The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Poetics of enlightened self interest

    Poetics of enlightened self interest

    Patriotism thrives by cultural standards. Progress too. Thus the songs that every Nigerian knows by heart, the lore of nationhood, and the politics of suburban, boondocks poetry should, normally, manifest the kernel of indigenous culture and political sovereignty.

    But all these flounder and fade where Nigeria subsists as a cultural whore. Beyond the powder and blush of its republican label, should Nigeria subsist as a neocolonial brothel? Or recaptured colony, if you like.

    Should Nigeria remain a settlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) whose nativities are embowered and restrained in a mental jail cell? To assert independence is to be labeled as too radical, too conformist, too rebellious, too conservative – and confined in a cultural straitjacket by imperialist design.

    Caught in a maelstrom of economic, political and cultural interests, Nigerians frantically seek escape via a specious remake of persona – political theater’s wooden mask – into a survivalist totem that is at  once functional yet sculpted to preserve shady alien interests.

    The resultant decadence, inventive in pleasures yet originative in malice, is amplified as leftist satire in mainstream literature and revolutionist chant across multimedia platforms. Ultimately, it is spruced up as a “liberal” revolt against the perceived austerity and tyranny of Nigerian personae, a desecration of ancestral origins.

    Society thus sidles from a multiplicity of morals to unity in depravity. Our veneration of Euro-American interests has assumed the ruckus of a ghastly orgy, far removed from fertile nature. This validates the Euro-American propagation of vulturine psychology as a specialty cum arbiter of diplomacy and the human experience.

    Hussein Bulhan’s treatise on metacolonialism brilliantly addresses this phenomenon and its deceptive psychology. During classical colonialism, psychologists and psychiatrists embarked on racial comparisons on the size of the brain, concluding from biased measurements that Africans belonged to a lower evolutionary phase.

    With the rise and growth of globalisation, the calculus and dynamics of colonial domination have assumed more subtle and treacherous forms as superpowers of the so-called “First World” redesigned their conquest expeditions to suit the poetics and arithmetic of their “enlightened self-interests.”

    Apollos Nwauwa posits that Western education produced a contradictory elite in West Africa; one that served as both an agent of colonisation and nationalism. But nationalism, in our case, rather than mature into sovereignty of thought, hardened into mimicry. We changed flags, not philosophies. What we call modernisation has often been little more than domesticated colonisation—metacolonialism.

    Also, a conditioned mass passion for consumer goods imported from abroad and effective dissemination of the belief that this stage of colonialism aka globalisation represents a great advance in human history continues to be the bane of industrial and economic growth in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

    By sustained assault on the world of meaning, metacolonialism also penetrates the psyche and social relations. Nigerians are, of course, vulnerable to this scourge of culture, politics, and personae – they are fawning and defenseless before its oppressive hierarchies.

    And there is a structure to the indoctrination. For instance, the journalist plays the proverbial role of the primitive town crier cum interpreter, who ditches good sense for witlessness. He stifles intellect as he inhales the carnations of mindlessness. Should the press slip into trance like the Delphic Oracle?

    Being part of the orgy requires corruption of intent and mystic loss of self. To keep the stream of indoctrination flowing, journalists and activists contort into a purulent faucet. But if Nigeria’s best minds must season decadence for profit, who would guide the country through the trials of dystopic revel?

    As globalisation flourishes, the dynamics of Euro-American imperialism become more pronounced yet camouflaged in our lives with devastating consequences. As long as Nigeria and Africa worship the dollar and the euro as the primary means of international exchange and measures of human worth; as long as we venerate Euro-American norms as indispensable edicts of civilisation, Nigeria will remain poorly heeled in the global commune of recaptured colonies.

    The current system, nourished by subtle and aggressive programming through the media and academia, projects nations of Europe and America as unimpeachable models of humanity and freedom, not minding their buccaneer exploits and abrasive presence in  the middle-east and “recolonised” territories of the developing world.

    To counter this metacolonial complex, Nigerians must partner as progressive social actors to reinvent our national narrative in the language of patriots and deeds of an exalted ethic. In covering the next general elections, for instance, the civil society and the press must desist from inflaming the polity through sponsored disinformation and psyops comprising dubious analyses and pronouncements by questionable “foreign observers.”

    This isn’t a call for self-censorship but over time, several activists, journalists and political actors have been conscripted by foreign interests. Their intent is to destabilise the country, by predicting and influencing a groundswell of conflict tailored to fulfill the “enlightened self-interest” of their sponsors. Nigerians must shun their factious quotes and counter their doomsday portrayal with tact and patriotic intent.

    The next general elections won’t be perfect. No election is ever perfect all over the world. At least the United States’ scandalous elections of 2016, mired in claims and counterclaims of tampered ballots and sexed-up results, shows clearly that there is no perfect system or nation in the world.

    Read Also: Ignorance biggest threat to Nigeria’s democracy — PAACA boss

    Nigerians must resist the impulse to sensationalise perceived shortcomings of the ongoing dispensation to suit the purpose of enemies of the State, at home and abroad. Heaven didn’t fall and Nigeria didn’t collapse simply because the outcome of the March 2023 elections contradicted the run of doomsday predictions by frantic foreign consulates and political interests.

    It’s about time we committed with a clearer conscience and altruistic intent to the analyses of the conditions that victimise Nigerians as pawns and minions of the political class and shady colonisers.

    Civil society, the press and other social actors must quit talking down at Nigerians and instead identify with the citizenry as discerning, self-determining political actors. The press must alert the citizenry to self-defeating electoral quirks and enlighten them about the benefits of progressive partisanship in the electoral process.

    Decolonised psychology advocates change using a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach. The top-down approach is imperialistic and arrogant. Many political interventions or programmes of social change fail because they are imposed top-down by local and international actors with ulterior motives – thus they are often supported by the threat or instigation of mayhem as a tool of revolt.

    En route to the 2027 elections, the Nigerians must resist every token and leash from foreign interests, rights groups and non-profits inclusive. But for a very few, they are all part of the metacoloniser’s poisoned chalice. The change they promise is oft insincere, self-serving, and borderline.

    Beneath their claims that they alone know what’s best for Nigeria, they only seek to hinder our progress march and infantilise the Nigerian mind, using psyops that foster hostilities and aggravate conflict. It’s all frantic, soulless posturing. In the end, they will claim victory for negligible successes and blame Nigerians for perceptible failures.

    True, fancy repute and ghostly online clout may earn venal activists, journalists and NGOs patronage in the short run, but they will lose it all in the long run to the same elements that taught them to be soulless mercenaries and hobbyists.

    We have used the soapbox and our presumed intellect as a mirror to reflect society’s hypocrisy, moral corruption, and injustice. It’s about time we walked our talk in the interest of Nigeria.

  • Boss Mustapha and the colour of Tinubu loyalists

    Boss Mustapha and the colour of Tinubu loyalists

    Boss Mustapha was appointed the Secretary to the Government of the Federation in Oct 2017; he was a card carrying member of Tinubu’s ACN. Unarguably, he utilized the ACN slot in the APC coalition. But Mustapha appears to be the first notable Tinubu supporter to question his principals Abeokuta 2022 declaration that he was the one responsible for bringing Buhari out of retirement after his three heroic failures of 2003, 2007 and 2011.

    Speaking during the public presentation of a book titled: According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesman’s Experience by Shehu Garba, Buhari’s former senior media assistant, he had argued that Tinubu did not make Buhari president. According to him, Buhari already had an established support base of 12 million votes, and the merger of legacy parties that formed the All Progressives Congress (APC) only added around three million more votes. For him President Buhari’s integrity, national stature and disciplined messaging were central to the breakthrough, not the insignificant three million votes from other merging parties.

