I AM NOT am alarmist, but talking from experience I can imagine what motorists will go through when work begins on the Berger – Kara axis of the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway on Saturday. That portion of the road will be partially closed to facilitate the work. By partial closure, Julius Berger, the contractor, means that the road will be narrowed from four lanes to two or even one, if need be. With the heavy traffic on that road, this will inevitably lead to congestion.
Since Berger began working on the road, motorists have not been finding things easy.
I remember when the firm was working on the Long Bridge, it was hell using the road for those of us living along that route. Going and coming was hell. You left home in the morning with trepidation. When returning from work, no matter how late, you also did so with your heart in your mouth. This is why the residents are in jitters over the planned partial closure of that section for three months beginning from Saturday, which is just 48 hours away. The residents knew what they went through in the past and they do not wish to relive that experience.
Berger, the Federal Ministry of Works, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), the Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Corps (TRACE) of Ogun State and related agencies will promise heaven and earth to ease motorists’ pains during the period, but when it matters most, none of them will be around. Make no mistake about it, this work will take a toll on human and material resources. Those that will bear the brunt most are the residents and workers in the immediate vicinity of the firm’s operation. They will not be able to access their homes and workplaces easily.
The most important aspect of the work to be done during this period is how to manage traffic. The public is jittery because it knows it cannot rely on Berger for help. Those that should be of help will not be there when they are needed most – when traffic is heavy with no room for vehicles to manoeuvre. Traffic on that road is highly unpredictable. How do you explain having a gridlock on the road between 2am and 5am?
As they did in the past, Berger, the works ministry, FRSC and TRACE have promised to make things easy for road users. They did not tell us how they will do that, except to urge us to obey traffic and also use what they called ‘’alternative routes’’. In a situation like this, you cannot rule out chaos. I saw a glimpse of what to expect from Saturday on my way to work on Tuesday.
Berger workers were placing boulders to narrow the lanes. This alone led to traffic build up from Berger to Kara. We know that the road is being rehabilitated for the good of motorists, but their discomfort should be minimal pending the completion of the work.
Talking about ‘alternative routes’, how good are they? Those in authority are quick to direct motorists to these ‘’routes’’ whenever there is an emergency like this, forgetting that for some there may be no alternative route to their homes because of their location on the expressway. How do you expect a resident of Sparklight Estate or Magboro or Arepo or Aseese to go and take any of the listed ‘’alternative routes’’? The routes, according to FRSC, are Epe – Ajah – Ijebu Ode, Lagos – Ota – Itori – Abeokuta and Ikorodu – Sagamu. For such a resident, these are no alternative routes, but a voyage of discovery. When they are not Mungo Park or Christopher Columbus, must they drive round the world in order to leave or get home?
What they need is the construction of link roads near the expressway, which would serve as alternative routes during emergencies like this. To now ask people to travel round the world in order to beat traffic near their homes is not proper. The government should always consider the people’s interest in whatever it does and avoid taking last minute remedial measures that may achieve nothing. Even those suggested alternative routes are not good. They need to be rehabilitated just as the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway. Motorists are, however, forced to take them whenever the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway is locked down.
Another way out may be to get all articulated vehicles off the expressway during this period. These trailers and trucks can be diverted to these alternative routes until the job is completed. But is it still feasible to do that now? It appears too late in the day because of the need to hold talks with them and convince them on why they should avoid the expressway between August 3 and October 31 in the public interest. Going forward, the nation should start thinking of creating a dedicated lane for these long vehicles as a way of addressing the recurring gridlock on the expressway.
For now, road users wait with bated breath as they look forward with anxiety to the partial closure of the only way to and from their homes. May we survive the envisaged suffering and hardship. Certainly, this too shall pass.
The common touch
BORNO State Governor Babagana Zulum is not your typical Nigerian governor. He stands apart from many of his peers with his way of life. He is simple, ascetic and down to earth. They are not made like that anymore. Borno is lucky to have him as governor.
He is the kind that the state, which is being ravaged by Boko Haram, needs at a time like this. The prof, who rode bicycle to and from work as a teacher, paid a nocturnal visit to some hospitals on Monday. He was shocked by what he saw – many patients in a state of helplessness without doctors and nurses to attend to them. He sent anonymous distress calls to those on call, they ignored him.
They thought it was ‘those disturbing patients’ again. Your Excellency, you saw firsthand how those who should save lives allow people to die from their acts of dereliction. In all, 10 doctors and scores of nurses were absent from work. If there was an emergency that night, your guess is as good as mine as to what would have happened to the patient. We need not tell the governor the action to take. Indeed, when the righteous rule, the people rejoice.
Budget preparation is strictly a function of the executive. The legislature debates, examines and authorizes spending of public revenue. To protect the interest of their constituencies, the legislature, like all other actors such as NGOs, pressure groups and international donors, are expected to lobby the executive at the budget preparatory stage. The constitution clearly identifies areas of cooperation between the two arms of government in the budgeting process as implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting. Absence of constitutional ambiguity has however not stopped massive corruption in the name of constituency projects by the legislature and their collaborators in the executive.
Between 2011-2016, N350billion was appropriated by the National Assembly in respect of about 2,516 projects spread across the country. Those projects according to Civic Technology Organisation-BudgIT never took off even after full payment had been made. In its July 2016 survey of 436 projects across 16 states, 211 projects covering water bore-holes, rural electricity and roads projects and primary health centres designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor according to the body were abandoned. The legislature was soon to confirm that the whole idea of constituency projects was designed to serve none but themselves. In July 2016 Abdul Mumin Jibrin while reacting to his removal as chairman of the appropriation committee following a claim he ‘unilaterally padded the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State attributed his travails to his refusal to ‘admit into the budget almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers”.
Not much has changed under President Buhari. In 2015, speaking at a one-day summit organised by the House of Representatives and Conference of Speakers in collaboration with the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), the then Secretary to Government, Babachir Lawal, told Nigerians that his principal was posed to change the practice whereby “constituency projects had been the conduit pipe through which lawmakers embezzled money”.
Only last Saturday, four years after that solemn promise, BudgIT’s Tracka’s Head, Ilevbaoje Uadamen told Nigerians that “Constituency projects costing about N270 billion, nominated by federal lawmakers between 2015 and 2019 are lying uncompleted or poorly implemented across the country”. He also drew attention to ”wasteful empowerment projects” in the 2019 Zonal Intervention Projects which according to him account for N58 billion of the N100 billion budgeted for Constituency Projects.
If anything has changed, it was that the 8th assembly law makers became more daring intimidating ministers and threatening to impeach vice president Osinbajo as Acting President for criticizing diversion of budget allocations from government critical projects to law-makers’ pet constituency projects. They even held the nation to ransom by sitting on the president’s budget proposals for six months.
The government however appears determined to continue the battle with the law makers. The Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Professor Bolaji Owasanoye recently inaugurated the Constituency Project Tracking Group (CPTG) steering committee with members drawn from ICPC, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Media and other stakeholders such as the National Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS) to look into federal constituency projects that had been funded from years 2015 to 2018.
But I think the new initiative is bound to fail. Massive budget fraud in the legislature with active connivance of a few in the government is a mere symptom of our crisis of nation building. The current system, everyone agrees is not built on justice. The leaders have no faith in a system while the led have no axe to grind with their representatives who are in Abuja sharing a national cake that belongs to everyone but to no one. As for the led, prof Wande Abimbola, former vice Chancellor of University of Ife and a former senator says : the peoples mindset is “we vote them (the law makers) to go and steal and bring home the loot” He narrated how on one occasion while travelling from Ibadan to Lagos in danfo(commercial bus) the other passengers who did not know he was sitting in front had wondered why a former senator like him would be going around by taxi with one in fact suggesting “people like him who could not steal should not be voted”
If the president really wants to know, the constituencies whose war he sets out to wage do not begrudge their leaders for collecting their own share of Abuja free cake. They are at peace with their Obas and his traditional chiefs who receive 5% of LGA Abuja free allocation without doing any work They have no axe to grind with their local council counselors who put off massive building after six months in office, their Abuja representatives who without asking what the people want institute irrelevant empowerment progammes , give out free motor cycles, sewing machines to favoured members of the community or nominate members of the community as contractors for projects that had been designed to fail.
It will also interest the president to know that the same constituencies will ensure no one toys with funds contributed at village level by villagers for development of their communities. No one steals from his community. In the first republic, no one, and not even the federal government dared toy with funds generated through the labour and sweat of the people in the regions. It was said the western region once threatened secession from the federation if anyone touched cocoa money they were using to prosecute their free education programme.
But unlike during the first republic when the state was strong with stakes holders sustaining it with revenues they generated from their regions, the Nigerian state today is an orphan with Abuja, a no man’s land. This is why none of the law makers accused of constituency project fraud or who according to Wall street Journal receives between N160m-N240m annually as constituency allowances, the bulk of which goes into the kitting of the law makers’ political war chests and their loyalists have been reprimanded or recalled by their constituencies since 1999.
