Category: Thursday

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

Ex-President Obasanjo last week warned members of our suicidal ruling political elite that continue to live in denial after turning our country from a federal to a unitary state, of a possible violent disintegration of the country if the demand for a return to a true federal arrangement is allowed to degenerate to quest for self-actualization by increasingly frustrated federating ethnic nationalities.  The agitation, which according to him was for a true federalism when he was first elected in 1999, has today moved to demand for restructuring warning that, “If we don’t address it they may go from restructuring to self-determination and this will be a serious problem”.

It is to the credit of Obasanjo that he has always made timely intervention at every critical period when our nation faces crisis of nationality. He was on hand to end the three years civil war in 1970. In 1979, he became the first African military leader to voluntarily cede power to a civilian administration. In 1999 after Babangida’s ‘army of anything is possible’ had brought the nation to her knees, Obasanjo came with a promise of a new dawn.

But that is only one side of the coin for a nation where the people are said to suffer from collective amnesia. A journey through memory will also show not only where the rain started to beat us as a people, but also how Obasanjo through malice and mischief has in spite of those historic interventions, prolonged our nightmare since his first coming as military head of state in 1976.

Much as we blame the colonial masters for our woes, they, unlike our successive political and military leaders, exhibited greater sincerity in addressing our crisis of nationality. They were the first to remind our aspiring new inheritors of power who had argued our differences was exaggerated by accident of colonial rule that we are a multi-cultural society with divergent groups at different  levels of cultural development.   In this regard, Hugh Clifford, the then Nigerian Governor-General made a distinction between those he described as ‘cannibals inhabiting some hilltops, the anti-social tribes and some naked warriors of the jungle”. Consequently, he in his address to Nigerian Council in 1920 went on to advocate “a regional government that secures for each nationality, each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have evolved for it  by the wisdom and the accumulated experiences of  generation of its forbears”.

But unlike the Yoruba who by nature are federalists and have been consistent in their demand for “a restructured Nigeria with constituents powers over law and order, education and public information and protection of rights of indigenes as provided for under the UN charter”, all through the various constitutional conferences in the country including the 1946 Richards constitution and the 1948 Ibadan conference set up to review it, other dominant ethnic groups have continued to live in denial. The north initially wanted a loose federation or a federal arrangement it can control, and the east and NCNC up till 1959 preferred a unitary system.

But of all the forces against a restructured Nigeria especially after the collapse of the independence constitution in 1966, none has succeeded in frustrating Yoruba’s quest for true federal arrangement as Obasanjo. In 1979, he derided the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, whose ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’ to date remains the best answer to our crisis of nation-building by claiming the best man didn’t need to win that year’s election and by his own admission supported Alhaji Shehu Shagari who was to be later declared winner through a Supreme Court twelve-two-third judgment that Justice Ayo Irikefe said could not be cited. In 1993, he betrayed MKO Abiola, a Yoruba and his Egba kinsman who had won a pan-Nigeria mandate annulled by General Babangida, claiming he was not the messiah Nigerians were expecting. For wanting for the others the good things of life they want for themselves, Obasanjo waged a war of attrition against his Yoruba people, their leadership and the tendencies they represent.

But in Yoruba nation where leadership is earned, the people know their leaders. Obasanjo who had up to 1999 never identified with the aspirations of his Yoruba people was as expected roundly rejected in the Yoruba nation where he lost his ward election in 1999. After literarily climbing the palm tree from the top by winning the presidential election without a political base, he intensified his war of attrition against the Yoruba. He infiltrated Afenifere, the Youruba apex social cultural group and brought the elders forum to grief with the death of Bola Ige, its deputy leader who was killed like a chicken in his bedroom as Obasanjo’s minister of justice by yet to be identified criminals.

In 2003, Obasanjo reneged on the promise he made to Yoruba leaders while seeking their support for his second term re-election bid. In his book titled “‘Battle lines: Adventures in Journalism and Politics’, Chief Olusegun Osoba, former governor of Ogun State revealed how  Olusegun Obasanjo  sought and secured the backing of Yoruba for his re-election after promising  to restructure Nigeria. The condition presented to Obasanjo according to Chief Segun Osoba among others were “the restructuring of the Nigerian federation, devolution of power, including moving some items from the exclusive to the concurrent list and ensuring fiscal federalism”. According to him “When all these conditions were tabled before Obasanjo, he assured us that he was satisfied with them and that he clearly identified with them”. He later outmaneuvered the Afenifere leadership rigging out all the AD governors with the exception of Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu.