    As expected, there have been various reactions to what many consider his attempt to rewrite recent history. First was the close associate and long-time ally of former President Muhammadu Buhari, Farouk Aliyu.  He disagreed with the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha’s claim regarding the role of President Bola Tinubu in Buhari’s 2015 election victory. Aliyu, as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today, last Thursday, dismissed Mustapha’s position as inaccurate, insisting that while Buhari’s 12 million votes were consistent, they had never been enough to secure a presidential victory until the 2015 alliance with Tinubu.

    Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Public Affairs described Boss Mustapha’s comment as a “disservice to our recent history”. “General Buhari would not have won the APC primary election at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos, in 2014 without President Tinubu, who mobilised the APC governors of the Southwest and the delegates to move Buhari’s way.” This was a primary in which some of Buhari’s northwest candidates did not vote for him.

    For  Osita Okechukwu, the immediate past Director-General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), and a founding member of Buhari’s CPC: …” Tinubu’s contributions were pivotal, describing them as the “premium golden victory votes”( Truly, without Asiwaju’s premium supplementary votes, there would have been no two-thirds spread and no victory,” adding  “.….My friend, Boss Mustapha, should be excused because he wasn’t with us in 2003 when Buhari began his presidential journey. He was in the ACN and wasn’t privy to the realpolitik that defined the alliance

    For Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, “Tinubu ensured that Buhari clinched the APC presidential ticket by overcoming strong challengers like Atiku Abubakar and Rabiu Kwankwaso.” Onanuga stated: “But more critically, he gave Buhari what he had always lacked — geographical spread and additional votes from the Southwest.”

    Read Also: How Buhari and I were admitted in same UK hospital before his death, by Abdulsalami

    The above testimonies by insiders with deep knowledge of what transpired behind the scene should have ordinarily lain to rest Mustapha’s attempt at revisionism.

    But beyond this, I think we should try to interrogate Tinubu’s choice of Mustapha, a man with drifting loyalty as his eyes and ear in the presidency instead of any of other so-called trusted allies he had invested heavily on.

    The choice of Mustapha was also curious because we know Tinubu is not a one dimensional thinker like most of us who often based our decisions on logic without taking into consideration the character of man, who God himself claim was the worst of his creation? And in any case, it is not as if Mustapha had not demonstrated he is a man of drifting loyalty.

    A few years to the 2023 election, Lagos took the federal government to court over control of waterways. Mustapha, an ACN card-carrying member working for federal government was on hand to defend his paymaster. They advanced all forms of arguments  but, without finding a theory  to support continued federal usurpation of powers of constituent units which had gone close to 70% when the likes of misguided Obasanjo started their misadventure that has brought our nation to its kneel.

    Then Boss Mustapha reached for the killer argument: he told Nigerians on a national television that “Lagos cannot take control of her waterways because most of the rivers flowing to the Atlantic Ocean did not take their source from Lagos”. This was in line with some bizarre argument of northern ethnic irredentist that claim all the oil deposit in the Niger Delta belong to the north because it was from there they flowed to the coast.

    For Tinubu, such sycophancy did little to tilt the choice towards his so-called trusted allies.

    That Tinubu spent billions to wage Kayode Fayemi and Rauf Aregbesola’s electoral and judicial battles; that he helped Ibikunle Amosun, an ANPP man to take over APC structure in Ogun; that Yemi Osinbajo confirmed he was the one mandated by Asiwaju to recruit 50,000 fingerprint experts from Britain who worked for six months in Nigeria to ensure Fayemi’s stolen mandate in Ekiti was retrieved; same with Aregbesola’s stolen victory in Osun, Oshiomhole stolen mandate in Edo and Mimiko’s stolen mandate in Ondo. That all of them were retrieved remains part of the nation’s documented history

    As it turned out, it was not long after Tinubu had carried Buhari on his back across the country to secure his second term victory that forces, who also thought they could be president in 2023, led by Tinubu’s ‘faithful’ boys –  Fayemi, Amosun, Aregbesola, joined  Tinubu sworn political foes including  Owelle  Rochas Okorocha,  Rotimi Ameachi, Nasir El Rufai and others to illegally remove Oshiomhole as APC chairman. They then handed the APC structure to their friend, Mai Mala Buni. Between 2020 and 2022, they tried to cast the APC in their own image in order to serve their interest in 2023.

    With their principal effectively shut out and their control of APC, Fayemi and Amosun set up their individual presidential committees in the various state governors’ offices from where they frittered away billions of state funds mobilizing support for their ambition across the nation.

    The Buhari mafia,  they cheaply sold their principal, started to speak of ‘a consensus candidate’ on the eve of a primary election and while some hawkish members insisted that Tinubu, regarded as front runner should be punished for saying Buhari lost elections three times after which he wept.

    If Tinubu had found favour in anyone in the two years he was pushed out of the structure he jointly built with others, by his own people, it was from Boss Mustapha, the politician with drifting loyalty. It was only from SGF office activities of those scheming to run a joint ticket with Nasir El Rufai, those shopping for delegates with their state funds and those who believed they have sealed the fate of their principal could be monitored and probably relayed back to the game master himself.

    Tinubu’s choice of Boss Mustapha as his eyes at the presidency therefore appeared strategic. The game master who boasted he is always ahead of his political foes was waiting for them in Abuja on the APC convention night-a night of many knives. It was here they discovered too late that they had all been swindled or to use Dino Melaye words “owo ti wo mi”. Monies paid in respect of promised delegate went into the water!

    When those consumed by blind ambition discovered there was no way to match Tinubu’s projected lead of over 2000, they started to step down one after the other with their tails behind their back. But everyone saw through their chicanery.

    Perhaps Tinubu’s secret to success is that he never holds political hostages. Everyone is his friend. While he understands all men are fortune seekers and all politicians are men of many words, he also knows that “there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face”, as Shakespeare puts it in Macbeth.

  • The vulnerable divide

    The vulnerable divide

    On May 28, Saratu and sons retired to bed amid the pitter-patter of rain that fell through the night. On Thursday, May 29, she woke up mangled by the floodwaters, reduced to destitution.

    First, the flood took her sons: three heartbeats that once pulsed into the seams of her world. The night before, they had prattled around a varnished lantern, planning imminent expenses and household chores. By dawn, Saratu was rid of her sons – aged 12, 15, 18 respectively. Three promising males, gone in one fell swoop.

    The torrential downpour of the previous night had triggered a flood. As the flood swept through Tiffin Maza and other parts of Mokwa Local Government Area (LGA) of Niger State, Saratu’s children drowned, one after another, as if the river intended to drink her womb dry.

    “All my valuables, my sons, gone…Where do I start from?” lamented Saratu, as she relived the deluge that turned her and about 416,600 residents of Mokwa into helpless refugees. Officials later confirmed at least 207 people dead and over 1,000 missing. The flood submerged farmlands, destroyed about 500 homes, and injured more than 500 people. The recent disaster is simply one among many in a country fast becoming familiar with floodwaters; in 2024 alone, flooding killed over 1,200 people across Nigeria.

    The impact of the recent flood hit hardest on Mokwa’s vulnerable divides: women, children and the elderly. This is not to underplay the impact on the male divide, but as I noted in last week’s edition, the consequences of such environmental disasters are usually more devastating on the vulnerable divide.

    Indeed, water may be the defining crisis of the country if great care is not taken. While we contend with ruination by drought and degrading water quality, Nigeria now has to do battle with and defeat the hydra-headed monster of incessant flooding.

    But as we grapple with conflicts triggered over scarcity of water and the now ubiquitous deluge, the government and other humanitarian actors must dig beneath the layers of Nigeria’s water crises and extend much-needed interventions to the most vulnerable divides.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s reforms boosting Nigeria’s economic recovery – FG

    There is no gainsaying that women and children compose the heart of the afflicted, bearing a unique burden of hardship. They are not only displaced from their physical homes but also pushed from the fragile balance of survival. Arjun Jain, UNHCR’s representative in Nigeria, observed that the floods are a fresh wound upon open scars inflicted by years of displacement and conflict on affected communities. “Communities which, after years of conflict and violence, had started rebuilding their lives were struck by the floods and once again displaced,” he said.

