebellious leaders who in the last 70 years rejected many UN resolutions including the one calling for a creation of state for Palestine with her capital in East Jerusalem have forgotten so soon the 1947 UN resolution 181 that spoke of “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations” is the same right they now deny their half-brothers.

    Hamas’ violence cannot be an excuse for denying Palestinians the right to self-actualisation or statehood.  The Jews in their struggle for statehood were no less violent. In fact, David Ben Gurion who made the declaration of state of Israel and later became the first Prime Minister and his group were at the beginning regarded as terrorists by the British. In any case, as offspring of Abraham, violence rebelliousness is in the blood of Jews and Arabs.

  • Playing ostrich while kidnappers, bandits and rapist play the victim

    Playing ostrich while kidnappers, bandits and rapist play the victim

    Long after the declaration of Fulani herdsmen as the fourth deadliest terrorists’ group in the world by the World Terrorist Index, those Nigerians who often play the ostrich and whose narrative is often promoted by the media are the same people who today assault our ears with talk of ethnic profiling. The identity of those who killed, maimed, confiscated farmlands and kidnap for ransom even before Sheik Gumi’s recent declaration that “government know them, monitors them by air view”, has never been in dispute.  President Buhari’s appeal to the people of Benue to tolerate the settlers in their midst during some of his condolence visits to the state after periodic massacres of farmers, women and children was but a confirmation the president knows those who have continued to make his job of nation building more arduous.

    Both governors El Rufai of Kaduna and Massari of neighbouring Katsina that had at different occasions negotiated and paid ransom to bandits admitted many of them are Fulani immigrants from neigbouring countries. Those that were indicted for the attack on Olu Falae were Fulani. Those arrested for the killing Chief Executive Officer, Kunfayakun Green Treasures Limited, Fatai Aborode, near his farm along Apodun village in Oyo State, were herdsmen also belong to the same ethnic group.

    When Akeredolu issued a fatwa for those AK-47-wielding herdsmen who illegally took over Ondo forest reserve, Shehu Garba and Bauchi’s Bala Mohammed came out not on behalf of Niger Delta militants but to defend Fulani herdsmen who they said are protected by the constitution to operate anywhere in Nigeria’s forests. Jigawa and Kebbi state governors with large herdsmen population in January joined their six southwest governors to resolve the crisis.

    When elder statesman, Theophilus Danjuma fingered Fulani herdsmen as those  killing and confiscating land in Adamawa State, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, then Emir of Kano and one the patrons of Miyyetti Allah, rather than deny the herdsmen’s involvement, claimed hundreds of Fulani herdsmen killed earlier by their host communities were never reported by the newspapers.

    In any case, nearly every harvest of deaths that accompany herdsmen attacks on communities, has been defended by Miyetti Allah spokesmen who have always described them as retaliatory attacks to avenge the killing of their men or rustling of their cattle.

    But if ethnic profiling accusation will not wash, we can make a saint of killers and bandits by playing the ostrich. Speaking in Bauchi on Thursday, February 11, to Justify bearing of  AK-47 rifles by herdsmen, Bauchi’s Mohammed  who condemned the treatment of Fulani herdsmen in the southern  region, said herdsmen “have inalienable right to defend themselves from cattle rustlers and other challenges encountered on the road” adding “it is not his fault, it is the fault of government and the people, the Fulani tribe  is a constant target for eviction from local communities.”

    Gumi who revealed “the herdsmen-bandits are engaged in an ethnic war against other peoples and sedentary Fulani in the country” was to complain that “Fulani are being profiled, killed by the military, lynched in town,” adding. “Do you know that there are situations where any man with this Fulani physique – slim, light-complexioned, even dark ones – on a motorbike is automatically arrested and incarcerated?”

    For their pains, Gumi wants herdsmen who he admitted are killers and kidnappers  who are at war with Nigeria, provided with “reasonable means of livelihood including jobs, working capital, entrepreneurship training as well as clinics and school”.

    Not left out are the governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, who wants “repentant bandits” to be granted amnesty by the federal government and Katsina State governor, Aminu Masari who with his policy of Dialogue and Amnesty Programme paid criminals millions only to visit more suffering on poor people of Katsina who were being forced to pay ransom to harvest their farm products.

    They all chose to play the ostrich instead of telling immigrants and imported Fulani herdsmen that Nigeria is not owned by Fulani in spite of the current constitution, rigged against Nigerians by Nigerian military. Instead what we got was  Bala Mohammed’s arrogant assertion that “we cannot close border against Fulani, he is a global man, Fulani from Senegal to Nigeria, Cameroon,  are Nigerians” and Gumi’s claim that “Fulani are in all Nigerian states, we cannot drive them away because they speak local Nigerian languages” And living in denial, they tried to present those  who engage in mindless killings, kidnapping of school children and other crimes against humanity as victims that deserve amnesty and resettlement like the Niger Delta militants of the Yar’Adua era.

    However, history tells us that long before the current wave of immigrant and imported Fulani herdsmen who today daily visit terror on Nigerians, Fulani herdsmen had hardly been good guests. As proof, King Yunfa (1801-1808) of Gobir who hosted Uthman dan Fodio who later helped him into the throne, ended up losing his life and kingdom. The respected cleric and reformer followed up with the conquest of all the Hausa states installing only but one non-Fulani Emir in over a dozen Emirates he created for his fellow Fulani.  It is instructive that not more than one pious Muslim could be found in the Hausa states that had embraced the Islamic faith about 400 years before the revered Jihadist and reformer came to Gobir.

    The story of Afonja was not different. He lost his Ilorin throne and his life to Alimi, his Fulani guest that had earlier supported him in his revolt against Alafin of Oyo. Tafawa Balewa’s biographer, Trevor Clark, in his A right Honourable Gentleman recorded Balewa’s story of his grandmother who had wanted Fulani settlers expelled from their land or killed if they refused to relocate.

