The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Middle Belt killings: Nation living a lie

    President  Buhari, on account of his recurring condolence calls and endless appeals for peaceful coexistence between suspected terrorists he had claimed are not Nigerians and their victims, has in recent times been irreverently referred to as ‘Nigeria’s mourner-in-chief’ instead of commander-in-chief. This notwithstanding, he wants Nigerians to believe he is doing his best to end the mindless killing going on in the Middle Belt of Nigeria. He re-echoed this once again, during his latest condolence call on the governor of Plateau State over the gruesome killings of between 80 and 200 helpless farmers and their family members. He also used the occasion to tell those who harbour the thought that he was taking sides with his Fulani compatriots in their deadly war against their host communities across the country to bury the thought. Unfortunately, those who believe the president has not matched his words with action think he has probably lost touch with reality.

    Indeed, those who had earlier alleged the president was fighting corruption among his political opponents with insecticide and with deodorant among his close associates have now also said that by refusing to use the same Operation Python Dance template used for the pacification of IPOB on Fulani herders already regarded by the international community as the fourth world deadliest terrorist group is sufficient proof he is waging selective war on terrorism. As a further proof, they ask: if Bukola Saraki as senate president can be invited by the police for questioning because some of his political thugs were involved in armed robbery, how come those who openly claimed to be speaking for terrorists have not been invited for questioning?

    And precisely because the president suffers from a sense of self-righteousness which in itself is form of extremism, he is unable to understand that Nigerians are not only disillusioned over what they see as his unwillingness to end the ongoing human carnage but also over the ineptitude of his trusted security chiefs. Nigerians are disappointed the president still harbours in his cabinet, Defence Minister Mansur Dan-Ali, who in response to the killings of 17 people in Benue, without restraint arrogantly asked: “If those (grazing) routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen”? His Inspector General of Police (IGP) who with thousands of farmers killed, territories and farm lands confiscated with survivors marooned in IDP camps, was speaking of “communal clashes between herders and farmers”; and of course an Internal Affairs Minister who for over three years supervised daily harvest of death without identifying, apprehending or prosecuting any of the marauders who, we are told, disappear with their cattle after each grisly killings.

    But stakeholders who want Buhari to free himself and his presidency from those who cage him have now started to talk to a president who seems to listen only to himself, his loyal appointees who many believe do not share his pan-Nigeria vision and probably Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, whose herdsmen including foreigners, its secretary- general, Saleh Al- Hassan haughtily insists can graze in Nigeria since herders ‘do not recognize international boundaries”.

    First, the lawmaker representing Barkin Ladi Riyon Constituency at the National Assembly,  Honorable Istifanus Gyang has claimed attack on his community like others in Plateau State is an attempt by killer herdsmen to take over communities. As proof he said “Over four villages have been added to the 45 that have already been over-run and are under forceful occupation”.

    And reacting to the Plateau killings last week, Ghali N’Abba, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, faulted the president’s handling of the crisis: “I don’t think it has been handled in the most appropriate manner. I don’t think Buhari can handle this problem alone and the impression he has given most people is that he is working alone”.

    Prof. Wole Soyinka has also said President Muhammadu Buhari is not doing enough to stop killings by herdsmen amid the general insecurity in the country. His message to Buhari: “Crimes against our humanity have been committed, and restitution must be made. Nothing less will restore confidence in a government, and reassure the people of its integrity, its commitment to equity in internal relationships and the rightful custodianship of ancient resources.’’

    The United Nations Secretary-General who has expressed deep concern “about the increasing frequency, intensity, complexity and geographic scope of violent conflict between farmers and herders…” has declared that “all attacks targeting civilians violate international humanitarian law”.

    The British House of Lords also disagrees with “government’s characterization and narrative of the violence as farmer-herder clashes” whilst advising “it is not sufficient for government to merely urge all sides to seek dialogue and avoid violence”. It says: “Given the escalation, frequency, organisation and asymmetry of Fulani attacks, it is hard to disagree with those who speak of ethnic cleansing and land grabbing.

    And with over 500 churches destroyed in Benue alone since 2011, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) says Fulani islamisation agenda cannot be ruled out. The Catholics Bishop Conference of Nigeria which also believes “a campaign of ethno-religious cleansing is going on in Nigeria”, has also accused the president “who appoints the head of the nation’s security agencies of refusing to call them to order, even in the face of chaos and barbarity into which the country has been plunged.” The body says the president ‘should not continue to preside over the killing fields and mass graveyard that our country has become”.

    Amnesty International (AI) which stated that it’s independently verified estimated figures indicated that since January “at least 1,813 people had been murdered in 17 states, which is double the 894 people killed in 2017” has said that “by failing to hold murderers to account, the federal government is encouraging impunity that is fuelling rising insecurity across the country”.

    Adding his own voice, president of the senate, Bukola Saraki last week also told the president: “We have to immediately device a plan through which the criminals behind the killings and their sponsors can be nabbed and made to face the wrath of the law”.

    All the above voices of reason cannot be wrong.

    The political class including President Buhari who rode to power on the promise of restructuring the country knows ‘the path to Nigeria freedom’. But because they are all beneficiaries of the ongoing chaos, they have for 50 years experimented with failed military social engineering strategies which celebrates indolence,   and promotes injustice as solution to our crisis of nationality.  Today as it was in the past, they mouth unity while our youths who lack a sense of history sing unity as if unity can be decreed.

    Since we like playing the ostrich, the colonial masters reminded us that the ‘Hausas of Zaria are different from the Bantu tribesmen of the valley of the Benue’ just as the Scandinavians in the Baltic are different from the Slavs of Bulgaria”. Hugh Clifford, the then Nigerian Governor-General in an address to the Nigerian Council in December 1920 clearly articulated a British policy designed to produce a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers’.

    Really who is afraid of a restructured Nigeria with constituents power over law and order, education and public information; a restructured Nigeria where there is freedom and justice for all; a restructured Nigeria that protects the right of indigenes as enshrined in the UN charter; a restructured Nigeria that puts an end to an orgy of killing of hundreds of helpless women and children at night in the Middle Belt region by unidentified ‘herdsmen’ who like Ahmadu Bello probably still regard the area as their “ancestors properties”?

  •   The famished road

    WHEN it was built in the late seventies, the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway stood in a class of its own. It was the best road in the country and travelling on it was every motorist’s dream. It was a breeze travelling to and from Ibadan on it. A motorist could make Ibadan in 45 minutes from Lagos. The road was smooth all the way. No broken down vehicles; no heavy duty trucks struggling for right of way with other motorists. Besides the reduction in travel time, the road was also safe. Accidents were few and far between.

    That road, that same road has become a death trap today. The road has gone bad, with huge craters here and there. The road, which people could see from afar stretching and stretching in the horizon, has become deplorable. It is no longer a sight to behold, but an horror and a nightmare to those who ply it. The once beautiful Lagos – Ibadan road is now an eyesore, whether in the day time or at night. Driving on it is no more smooth, it is rough, tough and killing.

    The road, it seems, is no more meant for light vehicles. Cars and Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) look like ants in the midst of giant trucks, trailers and other articulated vehicles, which ply it almost every hour of the day. Whether traffic is moving or crawling,  heavy duty vehicles remain a constant and fearsome sight on the road. And this should not be so.  Whenever they move, they do not give way to other motorists, who they dare to move near them. Since it will be suicidal to do so, other motorists simply allow them to have their way.  It is obvious that they now own the road and do whatever they like on it. They park indiscriminately on it, leaving little or no space for other users.