    According to the UNFPA’s 2022 estimate, about 6.7 million people – 80 per cent – of the 8.4 million people requiring humanitarian assistance in Nigeria are women and children and are in the three most affected northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. While more casualties are added, in real time, from other flood-prone regions in Mokwa, Niger State, Benue State among others.

    Within these population groups, some of the most vulnerable people with special needs are housewives and girls who, in some cases, face a triple burden of finding ways to survive, caring for their families and protecting themselves from sexual violence

    According to the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) for 2022, an estimated 1.4 million individuals (46% IDPs, 23% returnees, 31% host communities) will require Gender Based Violence (GBV) prevention and response services in the affected states.

    After the May deluge, an unwieldy social crisis manifests in Mokwa, accentuating rising gender inequalities. The risk for women and girls caught in such a situation often multiplies in real time, said social worker Omolara Odila, stressing that women are more vulnerable during emergencies and are left to navigate hardships that men rarely face in the same way. Many of them are poor, and the flood has rendered them even more vulnerable than most can truly comprehend.

    There is no gainsaying that several females face the brutality of survival on multiple fronts, battling natural calamities and the malevolence of males emboldened by a void of law and order. Health services are scarce; when available, they are stretched too thin to provide the care so urgently required. The risk of maternal mortality grows perilously high for expectant mothers, unable to access safe labour conditions amidst ruin.

    No doubt, the impact of floods often surpasses the loss of lives and damage to critical infrastructure. Not often highlighted is its impact on female health, as noted by experts. Damaged infrastructure may impede access to health resources, and pregnant women could be at a higher risk, thus leading to a rise in maternal deaths.

    Flooding, conflict and other humanitarian crises have only worsened the pre-existing severe reproductive health and GBV situations. Data from the 2018 NDHS show that a disaster-prone zone like the northeast, for instance, has a very high Maternal Mortality Rate of 1,546 per 100,000 live births as compared to the national value of 546 per 100,000 births.

    Teenage pregnancy is also high at 32%, a major health concern because of its association with higher morbidity and mortality for both the mother and the child. Only 22% of deliveries are assisted by a skilled birth attendant, exposing women and newborns to increased risk of death and complications.

    While the statistics are currently indeterminable for flood-ravaged parts of Mokwa, humanitarian needs remain critical and inaccessible to women and children, among other vulnerable segments of the displaced residents, despite interventions.

    In addition to population displacement, there are pressing public health concerns, as many women struggle to live in overcrowded and unsanitary IDP camps, without access to clean water, toilets, bathrooms, and emergency healthcare. Many women hitherto reliant on their missing or now incapacitated husbands and children suffer social exclusion and discrimination that limits them from education, employment and other social benefits.

    And when tragedy strikes, sometimes, its silhouettes prowl in government uniforms. The distribution of the relief materials has let loose a tide of distrust, prejudice, and unseen borders. In Wurin Gangare and Gudun Ruwa, for instance, resentment festers among bereaved families and displaced survivors of the flood as they trade accusations over relief workers and government officials’ perceived partiality in distributing relief materials.

    The Mokwa tragedy necessitates urgent reform. Emergency response must shift from reaction to prevention. Relief efforts must extend beyond provision of food to include menstrual hygiene kits, psychosocial services, and safe spaces for women and girls.

    The National Adaptation Plan and its outcrop, the proposed National Flood Insurance Programme, should include gender-specific coverage. These initiatives must be seen to truly provide a financial safety net for individuals, businesses, and communities. This will reduce the financial burden on the government.

    It’s about time we shifted focus from reactive emergency responses to proactive and sustainable flood risk management. Traditional flood management wisdom must be sourced from natives who have read rivers all their lives, and integrated into formal strategy.

    Gender-based violence prevention must be embedded in every resettlement effort. Water bodies must be desilted before the rains, not after the dead are counted, and drainage regulations must be enforced, not postponed.

    More importantly, the Mokwa flood disaster should not be a death sentence for the poor, nor must it be seen to impoverish otherwise solvent survivors. Women should never be treated as human junk, to be patronised for clout and exploited for political capital, only to be swept away with the silt afterwards. Rather, they must be co-opted as active partners in the recovery process.

  • ADC: The stirrings of an abiku

    ADC: The stirrings of an abiku

    Since its formation in 2005, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has never been a force to reckon with as a political party. It is more of a vehicle which utility value can only be guaranteed for the period that any user needs it. It is the same vehicle, wait for it, that Pat Utomi used to contest the presidential election in 2007.

    Wikipedia, the online information portal, even describes Utomi as ADC founder. This information may not be entirely correct. I stand to be corrected, though. I say so because Utomi cannot be the founder of such a party that has no ideology and stands for nothing, according to Dumebi Kachikwu, its presidential candidate in the 2023 elections. It has been 20 years since ADC was formed in 2005, and 18 years that Utomi was adopted as its pioneer presidential candidate in 2007.

     That was the party’s first-ever participation in national elections, and over the years, it has consistently failed to pull its weight in the polls, apparently due to the calibre of the candidates it presented. Elections anywhere in the world are not prosecuted by parading academic qualifications and pontificating on social and economic theories which a contestant cannot marry with the needs of the country (s)he wants to lead. The party and the person flying its flag must be versed in the art of politics, as well as its intricacies, and engage in acts that will endear it to the electorate.

    Utomi parted ways with ADC in the 2011 election, as he contested that year’s presidential poll on the crest of Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP) and lost again. Since then, he has been rolling with the waves like ADC. ADC has become the spirit or wanderer child known as abiku in Yoruba mythology. It is not a party in the true sense of the word. It is also not a platform. It is more of a vehicle that ambitious politicians board and disembark from when they get to their destination. If it does not take them to their destination, they dump it, and look for another.

    This has been the fate of ADC. Its presidential candidates come and go. They do not stay to build it to a structure that can stand its own against other parties. Some strange bedfellows have now found home in the party. After a long search for a platform to build their so-called national coalition to challenge President Bola Tinubu in 2027, they finally settled for ADC. They may have berthed, but from the look of things, they seem not safely anchored yet. They are facing threats from some of those they met in the party who are protesting what they called the ‘hijacking’ of ADC.

    The coalitioners or coalitionists, if you like, are desperate. Their desperation drove them to takeover ADC from a pliable national chairman, Ralph Nwosu, who has since stepped down from office for the soldier-politician David Mark, who was senate president for eight years. The row which broke out after the coalition’s takeover of ADC is proof that the deal was not tidy. Many things go into the signing, sealing and delivering of such arrangements, really.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s reforms boosting Nigeria’s economic recovery – FG

    Certain, if not all interests must be taking care of to avoid any fallout, the sort of which we are now witnessing in ADC. Kachikwu, who is leading those against the takeover, by virtue of his status as the party’s presidential candidate in 2023, should from all intents and purposes, be one of such interests. His candidacy may have expired with the election won and lost, but that should not have diminished his importance within the party. If he had won in 2023, he would have automatically become the party’s leader. His loss should not deprive him of that status, to the extent that deals would be struck behind him.

    Though, strange bedfellows, Atiku, Nasir El-Rufai, Rotimi Amaechi, Rauf Aregbesola and Mark, among other leaders of the coalition settled for ADC because the party was divided. Where the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which they intially sought to ‘acquire’ stood firm because of the principled stand of its presidential candidate in 2023, Prince Adewole Adebayo, ADC was an easy pick.

    Reason: Nwosu had the upper hand in the fight for ADC’s control with Kachikwu, and went with the coalition. He was excited when he gave away the party to the coalition in Abuja. Amid the pomp and ceremony, the crack within ADC surfaced. ADC is not for sale, Kachikwu thundered at another ceremony where he held court. ‘What the coalition bought is bad market as you cannot build something on nothing’, he said. This has always been the case with ADC in its 20 years of existence. Dead today and alive tomorrow.

