The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Senators, etiquette and protocol

    Senators, etiquette and protocol

    HOW that the heat generated by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “special statement” seems to have subsided and the follow-up by former military president Gen. Ibrahim Babangida has caused  a civil war in the Hilltop mansion, it is fitting and proper to move on to other matters that are no less important.

    Obasanjo, you may recall, has since launched a Coalition – some call it  Commotion – for Nigeria Movement (CN) after advising President Muhammadu Buhari not to pick up the gauntlet in 2019. Babangida and his media aide Kassim Afegbua are battling the wages of shiftiness, an attribute many will not hesitate to decorate the former military leader with.

    As I was saying, it is time we moved on to other matters. Among such weighty issues is the unnecessary contempt with which our senators are held, even among those who, by virtue of their standing, should be custodians of protocol and etiquette.

    Nobody considers the intellectual and physical exertions that go into lawmaking and oversight duties which keep them burning the midnight oil. All we talk about is their fat pay packet as if we knew what they actually earn.

    The other day Senator Dino Jonah Melaye took some time off his new video making venture – he has just released one in which he excoriated Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello; in the earlier one he was on the street hawking groundnuts and many thought he had gone nuts. He led the Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Wastage in the Nigerian Customs Service to the Customs Headquarters in Abuja. Comptroller- General Hameed Ali did not go downstairs from his office to receive the Very Important Visitors (VIV). He simply waited in his office until they were seated in the conference room before showing up.

    Melaye, the distinguished senator representing the good people of Kogi West, immediately charged him with a breach of protocols, a rather serious offence in official circles.  “Mr CG, rather than meeting us here at the conference room by way of courtesy, you’re supposed to have met us at the ground floor on arrival into the premises. That has been the practice of statutory bodies headed by Chief Executive Officers like you,” he told Col. Ali.

    The Senator banged the table with a gavel he had brought with him. The Senate was in session, Melaye – yes, Melaye – presiding. Oh; what a session.

    But Ali, a veteran of such battle of wits, would not be bullied. “I don’t need to come downstairs to receive you, just as nobody in the Senate or House of Representatives has ever come out to receive us anytime we visit the National Assembly,” he replied.  “So, there is no breach of protocol for not coming down to welcome you since appropriate officers have been assigned to do so. Our protocol is our protocol and should be allowed to be. In fact, by way of etiquette, it is the committee that is supposed to come to my office first on arrival and not just come straight to the conference room.”

    Needless to say, the meeting ended on a stormy note. No photographs. Nor handshakes. Nor tea and other niceties to which Customs is said to be accustomed.

    If Ali is summoned to appear in uniform and explain the “economic wastage in Customs”, we should not be surprised. A little courtesy to lawmakers surely goes a long way.

    Perhaps the CG did not understand all this talk about protocol, etiquette and such elements of officialese. Such ignorance could someday cause a dutiful senator to move a motion for the abolition of the Customs Service.  The “ayes” will have it and, just like that, our Customs will cease to exist. But, to be candid, these are compassionate people; I do not see them doing that.

    The Melaye-Ali row reminded a friend of mine of an encounter with a Senate committee last year. Some fertiliser suppliers had been summoned to, as they say, shed light on their bids for the yearly contracts. The planting season was on. It was that time of the year when all hands must be on the plough to avert a devastating food shortage.

    The company’s spokesman told the lawmakers that it was being owed for supplies it had delivered in the past and that in the new scheme it had supplied  about 85 per cent. With payment, it would be able to supply the remaining 15 per cent, the gentleman said.

    “But you don’t have the capacity for this job,” a member of the committee said.

    “We have. We have already done 85 per cent. We have the capacity for this job and more,” the company chief insisted.

    The argument went on and on. All about “capacity”. Flustered, the company chief kept quiet. The distinguished senator – all senators are distinguished – who led the committee looked straight into the eyes of the now subdued company chief and said: “We  say you don’t have capacity; you keep screaming that you have capacity. I put it to you on behalf of this distinguished committee that you don’t have capacity. Listen. You went to the Villa and showed them capacity. You went to the Ministry of Agric and showed them capacity. Now, show us capacity.”

    He was all smiles. Obviously showing some understanding of the word “capacity”, the company chief  smiled in return and promised to be back – apparently to show his “capacity”.

    The story is told of how the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was being summoned last year to explain one thing or the other. So frequent were the summons that many thought the CBN had moved its offices to the National Assembly.

    On one of such occasions, said a source close to a lawmaker whose colleague is a friend of one of the uncles of a member of the panel that met with the bankers, one of the senator could barely conceal his indignation.

    “Every time we read in the papers that the CBN has injected $200m into the forex market to prop up the Naira; who is getting the contracts?” he demanded.

    “Nigerians want to know and this committee will do everything within its power to let Nigerians know who is getting the contracts; $200m today; $250m tomorrow. Haba! The contractor must appear. Who signed the contract? Was there due process? Was it competitive? Is that the best we can do? Why were we not carried along? You award contracts without telling us and when Nigerians demand an answer, they want us to come up with one. Enough. Henceforth, the CBN must not intervene in the forex market or any market – Gerin Kasua, Ariaria, Oba Market, Oyingbo, Balogun; any market at all without the express permission of this committee.”

    However, of all the hazards of lawmaking, none seems to be more of immediate danger than the continued stay in office of the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu. A court has said the Senate has the power to confirm the appointment of a chairman for the agency. Based on this, the lawmakers are asking the Executive to nominate another person for the job. The Presidency does not appear to be ready to do this; it would rather swim or sink with Magu.