It is also on record that in the first republic, poverty reduction was through creation of self-sustained and skill acquisition programmes for rural people as against today’s free gift of commercial motor cycles and sewing machines procured through Abuja funds that belong to everyone but no one. Effective constituency projects such as roads, provision of health care facilities, construction of class rooms, school laboratories and libraries were funded through the taxes of the people and their farm products as against current practice where according to Tracker, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) allocated N1.5b in the 2019 budget for ‘for provision of ICT, Mathematics, and English language textbooks for JSS1-3’ with no details of the states, local governments and senatorial districts of beneficiaries. It is obvious why similar government efforts since 1999 have only earned us a place in Guinness Book of records as a nation with over ten million children of school age out of school
The problem is our dysfunctional structure. And to get government off our back, we must end mainstreaming which we embarked upon in 1970 when our current leaders resuscitated the dead British policy that allowed them seize resources of conquered territories for ease of administration. After seventy years in the wood we need to retrace our steps back to the ‘path to Nigeria freedom’ never taken.
I read with tremendous pleasure the news of the first graduation of medical doctors by Ekiti State university after struggling with the program for a decade . The college of Medicine was first conceived during the vice chancellorship of Professor Akin Oyebode In 1999 when Otunba Niyi Adebayo was the Governor Of Ekiti and therefore the visitor to the university .The plan then was to make the then university of Ado -Ekiti now Ekiti State university a comprehensive university with professional courses in Medicine , Law , Engineering and Business and financial studies. The problem was that establishing a medical school was like establishing a university in terns of financial outlay , staffing, laboratories at premedical and clinical levels and also building a reasonably well equipped and well funded teaching hospital . Unfortunately Ekiti had ambitions then but was short on funds . When the medical school was approved by the Senate of the university it only existed with only one staff, the provost and his official car and a small Bungalow on the grounds of the General Hospital.
When in 2003 Otunba Adeniyi Adebayo lost to Mr Ayo Fayose the so called medical school was one of the victims to the financial reality of the state . Governor Ayo Fayose set up a fact finding panel to look into the tertiary institutions in the state and in particular the embryonic medical school.The Governor graciously made me the chairman of the panel .The provost of the college professor Oyebola of the Physiology Department at the university of Ibadan and Professor Akin Oyebode the erstwhile vice chancellor were my school mates and juniors at Christ’s school so I knew they meant well for the institution . I remember telling the provost that he should not have accepted the job when he knew the university did not have the resources to mount a program in medicine .My panel submitted its report to governor Fayose giving him three options . 1 .That he had to find money to support the program of the medical school . Since we knew the State was impecunious ,we suggested syndicating a loan which would have run into billions over a five year period of planned development.
2.Make the students of the university medical school pay economic fees for their education and training . We knew the Governor would find this recommendation politically unpalatable especially when he had publicly and for political reasons slashed even the little tuition paid by the students in the university
Cancel the college and ask the university to seek the help of neighboring medical schools to absorb the students .
The governor in his wisdom accepted the third option and as far as I was concerned he had no other option and I wrote in the papers to support him . For this I was abused and someone said my medical professor brother would turn in his grave to condemn me .
When in the whirligig of time Dr Kayode Fayemi became governor after Fayose and disputed governorship of Oni I was made the Pro chancellor and chairman of the new Ekiti State university which was the amalgamation of three universities of Education in Ikerre, Science and Technology In Ifaki and the old university of Ado -Ekiti.Working with the new vice vice chancellor professor Dipo Aina ,a first class scientist from Obafemi Awolowo university, Ile -Ife and with the listening ear of Dr Kayode Fayemi an erudite scholar in his own right we worked with the provost professor Fola Esan , a pride to our state and Nigeria in the field of medical sciences and professor Yinka Afolayan to resuscitate this Abiku medical school . The Governor had to squeeze water out of Ekiti State’s financial stone to begin building our pre medical laboratories. God smiled on us through TETFUND to bequeath buildings and furnishing of physiology, biochemistry, Anatomy, medical library, and Animal farm on the main campus. These buildings compare with the best in Nigeria . We then built a medical students hostel on the grounds of the General Hospital to house some one hundred clinical students and some offices for clinical staff. I cannot remember all those who worked tirelessly to accomplish all these but I cannot forget professor Akin Araoye who brought his experience from Ilorin and Makurdi to bear on his work as Provost. There was also Professor Oluwadiya among others .This was the stage of the development of the medical school which in spite of the prodigious effort of our colleagues in the university and the state government we could not get full accreditation for our medical school.
When Fayose was elected governor in 2014 for a second term I left even though some people tried to persuade me to stay . I did not want to give Fayose the fun of firing me on the radio . Obviously not much was accomplished in the next four years of Fayose stomach infrastructure campaign.
After Dr Kayode Fayemi returned to office as Governor he seemed to have been embarrassed that the medical school was still not accredited. In the meantime the medical school had lost some of its staff to the brand new Afe Babalola university which has a medical school and a new teaching hospital attached to it .The efforts of everyone including the current Pro chancellor and Chairman of Council Professor Tale Omole and the vice chancellor and provost hugely assisted and supported by the governor Dr Kayode Fayemi have finally paid off and the Labour of those who have contributed to making our dream of a medical school come to reality has not been in vain .But this is not the end of the road in fact this is the end of the beginning .We still need to build a teaching hospital near the university itself because the present so called teaching hospital is inadequate and it cannot be expanded because of the topography of its location among granite hills in Ado Ekiti . The university site is flat and more easily amenable to development.
I have a personal interest in the growth and development of the medical school and Ekiti State University of which by the grace of God through the instrumentality of Governor Kayode Fayemi I was the first Pro chancellor and chairman of council. Before I left the university as Pro chancellor we brought all the scientific papers of my late brother and an internationally acclaimed neuroscientist Professor Kayode Osuntokun to the medical library . We endowed a prize of N1000,000 ( one hundred thousand Naira) to the best graduating student of the college. The money for this prize endowed in perpetuity was contributed by Chief Dele Falegan ,former Director of Research in the Central Bank Of Nigeria who said he owed his life to God and the medical diagnosis of Kayode osuntokun . I added my contribution and the rest was provided by the Kayode Osuntokun Trust .Chief Dele Falegan said the council of the university should name the medical school after Kayode Osuntokun who is Ekiti State’s contribution to Nigeria and global medical scholarship . The council which I headed did not take up this challenge at a time when the medical school itself was inchoate and in any case it would have been inappropriate for me to sit on a council naming the school after my uterine brother that I loved so much . I would have been accused of nepotism! Whenever the time comes and if it is deemed necessary to accord recognition to Ekiti academic heroes I know his name will come up. I remember what professor Chike Obi the late Nigerian mathematician told me in a chance meeting in Ibadan , I believe in 1984. I introduced myself to him as a professor Osuntokun from the university of Lagos and how delighted I was in meeting the great man . He told me he was pursuing some documents about his retirement. As usual he railed about the insensitivity of our government that would abandon a great man like him to be eking out the last days of his life on some miserable pension . I of course agreed with him . He said are the Osuntokuns not from Ekiti. I answered in the affirmative. Then he said “you Ekiti people in a generation caught up with the best in academics in Nigeria .” I said tongue in cheek particularly in mathematics where the late Olubunmo was a professor of mathematics before him . Not many people know this ! “ Ekiti no dey carry last” I just hope the young generation would not celebrate the achievements of their ancestors but build on it and make Ekiti the Silicon Valley of Nigeria ! There is no other way to develop a state that has no mineral and little agricultural resources but enormous manpower. There are good examples like Japan and Germany to follow with their achievements based on no natural resources but enormous gray matter and know how . That is the stuff of Ekiti of old are made off and one hopes the present generation will not betray the past and will hand over a winning Barton to the future anchors in our human relay race .
IBRAHIM El-Zakzaky is a child of belief. From childhood through adolescence, he was raised on a stern diet of toil and reward; thus his life from infancy till he clocked 16 was characterised by two things: attending madrassah (Islamic school) and helping his father on the farm. On the farm, his father guided his wiry hands to till the soil, till it sprouted with fruits.
He learned, however, that the harvest is a bonus, and the process is of essence. At the madrassah, he was fed a spiced gruel of Islamic monotheism: “Without faith nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible,” he learned. Born May 5, 1953 in Zaria, Kaduna State, El Zakzaky experienced rebirth in the folds of religion. By the time he clocked 16, he had hazarded his brand of belief. Inured to its precepts, he wore it like a fine robe.
His journey into faith, however, accentuated in 1969 at his encounter with formal education while attending the provincial Arabic School in Zaria. Back then, the Native Authority (NA) trained Arabic teachers for its primary schools.
