The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Buhari, service chiefs and political advisers

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    President Buhari needs help. The greatest threat to President Buhari’s legacy is Buhari himself. That he as a former army General, a hero of a civil war, fought to keep Nigeria united, suffers from a messianic complex  behaving most of the time like a monarch and the embodiment of the sovereign power of the nation is not unusual.

    Unfortunately, his APC party, those in his inner circle who many believe are serving other tendencies and many of the round pegs in square holes who are paid from public purse to protect the president, seem to promote this illusion.  This perhaps explains why President Buhari seems to listen only to President Buhari.

    Since his election in 2015, none seems to have had the courage to remind President Buhari that we now run a participatory democracy which makes interventions of constituents groups and individuals in political decisions and policies that affect their lives imperative.

    And when they are not maintaining their loud silence on those many occasions the president shot himself in the leg, they are embarking on vicious attack on those critics including his wife who genuinely care about the legacies of a president who got into power with so much goodwill.

    When holed up like an emir in Aso rock for six months unable to constitute a cabinet, an exercise that takes less than 24 hours in other participatory democracies, neither APC nor his new confidants his wife claimed had no idea of APC manifesto had the courage to engage the president on what his political opponents regarded as indolence.

    When it took him almost two and half years to constitute the boards of over 500 small governments he needed to implement his party manifesto and ended up with a list containing names of some dead nominees, sycophants tried to defend the indefensible.

    When the president’s minister of defence appeared to be blaming victims of herdsmen mindless killings, when the Emir of Kano was prodding Fulani settlers in Benue to embark on insurrection; when a particular governor arrogantly insisted cross-border Fulani herdsmen from other parts of West Africa must be accommodated within RUGA project to be funded with our taxpayers’ money, neither APC, nor the minister of information or any of his special assistants, who did not need to wait for the president’s permission before dissociating him from such indiscreet statements, did so.

    If anything, they by their in-actions, strengthened the hands of those Buhari political detractors who often call attention to the president’s body language as motivation for unguarded statements and criminal activities of some cross-border immigrants.

    The president and his men have thus made it more difficult for those who have no reason to doubt his pan-Nigeria agenda to dismiss such parallels.

    In view of increased spate of mindless killings, kidnapping and banditry in spite of the valiant efforts of the military, the president has ignored the various calls that the current service chiefs who were appointed in July 2015 be allowed to go on their well-deserved retirement after their tour of duty.

    Under military regulations, their terms of service expired in 2017, but the president has kept them on despite the rule that says “No officer shall be allowed to remain in service after attaining the retirement age of 60 years or 35 years of pensionable service whichever is earlier.”

    The justification was based on the efforts of the military chiefs in tackling terrorism in the Northeast and addressing other security issues.

    The then chairman of the Senate Committee on Army, Senator Ali Ndume, supported the move claiming we could not afford to change the military leadership because Nigeria was in a complete state of war

    In recent months, Nigerians have in view of daring criminal assault by herdsmen on innocent Nigerian subsistence farmers across the nation and resurgence of Boko Haram activities in the northeast renewed the call for the replacement of the service chiefs.

    The National Assembly have identified with the demand. Last week, the House passed a resolution calling on all of the military service chiefs to resign or be sacked by President Muhammadu Buhari. Earlier, the Senate had also expressed the view that the service chiefs had to go.

    From newspapers, the call by the two houses is backed by Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF; Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) who staged a massive protests over increasing insecurity in some Nigerian cities on Sunday as well as other opinion leaders including the founding member of the Arewa Consultative Forum and Kano politician, Alhaji Tanko Yakassi;, former Provost-Marshal, Nigerian Army, Brigadier-General Idada Ikponmwen (retd).

    Read Also: ‘Sack of service chiefs, not solution to end insurgency’

     

    And the reasons adduced by them range from: the need for new ideas, philosophy and method in the fight against insurgency in the country; the need for the president to listen to the voice of the people by reorganizing the security architecture of country; and the urgent need to remove the service chiefs, who have since reached retirement age in the military and now constitute   themselves into stumbling blocks to career rises of other officers.”

    Once again, many believe we are in this sorry pass because of the mind-set of the president and hypocrisy of some of his close advisers who seem to care more about security of their position than telling the president the truth he may not want to hear.

    President Buhari is not a monarch. Even if he humours himself and pretends to be one just like Babangida did when he adorned himself with a borrowed robe of a president after a palace coup, the age of divine rights of kings ended a long time ago.

    He needs to come to terms that he is an elected president in a participatory democracy, a new value system which rejects nepotism and provincialism as bases for decision -making and embraces bureaucracy, which according to a German sociologist, Max Weber, “constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which human activity can be organized and insists that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency, and eliminate favoritism”.

    Destroy bureaucracy, the nation decays. That was exactly what Generals Obasanjo and Murtala Mohammed did to our country in 1975/76.

    They followed up by destroying the press to complete Nigerian military assault on major institutions of society such as political parties, universities and civil society all of which are critical for society to thrive.

    The sycophants who are claiming the president as an ex- General is best equipped to manage the military the way he likes are therefore wrong.

    They seem to underestimate the far reaching implications of undermining morale within the military institution. When Babangida did it, we ended up with “an army of anything is possible” with Generals Abacha, Useni, David Mark and a few other officers without character holding the nation to ransom.

    It will amount to living in denial to dissociate the current apparent helplessness of the military from general disenchantment, low morale and assault occasioned by political interference and disruption of its bureaucratic system.

  • A sight to behold

    Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    MINISTERS of God do not have troops in the real sense of the word, but they command an army of worshippers. If you like you can refer to those worshippers as soldiers.

    Indeed, Charles Wesley whose brother John founded the Methodist faith, referred to them as such in his hymn titled: ‘’Soldiers of Christ, Arise’’, which is drawn from Ephesians 6: 10-18. Verse 13 thereof urges Christians to put on the ‘’whole armour of Christ that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand’’.

    Though Nigeria is a secular state, it is peopled by men and women of faith. There are atheists too. That is the beauty of our country.

    A nation where parents and their children may not share the same faith. Even couples too do belong to different religions.

    The man may be a Muslim and the wife a Christian or vice versa. Yet, they live in peace, raising their children, who also of their volition, may decide not to toe either parent’s religion.

    Our religious differences have never been an issue. We have always been tolerant of one another’s religion whether as members of the same family or community.

    When the Muslims are celebrating the end of Ramadan or the Greater Bairam festival popularly known as Ileya, the Christians join them and when Christians are celebrating Easter or Christmas, the Muslims also celebrate with them. They wine and dine together without a third party knowing that they are not members of the same family.

    We did not choose our friends on the basis of our faith. We related with others because of our love for them. What bound us was not our religion, but our friendship and the strength of character of the other person.

    We had friends who stuck to us closer than brothers. Many of us still have such friends despite the ruin laid upon the country by Boko Haram insurgents.

    Since 2009, the sect has laid siege to the Northeast killing, maiming, kidnapping and looting. Why is it doing all these? The truth is even the sect itself does not have a plausible answer for its wilful actions.

    In one breathe, it says it is against western education which it tags as ‘’sin’’ and in another, it  claims that it is all in its propagation of Islam.