    They also fall on the road, spilling their inflammable content now and again. Truck and trailer drivers have become lords of the Lagos – Ibadan road. What is more. They seem to be above the law. Law enforcement agencies shy away from calling them to order. To avoid a row with them, the police, road safety corps personnel and traffic managers look the other way when they break the law. Nobody wants to incur their wrath. In the not too distant past, it was hell driving through Ogere, a portion of the Lagos – Ibadan road, because of the activities of fuel tanker drivers there. To beat the heavy traffic at Ogere then, motorists usually went through Iperu to rejoin the express in front and continue their journey.

    The major problem, however,  is the frequent accident caused by these trucks. These accidents happen most times at odd hours. It could be as early as 4 am or as late as 11 pm or even in the day time. Whenever these accidents occur, traffic is hell, with motorists ending up spending the night or virtually the whole day on the road. The latest of such accidents happened last Thursday. For those who live off the expressway, these accidents have become part of life and living. They are forced to live with what has become a national problem because they do not have control over it.  They know that whenever these accidents occur, going home after the close of work is out of the matter. For those who are at home, going out is also ruled out. For these residents, it is  a lose – lose situation whenever these accidents happen.

    Getting home last Thursday was nightmarish for them. There was gridlock everywhere after a fuel tanker burst into flame after its brake failed on the Otedola link bridge of the expressway. The tanker driver  knew he had a big problem in his hand. When his brake failed, he thought the way out was to use the road median to stop his vehicle. He put it in reverse and started hollering on his voice, asking other motorists to give way. It was a dire situation, with motorists driving bumper to bumper. How do you get out of the way of such a killer truck in the few seconds between life and death which stared many in the face?

    Some promptly jumped out of their cars, abandoning the vehicles to their fate; others attempted to reverse, but before they could do so, the tanker carrying about 33,000 litres of petrol pulled off from its attached head, spilled its content on the highway and exploded. About 60 vehicles were burnt and 12 persons killed. The aftermath of the explosion was telling on many who live in that axis as all the roads leading to their homes were jam packed. Traffic on Agidingbi was at a standstill heading towards Ojodu Berger to take the underpass to link the expressway. The Oba Akran – Akilo – Ogba route was no better. As at the time I passed at  1 am on Friday, traffic was still terrible on these roads.

    Many motorists muttered under their breath, wondering what kind of hassle they were being made to go through again because of the fault of another inconsiderate truck driver. Friends, relatives and neighbours sent messages to one another, on where they were. “Are you safe where you are?” Those who had got home asked those still outside. “Stay where you are tonight because the roads are clogged”, they advised. Despite such advice, some of us remained resolute to get home. What happened was not strange to those of us who are used to plying the expressway at ungodly hours most days of the week. That Thursday, my colleagues and I  braved it to get home after 1 a.m., using the Lagos Traffic Radio as our compass.

    We drove with our ears glued to that station. Thursday, June 28, was a black day in all sense of the word. It is not a day we should wish for again. What should be uppermost in the authority’s mind now is to prevent a recurrence of that sad day. We cannot continue to be at the mercy of crazy truck drivers, who do not care about the lives of other road users. They do not even care about their own lives with the kind of vehicles they put on the road. If they do not care about their own lives, how can they care about those of others? It is high time the government moved against these truck drivers and their owners. It cannot continue to look at them while they waste precious lives on the road.

    And the big question is : should such trucks be on the road at the same time with other vehicles? There is no place in the world where heavy duty trucks and cars move on the same road at the same time, except in undeveloped economies like ours. It will cost the country nothing if we regulate the movement of tankers, trailers and trucks. If we take this step, it will save a lot of lives that will be lost to freak accidents such as last Thursday’s. My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones in the accident. May the souls of the departed find rest in the Lord’s bosom.

  • Troubles on the Jos plateau

    In 1972, I returned to Nigeria from Barbados, a paradise island in the West Indies to Jos, another paradise in Nigeria. The University of Ibadan had in 1971 set up a college in Jos at the request of the military governor of the then Benue-Plateau State, police commissioner, Joseph Gomwalk, a graduate of zoology from the University of Ibadan. He had allegedly approached Ahmadu Bello University for the same mission but was turned down obviously because the idea of a university in the minority area of the North was anathema to the powers-that-be in the Northern Nigeria. Apparently with  the support of General Yakubu Gowon, the head of state, the University of Ibadan acceded to the request of Benue-Plateau State. The late Professor Ayandele was appointed principal of the college. I was one of several young men deployed to the place by the University of Ibadan.

    We had a glorious time and for some, it was the first time they were in Jos to experience what was like in a temperate region of Nigeria. The population was still small so the weather remained cold all the year round unlike today when the massive population of recent times has brought in its wake relative increase in the temperature of the place. In the 1970s, people used heaters during the wet season unlike the air conditioning of today. Vegetable like strawberry and even apples could be grown on the plateau.

    Our students came from all over the country but generous allowance was made for our catchment area. Some of us lecturers were not too much older than our students so we had close but respectable relationships with our students. We also had great encouragement from the state government that provided accommodation for staff and students. The buildings provided had to be refurbished to make them suitable for use. But what was important was the sense of national service which we all had. Even as a lecturer, I represented the college along with the principal in the main senate of the University in Ibadan. The government of the state made offers of land individually to us just to encourage us to stay. With the exception of one person, none of us had the foresight to acquire property in a place we considered too far from our homes in the southern part of Nigeria.

    I used to visit a friend, the late Sola Onoviron, a veterinary doctor in Vom which was the Centre of Excellence in veterinary medicine in Nigeria. Anybody interested in pedigree dogs just had to go to Vom.   I acquired a Labrador golden retriever  from Vom. One could not but be captivated by the beauty of Barkn Ladi after Bukuru. The rolling green hills were so inviting that I promised myself that I would retire there in my old age and build a small bungalow and surround myself with a field of lettuce, potatoes, peppers, onions and tomatoes as well as a herd of cows and become a farmer and a gentleman in the idyllic environment of the plateau. This is the same wonderful dreamland where people are being slaughtered like chicken without any feeling whatsoever. How can all the promises of our national life end like this?

    In my life I have had the greatest times in Barbados and Jos in spite of the medical challenges my late wife and I had in the town leading to the loss of a son who was born prematurely. In my service to this nation, I also taught in the University of Maiduguri. The difference between my stay in Jos and Maiduguri was that I was barely 30 years old in Jos whereas I was 40 when I went to Maiduguri. To also imagine that Maiduguri that brought me so much joy has now also hit the rocks makes me sad indeed. I have prayed and fasted for both places and I know peace like a river will again flow in both places.

    The obvious questions to ask are what are the reasons for the collapse of civil governance in both places. For almost a decade, the military has been trying to maintain peace in the areas without much success. There is no doubt that the military has tried to stabilize the two places but internal security is really not the duty of the military. The armed forces internal operations fight with their hands tied because internal pacification cannot be fought as a total war with possible huge collateral damage. This is why the approach to restoration of peace must be through carrots and cane. We must find a way of taking out those causing trouble by unleashing law enforcement on them through arrests, trial and sentencing and those who have to go to jail must go to jail and those who have to leave this earth must be made to do so. Punishment must be swift and sure and there must be no prevarication. Once the military has stabilized the two areas of disaffection, civil authorities must be made to assert themselves.

