The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Of northern governors and abdication

    Of northern governors and abdication

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

     

    It is the view of not a few Nigerians that the Nigerian political class that has since independence shortchanged the masses on whose back its members rode to power, is the scourge of the nation.  The only time the ordinary Nigerians featured in the calculation of the political class after attaining power was the brief period between 1952 and 1959 when the fear of the imperial powers kept the then aspiring new inheritors of power on their toes.

    If anyone is in doubt, all he needs to do is to take a look at the 1963 Republican Constitution midwifed by our political class.  There was nothing in that superstructure about the masses of Nigerians.  It was all about acquisition of additional powers by the leading actors of the ruling coalition NPC/NCNC. Government policy thrusts including creation of Mid-West Region were driven by self-interest of actors without consideration for the future of the nation.

    When they finally pulled down the whole edifice over sharing of political offices after the 1962/63 census crisis and 1964 disputed election, the military that came in 1966 only followed in their footsteps. Instead of the new self-proclaiming messiahs fighting ‘ten percenters’, they institutionalised corruption through self-serving government policy thrusts including the 1978 Land Use Decree which allowed military governors on posting to share state priceless land to strangers and Babangida’s commercialization policy which allowed military men and their fronts to share the nation’s public enterprises.

    The emergence of military-bred ‘new breed politicians’ that breed only corruption in 1999 only increased the nightmare of ordinary Nigerians.  In the name of privatization, the political class sold Nigeria’s total investment of over $100b for a little over $1b to themselves, leading to the collapse of our budding manufacturing sector and turning of the country into importer of labour of other societies while our young graduates roam the streets for job. Following in their fathers’ footsteps, their children, according to a house probe, forged papers to steal N1.6trillion from government under the government’s fuel subsidy scam.

    That the political class often unleash armed thugs on the people during election has gone beyond the realm of speculation. We have it on the authority of President Jonathan’s former National Security Adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi that Boko Haram was a creation of North-eastern politicians. We also have it on the authority of Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, former chairman of PDP that Fulanis from Mali, Sierra Leone, Senegal and others were imported into the country to win the 2015 elections just as we have it on the authority of Dr Abubakar Gumi that most of the bandits terrorising Nigerians are aggrieved Fulani herdsmen seeking vengeance over government unfulfilled promises.

    Unarguably, the Nigerian political class is tarred with the same brush. But in terms of greed for power and impoverishment of the masses of Nigerians, the northern political class has no rival.  Unfortunately, the preoccupation of northern leaders since the end of the civil war has been to bring the south down to the same level with the north through various government policy thrusts including JAMB and now attempts at exporting self-inflicted social problems of the north to the south.

    Government has become a science. State and local policing have been found to be the answer to insecurity. But majority of northern governors with the exception of Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna, for fear of losing grip on the poor masses of the north, are opposed to state and local policing.

    Last week’s belated decision to embrace ranching and the decision of the Northeast governors to join their counterparts in the South to demand for state and community police after all the killings, cattle rustling kidnapping and seizure of farm lands can at best be described as actions of rulers who are not answerable to the people.

    For instance, a 2017 study titled ‘Conflict and Insecurity in Northern Nigeria’ by Mike Shand/International Crisis Group revealed the following facts.

    That in 2016, over 2,000 people were  killed and tens of thousands displaced in Benue and Kaduna states alone.  Incidents involving herders accounted for 44 per cent of all fatalities in the country in 2016.

    Read Also: Governors: NAFDAC must guarantee efficicacy

     

    While northern governors opposed state and community policing,  the study also pointed out that “large bandit groups operate with mounting audacity throughout the north, with the main theatres as the Kamuku forest in Kaduna, Falgore forest in Kano, Dansadau forest in Zamfara and Davin Rugu forest stretching through Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara states”.

    The study quoted another report which estimated that in 2013, more than 64,750 cattle were stolen and at least 2,991 herders killed in states across the north-central zone. From 2011 to 2015, bandits, cattle rustlers and other criminals killed 1,135 people in Zamfara state alone, according to the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) quoted by the study.

    The economic toll was also said to be huge with a 2015 study, indicating the federal government was losing $13.7 billion in revenue annually because of herder-farmer conflicts in Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa and Plateau states with the   four states also losing 47 per cent of their internally-generated revenues. In fact, in March 2017,  Governor Samuel Ortom claimed  that attacks by herders coming possibly  from Cameroon and Niger, had cost his state N95 billion  between 2012 and 2014.

    The report called attention to creeping desert which is fast turning 50-75 per cent of the land area of Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara states, to a desert. Most of the youths armed with motorcycles and unleashed on southern cities especially Lagos could have been deployed to embark on the process of reforestation of the affected area.

    While one minister of defence was defending mindless killing of subsistence farmers on the excuse  that grazing routes were taken over by farmers in the Middle Belt and the south, while Governor Mohammed of Bauchi was defending the incursion into Ondo State’s reserved forests, and  while Defence Minister Bashir Salihi Magashi was ordering federating states to abrogate their state’s anti-grazing laws  to forestall further herdsmen violence, they were silent on the 415 grazing reserves established by the northern regional government in the 1960s “which have succumbed to pressure from rapid population growth and the associated demand for farmland, overrun by urban and other infrastructure, or appropriated by private commercial interests”.

    The northern governors since 1999 rejected the idea of state and local policing of the thinly-policed areas identified by the study –  “the main theatres of banditry…the Kamuku forest in Kaduna, Falgore forest in Kano, Dansadau forest in Zamfara and Davin Rugu forest stretching through Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara states”.

    The northern governors have failed the masses. The federal government has failed it its core responsibility of protecting lives and properties of Nigerians. Federating states are therefore adopting self-help strategies in form of anti-grazing laws and ridding their reserved forest of illegal intruders and criminal herdsmen in order to fill the gap created by the federal government and compromised security apparatus. Attempt to read ethnic meaning to these efforts can only be interpreted as calculated attempt to export northern social problems to the south.

  • Ortom vs Fulani irredentists

    Ortom vs Fulani irredentists

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    With the overwhelming support and goodwill of Nigerians after President Buhari’s victory in 2015, the late Kano elder-statesman had predicted Buhari had the potential of becoming the best Nigerian president ever if he governed with justice. Reacting to Maitama Sule’s admonition, this column had argued on these pages that the only thing that could threaten Buhari’s claim to statesmanship after his presidency would be his Fulani ethnic group.  This was because, no sooner did he win the election than ethnic irredentists who ironically never supported his aspiration during his struggle for power lionized him as the new Fulani hope to complete  Uthman Dan Fodio’s dream of planting the sword at the sea. For them, with Buhari in government, might become right.

    But perhaps because his cause is right, Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State has in the past five years withstood their might and by extension that of the state. Among the northern governors, Ortom has largely been treated as an outcast. In Ortom’s own words: “When I talk I am being castigated, there was nothing bad that was not said against me”.  The contempt for him was such that in the midst of the RUGA controversy, some power-drunk people, falsely swearing in Buhari’s name, ignored the land use provisions and started erecting a RUGA illegal settlement in the middle of the night on a land never ceded to them by the governor.

    The legitimacy of his government was undermined. Miyetti Allah’s godfathers including Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the deposed Emir of Kano, directed Fulani settlers in Benue to disobey their host state. His people came under vicious attack by herdsmen resulting in periodic harvest of deaths. Villages were pillaged by those described as land grabbers by the governor with subsistence farmers driven from their land to IDP camps. The president’s defence minister even blamed the victims, asking that ‘what did people expect when grazing routes established by the colonial powers were taken over by states’?

