The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Press, greatest threat to democracy

    Press, greatest threat to democracy

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    I sympathise with embattled President Buhari who in spite of a life of selfless service to the nation as a civil war hero, governor, minister and former military head of state and his current heroic efforts at preserving the nation’s unity, is on account of the forces and tendencies many believed have caged him now, seen not just as a threat to the survival of the nation but that of its nascent democracy.

    Absence of governance, which is a threat to democracy is evident everywhere.  First, the war against corruption, the main thrust of APC manifesto is dead as a result of Malami, the attorney general’s wars against EFCC leadership over how seized properties are shared and EFCC’s leakage of Malami’s attempt to smuggle fugitive Maina now in court over alleged N2bilion pension fraud into the bureaucracy through the back door. The president kept his peace pretending not to know he was shooting himself in the leg.

    Nigeria with 370,000 police officers and a police-to-citizen ratio of 1 to 400 had the president’s nod to recruit 10,000 fresh officers into the police force. The exercise has remained stalled for about two years because of ego contest between political appointees, the Inspector General of Police, IGP and chairman of Police Service Commission who have now dragged themselves to the Supreme Court. While the macabre dance was going on with neither the president nor the party able to call the jesters to order, a lonely police officer guarding a secondary school boys’ hostel with about 900 students in Katsina was shot by bandits who ferried away about 333 students according to the state governor.

    A few months back, the president in response to massive unemployment of youths approved recruitment of 774,000 young Nigerians. That again remains stalled because of the on-going war between APC-dominated senate and the APC minister of labour.

    And if further evidence of absence of governance, which poses a great threat to democracy is needed, the fact that the ministers of education and labour that have been unable to prevent ASUU even if it involves using the big stick, from keeping our youths out of their universities for eight months, are still on their seats, is all that is needed.

    Like the executive, the judiciary, the legislature and the civil society groups that have become tools in the hands of politicians pose no less threat to our democracy. But none of the above institutions of democracy poses as much danger to the health of our budding democracy as the press.  Democracy can hardly survive without a vigilant press. It is however a paradox that Nigerian press which was the weapon freely deployed by our founding fathers and nationalists against the imperial powers in the struggle for independence and  in recent years by NADECO, Nigerian civil society groups to end military dictatorship and herald in the current democratic dispensation in 1999 has today become the greatest threat  to democracy.

    The travails of the press started at the birth of the fourth republic when a section of it was hijacked by non-journalists who saw it as an instrument for amassing wealth and influence among the new emergent inheritors of power who in 1999 spoke of recouping their expenses having sold personal properties to fight the election.

    They started with promotion of governors that the press as the fourth estate of the realm was expected to keep on their toes. They creatively came up with what was known as ‘Governor of the year’ award, moving from states to states, hawking awards. It did not matter that by 2007, about 17 of the ruling party’s governors many of them recipient s of the dubious media awards were in court facing EFCC charges for stealing their states blind.

    They then moved to the banking sector where some favoured banks, probably the highest bidders were getting the ‘Banker of the year’ award year after year. Again as it turned out during the era of Sanusi Lamido Sanusis as CBN governor, some of winners of the ‘awards were fraudsters who  engaged in insider-trading in addition to diverting depositors monies to buy choice properties in Dubai and elsewhere in the world and private jets in the names of their children.

    With another source of cheap money closed, the new media moguls embarked on what was a desecration of sacred newspapers’ news pages. First it was pages two and three which traditionally attract only a strip advertisement of about 12 inches. The targets once again are the politicians who have free monies to spend. One is slammed on the face in the morning with full page adverts on the otherwise news pages 2, 3 4 and five of newspapers. Other media houses soon joined.

    Then the battle shifted to the front and back pages with what is often described as wrap-around which initially attracted about N5m. With other newspaper joining the rush for a bit of the action, it todays attracts between N10m and N22m. Mast heads are freely traded for cash. Again the targets are the politicians especially governors who intend to make dubious claims of achievement or respond to attacks by political opponents.

    The TV stations have joined the bandwagon with their 30 or 45 minutes slots at princely cost of about N10m per segment. While the airing is in progress, news stories or breaking news are set aside. Again the targets are the politicians especially governors who often take slots for a quarter, six months or a year.  Those who have had the patience to watch various advertorials from states like Ekiti under Fayose, Imo under Okorocha and Delta under Ifeanyi Okowa must have come to the conclusion that there would be nothing left for future governors of those states to do in areas of roads infrastructure.

    Finally most of the new TV stations anchored not by trained journalists but by neophytes or those who just want to advertise their superior intellect do not see their platforms as institutions of democracy. During the EndSARS crisis, I stumbled on a programme anchored by two women shouting hysterically about “Massacre at Lekki Toll Gate” and using incendiary language bordering on incitement. There was another platform where the anchors of a programme had invited the political opponent of the Oba of Lagos whose palace was looted and burnt by hoodlums. From the manner of leading questions the guest was asked, it was obvious the programme was sponsored by the Oba’s opponents who wanted to drive it home the Oba deserved what he got.

    Of course we also know as Professor John Swinton of both The Sun and later the prestigious New York Times once said “there no such thing, at this date  of the world history, in America as an independent  press.  That the media is an instrument for waging battle of consciousness is evidenced by the on-going ideological war between CNN and Fox news.

    Similarly, the state is not a ‘night watchman state’, an impartial arbiter” that acts or should act on behalf of all. Quite often the state is acting on behalf of some interests or tendencies and depend on the media to implement its agenda.

    But whether the media is serving owners of society or temporary power-holders, there are rules and ethics to follow as an institution of democracy. Unfortunately, Nigeria press today seems to operate in a jungle.

     

  • The Kankara 333

    The Kankara 333

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

    The number sticks out like a sore thumb. This is the number by which many people in the world have come to know the kids who were abducted from their school in Kankara, in the Katsina home state of President Muhammadu Buhari by Boko Haram. Incidentally, the incident happened on the same day that the President arrived home for the first time, this year, on a private visit. It was not the way to welcome the President. But does Boko Haram care?

    Last Friday night as the President settled down at home in Daura, some 200 kilometres or so away in Kankara, Boko Haram, the sect he was famously quoted as saying had been “technically defeated”, was again wreaking havoc on the country. Rather than becoming extinct, Boko Haram keeps coming back to attack, kill, rape, maim and abduct as it likes. The government wants the people to believe that Boko Haram is dead, but the group has shown on several occasions that it would take more than words of mouth to kill it.

    The Kankara abduction should not have happened, at least, not after the two previous similar attacks on two girls’ schools in Borno and Yobe states in 2014 and 2018. Unfortunately, those who lead us are always wiser after the fact. Instead of acting before the deed, they do so after the harm has been done. We saw it happen under the Jonathan administration in 2014 when Boko Haram struck at Chibok Girls Secondary School in Borno State and carted away over 200 pupils. Sadly, we saw it happen again under this administration in 2018 at the Government Girls Secondary School (GSSS), Dapchi, Yobe State,  where over 100 pupils were kidnapped. One of those girls, Leah Sharibu, is still in captivity.

    Now, it is a boys’ only school in Kankara. The school, according to Katsina State Governor Aminu Masari, houses 839 pupils. All of them were said to be in school that fateful Friday. By Sunday, the governor told a bewildered nation that 333 pupils were abducted. As it is always the case in situations like this, the figure is in the realm of conjecture, as other numbers keep popping up.  There is no strong data to back Masari’s figure up. Though, as the official figure, it has been taken at its face value. If 839 pupils were in their dormitories, how did the governor arrive at the figure of 333 as those unaccounted for? Where are the remaining 506? At home? Or still in the bush where they ran to when the insurgents arrived?

    Kankara has, like the other incidents, exposed the underbelly of the porous security arrangements in schools susceptible to Boko Haram attacks. Boko Haram chooses schools to invade carefully and carries out its mission with deadly precision. It goes without saying that a government, which cares about the welfare and security of its citizens, especially children in schools in the line of Boko Haram’s attack, will do everything within its power to protect them. Boko Haram insurgents are not spirits that can operate stealthily without trace as they have been doing. Something must be wrong somewhere for the group to always catch troops prosecuting the insurgency war on the wrong foot.