    This is not to say other ethnic groups do not have their own demons. Yoruba talk of her superior culture and is held in disdain by Fulani for her overweening pride which makes her think the feudal lords need free education or egalitarian society. The Igbo think the god of Africa has ordained them to lead Africa, which forced Ahamadu Bello to observe that if you employ an Igbo man a labourer, he will aspire to become head of labourers and of course the Hausas are fatalistic which makes them see nothing wrong in becoming beggars in urban centres of the country while their Fulani overlords control their political economy and the Igbo buy up their lands all over the north.

    But all is not lost in spite of our thousand demons. Our visionary founding fathers adopted a federal arrangement, the social system that allows each group to battle its own demon without a threat to other members of the federating nationalities.  As Chinua Achebe puts in his No Longer At Ease, “we are strangers in this land, when calamity befalls the owners of the land, we move away leaving the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods”. The curse of our nation are our current political leaders. As the major beneficiaries of our current nightmare, there is neither political will nor incentive to go back to “the path to Nigerian freedom” they rejected because of greed.

     

  • Big Brother Abuja

    Big Brother Abuja

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Villa’s visitors!

    Gambari
    Gambari

     

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

    • BarkaDaSallah to all our Muslim readers.
  • A Nigerian press tragedy (2)

    A Nigerian press tragedy (2)

    Olatunji Ololade

     

     

    The most egregious lie Nigerians may cuddle is that our collective fate as a nation is independent of the press. If journalism dies, Nigeria dies. Good journalism to be precise.

    Now, you may define and paint ‘good journalism’ in whatever fancy hue appeals to you but if your definition perpetually highlights the press as a mongrel to your ogre, you are part of the elements whose deviousness has triggered a flurry of conflict and crime, death and disillusionment across the country.

    Disenchantment with the status quo: economic depression, power failure, and persistent insecurity, to mention a few – all caused by a mediocre leadership, its criminal negligence, and corruption by its patron-oligarchs, has triggered dissent and revolutionary cries among political segments across the country.

    As Nigeria dissembles civil society groups march in protest against the government’s perceived failures. Of course, the press takes sides. The ‘foremost’ media, mostly ‘owned’ by individuals understand the clamour as a necessary performance of will by the disgruntled citizenry. They also know that many dissenters will retire home to cuddle familiar grief while their leaders cut a deal with the ruling oligarchs – as usual.

    In ideal circumstances, the press would side with the truth. But to do this, the journalist must emerge unsullied in practice and endowed with unimpeachable character. This is impossible where he is kept hungry and morally bankrupt.

    Read Also: 60 years on, education still comatose

     

    The journalistic cult of poverty has a supreme theme: the morally deficient journalist. This theme is pitifully projected by government and big business, using ‘hungry,’ domesticated journalists as courtiers, within and outside the corridors of power.

    Courtiers’ truths are always dubious and never heartfelt. They wander in logic and polemic, like untamed gypsies, burnishing a world they ought to serve as bastions of love with hate.

    Of course, there are the ethicists who are never compromised by greed and lack of pride – they will not serve on any governor or president’s propaganda train. But they comprise a negligible few.

    Nigeria devalues her press; in the eyes of big business and the ruling class, the journalist is the manipulable pawn, the necessary evil that must be courted, tamed, tolerated, or ‘put down.’

    Media salaries are atrocious and this has led to the metamorphosis of the journalist into a sell-out and a courtier, that neither defies nor question the excesses of government and the corporate business sector.

    The latter, in return, let him into their ‘inner circle.’ Even so, he would never amount to much; he dies in name and repute, several times before his actual death.

    No class of courtiers, from the eunuchs behind the Manchus in the 19th century to the Baghdad caliphs of the Abbasid caliphate, has ever transformed itself into a responsible, socially productive class.

    Courtiers are hedonists of power, argues Hedges. And this truth resonates jarringly with Nigerian journalists serving as courtiers to the ruling class. The manifestations are severe for the larger society.

    Courtier journalism ennobles and protects mass murderers, treasury looters, armed robbers, warmongers, bigots comprising the incumbent oligarchs. It is understandable that the ramification of a looted public fund often manifests in mass deaths on a bad road to which the funding ought to have been committed or carnage between neighbouring villages duelling over communal wells or fast vanishing estuaries.

    Thus courtiers, like their principals, are responsible for mass ‘murders.’ The menace extends beyond the newsroom on to the corridors of power; several governors, lawmakers, and even the president may pretend to serve the public while they are courtiers, serving the whims of tribal cabals, foreign governments, and corporations.

    At the centre of the turmoil is the journalist whose fate is so intricately bound with the country’s but rather than pose a challenge to the system that domesticates and enslaves him, he chooses the easiest way out, and serves the corporate cabals and predatory oligarchs, for a token.

    Occasionally, he assumes the role of a poseur and pretends to fight for the interest of the public. This sad charade is continually perpetuated across esteemed writers’ polemics in foremost newspaper columns.

    The compromised journalist trades in all manners of truth, deploying sophistry and impressive fallacies in the interest of whatever social divide fulfills his lust for relevance and economic survival.

    If Nigeria chooses to exist as a land of savages, it’s the press’s responsibility to nudge her back onto the path of humaneness and progress. Our failure as journalists indicates severance from a progressive, moral culture.

    The traditional, conscientious journalist is going extinct today along with a dependable news culture because Nigeria embraces the pseudo-reality of the internet and reality shows. It is no doubt ironic that the masses would turn around to blame the press for not fulfilling its roles in society.