From the school, El Zakzaky proceeded to the School for Arabic Studies (SAS), Kano, from 1971 to 1975 and the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he studied Economics from 1976 to 1979. El Zakzaky graduated from ABU with a First Class degree.
As an undergraduate, he was an active member of the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN) at both campus and national levels. In 1978, then Secretary-General of the MSSN (ABU), he was fingered as the brains behind the nationwide demonstrations in support of the inclusion of Shari’ah in the Nigerian constitution. He was elected Vice-President (International Affairs) of the MSS (National Body) in 1979. Through those years, he quit farming and committed to the pursuit of knowledge.
He led a very busy life studying, teaching and proselytising Islam (da’awa). It was during this period that he attracted the attention of the Nigerian authorities.
“Some might say they are the years of struggle. This struggle contains learning, teaching and of course, calling others,” he said in a past interview. He stated: “Perhaps, it is calling others that the authorities do not want. If I may confine myself simply to learning and teaching, maybe there would be no problems.”
But El Zakzaky would not be confined to learning and teaching, instead he embraced his passion to “call others.” Immersed in his pursuits, El Zakzaky meant to influence his world. Then he sought to change it. Among other things, he couldn’t bear what he considered the misconceptions and frequent attacks against Islam.
He couldn’t be silent in the face of random accusations against Islam as a tool of oppression, nor could he bear silently what he termed the oppression of Muslims, thus he “started to defend the religion” and at the same time, spread enlightenment about “what it truly stands for.”
To this end, he established the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), an off-shoot of his student idealism, in ABU, in the 1970s. The Iranian revolution, coming in 1979, inspired him. To him, Iran epitomised what Muslims in general could accomplish.
Thus motivated by the Iranian example, he took a sectarian path and over time, adopted religious markers of Shi‘ism. It’s noteworthy that the IMN credo fol- lows the kind of “Twelver Shi‘ism” dominant in Iran, rather than the Isma‘ili Shi‘ism that exists in East Africa or the Zaydi Shi‘ism prevalent in Yemen.
For instance, the IMN celebrates Shi‘ite holidays such as Ashura, which commemorates the death of the Prophet’s grandson Husayn, whom the Shi‘a consider one of their Imams. Shi‘ism is only one aspect of the move- ment, however: in some ways, El Zakzaky adopts the conventional Nigerian Muslim religious leader’s pragmatism; for instance, he discourages some Shi‘ite practices, such as praying for Imams to intercede with God on one’s behalf. While his home town, Zaria, remains his base, due to his repeated clashes with authorities, he has spent years in prison: 1981-1985, 1987-1989, and 1996-1998 and now, 2015 till date.
Across northern Nigeria, El Zakzaky’s followers are seen by authorities as troublemakers. For example, in 1991, one of his followers led a violent protest in the northern city of Katsina, targeting the newspaper, Daily Times, over alleged blasphemy. In 2007, the IMN clashed with authorities in Sokoto, far northwestern Nigeria, sparking a legal battle that lasted until 2015.
There is no gainsaying trouble sticks to his fine robes, like ivy to a laurel bush. Consequently, El Zakzaky has been jailed several times for his ideas by successive military regimes, from Obasanjo to the late Abacha regime. Charges against him varied from sedition to inciting disaffection to government. In the Abacha era, he was arrested for declaring that, “There is no government except that of Islam.”
His total prison experience is nine years in nine different prisons across the country – the most famous being Enugu (1981-1984), the Interrogation Centre of NSO, Lagos (1984-1985), KiriKiri Maximum Security (1985), Port Harcout (1987-1989 and 1996-1997) and Kaduna (1987 and 1997-1998). Nonetheless, from where El Zakzaky worked, the crusade was going just great.
It was “the will of God.” Now, if only everyone else would see it that way. A problem of perception? No president underestimates El Zakzaky. Doing so could imperil “everyone,” successive military regimes had believed thus his imprisonment over nine years; from Olusegun Obasanjo to the late Sani Abacha/Abdulsalami Abubakar military junta. And dreading what the 66-year-old could lead his Shi’ite group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) ,to become, the incumbent administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, took him into custody since his first term in 2015.
El Zakzaky was detained along with his wife, Malama Zainab, on December 12, 2015, following deadly clashes between Nigerian soldiers and his followers in the city of Zaria. At least, 60 people reportedly died in the violence, which the Nigerian Army claimed was a response to an assassination attempt by the sect’s members on the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai.
The clashes and El Zakzaky’s subsequent arrest sparked protests by his followers and further aggravated the tension between the Nigerian state and El Zakzaky’s IMN.
The seeds of the lingering conflict were sown at a July 2014 Shiite religious procession in Zaria, during the administration of former president, Goodluck Jonathan. At the pro-Palestinian rally, known as a Quds Day procession, 34 protesters, including three of El Zakzaky’s sons, were reportedly killed by security operatives, who alleged self-defence. More recently, Precious Owolabi, a corps member serving with Channels TV, died after suffering a gunshot to the stomach as members of El Zakzaky’s IMN clashed with the police, on Monday, in Abuja.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, Usman Umar, of the FCT Police Command, was also killed in the crisis. The IMN said 11 of its members were also killed during the agitation for the release of their spiritual leader, El-Zakzaky, who was taken into custody by Buhari’s administration four years ago.
The making of another insurgency Shiite Muslims are generally well-integrated in Nigeria and do not suffer direct discrimination or persecution. El Zakzaky’s followers, however, have a strained relationship with the Nigerian security apparatus. In the wake of a recent Shiite unrest, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, the current Sultan of Sokoto warned the authorities to “exercise restraint” in order to avoid creating another Boko Haram-style militant group.
He warned the authorities about the potential of radicalizing the group and its followers.
“The history of the circumstances that engendered the outbreak of militant insurgency in the past, with cataclysmic consequences that Nigeria is yet to recover from, should not be allowed to repeat itself,” said Abubakar.
And just recently, Femi Falana, a lawyer and human rights activist, warned the Buhari government on the implications of detaining El Zakzaky, along with his wife, despite court orders for his release. Falana said the nation risks another insurgency, should El Zakzaky die in detention, just like it happened with Boko Haram after its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed by policemen, while in detention in Maiduguri in 2009.
“El Zakzaky must not be allowed to die due to medical neglect as it may provoke a crisis of monumental proportions. Therefore, the federal government should implement the unanimous resolution of the House of Representatives for the release of El Zakzaky and his wife without any further delay”, Falana warned in a lengthy statement on Tuesday.
He warned the Federal Government of Nigeria against its violent approach to handling members of El Zakzaky’s IMN, who are protesting the detention of their leader, despite court orders for his release. On Tuesday 23, one day after the IMN clashed with the police, members of the House of Representatives were divided at a plenary session, over the call for the release of El Zakzaky.
While the House unanimously granted the prayer that the heads of security agencies be invited to address the lawmakers on the measures being taken to check the Islamic sect, they voted out the prayers calling on the Federal Government and the Kaduna State Government to obey court orders and release El Zakzaky.
At the backdrop of the proceedings, the mainstream and social media pulsate with arguments for and against the continued detention of the Shiite leader and his wife. While some declared that the group should not hold Nigeria to ransom and constitute public nuisance, other pundits alleged that the Federal Government should respect court order and release El Zakzaky and his wife. A suit challenging the illegal detention of El-Zakzaky and his wife was earlier decided in their favour by the Federal High Court on December 2, 2016.
The presiding judge, Kolawole J, at the period, reportedly directed the Federal Government to release the couple from unlawful custody, pay them N50 million reparation and provide them with a temporary house since their house got burnt when the army laid siege to it. The Federal Government hasn’t complied with the judgment to the chagrin of El Zakzaky, his wife and the IMN.
To the government, El Zakzaky and his IMN loom as a threat to the continued peace and stability of the country. Neighbours give conflicting accounts of their encounters with the sect. While some alleged nasty encounters being bullied off public roads by IMN processions, others recount palatable experiences sharing neighbourhood with the sect.
But Sheikh Ya-aqup Yahaya Katsina, who has been standing in for El Zakzaky since his detention in 2015, stated that IMN is not a terrorist group and it does not have problems with anyone. He said: “If we say something, it will appear like we are praising ourselves. But if you ask them, then you have the ability to arrive at an average opinion.
But quite okay, you may find someone saying he is not happy neighbouring our members, because not all people are the same. But if you can get a hundred responses, check the average, you will see 75 or 80 per cent are quite happy cohabiting with us. We don’t have a problem with anybody. If anybody experiences a problem, it would not be from us but from him. “In the case of Katsina State, we initially began to stay at Unguwar Yari Quarters.
When we left there to another location, from that very day, the residents counted their losses from thefts, because we provided security for the quarters while we were there. In this community where we relocated to, nobody had been in the position to leave his car or property outside, talk less leaving the lights on. But since we became part of this community, several neighbours from the beginning to the end leave open their doors and windows till daybreak.”