    Is it possible for a soldier who is ready to lay down his life for his country to engage in a war, whether conventional or otherwise, like this? It appears the soldiers believe that there is nothing at stake in this their so-called “asymmetrical warfare” and as such, Boko Haram is being to run riot all over the place. Are the soldiers war weary? What about their commanders? Are they tired too? Is this a sabotage? Are the Service Chiefs still in charge? If they are, it is not reflecting in the performance of their men on the battlefield.

    Where were security operatives when the boys were being taken away on motorcycles? It is not easy to convey hundreds of boys on motorcycles in the dead of night to an unknown place. It will take 100 or more motorcycles to do that. Can that number of motorcycles move about in that community that night without attracting suspicion? What happened was, again, the failure of intelligence and the seeming reluctance to pursue the insurgency war aggressively. Must the military acquire 10 Super Tucanoes, as we are being told, at billions of naira before it defeats Boko Haram?

    The public keeps hearing of air strikes against Boko Haram in some places, with the killing of some of the insurgents and the destruction of their weapons.  Are these reports backed up with aerial pictures of those sorties real? If they are, where then does Boko Haram get the strength with which to unleash the kind of  attacks it carried out in Zabarmari,  Borno State, where 43 rice farmers were killed on November 28, and in Kankara, the relatively unknown community shot into limelight by the abduction of innocent kids six days ago.

    The casualty figure will always remain a thorny issue. Masari has given 333. Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu gave 10 and the lie in this number was seen, with the reported escape of 17 of the boys from their captors. A media report on Monday put the figure at over 600, quoting the school register. The families affected feel the heat. Only God knows the condition in which many of these kids’ parents will be. The trauma can be killing. Can you imagine sending your kids to school only to hear the shattering news that they have been abducted in their hostels? If things were this way when many of us were growing up, our parents would not have sent us to boarding schools. It is a big shame that due to no fault of parents and their children,  schools have become unsafe. What is the government doing about this? As usual, it is just to condemn the development as if that will bring back the abducted kids.

    The  purpose of government is to guarantee the safety of life and property by putting in place measures to prevent the kind of atrocities the nation has witnessed in Chibok, Bunu Yadi, Dapchi, Zabarmari and Kankara in the last six years.  One only hopes that Kankara will be the last of these unfortunate incidents.

  • ‘Shaytan has whispered into their hearts’

    ‘Shaytan has whispered into their hearts’

    Olatunji Ololade

     

    BETWEEN the Katsina governor, Aminu Bello Masari, and President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria suffers a wild encounter with recurring grief. On their watch, over 300 teenagers and high school boys were abducted from Katsina by the Boko Haram terrorist sect.

    The kidnappings occurred on Friday, December 14, in Kankara, hours after President Muhammadu Buhari landed in his home state, Katsina, for a week-long visit, forcing state authorities to immediately shut all schools.

    On that fateful day, the people of Kankara startled by a vicious evil. Around 10 p.m.  Boko Haram terrorists swooped on the town shooting sporadically in the air and afterward the Government Science Secondary (GSS) school, where they abducted students,

    It’s the worst siege since Boko Haram terrorists stormed Chibok town in 2014 and abducted 276 school girls. About 112 of the captives are still missing and believed to be held by the terrorists.

    The recent abduction has, however, ignited worry over the country’s security situation. If the terrorists could so brazenly operate in President Buhari’s backyard, kidnapping over 300 boys right under his nose, then Nigeria has great reason to worry.

    There are fears concerning what devilry the terrorists would subject the abducted boys to, if they are not rescued fast; there is the danger that many of them would end up as child soldiers, suicide bombers, drug addicts, and terror mules, at the behest of Boko Haram.

    My encounter with a Boko Haram commander, Joseph David aka Ibrahim Al-Hajar, revealed that several young boys are forcibly conscripted into the terrorist group’s bloodthirsty squads. Of course, this isn’t a subtle jab at Christendom given David’s Christian roots. As Boko Haram is in no way representative of about a billion Muslims around the globe, so also is David not representative of Christians worldwide.

    In an exclusive interview, David disclosed to me that his abductors indoctrinated him with spiritual texts regarded as Boko Haram’s holy grail. This was the prerequisite for training him to use guns and other weaponry. Thus after three months of brainwashing, David was renamed Ibrahim Al Hajar.

    Afterward, he was transferred to Shababu Ummah. “That is where they train people to use guns. I spent almost four months there, learning to use machine guns and other weapons of war. After that, I passed out (graduated),” he said.

    Subsequently, he was transferred to “Shababu Ummah,” where Boko Haram trains its soldiers to use guns. David spent almost four months there, learning to use machine guns and other weapons of war. After that, he “passed out” (graduated).

    For his first assignment, he was given a Hilux truck with an Antiaircraft (AA) machine gun. He was assigned to lead ambushes against Nigeria’s Military Joint Task Force (MJTF). He led his squad of mostly underage boys, “on several successful missions” ambushing the Joint Task Force (JTF) and halting military onslaught against Boko Haram in Sambisa.

    Today, David has renounced his membership in Boko Haram, claiming that he lives haunted by his past actions, he admitted that most of the child soldiers in his squad haven’t been so lucky. Many have suffered gruesome deaths during anti-terrorism military operations. Many more are still prowling the hills and border towns of the northeast in unflinching commitment to their handlers and commanders.

    My encounter with the ex-Boko Haram commander revealed that disaffection is often the most feasible rationalisation for Boko Haram’s appeal; the foot soldiers and commanders of the terrorist group are drawn mostly from male segments of the population with little formal education, captives turned soldiers and of course, unemployed northern youth like David.

    For instance, David, “an undergraduate of the State Polytechnic Yola (SPY),” was wooed by the promise of earning about N250, 000 monthly as an insurgent. However, he got lucky; due to his fearlessness and dexterity at mowing down Nigerian troops, he enjoyed rapid promotion and became a commander about five months into his conscription.

    Among other perks, he led a troop of 150 to 250 boys and earned over N500, 000 per month as a Commander. The money was disbursed to him and fellow senior officers in Nigerian currency and sometimes, in foreign currencies: Euro, Dollars, or Riyal.

    With such liquid cash at his disposal, he was influential enough to “marry” three wives. In one year, he forcibly married three abducted teenagers; his first wife, Faridah, was kidnapped from Madagali and the other two, Precious a.k.a Faridah and Elizabeth a.k.a Amina, were abducted from Chibok.

    Several northern youths would kill for such perks. Many of them live in straitened circumstances, surviving by menial jobs on the fringes of the urban and rustic north.

    Oftentimes, they are scorned and treated like vermin; many believe that they are lazy and hindered by a lack of ambition. You see them smiling and pleading for alms but deep down, they are very angry.

    And Boko Haram offers them a corrupted creed and platform to vent their angst. Boko Haram makes them feel loved. Eventually, they are goaded to believe that they are a crucial part of a great cause. A worthy movement geared to topple the “government of the infidels.”

    “They misinterpret the Holy Quran and use it to justify the senseless murders they commit. Shaytan has whispered into their hearts,” argued Sheikh Mahmud Abdullah, an Islamic scholar, and cleric.

    Sheikh Abdullah, however, forgot to add that the greatest repositories of Shaytan’s whispers are the hearts and souls of the Nigerian ruling class. Terrorism festered on their watch due to their insensitivity to the people’s needs, abject greed, remorseless corruption, and failure at governance.

    The northern youth embraces terrorism and kidnap for ransom, having lost hope in their governors’ capacity to lead and foster remarkable progress in their region – a similar situation subsists across the country but the north presents the ugliest conundrum being the hotspot of terrorist activities.