    It’s about time we stopped narrowing the debates and spotlight to the shenanigans and petty differences of the ruling class and instead serve as a true voice of the voiceless.

    Real progress will manifest in the country when we start demanding that the ruling class marches in virtual lock-step with promises they make. Whatever the tone and dialect of intellectualism that characterizes our news culture, posterity will judge us by how truthfully we fulfill our roles as the conscience and watchdog of the society.

    For the traditional press, the goal must be to evolve a journalism business model sustainable via readership; this will be achieved through print unit sales, paid subscription, multimedia platforms, and ingenious forms of audience engagement.

    ‘Short, punchy and brief’ is hardly the future of journalism; oftentimes you will find that its chief advocates are quacks seeking the dumbing-down of journalism to cover their inadequacies.

    Even the global press is aware that the problem is hardly the traditional press but the increasingly mindless, dumb, savage society that the press serves.

    The Nigerian press must begin to stimulate radical, progressive debates about power structures, laws, privileges, industry, and justice, and thus signal the end of an outdated culture designed to serve corrupt sentimentality and power structures.

    So doing, journalism may regain trust and Nigeria can see the overall story that is being told, the problems that are being highlighted, and the practical solutions to identified issues – while balancing the costs of such practice against the reality of new media and a severely commercialised media industry.

    We have more questions to contend with as journalists: How can long-form journalism operate a business model attuned to the precepts of new media? Should the Nigerian newsroom be funded by non-profits?

    Many have expressed fears over the downsides of NGO-funded journalism yet its beneficiaries have fulfilled crucial roles continually jettisoned by the traditional press – which is commendable.

    Lest we forget those journalists, who, having reinvented themselves as online publishers and ‘journalist trainers’ continually badmouth their former platforms for sport and to score cheap points as new hippies on the block.

    They must understand that the media’s fate is bound across all platforms and that neither journalism nor Nigeria’s future could be narrowed to ‘digital.’

    If it doesn’t ennoble the citizenry; if it doesn’t expose the corrupt, and divest society of its plagues, it is not journalism.

    The future isn’t digital. The future is humane. It is ethical.

    • This article was updated for World Press Freedom day

     

  • Impending catastrophe: Lack of preparedness for COVID-19 second wave

    Impending catastrophe: Lack of preparedness for COVID-19 second wave

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    Anybody who has been watching the thousands of deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic in India and other countries in South Asia and South Eastern Asian countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and even Thailand cannot but be worried about what will happen in Africa and particularly in our country if we were to experience the same phenomenon. With our situation of total unpreparedness, we can only hope and pray that we will be spared the consequences of our lack of adequate preparation.

    What is happening in India, the centre of vaccines manufacturing in the world has ramifications for the developing countries that receive vaccines pro bono from the World Health Organization (WHO) because of our impecunious situation caused by stealing of national resources and mismanagement and poor governance in most of African countries where state capture by a few well-connected local and or external forces is the order of the day. This has invariably benefited the ruling and colluding elite. If Nigeria were well governed, we should not be waiting for handouts from the WHO or any external bodies. But alas, this is the situation in Africa with the exception of South Africa which has the infrastructure to manufacture on license, vaccines against coronavirus. I suppose when we witness the oncoming catastrophe in our country, we will probably run to China for the vaccines of Sinopharm which has proved totally ineffective in Brazil. While on the issue of Chinese vaccines, I am totally confused about how the Chinese have managed to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic which started in Wuhan China. Apart from the initial closure of areas affected by the virus in China, there has been no other extraordinary measures taken by the Chinese. Some have suggested that the draconian measure taken by the Chinese could only have been adopted by a Communist country with its centralized planning, policing and control of all levers of power. Whatever the Chinese have done, one must admire them. The Chinese economy in the last year has grown by 12% which is incredible when compared with the negative nose-diving growth of western economies. This is why some cynics are saying the coronavirus pandemic was unleashed on the world as part of Chinese strategy to be the numero uno among the world powers. Whatever the case may be, the Indian situation probably indicates the fault lines in democracy in a large and highly populated country where perhaps strong governments are needed rather than parliamentary debates which are the hall mark of democratic governance. In our case in Nigeria, we suffer from the double jeopardy of weak governance and autocracy and state capture by a small ethnic and religious cohort.

    When we got the first batch of Covax vaccines from the WHO, states were given their shares according apparently on the basis of incidence of the disease and ready infrastructure to administer the vaccines. Lagos, the entry point of the coronavirus to Nigeria got half a million doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccines for its close to 20 million inhabitants. Other states got measly amount from the two million doses of the vaccines.

    Special allocations were made to members of the armed forces, of course these were for officers only while the rank and file would have to wait until the next batch. I don’t know if the police got any allocations. The allocations to the states were given to the higher members of the bureaucracy, state and federal, who got the jabs in their arms and allocations were made to the judiciary and the federal and state legislatures.

    To my surprise, nothing was given to teachers, at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Now the schools including universities have been asked to open. What will happen to teachers and professors and the students in their cramped dormitories, halls of residence and classrooms? What about the old professors who should have been part of those to receive priority consideration ab initio? It is of course true that the number of vaccines given to us as a country was too small. This two million total allocation to Nigeria’s 200 million amounts to one hundredth of our need.

    No one should blame the WHO for not giving us more. It can only give us out what it had. In fact, the WHO had to blackmail the rich world which was hoarding the vaccines with the USA and Canada having more vaccines than they would ever need. The rich country did what was in the interest of their people. It is natural to protect yourself before thinking of others. Even the Holy scriptures say love your neighbors as yourselves not more than yourselves. It was when the rich countries realized that no one would be safe until all are safe before they climbed down from their high horses of vaccines nationalism and began to accede to WHO request to help the poor people of the world. It is of course a pity that Nigeria and the rest of Africa wear the badge of poverty as an honor.  But in reality, Nigeria should not belong to the category of poor nations if we had managed our resources well. Countries that are members of OPEC are generally not considered poor. It was a herculean task persuading the rest of the world that Nigeria was a poor country when we were campaigning for debt forgiveness while suffering from the debt overhang. Unfortunately, this present government has taken us back to debt peonage where our children and grandchildren will be domiciled even when we are gone.