Through the crucible of his detention, the possibility of his release seems bleak and his ardent followers worry about his safety, warning that he musn’t die in prison. If that happens, the possibility of martyrdom looms for El Zakzaky; the IMN leader whose brand of Islam, rankles an ominous note to the state and cultivates a fiery model of belief.
His critics accuse him of extremism even as his apologists argue otherwise.
“What have we done that warrants us being branded terrorists? Why should we be called terrorists? But everybody knows Al-Qaeda are terrorists. Taliban are terrorists. Boko Haram are also terrorists. Why should El Zakzaky sect be regarded as terrorists? Are we doing the same operation? Calling us terrorists is clear cheating. We have the right to practise the religion of our own choice as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution. No one can stop us,” argued Sheikh Katsina.
Beneath the resonance of his words, a heartfelt plea steals into the atmosphere; the message is clear-cut; Katsina and his brothers in faith seek the unconditional release of El Zakzaky.
“He is not a terrorist,” they claim. True, El Zakzaky, until his arrest, didn’t live in a cave. He didn’t retire into the innards of some forest reserve to assign murder, or traffic in the image of an ascetic warrior-prophet.
El Zakzaky lived in a concrete house amid the flurry of neighbours and mundane concerns, where his sharp words elicited sharp blows of inquisition by defunct military and incumbent civilian administrations.
The frightful ending of Precious Owolabi’s life is a brazen incantation of bestiality over mankind. It exposes, among other things, the relationship between government and the governed as a barbaric ritual drama where the performers periodically swap masks.
Owolabi’s demise, however, occurs jarringly in the drama; his corpse manifests as a sick rose wrapped in menacing public thorns.
The corps member serving with Channels TV, suffered a gunshot to the stomach as members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), otherwise known as Shiites, clashed with the police, on Monday, in Abuja.
As Owolabi ebbed with his final hours, the Shiites and the police hacked at each other with sadomasochistic zeal – the Shiites energised by conviction and support for their incarcerated leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, and the police, sceptred by conviction of the state’s supremacy over outlaws.
At the backdrop of the mayhem, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Twitter reaction, that, he “most deeply commiserate with the families of Precious Owolabi” and another casualty of the crisis, “Deputy Commissioner of Police, Usman Umar, of the FCT Police Command” could be mistaken for artifice – a sterile rusing deception of a ruling class lamenting a pain it does not feel.
Does Buhari truly feel the pinch? How affected is he by the deaths? The IMN said 11 of its members were killed as they agitated for the release of their spiritual leader, El-Zakzaky, who was taken into custody by Buhari’s administration four years ago. Is Buhari regretful of Shiite deaths – whatever the true number of casualties?
Was his ‘twittered’ grief yet another maneuver mimicking compassion? What would Buhari say or do about the likes of Aisha Sani, the eight-year-old who was reportedly kidnapped two weeks ago from the Islamiyya School she attended with her siblings, in the Tudunwada quarters of Kano State by an unidentified lady?
Aisha’s kidnappers eventually demanded N200 million as ransom. Of course, the Sanis couldn’t afford it. Four days ago, Aisha’s corpse was found; she was hacked to death by her kidnappers. Her parents have since taken custody of her body for burial.
Cut to a recurrent panorama of mayhem and bloodshed from dusk through dawn across Borno, Zamfara, Benue, and the country’s major highways and transit towns, and you have a ghastly mosaic of the terror afflicting Nigeria.
The greatest terror, however, subsists in our complacent leadership, on whose watch, hundreds are hacked to death, monthly. In the wake of the carnage, public officers and politicians trade blames across party lines. While they play to the gallery, poor, helpless kidslike Aisha and youths like Owolabi, are murdered in cold blood.
President Buhari should flinch. He must understand that he is responsible for the safety of every Nigerian. He could, for instance, do with a more convincing response than silence to Aisha Sani’s murder and ‘twittered’ grief over Owolabi’s demise.
His expression of regret over Owolabi and Umar’s death is not enough. Regret is inadequate balm for eight-year-old Aisha Sani’s death and the carnage foisted on the country recurring conflict. The mayhem persists due to avoidable lapses in the security network and Nigeria’s culture of bigotries.
And, yes, the Shiite group overreaches itself by constituting a public nuisance but Buhari must learn to handle their grievances with tact, humility and wisdom characteristic of a mature leader. He must be decisive within the ambits of the law, and he must neither be condescending nor disdainful in his response to the debate triggered by the crisis.
Wild complacency, irrational brick bats, and mindless bloodshed have shaped our politics for too long. Many Nigerians, youth in particular, are probably living through the worst decade of their lives. They read of bloody genocides at dawn, poverty and strife in the next city while many more live through such. Add these to an economy patched with foreign loans and dubious tales of growth; if Nigeria is prospering, it hasn’t manifested in the lives of the citizenry.
It took a perfect assemblage of bad leadership to get to this moment. It would take an imperfect cannonball of a character to lead usthrough and survive it. Is Buhari such a man?
He was supposed to be a dependable President: a patriot of uncommon grit and fibre, whose fabled Spartan discipline, humaneness and decisiveness would signal the end of Nigeria’s recurrent carnage and locust years. Is he?
As the country endures, the youth would do right to coalesce into a cohesive force, given their significance to the country’s impending doom or probable rebirth.
Come 2023, Nigeria should seek candidates capable of fostering policies that would revivify industries, generate employment, a functional health sector and quality educational system.
The search should start now for individuals endowed with the native intelligence, skilled manpower, astounding genius, streetsmarts and wisdom, that Nigeria sorely needs to power her rebirth. The prospective candidates must be convincingly detribalised and courageous enough to eliminate crime and power Nigeria’s comatose industry.
Industry matters. If the youth are gainfully employed, they won’t be vulnerable to criminal masterminds using them to foment mayhem, for selfish ends.
In the Shiites-Police mayhem, for instance, none of the casualties was identified as a scion of the ruling class or rich, privileged divide. Its instructive to note too, that, no former or serving governor, president or legislator has a descendant among the murderous herdsmen and Boko Haram.
Such homicidal groups are mobilised from the working class, the boondocks and other destitute divide. It’s about time we put a stop to this.
Today is spitting out monsters, tomorrow portends the emergence of a million more ogres, if the cycle is not reversed.
What Nigeria needs at the moment is leadership driven by moral courage to change the status quo. While I wouldn’t root for a clueless gerontocracy or corrupt oligarchy, if Nigeria must elect a youthful leadership, it must comprise fully evolved, courageous, young men and women, capable of fostering change beneficial to all.
Moral courage encompasses the nerve to do the right thing and speak the truth always. It involves defying the mob as a solitary individual; spurning toxic comradeship and disobedience to a corrupt potentate, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle.
Come 2023, Nigeria must root for a candidate identifiable as the window into the Nigerian psyche. The one who internalises the grief he has learnt from the streets. I speak of the candidate who shall manifest as the blank screen on which people of vastly different stripes can rally to project their dreams and needs; the passive yet active instrument by which Nigeria may prosper and attain rebirth.
Failure to do so would manifest as yet another sociopathic confusion; a sign of the internal political and social divisions that make it difficult for Nigeria to bloom by her youth in monolithic terms.
The youth is crucial to Nigeria’s rebirth; knowing this, the incumbent ruling class silences them by an irresistible material caress. Think political appointments, unearned benefits, tokenism, violent and intellectual thuggery for cash and so on.
The youth must understand their role in this cosmic mess and avoid future rehash of the present lest Nigeria becomes one big cautionary tale.
Dr. Garba Abari, the Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), the man with arduous task of communicating government policy, staying abreast of public opinion, and promoting patriotism, national unity, and development of Nigerian society is angry with those he claims are politicizing the issue of Ruga settlement policy. I don’t think anyone should begrudge him for being unhappy. He is after all, doing the job for which he is being paid. I however sympathise with him for attempting to demonise those he describes as promoters of ethnic identity. There is nothing wrong with promotion of ethnic identity in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. The federal system has long substituted individuals with group as the most important variable in a participatory democracy
Ethnic groups formed the foundation of our federal system. Our early political parties were in fact offshoots of ethnic groups with the exception of NCNC which at the end also ended up as an ethnic party. Nigeria People’s Congress (NPC) started as Northern People’s Congress. Action Group took its root from ‘Egbe Omo Oduduwa’, a Yoruba socio-cultural group. Our founding fathers who later emerged as Nigeria’s celebrated statesmen, all started as representatives of their ethnic groups except Zik who also discovered at the end that charity must begin from home when his failed attempt to become premier of Western Region forced him to return home to become premier of the Eastern Region. Ahmadu Bello started as chairman of Local Council. He opted to remain in Kaduna to serve his people rather than come to Lagos as prime minister. If Awo was at the end of his life described by Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Biafra civil war leader as “the best president Nigeria never had”, it was on account of having served his Yoruba people as a regional premier with distinction. It must also be remembered that even the policy thrust of the then outgoing British colonial power was that each ethnic group should develop at its own pace by taking advantage of the wisdom of their forbearers.