    Boko Haram’s dogma, like similar groups worldwide, plays a central role in its survival. Its creed of violence and wanton genocide is primed to achieve resonance. And it’s success and appeal among the northern youth is largely based on a combination of persuasive communicators, the compelling nature of the grievances articulated, and the pervasiveness of local conditions that seem to justify the terrorist group’s rationale for deploying violence.

    Boko Haram and its sponsors, of course, cash in on the situation; they manipulate the impoverishment and sentiments of gullible youth in recruiting them as soldiers. They lure them with food, money, and a passport to paradise; they tell them that their religion is under threat.

    And in some cases, they simply storm secondary schools and abduct over 300 teenagers and underage boys. The latter’s fate could only be better imagined. It is about time President Buhari tweaked the nation’s defense machinery to contain Nigeria’s security challenges.

    Until then, Boko Haram will continue to prowl the villages and suburbs of northern Nigeria to abduct school girls and boys. Its teenage “warriors” will hush boys to sleep with bullets in Sambisa, after shooting hot lead into their parents in Baga, Zarbamari, and even Mr. President’s backyard in Kankara.

     

     

     

  • White elephants in Nigeria’s industrialization effort

    White elephants in Nigeria’s industrialization effort

    By Jide Osuntokun

    It is generally known that thousands of abandoned contracts litter the Nigerian environment and landscapes; yet this has not stopped every new government from weekly announcements of new contracts mostly after meetings particularly of the Federal Executive Council. Parallel meetings of states’ executive councils are infrequently followed by the charade of contracts’ announcement which those announcing them and the critical mass of the country’s intelligentsia know that those contracts were based on politics without careful analytical studies on their feasibility and wherewithal to source for the funds of their timely execution.

    Most contractors are paid so-called mobilizations ranging from anything from 10 to 40 per cent of the cost of the project which could be substantial sums of money and since most contracts go to party members who simply collect the mobilization sum and proceed to scratch the surface of the land where the projects are sighted and simply vamoose with no questions asked. This is why we have thousands of abandoned projects littering the whole country. This is how so-called national cake or is it gari is shared. Sometimes the companies belong to the ministers/ governors/commissioners/chairmen of LGAs /Permanent secretaries or their proxies and because of this no punitive measures are taken against these shell companies.

    I remember the late Chief Ashamu telling me in 1991 or thereabouts that in the past ,at least in Western Nigeria, contracts went to professional builders and not politicians or ministers’ companies and in his view, this was what accounted for the phenomenal achievements of the Obafemi Awolowo government of Western Nigeria from 1951 to 1959. Of course the accumulated reserves of the cocoa board came in handy but a bad government would have wasted the funds. Recently, this government issued a statement about category of contracts that will now be reserved for so-called local contractors. I just hope that expertise of such contractors will be taken into consideration before public money is dished out to them.  The big projects, the white elephants that are abandoned are what should attract our attention because of the billions of dollars invested on them without any dividends. We all know about the petroleum refineries, four of them which are perennially under refurbishment contracts with no refined petroleum to show for it.

    How can four refineries, two in Port Harcourt, one in Warri and one in Kaduna break down all at the same time apparently to create the current situation in which for almost 20 years we have spent billions of dollars on the importation of petroleum products while also annually awarding contracts for their turn around maintenance (TAM)?

    We have written in the past that these refineries should be sold and even better still, be given gratis to the contractors who built them with the proviso that they make them work. The overloaded bureaucracies in the refineries can be shown their way out to go look for jobs elsewhere. It is a question of courage and I hope someone would summon up this courage and make these white elephants of refineries work. As shameless as we are, we are now importing finished petroleum products from our sisterly state of Republique du Niger whose petroleum industry is only about five years old compared with us who have been at it since 1956 that is 64 years ago.

    A friend who is very knowledgeable about these things shared with me a lecture he gave recently with title of “Moved to tears” about the failure of our government to judiciously manage the resources of the country. He particularly zeroed in on the Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Company which was begun in the Yakubu Gowon years and which has remained a monument to folly up till today in spite of tinkering with it by several governments since 1975. At one time it was sold to an American company, then to Indians who immediately started piecing the various engines apart and shipping them out; then it was later privatized and then renationalised all without any positive results. We don’t hear much about the company since Kayode Fayemi, as minister of mines left the ministry that was responsible for the company.

    The history of our effort to industrialize on paper cannot be faulted. Civil servants wrote the brief about the necessity of iron and steel production for industrialization. They would have cited the experience of the western world and Japan as examples. The Yakubu Gowon government patriotically embraced the mission. The friendly countries in the West were approached for advice and collaboration. They dragged their feet because Nigeria was their market. The government, flushed with petro-dollars after the sudden leap in national wealth following the Middle East war of 1973 approached the then Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had helped India build its own steel mills in the past so they were quite experienced in these things. This was how our iron and steel complex in Ajaokuta came to be built by a largely Ukrainian company. Iron was known to exist in several parts of Nigeria including Ajaokuta. Limestone also required in the complex was widely available but Nigeria does not have coking coal which is highly required in iron smelting process. Nigeria has coal in Udi hills near Enugu but it is lignite or brown coal which is only useful in locomotive engines for which the Enugu mines were historically developed during the First World War when the British administration in Nigeria could not get coal from Britain because of German submarines which roamed the Atlantic Ocean making shipping between Nigeria and Britain hazardous. Itakpe, some 53 kilometers from Ajaokuta had iron ore which was the best in Nigeria but yet of poor quality. To be useful, a beneficiation  plant needed to be built to improve the quality of the iron to be used in the blast furnace in Ajaokuta. Then after this, it needed to be transported by railway to Ajaokuta. Apparently coking coal was to be imported to complete the mix of raw materials needed to produce steel. A rolling mill was built in Ajaokuta even before the blast furnace to produce steel was ready. The idea was that steel pellets produced in Ajaokuta would then be used in the rolling mills in Aladja, Oshogbo and Jos where flat sheets and rods for the building industry would be manufactured while the Oshogbo steel mill would concentrate on making small parts, bolts and other things needed in industries and by other end users. This sounded great on paper but its execution felt flat on our faces. The main iron furnace was not operational since the iron ore was not available because the beneficiation plant to improve the quality of the low grade at Itakpe was not operational, neither was the railway in place until sometime in 2019. The rolling mills were ready but since there were no iron pellets, they had to be imported to make the rolling mills in Aladja, Jos, Ajaokuta and Oshogbo work. This became unsustainable. Thus we sank $10billion into a white elephant that has never produced anything while thousands of houses are abandoned in the various locations of the national iron and steel company of Nigeria. Now we are now at a point where imported steel are cheaper than what we will ever hope to produce from our monuments to waste and squander-mania. We could have saved ourselves the trouble of looking for good iron ore locally by importing, as Japan and Germany do, in building their iron and steel industries and there is plenty of good iron ore in Liberia.

    Related to steel is aluminum. The Babangida regime was sucked into the Ikot Abasi Aluminum complex following what appeared then a reasonable proposition by the experts. It was then pointed out that the UAE had perhaps the biggest aluminum complex outside Canada and that Nigeria had the ingredients to successfully become an aluminum exporter because we have in abundance, gas which we were flaring. There was also bauxite, the raw alumna in neighboring Guinea Conakry. Nigeria in fact had invested in the bauxite mines in Guinea during the Obasanjo military regime. It was also pointed out that the Calabar port would have to be dredged to permit ships bringing raw alumna to the complex. The raw alumna to be sourced was not tightly nailed down and was left to the contractors Ferrostaal AG, a German company, to determine. The cost of the project was to be paid for in crude oil which almost became an open-ended affair. The company then decided to bring raw alumna from Australia in its own ships paid for by Nigeria. The Calabar port was too shallow to take in the shipment from Australia. Why go all the way to Australia is not clear to me when the same thing could have been gotten from Guinea or Jamaica that was able and willing. The complex was built but proved uneconomical to run. The company was later sold by the Obasanjo civilian government to a Russian company but the company was then enmeshed in legal combat with a local Nigerian company which claimed it was illegally outmaneuvered. The company has remained moribund up till today after billions of dollars had been sunk into it.