    Its actions have torn societal fabric. The country is in the grips of an ‘’evil day’’ amid the prevailing insecurity over which President Muhammadu Buhari, Senate President Ahmad Lawan and Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila met in Abuja on Monday.

    The meeting followed the National Assembly’s rancorous sessions last week on the burning national issue during which many lawmakers called for the sacking of the Service chiefs. Yesterday, the National Assembly held a joint session on the vexed issue.

    Read Also: Adeboye leads march as Christians protest killings

     

    As Boko Haram is doing its own thing, so are kidnappers, robbers, bandits, militants and ritual killers wreaking havoc on the country.

    Things have come to a head, leaving renowned Pastor E. A. Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) with no choice than to hearken to the call of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to protest the killings in the land last Sunday.

    Of recent, Rev Lawan Andimi, CAN Chairman in Michika Local Government Area of Adamawa State;  a mother of two Mrs Bunmi Ataga and a seminarian were killed after their abduction.

    The bodies of Mrs Ataga and the seminarian were dumped by the roadside and their families told where to find them.

    The late Mrs Ataga’s daughters are still being held by the abductors who are demanding a N20million ransom from their medical doctor father.  CAN was particularly flustered by the death of Andimi, who was beheaded by his abductors.

    In a green colour French suit, shirt and his trademark bow tie, Daddy G.O as Adeboye is fondly called, led worshippers from the RCCG National Headquarters in Ebute Meta, Lagos on the ‘’Prayer Walk’’ against insecurity.

    Raising a placard with the inscription: ‘’All souls are precious to God’’, Adeboye, a reserved pastor not giving to the frivolities some priests are known for, was surrounded by the ‘’soldiers of Christ’’.

    Even the late Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, who once asked: ‘’The Pope? How many divisions has he got?’’ would have been envious of the Adeboye road work in his grave.

    The Adeboye march was a bold statement on the state of the nation. It is sad that we have sunk into such a mess that Adeboye, who is usually guarded in his actions, was moved to publicly identify with a protest against these inanities.

    The protest is a call on the government to wake up from its slumber and address the security challenge frontally. The main job of any government is to secure its citizens against internal and external aggression.

    The people can only pray for their leaders, they cannot do the government’s job for it, so the resolution of this thorny issue lies in its hands.

     

     

    ‘Will these officers’ removal make a difference in the ongoing war to redeem our country from the rampaging marauders? Well, it is time up for them having been in office since 2015’

     

    Will their exit change anything?

    THERE is a clamour for the removal of the Service chiefs because of the prevailing insecurity in the land. Those demanding the sack of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen Abayomi Olonishakin, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt Gen Tukur Buratai, Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) Vice Marshal Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas and Chief of Air Staff (CAS) Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar believe that these military brass have overstayed in office.

    These officers, they claimed, no longer have what it takes to prosecute the anti-terrorism war. Only President Muhammadu Buhari knows why he is still keeping them.

    No doubt, with what is happening in the country today, fresh hands and ideas are needed to combat insurgency and other crimes.

    My fear is will these officers’ removal make a difference in the ongoing war to redeem our country from the rampaging marauders? Well, it is time up for them having been in office since 2015.

  • Ban on Nigerians traveling to the USA

    Jide Osuntokun

     

    Many Nigerians are still in shock over the inclusion of their country in President Donald Trump’s ban on certain countries from coming to the United States of America. The new list includes immigrants from Myanmar (Burma), Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Libya and Nigeria.

    On the other hand Sudan, Tanzania and Belarus citizens will no longer be permitted to apply for the diversity visas generally known as the green card lottery. Banning of some countries ‘citizens from coming to America is the signature policy of President Trump.

    He considers these countries as “shit holes” and their citizens as being undeserving of living in civilized countries including the United States.

    We are told Nigerians may still be allowed to visit the country as tourists for short time stay and perhaps young Nigerian students may also be allowed to come to the United States to study after which time they must return to their country.

    As far as I am concerned, this seems an afterthought and a palliative to soften the blow and humiliation of the wound inflicted on the biggest economy in Africa. At a time in the past, no American government dared do this to us when we were supplying almost 10% of American crude petroleum imports.

    Things have changed and America is not only self-sufficient in hydrocarbons but it is even exporting gas and oil thanks to additional oil production through fracking. But trade alone is not the only vital link Nigeria has with the USA.

    Nigeria is the third largest troops’ contributor to UN peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations in the world. As a global hegemonic power, the USA needs Nigeria in its effort to maintain global peace.

    Nigeria is useful in pulling out USA’s chestnut from fire where America may not want to be directly physically engaged in such places like Liberia, Lebanon/ Israel and Kuwait/ Iraq borders. Nigeria is also important in the security of West Africa and the middle Atlantic generally which are of strategic importance to United States.

    In any case, a major power like the United States cannot afford to be an island sufficient unto itself. Nigeria remains the largest African market for western industrial goods and all things being equal, Nigeria will remain a major global market in the future when the USA will be locked in horns with China in global economic struggle for supremacy. As an elephant never forgets, we and our children will remember this American humiliation.

    What did we do wrong to qualify for this disgrace? It is possible that our government shirked its responsibility in not providing immigration information as allegedly claimed by some sources? There is information to suggest that for over two years, the USA government demanded some immigration details from us which we were unwilling or unable to provide.

    Perhaps there were issues of sovereignty and security on our part which American Homeland Security Department did not appreciate. Whatever the case might have been, somebody was derelict in the assignment and duties of his/ her office.

    This is not far-fetched because the Nigerian bureaucracy usually responds very slowly if at all. It is not every country that will buy the way we do things in our country. There is also the issue of insecurity and terrorism in our country.

    Reports about these must be in the diplomatic dispatches sent home by the American embassy in Nigeria to the State Department in Washington D.C.

    The recent surprising sudden opening of our borders to all Africans who fly into our country where visa will be issued on demand may also have jolted American government into action over the unpredictability of our immigration processes.

    Some of our nationals who are our honorary envoys in the USA have not served our country well. A significant number has been involved in fraud, identity crimes and credit card crimes generally.

    This lot has ruined the excellent representation of distinguished and scholarly Nigerians making contribution to American medicine and scientific and liberal academy. Eighty percent of Nigerians resident in the USA have second degrees or masters and doctorate degrees.

    I remember former President Bill Clinton saying Nigerian immigrants in the USA are the most educated people as a group in the USA. Certainly all these should count for something. Nigerian-Americans should do what all immigrants do, let their votes count in November.

    The leadership of the US Congress seems aware of their demographic strength and has accused President Trump of racism. Nigerian-Americans should get engaged in American electoral politics and make their presence felt.

    What is driving President Trump’s policy is his desire not only to make America great again but to make it white. There is statistical evidence that suggests that by the year 2050, white peoples will become a minority in the United States.

    This is a frightening scenario to most white Americans. Americans like to say they are a nation of immigrants. When they say this they mean white immigrants not black and brown.

    But with the influx of immigrants from Latin American countries as well as from Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the colour of Americans is beginning to change.

    This is why President Trump and other racists like him will continue to win in presidential elections not out of merit but out of fear. Nigeria just happens to have fallen on evil times at home and abroad.

