President Muhammadu Buhari is back. Not to the back room of presidential exertions; he is back in his office at the Villa.
Gone are the rumour mongers, the yarn spinners who kept our heads gyrating like a shoe making machine, the self-styled presidential-conduct experts, the anarchists, the emergency futurists and the fatalists. Among them also are those inquisitive fellows he aptly described as mischief makers. They are gone.
In their place are the youths who are marching to show their love for the President Buhari, who returned to work on Monday after being away for about 50 days on medical vacation. Back also are those infectious presidential smiles that have lit up the Villa once again, even as he told of his medical odyssey. And what a moving story. “I have never been this sick… .”
While he was away, the rumour mill – and the wicked millers – hit overdrive. Some said an army of surgeons was working on Buhari for days at a hospital they refused to disclose. Others listed all manner of illnesses which they claimed had assailed the President. Yet others said he was no more. His photographs sent occasionally by his minders would not sway the pessimists.
Apparently drawing inspiration from these, politicians in the opposition seized the narrative. They found in the President’s condition an opportunity to pummel the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Among such politicians the most vociferous is the jack-of-all-trades governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose – fireman, thespian, chef, chauffeur, tailor, lawmaker, preacher, prophet,exceptional stuntman and more. Ah! Ekiti has never been this lucky.
Riled by reports that Buhari had spoken with United States President Donald Trump and some government officials, Fayose dismissed it all as the handiwork of some spin doctors. The President should speak with Fayose if he wants Nigerians to believe that he is alive, Fayose said with a flounce, adding – perhaps for emphasis – that he is credible. Sure. Nobody, except his political opponents, will accuse Fayose of lacking credibility.In fact, his admirers would swear that he is capable of also being incredible. Two for the price of one.
Since Buhari’s return, not much has been heard from Fayose. A close observer said Fayose has since shed the critic’s garb to attend to his floundering legacy, the much admired stomach infrastructure, which has been put in jeopardy by many months arrears of unpaid salary.
Nigeria is in trouble, former Minister Femi Fani-Kayode yelled on learning that the President had extended his vacation. “Buhari has finally acknowledged that he is sick and has extended his stay abroad indefinitely. It is now clear that Nigeria is in trouble,” the rambunctious politician said.
Fani- Kayode, you may wish to recall, held a press conference before the 2015 presidential election where he displayed what he swore was Buhari’s medical report. Now, many are asking: “Is he surprised that Buhari is alive?” So much for the ruination of the apocalyptic rumination of a boisterous politician, a colleague said the other day. He seems right.
It was also time for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – whatever is left of it, that is – to find its long lost voice. A faction of the opposition party that has been in disarray condemned what it called “the secrecy” of the President’s health.
“The President should know that he is not a private citizen. He should know that Nigerians are the ones paying his health bills and, therefore, he should tell them the true state of his health,” the Ahmed Makarfi faction railed. Besides, the splintered party renewed its threat to return to power from which it was shoved out after its dream of ruling for 60 unbreakable years – in the first instance – collapsed like a house of cards.
Obviously humbled by Buhari’s return and hobbled by its internecine war, PDP has retreated into its stifling shell. Its leaders have put their faith in the Supreme Court, which will determine the fate of the political gladiators who are holding the party by the throat, starving it of the oxygen it desperately needs to fire its opposition role.
Buhari made a point of thanking Nigerians for their prayers. That’s fine. In fact, if anybody had doubted our capacity to go on our knees in supplication when the need arises, this occasion settled the matter. From one state to the other, the frenzy of prayers gripped the land. Churches and mosques prayed against any major calamity. Many recalled the power struggle sparked by the death of the former President, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Some recalled former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s mobile phone call to then PDP candidate Yar’Adua at a rally: “Umoru…Hello. Umoru, they say you’re dead; are you dead?”
The prayers cost nothing. Not a kobo. In the days of the PDP, a former governor collected N4.6b for prayers to keep former President Goodluck Jonathan in office. Needless to say, the prayers found no favour in the ethereal realm because, as a wise fellow said, you cannot bribe God. He charges no fees. The cash simply went into the pockets of some marabouts, among them foreigners.
By the way, where is former Sokoto State Governor Attahiru Bafarawa?
If the din of arguments over the President’s political future has died down in some political circles, not so at the newsstands. A colleague spoke of how some free readers got locked in an argument after seeing Buhari’s picture, which was splashed on the front pages of several newspapers. One noted with some credulity that something was wrong with the President’s culinary choices, going by his looks. In no time the discussion veered off from politics to a session for emergency nutritionists.
Some said it was all because His Excellency had been fed English food. A fellow said he had it on good authority from Abuja House that Tuwon, the North’s popular dish, was not on the menu. Another interjected: “Don’t mix it up. There are tuwon shinkafa,tuwon dawa,with miyan gyada, tuwon masara and tuwon acha. Do you know the man’s favourite?” The row went on until the vendor got angry and disbanded the gathering.
While the vacation lasted, Nigerians were at their hilarious best. Buhari was awarded a prize of being “the first Nigerian president to be based in the UK”.
A friend sent me a message he claimed his nephew sent him: “Uncle, please don’t be angry o. There is a question I’ve been trying to ask you. I hope you won’t be angry. The question has been bothering me for some time. My friends don’t have a clue. Our teacher has refused to answer this question. Anytime I feel like asking you, my heart pounds and I keep quiet. But the question keeps bothering me. My mind won’t rest. I don’t know who else to ask. It is a very simple question. But you need to promise me, uncle, that you won’t beat me. It is an innocent question. Can I ask the question, uncle? Is Buhari with you?”
Now that Buhari is back, we hope to see more action. That is the essence of governance.
WANTED: A TAILOR FOR THE C.G.
CUSTOMS chief Col. Hameed Ali (retd.) did not show up yesterday at the Senate. Senators decreed that he had to appear in his official uniform to explain why motorists will have to show that they paid customs duty on their vehicles.
Col. Ali is not a stranger to uniforms. He decked the army’s for a long time. The trouble, the distinguished senators do not seem to understand, is that the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (a mouthful of a title, no doubt) is yet to find a tailor to sew him a uniform. His subordinates, I am told, are desperately searching for one.
How many competent tailors are confident that the duty on their machines, tape rule, scissors, needles, pressing iron, ruler, thread and other appurtenances of their trade was paid? Were the tools undervalued or not? Was the right duty paid – duty in accordance with the years of manufacture of such important tools? Who inspected them?
Imagine a tailor showing up at the Customs Headquarters to take the C.G’s measurement and an officer playing by the rules asks him to produce his duty papers and he has none. The fellow could be detained, his shop raided in the dead of the night and his tools carted away to be exhibited before the press as glittering trophies for our Customs’ diligence.
The Senate may have to pull the brakes on this matter. Ali, who has practically lived in uniforms since he became an adult, is not afraid of decking one now. The trouble is that all the tailors in town are scared of taking up this national challenge of making one for the no-nonsense C.G.
There is no gainsaying that DSTV/Multichoice, fulfills its role as pervert moulder and merchant of dark delight – alongside its contributions to employment generation, teeny philanthropy. Like reprobate social agents, Nigerian managers of the satellite medium, adorn the tragedian cloak to watch society inflame and burn in the scorching blaze of the Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) ‘reality show.’
Like a clever architect of sexual spectacle, the satellite broadcaster constructs the BBN house in the image of a brothel. The philosophy and theatrics that constitutes the house’s essence, reignites memories of Emperor Nero’s riverside brothels.
Nero installed patrician women in the brothels to solicit him from doorways, DSTV/Multichoice installs degenerate males and females in the BBN house to patronise and feed it’s voyeuristic appetite. Nero tied his young male and female victims to stakes, draped himself in animal skin and leapt out from a den to attack their genitals.
In similar fashion, makers of BBN perverse reality tie young male and female housemates to a monetary stake, adorn the cape of the voyeuristic Big Brother but lets the BBN inmates, led by inordinate lust for money and flesh, to attack their own genitals – to the pleasure of Big Brother.
Nero scandalised his army with his silk, jewelry, wild cavorting, degenerate pageants and parlor plays. The BBN masterminds ply the inmates with degenerate pageants, studio plays, wild frolic and rewards.
Absolute power was the crutch by which Nero’s fantasies were actualised. The BBN masterminds wield absolute power over the show’s participants. Wielding the power, they stake the inmates to a leash of greed and make living theatre of their turbulent fantasies – that is, Big Brother and the ‘inmates’ reciprocal lust.
In the BBN house, there is no void between wish and realisation; the moral and amoral. Fantasy morphs into instant visibility as DSTV/Multichoice markets sexual filth as ethical masque in its perverse reality. Thus DSTV/Multichoice, acting to provoke, scorn and arouse, removed the poetry and philosophy from theatre; it disrobes the media of the didactic cloak of ethics and high civilisation.
At the backdrop of this violation and cultural rape of Nigerian society, the country’s social institutions and agencies of censure play dumb. The National Assembly, presidency, Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and other social and moral agents conveniently lose voice.
The status quo presages and appropriates the degeneracy that led to the fall of medieval Rome. Sexual irresponsibility, deceitful illusion and idealisation of mores, led to lassitude and inertness of Rome’s social institutions and ethical custodians. In time, individual Romans and groups mutated into a mindless mass and participant in an orgy of filth and cultural devastation. The Roman society simply mirrored the emancipated realities of the time, argued emancipated and sexually-uninhibited liberals of the time. The argument held until culture died, morals died, good became pariah and evil became the norm.
As Spencer Kimball would say: “Had Roman parents assembled their children in their homes instead of the circuses and public baths; had they taught them chastity and honor and integrity and cleanness; would Rome still be a world power? Certainly it was not the barbarians from the north but the insidious moral termites within that destroyed the Roman world empire.”
The story of the Nigerian society and its fascination with perverse civilisation thus projects the same weaknesses that left Rome disrobed of mores, helpless, disintegrated and dead. Our successes inspires extravagances and our lust for base amusement. In this osmosis of filth and rot, the Nigerian media abdicates its role as a social and moral agent.