    It is this abiku nature of the party that has stunted its growth. Beyond the singing and dancing at the coalition’s ‘acquisition’ of ADC is the character of its champions. They are worlds apart on many fronts. They are diametrically opposed to one another on many socio-economic issues. They are only united now in their desire to wrest power from Tinubu. It is their right to seek to lead the country, but first, they should tell the people what they have to offer. Some of them had the chance to lead as vice president, senate president, governor and minister in the past, with nothing to show for their tenures in office.

    Today, they are claiming that there is hunger in the land because of the economic policies of the present administration. What was the economy like in the immediate past administration in which Amaechi and Aregbesola served as transport and interior ministers? How did Atiku, who has suddenly become an anti-graft czar, help to fight corruption as vice president between 1999 and 2007? It is funny to see these people coming out to seek office again, considering how they ran the country in their own time.

    Nothing best describes how some of them are than what Atiku and El-Rufai said about each other a few years ago during a rift sparked by the former Kaduna State governor’s memoir: ‘Accidental public servant’. It was a messy affair as the duo engaged in verbal warfare. El-Rufai, who believes that he is a saint, spoke of how Atiku influencèd things in the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) then in order to get favours for some firms. El-Rufai was BPE director-general and Atiku, National Council on Privatisation (NCP) chairman, by virtue of being VP.

    In a statement entitled: ‘Atiku haunted by his corrupt demons’ on November 15, 2016, El-Rufai challenged Atiku to visit the United States (US) if the ex-VP was not culpable in wiring $40 million to that country in the famous Halliburton case. He added that Atiku was obsessed with the ambition of becoming president, and as such, ‘fond of spewing out lies in an attempt to rejuvenate his image’. What more can anyone add to this? As the Yoruba saying goes: fun r’awon niwon ma fun r’awon l’ogun je (they will poison themselves with their own hands).

    How then can they redeem themselves under a party that is dying and returning to life every now and then? After 2027, that is if the party survives the Kachikwu onslaught, the electorate may not hear of ADC again until 2031, which is another election year.

  • Too much politicking; little thought on economy

    Too much politicking; little thought on economy

    It is amazing how much time and effort Nigerian leaders spend on the revolving doors of who will be chief of state and the ethnicity of the person and little thought of the resources in the hands of those who are charged with affairs of state and the provisions for the citizens of the country. It seems that what is important for the so-called leaders of our country is state capture by those at the top while the development of the country is kicked forward to the future.

    All the news one hears is the plotting against the president using all means available including regional, ethnic and religious slurs to damage those at the top of government without caring for the irreparable damage caused to the individual concerned and the whole  country itself as long as their goal of pulling down government edifice is concerned.  The people doing this were either those in the 16-year dominance of the PDP or those who were in government for eight years under President Muhammadu Buhari and who just exited positions of power two years ago and who have been shoved aside just for two years, and whose insatiable appetite  for resources and power need to be satiated.

    These people forget that they do not own Nigeria and that this country belongs to all of us and not just to a regional and religious clique and their satraps. Most of these people also served in the various military governments preceding the so-called civilian government beginning in 1999 which was really a militarised civilian government. These people do not care about the future of the country. They have no economic plan for the future of the economy coming after the end of the petroleum and gas economy which the country has been enjoying since 1970. It is either they are too dull or stupid or just don’t give a damn as long as they get power and loot whatever is left of the economy and the future of Nigeria.

    Whatever we may say about the military governments of General Yakubu Gowon and his military successors, they had plans for the future of Nigeria.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s reforms boosting Nigeria’s economic recovery – FG

    Before the military take-over of Nigeria in 1966, our country had well thought-out development plans and manpower plans to go with them. The civilian government only had six years to implement its plans before it was overthrown. Some of its plans were a carryover  from regional plans which were well thought-out and based on the comparative advantages of the regions in agricultural produce of cocoa and timber in the West; palm oil in the East, and groundnuts and hides and skin in the North. Petroleum production was at its infancy then. There was coal in Enugu and cement at Nkalagu in the East, tin and columbite production in the North and the West seemed to thrive on agricultural produce of cocoa, rubber and timber even though there was gold in one or two places but they were not significant in production.

    All the regions including the newly created Midwest Region relied on their agricultural boards for planned development. When prices of their agricultural produce were high, the excess price was saved and when prices fell, the various boards were able to pay reasonably good prices that would not destroy the agricultural economy. When the military took over in Nigeria in 1966 and despite having to fight to keep the country together for three years, it kept the marketing boards. From 1970 when the war ended and oil began to flow in large quantity and Nigeria became an oil economy and it abandoned the marketing boards, it replaced them with the petroleum oil marketing boards, gas production board and fertilizer production company. The military also set up car and trucks assembly plants with Mercedes Benz in Enugu, Volkswagen in Lagos, fiat in Kano, Rover in Ibadan and Peugeot in Kaduna, and batteries, windshields-making in Ibadan, and agricultural ploughs and army tanks in Bauchi and manufacturing of rifles and even trainer aeroplanes in Kaduna, and above all, steel and iron and aluminium complexes in Ajaokuta and Ikot Abasi respectively.

    The military was responsible for roads and flyover construction in Lagos and building of the military training institutions in Abuja, Kaduna and a strategic training institution in Kuru as well as military barracks and several universities and polytechnics. I am not saying the military did an excellent job in the years of their monopoly rule because corruption was rife but they left landmarks for the eyes to see!

    Thank God for President Tinubu who seems determined that his civilian regime will leave landmarks marks behind in the Lagos-Calabar express road and the Badagry-Sokoto express road.  He should be encouraged to complete these two projects because on their completion the civilian landmark depends. If only for these two landmarks he deserves to be re-elected in 2027.  I personally feel it is too early to start campaigning for 2027 when the present regime still has two years to go. The creation of regional commissions, which I hope are precursors of the regional governments many have been campaigning for, should be seen as the way to create weaker central government away from the present octopus and leviathan in which power is concentrated in one centre  to which all states run to for support is just not sustainable nor equable.

    One man cannot be expected to use too much power judiciously without stepping on the toes of others. We must constitutionally work for a system where power is diffused and politics is decentralised and all the political squabbling and fighting are localised and therefore not as destructive as they are today.

    We need a decentralised economic system run by forward looking people probably made up of technical experts chosen by politicians but not bogged down by the revolving doors of who is in  or who is out  of power. This system must be headed by a transparently honest men, surrounded by other visionary people who will think more about the people and their future and not the pockets of the politicians who need help to be satisfied with what they have already rather than hankering after what they honestly don’t need for which they want to kill or be killed. This is a country where the economic path to growth is confusing; it cannot be socialism or state capitalism because we have tried it in the past and failed. We do not have too many people with capital to embrace capitalism as the system of economic growth unless we go with the South Korean way whereby the state deliberately creates a group of capitalist companies which then help build the country’s economy and which are beholden to the country. Whatever economic plan we adopt must be debated before adoption. This is the serious task before the nation and not the political noise we usually engage in.

  • Nigeria, behold thy new messiahs

    Nigeria, behold thy new messiahs

    Our tragedy is that those who have brought the nation to its knee always think Nigeria suffers from collective amnesia. And with history not being taught in our schools, many Nigerian youths below 32 years of age have no idea of how some of the  military-baked new-breed politicians, who last week assembled  in Abuja in the name of coalition, were driven only by a desire to continue sharing our resources just as soldiers do of conquered territories.

    No one puts this better than Dino Melaye, a man who without any evidence of work before joining President Obasanjo as special assistant on youths, later a senator but today adorned his tastily furnished Abuja house with expensive state-of-the-art cars. When asked for his reason for going into government some years back, he said without reflection that he was in power to ensure Nigerian youths get their own fair share of national resources. Melaye never heard of American president, John F. Kennedy who admonished American youth never to ask what America can do for them but what they can do for America.