    Another problem we have in Nigeria is vaccines hesitancy. Some of our clerics, Muslim and Christian are even telling their flock that coronavirus only affect sinners and unbelievers and frown at wearing masks. Some illiterates are also saying it is a disease of the rich and affluent and the preaching about physical distancing, masking and avoiding of large congregations are falling on deaf ears in a country where poverty has driven our people to churches and mosques of charlatans who are exploiting and deceiving the gullible people.

    I of course know that the African Union is rumored to have placed orders for 400 million of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines even though South Africa has previously rejected them on the grounds of their ineffectiveness to combat the coronavirus variant in their country. This variant has spread to the Southern, Central and Eastern African regions. It is only a matter of time before it spreads to West Africa including Nigeria if it has not done that already. Even if the 400 million of Johnson and Johnson vaccines which require only one jab rather than the two jabs of Astra Zeneca jabs are delivered hopefully by next year, one wonders if they will work since they did not work against the South African variant. The date of delivery means we will probably all be dead by that time as predicted by the Anglican Bishop of Cape Town in South Africa.

    There is the issue of those who have already received the first jab of Astra Zeneca vaccines and waiting for the second jab which India has now embargoed because of the surging coronavirus in their country. It’s a case of charity beginning at home. There is no scientific backing for mixing vaccines. One just hopes that the Nigerian government would plead with the United States and the British governments to release some of the stockpiles of the Astra Seneca vaccines in their possession.

    The science of vaccines production is not totally alien to our country. In the 1970s vaccines of one type or the other against small pox, trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness and other diseases were produced in Vom on the Plateau. The current coronavirus vaccines may be different but certainly we could move from our previous knowledge of vaccines production to the new sophisticated computer driven ones if the resources were made available for researchers and if the infrastructure were kept up to date. But like everything we do in our import-dependent country, we have abandoned even our previous knowledge for imports in every aspect of our lives. We are now importing New Jersey cows to produce milk when in fact in the 1950s and 1960s, we were drinking fresh cow milk in Ibadan!

    Our problems are legion. On one hand we are begging foreign countries to come and help us with our self-inflicted wounds of banditry, herders war against farmers, jihadist terrorism, secessionist agitation and demands for wholesale restructuring and now we are going to have to plead for vaccines! Unfortunately, we have no choice. This is the cross road in which we now find ourselves and we don’t know where to turn to and remaining at this crossroads may be terminal for our existence. I shudder to imagine what will happen to us unless we make haste while the sun shines.

  • Between PMB and Sheik Gumi

    Between PMB and Sheik Gumi

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    I sympathise with Sheik Gumi who out of share envy by detractors has been going through severe stress and strain since his triumphant return from the den of killer herdsmen, kidnappers and vicious bandits; a no-go area for our soldiers, police and the DSS. His daring adventure has brought some relief to Nigerians. Contrary to what our security men made us to believe, at least we now know the mythical bandits that kill, kidnap, confiscate farmlands, reducing in the process, their surviving victims to candidates of IDP camps were not ghosts that disappear into thin air after each harvest of deaths. We now know they are, according to Gumi, disgruntled Fulani herdsmen that, Abubakar Kawu Baraje , former PDP chairman and until recently APC stalwart, claimed were imported by politicians for elections with no incentive to return to their country after graduating into lucrative banditry and kidnapping business with the potential to make millions from one victim as against selling one cow for N100,000.

    There are other reasons Gumi has come under vicious attack of disgruntled shortsighted Nigerians who freely deployed hate messages against the respected cleric. With near absence of governance following President Buhari’s unique administrative method of ‘delegation by abdication’ which allows his ‘loyal gatekeepers’, who many believe do not necessarily share his pan-Nigerian vision, issue statements on all issues in his name, there was a vacuum of leadership in the country. With a caged president and governors who were “attending wedding parties while Nigeria was burning”, Gumi by his daring intervention, easily fills what many Nigerian see as a leadership vacuum.

    We must not forget the narrative before Gumi’s daring trip to the lion’s den. First there was a change of fortune for our soldiers. The government declaration of technical victory over Boko Haram was at the end a pyrrhic victory as ‘liberated’ Sambisa Forest’ the military told us was going to be converted to games village was retaken by the insurgency.

    Then killer herdsmen unleashed free reign of terror over the middle belt region of Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa and Taraba. The battle then shifted to the north-western states of Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto. Both Kaduna and Katsina states tried payment of ransom to criminal herdsmen without bringing much relief to the residents of both states who have to pay ransom to harvest their farm products.

    In no time killer-herdsmen cells were discovered in the mangrove forests of southern states of Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo and Ogun with many recorded cases of mindless killings, kidnapping and raping of women. In the case of Ogun State, hundreds were driven from their homes by herdsmen to the neighbouring Republic of Benin. Then there was a looming anarchy as Shehu Garba and governor of Bauchi State encouraged AK-47 wielding herdsmen illegally occupying Ondo’s Forest Reserves to resist Governor Akeredolu’s quit order.

    With the president caged in Aso Rock presidential palace refusing to personally react to pressing national issues, there was an appearance of absence of governance.  Gumi quickly took up the challenge of leadership. He first met with the invincible gangs in Kaduna and Zamfara to negotiate an end to mindless killings, displacement of thousands from various communities in the north and their peaceful surrender. He then met with the bandits behind the abduction of 27 students and 15 others from the Government Science College, Kagara in Niger State rounding his adventure with a meeting with Niger State governor, Abubakar Sani Bello, on February 19, informing him: “I’ve spoken with them (bandits) face-to-face and they are ready to lay down their arms if their conditions are fulfilled and I find all the conditions they gave as justifiable”.