    How do we resolve this logjam? Simple. Let’s just pick a senator for the job. Won’t that save us all the rigmarole of background investigation, security report, and formal Senate interview?

     

    A curious (and dubious?) amnesty

    IMO State Governor Rochas Okorocha has ignited another controversy. He has not created a new Ministry. Nor has he erected any new statue. The fresh row is about the amnesty His Excellency has granted some seemingly repentant lawbreakers, including Emenike Agamu (aka General Red Scorpion).

    Red Scorpion is said to be number four in the hierarchy of leaders of the late Don Waney’s gang, which reportedly killed 23 people on New Year’s Day in Omoku, Rivers State. Some other members of the gang, including Waney’s brother, have met a bloody end.

    Okorocha and Wike
    Okorocha and Wike

    With the security agencies in hot pursuit of other members of the collapsing criminal empire, it is curious that Owelle Okorocha will suddenly announce an amnesty for the group. Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike is angry. He has said that the amnesty is not binding on the  state. He believes it is a desperate step by some suspected criminals to evade justice.

    Is the amnesty not preposterous? Isn’t the timing curious and dubious? How are we sure that Red Scorpion will not, like his late boss, go back to running a criminal enterprise?

    Don Waney was once pardoned by the government of Rivers State. He even got a chieftaincy title to the bargain. Yet, he would not forsake crime, until his sensational life of crimes collapsed under a hail of bullets fired by patriotic security agents. Will the killing and abduction of innocent people stop now? Will the destruction of oil pipelines end?

    Let’s hope Okorocha has not got it all wrong this time.

  • Your children will be slaves

    Your children will be slaves

    Nigeria is filled with beautiful boobs, human mass with luscious glands for politicians to slurp.

    Ask the presidency, your state governor, legislator, the itinerant lobbyist and power broker and they would oblige you the adventures of their souls atop thickset spoils.

    To this conniving band, the electorate is simply a mass of organs by which they nourish their lusts. Nigeria is their jungle, an eden of boobs and wildlife. In this degenerate eden they inhabit, the they survive by preying on electorate blessed with mouth like the parrot’s and the will of the catfish.

    When brackish waters recede, the catfish burrows deep into mud earth but that hardly prevents the fisherman from yanking it out of its filthy haven. Picture the electorate as catfish, the fisherman as the country’s ruling class; Nigeria becomes brackish waters and she recedes.

    Nigerians love burrowing into proverbial mud earth to evade negativity. They scurry deep into unlikely havens – ethno-religious bigotry and other sentimental foolery – to evade the violence of governance savagely doled out to them by the ruling class.

    In the crevices of mud earth, they immerse in filthy fluid. They soak in shameful rivulets like sanitary towel and hope to emerge sparkling clean.

    It’s a familiar scene, a Nigerian reality that often resounds like the fable of doomed Odysseus and the labouring ships.

    At the backdrop of this shameful proceedings, the argument persists in academia, social and political circuits, that the future is blurry and bleak because of the youth’s absence in politics. But I maintain that by Nigerian standards, the youth  are in politics.

    ‘Youthful men and women’ in their 60s, 70s and 80s control the country’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and major opposition platform, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    To sustain their legacies, their clannish pride covet incestuous bond with self – nurturing dark, chthonian parts of their innate nature. Hence Nigeria’s youthful-senior oligarchs impose their wards as successors and the country’s administrators even as they molest boondocks young in a never-ending cycle of sleaze and moral pedophilia. But the latter are hardly the preys they are thought to be.

    They are willing participants in a dehumanising ritual of violence, biological and mental retardation. From the hopeless to the vain, presumptuous and credulous, the country pulsates with nourishing boobs. Unlike the literal, fleshy sacs, often the delight of old and young, the Nigerian boob is neither pouch nor sac but human youth.

    It’s 2018, and the image persists of the nation’s youth as human assertions imagined in degenerate stillness by specific and random politicians.

    Unlike the artist’s masterpiece, sculpted in bronze and stone, the youth evolve like plasticine, easily malleable and amenable to devious politicians’ plots. As 2019 approaches, the country’s ruling class once again perfects its grand plot and counter-plots to tame the youth, preserve its ill-gotten wealth and tyranny. The youth predictably become willing pawns in the designs of the criminal ruling class.

    From the herdsmen murders in Benue, Boko Haram’s terrorism, Niger Delta militancy to random political killings and rumblings in Rivers, Taraba, the youth become the nub of discord and deathly rally ripping the country apart.

    Many have attributed the afflictions of the Nigerian youth to bad leadership, nonstop dominance of a predatory ruling class and tiring recalcitrance of the younger generation to engage in communal and national politics in a beneficial manner. Many more would readily diagnose the maladies of the nation’s youth to structural banes and the perverse culture of citizenship by which they are weaned and ushered into adulthood.

    In the wake of plausible and often farfetched analyses, too many ‘patriots’ conveniently excuse themselves from the nexus of blame and severally propound the tragic theory of Nigerians as being innately incapable of self-determination and self-governance. Many have recommended the American example, the British palliative, the Chinese abracadabra and Malaysian ingenuity to mention a few, as the ultimate measures to resolve the nation’s ills. How?