    In all these, Ortom has continued to vouch for the honour, integrity and sense of patriotism of the president. He insists the president was shielded from knowing the true tragedy that has occurred in Benue and elsewhere in the nation by those the president describes as “loyal gatekeepers’.

    Sadly, the impression from security men deployed to protect the helpless farmers was that the herdsmen killers who often disappeared into the thin air after each deadly attack were ghosts. But that was before the recent confession by some Fulani leading lights in the country.

    Sheikh Gumi after conferring with killer herdsmen and bandits inside Niger’s Tegina forest and Birnin Gwari forest in Kaduna State confirmed the bandits were invited by our own aggrieved vengeance-seeking Fulani compatriots.  Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi who declared: “I have attended one meeting where the bandits were there and I cannot imagine myself as a governor and chief security officer of a state sitting down and negotiating with them,” also confirmed “Nigeria was experiencing infiltration of criminals from neighbouring Benin Republic, adding: “The bandits are Fulani that has no one to control them, even their parents.”

    With this new reality, Ortom, recently defending his person against another vicious attack by Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi insisted his only offence was trying to prevent  Benue State from being turned into a sanctuary for criminal  herdsmen. His state and his people according to him “are not against any tribe, especially the Fulani people, but rather against terrorists, killer herdsmen, bandits, kidnappers and all types of criminals within the state”.

    Dismissing Bala Mohammed’s attack, he had declared “I am beginning to think that my brother, the governor of Bauchi State is part of the terrorist Fulani organisation that is terrorising this country”. This according to him was because the constitution which Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State swore to protect “does not leave room for allowing foreign herdsmen to come in without valid papers”. Yet Mohammed has not only defended the right of herdsmen to illegally carry AK-47 but has also defended illegal invasion of other federating states’ reserved forests.

    But Ortom did not stop at that.  Following the pronouncements of Dr. Gumi and some Fulani leading lights after their encounter with bandits and criminal herdsmen in their hideouts in the forest, it became obvious bandits and killer herdsmen, contrary to tales by the police and military are not ghosts. The encounters also seem to have also   confirmed Ortom’s narrative that herdsmen siege on Benue land was not about cattle but about land grabbing by imported Fulani from outside Nigeria. Ortom for the above reasons decided to drag his political foes and those waging war against Benue to the court of public opinion.

    At a recent interaction with journalists in Government House  Makurdi,  he called attention to various press conferences held by disparate Fulani groups to confirm that RUGA was a ruse by the president’s  ‘loyal gatekeepers ‘ to pave way for take-over of land by immigrant Fulani. He specifically called attention of Nigerians to the Kano Press conference of January 14, 2018 where some of the following declarations were made by some arrogant leaders of these disparate Fulani groups.

    First, they described the call for restructuring by Nigerians as “irresponsible”. The president is opposed to restructuring and power devolution. Nigerians however understand his position was informed more by his military background than his ethnic affiliation. They also declared Nigeria as “God-ordained place for Fulani”; that the killing of 86 in Benue was well deserved because it was a revenge attack over the killings of Fulani in Nasarawa State; that because the federal government was incapable of protecting the interest of Fulani in Nigeria, Fulani in West Africa have been invited to raise funds and prepare for war.

    Finally, they made it clear Fulani is prepared for war except the anti-grazing laws by various states are abrogated and replaced with federal government cattle colony policy with Fulani allowed to settle anywhere they desire in line with their culture. The statements were jointly Signed by Salisu Ahmadu, national president and Umar Shehu , national secretary.

    We have no evidence that the two men have been questioned by the police despite the observable parallels between their declaration and foreign Fulani herdsmen’s invasion of states’ forests and mindless killing and kidnapping across the country. The Minister for Information and the president’s two spokesmen, paid by the taxpayers to protect him even against himself have not come out to distance him from such reckless statements by enemies of the nation who have no qualms exploiting the president’s mismanagement of our crisis of nation building to achieve ethnic agenda.

    Ortom however did not end his interaction with journalists without “calling everyone’s attention to the general insecurity being propelled by herdsmen from the Northwest, Northeast, North-central, Southwest, Southeast and South-south”. He also did not forget to once again appeal to the president to act fast by arresting Miyetti Allah because according to him “These are people who have taken responsibility that they have killed, maimed, raped and committed all sorts of atrocities and yet their leadership is in Abuja and nobody is confronting them”.

    Beyond public relations coup against his political foes and the president jointly accused of incompetence by foreign killers who play the victim and their real victims currently taking refuge in IDP camps, Ortom has in spite of the stress and strains he went through in the hands of those who want to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it, proved the president’s Fulani compatriots are the real enemies of our nation.

  • The bandits curse

    The bandits curse

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

    With the chummy relationship between Governor Bello Matawalle and bandits, his state of Zamfara should have been the last where those criminals would strike. But they struck, sending a message to the governor and all those courting them that a leopard does not change its spot. A criminal will always be a criminal unless he is rehabilitated after paying for his crime. Not to make him pay for his crime is to make him believe that crime pays. Society suffers for it when those in government treat criminals with kid gloves.

    The abduction of 279 pupils of the Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS), Jangebe, should not have happened if the bandits are sincere in their ongoing negotiations with Matawalle for amnesty. How do you desire amnesty, on one hand, and on the other, continue to engage in acts contrary to being pardoned? Parties go into talks with their cards on the table. During such talks, there is what is called ceasefire. This means that no party would do anything to jeopardise the talks. Negotiations are based on trust and openness.

    The bandits broke these key ingredients when they went for the Jangebe school girls nine days after the abduction of 37 school boys in Kagara, Niger State. On Tuesday, they returned to the Rafi Local Government under which Kagara falls, and abducted over 50 travellers. It was the second time in less than two weeks that they were abducting passengers. They had kidnapped some passengers returning from a wedding few days before they snatched the Kagara boys. It is now clear that banditry has become a huge industry in the northeast and northwest. Kidnapping for ransom has become a major variant of banditry.

    As they are negotiating with the governor, they are busy plotting their next move because without kidnapping, there is no free money to fund their illicit trade. These bandits have become masters of the forests, where they have taken over the game reserves hitherto managed by the government. The wildlife in those reserves has been destroyed because animals cannot remain in a place where wild looking, gun wielding men hold their victims until ransom is paid. They chose to live in the forests, and so, any story to the contrary should be discountenanced. How can they justify their action on the grounds that they did not get justice after their cattle were rustled.

    Were the cattle rustled by the pupils they kidnapped from their hostels in the dead of night? Those pushing this line of argument like Sheikh Abubakar Gumi and company should drop it. There is no way anybody can rationalise what these bandits are doing. They have chosen the wrong path and the earlier they are made to realise this the better for them and the society. If they do not know, they should know now that they will not always be lucky in abducting pupils from their schools. Luck will run out on them one day, and that will be it. Then, they will no longer be the people being courted today by the like of Matawalle and Gumi.

    As a nation, we have gone virtually through hell in the past 11 years when talking about criminality. You name it, every form of criminality dogs the land. Insurgency. Banditry. Robbery. Kidnapping. Killing. Raping. Looting. Some would add the amputation of hand for the stealing of a cow as it happened to Buba Jangebe in 2001 under Sharia law. Twenty years after that barbaric act, Jangebe, that rustic community, has come to haunt the nation, with the unfortunate abduction of those girls.

