The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Portrait of a Nigerian patriot

    Portrait of a Nigerian patriot

    By Olatunji Ololade

     

    In an ideal universe, the Nigerian patriot could pass for an ascetic. Like the religious mystic, he would preach revolution as a moral imperative, in the tenor of progress and the Delphic oracle.

    While projecting his vision for all to see, he would understand the citizenry’s silences in order to speak them. He accepts deprivation and failure in his pursuit of the collective good; he is never daunted by defeat and his protests are never fashioned for photo ops or the TV cameras alone.

    He is driven by  an intense empathy, even love, for the defenseless, the persecuted, and the weak, far from media lens and the perimeters of political correctness.

    His compassion is neither funded nor godfathered, and his dissent is incensed by fertile consciousness; like the androgynous earth mother, it self-fertilises without help from society’s captors and oppressors: the corrupt presidency, venal governors, legislators, and international NGOs with a vampiric soul and a bleeding heart. He identifies them as spawns of the same ogress womb, carnivores of the same badlands.

    Having experienced or witnessed from the sidelines, the injustices of the raptorial ruling class, he chooses to rebel. Yet he understands that revolutions are like a long distance relay; they are often begun by one generation and completed by the next.

    “Those who give the first check to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin,” writes Michel de Montaigne in 1580, adding that the fruits of a revolution are seldom enjoyed by its pioneers.

    Yet revolutions can be crushed by force or hijacked by individuals as was the case of the #EndSARS protest. The movement eventually dissembled as a faux revolution; no thanks to the dubious sponsorship of ‘sexuality’ perverts at home and abroad, and the manipulation of counterrevolutionary forces who chanted ‘reform’ while working for the restoration of oppressive power structures.

    More worrisome was the quality of youth co-opted to power the movement; the #EndSARS protester paraded conscious youth in a careless style. He was the plebeian statue sculpted of spunk and spittle. Governors, lawmakers, and the presidency considered him to be a dangerous cuss. But he saw himself otherwise.

    In truth, he was the proverbial yowl who plundered rage slipshod, a revolutionary of dubious grace. His flashing eyes, vagrant rage, combined insolent swag with gruff panache. Flashing eyes may command and pierce but they can also incinerate from within as established by the #EndSARS.

    Violence was a mutation of the protest. When it broke, it was uninformed, primitive, and vast, like the chaos of savage night before the dawn of blossoms. Dawn erupted with sickly carnations; despite the flowery fantasies of the protesters, their clamoured dawn illumines with moonshine.

    The insinuations of fraud at handling funding for the #EndSARS protest, in its aftermath, further establishes the duplicity of intent of the arrow heads. Yet the fruits of the protests are negative for the same reason that they are positive for the youth; the resultant mayhem and betrayal counsels caution, tact and masterful self-containment.

    One positive takeaway from the protests is the timeless opportunity it offers to the youth to regroup and restrategise. Come 2023, they won’t seize power from the incumbent political class. That is a tall dream. This minute, they could set about reordering in numbers and might to renegotiate the nature and extent of their participation in the political process.

    Only an assemblage of true patriots could see this through. To rebuild Nigeria, the youth must seek legitimate means of participation in the political process. The window for establishing and registering a neutral or third force political party swung shut while they bickered and fought to validate a fictive massacre at Lekki Tollgate.

    But it is never too late to regroup and adopt a viable political party, and resensitise it to humane principles of nationhood, citizenship, and thought.

    The youth must forget the fiction of an almighty revolution by which they could gift Nigeria with a ‘young’ President, governors and lawmakers, come 2023. They have lost the only chance they had to achieve that in the wake of the #EndSARS protest.

    It is about time self-confessed youth leaders and closet patriots united in commitment to more progressive endeavours, like the sensitization of youthful and elderly electorate against the dominance and designs of the oppressive power elite.

    Too many times, Nigeria’s youth and electorate have been hobbled by carefully orchestrated and bloody distractions, like the ethnicization of the killer herdsmen-farmer conflict; the hijab wars; intra and inter-party violence.

    Pro-nomadic herding and open grazing advocates, for instance, insist that it is wrong for any government, person or group from any part of the country to outlaw open grazing and the atrocities committed by criminals among herdsmen. So doing, they deploy political muscles masquerading as ethnic interest groups to weaponise debates and pockets of skirmishes nationwide.

    They argue that child and adult herders must allowed to roam freely, and condemn attempts to restrict them to an organised ranching system, claiming it negates the culture of nomadic herding, and amounts to an infringement on their fundamental human rights.

    Such characters must be told the truth; if they truly wish to preserve such nostalgic, problematic herding culture, let them let loose their own children to roam free with cows.

    A new breed of patriots must emerge to initiate debates and deliberations spanning various fora nationwide, whereby they would honestly thrash out crucial issues that aid the reduction of Nigeria’s youth to nomadic herders, disposable social elements and cannon fodder for political violence.

    They must eschew inclinations for hate-speech, and their synergies must be guided through an ad hoc and premeditated coordination in repelling moles, armed goons, and saboteurs, who would be sent to disrupt their rallies with tribal toxins, fake news, religious venom, and filthy lucre.

    If they truly wish to assert themselves progressively at the forthcoming elections, they must begin to woo societal segments they have hitherto ignored and dismissed as too violent, too dumb, too compromised, and too wild.

    If they are truly keen on establishing a third force political party, they must learn to accommodate the random hooligan, herdsman, policeman, street urchin, among others, as co-travellers in the march towards the Nigeria of our dreams.

    To rebel against insurmountable odds requires courage and faith, without which the rebel is doomed. He risks being despised as the vessel of an errant demon. Yet he must stick to his vision.

    Negative emasculated passivity flourishes when the patriot acquiesces, unquestioningly, to the designs and patronage of the power elite. Playing passive requires extreme sacrifice; the docile character, in fulfilling his role as gelded, amoral being, must silence his mind.

    The true patriot, on the other hand, must vie to expand the life of the mind; he must develop a knack for asking the difficult, ugly questions at the risk of becoming a social pariah.

    Protest, to him, is always a means to fight for the good of all. He never resorts to deception. Demagogues promise glory without sweat, success without sudor, and get significant segments of the citizenry, mostly youth, hung up on the fantasy of a world without hardship.

    But the true patriot preaches the attainment of glory through sweat, and power through humaneness, and as a product of enlightenment. He is the plug to society’s moral void.

  • Shadow of death

    Shadow of death

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    It was a routine visit to his farm. Once in a while when state duties allow, Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom goes there to see things for himself. He uses the opportunity to chat up the farm workers; share a joke or two here and there and call it a day. The governor was there last Saturday and he escaped death by whiskers.

    Some may even want him to spend more time with them on the farm as it is not everyday that you get to see a governor at close quarters. But that is not possible considering his hectic schedule. Soon, it was time to go. And the governor turned the way he came to head out of the farm. The first few steps were smooth. In the midst of some of his security aides, he trudged on in the marshy terrain towards his car parked a few metres away.

    All the vehicles in his convoy were not driven into the farm because of its difficult terrain. They walked on, as they looked at the vehicles at a no far distance. Then, everything changed as guns boomed from nowhere. The party stopped in its track. The governor’s security aides knew what they had to do next: ferry their principal to safety, notwithstanding the deafening gunshots, which could be heard afar off because of the dense forest. In a state terrorised by herdsmen, many in far places would have run for cover even without knowing the cause of the gunshots.