Obasanjo today wants his Yoruba people to believe he has now seen the light and like the Biblical Saul turned St. Paul decided to defend the ideals he once denounced and did everything to undermine. I think it is in is in this regard many have been saying, the Yoruba although long victims of Obasanjo’s vindictiveness, must separate his important message which today resonates with theirs from the messenger.

But as Obasanjo puts on his armour as leader of Yoruba crusade for true federalism, it is important to place on record how his blind fury and policies designed to emasculate his own people paradoxically resulted in a prolonged nightmare for the nation.

The sacrifice of meritocracy through promotion of quota system of admission to universities, application of federal character principle in recruitment into the civil service and over centralization through federal seizure of states’ educational and economic institutions, all targeted at his Yoruba nation have led Yoruba youths to abandon the country for Obasanjo and the tendencies he serves and moved in droves to other parts of the world. The loss of our universities, our hospitals and our bureaucracy is the gain of Canada, USA and South Africa among other advanced nations where highly skilled Yoruba youths find satisfaction and relevance.

Activities of Boko Haram in the northeast, herdsmen’s mindless killings in the middle belt region and banditry in Katsina and Zamfara and southern Kaduna would have been greatly curtailed in a restructured Nigeria where states are empowered to protect life and properties of their people.

Infrastructural decay across the country, collapse of the health and educational sectors and massive corruption are the result of a dysfunctional centre that instead of promoting fiscal federalism dispenses seized federating states’ resources to promote indolence among states.

By  Jide Oluwajuyitan

If Nigerians and groups, including Catholic Bishops of Nigeria which recently warned that government’s “inability to prevent attacks and killing of innocent Nigerians by Boko Haram is fast breeding distrust and lack of confidence in the Buhari-led administration” are increasingly becoming apprehensive over renewed Boko Haram hostility  and bestiality,  it is not because Nigerians have suddenly forgotten the sacrifice of our soldiers whose heroic exploits led to the 2016 ‘technical defeat’ of an insurgency that had before then claimed lives of 50,000  and condemned two million Nigerians to IDP camps.

And in the unlikely event Nigerians far away from the centre of Boko Haram savagery forget, people of Borno State who daily carry the scars of its brutality will not for a long time.

As Governor Zulum admitted last week, “the people of the state still remember the days before Buhari’s emergence, when 20 out of the 27 local government areas were in the hands of Boko Haram while all the five routes into Borno State were largely inaccessible with exception of Maiduguri-Kano road”.

But it is of little relief to Nigerians, that almost four years after President Buhari led Nigerians to celebrate the liberation of Sambisa forest with fanfare, the spate of killings have continued, culminating in recent Auno town killings of about 30 travellers, stranded outside the Maiduguri military entrance city gate which military authorities claimed is usually locked at 5p.m.

Like his predecessor during the abduction of over 200 Chibok school girls by the insurgents during Jonathan period, Governor Zulum who revealed that “Auno town has been attacked for about six times since his inauguration on 29 May 2019”, believes the attack “was forewarned as a security report from DSS that Jakana can be attacked, was circulated” long before the attack with the military putting no measures in place to prevent it.

That the attack took place at a gate only eight kilometres to the University of Maiduguri, which the military authorities said needed to be closed at 5pm to enable them carry out counter-insurgency activities confirmed Nigerian’s worst fears: Maiduguri is under threat.

The military has not denied this looming threat. If anything, this was confirmed by the military authorities whose theatre commander, Major General Olusegun Adeniyi gave the impression the victims brought the tragedy upon themselves with his  crooked syllogism that “the incident would not have happened if the travellers respected military directive, which bans plying of the road from Benishek, a local government headquarters to Maiduguri, after 5p.m”.

That Nigerians cannot move freely any time of the day within eight kilometres of Maiduguri with its heavy military presence questions government legitimacy.

If indeed there is any governance going on in the country, heads should have started rolling in a military formation that admitted abandoning over 200 vehicles and passengers who probably due to no fault of theirs, found themselves stranded at Maiduguri city gate at 5pm.

Of course that the legitimacy of President Buhari’s government is being hotly contested by Boko-Haram from the outskirts of Maiduguri to Sambisa forest was clear from the statement issued by the Air force Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola.

He admitted “the Air Task Force (ATF), Operation Lafiya Dole has neutralized some Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) and destroyed some of their facilities in air strikes conducted on 27 February 2020”, adding as if to confirm Boko Haram’s is firm control of “liberated’ Sambisa forest, that the “air strikes targeted at the “S” region in the heart of the Sambisa forest, destroyed the terrorists’ facilities including vehicles and motorcycles hidden under dense vegetation.”