    The worst are insurgency and banditry because they are crimes people have not learnt to live with like robbery and looting. This is why the school girls abduction is annoying. What point are the bandits trying to prove with it? That they are in control of the country or what? I do not envy Matawalle. In fact, I pity him. As the governor of a troubled state, it is his duty to ensure the security of life and property,  but that does not mean that he should befriend bandits to achieve that objective.

    The governor says he has no apologies for adopting the carrot approach in trying to address the bandits menace in his state. This strategy, he said, helped to facilitate the girls release on Tuesday. Bravo, Mr Governor! Mutawalle is entitled to his own way of doing things. But let him pause for a moment and see whether he has achieved any result. Rather than the bandits to sheathe their swords, they are becoming emboldened by the day because those who should apply the law against them are their cheer leaders. It is strange that instead of being enraged by the bandits’ action, Matawalle still believes that he can use them for the good of the state. There is no doubt that a rehabilitated criminal can later become useful to the state. But, he must have gone through purgatory to attain that status. These criminals have not gone through rehab, yet Matawalle is talking of making them better people. That is putting the cart before the horse.

    To just bring them out of the bush, clean them up and load them with money after surrendering their arms will not achieve that purpose. Sooner than later, they will return to their old ways and the society will be the worse for it. This is now happening right before our eyes. The bandits should leave the bush if they have genuine grievances in order to seek alternative means of addressing their problems. For how long will they resort to abduction of innocent pupils? For how long will they declare war against their own country for no just cause? They should not listen to disgruntled people, who do not mean well for them and the country.

    Nigeria is bigger than any of us. As Nigerians, we are bound to have differences, but we do not resolve them by taking up arms to kidnap pupils, loot, rape and maim. Time is running out for the bandits, but they still have a chance to mend their ways before it is too late.

  • Nigerian in Ghana…The shame

    Nigerian in Ghana…The shame

    By Olatunji Ololade

     

    One dollar exchanges for 5.74 cedis. The same dollar exchanges for N480. And one cedis exchanges for N90. Nigeria is not the giant of Africa. Ghana is the giant of Africa. Nigeria must learn to be humble.

    From its entry point, Ghana’s Kotoka International Airport (KIA) unfurls in grandeur; its clean, polished floors, sparkling toilets, orderly  processions, polite and very professional staff will definitely astound you compared to Nigeria’s much hyped yet under-performing Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA). The Ghanaian civil aviation authorities did really well to harmonise the country’s airport operations with cutting-edge technology; the result is a seamless operation, from passenger check-in to boarding of aircraft.

    If entry points are acceptable windows into the soul of a nation, and immigration staff ambassadors of every country, Nigeria stands as a gangrenous sore in comparison to Ghana.

    Of course, Ghana isn’t some Eldorado, too much of the country resonates Nigeria but the society works.

    Nigeria, on the other hand, flaunts an under-exploited landmass and citizens who passionately believe that their country is a zoo.  Immigration staff ask for tips at entry point. Some do so with a smile, others simply harass you for it.

    From check-in to baggage handling, you are accosted by vile, mean-spirited aviation staff and airline officials. The few times you are enjoy the rare luck of a pleasant aviation worker, there must be the possibility of handing out a tip to the individual.

    Every Nigerian experiences great shame checking in and out Ghana’s international airport. It dwarfs the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA) in no small measure. As the Yoruba would say, Igi imu jina sori.

    It is hardly surprising then that the Kotoka International Airport was recognised as the “Best Airport in Africa” for both 2019 and 2020 by the Airports Council International (ACI).

    In examining the Ghana and Nigerian airports, we undoubtedly must face and appreciate the irony of the inherent metaphor. Ghana’s studious uplift of its entry point represents several aspects of its dominance over Nigeria in various phases of existence.

    The Nigerian government’s disposition to governance is reminiscent of a has-been nation that is sorely obsessive about her history thus clinging to old glory as a necessary performance of will and pseudo-therapy to withstand the storms of institutionalised corruption and citizenry’s disillusionment.

    Investors and tourists are more favourably disposed to Ghana hence they choose the country ahead of Nigeria while making investment and leisure decisions. This has translated to noticeable differences in revenue generated by both countries.

    For instance, in 2018, Nigeria recorded $1.9bn in FDI inflows, down sharply from $3.5bn in 2017. Ghana, in comparison, recorded $3.5bn in 2018, up from $3.2bn in 2017 – a remarkable feat for a country with a population six times smaller than Nigeria, argued The African Report.

    The intractable failures that afflict Nigeria, from institutionalized corruption, mismanaged economy to abuse of the constitution, substandard education and health care to terrorism in the northeast can be blamed on the masses. More complicit are the country’s political class and the institutions that produce the political elite.

    The masses make it possible for an insentient, inept political class to hold on to power to the detriment of the country.

    Could Nigerians fare better at choosing their own leaders? First, we must get it right with the citizenship enterprise. Our impoverished minds will never produce the kind of quality citizenship germane to Nigeria’s rebirth.

    Sterling citizenship is the fruit of higher learning. In 1967, Theodor Adorno wrote an essay titled “Education After Auschwitz.” He argued that the moral corruption that made the Holocaust possible remained “largely unchanged” and that “the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds” must be uncovered, examined, and critiqued through education.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria suffers the affliction of moral corruption at insidious and degenerate levels reminiscent of the Holocaust era. To avoid such consequences like the holocaust, the society must foster more progressive scholarship and family institutions. Our schools must teach more than skills.

    They have to impart humaneness and values. Failure to do that would afflict us with another civil war, or the kind of Auschwitz Adorno warned us about.

    At the moment, Nigeria dissembles to the designs of her corrupt leadership. The latter capitalizes on the heathen dialectic of partisan politics, which  is sweepingly comprehensive and accurate about electorate mind and nature. Nigerians vote for tribe, money, and random bigotries.

    Politicians know Nigeria thrives as a tribal cesspit and they encourage the country’s immersion in ethnicised muck. In handling the brewing killer-herdsmen vs farmers crisis, for instance, politicians, state governors, the presidency have successfully weaponized the crisis into an ethnic war.

    While urging the citizenry to desist from ethnic profiling, they recruit, arm and empower militia and thugs to foment chaos – as revealed by a herdsman in a trending video.

    They have diverted the citizenry’s attention away from the real cause of the crisis; their corrupt, feckless leadership. Using cohorts in the media and across party lines, they have successfully steered the discussion away from issues of their failures at governance, government ineptitude, embezzlement of public fund, nepotism, and instead, instigate the citizenry.

    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 resources.

    At the backdrop of these shameful realities, the citizenry, mostly youth’s political illiteracy is embarrassingly far-flung and subsumed in sentimentality, that, the ruling class has learned to gleefully re-invent a political devil in the opposition party, community or tribe, to exploit their ignorance and intolerance.

    The youth rant that they have been excluded from power at the state and federal level yet they have populated Nigerian politics for 61 years as thugs, murderers, vote-sellers, rhetoricians and canon-fodder for mayhem.

    The altarpiece of their presence manifests in every political season, when the incumbent ruling class, comprising men and women, who previously identified as youth five to seven decades ago, deploy them as unthinking muscles, emissaries of death and destruction.

    It’s about time the youth participated constructively in the political process. Nigeria’s current dilemma is a consequence of choices and perversions of the incumbent ruling class, whose collective, pathological self-interest derailed a long train of progress, while exacerbating and ignoring existential threats.