    Read Also: Travel ban: Nigeria won’t react to speculations, says Presidency

     

    I hope our government people will realize that stopping Nigerians from going to America has some economic dimension. The $28 billion sent home by the Nigerian diaspora in the west will ultimately be affected.

    It is hoped that Boris Johnson, the Trump mimic in 10 Downing Street will not follow suit by banning our people from visiting Great Britain.

    Quite a few Nigerians have children and family members in the USA, and one can only imagine the psychological damage the effect of visa ban will have on those of us who will be victims.

    One may say it hasn’t reached that point yet, but if one can read between the lines, the end game of this policy is to ban us and some “shit hole “and problematic countries from normal ties with the USA.

    The current situation calls for soul searching by our leaders. Setting up a committee to enquire into our predicament is like bolting the door when the horse has escaped.

    What our government should do as a matter of urgency is mobilizing all Nigerians against insecurity in our country and for development. The insecurity situation is just simply unacceptable. Nowhere is safe or secure; not Katsina the president’s home state nor are other states including the entire north east zone safe.

    When a Christian leader in Adamawa can be beheaded by a terrorist without anyone being arrested, it shows a sign of collapse of not only government but civilization.

    Young girls are still being abducted to be impregnated by terrorists in the northern part of our country with impunity.

    These calamities are too numerous to count. We need a declaration of state of emergency in the whole country to put us back to the secure environment which we were used to.

    Governance is more than musical chairs of appointments of religiously and ethnically preferred people to those in power.

    We cannot continue like this. There is just too much suffering in the land. For example the Lagos-Ibadan road whose reconstruction began under General Obasanjo in 2007 is just reaching 45% completion.

    If it takes this length of time to reconstruct 100 kilometres road, how long will it take to rehabilitate most of the collapsed roads in the country?

    I give credit to the Buhari government, before him virtually nothing was done on our roads by presidents Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan.

    But having said this, must we wait forever for these roads to be made fit for purpose? Our development deficit de-markets us as a serious country.

    Malaysians and Singaporeans on account of their development do not need visas to enter any western country including the USA.

    What I am saying is that the safety valve of legal immigration by our youth is being closed and I shudder to think of what the consequences will be on our security and our national development.

  • Amotekun…Beast of illusion (2)

    By Olatunji Ololade

    IN Amotekun we enter animal aura. There is magic there, both white and tame, black and wild. Enchantment corrupts psychic space and makes it temenos. In this ritual precinct, Amotekun manifests as a sacred creed of mind; a political logic of space, nature and expediences.

    This minute, it unfurls to dominance and defilement. But who domineers? Who gets defiled?

    The debate segues to ethics of power and self-preservation. Amotekun, according to apologists, is meant to protect lives and property of Yoruba land. The group is expected to work with the police and other security agencies to protect the region from killer herdsmen, robbers and kidnappers among other terrors of Yoruba land, claims the southwest governors.

    “Nobody knows Yorubaland better than the sons of Oduduwa. Whoever comes to Yorubaland to kill are known. Amotekun has 10,000-year-old technology that nobody knows. Amotekun must stand, it is a protective force for Yorubaland,” enthused an apologist.

    It’s easy to get smitten by the romanticism and rage of it all. The politicised arguments, juvenile spats, seasoned justifications, foxy upbraids and catlike ripostes attain harmony in the jarring snarl of the southwest’s feline sentinel.

    The drama intensifies but the effort has, so far, been productive. In the wake of Amotekun’s proclamation, the southwest governors have met with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to create a legal framework that would accommodate the regional security outfit into the Federal Government’s community policing plans.

    And even though the fear abides among certain pretenders to patriotism – mostly of northern extraction – that Amotekun was created in preparation for the southwest’s secession plan, Ondo governor and chairman of Southwest Governors’ Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu, has faulted such notions, maintaining that the security outfit was launched to complement the efforts of the security agencies to protect lives and property of the citizenry in the southwest geopolitical zone.

    Shared militia, driven by an autonomous but integrated command structure founded on superior, native intelligence seems a worthy and commendable response to the forays of murderous herdsmen, armed bandits and kidnappers tormenting the southwest’s outliers.

    Kudos to the governors. But beyond bromides and artifice, their falsehood disinters sinister truths. I don’t see Governors Rotimi Akeredolu (Ondo), Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Seyi Makinde (Oyo), and cohorts enlisting their children, wives and siblings as personnel for the security apparatus. And this stresses the ugliness of the southwest’s predicament.

    Of course, the governors’ apologists would call this a cheap shot, stressing that there is no basis for needling them with such prickly truth, yet the politics and drama of Amotekun was predetermined along the rigid straits of the southwest regions socio-economic and political realities, on their watch.

    It is very instructive to note that like previous initiatives of similar nature, Amotekun fulfills the Animal Farm stereotype. Apology to Orwell. While career courtiers, Twitter and Facebook warriors, don face powder and power the governors’ raucous orchestra, it need be said that we are at this sorry pass because the governors failed us.

    The southwest, like other regions of the country, needs an Amotekun because the governors manically dole savage love unto our sapless electorate. If they had over time, committed their states’ resources to actualise policy objectives, the southwest wouldn’t be at this sorry pass.

    If they had spent judiciously on education, health, economy, and infrastructure, the southwest would have appreciated in scholarship and medical services; and they would have generated employment by igniting industry, research and economic growth. The region would thereby enjoy improved quality of youth; an army of builders and progressives, undeserving of enlistment as members of Amotekun, or the rampaging hordes of the killer herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers.

    The spectre of social unrest pervading the southwest, like neighbouring regions, feeds off the greed and ambition of inefficient leaders.

    While the region’s vulnerability to attack manifests as a consequence of the unforeseen economic collapse, civil disobedience and widespread violence wracking neighbouring states, it’s noisy plummet down the steep slope of anarchy is smothered in the din provoked by the region’s inefficient leadership.

    They label critics of Amotekun, traitorous, although the real traitors are the governors who have made it difficult for the southwest and neighbouring regions to progress.

    While we applaud Amotekun as a worthy response to the southwest’s insecurity problem, let us nurture healthy inhibitions of what deviousness might result from its manipulation by the criminally-minded.

    History obliges us timeless lessons on the depths a power-drunk governor might descend if intoxicated by power. We have seen a former governor orchestrate the stoning of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC’s Ogun governorship candidate during the 2019 elections campaign, over political differences. The same character reportedly surrendered about four million rounds of ammunition, 1,000 units of AK47 assault rifles, 1,000 units of bulletproof vests and an armoured personnel carrier (APC) from his illicit arsenal to the police, at the end of his tenure. Picture a heavily weaponised state chapter of Amotekun in the control of such a governor. The consequences are better imagined.

    Amotekun would never resolve the southwest’s security problems. The rage frothing amid the ranks of Nigeria’s disenfranchised impoverished divide spills as venom from the blades and bullets of killer herdsmen, armed bandits, terrorists and kidnappers comprised by the nation’s unemployed youths. Their exploits resonate as chilling howls.

    Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise them into legitimate, mainstream economy, unless we tear down the walls of the highly politicised and exclusive socio-economic circuits, the southwest, like other regions is doomed. The region suffers a dislocation between the short-term interests of the ruling class and the longer-term interests of the electorate they dominate and exploit.