    The stars of the gathering of the aggrieved include 78 years old Atiku Abubakar, 77 years old David Mark, 68 years old Rauf Aregbesola and 63 years old Peter Obi, driven by a resolve to get a man who stopped their milking of Nigeria out of the way. It is times like this we miss Ken Saro Wiwa, master of sardonic humour who often succeeded in making us laugh when he in fact had expected us to cry.

    Atiku has been trying to rule Nigeria since 1992. His big break though however came in 1998 when Obasanjo, relying on the Yar’Adua factor picked him as his vice presidential candidate. But Atiku Abubakar, driven only by self-interest, in less than four years started scheming to deprive his principal an opportunity for a second term by aligning with James Ibori as the coordinator of south-south governors at war with federal government over resource control.

    Regretting his choice of Atiku as his VP later, Obasanjo in his book, Under my Watch said this of his deputy: “His propensity to corruption, his tendency to disloyalty, his inability to say and stick to the truth all the time, a propensity for poor judgment, his belief and reliance on marabouts, his lack of transparency, his trust in money to buy his way out on all issues and his readiness to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety, truth and national interest for self and selfish interest”. This forced Atiku, in 2007 as a sitting PDP VP, to seek rehabilitation under Tinubu’s ACN. In 2013, he waited long enough to pull down PDP along with Bukola Saraki, Aminu Tambuwal and his clique, driven by only self-interest, with his loss to Buhari in the APC presidential primary, forced him back to PDP where he paired up with another roller-coaster, Peter Obi, who had just finished his second term as governor of Anambra as APGA candidate.

     Atiku’s attempt to foist himself as PDP candidate in 2023 in breach of PDP rotational constitutional provision, thereby depriving the Southeast, the back bone of PDP, forced Peter Obi to pull down the whole PDP edifice and returned to his aggrieved Igbo people who gave him between 95 and 97% of their vote. In 2025, resistance by Bode George and the likes of Nyesom Wike, who funded and remained the only symbol of opposition while Abubakar, Obi, Tambuwal, Rotimi Amaechi and Nasir El Rufai and Dino Melaye were behaving like a woman with five husbands, is the source of last week Abuja coalition driven not by their alternative to Tinubu’s policies or humbled by what they had failed to do while in power for 16 years.

    One of our other old wine in new bottle is 77 years old David Mark who has been in government since he was first appointed chairman of abandoned properties in Port Harcourt at 38. He became governor of Niger State in 1984 as commissioner for communication during Babangida regime he was largely remembered for declaring that telephone is not for poor people.

    He was said to have led soldiers of fortune opposed to actualization of MKO Abiola’s June 12 mandate, allegedly volunteering to personally shoot Abiola if he was ever sworn in. Mark served the interest of the rich. Forbes publication for instance claimed number of private jets jumped from 20 to  150 while Bombardier, the Canadian aircraft manufacturer claimed Nigeria ranks behind the United States,  United Kingdom and China among those that top their order for the supply of their aircraft type.  

    For all his years as Senate president, there was no motorable road between Abuja and Otukpo, since Mark, as number three man, as Nyesom Wike put it last week, had a helicopter to ferry him from Abuja to Otukpo. The road abandoned by Mark for 16 years is now under construction by Tinubu’s government he and his frustrated group is trying to uproot. Perhaps the true test of his relevance in his Benue State is to interrogate how after 16 years, his daughter contested an election under another platform and won.

    The truth be told, for all his years in power, David Mark was never on ground for his besieged people. Like the typical Middle Belt soldiers of fortune traditionally  known as hired mercenaries for  fighting Fulani wars, his concern is self-preservation as his people were being slaughtered in their hundreds by herdsmen,  while successive Benue governors were chased from  pillar to posts by armed bandits. David Mark only worked for David Mark. How else does one explain David Mark who has been in government for over 40 years, pre-empting EFCC by dragging a body that had accused him of confiscating the senate president mansion, a national monument, without paying the economic rate to court?

    Rauf Aregbesola betrayed those who helped him to power. With no deep root in Osun politics, he was foisted on Osun with the help of the likes of Pa Bisi Akande. Even after winning the election, Olagunsoye Oyinlola declared a fatwa banning him from Osun. And when he tested the resolve of Oyinlola, he only managed to escape with his life as bullets freely rained on his car. He eventually retrieved his mandate through the judiciary. When he fell out with his benefactor, he joined the opposition PDP to frustrate the ambition of his APC candidate. He did not stop there; he publicly stood against the presidential ambition of his benefactor. And when that failed, he joined a group bent on removing his benefactor from power last week. He has forgotten how he was locked up like a criminal ostensibly for forging a police report. Those who see him as an asset forget if there is anything Yoruba detest; it is a man without character.

    Rotimi Amaechi betrayed Goodluck Jonathan to bargain for position in Buhari government in which billions of Rivers State money went into bringing about. He was speaker of Rivers State for eight years, governor for eight years before emerging as Buhari’s super Minister of Transportation for another eight years, during which time he was pursuing various degree programmes across the world. By diverting most of his ministry projects to Katsina State, he had thought that was all needed to become president of Nigeria.

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    His loss to Tinubu in APC primary tuned him into a sore loser, refusing to campaign for his party’s candidate.

    Amaechi had earlier told us he is hungry because he depends on the good will of his wife, who he said is an industrialist. Wike, a man who should know better, as his former chief of staff, pleaded with the president to release the suppressed NDDC report which allegedly revealed the humongous amount of money Amaechi’ wife allegedly cornered from NDDC, every month ostensibly to train Niger Delta women.  Amaechi also admitted owning a Rolls Royce which he said was a gift. Wike who also admitted to owning one last week revealed that Amachi’s was a gift from Rivers State government contractor. We are waiting for Amaechi to come clean of these serious allegations.

    Another star of the group is Dino Melaye who  was on hand to ensure that the leadership of the eighth senate was secured through display of audacious bravery, deploying self-help strategies of areas boys or what legendary Fela would describe as “igboju pass power’ (reckless bravery) often managed through bully and blackmail.  Melaye did not deny that senate rules were forged, his argument was simple: “If the senate rules were forged, it meant the confirmation of the AGF, service chiefs and the passage of the budget stands invalidated”. He and his group threatened to impeach the president if the case was not dropped. He was also known for demonstrating his audacious bravery by mobilizing 80 like minds senators to accompany Saraki’s wife to honour EFCC invitation to intimidate the judge of Code conduct Tribunal (CCT)

    Dear compatriots, herein are the baleful legacies of our new messiahs.

  • Towards a one-party state?

    Towards a one-party state?

    Some people including my humble self are wondering whether the political game in Nigeria is the struggle to attain a one-party state in the country. One has lost the count of which governor of a state with his entire state legislature has defected to the ruling party. When it started, it attracted my serious attention but now I just ignore the ridicule because that is what it is. Those of us who were born at a time when Nigeria was undergoing democratic tutelage under the British, we sure know what democracy means. It is not that there were no crossing of carpets in Britain or the United States but these were due to ideological cleavages not to ensuring staying in power in the face of a rolling and approaching federal powered train.

    This tide of desertion from one party to another just shows that there are no political parties in Nigeria but electoral contraptions put together to contest elections and share state offices for the benefits of individuals and not the people. Parties have been reduced to mere companies whose shareholding directors build them to contest elections and to share profits at the end of the venture more or less as venture capitalists looking for best results and dividends.

    Our ancestors would turn in their graves seeing what their successors have turned party governments into. The parties unlike in the past do not have party organisations or party bureaucracies which in the past of my youth were nearly as powerful as state bureaucracies and were responsible for party ideas and ensuring that members of parties in government stuck to party ideologies. I remember that in the days of good parties, members in government and boards and parastatals contributed percentages of their salaries ranging from five to 10 percent to the party treasuries from which party officials were paid.  No one knows today how parties are run financially and where parties get the funds for running their bureaucracies. 