    After all, self preservation is the first law of nature. Some would have shouted out to others that the herders have come again, without even seeing who the gunmen were. Men, women and children would have scampered to safety to avoid being hit. There was no need to worry. The gunmen were not after them. At least,not that day. They had their target in mind and they were going all out for him. They thought they had the governor where they wanted him. It was a perfect setting for them. From their hiding place, they thought it was finished for the governor.

    It was an ambush well planned, but its execution went awry at the zero hour. They had Ortom in the sight of their gun, but Providence intervened to save his life. The gunmen could not have imagined that the governor would escape. They thought they had everything sewn up. Shoot him to death in the bush and flee without leaving a trace of where they came from. From reports so far, it is obvious that the gunmen did their homework well. They had their coming and going well planned and timed. They came and left with ease because they had studied the farm well before they struck. It is possible that they worked with insider information and with someone who knows the governor’s itinerary.

    The gunmen meant business. Their mission was to kill Ortom. The reason for their action may not be unconnected with the governor’s well known stance on cattle grazing, which has pitched him against herders. The anti-grazing law in his state does not sit well with the herders who prefer to move about with their cows. In the process,  the cows have destroyed many farms, leading to incessant herders/farmers clashes in which hundreds of lives have been lost. This is basically the problem in Benue, which, unfortunately, is being replicated in many parts of the country today. From Plateau to Nasarawa, Oyo to Ogun, Edo to Delta, these clashes have become a common feature, with death and destruction all over the place.

    This is why the attack on Ortom should be viewed seriously. When has it become an offence for a governor to make his stand known on any issue? A governor is expected to act in the best interest of his state. So, if he feels it is in the interest of his state to ban grazing, should that be the reason to target his life? It will be difficult for many, especially Ortom and his people, not to see the hands of herders in this incident. A Yoruba adage puts it aptly: the child died today after yesterday’s cry of the witch and you are still looking for the culprit! This is the song that Ortom is already singing. Shortly after his escape, he pointedly accused the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) of being behind the attack. MACBAN has since denied the allegation.

    But a faceless Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM) is claiming responsibility for the attack. The group may just be seeking relevance. No matter, it is worrisome that gunmen can deliberately go out of their way to attack a governor despite the retinue of his security men. It shows how daring and bold these gunmen have become. If they had succeeded in their mission, it would have given them the confidence to take on other governors. It would have marked the beginning of the assassination of governors. The Ortom attack is unique because the gunmen took the fight to him on his farm. It was a clear case of seeking him out for elimination. No governor has been attacked in such circumstance in the history of this nation.

    Other governors with similar experience were attacked on the road when they ran into gunmen and not on their farms. Here, we are talking about one of Ortom’s predecessors, Senator George Akume as well as Governors Rotimi Akeredolu (Ondo) and Babagana Zulum (Borno). Akume and Akeredolu were attacked by gunmen operating on the roads they plied, while Zulum was ambushed by Boko Haram insurgents on the highway. But to go and confront a governor on his farm makes those past attacks, as serious as they are too, pale into insignificance. The police and the other security agencies must rise to the occasion in this case. They owe the nation a duty to get these gunmen.

    Ortom’s security aides have a question to answer on how the gunmen escaped after the attempt on his life. They cannot plead that they were caught unawares. As security agents, they are expected to be at alert always and be prepared for any eventuality. Are they saying that if the gunmen had got the governor, they would have allowed them to vanish into thin air just as it happened in this failed mission? As protectors of this class of Nigerians, security agents must take their job seriously. The lives of governors and other public officers are in the hands of these security agents and they must never be found wanting in the discharge of this onerous responsibility.

    Why did Ortom’s security agents allow all the gunmen (15, according to the governor) escape without getting one of them? Thank God Ortom was ferried to safety after, according to him, running 1.5kilometres to get back to the safety and comfort of his well secured car. Perhaps, if one of the gunmen had been caught, that would have helped in unmasking the masterminds of the mission. All the same, there should be no excuse in getting them and soon too.

  • The Biden foreign policy: Too many irons in the fire

    The Biden foreign policy: Too many irons in the fire

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    President Joe Biden has been in power for less than three months and the time is too short to have a full picture of the direction of regime’s policies but morning shows the day as childhood shows manhood. His policy at home will of course be subject to robust Republican challenge and even filibustering in the senate. He will have to moderate his policies in order to have national consensus in an ideologically and culturally fractured society. The areas of contention at home are immigration, health, civil rights, racism, housing, culture, infrastructure, energy, the environment, education and police reforms. These are subjects which American administrations since Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s have battled with sometimes with a national consensus but in most cases with sharp divisions between the Democrats on the Left and the Republicans on the Right.

    While foreign policy cannot be completely divorced from domestic policies but in some cases the linkage between the two may not be obvious. The foreign policy of a country like that of the USA remains fixed on the protection of its national interest. What appears to be different between the Democratic and Republican parties is at best tenuous and a difference in emphasis and in the dramatis personae. American foreign policy in the Middle East tries to protect American Oil Majors which had invested heavily in the development of the Middle East oil. Protecting them was couched in the defence of democracy and free navigation of international waters. This policy has been defended by Republican Administrations from David Dwight Eisenhower to Democratic administration of Joe Biden. While oil may no longer be important as a factor in American Middle East policy, America’s investment in the area and the strategic importance of the Middle East in global shipping and aviation will always make control and influence in the Middle East important to policy makers in Washington DC and now of course in Beijing and Moscow.

    America wants to reduce the power and nuclear ambitions of Iran while tolerating Israel’s excesses and those of Arab monarchies favorable to American interest. Surprisingly Biden has moved strongly against the Saudi Crown prince which a quieter policy could well have achieved. But America is not the only player there.

    The Russian federation needs neutrality if not acquiescence of the Muslim world in the way it tackles the serious Islamic fundamentalist problems of the Russian Caucasus and its relation with the now sovereign Muslim majority republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan where fundamentalism has remained a worrying political problem.

    China also needs friendship with the keepers of the holiest places of Islam to mollify its restive Muslim population in Northwest China particularly in Xinjiang, Gansu and Ningxia and significant Muslim population in Yunnan province in the South West and Henan province in Central China. In the past, Western policy makers used to feel that China and Russia did not have abiding interest in the Middle East but the situation has changed. The Soviet Union maintained presence in the Middle East ideologically and militarily in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt after Colonel Abdel Nasser came to power in 1956. China, until recently, did not count for much in global politics but since the Korean War of 1953, China has demonstrated muscle in protecting its interest in the Pacific and I remember a statement credited to Zhou En Lai, China’s prime minister in 1956 that in the event of war with the USA, China would be prepared to sacrifice 100 million Chinese and it would still have over a billion Chinese left. This came as a sobering moment to people in the Pentagon who were used to threatening China with nuclear weapons following Chinese troops pouring into North Korea to defend it against western allies fighting under the flag of the United Nations.

    What used to be a bipolar world of the United States and the USSR has now metamorphosed into a Tripolar world of a dominant USA, a much weaker Russia which President Obama dismissed as a medium power and resurgent China with a GDP of USD14.34 trillion (2019) compared with the USA USD20.9 trillion (2020) and Russia’s GDP of USD1.7 trillion (2019) which is about half of Germany’s.