    However, Nasir El-Rufai, who paid condolence visit to Kerawa, Zariyawa, government areas where 41 people were slaughtered after deploying taxpayers’ money to pay bandits raised objection, noting that the bandits cannot change from their ways and should be brought to justice instead. He believes bandits terrorising Nigeria have lost their rights to life under the constitution.

    His declaration that “In Kaduna State, we have zero tolerance for bandits. We don’t give them amnesty; we don’t negotiate with them” has however only led to renewed siege on Kaduna resulting in recent kidnapping of about 20 students of Greenfield University in Kaduna State which Garba Shehu, the president’s senior special media assistant attributed to “the ongoing military and police offensive against terrorists in the Birnin Gwari and Kajuru forests”.

    Add the above to  the looming anarchy in Imo State following the torching of the state governor’s personal house as well as many  police stations across the state leading to death of many policemen, with Sunday Igboho’s crusade against suspected killer herdsmen in Oyo State, with minister of defence asking Nigerians to confront AK-47 wielding bandits and kidnappers, with Obasanjo’s warning about forcing Nigerians to self-defence and Theophilus Danjuma actually calling on Nigerians to defend themselves against killer Fulani herdsmen;  with the fear of the infiltration of many institutions of state by terrorist sympathisers, With Miyetti Allah insisting there would be no peace in the country except their members in line with Fulani culture, are allowed to embark on open grazing across the country and with a crumbling economy under the weight of  $86.3 billion (N32.9 trillion) national debt, inflation above 18 per cent,  unemployment at 33%, and the naira exchanging for N480 to the dollar,  the country needs a messiah.

    Let us rate the front runners.

    By rejecting negotiation and insisting banditry must be crushed when all he could get from the presidency after the latest attack on Greenfield university leading to the abduction of 20 students was Garba Shehu’s “expression of the presidency’s deep sadness and regret over the bandits attack”, El Rufai was ignoring Zik’s admonition that it is only a mad man that argues with a man with a gun.

    On his part, Gumi claims he is making “attempt at talking to herdsmen to drop their guns, insisting they are “militants fighting for ethnic survival, and are kidnapping to make money… adding it’s either we as Nigerian sit down together and iron things out or go astray and come back to do what should have been done in the first place”.

    President Buhari, who promised to lead from the front is nowhere the rear. He probably thinks the problem will disappear without action. All we hear are the hollow voices of his ‘loyal gatekeepers’ whose every incendiary pronouncement appeared designed to portray their principal a Fulani president as against a man who secured an overwhelming support of Nigerians and a mandate to resolve our crisis of nation building.

    Although Gumi will reject the title of a messiah having pointed out that Isa (Jesus) was punished because people called him a messiah, but if you ask me, I will readily agree the country be handed over to him lead to lead. After all, it is said, a people deserve the leadership they get.

  • Thou art the man

    Thou art the man

    By Lawal  Ogienagbon

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • External assistance in the face of collapse of internal security

    External assistance in the face of collapse of internal security

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    There is nothing wrong in requesting for external assistance to beef up our military’s firepower in the face of aggression by foreign sponsored local terrorists. From 1957 to 1960, Malaysia requested not only the British forces but forces from several Commonwealth countries to support it against local communists-aided and supported by global communism. It is now clear that Nigeria is not only fighting internal dissidents but terrorists assisted by the forces of defeated Al Qaeda and ISIS and those of foreign mercenaries previously in the service of Muamar al Qaddafi. This is why they appear hardened and better armed than our poorly-equipped troops whose commanders have allegedly made away with their budget for equipment and weapons to build or buy fancy houses in Abuja and Dubai.

    Our foes are better motivated than our own forces. They are also made to feel they are fighting a jihad with promise of eternal enjoyment and paradise in the hereafter if they die as al-mujahideen. There also seems to be a grand plan by terrorists fighting under the flag of international terrorism mouthing the Islamic slogans to destabilize the whole of Africa as can be seen in what is going on in Nigeria, Chad, Niger, the Cameroons, Mali, Kenya, Tanzania, Central African Republic, Somalia and now Mozambique. The death of Field Marshal Idris Deby Itno perhaps the linchpin in the fight against Boko Haram and al Qaeda in West Africa has added more urgency in our struggle against terror. Unfortunately the present political leadership in Nigeria has sleep walked into the hands of the terrorists by fanning the embers of so-called herders and foreign Fulani terrorism rather than stamping it out the moment herders started killing farmers all over northern Nigeria beginning in Zamfara and Benue states and now all over Nigeria. This cancer has almost metastasized into a terminal disease which unless radically and surgically excised, would kill Nigeria.

    This is where we are and it is this desperation that has led our government to be giving up the fight and openly exposing its soft underbelly on the electronic media in the discussion between Anthony Blinken, the American Secretary of State with President Buhari and his foreign minister, Geoffrey Onyeama openly pleading with the United States to move AFRICOM from its headquarters in Stuttgart Germany to Africa.

    There has been some anxiety on the part of some experts about the propriety of Nigeria linking what is a bilateral request with movement of the African Command (AFRICOM) of United States military to Africa presumably to Nigeria although this was not so stated.