    In the past, officers of parties monitored what members in government were doing and whether they were complying with party ideologies. In the good old days of the Action Group (AG) in Western Nigeria, no party member in government could have more than a plot of land in state land. I remember when my brother, Chief Oduola Osuntokun was Minister of Lands and Housing in the old Western Region and his ministry controlled all state land in the region stretching from Ibadan to Lagos including Maryland, Ikeja, Ilupeju, Ikorodu road etc., he neither allocated a plot of land to himself, children or relatives because he already had a single plot in the government reservation in Ibadan.

    I remember Nasir El Rufai while defending allocation of state lands in Abuja to himself, his wives and infant children when he was in charge of the federal capital territory saying they as Nigerians had rights to state lands!  I hate to be personal. Most public officials including bureaucrats now routinely build estates on state land without batting an eye lid. It has become an unsaid ideology for state officials to fortify themselves financially with government funds against a future when they would not be in government and the revolving door of corruption goes on. If there were serious parties holding officials feet to the fire of party ideologies, this situation would have been avoided.

    Permit me the necessary digression. There is nothing new in advocacy for one party rule. This was greatly advocated sincerely by some post-colonial rulers like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Modibo Keita of Mali, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and even conservatives like Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal and   Kamuzu Banda of Malawi. Their arguments in those days was that in African polities before the advent of colonialism had no political parties divided along ideological lines nor was there anything like government and opposition and that whenever the head chief – Oba, Sarkin or whatever he was called spoke, that was it and there was never any room for opposing views. The argument is that the modern democratic praxis was divisive and waste of time that an African or developing country can afford.

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    To me these arguments are time serving and untenable and outrightly unintelligent. In any system, there should always be room for arguments after thorough discussion. The search for truth is attained through arguments and logic in the Hegelian fashion. Even in a family, there should be room for discussion and different opinions if there is to be progress in the family. If this argument is true of families, it must be true of nations and states. Our post-colonial leaders also said that because of the plural natures of our countries, one party system promotes unity whereas when there is room for more parties than one, different groups or ethnicities tend to form ethnic and tribal parties as illustrated by the example of the multiplicity of parties in Nigeria along tribal lines. This argument applies to countries as small as Switzerland and Belgium where division along parties seems to mirror the ethnic divisions in the countries.

    My argument is that a free country should tolerate parties formed along ideological or even linguistic or ethnic lines. A constitutional provision could be made for harmonisation of ethnic and tribal identities without silencing people in a homogenised national government. The examples of almost all the  post-colonial territories that embraced the one-party dogmas which have now reverted to multiparty democracy has proved the  lack of authenticity of one party system. Any party system destructive of individual freedom and all the tenets of liberalism is not worth it. All the dictatorship of the past that had tried to justify autocracy have ended in abject failure and the cracked up idea that one-party rule promotes rapid economic development have been exposed for what it is as a deceit and facade for corruption and illogical arguments.

    I honestly believe all reasonable people must be opposed to one-party state because it promotes dictatorship and rather than stability, it promotes instability and military dictatorship because when there is no other way of removing a government, people resort to coup d’état by the military or rebellion of the people which is worse than military take-over. I would rather we continue to have the chaos of multi-party rule than unified dictatorship. Liberal democracy may not be neat and may not the best system in the world but all other systems have been proved not to be better including one party system.

    What Nigeria is inching to be is not even an ideological one party system like the failed command communist system in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which failed miserably. What seems to be going on here is a ramshackle one party system which is not backed by any well thought out ideology but a belief in joining a moving train which if you don’t jump on it quickly, one may be left behind. There is no target or goal or mission but just to remain in office for personal selfish financial self-aggrandisements. This is not a good argument to support one party state which this mass defection towards the ruling party will lead to.

  • Soldiers of June 12

    Soldiers of June 12

    DAUDA MUSA KOMO, remember him? He was the soldier who struck fear into the Ogoni people of Rivers State as their administrator between December 1993 and August  1996. To the Ogoni, the native home of renowned playwright, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed with eight of his kinsmen on November 10, 1995 by the Abacha junta, Komo was a terror.

    The execution of the Ogoni 9 was a bestial act carried out under judicial cover. History will remember Komo’s role in what culminated in their execution. Komo’s tenure in Rivers where he was born in 1959, and died last May 30, left Ogoni worse off. The scars he left in Ogoni are still as visible today as they were then because of the way he handled things. He was more interested in working with Shell, the multinational oil firm, than the people.

    As Fela sang in one of his popular songs, Komo left the military trademark of sorrow, tears and blood (STB), in his trail after his exit from office. Since that incident which happened in 1994/95, Komo has been in the black book of many Nigerians, irrespective of where they come from. But this same Komo who acted more as a dictator is now being painted as a democrat by a fellow officer, the irrepressible Col Umar Abubakar Dangiwa, who deserves the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) that he got. As a witness to the June 12 history, I can attest to his role. That is a story for another day.

    Komo’s name appeared prominently on Dangiwa’s list of army officers who fought for the revalidation of Chief M.K.O Abiola’s mandate, but who were not given national honours during the celebration of Democracy Day last June 12. Dangiwa too was not among the honorees, but the President corrected the omission later by giving him CFR. In his reaction to the President’s decision, Dangiwa said there were other officers deserving of such honours too, and listed Komo, among them.

    To Dangiwa, Komo was a democrat at heart. However, he looked more a dictator, a terror, and a nightmare in the face to those he was supposed to lead in Rivers then. It is obvious that besides Komo, there are other names that would not have made it to that list, if it had been compiled by other persons, regardless of their profession. The post-June 12 actions of many officers on Dangiwa’s list did not portray them as soldiers of democracy; they acted more as opportunists when fortune smiled on them. I am not here to bùry anybody, but to state the facts as they are.

    This is a matter that is in public domain and which was witnessed by many who have come of age today. We know of some of the things that Dangiwa wrote about, though we were not in the barracks with him. We got tips about those who wanted the election results announced and Abiola formally declared winner; as well as those who did not want the election upheld because a court had stopped the poll; and those who wanted Abiola arrested and detained, with the key thrown into the ocean.

    Above the level of officers listed by Dangiwa as June 12 ‘heroes’ were their superiors, the Generals, who were also said to be in favour of Abiola taking office. These Generals were not on the list. It was believed then that if these Generals had their way, they would take over from the maximum ruler Ibrahim Babangida and hand over to Abiola, who was duly elected President on June 12, 1993. But Sani Abacha took over, and nothing of sort happened, to the shock of many, who had in their benign ignorance, counted him among those Generals.

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    What did we not hear then? Just wait, you will see. As soon as Abacha comes to power, he will invite Abiola and handover to him to form the government. This ING (interim national government) led by Chief Ernest Shonekan is what it is fidi e (interim), it won’t last. Awon soja ma gba s’egbe, wa gbe ijoba fun Abiola, eyin ema wo (soldiers will kick ING aside, bring in Abiola and hand over to him and end this interim nonsense). These and many more were the tales the public was regaled with.

    So, when Abacha removed Shonekan on November 17, 1993, the people’s expectations were high as they looked forward to him handing over to Abiola. It turned out to be  the beginning of the nation’s long night – four years of the locust that only ended following Abacha’s death on June 8, 1998. Abacha sent Komo to Rivers to do an hatchet job. Komo executed it with clinical efficency, using his sidekick Major Paul Okutimo to make life hell for Saro-Wiwa, especially. It was Komo’s and Okutimo’s poor handling of things that fueled the Ogoni crisis. It eventually led to the unfortunate killing of the Ogoni 4 in 1994, an act that appeared to have been orchestrated to get Saro-Wiwa.

    Saro-Wiwa and Abacha were no strangers to each other. They served together in Alfred Diete-Spiff’s executive council in the state in the late 60s and early 70s. Saro-Wiwa was a commissioner, while Abacha was then a military commander in Rivers. You will think that they should be friends, but it was otherwise. Abacha could not stand the sight of Saro-Wiwa. Thus, he needed a trusted officer to send to Rivers to stop the environmental rights campaign, gathering momentum then, which was championed by Saro-Wiwa and Ledum Mitee, among others. Mitee escaped the hangman’s noose in 1995, as the court freed him to give a semblance of a fair trial of the Ogoni 9.