    World peace is guaranteed by the fear of universal nuclear holocaust which John F Kennedy captured in his remarks during the Cuban crisis of 1963 by saying if war broke out between America and the Soviet Union, the “living will envy the dead” meaning those who survive will wither away through the painful death caused by radioactive fallout. Robert Oppenheimer the father of the atomic bomb was said to have regretted letting the genie out of the bottle and one of the earliest nuclear scientists, Albert Einstein was sad at the coming of the bomb and said if a Third World War was fought, the fourth will be fought with sticks and stones because civilization will not survive a thermonuclear exchange by the then two super powers. The situation is now more complex because of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of Britain, France, India, Pakistan and now Israel, North Korea and in spite of the nuclear weapons’ non-proliferation treaty, some countries like Iran are determined to have atomic weapons ostensibly for defensive purposes. If this pandora box is not closed tightly, the technology and the money is available in countries like Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea even Brazil.

    The antagonism of the Biden administration to Russia and China is therefore wrong-headed. Calling the Russian President a “killer” is totally undiplomatic. Putin in return, says he wishes the American president good health meaning he thinks the old man is unhinged. Trying to reset American-Russian relations to pre- Trump level doesn’t mean President Biden calling another president a killer even if there is incontrovertible and public evidence. What does America gain from it?

    American-Russian relation is too serious to be based on some nebulous civil rights consideration no matter how popular it is with the Democratic Left. Saying Putin will be punished and every American would see it is a “misspeak” because apart from economic pressures, what can America that has been wearied and weakened by two decades of wars in Asia and the Middle East do to Russia? Does Biden want to liberate the Crimean Peninsula annexed by Russia since 2014? Of course, Biden can make Russia pay in places like Syria and block the gas pipeline bringing gas from Russia to Germany. Before this brouhaha died down, Biden’s foreign minister  Anthony J. Blinken publicity lashed out at China in a public meeting in Alaska telling the Chinese, America would  no longer tolerate China’s stealing of American technology by violating copyright of American companies  as well as violation of democratic rights of people in Hong Kong and the rights of Muslims in Zinjiang and that America would resist China’s meddling in Taiwan affairs and obstruction of international waterways in South China Sea. The whole world knows this is standard American policy but what benefit did America derive from this public spat which elicited appropriate insulting response from China.

    Biden in this careless way of undoing Trump’s policy has unwittingly driven his two potential enemies into each other’s warm embrace. Yet, he needs China’s help in dealing with the recalcitrant Kim Jong-un of North Korea on denuclearization.

    Western Europe must be worrying about Biden’s wobbly foreign policy because if war were to break out and fought with conventional and tactical nuclear weapons, it will probably be fought first in the European theatre before it spreads to the whole world. Of course, if any disastrous policies emanate from lack of professionalism in the USA, they should not expect their European and Canadian allies to follow them sheepishly.

    One area of domestic policy that will explode in the face of Biden is the impression he has given to people in South and Central America that the American southern border is open to welcome gate-crashing immigrants into America where anti-immigrant racism and white supremacist tendencies are getting out of hands. The Biden administration is now soliciting for Mexico’s assistance by offering it two million Astra-Seneca vaccines which America doesn’t need.

    Lest I am misunderstood on the issue of immigration, I believe that the success of the Biden Democratic administration is so important to the welfare of the rest of the world that everything should be done to prevent the return of Trumpian  racist white supremacist republicanism.

  • Buhari’s real enemies

    Buhari’s real enemies

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    As a protest against the mindless stealing of the nation’s resources by PDP stalwarts and their children while Jonathan took refuge in Nigerian churches and Jerusalem synagogues, sometimes in company of those indicted by the National Assembly for financial malfeasance, Nigerians in 2015 overwhelmingly elected President Buhari.  But Buhari was demystified within his first two years in office.

    No thanks to his warring ministers, political office-holders and ‘loyal gate keeper’ permanently engaged in war of attrition, not over how best to serve Nigeria but over  ‘who gets what, when and how’.  Following the president’s inability to manage his warring men who many believe are serving other tendencies in his administration, he frittered away the goodwill of Nigerians.

    And for the president, it was a double jeopardy. It is today a sort of sardonic humour that the same men that delegitimised Buhari’s “divisive administration of confusion and crisis”,( apology to Sule Lamido ) that are now hawking APC’s 2023 presidential  ticket to President Jonathan who was humiliated out of office in 2015.

    And in recent times, for President Buhari, it does not just rain, it pours. While Monguno, his defence minister and the now retired service chiefs who had held the president hostage with tales of possible coup were engaged in war over procurement of arms, an emboldened Boko Haram regrouped. Although government denied control of any Nigerian territory by the insurgents, what is not however deniable is that the deadly insurgents have now made killing of our ill-equipped and out-gunned soldiers their pastime.

    Similarly, bandits and criminal herdsmen emboldened by the president’s warring disorderly men with incoherent messages, have turned kidnaping of students and demand of ransom as high as N500m into an art. With subtle encouragement of AK-47-wielding herdsmen by Bauchi’s governor, Bala Mohammed and a plea for amnesty and compensation for criminal Fulani herdsmen by Dr Gumi, replacing expected coherent response of the federal government, criminal herdsmen illegally occupying reserved forests of the southwest are not in a hurry to obey the laws of their host states.

    That the war of attrition between warring Monguno, Buhari’s National Security Adviser (NSA) and the president’s retired security chiefs did not end with their long over-due retirement came in bold relief during his press interview with BBC Hausa service last week.

    He had said without restraint: “The president has done his best by approving huge sums of money for the purchase of weapons, but the weapons were not bought, they are not here.. I’m not saying the former service chiefs diverted the money, but the money is missing.… The fact is that preliminary investigation showed the funds are missing and the equipment is nowhere to be found. When the new service chiefs assumed office, they also said they didn’t see anything on the ground.”

    Defence of the former service chiefs came immediately from another warring member of the president’s ‘loyal gate keepers’- Shehu Garba, the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media whose every intervention on behalf of the president seem to position his principal as being at war with those he governs.

    Faulting Moguno, he had said: “About the $1bn taken from the Excess Crude Account with the consent of state governors used for military procurements, I want to assure you that nothing of that money is missing. The reference to it in the interview of the BBC Hausa Service by the National Security Adviser has been misconstrued and mistranslated. NSA made two critical points – one is that we don’t have enough weapons, which is a statement of fact; and two, procurements made have not been fully delivered.”

    For the president’s political enemies who were once told by a Senator Shehu Sani, then a leading APC member, that the president fights corruption among opposition party members with insecticide but with deodorant among his supporters, Monguno and Shehu Garba’s different narratives was just one more  example of the president’s double standard in his anti-corruption crusade.

    Nigerians could not have also forgotten the Malami/Magu rivalry. After series of embarrassing public duel by both men serving the same principal, Abubakar Malami, wrote to the president, listing several allegations against Ibrahim Magu including mismanagement and lack of transparency in managing recovered assets; diversion of recovered assets for personal enrichment; discrepancy in foreign currency recovered and the lodgment of its naira equivalent.  Magu was detained on July 6, 2020 and a panel started investigating him on July 31, 2020.

    Magu was also believed to have leaked Malami’s secret meeting with fugitive Maina in Dubai before his controversial recall to the Nigerian civil service.  Malami masterminded along the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, the recall of Maina, who was then wanted for alleged N2 billion fraud. He  was condemned by Nigerians and civil society groups, forcing President Buhari to order his “immediate disengagement”  from the civil service while “demanding  a full report of the circumstances of Maina’s recall and posting to the Ministry of Interior.”