    It is sad that the affected areas outside the north-eastern part of Nigeria is the old Benue-Plateau State now broken into Nasarawa, Plateau and Benue states which  along with equally disaffected Taraba and Adamawa states are essentially the bread basket of Nigeria.  Farmers and herders have always lived together peacefully in these areas before with mutual benefits of the animal faeces fertilizing the land of the farmers while the animals forage on grass in the areas. It is true that our population has increased exponentially but this is no justification for wild criminal and murderous behaviour. If when this madness first broke out people had been arrested and dealt with, we will not be where we are today.

    It is no use blaming the president alone. We have a structural problem. We need to restructure immediately the security architecture of our country. There is no country the size of Nigeria whose police is centrally organized and controlled. We must have state and city  as well as community police to run side by side with the federal police which should be in charge of inter-state crime and general internal surveillance. The duties of these police forces must be spelt out to avoid conflict and promote coordination and cooperation. In the United States and Canada, universities are even allowed to have campus police. Without peace there cannot be development. We deceive ourselves if we think the arrangement that sufficed to secure the country in 1960 will still be enough for the huge problems of securing the country today.

    Restructuring the country is not a zero sum game. If we do not make haste while the sun still shines, it may be too late for this country. If we dilly-dally and allow the whole country to blow up in chaos, we will all suffer including those who want to maintain the extant structural status quo. Even if we do not take on the question of political restructuring now, the imperative of security restructuring is staring all of us in the face. We must bite the bullet, so to say, and get on with the job. The question we must ask ourselves is whether we want to run a modern state of law and order or a backward state that is a butt of jokes in the international community. Question will be asked whether in the face of incessant killings, a new kind of UN mandate of administration should not be imposed on Nigeria. It is not far fetched; speculations are being bandied around whether the international community can tolerate wanton killing without some action. We are being watched so that it can be publicly declared that the black men cannot rule themselves. This will be an eternal shame not only to this generation but generations to come.

  • Tragedy of Nigerian poor’s herd mentality

    That President Muhammadu Buhari was persistently ridiculed and condemned as a failure even before his second year in office, was a direct consequence of his inability to uphold the corrupt but highly lucrative systemic bazaar of the past. Although Buhari’s leadership suffers the affliction of crooked men and women, his glamourised aversion to corruption and his ongoing anti-corruption campaign, resonates dangerously to the country’s crooked divide. Too many men and women accustomed to pocketing and spending money that they didn’t earn are suddenly aghast and petrified by their inability to conduct ‘business as usual.’

    There is the oft-repeated logic and inclination to blame this persistent malaise on capitalism; however, attractive as such sophistry may resound, the impulse for acquisition, pursuit of gain and money in fact, has nothing to do with capitalism – it is merely a symptom, like perverse capitalism, of the society’s steady descent the slope of the decadent and grotesque.

    Max Weber, the late German economist and social historian, would say it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times and in all cultures of the earth but I would say that the Nigerian malaise is brought about by the absence of an enduring moral code.

    This deficit manifests in deficiencies of personal and societal ethics – the consequence of which is the preponderance and regeneration of tyrants, greedy-guts, fraudsters, narcissists, murderers and bloodhounds of all kinds and of all nature, across the country’s landscape.

    The trials of Nigerians’ moral degeneration as exemplified by the citizenry’s inordinate lust for money, the country’s recurrent tragedies and propensity to self-destruct, reveals an overarching tendency to savour short-term greed and relief over long-term prosperity.

    Despite a protracted and tumultuous history of impoverishment and bad leadership, Nigerians continue to look for quick fix solutions thus mortgaging the country’s present and future for short-term benefits.

    Through decades of moral perversions and self-inflicted disasters, Nigerians continue to bemoan their tragic fate. While many argue that the country ruins because the youth are too weak and too selfish to spill as much blood as is required to rid the nation of every human and institutional affliction, many more contend that the country’s woes will disappear immediately poverty is eradicated by the ruling class.

    Today, the fear of poverty as the irrepressible lust for money, drive too many to commit gross acts of dishonesty and irresponsibility. Personal greed is pervasive and poverty is endemic. It represents the triumphal punch delivered by the proverbial system against the country’s poor, hopeless masses. Nigeria suffers the consequence of the supremacy of money. Money rules the Nigerian society. It elevates and ennobles the possessor of it; whatever the nature and import of the rich’s membership of the society, as long as he has money to flaunt and throw around, nobody cares what value he adds to and denies the society.

    Thus the pardon and acquittal of several corrupt politicians and deposed bank chiefs; even after insurmountable evidences were marshaled against them by prosecution, they get off too easily with court sentences that were tantamount to a pat on the back. The poor, on the other hand, epitomise more of what is wrong and contemptible with the society. They represent that segment of the society that is easily swayed, viciously condemned and trodden by the power of money.

    The power of money is indeed frightening and overwhelming. Like Okwudiba Nnoli notes, it uplifts and crushes, enhances and debases, exhilarates and disenchants, dignifies and dehumanizes, enlightens and blinds, unites and divides. Under the influence of money, humaneness and the quest for the collective good are ferociously smothered by disruptive and selfish considerations.

    Materialism is fostered and greed is ennobled in the mad dash for money. Consequently, justice, freedom, equality, dignity and other human rights, are sacrificed on the altar of the perennial rat-race for the accumulation of money.

    More worrisome is the reality of the poor in Nigeria being unquestioningly docile to the power of money. This impoverished lot is hardly impressed by humaneness and promising leadership. To them, these are manifestations of weakness. Their loyalty and sympathies are reserved for tyrants that treat them like dogs on a leash; to the latter, they exhibit the greatest obsequiousness and erect the greatest statues.

    While it is true that the poor would often trample maniacally on the despot, who by a poetic twist of fate – be it by class politics or masses revolt – gets stripped of his power and authority, they do so because having lost his strength, the despot becomes relegated to an ignoble spot among the weak and repressed, who are to be loathed and not feared.

    This is emblematic of Gustave Le Bon’s philosophy of ‘The Crowd,’ which was valued not only by Pareto, Freud, Mussolini, and de Gaulle, but even by Horkheimer and Adorno. Le Bon contends that the type of  “hero dear to crowds will always have the semblance of a Caesar. His insignia attracts them, his authority overawes them, and his sword instills them with fear…Should the strength of an authority be intermittent, the crowd, always obedient to its extreme sentiments, passes alternately from anarchy to servitude, and from servitude to anarchy.”

    Democratic ideas are therefore in profound disagreement with the psychology and experience of the Nigerian poor. It is unsurprising then, that materially and mentally impoverished folk would distrust democracy and its promise of collective good, to covet and pursue the vain and ephemeral perks of socio-political harlotry.

  • Plateau and other killings

    AFTER a lull, violence made a bloody return to Plateau State last weekend. Scores of people were killed right in their homes by gunmen suspected to be herdsmen.

    Condolences. More condolences. Tears and more tears. Recriminations. President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo have visited, promising justice. But the question remains: when will the killings stop?