    Komo fitted the bill, and he discharged his mandate to his master’s delight. What Komo and Okutimo did in Rivers between 1993 and 1996 paved the way for the Niger Delta crisis which engulfed the oil-rich region in the early days of the return to democracy in 1999. Komo might have fought for the revalidation of Abiola’s ‘sacred mandate’ as the business mogul himself put it in the heat of the fight for June 12, but he changed course when he became Rivers administrator in December 1993, barely five months after the annulment of the election.

    Dangiwa, Komo and others might have fought for the restoration of June 12, but some of them did not stand to the end. They changed gear when they became politically exposed. Only a few remained true to their commission to the end. No matter what some people, whether as soldiers or politicians might have done for June 12 in the initial stage of the struggle, once they capitulated thereafter, they they no longer deserve any honours. As the scriptures say, only those who persevere to the end will be saved. Likewise, only those who stood on June 12 to the end, should get national honours.

    It will be absurd for anyone to suggest today that Abacha be honoured for fighting for June 12 when he did not do the needful when he had the opportunity to do so, no matter the impression he created that he believed in the cause? Like him, others, many of them his subordinates later got into political office, either elected or appointed, and messed up. Such people too deserve no national honours. Some even traded their mandate for political office, and got away with it. Their betrayal of the June 12 cause does not justify the honour they got. But then in life, some get luckier than others, no matter their misdemeanours.

    This does not mean that everybody should benefit from their betrayal of a cause they once fought for. Komo, who was from Kebbi State, is dead now. God rests his soul. Since the June 12 saga will outlive those of us who witnessed it all, it is important that things are put in perspective for the sake of posterity. By the way, another officer who deserves to be honoured for his stand on June 12 is Major-General Ishola Williams. I know his time would surely come. These are the kinds of officers we should celebrate, and not those who either as politicians or  soldiers traded with June 12.

  • Death flow at dawn

    Death flow at dawn

    There is the likelihood that the Niger River got straightened along its spine and tributaries to make room for houses and livable acreage. When nature fights back, flood becomes the shibboleth of horror across areas submerged. Yet, it is hardly “flooding” as Toni Morrison would say, it is “remembering.” It’s the water simply “remembering where it used to be.”

    Let’s assume, on the flipside, that the case in Tiffin Maza was remarkably different; that its land tract was never underbed to a rippling river. Let’s assume that the tragic flood that overran the once vibrant agrarian township, tucked in the heart of Mokwa, Niger State, was triggered by human infestation of nature’s waterway, does it justify the devastation wrought by the May 28 – 29  downpour?

    Not by a smidgen, I’d say, irrespective of the Federal Government’s claims otherwise. The government’s attempt to assign blame was

    telling. The Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation, Prof. Joseph Utsev, denied allegations that the Kainji and Jebba dams’ discharge caused the flood, attributing it instead to “torrential rainfall, climate change, and blocked waterways.”

    Unregulated building activities and encroachments, he said,  blocked a seasonal tributary of River Dingi, which normally remained dry except during periods of heavy rainfall. The absence of efficient alternative drainage channels also worsened the situation, he claimed.

    What has been omitted, whether deliberately or negligently, is that just weeks earlier, in April, the Jebba dam released water, flooding farmlands and killing 13 people. There had been warning signs, yet no precautions were taken. There was no coordinated evacuation plan. No community-level awareness drive and pre-flooding simulation. Just the same bureaucratic shrug that always follows a Nigerian tragedy: “We regret the loss. We will investigate.”

    Such devil-may-care attitude neither assuages the bereaved nor corrects the faultlines that triggered the disaster. And Mokwa, still reeling from the devastation of the May flood, can only wait with bated breath for the next deadly wave of flash flood.

    Ask the beleaguered residents of Tiffin Maza. Between the dirt paws of the Mokwa, Niger State township, a persistent draft of misery leapfrogs across the ruins, as if to reenact the tragedy caused by the heavy rainfall that started on the night of May 28, resulted in the deadly deluge of May 29. By the time the water reached Madarasatul Tarbiyyatul Islamiyya, a Quranic school hosting about 870 almajiri boys in Tiffin Maza and the mosque opposite it, it was no longer a river but a maw. A cold, muscular predator that peeled boys from sleep like overripe fruit and flung them into its mouth.

    AbdulMalik, 15, from Sokoto, screamed his mother’s name until the flood washed it from his tongue. Abba, also 15, from Sokoto, thrashed in the dark until his frail limbs stilled. Lawwali, 16, from Niger, equally got swept away, vanishing beneath the serpentine tide. Salamanu, 18, from Niger, had barely opened his eyes when the water closed its mouth around him. Muhammadu, 20, from Niger, equally drowned. The harder he fought, the deeper he sank. The sixth boy, unnamed, was found with a body battered beyond identity, yet no less mourned.

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    They were almajirai, mostly underage boys, but the water devoured them and swept them away in its tide. More than 500 homes were destroyed. Some 121 were injured. More than 3,000 individuals, were displaced in the flood that impacted over 9,000 people in total, according to the Director of Information, Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Dr. Ibrahim Audu Hussaini. Hussaini.

    But beyond the scale of the Mokwa disaster lies the scandal of who died. Not just how many. The almajirai, a floating population of underage boys subjected to religious training, are among Nigeria’s most systemically neglected citizens. They rarely feature in demographic data and public safety planning. They are educated without infrastructure, sheltered without walls and raised without parental care. Thus, their vulnerability when disaster strikes—be it fire, flood, or famine.

    The reasons for their vulnerability are manifold but not mysterious. Almajiri children live in open, low-lying, and often unsanitary spaces: mosque courtyards, abandoned buildings, under market stalls, and bridges. They often lack any form of early-warning safety nets. 

    Sources living close to the Madarasatul Tarbiyyatul Islamiyya, the Quranic school in Tiffin Maza, claimed that about 120 pupils died in the flood, but the school’s proprietor, Mallam Hassan Alhaji Umar, claimed that only 48 almajirai were missing, of which six have been certified dead.

    A 2024 study conducted across Kano and Kaduna found that three out of every six almajiri boys die before adulthood, exposed to hunger, violence, disease, and now, environmental disaster. The study concluded that for every six almajirai, three die, two get lost, and only one survives to adulthood. These numbers depict our national shame in flesh.

    At the heart of the Mokwa calamity lies a double failure: of infrastructure and imagination. The first is concrete: bridges not maintained, dams poorly managed, and urban planning left to guesswork. The second is cultural: a failure to imagine children like the almajirai as deserving of the same dignity, safety, and future as any other child.

    The flood exposed both failures. The town’s arterial bridge collapsed. Emergency workers were cut off, and recovery was delayed. An excavator had to be brought in to retrieve bodies from the wreckage. And when, days later, the authorities declared rescue efforts suspended, their words were chilling in their finality: “There is no one left to find.”

    But perhaps the greater tragedy is that most Nigerians have accepted and moved on, while bracing for the next catastrophe. In a country where disaster is regularised, death becomes ambient. Nigeria has learned to tuck children into unmarked graves while ignoring their names. This is scary.

    The Mokwa flood is not merely an act of God but the culmination of decades of state failure, misgovernance, and strategic neglect.

    To prevent future tragedies, Nigeria must radically rethink its approach to disaster preparedness and the structural neglect of vulnerable populations, like almajirai. The almajiri system requires a complete overhaul driven by a proprietor-government partnership. All almajiri schools should be registered, and the pupils must be provided with proper shelter, healthcare, and psychosocial support.

    Equally urgent is the need for climate-resilient infrastructure. Flood-prone states like Niger must invest in embankments, efficient drainage systems, and elevated housing designs built with the realities of a changing climate in mind. Disaster preparedness should begin at the grassroots and involve both secular and non-secular schools. Community-based early warning systems, whether through SMS alerts, local radio broadcasts, or traditional town criers, can offer lifesaving seconds of notice and foster a generation capable of responding more intelligently to emergencies.