    Perhaps there was no other issue that set Buhari against Nigerians than the unrestrained comment of Mansur Dan-Ali the Minister of Defence on the mindless killings of harmless Nigerians by criminal herdsmen.  Speaking at the end of a meeting of the National Security Council over the Benue killings on January 25, 2013, he had said: “Whatever crisis that happens at any time, there are remote and immediate causes.  Since the nation’s independence, we know there used to be a route whereby the cattle rearers take because they are all over the nation… If you go to Bayelsa or Ogun, you will see them. If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen?

    “These people are Nigerians and we must learn to live together with one another. Communities and other people must learn how to accept foreigners within their enclave. Finish!”

    But the killers as it turned out are not our own Fulani herdsmen. The minister while using blocked grazing routes as justification for killings subsistence farmers in their farms in federating states was silent on about 500 grazing routes that suffered similar fate in the north. And because the minister who kept his job was never cautioned by the president, Nigerians hold him responsible for Ali’s unrestrained comment.

    President Buhari was also missing when his two warring men, the Inspector General of Police and chairman of the Police Service Commission held the nation hostage with herdsmen, bandits and cattle rustlers terrorizing Nigerians. Perhaps as a compensation for rejecting demands of states for state police, the president had approved the recruitment of 10,000 police constables. But for over a year, the government policy could not be implemented as the president’s warring political appointees dragged themselves to court. Even after an appeal court led by Justice Olabisi Ige had unanimously held that the IGP and the Police lack the power to recruit the constables, the IGP went to the Supreme Court in October 2020. All Nigerians got from an elected president was a deafening silence.

    Lastly, the president was also missing as his misguided  Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami,  plodded on with his  poorly thought-out attempt at depriving millions of Nigerians from the mobile smartphone and digital space, through a mismanaged National Identification Number (NIN) policy. Matami wanted 100m Nigerians in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic to comply with his two weeks deadline (December 16, to December 30, 2020) after which all SIMs without NINs will be blocked from service providers’ network. As it later turned out, all those who have bank account with BVN numbers didn’t need to have wasted between N2000 and N10,000 to secure NIN.

    Buhari may not be featuring in 2023,;his APC will however most likely pay for the perfidy of his warring men.

  • When Nigeria was worth dying for

    When Nigeria was worth dying for

    By Jide Osuntokun

    An English friend  of mine phoned me a couple of weeks ago asking if it was true the governor of Bauchi State, Bala Muhammad said herders should carry AK-47 guns to defend themselves. I said I am not sure if he said so and that I would find out more about it and call him back. Of course I knew he said so; I was just trying to protect my country’s honour and integrity abroad. But the guy phoned back the following day and I had to own up to the fact that one of our governors actually said so. My friend said he was sorry to see that our situation was getting very serious and asked me if I knew that this type of weapon was for combat operations.

    Of course I knew being an expert in warfare myself. I asked myself why the governor took that position. He himself said Fulani herders were being killed and their cattle rustled. I don’t know how true this allegation is and if it is true it is a serious allegation and it should be investigated by the police. There is a general information that cattle are being rustled in the north by thieves and brigands and Fulani owners of cattle are losing their means of livelihood and many of the herders are consequently taking to armed robbery and kidnapping to make a living. Commentators have also said kidnapping for ransom which yields tens and even hundreds of millions are now more profitable than cow herding. We must first say the herders are not the owners of the cows. They are mostly cow hands hired by the big cow owners so this loss of cattle cannot justify robbery and kidnapping by cow hands unless we are to believe the rich cow owners are also involved in kidnapping and collection of ransoms to make up for stolen cows.

    So how does carrying Kalashnikov battle guns solve the problems? Secondly which security authority licensed the carrying of these lethal weapons which the governor was defending or the herders are law unto themselves and just carried these weapons without license? Some of us licensed to carry hunting rifles have even been asked to give them up because of the general proliferation of small arms which is a serious problem globally. The Nigerian public needs to know if the gun laws have changed and all those who can afford to buy any kind of weapons can now purchase them. This is a policy which we call “grave yard policy” when discussing the unbridled spread of nuclear weapons instead of disarmament. The same logic also applies to a situation where everyone can own battle-grade guns.  Even in America, the gun crazed country, people cannot carry these types of guns our governor is recommending! Imagine if the much abused farmers whose crops are wantonly damaged and eaten by cows took a queue from the governor and embrace this new gun culture.

    The Bauchi governor has been making all kinds of unguarded statements these days such as saying Fulani people have universal nationality and are not bound by borders and that Fulani in any country will find home in Nigeria and that he has relations himself in the Cameroons. Perhaps this governor should be told that division of nations and ethnic groups by national borders is not unique to Fulani alone, so are the Hausa, Yoruba, the  Mandinka  are actually divided among  Guinea -Bissau, Guinea, The Gambia, Mali, Senegal and Liberia. Other divided nations are Arabs, French, Germans, Punjabi, Bengali, Koreans, Dutch and even Chinese. If all these people refuse to obey international frontiers, international order will collapse and world order would have to be reconfigured.

    So why did the governor take this extremist view of wanting our people to see him as Fulani champion? If other ethnic groups adopt his bellicose position, this will harm Fulani rather than help them. Suppose people take seriously the advice of the minister of defence that we should all fight back the kidnappers and brigands tormenting us instead of crying and pleading with security forces to save us. This call on us to defend ourselves will lead to acquisition of the same AK-47 guns by everyone and since the villagers are more than their invaders, what chance would the Fulani herders have against armed peasantry all over the country. It is obvious to reasonable people that the solution to our security problem is not general arming of our people or a section of it.  What we need is general disarmament and increase in security forces in numbers and improved mobility and disposition. This will include establishment of local and state police as we used to have in colonial times and ensuring that offenders are swiftly punished. One of the causes of insecurity is the fact that swift punishment that should serve as deterrence has not been seriously employed in the past. The order given recently by the president to forcefully disarm or to shoot at sight any gun carrying criminals who resist security forces order is a policy in the right direction. One hopes it is not coming too late like shutting the door of the stable while the horse has bolted away!

    I asked myself why the governor of Bauchi took the extreme position as if he was not part of the executive that should be helping Nigeria to find a solution to its security problem not by suggesting a shoot-out solution to an extremely complex problem which if not handled properly could unravel the delicate cement that glues us together.

    I read a brilliant analysis of the governor’s motive by one of the editors of the Vanguard newspapers who said the governor is trying to position himself as Fulani defender because of the serious cases of graft and corruption the EFCC has against him. He built houses worth billions of Naira for himself and another for his young son in the exclusive Maitama areas of Abuja which he allocated to himself and family when he was Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. He also acquired hectares of land near the airport worth billions of Naira and to insure himself against presidential question, he allocated same to President Jonathan supposedly for agriculture. When Buhari came in 2015, Bala Muhammad was temporarily locked up for his malfeasance but later released. Needless to remind my readers he got his ministerial appointment from Jonathan for supporting the removal from power of poor sick Umar Yar’Adua. In any serious country, he should not have been allowed to contest election for the post of governor which he had resources to buy and which he promptly bought in the Nigerian fashion despite the fact that Bauchi State is an APC state as reflected by the party’s overwhelming majority in the House of Assembly.

    We must be very careful about who we elect into political positions in this country. Arming a group of supporters as was done in Borno during the governorship of Ali Modu Sheriff which eventually led to Boko Haram is not the best way to go. Arming Fulani herders may lead to another incendiary movement which we may not be able to control because action and reaction are equal and oppositely directed. Opponents of the Fulani herders will also arm themselves in a war of all against all, some kind of Hobbesian state of nature in which life is short  nasty and brutish .