    There are many other examples of aborted industrial projects such as the newsprint and paper industries in Iwopin in Ogun State and Oku-Iboku in Cross River State designed to supply all the paper and newsprint needed by Nigeria. The fertilizer company in port Harcourt built to supply all our fertilizer needs and the Defence Industry, Kaduna have all come to sad ends for no  other reason than our inability to follow through consistently on any project and our refusal to offload such projects to the private sector when the burden became too heavy for the national bureaucracy to carry.

    No country can develop by just exporting raw materials alone. It must add value to them and by so doing create employment for millions of its people. Our lack of success in this regard has led to massive unemployment in the face of our galloping population thus creating the present insecurity in the country. We need to do something about this by going back to the drawing boards and see which of these companies can be rehabilitated and then sold and rather than government directly investing in companies, it should create friendly environment that would facilitate foreign direct investment in our country.

     

  • Youth healing

    Youth healing

    By Olatunji Ololade

     

    What do politicians think at death’s door? How much money they could hoard into their caskets perhaps. What would you think at death’s door? You, the unbidden offering on their altar of greed.

    Desire, weaving its tissues of lust, wraps us in her shroud at birth. We grow out of the mould into a larger frame of the world’s hankering, until society flips us by the senses, moulding us from infancy into feral, garish cruciforms.

    The newborn startles to crucifixion in the home of the impoverished. He evolves through systolic throbbing of the heart at birth, oscillating between hunger and thirst, poverty and pain, power and weakness, ethics and amorality – vortices of a life foredoomed to a historical gyre of gloom and death.

    The lucky child, however, extinguishes at birth in the home of the poor. Thus he is spared death in macabre warrens, like Nigeria’s dirt roads and dysfunctional hospitals. He is spared gruesome expiration as a bone sliver, blood spatter and brain tissue, in Borno and Zamfara’s theatres of war, armed banditry and death.

    If he doesn’t extinguish to lack of oxygen in the hospital labour ward or alagbo omo (traditional midwife)’s matted lab, he risks growing up to become a street-urchin, cult killer, armed robber, menial worker, prostitute, assassin – forever amenable to plots of the oppressive ruling class.

    At the backdrop of his grisly narrative, his privileged peer stirs to lush, ornate extravagance; born into the aristocratic divide, he is feted by status and ravaged by wealth.

    He grows reprobate and unfeeling, weaned to extrude his savage lusts to the detriment of impoverished peers amid starving electorate – his parents’ meal ticket or family’s hound-meat if you like.

    At election time, he glistens the news pages in family portraits and carefully orchestrated media campaigns. He is the darling child, oligarchic heir, whose testimonial for daddy, whose secret philanthropy and ‘very Nigerian’ fashion sense, arouses the wonder and goodwill of ‘poor, silly, sentimental electorate’ as his father would say.

    As you read, he uploads in careless abandon, pictures of his wild cavorting aboard parents’ private jet bought with pilfered state funds. He throws the wildest parties at home, where boondocks daughters or ‘hustlers’ if you like, become fair game to him and friends.

    This minute, he is ramming into unsuspecting motorists and bystanders as they wait their turn to buy scarce PMS, made unaffordable by his parents’ savage whims; next minute, he is uploading pictures of the dent made on his father’s car at the densely populated filling station, by his victims’ splintered bones.

    The oligarchic heir, like the fabled palace troll, mutates into tyrant royalty. Having assimilated the ethical decay of his forebears, he blossoms in cruelty and procedural violence. He illustrates his class’s ferocious passions in the ways and pattern of licentious Rome.

    Each sadistic exertion by him establishes portents of his underprivileged peers’ future torment, by the venal occult ruling class.

    Nigeria thrives by this macabre rite. Thus while young Nigerians clamoured for the ‘#nottooyoungtorun’ bill, and more recently, trooped to the streets for the #EndSARS protests, chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), lent voice to their clamour at varying decibels and with vicious intent.

    The ruling oligarchs plan to perpetuate their kind in power courtesy their pampered wards. Thus their contempt for young Nigerians ranting about “taking over.” Not on their watch would a herd member rise to power.

    Only patrician spawns, be they drug addicts, sexual perverts, trainee looters, and Ivy League crooks, among others, may enjoy such privilege. Apology to every ‘blue blood’ that proves an exception to the ‘culture.’

    The votes our parents’ cast put us in such a bind. The votes we cast puts our children in a worse bind, which beggars the question: ‘For whom do we cast our votes in 2023? Whose constitution rejects our tragic ironies?’

    At the moment, the debate revolves around familiar fiends; desperate governors have coalesced into hideous gangs, like armed bandits. With unprecedented devilry, they inflict a choke-hold on power and Nigeria’s dying states.

    They have perfected their plans to steal votes and grab power, come 2023. They trust Nigerians, the youth in particular, to cast their votes for APC and PDP candidates taking the baits of money, bigotries, and poisonous politics.

    There is no gainsaying we face a far more difficult problem at this moment in history: the affliction by youth weaned on savage materialism. Twisted youths from two societal extremes, the haves and have-nots, coalesce in ghastly pursuits inimical to the Nigerian project.

    What do you promise youths who had been raised to believe that they can have anything they want without sweating for it? How do you give them a new vision to deal with bitter reality?

    How do we breed youth on the belief that success should never be about accumulating obscene wealth to show off but the right to live fully and engage more expansively, the elemental possibilities of existence?

    Which candidate projects a promising story of the future, a grand vision of possibilities that Nigerians may believe?

    To think we had higher expectations of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC; together, they could not restore stable electricity, and comatose industry. They could not revolutionise healthcare, improve education, security and provide good roads, among others.

    These were achievable in the past five years – at least in convincing phases – had Buhari and his APC truly committed resources to tackling crucial social problems.

    Come 2023, Nigerians would be wrong to believe that a vote for the APC or PDP would resonate as a vote for men with permanent personalities, integrity and values. Candidates of both parties are programmed to grab power for personal and sectarian gains; let the PDP’s 16 years in power and the APC’s unfolding dystopia serve as frightening deterrent to the electorate.

    Pardon my cheerless optimism; notwithstanding the incumbent administration’s apparent shortcomings, the ancient political rite of domination by the candidate with deep pocket and political capital, might manifest in keeping it in power.

    Nigerians will make uninformed choices as usual. The eye elects and the mind accepts a galvanizing object and formalises the union by espoused politics and bigotries, according to bestial nature. This imposes a hierarchic character on the electorate, making all receptors of the beloved’s manna. The structure is sadomasochistic. Infinitely subservient.

    Come 2023, the cycle will continue while reality perpetuates Nigeria as the proverbial ragged babe caught in a cycle of cannibalism enacted by the APC and PDP, primitives attacking and retreating in obsessive rhythms of victory and defeat.

    Nigeria, the ragged babe, shall be thrust to savagery for the umpteenth time. They will nail her down to a rock in their slaughterhouse of greed. They will sink poisonous fangs in her head, pierce her unformed nipples, hands, and feet. They will cut her heart out to sup on her blood.

    Picture us as the ragged child; the pre-nubile damaged girl. The savages live on our shrieks and cries. They nourish from our interminable miseries, pain, and death. They grow young as we wither.

    Youth is the key to dislodging us from their virulent fangs: a disciplined, cultured youth, armed with voter’s cards, can-do-spirit, towering humility, and courage to heal Nigeria.

  • APC as threat to Nigeria’s democracy

    APC as threat to Nigeria’s democracy

    Political parties as modernisisng agencies are expected to perform miracles by turning dreams to realities. The miracles of Japan’s industrial power, China’s poverty to prosperity and USA’s landing of man on the moon started with big dreams. Here at home, the Northern People’s Congress, later Nigerian People’s Congress (NPC) was responsible for the biggest business conglomerate in Africa between 1957 and 1962 while in the Western Region, the Action Group (AG) successfully implemented the most ambitious free education programme in Africa and went on to build and commission in three months, the first television station in Africa ahead of some European nations.