Journalists are supposed to be aristocrats of the spirit, projectors of the just, decent and humane. Not promoters, hustlers and salesmen for the high jinks and infamy of the debauched. Yet many a Nigerian journalist opts to fulfill roles characteristic of the latter.
The contemporary media landscape has changed significantly thus affecting the nature of the press’ involvement in the construction of citizenship and cultural identities. There is no gainsaying that the Nigerian media is wholly perverted by this wave of change. Consequently, BBN show masterminds appropriate the functions of the media as societal watchdog and moral agent – particularly the reconstruction of citizenship and cultural identity.
The agenda of the show’s producers isn’t quite difficult to detect. Its mission is to desensitize its teeming audience, particularly the youth, to base urges and primal instincts that renders brutes like the stray bitch and guinea fowl, the lower beasts that they are. Little wonder the BBN show thrives on its x-rated scenes: the shower hour and the party nights.
The sexual antics of incumbent participants in the show repudiate moral and romantic notions of love, loyalty, decency and responsibility. The BBN reality show thus project flawed and debauched characters as worthy role models for the Nigerian youth to emulate.
It’s all part of a grand plot: very soon, producers of the BBN show will introduce two homosexual males and two lesbians into the show. Sex between the gay couples will be used to legitimize African homosexuality and desensitize Africans towards it. Of course, folk will scream, “Are they not part of our reality?” Of course they are.
But while we all live with one secret perversion or the other, being human and humane requires sparing the society the horror of our base inclinations. The Nigerian society is already too permissive to a fault, we do not need DSTV/Multichoice, an unquestioning media and society to aggravate our situation.
As Okwuanya Pius rightly notes, Mary Cover Jones’ desensitization theory as adapted by Joseph Wolpe, a South African psychologist, infers that when an individual or a group is desensitized towards an activity, they quickly move to another activity that will best hold their interest. He termed it “systematic desensitization.” Now that Africans, Nigerians in particular have been desensitized to voyeurism and random sex, the next stop is homosexuality and bestiality perhaps.
Whoever wins the Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) sloth-fest will become another living proof that decadence and idleness are preferable to decency and industry. Ordinary folk’s decadent fantasies of fame, success and fulfillment will be perpetuated and substantiated by the winner. Yet in the losers, the wildest fantasies of consequence-free infamy, sexual impropriety will be irreverently stoked by the media. The Nigerian media, perceived moral censors and social agents will amplify BBN and DSTV/Multichoice’s culture of filth and illusion. They will persuade us that the shadows are real.
South Africa has been very much in the global news in recent weeks, but for the wrong reason. It was because of the massive xenophobic attacks in some key urban areas of the country by black South Africans on African immigrants from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Ethiopia, Somalia and some other African countries. Shops and businesses owned by immigrants from these countries were attacked and willfully destroyed by hordes of black South Africans, wielding guns, machetes and other dangerous weapons. Scores of fatalities were recorded in these wanton, premeditated and barbaric attacks, casting a slur on South Africa’s claim to be a ‘rainbow’ country in which all races and tribes live peacefully together and in harmony. This new wave of xenophobic attacks was perhaps the worst in the long history of attacks on African immigrants by black South Africans. And because of rising tensions it is not likely to end soon.
These attacks, though more vicious, were really not new. Even before the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1997 and the assumption of power by Nelson Mandela there had been reports of attacks by black South Africans on African immigrants in the country. They have since continued almost with unabated fury and vigour, each succeeding attacks being more vicious than previous ones. Between 2000 and 2007 over 100 fatalities were recorded from these attacks. In 2008 alone 62 deaths were recorded. In 2015 another round of attacks with scores of casualties led the governments of Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia, South Africa’s neighbours, to withdraw their beleaguered citizens from South Africa. The bloody attacks strained South Africa’s relations with its African neighbours and weakened SADDC, the Southern African economic community organisation.
Global response to the new wave of attacks was swift and strong with many foreign governments and international labour and human rights organisations condemning it as a violation of the declarations of the United Nations on the rights of migrant workers to protection in their host countries. Nigeria also expressed deep concerns over the attacks which appeared to centre mainly on Nigerian immigrants, their families and businesses. The South African High Commissioner in Nigeria, Mr. Nguni, was immediately summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Abuja where Nigeria officially made very strong representations over the attacks on Nigerians in South Africa. He was told that Nigerians living lawfully and peacefully in South Africa had a right to the protection of the South African government and that such xenophobic attack on immigrants could no longer be tolerated or accepted. Shehu Sani, the vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs visited the South African High Commissioner and conveyed to him in very strong terms the concerns of the Federal Government over these attacks from a country that Nigeria considered friendly. An official delegation from the House of Representatives, led by Mr. Gbajabiamila, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Relations, decided to go to South Africa to assess the situation there. The visit is unlikely to be of any effect. A few days later some demonstrators attempted to break into the South African owned MTN, the giant telecommunications company in Nigeria, but were driven back by the Nigerian security forces. There were a few minor protests and demonstrations in Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria over the xenophobic attacks. Despite the justified anger in Nigeria, we must discourage retaliatory action, threatened by Mr. Gbajabiamila, as it does not serve our economic interests.
The South African government does not yet have a handle on the problem. In 2007, when a similar xenophobic attack on black immigrants occurred in South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, then the South African president, dismissed media reports of the attacks as ‘exaggerated and false news.’ That was an open invitation to future attacks. But this time virtually all South African leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, denounced the attacks as shameful and disgraceful. Shoprite, the South African owned retailing business in Nigeria with many super markets, also denounced the attacks as deplorable. It has to be admitted that this time the South African security forces, though overstretched, acted swiftly to bring the attacks under immediate control. Several arrests of the perpetrators were made and many are being taken to the courts for trial. In the past the South African Police had secured some convictions of those involved in the attacks on immigrants.
What are the causes of these bloody attacks by black South Africans on black immigrants in South Africa? The attackers complain about African immigrants taking jobs away from black South Africans. It was also claimed that some of the immigrants were bringing drugs and prostitution into South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa has not been able to fully confront the challenges of job creation for the teeming blacks in South Africa. Political freedom and the fight against racism may have been won, but this has not led to the creation of jobs fast enough for the blacks in South Africa who remain largely marginalised in the domestic economy. Currently, there is rising anger and tension over this, as well as the pervasive corruption in South Africa’s public and private institutions. This competition for jobs in South Africa has no doubt contributed to the xenophobia against African immigrants in the country.
But the fact of the matter is that African immigrants constitute only four per cent of the total work force in South Africa. Most black immigrants do not enter the South African public service. They are to be found mainly running retail businesses where they employ thousands of black South Africans. In fact, as is usually the case, an investigative commission by the South African government into the economic activities of black immigrants in South Africa reported that they contribute a lot more to the South African economy than they draw in terms of the provision of social services. But this is not all that apparent to the black South Africans who readily find scapegoats in black immigrants from other African countries. Obviously, these black South Africans attacking black immigrants are ignorant and misguided.
In 1982, or thereabouts, we in Nigeria also made the same mistake when we expelled thousands of ECOWAS citizens from Nigeria with the excuse that they were putting pressure on social services and on the domestic economy. At the time I was serving as Ambassador at the United Nations in New York. I found it disturbing. I knew we had made a terrible mistake and that it had badly damaged Nigeria’s international image almost beyond repairs. It took us years to live down that image. Right now the ECOWAS workers we expelled are back fully in Nigeria and are making positive contribution to our country in all spheres. So, while we have every right to be angry with South Africa over these attacks, we should also treat it as a learning curve for South Africa.
South Africa, with its long coastline, alluring beaches, affable weather and striking mountain ranges, is a very beautiful country, in which comparatively better economic opportunities appear to abound for African immigrants, particularly from its black neighbours. But all that glitters is not gold. It has always been a violent and bloody country. Even long before the adventure and entry of the Dutch into the territory in the 15th century the blacks, in a wave of massive migration towards the Cape Colony, were already competing for land and massacring one another in a violent and no holds barred competition for land, in what became known as South Africa. The arrival of the British and the Boers intensified the struggle over land among the blacks and whites leading to many bloody wars in the country. In fact, apartheid was initially constructed to prevent the blacks encroaching and seizing land from the whites. It was much later on that it was erected into an obnoxious political, religious and social dogma. This is the terrible legacy inherited by post-apartheid South Africa. Throughout the long struggle against racism and the apartheid system in South Africa the black South Africans inflicted more fatalities on themselves than they did on the whites. Even today more blacks get killed by blacks than whites. South Africa is one of the most violent countries in the world. It is this terrible bloody legacy that is currently being reflected in the wave of xenophobic attacks on black immigrants by black South Africans.
What is to be done? In the case of Nigerians, both the Nigerian and South African governments should work together to resolve this nasty problem. This can be done under the aegis of the Nigeria-South Africa Bilateral National Commission that needs to be re-activated urgently. The framework for a settlement should include the right of documented immigrants to the protection of the South African security forces. Those not documented should either regularise their stay, or leave the country. They should be repatriated by our Federal Government as is being done with some Nigerian immigrants in Libya. The Nigerian government should also enlighten would-be Nigerian emigrants about the risks of leaving their own country for foreign lands where they cannot count on the protection of the host governments. But we must also create in our country the economic and social conditions that will make emigration by our people to other countries in search of economic opportunities less attractive.
It is with some pain that I write this. In my career in the Nigerian diplomatic service I was involved both at home and abroad in the struggle against apartheid South Africa. My professional colleagues and I were totally committed to the struggle. I had hoped that Nigeria and post apartheid South Africa, the two largest economies in sub-Saharan Africa, would work closely together to lift the continent up. We must not let these unfortunate and regrettable attacks on Nigerians by black South Africans destroy this positive prospect. Strategic cooperation between Nigeria and South Africa is in our mutual interests and the collective interest of Africa.
In its heyday, the Daily Times of Nigeria (DTN) Plc was larger than life. Its pride of the pack, Daily Times, was a newspaper which swallowed other newspapers. It had a niche, which it carved for itself through the efforts of its founding fathers and a newspaper legend, the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, who came after them. The Daily Times’ glorious years coincided with the period that the country was finding its feet politically and in the comity of nations.