    We must refuse to be led by time servers and people feathering their own nests while they claim to be fighting for their ethnic groups and if everybody does this in an insane manner, we will have no country to rule and we will all suffer when anarchy breaks out. The governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje has suggested to all those asking herders to be armed and to follow cows from Bauchi to Lagos to donate their children who are comfortably living in London or New York to come home and join the trek across Nigeria they are so much in love with.

    I need to remind the Bauchi governor that the cow herders do not represent the essence of being Fulani, an essence demonstrated by Shaikh Uthman bin Fodio which is piety, holiness, forbearance, order and peace and in my life I know millions of this kind of Fulani, not the killer monsters being encouraged by Bala Muhammad. This country has been too good to many people in my generation that I sometimes feel guilty for how low we have descended. Somebody asked me about the national slight of President Joe Biden not calling our president while he has called the presidents of Ghana and Kenya; I told the fellow to go and ask governor of Bauchi Bala Muhammed. With this kind of situation, who wants to die for Nigeria. In my youth and adult life while I had opportunity to serve Nigeria I would have gladly died for this country.

     

  • Cave parody (2)

    Cave parody (2)

    By Olatunji Ololade

    The path to dystopia unfurls, in the end, as a hypnotic daydream. In Nigeria, it is the hovels we run into, to escape reality’s tedious pangs. We covet the distractions. We need them to mask our lives’ dissembling. Thus our retreat into a world of magic – the type celebrated by musical, sexual reality shows.

    We live for illusions. We covet the spectacle of shadows cast on the walls of our minds, like the cave dwellers of Plato’s The Republic. In The Republic, Socrates explains that the cave represents the world, the region of life which is revealed to us only through the sense of sight. The ascent out of the cave is the journey of the soul into the region of the intelligible, and it  requires, writes Plato, that the enlightened mind endures four stages of transformation.

    The first, notes N.S Gill, is his imprisonment in the cave; that is our fascination with materialism and our world of illusions. The second involves his release from chains; that is, our contact with the real, sensual world.  Third, he makes his ascent out of the cave; that is, our flirtation with knowledge and the world of ideas. Fourth, he finds his way back into the cave to help his fellows but while wrapped in a beam of light.

    But what if the supposedly enlightened mind could only deign his fellow cave dwellers shiny, gray beams resonant of darkness? What if, like the sullied press, the shady revolutionary and corrupt oligarchs, he comes shining brilliant spokes of ambiguity?

    The process of progressing out of the cave is about getting educated and it is a difficult process requiring assistance and sometimes, force. This encapsulates the struggle involved in acquiring beneficial education or ridding a country of dark tyranny. The allegory of the cave intones our struggle to see the truth, to be critical thinkers, argues Anam Lodhi.

    Millions of Nigerian youths would love to resist the tyranny of the incumbent ruling class if they didn’t covet too much, the bliss of ignorance. The struggle for freedom is often a painful experience. Dreams die and lives get lost as our heavily policed state, goes after perceived critics of the government. Hence many find it easier to embrace ignorance or silence.

    The person who is leaving the cave is questioning his beliefs, whereas the people in the cave simply accept what they are shown. They do not think about or question the veracity of doctored reality.

    The allegory of the cave shows us the relation between education and truth, bondage and freedom.

    The battle for freedom and its sustenance is, however, best prosecuted by men and women of catholicity of will, higher learning and culture. I speak of true patriots and statesmen, ambassadors of Nigerianness and native intelligence. Have we such patriots? Have we such men and women of deep culture?

    The most pernicious aspect of our quandary is the disintegration of our cultural, moral complex. A land without both is dead to feeling; it becomes prone to rape and colonisation by cultural sovereigns.

    The history of the world pulses with subtle and bodacious seizures of sovereignty by global ‘super powers.’ The latter maintain dominance over the so-called ‘third world’ via cultural and political imperialism. The latter oft succeeds the former, where they aren’t launched from twin barrels of an imperialist shotgun.

    While it is fool-hardy to categorise the world into first, second and third worlds, such specious and flawed taxonomy of nations – perpetuated by the media, INGOs and the academia – facilitates easier recolonisation of poorly governed, impoverished nations of Africa and the Middle East, by failing states spuriously depicted as shining lights of the ‘First World.’

    The latter are nothing but varnished tombs of the imperial greatness they hitherto symbolised; scared by their imminent collapse, they craftily recolonise Africa, in particular – plundering her bowels to sustain their fading economies and social systems.

    Having reclassified Africa as the ‘third world,’ they lay siege to the continent, plundering her resources; it’s a familiar plot in which Africans’ greed and ignorance lay the continent open to pillage and trans-generational slavery.

    Nigeria’s lack of a humane, visionary leadership, for instance, makes her unbidden offering on an altar of imperialist vultures.

    If truly we seek freedom, we must take purposive steps to unshackle ourselves from the leash of predatory oligarchs within, and the carnivore nations and international money lenders plundering our bowels from abroad.

    Nigeria must rejig her cultural foundations and rebuild her moral complex. She must rise from her knees, and quit sucking the rusted end of the wrong spigot. The result of such endeavour would excite a social re-engineering built upon character mending, social and economic restoration in consonance with our peculiar strengths and weaknesses.

    The result would be felt across several spheres of our existence. Restoring our cultural dominance in our own land would facilitate easier salvaging of our society, particularly the engine and wheels of our industrial complex.

    China, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Sweden, among others, attained shades of equilibrium and progress across crucial facets of their national lives by basing their governance styles on personalised pivots cum foundations of culture and traditions.

    Nigeria, however, encounters her nemesis in materialism; the wild pursuit of status and money has destroyed our souls and our economy. The business and political elite comprising our bourgeois divide live on ill-gotten wealth. Their survival, continued relevance – amid the chaos that our lives have become – is funded by stolen money and beastly monopolies facilitated by heinous social and political contracts.

    The middle class fades into oblivion as boondocks families and the working class fight to maintain membership of informal social castes imposed upon them by a predatory political class.

    But rather than see the latter for the monstrosities they truly personify, the citizenry embrace ignorance.

    The general run of the masses supposedly think and speak; but many do so without any real awareness of the actuality of forms that define their existence. Plato’s allegory of the cave was meant to explain this. In the allegory, he likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. Plato’s allegory speaks to our individual and collective fate as a nation.

    For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge thus to train someone to manage a business account for PWC is to educate him or her in a skill. To train them to debate the ethics of a business venture is to educate them on values and morals. A culture that disregards the vital interplay between morality and power writes Hedges, condemns itself to death.

    Such existential truths are scorned by the modern fortune-hunter. This disconnect subsists across professions. Nigerian economists, for instance, chant elaborate theoretical models yet know little of how their fancy, soulless economics impacts on rural poetry and suburban lives.

    Our education and social systems must quit churning out such products of a cultural void, casualties of a system that produces graduates to serve the corrupted incumbent system; individuals who have been taught to cheat the system and applaud financial theft as a shrewd corporate strategy.

    The true purpose of education must be to make minds, not social cannibals. It must be far removed from a system that bullies the populace to pacify and please authority.