    PDP, a party described by John Campbell, former US envoy as ‘a political party that came together … as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils’, did not pretend in 2013 that it had any dream beyond uninterrupted ruling for 60 years. Audu Ogbeh, one-time PDP chairman was to later validate Campbell’s thesis by submitting: “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil”. There was also a suppressed Heineken Lokpobiri Senate Transport Committee probe report which alleged that from 1999 to 2009, government was surcharged to the tune of N49m on each kilometre of some 4,752 kilometres of road purportedly constructed. Ahmadu Alli as chairman of PDP as well as that of Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, according to a House probe, presided over the theft of about N2 trillion by some of the over 140 independent oil marketers they appointed. We can add the allegation by former World Bank vice president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili, who was education minister in the Obasanjo administration, that the PDP administration of Jonathan squandered $67billion reserves left by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

    For many miracle-seeking Nigerians therefore, the inauguration of APC on February 6, 2013 was something of a relief. Its eight-point cardinal programme covered electricity generation, war against corruption, food security, integrated transport network; free education; devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care. Although, the eight-point programme were routine responsibilities of government that did not require the intervention of angels or men with special talents, PDP’s baleful legacy forced Nigerian miracle-seekers to see APC and Buhari as the messiahs Nigerian were waiting for. And they went on to invest heavily on APC by giving it a clear mandate with a popular vote of 15.4m to the ruling party’s 12.8million, a clear majority of 65 to 43  in the senate, 190 to 151 in the Lower house and 21 of the 36 state governors.

    Six years down the line, betrayed Nigerians seem to have come to the sad conclusion that the difference between PDP and APC, neither of which has any philosophical foundation nor ideological orientation, is that of six and half and a dozen. Indeed Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC boss, and a politician who at different times sojourned in both parries was to tell Nigerians he brutal truth about the futility of trying to look for saints among current Nigerian politicians.

    Six years of APC government of change, very little has changed. Our lawmakers remain the highest paid lawmakers in the world. Just as it was during PDP years of the locust, ministers, heads of parastatals including Customs, Immigration, Army, Police, EFCC, vice chancellors of universities cruise around in in imported bullet-proof land cruisers at taxpayers’ expense. Six years into APC administration, none of our four refineries is working as we, without shame, continue to import fuel for domestic consumption.

    Most part of the nation is still in darkness. PDP after 14 years in government generated 3324 MW by 2015.  APC’s minister of science and technology, Ogbonaya Onu’s said APC generated additional 1,950 MW in six years. Add that to the 3,324 MW PDP generated in 14 years, what we get is 5,274MW out of which only 3400 MW can be distributed. Like Obasanjo and Jonathan did before him, Buhari’s APC has just signed an agreement with Siemens to implement the Nigerian Electricity Roadmap.

    On road construction, APC’s Raji Fashola, the very resourceful Lagos State governor who once asked PDP to identify 100 kilometres of road it completed in 10 years has been demystified.  Six years of APC government, Apapa Tin can Island Port road, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway like many other federal roads across the country, remain motorists’ and commuters’ nightmare.

    APC promised to tackle insecurity. Six years after, APC government seems to have no answer to rising insecurity across the country. Just in November alone, at least 216 Nigerians were killed and 144 others kidnapped according to data gathered by the Civic Media Lab. APC has no answer to periodic mindless killings of subsistence farmers in their farms in the last six years. Now helpless Nigerians are said to be killed daily in Borno, Katsina, Zamfara, Adamawa, Niger, Benue, Jigawa, Kaduna, Taraba and other areas in the north. Last week, Professor Usman Yusuf in a widely circulated letter titled  ‘Silence in the face of evil, is its self-evil”  noted the APC federal government has let Nigerians down by allowing “bandits to unleash terror on the people, operates their own government by imposing heavy taxes on the people”, adding “there is no law enforcement agencies to protect the people, while the police often showed up after the carnage have been done”. Katsina is said to have now become a mega IDC camp to refugees displaced from  nine local governments of the state.

    Death of a Nigerian doesn’t seem to have meanings to APC and its government. In other societies, the 43 rice farmers cruelly hacked to death by Boko Haram in their farms last week would have led to a declaration of a week of national mourning. Instead of threatening the president who has arrogantly ignored suggestion by Nigerian stakeholders including representatives of our ethnic nationalities, the Sultan of Sokoto who was reported to have lamented the mindless killing of 80 people in his domain, the northern elders forum that has asked the president to resign and the legislature that has passed different resolutions advising the president to sack the tired service chefs, the APC controlled legislature was inviting President Buhari for a talk.

    APC with restructuring in its manifesto forgot what restructuring or power devolution meant and had to set up the El-Rufai committee on restructuring. Governor Fayemi, now says it will be unfair of Nigerians to blame All Progressives Congress (APC) or Presidency for not implementing restructuring agenda as promised in its manifesto. He wants Nigerians to direct their anger at the National Assembly controlled by his party for not implementing the El Rufai report.

    APC remains not just the scourge of the nation but a threat to democracy because of its criminal conspiracy of silence in the face of incompetence of the executive.  With PDP, there might have been no honour among thieves but their vicious struggle over sharing of our national patrimony pitched Obasanjo against his PDP thieving sons and Saraki the ‘whistleblower’, against in his colleagues involved in the theft of N1.7trillion in the fuel subsidy scam. And when his PDP family members made PDP too hot for him, he teamed up with APC to defeat his estranged party.

    As it has turned out, PDP’s family war over sharing of our commonwealth is healthier for democracy than APC’s criminal conspiracy of silence over absence of governance and creeping dictatorship.

  • Destroying Zik’s statue, a national embarrassment

    Destroying Zik’s statue, a national embarrassment

    By Jide Osuntokun

     

    It was widely reported that following the #EndSARS revolt by young people recently, the statue of the first president of our country, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in Onitsha, his home town was damaged or destroyed and when interviewed, some of the hooligans who did this dastardly act, said they attacked the statue because “the man was one of those responsible for Nigeria’s problems”. From where did these young people get their story? I felt very bad about this because the people spoke English so they were not completely dumb. I wonder what the reaction would have been if someone had done this to Obafemi Awolowo’s or Ahmadu Bello‘s statue in Ikenne or Sokoto respectively. One cannot be too sure what the reaction would have been because the present generation suffers some kind of historical and mental amnesia about our past. Our school curriculum and the removal of the teaching of history from primary and secondary schools by the military when they ruled and ruined Nigeria may have been responsible for this. Some two or three years ago, a newspaper reported how a teacher in the primary school that Chief Obafemi Awolowo attended in Ikenne was surprised by the ignorance of the people about the past of their school. When he asked the children if they had heard about Obafemi Awolowo before and some of the children put up their hands and one after the other they chorused the name of Obafemi Martins the Nigerian footballer. When the teacher then tried to correct them they told him they had never heard about Obafemi Awolowo before. I don’t blame them. Most parents today in the materialistic jungle Nigeria has become would rather prefer their children follow the football or songs and dance route to fame and wealth than the dangerous route the likes of Awolowo and Azikiwe traversed before becoming famous. Even history graduates from our universities only think “Bode Thomas” is the name of a street in Lagos and cannot identify the name behind the street. My 40-year old engineer son once told me the only Nigerian leaders he knew were “Tunde Idiagbon and Muhammadu Buhari” because those were the leaders he knew growing up. He then innocently asked me if the current Buhari is the son of the Buhari he knew when he was growing up in the 1980s. I laughed and I said it is still the ageless Muhammadu Buhari. You can imagine what he said to me!

    Now imagine if the people who damaged Azikiwe’s statue had come from another ethnic group than Igbo; all hell would have broken out or imagine if Ahmadu Bello’s statue had been damaged by say, Yoruba or Igbo, the whole thing would not have been seen as a manifestation of our poor educational backwardness or youthful exuberance but as a manifestation of ethnic and religious bigotry and who knows how many people would have been killed as result of apparent youthful ignorance!