It will be an understatement to say that the Daily Times played a vital role in the political growth of Nigeria. Though it was not the only paper in the land, it more or less determined how the others were viewed. The belief then was that once you have seen the Daily Times, you have seen all the papers. It was a paper among papers. Its portals were a place of learning for many who cut their journalism teeth in that great institution. It was a pride to work in the Daily Times then and it would have still remained a pride to work there today if the paper’s fortunes did not nosedive.
Although there is still a paper called Daily Times on the newsstand today, but many can bear me witness that it is not the same as the Daily Times that they used to know in the days of the late Adeyemo Alakijas, one of the 10 founding fathers of the Daily Times, and the late Jose under whom the institution grew in leaps and bounds. What we have today is painfully, with due respect to its present managers, a caricature of the Daily Times. The paper that we see today lacks the bite and authority for which the Daily Times was known those days.
The Daily Times found itself where it is today because of the Federal Government’s undue interference in its affairs. The paper was doing well before the government wielded the big stick against the conglomerate in order to settle what could have been resolved through internal mechanism. Every organisation has its ups and downs and for the Daily Times the 1975 crisis, which led to the government’s acquisition of 60 percent of its equity was its greatest test. It was neither a boardroom nor a management crisis but what some have called a revolt against the late Jose’s leadership style. This is not the history of the Daily Times, but a background to my tribute to two men who were opportune to lead the conglomerate when things were no longer rosy for it.
The Daily Times that the late Innocent Oparadike and the late Onukaba Adinoyi Ojo managed during their respective tenure was a shadow of the old Daily Times. By the time these men came on board, the law of diminishing returns had set in for the Daily Times. It could hardly meet staff and contractual obligations. The paper which set the pace for others to follow had become a giant with clay feet. It was living on its old glory, courtesy of the foundation laid by the late Jose. Despite its mouthwatering assets across the country and overseas, it was hard to believe that the Daily Times could run into hard times. But it did. What happened?
By the time, the late Oparadike became managing director in 1995, the Daily Times had lost its preeminent position in the industry. It was trailing behind papers that came many years after it to which readers shifted loyalty. The Daily Times lost its loyal readers because they perceived it as government’s mouth organ. Every story was slanted to protect the military government, which had promised while acquiring 60 percent of its shares not to tamper with its independence. ‘’The Federal Military Government wants to state that its acquisition of the total ownership of the New Nigerian and 60 percent equity of the Daily Times of Nigeria will in no manner curtail the independence of the newspapers published by the two establishments. Government wants to underline its policy of full support for press freedom at all times’’. That was the government’s promise. But, it never kept the promise and we can all see the result today. Where is the Daily Times and the New Nigerian?
Those days, editors thought twice before running any story against the government. They ran it at the risk of their job. When Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed on November 10, 1995, the Daily Times lacked the courage to carry the story like other papers because there was no confirmation of the execution from the government. Tell me, who will confirm what was secretly done in order to avoid the global uproar which the government knew will follow. The managing directors and editors walked a tight rope (which incidentally is the title of the late Jose’s book on the Daily Times crisis) in the discharge of their duties and credit must be given to them for trying to bring sanity into an otherwise chaotic situation. As managing director, the late Oparadike ran helter-skelter to keep the paper afloat because the government was not ready to come to its aid and at the same it was not allowed to function the way it should.
The situation was more or less the same when the late Ojo came on board in 1999, three years after the late Oparadike’s exit. With the coming of the late Ojo, there was some hope that things may be better because the military was no longer in power. Moreover, many thought former President Olusegun Obasanjo may want to right the wrong of the past. The Murtala/Obasanjo administration had acquired the Daily Times shares in 1975; so, hopes were high that he may return the equity to shareholders so that the first Nigerian newspaper to be quoted on the stock exchange can bounce back. It was a misplaced hope. As much as the late Ojo tried, Obasanjo did not return those shares. The best he could do for the company, he told the late Ojo was to privatise it.
This was how the Daily Times ended up in the hands of Folio Holdings Group, which acquired the conglomerate in 2004. The late Ojo may have foreseen what is today happening to the Daily Times and that perhaps, may have been why he favoured a management buy out (MBO) to the privatisation of the Daily Times. He counted on his closeness to Obasanjo to win the argument for a MBO, but the former president thought otherwise. It is painful that the Daily Times is in the doldrums today. But it is more painful that we of the Daily Times family (those who passed through its portals) have lost yet again, some of the men that made the place tick. The late Oparadike and the late Ojo were not one of the boys; they were our bosses. Oparadike died on January 23; Ojo passed away last Sunday. May they find rest in the Lord’s bosom.
South Africa has been very much in the global news in recent weeks, but for the wrong reason. It was because of the massive xenophobic attacks in some key urban areas of the country by black South Africans on African immigrants from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Ethiopia, Somalia and some other African countries. Shops and businesses owned by immigrants from these countries were attacked and willfully destroyed by hordes of black South Africans, wielding guns, machetes and other dangerous weapons. Scores of fatalities were recorded in these wanton, premeditated and barbaric attacks, casting a slur on South Africa’s claim to be a ‘rainbow’ country in which all races and tribes live peacefully together and in harmony. This new wave of xenophobic attacks was perhaps the worst in the long history of attacks on African immigrants by black South Africans. And because of rising tensions it is not likely to end soon.
These attacks, though more vicious, were really not new. Even before the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1997 and the assumption of power by Nelson Mandela there had been reports of attacks by black South Africans on African immigrants in the country. They have since continued almost with unabated fury and vigour, each succeeding attacks being more vicious than previous ones. Between 2000 and 2007 over 100 fatalities were recorded from these attacks. In 2008 alone 62 deaths were recorded. In 2015 another round of attacks with scores of casualties led the governments of Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia, South Africa’s neighbours, to withdraw their beleaguered citizens from South Africa. The bloody attacks strained South Africa’s relations with its African neighbours and weakened SADDC, the Southern African economic community organisation.
Global response to the new wave of attacks was swift and strong with many foreign governments and international labour and human rights organisations condemning it as a violation of the declarations of the United Nations on the rights of migrant workers to protection in their host countries. Nigeria also expressed deep concerns over the attacks which appeared to centre mainly on Nigerian immigrants, their families and businesses. The South African High Commissioner in Nigeria, Mr. Nguni, was immediately summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Abuja where Nigeria officially made very strong representations over the attacks on Nigerians in South Africa. He was told that Nigerians living lawfully and peacefully in South Africa had a right to the protection of the South African government and that such xenophobic attack on immigrants could no longer be tolerated or accepted. Shehu Sani, the vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs visited the South African High Commissioner and conveyed to him in very strong terms the concerns of the Federal Government over these attacks from a country that Nigeria considered friendly. An official delegation from the House of Representatives, led by Mr. Gbajabiamila, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Relations, decided to go to South Africa to assess the situation there. The visit is unlikely to be of any effect. A few days later some demonstrators attempted to break into the South African owned MTN, the giant telecommunications company in Nigeria, but were driven back by the Nigerian security forces. There were a few minor protests and demonstrations in Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria over the xenophobic attacks. Despite the justified anger in Nigeria, we must discourage retaliatory action, threatened by Mr. Gbajabiamila, as it does not serve our economic interests.
The South African government does not yet have a handle on the problem. In 2007, when a similar xenophobic attack on black immigrants occurred in South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, then the South African president, dismissed media reports of the attacks as ‘exaggerated and false news.’ That was an open invitation to future attacks. But this time virtually all South African leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, denounced the attacks as shameful and disgraceful. Shoprite, the South African owned retailing business in Nigeria with many super markets, also denounced the attacks as deplorable. It has to be admitted that this time the South African security forces, though overstretched, acted swiftly to bring the attacks under immediate control. Several arrests of the perpetrators were made and many are being taken to the courts for trial. In the past the South African Police had secured some convictions of those involved in the attacks on immigrants.
What are the causes of these bloody attacks by black South Africans on black immigrants in South Africa? The attackers complain about African immigrants taking jobs away from black South Africans. It was also claimed that some of the immigrants were bringing drugs and prostitution into South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa has not been able to fully confront the challenges of job creation for the teeming blacks in South Africa. Political freedom and the fight against racism may have been won, but this has not led to the creation of jobs fast enough for the blacks in South Africa who remain largely marginalised in the domestic economy. Currently, there is rising anger and tension over this, as well as the pervasive corruption in South Africa’s public and private institutions. This competition for jobs in South Africa has no doubt contributed to the xenophobia against African immigrants in the country.
But the fact of the matter is that African immigrants constitute only four per cent of the total work force in South Africa. Most black immigrants do not enter the South African public service. They are to be found mainly running retail businesses where they employ thousands of black South Africans. In fact, as is usually the case, an investigative commission by the South African government into the economic activities of black immigrants in South Africa reported that they contribute a lot more to the South African economy than they draw in terms of the provision of social services. But this is not all that apparent to the black South Africans who readily find scapegoats in black immigrants from other African countries. Obviously, these black South Africans attacking black immigrants are ignorant and misguided.
In 1982, or thereabouts, we in Nigeria also made the same mistake when we expelled thousands of ECOWAS citizens from Nigeria with the excuse that they were putting pressure on social services and on the domestic economy. At the time I was serving as Ambassador at the United Nations in New York. I found it disturbing. I knew we had made a terrible mistake and that it had badly damaged Nigeria’s international image almost beyond repairs. It took us years to live down that image. Right now the ECOWAS workers we expelled are back fully in Nigeria and are making positive contribution to our country in all spheres. So, while we have every right to be angry with South Africa over these attacks, we should also treat it as a learning curve for South Africa.
South Africa, with its long coastline, alluring beaches, affable weather and striking mountain ranges, is a very beautiful country, in which comparatively better economic opportunities appear to abound for African immigrants, particularly from its black neighbours. But all that glitters is not gold. It has always been a violent and bloody country. Even long before the adventure and entry of the Dutch into the territory in the 15th century the blacks, in a wave of massive migration towards the Cape Colony, were already competing for land and massacring one another in a violent and no holds barred competition for land, in what became known as South Africa. The arrival of the British and the Boers intensified the struggle over land among the blacks and whites leading to many bloody wars in the country. In fact, apartheid was initially constructed to prevent the blacks encroaching and seizing land from the whites. It was much later on that it was erected into an obnoxious political, religious and social dogma. This is the terrible legacy inherited by post-apartheid South Africa. Throughout the long struggle against racism and the apartheid system in South Africa the black South Africans inflicted more fatalities on themselves than they did on the whites. Even today more blacks get killed by blacks than whites. South Africa is one of the most violent countries in the world. It is this terrible bloody legacy that is currently being reflected in the wave of xenophobic attacks on black immigrants by black South Africans.