    It was not immediately clear why the gunmen struck, but the popular thinking is that the bloodletting was a result of the loss of some cows by Fulani herdsmen. Indeed, the spokesman of the association of cattle breeders said that much – that the bloodbath was in retaliation for the loss of some 300 cows. He was later to retract the statement, blaming it all on reporters who, he said, misquoted him. It was obviously to fend off the huge pressure that he should be arrested for fuelling the senseless killings and provoking the question: what is a man’s life worth, as against a cow’s?

    Only justice can answer this knotty question. But when will justice catch up with these marauders?

    Governor Simon Lalong was shocked at the carnage. He wondered why and how the peace he had been so proud of suddenly collapsed like a house of cards. The Berom and the Fulani who had been living together in peace suddenly became enemies, drawing daggers and pulling triggers.

    “I am greatly shocked that it happened because we have set a roadmap for peace for ourselves…shocked because the Berom and the Fulani have agreed to live in peace with one another and in practical terms they have co-existed for the last three years based on that agreement – to put the past behind them and live as a family.”

    The governor said when he was alerted that the violence was coming, he rushed down to the security agencies who assured him that it would not happen. “I left and it happened,” Lalong said.

    Why did the security chiefs’ assurance become a deflated balloon? Is an officer’s word still a word of honour? Was Lalong deceived? Or was it just a matter of intelligence deficit? Or Conspiracy? Or complacency? Or sheer incompetence?

    One thing is clear: the justice the President spoke of should start from the security agents. Whoever is found to have been negligent in this matter should carry the can. Carrying on from here as if rhetoric, and not action, will be enough will be politically and morally imprudent. People must be brought to account on the bloodshed that happened under their watch. That way, they will be more alert in future.

    The killers should be fished out and punished. We must find out who they are and why they are so mad. I do not believe that it is all because of cattle rustling and associated problems – land, ethnicity, religion and all that. No. It is, as Lalong observed, deeper than all the sentiments that we confront.

    We have a large army of terrorists in our midst.  Bands of bandits moving from one part of the country to the other, posing as kidnappers and highway robbers. They are not; they are in reality terrorists who have found us so vulnerable.  Even the President attests to the weight of the assault weapons they carry.

    Buhari said: “Take, for instance, the situation in Benue. The Benue subsistence farmer knows that the Nigerian cattle herder that he knows doesn’t carry nothing more than a stick, occasionally, sometimes something to cut grass to feed his cattle.

    “But the present herder, I am told, carries AK47 and people are even blaming me for not talking to them because maybe (they say) I look like one of them. There is some injustice in these aspersions.”

    Buhari is right – in his analysis (I have always believed that the herdsman is a mask for those crazy elements who are bent on destroying our humanity and our values but there is no way he can be right in what seems a security failure here.

    It was the turn of Ekiti State to have a taste of the madness a few weeks ago when these un(known) gunmen and madmen posing as herdsmen seized the beautiful Iwaraja (Osun State) – Efon Alaye (Ekiti State) road, killing and kidnapping innocent motorists and passengers. Those who attempted to flee the hell were shot in the back, among them a woman who had her kids in the car. By the time the military were called in, the marauders had gone into the deep, dark bush on the outskirts of Efon Alaye where they were negotiating ransom for their captives. No arrests have been made.

    Travelling from Iwaraja to Efon Alaye, you are confronted on both sides of the road by a beautiful scenery of lush green forests, undulating hills with low  vegetation in some areas and a massive greenery of virgin forests that exhibit the majesty of nature. The seductive hills take your eyes round and round in an exciting spectacle. The air is clean and fresh. All is quiet, except for birds chirping and farmers chatting on their way from the farm.

    Now motorists pass through with trepidation, their hearts in their mouths. And everybody is asking: Where are Governor Ayo Fayose’s hunters who came out the other day in their numbers – charms, arms, amulets, guns, catapults,machetes and headlamps – vowing to stop killer-herdsmen? His Excellency himself addressed them, decked out in military fatigues, pumping the air with his fist in a gesture of defiance.

    One of those kidnapped on this road, Dr Tunde Hamzat, spoke of his six-day ordeal in the hands of the gunmen. In his view, the Southwest has been infiltrated by agents of the devil. He has big machete cuts on his head and other parts of his body. He was starved, beaten and dehumanised. Every night, he and his captors trekked a minimum of five kilometers into the forest. To his amazement, he found out that the gunmen had a supply line; they were getting Indomie and recharging their phones by calling somebody somewhere. They had power banks to charge their phones, he said, adding that the gunmen confirmed that they were Fulani and members of the Boko Haram, the deadly Shekau faction. He was tied down like a goat. Insects feasted on his body. Eventually, he was freed after his friends and associates paid a ransom, in millions, of course.

    Until recently, the Akungba-Owo road was a den of kidnappers, perhaps the same set of bandits or an arm of their evil organisation. Their domain used to be Borno and some other states in the Northeast. Not anymore. The terror corridor has been expanded. We all seem to be helpless.

    The new war is beyond tanks, arms and ammunition. It is, in fact, beyond battalions. It is a war of intelligence and technology,  a people’s war. It is everybody’s war because the situation keeps challenging our claim to humanity.

     

    A World Cup update

    BEFORE the Super Eagles’ loss to Argentina on Tuesday, I asked my colleague Ade Ojeikere, who was in St. Petersburg to cover the match a difficult question: “Can Nigeria beat Argentina?” He replied: “It’s possible, based on our boys’ form, and if the ref will not play politics. They may see Argentina as the better team to advance – for marketing sake.”

    Isn’t Ade damn right? The ref saw an Argentine defender handle the ball inside the box, yet he would not award a penalty, which, if scored, would have sunk the Argentines. After the match, on the social media appeared the image of the ref watching the VTR to establish what happened. On the screen is $10,000,000. “That is what the referee saw on the VAR,” a fellow wrote.

    As usual, all Nigerians have become experts in soccer. The coach, poor fellow, is being hammered for the loss. He is blamed for not knowing what to do in the last 10 minutes of a match in which he required a draw to qualify. He is blamed for fielding Ighalo who lost at least two clear and crucial chances.

    Besides, there are sardonic jokes about our exit. A friend sent this before the match ended: “Now that we need Nigerian witches and wizards, they won’t show up. If it is to stop somebody from getting a big contract, they will be flying up and down.”

    In my view, the Eagles did well. They are gallant losers. They were not disgraced. Above all, their exploits united us all. Can we continue in that spirit?

  • Of human and cow lives

    TO a cattle breeder,  the life of a cow is worth more than its weight in gold. His cow is his life. It may be accurate to say that he even values the life of his cow more than his own. If this is not so, we will not be witnessing killings in the North central by some supposed Fulani herdsmen over the rustling or killing of their cows. In the past few months, these herdsmen have gone haywire, dispensing justice their own way over the theft or killing of their cattle. For a stolen or dead cow, they are ready to wipe out a whole village.

    Does it mean that the life of a cow is worth more than that of people in the razed village? I am not in any way supporting the stealing or killing of  cows. Stealing or killing a cow for no just cause is a criminal offence. There cannot be a justifiable reason for such an action. To say that the cow strayed into your farm and destroyed your crops cannot absolve you of that criminal act. If a cow grazes on a farm and destroys the crops therein, the best the farmer can do is to report to the police and not take the law into his hands.