    These arguments have overtime, attained a language of their own and thus evolved as a dialect of dissent and exaggerated self-abnegation. The nation’s academic elite, political and economic ruling classes frequently marshal clashing precepts as solutions and justifiable putdown of the ruling class and the lower working class as their politics dictate.

    A more damning view identifies the electorate’s persistent ‘claims to victimhood and sense of entitlement’ as whiny and symptomatic of a dense and irresponsible citizenry. Between the conflict of hyperboles and sentimental vituperation, Nigeria suffers the affliction of intellectual miscreants and promising youth-turned-foetal-adults.

    The coordinated tragedies afflicting our consciousness daily, append the only real structure to our lives as impoverished Nigerians. From burdensome realities of fast slipping youth, recurrent rites of bigotry to the ethical quandary of coping with strict moral codes of adulthood and ideal society, our lives obscure in purpose and meaning.

    Thus the scorning of ethics by the youth for fast, illicit riches even as ripples of their actions keep hundreds of millions more in binds of despair.

    Consequently, the revolutionary dissent that sprouts from oppression is pitiless and unbending. It radically splits our world into ‘insensitive ruling class’ and ‘clueless lower class,’ ‘elite’ and ‘downtrodden,’ ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ It fosters even more fragmented discord that continually pits Nigerian Christians against Muslims, Hausa against Igbo, Igbo against Yoruba, Yoruba against Ijaw.

    While this piece too may resound as hackneyed howl and lamentation, a regurgitation of towering monstrosities we have become, it need be said that our ultimate solution lies in our will to effect true change.

    Do not vote for APC, PDP and others. Let the youth unite; register a party of true patriots, elect men and women of unimpeachable character. Effect change. Failure to do this will sustain your status quo as slaves and your children as slaves to your oppressors’ children.

  • Which way for Third Force?

    Which way for Third Force?

    In his epistle to President Muhammadu Buhari, former President Olusegun Obasanjo advocated what he called a Third Force under the auspices of the Coalition of Nigeria (CN) to take the country out of the doldrums. The movement, he submitted, ‘’must be a coalition for democracy, good governance, social and economic well-being and progress. A coalition to salvage and redeem our country”.

    Obasanjo was not done yet. ‘’The CN will be a movement that will drive Nigeria up and forward. It must have a pride of place for all Nigerians, particularly for our youths and our women. It is a coalition of hope for all Nigerians for speedy, quality and equal development, security, unity, prosperity and progress. It is a coalition to banish poverty, insecurity and despair’’. These are lofty ideals, which all who love Nigeria should key into. The question is : who will drive the process? In a country of over 180million people, we have more than enough human resources to push the Obasanjo idea. But will those already entrenched in the system allow fresh voices to have their say in this new Nigeria that Obasanjo is clamouring for?

    A Third Force, a Third Way or a Third Eye or by whatever name it may be called, should comprise those not tainted by the kind of politics we have been playing since the sixties. This may be a tall order considering the penchant of our politicians to dominate everything. Obasanjo too may not be as neutral as he is portraying himself now in the whole matter. Can he honestly say he has not been working underground with some people before he issued his statement on ways of ‘’building a united and socially cohesive country’’? If he has not been consulting people before now, then creating his so-called Third Force may not be that easy. This is not to say that it is not possible.

    One week after his call, some people close to him have picked up the gauntlet. On Tuesday, they gathered at the Abuja home of former Osun State Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola to hammer out the vision and mission of CN. Ten governors, with seven coming from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are said to have indicated interest in joining CN. Some senators have also lined up to be part of the movement. Yesterday, the CN was launched in Abuja, but as I write this on Tuesday night, it was not yet clear who its national  leader is. For now, Oyinlola is coordinating its activities. But can anything good come from this CN considering the kind of people it is parading?

    These are people who were at the helm of affairs in the country in the past and performed poorly. Can we trust them again with the leadership of our country? Is this the Third Force Obasanjo wrote about? Will Obasanjo associate with these faces of CN?

    This CN parades Oyinlola and former Cross River State Governor Donald Duke, among others. All these people have been part of the country’s problems for years and honestly speaking they cannot be part of the solution. If they are coming out now to push the CN cause, their track record should speak for them. What were their achievements while in office? If they can show what they did in the past, they would have scaled the first hurdle in their dreams of building a new Nigeria.

    This is not the CN Obasanjo is pushing for. According to him, ‘’the CN, as a movement, will be new, green, transparent and must remain clean and always active, selflessly so’’. Does the Oyinlola-led CN have these attributes? Is the movement green? Is it new or only just new in name? Is it transparent? Will it remain clean and always be selflessly active? What Nigeria desires is new wine in new skin, not old wine in new bottle.

  • OBJ: Feeding on fears of the uninformed

    OBJ: Feeding on fears of the uninformed

    When they took power, the soldiers marched out on a straight path towards their vision of a good society. But the mission became more elusive, the closer they came towards it’’ – Robin Luckman.

    The problem with admirers of Gen. (Dr) Olusegun Obasanjo, like his other military adventurers from Nzeogwu through Ironsi, Gowon, Murtala Mohammed Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar, especially those below 60 years of age who never knew we once had an ordered society is their inability to properly articulate our crisis of nationhood.

    Haunted by a spectre of journey to nationhood in the run up to independence, Nigeria’s founding fathers had settled for a negotiated federal structure which the military in their elusive search for a vision of good society destroyed. And “confronted with the complexities of our socio-political realities over which they had little control and a task for which they were ill-prepared,” they chose to address symptoms instead of the fundamental problem.