What is to be done? In the case of Nigerians, both the Nigerian and South African governments should work together to resolve this nasty problem. This can be done under the aegis of the Nigeria-South Africa Bilateral National Commission that needs to be re-activated urgently. The framework for a settlement should include the right of documented immigrants to the protection of the South African security forces. Those not documented should either regularise their stay, or leave the country. They should be repatriated by our Federal Government as is being done with some Nigerian immigrants in Libya. The Nigerian government should also enlighten would-be Nigerian emigrants about the risks of leaving their own country for foreign lands where they cannot count on the protection of the host governments. But we must also create in our country the economic and social conditions that will make emigration by our people to other countries in search of economic opportunities less attractive.
It is with some pain that I write this. In my career in the Nigerian diplomatic service I was involved both at home and abroad in the struggle against apartheid South Africa. My professional colleagues and I were totally committed to the struggle. I had hoped that Nigeria and post apartheid South Africa, the two largest economies in sub-Saharan Africa, would work closely together to lift the continent up. We must not let these unfortunate and regrettable attacks on Nigerians by black South Africans destroy this positive prospect. Strategic cooperation between Nigeria and South Africa is in our mutual interests and the collective interest of Africa.
There were corn rows on the head of the girl that exploded in Muna Dalti. There was a colourful bead on her wrist too. She probably loved to play dress-up and look good. Everybody forgets these bits of her. Folk remember her as the ‘vixen’ who flicked a switch and blew up, into a puddle of flesh and bone fragments. No one cares if she was ever innocent or raised in virtue. The village is thankful that she took no innocent life, save her teenage accomplices. Their carcass lay strewn about the rustic community in Maiduguri, Borno State. Their innards and blood spatter sully the village even as you read.
Lying in the dust few metres from her shredded mate, the girl with the cornrows evoked the dread that wild weeds induce at the base of shoots. Two hours after her ‘sister’ and agent of a terrorist group, Boko Haram, detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the Muna vehicle park, injuring eight people and burning 13 freight trucks, the girl with the cornrows sauntered into Muna Dalti with another ‘sister.’
Time was 2:00 a.m. and they looked suspicious to the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) patrolling the area. When the latter accosted them, they said they were waiting for their husbands. Of course, their responses were unsatisfactory; having seen eight of their comrades incapacitated by a girl strapped to an IED few hours earlier, around 11.30 pm to be precise, the CJTF suspected foul play.
Hence the vigilante group ordered the girls to come with them. But rather than comply, one of the girls fiddled desperately with a device under her dress. Instantly, the CJTF scurried for cover, shooting sporadically in the air.
‘How I became a suicide bomber’
In the ensuing melee, the girl with the cornrows reached under her dress and did what her mate couldn’t. She flicked the switch on an IED strapped to her body.
In a second, she blew herself to bits and decapitated her mate, who was standing close by.
Ka’ana Hawaye, a CJTF officer in Muna Dalti, said the girls were on a mission to kill. “The bomb blast at 11.30 pm put us on red alert. So, when we saw them, we suspected trouble. But we made sure they didn’t achieve their aim. They couldn’t kill anyone here,” he said.
Corroborating him, CJTF officer, Muhammadu Idris, stated that after the first bomb was detonated by the girl at Muna park, CJTF officers in the area became more vigilant.
However, Ba’ani Aliko, a lieutenant in the group, disclosed that there would have been more casualties had his team not stepped back from the girls in the nick of time.
Further findings by The Nation revealed that officers of the Nigerian Army killed about six members of Boko Haram at the Mafa military checkpoint few kilometres away, barely one hour before the first bomber struck in Muna motor park. They were killed about nine kilometres from the state capital while they tried to storm into town.
Video: ‘Those who come and throw bombs’
However, as Muna town heaved a sigh of relief, tragedy struck again as the three teenage girls, who had successfully snuck into town, detonated their explosives. The first girl struck around 11:30 pm, Thursday, February 17, at Muna motor park while the other attack occurred in Muna Dalti around 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 18.
The Muna bombers apparently succeeded where insurgent mates, Zainab and Amina Yusuf, failed. Amina, 17, was intercepted while her co-bomber, 15-year-old Zainab, was killed as she tried to ram into motorists queuing to buy fuel and detonate a bomb at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) mega station along Damboa road in Maiduguri, on Tuesday, February 7.
The girls were intercepted by men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC), soon after they arrived in Maiduguri on orders from Boko Haram.
My story, by bomber
As she recounted her experience, Amina’s eyes glistened with hope and gratification. She spoke in a crisp, clear tenor, caressing the strands of a severed ribbon from her veil. She fingered the thread and slipped it through her lips with gratifying immersion, all the piteous miseries of her life seemingly summoned in her wiry hands.
Her face, hard and weary from strife, provided a soiled, pale background to her gaunt eyes. Her eyes, twitching open and close in rhythm with the groove where her lips met with the frayed strands seemed in search of something; comfort perhaps.
Occasionally, she removed the threads from her mouth to answer questions, the words leaping from her lips as if she meant to exhale in one breath, the agony interred in her buried narratives. With submissive firmness, she revealed that she and Zainab were on a mission from Gobarawa, a Boko Haram enclave along Borno’s Alagarno axis, to kill people. She said she was abducted by the terrorists in 2015 in Madagali, Adamawa. From there, she was taken to Sambisa where she was held hostage for a while before being transferred to Gobarawa.
Life in Gobarawa
“My younger brother and sisters Umar, Fatima, fauziya, Abbas, Maryam and Faiza, were all held hostage and married off to Boko Haram men in Gambarawa. But my father and mother were all killed when they tried to escape with us from the camp where we were held hostage in Gobarawa.
“All the people in Gobarawa are Boko Haram. They are many and they all had sophisticated weapons, motorcycles and vehicles which they use to operate,” said Amina. The teenager revealed that when life became too hard in Gobarawa, her captors resorted to drastic measures.
“They usually go out to snatch food from locals and bring us food. We don’t have grinders but we relied on stone to grind sorghum. We pounded sorghum with stone to make food,” she said.
In Gobarawa, Amina, like several child hostages, was married off to a member of the sect. “I am also married to a Boko Haram Commander, an Amir, who has killed more than 100 people, including his mother and father,” she said.
I am also married to a Boko Haram Commander, an Amir, who has killed more than 100 people, including his mother and father
Suicide mission to Maiduguri
It took Amina and Zainab three days to get to Maiduguri, travelling on a motorcycle. She said: “We were directed by the sect members to detonate our explosives anywhere we saw any form of gathering…They said if we press the button, the bomb would explode and we will automatically go to heaven. I was scared, so, I told them that I could not detonate any explosive. But Zainab said she would do it. So, they said if Zainab detonated her own, it would serve the purpose.”
However, things didn’t go according to plan in Maiduguri. At 6.45 a.m., Amina and Zainab were accosted in the city, after a bean-cake seller alerted NSCDC operatives about their suspicious moves. But while Amina balked from the mission, Zainab decided to go ahead with it. She ignored Amina’s counsel that they flee into the city and seek help.
Amina tossed her explosive away at the point of arrest
“I demobilised my own explosive right from when we were about to sleep in a nearby town en route Maiduguri. I had only N200 with me. I told Zainab to come along with me to town instead of blowing the explosive and killing herself for the sake of nothing. I told her that with the N200 they gave us, we can go to town to meet somebody I know.”
But Zainab rejected Amina’s counsel and proceeded with the mission. Initially, she attempted to detonate it at the bean-cake seller’s roadside stall but she later decided to attack the NNPC mega station in the area because it contained a greater crowd and the promise of greater casualties.
Fortunately, the bean-cake seller noticed their suspicious moves and male accomplices and she alerted NSCDC officers in the vicinity. Promptly, the latter marched up to the girls to interrogate them. But no sooner did they accost them than their male handlers disappear. Instantly, Amina revealed that she was strapped to a bomb. The security operatives scurried backwards and cocked their rifles to shoot. In the scuffle, Amina unstrapped her bomb and tossed it away.
“I already told them that I will not detonate my bomb; that was why I threw it away and handed myself over to the security. Zainab insisted on detonating her explosive. I don’t know why. I couldn’t say whether she was in her right senses,” said Amina.
Zainab ignored the NSCDC’s sharp orders that she stood down and proceeded to detonate the bomb. This attracted a warning shot from the NSCDC to her limbs. The shot was meant to demobilise her. But even while she writhed in a blood pool from her bleeding leg, the teenager stubbornly sought to detonate the bomb. This earned her a ‘kill-shot,’ this time around, from a soldier’s rifle. It was either Zainab’s life or the lives of several innocent folk citizens.
A disturbing trend
There is no gainsaying that Boko Haram radically changed the landscape of internal security in Nigeria when it launched the first suicide bombing in Nigeria, at the Police Headquarters in Abuja the Federal Capital territory on June 16, 2011. It’s 35-year-old male bomber, Mohammed Manga, detonated his explosive-laden car, killing more than five persons and destroying several cars. The group subsequently executed several attacks, involving the fitting of IEDs on its members, widely known as ‘suicide bombers’ and common means of transportation, including vehicles, motorcycles and tricycles.
However, on June 8, 2014, Boko Haram dispatched its first female operative, a teenage girl strapped to a bomb. She attacked the 301 Battalion Barracks of the Nigerian Army in Gombe State. The girl detonated the explosive concealed under her hijab, thus killing herself and a soldier.