Unfortunately the president’s confidants continue to give the impression that those who call for a change of strategy in our war against Boko Haram are the president’s political enemies.

Only last Sunday, even with reality striking us all on the face, Shehu Garba, the president’s spokesman was busy jarring our ears with same worn-out phrases about “the commitment of President Buhari’s administration to protect the lives of Nigerians”; “that the remnants of Boko Haram will ultimately be crushed”; that “this administration is ever determined to frustrate their goal to hold Nigeria to ransom’’ and “that terrorists are clearly on a back foot and their days are numbered’’.

I am not sure those who had faith in Buhari and voted for him in 2015 and 2019 have ever doubted his commitment to Nigeria.

Their anguish is over how he can free himself from hostage takers preventing him from listening to voices of other patriotic Nigerians. One of such voices is that of Governor Zulum who in spite of saying “We need prayers more than ever before, to handle our problem from different approaches”, and has gone ahead to engage 30 Makkah, Saudia Arabia based Nigerian prayer warriors also submitted that “we need to keep taking the war to enclaves of the insurgents in the fringes of the Lake Chad Basin, Sambisa Forest and some notable areas”.

Read Also: We’re winning war against corruption, says Buhari

There are so many questions begging for answers from President Buhari who until his last week’s belated order that security personnel sabotaging the closure of the borders be sacked, was not known for holding his political appointees and warring security men in charge of coercive power of state to account.

Where was General Tukur Yusuf Burutai, the Chief of Army Staff who President Buhari ordered to relocate to Borno State in 2015 when Sambisa forest whose liberation he supervised in 2016 was retaken by Boko Haram that today threatens Maiduguri?

His new passion along with his counterparts in the Air Force and Navy seem to be setting up universities, sometimes in their villages!

How did Boko Haram retake Sambisa forest which upon its liberation in 2016, the army declared it was turning to a training ground and in fact became the venue for its 2017 Annual Sports Competition?

Sambisa forest, according to a study titled “Once Upon a Game Reserve: Sambisa and the Tragedy of a Forested Landscape,” by Azeez Olaniyan of University of Ado Ekiti was gazzeted, as game reserve by British colonial administration in 1958.

It is the duty of this government to identify and prosecute those behind the corruption that led to the decay and degeneration of a tourist attraction whose “lush greenery could rightfully be called a pearl in the semi-desert environment” into headquarters of Boko-Haram where abducted underage girls and married women are used as sex slaves and indoctrinated to become suicide bombers?

Another study by Professor Umar Maryah of University of Maiduguri, shows that the “Gwoza and the Fulani  use part of the Sambisa forest which stretches across the northeast from Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi states along the Darazo corridor, Jigawa and right up to some parts of Kano State in the far north as a grazing forest”.

How come no one in government saw through the forces of instability using cows as cover to inflict violence on Nigerians and who traded the N170b National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) introduced in June 2018, to encourage ranching which would have thrived more in Sambisa forest for Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) settlements for Fulani herdsmen with potential for conflict among federating states especially those of the middle Belt region of Benue, Plateau, Taraba and Kaduna states?

And finally it is also a challenge to President Buhari’s government of change to identify those driven by greed to wreck Sambisa forest game reserve after it was handed over to the federal government through the National Park.

By Jide Oluwajuyitan

President Buhari, on account of what many have come to regard as his mindset on many national issues, is an image maker’s nightmare.  He speaks without inhibition even in circumstances where restraint or introspection is required. As candidate Buhari, he made an odious comparison between Boko Haram- insurgents hiding under the cover of religion to perpetuate evil against Nigerians, and Niger Delta militants- a self-actualisation group protesting despoliation of their resources by the state.

At his inauguration following a victory after three earlier failed attempts, he had thundered “I belong to no one, I belong to everyone”, an unnecessary display of audacity by a political novice which prompted a perceptive lawyer, Ebun Olu-Adegboruwa to point out on a Channels TV programme that ‘but some people provided the resources and the aircraft he used to junket around the country while on campaign trail’. He forgot the expectations of miracle seekers who wanted all the nation’s problems solved overnight and others that expected him to restructure the country by working out an acceptable compromise relationship for peaceful coexistence of diverse nationalities with divergent cultures.

One cannot but imagine the nightmare of image makers of a president who after tongue-in-cheek asked David Cameron who had described Nigeria as ‘fantastically corrupt country’ to prevail on his fellow European custodians of Nigerian looted funds to return same, still standing by his canonization of Abacha as saint even after a clear proof the repatriated funds was what Abacha stashed away in banks across Europe and the Bahamas.