I understand we need to doubt the motive of the cunny British imperialists. It can be argued that Nigeria like most other African new states was designed by the imperial powers that – at their Oct 1884-Feb 1885 Berlin Conference – arrogantly declared Africa was terra nullis (nobody territory), and went on to share African territories among themselves with state boundaries set for their convenience rather than for our welfare was programmed to fail. The foisting of what Basil Davison describes as the black man’s burden or ‘the curse of the nation state’ on Nigeria undoubtedly contributed to today’s mutual suspicion among her many ethnic groups including the Yoruba, Hausa, Karuri, Igala and Igbo that had for centuries engaged in free trade among themselves without movement barriers.
But it is also on record that the British colonial government also institutionalised a federal arrangement which formally recognizes groups as legitimate and autonomous participants in the political process. It was this new emphasis on group identity that forced leaders like Ahmadu Bello to dedicate his life towards bridging the 70 years gap between the north and the south in terms of western education by sending brilliant northern youths either to the military or to the best universities in the world. It was what propelled him to build the biggest conglomerate in Africa. It was what also encouraged Awo and his group to exploit the culture of their people to introduce free education in an effort to lay foundation for an egalitarian society for their Yoruba nation. Of course it was what also encouraged Zik to resolve in 1934 that the Igbo must catch up and obliterate the head-start Yoruba had in education, a feat he had accomplished by 1960. This healthy group competition went on without posing any threat to the health of the nation. What eventually abridged our march towards modernisation was the attempt by two of our three dominant groups to impose their world view on Nigeria. This was the root cause of the collapse of the elite group consensus that produced the golden age of Nigeria 1952-1962.
From the end of the civil war to 2015, groups were demonized by self-serving Nigerian rulers who also made efforts to turn Nigeria into a unitary state through ‘mainstreaming’. Groups that once served as centres of development were broken into 36 states and 774 LGAs, all, going periodically cap-in-hand to Abuja for life support. Like the colonial masters who destroyed the various emerging nationalities they inherited to pave way for nation state (the Black man burden), the unviable states and LGAs were designed not for the welfare of the people but for short-term political advantages of those in power.
After the destruction of our political socialization process, IBB decreed two parties which ended up presenting his two friends as presidential candidates in the June 1993. Abacha created five parties with all ‘the five fingers of the leprous hand’ picking him as their presidential candidate. Abdulsalami Abubakar imposed a constitution no one had seen before the inauguration of President Obasanjo in 1999. Obasanjo set up a constitutional conference ostensibly to find solutions to our crisis of nation building but in reality designed to rubber stamp his failed third term agenda. Jonathan set up a constitutional conference but only as a bargaining tool for his 2014 failed re-election bid. Similarly government policy thrusts all through this period such as JAMB, Unity Schools, Quota admission to universities, federal character policies were all designed not to promote justice and merit but to lower standard and institutionalise mediocrity for the benefits of the tendencies those in power represented.
Dr. Abari’s demonization of ethnic groups as a response to indolence, incompetence or hypocrisy of government as the opposition PDP has alleged, seem to confirm nothing has changed under President Buhari’s government of change. Efforts by those who are passionate about Nigeria especially critical stakes-holders in the Nigerian process such as Afenifere, Ohaneze and the Northern Elders Forum groups, to make the president understand that restructuring and devolution of power in a plural society where people require a measure of autonomy is not a threat to national unity has failed. His resolve to listen only to himself has led to frustration and bitterness among those who believe they have been reduced to second class citizen in their country.
What the subsistence farmers of Benue, Plateau, Adamawa who under deadly attack of invading herdsmen who kill and allegedly confiscate land need is state and community policing to implement their state laws. The demands of the helpless Zamfara people held hostage by bandits, kidnappers and illegal miners is not different. The prayers of those in the Southwest whose forest reserves have been taken over by criminals is for federal government to get off their back so that they could manage their lives. The president who appears only listens to himself however seems to believe the answer to insecurity in the above areas and across the country is underpaid and ill-equipped federal police from Abuja, drafting of soldiers to highways and use of fighter jets against bandits who operate inside thick mangrove forest.
Unfortunately for angry Dr. Abari, the attempt to surreptitiously railroad Ruga, a controversial government policy denounced by both the National Economic Council (NEC), crop farmers and nearly all the major Nigeria’s ethnic groups, has sadly left the impression that it is another self-serving policy thrust designed for short-term political advantage of those in power who like their preceding self-proclaiming messiahs, pretend to know what Nigerians want without asking them.
The recent killing of Mrs Funke Olakunri ,Chief Rueben Fasoranti’s daughter has raised the insecurity temperature in Nigeria to a breaking point and has made many people in the country to begin to question the reason of the existence of our country apparently out of frustration and hopelessness. The inability of the security forces to secure lives and property arises, it is thought, because of the way they are presently constituted.
Permit me, my readers, to extend my heartfelt sympathy to the Fasoranti family, the second time in recent times when I have had to do this. Many may not know that Mrs Rachel Falae née Fasoranti is the aunt of this unfortunate lady. Mrs Falae herself lost her dear son, Deji who was my lawyer and “son” in Lagos in the plane crash carrying Dr Segun Agagu’s remains to Akure in 2010. Mrs Rachel Falae and I were classmates in Ibadan Grammar School in the 1960s.
While insecurity has persisted in Nigeria beginning from the North-eastern part of Nigeria infested by Boko Haram jihadists for over a decade causing much havoc and destabilization of the place, it has now spread in form of banditry and herder terrorism to other parts of Nigeria both north and south. The physical manifestation of this insecurity is the incessant killing of farmers and those traveling between various towns and villages by gun-wielding terrorists masquerading as herders. There was a time in recent times when Abuja – Kaduna Expressway in the geometric centre of the country and a shouting distance from the centre of power in Abuja was taken over by bandits. We are told the road has been cleared and several terrorists were arrested. The country is still waiting for their trial and conviction. The police and security authorities must surely know the link between crime and punishment. Until those arrested in all these criminal cases are tried and appropriate punishment meted to them, there will be no incentive against committing crimes again and again. The situation of crime has morphed into it being perceived in North-South and ethnic dichotomy leading to open and hate campaigns against people from other parts of the country. Things are getting so much out of hands that people who had lived together, traded with each other over the centuries are now holding each other in suspicion as potential killers and murderers. When I was a child, Hausa traders from Gombe used to come to buy kolanuts from my mother on credit with promise to return her money three months later. They never for once failed and that was 70 or so years ago. That trust has been ruined by politicians. Things are so bad that leaders of the country are now appealing to their ethnic cohorts to return “home “for fear of being murdered in the growing unsafe open space in rural Nigeria. It has even gotten to the point that leaders are openly saying police are refusing to arrest terrorists when reported to them because of fear of being reprimanded by their superior officers “who are following orders from above. “There are dangerous posts on the social media fabricated to incite one group against another. Recently there was a post of a suicide bomber blowing up a bus in Enugu and when I checked it, it was all hoax arising from the fertile brain of a person with cinematographic skill.
There is no denying the fact that something is fundamentally wrong with Nigeria today. We however need immediate palliative measure to be taken to save the patient before radical surgery. This is not politics. We must first have a country before we can play politics and form a government. I therefore support the call by the senate on the executive to call an emergency summit of the National Assembly, state governors, chief security officers, officers commanding the armed forces, Inspector- General of Police and members of the Council off State, to have closed door conference with the president to take immediate decisions to salvage the country and to advise on the way forward to secure the country through the restructuring of the security architecture of what was hitherto a promising country. The vice president said troops will be deployed to the highways to secure people’s right of passage. This is welcome news. The troops are already there but in stationary and fixed tents. What we need is highway patrol, be it, of police or army not a military camp along the highways. The president must urgently embark on country wide tour of Nigeria to assure the people that government would protect them. The determination of the government to secure the country must be noticeable and manifest by the number of people arrested tried and put away. Surely this is not out of the purview of the present government. If there is no noticeable and immediate improvement people are likely to resort to self-help which will not augur well for the future of our country.
Those who are calling for various measures to be taken to secure this country are people like me who have invested so much in the country and have also benefited from it and would like my children to inherit a vibrant Nigeria they would be proud to call their home no matter where they are at the present. I do not know anybody except gun runners who will gain from the dismemberment and destruction of Nigeria. If we push ourselves to the precipice and the country falls over, we will all suffer. The world will not be able to accommodate the millions of Nigerian refugees. Some daring members of the international community will intervene to impose a pax after we would have exhausted ourselves in mutual slaughter. If any group thinks it can suppress others and impose its will on others, it will not happen easily. Whatever secret plan any group may nurture to inherit the rump of Nigeria left at the end of war of all against all, such group delude themselves. If we have not been able to impose a peace on the North-eastern part of Nigeria after a decade long war of pacification, one can imagine what will happen when the whole country implodes. It certainly cannot be the will of anyone that Nigeria should implode or explode.