    We cannot respond to crises effectively if we do not know who lives where. Every almajiri school and informal community must be mapped and integrated into a digitised database and national emergency frameworks.

    The government must also must also account for poor urban planning decisions: settlements allowed in floodplains, blocked drainages left unchecked, and warnings ignored. Only through such coordinated, humane, and forward-looking action can the memory of those drowned in Mokwa, especially the unseen almajirai, be honoured beyond lip service.

    After the flood, there were no marble tombstones or state funerals in their wake. Just quick burials in shallow, anonymous graves. Nigeria has already forgotten them. But their memory lingers in a sandal half-buried in mud. In a slate smudged with rain. In the eyes of those who scurried from death that they might collapse into life.

  • Benue killings: Those Nigeria must appease

    Benue killings: Those Nigeria must appease

    The Inspector General Of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, during last Tuesday press briefing at the Force Headquarters in Abuja confirmed the arrest of 26 suspects for  their alleged involvement in the massacre at Yelewata community, Benue State during which over 200 people including women, children were mindlessly killed inside their torched houses or shot as they tried to escape. The arrest came barely a week after President Tinubu’s condolence visit during which he had asked “How come no one has been arrested for committing this heinous crime in Yelewata. Inspector General of Police, where are the arrests?

    Although the Director General of NOA, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, celebrated the swift action taken by the police and other security agencies after the president’s directive which he claimed has “brought a sense of relief to the affected communities and the nation at large”, I am however not sure many will agree with him that “the arrest was a testament to the commitment of the security agencies to protecting the lives and property of Nigerians”. If anything, it has only brought back bad memories of the Obasanjo and Buhari years when the impression was given that those visiting violence on Nigerians were invincible ghosts.

    It is on record that the police and the military maintained their narrative even after a particular governor of Niger State repatriated some herdsmen and their cattle back to Kaduna State in buses. The tale was the same even after the then governors Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Aminu Masari of Katsina and Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna who at different times negotiated and in fact paid the criminals some ransom to stop their assault on Nigerians had confirmed that the criminals laying siege on the middle belt were immigrant Fulani herdsmen. Sadly few arrests were ever made.

    But that changed following the visit of Sheikh Gumi to the killer herdsmen’s den where he took photographs with them and returned with his controversial recommendation that those he described as disgruntled herdsmen be compensated, rehabilitated and integrated into the security forces. Curiously, government accepted the recommendation and in no time thousands of repentant criminals emerged from the bush and were rehabilitated in government houses while their victims remain condemned to IDP camps.

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    Indeed, last week police action after the president’s marching order has raised two fundamental issues. First, it confirmed the fears of Nigerians that there are powerful forces backing and sponsoring herdsmen insurgency in Nigeria whose toes the security forces dare not step on.  And second, the theme of ethnic cleansing and land grabbing which echoed during the Tor Tiv’s speech to welcome the president was a sad reminder that the endless killing in Benue is about land grabbing.

    Indeed, if there are those who doubt the claim that the battle is over Plateau’s and luxuriant Benue Basin trough, the gathering of about 93 members of the Fulani communities of Jos North, Jos South, Riyom and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas of Plateau State at Crest Hotel in Jos on May 19, 2013 to dialogue together and map a way forward will lay that to rest.

    The meeting was facilitated by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre with Afuzere, Anaguta, Beron and Hausa to dialogue about incessant crisis that have engulfed the area and the way forward;

    The gathering rejected the labels of ‘strangers and settlers’ in Plateau State by the Berom; disputed the Berom ownership of “Jos North, Jos south by the Riyom and Barkin Ladi LGAs” insisting that ownership of land has for long been taken away by the Land Use Act and the same vested on states government.  Finally, they claim that “there is no law in Nigeria that allows any person or groups of persons to identify some persons as strangers or settlers and no law equally allows any persons or group of persons to identify themselves as indigenes of a place”.

    Unfortunately, this deliberate misinformation has been used to embolden criminal herders who believe they are fighting a just war. And it was of little relief that our past leaders did not have the political will to challenge those they believe are more equal than others before the law. And this is why I will not advise the president, in spite of his Dutch courage and penchant for taking risks, to confront the representatives of owners of Nigeria.

    My unsolicited advice to the president with a deep Yoruba culture will be to start the appeasement with Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II. Here is an Emir who at different times in the past, dared Presidents Jonathan, Buhari and in recent months, President Tinubu whose government’s directive that he should have a low key Sallah celebration because of volatile situation in Kano, he flouted. A letter inviting him to Abuja by the police was quickly withdrawn with an apology.

    It is on record that reaction to Sanusi’s ‘fatwa’ on Benue started with an attack on Governor Ortom who narrowly missed death when he was chased by heavily armed herders from his farm. Ever since, there has been no relief for people of the middle belt.

    The orgy of killing which started with the killing of 86 became intensified with Buhari declaring  on April 12, 2022,that there would be no mercy for those behind the killings of more than a hundred in a series of attack on the middle belt region. In 2018, following the killing of about 200 in Gashish district in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area, about 1,116 children and 1,821 women were crammed together inside the hall of Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society used as IDP camp in Anguldi-Zawan in Jos South LGA.

    Julie Bala, Director of Plateau State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) on  July 8, 2018 confirmed  38, 051 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) were taking refuge in 31 camps in the state following June 23-4 suspected herdsmen attack on  villagers in Barkin Ladi, Riyom, Mangu, Bokkos and Jos South local government areas.

    On April 12, 2022, President Buhari who had by this time been rechristened ‘mourner in chief’ was in Ganga Village in the Kanam Local Government Area of Plateau following the burning down of houses that sent 4800 people to IDP camps. Many believe if Muhammadu Sanusi II lifts his ‘fatwa’, Benue and the whole of the Middle Belt will know peace.

    Another powerful Nigerian that needed to be appeased is Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State. First as governor, he is a Leviathan who operates above the law. It is on record that he once lionized the killer herdsmen on a live TV by defending their right to carry AK-47. We can only speculate about the source of the AK-47 assault guns the police seized from some of those arrested for last week massacre of about 200 in Benue.

    Bala did not stop there; he also said immigrant Fulani in any part of Nigeria from any part of Africa is a Nigerian. Again, we can see where the crooked logic that the Land Use Act has taken away the right of land ownership from indigenes was coming from.

    Although, Bala is not Fulani, he needs endorsement of the hegemonic power in the north to fulfil his presidential ambition even if it means being in office while others wield power as was the case with his kinsmen, the assassinated Tafawa Balewa, our first Prime Minister.

    Of course we also have Abubakar Malami, Buhari’s attorney general. It is on record he tried to equate Igbo traders engaged in legitimate business of trading in the north with armed herdsmen who secretly took over reserved forest in the south to commit heinous crimes. Many senior lawyers faulted his fraudulent attempt to equate constitutional provision for free movement of Nigerians in their country with marauding cattle indiscriminately destroying subsistence farmers’ farms across the country. Unfortunately, his odious comparison is what herdsmen are using to visit violence on subsistence farmers across the country.

    Finally, others that need appeasement  include Salisu Ahmadu, national president and Umar Shehu , national secretary, of Fulani Nationality Movement, (FUNAM), who once jointly signed a joint statement where  they literarily took responsibility for the killing of 86 in Benue during the Ortom administration  when they attributed it to a revenge attack over the killings of Fulani in Nasarawa State, adding that because the federal government was incapable of protecting the interest of Fulani in Nigeria, the Fulani in West Africa have been invited to raise funds and prepare for war. 

    President Tinubu must positively deploy his celebrated tact to persuade those who are unarguably above the law to understand that distributive justice, even when alternatives including coercion and monopoly of violence on members of your federating states are available, is the best safeguard for peace, stability and shared prosperity in multicultural deeply divided societies.