    I remember this issue of the location of AFRICOM came before the five-man Presidential  Advisory Council on International Affairs(PAC) then headed  by Chief Emeka Anyaoku of which I was a member in 2008  for advice. I remember the unanimous advice to the then President Umar Yar’Adua was that Nigeria should not welcome its location in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. If it is appropriate to say this, I was not then against the location of AFRICOM even in Sokoto which I was aware was what the Americans wanted. My support even though I felt pained about its implication on our hard fought independence from the British was based on realism that no country was totally independent in an interdependent world.  My position was based on our ability to properly negotiate the basis of the American base on our soil.

    I was aware of American huge presence in Germany particularly in Bonn where they have a whole “city” and in Britain, France, Italy, Okinawa in Japan, South Korea, and nearer home in Saudi Arabia. These American bases bring enormous benefits to those countries in terms of employment and resources and security. My point was that we were not near any theatre of possible superpower military confrontation and would not be involved directly in any American conflict with another power. I also felt American presence in the above listed countries has not derogated from their sovereignty. My position was based on realism of the fragile nature of our country which has now been exposed.

    Of course I agreed with those who felt and still feel that whoever wants to sup with the American devil must do so with a long spoon. The Americans may have had an agenda completely different from ours. But the point is that life is a gamble; you only win or lose and there is no point in not playing the game of life. I write all this for historical records.

    But to come to the present, General Buhari should be told that in a game of Chess, you have to make a move before your opponent responds. To strengthen the hands of Nigeria in this insecurity conundrum, we can solve half of the problem politically by devolving power and security to the six informal zones the country seems to agree exists with the present unwieldy 36 states reduced to local governments while we do away with the useless 774 local governments administration which merely consumes resources without any demonstrable profit in terms of security and development.

    So instead of the myriads of states and local governments, we would have a weakened centre, six powerful zonal administrations and 36 local or provincial administrations each with its own  mobile and motorized  powerfully armed and equipped police force like the French gendarmes  answerable to their zones and local/provincial authorities and coordinated by a federal police  like the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The army and other security forces would then be available as supporting forces if the powerful police forces cannot handle any security problem. This new structure would go hand in hand with fiscal and cooperative federalism. Buhari should, like General Charles de Gaulle during the Algerian war who took a decisive, costly and personally risky decision to cut the Gordian knot of the problem by granting independence to Algeria and ending a costly war in men and materiel. Buhari should risk everything and solve Nigeria’s problem and thereby saving the republic and writing his name in gold in Nigeria’s history.

    Since the Nigerian parliament is calling on the president to declare a state of emergency and siege, Buhari should pick up the gauntlet and bring an executive bill incorporating the suggested new administrative and police architecture which the parliament should quickly ratify. Once this is done, then we have the architectural structure to which we can call our trading partners to react to. Negotiations with external bodies should not be done in the public. These kinds of things should be handled by senior military and police officers advising a powerful diplomatic team to handle the intricate and delicate issues involved. It’s not the kind of thing you do through Zoom or other electronic devices. You need what the Yoruba calls “oju loro wa” meaning the “eye carries more importance when talking than mere words”. That is what diplomats call “body language”.

    No foreign power can do more than what ordinarily we should be able to do for ourselves. We have since 2019 been playing with fire of not arresting terrorists of whatever hue or colour and of whatever ethnic group or the other and trying them and imposing on them appropriate punishment including hanging or public executions for those who commit murder. Punishment ought to have been swift and sure but we prevaricated and let people go because of whatever emotional reasons of common ethnicity the political leaders may have had. Chicken has now come home to roost; the whole thing has gotten out of hands and people have now taken to self-help and the whole country is now on fire and great Nigeria, the giant of Africa, has become the butt of jokes by other Africans.

    We who in the 1960s sent troops to stabilize Tanzania; who formed the majority of the military component of, and financed ECOMOG during the Babangida years; Nigeria a frontline states in confrontation with apartheid South Africa and its western powers; Nigeria which made possible the independence of Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and the eventual non-racial majority rule in South Africa possible. Nigeria which was third after India and Bangladesh in providing troops for United Nations peace keeping and peace enforcement operations is now reduced to mockery by Chadians saying our soldiers cannot fight.

    Whatever is responsible for this loss of glory is directly related to the absence of will and direction by our political leadership and dedication of the followership, some of who, are fifth columnists feeling no sympathy for the national cause because of their alienation as a result of marginalization and ethnic and religious discrimination. Our insecurity problem arises from our not understanding the fact that war is politics by other means. There can be no development without peace and without development the devil will find work for idle hands. We are caught in a self-inflicted wound of pandering to the forces of ethnicity and religious discrimination while losing our focus on national direction. Yet it is obvious that like the rest of the world, we are bound together by economic interdependence in which the mineral resources in one part of the country service the whole country while food security is guaranteed by the hard work of farmers in another part of the country.

    To come out of this coming and looming disaster of dismemberment and dissolution, we must reverse our treacherous and headlong celebration of ethnic exceptionalism and embrace the credo of universal humanity.

  • Lest we become a cautionary tale

    Lest we become a cautionary tale

    By

     

    The frightful spurts of violence across the country intone a brazen incantation of bestiality over mankind. It exposes the scourge of our inner ugliness, and establishes citizenship as a barbaric ritual drama, where the performers periodically swap masks among government and the governed.

    From Boko Haram’s terrorism, armed banditry, kidnap for ransom, to the killer herdsmen-farmer crisis, criminals and mass murderers actualise their fantasies of ill-bliss across the country.

    Amid the mayhem, we embrace the cancer of forgetting, knowing our capacity to forget is ultimately therapeutic in our dysfunctional state of affairs. Hence it may be understandable that Nigerians have forgotten already, grievous incidents, like the tragic fate of Mallam Abubakar Yunus, who watched helplessly, as Boko Haram terrorists slaughtered his two sons, like rams, in his presence.