By January 20, 2015, there have been a total of 17 attempted suicide bombings by underage and teenage girls in Nigeria; 15 of the attacks were successful. By January 2016, the documented attacks increased to 89. With this new experimentation, Boko Haram joined the ranks of terrorist groups that have incorporated women into their organisational profiles. Since the first attack, women and young girls between the ages of seven and 17, have been coerced into targeting civilians at markets, bus depots, fuel stations and mosques. The 89 attacks documented between June 2014 and January 2016, mostly of civilian soft targets, have been responsible for more than 1,200 deaths and an even greater number of injuries.
A disturbing trend, however, ensues with the terrorist sect’s increasing deployment of teenage girls to execute suicide bombings in Maiduguri, Borno State. Rescued girls experience stigmatisation from family and friends when they return home. One such survivor returned to Maiduguri after being freed by soldiers. But on arrival at home, her mother turned her over to the military after finding out that she had been trained as a suicide bomber.
The adoption of female suicide bombers is not especially surprising as an operational adaptation to increased state surveillance of the group’s activities; it has been a tactic adopted by secular and religious terrorist groups from Sri Lanka to Syria.
However, Boko Haram depends on female operatives disproportionately, relative to similar insurgencies; for example, the Tamil Tigers used 46 women over the course of 10 years, whereas Boko Haram has deployed over 151 females including underage girls in a little over a year.
Data from Beyond Chibok, a United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) study, show that 44 children were used in suicide attacks in north-east Nigeria and neighbouring countries in 2015 alone.
The figures, released to mark the second anniversary of the abduction of over 270 girls from Chibok, show that children now account for nearly a fifth of all suicide bombers in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. Thus between late 2014 and the end of 2016, the number of such attacks escalated to 151. In 2015, 89 of the attacks were carried out in Nigeria, 39 in Cameroon, 16 in Chad and seven in Niger.
Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, said children used in suicide bombings should not be seen as willing combatants. “Let us be clear: these children are victims, not perpetrators. Deceiving children and forcing them to carry out deadly acts has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in Nigeria and neighbouring countries,” he said.
There is more to the use of girl-bombers—Theatre Commander Gen. Leo Irabor
Leo Irabor
MAJOR-GENERAL Leo Irabor is the Theatre Commander (TC) of the anti-terrorism war, code name: “Operation Lafiya Dole (Peace by force).” He was appointed as the TC on March 18, 2016. In this exclusive interview with The Nation, he bares his mind on Boko Haram’s use of minors for suicide bombing and other issues related to the anti-terrorism war.
Operation Lafiya Dole
In respect of Operation Lafiya Dole, I was appointed here as the Theatre Commander on March 18, 2016. Before then, I resumed here on the 5th of January, 2016 as the then Theatre Commander. Two months later, I was appointed the Theatre Commander. So, I have been heading this operation for one year.
The military operation here is asymmetric. It is asymmetric because you really can’t tell who the enemy is. In a conventional setting, the belligerents are well defined. It is easy to identify them. You don’t need to do much to understand who the enemy is. More importantly, the belligerents have respect for the rules governing warfare. They respect the laws of war and the international human rights. But asymmetric wars like we have here in Borno, it becomes difficult to determine who the enemy is.
That the war has lasted this long is largely in part, because it is asymmetric in nature. The Nigerian military was not attuned to threats of this nature; a situation whereby the secret police should normally look into, you now get yourself involved in it.
But time has passed and we have been able to learn our lessons. And that is why you have been able to see the reversals that are occurring.
So far, our findings show that they are told that if they blow themselves up, they will go to heaven, and so on and so forth. I know that there is more to it. We are carrying out certain investigations and by the time we are done with them, you will know what our findings are.
Making sense of the girl-child bombers
Anybody can be a suicide bomber. It all depends on what you assimilate. So, someone that calls himself or herself a suicide bomber, it all depends on what the fellow assimilates. Part of the transformation that we also found in this war is that, it became a war of ideology. So for me, I would say it’s a war of ideology rather than a religious war. It is a situation whereby a group of people are made to believe a certain falsehood. And that falsehood is repeated to them over and over until they begin to see it as the truth.
And that is precisely what Boko Haram leadership is trying to do with those in their fold. So, that’s why I said anybody can be a suicide bomber depending on what you assimilate.
So, who are those that they have engaged as suicide bombers? Those that are illiterate, those that are in their youth. I will not even call them youths. They engage children who cannot tell what life is; children who cannot tell right from wrong. Because they’ve been so wrongly indoctrinated, whatever their captors tell them is what they believe. They do their captors’ bidding. So far, our findings show that they are told that if they blow themselves up, they will go to heaven, and so on and so forth. I know that there is more to it. We are carrying out certain investigations and by the time we are done with them, you will know what our findings are.
Politics and War
Many have also tried to politicise the problem which, of course, is unfortunate. They are of the erroneous notion that the military must be involved in issues of politics. Yes, there is some school of thought that believe that war is politics by other means. But certainly not a war of this nature whereby all the contending forces are all nationals of Nigeria. For me, I believe that issues of war, issues of national security must not be relegated to politics. It is wrong to read meanings into military operations. It is wrong to think soldiers have ulterior motives for engaging in battle.
There is no military around the world that will say they are sufficient in all things, no. Rather you build, you learn, you re-align, you re-assess.
At some stage, people have also tried to make the war look like some religious crisis, which of course, has now been dispelled. They once attacked structures of a particular religious faith in order to make it seem like a religious crisis. That failed. Then it became an all-faith affair, where any structure that belonged to any faith and every creed were attacked by them. Then it dawned on the populace that, these are madmen. These are people that are deranged. Until it got to that level, the cooperation between the civil society and the military was very poor. So, as the threat transformed and the war transformed, the gaps between the understanding of the civil society and the military began to narrow. And so the narrowing of the gap means that minds at both ends came together.
That closing of gap also contributed immeasurably in seeing the establishment of what we now call the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF). It is because they now understand that they’ve got a part to play, it’s not just a military affair. That of course, also accounts for the successes we have recorded.
Threats and discipline
What we call ‘Table of equipment,’ ‘Table of organisation‘ takes into cognizance, the various factors, one of which is threat. What is the threat perception? Because of that setting, every military officer has at the back of his mind, a desire to honour the oath that he has pledged to. As a result of that, he cannot go against that oath. For those who may have reason to, that is why we have procedures to manage such situations. We have court-martial and so on to address such situations.
Beyond Operation Lafiya Dole
The minds of the troops are focused. We’ve been able to provide them the necessary tools. This is responsible for the success stories. And the military is being more proactive. Right now, I am looking beyond “Operation Lafiya Dole.” The military leadership is thinking of its aftermath. We are making assessments of what we need to do to prevent things from returning to how they used to be. We must do everything to educate people and sensitise them to their civic responsibilities. Governance is not for a small group of people in public offices. Every citizen is part of the government. And when citizens perform their civic responsibilities, they exercise their power as intrinsic part of government. Going to school to learn to read and write is only a part of education. It is not education in totality. Societies are regulated. Every society is regulated and that regulation is brought about by laws. Societies have laws that should be respected. People must understand that.
The media challenge
When those who know go to misinform others, then there is a problem. This is where the press comes in. The press shouldn’t misinform simply because they believe they have freedom of speech. Freedom of speech comes with great responsibility and the press should always understand and respect that. You cannot infringe on my rights simply because you wish to exercise your freedom of speech. I am an agent of government and that state is working to guarantee the territorial security and integrity of the state but some people are of the wrong impression that they could be an impediment to me.
It will be wrong for anyone to think that if he becomes an obstacle in my way, I will be forced to placate him or settle him in order to become more effective. If that happens, then he becomes an obstacle even to his own security.
And there are others who are also being used to disrupt activities and our peace-keeping efforts. There is no friend in the world. In reality, there is no friend. What exists around the world is interest. What scholars call ‘enlightened self-interest.’
To tame a suicide culture…
The suicide bombers are usually brainwashed. There is nobody who was born hardened. No child is born as a suicide bomber. Situations cause them to harden. There must be a total reorientation of our youths and reestablishment of our good values. Our education system should be overhauled and broadened to produce more progressively literate and responsible citizens. You don’t go to school simply because you wish to get a certificate and get a job. That is not what education does for you.
Education should help you to think logically and to be able to identify alternatives when you see them. It should empower you to understand issues and perspectives to an issue. It should enable you to discern between good and evil, right and wrong.
A well-educated youth will be empowered to shun evil and embrace progress. Education helps you to develop your conscience and become a better patriot. A national reorientation of our children, youth and people will conscientize our nation towards a more positive and progressive direction.
When we as a people have a commonality of values that are well defined, we won’t argue or bicker about it. As the Americans have the American dream, we should also have the Nigerian dream. It’s about time we decided on and evolved a sustainable Nigerian dream.
Shared values will always unite us. A national reorientation geared towards truly positive objectives will make us better citizens and people.
Why girl-bombers?
The value underage girls add to terrorism is very clear, according to Mia Bloom, a Professor of Communication at Georgia University and Hilary Matfess, a research analyst at the National Defence University’s Center for Complex Operations and a member of the Nigeria Social Violence Project (NSVP) at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
While Bloom addresses the lure of suicide terrorism in her books, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror and Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, she and Matfess recently took a holistic look at the trend in Northern Nigeria.
“The incorporation of women into Boko Haram’s activities,” they opine, “builds upon a history of tactical experimentation, undertaken in response to cyclical government responses and opportunities posed by regional trends in arms availability. The symbolism of female-led attacks has been a means by which
‘My Boko Haram husband killed his father and mother’
Boko Haram has distinguished itself from similar movements and local rivals. Understanding Boko Haram’s use of women is particularly critical, as it is the most lethal insurgency on the continent, having claimed an estimated 29,000 lives since 2002, and shows no signs of abating.”
“The very fact of being female is proven to enjoy several tactical advantages. First, women suicide terrorists capitalise and thrive on the ‘element of surprise.’ They can take advantage of cultural reluctance toward physical searches to evade detection. Given their seemingly feminine facade, they are categorically perceived as gentle and non-threatening. Further, they constitute a potentially large pool of recruits, a resource that terrorist organisations can draw from and cash in on. Symbolically, the death of women bombers is more likely to evoke a feeling of desperation and sympathy,” noted Bloom.