    Inasmuch as it is wrong for a cow to enter a farm and destroy crops all because it wants to graze, with its shepherd watching, it is also wrong for the farmer to kill the cow in anger. Two wrongs, they say, do not make a right. We have thrown this maxim overboard and that is why we are faced with the terrible situation of herdsmen killing, maiming, looting, raping and ransacking communities all over the place in the North central today. When they struck in Benue State on January 1, we all shouted and shouted. Our shouts amounted to nothing because those killings have continued unabated.

    These herdsmen have continued to strike, killing without let and hindrance,  not only in Benue, but also in Nasarawa and Plateau. As a nation, we seem not to have an answer to this challenge. Or do we have an answer to it and are just simply afraid to tackle the matter head-on? Whatever it may be, we cannot fold our arms and allow things to continue like this following what happened in Plateau State last weekend. Eighty-six persons were killed when herdsmen attacked many communities there. The police gave that casualty figure. For the police to have confirmed 86 dead in those attacks, you can be sure that the casualty figure will be in the region of 120 and above.

    What is irksome is that the killings happened despite assurances by those in power to stop them. The essence of government is to make the country safe, sound and secure for the people. Any government, which cannot provide maximum security for its citizens is not fit to be so called. A government that watches while the country burns is not a government. It is at best a caretaker, which has no power and authority to act when things go bad. I do not understand why these things are happening when we have a full-fledged government in place.

    This was how Boko Haram started in 2009 before it got out of hand and became a monster that cannot be tamed. Even though the government claims to have degraded the insurgent group’s capacity to strike, we all know better. Boko Haram is still barking and biting to the chagrin of the people. We cannot afford to create another Boko Haram from these killer-herdsmen. These are no herdsmen, they are snipers trained to shoot and kill. Mercifully, the government also knows this. It has since discovered that these killer-herdsmen were gunmen trained by former Libyan strongman Muamar Gaddafi. They were said to have infiltrated the sahel region after Gadaffi’s death in search of something to do.

    Some of them have settled in Nigeria. Since an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, they have turned to herdsmen carrying AK47 all over the place. Fishing out these killers should not be too difficult for the security agencies if they work with the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN). The association, which is the umbrella body of cattle owners should know the shepherd who take care of their sheep. In other words, these shepherd work for them and this being so, they should know their workers.

    A principal cannot claim not to know his agent. In law, a principal is responsible for the actions of his agent. So in this case,  the cattle breeders should know those shepherd taking care of their sheep. Unless, they are saying that any shepherd can just pick up cattle from anywhere and start taking them around for grazing. That should not and cannot be the case. A herdsman must have a source and that source should be able to identify whoever its herdsman is whenever the need arises. From the way MACBAN has been defending herdsmen, it is obvious it knows one or two things about them.

    MACBAN has a major role to play in resolving this debacle. The group can only play that role by being temperate in its use of words. This is no time to talk tough or compare the life of a man with that of a cow. This is the time to condole with the bereaved and not to add to their grief. We should not exacerbate the situation with the kind of words attributed to the North central zone Chairman of MACBAN Danladi Ciroma that : ‘’Fulani herdsmen have lost about 300 cows in the last few weeks – 94 cows were rustled by armed Berom youths in Fan village, another 36 cows were killed by Berom youths. In addition to that, 174 cattle were rustled and the criminals disappeared with them to Mangu. Since these cows were not found, no one should expect peace in the areas…’

    This is not the time for such incendiary remarks, but the time to look for how to fix this problem. To Ciroma, ‘’the attacks are retaliatory’’. Can the killing of a man over the killing of a cow be termed retaliatory? I do not think so. To wipe out 86 people or more over the killing of 300 cows is the height of bestiality. There can never be a tenable reason for such a barbaric act. Never. As President Muhammadu Buhari noted on Monday, it is regrettable that human lives have become so cheap now in our country.

  • NASS greed and self-centeredness

    Even as nascent inheritors of power, Nigerians never had faith in the educated elite that finally emerged as our new governing class. Given a choice between them, the traditional rulers and the departing colonial masters, Nigerians according to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, would have chosen in a reverse order. Their main affliction according to him was greed. About 70 years after that observation by a visionary leader who confessed taking pains to study Nigerian problems and proffered solutions while his greedy political adversaries caroused all night through, not much has changed. Greed was behind the governing political class’ political suicide in the first republic (1960-1966). It was responsible for the collapse of the second republic (1979-1984). With ill-implemented privatization and monetization policies, massive looting of the nation’s resources, budget padding and award of humongous indefensible salaries to themselves, greed is the only thing that so far defines the current fourth republic (1999-2018). Greed, more than any other advertised personal inadequacies of President Buhari, is behind the current war against his administration especially by the National Assembly and others that have illegally cornered more than their own proportionate share of our national resources.

    Sadly, unlike Col. Dangiwa Umar (rtd.) who recently called our attention to the greed and self-help tactics that have become the mainstay of the National Assembly, many of our  men of conscience seem to have accepted  heinous crimes such as treasury looting, opportunism, self-help tactics and massive corruption  by leading members of the current national assembly as ‘real politik’. Col. Umar not too long ago openly declared that NASS was not only driven by greed, they are “on a mission to crash the federal government’s war against corruption using the power of ‘oversight’ as cover.”

    He cited as proof some unpatriotic activities of some senators including the one whose company imported 1,200 metric tons of rice in 30, 40-foot containers, fraudulently declared as yeast to evade payment of appropriate duties. He also alleged the same powerful senator secured “a contract to dredge the Calabar Channel” which the Bureau of Public Procurement has condemned as violating all due processes”. The fact that there was no evidence the contract was ever executed was not sufficient disincentive for the senator to “demand and get a whopping $12.5million upfront payment from the NPA or to ask for a purported balance of $22million”

    If there was any doubt that NASS was driven by nothing but greed, the recent book, titled “Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines’ released by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Minister of Finance under the Jonathan administration which revealed the arm-twisting that characterised budget passage by NASS during the David Mark/Ekweremadu 7th senate settled that.  According to her, the National Assembly allegedly coerced the Jonathan administration to part with an additional N17 billion even after cornering a disproportionate share of the 2015 budget for their own use before passing it.

    And from President Buhari’s lamentation about the unpatriotic actions of the National Assembly during the signing of the 2018 budget into law last week, it is now easy for people to see that the civil war within his ruling APC was driven by greed. And what are the facts?

    First, after the National Assembly had held on to the 2018 budget for about five months, the president publicly avowed not to lobby (a euphemism for bribing) the National Assembly.  But with total disdain for the president and disregard for public opinion, what was returned to the president after six months was a new budget fashioned in their own image. In their new budget, the lawmakers without restraint increased the oil benchmark for lawmakers’ interest; raised their own expenditure from N125billion to N139.5 billion; added N170billion to the N100 billion government earlier budgeted for their controversial constituency projects and then went on to remove a number of government projects amounting to N347billion to accommodate 6,403 of their own new projects at a cost of N578billion.

    Some of the projects sacrificed  to accommodate  provision of street lights, bore hole and ‘Beke Napep’  in their constituencies include the all-important Lagos – Ibadan Expressway, the East-West, Enugu Airport, Itakpe – Ajaokuta roads, mass transit and major arterial road in the FCT and the Maritime University in the Niger Delta area.  For Femi Adesina, the government spokesman, these distortions and “alterations (by the lawmakers) demonstrated greediness and self-centeredness”.