    I have always wondered why Azikiwe is not celebrated in Nigeria especially by the Igbo people. Some have said even though he wrote the Biafran national anthem, he deserted Biafra during the civil war. But this is not really true. It was when he saw the fruitlessness of the situation that he advised Emeka Ojukwu to seek for peace. He knew there was a time to fight and a time to seek for peace and as a wise man he knew the Igbo people had proved their mettle and to continue to fight a war in which they were facing overwhelming odds in terms of weapons, ammunitions and manpower was the height of folly. For taking this position, the man’s record has been deliberately distorted and his contribution to Nigeria and Africa as a whole has been diminished. This was a deliberate ploy by Ojukwu to reduce the stature of Azikiwe in order to boost his own. Yet without Azikiwe’s contribution, Nigeria’s independence would not have come at the time it came; it certainly would have been delayed. Many young people today cannot believe that with two Masters Degrees from two Ivy League universities, namely Columbia and Pennsylvania, Azikiwe could not get a job in the civil service of Nigeria because the British colonial administration did not think too highly about the quality of American education. Up to the early 1950s the “Colour bar” prevented Nigerians from getting served in hotels in Lagos reserved for whites only! But for people like Azikiwe, this humiliation would have continued for a while more in our own country. Today in Nigeria, young people without the right dose of historical education take many things for granted. It was not in the plan of the white man to walk away from his conquest of Africa without the push of such men as Azikiwe. Rudyard Kipling, one of the ideologues of imperialism felt black Africans constituted the “Whiteman’s Burden” and Africans were “half children half devils” and his counterparts in Germany regarded Africans as “ Untermenschen that is, sub-humans and it was the lot of people like Azikiwe to remove from Africa what he called “man’s inhumanity to man”. His struggle and those of others like him should never be forgotten by poorly educated compatriots. Who was Nnamdi Azikiwe?

    He was essentially a true Nigerian. He was born in 1909 in Zungeru, where his father was a clerk in the military detachment of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) in the present day Niger State in northern Nigeria. After some years of elementary schooling in Onitsha, he moved to Lagos for his primary and secondary schooling which he completed in Methodist Boys High School in 1924. He worked briefly as a government clerk before going to the United States in 1925. He finished his high school in Storer College, a high school for blacks at Harpers Ferry in Virginia before going to Lincoln University, a predominantly Black college in Pennsylvania.

    He later transferred to Howard University in Washington DC. These were black institutions in then segregated America where blacks were put in their place of subservience to whites. He acquired two Masters in Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania, two Ivy League universities in the United States. He was one of the first blacks to cross the “colour bar “in these white institutions. He achieved all this by dint of hard work, determination and exceptional ability to eat the “bread of racial bitterness” as he later put it. To pay his way through college, he served as porter in railway stations where he sometimes slept and even tried professional boxing. He spent a total of nine years in the United States before returning to Africa where he intended to show in his own words the “light of freedom for people to follow”. He did not return to Nigeria but in the spirit of Pan-Africanism, he went to Accra where he lived for a while and established a newspaper as the mouthpiece of fledgling African nationalism in 1934. It was not until following year that he shifted his base to Lagos.

    While in the Gold Coast (Ghana) he mentored young people, including Kwame Nkrumah who later led his people to independence in 1957, three years before Nigeria. As a journalist, Azikiwe established newspapers located in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria and brought young people like Anthony Enahoro into journalism barely just out of secondary school. Azikiwe the orator was such an effective mobilizer of people that young men from all parts of the country flocked around him .People like Sule Zukogi, Raji Abdallah, Kolawole Balogun , Osita  Agwuna to name a few formed the Zikist movement as a radical group to forcefully demand for “Freedom or death” from the British. Zikism became an ideology that sometimes left Azikiwe bewildered because he was not a revolutionary but a liberal democrat. He had however planted the seed of nationalism for the younger firebrands to water. Many of these young people suffered for it by being jailed by the colonial government and this made a few of them to be critical of Azikiwe. In the nationalist rally around him, all sorts of associations enlisted and the Ibo State Union became one of the powerful forces in the NCNC (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons) which  at the prodding of mostly students in Lagos he joined the veteran nationalist and land  surveyor Herbert Macaulay to form  in 1948. This rally  was distinct from all the  previous nationalist parties that existed  in Nigeria  before Azikiwe returned to Nigeria in 1935 and they resented his domineering presence and dismissed him  unfairly, in my view, as an Igbo champion.

    It is a long story. It will suffice to say Azikiwe was elected into the Western House of Assembly from Lagos in 1951 and he actually wanted to head the government in Western Nigeria before the Yoruba felt their liberalism was being exploited and forced Azikiwe to abandon his pan-Nigerian mission for a more realistic vision of heading the government of Eastern Nigeria while his nemesis Obafemi Awolowo headed the government of Western Nigeria. This was the genesis of the poisoning of relations between the two titans of Nigerian politics and their followers. While Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello wanted a loose federation, Azikiwe wanted a federation with a strong centre. In 1959, some nationalist forces felt Awolowo and Azikiwe could have teamed up to lead a strong government to independence in 1960 but Azikiwe rightly or wrongly moved to form a coalition with the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) on principle of realism not idealism. He repeated this again in 1979 when his Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) formed a coalition government with the northern party, the National Party of Nigeria. Whether his political decisions were the product of opportunism or realism remains a moot question but no one can deny Azikiwe his rightful place as primus inter pares among the founders of modern Nigeria. I was privileged to have met him in 1979 and chaperoned him round Philadelphia when the University of Pennsylvania honoured him with a doctorate degree, honoris causa. I was part of the official Nigerian delegation and I will never forget.

  • Moment of truth

    Moment of truth

    By Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    By his nature, President Muhammadu Buhari is not given to talking, according to his spokesman, Femi Adesina. Like every human being, it is not that the President does not talk at all, he just does not talk much. Indeed,  there are people like that who find it difficult to talk, except it is extremely necessary. When they talk, those around will look at one another, wondering what happened. What could have propelled the taciturn guy to talk? They ask no one in particular.

    If Buhari were the talking type, he would have been voluble in recent times, especially over the worsening security situation in the country. But being a man who keeps to himself, he has said nothing even when there is much to talk about and people are yearning to hear from him. When it comes to talking, Buhari and his American counterpart Donald Trump are different. Trump can talk the dead to rise,  while Buhari can keep mum, no matter the din around him. The more the noise, the more he is unaffected by his surroundings. That’s him for you.

    It is strange that he has not been moved to talk by the heightening insecurity,  which was brought home grimly, by the killing of some rice farmers in Zabarmari, Borno State, last November 28, by Boko Haram. The casualty figure remains conflicting till today, more than 12 days after 43 of those killed were buried. The  Abubakar Shekau faction of Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for the killing, puts the figure at 78. The Senate says it is 67. Whether one or two, the truth is no life should be taking in such circumstances. It smacks of barbarism to kill people by slitting their throats. That kind of bestiality can only be seen in movies.

    For that horrible show to happen in real life again and again portrays Boko Haram for what it really is: a bunch of demented bigots. The group has been killing civilians and soldiers and even kids in what the military has since described as “asymmetrical warfare”.  Whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, the citizens are not interested in whatever name the military calls the war; all they want is for Boko Haram to be defeated. They are tired of being told that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated”, a phrase first used by the President.

    What is the point of such “technical defeat” when Boko Haram is still strong, as we have seen time and again, to inflict colossal damage on the country. To the public, Boko Haram was at no time “technically defeated”.  If it was, it would not still be that bold as to ambush a governor’s convoy,  attack army barracks, invade schools and farms, without let or hindrance . To put the people’s mind at rest,  the President may have to shed light on what he meant by “technical defeat” of Boko Haram when he addresses a joint session of the National Assembly today.