    The incumbent governors can’t resolve the southwest’s security and development challenges perhaps because they are rich. Wealth and privilege insulates them from the major afflictions of the poor electorate; these include bad roads, substandard healthcare and education, and comatose infrastructure. Affluence permits them to turn those around them into compliant and expendable workers, hangers-on, sycophants, and candidates for lifeboat palliatives, like Amotekun.

    Wealth, argues Fitzgerald, breeds a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities.

    Although the governors affect a protective mien, their actions resonate as chilling neglect of the miseries of the southwest’s impoverished outliers.

    Sadly, the citizenry’s inability to grasp the pathology of the governors as members of an oligarchic corporate elite makes it difficult to organise an effective resistance and change in their fate via the ballot box.

    Politics looms entwined with money and power across the region, two cuffs of its shackled-lyre.

    Armed with the cuffs, the governors turn the electorate into docile subjects of their godlike delectation; there is a vast disconnect between what they say and what they do. Sadly, the masses are blinded and enchanted by their illusions. No thanks to a fawning press and civil societies.

    Amotekun is a frantic mental caress that induces weeping but instead excites applause. The masterminds (governors) grope and stroke their beloved (electorate) with calloused palms, violating the latter’s psychic spaces even as you read. Until they match in virtual lock-step with their campaign promises, the governors will loom as marketers of illusion, skittish shamans channelling deceit to trade in confusion. They would be continually seen as crafty fabricators of mood and gesture, prowling the edges of duty cloaked in deceit. These are truths that can’t be ignored.

     

     

  • Against her will

    Lawal Ogienagbon

     

    WITH HER abduction two years ago, fate dealt Leah Sharibu, the girl from the rustic community in Dapchi, Yobe State, a cruel blow.

    She and 104 other girls did not bargain for what happened to them that fateful February 19, 2018, about four years after a similar incident in Chibok, Borno State. Leah was in school with the other girls when the Boko Haram insurgents struck in their characteristic manner.

    It was something the nation had thought would never happen again following the April 14, 2014 abduction of 112 pupils from  the Chibok Girls Secondary School.

    The 2014 incident should have prepared the government for any eventuality by Boko Haram and everything done to nip whatever the sect’s plan is before it is executed. It never did and Boko Haram successfully struck in Yobe four years later.

    Since then, Boko Haram has continued to strike here and there, abducting aid workers, clerics, farmers, women, pupils, undergraduates and even policemen and soldiers. Nobody is safe from the clutches of Boko Haram, except those who are far away from the epicentre of its operation in the Northeast, especially Borno.

    The sect remains determined as ever to continue with its bestial act. Just last week, it beheaded Rev Lawan Andimi, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Chairman in Michika Local Government Area of Adamawa State. His offence: he allegedly refused to renounce his faith after he was kidnapped.

    Boko Haram is waxing stronger despite the government’s claim that the group has been ‘’technically defeated’’. How can the group still be wreaking havoc on some parts of the country despite the government’s claim, many are wondering.

    The military keeps reassuring all that it is on top of  the insurgency war but the results indicate otherwise. Leah’s case keeps haunting the nation because of the undercurrents surrounding her continued captivity.

    She was said to have rejected freedom on the condition of renouncing Christianity. By her action, she was only living her faith as Jesus says in the Bible: ‘’whoever denies me before men, I will deny before my father in heaven’’.

    Read Also: Leah Sharibu’s father: we’ve surrendered our fate to God

     

    To show her who is in control, the abductors released others, but held on to her. This same Leah has become a mother. Surely, that too, just as her abduction, cannot be according to her wish.

    As she is being forcibly held against her wish, so has she been forced into early marriage by her abductors. News that she gave birth to a baby boy shook the nation last weekend. The father of the baby is described as a Boko Haram leader in Niger Republic.

    Nothing can be changed now after Boko Haram has had its way with the poor girl. Fate could not be more cruel to her and her family than this.

    With the underground negotiations said to be going on for her release, the nation was looking forward to her returning home and not the shattering news of her giving birth to a baby.

    Will her abductors allow her to go now? What more do they want from her? Another baby so that their evil tribe may continue to increase? The fault is not Boko Haram’s, but that of the government which allowed this matter faster.

    Ahmed Salkida, who is said to be close to the group, put it aptly: ‘’why, I wonder, do we pretend that leaving Leah behind won’t result in pregnancy? Since the terror group announced condemning her to slavery is there any step or collective focus on preventing similar occurrences?

    She is a mother, but I do not know the gender of the baby’’.  Leah would have looked forward to being a mother one day, but nothing in her wildest dreams would have prepared her for what fate has now thrust on her.

  • Nigeria: Time to laugh and cry at an old person in pampers

    By  Jide Osuntokun

     

    Nigeria became a sovereign country 60 years ago and by normal expectations this our dear country should have settled down by now properly providing a healthy environment for all its people to grow and thrive.

    There is of course no doubt that at independence the British cleverly booby trapped our trajectory of  growth and development as they did on the Indian sub-continent, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan ,The Central African federation, South Africa and in the oldest dominion in the Commonwealth, Canada.

    All these countries have somehow attempted finding solutions to their loaded and some would say, predictable and planned obstacles put in their ways by the departing “perfidious Albion”.

    In the case of India and Pakistan, the two countries have fought four wars over the control of Jammu and Kashmir between 1947 and 2017. East Pakistan declared itself Bangladesh in a brutal liberation war from Pakistan in 1971.

    On August 9, 1965, Singapore broke away from the Malaysian federation because of racial riots of September 1964. The two countries have prospered since then.

    Sri Lanka saw a bitterly fought civil war between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils from 1983 to 2009 before an uneasy peace was imposed on the country by force of arms.

    The Central African Federation created by the British  in 1953 to include British colonies of northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Malawi ) dissolved in 1963 when northern Rhodesia ( Zambia ) and Malawi became independent  countries leaving Southern Rhodesia to fight a bitter racial war until it became independent Zimbabwe in 1980.

    South Africa fought a low intensity racial war from the 1960s until 1994 when a nonracial majoritarian democratic government emerged to maintain the present precarious peace in the country.

    Canada after series of French ethnic insurrections in Quebec resolved its identity crisis under the rubric of bilingualism and biculturalism in which the two founding nations are equal in spite of the demographic preponderance of Anglophone Canada.

    Nigeria too went through the baptism of fire in the civil war between 1967 and 1970 before a forced peace prevailed.

    This peace is not without challenge by those who feel the unitary government imposed on the country by the military since 1970 is not what our founding fathers negotiated as a basis of our political and economic association.

    Unless we learn from the fortunes and misfortunes of countries with which we share common historical ties and tradition, we will experience the same problem.

    If we had been more careful and had learned from the experience of countries similar to us as detailed above, we would not have fought the civil war in which a million or more poor people died. My emphasis is on suffering humanity who die in these unnecessary conflicts.

    The unfinished task of balancing the need for individual and group freedom and security with the interest of the wider political union of a proper federation is what is at the root of the present brouhaha over the Southwest desire to protect its people from internal and external terrorism in the face of the inability of the federal police to properly secure the whole country.

    The  southwest security outfit known as “Amotekun” should be welcome by the federation in other to prevent self-help by people pushed to the wall by those bent on killing and injuring them and laying their farms to waste.