    Last week, Obasanjo who along with Murtala Mohammed in 1976, 41 years ago, destroyed  the academia and  the bureaucracy, the two institutions that guarantee survival of any society and 23 years after hijacking and destroying the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) along with the opposition AD and ANPP through ‘mainstreaming’ misadventure, was asking Nigerians to see him as  a part of solution to our national crisis, long resolved before he and his ‘Nigerian army of anything is possible’ came to the scene in 1966.

    He first highlighted the failure of the Buhari administration in a 13-page letter by calling attention to ‘poor performance in government – poverty, insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, ‘condonation’ of misdeed – if not outright encouragement of it, lack of progress and hope for the future as well as lack of national cohesion and poor management of internal political dynamics and widening inequality’. He went on to insist ‘the situation we are today is akin to what and where we were in at the beginning of this democratic dispensation in 1999 when the nation was tottering; People became hopeless and saw no bright future in the horizon’.

    It can be said that the difference between him and Buhari is that of six and half a dozen. While Obasanjo practiced nepotism in reverse by surrounding himself with people of Igbo extraction, exhibited disdain for public opinion, insisted he was not obliged listen to his advisers but only listen to God, Buhari similarly has regard for neither public opinion of that of the party that brought him to power choosing only to listen to a cabal of his cousins and nephews from his Daura village who according to Dr. Junaid Mohammed have caged him.

    Obasanjo lacks the generosity of spirit to admit ‘that like him and his hand-picked immediate successors,  Buhari failed because  all they have been doing is to address symptoms  in the absence of a political will to restructure the country along the lines of sustainable development or return to where the rain started beating us in 1966. And  even after identifying the current structure as impediment to national development in some of his books, Obasanjo still  pretends not to know that  ‘corruption, Fulani herdsmen’s menace, nepotism, indolence incompetence, dereliction of responsibility’ are the result of over-centralisation of power and resources in the hand of  an inept overbearing centre that presides over both exclusive and concurrent lists while the federating states in the absence of residual list are reduced to  parasites waiting for hand-outs from the centre.

    Many patriotic Nigerians believe a restructured Nigeria where federating units take control of their lives, by directly generating resources to plan for the health and education of their children, with freedom to protect and project their culture and values without an overbearing centre insisting on uniformity among nationalities at different levels of cultural development, is the only answer to the national question.

    But Obasanjo, an active participant in 51 years of an  elusive search for ‘a vision of good society’ , is proposing a coalition of the concerned and the willing – ready for positive and drastic change, progress and involvement’ , even after reminding us of Einstein’s admonition that ‘doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the height of folly’.

    The danger we face today is that Obasanjo who has reaped bounteously from the current unworkable structure as military Head of State and two-term president just by claiming to be a Nigerian first before being the representative of his tribe is trying to sell the same fallacy to Nigerians below 60 years of age who never witnessed an ordered Nigerian society as obtained under the old structure fashioned out by our founding fathers. Most of the names bandied around as part Obasanjo’s proposed coalition have always known the current unworkable military-created structure. The fear therefore is that they could easily be seduced with a thesis long invalidated by federalism which celebrates individuals and groups as the most important actors in a nation state.

    Obasanjo’s hallelujah younger admirers and advocates of citizenship right above group or tribe right must ask him to validate his thesis  by providing explanation as to why it is easy for an Igbo man to buy land and settle in any part of Yoruba land while, TOS Benson, first republic minister for information, a Zik ally and a staunch NCNC member publicly agonized before his death over his failure to secure a plot of land in Igbo land to build a house for the remains of his first wife who was of Igbo extraction. To validate his thesis, Obasanjo must find explanation as to why the Emir of Kano will arrogantly insist the governor of Benue State cannot implement a law duly enacted by his state House of Assembly because it did not adequately protect the interest of Fulani settlers. Finally Dr. Obasanjo must find explanation as to why the minister of defence, Mansur Dan-Ali’s reaction to the killing of subsistence farmers in Benue State by rampaging Fulani herdsmen is – “Communities and other people must learn how to accept “foreigners” within their enclaves. Finish.”

    Obasanjo also says “The development and modernization of our country and society must be anchored and sustained on dynamic Nigerian culture, enduring values and an enchanting Nigerian dream. We must have abiding faith in our country and its role and place within the comity of nations”.

    We must stop deluding ourselves. There is no one Nigerian culture. There is similarly neither an enduring values nor a common Nigerian dream. One proof of this is the ongoing mindless killings across the country by herdsmen who insists open grazing is part of Fulani culture over which they are not prepared to compromise. Similarly importation of fake and substandard goods including drugs that kill Nigerians in their thousands cannot be evidence of an abiding faith in Nigeria. It can only be a demonstration of lack of faith in our nation as a corporate entity.

    Obasanjo’s “coalition of the concerned and the willing – ready for positive and drastic change, progress and involvement,” can therefore not be the ‘’only one choice left to take us out of Egypt to the Promised Land”. It cannot be a substitute for restructuring of our country along the line of sustainable development in an age when the federal arrangement is driven by market forces. It is similarly not an alternative to political party – the 17th century ingenious creation of the political elite which as a modernization agent is credited with creation of a more egalitarian society and the emergence of modern states across the world. As Bode Thomas once warned and as was demonstrated by the Yoruba in 1999, the nation must reject being led once again by a one eye-king.