    At times, it may be a strategy to keep quiet, but when things are turning upside down, the President cannot pretend that all is well. Things are just not right in the country right now and we all know it. Security has totally collapsed, with the people left to look after themselves. In this regard, one is not talking about Boko Haram alone. The people are more concerned about Boko Haram because of its audacious campaigns in the Northeast. With the governors raising the alarm that the group is behind the kidnapping in the Southwest, it may soon be everywhere in the country,  if not stopped now.

    The solution to this security challenge is in the President’s hands. Today, he should let the lawmakers know how he plans to end the Boko Haram siege. His visit should not just be another visit; it must be meaningful because, from the look of things,  on it rests some of the answers to our problems as a nation. The lawmakers as representatives of the people are concerned with what is happening in the land because their constituents are affected. They are being killed, kidnapped or maimed and their homes destroyed. It remains for the lawmakers to use the opportunity of this meeting to convey their constituents feeling to the President. This is the essence of their invitation to the President.

    It will also enable them to hear from him firsthand,  his plan for securing the nation not only from Boko Haram, but also from other criminal elements. It is a moment of truth for the executive and legislature. What does the executive need to redress the security situation? Is there any need for a special legislation to address the Boko Haram menace? The President should open up and seek the lawmakers’ help, if necessary, to get the nation out of this security bind. Things cannot continue like this. As the President, the buck stops on his table. He should take the lead in the counter-insurgency war. Five years ago, many never believed that what we are experiencing today will ever happen under a Buhari Presidency.

    He too made us to believe that he had the magic wand for the Boko Haram menace. Buhari told us that six months after assuming office, he would have ridden the nation of Boko Haram and we believed him. We now know better. When Boko Haram struck in Chibok, Borno State, in 2014, and abducted over 200 schoolgirls, during the Jonathan administration, we said such would never happen under the Buhari administration and so, we voted for him in 2015. But it did. In 2018, Boko Haram invaded Dapchi and took away over 100 schoolgirls. One of those girls,  Leah Sharibu, is still in captivity.

    Will the President tell the lawmakers that he has made a headway in the counter-insurgency war? Will he insist that Boko Haram has been ‘technically defeated’? If he makes that submission, can the lawmakers look him in the face and ask: how can Boko Haram be ‘technically defeated’ and still be able to hit ‘soft’ and hard targets?

    Willy-nilly, Buhari must talk about his Service Chiefs, who the Senate is insisting must go. The President prefers to keep them. The people do not begrudge him that right. But they also have the right to know why he is keeping them in the face of their seeming inability to tame the Boko Haram monster. The people are not asking that the Service Chiefs be sacked because they hate the military brass’ faces, but because of their poor handling of the counter-insurgency war. Under the watch of these Service Chiefs, Boko Haram has  made a mincemeat of not only our troops, but also of civilians. This is why the people believe that they can no longer be in charge of the counter-insurgency war, if Boko Haram must be defeated.

    Perhaps, we do not know what the President knows that makes it compelling for him to keep his Service Chiefs. This may come to light at his meeting with the lawmakers. One hopes that both sides will put the nation first in the collective search for a lasting solution to this scary problem.

  • Jonathan should avoid APC’s poisoned chalice

    Jonathan should avoid APC’s poisoned chalice

    By Jide Osuntokun

    Recently former president, Goodluck Jonathan celebrated his 63rd birthday and some APC governors went to felicitate with him and to invite him to cross over to their camp so that he can be anointed to contest the 2023 presidential election on their party’s platform. Among those who went to Jonathan with this offer is the interim chairman of the party and governor of Yobe State, Mai Mala Buni. The newspapers reported that the calculation of those rooting for Jonathan in the north is that after a term of four years, he would yield the position to another northerner because Jonathan would not want to seek re-election after he would have been president for a total of 10 years. They were alleged to have argued that Jonathan would not harm the northern interest because in his previous political incarnation, he served with dedication northern interest.

    I am not sure Jonathan would like to be perceived as having served northern rather than Nigerian interest for the six years he was president. What this attempt of a few young northern Nigerians trying to determine the future of Nigeria is a sure way of unraveling this delicately balanced country rotating as it were on one leg of a tripod so to say. I know many will disagree about Nigeria resting on a tripod of different nations and several other nationalities. I plead guilty for not having a better analytical tool.

    To suggest to thinking Nigerians that the best their political leaders are thinking about the solution to the problems of their country is to bring back the leadership most people organized to remove in 2015 underrates their intelligence. It is also ironically a repudiation of the Buhari regime itself of which these buccaneering APC governors are currently part of. If the only solution to the myriad of problems this country has is to call on a man who could not solve Nigeria’s problems when the country did not have the current financial challenge, then we need to go back to the drawing board and device another method of governance than the current so called democracy that has thrown up the kind of governors who are clandestinely planning to take over a ruling party and toy with the future of the largest Black country in terms of population. If these people are not challenged, they will ruin the only country millions of us have.

    I have no problem with President Jonathan. I also feel he will not want his own head to be used to crack a coconut, as we say, in my own part of this country. But as an academic, he himself on self-examination will arrive at a conclusion that he was not an exceptionally successful president. There were many reasons for his failure. He was not strong enough to discipline his own troops because running a government is not a one-man show. But as the president, the buck stopped at his table. The general perception of his regime was that of a financial open sesame or bazaar for all kinds of people to indulge themselves in sharing what Nigerians call national cake. I am not sure if the present regime is better than the Jonathan regime. But in 2015 most of us, and I speak for the national intelligentsia, felt we needed a change and General Buhari in our estimation was seen as the man who could clean the Augean stable. It is a moot point to say if we miscalculated or not. Even if we did, those benefiting from the movement that swept Buhari into power do not have the right while still in government to repudiate his claim to integrity by inviting the man he defeated to come and take over from him in 2023. If they are convinced that he has not done well, they should say so and resign from the APC then Nigerians will take them seriously. They should not from the comfort of their state houses be throwing stones at the party and leader who brought them to power. The surest way to throw the country into political chaos is the way Governor Mala Buni and his northern governors are going. It will destroy the APC and plunge the country into disarray considering the various political, economic and security problems the country faces.

    I am personally surprised how politicians are handling the affairs of this benighted country. None of them is seriously tackling the problem of insecurity as it should be. A situation in which traditional rulers are being murdered as was the case with the Olufon of Ifon in Ondo State calls for soul searching. The Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar recently openly cried out about how terrorists were running over villages in his domain and terrifying people in the markets wielding wildly AK-47 rifles. Just last week, the Boko haram inflicted a massacre on rice growers in the Chad basin. I read a sad piece in which  Alhaji Baba Ahmed  bemoaned the situation in the north where insecurity is so wide spread and killing is almost a daily and universal occurrence that it is no longer news. From Sokoto, Kebbi through Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Yobe to Borno and from Niger, Plateau, Nassarawa, Benue, Kaduna, Taraba, Adamawa, Kogi and Kwara, the same problem of insecurity pervades the entire northern half of Nigeria and it is rapidly spreading to Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo, Enugu, Ebonyi and the Niger Delta as a whole. There is nowhere to hide. Lagos State has witnessed the influx of unruly northern motorcycles-riding youths who either out of ignorance or out of deliberate misdemeanor are taking on law enforcement officers who try to apply state laws on road usage. Insecurity has spread to all parts of Nigeria and soon interstate and intercity routes will be no-go areas except for a few intrepid travellers armed to the teeth and ready to die fighting!

    These are the problems confronting ordinary people in Nigeria which some of our idle and calculating governors seem oblivious of. I honestly think any honest politician should be helping the federal government to find its way out of this insecurity conundrum rather than speculating about three or so years to come. At the rate this country is being torn apart by marauders of different hue and colour, we may not have a country by 2023 for these governors to play with as in a chess game.  Perhaps they need to look at other parts of the world to learn that you don’t toy with the destiny of 200 million people by meeting within the cool environment of your state houses or in distant places like Abuja and try to determine the course of history of a whole country. How can anybody be planning about putting somebody in the position of a president just to serve sectional interest while ignoring genuine problems of exclusion and sectional monopoly of power and alienation to one section of a country’s wealth generated in another part of the country and expect peace and quiet?