    It is not only government that is fuming over NASS’ latest demonstration of greed. Other Nigerians including even some members of the National Assembly seem to have become incensed by NASS insensitivity.

    For instance Enyinnaya Abaribe, who is also chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy, alleged N30 billion was smuggled into the power budget without his committee’s knowledge. SERAP has also said: “Cutting funding for essential public services, such as health, education and security, constitutes a serious human rights violation and potentially rises to the level of crimes against humanity against the Nigerian people.”

    The President of Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Eric Omare described NASS action as “insensitive and retrogressive to the development of the country. It is utter selfishness for the National Assembly to reduce funds allocated to key developmental initiatives and increase its budget”. For Femi Okurounmu, a former senator, ‘budget padding and or introducing a lot of extra-legal amount just to meet all those illegal allowances that they are getting is fraudulent”.

    If one expects a NASS that intimidated customs’ Comptroller General for refusing the senate’s dubious alibi that it was ‘the clearing agent and not the senator who imported impounded rice that called it ‘yeast’ instead of ‘rice’ and exonerated the senate president over the impounded SUV bullet proof new addition to his fleet, cleared with forged papers, blaming everything on the importer, to be remorseful, one will be expecting from this NASS what it lacks –honour.

    NASS is going to justify their latest demonstration of greed even if it means holding on to a straw. At a joint press conference addressed by spokespersons of the Senate, Aliu Sabi Abdullahi and his House of Representatives colleague, Abdul Razak Namdas, they claimed usurpation of the role of the executive in a constitutional democracy was done to ensure the promotion of the principles of federal character as contained in Section 14, subsection (3) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended which states that “the composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria…”

    But this is a provision that has been operated more in breach in the last 18 years and especially under the Buhari’s APC government with every geographical zone including the north that has accused the President of nepotism for ceding key appointments to his cousins in his Daura village as if Daura makes up the north, complaining of marginalization.  There is no evidence that these self-serving lawmakers have done anything to address the fears of those calling for convocation of a national conference and the restructuring of the country. That the federal character clause is being whimsically applied to justify the greed of the assembly members who as members of the ruling party are expected to join hands with the president to address our crisis of nation-building only confirm the fears expressed by Nigerians that the lawmakers are in Abuja to serve none but themselves.

     

  • MKO Abiola remembered 

    There have been several comments on the recent recognition by President Muhammadu Buhari of the victory of Chief MKO Abiola in the presidential election of 1993. I congratulate our president and the Abiola family for the appropriate though belated recognition of what happened in history.

    Some have suggested that the action did not go far enough and that the man should be declared president-elect posthumously and the details and tallies of the votes declared. I say to those who say this that half a loaf is better than none. Sule Lamido, former governor of Jigawa and foreign minister has re-echoed what Babangida said was one of the reasons for cancelling the election which was that the federal government owed Abiola’s company N45 billion for telecommunications job and that if Abiola was sworn in, he would have had to pay himself that humongous debt owed his company. He made a valid point about paying Abiola’s family the debt owed their father. It is only fair.

    In the struggle for exercising the mandate freely given to him by millions of Nigerians, Abiola’s businesses employing hundreds of thousands of Nigerians were deliberately destroyed. These businesses ranged from book and news paper publishing, agriculture, shipping, oil and gas, bakery, estate development and so on with tentacles spread across Africa, Middle East, Europe and America. The federal government should look into how it can ameliorate the hardship of the Abiola’s family by liquidating the debt owed him. Never in the history of this country has a single man done so much in the areas of religion, sports and journalism to bring the country together as Abiola did. At a time he was funding the training of the national soccer team and he had his own football club and was supporting athletes to the extent that he was named the greatest backer of sports in Africa and not just in Nigeria. He was also building mosques and churches all over Nigeria. He was the largest financier of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), a body which brought all Nigerian Muslims together.

    I remember him asking me to explain to him in 1991 the problem between Yemen and Somalian refugees who were being sunk in the Red Sea by Yemeni navy because they were not wanted in their country. Abiola was  much pained by the fact that Muslims were doing this to fellow Muslims that he travelled to Saudi Arabia to put pressure on the Yemenis. He was to be shocked later in 1993 when his Muslim brothers put ethnicity over religion by withdrawing support from him after he had won the presidential election because of the accident of his birth in southern Nigeria.

    I first met Abiola in 1977 in Lagos. I was a senior lecturer then in the University of Lagos and I wanted to start on the side so to say, a publishing company to augment my miserable salary as an academic. Since I was a writer myself, I thought I could edit other people’s manuscripts and publish them under my company’s name. I was introduced to Abiola as somebody who could help. His answer was that I should come and work for him full time. That put paid to my plan because I was not ready to abort my academic career. The next time I met him was 1988. I was special adviser to General Ike Nwachukwu, then minister of Foreign Affairs. Abiola had the idea that we should campaign for reparations from the West for centuries of slave trade and slavery for the black man and decades of western colonialism. We bought the idea which Abiola said he was ready to bankroll. This was at a period of so-called Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) forced on us by the IMF and the World Bank because of the debt overhang in our country and in Africa generally. We felt we should fight back with cry for reparations and that rather than owing western creditor countries and their financial institutions, they were the ones who needed to pay historic debt of mans inhumanity to man and genocide of the cruel deaths during the trans Atlantic transportation of Africans to the Americans and the white man’s introduction of guns and fuelling of inter-tribal wars in Africa to aid the supply of slaves to their ships waiting on the coast. In this way, we argued, they ruined Africa, weakened us for eventual defeat and military subjugation and colonial rule and planted the seed of racism in which Africans were traded as chattels.

    The late professors JF Ade Ajayi and Ali Mazrui were recruited to the cause to provide unassailable academic backing for the project. The reparations struggle became a continental project supported by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU/ AU).

    In 1991 while I was ambassador in Germany, Abiola phoned me that he needed to see Aliyu Mohammed, then secretary to the federal government who was on admission in a hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany but that he had no visa. He was flying in his private jet en route to London and wondered if I could arrange for a visa waiver for a few hours.  It was a difficult request but we pulled strings and it was agreed with the German Auswartiges Amt (foreign ministry) that I could pick Abiola in my representational car, take him to the hospital to visit his friend return him to the airport and that was what I did. Needless to say he was immensely grateful. That same year, he called me that I should contact Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart for the price of an armoured car.  I asked him what he wanted to do with it he said General Obasanjo was attacked by robbers on his way to Ilorin inside a Peugeot 404.  He said it would have been a national humiliation for Nigeria’s former head of state to be killed just like that. I sent him the details of what he asked me but I am not in a position to say if the car was purchased and given to his friend Obasanjo.