    The ruling class’ sociopathic need for instant gratification pushed them to midwife equally sociopathic policies, causing them to fritter away an enormous inheritance, and when that was exhausted, to mortgage the future.

    Thus there is urgent need for Nigeria’s youth to coalesce into more definitive roles and forms and make informed choices – like replacing corrupt, dangerous leadership with humane peers.

    Until then, Nigeria will continue to careen down the steep ravine of decline and endure shameful truths like her inferiority to neighbouring countries like Ghana.

    In 1983, Nigeria, hard hit by declining oil revenue and corruption, expelled two million undocumented West African migrants, half of whom were Ghanaians thus birthing the ‘Ghana must go’ movement.

    Thirty eight years after, Nigerians would happily relocate to Ghana for its stable securities, among other reasons.

  • Oduola Osuntokun: A centenary (Feb. 20, 1921-Feb. 20, 2021) – 3

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    The  meteoric rise to the position of Minister of Finance  from Minister of Works soon came to a halt  when Osuntokun was sacrificed  to appease the opposition when there was widespread protest against increase  in the taxes to finance the universal free  primary  education which came into force in January 1955  and which led to an increase in the number of students,  teachers and consequent construction of schools and classrooms all over the Western  Region. He was then moved to the Ministry of Lands and Housing. As a geographer who was familiar with country and town planning, he tried to have an impact in his new ministry and came up with the idea of town planning in Ilupeju, Ikorodu road, Ikeja, the various government reservations in Ibadan and a brand new town in Bodija Housing Estate. His contribution to town planning is his lasting legacy.

    Dr. Omololu Olunloyo, a former governor of Oyo State commented to me while I wanted a plot in Bodija Ibadan that my brother built Bodija without allocating a plot to himself. He did the same thing in Ikeja, Ilupeju and Ikorodu Road without giving himself or any member of his family a plot but only remembering some of his friends who were of course very grateful.

    He  later  headed between 1958 and 1966,  the ministries of health and social welfare, economic development, and education before the civilian regime was toppled by soldiers. The turnover was too rapid that it is difficult to go into detail about his contributions in all the ministries he held. What comes readily to mind was his introduction of the Western Nigerian Lottery which presaged all lotteries in Nigeria.

    Everything was going on well at Oduola Osuntokun’s House. His children by 1960 had increased to five and like most politicians of his time with roving eyes, he had added another wife by marrying Folorunso, the daughter of one of his friends in Ado Ekiti. His drinking elderly buddies in Okemesi found a local girl to add to the harem with the justification that charity begins at home!

    The situation by 1959 was moving rapidly to a political denouement with independence expected in 1960 but before it there was a federal elections scheduled for the end of 1959.  Earlier Chief Akintola had changed places with Chief Awolowo who moved to Lagos with the expectation of becoming prime minister while Akintola moved to Ibadan as premier.

    The AG and the other major parties, the NCNC and the NPC were determined to give winning the pre -independence election their best shot. Chief Awolowo had assembled an efficient electoral machine in which all his ministers were deployed almost for three months in the field in the northern part of the country particularly in the minority areas of the Middle Belt and the Northeast of the country where it was felt the election would be won or lost. Osuntokun led campaign teams to the Plateau and Adamawa provinces. The AG did not do as well as it expected because of alleged British sabotage. This loss was the beginning of the trouble in the AG which came to a head in the crisis that rocked the party to its very foundation from 1961 to 1962.

    As a member of the cabinet, it was normal for Osuntokun to be sympathetic to Chief Akintola, the premier whose oratorical skill was fundamental to the AG’s acceptance in the Oyo Yoruba area which constituted about two-thirds of Yorubaland. While Chief Awolowo was the brain box of the party, Chief Akintola was the practical man who marketed the philosophy of the party to the Yoruba people who had seen him as a champion of their causes since he was the editor of the old Daily Service in Lagos in the 1940s. Akintola was a voluble and warm person while Awolowo was cold and distant for a politician. Most of the Yoruba obas and the monied class in Lagos intervened to ask the two combatants to bury the hatchet  but there were forces driven by ambition particularly by the non-Yoruba leaders  of the AG  like chiefs Anthony Enahoro and S.G Ikoku who later betrayed Awolowo by teaming up with Shagari in 1979. Left to themselves, the Yoruba people would have resolved the differences between Awolowo and Akintola.

    The Obas and the elders and the monied class among the people were in fact leaning to the side of Akintola after he was forced to beg Awolowo against his own better judgment. But the cracks in the party had made it easy for lizards to wriggle through it. There were enemies within and without. The AG had been too formidable an opposition party that the coalition government of the NCNC and NPC was too eager to take any opportunity to end the troublesome presence of the Action Group. A sinking man would hold on to straw and this was what Akintola did to play the northern card against Awolowo and later against the NCNC.

    Osuntokun and his colleagues were sucked into this boiling cauldron. Sometimes going forward were as difficult as going back. During this time, Osuntokun wanted to leave politics entirely and tried to look for a job in the administration of the new University of Ife but the premier would not hear about it. He was dragooned into the case against Awolowo as a prosecution witness or on refusal be charged along with those who were to face trial for treasonable felony. The bitterness this crisis created in western Nigeria especially when Awolowo and some leaders of the Action Group were sent to prison left a bad taste in the mouth. Up till the coup d’état of January 1966, clandestine efforts led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Sir  Adetokunbo Ademola  and involving Chief Akintola  himself to free Chief Awolowo continued to be made.

    The details of the crisis have been written by many scholars including myself. It will suffice to say there was much animus against one another and vendetta against one another to the extent that by the time of the 1965 election in the West, the contest had become a do-or-die conflict that eventually led to the civil war after the travesty of an election in the Western Region, followed by the one-sided coup d’état and the pogroms against the Ibos in the north and eventually the civil war.

    For Osuntokun, these were not the best of times. He lost his brother, Captain Edward Abiodun an army engineer; his career in politics was in tatters. He did not indulge in financial self-aggrandizement so he did not have money after being in government as a minister for 12 years.  After the coup d’état of 1966, he tried to pick up the pieces of his life by going back to teaching and principalship of a high school and even as Assistant Director in the Federal Ministry of Education. They all came to nothing. He humbled himself teaching geography in a few high schools before finally going home to Okemesi where he taught on part-time basis in a school he had helped establish when he had power as a minister. Ekiti people politically are very unforgiving. When others on different sides of the political crisis in the AG had moved on, people in his home division still kept him at arm’s length. He tried in the 1970s to reconcile with Chief Awolowo, but he was turned down. He had too many enemies because of his role as a supporter of Akintola. His houses in Ibadan and Okemesi were burnt down and he suffered from insomnia and never regained his verve until the end of his life at an early age of 69.

    He however left an imperishable legacy of honesty, courage and integrity in standing for what he believed was right. He was one of those who spearheaded western enlightenment in Ekiti and fought for the old Ondo State of which Ekiti was part for equitable share of development based on its agricultural contribution to the wealth of Western Nigeria derivable from its cocoa production. Most of the roads in Ondo Province including Ekiti were tarred when he was minister. He spoke truth to power to the annoyance and discomfiture of the yes-men in the government when he opposed the plantations of rubber and oil palms in areas he considered unsuitable for them but favoured because the head of government came from there. The Yorubas say when a man has nine fingers, a wise man should avoid asking for counting of fingers in the public. Osuntokun was a man who when everyone said why he would say why not?  The ability to speak truth to power was at the end detrimental to Osuntokun’s political career. There is no public monument in Ekiti named after him except for the Oduola Osuntokun presidential guest house, thanks to Governor Fayose. His legacy however lies in the Osuntokun brand of excellence which has been nurtured by his brothers, children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces at home in Nigeria and in the Nigerian diaspora in the western world.