    No people would fold their arms and allow other people whom they have in no way offended to descend on them killing their men and raping their wives and their male and female children, yes both boys and girls, and just remain quiescent.

    Read Also: Makinde meets IGP over Amotekun, Oyo LG crisis

     

    It is the cries of these hapless people that the governors have responded to. The federal authorities must understand the level of political education of people in this part of the country and that if their governments fail to respond to matters of life or death, the people will react violently. It is to forestall this that Amotekun has come up.

    Governments everywhere exist for the common good. There should be no conflict between our demand for patriotism and the call to support our nation.

    One has to be alive first in our towns and villages before one can think of belonging to a wider political community like the federation. I personally have suffered because of lack of peace in my part of the world.

    I cannot visit my parents and my siblings’ resting places in the cemetery in my town because of the insecurity in my home state. Like many people living away from home, I am marooned in Lagos.

    What I believe the federal government should do is to ask the other five zones of the country to organize along the same line as the southwest. If we have six regional police services along with the federal police, some level of sanity is bound to prevail.

    We should reject the suggestion that Amotekun should not be armed. This is nonsensical and a non-starter. Even mai-guards are armed.

    My neighborhood night watchmen made up of ex-service men are armed and without arms they will be like women! Are we going to deploy unarmed men against Kalashnikov-carrying terrorists and brigands? That will be a recipe for disaster. .What is necessary is to license members to carry arms that are properly registered so that their use can be tracked.

    This is what is done in civilized countries of the world. Security goes beyond armed braggadocio; we must now use our common sense and intelligence. We should lay our cards on the table.

    Amotekun must be properly kitted to make the kind of impact required. The time has come when we must put in place a proper structural architecture for a modern state good enough to attract international development partners to help with the development of this country.

    If we do not do this, our country will die under its weight of inefficient and ineffective political and governance structures. The impression one gets nowadays is that our country is being run incompetently. The deep state is poorly served by people recruited without merit.

    Recently, I got a text that I should come to Abuja to collect my National ID card which I applied for in 2015. I was pleasantly surprised because I had forgotten about it since the card really does nothing for anybody that I know. Of course I couldn’t go to Abuja.

    I sent my nephew who is a lawyer to collect the card. The card finally got to me in the year of our Lord 2020. I looked at it and it says it will expire next month. The question I want to ask is – if the people in charge are brain dead or are insane? Why should a national ID expire? Common sense should have dictated that like birth certificate, the ID card should be forever at least for all adults.

    I asked people who had the cards before and they said it had no expiry date. My university ID card as a professor does not expire. It has the date it was issued but no expiry date. I checked my ID card when I was a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on International Affairs in the presidency; It has date issued and no expiry date.

    The issue of this card is a manifestation of how far we have sunk in public administration that we don’t seem to think about national affairs.

    This is simply because there is no merit in appointments and recruitment of staff particularly at the federal level where nepotism, religious and regional bias have replaced sense of nationalism and excellence and yet we shout daily about national unity being nonnegotiable and irrevocable.

    How many countries in the world do we know where if you want to buy a product or even medicine you are asked if you want “fake or original?” It happens in this country with un-policed or under-policed state where we all enjoy inflicting sorrow and pain on each other once one has some political leverage or advantage.

    It is not the issue of Amotekun that we should be talking about; rather we should be talking generally about  the federal government’s alienation from the majority of the people not just in the Southwest or Southeast but also in the North unless you belong to the favored few in the inner circle of those in power .

  • State/community policing as answer to insecurity

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

     

    Statistics of daily harvest of deaths from bandits, kidnappers and herders’ siege as well as those arising from Boko-Haram’s continuous attack on soft targets in the Northeast underscore not just how cheap life has become in Nigeria, but also the verdict on President Buhari’s handling of security, the most important reason Nigerians traded their freedom for his protection of their lives and properties.

    Many Nigerians including APC sympathisers will readily agree the failure of government in this critical department is as a result of President Buhari’s mind-set.

    In an age when governance has become a science, the president and his men have continued to ignore expert advice, public opinion and the wishes of Nigerians on the desirability of local and state police in a multi-cultural and heterogeneous society.

    He has continued to show his inclination towards centralization and uniformity just as his predecessors have done since the collapse of the first republic. Government response to every sign of social dislocation has always been more centralization.

    President Buhari has turned this to an art often resorting to force to demonstrate federal might even in circumstances where negotiation and compromise have better chance of ensuring unity in diversity in a deeply divided society like ours.

    Every cycle of mindless killings in the last five years was followed by an assurance that victim communities would not be abandoned by the rest of the country, a promise that often found expression in deployment of police, soldier’s tanks and jet bombers.

    Let us start  with the president’s own Katsina State where  eight  local government areas  including Kankara; Faskari; Dan-Musa; Safana; Sabuwa; Dandume; Jibia and Batsari have according to a report in Thisday, lost about 2,000 people, with 500 communities destroyed and over 33,000 people displaced as a result of  incessant attacks.

    President Buhari’s establishment of the Air Force bases at Daura and Katsina, and a Brigade Command of the Nigerian Army, has according to Dr.  Bashir Ruwangodiya, Masari’s special adviser on higher education failed to “put an end to banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and murder, as well as other crimes in Katsina State.”

    In Plateau State, separate attacks by some unidentified gunmen according to Vanguard newspapers report (March 17, 2014) reportedly led to the death of 32 people were in Riyom Local Government, 19 in Rajat, and 11 in Atakar with about 60 houses burnt.

    In Kaduna State, the paper also claimed gunmen suspected to be Fulani, killed no fewer than 30 people in Kirim, Zagan and Zandyen villages and razed hundreds of houses in the three communities.

    Similar killings were reported in other areas of the state notably Sankwai, Tekum and Unguwan Gata villages in Maroa Chiefdom when the villages were invaded by those the villagers said looked like cross-border Fulani gunmen.

    The cycle of killings have continued in Plateau State. Just last Monday, January 27, the Police in Plateau through ASP Abu Gabriel admitted the death toll in last Sunday night attack on Kwatas village in Bokkos Local Government Area of the state by gunmen had risen to 15.

    This attack according to NAN reports was the second in the last two weeks. Twelve persons were reportedly killed in Kulben village in Kombun District of Mangu Local Government Area of the state by gunmen during the first attack.

    President Buhari’s response to last week attack on Dogon Gona forest in Niger State communities by bandits, kidnappers and cattle rustlers was predictable.

    Garba Shehu, the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, has since informed Nigerians that the president had authorised the deployment of air power to support troops and policemen deployed to the “difficult terrain,” to counter the menace of the attackers operating in the forest area bordering Kaduna, Niger and Zamfara states.

    The Police Command in Niger has equally given assurances that the planned dedicated air raids to complement the police helicopter gunship operations remain the best approach given the lack of motorized roads in the areas constantly under attack.”

    And in what appears an advance notification to the criminals to relocate before the bombing, Garba Shehu hilariously added: ‘With the harmattan dust gradually easing its hold on the skies, it is time to strike’.

    Experts have said military raids will continue to fail because of ‘the operational challenges arising from insufficient knowledge of the terrain.