Investigations revealed that children and child-widows of slain Boko Haram fighters are also conscripted as suicide bombers. During their conscription, they are allegedly brainwashed and psychologically programmed to die for martyrdom, often as revenge against ‘infidels’ whom they are made to believe caused the death of their loved ones.
The girl bombers are also recruited through female scouts. In June 2014, for instance, troops arrested three suspected female Boko Haram members Hafsat, Zainab and Aisha, have been secretly recruiting girls for Boko Haram.
Boko Haram corrupts theology, victims’ psychology
Boko Haram’s girl bombers are psychologically and physically coerced into carrying out the attacks, according to Milda Okoro-Essiet. The child psychologist argued that the remote detonation of explosives strapped to the sect’s child victims also suggests that the girls may be unaware of the gravity of their mission or the masterminds did not trust the girls would have sufficient courage to carry out the attacks.
While it is possible that the Boko Haram may be selecting those that are too uneducated or naive to recognise that they are actually carrying explosives, the confession of a suspected female suicide bomber, Zaharau Babangida, indicates that the girls are also being coerced. The 13-year-old girl was arrested strapped to a bomb in December 2014 in Kano State.
She narrated how she was conscripted by her biological father and transferred to one of Boko Haram’s radicalisation camps in Bauchi forest. She revealed that an ideologue in the camp tried to brainwash and intimidate them into undertaking a suicide mission.
“I was not moved by the soul searching preaching of bounties in the heaven and it was at this point, their leader resorted to threat and intimidation to obtain my consent. We were shown a deep hole where the leader of the group threatened to bury us alive at a point if any of us refused to play along, and at another time, he picked a big gun and threatened to shoot anyone who fails to obey his command,” she said.
Subsequently, Zaharau was taken to a market in Kantin Kwari, Kano, along with two other girls, who detonated their bombs – killing six people, including the bombers. The 13-year-old, who was injured in the blasts, said she was too scared to go through with the attack after she saw her mates’ cadavers barely a second after they detonated their bombs. She made her way to a nearby hospital in Dawanau, where she was arrested.
At the backdrop of the dangerous trend, Islamic clerics reiterate that Boko Haram interprets religious texts out of context. “They paint the texts in shades of violence and force-feed it to impressionable girls and boys in their captivity. What they teach these kids is at extreme variance with the tenets of Islam,” stated Borno-based cleric, Muhammadu Arif.
Idowu Bisi-Akinrolatan, a social psychologist, argued that, “most of these girls have experienced untold miseries since the insurgency began. Many have seen their parents, siblings, friends and other loved ones shot to death or decapitated by Boko Haram. The impact of such horror on their psyche is often immeasurable. The future looks bleak to them. Having been forcefully conscripted as suicide bombers, they resign to fate and consider their imminent death a shortcut to escape the hard life that they live. It doesn’t hurt them too, to believe the propaganda that they will gain an early access to paradise, she explained.
Thus poor, vulnerable girls, are brainwashed into believing that if they succeed in detonating bombs in crowded places, they would be killing infidels who are intent on corrupting the lifestyle that God wants humanity to follow.
Theological luminaries consider this thought process, “altruistic evil” which thrives on the flawed belief that convenient evil is ordained by God. But Sheikh Idris Alogba, an Islamic scholar, argued that evil is never ordained by God. “The God that we serve, Allah (S.W.T), has no blood thirst. He does not approve of mindless killing or murder under any guise. Boko Haram, suicide bombing or terrorism by any premise are unapproved in the sight of God. Islam is a religion of peace. Allah is a God of peace. The terrorists are misguided, likewise the suicide bombers,” he said.
Defeating terror
Yahaya Imam, Borno State Director of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), described the spread of terrorism in Nigeria’s northeast zone as unfortunate but he commended the Nigerian military and leadership for prosecuting a decisive and successful routing of Boko Haram from its strongholds. Yahaya believes a cultural and value reorientation of Nigerian youths will sensitise them to progressive civic responsibility and prevent more youths from falling prey to terrorist sects like Boko Haram. However, the NOA boss lamented the unavailability of funds required by his agency to execute positive youth orientation projects in war-ravaged Borno.
According to him, “The NOA is taking steps to involve traditional authorities and youth organisations in its reorientation and peace-building drive across Borno. And our efforts are yielding fruits.
Abdullahi Ibrahim, the Commander of the Borno State Command of the NSCDC, stated that his command has taken far-reaching measures to prevent attacks by suicide bombers. “We have our officers embedded in various parts of the community across the state. Our intelligence network is ever active and primed to nip any dangerous development in the bud,” he said.
Ibrahim stated that his command’s collaboration with the Nigerian Army in Borno has yielded very positive and encouraging results in the war against terrorism. For instance, Amina and her late mate, Zainab, were intercepted by a combined team of NSCDC and the army before they could wreak havoc in Maiduguri few weeks ago.
Fiona Lovatt, a New Zealand teacher, poet and humanitarian volunteer based in Kano, advocated a departure from the dominant narrative about girl-child agents cum victims of Boko Haram’s suicide bombing attacks. According to her, the issue of child radicalisation by Boko Haram constitutes a red herring. She lamented that Borno’s girl-child bombers are endangered children bearing the brunt of society’s inadequacies.
She urged the government to protect children of the war-ravaged region. “And if they are abducted and taken into savannah grasslands, find them and bring them home. Treat them well when they get back,” she said.
But who will treat them well when they get back? Adijatu, for instance, was forced to relocate from her native Borno to Sabo, Ogun State, following her one-year ordeal as a captive sex slave and child bride of Boko Haram. The 17-year-old believed her travails were over immediately she was rescued and returned to Bama, her hometown, by the military Joint Task Force (JTF). Unknown to her, her nightmare was just beginning. The teenager fled her home when her best friend’s aunt and guardian tried to bash in the skull of her infant son, Habibi, because she conceived of him by a Boko Haram fighter. And she was not even a ‘suicide bomber.’
A worse fate awaits intercepted bombers like Amina and Zaharau. Popular cultural beliefs about ‘bad blood’ and ‘witchcraft’ are exacerbated by stories of girls returning from captivity to murder their parents. This explains why a mother invited soldiers to arrest her returnee daughter after the latter confided in her that she was trained as a suicide bomber. Women and girls who spent time in captivity are often referred to by communities as “Boko Haram wives,” “Sambisa women,” “Boko Haram blood” and “Annoba” (epidemics).
Survivors’ legitimate concerns about being shunned by their communities are compounded by their fear that the militants will return and track them down. One such survivor said in an interview that she feared that her Boko Haram militant husband would “kill her for running away;” at the same time, in her community, she is considered “an outcast…they remind me that I have Boko Haram inside me,” she said.
Thus rescuing the women from the insurgents is only one part of the solution, according to expert psychological opinion. Providing emotional support, health services, and community reintegration is critical to the success of Nigeria’s counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategy.
In June 2015, Dr. Fatima Akilu, head of the Countering Violent Extremism Department of the Office of the National Security Advisor, announced that 20 women and girls who had been recruited by Boko Haram had been “saved” and were “undergoing rehabilitation and de-radicalisation,” although the details were never released.
The support efforts, noted Dr. Abubakar Monguno, should be survivor based. Monguno, working with a team including Dr. Yagana Imam, Yagana Bukar and Bilkisu Lawan Gana from UNIMAID, and in collaboration with the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), the Borno State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, International Alert and UNICEF, authored a report revealing that hostile perceptions place children conceived of rape and violence on Boko Haram terror camps are “at risk of rejection, abandonment, discrimination and potential violence.”
They advocate that support efforts should also integrate social workers into affected communities to identify families at risk of breakdown. The social workers should follow up with home visits together with religious officials, to provide mediation and guidance to husbands and family members.
But that is in the long run. In the short run, urgent steps should be taken to assist victims and survivors like Amina and Zaharau to pick the broken pieces of their lives. Every day, the teenagers struggle to forget the act that was meant to end their lives: the righteous murder of innocent folks who committed no wrong against them and their instigators.
At the time of their arrest, they were both frightened and sad. But their fear was borne of valour; the courage to say “No” to mindless carnage of their own people. Zaharau, 13, could not envision paradise by killing herself and innocent people. Amina, 17, couldn’t either. They probably dread the scorn of friends and strangers by whose deaths they could become ‘evil.’
Nonetheless, their fate resonates a tragedy so overpowering that it incites a torrent of feelings. Beyond that, there is guilt – that our desire for them is so strong that it sets the society, like a bird of prey, to stalk them, stigmatise them and reignite their buried narratives. In their sad, sorry world, every muted spasm and tragic elocution of pain pricks their hide and sink like claws. There is no clear significance. There is only loss.
Digital medium, DSTV/Multichoice, spreads perversion like a plague. It vengefully debases and liquidates society’s arrogant hierarchs by broadcasting filth like the Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) show. Thus the media broadcaster flaunts its supreme theme of filth as fun and debris as new civilization. Culture and morality are challenged and redefined within the bounds of the BBN house and the show’s producers and its apologists cheekily attack critics of the show.
“But you are free to change the channel,” BBN groupies will earnestly tell you. They will say: “No one is forcing you to watch the show;” “Na grammar you dey speak;” “Must you watch it and whine afterwards?” “You are a bloody hypocrite!” “Nigerians and hypocrisy sha…What is wrong with you Nigerians?”
If you tell them, “The kids are watching,” they will scornfully tell you: “The show is rated 18;” “If you can’t control what your kids watch in your home, it’s your problem.” When you bemoan the import of such media fare on societal mores, they will scream at you: “Mr/Mrs. holier-than-thou, you can’t control what channel I watch in my home!”
Of course, no one can control what anyone else does with his or her time or what channel different folk watch in their homes but it need be said, that when morality and mores segues from good and evil, black and white to the gray region, the end of sanity is nigh. Civilization as we know it suffers avoidable, gruesome death. From its ashes, decadence and grime will rise like the proverbial phoenix, to corrupt our present and fill our lives with ill bliss, until every more and value that makes us human and humane falls apart. Just like it happened in medieval Rome.
Yes, this writer too reserves the right to ‘Change the channel’ and he gladly does that. But the snippets and scenes of the filthy show are prevalent on the social media. For how long can the BBN be ignored? The BBN house could be likened to a perverts’ paradise; a debauched utopia and form-dissolving fountain of filth and chthonian force, erupting from primeval chaos.