  • Our money or our guns

    Our money or our guns

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

    National Security Adviser (NSA) Maj Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd) stirred up the hornet’s nest when he spoke on the $1billion taken from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to buy arms to prosecute the insurgency war. Monguno was not saying anything new. It has always been in the news that, that amount is being spent on acquiring 12 Super Tucano fighter jets. The issue has been on for over three years and in an environment where things work, it is only appropriate for the public to get an update from time to time

    It was that update, unpleasant as it may seem, that the NSA provided on the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) last week. It is not a secret that the money is being expended on arms acquisition to enable the military, as we are told, finally ‘finish off’ Boko Haram. What is secretive about the deal is what has become of the huge sum and the weapons ordered from the United States (US)-based Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). Before now, it was fashionable for many of those in government to bore Nigerians with how the non-acquisition of these weapons is affecting the military’s performance whenever Boko Haram made a hit in the Northeast or elsewhere.

    “If only we had the right weapons, we would have finished off Boko Haram, which has been technically degraded, and is only going after soft targets,  such as women and children. Once, we get these weapons which we are expecting,  it will be game over for Boko Haram and bla, bla, bla…,” these officials will rattle on and on. In February 2019, shortly before that year’s general elections during which President Muhammadu Buhari secured a second term, the nation was told that six of the 12 Super Tucano jets would be delivered in 2021, which is the year we are now in.

    Not too long after, the story changed when 43 rice farmers were killed in Zabarmari, Borno State, last year. Information Minister Lai Mohammed alleged that global powers were blocking the sale of the fighter jets to Nigeria. He stopped short of telling Nigerians why the manufacturers would dance to the tune of a third party, not involved in the deal and, breach the contract. Then, there were talks about the Leahy Law, which forbids the US from assisting militarily any country involved in human rights abuses. If the US wanted to use that law in stopping the sale of those jets to Nigeria, it should have brought it up before the deal was signed, and not after.

    Be that as it may. It seems we have passed that stage. This is 2021 when the government should be talking of taking delivery of six of the 12 jets for which it paid $496million (about N152billion as at 2018). Defence Minister Brig Gen Mansur Dan-Ali (rtd) was so thrilled about the payment that he said back then: “Gone are the days when our soldiers dropped their rifles and started running from the war front. Our gallant troops have successfully degraded the Boko Haram insurgents…the conversation (on the weapons) began during the previous administration; but the planes have not been fully built. They are being assembled and will be delivered from Florida before the end of 2020”. 2020 ended over three months ago, and the jets are not here.

    If the people whose money is being expended on acquiring these planes really matter, the government should be updating them today on the state of things. Are the aircraft still coming? If they are not, what happened? Since there appears to be a breach of contract, will Nigeria get back its money? Will the refund be with interest considering that the value of the dollar then is not the same as today’s? These questions have arisen because of the fears Monguno expressed over the arms deal in his BBC interview. No matter his subsequent rebuttal, it is certain that something is wrong somewhere with the nation’s planned acquisition of the Super Tucano jets, which the government has been talking about with glee in the last three years.

    If there is a problem, should Nigerians not know since we are talking about money taking from the public till. If 2021 is no longer feasible for the delivery of the first set of aircraft, when are we to expect them now? Although, there is still nine months to go in 2021, the omens do not bode well at all for the delivery of the jets this year. Remember, Dan-Ali said they would be delivered in 2020, but they were not.

    If he, as Defence Minister, could get it wrong, whose word on the delivery date would be right then? Perhaps, this was why Monguno cried out. If as NSA to President Muhammadu Buhari, who approved the acquisition of the jets, Monguno does not know that they are expected to be delivered this year, then something is not right in the inner workings of government.

    Monguno raised genuine fears about these jets on which some of his colleagues have repeatedly said  our  winning the Boko Haram war depends. “It is not that we are not working to end the security challenge in the country. The President has done his own part and allocated huge amount of money to purchase weapons, but they are yet to be here. We don’t know where they are. I am not saying that the past Service chiefs have diverted the money, but presently, we don’t know where the money is…even, the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) has started questioning where the money is…I can’t say the money was stolen, but we didn’t see anything and even the new Service chiefs said they didn’t see the weapons”, he said, adding,  sarcastically:

    “It is possible the weapons are on their way coming. Maybe from America,  England and other places, but as at now, I didn’t see anything and the Service chiefs too didn’t see any weapons too”. It is sad that this is coming on the eve of when we were made to believe that the jets would be delivered. Monguno, as a general,  knows what he is saying. Even, in the so-called rebuttal issued by his office, he still maintained his position on the issue:  “…we would like to state that the NSA…did not categorically say that funds meant for arms procurement were missing under the former Service chiefs…” Of course,  he was not categorical, but he was not ambiguous either. What he said was: “…presently, we don’t know where the money is…” How should Nigerians interpret that?

    Nigerians are no fools. They can read between the lines. Denying the obvious will not help us in this matter as a nation. What happened to the arms funds? Were they utilised for the purpose meant? If they were, when will the arms be delivered? Over to Dan-Ali and the immediate past Service chiefs.

  • Cave parody (1)

    Cave parody (1)

    By Olatunji Ololade

    Muhammadu Buhari’s Nigeria is a brazen incantation of wile over forms. On his watch, the lilies and langours of virtue are sacrificed for the raptures and roses of vice as Swinburne may say.

    Patriotism is not pleasure but torment; good, public-spirited citizenry are vilified, and terrorists and armed bandits are patronised. But the problem is vaster in scale than government grudgingly admits.

    In handling banditry and the killer herdsmen-farmers crisis, for instance, public officers and politicians have successfully weaponized the crisis into an ethnic war.

    While urging the citizenry to desist from ethnic profiling, government ennobles the murderers deliberately or by sheer ignorance. Buhari’s recent ‘warning’ to bandits imparts a sour mite in the psyche.

    “They shouldn’t mistake our restraint for the humanitarian goals of protecting innocent lives as a weakness or a sign of fear or irresolution,” he said, in the wake of the February 26 mass abduction of no less than 279 female students from the Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS), Jangebe, in Talata-Mafara local government area of Zamfara.

    With such feeble response from the Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces, the bandits of course, could only commit to more dastardly acts.

    Although the abductees have since been released following government negotiation with the bandits, the latest incident increased the tally of abducted school kids to about 1,100 students, over the course of seven years, in northern parts of Nigeria, according to The Nation estimates.

    From Chibok (276 students), Borno State, to Dapchi (113 students) in Yobe, Kankara (344- students) in Katsina, Kagara (27 students and 15 others) in Niger State and Jangebe, Zamfara, mass school abductions have become worrisome.

    The jury is still out on the trending video in which a herdsman claims that people in government recruit and arm killer-herdsmen and bandits.

    Just recently, the Federal Government slammed the “no fly” order on Zamfara, after the National Security Council meeting. Speaking with journalists, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, disclosed that President Buhari declared Zamfara a “No-fly” zone and suspended mining activities in the state as a means of curbing terrorism and banditry.

    The pronouncement was made on discovery that helicopters were  been used for aerial supply of weaponry and food to bandits in the state. The aircraft is also used to smuggle out gold illicitly mined in the state.

    Pundits commend the government for taking the decision as well as the “shoot on sight” order against carriers of AK-47 assault rifles in the forests; arguing that such measures may end insecurity soon.

    Yet the presidency must explain why it took it several months to arrive at the decision. It would be recalled that the presidency ignored outcry by residents of Arimogija, in Ose council area of Ondo State, in the first week of April 2020, over alleged supply of weapons by a helicopter to killer herdsmen terrorising residents of the community.