  • As karma stalks northern oligarchs

    As karma stalks northern oligarchs

    By

    Very soon, the armed bandits of the north will turn their guns at the northern oligarchs. They will understand that their enemies aren’t the peasant farmers or herdsmen of the northeast, northwest, and north central. The truth shall dawn on them in common hours, that they got it wrong murdering their host communities in the southwest, southeast and south-south.

    They shall unlearn the menacing lore of their presumed ‘supremacy’ and ‘right to kill’ other people for grazing land across the country. They shall refute their entitlement to rob, steal and intimidate other Nigerians as maniacally advanced through circuitous hate-speech and tribal warmongering by the northern oligarchs.

    As the scales fall from their eyes, they shall attain clarity of purpose and discover that their real enemies are the northern governors, lawmakers, sponsored ethnic cults and the presidency, who have deliberately kept them shackled to poverty and ignorance.

    They will understand that the governors urging them to exchange their guns for cows, the clout-chasing clerics visiting them in the forest  for photo ops, the lawmakers keeping them on retainer-ship, and politicians justifying the heinous murders they commit across the country are their greatest foes.

    We are at the verge of the hour, when clusters of Boko Haram terrorists and armed bandits shall unite in rare enlightenment and rouse to the bitter truth of their reckoning and their lineages’ betrothal to transgenerational doom. This minute, some Boko Haram commander or bandit leader is awakening to scarce consciousness; he is cautiously but passionately appealing to peers and underlings to stop targeting their guns and explosives at the poor, helpless masses.

    At the dawn of their new awareness, they shall turn their guns and machetes against the northern political class. They shall invade the latter’s homes and abduct their trophy wives, daughters, sons, and grandchildren.

    They shall whisk the latter off into the heart of Sambisa and the fringes of Zamfara, Kaduna, Yobe, Adamawa’s forest reserves among others. Just like they abducted little Maryam Alhaji-Wakil at the tender age of nine, from her family home in Bama – after killing her parents in her presence.

    In 2014, Boko Haram terrorists invaded Maryam’s village and killed her relatives. They burned her home and decapitated her neighbours. Then they whisked her off to Sambisa Forest.

    There, she was forcibly married to Modu, a lustful and violent Boko Haram insurgent. In two days, little Maryam was violently thrust into womanhood. Modu, 35, forced his way into her unripe orifice, robbing her of innocence and the mystic pleasure of first and legitimate adult sexual experience.

    Modu was hasty and rough thus making her ‘first time’ bestial and replete with pain. She screamed in agony but Modu didn’t care. “The louder I screamed, the more violently he shoved into me until I passed out,” she revealed to me in a personal encounter.

    Thus at the tender age of nine, Maryam was violently used and sexually abused. When she could not withstand the misery of living as a sex slave any longer, she opted to serve as one of the terrorist group’s female suicide bombers. Consequently, she was dispatched with a bomb to neighbouring Cameroon; she was taken on a motorcycle to blow up a soft military target in the country. But Maryam had other plans.

    When the rider dropped her, she approached the soldiers and told them, ‘I have this thing on my body. It is a bomb. I was sent to kill you. Please, help me remove it.” Instantly, the soldiers sprung into defensive position but realising that she had come to surrender, they approached her, cautiously, and unstrapped the explosive from her body.

    Maryam spent several months in the custody of the Cameroonian gendarmes until she was handed over to the Nigerian military. Hard as it is to picture the extent of bitterness devastating her heart, an intense gape into her eyes reveals a girl utterly torn apart. Beneath her pretty face lurks a battered soul.

    Now 16 years of age, Maryam is yet to break out of the jailhouse of her past. She is still the frightened nine-year-old that got whisked off to Sambisa Forest, while her relatives and neighbours fell in a bloody heap, to the bullets of Boko Haram’s terror squads.

    Maryam relives the days she endured hunger because her insurgent ‘husband’ was too poor and too lazy to provide her food. She remembers the excruciating nights that she laid captive and helpless under his massive bulk, while he violently plowed into her because she  “was an unwilling bride.”

    When Maryam eventually discovers that the men and women who were elected to ‘protect and serve her’ as all good leaders should do, were responsible for her misery, should she simply ‘forgive and forget?’

    When she discovers that they embezzled the £2.1 billion disbursed to procure weaponry meant to subdue her captors and secure her release and that of the 276 Chibok girls, should she seek them out for a hug and bless their progeny?

    Would Maryam be wrong to persistently utter heartfelt prayers that the daughters and granddaughters of the men and women who triggered and accentuated her misery, share similar fate with her?

    Would it be humane and politically-correct to do that? Some would claim that it would be wrong to wish such retribution on innocent children of perceived bad leaders. They would counsel forgiveness saying: “Let the actual offenders be punished and not their bloodline.”

    In a nation where rich, privileged convicts are given a slap on the hand and pat on the back, would it be wrong to wish that their offspring and wives experience similar tragedies as victims of their inhumanity?

    The RUGA toxic rhyme

    The Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) has perfected its plot to impose the RUGA on “uncooperative” regions through the backdoor. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the initiative as long as it is done in the interest of justice, peace and stability.

    Critics argue that by imposing the scheme on southwest communities, for instance, government seeks to compensate killer-herdsmen for the mayhem and murders they continually visit on helpless, indigent farming communities. And what do the latter get in return?

    It is extremely devious of any governor of the southwest states, afflicted by killer-herdsmen, to collude with counterparts from the north to impose the RUGA on southwest communities still on the receiving end of wanton killings by killer-herdsmen.

    The latest plot involves the deployment of traditional rulers as pawns; the governors seek to bully poor, helpless communities into acceptance of the scheme, using their traditional rulers as muscles.

    The latter depend on their individual state governors for their salaries and other luscious forms of patronage – and none of them would dare rebel against their benefactors.

    The argument being espoused by the proponents of the scheme is both frantic and whacky; “You better tell your people to accept RUGA now or else herdsmen will kill them all.”

    You could be forgiven for likening them to the proverbial huckster, who would market dystopia to seekers of Eden.

    The government must adopt  just and humane measures at resolving the farmers-killer herdsmen crisis. The situation deserves better handling unsullied by frantic warmongering, bullying and artifice.

  • Between Gumi, Bala Mohammed and El-Rufai

    Between Gumi, Bala Mohammed and El-Rufai

     

    Except for the political elite driven by greed for power, most Nigerians believe we have been ordained by God or nature to live together.  Our multi-ethnic groups are inter-dependent. Besides the physical features such as the drainage system and vegetation zones, which cut Nigeria out as an economic unit, other social forces apart from British imperialism would have forced us to live together.

    A few days back, I was exchanging banters with a colleague who has now retired into fish farming in his native Delta State.  He was complaining about the price of millet and sorghum which he said was hitting the roof because of the general insecurity occasioned by activities of herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers. He kept on wondering if those currently mishandling our crisis of nation building actually appreciate how interdependent we are as a people.