    Read Also: Insecurity: Buhari stunned as lawmakers seek action

     

    Some of the communities in North-western Nigeria’s forestlands, according to Chukwuma Okoli are “located in remote areas where there is little or no government presence.

    This situation is made worse by the absence of effective community policing mechanisms capable of addressing the hinterlands’ peculiar security challenges”.

    There is a consensus among experts, concerned Nigerians and victims of herdsmen killings and bandits’ attack across the country that the cheapest and most effective strategy for securing local communities is through community policing.

    In fact the pattern of attack as highlighted above has clearly shown that it is only the local people with the knowledge of themselves and of their terrain, who speak the same language and have stakes in their communities that are better placed to prevent infiltration and the overrunning of their communities by strangers.

    Asking police men from Yoruba or Igbo country to go and confront Boko Haram in Borno State, local warlords and Fulani land grabbers in Zamfara or immigrant Fulani herdsmen and men fleeing the hostile Sahel region to Nigeria is to mistake policemen for soldiers who pledge to lay down their lives for their country.

    State and community policing, whose central theory is that it can build relationships with their community through interactions with local agencies and members of the public, remain the best safeguard against insecurity in a deeply divided society like ours.

    Perhaps the challenge posed to Abuja by the inauguration of  ‘Amotekun’ security outfit by southwest states has finally pushed the federal government  to revisit the community policing scheduled to have come on stream since August last year.

    But there is already an apparent demonstration of insincerity on the part of the federal government. According to a Punch report, the IGP last Sunday ordered all state Commissioners of Police, Assistant Commissioners of Police and Divisional Police Officers to liaise with traditional rulers and community leaders in their domains to screen volunteers who would be engaged after passing the screening tests.

    State and community police are not arms of federal police. Since we are a federation, states or group of states who share identical values should be allowed to organize community police that can best serve their purpose.

    It is instructive that the Middle Belt Forum has already expressed preference for a regional security outfit like Amotekun which they believe would be more effective in curbing insecurity in the Middle Belt region.

    Federal, state/community police maintain their different identities in all federations including the US where sanctions for the same offence differ from county to county.

    Nigerians have no reason to doubt the president’s commitment to the country. But on account of his mind-set and his known opposition to restructuring and devolution of power including state police, not a few will view his directive and the IG’s  attempt to introduce uniformity into community policing  as part of a design to ensure the whole idea of state/ community policing is dead on arrival.

  • Amotekun…Beast of illusion (1)

    By Olatunji Ololade

    To the murderous herdsmen, trespass is euphoric, and subliminally erotic perhaps. Hence they rape farmers’ wives, daughters, sisters and even grandmothers, while plundering peasant farmlands.

    Supposedly miffed and driven to self-preservation, the Southwest Governors’ Forum established the Western Nigeria Security Network, code-named, Operation Amotekun (Operation Leopard) as a promising deterrent to terrorist herdsmen, armed bandits and kidnappers tormenting the rural outliers.

    The leopard is a dangerous animal and moral exemplar; an embodiment of poise, predatory instinct and fastidious eating habits hence its suitability as a metaphor for the southwest’s security initiative.

    In the wake of its establishment, however, Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has described Amotekun as “illegal,” drawing flak from several quarters.

    Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) argued in a recent interview, that Amotekun doesn’t run foul of the law, stating that the governors have no duty whatsoever to consult Malami.

    He said: “I think the governors should just ignore him and carry on with what they are doing…That arrogant authority that he can dictate to states is very insulting.”

    Operation Amotekun, argues pundits, agrees with Section 14(2)(b) of Nigeria’s Constitution: “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government,” which, in a federation, includes the federal, state, and local governments.

    Subsequently pro-Amotekun rallies have held in Akure, Osogbo, Ado-Ekiti, Abeokuta, and Ibadan. In Lagos, the planned rally was, interestingly, foiled by the police.

    At the backdrop of the ensuing drama, some have argued that Operation Amotekun resonates the frantic skirmish between southwest governors and their northern peers, in a pageantry of wile and maneuver en route the 2023 elections.

    However, to totally condemn Amotekun is to amplify the rabid cries of biased critics of the initiative. To its apologists, if the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) and Hisbah, among others, are acceptable as worthy security measures, up-north, then Operation Amotekun must be acceptable to all as the southwest’s inalienable right to security and self-determination as backed by the constitution, and foremost legal luminaries.

    For instance, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), advised the southwest governors to proceed with the implementation of Amotekun and leave the Federal Government to challenge the matter in court.

    As most south-westerners read of Boko Haram and armed bandits’ assault on the northeast, hovering at the edge of a forbidden locus of experience, so do misguided critics of Amotekun up-north perceive news of homicidal herdsmen tormenting the southwest.

    Nonetheless, Amotekun is a welcome initiative in an era when armed bandits, herdsmen, and kidnappers subject fringe communities of the southwest to a merciless ravage akin to the plundering of a nut grove thus rendering the fertile lands mutilated bowers.

    According to urban legend, on Amotekun’s watch, terrorist herdsmen, armed bandits and kidnappers will shy off the boundaries of the southwest. But the regional security initiative faces opposition from both external and internal forces, according to Ondo State Governor and Chairman, Southwest Governors’ Forum (SGF), Rotimi Akeredolu. Akeredolu berated internal enemies for sabotaging Amotekun, describing them as “collaborators whose parochial political pursuits have beclouded their sense of tomorrow.”

    But that is simply one way to look at it. On the flipside, Amotekun is a pseudo-gesture affected to excite sentimental feelings of safety and racial pride. It’s a wildly selfish ploy, plotted to make the citizenry confuse how they are made to feel about the governors’ inefficiencies and political maneuver, with the bitter reality of pervasive insecurity across the southwest.

    Governors who can muster no justifiable account of security votes allocated to them want us to believe that they care about our safety, the protection of our civil rights, and democracy. Ultimately, they seek to funnel billions of tax naira to fund Amotekun, and so doing, replenish their political war-chests, acquire choice property and stash public fund in their overseas accounts, illegitimately.

    There is no gainsaying auxiliary forces, like Amotekun, in Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq and other contemporary conflicts have played key roles in winning back territory from terrorists and brigands. Such forces are often convenient, short-term solutions for governments facing insurgencies that outmatch regular security forces.

    Amotekun is expected to operate as a cheap force multiplier; as its members presumably have local knowledge and language skills that makes them more effective fighters and intelligence gatherers. More importantly, the group offers southwest governors more plausible immunity and denial of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in the context of ‘keeping the peace’ and counter-insurgency campaigns.

    Through the hoopla and feral applause, very few people, perhaps, have paused to mull the likely ramifications of Amotekun. How long before the militia turns back to haunt the people whose interests it was created to protect? How long before it sinks its fangs and claws into their hide?

    Its a given that on Amotekun’s watch, human rights conditions would worsen across the southwest. Violence and torture, state-sanctioned murder, unjustifiable citizen arrests and disappearances would increase as each state governor nurtures infinitely ‘loyal’ units of the group.

    The group’s ultimate loyalty is to the governors, whose chief intent is to deploy Amotekun to bully political opposition, steal ballot boxes and rig the 2023 elections.

    Arrowheads of the Amotekun movement, despite their platitudinous chant, clandestinely seek to deploy the outfit in taming detractors and ‘political godfathers’ whose perceived influence may limit their chances and interests at the 2023 elections.