  •  A tale of two generals

     A tale of two generals

    IN THE military, which is their first constituency, a lot of premium is placed on camaraderie. Soldiers bond together no matter the situation. Whether in war time or peace time, there is an unwritten rule for them to look out for one another. A  soldier can take the bullet meant for his colleague . That is how much love they have for one another. The officers are in a class of their own altogether. And if they are generals, aah, that makes the bond thicker.

    Generals enjoy the best of everything. There is virtually nothing that they require that the Service does not provide for them – even after retirement. Generals may have their differences, but hardly do they allow such issues to blow open. When such problems get to the public domain, they refrain from talking in order not to exacerbate things.

    When Gen Olusegun Obasanjo fired a ‘’special statement’’ on the state of the nation to Gen Muhammadu Buhari on January 23, not a few thought that he was breaching military tradition by taking on a fellow general. But you can always trust former President Obasanjo to say whatever he wishes to say at any time he wishes to say it no matter his relationship with his subject of attack. In the statement, he advised President Buhari not to seek a second term in office because he has so far performed below par. It was a statement which triggered a chain of reactions, but the duo, who were also once head of state moved on in the fashion of top generals.

    Five days after the release of that statement, the generals met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was a friendly meeting with both men, shaking hands and exchanging banters to the surprise of many. People  watched the generals, with mouths wide open. They were stunned to see Buhari and Obasanjo chatting as if the latter had not just taken the former to the cleaners. Is this real? some seemed to ask. It was real. Buhari and Obasanjo pumped hands amidst smiles by another former head of state, Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar, and Foreign Affairs Minister Geoffrey Onyeama, among others.

    Their meeting place – the Nelson Mandela Hall – was apt for the occasion. Reason: the name, Mandela, connotes peace, freedom and if you like, free speech. It is an honour that Buhari and Obasanjo met in that hall to lay the ghost of the latter’s statement to rest. The bigger lesson in it is for those who have been weeping more than the bereaved over the issue. Politics, as the generals have shown, is not a do or die. You have to agree to disagree in order to move forward, just as the generals have done. They have shown maturity and we should all learn from that and not allow divisive politics to ground our country.

  • Small arms proliferation

    Small arms proliferation

    Since the Liberian and Sierra Leone civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s, the West African region has been faced with the problem of small arms proliferation. What was a Middle Eastern, South Asian and post-Soviet Union problem had by the 1980s become a global threat. Such was the severity of the problem that it became an item of deliberation in the United Nations General Assembly Plenaries of the period. The flow of arms to West Africa and to the boiling cauldron of Liberia and Sierra Leone came from Libya whose strongman Muamar Gadhafi had the ambition of spreading his influence all over Africa either by force or bribery made possible by the huge petroleum dollars in his country’s coffers. Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia now serving a life sentence in Europe, became one of Muamar Gadhafi‘s protégés. Most of the rebels in Liberia and Sierra Leone carried the AK47 supplied them by the Libyan regime. The AK 47 which most of the armies in the collapsed Soviet empire in Eastern Europe carried could be bought for half a penny, with a bit of exaggeration, on the streets of the capitals of newly freed East European countries and the Balkan region of former Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria.

    The AK 47 is a revolutionary weapon and gas operated7.62x39mm assault rifle, developed in the old Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is light and simple to operate and very deadly. It is now made either under license or pirated in several countries of the developing world. This is the weapon of choice by many guerrilla movements or armed gangs with no noble or ideological causes. The ECOWAS heads of state and governments during the post-civil wars in the region tried to prevail on governments in the region to find ways to disarm former rebels and those in possession of small arms by arguing that these arms presented as much existential challenges to Africa as nuclear weapons to people in the so-called First World. From what is going on now in Nigeria, all our protestations have apparently been in vain. The fact that herders of cows are killing farmers with these weapons means we still have much to do. The volume of this type of weapons available in our region has been increased by the wars for territorial control raging on in Libya after the NATO-induced overthrow of Gadhafi. Unscrupulous Nigerian businessmen have also been bringing these weapons from Turkey and China as articles of trade in readiness apparently for the 2018 and 2019 elections in Nigeria.

    It seems the security organizations in Nigeria are either inept or overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems. It is no use blaming the president even though I agree the buck stops at his table. What we should be asking is what the security agencies are doing while the country is being overrun by a rag tag band of herders or armed militia. The fact that things have gotten to a situation where innocent people are being killed daily is a serious indictment of our federal government agencies responsible for securing the country. If the current heads of these agencies are not performing optimally, then there is a need for their wholesale overhaul. President Buhari must save us and save his government from the current trauma. People are afraid to travel all over the country. It is becoming dangerous to move even from Abuja to Kaduna a few kilometres from the seat of the federal government. If this is so, one can imagine the situation at the periphery in the states where sometimes there is no effective control of government because states have no means of enforcing their laws.

    What is happening in Nigeria is not just Fulani herders killing farmers. There is evidence that the killing is mutual in some parts of the country like Adamawa particularly in Numan and Bachama areas, Jos and the Mambilla Plateau. These killings are manifestations of ancient animosity among ethnic groups. The same is true in Taraba where Jukun/ Chamba are in antagonistic embrace with Kutebs, and Tivs over land.   In most instances, these killings have no religious significance; in fact many of the Bororo Fulani herders are animists and not Muslims. In the past these violent tendencies were curtailed by the effectiveness of local governments and the emirate administrations. But not anymore. The local governments have been reduced to mere sharing of unearned income  from the federal government by local officials and leaving the local people to settle ancient  disputes arising from mutual hatred rooted in history of conflict passed on from generation to generation. I personally witnessed this from my sojourn on the Jos plateau and Maiduguri for about five years.