I hate imagining the effect of the collapse of Nigeria on the psyche of all black people all over the world. As it is, the potentiality of a powerful Black country exists in Nigeria even though the hope of its actuality remains in the belly of time. But the hope is still there. If we were to allow this hope to be lost, then generations unborn will curse us for allowing it to happen. At present, the black man is under severe pressure and attack wherever they find themselves. Mr Trump is asking black members of Congress who criticize him to go back to the shit countries where they come from. The Europeans do not want our people around and the Asians are less charitable, in any case, they are overpopulated. In the meantime, black Africa is equated with all kinds of vermin, viruses and bacteria predisposing us to various diseases and pandemics. Do we want to add to all these the case of a collapsing and disintegrating Nigeria to the cup of the black man which is already full of natural and self-made disasters and calamities? It does not appear that our leaders are living in the real world because if they are they will not be following short-sighted policies that will lead to the eventual destruction of a country built by the blood and toil of our past leaders. No one is a saint in the tragedy of Nigeria. We are all guilty because we have not always been our brothers’ keeper. We have betrayed the various cannons of our two monotheistic faiths. Even those who are votaries of our African traditional religions have betrayed the spirits of our ancestors. All this has been in the altar of ephemeral materialism and unearned wealth. We brought nothing to this world and we shall take nothing with us when our time is up. Why do we then want to spread destruction by arming each group against one another? People who have cohabited with one another since time immemorial are now being told that they should be wary of one another and should kill before they are killed. We all talk glibly about “road to Kigali” as if the road was to Jerusalem the city of peace. It is the bounden duty of the present administration in Nigeria to save the country from Armageddon and destruction.
Leaders are known in history by the way they rise up to occasions and take difficult decisions. In spite of the prevailing public opinion against the dissolution of the British Empire after the Second War, the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee conceded independence to India and Pakistan in 1947 and to Ceylon in 1948. Harold Macmillan did the same to the Sudan (1955,) Ghana (1957) Nigeria (1960) and others in the 1960s. General Charles de Gaulle against the interest of three million French settlers in Algeria gave independence to the country. General Dwight David Eisenhower warned Americans to beware of the power of the military industrial complex wielding undue power in their country. These examples are profiles in courage and political realism. Will our own leaders write their names into our history by taking difficult decisions to give us peace in our time?.
Our leaders must rise to the occasion of doing whatever is necessary to keep our country together which in my view is to return to the federal structure which we had between 1957 and 1966 before the present unitary form of government masquerading as federalism. This much is necessary to ensure the survival and security of this republic.
Long live the federal republic of Nigeria, not in name only, but in truth and indeed!
THE group has never hidden its disdain for constituted authority. It looks down on those in power and goes out of its way to court trouble. The Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) popularly known as Shi’ites is law unto itself in its base in Zaria, Kaduna State. Its leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, holds court there and his word is law. As the the all-in-all of the Shia sect in Nigeria, El-Zakzaky enjoys the respect of his followers. They deify him and at his behest, they can kill. We have been seeing the result of this blind following in the past four years.
The Shi’ites, as it were, bit more than they can chew in December 2015 when they attacked the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai, who was on his way to the military academy in Zaria for an official function. Coincidentally, that day, the Shi’ites were having a procession. The group does not joke with its procession and whenever it is on the road every other person must give way. No one, no matter how powerful dares to pass the road during such procession.
But no army chief will take that nonsense. Instead of turning back, Buratai’s men cleared the road blockade to ease their boss’ passage. The Shi’ites felt slighted. Who could do that in their territory? They mused. They felt it was a slap on their face and fought back. The soldiers too wondered who these ‘bloody civilians’ are to challenge them and in no time, a gun battle ensued. Since soldiers will be soldiers, they returned the next day in full force to continue from where they stopped the previous day. At the end of the assault, they went away with El-Zakzaky and his wife Zeenat. The couple and some of their followers have been in detention since then. Last year, El-Zakzaky was charged with murder, culpable homicide, unlawful assembly and disruption of the public peace, among other offences. Two years before his arraignment, the court had ordered that he be released.
The government has not complied with the order. His followers have resorted to holding series of protest to force the government to release him. The Shi’ites did well by resorting to protest, but where they got it wrong was in becoming violent. They would have made their point better with a peaceful protest than with violence. Violence does not breed anything good and we can see that from what happened in Abuja on July 9 and last Monday, just to cite these two instances. Even if one has sympathy for the group, the way its members went about attacking motorists on July 9 under the guise of protesting the continued detention of their leader would kill such support.
The impression has always been that the group is violent and it has proved this assertion with its July 9 and 22 actions. What happened on July 9 is child’s play compared to that of July 22. Last Monday, many people including a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Usman Umar, and a Corps member serving with Channels Television, Precious Owolabi, died during the group’s protest. The sect has since said it did not kill the DCP and the reporter, claiming that they might have been hit by stray bullets. But something gave rise to those ‘stray bullets’ and that is the Shi’ites violent action, which the police wanted to contain. But a DCP killed by a stray bullet! It sounds somehow. The Shi’ites cannot continue this way, no matter the amount of support they enjoy locally and internationally.
The government, no doubt, is wrong in not obeying court orders on El-Zakzaky’s release, but the solution is not for his followers to take to killing, maiming and destroying public and private properties. The Shi’ites may have a good case, but that case is not being helped by their antecedents and some of the things they are doing now. The Shi’ites should remember one thing. They have issues with the government and not the innocent lives lost in the course of their protest. The bereaved families will never be happy that their loved ones died this way. And they will forever blame the sect for it. So, it should let reason prevail and mend its ways.
COZA house of arrest
A CHURCH is a public place. People go there to seek salvation. There are no restrictions in church. You are free to come and go as long as you do not disturb the gathering. More important, pastors are happy to welcome a crowd (multitude, they call it) into their churches. To them, the more the people, the better. Pastors take pride in having a full church week in, week out. If possible, they will prefer it to be day in, day out. As the temple of God, the church is also a place of refuge; people go there to find relief. Jesus never drove people away from the temple except those who turned it to a house of selling, buying and gambling. Why will a church scan worshippers, arrest and detain them, if it has nothing to hide?
Since Mrs Busola Dakolo accused Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of the Commonwealth of Zion Abuja (COZA) of raping her as a teenager, his church has become out of bounds to some worshippers. But many of these worshippers do not know. Barrel-chested bodyguards, follow the pastor like his shadow, keep watch on those coming in. They even have the photographs of those they do not want to see in their church. Unknowingly, one of such people, Abimbola Adelakun, a columnist with The Punch, walked into the place last Sunday and she was promptly fished out and taken to the security post. When they realised that she had sent out word of being held against her will, they hurriedly took her to the police station and filed a complaint. The police then accused her of ‘’criminal trespass’’. Oh, my God! In a church? Is that possible? Can a worshipper commit ‘criminal trespass’ in the house of God? There is nothing we will not see in COZA. But the police should be wary of being used by men of God who seem to have something to hide. Otherwise, we may soon be hearing of worshippers disappearing without trace in some churches
LASURA courts private investors, adopts N288 billion highrise building technology
Bintu Rahman dreads thunderstorms. The early drizzle pounds fear through her roof into her fragile frame. When it pours, the 86-year-old feels a rare chill to the bones; rivulets trickle through her housetop. It channels down the living room wall, leaving a brownish smear in its wake, the colour of rusted aluminium and dusty slates.
“The rain destroys everything. It leaks through the roof and the flood takes over our homes. Our houses are sinking and falling apart, but we have nowhere else to • Ganga paradise: Unidentified teenagers and young adults smoke Indian Hemp in the open to the Chagrin of Phase I residents. go. I have been trapped inside since four days ago. I couldn’t step into the flood,” she said, staring outside her second-floor apartment at Block 67, Adeniji Adele Phase III Housing Estate, Lagos.
Outside, the spatter of rain had subsided to a sprinkle, the note of each drop playing into the tenor of filth below. The buildings look derelict from afar. Closer, the peach-coloured flats bleed into the bleak, dark, expanse. The sinking houses, peeling paint lines, vanishing porches, roads and sidewalks bear insolent scars of decades-old flooding and sludge, a menacing fallout of administrative neglect and torrential rainsquall.
A journey through the flooded expanse is akin to a pilgrimage of sort. Venturing out of her apartment to receive the reporter, Rahman, 86, seemed like a wayfarer seeking to rediscover the forgotten footpath to the neighbourhood in its prime. However, she couldn’t advance beyond the rickety bridge made of a broken plank, which connects her house to the river of muck bordering her front yard.