    The downside of this reality is that such ‘godfathers’ equally have the capacity to woo and purchase the loyalty of Amotekun’s hierarchies. In the long-run, Amotekun will implode, with members pitching tents and selling allegiance to the highest bidder.

    How would Amotekun’s membership be drawn? What are the yardsticks for vetting recruitment? If the police and other state law enforcement agencies, despite their access to structured academies and international training, continue to churn out mostly inefficient, trigger-happy cops, what’s the guarantee that they would help mould Amotekun into a sterling militia as the governors’ claim?

    Bus conductors, park urchins, transport unionists, political thugs, assassins, human parts dealers, the unemployed, ex-convicts, and warlords, among others, will comprise Amotekun alongside ageing hunters, vigilante and native-doctors.

    Crisis is bound to erupt; the group will implode by its inability to achieve a synergy between its young, violent membership and ageing conservative divide.

    The people may need to gird their loins for more outbreaks of ritual murders by auxiliary militia members seeking spiritual powers in bid to assert their individual might and repute, and thus enjoy patronage by governors seeking ‘muscles’ for “top-secret political missions.”

    Moreover, given their roles in fighting armed bandits, kidnappers and terrorist herdsmen, Amotekun members will often be seen as heroes by segments of the citizenry.

    This would raise the political costs of trying to bring their members to justice when they run foul of the law.

  • Malami, Amotekun and President Buhari

    By Jide Oluwajuyitan

    As products of our different environments, we are Hausa/Fulani, Igbo or Yoruba, Muslims or Christians by accident. No one should therefore have apologies for loyalty to his or her primary constituencies and faith.

    Charity must begin at home – to paraphrase Edmund Burke philosophy. Or as Chief Obafemi Awolowo puts it, you cannot be a good Nigerian if you are not first a good representative of your people.

    In spite of widely advertised commitment of President Buhari to his Fulani ethnic group and his Islamic faith, his commitment to Nigeria has never been in doubt.

    He fought a civil war. He was unjustly imprisoned for over three years for fighting corruption, enforcing discipline and for admonishing Nigerians to eat what they produce or starve. He fought and lost three presidential elections until he succeeded the fourth time at over 70 years of age.

    President Buhari on whose table the buck stops therefore clearly understands why he is in government. The choice as to whether he wants to be remembered as a Nigerian statesman or a Fulani irredentist, the image into which he has been cast by his Fulani kinsmen using his name to pursue what other federating ethnic groups regard as Fulani agenda to build on their 1904 conquest of Hausa states.

    The president cannot pretend not to have been warned, first by Pa Bisi Akande, the interim chairman of APC and later, Aishat Buhari, the president’s wife. They both said those who hijacked his government love neither Buhari nor Nigeria.

    For keen observers, Malami’s current unproductive war with southwest and its governors amidst a siege by cross border Fulani herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers has parallel in the blaming of victims of cross-border herdsmen’s killings in the middle belt region by the president’s Minister of Defence not long ago.

    It is also not different from the burden placed on the president by his senior media adviser who claimed his daughter was entitled to the use of presidential jet for photo-shoot.

    Now what people remember is not a president who insists his wife travels by commercial airlines but the contradiction between a candidate Buhari   who once took his war with ex- President Jonathan over the misuse of presidential fleet to London and a President Buhari who now places a presidential jet at the service of his daughter.

    And while Malami’s current war with the Yoruba and her governors’ security initiative is intensified, the picture Nigerians see is that of Lamido Sanusi, the Emir of Kano   surrounded by Hisbah police that arrest and prosecute Muslim offenders, by virtue of our federal arrangement while the same emir is openly inciting herdsmen located in Benue to disobey laws of their host state.

    The Southwest governors insisted they reached out to Police Inspector-General Adamu Mohammed and the Director-General of the Department of State Security Services (DSS), Mallam Yusuf Magaji Bichi informing them that Operation Amotekun is not different from a neighborhood watch security organization.

    Indeed the police commissioners in the affected states were present at the launching of the governors’ security initiative. But in character with the president kinsmen, these facts did not stop Malami from declaring:

    “The setting up of paramilitary organisation called Amotekun is illegal and contrary to the provisions of Nigerian law”, contemptuously adding, “the governors are aware that there are 67 items on the Exclusive Legislative List and they should have pushed for constitutional amendment to move policing to the Concurrent Legislative List.”

    That Malami is serving other tendencies or has a mindset is apparent as nearly all accomplished law scholars and eminent lawyers and the NBA faulted his position. For the NBA: ‘The law allows a person or group of persons to protect themselves within the framework of the law and/or report untoward activities to the police’.

    As for Afe Babalola, “All that the AGF said is that Article 45 of the constitution, second schedule gives to the federal government the exclusive power to manage the police, he did not say that sections 20, 40 and 45 which are superior to the schedule are abrogated”.

    And finally, for Itse Sagay “there is nothing in the constitution that precludes either states or association of states from taking care of their security.”

    Unfortunately, the colour of those who lined up behind Malami’s flawed legal position only strengthened the position of peddlers of conspiracy theories.

    First was Dr. Junaid Mohammed, a Second Republic lawmaker, who describes the security outfit Amotekun, as “nothing but a tribal militia to prosecute the region’s agenda of transforming into a separate nation through the backdoor”.

    Also lining up behind Malami was a Miyyeti Allah chieftain who said the “Amotekun scheme is political and is not the solution to the problem of insecurity. He wants the Southwest governors to continue to push for state police, (probably through the legislature); offensively adding “It is best they give up on this idea because it may affect the chances of the Southwest to produce the President in 2023”.

    Read Also: Malami stirs up hornet’s nest over Amotekun

    And finally, there was the former governor of old Kaduna State and elder statesman, Balarabe Musa, who declared “First of all, taking into account what happened in the history of Nigeria, this Amotekun will lead to a declaration of Oduduwa Republic.”

    But when has a regional agenda in a federation become a crime and why is Balarabe Musa afraid of history? We will come to that shortly.

    It is not lost on Nigerians that the common refrain from all those who lined up behind Malami are repudiation of restructuring, devolution of powers and fiscal federalism.

    It is their position that those seeking solution to our national question must go through the National Assembly where experience from 1999 has shown, it will take a camel to pass through a needle’s eye to get the above changes which are at the core of our crisis of nation-building, through.

    Now Let us return to why those who are opposed to regional agenda in a federation are afraid of history. Chief Awolowo was a torn in the flesh of coalition partners (Hausa Fulani and Igbo) for preaching ‘one man one vote’ among minorities in the north and east as the shortest route to their freedom from hegemonic powers that treated them as slaves.

    After independence, he was framed up and imprisoned for 10 years by the federal government. They openly boasted: by the time he returned if he ever did, he would be too old to question how they governed Nigeria.

    With Western Region and its leadership decimated, Igbo and Hausa Fulani warring politicians confronted themselves over disputed 1962/63 census figures finally settled in favour of the north by the Nigerian judiciary. The rivalry of the two estranged coalition partners over the soul of Nigeria led to the civil war.