    What is to be done?

    The federal government as a matter of urgency must and should call in the army to embark on “Operation Damisa” to ask all those in possession of arms to surrender them at their state headquarters supervised by the army. To make sure this is done, every arm surrendered should attract a reward of N1000. The time lag should be two weeks after which anybody with arms will be treated as terrorists and summarily dealt with. In this mission, the army should alone be responsible for collecting the arms after which bonfires should be publicly made of them.

    The long-term solution is education for both farmers and herders and their sponsors. Those involved in cattle rearing should be persuaded that ranching is the way forward. If properly done, ranching will bring more money to owners of cows particularly in the production of milk, cheese, hides and skins for local and foreign shoemakers. In ancient times, the so-called Moroccan leather came from Sokoto and ‘shipped’ across the desert on camels’ backs. Instead of cows being driven across the country until they become emaciated, they would be slaughtered in the ranches and transported across the country in refrigerated trains, trucks and air planes. We used to get beef airfreighted from Argentina in the 1970s. As the Americans used to say in the Clintonian era, it is the economy stupid! We have to find a way to create jobs for our teeming young population. If people have jobs, it will not matter what ethnic groups people come from.

    We must again look at the political geography of this country. Do we really need 37 states including Abuja guzzling 90 % of our resources for administration with little left for development? Whether we like it or not, we must collapse these unviable and insolvent states that are unable to pay salaries and maintain law and order into six or at most eight ethnically rational states or regions so that we can have a competitive and cooperative federation as we used to have in the past. Nigeria is not more heterogeneous than India and the kind of mutual slaughter going on here will be obviated when the coordinating federal government is not overburdened by the weight of too many responsibilities. In this regard we must redesign our federal architecture so that the issue of security is divided between the states and the centre so that we do not have a Poobah of a president and political leviathan with all power of security in the hands of a single individual as we have today.

    But we must begin our journey to security and sanity by countrywide disarmament which must be coordinated with our partners in ECOWAS and the Lake Chad Basin Commission. This is an existential urgency before the coming elections. Any prevarication is not in anybody‘s interest. Nigeria is too important to Africa and the black race in an era of rising racism all over the world to be toyed with and be tossed up and down by a clandestine political interest group whose interest may be at cross purposes with the overall interest of the country at large.

  • Up Nigeria

    I KNOW I am taking a risk predicting on Tuesday night that the Super Eagles will play the African Nations Championship (CHAN) final on Sunday . Their semifinal match against Sudan was yesterday. The players have shown resilience coming from behind to beat their last two opponents before getting to the semifinals. I know that in football you cannot write off any team. So, I am in no way writing off Sudan. With the class our boys have shown,  the Sudanese cannot stop them. To avoid distractions, they have asked that they be paid  their allowances and bonuses after the competition. I doff my hat to these boys for their patriotism and commitment. Go, Eagles, go, nothing shall stop you until you win the trophy.

  • Obasanjo on his latest move

    Obasanjo on his latest move

    SINCE former President Olusegun Obasanjo issued his “special statement” in which he spanked the Muhammadu Buhari administration, nothing has been heard from him.

    He showed up the other day in Addis Ababa at the African Union Summit. A video of his encounter with President Buhari has been rocking the Internet. Obasanjo is seen in the footage with Buhari and former Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar. They throw banters and laugh heartily.

    To many, it was incredible that Obasanjo could be that warm to Buhari after firing off that excoriating statement, which sent panic into the Buhari political camp and ignited a renewed excitement on the political landscape.

    Is it true that the Generals who have held the power levers since 1966 may have sworn to a secret oath to remain one even when they seem to disagree in public, to go only so far and no farther? Do they speak a special language the rest of the country cannot understand? What is Obasanjo thinking now? Is he just trying to rock the boat and put Buhari under pressure?  What does he want to do with his Coalition for Nigeria (CN)? Who is beating the drum to which the wily old fox is dancing?

    These are some of the questions Nigerians have been asking since that video surfaced and newspapers splashed the pictures of the Addis Ababa show on their front pages. Nobody can claim for sure that he knows where Obasanjo is heading.

    Considering the avalanche of questions, permutations and postulations, “Editorial Notebook” has taken up the task of finding out what is on the former president’s mind, through a hypothethical encounter with reporters at the Lagos airport upon his return from Addis Ababa. Here we go:

    Reporters are rushing after Obasanjo as he walks briskly to the lounge. He stops suddenly, looks at the small crowd, frowns a bit and beckons to the reporter  ahead of the pack. He moves close. Obasanjo grabs him by the shoulder and pulls his head under his armpit. He knocks his head twice, releases him and says softly:

    “Oya, two questions. I won’t take more than that today; otherwise, you get more knocks.”

    “Since your special statement was released, some people have been making comments. Now, they say you were posing for photographs with Buhari and cracking jokes with him. Are you sincere?”

    Huuum! Huuuum!Huuum!Obasanjo clears his throat and smiles like a baby.