At four feet, it’s too shallow to pass as a river, but it was deep enough to instill caution in the 86-year-old and her five-year-old neighbour, Mariam. The latter, cleverly, avoids the pool by taking a detour to her block.
“It’s quite sad,” said Rahman. “Every time I stare down my window, I am besieged by memories of this estate back when it was habitable. Then, we all felt privileged to live here. Little kids (like Mariam) do not have to suffer any ordeal while running an errand. But that was 25 years ago when my late husband, Rasheed, bought our apartment and we moved in thinking we had made a good buy. Today, I can’t bear to live here anymore. There is no pipe-borne water. We have to buy water from vendors.
Nonetheless, she raised her children there. “They used to live on the ground floor, but the persistent flooding sacked them from their apartment,” said Rahman.
Corroborating her, one of her sons, who pleaded anonymity, said that he had to flee his flat on the ground floor and relocate to his parents’ apartment on the second floor.
“It’s so sad. We live here like animals. They can’t keep neglecting us. This place has become very dangerous to live in,” he said.
The ‘Lizards of Lagos’
There is no gainsaying that flooding constitutes a major challenge to residents of Adeniji Adele Housing Estate Phases 1 to 4. The low-income housing estate, which comprises 120 residential blocks of two bedrooms and three bedroom apartments in four phases, was established in 1983. At the period, it was considered an attractive residential project thus making access to the housing units very competitive.
The proximity of the site to the Lagos lagoon, its low lying terrain, and external, physical development infractions have caused the estate to be decimated by floods over the years.
“I moved here as a bachelor in 1985. I also got married here. Those were the glory years. Today, this estate has gone to the dogs,” lamented Yinka Adekunle, 58. The widower and father of four stated that but for his undying attachment to the community, he would have relocated abroad to live with his son.
“I tried it once but I could not bear to live anywhere else. Soon after my wife passed away, my first son invited me over to London to live with his family but I couldn’t. Life over there was too boring and regimented. I missed my friends back home. I felt constantly harassed by the laws over there. I returned home four months later. And I never had any cause to regret until now,” he said.
Residents like Adekunle comprise what is known in coastal city parlance as Alangba Eko, meaning the Lizard of Lagos. The moniker connotes a subtle barb at residents of flooded parts of the Adeniji Adele estate, most of whom have refused to vacate their quarters for more habitable places on the mainland or outside Lagos.
“They do not mind the perils of living in a flooded slum,” said a shoemaker and resident of the estate’s Phase 2 commune.
A short history of neglect
Alhaji Rasaq Noibi, Chairman of Phase 2 residents association and also the Social Secretary of Adeniji Adele Phase I-IV Housing Estate and Oko Awo, stated that the flooding happened due to the neglect of the canal structure that ran through the four phases of the estate.
“By the time we came here, this estate was a great place to live, but in time, there was a sand-filling in front of the Federal Roads Safety Commission (FRSC) office across the road. That was when this problem started. It, however, worsened by the time of the filling of the Ilubirin building site; all the water began to flow back here. It worsens during the rainy season, then there is a blockage and flooding became the order of the day here,” he said.
The first flood happened in 1994 and continued ever since. Residents alleged that the major contribution to the persistent flooding is the “sand filling” of the Ilubirin area behind the estate. The sea level rose and water flowed backward. The canal structure is three-quarters-filled with sand, as it is not maintained.
According to Noibi, former Lagos governor, Babatunde Fashola, noticed the dilapidated state of the estate towards the end of his tenure. “He noticed that most of our houses were about collapsing when he came to inspect the canal and he instructed the Lagos State Urban Renewal Agency (LASURA) to intervene.
“The agency staff came, and during deliberations, we agreed on relocation. But before we can relocate, we stated that we would hand over our buildings to them for regeneration. After the regeneration, our flats would be given back to us, free. The project commenced in Phase 1 of the estate, where five blocks were demolished to pave way for the exercise.
“At the sitting with LASURA, it was decided that residents whose houses were billed for regeneration (renovation) would be relocated to the LASURA Transit Camps at Iba and Amuwo. Before the exercise commenced, they were given N25,000 each to finance their relocation to the transit camps. But there were some who insisted that they are lizards of Lagos (Alangba Eko); they said they were not living the vicinity of the estate,” said Noibi.
“So, we agreed that those ones should be given money to rent houses in the area and each family was given N1.2 million as rent for three years. Subsequently, the figure was reviewed to N550, 000 per year. But as we speak now, their rent is due and they are yet to receive the next instalment.
When Governor Akinwunmi Ambode assumed office, said Noibi, “he said he would not spend government money on the scheme and suggested that we involved a private investor. Then we (community heads) contacted the United Africa Company (UAC), who were more than willing to help out, but Ambode refused to put pen to paper. This is why we are here today,” he lamented.
It will be recalled that the Lagos State Government paid N6.6 million to the 12 families who were displaced due to the ongoing redevelopment project of Adeniji Adele Phase 1 as rent for the 2017/2018 period.
The 12 families who received the payment were reporteldy among the 30 families living in the estate before the demolition for redevelopment.
The government was said to have paid an initial N18 million as rent for the 12 families in 2014, while the N6.6m served as payment for the 2017/18 period with each family collecting N550,000 as against N500,00 previously collected due to increase in rent.
The families were given two options of resettlement: either they moved to LASURA’s Transit Camp within Iba Housing Estate or get paid to secure a convenient accommodation in a location of their choice, pending the completion of the project.
Eighteen families opted for resettlement at the transit camp while the remaining 12 families chose to receive money to rent an apartment of their choice in a preferred location.
Drug dens and marijuana divide
Those left behind, that is, current residents of the estate, however, have to contend with greater challenges. Besides the persistent flooding, decrepit infrastructure and lack of potable water supply, they have to deal with the invasion of the community by aliens and shady characters.
“A major fallout of our flooding challenge is the invasion of our community by criminal elements. Since many of the apartments here are deserted after flood sacked the occupants, criminals have moved into the empty buildings; they have turned most of them into drug dens where they sell and smoke hard drugs,” disclosed a member of the estate’s Community Development Association (CDA), who pleaded anonymity.
The Nation’s tour of the area revealed the depth of the estate’s brewing drug crisis. The reporter encountered gangs of youths brazenly smoking and selling Indian Hemp in the open, particularly near the clogged canal of the estate’s Phase 1 region.
Why govt, other stakeholders must intervene
Worried by the crisis posed by the estate’s environmental challenges, among other habitats, stakeholders came together recently to address the challenges at the climate and habitat conference on Flood Resilience and Housing in the City of Lagos. The event, which was convened by development guru, Lookman Oshodi’s Arctic Infrastructure (AI) and Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Nigeria, at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) building, Alausa, Ikeja, on Thursday, June 20, highlighted the climate change factors affecting the city.
Speaking at the event, Engr. Sunday Omoniyi of the Lagos State Public Works Corporation/Ministry of the Environment reviewed the flooding situation in Adeniji-Adele, Lagos Island and Divine Estate Idi-Ori, Ajegunle as ponderous case studies.
Reacting to flooding and housing challenges in Adeniji-Adele/Ilubirin, he said that the government improved on the state’s drainage Master Plan in 2015 to “de-flood” the entire state, including Adeniji Adele Housing Estate, but gross environmental mismanagement hindered the functionality of the basic drainage infrastructures within the area.
Omoniyi linked the causes of flooding in Lagos to global climate change and poor urban planning.
He stated that according to the drainage Master Plan 2015, there are three primary drainage channels and other secondary and tertiary drain networks within Adeniji Adele neighbourhood proposed to “de-flood” Lagos Island, and they are mostly concrete lined.
The primary channels are the Jankara/Adeniji-Adele channel which runs through the Ilubirin reclaimed land area with 10 meters bottom width, 15 meters top width and 1.5 meters depth; the McGregor channel, which runs within Osborne estate having a 10 meters bottom width, 15 meters top width and 1.5 meters depth; the Mandilas/Ebute Elefun channel, which runs along with Sura Market and Osborne extension.
Omoniyi recommended total urban regeneration of the estate due to the structural state of most of the buildings and its poor planning at the time of conception.
Funding the master plan may, however, pose a problem going by the claim of Abiodun Oyeshola of the state’s Ministry of Finance that the budgetary provision for drainage—both construction and maintenance—is declining. The major cause of setback in fighting flood in the state, argued Oyeshola, is government policy and lack of political will.
Further expert analysis of the flooding at the Adeniji Adele Housing Estate revealed that the community was built below sea level. Arctic Infrastructure recommended that the estate should be raised at least 3.5 meters above sea level as opposed to its current 0.6 meters, due to its closeness to the Lagos lagoon.
In an earlier attempt to improve living conditions in the estate, Lagos authorities mooted a major urban renewal project billed to see the transformation of the estate into high-rise buildings. As part of the efforts of the state government to get rid of slums in the state, it projected a reduction at five per cent per annum basis of its slums in the Lagos State Development Plan 2012–2025, similar to the first and second phases of the Lagos Island redevelopment that involved Isalegangan and Ojo-Giwa areas.