    The incident occurred soon after a rice farmer, Jacob Oduche, his son, Adura and one Victor Ejeh were murdered in their farm by killer herdsmen in the state.

    Eleven months after the incident made news, the government has suddenly deemed it fit to address a similar situation in Zamfara. But this is not the hour to contend the government’s lethargic response to insecurity and selective sensitivity. There are more dangerous truths about the incumbent government that we must acknowledge, such as its scary lack of direction and tenacity in fighting terrorism, banditry among other crimes.

    The government seems overwhelmed but rather than commit passion and resources to resolve the country’s security problems, public officers resort to artifice. For instance, the president has ordered the nation’s service chiefs to end banditry before the rainy season. At the backdrop of this unrealistic order, a presidential aide launched into a tiresome drivel, highlighting how helicopters are used to smuggle artisanally-mined gold from Zamfara to Dubai. Reuters and The Nation have reported this curious development even as the government feigned ignorance.

    Read Also: We’ve paid ransom in hundreds of millions to bandits – Emirs

    Earlier, Governor Matawalle claimed the abduction of the Jangebe schoolgirls was politically motivated.  “While the state was in negotiation with the abductors for the release of the schoolgirls, other persons offered money to the armed bandits to keep the girls in captivity,” the governor said, drawing flak from various quarters.

    The more you look, the less you see; between Matawalle and his critics the truth subsists in relative swirls as the political class diverts the citizenry’s attention away from the real cause of insecurity.

    Using cohorts in the media, NGOs, and across party lines, they have successfully steered the discussion away from their failures at governance while inciting the citizenry to needless tribal wars.

    Their subtle admonitions and tough talk must be dismissed as shabby artifice. Their ‘truths’ and ‘solutions’ to the crisis are  products and vectors of toxic altruism, a system of thought that cloaks cunning and subterfuge under the thick veil of patriotism, in a cutthroat jostle for political and socioeconomic spoils.

    While Boko Haram, armed bandits and the killer herdsmen intensify their onslaughts against the populace, the truth is underrated and lives are brutally cut short as Nigerians knock heads in a fierce, relentless push towards civil war.

    The recent food blockade by some northern elements and the promised retaliation by from the south further highlight the magnitude of intolerance fostered by the current administration.

    The president’s handlers and apologists, however, defend his foggy interventions, claiming that is his style. They would rather bereaved, impoverished Nigerians vie through losses and misery to study and appreciate Mr. President’s body language.

    The political class thrives by the masses ignorance. Widespread insecurity, poverty, ethnicism have, so far, served as powerful distractions and means of diverting public thought away from their shortcomings and excesses.

    On their watch, Nigerians could be likened to the prisoners in Plato’s The Republic.

    Socrates, the main character, tells the allegory of the cave to Glaucon, who is his interlocutor, urging him to imagine a group of prisoners who have been chained since they were children in an underground cave.

    Their hands, feet, and necks are chained so that they are unable to move. All they can see in front of them, for their entire lives, is the back wall of the cave.

    Their gaze is confined to the cave wall, upon which shadows of the world above are thrown. They believe these flickering shadows are reality.

    Behind them burns a fire.  Behind the prisoners, there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk and hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave.

    The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.

    If, Plato writes, one of the prisoners is freed and dragged out into the sun, he will be painfully dazzled by the brightness, and stunned by the beauty of the skies. But as his eyes adjust to the brightness, he would want to stay above and  remain in the light, but, he must not, argues Socrates. For true enlightenment, and in the spirit of goodness and justice, he must descend back into the darkness, join the men chained to the wall, and share that knowledge with them.

  • The other Nigeria we have created

    The other Nigeria we have created

    By Samuel Akinnuga

     

     

    I present to my readers the views of a 25 year old young man I am very proud of and a former student of ours in Redeemer’s University, Ede and president of the students union in his graduating year. 

     

    No better time exists, to tell the truth than in a moment where silence in the face of glaring injustice is a politically correct choice. This moment is one of such times. If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive, he would have considered it appropriate to rephrase his statement about dark moments and bright stars, particularly in the context of the realities in our country. It was he who declared, and quite profoundly so, that “only when it’s darkest can we see the stars.” And this statement bears far-reaching significance. Darkness is symbolic, often a metaphor for a period of distress and despondency. On a bright note, it represents the calm after the storm and so there is the urge to keep hope alive with the expectation that a glimmer would be sighted at the end of the tunnel. Would MLK be as bold to make the same declaration in a time as this when every bit of sanity is drained from anyone who is so emotionally attached to the dismal state of affairs in the country?

    These times are dark, and with all that has happened recently, one is frustrated enough to think that there is a fault in our stars. From all indications, everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. We are gradually becoming inured to accepting an anomaly as the norm. People can just be whisked away; students from their schools, travellers on their way, and nothing will happen. These days, no one is really shocked that a kidnapping happened. It’s sad news but no one is shocked. What comes as a shock is something different. One, the number of victims involved each time, details we are mostly unsure about. Two, the nature of ‘negotiations’ with the kidnappers, bandits, or whatever we choose to call them, details of which are utterly ridiculous from what we are made to believe.

    In between the kidnapping and the ‘releasing’ or the ‘rescuing’, we don’t miss the trail of statements with a huge tact-sensitivity deficit left by those who appear to defend the aberration rather than bolster confidence in the body politic that public safety is being sought as a matter of critical national priority. We have somehow adopted the uncanny habit of justifying madness and stifling patriotic passions. We have become so adept at misdirecting state force, misplacing national priorities, and majoring in minors. We have simply developed the unbridled penchant for missing the mark.

    There is no denying that these are not the best times for our country further worsened by rising anxieties and tensions. You’ll be practically frustrated at almost every noble effort to eke out a decent life while some misguided elements who have continuously unleashed terror on vulnerable Nigerians have continued to enjoy government attention, unabatedly. Nobody needs to tell anybody that the crisis playing out before us is a most unhappy culmination of the years we paid lip service to the ideals of fairness, equity, and social justice; a society where some are more equal than others; a society where a criminal is called by a more dignifying name because, in the words of some people who should know better, that criminal is being ‘marginalised’.

    Are we now supposed to accept this ‘marginalisation’ as a pardonable justification for the killings of innocent people in a country that has laws and leaders? That would be unfortunate. We now defend criminals and hound those who speak truth to power. We negotiate with criminals and come hard on those with genuine grievances, and who go about expressing such grievances peacefully. This writer has lost count of attempts by the powers that be to shut the mouths of those who have dared to be critical of the government. This is sadly often the case with many others with whom it seems those in government have scores to settle.

    With every passing day, we lose the credence to lay claim to being a sane democratic society. What kind of society is ours, where people are suddenly treated as criminals when they speak against the obvious failures to deliver on the most basic expectation of every government? The other day in Lagos, some young Nigerians were practically submitted to suffer indignities for choosing to demonstrate within the constitutionally-guaranteed limits. That show of force was patently misplaced and most unfortunate. If we approached the insecurity crisis and many other failings in the country with the level of determination we deploy to intimidate citizens, we would have recorded outstanding gains.