    If there is anytime the whole question of restructuring of this country must come to front burner of our national politics, this is the time. The current security architecture has failed. The country cannot be policed from Abuja. There must be local police recruited locally from the indigenes of our states who presumably would know the geography and languages and be in command of intelligence gotten from familiarity with their areas. Federal police can continue to provide additional layer of security and take care of interstate crimes. The country will have to go back to where we were before the military coup d’état of 1966 with modifications. This will mean local and state control of their resources with adequate contribution in taxes to support the federal functions of defence, diplomatic representation, post and telecommunications, currency, aviation and transportation while all other areas of governance shall be the responsibilities of state on principle of subsidiarity.  We had this paradigm of governance before and there is nothing new in this. This will greatly assist in development based on healthy and cooperative federalism as was the case in the First Republic. Any attempt or effort to continue the way we are now at the moment will fail miserably. That is the truth. I love my country and as a former ambassador, I am a beneficiary of the size and importance of the country  and I will like Nigeria to survive as one entity but the only way this country can survive is through restructuring.

    To continue to do things the same way and expect a different outcome is the height of insanity.

    The problem of Nigeria will be solved through having appropriate policies and right and honest individuals not through revolving doors or musical chairs of going back and forth to bring back failed and failing leaders. Nigeria is too important to the black race to be left in the hands of political neophytes and buccaneers.

  • President Buhari as the curse of APC

    President Buhari as the curse of APC

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    President Buhari has faith neither in politicians nor in political parties.  For the former, he has nothing but disdain and the latter for him is nothing more than a vehicle to take control of government. That perhaps explains why after his 2015 electoral victory, his first victims were those tested politicians on whose back he rode to power after three failed attempts and APC, the platform that aided his ascension to power which he later abandoned to political dealers and wheelers while he was in self-isolation for six months.

    He personalized victory that rightly belongs to APC while refusing to constitute a cabinet or the boards of the over 50 smaller governments APC urgently needed to implement its manifesto, the basis on which the electorate voted it into power. He, in the process, ignored the most important duty of an elected representative of a political party- the pursuit of the special interest of party members and party supporters.

    President Buhari unfortunately believed APC victory for which he is only a custodian was his victory; believing the fallacies and crooked logic by the likes of  Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Dele Momodu to the effect that he won the election on his own merit on account of his integrity, an integrity that did not help him in his three earlier disastrous outings. Sycophants downplayed the role of the APC platform and the contributions of those who criss-crossed the land to sell the candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari who on account of his human right abuses during his first coming in 1984, many believed was incapable of purging himself of his dictatorial tendencies.

    President Buhari did not only deny APC participation in APC government at all levels but has continued to undermine the APC platform that aided him to power in 2015.  First he ignored the warnings of Pa Bisi Akande, APC first interim chairman and that of Aisha Buhari, his wife that his trusted loyal gatekeepers who did not contribute to his victory and who as outsiders could not properly articulate the manifesto of APC were merely exploiting the president’s well known weakness of trusting only old allies.  Then out of share incompetence, he had allowed the government he was holding in trust for the APC to be he hijacked by Senate President Bukola Saraki and his 84 like-minded senators led by Dino Melaye. Between 2015 and 2019, the government was in disarray while the party displayed only instincts of factions with divergent tendencies, only interested in power as distinct from true political parties, the 17th century ingenious creation of intellectual elite to espouse vision and mobilize people for development.

    It wasn’t until the eve of the 2019 presidential election that President Buhari remembered Bola Tinubu, the rejected cornerstone. He was saddled with reconciling warring APC members and their governors who, like the president, had institutionalised impunity in the management of state chapters of the APC. Tinubu and Adams Oshiomhole, a firm believer in party supremacy then set to work in earnest.

    Bukola Saraki who until then had all his past wars fought for him had never experienced failure. But that was until he met Oshiomhole, his nemesis who declared “We went to Kwara, we did ‘otoge’ (Enough is enough). As a senate president, we uprooted him as a senator, we uprooted his nominee for governor and senators, while we were saying that we will impeach them, their people said they would rather bury them”.

    In Ogun State, Amosun was the lord of the manor. He disallowed candidate Dapo Abiodun from campaigning in Abeokuta where his supporters also disrupted President Buhari’s campaign rally. He, according to Oshiomhole prevented his preferred aspirant from “participating in the primaries organised by the working committee; picked himself as a senate candidate to replace the incumbent, picked the governorship candidate and his deputy, the next speaker and deputy speaker, and declared that of the eight House of Representatives members, seven will not return. He then arrogantly declared “I, Senator Ibikunle Amosun will not work for any other candidate that they are rooting for to become governor. No way. They are free to do whatever they want to do, but I will not support them”. He also supported 26 aggrieved aspirants vying for Ogun State House of Assembly seats that had defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Allied Peoples Movement (APM). Then Oshiomhole taught him a lesson in humility.

    Then, Adams crossed over to Imo State where he ended Governor Okorocha’s dream of establishing a dynasty in Imo Government House.  “What is painful”, Okorocha later lamented, “is that Adam Oshiomhole that I literarily put into this position…has become part and parcel of this high level of conspiracy to bring down Rochas politically”.

    In Zamfara, Governor Abdul’aziz Yari wanted to impose a successor.  Oshiomhole insisted he must follow APC rules. Eventually, the Supreme court ruled that the party did not conduct valid primaries in the build-up to the elections. It also decided that a party that had no valid candidate cannot be said to have emerged winner of the general elections. The Independent National Electoral Commission confirmed Bello Matawalle of the People’s Democratic Party, as the governor-elect of the northwest state. It also confirmed other PDP candidates for the National and State Assembly seats

    In Rivers, while Minister Rotimi Amaechi backed Tonye Cole to clinch the party’s governorship ticket in the 2019 governorship election, Magnus Abe claimed that he was the party’s authentic governorship candidate, having scored the highest votes in a primary conducted by his faction. The two political gladiators went into a protracted legal battle that denied the party the opportunity to field candidates in governorship, national and state assembly elections. Amaechi had an axe to grind with Oshiomhole for not supporting impunity.

    Because the party was behaving like factions, its National Working Committee (NWC) warned members who had taken the party to court to withdraw the suits or face sanction, citing Article 20, Subsection 10 of its constitution. But in flagrant subversion of the party constitution, President Buhari directed aggrieved party members to disregard the party’s threat and pursue their grievances in court.

    For ‘doing the right thing, in the words of  Chris Ogiemwonyi, former Minister of Works, Oshiomhole came under attack of aggrieved APC governors, merchants of impunity and others who according to Bola Tinubu, the national leader of APC, “perceive the chairman as an obstacle to their 2023 ambitions”.  The only plausible reason one can advance for President Buhari’s decision to join hands with aggrieved APC governors who unconstitutionally humiliated him out of office is to say President Buhari loves none but self.

    With Mai Mala Buni-led National Caretaker Committee of APC which ousted  Oshiomhole from office pursuing its own agenda while selling a dummy to the eastern politicians, with the party behaving like factions in many states including Imo where Dan Nwafor-led state executive is facing crisis of legitimacy, Ekiti, Rivers, Zamfara, Ondo where internal wrangling are tearing the party apart and  Ogun State where the caretaker committee of the party loyal to Governor Dapo Abiodun and former governor of the state, Chief Olusegun Osoba, last Monday allegedly broke into the state secretariat and took over the office, the party is set for implosion while the president pretends all is well.

    Those APC leaders queried or suspended for their anti-party activities by Adams Oshiomhole committed no greater crime than President Buhari who during the 2019 electioneering campaign told voters in Zamfara, Imo and Ogun states to vote him as president but feel free to vote for any candidate of their choice for other political offices.