    The victorious cornered the loot of war. Military social engineering methods have since been applied to ensure more states and LGAs for the north, federal take-over of state-owned institutions, establishment of federal unity schools and JAMB, and quota system of admission and recruitment into federal schools and federal bureaucracy to prevent a return to pre-1966 Nigeria where meritocracy allowed people to develop at their own pace without interference from a dysfunctional centre.

    The current war by Malami and the tendency he represents seems to confirm the fears of the people of southwest that the flooding of their territory by cross-border herdsmen, bandits and poor jobless street urchins is a continuation of war against a people whose only sin is to desire what they want for themselves for others.

    Unfortunately, except President Buhari who critics believe lives in denial, most Yoruba who are today no more safe in their homes, roads and farms believe the war has become  intensified under Buhari presidency they helped install.

  • Suffering humanity in the Middle East

    By  Jide Osuntokun

     

    The shooting down of Ukraine air plane in Iran in which 176 innocent souls perished has brought to the fore the unacceptable tinderbox situation in the Middle East.

    This followed the assassination of General Qaseem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Force through a drone attack by the American government. Suleimani was killed in Iraq which had been virtually destroyed by American and western bombs following the war against Saddam Hussein and later against Abubakar Al- Baghdadi’s caliphate.

    Important legacies of ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Babylon and Chaldea were obliterated. Suleimani was allegedly plotting against American forces in Iraq and American interests generally.

    America had previously tolerated Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, shooting down  of American drone and launching an attack on Saudi Arabian American-built, world’s largest  oil refinery.

    The assassination of Suleimani was the climax of seething antagonism between the Western hegemonic power of the United States of America and Iran, a putative power in the Middle East with determined influence and leadership of the Shia sect of Islam particularly in the Middle East and South and South East Asia and some toehold even in Nigeria.

    Iran was fuelling the conflict in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon and had considerable influence on the Taliban in Afghanistan its neighbour to the East.

    In recent times and at considerable cost in American lives and money, the USA has had to contend with Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, Abubakar Al – Baghdadi’s ISIS and virtual Iranian take-over of Iraq. One of course can legitimately ask who made America the global gendarmes.

    As long as there is no other way of maintaining global peace outside some delicate balance of power among the super powers or under some informal directorate of global powers, the question of what is the USA doing in the Middle East or why it is there, will remain a moot question.

    The strategic importance of the Middle East in a world still dependent on hydrocarbons as sources of energy draws the big powers to the area. What will happen when the world abandons oil and gas remains in the belly of time.

    Even apart from the search for secure energy source, the Middle East is located along the most important shipping route in the world, and it is also a major meeting point for global culture.

    The Middle East is the place of origin of the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and the holy sites in sometimes overlapping locations are found there occasioning conflict over primacy of ownership.

    The place has witnessed the rise and fall of the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian and later the Phoenician empires before the place fell under the Greeks and later the Romans which brought the place into unequal relations with the western world.

    By the time Islam knitted together the various contending forces in the region by the 7th century, some semblance of order at considerable slaughter of people had been imposed under the largely Arab Umayyad  caliphate with headquarters in Damascus in Syria in 661.

    The Abbasid under Persian leadership took over control in 762 and moved the capital to Baghdad. The Caliphate was destroyed by Mongols in 1258.

    Later the Ottoman from 1301 to 1922 were to be the supreme force in the world of Islam until in 1918 when they were defeated along with Germany in the First World War and their Arab territories were “liberated” and Syria, and Lebanon came under France’s League of Nations mandate while Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq came under British administration as mandated territories of the League of Nations.

    Even the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was largely a British creation. From then on, all attempts to drive out western influence in the Middle East have failed. Regimes have been changed at the whim of their western overlords.

    Earlier on from 1095 to 1291, in nine brutal  campaigns against Muslim control of Jerusalem, Christian knights in what has gone down in history as crusades fought to liberate Jerusalem from Islamic control and to set up colonies in the near East.

    This of course elicited equal massacres by Muslim forces against Christian knights from Europe. The point I am making is that western and Middle Eastern conflict has a long history. Unfortunately, this conflict is rooted in religious antipathy. But religion does not explain why the leadership of the Arab world are largely pro West.

    From Morocco, to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the gulf states and Oman, the leadership there and possibly their people follow a live-and-let-live policy with the west.

    Algeria in spite of its war of liberation against France in the 1950s and 1960s, has remained pro-west; so also has Tunisia. Yemen before the Houthis take-over of the place has been too poor to matter.

    But Persian Iran is a different kettle of fish. American and western attempt to dominate it has been rebuffed. After genuine nationalist government of Muhammad Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil and took it from the British, western power was called in to reverse a genuine nationalist assertion and thus began the hostility between Iran and the West.

    The British appealed to the USA for help and the USA promptly through the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian government and restored power to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. In this way, the USA became the enemy of Iran.

    Read Also: Iran seeks help reading downed plane’s black boxes in new standoff

     

    The Shah, even though a modernizer, ruled with iron fist under American military tutelage until overthrown by students and Islamic fundamentalists led by grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini In 1979 thus ending a dynasty that was more than 2000 years old and also drawing a wedge between the USA and Iran.

    From this time onwards, Iran adopted two strategic policies that have continually brought  it into conflict with the USA. Iran realized that its security would always be threatened unless it developed a nuclear deterrence as well as a delivery capability in terms of missiles that could conceivably reach not only Israel and Europe but also the USA itself.

    It was the fear of this that made the Obama administration to sign with the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany the so-called P 5+1 with Iran the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015 essentially to prevent Iran refining Uranium up to nuclear weapons grade.

    This was to be verified by the International Atomic Agency of the UN in which all the signatory powers have representatives. This plan was to last initially for 10 years and renewable thereafter. Iran was to get its money seized by the USA after the Iranian revolution of 1979.

    Iran‘s missile programmes were also to be monitored. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel feel that the treaty with Iran was too loose and that it will permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

    For this reason President Trump withdrew from the treaty and slammed comprehensive economic sanctions on Iran. These sanctions have virtually brought Iran’s economy down.

    A proud country like Iran, inheritor of an ancient civilization, finds itself humiliated and almost brought to its knees. In reaction, it has gone on adventurist policies of destabilization of the whole of the Middle East.

    This is the kernel of the problem in the Middle East and the USA’s relation with Iran. Unfortunately when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. This has been the lot of suffering humanity which for the past 40 years has witnessed one war after the other with countries like Yemen, Libya, Syria, Palestine and Iraq in ruins.

    Iran has publicly said it will attack Saudi Arabia and the Emirates states if the USA attacks it. Iran also can expect to be supplied with Russian weapons. It was a Russian made missile that brought down the Ukrainian plane which killed 176 people about 100 of them young Iranians living or studying in Canada.

    The bogey of Godless Russia has been removed since the collapse of the Soviet Union so Iran can feel comfortable dealing with its Russian ally just as Turkey, a member of NATO, is awkwardly dealing with Russia in the purchase of advanced weapons in the face of western and USA‘s refusal to oblige it.

    The role of Turkey may be crucial in finding solution at least as Sunni counterbalance to Iran’s Shia influence. This may persuade the USA to treat Iran with less hostility. One hopes Iran will not gamble going to war with the USA and thus bringing total destruction to its ancient civilization and its people and precipitating a possible global Armageddon.