    The truth is that even the aggrieved and much abused oil-rich Niger Delta that lost their illustrious sons including Isaac Boro and Ken Saro Wiwa to the struggle for the survival of Ogoni land and the Ijaw people in general, understand we cannot do without each other. That perhaps explains why in their struggle for truth, justice and fairness, they have never visited violence on other innocent Nigerians, the Fulani or any other ethnic group for that matter.

    The myth of our ethnic division has only been strengthened by greed for power by our self-serving political elite who laid the foundation for politics of falsehood, injustice and opportunism.

    When Ahmadu Bello and the northern leaders in 1953 insisted on 50% of the member of House of Representatives and non-negotiation of boundaries as precondition for remaining part of Nigeria, Awo, according to Trevor Clark, had said the north should have been allowed to secede so that they could experience the consequences of secession. Awo, although an unrepentant federalist, nonetheless suggested we retain a secession clause in our constitution. At the 1957 independence constitutional debate in London, Awo who the British press claimed was the only one who spoke as statesman, insisted that for Nigerians to be truly free, regions must be created for minority groups seeking self- actualization and the issue of boundary adjustment must be resolved. Unfortunately our political elite chose falsehood, injustice and opportunism.

    Since we sowed the wind, it followed naturally that we would not escape reaping the whirlwind. The chicken finally came home to roost with the outcome of the December 1959 federal election. The 1952/53 British supervised census exercise had awarded 16.5m to the north, seven million to the Easts and six million to the West minus Lagos. But in the December 12, 1959 election, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) despite intimidation and blackmailing of voters, came a distant third with 1.9million votes to Action Group’s (AG)  two million and NCNC National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon’s (NCNC) 2.5million.

    To sustain the 1952 fraud, many have alleged infiltration of Fulani herdsmen across our porous borders during census exercises and elections were often encouraged by the hegemonic power in the north.  But it boils down to the metaphor of those who foolishly sought power by riding on the back of a tiger. The fear of immigrant Fulani herdsmen has today become the beginning of wisdom for most northern state governors.

    Governor Nasir El-Rufai who once attributed North’s invincibility during election to its numerical strength not too long ago admitted paying ransom to foreign Fulani herdsmen and bandits in an effort to stop mindless killing of the people of Southern Kaduna. He was to admit later to the futility of trying to negotiate with bandits or herdsmen who make N100,000 selling a cow but now make a million kidnapping one person for ransom.  His Katsina counterpart, Governor Bello Masari who had paid ransom to bandits a number of times in the past must have since also come to the same sad conclusion.

    If the outcome of 1959 election results was not sufficient proof that the British supervised census return of 1952/3 for the north was dubious, the recent admission of a former stalwart of PDP and now a leading light of APC that Fulani were invited in during the 2019 election from other parts of West Africa only but confirmed what most people have always suspected-

    Following last week’s abduction of about 42 persons, including students, staff and their families from the Government Science College Kagara in Niger State, Sheikh Gumi visited Tagina forest where he met with bandits’ group leader, Dogo Gide and his fighters.  He also visited Birnin Gwari forest in Kaduna State to confer with bandits and herdsmen.  He revealed the bandits were invited by aggrieved Nigerian Fulani seeking vengeance. It was not made clear whether it was vengeance against those who resisted the take-over of their farmlands as they did in Benue State or over their alleged arrest and prosecution by the military as also claimed by Sheikh Gumi. His recommendation after conferring with killer herdsmen that the military and the police told us were invincible was that government should give blanket amnesty to those bandits willing to make peace.

    On his part, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi who argued against a blanket amnesty however agreed with Gumi when he declared that “Nigeria was experiencing infiltration of criminals from neighbouring Benin Republic, adding: “The bandits are Fulani that has no one to control them, even their parents”.

    But this admission has not stopped Governor Bala Mohammed from playing a game of mischief as long as it guarantees his clinging to power as he has done since 1984, serving  at different times as Director of Nigerian Railway Corporation, Nigerian Meteorological Agency, Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals, senator, and as  Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Minister of Aviation and Minister of Power and Steel, with little or no impact on the people he claims to serve,

    Attacking Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State over enforcement of his state’s 2006  Forestry Law forbidding farming, logging or pasturing of cattle in any part of Ondo reserve forest, he had said: ‘no one owns Nigeria forest’. Defending his support for  illegal occupation of southwest reserve forest by herdsmen who  move around with AK-47 assault guns,  his press secretary said: “To interpret such a temporary stay as a form of ‘land grab’ by the Fulani herdsmen is completely incorrect; adding, “in actual fact, neither does such temporary habitation of the forest inconvenience anyone …”

    If Governor Mohammed is unaware of herdsmen’s siege on his neighbouring Benue State where sacking and confiscation of villages have forced displaced farmers to take refuge in IDP camps, oblivious of Gumi’s narrative of his encounter with killer herdsmen inside Birnin Gwari forest, reprisal killings in southern Kaduna and the tale of woes by victims of herdsmen and bandits assault elsewhere in the north, it is most unlikely he would have heard about the mindless killing, kidnapping and raping of women in the southwest farms, forest and roads in the last three years.

    Unfortunately, it is this type of hypocrisy, mischief and disdain for truth, which Bala Mohammed, like his forbears, driven only by greed for power, exhibited last week  that continue to prolong the nightmare of ordinary Nigerian victims of our elite’s conspiracy.

  • Oduola Osuntokun: A centenary (Feb. 20, 1921-Feb. 20, 2021) – 2

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    Oduola Osuntokun was very close to his father who adored him. It was considered unmanly for the scion of the Osuntokun dynasty to associate with his mother whom he rarely visited. His father had three other younger wives apart from his mother and he consequently had a retinue of sisters and brothers. He was only close to his immediate younger uterine sister who unfortunately died young. He seemed to have transferred his love to his younger brother Edward Abiodun who left Government College, Ibadan, a year or two before he returned from Fourah Bay College in Freetown Sierra Leone. Oduola was a strict disciplinarian at school and he did not spare the rod. This brought him once into a serious disagreement with his father over Oduola’s flogging of his younger brother, Kayode who was his father’s favourite. The application of corporal punishment liberally on students sometimes led to disagreement between Oduola and his Principal, the Reverend Leslie Donald Mason who did not subscribe to the Saint Andrews Oyo doctrine of physically driving the devil from the hearts of recalcitrant and stubborn young people.

    Unfortunately for Oduola, his father whom he loved dearly, after several months of moving from one hospital to another, succumbed to what was apparently prostatic cancer. This was at a time when he needed his advice and guardianship at the time he was about to entire public life and to face what were seen and unseen enemies in the turbulent arena of Nigerian politics. His father’s death left a void in his life that could not be filled and a baggage of a large family to head. He perhaps because of this, found comfort in the friendship of much older people while not totally distancing himself from his contemporaries with whom he played tennis and soccer which he continued to play as captain of Ekiti soccer team even as a parliamentarian until age caught up with him.

    Oduola Osuntokun was just thirty years old when he plunged into the slippery world of politics almost involuntarily.

    As a result of much agitation for political constitutional changes in Nigeria, the governor- General of Nigeria, Sir John Stuart Macpherson decided to give  a new constitution to Nigeria that would introduce some electoral principle of political representation to the new regional Houses of Assembly in Ibadan, for the Western Region, Kaduna for the North and  Enugu for the East. The two political tendencies or movements in the South were the NCNC (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons) and the  A.G (Action Group), an off shoot of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa formed as a cultural organization in 1947 embracing all Yoruba people, that is, all those  who believed they descended from  Oduduwa the eponymous ancestor  of all Yoruba people.