    “You see, I mean no harm. Don’t forget, it was advisory. I only advised Buhari to let go and join us to rebuild Nigeria. My brother Buhari knows it is not personal – and that is the hallmark of a statesman; the ability to speak out when others are merely grumbling. You know I fear nobody. I speak my mind.”

    “They say you’re selfish and opportunistic, hitting the government because you think it is vulnerable.”

    “If that is your opinion, keep it; I don’t care. What kind of reasoning is that? Do I want Buhari’s job? How many presidents do you want to make of me? You people should grow up o. I have said my own. Chikena. He who has ears, let him listen. Before it is too late.

    “The other time, they said I wrote a letter to that boy…eeem, eeeem… Jonathan  or wetin call. Yes, I did. This is not a letter; it is a special statement, which is as clear as day in its meaning and objectives. Please.”

    “They say you danced with the late Okadigbo’s wife and ate pounded yam in his house. The next day, the man was fighting a losing battle for his political life. They speak about a tinge of savagery or do-or-die in your politics.”

    “Please, you should know how to talk. What did I do wrong there? I am a statesman; I’m not a politician. My politics is Nigeria and anybody who says Nigeria will not move, I’m ready to go konkobilo with him, no matter how highly placed. Is playing my role as a statesman politics? If you can’t differentiate between politics and statesmanship, then you are a fool. Politics my foot!”

    “The critics say you sold the late Umaru Yar’Adua to Nigerians and later condemned him, asking him to step down. In short, they say you have a megalomaniac tendency and a false messianic orientation which is fast leading to  a Samsonian affliction.”

    Obasanjo raises his left hand, brings it down slowly as the reporter’s  comments continue. He raises his hand again and frowns his face,

    “Wait. Wait.Oga reporter or whatever they call you. Let me talk. You see, it is true that I spoke about Umoru. I stand by what I said. If you take up a job – appointed, selected, elected or whatever. And you discover that your health can no longer carry on, you should know what to do. If you don’t, then you don’t know anything. I said so. Is that too much? Samson ko, Delilah ni. “

    “They say you condemned Atiku Abubakar, who played a major role in your administration and that you think you are the only good man in town, Mr Clean.”

    “They say so? Hmmm. You see, it’s true they told me that he was preparing, that he wanted to be president. I recall saying nothing. I only replied, ‘Atiku? I dey laugh o.’ How has that become anybody’s problem? If that one dey pain you, that na your toro. As for me o, I dey kampe.

    “I remember that when we were leaving office, I was singing and dancing when you people came to me. I said, Aremu a maa lo s’Ota, awon kan a maa lo s’ewon (Aremu will be going to Ota, some people will be going to jail).(He begins to dance in short,slow steps, murmuring a song and smiling).One of the reporters cuts in, ‘that was a python dance, Your Excellency’. Obasanjo frowns and hisses.”

    “The June 12,1993 election was adjudged to be Nigeria’s fairest and freest ever, but the winner, your kinsman MKO Abiola, was denied the prize  and you rubbed it in by saying he wasn’t the messiah Nigeria needed and…”

    “Stop it! Please, please, please. Don’t annoy me. If you don’t know how to ask a question, you keep quiet. If I said Abiola wasn’t the messiah, don’t I have a right to my opinion? If he was my kinsman nko? I don’t operate that way. I’m a detribalised Nigerian. How many of you can tell me that your best friend is not from your tribe? You people are the one killing this country.”

    “In your statement, you said Buhari hasn’t done well in the economy, but the government says you may have been travelling too much to notice its scorecard in this and other areas.

    “Foreign reserve is climbing up, rice importation is down, manufacturers have access to funds, the stock market is among the world’s best in performance and foreign investors are coming back.”

    “Look young man. It is true that I said the economy does not obey military order. Besides, if I travel, is it anybody’s business? I have said it again and again; I’m a citizen of the world. I’m a statesman. I have so much to do overseas.I must travel, but wherever I go, Nigeria remains on top of my mind.”

    “It is being said that the coalition you are pushing is a conclave of PDP renegades and looters as well as their disgruntled cousins in APC who would want the days of old back.”

    “Well, I don’t care. Anybody who is not happy should form his own coalition and when coalition jams coalition, there will be collusion and we will step in to curb the commotion. No be so?”

    “Some people are saying you issued that statement because you are still breathing fire over your inability to get a third term.”

    “Those saying that are foolish. Don’t annoy me, please. I have said it before and open your ears now (Obasanjo holds his right ear firmly).I never wanted a third term. If I had wanted a third term, I would have asked God and he would have given it to me. He has never refused me anything. Is that clear?”

    “Some of your critics say your own home has always be in turmoil and that yours is a pretence to moral rectitude.”

    “Moral rectitude, attitude or altitude or magnitude or whatever you call it, I know where you’re going. Dem send you? Go and tell whoever is sending you that I, Olusegun Aremu Okikiolakan Matthew Obasanjo, I cannot be embarrassed. Nobody can embarrass me. Nobody, I repeat. Let them come out; I’m not afraid to fight.”

    “Thank you so much Dr Obasanjo.”

    “Excuse me; point of correction. I remain Olusegun Obasanjo; chief –if you like. And have a good day.”

    He hops into his car, smiling as the vehicle zooms off.

  • A whimpering movement

    A whimpering movement

    FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo no doubt had it in mind when he suggested a movement to save Nigeria. Just a few days after his “special statement”, the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) berthed yesterday in Abuja.