Every BBN scene prefigures the transition in Nigerian mores from high morality to perverse hedonism. In the antics of every ‘housemate’ or inmate to be precise, the conservative boundaries of decency and civilisation are burst through. Hence it is easy for a married inmate to deny his wife and kids while he fondles and performs oral sex with a fellow inmate on live TV. In the BBN’s perverse reality, a married woman denies her husband to cuddle, kiss and orgasm by the fingers of a fellow inmate. Lest we forget the single mother of one who threw decency to the dogs to give fellatio to a fellow inmate, a married man, till he orgasmed, on lived TV.
The BBN’s decadence and emotional attraction no doubt mutates from the society’s smirking vanity and the sudden melting of her features beyond recognition. Little wonder most of the show’s participants, or inmates if you like, ditch wisdom, decency and morality to embrace filth in the wink of an eye.
Like victims of a modern cultural holocaust and moral apocalypse, BBN inmates flounder at ground zero, unbounded from responsibility even as their socialised mores and self-imposed inhibitions incinerate in the electric moments of indolence and orgasmic lust that they spend in the house.
The intelligible momentarily loses to the irrational, caution yields to recklessness and the inmates, swamped by adrenaline, ego and depravity, exult in DSTV/Multichoice’s fiery lava of grime. In time, their names will resound as the crusted corpse’s muffled groans in a garden of dirt.
They should probably ask ex-BBN inmates how bleak and frustrating life becomes after they lose their pass to the red carpets. They should ask them how frustrating it is to lust for sustained coverage by perverted journalists and their equally permissive media. It’s an ugly reality for ex-BBN inmates – that is, the losers.
A skinny inmate from a past edition of the show, constantly forced her way on to the red carpets, after she lost out of the BBN show. She persistently slept with ‘media managers’ and movie producers in desperate bid to remain in the news. She did all manner of crazy things, most of it sexually demeaning and unbecoming of a child/lady raised in virtue. Eventually she burnt out. The list is endless. I would love to give names but even that will be a boon for the fame junkies that I speak of.
Back to the ongoing BBN reality show, there is no gainsaying that DSTV/Multichoice savours the sexually grotesque; in doing so, they argue that they are only pandering to the wishes of millions of viewers whose love of decadence promotes degenerate media fare. Indeed.
Despite the widespread condemnations trailing the conduct of BBN inmates, they help perpetuate the myth that accidental celebrity or fame junkies like them, are glaring indicators that there are always acceptable shortcuts to riches and the fulfillment of our wildest fantasies. And this relative reality is propelled by the public’s morbid fascination with celebrity worship. Where the object of interest excites inadequate controversies and passion for adulation, the public has learnt to recreate the object of their fascination into the ideal celebrity icon or superstar of their dreams.
This no doubt substantiates Dostoevsky’ s wisdom: “So long as man remains free,” Dostoyevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov, “he strives for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to find someone to worship.”
But are characters in the BBN reality worthy of “worship?” Are they deserving of acclaim? Will winning the prize money justify the antics and sexual irresponsibility they exhibit on live TV? Yet they made it as subjects of discourse on this page, for sexual reasons. This is bad news.
I won’T join those insisting that President Muhammadu Buhari must talk on national television. Such tendentious requests belong to mischief makers, among whom I would not want to be counted.
A vacation is no AWOL. Neither is a doctor’s recommendation of tests and rest the medical equivalent of the National Day. No. It is not yet October 1. Why must he speak?
Besides, with some privileged people confessing publicly that the President called them – many have indeed visited him in London – I have imagined that I might just be lucky some day. The mobile network could be in a crazy mode as is often the case nowadays and His Excellency’s call could just stray onto my line.
What will I tell the President?
A little bird tells me he still gets those messages coded in some esoteric security jargon. I bet there are many issues with grave security implications that may have been kept away from Buhari. So, how will a chance presidential conversation with this reporter go?
Buhari: Hallo. Let me speak with… hallo…
This sounds like my President. Am I right, sir?
Yes; this is President Buhari. And who are you?
What a privilege, sir. You got the wrong number, sir. This is a reporter from your favourite newspaper. Please, spare a few minutes, Your Excellency.
Yes. Thank you. Go on. I’m listening. How is Nigeria?
Nigeria is fine, sir. The anti-corruption war is on track. The EFCC has been making staggering recoveries. They are mind-boggling – $9.7m, 74,000 Euro, $151m, N8b, N111.3m, and more.
You see, I said it a long time ago. If we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. They say Naira is falling and they don’t know why. Is that fair?
No sir. But trust some Nigerians; they are fighting back. Just a few days after some hefty boxes of raw cash – in dollars, Euros and naira – were hauled out of his house, the former Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Group Managing Director (GMD), Dr Andrew Yakubu, a honest man, has come forward to claim the cash. He says that the little fortune was a gift from his friends. The EFCC won’t let go of the cash and those Nigerians who have long been condemned to the indignity of being in the company of poor friends are crying like some hungry babies. Now, Yakubu has gone to court to defend his integrity and enforce his fundamental right to receive, obtain, own, keep, hold, spend, disburse and store the cash.
Really? That’s interesting and nobody told me. Anybody has the right to go to court for whatever reason, you know. That is the beauty of democracy. Nobody goes to jail without trial.You see, this is what I have been saying; well, we are in a democracy.
Not only that, sir. Musiliu Obanikoro, the former minister and PDP big man, the one who was said to have collected N2.1 billion from the Office of the National Security Adviser, has also gone to court. He says he shouldn’t have been asked to refund money. He wants the N785 million he refunded back – with interest and apology.
You see, this is amusing. And amazing. Since you say he has gone to court, I won’t want to talk about the matter. Why did he refund money? Was he forced to do that? I’ve told Nigerians to get ready. It is a long fight. ‘Walahi, corruption’ will surely fight back; I swear.
Ekiti Governor Ayo Fayose has been threatening to run for president. Should that fail, he wouldn’t mind being vice- president. Besides, he’s been railing and wailing about your health. But some people are saying: ‘Fayose for president? That will be the day – a presidency of okada riders, agbo jedi hawkers and amala joint clients as well as executive stuntmen.’ Good times are on the way– indeed.
I wish the young man good luck. Don’t forget, every Nigerian has a right to his legitimate aspiration.
Despite all the efforts your administration is making to diversify the economy and build up our foreign reserve, some Nigerians do not seem to know that they have a role to play; they are turning back the hand of the clock. The other day in Lagos, a popular retailer was found to be stocking gari imported from India. The authorities are also investigating the claim by some customers of the said retailer that the toothpick found in the store may have been imported– from China.
That is the lack of patriotism we have been talking about. ‘Why should a Nigerian connive with foreigners to import, of all things, gari? Yet, you cry that Naira is falling, that Buhari has no economic policy, and that nothing has changed. Haba!
Anyway, the Customs Service has been fighting hard to stop the nonsense. Its officials have devised a way to stem the smuggling of rice. They no longer bother to stay at the border all day, chasing rice smugglers. Now, they go out in the dead of the night, smash open stores in markets and haul out the stuff and cart it away to their offices. Traders are crying and protesting.
Hmm…hmmm (He clears his throat).If the government says there should be no smuggling of rice, why should people not just listen and stop it? We are trying to protect the local, poor rice farmer who needs to feed his family and pay his kids’ school fees. I hope the smugglers will repent; otherwise, they will always have themselves to blame.
The PDP and its leaders have been blaming its misfortune on your party, alleging that your APC has been fuelling its internecine war. Besides, they have been boasting that they will return to power in 2019. Many people have been asking them: “Return to power? For what? To continue the looting and bring back Boko Haram? “
PDP or what do you call them. Are they still around? I don’t have anything to say about them; and I won’t say a word. If you run the show for 16 years, looting the treasury and stealing all the money and you are not ashamed; you want to come back, that is your problem. I leave Nigerians who are feeling the pains to handle that. Don’t people have shame?
On the foreign scene sir, Nigerians are being attacked in South Africa, their property looted. In Abuja, there have been protests against what many consider as South Africa’s ingratitude to Nigeria for its major role in ending apartheid. There are fears that the protests could escalate if the South Africans don’t stop the attacks. We are told that you spoke with United States President Donald Trump. With what is happening in South Africa, Nigerians are wondering if you had a word with Zuma, the South African President.
Thank you. The South African situation is a bit complex. I think the relevant organs of the government are handling it. I don’t want to comment on what they are doing now. I assure you that something is being done. Is it true Nigerians are not happy that I’m here in London?
Nigerians not happy? That’s not quite correct sir. Many have been praying for your good health and safe return . But, that is not to say that there are no mischief makers who have turned it all into an opportunity to scorn you. The majority miss you genuinely – your humour and compassion for the poor. Then, the crazy game between looters and hooters. Whistleblowers now get five per cent of a looter’s fortune. That is the new business in town. Everybody is happy – the government is excited, the hooter gets his cut and the public is well entertained.
In fact, some have found in all this a way of easing the financial tension that has gripped the land. They joke about the Nigerian condition, including your stay in London. Consider this sir: “These oyinbo people are bad o. They gave us Ibori and kept Buhari. That was how the crowd in the Bible screamed that Pontius Pilate should release Barabbas the thief and hand Jesus Christ over to his killers.”
The other day in Lagos when all of a sudden the skyline turned dark and cloudy; the wind got cold and harsh, some began to sing: “So, because Buhari is not in the country people think they can do anyhow. Imagine, even harmattan thinks it can come out anytime it likes. Now that Nigeria’s headquarters has been shifted to London, our weather has changed to London weather. Harmattan in FeBuhari.”
That’s funny indeed. I thank all Nigerians who have been praying for me. May Allah reward them all. I hope to be back soon. Just some tests and the doctors are insisting that I should rest; otherwise I would have returned. Thank you.
Fulani herdsmen, despite increased security measures put in place by government, not too long ago once again carried out a deadly attack on Atakad-District Local Government and Baki –Kogi Goska District of Jama’a Local Government Area of Southern Kaduna killing 16 innocent people. Government reaction was predictable. The Acting President summoned the IG to Aso Rock Presidential Villa, gave him a directive to restore law and order to the affected communities. In addition to deployment of troops, the formation of a new military unit to be stationed in Southern Kaduna was announced.