    Unlike the A.G the NCNC was more like a rally. It was founded in Lagos in 1944 at the instigation of young students and later metamorphosed into a political party led by Herbert Macaulay the grandson of Bishop Ajayi Crowther. After Macaulay’s death, leadership passed to Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who considered himself a Lagosian because he had most of his investments in Lagos and spoke Yoruba fluently. The AG on the other hand, was new and was only formed on the eve of the election into the regional Houses of Assembly. The election was actually done by electoral college on divisional basis. The four people chosen to represent Ekiti were Mr. EA. Babalola of Oye Ekiti who topped the list, Oduola Osuntokun came second, Reverend Canon Ajayi of Ado – Ekiti came third and Barrister A. Adeoba, a Lagos lawyer of Iyin extraction came fourth. These people were chosen as the most educated people from Ekiti and they were all graduates. They were strictly speaking not card-carrying members of any of the two political parties. They were elected strictly on their own merit.

    Even though the NCNC was a mass party and had large Yoruba following, its enemies began to campaign that the party under Azikiwe had been taken over by the Ibo State Union which as a bloc belonged to the NCNC which had begun to equate the party with the Ibo Union’s interest. It was in this circumstance that the Ekiti delegation moved into the Action Group. It is not true they were snatched from the NCNC; they were elected as independent leaders of their people on their own merit.

    Chief Obafemi Awolowo was Leader of Government Business in the Western Region until 1952 when like in the other two regions in the North and East, the leaders of business became premiers. Thus began the trial of the practice of cabinet government and responsible government on the pattern of what existed in England. Chief Awolowo chose a small cabinet of eleven people from what is now Delta, including some parts of Bayelsa, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Ogun, and Lagos excluding Lagos Island, Ikoyi, Apapa, the Mainland up to Yaba while the rest belonged to the Western Region as colony division. This vast area was governed from Ibadan with one civil service and a small cabinet answerable to the British Lieutenant-Governor. The choice of the first cabinet was made on provincial and divisional basis and on the principle of political balancing. Chief E.A. Babalola who topped the Ekiti list was appointed minister of works; Chief Awokoya from Ijebu Igbo was made minister of education; others in the cabinet included Chief S.O Ighodaro from Benin, Chief Adisa Akinloye from Ibadan, Chief Arthur Prest from Warri, Chief Adigun and Chief Omowonuola Adeyi from Ogbomoso and Fiditi respectively, chiefs Akin Deko and Anthony Enahoro from Idanre and Uromi in Esan  divisions  respectively and finally, Chief F.O Awosika from Ondo who was made minister of finance. It was a tight and small cabinet for such a vast region like the West.

    The accumulated reserves of the cocoa board came in handy for Awolowo’s party to embark on revolutionary changes in the West. There were many educationists in the party and Oduola Osuntokun served on the very important committees on education and finance. The Opposition was led by the formidable Ibadan politician Chief Adegoke Adelabu. Since it was a parliamentary democracy, much time, at least two weeks in a month were spent on debates on all issues in parliament. It was in this situation that Osuntokun’s parliamentary and debating skill soon caught the attention of Chief Awolowo. As a teacher, talking was easy for him and he was not crowd shy and in the confrontation and histrionic effusions of Adelabu, Awolowo needed younger people than him to confront the stormy petrel of Yoruba politics. Anthony Enahoro and Oduola Osuntokun proved very useful. He did not live in Ibadan because he still had students to teach at Christ’s School Ado Ekiti. Politics for him was not a profession unlike nowadays when politics is a full-time job for people.

    As he rose in fame and prominence, people began to put pressure on him to get married. There were many young ladies who saw themselves as potential wives! But he took his time until he found a young lady, the child of an Anglican priest, the late Archdeacon M.A. Osanyin  later Bishop, who was in charge of the Anglican Church in the whole of Ekiti and who hailed from Ijebu-Jesha a couple of miles from Okemesi. It was a good catch for the young lady, Mabel Adetola, who was a pupil teacher and for Osuntokun too who needed a quiet companion to take care of the domestic front. The solemnization of the wedding took place in Ado Ekiti in 1952 obviously to the disappointment of those who had had eyes on the honorable gentleman. Soon, two children, Tinuola and Olakunle came one after another. However, it was not smooth sailing on the domestic front for the couple. The absence of the husband must have put some strain on the marriage and the life of the poor wife who had to cope with two little children and their absentee father who kept late nights attending political meetings.

    Events were moving rapidly on the political front and dividing his time between his teaching job and legislative duties was proving difficult. Things took a dramatic turn when as a result of widespread complaints of neglect of Ekiti and lack of government presence as evidenced by the bad roads in Ekiti, Osuntokun and his colleagues representing Ekiti were then being challenged to exert themselves. Rumors had it that the minister of works, Babalola was not dynamic enough and that he had said the roads were not tarred because Ekiti roads were “naturally tarred” because of the granite nature of the soil. This rumor gained currency in spite of its strong denial by Babalola. Whether true or not, people began to say if Osuntokun were in the cabinet, he would take care of Ekiti’s interest. It is not clear whether this rumour influenced a cabinet reshuffle in 1955 and Osuntokun replaced Babalola as minister of works. This was at a time when there was an impending election into the Western House of Assembly itself. The AG had been worsted in 1954 in the federal elections in the number of seats the NCNC won in the West, so the AG wanted to put its best face forward. The party won the election and in 1956 a new cabinet was formed and   Osuntokun emerged as minister of finance at the age of 34. In England, the example we were following, being Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance) puts you in line for the premiership. Of course Osuntokun at 34 was not expecting to be premier at least not in the immediate future.

  • A Sheikh in the forests

    A Sheikh in the forests

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    In the past few weeks, renowned Islamic cleric, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, has been traversing some forests in the north to meet with leaders of the bandits troubling the region.  The Sheikh is no doubt on a good mission. He desires peace in the land and he is working assiduously towards it. He is not sitting on his hands like some of our leaders who are watching, or is it fiddling?, while the country is burning.

    My fear is will he achieve anything at the end of  his self-assigned mission? Like every Nigerian, this writer wants peace in every part of the country, which today is under the siege of criminals, for that is what insurgents, bandits, kidnappers, rapists, armed robbers, or by whatever name they are called, are. Let us face it, there is no plausible reason for any person to take up arms against his fellow compatriots. Criminality, under any guise, cannot be justified, otherwise, everyone will take to crime.

    If care is not taking, that will happen eventually because everybody has one reason or the other to be aggrieved with the system.  The failure of the system should not be taking out on others, who are also battling with their own challenges of daily living. As a peace lover, I appreciate what the Sheikh is doing,  but I fault his premise for doing it. We will be treading a dangerous path if we buy his submissions that the bandits have a genuine reason for waging war against the society, for that is what they are doing in the actual sense of it. They are breaching the laws of the land with impunity under the guise of fighting the system for not giving them justice when they were wronged.

    If that is the case, should those they kidnapped and released after collecting ransom or the families of those they killed, also take to the bush in search of justice? This Mosaic law of an eye for an eye, which they are postulating is not the best for our society and the Sheikh, or even any other person for that matter, should not give them the impression that what they are doing is right. Otherwise, as Ghandi warned decades ago, an eye for an eye would leave us all with one eye. Ghandi was right because everybody has one reason or the other to be angry and could seek to assuage their anger through self defence. Any society that allows that will be the worst for it.