    The Yunus were reportedly harvesting their rice in fields around Zabarmari, about 25 kilometres from Maiduguri, Borno’s capital, when the terrorists arrived decked in army camouflage. They tied up Yunus’ sons and slit their throats alongside other farmers. He could only watch and cry.

    Official reports cited 43 dead in the wake of the terrorists’ attack even as Borno governor, Babagana Zulum, told journalists that at least 70 farmers were killed. Abubakar Shekau, leader of the terror group, subsequently stated that his group killed 78 farmers in the attack.

    If the Zarbamari incident was as a rude jolt to the government’s ineffectual war against terrorism, the growth of kidnap for ransom portends more evil.

    In Kaduna, the abductors of the Greenfield University undergrads recently murdered five of the students, to bully Governor Nasir El-Rufai into paying the N800 million ransom requested but the state governor wouldn’t budge thus arousing fears about the fate of the remaining hostages.

    The funeral pyre mounts as kidnappers, armed bandits, and murderous herdsmen run riot across the country.

    More worrisome is the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB)’s posturing as Nigeria’s second insurgency. While the police and southeast governors trade invectives over the recent scourge of killings  perpetrated by “hoodlums” against policemen in the region, police morale, which took a heavy hit during the #EndSARS  murders of police officers, has taken a further dip.

    Every fresh killing, occurs jarringly in the wild drama; the corpses manifest as a sick rose wrapped in menacing public thorns. Amid the mayhem, the governors look up to the federal government to rescue their states from the jaws of insecurity thus drawing speculations about what they do with the outrageous security votes they draw from the federal purse, monthly.

    President Buhari and the governors’ occasional knee-jerk reactions to insecurity are ineffective and steeped in artifice. There is no gainsaying the incumbent administration has lost its grip of the nation’s security apparatus. It is, however, pointless rehashing calls for an overhaul of the security system. Nigeria needs a more drastic intervention.

    This administration won’t defeat Boko Haram and armed bandits. Save occasional flashes of feeble resolve, it will keep urging the nation’s military on a glorified hide and seek from now till its expiration in 2023.

    Whatever good the incumbent administration might have achieved is smothered by the miseries and death-cries of victims of insecurity, unemployment, and infrastructure lapse. On the watch of the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s President Buhari, Nigeria diminishes into a Darwinian spectacle of turbulent energies: terrorism, warmongering, buck-passing, corruption, and inefficiency – the same failings for which the party tirelessly chastised the former administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    At the moment, Boko Haram, killer-herdsmen and armed bandits have seized control of rural communities across the northeast and northwest; a colony of shady characters striving in twos and threes, fours and fives, have made it on to the boards of Nigeria’s most lucrative cash cows, the country’s public corporations.

    From their vantage positions, it becomes easier to hike fuel charges, prevent stable electricity, dominate import-export business, steal public funds, weaponise financial crisis and influence election results.

    Many Nigerians, the youth in particular, are probably living through the worst decade of their lives. They read of bloody genocides at dawn, poverty and strife in the next city while many more live through such. Add these to an economy patched with foreign loans and dubious tales of growth; if Nigeria is prospering, it hasn’t manifested in the lives of the citizenry.

    It took a perfect assemblage of bad leadership to get to this moment. It would take an imperfect cannonball of a character to lead us through and survive it. Nigeria deserves a dependable President: a patriot of uncommon grit and fibre, whose discipline, humaneness and decisiveness would signal the end of Nigeria’s recurrent carnage and locust years.

    As the country endures, the youth would do right to coalesce into a cohesive force, given their significance to the country’s impending doom or probable rebirth.

    Come 2023, Nigeria should seek candidates capable of fostering policies that would revivify industries, generate employment, a functional health sector and quality educational system.

    The search should start now for individuals endowed with the native intelligence, skilled manpower, astounding genius, streetsmarts and wisdom that Nigeria sorely needs to power her rebirth.

    The prospective candidates must be convincingly detribalised and courageous enough to eliminate crime and power Nigeria’s comatose industry. Industry matters. If the youth are gainfully employed, they won’t be vulnerable to criminal masterminds.

    It is always instructive to note that no former or incumbent president, governor, or legislator has descendants among the perpetrators and casualties of the widespread mayhem. Such homicidal groups are mobilised from the working class, the boondocks and other destitute divide.

    Today is spitting out monsters, tomorrow portends the emergence of a million more ogres, if the cycle is not reversed.

    What Nigeria needs at the moment is leadership driven by moral courage to change the status quo. While I wouldn’t root for a clueless gerontocracy or corrupt oligarchy, if Nigeria must elect a youthful leadership, it must comprise fully evolved, courageous, young men and women, capable of fostering change beneficial to all.

    Moral courage encompasses the nerve to do the right thing and speak the truth always. It involves defying the mob as a solitary individual; spurning toxic comradeship and disobedience to a corrupt potentate, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle.

    Its about time Nigeria rooted for a candidate identifiable as the window into the Nigerian psyche. The one who internalises the grief pulsing on the streets.

    I speak of the candidate who could manifest as the blank screen on which people of vastly different stripes can rally to project their dreams and needs; the passive yet active instrument by which Nigeria may prosper and attain rebirth.

    Failure to do so would manifest as yet another sociopathic confusion; a sign of the internal political and social divisions that make it difficult for Nigeria to bloom by her youth in monolithic terms.

    The youth is crucial to Nigeria’s rebirth; knowing this, the incumbent ruling class silences them by an irresistible material caress. Think political appointments, unearned benefits, tokenism, violence, and intellectual thuggery for cash, and so on.

    The youth must understand their role in this cosmic mess and avoid future rehash of the present lest Nigeria becomes one big cautionary tale.