The only difference this time around however was that, the Ag. President as a devout Christian in a speech at the PFN 14th Biennial conference in Benin city, told his fellow Christians who constitute the majority of Fulani herdsmen victims, that ” those ”who come in to your community annually to kill as many as they can find ; who throw bombs in the marketplace and in motor parks, kill children in their beds, who in Bunu Yadi, killed 59 children in boarding school, “ were driven by ‘hate and the devil’.. “Today,” he continued, “the greatest enemy of our faith and our nation is hate, a device of the devil.” And for him, the “answer to hate can only be found “in the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “Love your enemies and bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you that ye may be sons of your father which is in heaven.”
While one cannot take up issues with an ordained pastor of God, it is however doubtful from the point of view of a social scientist if God or the cursed devil have anything to do with our self-inflicted problems. Obasanjo, although without admitting his generation laid the foundation for the ‘hate’ by insisting on ‘unity without justice’ and by breeding the current generation of ‘newbreed’ politicians that breed only corruption, while speaking as chairman of the 38 Kaduna Trade Fair, however, put the blame squarely on “”our leaders who lack focus, commitment, continuity and sometimes proper knowledge about economic and development issues.” He wants them to stop blaming ”God for the nation’s woes.” In fact, he was of the opinion that we should be thanking and praising God for giving us everything we need to be a great nation.
The truth of the matter is that our founding fathers, Muslims Christians and traditional religion worshippers correctly identified absence of justice and fairness as potential source of ‘hate’ some 60 years ago and went on to bequeath on to us a constitution that guaranteed justice and fairness. The military in the name of unity destroyed this superstructure, imposed a new one that promotes injustice, celebrates idleness of federating states and breeds parasitic multi-billionaires who feast on the blood of the poor. Unfortunately, instead of going back to ‘path to Nigeria greatness’ we have been tinkering with military social engineering efforts from which the nation has derived little joy while others who are in a position to properly articulate our crisis of nationhood now want us to pray for miracle even when we have been told heaven helps only those who help themselves.
Let us start with land ownership, the core source of dispute between Fulani herdsmen and their host communities. The native Tiv, Idoma, Berom, Angas, Kwalla and Taroh people of Benue and Plateau States and Southern Kaduna took ownership of their land following the collapse of the Sokoto caliphate, founded in 1809 by Uthman dan Fodio and sustained with slave labour of about 2 million slaves captured mostly from non-muslim minority groups in the north, on March 13 1903. Frederick Lugard stated very clearly that the power once exercised by the defeated caliphate had reverted to the British, at the inauguration of AttahiruII, as the new Caliph. There was no evidence power was given back to the Fulani after independence. It was an attempt to contest the ownership of the land by the descendants of defeated Fulani feudal lords that led to the Tiv popular uprising after independence.
Beyond Frederick Lugard’s declaration, the issue of land ownership was not in doubt even before the amalgamation of 1914. For instance, by 1908, Herbert Macaulay had successfully launched a campaign against the Hausa Land Ordinance which gave the colonial power an unlimited right to acquire any land This was also done in Lagos when after losing in Nigeria, he took Chief Oluwa’s case against government to the Privy Council in London which upheld Chief Oluwa’s appeal over the acquisition of his family land and compelled the colonial government to pay full compensation of 22,500 pounds for his acquired family land.
One hundred years later, power and privileges won and lost on the battle field and in the court rooms have become sources of tension among Nigerians because of military imposition of a fraudulent ‘Land Use Decree’ and a unitary constitution that was never debated by Nigerians. The embattled natives of Southern Kaduna along with other minorities in the north who as non-believers provided slave labour to sustain the caliphate have once again become victims of Fulani herdsmen marauders
The restiveness in the Niger Delta is not markedly different from the crisis in the middle belt regions. The Niger Delta crisis is about resource control. Fifty years of conflict must have convinced the military who as self-proclaiming custodian of the Nigeria constitution, destroyed what it inherited and in the pursuit of Nigeria’s unity unilaterally confiscated the resources of a group for the use of all. We have continued to resist a cheaper approach to Nigeria unity such as allowing Niger Delta to control its resources and pay tax to the centre as was the case in the first republic.
A restructured strong middle belt region (which the current governors and law makers may be opposed to out of selfish interest) with enough economic muscle to embark on economies of scale, such as adding value to their agricultural products, establishing ranches to provide jobs for youths, creating local and community police to prevent infiltration of Fulani herdsmen from Niger, Sudan and northern Cameroon will appear from the benefit of hindsight, a cheaper way to generate national integration to deployment of federal police, helicopters and soldiers as we have done since independence.
Perhaps now is the time to stop living a lie by our leaders’ empty claim that the unity of our country even amidst glaring injustice is not negotiable. Perhaps it is time to take a cue from our founding fathers who garnered more bounteous yields from diversification of politics between 1952 and 1959, a feat yet to be matched by our endless economic diversification efforts since the Babangida years. With governors now forming regional groups for economic integration of their various areas, APC government that campaigned on the basis of restructuring should see the development as an opportunity to lay a new foundation for the unity and economic prosperity of the country.
Many Nigerians are beginning to get exasperated over the kid gloves with which people who are alleged to have illegally enriched themselves at the expense of the Nigerian state are being treated. Cynicism is beginning to develop in the minds of our people that nothing will be done to those accused of crime of embezzlement and corruption. In fact people are saying you only hear about the huge sums people have cornered into their pockets and after that the whole story will disappear from the news to be replaced by more grievous news of greater stealing.
In the meantime the suspects will go ahead and hire some of the most expensive lawyers in the country to take their briefs and argue their cases before the courts of law. Sometimes these lawyers will ask their clients to settle their cases out of court by surrendering portions of the stolen money.
I have no problem with people hiring lawyers to defend themselves. What I object to is people being asked to surrender part of their loot or enter into agreements to pay by instalments while being granted unlimited freedom including involvement in the same vocation that was previously abused and exploited to steal money in the first case.
Yes, freedom is a fundamental right of everybody but it can be abridged in the interest of justice for the larger society. Freedom is not absolute. It should come with responsibilities. I do not agree that an office holder being tried for corruption should be free to go around politicking and campaigning. There ought to be a show of remorse and demonstration of sense of contrition. In the absence of these feelings, what we have is the corrosive effect on the larger society and especially on the youth that bad behaviour is acceptable in Nigeria.
We are talking of billions of Naira. At the last count, about a trillion Naira has been recovered; yet there as yet been no clinical examination of the Central Bank (CBN), Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defence and Nigerian Customs Service, all of which were nests of unbridled corruption in the last regime. I know that this government cannot find out everything that happened in the past but let us deal expeditiously with the cases we have in hand. Cases have been in courts since 2007 without judgement being passed one way or the other and some of those who had cases to answer have found their way to legislative and executive position at federal and state levels.
Our lawyers have developed a specialty in dragging cases interminably by asking for frivolous adjustments. Cynics are even asking if there can be justice through the courts especially when it has transpired that judges at all levels of the judiciary are being corrupted by senior lawyers who are arranging with their illegally rich clients to buy judgements sometimes from judges who apparently do not need much encouragement before selling judgements.
This reminds me of the late Justice Kalu who was chief judge of Borno State in 1982 before being made appellate judge of the Court of Appeal in Kano who famously said he sometimes would like to jail criminals and their lawyers when it seemed to him that lawyers had misconstrued their job as perverting the cause of justice. He argued convincingly that the job of a lawyer is to ensure justice is done to litigants and not just to his clients. His argument then sounded esoteric until recently when a former Nigerian governor was convicted along with his lawyer in London.
If it seems justice cannot be secured in Nigerian courts, then we are in trouble of people resorting to self-help. This will be bad for all of us. This is why we have to stop the present trend going on in Nigeria. Imagine people keeping billions of Naira at home or in banks with fictitious names or hiding monies in shrines then taking government to court after the seizure of their loot.
For example, Andrew Yakubu, who claims close to ten million dollars were gifts from unknown persons. If they were gifts why bury them in a vault in an unused house in a slum in Kaduna? Instead of hanging his head in shame, he has now headed to the court asking government to return his money. He is following the example of others who when humongous sums of money were traced to them and seized, they claimed they were gifts from all sorts of people including dead relatives. Recently, a former minister from Lagos State who confessed to illegal possession of government money and had paid back substantial amount suddenly went to court, saying his fundamental rights are being violated.
Some of these people should have kept quiet and hope that over time their sins would be forgiven and forgotten. There are times when silence is golden. These are such times. As it is to be expected, some of these people’s tribal cohorts have started issuing statements supporting their “son” and “daughters” of the soil and arguing that their seized monies should be returned to them.
We have reached a point where people are embezzling money they do not need and cannot spend in several lifetimes. Some of these hidden monies cannot be openly spent without people asking questions; and this explains why they are buried in anonymous accounts or hidden in vaults. We may yet exhume monies buried in people’s farms if our security people explore well.
I honestly believe that as a people, we have to collectively tackle the problem of corruption. It seems to me that we must collectively define what constitutes corruption and collectively design the way of attack. The poor salaries and the uncertainty of employment may be at the root of official corruption. For example, the late Lee Kwuan Yew, for many years prime minister of Singapore , said the way he ended corruption in his country was by paying public servants so well that it made no sense stealing state funds .
When I was ambassador in Germany, my colleague from Singapore earned six times my salary! To be able to do what Singapore did, we have to have a thriving economy and the right size of bureaucracy .The late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, our first president, said corruption in Nigeria arises out our politics of poverty. This he defined as the fact that most politicians in Nigeria came from poor homes and knew poverty at close contact and quarters, and having tasted power and money would not like to go back to the state of poverty.
But it would have been better if our politicians and governments and the Nigerian elite generally could build an enduring industrial economy that will create sustainable wealth for all of us instead of selfishly taking care of themselves and their families. Our approach to solving the problem of corruption, l am afraid to say, has been haphazard and episodic rather than wholehearted and comprehensive.