    I was not surprised that he was elected president in 1993 because this was a man who genuinely cared for others. When I was forced out of my job in a hurry in 1995 as a NADECO ambassador and returned to Nigeria in 1995, Abiola was already in military detention without trial for treason for declaring himself president according to the will of Nigeria’s people. Question of my seeing him in prison did not arise and I had given interviews about how the policy of the then Abacha government would lead to isolation and alienation of our nation from the international community. I did not know I was a marked man. I travelled abroad in December 1997 and on my way back in 1998 was picked up at the airport and separated from my late wife and confined in military detention on Child Street in Apapa, Lagos. I stayed with eight other people in small office meant for one person during working hours but where we slept on the floor at night. There was no provision for food and since I was not prepared for my ordeal, I had no money on me. I would have died of hunger but for the generosity of Brigadier Oviawe, a fellow detainee who shared the food brought daily for him by his wife. Fellow detainees included Chief Durojaiye and one Moshood Fayemiwo, who I understood was a journalist. There were many young army officers ranging from lieutenant to colonel and some businessmen. At a point I started hallucinating that could I have been in a coup plot without my being conscious of it? One day, the camp commandant Lieutenant – Colonel Omenka presented us to his boss, Brigadier Sabo Ibrahim and when he was asked who I was, he casually said I was one of the professors throwing bombs in Lagos. I screamed that if that was true I should be tried and executed immediately. They both laughed because they knew they were lying.

    I was subsequently released – I heard – because of the intervention of people like Chief Shonekan, late Ambassador Hamza Ahmadu and General Ike Nwachukwu.

    Fayemiwo my young fellow detainee who was in underground detention who we were told had turned grey because of lack of sunlight and had converted to Christianity from Islam had prophesied that Abacha would die before October 1998. I was still being visited by sympathizers when the news of Abacha’s death was announced. I thought Abiola would be speedily released to go home to be with his family but alas it was not to be and he continued to be kept until his suspicious death in front of an American delegation a month after Abacha. One hopes the action taken by President Buhari would lead to national healing. Some of us are still alive by the grace of God and for me this grace is sufficient.

  • Expensive faith

    Three years ago, bitterness was dressed as a garland of flowers and handed to Goodluck Jonathan, piecemeal, calculatedly; till he got utterly swamped by its scent. Some dandy ‘priests’ sold him a triumphant tale of success at the March 28, 2015 presidential election. Their prophecies were convincing. They leapt from forked tongues with extraordinary spunk and fire, seducing the former president and ensnaring him to bogus plots that reality shut out at birth. The prophets lied. Jonathan lost the presidency to Muhammadu Buhari.

    Faith destroyed Goodluck Jonathan. Faith in spurious prophets to be precise. His hankering for unearned ‘grace’ and ‘glory’ ensnared him in a futile, mischievous plot to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Goaded by flawed prophecies, the former president committed series of flawed actions that eventually showed him up as a pitiful hostage to lust and emissaries of mammon.

    At his defeat, Jonathan awakened to a rude shock: “The prophets lied.” While rumours of a ‘N7-billion-booty-for-heavenly-grace’ rent the air, Jonathan grudgingly accepted that he had been fleeced in an elaborate con reminiscent of Christian Andersen’s timeless plot of the fabled emperor’s invisible garment. Having discovered Jonathan’s lust for power to be irrational and naked, the swindlers sold him a curious talisman for victory, the Most High’s ‘grace.’ But Edumare’s ‘grace’ is never for sale. Hence Jonathan, like the fabled emperor, walked naked in the political square; stripped of glory, passion, integrity and belief in the false ‘prophets.’ The invisible ‘grace’ they sold to him was never of Edumare’s infinite mercies. Eventually, Jonathan did what a man and good sport should do, he accepted defeat and made that ‘epic’ phone call to Muhammadu Buhari.

    In Jonathan’s tragedy subsists timeless lessons for the intuitive. Will Nigeria’s youth emancipate themselves from the shackles of their spiritual daddies and mommies before they suffer worse fate than Jonathan? This applies to both Christian and Muslim youth that are persistently swamped by vapid mysticism, brainwashed and domesticated like dogs on a leash to a conflicting canon of ‘faith and profit.’

    Such credo are advanced principally by the nation’s shady Pentecostal pastors and Muslim clerics. The latter, having witnessed the stupendous wealth enjoyed by their Christian peer, have resorted to equally desperate means to attain heavenly ‘grace’ and bounties.

    By their gospel, worldly success has become the major indicator of spirituality and “God’s grace” hence their subjugation of the divine spirit of the soul, to the pursuit of riches. Thereby, they succeed in brainwashing daily, their oft submissive and unassuming “fishes” and flock, mostly youths, turning them into hapless preys in their pursuit of material wealth and paralysis of asceticism.

    In the mix, it becomes very easy for politicians to co-opt the help of these false prophets to brainwash and mislead the youth in tandem with selfish political ends. It becomes easier for so-called Daddy G.Os (General Overseers), to instruct their ‘fishes’ and ‘flock’ to lean towards a particular power bloc and cast their votes for a particular politician, irrespective of the recipient’s qualification for such benefits.

    Strange thing, faith. In pursuit of salvation and “His Grace,” the faithful “believe” quite laxly and live less humanely; even as their passions pale as their faith increase, by their daddies’ holiness and grace.

    It doesn’t matter that the truths the preachers preach, as their deeds, reveal an insufferable perspiration towards ridiculous and shared goals: a mansion, a choice car, a huge bank balance and an intimidating fortune with limitless possibilities to exploit.

    But if no one could read in between the lines, at least everybody gets to see their truths in dazzling, ugly manifestations: expensive suits; huge, bullet-proof black jeeps with sirens to announce their presence; well appointed mansions; trigger-happy armed escorts and a wanton lust for the fleeting epitomize their righteousness and grace.

    In essence, their messages revolve around wealth. To the poor, they offer deliverance and the banishment of poverty. To the rich, they offer salvation and the perpetuation of wealth undiminished. It doesn’t matter how the latter come by such wealth. It doesn’t matter if in acquiring such wealth, they flout heavenly tenets. What matters is for both the poor and the rich to “sow seeds” in the name and temple of God.

    Everybody affects the transcendence of faith but nobody wishes to fulfill its demands. True devotion demands total abhorrence of the worldly, and steadfastness in faith. But what is faith? How expedient should it be? Kind of a trick question, isn’t it?

    Nobody wishes to observe the rigorous dedication and humaneness characteristic of faith.

    That is why some desperate bank chiefs could steal from poor, struggling publics and yet scurry to their pastors to purchase absolution, and a first class cabin to Paradise at offering time.

    And that is why our equally errant and desperate pastors always manage to “intercede” on their behalf in the presence of God that He may for their sake, disable his Commandments.

    Ill-gotten wealth shan’t acquire His Holy grace. Money will never be enough to hinder retribution and acquire salvation. The gospels being appreciated rob too many of intellect and thought. That is why they label clerics who are one-and-a-half-witted, geniuses – because they have been programmed to worship only a third or smidgen of wit.

    The gospel of prosperity-at-all-costs negates the doctrine of control by conscience, which requires rigorous honesty and fastidiousness. In simple terms, the Nigerian cleric vehemently contradicts and rejects the ascetic view that covetousness and lust for material wealth should be shunned as preached by valid and true scriptures.

    Equally duplicitous and yet vulnerable to deceit, these loyal congregants pander to their gospel of prosperity thus substituting simplicity and honesty with a new brand of spirituality, that invests materialism and covetousness with high moral significance.

    Both clerics and adherents thus engage in material pursuits, not only for the expediency of making a living, but in the expectation that they would amass a fortune. In this regard, they recklessly pray and intone: “It is my right to be rich! Heavenly father, you have promised me so! I bless you father because I am rich!”

    A major effect of this belief is that the modern faithful seeks to accumulate wealth with an earnestness of purpose that ridicules the very foundations and admonitions of faith.