They must have felt the same way last week following the president’s decision to ‘blame Nigerians for perceiving National Assembly members as being overpaid’ during last Wednesday’s launching of the Green House chamber magazine. According to him: “Hitherto, the public perception of the National Assembly is that of a bicameral legislature where overly comfortable and highly-overpaid members merely stuff wads of currency notes into their pockets for little work done.” He blamed the wrong perception “on lack of understanding of the enormous work of lawmakers”.

The President talks of perception ignoring the overwhelming evidence that support the parasitic nature of our National Assembly. It is on record that no sooner they were sworn in at the onset of the fourth republic that they publicly declared their intention to recoup their expenses claiming they sold their properties to contest the election that brought them to power.

They immediately created artificial fuel scarcity and passed a bill setting up a PPPRA, an instrumentality through which N1.7trillion was stolen in the name of dubious fuel subsidy.  They mismanaged the handling of the World Bank privatization policy. They awarded the bungled rural electrification projects’ contracts to themselves. They cornered choice properties they inherited including the senate president and the House speaker’s mansions through monetization policies. They then awarded themselves salaries that would make lawmakers in Europe or America green with envy.

It is perhaps only President Buhari who, after calling on the National Assembly to hasten work on the Special Crimes Court Bill during a recent presentation of ICPC report on constituency projects that confirmed that ‘in the past 10 years, N1 trillion has been appropriated for constituency projects,” without the impact of such huge spending on the lives and welfare of ordinary Nigerians, who would insist the lawmakers deserve their outrageous salaries.

But it is just as well that not many Nigerians share the president’s sentiments. For instance, not too long ago,  former governor, Gabriel Suswan of Benue, and a two-term member of the Lower House during a lecture at the University of Abuja, admitted a good number of the members are “uneducated” and “immature” and that less than 20 of the members make useful contributions at plenary session, sponsor motions or bills”.

Before him was Sanusi Lamido who as Governor of Central Bank had as far back as December 1, 2010 during a lecture at the University of Benin lamented that the federal legislators gulp about 25% of federal government overheads.  According to him, it works out simply thus: “If the overhead of the federal government of Nigeria stands at N536.2 billion and the National Assembly, NASS, gets N136, 259, 768, 102 (N136.2 billion), what does it constitute?  Is it 25.41% or 3.5%?

Ex-President Obasanjo had similarly during the public presentation of the autobiography of Justice Mustapha Akanbi, in Abuja, in November 2014 ridiculed the National Assembly, as “largely an assemblage of looters and thieves”. As if to validate Obasanjo’s thesis, instead of denial, the assembly members insisted no one can demonise them for taking after their father who allegedly tried to bribe the National Assembly members with “Ghana must go bags” stuffed with raw cash in pursuit of his doomed third-term agenda.

And if Nigerians were to choose between Obasanjo who celebrated  sacking of not a few erring National Assembly leaders including Salisu Buhari and Adolphus Wabara and President Buhari who many Nigerians rightly or wrongly feel is too weak to discipline his political appointees and has in fact been accused by Shehu Sani, one-time member of his own party, of ‘fighting corruption among his friends with ‘deodorant and among political foes with insecticide’,  they will in all probability pitched their tent with the former.

And precisely because nothing has changed, for many, the president’s assessment must have been a product of his mindset. PDP and APC have shown they are the same with no ideological differences. The leaders of both parties often speak and act not like leaders of political parties but like commanders of Niger Delta militant groups. Oshiomhole who probably forgets political party is a serious affair told us the difference between him and Secondus is that “he is Adam, the first man and his PDP counterpart, Secondus, doomed to always take a second position”.

More than this, our lawmakers remain the highest paid in the world. The senate like its predecessor was reported to be considering the purchase of Toyota Land Cruiser SUVs toys for its 109 members at an estimated cost of N50m each or about N5.5B.

Devoid of a mindset of ‘my friends can do no wrong’, canonization of a National Assembly which like its predecessors is made up of military baked ‘new breed’ politicians, who suffer same military affliction of looting conquered territories cannot but be sacrilegious.

Little has changed under Buhari government of change. As late as December 2, 2018, Sanusi Lamido, former CBN governor and now Emir of Kano had asked: “Where is the change?’ adding that “change should start with the National Assembly. A senator receives N36 million monthly. If this is divided into two, it comes to N18 million. The second half of N18 million can be used to create jobs for 200 Nigerians, each earning N90, 000 monthly”;

The President recently confirmed during presentation of ICPC report on constituency projects that “The first phase report of tracking these projects by the ICPC confirms our worst fears that people at the grassroots have not benefited in terms commensurate with the huge sums appropriated for constituency projects since inception”.