    A society where the vulnerable are victimised and criminal elements justified is not headed for a good place. Worse still, the posture of the leadership, and particularly the president, in the bigger scheme of things, has been largely untidy.  No one seems to know what we’re doing or how we’re going to get things done. There’s really no sense of direction and we honestly can’t keep making excuses for below-par leadership in a most critical time like this. The consequence is that many Nigerians, obviously helpless, have resorted to ‘carrying their cross.’ The ‘cross’, for most Nigerians, is simply not to have any decent expectation from the political leadership while they are routinely exposed to uncertain degrees of harm by criminals as they go about their daily lives.

    The sense of duty of most has become so blunted by affiliations to political actors, aspirations, and tendencies rather than a commitment to the cause of the country. And by all indications, this trend would not be reversed in any short time to come. The general state of affairs in the country, with the insecurity crisis being an awry watershed, begs for a renewed, honest reflection on the situation of Nigeria. It is becoming increasingly clear that we have two ‘Nigerias’. The first is a Nigeria created of the political class for the political class; a Nigeria where all is well as long as political interests are protected; a Nigeria where the welfare of the masses of Nigerians doesn’t matter as much as the pockets of the political class; and one in which the body language of the person in power is more pervasive than the patriotic deference to the spirit and letter of the constitution.

    And there’s the other Nigeria where the overwhelming majority of Nigerians find themselves. A country where ethnic affiliations are more relevant than credentials of competence; a country in which the lives of most are in the hands of God rather than in social institutions that work; a country where citizens are constantly subjected to economic, ethnic and religious tensions stirred by an unpatriotic bunch to advance a deleterious agenda. The other Nigeria is the one that has made living a nightmare for those with no means, where poverty, illiteracy, and deprivation are the only things many have known all their lives. Not necessarily by these names but by the unmistakable manifestation of these maladies on their lives and livelihoods.  The other Nigeria is the one in which you must know someone to stand a chance of becoming something. It’s been said too many times that who you know is far more important than what you know. That is the other Nigeria. The other Nigeria is sadly the place where the principles of social justice and fairness are alien concepts in reality. And as long as the other Nigeria is the only one majority of Nigerians would continue to know, we should jettison the idea that things will get better. They will not. And this is the sad reality of a Nigeria we have created.

    Ours is a nation in dire need of salvaging. Anyone who is anything has said something about the ugly state of affairs. Any attempt to gloss over the issues or look for quick fixes without a deeper look at the big picture would amount to a waste of time and other resources expended. The nation’s best chance of ‘bright stars’ lies in its investment in the younger population. There’s got to be a marked departure from the usual shabby disposition to youth empowerment and the joke we’ve made of constituency project like we are doing the people a favour. We need to activate a public-spirited commitment to a Nigeria where unity and faith, peace and progress are not merely symbolic good-to-haves.

    May we find the courage to save this country from the brink. And may God bless this republic.

  • Nothing but the best

    Nothing but the best

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    As a country, Nigeria is where it is today because of inept leadership. This has been the case with us over the years. Our successive leaders have been a disaster and our country is the worst for it. For instance, in the past 22 years of democracy,  we have had a mix of leaders that can be classified as terrible and not-so-terrible. You can fix them in the class they belong.

    Nigerians invested a lot in President Muhammadu Buhari, who is now doing a second term. They believed that he would do wonders. So, they were in a hurry to see President Goodluck Jonathan go in 2015. That same Jonathan has today become the ‘beautiful bride’ who is being wooed by even the ruling All Progressives Council (APC) to return to office. The people are fed up with the APC government and many of those serving in it know this as a fact. The nation found itself in this Buhari cauldron not because of his sparkling record while in office as military head of state between 1983 and 1985, but because he is ‘Mr Clean’, who has a cult following in the north.

    That cult followership and his being Mai Gaskiya (a man beyond reproach) were exploited to get him elected. In the three elections that he lost before he beat Jonathan in the 2015 contest, he reportedly scored some 12 million votes in the north on each occasion, but could not muster the same number of votes in the south. Can APC count on those 12 million or so votes in the 2023 election? Analysts do not think so as the Buhari myth has been broken because of his lacklustre leadership.

    The party is on an uneven keel. Directionless and rudderless, it is going into the 2023 race with the political baggage that Buhari has become. It cannot campaign on the leadership strength of Buhari because we have not seen any in the past five years. No one seems to know this better than Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello, an ardent Buharist, who has been endorsed for the 2023 presidency by his House of Assembly.

    Becoming president is not as easy as that and Bello too knows the kind of game his lawmakers are playing with him. What they are saying is music to his ears. Bello wants to be president and he is not afraid to say so. However, he knows that his lawmakers cannot make him president. They are not just relevant in the political equation that will make that happen. The most they can do is to sing his praise as they are now doing. Who is that state lawmaker that will be on the opposing side of his governor who is desirous of a thing?

    Does Bello have the attributes of the president Nigeria wants in the face of its daunting challenges, many of which were brought about by his party? I will be cautious by saying that I doubt it so as not to be seen as writing off the young man. After all, this is the season of youths. But any youth with such aspiration must have the ability to discharge the responsibility of that high office. Being  ’not too young’ to run is not enough; it must be backed with the ability to run the office. This is why I like Bello’s statement in Abuja last weekend on 2023. To him, only the best is good for the job. That is how it should be. It does not matter where the president comes from as long as he is fit to do the job.

    “People are saying I am going to contest for president in 2023…if it is the will of God that I will be the president of this country, I will be at the right time… If a level playing field is provided, I will defeat whoever will confront me at the primary, whether direct or indirect. But that is not the issue. The issue is about Nigeria… People are afraid; leaders are afraid… There is no zoning arrangement in APC. Even, if there is, how has zoning helped us in this country?  For once, let us look for who can fix the problems… Let the best come”.

    Leadership is not about cult followership. It is about a leader’s ability to do the job. Where has the fabled 12 million votes taken the country today? The popularity to win huge votes is not the same as the ability to do the job, which is key. May Nigeria not fall into such a trap again.

     

    Who is Iskilu Wakili?

     

    The exit of Alhaji Saliu Abdulkadir from Ibarapa in Oyo State in January was expected to bring peace to the restive community. Unfortunately, the Sarkin Fulani’s ouster has not achieved that. Igangan and environs in the Ibarapa North Local Government are still hotbeds of crises. After the Sarkin was sacked, it was discovered that he was not the one calling the shots in Igangan. He was only the leader in name; power was being wielded elsewhere. The power behind the throne has turned out to be one Iskilu Wakili. All the Sarkin was said to have done are now being heaped on Wakili, who met his Waterloo in the hands of the Odua Peoples Congress (APC) four days ago

    Eventually, the truth will emerge. Wakili’s arrest last weekend, like the Sarkin’s ouster, is generating heat. Wakili was arrested in his house, which was reportedly set ablaze and a woman burnt to death. After his arrest, something beguiling happened. Those who arrested him were arrested by the police. A case of arresting the arrester! In law, any citizen is free to arrest a suspect and hand him over to the police. This is why the OPC members’ arrest appears suspicious. Did they commit any crime by arresting a suspect? If they did, the police should let the world know what the offence is so as to douse tension.

    The police should be mindful of public perception in how they handle this case considering the circumstances that gave rise to it. The police cannot claim to have forgotten so soon the cases of kidnapping, rape, killing, extortion, destruction of farms,  and looting in Ibarapa for which herders are being fingered. What is Wakili’s connection to all these? This is what the police should focus on, while not overlooking any other crime committed by any other person. There is no better time than now for the police to live up to the credo of no person is above the law. But, first who is Wakili? He must be unravelled in order to get to the root of the Ibarapa conundrum.