    The bandits are not going about their so-called worthy cause in the right way. Going by their theory, every Nigerian who has been a victim of one crime or the other, has the right to take up arms and start terrorising the people to remedy the wrong done him. This is wrong logic and we should all condemn it. Gumi means well. Other public-spirited Nigerians like him should be encouraged to take up such duty in their localities before and not after things have got out of hand. These bandits are products of some homes,  localities and communities. How were they brought up by their parents or guardians? What contributions did their teachers and religious leaders make towards their moral and religious growth?

    Train a child the way he should go and when he grows up, he will not depart from it, so says the scriptures. These bandits need to be told the truth that things are not always as they look. They have the upper hand today because they have sophisticated weapons and are also masters of their terrain in the forests. Things will not always be like that. Sooner or later, the tide will change and if they do not mend their ways before then, they may live to regret their actions. This is the right time for them to drop their weapons and get reintegrated back into the society.  Living in the bush and turning themselves into terror groups that come out now and then to kidnap people on the road or in their schools for ransom is wrong, no matter the cause they are fighting.

    I commend Gumi for his courage to have gone into the forests to meet with the bandits. But, he will be failing in that duty if he does not tell them the truth that they are fighting their cause in a wrong way. Regrettably, while he is talking peace, the bandits are still thinking of war. A report, which quoted the Sheikh, said the bandits were planning to acquire anti-aircraft missiles to repel military attacks. This shows that the bandits have tentacles, which even spread beyond the country. Gumi needs to watch his back, if the bandits  can be thinking of acquiring such weapons while he is talking with them.

    For there to be peace, Gumi is  calling for amnesty for the bandits. Amnesty, he argued, would enable them drop their weapons. Then, why are they contemplating procuring anti-aircraft missiles if they are ready for peace? Gumi has taken the initiative, what remains is for the government to build on it. Since the bandits seem to trust Gumi, the government should ride on his back to get across to them to end these killings and kidnapping, especially of school children, in the north. We need peace to grow as a society and ending this banditry will aid the process. But, the government must not give away too much in the desire for peace or the nation will remain at the bandits’ mercy.

    The nation travelled this way before when Hajia Aisha Wakil popularly known as Mama Boko Haram and a journalist tried to broker peace between the Islamic sect, which believes that education is sin, and the government. Nothing came out of that initiative and till today, we do not know why the talks failed. For peace to reign, I will support the Gumi initiative, but not at the expense of turning over our country to criminals. There are fears that negotiations with the bandits may encourage criminality. These are genuine fears that must be addressed so that another group with its own tendencies does not arise tomorrow to also hold the nation to ransom.

    The government should not negotiate from the position of weakness, but that of strength, so as not to create the impression that it is there, just for the taking by any group of armed men which feels that it must make some noise to be relevant. The way to do this is to ensure that the security agencies, especially the police, are well equipped to enforce the laws. The bandits, according to Gumi, are aggrieved because “they were the first victims of cattle rustling, who lost all their cows to rustlers because then, the rustlers were having the guns. Then when they lost their cattle, they joined the rustlers and they started to kidnap people”.

    Hmmm! Hiding under the failure of law enforcement to commit crime! I do not agree with the Sheikh’s proposition, but then the rule of banditry will prevail where law enforcement fails. We should not allow this as a nation, otherwise criminals will overrun society.

  • Nigeria first   

    Nigeria first   

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

    These curity and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government – Section 14 (2) (b) of the Constitution.

    These are times that try the souls of men. Everywhere is tense. Just a little spark and there will be fire, a huge ball of fire. This is what the trouble makers want. They are seriously working towards pushing the country off the precipice where it perches precariously now. Just like the Psalmist, many who love the country with all their hearts are for peace; but when they speak peace, the trouble makers are for war.

    These times have brought out the worst in the best of men,  those that many never thought would do anything to breach the peace. These hitherto cool and calm individuals lost their heads in the heat of the moment. Let’s face it, we are walking a tightrope in this country today. In the not too distant past, Nigerians were grappling with economic hardship, but now, their trouble has been compounded with the sectional crises rocking some parts of the country.

    If only the government had moved fast, things would not have got to this stage, where a fire brigade approach is being adopted

    to douse tension. But, as the saying goes, better late than never.

    Read Also: Nigerians should learn to live in peace

    This is why every well-meaning Nigerian and group must join hands with the government to push back our country from the brink. The media, especially, must be in the vanguard of the search for peace. It must not inflame passions with its reports or set one ethnic group against the other.

    The media has always been nationalistic in its outlook and there can be no other time than now for it to display this nationalistic fervour. There comes a time for an individual or an institution to rise above sectional interest and do what is right for country. We are in such a time now. The media cannot fight along with nationalists for Nigeria’s independence and also take on the military junta, only to succumb to sectional interest in a democracy because of the belief that it must support its own people. The section of the media that is doing this still has time to retrace its steps in the national interest.

    If the media cannot do anything to bind the country together at a time like this, it should not do anything to balkanise it. Since the Presidency has seen the light and is now prepared to do what it should have done since, the media owes it a duty to support the government’s initiative. Igangan and Shasha, both in Oyo State, which are the latest hot spots in the country, would not have happened, if the government had stepped in when the herders’ crisis started in the Middle Belt. The issue was politicised and here we are in Igangan and Shasha, with Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde facing a baptism of fire of sorts. This piece is not to apportion blame on anybody, but to appeal to every Nigerian to let peace reign. Mistakes have been made, no doubt, but the people cannot allow these errors to continue to strain their relationship with those they have lived with for decades.

    Whether Yoruba,  Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Bini, Ibibio, Nupe, Agatu, Ebira, Tapa or whatever ethnic group, we must allow Nigeria to come first. The way things are going now, if care is not taking,  our country will go up in flames. The bloodshed must stop, the kidnapping must stop, the insurgency, banditry, killings, maiming, raping, open grazing, cattle rustling and looting must stop. Some people fought a war between 1967 and 1970 to keep this country as one. Not all of them survived the war. We will not be doing the memory of the dead any good, if we allow our country to slip into another war over these herders’ crises, which have taken a frightening dimension. Let us remember the popular saying: “no country survives two civil wars”.

    The Presidency finally did what it should have done long ago when it vowed on Sunday to protect all religious and ethnic groups. It was a refreshing statement coming from the seat of government, which in the past, had shown its bias in its interventions on the herders’ problem. The Presidency is the god that people look up to in times of trouble for relief and protection. So, it cannot afford to take sides with any ethnic group so as to avoid creating the impression that the other sections of the country do not matter. The Presidency must unite and not divide the citizenry, as enunciated in the Constitution. Mercifully, it has woken up to this reality.

    It is never too late to do what is right. The only problem is that a lot of harm would have been done before that initiative is taking. As we are all aware, thousands have either been killed or displaced across the country. In a country with a government,  the perpetrators would not have gone free. For the sake of peace, which the government is preaching now, there must also be justice for the aggrieved to bring about a closure. Justice and peace go hand in hand. No efforts should be spared in fostering peace across the country in the aftermath of the Igangan and Shasha crises to avoid a backlash.

    The country will gain nothing from any upheaval. Such crisis will only set the nation back. Let the Presidency live up to the country’s motto of Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress as contained in Section 15 (1) of the Constitution by fostering a feeling of belonging and of involvement among the various people of the federation, to the end that loyalty to the nation shall override sectional loyalties, as stated in Section 15 (4) thereof. Keeping Nigeria as one remains a task not only for this administration, but for all of us.