    Such an approach to monetary gain constitutes a moral habitus that burdens the seeker and possessor of money with a bandit’s obligation towards his loot.

     

     

  • When sleeping becomes a crime

    WHEN should a man fall asleep?

    Simple.

    So I thought until this innocuous question became a subject of hot debate for social scientists who turned it all into a matter of theoretical contestation.

    Nature seems to have settled the question, a layperson would think. We sleep at night and stay awake in the day.

    Not so simple, rejoin the experts, among whom, I must confess, I do not number myself.  Some people sleep during the day because they work at night. Among them are those in the essential services – medical personnel, fire fighters, soldiers, journalists, policemen, and many others. Others just follow the law of nature, sleeping only at night. Doctors, we must note, advise a siesta, a nap during the day. It is, according to them, a health booster

    If doctors recommend that of the 24 hours we have in a day eight should be devoted to sleeping and nature ensures that we go to bed at night, why then should there be arguments about this phenomenon? In other words, when does sleeping, a common routine, become a subject of controversy and a crime to be severely punished? Is it when it lasts more than eight hours? Is it a question of where one sleeps? How much control has a man over when and how he falls asleep?

    Dear reader, forgive the rather long preamble. We will get to the issue at hand presently. And I assure you, it is not a voyage into the minds of somnambulists, their ailment and its management. Neither is it an exploration into narcolepsy, jet lag and related conditions. No. Not at all.

    It is an attempt to comprehend the fate that has befallen a member of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Hon. Sunday Akinniyi , who is representing the good people of Ikere Constituency II. Akinniyi also goes by the onomatopoeic appellation, Gbosa! He was suspended indefinitely last week “for sleeping too much” at plenary in the last three years.

    Akinniyi was also accused of “pugnacious behaviour in his constituency against his people”, according to a report in this newspaper. He got the push also for being “regularly regular in absenting himself, especially when issues relating to his constituency are slated for discussion”.

    The report quoted a source as saying that the lawmaker’s suspension was to preempt his planned defection to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the crucial July 14 governorship election. No fewer than 10 lawmakers are said to be planning to jump the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ship. When they eventually do, there is no doubt that they will be accused of “sleeping too much”.

    Will the attentive public, not excluding the mammoth clients of the state’s flagship programme, the vote-harvesting Stomach Infrastructure, not begin to query what makes the lawmakers yield so easily to sleep in, of all places, the hallowed chambers of the Assembly where the delicate business of lawmaking for the wellbeing of the people is conducted? Why should a lawmaker sleep for three years before the authorities of the House moved against him? When is “sleeping too much” indeed too much to attract such a stiff sanction?

    Akinniyi, who is reported to have fallen out with Governor Ayo Fayose, had earlier been removed as the Chief Whip on May 24 for alleged “disloyalty to the governor and other un-parliamentary activities”.

    A former deputy speaker, Mr Olusegun Adewunmi, suffered the same fate.

    There are fears that this problem of “sleeping too much” may have gone beyond the four walls of the Assembly. The indications are clear; more lawmakers who may be finding it difficult to stay awake may soon get the Akinniyi treatment. And why not? No House worthy of its mace will tolerate members who are half awake or simply snoring away the day when important and urgent matters of state are being discussed.

    The fears, as I have said, may have spread. And, irony of ironies, many are stacking the blame at the door of the very programme that has been hailed at home and abroad as the most ingenious of its kind, the Stomach Infrastructure under which indigenes are fed to their fill – free.

    The excuse being bandied all over the place is that overfeeding through this lofty government programme may have induced oversleeping, a development which the Assembly is desperately striving to curtail.

    This strange sleep problem, a keen observer of the Assembly said the other day, may have struck most of the members when His Excellency tendered the budget for ratification.

    All was quiet in the chamber as the governor placed the document on the podium and asked repeatedly: “Those who want this budget to be passed speedily say yes.”  The gallery erupted: “Yeh!”

    “If you want this budget passed speedily, say yes.” The gallery yelled: “Yeh.”

    If you want this budget passed speedily, say yes.” “Yeh!”.

    “Those who want the budget passed speedily, say yes.” “Yeh!.”

    “Those who doesn’t (sic) want this budget to be passed speedily, say no.”

    All was quiet. Fayose banged the table with the gavel he had brought to the sitting. The gallery – an assortment of youths, okada riders and artisans – erupted in jubilation.

    But the lawmakers were dead quiet.

    Many were asking after the session: “What hit the lawmakers; were they dumb and deaf?” Now they should know. Their sleeping sickness may have reached a clinically discernible stage at that time, but many, being no experts, did not notice.

    Why did it take the Assembly and its ever-dutiful leaders this long to discover that a rather strange ailment had hit the House? Complacency? Carelessness? Indifference? It is neither here nor there?

    A confidential source, who is close to the leadership of the House, has just told me that the leadership has ordered an audit of every Honourable’s sleeping habit to find out if it conforms with legislative recommendations or not. Doctors, specialists, of course, will be called in.

    Besides, a Bill to ban sleeping in the chamber in whatever guise is in the works. When it becomes law, the first of its type anywhere, it will make it an offence to snore, sleep and doze at plenary. It will be punishable by expulsion, the logic being that mere suspension will be unfair to the constituents of the affected honourable member. If he or she is expelled, the constituents will know that they are simply not being represented. This, as the popular thinking goes, is better than having a sleeping representative.

    Those who are knowledgeable about such legislation are already thinking of how to make the National Assembly adopt it to whip its sleeping and snoring members into line so that the nation can get value for what is believed to be our lawmakers’ jumbo pay.

    By the way, Hon. Akinniyi defected to the APC on Tuesday.

     

    A World Cup update

    THE World Cup is in full swing. It is too early to predict the winner. But the giants have not been finding it easy. Defending champions Germany lost 0-1 to Mexico. Brazil drew 1-1 with Switzerland. Senegal pounded Poland 2-1.

    Besides, there has been no goals drought. Is the rank of good strikers growing?

    Since the Super Eagles lost their first game 0-2 to Croatia, the fans have been restless. Every Nigerian has become a soccer expert. The coach has been tongue lashed for the 4-3-3 formula the team played. Odion Ighalo, the lone striker upfront, was easily rendered immobile by the Croatian defence.

    Off the pitch, the Super Eagles were the toast of fashion aficionados. Their jersey was rated the best. Their travel outfit was hailed as the most creative – and it is home-made, we are told.

    Back home, members of the team are the subject of ludicrous jokes. They are scorned. A friend sent me a picture of a flat plate full of pieces of meat. “The pig that predicted Super Eagles victory has been slaughtered. Here is the meat,” he wrote.

    And this on the social media: “Journalist: Why did the Super Eagles’ lose their match? Lai Mohammed: It’s part of the problems created by PDP. We inherited a poor team.”

    Yet another: “According to the news this morning, the President of China spoke about the Eagles loss at the World Cup. He said:’ Shai choi ting yang teng wong feng deng fung chan kin kong cho fungi lin.’ I agreed with him because it is for our benefit.”

    After Senegal beat Poland, some Nigerians hit the social media to claim their Senegalese origin, saying their great, great grandmas were born in that country.

    Now that attention has shifted a short while from the horrors that threaten our humanity, we should all see ourselves as winners; no losers. All the best to the Super Eagles as they face Iceland tomorrow.