At present, the estate houses 15,000 people with 720 housing units, but in the swift urban renewal project, the state targeted 2,500 housing units in a high rising building format.
In an exclusive interview with The Nation, the General Manager of LASURA, Sholebo, disclosed that the redevelopment of Adeniji Adele Housing Estate Phase I-IV will commence soon.
He cited UACN Property Development Company (UPDC) Plc and ATO/Integra Architects Consortium as prospective developers, who have indicated interest and submitted designs for the projects.
He said that the state targets the construction of 2,500 housing units with all infrastructural facilities including alternative power supply and recreational facilities. According to him, “The redevelopment of Adeniji Adele Phase I-IV Housing Estate will be using a combination of various house types at various heights to achieve the required density for the redevelopment. The project consists of commercial and community development as well as provisions for elevated parking spaces would make it one of the iconic estates in the state.”
He said the project, when completed, will further meet the housing needs of residents in fulfilment of the government’s promise to provide shelter across all divisions of Lagos.
Although the United Nations (UN) pegged the city’s population at 14 million, Lagos government estimates it nearer 21 million, as rural Nigerians are drawn by the hope of a better life to its congested mainland and coastlines, daily.
To contain the surge in population, the new administration of Babajide Sanwoolu would be banking on the Lagos Drainage Master Plan 2015, drafted to address necessary factors such as area topography, tidal variations and climate change, among other variables, to ensure that the city of Lagos and Adeniji Adele Housing Estate Phase I-IV in particular, is flood-resilient.
Amid the misery of flooding and failed drainages, Bintu Rahman, 86, is a woman older and wiser. Her mind gradually adapts, like a channel of coarse memories and forms, through which beauty once raged.
Her five-year-old neighbour, Mariam, on the other hand, presents a perfect opposite to the widow and grandmother. Innocence enshrouds her as she meanders, running errands through rivers of muck, daily, like a light-walker on pond scum.
In the estate, the five-year-old cuts the perfect mould of what may pass as the beauty of things after a rainstorm. Yet it cannot be said that the storm has eluded or besmirched her. For she is of the storm.
I begin with a confession. The title of this article is not original; it is borrowed.
Whenever the late Afrobeat legend wanted to close a show at the Afrika Shrine, he would always face his audience and scream: “Everybody say yeah yeah!” and the crowd would yell: “Yeah yeah.” He would repeat the line and the audience – a mixture of respected citizens, ordinary folks and weird elements who worshipped at his music shrine – would yell: “Yeah yeah!”. Those familiar with this dawn ritual would then turn to the gate to make their way through the sweating and smoking lot for the journey home. End of show. The not-too-familiar would stay put, waiting for the show to resume; it would not – until the next show.
My apologies for this rather long opening. I assure you this is not about Fela “Abami eda”Anikulapo-Kuti of exciting memories. No. Nor is it about contemporary music – every dude with access to a microphone (ear rings, long necklaces, colourful trainers, shredded jeans, dreadlocks and all) and can scream some obscenities is a music star. Not at all.
This is about “Editorial Notebook”, the column that I have written, first as a fortnightly offering and later weekly (every Thursday) for about 13 years. It is taking a “short break”.
The column might never have been written by this reporter, considering the rigour of combining such a task with editing the newspaper, which is enough trouble to face everyday as it is like writing an exam, which thousands of teachers will evaluate the next morning.
When this newspaper made its debut on July 31, 2006, Managing Director /Editor-in-Chief Victor Ifijeh and I launched a search for writers. Many shunned us; they would not write for an unknown newspaper. Some veterans signed on right away to encourage us. Prof. Olatunji Dare, revered scholar, wordsmith and Nigeria’s most popular satirist, Ambassadors Jide Osuntokun and Dapo Fafowora as well as Mohammed Haruna, “the Northern Star” signed up. So did others. They were not enough.
We then at an editors conference allotted days to some of our colleagues, who protested the additional burden. Needless to say, today, dear reader, many are finding it difficult to get some space in this newspaper, “The Newspaper of the Year”.
Mohammed Haruna went on a rather long break and did not write for about five weeks. Readers were grumbling. I then decided to fill the space. I wrote. The piece was titled “President Obasanjo’s future”, a conversation in which the ex-president was offered a job in Somalia. And, boy, the excitement- and applause- was remarkable. For the next few weeks, I turned out a delectable dish the readers munched as kids would lick lollipop.
When Mallam Haruna eventually said he was ready to return, I annouced the sudden death of the column. Readers kicked. Prof. Dare, the Editorial Consultant, aforementioned, and General Editor Adekunle Ade-Adeleye encouraged me to keep the column, suggesting that I write fortnightly. I thank them. In fact, Prof. Dare suggested the name of the column.
The column went on to win awards – against all odds. Yes. How can a hilarious column be meaningful in a country where many are hungry and angry? Boko Haram, armed robbery, kidnapping, corruption (in which many leaders gorge themselves on the cash that is meant for the good of all), incompetence and crass impunity. Where is laughter in all this?
But, the Yoruba say “ t’oro ba k’oja ekun, erin laa rin” (we laugh when crying won’t be enough to express our pains). It is in that spirit that “Editorial Notebook” carried on. The article, “A comedian’s fate” on frontline actor Baba Suwe, who was detained for alleged drug trafficking, won the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (Informed Commentary) in 2012. It was written on November 3, 2011.The piece, the organisers said, wittingly analysed the Baba Suwe vs NDLEA saga. The famous actor’s toilet activity suddenly became a matter of public interest as anti-drug officers waited on him to defecate, believing that he had ingested some drugs. Baba Suwe would not defecate any and his fans were hailing: “O ya gbe ti” (the one who would not be forced to defecate).
“The Saka Sensation”, which celebrated the rise of another comedian, Afeez Oyetoro, published on May 9, 2013, won the National Media Merit Award in 2014.
Many readers found quite hilarious the yearly “Honours” in which the column offers awards to our leaders, cleverly highlighting their fables and foibles even as it appears to be praising them. “Where are they now?”borrowed from Prof Dare, occasionally probes into the lives of former public officials and politicians. There is also the yearly mailing list that precedes the Yuletide when this column offers our leaders gifts of various kinds, which this reporter believes such personalities would like. The title: “Season of Goodwill”. And more.
Octogenarian Deji Fasuan, a chief, retired technocrat and one of those who led the battle for the creation of Ekiti State, is a big fan of this column. He would often tell of how he has been in high spirits after reading a submission. He loves it when it mimics Obasanjo or Chief Gani Fawehinmi, he of blessed memory, or MKO Abiola, winner of the June 12, 1993 election whose deployment of Yoruba proverbs and anecdotes remains unmatched. This column brought them all back to life in a vivid manner that gripped the reader. Prof. Bola Osifo, head of Department of Nuclear Medicine at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan often calls to comment on the column and offer fresh perspectives after perusing it with clinical eyes.
Now, this column is taking a “short break” as this reporter moves on to take up another challenging role. I have been nominated for commissioner by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, whose passion to put Lagos on an enviable pedestal in the comity of city-states is remarkable.
Nevertheless, the engagement continues. This reporter will be communicating with this audience and others in a different language – frank and fair – on another platform, the public platform. I promise that the patriotism and sincerity that characterise this column will be sustained.
I will do my very best to make you – and all other stakeholders – proud. I hope it is not too much for me to ask that the love you have shown this column, my humble contribution to public discourse, will be transferred to my new assignment in the Sanwo-Olu administration so that our dream of a Greater Lagos will be achieved.
So long.
For Segun Osoba at 80
NOW that the itinerant drummers have gone home and the revelry has subsided, it is fit and proper for this column to pay tribute to a worthy elder statesman, journalism giant and frontline politician. No need to stand up for recognition; you are widely recognised, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, former governor, Ogun State.
Aremo Osoba came into journalism by chance. Many do not know that he was a sub-editor, one of those guys who mould the character of a newspaper but who are never seen or heard, unlike reporters who are the glamour boys of the trade. But, for Osoba, reporting is the soul of newspapering. Many of today’s journalists do not see it so. Unfortunately, features and column writing have dwarfed reporting. Exclusive stories have dried up in the media, even as purveyors of fake news are having a field day.
Osoba excelled in reporting and became a reference point for editors telling their subordinates how it should be done. His newspaper days have been well documented by Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe in his biography. Besides, his autobiography, “Battlelines”, which documents his rich exploits in journalism and politics, has just been presented at a colourful ceremony in Lagos at his 80th birthday.
Osoba, sub-editor, reporter, editor and managing director, conquered a vast territory in journalism before moving on to politics where he has excelled.
Here is wishing the Aremo (the chosen one, the favourite) of reporting in Nigerian journalism more exciting years ahead.