  • The president’s combative spokesmen

    The president’s combative spokesmen

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    With looming anarchy as terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and criminal herdsmen take the country hostage, with police stations and military barracks coming under frequent attack resulting in harvest of deaths, the nation drifts. In ex-President Obasanjo’s words, Nigeria “is on the precipice and dangerously reaching a tipping point where it may no longer be possible to hold” as a result of what Wole Soyinka has also described as “acts of mis-governance, unforced errors and acts that are considered being stupid; such as failure to secure lives and languages of self-excusing”.

    Because the buck stops at President Buhari’s desk, history as the record of our past heroes and the summation of the dominant class’ quest to render selfless service to society will remember him for his management or mismanagement of our current crisis of nation-building. But history will also not forget, even if as footnote, the role of his combative spokesmen including, Lai Mohammed, his information minister who has chosen to play the ostrich while the nation burns, and,  Shehu Garba, his senior media adviser, who has chosen to serve other tendencies  rather than  the nation or Buhari, who was voted into power in 2015 by millions of Nigerians in spite of his baleful legacies as a military dictator back in 1984,  on account of his pan-Nigeria vision which  Garba Shehu continues to undermine.

    With the duo cutting a picture of men at war with their consciences during their different outings last week, Nigerians are now more convinced that with Buhari’s loyal gatekeepers in control of everything from recruitment to reading the president’s mind, Buhari needs no enemies. With their declaration of war against Nigerians that come under daily assault, they have succeeded in alienating him from millions of Nigerians that once swore by his name.

    Pa Ayo Adebanjo, who prides himself for fighting for Nigerian unity long before many of the current politicians threatening the unity of the country were born, told Buhari the truth to the effect that all the security agencies are in the hands of the north and that we have been surrounded with AK-47-wielding herdsmen all over the country.  He added – that there is no where they don’t exist armed with AK 47, asking President Buhari and his defence minister, Bello Danbazzau if AK-47 was part of the tools to rear cattle or whether that was the practice before Buhari came into power?

    Because truth hurts, for Lai Mohammed and Garba Shehu, that was a hate speech.

    When Bishop Mathew Kukah in his Christmas homilies a little over a year ago condemned what he saw as Buhari’s institutionalisation of nepotism by efforts at entrenching a northern leadership hegemony through skewed appointments observing if any other Nigerian but a northerner like Buhari had done some of the things Buhari did while ignoring public opinion, such a person would have been removed through a coup. And because the truth hurts, for the duo, that amounted to hate speech and an attempt to topple Buhari’s government for which a bill was quickly packaged for the National Assembly.

    With Pantami’s admission and apology for his past sympathy with terrorist groups, there was too much at stake for government whose legitimacy is being fiercely challenged from all sides by terrorists.  The least damaging approach from a media adviser that understands what was at stake was distancing the president from Pantami and his past.

    But behaving as if he owns the presidency, Shehu Garba who is never afraid to walk where angels trod came out forcefully in support of the minister.  Celebrating Pantami’s achievements which according to him include “leading the charge against illegal data deductions and pricing;  establishing  ICT start-up centres to boost youth entrepreneurship and create jobs and blocking “ some 9.2 million SIMs – to end the ability for criminals and terrorists to flagrantly use mobile networks undetected”,  he said the government not only  “stands behind Minister Pantami”,  it is  set to investigate “the veracity behind the claims of attempted inducement of the minister by some business men”.

    Garba does not see any merit in the argument of those who believe a government at war with terrorists should not been seen as harbouring terrorist sympathisers. The reversal of fortunes of our soldiers chased out of ‘liberated Sambisa forest’ who went on to suffer other humiliating crushing defeats due to what they attributed to sabotage by insiders and the renewed kidnapping of students leading to shutting down of over 600 schools by northern governors, all happening at a period Pantami was recruited to creatively fight terrorism, count for little.

    But rather than investigate if many of those recruited by Pantami into the institutions he has headed since 2015, constitute a danger to the nation, Garba would rather probe alleged attempt to bribe Pantami by some faceless businessmen.

    President Buhari, has continued to insist Nigerian unity is not negotiable.  He was to declare during his 2018 new year address that: “When all the aggregates of nationwide opinions are considered, my firm view is that our problems have more to do with process than structure”. He insists he does not understand the meaning of restructuring despite mouthing it during his 2011 failed presidential bid, had it as part of APC manifesto that brought him to power in 2015 and also received the El Rufai APC committee report on restructuring.

    But rather than advise the president as a lawyer that what ethnic nationalities in Nigeria are against is a situation where they are being told to accept the current document rigged against the rest of the country by a section of the federation, Lai Mohammed would rather play the ostrich.

    He was on a Radio Nigeria interview programme on June 9, 2017, where he stated that restructuring was not President Buhari’s priority. In August 2017, two months later, he was to say: “For the federal government, restructuring means devolution of power, a system whereby government’s policies and programmes can reach everybody at the grassroots”. He said they have started with community policing.

    Not long after, Lai Mohammed, still playing the ostrich decided to blame the constitution claiming: “You cannot today as a government do anything that is contrary to that constitution because that is the supreme law of the country”. He forgot to add that those that forged the self-serving document have no incentive to change it.

    Finally, last week, Lai Mohammed warned those threatening separation over our derailed federal arrangement of the apocalypse that awaits “many of the professors calling for the dismemberment of the country who may end up as bread-baking journeymen in Togo if the situation takes a dire and nasty turn” should Nigeria unravel.

    It will be recorded against Lai Mohammed that he opted to play the ostrich when he had the opportunity to remind those who are  today making our country ungovernable of  some  historical facts  about Ahmadu Bello, their grandfather, who rather than allow the north to remain part Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC preferred unitary Nigeria, was already negotiating how water can be channeled  from Congo River to independent north until he bought into Awolowo’s thesis on the value of the federal arrangement after the 1953 constitutional crisis.