    Its promoters promise that it will be youth-driven. Leading the way are former Osun State Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, an ex-PDP chief who played a major role in the internecine war that hobbled the party, former Cross River State Governor Donald Duke, another ex-PDP chief who has recently showed us more  fluidity on the sax than in politics, Otunba Oyewole Fasawe, Obasanjo’s man Friday and Atiku Abubakar’s pal as well as Abduljalil Tafawa Balewa, son of the former Prime Minister, he of exciting memory.

    Where are the frontline youths in the professions, the arts, sports, science, business, politics, academia and others?

    If you think rallying the hip hop generation is a walk in the park, you’d better think again. Those who expected the CNM to come out with a bang must have been disappointed, indeed; it came out with a whimper.

  • You are like brittle toothpick in the paws of a mongrel

    You are like brittle toothpick in the paws of a mongrel

    Someday, you may choke on your spittle. You could die if you do. Death could come in your saliva. When it does, your face will bulge with varicose veins straining to go ‘splat!’ in your head. In that moment, neither medicine nor the finest surgeon will be available to help you. Your money will be useless. Your power, ‘street credibility,’ thugs, charisma, will disappear in plain sight. Your concubines, trophy wives, spoilt kids and sycophants will be unable to charm death. Many of them would  be glad that you are dead.

    Whatever your degree of affluence, you will discover that you are worthless, like brittle toothpick in the paws of a mongrel. In split seconds, death will maul you the way boondocks crowd chew tinko (horse meat of the impoverished) they purchase with your hand-outs.

    You will remember the smile on your face and the sneer in your heart as you lured starving citizenry to sell their votes to you for a N500 hand-out, a quarter of rice and stale bread.

    Death will find you in common hours. And when it does, it wouldn’t recognize you as the powerful governor, senator, council chairman, vice president, president.

    Your title will be worthless; at death’s door, nothing else matters. Your life would probably flash before you and you would relive for an instant, the most crucial aspects of your finished life.

    You will remember the monies you stole from public coffers. You will remember your guilty and diabolic pleasures: the aides and concubines whose anuses you plowed for bewitched wealth; the newborn and seven-day-old infants whose heads and intestines you pounded in a mortar to make black soap and anti-death talisman. You will remember the sons and daughters you sacrificed or ‘used’ if you like, to ascend the ladder of man-made gods.

    You will remember the poor primary school kids you left at the mercy of nature’s wild elements – harsh sunlight, torrential rains and windstorms – because you had better things to do with State money, like the acquisition of mansions abroad, the seduction of a trophy bride or purchase of sinful pleasures.

    When death comes, you will remember the infant children, parents and youth whose lives never mattered to you even as they died in ghastly auto accidents on the cratered roads you refused to repair.

    Death will find you while you read commentary on your latest social and political theatric. The grim reaper will claim you while you exult in the praise of your fools and court sycophants; in that moment, you will find that you are the greatest of fools.

    Your Excellency, your paranoia is so great that you steal billions from public coffers only to bury them in sewages, water tanks and crop farms.

    At death’s door, you won’t have your great war chest and grand armies of thugs and corrupt law enforcers to command. At death’s stare, you will go blind in the face and your mind’s eye.

    You will understand why it was so easy for you to subdue political enemies and not the enemy within you. You will understand why you could look on earthly tempests and not flinch. But you will never understand why death will take neither gold nor silver to spare your life.

    Mr./Mrs. Excellency, you have grown from the desperate politician with tall dreams and modest wealth to become filthy-rich, power-drunk and self-possessed. You have become the titan who is successful at ‘cancelling out’ and overpowering lesser titans.

    Your virtues have turned to failings and you soar in a fetish cloud of lust and arrogance. As you exult with lust that will kill you, remember greater men and women who expired in the throes of fetishes like the ones that afflict you.

    Remember Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who collapsed, coughing up blood in 1925. The X-rays showed he had severe gastro-duodenal ulcer. Thereafter, ulcer pain was ever present. Then he suffered increasing insecurity, paranoia and finally became detached from reality.

    By late 1942, his mental health had caught up with him. All the bombast and pomp had gone. He had no reserve of courage or wile and he yielded to ulcer, deep-seated depression among others.

    The Greek war became his unmitigated disaster, the shame from which Italy had to be rescued by the Germans. Power intrigues with Germany quickened his latter descent.

    In July 1943, he was in effect, imprisoned by fellow Italians on the island of Ponza, then moved to a naval base in Sardinia and later to a ski resort. After Italy surrendered in September, Mussolini was rescued by a German SS glider team and flown to Munich. The Germans then returned him to Italy and installed him as the puppet dictator of the remnant Italian Social Republic.

    He was eventually captured and shot by Italian partisans near Como; his body was flung in the back of a truck and driven to Milan where, on April 29, 1945, it was strung upside down alongside that of his mistress in Piazzale Loreto, where 15 Italian partisans had been shot in August 1944.

    Like Mussolini, the time for humouring yourself will soon be over. Your end will come varied, like the whimpers and howls of  poor, helpless Nigerians, whose miseries never matter to you.

    The indices of your brutal end emerge but you are too blinded by power and ego to see them; by your machinations, there is widespread poverty and unemployment in the land; Boko Haram afflicts the northeast, herdsmen invade southwest and Biafra’s dead bones jut from the grave across the southeast.

    Death travels with the restive wind but you dream of escaping its scourge by simply hopping on the next plane to join your families abroad. You forget that death could find you in your spittle aboard your private jet.